Interesting idea.

Hunter Island Bugs, Suggestions & Monster Ideas
1

Alright, so I was thinking of ways that we can implement a way to allow user-hosted contests. After all, it would increase activity on the forums, making it more lively. It would also make it more important, so people would naturally join, increasing the number of people as well. More people, and more activity, Win-win! Now, you may be thinking that nobody would want to get rid of their arks…well, what if they want to restart? What if they are quitting? What if they are feeling great? What if it’s to celebrate something? What if they have extra stuff they’d like to see put to good use? These are all reasons to implement this. I’d definitely contest some of my spare S Dreadwolves, some of my spare egg-only monsters, maybe a S Omegawyrm or two as a birthday celebration.

Now then, there’s the matter of actually getting the monsters to the winner’s account. I agree that open trading would be a TERRIBLE idea. It would promote cheating, getting the starting dragon from the first egg and then sending it to another savefile and getting infinite amounts of dragons, etc. Terribly flawed.

However, there is a better way. Moderators here can be made into moderators on the actual game itself. Therefore, I suggest that the devs grant them transferring abilities. Why will this work? Simple. We just make a rule saying that members should NOT ask mods for a random transfer, and only do it for contests. This would also make switching between devices much easier, as long as the player has undeniable proof. Finally, there’s the question of abuse by the mods…oh wait, does that sound wrong? Of course it does. They’re mods for a reason - they wouldn’t abuse it. Therefore, all is good. You might say that mods might get flooded with requests…but they’re mods…they’re active…there are many of them…not many people want to give up 9+ star monsters frequently…they don’t have to approve requests…etc.

Once the contest is over, the player gives his/her gamecenter ID and they transfer it over to the given account. Sound good?

Summary: Allows wealth to be distributed, boosts activity, increases number of members, makes forums more important, adds another aspect to the game. No reasons that it won’t work, as far as I can tell, except for the fact that it may be too hard to implement. Just my opinion though.

Thoughts?

2

This is an interesting idea. I suggested before to Ryan that he adds a system where developers can give monsters to players. I suggested that he only keeps this system between developers and players, not between players and players. This would be useful in the case that someone misses a chance to get a monster due to a bug, or for special events. This would require a database being set up for player information to be stored in - but that’s a relatively simple task.

Allowing moderators to have this same functionality (though perhaps not able to give ‘any’ monster away in infinite supply, it would need to be restricted for moderator use) if it is already put in wouldn’t be terribly hard. Of course, the question comes down to: does the benefit outweigh the cost of implementing it?

I think it does. This system would have numerous benefits if it is coded in such a way to where it can’t be abused. Of course, it would keep the moderators quite busy!

3

+1 An awesome idea! It will help to improve the game into a much better sociable place :slight_smile:

4

+1 i like

5

i like where this is going, but if its something like, make a clan, you can use another monster owned by a member of that  clan temporarily, it might be doable. but as for restricted trading, how do we know the person giving the dragon or whatever away isnt a cheater? how can we manage it when we have 100k players?

6

He was talking specifically about moderators in this case, because moderators [should] be able to be trusted and shouldn’t be cheaters (otherwise they shouldn’t be moderators!).

As far as management, yes, that’s one of the issues. If there are 100,000 players, then having only 10 (active?) moderators might be difficult. So for this there would need to be restrictions on the system to limit the amount of requests going to the moderators. 

7

as for contests such as the pvp tournaments being organized right now on this forum, we are looking into what we can do, ie individual rewards with a code inside the game or itunes gift cards etc. lets see how the first one goes. 

well a player is going to ask a moderator to give monster x to another player right? how do we know that player isnt cheating to begin with? i feel like you guys will get so many requests if the game continues to do well…its gonna be a lot of work, and if we decide to get rid of it, its gonna lead to a ton of complaints.  

8

Right. I see your point. We don’t know that a cheater isn’t getting a ton of monsters and asking moderators to give them away. That’s a good point… 

You could make it so that one person can only transfer a monster through a moderator one time per x period of time. As in once per day, once per week, etc. If we’re doing this for contests especially, then this shouldn’t be something that’s happening all the time as it is. 

As far as the number of requests, this system would also cut down on the requests since people are limited to one monster per a specified period of time.

9

Shouldn’t the moderators be able to determine whether the player that is asking for a contest is cheating? Isn’t that part of their job? Unless it’s impossible to do anything about cheaters, which would then make their positions useless, in my opinion.

I don’t mean to offend, of course. n.n

Thanks a ton for your feedback though~

EDIT: That’s a great idea, Ashie.

But can’t you guys tell between cheaters and legit players?

Let’s imagine a perfect world where cheating doesn’t exist…would you agree to this? And, when you guys do find a way to get rid of those cheaters, would the likelihood if implementing this idea increase? Makes sense…

10

They would still have jobs if they have the job of transferring monsters :slight_smile:

As for cheaters, though, how do you really know if someone is cheating? Lots of gold? Well, they [could] have bought that gold… save file transferring? Yes. But that’s outside of a moderator’s scope of knowledge, since there would need to be code to detect that. People using monsters they’re not allowed to use? Yes, this is a way. But how often are hackers going to be doing that? 

I think cheaters won’t be much of an issue when IAP hacking is patched up and when save file transferring doesn’t work anymore. 

In-game moderation could still have a lot of uses: transferring monsters as this idea suggests, moderating an in-game chat if one ever gets added, banning or “temporarily restricting” people who exploit the system, etc. 

11

Exactly my point ;).

Well, you know I’m not good with technology. I thought there’d be some code or something to detect it, and that moderators would be able to detect and ban cheaters. Oh well…hmm…maybe that’s another thing to work on?

Aye, that’s true enough. But what about those Kamiwyrm folks? Where do they fall on this whole thing? And they really hacked IAP? Wouldn’t that fall under Apple’s responsibility? After all, it would be abuse of the purchasing system, no?

Indeed. Well, it does seem like hard work. On the bright side, you all have those awesome monsters, hmm? xD

12

There could also be a report button that reports to moderators. Now of course, that gets abused. But if we had a way to filter it or ensure most of the reports are legitimate, that could definitely be helpful. Though the players would face the same issue - not really knowing if people are cheating.

One thing you can do is add in a way for cheaters to be easily detected. For example, if there’s a type of hack that exists but that there isn’t currently a fix for (and maybe a fix isn’t known), throw in something that the hacker would gain through using that hack that would be easily visible to people. I’m not sure exactly how that would work, but it’s something other people could potentially build off of. 

As for IAP hackers, they could potentially fall under Apple’s responsibility. But it is stoppable in the game, so there’s no reason not to stop it if you can. 

13

Well, looks like we addressed more issues than we intended xD.

Everything else aside…are we all in agreement that it would be great to add if we implement more ways to prevent cheating? And since the devs would probably end up dealing with cheating eventually, is it safe to say that this might be a possibility?

14

I like this whole clan idea thing

15

This was suggested a bit before, but no one really commented on it so I thought maybe it was too flawed to be considered. But glad to see you brought it back up and got a discussion (that I was late to) kicking!

Yes, I agree it’s good to add more things to prevent cheating. Ashley’s idea of gaining something when you cheat seems quite appealing, though I have to say I don’t have any (good) ideas either.

16

Yes, of course.

Now, the main flaw that has been pointed out is the potential for this to get hacked, and screwing us over big time.

However, improving the game to make cheating and hacking nmore difficult will inevitably be done anyways…therefore, do y’all think that the idea is good excluding the potential issues?

17

I think it’s great, if you disregard the hacker/cheater problem.

18

Great, so the majority agree that it’s a matter of cheating.

…I really don’t know. I’m not well-versed in coding…but I’m sure it’s possible to at least make it 99.9% safe…actually, it’s probably not. But idk.

19

As I said, there are ways to make the system work even with hackers being a threat. 

20

Yaaaay. I feel as happy as…ummm…I don’t know…someone finding a D Frostjack? Lol.