Showing Posts For Alec Owlyear.6782:

I was banned

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Alec Owlyear.6782

Alec Owlyear.6782

Not to mention it takes two seconds to hit ESC>Logout>Character Select, and relogging from there takes about 10 seconds of a loading screen.

I was banned

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Alec Owlyear.6782

Alec Owlyear.6782

Accidentally leaving a turret behind is one thing, but setting caltrops to auto-attack and leaving makes it pretty hard for me to sympathize. I agree they should have given warnings and changed the TOE, but there is a TON a stuff happening right now, and warning people and keeping track of the warnings takes too much time. There are thousands of REAL botters, so warning each real bot and waiting a week and checking if they’re still botting would take ages and be a nightmare to keep track of the warnings. Additionally, changing the TOE isn’t as simple as changing a for sentences, they have to bring in a lawyer, and have it notarized as a legal contract, then everybody will have to agree to it again on the next login. We likely won’t see a TOE change for just this one issue.

One thing I wish people could understand, is that ANet is probably incredibly chaotic in the offices right now, with coders scrambling to fix game breaking bugs, sound techs searching every dialogue for the missing files, and CS reps dealing with thousands and thousands of people having troubles logging in, getting hacked, or botting. I realize it seems like a huge issue that (most of) you guys have been wrongfully banned, and it is, but their are a lot of things on the list to take care of. The best things you guys can do is follow the directions you were given and keep politely reminding the reps that you’ve been waiting for a while. It’s like keeping track of a school class of 11,000 people with 200 teachers. The best thing you can do is sit tight and wait for help.

I’m sure this isn’t significant, but look at the attitudes of the people already unbanned vs. the people still waiting. Of course this isn’t everybody on both sides, but as two examples, the player who was extremely apologetic and promised to never do it again (despite it just being the healing turret issue) was unbanned relatively quickly, while the player interrogating the CS rep and accusing them of not looking at his case was shrugged away and left with a temporary ban. Make them want to help you, otherwise they’ll go the easy route and just say “Sorry that’s policy,” they are unbanning you guys because you’ve proven you’re either resentful, unknowing, or have been otherwise straightforward in saying “Yes it was 10 minutes AFK, I’m sorry.” They don’t have to unban anybody, since your cases could be covered by the TOE anti-botting clause if they wanted it to, and could just leave you banned.

I was banned

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Alec Owlyear.6782

Alec Owlyear.6782

Here is proof that they don’t investigate! Don’t auto attack and go AFK.

The only proof I see is that:

1. You’ve been a complete kitten to people trying to do their jobs and have had nothing to do with your ban, nor could they reverse it (because of #2)
2. You just admitted to “auto-attacking and going AFK.” No, this is not technically botting, but you earned gold and experience without actually playing the game. That’s like saying it’s okay if you exploited any other oversight in the game and got an unfair advantage. “Mispriced karma items? It’s part of the game, you can’t ban me for keeping them!”
3. The poor CS agents are overwhelmed by people with legitimate issues, compromised accounts, and kittens trying to rationalize why their exploit wasn’t an exploit, and was really just a method of abusing the system for gain without effort.

Word is, next patch they’ll be adding in a free common sense injector, although it appears you’re apparently allergic to it, sadly.

(edited by Alec Owlyear.6782)

Hacker playing on husbands account as I type this

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Alec Owlyear.6782

Alec Owlyear.6782

I see. On the note of same e-mails, I used my GW1 e-mail to reserve my name, then changed my registered e-mail to my unique one.

What would be handy is website that permits multiple e-mails addresses that forward to one central inbox, using the domain name as the unique user name, and the prefix as the e-mail descriptor e.g. “facebook@alecowlyear.gmail.com” and “GW2@alecowlyear.gmail.com” forward to the same inbox and are managed centrally. I know this is possible now, but not widely practically available. Perhaps a total rehashing of the age old e-mail system is in order?

Hacker playing on husbands account as I type this

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Alec Owlyear.6782

Alec Owlyear.6782

Aren’t passwords supposed to be encrypted within the database? Specifically against hackers and unscrupulous employees the same? You usually will see some sort of disclaimer of “If you lose your password we cannot retrieve it”. I would imagine that this is the industry standard, but if not, it could be cause for investigation…

The dialogue... oh lord, the dialogue...

in Personal Story

Posted by: Alec Owlyear.6782

Alec Owlyear.6782

I’m frankly quite impressed with the amount of text going into intelligently and (mostly) calmly critiquing the voice acting in a game.

Now without repeating too much of the same things that have been mentioned a dozen times in this thread, I’ll point out my biggest complaints in extreme punctuated shorthand:

1. Lack of Conversation Options/Inability to have even a SLIGHTLY sinister or ruthless character. No choices other than which paths to take:
e.g. Character is street urchin cutthroat thief suddenly elevated to a positions of power, first thing he does: “Yes sir! I think the strategically best option is to send the troops to confront the enemy at the monastery and ask him nicely to surrender!” HWHAT?

2. Whether they are or aren’t, I get the feeling there were TONS of shortcuts used to reduce the amount of voice acting. I understand there’s a huge amount of money involved with voicing every last thing, but the shortcuts shouldn’t feel so blatant and abrupt:
e.g. While my character is talking to another character during a cutscene, the NPC will (seemingly out of the blue) say something like “Think it over and come talk to me.” “Alright check in later [actually now is great too.]” or better yet, the conversation just ends with no rhyme or reason. I then need to click on the NPC so we can finish our conversation in totally unvoiced text chat.

3. The cartoony cutscenes really detract from immersion. Instead of walking up to a person and engaging them in conversation, you’re suddenly floating in front of a mural of stylized shifting and floating backgrounds, standing totally still, save for the occasional gesture or facial twitch. Again, to me this seems like it would have been a method to cut animation costs, but again, it feels too obvious. Even a cinematic pan up to the characters’ faces would feel more appropriate than the current system. I strongly dislike it in general.

Remember devs, we only take the time to nit pick because we love the game so much! <3

Hacker playing on husbands account as I type this

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Alec Owlyear.6782

Alec Owlyear.6782

I agree wholeheartedly with sdsakuragi, if somebody buys a house and installs the same lock on all the doors using the same key as their car, office and safe, they can’t very well blame the architect for it when one key goes missing and they come home to an empty house.

It’s one thing to blame the victim of a crime when it’s a totally random mugging on the street or brute-force password crack. When the person is walking around with their wallet hanging from their pants by a thread or with the same password and e-mail for another account on this one(ESPECIALLY if that other database was compromised, that includes a lot of Bnet and other MMOs).

The thing is, this may seem like 11,000 totally random victims, but in all honesty, I would bet good money that their e-mail and password combination for their hacked accounts was used on a website/game that was compromised or was otherwise keylogged or intercepted. If you were to hear about 11,000 random muggings, it would indicate a lack of security and police enforcement. If you were to hear of 11,000 unlocked houses being burgled, it would indicate…that these houses were indeed unlocked.

Lastly, I’d like to point out that hackers often work in communities, sometimes even in ‘syndicates,’ and have access to thousands of credentials from their own community and likely many others. If your password has been cracked ever, they’ll probably have it on file in a spreadsheet, and it’s as simple as plugging the sheet into a bot program that auto-tries every known compromised e-mail/password combo.

(edited by Alec Owlyear.6782)

I play a necro, but I traid a warrior for one play session...

in PvP

Posted by: Alec Owlyear.6782

Alec Owlyear.6782

I’ve only been playing for hardly a week but here’s the way I can see it having played plenty of Necro and read most of this thread.

The Necro skill curve is an inverse bell curve. There’s a lot of people at the low end, and a lot at the high end. There’s not a ton of room in the middle.

From what I’ve read, people are still trying their silly vanilla-MMO tricks of “WHY ISN’T HE DOING 100000000000 DMG PER HIT OMG SUCK” and “BLEED <9000 SUCK”. As somebody else has mentioned, Necro has a very tiered power. He’s not meant to (although in the right hands can) waltz in and deal 16k damage. It’s similar to learning algebra in middle school:
There’s the kids who flip kittens and say “OMG WHY THIS IS STUPID. WHEN IS THIS USEFUL SUCK SUCK SUCK” (“NO DPS = SUCK”)
There’s the kids who don’t get it “You can’t add letters to numbers! It’s BROKEN! Algebra is BROKEN!” (They compare raw numbers of damage/stacks to other classes, when the Necro isn’t so much lethal for his ability to stack a million bleeds, rather to take the cons off his teammates, stack them on the enemy, and steal HIS boons.)
And the few kids who completely understand it and are busy flying spaceships and kittens with their highly advanced middle school level algebra (dealing 16k damage in 2 seconds and stealing retaliations to kill warriors).

One thing I also heard a lot of: “DS only serves as a red flag for when the Necro is about to die.”
Don’t MAKE it a red flag, use it at other times in combat, there’s a free heal bar and a little bit of damage and fear and a weapon switch, then you get back and you could even get LF back up for another DS burst if you’ve specced right and are lucky.

And lastly, YES Necro has a TON of broken things and issues, but they will be fixed as soon as ANet sorts out all the jumbles of kittens jamming up the game right now (wrongful bans/major exploits, bugs/hackers).