Discussion: Command Line Option Changes [Merged]

[Pifil.5193]

@Healix.5819 said:

@Mireles Lore.5942 said:Would you mind linking where this was said? It is still showing up for me.

The SMS reminder not showing? I'm the source - I found that out years ago. If you exclusively play the game with -sharearchive and only update the game with -image (the default functionality of Gw2Launcher), the SMS reminder will stop showing after the next patch. I haven't seen that message in years, until I launch the game without -sharearchive, then it's back until the next patch. I just changed my Local.dat file this patch and have seen the message, so I can only confirm if this functionality is still true with the next patch.

@"Miss Lana.5276" said:I was using Launchbuddy, and a guildie had recommended gw2launcher to me, but I can't get that one to work for me either, autologin or no.

https://github.com/Healix/Gw2Launcher/wiki/Getting-Started

Thanks for the link (and the hard work) Healix! I'll be switching to using your tool.

[Sylum.1806]

@Miss Lana.5276 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@Shikigami.4013 said:The inconvenience will be countered by people giving all their accounts the same password so they never have to change it anymore when logging into different accounts.This does not improve security.

IIRC the password system will not allow that. You can't use any password than anyone has ever used before either in GW2 or any of the compromised password databases.

Incorrect. All my alt accounts have the exact same password.

And this is why ArenaNet should be making multi-account management more convenient, not less so.

[ElderNewt.5840]

May I ask why it's taken this long then to get rid of those command lines if security was such an issue.I understand why on a security level, I don't understand how it's taken soo long and that no alternative was offered.It's an inconvenience yes.. but it's a BIG one

[Cobrakon.3108]

Couldn't someone write 1 batch file for each account. In the batch file it could save the necessary changes overwriting the existing local.dat with the version that has the account info you want to play.

Maybe not even a write, could be a file swap of locations, or hide one show the other, etc. As long as their isn't some sorta conflict with a checksum or something.

[kurfu.5623]

I predict this thread will lead to nothing more than a great wall of silence from Anet on this topic after the one response we got yesterday.

Prove me wrong.

[Shadowmoon.7986]

This reaks of "big brother knows best". Instead of educating people of the risks like with the stickied 3rd party add on thread, you remove a feature. Very authoritarian and illiberal.Sorry this sounds 100% of we wants to screw multiaccount users to reduce the amount of daily rewards farmed.

[Nasbit.3240]

Anyone wrote an cracked version of the game-client yet? ;)

Would like to see - now without official login feature... people doing things anet dont like: Client-Manipulation. Cause they took the official features we want/need.

[Khisanth.2948]

@Cobrakon.3108 said:Couldn't someone write 1 batch file for each account. In the batch file it could save the necessary changes overwriting the existing local.dat with the version that has the account info you want to play.

Maybe not even a write, could be a file swap of locations, or hide one show the other, etc. As long as their isn't some sorta conflict with a checksum or something.

People can and they have been sharing it on the forum and else where long before this issue came up.

[Crackmonster.2790]

@Holy Security.9724 said:

@Crackmonster.2790 said:This is excellent, anything for reducing those who don't play straightforward but try and get more than others. Even if that wasn't the intention.

I don't have much good to say about multiboxers, running multiple accounts so they can get manyfold the rewards of normal honest players, or overcome challenges that weren't meant to just be facerolled by a single player. This is not something that is good, but ofc those who do it will argue to death it's sooo good, because they can get manyfold the rewards.

Essentially just people willing to abuse game mechanics for getting more than the normal honest player.

I mean, really, did you expect me to have any sympathy towards the guys who come here to complain its harder for them to just load up all their accounts so they can grind their home instance for mega rewards?

They are directly leeching off everyone, reducing values of things for everyone normal. It's just the same as a societal leecher who doesn't do kitten but takes all the benefits from taxes. Everyone else ends up paying for it, except here it's not because of good reasons that everyone should pay.

What puts you off doing the same? Your morality? Welcome to the real world, my friend, where morality is so small it barely even exists. Multiboxing is allowed and still easily doable with self written stuff. Nothing has changed, nothing will change. Unless they completely forbid multiboxing and IP track this. But this will be the nail in the coffin for gw2 all togetherWisdomCoz i do not want a game balanced around such hassles.

Can you believe it, i have foreseen that spending my time loggin in and out and whatnot szoning around boring areas instead of playing the game isn't the way i think leads to best game quality.:O

[Crackmonster.2790]

@Vash.2386 said:

@Crackmonster.2790 said:This is excellent, anything for reducing those who don't play straightforward but try and get more than others. Even if that wasn't the intention.

I don't have much good to say about multiboxers, running multiple accounts so they can get manyfold the rewards of normal honest players, or overcome challenges that weren't meant to just be facerolled by a single player. This is not something that is good, but ofc those who do it will argue to death it's sooo good, because they can get manyfold the rewards.

Essentially just people willing to abuse game mechanics for getting more than the normal honest player.

I mean, really, did you expect me to have any sympathy towards the guys who come here to complain its harder for them to just load up all their accounts so they can grind their home instance for mega rewards?

They are directly leeching off everyone, reducing values of things for everyone normal. It's just the same as a societal leecher who doesn't do kitten but takes all the benefits from taxes. Everyone else ends up paying for it, except here it's not because of good reasons that everyone should pay.

Wow this just reeks of pure jealousy. Are you aware that many players who have multiple accounts have also spent real dollars to buy extra copies of the game, buy expansions, maybe even buy gems and account upgrades like inventory/bank/shared inventory/harvesting tools and character slots, etc. Why do they not deserve to also get the benefits from these accounts?

That doesn't have anything to do with what i said.

You may have invested both money, and time each time you have to carry it out - but you reap also rewards that a player is supposed to get once per day, a multitude of times. The reason you do it, is because it pays off big time.

[mordefelix.5826]

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:I'm really sorry that some of you are unhappy with this change. I'd like to reiterate that the decision was based solely on our concerns for player security. Theories about alternative motivations for the change are completely baseless.

I notice at least one person state that those who used the system were fully aware it was an "at your own risk" situation, and that every user would be aware of any security risks that they were taking on. I have to dispute that. I don't believe that everyone knew of the risks, nor that every single user willingly accepted them. It would be provably inaccurate to state, "I knew it was risky, therefore every other user knew that, too."

As stated here, we have no objections to players using multiple accounts, when that use follows the proscribed limitations. The change today was decidedly not a means of trying to limit or halt multi-boxing, nor was it developed as a means of inconveniencing those who play with multiple accounts. If you are inconvenienced, we're sorry. But security > convenience, as I'm sure you'll appreciate.

@Gaile Gray.6029Although I agree that security > convenience, there are other suggestions in here that have been posted and seem like viable options. Launchbuddy encrypts your passwords as well and if people use two form authentication I'd be hard pressed to believe that this a security issue as it will just force all of us the change our passwords to be the same between multiple accounts to make things easier though I would still defer to your judgment if you believed otherwise. Could there possibly be a compromise where you make sure that all of us have phone/email authentication instead? People here have been making very good points (far better than my own suggestion) and that there seems a far better way to compromise and make sure security is upheld without having to do away with this functionality. All of us would have to resort to arguably higher security risk prone setups in order to keep viably multiboxing if at all which is why I'm particularly against this loss of functionality.

[Healix.5819]

@"mordefelix.5826" said:Could there possibly be a compromise where you make sure that all of us have two form authentication instead?

fyi, everyone has 2FA - email authentication is required by default.

All of us would have to resort to arguably higher security risk prone setups in order to keep viably multiboxing if at all which is why I'm particularly against this loss of functionality.

If you haven't been following along, multi-boxing is only getting more secure now that more people are aware of the Local.dat method. The only thing ArenaNet really needs to do is support "-nopatchui -autologin" to allow you to login directly to character select, which should be trivial to implement. It would also be nice if they separated the stored credentials from Local.dat.

[mordefelix.5826]

@Healix.5819 As I said, other people know better, namely you. @Gaile Gray.6029 this is a relevant post and supporting this would be the compromise we would be looking for since this should be an increase to security if anything from the above post to Healix.5819's comment to my post.

[Nihevil.8024]

We had this feature since launch, why remove it now? Why are you so worried about the security of the commands now? Also just days after saying multiboxing is ok. It's quite suspicious. People are going to start using the same passwords for their alt accounts.

All these terrible decisions that keep being made is going to make your company as disliked as blizzard. lol

[yahoo.4752]

@mortrialus.3062 i agree. @Gaile Gray.6029 give back commands

[Nihevil.8024]

@kurfu.5623 said:I predict this thread will lead to nothing more than a great wall of silence from Anet on this topic after the one response we got yesterday.

Prove me wrong.

Unfortunately you're right, Arena net is as bad as blizzard when it comes to communication.

[YaoMitachi.2397]

This decision also has an impact on Linux users. The game itself works very well in Wine today, but the launcher absolutely does not. It has a high tendency to freeze the desktop, and has for some time now. Emulating a virtual desktop in Wine can mitigate this particular issue, but that causes a bigger issue: the inability to move the camera more than 180 degrees in-game due to the cursor invisibly hitting the edge of the virtual desktop. So that's a no-go.

Until now, I used the -email, -password, -autologin, and -nopatchui options to avoid the launcher entirely. (Of course, I would still need to use the launcher sometimes, when an update comes out... unfortunately.) And now that's gone.

I know Arenanet doesn't offer support for Linux users, but they should at least know the wider impact that this decision had.

https://lutris.net/games/guild-wars-2/https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32010

Is there at least some workaround available for me?

[Veliant.1683]

Would a better security measure not have been to add an account-switching feature to the launcher? Say, a drop down box to select the account and have the encrypted credentials stored by the launcher itself? If the removal is actually to prevent people with access to the user's computer from being able to log in to the user's account, you should remove the Save email address and Save password check boxes, no?

If you're going to remove a feature that so many players use, why not replace it with a stronger feature that serves both security and usability?

This. I was going to say something similar but that about sums it up. If you guys are going to remove a feature that many have relied upon, and based the decision to buy multiple accounts on, you need to commit to replacing it with a feature that replaces that functionality. This is just plain lazy.

Keep in mind that the people this change most affects are the people who own multiple accounts. This means that the people most affected are the ones willing to shell out the money to support your game. Too many decisions like this and that revenue dries up. And I am sure any company out there ranks things as such - Revenue > Security > Convenience - Regardless of the public face they put on it.

[Rabbi Rick.3194]

10 years of using these options in the command line of GW1 and GW2 for multiple accounts. Now, instead of shortcuts with -password ...., etc. I have a notepad file on my desktop so that I can just "copy/paste" my rather lengthy usernames and passwords rather typing 50 characters every time I switch between accounts. Much more secure, I'm sure. Oh, and in that 10 years, not once has my account been stolen because NO ONE, except my wife, has access to my computer.

My point, the "lack" of security of these command line options were entirely up the user to control, and to remove the ability without replacing it with a viable multi-account option is poor customer support. We love most of the staff at Anet, and we've been extremely strong supporters of GW2 in past years (over 3k a year spent in the first few years), but it is choices such as this one, constant nerfs of content to "control" how players play, ridiculous time gating on stuff that hinders alt-character play, and continued buffing to obviously favored classes (seriously, 8 clones per mesmer when the max of 3 at a time was more than enough) that have caused my real money support to dwindle over the past year or so. So much so that I've not spent a dime on the game in the last 4 months (though the wife has still spent a bit here and there).

Edit: Let me add that it was quite frustrating to have this happen without any pre-warning or even a note in the patch notes. Instead, I fought with my launching shortcuts, etc for quite awhile before just launching normally (typing info in) and getting my dailies done. Only to search for an issue this morning and find that it was an intended change (THAT SHOULD BE LISTED IN THE PATCH NOTES AT THE VERY LEAST).

Just my two coppers with,

[Kyranna.1730]

@Crackmonster.2790 said:

@Vash.2386 said:

@Crackmonster.2790 said:That doesn't have anything to do with what i said.

You may have invested both money, and time each time you have to carry it out - but you reap also rewards that a player is supposed to get once per day, a multitude of times. The reason you do it, is because it pays off big time.

If Anet, the publisher of the game, makes it possible to have, and specifically allows, multiple accounts and multiboxing, then I don't see how one person playing one account is how it's supposed to be. That's like telling someone no you can't get a second job to make more money because you're only supposed to have one job. Says who?

[Rabbi Rick.3194]

@Mireles Lore.5942 said:

This has been a feature for six and a half years...

Just so you know, this has been a feature for over 10 years as it's also part of GW1. In the 10 years plus that I've played GW, I've never had someone look at my shortcuts to steal my password. Additionally, I would argue that ANYONE who types their name and password into a shortcut, a text file, etc. would HAVE to know that there is at least of modicum of security risk. Though in my years as an IT professional, it's not unusual to have people write passwords on post-its, under their keyboards, etc. I suppose the next step is to force us to send a snapshot of our desktops (both virtual and physical) to make sure we aren't unnecessarily risking our account access. (Yeah, that's a bit snarky, but this unannounced and unnecessary change really got under my skin).

[Rabbi Rick.3194]

Note to Gaile, if you're still reading this. Please, can we at least get an option to permanently disable the "SMS" reminder screen that pops up every other login. Some of us don't want SMS as it interferes with logging in too often when we are forced to dig out our phones or go check email. Thank you very much.

[Crackmonster.2790]

@Kyranna.1730 said:

@Crackmonster.2790 said:

@Vash.2386 said:

@Crackmonster.2790 said:That doesn't have anything to do with what i said.

You may have invested both money, and time each time you have to carry it out - but you reap also rewards that a player is supposed to get once per day, a multitude of times. The reason you do it, is because it pays off big time.

If Anet, the publisher of the game, makes it possible to have, and specifically allows, multiple accounts and multiboxing, then I don't see how one person playing one account is how it's supposed to be. That's like telling someone no you can't get a second job to make more money because you're only supposed to have one job. Says who?

You are missing the point again.

I am not telling you, that you shouldn't do it. I know very well, people will do anything within the laws(and many outside) to maximize their gain, that is just our nature. Moral irregardless. And i am not here to tell people what person they should be. Do you, and ill speak on how things relates to me.

However, do you really think the devs created daily rewards and gatherings hoping that people would spend time logging in on different accounts to gain stuff in game rather than playing the actual game? And even if in the case that they made it legal hoping players would buy more accounts etc, it still does not take away from the fact that it reduces the value of everyone else's gains who just plays normally. But i honestly think it is just done because it would be impossible to justly prevent people from playing different accounts same computer etc, for example a family.

There is no way you will convince me otherwise and i think i have said all i could say on the topic - i do accept that people will do it if it is possible, but i for one am not in favor of "using" the game terms that way. Just like MTX in a perfect world would be nice if was earned in game - but that will never be realistic. But anytime i get stuff earnable ingame i consider it just a nice bonus(expecting nothing), just as here i consider it a nice bonus if it is less attractive to multiaccount because it is a boost to my preferred playstyle(sticking to actually playing the game). That's all.

As for your strawman - you can't just legally pay to create new government identities so you can reap multiple welfare bonuses and the like either. Your two job analogy is more like, if i wanna spend 10h farming i should get twice as much for that period as the one who spends 5h farming, which you do.

Why do you think they keep imposing limits to for example chests per account in istan etc, so people can buy more alt accounts? Harh Harh.

But don't worry, someone will write some code to circumvent this. I mean, i could even make something myself with autohotkey, so someone with proper knowledge will make something. It can be done, maybe it would be slightly more troublesome, but it can be done with 1 click.

[Shakki.3219]

Thanks for diasblign this. It should be the concern of everyone to not store stuff in cleartype...

Now please @Gaile Gray.6029 disable that you can perform autotype with tools.

[Malediktus.9250]

@"Rabbi Rick.3194" said:Note to Gaile, if you're still reading this. Please, can we at least get an option to permanently disable the "SMS" reminder screen that pops up every other login. Some of us don't want SMS as it interferes with logging in too often when we are forced to dig out our phones or go check email. Thank you very much.

Yes, the SMS authentification nag screen is insulting. Definitely won't get 2FA for stupid alt accounts