Just thought of a crazy idea for a path to gaining age for those of us who are tired of waiting years for age based content. It would be a GP item called Identity Theft - which would find a player at random with an age greater than yours who has been inactive for at least 2 years. It would reveal the players name, age, and rank and would give you the option to steal identity. The effect of this theft would be for you to lose all your medals and planets and gain those of the target player along with his/her age in days played.

Bold and interesting. I like it, so we won't ever see it.

that would be jokes you know how many would dive on that and end up with worse then they had lol

life is a risk. Not everything should be hitting the lottery.

make prod and planets go with it...talk about a random spin of the wheel

yep why i said it be jokes seeing how many would fall into the trap now i see it be great for some of these trainee's who just joining finish the term and then purchasing the item no matter they win from it as they get an older ship and some good production if not some good planets.

only thing i would say is mission dyson and mission exotic should not be part of the planets list so if you do this you lose out on those 2 planets plus the rifts

I wouldn't do it. I'd rather pay the experience/energy/arti costs of a daily mission to advance the date as it would still be my own efforts versus a crapshoot of getting somebody else's.

Make it you need to have an account at least 2 years old to be able to buy that item lol

Same here although said mission or feature could cost GP and I would be fine with it.

Apart from the obvious drawbacks that would make this a very big gamble and unlikely to be widely used, I think there would be potential legal reasons not to spend time developing it.

If the game were to actively give away stuff created by one player to another player, regardless of how long they choose to be inactive, it could be argued that amounts to fraud.
Any player returning after a period of inactivity to find their possessions in the hands of another player would be well within their rights to complain to facebook, paypal, their credit card provider or all three at once, because the TOS states nothing about the game reserving the right to give away their online possessions to another player if they are inactive for a certain period of time.

So there could be potential financial drawbacks or at the very least unnecessary hassle for very little gain.

From the ToS:

Elsewhere, although I'm not sure if it applies because of the context:

You don't "own" anything in this game.


Also:


They have the right to change the game, in any way. As in, outright removing items, or adding new ones that... Give people your stuff.

__________________________________________


That aside, I don't think the item is good. Why would I give up all of my planets and hard-earned medals (Like Path of the Devoted) in order to get less than that? Most players who have been inactive for 2+ years probably have less than half of their decent planets left. It's really just a way to pay to screw yourself over.

Yeah mate, I totally agree it would not be overly useful.

Regarding the legal aspects however, I suspect an argument could well be made that not acquiring ownership rights, not owning materials, and the ability of the game to eliminate or discontinue any content or features are all materially different from the game arbitrarily and deliberately giving away in-game assets you have developed or purchased using your money, to another player.

It is not really a question of ownership as such, but of being deprived, without reason, of access to in-game items collected under your account and possibly purchased for in-game use using real cash.

A player returning to find their account essentially turned over to another player would be highly likely to complain the game had acted in bad faith and I suspect Facebook, PayPal and Credit Card companies would take the view that for the period of time the game is available, and assuming you have not been banned, that the game developer should not actively and deliberately give your in-game items to someone else without your knowledge, without warning, and outside the normal mechanics of the game.

I don't think they would be inclined to give the ToS quite that degree of latitude against the person who is their actual customer.
If the game decided, for example, to simply remove every item bought since a certain time, you can be sure refunds would quickly start flowing.

All those entities would themselves have a ToS which any game would have to adhere to and the danger of losing access to an entire payment method would be a very real consideration to take into account when any dispute arose I suspect.

Regardless, I suspect the messy possibilities would far outweigh the limited potential utility.

Lol imagine doing this and getting a banned player lol

This idea would just be used by alt accounts to strip planets from old inactive accounts and, then abandoned over to their mains. Even if they got a bad old account, it would more than likely have atleast a few good planets, or its planets that were stolen by someone else and those other players might not have bother to flux since they were inactive.

Way to exploitable.

I think a gp buy-in would suffice.
1000 gp per year seems legit

Yeah I guess I'd have to agree with you. An alternative with the same flavor of trade off might be an artifact that ages you 1 year and causes half your planets to be abandoned and purged.