Suggestion talk:20110630 Character creation daily limit and Captcha

Discussion from Developing Suggestions

Character creation captcha and limit

time --#31 - TastyNougat TMG 16:30, 29 June 2011 (BST)

name Character creation captcha and limit

type Interface

scope Game

description Similar to the IP move limit, every IP would be limited to creating a certain number of characters per day. After a bit of discussion, I posit that the limit should be no more than 5. I'd like to hear from someone who thinks that 4 would be too low. This would prevent mass character creation in order to squat buildings or get the starting location you really want. After the third character is created, a warning would be displayed in the character create screen, informing the user that they have a certain number of creations remaining. As an additional countermeasure against abuse, a ReCaptcha would be added to the creation page. While there is obviously no proven evidence of automated character creation, this is not an unreasonable measure. I understand that many players support and use bots, I think everyone can agree that automated character creation would be beyond the pale.

Discussion (Character creation control)

The only times I can think of when more than 5 characters are created in a single day are when either they're zerging, or when research is being conducted on spawnign locations, etc.--Yonnua Koponen ^{T G P} ^^^ 16:54, 29 June 2011 (BST)

Exactly. And I don't think "research" is a sufficiently good excuse for creating a bunch of throwaway characters. --#31 - TastyNougat ^TMG 17:00, 29 June 2011 (BST)

The point being though that if this is done, it should either be a lower cut off point or not at all.--Yonnua Koponen ^{T G P} ^^^ 17:09, 29 June 2011 (BST)

Agreed. I think 4 would even be acceptable - but I'd like to hear from someone who thinks there's a good reason to allow 5 versus 4 per day.--#31 - TastyNougat ^TMG 17:21, 29 June 2011 (BST)

I do think it's important to add that the exact value of the limit itself is not that important - 4 versus 5 is not a huge difference - they're both way better than 10-15. As it stands, someone can easily create that many characters, leave half of them in the street, and walk the other half into strategic locations - meatshielding for survivors or blocking NT's for zombies.--#31 - TastyNougat ^TMG 17:21, 29 June 2011 (BST)

I was thinking a bit lower. Maybe 1? Nobody needs to make more than one alt a day unless they're doing research or something as mentioned above. Otherwise, they can happily wait a day to make another alt. Before this is implemented however, I'd like to know that any research into spawning conditions is complete.--Yonnua Koponen ^{T G P} ^^^ 17:23, 29 June 2011 (BST)

Many new players start with 2-3 characters - I guess you could finagle this by making a 4-5 character limit that resets every 2 days (or a similar structure - you get the idea). That way, a totally new player can get started up, but the effective rate of mass character creation is kept down.--#31 - TastyNougat ^TMG 17:53, 29 June 2011 (BST)

Honestly, I don't care about anyone's spawning research. Much like we don't raise the IP limit so that someone can more accurately figure out generator search rates, trying to make life easier for reverse engineers is not really an attitude productive to everyone else's gameplay. If someone really wants to research spawn locations, they can spend a few weeks doing it, find a team of people to work with, use proxies/Tor, etc. A determined researcher will find a way to get results.--#31 - TastyNougat ^TMG 17:53, 29 June 2011 (BST)

As would a determined zerger or meatshielder. --Rosslessness 17:55, 29 June 2011 (BST)

Absolutely. However, I think this measure would reduce the amount of zerging/shielding. First, I would bet many are not all that determined - dealing with proxies, etc, is a pain. Second, currently, creating many characters is currently not at all disallowed - someone doesn't feel like they're breaking the game just by creating 10 characters and stuffing them in buildings. By making people explicitly have to work around the system, you're also informing them that they're doing something wrong.--#31 - TastyNougat ^TMG 18:04, 29 June 2011 (BST)

That's a disturbingly coherent response. --Rosslessness 18:11, 29 June 2011 (BST)

i like this.. but I would leave it at 2-3 tops.. that way if you generally mess up you have two more tries to get it right.--User:Sexualharrison18:06, 29 June 2011 (bst)

3. IP hits is 160, and I'd like new players to create a trial character, a zombie and a survivor. --Rosslessness 18:11, 29 June 2011 (BST)

I would agree that 3 characters is a good limit. That little bit of extra effort required, if this gets implemented, would turn off most zergers or at least slow them down.       18:38, 29 June 2011 (BST)

This has actually been implemented since the last batch of mass-created characters, but in a fairly weak manner. I'd definitely support the CAPTCHA. ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 23:32, 29 June 2011 (BST)

Do you have any details - I'm curious. I haven't personally tried spam-creating characters. --#31 - TastyNougat ^TMG 18:17, 30 June 2011 (BST)

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Suggestion Discussion

Details are thus far scarce, but here's what I have:

• After creating 4 characters in an hour, the following error is presented:

This IP address has created too many characters recently. Try again later.

• “Later” in this case is about 2 hours.

ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 07:21, 1 July 2011 (BST)

Well, it looks like Kevan is already thinking about this - maybe the support for this suggestion will convince him he can change that to 24 --#31 - TastyNougat ^TMG 18:23, 5 July 2011 (BST)