Hypothetical: Voluntary Sandboxing

XandorXerxes

I've been reflecting on the 4* transition, because I think it leaves the majority of players (casuals) in the dust. I remembered someone talking about the effects of being put in the sandbox, and I was debating if that would be a viable alternative if a player wasn't actually competitive and just wanted to play.

The sandboxed player can use his 3*s to earn his 4*s, and he'll always be slower than a competitive player (no alliance). Additionally, if it keeps players active (players who would otherwise quit because they are frustrated or feel no progression) that means a potential revenue stream from those players exists. Obviously they're not going to be buying 4* covers, but other items aren't out of the question.

If a player wanted to be sandboxed he could just tinker with his game enough to flag that he might be cheating anyways, so I'm not sure being able to be voluntarily sandboxed really changes anything. The real question to me is - do you let a player who is voluntarily sandboxed return to being a normal account? I don't know that anyone who was voluntarily sandboxed would really want to do so, but you never know.

IceIX

No. Once you're sandboxed, there is no coming back. We may on rare occasions allow such a player to reset their account and be unflagged, but they certainly wouldn't be keeping any of their stuff.

Mawtful

IceIX wrote:

No. Once you're sandboxed, there is no coming back. We may on rare occasions allow such a player to reset their account and be unflagged, but they certainly wouldn't be keeping any of their stuff.

Except for all the times where you sandbox legitimate players for having too much ISO/HP.

IceIX

Mawtful wrote:

Except for all the times where you sandbox legitimate players for having too much ISO/HP.

I figured it went without saying that incorrect flags can be reversed. I suppose not.

Of course, incorrect flags can be reversed since they were not actual cheats in the first place.

slidecage

Mawtful wrote:

IceIX wrote:

No. Once you're sandboxed, there is no coming back. We may on rare occasions allow such a player to reset their account and be unflagged, but they certainly wouldn't be keeping any of their stuff.

Except for all the times where you sandbox legitimate players for having too much ISO/HP.

how much is too much... sitting on around 650,000 ISO and 19,000 HP is that too much

Unknown

slidecage wrote:

Mawtful wrote:

IceIX wrote:

No. Once you're sandboxed, there is no coming back. We may on rare occasions allow such a player to reset their account and be unflagged, but they certainly wouldn't be keeping any of their stuff.

Except for all the times where you sandbox legitimate players for having too much ISO/HP.

how much is too much... sitting on around 650,000 ISO and 19,000 HP is that too much

No. I'm at 1.4m ISO, have an alliance mate around 2m, and a bunch of us have much more HP than that. And I doubt that we're the top end of that.

A long time ago, 1m ISO was a lot (and I remember someone getting boxed and then unboxed for 1m when very few were that high), but it's not that much any more.

killerkoala

IceIX wrote:

Mawtful wrote:

Except for all the times where you sandbox legitimate players for having too much ISO/HP.

I figured it went without saying that incorrect flags can be reversed. I suppose not.

Of course, incorrect flags can be reversed since they were not actual cheats in the first place.

i just sold 2.2k in covers that i have saved token wise for about 6 season. i hope it doesn't send up a flag that i gain 468k iso in day.

GurlBYE

It's nothing to do with topic but it's so weird to me that with this game having purchases through google play/ apple store, theres no concrete way to monitor resources and that there ever even are false positives.

There's a limit to the amounts you can get at once, but not to what one can choose to hold, so I must be misunderstanding which data is measured.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Mawtful wrote:

Except for all the times where you sandbox legitimate players for having too much ISO/HP.

I figured it went without saying that incorrect flags can be reversed. I suppose not.
Of course, incorrect flags can be reversed since they were not actual cheats in the first place.

Is there a way to wrongly not catch a cheat case as such after a closer look or those are things that jump to the eyes and it's very obvious on sever side?

Malcrof

ShionSinX wrote:

IceIX wrote:

Mawtful wrote:

Except for all the times where you sandbox legitimate players for having too much ISO/HP.

I figured it went without saying that incorrect flags can be reversed. I suppose not.
Of course, incorrect flags can be reversed since they were not actual cheats in the first place.

Is there a way to wrongly not catch a cheat case as such after a closer look or those are things that jump to the eyes and it's very obvious on sever side?

Doubt this question will be answered.. basically asking how to cheat and not get caught..

XandorXerxes

IceIX wrote:

No. Once you're sandboxed, there is no coming back. We may on rare occasions allow such a player to reset their account and be unflagged, but they certainly wouldn't be keeping any of their stuff.

But asking to be voluntarily sandboxed is still allowed?

Unknown

Sounds like you can self-sandbox now. Drop out of your alliance and just play for the sake of playing.

XandorXerxes

aesthetocyst wrote:

XandorXerxes wrote:

IceIX wrote:

No. Once you're sandboxed, there is no coming back. We may on rare occasions allow such a player to reset their account and be unflagged, but they certainly wouldn't be keeping any of their stuff.

But asking to be voluntarily sandboxed is still allowed?

Like self-reporting your intent to cheat? Or asking for your own single-player MPQ environment?

Not an intent to cheat, just asking to be sandboxed without having to cheat to get there. Pretty much this:

Splarne wrote:

Sounds like you can self-sandbox now. Drop out of your alliance and just play for the sake of playing.

If a casual player doesn't care about his or her alliance and doesn't see a way to progress in the game at whatever level the player is at, then I really don't see a downside to them for sandboxing. Granted I doubt most will even know about it if they don't read the forums...

The only thing I'd worry about is if the developers change their policy and institute, say, banning instead of sandboxing. Not sure why they'd do that, but if they did those in voluntary isolation would be hosed. Ideally there would just be a "casual" flag an account could enable (permanently), so any changes to the punishment for accounts that cheat wouldn't also affect it.

SnowcaTT

Sandboxing seems like a fun thing to do occasionally. The only time I'll ever, ever get to run a max SS is the test sim node going right now. I wish they'd put all those test nodes in Prologue somewhere, so you can try out all the characters and see how they play.

I've been tempted to make an alternate Steam account and sandbox it just to try out the newer characters - but I've also been concerned that the sandbox may track IP and ban my main account as well.

XandorXerxes

SnowcaTT wrote:

Sandboxing seems like a fun thing to do occasionally. The only time I'll ever, ever get to run a max SS is the test sim node going right now. I wish they'd put all those test nodes in Prologue somewhere, so you can try out all the characters and see how they play.

I've been tempted to make an alternate Steam account and sandbox it just to try out the newer characters - but I've also been concerned that the sandbox may track IP and ban my main account as well.

It is my understanding that you would still have to alter your game to achieve that feat - the act of sandboxing itself I believe just removes you from contact with other players. If I'm wrong, please someone correct me.

Born2DieNPvP

I had an alt account some months back I created intentionally to sandbox and test different combos while my health packs recharged on my real account. That was when we only had 5 health packs and no taco vault to stock up on extras so often I'd run out before I wanted to stop playing. Since they upped it to 10 health packs I no longer have that issue and I abandoned the account. Sure you can have a roster full of maxxed out behemoths but the victories are hollow and it gets dull very quickly. I'd advise against it.

Crowl

Born2DieNPvP wrote:

I had an alt account some months back I created intentionally to sandbox and test different combos while my health packs recharged on my real account. That was when we only had 5 health packs and no taco vault to stock up on extras so often I'd run out before I wanted to stop playing. Since they upped it to 10 health packs I no longer have that issue and I abandoned the account. Sure you can have a roster full of maxxed out behemoths but the victories are hollow and it gets dull very quickly. I'd advise against it.

It is a shame that this game doesn't have a training mode along the lines of the one in USF4 where people could set up their own characters and match-ups to try things out such as new builds since there is no simple respec mechanism in this game.

Pongie

IceIX wrote:

No. Once you're sandboxed, there is no coming back. We may on rare occasions allow such a player to reset their account and be unflagged, but they certainly wouldn't be keeping any of their stuff.

One of my alliance member had their facebook account hacked. Apart from having embarrassing posts, the hacker also proceeded to use cheats on his mpq account. Obviously D3 detected this and sandbox his account. However, what stumped me was the only option offered was to unflag and reset their account. Surely there must be a way to restore his account before the hack? Strange that a paying customer can lose more than a year progress just like that. He is seriously considering leaving the game.

XandorXerxes

Born2DieNPvP wrote:

I had an alt account some months back I created intentionally to sandbox and test different combos while my health packs recharged on my real account. That was when we only had 5 health packs and no taco vault to stock up on extras so often I'd run out before I wanted to stop playing. Since they upped it to 10 health packs I no longer have that issue and I abandoned the account. Sure you can have a roster full of maxxed out behemoths but the victories are hollow and it gets dull very quickly. I'd advise against it.

Well, my suggestion was really just to implement the "single player" version of the game. Giving people unlimited HP and covers would be silly, and not really in D3's best monetary interest.

AXP_isme

I've wondered about trying to get intentionally sandboxed before, the hope being that it makes everything much more like progression - notably PvP becomes less of a slugfest when you can't get hit because you aren't in anyone's queue. It doesn't reflect very well on the design when people are considering getting removed from the primary competition mechanic in order to get to, what they feel, is the right sense of progression.

Unknown

Malcrof wrote:

Doubt this question will be answered.. basically asking how to cheat and not get caught..

No no no no no. I'm not asking HOW, I'm asking if it is possible that someone hacks and don't get banned, because there has been a rampart of hacked accounts with surfers on them. And also a case of a hacker I know who was flagged as cheater then un-sandboxed.