TR Soldier Rocking Camo

[Crator]

Nice, I really like what you guys are saying here about no FF for new characters...

[NlightN]

Originally Posted by Higby

Yeah, some form of hardware fingerprinting is something we've been discussing. There are always ways to reassign your MAC address, change that ID file we put on your PC, etc... someone would spend 10 minutes making a little visual basic app that let you switch between "installs" if we put something like that in. It's sadly all about finding the way that makes it as much of a waste of time for the hacker to get around and therefore not worth doing. We have a lot of plans to thwart this sort of stuff, but I'm not going to discuss them for obvious reasons.

I say just skip all the tapdancing and just go with a boxed copy, with an account key ftw. Or boxed + f2p option.....the ftp being very limited in abilities....capping out at BR10 or a quarter of what the max rank would be. F2p players would be able to play as a viable grunt or medic and be able to contribute to their side, but not able to do much else. Make it so they'd PREFER just buying a copy, but keep the ability to still label it as F2P.


Probably too late to go this route but imo would be the best combo for coupling high population + hightened security

[Coreldan]

Originally Posted by NlightN

I say just skip all the tapdancing and just go with a boxed copy, with an account key ftw. Or boxed + f2p option.....the ftp being very limited in abilities....capping out at BR10 or a quarter of what the max rank would be. F2p players would be able to play as a viable grunt or medic and be able to contribute to their side, but not able to do much else. Make it so they'd PREFER just buying a copy, but keep the ability to still label it as F2P.


Probably too late to go this route but imo would be the best combo for coupling high population + hightened security

Or even a 5€/$ account activation cost, much like EVE online has. That ain't much, so it shouldnt turn away many potential gamers, but still enough to get expensive to get constantly banned.

[Shogun]

it doesn´t make griefing totally impossible, but like matt said, the goal is to make it really hard to grief on purpose, rendering the effort unworthy.

funny funny assheads will just annoy themselfs by shooting peas and getting grief for it, and as a bonus this applys to noobs who just don´t know better and allows for them to learn how the game works without annoying veterans in the process.

the key to this system is that only active playtime is measured for the counters. no afk time and no realtime counters! griefcounters only move while the player is logged in and gives any kind of input! that makes grieflocks really annoying for the player and forces him to do some support to make up for the evil teamkillings ;-)
no purpose griefer would go through this more than one time!

[Shogun]

Originally Posted by Coreldan

Or even a 5€/$ account activation cost, much like EVE online has. That ain't much, so it shouldnt turn away many potential gamers, but still enough to get expensive to get constantly banned.

that´s what i thought of as well.

maybe pair this with a trial version, to draw in the unsure masses and switch off the trial accounts FF, so there is no money barrier to check out the game, but there is also no way to abuse the trial for annoyance.

at least a small fee for full version activation would really be wise. if not for griefers, do it to make cheaters and hackers have to risk some real money with every ban! and to be able to identify them if they repeat this.

doesn´t need to be a full price boxed game, just some bugs will do the job for a great amount of wannabe hackers or trainer/cheat downloaders.
and there will be downloadable trainers and cheats... there have always been and always will be so if you cannot stop them, at least make them pay!

[Coreldan]

Trial still has the problem that the rage hackers who cheat just to annoy people will have free reign, thus the activation cost would be mostly useless and would only annoy those who try to do some subtle'ish long term cheating.

But yeah, I really think a 5-10€ cost should come in some way of making a new account, be it a "box" price or just an account activation cost. Will make it alot nastier for chronic cheaters while still keeping the bar to try the game out low. You could even give those 5€ worth of "station points" or whatever they are, so that people don't really "lose" anything if they are on a legit purpose, but cheaters still lose money for every new account they make.

[ThGlump]

Originally Posted by basti

That would indeed be a simple and perfect solution. Makes it impossible to be a asshat.

What you could do is create a bunch of accounts, level them all up to be able to attack friendlys, and then jsut start being a asshat. But theres also a counter to that, simply track for such stuff, easily done. If a account just logs in to one or several chars to be a Teamkiller, ban that account. :>

Well that cant be avoided unless you bound every account to credit card, and grief link all accounts with same card. But that would fend off many players so they wont do that. You could only annoy them so they wont bother creating multiple accounts - like needing to reinstall game if you want account not grief linked with your other accounts as every install wold be unique (not some additional file but hardcoded ID during compilation into some main files). Its possible as today installs are often streamed, but it would be hell on soe side to create and manage that many installs/recompiling for every install request.

Or accounts without card link, or those without any purchase would have rocket fast grief gain (with lowered FF damage). You will end grief locked before you can do much damage. And it has no impact on gameplay unless you shoot teammates so it wont hinder free players.

And first few BR of no damage/grief but with annoying warning that you should not shoot friendlies should be in place so new players learn.

[Shogun]

Originally Posted by Coreldan

Trial still has the problem that the rage hackers who cheat just to annoy people will have free reign, thus the activation cost would be mostly useless and would only annoy those who try to do some subtle'ish long term cheating.

But yeah, I really think a 5-10€ cost should come in some way of making a new account, be it a "box" price or just an account activation cost. Will make it alot nastier for chronic cheaters while still keeping the bar to try the game out low. You could even give those 5€ worth of "station points" or whatever they are, so that people don't really "lose" anything if they are on a legit purpose, but cheaters still lose money for every new account they make.

great idea!

make a small activation fee and give this amount as credits for the shop!

this idea is brilliant and a win/win situation.

after all, SOE wants to make cash with that game and legit players will not be forced to throw the money away just to play, they can spend it in the shop. that will also force them to actually look at the shop and maybe fall in love with some stuff that goes beyond that first credit. like i said win/win situation

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Shogun

the key to this system is that only active playtime is measured for the counters. no afk time and no realtime counters! griefcounters only move while the player is logged in and gives any kind of input! that makes grieflocks really annoying for the player and forces him to do some support to make up for the evil teamkillings ;-)
no purpose griefer would go through this more than one time!

I hope that the anti-AFK detection is pretty robust.

It should have some pretty strict criteria for counting you as not being afk. Obviously you wouldn't have to meet all the criteria to keep playing, just for that playtime to count towards your anti-grief non-being counted as afk time.

Things like requiring at least one kill or, alternatively, one specific non combat task (such as healing someone) per hour, or else that hour doesn't count towards your time. You must move at least once every 5 minutes or it stops counting towards your time. Moving in the same direction for prolonged periods stops counting towards your time.

The timers would of course be separate, so that it wasn't subversively penalizing people who happened to go afk for a couple minutes quite often.

As long as you killed someone or did some support task at least once during that hour, at least 55 minutes would still be credited to you even if you went afk for 5 minutes.

[ThGlump]

Originally Posted by Coreldan

Trial still has the problem that the rage hackers who cheat just to annoy people will have free reign, thus the activation cost would be mostly useless and would only annoy those who try to do some subtle'ish long term cheating.

But yeah, I really think a 5-10€ cost should come in some way of making a new account, be it a "box" price or just an account activation cost. Will make it alot nastier for chronic cheaters while still keeping the bar to try the game out low. You could even give those 5€ worth of "station points" or whatever they are, so that people don't really "lose" anything if they are on a legit purpose, but cheaters still lose money for every new account they make.

That could be solved someway as in Rift. Separate servers for free/trial players (regular/paying players can play there too to help/play with friends) and if you ever make any payment you can move your account to regular server. It just need easy automated character transfers (or character not lock to server but to account so it doesnt matter which one you play and you can play on different one anytime).

[Bags]

The dumbest thing you can do in F2P games is to segregate the payers and the freebies.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Bags

The dumbest thing you can do in F2P games is to segregate the payers and the freebies.

This.

F2P is to keep the game populated so that we can actually play Planetside as it is meant to be played. Keeping everyone together is not only a good idea, it is essential.

The trick is to keep F2P griefers from ruining the game for anyone, freebies or payers alike. Segregation is a terrible solution. Box price is a much better solution, but is also a bit of a simplistic solution.

I'm interested to see what the devs can pull off.

[ThGlump]

Originally Posted by Bags

The dumbest thing you can do in F2P games is to segregate the payers and the freebies.

Not much dumber than to annoy paying players with endless hacking freebies so he stop play/spend money on it and you end with full servers with no money gain.

Yes when freebies see something cool on paying players they may desire to buy it too, but you must ensure that number is greater than pissed off players.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by ThGlump

Not much dumber than to annoy paying players with endless hacking freebies so he stop play/spend money on it and you end with full servers with no money gain.

Yes when freebies see something cool on paying players they may desire to buy it too, but you must ensure that number is greater than pissed off players.

Planetside 1 is a pay to play game and it has hackers out the ass.

If you have hackers running rampant, you have already failed. Segregation won't help the matter much.

Addressing the issues head on while keeping all of the playerbase together is the way to go.

[ThGlump]

Originally Posted by Xyntech

Planetside 1 is a pay to play game and it has hackers out the ass.

Well i somewhat expect that soe dont make same mistake as with ps1 - not caring about game and not baning hackers is what keep them there.
Problem is that with f2p banning wont help so we are screwed.