Lucky Dip

Whatchall think about re-implementing Lucky Dip? For some small amount of LGG you get a random account.

I'm thinking the account worths for each account should be averaged, and you pay LGG relative to the average value. So if the average value of the pool of accounts available is 100k, then it's X LGG for a random one, but if it's 200k then it's 2X LGG to buy a random one.

I never saw how it was implemented before, so IDK how they handled user:pass combos that were no longer valid.

But it can be done. Any of y'all be interested in that?

GAMEchief wrote:

Whatchall think about re-implementing Lucky Dip? For some small amount of LGG you get a random account.

I'm thinking the account worths for each account should be averaged, and you pay LGG relative to the average value. So if the average value of the pool of accounts available is 100k, then it's X LGG for a random one, but if it's 200k then it's 2X LGG to buy a random one.

I never saw how it was implemented before, so IDK how they handled user:pass combos that were no longer valid.

But it can be done. Any of y'all be interested in that?

Seems interesting, but wouldn't it greatly increase the risk of someone getting banned for it? I guess people could sell them but they probably wouldnt for amounts like that. Just taking 100-200k from a random account every other day, even if it isn't hacked, generally might be looked at as suspicious activity x:

I personally wouldn't be that interested but I think it'd be a cool feature for the site.
If you're going from a list of accounts wouldn't you just need to run a validity check before actually putting them into the pot of accounts?

Ugh, the excessiveness of "y'all" just has an irking ring to it.

Seems like a cool idea. Are these Gaia accounts or what?

Why would they get banned?

Also, it would almost entirely be freebie cheap accounts, I'm sure. The stuff from FLPs that can't be sold. They're great to use for adspam or whatever you want to do under-the-radar. Pretty much accounts you wouldn't mind if got banned anyway, not that I think it increases the likelihood any over any other hacked account.

The Unintelligible wrote:

Ugh, the excessiveness of "y'all" just has an irking ring to it.

Seems like a cool idea. Are these Gaia accounts or what?

Yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyeah, it was before. It was called Gaia Lucky Dip or something, but I might call it Gaia whatever-those-machines-are-you-put-a-quarter-into-and-get-a-random-item.

Isonyx wrote:

I personally wouldn't be that interested but I think it'd be a cool feature for the site.
If you're going from a list of accounts wouldn't you just need to run a validity check before actually putting them into the pot of accounts?

I don't know how I'd handle it really. Namely because validity checks aren't reliable due to captchas. There can be a brainstorming session.

GAMEchief wrote:

Why would they get banned?

Also, it would almost entirely be freebie cheap accounts, I'm sure. The stuff from FLPs that can't be sold. They're great to use for adspam or whatever you want to do under-the-radar. Pretty much accounts you wouldn't mind if got banned anyway, not that I think it increases the likelihood any over any other hacked account.

Freebie cheap accounts makes sense, say an account of yours gets banned and you want a new one to use.
Pay some LGG and grab another to re purpose. The idea is actually sounding better by the minute.

GAMEchief wrote:

I don't know how I'd handle it really. Namely because validity checks aren't reliable due to captchas. There can be a brainstorming session.

You have a point, the volume of accounts you'd need to check and all.
Not sure what Gaiaonline's captcha system looks like at the moment but could you just run it on different systems?
If you had a pretty large account list you could have a group of some trusted members run a program on their computers that cycles through accounts with a sleep system to negate the captcha. Give each of them a different chunk of accounts and wait a few days (depending on the size of the list and the time it takes to sleep between each login).
A brute method but might work.

If they are taken from FLP's then they can be banned. I could contribute.

Just make it say "Play at your own risk. Accounts could be hacked, inactive, banned, or even just a wrong user/pass combo, but there are also those that are rich, old, and have rare usernames. Play away, only XX LGG!"

Hell, you could call it Gaia Roulette

Flareboy323 wrote:

Just make it say "Play at your own risk. Accounts could be hacked, inactive, banned, or even just a wrong user/pass combo, but there are also those that are rich, old, and have rare usernames. Play away, only XX LGG!"

Hell, you could call it Gaia Roulette

I like that idea. I could provide some from my new program weekly if I get a big user base.

There was nothing on the old Lucky Dip to handle invalid passwords - it broke because I dumped a large list of accounts in it, and the account checker got IP blacklisted for failed logins.

Smithno13 wrote:

There was nothing on the old Lucky Dip to handle invalid passwords - it broke because I dumped a large list of accounts in it, and the account checker got IP blacklisted for failed logins.

Figured something like that would be a problem.

I might just only have approved account submitters with the "play at your own risk" message and a report-as-broken link to check and see if any one account donator is getting more broken reports than others.

Oh i wish I knew that I just posted some really expencive account D:

Actually how it was set up before was pretty perfect in my opinion. There was a wall of top submitted accounts, so people had an incentive to submit accounts of value. Accounts were picked 100% randomly, so everyone had to often spend a lot of LGG to get the good accounts, and there was another wall for top submitters, so people had an incentive to bulk submit accounts.

The only thing that needs to change is the checking of the worth of accounts. If we log in to the account, we either need to do it clientside (i.e. in Java or flash), or if we do it serverside, we have to check the worth without logging in (because if they get on to us they ban them all). The latter should be possible, talk to me about it over Steam or something.

A cron also needs to be set up to remove banned accounts. That or you just check if an account is banned before dishing it out. Also, if an account was banned/user/pass changed, the user previously got awarded a strike. If they got (x) strikes, they were locked out of the system for a while (to prevent them submitted hacked accounts or changing the user/pass on an account).

All great features that can't exist with an IP ban of LG's server.

Unless we trust content generated by the user (unknowingly, such as through Java, though still forgible), but hell, it's way better than the alternative of hoping not for an IP ban.

GAMEchief wrote:

All great features that can't exist with an IP ban of LG's server.

Unless we trust content generated by the user (unknowingly, such as through Java, though still forgible), but hell, it's way better than the alternative of hoping not for an IP ban.

Why do we even need account checkers? Users should just be able to say it didn't work, and the submitter will get a strike against them. To say it didn't work though, you have to have at least 30 posts. That way people don't come on the forum, leech accounts, and say they didn't work so they can get a refund when they actually did work.

But what about accounts that are in the system for some time? If the accounts are unsecured, as is, they could easily be banned.

Additionally, a hacked account be banned at any point AFTER it's submitted. So even if the checker checked preemptively upon submission, it might be banned sooner or later. Additionally, to check for ban would require the system log in. The systems IP would be quickly noticed, blackmailed and chainban any account submitted thereon.

PrincessFluttershy wrote:

Additionally, a hacked account be banned at any point AFTER it's submitted. So even if the checker checked preemptively upon submission, it might be banned sooner or later. Additionally, to check for ban would require the system log in. The systems IP would be quickly noticed, blackmailed and chainban any account submitted thereon.

This. Unless it can use different proxies

Flareboy323 wrote:

Why do we even need account checkers? Users should just be able to say it didn't work, and the submitter will get a strike against them. To say it didn't work though, you have to have at least 30 posts. That way people don't come on the forum, leech accounts, and say they didn't work so they can get a refund when they actually did work.

That'd take so much administrating. You can't tell if the user is lying or telling the truth, etc. Automation is always better in a scenario like this.

Artificial wrote:

That'd take so much administrating. You can't tell if the user is lying or telling the truth, etc. Automation is always better in a scenario like this.

But wouldn't automation take some extremely complicated proxy-utilizing account checker in this case?

Flareboy323 wrote:

Why do we even need account checkers? Users should just be able to say it didn't work, and the submitter will get a strike against them. To say it didn't work though, you have to have at least 30 posts. That way people don't come on the forum, leech accounts, and say they didn't work so they can get a refund when they actually did work.

You'd need the session to get an automatic Tektek value for the account.

Smithno13 wrote:

But what about accounts that are in the system for some time? If the accounts are unsecured, as is, they could easily be banned.

Yup. "Buy at your own risk."

Flareboy323 wrote:

But wouldn't automation take some extremely complicated proxy-utilizing account checker in this case?

Not if they provide the session. Or, at least, the password might be wrong (unless Gaia publicly provides an encrypted password that I don't know about somewhere?). But they wouldn't be lying about having access to the account, nor would they be able to lie about the value of the account.

And if it's something like UG-only submitters or otherwise hand-picked/high-requirement submitters, it's very unlikely that they will both have access to the account but not actually submit the correct password with their lucky dip submission. "Buy at your own risk" + user reports should be enough to see what's up. One user getting a bunch of reports, probably being malicious. Random users getting picked, probably bans out of their control or the user lying; either way, doesn't matter.

I already told you. Just program a java web applet or something and it'd be fine. It'd take some technical know how to forge data, and if they do just ban them, simple as that.

It was an awesome system.
I say try it again if you can get the right amount of people to join.