Guide update - Revelation Day

[Thomas]

Flame me, I like the idea.
 

[karial]

consider yourself flamed, good sir

*grabs flamethrower*

lol, jk.

[Witcher]

I write again because I feel I must.

Much of what has been said before me, particularly by Moen, Magna Carta and Ebolla I echo.

The implementation of this change would mean a radical change to the game – I know it’s within the TOS for radical changes to be made to the game. I accepted that.

Changes are necessary to every game. Things need to be balanced, ideas need to be tried out, new content be implemented. All of this implies change some of which could change in a very substantial manner the game mechanics; it could force me to change my outlook, my tactics and my goals. I am sure I would welcome some of those changes, and I would probable curse a few of them too.

But HP would remain HP. Evolving certainly changing but that tingle of excitement – not knowing if my servers have been hacked, if my plans have worked out, have my precious virii been disinfected or stolen?

All of this matters because I have a goal. It’s not a goal which can be accomplished in a day or a week or a month or even several months. But I have it and I wish to accomplish it. To that means I have poured in resources – I have spent a considerable amount of time reading and learning, planning and calculating. I have contributed financially in order to put forward my plans to the stage where they are manageable and I have committed myself to the joys of the game.

Ash.

Ash is all that I feel is left now. The bitter disappointment of a dream of a joy which seems to be going horribly terribly wrong. Now I know all my work was for naught, for I will probably not see its fruition. Or will I? Everything is uncertain and in the uncertainty there is no joy, only ash.

A fresh start would compensate? No… the mere thought of having again to find hundreds of secret servers… well that is certainly not a joy.

We talk about other successful games. I think perhaps the following might be a more accurate model for HP to follow:

Kapilands – An economic modeling game
Renaissance Kingdoms (RK) – A medieval setting game
World of Dungeons (WoD) – A fantasy setting game

Most of you will not have heard of these I suppose. They all share these characteristics in common:

1) They are all persistent worlds. Never does the game stop, though in some cases you, as an individual, have that option.
2) None of them are “commercial” in the normal sense of the world. RK was developed by 3 friends, the other two have a single developer behind them.
3) They have all been greatly expanded by players helping the developers. Game translations, art, stories, background etc. have all contributed to make them great games.
4) They all have a playerbase of over 100,000 active players (WoD might be a tiny bit less, hard to know but the others are both well over the mark), sometimes distributed in various worlds, sometimes only in one. I think that makes all of them very successful. That is the sort of thing I was hoping for HP.
5) They all have the same financing model as HP does. This may be a minor point for some, but I feel Sir Emi might like to know.

I know feel sad and to some extent betrayed when I log onto HP. I think that the fundamental nature of the consequences implementing the proposed Faith-Revelation story are enormous.

I also realize that Sir Emi has put a lot of work already into this game – I’ve been a game developer as well and I have some idea how it works (and yes the games I worked on got published) – I want to help but right now I am in shock. I would like this to be a game where the players could help build it and develop it to its full potential which is there. It is something that would be fantastic for everyone… but this is just putting a break on that development.

If this goes ahead as planned I know I will not stay, maybe I will do what Ebolla claims and ask for my money back , maybe I will just fade away.

I don’t know. All I know is the current situation is more ash than joy.

[setech]

I like the idea too.

(not that I would be stupid enough to even touch that reverlation thing).
Also, as Ged Crimsonclaw stated: the probability is so small. And I don't think someone will be bothered much by this. More probably once in a while some 'quitter' will try to download the virus and get so ripped apart.. And then peace.

~ setech

[Player]

How would I activate 10 revelation virus.

Untested and purely theoretical, feel free to point out any errors.  


The revelation virus has several differences compared to other type of virus, I ll just go for the easy way and quote Ged Crimsonclaw.
"So why worried?  Some notes, as I understand them:
1. Faith can easily disinfect Revelation
2. Revelation is easily located - it would appear to not only broadcast its location, it also deletes all defenses on the host.
3. Any player that so much as downloads Revelation will be immediately targetable, due to the unique broadcast feature, again.
4. At 6 hours per install, no parallel installs, one install per player, a day countdown, needed is a minimum of 10 players and half a week (3.5 days) of uncontested time.
5. Top players will be researching Faith and providing it freely to all.
6. "Faith anti-virus is faster then a normal anti-virus" - so it moves fast
etc."

1) Virus can be disinfected very easily.
Unless I am wrong here, but i think localhost has to power to kill any remote delete processes. So if You keep a copy of uninstalled virus in in server and consitantly checking and killing all deletes, theoretically you could keep the virus there forever.

2) Revelation is easily located.
True, if you only have 1 virus in the whole net. What if there are 10, 100,1000, 10000, or even 500000? Then it would be pain to keep track of all the virus. I think its also possible for that to happen. Because, a) you can never delete a virus thats owned by a player.
b) It is possible to complete a download, using an IP reset or log deleter version 500000   ( downloads can only be killed by either getting into your server, or the host kills it. )

3) Revelation negates defenses.
So what? let them come, they cant do much harm anyways until you actually start to install the virus.

4) Half week of activation time.
Ok there is probably no way around this one, as once the virus is installed, AV will kick in and disinfect the virus. The only way to do this is probably research till disinfecting time is higher than the total activation process. Either you use IP reset alot, (resetting in 5 min intervals) or just try your luck. ( If you got a chain of virus set up like above, of course. )

5) AV version is higher than virus version.
Yea and probably will stay that way. Only way around it is to research the virus to prolong the disinfect time.

[Seb]

Your speech brings us great sadness I'm sure, let us try to stave off your leaving, and keep the revelation from ending the Mega corps for as long as possible.

[ZacQuicksilver]

4) Half week of activation time.
Ok there is probably no way around this one, as once the virus is installed, AV will kick in and disinfect the virus. The only way to do this is probably research till disinfecting time is higher than the total activation process. Either you use IP reset alot, (resetting in 5 min intervals) or just try your luck. ( If you got a chain of virus set up like above, of course. )

5) AV version is higher than virus version.
Yea and probably will stay that way. Only way around it is to research the virus to prolong the disinfect time.

I can improve upon that: I just don't finish installing until I can finish 10 or more so AVs don't work. If I get 1000 or so servers, and start downloads to an equal amount of Corp. Servers, then activate them, I can probably get 200 in. You then have 24 hours to disinfect 191, while simultaneously stopping me from starting new Revelations.

And yes, I am perfectly willing over some week-long vacation from college to get a couple friends, and spend time on making 1000 accounts just to do this: You can slow us down, but you can't stop us.

I bet with just 250 accounts, I could (solo) unleash a barrage of Revelations that would require the efforts of SGP to stop. The issue is that I can stop deletion processes, I can accept the AV and begin installing another, and with that many accounts, you'd be hard pressed to beat them all.

And you would need to beat them all: as far as I can tell, if I get 15 installed, even if you shut down 6 of them, if I can get another one up, that clock is still going. And if I can get another 10 up, that clock is as good as finished.

[Seb]

I can only hope SirEmi makes using multiple accounts to bring about the revelation an abuse 
Zac, I thought you were going to be against the revelation 

[RaiseCain]

Zac, I thought you were going to be against the revelation

Yeah going against Faith is a big mistake ^^

[ZacQuicksilver]

I can only hope SirEmi makes using multiple accounts to bring about the revelation an abuse 
Zac, I thought you were going to be against the revelation 

I am.


But it's way too easy to run Revelations.

[virus man]

I think he was just giving an example.  Very similar to what I gave when the Newbie Protection was implemented and how it could be abused.
To be honest this soon to be update just makes dupe accounts even more abusable.  Create the account.  Download the virii and install it on the server then walk away.

[Xirad]

Running off of ^^
Depending on the specs of the Revelation virus... couldn't someone that is still in Newbie Protection download the virus and constantly research it with no worry about harm coming to them or their virus?

And then all it would take would be some people to download it and spread it...  but than again, the required specs might be too much for a new account.

[ZacQuicksilver]

A player is no longer protected when:
CPU>1100
OR
Bandwidth>10

Nope: I can be protected. I just never upgrade Bandwidth or CPU: I can still increase HDD.

and that "Only spawns on servers with protection >1.0" limit doesn't do anything: I just need one server to access the Revelation server, and download it, then have a bunch of people download from there.

[Noseedam]

  it blows that we've been forced to this......... as it stands i have been going more and more inactive as time goes by........... because i simply don't see the point anymore, as a lot of other higher ranking players have been saying, the game lacks the fun it started with, i used to be able to slip into a server, install a virii real quick, and have myself a new farm............ now it's that i have to wait and wait, and sometimes never get it because newbie is based purely on hardware (i still believe this is stupid)

i also see the potential on this, and let us not forget that you could simply keep track of all of the 1.0+ truelights and install on all of them, or have people helping you, in addition to strong players

also, the very nature of the game demands resets.......... i found tiaks server, and i scanned him, and he has a undeleter 34.? already......... he's not even the strongest player, this should tell you something............. or that might just be my opinion

[ZacQuicksilver]

I agree this game needs something for the high-powered players to do to keep them from just doing insane research projects. However, I don't think this is it.


What I would do, if I were the developer, is make a new type of server: an internal network. Basically, you get to hack into an office space, and have to balance how much you want to do with the risk that some of the workers in the office are hackers that will, if alerted to your presence, attempt to shut you out, wipe out your virii, and/or hack into your computer.


Although, there's a lot of mediocre ideas (this one included) that have been suggested that would give the high-powered players something they can do other than make life difficult or easy for newbies.