logged out on the game but logged in on the leader board

fmouse

I logged out of my fmouse account on Freecell so I could practice the Game of the Day as anonymous, and my scores came up accordingly after each game, attributed correctly to anonymous. After I had mastered the game, I logged in as fmouse and played it and got a very good score. When I checked the Leader Board, however, I saw that all the games that I'd played as "anonymous" were attributed to "fmouse" there, and all my scores obtained while I was logged out showed up as fmouse's scores. Is there a session cookie involved here? Do I need to restart my browser after logging out, or before logging back in?

david

fmouse wrote:

I logged out of my fmouse account on Freecell so I could practice the Game of the Day as anonymous, and my scores came up accordingly after each game, attributed correctly to anonymous. After I had mastered the game, I logged in as fmouse and played it and got a very good score. When I checked the Leader Board, however, I saw that all the games that I'd played as "anonymous" were attributed to "fmouse" there, and all my scores obtained while I was logged out showed up as fmouse's scores. Is there a session cookie involved here? Do I need to restart my browser after logging out, or before logging back in?

That's actually by design, because we like to discourage the practice of memorizing a game and then playing it for a high score. We think the best indication of how good you are is playing a game blind. To the point that we've considered only letting games of the day being played once (or maybe special tournament games). Though we're not there yet. :-)

Anyway, that's why we only show the first game you passed in the leader board, and that's why we save anonymous games and attribute them to you when you log in.

-David

fmouse

david wrote:

That's actually by design, because we like to discourage the practice of memorizing a game and then playing it for a high score. We think the best indication of how good you are is playing a game blind. To the point that we've considered only letting games of the day being played once (or maybe special tournament games). Though we're not there yet. :-)

Anyway, that's why we only show the first game you passed in the leader board, and that's why we save anonymous games and attribute them to you when you log in.

-David

I can't think of any competitive sports which discourage practice. If you're an olympic athlete you get one chance at a medal, but you're free to train in your sport as much as you can, under conditions that resemble as much as possible those at the olympic venue in which your competition will occur.

The barrier in this case is easily circumvented since if one has a host with virtual machines, or even separate browsers with separate cookie stores on the same system, the issue is moot.

david

fmouse wrote:

I can't think of any competitive sports which discourage practice. If you're an olympic athlete you get one chance at a medal, but you're free to train in your sport as much as you can, under conditions that resemble as much as possible those at the olympic venue in which your competition will occur.

I think of it more like an SAT test than an Olympic event. You are allowed to study and take practice tests for the SAT but taking the identical test beforehand is generally looked down upon.

Besides, if solitaire was an Olympic event, do you really think they'd give you the deck shuffled in the exact same way beforehand and let you practice with it?

The problem we have with this kind of practice is that it turns the game from a thinking game into a rote memorization game (and then a motor skill game--how fast can I click the cards). We don't think rote memorization is very fun at all. If that kind of memorization and clicking skill is that fun then maybe we should make a Simon game.

The barrier in this case is easily circumvented since if one has a host with virtual machines, or even separate browsers with separate cookie stores on the same system, the issue is moot.

We understand that we can't stop (what we consider to be) cheating completely, but we can discourage it as much as possible.

-David

jim

fmouse wrote:

I can't think of any competitive sports which discourage practice.

We do encourage practice. Your new times will still show up on the specific shuffle's page that you've replayed so you can see your improvement. We just don't make it easy for you to get on the leader board when you replay a game and get the same score.

-Jim

fmouse

jim wrote:

We do encourage practice. Your new times will still show up on the specific shuffle's page that you've replayed so you can see your improvement. We just don't make it easy for you to get on the leader board when you replay a game and get the same score.

-Jim

As it is now, you can play the game as many times as you wish, up to the point at which pressing the Auto-finish button will run the game to completion, and your option to play for a recorded score will remain open. Having played the game, and judging from the scores on the Leader Board, I'd guess that this is commonly done. Would this be considered cheating? I would assume that people who do this are learning (memorizing) the best moves in the game. The only way to stop this would be to limit the number of partial runs available to players, and even then people could clear their greenfelt.net cookies and come back in as anonymous for a fresh round of trials.

I guess this is a little like preventing people from counting cards at a blackjack table in a casino. The only thing the pit boss can do is to reserve the right to kick out anyone who wins too much.