“System Maintanence” to Deal with Cheaters
The official blog update today promises system maintenance, starting this morning, to deal with multiple account cheaters.
The game will be down for 3 hours starting sometime between 10 and 11 AM Eastern. During that time, systems will be put in place to eliminate the multiple accounts many cheaters are using.
And the official word on multiple accounts? One account per player, please. But we’ll let you have up to 5 per computer, just in case you’re sharing it with your family.
In other words, cheaters can now only use 5 accounts per IP address… A good change but still probably too easy to work around. I expect to still see plenty of multiple account abusers until more stringent measures are put into place. A good additional step would be to allow users to report abuse within the game.
Lots of players are still very angry with the unannounced drop in rent values yesterday. Some have even quit the game.
What do you think the developers should do to get rid of multiple account cheaters, for good?
What about families? Is anybody playing with their kids? In spite of all the setbacks, it is a very family-friendly game.
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What about people using a DSl connection with dynamic IP. How will they know if you are following the “rules” if your IP changes? Will they only allow users with static IPs to play the game?
I love this game.
It has been one of Hasbro’s most successful games for generations because it is a family-friendly, reality based real estate game, and mashing it with the world street maps is a brilliant evolution of the franchise.
I am relatively pleased with the efforts being made to reduce, if not eliminate cheating.
I think limiting accounts by IP address will help significantly.
Restricting to 5 accounts is good because even without any cheating, I currently use 4 accounts just to play the game more.
With only 1 account, gameplay only lasts between 1-15 minutes before the days revenue has been spent. Even drinking a cup of coffee lasts longer.
That being said, it should be noted that while most cheaters are using unfair trading strategies, the most egregious cheating is being provided by third party hackers who have figured out how to add any dollar amount to the day’s revenue. A player need only tell them how much $$ they want, and the hacker will make it happen in return for either cash or referrals or subscriptions, etc.
Ultimately, this is a security issue that allows illicit access to the server data.
Tightening security firewalls and limiting the number of users authorized to update the data should be your highest priority, regardless of the cheating issue.
With respect to the change in rents, I was burned by the sudden loss of exponential ROI, but let me point out that the high street prices are not totally wasted because they are proportional to the number of building sites on the street. Therefore, even though the maximum multiplier will no longer exceed 1.0, more buildings can be placed, providing more daily revenue per street.
Perhaps a better compromise would be to increase the multiplier above 1.0 after the street over 50% built.
The sudden unannounced update was briefly upsetting, but hey, it’s still a great game and these changes don’t make the game unfair. They just close some arguably unfair loopholes we were taking for granted.
Thanks Hasbro
I agree that the sudden loss of expected ROI is a huge hit. I would also lobby for an increase as the street is built up. Like in regular monopoly, when you own a color set, it increases the rent value of all those properties.
I’m worried how the team is going to enforce the use of accounts on the same IP. I am at a university that largely uses one static IP. I have showed the game to one of my finance profs, and we may use it in class since it is such a good model for wealth building. If they heavily enforce this, we won’t be able to make use of this temporal stroke of genius.
Also, it may mess up my team of roommates and upset our plans of world domination.
I’ve got 6 streets, and i must pay tax due.. if sell 1 street and go back to 5, taxes will be eliminated?
Please have a look at
http://www.wincitystreets.com
Wincitystreets is an unofficial community for players of the fantastic free global online game Monopoly City Streets.
The forum and blogs allows you to keep up to date with everything to do with the game and to see what everybody else’s up to.
The forums include sections on the rules FAQS , gameplay, strategy, tips and tricks.
You can create your own blogs and follow other players thoughts, campaigns and disasters.
Registering is easy and free. So please join in !
maybe there is something more than here (because there is a forum) but there is still less than nothing. for being up to date this blog is better than that forum. nice try but thanks
Thanks beriba, I couldn’t agree more!
By the way, are you guys interested in a forum on this site? I’ve been thinking about adding one.
comments under news are perfect. forum is unnecessary. it will be too much. it’s not a game which require discussions as long as for example StarCraft or Warcraft. tactics are simple and very similar. there is still something to talk about and comments are very good for this job
nobody answered me, so I’ll do it by myself: if you go back to 5 streets, taxes will be eliminated!
in addition: i think forum is unnecessary, but comment should be read and answered, for help each other!
Hey Riccardo, sorry for the lack of reply. I was hoping someone else would jump in.
Glad you found your answer. So you’re planning on sticking to 5 streets?
For the moment, I have a long road that must be filled with buildings, then I don’t know, I think a good strategy is to purchase bigger roads, possibly to sell what you have to not overdo it in quantity and not to pay too many taxes.