Observation on one aspect of your business model: multiple accounts
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Enthusiastic new user her, but here's something I've seen right off that in my opinion is hurting your business.
1) You want to maximize revenue. No problem with that and in fact we WANT to you maximize revenue, to keep the game going and fixes/updates coming.
2) I brought in my friend and he likes that game BUT he's quitting in disgust. And he bought High Command and has spent a lot of money on gold already.
3) The reason he's leaving is people playing on multiple accounts. We just had a game where one guy was playing several countries (he admitted this), some pretending to be enemies of his real country (that he wanted to win) to fool his enemies and get shared map, and some rolling over and letting his real country invade them easily. It made a mockery of the game, wasted the hours (and gold!) we put into it, and made my friend quit in disgust (not me -- yet). Apparently this is quite common based on my experience so far.
4) And FWIW running a second (or third, fourth...) country and pretending to be allied with the enemies of your "real" country gives you shared map with your enemies -- a "poor man's" intelligence -- so you don't have to spend gold for intelligence. So that chokes off another revenue stream.
5) And there's a solution. Not easy but people do it and you can probably buy a package that does most of the work. INSTEAD OF AN EMAIL, REQUIRE A PHONE NUMBER. When a new account is made, instead of asking for an email, get their phone number and text them a code that they have to enter. You have to keep a database of all the phone numbers, access it quickly, and refuse the account of the number has already been used.
Anybody can get an email -- I can get 20 AOL or Yahoo accounts in 15 minutes. It's much harder to get different phone numbers. Yes you can ask friend to help you but it's just much, much more work.
Yes I know that the TOS probably doesn't allow multiple accounts. But it's got no teeth apparently. By having no teeth you are de facto allowing it. Stop doing that is my suggestion. Yes one can complain (but usually one just has a suspicion not a an admission) but so what? if the accounts are blocked the person can get 20 more in 15 minutes.
OK? Think it over. Now, there MIGHT be business reasons for allowing multiple accounts. But I don't think so. I think most of these people are not spending a lot of gold (and they don't have to to get intelligence). And the downside of allowing multiple accounts (de facto) is that user experience is degraded. That's not a good business model long-term, I wouldn't think.
-- Feric Jagger
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11 Replies
31 Aug 2017, 20:02
Feric Jagger wrote:
INSTEAD OF AN EMAIL, REQUIRE A PHONE NUMBER.
You do realize some players may not feel comfortable with giving their phone number, and some might not even have a number yet. We have to realize some players don't care about fair game-play, and are willing to CHEAT to win. That is what I would call bad sportsmanship (or would it be bad gamer-ship?).
I personally think it is a good idea to allow multiple nations by one account in a private game type, because obviously nobody wants that to be a public thing. If multiple accounts are to ever be permitted, it should be included in the game settings in BOLD. I would NOT make another account just to simply go to war with myself and maybe some computers.
I like to play this game quite a bit, but it's very time-consuming, so I have to be wise about the games I start to avoid tanking my statistics. Now when I say time-consuming, speeding up won't help. I like the game's pace, but don't like to quit a round just because of inactive players. I tend to stick to Europe - Clash of Nations - 22 Players for those reasons. I would love to play a game of America 1942: Homefront - 50 Players or World at War 1932 - 100 Players, but I don't have the time to keep up with my nation. If I was playing alone, my countries would be able to take pauses in the game during heavy work or a vacation, but you can't do that.
Note to clarify: I only use one account myself, and am not interested in making another for this game.
"Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster." ~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War "War does not determine who is right - only who is left."
1 Sept 2017, 01:36
Sadly, as minors are allowed to play within parental consent, and not everybody in that group has a cell phone, this is not a good way to stop multis.
We do chase after multis, and take their accounts away. However, you must report them by opening diplomacy, and clicking the "i" for that player. Follow the icon to "Report Player" and change the drop-down menu to "multi account." Please include all information you can as to why you believe it is a multi account.
Please be patient, as these reports take a lot of time, and enough people have such sorry lives, that a good amount of backlog in these tickets does occur at times.
Free Time looks good on me
1 Sept 2017, 20:18
WiseOdin wrote:
(...)
We do chase after multis, and take their accounts away. However, you must report them by opening diplomacy, and clicking the "i" for that player. Follow the icon to "Report Player" and change the drop-down menu to "multi account." Please include all information you can as to why you believe it is a multi account.
(...)
I would prefer auto ban from map/session/match if two accounts (with the same internet connection) are playing this match. Just a warning on day one and a ban on day two.
And I don't like the idea giving number of my phone.
Better to be servant in heaven than a monarch in hell ... besides there is already monarch in hell and he will not tolerate usurpers.
1 Sept 2017, 23:57
We already have means in the game to autoban multi accounts. Additionally we have our great support staff. So in no way we are allowing multi accounts and we combat them actively. No system is perfect though.
2 Sept 2017, 20:18
freezy wrote:
We already have means in the game to autoban multi accounts. Additionally we have our great support staff. So in no way we are allowing multi accounts and we combat them actively. No system is perfect though.
I told you to hire Heimdallr to help out with multis
In all seriousness, the autoban system has worked well, and has seen two major upgrades in my time, here. We are getting better and better at getting rid of the multi account users.
Of course, there is a spike every Summer when children are home all day. This will eventually lead to backlog of some of the multis that need to be handled by live support. Eventually, children are dragged back to school after spending two and a half months sitting at a computer, and we catch up on our backlog.
Free Time looks good on me
2 Sept 2017, 20:24 (edited)
WiseOdin wrote:
Of course, there is a spike every Summer when children are home all day. This will eventually lead to backlog of some of the multis that need to be handled by live support. Eventually, children are dragged back to school after spending two and a half months sitting at a computer, and we catch up on our backlog.
That may very well be true. However, the last multi-account cheater I encountered was clearly an adult and he had apparently gotten very good at dodging our auto-ban system until he got sloppy. He also had been given a second chance by staff after getting caught previously. As far as I am concerned, one intentional violation of the multi-account cheating rules should lead to a permanent ban of all associated non-institutional IP addresses. Period.
That said, the current auto-ban system scoops up too many innocents, high school and college students in particular, as well as family members, because they share the same wifi access. There should be a way to automatically distinguish innocent users based on their use of separate wireless devices, email addresses and registered credit cards. There should also be ample and unavoidable warnings during the COW registration process which give new users the option to provide additional information that allows the system to separate the sheep from the goats. COW is not the first online gaming community to encounter these problems.
3 Sept 2017, 23:33
Some sort of mechanism that makes use of cookies, etc. should work. I would think that even if someone is hiding behind multiple different VPNs (and therefore different IP source address) and multiple email accounts some, cookies tied to their MAC address, etc. would at least force them to use different computers also. I'd also think that it could be fairly automated such that a quick check of all players in a game upon start could could be auto-generated...i.e. "CoW has detected more than one account using this computer...etc." Disabling both until you open a ticket...etc. etc.
4 Sept 2017, 09:23
I guess someone going to the trouble of multi-accounting would know how to tell his browser how to delete cookies.
4 Sept 2017, 13:16
K.Rokossovski wrote:
I guess someone going to the trouble of multi-accounting would know how to tell his browser how to delete cookies.
Yes...but some sort of hash/cookie based on MAC address or something that doesn't change within a PC. You can't change your MAC address. So at least that would tell them if its coming from the same PC. They would have to grab it each time you logged on or started a game. Of course everyone has multiple PCs but just like security the goal is to make it too hard for someone to want to do it.
6 Sept 2017, 10:59
Actually changing your MAC adress is easy. Same as deleting cookies. As I said before, no solution is perfect.
Of course not everyone knows how to do these things and we also would not communicate it if we are using those means for detection (maybe we do certain things already? ), to at least catch some more cheaters off guard.
