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Lifetime Sale and Anti-Fraud Measures

Cryptic make changes to their Anti-Fruad system, and also put Lifetime Subscriptions on sale.

By Three of Seven Sat 02 Mar, 2019 9:12 PM - Last Updated: Sun 03 Mar, 2019 8:09 AM
On the last day of February, a few things were announced for Star Trek Online. One piece of news is that the Lifetime Subscription has gone on sale for $$199.99, instead of the usual $299.99, which might tempt some of those who are enjoying, and spending a long time playing the game. The offer is lasting until April 4th, so just over a month.

This sale is a fairly common occurrence, just as the Phoenix Prize Packs are, which were also announced on the 28th.

Something that isn't a regular occurrence though is the Anti-Fraud measures, this was brought up on our forum here by Arimimochi Taku. The original news states that the reason for this is "to further reduce the impact of fraud and gold-seller behaviour on game economies".

We have seen a similar Anti-Fraud measure in place before, however previously, when an account was flagged, and investigated, any items bought in that time were bound permanently. This was mentioned by ambassadorkael on the official STO forums, where he said "that if your account is flagged for suspicious activity, items you purchase will be account bound for a limited time, instead of how it used to be, forever.", which is a much better solution to this problem.

This is unlikely to put an end to the gold seller messages that you get (hint, never trust, or respond to them), it should go some way to keeping the economy clean. What this does to prices, like the Dilithium market, or keys, I wouldn't know, I don't have a grasp of any game economics! But, hopefully, someone can shed some light onto that area.

WRITTEN & EDITED BY Three of Seven - rena.hobden@ufplanets.com
3 Comments
Mon 04 Mar, 2019 2:04 PM
Those fraud measures will boost the key prices since you can't buy and sell keys anymore. You'll have to wait for 7 days between zen store purchase and item unbinding. If you make it for 7 days with keys, you're clearly a strong willed individual.

Basically, this will increase the EC worth of the cstore goodies, will force people to purchase via zen and will ruin the ferengi of this game. Call this a bogus claim. Smile
Mon 04 Mar, 2019 2:41 PM
Those fraud measures will boost the key prices since you can't buy and sell keys anymore. You'll have to wait for 7 days between zen store purchase and item unbinding. If you make it for 7 days with keys, you're clearly a strong willed individual.

Basically, this will increase the EC worth of the cstore goodies, will force people to purchase via zen and will ruin the ferengi of this game. Call this a bogus claim. Smile
That's IF your account is flagged for suspicious activity. The 7-day hold does not apply to every purchase by every person. If you're not buying hundreds of 20-key rings (for example), then you shouldn't notice anything. In theory.
Mon 04 Mar, 2019 3:02 PM
In all the years I've played STO, I've only ever run into that anti-fraud thing once. I believe I bought a C-Store ship and didn't care, but I was diligent enough to notice the warning that popped up.

I didn't notice myself, but if my friend's experience is anything to go by they clear the flag fairly quickly (unless there is actually an issue).
They probably review the account as they are flagged, my friend's account was cleared by the next day or so.

If you don't buy anything while the flag is there then nothing gets bound at all, and this change wouldn't affect you.

If anything this increases supply, because now anyone who accidentally buys things while flagged (missing the warnings) will eventually add to the supply instead of not having those items enter the market at all.