Hey folks,
Will try to shed some light on your questions and concerns.
Thanks for the suggestions, will see what we can do! 
To make it easier to read through, I have seperated each of your concerns below.
Bots
The main answer to this of course is Easy Anti Cheat, this is one of the very reasons it was prepared and implemented ahead of the F2P launch. We are not solely relying on easy anti cheat, but in addition we're improving our data collection methods and we're using this data to detect bots as well.
Our policy on botting has always been absolute zero tolerance , and several departments in our team are actively monitoring this very closely.
Other ways of cheating
I am not sure I can give you a relevant answer here because the question is pretty open, but in general Easy Anti-Cheat is capable of automatically detecting various cheating methods.
In addition to that we are also expanding our support team, who are also keeping a very close eye on this.
You can find more information on Easy Anti-Cheat here.
Premium price
Player market determines the price for premium. If the increased demand causes a price increase, this will make buying gold a more attractive prospect, which should in turn, bring down gold prices.
Spammers, Trolls & Scammers
We have recently implemented an anti spam system, combined with several other chat moderation mechanics in preparation for F2P, so far this includes;
I believe you’re referring to silver sellers here, our stance on this remains unchanged, it is and will always be highly prohibited.
To combat them we have targetted their business model - how we do that is preventing botting and preventing credit card fraud. We have implemented a system that requires the account to meet certain criteria, which is then manually verified by us to be able to use Gold.
More info can be found here.
Naked scouts
Note that naked scouting with a 2nd account is forbidden by our terms and conditions if the same person is inside the dungeon with their first account - that would violate our multi-accounting rules as the two characters are then assisting each other. If you suspect someone of violating the terms and conditions, please report this to our support team here.
Recently we have taken a measure, that two clients cannot be run simultaneously If premium is not active on at least one account, which would also make scouting on secondary accounts significantly harder.
MORE ZvZ lag / Performance & Stability
To be clear, improving the technical performance of Albion Online will continually be a high priority to us, and we are fully aware that performance issues sometimes occur during very large fights.
Not only do we strive to push Albion Online to it’s technical limits wherever we can so that you can experience these large scale fights, we incrementally improve the stability of the game as we locate performance issues. Since it can be down to a wide variety of reasons, we are evaluating reports on a constant basis.
Additionally, here are some of the measures put in place in the past and looking to F2P:
On top of this, we are always grateful for your support in helping us pinpoint potential issues, it's great if they can forward their cases with as much detail as possible.
Filling zones with F2P accounts
So a couple of measures to prevent this, first also relates back to the fact we have made it significantly more difficult to have multiple accounts running in parallel that do not have premium active. And although not as restrictive as above, the new tutorial also acts as initial time-based barrier that you need to complete in order to access the rest of the game. Right now the tutorial takes approx. 40 mins to complete.
What are you going to do to make sure that the players who will try out this game will actually stay?
We have introduced 6 major updates since release, at a general pace of 3-4 major updates per year which we will keep up going forward. Content is king, and the timely introduction of new content into the game will always have the biggest impact on player retention.
During that time, we have made a conscious effort to improve the rewards you can obtain in Albion Online on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
This is also part of our objective to introduce features that let you make meaningful progress and feel the benefits of logging into the game on a daily basis, even if your friends and guildmates are offline, which doesn’t lock you into waiting for others to show up.
At the same time, we have kept ‘rewarding the effort of individuals’ at the forefront of our minds when designing the way you achieve the GvG season rewards. Not only can you obtain them at different ranks but you also need a certain amount of guild loyalty.
Overall, we see that the recent Adventurer’s Challenge and the GvG season rewards, has had a very positive impact on short term and long term player retention.
To further expand on that, as you may have read in the recent Roadmap, we outlined our two main goals, one of which being to ‘’Improve the quality and variety of activities available to players of all experience levels’’. By improving the replay-ability and variety of content that we offer to all experience levels, like we see in the Random Dungeons for example, we can create great incentives for players to return to them.
You do not need premium active on you account to recieve the Spectre Wolf, you just need your chosen pack to be redeemed.
The FAQ will be updated accordingly, thank you for putting forward your questions and sharing your feedback, hope this helps!
- Evoque
Will try to shed some light on your questions and concerns.
SHARKY wrote:
While I'm happy with the bonus rewards the current pay-to-play players will be getting, one thing I would REALLY like is a unique Avatar Border, that sets us apart from the F2P players.
I'm thinking of a border similar in presence to the ones that the Legendary and Epic Founders got.
Equartus wrote:
Are you ready guys? xD
One question - your servers are ready for this?
Dhivine wrote:
What are you going to do to prevent
....
What are you going to do to make sure that the players who will try out this game will actually stay? If you can't let a lot of the players stay that actually paid for Albion?
Bots
The main answer to this of course is Easy Anti Cheat, this is one of the very reasons it was prepared and implemented ahead of the F2P launch. We are not solely relying on easy anti cheat, but in addition we're improving our data collection methods and we're using this data to detect bots as well.
Our policy on botting has always been absolute zero tolerance , and several departments in our team are actively monitoring this very closely.
Other ways of cheating
I am not sure I can give you a relevant answer here because the question is pretty open, but in general Easy Anti-Cheat is capable of automatically detecting various cheating methods.
In addition to that we are also expanding our support team, who are also keeping a very close eye on this.
You can find more information on Easy Anti-Cheat here.
Premium price
Player market determines the price for premium. If the increased demand causes a price increase, this will make buying gold a more attractive prospect, which should in turn, bring down gold prices.
Spammers, Trolls & Scammers
We have recently implemented an anti spam system, combined with several other chat moderation mechanics in preparation for F2P, so far this includes;
- Whisper limit to max amount of players within a certain time-frame
- Automatically censoring racist, homophobic slurs which also applies when creating characters, guilds and alliance names.
- An extended mute list to 150 incl. Mails
I believe you’re referring to silver sellers here, our stance on this remains unchanged, it is and will always be highly prohibited.
To combat them we have targetted their business model - how we do that is preventing botting and preventing credit card fraud. We have implemented a system that requires the account to meet certain criteria, which is then manually verified by us to be able to use Gold.
More info can be found here.
Naked scouts
Note that naked scouting with a 2nd account is forbidden by our terms and conditions if the same person is inside the dungeon with their first account - that would violate our multi-accounting rules as the two characters are then assisting each other. If you suspect someone of violating the terms and conditions, please report this to our support team here.
Recently we have taken a measure, that two clients cannot be run simultaneously If premium is not active on at least one account, which would also make scouting on secondary accounts significantly harder.
MORE ZvZ lag / Performance & Stability
To be clear, improving the technical performance of Albion Online will continually be a high priority to us, and we are fully aware that performance issues sometimes occur during very large fights.
Not only do we strive to push Albion Online to it’s technical limits wherever we can so that you can experience these large scale fights, we incrementally improve the stability of the game as we locate performance issues. Since it can be down to a wide variety of reasons, we are evaluating reports on a constant basis.
Additionally, here are some of the measures put in place in the past and looking to F2P:
- Optimizing performance of spell effects
- More customizable graphical settings
- Adapting cluster caps in relation to performance limitations, while also maintaining our real time action combat model.
- The Portal Rework should also have an impact on how often you encounter these issues, since the player population will be much more spread out. Naturally, we will be reviewing that during and after the test.
- We recently split cities into into multiple clusters
- We have also invested in additional hardware, to mitigate the impact of server overload of a particular zone on the entire game.
On top of this, we are always grateful for your support in helping us pinpoint potential issues, it's great if they can forward their cases with as much detail as possible.
Filling zones with F2P accounts
So a couple of measures to prevent this, first also relates back to the fact we have made it significantly more difficult to have multiple accounts running in parallel that do not have premium active. And although not as restrictive as above, the new tutorial also acts as initial time-based barrier that you need to complete in order to access the rest of the game. Right now the tutorial takes approx. 40 mins to complete.
What are you going to do to make sure that the players who will try out this game will actually stay?
We have introduced 6 major updates since release, at a general pace of 3-4 major updates per year which we will keep up going forward. Content is king, and the timely introduction of new content into the game will always have the biggest impact on player retention.
During that time, we have made a conscious effort to improve the rewards you can obtain in Albion Online on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
This is also part of our objective to introduce features that let you make meaningful progress and feel the benefits of logging into the game on a daily basis, even if your friends and guildmates are offline, which doesn’t lock you into waiting for others to show up.
At the same time, we have kept ‘rewarding the effort of individuals’ at the forefront of our minds when designing the way you achieve the GvG season rewards. Not only can you obtain them at different ranks but you also need a certain amount of guild loyalty.
Overall, we see that the recent Adventurer’s Challenge and the GvG season rewards, has had a very positive impact on short term and long term player retention.
To further expand on that, as you may have read in the recent Roadmap, we outlined our two main goals, one of which being to ‘’Improve the quality and variety of activities available to players of all experience levels’’. By improving the replay-ability and variety of content that we offer to all experience levels, like we see in the Random Dungeons for example, we can create great incentives for players to return to them.
Grimhawke-EB wrote:
Do we need to have premium active in order to receive the rewards for having purchased a founder or starter pack? I have an alt account that I don't use anymore and let the premium expire. Will that account get the specter wolf, 1000 gold and 3 days of premium?Korn wrote:
The reward will be given per game pack redeemed. I.e. if you have redeemed, say, 3 game packs (veteran, epic, legendary) on a single account, you'd get the reward 3 times. This is to make sure that people who redeemed multiple game packs on the same account - as opposed to different accounts - are not at a disadvantage.MissBehave wrote:
Yep, so did I. If I had 6 characters, 1 on each of 6 accounts, I would get the rewards 6 time. So what if I bought 6 starter packs on 1 character on 1 account, should I not also get the reward 6 times???
The FAQ will be updated accordingly, thank you for putting forward your questions and sharing your feedback, hope this helps!
- Evoque
Evoque#9601
