What about a VIN for every car?

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M_Grip

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I'm a little late to the complaining about v1.07 party and haven't done a thorough search, but wouldn't adding a VIN to every car prevent duping?

I must admit to a little bit of "cheating". Since the Seasonals came out, I started three accounts so that I can get some easy cash. I'd only have to buy one set of cars and then trade them to another account. I'd basically have three accounts making all the Seasonal money instead of just one. v1.07 doesn't kill this, but it does make it less efficient.

If PD added a VIN to every car and prevented any account from having a duplicate, wouldn't this eliminate duping? I don't know how much extra data this would require, but I doubt it'd be anything much. I'm guessing there is some sort of code to differentiate each vehicle. Adding a VIN of maybe 4-5 characters (numbers and letters) should be enough to make each car unique.

A four character VIN would give about 450k unique numbers.
A five character VIN would give nearly 12M.

Am I crazy or missing something? I doubt four characters can add that much to file sizes and it should completely eliminate all duping.

Also, I don't know (haven't researched) why there is a $1M limit on trades, but it doesn't seem to make much sense to me.

Sorry for my ignorance on some things, but like all the "I'm too old to spend 50 hours a day playing this game" people....I am.
 
+1, this is actually a great idea, it'd be kinda neat to know that once you buy a car that thats the only one and no one else will have it... :D
 
nice idea but to late to do that and i think they have other bigger problems then to worry about duped cars now
 
I thought about this some more.

I guess you could just keep copying the car and trading them away or trade them to yourself to a dozen different accounts.

Wait, what's the real issue with duping? It's not fair? I think we can all agree that fair is for children.
 
Actually, something very similar has come up before in old threads - but since you bring it up quite succinctly in the OP, I think it's a good discussion to have 👍

It was mentioned that maybe having a VIN-type system of, say, the user's first couple letters in their username, followed by a number (or alphanumeric) combination could eliminate duplicating. The game could simply be programmed to refuse more than one instance of a car in the save.

It'd be a bit harder to eliminate duping between multiple accounts, though. If you and I both had an identical VIN car in our garages, the only way to stop it would be to record every vehicle's VIN (and it's current location) on the servers. That could be messy.

The thing is... there's numerous things PD could have done prior to release, because duplicating was a pretty easily-hatched idea. They just... didn't.
 
M_Grip
A four character VIN would give about 450k unique numbers.
A five character VIN would give nearly 12M.
Click to expand...
With 6.5M copies of the game sold and 1045 cars there would need to be at least 6,792,500,000 unique numbers.

Provided that everybody who owns the game only wants one of each car.
And that doesn't account for any DLC cars that may be released in the future.
It also assumes that there won't be any more copies of the game sold.
 
GrahamTurismo
With 6.5M copies of the game sold and 1045 cars there would need to be at least 6,792,500,000 unique numbers.

Provided that everybody who owns the game only wants one of each car.
And that doesn't account for any DLC cars that may be released in the future.
It also assumes that there won't be any more copies of the game sold.
Click to expand...

There doesn't need to be a unique number for each car - just for each unique car type.

For instance, a Corvette ZR1 (C6) '09 and a Ferrari F2007 could have the same VIN, but they'd be separate because they're different cars.

At any rate, I don't think it's any good because a million people could have your VIN they just couldn't have two at once. Maybe one of you kids with 50+ hours a day to play GT5 can think of something better.
 
GrahamTurismo
With 6.5M copies of the game sold and 1045 cars there would need to be at least 6,792,500,000 unique numbers.

Provided that everybody who owns the game only wants one of each car.
And that doesn't account for any DLC cars that may be released in the future.
It also assumes that there won't be any more copies of the game sold.
Click to expand...

Beat me to it. +1
 
ScariestGariest
But at that point wouldn't this be quite a large project all for the purpose of trading?
Click to expand...

Read what I wrote right before you first one.

But you're right. I didn't think duping was such a big deal, but it seemed like it was given the latest patch. My idea wouldn't work anyway. Not because of logistics but because there's no way to prevent more than one copy of each car. It only prevents one account from having more than one.
 
Good idea here, let me build on it.

Lets say there was an online authenticator/ registry that you can add an ID tag to your car. After you win a car, you take it to the 'Authenticator' (TM pending) and it assigns that particular car with a special number like a VIN. The first people to win or buy a car then register, that car will get the lowest number. Then only these cars would be allowed to be traded. Not only would it be cool it see how fast you earned a car compared to the world, it would add real (although still fake) value to the cars.
 
Any sort of system like this would require an internet connection so the game could assign the "VIN" from the server, because the server would have to be sure to give out a unique number.


One could still dupe. If you're offline, you buy cars, they don't get a VIN yet. Fine, that's not an issue because you can't trade without being online. Or is it? Go backup the save right now. Load up the BACKUP save. Sign into PSN. Now the game has to do a quick check through your garage, finding any cars that don't have a VIN, then contacting the server, asking for those unique VINs to be created and assigned. Save your game (this would have to be an autosave moment, actually), now go load up the ORIGINAL save. Sign into PSN. Now the game has to do a quick check through your garage, finding any unique...blah blah.

See what just happened? Now you have two gamesaves with the same cars but with different VINs. And there wasn't even anything special in those steps.


Now, there could be some extra things added, like the game always assigning a vehicle number to the cars you get, just as a simple counter (first car you obtain = car 1, etc). The server would also need to keep track of every PSN ID's garage, in some sense.


Then, when the game checks with the server, it could go through this process:

1. Server gets a request for VIN on a 2008 Civic Type R, car index 3, for user GTP_Eric
2. Server looks up the user (GTP_Eric), searches for a 2008 Civic Type R, doesn't find one, so it generates a unique VIN, and saves the VIN, car, and car index data to the information stored with the user.

Now, if I was using the exploit I said above, and try it with this setup...

1. Server gets a request from GTP_Eric to assign a VIN to a 2008 Civic Type R, car index 3.
2. Server looks up the user data...looks for any 2008 Civic Type Rs, finds one. Compares the car index. Its the same, so it throws a red flag, saves some value into the VIN that the game recognizes the car as a duplicate and is not allowed to be used online.
 
Dupings already fixed as soon as they bring the restriction back. Its already much harder to dupe with the 1 trade per ps3 rule, sucks for the guys with 10 psn accounts lol.
 
ucwepn
Dupings already fixed as soon as they bring the restriction back. Its already much harder to dupe with the 1 trade per ps3 rule, sucks for the guys with 10 psn accounts lol.
Click to expand...

O' RLY? Suppose I have a X-1 Prototype ticket or birthday ticket and 5 gold chrome paints.

Instead of duping it myself. I send it to my friend, My friend will then dupe them and send them right back to me.

So instead of 2 tickets and 10 chromes, there are now 3 tickets and 15 chromes. :)
 
What makes anyone think cars in GT5 don't already have some type of unique identifier already attached to them, but it's simply a hidden variable that isn't yet being used? If I was a programmer/developer, that's what I would do i.e. you engineer future expandability into the game right from the start. That way, you have to flexibility to make changes/additions in the future without starting from scratch.

The size of the unique number needed is so small in terms of memory needed it's not really an issue. A 4-byte integer can generate over two billion unique values. You can even make it a string several bytes long to make it a little less cryptic.

As far as the suggestion by the OP. The problem with duping isn't with one owner having identical copies of the same car, it's with one owner gifting the same car over and over, and reloading a backup save so he doesn't lose the car. There are a lot of simple ways this can be 'blocked' without PD having to keep some sort of massive unique car database that checks every single trade that occurs online.

Having said all that, finding a way to do it isn't the problem, there are a million ways to do it. Gauging the customer response and reaction, and also deciding what to do with all the existing dupes already out there are the big issues.

It's easy to realize even just by perusing the GTP forums for a few minutes that everyone's opinions differ. It doesn't matter what PD does, someone somewhere won't like it when something changes. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't.
 
Easy, if there is some ID number attached to each car, its not unique. Otherwise the game would have to connect to a server and get a unique number.
 
Don't make me say it... don't make me say it...

Duping was not and is not a problem. They should have never stopped it. They have bigger things to stop... like people making money by doing donuts.
 
Eric.
Easy, if there is some ID number attached to each car, its not unique. Otherwise the game would have to connect to a server and get a unique number.
Click to expand...

You need to read about UUID/GUIDs.

And the proposed scheme won't prevent duping between accounts, but it could prevent people from having more than 1 item of any kind on each account.

To prevent duping you'd need to maintain all user inventories online and implement transaction security on those. This could be done, but requiring internet connections could be a hassle for many users.
 
M_Grip
Seriously though, if this is a real issue:

10 digits would be plenty = 140,000,000,000,000 numbers (I think that's right it's 1.4x10^14 according to my calculator).
Click to expand...

Actually with a code length of ten (English) letters or numbers which are randomly assigned, can have 35 alternatives (10 numbers and 25 letters) for each digit. So, there are 35 choices for the first number. Then there are another 35 choices for each of the previous choices, and so on, leading ultimately to a situation of 35*35*35*35*35*35*35*35*35*35 = 35^10.

35^10 = 2.7585...*10^15 = 2 700 000 000 000 000 (rounded down)

That means over 2.7 trillion choices for a VIN of 10 letters or numbers.

If codes with a length of less than 10 digits are also allowed, that'd mean 35+35^2+35^3+35^4+35^5+35^6+35^7+35^8+35^9+35^10 = 2.8*10^15 = 2 800 000 000 000 000 (rounded down).
Not much more, only about 0.1 trillion more.

According to that, it'd be more than enough. A code of 4 digits (letters or numbers) wouldn't be enough though. It'd have merely 1.5 million choices, which would easily be passed.


It still wouldn't be practical IMO, even though it could easily cover all the cars.
 
Fix the inherent problem instead to stop duping

And the point that everyone would have to be online to register their VINs makes the whole idea pointless

I dont know why duping bothers people so much, if you dont want to just dont do it, who cares if someone else is manipulating the system to own more
 
XoravaX
Actually with a code length of ten (English) letters or numbers which are randomly assigned, can have 35 alternatives (10 numbers and 25 letters) for each digit. So, there are 35 choices for the first number. Then there are another 35 choices for each of the previous choices, and so on, leading ultimately to a situation of 35*35*35*35*35*35*35*35*35*35 = 35^10.

35^10 = 2.7585...*10^15 = 2 700 000 000 000 000 (rounded down)

That means over 2.7 trillion choices for a VIN of 10 letters or numbers.

If codes with a length of less than 10 digits are also allowed, that'd mean 35+35^2+35^3+35^4+35^5+35^6+35^7+35^8+35^9+35^10 = 2.8*10^15 = 2 800 000 000 000 000 (rounded down).
Not much more, only about 0.1 trillion more.

According to that, it'd be more than enough. A code of 4 digits (letters or numbers) wouldn't be enough though. It'd have merely 1.5 million choices, which would easily be passed.


It still wouldn't be practical IMO, even though it could easily cover all the cars.
Click to expand...

wow,what a load of maths going here.wouldnt disabling copy save game like before 1.05 would be an easier solution?they already have the formula,they just dont want to apply it,because they dont care about duping really.so,why would u all be the one to think too much about this?hehehehe.just play the game like PD want us to.people should really spend more time on actually playing the game than complaining about them.complains never ends... :sly:

probability of PD satisfying everyone is
1 / 35+35^2+35^3+35^4+35^5+35^6+35^7+35^8+35^9+35^10 = 2.8*10^15 = 2 800 000 000 000 000 (rounded down)
= 1/0.1 trillion :lol:
 
jitcup
probability of PD satisfying everyone is
1 / 35+35^2+35^3+35^4+35^5+35^6+35^7+35^8+35^9+35^10 = 2.8*10^15 = 2 800 000 000 000 000 (rounded down)
= 1/0.1 trillion :lol:
Click to expand...

Quite true. But I would like to see the option to gift expensive cars return.

Or then just fix the rewards (double at least) and make prize cars re-obtainable. Also the endurances should yield much more money, so should the FGTWC. 73k per race is just pathetic. It's like 7.3k in GT2 where the most expensive car cost 2 million.
 
It won't stop you getting free cars on your own account as you don't actually duplicate the car, you just don't pay for it and have it sent back to you.
 
VIN?! Can you imagine the lines at the GT DMV?! "I gotta' get back to work people! Don't give me that look, my GT taxes pay your salary!!!" :grumpy:

Then we'll have to get GT insurance....:yuck:
 
Eric.
Easy, if there is some ID number attached to each car, its not unique. Otherwise the game would have to connect to a server and get a unique number.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily - the ID could be generated in part using some unique identifier that can be found on the local PS3 (the MAC address, for example). Each GT5 disc could've been tagged with its own unique ID as well (very unlikely, but technically possible).
 
I thought about this one myself also but I wouldn't know whether or not it could be implemented.

If it was it should go like this.
If a duplicate of the car is detected it is reported stolen and the original one disappears form your garage.

Kaz said he wanted players to experience as many aspects of car ownership as possible, so having your car stolen will take it one step closer to being an accurate simulation:tup::sly:
 

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