Temporary Substitute Player

[ajqtrz]

Because some people seemed to like the idea, here it is as a suggestion.

People are sometimes just away for a short period of time. (This is related to the "Away" suggestion, I might add, here), and while away some things can't be done...like collection, resetting production and all that. Instead of them losing the time it would be nice if they could name a substitute for that short period of time. The substitute could be limited to a few days 1-14 and automatically end. He/she could not spend diamonds, but could collect and reset things, including FA's, Tournaments, Spires and everything else. In other words, they could be the player for a limited time, except for spending diamonds, joining or quitting fellowships, changing ranks of fellow fs members, and perhaps editing the fellowship description if the original player was the AM.

Possible way to do this: Put a name box, either from:to date boxes, or a duration box. and a password box, in the settings. The player fills this out and sends the details of the substitution via the mail (a button on the form for automatically sending it all at once) to the designated substitute. He/she does not send any account info, just the temporary things. OR, a notice comes up with an "agree" button in the notices when the substitute player accepts the role. Then the substitute logs into the account with the temporary password and can do so until either the time expires or the original player signs in with his/her account. Substitutions would be limited per year to 30 days (or some other amount of time) total, and/or so much time between each period to keep from "chaining" substitutions so that the substitute becomes, in effect, the owner of the account.

Pros:
1) Keeps the account active while the player is on vacation or whatever. Reduces the pressure to log in when on a trip or whatever, meaning the game is less stressful.
2) Allows players to be away but keeps (the substitutes) "eyeballs" on the screen more.
3) Solves the decay problem mentioned in the "away" idea request.
4) Allows for players to experience another players' city more fully and thus learn things.

Cons:
1) Time to program. Not an easy task because it means expanding the current log in code.
2) If the player is on several worlds and has different substitutes (which is likely) could they log in at the same time?
3) Might reduce the stress of the away player, but that would also mean he/she was not playing.

Discussion:

This idea, in my opinion, has merit even if it's unlikely to be implemented. The reason is the coding is not trivial, in my opinion, AND I'm not sure Inno is willing to make our presence more flexible as that means we will feel more at ease being gone since we have a substitute to keep our city going. On the other hand, a game of less stress may result in more players hanging around since they won't see their city lose resources because they are away and can come back to them with a reasonable chance that they actually grew while they were away.

What do you think? Any suggestions to improve this?

AJ

 

[Alram]

I think this sounds like a whole barrel full of trouble for a small return. For example, what if you came back and half your spells were gone because Subby used them all up? What if Subby blew all your goods in the spire because they don't know how to negotiate? What if Subby blew all your troops because they aren't any good at fighting? FS perks do help cover spire and tourney when players are gone for a short time. FAs can be completed with 1 path per stage.

 

[Myne]

tl/dr

 

[Darielle]

There are pros and cons to this, that's for sure. I think the extra cons were stated well by Alram. But I would like this feature if the contingencies could be accounted for. It's certainly intriguing!

 

[StarLoad]

While interesting, the noted issues and drawbacks are a real issue but IMO the real issue is going to be the privacy concern over the individual account. I was a CM and GM for another game that looked the other way with account sharing and there were many many issues with items sold/used that "were not" supposed to have been done while the account was shared. Support tickets and complaints had to try to sort all this out and many times it was just not possible to fix the damage. Several times a month emails were changed and the account was taken and items removed, until the entire "account sharing", even within an "FS" as we call it was banned fully.

Ed

 

[Killy-]

There is an easy fix, find a better subby.
I like the idea - might be a better solution to giving away your password (that is no solution of course, because it is not allowed ).

 

[Yavimaya]

Would be nice and I like it, but I feel the cons outweigh the pros unfortunately.

 

[ajqtrz]

I think this sounds like a whole barrel full of trouble for a small return. For example, what if you came back and half your spells were gone because Subby used them all up? What if Subby blew all your goods in the spire because they don't know how to negotiate? What if Subby blew all your troops because they aren't any good at fighting? FS perks do help cover spire and tourney when players are gone for a short time. FAs can be completed with 1 path per stage.

I agree that the picking of the substitute could cause problems...but that's between the sub and the the one picking them. Personally, in the games where a sub was allowed their were restrictions on what could be done and what not. Such restrictions were, in one game, automatic (you couldn't spend $$ or attack another city). In this version you could just have a few check boxes for what was allowed and what not. Like "Play the Spire? Y/N, Play the tournament Y/N and so on. That's a lot more coding, though, so until the "Bad Subby" problem was large enough to actually do that coding, it wouldn't have to be done. Like I said, in the games I played with subs, it didn't appear a big problem.

tl/dr

I laughed when I saw this. The judgement that it was "too long" is funny since every thing written can only be too long if the information in it could have been said a with a lot fewer words. After all, you wouldn't expect a dictionary to be less it's very long length, or instructions on how to bake a cake to take up more than a page. And if the dictionary took up two pages and the cake recipe 100, you'd think their length innapropriate in both cases. Every written attempt has a concise length and anything close to that length should be close enough.

Even funnier is the "dr" since it says you can't have made the "too long" judgment with any sort of confidence, since you can't know if the piece uses a lot more words than necessary if you didn't read the piece. To me is all so darn funny! All it says to me is that you don't like reading long things, and that your comment is just one on your unwillingness to read more than X number of words, not on my post being, truly, too long. But thanks for the humor and the opportunity to clarify why I didn't take it too seriously.

While interesting, the noted issues and drawbacks are a real issue but IMO the real issue is going to be the privacy concern over the individual account. I was a CM and GM for another game that looked the other way with account sharing and there were many many issues with items sold/used that "were not" supposed to have been done while the account was shared. Support tickets and complaints had to try to sort all this out and many times it was just not possible to fix the damage. Several times a month emails were changed and the account was taken and items removed, until the entire "account sharing", even within an "FS" as we call it was banned fully.

Ed

The privacy concerns are a real issue, but since the city can be viewed by anybody that part is of no concern. What is of concern is the persons account info, when they are on line, and all that. Nothing in the proposal reveals any more than is currently revealed and since the sub only gets a temp password - which only they, the owner of the account, and Inno, know, -- no privacy problem.

As for the "bad subby" problem, one of the games put up a warning that if you picked a bad sub and such things happened, you were on you own. It said something like: "Pick your substitute well for if he or she does things you don't like we will not intervene in any way. The matter is between you and your substitute." This message popped up every time you changed or added a substitute and, if I remember correctly, you got a mail msg with the same warning. They probably did that because there were "bad subbys" but the warning certainly removed their need to do anything about a bad choice a player made.

And, finally, as noted, you could also have a list of check boxes as to what the sub was allowed to do an what not.


AJ

 

[Yavimaya]

I agree that the picking of the substitute could cause problems...but that's between the sub and the the one picking them. Personally, in the games where a sub was allowed their were restrictions on what could be done and what not. Such restrictions were, in one game, automatic (you couldn't spend $$ or attack another city). In this version you could just have a few check boxes for what was allowed and what not. Like "Play the Spire? Y/N, Play the tournament Y/N and so on. That's a lot more coding, though, so until the "Bad Subby" problem was large enough to actually do that coding, it wouldn't have to be done. Like I said, in the games I played with subs, it didn't appear a big problem.

I think if everything like that would be an option that would make it a bit better for sure.

 

[Alram]

I would vote no.

 

[shimmerfly]

I wouldn't want to share my city/account, or have a sub.
If or when I can't play I would simply catch up on my return.
Nope from me.

 

[paw123]

I think it would be a "no" from me , imagine how would the substitute player feel when the player comes back and sub gets kicked out - either you are in the fellowship and you follow the fellowship rules or not - in my fellowship you let the mag know that you need some time off and if you are not back reasonably within the time you ask for they still try sending emails and try to get in touch with the person before eventually they get kicked out and recruitment process starts... obviously you can write certain rules around your own fellowships and recruit people simply letting them know that they will be taken onboard only for certain period of time but I think that IF i were in position where I have been with fellowship for a few weeks or months and than out of nowhere they would say we need to kick you because the player that was off is back now that wouldn`t be nice ...

 

[Yavimaya]

I will say I personally would never let anyone touch my precious account lol. I cannot talk for others though.

 

[Myne]

Hard pass

 

[defiantoneks]

I think this sounds like a whole barrel full of trouble for a small return. For example, what if you came back and half your spells were gone because Subby used them all up? What if Subby blew all your goods in the spire because they don't know how to negotiate? What if Subby blew all your troops because they aren't any good at fighting? FS perks do help cover spire and tourney when players are gone for a short time. FAs can be completed with 1 path per stage.

or uses all my AKP on their own AWs. oh i'd be sooooooo perturbed.
granted, the idea is that the person subbing should be trustworthy but… nope.
suppose they're playing and forget they're not in their own city? just way too many hazards for me.

 

[Alram]

suppose they're playing and forget they're not in their own city? just way too many hazards for me.

Exactly! Subby could be a great person, just playing their regular playstyle and a whole FS could explode over what Subby, helpfully, did to your city. It just doesn't seem worth it to me.

 

[Zoof]

Concerns abound, though I'm kinda surprised that there are games out there that have actual provisions for such a thing. For me, it'd only make sense from a coding experiment point of view: Is it possible to make a multi-user account with temporary permissions granted for the account's non-owner user(s)?

If a second (or more) "authorized" user can play an account with no restrictions... well. It runs into problems as have been mentioned already: What if the temp player does something (even if out of ignorance rather than maliciousness) that negatively impacts the city? Even if easily disclaim-able (user takes full responsibility of temp's actions), the amount of support tickets that might generate anyway (kinda like lawsuits in the US - anyone can file them, even if it has no basis whatsoever) might be overly burdensome to the support staff. I wouldn't wish that on them.

If it's a permissions-controlled sort of thing where the temp can only do things you've checked out on a box, such as collect/start productions, complete quests, do spire/tourney, or others, the account owner might still run into aforementioned problems of a no-restrictions situation if permissions weren't set up correctly.

In either case, I can't really think of a way this would help out Inno's bottom line (which is what they really care about in the end), and in cases of conflict, may even result in increased occurrences of chargebacks or other monetary disputes, even if handled in the most careful of manner (just short of allowing or being able to allow things like account rollbacks).

It's an awesome idea in theory and there are most definitely ways to make it work, I'm going to say no to this because this most certainly will generate more problems than it is worth. On everybody's part.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Any kind of account sharing violates the TOU/TOS/rules, so you are basically asking Inno to rewrite that because a few players might be experiencing FOMO when they have to be away from the Game.

 

[ajqtrz]

I wouldn't want to share my city/account, or have a sub.
If or when I can't play I would simply catch up on my return.
Nope from me.

From all the negative voices it would appear to me that many people just don't want to trust anybody with their city because they think anybody who does is taking too big a risk. A risk which will lead to a lot of support tickets (in spite of warnings) and the whole thing will become a big, big, mess. Did I get that right?

First, nobody has to trust anybody. Nobody has to select a sub. It's just an option for those of us who aren't as afraid of somebody screwing up our city.

Second, in the two games I've played with this option, no one mentioned an increase in complaints to support and, as an active forum member in both games (can you imagine me NOT being active?) there was no mention of such a problem. I played the two games for a total of about 8 years.

Third, the privacy laws are not designed to thwart a person from sharing information with those whom he/she desires, they are about keeping private what you wish to keep private. Thus, my allowing a person to view my account is my allowing information to be shared with whom I say it can be shared. No privacy laws are, in any country of which I am aware, restrictive of you sharing personal info with whom you wish.

Inno's bottom line depends on eyeballs - players spending time playing. When a player is away it's a negative. When a player is playing that count it's a plus. Of course, the whole "spend diamonds" may make it irrelevant if that's the only way Inno makes money and you restrict the sub to "spend no diamonds," but there is the indirect pressure to spend diamonds since players who do so, do so at a rate. That rate, when they return, will increase to make up for the period they weren't there to spend diamonds because the sub will continue using resources at about the same rate as the owner of the city.

In the end then, the chief negative is that some players wouldn't use the thing, it may increase support tickets (In my experience, probably not), and it may not be profitable or profitable enough for Inno to bother.

Of the three the first has no impact on the question other than players not wanting something others might want. The second may or may not be true. My (limited) experience with two games says it won't, but who really knows? And the third is something only Inno can decide. But of course they won't if the idea isn't presented to them, will they?

So while I can certainly see a "no" vote is not a stupid vote, but a reasonable one, I do think a "yes" vote is just a bit better because it opens the door to trying something that might be a benefit to many, even if not to those who would not use the feature.

AJ

 

[Alram]

I would still vote no. There is too much potential for abuse.
I can understand why someone would want control of other people's cities.