My 2 cents is No there is absolutely no need for it if u live in the same house there is no way to tell really unless the person comes out and says I'm not the acc owner I'm there wife/gf/brother... Ect. But acc sharing on other servers is black and white aswell u get caught u get banned and I think if somebody needs something from there friend say int equips to lvl then said person should wait till the acc OWNER logs on and trades them to the other person if its somebody not knowing how to wash call them and deliver step by step instructions I never washed at all till about 2 months ago and it took a bit of questions but nothing others weren't willing to answer in Skadis case what I was thinking was perhaps they were both voting and transfer ap resets that they got to the other acc to do a 2x faster wash without having to spend meso on others resets, real life example: I wouldn't ask somebody to come to my house cause I don't know how to cook I'd call and receive advice on how to cook I have nothing against lance at all just puttin one mans opinion out there I had quit for a bit and I was going to give alot to mike but was busy with rl stuff so I asked Matt if mike could go on my acc to take stuff off of it the answer was black and white straight up No and I agree it is the way it should be There is no way of knowing if people are going to "acc share" and say I just wanted to borrow a robe but lieing about usein the nx aswell thus getting more nx. Sorry for very poor reply but phone doesn't have spell check and hard to type on my phone
Only Rayes? Lol. Dayum. And here I thought you were different Kat. Turns out it's fine to insult another member so long as I stay in topic with the thread? Pretty neat on how this server is ran to a certain extent. Just to keep on topic. IMO. A server should be ran in accordance to how the players may enjoy. I would agree that account sharing should be ban-able ONLY if this option has been abused but should be a little flexible on that. Let me just give you a scenario. 1: Player A has been reported to be sharing an account with Player B. Checks the databases. Oh yea, both accounts has been logged onto this particular MAC address over a period of time. Turns out the two accounts are shared for buffs. - Ban for account sharing. 2: Player A has been reported to be sharing an account with Player B. Checks databases. Oh yea, both account has wen logged onto this particular MAC address a few times. Turns out they are of the same household. Should still be ban-able under the account sharing? Likewise for your vote log checks, there's definitely flaws on this. There should be an investigation on whether abuse is attempted or present. Instead of making your judgment based on evidence such as MAC address log, etc.. Relating to lance's case. It's could be easily deem as a conspiracy. On that very day when a GM has been accused on biased act. He got banned for something else. He even provided evidence of a GM giving him a go ahead before doing it. And yet he is still banned for it. :O Such dilemma from a supposedly 'great server'. Could we eventually get ban for following the rules set by the GM one fine day? No hard feelings. You may or may not agree. Just my own opinion.
The logs do not provide us with every single piece of data of what goes on in game. Otherwise, we would need a server farm the size of Google and the donations currently do not make that a feasible option. Additionally, the logs from the exGM in question told him how to circumvent the rule and try to do the account sharing undetected. Believe me when I say, if the GM in question was still on staff, they wouldn't be for long after those screenshots were brought to our attention. As Matt had said earlier, the rules are posted and Skype is not an acceptable nor official way to seek rule clarification as it is very easy for things to be misconstrued. There's a reason we request Abuse Reports to be posted on the forum and not PMed or sent privately to staff via other means.
One reason people like shared accounts is buff mules. I think we need more FM buff parties on this server, i.e. a group of people party while training at different places, and buff one another by going into FM every few minutes. If anybody wants HB, then I am happy to share my HB. If anybody else has buffs they're able to share with me then that'd be awesome, although I'm still happy to HB those who do not have buffs to share but could really do with HB (such as non 4th job bowman classes) Shared CPQ mules makes no sense (CPQ on this server isn't even about having fun, it's just training). GQ sacrifice mules are unnecessary (on GMS where it took more time to get to 30 people liked them, but the EXP rate is much higher here, and we have a lot of really nice weapons available to low levels). Sharing items would be best done via an NPC, if possible. While some arguements have been brought up where sharing accounts would be nice, I think they are outweighed by the amount of effort that would be required by the staff to determine whether or not the account sharing in question is or isn't harmful. This isn't fair on the staff given that they are volunteers. What I'd like to see is automated detection of account sharing to try and catch out EVERYBODY who does it (of course some investigation would still be necessary as an autoban would be dangerous). This should not be done retroactively, but a clear warning should be put out if such software was implemented that from that day forward, you will be caught if you continue to account share. I am not a fan of the "don't get caught" approach. I understand though that implementing such an algorithm may be more trouble than it is worth.
Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, that automated approach is impossible. Consider the situation where I log onto the game from my laptop from a public cafe. It is me playing on my own computer but the autoban system (in the way I would program it/only way I can think of) would ban me for account sharing with whoever else may have accessed the game from that public cafe's IP. I think the number of mistaken bans would be far too high to be worth implementing such an automated approach.
That still doesn't deny the fact that that action was firstly approve by a then GM before lance carried it out right? In accordance to the topic. Which is entirely why I said that judgment should not be made based on what is seen on the log but a in game investigation should be made if abused has been carried out. I believe you would agree that judgment based in log in MAC address is flawed. So why made the call for a ban before an investigation was made?
Yeah, I agree. I was originally thinking that maybe approximate location based on IP could be used as well (i.e. if IP's from 2 different places are logging into an account, it starts to look a bit suspicious). But then that kind of information is pretty unreliable, unless the 2 IP's are in different countries. If you were using your laptop at a cafe, it would at least have your own MAC address. But then if you were using some public computer that more than one maple royals player could potentially be using, even that becomes unreliable. There is patterns though that may be usable. i.e. person from same MAC/IP address logs off an account, logs onto an account known to be somebody elses, logs off it, and then logs back onto their own. Or 2 accounts are logged on simultaneously from the same IP and/or MAC address (IP address being the same could suggest anything from 2 people being in the same house to 2 people being in the same large organisation, such as a university though ), that are known to be owned by different people. But I can see flaws in even that :-( SURELY there is a way!
OK, you've lost me there. Robb called Tentomon out on rudeness towards Mantouks. Tentomon explained that her intention was not to be rude, quite the opposite. Her explanation made perfect sense and she also offered an apology. You made your "Karma is a beach" post. Daniel asked you to stay on topic. I gave your post an infraction for being: "Un-necessary and flame-ish" (my exact words). Tentomon replied to your post, and I asked her to stay on topic so that we could get back to the original discussion. I'm not seeing any hypocrisy/double standards/whatever else here, and to be honest, if I wasn't a member of staff, I wouldn't be replying at this point, but I don't think it's reasonable to let unfair accusations directed at us go unchallenged. I do have more on-topic material to contribute at some point, but it's 2am and I'm tired, so I'll do it tomorrow.
It was never APPROVED by a GM. A GM never straight up came out and said "it is not against the rules to account share". The GM in question told Lance through a third party chat program how to break the rules without getting caught. That is NOT the same as an official announcement by the Staff via the forum. Lance should have realized that the GM was giving him shady advice. One rogue GM does not speak for the rest of the Staff. Let's say a police officer tells you how to commit a crime and not get caught. Then, you do get caught. Are you allowed to say "but the police officer taught me how to break the law without getting caught "
one rouge GM? excuse me, but GM christine is a friend and I won't apologise for trusting a friend. Let's say you have a lawyer friend. You met him for some coffee and asked for legal advice. If your friend isnt a lawyer now, does that make his advice wrong? also, like I said, whatever I said earlier was not meant to convince others that we should be unban. It was just my ppoint of view and why we "shared acc". Tento said earlier that we could call and clarify. But ppl who know me knows that I dont talk in calls.
Christine is my best friend, and it pains me to talk about her in this light. However, she taught Lance how to do something against the rules. That cannot be excused. She never said "You're allowed to do it". Her advice was blatantly shady.
Actually if a lawyer friend or engineer friend (or anyone else in a similar professional capacity) gives you advice related to their field, with knowledge that you may act on that advice, they can be sued for negligence if that advice is deemed bad. This is regardless of the social setting, ie. even if it was said at a social gathering and no money was involved. How funny is that?
Getting slightly off topic here. But since we are using police as examples of reference here. E.g Even a suspect gets a chance at a trial to justify if his case was a murder or a manslaughter given his situation. Getting back to my second point just in case you missed it. Why isn't there a investigation before banning on such allegations, a third party report and a flawed method of justifying via MAC ADDRESS LOGS? Instead a permanent ban was issued based on the flawed evidence. Getting back on the topic. I'm up for the idea of banning should abuse be present found after an investigation. But banning when a member isn't even abusing isn't right. There's a saying 'innocent until proven guilty' It isn't our fault that the database log is unable to provide you with details to make a better call. At the very least make the effort to investigate thoroughly.
There is no guarantee the advice was correct in the first place. Perhaps the reason the friend is no longer a lawyer is because they were giving bad advice. --- Anyway I've been thinking more about the account sharing detection thing. The conclusion I've drawn is that yes, there probably is some clever algorithms that can be designed with a LOT of thought to mine the log files in order to detect very likely cases of account sharing. Such a problem could be quite interesting to work on, at least initially. However, the amount of effort designing such a thing would take is time that could be doing into exciting new server content and fixing bugs. There is no way to justify it, so I take back that suggestion. If you break the rules, you might or might not be caught. But if you are caught, then you are in no position to complain that it is unfair that you got punished for breaking the rules when others did not get punished because they were not caught. If you break the rules, you are in no position to complain about unfairness. Avoiding ending up in this "unfair" position is easy; don't break the rules! It isn't like it is mentally challenging to not break the rules. It isn't like we have a rule that says you must get a certain score in a math test or be banned, which could be a difficult rule to follow (it is unfortunate that some schools/ parents do have such rules for their kids)
Skadi and Mantouks have effectively plead guilty though. They have admitted they account shared (Skadi was HP washing for Mantouks, along with a bunch of other things). The problem is that you don't think this is account sharing, when the staff have made the decision it is (as the definition of account sharing is ANY accessing of somebody elses account, regardless of the reason). If they hadn't been account sharing, they could have appealed the allegation, and likely gotten the ban lifted. The server doesn't have to follow "innocent until proven guilty". It is not legally bound to such a thing. The most practical approach is to ban when there is evidence, but then allow ban appeals. I think this thread has nearly served its entire limited purpose... The way it was set up was problematic. Like I said in my first post, it brings 2 completely different issues together; should the rule be changed, and should it be applied retroactively. The intention was to try and get Skadi (and others) unbanned, with the idea that perhaps getting the rule changed would achieve that goal. Some of us have tried to discuss the issue without bringing individuals into it, but it is clear that was not the real purpose of the thread....
I believe this thread is done up as a suggestion so that possible replication of such situation could be avoided in the picture of other players. The intention of getting Skadi and Mantouks unban was never present since they ain't coming back even if they got unbanned. I believe players are named as a drawn reference as a past incident. But yep. I won't deny the fact that this thread has served it's purpose since it's clear that flexibility and options isn't much tolerable. Peace
Just for the record, it's not that flexibility is not tolerable here. It is that nobody has raised a good reason for allowing account sharing in some cases, that justifies the amount of staff effort it would take to determine what exactly went on in an instance of account sharing. The staff only have logs with limited information to go by. Like I've said, they are volunteers. When making decisions, arguments from both sides need to be weighed up. You are only weighing up the pros for allowing account sharing, and not the cons. That is not fair on the staff. If account sharing becomes a free for all, it will be abused. I actually would support account sharing in certain situations if it didn't make the account sharing rules difficult/ impossible to enforce..... As a member of this community, it just amazes me how UNGRATEFUL some others here are towards the staff who are providing us this amazing service for free, and with very little gain in it for them. Why can't we thank them instead of making unreasonable demands of them?
OK, I think I should make something very clear at this point: neither Model's case nor Lance's/Mantouks' case are remotely generic. They are specific, complex and individual, and we have no reason to believe that they were banned unfairly or erroneously. If by some unlikely chance the exact same circumstances were to arise again with other players in future, they would also be banned. There is no reasonable or fair rule revision that we could possibly make to prevent anything like this happening again, because these bans were completely justified.
Even if the rules are revised, we won't be unbanned. Even of we're unbanned, chances are we won't be back. Yes we did log into each others acc for whatever reason but that doesn't mean that we affect others' gameplay etc. And like I said, the GMs have the right to ban us.
May I just suggest that rule 24 be made more clear? The way it's worded makes it sound like any illegitimate attempt to obtain another person's log in information, not including log in info that was freely given. Something along the lines of: Attempt to obtain a password or other private account information from any other person or user of the game. Including but not limited to account sharing. Punishment: Permanent ban
