"Bleeding" Guild Cards?

[Socrates]

Okay, here's a puzzler. Today I was online with a brand-new character, and a fellow by the name of Sorcerer S-mails me. Fine, except that I'd never heard of Sorcerer before, much less given out my Guild Card (this character was only four hours old, and never gave out any cards).

Turns out Sorcerer thought he was S-mailing Forest Angel, a character he knows that belongs to my son. Not only did the Guild Card he had from Forest Angel end up coming to me, Sorcerer even dropped into the Team I had created (and was alone in at the time), because apparently the search results told him Forest Angel was in there!

Okay, weird, yes. Almost creepy, really. So I checked my own settings, and sure enough, there were a half-dozen Guild Cards there that I had never received, and had apparently 'bled' over to my new character.

There were Guild Cards that came from the collection of a deleted character that occupied the same VMU weeks ago, as well as cards from the collections of my fiance's character as well as my son's characters (both of whom have their own seperate VMUs).

Has anyone else had this problem? I can only assume that Guild Cards are kept, to some degree, on the Dreamcast's internal memory, and they somehow got 'copied' back and forth between our characters (apparently my son also got an S-mail intended for one of my characters once).

Certainly the Guild Cards aren't linked exclusively to the Access Codes, etc. for a particular copy of the game, are they?

[Spasm]

Your guild card itself is based upon your game serial number. If you play 3 different characters on a single DC, they all share the same serial number. If someone tries to find you by searching your first character's serial number, they'll see you online even though you may be playing as your second or third character. The person searching in such an instance would see the message, "Socrates is an old name of this user" indicating that someone other than Socrates was playing at the moment.

[Socrates]

Bleah. Well, that bites. I figured the Serial numbers were in some way based on the Access codes, but I figured there would be a random element to it as well. Did nobody think more than one character would be played off the same Dreamcast? http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/icon_smile.gif

But how does that explain other people's GCs showing up on my new character's list? Is that info stored server-side somehow?

[Spasm]

Hmm, not sure. I speculate that people's guild card lists are stored on Sega's servers, and loaded onto your system when you connect. Again, one card list per one serial number. This is pure conjecture though.

[Seutekh]

It's something I've noticed myself...

Did you have multiple VMUs plugged in at the same time? I've noticed a fair amount of this happening between my characters... (since I'm the only one using my DC, it's not a big problem--actually kind of a convenience)

At the same time, I keep two VMUs in the controller at all times, (mainly just too lazy to remove them) and i figured it was an "automatic copy" feature. Ask Sega, maybe they know. Maybe.

[kazee]

If u want to start a new character without carrying over the Guild Cards, make sure u have only one VMU plugged in when creating a new character.

[Manifest]

if you really want to hear something weird listen to this. I am the only one who plays pso, (my girlfriend is far from interested) and yet the other day I started getting mails from someone I have never played with before demanding that I stop sending them messages. weird huh?

[Socrates]

Actually, Manifest, that was my son. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/icon_smile.gif Apparently somebody was trying to s-mail my Decker character, and it kept going to him because of this wierd GC thing, and was listed as coming from you (or one of your other characters? Dunno). Recognizing no names, he assumed it was from some goofball that was just harrasing him or something.

Incidently, having now figured out what was going on, he told me to tell you sorry for any confusion. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/icon_smile.gif

As to the multiple VMUs, no, we never had more than one VMU plugged in at the same time. Actually, we each have our own controller, and we just swap out the actual controllers whenever we get ready to play, so not only were multiple VMUs never in place at the same time, there wasn't even any sort of hard connection beside the one being used.

And in case someone thinks maybe the DC kept it in temporary memory, the game was physically turned off at before I started my new character for the first time, so I know there's no 'residual' memory there... Weird!

[Breza]

How weird. My boyfriend and I both use the same dreamcast, with our own VMU's. But we don't have the same guild card lists. And we just swap the VMU's itself not the controller. I've heard about other people getting shared guild card lists too. Actually it would be good if we could share guild cards. By the way, does anyone know if there is a limit to how much cards you can have?

[Naylor007]

Here's the solution. Controller A has 2 VMU's in it. VMU 1 is your original character and you wish to make a character on VMU 2. If you want character 2 to have it's own guild card you have to remove VMU 1 from the controller or the new character will share the old character's card. The same hold's true for creating characters on VMU's plugged into controller B, C, or D. As long as you remove the original character's VMU each new character will get their own guild card. Hope this was helpful.

[Ryoji]

I THINK (not too sure) that the limit on cards are 14 full pages (never bothered counting how many on each page really). I"m not too sure on this. Anyone wish to confirm it? ^^;

[Ambrai]

Grr just hit reset so let me do this again...

This is how the guild card system works.

1) When you give your guild card out you are actually giving your access number to other players. When they search for you the search is done server side.

2) You could delete all PSO Data and then go back online with a new lv 1 and no guild cards and still be searchable since you gave your guild card out and your access number is the same.

3) What guild cards you have access too depends on what list you have on the VMU that has the char you are playing on.

4) If you wish to see other guild cards from your first char, just copy the guild card file in the VMU to the other VMU. This file is not locked so you can move it without any trouble.

[Manifest]

On 2001-03-05 21:47, Socrates wrote:
Actually, Manifest, that was my son. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/icon_smile.gif Apparently somebody was trying to s-mail my Decker character, and it kept going to him because of this wierd GC thing, and was listed as coming from you (or one of your other characters? Dunno). Recognizing no names, he assumed it was from some goofball that was just harrasing him or something.



ah that makes sense now. eh. no harm no foul.