Original Post
Should alts be allowed?
This question has haunted me for a while and after seeing current events I think it is time to discuss this issue.
Alts had been an issue for a while in Toribash, and an accessibility of creating new account so freely has become quite a problem. For example, check out current ban list.
Even if you go to completely random page you can see that around 80% of bans occur on alt accounts. That is not only burning out our staff's time, but also it clearly shows how making alternate accounts prompt users to go against the rules.
Besides already mentioned points, alts also ruin experience for beginners. The amount of alts in beginner rooms is staggering. For instance, take this live example that I have caught today. In a 5 player room, 3 of the players were alts. I knew they were alts because of their play style and win ratio, which was above 80% on all 3 accounts. Moreover they knew they were going against the rules as they all disconnected as soon as I mentioned reporting them to higher authority.
My point is that in some cases there are more alts in beginner rooms than there are actual beginners. Surely that discourages some beginners to attempt the game when they get destroyed as soon as the get a chance to play.
There are many many other activities that are mainly performed by alts and go against the rules, including such as rank farming, scamming, using offensive language and more.
I think this should be put to and end, and there are few ways to do this. Simple Email confirmation process could solve majority of this problem. For example to register a new account a player would have to register an email that was never used for any other Toribash account before, and then confirm the account by clicking active link in the email sent by Tori team. This would drastically decrease number of alts as more effort would be required to create a new account.
I'm sure there are many other ways or techniques to solve this problem and discussion is required to find the most fitting solution.
I know there will be many people who will disagree with this post as there are many active players who actively use alts, but it is not good for the community in general thus something has to be done about it.
Alts had been an issue for a while in Toribash, and an accessibility of creating new account so freely has become quite a problem. For example, check out current ban list.
Even if you go to completely random page you can see that around 80% of bans occur on alt accounts. That is not only burning out our staff's time, but also it clearly shows how making alternate accounts prompt users to go against the rules.
Besides already mentioned points, alts also ruin experience for beginners. The amount of alts in beginner rooms is staggering. For instance, take this live example that I have caught today. In a 5 player room, 3 of the players were alts. I knew they were alts because of their play style and win ratio, which was above 80% on all 3 accounts. Moreover they knew they were going against the rules as they all disconnected as soon as I mentioned reporting them to higher authority.
My point is that in some cases there are more alts in beginner rooms than there are actual beginners. Surely that discourages some beginners to attempt the game when they get destroyed as soon as the get a chance to play.
There are many many other activities that are mainly performed by alts and go against the rules, including such as rank farming, scamming, using offensive language and more.
I think this should be put to and end, and there are few ways to do this. Simple Email confirmation process could solve majority of this problem. For example to register a new account a player would have to register an email that was never used for any other Toribash account before, and then confirm the account by clicking active link in the email sent by Tori team. This would drastically decrease number of alts as more effort would be required to create a new account.
I'm sure there are many other ways or techniques to solve this problem and discussion is required to find the most fitting solution.
I know there will be many people who will disagree with this post as there are many active players who actively use alts, but it is not good for the community in general thus something has to be done about it.
Last edited by Smaguris; Mar 16, 2017 at 05:08 PM.
Originally Posted by Kore
Currently I have 3 accounts connected to my email, I dont know if you're up to date with the happenings of toribash
I definitely am, they must have been registered to the email before the "one account per email" thing got put into place, otherwise you wouldn't be able to.
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The bigger use of alts is dueling and anonymity, if a player has a bad reputation or wants to duel someone that wouldn't normally duel them, use an alt account. Don't remove the availability for alts all in all, MAYBE make it a bit more complicated to make alts, as in email verification, but I don't see a big need to do so. Duelers aren't going to target beginner servers, they're going to go to private servers and public servers and duel. Players wanting anonymity are not going to target beginner servers because there's no fun in beating people that can't challenge you. The only real reason people might go to beginner servers on alts that I can see would be to gain a little amount of qi and then leave for whatever reason, which is where the server squatters come in.
Last edited by Kozmonaut; Mar 16, 2017 at 08:36 PM.
Reason: <24 hour edit/bump
you're on thin ice, pal
Originally Posted by Kozmo
You already have to use a different email to make an alt, you cant use the same email twice, its been like that for a while now.
You are not required to link an e-mail address to your account if you sign up in-game. I agree this should be changed, however I am not entirely convinced this will have a positive effect on user retention, because you're trading off genuine new players who don't want to set up their e-mail in order to play the game, for getting control of the group of users that make alts. It's just something to consider.
Oh, also, another important thing to consider is security, but that's an entirely different topic.
Last edited by Slau; Mar 16, 2017 at 09:01 PM.
Originally Posted by sir
While I agree that there should be a system that prevents simple alt creation, I think that some moderation policy changes should come first. Toribash is probably the only game I know where you can get a real ban for calling someone a dick (other words may be used, it doesn't change the point). Yes people should know how to behave but due to the lack of tools allowing to mute players instead of banning or having any other sort of softer punishment killing off the possibility of creating alts would be kinda weird. You can get restricted from playing a game if you shitpost in market on forum, after all.
If we ever get to actually implementing an anti-alt system, I'd like it to be more harsh though: you can register only one account from your steam ID (email required, no confirmation needed); if you register an account using a standalone version then you have to confirm your email and your account's functionality is restricted (transfers mainly) for certain amount of time / until you play certain number of games. This would make accounts more valuable than they are now (because you can't just go and make a new one any moment even if you get a new email) and open possibilities for having game rewards.
This is such a brilliant idea! It would also mean that we could bring back the newsletter, something that would bring back players and that I wouldn't mind helping out with, because there would be a way to filter the emails better through verification.
My way or no way, totalatarian.
