Originally Posted by
ObelixMMIX
Hi,
Our alliance has lost some cities for the first time in many months, simply due to players being automatically logged out because they weren't at their PCs when the captcha screen popped up and therefore could not answer the question within the two or three minutes allocated to do so.
When they returned to their PCs, they couldn't log in. Meantime, their city was getting hit.
Evony, your current implementation of captcha is really flawed. We have tested it for two or three days now, and can tell you, it is not ready for prime-time. Players are leaving the server to go play other servers, simply because the captcha screens - in particular when they pop-up after having logged in - are ruining the game experience.
After talking to a number of players who are adamant they want to quit SS57, I decided to play with my son's account for a number of hours last night just to see how bad it is.
I sent out a farming wave at a 10, and came back in about 30 minutes to send out another one. I had been logged out. Upon logging in, I was immediately greeted with the captcha screen. Fortunatelty, it was legible and I got in. Sent out another wave. Went to watch a movie. Came back, I was logged out. Tried to log in. Couldn't. Came back after half an hour, and could get in. Again, captcha screen came up immediately. Launched another farming wave. Decided to stay near the PC to see when the captcha screen would come up again. It came up about one and half hours later. This time, I decided to see whether it was the captcha screen that caused the logout. Indeed, it does. Looks like you have two or three minutes to decipher the image, and guess the correct answer. If you don't do it in whatever prescribed time, you're logged out, and have to login again and hope that your IP isn't temporarily banned.
Thalin mentioned that there isn't any suspension due to guessing the captcha characters wrong. I'm not so sure this is true. Too many people report being unable to log in after getting kicked out. I have personally logged into their accounts upon request to see what's going on for them, and have been able to do so. Either a single IP-address gets suspended temporarily, or entire countries are being blocked from logging in during certain hours of the day. Players have resorted to re-routing their Evony connections via other countries and VPNs when their accounts are inaccessible on their local IP-address.
The auto-logout will only destroy the game. Not everyone can afford to sit watching blue and red stripes while they are farming. It isn't really that entertaining. Should the birdie start flashing, you know you have some work to do. I personally flip into the browser every now and then, if I'm at my desk, or walk past to see if I'm being attacked, and carry on with my real-life tasks if not. What the auto-logout is doing, is removing the ability to simply look at the screen, or flip to the browser and react to the presence or lack thereof of a flashing bird. What previously took a few seconds now takes minutes, and if there's lag or you're blocked, it can take upward of an hour. Remember, it takes one and a half hours to lose a city. Explain why players are unable to get in for that long?
I request that Evony consider the following enhancements to captcha:
1. Remove the auto-logout part of captcha. A player cannot do anything besides fill in the characters anyway, so keep the screen up until they return. It is in their interests to answer the question. Do not log them out. We know how hard it is to get back in.
2. Please seriously consider captcha only popping up at login time. It seriously messes up the game when you're busy.
3. Please make the images either grey-scale or monochromatic. I can see why the visually impaired are struggling with the current colours.
4. Make the image bigger.
5. Consider adding intersection detection to the image production code so that overlapping characters can be avoided.
6. Can you investigate whether you can make the letters less jaggy?
7. Give us an option to request a better image if we cannot read it.
8. Please remove the current version of captcha until you have a better version, that is less flawed.
9. Please open up your testing to other servers. I would even venture to say keep captcha in its early testing stages off the busy servers as well as the servers where players have more to lose due to the current flawed implementation.
Finally, please provide feedback to the above nine suggestions.
Regards,
ObelixMMIX