Ask the Staff Anything

[Dark Drakan]

Mine switches on DeadSpace2 sometimes, it's nearly impossible to get in a lobby. ​

But when it's normal i get lobbies right a way.​

I don't wanna screw with mine because i'm not absolutely sure what it'll do. ​

Many gamers say switch to open, blah blah open blah blah open, but what else does having it open effect.​

Having it open makes joining lobbies easier but what else does it makes it easier for ? ​

Viruses, hacks, crashes.......what? ​

That's why i'm not taking a wrench to anything at the moment.​

Don't understand it, don't screw with it lol. ​

It basically restricts who can connect to you and your party etc, Strict NAT will only connect to members with Open NAT I believe and wont allow anyone with Moderate or Strict to connect to you. It will often kick you from games if anyone else with Moderate or Strict NAT joins which makes it a nightmare to play in parties when other peoples changes too. My cousin and I spent 3 hours trying to get 1 game on Battlefield before because of this. Soon as we both switched to open I never had another connection issue. The good massively over compensates for any minor security changes that come from open NAT. Ive used Open NAT for many many years with no issues at all.

You have Firewall and likely a security key on your router to protect from hacks and unauthorised access so open NAT wont affect the security in that regard. I know Open sounds bad as if you are opening a security hole for hackers and viruses but thats not how it works. Its merely a control on who you can connect to and what other NAT types you can enter lobbies with.

 

[Dark Drakan]

Thank you, this can really help alot of gamers. ​

I had so much trouble joining a friend in SaintsRowThe3rd because of that, her setting was strict & we didn't know & after several tries we couldn't join at all. ​

She figured it was her settings & changed something & we're able to join very easily. ​

There has to be more though, i mean it just can't be for making connections difficult. ​

​

Its likely to just be for those who want to limit who can openly join their games and vice versa.

 

[Dark Drakan]

I don't know, it seems more than that. ​

Why make it difficult to adjust or change the settings, & why have that at all when you can simply refuse or except others wanting to join your games. ​

But as i said i really didn't know it could switch on you. ​

Is it possible that it could switch from open to moderate ? ​

Have you noticed anything ?​

​

Yeah it can switch from open to moderate and strict. Its not something that the game lobby has management of its a router setting so it would be hard to control between the lobby and the router from a developer standpoint as the settings dont have open access to router settings and rightly so. Its not that difficult to change when you first find out how to do it. Though more games are giving you the ability to see what your NAT is set to in the lobby, just in case you are having issues connecting with people as your blame normally goes towards their servers first.

Heres a better description of NAT than I could give:

How NAT Works

Also:

A NAT router basically acts as a gateway between a private network and the WAN. The security aspect simply means that when you query what computer is accessing certain information, you get the IP of the router, not the IP of the specific computer....which means if you have 1000 machines behind the NAT, nobody outside the network will know what machine is accessing what information. Also, no single machine is accessible from the WAN unless the NAT router is configured to allow such activity.​

 

[Laurence Barnes]

ask the staff anything so i thought i would randomly ask: if you had the chance to become a robot with amazing weapons and superior intellect would you?

 

[Dark Drakan]

So basically the router info is displayed but the information stored on the PC is safe ? ​

Pretty much yeah but its not like its open to everyone to view. Shouldnt put your PC at risk, ive never had any issues with it.

ask the staff anything so i thought i would randomly ask: if you had the chance to become a robot with amazing weapons and superior intellect would you?

Nope, I enjoy food, drinking and other human activities too much to swap it.

 

[Angel]

ask the staff anything so i thought i would randomly ask: if you had the chance to become a robot with amazing weapons and superior intellect would you?

Well I got a mean looking spatula in the kitchen and a pretty decent IQ number so I'm halfway there already. Just wrap me in tinfoil and call me Bender. Or whatever...

 

[Chaos Raiden]

Is it possible to include the 'Spoilers' tag function back for us to use in this forum? Since DmC: Devil May Cry's release is January next year, any potential early players might intentionally leak spoilers in this forum. This in turn may causes other players to be disinterested and enraged for being spoiled with early story spoilers. This not only applies to DmC: Devil May Cry, but any other future DMC and other games as well.

 

[sylvanas]

why is the sky blue?

 

[Angel]

Is it possible to include the 'Spoilers' tag function back for us to use in this forum? Since DmC: Devil May Cry's release is January next year, any potential early players might intentionally leak spoilers in this forum. This in turn may causes other players to be disinterested and enraged for being spoiled with early story spoilers. This not only applies to DmC: Devil May Cry, but any other future DMC and other games as well.

Still waiting on officially supported mods for spoiler tags. In the meantime, people need to exercise some common sense and white-out their text if it contains spoilers and put "SPOILERS!" in their thread titles. It is a pain but it'd be worse if the sites went down because of security problems using unsupported mods.

why is the sky blue?

Because it eats only the blue M&Ms.

 

[sylvanas]

Because it eats only the blue M&Ms.

makes sense.

 

[Shadow]

Why is my dog getting smarter and smarter everyday? :|

 

[Dark Drakan]

Why is my dog getting smarter and smarter everyday? :|

Maybe hes an alien or not actually a dog at all.

 

[Chimera Khaos]

I has a question: How come you guys don't have a shoutout box on here like the FF forums? If you guys had one, I think that'd be awesome lol...

 

[Dark Drakan]

I has a question: How come you guys don't have a shoutout box on here like the FF forums? If you guys had one, I think that'd be awesome lol...

We tried one out in the past but it was a resource hog and hard to moderate as people could post anything in there and if there are no staff there at the exact moment it was posted it can go unnoticed for a while. If it links to viruses/spam or anything illegal people could have accessed it before we took it down. Bottom line is people abuse them...

 

[Dark Drakan]

On forums Is anonymous & visitor ? ​

​

What abilities do forum members have ?​

What abilities do anonymous users have ?​

Visitors are guests, members can freely post threads/posts/profile messages etc and visitors can browse forums thats it. They cannot post or create threads and they can also see adverts on the sites when members cant. If that is what your referring to anyway...

 

[Dark Drakan]

Yup very much thank you ​

​

Now, if your website has more visitors then users, also has the occasional Trolls, & the visitors has almost the same abilities as members. ​

Like the ability to post replies to threads, comment on profiles or give likes, all under the anonymous visitor name. ​

​

Wouldn't it be smart to reduce those abilities from visitors giving them more incentive to join the website as a member instead ? ​

Visitors have no abilities but to see some of the boards (not all of them) which you can check by not logging in and they can only see posts and the boards with adverts. So if they want to reply or get rid of the ads they have to register, that is the incentive.

 

[Dark Drakan]

I like the way it's setup too. ​

​

See i'm on this other other other website & user generated blah blah blah, but there's a few complaining about Trolls & how they post unwanted comments under the anonymous name. ​

There's a thread put together on suggestions on how to cut the Troll posting unwanted comments but the admin says it'll reduce traffic. ​

It wont reduce traffic as such as people would still go there, just might reduce activity as those visitors couldnt post. At the same time it would reduce the trolls as they couldnt go posting stuff without an identity to ban though so it depends on what sort of community they want to become known for. Leave things like they are for to long and let trolls run riot and people will leave anyway and they will lose traffic as it will drive perfectly good members away. If visitors really want to post something they will register anyway.

 

[Angel]

Yup - some of the most popular websites around require registration before the ability to post. If an admin says it's a bad idea then I would suggest they didn't do their homework thoroughly enough when making such a decision.

Traffic is all very well and good if all you care about is monetizing your site but if you want to actually be more than just a trash can for the dregs of the internet then you need to have some standards. Nothing screams "AVOID!" more than a site that is just one big bonfire of flames and trolls. Plus in the long term, you have no hope of ever making money, getting a good profile or even encouraging people to visit at all because any search engine worth its salt will flag your site as spam, malicious and warn people away from it. Then bang goes your advertising, your money, your site.

 

[Dark Drakan]

I agree very much with both of you. ​

I asked a few times what's the point of having members when anonymous visitors has nearly the same amount of access. ​

​

He's spending have the time redoing tags or removing comments from Trolls that he allows that freedom to. ​

I mean there's an obvious issue & you have a solution in front of you, even members can see that. When it ends up abandoned he shouldn't ask why.​

If you have staff of about 20 and from all different timezones monitoring the site 24/7 then fair enough but its a little to much work for such little return. For every guest/visitor who posts decent content there is 10 trolls/spambots who fill your forums with nothing but porn ads/viruses and phishing scams.

 

[Dark Drakan]

True but these aren't bots or ads, these are actual people making rude comments. ​

Point still stands but with flaming posts added to porn ads/viruses and phishing scams. Just seems silly to give actual people the ability to freely be able to do it without an account or identity to ban. Hard enough keeping an eye out for spam and dangerous content without destructive people to contend with too with no account to hold responsible.

First time ive heard of guests/visitors being given the ability to post was when you mentioned it however. Ive never been in a community where people could do this, view content yes but not interact with the members and post etc.

Just banned a spambot here as I typed this...