I've already been through this, in this very thread. Making "mule" accounts is NOT AGAINST THE TOS.
wait what?
Ah, now here is the rub. PWE/Cryptic could, since it is their property, decide that creating multiple free accounts for the sole purpose of storage is an exploit. Even though the system is designed for this, and under the current rules allows for it. But then the original mail system followed the exact same path, and look where that ended.
Ah, now here is the rub. PWE/Cryptic could, since it is their property, decide that creating multiple free accounts for the sole purpose of storage is an exploit. Even though the system is designed for this, and under the current rules allows for it. But then the original mail system followed the exact same path, and look where that ended.
And... your point? PWE/Cryptic could also decide that logging in is an exploit. Maybe everyone should stop doing that in anticipation of that ruling.
Anyway, it seems unlikely that they would try to crack down on something that they couldn't enforce. (Not without alienating a lot of potential customers.)
"Participation in PVP-related activities is so low on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we could in fact just completely take it out of STO and it would not impact the overall number of people [who] log in to the game and play in any significant way." -Gozer, Cryptic PvP Dev
And... your point? PWE/Cryptic could also decide that logging in is an exploit. Maybe everyone should stop doing that in anticipation of that ruling.
Anyway, it seems unlikely that they would try to crack down on something that they couldn't enforce. (Not without alienating a lot of potential customers.)
Thanks for the slippery slope argument but really, creating multiple accounts for storage seems far more questionable and doesn't solve the issue. You know, some of us might actually want to play the game from time to time and not spend our time moving from account to account to deal with a poor game design and an arbitrary developer choice that is likely completely unrelated to STO.
It is an in game change so there should be an in game solution to the problem. We have many suggestions that can earn the developers revenue as well as provide a more convienent method to organize and utilize storage.
creating multiple accounts ... seems far more questionable
Something that's common practice in practically every MMO?
and doesn't solve the issue. You know, some of us might actually want to play the game from time to time and not spend our time moving from account to account to deal with a poor game design and an arbitrary developer choice that is likely completely unrelated to STO.
It is an in game change so there should be an in game solution to the problem. We have many suggestions that can earn the developers revenue as well as provide a more convienent method to organize and utilize storage.
Oh, I'd prefer a sensible solution too. I just don't think Cryptic will come up with one. And I have zero interest in contributing to their revenue.
"Participation in PVP-related activities is so low on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we could in fact just completely take it out of STO and it would not impact the overall number of people [who] log in to the game and play in any significant way." -Gozer, Cryptic PvP Dev
Thanks for the slippery slope argument but really, creating multiple accounts for storage seems far more questionable and doesn't solve the issue. You know, some of us might actually want to play the game from time to time and not spend our time moving from account to account to deal with a poor game design and an arbitrary developer choice that is likely completely unrelated to STO.
It is an in game change so there should be an in game solution to the problem. We have many suggestions that can earn the developers revenue as well as provide a more convienent method to organize and utilize storage.
Actually, that particular slippery slope comes courtesy of Cryptic/PWE, not me. As I made quite clear in my post, for years the mail system and peoples use of it as a storage solution was absolutely fine and dandy with Cryptic/PWE. Until the day it wasn't. And then *poof* it was changed without so much as a by-your-leave, causing untold headaches for everyone.
Now we have people suggesting that players just make new, free accounts to use as storage. At the same time we have appear to have a moderator saying that this is against the TOS/EULA and that we should not do this, despite it not actually being anywhere in the TOS/EULA. Since Cryptic et al have already made such a drastic alteration to their own rules once, without a single notification anywhere ahead of time, they have given everyone more than enough cause to believe they would do so again.
As for me, I am one of the people offering viable, cost effective and profitable methods of replacing the lost functionality of the old mail storage system. Getting anyone at Cryptic/PWE to read the things we write, I fear, would take a lot more than just posting on here and sending in tickets. So far they appear as uninterested in us, as most people are about the microbes living on the soles of their shoes.
I'm still trying to figure out why the people who don't need to store doffs in the mail for starbase projects, and who therefore aren't affected by this, think they have any business voicing their 'thoughts' on the matter.
There is a time to speak, and a time to keep silent. Self control is the foundation of self respect.
It is called freedom of speech, and everyone has a right to it whether we agree with them or not. Lets leave the snide remarks and antagonism to them shall we?
File support tickets against the ones who are guilty of wrongdoing.
They need feedback on their volunteer community moderators. The one's who refuse to behave professionally need to be replaced. I'm sure there are people out there willing to do it who won't be obnoxious and rude to customers.
I filed a support ticket complaint against "syberghost" after he was uncivil and made false and insulting accusations against players and asked for an apology.
His response was to close the thread he'd posted in.
This has nothing to do with this thread, please don't drag it off track with personal issues about moderation, thank you.
I have no problem paying Cryptic money that they've earned. This is not the case here.
I have a huge problem paying for something that's been taken away, and after being called an exploiter in the bargain.
No, there is only one other way - on a character. Which requires buying slots or doff storage. Or using stacked free accounts.
It was exploiting. if it wasnt they would not charge zen for extra bank slots or to upgrade the amount of DOFF's you can have on a character that not being sold in exchange. You may not like it being called an exploiter but that is exactly what you were doing. No MMO game has ever considered mail a storage system And I am amazed they didnt put a 10 day limit on attachments before the atachment gets added back to inventory automaticaly.
Truthfully I have 0 none nada sympathy for anyone complianing about losing the mail system as an unlimited bank. Especialy about DOFF's being horded for fleet projects. first if you are in a fleet with hundreds of members and you go to your bank and pull the DOFFS required for the projects and complete that part you are hurting all the other members who have DOFF's to donate but no dilithium. They may want some fleet credits too. Second Fleet projectys are meant for many people to contribute to. If you are doing it solo then suffer the f@#$ing consequences of doing the work of 200+ people solo.
Also Did you even read my post or pick 2 points and go off on them half cocked and half TRIBBLE? My suggestion of selling the overflow DOFF's on the exchange, saving the EC from that and buying DOFF's from the saved EC is a workaround and makes this whole DOFF storage issue moot.
Join Date: Nobody cares.
"I'm drunk, whats your excuse for being an idiot?" - Unknown drunk man. :eek:
It was exploiting. if it wasnt they would not charge zen for extra bank slots or to upgrade the amount of DOFF's you can have on a character that not being sold in exchange. You may not like it being called an exploiter but that is exactly what you were doing. No MMO game has ever considered mail a storage system And I am amazed they didnt put a 10 day limit on attachments before the atachment gets added back to inventory automaticaly.
Truthfully I have 0 none nada sympathy for anyone complianing about losing the mail system as an unlimited bank. Especialy about DOFF's being horded for fleet projects. first if you are in a fleet with hundreds of members and you go to your bank and pull the DOFFS required for the projects and complete that part you are hurting all the other members who have DOFF's to donate but no dilithium. They may want some fleet credits too. Second Fleet projectys are meant for many people to contribute to. If you are doing it solo then suffer the f@#$ing consequences of doing the work of 200+ people solo.
Also Did you even read my post or pick 2 points and go off on them half cocked and half TRIBBLE? My suggestion of selling the overflow DOFF's on the exchange, saving the EC from that and buying DOFF's from the saved EC is a workaround and makes this whole DOFF storage issue moot.
Have you bothered reading any of these threads or are you just spouting off to gloat. The mail was never an exploit. It was designed that way, and utilized that way for years. No developer has called it an exploit, no accounts were banned or rolled back for it. Your catargorization is hurtful and masks the real issues involved. We are not begrudging the developers earning cash. In fact we have stated numerous ways that they could earn more cash from us by enacting certain changes (some of which would take almost no effort such as unlimiting the numbers of doff slots/bank slots we could buy).
You just don't seem to have a clue regarding the sheer quantity of doffs we are talking about. I only have 40 sales slots on a character and lots of things to sell including higher quality doffs, gear, commodites, and other things I gather. I will give you an example from today to hopefully educate you. Today, I opened about 210 boxes to get the 60 security officers that were missing. Thankfully there were 3 tac projects going that hadn't been filled on the doff requirements so I had an opportunity to dump those 160 tac officers in, but that rarely happens. 200 doffs is a small run, it gets larger when your after the medical officers who are even rarer. We don't have the doff storage to deal with the quantities and can't get rid of them fast enough on the exchange.
I am in a large fleet, but people tend to go for the easy Science and Tactical officers and leave the Security and Medical remainder that take lots of work. They want the easy dil, expertise, commodities, fleet marks turn ins. Doffs don't drop in quantities so they leave it to the professional doffers to handle. Sure, myself and other doffers could wait for other fleet members to slowly fill it, but that turns the project into a several day affair and slows starbase projects to a crawl. Other fleet members don't want that, they want a fresh project to earn easy fleet credits with. It is a problem of the doff distribution that has existed. I don't want to store the doffs but I couldn't deal with them in any reasonable manner but storing them. Now that has been taken away and starbase progress languishes. It isn't your business how we run our fleets, I don't tell you how to run yours.
From F2P launch there has always been C-store doff, bank, inventory and account bank slots, and these slots have also been worked into the sub matrix. The obviously shows that storage slots have always been intended to be controlled behind paywalls. Hence the mail system was an exploit, albeit one that was not rectified for some time, until the higher tier fleet system started kicking in. In any case, we all know that if this limitation had been applied from launch, this thread, and this level of complaining, would simply not exist.
Have you bothered reading any of these threads or are you just spouting off to gloat. The mail was never an exploit. It was designed that way, and utilized that way for years. No developer has called it an exploit, .
According to Branflakes it was and is an exploit and was not designed to be a torage system. Enough said. go cry about the loss of an exploit all you want they will not revert the decision and you are lucky they didnt ban you.
Join Date: Nobody cares.
"I'm drunk, whats your excuse for being an idiot?" - Unknown drunk man. :eek:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Has nothing to do with Cryptic or anything said in this thread. The federal government doesn't give a damn about STO's email attachments being limited.
What? I'm not American. Free speech isn't just an American thing, you know that right?
According to Branflakes it was and is an exploit and was not designed to be a torage system. Enough said. go cry about the loss of an exploit all you want they will not revert the decision and you are lucky they didnt ban you.
And yet for years it was not an exploit. Funny that eh?
From F2P launch there has always been C-store doff, bank, inventory and account bank slots, and these slots have also been worked into the sub matrix. The obviously shows that storage slots have always been intended to be controlled behind paywalls. Hence the mail system was an exploit, albeit one that was not rectified for some time, until the higher tier fleet system started kicking in. In any case, we all know that if this limitation had been applied from launch, this thread, and this level of complaining, would simply not exist.
There is no C-Store doff bank, there is only the 300 extra slots you can purchase which is bound and limited to a total of 400 doffs. Account bank and additional inventory and bank slots are available but also ultimately restricted. The lack of mail restrictions predates all these changes so that would suggest that while perhaps not considered it certainly wasn't a flaw or exploit. Furthermore even assuming this wasn't as intended, there is no reason there was no announcement made so that players could try and make adjustments or raise the important storage issue prior to the changes so perhaps adjustments could have been made.
On your second point, this storage problem would have been an issue sooner with some of the changes they implimented if mail had not been an imperfect workaround. Several design changes from F2P to the present patch have caused these storage problems as I listed below independent of mail changes.
1. The introduction of the starbase system and the method of filling projects with only white doffs greatly increased the needs for these doffs.
2. The introduction of the duty officer crates to generate doffs at a great disparity between what is required for the missions and what is generated due to the calculations based on the numbers of doff catagories in a given class (hence security and medical with only 3 and 5 classes greatly outnumbered by the tactical and science catagories they are paired with resulting in large quanties of low value doffs.
3. The alteration of the duty officer reassignment mission at SFA/KDFA/Starbase to greatly increase the dil ithium costs on all levels of the exchange making it economically unfeasable to grind up the quantities of low grade officers to reduce the volume being stored.
4. The increase in bound equipment generated by missions, c-store, reputation drops are all increasing the items we must manage and store without any increase in general storage.
Each of these factors have created a problem which the mail system was a bandaid to address. Now that this has been eliminated, there is a unreasolved issue that been building and needs a mechanism. These thread have ample ideas on how to address them, but the elimination of mail as a storage option was the straw that broke the camels back. If it wasn't there in the first place, the starbase introduction itself would have created the pressure for a change as that is the catalyst driving the acquisition of doffs which is the most limited in storage options.
According to Branflakes it was and is an exploit and was not designed to be a torage system. Enough said. go cry about the loss of an exploit all you want they will not revert the decision and you are lucky they didnt ban you.
Can you please point out where this was stated? All I have seen from any developer on the issue is a tweet that stated that the mail changes were intended. Has there been an additional statement or are you merely infering the reason for the change from that vague statement?
Can you please point out where this was stated? All I have seen from any developer on the issue is a tweet that stated that the mail changes were intended. Has there been an additional statement or are you merely infering the reason for the change from that vague statement?
I just went back through all of Brandons tweets right back to LoR launch day and he claimed on the 22nd that he wasn't aware of a limit being imposed, only that he knew people were having issues with deleting mails. Then the following day he confirms that the limit is here to stay.
He is asked several times about the new mail limit, and in every single response he just confirms that the limit is now 100 items and that the "unable to delete mail" issue was being worked on. At no point in his official communications, nor any from any Dev that took place on these forums (or anywhere that I could find) does he or anyone from PWE or Cryptic, state that it was an exploit. The closest he or anyone gets to that kind of comment is Brandon stating that the mail was never supposed to be infinite.
So what. CoH had an exploit for about 6 years that allowed players to put items into an allied Super Group's storage bins. There was no pressing reason to fix it until it was discovered that there was a way the storage bins could be plundered without leaving a record of who was removing items from storage.
Just because something has been left alone because it doesn't have a high priority to fix doesn't mean it was always intended to work that way.
It also means that classifying it as exploit and hurling vitriolic abuse at people is unwarranted and unnecessary.
And yet for years it was not an exploit. Funny that eh?
For years we didn't have star bases and their levelling projects. This meant no strain on the system to the point it was causing possible problems and so became a blip on their radar. Therefore they did not envisage it being used as such a large scale storage system.
We have no idea what brought this to their attention.
I am not one looking down from on high here as I also use the mail as storage. However I can see why they instigated this change. How it was done however was wrong, it was decietful and low handed. It should have been announced in the patch notes atleast and preferably with forewarning to allow people to sort things out. They still haven't as far as I know, confirmed it on the forum only on twitter.
They know about fleet project requirements so they should have added some sort of DOFF project storage system into the starbases themselves. This could have avoided this sort of issue in the first place.
However it could have been worse, it could have been a delete after 30 days system. Now imagine how people would feel then.
And yet for years it was not an exploit. Funny that eh?
It always was an exploit. Using a system in a manner it was not intended for, to circumvent other limitations in the game, is exploiting that system.
The fact that the devs made closing that loophole a low-priority item for so long, did not legitimize the exploitation of that system by the users.
The fact that some users have created rationalizations for why they are using said system for a purpose they know it wasn't intended for, does not make exploiting said loophole any more legitimate.
As for 'need'? Turn off the lights, take a deep breath, and relax. This is a game. There is no 'need' here.
Those who defend exploiting the mail system as storage, keep referring to the noun definition of 'exploit' in a computer security sense, in their justifications about how the mail storage practice isn't an 'exploit', and in that context they are correct, as they were just using the system as programmed, if not intended.
Those who denounce exploiting the mail system as storage, keep referring to the verb(adverb?) definition of 'exploit' in a generally non-computer security sense, when they say that people have been exploiting the mail system for years, and in that context they are also correct, as many were using it in a manner that it was never intended for.
To evade the storage limitations within the game, that actually were intended to limit people's inventories. The mail storage practice, was exploiting a weakness in design, that nullified the intended purpose of a limited inventory for everyone.
For everyone who has suggested to someone else to just mail stuff to yourself so you don't waste your limited inventory slots and can store a lot more, you participated in exploiting that system, and making the problem bigger.
You guys can go back and forth all you want to, but you know you were exploiting mail to keep more stuff. You know that mail wasn't intended to be storage, or it would have been called "Storage" instead of "Mail". To suggest otherwise, and expect us to believe you honestly weren't knowingly exploiting mail for warehouse storage, would require us to suspend reason and logic to a degree that we aren't capable of, and rather than pretend you weren't exploiting a loophole, just suck it up, man up, and own it. We all already know, we're just waiting on the rest of you to own up to it so we can move past that part and get to the meat of the issue.
As long as you keep pretending otherwise, we're just going to keep calling you out on it. Sorry, but that's just the way it goes.
-- Smoov
ps: all 'you's in this post, refer to 'you' in general, the people who were exploiting mail, not specifically to the person I replied to.
I'm still trying to figure out why the people who don't need to store doffs in the mail for starbase projects, and who therefore aren't affected by this, think they have any business voicing their 'thoughts' on the matter.
There is a time to speak, and a time to keep silent. Self control is the foundation of self respect.
Let me get this straight: the only people who should speak on this matter are the ones actively using the technique themselves? :rolleyes:
By that argument, people who have never bought anything through the C-Store should not discuss the C-Store. People who don't own a Galor should not discuss the Galor. Do you see how silly that is?
____
Keep calm, and continue firing photon torpedoes.
The Community staff has been way over the top on this whole issue, calling players exploiters, dispensing false information and asserting conjecture as fact.
Huh?
When did I call someone an exploiter?
As to 'false information', you can't create more than one game account without also technically having the ability to post with that account. Hence, you are in violation of the rule against more than one forum account if you have multiple game accounts.
That assumes you ignore the part where it doesn't specify game or forum account. It just says 'account'.
See, I can lawyer up same as you.
Geeze.
Anyway... Cryptic decided to limit mail attachments. If the second-hand info is correct, they did it because it was contributing to server stability issues. Over and done, not going back. So we need a Plan B for the future.
I'm certainly not going to suggest to players that they should create multiple accounts instead of waiting for Cryptic to come up with Plan B. Cryptic is within their rights to blow away accounts for any reason they can make fit in their ToS, as the Foundry exploit debacle demonstrates.
Cryptic giveth, and Cryptic taketh away. You can test it if you want, but I like my account the way it is.
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
For that matter, when did you become part of the Community staff? Last time I checked, you and I weren't employed by Cryptic or PWE, which makes us not staff. We're just forum users like everybody else, with a little extra ability to clean up the trash. Nothing we say represents PWE unless it's about forum business, and categorizing ingame action as exploit or not isn't forum business.
Anyway, there's no prohibition on multiple game accounts; the terms of service prohibit multiple FORUM accounts, multiple game accounts are fine. This is even in the knowledge base for PWI:
For that matter, when did you become part of the Community staff? Last time I checked, you and I weren't employed by Cryptic or PWE, which makes us not staff. We're just forum users like everybody else, with a little extra ability to clean up the trash. Nothing we say represents PWE unless it's about forum business, and categorizing ingame action as exploit or not isn't forum business.
Anyway, there's no prohibition on multiple game accounts; the terms of service prohibit multiple FORUM accounts, multiple game accounts are fine. This is even in the knowledge base for PWI:
Not the same game, obviously, but still; same TOS for all their games.
That sounds a little misleading, it doesn't say that a player is allowed to have multiple accounts, it says multiple accounts can connect from the same network, for example my wife and I share a router but have 2 different accounts on 2 different computers.
That sounds a little misleading, it doesn't say that a player is allowed to have multiple accounts, it says multiple accounts can connect from the same network, for example my wife and I share a router but have 2 different accounts on 2 different computers.
I'm thinking that a lot of STO players didnt find that because it applies to (PWI) not (STO), two different games by two different companies, hosted at two different groups of data servers.
Well...that still offers nothing new regarding Cryptics policy of multiple accounts for STO, but I did find this in the 'Jade Dynasty' forums:
Based on community feedback and after much deliberation, taking into account the various subtleties of Jade Dynasty, we have devised a Jade Dynasty specific policy regarding multiclienting/multiboxing.
You may only have 2 accounts per person, regardless of how many computers you own.
There isn't a viable reason to create an excessive number of accounts, so any suspicious activity from now on will be fully dealt with. We aren't going to punish you for having existing accounts prior to this rule, but you can only be online on two at once at the most.
*Note: Excessive account creation has been and will continued to be pursued. Provided you did not abuse this before, you should have nothing to worry.
-Greenthorne (community manager)
It does NOT mention any other game except Jade Dynasty, but as you can see from the post PWI does have a policy regarding multiple accounts, just not one specific to STO that I can find, other than whats already been quoted.
Well...that still offers nothing new regarding Cryptics policy of multiple accounts for STO, but I did find this in the 'Jade Dynasty' forums:
It does NOT mention any other game except Jade Dynasty, but as you can see from the post Cryptic does have a policy regarding multiple accounts, just not one specific to STO that I can find, other than whats already been quoted.
Jade Dynasty and PWI referenced above are both PWE games not Cryptic games.
Jade Dynasty and PWI referenced above are both PWE games not Cryptic games.
Different companies/developers
Different developers, yes; same company, though.
Perfect World Entertainment owns Cryptic. All the games have the same TOS, so in the absence of a rule prohibiting multiple accounts, and with evidence that other games with the same TOS allow at least two accounts, it's reasonable to assume there's no rule against multiple accounts in STO unless and until PWE creates such a rule.
They don't explicitly allow it, but they don't explicitly prohibit it, and there's nothing that seems to otherwise indicate it's prohibited.
Unless you see a rule that you think it violates, I think you're pretty much in the clear, unless you make a second account to avoid the ban of the first.
The forums, however, explicitly have a rule; so it's prohibited here.
Make sense?
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
Comments
I've already been through this, in this very thread. Making "mule" accounts is NOT AGAINST THE TOS.
wait what?
Ah, now here is the rub. PWE/Cryptic could, since it is their property, decide that creating multiple free accounts for the sole purpose of storage is an exploit. Even though the system is designed for this, and under the current rules allows for it. But then the original mail system followed the exact same path, and look where that ended.
Sig by my better half.
And... your point? PWE/Cryptic could also decide that logging in is an exploit. Maybe everyone should stop doing that in anticipation of that ruling.
Anyway, it seems unlikely that they would try to crack down on something that they couldn't enforce. (Not without alienating a lot of potential customers.)
Thanks for the slippery slope argument but really, creating multiple accounts for storage seems far more questionable and doesn't solve the issue. You know, some of us might actually want to play the game from time to time and not spend our time moving from account to account to deal with a poor game design and an arbitrary developer choice that is likely completely unrelated to STO.
It is an in game change so there should be an in game solution to the problem. We have many suggestions that can earn the developers revenue as well as provide a more convienent method to organize and utilize storage.
Thank donutsmasher.
Something that's common practice in practically every MMO?
Oh, I'd prefer a sensible solution too. I just don't think Cryptic will come up with one. And I have zero interest in contributing to their revenue.
Actually, that particular slippery slope comes courtesy of Cryptic/PWE, not me. As I made quite clear in my post, for years the mail system and peoples use of it as a storage solution was absolutely fine and dandy with Cryptic/PWE. Until the day it wasn't. And then *poof* it was changed without so much as a by-your-leave, causing untold headaches for everyone.
Now we have people suggesting that players just make new, free accounts to use as storage. At the same time we have appear to have a moderator saying that this is against the TOS/EULA and that we should not do this, despite it not actually being anywhere in the TOS/EULA. Since Cryptic et al have already made such a drastic alteration to their own rules once, without a single notification anywhere ahead of time, they have given everyone more than enough cause to believe they would do so again.
As for me, I am one of the people offering viable, cost effective and profitable methods of replacing the lost functionality of the old mail storage system. Getting anyone at Cryptic/PWE to read the things we write, I fear, would take a lot more than just posting on here and sending in tickets. So far they appear as uninterested in us, as most people are about the microbes living on the soles of their shoes.
Sig by my better half.
It is called freedom of speech, and everyone has a right to it whether we agree with them or not. Lets leave the snide remarks and antagonism to them shall we?
Sig by my better half.
This has nothing to do with this thread, please don't drag it off track with personal issues about moderation, thank you.
Sig by my better half.
It was exploiting. if it wasnt they would not charge zen for extra bank slots or to upgrade the amount of DOFF's you can have on a character that not being sold in exchange. You may not like it being called an exploiter but that is exactly what you were doing. No MMO game has ever considered mail a storage system And I am amazed they didnt put a 10 day limit on attachments before the atachment gets added back to inventory automaticaly.
Truthfully I have 0 none nada sympathy for anyone complianing about losing the mail system as an unlimited bank. Especialy about DOFF's being horded for fleet projects. first if you are in a fleet with hundreds of members and you go to your bank and pull the DOFFS required for the projects and complete that part you are hurting all the other members who have DOFF's to donate but no dilithium. They may want some fleet credits too. Second Fleet projectys are meant for many people to contribute to. If you are doing it solo then suffer the f@#$ing consequences of doing the work of 200+ people solo.
Also Did you even read my post or pick 2 points and go off on them half cocked and half TRIBBLE? My suggestion of selling the overflow DOFF's on the exchange, saving the EC from that and buying DOFF's from the saved EC is a workaround and makes this whole DOFF storage issue moot.
"I'm drunk, whats your excuse for being an idiot?" - Unknown drunk man. :eek:
Have you bothered reading any of these threads or are you just spouting off to gloat. The mail was never an exploit. It was designed that way, and utilized that way for years. No developer has called it an exploit, no accounts were banned or rolled back for it. Your catargorization is hurtful and masks the real issues involved. We are not begrudging the developers earning cash. In fact we have stated numerous ways that they could earn more cash from us by enacting certain changes (some of which would take almost no effort such as unlimiting the numbers of doff slots/bank slots we could buy).
You just don't seem to have a clue regarding the sheer quantity of doffs we are talking about. I only have 40 sales slots on a character and lots of things to sell including higher quality doffs, gear, commodites, and other things I gather. I will give you an example from today to hopefully educate you. Today, I opened about 210 boxes to get the 60 security officers that were missing. Thankfully there were 3 tac projects going that hadn't been filled on the doff requirements so I had an opportunity to dump those 160 tac officers in, but that rarely happens. 200 doffs is a small run, it gets larger when your after the medical officers who are even rarer. We don't have the doff storage to deal with the quantities and can't get rid of them fast enough on the exchange.
I am in a large fleet, but people tend to go for the easy Science and Tactical officers and leave the Security and Medical remainder that take lots of work. They want the easy dil, expertise, commodities, fleet marks turn ins. Doffs don't drop in quantities so they leave it to the professional doffers to handle. Sure, myself and other doffers could wait for other fleet members to slowly fill it, but that turns the project into a several day affair and slows starbase projects to a crawl. Other fleet members don't want that, they want a fresh project to earn easy fleet credits with. It is a problem of the doff distribution that has existed. I don't want to store the doffs but I couldn't deal with them in any reasonable manner but storing them. Now that has been taken away and starbase progress languishes. It isn't your business how we run our fleets, I don't tell you how to run yours.
According to Branflakes it was and is an exploit and was not designed to be a torage system. Enough said. go cry about the loss of an exploit all you want they will not revert the decision and you are lucky they didnt ban you.
"I'm drunk, whats your excuse for being an idiot?" - Unknown drunk man. :eek:
What? I'm not American. Free speech isn't just an American thing, you know that right?
Sig by my better half.
And yet for years it was not an exploit. Funny that eh?
Sig by my better half.
There is no C-Store doff bank, there is only the 300 extra slots you can purchase which is bound and limited to a total of 400 doffs. Account bank and additional inventory and bank slots are available but also ultimately restricted. The lack of mail restrictions predates all these changes so that would suggest that while perhaps not considered it certainly wasn't a flaw or exploit. Furthermore even assuming this wasn't as intended, there is no reason there was no announcement made so that players could try and make adjustments or raise the important storage issue prior to the changes so perhaps adjustments could have been made.
On your second point, this storage problem would have been an issue sooner with some of the changes they implimented if mail had not been an imperfect workaround. Several design changes from F2P to the present patch have caused these storage problems as I listed below independent of mail changes.
1. The introduction of the starbase system and the method of filling projects with only white doffs greatly increased the needs for these doffs.
2. The introduction of the duty officer crates to generate doffs at a great disparity between what is required for the missions and what is generated due to the calculations based on the numbers of doff catagories in a given class (hence security and medical with only 3 and 5 classes greatly outnumbered by the tactical and science catagories they are paired with resulting in large quanties of low value doffs.
3. The alteration of the duty officer reassignment mission at SFA/KDFA/Starbase to greatly increase the dil ithium costs on all levels of the exchange making it economically unfeasable to grind up the quantities of low grade officers to reduce the volume being stored.
4. The increase in bound equipment generated by missions, c-store, reputation drops are all increasing the items we must manage and store without any increase in general storage.
Each of these factors have created a problem which the mail system was a bandaid to address. Now that this has been eliminated, there is a unreasolved issue that been building and needs a mechanism. These thread have ample ideas on how to address them, but the elimination of mail as a storage option was the straw that broke the camels back. If it wasn't there in the first place, the starbase introduction itself would have created the pressure for a change as that is the catalyst driving the acquisition of doffs which is the most limited in storage options.
Can you please point out where this was stated? All I have seen from any developer on the issue is a tweet that stated that the mail changes were intended. Has there been an additional statement or are you merely infering the reason for the change from that vague statement?
I just went back through all of Brandons tweets right back to LoR launch day and he claimed on the 22nd that he wasn't aware of a limit being imposed, only that he knew people were having issues with deleting mails. Then the following day he confirms that the limit is here to stay.
He is asked several times about the new mail limit, and in every single response he just confirms that the limit is now 100 items and that the "unable to delete mail" issue was being worked on. At no point in his official communications, nor any from any Dev that took place on these forums (or anywhere that I could find) does he or anyone from PWE or Cryptic, state that it was an exploit. The closest he or anyone gets to that kind of comment is Brandon stating that the mail was never supposed to be infinite.
Sig by my better half.
It also means that classifying it as exploit and hurling vitriolic abuse at people is unwarranted and unnecessary.
Sig by my better half.
For years we didn't have star bases and their levelling projects. This meant no strain on the system to the point it was causing possible problems and so became a blip on their radar. Therefore they did not envisage it being used as such a large scale storage system.
We have no idea what brought this to their attention.
I am not one looking down from on high here as I also use the mail as storage. However I can see why they instigated this change. How it was done however was wrong, it was decietful and low handed. It should have been announced in the patch notes atleast and preferably with forewarning to allow people to sort things out. They still haven't as far as I know, confirmed it on the forum only on twitter.
They know about fleet project requirements so they should have added some sort of DOFF project storage system into the starbases themselves. This could have avoided this sort of issue in the first place.
However it could have been worse, it could have been a delete after 30 days system. Now imagine how people would feel then.
The fact that the devs made closing that loophole a low-priority item for so long, did not legitimize the exploitation of that system by the users.
The fact that some users have created rationalizations for why they are using said system for a purpose they know it wasn't intended for, does not make exploiting said loophole any more legitimate.
As for 'need'? Turn off the lights, take a deep breath, and relax. This is a game. There is no 'need' here.
Those who defend exploiting the mail system as storage, keep referring to the noun definition of 'exploit' in a computer security sense, in their justifications about how the mail storage practice isn't an 'exploit', and in that context they are correct, as they were just using the system as programmed, if not intended.
Those who denounce exploiting the mail system as storage, keep referring to the verb(adverb?) definition of 'exploit' in a generally non-computer security sense, when they say that people have been exploiting the mail system for years, and in that context they are also correct, as many were using it in a manner that it was never intended for.
To evade the storage limitations within the game, that actually were intended to limit people's inventories. The mail storage practice, was exploiting a weakness in design, that nullified the intended purpose of a limited inventory for everyone.
For everyone who has suggested to someone else to just mail stuff to yourself so you don't waste your limited inventory slots and can store a lot more, you participated in exploiting that system, and making the problem bigger.
You guys can go back and forth all you want to, but you know you were exploiting mail to keep more stuff. You know that mail wasn't intended to be storage, or it would have been called "Storage" instead of "Mail". To suggest otherwise, and expect us to believe you honestly weren't knowingly exploiting mail for warehouse storage, would require us to suspend reason and logic to a degree that we aren't capable of, and rather than pretend you weren't exploiting a loophole, just suck it up, man up, and own it. We all already know, we're just waiting on the rest of you to own up to it so we can move past that part and get to the meat of the issue.
As long as you keep pretending otherwise, we're just going to keep calling you out on it. Sorry, but that's just the way it goes.
-- Smoov
ps: all 'you's in this post, refer to 'you' in general, the people who were exploiting mail, not specifically to the person I replied to.
By that argument, people who have never bought anything through the C-Store should not discuss the C-Store. People who don't own a Galor should not discuss the Galor. Do you see how silly that is?
Keep calm, and continue firing photon torpedoes.
Huh?
When did I call someone an exploiter?
As to 'false information', you can't create more than one game account without also technically having the ability to post with that account. Hence, you are in violation of the rule against more than one forum account if you have multiple game accounts.
That assumes you ignore the part where it doesn't specify game or forum account. It just says 'account'.
See, I can lawyer up same as you.
Geeze.
Anyway... Cryptic decided to limit mail attachments. If the second-hand info is correct, they did it because it was contributing to server stability issues. Over and done, not going back. So we need a Plan B for the future.
I'm certainly not going to suggest to players that they should create multiple accounts instead of waiting for Cryptic to come up with Plan B. Cryptic is within their rights to blow away accounts for any reason they can make fit in their ToS, as the Foundry exploit debacle demonstrates.
Cryptic giveth, and Cryptic taketh away. You can test it if you want, but I like my account the way it is.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
For that matter, when did you become part of the Community staff? Last time I checked, you and I weren't employed by Cryptic or PWE, which makes us not staff. We're just forum users like everybody else, with a little extra ability to clean up the trash. Nothing we say represents PWE unless it's about forum business, and categorizing ingame action as exploit or not isn't forum business.
Anyway, there's no prohibition on multiple game accounts; the terms of service prohibit multiple FORUM accounts, multiple game accounts are fine. This is even in the knowledge base for PWI:
https://support.perfectworld.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1775/kw/multiple%20accounts
Not the same game, obviously, but still; same TOS for all their games.
That sounds a little misleading, it doesn't say that a player is allowed to have multiple accounts, it says multiple accounts can connect from the same network, for example my wife and I share a router but have 2 different accounts on 2 different computers.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
OK, how about this one:
https://support.perfectworld.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1776/kw/multiple%20accounts/related/1
I'm thinking that a lot of STO players didnt find that because it applies to (PWI) not (STO), two different games by two different companies, hosted at two different groups of data servers.
But its a good reference, as its something
Well...that still offers nothing new regarding Cryptics policy of multiple accounts for STO, but I did find this in the 'Jade Dynasty' forums:
It does NOT mention any other game except Jade Dynasty, but as you can see from the post PWI does have a policy regarding multiple accounts, just not one specific to STO that I can find, other than whats already been quoted.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
Jade Dynasty and PWI referenced above are both PWE games not Cryptic games.
Different companies/developers
ya, changed it before you posted. Good catch.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
Different developers, yes; same company, though.
Perfect World Entertainment owns Cryptic. All the games have the same TOS, so in the absence of a rule prohibiting multiple accounts, and with evidence that other games with the same TOS allow at least two accounts, it's reasonable to assume there's no rule against multiple accounts in STO unless and until PWE creates such a rule.
They don't explicitly allow it, but they don't explicitly prohibit it, and there's nothing that seems to otherwise indicate it's prohibited.
Unless you see a rule that you think it violates, I think you're pretty much in the clear, unless you make a second account to avoid the ban of the first.
The forums, however, explicitly have a rule; so it's prohibited here.
Make sense?
Hmmm.......
<edit> changed broken to fixed
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG