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War also revealed a negative phenomenon – namely, excessive page refreshing for the expected opponent. Some people do it in 2-3 seconds. Below are a few reports.

I'll leave the question of whether this is moral and consistent with the rules to the administration.

I have doubts whether a 2-second attack is realistic? I'm wondering if I'm playing with humans or robots.

I did my tests:

• Laptop: Intel i7 processor, 8 GB RAM, OS: Linux
• Browser: Firefox 115
• Mobile internet: download ~4Mb/s, upload ~3Mb/s, Ping ~30ms

Technical analysis of the problem:

• The 'attack' button is required to launch the attack.
• There is a time period (tx) between reading the database and displaying the button – see the timeline below

• The human reaction time is scrolling the page and/or clicking a button (I'll call this rx).
• The thesis is that (tx + rx) ~= 2000ms. Rearranging the formula yields rx ~= 2000ms - rx. So, the human reaction time is just over 1 second.

Below is a link to a screenshot.

https://i.ibb.co/xK8T9Lym/123123.png or https://ibb.co/1YJWyQ3s

On my device, the page loads in about 1200ms. I assume the button will appear earlier (kx value - see the timeline above), because not all page elements need to load.
With faster internet speeds, the refresh cycle will be faster, but that doesn't change the fact that a human reaction in about 1 second is impossible for me - regardless of the device (phone, laptop). On a laptop/PC, you need to hover the mouse precisely, and on a phone, scroll and tap.

To prevent such refreshes and increase the security of the entire system (anti-DDoS), I suggest implementing a captcha or similar anti-robot test.

What do you think? Are we still human?

Well, I just won against a guy who was attacked at 07:19:14, my attack is at 08:19:16, so 2 sec. Probably a lil bit more, as it is rounded down. All of course done manually, F5, + 2 mouse clicks, so it is possible.

If there was a robot check every fight I'd stop playing, and I don't have the need to respond as fast as those in a war (or spamming BG fights).

But I honestly think you're suggesting to fix/change something that's not an issue.

If in war you already anticipate when you will need to refresh you have the tab preselected & you hover your finger over F5 or refresh spot on a screen. The finger press is significantly less than 1s to move.

Size the screen to not need to scroll or move mouse to the area where the button will appear once the page loads and/or anticipate it It finish loading & you shave time off.

The new ui takes a fraction longer to load than the old one imo, my net is 500/250, but the page is not one where think there will be much difference in real terms on refresh rates. Latency prob has more of an effect than the bandwith/peak speed.

Many players have already written to me that 2 seconds is achievable with a fast internet connection. I agree with them. One player tested the page loading time and got just over 500ms, which is 700ms less than on my internet and laptop – confirming the claims made by other players.

This doesn't change the fact that changes are needed to prevent massive page refreshes for server stability. Refreshing multiple times for a few seconds is fine, but pressing F5 multiple times per second should be blocked.

There's also the question of morality and humanity – is it worth losing your health by sitting at your computer at 3 a.m., maniacally tracking times and pressing F5. Cheers everyone, since we're humans, not machines :)

For the record, I traced it on my line now I'm in front of my admin laptop (wired as the router sits just behind it so my best possible speeds) and not wireless on my tablet/gaming laptop.

It's 356ms for me to refresh a cached page of a player - and there's only 18KB transfered (~120KB if this page wasn't cached).

I think Cratr will have some serious issues if a few people are spamming F5 and it takes the server down given these low sizes ;)

If you want to maximise your game - and those that are competitive in a war senario and want to get 10k MC's are - then hitting folks every 12 hours is going to trigger this sort of behaviour.

Even if you dropped the attacks to once per day, you'd still get people looking for the moment some-one is free - so nothing changes.

I def fall into the "too much like hard work" category for it to be something I do - but different horses for courses as they say!