Planetarion Forums - Why Planetarion wont expand (A students point of view)

Smudge · 11 Mar 2005, 15:59

You may recall recently there was a free speed round of PA (woohoo top 50 finish) which I played. It was really fun and cool and I had some friends come along and say oooh whats that. I told them about it and they wanted to sign up.

Then it dawned on me.

If my friends signd up, first of all they would have had to mail xontas in game to get an "exception", but still, me and my friends couldnt play together, which is why they would have played. We couldnt have gone on drunken suicide runs together, nor could we have defended each other. After explaining this to my friends they realised it wasnt worth it, and went off and played FIFA on the PS2. Customers lost = 3

After this, they went off and had some of my other friends round. Same story again, they looked at the game, I explained the background etc. The second group were from the Comp Sci department and, not trying to be sterotypical, but they dont get out much, which means PA would have been ideal for them. Again, customers lost (7)

That means PA lost 7 potential customers, which is bad in anyones books. There needs to be some way to combat this loss, ie people signing up with Uni email accounts (so they can be proved to be individuals) or something like that.

Kal · 11 Mar 2005, 16:31

In the same way that we don't require AOL users to register for exceptions, I think its safe to say that if a university does nto give unique IP addresses to people, then that is no different from them being AOL users. In short as long as people use seperate connections to their ISP they should not need an exception

Orion Treet · 11 Mar 2005, 17:59

I've gone online from school plenty of times before, no problems had with it.

JC · 11 Mar 2005, 18:52

4 of us played in the same house on the same network and never had any problems

.

Iceman · 15 Mar 2005, 07:23

thats probably luck dude, lol. and as for school, i got banned in r11 along with 2 of my mates from us using computers from our school logins in the library... reason we were using them is to launch a coordinated attack (duh) so yeah its easily a problem even if it doesnt happen to all of us

Kal · 15 Mar 2005, 10:31

it depends how coordinated the attack was though - if it was all of at the same time on the same target on the same ip....

Iceman · 16 Mar 2005, 07:00

same gal, pc's right next to each other, same time, like oosh oosh oosh launch

mist · 16 Mar 2005, 14:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kal

In the same way that we don't require AOL users to register for exceptions

i was under the impression that you can simply ask aol for another account? i seem to recall my friend on aol having 3 or 4...

Bashar · 16 Mar 2005, 15:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kal

it depends how coordinated the attack was though - if it was all of at the same time on the same target on the same ip....

....then it proves that the attack was launched by multiple people, as even bots are restricted by page loading times for logging in. If there was say...... 30 seconds between each planet launching, then yep, it could be suspiscious. But if they launch the same time, it's a massive pointer that they are not cheating.

Kal · 16 Mar 2005, 15:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bashar

....then it proves that the attack was launched by multiple people, as even bots are restricted by page loading times for logging in. If there was say...... 30 seconds between each planet launching, then yep, it could be suspiscious. But if they launch the same time, it's a massive pointer that they are not cheating.

miltiple browsers on a single pc?

Kal · 16 Mar 2005, 15:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by mist

i was under the impression that you can simply ask aol for another account? i seem to recall my friend on aol having 3 or 4...

aol uses a proxy which means aol users pretty much have the same ip

Iceman · 17 Mar 2005, 04:45

phh lol forget multiple browsers on one pc, what stops someone from logging into multiple computers at a public place.... remember this was the actual situation, LAN'ed pcs on one connection

Ferretus · 17 Mar 2005, 14:19

I personally dont have a problem with multis. Its what made the old game fun. Now before everyone flames me saying "you dont no shit", I was there when multi's were rife, and I enjoyed it... if you didn't then nevermind.

I was temporarily closed about 3 years ago with a similar problem associated with University computer use whcih resulted in my friends account being deleted and me being reinstated after several delays without even a "sorry for the mixup, heres some compensation". All I got was abusive mails stating that I was a cheater and they had proof, without ever showing me this alleged proof. At that point our only interaction with eachother was via internal mails... maybe in same alliance too, I can't remember. Point is, another player walks away with his mates (lost about 4 potential players).

Anyway, a note on multis, if the same player pays twice for a game, yes they can send more ships at you at once etc and yes its bad sportmanlike...but they also have a lot of trouble defending tboth planets at once. It increases player/planet base (whatever way you want to look at it) gives access to some easy roids as you go multi hunting and take out their famrs etc

in terms of getting kiled, no different to when an alliance decides its gonna kill you. Regardless of incoming, if you cant defend it you run... doesnt matter if its 1 planet or 1000.

Phil^ · 17 Mar 2005, 17:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iceman

phh lol forget multiple browsers on one pc, what stops someone from logging into multiple computers at a public place.... remember this was the actual situation, LAN'ed pcs on one connection

thats precisely what exceptions are for

noah02 · 17 Mar 2005, 18:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ferretus

I personally dont have a problem with multis. Its what made the old game fun. Now before everyone flames me saying "you dont no shit", I was there when multi's were rife, and I enjoyed it... if you didn't then nevermind.

Erm Multi's ?
I did'nt have more than 1 account in round 2 honest guv

Couldnt handle more than 1 nowadays though

Stressfull game.

Iceman · 18 Mar 2005, 03:19

yeah lol ppl who are good at multing are still doing it... just carefully. lets face it, its easy to multi if you just change yr IP every time you wanna go on a diff account... anyone who believes they have the time and energy to play 2 or more accounts to a good level can multi in PA in the way it stands now. However we get burned for having mates playing with us, and exceptions are usless.. it means they are now waiting for you to interact, instead of guessing lol it doesnt sound appealing.

Its good that you cant farm as easily as you could in the old days (bless them) by cash donations but the IP thing has got me too often, infact i told my brother just the other day "hey PA round 13 starts s... wait no i dont want you to play it" cause i couldnt be f'ed dealing with the stress, i mean he would only play to play with me... and the rules on exceptions say "accounts may interact a little but not even an exception will prevent account closure if accounts interact too much"

which basically means i cant login and see that i need def and then yell at my bro for def... cause it'll ban us.

I know this has always been a tricky topic of discussion but maybe its time to make free accounts even more restriced (like limit fleet size or something) and loosen the rules on the whole IP thing...