This is for all the moderators:
This post is over a year old, it is why it no longer is saved on this forum. IT WAS NEVER DELETED. Infact your HGMspam did directly reply to me in the same thread, I will post that as my first reply to this repost of mine. Before you rashly delete this thread, read it again, you will find absolutely NOTHING detrimental to your company, and absolutely NOTHING that breaks the rules of the board.
This message is specifically meant for the employees of NCsoft, but also for the small community of posters on these forums as well. But please, I know alot of the regulars on this forum are not a part of the Bartz community, the server with biggest farmer problem, so please do not join in on the discussion if you are going to make certain presumptions about our server without actually understanding our politics.
The point of this post is not to in any way slander NCsoft as a company, or Lineage II as a game. It is intended to let the developers, GMs, and support team know how desperately bad some of the problems are that your customers must deal with day to day.
You recently deleted a post from here for breaking several major rules of this forum, I am sure you know which post I am referring to Ash. I will not be reposting it here, but instead be bringing up some of the valid arguements and questions that were attached to that post. I understand that posts need to be made with a certain amount of tact in mind, so I will try to leave out everything that could possibly be viewed in a bad light, instead of a concern wishing to be addressed.
That being said, please also understand that this post is not coming from just a single player, but from an entire community that is completely distressed with the way this game is heading currently. Our main concern in this game is not how the game itself operates, I think this game comes about as close to being perfect MMO for PvP and PvE as any other I have ever played. What has been causing so much unrest in the community lately is the extent of how large and powerful the "Farmer" population has grown to. When I refer to a player as a farmer, it is describing that player or players as a somebody who sells adena, items, or accounts for some sort of real world assets. Now this is definetely against the End User License Agreement, also included in that is botting.
However I can run down to Giants Cave right now as I type this, and find at the very minimum five or six full parties that are completely botted off one charachter that is played ingame. I have been reporting these botted charachters for months, back when they were leveling in Cruma, yet I still see the same names botting and farming away as usual. And I know I am not alone in this matter, many people also have complained to me about the same neglect from GM's regaurding banning obvious bots. If a GM entered the game on a normal charachter (not on a GM or a red charachter as bots will automatically log out now), and ran around the world of Aden for an hour, he/she would have a list of well over 100 accounts to ban. This could be done daily and I garuntee within a week we would see great changes within the game.
All in all I would not be that disrupted by farmers if they had no impact on the trade economics of this game. If they had no other impact on this game other than making a charachter stronger in this game than they deserved, I would not care about farming because it truely would not impact my own personal gaming experience. However the entire trade economy has been thrown askew because of immense over-farming of certain high reward areas (ToI and DVC mainly). It is ridiculous to see B grade materials going for under 1/5 the cost of C and D grade materials, that alone is a powerful sign as to how much this game is economically controlled by farming.
Not only that, but like oil companies that are doing backdoor meetings, they can drive up the prices of certain materials to make incredible profits. A good example of this would be the material Varnish and Mold Hardeners, these materials are almost triple the price of what is considered normal from servers with less farmers, and from Korean server that have no farmers.
I myself am part of a clan that is specifically designed to kill farmers. We recieve donations from the majority of bartz to help gear our perma-red charachters. Our main purpose in this game now is to help alternate charachters, or new players, be able to enjoy this game like it was meant to be, and not be so intimidated by farmers. Before our clan started, over 1/2 of Cruma Tower was controlled by farmers, now people in their mid levels of this game are free to choose any room in Cruma to level. Our methods of dealing with farmers were working wonderfully untill they completely out-leveled us. Being a red charachter, basically means you will not be leveling in this game anymore. So while we were staying the same levels, they kept going. Now the majority of the "big name" farmers are all level 72-75. In no way or form can we combat them with the same efficieny as we did a month ago. Even legit clans have a very hard time killing them because of how powerful they have become.
Now here is where I tread lightly. While this is a game to the end users, this is a business to the company. Now, looking at this from a perhaps a business perspective, I would say at a VERY MINIMUM half of all timecard users are farmers. Now, that is a lot of income bi-monthly for NCsoft. I understand that as a business you need customers to survive, and cannot just freely ban accounts without verifying first that they are farmers. Not to mention that if you did ban all the people that WE VIEW as farmers, it would result in a large drop in monthly revenue for your company. However, please try to view this is in a long run timeframe, many legit people are quitting as a result of farmers. And every legit customer you lose due to this, deletes the neccesity of a farmer(s). So after you lose many legit people, you will also be losing many farmers from this game because the need for them would be reduced. I fear that in the long run, if nothing major is done about the farmers, too many people will have left the game to recover from.
The end result is this, our desperation in posting here, hoping for help. I'm afraid my friend posting before me put too much emotion and non-essential stuff in his post, resulting in his forum ban. If you find my post to be degrading or offensive towards your Company and Game, please edit my post, and give me the chance to reword the offending part so it will fit the guidlines of this forum.
We, the large majority of the players on Bartz, are requesting your help to make our gaming experience more enjoyable. We understand it is hard to logically prove who is, and who is not a farmer. But please, include the community in aiding during the process of ridding the server of farmers, there are many wonderful people in our community that have wonderful ideas on ways to get rid of the farmers.
So in ending, please, work closer with our community, and make this game one that lasts for years with the same attraction that you had when you first started playing. And instead of replying to this post with a simple message neglecting the true intent and purpose, please take this to your development and suport team for L2NA, and talk this over. Then maybe even officially post about severe actions that will be takin against people playing this game illegally, and recognize the problem in the full extent of severity it has become.
Thank you for your time reading this, Regaurds
Doug
__________________________________________________ _____________
This post is over a year old, and it still has so many concerns in it that STILL have not been addressed, how long must we wait? And since then even larger ones have come about, like the inability to complete the level 75 quests because the duration that the raid bosses are up is such a small window it is almost impossible to get to them intime.
We have come here asking for your help, and infact had a very widely recognized and respected alliance leader from our server post a very well thought out message. You have completely dis-respected a HUGE amount of your long term subscribers that have played this game, if you noticed before your forum bannings, most of the accounts were made in 04 or late 05. Perhaps it would be better to try to work with customers who have been loyal to your company for such a long time, instead of threatening to banning our game accounts.
Let me start by saying that I truly understand how you and others like you on bartz (and lets be truthful, all the servers,) feel about Pro-farmers, botters, and cheaters in general.
Now just to qualify myself, as I know it is hard to believe there is a man behind the curtain and not some large corporate bureaucracy. I was the very first Game Master hired for this project and the sole “owner” of Bartz at its inception. I have leveled 3 toons naturally on Bartz above level 70. During closed and open beta I answered all incoming support e-mails personally. At this point I was promoted to a position to run the entire dept. I then hired a group of very responsible and intelligent people that cared only about one thing, to support the customers of this game and try to make it as fair and pleasant as possible.
Now, with that being said lets get to the meat of this subject. (I’m going to keep this concise as too many ideas are missed with too many words.)
Main Question
Why do we not ban farmers, botters, and cheaters in general?
Answer:
We do. We ban enough accounts to make your head spin. We ban enough to make people think… “How do they make money?” Honestly.
Heretik said “If a GM entered the game on a normal (character)… and ran around the world of Aden for an hour, he/she would have a list of well over 100 accounts to ban.”
What if the GMs already banned more than that a day? (Because we do) Would I just need to ban more? Or make a press release? (Press release would sooth the soul but not get rid of more farmers.) The problem we have here is not a lack of desire to stop Pro farming and botting. It’s a time and money ratio. I need to provide customer service to everyone that legitimately needs it (Arrogant Searcher Quest anyone?) and also bust the bad guys with X amount of people in 24 hours a day. So I can only steal so much time from a legit customer to stop bad guys. With that being said I commit about 80% of a GMs time to busting bad guys. I don’t think any customer would want me to steal any more out of that 20%. As for sending GMs out to search for them… don’t need too. Our queues are filled up with their names. Did you know that farmers report other farmers for farming? Sure do! They report each other during turf wars hoping they can be the next to own DVC and TOI. Petitions with 10-20 names at a time flood our queues.
Please don’t let this get you disheartened. As I have made the pledge before, I’m not giving up. We have new and improved ways to combat farmers and [censored] everyday. You might complain about Game Guard now… but I guarantee you will not later. (not to mention other methods.)
I know that this post was made to educate me and the others that work here because the perception is that Ash and I sit in our gold laden room counting our coin and we really don’t know what it going on. But believe me, everyone here knows about farmers.
We have done many things in the past to catch and remove farmers from the service. In the end the farmers adapt relatively quickly to avoid what ever method we use. Sure we used the whole “Hey this guy played for 23 hour a day for the past 3 days…” and banned his account. Then by the next day every organized farmer had 2 alts so he/she could play 8 hours a day on each. I would go into other methods of detection but we still use them actively so they will go unmentioned.
In the end this is not just a Customer Service problem. This is not just a development problem. This is not just a legal problem. This is not just a social problem. It is a little bit of everything. We can babble back and forth all day about what is the “best way” to remove farmers and make L2 a Utopian game but I honestly talk about it all day here at work.
With all of that being said, as a fan of this game I work hard to make it better. You may believe me, or you may not. You may be patient and stick around to see if I am successful or you may leave. My point is simple: I don’t sling BS at customers because I don’t want BS slung at me. The GMs are on your side. I only ask for your support. (Or faith if you think this is impossible.)
So it's an understaffing problem. Don't get me wrong I know how business works and how hard it can be to add one person to an already strapped dept. That being said though hire 1 GM temp for say 2 monthes and have him fully dedicated to farmer control and I would imagine you have the farmer situation much more in grasp than you currently do. Once you get the farmer situation under control it would be much easier to maintain and you probably wouldn't need said temp gm anymore.
This is my PoV from a customer who is not knowledge in your current corporate climate.
they stated you cannot talk about bots/farmers on the main forum about 6 months ago so this post is against the rules now. Its the old 'make it all look ok on the outside' method.
Easy fix. Make trading of Adena impossible between two chars.
Why is this option even in the game?
1.) You can Warehouse money between your chars on the same account.
2.) You can sell items from a private store.
3.) You can even grind on all the critters.
So why is the option of trading Adena to chars allowed? Do away with it and 90% of you problem disappear. By removing the ability to trade stright Adena, you remove the market for selling Adena for RL money, which are what 99% of those companies in bussiness for.
Also the selling of items for huge sums is easy to take care of. Someone sells a cloth hat for 10,000,000a, well you have your Adena seller and the buyer in one neat package. Two cheaters for the price of one :).
If you just remove the ability to trade adena, you remove the majority of the problem.
Also the selling of items for huge sums is easy to take care of. Someone sells a cloth hat for 10,000,000a, well you have your Adena seller and the buyer in one neat package. Two cheaters for the price of one .
Also the selling of items for huge sums is easy to take care of. Someone sells a cloth hat for 10,000,000a, well you have your Adena seller and the buyer in one neat package. Two cheaters for the price of one .
What part of that didn't you understand?
No, you don't. Often times when a clannie owes me money, I have tossed up a shop overnight to get it back. It normally includes the player name in the shop title to return cash I loaned earlier. Most of this is in the past when I was more active. You cannot get at players that easy. Just banning for suspect of sale is HARSH. The problem is entirely that they need to ban hundreds of accounts per server per day. 1000 account closers per day for 5 days and the farmers would give up for quite some time. They need to get auxilary staff, train them, and simply do mass banning once every 3 months. One week out of 3 months destroy the bots...then don't address botting for awhile. Devout staff 90% to dealing with player support. The problem is making it HURT the botters/farmers. 100 accounts on 8 servers is all of 2 grand lost. The money farmed is worth 10 times that. The banning has to be massive, and singular. That means don't ban accounts 1 at a time all week. Get a list. A LIST. And on friday nuke several thousand accounts. No more bots. Also 2000*15....30,000 dollars. But it's too late to market L2 hard now. It's too late to save it and keep players by banning and making the game GOOD. Now we have a mediocre game that can't improve without destroying NCsoft income. So why would they bother? It doesn't make sense to me. It's not worth their time. Just my opinion.
Sounds like you are just seriously understaffed -.-
But come on here........ with some unknown software became free recently, many legit and illegit player start botting too, so I guess you guys have to work extra hard this week... till the evil bot programmer fix the problem and make it pay to use again.
Sounds like you are just seriously understaffed -.-
But come on here........ with some unknown software became free recently, many legit and illegit player start botting too, so I guess you guys have to work extra hard this week... till the evil bot programmer fix the problem and make it pay to use again.
Didn't know the government in China could be patched. On a more serious note I have read into some of the info you are posting about. I wouldn't be suprised if NC does get those connection lists and uses that to streamline their ban efforts.
As far as the thread the rules have changed over time and what was once acceptable when Ash was in charge is probably not now. It was a good idea from the posters at Blah I just think some of them were a little over the top (not a bad thing but an easy way to get ignored).
Frankly I liked spam's answer...cause it seemed like he cared...which I like. :D
Anyway, yes it is still a problem. Yes I think I would like the GMs to repost in here. The 'official' thread for these activities is so long that nobody is going to read it anymore. This one isn't that long, it is old and yet very valid. Same situations. I know GMs try, and I am happy they do. I just hope they don't give up because the community seems ungrateful. Yes a happy community of an MMO is a dream to a company because they can rake in more money than imaginable...but you can't satisfy everyone! You can only try your best. I still have hopes for this game...I come back often to check up on it to see if anything has changed...for the better!
Oh and NO! Farmers control more than adena...WAY WAY more. Why take away my flexablity to do what I wish with MY adena. If I wanna give it to a buddy, well I should be able to. If I wanna give it to the homeless elf in the corner of giran I should be able to also. The great thing about this game is how free the market is, but the bad thing is also how free the market is. It can be great and it can be bad. Right now it is bad because it is tied to RL currency that farmers make a living off of, but that technically isn't the game's fault...but instead the people that control the economy let it happen and use it to their advantage.
But seriously...I would rather the GMs take more time to ban a cheater than mistakingly ban a legit player.
Once every 3 months? Might as well not even ban them. Takes a week now to get to lvl 70 on most classes. They can be back to their farming, even at high lvl places in no time.
I really like the idea of having the players on a server take matters into their own hands, and wage an organized war (crusade?) on these guys! Maybe the GMs could just "deputize" Chaotic players, and just turn them loose on the server!
I really like the idea of having the players on a server take matters into their own hands, and wage an organized war (crusade?) on these guys! [..blah blah blah..]
Its been done on almost every server already. Not the same issue as far as third-party software but it was for farming "back in the day."