I'm not actually sure this is a bug or if this is how the game is suppose to work. I was sent two invites and registered both accounts. (Was that a mistake?) Anyway, these accounts both draw from the same pool of mist energy (100 per day). If I play with one account then the other account doesn't have any energy.
Multiple accounts sharing Mist Energy
How will this work with multiple players in one household?
A paid account (that is, an account which has purchased energy), will have its mist energy recharge at a normal rate, and will not be affected by any other accounts played on the same computer. So for multiple player households, if each individual account has purchased some energy, everyone will have their full amount of daily mist energy as well.
@mjohnson
It's not like ME is trade-able, so how is it really different from having a separate player? You could argue that one could be used to farm for the other, but that's not a big deal given the equipment requirements for the lower levels of the dungeons. You would, in the end, have to equip both accounts evenly, doubling the time it takes to do anything. There's no benefit to having a separate account to farm. All this is doing is turning away a potential market of customers who use the same machine (families, roommates, etc) from playing, much less spending money on the game.
In what has been discovered by the older players, it only takes one good account to equip out a multitude of new players. That new player can be easily piggy-backed through a high-risk dungeon to farm Crowns and Heat. Crowns can be traded and weapons can be leveled, and crafting an item to upgrade removes player binding. Without the free account limitation farming would be pretty easy for the simple player.
As for a family market, it costs only $0.75 a player to remove this limitation. Those abusing this would show up quite quickly in the billing records. Some parents find games that limit playability to be quite a boon in enforcing the amount of game time their children spend. (I can't be the only one that grew up with strict limitations on play time)
You don't even need to equip the farm account, just invite it in your party. Then just let it die if you're only up for crowns, it'll get transported along at every part button and such. If you want the heat too, then in the end kill it and revive it a few times. Each time you'll get 30% of its gathered heat, which in total after a few revives gives you about a 50-60% heat bonus in total on top of your own heat. Is it clear now why you shouldn't allow different ME pools/accounts on the same machine?
Not really, because I still don't see the point. What is the point of having multiple accounts and leveling them? You can't farm equipment levels because they're all bound to you. I guess you -could- farm crowns and heat but 1) more in the party = more difficulty, so that evens out (especially if you need to revive more than once) and 2) crowns are basically worthless anyway. As far as leveling new players fast, guilds are going to do that anyway. Let's face it, any good heat/crowns are going to be tier 2-3. The only armor/weapons you're going to be leveling are the best ones you have for yourself that you would use a lot of the time anyway. That plus going through tier 2-3 with an inactive party member with anything less than tier 4 armor/weapons will mean you're going to revive a couple times, especially as you approach the bottom.
As far as parents liking this system, if they need the game itself to limit play then aren't they poor parents to begin with? That aside, I don't mind the ME/CE system limiting free play. I just see losing a lot of customers because they don't even get a chance to try it out (because someone else in the house already spent all the ME).
I don't see the point of having multiple accounts for the same player, so what is the point of sharing ME?
I would take away the shared ME pool and make it cost more to revive. That would be more fair to players on shared machines while discouraging farming with inactive party members - which I still don't see a point for tbh.
Leveling them isn't the point. And crowns are not useless, what crack are you on? >_> You use crowns for a lot of things in this game, especially for buying energy from other players. Without crowns, how the heck do you get any gear at all? The end game 5* gear costs over 40k to make so...
With the difficulty, it's only a slight increase in hp in turn, you gain double, triple or quadruple the amount of crowns. Now that's not balanced out. Heat isn't that important though, you get that everywhere. (That's just another plus to multi clienting) I also don't see what you mean by reviving (You could just use the alt's mist anyways) as the difficulty isn't increased by a huge amount and like Evolution said dead players get teleported with you. Heck they're revived for free once you go down an elevator.
I don't the system is aimed at restricting people from playing too much because too long is bad for kids. It's more of an encouragement to pay for the game. If you like a game and you want to play it more, it makes sense to pay for it. (Three Rings is generous enough to even add in a fair work around, buying energy with crowns).
I also don't think you would lose customers that easily (especially since its a small $0.75 cost to work around this problem) as there will be at least one person interested. They could easily take it in turns and the problem would be non existent once the character has gotten started with buying energy with crowns.
Reviving already costs a hell lot, especially deeper down and in hard stages you'll die a lot in. (The cost doubles each time)
@Sircua
My point with saying crowns are "useless" is that they're very easy to get. Tier 2 solo runs can yield 4-6k easily if you go to the right levels, and you can run that twice per day if you don't die more than once or twice. As for the revive cost, you said what I meant. It increases every time you die. If your alt doesn't have decent equips, it's not making it to revive you anyway. Besides in the time it takes to switch between clients and keep attacking, you might die again. Either way the alt will die, too. And let's not forget that it will cost the alt to use the lifts, too, so there isn't that much ME from them to spare.
I actually know a couple people who refuse to play because they share a computer and can't play when they want. Alternating can't really happen because either 1) they would only get to play like 1/2 hr per day each with no crafting or 2) alternate days, which sucks. They would have spent money on it later, too, but they won't now on principle. I know that's not a lot of people - but either way it's lost sales. Also on buying energy with crowns - you're right except that the market has exploded. It's nearly doubled in a week. Once you hit tier 2 it's not so bad, but up until then you can't play very much.
I've already spent money on the game, so it's not a problem for me. I just don't want to see TRD to lose money over something so minor. I wouldn't like an increase in revive cost, but between that and shared ME I see it as a lesser of two evils. I'm sure there's another way to stop this; I was just giving one suggestion. Actually what they should probably do is make players unable to multiclient. That would do away with the issue completely and make everyone happy.
*sigh* You don't seem to want to understand it.
If Mist Energy is not shared by multiple accounts on the same computer then the following is very much doable:
> Create 1-3 alt accounts (depending on your personal skill level, concerning your ability to deal with slightly stronger monsters)
> Invite alts into your party
> Stack client screens on top of each other with a tiny bar of the screen still available on the left, right, top or bottom
> Let alt accounts die
> Play through the levels normally with your main
> Hover your mouse an instant over the other screens to keep alt accounts active every now and then
You'll have:
- 1-3 times as much crowns for the same ME spend on your main
- Free revives from those alts if you always leave 1 with a pending revive
- An extra load of heat if you leech it from your alt accounts in the end
- 1-3 times as much Minerals
Now, do you understand my point?
That's still doable regardless. That $1 that will fix it also allows for paid people to do it. If that $1 is as meager an amount of money as claimed to fix it, it's also a meager amount to allow that to happen. In fact if you run 4 accounts at once, that's $3 to be able to work around the restriction and do just as much of this kind of farming. If this is against the rules to free players, it should be against the rules for paid players too. As I said above, TRD should stop multiclienting and remove the shared ME pool. That would fix everything and stop this exploit farming for everyone.
"As I said above, TRD should stop multiclienting"
That's essentially impossible. Someone always finds a way, then tells everyone else, and next thing you know the problem returns because you bypassed the problem instead of solving it.
I have a question about this... If my brother plays on a separate computer in the same household on a different account, will we each only be able to play half as much? Also, will it matter if I sometimes use his computer and vice versa?
Separate computers within the same household do not share Mist Energy. If you log on on his computer and he's already played for the day you will find your Mist Energy depleted.
Okay, so ME is simply stored on the computer then? Although I assume that if I use the same account on two computers I won't get 200 xD
I've actually have a second account as well, and I wanted to use it just so I could play more. I wasn't even thinking of farming like that, I just wanted another character to mess around with. But I can't, and I'm not able to pay 75 cents to fix it. It's annoying.
Anyway, if it's stored on the computer, doesn't that mean it's hackable? That would be really bad.
And doesn't that also mean that anyone with multiple computers could farm the way you guys have been describing? Wouldn't they just have to get some extension cords for their mouses and wiggle them around occasionally?
There are work arounds... suffice to say they are comfortably in the realm of the power user. The explicit discussion of these methods in practice is assumed inappropriate in the forums and will get your post deleted. If you discover a method of circumvention the Devs have requested you contact them at https://www.spiralknights.com/support/#mail . There's no publicly known instances of account hacking, but so long as people follow through as Preview Event testers by the rules the vulnerabilities will be reported privately.
Please don't discuss methods of abusing the game publicly.
@CrazyMLC
I've gone through some of the source, but I don't know how they store it. It's a weird mix of sever and client checks. It seems that whichever has a lower amount, that's the ME that's applied to both. Buying CE removes this for the account it's bought for.
Also yes, it's possible to exploit with multiple computers like you asked. It's also possible to do it by buying $1 worth of CE on each account and then multiclienting on the same PC.
@Polantaris
By that logic there should be no law because someone will always find a way to commit crime. I think TRD needs to stop multiclienting on vanilla clients and make it against the EULA to multiclient. Yes, you will always have people who will try and circumvent the system, but then they can be suspended and banned for breaking the rules. It's not hard to do, and it would be more fair than the current system which allows people who spend $1 to cheat - an issue that the devs seem to think is a big deal.
Also I agree with d0gr0ck. If you find any way to exploit the system, it should be reported to the developers.
*Note to admins: This thread is about exploits, please read and consider the fixes suggested.
Well that's me done then,
I can't play because I share a computer with someone who gets way more free time than me.
:(
weak.
You can simply avoid the issue by one or both of you purchasing Mist Energy. $0.75 is more than worth it to me to no have to share resources with a sibling.
I'm sorry about this, but I couldn't think of where to post this.
My friend came over to play along with me, using his laptop today. While I was relaxing, I went on his computer to see how much ME I had. I have paid on my account, he has not.
Did I just inhibit his account because of this? If so, can it be fixed without him having to pay for it?
It should not have affected his account, as your account is considered paid and should have a separate ME pool from his.
However, your account may now be counting towards the 3 accounts he is allowed to have on his computer. If he really needs to create more accounts, he can contact Support to explain the situation and have them undo the computer-account associations for him.
This thread will never be able to find peace.
If you buy energy, what happens when you run out of the energy you purchased? do you return to the old ways of sharing energy?
If you run out of CE, your account will still remain "paid" even if you don't purchase more.
FYI, this thread is very old, and you should probably start a new one in New Recruits the next time you have a question.
This issue continues to be ignored and needs to be looked at. Very logical solutions in this thread but they are still not implemented...
"It should not have affected his account, as your account is considered paid and should have a separate ME pool from his.
However, your account may now be counting towards the 3 accounts he is allowed to have on his computer. If he really needs to create more accounts, he can contact Support to explain the situation and have them undo the computer-account associations for him."
Wait...so you're saying if you log onto somone else's account ONE time on your computer, it is immediately and permanently assosciated with any other accounts on that computer? Wouldn't this make it so that your friend's mist energy is linked with yours forever?
My brother and I have been playing spiral knights together on the same macintosh. We soon realised that our mist energy was shared between the two of us (for no apparent reason, and really sucks). I have 2 questions
1. If my brother played on our other PC and I played on the mac would our ME still be shared between our two accounts? So does the ME sharing rule only apply to the machine you are using? Or the household you are in? Or Email even? (we used the same email address to sign up)
2. From what I gather, ME will not be shared between 2 accounts if one of them buys energy with real cash. Would this be a permanent effect or just a daily sort of thing that would eventually wear off? I dont want to have to spend money everyday just to stop my brother from using my fair share of ME.
P.S to stop ME energy being shared do both my brother and I have to purchase ME? Or just one of us?
I would be extremely grateful to receive help with this, because honestly, im stumped
1. I believe someone here wrote that if you are using two different computers, then your ME isn't shared between the two accounts.
But I'd say this "energy sharing" rule applies to IP... don't know anything about how these things work, though.
2. If one of you buy ANY amount of energy with real cash, energy will no longer be shared. This is permanent effect, so you don't have to buy energy again after some time.
EDIT: As D0gr0ck mentioned, please do not discuss or encourage people to try potential methods of circumventing game mechanics, as attempting to do so can result in disciplinary action. If you think you've discovered one, please contact the developers directly. Thank you!
-Hyperion
This is intended. If you're not paying, we don't want you to just create new accounts to get another allotment of mist energy.