We are aware of the issue of Teon and Bartz hitting their player cap. We are researching and implementing ways to eliminate this issue. In the meantime, if you have comments, please add them in this thread - keeping the discussion in one place will help our staff review it more easily. Additional threads on this topic will be locked or removed. Thanks!
I think the best way to resolve this issue is to create a new server. I know atleast 10people in real life which will come back to lineage2 for this. On forums 70% of teon admit a new server would solve alot of problems on www.l2guru.com (http://www.l2guru.com) even palyers who still play on teon want a new server. The population is to big people want less and smoother gameplay. I guess there will be quite a few bartz players which wants a new server to they must have a few euros. Many people would want a fresh start to stay par with anyone to have another shot at lvling to be honest.
I think creating a new server would defenmetiely be the best thing especially if its european because I know for fact that euros take up more then 1/9 of the population. Nc Soft has gained alot of new customers therefore to get more customers creating a new server will help.
I have based my opinion on reading many threads on many differnt threads I filed few msgs to support to. From my personal opinion this is the way to go to solve the multiple issues cus you will gain alot more players to lineage2 especially new players witch are less experienced.
I don't know if this is very constructive, because probally all the GMs and most of the players have thought about this. But banning illegal 3rd party use in order to automate a characterto collect in game currency for online sale in exchange for physical currency.
I know that Kain is probally at it's full status (doesn't seem as full as Bartz and Teon, due to the fact I can still log in), because of the countless bot trains or 8 or 9 which are taking up room for real players. It is hard to log in when they log out, because they rarely log out.
This is the cheapest way to fix the problem, unless NCsoft plans on getting a new server which still will not fix the problem compleately. That is because this game requires lots of time to level, and most people will not leave their toons that they spent so much time on.
agreed i want new server but leaveing my bd behind would kill me i put so much time into him over 7 months dont wanna do that again i wanna get higher not lower....and yea the problem withs its growing before it was arund 15min for me its been almost 3 hours this time
It is time for another mass banning. Im sure you can confirm this by looking at your numbers behind the scene, but Im sure many new accounts were created over the holidays with people getting the game either as a gift, or by purchasing it themselves with holiday cash. Also with the opening of the Euro site, Im sure you've pulled in a large number of new European players. Combine these two influxes of real players, with the obvious increase in farmers/bot accounts ramping up for C4(new chronicle=new gear for people to ebay and buy) equals full and extremely laggy servers.
Honestly, I think the real issue may be a bit deeper than that, as the NPC server has crashed more times in the last couple weeks on Lionna than I've seen since Open Beta. I believe that some server resources were siphoned off for C4 testing or somthing back when it was first announced as coming, as that is when this problem started in earnest.
Its almost become impossible to play on Lionna, I get massive lag spikes and odd disconnects(and cant log back in with full servers) constantly now. I've actually lost more XP than I've gained in the last 6 hours today, 8 deaths is more than I usually have in a month. Makes me wish I'd bought myself some new PS2 games or somthing for christmas so I'd have somthing to do till this is fixed.
in my opinion there are 3 ways to solve this problem:
NR1:
Get more active GM's who only "seek and destroy" botters. Everytime i check how many GM's are online its only 1 or none. Get more GM's and educate them how to find the bot groups and how to ban them. These GM's should be different than the ones u have already, they should do only 1 thing, and thats finding Bot groups and banning them so regular players can access the Server again without problems.
JFYI: With "Bot" i mean anyone that is using illegal third party programs to lvl, access server or set up a Shop with certain functions that are not available for the rest of the regular players.
NR2:
Set up a new EURO Server, that is really physically located in Europe and fulfil the dreams of many players and gain back their respect that u lost during this period of time where most regular players stay no chance against those who buy Adena or use illegal programs to gain an advantage.
From what i read and hear, a new Server is a MUST. Not only because we cant log in on Teon anymore, but there are too many players and the Server is lagging 24/7. And NO, people wont believe you anymore when you say its client side. Its your Teon Server that is full with Bots.
NR3:
Dont do anything and leave it how it is and watch how an awesome Game like this dies slowly but surely and all of you lose your jobs because nobody wants to pay you anymore for Game that one cant even play.
Step 1. Ban bots now
there ae hundreds of bots on the bartz server you know who theay are if not just look in catacomes for rooms where no one picks up there arrows or soe's and go in town and look for chars whos ship name is just AAAAAAAAAAAAA and so on. Even if you want to be sure go on line buy 5 mil and once theay deliver it trace that adena see where it came from i dioubt there useung sell shops to move adena on to there alts and if yiu think theay are then make a character and walk in to thetre room and try top talk to them forget that gm window theay know thats a gm on site but if theay dont read the server message and you walk in with =GM=Name and talk to them in normal chat theay have NO excuse. also nc look at it this way you ban them and what are theay gonna do ? go away ? ha all there gonna do is buy more accounts so its a win win we get ourservetrs free of bots and theay buy new accounts and make you money but thats why you need to follow up with step 3 ( read on )
Step 2. Increase limit
now that step 1 bought you alot of time increase the server limit or what ever you have to to
Step 3. Work on GG
lets face it GG was implimented to curb the bot program but it is worthless you need to call the GG people and tell them to make it so it can stop walker or take GG out of the Client as it is it is not realy a bot hinderence but does hurt the preformence in the game
Could we suggest as a short term solution (something you could implement almost immediately) would be to preform a server reset at fixed intervals (say every 4,6 or 8 hours ?). I know this would kick people with AFK sell/buy/craft shops, but at least it would allow people to get in game and hunt/xp/party with friends. Wouldnt be so frequent as to interupt parties, but should help make some room ?
(again I suggest this only as a short term solution)
I have been unable to log in for the last 4 hours now, and its very frustrating :(
Do smth with that annoying farmers, i can tell u names of 40 all-the-time-AFK farmers (100% sure) after playing 3 days on Teon, so stop blshiing that "u need deeper investigation" to ban them.
I've LOTS of friends from private shards, and after those 3 days i told on very popular L2 forum, that retail sucks 10 times more than priv servers, which is true - a lot more bots, bigger lag, server everytime full so i need 1-2 hours to log in, few critical errors per day.......... Afer playing on priv shards i though it will be paradise, but all i want to say is - N/C.
And one idea - think about automatically disconnecting ppls who are online longer than i.e. 16h, and let them login again after next 8h. For their health (if bots have health) and for our pleasure!!!
Bots are the problem and everyone knows it. I was recently reporting nice trio of bots named "snowbaby11 "ever007 and "bluefield03 (leader, targeter) they still online 24*7. NC soft do nothing to stop them! This nice trio is holding 3 slots on Teon right now Why not to stop them? I dont know... Maybe because they also pay to play? It impossible to login now. Im thinking over freezing my game account now. The game service is not avaible.
one thing they may want to think of is a que server as well. For example, in wow. If the server is full, you're placed in que to connect. Once people start disconnecting you move up in the que. One thing im sick of is having to retype my password 20+ times then having lineage close on me because I did this too much.
you could try harder with the bots, but even if you would you couldnt stop them. this game is designed for sweatshop farmers and you will never be able to decrease their numbers as it seems to be just too profitable for them.
if you keep that in mind you have only one option left, and that is to reduce the number of real players on those servers. the solution is simple:
make a 10th server, located at the east coast, with event times being between euro and east coast times and give everyone a chance to transfer their accounts to that server before it opens (this pre-live transfer has been done in taiwan l2 already).
this should take significant load off teon and a good portion off every other server, especially bartz and kain.
Kain has been full for quite a while now, but luckily I can get on at times.
One thing I have noticed however (since I've rerolled yet again) is the amount of bots in DE Village. It is very obvious as to who they are with lovely names (you know the ones ending 01-08) and the fact that they are in the same spot all day long killing the same thing and going back to town to delvl. The ratio was about 10-1 (bots-actual players)
make a 10th server, located at the east coast, with event times being between euro and east coast times and give everyone a chance to transfer their accounts to that server before it opens (this pre-live transfer has been done in taiwan l2 already).
this should take significant load off teon and a good portion off every other server, especially bartz and kain.
There are too many Euro players out there...IF there is going to be a new Server i suggest it to be located in Europe. Thats the only thing that would satisfy the Euro players that want a new Euro Server.
you could try harder with the bots, but even if you would you couldnt stop them. this game is designed for sweatshop farmers and you will never be able to decrease their numbers as it seems to be just too profitable for them.
if you keep that in mind you have only one option left, and that is to reduce the number of real players on those servers. the solution is simple:
make a 10th server, located at the east coast, with event times being between euro and east coast times and give everyone a chance to transfer their accounts to that server before it opens (this pre-live transfer has been done in taiwan l2 already).
this should take significant load off teon and a good portion off every other server, especially bartz and kain.
This is not a valid option a new server would just mean more farmers on there fresh land for them to ****. Lets talk "ENDGAME" becouse nc thats what your faceing i sugest bring back the petition to ban all asian ip addresses theay have there owne servers make them get off ours. NC you either stop the bots or you wil lbe looking at a game of only bots playing and that wont last long when theay have no one to sell to
well most likely if u kick all this bots from the server would be the best way but plz be carefull i dont want to loose my account couse of a misstake much of my friends got banned couse some misstake that they was botting but they didnt :(
still going on 5 HOURS now havent been able to get on bartz umm today is my last day to play and i cant this is some ~{explicit content not suitible for children}~ i wanna play........................finally got on WOOHOO now the server is crashing like MAD
Do what i did. Goto 'My Account' access it and press 'Deactivate'. I refuse to pay for 'Access Denied'. NC isnt stealing my money...
Lol, I did this because I was tired of all the bots along with the lag caused by so many bots creating full servers. I think bots probally outnumber real players on Kain currently.
Reseting the server every 8 hours or whatever, isn't a good idea because it only effects legit players. Bots auto log back in with their AFK shops. The only people that will be missing out are the legit people that sit in town and wait for purchases or for a sale. Same with only letting an account stay logged in for a certain number of hours out of 24 hours. Bots will still stay in, they will just have different groups to switch off and on with so that they can farm 24 hours.
If all the bots were banned, or blocked from accessing L2 servers (better choice, maybe first a mass banning, and then a bot blocker for the BIGGEST bot programs on the market) ALL the servers will be good or normal. This makes the game more fair and enjoyable for players, and also opens up room for full and near full servers.
Creating a new server, without blocking bots, will just create another server like the rest. Bots will come in, and it will look just like Teon and all other NA Lineage 2 servers. It isn't gonna be a fresh start. People will go there to ebay, bots will become rampant...ect. ect.
Here is a feasible short term solution, release one of those patches that makes walker stop working for a few days, then in a few days release another.
I allready reactiavted my account but I think soon im going to look for new games this is a joke. Theres nothing you cando about bots they will keep coming back no matter what.
New games coming nc soft make new server income =high just leave it how it is people will leave the game you guys need to realease making a new European server is the only way for new players you have done it toevery where else you allways make new servers in differnt countries but hereyou don't Im really yet to understand why.
Given that the population of North America and Europe are roughly equal - does it make sense to have 1 euro server and 8 North American ones?
As has been mentioned playing on a NA server isnt feasible because of the siege times - else I would have dumped teon long ago.
I think a new server is needed for europe even if C4 increases the cap because C4 could well bring many new players (which of course is a good thing) even if there is no character transfer.
I know that this wont stop the bots but at the minute it takes so long to log in that this is surely the most pressing issue.
I know that changing an existing server to euro time would understandably be unpopular with existing players - but surely given the success of teon (in terms of numbers) the businesss model could support another euro server.
The situation really is bad - worse for people like me who work - cause i'm trying to log on during peak times - it can take me hours to get through.
Guys i'm really counting on you being able to fix this problem - if its gonna go on and on it will be a nightmare and many good players will lose patience.
Since there was something in there about botting/ebaying another extremely unfortunate method of dealing with botters/farmers who sell adena is to destroy their market. I hate to say it, as I oppose Ebaying very much, but since there will always be people who ebay NC might as well take the market. NC selling adena makes it so that the botters/ige would not do any sales and would probably destroy the bot trains. And since NC wouldn't have to run bot trains to sell adena that would free up loads of space. Of course this would f everything up, people who wouldn't ebay would because NC was selling it. I hate ebayers =/
lol instead of a server for the non-ebay people like someone mentioned(forget who :confused:) Why not make the Ebayer server, let them screw up there place and deal with all the bot trains so they can buy there way. God might need 2 or 3 servers, I know a whole clan that probably ebays...meet the leader 1 week in DEV he is 24 and using a falchion...2 weeks later he is in top C with a blue flame OE'ed SLS, I mean you could get lucky on the market..but I doubt he got that lucky so **** fast.
- Your attempts if any at this stage of trying to solve this problem are well and truely failing. 12am - 7pm GMT (my peak playing hours) you can forget even attempting to play.
- Banning the botters isnt the solution because where ever there is money and gaming there will be people trying to make RL cash from it and those willing to spend it.
- Banning the Farmers, in my honest opinion this would be the worst move NCSoft could make from a player point of view, they are the ones spending month after month spoiling animal bones/varnish/recipes etc that all the players need to craft. As soon as the farmers leave our servers crafting items will become a weekly if not monthly mission for us.
- The fact NCSoft is aware about the login issue doesn't help the players unable to log in.
Dissconnect anyone thats AFK for more than 30mins.
Ban all private and afk shops from towns, these people are not playing the game they have shops set up whilst they work or sleep. Im aware this is a function of the game and many peoples way of making money but unless you all want to spend hours upon hours trying to log in then as far as i can see its the only way round this problem.
- Disable the private store Buy/Sell function until C4 and the server upgrade or until NCSoft find a solution.
On Teon you cant walk around Giran for shops, my clan members have even lagged out in giran and ended up getting 4 shops surround them until they are unable to move.
Permenant Solution.
Get rid of the Private Stores altogether and have an NPC in all towns where you sell items and buy them, think of it like message board. You add a message (item) people go to the message board and read your message (see your item) then contact you about it.
DO NOT DISMISS THIS IDEA, if we want to be able to log in sacrifices have to be made or we may as well shut up and make do. There is a marketplace thread on this forum that can be used for all to buy/sell lets stop having towns so laggy and packed you cant walk round. Eventually its going to spread from Giran to HV and Aden, i'm already noticing HV is filling up where it used to be empty.
There's my idea/solution implement it or dismiss it. I cant see any other solution.
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New Servers
If this was a viable option for NCSoft then it would have been done already, the fact servers have been full for the past 4 months suggests to me this isn't viable.
Even if New Servers were added i for one do not want to leave behind a level 73 account plus my buffer accounts either. I moved from Erica to Teon and the time spent regaining my past levels/equip on Teon would see me as a level 75/75/75 on Erica now.
Server Transfers offered to those that have high level accounts on other servers would be a good solution. Allow 1 Server Transfer per account when a New Server is added.
Central buying/selling hub - omg I LOVE that idea. Imagine, no 100's of buy/sell dorfs cloging up giran (Gustin anyways). Only Crafty dorfs sittin by the main market waiting to help ya out. The list could be sorted by price/item/how many for sell or to buy no more lag from having to wait for screen draws or seeing the yell chat scroll by at 100mph. I could shop for an item in 5 mins instead of 2-3 hours to make sure I'm not getting shafted. That would rock. Instant pricing comparisons and availability - wow what a dream that would be. Now permabanning botters instead of this silly 1 week ban would help as to slight incremental code changes to make l2 Wlkr and it's variants not work would be cool too. If they made one or 2 more servers I might actually think about changing servers too. Get away from the politics and start afresh :).
Here is a feasible short term solution, release one of those patches that makes walker stop working for a few days, then in a few days release another.
The situation on TEON is a JOKE! But not a funny one...
Short-time Solution:
- NCSoft made an effort to ban bots in the past (twothousand-something), this helped the server from "normal" to "good" by that time.
Do it again now, and do it ASAP!
- Make changes to Game-Guard with every tuesday server maintainance (like you did in the past), so bots will have to find a way around it each time (helps at least for 2 - 3 days).
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Some of my friends already left the game (no intentions to come back, too ****** off) and some other Clans I know still discuss about leaving.
Many ppl. I know wait for C4, if the same problems still exist that we have now, the "Server Full" problem will be solved automatically, because (at least on TEON) you will loose just too many players...
BOTS ARE [censored] EVERYWHERE I MOVE NOW!!!!
On the weekend, I outgrew my old lvling Spot and searched for a new place, been up and down on the map.
IT WAS SHOCKING!!! I met 10 times more BOTS and actual players!!! This cant be!!
From the Garden of Eva (ONLY Bots, not ONE legit player - if you dont count the professional "Powerlevel against money" group in the heart of GoE :p) to Forsaken Plains or Silent Valley, all STUFFED with bots!!!
This finally needs to be treated with highest priority, it's a MESS, TEON server is a mess, the game I love so much is just a MESS at it is now....
And we all have the impressiong NCSoft does not give a ****!!!!
OH, and Sarge, I don't want a bloody PONY, I want to play a game I PAY for, that's all!!!
I wonder, when you INCREASED the prices not long ago, there was no discussion about that here on the boards (did I miss it, or was it against your rules again? :p )
Reason for increasing the monthly fee was that you want to be able to provide us with the best service.
Or did you mean, best service for bots and RL money makers? If so, congratulations, it worked :mad:
I've already taken the initative and self-banned my three accounts and i'm still playing *wink *wink
Good job NC... wonder how well things will be when the entire server is just bots.... the new chronicles are not going to get me back either so if your hoping those willl save you your mistaken...
I suppose some may like the bots since bots don't petition you to do your jobs and enforce the rules but hey I'm just a ex player so why would you care what I say anyway myfunds increased $45 woot and I'm still playing ;) ;)
Someone mentioned on my Vent Server getting this months fee refunded as we've not been able to play? Seems a resonable idea to me. I dont think from 11am to 7-8pm where i'm unable to log in acceptable.
I've put in for RF Online European Beta, if your problems are not sorted by the time i get the confirmation mail then Lineage 2 will be in the Bin, and Hello RF.
Get rid of the Private Stores altogether and have an NPC in all towns where you sell items and buy them, think of it like message board. You add a message (item) people go to the message board and read your message (see your item) then contact you about it.
THIS ALONE WOULD ALRREADY SOLVE THE PROBLEM.
WHAT ARE U WAITING FOR NCSOFT?
My account expires soon, and im not gonna activate it again until you solve this problem. And i want at least 1 month free playing without paying!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The log in problems get worse each day. :(
Swift action is needed!! I will talk to a lawyer and see what can be done against NCsoft. They let ppl pay for a game and it is impossible to log in!!!
Ban every korean/asiatic player in lineage 2 NA/euro servers. End of the problem.
Im not saying ban NA or euro players who live in asia, in saying asian ppl. They have their own lineage 2 with their own server, so go play there.
Is an extremist action? yes, but also is extremist that u cant log in lineage for 6 days already while are paying for it, and while u are trying to enter to play legal, there are 1000000 asian bots playing 24/7.
Oh and for sure there are NA/euro botters, but 90% are asian and the rest 10% are NA/euro, and is funny how NCSOFT only bans that 10% euro/NA bots , but dont do anything against the asian ones.
u getting any % from asian adena sales on internet maybe?
There are several things that would fix the farmer/botter problem.
1) Sell all weps, armor except for top wep and armor of each grade in stores in towns. Of course only sell certain grade weps in certain towns.
NG=Newb towns
NG, low D = Gludin/Gludio
D,C low B = Dion/Giran/Inadrill
C,B = Oren
B, A =Aden
You get the point. All Stores now sell NG and some D gear and some C in Giran.
2) Sell the top wep and armor mats from NPC's in town. Make the top wep and armor of each grade craft only. But specific mats could be bought in town from NPC.
3) Sell all regular mats at stores in towns.
4) of course keep all drops the same as they are now. You wouldnt have to by all the mats to make what u want.
Now that doesn't cover every aspect of the game its just a simple thing to do.
The biggest thing to remember is dont have anything that takes forever to get from drops, or long/low rate of return quests. The top wep recipes and stuff could still be difficult but shouldn't be harder than the average player being able to get it withing say 20 hours of game play. Or u cant have anything that only drops from 1 or 2 quests or mobs otherwise farmers will camp these mobs and monopolise them.
Just balance the game for all players and not just hard core gamers.
Of course NCsoft my not want all farmers to go away since they probably make up atleast 50% of each serverse populations
When servers are as full as Bartz and Teon there is only one thing you can do.
Change their status so that people cannot create new characters on those servers. Keep this up and wait for attrition to change their statys to more normal levels.
Of course, this will also seriously hinder those who try illegal actions like botting and farming. I am sure the same name scammers will hate this as well.
I love to play with twinks from time to time, and not be able to make one would suck, but it's a million time better than not being able to play at all!
lolz cant log in since yesterday, thats is really funny...
Anyone got any idea how to get our money back? I payed for a service that isnt available, that is illegal....nice one NCSOFT.
So when Euro's buy the game they can't play?. Best thing to do is make a new server it will take a huge chunk of teon of the server and bartz maybe. Im 65+ on teon but I still want a new server I think is the best soultion it will reduce players on each server to the new server so there will be more players on the new one less on teon/bartz.
Banning 'asian' IPs is not going to work - the main reason is that it doesnot need to be nor should be done <--- if you pay you play.
Kicking afk shops? How are players going to buy their materials? How are real players going to sell/buy their materials? <--- that's also taking their game play away.
Someone posted that if the bot are not here then players will have to spend a lot of effort in getting the materials that they need ---- but you know something? NCSoft has already made it so that any player can get the base materials (bone, skin, varnish, every base mat except SoPs) through working the manor system <---- but with the bot programs automated selling to the manor guy legit players do not have a chance at trading their mature seeds in for materials.
It seems with less bots/farmers the problems of legit players would go away.
The player base can grief the botters but, unlike the player base, the botters/farmers will not go away.
One thing everyone needs to tie together is bots are not just bots. The solo 'real' NA player that uses a 3rd party program while eating or showering is NOT the main problem. The main problem is the farmer sitting at a computer with several 'instances' of L2 running on his computer. He may have them all on a bot program or may actually be manning the lead charater and have a train of botted charaters to assist his main. The farmer sells his adena to players.
I remember reading a post where I believe it was HGMSpam stating that the adena sellers (i.e., farmers) is what he/NCSoft were very concerned about. It seems that NCSoft is aware of the abundance of farmers but it appears that they have been unable to control the number so that legit players can actually play.
So . . . remove the farmers and their bot trains first. Focus on the solo 'real' (not legit) player second. Or, better yet, remove the ability to bot.
Have an auction house type style trading system which would allow players to post items and then LOGOUT! This would save on bandwidth for you guys also! (This tactic has been used by other MMORPGs such as Star Wars Galaxies!)
Also, if you are having population problems with MANY servers, making a few new ones and temporarily offer server transfers! (This tactic has been used by other popular MMORPG's such as everquest).
While a lot of european gamers are fleeing WoW and SWG, Lineage 2 is messing up a real opportunity to increase its popularity.
A lot of us from Teon are going to give up this game, just because nothing is made to solve the full server issue. I've read here a lot of clever answers to this issue, so you at Nc Soft what do you think of them ?
Should we wait for an answer from you ?
At least tell us you read them and if you don't agree with them please tell us why.
Oh by the way, the less we play the more we'll make this game unpopular...we have so many time left now.
you could try harder with the bots, but even if you would you couldnt stop them. this game is designed for sweatshop farmers and you will never be able to decrease their numbers as it seems to be just too profitable for them.
if you keep that in mind you have only one option left, and that is to reduce the number of real players on those servers. the solution is simple:
make a 10th server, located at the east coast, with event times being between euro and east coast times and give everyone a chance to transfer their accounts to that server before it opens (this pre-live transfer has been done in taiwan l2 already).
this should take significant load off teon and a good portion off every other server, especially bartz and kain.
/Agree with this and the Auction NPC suggestion
Just set up a new server or re use one of the atm least in use server with event
times based on main CET (Euro) times and allow server transfer, can guarantee
that Bartz and Kain will get a lot of free space then.. balancing Teon will be more
tricky as that server is already fully Euro only atm but it would be a good start.
you could try harder with the bots, but even if you would you couldnt stop them. this game is designed for sweatshop farmers and you will never be able to decrease their numbers as it seems to be just too profitable for them.
if you keep that in mind you have only one option left, and that is to reduce the number of real players on those servers. the solution is simple:
make a 10th server, located at the east coast, with event times being between euro and east coast times and give everyone a chance to transfer their accounts to that server before it opens (this pre-live transfer has been done in taiwan l2 already).
this should take significant load off teon and a good portion off every other server, especially bartz and kain.
/Agree with this and the Auction NPC suggestion
Just set up a new server or re use one of the atm least in use server with event
times based on main CET (Euro) times and allow server transfer, can guarantee
that Bartz and Kain will get a lot of free space then.. balancing Teon will be more
tricky as that server is already fully Euro only atm but it would be a good start.
Teon is NOT fully Euro, that is teh ***cing problem lol. Its full of China and rang rangs and i have also tons of US Friends who play Teon. Teon is NOT anymore what is was supposed to be.
1. BOTS BOTS BOTS BOTS BOTS. There are probably 25 to 50% bots on Gustin (don't know about other servers, only play on Gustin and PTS). This figure counts all the bots that are AFK selling things as well.
Go out to any big hunting area, count the bots, go into a decent-sized town, count the people AFK selling that you've seen botting in the past, then multiply that by how many areas that that there are in game...the number's horribly depressing...anyway, STEP 1: KILL ALL BOTS
2. AFK SELL SHOPS ARE THE DEVIL. Seriously, if your server's full, every AFK shop is one more person that CAN'T PLAY. And afk shops are annoying! They block the paths in town, they don't work for anyone who can't stay connected all night... At least offer an ALTERNATIVE to AFK sell-shopping. MANY MANY MANY Alternative shopping methods have been discussed on the boards here...pick on you like. Use it.
3. Until one of the 2 above happens (Which, we all here know will be never) why not make it so that if someone tries to log in and the server's full, the server will search for an AFK shop, and boot whichever AFK shop's been up for the longest, so that the player can log in. Or boot the player that hasn't done anything for the longest or something like that...
Ban the **** bots on your servers and you won't have this problem. I'm not joking when I say I'll bet that at least 40% of all accounts on servers are bots or farmers. GJ NC.
NC, you want to mask or hide the known botting/farmer problem in your game and now you see the results. It's obvious to everyone, including yourself, that the server congestion problem is because of botters and farmers.
It's about time you get off your [censored] and fix the problem you slackers.
A year and a half later and NCSoft is still having the same issues they had during Open Beta.....Not a good sign. Possible explanations for why "the issue" (servers hitting their player cap) is happening again:
1. They never fixed the issue, they resolved it temporarily by spreading players out across more servers.
2. They did fix the issue, but whatever they did they cannot increase to raise the cap again (technically impossible).
3. They did fix the issue, but whatever they did they will not do again to raise the cap again (such as buy/allocate more BW/Hardware upgrades to the capping servers).
4. They did fix the issue but whatever they did will not resolve this issue because what is happening now is different than what happened before (if so, ++++explanation)
One positive thing out of all of this is that now we at least know that the issue is in fact that Teon and Bartz are hitting their player cap. So we don't have to guess or anything like that as to what's going on. And of course, all my explanations are more about the technical aspect of it rather than the in-game solutions....
Oh God I swore I wasn't gonna do this. Your probably gonna track me down personally and use your favorite game play style on me...."I like to hit things". But you made this post Sarge so now I'm going to speak my mind on this subject. Please keep in mind that I am not some 13-16 year old kid. I'm 46, married for 21 years, got kids, grand kids (2 twins) and a job (IT Prof)....and I play this game too! The following is the result of several months of discussion with my fellow clan elders, all of which are adults 30+years old working for the same company and very much business (making money) oriented. Oh man I'm going to get banned for sure for this one....................except, you asked for suggestions!
Problem? Bots
I don't know but sometimes it seems like you don't listen to the players. I hope I'm wrong about that. The players are correct in this case, sometimes on Bartz it seems like there are more bots than real players. My clan is one of the fortunate few that has a clan house. Ours is located in Gluden, now some might think that this is not a great location and they are wrong, or should be. We can port directly from the hall to a location that is an easy trot to 2 fairly high lvl Necro's. Patriots (50-60) and Ascetics (60-70), nice places to lvl and get seal stones.......except you almost can't find an empty room in them for all the bots! This seems to be true in all of the other Catacombs and Necropolis's too. As well as most, if not all, of the good hunting grounds!
Solution? The bot farmers have to go! But how? Banning accounts doesn't work, they just get new ones and they are back in a week! Adjusting drop rates won't do it either, (thought it will help something else, later in this post).
Well, here it goes! I'm going to say the thing it seems no one wants to take the chance and say. The thing that I think everyone wants to say and is afraid to, at least I haven't seen this on your forums anywhere.
If you can't beat'em, join'em and then put them out of business!
Sarge, you guys are going to have to sell adena! OMG I said it!!
It's too late now I can't take it back, so here is the solution that we came up with. Now, before you start thinking about things like "there goes the games economy" and (gulp) "delete this guys account right now". There is a method to this madness. I know, I know! It's a violation of the EULA, fine, get on the phone to legal and tell them you need a rewrite pronto!
Why are the bots there? Because players want adena, a lot of it, and when there is a demand for something, someone is going to find a way to supply what is wanted. There is a hole in the **** Sarge and you need to stick a finger...err....horn in it! Unfortunately the hole is the Manor System itself. This system was originally intended for us players to use to make that extra adena we need for weapons, armor upgrades and what not. It is this system that let the adena farmers into the game. Now we can't use it because they have it all tied up. The only effective method of getting rid of them is to remove their reason for existance! And now would be an excellent time to do it too, just before C4 hits. The farmers are ramping up for C4, so you can really put the screws to the .com sites they work for. Do this now and they won't have anyone to sell their ill gotten adena to!
Look, the game economy is already pretty much shot and it's true that if you do this wrong it'll get much worse. The only way to make it work is to sell adena so **** cheap that they can't compete with you (you and I both know how easy it is for a GM to create adena out of thin air) AND you must put limits on how much the player can buy for their account. This gets rid of the adena farmers pratically overnight, frees up a lot of connections to the server, keeps the game ecomony fairly stable and still gives the players a way to get large sums of adena if they really need it. Let me outline a proposed plan that we came up with.
You sell the player 120 million adena for say, $60. Way less than the going rate on those websites. But, the player can only buy that much in a 4 month period and can't make a second purchase within say 30 days of the last one. They can buy as much as they want up to the limit. That's $10 for 20 million. The .coms will never be able to survive the impact of this. Besides which, doesn't it burn your CFO's stomach lining that there are some other company's making money off your game? I know it would if I was him! No one, and I mean no one, should be making money off your game but you!
Now examine the multi tiered effects this will have. The bots are gone.(Yea!) Real players can now use the manor system to make extra adena (Yea!) and I dont' mind telling you that I will if I can. Why should I pay even you for the adena if I can make it myself in the course of normal game play! Yes, certain mats will become more expensive and harder to obtain! So what? Wasn't it the original intent that certain weapons and armor would be rare and hard to come by? So now the players don't have it so easy and they have to form parties and go get the mats themselves? Isn't that what we were supposed to do anyway? At least under this plan we won't have to fight the bots for the hunting grounds where the mats do drop! And, if worse comes to worse, I can still buy adena from you if I really need to and at least your getting the money, not some blasted .com! Shoot! The only time players really need large sums is when they make grade changes anyway, the rest of the time we only need small amounts for supplies and we should be able to make what we need from the manor system.
Well, there you have it. What we as business professionals suggest as a solution to this particular problem. I just hope you will keep in mind that you asked for suggestions and not ban me for this post. For all I know this suggestion has been made before and I just never saw it, probably because it was deleted from the forum. Just, please, don't delete me!
Oh! I said something before about drop rates and "later in this post". The only supply that I consider to be required for game play...SS and SPS. But the drop rate on adena will not pay for shots, especially when you can kill 20 mobs and as many as 10 don't drop any adean at all. The ones that do don't drop enough to pay for the shots you used to kill them. That should be fixed. The game should at least support the characters requirment for these supplies. If the player wants pots, sell your mat drops, you want greater pots? spend time in the cats and necros and get AA. But shots should be a given for game play. IMHO
I am normally an exceptionally patient soul...and have been able to tolerate the annoying server full/access denied status on bartz with only minor annoyance..but after 16 days in a row of work and ONE day off before 14 more days of work...and UNABLE to log in after 46 attempts on my one day off....i was pretty steamed. one, i wasted all that time continuously retyping my password, a major excerise in futility, two i never did play on bartz at all on the single best day i had for a month. thankfully i have characters on another server, hindemith..so i was able to get some eazing of my l2 jones...but it wasnt what i wanted to play...
we dont need more servers, there are anywhere from 3-5 servers that are never full. been on hindemith lately? there arent a whole heck of a lot of real players there. if server transfers were allowed ever...it should be only from full to normal servers..otherwise you would still see a mass exodus from the quiet servers to the already congested ones.
a new european server just for the europeans? where ever did you get the idea that teon was only for you? teon euros complain about americans playing there and adding to the congestion, but its just another server on the list, anyone at all that pays to play can chose any server they wish..so you would have to restrict access somehow to USA Ips in order to have a true euro only server..except...the bots/farmers would stil lmove in and take over as they have done with every other server.
i love the auction house/npc shop idea...its great and would drastically cut down on the amount of accounts logged in 24/7 doing nothing but selling/buying...of course the private craft shops would still be there, but that wouldnt be nearly as bad of a load. i hate trying to navigate giran with a passion...its nigh on impossible some days...i cant even see the gatekeeper/dawn priest.
of course the bot/farmer problem needs addressing, but realistically its a little like america's "war on drugs", its coming in faster than we can stop it/catch it...and there will always be people willing to risk getting caught to take advantage of it.
regardless....after spending several long and pointless attempts trying to log into my main character, and now my only free time today is during server downtimes..i have reached a new level of aggravation with ncsoft.
please please listen to your paying "real" customers
and it's not even that they don't get banned. it's that nc soft encourages adena farmers to pick up another code (or packa of codes) and start all over.
their refusal to get tough and do more than simply ban accounts(beyond specific ip addresses, or cc numbers, or names, or w/e) is what makes teh servers full. it's why your ideal hunting grounds have 3bot trains falling over each other eating all teh mobs. it's why yoru drops are so low an dyou prices are so high. it's also why that guy that started last month can go to dk and come back in full a grade having never actually played the game...
One big thing is as others have said...bots. Lionna server has steadly gotten higher and higher population count. Problem is it isnt new players but lots and lots of bots.
Go to Patriots Necro. We took a party in there the other day...EVERY SINGLE ROOM was taken. We saw maybe two legit groups the rest were all bots with the crazy adfalde, aofjaofanv.dofsoajaeof style names and following behind the master not using ss, going one mob to the next to the next to the next etc. We actually got contacted by one of these bot groups..thought orginally we were mistaken and it was a real group after all. They started talking to us in chinese and we told them english only and they told us in broken english they man room and to leave. Told them we had been there for about an hour by then no matter...next thing we know 3 full bot trains come into our room and just start killing every mob in sight including mobs we were fighting. So we left the room to find another room and again get chased out...10 minutes later we find our orginal room and no one was there. So we start pulling again and what do you know we get the same message "I man room" and here comes 2 or 3 full bot trains in to clear the room again and stood around with us untill we pushed on. Go back 15 minutes later room empty...start pulling again "I man room" and bot crews come rushing from all directions to chase us from the room yet again.
Apostate the other day every room was full. I would say there was maybe 8 legit groups in the dungeon the rest where all bots. Then one guy brought his high lvl alt in and just started trainning everyone (bot crew or solo didnt matter). Cleared the place out pretty fast and normal groups were able to go back in...for a time. Head down to the medusa/bat rooms...99% of those rooms have bot crews running 24/7. Stay there long enough and you can see one crew log out and another crew log in to take over the room.
Devils Island: Wow lots of bots in here. Saw 1 real group all the rest where RICE or other farmer groups.
Pretty much all the out of the way necros/cata are full of bots. Witches is not used by normal partys to level because so many bots...most people go to Martyers. Saints cata bot haven, Dark Omens...bot haven, and on and on.
Lionna is now showing full status and oddly enough you dont see that many new players around but a butt load of gobbly [censored] names with sell/buy shops and bot crews pretty much everywhere you go. Its gotten very bad and is the worse that I have seen on Lionna since I started 8 or 9 months ago.
Think finding a way to purge the bot crews will do a lot to open server slots. Problem is you ban a crew and two more show up to take its place. Whats the point of game guard anymore since its painfully obvious that it doesnt work?
I don't understand why GM's dont create characters to scout these above mentioned "Bot Nests". So far as I play, I don't see any effort from GM's to make Teon or any other server a better place for us - players. Sometimes i even think that they don't want to lose the $$$ income from those bot/farmer accounts.
Once again, i dont see gm's put any effort for banning the illeagal accounts, no matter how many petitions i write about bot groups I still keep seeing the same bots every single day OCCUPYING OUR PRECIOUS SLOTS
Its not just bots levelling, well not on teon anyway. Have you noticed the number of shops there are within 5 minutes of the servers coming back up after a reset. Although "farmers" on teon are getting very aggressive in areas that are good for making adena. Teon is getting by far the worst now. Server down at 6pm and by 6.45 its full. Its rediculous to think that a game like this cant cope with the number of players.
My theory on the matter is they are collecting adena ready for C4 and all the people that are incapable of waiting/making there own and that will want S grade as soon as its available. Therefore hopefully it will settledown down sometime after the C4 launch. well im hoping anyway.
We all know bots are the problem. Its like a virus, you bann them, they getting back in few days.
Some ppl said to bann those bots. This dont work. They just create another accounts and do the same as before.
Me and our clan obey those farmers a while. The crazyiest thing about this is. Teon is full. I tried to login, and cant login.
My members who are on ventrilo and were ingame train 2 bots groups in Apostate. They all forced logged. Now comes to funniest thing. At that time i cant still login.
Then some members of our clan say on ventrilo. The whole 2 bots party logged back in. All 16 ppl. oO
Those bots/farmers just using exploits to bypass the login server. Its was not possible to login 16 ppl in like 20 seconds at that time. Even when they logged in i tried to login. I still got the accesss denied thingy.
Solution: Work on GameGaurd and make this program usefull, its outdated, it dont banish new 3th party programs. This is the only way to get rid of those famers and make Teon and other full server a better playable server again.
One way to get rid of ALL farmers and botters from taking valuable hunting spots is to have open PVP. Yes there will be griefing, but I gurantee you the bots will be gone. I would go on a bot killing spree for most of my time if this was the case.
How do you prevent griefing? Remove the pointless drops when killed while not red. Done. No more bots taking our hunting spots.
Me and our clan obey those farmers a while. The crazyiest thing about this is. Teon is full. I tried to login, and cant login.
My members who are on ventrilo and were ingame train 2 bots groups in Apostate. They all forced logged. Now comes to funniest thing. At that time i cant still login.
Then some members of our clan say on ventrilo. The whole 2 bots party logged back in. All 16 ppl. oO
Those bots/farmers just using exploits to bypass the login server. Its was not possible to login 16 ppl in like 20 seconds at that time. Even when they logged in i tried to login. I still got the accesss denied thingy.
Solution: Work on GameGaurd and make this program usefull, its outdated, it dont banish new 3th party programs. This is the only way to get rid of those famers and make Teon and other full server a better playable server again.
GoGo ASH!!!
Lol that sux...and the funniest thing is i bet NCSOFT knows that already...i mean its their game..What makes me wonder more is why they not going to do anything against that. Actually there is a lot more i want to post about this bot problems and NCSOFT but i dont want Sarge to lock this Thread...There could be only 1 Reason why NCSOFT is ignoring Bot Problem.........
.... i dont want Sarge to lock this Thread...There could be only 1 Reason why NCSOFT is ignoring Bot Problem.........
Yeah, i think ever1 knows what u have in ur mind ;) One guy even said that... I think some1 really should speak with a lawyer, they r just stealing our money, letting bots play beeing AFK (using l2-we-know-what) while legit ppls cant even login!!!! FFS im paying for that fycking game and cant login from few days!!!!!!!!!!!
Get an NCsoft fulltime team working on Gamegaurd. Update, Update, Update!!. Said it so manny times. Problem = 3th party programs. No 3th party programs means "NO BOTS".
Dont understand me wrong Ash/Sarge, you putted this program into the game to do something against bots->3th party software. You know the programmers of [censored] are to fast. Thats why you need to get more ppl working on GameGaurd. When did we got the last update for GG? 6 months ago?
Maybe there some programmers here who wants to make alternative GameGaurd, just like Cheating-Death program in Counter-Strike made by just normal people. It worked kinda good.
Yes Teon has bots, but it has alot more players coming to it.
Why open a EU website clearly advertising L2 for the EU market when you clearly cannot even cater for the market you have at hand.
open another one or maybe 2 EU servers and let people have a 1 time transfer from any other servers. This will let all the EU's have what most truly want but dont want to lose there hard worked for chars... a TRUE EU server.. and the Americans which cant take Sunday seiges.. can go back to there NA servers if they want...
If the new players who bought L2 at Christmas can't login because of bots, they wont be tempted to get illegal adena as well on the other hand, they will even cancel their subscripton. I don't see any economical logic into this.
Bots/adena farmers will start losing money big time by keeping the servers full. This hurts the legit players but hurts the adena farmers and NCSoft at the same time.
Last but not least. They can still login when server is full, when normal legit ppl cant login.
This only possible by using a Authentication Bypass exploit. This also will work proberly with your idea.
And i know they are there made by the famous L2 3th party programmers.
Like i said for over 46 times. Work on GameGaurd, Update it every week. Infiltrate in L2 Third Party software websites. This was also how the guys from Cheating-Death did it for Counter-Strike. Also some coder-crew from valve infiltrated into cheating programs website for Counter-strike.
Why shouldnt NCsoft do this and let see who can code better then those dirty 3th party programmers. In the beginning its maybe much searching and development to get a good anti 3th party program, but in the end it are the "3th party sofware programmers who give up".
Even if I know a little more about the code i would gladly to help NCsoft to get GameGaurd updated. But i dont have the performance/knowlegde to do so.
Heres the clear and present problem....in a nutshell.
[please don't actually link to ebay auctions,thanks - Sarge]
Fine...bottom line is there are over 2100 live auctions on Ebay selling adena... Everywhere I go I see blatent walker groups exactly following a leader, yet NCSoft doesnt seem to see or act upon patetions pointing this out. Is it so hard to see a group reacting all together like this and do something about it. Have a few GM's just roam around the map, you'll find all you need to see.
I dont know much about technical stuff, so I want to ask some questions about this IP banning.
First of all:
Banning Asian IPs, will or will not prevent people located to these countries to connect to the game? Cause on another forum I saw a post stating that it wont, cause there is that "proxy" solution, but he didnt explain himself better. I dont know about these stuff, so I would apreciate if you post your comment.
And to make the question more general:
Can a company like NCsoft prevent the access to the game from certain countries or regions or not?
Second:
If the answer at the above is "yes", so I want to know, why didnt NCsof procede to that "IP ban" from the start of Teon server?? It would have solved the biggest part of that farming problem, and today we wouldnt be facing this "dead end".
Of cource I realise that there is an issue doing that now that the server is "grown up", cause it would be too harsh and unfair for legit players playing from Asian countries just banning all their eforts till today.
But WHY didnt they do it from the beginning?
Possible solution:
IF there is a way to prevent access from Asian countries, NCsoft should make a new server, with that Asian IP ban thing enabled, and allow character transfer from servers that face this dead-end.
And my coment about the situation:
Im really disappointed by the NCsoft's customer service. In fact I feel it is that bad, that it reaches legal issues (Im not able to access a service that Im paying for).
There are so many good thoughts and suggestions posted on these forums (such the one FinalBoss posted on this thread), and one would have expect that NCsoft would have done everything they could till today to hunt down a solution (if they really wanted to).
To my point of view, its a dead-end for the players (the true ones), not an actual one for NCsoft.
To pitty some people cant reply normal, like dudes like you Slaytan.
p.s.: Remove link pls.
@Colaz: Banning on IP's is only effective if programs can be found by GG. I heard so manny stories about ppl got banned when they didnt used 3th party programs. Manual banning dont work. Even if you bann the Korean/Chinese IP Range, they just using a NA/EURO Proxy server. But this is a small percentage of bots who use proxy servers to get online again. Most bots/farmers dont even know how to work with proxy servers. If you can bann 1000 more farmers because the program worked a little, its better then nothing.
Like you said this problem isnt easy, but there are some ways to get this prevented.
If we/NCsoft get Gamegaurd worked good again, then GM have more time to do other things than investigating bots for several hours. Just let the program do it.
GM Service will increase more to players, which its only good for us. I think its really wise to start fixing GG.
You people are ******ed, quit all this [censored] with 'ban the bots' thats not the solution thats going to work. *god knows it is the problem* but its not the solution because the more bots that get banned the more will appear. You think these companies running the bots care about loosing 9 accoounts worth 14$ a month? they make hella more than that in 1 day.
Until NCSoft find a safe and secure way of riding our servers of bots we have to look elsewhere for the time being (or quick fix).
People in afk buy/sell shops are not playing the game. They are in game but not playing and therefore stopping people that want to play. Not to mention they are making towns impossible to walk through. Get rid of people AFK and people can play. I didn't mean get rid of Shops forever, just as a quick fix.
To be honest i dont know why we bother with this [censored] because the thread was made by NCSoft to make the community believe they care. Im willing to bet we see C4 before we see something taken from this thread and implemented.
*Sticks up middle finger to NCSoft* this has gone on long enough longer than a month and your telling me you guys haven't figured out a solution in a MONTH??
What disturbs me more is that NCSoft are relying on the community to find a solution to a problem with THEIR game? I say relying on us to come up with a solution because so far the 'so called' attempts they say they've tried haven't made a blind bit of difference.
Create a new server and instead of banning bots move them to the new server. Whenever someone is suspected of botting move them to the new server.
The bar for proof would be much less since you aren't banning a paying user. This would free up GM time for dealing with other issues. Some non-farmer players who bot would probably move there voluntarily.
The only other way I can see to deal with this is to increase the adena rates to 100x or so. This would eliminate most of the adena sales and leave a lot of professional farmer accounts sitting on a ton of useless inventory.
*Side question for NCSoft, does the player cap get significantly increased in C4 as rumored or is this urban myth?
Im sure many people have said this, but get rid of the bots.
It boggles my mind how full groups are being botted non stop and they can get to the high lvls of this game. Even if you play for 24 hours a day and a full group it will still take about a month to get to lvl 70+.
Im sure anyone can take a gm on a trip around aden and show them plenty of bots that are there every day, some bots have been there for months on end. You can do this any day of the week at any time and players can show you. What I dont understand is how the botting can be so clear to the eye to any player, yet the gm's do not catch them. When the whole party stops once the petition comes up, it might be a sign!! When they all move ontop of eachother and stop on eachother, it is a sign!! The bot programs turn off the clipping that L2 has on. When they all sit down and stand at the same time, it is a sign!!
Now I know this is a thread about the server population, but making a new server WILL NOT HELP. The servers are full cause of bots, not regular players. Once a new server is made, bots will be there too. The server population will not be a problem if the bots are gone. If there werent any farmers and only people who play the game, not to make money, I bet they could easily fit us all into 6 servers, maybe even 5.
I have a Permared 60+ SR I use to kill bots! Since NCSOFT doesnt care at alllllllllllllllllllll about this, think about it how many replies we got in this thread? Oh **** unless I'm blind 0! (not including first)
But yeah, so I take my SR (geared in top D grade) first bot train of 4, BOOM HEADSHOT all 4 go down relatively fast. So I think alrighty then, good start. The trick is you have to PK the whole party or they log out then log in and rez scroll each other. Then I run into a grp of 7 and a grp of another 6, I had messed with them earlier that day, and they ATTACK me!!! Jesus, so I pvped with them for awhile dropping most, thena 52+ sps named AUDEO comes and kills me, then yells at me in chinese. Wee.
Bots are the problem, But I think you are approaching the solution the wrong way. Bots are like a virus u can cut off one piece and they will keep coming back.
Instead of going after the bots, go after the websites. Its clearing defined in the EULA that this game doesn't allow that. Get a group of webmasters together and just search lineage 2 and just start going to 1 website after another getting them to stop or getting the website deleted. Bots might be back in a day or 2, but a well setup website takes alot more time and effort. You don't even have to delete them all, just get rid of enough that they r hard to find.
Just say it clear:
$$$$ from farmers > $$ from legit player.
So ncsoft have legit players deep in @. Business is business.
Bots are EVERYWHERE and i think no one belives that "they need investigation" to ban 24/7 bots with cute names like dsdfosfsdksfs009 (its hard to write such name in petition and thats only reason why they r choosing such names).
I think its time to tell all our friends, search private shards forums (lots of ppls is coming here from priv shards like i did and several my friends), search all mmorpg forums, and post there link to this thread, show them like ncsoft "care" about legit ppls, and time to stop playing L2 (it wont be hard, i think almost all of us is not playing bcause we cant even login to game for which we r paying!!!!!!!)
This is going to be worse this week end.
Castle sieges are planned, this the last main feature of the game where bots are not *directly* involved. And how do you have fun in sieges when only half, or less, of the players can be connected ?
This week end castles will be lost and won not by skill but by luck...the luck to have succeeded in connecting. So one of the main feature of the game is ruined.
I guess soon there will be a lot more unsatisfied players and C4 won't get them back.
One more thing. I know that u r reading this thread Sarge (one post edited yesterday by: Sarge), so... Think about this that way:
1. u let things to be like now, so AFK 24/7 bots are legal and u wont do anything. Farmers will love ya, u'll love them too (lots of $$$$ from their accounts). But legit ppl will leave this server, and even Chronicles 10 wont help, new ppl wont come, u can be sure. So bots wont have clients for their adena and they will stop playing too. Conclusion? U wont have $$$ from farmers either from legit players. Great!! u've dont it!! u've just ruined cool game, and u can start looking for new job.
2. u'll ban bots/farmers bcause its obvious who they r and u know this. Legit ppls will stay, maybe u'll have less $$ than from farmers, but soon new ppls will come, and u'll have same $$ like from farmers or even more (im sure). GJ ncsoft, u've done it!! u've just saved coolest (i think) mmorpg ever, we love ya.
Personally I think the ability to not be able to log onto any server at anytime when its a paid service is pretty bad. However, if the game had been designed to where you have to choose a server, and if the server already had the max number of users you couldn't choose that server, it would be fine. Perma bans would open up slots on the server, and perhaps you could narrow the 'audience' of the servers by limiting areas of users by IP. (not specifically asian). As servers fill, new servers could be created. Each account could have access to more than one server, with the $15 a month being per server. Deactivating an account would open up the slot on the server, once the paid time had ended.
As for bots... Dusk just won on Erica for the first time in quite a while... and since all the bots went Dawn- TOI, AL and GC are all swarmed with bots... and not just normal bot trains- HUGE bot trains to prevent dropping a crapload of mobs on them. Why can't they hire GM's to watch these places and knock them out?
Cause: Servers running on full capacity due to farming bots.
Solution: A working GameGuard or other protection software.
Completly blocking server access by 3rd party applications is the only lasting solution that can save this game. Of course a dedicated hacker will still log on, but I do not think they are the problem...
Is it really that difficult to allow only verified NCSoft applications access the servers? Is it that difficult to control and authorize an application? I do not think most of the farmers are real hackers, who could bypass professional protections. And if the people who write their software are, your programmers should still be better, no NCSoft?
I see two explanations of the current situation:
1. NCSoft doesn't want to block third party program access to it's servers, thus the GG is disabled (it is!).
2. NCSoft's programmers are incompetent and unable to write a working protection software (suggestion: hire new personnel).
It's a sick joke that when I first downloaded the game, activated account, updated and wanted to play, I couldn't, as the game reported some GameGuard error. I then proceeded to reinstall the game and update it again, only to learn from my friends that I'm doing it wrong - instead of reinstalling, I should have deleted the entire GG directory. I followed their advice and it worked like a wonder! The game run without problems with no GG at all and I got no more error messages (well, save the occasional crash).
Additional servers are not a solution. Increasing server capacity is not a solution. Those temporary fixes will just cause the problem to spread wider.
Mass banning bot accounts would also be a temporary fix, but a a very popular one I belive, I would certainly support it myself.
At least people would see you do SOMETHING.
Bots=many acc online=log in problem.
We cant ask NCSOFT to stop bots and start sells "oficial" adena, its not fair for anyone....
I think the best for all is to raise the adena-drops rates...
Lets say x5. With x5 rates you dont need to buy adena or mats. You enjoy the game and you dont ebay. The drop rates make ebayers to buy...
I have on a private server (not a pvp server with x500 rates)
a 60lev char and i can play the game! i dont need to buy anything. I USE the private shops to sell my drops.
I think its fair for all. You kill mobs and you get adena and drops to help you buy better weapons and kill more mobs...
You stop bots if you give for free what they sale for money.
and it's not even that they don't get banned. it's that nc soft encourages adena farmers to pick up another code (or packa of codes) and start all over.
their refusal to get tough and do more than simply ban accounts(beyond specific ip addresses, or cc numbers, or names, or w/e) is what makes teh servers full. it's why your ideal hunting grounds have 3bot trains falling over each other eating all teh mobs. it's why yoru drops are so low an dyou prices are so high. it's also why that guy that started last month can go to dk and come back in full a grade having never actually played the game...
it's bots.
not afk shops.
not anything else.
just bots.
lol yeah, just bots and the [censored] that pay them. Sick of people showing up and having stupid OE'ed top C within a 2-3weeks. I mean who gets that lucky on drops or the market when you enter the game? I know I couldn't afford a +8 or greater (whenever it turns dark blue flame) SLS within 3 weeks of play, and I pretty much farmed the manor from 20+ to make money for C grade AND played the market....hmmmmm...
so in conclusion ban the bots and the buyers OR put them on their own server could call the server "ebay" it could be like a prison island =o .
Think about it the farmers would be happy, they would sell to the ebay [censored] who sit on the same server and pay to get pl'ed by the bots, and since anyone who buys gets but on the "ebay" server the bots wouldn't have any reason to go elsewhere. And I know that people would probably have some loggin troubles on this server as the ebay [censored] would have to fight for loggin rights with the botters/farmers, but thats their problem...and they could probably just ebay their login time with a farmer if they wanted it bad enough anyway :)
Seems to me that most people are forgetting something.
Problem:
Servers are hitting their maximum concurrent connections (player cap), causing players to be unable to log in.
Solutions (broken down into the two most general solutions):
1. Increase the player cap.
2. Decrease the number of concurent connections on the servers that are having problems.
It seems to me that most people are focusing on #2 whereas #1 makes the most to me since it permits NCSoft to grow, which is a good thing, whereas #2 limits growth....
I disagree. The ONLY way to get rid of the bots permanently is to remove the reason that they are there in the first place. They are there because players want Adena that they can't get any other way in a decent amount of time.
Demand = Supply
As long as demand exists somone will supply. If, I say IF, someone is going to supply adena, it should be NC not some 3rd party. I am not saying that this is right or wrong. I am simply stating a fact. As fast as you find ways to block the bots, they will find ways around the blocks because they are making real world money doing this. No one but NC has the right to make real money on this game.
As for it not being fair? Is what's happening now fair? We can't play a game that we are paying for! Besides, what's not fair about it? Everyone with an acocount will have the same ability to get adena, even accounts that use time cards. There is no reason that time cards could not be used to pay for adena.
So long as a demand for something exists there will be someone who will find a way to supply it. The demand for adena will never fade, therefore there will always be bots! Unless NC does the inevitable and themselves become the supplier of our "drug". NC needs to own this game and right now they don't, the bots do.
NC! Take back ownership of this game. Put the buggers out of business! Let us get back the playing again!
I disagree. The ONLY way to get rid of the bots permanently is to remove the reason that they are there in the first place. They are there because players want Adena that they can't get any other way in a decent amount of time.
Demand = Supply
As long as demand exists somone will supply. If, I say IF, someone is going to supply adena, it should be NC not some 3rd party. I am not saying that this is right or wrong. I am simply stating a fact. As fast as you find ways to block the bots, they will find ways around the blocks because they are making real world money doing this. No one but NC has the right to make real money on this game.
As for it not being fair? Is what's happening now fair? We can't play a game that we are paying for! Besides, what's not fair about it? Everyone with an acocount will have the same ability to get adena, even accounts that use time cards. There is no reason that time cards could not be used to pay for adena.
So long as a demand for something exists there will be someone who will find a way to supply it. The demand for adena will never fade, therefore there will always be bots! Unless NC does the inevitable and themselves become the supplier of our "drug". NC needs to own this game and right now they don't, the bots do.
NC! Take back ownership of this game. Put the buggers out of business! Let us get back the playing again!
I already said that :P and if NC sold that adena they would not need farmers/bot trains running 24/7 to get it, killing the botters now. (and they could probably make up for the lost farmer accounts through adena sales...free money from idiots and cheaters ftw!) BUT! If they were to do this they should just make one or two servers that are the ONLY ones that allow the purchases. They should also allow free unlimited transfers too the server which they sell adena on BUT never allow transfers from that server to other servers.
ya either NC needs to put them outta business or quaranteen all botters/farmers AND the people who buy from them, that way there is one (or two...or three) server(s) that is inhabited by bots and the cheaters who pay them. And then the other servers would have no reason to have bots on them and no one gets banned for doing w/e they want. Just transfer there characters to the "ebay" server when they get caught, no harm & still get that $15 a month.
Private servers with low drop rates and no bots still have stable economy, everyone is able to equip themselves and no need for automated grinding. Instead, mats are difficult to collect by yourself so people work together in clans and with friends and dwarves are very valued.
I believe gameguard updating will not solve bot problem - it is designed to protect from 3rd party software, but what use it has when client is _completelly_ replaced with modified_version_of_you_know_what wich even emulates GG behaviour to server too? :) Can't do anything, inherent problem (or orginal idea) in client-server architecture, no assumptions on client (real or bot) or server (retail or L2J) when protocol is followed can be made. This is why its so difficult to dectect it automatically so NCsoft must rely on heuristics, secondary indications and GM work. NCsoft must hire more GM's or increase payment for current ones to make them more motivated.
Implementing complex technological solutions to combat botting is economically inefficient. How many more minds work on hacks than original developers protecting their software against them? It can be done to some level yes but it will violate your privacy and endanger your personal information because anti-cheat programs will have very high rights on your machine, send non-game related information to server and will need constant updating.
Also bots are not only illegal things here. Powerleveling in bot groups, other **** usage to gain advantage against opponents in PvP and other nasty things are so common that community is even tolerating such behaviour.
Ah, original topic..
for now - ban bots.
later - raise rates and implement offline shopping system. Only devs can do this and if there is no such problem in Korea..
someone is going to supply adena, it should be NC not some
. No one but NC has the right to make real money on this game.
NC needs to own this game and right now they don't, the bots do.
very simple...furnish gold or drops to this game...the consumers demand it...ebay is proof of this fact.
if NCSoft does not want to increase drop rates then at least SELL ADENA and/or equipment via the L2 site.
I visited the Korean website and they have the bot problem in their game as well. I just do not understand NCsoft. You are probably thinking of how much real dollars it takes to "ban" each account. STOP thinking this way. When you "fix" the real reason why people need "bots" then you will not need to "ban" anyone.
someone is going to supply adena, it should be NC not some
. No one but NC has the right to make real money on this game.
NC needs to own this game and right now they don't, the bots do.
very simple...furnish gold or drops to this game...the consumers demand it...ebay is proof of this fact.
if NCSoft does not want to increase drop rates then at least SELL ADENA and/or equipment via the L2 site.
I visited the Korean website and they have the bot problem in their game as well. I just do not understand NCsoft. You are probably thinking of how much real dollars it takes to "ban" each account. STOP thinking this way. When you "fix" the real reason why people need "bots" then you will not need to "ban" anyone.
People ebay, increasing drops will not help, people ebay in WoW/Guild wars ffs... there are just some lazy *** rich [censored] out there, increasing drops will not stop them from ebaying.
I am going to say it again, NC should make one new server and then they should sell adena on ONLY that one, allow free transfers too it as well. Why? It takes the botters out of business, anyone who ebays will move to that server because, well, NC can just conjure up adena so it can be Extremely cheap, this should destroy the reason for the botters...I don't see a downside, except that maybe somepeople would not move to the Ebay server, but thats easy catch them botting/ebay w/e move them to the ebay server. Oh, and we loose the idiots who buy the overpriced items b/c they just ebayed 100m and it is burning a hole in their pocket :P (I <3 them, they pay my bills :P )
Valid point. The interesting thing here is this "new" server would not have bots either as there would be no need for them if NC was selling adena on that server.
Teon is full again, access failed. please try again.
So much for the 'Mass' banning, more like ban a few genuine players and leave the farmers. Farmer groups are still running and teon's back to the way it was a day ago.
What a waste of time.
If NCSoft are always banning people Sarge then why was it this banning that made the server accessable.
I think we should leave the private servers out of this thread. Besides, you need to look a little deeper into them. A lot of them have systems where you "donate" to the server fund and they provide you with items that you need. Not all of them do that but a lot.
I did find one though that had a very interesting way of dealing with bots. I'll simply list the process. others (nc?) can do what they want with it.
GM catches a bot
1. Empty bots inventory and warehouse completely, including weps/armor/mats/adena.
2. De-level bot to lvl 1
3. Give bot squire equipment
4. Port bot to newbie area.
5. Msg "you wanted to bot so now you can just start over from the beginning."
Again though, lets leave the private servers out of this thread. Don't want the thread to get diluted.
1. Ban bots, easiest plan.
- Make dedicated GM's do bot hunts, do not use them for other functions.
- Players (an account) playing longer than 72 hours (incase of lan party) actively should be banned for account sharing or 3rd party programs.
2. Fire the developers for the program Gamegaurd or end your contract with them. They are incapable to keep up with L2 botting programs, therefor they have not fullfilled their contracts. L2 botting programs have 1-2 days downtime when gamegaurd has been upgraded, this is way too low.
3. Hire the people who made the spyware program from World of Warcraft, basicly it works as spyware: It checks the memory adresses, cpu /process data and looks what is active as a process on the system. Also it seems to scan ip packets if they have been altered by 3rd party programs.
- Adjust your EULA to this, give everyone a time frame to accept it and else end their accounts.
- Adjust your EULA that you state explicit that this program only is related to your service and that any scanning will not be released to 3rd party company's, will not be stored for marketing purposes or some sort that might harm the privacy of persons.
- Those who do not accept will receive money back from the time they have paid in advance and their accounts will be banned, offcourse only active accounts have a right for restitution.
Server clustering/load balancing/:
- Cluster your servers by help of hardware suppliers like IBM, cluster your server into several application servers. Basicly what that means is that each task on the shard is handled by an application SQL server. Thus: Let the calculations for over enchanting, selling/buying/quests be handled by one server, let there be another server do all the sql data processes off character advancements, character locations, character properties etc. That way you devide the sql data base into several tasks and each process you can adjust so that load is balanced.
- Host updates on another server/another ip so that data transfers from downloads off game updates does not interfere with game usage.
- I asume authentication is allready on an seperate server, just as there are hardware load balancers.
Those are my main advices. PS what mass bannings, cant find an announcement?
My point was that developers created L2 able to support bot-free economics.
There is nothing wrong with that part and theoretically everyone can get what they want in time. Practically lazy ppl want to get this easer and so there are bots to satisfy them.
Genuine ppl using cheats were better choice to ban because of economical reasons (farmers pay for more accounts).
Malkavians suggestion is very good. And it may be even more profitable for NCsoft - bots do make profit so they earn more $ selling adena than wasting on accounts.. If NCsoft loses farmer accounts by selling adena to those lazy they will earn more than now, maybe lower than AdenaInc still but: no angry customers; new customers both hardcore and lazy; happier employees - no bots to deal - GMs will no longer need to do this routine task and can focus on more interesting things.
I am afraid this will not happen, this Korean head guy is now talking of L3 so they may be willing to suck as much money from L2 till they can and move on..
1. Ban bots, easiest plan.
- Make dedicated GM's do bot hunts, do not use them for other functions.
- Players (an account) playing longer than 72 hours (incase of lan party) actively should be banned for account sharing or 3rd party programs.
Yes well sadly bots will always be here banning them only stops them for a few days. All games have bots.
2. Fire the developers for the program Gamegaurd or end your contract with them. They are incapable to keep up with L2 botting programs, therefor they have not fullfilled their contracts. L2 botting programs have 1-2 days downtime when gamegaurd has been upgraded, this is way too low.
I'm not sure how GG works but i'm sure it does prevent some bot programs from working maybe not all but it helps. Remember the Film Jurassic Park and the quote "life finds a way" same with bots, they find a way round the safe guards stopping them do it.
3. Hire the people who made the spyware program from World of Warcraft, basicly it works as spyware: It checks the memory adresses, cpu /process data and looks what is active as a process on the system. Also it seems to scan ip packets if they have been altered by 3rd party programs.
- Adjust your EULA to this, give everyone a time frame to accept it and else end their accounts.
- Adjust your EULA that you state explicit that this program only is related to your service and that any scanning will not be released to 3rd party company's, will not be stored for marketing purposes or some sort that might harm the privacy of persons.
- Those who do not accept will receive money back from the time they have paid in advance and their accounts will be banned, offcourse only active accounts have a right for restitution.
No Spyware is ever getting on my machine dispite its function. Im not turning my security systems off just to play a game. I'll quit before i do that. The idea is sound but sadly i'm not willing to take the risk. All it takes is one clever person to **** that program and mess everyones PC's up.
Server clustering/load balancing/:
- Cluster your servers by help of hardware suppliers like IBM, cluster your server into several application servers. Basicly what that means is that each task on the shard is handled by an application SQL server. Thus: Let the calculations for over enchanting, selling/buying/quests be handled by one server, let there be another server do all the sql data processes off character advancements, character locations, character properties etc. That way you devide the sql data base into several tasks and each process you can adjust so that load is balanced.
- Host updates on another server/another ip so that data transfers from downloads off game updates does not interfere with game usage.
- I asume authentication is allready on an seperate server, just as there are hardware load balancers.
Not got a clue what you said there so i'll smile and move on, if its what i think it is then wouldn't that require alot of extra work and should 1 server fail it would mess up the rest?
If the servers go down now NCSoft know about it. If the proposed OE server went down NCSoft wouldn't know about it unless someone petitioned them?
Those are my main advices. PS what mass bannings, cant find an announcement?
Make all towns and all area's 'non shop mode' areas IE you cant set up afk shops. This will free up half the servers slots. The fix would be temp. until C4 comes and the servers get an upgrade to allow more connections.
Just a Question are the server upgrades going to be effecting the amount of connections it can handle or is this just blind hope from the tired community.
Seems to me that most people are forgetting something.
Problem:
Servers are hitting their maximum concurrent connections (player cap), causing players to be unable to log in.
Solutions (broken down into the two most general solutions):
1. Increase the player cap.
2. Decrease the number of concurent connections on the servers that are having problems.
It seems to me that most people are focusing on #2 whereas #1 makes the most to me since it permits NCSoft to grow, which is a good thing, whereas #2 limits growth....
But..... I would have to guess with the current server hardware they are running the server cap at a number to keep the servers stable.
By rasing the cap they have the chance to make the servers become unstable.
Valid point. The interesting thing here is this "new" server would not have bots either as there would be no need for them if NC was selling adena on that server.
thats what I am saying,kills botters/farmers business AND gets rid of the ebayers on the regular servers...win win no?
AND NC would make up for lost accounts to the botters/farmers with Adena sales from the one server more than likely. And besides who doesn't like free money with no overhead/no pay to farmers/no delevery fee(they could just write a program to allow you to charge your card ingame for it such as EQ2's ridiculous /pizza thing, and it would just get dumped in a adena pickup NPC once card is cleared)/And No upkeep server space taken up for any botter/farmer accounts they don't have to create because they can conjure adena up. NC how could you deny Free money?! =)
Sarge how about a responce we know youir reading this so lets hear you chim in here what actions is nc soft trying to do top solve this what are theay thinking about etc
Hehehe. I would love to hear an opinion on this part of the thread from Sarge. But he probably cant' say anything that's not "official policy". Unless, of course, the pair he carries around are made of stainless steel. In which case he might just say whatever he **** well pleases!
I think we should leave the private servers out of this thread. Besides, you need to look a little deeper into them. A lot of them have systems where you "donate" to the server fund and they provide you with items that you need. Not all of them do that but a lot.
I did find one though that had a very interesting way of dealing with bots. I'll simply list the process. others (nc?) can do what they want with it.
GM catches a bot
1. Empty bots inventory and warehouse completely, including weps/armor/mats/adena.
2. De-level bot to lvl 1
3. Give bot squire equipment
4. Port bot to newbie area.
5. Msg "you wanted to bot so now you can just start over from the beginning."
Again though, lets leave the private servers out of this thread. Don't want the thread to get diluted.
I know you said leave them out, but there was another funny one that they could use as a immediate bot test. it went like this
1. you report person for botting
2. GM morphs into mobs bot is attacking
3. if it is an afk bot it will not notice it is attacking a pc and keep going
4. Kills GM and the player goes red
5. GM's set bot/players PK to 1m or something crazy
6. Port botter outside of town and announce their presence.
7. FREE BOT DROPS xD
but really why not get rid of the need for bots by making a cheap server for ebayers? Keep ebayers paying you $15 a month, sure you loose the bot accounts, BUT you make more than that on adena sales to the ebayer server. Can't see a downside yet =P
Hehehe. I would love to hear an opinion on this part of the thread from Sarge. But he probably cant' say anything that's not "official policy". Unless, of course, the pair he carries around are made of stainless steel. In which case he might just say whatever he **** well pleases!
1. Ban bots, easiest plan.
- Make dedicated GM's do bot hunts, do not use them for other functions.
- Players (an account) playing longer than 72 hours (incase of lan party) actively should be banned for account sharing or 3rd party programs.
Yes well sadly bots will always be here banning them only stops them for a few days. All games have bots.
2. Fire the developers for the program Gamegaurd or end your contract with them. They are incapable to keep up with L2 botting programs, therefor they have not fullfilled their contracts. L2 botting programs have 1-2 days downtime when gamegaurd has been upgraded, this is way too low.
I'm not sure how GG works but i'm sure it does prevent some bot programs from working maybe not all but it helps. Remember the Film Jurassic Park and the quote "life finds a way" same with bots, they find a way round the safe guards stopping them do it.
3. Hire the people who made the spyware program from World of Warcraft, basicly it works as spyware: It checks the memory adresses, cpu /process data and looks what is active as a process on the system. Also it seems to scan ip packets if they have been altered by 3rd party programs.
- Adjust your EULA to this, give everyone a time frame to accept it and else end their accounts.
- Adjust your EULA that you state explicit that this program only is related to your service and that any scanning will not be released to 3rd party company's, will not be stored for marketing purposes or some sort that might harm the privacy of persons.
- Those who do not accept will receive money back from the time they have paid in advance and their accounts will be banned, offcourse only active accounts have a right for restitution.
No Spyware is ever getting on my machine dispite its function. Im not turning my security systems off just to play a game. I'll quit before i do that. The idea is sound but sadly i'm not willing to take the risk. All it takes is one clever person to **** that program and mess everyones PC's up.
Server clustering/load balancing/:
- Cluster your servers by help of hardware suppliers like IBM, cluster your server into several application servers. Basicly what that means is that each task on the shard is handled by an application SQL server. Thus: Let the calculations for over enchanting, selling/buying/quests be handled by one server, let there be another server do all the sql data processes off character advancements, character locations, character properties etc. That way you devide the sql data base into several tasks and each process you can adjust so that load is balanced.
- Host updates on another server/another ip so that data transfers from downloads off game updates does not interfere with game usage.
- I asume authentication is allready on an seperate server, just as there are hardware load balancers.
Not got a clue what you said there so i'll smile and move on, if its what i think it is then wouldn't that require alot of extra work and should 1 server fail it would mess up the rest?
If the servers go down now NCSoft know about it. If the proposed OE server went down NCSoft wouldn't know about it unless someone petitioned them?
Those are my main advices. PS what mass bannings, cant find an announcement?
They dont announce mass bans, they just happen.
About that server/load balancing story: Its currently implemented succesfully by a game called eve online, basicly it means less downtime: the last downtime was due to some stuff starting to smoke and has been weeks ago.
It may be true that Bots cannot be stopped. However, they can always be controlled. In the current state it appears things are overrun with illegal players.
1) Contact eBay and have them stop any future auctions related to Lineage 2.
2) Have a small team that actively searches online engines for keywords such as "lineage 2" etc etc. Contact the website admins of the sites that are breaking the rules in the EULA.
3) Watch the population level on the servers start to dwindle to a stable level.
Cut the head off the snake. The rest will fall into place.
but really why not get rid of the need for bots by making a cheap server for ebayers? Keep ebayers paying you $15 a month, sure you loose the bot accounts, BUT you make more than that on adena sales to the ebayer server. Can't see a downside yet =P
A nice idea, but it unfortunately wouldn't work.
For a simple reason.
People who like to "cheat" in games, usually also like to impress others with their l33t UBER equip on their powerleveled toons, rock them or simply spoil their fun.
They pay, among other things, for being able to easily PK those pathetic, weak regular players, to pwn them.
On an ebayer server everyone would have top equipment and levels, equal chances so to say, so no fun for them. They simply wouldn't migrate to it.
They would prefer to pay more to the farmers and stay on the regular servers, where they can pwn normal players.
in my oppinion nc soft dont realy want to kick the bots.
what is nc soft ? nc soft is a concern whitch is earning moning with pc games
when u can earn money what do u want ? right, earning more money
how u can earn money ? let the bots where they are they paying for accounts, they paying for time card and they paying good
i mean just watch on teon TOI 1 the first 4 room are taken for weeks 24/7 from the same 9 ppl bot trains
whey the hell takes is weeks to see them and to ban them
let the gms to move their [censored] in to the cats and necros
everywhare the same bot trains 24/7 just go around at Forsaken Plains u will find for sure up to 10 trains of bots with 3-6 ppl in it. GG will not help with that problem block the actual [censored] version with a newer version of GG and u will have 2 h later a new version of [censored] and the bots can log in again.
Get more active GMs and let them do noting else then walking around to find and ban bots
at least they will bu new account and new time cards as long as there are ppl buying adena on ebay or on other adena delivery services
With serveral friends we bought several games and started playing about week ago. Now we are coming back to private servers - no bots (they are banned instantly), same lag or less sometimes, stable economy, i dont need to do same quest 100x to earn money for top nograde weapon, no manor system but its completly usless here (owned by farmers) etc etc
U DONT WANT TO BAN BOTS AND U WONT BAN THEM SO ..i..(^_^)..i..
I hope more ppls do same, bcause its clear they dont want to do do anything. Im sure they have some % of incomes from 3rd companies, like from l2vvalker programmers, when they started earning money selling l2vvalker, they made GG, then they told: ok, so thats our proposition - we want 50% of incomes and we disable GG. Sooo... GG is disabled. Same with companies selling adena on ebay and sites such as ige.com, they should be blocked long ago but they are still here and they are earning LOTS of money, but i think they are sad that they can have only 50% their incomes...... I see no other reason for all-the-time-SAME-bots running 24/7/365.
btw. its funny when they censoring word "l2vvalker" when 70% population of each server is running it ALL THE TIME.
With serveral friends we bought several games and started playing about week ago. Now we are coming back to private servers - no bots (they are banned instantly), same lag or less sometimes, stable economy, i dont need to do same quest 100x to earn money for top nograde weapon, no manor system but its completly usless here (owned by farmers) etc etc
U DONT WANT TO BAN BOTS AND U WONT BAN THEM SO ..i..(^_^)..i..
I hope more ppls do same, bcause its clear they dont want to do do anything. Im sure they have some % of incomes from 3rd companies, like from l2vvalker programmers, when they started earning money selling l2vvalker, they made GG, then they told: ok, so thats our proposition - we want 50% of incomes and we disable GG. Sooo... GG is disabled. Same with companies selling adena on ebay and sites such as ige.com, they should be blocked long ago but they are still here and they are earning LOTS of money, but i think they are sad that they can have only 50% their incomes...... I see no other reason for all-the-time-SAME-bots running 24/7/365.
btw. its funny when they censoring word "l2vvalker" when 70% population of each server is running it ALL THE TIME.
**** dude u wrote the words i didnt want to write.....
at all i am to 90 % sure that nc soft has a deal with 3rd party
about that stuff. 1 hand is washing the other.
u know what just look on internet for l2 C3 server software
when u find it just watch the server configuration file
And now a musical interlude thanks to Nancy Sinatra...
You keep saying you do something for us
Something you call ban, but confess
You've been messin' where you shouldn't have been a messin'
and now someone else is gettin' all your best.
These bots are made for farming, and that's just what they'll do,
one of these days these bots are gonna walk all over you.
You keep lying, when you oughta be bannin'
and we keep losin' when we oughta just play.
They keep scammin' when we oughta be tradin'.
Now what's right is right, but you ain't been right yet.
These bots are made for farming, and that's just what they'll do
one of these days these bots are gonna walk all over you.
They keep playin' where they shouldn't be playin
and they keep thinkin' that you´ll never catch them
I just found me a brand new server to play on
and what he knows you ain't HAD time to learn.
NCsoft can learn from the makers of WOW
- Split servers when they are full.
Allow ppl to transfer to another server.
A lot of ppl I know are thinking about quiting Lineage or taking a break till at least C4. When C hits lots of ppl come
back if the problem is not solved then. Many ppl will leave the game. I know this for sure. :mad:
Why is it taking so many days before they accounce how they are going to solve it?
How hard can it be?
If they have a database they can make software to extract information out the database.
1) find bots or
2) make server transfers possible to a new server or empty
server.
In no way this problem is new, at least the bot problem. Even you say you're "inspecting the problem and doing 'something'", it clearly is not enough, not even close. What are you doing? How long are you just inspecting?
Oh yeah, you didn't mention anything about the bot problem (shh, let's keep quiet about that, there are no bots or problems), it's just the server is full problem. But do you really want to know why it's full even many players are leaving the game?
Friends who recommend L2 to their friends:
"It's a cool game but it's infested with bots which ruin the gameplay and economics totally but they don't ban the bots because they don't want to lose paying "customers"".
You guys crack me up. So exactly what game is out there that doesn't have bots?
In game item/money sales for real cash?
Account sales of existing characters?
If you can't provide an example of a major MMPORG out there that is free of these problems maybe it is a little harder than simply banning all the bots.
Besides, the continual cry for banning bots is a joke and a red herring. Regardless of how and why the current login issue exists you should be demanding service for the fees you are paying. You should be able to get access when you are paying for access.......
Get rid of AFK shops? No way, that would suck, half of what i like about this game is working the economy. The ebay server wouldn't work as was already stated because cheaters want to have better stuff than real players. They can't handle the grind and want to show off, if everyone on a specific server was an ebayer they would be normal, and would simply switch back to the regular servers.
As much as i hate the idea, NCsoft selling adena may be the only option if they can't get rid of the bots. That ticks me off because people who don't ebay because it's simply against the rules would then do it. Frankly i think its ******ed and if you ebay your missing the whole point of the game. Its supposed to be hard!
The sad thing is, it only takes about 2 min to find bot groups, they are always in the best higher level grinding spots. They don't even try to hide what they are doing. I simply have a hard time believing that ncsoft spends much time getting rid of them. Of course its probably much like drugs or prostitution and the police. There is simply too much of it to make any kind of impact without some serrious man power and very strict rules.
If you could ban the botters you would have plenty of room for the regular players on the server.
It seems that when changes used to be made to gameguard it blocked the bots for a few days. So make the changes every day instead.
Or every once and awhile flicker the servers on and off. See who logs in instantly and sets up instant shops and Ban them.
Frankly i think banning isn't as usefull a tool as emptying their inventories and dropping them to lvl 1. Then simply recheck those accounts regularly for bot activity and smack em over and over. Most bots seem to be in the higher lvl areas, and they don't want to be botting lvl 1 chars as they dont make much money. So let em pay but punish them. Some bot activity would surely drop off then.
and Serriously.... upgrade the busy servers. I'm just glad i picked Sieg. I never have trouble logging in but the bots seem more numerous than the real players.
I've been playing this game for a while, and I think the best options for NCSoft would be:
*Making a qeue system for loggin in the server, like WoW, that shouldn't be hard for them.
*Enabling a TRUE AFK shop model, Why I need to spend 8 hours with my chars sitting on their **** for selling a item? It'd be easier if we could go to the Warehouse keeper and say him tho sell a item at a price.
I completely agree with you on the AFK shops, though the post after yours is a very intersting idea too. How about several NPC's in the main squares of every town that you can simply give your items to and say sell these at this price and come back later to pick up your cash? Now you don't need afk shops at all! Let the game do it for you. This would free up a lot of server connections. Had to say that really fast to make sure that Thread is staying on topic. :-)
Now then, as to your remarks about people ebaying if they could when they don't do it now just because it's against the rules.............you know? I have to wonder if they would really. See, if the bots are gone, cause NC started selling adena, then the manor system is usable again. I think I'd like to give the manor system a try before I bought Adena from NC. From all indications you should be able to make a lot cash that way. Look at how much the adena sellers are making after all. I checked some of their sites. You can order up adena by the 100 millions for crying out loud! If NC sets up to sell adena, I have to wonder just how much they are going to sell! Cause I promise you, I don't know about you or the others but before I spend money to get adena, I'll try to make it myself first! This makes me wonder how many other real players in the game would do the exact same thing, even knowing that they could buy it from NC.
Come on NC! Bite the bullet and get the job done. Hell, you can always un-do it later is you have to! and I notice that Sarge still hasn't chimed in with any comments. Makes me wonder if she has no comment or is biting her tongue to keep quite!
You guys crack me up. So exactly what game is out there that doesn't have bots?
In game item/money sales for real cash?
Account sales of existing characters?
If you can't provide an example of a major MMPORG out there that is free of these problems maybe it is a little harder than simply banning all the bots.
So very, very true!
As to the other poster that said learn from WoW... My friends play on a server that regularly has server full issues and queue times of up to 30 minutes. So they don't have it down either....
Get rid of AFK shops? No way, that would suck, half of what i like about this game is working the economy. The ebay server wouldn't work as was already stated because cheaters want to have better stuff than real players. They can't handle the grind and want to show off, if everyone on a specific server was an ebayer they would be normal, and would simply switch back to the regular servers.
As much as i hate the idea, NCsoft selling adena may be the only option if they can't get rid of the bots. That ticks me off because people who don't ebay because it's simply against the rules would then do it. Frankly i think its ******ed and if you ebay your missing the whole point of the game. Its supposed to be hard!
The sad thing is, it only takes about 2 min to find bot groups, they are always in the best higher level grinding spots. They don't even try to hide what they are doing. I simply have a hard time believing that ncsoft spends much time getting rid of them. Of course its probably much like drugs or prostitution and the police. There is simply too much of it to make any kind of impact without some serrious man power and very strict rules.
If you could ban the botters you would have plenty of room for the regular players on the server.
It seems that when changes used to be made to gameguard it blocked the bots for a few days. So make the changes every day instead.
Or every once and awhile flicker the servers on and off. See who logs in instantly and sets up instant shops and Ban them.
Frankly i think banning isn't as usefull a tool as emptying their inventories and dropping them to lvl 1. Then simply recheck those accounts regularly for bot activity and smack em over and over. Most bots seem to be in the higher lvl areas, and they don't want to be botting lvl 1 chars as they dont make much money. So let em pay but punish them. Some bot activity would surely drop off then.
and Serriously.... upgrade the busy servers. I'm just glad i picked Sieg. I never have trouble logging in but the bots seem more numerous than the real players.
ah but I didn't say ask them to move there, I said make the server, those who do want to ebay safe will go there, those who want to "pwn" everyone who doesn't cheat...well instead of banning move all of their characters to the ebay server, They are breaking the rules and deserve to be banned, but maybe this way they will decided ebaying sucks when the richest person/person who sells their house to buy a caste? owns the ebay server, either way there is a 50/50 chance of them staying on the ebay server, but yeah nothing can really ever be done about bots/ebayers there are just too many people who want to cheat, and too many who want to get paid.
It's obvious to anyone playing the game or reading the forums that bots by far the biggest problem in the game, and many times in this thread I've seen players hit in the reason bots exhist in such numbers. The plain fact is that without help of some sort (i.e. ebaying, friends with higher level characters, help from a large clan) it's not possible for a character to get equipment that's suitable for his/her level.
As an experiment, on Hindemith I started a character and provided all gear/ss/potions needed to attain level 20. running no quests this character gained a total of 20,000 adena after selling all drops. That's not enough to get more than a good NG helmet. With running quests another character was able to get 150,000 adena. Enough for NG armor, but no weapon. now keep in mind that these are not the adena for shots or potions, and all drops are sold to buy shops or NPC's. So here we have two characters, that if no assistance is gotten, they have at best mid No-Grade weapons when they get thier D grade Mastery. (don't mention the Manor, on hindemith it's clogged with bots and farmers from the newbie towns through Dion). With my other characters I noticed a trend, that a thrifty player running quests could usually afford top Grade gear when they are half way through the grade above what they can afford... for example, to be able to afford top NG gear (300k secondhand) the average player can afford that around level 30 if they don't use shots.
All of this information is to highlight my point that the economy in Lineage is broken. Raising the Adena drop rate won't fix things... it will just cause inflation. But like has been mentioned several times in this thread, the material drop rate is pathetic. If enough materials are droped to make your own equipment that is suitable to your level, the need to (and is truly is a need if you don't have high level friends) buy adena drops, the botters start loosing money, and the servers start to correct themselves. This is my long term fix for the problem.
As a short term fix, it has been noted that botters relog instantly after a server reset and set up shops again. Note that... "instantly". Set up a script that logs the names of all characters that have a shop set up within 5 seconds of a server coming back online. These are guranteed to be bots as few humans could even have the name typed in that time, and I don't think it's even possible to manually set up a shop in 5 seconds, not counting the time it takes to log in. The script should be no more than a few minutes work for someone who knows what they are doing.
It's obvious to anyone playing the game or reading the forums that bots by far the biggest problem in the game, and many times in this thread I've seen players hit in the reason bots exhist in such numbers. The plain fact is that without help of some sort (i.e. ebaying, friends with higher level characters, help from a large clan) it's not possible for a character to get equipment that's suitable for his/her level.
As an experiment, on Hindemith I started a character and provided all gear/ss/potions needed to attain level 20. running no quests this character gained a total of 20,000 adena after selling all drops. That's not enough to get more than a good NG helmet. With running quests another character was able to get 150,000 adena. Enough for NG armor, but no weapon. now keep in mind that these are not the adena for shots or potions, and all drops are sold to buy shops or NPC's. So here we have two characters, that if no assistance is gotten, they have at best mid No-Grade weapons when they get thier D grade Mastery. (don't mention the Manor, on hindemith it's clogged with bots and farmers from the newbie towns through Dion). With my other characters I noticed a trend, that a thrifty player running quests could usually afford top Grade gear when they are half way through the grade above what they can afford... for example, to be able to afford top NG gear (300k secondhand) the average player can afford that around level 30 if they don't use shots.
All of this information is to highlight my point that the economy in Lineage is broken. Raising the Adena drop rate won't fix things... it will just cause inflation. But like has been mentioned several times in this thread, the material drop rate is pathetic. If enough materials are droped to make your own equipment that is suitable to your level, the need to (and is truly is a need if you don't have high level friends) buy adena drops, the botters start loosing money, and the servers start to correct themselves. This is my long term fix for the problem.
I greatly disagree, without any monitary help I have succeded in making a nice amount of money in L2, granted I was in ng until 24 or so on my 1st character, but using the manor system to make an initial amount of money and then, ironically enough, buying things cheap (from what I assume are farmers as not too many put up with my afk shop prices) and then selling to the what I seems to be ebayers as they once again put up with my relatively high resale prices. You don't need to ebay, owning a second account would help, but until L2 works on a mac I can't dualbox. So in conclusion don't say it is hard to earn money in this game, you just have to know how, and <gasp> WORK at it(or leave computer on while at work/asleep/not playing L2)! I made 12m last week, and noo that is not on OE stuff, I don't like OE'ing market yet, too risky and could strip me of all my money to quick, maybe later when I am super duper rich :)
Ok, first i don't read all the post "too much" the real solution is this
-Take away the shops in towns !!! how eazy make an central place where we can drop off ur stuff to sell.
Example: i want to sell "bow of peril" and i want at least 50mil for it, then i place my bow on the market and let them poeple bid on it for an day and after the day the highest bid gets it. that eazy that simple. no more logons for the nightly shopers.
Look people, this thread is to give our suggestions to NCSoft on how to combat this problem. Teon is now full again and at certain peak times logging in can get difficult, true its not as bad as before but its only a matter of time.
LET ME SPELL THIS OUT FOR YOU THAT CANT UNDERSTAND
Those saying banning the bots is the solution are dreaming, because as i've said and many have pointed out all games have botters and you cant just wave a magic wand and have them banned forever. They will return and it starts over.
Secondly, banning AFK shops is by far the best solution in my eyes, i for one hate waiting 5minutes to port into a town. Then once ported in it can take up to 20mins for all the shops to load in. During this time you can get caught inbetween shops and get stuck (its happened to my clan member he had to soe out). Stairs in Giran are a nightmare and it lags like a son of a ******.
Banning the afk shops will kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Firstly the servers will open up for those that actually want to play, and allow people to walk through towns without lagging out for minutes at a time or getting stuck or not been able to walk through town along the paths and not get blocked off by shops.
Might i add this was a temp solution until the servers can handle more connections.
Still keep [censored] about bots all you like fact is if there was a quick solution in banning them all from the servers im sure it would have been done.
Now drop all the 'Ban the bots' posts because almost every page says it and its obvious thats not a solution at this time.
Those saying banning the bots is the solution are dreaming, because as i've said and many have pointed out all games have botters and you cant just wave a magic wand and have them banned forever. They will return and it starts over.
Still keep [censored] about bots all you like fact is if there was a quick solution in banning them all from the servers im sure it would have been done.
Yes, we all understand that banning a bot is a temporary fix at best. the whole point of my post was that the cause of the bots is the balance of the games economy. (not that the bots will ever completly go away, I'm not that foolish, but NCSoft can at least make it less profitable to sell adena online.)
Secondly, banning AFK shops is by far the best solution in my eyes, i for one hate waiting 5minutes to port into a town. Then once ported in it can take up to 20mins for all the shops to load in. During this time you can get caught inbetween shops and get stuck (its happened to my clan member he had to soe out). Stairs in Giran are a nightmare and it lags like a son of a ******.
Personally I also like this idea, but I don't think it will have a large effect on the servers filling up, though it would make giran much easier to get around in. Not to mention make shopping less of a chore.
Unfortunatly, It would also make it much harder for players to make money like Malkavian mentioned in his post. (Yes I am aware that it's a good way to make money Malkavian, I've even made a quarter billion myself that way. But very very few players have the patience and tenacity to look through all the afk stores to find the profitable deals. And you cannot do this until you reach Giran and have enough money to start with anyway.)
Secondly, banning AFK shops is by far the best solution in my eyes, i for one hate waiting 5minutes to port into a town. Then once ported in it can take up to 20mins for all the shops to load in. During this time you can get caught inbetween shops and get stuck (its happened to my clan member he had to soe out). Stairs in Giran are a nightmare and it lags like a son of a ******.
Banning the afk shops will kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Firstly the servers will open up for those that actually want to play, and allow people to walk through towns without lagging out for minutes at a time or getting stuck or not been able to walk through town along the paths and not get blocked off by shops.
I strongly disagree!
Just how are we supposed to EARN adena then? Are you suggesting EVERYONE should e-bay? Because banning trade would cause this...
Now if the afk shops would be replaced by something else, like a trade center of some sort, I wouldn't mind.
But banning the afk shops without any replacement would ruin this game! Make the economy non-existant (though it is already in terrible shape, over-inflated and just bad)...
BOTS ARE THE PROBLEM. And the problem needs a solution. Maybe not necessarily banning, but blocking accesss...
Ok, first i don't read all the post "too much" the real solution is this
-Take away the shops in towns !!! how eazy make an central place where we can drop off ur stuff to sell.
Example: i want to sell "bow of peril" and i want at least 50mil for it, then i place my bow on the market and let them poeple bid on it for an day and after the day the highest bid gets it. that eazy that simple. no more logons for the nightly shopers.
people people, banning shops !!! NO NO, make a central shop NPC, where all shops will be listed and therfor no char needs to be online "no more afk shops on the ground" the player shops just moved into an central NPC eazy and lag free AND more slots open for connecting people.
anyway i don't think this will happen cus NCSoft is holding to there own "story line", and the central NPC is not in it that or NCSoft do not care what we say or want. to bad i consider to leave L2 for World of warcraft, yeah WoW much beter in all ways .... i just gona miss L2's PvP's :/
PS: at this rate will Lineage2 NOT make it to C5, people will left long befor that. by ever "C" the econ rises, prizes go UP, people start to act "jerky" and so on ... i know more friends that quited this game cus of this then i urned adena by hunting. NCSoft please kick some [censored] ^^
Well, one of the big things I've seen brought up is this:
1. Bots can Log in even if the server's full
2. GG doesn't work.
This is both due to the same issue. The most popular bot programs DON'T USE THE L2 CLIENT! they have their own stand-alone client. So they don't even look at the "login server", they don't have GG loaded, and they don't care!
GG has a feature ALREADY INSTALLED that create an authentication loop which means when you try to login the server makes sure you have GG running. If you don't, you don't get in!!! This would stop those bots from doing this...but:
Is this feature activated??? NO!
Why NCSoft? WHY???
Do you enjoy bots? I guess so...
Turning on the GG authentication wouldn't do JACK to Non-bots, but would tear the hearts and souls out of the client-less bots! They'd then have to move back to using client add-on programs....which is what GG was designed to stop! So GG will then be ABLE to stop them! As it is, with the authentication turned off GG = COMPLETELY USELESS!!! :mad:
The ban of AFk shops will realy make some place on Teon.
But not for players, just only for [censored] BOTS.
The Bots are using manor, that nobody is able to earn good manor adena ( i could make about 2kk adena in one day, but not anymore) :mad:
Bots are taking all good hunting grounds, and push normal players away (by their protector).
the AFk shops isnt the problem of this server, the problem is in BOTS.
I'm not sure, but if Nc will ban bots fast enough, the people who are using full party of bots will just lose adena and real money, and time.
Firstly they will need to lvln a char till at least 30Lv, then to buy D Grade equipment (all bots have almost always top D weapon and armor). Secondly They must get a new account at all. And its 15€.I'm not sure if all bots in one full party are running from one account or not...But if yes, so the idiots will lose at least 120€ with every ban of the group.
But NC just dont ban them, i can see the same party of bots in the forgotten temple for a 2 weeks already:(
How about some indication here that this thread is still being monitored? I mean, please don't lock it but it's been going on for quite a while now with no word from you or anyone else at NC to indicate your looking at it. I've been monitoring it constantly and from what I am reading the following has become obvious to me.
1. Sad to say, that so far the only solution offered that appears to have any chance at all of stopping this bot problem is the one that I originally posted. I don't like it any more than you Sarge, (and a lot of the players), but NC just may have to sell adena to make this go away. It's becomming a quality of game play issue. The bots are making it hard, difficult and sometimes impossible to play the game. They are reducing the joy of play to the point that many players are going to quit playing and go to some other game. That means lost revenue for NC, and bad reveiws. This is not something you want going on just before you are going to release C4.
2. A second line of discussion has started here that I believe deserves a thread of it's own. This talk about the AFK shops. I think that some of the posters here have hit upon an excellent concept. Something that will improve the quality of game play. I hate going to Giran on Bartz. I try not to go there unless I really have to. If I'm hunting in the Giran area and have to soe to town for supplies, OMG the lag! The concept of an NPC Commerce Center is one of the best ideas I have seen yet! It could even be setup like the warehouse is, so that a player in Gluden can see something that was put up for sale by someone in Aden. Thus giving us players a Universal Commerce solution! I'm not saying ban private stores. If a players comes into town and he/she has some really nice mats that they want to sell right away and then go back out hunting, they should be able to setup a private store to do so. But! Put a timer on the store 30 minutes or 60 minutes and the store closes automatically, AND put a cool down periond on the store just like spells. Can't set up another store for say 3 hours! If the player dosn't want to do this then he/she can put their stuff in the Commerce Center and check back later to see if it's sold!
Please make some kind of comment here even if it's just a bull snort, something to let us know that this thread is being monitored?
Pfff... Are you guys aware of the fact that you're working (and paying) for NCsoft atm? They should have a professional team for this, brainstorming about possible solutions.
I think the solution for this problem is already there, implemented. It's called the 'Sin Eater' quest.
I mean, how much ppl are whining about the bots? Why don't we all stick together and have PK-raids all over Aden?
That would be fun I tell u. And isn't that what we pay for?
One clan won't be enough. But a couple of Alliances... maybe that would help. I say MAYBE, we can at least try! There's nothing to lose, not if you're below the 5 PK's.
Really, I don't care if you join my clan (FarmTheFarmers) or create your own one.
I think this is the most effective way against bots, if NCsoft doesn't do anything.
Well maybe they did, but the problem is still there. I won't spend my precious time about thinking of a solution. That should be the job of NCsoft.
Let's have some bloody brainless genocide PK wars against bots. Release your frustrations!
For us it should be as easy as when we setup a private shop, we select the item for sale, n decide on the price, then its inputed into the Universal system. I dont think this system should be a biding system tho, that might not be very good. (once the item is inputed, its clasified by what type of item it is)
But with that said, the search engine needs to be top notch.
Like we should have sections like : Weapon, armor, etc....
Within each section drop down menus maybe on what type of wepon (for example) ur looking for with maybe estimate prices u would like to pay for.
I would also like check boxes that would allow me to select if i want to look thrue all of Aden or a specific village or a few specific villages.
Then a list appears if it finds anything. U can browse thrue the list, n if u find something u want, u put a check mark beside it and do a check out type of thing, if u got the funds, they disapear n u get the items dumped in ur inventory. If inventory is full check WH maybe, if that is full give user a message.
I think this could work better, n this Universal shop would always be there, n if server disconnects, no worries cuz its put bck up n running once server starts up again with all the items inputed to date in it.
I think it could make life very easy, n might be able to make even more money, becuz u dont need to open a shop during the day while ur at work or nothing..
I would perhaps limit the numbers of items sold by one person, just the way its setup right now with sell shops.. no?
That way u can have 4 items if ur a dwarf or just 3 if ur not one....
Thats my 2 adena, n i most say i like this idea alot....
Would make giran so much easier to get in n out of u know?
How do you make money when the servers are too full to even log on for hours at a time. Then these people getting on are setting up shops or sitting in town afk so they can play 2morrow without having to log in.
Banning the AFK shops will releave alot of stress on the Teon server it will at least help others get on. Bots may log on because of this but then the GMs have a better chance of catching them.
I dont use afk shops, and i still make money. So dont come with the we need these shops to make money crap.
I've made 3 mil in 8 hours.
1.5mil in pure drops 1.3-5mil in Inf Ore drops, costs 1.5mil to replace my SS and i'm set again.
15k *** will make me 3mil cash.
As a Tyrant thats [censored] loads, tyrants are the most expensive Melee class to play, but with the right equip also the most lucrative.
Well i disagree here, u cant remove afk shops n not replace then with something else, thats just plain rediculous...
I make my money at nite, n during the day while im at work, remove that, i dont have any other window of time where i can sell or buy stuff, cuz thats when i play..
I agree it would hlp with the lag if no more afk shops where there, but it cant be done without a propper replacement/management system...
Well i disagree here, I make my money at nite, and during the day while im at work. Cheers!!
Yes, now because you dont log out when you go to work or when you go to bed that means i cant get into to play. Your holding up a server slot 24 hours a day, same as a botter.
I mentioned a verrrry long time ago about removing Private Stores and having a Marketplace NPC where you buy and sell, but everyone dismissed it, and now people are coming up with the same idea. Funny eh?
So you telling us that you have sat at your computer monitoring your private store non-stop for 8 hours. You never left the room or anything? If this is true then you really need to get a life! I pay to play this game not sit on the ground trying to get people to buy my stuff. If that's what you want to to that's great! It really is! I'm not kidding! I think it's wonderful that this game offers so many different things to do for so many different personality types. Me? I want to log in and go trash mobs! Then, if I get some mats that are worth selling, I want to do that too. If I had a way to do it and NOT set up a private store and leave it running all night, you better believe I would. I absolutely HATE all the private stores clogging up Giran, Dion, Aden and even Oren is getting a few. Especially when probably 50% or more of the private store are from the Adena farmer bot groups. Which is still the entire reason behind this thread. BOTS!
Oh and for the other poster who was talking about killing the bots to get rid of them?
1. You can kill them all you want too, they are not going to leave! It's their jobs to do what they are doing. The only way to get rid of them is to get rid of their jobs!
2. I didn't buy this game nor do I pay every month for it so that I can spend all my time running around killing bots! Bots (mindless scripts running on a computer unmonitored) I might as well go buy a game that doesn't require the internet at all, just my computer. Because that's what this would amount too, just me playing against my computer. If you want to spent all your game time killing bots? Joy to you my friend. Have at it and kill a couple for me! I have other things to do in ths game, when I can get logged on that is. :)
Unfortunately it is beginning to appear that this thread is no longer being monitored by anyone at NC. So we are probably all barking at the moon anyway. :mad:
How do you make money when the servers are too full to even log on for hours at a time. Then these people getting on are setting up shops or sitting in town afk so they can play 2morrow without having to log in.
Banning the AFK shops will releave alot of stress on the Teon server it will at least help others get on. Bots may log on because of this but then the GMs have a better chance of catching them.
I dont use afk shops, and i still make money. So dont come with the we need these shops to make money crap.
I've made 3 mil in 8 hours.
1.5mil in pure drops 1.3-5mil in Inf Ore drops, costs 1.5mil to replace my SS and i'm set again.
15k *** will make me 3mil cash.
As a Tyrant thats [censored] loads, tyrants are the most expensive Melee class to play, but with the right equip also the most lucrative.
Ok, remove shops.. Imagine how warsmiths will get all mats for crafts..
PPl will running in giran shouting "WTB 3 bw bp parts" etc, totall mess.. And also will need actively read what others are shouting and not to miss PM.
Maybe when you are in A grade you don't care now..
There are two solutions of varying effectiveness to deal with this problem.
The first is only a stopgap and was not originally conceived by me, but it is however a very good and easy to implement idea which has no drawbacks that I can think of.
This would be the addition of a random image containing a few characters to be confirmed on every login to the Lineage II game.
Example; on the login screen you would see a small image with 3 random characters in a funny colour or sequence (I'm sure many of you have seen this on web based registrations before). You simply type the characters in a text box beside the picture to confirm you are a real person and not a bot or script.
This would add a very minor delay to every login which I don't think anyone would complain about, given the profound effect it will have.
It is extremely easy to implement, if it can be done on webpages I'm sure it can be done on our login screen.
It is almost impossible for the cheat program developers to crack. If they do end up cracking it you only have to change the random number seed that generates the pictures and yet again they are stuck (Perhaps that's the wrong explanation, but it is simple to change it so they have to start from scratch at cracking it). At best they would be able to make the image viewable on their non L2 clients (what most cheats seem to use) but even this may take them a while.
This would completely stop all auto relogging and any other auto login procedures completely. You would need to visually see the image and input the characters before you could login.
By no means will this stop the bots, oh no of course not. However, it will stop them from always being there after every downtime, every disconnect, everytime you train them and they autolog.. they can't get back unless a guy is there to input the characters. The hassle this would cause would shake the world of farming in this game for a while I'm sure.
By stopping the constant presence of afk clients you free up more slots on average for real people, should make Teon and Bartz much more playable. Additional bonus of training bots to make them autolog (they like to log when trains come near) and they wont ever return until their operator notices and inputs the codes again. You can just make them log again and yet more hassle for the operator.
Of course yet another bonus from this idea is it will allow farmers to occupy less of the market and will put all those bot sellstores on a level playing field with all real players.
I've yet to see a problem with this idea, credit to the first person who thought of this, can't remember your name.
Of course the real solution is to just work harder at catching and banning the cheaters which generally run rampant on every server. Just doing this once wont solve it though, the servers have to be kept much cleaner than they are.
This would actually stop nothing you listed. Most botter don't use the L2 client. They use an alternate client. That's why they can log in when the server's full, and why GG doesn't stop them. Try again. :mad:
1. Sad to say, that so far the only solution offered that appears to have any chance at all of stopping this bot problem is the one that I originally posted. I don't like it any more than you Sarge, (and a lot of the players), but NC just may have to sell adena to make this go away. It's becomming a quality of game play issue. The bots are making it hard, difficult and sometimes impossible to play the game. They are reducing the joy of play to the point that many players are going to quit playing and go to some other game. That means lost revenue for NC, and bad reveiws. This is not something you want going on just before you are going to release C4.
Yes, NCSoft selling Adena would almost instantly kill all bots. because they can generate adena from nothing and can underprice the current adena sellers. This would solve everyone problems. The farming bots would vanish and 3/4ths of the afk shops would dissappear. Even NCSoft would benifit as you mentioned earlier by the income from adena sales. But I have to say I think this idea should never be implimented. It would violate the integrity of the game and make it totally unfair to those who don't have access to ready cash to buy adena; not that it's fair now, but legitimizing it would totally disillusion the loyal core of players that have stayed true to the rules and not purchased adena, as well as demoralize the players too young to have a credit card to buy adena with.
Another thing is this: Correct me if I'm wrong, but NCSoft has never changed the rules to combat a problem. Added, sure; tweaked, yes. but never totally reversed. To do so now would be like saying the game cannot be played as it was ment to be according to the rules in the EULA.
They use an alternate client. That's why they can log in when the server's full, and why GG doesn't stop them.
Hmmm.... This brings up an interesting point... I've seen several times that the most popular botting program does not use the client, so I wonder...
How difficult would it be to plant a rotating validation code in the login scripts? this could be changed weekly when the servers are brought down for maintanence. This is not a retorical question, I really want to know if it's a viable solution. It seems too easy, so I imagine it must have been tried, right?
Sorry for so many posts in this thread guys... but a lot of ideas here sound good and I can't resist putting in my two cents.
I like the Universal commerce idea alot.
For us it should be as easy as when we setup a private shop, we select the item for sale, n decide on the price, then its inputed into the Universal system. I dont think this system should be a biding system tho, that might not be very good. (once the item is inputed, its clasified by what type of item it is)
I think that this is a very good idea, (I may have said that part before...) but the lineage 2 interface is not built to handle a listing of this magnitude. It would have to be generated from scratch and tested before implementation.
This is not to say it should not be done, but it's a long term thing that should be in a major patch or upgrade. we need a short term fix here to let players log in before they all leave.
This would actually stop nothing you listed. Most botter don't use the L2 client. They use an alternate client. That's why they can log in when the server's full, and why GG doesn't stop them. Try again. :mad:
I did infact mention that they didn't use the default Lineage II client. I am aware of this and the idea still stops them too.
If the server does not get the code that matches the picture generated for an attempted login you don't get in. It doesn't matter what client you use.
Type in username / password, hit login. Next screen = picture auth... tell me how the non Lineage II bot clients get past that?
If the server doesn't get the right code it doesn't let you into the game, so yes it would work.
Also I would venture to believe that no matter what client you use if the server is at it's player limit it will not let a few extra bot clients slip past. It wont let anyone in.
I believe you have a warped perception of this situation.
What I would say is that the bot programs have an advantage over logging in, because they can probably try at half a second intervals non stop until they get in, without needing a human at the computer. That is where the bots logging in before normal players theory comes from.
I mean, how much ppl are whining about the bots? Why don't we all stick together and have PK-raids all over Aden?
That would be fun I tell u. And isn't that what we pay for?
One clan won't be enough. But a couple of Alliances... maybe that would help. I say MAYBE, we can at least try! There's nothing to lose, not if you're below the 5 PK's.
Really, I don't care if you join my clan (FarmTheFarmers) or create your own one.
I think this is the most effective way against bots, if NCsoft doesn't do anything.
Well maybe they did, but the problem is still there. I won't spend my precious time about thinking of a solution. That should be the job of NCsoft.
Let's have some bloody brainless genocide PK wars against bots. Release your frustrations!
That's all I got to say...
ok I am with you on that, in fact I do it on my old main, but unfortunatly...
(1) after about 3-4pks the bots all start forcelogging when I get within 50 or so feet of them, they also forcelog on trains much to fast. Yes they relog, but I can only usually get 1 hit in on them when they forcelog again.
(2) Some people just don't care why you are red. I was out there pking bots for maybe an hour, obvious bots, soo obvious that when another character came out of along they said "oh hi, killing the bots?" after a lengthy discussion they just 1 shot me (60 dagger vs 40 in ng cloth gg.) for relativly no reason, I was not griefing anyone except bots, I explained that, and even though they came dressed in ng gear as well, I never showed aggression. So unless there is really like an official bot killing clan on each server people just kill reds, and besides I would hate to see the griefers trying to use "I was killing bots" as a get out of jail free pass.
Organize the bot killers, put them under one tag, and then probably the farmers and pro farmer-clans will come after them ( we all know they are there..). So it just kind of is one of those situations. Although it would be nice and fun :P
Sorry for so many posts in this thread guys... but a lot of ideas here sound good and I can't resist putting in my two cents.
I like the Universal commerce idea alot.
For us it should be as easy as when we setup a private shop, we select the item for sale, n decide on the price, then its inputed into the Universal system. I dont think this system should be a biding system tho, that might not be very good. (once the item is inputed, its clasified by what type of item it is)
I think that this is a very good idea, (I may have said that part before...) but the lineage 2 interface is not built to handle a listing of this magnitude. It would have to be generated from scratch and tested before implementation.
This is not to say it should not be done, but it's a long term thing that should be in a major patch or upgrade. we need a short term fix here to let players log in before they all leave.
I am sorry, but if there actually does have to be some kind of selling/buying system other than the one inplace IT SHOULD NOT BE A UNIVERSAL ONE. there, now why you ask? Because it would completely [censored] up playing the market. As is now, I can buy cheap one place and sell more expensive somwhere else. For example on Lionna C.Leather sells for 9-10k in Dion shops, while it can be sold in Giran for 12-13K.
Globalizing/Universalizing will ruining that. You see when you universalize prices then everyone in everytown has access to all the prices and price records, thus creating an accepted norm for each item there would be no more of oh well I am going to sell this [censored] in Giran and I could sell these too, why not buy them for 9k and resell them for 12k? Universalizing prices would be as good as putting all items in the lux shop imo. The only way to make money then would be to craft or do the manor system, and I think we all can agree that that is largely [censored](manor, not crafting, but how many really want to roll up a high level crafter just to make enough money to play their main?).
Hmmm.... This brings up an interesting point... I've seen several times that the most popular botting program does not use the client, so I wonder...
How difficult would it be to plant a rotating validation code in the login scripts? this could be changed weekly when the servers are brought down for maintanence. This is not a retorical question, I really want to know if it's a viable solution. It seems too easy, so I imagine it must have been tried, right?
Great sugggestion Aburi. I also think this shouldn't be too difficult.
Also love Skyler's (or whoever thaught it out first) idea of login picture athorizations.
Both should work great and I believe would at least severly limit the scale of the problem.
I am sorry, but if there actually does have to be some kind of selling/buying system other than the one inplace IT SHOULD NOT BE A UNIVERSAL ONE. there, now why you ask? Because it would completely [censored] up playing the market. As is now, I can buy cheap one place and sell more expensive somwhere else. For example on Lionna C.Leather sells for 9-10k in Dion shops, while it can be sold in Giran for 12-13K.
Globalizing/Universalizing will ruining that. You see when you universalize prices then everyone in everytown has access to all the prices and price records, thus creating an accepted norm for each item there would be no more of oh well I am going to sell this [censored] in Giran and I could sell these too, why not buy them for 9k and resell them for 12k? Universalizing prices would be as good as putting all items in the lux shop imo. The only way to make money then would be to craft or do the manor system, and I think we all can agree that that is largely [censored](manor, not crafting, but how many really want to roll up a high level crafter just to make enough money to play their main?).
This is a good point. It would make working the market much less profitable (note my earlier posts about making money). I have two considerations about this though:
1. Assume that you have to go the the sellers town to make the purchase, this would allow at least some variations in prices.
2. It need not be globalized. The point is to make an NPC to replace AFK shops.
I am sorry, but if there actually does have to be some kind of selling/buying system other than the one inplace IT SHOULD NOT BE A UNIVERSAL ONE. there, now why you ask? Because it would completely [censored] up playing the market. As is now, I can buy cheap one place and sell more expensive somwhere else. For example on Lionna C.Leather sells for 9-10k in Dion shops, while it can be sold in Giran for 12-13K.
Globalizing/Universalizing will ruining that. You see when you universalize prices then everyone in everytown has access to all the prices and price records, thus creating an accepted norm for each item there would be no more of oh well I am going to sell this [censored] in Giran and I could sell these too, why not buy them for 9k and resell them for 12k? Universalizing prices would be as good as putting all items in the lux shop imo. The only way to make money then would be to craft or do the manor system, and I think we all can agree that that is largely [censored](manor, not crafting, but how many really want to roll up a high level crafter just to make enough money to play their main?).
This is a good point. It would make working the market much less profitable (note my earlier posts about making money). I have two considerations about this though:
1. Assume that you have to go the the sellers town to make the purchase, this would allow at least some variations in prices.
2. It need not be globalized. The point is to make an NPC to replace AFK shops.
the only way I would ever agree to npc shops replacing pc shops, is if it worked like this.
____________________________________________
-you hire an npc from a main npc guy in each village. you pay based on how long your npc would sit and how many slots it would have.
-you then place your npc in a town, much like the castle guards can be placed for sieges.
-you then put what you wanted up for sale on the NPC. All money from items sold is immediatly transfered to your warehouse. All items bought are immediatly transfered to your warehouse. Anything not sold after the time you purchased is imediatly transfered back to your warehouse.
-You and only you can change the prices and things inside the NPC shop you put up at anytime by clicking on them and selecting the option to add/subtract or change prices within the shop.
_____________________________________________
So basically you just have a bunch of NPC's sitting around the towns to click on like people now, but without the people connected.
But, I would prefer that they make the authentication loop and the fuzzy pictures so that the botters cannot log in using their client of L2, and then the fuzzy pictures would help to prevent them from just adding second party things to L2 to log bots again. As well as GG should do its job once they are back on the original client.
Still all temp fixes really, until server caps increase.
- couse 100% CPU usage, maybe a primitiv idea to handikap BOT - programs.
- let overpopulate server so long, like there are enough new player on the server (Teon), after it is over, BOTs go to the new one
- result: Lionna, Erica , Gustin, ... are only half-full, nobody want to start on these server, because they have too much high - level players and too less new
I searched BOT - applications for lineage2. I found 2, L2Agent, [censored]. For both you must pay monthly 5-10€. These programs looks lie very professional. It's clear that these programs give indirektly (i hope ! only indirektly) money to L2 (because accounts), and that's the reason why L2 do nothing against BOT's. (1+1 = 2) :(
Solution for full servers: make queue's like in WoW ;), and do something against 100% CPU usage, because in this time player want to do something else.
- couse 100% CPU usage, maybe a primitiv idea to handikap BOT - programs.
- let overpopulate server so long, like there are enough new player on the server (Teon), after it is over, BOTs go to the new one
- result: Lionna, Erica , Gustin, ... are only half-full, nobody want to start on these server, because they have too much high - level players and too less new
I searched BOT - applications for lineage2. I found 2, L2Agent, [censored]. For both you must pay monthly 5-10€. These programs looks lie very professional. It's clear that these programs give indirektly (i hope ! only indirektly) money to L2 (because accounts), and that's the reason why L2 do nothing against BOT's. (1+1 = 2) :(
Solution for full servers: make queue's like in WoW ;), and do something against 100% CPU usage, because in this time player want to do something else.
perhaps time to upgrade? Somedays when I don't feel like playing I keep a shop alt-tabbed and play something else, as long as I have low detail option on I have no problems. Thief 3, hell I even ran SwG once when they had a free trial with no problems (it sucked ;/ ).
Maybe you have deleted your GameGuard directory, and didn't refreshed it ;)
If i start the L2 (im not in the game), have 100% CPU usage.(login frame, and server choose frame)
And, if they would make a queue like in WoW, it shouldn't be use all the CPU time.
Then you come up with a way that quaranties the bots will leave. Also, if you read further in the post I made I said that there should be a limit on the amount that players can buy for their account. AND, with the manor system available again, those who can't buy can make adena using it. Right now as I type this post, I can't log into Bartz. The removal of the adena farmers from the system will resolve this issue instantly.
My aggravation is getting the best of me... If only PlayNC could punch in all of the credit card numbers as many times as the people who've punched in their passwords and been denied access in the past 5 minutes they might act on this a bit sooner than "someday".
Also love Skyler's (or whoever thaught it out first) idea of login picture athorizations.
Thank you for being the first person to offer a positive response to that idea :)
It is a good idea but can't solve all our problems. It would however offer a very noticable improvement in a lot of areas for very little initial effort.
Yea, i'm a new player (3 weeks of playing) but i'm already thinking of leaving this game cos it really gets on my nerves when i have to type my password about 30 times before i can log in to Teon (and that's IF i can log in, which isnt even the case right now, i've been trying for about half an hour...)
Sarge, you seem like a nice guy when i read your posts, could you please keep us updated on what NCSoft intend to do ? But i mean, really DO ?
(and we all know that banning the f***ing bots would be the solution)
Heres a solution for your "bot" problem, Its implemented on most websites to date. at the login screen u have username password and then another box u have a random string of letters/numbers formulated which the user has to type into a box personaly i dont think bots can see and or are smart enought to bypass this, and frankly dont know why it wasnt done in c1 or before amature tbh.
Yea, i'm a new player (3 weeks of playing) but i'm already thinking of leaving this game cos it really gets on my nerves when i have to type my password about 30 times before i can log in to Teon (and that's IF i can log in, which isnt even the case right now, i've been trying for about half an hour...)
Sarge, you seem like a nice guy when i read your posts, could you please keep us updated on what NCSoft intend to do ? But i mean, really DO ?
(and we all know that banning the f***ing bots would be the solution)
I've said this a million times and i'm going to say it again, open a support ticket and let them know the server you play on is full. You need to be telling them that not us on the boards.
I've said this a million times and i'm going to say it again, open a support ticket and let them know the server you play on is full. You need to be telling them that not us on the boards.
I'm not telling YOU that, i'm telling Sarge who has opened this discussion thread exactly for this !
If you dont wanna read about this, dont read this thread, simple as that.
Also sarge..... Is a woman not a guy.
:p
He he... ok, i didnt know that, but anyways, Sarge is a nice girl then (well, i dont know her, but her messages are nice, unlike the ones from Star Wars Galaxies where i come from)
I suggest everybody repeats this in his posts for that this useless thread can be closed - or that the admins have something to do. At least then there would be a few persons in this company that gets paid for doing actual work. The tech staff obviously does nothing.
Perhaps someone can design a homepage logo. Must be something with nc soft, lineage2 and the fact that this company sucks.
And btw - the "fuzzy images thingy": it wont come. As then a lots of botters would leave and then all the incapable players that cant live without them. So not only the bot accs are gone then. And if it comes i bet nc soft makes it to implement the system in a way that is so bot friendly that they can circumvent it.
Why the hell are all ppl so friendly to this bunch of morons (sry "nc soft staff"/"nc soft personel"). They do NOT deserve respect, politeness or anything else. Or would you be friendly to a fraudster selling a service and not providing it - think about it and see the fact that this behavior is fraudulent.
Oh and yes before all the "that's not sarge's fault buhuhu" posts come. He is here to take the beating and he gets paid with the money YOU pay for a service you can't access. I shed a tear for sarge tomorrow.
Replace all "he" in my post with "she" if sarge is a woman. Doesnt matter - let's agree on "he" as an gender-neutral pronoun refering to administrators. Still he/she and his/her company sucks
I just looked through the forums, and this is now the largest thread in the whole set. The topic of Bots/Economy (one always leads stright to the other) has more than twice the posts of the next topic. The next leading topic is technical problems leading to inability to connect.
Is there any chance we can see some evidance that this post is even monitored? This seems to be the number one reason players leave the game at the moment and it would reassure me to know that our suggestions are at least being read.
lol its Siege and i get disconnected from server and cant login back even after like 100 tries. WAsnt Siege supposed to be the most fun part of this game? And what is it now Sarge?
I cant login to participate in that siege?
Starting to get bored with NCSoft & Teon...1h to get online, using gk between aden and fg, then crash !!! **** good !!!
Thank for doing absolutely NOTHING, i think i'll stop my account: it's absolutly useless to pay for not to be able to play...
Im on teon and in the middle of a siege i get disconnected. as do half my alliance. Now we cant get logged back in result..... seige lost. SORT OUT THIS NOW OR LOSE PAYING PLAYERS.
This isnt a threat... its a fact. i know numerous members of my alliance who are annoyed at the fact they cant log in at night.
Even if we cant get logged in a QUEUE system would be great so we dont have to type in our passwords EVERY SINGLE TIME!
Well, if you think NCSoft is bad, i suggest you never ever play any game from Sony Online ! :p
I cant really judge NCSoft cos i'm quite new to the game, but i played City Of Villains before (just after cancelling my Star Wars Galaxies account because of this REALLY bad bunch of people called Sony Online), and so far i think that NCSoft is an ok MMORPG studio !
Except for that Teon server thing, this is getting ridiculous now, i've been trying to connect for the last 2 hours, but there's absolutely no way to log in !!!!! :mad:
Even if we cant get logged in a QUEUE system would be great so we dont have to type in our passwords EVERY SINGLE TIME!
Hey even if u take 1000 apes they might write shakespear after 1000 years by accident. But NC Soft America is developing nothing. They get their [censored] from the korean devs and a qeue system - i mean: It's not necessary over there because they got
good servers. WE GOT [censored] SERVERS HOSTED BY A BUNCH OF MORONS.
But hey an idea - why do we actually post that in a forum to which only ppl have access that already made the mistake and bought l2. I think we should transfer the discussion to some other forum - to the ones of big computer mags.
Main problem right now is all the bots have auto login capibilities so they are free to hammer the login server every second nonstop till they are in. But it only gets worse.. right now on erica we now have not one but two full chinese raid farmer clans that decimate all raid bosses making getting a subclass near impossible. They have banned them before but they just make new toons and do it again.. they even got the balls to tag them in the same clans because they know ncsoft wont do crap to them.
Want the real problem? NCsoft for lineage2 america is just an offshoot of korean lineage2, there are not that many legitimate players for the american servers so to management how do you fill the servers up so your making a profit? Do you boot the bots and make no profit or keep them and screw the legitimate player who is by far a minority for the american populations?
Remember this is a korean game... all of their developement is focused on the koreans.. they have no reason to care about the american counterpart when they got millions of koreans all over this game and face it.. it just wasnt that big of a hit in north america/europe.
As mentioned earlier in this thread there is one major way to stop the bots from destroying the login system as they are atm and that is to use words in pictures as most forums use to register new accounts and other places to stop auto scripts.
This one simple and easily programible feature would force all of the botters to at least suffer from having to type in codes by hand and take their pot luck with the rest of us.. but what i suspect will happen as in the past they do a supersized bot banning for the start of c4 and not only that but they also do a major upgrade to allow more people to be online at once which they would have to do for korean servers primarly.. this will backfire however as after c4 the bots will be able to double their current numbers and utterly destroy any chance at normal play.
I think C4 will be a major event for L2 for the legitimate player, if the C4 launch and policy with botters doesnt change.. there gonna quit in droves as they already are for the full servers.
Well just to say that me and my friends have a local where we go toghter when we play online.
Just atm, 21 accounts from lineage 2 (our full clan) get deactivated.
Thats 21 more spot for ur lovely bots, gratz on them.
We know that ur [censored] company will not go to hell for 21 acounts deactivated, is only that when you pay for playing, want to be able to play.Not going to give u our $ for nothing nevermore.
I don't think that NCsoft or GM are reading this topic, so its no use to post something here.....
Yea, i have the same impression. It reminds me when I was playing on the priv server, there was no replies from the GM side and no progress on repairing major disadvantages. Because of that i've decided to move to the official servers and... now I can't play either - it's the very same here!! :mad:
I dont think so. If i will leave this game, you, and more 10 peoples its wouldn't change anything. There are enough Hight level players , who dont need any adena now, and who dont care about manor sytem or hunting grouds for another players with a lower Lv. So they will stay here. And i think i will leave Lineage, i wanted to make Phantom ranger , but its immpossible to earn adena even for Emi Bow, since Bots are using manor, i havent got any idea where i can get about 20kk:((( Just immpossible to play:_(
If their so crap get rid of your account stop paying them and hush your bantering, Wont solve anything Isajha
1) i wont stop coz im paying 2 other accs
2) why should i listen to you - who are you to tell me what to do? lol but anyway...
...do YOU have anything interesting to contribute - or just "ban all bots pleeeease" - this thread is pointless. as long as i play this game nc soft never listened to his costumers and they wont do that now. They never ever fixed something in time - so why should they do now? They let this thread run till c4 comes out and see if it gets better then.
So i use this thread the way it's worth it. As a place for ranting as no one except of sarge and the other useless forum slaves read it. And i will continue that this way till they fix it. If my posts get deleted - fine. If this thread gets closed i will post it in another thread. Any questions. So i guess u gotta live with it. 1 char so far logged after 4h... now trying the second 1. That's great NoClue Soft.
dude its just pointless we all know they dont care what we say good or bad i add my 2 cent i personaly think getting rid of the botting on the game will give it a better name and thus bring more people into the game but your intitled to your own opinion ;p
As long as ppl pay them money they dont have to listen to you.
So repeat after me:
- My account
- Log in
- Deactivate
- Log out
Its quite easy people. I already did it =) NO company is going to steal my money, cause when you dont get a service for what you paid for, its Stealing!
They can not get rid of them, they do not want to get rid of them. They dont even try. Ok let's say they ban 1800 accs (i think that was the last *big* ban right?)
1800/9=200 accs per server? That's just LOL. Hilarious. If they did that every 2 weeks then we *perhaps* dont have anymore bots.
There is no way of getting rid of 3rd party programs btw. NO way.
Why the hell do i have to deal with the bots. I'm a player. I do not have the duty to report [censored]. NC soft logs everything chat dialogues, msn blahblah everything. So why the hell do they say "privacy" when it comes to bots. They dont care monitoring our chats but they can not investigate bots on their own.
Ok this is what I think NCSoft needs to do in terms of anti-bot software:
Anyone who has hosted a punkbuster enabled game probably knows about the pb_getss function, which takes a screenshot of the client's game(only the game, not desktop or anything personal). If this kind of feature was added, there would be virtually NO WAY for someone to fool a GM into thinking they were not using an out of game bot program. If the program sent a fake screenshot, it would be pretty easy to tell by their surroundings. If necessary, the GM could become visible in game and ask them to put them in their camera view as a test.
As far as in game bot programs, there simply needs to be better bot detection than there currently is. Keep things updated, keep checking for new versions of the software, which is EASILY detectable because of it's use of in-game hooks. I know NCSoft would probably never do this, but I think they need to get in touch with evenbalance.com and see if they have a better solution to the problem, because all gameguard does is make L2 take longer to startup.
I do agree with the NPC Hub for buying/selling. I think that buy/sell shops should still be allowed because it would make things especially difficult for crafters to make money, but for people selling weapons/armor it would be a great addition, and cut down on the amount of logged in players immensely.
And really, NC Asian is their REAL market.
NCNA's just their little "side project"
If NCNA doesn't shape up, they will lose their players.
You lose players, you lose bots.
You lose both, you make no money.
NC Asian pulls the plug.
Bai bai.
After 8 pages of responses no one from NCNA's said anything here. So, one has to deduce that they're out doing one of these things:
1. Hiding
2. Screwing off/Sleeping
3. Working on one of these solutions without saying anything about it
4. Working on another solution without saying anything about it
5. Working on something completely unrelated
I'm guessing it's some combination of 1, 2 and 5. I'd like to think either 3 or 4 are going on somewhere in there, but based on NCNA's past performance on matters like this, that's a definite loser's bet.
Anyway, keep hope alive, peace out.
NCNA SUCKS - For now...please change? I love you long time?
Now, this is really getting ridiculous...
I've been trying all day long to access the Teon server, and when i finally can, the server goes down after less than one hour of playing !!!!
If i have to retype my password one more time, my PC will be flying out of the window !
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO SOMETHING !!!!!
well, so much for the theory that the Korean servers don't have the bot problems that we do here... They just gave up on fixing it apparently, Like they are doing here...
There is only one solution - play PTS (yep, C4 pts is on) untill Teon will be upgraded to C4 :( :D
From where i come that is called surrender.
So my option is to play in a temporal an future wiped server with other chars. Well this has to be an option, why not.
But the great problem here is greed. Hey no problem but please be sincere and talk clear with the customers. The minimum is a "sorry my fault".
A server have a cap to warranty a good server enviroment. Every server. The fact is, if xxxx players log, then access is restricted and no more players can enter.
If there is a limit, why they let so much players play on Teon? Why was permited to so many people play on Teon?
Why they don´t say "woops limit of players to warranty good play has been exceed, i think i dont gonna let new players on this server, or the existing players are gonna kill me". This must to be made months ago. Its called prevention, safe restrictions.
Why when was close of cap they don´t say: sorry can create a char on Teon is full, try another server?
Right know there is people making new accounts and trying to make chars on Teon. And they can (when they succes to log in). In a full oversized server can enter more new people? what type of logic have that?
Why let the bottle be full of water instead of put a resonable preventive cap in the neck? If this cap was really tested i can tell it sucks cause the current cap have more players out than in.
Sorry but a "hey, we reached the cap, funny uh?" is a little offensive. Other games and communities make a "sorry my fault" when this sort of things happens.
In weekend my ally was in siege time. Me and half of my ally was unable to enter. We lost the oportunity of take the castle.
Was necesary 2 weeks of bad login to make this official thread. 2 weeks. How much weeks or months to inform players and make an excuse?
I know the forum staff make this the best they can and guys i don´t want to blame you cause i know it isn´t your fault, everybody have his work. But i wasted all my ways: support ticket, forum, ingame petition... what more i can do? just quit and say bye bye to the game? what more can i do?
lol after the siege yesterday some ppl in my alliance gonna leave game too (Teon), i cant believe i get disconnected during siege and cant login back.
My account expires in some days and i highly doubt i will reactivate it.
They just gave up on fixing it apparently, Like they are doing here...
They gave up on fixing it, or smth more....
``They don't have any reason to stop it. They know the item market actually helps increase their popularity. Some developers even try to boost the trading market for their products.''
Another dealer, Lee Myung-hoon, also believes that NCsoft has benefited the tmost from the item sales market.
``They have the power to control the flow of the adenas using various methods within the game'' said Lee, who operated Sunitem.com until last year. ``No one would deny that `Lineage's' success is based on the item market.''
one way or another, i gave up on playing retail, same as my several friends :]
I agree with most of the people here. The player cap on the servers is due to an abundance of farmers who use a 3rd party program to control their actions. Banning these people, however, will not solve the problem. It's a temporary solution to the problem. Instead you need to fix the engine in a way that cripples the opportunity of modders creating these programs, and continually updating the engine with patches so newer programs wont work. It's the same concept as a virus protection program for your home computer. Gold farmers will always be on any popular MMOG that is out there. In my opinion I rather have the gold farmer sitting at the computer working for the gold as a job then setting up an array of accounts and having a program run them all while he/she watches TV. It comes to the point where, as a company, you need to either keep the community happy by fixing the problem or just ignoring it to generate a higher revenue. Banning the botters is just going to force them to create new accounts. They will keep on using the same programs to do what they are doing and the same problems will still plague the servers to the point that you loose the actual userbase.
Other solutions are to move players accounts to other un-populated servers. Maybe move an entire clan or give the players items as incentive to move servers. You could also implement a cap to the number of people who can initally sign up on a server when they create a new character.
I want back my money from NCSoft. FOR WHAT I PAID, IF I CANNOT PLAY? :mad: I have realy no more fun with L2! Im very bored to waiting 2h long to log in the game, type in the password 1000 times. I dont see reason, why i should play with L2, because TEON is full and i cannot play with.
I live in europe, and i want play sieges in europe - times, so i have no more possibility to choose another server.
A QUEUE - system is the minimum what they can do for full servers!!!
1. there is only one server for europe (important for siege times), so we dont want tho choose another one
2. programmers know that it is an easy way to block BOT's
- SSL, maybe couse a bit higher ping
- make a good login-application, a complicated encodeing, encode it maybe with an changed LZ77, LZ78 LZW, (need a very much time to recognize the algorithmus. Doesn't influence the ping times. AND you are able to change the encoding algorithmus maybe every week.
Teon is full (as in can't log in) from about 7am EST till about 8pm EST every day for last 2 weeks, DO SOMETHING for the love of god
we don't need a transfer, we need a new server, transfers just ruin the game, why they didn't do it for teon
we need an IP ban on ALL asian IP's they have their own servers
NC needs to hire competent people, needs people to actually ban bots, saying what is 2+2 to a bot party is assanine you know they are a bot, so just type in /ban
If every "human" player leave the game, the bots will leave too. Why? noone will buy adena, no human players left.
But thats not going to happen becose there still lineage 2 addicts who can wait 1 or 2 or 3 months for a solution.
That what I deactivated account, is only a video game, dont worth to pay $ for not playing.
If anyone wanna still "not" playing a game but paying for it , is their problem, there are 1000 mmoprgs out there, some better, some worse, but for sure can find one u can play when u want.
AND again the same, is only a video game, someday u'll stop playing, or maybe the game will dissapear, maybe ull find one better for u.
My advice, If u are getting angry with ncsoft etc etc, just send the game to hell, and find another thing to do.
I am in total agreement with the last several posts.
NCSoft has given us no indication that they have even looked at this thread, and bots are taking over the servers. It's time for us to put up or shut up.
It's time for the player base to leave. let the couple dozen hard core gamers stay, the ones I know don't buy adena anyway. maby in 6 months or so we can check back to see if the problem is resolved.
I heard Convict and some clans in conspiracy (rumored to be botters and ebayers) had a massive ban in the past week... but for 3 days? lol? my alliance was sieging this past weekend and guess what? more than half of us got crits during the siege and werent able to relog in. zzzzzzzzzzzzz hope you guys liked the mass amounts of petitions u got... it was nice conversing with the admins- autoreplies ftw. after that, several people quit the game... imo nc soft doesnt care whether the server is full of players or bots, as long as they get the money.
I got the game by Xmas. If the server continues being so FULL and unstable I will have to leave. A pirate server will offer me better service, but I do not want to play a pirate server. I want the full true gaming experience. This also means that bots are making me leave. How can there be groups named "asfd01", "asfd02, "asfd03", etc. farming on the same spot and no game master doing anything about it???????!
Reviews told me that the grind and leveling was very hard. What they missed was that you can bypass all this hard farming with ebay and bots, if the full server let's you play. Very bad game and community management. If things continue like this a few more weeks, I won't be happy at all. For me a MMORPG is a long term project, so leaving would be a bad thing, but i'll do so if I have to. I'm sad :-(
CNSoft is most likely working together with Adena Selling Companies, thats why they rarely touch Farmers.
Really guys, whoever reads this Thread, show CNSoft who is the boss and deactivate your accounts, im doing it, u can do it too. We are paying for a Game we cant even play and its getting worse every day, and CNSoft is laughing his *** off coz people still pay for their game. Customer is the King! Show them!!! YOU CANT FOOL ME ANYMORE CNSOFT! Lets see how much longer u will cover your Bots and Adena selling companies.
I wanna say i think NCSOFT doesnt have any control on the server anymore,
the even ban players that beg them for 120+ mails that there never used an 3th party program. Aint that strange ?
I reported 4x the same bot train in DeathPass still there (some days ago) (pkd them away cuz hey i was ******).
I think ppl reported alot of farmers and bots and there still there.
I think NCSOFT lost control over teon and bartz allready. looks like if they ban 2k people they get 4k back.
i deactivated allready because im not paying for an game i cant login at my times im off from work,
even lost mannon for my staff now I CANT play 1 week cuz i couldnt login on saturday...
so i couldnt trade my weapon back nice aint it ?
sooo Go go what happends if more ppl deactivates will l2 then die ?
why can a game called eve-online run 22000+ clients on one server and ncsoft fails at 3/4k on 1/2 servers ?
i read about a topic if ppl just have to enter 4 / 5 digits thats automaticly generated at login screen on an Image
to verify that there really entered those digits etc etc.
Loved that idea.
other idea:
Hey why dont ban EBAYERS cuz ebayers is were farmers life of and it safes time cuz less ebayers = less farmers =
no income for these farmers.
THIS game i LOVED and ENJOYED is getting on my nerfs now.
Bye NCSoft, this game looks like the best MMORPG at the time, but you made the same error like GoA (DAoC), we are the CLIENTs, we pay for you, dont ignore us.
The minimum is a statement for so much unsatisfactory things.
Don'T be so naive that this game will not have bots. WoW has them L2 has them and RFO will have them too.
Well, sure, I'd say that on a technical or customer support level. There's only so much a game company can do to limit bot activity. However from the feedback from earlier beta-testers only a moron would buy anything in this game. It's supposedly so easy to gear yourself up, it's sickening. The only thing that balances it is the "destroyable" gear and stuff. Basically your stuff blows up frequently, but your rich and stuff, so who cares?
I know I just made that sound like crap in a can...in my head it sounded better...bleh go read the PH Beta forums or something...it sounds better when they say it. :P
Hey you know what ?
Today i could login into Teon !
And wait, there's even better : i could login TWICE ! In the same day ! :eek:
Did they finally do something ? Ban all the bots ? Unshare the server with the PTS ? Read the posts in here at last and fear that we were all gonna leave for RFOnline ? :p
Think this game is almost death, we are getting no official response to how and when they are going to act. They make a forum post so all the complaints are in one post and that's it. Many ppl I know are leaving the game. Even if they can solve something a lot of players are not going to pay for another period.
I am going to leave when my game time expires. There are more MORPG's with better customer support.
Nowadays in this game all the content is for high levels, and is IMPOSIBLE to lvl up to those levels if u dont have top equipment and u spam SS or bsps thats the fact. Whats the problem on that? For sure that u can make money using dorfs etc, but not all ppl can spend 8+ hours every day making money, or 8+ hours leveling up, and that ppl want to see the high level content... and the sad part is that a lot of them use ebay or powerlevel.
And botter knows that, if ure not a power gamer who spend 8+ 10+ or 12+ hours a day making money, exping etc, probably u'll need them, thats why this [censored] game is so full of bots.
And bot problem isnt the same as always, when I started playing I saw bots for sure, maybe 3 at dwarf town, 2 at roa, 5 at rod... nowadays I counted 79 different at dwarf town, 31 at roa, 19 at rod, 21 at disciples outside, 59 at witch inside, 21 at branded, 117 at Toi. (numbers of bots I count in my last day ingame) and thats only in few locs, if u count all dungeons in game etc, they should be more than 1500 or 2000 bots every day playing.
Another of my points of view is, How many partys have u seen with ppl not equipped with top grade and burning ss outside ur clan? My answer 0. I got 3 friends who left the game becose in 1 month, at branded, 1 destroyer, 1 dark avenger and 1 tyrant got 0 (yes cero) partys becose they were using some parts d grade and dome low C, and ppl only get players with top eq.
Again the same, if ure not a powergamer, or u dont have time for making 3 chars, and counting that in this game is almost imposible to get a full drop, if u wanna play after 40+, or u ebay or better leave the game.
Ncsoft will not make nothing against bots, If they ban bots, bots will leave, but also lot of players who got bored of exping or farming 2 or 3 hours a day for not getting anything (well, a level every month or so) so there will be only the powergamers playing...that means lot less money for them.
i agree with your post, Suleiman. i also think that we should take some action on this. are there no lawyers playing this game? im sure some of us do have some connection with layers/lay firms and i am also sure that there is possible to take action against NCsoft, because surely they are not takeing care of it's customers. this is business and in business you have to play fair. we, the true and legit players play it fair, we pay and obey, and our interests are harmed. while others that do not follow the rules of the contract not only do not get punished, but they are the main cause of our "damage".
it has to be possible to drag this matter in court.
i agree with your post, Suleiman. i also think that we should take some action on this. are there no lawyers playing this game? im sure some of us do have some connection with layers/lay firms and i am also sure that there is possible to take action against NCsoft, because surely they are not takeing care of it's customers. this is business and in business you have to play fair. we, the true and legit players play it fair, we pay and obey, and our interests are harmed. while others that do not follow the rules of the contract not only do not get punished, but they are the main cause of our "damage".
it has to be possible to drag this matter in court.
Wasn't there a class-action law suit against SoE after the original EQ servers went down for like a week, or something like that? IIRC SoE Lost, but not because the servers were down.
IIRC, the ruling was something to the effect of: "Servers go down, technical difficulties happen, every player realizes that. But it's the company's responsibility to put forth reasonable effort to make sure it's not a bad, or chronic, occurance."
Something like that. Basically. SoE had to pay out, not because the servers were down, but because they really weren't trying very hard to bring them back up within any reasonable amount of time.
Unfortunately NCSoft does enough idiotic tailchasing that, if this were ever brought to court, they could probably cite their innane activities and be vindicated. :P
Ok, forget about my last post, i just tried to login for like 50 times today but guess what ? "Access failed, try again later"...
When is RFOnline gonna be released ?
Nah, the pre-order boxes ship 14th Feburary. I think the servers do go "live" on the 10th though, for people who did the beta. That's right, we get a 5 day headstart (ship 14th=you get it 15th). EAT IT! :cool:
Well, I was many times in catacombs and saw bots I have called GM's and reported them they did nothing. I told them that it's a bot, told them why it's about and how you can detect them and test. GM was only saying this is not your problem tell us names and we will ask them. Pff what a hell owner is always there and will answer on any question with his bad english :(
Issue... Banning for boting for a week, if he will bot again ban him for 2 weeks if again for 3 weeks and etc...
People or bots who leave their trades for 1-5 days pff insane.. :( There must be some kind of limit like after 6hours of trading you gonna stand up and pay tax like 10k if you will do this on your own you wont pay any taxes or something like that...
Afk mode... just sitting on the ground for a long time... maybe owner forget about l2... doing his job or went to party, his char is still online and lagging us, to solve this there must be timer some kind of timer... if u dont move your mouse 1hour you gonna be disconnected to login panel....
Most of the Bot'S out there have already an auto-response script.. So if you ask "Are you a bot?" the bot will say "of course not". You can only make sure if it's a bot if you REALLY try to talk with them.
I don't know... I have an acc at the european Ragnarok Online Server and of course there're some bots - but there's also a special GM Group - called "Bot Hunters" who hunt for bots. You really have to try hard to find any bot there and if you do and report him a GM will check it after a few minutes ^^
One day at sieghardt server, 2 years ago, me and a friend make an experiment, he petitioned about me, saying that I was a bot.
A gm talk with me asking question like :
-name.
-where am I from.
-last adena drop (how much).
-exp/sp I get from my last kill.
-since when I was playing.
Easy to catch a bot If u answer "im not a bot" to all question.
Whats the problem on that?
- what about is someone only speaks spanish?or french?or german?or korean?... and u answer to all questions : sorry I dont speak english?
wanna know what happens? nothing, I was on a clan at teon where ppl uses bots, I left the clan and reported some of them.... Well, they all response to GMS : sorry I dont speak english. And the funny part, there are videos of them botting at l2blah, theyve said on forums directly that they bot, and they have screnshots of their bots on their web answering : Sorry I dont speak english... and they still ingame with level 70+, botting since level 30.
GMS ingame really dont care, and NCSOFT don care neither. Why dont they get gms who speak english and the rest of european languages? or korean or chinese?.
Or another thing, do you think that any gm ever get in game?
Disciples necropolis outside
3 bot partys 2 months there, with names like asjdhas, usagambls, securybbz, aiyyyoi, ooiouy, number00 etc... 21 bots. All with d grade,noone using ss, they sit exactly at same time, stand at same time, heal at same time...with santa event, first days noone of them picking up presents, the 21 guys walk exactly in the same line, logging at same time, and logging the 21 when u flag in any of them, logging the 21 at time, 24/7 same spot.
Ive sent 90+ emails to support with names, I made a fraps video, got screenshots, reported to gms 5 times a day during almost 2 months....
Any GM can , with only getting in game, look (FOR SURE) that theyre bots. why after 2 month they still playing at the same spot without any response from gms?
That was one of my main reason for leaving lineage 2, another was GM arsis from teon teleporting a clan mate from witch to talking island saying : "im not going to allow u harrasing other players" .
That was after that friend trained 2 bot partys at witch.
Now THAT is something I can relate to! This will even be more possible in C4, with "heroes" being given global chat. All they have to do is send out a little shout sayin "OK people, anyone who wants to f**k up some bots, disrupt their farming time by ganking them...come to such-and-such a place, as quick as you can - all clans, all allies, and we'll all just PK the bot trains til they give up." If any clans or allies turn up to protect the bots, we'll know who's behind some of the farming and can petition against them. But seriously, people, you have FIVE PETITIONS PER DAY!!! You might as well be using them. NCSoft will ban if enough people make petitions about the same bots.
And if anyone is struggling to get on and has access to vent, just ask very nicely if some kind people from your clan might want to take a huge-@ss train through a cata, round and round and round. The bots can forcelog as often as they want, but the more they do it, the less time they're spending getting drops. And if there is a 400 man gank squad of people who are ****** off with the bots waiting for the protectors to show up outside the necro or wherever....well....then at least there should be some fun :)
C'mon guys, this is a PvP game. All you dorfs just get your blunt weapons and stun a few bot healers while the THs bring the trains round :)DD
If we can't do anything to get rid of them, we should at least make their time online unprofitable for them and more entertaining for us. I'm so frustrated at not being able to log onto Teon that I have routinely considered quitting. The only thing that is keeping me hanging in there is all the effort I put into levelling her back in the good old days when Teon wasn't labelled the Euro server, and it was good-normal at whatever time of day.
Honestly, the only thing about making a new server is that all the bots would flock there to get a headstart in the adena race.....which is precisely why, if a new server is made, I shall be staying on teon....
But u are paying for playing the game, not for cleaning the servers, thats gm's and ncsoft job.
If u can (maybe) only play 2 hours a day, why the hell must u spend that 2 hours in "making something about bots" . Thats the Gm´s and ncsoft responsability not ours.
We are paying for a service, or are we paying for making their job? OMG for sure no, theyre getting our money, so they MUST do the work not us.
And this situation is becose all that ppl who thinks :
- Bot problems? Players will do something, dont worry if ncsoft is doing nothing against them.
- Cant loggin? bah, servers will get better in one month at C4.
THEY DO NOTHING BECOSE THERE ARE PPL HAPPYLY PAYING THEM FOR DOING NOTHING.
alot of player (legit players getting fed up with ncsoft policy vs illegal ones) are leaving the game. wich is good.
first cause thats what they are suppose to be doing, altho L2 beeing awesome game and all, you pay for it and you have rights, youre not getting your kick anymore, you have to leave. the more you leave the more ncsoft hurts.
on the other hand cheators and ebayers and such will be happier by the minute, with less players around them, surrounded only by bots and other ebayers. fun.
RF-online is a good alternative and alot of players are shifting to it. its a pvp game, where money and gear are not as hard to get (thus almost no need for ebay for kids that cant play the game by themselves), and judging on what screens show and forums comment, even looks better than L2.
If they want to reduce the botting and farming in this game, they need to do away with the amount of afk shops in the game. Most other online games have auto disconnects if you are idle for 20 minutes. This game needs that too. It will reduce server load, so real players will be able to log on when they want and will drastically reduce lag issues all around, as well as impair the bot farmers/crafters a great deal.
This game is really turning into Lineage II: The Bot Chronicle
I realy dont understand why do you write something here, as if GM or Ncsoft read it:(
I deactivated my acc for now...If nothing will change in C4, i will leave this game complitely....maybe RF online is much better then L2... Besides if nobody reads it, lets see how long the following messege will stay here:
NCsoft
If they want to reduce the botting and farming in this game, they need to do away with the amount of afk shops in the game. Most other online games have auto disconnects if you are idle for 20 minutes.
Most other games have a trading system which lets you sell item when you're not logget.