Petition for permanent IP ban punishment option

[myriverse]

They should enable Froglok PC models and force every character they ever make to be frogs.

[Lagaidh]

Economy's been rough in my sector ever since the last population spike. I haven't been able to break the 12k saved barrier in a long time (it's a good thing I'm not spending). I'd wager some of the plat-price increase on key items has to do with raw demand.

For an item with multi-class and multi race use like the fungi, sure the price has gone up. So has the server population. For a class-specific item for a class with stable higher level numbers, like the paladin, we see the price dropping. Just ask my DW BP that depreciates by the second. (Okay, the click 300+ heal is still worth, to me, what I originally paid.)

[SirAlvarex]

Originally Posted by Lazortag [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

2.5k a pull? What a ripoff!



While it's true that you can just get a new IP, the point is that these people shouldn't be allowed to keep playing if they've been "permanently" banned. Ie, if they admit to being who they are in game, they should be banned again, and if their guild hides who they are, the guild should be punished too. The only way to get around this would be to cheat and just assume a new identity, but then you wouldn't be able to get PLed back to 60 easily, so it's not that big of a harm. The biggest problem is when people get banned and then use their connections to get PLed again. This has been a huge issue on both servers and it would be great to see it addressed.

This. A community blacklist is probably our best option for "permanent bans". I wouldn't off rewards (it would start a witch hunt), so I agree that offering punishment if a guild "knew" about a blacklisted player is in their guild.

There really isn't any way I can think of otherwise.

IP Ban? Nope, those can be dynamic.

MAC address ban? Those can be spoofed even easier, and even then the information might not be in the headers that are being sent to the server.

Phone ban? Intrusive to players, and has an over-arcing "why am I giving my phone number to some random dude on the internet that is running an emulated server..." feel to it. I wouldn't doubt if some cheap services are out there where you could get a "floating number." But as a plus this would probably cut down on the account sales if there was a google authenticator requirement.

Email ban? This would be possible if you had to use an email that had been active for X amount of time (similar to the phone idea thrown out there). But then the RMT'ers/cheaters would just hoard emails.

[Lyra]

Need to punish both the buyer and the seller.

Buyers are a bunch of wimps that can't even play a 13 year old game without cheating. They would be easier to scare than the sellers.

Not sure how to catch buyers without P99 staff putting out fake adds and banning buyers. I doubt the easy way is legal. Maybe someone could give them free legal advise how to do this.

Another option targeted at sellers: We players donate to a fund specifically used for P99 staff to "buy" plat and then ban accounts associated with the plat transfer. This would only be effective if they can trace plat transfers. I don't know what they can see.

Word would spread. This would get easier to control.

[jkfranklin]

Originally Posted by Nocturne [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

First of all I wasn't caught RMT'n. There is no evidence whatsoever that I ever RMT'd, only that I propositioned a couple people. Second of all, I know you're fucking retarded and all and for this reason a permanent IP ban would work on you but to anyone with a brain it would take a very short amount of time to hop on a VPN and problem solved. Third of all, if I really gave a fuck what some worthless pieces of shit like you thought about me, I would try to hide my identity better and nobody would even have ever had a clue who the fuck I am.

ban this dumb mother fucker pls.

[Lagaidh]

You know... compared to last year, there are things in the economy that are more affordable than ever.

I used Zanderr's services and got a Pegasus Feather Cloak for 4k. I never did get one of those effin' things in Live. A pittance of plat, my and my wife's attention and aid, and Zanderr had helped me get one in less than a few hours (under 3 if I recall).

That's an incredible value!

Some items will always be huge in price because of how they alter the game for the owner. Fungi tunics are in this realm. Actually, now that I think of it, there's a good reason the phrase e-peen was born... Really good gear in EQ is like having a big ol' dick in real life. The gear won't make you a better player, and a giant dick isn't going to make you a better lover, however, having the gear or the elephant dong will forgive a lot of mistakes of ignorance.

Me? The e-peen pixels I enjoy owning, and an item that simply reminds me of what I love in EQ is the Cloak of Flames.

I got one. I don't raid. I paid through the nose for it. Me and the wife's toon went back to ghetto threads for a while to raise the cash for it when the opportunity arose.

Now, if I can take even 20% of all the forum talk of RMT at face value, I can see how the practice can raise the price on hot items, sure, but when price spikes begin alongside of a population spike... well... supply and demand. They're fundamental tenants of an economy!

[ymw]

I voted yes to the permanent part. There's no way to completely and utterly block someone off and there are certainly better ways than an IP ban to try, but *something* a bit more permanent would be awesome for the people that truly deserve it.

I know there's concern about false positive, but I'd like to think that qualifying for one of the more extreme banning methods would also include a much, much more cut and dry offense/set of offenses.

[Exmo]

Originally Posted by tommydgun [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Nocturne: "Heyyyy moooooom can I borrowwww your phoooone?!?!?!"

/workedaround

Sure, also 40 bucks for a 1 month cheap ass pre-paid phone. There's work arounds for everything. Short of Emailing a Copy of your Driver's license to admins when you sign up there's not much that's going to be a complete solution. Especially because you're talking about people that gain a financial incentive to play, so they would be the ones willing to make a small investment for the ROI.

Another solution may be to dramatically lower the platinum caps per character/account, but this just makes the process more of a pain in the ass, then it does really prevent anything.

Or make a rule against selling PLing or other common methods of earning the cash. But then it will just be people who farm gear doing RMT's.

[Tiggles]

Keep deleting the plat and they will stop farming it to sell.

you pop a RMTers mule toons enough times he will lose more then he will make.

it just takes diligence the current staff doesn't have when it comes to RMT.

Uthgaard 2013.

[skipdog]

Permanent IP bans are not a solution, period. Many have made the reasons quite clear in this thread.

I think people are REALLY overstating the RMT problem on the server. People who think prices are going up everywhere because of RMT are not thinking the situation all the way through.

Honestly, RMT has very little impact on the economy. RMT isn't why Fungis are now 85k.

I don't know what a good solution is for permanent bannings. I just don't think it is possible on an emulated server. At least on live servers you can require the person to pay for the game with each banning, but that never even stopped them.

I just don't think the technology exists to permanently stop a person from creating an account and logging onto the server. The best practice is to probably simply delevel/strip all associated toons on banned accounts, as well as all mule accounts associated with them. At least force them to level up new characters and rebuild their wealth from scratch again.