Need Policy on Multi-account play
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- Annihilon
- Awakened
How are you able to stop multiple accounts on multiple devices? Someone exploiting that could easily state that it was a friend's device or a relative's, or an endless amount of excuses that would peg GA as the bad guy for banning them or whatnot.
It's like gold trading or account selling on any other MMO, impossible to police
There isn't a reward for winning campaigns anyway, so why does it matter who wins.. specially with the fact that one side only wins because of an exploit and its made public knowledge.. its like people who buy multiple mcdonald's food products during a promotion just to peel off the stickies on the food package and brag to others that they "won a free burger by buying 10 burgers", cept here, there is no burger, there is literally no reward for winning a campaign.
Mana bottles often aren't worth the while of staying up late till the end of the round if you're competing with some nutcase that plays for 20-23 hours straight, so even competing for the leaderboard is often moot, as mana pots are far more efficiently farmed by casually hunting spirits, its more for bragging rights and notoriety.
If you quit, don't quit for such a reason just because some prick has 2 devices and no life so they farm all day for no other reason than to "win a campaign", you seem to legit for that John.
It's like gold trading or account selling on any other MMO, impossible to police
There isn't a reward for winning campaigns anyway, so why does it matter who wins.. specially with the fact that one side only wins because of an exploit and its made public knowledge.. its like people who buy multiple mcdonald's food products during a promotion just to peel off the stickies on the food package and brag to others that they "won a free burger by buying 10 burgers", cept here, there is no burger, there is literally no reward for winning a campaign.
Mana bottles often aren't worth the while of staying up late till the end of the round if you're competing with some nutcase that plays for 20-23 hours straight, so even competing for the leaderboard is often moot, as mana pots are far more efficiently farmed by casually hunting spirits, its more for bragging rights and notoriety.
If you quit, don't quit for such a reason just because some prick has 2 devices and no life so they farm all day for no other reason than to "win a campaign", you seem to legit for that John.
Edited by Annihilon (July 4, 2011 20:36:24)
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- Lazarus
- Awakened
3) same player, two devices, two same level accounts on different sides: Banish the other account every 30 seconds or so. 15 points per banish. You do the math.
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- Annihilon
- Awakened
that problem can be easily solved with diminishing returns of energy gain from PvP, it would also discourage "camping"
i.e kill 1: 15 points, kill 2: 10 points, kill 3: 5 points, kill 4: 0 points, and this is reset once per hour or two, so there's still a reward for banishing an enemy, but prevents them from becoming an endless source.
i.e kill 1: 15 points, kill 2: 10 points, kill 3: 5 points, kill 4: 0 points, and this is reset once per hour or two, so there's still a reward for banishing an enemy, but prevents them from becoming an endless source.
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- Octavius
- Awakened
Thanks guys, I had not seen these, appreciate it. I do however stand by my assertion that dual account usage does more harm than good. I say one account per device at least.
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- JohnThatGuy
- Awakened
Annihilon
If you quit, don't quit for such a reason just because some prick has 2 devices and no life so they farm all day for no other reason than to "win a campaign", you seem to legit for that John.
It's not so much that they do it, its the attitude that "it's allowed" by GA, which clearly isn't their intent. I'd just love a simple statement from GA that "playing two OR MORE accounts by a single player in a campaign to gain an advantage in any way over single account play is a violation of the game rules."
I get that you can't stop it. The blatant GLOATING over using multis in game chat kinda did it for me as the last round wound down... because "it's not illegal"
Well crap, it should be obvious that's not the intent of the game. Apparently not as obvious as I thought.
We all know multis give a player a significant advantage - or at least I hope I've helped illustrate that. Either we all agree we should run as many accounts as humanly possible each round (right? I mean, heck, we should all do it... there are 10 Gateways around me that no one owns, that's only a couple extra accounts for me and I can more than triple my harvesting... GO GREEN!) or we don't do it at all. Or at least when we're doing it, we know we're breaking the rules (which, currently, we're not)
But seriously, I'm done anyway, so carry on as before.
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- JohnThatGuy
- Awakened
Annihilon
Wouldn't such blatant harvesting trigger AHCs to those areas, though?
Yes, it does.
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- KrazyPete
- Awakened
"Instead, our current strategy is to design the game in a fashion where dual accounts are not really worth the while."
The current campaign, where the emphasis is on finding and destroying enemy doms, fails this goal miserably. An official policy against multiple accounts would be a deterrent even if it were virtually unenforceable. Right now players can justify creating multiple accounts because it's not “officially” against the rules. Make a rule and we can at least shame the people caught in it for being cheaters.
The current campaign, where the emphasis is on finding and destroying enemy doms, fails this goal miserably. An official policy against multiple accounts would be a deterrent even if it were virtually unenforceable. Right now players can justify creating multiple accounts because it's not “officially” against the rules. Make a rule and we can at least shame the people caught in it for being cheaters.
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- Murgleis
- Arcanist
KrazyPete
An official policy against multiple accounts would be a deterrent even if it were virtually unenforceable. Right now players can justify creating multiple accounts because it's not “officially” against the rules. Make a rule and we can at least shame the people caught in it for being cheaters.
Quoted in case anyone missed it the first time.
If respect is a main prize for being on top of the leader board, let it be earned properly. One account per person.
Edited by Murgleis (July 5, 2011 02:11:00)
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- Aurelius
- Staff
We are currently thinking about two strategies against multi-account play.
1. Diminishing returns on repeated Banishes, to make the suggestion made by Lazarus impossible. This makes big battles less fun and rewarding, but we might have little choice on the matter.
2. It would be possible to enforce a delay on playing many characters on a single device -- say, 30 minutes before you could login with another character. This would have no effect on people playing with multiple devices.
Do you people feel that the latter option would help with the issue or make it worse?
(We are hesitant on 2. because it would hinder many legitimate ways of playing Shadow Cities -- like sharing one iPad in a family. Perhaps the delay should be account-by-account, so that I should wait half an hour before logging Aurelius back in after logging him out.)
Aurelius
1. Diminishing returns on repeated Banishes, to make the suggestion made by Lazarus impossible. This makes big battles less fun and rewarding, but we might have little choice on the matter.
2. It would be possible to enforce a delay on playing many characters on a single device -- say, 30 minutes before you could login with another character. This would have no effect on people playing with multiple devices.
Do you people feel that the latter option would help with the issue or make it worse?
(We are hesitant on 2. because it would hinder many legitimate ways of playing Shadow Cities -- like sharing one iPad in a family. Perhaps the delay should be account-by-account, so that I should wait half an hour before logging Aurelius back in after logging him out.)
Aurelius