Discussion: Trial Account Restrictions

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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

[/ QUOTE ]Math is hard. 20 per 24 hours = 1 email per 72 minutes, which is SEVEN TIMES FEWER than your supposed new accounts limit. Yeah, vets would LOVE that.

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Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

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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


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Some flawed math, largely good though, but a continuation.

Unless the spammers are buying from NCSoft's store, NCSoft is not getting 20$/box. If they are purchasing from a storefront, the currency profit to NC gets cut in half or so. However, there is the timlyness of that, so it's doubtful that they are buying from retail stores. However, assuming they are purchasing from the Store, NCSoft still eats the credit transaction fee [which, I'll be honest, I don't know how much that is] as well as really the cost of operating the store [a neglible cost arguably, but I wonder how much they spent trying to fix the server the past few weeks :P].

That said, that still feels pretty doubtful to me. My personal theory, is that they buy keys in bulk, from either distributors or secondary outlets such as big lots [you could get the Cov collector's edition for 10$ a while back there, or the base key for 5$]. Which pushes the point of profit closer to the store purchase.

All said, even at Full Credit, by your number, you're looking at enough currency to have one minimum wage employee a month to handle/research all those ignore_spammer reports. I think you're looking at a wash there .

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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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The fact that people would pay money instead of expend slight effort to get money should be obvious when you walk into atlas park or Cap Au these days and see eight thousand farmers shortcutting the game in other ways.

How can you boycott something you aren't buying?

Suggestion:

* Let Trial accounts send tells to Global Friends.

There doesn't seem any in-game way to know when a friend is playing if they're on a Trial. At least if a Global Friends rule was in place I'd only have to trade one phone call to set it up.

Make it so trails can only send one e-mail ever half a hour......

I would just like to point out that one of the main reasons I got into this game as much as I did when I had a trial account years ago is the super group I was in. It was actually a very poorly run super group all things considered and it didn't last long but I found it very fun for the period of time that my trial lasted and I signed up for the game to keep that fun. If these restrictions would have been in place back then, of course, I probably would never have signed up and been a player for over two years now.

I wonder how many other people you have lost because of the enormous number of restrictions on trial accounts these days. I know of at least one personally. It was just too hard for me to convince her that the game got more fun once you were actually allowed to do stuff since she was constantly hitting brick walls whenever she tried to do anything and doesn't speak English that well anyway and didn't have access to the Korean channel to talk to people.

Are these restrictions really doing what you intend? I doubt it.

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I would just like to point out that one of the main reasons I got into this game as much as I did when I had a trial account years ago is the super group I was in. It was actually a very poorly run super group all things considered and it didn't last long but I found it very fun for the period of time that my trial lasted and I signed up for the game to keep that fun. If these restrictions would have been in place back then, of course, I probably would never have signed up and been a player for over two years now.

I wonder how many other people you have lost because of the enormous number of restrictions on trial accounts these days. I know of at least one personally. It was just too hard for me to convince her that the game got more fun once you were actually allowed to do stuff since she was constantly hitting brick walls whenever she tried to do anything and doesn't speak English that well anyway and didn't have access to the Korean channel to talk to people.

Are these restrictions really doing what you intend? I doubt it.

[/ QUOTE ]At this point it just hurts customers because it isnt doing a damn thing to stop the RMT spammers. They either found a way around the restrictions yet again or they are using paid accounts. I say just give us a way to turn off email already and trials can go back to what they were.

I just started playing because of the 14-day trial offer. 3 days into the trial, I hit the level and influence limits. I was already frustrated by the supergroup and architect limitations. I don't feel that the trial limitations allowed me to actually evaluate the game. What I saw showed enough promise that I bought a copy of the game so I could actually find out if I liked it enough to subscribe. On the other hand, I was irrtated enough by the limitations of the trial that I made the concious decision not to buy from the NCSoft website so that they would not receive the full amount of the sale. Further, the lingering ill will from the nature of the trial makes it less likely that I will continue my subscription past the first month.

Several of the limitations appear to be aimed more at preventing existing players from using trial accounts to farm influence and prestige while allowing their main accounts to remain inactive than at stopping the RMTs. The solution isn't to limit gameplay on trial accounts, it's to prevent abuse of trial accounts.

There are alternative limitations that could be put in place to prevent abuse of trial accounts without alienating new players. Instead of not allowing trial accounts to join supergroups, prevent trial accounts from earning prestige. Instead of limiting influence, levels or access to the architect, limit the trade window and the auction house.

It really doesn't matter how much influence a trial accont earns if they can't give it to anyone.

To put an end to RMT emails, simply just implement the following:
<ul type="square">[*]Any account cannot send more than 5 emails per hour; and a max of 10 per day.[*]The email name/recipient has to be typed (remove the right-click-email option from the search screen)[*]Extra option in the options/miscellaneous section. A yes/no toggle, to only allow emails from players in your friend/global friend/supergroup.[*]Global name cannot be changed for 7 days after the last email you send.[/list]

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I would just like to point out that one of the main reasons I got into this game as much as I did when I had a trial account years ago is the super group I was in. It was actually a very poorly run super group all things considered and it didn't last long but I found it very fun for the period of time that my trial lasted and I signed up for the game to keep that fun. If these restrictions would have been in place back then, of course, I probably would never have signed up and been a player for over two years now.

I wonder how many other people you have lost because of the enormous number of restrictions on trial accounts these days. I know of at least one personally. It was just too hard for me to convince her that the game got more fun once you were actually allowed to do stuff since she was constantly hitting brick walls whenever she tried to do anything and doesn't speak English that well anyway and didn't have access to the Korean channel to talk to people.

Are these restrictions really doing what you intend? I doubt it.

[/ QUOTE ]At this point it just hurts customers because it isnt doing a damn thing to stop the RMT spammers. They either found a way around the restrictions yet again or they are using paid accounts. I say just give us a way to turn off email already and trials can go back to what they were.

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Yes, I have sent a PM to Avatea requesting this very thing and have included it in multiple spam reports. Please give us this option.

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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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How is something that is "optional" an attack on functionality? We did not say eradication of email. Those that actually use it, still can. Those that are tired of a clicking a Spam button daily for essentially no reason can now avoid the annoyance of RMTers. He also mentioned he does not even use email which is the same case for me. No loss of functionality when it was unused in the first place. I want to send the message that I am not their customer and because I continue to get Spam email daily no matter how many times I've reported them I want to send the message I am not a "potential" customer either.

Ive asked for the email turn off function since i9. All my friends reach me through tells etc and never use email. 50 friends and only 5 emails form them in 4 years of playing. I vote turn my email off please. I realize the devs are scared of what the next move the rmter spammers will do next. They need to act more swiftly to handle them like other games have.

I'm all for getting an option to shut off email reception on characters. This spam junk has gone on long enough.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

I would also like the option to turn off email for a character. I never use the in-game mail system anyways.

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In my opinion overly restricting the trial accounts is counter productive. It obviously is not hindering the RMT spammers in the least, but it is annoying potential customers. This is a very good game with a great community, but how long can it continue to stay that way if it makes the introductory experience for many new people more of a hassle than it's worth?

The gave us the option to "Block Architect Entertainment Email" when they had planned to use the email system for sending MA feedback comments to the Author. However that was changed to global chat instead, but the option to Block is still in the option menu. Shouldn't take much to change it a bit.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

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I would also like the option to turn off email for a character. I never use the in-game mail system anyways.

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In my opinion overly restricting the trial accounts is counter productive. It obviously is not hindering the RMT spammers in the least, but it is annoying potential customers. This is a very good game with a great community, but how long can it continue to stay that way if it makes the introductory experience for many new people more of a hassle than it's worth?

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The trial restrictions in CoH are no more restrictive then any other game that has restrictions.

That doesn't make most of them right, less annoying, or overly effective either.

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I would also like the option to turn off email for a character. I never use the in-game mail system anyways.

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I would very much like to see an email filter of some sort too. I log onto my main charachter and find a list of spam mails on a daily basis and have absolutely no way of stopping them.
The spammers can add anyone to a friends list without even asking and then spam away.
I find it very annoying and definately harassing. Being completely hidden will have no effect on spammers once they have your name on their list.
Email from friends have to be sorted out before they get accidently reported as spam.
Would it not be possible to filter email by linking it to My friends list so that only those on my list will be able to send me mail.
It would be so much shorter than my ignore list which is basically useless anyway.

My recent ticket with Customer Service seems to indicate there are no plans to implement the option to turn off email. I told them I have stopped reporting spammers and using the Spam button. I do not even bother to delete the emails. When I told them this they said that was the same as providing the option to turn off email. Which is confusing because a couple sentences later they explained the purpose of the Spam button and reporting RMTers. I countered I have been doing it for MONTHS with no effect on the amount of spam my characters receive.

I ended with a it is not the same because of the system messages and red highlight is a constant reminder we have spam. At least let us turn off those then I can completely ignore spam email.

What is the point of the Spam button? My thought it was to reduce the amount of spammers and messages sent by them. Does anyone think the Spam button is doing that? Even if we are the police for NCSoft then what is the point beyond making said spammer just open a new account and send again to everyone on their list?

I would advocate just forget the Spam button and let the emails grow in your box. Hopefully I reach a limit where my inbox is full.

I've received two emails from the same user name many times. Does anyone know if you receive a message that the email was refused? If it does that seems a good way to know you are reaching a "good" account and the ignore issued by the Spam button lets the RMTer know you are active.

/e rant off

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To put an end to RMT emails, simply just implement the following:
<ul type="square">[*]Any account cannot send more than 5 emails per hour; and a max of 10 per day.[*]The email name/recipient has to be typed (remove the right-click-email option from the search screen)[*]Extra option in the options/miscellaneous section. A yes/no toggle, to only allow emails from players in your friend/global friend/supergroup.[*]Global name cannot be changed for 7 days after the last email you send.[/list]
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I like these ideas, would like to reccomend a modification to the one concerning Global Names, make them unchangable.