completed Many Problems - 1 Solution - For Unity TO

[Canadian_Eh 1,354]

EDITED: 10/28/2015   This idea is purely for entertainment purposes. The developers do not even come to this section anymore. Anything posted here is a waste of time according to their own words. I wrote this when I believed that players offering suggestions could make a difference to this game. I, along with many others have come to realize that Tanki does not value our opinion. To them we nothing but kids wallets.  So continue reading if you wish but remember these are just "what if's"

 

 

 

 

 

Let's just call it Better Account Control

**1 - UPDATED 9/2/2015

 

The Problems

 

Account Related:

• Account Theft
• Account Transfer
• Account Sharing

Alternate Accounts:

• Mults
• Sabotage
• Power Leveling
• Trolling players in battles
• Trolling players in chat
• Repeated violations of game rules as well as chat rules.

The Reason

 

The reason that we have many of these problems is because Tanki has left this game vulnerable to this kind of behavior. People can come to Tanki, create as many accounts as they like, and remain completely anonymous.They know that the accounts are not linked and are very hard to track. 
Banning these people has little or no effect. If an account gets banned they will simply login with another account and continue doing what ever they want with little fear of any real punishment. Many people also create accounts for no other reason then to cause trouble, scam, spam, and troll the chat. They do this because they can and under Tanki's current sign-up policies nothing can be done to stop them.
 

My Solution

 

This solution makes a lot more sense when we consider it for the switch to Unity, so keep this in mind while you read. 
To solve or reduce the problems I have listed and maybe even some that I overlooked, we need to go back to the start. For me the problem starts at sign-up, so this is where the solution needs to start. Considering we will all have to create new accounts for Unity, why not take advantage of that and create a better sing-up procedure. Now to clarify, the Unity TO version will require a new, player account data base. Whether this data base is created from brand new accounts or our existing ones shouldn't make any difference. The point is the data base will be new.
 
The sign-up process:

• Each player will need to provide a real name, a user name, and an E-mail address. <<< A real name is not absolutely necessary for this idea to work and should be optional.
• Each player will need to agree to a "terms of use".
• Each player will need to activate their account with the E-mail they used to sign-up.

After the sign-up:

• You will only be able to create 1 account per E-mail.
• ^**1 ORIGINAL Idea: Each account will then have up to 5 profiles.  
• ^**1 NEW Idea: As suggested by @RECHARGED_RAY and modified by me. >>  Each account will have up to 3 free profiles. Additional profiles could be purchased 1 at a time or some (3 for example) could be included in a "premium" account.
• These profiles are the equivalent of our current accounts, with different user names, ranks and garages for each profile.
• Only the first profile will be used in the beginning and will have the same user name as the account. ( more on this later )
• The other profiles can be unlocked as you rank up. ( Maybe certain restrictions could be placed on these profiles depending on the rank of your other profiles, to reduce "Generalissimo bullying" in the low ranks.) 

* If Tanki decides to allow us to transfer our existing Flash TO accounts over to Unity TO, each of our current accounts will be converted to profiles. If a player has more then 5 Flash TO accounts, they will need to decide which 5 to save or create more then 1 new account with a different E-mail.

 

Other restrictions and conditions:

• Accounts are protected by passwords and profiles can only be accessed while an account is logged in.
• Tanki has already stated that each player will have a profile page. Well this would be your account profile. Under this account profile there would be a list of your 5 user profiles for that account.
• Only 1 profile can be logged into any battle at a time. If one profile is in a battle all others are prevented from entering any battles on any servers. They can be logged into servers simultaneously but not battles. 
• All account related changes will need to be confirmed through the provided E-mail and possibly some may require an E-mail to Tanki Help for confirmation.
• Tanki will need to continue to monitor IP addresses. 

 

Lets apply this to the problems:

• Account Transfer and Theft:
  • Because all 5 profiles are under 1 account and all accounts have to have an E-mail it becomes very hard to transfer or trade a profile without effecting the whole account.
  • Changing of a password would require an E-mail confirmation, so account theft would be reduced. Most refer to it as "I was hacked ". Why can't they just admit "I was stupid and gave my password to someone "?
• Account Sharing:
  • Now, this is not perfect but it will have a significant impact on account sharing.
  • Sharing will already be reduced because a player would need to share the whole account not just a profile. 
  • Sharing can be reduced even further if they look at the IP address. IP addresses can be used to track an account to a specific city. If a player signs up and plays from, lets say Toronto Canada and that account suddenly signs in from let's say London England, it would be locked and have to be re-activated using the e-mail on record. Players are less likely to share accounts and E-mails just for a game. If it continues to happen, the account can be flagged for further investigation by Tanki.
  • Additionally, if an account is logged in and someone else tries to login at the same time, the account gets locked, and they would need to explain to Tanki how this happened.
• Mults, Sabotage, and Power Leveling: This is one of the best parts of the whole idea.
  • Because you can't have more then 1 profile in any battle, at the same time, these activities will become very difficult. 
  • Now, what about using 2 different accounts? If they are from 2 different IP addresses not much can be done other then players reporting them. If they are from the same IP address and are in the same battle they should be flagged so a moderator can investigate what is going on. If they are 2 distinct different players just playing together, no problem. However if they are breaking rules then they can be dealt with by the moderator. A moderator should be able see who is playing and who isn't. Now, don't forget that with all the problems this solution solves, the moderators work loads will be reduced so they will have more time to investigate reported and flagged battles.
• Trolls and repeat offenders:
  • If you remember that all profiles of any given account are listed, anonymous trolling is not possible. If I used some low rank profile like "ABC123" to come into chat or a battle to cause trouble, players and mods would be able to easily see that I'm actually "Canadian_Eh". All they would need to do is check the profile for "ABC123" and see what my other user profiles are. No more hiding who I am.
  • Mods and Admins can use the fact that players are no longer able to hide who they really are and issue bans to the whole account, not just a profile. This is the big one.
  • With the fear of knowing that they could get the whole account banned and have nothing else to play will be a big deterrent.

Yes I know people could use more then 1 E-mail and have 5 other profiles or even 10. The fact remains that this would greatly reduce the amount of players causing problems for others. Players will be less willing to risk accounts when they know they can be tracked and have all their profiles banned at the same time. 
 

 
As always, your feedback is welcome. Don't forget to follow this topic and give a +1 if you like this idea. 

 

---

^**1Optional Ideas by other Players

Idea 1:

@RustyNail  

@RustyNail:

That is a generally good idea and I upvote it.
Now, you all know that I write a lot. So, apart from the usual suspects that have the vice to read a lot :P this comment is not for most of the players, but for Canadian_Eh mostly. Should he (Canadian_Eh) find parts of this comments welcomed he can add them to his own thoughts.
 
Comments:
 
[As you say that some problems start at sign up, some others have to do with the xp gathering and the allowance of an experienced player to play among newbies, in which case the experienced gets all the funds and newbies get nothing, which in turn means that today, newbies can't evolve naturally in the game due to lack of funds]
 
Therefore, a contribution to this idea and an answer to the objection "but what about the simplicity of just signing up without much bureaucracy?" could be the opportunity for a new player to create a new account without e-mail and the rest, and with this account play some maps (as a sample), buy some new turrets or hulls and even get an uprank or two. But then, if this player likes the game will have to make this account official providing an e-mail address etc.
In other words, I suggest that this procedure with the e-mail starts after the two first (today's) ranks.
 
A second commend is about what battles / maps will be available for the different profiles of an account.  Considering the real experience level of the account the higher profile, the player must not be allowed to participate in battles of lower experience, regardless of the specific profile's xp level.
That means that there is a double restriction for a battle: according to rank AND to xp level. Thus, newbies will have their own battles to joy and experienced players will be able to have their own battles to remember how it is to fight as minus ten ranks :P
(let alone that a third restriction would be nice, that of equipment similarity, that is, an M4 can't participate in a battle of M2s)
 
The above said comments, should they be applied, will make the game a little bit harder for all those that harvest the lower ranks with their higher experience embodied in a lower combo.

 

@Rohrmeister has also suggested something similar

@Rohrmeister:

The easy start was the _only_ reason why I started to play here. Also for other games this is a cruicial criteria for me.

Later I linked the account to an email voluntarily, because I got afraid of my account beeing hacked.. but at this time I already liked the game so much, that it was ok for me.

 

Therefore I propose, that after 5..7 ranks the system requests an email adress that has to be provided (reason for players: "prohibit hacking, secure your account from theft"). The player may skip that and continune to play until his next rankup, then - at latest - he has to provide an email that will be checked as today.

As mults can have easy access to free email adresses, the email should be checked on a regular base (all 100 hours played). This check can be skipped some times, but after 5 skipps it becomes mandatory for login. So mults have to keep track of accounts and mails, and to keep their mail accounts alive.

 

The part I like is:

"a contribution to this idea and an answer to the objection "but what about the simplicity of just signing up without much bureaucracy?" could be the opportunity for a new player to create a new account without e-mail and the rest, and with this account play some maps (as a sample), buy some new turrets or hulls and even get an uprank or two. But then, if this player likes the game will have to make this account official providing an e-mail address etc."
 
This is a good approach for attracting potentially new players using the same method they have always used, but allowing better control over those that like the game and choose to stick around. It also addresses the issue about dead and un-used accounts hogging all the good usernames. If a an account is not made official within 6 months then the account gets deleted.
 

Idea 2:

Additionally @RustyNail suggests that we should filter who can play with whom a little better. In my opinion they could use a players rating, XP, and rank to create these filters. This would prevent highly skilled players from being able to bully the un-skilled players and stealing all of the battle funds. (Raiding Parties use this tactic)

Idea 3:

@itsJaswinder

 

 

 

why not just use "device fingerprint" for identification, which is unique to every device.
even if someone uses proxies / new email acc. he/she will be more than likely be using the same device.
this way its easy to determine alt / anonymous trolls.
we can also authorize new devices to acc's as they use them to login. 

issuing a ban will blacklist all the device used to login till date. so MODS can watch over better.

 
i have used this method in a software of mine, and this works perfectly for me.  ;)
but the reason of my implementation was to stop piracy. 
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_fingerprint

 

 

He is suggesting to use something called "device fingerprinting".  A device fingerprint or machine fingerprint or browser fingerprint is information collected about a remote computing device for the purpose of identification. Fingerprints can be used to fully or partially identify individual users or devices even when cookies are turned off.

I like this idea. I just don't know if Tanki cares enough to try and implement something like this.

[Maf 32,317]

Valid
Completed
[vltr]

[E.Leclerc 1,887]

Very good idea. +1

[Canadian_Eh 1,354]

Sorry, about the long read. Detail is important.

[dont_you 70]

Abuse due to multiple accounts cannot be solved just requiring an unique email address, as it is pretty easy to get a new email address in 2 minutes (just google "free email"). Saboteurs will simply use a different free email address for each one of his accounts :(

[Canadian_Eh 1,354]

Abuse due to multiple accounts cannot be solved just requiring an unique email address, as it is pretty easy to get a new email address in 2 minutes (just google "free email"). Saboteurs will simply use a different free email address for each one of his accounts :(

You are correct, however if stops at least 50% of the trouble makers then it is better then what we currently have, which is nothing. Remember that trouble makers are fundamentally lazy and how many will bother to create all these E-mail accounts just to cause trouble for Tanki Online. This is a simple thing to implement and the pay back, in increased security is pretty big. We can all agree that something definitely needs to be done and this can only help.

[I.Devastation 2,053]

Real name? No ones going to give a real name ...

[trivy_super 10]

This is not smallworlds XD

[Brubook 1,161]

 

The idea is interesting and sure anything that can limit mults/saboteurs/thefts and so on is good. I appreciate the idea, I will follow it and I support the effort you made and make for a better Tanki (as some of us do).

 

Now the critics. Take them positively (as they are), take them as thoughts that may help (or may not) to tailor the idea to an even more defined form.

 

The only thing that come to my mind is that in most cases Tanki staff does not want to solve problems that somehow make them richer (or they have this idea). In the specific case, they declare on Alternativa Platform (owner of Tanki) to have 15 millions users, which of course means 15M accounts. With your solution you will probably limit real problems, but they will reduce their 15M accounts claim ... and that is not commercially good on their view.

 

We all know (and I stated many times myself) that a more satisfying and enjoying game means more revenues, but this come with time. Satisfied players are the best advertising and with a good safety (mults, saboteur, etc.) and good playability (drugs nerfing and usage limits, better game balance, etc), Tanki would probably triplicate players in one year.

 

But, on my experience, Tanki staff is quite shortsighted and greedy. They are draining players to bones right now, providing a quite bad service (especially on customer care), making fool of us players (publicly written, not just my bla bla bla) ... so I really don't know if they will ever take you (as well as me) into consideration!

 

Keep going on!

 

B.

[lordmostafa 3,821]

You see, Devs realize the issue, and can do something about it, but stopping something might make another aspect suffer, such as the simplicity of "Just go to the main page and sign up, no E-mail or verification needed!".

[Canadian_Eh 1,354]

Real name? No ones going to give a real name ...

The real name would be only visible to the Devs. Lots can and probably will use a fake name. Besides the name was not the most important point.

 

 

 

.....

Keep going on!

 

B.

 

Thanks I will keep going. 

 

You see, Devs realize the issue, and can do something about it, but stopping something might make another aspect suffer, such as the simplicity of "Just go to the main page and sign up, no E-mail or verification needed!".

So you suggest we keep things the way they are so the ease of sign-up doesn't suffer but we should continue to let the quality of the game suffer.   :huh:  :blink:

Did I miss something here?

Wouldn't it make more sense to attract players based on the quality of the game as opposed to how easy it is to sign up? Doesn't the fact that Tanki Online has a reputation of being a cesspool, full of hackers, cheaters, out of control chat rooms and also that the game developers have no control over their own players, mean anything?

The easy, uncontrolled sign-up is what created this problem in the first place. So why not fix the vulnerability?

I wouldn't consider the fact that I can sign-up without an E-mail or verification a strong selling feature, but when the target audience is naive kids......

[Extant 154]

Um great idea and nice essay :) bht theres an easy way around this - create mutiple "accounts." Ik i have over ten emails, and its easy to create them, so this virtually does nothing except add some cool features. You may have said that IP addresses can be tracked, but TO admins/mods dont have the deal to look at EVERY SINGLE case of this, bc there r just too many.

[manish17 1,085]

Suggest good ideas . Keep it up! But nothing happens...

[dilsharox 2,395]

good idea

[drazeruzumaki 5,021]

ok didnt read but seems like a good idea so an upvote

[RustyNail 1,538]

That is a generally good idea and I upvote it.

Now, you all know that I write a lot. So, apart from the usual suspects that have the vice to read a lot :P this comment is not for most of the players, but for Canadian_Eh mostly. Should he (Canadian_Eh) find parts of this comments welcomed he can add them to his own thoughts.

 

Comments:

 

[As you say that some problems start at sign up, some others have to do with the xp gathering and the allowance of an experienced player to play among newbies, in which case the experienced gets all the funds and newbies get nothing, which in turn means that today, newbies can't evolve naturally in the game due to lack of funds]

 

Therefore, a contribution to this idea and an answer to the objection "but what about the simplicity of just signing up without much bureaucracy?" could be the opportunity for a new player to create a new account without e-mail and the rest, and with this account play some maps (as a sample), buy some new turrets or hulls and even get an uprank or two. But then, if this player likes the game will have to make this account official providing an e-mail address etc.

In other words, I suggest that this procedure with the e-mail starts after the two first (today's) ranks.

 

A second commend is about what battles / maps will be available for the different profiles of an account.  Considering the real experience level of the account the higher profile, the player must not be allowed to participate in battles of lower experience, regardless of the specific profile's xp level.

That means that there is a double restriction for a battle: according to rank AND to xp level. Thus, newbies will have their own battles to joy and experienced players will be able to have their own battles to remember how it is to fight as minus ten ranks :P

(let alone that a third restriction would be nice, that of equipment similarity, that is, an M4 can't participate in a battle of M2s)

 

The above said comments, should they be applied, will make the game a little bit harder for all those that harvest the lower ranks with their higher experience embodied in a lower combo.

[creeperskelly 1,281]

Two of the worst problems I encounter after drug raids (being #1) are mults and saboteurs.

 

It's frustrating to be on a team when over half the players are doing nothing (which can be observed by their lack of score or very low score).

 

When I or one or two others have scores > 300 and the rest have scores that are <20 then it is a serious problem. You might as well be fighting alone!

 

Also one of the other irritating things is a saboteur - the guy who insists on taking the flag from you and does practically everything he can do to interfere with your ability to hide or avoid damage while your team tries to get your flag back. Such a person blocks you, gets in your way, pushes you off ramps, or, even more annoyingly is using Twins to constantly shoot you. Or such a person takes the flag when the flag carrier gets killed and subsequently does nothing to capture the flag once yours is returned.

 

I would support any idea to stop these kinds of people and get them out of battle. I can deal with druggers most of the time, but, there's no recourse for dealing with bad team members. You can't kill them and if you start spending too much time trying to fight them off it usually results in being too distracted and gives the other team the chance to find you and kill you.

 

There has to be some way to tie emails and physical IP addresses together. It would be simple to implement an IP ban of bad players, however, there are instances where the IP address is not that of the computer playing Tanki but rather the IP address of a router. So, if you have several room mates, or, as in my situation my son and I play together then banning the IP could affect the wrong person.

 

It is too easy to sign up for a bazillion email addresses, however, the main free ones usually have a limit based on IP. Yahoo, Gmail, etc. have some steps in place to stop spammers and perhaps limiting Tanki accounts to the big email providers might be a good idea that could be tied into the ones presented here.

 

I don't see how you can force someone to use a real name - this is too easy to circumvent. It's not even that difficult to sign up with Facebook using a fake name - though the TOS demands a real name there is really no way to enforce this short of requiring a credit card as a verification.

 

Mojang requires an adult and a separate email account from that adult in order for a minor to play Minecraft.

 

Perhaps something like that could be used in some way to keep kids from registering multiple accounts with Tanki.

 

I have the feeling most of the troublemakers here are not adults.

[MatjamRicochetShaft 30]

one thing that i noticed is that in the new Tanki Online is that the graphics r much better. however, the new Tanki Online project will have many backslashes. for one thing, if u dont already have Unity Web Player it is very difficult to get it. for me, i did not have fun trying to instal unity web player, because certain things just pooped out on the screen that i had no idea were there. i later found out that i had a virus. just because of this stupid web player. i never did download it, another thing is that the graphics will b different, so u will need a lot of different gaming experience to play the new one correctly. another thing that i found that is an issue is that the battle fund and time left and score and players score are all arranged differently. this will make the new tanki online much different. one of the good things is that the old version is still going once the new one is set up. i strongly believe that the new tanki wont b as much as the old one. when TO first said that players would b able 2 carry their ranks int he old game to the new one, i was surprised. after all, this is supposed to b a game that starts from the beginning, not the end. i was thoroughly relieved when TO changed their minds. another thing is V-logs. will they make v-logs in the new one and not the old one? will the still make ones in the old one but not the new one? everything will b different 4 announcements and everything, but as the last v-log states, TO does the v-log the whole week. u would need a lot more support if u were going 2 make a double v-log. and of course u need info right? what will the new Tanki Forum look like? there r lots of questions that cannot b answered right now, but i just put out the ones that i thought were the most necessary. thx 4 reading :)

[Canadian_Eh 1,354]

Therefore, a contribution to this idea and an answer to the objection "but what about the simplicity of just signing up without much bureaucracy?" could be the opportunity for a new player to create a new account without e-mail and the rest, and with this account play some maps (as a sample), buy some new turrets or hulls and even get an uprank or two. But then, if this player likes the game will have to make this account official providing an e-mail address etc.

In other words, I suggest that this procedure with the e-mail starts after the two first (today's) ranks.

 

 

I like this idea. It satisfies both concerns.

 

 

A second commend is about what battles / maps will be available for the different profiles of an account.  Considering the real experience level of the account the higher profile, the player must not be allowed to participate in battles of lower experience, regardless of the specific profile's xp level.

That means that there is a double restriction for a battle: according to rank AND to xp level. Thus, newbies will have their own battles to joy and experienced players will be able to have their own battles to remember how it is to fight as minus ten ranks :P

 

 Preventing highly skilled players from playing with unskilled players is a great idea. However how would we address the issue of training of the lower ranks by higher ranks? Maybe PRO passes or maybe select servers with out the restrictions.

 

 

There has to be some way to tie emails and physical IP addresses together. It would be simple to implement an IP ban of bad players, however, there are instances where the IP address is not that of the computer playing Tanki but rather the IP address of a router. So, if you have several room mates, or, as in my situation my son and I play together then banning the IP could affect the wrong person.

 

IP bans will never work. It has too many issues.   1. Legit players sharing an IP address.    2. Many players have dynamic IP addresses.

 

It is too easy to sign up for a bazillion email addresses, however, the main free ones usually have a limit based on IP. Yahoo, Gmail, etc. have some steps in place to stop spammers and perhaps limiting Tanki accounts to the big email providers might be a good idea that could be tied into the ones presented here.

 

I agree, but how many will be bothered to go through the hassle of creating multiple E-mails. If people really want to cause trouble they will find a way. 

 

I don't see how you can force someone to use a real name - this is too easy to circumvent. It's not even that difficult to sign up with Facebook using a fake name - though the TOS demands a real name there is really no way to enforce this short of requiring a credit card as a verification.

 

Using a real or fake name really doesn't make any difference. The other aspects will still work.

 

[RustyNail 1,538]

I like this idea. It satisfies both concerns.

New players may be called GUESTS until they create an account, switching then to be called MEMBERS.

 

 Preventing highly skilled players from playing with unskilled players is a great idea. However how would we address the issue of training of the lower ranks by higher ranks? Maybe PRO passes or maybe select servers with out the restrictions.

Training new players can be done, since I did not suggested a complete isolation of each rank / xp level. For example, I said that a General with an alt account profile of WO2 won't be able to play with other "newbies" WO2, because this "training" will cost a hell of crystals to newbies :P

However, these new WO2 can and will play with newbies WO3 or WO5 that have learned a trick or two... Thus training will not cut newbies from 50-70% of the funds... see an example of some experienced players vs newbies, and where all the funds really go.

First five players in this battle were - speaking as a personal witness - experienced.. All the other players were cannon fodder. (it kinda remind me of my Tanki youth and the wonder I felt seeing some dudes doing amazing staff, that now I recognize as being just experienced players in alt accounts)

 

According to a small sample of low-rank battles I saw myself, most of them are dominated by experienced players in alt accounts. I guess, players that can't buy and are having difficulties gathering crystals to upgrade or buy new items, have created alt accounts and harvest the lower ranks funds so that they can evolve this/these allt account-s faster (than the main one). But this struggles the game for new players that find it next to impossible to evolve normally. Only top buyers can face the extreme challenge that those experienced players create, by purchasing special kits. I wonder why Tanki doesn't seem to realize what kind of problem this is.

[creeperskelly 1,281]

It is a bit humorous to use another account to play using skills learned from playing for a long time.

 

Once in awhile I log in using my son's account and it's comical to hear people say "Wow, dude! You're really good!"

 

(Well, yes, because I'm really a General disguised as a WO2 :P )

 

I will tell people that I am experienced and try to help them out by giving them tips and telling them my opinions about the various turrets/hulls I have.

[Canadian_Eh 1,354]

I have also seen buyers at the first few ranks.

They come in several varieties. The buyer who buys everything available and fully micro upgrades it all. So you effectively get M1 smokey and hunter at recruit.  :huh: Then you can add the "mindless drugger" to an already severely over power combo. I'm surprised any newbies stay at all.

 

So to sum up, you get a skilled, drugger using M1 in recruit battles.   This makes no sense to us but makes perfect sense to others for some strange reason. 

 

I do get some satisfaction from teaching newbies as well. So there is always that.

[momy950666 960]

agreed +1

[Canadian_Eh 1,354]

As mentioned this idea has a problem. It would not be very difficult to create more then 1 master account by simply using alternate E-mails. What we need is a way to stop players from logging more then 1 account from the same device. It needs to be at the device level because it has all ready been established that IP blocking will not work. I'm certain there is a way to do this, I just don't know what it is yet. I think one way would be to prevent more then 1 instance of the web player from launching at the same time. This effectively stops any multing from the same device. 

 

This idea still has great potential to reduce many of the issues. If we can solve the above problem with an easy solution then the idea will be effective enough to make a huge difference in the fight against all the problems I mentioned in my original post.

[creeperskelly 1,281]

How do you get more than one instance running? Whenever I switch browsers it automatically disconnects from Tanki in one if I open up Tanki in another.