Posts by Salix

Hi Grim Reaper!

I actually have very good news for you, because none of your worries are necessary. The reason why we recommend Chrome, is that Chrome is the best Browser for HTML5. Why does that matter? Because DE05 is already running on HTML5.

We are right in the middle of switching all servers to HTML5 and will get rid of Flash entirely way before December 2020. We are getting rid of it right now
It's worth mentioning that not just Chrome will get rid of Flash, but everyone. Flash will officially not be supported anymore in 2020 anywhere. That's why we switch to HTML5, like many other games do, did or will do.

So, to answer your questions:

1) Because it's, on average, the best browser for HTML5 right now.
2) Already done. Absolutely nothing about the game itself changes, it's merely a translation of the game from Flash to HTML5. Since you apparently already played on HTML5 without even noticing, that should answer your question if anything changes

This is fully automatic. It actually already happened on a few servers. Usually you won't even notice the difference (except that you don't have to click to allow Flash anymore).
There is absolutely nothing you have to do or install...with one small exception: In case you are using Edge or Internet Explorer, we recommend you switch to another browser to avoid performance problems. Pretty much every other browser will do the job. Our recommendation is Chrome, but everything else is fine too.

Which other workers are incorrect and in what way?

Hi.

The change is actually intended. What's not intended is that some texts still mention the old 40%. This will be fixed in a future update.

We are sorry for the confusion, of course this should not have happened.

Hello there!

What follows is my personal opinon:

This is a super interesting topic and I would like to share my thoughts on it. At the beginning you mention that violating the netiquette is bannable behavior because it disrupts a friendly environment while disruptive gameplay that has the same effect is not punished in any way. So why is that?

The key difference is intention here. If you insult someone, the clear intention is to...well....insult that person. You try to hurt, attack, ridicule or annoy that person and there is no other real purpose. Stuff like stealing majorities however...that actually has a purpose in the context of gameplay. It's a strategy that can help to fulfill the game goals.

You can compare it to professionel boxing, for example. Boxing, like most other sports, is all about sportsmanship and respect for your opponent. Hitting someone in the face is usually not considered a sign of respect. In boxing however it's completely okay, despite the fact that it's not a "nice" thing to do...because it's a valid method to win in this sport.

It's the same in Rail Nation. Yes, stealing majorities is not nice and if you want to make friends, that's probably the wrong way to go. But it's a strategy for success, similar to hitting someone in the face in boxing. It's is not necessarily done out of evil intent.

And that's the key difference between insults and aggressive gameplay. Insults always have an evil intent (except of course jokingly insulting among friends), but not aggressive gameplay...at least not necessarily.

Of course it's also possible that a player is using aggressive gameplay with the clear intention to be a jerk. That is basically trolling. The difficulty about punishing that is that you have to be sure. Did this player use aggressive gameplay because of strategic goals or maybe lack of knowledge/skill? Or did he do it just to be a jerk?
Unless you are 100% sure it's the latter and you have proof for it (for example if the player explicitly explained why he is doing it), you can't really punish it, because it's not okay to punish players for simply playing the game as it's intended to be played.

And it almost all cases, it's impossible for our supporters to be sure. That's why you usually get the "It's a feature of the game" answer. Because it is a feature of the game and it is intended to be used. It's a normal part of the game to do this for strategic purposes and it's also part of the game to adapt your strategy to other players using aggressive gameplay.

Good Morning Lacidd23  

The Masters 2 Community Event will start on the 2nd of September.

The Masters 2 Allstars servers will be accesible (preregistration, not playing) today.

The Masters 2 Allstars server will start tomorrow, the 30th of August.


Does this answer your question or is there anything else you would like to know?

Kind regards,

Salix

I am not lawyer, so I can't really explain it in detail. Usually this problem is related to gambling laws that somehow apply to this kinds of contests too. For example it can require to actually send the prices to the government in order to prove they do exist. And depending on the country, it can happen that those prices that are sent to the government are never given back (if no citizen wins) or given to the actual winner.

It is possible that some companies do this kind of contest anyway, which is most likely related to lack of knowledge about the legal situation.

If someone has more insight in this, I apologize for my (most likely) very simplistic explanation.

That's because the laws in those countries essentially make it impossible to run a tournament like this there legally.

Thank you. We actually applied a hotfix that fixed the bug that forced you to manually start videos in Chrome. I'll forward your kudos to the team.

Uh, i like that one GIGASTORM !

Forwarded.

Hello there,

about maps & scenarios: This survey was actually about both. Some of the suggested themes basically HAVE to be entirely new scenarios, some others might work very well as a map. It's totally an option to do both. In addition to that, there is also the option for a hybrid, i.e. a map that does not have entirely new features on the same scale as SoE or USA, but instead offers alternative gameplay by manipulating or removing current features. For example there could be less or more cities, there could be different balancing concerning prestige gains, the train stats could be different, industries could be removed etc.

Caténaire Interesting idea! We actually also discussed the theme "Silk road" internally

naike We discussed the idea of tutorial servers internally and there are a lot of advantages to it, but also some problems. One of the biggest problems is that, on a tutorial server, players don't really connect with the player base. They play in their own little bubble and have no contact to experienced players, which will make it difficult for them to be integrated socially. This is already hard for newbies and with tutorial servers it would be even harder.

Another problem would be the "culture" of Rail Nation. There are big differences in play style and mentality across the different regions of RN. For example in some regions, taking majories is a total no-go and if you do it you will be hit by the wrath of the community, while in other domains it's widely accepted as competitive play and considered perfectly normal. Both mentalities are okay, but which one would we teach the newbies?

It's basically the "do's and don'ts" you mentioned, they are not universal, they strongly depend on the region or even the server and there is no "right" version.

That's also why the Origin Journey servers experience a bit more...let's say "discussion" than other servers, because on these servers multiple mentalities collide with each other.
That being said, I totally agree that the basic tutorial is not really enough to integrate new players in the full depth of RN gameplay. While that is perfectly normal for a basic tutorial, it would be cool to find a way to provide additional guidance for players who finished the tutorial.

We also got this, but I'm afraid this particular shirt is limitted to our four-legged Feelgood Manager.

Klabbauter wrote:

At the moment you give a first reply, telling nothing but you go the message. Then ... nothing. The customer who reported is left alone, without further information

After already being told that the report was received and that, if justified, action will be taken...what kind of further response would you expect, when keeping in mind that informing you if and what action was taken is not allowed? What kind of "further information" is left that we are allowed to share?
I'll gladly try to improve this aspect of our CS, but in this particular situation I'm not quite sure which kind of improvement you would expect.

Klabbauter wrote:

(ok, its getting too long again, sorry guys

That's not really the issue. But while writing you kind of went offtopic and most of what you wrote has nothing to do with with making multis less attractive. Maybe I also didn't express myself clear enough. What I'm am looking for is methods to basically take away the reasons to use multis. Let me explain it with an example
Problem Player A creates a lot of accounts to invest his starting money in industries of where the association of his hated rival Player B owns the majority.

Gameplay solution: New players can't invest in industries.

Now this example is just to show what I am looking for, I know that various problems are associated to this "solution". It's just an example what I mean with "making it less attractive. In this case, a troll would have to level up his account first, which would be effort ---> less attractive to do it.

Your ideas are certainly interesting, but not related to the quote you replied to, which of course might be caused by me being unclear.

★YUKI★ wrote:

I dont know about my teammates, but I will try to give one more chance then, if you promise to intervene.

We found the reason why this wasn't taken care of properly so far and are on it as we speak.

Then I'm very sorry I misunderstood you. I thought you meant what you wrote (the "not accepting problems" and dismissing concerns" are direct quotes, you wrote exactly that).

I have a small update about the topic:

- I talked with Legal and the problem with providing specific information about punishments is not the GDPR, but the German constitution/fundamental rights, which protect the punished player. It's complicated and it's a case by case decision. I will try to dig deeper in this topic.

- As already mentioned, the performance of the JP CS team is not satisfying in this case. We (the Game Centre/Devs) will intervene.

Rype wrote:

As i wrote GDPR is all about of what U want it to be

Not really, it's a law. And it's not either a problem or protection, it's both. Yes, GDPR does protect privacy...but it can also cause problems, for example if customers somehow need/want access to information about other customers and GDPR doesn'ta allow it.

But, to be honest, I'm wondering how this discussion suddenly became all about GDPR. Is getting information about the punishment status of multis really what this discussion is about? How exactly does that help? If there is a multi (the kind of multi that was discussed originally here, short term multis) and you report him...is it really that different whether you are told "Thanks for your report, we are on it" or "Thanks for your report, we take action". If you trust our support, both statements are the same. If you don't trust our support, both are just "hot air". Is it really that different?

But my real question is: Is this what you actually want? Is this the solution? Knowing what happens? The multi will still be able to just create a new account and do the same thing again. Knowing that he got punished changes nothing about that.

Of course I understand the need for information about punishments. I am a gamer myself and, for example, I've been playing a lot of League of Legends. There you can report players for bad behavior and occasionally you get a notification that one of the players you reported got punished. This notification is incredibly satisfying and I wish it would appear more often. It feels awesome to see that justice was served.

But in the end, as satisfying as it feels, I don't really care too much about it and what's really important to me is that rule breakers are caught or it doesn't even happen in the first place.
If you want a better experience when reporting multis to the support, I get it and I support that. At the same time I would much prefer it if you wouldn't even have to write those support tickets in the first place.

Since this disussion widened up a bit, let me try to sum up a few topics:

• JP CS: If our Japanese customer support is below standards, we will take action. On it.
• Phrasing of CS replies to multi reports: I'll ask our legal guys how much info we can provide and how we can change the CS reply accordingly.
• Preventing the creation of multis: That's a topic I could still need your help with, with the focus being on methods to make the creation of multis less attractive. We are having a meeting about this internally soon, but more heads have more ideas, so your input is still highly appreciated.

GI_Joe wrote:

As far as I understood her she is so disappointed that no actions are taken by your support

That's not what she said though. She said we don't accept the problem and dismiss concerns. That is what she actually wrote and that is simply not true. We are very well aware of the problem and we absolutely understand the concerns players have with this. Keep in mind that we are players too, we are bothered by this problem too.

And yes, it is disappointing that this problem is not easy to solve and that we can't pull a solution out of the hat just like that. I get it. The complaint about the problem itself and lack of a solution is justified, understandable and correct.

GI_Joe wrote:

To make it clear and that no misunderstandings between myself and you Salix comes up: "No action" means beside a reply message "Thank you for your report.... we'll back to you soon." (copied from email to me received 15.06.2019 um 19:40 Uhr).

That is below expectations for our CS, I totally agree. Which region was this? Not JP, right?
I would like to be able forward a specific case where the quality of the CS replys is below expectations. You can also contact me via PM for this.

GI_Joe wrote:

So what are you talking about?

What I was talking about was ideas for a possible solution for malicous multi account. As Klabbauter already correctly hinted, I am indeed not the right person to talk about their performance, which is why I don't focus my part of the discussion on that topic. I don't know more about it than any of you...less even, because I never wrote a ticket.

That being said: I'm in contact with the tech support to discuss this problem (this case in particular and the problem in general) to check what could be done, what limits us and what is already being done. And I also talked to our Game Director to explain the situation and its priority.

I was (and still am) hoping for this discussion to help with coming up with feasible solutions how to tackle the problem, preferably via gameplay mechanics changes. So that's what I am talking about and what I would like to continue talking about.

I simply prefer talking face to face (or rather headset to headset) because this prevents misunderstandings, which seem to happen a lot in this discussion.

For example you, Yuki, seem to think that I don't recognize the problem , which is not at all true and I repeatedly made that very clear in this very discussion. But apparently you haven't read that, or you forgot it or you misunderstood this. That's what happens in a discussion that stretches over days. In an actual conversation, these misunderstandings can be fixed in a matter of seconds while here, in the forum, they derail the entire discussion for days.

It's just an offer. I would prefer to include you guys effectively in finding a solution quickly and effectively. But of course you don't have to. We are adressing the problem internally too. I would prefer to include you, but it's just an offer, of course you can say no.

Klabbauter wrote:

what shall we talk about?

Discussing possible solutions for different cases of multi abuse within the limits of law, reality, business and technology.

Time: Unless you have specific preferences, I'll let you know early next week. It will be in the evening (more players online/available and no interference with regular work for me) and it won't be Thursay (already got another appointment Thursday evening).

Klabbauter wrote:

Discord discussion should be about what can be used of the ideas

That automatically makes it necessary to also define what can't be used, doesn't it? Otherwise you are not actually discussing ideas that can be used. I'm afraid a discussion without recognizing the limitations of reality is not very solution-focused.

★YUKI★ wrote:

But what is a discord?

Discord is a free chat software (can also be used in the browser, without any software) and is commonly used by gamers, due to it's simplicity.

Would anyone be interested to discuss this "live" in Discord (I will talk, but writing is also okay for everyone who won't do that) some evening next week?

naike wrote:

Now suddenly it's not allowed anymore to give a common answer as "We have received your message and look into it. If we find abnormalies we will take the proper actions"?

You misunderstood that. Nobody said that. What you just wrote is something we definitely can write. We can just not provide any indication if or what we did to someone elses account.

Streitaxt wrote:

Gain more profit with new players.

New players don't generate as much profit as established ones, so no, that is not our focus. This isn't an "either or" decision, "either new players for current players". We need both, we focus on both, both are necessary.

Streitaxt wrote:

And this will kill your game much faster, than a lower number of new players with 2FA.

Well you say that, but I'm afraid that's not realy true. Current players are important, you are absolutely right about that. And, given the fact that I mostly interact with current players, they are also the main focus of my work. I am very well aware of the incredible value the core playerbase has. But that still doesn't mean we can focus on them no matter the consequences. In this particular case, the consequences would be the end of Rail Nation. That isn't in the interest of the core players either.

Streitaxt wrote:

What will you do with your huge amount of new players, if you really get them ?

We don't. It's usually a steady flow of new players, not sudden masses that flood the servers.

Streitaxt wrote:

No matter on what server, your endgames are already lagging with the existing number of players...so what will you do with your "new players" ?

To answer your question anyway: We are working on the new RTS and HTML5. Both will increase performance. The new RTS is specifically designed to be able to handle the increasing complexity of the game (in comparison to the past), future features and, that's the relevant part here, the endgame.
So in the hypothetical situation that player numbers increase in a sudden burst, we will be able to handle this better in the future.

Klabbauter wrote:

Tell them, that you took action

That is already not okay.