Word Ace Review

[Mononoko]

Originally Posted by selfawaregames

...in case you're wondering what's next...

Why do you taunt me?

This picture has made me realiz I want card ace more than webOS 2.0

[selfawaregames]

Originally Posted by Mononoko

Why do you taunt me?

This picture has made me realiz I want card ace more than webOS 2.0

Excellent.
seppo

[thermodynamic]

Wooo! Card Ace!

[02589]

I appreciate the hard work that was put into this game. I find the annagrammers intolerable. It's not fun to play a mind challenging game with a cheater. Raising the buy in to $4000 only fed their fury. I have tried all of the suggestions. I even went to the low stakes tables.

I see this game going nowhere that will suit me. The projected system of buying more points will not deter the annagrammers. It will only make them worse. It seems the developers of this game are feeding the ego driven d-bags instead of driving them away.

Until I hear of a real solution, this game has no future for me. It is a helluva concept and I would love to play honest games in the spirit of the concept. I have deleted this game from my Pre and iPhone.

[tonycpsu]

The cheaters are easy to spot after watching a few hands, so I'm hoping the developers can add the capability to sit at a table for a while before getting dealt in. That way, you can see if there's obvious cheating, and go somewhere else. As folks have said, there's no foolproof way to tell the cheaters from the, er, tens of thousands of former Scrabble champions playing Word Ace... so it's best to just avoid them if you see them.

Any rating system where players rate other players is subject to problems where people gang up on others and accuse them of cheating, so I'm against that. But I do think the ability to watch tables before officially joining could solve some (not all) of the cheating problems.

Alternately, the ability to select a more restricted word list without a lot of the BS "words you only find in Scrabble" words would be nice.

[selfawaregames]

Originally Posted by 02589

I appreciate the hard work that was put into this game. I find the annagrammers intolerable. It's not fun to play a mind challenging game with a cheater. Raising the buy in to $4000 only fed their fury. I have tried all of the suggestions. I even went to the low stakes tables.

I see this game going nowhere that will suit me. The projected system of buying more points will not deter the annagrammers. It will only make them worse. It seems the developers of this game are feeding the ego driven d-bags instead of driving them away.

Until I hear of a real solution, this game has no future for me. It is a helluva concept and I would love to play honest games in the spirit of the concept. I have deleted this game from my Pre and iPhone.

Sorry to hear 'bout the deletions. Hopefully, after an update or two, we'll have addressed the problem to the point where you feel you can play it again.

Buying more points and the higher buy-ins weren't intended in any way to address the anagrammers. If there was any change in their behaviour, it was purely an unintended side-effect. The higher buy-in tables were unlocked because the good players (and the cheats, probably) were racking up enough chips that they wanted something to do with them. We'll be opening up more options for that in the next update, but the higher-stakes tables were an option that players were vocal about wanting.

IMO, the best thing anyone can do right now is to simply judiciously use your Friend List - add people who you play with who don't cheat, and if you add enough people, you'll quickly build up a list of people who will be online any time. If they similarly don't tolerate cheaters, then you'll create a little closed network of good players. If you have enough, you can even play at the private tables where only your friends can join you, and you'll be completely isolated from cheaters.

I've said it a handful of times, but we're working to address the problem in a variety of ways. It'll take a little time, but we're committed to keeping the game fair and playable for everyone. We see this as a game we want to still be playing 10, 15, 20 years from now - and we'll do what it takes to make sure the cheaters don't ruin it for people.

What I'd ask is that if you're playing at a table, and you see someone who's obviously, obviously cheating, send their username to support@(our game company's name).com. That will help us aggregate enough "bad user" data to make any anti-cheating stuff we do on the back end more effective. Or heck, PM it to me here, if you want. The more info we get, the better our solutions will be.

Thanks!
seppo

[02589]

Again, I think this game is a brilliant concept. And it's awesome how much the development team interacts with us here. For that, I thank you.

BTW, I realize the cheaters are actually alleged cheaters. And while it's cheating in my book, are there actual rules that say you can't do that? I also realize that the cheating community represents a large portion of the downloads, word of mouth, bragging, and recogition for the game.

I think most of the points and counterpoints have been discussed. I'll just go with Word Whirl until I hear good news.

[Mononoko]

At least you cant cheat in card ace :P

[selfawaregames]

Originally Posted by Mononoko

At least you cant cheat in card ace :P

That's for sure.

seppo

[selfawaregames]

Originally Posted by 02589

Again, I think this game is a brilliant concept. And it's awesome how much the development team interacts with us here. For that, I thank you.

BTW, I realize the cheaters are actually alleged cheaters. And while it's cheating in my book, are there actual rules that say you can't do that? I also realize that the cheating community represents a large portion of the downloads, word of mouth, bragging, and recogition for the game.

I think most of the points and counterpoints have been discussed. I'll just go with Word Whirl until I hear good news.

I don't see the cheating community as our real audience. Personally, I'm not a fan of griefers in any community, and what it comes down to is that people using automated anagrammers are playing only to ****** other players, and not because they get any satisfaction out of the intellectual challenge of the game. So we're not trying to skirt some line where we're cultivating a certain percentage of cheaters because they help spread the word - they're not buying chips, they're not helping us in any way (though I suppose you could argue they get legit players to churn chips faster, but since someone who's had their chips "stolen" by one of these people isn't likely to continue playing, much less buy chips, that's a tenuous argument at best).

So just to be clear on that. The apprehension I have about coming down on cheaters is only because it's difficult to say *for sure* whether someone's cheating or not.

That said, maybe you can enjoy games in the original spirit of the game once we release printed cards. You'll be able to play with your friends, and if they whip out an anagram generator, you can kick 'em out of your house!



seppo

[tonycpsu]

Hi seppo,

Are you able to shed some light on what anti-cheating things you're working on? I agree that using a "circle of friends" helps, but have you also thought about keeping track of a player's last N winning words and letting people view them when they click on the user's avatar? This, along with my aforementioned suggestion of letting people observe games for a few hands before they join them would make a big difference, I think.

[selfawaregames]

Originally Posted by tonycpsu

Hi seppo,

Are you able to shed some light on what anti-cheating things you're working on? I agree that using a "circle of friends" helps, but have you also thought about keeping track of a player's last N winning words and letting people view them when they click on the user's avatar? This, along with my aforementioned suggestion of letting people observe games for a few hands before they join them would make a big difference, I think.

I don't want to say everything we're doing - since some of the stuff we're looking at, the more people know about it the more they'd be able to try to "game" the system. We keep a lot of data, and are planning on using it.

We've had a couple suggestions about letting people see past hands of players, or even the last few hands that have won at a given table. Those are elegant solutions - the only potential downside is that it "tips the hands" of some of the players, but that's relatively minor compared to the potential upside.

So it's very likely that we'll see something variation on that theme coming soon. It is something that will have to go out with a software update, so we can't "push it" from here. But yes, something like that, and the ability to flag players you wish to avoid will be coming as soon as we can complete those features.

seppo

[tonycpsu]

Excellent! Great to hear you guys are on top of things.

[DKatman]

Originally Posted by jhoff80

... That's just as bad as using an anagrammer, in my book, if there's no way for people you've beaten to win their money back.

I don't agree with this statement. I do think it is good to come back to the same table (I thought I always did, but I think those were just on slow nights). But I want to increase money. It doesn't matter if it was getting it back from the same person. Of course, in Vegas, I would also prefer to put my start money back in my pocket at some time and only play with my winnings as well (Right! Like I ever had winnings!).

That just sounds like saying it is like cheating (creating words out of thin air) to decide to attempt to bluff through any given hand. It is a strategy that has gone against me (I hate folding on a decent hand). I have even started a bluff and caught a decent flop.

I like the idea of building a decent friend list so you have a decent core of people that play fairly and trade off on good hands.

Also, I like having some kind of accountability. There is something about someone who won't put ANY pic other than default avatars (aside from first trying the game at all). Also, I use my same name EVERYWHERE on the Net. I am DKATMAN here, I am DKATMAN in the game. People who hang out at Precentral should use their screen name. If you get called out on the board, it is you.

Hope to see some of you in the game....or maybe not

You sound smarter than me (or is that I?)

Dave

[jhoff80]

Originally Posted by DKatman

I don't agree with this statement. I do think it is good to come back to the same table (I thought I always did, but I think those were just on slow nights). But I want to increase money. It doesn't matter if it was getting it back from the same person. Of course, in Vegas, I would also prefer to put my start money back in my pocket at some time and only play with my winnings as well (Right! Like I ever had winnings!).

That just sounds like saying it is like cheating (creating words out of thin air) to decide to attempt to bluff through any given hand. It is a strategy that has gone against me (I hate folding on a decent hand). I have even started a bluff and caught a decent flop.

I like the idea of building a decent friend list so you have a decent core of people that play fairly and trade off on good hands.

Also, I like having some kind of accountability. There is something about someone who won't put ANY pic other than default avatars (aside from first trying the game at all). Also, I use my same name EVERYWHERE on the Net. I am DKATMAN here, I am DKATMAN in the game. People who hang out at Precentral should use their screen name. If you get called out on the board, it is you.

Like I already explained, I just like fighting back to win my money back if someone gets a good few hands over me.

[Yeorwned]

This one makes me absoutely crazy! Just not enough options imo.

[02589]

As long as we're whining, there needs to be control on raises. I don't need to go through all the different ego driven scenarios. We've all seen them. For the sake of sanity and keeping the game flowing, the devs should see this is out of hand and do something about it.

[musicguy]

Thanks for developing this game. It's the best

[selfawaregames]

Howdy, precentral folks!

Just wanted to ask that if you see someone who's griefing in any way - obviously using an anagram generator, going all-in every hand all the time, etc., let me know their username. Don't tell them, or confront them, just lemme know their username. If I see them online, I'll jump into a game with 'em, see how they're playing, and give them a warning or ban them if necessary.

We're working on various ways to deal with cheaters, but the simple fact is that it's going to take some time. In the meantime, I'm going to be more actively moderating the game, and dealing with cheaters manually.

Thanks!
seppo

[selfawaregames]

Given that after we do Word Ace, we're doing Card Ace, I wonder if the next thing we should do is a renaissance-themed Rock Band/Guitar Hero clone.

seppo