Hey, a really weird thing happened for Bartz yesterday...
"Raid Farmers" tried Antharas, for the first time on Bartz. That was very suprising for most of the server. Clans eventually stopped them from doing it, but at a large cost, because we had to go red and we lost a lot of very valuable gear in the process.
We've "tolerated" farmers for a while, even though they do 95% of the raid bosses on our server, including Ant Queen and Zaken, and we hear it's even worse on other servers. It ruins the gameplay for the other clans and players who want to play the game. But they are really starting to cross the line now.
Everyone complains about them, but these raid farmers have been around for months, the exact same names and accounts, and almost nothing has been done about them. I'm sure if it were easy something would have been done already.
Us players cannot do anything, because raid farmers are only after one thing: money. We can kill them 100 times, and they will not stop coming back. Our only real tool to fight them is to take away their exp (and even doing that penalizes ourselves), and if that has no effect... what are we supposed to do?
I'm sure the GMs and whoever else is responsible for stopping this in NCNA has it very difficult as well, although I can't claim to know specifics. The main problem I think lies in these are "legitimate" players in the sense that they don't use 3rd party programs and it's difficult to prove what they do with their money. But from a player's perspective it's obvious.
My question for Mistryl, or whoever else, is:
How can us, the players help GMs or whoever else at NCNA stop these people? I think it's pretty obvious we need to work together... because this urgent problem has driven and is driving many people away from the game. It's a very serious problem that people really need to see results in. We constantly hear that NCNA is working on the issue and that's awesome, I'm sure they are working very hard, but it's obvious that it needs to be stepped up a bit, and I think you may need the players' help to do it.
Apparently a large section of the bigger clans both on Sieg and Devianne has been banned. That's the third banning of this nature on Devianne if I recall correctly (it might be the fourth), so I suppose they just work really slowly.
yeah on kian One of my guild mate is doing his 75 subclass quest finally. The farmers have definatly been banned, since a pick up grp was formed to kill cabrio and it seems the rb are starting to stay up longer.
As long as raidbosses are a guaranteed way to get gear and now the orbs in C5 there will always be raid farmers. The only way to remove raid farmers is to remove the incentive for them to be here. Every decent way to make adena in this game is dominated by the farmers so they can control prices.
I'm not going to go into how they could fix the problem almost intantly because they know how to stop it. But as more and more people get into A grade and up it's just going to get worse and worse.
Apparently a large section of the bigger clans both on Sieg and Devianne has been banned. That's the third banning of this nature on Devianne if I recall correctly (it might be the fourth), so I suppose they just work really slowly.
I'm from Sieg and I haven't heard of anyone getting banned recently. As for the raid farmers on Sieg, it is rumored that they are leveling up more lowbies so I'm not sure if they were banned or just preparing for C5.
Hey, a really weird thing happened for Bartz yesterday...
"Raid Farmers" tried Antharas, for the first time on Bartz. That was very suprising for most of the server. Clans eventually stopped them from doing it, but at a large cost, because we had to go red and we lost a lot of very valuable gear in the process.
We've "tolerated" farmers for a while, even though they do 95% of the raid bosses on our server, including Ant Queen and Zaken, and we hear it's even worse on other servers. It ruins the gameplay for the other clans and players who want to play the game. But they are really starting to cross the line now.
Everyone complains about them, but these raid farmers have been around for months, the exact same names and accounts, and almost nothing has been done about them. I'm sure if it were easy something would have been done already.
Us players cannot do anything, because raid farmers are only after one thing: money. We can kill them 100 times, and they will not stop coming back. Our only real tool to fight them is to take away their exp (and even doing that penalizes ourselves), and if that has no effect... what are we supposed to do?
I'm sure the GMs and whoever else is responsible for stopping this in NCNA has it very difficult as well, although I can't claim to know specifics. The main problem I think lies in these are "legitimate" players in the sense that they don't use 3rd party programs and it's difficult to prove what they do with their money. But from a player's perspective it's obvious.
My question for Mistryl, or whoever else, is:
How can us, the players help GMs or whoever else at NCNA stop these people? I think it's pretty obvious we need to work together... because this urgent problem has driven and is driving many people away from the game. It's a very serious problem that people really need to see results in. We constantly hear that NCNA is working on the issue and that's awesome, I'm sure they are working very hard, but it's obvious that it needs to be stepped up a bit, and I think you may need the players' help to do it.
I know ppl say "these servers are open to the world" or what have you, but the fact of the matter is that there are Chinese dedicated servers for L2 that the chinese play on. These is absolutely no reason for them to play on servers that are based in North America. This policy was adopted by NC Korea and I strongly support its application to the NA servers as well.
I have no problems having people from other countries play on our servers *IF* they have no home servers in their country made for them. Hence the euro's playing here and on Teon. This is perfectly acceptible. Having a server to play on that is made using your own language packs and text and setup on your time zone should limit you to filling up other peoples servers, especially since, lets face it, theirs no reason for them to come to our servers unless they wanted to farm it for adena that makes it way to ebay or other such places.
before anyone says my idea isnt fair, consider this. Are we allowed to play on Korean servers? Japanese servers? Chinese servers? no, we're not allowed, cause our IPs are allready banned by them. Korea even took a step further and required you to have a Korean SSN to even register to play L2 in Korea. Why doesn't the NA servers block the chinese IP considering we're all pretty much blocked from all the other dedicated servers for the other nations?
This is the only implementable solution I can think of to really, REALLY stick it to the farmers, regular ones and the raiding variety. Take away a large supply line, and the illegal market will eventually starve and die.
As me and alot of other people have said more times then i remember: Anyone with half a brain can just connect through a proxy so i wont change anyhting!
God can't people learn to actualy search and read the other 847364823 threads about this before they think they have come up with the ultimate answer.
You guys don't know how well you have it. On lionna, the farmer clans have long been a core to the powerful pvp clans. Invincible grew up because of these, and long protects them. You war/attack the farmers, they're defended by real players that are happier to have the scraps from their table than to try to fight them.
As me and alot of other people have said more times then i remember: Anyone with half a brain can just connect through a proxy so i wont change anyhting!
God can't people learn to actualy search and read the other 847364823 threads about this before they think they have come up with the ultimate answer.
Require social security # on all NA servers but teon. Sry canada... you don't count.
We have them on hinde too. They're mostly american and swedish I think (I know *some* are swedish as we can communicate in norwegian/swedish).
What's annoying is their perspective on it. "Think of the people who are trying to make some money", "We're only helping the servers", "you can't kill these bosses anyway".
I'm not sure if they're being sarcastic or sincere, but it's bull either way. Think of the people who *pay* to play this game only to be overrun by these guys. They're not "helping" us by monopolizing lvl11-13 SA's and the epic jewelries. We sure as heck can kill those ourselves.
But as you guys said the problem is that they're not doing anything illegal. Unless you count the great mystery of where all that money goes from selling the loot.
As me and alot of other people have said more times then i remember: Anyone with half a brain can just connect through a proxy so i wont change anyhting!
God can't people learn to actualy search and read the other 847364823 threads about this before they think they have come up with the ultimate answer.
Require social security # on all NA servers but teon. Sry canada... you don't count.
what about Central and South America :mad: and not all Europeans play on Teon if you havent Notice
You are aware that all the servers and just not Teon is for the whole western world and not only the US and to do that would be to shoot themselfs in the foot. The 8 first servers have a big Euro population and im pritty sure most of them would quit in a second if their characters got booted becouse some bull-_- like that.
And besides that, its hardly something dificult to fake/rerout a SSN with they want that (the SSN isnt very safe tbh). Plus that the farmers could just relocate, which wouldnt be a problem considering the amount of money the companies earn in that buissnes.
Solutions like that might have worked if they existed in the game on release but hardly now.
lol bartz, the server who has always tried to get rid of the raid farmers, doing raid farmer "events" to get rid of them. Nice work you guys have done.
btw, kain, has no more raid boss farmers. They are gone, not there. No shop dwarfs, no raid boss tanks, no raid boss mages. Nothing is left of them on Kain. We didnt even try.
Well we could talk about why that is on Kain but I doubt it'd be appropriate. :(
I don't know why you say "lol bartz" when we were trying to stop farmers though, that's just silly.
I'd prefer constructive posts as opposed to "lol our server has no farmers and yours does even though you tried to stop them lolol" if at all possible, thanks. :)
dev has 1-2 alliances of raid farmers, depending on whom you ask. i dont think they operate without 3rd party software, but lets say they used regular, unmodified clients. in that case, there is nothing wrong with what they are doing, besides the collection/RMTsale of adena/items, which is very hard to prove becasue NC does not currently ask from their users the kind of information that could prove any RMT transaction had occurred. there is nothing wrong with one alliance killing all the raid bosses they can, but a lot of people whine by saying "i wanted to do this raid boss and it was down the one time i went there to find it, farmers must have killed it, they took my boss!". but in a PvP game, its not YOUR boss, until the raid is over, and you got all the items from it. that said, i think instead of going red on the farmers you could have healed/buffed their boss and taken their gear.
dev has 1-2 alliances of raid farmers, depending on whom you ask. i dont think they operate without 3rd party software, but lets say they used regular, unmodified clients. in that case, there is nothing wrong with what they are doing, besides the collection/RMTsale of adena/items, which is very hard to prove becasue NC does not currently ask from their users the kind of information that could prove any RMT transaction had occurred. there is nothing wrong with one alliance killing all the raid bosses they can, but a lot of people whine by saying "i wanted to do this raid boss and it was down the one time i went there to find it, farmers must have killed it, they took my boss!". but in a PvP game, its not YOUR boss, until the raid is over, and you got all the items from it. that said, i think instead of going red on the farmers you could have healed/buffed their boss and taken their gear.
How can you heal/buff a boss like Antharas which aggros everyone in the area automatically? I know it's hard, and that's why the farmers aren't banned. And they aren't doing anything technically wrong, but they're ruining everyone's game. Which is why I think something else needs to be done.
All we can hope for is something like what happened in siegehart also happens in bartz.
This will happen on every server, sooner or later. Antharas and Valakas are the bosses with the best loot, guaranteed to drop a whole pile of A/S full items, unlike all the other raid bosses. So it is only logical that they will try to go for them sooner or later.
On Hindemith, until recently the farmers did not raid Baium. Now they evolved and try to raid him every time he is up. I am absolutely convinced that sooner or later they WILL raid Antharas successfully. It is just a matter of having enough nukers/ressers and the necessary "organization".
We have them on hinde too. They're mostly american and swedish I think (I know *some* are swedish as we can communicate in norwegian/swedish).
What's annoying is their perspective on it. "Think of the people who are trying to make some money", "We're only helping the servers", "you can't kill these bosses anyway".
I'm not sure if they're being sarcastic or sincere, but it's bull either way. Think of the people who *pay* to play this game only to be overrun by these guys. They're not "helping" us by monopolizing lvl11-13 SA's and the epic jewelries. We sure as heck can kill those ourselves.
But as you guys said the problem is that they're not doing anything illegal. Unless you count the great mystery of where all that money goes from selling the loot.
Swedish farmers?? come on, for real?? I'm swedish and I can't imagine doing that...who needs money that bad? Tell me it isn't true :confused:
I feel from my point of view it's not in the players hands, that it's all in NC's hands. And all a person can do is to wait and let them handle it.
I know thats not much of an answer, but what is?
Quite the contrary. It is ALL in the players hands.
If there were no buyers, there were no sellers. The high level people, who buy 999 Million adena to buy a clanhall and then buy another 10 Million per week for "expenses" are the source of all evil.
And there is something we can do about that:
Do not group them !
Leave their clans !
Shun them !
Leave their Allys !
All truely legitimate players would need to stop closing their eyes and stop acting as if their clan buddies had really "found" all their wealth by some mysterious friend that stopped playing.
IMO the buyers are no less cheaters than the sellers. Morally the sellers are even better, as they are working to make a living, while the buyers are cheating on a game they are playing.
I got absolutely no respect for anyone, who ever bought money and there got to be tons of those players, or else there wouldn't be such an extreme market for the sellers.
The biggest hypocrits are the ones, that had their chars powerleveled or leeched in bot groups, bougth adena to buy A-grade and S-grade and are now complaining, that the game is infested with farmers. YOU guys are the reason. You should not complain about it, you should get the hell out and stop making the problem worse.
Not only the farmers and botters are cheating. The people who support them by giving them their RL money are cheating even more.
And in that context, I would rather have 500 chinese farmers with me in the same area, than one arrogant *****, who thinks he is in any way better than me, cause he got a higher level and better equipment in less playtime, because he got the "no-problem-200M adena" package.
Only if you are too weak to watch your shop all night for the case an unwanted customer comes by...
And to add some seriousness:
yes, overpricing could be another reason why people ebay...but thats like the egg and the kitten ...
Apparently a large section of the bigger clans both on Sieg and Devianne has been banned. That's the third banning of this nature on Devianne if I recall correctly (it might be the fourth), so I suppose they just work really slowly.
I'm from Sieg and I haven't heard of anyone getting banned recently. As for the raid farmers on Sieg, it is rumored that they are leveling up more lowbies so I'm not sure if they were banned or just preparing for C5.
Probably, a little bit from A & a little bit from B.
There is one thing NCNA could do quite easily. Set up a credit card/paypal account go to one of the major seller's website and buy some adena. Then set up a non GM toon on a new account and go pick up the money they just bought. When they do they'll have the account information and the credit card information for that toon. Yes it would only be one account, but it's one account less. This would be sufficient proof that they broke the EULA by selling in game items for real money.
It's also worth considering that multiple accounts bought on what's probably a business credit card might be selling in game items for money. Yes, a lot of people buy accounts for their whole family on the same credit card, but anyone that can accept credit cards can call their rep at the issuing company and find out whether it's a personal or business credit card.
Just some ideas, although I agree with Schmuse, we should just be boycotting all the buyers (although in gustin this might only leave enough people to form a lvl 3 clan).
There is something else we can do :)
Training the hordes of farmers in the catacombs back to level 1 :)
All it takes is some dedicated BHs/THs with fake death and a bodyguard to take care of the protectors.
And I am one of those dedicated BHs ^^
I know they will forcelog eventually, but if players keep on the pressure, farmers wont be that happy ;)
Well we could talk about why that is on Kain but I doubt it'd be appropriate. :(
I don't know why you say "lol bartz" when we were trying to stop farmers though, that's just silly.
LOL bartz
Kain has gotten rid of the raid farmer problem for the time being. Whether it has been through bannings or what not. All I know is that there was some hawt pvp at longhorn that would never had happened b4.
All truely legitimate players would need to stop closing their eyes and stop acting as if their clan buddies had really "found" all their wealth by some mysterious friend that stopped playing.
ROFL. I've heard that three times when I asked people how they got their money or was it four times LMAO. Xaxaxaxaxaxaxa.
Ebayers are like steroid users, so obvious that they abuse, yet they'll kill their own mothers before they admit it. Ever see Bubble boy at the gym? (meaning his muscles all look inflated by bubbles).
I remember an example in the gym, I was bench pressing and I aksed this guy to spot me (which means make sure i don't drop the thing on my chest when I get tired), he had a workout tank top on and his muscles were inflatable balloons.
So I start lifting the weight, and he is like, "bring it up, nice and tight, push" in a feminine voice. I almost dropped the weight on my chest because i was about to laugh hysterically. I see the guy in the gym, he must have stopped the juice, he's lean now. He doesn't wear those tank tops either :).
I will say you can never jump to accuse people of ebay. I've only been in the game 3 months and I'm close to all A gear. I also have a customer of mine who has a knack for the OE. He has like OE'd a few C weapons up to +8 and his B weapon up to 6 so far. So you can never tell really.
As almost everyone knows, threads that discuss violations of the User Agreement are typically closed because of a hostile tone toward NCsoft or other inappropriate behavior. I would like to thank Aeze for the constructive approach to this discussion, and everyone else for contributing.
Please remember that simply killing a raid boss repeatedly is not a violation. However, using bot programs to fight the raid boss or selling the dropped items for real-life currency are violations, and we take strict disciplinary action against that type of behavior.
How can us, the players help GMs or whoever else at NCNA stop these people?
The detailed reports that players take the time to send are invaluable, and every report of a suspicious player is appreciated. We do not rely on these reports to investigate a suspicious player, but they are helpful and useful. When making your report, please include the name of the player (with the exact spelling, even if it's tough), the time you saw the suspicious behavior, and as many details as possible.
We are dedicated to investigating and taking action against anyone who is violating the User Agreement. We hate botters and ebayers just as much (if not more) than you do. :)
This thread will remain open for the time being. Any flames or inappropriate posts will result in the immediate lock of the thread.
As me and alot of other people have said more times then i remember: Anyone with half a brain can just connect through a proxy so i wont change anyhting!
God can't people learn to actualy search and read the other 847364823 threads about this before they think they have come up with the ultimate answer.
Require social security # on all NA servers but teon. Sry canada... you don't count.
no problem, we'll just get ncsoft to setup 2 or 3 servers right in central canada through some of the worlds fastest connection ever conceived for steller lagless results, and move teon here as well, leaving us 4 servers are you all the rest, Then there will be little to no problems at all as US residence will be able to connect to our servers reguardless.
i think a re-evalutation of teh eula is at hand, and a conflict of interest about the raid bosses and how they are farmed the way they are by what ever player would consider obvious to whom they know is doing it repeatably.
Anything to make the raid bosses more difficult to repeatably kill the moment they spawn by the same faction over and over and over and over again i'm for.
Plus i'd also like to see raid bosses that are resistant to the most obvious of players, mdef boost would be nice, cause a BD with full tats made for dealing damage is unable to dole out even remotely 1/100th of the damage a single nuker could makes for slightly unfair and biased party making methods.
As almost everyone knows, threads that discuss violations of the User Agreement are typically closed because of a hostile tone toward NCsoft or other inappropriate behavior. I would like to thank Aeze for the constructive approach to this discussion, and everyone else for contributing.
Please remember that simply killing a raid boss repeatedly is not a violation. However, using bot programs to fight the raid boss or selling the dropped items for real-life currency are violations, and we take strict disciplinary action against that type of behavior.
How can us, the players help GMs or whoever else at NCNA stop these people?
The detailed reprorts that players take the time to send are invaluable, and every report of a suspicious player is appreciated. We do not rely on these reports to investigate a suspicious player, but they are helpful and useful. When making your report, please include the name of the player (with the exact spelling, even if it's tough), the time you saw the suspicious behavior, and as many details as possible.
We are dedicated to investigating and taking action against anyone who is violating the User Agreement. We hate botters and ebayers just as much (if not more) than you do. :)
This thread will remain open for the time being. Any flames or inappropriate posts will result in the immediate lock of the thread.
I am interested in wondering what is NCNA's approach and what are they doing in meticiulous details. If we know sort of how your actions work perhaps we can come to some sort of synergistic approach. Where we help your GM's put a stop to this.
In short, I would like to know what a typical GM does, what happens when a petition is sent to GM, who knows about it, what is the chain of command? What are the steps taken? I think this would be helpful so we can streamline the process and be effective together.
Also let's work together, let me give you an example. Today when i come back from work I'm going to target Yeliyol the person who i'm 100% sure is using a L2 program (a 3rd party program) to restock his EAB.
I'm going to buy one and then I'm going to watch him restock it, put the price, and sit down in less than one second.
So what should I say in my petition that would be most helpful to your cause? Should I take in-game footage and email it to you? Should I try to contact a GM to come over and investigate?
Thanks, sorry for the hostile tones before, you could say I was quite upset about the whole thing,
Mistryl, would it be better to submit the report to a GM in game or to use the Support website as some one mentioned a couple of pages ago?
Please use the Support web site (http://support.lineage2.com) if you are sending a detailed report about a player or a group of players.
If you want to make a quick report to give a heads up about someone you suspect of using a third-party program, you can do so in game. The fastest format you can use is:
/gm [exact spelling of name] appears to be a bot.
Usually you will receive a response and the petition will be closed. The closed petition does not indicate that your report was brushed off or seen as unimportant! It simply means that all of the necessary information was received. All reports are very much appreciated.
Mistryl, would it be better to submit the report to a GM in game or to use the Support website as some one mentioned a couple of pages ago?
Please use the Support web site (http://support.lineage2.com) if you are sending a detailed report about a player or a group of players.
If you want to make a quick report to give a heads up about someone you suspect of using a third-party program, you can do so in game. The fastest format you can use is:
/gm [exact spelling of name] appears to be a bot.
I'm sure you understand how hard it is to get exact spelling of their names some times. Plus, if there's a party of 9 you cannot report them all in this manner (only allowed 5 petitions a day).
Perhaps Spam could comment but is it enough to petition with one name and state that the entire party is botting? I don't mind (and have NUMEROUS times) creating a petition to try and get all of the names but, come on, that can take some serious time to get right.
PvrJudas, I don't see why such a macro would not work. From my understanding, everything you can do through the chat box can be done through a macro and vice versa. I could be wrong though.
SirE, even if it is only 5, that's 5 today and another 5 tomorrow and your party members/clanmates get 5 petitions also. :)
Mistryl, would it be better to submit the report to a GM in game or to use the Support website as some one mentioned a couple of pages ago?
Please use the Support web site (http://support.lineage2.com) if you are sending a detailed report about a player or a group of players.
If you want to make a quick report to give a heads up about someone you suspect of using a third-party program, you can do so in game. The fastest format you can use is:
/gm [exact spelling of name] appears to be a bot.
I'm sure you understand how hard it is to get exact spelling of their names some times. Plus, if there's a party of 9 you cannot report them all in this manner (only allowed 5 petitions a day).
Perhaps Spam could comment but is it enough to petition with one name and state that the entire party is botting? I don't mind (and have NUMEROUS times) creating a petition to try and get all of the names but, come on, that can take some serious time to get right.
this is why i suggested or asked about a macro command being used in which
Mistryl, would it be better to submit the report to a GM in game or to use the Support website as some one mentioned a couple of pages ago?
Please use the Support web site (http://support.lineage2.com) if you are sending a detailed report about a player or a group of players.
If you want to make a quick report to give a heads up about someone you suspect of using a third-party program, you can do so in game. The fastest format you can use is:
/gm [exact spelling of name] appears to be a bot.
Usually you will receive a response and the petition will be closed. The closed petition does not indicate that your report was brushed off or seen as unimportant! It simply means that all of the necessary information was received. All reports are very much appreciated.
Great stuff,
Okay guys, I'm going to go around Giran, Dion, Aden looking for sellers using bot programs to restock. Usually it's used on scrolls.
I'm going to take a screenshot of all of them and then submit it via the website support forums, i wont' be playing much tonight between 6-10PM est but after that I will be on the prowl. So if you see anyone and you're off somewhere in a rush, just in-game email me and I'll get them down and then I will submit to the support forums.
These bot restockers are so easy to prove beyond a doubt that they bot, so I'm excited, I think we'll get somewhere.
Mistryl, would it be better to submit the report to a GM in game or to use the Support website as some one mentioned a couple of pages ago?
Please use the Support web site (http://support.lineage2.com) if you are sending a detailed report about a player or a group of players.
If you want to make a quick report to give a heads up about someone you suspect of using a third-party program, you can do so in game. The fastest format you can use is:
/gm [exact spelling of name] appears to be a bot.
Usually you will receive a response and the petition will be closed. The closed petition does not indicate that your report was brushed off or seen as unimportant! It simply means that all of the necessary information was received. All reports are very much appreciated.
Can you perhaps do something, or tell me who I need to talk to about getting something done about petitions with misspelled names being auto-closed??
It's VERY annoying to petition someone...wait for 20minutes and get the reply "The player you named does not exist on this server, please check your spelling." And have the petition closed.
They could EASILY just ask me to re-type it in the petitionwindow, couldn't they????
These bot restockers are so easy to prove beyond a doubt that they bot, so I'm excited, I think we'll get somewhere.
Qais
They never promised to do anything even if you proved your case. That is why we have this thread to begin with. Some bots cross the line while other bots are not. The sad reality is that we are now ok to live with the "behaving" bots. I'd say ban the actively farming ones before we take on the selling bots. BTW, they are "proven" to be there for sure.
They never promised to do anything even if you proved your case. That is why we have this thread to begin with. Some bots cross the line while other bots are not. The sad reality is that we are now ok to live with the "behaving" bots. I'd say ban the actively farming ones before we take on the selling bots. BTW, they are "proven" to be there for sure.
Well based upon what Mistryl said, that's not the case, I intend to try to do whatever i can to help NCNA solve this problem. I am going to try to mobilize a task force on Hindemith to help snuff out these users and then we can submit them via the support forum and hopefully clean up Hindemith as well as other servers.
Also, the selling bots are selling the loot from the bot farmers. We take them out and we keep taking them out then they will have to re-think their strategy.
The detailed reprorts that players take the time to send are invaluable, and every report of a suspicious player is appreciated. We do not rely on these reports to investigate a suspicious player, but they are helpful and useful. When making your report, please include the name of the player (with the exact spelling, even if it's tough), the time you saw the suspicious behavior, and as many details as possible.
Why would you not use our reports to investigate? What is the point of me submitting all of those petitions if they wont amount to squat?
Question: Who knows better what 3rd party programs look like in game?
Answer: The players.
If you dont use the information we give you then why ask us to continue doing it? I am not getting a warm fuzzy from your response Mistryl.
SirE, even if it is only 5, that's 5 today and another 5 tomorrow and your party members/clanmates get 5 petitions also. :)
Try going somewhere where there's 6 or 7 full bot parties and you'll see why it's a waste to use one petition for a single bot. Plus, who wants to use up all 5 of their petitions one bots when they may need one for something important?
The detailed reprorts that players take the time to send are invaluable, and every report of a suspicious player is appreciated. We do not rely on these reports to investigate a suspicious player, but they are helpful and useful. When making your report, please include the name of the player (with the exact spelling, even if it's tough), the time you saw the suspicious behavior, and as many details as possible.
Hi Mistryl. I've tried reporting people with shops selling 1 arrow or soulshot for 500,000,000a as suspected ebayers. But 3 of 3 times now, the GM response have been that they will not interfere in theft or scams, and that I should take great care when trading.
Am I formulating myself wrong or using the wrong category when reporting? How do I go about reporting it correctly?
I remember when I was killing bots for a while. I was out on windmill looking around and over the hill I see someone running my way. As they get closer I look at the name and decide I should proceed with my normal bot detection methods. I followed her around for a while. Tried to make conversation. Then Smacked her a few times and finally decided what I had to do. I killed her wrote down her name for my own personal reference and when I looked back at the screen she was still laying there. So I petitioned "/GM I suspect "name" is botting. I have brutally murdered her on windmill hill. THANK YOU!" I have never seen that bot again. So im thinking maybe it worked. Oh and for all the players out there that one day decide it might be a good idea to kill bots. DONT DO IT! Find other ways to drop them. I was warned when I started that it was not a good idea. I decided to do it anyway. Not a good idea. :(
Someone selling an arrow or a soul shot for insane amounts of money is an ebayer? I think maybe the person that buys the 1 arrow might be the ebayer. Guess im just confused. :confused:
OH ****! Now I get it! lol guess buying adena would work both ways huh. Well just shows I dont know much about how to purchase adena.
"Do not rely" indicates that we do not solely depend on players to report a bad user in order for a bad user to be investigated.
All reports sent in by players are investigated.
Does that make sense, or did I misunderstand the question?
No you didnt misunderstand me, but thank you for clarifying NCNA's approach. The "Do Not Soley Rely" clears up the mystery Mistryl.
It just becomes frustrating for me when I see and report someone three days in a row and come back for the fourth and the whole group is still there. :mad:
Because I have seen auto buffers that stand in town for several hours rebuffing, one can only assume the the player in question fell asleep without logging out first. And still seeing the auto buffer months latter. Its safe to assume that not many people bother to report suspected violations anymore. I could make far more bot reports than I do. But more often than not, I'll just train them instead and not bother reporting them.
Though I do /gm the ones standing around town autobuffing, every once in a while and have included the sujustion that now would be a good time to try an afk test on them.
I'm actually tempted to try report them anytime I see them standing around in a safe area autobuffing, on the off chance that they are in the safe area because the person monitoring them stopped to take a break and is no long at the keyboard.
Oh, and because I thought the 15k B crystals were selling for at one point was funny, its now around 13k on Kain. Did you know that you can NPC B grade duals? An elven sword is worth 660a/D crys. Dual Elven swords from the blacksmith in Giran gives you 3025a C crys. A Sword of Delusion*Stormbringer from the Lux store, will get you about 11,000a B Crystals. Think there is any money to be made doing this? Of course the problem with this is finding Dual craft stamps.
Try going somewhere where there's 6 or 7 full bot parties and you'll see why it's a waste to use one petition for a single bot. Plus, who wants to use up all 5 of their petitions one bots when they may need one for something important?
Very true. All I meant was to try and use what you've got. Report 1 or report 100, either way you are not going to see immidiate results. Might as well at least report 1 with the exact spelling then go to the support website and make a detail report stating (to the best of your ability :)) all the names of the bots that were in the party.
I don't know just some suggestions to make do with what we have :).
The detailed reprorts that players take the time to send are invaluable, and every report of a suspicious player is appreciated. We do not rely on these reports to investigate a suspicious player, but they are helpful and useful. When making your report, please include the name of the player (with the exact spelling, even if it's tough), the time you saw the suspicious behavior, and as many details as possible.
Hi Mistryl. I've tried reporting people with shops selling 1 arrow or soulshot for 500,000,000a as suspected ebayers. But 3 of 3 times now, the GM response have been that they will not interfere in theft or scams, and that I should take great care when trading.
Am I formulating myself wrong or using the wrong category when reporting? How do I go about reporting it correctly?
This is not an ebayer he is praying on someone not paying attention and clicking it by accident. This doesn't bother me so much, but what bothers me is people who say EWB 1.5m and it's EAB. False advertizing ****** me off.
Also, in general, if you see a char in giran/dion with lvl 1 clothes on, don't even bother. People also put 1 adena around them to indicate they are scammers. I actively do this and I will continue to do so.
Price gouging is legitimate. Legitimate in Aden :).
The detailed reprorts that players take the time to send are invaluable, and every report of a suspicious player is appreciated. We do not rely on these reports to investigate a suspicious player, but they are helpful and useful. When making your report, please include the name of the player (with the exact spelling, even if it's tough), the time you saw the suspicious behavior, and as many details as possible.
Hi Mistryl. I've tried reporting people with shops selling 1 arrow or soulshot for 500,000,000a as suspected ebayers. But 3 of 3 times now, the GM response have been that they will not interfere in theft or scams, and that I should take great care when trading.
Am I formulating myself wrong or using the wrong category when reporting? How do I go about reporting it correctly?
Nope. There is nothing in the rules against selling any item for any price.
2 of those 3 times, it's been bought tho - by some naked dwarf named llllllliawufbn and moneykings or something.
I stood there watching as the shop was set up and it took like 5 minutes for it to get bought. Sounds like a pretty effective way to make money if people misclick that much :o
As I said though; I wasn't reporting them for ebaying, I was reporting them as *suspected* ebayers. Nothing more.
In what way, are they suspected ebayers for selling at that price? The term most use for individuals like that are called scammers. Its the people buying from shops that have some insane prices that one should be looking at.
Is breaking a Rule of Conduct a bannable offense? Because under the Rules of Conduct on this site... the first rule is
While playing Lineage II, you must respect the rights of others and their rights to play and enjoy the game. To this end, you may not defraud, harass, threaten, or cause distress and/or unwanted attention to other players.
Could we report people for that? Because I can tell you, the raid boss farmers are causing very much distress for the large part of the server community. I mean, if we could just fight it out like we could with normal players... it would be different. But they're not normal players...
In what way, are they suspected ebayers for selling at that price?
It's a form of semi-secure money transfer. The modus operandi looks as follows:
1. The ebayer (let's call him "E") buys some adena for real-world money from the farmer ("F").
2. E sets up a shop with a single cheap item, say a stem or a wooden arrow, priced at the amount of adena he bought. You can find such shops in Gludin most of the time, at least on Teon.
3. F logs in a "banking" toon, goes to the shop of E and buys the worthless item.
In what way, are they suspected ebayers for selling at that price? The term most use for individuals like that are called scammers. Its the people buying from shops that have some insane prices that one should be looking at.
I still don't get why anyone would buy 1 tutorial guide for 100,000,000 when the shop doesn't even have a title.
I'm only saying it "could" be an ebay transaction, certainly enough grounds to cause suspicion.
I'd hardly call it a scam. Who buys a tutorial guide for 100 mill? Even if they thought it was 100 adena, they wouldn't want a tutorial guide by the time they had 100 mill anyway. Let alone buy it from an unnamed shop after staring at it for 5 minutes.
In what way, are they suspected ebayers for selling at that price? The term most use for individuals like that are called scammers. Its the people buying from shops that have some insane prices that one should be looking at.
I still don't get why anyone would buy 1 tutorial guide for 100,000,000 when the shop doesn't even have a title.
I'm only saying it "could" be an ebay transaction, certainly enough grounds to cause suspicion.
I'd hardly call it a scam. Who buys a tutorial guide for 100 mill? Even if they thought it was 100 adena, they wouldn't want a tutorial guide by the time they had 100 mill anyway. Let alone buy it from an unnamed shop after staring at it for 5 minutes.
Again, it's not against the rules to sell any item for any price. Petition and the GM will tell you the same thing. Hell, I've put up outrages shops like that myself when I was bored. I guess I should be banned, huh?
I have seen this exact thing before. I didnt realize what was going on. Amazing how this thread has opened my eyes to whats happening. Im not saying that the person in the picture is buying adena either but it is **** suspicous.(sp)
**** SirE keep making me edit post today. I also see your point. Screw it im going to take a break from posting for a few minutes and try to think for myself. Your manipulating !! :cool:
His point was that who the hell would sell a tutorial guide for 100m and who would buy it for 100m. Tarun is hypothesizing that the person selling the 100m tutorial guide had bought Adena from a 3rd party company and probably had to go offline before he could recieve his order. So to get around this problem, he setup a shop like that.
Again, it's not against the rules to sell any item for any price. Petition and the GM will tell you the same thing. Hell, I've put up outrages shops like that myself when I was bored. I guess I should be banned, huh?
Please please try to understand where I'm coming from. I'm not calling it proof. Just because someone buffs/dances/sings while they're not fighting, doesn't talk, and doesn't react when you train or pk them, doesn't make them bots and earns them an instant ban.
Should we stop investigating the above because it doesn't mean they are bots?
Just because I set up a shop selling my tutorial guide for 100 mill doesn't make me an ebayer. A naked untagged dwarf buying it doesn't make me an ebayer.
All I ask is that it's enough grounds for investigation.
I didn't think of that of being a way to obtain Ill-gotten adena, I wouldn't know enough about it. But the way it sounded, is that people who are selling the insanely priced stuff are ebayers. Like I said, you should also report the person buying the product for 100 mil adena.
I agree with _Akjosch_, this seems like a way to get around people reporting them for ebaying. Back in prelude the clan I was in had a point system for members who contributed materials to the clan. The clan WH being the way it was back then, we decided that the 3 officers would set up mules on their accounts and post them at gludio. This allowed us to keep tabs of who contributed what and allowed the members to withdraw materials/their crafted items even if the clan leader was not on. On a particularly crowded day one of the officers and I were balancing the loads on the mules and someone asked us for adena or we would be reported as ebayers. We ignored him since we were not doing anything wrong, but we did get reported for seeming like ebayers. I can see where setting up a scammer shop is less conspicuous. Not against the EULA, but still rather suspicious.
Again, it's not against the rules to sell any item for any price. Petition and the GM will tell you the same thing. Hell, I've put up outrages shops like that myself when I was bored. I guess I should be banned, huh?
Please please try to understand where I'm coming from. I'm not calling it proof. Just because someone buffs/dances/sings while they're not fighting, doesn't talk, and doesn't react when you train or pk them, doesn't make them bots and earns them an instant ban.
Should we stop investigating the above because it doesn't mean they are bots?
There should be ways of detecting bots that don't involve players noticing something "odd" about a persons behavior. Player reports should not even be necessary.
Just because I set up a shop selling my tutorial guide for 100 mill doesn't make me an ebayer. A naked untagged dwarf buying it doesn't make me an ebayer.
All I ask is that it's enough grounds for investigation.
Perhaps. Care to create a list of every item in the game and the cutoff value at which it can be sold before triggering the investigation? Because that would need to be the first step.
Perhaps. Care to create a list of every item in the game and the cutoff value at which it can be sold before triggering the investigation? Because that would need to be the first step.
But then, at what point does a free player controlled market become a NCSoft controlled one? The 3rd market is indeed the bane of our server Economies' exisitence. Perhaps NCSoft could make a couple accounts for "sting" purchases?
I don't understand where you're getting at.. I've yet to see a tutorial guide being sold for less than 100m. Are you saying that if I report all tutorial guides being sold at a "high price", I will be disturbing the tutorial guide market?
I've never reported EAD's being sold for 400k with the shop title "EWD", or stems being sold for 500k with the shop title "bop shafts". I've only reported naked characters selling their tutorial guide or one SS for 100-500m in an untitled shop as "possible adena buyers".
If they aren't. Great. Why does it matter if the GM investigates? I don't understand why you guys are so against this.
I don't understand where you're getting at.. I've yet to see a tutorial guide being sold for less than 100m. Are you saying that if I report all tutorial guides being sold at a "high price", I will be disturbing the tutorial guide market?
I've never reported EAD's being sold for 400k with the shop title "EWD", or stems being sold for 500k with the shop title "bop shafts". I've only reported naked characters selling their tutorial guide or one SS for 100-500m in an untitled shop as "possible adena buyers".
If they aren't. Great. Why does it matter if the GM investigates? I don't understand why you guys are so against this.
Because scamming doesn't violate the EULA. It isn't an exploit. Well, adena scamming by setting prices in weird ways, isn't against the EULA.
What I do to those liars, cheaters, and pieces of ***** that lie in their shops purposely is I put 1 adena around them so people know they are scammers.
The point is that the investigation will be useless as you will never be able to prove anything and there is a serious slippery slope warning.
I don't care if they investigate or not. That isn't my point. You're arguing from a philophical viewpoint and I'm arguing from a technical one. I don't want to ban people for suspicious behavior. I want them banned because of a quantifiable action.
Qais, I said specifically "I DON'T report scam shops" because I KNOW scams are not against the EULA. I've gotten scammed myself but I wasn't stupid enough to try and report it.
And I'm not asking to have them banned for suspicious behaviour. I'm asking to have them investigated for suspicious behaviour.
I can see both sides of the argument. However, you come across a situation where one person is only scamming and they get banned for being a suspected ebayer by one gm, then in another instance, a person (who is an ebayer) is allowed to stay because a different NC Offical determines that the ebayer is only scamming. Too much of a gray area.
Qais, I said specifically "I DON'T report scam shops" because I KNOW scams are not against the EULA. I've gotten scammed myself but I wasn't stupid enough to try and report it.
And I'm not asking to have them banned for suspicious behaviour. I'm asking to have them investigated for suspicious behaviour.
I never said you did, I was just responding to the investigations you were talking about. You said why are you so opposed to investigations and I gave my reasons. If i insinuated that you reported scammers, then i apologize.
I see your point you were just trying to say that it is suspicious of these people, I agree with you, it is suspicious, but then you said they should be investigated by GM's. That's where you got resistance to your idea. I was responding to the GM issue, i was responding to the practicality of it and the point.
Elro, if you only investigate once you have undeniable proof - what's the point of the investigation?
You wouldn't. That's why I want black and white rules as to what price you can "legally" sell an item. Taking the human decision making out of it would be best. I don't want GM-A coming to work and thinking my shop is okay, then GM-B coming on duty after fighting with his wife thinking that I'm an Ebayer for the same shop.
...Also, in general, if you see a char in giran/dion with lvl 1 clothes on, don't even bother. People also put 1 adena around them to indicate they are scammers. I actively do this and I will continue to do so...
Price gouging is legitimate. Legitimate in Aden :).
Qais
This is an okay policy as long as people remember it doesn't hold true for all nekkid dwarves. I personally use my dwarf to sell because of the extra slot, and I keep it w/o any gear because I remember the day the raid boss came to town...
Crazy Raid Boss (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v237/theregulators/ab97c0b3.gif)
Well, on that note, I've always thought that at some point X times over the 'normal' price of an item the game should just show a popup window that reads:
"You're screwing with me, right?"
And when you click ok it cancels the transaction. :P
Well, on that note, I've always thought that at some point X times over the 'normal' price of an item the game should just show a popup window that reads:
"You're screwing with me, right?"
And when you click ok it cancels the transaction. :P
I have gone through various levels of frustration with bots and think I understand some of the ins and outs why botters aren't banned immediately, even if they are blatantly doing things that normal people won't do (e.g. perfect 20 minute buff cycles, 9-toons on top of each others, etc).
Let's just ASSUME for a minute I fell asleep playing Lineage2. If I had a macro bar set up for a buff cycle on my EE and buffed myself repeatedly for no reason I could be perceived as a bot and not just asleep at the keyboard. (I know this is hard to believe, but stay with me for the conclusion). I would be irate if my account was banned for my head hitting the F1 key all night and being reported as a botter.
Imagine I was another player who never communicated with anyone and had precision timing on killing mobs. My group and I always played together and were in Ventrilo, never needed to speak, we don't care if you heal our mobs, we'll just note your clan and PvP later, hit us all you want, when you go red we'll kill ya for your gear, etc. (Again, not really likely but POSSIBLE).
I think NCSoft is trying to make sure they don't ban the legitimate players who may have fallen into one of the two (or possibly more) scenarios I described.
I feel the process takes time and yes while we might see the same names over and over again it could possibly be that the botters aren't being detected when GMs do their tests. I've seen my share just randomly appear in front of a raid boss, kill the boss, and all log out in less than 3 minutes flat. It's kinda hard to expect GM's to investigate them if their total game time is 3 minutes a day.
Banning DOES happen. Sure, we might have opinions of who is being banned was not botting or using programs, and good luck with your cases. However, I know there are players I have seen for an extended time (maybe a month) in the same area for 24/7 playtime no longer in game. Not just one, but the whole group of them gone, and not just to delevel..
Throughout my year and a half of this game I have seen the rally cries for bot masacre parties, Petition rallies to /gm-ed them death, etc. and it just takes persistence. Sure, it seems like a slap in the face that the auto-response petition comes back. HOWEVER, what if you were the person who got banned just because someone reported you (accurately or not) and there was no due process on figuring out if you were truly breaking the EULA. It would truly suck to lose 18 months of grinding because some over-zealous GM got a petition and decided to ban someone.
(In short...NCSoft is covering their backsides)
All that said...
Let's DO put one thing into perspective about this situation. Those who BOT professionally do affect our in-game economy and I would almost venture a guess and say positively. Use the new PTS (after-wipe) as an indicator. At 41, in a Devotion Set, and a Mid-Grade 2-handed mage blunt, I am struggling to make enough money/mats (even with 10x drop rates) to craft/buy what I have on Live. I'm not complaining, but it HAS put things into perspective...especially when I can't make 140 cokes to get two sabers made so I can upgrade with mammon to get better d-duals to give to my scavy who can make more mats to get my b grade...etc...etc...etc
In short, be careful what you ask for. But I do agree botting needs to be stopped.
Gameguard has a function that does an encrypted authorization between GG and the server...any client trying to connect without completing the authorization is denied.
This feature is currently disabled. WHY?
This feature would, theoretically eliminate a LARGE portion of the bots.
I don't care if they investigate or not. That isn't my point. You're arguing from a philophical viewpoint and I'm arguing from a technical one. I don't want to ban people for suspicious behavior. I want them banned because of a quantifiable action.
... and then the parameters for those quantifiable action will get known, rather sooner than later, and the farmers/ebayers will simply stay just below the threshold.
Sorry, but from the experiences in my line of work - finding and shutting down "offensive" hosts in a network of something over 100k servers - I can clearly say this doesn't work. You need the human factor, an actual human to investigate. Automated tools can help, but the final decision has to come from a human. And this means that one person's "suspicious, but ok behaviour" will be another's "bannable offence", but this little zone of uncertainity is a downside I can live with - and we all must live with if we want to see the offenders banned. Also, it doesn't matter how good your tools are, they have to be updated constantly; what works now might be useless next month already.
I don't care if they investigate or not. That isn't my point. You're arguing from a philophical viewpoint and I'm arguing from a technical one. I don't want to ban people for suspicious behavior. I want them banned because of a quantifiable action.
... and then the parameters for those quantifiable action will get known, rather sooner than later, and the farmers/ebayers will simply stay just below the threshold.
Sorry, but from the experiences in my line of work - finding and shutting down "offensive" hosts in a network of something over 100k servers - I can clearly say this doesn't work. You need the human factor, an actual human to investigate. Automated tools can help, but the final decision has to come from a human. And this means that one person's "suspicious, but ok behaviour" will be another's "bannable offence", but this little zone of uncertainity is a downside I can live with - and we all must live with if we want to see the offenders banned. Also, it doesn't matter how good your tools are, they have to be updated constantly; what works now might be useless next month already.
Whether human or software, there has to be a quantifiable number if you're going to ban for this sort of thing. I don't wanna get banned on a "feeling".
But the thing is, if someone is investigated, I'd hope that it's not like the GM just looks at the amount the item is sold for and bans or not - wouldn't it warrant checking who "delivered" to the sell store (and if he makes that sort of delivery frequently, or has other relations to the people he is delivering to).
However, I doubt that the appropriate tools are available.
Whether human or software, there has to be a quantifiable number if you're going to ban for this sort of thing. I don't wanna get banned on a "feeling".
No, there has to be no quantifiable number at all. There has to be a well-trained team of GMs who must have the right and the willingness to trust their "feelings". Sometimes, they'll be wrong - I've been wrong on occasion, misinterpreting heavy backup traffic for SSH attacks for example, and I had to apologise to our customers - but if you have a good team and trust it to do "the right thing", they'll be right in more than 99% of the cases, as I am, looking back at the statistics. Trust me, the occasional failure is more than worth it.
Trust the GMs. Give them the means to do something and give them the feeling they're right to do something if they see suspicious behaviour. Don't just blame them if they fail - and fail they will, oh yes! - but let it be a lesson for them, and they will learn and, with time, get better at what they do. In the end we, the legit players and the GMs, will make the servers a better place, even if it's a never-ending battle.
Trust me, the occasional failure is more than worth it.
Tell that to the people who will get banned without cause. If you really think "losing a few innocents" is acceptable, then I say, ban 50% of dorfs. Just randomly pick 50% of them on each server. Sure, you'll get some innocent players but, hey, it's worth it, right?
Trust me, the occasional failure is more than worth it.
Tell that to the people who will get banned without cause. If you really think "losing a few innocents" is acceptable, then I say, ban 50% of dorfs. Just randomly pick 50% of them on each server. Sure, you'll get some innocent players but, hey, it's worth it, right?
Well, where did I say "losing a few innocents is acceptable"? Quite the contrary - as I wrote, when I was wrong, I has to appologise to the customer. We didn't lose a single one of those.
All of my other points still stand. Deciding who to ban needs humans - people with both the right to ban and the willingness to use it based on their gut feeling alone. Rough rules and automated (statistical) tools are just guidelines, but they should only supplement the decision-making, never be a sole reason to ban or not to ban someone.
Maybe that's where we're misunderstanding eachother - when I say gm's investigating, I don't mean simply looking at the price of the item and going "woah most certainly a ban!".
When I want them to investigate, I want them to check if the one who bought the tutorial guide has bought any others. If he's suspected for botting. If he's previously suspected for selling adena. If he received the adena from suspected botters.
Did the person who gave him the adena to buy the tutorial guide give adena to any other characters?
Say, because of my petition, the gm investigates this, and finds out the adena comes from a character who gives out 40 billion a week only buying tutorial guides. I think that's enough to cause further suspicion for ebaying.
Or say, it turns out the adena comes from a character on a completely legit account with one high level character who just started a buffbox. Great. Next case.
Too bad we can't read the minds of the people logging in yet ...
Um, with proper client-server security, you wouldn't need to. This isn't a new technology.
We're not talking about botting here. What kind of magical client-server security would prevent a player who wants to buy adena for dollars from logging in using the official client which wouldn't also prevent the same player, but without this intention, to log in using the same client?
Barring that, both the "ebayers" and the "farmer's" banking-toons log in with official clients. There's no technical way to catch them during log-in.
Let 'em. Without their bots, they don't have any money. Besides, farming is legal.
"Legal" or "illegal" doesn't even enter here. Exchanging adena for dollars (euros, rubels, other real-world currency as needed) is against the EULA.
Too bad we can't read the minds of the people logging in yet ...
Um, with proper client-server security, you wouldn't need to. This isn't a new technology.
We're not talking about botting here. What kind of magical client-server security would prevent a player who wants to buy adena for dollars from logging in using the official client which wouldn't also prevent the same player, but without this intention, to log in using the same client?
Sorry, I was. There seems to be 2 different discussions going on in this thread.
Barring that, both the "ebayers" and the "farmer's" banking-toons log in with official clients. There's no technical way to catch them during log-in.
Let 'em. Without their bots, they don't have any money. Besides, farming is legal.
"Legal" or "illegal" doesn't even enter here. Exchanging adena for dollars (euros, rubels, other real-world currency as needed) is against the EULA.
I totally agree. And, get rid of the botters and they won't have adena to pass around.
I see an increase of ingame bot petitions coming. I for 1 will be making my /gm %target appears to be a bot. macro as soon as I get home from work. One thing that usually stopped me from petitioning was having to try and spell the sdfiiilefiiiffFdsef name for a petition.
now ill be click, click, click, clickityclickclick, clcccclclccccclccllcclclcclclcl aaarghhh no more petitons left every day.
Try going somewhere where there's 6 or 7 full bot parties and you'll see why it's a waste to use one petition for a single bot. Plus, who wants to use up all 5 of their petitions one bots when they may need one for something important?
I have posted my feelings :mad: on that very subject to Spam and Mistryl.
But i have at times used up my limit of 5 petitions making reports of groups. Which leaves me with a big fat Zero when i really need a petition for something important.
So i don't make reports anymore, why should i use up my 5 petitions....
As almost everyone knows, threads that discuss violations of the User Agreement are typically closed because of a hostile tone toward NCsoft or other inappropriate behavior. I would like to thank Aeze for the constructive approach to this discussion, and everyone else for contributing.
Please remember that simply killing a raid boss repeatedly is not a violation. However, using bot programs to fight the raid boss or selling the dropped items for real-life currency are violations, and we take strict disciplinary action against that type of behavior.
How can us, the players help GMs or whoever else at NCNA stop these people?
The detailed reprorts that players take the time to send are invaluable, and every report of a suspicious player is appreciated. We do not rely on these reports to investigate a suspicious player, but they are helpful and useful. When making your report, please include the name of the player (with the exact spelling, even if it's tough), the time you saw the suspicious behavior, and as many details as possible.
We are dedicated to investigating and taking action against anyone who is violating the User Agreement. We hate botters and ebayers just as much (if not more) than you do. :)
This thread will remain open for the time being. Any flames or inappropriate posts will result in the immediate lock of the thread.
Well, let's analyze a few things first Mistryl. We the players, all know that NC has a lot more power to exercise its ability to police the servers, however our biggest question is why they don't do it?? I know that you can have any DM on any server goto any character, any location, anywhere in the game universe stay in invisible mode, and at least have them make a recording of the bots that someone has turned in and have that submitted to the head DM so the bots can be banned within a few hours. So why does this not happen?
You know as well as we do what constitutes bot programs, but you DO NOT take an aggressive stance to make your game player friendly. It is very disheartening to find out that it takes you a whole year to ban botters and cheaters, during that time those same bots are online making 10 times the money off of your game as opposed to what you are making off of them. Last time I checked this was considered stealing!
From our perspective your lack of an aggressive stance is what ruins the game because to the player base it seems like you support what the botters/cheaters are doing in your game.
We also do not like the fact that it looks like you have taken no legal action against the writers of third party programs in your game, and we would know if you had becuase the programs would no longer be so proliferate in this game.
We the players don't really care how you do it, however we do want to see NCNA take a more aggressive stance towards this problem instead of taking a laxy dazy attitude about it. If you do not you will continue to lose legitimate players until all you have left on your servers is botters/cheaters!
We know you have the money to do what needs to be done, so why don't you stop making excuses all the time and do something about it!
yes.. When C4 was applied.. a new GM network/support was setup, this allows the GMs to from my understanding, cross server support, no gm would need to log into any specific server, the client side callup of the gm list is broken because it tries to litterly connect up to the gms connected, but since none are using the old client now for it, no gms are listed.
Out of all the gms across all the servers, they can all do support "load balanced" for quicker and more efficent GMing.
But the thing is, if someone is investigated, I'd hope that it's not like the GM just looks at the amount the item is sold for and bans or not - wouldn't it warrant checking who "delivered" to the sell store (and if he makes that sort of delivery frequently, or has other relations to the people he is delivering to).
However, I doubt that the appropriate tools are available.
That is in fact what happens, and the tools need to do that have been availble for a very long time.
How much time do you have to look through say....20000 player logs? How many people could look through those logs in a month? How consistent must the behavior be for it to be considered illegit?
Businesses have protocols...not fly off the handle banning.
You have been on the boards as long as I have been, you should remember the posts Spam made a few times about people selling adena for rl money and what the GMs had to do to catch them. And why it takes so long.
How much time do you have to look through say....20000 player logs? How many people could look through those logs in a month? How consistent must the behavior be for it to be considered illegit?
Based on network traffic logs from some 100000 servers, measuring in ca. 10TB daily (part of my daily work load):
About the time it takes me to write a program to sift through the logs and report "unusual" activities, and further to iteratively refine the program to exclude "unusually looking, but ok" and include "unusual and not included yet" activities. I'd say around a week for the initial program (probably less; the first version of some of my tools was ready in under one day, actually), two to three hours max (of those, less than one hour for the re-programming) for each iteration.
Um, with proper client-server security, you wouldn't need to. This isn't a new technology.
Sorry, I was. There seems to be 2 different discussions going on in this thread.
Let 'em. Without their bots, they don't have any money. Besides, farming is legal.
And here's a 129 posts discussion summed up in three lines. Ty SirE, nice indsight as often.
As stated a [923]load of times : no software should be allowed to connect to the servers but the official client.
It's plain, simple, and definitive.
If RGIs can't rely on automated farming, they'll stop farming. Period. They won't do it manually.
If they do modify the server to accept only legitimate clients there just won't be any RGIs anymore, nor ebayers.
This is the single final point of any botting/farming discussion. The technology exists, is easy to implement blah blah.
Now the only question left, and this is imo precisely why those discussions are not allowed, is WHY such security mesures are not implemented.
We all have our ideas which are not all marked on the sign of the great "conspiracy".
I'll provide a list of ideas which is not a flame nor a critic, just a state of what the WHY could be.
So to sum up and feed your thoughts these could be :
NC (NA, KR, whatever) doesn't want to add the security because:
- they don't hear us
- they do hear us but they don't care
- They do hear and care but it is deemed too expensive (which it isn't but let's let it go that way)
- they have a stubborn asian style management who won't ever recognize a mistake (it exists)
- they have an interest in keeping the things as they are (like for instance the famed supposed deal with IGE)
- SirElrohir
- a mix of the above
Feel free to add your suggestions but keep it civil and don't hit the dead horse for the sake of the thread.
I win at not expressing myself clearly. Let me try again:
I know that they have the logs, but I don't think there is automated flagging of suspicious transactions or characters related to those flagged for inspection. From my understanding, all the work with the logs is done manually; not really a pleasant- or fast - task no doubt.
I win at not expressing myself clearly. Let me try again:
I know that they have the logs, but I don't think there is automated flagging of suspicious transactions or characters related to those flagged for inspection. From my understanding, all the work with the logs is done manually; not really a pleasant- or fast - task no doubt.
Task which would be unnecessary if the bots could not connect.
(I don't know if I can be anymore clear in hinting at my post ... ;) )
And here's a 129 posts discussion summed up in three lines. Ty SirE, nice indsight as often.
As stated a [923]load of times : no software should be allowed to connect to the servers but the official client.
It's plain, simple, and definitive.
I wish it would be so simple.
It takes only a few hours to "****" either the client or the protocol it's using and be back botting. The latter can be manipulated via a proxy, which means there's no bot program for GG and similar tools to detect running on the computer with the official L2 client.
This means: To counter it, the L2 executable has to be changed (updated) every few hours.
Given the fact the L2 client doesn't implement "soft updates" (updates to the running executable or its data which don't require the client to restart) and re-implementing it into the current framework would be a PITA, there's no chance we'll get such update frequency any time soon, and there's little chance we'll ever get them in L2.
On the other hand, going after the "end users" - the people who are buying adena and other services - means the RMTs will see their market erode and move elsewhere. Also, if done consequently, it'll send a message to the player base; both that NCSoft is "doing something" and that cheating doesn't pay off. This'll erode the market even further.
In the end, you have to try and do both of this things (and more). There's never a simple solution to abuse problems like this and there's never a purerly technical solution, despite what the marketing of firms like McAfee and Symantec would like you to believe. Also you can never stop adapting to this ever-changing environment, because the bad boys certainly never will. No amount of code will make this adaptation possible for you - it's still something you need a human for.
It takes only a few hours to "****" either the client or the protocol it's using and be back botting. The latter can be manipulated via a proxy, which means there's no bot program for GG and similar tools to detect running on the computer with the official L2 client.
This means: To counter it, the L2 executable has to be changed (updated) every few hours.
Sorry but you're wrong.
How do you think your bank is doing ?
Do you think it's expensive ? If it was the bank wouldn't do it. Or you'd have to pay a premium. Netbanking is cheap and safe.
I know that the US are a bit late on these technologies with the major websites (amazon, ebay...) relying on password transmitted in clear in content-type data. But even then. Look at what Dutch or Belgian banks are doing.
The answer is key pair exchange.
And the update could be daily, automatic and soo easy.
I know. It's my job. I'm IT Project Manager working for a bank/insurance company. Security is not a topic anymore, we breath it.
All these techniques are based on cheap open source techniques.
Trust me, no bank will ever allow another software than theirs to connect to their servers. And besides some crazy Swiss bank they don't want to pay premiums for that.
It seems to me that nearly everyone that is involved with any kind of constant in depth discussion about nearly everything on these forums either works in IT or has background in IT. That's just an observation, though =/
It seems to me that nearly everyone that is involved with any kind of constant in depth discussion about nearly everything on these forums either works in IT or has background in IT. That's just an observation, though =/
I don't...but ok I'm probably not the one you were talking about LOL
My bank (the German Sparkasse, BTW) is allowing me to connect with any client (browser) I like. Even with a client I wrote, if I want to. Hell, I could do online banking with a bunch of bash scripts (say, with "curl" or "wget") if I felt like it.
How is this in any way relevant to the "only one client allowed to connect" model of L2? The security model of a bank is way different simply because a bank doesn't trust the client to do anything but send, recieve and display data as well as authentificating the user. It doesn't need to verify the client, just the user.
L2 is a (semi-)real-time game. To be able to deal with network lag, the client gets additional information which it isn't allowed to display to the user (for example, the exact HP numbers of nearby players and monsters or the position of monsters not yet in view of the player). Also, it's allowed to say "I'm moving to the spot X,Y" instead of sending mouse/keyboards events over the network, which also helps botting.
Bank = thin client
L2 = fat client
You can't meaningfully compare the security requirements for those two.
The answer is key pair exchange.
It's the answer to the wrong question. It's able to identify the user, but does nothing to identify the client, or to stop man-in-the-middle attacks via a proxy.
Yes, daily updates are easy. That's a given. Daily updates which don't shut the client down aren't possible with the current L2 codebase.
My bank (the German Sparkasse, BTW) is allowing me to connect with any client (browser) I like. Even with a client I wrote, if I want to. Hell, I could do online banking with a bunch of bash scripts (say, with "curl" or "wget") if I felt like it.
Don't be dumb (or play with words if it's more civil to say so), you still have to load the appropriate java classes. Java IS the client. The browser is just a medium, or a launcher. You have an environment in which you use an application. The browser is the environment.
It's the answer to the wrong question. It's able to identify the user, but does nothing to identify the client, or to stop man-in-the-middle attacks via a proxy.
Of course not. I was not at all talking about User authentication.
When you telnet or connect to a server you get a handshake. The handshake is typically the server saying "Hello, I'm a server" while the client says "Hello, I'm a client". It's the handshake that should be key based.
Then you have user authentication by whichever method you like.
And for the daily udpate, some code transmitted by the update server would fit just so.
1 - Update server randomly telling L2's client what algo/prot to use or updating the keys
2 - L2client making its handshake with the servers and authenticating itself.
3 - User typing his PW to access to the game.
My bank (the German Sparkasse, BTW) is allowing me to connect with any client (browser) I like.
Don't be dumb (or play with words if it's more civil to say so), you still have to load the appropriate java classes.
Oh, but I'm not playing dumb. The German Sparkasse doesn't use java for online banking. Sorry. Just pure HTML. I can use it with any web browser I like, and the browser's the client.
No need to, even. As I said, a bank is using a "thin client (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_client)". This both needs no special client, just one that implements a protocol (in this case: HTTPS), and is way easier to secure than L2's "fat client" model.
It's the answer to the wrong question. It's able to identify the user, but does nothing to identify the client, or to stop man-in-the-middle attacks via a proxy.
Of course not. I was not at all talking about User authentication.
When you telnet or connect to a server you get a handshake. The handshake is typically the server saying "Hello, I'm a server" while the client says "Hello, I'm a client". It's the handshake that should be key based.
Time to find (easy; after all, I know exactly when the handshake happens, based on network logs) and rip out this part of code (together with all needed keys) for use with my own unofficial client: under 30 minutes.
You don't gain any security this way, sorry.
And for the daily udpate, some code transmitted by the update server would fit just so.
1 - Update server randomly telling L2's client what algo/prot to use or updating the keys
2 - L2client making its handshake with the servers and authenticating itself.
3 - User typing his PW to access to the game.
Again: The L2 client currently isn't capable of doing this kind of "soft" update.
(edit : hint: pure html won't allow you to access to any database...)
And for the time to 'rip off' a key generation and exchange process I won't take the 2 pages post to explain you why or how but go get some documentation about he topic and you'll see your prejudices don't stand up the analysis.
You can begin there : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography
Even some p2p bot softs are using those keys and afaik it's stil uncracked tho I read that many ppl are trying hard.
As for modifying the client, they did it for Gameguard and every chronicle, and it's only a handshake.
I'd estimate the job at about 20 man days.
And I estimate the profit in new/returning players to be a lot more.
Not using Java but still having jsessionid in the https connect ?
You do realise the difference between using java on the client side (what you said every bank does) and on the server side (which wasn't what you said at all, but which the "jsessionid" hints at)? :)
(edit : hint: pure html won't allow you to access to any database...)
Try phpMyAdmin sometime. The client side is pure HTML. We're still talking about the client and you're not changing the subject, right?
And for the time to 'rip off' a key generation and exchange process I won't take the 2 pages post to explain you why or how but go get some documentation about he topic and you'll see your prejudices don't stand up the analysis.
I don't want to break the keys or the encryption (this would be somewhere between "hard" and "practically impossible"). All I need to do is to know the encryption algorithm (code analysis allows this pretty easily; for example, AES needs a specifc S-box (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rijndael_S-box), which has to be somewhere in memory for the algorithm to work) and the keys (which have to be embedded into the executable and also be in memory for the time it takes to do the handshake). Given those two data, I don't need the client anymore - I can do the handshake myself, with my own client.
No "cracking" of the encryption needed.
...
Here is what is sent in clear text on the internet tubes :
No, it didn't. You might want to learn the difference between "HTTP" and "HTTPS". The former is unencrypted, the latter isn't, and my bank sure as hell doesn't use pure unencrypted HTTP for the online banking website. :)
Sorry to say but you're making a lot of noise in a thread stating falsities you firmly believe.
(edit : hint: pure html won't allow you to access to any database...)
Try phpMyAdmin sometime. The client side is pure HTML. We're still talking about the client and you're not changing the subject, right?
phpMyAdmin is not pure HTML, it's PHP!!! The php is stored on the server, interpreted by a parser and using a connect class to access DBs. Sending html formatted (or not btw) data in return. So there is no client on your side but an HTML reader, but the PHP itself is the DB client ! HTML is not connecting to a DB, it's connecting to a medium connecting to a DB.
You don't get the key exchange mechanism either but persists in saying it's easy to ****.. DO SO AND BECOME FAMOUS.
...
Here is what is sent in clear text on the internet tubes :
So about L2 you say that an encrypted key exchange can be read and hacked and about your bank it can't.
Don't bother explaining me how ; you just made my point. Ty the bait was free of charge.
Now if you could suspend your grievances and go back to the topic which is about "crossing the line", ppl finding ebaying as moral and or purchasing adena and possible ways to prevent this. You surely have a background on those technologies, hence the bait, but unfortunately some misinformation also passed through.
About the tutorial selling shops for 100kk...
On Teon, several weeks ago, some shops appeared in giran and dion with such a tutorial. "The shopmessage read 0.75$ for 1kk, visit www.... etc" . That guy just wanted to keep his shop open to advertise his site,so he had to put an item there for a price that would never sell. One of the most blatant eulaviolations i have evver seenTHey probably did this on all servers and here and there forgot the message.
However,this technique is sometimes used by real, legit, honest players as well. For example u can find shops with " WTB recipe damascus, mail me" . In the shop they sell a worthless item for a ridiculous price, just to make sure nobody buys it and the message can be seen. (if u dont have an instance of the item u want to buy, u cant set up a buyshop for that item)
We are perfectly aware that killing raid bosses is not against the rules. I have no problem whatsoever competing for raid content against other true players of this game. That is the whole fun part of raiding in this game, compared with WoW which is instanced based so everyone gets what they want.
But these players in question do nothing but level their chars to RB killing level, kill RB's. Then they offload all the loot to the same 2-3 selling characters in Giran who sell all the nice loot they get.
I am talking about a group of 20-30 people, mostly nukers with an EE in every party, SE's, couple of Bishops and a couple of tanks.
The nukers all wear Avadon Robe and use a SoM/Dasparions staff. Their jewelry is mostly Black Ore and they never upgrade it.
Why would 20-30 people play this game 24/7 (two 12hour shifts) to endlessly farm raid content on level 70-76 characters in unenchanted B Grade gear (except for weapon ofc) and then SELL all the gear they get immediately after they get it.
If the limit on ingame carried adena is 2billion, then where do they put all this adena they make? Why do they do this endlessly, day after day, 24/7 non stop killing RB's and then standing in town until another one spawns. Why do they sit there and make billions of adena every week, that is never spent, never used and can't even be stored cause the game has a 2billion limit on each character.
There is absolutely no possible other explanation for it other than they sell adena.
These guys have been around for months on my server, they just added a whole new clan full of nukers in preperation for C5 harder raid bosses.
I can't understand how NC cannot track where those billions upon billions of adena go and see that it is sold?
Why would 30people play the game 24hours a day to have useless gear and stand in town 50% of the time they are online.
I'd like to thank you Mistryl for leaving this post open long enough for a discussion to develop, seeing as everyone expected it to be closed.
I will gladly donate my experienced MMO mind to NC in order to combat the illegal players in this game. I'll even promise to assist on a server where I am not involved in the politics at all, so that you can ensure that I am impartial about which cheaters I would recommend banning.
I don't care if all the servers become half empty when all the cheats are removed, because the quality of gameplay even then will be much higher than it is now.
Sorry to say but you're making a lot of noise in a thread stating falsities you firmly believe.
(edit : hint: pure html won't allow you to access to any database...)
Try phpMyAdmin sometime. The client side is pure HTML. We're still talking about the client and you're not changing the subject, right?
phpMyAdmin is not pure HTML, it's PHP!!!
We're talking about the client-side here, remember (unless you're trying to change the subject, that is)? I know fully well how phpMyAdmin works on the server. On the client, it's just HTML.
You don't get the key exchange mechanism either but persists in saying it's easy to ****.. DO SO AND BECOME FAMOUS.
You misunderstood me. I said it was easy to replicate given the algorithm and the used key, and it's easy to find out the algorithm and the key given the client in which both are embedded.
You are the one talking about "hacking" the encryption. I talk about "hacking" the encrypter.
So about L2 you say that an encrypted key exchange can be read and hacked and about your bank it can't.
No, I didn't. You're still misunderstanding me.
If I wanted, I could read what I sent to my bank (via an encrypted channel) in clear text, despite the encryption. That's because the encryption (and decryption) is happening on my side of the connection, too.
The same holds true for the game connection.
Of course, "hacking" the online banking connection is pretty pointless - I already know what I'm sending anyway, and my client (browser) displays what the bank is sending decrypted, too.
Your frustation is surely legitimate skyler but you need to get at the source.
You're talking about tracking and hunting bad RB behaviours while they could be prevented at a way earlier stage.
You might want to read a few posts above when SirE summed it up and gice us your opinion.
"Legal" or "illegal" doesn't even enter here. Exchanging adena for dollars (euros, rubels, other real-world currency as needed) is against the EULA.
I totally agree. And, get rid of the botters and they won't have adena to pass around.
Not really. As long as different cheaters value their adena in RL money differently (being that 3rd party software help, different levels of playing skills and/or different levels of their IRL incomes), there will be exchanges of adena for RL money.
Bots aren't so easy to disable, too. Dunno about you, but I can make a bot even using the standard client and some explicitly allowed hardware.
Bots aren't so easy to disable, too. Dunno about you, but I can make a bot even using the standard client and some explicitly allowed hardware.
Ha, that's an interesting bias.
But economically do you believe it'd be viable if you HAD to use In Game botting ?
In Game botting requires 1 computer per bot or a great maximum of 2 provided they're good computers (thus expensive) and low res is used.
Out Of Game botting requires 1 computer for each 9 grp party. I can even believe you can run several 9bots groups on a good computer.
That means the investment you have to make to bot and have to recoup somewhere is by far higher !
That should put a real lot of bots off the market.
The math : (at $800 the comp)
1 comp for 18 accounts = $44 per toon
1 comp per 2 accounts = $400 per toon
400 x 9 = $3600
But economically do you believe it'd be viable if you HAD to use In Game botting ?
As long as there are buyers, it'd be viable to do even without botting.
1 comp per 2 accounts = $400 per toon
I'd put $350 for a single dedicated computer for one account. Maybe less. You won't be expected to run across Giran on it anyway. And don't forget, it is one-time investment, you don't lose it when (well, if) NCsoft closes your next account.
You still have to recoup, be it on one toon or a succession of banned toons. And recouping means a price increase if you have a cost increase.
And as for someone bying it will depend on the price. What if the mil went to $30 to follow some similar ratio ?
Hard to buy 500 mils at that price.
I bet those Majestic circlets would dramatically fall in price (and BEFORE the ToI quest is fixed OMG 111)
Although the thread's branched off a few times, I appreciate everyone's replies, it's a good thread. Thanks everyone for being contructive and not getting the thread locked! It's an important issue, and it's important to be able to talk about it constructively, even if it is tempting to do otherwise.
We're going to try some support tickets with some screenshots of the raid farmers saying some questionable things and see if that does anything, but I don't know if it'll be enough... I really hope that maybe this thread has brought a little more attention onto these specific type of farmers. :)
Disable game cards.. no more game cards.
Credit Card payment only.
I know it won't be popular, but too bad. The best medicine rarely tastes good.
Then all they do is continue with the existing policy - if an account gets banned, every account on that CC gets banned, and the CC itself is blacklisted from creating new accounts.
Disable game cards.. no more game cards.
Credit Card payment only.
I know it won't be popular, but too bad. The best medicine rarely tastes good.
Then all they do is continue with the existing policy - if an account gets banned, every account on that CC gets banned, and the CC itself is blacklisted from creating new accounts.
Very simple solution to a complex problem.
It's obvious, and simple, but I'm not sure it'd be practical... Personally I know a ton of people that have to use gamecards for a number of reasons. :(
I want to know how i get a GM then. if /gm list doesn't work. Do I make a petition asking to speak to a gm directly in game?
I don't want some automated response, I actually want to see a gm the one with === in their name and I want to speak with him/her.
Anyone know how to do that? Do i have to fill in a special petition or should I dial zero to get an operator?
Mail support for any complex problems. Ingame /gm function is for canned answer stuff.
Disable game cards.. no more game cards.
Credit Card payment only.
I know it won't be popular, but too bad. The best medicine rarely tastes good.
Then all they do is continue with the existing policy - if an account gets banned, every account on that CC gets banned, and the CC itself is blacklisted from creating new accounts.
Very simple solution to a complex problem.
It's obvious, and simple, but I'm not sure it'd be practical... Personally I know a ton of people that have to use gamecards for a number of reasons. :(
I'm sure if they had too, they'd find a CC to put their account on. They're buying gamecards somehow after all.
As I said, the best medicine almost always tastes terrible.
Disable game cards.. no more game cards.
Credit Card payment only.
I know it won't be popular, but too bad. The best medicine rarely tastes good.
Then all they do is continue with the existing policy - if an account gets banned, every account on that CC gets banned, and the CC itself is blacklisted from creating new accounts.
Very simple solution to a complex problem.
It's obvious, and simple, but I'm not sure it'd be practical... Personally I know a ton of people that have to use gamecards for a number of reasons. :(
I'm sure if they had too, they'd find a CC to put their account on. They're buying gamecards somehow after all.
As I said, the best medicine almost always tastes terrible.
Well, i'm not sure how helpful that would be, I want to get a gm to follow me around for 10 minutes, while i snuff out all the bot-restockers. Then they would have no choice but to ban them on the spot. I know it's not hitting the farmers, but then again, any type of help will be helpful.
If I go through mail support they'll just brush me off.
Disable game cards.. no more game cards.
Credit Card payment only.
I know it won't be popular, but too bad. The best medicine rarely tastes good.
Then all they do is continue with the existing policy - if an account gets banned, every account on that CC gets banned, and the CC itself is blacklisted from creating new accounts.
Very simple solution to a complex problem.
UO did this, but it had gamecards too.
It's easy enough to allow people to pay with debit as well as credit cards, then you can reliably remove gametime cards and you kill a lot of problems very quickly.
If I go through mail support they'll just brush me off.
Maybe, maybe not. I work IT Support for our company and I know a lot of our users feel like they get the brush off when they use the automated support ticket system so they call instead. What they don't know is that them calling us is keeping us almost glued to the phone and not able to answer any support tickets. I don't know how NCNA does their support, but if it's anything like all the other support departments I've ever worked for then everything gets read and prioritized. It's that second part people have problems with, what's high priority to the user is not nescesarily what's a high priority for the company.
You guys are overlooking the obvious.
....
Very simple solution to a complex problem.
Part of a solution yes, but it's still not preventing the cat and mice game since bots would still effectively need to be detected.
Other solutions prevent them from coming.
It's a bit like in a disco. you prefer the bad guys to stay out than to offer free bandages...
If I go through mail support they'll just brush me off.
Maybe, maybe not. I work IT Support for our company and I know a lot of our users feel like they get the brush off when they use the automated support ticket system so they call instead. What they don't know is that them calling us is keeping us almost glued to the phone and not able to answer any support tickets. I don't know how NCNA does their support, but if it's anything like all the other support departments I've ever worked for then everything gets read and prioritized. It's that second part people have problems with, what's high priority to the user is not nescesarily what's a high priority for the company.
Well, Mistryl said EULA breakers are high priority, but I still think I will be thrown in the trash. You see what bothers me is that I made a petition and I instructed the GM, to do x, y, and z and they will be proven without any shadow of a doubt that the person is a bot user.
If what they say is true, that bot user should have been banned already. I understand what you're saying about customer priority over company priority, but when they say it is a high priority and evidence proves otherwise, I'm not sure it's a good idea to go through a website.
I actually want to call the boss of the GM's and whoever is in control. I want to clean up my bloody server, i pay the fee, I should be helped in the process.
I actually want to call the boss of the GM's and whoever is in control. I want to clean up my bloody server, i pay the fee, I should be helped in the process.
Most GM's let them be cause of obvious reasons. Spotting, reporting, training, pk'ing bots...it all does nothing if they don't get hit by the ban button.
But of course, as people are greedy, the bots stay...and I'm not only talking about the players who e-bay.
Mistryl said otherwise. So i want to put her words to the test. Actually, if possible, Mistryl, I want you to get on a GM toon and I will personally show you the illegal users in Hindemith. The ones that there is no shadow of a doubt about them. The users that I could write a scientifically valid paper proving that they are bot users.
It would have an abstract, an introduction, materials and methods, results, and a discussion section.
Mistryl said otherwise. So i want to put her words to the test. Actually, if possible, Mistryl, I want you to get on a GM toon and I will personally show you the illegal users in Hindemith. The ones that there is no shadow of a doubt about them.
Qais
Mistryl is one thing, reality is slightly different.
Yup, I just read the whole EULA agreement, basically NC isn't liable for anything but the amount we paid per month. Then the following section was an indemnification section, I can't say I fully understood it, but if we break the EULA we hold NC and its associates harmless. That's what I think it said.
But if they break the agreement, we can only recoup how much we paid per month.
Actually, if possible, Mistryl, I want you to get on a GM toon and I will personally show you the illegal users in Hindemith.
I appreciate the offer, but neither I nor members of the GM team would be available or visible for a personal tour. It's not that the GM team wouldn't "believe" you, but that they conduct their own investigations and cannot spare the time that would be required. Your reports will be just as helpful as any tour would be. Thank you!
The way I feel about this is, beat them to the boss, if they want to pvp then do it or leave. A clan that has all active members at a raid should be able to kill as many and as often as they want.
BTW, does anyone else find it a little condescending that the GM's are "too busy" with their own (obviously wanting) investigations to at least take a peek at a user's findings of a way to, he claims, 100% accurately spot shop bots?
You never know.. You show up for a meeting, you have a drink, enjoy the conversation, then actually want to stay a tad longer and that tad becomes a night and you might end up married with two kids.
BTW, does anyone else find it a little condescending that the GM's are "too busy" with their own (obviously wanting) investigations to at least take a peek at a user's findings of a way to, he claims, 100% accurately spot shop bots?
Also, if a GM showed up for a "tour" for one person, how many more people would demand the GM's time? And someone probably won't request a GM's time just once...
I apologize if it sounds condescending, as that is not my intent, but unfortunately it's not feasible. :(
BTW, does anyone else find it a little condescending that the GM's are "too busy" with their own (obviously wanting) investigations to at least take a peek at a user's findings of a way to, he claims, 100% accurately spot shop bots?
I apologize if it sounds condescending, as that is not my intent, but unfortunately it's not feasible. :(
I think the condescending remark was humorous ;)
But nonetheless I'll shout 'Prims' to be the first in line for a tour of Aden with Mistryl.
Its to bad you cant hire more gm's even for a temporary project. I would kill for a job like that. Instead my sitting at my crappy job right now wanting to go play. :( Could you at least reimburse me the 10 levels I lost when I decided it would be a good idea to go murder some bots? ;)
Also, could you reimburse me the time it took for my friend and I to wash NoS :). ROFLcopter.
Getting back to Mistryl, I agree with you that doing personal tours is just not feasible, how about a detailed list of the offenders with precise instructions on how to prove they are botting.
If I did do a tour, it would actually take like 5 minutes max. It would go like this.
1. Hi gm, thank you for your time (5 seconds)
2. /target yeliyol (5 seconds)
3. Run to him/her (30 seconds)
4. GM buy one or four of his scrolls, four being better as he will restock all four of them in less than one second, then I will do a quick trial for him showing that i can't even restock 1 in the time it takes the bot to restock all of them. (60 seconds)
5. Then I will give him the names of the other offenders in Giran and boom. Game over for the bot users. (20 seconds)
Quick, clear and streamlined. I'll try to get a GM tonight to follow me around.
Sorry guys if i seem so gun-** about it, I just felt Mistryl's post earlier in this thread was saying that they needed help, so i'm trying as hard as possible.
Could you at least reimburse me the 10 levels I lost when I decided it would be a good idea to go murder some bots? ;)
Unfortunately, PKing them is the most useless way of fighting them. Yeah, I've done it and it feels good at the time (like "flogging the bishop") but, in the end, leaves you feeling empty inside.
BTW, does anyone else find it a little condescending that the GM's are "too busy" with their own (obviously wanting) investigations to at least take a peek at a user's findings of a way to, he claims, 100% accurately spot shop bots?
Also, if a GM showed up for a "tour" for one person, how many more people would demand the GM's time? And someone probably won't request a GM's time just once...
I apologize if it sounds condescending, as that is not my intent, but unfortunately it's not feasible. :(
Obviously a GM can't show up to every tool that says "Hey can I play with a GM for a while?"
But if someone claims to have a 100% foolproof way to spot bot shops and thus ban them...that's not worth a few seconds of your time?
Priorities...
Not to mention, having a few "community GMs" that actually appear in-game and are a visible reminder that NCSoft actually exists in-game would do a lot towards customer morale...but that's just wishful thinking... :(
Best thing I have found for combating bots so far is training them. Keep my PK count down, pick up the stuff they drop when they die. If it cuts into their profits then your hurting them, anything else doesn't bother them at all.
Best thing I have found for combating bots so far is training them. Keep my PK count down, pick up the stuff they drop when they die. If it cuts into their profits then your hurting them, anything else doesn't bother them at all.
Force log has ruined that a lot and most bots don't wear high end equipment anyway.
Has anyone ever thought that maybe the GMs don't actually play the game, but are staring at rather boring text server logs? Way back when it used to be that if the GMs wanted to talk to you they would have to spawn a toon and then they would port you to the Towers near the Elven Village. I haven't heard of this happening since they introduced the /gm messaging utility a couple of chronicles ago. My guess is that the majority of the GM staff was outsourced and that the only ones capable of spawning toons in game and investigating anymore are the HGMs and the QA staff.
frankly i'm quite annoyed and outright ****** off that the moment a GM spawns, even on the PTS that every person within target and shouting range comes whistling over to them asking for mobs to be spawned, drops, adena, xp, lvls for christ sake.
I can somewhat see this on the pts, but enless it's obviously chaos week, leave them the hell alone, and even durring chaos, quic whining and begging for them, or worst, start swearing you doltz.
Frankly if a GM should up on the live servers, i can see it now, the mass movement of people running from any location they were previously at, SOEing and porting like mad just to see someone in a game, but doing a job they are being paid to do and assist perhaps someone specifically with.
However since GMs have a "invisibility/hide" mode, a gm could likely easily move around while letting a specific player know of there excistance and being able to witness anything that player would be trying to show.
Problem is taking the chance of doing that, and then people getting either jealious or sour about that fact that a gm singled out someone and the mass cries foul in being favor of a single or specific player.
I don't get some people, but that's how i could see it playing out, and that's why NCsoft doesn't usually take the chance cause they've already either experienced this or are well aware of the senarios.
Personally i've love to see more GM interaction, dairly interaction is possible. But i can understand the reluctance due to so many jerks and idiots that want the gm all to themselves or not for anyone at all.
I'd say a single gm, durring a lunch or coffee break while munching on thier hopefully healthy sandwitch and downing a glass of orange juice, could take the time to log onto a server and take there sweet time to move around the area and flag players.
Some people hate the thought of "working" on there breaks, but doing something like that should be still considered a break imo, but it's really the person working the jobs own thoughts on the matter.
Get a GM out there to walk the lands, ask a few players in game a few questions and suggestions. You'd be serprised whom will give you a straight honest answer in finding botters, and whom will shy away because they don't care, or are guilty themselves.
frankly i'm quite annoyed and outright ****** off that the moment a GM spawns, even on the PTS that every person within target and shouting range comes whistling over to them asking for mobs to be spawned, drops, adena, xp, lvls for christ sake.
It's human nature. Frankly, I don't get "star struck" like a lot of people do. They see a "star" and want attention.
frankly i'm quite annoyed and outright ****** off that the moment a GM spawns, even on the PTS that every person within target and shouting range comes whistling over to them asking for mobs to be spawned, drops, adena, xp, lvls for christ sake.
It's human nature. Frankly, I don't get "star struck" like a lot of people do. They see a "star" and want attention.
And the best solution to that is making it a non event.
If ppl were used to sse GMs it wouldn't be such an event.
I have yet to see a GM in game. And I play since CB.
frankly i'm quite annoyed and outright ****** off that the moment a GM spawns, even on the PTS that every person within target and shouting range comes whistling over to them asking for mobs to be spawned, drops, adena, xp, lvls for christ sake.
It's human nature. Frankly, I don't get "star struck" like a lot of people do. They see a "star" and want attention.
And the best solution to that is making it a non event.
If ppl were used to sse GMs it wouldn't be such an event.
I have yet to see a GM in game. And I play since CB.
Personally, I don't think they really should ever be seen. I like the "hands off" approach of this game. I don't need to see them to be "comforted" or have my hand held. Besides, we all know that bots would see them for what they are anyway (they can already tell everything about your toon, gear, level, etc).
i agree sir about the first comment, to many people put way to many people namely "celebrities" up on pedistals in which they are considered golden or something. It's a strange thing to see in rl, and just stupid to see on tv.
Sure if i were to run into tom hanks, i wouldn't be crapping my drawers or hanging off him like some photo mob. Sure i'd say hey tom, and then continue on. Just an example.
However in the case of already a pile of people hanging off him for idiotic reasons, i'll stick around to witness and be amused by the stupidity.
I think even with more frequent GM interaction, there would still be a pile of people still hanging off them regularly. I don't think you could ever get rid of it.
As for the "hands off" approach, that's your opinion ;) but i really think it would add a bit more friendlier or interesting atmosphere to the game, theres only one thing that beats playing a great game, it's playing that great game with the people that made it the way it is and continue to work on it.
There is merit in both approaches, I could careless about celebrities, I found most of them pathetic anyway, and who cares if you so x, y, and z. I think when I walk down the street, people should go home be like "OMG, I SAW QAIS WALKING DOWN THE STREET."
It would be nice to have them walk around so people know they're there, but then again people would abuse it. What would be better is undercover gms.
They could be even in our clans and we'd never know it, that seems like the best way to be "visible" and "invisible" at the same time. I mean, maybe Tokara is a GM, doesn't he live in Texas?
Also, i hope i'm poster #200 if not, then just selectively delete your memory cells that recorded this last sentence.
qais, i've suggested that there be gms like this, but i think there is a policy of entrapment of some sorts and other policies in which outside of the ncsoft network, they can't really do much. it's a bit of a grey area.. but it'd help a crapload if they could just full out do it.
Has anyone ever thought that maybe the GMs don't actually play the game, but are staring at rather boring text server logs? Way back when it used to be that if the GMs wanted to talk to you they would have to spawn a toon and then they would port you to the Towers near the Elven Village. I haven't heard of this happening since they introduced the /gm messaging utility a couple of chronicles ago. My guess is that the majority of the GM staff was outsourced and that the only ones capable of spawning toons in game and investigating anymore are the HGMs and the QA staff.
they play. i asked once. i bet, however, that they are extremely tired of having to go through the bot detection process because they already do it so much, and in all common-sense-ness they cannot ban an account unless they are actually physically at work. so it makes sense to me that they may not care and do not look for bots in the same way a non-GM player does while they are not at work. being a GM is not a lifetime commitment, its just a job, and i wouldnt expect them to do their job when they are supposed to be taking a break. breaks allow you to do your job without going insane.
Hey, a really weird thing happened for Bartz yesterday...
"Raid Farmers" tried Antharas, for the first time on Bartz. That was very suprising for most of the server. Clans eventually stopped them from doing it, but at a large cost, because we had to go red and we lost a lot of very valuable gear in the process.
We've "tolerated" farmers for a while, even though they do 95% of the raid bosses on our server, including Ant Queen and Zaken, and we hear it's even worse on other servers. It ruins the gameplay for the other clans and players who want to play the game. But they are really starting to cross the line now.
Everyone complains about them, but these raid farmers have been around for months, the exact same names and accounts, and almost nothing has been done about them. I'm sure if it were easy something would have been done already.
Us players cannot do anything, because raid farmers are only after one thing: money. We can kill them 100 times, and they will not stop coming back. Our only real tool to fight them is to take away their exp (and even doing that penalizes ourselves), and if that has no effect... what are we supposed to do?
I'm sure the GMs and whoever else is responsible for stopping this in NCNA has it very difficult as well, although I can't claim to know specifics. The main problem I think lies in these are "legitimate" players in the sense that they don't use 3rd party programs and it's difficult to prove what they do with their money. But from a player's perspective it's obvious.
My question for Mistryl, or whoever else, is:
How can us, the players help GMs or whoever else at NCNA stop these people? I think it's pretty obvious we need to work together... because this urgent problem has driven and is driving many people away from the game. It's a very serious problem that people really need to see results in. We constantly hear that NCNA is working on the issue and that's awesome, I'm sure they are working very hard, but it's obvious that it needs to be stepped up a bit, and I think you may need the players' help to do it.
Hail, as an oldtime hardcore US Lineage gamer I felt obliged to reply to your post. I re-activated my account about 10 days ago or so. I'm waiting on a certain game to enter beta and was bored. lol
Ok, so it sounds like you need help. First lets start with the situation. Raid farmers...My mentality has always been to out think farmers given whatever situation. "out farm the farmers" has always been a favorite expression of mine.
So ya start with the basics. The "raid farmers" and most likely a majority of the farmers on the servers are using voice communication software.
So you must counter this action. Go spend 9 bucks a month and get a TS or vent server hosted. Get Officers in several well known "good guilds" to form an alliance. The officers will know the passwords *if any are needed* and be able to log onto other guilds voice chat servers. You have now formed a network of sorts. Now build on it and let it begin to grow.
Think this all sounds like a bunch of work? bah! The last game I quit (WoW) back in Febuary, every major guild had a vent or ts server up, you needed them for raids. I never saw a large scale raid kill a boss without using voice chat. It's also possible to direct multiple 40 man raid groups using multiple copies of vchat programs.
To win your battle you must be organized. A voice chat network is great. I remember when we'd organize outdoor non instanced raid bosses... It was all a matter of time to organize the 40 people necessary. Sometimes people from a guild leave their voice chat progs on and are offline from the game. It makes it real easy to build up a force quickly.
The farmers are most definetly using voice chat to organize. And you must remember, Lineage was developed for a market in which the majority of players are already in voice communication. Either as a guild who has taken over an internet cafe, to those playing from cafes, using vchat to communicate to others playing in other internet cafes.
You can't beat an organized group if your un-organized.
The odds of you getting help from a GM or any game employee to deal with a "world enviroment issue", that was most likely designed for conflict between raid groups in a non instanced area is pretty much impossible.
Take it into your own hands. Build your own comunity as strong as the farmers community.
Regards,
Dein (Lord of the Idea)
P.S. I'll be around for a couple weeks posting, then hopefully the power of Logos will email me the magic code to enter. lol
__________________________________________________ __________________
The Glorious Lord RandAlthor *The man with the house ontop the mountain*(Great Lakes)
The Noble Lord Glitterclothes *most outrageously dressed charactor the server knew 99-00*(UO Test Center)
The Glorious Lord Rand-7x GM(Siege Perilous)
Margon- 24th player to lvl 50 L1-NA (DEP)
Flashwave-150 PW (Andromeda)
Trisnic-150 JE (Andromeda)
Margon-Lvl 55 Pally (Kain)
Margon- lvl 60 Pally (ex pvp rank 13 Field Marshal )(19th player to lvl 60 on Argent Dawn)
__________________________________________________ __________________
*time to do my yearly check...darn.. This account is 106 months old! Guess I get to ride a Polar Bear around!* *logs out* LOL
As for the "hands off" approach, that's your opinion ;) but i really think it would add a bit more friendlier or interesting atmosphere to the game, theres only one thing that beats playing a great game, it's playing that great game with the people that made it the way it is and continue to work on it.
I guess, for me, it takes away from the emersion in the game. I know there are people behind the scenes pulling the levers and pushing the buttons to make things work. I don't need to see them to understand that. I guess it's a little like our criminal justice system, the less I personally see of it, the better; but it's good to know it's there if I need it.
Hey, a really weird thing happened for Bartz yesterday...
"Raid Farmers" tried Antharas, for the first time on Bartz. That was very suprising for most of the server. Clans eventually stopped them from doing it, but at a large cost, because we had to go red and we lost a lot of very valuable gear in the process.
We've "tolerated" farmers for a while, even though they do 95% of the raid bosses on our server, including Ant Queen and Zaken, and we hear it's even worse on other servers. It ruins the gameplay for the other clans and players who want to play the game. But they are really starting to cross the line now.
Everyone complains about them, but these raid farmers have been around for months, the exact same names and accounts, and almost nothing has been done about them. I'm sure if it were easy something would have been done already.
Us players cannot do anything, because raid farmers are only after one thing: money. We can kill them 100 times, and they will not stop coming back. Our only real tool to fight them is to take away their exp (and even doing that penalizes ourselves), and if that has no effect... what are we supposed to do?
I'm sure the GMs and whoever else is responsible for stopping this in NCNA has it very difficult as well, although I can't claim to know specifics. The main problem I think lies in these are "legitimate" players in the sense that they don't use 3rd party programs and it's difficult to prove what they do with their money. But from a player's perspective it's obvious.
My question for Mistryl, or whoever else, is:
How can us, the players help GMs or whoever else at NCNA stop these people? I think it's pretty obvious we need to work together... because this urgent problem has driven and is driving many people away from the game. It's a very serious problem that people really need to see results in. We constantly hear that NCNA is working on the issue and that's awesome, I'm sure they are working very hard, but it's obvious that it needs to be stepped up a bit, and I think you may need the players' help to do it.
Hail, as an oldtime hardcore US Lineage gamer I felt obliged to reply to your post. I re-activated my account about 10 days ago or so. I'm waiting on a certain game to enter beta and was bored. lol
Ok, so it sounds like you need help. First lets start with the situation. Raid farmers...My mentality has always been to out think farmers given whatever situation. "out farm the farmers" has always been a favorite expression of mine.
So ya start with the basics. The "raid farmers" and most likely a majority of the farmers on the servers are using voice communication software.
So you must counter this action. Go spend 9 bucks a month and get a TS or vent server hosted. Get Officers in several well known "good guilds" to form an alliance. The officers will know the passwords *if any are needed* and be able to log onto other guilds voice chat servers. You have now formed a network of sorts. Now build on it and let it begin to grow.
Think this all sounds like a bunch of work? bah! The last game I quit (WoW) back in Febuary, every major guild had a vent or ts server up, you needed them for raids. I never saw a large scale raid kill a boss without using voice chat. It's also possible to direct multiple 40 man raid groups using multiple copies of vchat programs.
To win your battle you must be organized. A voice chat network is great. I remember when we'd organize outdoor non instanced raid bosses... It was all a matter of time to organize the 40 people necessary. Sometimes people from a guild leave their voice chat progs on and are offline from the game. It makes it real easy to build up a force quickly.
The farmers are most definetly using voice chat to organize. And you must remember, Lineage was developed for a market in which the majority of players are already in voice communication. Either as a guild who has taken over an internet cafe, to those playing from cafes, using vchat to communicate to others playing in other internet cafes.
You can't beat an organized group if your un-organized.
The odds of you getting help from a GM or any game employee to deal with a "world enviroment issue", that was most likely designed for conflict between raid groups in a non instanced area is pretty much impossible.
Take it into your own hands. Build your own comunity as strong as the farmers community.
Regards,
Dein (Lord of the Idea)
P.S. I'll be around for a couple weeks posting, then hopefully the power of Logos will email me the magic code to enter. lol
__________________________________________________ __________________
The Glorious Lord RandAlthor *The man with the house ontop the mountain*(Great Lakes)
The Noble Lord Glitterclothes *most outrageously dressed charactor the server knew 99-00*(UO Test Center)
The Glorious Lord Rand-7x GM(Siege Perilous)
Margon- 24th player to lvl 50 L1-NA (DEP)
Flashwave-150 PW (Andromeda)
Trisnic-150 JE (Andromeda)
Margon-Lvl 55 Pally (Kain)
Margon- lvl 60 Pally (ex pvp rank 13 Field Marshal )(19th player to lvl 60 on Argent Dawn)
__________________________________________________ __________________
*time to do my yearly check...darn.. This account is 106 months old! Guess I get to ride a Polar Bear around!* *logs out* LOL
I'm not sure how to put it without sounding weird.... but, we're... Uprising. o.o
I appreciate the help, but like I said, we can kill them 100 times, it doesn't stop them from getting raid bosses. The raid farmer alliance on Bartz has 3-4 groups of 3-4 parties of farmers that constantly do every raid boss that pops up... we can't stop them all, and they'll eventually get them all anyway. That's why we need NCSoft's help.
I meant that while at work they don't actually play the game. If once they get off they do get on the live servers and play then kudos for them. I still believe that a large number of the lower teer GM staff is outsourced and that all those people get to see is server logs while they are at work.
To add something in similar regards to the mindsight of farmers.
I used to buy and sell diablo 2 items on the servers, I only did it for two weeks, but it was profitable $400 in two weeks. But the mentality that i had while buying/selling was so much different than the mentality I had as a legit player.
As a "farmer" you could say, I only cared about the bottom line which was $$$$. I'd make trades in-game that wouldn't make sense to any legit player. The L2 equivalent would be this.
I would trade Basalt battlehammer, Saint spear, Dual damascus, Forgotten Blade, Light Tallum set, imperial staf,leather NM set for +6 SoM.
The trade I made may look unbelievably stupid, but if i were to try to sell the basalt bhammer/saint spear, etc. . . on ebay i would get like $80, but I knew that the +6 SoM would get me $150.
See how the $ value is completely different than the in-game value.
LIkewise, to the person that said you can kill them 100 times and it won't do anything and the reason is they think differently than you do. You kill me 5 times in a week and I'll stop my behavior. You kill them 500 times in a week and it won't stop them because they are thinking on an entirely different wavelength.
To stop them, as we all know, just affect their bottomline and they will stop. The market in diablo 2 got too saturated and once I liquidated my inventory I was gone, two months later I'm in L2 and my legit switch is turned on :).
If you want to nail farmers, get em banned, and hopefully you ban the ones with "full warehouses".
Best thing I have found for combating bots so far is training them. Keep my PK count down, pick up the stuff they drop when they die. If it cuts into their profits then your hurting them, anything else doesn't bother them at all.
Force log has ruined that a lot and most bots don't wear high end equipment anyway.
Qais
True on the forcelog. As for the lower end gear, well I just crush it for crystals anyhow. Unless I know someone who needs lower end gear.
This whole posts is fruitless. The only thing you can do is to report the bots you see or kill them. Personally I hate when they force log because it took me a while to work up that train to bring down on them. Then ten minutes later they are back and time to train again and watch them forcelog.
Going red on a bot doesnt do any good because other players see you and want to kill you. What cooperation between real players exists when you are red for killing a bot? I know I know there can be no proof you killed a bot unless someone else saw you do it. I went red with Nos for a while and while it felt good to take revenge what was the outcome? Nothing except the levels lost washing.
Affect the bottom line of the rb farmers? How? The current ones on Hindemith stand around and wait for you to go red on them or heal the rb. You have to kill them all to affect their bottomline. Sure if you want to spend the time spoiling thier mobs go ahead. This only last so long as you will get bored, and they cant.
Having a gm around would be nice, but not really feasible unless NCNA hires a huge staff and they already downsized. As players we know who bots because it is obvious. We know who the rb farmers are because it is obvious. If it is obvious to us then it has to be obvious to the gms. Many reasons have been brought up as to why they cant react as fast as we would like. I know this is the case for me as I have reported the same bot group 3 days in a row, and on the fourth gave up because they were still there.
What it comes down to is customer service or lack there of. However are all of you willing to quit the game to make the point? How many of you have left a resturant without leaving a tip because the service was so horrid? Now do you go back to that resturant again? If you really like the food probably. Same thing goes for this game. You enjoy the game, but hate the customer service. So you keep coming back hoping it will get better but really knowing it wont.
I wish I had some grand scheme for setting things right, but I dont. I report, I train, and have gone red. The outcome is the same. I remain frustrated like the rest of you, but still play. In the end who wins?
Want to get rid of the raid boss farmer problem?
Make all important raid bosses spawn in a free for all zone.
Then no one will have any excuses. You will be either to lazy or uneducated to figure out a way to monitor the spawn of the raid boss or to weak/outnumbered to kill the farmers at the boss.
... We are players who pay for this game we shouldn't have to deal with these problems. I shouldnt have to fight an army of 100 raid boss farmers to get the boss... They should be banned and the legit alliances should be getting the bosses.
Actually, if possible, Mistryl, I want you to get on a GM toon and I will personally show you the illegal users in Hindemith.
I appreciate the offer, but neither I nor members of the GM team would be available or visible for a personal tour. It's not that the GM team wouldn't "believe" you, but that they conduct their own investigations and cannot spare the time that would be required. Your reports will be just as helpful as any tour would be. Thank you!
Corrected grammar, thanks Mizwisfist!
You say you cant ban them without 100% proof that they are some way violating the EULA. Any GM that actually watched these raid boss farmers for a week or 2 would see exactly what the legit players of bartz see. Their characters are ingame 23 hours a day, played by 2-3 different people on shifts. Its unrealistic for ANYONE to play as much as they do and it cant be that hard to do an IP check to see multiple people using the same character...
*edit*
The 1 hour a day they arent ingame is when theyre loged out at the Lilith port waiting for the boss to spawn :/
(during reward week of course)
I'm not sure how to put it without sounding weird.... but, we're... Uprising. o.o
I appreciate the help, but like I said, we can kill them 100 times, it doesn't stop them from getting raid bosses. The raid farmer alliance on Bartz has 3-4 groups of 3-4 parties of farmers that constantly do every raid boss that pops up... we can't stop them all, and they'll eventually get them all anyway. That's why we need NCSoft's help.
Ok, maybe I'm missing something? Why not just organize your own alliance. Using vchat it's much quicker to 1. be able to get the amount of people necessary quick enough to beat them to the spawn and take it down yourselves. It might take some time, but if you build a hardcore group it will payoff. Not everything needs to be done in-guild. If your part of a small guild, build alliances. If you want it can be a group of friends running it. It's only limited by your imigination.
Voice chat in the beginning can be an unwelcome experience. But it does grow on you over time. You don'nt need to listen all the time and an adult with admin powers is great for muting annoying people. lol
If you really want to fight the farmers in every possible way, this is a start to becomming organized. And ending up with more loot yourselves.
I don't really want to get provacative in my first day back on the boards, but there are many things you can do with vchat. If you invite suspected farmers to one specific vchat server, you can try and identify if that person is really a farmer or some bored kid who just macros from the usa. The list is endless.
If you can keep the raid bosses from genuine farmers, your going to make them mad. lol And that's right where you want them! :p Their emotions will lead them to get banned. They will abuse the eula in some way, try and use bugs on you, profanity,etc.
You have to ask the question: Are these our servers or theirs? I played Lin 1 from the .77 beta server onwards. I met tons of great asian people. None were farmers. They were all there to play and have fun. There was no botting seen on the server up until around I moved to another game EnB. It was an awsome play experience! The grind was fine, same as with L2. But no farmers-bots. :) Sure the game lacked many features that would have made it much more marketable worldwide, nc-korea choose to stay with what worked in their monoply based market in Korea. L2 should be the way L1 was in terms of no bots-farmers. All ebay ads were deleted for L1 stuff... :) (at the time).
L2 is just loaded with farmers as many games are today :( Much of what can be done will not. Companies will not ban 50% of their playerbase if they are "gold farmers". It would wreck them financially. So they have to be a bit more subtle. I personally recommend adding tons of anti-macro terrain to the games landscape, but i digress as that does not have much to do with raid farmers and more to do with farmers in general.
If I was'nt looking towards TR and hopefully getting 3 of my rl friends to play it also, I'd consider comming to help.
You can easily organize a network, or someone who is more motivated than yourself could do it. You just need to find and motivate that person. lol
Your server is the world you live in. It's partially what you make of it. If you can get active community forums going that's a start. You need to get people interested and then it will take off.
If you just want to grind and play with a couple friends and come here to complain, not much is going to change. Change requires motivation :)
It's the non farmers against the farmers. The legit ones against the RL profit for play ones. In WoW there were websites that listed farmers names on our server. People would refuse to trade with them.
Take away their profits and they move away.
What's funny is how this could be like the old uo days. A variation on a theme. lol If you guys were ever able to spread the word and really get organized, it could be a pk fest for a couple months to exterminate the farmers. I know it sounds wild, but it could be done if a person was motivated enough to organize a majority of a servers non farmer base into a red army that went after *all* confirmed farmers. It'd be a heck of a player driven event. Maybe I'm just dreaming, but it is surely possible if people are tired enough of the farmers. Just forget about making adena for a few weeks and have a mass server hunt 24/7. it'd be fun. lol using voice com, like 20 people would just destroy a 5-6 boxer. lol Keep score of kills with screenshots maybe on a website. Once you get the word out and it's known in the non farmer community, it's either join up or farm and die if your not in an organized(non farmer) party. List them, hunt them, keepthem from farming for a month and they will all leave for greener pastures. If they can't make money they will move to a game where they can.
HECK! Lineage Radio could sponser prizes for the best screenshots of the day.
Nothing is impossible with a mmo if you are motivated. It just takes time and effort.
I've probably been in 50 guilds over the past 10 years in dozens of games, I can honestly tell you, if you want a change, do what you can to make it possible, don't wait on a company to change something that is out of their control.
The core of the problem is socialization. Most non farmers are used to a closed enviroment such as a house, where the farmers are used to playing in social enviroments and thusly social network much more. I've seen voice chat servers full of farmers, i could'nt understand what they were saying, but it was confirmed by a couple asian speaking players who were totally legit, andthere are hundreds of these social networking farmer voice chat networks for many games.
All it takes is one motivated person to get the ball rolling. Most of the momemorable moments I recall over the years have all been player driven. The game companies can't design in many aspects to limit farming for rl profit. And to do so in a game littered with them is disaster. As this whole topic evolves, players in many games are realizing they do have power to influence the games they play in different ways not using game mechanics as intended, but they do deliver positive results. I'd clearly be playing L2 if the community was like the one in L1 (as small as it was thru 02).
Regards,
Dein (Lord of the Idea)
__________________________________________________ __________________
The Glorious Lord RandAlthor *The man with the house ontop the mountain*(Great Lakes)
The Noble Lord Glitterclothes *most outrageously dressed charactor the server knew 99-00*(UO Test Center)
The Glorious Lord Rand-7x GM(Siege Perilous)
Margon- 24th player to lvl 50 L1-NA (DEP)
Flashwave-150 PW (Andromeda)
Trisnic-150 JE (Andromeda)
Margon-Lvl 55 Pally (Kain)
Margon- lvl 60 Pally (ex pvp rank 13 Field Marshal )(19th player to lvl 60 on Argent Dawn)
__________________________________________________ __________________
*The names have been changed but they are still the same people. Gotta love comparative writing analysis software! lol*
LordsOfLords cannot get banned for repeatidly killing raids.. If you remember you all did this before petitioning everyone in LoL including myself (lol) to no avail.. And if they wernt banned then what makes you think they will be this time?
Dein_Cathair, Lineage 2 could never be like the old uo days. If the pvp mechanics were anything like the old UO (drop everything in your inventory) days, there wouldn't be a problem. lol..
Dein_Cathair, Lineage 2 could never be like the old uo days. If the pvp mechanics were anything like the old UO (drop everything in your inventory) days, there wouldn't be a problem. lol..
I did not mean drop everything in your inventory when you die type pking. I just mean there would be a ton of PvP activity. Lots of PvP-PK activity is always fun :)
I think that the sheer number of replies to this thread should suggest how much of a problem it really is. I used to report a set of bots outside dion every day for a week on my red (who I proceeded to PK them with), one day, they were gone, I don't konw if they were banned or high enough level to move on, but they were PROMPTLY replaced by a new set. Also, there is one bot oustide Floran who has been there 2 CHRONICLES, farming some material off the mobs there.
Lords of Lords do use exploits especially at zaken.
There has been multiple times where we were able to beat them into the zaken room where the door closes. However they use exploits to get past the door inside so even when we did beat them back and keep them from getting inside the room they just used exploit to get back inside.
We screenshotted it, fraps it ingame recorded it sent 30+ petitions reporting every name we saw doing it and sending reports in via support. However everysingle one of those farmers that used the exploit to get past the door after it closed is still playing, they even still use the exploit...
I think we need to get used to the idea that they are not going away and nc wont ban them... We as players if we want bosses will just have to fight for it period.
Sorry if that was alreday posted but im really not in the mood to read through 20 pages of people comaplining about the farmer problem.
I'm not sure how to put it without sounding weird.... but, we're... Uprising. o.o
Ok, maybe I'm missing something? Why not just organize your own alliance. Using vchat it's much quicker to 1. be able to get the amount of people necessary quick enough to beat them to the spawn and take it down yourselves. It might take some time, but if you build a hardcore group it will payoff. Not everything needs to be done in-guild. If your part of a small guild, build alliances. If you want it can be a group of friends running it. It's only limited by your imigination.
I think what he wanted to point out is that they already ARE doing everything you suggested because they are not exactly the smallest alliance on Bartz, and they already ARE very well organized...
And I think by now every halfway decent clan on NA servers is already using vent or TS.
And I think by now every halfway decent clan on NA servers is already using vent or TS.
Even non decent ones trust me.
It was a fun read in fact. As if that guy had just discovered the power of voice chat and wanted to share.
As of we didn't already know. Lmao
If NC Soft wants to help, then they can start by making all Main Boss Areas (Zaken, Core, Orfen (would be hard), Valakas, Antharas, Ant Queen, Baium, Frintessa) Seige like zones. Open PvP and only 1% loss in XP.
This helps greatly versus the farmers who will not PvP but rather wait till we go red to get items.
If NC Soft wants to help, then they can start by making all Main Boss Areas (Zaken, Core, Orfen (would be hard), Valakas, Antharas, Ant Queen, Baium, Frintessa) Seige like zones. Open PvP and only 1% loss in XP.
This helps greatly versus the farmers who will not PvP but rather wait till we go red to get items.
I thought this but it would actually make things worse. The farmers would just wait until you started a raid and kill the tanks and any healers you had in pvp and wait for the raid boss to kill the rest. You would actually need 2 parties, 1 to fight the raid boss and 1 to protect them from farmers.
What they should do is stop healing from working on raid bosses.
Ok well one group of farmers got banned on kain (there was 2 groups fighting eachother and actually a 3rd starting to show themselves) but oen group got banned, then 1-2 weeks later the other had no gear and you could only see 1 or 2 around and very rare at that, banned or left who knows. but now im starting to see that some other farmers are leveling up in giants cave as they do.
you can ban them all u want, but in the end they will come back. they make more money from killing the boss's in a month than the accounts cost......
considering baium spawns 6 times every month and say they kill that every time, thats alot of money from the jewels, just from baium, add to that zaken and QA and u got urself lots of money in just boss jewelry
Hence why it would be simpler to just make the main bosses PVP zones.
The farmers would be forced to fight for the boss, most of the times they don't fight they will let you go red and try and get the drops off the reds, either way they make money. Make it a siege zone and farmers get screwed.
The problem though is that you'll end up having alliances who are legitimate bully or intimidate others around the bosses. If there are no PvP penalties, you'lll have minor wars over it.
Yes, it screws the farmers, but i think it may end up being worse for the legit people.
I'd rather have NCsoft do what Mistryl said they do and that would solve most of the problems. It seems like it would solve all of their problems.
It does not really solve anything, it just delays the inevitable.
You ban the farmers.. they come back. Farming is obviously profitable.
As for the Siege Zones, I really don't see that as a problem. Bully clans can allready control bosses by PK'ing clans that show up, or PvP on them if they flag back (which is generally what happens, I have never really seen a clan stand there and get PK'd). The area I am suggesting to be a "Siege-Like Zone" is not the actual port in area, or camping spots but the actual area the boss is in (for most main bosses, these are closed areas). I don't think I have ever seen a two clans wanting the boss wait till the boss spawns and then fight inside, the fights always happen outside. So I don't really see any harm in this at all.
And I think by now every halfway decent clan on NA servers is already using vent or TS.
Even non decent ones trust me.
It was a fun read in fact. As if that guy had just discovered the power of voice chat and wanted to share.
As of we didn't already know. Lmao
lol cute...
I've probably used voice chat programs since before you were born :)
I left L2 in Nov 2004, at that time I did'nt see much use of vchat progs in l2na. I hope I entertained ya. lol Sounds like a majority of your infrastruce is in place :)
It still does not explain why the players cannot control this situation on their own. I know first-hand the passion created by players who love their game.
I don't see much passion here, alot more endless complaining with no action. I see lazy players. I see some people having more fun playing the boards than the game also.
I also see some people worried about a certain type of farmer not all farmers for rl profit. Which I find slightly disturbing. It's only the ones who directly affect me that I complain about atitude in general. Some are ok? I think not. It does not matter where the items or gold came from, whether it wa a farmer farming lvl 20 areas or a group farming raid bosses. When it gets sold to a company, and resold to your enemy he gets to get that uber item crafted, while you wait months to accumulate the adena.
So here are your choices.
1. wait for the game company to remove-ban all farmers.
2. promote positive changes to the companies or wait for the game company to change the game to reduce farmers
3. complain on the boards about an issue that is just as hot on these forums as when I left almost 2 years ago? I don't see a change. I saw as many bots and farmer packs as I did back then if not more upon my return. I will say good job on somehow breaking some of the bots nc-na!. I did enjoy following around this one bot duo for a couple hours as they left all the drops on the ground. And I saw similar with my newb dorf, he ran around for literally 3-4 hours picking up trails of stuff lying around the harbor near gludin.
4. create your own changes using legal game mechanics. I'd prob go the route of pushing for #2 and keeping #4 in the background. Keep your work on #4 off any official sites. lol
I really don't think they are going to change L2 to reduce farmers. I think nc-korea is happy with it's asian profits and they see no need to change the game over here.
They could have implements dozens of types of systems to reduce farmers especially in raid areas, just like EnB and WoW did... Make the stuff bind on pickup (BOP). materials and items. Whalla. can't be resold. This is just one methodology to reduce farmers in raid areas, there are several more. But will nc-korea change the game? nope they won't. Why not? Because the game made them a ton of money in it's home market. They don't have many of these problems we do. I think nc-na has tried, I think they also understand the problem, but nc-korea will not change the game to reduce the dramatic amount of farmers the game invites and nc-korea refuses to change it to more of a system that would repels farmers at all levels.
So if you want change, start planting seeds (meant as a metaphor, not in-game seeds... saving myself a pointless reply) and keep in mind any good plan takes time. I'm sure if your serious enough you'll change it :) If not, I expect to come back in a year or so and read the boards with the same or more of this topic.
__________________________________________________ __________________
The Glorious Lord RandAlthor *The man with the house ontop the mountain*(Great Lakes)
The Noble Lord Glitterclothes *most outrageously dressed charactor the server knew 99-00*(UO Test Center)
The Glorious Lord Rand-7x GM(Siege Perilous)
Margon- 24th player to lvl 50 L1-NA (DEP)
Flashwave-150 PW (Andromeda)
Trisnic-150 JE (Andromeda)
Margon-Lvl 55 Pally (Kain)
Margon- lvl 60 Pally (ex pvp rank 13 Field Marshal )(19th player to lvl 60 on Argent Dawn)
__________________________________________________ __________________
*Bored........Bored........Bored....*
lol not really I've just been around the scene a long long time. Hopefully nc-korea does change or gives nc-na some dev control influence so that this game can be fixed to promote less farmers and more community.But they need to do it to increase revenues. Playing in an enviroment filled with farmers sucks. There were so many less farmers in the last game I played, it was all due to systems designed to reduce farmers. Spotting one and telling others ya knew on vent/ts/ingame chat, meant with a little work probably 200 or more other people would all submit tickets on the one farmer. They were slow to ban people for being suspected farmers, but given a couple months, the person would most likely disapear. It was a winning battle. A battle the GM's could handle, they were not swamped, like I'm sure the L2 ones are, they apparently don't have alot of time....
lol not really I've just been around the scene a long long time. Hopefully nc-korea does change or gives nc-na some dev control influence so that this game can be fixed to promote less farmers and more community.But they need to do it to increase revenues. Playing in an enviroment filled with farmers sucks. There were so many less farmers in the last game I played, it was all due to systems designed to reduce farmers. Spotting one and telling others ya knew on vent/ts/ingame chat, meant with a little work probably 200 or more other people would all submit tickets on the one farmer. They were slow to ban people for being suspected farmers, but given a couple months, the person would most likely disapear. It was a winning battle. A battle the GM's could handle, they were not swamped, like I'm sure the L2 ones are, they apparently don't have alot of time....
Ya gotta be realistic :)
Dein
*Spreading the Knowledge*
I understand what you're trying to say, but we are organized. It's not that. It's that we can't fight the farmers. I explained it in my original post but I'll try it again.
Our tool to fight other people in the game is our ability to make them lose experience, which is what most players work for. These farmers, on the other hand, aren't concerned with their experience. They want money. We pk them all? They have a bishop to mass ressurect them all at once and then they kill our reds before we can even do the raid boss ourselves. We can't take money away from them, actually it goes the other way because when we go red on them to stop them from getting a raid boss, they have a chance to kill our reds and further increase their profit from that raid.
Now, let's say through a miracle we stop them from getting one raid boss. There are tons of raid bosses constantly spawning, and the farmers have spies at every single on of them, and keep track of their spawn time. They have multiple raid forces in the same alliance, so even if you stop one, the others are still getting the others so they don't mind much.
I could go on about it more, but the point is don't pin it on lazy or disorganized players. We love the game, and believe me, we're not lazy. Unfortunately the game mechanics weren't designed to let the players deal with it themselves, and really our only hope is for NCSoft to do something about it, and I actually have faith that they do try, and was hoping the players could aid them somehow in that.
Your telling me, as I suspected that they are more organized than you. They have people camping spawn locations or loggin in and out at those locations. I understand these people are more motivated than you guys. The farmers are doing it to make RL money.... And your there to have fun, relax and enjoy yourself.
I feel your pain. I've literally been robbed by farmers in other games. EnB was the worst, ebaying was legal. I can't remember how many times certain people would try and collect all the loot for later distrbution durring a couple events and they just plain stole it all to sell it on ebay, leaving everybody empty handed for hours of work.
I honestly don't think your going to get help from ncsoft on this issue. It would be considered a world enviroment issue. If they get there first, it's theirs. Your intent is to prove they are farmers. Proving they are farmers for nc-na is harder than proving people use bots. They launder the money in several different ways which helps prevent detection. For them to really find the networks, they need to make actual buys and work backwards and their budget seems pretty low :(
I did make a post in the dev questions thread asking about some anti farmer measures, like that will really get answered, but it brings it up to them in a way it might get forwarded to korea. But anything like that is a rewrite on alot of stuff and it all comes down to how they want their product percieved by the world outside of Korea.
I know I sound a bit pushy, I'm trying to motivate whoever into building a network who can beat these guys to the raid bosses. You yourself say.... there are alot of raid bosses, they make alot of money... Organize a rolling group to start running these bosses before the farmers can hit them. Get your own network of lookouts. In my last mmo I played we always had people looking out for different world bosses, we ususally got there first because of it. many times if it was late night or early morning ir early afternoon, it could take an hour or two to get 40 people together, but we did it and would get the world bosses. It'd end up being multiple guilds and even some pickups. But we did'nt ring the alarm and spam it in town... :) I'm still sure you guys or some group on your server can organize an alliance to run these bosses and beat the farmers to them.
I dunno, maybe if this thread starts to irk them enough they may take the time to investigate these farmers for ya. lol :)
I ususally joke around more in posts but farmers always change my attitude. So I'll leave ya with a laugh.
So, heres a good one... A long time ago after DG stepped in and took over operations in NA for L1, they put up the L1 message boards. Instead of using my normal posting handle(this one), I registered with "Lord_British" as my handle and made the first post on the L1 NA official forums. I think I titled it "Looks great, good job!" and inside I wrote you guys did fantastic! take the rest of the week off with pay!
I also made the second post on the boards after Leilo and I had a talk and I reregistered. lol and thats how the L1 boards were christended.It still gives me a good chuckle.
Dein
*Currently lurking the tr boards! 0 reg and 1 annon online! Want me to list the 12 reg users? I was one of those 14 6/08/06 04:14PM!! LOL *
IMO, the one thing keeping us from beating the RB farmers in in-game hates.
Rather than band together to fight the farmers people go "I don't wanna help that guy, I hate him!~"
Seriously, between ALL the alliances on your server you're saying you can't muster up enough people ANY time of day to PWN a raidboss?
All you gotta do is start posting death times and respawn timers in the server threads. Every time you kill a boss, have someone go to your server's thread and put up:
Boss Name: XXXXXXXX
Time Killed: XX:XX:XX
Normal Respawn Timer: XX:XX:XX
Estimated Time of Respawn: XX:XX:XX
Then have a nuetral raid group that ANYONE from ANY ALLIANCE on your server can join going 24/7. Find a handful of people in different time-zones that people on your server recognize as trustworthy to run the groups and handle the drops.
Will you eventually get ripped off or ninja-looted by some theif? Yes. Will representatives from every major alliance on your server be there to see and KOS the person? Probably.
Will you kill hordes of raidbosses thus denying the farmers their loot? Hopefully.
Will 'enemies' try to use your time posts to beat you to the raidbosses? Even so far as the raidboss farmers using your posts? Possibly. But with enough people going after the bosses like this, I don't think it'd matter. Besides, I like to PvP...so sounds like a bonus to me.
Alternately, someone could just post the death notices on a private board that only the group leaders would have access to.
Seriously though, this would probably work if started....but it probably won't be started because people won't be able to put aside their in-game differences for long enough to do it.
Your telling me, as I suspected that they are more organized than you. They have people camping spawn locations or loggin in and out at those locations. I understand these people are more motivated than you guys.
You have got to be f-in kidding me. What planet are you from? "More motivated"?? WTF? This is their job. They earn their money by sitting in front of that computer for 12 hours to monitor the bosses. How dare you say the players aren't motivated enough to keep up with that.
Odds are they are scoping for raid bosses on multiple servers, they just don't sit there and wait. They have them constantly working, not just sitting.
And I dare say it because it's true. The farmers are clearly more motivated. It is for rl money that they work the game. I've been saying it from the start... that the farmers can be outwitted, this can be taken away from them, maybe more players just need to be exposed to the situation for more player action to be taken. Just wait till they get screwed out of more and more raid bosses. Motivation ususally occurs with one person and spreads to like minded individuals who band together for a cause. For the most part people stand around doing nothing until one person motivates them. Terms like leader and follower come into play next.
So heck yeah, I'm from the planet Earth and I'm not kidding ya. :)
the major problem is the HUGE upper hand these people have over us, how is this is possible?
Because simply the fact that they cheat, using 3rd party programs that automate isn't what's causing the biggest issue, it's the fact that they use programs that also give them a "whos who, where they are what they are doing, what lvl they are and the whole shwack of information they could ever want" right in the palm of there hands, they knew where and when a raid boss is spawning instantly, they have accounts specifically setup in which sometimes are seen as afk or dead for hours on end.
I agree. We are not talking anly bots here, we are talking about modified clients. There is no way that regular players can fight it, not without dedicating all your playtime to it and thus, gimping the fun. Its just better to concentrate on fighting out of game, and by frowning upon ebayers and botters in game. But to be honest, its all in the hands of NA team ( I don’t trust NC korea on this one, the have a way different view on this) Just one thing I don’t understand, is letting, as a company that tires ton be a leading MMO developer, to have such a bad reputation and US and European market. I have heard plenty of players say that they avoid NC games because they support botting (which is a huge misinterpretation, but it is a nasty one and vide spread) and buying ingame currency. Considering that US and Euro market is very important, being interrelated to whole gaming industry and most prestigious one ( though not the most profitable) NCsoft did kind of shot itself in the knee, letting this one get out of hand. And considering we see that other companies, from outside of Asia start to export these games (for example most of WoW players are from asia, though I think Vivendi does not get direct profit from distribution) this might prove itself fatal if left unchecked for a longer period of time.
Gah, sorry for a long rant, got a bit offtopic here. Anyway, have fun and play clean! :P
There is no possible way to get people who play this game for fun to raid 24/7 to take bosses from the farmers.
It doesn't matter what kind of a server zerg you have involved, you simply will not be able to do it.
These farmers are 50-100 people operating in a lan cafe, on seperate machines. They are shift based so someone awake and not half asleep is at each machine every second of the day.
They are earning a good wage for their country/situation by doing this, and arguably having fun playing a game for money.
Their entire operation is dedicated 100% towards killing raid content in the Lineage 2 world. They know better than anyone the times between spawns, how to kill bosses, the most efficient way to kill bosses etc.
You will never get people who play for recreation to be as efficient, as alert, as responsive, as willing and as dedicated to killing ingame raid content non stop day after day in a shift pattern.
Even if you come close, you are competing against people doing it just as efficiently as you ever can, this means conflict.
I've been involved in many fights against raid farmers, these guys are so alert no matter how long you are camping a boss with them. Baium is a great example, they will stand at the vortex for 10hours straight and still instantly port in when Baium pops up and be well organised. Players after 10hours will be at least 50% afk, and the rest either tired, gone for one reason or another (sleep etc.) or unprepared.
Aeze is right in pretty much all that he has said so far.
NC is the only thing that can stop these farmers from doing what they are doing, it's all down to NC to see it and deal with it.
They are flaunting the rules, selling billions of adena on a weekly basis. There is almost enough circumstancial evidence to convict them beyond all reasonable doubt, let alone going for hard proven evidence.
There is no valid, within EULA reason for a group of 40 characters to play 24/7, do nothing but standing in town and killing raid bosses, wearing poor gear for their levels, giving all the loot they get to one or two characters which sell that loot for adena. That adena has to go somewhere, where is it going?
I don't want NC to change the way raid content works, I like fighting over bosses and % Healing bosses etc. Just remove the people funded and motivated by money from the game as well as all automated/cheat players. Once that is done you will see that the way raids work in L2 is amazing fun compared to WoW.
Here is how you get rid of farmers of all types. Stop buying anything from them. I mean anything, refuse to pay more and more adena for stuff. Don't break the Eula in order to advance your game. Bingo the farmers no longer have any reason to be there.
Ok folks! As fun as “Crossing the Line” has been, it has ended in the place it had began.
Game Masters are continuing to concentrate on the raid boss farmer situation. As evident from some previous post several bands of illegal account have already been closed. At the same time we are always looking at and investigating better ways remedy the situation.
With that said, it is time to send this thread to gloomy depths.