Celtic Heroes

Regarding clan banks:

Sharing accounts is against the rules. This is in place to prevent 1 user from stealing all of the items on an account.

If you share accounts, and you lose your items, Support will not be able to restore your items.

The person who has stolen the items will be subject to the Celtic Heroes Disciplinary Procedure, and their account may be disabled as a result.

Wait you guys are making this so wrong. I have been active figthing agaisnt scamming since 10 months ago but nothig of your new policies is new this has been like this since the beginning since admin got dub in to give some drags frag to a player . only diference is banning the scammers now .

You suspect of player scamming. And u take diciplinary actions banning account involve in the scam
And laundry of those items . But those items get to stay in disbale account? Doesnt make sense.

All this is just targerting players who share there account. You never have help ppl who got scam, or their account/password fishing under no reason. You guys never have help this accounts i have long emails about this with you guys in the past so why punnish the fair players with this you only have said we are sorry for the loss.

Is the long policy have been never to help about scam lost account . So why no the banning of share accounts. All players who give items to clan banks they know this items are no longer belong. To them.

Might I suggest a change that I believe captures what we have been discussing.

• Repercussions for Compromising an Account
  Players who have revealed the username and password of their account no longer have any assurance of security and are ineligble for support on that account.
  Players who endevor to
  • •Aquire accesses to an account which they themselves did not register (via purchase, trade, phishing, hacking, etc)
    •Engage in trade, purchase or sale of any account regardless of who registered it.
  will be subject to the Celtic Heroes Disciplinary Procedure, and as a result may have their account disabled.

I'm not trying to be a jerk here but I work with governmental regulations every day. Words matter. Good communication is not that you can be understood, it is that you can't be misunderstood.

My issue with that particular wording is this line:
"Players who have revealed the username and password of their account no longer have any assurance of security and are ineligble for support on that account"

To me, that sounds like 'we don't mind if you share your account details, as long as you realise that if you do you won't get any help from Support if you run into any trouble', which is something we definitely do not encourage.

This is why our policy, and the Terms and Conditions (which is something everyone accepts when they start playing the game), state that you are not allowed to share accounts. The aim of these policies is to protect people from scams and losing access to their accounts, and the best way to protect everybody is to say that you shouldn't share your accounts with anyone.

I agree that perhaps a line should be added regarding players who attempt to sell or trade their accounts will be subject to the disciplinary procedure, to make it absolutely crystal clear, and that the first line should read something along the lines of what you have suggested (that is, "Players who acquire access to an account which they did not register", rather than "Players who accessed an account which they did not register"), and I will discuss this wording with the team.

I must stress to everyone that we are only putting these policies in place to help protect you, the players, and to improve the game experience for everybody who plays Celtic Heroes. Of course I do welcome constructive discussion regarding these policies, and take everything you say on board so that we can work together in improving the game experience.

As long as OTM does things in the "Spirit of the Law" not the Letter, I have no issue.

You hafta know by now that almost all successful clans have a shared-bank toon, with millions in gold worth of stuff.

The clans decide who can access this, and they realize that if anyone scams access, or an untrustworthy person long-con's their way in... Then they lose it all and they can't do anything because they made the choice to share.

Going forward however, Xell is correct...to discipline to "the Letter of the Law" here would really disable more than 80% of the leaders of all the successful clans, all stored clan wealth...and it would most likely make around that many of yer plat-buying population strongly consider leaving.

I trust OTM to be savvy here and follow the Spirit.

This:

http://www.onethumbmobile.com/celticher ... =4&t=14425

My issue with that particular wording is this line:
"Players who have revealed the username and password of their account no longer have any assurance of security and are ineligble for support on that account"

To me, that sounds like 'we don't mind if you share your account details, as long as you realise that if you do you won't get any help from Support if you run into any trouble', which is something we definitely do not encourage.

But isn't that what you are doing now. The sentence mearly states the truth. You have already said that you have no intention to go after these accounts so long as nobody reports a theft. But all it would take is a rival clan to file a complaint about theft. You would have no way to tell what was a theft or a clan transfer.

The fact is that the game as defined lacks all the tools a clan may need to operate efficiently and thus clans have resorted to sharing accounts which technically violate the TOS. We want to comply with the policy but you are forcing us not to. Please reconsider the sentence above as a temporary solution until the game can code a solution.

Tea is correct, and Cali does point out that the only reason clans share accounts is because we have no other way to accomplish a clan bank. I understand you don't encourage it but it is a rampant practice. How do you propose we accomplish this game requirement and still comply with the Policy?

Well..they can check the clan/character Chat logs

I mean if someone asks for the bank to log on, the bank does and an exchange is made that can't really be construed as stealing/scamming. But your point is correct in that we are all hoping to god that they do the necessary measures to investigate. But Papi is dead-on...Because a rival or a troll..or an angry scammer would know every bank and could report against them simply outta spite.

I guess we all just hafta have hope and faith that the correct measures are made and have a ready transfer plan when the first clan bank gets can'd unfairly and it hits forums.

My issue with that particular wording is this line:
"Players who have revealed the username and password of their account no longer have any assurance of security and are ineligble for support on that account"

To me, that sounds like 'we don't mind if you share your account details, as long as you realise that if you do you won't get any help from Support if you run into any trouble', which is something we definitely do not encourage.

But isn't that what you are doing now. The sentence mearly states the truth. You have already said that you have no intention to go after these accounts so long as nobody reports a theft. But all it would take is a rival clan to file a complaint about theft. You would have no way to tell what was a theft or a clan transfer.

The fact is that the game as defined lacks all the tools a clan may need to operate efficiently and thus clans have resorted to sharing accounts which technically violate the TOS. We want to comply with the policy but you are forcing us not to. Please reconsider the sentence above as a temporary solution until the game can code a solution.

Tea is correct, and Cali does point out that the only reason clans share accounts is because we have no other way to accomplish a clan bank. I understand you don't encourage it but it is a rampant practice. How do you propose we accomplish this game requirement and still comply with the Policy?

The fact of the matter is that account sharing is against the Terms and Conditions, and I can think of no MMO which allows for this.

We are not going to actively search out and ban accounts which have been shared.

However, if people insist in sharing their account details, even though this is in breach of the rules, they run the very clear risk of someone who has access to the account taking their items and characters.

If you contact Support about items being taken from your account, your items will not be restored. This is why the rules say you are not allowed to share your account.

That being said, advertising to sell or trade an account will be actively pursued by the Support team to protect players from scams. People who also steal items from others will be subject to the disciplinary procedure.

I hope this goes some way in helping clear the confusion surrounding this policy. We want people to understand where we are coming from in regards to these issues, and that the reason we are doing it is protection.

Ok lets summarize:

I am going to read between the lines here. Onethumb has been very careful about responses, avoiding certain phrases or acknowledging standard practices. Normally this occurs because there is a legal requirement someone must comply with and so aren’t permitted to be more forthcoming. I will not ask you to confirm this because you wouldn’t be able to answer that question. So I am going to make two statements that I will not ask onethumb to acknowledge. This is the collective perception of the customer base and that is sufficient regardless of whether it is true.

1. It has been made perfectly clear that onethumb will never even hint that sharing accounts is anything less than egregious and should never be done under any circumstances.
2. Sharing accounts is a rampant practice in every clan. They do this because they feel forced to violate the terms of service because the game does not provide any other means to accomplish clan needs.

So let’s try to take this discussion in another direction. Let us end the discussion of the policy and focus on a solution to the needs the user community has. There are certain needs that can be accomplished in the game currently but not in compliance with the terms of service.

Onethumb;

Please accept this request as coming from the user community.

1. High priority – Clan Banks - There is a GREAT need in the clans to have you code in a clan bank function. The chief needs to have control of who gets access, because he cannot be online all the time. That responsibility needs to be delegated.

2. Lower priority – Character borrowing - On occasion the users see a need to have someone else drive their character. This is especially needful at a clan level because of the different time zones and how many people happen to be online, a clan often is short a specific type of class like a tank or a druid or a support mage and may wish to have “clan staff” that generals or guardians have access to. We would desire for you to consider a way we can have one of our toons appear on someone else’s account page for temporary access. The other account would have no way to trade or vendor any items. Will not be able to allocate skill or ability points but would be able to use the character so long as someone else is not already doing so. This will also help with letting a friend see what its like to play your character without the risk of loss. This may be a good way to increase the player base.

Do you need us to have a discussion about the implementation or do you have enough information already? When can we expect this functionality to be implemented?

Somebody has already brought up the idea of clan banks, so I'll copy/paste my response from that topic here to make things easier.

I personally think this is a great idea, and I think it's definitely something which will help the clans.

I will suggest this to the team, and hopefully we will be able to discuss it soon. However, please note that just because I am suggesting it doesn't mean it will definitely be made, nor will there be a definite time frame as to when it could be introduced (if, it turns out, it is going to be introduced).

There are a lot of things to consider when creating something as significant as this, and it is something that cannot be rushed. Like I said though, I will suggest it and explain how it could potentially benefit players as a whole, and then we'll just have to take things from there.

As for the idea of 'Character Borrowing', again this is my personal opinion, but I don't think it's a great idea as there is the potential for the system to be open to abuse by the players. However, like with the clan banks I will pass this suggestion on to the team, and we'll have a discussion about it.

It's quite clear that something does need to be done, and I will be pushing for a change that will help clans in this situation. However, like I said in my original post regarding clan banks, such a change takes time and I don't think, at this moment anyway, I can give any definite time frame as to if and when such a change will occur.

I am am the 'somebody else'. Here is my proposal:

http://www.onethumbmobile.com/celticher ... =6&t=14425

My summarization would be as follows.

1- clan banks: until they are fixed there is a structural motivator to violate policy. Changing policy creates a non-beneficial, exploitable loophole. I beleive this makes clan banks a project priority, since it is directly connected to the priority related to scam prevention. This is on OTM and I feel they need to fix it.

2- Character borrowing: without recoding some way to regulate this, it also creates an exploitable loophole. Therefore, in current policy any such borrowing would always be at the players risk. It is important to note that the current precedent is that this risk extends to all the accounts and toons associated with the activity. In other words, if five people participated in such borrowing all 5-6 accounts would be at risk, including accounts that were not shared in any way. It might even extend to the case of multiple accounts registered to any of the players involved, since the punitive action is directed at a player and not a toon. I am not saying anything about the rightness or wrongness of any of that here, and it is the current precedent. It would be possible to create policy where toons instead of players are punished, locking skills and in game abilities, fines, etc.

When I say loopholes, I mean areas that open up ways for third party trading, scamming etc. to occur, even if that is not what is happening in specific instances. The rental car analogy is again a good one. We dont own our toons or anything about them in any way. They are more or less rented, and not even really that. More or less you are paying/ agreeing to conditions (if you are paying at all) for the rights to drive and improve a toon that belongs to OTM in a world that belongs to OTM. If you rent a car and someone else drives it, that is all at the renters risk. Without recoding such that multiple users can be registered to a single account, as you would with a second driver on a rental car, this is the condition.

If they wanted to, OTM could create an game object, maybe a plat item, that registered the event of a second player using an account for a limited period of time, making it transparent and subject to policy. It still puts the account at risk if something goes wrong, but by purchasing and implementing this device, both players have agreed to that risk, and OTM has a way of seeing and regulating it. Though I think this would be cool, I do not think it is likely. It also sets up an entirely different dynamic open to abuse since people would try to set up and profit from rent-tank accounts and such.

That said, there is nothing that OTM, or Hertz, can actually do to prevent a second driver. If nothing goes wrong, then it is more or less invisible. If anything goes wrong that requires an investigation, different story. Some people play these games as much for the social drama as anything else. Personally, I would plan on something going wrong and act accordingly, even if it were an inconvenience to me and my clan.