Discussion: Trial Account Restrictions

You know, this is almost certainly not the case, but here's a paranoid spin: What if NCSoft were selling partnerships that RMT companies could buy?

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You know, this is almost certainly not the case, but here's a paranoid spin: What if NCSoft were selling partnerships that RMT companies could buy?

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That's a tin foil hat award, sir!

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What he said.

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thats not a bug. thats what is known as a hex editor. a third party program if you will. the rmt'er is useing it to break the game. this is going to heat up fast. Sounds to me like rmt'r has figured out alot of tricks. the sooner this is fixt the better... someone with that type of program has dev tools.

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Ignoring anyone is a mistake. You might miss something viral to your cause.

Can we get an option to turn off email?

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actually... that makes me think further as to why our spam button and other things arent working properly. I wonder what an outside program like that- or useing an outside program like that... would do to clients.

dude comes in, and like changing costumes too fast.. changes his name... that would make everyone crash the same way, right?

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Ignoring anyone is a mistake. You might miss something viral to your cause.

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They cannot level past level 13

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Didn't that used to be 14?

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Unless it was changed recently (within the past couple of weeks), it *IS* level 14. I know someone who just started the game recently and got to 14 before upgrading their account.

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The Mentor Project

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thats not a bug. thats what is known as a hex editor. a third party program if you will.

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I doubt they're using a hex editor. You could only do that on the files on your local machine, but I would imagine the server is what keeps track of your global. That's why you can't use any sort of an editor to "dup rares" or do travel power hacks, because these aren't client-based data.

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I stayed for a while, just standing near the lvl 1 plain looking spammer and watched as he spammed, changed name and @global 4 more times!

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That's a heck of a bug. Good catch! And I concur -- I'd PM a dev or two for sure.

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oh hell yeah!

That's not something you wait on CS to get on. I would send that directly to a dev or two also.

The implications of that are scary.

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They cannot level past level 13

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Didn't that used to be 14?

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Unless it was changed recently (within the past couple of weeks), it *IS* level 14. I know someone who just started the game recently and got to 14 before upgrading their account.

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I think leveling past 13 means you can level at 13 to 14, then you can't level any more making your final level 14, not 13. A little bit of ambiguous English here, but it's not "You can only reach level 13" its "You can't level past 13." When you are level 13 and have a full bar of xp, you are leveling at 13 to 14. When you reach a full bar at 14 you are leveling at 14 to 13.

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well... somewhere the data is being manipulated... somehow... hex or not. that is very very wrong and needs to be shot down asap. my global ignore list is full when it should not be. whatever that person is doing is affecting us all.

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Ignoring anyone is a mistake. You might miss something viral to your cause.

Suggestions:

Raise their max level to L14 so they can try out travel powers (I joined this game because I could fly... still here 5 years later for the SAME REASON)

Remove access to EMail for all trial accounts.

Force all trial accounts to go through the tutorial.




I wanted to go on with that last one a bit. I had an idea about a place just for trial accounts (and new toons) that's higher than the one we have now. I sadly got the idea from SW:G about 2 years ago when I went there to try out space combat... anyway, their entry zone to the game gets you to L2 and then you are sent to this neutral zone kind of thing and you stay there until you finish a quest that teaches you most of the basics and you are around L5 or so.

I was thinking that we need something like this for our game, still skipable I suppose, but it would be sort of like a Boot Camp for Heroes. Just give them an Atlas sized zone with a lot of infected and have them fight, heal, and learn powers and all that jazz. The fun part is that all SGs can get access to that zone through a badge (say 5 SG Porter badges gets you access to the Boot Camp). That way we can go back and help out new players.

Just a thought though.

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Something is fishy here for sure. My hubs and I play side by each and a few weeks back he was on his main 50 in P.I and I was trying out a lowbie vill side in Mercy. I got spammed right before my eyes, I said that to my hubs and looked up. I couldn't beleive it! There in P.I by crimson is the same name who had spammed me. I said honey that guys a spammer get him! I reported it instantly hoping they could catch the rmt'ers butt! But they logged right away , so they stand in mercy to spam hereos, and stand in PI to spam vills, hopefully this info is somewhat helpful in stopping these guys once and for all. I mean really, I can't beleive there is enough people buying this filth for it to be worth their while. SHAME ON YOU INF BUYERS!

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This stops star purchasing outside of the game. Not bad. However, like I have always said, these guys are like viruses, they'll mutate around it in no time and people will be upset again. Just be prepared to keep getting emails.

In the accounting aspect, this is a good way to keep a constant flow of money via repurchases of codes and things like that.

Lets say that on average we have 5 new accounts a day, meaing we have 35 a week, at [u]20 bucks[u] a crack thats an additional [u]$1,820.00[u] in additional capital o.o

In this economy and on an aged MMO, based on the number of people coming back and leaving (I don't have those numbers :P) I think this is an acceptable loss, and I'm sure alot of other people won't agree with that, but in the end it's the [u]bottom line[u] thats important.

Just my 2 cents!

-C.A.

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They cannot level past level 13

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Didn't that used to be 14?

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Unless it was changed recently (within the past couple of weeks), it *IS* level 14. I know someone who just started the game recently and got to 14 before upgrading their account.

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I think leveling past 13 means you can level at 13 to 14, then you can't level any more making your final level 14, not 13. A little bit of ambiguous English here, but it's not "You can only reach level 13" its "You can't level past 13." When you are level 13 and have a full bar of xp, you are leveling at 13 to 14. When you reach a full bar at 14 you are leveling at 14 to 13.

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Well, it just seems to me that reaching level 14 would be considered as leveling "past level 13". My friend was indeed able to train to 14 and get a travel power and subsequently could not advance any further.

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Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project

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You know, this is almost certainly not the case, but here's a paranoid spin: What if NCSoft were selling partnerships that RMT companies could buy?

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I foresee a ludicrous MArc concerning this very idea in the near future.

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Can we get an option to turn off email?

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I agree, why can't the dev's just add in an option to turn off email, just like we can turn off XP now? At least it should provide a quick Band-Aid for now until they can track these people down. My personal option is, I don’t use email at all. So turning it off should stop the spamming, hopefully.

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Edited the restrictions and changed the level restriction to 14 indeed.

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Edited the restrictions and changed the level restriction to 14 indeed.

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Which is about 10 minutes in an AE farm?

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In the accounting aspect, this is a good way to keep a constant flow of money via repurchases of codes and things like that.

Lets say that on average we have 5 new accounts a day, meaing we have 35 a week, at [u]20 bucks[u] a crack thats an additional [u]$1,820.00[u] in additional capital

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NCSoft is almost certainly not making any money off the spammers. They are almost certainly buying their accounts with stolen credit cards, which means that NCSoft is not getting a nickel, and most likely is losing money on each such account created.

That, or they're hacking the system somehow, in which case they're actively stealing services from NCSoft.

Either way they're a scourge. The only real way to stop them is to stop buying their services. If we all boycott the for-pay PLers and influence peddlers, they will dry up and blow away.

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Edited the restrictions and changed the level restriction to 14 indeed.

[/ QUOTE ]The restrictions listed here the same as they were yesterday. Where were the edits made?

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The only real way to stop them is to stop buying their services. If we all boycott the for-pay PLers and influence peddlers, they will dry up and blow away.

[/ QUOTE ]This will never happen because you cannot control other players. People will buy influence even under a boycott. Because people are dumb and impatient.

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I was just entering Atlas with my lvl 2 character, having just finished the tutorial. I was waiting for the countdown to clear when I received an email from an RMT spammer who happened to be standing right in front of me. I spamnoted the email and sent a petition. I noted the @global and shortly after this I noticed that the character in front of me, who had a random string of letters that was almost a name, changed not only his name, but his @global at the same time. (there was the notification of the @global change in chat as well). I noted this in a /petition. I then received another spam email from this character, that I spamnoted and petitioned. Shortly after this the character's name and @global changed again.

I thought that you could only change your @global once, and how is it that some spammer has the ability to change their character name without logging out and accessing the the change name feature?

I stayed for a while, just standing near the lvl 1 plain looking spammer and watched as he spammed, changed name and @global 4 more times! I worry that the spammers are doing more than just creating throw away accounts, I'm hoping they aren't hacking directly into the servers.

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Someone I know in real life just pointed out to me that what I saw, described above, may have been an illusion rather than someone hacking the game. Since the spammers don't bother with creating a costume, I may have seen more than one spammer logging in, spamming, changing their global once, and another spammer logging in just as the first logged out, spamming, changing their global once... etc.

Now that I think about what my friend said, it seems much more likely than going through the difficulty of hacking the game. And it is a lot less tinfoil hat than claiming that the devs are the spammers.

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The only real way to stop them is to stop buying their services. If we all boycott the for-pay PLers and influence peddlers, they will dry up and blow away.

[/ QUOTE ]This will never happen because you cannot control other players. People will buy influence even under a boycott. Because people are dumb and impatient.

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I know the game well enough to know how to make money easily without having to buy it - but a real blow to the RMT would be if NCSoft offered micropayment cash themselves - they could make a fortune from it - i know it goes against thier intention of how the game should be played - but if its happening regardless might as well have them cash in on it - and they wouldn't be the first game with that sort of company based thing.

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Can we get an option to turn off email?

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I agree, why can't the dev's just add in an option to turn off email, just like we can turn off XP now? At least it should provide a quick Band-Aid for now until they can track these people down. My personal option is, I don’t use email at all. So turning it off should stop the spamming, hopefully.

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That would be a terrible attack against the functionality of the game to stop them.

It makes a lot more sense to just limit the number of emails that can be sent in X period.

New accounts: 1 email per 10 minutes (replies to a person who emailed you do not count against this)
Accounts with at least 1 veteran badge: 20 per 24 hours

With this restriction even if they are using trials, paying, stealing credit, or hacking to change their globals, spam would be rare and would quickly become too slow to be effective.

The vet restriction is to de-incentivize hacking of vet accounts to spam.

And to those who say to shame the buyers, if even 10 people do it they will continue to spam.

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A game is not supposed to be some kind of... place where people enjoy themselves!