Efim
Guardian
- Joined
- Jul 5, 2006
- Posts
- 316
- Society
- Berkut Squad
- Avatar Name
- Ocelot Efim Lance
Recent ban of the well-known Russian crafter, one of the top crafters in Entropia, for multiple account usage has made me come up with this post. Alts are a real problem for Entropia like they are in many other games, but here they do more harm than in any other mmo. And this problem should be treated with all the necessary attention to find a complex and liable solution. Otherwise it will never end the flow of displeased and disagreeing players from both sides.
In this “game” we have a multimillion US dollars economy and, in my opinion, here, like nowhere else, rules must be strictly followed by all the players, while the developers should thoroughly control the matter. There is nothing worse than a situation where everyone is equal, but some are still more equal than others. It’s either ban them all (what I ardently support on the assumption of EULA) or lift the ban from the one. Or change the rules and let everyone have as many avatars as they want per one account or limit the number of avatars per account with whatever amount you come up with, but let it be official, as it is allowed in many other mmo games. At least that would be fair. But if you forbid using multiple accounts (avatars), then this rule must apply to everyone, not just selected players.
What EULA actually is? It’s the code of laws of Entropia, the compliance with which MindArk keeps an eye on. If the law is violated than according measures should be taken. I find it inadmissible when we have a clear rule of one account per player but at the same time we all know players with multiple accounts, while many of them don’t even try to conceal. And MindArk turns a blind eye on the fact. I think we all know a few more top crafters who have accounts in numbers no less than the crafter who has been banned. And that’s the problem. It’s a real problem for the Entropia economy. I welcome the raid on alts but in current situation it looks more like a knockout competition.
Alts in general, especially trade alts that manipulate markup through fake auction deals, and numerous alts of crafters create a very unhealthy state of the Entropia’s economy.
First of all it becomes impossible to compete with crafters, who have 10+ accounts presented on all of the planets at the same time and immediately outbidding orders, marking down the prices, having ten times more auction slots than a fair crafter with only one account. It is a monopoly, cartel of top crafters, which directly violates EULA and MindArk does nothing with it for many years. Banning one crafter is not a solution, it only lets the other top crafters to redistribute his share of the market.
Secondly the permissiveness of alts has naturally killed the shops, and advertising market. Why bother, really? When you can have unlimited auction slots.
In the third place it vastly harmed the component market and the wholesale trade. One pro crafter physically can’t craft all the components he needs for all the items he produces. In a healthy economy he should find a contractor, who would craft the components for him, even several contractors. But what happens in real life? Contractors often ask for higher prices, but why bother? Create an alt and craft yourself! The same goes with the bulk sales. One should find a wholesale trader or buy himself a shop, if the auction slots are not enough but again, why bother? Create as much alts as necessary and forget about everybody else!
In the fourth place – traders. If you just stay 24/7 monitoring auction, than you have no time for any other activity, but if you have an alt, well… I believe there are true traders with only one main account, but there are those, who use alts to monitor profitable deals during hunting/mining.
In the fifth place one players gain unfair advantage on the others by using strictly prohibited means.
If this game was not about RCE I might not even bother also, but… It reminds me a virtual form of some sort of real life corruption, where industry giants manage to avoid penalties for violating national laws. Well, I hope top crafters didn’t bribe MindArk (lol) but nonetheless the existing situation is awful. And I am not talking about hordes of fruit/sweat gatherers/botters that only further drop already low prices, including many other exploits with alts that are harder to trace like personal fapper, cheap and safe loot delivery in space, etc. And I do remember the times when MindArk was really strict and ban hammer was mashing with no mercy to violators.
I call upon MindArk to create a specific mechanism that would automatically and preventively detect multiple account suspicious activity and market manipulations with further manual investigation instead of existing “ban via support case” system that is utterly inefficient.
But first of all MindArk should grant an amnesty to all existing players using multiple accounts. MindArk should give an exact period to voluntarily chip out skills and transfer money and items to the main account (excluding bot users). Afterwards all accounts that fall under conditions described below should be banned with all the stuff they have on their hands.
Alt check procedure should consist of the following steps (subject to discuss by more competent specialists):
1. System must automatically notify about more than one account per IP/MAC address.
2. Suspicious account does not contribute to Entropia’s economy (no deposit, hunt/mine/craft activity, possibly sweat/movement check)
3. Regular trade transactions (possibly unilateral) with another account from the same IP/MAC.
4. Incomparable in terms of volumes trade deals, regular sales of items that are not crafted/looted/mined by this avatar.
5. Warning and immediate check notice, if more than two accounts are regularly used from the same IP/MAC. In the vast majority of the situations they will be alts, not the real persons.
As a side note, the biggest harm to the economy comes from players with several accounts. As they gain unfair advantage intentionally. Those with one extra account that belongs to the brother/sister/wife/father are in most cases of little harm, as they are often only half-alts, being used by a real person part-time, though they should be treated properly, if they fall under stated procedure.
MindArk should deviate from the “avatar registered on a real passport data” principle. As this approach to the problem has a major flaw. This principle should be only a step in a more complex procedure described above. If an account is registered on a real person, but one can see with a naked eye that it’s an alt – account should be banned. If there are multiple accounts that fall under described conditions despite whom they are registered on, they all should be suspended.
In general the system should be aimed towards preventive detection and block of alts with a following manual check by admins. Main avatar is well permissible to be left unbanned in case there were no serious violations (e.g. botting, scamming, market price manipulation via auction). But alts should be definitely banned with all remained stuff on them.
But… You can’t just break the existing situation and give nothing in return. There are lots of things needed to be done to stimulate the economy and partially the current situation came up because of the lack of effective and compensatory mechanisms to lower the appeal and temptation to use alts.
First of all – the shops. They had been created long before shopping malls made their way to Calypso but hardly they could withstand competition with auction even after the introduction of the malls. The biggest problem is – navigation. It takes hours to run through all the shops, you have to write down contents and prices, it’s awkward, bothering and tiresome, not counting game freezes by the end of the run due to the memory leak. I see no difficulties in creating an intuitive shop content interface at the top of each mall near the televator. You just interact with the terminal, you browse the contents, look through the prices, with search function available and then go straight to the shop you need. Or even better create a terminal or an NPC near every Auctioneer, called like “Shop browser” who will have all the info on all the contents and prices in all the shops across the planet/universe (Omegaton, Sakura, TI, New Oxford, Celeste, Tangerine, etc). So you can just type in the item of interest in the search field and you will get the prices and locations of the item among the shops. It would be a great feature that will increase shops turnover, profitability, attractiveness and usefulness by a couple of times.
Also, why there is such a necessity to deliver the goods to each planet yourself? If we can buy from another planet, why can’t we sell? Future delivery missions would also benefit from this, plus shops should have a low delivery commission, or as an alternative you could only deliver goods for sale to your own shop.
And as a compensatory measure why not to sell additional auction slots? Selling additional inventory slots is a common practice in many other mmo. In Entropia it will be auction slots. The rest of players rarely experience the lack of slots, but those who does will pay for them. Shops cost 10-20k peds, so additional 30-50 auction slots may come in that price range with a total limit of 150-200 slots per avatar (prices and amounts are a subject to discuss and MindAk knows better which one to set).
That were the most simple and obvious improvements that came to my mind. And I believe there is a lot more stuff to improve and implement if we sit back and think about it.
So to conclude my long post, I would like MindArk to review its policy concerning multiple accounts, to be fair to all of the players and treat them all the same, to take my ideas into consideration and also to lift the ban from the only crafter who fell a victim to a knockout competition between top crafters, who are hardly better in terms of using the advantages of numerous accounts, or, please, to be fair to the end.
Any thoughts and discussion are highly welcomed. You can also send in a support case to MindArk with a link to this thread if you agree that the problem exists and would like to attract more attention from the developers.
In this “game” we have a multimillion US dollars economy and, in my opinion, here, like nowhere else, rules must be strictly followed by all the players, while the developers should thoroughly control the matter. There is nothing worse than a situation where everyone is equal, but some are still more equal than others. It’s either ban them all (what I ardently support on the assumption of EULA) or lift the ban from the one. Or change the rules and let everyone have as many avatars as they want per one account or limit the number of avatars per account with whatever amount you come up with, but let it be official, as it is allowed in many other mmo games. At least that would be fair. But if you forbid using multiple accounts (avatars), then this rule must apply to everyone, not just selected players.
What EULA actually is? It’s the code of laws of Entropia, the compliance with which MindArk keeps an eye on. If the law is violated than according measures should be taken. I find it inadmissible when we have a clear rule of one account per player but at the same time we all know players with multiple accounts, while many of them don’t even try to conceal. And MindArk turns a blind eye on the fact. I think we all know a few more top crafters who have accounts in numbers no less than the crafter who has been banned. And that’s the problem. It’s a real problem for the Entropia economy. I welcome the raid on alts but in current situation it looks more like a knockout competition.
Alts in general, especially trade alts that manipulate markup through fake auction deals, and numerous alts of crafters create a very unhealthy state of the Entropia’s economy.
First of all it becomes impossible to compete with crafters, who have 10+ accounts presented on all of the planets at the same time and immediately outbidding orders, marking down the prices, having ten times more auction slots than a fair crafter with only one account. It is a monopoly, cartel of top crafters, which directly violates EULA and MindArk does nothing with it for many years. Banning one crafter is not a solution, it only lets the other top crafters to redistribute his share of the market.
Secondly the permissiveness of alts has naturally killed the shops, and advertising market. Why bother, really? When you can have unlimited auction slots.
In the third place it vastly harmed the component market and the wholesale trade. One pro crafter physically can’t craft all the components he needs for all the items he produces. In a healthy economy he should find a contractor, who would craft the components for him, even several contractors. But what happens in real life? Contractors often ask for higher prices, but why bother? Create an alt and craft yourself! The same goes with the bulk sales. One should find a wholesale trader or buy himself a shop, if the auction slots are not enough but again, why bother? Create as much alts as necessary and forget about everybody else!
In the fourth place – traders. If you just stay 24/7 monitoring auction, than you have no time for any other activity, but if you have an alt, well… I believe there are true traders with only one main account, but there are those, who use alts to monitor profitable deals during hunting/mining.
In the fifth place one players gain unfair advantage on the others by using strictly prohibited means.
If this game was not about RCE I might not even bother also, but… It reminds me a virtual form of some sort of real life corruption, where industry giants manage to avoid penalties for violating national laws. Well, I hope top crafters didn’t bribe MindArk (lol) but nonetheless the existing situation is awful. And I am not talking about hordes of fruit/sweat gatherers/botters that only further drop already low prices, including many other exploits with alts that are harder to trace like personal fapper, cheap and safe loot delivery in space, etc. And I do remember the times when MindArk was really strict and ban hammer was mashing with no mercy to violators.
I call upon MindArk to create a specific mechanism that would automatically and preventively detect multiple account suspicious activity and market manipulations with further manual investigation instead of existing “ban via support case” system that is utterly inefficient.
But first of all MindArk should grant an amnesty to all existing players using multiple accounts. MindArk should give an exact period to voluntarily chip out skills and transfer money and items to the main account (excluding bot users). Afterwards all accounts that fall under conditions described below should be banned with all the stuff they have on their hands.
Alt check procedure should consist of the following steps (subject to discuss by more competent specialists):
1. System must automatically notify about more than one account per IP/MAC address.
2. Suspicious account does not contribute to Entropia’s economy (no deposit, hunt/mine/craft activity, possibly sweat/movement check)
3. Regular trade transactions (possibly unilateral) with another account from the same IP/MAC.
4. Incomparable in terms of volumes trade deals, regular sales of items that are not crafted/looted/mined by this avatar.
5. Warning and immediate check notice, if more than two accounts are regularly used from the same IP/MAC. In the vast majority of the situations they will be alts, not the real persons.
As a side note, the biggest harm to the economy comes from players with several accounts. As they gain unfair advantage intentionally. Those with one extra account that belongs to the brother/sister/wife/father are in most cases of little harm, as they are often only half-alts, being used by a real person part-time, though they should be treated properly, if they fall under stated procedure.
MindArk should deviate from the “avatar registered on a real passport data” principle. As this approach to the problem has a major flaw. This principle should be only a step in a more complex procedure described above. If an account is registered on a real person, but one can see with a naked eye that it’s an alt – account should be banned. If there are multiple accounts that fall under described conditions despite whom they are registered on, they all should be suspended.
In general the system should be aimed towards preventive detection and block of alts with a following manual check by admins. Main avatar is well permissible to be left unbanned in case there were no serious violations (e.g. botting, scamming, market price manipulation via auction). But alts should be definitely banned with all remained stuff on them.
But… You can’t just break the existing situation and give nothing in return. There are lots of things needed to be done to stimulate the economy and partially the current situation came up because of the lack of effective and compensatory mechanisms to lower the appeal and temptation to use alts.
First of all – the shops. They had been created long before shopping malls made their way to Calypso but hardly they could withstand competition with auction even after the introduction of the malls. The biggest problem is – navigation. It takes hours to run through all the shops, you have to write down contents and prices, it’s awkward, bothering and tiresome, not counting game freezes by the end of the run due to the memory leak. I see no difficulties in creating an intuitive shop content interface at the top of each mall near the televator. You just interact with the terminal, you browse the contents, look through the prices, with search function available and then go straight to the shop you need. Or even better create a terminal or an NPC near every Auctioneer, called like “Shop browser” who will have all the info on all the contents and prices in all the shops across the planet/universe (Omegaton, Sakura, TI, New Oxford, Celeste, Tangerine, etc). So you can just type in the item of interest in the search field and you will get the prices and locations of the item among the shops. It would be a great feature that will increase shops turnover, profitability, attractiveness and usefulness by a couple of times.
Also, why there is such a necessity to deliver the goods to each planet yourself? If we can buy from another planet, why can’t we sell? Future delivery missions would also benefit from this, plus shops should have a low delivery commission, or as an alternative you could only deliver goods for sale to your own shop.
And as a compensatory measure why not to sell additional auction slots? Selling additional inventory slots is a common practice in many other mmo. In Entropia it will be auction slots. The rest of players rarely experience the lack of slots, but those who does will pay for them. Shops cost 10-20k peds, so additional 30-50 auction slots may come in that price range with a total limit of 150-200 slots per avatar (prices and amounts are a subject to discuss and MindAk knows better which one to set).
That were the most simple and obvious improvements that came to my mind. And I believe there is a lot more stuff to improve and implement if we sit back and think about it.
So to conclude my long post, I would like MindArk to review its policy concerning multiple accounts, to be fair to all of the players and treat them all the same, to take my ideas into consideration and also to lift the ban from the only crafter who fell a victim to a knockout competition between top crafters, who are hardly better in terms of using the advantages of numerous accounts, or, please, to be fair to the end.
Any thoughts and discussion are highly welcomed. You can also send in a support case to MindArk with a link to this thread if you agree that the problem exists and would like to attract more attention from the developers.
