New Anticheat Measure Going Live Today

[E_Boko]

Couples do not have an unfair advantage anymore then an organized kingdom does in terms of interaction. Yes physically they are closer and can get info for each other by going into the other room and signing in but good kingdoms can just text each other and get the same results at the same speed. This system is ridiculous if you think you are stopping the true cheaters with anything.

This is your basis for the new system no? You don't feel like taking care of the whitelist and couples have some absurd advatange. Way to go after a minority of players and just mess with them completely in war. Meanwhile the game still has ticks, goes down every now and then, no autofill form for thievery or magic, needs 3rd party tools nto be playd properly. So you don't care about big or small issues, except the xlogging couples. Brilliant priorities.

[Bishop]

Actually no E_boko - the basis for this new system is not couples. The reason for it is mainly to help combat cheating. As already stated clearly in 2 blog posts the restrictions being applied to couples is an unfortunate but necessary side effect.

[E_Boko]

And I'm saying you have your priorities screwed up. How bout making the game better before turning more people off from it?

Also I don't care if you gave me a month notice for this crap. changes should not be made mid age. Sure let's just change the rules around mid age. That's smart and fair

[Bishop]

Priorities differ depending where you stand, this was a huge one for us as we cannot scale without it. When would you like teh change made? It was going to happen mid age because we needed age data to verify.

[Lilith]

I don't like to play Utopia without my boyfriend. So we decided not to play at all. Playing utopia is only fun for me on a high level and in high level kingdoms there are strategies that are not possible now, if you live together. The only option for me is quit or cheat. I decided to quit (or not come back because I took a break) because cheating sounds like too much effort to be worth it. It is only a game.

It makes me sad though, because Utopia is the place where I met my boyfriend.

[E_Boko]

Priorities differ depending where you stand, this was a huge one for us as we cannot scale without it. When would you like teh change made? It was going to happen mid age because we needed age data to verify.

To verify its gonna do what it was intended to do? So you need age info to confirm you're stopping cheater implying you don't know if this will help? You're just gonna have an age of data showing ppl leave the game instead.

[faegan]

I haven't read all 30 pages of this thread, but I think the main sentiment of the posts is that Bishop & developers are kindly requested to reconsider the implemented mode of cheat-protection. As most of the previous posters, I am in favor of good anti-cheat measures.
I started playing Utopia (@Jolt) in the late 90s when I was at University. I was introduced to the game by a couple of fellow students, and quickly we decided to try to get into the same kingdom. This is when all the trouble started; Mehul noticed the multiple logins from the same IP address due to the fact that we were using our University internet rooms to play. We've had so many arguments and in the end we convinced Mehul to "whitelist" us.

It seems that 14 years later we're having the same discussions/problems again. People who have been playing the game for ages are now being punished because a couple of idiots from GodKnowsWhere break the rules. Was the whitelist really such a burden? How often did you get a request to have a certain IP address whitelisted? And sure, you would have to do some checking to ensure that the whitelist request would be legit, but there are many ways to confirm if there are actually two or more people on the other side. Perhaps you could investigate this further, I am sure that in the past 14 years technology was developed to provide you with good-enough information about the people at a certain IP address.
Imho the worst of the current implemented method of anti-cheat: it will not cover xlogging; if I have 2 IP addresses for example home and work, I could just use a VMWare session with which I could open a VPN to my work. You would see my home IP and work IP and there is NO WAY you can tell if anything is wrong. I could also sit at home and ask my neighbor to grant me access to their wireless network... if you really want to limit the xlogging, the best way is the whitelist (for now); there's always the option of issueing private certificates, but that would require payment...

Finally, I'm bothered by the fact that Bishop will not investigate the "Couples" issue that has been raised. My wife bloody hates Utopia so it won't benefit me, but I do know some people who would be very glad if you could tweak your changes a bit.

[Bishop]

"Was the whitelist really such a burden? How often did you get a request to have a certain IP address whitelisted?"

Yes, it was a massive time sink. Over 40% of support queue requests were whitelist requests and about 50% were multy/farm reports. These whitelist requests took a disproportionate amount of time to resolve and it would be impossible to scale up the game with support as it stood.

Additionally, many of these requests came from people that were clearly looking to get us to whitelist a farm account. Not only that, but as time passed when the whitelisted account was reviewed it became immediately apparent that it was being abused.

Additionally additionally, whitelisting a couple once is useless unless you verify who they are each and every time they long in. This is obviously not workable.

What is workable is blocking the reasons people cheat. Unfortunately for partners the flags that get raised for someone running multiple accounts are pretty similar to those that live together and play. However, the inconvenience to partners is small compared to the blocks put in place for someone running farms or intel multies.

whats the couples issue?

[khronosschoty]

Imho the worst of the current implemented method of anti-cheat: it will not cover xlogging; if I have 2 IP addresses for example home and work, I could just use a VMWare session with which I could open a VPN to my work. You would see my home IP and work IP and there is NO WAY you can tell if anything is wrong. I could also sit at home and ask my neighbor to grant me access to their wireless network...

These kind of methods are why cheating will not be stopped. It will however stop regular couples -- because it will be too much work for them.

[Bishop]

I dont really like repeating myself, but i guess some things are worth repeating.

As much as you guys think you know, you do not have any insight into the cheating we deal with on a day to day basis. This mechanic will massively reduce our workload. A workload that stops the game from growing as we devote too much time to it.

Why would we care if you use your neighbours wireless?

[E_Boko]

Then if you have 40% more time now I expect to see some real changes to the game to make more ppl want to play it instead of crapping on a few. Ill give you two ages to wow me.

[Lost_Stacey]

I want to give a big thank you to Sean and Brian for giving me my life back!

I started playing Utopia years ago (During a series of really short beta rounds) and have immensely enjoyed the game for longer than anyone has a right to enjoy anything. I took a long break, though, for a couple of years while I was going through college and hadn't decided to pick it up again until Age 50, when my boyfriend (Who I had introduced to the game back in the first age, while we were both in junior high) started playing again while he was bored working third shift as a security guard.

He started playing with a couple of people who seemed a good group, and then asked me to join the kingdom he was building from scratch. At first I was hesitant because I didn't want to deal with the trading/scripting that used to be required to get into a kingdom, but he told me that it was now within the rules to invite people to a kingdom, so we looked up the logistics of the "Whitelist" and eventually got approved and I joined the kingdom.

While on the whitelist, we tried to be very thorough in keeping the developers and moderators aware of any changes we made in habits (He logs in from work on his cell phone network as well as at the house, I only login from the house.) going so far as to e-mail and inform the team of our vacation plans when we went to the Greenbrier Resort for the Greenbrier Classic golf tournament, and again when we went to the beach in South Carolina. We were two people who live together and wanted to play together, and in no way were we trying to cheat. We did do what all good kingdoms do, and we aided each other and followed chain targets.

And then the newest change hit, and we are unable to do that any longer. While we are still allowed to play in the same kingdom, it actually HINDERS the kingdom for us to be there. We honestly didn't think there would be all that many issues with the changes, at first. Sure, sending aid would be difficult, and he and I would be unable to be the intel gatherers for the kingdom (Which we had done often in the past) and even the chains would have to be worked around, by having multiple targets that we could each hit.

However, with a current war going on, and our kingdom relying on us to do certain things, we've found ourselves unable to perform the tasks the kingdom needs us to perform. We are supposed to be ambushing attacks on us made by the chain targets (To lower their incoming land, since an ambush is lowering the incoming land to a greater degree than 4x traditional marches would), however, as fate would have it, he had attacked one person over 12 hours ago before he went to work, and I had attacked another person later. Wouldn't you know it, the one he attacked ended up hitting me, and the one I attacked hit him. The one target hit him for 89 and 73 acres, and instead of being able to ambush for 44 and 36 acres, we have to have someone else hitting them for less gains than the ambush would be. The one who hit me took 82 and 69 acres, and instead of being able to ambush 41 and 34 respectively, people are having to hit for 13-16 acres or less (The person suicided and has no defense home, but still has over 150 acres incoming, which means we can't drop them low enough to be overpopulated when the land comes in.)

Since we are hindering the kingdom, the best thing we can do is not play together in the kingdom. If that is the direction we decide to go, then neither one of us will continue to play the game at all, since playing with friends and family is the only thing that is keeping us here almost 14 years later. So while it is a bit sad to be leaving the game again, I do have to say thank you for giving me an excuse to quit so I can have my life back. This game has been a part of me for half the time I've been alive, but all things must come to an end. I just wish I could say "all good things", but I can't, because the game has gone downhill faster than a landslide over the last couple of ages.

So long, thanks for all the memories (And the fish!) and please, do the world a favor and NEVER, EVER get involved with another game project again, because all it will do is lose you money and destroy people's lives. Ciao!

[Lost_Stacey]

Priorities differ depending where you stand, this was a huge one for us as we cannot scale without it. When would you like teh change made? It was going to happen mid age because we needed age data to verify.

By scale I can only assume you are trying to scale 1:92 like a model car, right? That would be, what, 77-78 players that you hope to retain?

[Bishop]

Moved your post in here lost_stacey.

[Lost_Stacey]

Why would we care if you use your neighbours wireless?

Because he could run multies by using his wireless and his neighbor's wireless. Not understanding simple things like that is why nobody trusts you to know anything about what you are doing.