Is it safe to log onto PSO servers?

[Marlboro]

Folk apparently the servers are killing inventory of characters that dupe and also legit players at random.

I'm checking messages from people I know as friends and people I work with. Out of eleven people who mailed me three do use Gamesharks and two are confirmed dupers.

The problem here is there are at least four out of six people left asking or help here that use free ISP's and don't have cheat devices and can't backup characters.

Don't know whats going on but I'm not playing online till Sega fixes what they've done that attacks legit players.

Anyone confirm or denie whats happening here?

[Seutekh]

okay... nearest I can tell it's not "legit players at random," but legit players who somehow traded for a duped item. (or possibly recieved duped cash?) While this puts everyone in a state of fear (myself included... I haven't traded recently, but who knows about that stag cutlery I picked up a few months back?) assuming you haven't traded and haven't taken money from anyone (thieved or just a gift) you SHOULD be safe.

Of course, I've been wrong before...

[SuperSubZero]

I can understand how they can detect a backed up character, but how can they detect a duped item? Is every single item assigned some kind of serial#? That would be an unwieldy thing.. Imagine even a low number like 50,000 US players, and every single item they've EVER seen being assigned unique identification. Sega couldn't even keep player data on the servers, how they heck could they manage some monstrous item serial# database?

Sega's decision to simply eliminate questionable items is pretty lame. A more tactful thing would be to either ban them from servers, or to itentify them. In Unreal Tournament for PC there is a popular anti-cheat util which actually changes the name of the character to say "(CHEATER)" in with their name. To a legit player this is embarrassing but at least they can still play.

-SSZ

[Ambrai]

They are not tracking items but time played and some other factors. I am still looking into it and will have a work around as soon as possible.

[MechDan]

Keeping player data on the VMUs rather than the servers is due to a design decision to allow for offline play, not any technical limitations. Let's say that with unique identifiers for every item, the disk space required per player is 1Mbyte (say, 100Kbytes per character; 10 characters per player). With 100,000 players that's still only 100GBytes of disk space. That's peanuts.

[Neifirst]

Can anyone answer the topic of this forum - is it safe? Every day, a greater sense of dread comes over me as I select Online Mode. I shouldn't have to be afraid to play the freakin' game! Please, someone, calms my fears!

I'll gladly wait a couple of days if it will ensure the life of my dear Neifirst. She never did anything to deserve being corrupted (except maybe killing Nei... but that was a several 1000 years ago...).

[Maverick]

Exactly when did these server changes go into effect? Sorry, I'm out of the loop (stupid blizzard!).

I was last online yesterday evening and heard no one discussing these changes. Now maybe everyone I played with was honest and never duped, but c'mon, someone I saw yesterday had to have (at least unknowingly) a duped item on them. Yet I heard no complaints. So, unless the changes were made sometime after yesterday evening, maybe Sega is only targetting people using the duping techniques, not the people who unwillingly accepted a duped item.