Also and this is important I don't pay in credit cards, I pay in debit cards. Why do I mention this, because it is something else to add to your filters, the banks don't risk money on debit cards.
Unless we were making a transaction in the tens of thousands I wouldn't use a credit card, as there would be no benefit in it.
i curious on the conditions of the so call probation , is it just Creditcard purchases , what about paypal, ARC cards and other types of options ?
whats the time frame? is this for each time you use a CC for a purchase ? whats considered vaild purchase history ?
i normally use PWE/ARC cards , but what if i wanted to make another purchase thru another method , being a consistent customer? Any purchase history should go towards these means . not just when you started the policy . the purchase history is there so there is no reason that it cant be used . to be honest to fail to do so will hamper future purchases cuz especially for those that have been buying consistently.
this is a rough few weeks for this IP and cryptic / PWE . this doesnt inspire customer confidence .
Not too sure what the exact conditions it's checking for are. I use PayPal, and I've bought some Zen today without any problems. Though I have always bought my Zen through the website using PayPal and I have quite a lot of payment history showing up just for this year alone.
Join date is wrong, I've actually been around since STO Beta.
True alters don't have a "main". Account wide unlocks for all unique event rewards!!
The Probation is not about buying Zen. It is that the items you purchase with the Zen become Account bound. So if you buy 2,000 Zen and buy a 10-Pack of Keys those Keys are bound to your Account and cannot be sold on the Exchange while you are under Probation - there is a warning that pops up telling you this when you attempt to buy the Keys.
The goal here is to keep people from using stolen Cards to buy Zen, use the Zen to buy Keys or Fleet Modules, sell the Keys/Modules on the Exchange for ECs, then turn around and sell the ECs back to others as a Gold Spammer for $10.00 for 1 million - or whatever rate.
The probation period gives both sides time to declare the transaction fraudulent or legitimate - and thus prevent Gold Sellers from getting any further in the door via stolen Debit/Credit cards.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
I don't understand why they would not just wait to deliver the Zen until the few days have passed at least. It would actually make more sense to delay the completion of a possible fraudulent charge until such time it could be verified.
"I'm not big on telepaths myself. I'm not big on guns either. But if everyone else has them, I want to make sure I can get my hands on the biggest one I can."
The Probation is not about buying Zen. It is that the items you purchase with the Zen become Account bound. So if you buy 2,000 Zen and buy a 10-Pack of Keys those Keys are bound to your Account and cannot be sold on the Exchange while you are under Probation - there is a warning that pops up telling you this when you attempt to buy the Keys.
The goal here is to keep people from using stolen Cards to buy Zen, use the Zen to buy Keys or Fleet Modules, sell the Keys/Modules on the Exchange for ECs, then turn around and sell the ECs back to others as a Gold Spammer for $10.00 for 1 million - or whatever rate.
The probation period gives both sides time to declare the transaction fraudulent or legitimate - and thus prevent Gold Sellers from getting any further in the door via stolen Debit/Credit cards.
It fails, as all the lobi now are split into two stacks. Is this happening with other items, most likely, I haven't opened any more to check. So I am suck with 30 pounds worth of useless keys, let's say one gets that 200 mill ship, well tough I can't sell it right?
No Wrong.
I won't buy anything else until those stacks are united, and this stupid ban is lifted.
Call visa if steam's word is not good enough, if my past history for the last 2 years with STO where I have bought plenty of packs ID's me as someone you need to watch I am confused?
Why the hell would someone who has never sold anything, who has never traded anything, who has never spammed anything be a gold seller? Your reasoning is nonesense.
Check my damned account if you want proof, in fact, no hell with it. I am about to ask for a refund and start legal proceedings. I have had enough.
I don't understand why they would not just wait to deliver the Zen until the few days have passed at least. It would actually make more sense to delay the completion of a possible fraudulent charge until such time it could be verified.
I would imagine most people are buying items that do not matter if they are Account bound or not. For example, if you are buying a new T6 ship it is already Account bound so the Probation means nothing to you. Those people want access to those items immediately and it does not cause problems to let them use them right away. So there is no reason to hold the Zen for 10 days for most players.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
You can send a Support Ticket to billing and hope for the best. Of course as you were notified in-game at the time of purchase that the items would be Account bound, and you did the transaction anyway, your chances of getting a refund are slim. Good luck, though!
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
Why the hell would someone who has never sold anything, who has never traded anything, who has never spammed anything be a gold seller? Your reasoning is nonesense.
I did want to address this part separately. You could be a player of this game for 5 years, like I am, but that does not mean that your Account information cannot be TRIBBLE and your personal information cannot be used by the Hacker to make money for himself in this game. Maybe you were not here a couple of years ago when STO was TRIBBLE, but it does happen, and it can happen again. And considering I recently received a PM about the new ARC Defender software I would not be surprised to hear that Cryptic or PW has been under some serious hacking threats of late - which is why they are implementing all these new procedures. They are trying to protect themselves and us.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
You can send a Support Ticket to billing and hope for the best. Of course as you were notified in-game at the time of purchase that the items would be Account bound, and you did the transaction anyway, your chances of getting a refund are slim. Good luck, though!
Ive done that, and all I get is the run around and computer generated responses. link to my thread here>>>>
You can send a Support Ticket to billing and hope for the best. Of course as you were notified in-game at the time of purchase that the items would be Account bound, and you did the transaction anyway, your chances of getting a refund are slim. Good luck, though!
No I don't hope for the best if a company has mislead me, then I take action against them, simple as.
Are not lobi crystals account bound anyway? If not well I don't see an easy way to sell them, either way making them account bound screws everything up, and falsely advertises what the keys and boxes are. There is no mention of you not being able to use one set of lobi's with the other, there is never a mention of you having two sets of lobi's in your inventory or any currency for that matter.
There is no mention of the new game systems they have for these purchases, if they stick with this bug they are misleading customers. In fact any player is just throwing money away looking for lobi's when you are 'barred' as there is no purchases you'll be able to make. Forever these will sit in my inventory doing nothing, I probably can't even trash them.
I listed out their responses to my questions. My lobi is split, and useless.
Your Lobi can still be used by you, thus it is not "useless." Simply buy something with it that you are not going to sell on the Exchange. Problem solved.
And as I pointed out in the post you quoted, I did say it was a slim chance.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
Your Lobi can still be used by you, thus it is not "useless." Simply buy something with it that you are not going to sell on the Exchange. Problem solved.
And as I pointed out in the post you quoted, I did say it was a slim chance.
No they can't, as they get split into two stacks, the second stack will always be so small to amount to nothing, when they finally 'approve' you again (yeah I feel really insulted btw, after spending decent money for 2 years with the company), then the old stack will keep filling up and the new bugged stack will sit there.
This probably happens with other items I haven't dared using the other 30 keys they bugged out.
Either way, the company can be sure, even when I am approved. I'll never spend half this much again. So if they wanted 1 less customer, what people affectionately called a whale, they did a great job.
No they can't, as they get split into two stacks, the second stack will always be so small to amount to nothing, when they finally 'approve' you again (yeah I feel really insulted btw, after spending decent money for 2 years with the company), then the old stack will keep filling up and the new bugged stack will sit there.
I assume if you attempt to use the Lobi on something the system will use them. They will not just sit on your Account forever.
Either way, the company can be sure, even when I am approved. I'll never spend half this much again. So if they wanted 1 less customer, what people affectionately called a whale, they did a great job.
And that is your right. Good luck to you.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
Wow. Granted I have stopped my purchases but now THIS risk to figure into my cost-analysis matrix, that a purchase could be hobbled in this way? Given that there are reports of users receiving no warning about it prior, I am very displeased on their behalf and wary.
I AM glad you spoke up--late--though I am not personally blaming you, Adamanteus, as it seems yesterday was your first day on the job and this started before you. But this is definitely another trust setback. I'm sorry it's come to this, but I have to be forthright because I see no other way to make sure the severity of these concerns is registered. "Silent" means no chance to make a difference, so I do speak up.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
it doesnt effect me in any way, if i ever do buy zen it will be used anyway and not on the dil market, i hardly ever consider it, but rather to buy something to use. there are those here like cosmic who have over the years stated that they got everything in the game and just build on dilithium stockpiles they get just doing dailies everytime over multiple toons on the account. but ive never had the stomoch to spend my entire life on the computer and on sto doing grinding. so getting zen even locked to the account, it wont be any concern.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Nitpicking is a time-honored tradition of science fiction. Asking your readers not to worry about the "little things" is like asking a dog not to sniff at people's crotches. If there's something that appears to violate natural laws, then you can expect someone's going to point it out. That's just the way things are.
Adamanteus my man, can I suggest writing and posting a dev. blog about on the main site of STO? Surely you realize that most players don't bother with the boards, so a lot of them probably won't have appropriate access to this important info. This is sort of very important, especally for paying customers and can lead to much aggravation of people whose stuff may get messed up or they acted on somethng rashly because they were not informed properly.
Let's keep that communication flowing.
Oh, interesting information, there have been some reports on players experiencing this issue and finding no information about it anywhere, with the customer support providing little additional information and only suggesting to look into the forums, wher no information was to be found.
pweadamenteus, you need to get yourself added to the Dev Tracker. I almost never open the Galactic News Network directly and so I almost missed this post!
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
How many of us use steam? how many of us by zen through steam? I wonder what steam would do if they found out that their purchases were not being honored?
My experience with this new system in Neverwinter wasn't so good. All zen purchases through Steam flagged my account for 2-4 days. Direct purchases through Arc were never flagged. My extensive purchase history through steam was never taken into consideration. Just a FYI.
1) Steam has it's own fraud protections.
2) I've been purchasing Zen through Steam literally for years.
3) The credit card account has been connected to Steam for years before I even came to STO.
Quite simply, the assumption should be a Steam purchase is valid. Not the opposite. While I purchase Zen regularly, I haven't done so since this change. And I will be refraining from doing so until I am convinced there will be no "unintended" consequences.
While I realise new systems can sometimes action in error. In my professional opinion as someone that works within the online games development industry. You do not activate these systems without a support structure in place to ensure errors can be reversed.
I've been affected by this since Thursday 30th November. I'm a legitimate customer that has only ever purchased directly through the ARC website, and have only ever used my Zen for the following things:
Selling Master Keys on Exchange
Selling R&D Packs on exchange
Opening lockboxes myself and selling materials from within
Using Zen on the Dilithium Exchange
Purchasing addons such as duty officer packs
Selling Fleet Ship Modules
Selling Ship Upgrade Tokens
You get the idea... I use my Zen, mostly to get in-game currency to do what I need to do. I also recently purchased the Delta Ops Pack & the Lifetime subscription. Over the last 4-5 months I've probably spent near to $1000 with you which has all been legitimate transactions.
When I purchased the lifetime subscription, your billing system made an error and charged me twice, on two separate cards (as I had them saved on the website). The card I used to purchase lifetime membership I authorised, and went through the two-tier authentication via my bank.
The other however, that your billing system attempted to incorrectly charge, was blocked by my bank as the two-tier authentication was not present. I can only assume that the error in your billing system has caused the suspicious flag on my account.
Regardless, your CS team have been unhelpful, have lacked any decent knowledge of the system and it's potential errors and in general have been quite insensitive about the whole matter. They've accused me countless times of using steam to purchase Zen, when I don't even have it installed on this computer which I solely use for STO.
You have disappointed me, and I can only hope that there aren't more suspensions that have been done in error than you think there are, as it would be quite devastating to your players sentiment. It certainly has had an impact on my perception on the quality of your support, and development strategy.
On Thursday October 30, Star Trek Online enabled a new fraud prevention system. This system has been in place on another Cryptic game, Neverwinter, since July, where it has worked effectively. It has been enabled on STO due to increases in credit card fraud over the past several months.
What this new system does to protect all players is to temporarily change the way ZEN is treated by accounts that may be flagged for consideration in the new probation system. While we are introducing this system into STO, there is a chance that the rules may result in a false positive trigger but we have reduced the chance for that to the bare minimum. When purchasing ZEN, if an account is flagged, it puts the account into a temporary probation state for review by the system. New ZEN buyers and those with a limited purchase history may get temporarily flagged into the probation system. Once you have an established purchase history with us, the system is unlikely to trigger.
When on probation, Zen cannot be traded on the Dilithium Exchange to acquire Dilithium. Also, some purchases made in the C-Store may become bound-to-account instead of being tradable. You will get a warning dialog at the time of purchase letting you know that the purchase will be bound-to-account.
The bound-to-account status is contagious, so that if you open a Lock Box using a Master Key that has this status, everything from the Lock Box will also be bound-to-account in the same way. This contagious nature applies to anything you get from the C-Store that can be opened, and the purpose is to prevent fraudulent purchases from being traded off of the account.
The system is intended to have minimal impact on users who purchase for themselves. All purchases are bound-to-account, so you can still move the purchases between your own characters. This is only an inconvenience if you planned to purchase for later trading to other players.
If you receive the warning about a C-Store purchase being bound-to-account and do not wish to have bound items, cancel your purchase and try again the next day. The probation status is removed from your account once the financial transaction is confirmed, which can take up to 10 days. Any purchase you make after the probation status is cleared will not have the bound-to-account status added, and can be traded freely. Purchased items that become bound-to-account will permanently remain account bound, so you need to make this choice before purchasing.
Current and past users that have an established purchase history with us are less likely to have this ever trigger on their accounts so the majority of you should not see any difference when you purchase Zen and items.
Thank you for your continued support!
Aaron "Adamanteus" Biedma
Product Manager
Star Trek Online
Thanks for posting this, hard to find any information like this. They -DEFINTITELY- needed to put this in large print somewhere else on the game FAQs/info and not buried in responses or on the forums. Especially since this hit a bunch of recent lifetime subscription buyers. I got hit by the dilithium-zen security nonsense (and I do use Arc, not Steam) I -think- on 31 October--at least when I first noticed it. So 10 days will be about 9 or 10 November. And I had purchased zen in the past on the same card prior--so... *shrug*
with such limited information and the chance of being miss-flagged, i dont think i will risk purchasing any more zen. it isnt that i do much in terms of trading, but if i spend my money on zen, i want to be able to use it how i wish, and purchasing dilithium is always a possibility.
This,
Thanks Cryptic, you're making saving my money for the holidays a lot easier. Too bad that pesky detrimental affect to the game and all, but you understand.
Reviewing comments, It would appear your're getting a few false positives.
I may have 1000 problems that I have to deal with, but thankfully, this latest fustercluck isn't going to be one of them.
So, as I have found out the last couple days, it is not just the Zen you buy! All the dilithium I have refined and turned to Zen across a few characters is ALSO locked.
This would be funny if it just wasn't so sad, Sad at the absolute and complete cumulative mess thing's have become with this expansion.
Trying to do the right thing for the right reason and implementing it so badly that it further damages your corporate reputation is not a good idea. Take more time, do it right, and ensure that the innocent are not harmed.
Cryptic and PWE's business ethics are already questionable enough without adding the fire of banning Steam users for utilizing a feature that's been built into STO since the beginning, affecting their actual Steam accounts is unforgivable and hopefully, actionable in court.
Keep in mind that you're not just affecting what goes on in your game, you're risking the IRE of much bigger software developers than yourselves by causing Steam users to be banned from their Steam accounts due to your poorly implemented security measures, and they did NOT accept any contracts from you guys.
So, as I have found out the last couple days, it is not just the Zen you buy! All the dilithium I have refined and turned to Zen across a few characters is ALSO locked.
So, not only does having the temerity to actually buy Zen from you guys mean that that Zen is now locked down and can't be turned to dilithium, but as an added bonus I can no longer use dilithium refined on my alts?!
I can BUY zen just fine with dilithium on all chars, I just can't turn it back into dilithium, for an unspecified amount of time.
So basically, buying Zen right now just completely SCREWS your dilithium production for, what, 1 to 15 days depending on when you get around to unlocking my account? On top of TRIBBLE with your lockbox keys and the "viral" nature of the lockdown TRIBBLE over anything you do with said keys... yeah.
Don't give these morons any money, people! Whoever approved this system is either a complete moron or intentionally evil.
Purchasing zen through steam should be OK, i have been a steam user since 2004!!!!
Your new protection is beyond worthless, i have not been playing STO since i first got that message on the zen store. I just don't feel like playing when you are assuming i am gaining zen illegaly.
Ignoring me and the other players who feel the same way will make things even worse.
According to STEAM i have been playing STO for 4825 hours....I regret spending so much money on this game.
I await an official statement from the admins!!!
Perfectworld:
My wallet has just put you on indefinite probation!!!!
You should get the development team to check a couple of things:
1. Some users have reported not receiving a warning or receiving a warning only after they've made a purchase from the C-Store. You should send users an email or in-game mail notifying them if they have been put on probation.
2. Some users have reported being put on probation simply for buying Zen through Steam. Purchases from Steam should not be automatically flagged.
Also, we should have been notified about this fraud prevention system before it was put in place, not after several users reported not being able to buy Zen. You should also give customer support the ability to remove the probationary period from accounts that have been erroneously flagged. That way, when a customer contacts customer support, they can actually do something about it.
Comments
Unless we were making a transaction in the tens of thousands I wouldn't use a credit card, as there would be no benefit in it.
Not too sure what the exact conditions it's checking for are. I use PayPal, and I've bought some Zen today without any problems. Though I have always bought my Zen through the website using PayPal and I have quite a lot of payment history showing up just for this year alone.
The goal here is to keep people from using stolen Cards to buy Zen, use the Zen to buy Keys or Fleet Modules, sell the Keys/Modules on the Exchange for ECs, then turn around and sell the ECs back to others as a Gold Spammer for $10.00 for 1 million - or whatever rate.
The probation period gives both sides time to declare the transaction fraudulent or legitimate - and thus prevent Gold Sellers from getting any further in the door via stolen Debit/Credit cards.
It fails, as all the lobi now are split into two stacks. Is this happening with other items, most likely, I haven't opened any more to check. So I am suck with 30 pounds worth of useless keys, let's say one gets that 200 mill ship, well tough I can't sell it right?
No Wrong.
I won't buy anything else until those stacks are united, and this stupid ban is lifted.
Call visa if steam's word is not good enough, if my past history for the last 2 years with STO where I have bought plenty of packs ID's me as someone you need to watch I am confused?
Why the hell would someone who has never sold anything, who has never traded anything, who has never spammed anything be a gold seller? Your reasoning is nonesense.
Check my damned account if you want proof, in fact, no hell with it. I am about to ask for a refund and start legal proceedings. I have had enough.
Where do I ask for a refund for my purchase?
Ive done that, and all I get is the run around and computer generated responses. link to my thread here>>>>
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1282281&page=3
I listed out their responses to my questions. My lobi is split, and useless.
No I don't hope for the best if a company has mislead me, then I take action against them, simple as.
Are not lobi crystals account bound anyway? If not well I don't see an easy way to sell them, either way making them account bound screws everything up, and falsely advertises what the keys and boxes are. There is no mention of you not being able to use one set of lobi's with the other, there is never a mention of you having two sets of lobi's in your inventory or any currency for that matter.
There is no mention of the new game systems they have for these purchases, if they stick with this bug they are misleading customers. In fact any player is just throwing money away looking for lobi's when you are 'barred' as there is no purchases you'll be able to make. Forever these will sit in my inventory doing nothing, I probably can't even trash them.
And as I pointed out in the post you quoted, I did say it was a slim chance.
No they can't, as they get split into two stacks, the second stack will always be so small to amount to nothing, when they finally 'approve' you again (yeah I feel really insulted btw, after spending decent money for 2 years with the company), then the old stack will keep filling up and the new bugged stack will sit there.
This probably happens with other items I haven't dared using the other 30 keys they bugged out.
Either way, the company can be sure, even when I am approved. I'll never spend half this much again. So if they wanted 1 less customer, what people affectionately called a whale, they did a great job.
And that is your right. Good luck to you.
I AM glad you spoke up--late--though I am not personally blaming you, Adamanteus, as it seems yesterday was your first day on the job and this started before you. But this is definitely another trust setback. I'm sorry it's come to this, but I have to be forthright because I see no other way to make sure the severity of these concerns is registered. "Silent" means no chance to make a difference, so I do speak up.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Sounds to me like it's time for some people to file chargebacks with their banks for service not rendered as advertized.
Joined January 2009
Let's keep that communication flowing.
pweadamenteus, you need to get yourself added to the Dev Tracker. I almost never open the Galactic News Network directly and so I almost missed this post!
1) Steam has it's own fraud protections.
2) I've been purchasing Zen through Steam literally for years.
3) The credit card account has been connected to Steam for years before I even came to STO.
Quite simply, the assumption should be a Steam purchase is valid. Not the opposite. While I purchase Zen regularly, I haven't done so since this change. And I will be refraining from doing so until I am convinced there will be no "unintended" consequences.
I've been affected by this since Thursday 30th November. I'm a legitimate customer that has only ever purchased directly through the ARC website, and have only ever used my Zen for the following things:
You get the idea... I use my Zen, mostly to get in-game currency to do what I need to do. I also recently purchased the Delta Ops Pack & the Lifetime subscription. Over the last 4-5 months I've probably spent near to $1000 with you which has all been legitimate transactions.
When I purchased the lifetime subscription, your billing system made an error and charged me twice, on two separate cards (as I had them saved on the website). The card I used to purchase lifetime membership I authorised, and went through the two-tier authentication via my bank.
The other however, that your billing system attempted to incorrectly charge, was blocked by my bank as the two-tier authentication was not present. I can only assume that the error in your billing system has caused the suspicious flag on my account.
Regardless, your CS team have been unhelpful, have lacked any decent knowledge of the system and it's potential errors and in general have been quite insensitive about the whole matter. They've accused me countless times of using steam to purchase Zen, when I don't even have it installed on this computer which I solely use for STO.
You have disappointed me, and I can only hope that there aren't more suspensions that have been done in error than you think there are, as it would be quite devastating to your players sentiment. It certainly has had an impact on my perception on the quality of your support, and development strategy.
Thanks for posting this, hard to find any information like this. They -DEFINTITELY- needed to put this in large print somewhere else on the game FAQs/info and not buried in responses or on the forums. Especially since this hit a bunch of recent lifetime subscription buyers. I got hit by the dilithium-zen security nonsense (and I do use Arc, not Steam) I -think- on 31 October--at least when I first noticed it. So 10 days will be about 9 or 10 November. And I had purchased zen in the past on the same card prior--so... *shrug*
Website: http://saw.iclanwebsites.com
Also note it says under my name i am a Champions Online User, i play Star Trek Online and have no idea how to change that lol
This,
Thanks Cryptic, you're making saving my money for the holidays a lot easier. Too bad that pesky detrimental affect to the game and all, but you understand.
Reviewing comments, It would appear your're getting a few false positives.
I may have 1000 problems that I have to deal with, but thankfully, this latest fustercluck isn't going to be one of them.
You'd might wanna send out the forum hounds anytime now. Oh, never mind, forum changes incoming ! LOLZ, I forgot....
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1287731
Sigh... even more unfavorable metrics for you to analyze I'm afraid.
This would be funny if it just wasn't so sad, Sad at the absolute and complete cumulative mess thing's have become with this expansion.
Cryptic and PWE's business ethics are already questionable enough without adding the fire of banning Steam users for utilizing a feature that's been built into STO since the beginning, affecting their actual Steam accounts is unforgivable and hopefully, actionable in court.
Keep in mind that you're not just affecting what goes on in your game, you're risking the IRE of much bigger software developers than yourselves by causing Steam users to be banned from their Steam accounts due to your poorly implemented security measures, and they did NOT accept any contracts from you guys.
So, not only does having the temerity to actually buy Zen from you guys mean that that Zen is now locked down and can't be turned to dilithium, but as an added bonus I can no longer use dilithium refined on my alts?!
I can BUY zen just fine with dilithium on all chars, I just can't turn it back into dilithium, for an unspecified amount of time.
So basically, buying Zen right now just completely SCREWS your dilithium production for, what, 1 to 15 days depending on when you get around to unlocking my account? On top of TRIBBLE with your lockbox keys and the "viral" nature of the lockdown TRIBBLE over anything you do with said keys... yeah.
Don't give these morons any money, people! Whoever approved this system is either a complete moron or intentionally evil.
Your new protection is beyond worthless, i have not been playing STO since i first got that message on the zen store. I just don't feel like playing when you are assuming i am gaining zen illegaly.
Ignoring me and the other players who feel the same way will make things even worse.
According to STEAM i have been playing STO for 4825 hours....I regret spending so much money on this game.
I await an official statement from the admins!!!
1. Some users have reported not receiving a warning or receiving a warning only after they've made a purchase from the C-Store. You should send users an email or in-game mail notifying them if they have been put on probation.
2. Some users have reported being put on probation simply for buying Zen through Steam. Purchases from Steam should not be automatically flagged.
Also, we should have been notified about this fraud prevention system before it was put in place, not after several users reported not being able to buy Zen. You should also give customer support the ability to remove the probationary period from accounts that have been erroneously flagged. That way, when a customer contacts customer support, they can actually do something about it.