Multi-Clienting Temporarily Disabled - Discussion

armoftheland33 wrote: »

I was under the impression that less players meant you could run on fewer servers, which I imagine is the bulk of the cost of running the pwe service considering they seem to have a whole three people hired to manage everything.

And if we imagine limiting players to two clients at once (when i knew many in the game who would run many more) and the amount of players who have either lost their access through this arc enforcement or who have quit, that's a significant drop in use of the servers.

Thats just a guess though because a lot depends on how they are set up currently and i dont have any of that info.

In earlier years, when more servers were opened, they were opened because the size of the playerbase could support that. You could afford to have forced-PVP servers and they'd actually have people on them. You could afford to have servers in multiple regions just to cater to the needs of your playerbase more effectively. It's a good look for a game, and in PWI's case, new servers meant a rush to CS things in order to be one of the first on the server with the best stuff. The costs of running an additional server were, theoretically, outpaced by sales on that server.

You only merge/close servers when they look too empty to be playable. And you never, ever deliberately shrink your playerbase. I don't know why this idea persists. I know we all like to joke about PWE basically gathering up all their cash and throwing it into a big fire, but deliberate purges of the playerbase would be an action of the exact same caliber, without the joke. The action would be quite literally beyond stupid.

greenfire312 wrote: »

You only merge/close servers when they look too empty to be playable. And you never, ever deliberately shrink your playerbase. I don't know why this idea persists. I know we all like to joke about PWE basically gathering up all their cash and throwing it into a big fire, but deliberate purges of the playerbase would be an action of the exact same caliber, without the joke. The action would be quite literally beyond stupid.

I think the idea persists for a few reasons. While no, I doubt they're trying to shrink their playerbase per se, I do believe they are employing some strategies to drive certain metrics. Obviously I'm speculating a lot on their motives (but a lot of this just feels true), but being free-to-play as they are, there's going to be a huge push to drive spending among users in PWI. There's a segment of their playerbase who consistently spend, and a smaller section of those players who spend a lot ("whales") and the product management team for the game is going to focus heavily on this segment. Part of the ftp model means spending much less time, effort, and resources on the players who have shown that they will not spend, or are extremely unlikely to up their spending. I believe the game has deteriorated to the point where these fully or mostly ftp players are going to be completely ignored (even their cries to maintain basic game functionality: base access, events being run on time, receiving promised rewards) in favor of desperately trying to get the heavy cashers to spend, and spend as much as possible. I feel this trend has been in place for awhile but this latest slap in the face to the ftp segment is causing us to feel it even more acutely. I'm even cynical enough to think that with the likely departure of many players who can't access their accounts due to Arc enforcement or who got burned heavily by the base changes (it seems likely these folks are largely non-cashers) that their average revenue per user will go up as a result, and perhaps that's actually a win in management's minds.

aradriel wrote: »

I think the idea persists for a few reasons. While no, I doubt they're trying to shrink their playerbase per se, I do believe they are employing some strategies to drive certain metrics. Obviously I'm speculating a lot on their motives (but a lot of this just feels true), but being free-to-play as they are, there's going to be a huge push to drive spending among users in PWI. There's a segment of their playerbase who consistently spend, and a smaller section of those players who spend a lot ("whales") and the product management team for the game is going to focus heavily on this segment. Part of the ftp model means spending much less time, effort, and resources on the players who have shown that they will not spend, or are extremely unlikely to up their spending. I believe the game has deteriorated to the point where these fully or mostly ftp players are going to be completely ignored (even their cries to maintain basic game functionality: base access, events being run on time, receiving promised rewards) in favor of desperately trying to get the heavy cashers to spend, and spend as much as possible. I feel this trend has been in place for awhile but this latest slap in the face to the ftp segment is causing us to feel it even more acutely. I'm even cynical enough to think that with the likely departure of many players who can't access their accounts due to Arc enforcement or who got burned heavily by the base changes (it seems likely these folks are largely non-cashers) that their average revenue per user will go up as a result, and perhaps that's actually a win in management's minds.

A F2P game company ignores its F2P segment at their own peril. This is particularly the case with PWI because of the gold exchange - the cashers need the F2P crowd to buy their gold with coin. Both pieces are necessary, and the game could not possibly have lasted this long if PWE didn't understand that. If the "average revenue per user" goes up at all, it'll only do so briefly before those same people slow if not stop their spending on a game which is quickly running out of people they can pay to win over.

And PWE's management has always been pretty slapdash. Problems with events are the rule rather than the exception. You could say I'm still waiting on a physical reward item I won from a story contest like two years ago. Only I'm not really waiting on it because I don't expect them to ever send it. Their track record with events is abysmal. I wasn't even surprised to hear that the fortune pill redeem NPC disappeared the other day (this is more the fault of the devs, but PWE still should've checked the patch). No doubt it'll be back at some point. But if I had to guess, I'd say that PWE hasn't been properly staffed for most, if not all, of PWI's lifetime.

My point being, you can't point to PWE's general mismanagement (which, again, has been pretty consistent over the years) as evidence of a deliberate attempt to purge the playerbase. There's no metric in the world which would argue for this, even from a business standpoint. I can totally understand how it "feels true," and the monumental stupidity they display in decisions like these makes it hard to rule out the malice angle, but at the very least they're not going to be malicious to themselves.

jadasia wrote: »

Or when they want to implement genuine cross server events

Why would merging/closing servers be required for that? We have cross-server events already, and they don't require merging the current four. Especially xNW which kinda requires that we have exactly four servers.

Unless you're going to make the case that they did the first merge so that they could pull off xNW, but (a) that strikes me as more long-term planning than PWE typically demonstrates, and (b) even if that were true, it would speak to that particular case only, not a general rule that merging/closing servers is done for the benefit of cross-server events.

X server events need 4 servers. No more no less. The system is coded like that so that's the way it is.

greenfire312 wrote: »

A fantastic way to curb alt abuse would just be to ban the abused accounts.

I don't disagree. But pwi hasn't done that in the last ten years and they won't start now. I would bet it has something to do with how many employees they have and the ones they already have being too busy to deal with what's already on their plate. Hiring someone to enforce rules in the long run is more expensive than simply paying a one time fee to someone who can code in a restriction, and then they can ban people who alter the code of the program if necessary (or not). Let's not open the can of worms that is players not having any possible way of knowing that this is against "the rules" since its not stated anywhere in game or in the tos.

greenfire312 wrote: »

Except, the r9 alt people probably know about the current multiclienting method........
So the end result here is, they're locking out exactly the opposite people you claim they're intending to. Oops?

I am not aware currently of a workaround to multiclienting other than altering the program code which is explicitly against tos. If there is a different work around my comments were not made with that in mind, but then I would argue that pwe did not implement this "fix" with the intent of allowing multiclienters to simply find an easy work around.

If f2p players don't multiclient and so wouldn't find this supposed workaround, why does the restriction on multiclienting lock them out of playing in any way? (Barring those who forgot their account information or bought accounts etc.) Players who aren't multiclienting wouldn't care to find a work around to start multiclienting... But they weren't multiclienting anyway so I see absolutely no change to their experience with the exception of ugly ad-filled bloatware.

Out of curiosity, if there is a legal (tos wise) work around that everyone knows about, why are you all still here waiting for pwe to fix it?

I think you mistake my comments for defending pwes decisions. I am not, and I don't think their decisions are clever or logical (I figured that was pretty obvious but hey a reminder doesn't hurt) Im posting what I believe could be an angle they considered when making those decisions.

And again, I don't know why you are on this purge the player base thing. I already explained it's not about purging the player base; it's about lowering costs of running. I guess when people you are having discussions with stop reading before they discuss its time to end the discussion and leave it to those still waiting for answers.

zeevhaora wrote: »

Still waiting answers, @armoftheland33 ? @kalystconquerer#0876 totally ignore this thread, only @heero200 show his/her face sometimes here, but he/she has no answers to us.

the problem they will not change of mind unless they care us for example my principal problem is the forcelog button when i dc i cant get back cuz the dc is for 5 min along so stupid arc for real really stupid

greenfire312 wrote: »

A fantastic way to curb alt abuse would just be to ban the abused accounts.

Or they can enforce the 2 account per player rule by forcing to log into the game through Arc instead. Just think of the abuse that will curb.

Something that is temporary lasts for only a limited time. explain please? You have had ample time????

My answer to Kalysts questions from early in this thread:

1) Number of clients My answer: 2, one to play, one for catshop

2) (something about improvement to the game) My answer: make ARC available for windows XP


I know that 2 clients would be terrible in most players opinions, since it has been so long since that rule was in effect and enforced, so people have changed their playing style to take advantage of multi. Maybe I am just nostalgic, but I liked the game better when more people joined squads instead of people leveling up an alt army this way (Not that I am opposed to alts, love them... too much, but mine I play as an individual) and I suppose that most of the people who think the same way as I do left the game a long time ago, for this and other reasons.
My second answer is more selfish I guess, my best friend had just gotten back into playing after a while away, and I had been having fun having our two alts born on the birthday of Archosaur server playing together again, but my guess is that PWI doesn't care enough about her ability to play the game.

sontzu wrote: »

jadasia wrote: »

Or they can enforce the 2 account per player rule by forcing to log into the game through Arc instead. Just think of the abuse that will curb.

People are still logging multiple alts, even with being forced to log using arc, so idk what you're thinking of.

It takes longer to do is all, but doesn't limit how many you can log. It seems to have stopped those annoying clientless bots,
but frankly that's not a big enough gain imo for all the grief it's caused

Very easy to fix. Make killing Arc in task manager kill all PWI clients at the same time

jadasia wrote: »

sontzu wrote: »

jadasia wrote: »

Or they can enforce the 2 account per player rule by forcing to log into the game through Arc instead. Just think of the abuse that will curb.

People are still logging multiple alts, even with being forced to log using arc, so idk what you're thinking of.

It takes longer to do is all, but doesn't limit how many you can log. It seems to have stopped those annoying clientless bots,
but frankly that's not a big enough gain imo for all the grief it's caused

Very easy to fix. Make killing Arc in task manager kill all PWI clients at the same time

Sure, let's **** off more of the innocent player base by removing the last remaining half-workaround we have. What could go wrong?

armoftheland33 wrote: »

I am not aware currently of a workaround to multiclienting other than altering the program code which is explicitly against tos. If there is a different work around my comments were not made with that in mind, but then I would argue that pwe did not implement this "fix" with the intent of allowing multiclienters to simply find an easy work around.

If f2p players don't multiclient and so wouldn't find this supposed workaround, why does the restriction on multiclienting lock them out of playing in any way? (Barring those who forgot their account information or bought accounts etc.) Players who aren't multiclienting wouldn't care to find a work around to start multiclienting... But they weren't multiclienting anyway so I see absolutely no change to their experience with the exception of ugly ad-filled bloatware.

Out of curiosity, if there is a legal (tos wise) work around that everyone knows about, why are you all still here waiting for pwe to fix it?

Look for the thread by spaz221. Currently on page 2. jadasia also made reference to it earlier on this page.

That's literally all the detail I feel comfortable giving you right now. Not because it's actually illicit in any way, shape or form... the method discussed does not[ modify the client or any game files... but because I have no idea what policies Kalyst expects us to converse under at this time. You remember the "hey guys stop Arc from spying on you, go to this Github page" guy from like, ten pages back? Sketchiness of his exe-conversion aside, all he did was automate the process spaz221 describes by way of a basic Windows function, which also does not modify the client/game files in any way. However, I have it on good authority that even giving details on that function is less than kosher at this time (as if PWE controls what you tell your Windows machine to do).

The tl;dr is we're treating a lot of legitimate things as illegitimate right now, for reasons not sufficiently stated. So I will err on the side of caution (though with that being said, why spaz221's thread has stayed up this long is beyond me).

Why am I insistent on a fix? Because there remains no logical reason why Arc is necessary, and if PWE wants to play the "yeah ok, it's marketing BS but you have to deal with it anyway" card, then it's on them to actually make Arc work. And it doesn't. Everyone seems to have their own personal horror story, even. Mine is disk usage - my Win10 machine will constantly report high disk usage after the client launches (whether Arc is running or not), resulting in a severe performance dip when I run PWI. This wasn't the case until I put Arc on the machine. Curiously enough, my Win7 machine doesn't have this problem and actually runs PWI better than the Win10 right now.

armoftheland33 wrote: »

I think you mistake my comments for defending pwes decisions. I am not, and I don't think their decisions are clever or logical (I figured that was pretty obvious but hey a reminder doesn't hurt) Im posting what I believe could be an angle they considered when making those decisions.

And again, I don't know why you are on this purge the player base thing. I already explained it's not about purging the player base; it's about lowering costs of running. I guess when people you are having discussions with stop reading before they discuss its time to end the discussion and leave it to those still waiting for answers.

It was mistressani who suggested the "grand purge" thing, now that I look back over the thread. I got my wires crossed there, a bit, replied to both of you at the same time like five pages back.

The "cost cutting" thing really does sound similarly hare-brained, though. As you correctly point out, they've no doubt taken the axe to their manpower on this game, if not many others in the company. That's a typical action for a company who wants to control costs. Removing access to your product is not such a typical action. That's not cutting costs, that's cutting customers. It's the exact opposite of the stated intention. You can't tell me that PWE honestly thought forcing Arc use would recover more in bandwidth costs from alt abusers than it would cost them in lost revenue from innocent and very rightfully pissed-off people who can no longer play properly.

In fact, I'd be willing to bet that whatever data Arc sends back and forth to their servers takes more bandwidth than the alt abusers ever did. No doubt PWE considered that bandwidth a justifiable expense, all in pursuit of the "features" (read: marketing) that Arc provides. But if it's bandwidth costs they were concerned with, maybe they should've started with Arc itself.

heero200 wrote: »

I'm trying to get an update on this and a few other things. But also this is not gone unnoticed.

Heero, I have no reason to believe that you'd be less than truthful about this, but can you tell us literally anything which might help convince the rest of us that this has, in fact, not gone unnoticed by the staff? Kalyst hasn't had a word to say about this in basically a month now. They have to know that the longer they wait, the worse it's going to get.

Thank you for your report about the item issue. For this situation, we'll be checking to have a replacement -voided- provided after a future maintenance when recoveries are working again. We're still looking into a fix with the developers on a recovery issue which is causing some extended delays which are expected to last over a month.

Seems to me that the dual clienting issue is also related to the GM’s ability to spawn in items...

In my experience with this game this points to a compromised GM console which is used to spawn in items...

The way it works on unofficial servers is a client is provided to a GM, this client is modified to have the ability to provide a console to the user. On these servers the client also requires a back up password and a verification process to access it... I’m assuming that was custom and in my honest opinion it all points to a compromised GM console.

This is all just an educated guess and I’d rather put it out there then leave the community in the dark like the so called staff is doing.

@greenfire312
Dual clienting is the entire idea to boot up an unothothized GM console...

With dual clienting disabled the only way to manually spawn in items is disabling arc login.

Alright let me explain it as easily as I can.

A GM console is not embedded into the toon, so even if you are a GM you can’t access said console to spawn in items, however with a GM toon you still have access to teleport anywhere and teleport people to you.

Now, where the supposed exploit could come in.
In order to access a GM console you need a modified client version which allows you to spawn in items. This requires you to boot from a client sorta as if you were dual clienting but for GM’s.

With arc login enabled a player can’t boot the GM console and apparently they don’t even want to risk booting said console themselves, so CN comes in. Arc is enabled and therefore a **** GM console no longer can boot due to not being able to dual client.

The part that makes me lol is that as long as you boot from the modified client, regardless of being logged as a GM toon or ordinary player, you can still spawn in items, ids which can be found easily on pwdatabase

Conclusion or supposed reason dual clienting is disabled is drawn from these facts.

This reason would also explain why we were told to change passwords etc, as a precautionary measure, cause honestly if you can spawn in whatever you want why in the world would you want another players account info.

greenfire312 wrote: »

Sure, let's **** off more of the innocent player base by removing the last remaining half-workaround we have. What could go wrong?

Innocent people obey the rules and manage to adapt well to the evolution of the game. They won't be impacted. However those who think rules do not apply to them will be impacted.

As I previously stated the best solution to enforce the 2 client rule we have is to modify the game to allow 2 characters per account to log in at the same time. And further modify Arc to allow only one account to be logged in per computer and kill all running games when Arc is killed with task manager.

That will stop most of the multi-clienting abuse and provide the account security through Arc which is the prime objective for the emergency update which you are complaining about now.

Only people who would be mad would be those who abused the multi client rule and multi account rule. Think about how much better NW et al would be without having to compete for rewards with do nothing alts? Think about how better JoJ quests would be without freaking alt armies hoarding the questing areas.

Sure some will find a way around my suggestion with a virtual machine but that would be easy to detect and fix too

@sylenthunder - Thanks for the clarification. It would've been a great explanation if true, but evidently it's not.

But @kalystconquerer#0876 , take note here. Whatever the truth really is, we're probably more willing to handle that than the current situation of being told next to nothing. As much as I hate Arc, I accept the possibility that there are situations (beyond marketing demands) which would legitimately require its use. But it's a lot harder to accept if you and the staff don't tell us what those situations are. Had nunuator's theory been correct, I probably would've accepted that (with some follow-up questions... off the top of my head, if a modded client is required, doesn't the server check for that even if you don't use the launcher?).

jadasia wrote: »

Innocent people obey the rules and manage to adapt well to the evolution of the game. They won't be impacted. However those who think rules do not apply to them will be impacted.

As I previously stated the best solution to enforce the 2 client rule we have is to modify the game to allow 2 characters per account to log in at the same time. And further modify Arc to allow only one account to be logged in per computer and kill all running games when Arc is killed with task manager.

That will stop most of the multi-clienting abuse and provide the account security through Arc which is the prime objective for the emergency update which you are complaining about now.

Only people who would be mad would be those who abused the multi client rule and multi account rule. Think about how much better NW et al would be without having to compete for rewards with do nothing alts? Think about how better JoJ quests would be without freaking alt armies hoarding the questing areas.

Sure some will find a way around my suggestion with a virtual machine but that would be easy to detect and fix too

Troll or no troll, you need to dispense with the black-and-white thinking here. This is impacting far more people than bot or Jones abusers. If you can't see that, then either you're not paying attention, or you reject what's in front of your eyes on the grounds that it doesn't fit with your narrative that no one would bypass Arc unless they wanted to break rules. Either way, the use of non-Arc logins for legitimate purposes is well documented. I will not debate further on this point.

The solution you propose here would radically alter how multi-clienting works in PWI, to the detriment of many legitimate players who built their second account around the current structure. Shop alts, buff alts, mule/storage alts, and actual characters on the second account which are reasonably geared for dual-account play in instances would all cease to work as intended.

I suppose you would argue that this is something we'd have to adapt to. But no one who plays PWI for any length of time can be accused of failing to adapt to changes. As with your other posts, your logic always seems to go no further than "PWE can change whatever they want." And while no sensible person would dispute that in a vacuum, it would behoove PWE - or any business - to not take actions that directly result in a significant loss of customers. Players can and have been exercising their right to leave over these changes, and more are hinging on the staff's ultimate response here. So to say that making their current multi-clienting setup useless would exacerbate this problem would be a massive understatement. Joke about it if you want, but PWI is fast running out of players for PWE to gamble with.