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Post by A Pot of Water on Sept 14, 2015 14:20:32 GMT -5
Hello everyone, With the new steam integration I would ask all our players on the forums to change their steam nickname to the same you have on our forums. As you can see we are able to see your steam ID, so in order to make a list to avoid fraud, it is important for us to double check your identity when you order a voucher. This doesn't have to be over a long period of time. If this method is successful then you will be able to order a voucher on any of your alts if you are not on TS. If you know how to send me your steam ID via the forums it'd be even better =)
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Post by Dryke on Sept 14, 2015 15:31:27 GMT -5
A Pot of Water Hmm. I can't say I'm willing to do this. I've used 'Urban Legend' forever on steam and I'm not terribly inclined to change it. I would, however, be willing to either change my ID here on the forums or add 'Urban Legend' as an alias
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Post by A Pot of Water on Sept 14, 2015 16:46:16 GMT -5
Just as long as I witness it or if you are in my friendlist (/mokaykopin) it's fine.
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JordosS
The Agency
Posts: 263
AKA (in game): Nicola Tesla
AKA (in game): Usain Bolt
AKA (in game): Drakon
Reputation:: Veteran
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Post by JordosS on Sept 14, 2015 17:59:32 GMT -5
I want my anonymity back
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Snow
"Talk is cheap. Show me the CODE."
Survivor
Posts: 72
AKA (in game): Snow
AKA (in game): Legend
AKA (in game): Wesley Pipes
Reputation:: Enigma
Group(s) In-Game:: Fractured Legs
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Post by Snow on Sept 14, 2015 23:46:39 GMT -5
Every one add me. Steam ID: ♛Snow I should be the first one that shows up on steam. But Dryke not the same luck lol urban legend has like 12 people are you Michigan or Texas?
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Post by Dryke on Sept 15, 2015 8:26:53 GMT -5
Yeah, turns out it's a fairly common moniker I'm in California. My picture looks like a skull with a cap and goggles. Try steamcommunity.com/id/Urban_Legend and see if that gets you to my profile
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Post by Hobbes on Sept 15, 2015 8:32:24 GMT -5
maybe Aniketos could look into this and hopefully with some modest amount of effort, could make this more fluid without sacrificing anonymity; though, the guy has had his hands full for as long as I've known him. Or maybe just send admins a PM with your steamID. we can start building a list of who's who and who's alts are where. We obviously want you all to be able to maintain your anonymity but we also want to be able to smoothen the gap between the forums and in-game. Ideas?
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ellis
Cosa Nostra
Posts: 133
AKA (in game): Elisa
AKA (in game): Wilson
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Post by ellis on Sept 15, 2015 15:57:23 GMT -5
Does any player have a fraud claim? Would like to hear some.
Prior to rolling back to stable branch, an admin told me I had too many caps and alts and would only be allowed to use vouchers on 4 names, those attached to my profile here. Also that I could not heal others anymore (community?). This was said to be a combat to this fraud. What fraud? I suggested then that a PM here would solve any imagined fraud but that was not enough. I also bet 100 (mostly useless to me) caps that I was the only one told this 'rule'.
When we went back on stable branch our old characters got trapped in limbo, leaving me no allowed characters to use vouchers on anyway. What a mistake to have earned so many caps, leaving my characters to die.
I have never denied being me (Ellis is a random name too, as are all my alts) ingame. My steam ID (also hardly important to me) does not lend itself to a survivor characters name, neither does my mind accept ten Ellis' all happened to be in Kentucky and survive the initial outbreak. They have different names because they are different characters.
So steam IDs showing ingame have somehow made it even more difficult to track? Or the false voucher cashing racket has accelerated? I have not cashed a voucher in over a month, avoid posting so I don't get too rich, and have been letting many skilled up characters die. Unfortunately I now pretend there is no cap and voucher system as it seems I could never willingly jump the hoops necessary to use it.
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Post by A Pot of Water on Sept 15, 2015 17:30:15 GMT -5
Does any player have a fraud claim? Would like to hear some. Prior to rolling back to stable branch, an admin told me I had too many caps and alts and would only be allowed to use vouchers on 4 names, those attached to my profile here. Also that I could not heal others anymore (community?). This was said to be a combat to this fraud. What fraud? I suggested then that a PM here would solve any imagined fraud but that was not enough. I also bet 100 (mostly useless to me) caps that I was the only one told this 'rule'. When we went back on stable branch our old characters got trapped in limbo, leaving me no allowed characters to use vouchers on anyway. What a mistake to have earned so many caps, leaving my characters to die. I have never denied being me (Ellis is a random name too, as are all my alts) ingame. My steam ID (also hardly important to me) does not lend itself to a survivor characters name, neither does my mind accept ten Ellis' all happened to be in Kentucky and survive the initial outbreak. They have different names because they are different characters. So steam IDs showing ingame have somehow made it even more difficult to track? Or the false voucher cashing racket has accelerated? I have not cashed a voucher in over a month, avoid posting so I don't get too rich, and have been letting many skilled up characters die. Unfortunately I now pretend there is no cap and voucher system as it seems I could never willingly jump the hoops necessary to use it. If I do that is in order to prevent any kind of fraud. You were not told a rule, you were asked for an advice and a point of view, now stop feeling so oppressed. I told you I was thinking about it, have you seen a rule change a rule anywhere on the forums or anyone claiming IG rules have been changed? Thoughts sometimes are just that and with the steam integration thing it's going to be very useful. We can have you steam id number and check you in 5 seconds of our time. That new system closes the door of using heals on a fewer number of characters. Now apparently there is a way to retrieve your characters stuck in the future. I wouldn't be able to tell you though. Once again you think it is a personnal attack, but I have never. I asked for your view on a subject that was still unsure to me. Like I did with Metal, Grumpy, Hash or others at times. Steam IDs make it way easier tp track on the contrary. I've never told you to stop getting money, I've said that you have a certain advantage over new players.
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Post by Dryke on Sept 15, 2015 18:06:28 GMT -5
For what it's worth your characters are not stuck any more. If you did not delete them they will work now. What I did when this happened is back up my whole multiplayer folder; when the stable branch reached the point where the IWBUMS had been I moved all of those old characters into the current folder and voila, they were available for play
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ellis
Cosa Nostra
Posts: 133
AKA (in game): Elisa
AKA (in game): Wilson
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Post by ellis on Sept 15, 2015 18:37:35 GMT -5
Dryke Yes, with no backups or anything most my old characters work now that we have caught up. A Pot of Water Was not trying to stir the pot as it were, or call you out, hence 'an admin'. Is it not valid to ask a player to describe an incident of fraud? That is all I meant to ask, exactly what these measures will prevent. I don't feel oppressed, I am just playing lately like there is no cap system (which I did not create) because if its this much hassle for both sides I am fine to die and play on. If players were claiming other players caps or vouchers, why not require a PM here? It promotes the forum and seems quite simple, as a PM from Ellis asking for a heal from Ellis' profile would be as sound as matching names to steam IDs or trying learn or create a list of steam IDs and ingame alts.
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Post by Dryke on Sept 16, 2015 9:06:14 GMT -5
I'm wondering if my suggestion would work here - what if for people like me we just added our steam ID's as a valid alias to our main profile?
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Post by Hobbes on Sept 16, 2015 11:30:50 GMT -5
I would say that so long as there is a clear distinction from in-game characters to in-forum alias for admins (as we do not want players to sacrifice their anonymity, but would like to take advantage of some of the new features to help either PREVENT fraud, or to quicken the pace in which we can address voucher exchanges or detect cheaters. There have been some minute instances of fraud in the past, but the main goal is to prevent them BEFORE they occur, especially with numbers getting back up to normal, it means our jobs will become more and more pressing for perfection and smooth interaction. Some folks may not want their Steam ID available for viewing by all on the forums, which I can appreciate. So maybe just making an alias on the forums designated to your steamID, will suffice. that way, we can just type in the steamid into the forum search bar and the correct player will show up for admins, but not for players attempting the same search. It's just a thought. It's a nice feature the devs included and we are just trying to make use of it to be even more fool-proof, despite our good fortune and best efforts that have gotten us this far, the game evolves and so must we to either accommodate or take advantage of the new additions. Don't forget, our ultimate end goal is to make the game more fun and interactive. I'm not sure why anyone is getting the third degree for having "too many caps" and frankly if you have the vouchers, admins should be exchanging them, on whichever character you want. The system is designed so that there is no haggling or accusations requiered when trying to exchange your vouchers and the new features includes a method that allows us to be even faster. no checking up on who is who and rewards from events can be dolled out without 1001 inquiries to each player involved at the end. On the subject of PMs... uhg. gross. we have A LOT of PMs as it is. it's a lot of work to hold on to every PM indicating who is who, and to go rooting through the list of still active PMs would be even slower than our current situation. just to satisfy the question (which is moot now as it's clear we are just trying to better prevent instances of this); It happens often that many players will ask to redeem heals all at once and admins (at no fault of the players) can get turned around trying to satisfy everyone's needs in a quick and facilitated manner, though keeping track of who redeemed how many vouchers can get confusing with enough instances stacked on top of one another. up until the steamid integration, the only method to prevent such a thing, would be to remove each heal on the forums as they are administered, greatly slowing down the process. Or even at the end of an event, when players want to get back to their lives, immediately, yet there is a slew of characters that took part and completed the event and deserve rewards. Instead of having everyone stand around waiting, we can take a quick screen cap and administer winnings without forcing players to wait patiently (or even worse, going through everyone and asking who they are on the forums) while we go through each winner making sure they all get their just-desserts. Ultimately, it's all for you guys, if we can move a bit faster, especially if more and more players will begin to discover us. SO my suggestion would be to either have a mandatory space to be filled in your profile description (as suggested by Dryke) or create an alt with your steamid if you value secrecy among the other players... thoughts? objections? better suggestions? we're all ears.
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Post by Aniketos on Sept 16, 2015 19:37:48 GMT -5
On the topic of fraud... I'm aware of at least seven instances of players impersonating one another, two of which would have unjustly altered a player's bottlecap balance - so it does happen, unfortunately! maybe Aniketos could look into this and hopefully with some modest amount of effort, could make this more fluid without sacrificing anonymity I do have some thoughts in mind! I'm wondering if my suggestion would work here - what if for people like me we just added our steam ID's as a valid alias to our main profile? Unfortunately, I think manually entering Steam IDs would be just a small hoop rather than security improvement, sadly - it's a trivial matter to look up another player's Steam ID. While it seems unlikely that community members would be running around using eachother's Steam IDs, I think the possibility of it happening makes it something that particular circumstances would see come to pass - there are some potential messes here that I'm not even sure Trashboat could clean up! But I think I can set up an OpenID authorization, though. This way, you would click a button, be taken to the Steam website to log in, and then grant permission for Zeek's Haven to access some of your profile details. In this manner no one without access to your Steam account could fraudulently impersonate you - and it has next to no chance of causing administrative nightmares And this is all really straightforward to implement, too. Or at least it would be on most sites - but hosting our forums on ProBoards comes with a tremendous pile of complications. I'm certain it can still be done, but I'll need a chunk of time to figure out satisfactory and secure work-arounds. Such a Steam ID association with the forums comes with some seriously awesome possibilities down the road, though (with Steam Workshop mod synchronization, there arrives the possibility of in-game Spiffo Store access, for instance) - so it's definitely got a prominent spot on the to-do list! For the moment, I'll see if I can add a hidden field to your forum profiles such that only admins can view it - then we'll phase it out when I get the more secure OpenID solution sorted out. I've been a little buried, working 12 hour days as of late - but the moment things quiet down I'll start digging into this in earnest! I think I may need to start recruiting techies for projects... more on that at a later date.
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Post by Aniketos on Sept 16, 2015 22:53:13 GMT -5
SteamID profile field implemented. Thanks to some egregious template hacking, I also managed to add secure, custom privacy settings for the field (despite ProBoard Support's insistence that it's not possible, muahahaha ). So here's what's up: - Add your SteamID in the new SteamID 64 field in the "Personal" tab of your profile settings
- SteamIDs come in a bunch of different formats. We're specifically looking for the one that's a big long number (often called "SteamID64" / "Steam 64 ID" / "64-bit Steam ID")
- If you don't know your SteamID, you can use one of the various lookup methods/services listed here to look it up. Something like steamid.co/ does the trick nicely
- By default, only Admins can see your SteamID, however you can change this using the SteamID Privacy setting immediately below the SteamID 64 field. It has three settings:
- Members - All registered forum members can see a "View my Profile on Steam" link (the address of which contains your SteamID), visible on the "Summary" tab of your profile
- Members and Guests - All visitors to the Zeek's Haven forums can see the link mentioned above
- None of the Above (default) - Only the Admins can see your SteamID
Admins: for convenience, profile links will be shown as the actual SteamID instead of "View my Profile on Steam"; they will additionally listed on the mini (hover) profiles across the boards and on the members list.
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