Please No Win/Loss Tracking

Uber Entertainment would not be providing duplicate services for free. This is one copy of the game.

Games with disk checks limited the amount of active sessions to the disk you had. Red Alert 2 being a bit lenient with two working disks. Battlefield 1942 and 2's servers didn't allow duplicate keys to be logged in at the same time.

Regardless - this was about limiting keys to one account for the sole sake of mitigating ladder abuse.

Doesn't matter if the reasoning about ladder abuse is stupid, the entire multi-account per key solution is a bad idea.

If Uber really feels that a household should be able to run several Ubernet PA accounts, they have every right to go ahead and give you the option to purchase additional keys for a discount - heck, Steam does that sort of thing all the time with their 4-packs and such.

We already know that you will be able to play with each other w/o purchasing additional copies, AND you will be able to play online on custom servers w/o purchasing additional copies... it's just that if you want the additional features of the competitive scene, a profile, stats tracking, friends lists, etc, you need a unique Ubernet account.

Does it reduce smurfing? Definitely - you can't argue it doesn't. That doesn't mean that smurfing is the sole reason a single account per key is a good idea though.

unfortunately, smurfing is required for esports. Unless uber have found someway of preventing any replays from a certain player from ever being watched (which i doubt they would), then there are no ways for a 'pro' to practice without leaking his strategy or build orders.

btw, that is only one reason why smurfing is a good thing. Besides, the ones that complain about smurfs on ladders tend to be either bad players, or people just missing tournament invites due to said accounts.

Smurfing is certainly NOT required for Esports. Only allowing 1 account per Game(code) is very similar to how Starcraft2 handles Smurfing. Want/need a second account? Buy another copy of the game. Except Hopefully UberNet's Clan Support will be such that you don't need to buy copies every time you change teams.

Mike

...what?

Meticulous stat tracking is only a bad thing for ladder if people can create 100 accounts to smurf with.

But they shouldn't be able to, so it's a great thing for ladder.

Also, are you expecting to install on 2 (or more) different computers, create 2 (or more) different accounts, and play vs eachother with one game key? In my opinion that's kind of unreasonable. Or are you just wanting to take turns playing? If you're just going to take turns you can do so on one account and play unranked games.

That's unreasonable, that is to be expected. Or, it was - but it should still be.

I don't care about stats, and I'd prefer it if they didn't exist at all. I also don't care about smurfing. But why punish everyone, only to punish a tiny few people?

The way starcraft 2 handles it does not prevent smurfing. What you guys are discussing here is trying to remove it alltogether.

And unfortunately or fortunately im not one of these people who go around making multiple accounts, but i do see the value of hiding your replays, and the best way of doing this is through anonymity. Besides, like i said before 'the ones that complain about smurfs on ladders tend to be either bad players, or people just missing tournament invites due to said accounts.'. If you want to be at the top of the ladder, then smurf accounts wont matter.

I never said it prevents it. No matter how you look at it though, forcing 1 account per game purchase does reduce the amount of smurfing done compared to allowing 2 or more accounts per game purchase does.

As we've also seen in Starcraft, those that feel they need/want to smurf, are still capable of doing so if they choose and it further supports the Game(not needed in Starcraft2's case, but much more pertinent for PA/Uber) but I feel Starcraft2 takes it too far by not having any Clan/Team support, Forcing players to buy keys as they change teams and such.

Mike

People in this thread asked for no smurfs?

No. Why should it?

Smurfs kill the competitive scene. Everyone against it seem completely uninterested in competitive gaming.

Having the top 100 players populated by just 20-30 people is just terrible for the game.

If you didn't have one account per key then wouldn't piracy be rife? Couldn't anyone just pirate the game by using any CD key?

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if your familymembers or friends want to play online by themselfs just let play on your account then..
otherwise if you want to play with them online then they shall buy a key for one account..
or play over lan ... i don´t care ...
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you don´t have a disk as far as remember ... you buy a key for one account made here o this site and download the game from uber ... unless you buy a boxed copy from a store ...
and basicly buying a disk in that case is buying a key ... buying a key is beeing allowed to install/download the game and play it ...
(someone from uber may correct me if i´m wrong)

i generaly think stuff will be handelt similar like we saw for supcom/fa
one onlineaccount/profile and multiple offline/profiles ... i would be ok with that ...

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so it´s ok to punish the competitiv scene with more smurfs? what?

No. A real competitive scene lives from more than just a ladder. In fact the meaning of the ladder should be lower than the meaning of tournaments and the like.
Also the ladder does not become meaningless with smurfs. With smurfs a high position is more "valueable", but also harder to reach.

Have unlimited accounts per key, but only allow one of them to log in at a time.

It's not punishing anyone. It's just not having that implementation of stats. Having stats prominently visible, as in the example games the OP posted, poisons the well for everyone and really is not worth it just to satsify a minor curiosity of a minority of players. Individual choice cannot beat this problem, it is an issue with human psychology.

Damn stats, damn medals and damn unlocks. Play in the moment to beat your opponent. Play for the experience of playing the game. Don't play for an integer in a spreadsheet.

More sophisticated, optional, private or whatever, stats methods to satisfy dedicated/skilled players, and massage their "pro" egos, sure, I guess. But not a system that accidentally plays on psychology to make people cheese things.

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i don´t want stats to show them off ... i want stats in order to know for myself where i´m good, where i lack and where i can improve ... simply only for personal information purposes ...

Hey, I fully agree with you!

Or...prohibit duplicate keys from being logged in to Uber Entertainment's servers. Players using the same key can not play online together and overload the servers. Surely this is good enough.

People who post on forums are a tiny minority of the market for video games. Being knowlegeable of, and active on forums like Uber Ent typically requires you are already engrossed with the internet and technology. So of course anyone posting on forums will naturally be biased towards anything related to going full online.

Because eventually, no one else can fully use the game that I bought. Once everyone using it gets bored with the game, the purchase then becomes defective.

What do you mean, what? None of those functions can be personal per individual.

So you admit that meticulous stat tracking harms online play, and needs the crutch of punishing customers for it to be of any value. i.e. a problem looking for a solution

No reasonable person wants this; you are really one of few.

But ranks a la Forged Alliance Forever don't psychologically torture players like meticulous stat tracking does, and ranks are still a worthwhile part of the game.

Smurfing and abuse already becomes mitigated with just player ranks because the underlying hard mechanics determining ranks aren't visible to the player.

Watching replays of yourself and top players and comparing notes is far methodical and better at this than rudimentary win/loss, total land/air/naval kill counters.

Watching replays and comparing yourself to top level play does this far better than rudimentary win/loss, total land/air/ship kill records could.

A game that is boring to you is defective? Uh, ever tried to fill in such a bugreport? I still totally don't understand your line of though.

Your argumentation is basically on the same level as the request to limit the zoom so bad casters won't zoom around so much. Why dump the game down because of a few idiots who can't deal with certain features? Just /ignore them instead.

Lets turn this up side down, so it sounds right to me:

It's not punishing anyone. It's just having that implementation of stats. Having stats prominently visible, as in so many other good games, adds value to the game for everyone and really is worth it to satisfy the urge for information of the majority of players. Not having stats won't chance the behavior of all the idiots you are afraid of.

I agree that true elo is nice.
Something I do not like is that it does not drop.
If I have not played for 6 months, then my skill level is significantly lowered.
I would like to see the elo drop aswell when I am not active for a long time.

Since ELO suffers from a constant inflation your points will be less "worth".

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again .. win/loss kill or totalkillbla isn´t what i am looking for
but f.e. example how well i did build up my economy, did i take good use of it on average after playing multiple games or didn´t i waste to much .. this is useful information
that someone elses replay can´t neccesarily give me