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I am hearing rumors that one or more guides may have been revealing the identities of player alternates to other players. I find this a very disturbing practice.
Player alts must be treated as a separate character and allowed to exist and play without any way to be unmasked unless the player reveals themselves.
Any game mechanics that can be used to positvely identify alternate characters needs to be off limits to all normal players. Guides who need this information to handle problems cannot be allowed to pass this information to anyone in the game.
If this is in fact being done by someone you have placed in authority then please deal with it. The guides must remain neutral and keep any knowledge gained from thier access confidential at all times.
Player alts must be treated as a separate character and allowed to exist and play without any way to be unmasked unless the player reveals themselves.
Any game mechanics that can be used to positvely identify alternate characters needs to be off limits to all normal players. Guides who need this information to handle problems cannot be allowed to pass this information to anyone in the game.
If this is in fact being done by someone you have placed in authority then please deal with it. The guides must remain neutral and keep any knowledge gained from thier access confidential at all times.
Guides are not revealing alts. They all know we are against that, and besides, have no specific access to the account data. This sort of rumor is usually based on someone's wild paranoia and a vague, misunderstood comment.
Alts are generally revealed by their players being unable to change telltale behaviour sufficiently. Playing a true, hidden alt, for a well-known person, is difficult (I should know). It requires altering diction, conscious avoidance of commonly used phrases, and other tactics to build a cover and maintain a completely unknown character. Then one day, Andy may log onto the game and publicly say "Oh, hi john" on 100. <sigh>.
There are also some guild(s) who have maintained login-correlation databases, analyzing characters that were never logged in at the same time. But, this has nothing to do with guides.
Alts are generally revealed by their players being unable to change telltale behaviour sufficiently. Playing a true, hidden alt, for a well-known person, is difficult (I should know). It requires altering diction, conscious avoidance of commonly used phrases, and other tactics to build a cover and maintain a completely unknown character. Then one day, Andy may log onto the game and publicly say "Oh, hi john" on 100. <sigh>.
There are also some guild(s) who have maintained login-correlation databases, analyzing characters that were never logged in at the same time. But, this has nothing to do with guides.
I agree, Pa... people spreading rumours that guides are revealing alts when there is no factual basis for such a wild assertion is a disturbing practice.
what is alts?
What possible advantage could be gained by finding (knowing) players alternate characters?
VO is a small community.
I do not need an alt finder scripts and thingamajigs to see if i am dealing with an alt of some player I know. I have no use for that information anyway.
And, frankly, I couldn't care less if someone wants to take a break from playing one character and chooses to play a completely different person.
Guild politics, big secrets, spying...?
Give me a break, this is a GAME!
VO is a small community.
I do not need an alt finder scripts and thingamajigs to see if i am dealing with an alt of some player I know. I have no use for that information anyway.
And, frankly, I couldn't care less if someone wants to take a break from playing one character and chooses to play a completely different person.
Guild politics, big secrets, spying...?
Give me a break, this is a GAME!
I realise some players out themselves and I consider it thier own fault.
Any Game mechanic that allows two characters to be connected must go and that does include login data.
Perhaps then it is time for the active players list to go....
Or be changed to render it ineffective for tracking alts.
Any Game mechanic that allows two characters to be connected must go and that does include login data.
Perhaps then it is time for the active players list to go....
Or be changed to render it ineffective for tracking alts.
Be careful. You might just get what you wish for.
Seconding what Incarnate said, the login databases that some guilds use are much more effective at identifying alts than any of the guide tools would be. The devs were very cautious in the way guide tools are limited. I have a much better chance of identifying alts by their behavior and syntax. And to echo Bojan, I really don't care who is an alt.
ahhh...seckret stuphs!!!
"Guild politics, big secrets, spying...?
Give me a break, this is a GAME"
Um... exactly. Some people LIKE those aspects in a game. Hell-- manipulation, deceit, and espionage are a game of their own. It's an element of roleplay and sometimes that kind of drama is exactly what an MMO needs.
As for finding alts... if you're dumb enough to expose yourself by acting the same way, its nobody's fault but you're own. Do better next time.
Give me a break, this is a GAME"
Um... exactly. Some people LIKE those aspects in a game. Hell-- manipulation, deceit, and espionage are a game of their own. It's an element of roleplay and sometimes that kind of drama is exactly what an MMO needs.
As for finding alts... if you're dumb enough to expose yourself by acting the same way, its nobody's fault but you're own. Do better next time.
Any Game mechanic that allows two characters to be connected must go and that does include login data
Why?
Why?
Incarnate cannot prove that what he says is true without providing a fair chunk of the Guide (or, more likely, the /roper and /oper) activity logs -- interestingly enough, neither can anyone on the "other side" of the issue without those same logs.
Guides do have tools that are pretty effective at finding alts, but they have to use them that way deliberately for it to work. (That report/player record function you have? Yeah. That's account-wide, not per-character. Guess what its "alternative" use is.)
I personally have been approached on at least one occasion by a Guide while on an alt that would not be caught by login correlation, and has barely spoken more than 10 lines of chat ingame. A little odd for the Guide to assume that it would be me in that case, especially considering all I'd really done on that character was bot and do a tiny bit of trading. I have also seen Guides asking players about alts that also are not findable by login correlation, but only by either being told by the player in question, or by looking at account data. (NB: When you've told a grand total of THREE people about this alt, NONE of whom would speak to the Guide in question, it looks pretty suspicious when that Guide asks about it.)
All that aside, the real problem is when people publicly out the alts of other players on the forums or over 100, regardless of who said it, Guide or not.
Guides do have tools that are pretty effective at finding alts, but they have to use them that way deliberately for it to work. (That report/player record function you have? Yeah. That's account-wide, not per-character. Guess what its "alternative" use is.)
I personally have been approached on at least one occasion by a Guide while on an alt that would not be caught by login correlation, and has barely spoken more than 10 lines of chat ingame. A little odd for the Guide to assume that it would be me in that case, especially considering all I'd really done on that character was bot and do a tiny bit of trading. I have also seen Guides asking players about alts that also are not findable by login correlation, but only by either being told by the player in question, or by looking at account data. (NB: When you've told a grand total of THREE people about this alt, NONE of whom would speak to the Guide in question, it looks pretty suspicious when that Guide asks about it.)
All that aside, the real problem is when people publicly out the alts of other players on the forums or over 100, regardless of who said it, Guide or not.
knowing an alt shouldn't matter to an RP'er the faults of one character do not apply to another.
<rolls eyes at topic>
Look, if someone has evidence of a guide outing someone's alts, then open a support ticket and let us know. Barring that, let's drop it. Seriously. I get the logs of guide commands daily, and I do read them. I have not noticed anything nefarious.
But we do have a history of rampant paranoia, which I could do without. Barring some new information, I would say the Occam's razor here is simply that people aren't quite as clever at hiding their alts as they think they are, and that maybe some of the people they told.. may have mentioned the alt more than they admitted. Wow, humanity.
Anyway, we will eventually get rid of the players-online list, but not immediately. I have other fish to fry right now.
Look, if someone has evidence of a guide outing someone's alts, then open a support ticket and let us know. Barring that, let's drop it. Seriously. I get the logs of guide commands daily, and I do read them. I have not noticed anything nefarious.
But we do have a history of rampant paranoia, which I could do without. Barring some new information, I would say the Occam's razor here is simply that people aren't quite as clever at hiding their alts as they think they are, and that maybe some of the people they told.. may have mentioned the alt more than they admitted. Wow, humanity.
Anyway, we will eventually get rid of the players-online list, but not immediately. I have other fish to fry right now.
Suck it down people. Even those defending "alt privacy" have outed alts of mine, and it has always been my fault (no matter how pissed off I may have been at the time) because when I play a game I play as me, no matter how hard I try certain traits still remain...
...Also Mehairy is right, the guides must have access to account info - even if not meant to - as the only alt that "confused" at least 2 guides was on a second (payed for) account. But I would never put a guide in the position to find out who another "character" actually is, I have my own ways and means(see below image for my database), but I do trust the guides to not share this info.
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Oh yah, and on data farming the active player list? Thats so not useable, trust me, I do have access to the mystical blak db, and its pretty much always wrong about my alts :-P
...Also Mehairy is right, the guides must have access to account info - even if not meant to - as the only alt that "confused" at least 2 guides was on a second (payed for) account. But I would never put a guide in the position to find out who another "character" actually is, I have my own ways and means(see below image for my database), but I do trust the guides to not share this info.
[edit]
Oh yah, and on data farming the active player list? Thats so not useable, trust me, I do have access to the mystical blak db, and its pretty much always wrong about my alts :-P
Yay paranoia!
Lets stoke the fire with propaganda
I sell all of your character names to a secret 3rd party.
The Vendetta Seen database is really the "I must know who everyone is HA HA!" Database
Lets stoke the fire with propaganda
I sell all of your character names to a secret 3rd party.
The Vendetta Seen database is really the "I must know who everyone is HA HA!" Database
Speaking of alts... there is only one I care about.
Char name is Felonious Monk.
I wanted Felonious Monk to join SKV 2 years ago and I still do. :)
Submit!
Char name is Felonious Monk.
I wanted Felonious Monk to join SKV 2 years ago and I still do. :)
Submit!
Yeah, I was mistaken about the command thing, there is an oper command that can show the base account of a given character. I never use it.. since it's very limited, and I have access to everything via dev-only means.
Anyway, regardless, I highly doubt that any guides have outed any alts. If people would like to report some evidence of this, please do so.. via the support ticket system.
Anyway, regardless, I highly doubt that any guides have outed any alts. If people would like to report some evidence of this, please do so.. via the support ticket system.
Try being mecha for a week and then taking a vacation on an alt, nobody lets you. Even if you change your habits and even pvp habits and even if mostly you stay out of other people's way. People that are so obsessed with this alt business and log charids and log correlation and other things. And the fact that guides seem to know who i am all the time without me even seeing them or saying anything on 100, so yeah. Paranoia whatever, you explain it.
the charid stuff and the irc/active page stuff should go, but I'm not playing for a while or ever again, so it's not my problem anymore. kudos tgft, you did what the pirates could not.
the charid stuff and the irc/active page stuff should go, but I'm not playing for a while or ever again, so it's not my problem anymore. kudos tgft, you did what the pirates could not.
Mecha, how many alts of mine have you been told about via a 3rd party? Oh yah, and I knew broken eternity was you without being told by anyone. I saw some guild chat fly by (on about 3 guilds) where players after meeting your alt also said "is that mecha?"
Maybe (like me) you just suck at hiding alts?
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Mecha, really, I know me and you never see eye to eye in-game (maybe its cos im only 3ft 4"), but thats just game stuffs, enjoy your break, and see you soon, knobhead :-)
Maybe (like me) you just suck at hiding alts?
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Mecha, really, I know me and you never see eye to eye in-game (maybe its cos im only 3ft 4"), but thats just game stuffs, enjoy your break, and see you soon, knobhead :-)