"Last active" field

[Max Min]

Hello all! I'm returning here after a few years hiatus, and unable to find my old login details.

I remember I left after a discussion about the field called "Last active", visible on each player's profile.

It seemed to me (and several others) that this broke the game. You could simply check whether someone had logged in over Night. And if they hadn't, you knew they were Town.

I'm interested to play Mafia again here. But first I'd like to check if this "problem" (as I see it) still exists. At first glance, it looks like the Last Active field is still there and visible to everyone? Can this be used to identify definite Townies?

Thanks for any info/comments on this.

PS Hope I put this in the right forum! Please move it if not, thanks.

[Ythan]

For one i think most players still visit the site when their games are in night but they have no action. For two you can set it to not reveal when you're online. Third welcome back!

[Max Min]

Thanks for these points, and for the welcome

It still seems like a game-breaking issue to me though ... if you can sometimes know for sure that someone is Town?

[Max Min]

To put the question another way perhaps: why is it useful to ever have this field displayed?

Especially if it can sometimes break the game?

[Aureal]

The last active field doesn't mean much of anything, there's no rhyme or reason to it. You can be online and not have it update or have it show an update at random.

For instance, my last post was about 23 hours ago, but it showed me as last active 11 hours ago when I checked a couple of times earlier this morning, even though I have looked at the site a couple of times in the last few hours (on different devices, even!). Now that I come back to finish writing this, it's showing me as last active 2.5 hours ago even though an hour ago it still thought I was last active at that 11hr ago mark.

Or take my alt Firebagel, whom I logged in 2 hours ago to test this. The last online time is still back in October. Neither of these accounts have been set to hide my online status.

Logging in does not necessarily update the last online time, and it might update at some undetermined point anyway.

[Aureal]

And even though I just made that post so OBVIOUSLY I am active, it is still showing me as last active 2.5 hours ago. So.

[Aureal]

And now Firebagel is last active 3 hours ago. I didn't do anything with the account since then. XD

[Ythan]

In conclusion no it's perfect as is.

[Max Min]

Thanks for these replies.

I think I must be missing something still.

Could you explain what is the purpose of this field?

If it’s not even accurate … why have it enabled at all?

[Cheery Dog]

It's just somewhat delayed, but it's still not going to mean anything.

I have used it in the past when I modded games in terms of trying to figure out if someone is likely to end up responding to a prod.

Sometimes it's also nice to know that that friend you haven't seen in forever is still lurking around the site, even if they're not posting.

[Max Min]

Test post to see if mine updates

[Aureal]

It hasn't updated to me at this point, I'm seeing you as last active nearly 24 hours ago.

[SmileyDude1]

Seems to have updated now for me.

[Max Min]

After a little bit of testing, it seems like mine is updating very reliably but with a short delay of a few hours.

If that is true generally, I can reliably tell that someone is Town: if they didn't login over Night.

I just need to wait a few hours for that field to update for everyone who did.

Unless I'm missing something?

[biancospino]

Regardless of the field's reliability or lack thereof, why are we assuming that "was never online during Night" = "couldn't have been Mafia"?
One can very well just post "

@mod:

killing X this Night" during Twilight and then scurry off for 48 hours. Or even just scurry off if there are other living mafiosi.
In fact that's what I'd imagine is likely to become the meta if checking the field becomes something that people do. And it doesn't even have to be done on purpose, maybe one mafioso just figured they'd be busy for a fortnight and let the rest of the team handle actions that Night.

[Max Min]

Regardless of the field's reliability or lack thereof, why are we assuming that "was never online during Night" = "couldn't have been Mafia"?
One can very well just post "

@mod:

killing X this Night" during Twilight and then scurry off for 48 hours. Or even just scurry off if there are other living mafiosi.
In fact that's what I'd imagine is likely to become the meta if checking the field becomes something that people do. And it doesn't even have to be done on purpose, maybe one mafioso just figured they'd be busy for a fortnight and let the rest of the team handle actions that Night.

I can see this.

But then my question becomes: is the existence of this field giving a benefit which outweighs the drawbacks?

It seems to me: clearly no.

Perhaps the next question is: can this field actually be disabled, so nobody sees it any more?

[SmileyDude1]

Regardless of the field's reliability or lack thereof, why are we assuming that "was never online during Night" = "couldn't have been Mafia"?
One can very well just post "

@mod:

killing X this Night" during Twilight and then scurry off for 48 hours. Or even just scurry off if there are other living mafiosi.
In fact that's what I'd imagine is likely to become the meta if checking the field becomes something that people do. And it doesn't even have to be done on purpose, maybe one mafioso just figured they'd be busy for a fortnight and let the rest of the team handle actions that Night.

I can see this.

But then my question becomes: is the existence of this field giving a benefit which outweighs the drawbacks?

It seems to me: clearly no.

Perhaps the next question is: can this field actually be disabled, so nobody sees it any more?

If you go to "board preferences" on the user control panel there's an option to hide your online status that you can enable, which I believe causes the last active field to come up blank. Not sure if that's the same thing as not being able to see the option at all though.

[Max Min]

Seems to me that a solution would need to be applied globally.

The "hide your online status" setting would need to be turned on for everyone globally.

And/or the "last active" field would need to be disabled or hidden globally.

[DragonEater70]

Personally, I have never heard of anyone employing this strategy and I would never dream of using it. Disabling the feature would in my opinion suck a little because it's always nice to have the site show me that one or more of my friends are online and then I want to send them a PM. If this exploit / strategy would have had any degree of prevalence or relevance, I'd be happy to sacrifice that feature for the integrity of games. But it doesn't seem like an actual issue so I don't get why we'd need to solve it.

[SmileyDude1]

^^^ Agree with the above.

Also in a world where this begins to become problematic I feel like you could probs just soft-fix the issue by requiring all players to send a response to nightstart PMs during games (thereby ensuring that all players "last active" field updates during the nightphase) instead of removing the feature entirely. This would be somewhat tedious though, so I'd only want to see that pursued if it became clear that the last active field was beginning to jeopardize game integrity.

[Max Min]

Well, if I’ve spotted a weak point in the setup, you can be sure that others have too and are using it. Especially since this was all discussed a few years ago.

Personally, I would rather not play a game at all, than play using an exploit that gives me an advantage. Not everyone takes that approach, of course.

But I’m getting the sense that nothing is going to be done about this at the moment.

So I guess I’ll leave again and maybe come back come back in a few more years to see whether anything has changed …

Thanks for the replies and wish you all well.

[Ircher]

Well, if I’ve spotted a weak point in the setup, you can be sure that others have too and are using it. Especially since this was all discussed a few years ago.

Personally, I would rather not play a game at all, than play using an exploit that gives me an advantage. Not everyone takes that approach, of course.

But I’m getting the sense that nothing is going to be done about this at the moment.

So I guess I’ll leave again and maybe come back come back in a few more years to see whether anything has changed …

Thanks for the replies and wish you all well.

I've kept my status turned off lately but not because of this. I think the bigger issue is people using the "who's online" to decide whether someone is lurking or not: "X is online but is posting everywhere except this game."

[Ythan]

Is this a bot or what.

[usesPython]

Personally, I have never heard of anyone employing this strategy and I would never dream of using it. Disabling the feature would in my opinion suck a little because it's always nice to have the site show me that one or more of my friends are online and then I want to send them a PM. If this exploit / strategy would have had any degree of prevalence or relevance, I'd be happy to sacrifice that feature for the integrity of games. But it doesn't seem like an actual issue so I don't get why we'd need to solve it.

We had it happen to us once and then we turned it off on all our accounts after that to prevent it from happening again.

That being said, we've never seen any other instances of that happening on this site so it's not as if it's a widespread thing

[Max Min]

We had it happen to us once and then we turned it off on all our accounts after that to prevent it from happening again.

That being said, we've never seen any other instances of that happening on this site so it's not as if it's a widespread thing

The point, surely, is that you’ve no idea how widespread it is.

The instance you linked to is one where someone referenced that they had used this field.

If I were playing here and using this exploit, I wouldn’t tell anyone!