Oh dear oh dear
 

Well, I have to hand it to the multihunters. I now find myself about to be closed for having multiple accounts. Let's recap for a while.

I am not expecting any special VIP-treatment in Planetarion these days. I am just your random player who have not played for a while. I signed up sone days ago and figured I should support my old baby with the fiver required to upgrade my account. Today I told mycolleague to sign up as well.

Now, at tick 1, I am about to be closed, which I find to be a bit amusing :-)

I am aware that we share the same IP when we Are at work, thats cool. I am guessing that we also both used a managerleague email-address. Apart from those two things, there is not a single simlarity.
But is this what the hunt for cheaters has come to here? 20 minutes into the round and we bring down the hammer on anyone with the same Ip?
I would have thought new paying customers were like rare artifacts in here. Sadly this has shown me yet another reason why this game has no chance to increase its userbase.

Now, I will not tell anybody how to do their job, whether they Are paid for it or not. I am also "somewhat" experienced when it comes to dealing with players who break rules, so I know that things can be stressfull and not very motivating in these cases. I also assume these things Are not meant for the forums. Then again, I am probably not the only one who thinks its a bit funny that I was closed :)

Now then, dearest eager MultiHunter, and I say this with the utmost respect for you and your work :
OPEN MY ACCOUNT, YOU DAFT UNKNOWING GIT! DO YOU SERIOUSLY THINK THAT I, THE CREATOR OF PLANETARION, WOULD MULTI???
:)
(if you do not, you'd better pray there Are no backdoors left in MY code!!)

I bet I just made someones day (-:

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

Hacker.

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

lol

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hahahahhahah

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and bring back Oreo.. he had good music

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Welcome back Spinner... I am glad to see ya around... I wonder if Zeus still plays... anyway... this is epic! :))

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

Seems fairly simple to me.

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Always nice to hear that even former owners are being watched by the MH team I guess. No cheating allowed here! :p

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

Hi Spinner

As it said in the e-mail you got, your not closed. Your warned.
And the multihunter who warned you did his job perfectly.

Every planet on same ip gets a warning from us, as it is these days when sharing an ip you need to get an exception.

There also was a warning when the second one of you signed up, that you was the second person signing up from this ip and thus should contact the multihunters.

So we are not going to reopen your account ( since its not closed :) )

So drop by us in #multihunters on irc and this is easily sorted out!

Regards
Spritfire
Multihunter & Support

P.S Yes it did make our day :)

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

Hehe, I am well aware of the writing on the Overview-page.
So using IRC is now a requirement for playing?

Look, I am quite confident this will be resolved nicely, that's not my point at all. I thought it was funny, and from the replies, I was right in thinking others would too.
But there is a serious side to this too. Ehat if I was a new player, who found a link to PA and started playing, never heard about something called IRC, and #multihunters is what, a bookmark? A comment? I still recall teaching the MHs about "The IP alone is not evidence of a multi" but apparently that rule has gone out the window while I was away. And that's a true shame.

Oh well. At least some got the humour (-:

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

Zomg hes back!!!! :D and he called MH a git!!! woot!
wb mate :D

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

lol...

welcome back Spinner..

nice to see u a again Christian, now ur back we can do some other paintball meetings in Rucphen :D

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

Hello Spitfire!
I posted primarily due to the humor involved here, not to complain about a hunter doing his job (-:
But since you dropped by, maybe you would be interested to know that the email came in hours after my overview-page told me I would be closed unless I went to #multihunters to sort it out.
I can also assure you that my colleague got no warning when signing up, and I was looking over his shoulder as he did so.
I also hope you might reconsider the rule about acting so quickly when the only thing linking the two accounts together is the IP. Specially in relation to new users and how new players are treated. New paying customers, no less! Yes yes, the same rules apply to paying and non-paying customers and all that, but still.

Oh well :)

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

Hell no! Every time I go there, I get thrown in a pool!

(-:

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

While it was obvious you intended the post to be humorous, it also seemed to me like you were "attacking" the Multihunters for doing a poor job, who in this case were 100% in their right.

As for having IRC a requirement, it IS a requirement to play this game properly. I don't see how else people can coordinate alliances/galaxies with the same efficiency.
That, and there's a click-and-play ComUnit in the menu, with the immediate option to join #multihunters (and #support if I'm not mistaken).

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

i remember i sved u once togheter with spinnerke when we went for cofee n tea.. oreo did get the wetsuit then!

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

IRC is not an requirement to play. You can also supply support tickets, there is a ingame com-unit who connect to the irc server.
So having an irc program isn't required (:

And no, planets on same ip aren't multis right away.
The warning in use when being on same ip and in need of an exception are as you noticed 'Having multiple Accounts'
If thats right or wrong is another discussion :)

Good to have you back

And yes we thought it was funny warning you to :)

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

Spinner,

If you drop by in #multihunters we can discuss this a lot easier.
As not all is like you post it here :)
and for the ppl that never used IRC we got the chat option created so they can talk to us anyway even without a IRC client :)

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

Do like the rest of us do Spinner. Wish the multihunters all died a horrible death! :D

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

Hehe, Kargool, I'm afraid I respect them and pity them for all the hard work they do without getting a lot of positive feedback!
But I still think this whole things was extremely funny (:

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

I laughed

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I for one miss the days when Spinner did most MHing :D

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Our planets are safe again now, btw, so all worked out neatly (-:

Kudos to Judge for having big cohones!

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

hahahaha

also: spinner can you PLEASE bring back the old planetarion (pre-R10 style)? i know you're also one of the brains behind the shit surrogate it has become now, but i think it's been proven now that it hasn't exactly been a step forward. tomorrow i'll start playing a clone again, which is more or less the old game. would be nice to be able to play proper pa again though. :(

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

strange i didnt get the same warning as i was open till tick 4 when i went to MH to set exception up

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It's good stuff bro. It's nice to see the multihunting team doing their job proper and taking necessary precaution to close the "actual" cheaters. Naughty naughty.

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

To bad you dont have admin access anymore Christian, was fun calling you in the middle of the night when I had incomming so you chould stop the server:D

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"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Spinner again."

Awww man :(

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

Were I to find what appeared to be a fantastic new game to play, and I received a message to install AOL and add xyz person to talk about why I couldent proceed any further after signing up, I would LOL and move on to another game.
While IRC=/AOL you get the drift... in todays communication mediums for games that want players I do not believe IRC would be at the foremost of those mediums as a feature to posed as a benefit to attract new players.

2 cents
approx euro value .01 cent

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

Indeed, sirad.
IRC is not very big with the "younger" people online today.
Had I been one of those in stead of an old dinosaur, I would have called Visa, gotten my money back, and never returned. That was the serious point in my post.
Its not the MHs fault, I would rather say it's the rules under which they operate.
I had a chat with the fabulous MHs last night, and apparently they close about 100 planets in a round. Which kind of makes me wonder if multi-ing is really a big problem these days, enough to warrant such a rigid set of rules and the rather "unfriendly" impression new users can get. It is not good to lose new customers to avoid 100 multi-planets.
Serisouly, even if I were to play with 2 planets, how much damage could I do? Isn't this game dominated by those who play in bigger groups anyway? I wouldn't have a snowballs chance in Spain!
And the big veterans are probably not multi-ing, I'd be surprised if they did. And they will be winning anyway (:

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

100 seems like rather a lot to me given there only around 1000.

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

The obvious outcome of this should be changing the way things are done: monitoring shared IPs but dont give a rats ass about it until you have more "evidence" that one of them are either a support planet of some kind or they always log in at the same time "like logging into both accounts within a period of a few minutes"

I bet that out of those 100 closed planets, a few of them were new players!

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

Yes, it's not difficult to improve on the system.
If you see two account with the same ip during daytime, nd then with different ips late, it's pretty easy to spot that they might be going to school together or work together, and then play from different homes in the evening. And when they have not even attacked, defended or interacted in any way, I think it's fair to let them play undisturbed.

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

Sounds fairly reasonable: let people be until they do something dodgy, then ask them to explain.

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

This is very well understood by the PA team, the problem is no one has come up with a reasonable solution that doesn't require a major rewrite of the game. The entire medium that this game is played in is not very attractive to younger people today.

As I am sure you are well aware the entire game really needs a face lift, and a non installed common chat interface to really be successful. Will it ever happen? Not with the current owner of PA I suspect.

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

As far as i know the multihunters have guidelines? If they are forced to act the way they did to spinner then maybe the head MH have a job to do here, or step down and give the position to someone with common sense. hint: Pa-team or the game owner can ofcourse also step up here.

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

Go read the overview HaNzI and see that sharing an IP to play PA needs an exception.
If no exception is requested the planets get a warning to come and discuss the exception rules.

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

mh so smarmy so patronising" :) "

i lolled

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What I love about the whole IRC discussion is that removing the IRC factor from the game was the first change I wanted to make, and pushed for reasonably hard, and just couldn't get it through without losing a whole bunch of old players which I couldn't afford as a small business.

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

In fairness, even if IRC is not very fashionable nowadays, the new com unit is actually fairly decent. You can autojoin alliance channels, official channels and it even contains a basic but workable version of the perform mechanism, present in many IRC clients.

A good COM unit is the best compromise between making it easy for new players to communicate without losing the current player base.

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

I spent the last week or so without a computer, came on IRC using the new com unit on my phone a few times and it worked surprisingly well, so thanks! I've used mibbit before but it didn't render great on the phone, and it didn't work over GSM, only with wifi, so this is a success!

That said, I'm still totally pro a system that is very un-IRC like, while underneath being a very standard IRC system. I've written a few times but I feel like mentioning it again: a facebook chat style inteface, that runs on top of and at the same time as my viewing of PA, while underneath interfacing properly with netgamers.

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

Hi Spinner

I have missed you!

Want another laugh, try to send your friend some defense if you arent in the same gal or alliance. It is actually coded in the game that you cannot send defense to whomever you want too. Cluster channels was a great place for a new player to learn the game if there gal was inactive or just too busy and gals would work together in the clusters from time to time to help each other, this game is losing so much of what made it a great game.

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

Isn't it possible to send defense to whomever you want as long as you are not in an alliance? Seems like not THAT bad to me if it should be that way. Would make sense as clusters and galaxies are still able to be your primary places for meeting people and establishing contacts.

Of course, it would have been far easier to just scrap the alliance limit instead to solve the oot/oog defense "problem".

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

By Appocos words: "2 planets without alliance aren't in same tag"

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

Yeah that might be, however, the announcement read:

"A planet in an alliance can only be defended by other members of the alliance or his galaxy"

Which means that a planet not in an alliance can be defended by everyone. But I am probably just overrating PA Team's coding and game design abilities again.

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

That's exatly the thing i asked from Appoco and got the answer above. By the original post i was thinking the same thing.

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When I get a ship I will test it.

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Fleet "Gamma": Defending a planet out of your galaxy in an alliance not yours is forbidden.

I cant send any def out of my gal.
Which is kinda bullshit :-(
Another limitation we really need.......

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

Good to see PA team puts so much time and effort in such important issues...


[23:05] <Villeh> 5 waves, each wave 3-4 attackers, triple bookage ftw
[23:06] <Villeh> on a 300 roid dude
[23:06] <Villeh> laughable
[23:07] <Villeh> Wave 5 will capture 24 roids leaving 72 <<-- lols, last wave 3 ppl share 24 roids
[23:07] <Villeh> this game really has gone downhill

Re: Oh dear oh dear
 

That is not an issue at all. Initing back to 300 barely costs anything.