1st. Why are we limited to 255 characters when opening a petition? I found and tried to report 6 bot parties at devestated castle and with their long names I could not fit it into one petition. Naturally the gm who handled my petition gave me a false hope autoresponse and did not give a chance to add more to the petition. So had to type out another petition half an hour later to complete illegal program use report.
2nd. There should be no reason why in game problems cant be handled through the petition system. Why should I stop what I am doing in game to fill out a support ticket on a external website.
3rd. "Beyond a reasonable doubt" must be proved before taking action against 3rd party program violators. This policy does not seem to be working in keeping up with the bot problems. Give the GM's more power or something, if the ingame gm's were 1/8 as efficient as the forum moderators on here in upholding the EULA, I might be able to find a place to level bot free.
4th. Eliminate the need to petition a gm about bad users, create a button or text box to simply report suspecious activity. Save the petitions and the gms the trouble of answering all these bot petitions. Theres no sense in petitions for bot behaviour now since they dont seem to be doing a **** bit of good.
What must be done before the bot issue is taken more seriously? Do we need to spam forums, shout in town, flood the petition system, boycott the game for a day, etc? Being patient is hard to do when not only do you have to "police" bots ourselves just to have nothing done, and then you have to pk just to get a spot to train.
I am also experiecing frustration with the petition system. In the past, it was possible to have a conversation with a GM about bots. Now, there are rarely any GMs online and the usual response to a petition is some automatically generated message that to me says, "We don't give a crap."
With bot groups filling almost every room in the catacombs and necropoli on my server, it is obvious that NC soft is not doing enough to stop botting. While their auto-response messages talk about "proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the players are using 3rd party software" this process needs to be sped up. I've seen the same bot groups operating for over a year. I've seen people sublcass and have their subclass to 75 in a month by sitting in bot groups. All of the clans that own castles on my server admit that they use botting programs like [censored] or wind. These people either have their own bots leveling them or get invites from farmer groups where they can sit in a catacomb all night getting power leveled.
The only way to discourage people from using bots is for NC Soft to take a strong stand against it. Right now, the attitude is that hey, NC doesn't care, why shouldn't I do it? There are a great many people who are not the power hungry, do-whatever-it-takes-to-win players who are having a really hard time finding a fun way to play the game. The question is, does NCSoft care about these players?
But will NCSoft take a stand against it? I'm afraid that NCSoft sees enforcing their rules against botting as being more harmful to their company than letting botting go on because it has spread to such a large percentage of the player base. As a business, they probably generate more income from all the farmer bot accounts and players that bot than casual players or people who play for fun. This is one reason I can think of that explains why so little is done to stop it.
While allowing botting might provide NCSoft with more income in the short run, in the long run most people will not want to come back to a game company that favors farmers and power-gamers. As it stands, Lineage is not a game that can be easily enjoyed by a casual gamer. With botting allowing people to get to high levels with little effort and farmer groups providing adena-selling companies with an unlimited supply, people who don't avail themselves to these methods can't compete with those who do. And if you'll never have a chance to compete, why bother playing at all?
I was in DION the other day, just looking for recipes when 3 full bot parties were delevling via one of the guards.
I /gm so&so are deleveling @ Dion etc ..
Well 25-30 minutes later I get an acutal gm on the petition instead of those generic auto response messages. Now I really hate those, I mean, common that is offensive, it says "we don't have the time to respond to you personally, here is a computer generated response".
Anyways, the GM actually told me that delevling wasn't a punishable offence ...
I am the only one here who see's something wrong with that?? I had to actually tell the 'gm' that they were using 3rd party software to do it. Where the hell are they training these gm's is beyond me, but if i were working in customer support i'd be on those bots before they knew what hit them.
I've lost hope a long time ago with bots, they have been around since open beta and are still here. What more needs to be said?
Delevelling isn't illegal. I do it, would you ban me over it? I do it on my lowbie chars to stay in range for raid bosses, since 3-4 bosses can bump me a level or two.
I believe he was petitioning because they were using 3rd party software to delevel at the guards.
Is there any difference in appearance between a 3rd-party-software-user and a normal player, when all that both are doing is running up to a guard, hitting him, and dying?
Two different things though. Delevelling is not illegal, using a third party program to do ANYTHING is. Though I wouldn't be surprised if the gm missed the "delevelling USING a third party program" part.
I believe he was petitioning because they were using 3rd party software to delevel at the guards.
Is there any difference in appearance between a 3rd-party-software-user and a normal player, when all that both are doing is running up to a guard, hitting him, and dying?
Sure when there is a huge group of them all following in the exact same spot to the exact same guard. I dont see how 20+ people can be that coordinated consistantly to do this. However detecting one person doing this, yeah that would be really difficult to distinguish.
Do we need to spam forums, shout in town, flood the petition system, boycott the game for a day, etc?
Doing any of those will get you banned for three days, and any further abuse of the shout/pettition/boards would get your permanently banned. Any post inciting a boycott would be deleted, along with your account being suspended. Besides not playing for a day doesnt mean a thing since you pay per month, some idiots even pay per year. Anyone using a gametime card has paid for 2.
Suck it up or leave (and for gods sakes dont cry about it 24/7) is nc's responce in this regard. Thank you for playing lineage 2.
bekkar, do I need to find a place to host a 2 minute replay video of over 30 male dwarves running to the same spot in the middle of town, stopping, turning, running to the same spot infront of the gate, stopping, and waiting thier turn to hit the guard(they had it set up to only allow 3 toons at a time to hit the guards)? its obvious which ones are on 3rd party and which arent. First, if you are using 3rd party, your corpse disapears the instant your death animation starts, this has been impossible to do with the live client since C3, you do not get the back to town box till your death animation is over. Second, look at the names, DALSDFNV(named by throwing a small heavy object at the keyboard as always) is 99% NOT a real player smacking guards.
Its just the way of Lineage though, so get used to it, train em till they lose all thier gear.
Its just the way of Lineage though, so get used to it, train em till they lose all thier gear.
Then they should change the EULA to reflect this and I will stop b*tching. Its kind of hard to train a bot party when they force log when more than 5 mobs come near them. Yes I reported the force logging, shockingly weeks later the same bots are still on there, just in higher level locations. They say 3rd party programs are illegal but do little to do anything to uphold this rule.
I am also experiecing frustration with the petition system. In the past, it was possible to have a conversation with a GM about bots. Now, there are rarely any GMs online and the usual response to a petition is some automatically generated message that to me says, "We don't give a crap."
Lets do a little roleplay here. I'll pretent to be the GM and you can be the player.
I would hardly say banning 21.000 accounts (almost 1/3rd of the playerbase) as "lax GM enforcement".
and I would hardly say that was the truth.
On one hand, if they really did ban that many, then wow, thats a lot of free money they got from the accounts being activated and then being put on game time card.
On the other hand, if that is the real number of accounts banned, then why is every single dungeon on my server populated by bots? It's gotten so bad that the botters are now making NUKER groups to farm the physically resist monsters.
Its just the way of Lineage though, so get used to it, train em till they lose all thier gear.
The point here is that according to their own EULA, this SHOULDN'T be the way of Lineage. It's the lack of enforcement on NC's side that makes Lineage into a botter's paradise.
As for training them, I do this repeatedly and occasionally I get a piece of d grade or lux shop gear that isn't exactly difficult to replace with all the adena they have from being online 24/7 in the catacombs. If I train them out of a room so I can use it, all they do is log out all but one of their bots and watch me until I leave. As soon as I am gone, its back to business as usual.
The most annoying thing about bots to me is not that they fill up every room in a catacomb, but how the power-gamers use them to level up by going afk in bot parties overnight. Sure its fun to find a geared one then get a mob with an aoe attack to aoe near the leecher and kill it (with the leecher hopefully dropping gear) but this doesn't stop them going from 40-75 in a month or less. Is it a surprise to anyone that the clans these leechers belong all own castles? This is what ruins the game for me; dedication doesn't mean crap anymore when it comes to leveling your character. Honest players can't compete with the cheaters. I hope all the cheaters are happy when the honest players get frustrated and go elsewhere, they won't have any easy targets to hunt anymore and no one will siege their castles. GF.
It's the lack of enforcement on NC's side that makes Lineage into a botter's paradise.
Thats complete and udder hogwash. It's not the lack of enforcement thats the issue, but the ones that spend real life money on game money thats keeping this monster alive.
Thats complete and udder hogwash. It's not the lack of enforcement thats the issue, but the ones that spend real life money on game money thats keeping this monster alive.
It's those that your hate should be focused at.
It's uTTer hogwash to believe that a company should uphold its own rules? I'd hate to see you in charge of a company.
The thing is, these players that bot will not regulate themselves, it is their desire to do whatever it takes to win (including IGEing vast sums of adena and running bot trains). There will always be these kinds of people. That is not something NCSoft can control. What they can control is their own system. Right now, their system is full of flaws which allow power gamers to exploit it.
The whole point of playing a game is to have fun. Right now, it is the people who have botted their way up to the top that are most enjoying themselves by being able to own the lower level players who don't. When people aren't having fun and realize that they can't compete with the cheaters, they are going to leave this game. So, the botters and cheaters can enjoy their positions as top dogs, but sooner or later, they are going to chase enough people off to where it will only be them, their large piles of adena, and their bot trains left.
It's uTTer hogwash to believe that a company should uphold its own rules? I'd hate to see you in charge of a company.
I love it when a person twist someone elses words....
It's UTTER hogwash to think that NC is showing a lack of enforcement on the issue. Just take a moment and look around at what Spam, Mistryl, Rust, and Tisirin, has said on the issue. And i am so tired of these types of doomday threads, it just makes me sick.
It's uTTer hogwash to believe that a company should uphold its own rules? I'd hate to see you in charge of a company.
I love it when a person twist someone elses words....
It's UTTER hogwash to think that NC is showing a lack of enforcement on the issue. Just take a moment and look around at what Spam, Mistryl, Rust, and Tisirin, has said on the issue. And i am so tired of these types of doomday threads, it just makes me sick.
Makes me sick trying to login and getting the unable to login message. When I do get on spending 40 mins to find a place to train with subpar mobs because all the good spots are being botted. I need A grade jewels, I am trying to do the aden church priest quest that you have to collect 60 remains but I cant. The 9 man bot parties ks my mobs and my pathetic attempts at training them is futile when there are so many bot parties running around I cant even find a dozen mobs to train them with.
My intention of this post was not to say that NCSOFT is doing nothing, it was that they are not doing things fast enough. There are plenty of other examples besides the bot problems that are not getting attention fast enough lately: spoil crash problems, raidboss bug allowing pets to solo them, etc.
Changing the server status from saying Full to Heavy is not what I consider a fix.
How i would love to hop into this convo and rant about things. I too have given up on this game turning around for the better. I continue to play for friends in game and the great laughs of seeing bot trains die after a large train. OOOOOAAAH..E...... Seems many can not do raid bosses or are smashed by zerg "powerleveled" necros in sieges
and the rest laugh at how someone could bid 999m on 7 clan halls and win them all. Oh **** forgot about those at 75 that can't do their subclass because farmers got it camped.
We need an NCNA dev team, this korea run crap doesn't work for us plain and simple.
You have to remember that while we might wield more reporting power for good, others might use it for evil. Some players can't be held responsible and will pretty much report every member of their enemy clan for botting. It's annoying...childish...and really hard for GM's to keep up with I imagine. So amongst the 500 petitions about bots a GM probably gets every day, I believe half of them are probably server politics and personal bitter BS. The GM have to weed through this and that's not easy.
It is not going to change anything to remove bots by banning them. They will just make 10 more in its place. I agree, at least it hurts their wallets and doing a better job of it would be great. I wish the requirements for banning a bot were more than opening a petition with the player and asking him his level lol. GMs need to get smarter and use the visual interface for questions. Like, what color is the armor you're wearing? Then port them to a random set of rooms of varying colors and ask them the same questions. As long as you break up the bot party into different rooms, that's going to get really tough to catch with 3rd party programs. Especially if they get ingenuitive and use textures etc to ask questions like, what word is written on the wall in front of you?
Botters do this FOR A JOB. They aren't dumb, they recognized a market and pursued it. In most cases of reality we'd call them amazing for pursuing an untapped market and being so successful selling stuff that doesn't even exist! You've gotta outsmart the players watching the machines, and to be honest, that's not so easy.
Too many people view the in game petition system as just another form of PvP. Another way to "defeat" your opponent. Some alliances have been known to report every single infraction of the EULA that thier enemies make, even when they do the same thing. My favorite is when they petition against you for swearing. They take the screenshots, spend 2 minutes sending it to support, and you wake up to find yourself in a temp or perma ban with no recourse. One clanmate of mine was given a temp ban for cussing someone out after being PK'd, trashtalked, sworn at and racially abused. But since he did not take screenshots, he was unable to send them to support afterwords in defense.
While this thread started as suggestions for the petition system, it has turned primarily into a discussion about third-party programs, so I am closing the thread now. Please see this thread (http://boards.lineage2.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=442966) for more information on this forum policy. Thanks!