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For those of you who dont know there is a way to hide messages in BBCode. Quote this message and read it in the quoted form.
The question is should these be allowed in games? Recently it was used in a newbie and people had no idea what was going on.
My personal feelings are they shouldnt be in newbies, but are ok in normal games. We kinda went over it in the Newbie podcast tonight and I wanted to bring it up here.
Thoughts?
Some arguments are if it gets too popular then it is just a hassle to need to quote every post. I think depending on the post it is only more likely that town quotes it over scum and is a good way to hide claims.
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Not sure about this. Think I'm more against it.
Its a fairly sneaky way to hide messages/claims. Though it seems like it would be rather hit and miss if what you've hidden is actually found.
Onegu might have a point that if you are careful about the post that you use this in it will make it more likely to be found by Town over Mafia but there is no way to be sure about that. Really just whoever quotes that post (and reads the quoted version, which doesn't always happen) first will find the message, which could be anyone.
It def would be frustrating if this became common since hitting quote on every post just to see if it has a hidden message like this is cumbersome to say the least.
Also while this sounds like a clever idea now, if it becomes more common then it's a pretty boring way to hide claims isn't it? It's not like leaving subtle clues for someone who is paying attn to piece together, it's just a little trick that once know isn't that impressive especially if everyone knows to look for it. + Show Spoiler +A good analogy is Magic tricks. The first time you see a trick & learn how it's done it might blow your mind, but the 2nd or 3rd time? The "magic" is gone and your just playing along at that point.
Guess it comes down to being a niche thing to me. It's cool and clever the first few times but if it goes into the mainstream then if looses it's appeal. I'd rather see people be creative with their words to drop hints to their role if they want to do that, not rely on a mechanic that comes down to "Oh I clicked the right button and found the message."
Just my 2 cents.
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
yeah, i don't like it much.
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United Kingdom10443 Posts
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On June 23 2015 18:42 KelsierSC wrote:
it's stupid as fuck
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I'm not liking that.
a) it can be spotted very easily by chance
b) if everyone knows about it, finding out about those means quoting every single post has to be opened
c) if only a part of the players knows about it, it gives an unfair advantage.
Only scenario where I could imagine that to work is if a blue role sneaks in a claim. That would only work if scum players don't know about the BBCode issue or are lazy as fuck.
"It's cool and clever the first few times but if it goes into the mainstream then if looses it's appeal."
pretty much this!
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Blazinghand
United States25561 Posts
I'm aware of this kind of thing and nobody uses it because it's pretty stupid. Even if it weren't stupid, hiding messages is unacceptable in a non pm game. I doubt any player would be do foolhardy as to try hiding secret messages in any game hosted by me.
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On June 23 2015 18:37 marvellosity wrote:
yeah, i don't like it much.
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On June 23 2015 22:20 Half the Sky wrote:
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kitaman27
United States9245 Posts
When it comes to hidden messages, it's probably more effective to just weave a role claim or night action result within a post by using the last letter of each word or something along those lines.
If something like that is legal, then hiding a message in BBCode probably isn't all that different. I'd probably consider it lame/lazy, rather than actual cheating.
It's tough to draw a line between what type of hidden messages are allowed and what aren't.
For instance, if you can't hide a message in a url, can you post a picture that contains a message in 2pt font if you zoom in? Can you hide a message within a paragraph of text? Can you quote some song lyrics where the next passage contains the message that you'll refer to? Can you post a random phrase like "I'm like Sirius Black" and a few days later point out that the same actor portrayed Detective Gordon?
A few years back we had a discussion about encryption and breadcrumbs and I believe the general consensus was that it's fine as long as everyone has a "reasonable opportunity" to discover the message.
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I think kita has it right. There was a game a while ago where encryption became a hot issue:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/mafia/340727-pick-your-poison-mafia?view=all
Basically it allows you to do things and reveal them later. This becomes a major issue for mafia because if they want to counterclaim a cop or something, they could have had to plan for it since day 1 to match an actual cop that has been dropping encrypted messages throughout the game.
In general, it's probably fine to hide messages like this. Holyflare did something similar in the game where we lynched DreadReturn on day 1. He posted a big post of bullshit with 2 "hidden" links to images that contained actual analysis. However I would recommend just not doing it for the most part, because if everyone starts doing it it simply makes the games worse for having to click-search through every post in the game. This game is time-consuming enough already.
There is a massive grey are of things that people can do this game, some are more grey than others. I'll list a few
- Checking of other players on steam/battle.net or other social networks.
- Encrypting messages
- Speaking in code that only part of the game is likely to understand (I think geript/wos did this?)
- Abusing own meta to the point where you stop trying to win in some situations (town seal / promises)
- Discussing an ongoing game with another player not in the game (is this hydra now? Looking at you Protactinium)
- Using out of game content (images, videos) that may be subject to change
- Spreadsheets that can be posted in the thread as "proof" you've been doing something
- Using out of game information to "prove" out of game actions (look at these boxes, I'm really moving)
There's been so many of these throughout the years. In general it's best of people just stop trying to break the game and focus on just playing it.
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We ended up banning encryption though, because it wasn't fun. I remember some game where everybody was forced to encrypt a roleclaim on d1 and then later they could prove their d1 roleclaim by posting the decryption key. That just wasn't fun.
I think that banning hidden messages in BBCode makes perfect sense, again because it isn't fun. I don't think anybody plays mafia to quote every single post in search of hidden BBCode messages. Hiding messages is okay but everything hidden should be hidden in plain sight for everyone to see without having to quote a post or put it through google translate or whatever.
I also remember a game where someone posted a small talk oneliner with a smiley appended, but not a teamliquid smiley. It was an image of a smiley that was also a link. No one thought to hover the smiley to discover that it was a link and in the end the link lead people to somewhere with game related information. Would this be alright? Would hiding a link inside an otherwise underlined passage (like this, the comma is linked) be alright? I don't think so, nobody plays mafia to hover everything that could possibly be a link.
kitaman27 raises an interesting question with the Sirius Black thing, are pop cultural references like that something we want in our games? Is it fair to have an edge just because you've watched Harry Potter and Batman? It's probably not a big deal and a ban on that would probably be undesirable (and unenforceable?). What about obscure reference to old games "Remember that time in that game when you thought that thing about me and it was completely untrue? Well that's happening again!!!".
I think we should just ban behavior we think takes more fun away from the game than it puts into it. With this BBCode thing the answer is pretty straight forward (people don't seem to support it and some are actively against it) but with some other related hidden message things it might be a little less obvious.
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yea, this is a game of behavioral analysis and logic and thing that give an edge and isn't one of those should be considered for BAN
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kitaman27
United States9245 Posts
On a side note, this guy would totally be in favor of BBCode hidden messages 
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
well, the good thing is, we don't have to be consistent over everything.
we can whimsically decide we don't like this and not worry how it matches up with other things we do and don't like.
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You aren't actually hiding anything since anyone can see it in my opinion, you just have to look for it, but I can accept if they are disallowed.
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On June 24 2015 01:30 marvellosity wrote:
well, the good thing is, we don't have to be consistent over everything.
we can whimsically decide we don't like this and not worry how it matches up with other things we do and don't like.
Exactly.
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Not really a podcast but WoS recorded what we talked about for the newbie. Its on his twitch
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Blazinghand
United States25561 Posts
We podcast from time to time though after big/interesting games. You can expect one after TL Mafia LXXI: Gaiden
Main thing for me is that like, there shouldn't be anything "hidden". You can have things that are tricky, but if everything you write should be readable by a person trying to read your post. Hiding things inside hyperlinks or bbcode tags that would require people to mouseover EVERY LETTER in the entire game of mafia, or quote every post and copy it to a notepad every time, should be obviously not chill at all. I can't imagine anyone finding this acceptable.
If you want to be like "heh heh I'm Batman's enemy" to bredcrumb that your'e the jester or whatever, I don't care, as long as it's readable. As a host, it's my job to police interactions and prevent people from flaming together, and you can bet your sorry asses that I absolutely refuse to quote every post made by a player, and mouseover ever letter, looking for bbcode and hyperlinks to make sure everyone is following behavior guidelines.
Anyone doing this kinda crap is gonna get kicked out of my games cause I cannot be bothered to deal with the amount of moderating bullshit required.
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EPT
