Regarding Subscriptions.

[Andrew]

Wonderful and meaningless line.
I would say that I know quite a few players who have negatively affected other players and even chased them out of the game without technically breaking the rules.


But that is tangential of course. The main point here is that a player can potentially own limitless number of accounts which in turn does mean a pay to win environment. There is a clear win in being able to amass countless number of provinces and being able to keep minimal levels of corruption at the same time. There is literally no better definition of advantage in a sandbox game than accumulating a huge amount of resources with a paid option to avoid all the drawbacks.

Advantage does not equal win.

If that quoted couple of lines is meaningless, you may want to look at other ways to interpret it.

[Gustav Kuriga]

Advantage does not equal win.

If that quoted couple of lines is meaningless, you may want to look at other ways to interpret it.

actually, pay-to-win is referring to paying for an advantage in the game. It does not require an actual end-game win condition. For example, a multiplayer FPS may have certain weapons that can only be bought with real money, and are overpowered. In a match-based multiplayer game, there is no real "beating the game", per se. You could win a match, but there will always be another one and hence no real end-game. However, if you pay for an advantage over your peers, all else being equal, that is "pay-to-win".

Or we could go with Planetside 2 as our FPS example, as the world never resets, so while a faction may have an advantage over another to the point of owning the entire map except for the gates, this can always be reversed. However, there are certain weapons that can be unlocked for an advantage using money. Even though you cannot "win" according to your definition, buying these weapons with money is a pay-to-win element.

[New Player 123]

Per Tom:

As the game's legal owner, there's your ruling. One free account or as many paid ones as you want. As seen here.

Thanks very much.

[New Player 123]

Some of my characters are fleeing a takeover by a player using multiple accounts. I have proof of the multi-ing, but of course I can't be sure whether any or all of the accounts are paid-for. What's the etiquette for a situation like this? Can I report the matter to @Andrew and ask him to investigate? Or is the game database swept for free-account multi-ing regularly, so all players' accounts would be reviewed sooner or later anyway?

[De-Legro]

Some of my characters are fleeing a takeover by a player using multiple accounts. I have proof of the multi-ing, but of course I can't be sure whether any or all of the accounts are paid-for. What's the etiquette for a situation like this? Can I report the matter to @Andrew and ask him to investigate? Or is the game database swept for free-account multi-ing regularly, so all players' accounts would be reviewed sooner or later anyway?

How in heavens name does anyone that can't review database data have "proof"

[Andrew]

Send me your evidence, I'll look into it.

A method to properly ban people is the next thing on my todo list after I figure out why the testing server's map isn't generating properly.

I've got a few pretty good ideas, for what it's worth.

[New Player 123]

Send me your evidence, I'll look into it.

Done. Thanks in advance.