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Post by Beagle on Apr 22, 2005 11:49:12 GMT -5
Hi everyone, It's been a while since we've had some serious discussion, but since we've been making heavy progress on NW2 we've run into an issue that I want to bring up to you players and get your feedback on.
New techniques will allow us to detect multi-accounts more accurately and more successfully. However, this new power brings up a few good questions:
When is multi-accounting excusable? What if 2 players share a computer, can they have separate accounts? Is there some way we can allow multi-accounting in certain situations?
Is it possible to allow multi-accounting if we are told about it first? Could we let a player register an account and then have their family member who also wants to play register as a known multi-account? We could then restrict the actions the two characters could take towards each other and towards the same targets.
If you any thoughts on this issue, I would love to hear them. Please let us know what you think.
--Woof
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Post by camilo on May 7, 2005 22:29:35 GMT -5
1) Having multiple accounts is not excusable. Signing up more than once, having access to more than one account, or 'looking after' a friends account should not be permitted. If a person is caught the offending accounts should be terminated!!! 2) Allowances could be made under special circumstances, but only by talking to an administrator first. 3)Multi accounting should not be allowed in any situation even by permission (and by multi accounting I mean 1 player having many accounts). One individual should constitute one account and thats how it should always be! Players KNOWN to have family members or friends playing (I enjoy playing with people like this cause at least they have the decency say it and to let other people enjoy the game) ... should be severely restricted on what actions thay take between each other...I could have elaborated on this but I (we) havent really got a glympse of whats going to be available in Ninjawars 2 care to tell us a little bit....?
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jai
Ninja
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Post by jai on Jun 20, 2005 19:10:46 GMT -5
I know Murmkuma and myself use the same Cpu. we are also roomates. As well when our friends are over they play their characters...So please be careful as to the restrictions. Seems sill having to buy another cpu just to play.
BUT Camillo is correct. One person...one account.
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Post by Beagle on Jun 22, 2005 21:41:02 GMT -5
As for telling you a bit more about NW2, I'm going to make a sticky tonight with some new information for everyone.
Now, the multi-accounting issue is getting a bit worse off. It didn't occur to me that there are players who play from each other's houses. That is troublesome.
Here's a suggetsion, please let me know what you think about it being effective and fair.
Players who collide IP addresses will not be allowed to take actions towards each other that affect gameplay. No attacking, trading, or helping. This will prevent imbalance from arising by multi-accounts, but it also prevents using friends to create unfair advantages as well.
Due to the gameplay changes between NW1 and NW2, you won't see as much of a need to prevent 2 players from targetting the same player. We will take care of that on our end.
Is this the beginning of a good solution? Is there more to consider? Is this the wrong path? Let me know.
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Post by b_zurc_ker on Jun 23, 2005 13:13:17 GMT -5
Although i like the idea of a swift solution, I think some interactions should be allowed, example: Money or stuff exchange (they cannot exhange stuff for nothing, equal value must be given back). The restrictions should be : u cant get a bounty from the same ip adress, cant use items or skills on them (cause right now u can kill anyone by using ninja items, but cant attack them).
PLus for NW2, for making a clan, there should be atleast 5 people of different ip address joining in. There should be an elected leader, so leaders could change. Like if u challenge the leader in a duel held every week or month. There should be a vault, where u can store clan items and ninjas are given these items at every period (According to lvl), this idea would be nice if u restrict ninjas to carry a certain amount of stuff.
And, when u die there should be really i time limit to ressurect, cause i ninja cant die and revive instantly, can they??? (of logging in if the person is using another account). and i read about the archetypes, assasin kills should take a really big toll on the victim, like u cant revive for 2 hours, something like that.
WEll that is all ;D ;D ;D
---ZURCRUZ
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Neoguy
Ninja
He returns to ninjawars after 3 years! A lot has changed, but... a lot hasn't.
Posts: 36
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Post by Neoguy on Jun 23, 2005 14:15:42 GMT -5
i kinda like the plan but how about helping people in the same IP like the school because 32 people play in my school
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Post by Beagle on Jun 23, 2005 16:16:57 GMT -5
Let me clarify something here:
I'm not talking about people that "have" the same IP address. When I talk about IP collisions, what I mean is that if at any point in time you use a computer to login to your account, and at another time someone else logs into their different account on the same computer, then the accounts will be restricted by the policies we are discussing now. This doesn't prevent friends from helping each other if they never use the same computer to play NW2. But if they do, they can no longer make transfers or gain/lose experience to each other.
b_zurc_ker, On the issue of trading/bartering, we would need to assign values to those items and enforce fair trades in that example. While this might be necessary if we ever implement super rare items people need for quests or something similar, I don't think the simple nature of the NW2 economy calls for such a solution. I think that banning item and money transfer between accounts that collide won't really inconvenience people much.
Also, you are correct, bounty should not be awared to accounts that collide with the victim. Also, on the topic of clans, I don't think it's a problem if a clan consists completely of accounts that collide. It's not uncommon for friends to create exclusive clans in games, and it shouldn't be stopped here. But I recognize the need to make sure people aren't using multiple accounts to throw off the rankings of the clan system.
On the clan vault, that's an interesting problem. Can players use a clan vault to transfer items and gold between multiple accounts? If they can, then the system is broken, if they can't, then joining a clan with your friends become less favorable because you can't benefit from the success of others.
About death, and assassins, hit another thread for that. There's one called "Dying". Try there.
neoguy, We're fixing the problem with IP detection at schools. Each computer will be considered unique from our view. If you all manage to only play your accounts on one computer, and you never share a computer with someone else, you can play with them as normal. But once we detect that your IPs have collided, you won't be able to take actions with or against them anymore.
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Neoguy
Ninja
He returns to ninjawars after 3 years! A lot has changed, but... a lot hasn't.
Posts: 36
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Post by Neoguy on Jun 24, 2005 10:34:20 GMT -5
Alright I'm cool with that
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jai
Ninja
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Posts: 74
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Post by jai on Jun 25, 2005 8:07:04 GMT -5
Beagle, I speak for myself when I say that that is an ideal solution. Certainly a step in the right direction. I enjoy playing and have no need to bounty steal and multi account. So It really would make no difference placing limitations on the activities of 2 accounts on one Ip. Thank you Beagle, oh great one. As well, I try and ecourage my friends to try NW whenever possible, so if they are over and want to start an account for themselves I think that is a beneficial thing.
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Neoguy
Ninja
He returns to ninjawars after 3 years! A lot has changed, but... a lot hasn't.
Posts: 36
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Post by Neoguy on Jun 25, 2005 11:37:40 GMT -5
2 accounts on one Ip
Jai no way
in my house there was a lot of people that played NW1 and waiting for NW2 and rejoining 2 is not enough there is at least 5 people in my house that play NW like the Beagle idea that oe computer, one acount at one time, so two acounts cant go at the same time at the same computer ya so
see ya
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jai
Ninja
Personal text
Posts: 74
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Post by jai on Jun 25, 2005 23:00:45 GMT -5
What Neoguy??? I am not talking about at the same time. Listen you think its worth buying a whole new cpu so my roomate can play? That makes no sense and also does not encourage people to play. Does that not make sense to you?
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Post by murmkuma on Jul 13, 2005 15:27:23 GMT -5
i bounce around alot, I hop on to nw whenever im near a cpu, how does this affect my gameplay, ie home, friends place, etc etc?.. jai and I regularly play nw together, taking turns and admittedly we help each other out.. however we have two seperate clans.
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Post by Beagle on Jul 13, 2005 19:40:03 GMT -5
murmkuma,
Generally changing computers a lot won't affect anything.
But, playing on computers other people play on will affect you.
Basically, think of it this way. If two people from different parts of the world play NW2, and they fight, we can pretty much agree that they'll be self-serving, which is what most games assume to keep the balance.
But, if one person has two accounts, what happens? Clearly, the worry is that he will play one account without any desire to succeed and do everything he can to help his other account.
Now, it gets unclear, but what about two different people who know each other. They could take great pride in letting one account die while the other account skyrockets to the top. We don't want this, just like we don't want one person with 2 accounts to do it.
So, if you and Jai play from each other's computers, you will be restricted from gaining anything from each other. That means if you attack him, you won't gain experience, or money, or items, and he won't lose anything, and vice versa if he attacks you. No trading of items or money can occur, and you won't be able to use skills on each other either.
Now, I understand this is a bit rough. In a lot of games, these restrictions do not apply. But the reason I find that we need them for NW2 is because the game is highly competitive by nature. If the game was simply players versus the environment, it wouldn't be so important. But you don't want to feel cheated when it's a direct competition.
So that's my reasoning. I'd love to hear what you have to say. I want to make sure we're making the right choices for all of you.
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Post by Gloomfall on Jan 7, 2006 3:07:12 GMT -5
Where I can fully understand the desire to restrict people from playing multiple accounts, it's simply annoying to the people who do legit things..
One example is, my brother and I both play NW2.. He's in the same clan as I am and we play on the same computer, we're both interested in progressing our charactors and have nothing agains't helping eachother out when we might need to. So just because we live in the same house and play the same computer, why stop us from exchanging money/items?
I can understand not attacking and killing eachother (for the sake of balancing purposes) but what happens if we had a fight irl, and decided that we don't want to help eachother anymore and want to hold a grudge agains't the other's charactor.. Why stop us from making eachother enemies?
Those are just a few things that some people could run into with those restrictions in the game, which do get in the way. So I think that all accounts that are played on the same computer/IP should be cleared through an admin before it happens explaining the situation, and can periodically be monitored to see if one account is withering away on purpose while the other is prospering out of it (which would be wrong). That way you can allow unrestricted playing to family, friends, couples, etc.
It should also be a warning messege every time you log in about multiple account abuse, that if it's discovered to be happening, they can both get deleted without warning.
That's my idea for a policy anyways.
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Post by suavisimo on Jan 7, 2006 10:55:36 GMT -5
Multi-accounting seems to be defined as any 2 accounts logged into the same IP.
It seems like there are 2 options here:
a) We decide for good that mulit-accounting is against good-natured gaming and both accounts are deleted
OR
b) We decide that multi-accounting disallows the ability to affect accounts logging in with the same IP.
In Jai and Murms scenario, they would be deleted every time they logged in on one anothers computer. They are devoted players who most likely are not multi-accounting. Why should they pay an active penalty because of an IP shortage? It ruins the game for both players, and anyone in the same situation.
For Gloomfall, however, his scenario dictates that he and his friends/family often help each other in NW1. Technically if you are on the same IP, it's the same thing as if you were "one person" helping your "other accounts". By disallowing access to this "helping hand" you are at the very worst preventing the number of people using that IP from gaining easy aid from other accounts. Even if 5 people share an IP, you have an entire community to aid or harm in any way you wish. If we deleted 5 accounts, we'd lose 5 players.
The more passive way of restriciting actions by IP collisions makes the most sense here. We still have an active community for you to enjoy, there will be so much content most times you might not get it all in one cycle, so having your friends doing the exact opposite and having their own experience is so beneficial.
Other suggestions are always welcome. Here's some of mine:
-IP collisions with Time association - allows people to wait a period of time after which they can log in another account.
-Timeouts of account inactivity - for people who never log in.
-Thresholds of wealth/xp/etc - level 1 cant touch level 50, poor cant touch the rich, etc.
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Post by Gloomfall on Jan 8, 2006 3:41:00 GMT -5
Well, I was speaking that beyond the restrictions, just make it so that special cases are allowed, such as family, friends, and wife/husband etc. I agree that there is still everyone else around to help them out, but it's kind of disheartening when people who want to help eachother out the most are unable to do it.
IP Collisions with Time Association is a good way to go, that way you can't log on two accounts at the exact same time, so long as they made it so you can still do that when on different computers it wouldn't be such a bad thing, for example my brother and I both have seperate computers but have a router, so we'd have the same IP.
I'd make it so that a level 50 could take out someone lower level then them, but have a "threshhold" on which charactors they would be able to attack.. Lets say, you're untouchable by everyone over level 10, until you're level 10. That way you won't have any "Impossible" battles, but after the grace period you should really find shelter and protection from people that mean you harm. A PVP Level cap so to speak, they have a similar system in Anarchy Online.. preventing others from attacking people too low for them.
Keeping it in line here would be fair, yet i'd keep it managable so someone who gets a bounty on their head could still be taken out by an elite bounty hunter. I'd make it so that once you hit level 20 you're open to attack by anyone. And from level 1-5, you're only attackable by 1-5, from 5-10 you're attackable from everyone under 10, 10-15, 15-20, etc. After that open season on everyone. By then if you should know better then to be making enemies and doing things you're not supposed to be doing.
Back on topic though, I like the idea of limitations put into place to prevent multiple accounts, however I think that the best way to prevent this is to make combat possible over a long period of playing, rather then being exhausted after 10-20 minutes of playing and needing to rest for a full day to recover enough to do it again. That's the only thing that I see that promotes people wanting secondary accounts. If they made it so that you can play for an hour, rest for 20-30 minutes, that would be fine with me. Considering it would give you some time to do some personal things around the house, go on some errands and be able to come back and enjoy playing again.
The only thing that made me not want to play NW1 too much was that I was always sitting around waiting for more turns and was pretty much useless without them. I think death should be pretty much the same, but a much longer time penalty.. say, if you die you have to wait for an hour or so to be able to play again. Etc
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Post by Beagle on Jan 8, 2006 11:35:44 GMT -5
Well, ok, So there's a couple great things going on here. I'll try to hit them all adequately.
First off, we all agree that someone signing up for two accounts and leveraging them to gain an unfair advantage over other players is something we want to prevent. We also agree that players should be able to help each other out. And we recognize the fact that some players will share credentials, such as IPs, which makes them nearly indistinguishable from a single person with multiple accounts.
So, first, how does a single player leverage multiple accounts to gain an unfair advantage over others? As Gloomfall expressed, one does this by advancing a single character at the expense of another. For example, repeatedly killing one of them with the other. This would advance a single character while the other character wasted away. How is this distinguishable from two players attacking each other, and one of them being greivously victorious? I'm not really sure, and that's a problem. If you have two players on the same IP and one of them kicks the crap out of the other one, how is that different than 1 player using one account to level and the other to act the victim? Problem to be solved.
Second, Gloomfall brought up a really good point about WHY most people multi-account. They do so because NInjaWars is a casual game, with a target gameplay time in mind, and some people desire to spend more time playing the game, but they simply can't. Turn allocation is something we will not compromise on. The game must be fair for a wide range of players. So everyone will have equivalent turns to play. However, we have designed a system that allows players to spend lots of turns for lots of progress, or small amounts of turns for small progress. This allows players to prolong or speed up their play time based on their preference while still keeping potential growth constant for everyone.
So I see several solutions, and I would appreciate comments on these.
The first, as I described, is to allow players flexibility in the amount of time they play the game, by providing multiple choices for spending turns that give varying amounts of experience and cost relational amounts of turns. This way, you spend X turns, you always gain X progress. That way, you can blow all your turns in 15 minutes, or you could spend close to 45 minutes playing and your progress will be the same in both cases.
The second is single-player content. This was a debate we had internally and ultimately the feature had to pushed back as we're behind on our deadlines. The idea is to provide single player content that allows you to explore the world, story, and the characters in it, without spending turns. You won't gain character progress for it, but you could get trophies, or novelty items, some kind of noteriety, etc. This way, as you waited for your stamina to regenerate, you could be experiencing the world of NW2, chatting in the new chat room (which is vastly improved), and dealing with your clan (strategy, voting, leadership, helping newbies, etc).
The third is to allow some kind of acknowledgement of multis. For example, lets say a husband and wife sign up for separate accounts. In order to prevent their accounts from being deleted, they could register themselves as either enemies or allies. Allies would not be allowed to kill, injure, steal from, or otherwise attack each other. Enemies would not be allowed to join the same clan, transfer items or money, etc. There may be other restrictions, for example, they would not be able to collect bounties on each other, because the knowledge they share gives them an unfair advantage. Things of that nature would apply whether or not you are Enemies or Allies. Further, I think it would be prudent to list Enemies and Allies (of the multi-account nature) in character profiles, so that everyone can monitor their activities and raise alarms when they see unfair practices.
So what does everyone think of these 3 ideas for helping alleviate some of the problems multi-accounts?
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Post by Gloomfall on Jan 9, 2006 7:06:30 GMT -5
I think that the enemy/ally system is a great idea, but rather then informing everyone of that fact (can cause some problems sometimes.. say one person makes another person angry, that person can go after their allies and start somewhat of a greifing practice).. but anyways.
My thoughts on this are to keep Admins and Moderaters in charge of handling multi-accounts and periodically check up on various people, if the community is going to be as tight as it was on NW1 then there really shouldn't be a problem in doing that. Also, I don't think they should be able to sign up for a second account on their own, yet should send in a special request to the admins to get them approved for it, that way they can keep track of people who bypass the correct channels which would most likely be the ones that are taking advantage of the system.
I don't think there should be any mass automated deleting of accounts or anything, but I do think that someone if not a few people should be monitoring situations where they find multiple accounts activated from the same IP address, and check those account notes to see if they're approved for doing something like that, if not then they can send an email to those accounts asking for an explination, etc.
Anyways, some great ideas forming here and I look forward to seeing where this ends up.
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Post by Beagle on Jan 9, 2006 8:51:37 GMT -5
Your recommendations are unfortunately too personnel intensive. We hope that the community for NW2 will be MUCH larger than NW1. We also are looking for the best ways to automate the system of multi-account checking, while understanding that some moderator influence is required.
Frankly, requesting permission to multi isn't really a hurdle. People lie about their situations, we can't verify them at all. I don't see anything prudent about requiring admin confirmation to multi.
Instead, it's more important to recognize that people from the same IP are problems and they need to be able to work together, or against each other without constant supervision. That's why I thought it would make sense for the community to know about the allies/enemies thing so that they could be extra eyes watching for exploitative behavior.
Because really, where the mod staff really needs to spend it's time is with people who multi from DIFFERENT IPs. That's a completely different problem, that will require way much more processing to catch.
Quite frankly, I think that chasing down an opponent's allies is completely legit. You would do it in a clan situation, there's no reason you wouldn't do it on an individual basis. If you piss someone off, you better tell your allies to stay alert, and be prepared to back them up if they need it. It's a community based PvP game, I think it fits fairly well.
I also don't think there should be mass deleting of accounts. What we actually have is a system of account states, Normal, Flagged, Restricted, and Banner.
Normal accounts can play without any restrictions.
Flagged accounts have their activities marked so that admins and mods can easily track their behavior for exploitation. We would flag an account based on suspicious activities, data, or tips from players.
Restricted accounts would have most functions that allow exploiting unavailable to them. No transferring money, items, no collecting bounty, etc. They would be on a warning to stop exploiting, and they would need to show go behavior to become unrestricted again.
And finally, banned, for any time period we deem reasonable, based on the offense, that account cannot access the game.
But there's always the possibility of coming back from them all, without your account being deleted.
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Post by murmkuma on Jan 9, 2006 15:23:57 GMT -5
i like the ideas bein tossed around here. I myself play at a few buddies places where there are now at least 2 cpus on routers....rarely but sometimes jai and i will be on at the same time from the same IP. we are both mostly independent and if anything we poison or shuriken each other. I like the idea of the ally/ enemy system, perhaps a list even of anyones allies outside the clan. i beleive gold and items should be traded among allies. But this does leave the multi exploitation open. Although i imagine it would be pretty easy to find someone throwing items to another player. How about a daily limit for items and gold to be given to another player? will you be able to turn your allies on and off, or will admin have to authorize? when signing up have an option for easier tracking of multies like will you be always logging on from the same ip, always, sometimes, rarely, or never? I dont see why a group of friends playing on a network shouldnt be able to hop on and gang up on everyone, but limited interaction between themselves seems reasonable. I dunno man seems like a tricky problem. sorry beagle i forgot about this thread for awhile:)
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Post by Beagle on Jan 9, 2006 18:56:17 GMT -5
Well, I guess to clarify here, if we auto-matically detect an IP collision, that would be if you play from someone else's machine/network, even if they aren't online at the time, then we'll stop you right there and ask you to declare enemy or ally with whoever you collided with.
As for changing ally/enemy status, I think it could be changed every round, but not during a round, just for sanity's sake for all involved.
And as for the other things, yes, obviously, multi-accounting isn't the real problem, it's unfair gameplay. The multi-accounting issue is an attempt to prevent as much under the radar stuff as possible auto-matically, and help us to focus our efforts on real detrimental behaviors.
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Post by murmkuma on Jan 10, 2006 18:49:07 GMT -5
sounds fair
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Post by kultcher on Jan 10, 2006 20:41:41 GMT -5
The enemy/ally thing is a brilliant little system. I think that that, along with the much riskier combat system (i.e. you can't really attack without being attacked back) we're implementing now, will likely make multi-accounting not worth the effort.
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Post by camilo on Jan 12, 2006 23:43:41 GMT -5
ummm yeh... make the marginal cost of cheating so high that it exceeds the marginal benefits... (sorry thats the univ talking not me)
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titanx
Young Ninja
spartan-117
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Post by titanx on Feb 19, 2006 3:45:08 GMT -5
i love the idea of ally/enemy system because me and my brother play all the time. but what about when i am gone would he not be allowed to log into my name to keep it current. I know this is getting techical but i leave for the navy boot in 2 months and i wont be able to access the computer for who knows how long but i would like my character to be able to keep leveling up so when i get back there isnt a thousand lvl 85's and me still be lvl 5...we both share the same computer and we do regularly help eachother other out ...for example ...if he is getting revenge on a clan and runs out of speed scrolls i will log in (cuz he dont know my password) and send him 5 or 10 speed scrolls...or vice versa...i think as long as both accounts are active and still gaining levels it should be alright ...but i know this causes a problem cuz someone could be doing the same things but still only be one person...i honestly ddont know how you will solve this problem ...maybe you could make seperate worlds or games ...and allow people of the same IP address log into a different world were everything would be the same but the two couldnt interact...but would have equal gameplay as anyone else...i dont know if your familiar with pimpwar.com...but they normaly run 5 games at a time and i have a character in all five games (they encourage that) but i cant interact with any of my other accounts and i join the same clans in every game .....so i know people and its not like i am starting all over agian ...grudges are still held in every different game...ect...i am jsut rambling ..but i do hope you all find a way around this dilema...
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Post by Beagle on Feb 19, 2006 12:19:25 GMT -5
I'll mark your support for the enemy/ally system.
As long as your brother isn't using your character to gain an unfair advantage over other players, of course he can log in to keep you active. There's no way we could protect against that, nor would we really want to.
As for the being left in the dust, the game will be played in rounds, so if you're gone a whole year, when you come back, you can start when the new round starts and be on an even playing field again, despite the lost time.
And instead of separate worlds, we simply plan on preventing you from interacting in certain ways with accounts we consider to be multi-accounts.
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Wing
Young Ninja
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Post by Wing on Feb 23, 2006 20:18:30 GMT -5
Er, I know this sounds kinda suspicious but most of my friends are computer illiterate, therefore i set them all up e-mail accounts using my laptop. There's two gals and three guys, we all live in the same dorm, me and one of the guys are roomates and the two girls are roomates and the other guy is dating one of the girls and lives right next door. (whew) So we all have the same IP for our accounts ME!! Please don't shut us down! We live in Hickville(haha, not really but everyone here talks with either a cajun or texan accent or a mixture of the two) and being college students don't have the money to own computers that are any kind of decent. (Except mine was a present from my aunt ^^) As odd as that sounds it's the truth, and we'd be real depressed if ya'll just shut us down. So please talk to us or something if ya start getting suspicious!! ~GoD~ and Wing (he's my roomnie!)
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Post by murmkuma on Mar 9, 2006 11:30:53 GMT -5
as long as you play fairly and dont abuse the system you should have nothing to worry about, many of my friends have started playing the same way, by the same token a had a friend who about a year ago abused hte system , got caught and deleted. just respect the rules.
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