Hello, I would like to raise a topic of House Boosting. Me and few players I've talked to have agreed that alts being able to boost the house cup double the amount than it should be able to isn't very fair. I strongly see no point of alts being allowed to boost house points when they are not allowed to boost something like order up in the aniversary event.
House Boosting
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- Thread starter Lannifox
- Start date
how do you stop an alt boosting house cup? it's easy in order up, you just ban joining it. Aside from outright banning alts, I really don't see any way this can be done.
i'm not sure exactly how alts are boosting the house cup, dailies?
in which case i personally don't think it's a major problem, though i don't have the statistics.
basically, i think stopping alts from playing order up is different to the house cup, because in order up it's about getting extra rewards for two accounts despite only playing the game once, ie one of the accounts being afk in the game. However, in the house cup, you still need to do twice as much work to get all the daily rewards, so while I see there can be a benefit since most players can only get one set of rewards, I also don't think there's too much effect from it, and imo if someone wants to put that much effort into grinding for the house cup in doing multiple sets of daily activities every day, then I don't have a problem with that.
i'm not sure exactly how alts are boosting the house cup, dailies?
in which case i personally don't think it's a major problem, though i don't have the statistics.
basically, i think stopping alts from playing order up is different to the house cup, because in order up it's about getting extra rewards for two accounts despite only playing the game once, ie one of the accounts being afk in the game. However, in the house cup, you still need to do twice as much work to get all the daily rewards, so while I see there can be a benefit since most players can only get one set of rewards, I also don't think there's too much effect from it, and imo if someone wants to put that much effort into grinding for the house cup in doing multiple sets of daily activities every day, then I don't have a problem with that.
Ofc it could be done... I personally spoke about alts on so many occasions, including DMing staff directly, but I would always get the similar responses - how they either don't see it as an issue OR they cannot know who's an alt.
The advantages that you get from an alt are often dismissed alongside the logic of "you put double the effort", which is not quite true because a single player simply doesn't get the opportunity to put double the effort in for the same outcome, therefore it will never be fair, as well as the fact that quite often its not evem double the effort, its a little more effort for getting double the reward. From going to classes with several accounts (which is absurd to me), from being able to buy double/triple sets of collectables in a totally broken economy, being able to get more dailies (which in reality, you cant even get those days because minigames aren't played), from the absolutely broken voting system and its rewards, any kind of gameplay with cooldowns is yet another huge advantage for alts..
If anyone really thought about it, its really obvious that with the current state of the server and economy - alts are just rigged. It's a choice if they want to do something about it or not, but they chose not to and I'm not surprised as a big big majority of staff members use alts as well. Many servers have limitations and rules about alt accounts, as well as in game mechanics that stop you from taking advantage of them, without straight up banning those accounts.
The advantages that you get from an alt are often dismissed alongside the logic of "you put double the effort", which is not quite true because a single player simply doesn't get the opportunity to put double the effort in for the same outcome, therefore it will never be fair, as well as the fact that quite often its not evem double the effort, its a little more effort for getting double the reward. From going to classes with several accounts (which is absurd to me), from being able to buy double/triple sets of collectables in a totally broken economy, being able to get more dailies (which in reality, you cant even get those days because minigames aren't played), from the absolutely broken voting system and its rewards, any kind of gameplay with cooldowns is yet another huge advantage for alts..
If anyone really thought about it, its really obvious that with the current state of the server and economy - alts are just rigged. It's a choice if they want to do something about it or not, but they chose not to and I'm not surprised as a big big majority of staff members use alts as well. Many servers have limitations and rules about alt accounts, as well as in game mechanics that stop you from taking advantage of them, without straight up banning those accounts.
ok i see your point but i really cannot see how you can stop this from happening without outright banning alts, which i don't think would be fair for the people who have alts but don't use them to boost themselves or families with multiple players. An alt limit being introduced I would be in favour of, because last day 4 accounts it really becomes unreasonable - there's no reason to need that many accounts other than to provide an unfair advantage. Other than doing that though (and really, I don't think many people have more than that many accounts? it can surely only be a select few) it seems impossible to regulate - how do you suggest doing it?
I'll try to explain my thoughts here.
First of, I believe I mentioned this, but staff did say on some occasions during our discussions they have no way of telling who's an alt or not. That doesn't mean they cannot put rules in place for people to follow, whenever they can easily enforce them or not. Ban evading is a good example, going from what they said they cannot know if someone is using an alt to ban evade, but the rule still exists.
The point I'm trying to give here is that there could be rules put in place that might not be easily moderated, but just the fact that the rule exists will make majority of the people not want to break it.
For example, I've been to a few classes that Wildsam hosted recently, and he has a no alt rule, which is something I argued for before on several occasions, but was always dismissed.
So yes, one of the regulations we could have is to ban alts in classes (they're already not allowed in challenges).
Agreed, I mean it's obvious. And ridiculous
It's also obvious who on the server "abuses" alt accounts, all you gotta do is open your eyes. I don't blame those people because it's not their fault the server has made it stupidly easy to profit of them, but if I take into consideration that a lot of those people are staff who ultimately decide the faith of alts, that's when it becomes an issue and I do blame them for allowing it slide.
1. Add rules (whenever they can or can't moderate it). If Sam can do it in his class, I don't see why it can't be a all class type rule (I will not get into why having 2+ accounts in a class is unfair, and anyone who disagrees with me on that is simply not right). You could add a alt limitation rule (I will get into this later).
2. Fix the economy. If I could profit more from something I'm actively doing, rather than just using alts, then it wouldn't be such a big issue as it is right now. I don't want to make this reply too long, but anyone who knows how earning gold works and what the economy looks like, knows what I'm talking about. The richest players on PW didn't earn their gold from actively farming mobs and opening chests (where alts also have an advantage bc chests have cooldowns), they made the gold for selling their extra collectables sets that they easily got simply for having more than just 1 alt. A single player cannot do that, because no active way of earning gold can match up the collectable economy, and if it does, it's still unfair because of the effort they had to put in.
3. Some servers limit the rewards so that you can only get 1 per your IP. This means that you wouldn't be able to claim extra rewards on your alt, unless you used another IP. Of course, bypassing this limitation is a violation of the system put on place. In fact, PW has one system like this, and that is voting, but for whatever reason, PW never addressed the people who change their IP on alts. so they can get double the voting rewards.
To me, that's a clear sign PW willingly chooses not to do anything about it, because it's ridiculous to allow people to just do that like its nothing, as well as having those absurdly high voting rewards (speaking of HPs here mainly).
And finally, let me turn the tables and ask you, why is the purpose of allowing alts, especially more than one? (Other than getting unfair advantages which I named above). The only legit response I ever got to this question is to allow people to redo the quests. You can make quest replayable. I know PW would never do it, but I do think banning alts all together does way more good than bad. You can disagree with me on that as much as you want, but as of right now, that's just how it is.
First of, I believe I mentioned this, but staff did say on some occasions during our discussions they have no way of telling who's an alt or not. That doesn't mean they cannot put rules in place for people to follow, whenever they can easily enforce them or not. Ban evading is a good example, going from what they said they cannot know if someone is using an alt to ban evade, but the rule still exists.
The point I'm trying to give here is that there could be rules put in place that might not be easily moderated, but just the fact that the rule exists will make majority of the people not want to break it.
For example, I've been to a few classes that Wildsam hosted recently, and he has a no alt rule, which is something I argued for before on several occasions, but was always dismissed.
So yes, one of the regulations we could have is to ban alts in classes (they're already not allowed in challenges).
Agreed, I mean it's obvious. And ridiculous
It's also obvious who on the server "abuses" alt accounts, all you gotta do is open your eyes. I don't blame those people because it's not their fault the server has made it stupidly easy to profit of them, but if I take into consideration that a lot of those people are staff who ultimately decide the faith of alts, that's when it becomes an issue and I do blame them for allowing it slide.
1. Add rules (whenever they can or can't moderate it). If Sam can do it in his class, I don't see why it can't be a all class type rule (I will not get into why having 2+ accounts in a class is unfair, and anyone who disagrees with me on that is simply not right). You could add a alt limitation rule (I will get into this later).
2. Fix the economy. If I could profit more from something I'm actively doing, rather than just using alts, then it wouldn't be such a big issue as it is right now. I don't want to make this reply too long, but anyone who knows how earning gold works and what the economy looks like, knows what I'm talking about. The richest players on PW didn't earn their gold from actively farming mobs and opening chests (where alts also have an advantage bc chests have cooldowns), they made the gold for selling their extra collectables sets that they easily got simply for having more than just 1 alt. A single player cannot do that, because no active way of earning gold can match up the collectable economy, and if it does, it's still unfair because of the effort they had to put in.
3. Some servers limit the rewards so that you can only get 1 per your IP. This means that you wouldn't be able to claim extra rewards on your alt, unless you used another IP. Of course, bypassing this limitation is a violation of the system put on place. In fact, PW has one system like this, and that is voting, but for whatever reason, PW never addressed the people who change their IP on alts. so they can get double the voting rewards.
To me, that's a clear sign PW willingly chooses not to do anything about it, because it's ridiculous to allow people to just do that like its nothing, as well as having those absurdly high voting rewards (speaking of HPs here mainly).
And finally, let me turn the tables and ask you, why is the purpose of allowing alts, especially more than one? (Other than getting unfair advantages which I named above). The only legit response I ever got to this question is to allow people to redo the quests. You can make quest replayable. I know PW would never do it, but I do think banning alts all together does way more good than bad. You can disagree with me on that as much as you want, but as of right now, that's just how it is.
@Ivan_ the website isn't letting me reply to individual snippets so i can't quote individual bits :/
would the rule be something along the lines of 'don't use alts to grind house points'? I guess this works, it's just a little vague because I could, for example, do dailies on multiple accounts and as a side effect get more house points for it, when really i'm after gold. The ban evading rule is in place because even if they can't always detect it, it gives staff something they can do if someone reveals that they are ban evading in some other way, so I guess the house point thing makes sense as a rule if staff wanted to minimise this happening - but it would likely turn into something happening behind closed doors. I'm not against it being a rule though, as I don't think it would do any harm. I just wonder how much good jt would do, either.
1 reward per IP seems promising but idk how they can bypass changing IPs. There's an extent to which making unenforceable rules just punishes the players who follow the rules, and i think this is one of those cases. Also, for people who just want to have an alt, this can be pretty annoying. I personally fell victim to having to choose whether to vote on my main and get VT for the new shop or on my alt to get xp which was frustrating.
unless, i just thought of this and it's probably more difficult and wouldn't be considered worth it, but what if you could only get hp once per ip? not a perfect system since you could still bypass and still get extra gold on alts but still maybe could work
and then this is why i think one or two alts should be acceptable
- i have an alt myself, and i used it as a 'blank slate' kind of thing to redo quests and to experience the whole levelling up thing again - ik a lot of people don't like the levelling up system and that's fair enough, but the whole discovering new places feels very different when starting afresh, in a way that it wouldn't of quests were simply repeatable (that being said, i do agree that quests should be made repeatable).
- I am also very conscious that multiple people might play on the same ip, and in my opinion it's not fair to exclude them when the rules could be loosened a bit to allow for an alt or two.
would the rule be something along the lines of 'don't use alts to grind house points'? I guess this works, it's just a little vague because I could, for example, do dailies on multiple accounts and as a side effect get more house points for it, when really i'm after gold. The ban evading rule is in place because even if they can't always detect it, it gives staff something they can do if someone reveals that they are ban evading in some other way, so I guess the house point thing makes sense as a rule if staff wanted to minimise this happening - but it would likely turn into something happening behind closed doors. I'm not against it being a rule though, as I don't think it would do any harm. I just wonder how much good jt would do, either.
1 reward per IP seems promising but idk how they can bypass changing IPs. There's an extent to which making unenforceable rules just punishes the players who follow the rules, and i think this is one of those cases. Also, for people who just want to have an alt, this can be pretty annoying. I personally fell victim to having to choose whether to vote on my main and get VT for the new shop or on my alt to get xp which was frustrating.
unless, i just thought of this and it's probably more difficult and wouldn't be considered worth it, but what if you could only get hp once per ip? not a perfect system since you could still bypass and still get extra gold on alts but still maybe could work
and then this is why i think one or two alts should be acceptable
- i have an alt myself, and i used it as a 'blank slate' kind of thing to redo quests and to experience the whole levelling up thing again - ik a lot of people don't like the levelling up system and that's fair enough, but the whole discovering new places feels very different when starting afresh, in a way that it wouldn't of quests were simply repeatable (that being said, i do agree that quests should be made repeatable).
- I am also very conscious that multiple people might play on the same ip, and in my opinion it's not fair to exclude them when the rules could be loosened a bit to allow for an alt or two.
Not like that, of course the HPs is what the original thread is about, but I spoke about other issues. The best solution is a combination of the three examples I wrote but when it comes to rules specifically - They could ban alts in classes permanently. On top of that, they could ban the usage of a VPN in order to gain profit (whenever it's voting or if they make the IP reward system).
Doesn't matter, you're still taking advantage of it, whenever it's for extra HPs, gold or XP.
I'm not sure about that, let's say someone chooses not to follow the rules and profit - They would have to secretly use an alt, otherwise they would be caught. So in theory, they must always use a VPN. They won't be able to be online at the same time, recognizing alts and their behaviors isn't that hard, they can easily track how gold and items are transfered. My point here, it would take a LOT of effort to bypass such rule and the risk would be too high, so I doubt any long lasting players (aka the only ones that do abuse altos) would do that, it's not worth it.
This is true, but it's also a rare scenario. And those people wouldn't be alts, so it wouldn't be a rule break. It would only become an issue with the IP rewards, but in that case those people could get in contact with the staff and have their accounts fixed so that the system doesn't apply to them (again I'm sure this is a extremely rare scenario).
So again, a combination of specific rules, rebalances of the game (aka not having voting rewards so high when the effort you put in is minimal, but rather have high rewards for active play content), and possibly the IP system would fix the issue. Another idea I haven't mentioned but maybe even consider adding unlimited stock you can buy. Yes, it would bring the price of collectables down, but it could create a healthier economy in future where it's not just collectables that you profit from.
Meh, that's just a subjective feel, when in reality if you had the option to repeat quests, it wouldn't be different in any way (you can take off gear and limit your spells if you want to roleplay a first year). Plus, how many people even graduate nowadays, nobody is getting alts to play the game again from start.
There's too many hypothetical scenarios that are far from reality that people use in those kind of debates, and I think it's quite clear that something needs to be done because it's just stupid. It's a game flaw. No successful game/Minecraft server encourages you to just keep switching accounts because you profit more like that rather than PLAYING THE GAME. And then people wonder why pw is dead
Doesn't matter, you're still taking advantage of it, whenever it's for extra HPs, gold or XP.
I'm not sure about that, let's say someone chooses not to follow the rules and profit - They would have to secretly use an alt, otherwise they would be caught. So in theory, they must always use a VPN. They won't be able to be online at the same time, recognizing alts and their behaviors isn't that hard, they can easily track how gold and items are transfered. My point here, it would take a LOT of effort to bypass such rule and the risk would be too high, so I doubt any long lasting players (aka the only ones that do abuse altos) would do that, it's not worth it.
This is true, but it's also a rare scenario. And those people wouldn't be alts, so it wouldn't be a rule break. It would only become an issue with the IP rewards, but in that case those people could get in contact with the staff and have their accounts fixed so that the system doesn't apply to them (again I'm sure this is a extremely rare scenario).
So again, a combination of specific rules, rebalances of the game (aka not having voting rewards so high when the effort you put in is minimal, but rather have high rewards for active play content), and possibly the IP system would fix the issue. Another idea I haven't mentioned but maybe even consider adding unlimited stock you can buy. Yes, it would bring the price of collectables down, but it could create a healthier economy in future where it's not just collectables that you profit from.
Meh, that's just a subjective feel, when in reality if you had the option to repeat quests, it wouldn't be different in any way (you can take off gear and limit your spells if you want to roleplay a first year). Plus, how many people even graduate nowadays, nobody is getting alts to play the game again from start.
There's too many hypothetical scenarios that are far from reality that people use in those kind of debates, and I think it's quite clear that something needs to be done because it's just stupid. It's a game flaw. No successful game/Minecraft server encourages you to just keep switching accounts because you profit more like that rather than PLAYING THE GAME. And then people wonder why pw is dead
I think this discussion is interesting, and you can tell by the dailies how many points an alt getting just most of the points will be able to collect without restrictions.
Let's say you can keep a 30-stay streak (4 HP)
Attend at least 2 classes (5 HP)
Do a chest run of 50+ chests (3 HP)
^ All of the above also gives gold and experience ^
Then you can time it by the amount of alts someone is willing to do this with. It becomes a significant advantage over the course of 3 months. This advantage goes away if you spend time on your alt, and the alt is a different house than your main. (Such as a Raven playing as a Griffin for a Season, but doesn't wanna get a resort token)
Even with that said, it doesn't change the ability to gain multiple 1-time rewards such as valuable collectables (which could either be purchasable multiple times or bound to the account who earned it)
Even if there were an alt-connecting system in place (Connect your alt to your main account to access same currency, inventory, rewards etc.) I don't think it would encourage people to connect their alts as it takes away those additional rewards you get for dailies.
I just wanted to highlight what an alt can really stand to gain, and how those 12 HP a day could be more than 1k house points in the end if done every single day. (with no restrictions.)
I hope this can highlight what I believe Lanni refers to when he mentions a problem with House Boosting. I myself really don't have great solutions to the problem. I will agree with Ivan that a great initiative was done by at least some professors to not allow alts into classes / challenges for the class daily being done on 2 accounts at once.
Stay curios and have a magical day
- Athena Moonwish
Let's say you can keep a 30-stay streak (4 HP)
Attend at least 2 classes (5 HP)
Do a chest run of 50+ chests (3 HP)
^ All of the above also gives gold and experience ^
Then you can time it by the amount of alts someone is willing to do this with. It becomes a significant advantage over the course of 3 months. This advantage goes away if you spend time on your alt, and the alt is a different house than your main. (Such as a Raven playing as a Griffin for a Season, but doesn't wanna get a resort token)
Even with that said, it doesn't change the ability to gain multiple 1-time rewards such as valuable collectables (which could either be purchasable multiple times or bound to the account who earned it)
Even if there were an alt-connecting system in place (Connect your alt to your main account to access same currency, inventory, rewards etc.) I don't think it would encourage people to connect their alts as it takes away those additional rewards you get for dailies.
I just wanted to highlight what an alt can really stand to gain, and how those 12 HP a day could be more than 1k house points in the end if done every single day. (with no restrictions.)
I hope this can highlight what I believe Lanni refers to when he mentions a problem with House Boosting. I myself really don't have great solutions to the problem. I will agree with Ivan that a great initiative was done by at least some professors to not allow alts into classes / challenges for the class daily being done on 2 accounts at once.
Stay curios and have a magical day
- Athena Moonwish