Announcement Sept 27: Device Registration & New Trading Rules

From the announcement, from the 28th September 2012 - all accounts must be registered in order to receive anything from your inbox as well as trading. Further up from the notice it highlighted a few things such as the policy, the purpose of trading etc. I can see why they are doing this but my main concern is that if you lose your device you have to start again (if you haven't registered it) or if you upgrade your device and want to play with it using the old account you have to create a new account, get to level 30 and then transfer it from the old account (I'm not sure what the policy in other accounts are).

There are good and bad for the reasons of doing it; namely to stop people using multi acounts on one device I suppose. Thoughts?

I think it's completely stupid to make a game that's played on a cellphone be tied to the device since cellphones are something that people CONSTANTLY upgrade (usually once every 2 years, on average, depending on the user). If people can't transfer their accounts from their old phone to a new phone, then they will lose a LOT of customers very quickly, because nobody is going to want to spend money on a game they'll have to start completely over when they next decide to upgrade their phone (or replace a broken/stolen one, which also happens a hell of a lot).

TERRIBLE business move.

chaosbladeuk wrote:

From the announcement, from the 28th September 2012 - all accounts must be registered in order to receive anything from your inbox as well as trading. Further up from the notice it highlighted a few things such as the policy, the purpose of trading etc. I can see why they are doing this but my main concern is that if you lose your device you have to start again (if you haven't registered it) or if you upgrade your device and want to play with it using the old account you have to create a new account, get to level 30 and then transfer it from the old account (I'm not sure what the policy in other accounts are).

There are good and bad for the reasons of doing it; namely to stop people using multi acounts on one device I suppose. Thoughts?

Bad. The game is on the way to becoming like R.O.B, which is definitely NOT good at all. Bad move Silicon, bad move.

I changed the title to reflect what this discussion topic is about.

First of all:
All the warnings about trades & getting scammed are exactly what I wrote about in my sticky. Silicon/mobage are not going to help you if you hit "trade" and traded away your 6* on a shitty deal of an album trade and never get it back. This much was always obvious.

But there are two new rules:
- You can only start trading once your account reaches level 30. This isn't something I necessarily disagree with. I know of quite a few people who just registered new accounts and sent the stuff over (I think you get 3TE for completing the tutorial) to give their main account a head start. They can't do this anymore.
- Device registration. While I don't disagree with this particularly, the whole "can't be registered on a different device" seems like it will be a major hassle. What about people who are playing the game now and have an iphone 5 in the way? Guess they will deal with support in a few weeks! What about people who might play on an iPad and their phone? Or have a couple phones that they play on?

If it wasn't one-device-per-account but one-account-per-device, I think it would work out better. Now, I'm sure you will be able to register your account on a different device, but you will have to go through support to do it. That's more of a hassle.

I agree, this is a poor decision. As was mentioned, people commonly upgrade devices, or devices break and need replacing. There has to be something that can be done to transfer the account in that instance.

I currently have both an iPhone (for the next 6 months for work), and a Galaxy 3 (Personal). I play more on the iPhone as it is always connected to 3G, whereas the Samsung is Wi-Fi only for now. After my time with the iPhone, I will definitely be using my Galaxy full time. I'll be registering the Galaxy, however I now face not playing much (in-turn not buying much) until then I suppose. Their loss.

That's lame. I usually play on my tablet when I'm at home and on my phone when I'm away. Now I can only play on one device which would be my phone since i always have it with me. But I plan on upgrading my phone in a couple of months. There is joy on playing on a bigger screen but it's tougher for me to drag that thing around. Hopefully, I can talk them into letting me register more than one device. I wonder what the thought process was behind this.

(Waking up ranting) Well if they are trying to model after a "successful" game like RoB which has over 3 mil users, Cryptids with over 2 mil users (I can't remember after the tutorial if you had to register the app to the device) can you blame them for trying to do so? Change is something people never embrace in any situation.

With that being said, if the game is heading in the direction of "RoB," then be prepared to have a lot more than just scammers on the way. Think of all the hacking incidents that came with RoB after hitting their 3mil mark. In response RoB change their whole set up of trading system. Blah blah blah. (Done w/ ranting)

Just completely lost my train of thought.. It's too early in the mornin to be serious lol

How do they handle changing devices in RoB or any other game with device registration? Does mobage or whoever is in charge of that actually honor device change requests?

Also the level 30 trade thing is understandable. I figured they would make the 3 elixirs you get in the beginning non tradable,but since you get a 3* from referral too, that might be the best way to go about this issue.

Did you guys notice the trading in-game goods outside of game notice as well? It's been in the notice since forever, but the fact that they have to mention it again seems interesting.

pnoytroi wrote:

(Waking up ranting) Well if they are trying to model after a "successful" game like RoB which has over 3 mil users, Cryptids with over 2 mil users (I can't remember after the tutorial if you had to register the app to the device) can you blame them for trying to do so? Change is something people never embrace in any situation.

With that being said, if the game is heading in the direction of "RoB," then be prepared to have a lot more than just scammers on the way. Think of all the hacking incidents that came with RoB after hitting their 3mil mark. In response RoB change their whole set up of trading system. Blah blah blah. (Done w/ ranting)

Just completely lost my train of thought.. It's too early in the mornin to be serious lol

like i said, 3 mil? Half of them are probably alternate accounts LOL

I'm sure there will be a way to contact support to get the device changed -- it's just a bit harsh how they framed it.

I also don't think the trading level restriction is too bad, although I agree that it may have made more sense to just make those elixirs personable.

Also, considering mobage is in charge of running Fantasica over here, I don't think it's them attempting to model Fantasica over RoB or LotC -- they run those too, so it's just them bringing the model in line with everything else.

Shokkeru wrote:

Did you guys notice the trading in-game goods outside of game notice as well? It's been in the notice since forever, but the fact that they have to mention it again seems interesting.

I think we're just pushing this one under the rug.

tzerherman wrote:

like i said, 3 mil? Half of them are probably alternate accounts LOL

:-p I said I was just waking up lol shush. And still can't get over that Kirlx situation. Should've asked for more in that trade :-/

n00face wrote:

Shokkeru wrote:

Did you guys notice the trading in-game goods outside of game notice as well? It's been in the notice since forever, but the fact that they have to mention it again seems interesting.

I think we're just pushing this one under the rug.

Our forums don't condone any cross-game or currency trading, and we've banned people for it before. I realize it's probably prevalent or conducted elsewhere, but our policy is aimed to be in-line with Fantasica's. :p

pnoytroi wrote:

tzerherman wrote:

like i said, 3 mil? Half of them are probably alternate accounts LOL

:-p I said I was just waking up lol shush. And still can't get over that Kirlx situation. Should've asked for more in that trade :-/

What Kirix situation? maybe i can help?

tzerherman wrote:

pnoytroi wrote:

tzerherman wrote:

like i said, 3 mil? Half of them are probably alternate accounts LOL

:-p I said I was just waking up lol shush. And still can't get over that Kirlx situation. Should've asked for more in that trade :-/

What Kirix situation? maybe i can help?

Trade traded them their Ana for Kir's Cecilia 1:1

I found this on their support page, but it's RoB specific. Seems to expand upon what's in the notice today. Effectively creating a one account to many device relationship...

Support dot mobage dot com slash

kbarticle?id=kA0C00000008V2p&lang=en_US

http://support.mobage.com/kbarticle?id=kA0C00000008V2p&lang=en_US

The important part:

Quote :

I got a new mobile device, can I move my old terminal or device registration to it?
Yes, you are able to register a different devices on the same account to allow for access from any one of your devices. Your old device will remain linked.

Oh so you can register your account on multiple devices, but just not register multiple accounts on one device?

That makes more sense.

Yeah, they really worded their announcement poorly and alarmingly.

The official text in the notice contradicts the whole thing though - "Once a device has been registered to an account, you will be unable to switch your account to another device at a later date"

This is obviously a move to standardize the registration system with their other games - so I don't think this can be correct.

This is likely a developer note where the word account and device were switched between 7pm to 10pm - a simple mistake considering these guys probably just wanted to post the release and get home.

When you flip the two words, it makes comeplete sense:

"Once a device has been registered to an account, you will be unable to switch your DEVICE to another ACCOUNT at a later date"

Who knows - I'm proceeding with caution until they clarify this.

Also, there's no guarantee that they'll use the same policy as their other games. It would be stupid not to in this case, but still no guarantee.

The majority of accounts I'm sure they could give a shit less about.

They'd be ROYALLY screwing themselves if they worded the announcement correctly. That's when they start worrying about the accounts they do give a shit about.

How many lawsuits for theft do you think they can handle from ppl who have spent any amount of money, but have to start over cause they got a new phone, or theirs broke and they got a replacement?

I don't really see any potential lawsuits from it - you agree to the T.O.C when you sign-up and there's a note there that mobage owns everything in the game and promises you nothing in terms of continuity or right to access anything. They could just delete your account and tell you to shove it and eat the bad PR, but they won't do that.

It's likely just a word mis-flip.

Mobage has a twitter if anyone is so inclined as to ask them, it seems like they respond to inquiries there. Or create a new question on the support thread? Either one of those seem like a slower option though, and I'm sure we're going to get more explanatory text post maintenance tonight when this goes into effect before we register anything.

If the notice text is indeed correct I cannot rationalize this from a registration/security standpoint.

I'm sure it's worded poorly. Like I've said, you will most likely be able to ask support to re-register. It would make more sense if it were one account per device and not the other way around (because otherwise you could just register multiple accounts on one phone... what?).

We'll find out tomorrow either way. ;___;

I play on my Phone, i want to buy card packs on the Ipad since i don't want to add a creditcard on my phone.

so that will get annoying..