Need a way to re-enter an in-progress clash (just a link is fine) after it starts. I joined a clash but experienced latency issues seconds before the clash started. Due to those issues it never took me to the actual clash page, even though I was entered. I was able to view the report page, which had my name on it, but could not view the actual challenge so had to take last.
You can re-enter in the clash (if no submitted/finished), you have just to join the lobby of the clash again.
Step 1:
Find your clash in the Current clash list and join the report:
Step 2:
Delete the /report/ of the url to join the lobby
If the clash is started, you will be send to the IDE.
Thanks, good to know. Would be nice to have a link too though.
I feel like Clash of Code gives too much Coding Points.
I did like 20 clashes or so, never really taking it too seriously. I did not even ranked 1st very often, and still I have 1000 points from that! Itās like solving 4 hard problems, or 2 very hard. This is way too much.
The fact is that if you are not clashing, the system automatically remove you rank places each night.
So, to keep 1000 points you will have to maintain your actual ranking over the time.
Today, there is not a lot of Clasher (about 1300). Tomorrow we expect to have a lot more clasher. And if you are top 100 in the ladder with 5000 players, then you worth the 1000CP.
For the exact formula of CP, go to the thread āHow is the Coding Rank calculated?ā.
As we have been discussing on IRC over the last couple of days, the high quantity of available points in clashes encourages highly criticized behaviours such as pasting. Blocking pasting in the IDE is a pain because, even without cheating, it happens sometimes that your code needs to be copied and pasted. There is actually no way to stop people using these kind of techniques to win over others except waiting for them to get fed of ācheatingā.
However, one thing some people tended to agree over on IRC was that this kind of behaviour would be lessened if clashes were having a much lower cap. For the moment, the cap is at 5000 points, which is huge. I understand the will of making it a real competition, but giving the best clash player a reward equivalent to 10 very hard problems seems a bit disproportioned. Especially when you have no way of controlling whoās honest, and whoās not I guess. (I also understand that for the moment nobody earns 5000 points in the clashes, but if the cap stays the same and people keep coming, the 5000 points will be reached really soon)
4 Likes
How to stop pasting pre-made answers?
Ensure that a player cannot see the same puzzle twice (regardless of the mode).
Obvious issues:
- it probably cannot fix the leaderboard retroactively (not a problem in the long term)
- it will lead to a lot of players being unable to clash until the puzzle pool grows
- it can be bypassed with multiple accounts (but will people really create multiple accounts for that?)
Another option is to take into account the repetition of the puzzle in the ranking. For example say that only the first clash with a given puzzle (no matter the mode) counts in the ranking. This way people can keep clashing at will, but they will have no intensive for cheating with pasting. The first issue may be still valid (if the logs donāt contain info about the puzzles done), the second is not, the third is.
Disabling pasting in the IDE is a terrible idea which will hurt genuine players (they may be using an IDE to write code) and leave genuine cheaters in peace (they may write a script to autotype their code in the IDE window).
With regards to points: you can get around 13k points from achievements, 3k from contests, and 1k for each optimization/multiplayer game (10k at the moment). 5k for clashes sounds rather reasonable. Keep in mind that as the pool of problems grows bigger, looking for the correct code to paste will become longer than actually typing it in.
Unless you have a script that does thatā¦
A first partial solution would be to increase the number of questions. However, itās hard to write more than 10 new questions per day so it would be too long for us. This is why we are currently working on a solution to allow CodinGamers to write their own Clash questions.
3 Likes
Aw, do they really? 
If so, countering that is not as hard as introducing new puzzles (you just need to obfuscate the existing ones), but this is probably not a race you want to start. Thatās a very sad behaviorā¦
In my opinion it is indeed a very good idea. 
I prefer not to think about how some will try to abuse this thoughā¦
2 Likes
There is an annoying bug since several daysā¦
some clashes never end because at list one player seems to be in an invalid stateā¦
Have you detected why this happens?
Is there a plan to fix it soon?
Yup, happened to me twice.
Example : https://www.codingame.com/clashofcode/clash/report/12455df8cd7a30fc7d4d2f08f70ac4b206cc6
Another example:
Clash has finished after a while
Nope, we have tried to reboot all the servers that compile/execute the codes on Friday but this was apparently not enough. We have difficulties to reproduce that issue.
Of course, weāll do our best to fix this problem but I canāt tell you when it will be fixed (especially because we are in the middle of the week-end).
I experienced a sever error, (red box, I do not remember the number) just a few minutes before it first happensā¦
I do not know if it is related or not!
for the other ones, my feelings (perhaps trueā¦ or notā¦) are that a player has closed the browser window without finishing or submitting an answer. (perhaps a way to not record a bad score)ā¦ I didnāt tried itā¦ because if i am wrong, I will get a bad scoreā¦ and I donāt want to disturb the other playersā¦
perhaps you can investigate furthermoreā¦
I did several clashes this week end and here a more general feedback :
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This is a beta so i donāt care of bugs. Thereās some of them anyway, but nothing really big (some clashes never ends. Or very later. I sometimes got a 502 error when i want to join a clash. ā¦).
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Some test cases are not enought
I got a example in my mind. Thereās a clash with overlapping squares. You have to find the size of the overlapping area. Take this javascript code : [EDIT: full code of an exercise removed] If you use it for this clash, youāll get 100% in the IDE. But youāll have 80% at submit. Everytime i got this i specify it in the feedback form. But itās very frustrating.
Now we enter in the more disturbing things :
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Itās pretty easy to keep our code and re-use it. I donāt know if we can do something against this. And worst of all, sometime you got the same clash in the same 10 minutes. So you just have to do ctrl+z to find it again and copy/paste it. I know i would be impossible for the team to create new clashes every day and i canāt think of a good solution for this.
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I donāt know how points and ladder is calculated, but it look to me that is according too much points to the number of clashes we do. For exemple, Pplox and Royale are better than me. I just canāt win a clash against them or very rarely. But iām ahead of Royale because i do more clashes than him. It donāt seem pretty fair to me. It may be brutal, but i feel like the better way to be in the top of the clashes ladder is just to āfarm some noobsā (MMORPG style).
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I also feel that clash of code if rewarding too much points. At the moment, i have 1500 points for clashes. Itās 50% more than the first place in Platinium Rift or Poker Chip Race ! Itās crazy.
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Since you remove the timer cut at submit, golfing mode is just pretty boring. You know you canāt win with some languages. For example you are a C# or Java coder, you are just fucked. With the timer cut, you could win by submitting fast. You cut the time for others so they canāt golf until the end and they may make a mistake because of the rush or maybe they wonāt golf enough. But now you are just fucked and you know you will lose. Learn ruby/perl/python or die. Where is the fun ? I totally agree that the timer cut is useless for faster and reverse mode. Because the first submitter will win anyway, so let others peoples the time to think. But in golfing mode, the first submitter got nothing. Only bad points. The others players see you code size so theyāll just try to do less than you and they have all the time to do that.
4 Likes
The copy / paste issue is a real problem. There are players who are finishing their clashes in 25 seconds, itās pretty obvious what is going on.
has I already posted :
I still think that it is the best solution, except for code size mode:
It should be possible for a player to reduce his code sizeā¦
Note that depending on what was required for the clash, 25 seconds may be legit.
Yeah 25 seconds could be legit for some clashes, but not the one I was playing againstā¦
edit: As an example, I just go the same clash twice in a row. The 2nd time I was able to do it in 57 seconds when I already knew the solution. First place did it in 21 seconds. This is a 10 minute clash.
I think there needs to be a ranking system which takes into account how many times each player has seen the particular question being played. Better yet, donāt award any points or donāt let someone play if the question has already been played.
1 Like