Petition for multi rule change (in General)

So after the last mutli-ban (which is totally uncalled for imo), I've decided to make a suggestion.

If you want to make a multi, it's allowed if you tell the admins about it. No interaction is allowed between accounts or they immediately fall under the old multi rules and get the ban hammer.

If you play nice and keep them separte you are allowed to enjoy CB twice as much.

Kefeck went for almost 2 years unnoticed because he wasn't exploiting anything, just being an active member who wanted to play more than the game allows you to play with one account. And now he gets punished for enjoying the game. WTB options for people to play the game more instead of slapping them for doing so.

The only reason to multi is to sell for USD, which was the case here as well.

I would run 5 accounts if I could, not sell any for USD, and have 0 interaction with them.

So that statement is just a lie.

Problem #1, the admins would have to monitor so much more.

Problems #2, that would also mean more income that could be sold for USD. If that's the case, then we can just allow multiple NUB attempts. Say hello to sellouts running five accounts each.

I disagree. It allows one person to play one account and sell out with the other. Even if there is no trading between the two accounts directly, this is open to abuse.

I do think the admins get a little heavy handed when dealing with new players who may not understand the rules fully, or those who are just testing the system and come on the forums to say so.

I should note this was directed at Wraithlin's first post.

How about if it's a declared multi then you also get the ban hammer for selling for USD with any account?

And they already somewhat monitor for multis, if you have a set list of people not supposed to be trading, that part of the process is very quick.

It takes maybe 5 minutes to come up with an SQL script that pulls all trades involving two names in the last week. And then seeing if they traded directly or through someone who is helping them mutli.

I could monitor this once a week in under 30 minutes for over 100 accounts. Heck, I could probably automate the process if I was feeling really lazy and just have it pm me when it detects it happening.

No thanks, multi = bad.

You don't want to give the opportunity to someone to gimp is own 2nd account to gain massive challenge bonus and unfair advantage.

Wraith, so I could make a gazilion multis, all with the NUB, make a new clan, stick them all in it, and (as long as I had the time to) burn all thier BA for more CPs than I would otherwise be able to get?

Or, I could make a gazilion multis, NUB them, purchase a smany rares as I could, and them retire them all.

It's too open to abuse.

Sure, I share the sentiment of wanting to play more, but multiple accounts isn't the way to do it.

All these abuse things you guys are saying are incredibly easy to see what is happening and ban someone, and if you get banned for multi abuse then you lose the priveledge.

I just hate that we start off assuming people will abuse it.

Currently the only people that do multi, are people who multi to abuse it (for the most part). So we as a coummunity have a scewed perception of it.

If it was open to honest use as well, there would be plenty of people not abusing it, just playing to enjoy it.

The underlying issue is the stupid NUB and the super accelerated rewards, mostly money, that accompanies it.

That and the super fast tattoo growth of which you can make tons of USD from.

This would be way too open to abuse.

1) Gimping characters to allow another character to allow another to grow incredibly fast.

2) Trading through a third party back to the main.

3) Building a super NUB when you have all the experience of a seasoned player.

These, of course, could all be caught, but it would force a much much higher degree of supervision and monitoring than the admin would be able to do.

even responding to suggestions like this is silly...

1) Is already done. Can even be a bannable offense if you really care.

2) Can be monitored for just as easily and still automated.

3) A declared multi gets no NUB status, have multi part of the creation process.

People currently multi, get away with it for awhile, and abuse the system.

Why are you all opposed to offering it to people if they fully declare themselves a multi and don't abuse the system.

Heck the admins won't even have to do anything to monitor, there are so many bloodthirsty fingerpointers already in the game to have to worry about it, they'll get found out faster by the community than the admins.

No. Most of us have had only one account for many years. The mistakes we made as well as the good choices were very important along the way since we only got one "try" at CB. Give people the option to run several accounts and you will dillute the responsibility attached to our actions.

Then it doesn't matter how many stupid things we can do to bork our accounts since we can always start again. Removing all meaning to whatever it is we do. Sure, since everybody could multi it wouldn't be unfair to anyone, but it still would make CB a place (more) infested with useless forgotten chars and irresponsable trades.

Right now, part of what makes CB awesome is how joining means you're in for a long run, which means every CBD you spend makes you think as well as every XP you untrain. I like it that way, even if I have not broken any milestones myself due to my atrocious ability to think in the long term. I will gladly take responsibility for that, and will stick with my one account anyway.

So no offense to kefeck, he seems nice enough, but multi=ban. It's fine as is.

Wraith, there's no need for it.

It has a whole bunch of negatives, that we'd have to increasingly look out for, for no real postive.

People want to play more, sure I get that. Hell I want to.

But multiple accounts isn't the way.

For reference, see Almaisky/dudley... sabotaging the score system through my NCB at the cost of his NUB. and now he sits laughing as I mention his name while he's on yet another throwaway account...

I admire the OP's innocence, but to honestly think that the majority of people wouldn't use this the wrong way is a little unrealistic - As he's only been around about 6 months he hasn't seen all the scams the vets have...

Not to mention there's too much gray area. May as well let this idea rest, no way it'll get any further than this thread.

I think the only way this idea would ever work if it was heavily restricted. Maybe only certain transfers are allowed... auctions only. Only allowed to bid a max of the market rate +20%. No direct player to player transfers.

I think the system is fine how it is though :)

The only reason to multi is to sell for USD, which was the case here as well


Silly slayer, why so quick to jump to assumptions. I don't need USD, I have more then enough. If that was the case I would have sold out over a year ago when the market wasn't so bad.

Find one instance where I tried selling the cash I made? Bet you can't.

My apologies, I mistook your transfer this morning to Wasp as a last minute sale for USD.

Silly me.

You just did.

That was a payment.

Wrathlin, allowing people to multi and "not abuse the system" requires drawing the line for what "abusing the system" means.

That kind of conversation would probably be the biggest headache ever, people would easily misinterpret and possibly get needlessly punished, while others will do underhanded USD deals. Sorry dude, but the cost (especially in Admin time investment) far outweighs the benefits (it would be nice to have two accounts).

I can see a lot more rage quitting if such a thing was implemented.

I wouldn't mind being able to run two seperate characters on the same account. Have seperate BA to burn on them. You could actually grow two characters that way. If that was your intention. Just a thought..

Few times I see multin' as legit would be for those who joined in say '05, quit, and now comeback with no way to compete. This NUBbery would only be allowed with an agreement by all admins of course. Only debatable issue.
/me resumes forging pitchforks

Alright Gun for the Sake of Argument. I fit those requirements can I do a NUB?

Oh I would love to start a NUB clan. Get all the QBs in there as new players with a NUB. That wouldn't be a bad thing would it...oh no...

Quite obviously this wouldn't work... but oh how I wish it could! because we desperately need about 1000+ characters in the system to have CB realize its full potential as a game. right now the diminished player base makes for quite a flawed system.

Should have said 1000 more than we already have.

If its more playing time you want, x/10!

Tourneys.

If you feel like you have time to do a multi, then you aren't putting enough time in on your 1 account. There are tourneys as well and if you are really trying to be competitive there are lots of things you can do. Opening up the multi is just not a good idea.

I'd love to be able to make a new account. Speaking as someone who screwed up their own NUB run and made nothing from it. Yes, I know that plenty of people did amazing things with their account with a NUB but... you guys have competence at this game, I am... well... not very swift.

Messing up your NUB doesn't mean that much. After I finished my nub I ended up using up all my money and had to rebuild it more or less from scratch. Given about 8 months of concentrating on making money you can get to a position that is about the same as the end of a good nub or even more.

Never.Had.A.Nub.

Not only that, the original Jan 1st 2005 teams ,as they were all fighting up together, had *no* way of fighting at full 100% Challenge Bonus, unlike todays teams, as there weren't the larger characters above you to hit upon.

Rewards were lower, growth was slower, and Rares didn't really exist.

But hey, at least we can NCB today, with it's rediculous BA cost...

Wraithlin, while what you suggest is feasible and could greatly benefit the game if used wisely, it would put an excessive drain on admin resources to set it up then maintain it.

There are ways to make it work, but it will always remain open to abuse in some manner, either created to abuse or something previously overlooked.

Kefeck's case is interesting because of how appropriately he behaved in regard to the game rules with his multi, but such behaviour is rare in multi users. This rarity is why there is such a large opposition to your suggestion.

This is the main problem with the OP.

Why is the ban uncalled for?

It is very clearly stated and well known by the multitard that one can get banned but typically one gets reset for being a multi.

And BTW, in this case, the multitard was only reset and not banned. Best get your facts straight before you post.

I'll give a real response to this, since I actually did run some similar ideas by Jon a while ago.

Basically, I was looking into ways to entice players to keep multiple characters active. From what I understand, farming was useful in CB1, and provided good income. Here in CB2, it does not, since defensive wins only provide rewards a few times. So, we talked about ways to bring back farming to try to get more characters spread across the ladder.

One particular idea was having a separate BA pool for each of your 5 parties (which, for the record, is how Wraithlin's idea would be implemented if we decided to go that route. It's stupid to have multiple accounts when we can already have multiple parties.) This would allow you to run multiple teams at once, and get more people moving and shaking the ladder.

The main reason why Jon said no was that this would, even in Wraithlin's form of the idea, force players to play multiple parties to remain competitive. The increased cash you would gain from having 4 other parties feed into your main party (for instance, playing the other 4 only at cash time, etc.) would make the game very un-fun for those who play less than 5 characters. We would have the same result if we said BA was unlimited.

Now, granted, in Wraithlin's version, nothing from one account would be allowed to feed into another. But realistically, it would happen, and there's no way to effectively police that without making it a full time job, or without restricting a lot of legitimate uses of in-game functions (transfers, etc).

So there's the long version for my more simplistic response of "No."

:)

Thanks for the awesome, in depth answer! :D

Thanks for the explanation, NS. That really does help this thread. That being said, I 100% support anything that will make farming beneficial again. It was standard practice to have a farm team holding items in CB1, and while they weren't getting anyone wealthy, we would keep failed teams around for the income.

Please revisit the idea. Please. It would resolve a small part of the "disposable teams" problem and bring back something I liked. Even though players would have to restart NCBs, they would at least keep the old teams in the fray (as long as they're smaller than the current team).

You would need to give some tiny reward for losses and create a 24-hour warning before auto-retiring, but otherwise I like the idea of players having to spend occassional BA on farm teams.

The main reason why Jon said no was that this would, even in Wraithlin's form of the idea, force players to play multiple parties to remain competitive.

... This is the same reason why we are now in x/20 instead of x/10. I also have the same feelings towards "multiple parties". If people want to dedicate more of their time towards CB, then why not allow them to? If someone is at the top of the ladder because they put in 100% effort, they should be there. Then again, if a change like this occurs and people were to "rage quit" as someone said above, I am not sure if it would be worth it.

No offense bro but Time doesn't = Effort. Effort = Effort. Just because a Person can be here and burn the BA shouldn't auto equal them on the Top of any kind of Ladder here in CB. I can put in 100% Effort and NEVER reach the Top if I am not strategic. The way the system is set up to run right now is efficient in that it rewards those who use everything available to them.


Opportunity to get to the Top is already available a few tweaks and it would be even better than it is now.(IMHO)

And BTW, in this case, the multitard was only reset and not banned. Best get your facts straight before you post.


But my multi was banned, which was what he was referring too..

You said it best ranger.. Best get your facts straight before you post.

kef, it's two keys... greater than sign and a space and you've got a quote...

Ranger was replying to the inital posting in the thread... So basically, either Wraithlin was saying that your multi should not be banned (hah...) or implying that it was a ban on both... Facts seem straight enough

dumb thread, I fail to see why there's even any discussion on this non-issue, there are inherent problems that are made obvious with even the slightest amount of thought put toward the subject

I know I'm not the first with this idea, but how about having two completely isolated instances of CB that do not interact with each other at all? Identical codebase (to make maintenance etc. as easy as possible), just a separate database and URL. "This" instance of CB remains the "normal" one, but users could explicitly opt to sign up at the second instance as well.

I think this is a workable solution, however I think we might need a larger number of active users (and new accounts etc) to not make one or the other a potential ghost town.

(Then again, it's very possible that a large number of current active users would play on the second instance as well, so maybe that's less of a concern.)

The biggest argument? What should the subdomain for the new instance be? ;)

What you are describing is what most games do via multiple servers. You can play on Server 1, 2, etc. and they are all separate.

We don't have anywhere near the userbase to warrant such a thing. Games branch new servers when the load is too high.

In response to why I thought the ban was uncalled for.

I realize that it's against the rules and happened because that's what happens under the current rules.

I was saying I think the rule needs to be changed IMO.

NOT that anything happened against current rules.

If you check back through the thread, there are excellent explanations for why the rule is in place. Ignoring those and continuing to call for a change would not accomplish anything; they'll have to be addressed if you intend to do anything more than express an opinion.

I have read this thread with a lot of interest. Firstly I am against any abuse of game rules. That being said, I also agree with the fact that there are many times when I would like to be running two separate characters, one being a 'test'.

If you try this in the current setup - you are in a lose-lose situation as you half the BA of each. I would love to see this CB partitioned so that you could have one account in each of multiple partitions (you could call them server1, server2 etc if you really wanted).

Obviously each partition would be separate with no xfers between them.

Maybe this is something for CB3 to address :)

Freed, that's what some use Tournaments for.

Many tournaments it seems are with specific guidelines, rules, limitations. Whilst being fun and a great idea, many would be too restrictive to a test character

There has been a new rule added to tournaments where you can create test chars, that don't have to follow the rules, as long as you don't participate in the tournament.

Yo, from the wiki;

"Test Characters

You may make a character to test a strategy in any tournament you wish, however, there are a few stipulations.
Your character name must include [Test].
You may not fight other tournament characters."

I used it once (for like a set of BA) on a Tourny that gave like 5 Mil starting XP. Just to see. ;)

Although, if the tourny doesn't specify a naming convention for participants, it can be hard to follow the "no attacking another tourny team" rule.

This seems like an easy fix, why not just implement it, and you only get cash rewards from one active character at a time, then just put a cooldown on how often you can change which character is earning you rewards. That way it's not introducing any extra cash into the game at all, but I bet people would still run multiple characters, just out of boredom // wanting to play more.

You would have to change the forge though and make a separate forge BA pool. I think that would be easiest.

Clan Points, and Healing costs mate. ;)

And if you just want to burn more BA, on a character that you won't gain income from, effect Clan Points or manipulate the Score of your friends/opponents at all.

Then why not use the existing Tournament Test characters?

No need, at all, to implenent anything new, and try to police the multitiue of potential exploits that come with it, when we have an extra BA burning method already.

Yeah, but tournaments aren't a for sure all the time answer, there are several weeks at times of downtime when there is no tournament running, and it's different from running a nub from start to finish.... I would run a side nub that had limitations on it. Even if I had to eat healing costs (just another NEEDED cash sink for the game).

Something similar to what NS said would break a lot of the stagnation, hell maybe even a full nub with those limitations if you really wanted, that would make things a lot more fun, you could play your main character that you've been using for years or w/e, and still have the fun/excitement of playing a NUB... Some of us don't care about making a CBD profit, just the fast growth and fun of running a character through the ranks would be enough to get me to do it.

The last tournament only lasted one week I think. So I want to test a High decay character and use a Tat - I want to buy some equipment to test its effect. What happens to my character and equipment after the tourney is over, what happens to the equipment that I already have and have xferred to my T-character to test ?

You don't Xfer, and with the Tourny store, don't need to.

Why? What's the goal or purpose?

Granted, a tournament might only be running for a week, or might not be running then at all, but surely the wait isn't *really* an issue?

If you're limiting yourself, and policing yourself and everyone else for exploits, with the goal only as burning more BA, then why not use a tournament?

Either for the fun of running in the tournament, for goals and rewards you can keep.

Or using it as a test bed, or just some place to burn more BA.

If the wait, or a cut off time is really the issue, why don't we petition for a persistant Tournament, that runs alongside the exisitng ones.

With no rewards.

Would give everyone the sandbox they want, to test, or burn BA, without effecting the game as a whole in any way.

Tournament characters are nowhere even close to being a subsitute for the people that want to play more than one character.

Unless someone wants to start hosting 6 month tournaments with a tourney bonus that is coincidentally exactly equal to the current NCB bonus.

Otherwise tournament characters are not and never will be a method of testing different strats to see how they do against each other at the same time.

You can't even test two different strats in back to back tournaments because the bonuses will be different and it would be near impossible at best to see which one actually worked better. (unless one was complete trash).

I like the idea of a persistent tournament lasting 6 months or maybe a year with rewards exactly like CB2.

Still, this is a *luxury*, and not a necessity.

It might be nice to be able to burn another set of BA, but we don't need it. It's not part of the game, and is open to a massive amount of exploits if it was even to be considered.

Tournament play is a substitute, it's current in game, and it doesn't have any of the problems multiple accounts would.

What's the disparity?

Just to clarify, I ment no participation bonus, or winnings you could transfer to your 'main'.

It could be set with base XP, a calibrated XP/Cash bonus equal to the current value of the N*B, or nothing. ;)

i am still waiting for the proof that multis multi because they want more ba!

I don't have enough time to use up my current BA, never mind if I started a separate BA channel.

There's part of me thinks that if somebody has that much time on their hands then they need somewhere to spend their time!