Dev Update 12/11/2018

[Achilles]

What I've worked on since the previous update:

Spam changes
* Reduced the time between duplicate message checks from 10 seconds to 5 seconds to reduce the effect on normal users.
* Changed the spam algorithm to do substring matching and check if messages are the same or have a 1 character difference. With this adding or removing an extra character to slightly change the same message will get rejected.
* The server now removes all trailing whitespaces from chat messages. Note that users can no longer type what appear to be empty messages with this change.
* Fixed bugs with spam checker that would count messages during phases where you can't talk.
* When users get put on trial all previous spam checks are cleared. This will ensure that a user on trial doesn't get spam blocked from a previous message before the defense phase.

Sheriff
Changed the Sheriff results server messages to all use the same id. This prevents users from altering their XML to go back to the old Sheriff results.

Changes to inactive, low games played accounts
We know that the botters have been trying to guess low security passwords and get access to any grandfathered accounts they can in an attempt to continue trolling, spamming and botting. In a preemptive strike to thwart this we have ungrandfathered free accounts that were inactive (no logins) for over 1 year and had less than 5 games played. Since these accounts had not logged in for over 1 year this should have little to no effect on the active player base and the accounts had less than 5 games played so they were mostly alt accounts or accounts where the player tried out ToS for a few games and quit.

Coven Free Ticket System (Still in development)
We have seen many posts about Coven not having enough players and the Steam reviews also reflect this. It personally pains me to see a great expansion to ToS suffering because of a low player base. We had a plan for doing this free coven ticket system after the Unity port but I decided that this was too important to wait.

To help increase the amount of users in the Coven we are doing two things. First we are doing another free coven weekend ahead of schedule in order to help alleviate some of the pain Coven users are experiencing while we work on the permanent system to help. The second is a permanent feature we are calling the Ticket system which was a suggestion from a user on our forums.

Coven Tickets will be given to users as a free reward and will allow them to play a limited number of Coven games for free. This will give the normal player base a chance to try Coven on a more regular basis outside of the free Coven weekends. Coven users should see a much larger player base regularly participating and hopefully start filling up most of the game modes in a reasonable amount of time.

The current design for ticket grants (which is subject to change):
3 Coven Tickets for every 25 games played, up to a maximum of 250 games played.

We do plan on rewarding existing players with 25 games played or more with the tickets they would have gotten.

Since I did not want to slow down our two other developers on the Unity port I am attempting to do this feature, both client and server, entirely on my own. I have the first pass of the server tech done and will be moving on to the client work for Unity soon. It will be my first time working in the Unity code base as I have primarily been focused on the server code. It is also my first time working with Unity tools and in the C# programming language (our server is C++). I expect this will be a slow process for me as I have a lot of new things to learn, but since the AS3 code base is on it's way out the door it is an important step for me to take.

[NateNate60]

Finally, I can play Mafia Returns without waiting ten days in the lobby.

[Chemist1422]

Coven ticket idea is great! I think it's a great way to get more people into Coven.

[abizoey]

Just passing on the message here, but it's a valid point. Talking in all caps has never been against the rules so why is it now in the spam filter?

[rushofpower]

Yay Great idea with the coven tickets!

Glad to see that spam changes are being implemented, I type really fast so i frequently get the message to wait a while before sending another message despite not spamming. Very happy w/ these changes and glad to see ongoing development to TOS

[Achilles]

Just passing on the message here, but it's a valid point. Talking in all caps has never been against the rules so why is it now in the spam filter?

There’s a fine line between using caps at critical times and having your caps lock on the entire game. I’m trying to find a nice balance point.

[abizoey]

There’s a fine line between using caps at critical times and having your caps lock on the entire game. I’m trying to find a nice balance point.

I understand that it's not necessary/ideal to speak in all caps but it's never actually been against the rules. Since this change was to prevent people from accidentally breaking the rules and getting suspended it seems odd that speaking in all caps is part of it. Not allowing people to ever send a message in all caps anymore, even if it's just a single word, seems excessive, and I've never even seen anyone keep it on all game tbh.

[Achilles]

There’s a fine line between using caps at critical times and having your caps lock on the entire game. I’m trying to find a nice balance point.

I understand that it's not necessary/ideal to speak in all caps but it's never actually been against the rules. Since this change was to prevent people from accidentally breaking the rules and getting suspended it seems odd that speaking in all caps is part of it. Not allowing people to ever send a message in all caps anymore, even if it's just a single word, seems excessive, and I've never even seen anyone keep it on all game tbh.

That’s not even how it works. It prevents typing in all caps twice in a row within a 5 second window.

[qwatbattery]

maybe instead of 1 ticket for 25 games played how about 25 wins so that we dont get people who dont know how to play

[Achilles]

maybe instead of 1 ticket for 25 games played how about 25 wins so that we dont get people who dont know how to play

It’s 3 tickets and I think 25 games is enough to understand the basics of ToS. Keep in mind that if we make the ticket grants too strict then this system won’t help coven get more users.