Excuse me Kat, but how does the catching of accounting sharing work? Is it only from reports? I remember a ban for heroin and minthy (if that's how you spell their ign correctly) and a comment saying they were account sharing, but I didn't see any reports. If you could check the IP how long would it take? Just an idea to add on to your suggestion. If the second time you account share ( after account ban occurs) on your new account, you could IP ban. That is if checking IP is quite simple, but I don't know how your system works. John made a good point about attempting to transfer equipment and mesos to a non-account before the account ban takes place. If that's the case, how about banning all accounts within the IP while allowing them to restart by making a new account. Another counter argument would be to transfer to a friend (with your own risk of getting lied upon). Even if they have their second chance with all their equipment. I feel they would be disappointed by their level lost and untradeable equipment. They would most likely not attempt it again, since the main point of account sharing is power leveling. Just my own personal opinion and suggestion.
Tryna argue with GMs is like Tryna argue with a cop your not gonna win no matter how good your evidence/ideas are...but I wish u the best of luck chaossound
I just think the overall idea of ip/ MAC address banning is ridiculous, it just ruins so many other people's chances of playing, not just the offender
Not using IP/MAC adress bans would make it very easy for offenders to make new accounts. The server could potentially become extremely chaotic. Unfortunately, we live in a world where a small amount of people ruin things for others.
If someone provided a working alternative solution we'd listen, and have listened in the past. Don't base your comment on a small sample size. Exactly, I haven't seen any better way to deal with it, and if someone has any idea other than simple account bans I'd personally love to hear it. The fact is, simple account bans are way to easy to avoid and provide no discipline for breaking the rules. If you really want to be so negative towards the staff, at least be a little constructive in what your saying. Comments that only provide criticism are more detrimental than they are helpful. I'm a full believer of constructive critisism.
There are at least 4 different ways we come across account sharing, of which player reports and player admissions are 2. Forgive me for not wishing to go into details of exactly how else we come across and investigate account sharing - I don't want to make this into a guide on "How to account-share without being detected"! What I don't see as feasible here is purely banning by account, rather than banning by IP. We really don't want hackers/dupers/Mesos-for-real-money sellers (etc) being easily able to make new accounts without making any effort to cover their tracks, and that is unfortunately what would happen if we did not have a system which banned players by IP. Everyone who has ever invented a brother/friend/cousin/roomie who apparently hacked and got them blocked from the game would have a field day. The way our ban system currently works enables us to detect and stop a lot of ban evaders. As I've mentioned earlier, I, personally, would be in favour of a 2-tier ban for account sharing (first offence: 14 day ban; second offence: permanent ban) rather than a flat permaban on the grounds that this would bring it more into line with other offences and that major abuse (eg power levelling) and doing other people's ZJQs for them should be reasonably easy to detect. However, this a point where staff opinions vary, and if we changed anything, we'd need to reach an agreement on it first.
I just feel that with the first and second offense rulse many people will be ready to risk it the first time because they can always come back after 2 weeks. There will be a breach in the security and more people will be get hacked. I say make it at least 3-4 week long ban to show people you guys are serious about preventing people from account sharing. 1 month is enough to make many players leave and the waiting time is awful long(should be quite a blow to those who tried to use account sharing to get an lvling advantage and set them back 1 month of training). Permban on second offense will tell them that they will never come back in a legitimate way, not even in a 99 x 10^68 years. Break the first level and take a hard punishment or leave. Break the second level and you're never coming back. Sounds good fair? Feedback?
You guys are making this overly complicated. There is nothing wrong with the rule. The problem lies in the fact that account sharing was perfectly okay in GMS; people simply aren't aware that it is a serious offense here.
What are you talking about? There's so many flaws in this rule but it's hard to find a solution to these flaws without causing insecurities in the rule. Like the 2 tier rule doesn't compensate for the decrease in security. And I disagree with many on the point that the current banning system is too harsh but infact it isn't too harsh at all because every hacker/duper/scammer/account trader&seller deserves it. However it's too bad that people with no bad intentions get perm banned because they don't deserve it. < That's the only point I agree with them. If there were no one with bad intentions we wouldn't even need that rule in the first place. They want to help the innocent but if they do the are giving the ones with bad intentions an advantage. I still believe there is a good solution to it but that we just haven't come up with it yet. These things take time.
This might be a lot of topic from the first post, but I lost track of the topic. How about making a legal way of account sharing, making one able to log on an other account with a new password other than the official one. And the password expires after xxx days, or yyy times of use. When logging in like that (using the different password) the account is in a locked mode where you can't gain EXP to prevent power leveling, and other blocks to prevent wrong intentions. If someone hacks when using the shared account, his/her own accounts and the currently shared account (as that's what the owner of the account gets for sharing with bad people) gets banned. Something like sharing your desktop for viewing only. On top of that this feature should be made well aware of when creating an account. And also the account sharing rule in general should be highlighted more when creating an account (something I've said before I think).
^ it's a nice thought. But is it really possible to make it able to not gain any exp. Doesn't the game mechanic itself allows you to gain exp, and an on and off switch for it sounds impossible. But I wouldn't know anything about this. If this was possible it'd be nice, but as Sila said skyping would easily work as well for checking account with screensharing or just sending screenshots if its a minor issue.
Too complicated. I believe there's a better way what you're suggesting. Why not make a subforum where you fill out an application of the ones you wanna share your account information with? That way you can't complain on that you didn't read the ToS and that your so called "brother" was just going to do ZakumJQ for you. Of course the application has to be approved and you have to show pic of yourself and the one your sharing account with(doesn't need to show faces) standing near each other with each holding paper saying who u are and who you are sharing it with and should only be accepted if you guys can take the photo together so that you don't share with someone in another country. And if you get hacked suit yourself. This way the punishment will be same for account sharing but there's a way to do it legitimately but on your own risk. And if that person reports that he got hacked even if he wasn't hacked by the one he shared the account with he won't get anything back. So simply if you choose to share account with someone then you guys will take no responsibility if he gets hacked. Since many people think since it wasn't enforced in GMs and it should be allowed I guess this is a possible solution. Possible counter-arguments: 1. What about selling/trading accounts won't this make it possible? Answer: No, you have to take picture of you two standing together so selling it will be really hard to sell it that way. 2. What about those who didn't know about account sharing being allowed due to certain conditions and got banned? Answer: They could choose between being permanently banned or get temporarily banned for not reading the ToS carefully and they are also forced to fill out the account sharing application since they already shared account information so they have to prove that they know each other IRL. Which is hard for people who don't which is key to proving their innocence and good evidence. Also this could be mentioned in the account sharing rule so that people can't complain they didn't missed it if they read the ToS because that means that they didn't read the ToS at all. 3. What if they edit the image? Answer: Edited pictures aren't allowed. At least one full-screen unedited photo that is not unclear or blurred out.
Well this isn't 100% replica of GMs. You are playing on a private server so don't expect every rule to be exactly the same like back then. Ffs getting free nx from voting daily isn't nostalgic either since you couldn't get free nx that way back then.
It is (easily) possible, if that removes any doubts from other people aswell. Your solution is an easy to implement but hard to maintain one. Even though I doubt the 'easy to implement' part already. As accounts will get linked with one and an other due to MAC adresses being shared, this will lead to random connections linking accounts that are totally unrelated by the way it was intentially wanted. Something I mentioned before in this reply. On the long term this account-connection-disease will spread during it's incubation period and when one account gets banned, all the symptomps will become visible. Leaving the Staff with a headache because it will be too big of a job to figure out who was linked to who, who was banned for hacking, who got into something totally random. To maintain this, you're giving the Staff a lot of work to reply to the applications and also to verify them. On top, you seem to only provide a way to make account sharing possible between people who know eachother. Where my solution is harder to implement, but doesn't leave the Staff hungover. So in the order I adressed my concerns on your solution I'll type why I think my suggestion serves better. MAC adresses should not get logged to the account when using the new password. So there's no hidden account linking. This requires two changes to current systems I know. I do advise a full cleanup of the related code though. The login mechanics should be changed so MAC adresses don't get listed onto accounts when using a sharing password. They should also provide information when using a correct sharing password (such as 'The password has been expired' if needed). The ban mechanics (before you go all crazy, this means one function should be changed slightly) should be changed that if someone logged in with a sharing password, not all the MAC acresses on the account get banned, but only the account itself, and the IP and MAC of the current user. There would be an NPC who does all the work. Something where you enable/disable account sharing, set your sharing password (or not), the expiring options (by time, by times used, something else). There would be very little Staff interaction with it. Obviously there should be a logging mechanism that makes sure all claims of account breaches can be checked even if the account sharing options have been changed. Even though this is way of the original subject posted, it's something more outside the box for it. As it topic was raised to lower the punishments for innocent sharing, this simply allows it. No changes should be made to the rule, other than clarifying you're allowed to shared using the above mentioned way. Note: just some quick thoughts though, please correct me if I'm wrong somewhere cause I didn't think it through properly, something that's important for a big change like this.
My problem with your suggestion is that one will easily get scammed and I think it's wrong to permanently ban someone for trusting the wrong person. He will have to pay the price for trusting someone who he thought was a good person only to later find out he get screwed over. Why should he get banned for something the other person did? I mean I understand that it's his own fault he got scammed, it's at your own risk so you never know who really can trust. But let's say someone need help with ZakumJQ and a really nice person offers help and that owner of the account agrees to sharing it fully aware of the risks. Shouldn't the fact that he lost a lot of items be enough of a punishment? Why add the ban? Why should his other accounts be banned too and not only the shared account? Unless of course they all have similar username and login I could understand why but other than I don't see why that's necessary. Also your suggestion will cause so many "please I got hacked! HELP!" threads and they will all end with GM replying "It's not our responsibility, sharing your account is at your own risk bla bla bla we're closing this now." Mine won't output as many of those threads since you can only share with someone you know IRL which will make so that not as many people will account share which they shouldn't do with strangers anyways. The amount of reports from account sharing will be coming in less often due to reasons stated above thus they will not have to deal with as many reports. Although I'm not a genius about this MAC banning system I wonder how MAC address ZZZ gets banned for accessing account BC when the only banned MAC address on that account is YYY. Lastly, account sharing SHOULD only be allowed between people you know. Why would you want to give out your account information to stranger that "seem" nice but we all know they can't be trusted? That would only cause more scam reports… Also sharing accounts with someone who lives on the other side of the world will cause certain problems for sure. What's your thought on this Gi? Maybe we can come up with a great idea if we keep going like this. I feel like we're getting somewhere.
As someone who plays a ridiculously underpowered class with a highly desirable party buff, fuck making it allowed in any way, shape, or form. Every guild would have shared SI/SE mules and the people who play these classes will have an even harder time finding groups to do anything.
I'll try to explain the full process of my suggestion and I hope you'll see that the problems you (@digestive) have with it are actually going to occer with your suggestion rather than mine. An account must always be made by one person (lets call that person the master of the account), it's the master who gives his personal info to create the account, as asked by the TnC. In my suggestion this means only the master has the password used to create the account. Logging in with this (and only this) password gives you full power over the account. Account sharing would be a bad definition, as you're not sharing the full account. The master can set up his account with a new sharing-password (through an NPC in game) which people (lets call them puppets) can use to log in the account with the limitions mentioned above. This would allow the puppets to do some basic actions like setting SP/AP, doing the ZakJQ, organize inventories or even test the class of the master. I believe this was the main arguement to raise this discussion, people getting banned getting banned for these basic actions. But there's no other way than enforce the rules strict. The limitations that puppets have are something that require a lot of time to find. Some restrictions can be: no EXP gain; no party buffing (@Ague); not being able to finish the ZakumJQ. However, the current infrastructur does not support a system like this, so change is needed. This is my suggestion below (some of these may already excist). Logs of which IP and MAC logs onto the account, also logging if the person was a master or a puppet. Logging in on an account as a puppet does not add your MAC adress to the associated MACs of that account. How should bans be handled? Banning a master The master is banned and can't play MapleRoyals as long as his ban lasts. Puppets can't enter any of the accounts from the master anymore either. Instead they will get a message prompting the master of the account has been banned, and thus the account has been blocked (temporaly). Banning a puppet The puppet is banned can't play MapleRoyals as long as his ban lasts. If the puppet was banned on a shared account, the account is also blocked for that time duration. The master of the account isn't affected by the ban otherwise than the shared account. If you do not make these changes and allow players on the account anyhow, there's little to no way to log this. There's a wide gap for abuse like power leveling. And if you've shared the account with someone even once, your account will always be linked to that person aswell. So if you trusted someone months ago, and (s)he gets banned today, you will be linked with the ban (because of the list of MACs that are associated with your account). As for your (@digestive) other questions I suggest you reread the replies, I think I've explained everything properly.
1. You can cancel your account sharing whenever you want or it will cancel it automatically if you stated so in your application. 2. I still can't find the answer as why is MAC address ZZZ being banned for accessing account BC when only MAC address YY is the only MAC that is banned on the account BC from playing? How does he also get banned when he did nothing wrong? Your post doesn't explain that properly. 3. You can prevent XP from being gained when account sharing, so that doesn't only apply to your suggestion it can be used on mine as well.
