I thought it was a good interview overall; very informative.
What i find the most interesting is the comment from spam about how 90% of the time they are addressing third party software petitions. (...) If thats not a sign of being over run what is?
I was more interested in his comments concerning raid boss farmers. They are far more bothersome than our automated friends. It is reassuring however to hear that they do look into this matter and that is what they mostly work on. I wonder if game masters are glad to recieve a petition that isn't related to third-party software though.
one of the worst interviews....very short and useless answers, plus if ur that sick that u cant even talk, wasnt it better to reschedule to some other day
If 90% of the work you do is to do with bots, then that really means they are flooded and don't have the staff for the problem they are dealing with. I know I would be very conservative with the ban button if it could cost NCSoft another 15 bucks a month in revenue.
Although I enjoyed the interview, I have not seen an answer to the bot issue that has plagued L2 since beta. How is it other game companies can remove this menace yet NCSoft cant?
I appreciate the time you have spent while being ill HGMSpam on the interview but imho your answers to bots in L2 really were NOT answers. Bots in L2 are the worst in any game I have played in my 10+ years in gaming and this should be easily solved by NCSoft. If you want an honest game (as you stated in the interview) you MUST remove bots. And you must remove them with extreme dedication so that those of us who want to play a "fair" game can actually do that in L2. This is in your hands, NOT the players because we see bots all day, everyday, everywhere...but only you can ban them.
How is it other game companies can remove this menace yet NCSoft cant?
Misconception. Name me a popular, traditional style MMO that isnt plagued with bots.
EQ certainly had a huge macroing issue, particularly after a few years, WoW is heavly botted also and dont get me started on FFXI. I havent seen other major companies take a much stronger stance than NC soft, particularly after the game is 3 years old.
I agree, bots are a problem, very large and visible on L2, but consider this when comparing it to other MMOs:
-Currency is a lot harder to get by traditional means (hunting) in L2 than other games.
-L2 has the best money sinks of any game, soulshots, which keep your income from adena drops low.
-The crafting resource gathering system of L2 is directly tied to hunting mobs, most other games have mines and harvesting, which is also heavly botted in those games.
-L2 has 0 instances, which means bots have no where to "hide".
-L2 has 0 instances, which means bots have no where to "hide".
Not true anymore, they could do rift, which is a form of instance, but mobs there are unpredictable and is prolly not easily set up. Thats my guess why you dont see em in there anyway. But we do have one instance....
To correct, I said that 90% of petitons are violation related. Not all bots.
But can you agree that a bot is a violation of the games EULA? So if a bot is a violation and 90% of petitions are violation related then they are bot violations that are taking up 90% of the GM's time.
If that isn't a sign that the GM's are overloaded what is....
I feel that the level of violation related petitons are way to high with no signs of going down.
Violation related, that's like when every time you go into giran or aden or during a pvp you some someone bypassing the chat filter. Happens all of the time, and usually happens when two people that are currently at odds with one another so one is bound to petition if they fell like it. Lots of smack talk in this game. Could be other things too but smack talk/chat violations were the first thing I thought of b/c you see it every day somewhere.
IMO, our raid boss farmer is the worse plague. They are the cash cows for the secondary market.
I enjoyed the interview. But I was a bit disappointed about the questions Shonen chose to ask. Some of them have been answered numerous times here, and if you frequent these boards you'd already know the answer.
-L2 has 0 instances, which means bots have no where to "hide".
Not true anymore, they could do rift, which is a form of instance, but mobs there are unpredictable and is prolly not easily set up. Thats my guess why you dont see em in there anyway. But we do have one instance....
Rift is not instanced. Every level range in the rift has a set number of rooms where always the same mobs appear, and parties who enter get randomly thrown into a room. But since it is not instanced, there is a maximum number of parties which can enter (think I read it is 8 or 9 parties per level range), because eventually all rooms would be in use and there have to be free rooms to move the parties to. It is just a "catacomb" where you cannot leave the room you are in by walking out, instead you get thrown into another room after ten minutes.
i cannot quote it exactly, but he said something to the effect of "obviously if a player is pettitioning (for example, third party software use) its something that should be dealt with right then" then later said "it takes about a week to ban a bot". though he sort of explained why these two statements werent contradictory because of the process of mass-banning they do each week, it really makes me wonder if this is not the core of the issue. the ability to pettition, whether it is designed to do it or not, passifies people by thinking they did their duty to get something done, which is really the responsibility of someone else.