Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
lol that list was a quick search. an after though addition... it's funny you cherry picked that out of everything and lean so heavily on the 'it's too hard to do'. if all you have is wild claims like 'even facebook won't do it' and 'it's too hard' i don't think we have much to talk about. you have your opinion and i have mine. if you show me an example or two or three of a company trying to implement something like this and it failing than please do. Or an article or something. At I'm not saying it'd even work or have the desired out come I'd like to see, but just because "it's too hard", "people don't want it", "facebook doesn't do it", is just farts in the wind.
To track every asset generated by a player you'd need every generated asset to be saved in the database with a unique ID of the player who generated it. Such as a piece of common copper. So if the player that generate that copper from the copper node was banned as a bot that piece of copper could be removed, regardless of who has it at the time of deletion. If that ore was used to make a weapon do you delete the weapon? This solution is more difficult to the Nth than other solutions to combat cheating. I'm not sure if that's exactly what you were getting at.
Great points though. 80/20 rule is real and effective. There lists of VPN Ips out there that could be used, but likely they would use a license on one of their network appliances. Detecting VPN type connections is fairly straight forward too, but this would add to an administrative overhead that would affect the bottom line. I don't know where or how they host their servers, but I'm sure even AWS has these options, in their paid tiers because Jeff needs another yacht..
I have no doubt that this is a viable way to do this now.
The thing is, it has the same issue. You can set up your own VPN fairly easily, there are a number of tutorials on YouTube for how to do it. If all you are doing is blocking the top providers, all you are doing is preventing honest (or lazy) cheaters.
This does absolutely nothing at all to prevent those exploiting as a business. Nothing at all. Ot won't even slow then down.
Again, you are mis-understanding what I am saying.
I am not saying it can't be done. I never said that. I said (many, many times, you should learn to read) that the companies that are doing it are all set up to be sold off to capitalize on the data they collect. The data they have on hand is worth more than the service they offer, so that data WILL be sold off.
That is why people with a fraud background are so attracted to these kinds of businesses. The entire industry is set up to be sold off to profit from the information they collect.
Thus, any company that asks its users to use one of these services is guaranteeing that all of its users are giving their personal identifying information to anyone willing to pay for it.
Do I really need to give you examples of companies that have collected information on people, only for that information to end up with others for various reasons? 23 and me and Ashley Maddison would be the two big name examples if you want some. They perform a different function, but the the end result of *collect data for function of business > realize that data is worth more than the function of business > monetize data* is the same.
Yes setting up a VPN is simple as simple as detecting connections via a VPN. It would help a lot. Maybe this is the crux of the disagreement, you believe security doesn't work completely so it's not worth doing and/or these efforts will have no effect. Blocking access to a service via a VPN connection is done quite often. Detecting bot farms connecting through a VPN would be really easy even if it is a private/custom VPN.
No need for a strawman argument... Give me an example of a company requiring valid ID to gain access to a service or product that failed because they required valid ID. Not about companies that leaked PPI because of bad security or shady employee. Also again your name is NOT PPI, nor is your address. This information is public record.
At the end of the day if you want to be completely anonymous on the internet (maybe go back to the 90's) fine go for it. Given the option I'd play on a server with verified players. Enjoy playing in the sea of bots and gold sellers. Or possibly given your stance and the strength of your arguments enjoy botting and selling gold in the sea of bots and gold sellers. Your basically saying don't use a tool to protect something from criminals because the tools used to protect may be abused too. Like don't put locks on your home because criminals might lock you in. I mean damn Meta, Google, Apple, Amazon, and more are already watching you poop. XD but nope lets not require ID verification because a company bound by law and severe punishes might abuse my name. A better argument is that people won't want to do it and that extra step would deter new players and lower sales... but then Verizon is still in business and doing quite well lol. So...
No, in regards to VPN's i believe some people have perfectly valid reasons for using them, and since they aren't going to do anything at all to stop serious offending, on balance, it isn't worth it.
If there were no valid reasons for using them, then there would be no harm in blocking them.
Detecting bot farms using a custom VPN is indeed quite difficult. That is why those companies do this
I uave a better idea - name a company that operates online and does what you say.
The reason I am flipping that around is because I can't think of a single company that actually uses identification services as a hard requirement. The only organizations thst do are government based.
Intrepid have no way to verify who I am.
okay, cool cool cool
For an in game exploit like leveling via a glitch monster pawn. Exploit was really referring to cheaters, bots, gold sellers, as well as people using exploits to cheat their way to whatever victory is for them. You're not going to give a temp band to an account that bots or gold sells. That's perma ban territory.
I'm going to assume this is just your way of trying to get out of answering the question of naming a company that uses the services you are talking about as a hard requirement - because you can't, because none do, because it is a bad idea, because those companies are not trustworthy and no legitimate company would want to partner with them.
I didn't read it. Only read the first sentence on this one. You can't provide anything of value to the conversation anymore. You used made up stats, argue it's too hard, people don't want it, you can't trust companies, strawman replies, cherry pick, ect ect. It's nothing of substance, it's anecdotal and opinion. I understand your opinion and no longer have an interest in it. I've given up trying to get actual data and facts from you. Maybe this will be more clear to you than just 'okay, cool cool cool'.
Issue is for some of these people its not the first time doing it, and they killed an entire server in phase 1
I don't know what more you want.
I told you over a week ago that those companies are not to be trusted. I said that instead of taking my word for it, you can simply google those companies in relation to fraud and see for yourself.
I am not asking you to believe me, that is why I am giving you very few facts. I am giving you enough for you to go and find out for yourself so that you don't need to believe me.
Tell you what, I'll just give you the results of the first 30 seconds of looking in to the first company on your list from earlier.
Jumio, founded in 2010 by Daniel Mattes, who in 2019 was charged with fraud. This fraud charge also caught up Jumio's CFO, who settled the case against him for $420,000. In 2016 the company was declared bankrupt, and acquired by an equity fund (ie, all data they had collected was now owned by said equity fund). Jumio is also currently (I believe it is still ongoing) dealing with charges due to it's mishandling of biometric data in relation to Binance.
This is not a company I will willingly allow to have any information on me at all.
So, really, don't take my word for it, don't ask me for the information. I've told you what to look for, go and look for it instead of continually insisting that your idea has merit. It does not have merit.
Do they not need to do that anyway in order to see which item is in which inventory? If every piece of Copper in the game was the same, then the second anybody sold one, it would sell all of them across the server.
So, if all pieces of Copper are separate, and if they already have their own unique ID, then you'd just simply add a couple of fields for the players that created/found/etc it and for the player that currently owns it.
Deleting items from players that currently own it is not a great idea.
If this is how enforcement starts happening, you watch people start up new accounts, farm specific materials, trade them to rivals and watch them get deleted, thus removing the wealth those rivals built up from the game.
If Intrepid remove the items and reimberse the player what they spent buying the materials, then this whole thing will be ineffective
There are many reasons we players don't know what systems developers use to combat exploiting and cheating. One of them is because then the exploiters and cheaters would know and would be able to circumvent them better, but another is because if we know them, we can use these systems the developers use to combat exploiting as exploits in their own right.
I'm not putting forward a better solution, I'm just saying this is not a good one - in part because it will become VERY obvious to people very quickly.
Yeah, I dunno what the answer/solution to it is, I was just suggesting that the items already had a unique value since they're separate occurrences of the object type.
That's why I think a soft first approach is better. You're also in a growth phase of the game, so being too punitive too quickly sets a negative tone.
You have to balance perception. That's why a soft first brush with "justice" is appropriate. It's not, that it wasn't disruptive, but it was low hanging fruit, and the company can do better to stop people. Letting people choose the easy way out by not addressing the easiest exploits...is going to open too many of your genuinely just goof balls...to getting out of the product environment.
Gamers have pushed the bar with these things, and that means there's a little tolerance for letting the first pass slide.
If people make the testing environment useless, it's better to do that in a few passes after you've marked and verified the offenses. Then ban them from the testing period if you have to go as harsh as possible until launch.
In terms of abusive behavior like harming other players directly, like Asmongold via system exploits, I believe harsh penalties straight out the gate are good.
Harming people vrs harming a test phase's utility, is a slightly different psychological state, that is worth harsh discipline.
Having a test environment with a test setup where disruption is likely, means you need to modify your measurement approach...because you can't avoid that. You can't test in a poor conditioned environment, and then shrug when your tests don't match the reality you're living in vrs what you would have preferred happened.
That's why I think the soft approach for one is different than another. Penalize behavior that is intolerable in any context, like harming other people's experience directly...and when you can clean up the economic environment use a new test, and then verify based off of what you might have learned after testing in the exploited environment.
Exploited money is still circulating in the economy, it just means your measure of certain factors has to adjust...it's not completely wasted time.
It's not like there is a correct answer here. So I trust Steven with his wealth of experience and his communication with experts...to try and adapt a reasonable approach.
I'm making some assumptions on how they made it. So take this with a pinch of salt. It's just an educated guess.
The copper your character has isn't unique. It's the same copper everyone has. When "deleted" it's just removed from you, or the relationship is cut. So when a copper is found it's just made from the same object/asset that they are all made from. This gets into OOP and relation databases. It would not be impossible to track each copper as a unique asset just a bigger database and more code. Maybe they did do this. I just highly doubt it.
A simplified example would be. If you find 5 common copper. That copper gets put in your inventory. All that happens is your inventory now lists the common copper in it with an amount. If delete one copper the amount in your inventory is just reduced. A copper isn't actually deleted from the world, because that copper is just a number while in your inventory. Lol might be better to youtube. It's hard from me to explain without pictures and I'm retired so I'm a bit rusty too. Hope this helps shed a little more light on it though.
I pretty much agree. I don't really care too much about the exploiting right now, as long as they are fixing it. It's actually good they are doing it so it can be fixed. The same thing with the griefers and broken mechanics. I just care about the integrity of the game, as it is now I don't see anything different they are doing vs what any other MMORPG has done. And we all know how those turn out.
Big difference in no lifeing the game to get ahead and exploiting. An exploit like duping will kill the market and in a game like this probably the whole game. An exploit like killing wall glitched mobs, not really a big deal. At the end of the day we have know actions are being taken and what those punishments are. If exploiters are going to be allowed then the only way to compete is to exploit too, being a OWPvP game, it's competitive. A competitive MMORPG will require a huge time investment. If you put that work in, then an exploiter comes by and gets to where you are by cheating it invalidates all the work you've put in. If not handled properly this will cut player count. It's tough to do, but critical to success and may require drastic measures.
To be fair most gaming companies use this, just not in America, or most other countries, But China forces you to ID yourself and limits your play time.
Which doesn't matter I'm still not giving my SSN to a gaming company.
Yeah, I've not looked in to exactly what is used in China, but they do have a government mandated system for online identification.
Your last sentence is exactly why I said about 70% of American MMO players would simply opt out of rhe game if this were a requirement. That is because 70% is the current estimate of people that spend a significant amount of time online that are also somewhat security conscious while online. Very few Americans would hand over their SSN to any company they wish to purchase a product or service from - because that isn't what they are supposed to be used for.
At the end of the day it comes down to this, even if IS told me they had a 99.9999% secure system I still would not give them my DL (Drivers License), SSN, or any other personal ID information beyond my name and address.
Because I don't need another database out there with my personal so I can find out I'm trying to buy a Porsche on credit in Bangladesh.
Indeed.
You are - as far as I can tell - very much in the majority with this.