Terms of service and banning of player

[Calitri]

Im posting this due to my own saddness of losing a friend and guild mate. The person has been a dedicated member of Crystal Saga on R2Games sence Alpha and has made many friends and been a devoted player on this game. He has been banned for 3 months due to logging in to accounts that R2 says is not his. Yet the accounts in questioned were not banned only his main. These accounts he has logged into were left to him by players who have long quit this game. Technically in R2s terms of service you can see here

"No Ownership Rights in Account

You acknowledge and agree that you shall have no ownership or other property interested in any account stored or hosted in an R2Games system, including without limitation any R2Games account or Crystal Saga account, and you further acknowledge and agree that all rights in and to such accounts are and shall forever be owned by and inure to the benefit of R2Games."

Everyone logs into accounts that are not their own according to R2games, the accounts we log into are R2games and not even our own. So why single out this one player when people share information with the in game wives and husbands? I would like to know if just cause someone "pilots" an account for someone they get banned? When in your own terms of service by this line >

"You must not attempt to access any Account that is not your own."

you only mean that you may not hack someone else account? Because where you have this line it is under the Cheats/Hacking section of your terms of service. How is "piloting" considered cheating or hacking? And how do you know the accounts arnt his own? They were created in different places? Well I travel for work and may feel the need to create another account in another state then where I live. Am I subject to banning?

"You may hold several accounts; however you may not exploit this privilege. Any “bugs” (programming errors) discovered through playing Crystal Saga must be reported immediately to R2Games. You may not exploit any bugs to advance in the game. Exploiters will immediately be contacted and dealt with accordingly."

You may hold several accounts? But not exploit the privilege? Please define exploiting the privlege. Would having 15 accounts doing the daily quests/events on all be exploiting? If so you should ban everyone. Cause everyone does that. Or doing dungeons on more then one character. Would that quallify as exploiting? Again everyone does that. I know R2 has the right to suspend or delete any account with out any cause. But this seems unfair to me. My guild loses a great long term friend cause you ban him for 3 months? Even if it is a justified banning. Isnt 3 months harsh? If you lose 3 months of playing time in Crystal Saga its like missing 3 years of activities. Especially with the upcoming holidays. Now if the person was hacking or cheating then I completely understand. But just for piloting accounts you ban him and only his main account for 3 months?

Id like to know more info on this cause I along with many others are worried about banning for being piloted and piloting other accounts.

[wak-wak]

seems like 92% of our server should be banned for account sharing or "attempting to access an account that isnt your own"..not just pick and choose the people you ban, nice job r2 really fair gameplay there

[MemoryLane]

Technically, piloting someone else's account IS against the rules as it says in the rules not to give your password to anyone. Being gifted an account when a player quits is against the rules as well, which falls under both the password and right to ownership sections. It says all that in the ToS, quite clearly, so there really isn't more information that can be given about that.

It is common for people to pilot or be piloted, but that doesn't make it right and it doesn't make it legal for the people who do get caught just because a bunch of other people break the rule as well. When you pilot another character, you do put yourself at risk for being banned if reported for it with proof. Your friend got off lucky with a 3 month ban, as they could have permanently banned the account.

The attempt to access someone else's account part- you are reading that wrong. It means you can't attempt to access, ie, try to guess at a password or use hacking tools, etc.

To define exploiting the privilege of using alts, I will use a recent example. The mount extravaganza- people were creating alts, upgrading the mounts to battle bear, getting the reward, then deleting the alt and making a new one to go through the same process. When it first came out, there was no level requirement, so this process of alt creation to claim the reward was taking about 40 minutes per alt. Multiply that by dozens of alts for many, many people, and the amount of mount upgrade spam in world chat, which was all world chat was for most of that day. That is alt abuse- finding a bug and creating as many alts as possible to exploit it. It does not mean making a few accounts for the sole purpose of running indigo for PCs or using the same set of alts to run through weekly events. Key words being a few and the same ones, not creating and deleting repeatedly.

[powerdemon]

To define exploiting the privilege of using alts, I will use a recent example. The mount extravaganza- people were creating alts, upgrading the mounts to battle bear, getting the reward, then deleting the alt and making a new one to go through the same process. When it first came out, there was no level requirement, so this process of alt creation to claim the reward was taking about 40 minutes per alt. Multiply that by dozens of alts for many, many people, and the amount of mount upgrade spam in world chat, which was all world chat was for most of that day. That is alt abuse- finding a bug and creating as many alts as possible to exploit it. It does not mean making a few accounts for the sole purpose of running indigo for PCs or using the same set of alts to run through weekly events. Key words being a few and the same ones, not creating and deleting repeatedly.

And why did the people who exploited this and now have hellwings not get banned?

[seclusioned]

I personally see "dont give out your password to anyone" In all games ToS. I dont see it as a rule, I see it as a suggestion in the fact that if said person gave out password and the person lost everything on account due to giving out password. Then the games GMs couldnt do anything for the person who gave out the password. I dont read that as a rule at all. Just a mere suggestion.

And in any case once you create an account R2 knows your password right? If they know your password do the own that too? I wouldnt see them being able to own a players username or password. Yes they may own all rights to the account. But I know several people who play mmos and have their username copy righted. So I wouldnt think they have the right to own a username or password so there for a user should be able to give out a password to whom ever they please. Consequences will fall on the person giving out the password if something were to happen. But I dont see where piloting is against rules at all. In some games yes. In games where you can be logged in at 2 different places at the same time there is a way to exploit that. But a CS character can only be logged in at one place. So there is no ability to exploit.

I may be wrong but what ever.

[VicZar]

And why did the people who exploited this and now have hellwings not get banned?

Because basically, creation of alternate accounts or characters is not against the ToS.
Hence they raised the level requirement instead.


Rules are made in order to prevent things that you don't want to happen.
For example, you're going away on a trip, you can't level up your character. Somebody goes in and is willing to pilot your character for you. You accept, days later your items are gone. Who's fault is it?

[seclusioned]

Who's fault is it?

Exactly. But how is it against the rules? If someone knew your password and all your stuff came up gone. Why would you blame on a hacker? Id turn to the person that had the password and say congrats for making me a fool. Its not R2s fault someone gives out a password. If someone is willing to risk it then I say let them. R2 lets us risk dropping 100$ on fire lord eggs to only have all of them fail. Whose fault is that? Can we blame R2? NO! Because we took the risk!. Just saying.

[VicZar]

Exactly. But how is it against the rules? If someone knew your password and all your stuff came up gone. Why would you blame on a hacker? Id turn to the person that had the password and say congrats for making me a fool. Its not R2s fault someone gives out a password. If someone is willing to risk it then I say let them. R2 lets us risk dropping 100$ on fire lord eggs to only have all of them fail. Whose fault is that? Can we blame R2? NO! Because we took the risk!. Just saying.

Like I said, rules are made to prevent things that you don't exactly want to happen.
Punishment for breaking the rules is the harsher, more official way of saying "learn your lesson".
Yes seclusioned you do have a point.

But then somebody rages and goes "Holy llama! My bestest most trusted friendest friend in the world whom I have trusted my gorgeous awesomeness to the max account has hacked me! I must report to R2 Games to get him banned because he betrayed my trust and deserves it! <insert more rage quotes and sound effects here>". Well and the rest is history, banishment. With proof of course.

Why didn't the "victim" get banned then? Well it's pretty much like traffic laws (in here I guess). The red light for the pedestrian lane was on, for vehicles the light were green. This pedestrian jay-walked across the road, didn't even bother using the pedestrian lines, a truck comes in, BOOM. Who will get the charges? The truck, because he wasn't watching out for the pedestrian. You see where I'm going?

[seclusioned]

I see your point. Still the guy wasnt piloting. People left and just gave them the password. He never changed the password and I too was friends with him and he has said several times that he wished the people would come back that he hadnt taken anything off the account. Only improoved them. I too left a year ago gave my account to someone and just recently came back about a month ago. Password was the same and it was cool with the person who had my account. So It wasnt technically piloting or even ownership transfer. I say if someone wants to quit playing dont delete it. Its hard work lvling toons. Let someone else use it. Maybe set up a support ticket system to allow someone to say ok I quit im leaving my account to ***** such and such. Idk. Piloting can go wrong when you let someone use your account while your still playing. But if you quit and allow someone else to use your account. Whats the harm?

[VicZar]

In practical terms, true.
But then somebody might use the account for bad, oh say... Wronged that person's name by running around, scamming everyone. Then some would say "oh I know that person he isn't bad, why would he scam"?

Well overall it's complicated.
Imagine if hundreds of players do those, with so many possible outcomes to what will happen. And the GMs would have to run through the issue of those hundreds.


As long as nobody reports, nobody complained, nothing will happen.
No ban, no punishment, accept the consequences if there is.

[kiam25]

if u cant spend too much time on this game but have a m8 who can be say afk grind for you and do wat u miss each day wats so bad bout that that way u can try to keep up with the top flight id never give ma log in too no one i didnt trust i give it to trusted ppl that would neva wrong me so wat if u get sum1 else to pilot for u its only so u can keep up wen u have time

[smurfs16]

In practical terms, true.
But then somebody might use the account for bad, oh say... Wronged that person's name by running around, scamming everyone. Then some would say "oh I know that person he isn't bad, why would he scam"?

Well overall it's complicated.
Imagine if hundreds of players do those, with so many possible outcomes to what will happen. And the GMs would have to run through the issue of those hundreds.


As long as nobody reports, nobody complained, nothing will happen.
No ban, no punishment, accept the consequences if there is.

Reading the first few posts it seems that here the guy didn't wrong the pilotted accounts, they helped them and wanted them to come back.
Howcome this guy did get banned, yet we have over 10 people I can point out and prove who abuse the gifted accounted for the wrong cases. We report them, we complain about them: Still nothing happens. They use the gifted toons to pk people, steal gems and verbally abusing fellow gamers in worldchat.
Ignore/report sure, but the following day report again. Others don't ignore them but go up against them in worldchat, still making a giant argument about it: ignore them too? Expand the ignore-list if R2 wants to keep that as an excuse for verbal abuse.

[VicZar]

Mhm.
Well that is pretty much out of my knowledge of how come he got banned first and the other 10 you are talking about didn't.
File a ticket about those others, pretty much the report button in-game isn't as much efficient.

Still, if you are tired of hearing this phrase, rules are rules.
I once got late in class because my alarm clock didn't ring. I missed an important exercise, but I must accept that I missed that exercise, because it's the rules and I can't change anything about it, even though I'm only a few minutes late.

[R22280434]

after knowing there is a rule like this in R2, it lose my interest to create account here

[Miscy]

So the pilot got banned and not the one who gave the account? That's weird. So I can ask the player I hated so much in our server to pilot or log in my account and then send a ticket that he hacked me so he could get banned. :P As far as I know, the one who shared info should be the one responsible for it. Weird rules.