The infestation of Bots since this event started is so out of control it's a pity and has made this event a **** joke. You petition them to GMs WITH names and all you get back is their **** auto response saying if they can prove without a reasonable doubt... yada yada yada. Well hello!! If we had LIVE GMs in this game and they visited one of the many infested towns problem solved.
GG NCsoft... a nice event but face it... you screwed up!
BS... if we did they would've done something about this problem. How difficult would it be for a "live" GM to come to HV and see wth is going on. I'm fed up with their **** auto-replies.
I think that if their actions were noticeable, people would not think twice about the copy / paste messages. Seeing full bot trains running through the middle of town with the bd and sws singing and dancing at 2 min on the dot (while in town), is not very encouraging.
It used to be that the botters were afraid. If you came upon someone running a train they would plead with you not to petition them. It isn't like that anymore and it isn't because its less obvious.
It does look amazingly bad though, just go to dwarf town for instance and there are 2 bots per every pig spawn, it's beyond ridiculous. I've killed 90+ and they might be getting banned as the names change often but it doesn't look good :/
I sent in at least 6 petitions this eve and got the same **** auto-response being... thank you for your concern, we're doing all we can, please be patient. Yea right. Sorry, my faith in NC to deal with this problem went WAY downhill after giving them names and still seeing dozens of bots infesting HV.
Your complaint was with the auto-closing. And i'm still waiting for your petition.
Nope, my complaint is with the lack of LIVE GMs in this game. If there were and they received god knows how many petitions about the bot infestation since this event started and knew WHERE they would've been on it instantly.
Plain and simple fact... they don't care.
P.S. I sent in at least 8 petitions this eve from HV. Go look for them yourself.
P.S. I sent in at least 8 petitions this eve from HV. Go look for them yourself.
Splatter isn't a GM. He's saying to post a 'hypothetical' petition. He's challenging you to post something that doesn't deserve a canned response.
/GM
Timmy fell down the well. Woof woof.
Response:
Thank you for notifying us of your issue. Timmy will be relocated to the nearest available space outside the well. Please enjoy playing Lineage 2, and petition again if you need any more assistance.
/gm_Lassie has closed the petition.
Both you and i know that the GM's are being overwhelmed, that about 90% of a GM's time is dealing with these kind of reports. When it could be better spent on other things.
We also know that all petitions thats sent in goes to the 1st tier first... Then they forward them to the 2nd tier. So nothing can ever be instant.
And when the GM's clean up an area we have a ton of them just waiting in the wings to move back in.
Now I agree that the GMs could and should ban much faster - the signs are obvious, and there's no making an accidental mistake when marking down bot trains.
However, wasting extra time responding to people individually when they are, in fact, required to say the same thing every time (and you won't be telling them anything new about the bots that they didn't already hear five hundred times beforehand), is certainly not going to help the miserable situation. :p
And like Spam said before, there is NO reason to make custom replys to bot petitions when one reply says all there is that needs to be said. They aren't going to tell you that X player was botting, nor are they going to say that they went and banned X player.
Hell I've been accused of "reading from a script" at my job when I simply have answered the same freaking question 10000 times before and there only is ONE right answer, so it sounds much like a script.
So saying it's some souless automated system is wrong and untrue. (notice I'm not saying some GMs do a bad or stupid job... )
can't say I envied them cleaning up the craptastic mess of bots thanks to this event though. Buggers were persistant.
Play a game where in game currency isn't worth more than the currency of China, and you will have fun. If you can't deal with it. It's not meant to be rude either, but if you can't have fun playing NCSoft horrible game then maybe you should find a better game to play.
I think this might be what is missing from most of the "auto-responses". We never know who the Rtard was who closed the ticket without reading it.
I don't mind the "auto-responses", I would really like to see the results though. I know bots are banned (some of them), but if I go into any catacomb tomorrow, they will still be so full of bots that I won't be able to get a single room.
Even if they have live GMs... there's on thing that is painfully clear. They need MORE. Lots more... It's like a tsunami of bots killing pigs now. It's overwhelming in some places.
My guess is that it's these guys that are behind most it. http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/3875/adenasalesdp3.jpg
All servers seem to have them spamming people. I'm sick of seing these shouts. Sure, you can report them but what's the use. They will just make a new trial account anyway and continue spamming.
Soon they'll probably spam us with offers of buying first mate's hats. "On sale now!" :)
I don`t care about canned responses, as long as they remove botters. I try to petition every one I see while i have petitions left. I have a good memory, so when i`m doing 2nd prof quests in noob towns on my alt and i see the SAME bots I petitioned on my MAIN when he was still a noob... it`s depressing. Or when I petition a bot train in lowlevel cata, and next week Dusk wins, I go to EV on my main and see the train has transfered itself there and already is in Cgrade... so I petition them once more on my main, and come there a week later... and they are still there, just one level of terrain higher... No, I don`t believe there are ANY live GMs. I don`t see a single result of their work. Maybe they are on some other servers, I don`t know, but definitely not on Franz.
I understand the ops frustration. HV on Gustin is (or was as the event finishes today) exactly the same. I petitioned without names because it was easier to tell a 'GM' to come and have a look than write down the 20-30 names that were running around there. The laughable thing was that the bots bows had ended and they were hitting the pigs instead. As I have said before it's not exactly rocket science to work out which were bots.
Having said all that I have seen posts here congratulating the GM's for the quick removal of bots that they have witnessed during the events. Maybe it's a server thing - if you have a quick responding GM you're lucky, if not - well keep the petitions coming boys and girls :)
Even if they have live GMs... there's on thing that is painfully clear. They need MORE. Lots more...
I don't think we need more GM's and thats the truth. It's a given fact they are being over-run with the current issue, that i would bet 90-95% of the GM's time is used dealing with this.
That we need to take this load off of the GM's not add more GM's to handle the load. And that is to replace game guard with a more effective anti cheat. While GG does prevent cheats on a client level it does nothing to authenticate the client. In truth i see less and less games using GG these days that they have moved to something else.
And while yes they could try and crack the authentication, use the weekly maintenance to switch things up.
We went down, observed them "playing", targeted their mob and watched them auto retarget. Pm'd them, white chatted, left an adena trail and watched them pick it up piece by piece, PK'D THEM , came back 15 minutes later, watched them auto accept a rez and continue hunting like nothing happened. (reported them to GM)
2 hours later, they shouted in clan chat for the BS location.
Because clan leader was not on, none of the officers could boot the toon. Only CL can boot academy apparently.
We spent the next hour describing to this person why they need to drop clan and GTHO. They sat there the whole time and denied it.
"I am not a bot. I dont do that. My son was playing my account , he is 8, doesnt speak English." on and on and on.
Yes, this is one flaw with the academy section. I do not understand why that is not a flagable right that can be given out by the clan leader.
We have the same policy. We hear or catch you botting (not farming either), have proof, you be gone. We will not deal with that in our clan at all.
As for the other, you all did excellent proving your case. Funny he was adement about it not happening.
It does look amazingly bad though, just go to dwarf town for instance and there are 2 bots per every pig spawn, it's beyond ridiculous. I've killed 90+ and they might be getting banned as the names change often but it doesn't look good :/
They just move them around. I've tracked one to six different spots on six different days. If you're bold then make a list and once you know when they are usually up then send a pm. It will go through.
Actually, if you report someone selling adena in shout, the GM's will get them out before you get a reply. They will work faster on them than they will the bots. When I was in Giran getting ready to set up shop I saw someone was advertising their adena for sale along with the website. I reported it. Less than 5 min he was gone, then I got a reply from the GM. The next day the same thing happened again, this time with a different char. So far I haven't seen anymore shoutouts for adena since then.
THey wouldnt have taken a whole [censored] hour with the login servers down on Saturday siege to "attempt" to freeze the siege in the final 10 minutes a fail.
Was there anyone on this game that couldn't find alot of pigs to kill? There were pigs all over the game during the event (at least on sieghardt). In Rune, the golden pigs were just sitting there as no one was attacking them. It was the same thing outside of Dion, outside of Giran Castle, and the coliseum was full to bursting with pigs constantly. The only reason why most people had a reason to complain is because they were too busy trying to find and identify bots to even enjoy the event. They ought to make bot hunting a quest ingame or a new event since this is all people care to do anymore. Let em drop control cogs and apology letters and pay adena for each cog gathered, and lunch with a GM for each apology letter. Maybe that will cut down on the constant onslaught of hellfire and brimstone complaints and, who knows, they may even be overcome with joy and actually have fun in this game.
By the way, these constant bot complaint posts aren't really helping to attract new players to the game. I almost wish that they would ban every bot, every high level player that ever botted, every player that's been in a party with a bot, and everyone who's purchased merchandise from players that have botted so that we can leave each server with only 8 to 20 players on it. Then L2 can shut down in NA completely and we can all be free to find other games to take waaaaaay to seriously.
By the way, these constant bot complaint posts aren't really helping to attract new players to the game.
Yes, that's exactly what we need: no solutions, just less information so that trial account makers can be duped into joining.
I almost wish that they would ban every bot, every high level player that ever botted, every player that's been in a party with a bot, and everyone who's purchased merchandise from players that have botted so that we can leave each server with only 8 to 20 players on it. Then L2 can shut down in NA completely and we can all be free to find other games to take waaaaaay to seriously.
This game would have more "legit" players if NCSoft had gotten on top of this back in 2004. Three years later and they need players to stop playing long enough so we can open tickets to report the 10-30 bots that are excrutiatingly obvious in every starter town. That's just...nonsensical.
Whoever is left in L2 loves the game in spite of NCSoft's complete failure on this issue. We cringe and bear it. Asking the player base to be complicit in the obfuscation of this problem solves nothing. Oh, what's that you say? More subscribers would mean more money which would mean more GM's and then they could tackle the issue? Yeah, just like they did in 2004...
Listen, I like L2 but I have a friend who is trying it out and the last thing I am going to do is lie to him so that it makes you feel better or artificially inflates the population by one measely subscriber. I'm going to tell him all about the bots, the grind, and lack of class balance.
The problem is simply more visible because of the pig event, but there are areas that are simply controlled by bots.
In bartz for example, every high level catcomb has a bot team in every non physical resist room, the middle of varka silenos has at least 5 parties of bots killing everything that moves, WoA the same story, spots with buffalos and all the high XP mobs are tanken by highly evident bot trains.
I think this might be what is missing from most of the "auto-responses". We never know who the Rtard was who closed the ticket without reading it.
If it is a bot petition, or a "Help, I'm stuck" petition, or a "Timmy fell down the well" petition, there really is no reason to keep the petition open.
The only reason to keep it open is when there must be ongoing discussion. For instance, when I died in Forest of Mirrors, before the graphic glitch was resolved. I dropped my Avadon gloves, and could not see the screen to click back to town.
I logged into an alt, petitioned to be moved back to town. They moved me back, pmed me on my alt to tell me, and even surprisingly gave me the gloves back.
He PMed me to make sure everything was ok. Once it was, he closed the petition.
Simple as that. They don't need to have a conversation with you to say "Okay, we'll see if he's a bot."
The problem about banning bots are their procedures - if the server doesn't even autoban people doing things that the normal client can't do, and if the visual satisfaction of 'this is or is not a bot train' which offers pretty much absolute certainty to players isn't enough, how are they supposed to ban them, even if they have two, three, four times the GMs?
I think L2 is too far in its development to remedy some of the horrible decisions of the way the server was made, and they are obviously not interested in mechanising parts of their banning process, or in fixing their policy about how fast they ban.
With that framework, no matter how hard the individual questions do or do not work, notable progress is impossible.
I think this might be what is missing from most of the "auto-responses". We never know who the Rtard was who closed the ticket without reading it.
If it is a bot petition, or a "Help, I'm stuck" petition, or a "Timmy fell down the well" petition, there really is no reason to keep the petition open.
The only reason to keep it open is when there must be ongoing discussion. For instance, when I died in Forest of Mirrors, before the graphic glitch was resolved. I dropped my Avadon gloves, and could not see the screen to click back to town.
I logged into an alt, petitioned to be moved back to town. They moved me back, pmed me on my alt to tell me, and even surprisingly gave me the gloves back.
He PMed me to make sure everything was ok. Once it was, he closed the petition.
Simple as that. They don't need to have a conversation with you to say "Okay, we'll see if he's a bot."
You missed my point. I was trying to say that they never tell us who it was that closed out the ticket. Therefore, they have no accountability with their customers.
If gm_idontgiveacrap keeps closing out reasonable tickets that SHOULD have some interaction, then we need to know this. Then we can make a formal complaint about gm_idontgiveacrap. At the very least, we could attempt to avoid communicating with this GM.
It is just like when you go to a restraunt and keep getting the same crappy waiter that would rather talk with a coworker than refill your drink. If they all wore a mask and covered their name badge it would be impossible to avoid being put in their section.
"This petition needed attention and a GM closed it without providing interaction."
We might not see the names, but each petition carries a record of who handles it. The higher-tier GMs, that are responsible for reading the feedback, then can see "GM_I_HATE_Players" isn't doing his job.
If your hypothetical waiter keeps giving you bad service, you have a responsibility to yourself to speak to the manager (even if his name is covered and he's wearing a mask like some demented luchadore). The manager then can see who was assigned to your table and take appropriate action to improve your experience.
If you do not provide feedback, how can you expect things to change?
"This petition needed attention and a GM closed it without providing interaction."
We might not see the names, but each petition carries a record of who handles it. The higher-tier GMs, that are responsible for reading the feedback, then can see "GM_I_HATE_Players" isn't doing his job.
If your hypothetical waiter keeps giving you bad service, you have a responsibility to yourself to speak to the manager (even if his name is covered and he's wearing a mask like some demented luchadore). The manager then can see who was assigned to your table and take appropriate action to improve your experience.
If you do not provide feedback, how can you expect things to change?
Yes, but adding a name shows that SOMEBODY was responsible for closing your ticket. With the way it is now, it LOOKS like it was closed automatically.
The review thing would mean something if people actually felt that their petition was read. As things are now, it SEEMS like noone is reading them. Why would anyone feel that the review will be read if they dont think the tickets are being read? I do some help desk stuff at work and trust me, some people go nuts if I forget to put my name on the ticket.
And with the waiter thing, how do you know it was the same guy as last time? How do you know that they do not switch out who is supposed to be serving you? There is no way for YOU to tell what is going on.
I actually talked to a GM during the event. It wasn't about bots, though. I don't even want to talk to a GM if it's just a bot report. What's there to talk about? If there's anything else, I'll petition again. Although it would be fitting, imo, if you'd get a live GM the times they tell you to repetition (due to wanting more info, or if you had spelled a name wrong and such).
In WoW, I've caught myself not reporting those gold seller spammers in the cities, because I didn't want to talk to a GM. I prefer to just give them names and offense, and then they can deal with it.
While it's nice to see some signs of life from the company's side, if I wanted to make small talk, I'd pm a friend.
But I'm not much of a people person either.
I'm pretty certain thet there is someone there in the background. I've had two instances (neither bot related) in IT Crator where a SB I've wanted just would not drop no matter how long I hunted there. I'd have numerous amounts of other SB's so when I started getting mutiple amounts of them I petitioned the GMs. Both times the book I need dropped more or less immediately from the mob.
Being as in both cases I'd been hunting for the best part of 6-8 hours for the books I doubt it was a coincidence :)
Way back when they looked like that though, I remember seeing a GM at a siege in C1 and the name was just like GMConan but he had super incredible speed like a GM.
Live GMs are all around and helping many very quickly I might add. I submitted a petition a few months back about a quest, GM responded with a live session, asked a few questions about the Class Change Quest I was attempting, I realized I was at the wrong NPC and I thanked him and the petition was closed. I left the encounter feeling stupid, yet I was satisfied with response and services provided.
Wow my first post. And on a bot thread, who'd of thought.
This thread just ticked me a little abit because of the OP's wah wah statements.
1: Though I don't support game guard and do think that its the biggest waste of code ever... it isn't just there to stop bots... its also to stop key loggers and other things. Doesn't stop it being a crap piece of software, thats easy to get around (evident by the number of 'dedicated players' visable around)
2: There may be live GM's. But I think that the automated closure of a ticket for bot reports is fine. In many jobs I've done in CS I've had automated responces for emails (called cut and paste) and also the same answer. I agree adding a 'pretition closed by this gm' would be nice. But, meh.
I never expect bots to disapear strait away. On Hinde where I was hunting (mainly Dion Castle) the bots seemed to disapear within a day or 2, only to be replaced by others (though by the end of the event there where less there)
I diverge though. Though it does take them an [censored] of a long time (and in some cases appears not at all) to ban bots... just think of this for a moment, if you where to systimatically ban hammer every bot seen and accused for a decent reason for botting, what then. All it takes is 1 or 2 real players to be banned (and mistakes do happen, especially with real gm's who are only human) to go sue happy, which probably would cost NC a lot of cash/rep. Face it we westerners are as a stereotype sue happy. And willing to kick up a fuss. Yes I wish they ban bots faster, yes I wish they would be seen to be more proactive.
But at the end of the day, you choose to play this game, no one is forcing you to give NCsoft your money. If the bots and apparent lack of Live Gm's really anoys you that much, take your custom else where. It is a sad fact, but it is part of this game, and unconstructive posts about how crap NC is really... well is unconstructive and somethign I'd expect to see on L2blah or something.
I've yet to see a live GM, but then the only petitions I've sent are bot reporting ones, so, I don't expect it.
I think the one thing that would make me happier is the replacement of GG with something more effective... and the name tag on the end of a petition closure.... and the ability to send as many bot petitions as possible... 5 a day is a little... low.
Anyhow, back to enjoying the game... and reading up on CT 1. Have fun all.
I suggest players have some authority on the discipline of botters. For example, being able to give someone a negative recommendation for their actions. Although a system like this could draw more problems, it would be a visually easy way to point out blatant and negative botters.
The recommend system makes ur char name turn blue... perhaps this negative recommend system makes the char name turn green. Some of the negative side effects of having a green name should be not being able to /trade or drop items from your inventory (kind of defeats the purpose of farming illegally).
Live GM's I honestly dont think could fix the bot problem in L2.
I don't think a negative recommendation system would work. It would only hurt real players, not bots. First of all, you know there will be clans/allies out there that will take it upon themselves to negatively recommend their enemies until their names turn green (and if the neg. recs are limited like real ones, they'd just use every available alt/buff slave to do it). Second, most of the real bots never see the light of day. They stay secluded in dungeons. Some of them are more visible (if they hang out in popular catas/necros) while others I'm sure are seen by only a few people a week, if that. In other words, the real botters wouldn't have enough people even seeing them to negatively recommend them.
Alright, make a "watermark" signature that you must manually decode each time you give someone a negative recommendation. If they can respond to it correctly, they dont get a negative rec. Make it so it doesnt work against your enemies and ppl in pvp, and give them 1 min to respond (some ppl naturally take a break or sit from L2).
GIve him a minute to respond ? Lol, i afk for ages :o. SUre, i don't "play" while afk but i am afk for ages, standing/sitting or even when finishing up a monster (afking to fetch/do something and knowing my char is safe (a cata hallway) i don't need to get back fast.
Anyway, negative recommend is not a good idea. Can be abused very easily (negative recommend assault ? hello!),
something moving without a person controlling from behind a computer is not that difficult to spot.
sure there are the rare occasion of some responding but when a 9 group party is moving in a strange matter?.... plz
When I dual-box, I place my wife's keyboard directly next to mine. I press F1 to have the boxed-character follow me, F2 to battle-heal/follow me, and F3 to battle-heal herself/follow me. Once a buffset I press F10 to buff me and her. During the 20 minutes that I xp, I don't have to look at her monitor, not even once. Am I doing anything against the EULA? Nope. I think you'll find that a lot of dual-boxers do this same thing.
Sending a simple "hello" and waiting for the response isn't going to tell you anything. Hell, when we get into our very fast xp groups in Pagans or FoG or when we do pole groups, I miss PMs on my own monitor because the text goes by so fast.
Bots are most easily recognised by movement patterns for players - I wish that was enough for GMs as well.
Absolutely. I don't know a single person in L2 that can't tell who is a bot and who isn't with remarkable accuracy within 15-30 seconds.
On a reltaed note, I love how L2 players "lawl" at how obvious bots and bot trains are, but in the same breath, when someone actually broaches the subject of banning them:
1. Everyone turns into a privacy advocate/lawyer
2. It becomes all but impossible to verify who is botting.
You get everyone and their brother coming up with ludicrous hypotheticals that usually make no sense whatsoever. Something along the lines of...
OMG that is t3h stoopidest idea evar!!!! What if I am /afk in the shower and a GM sees me and my cat is walking on my keyboard because i spilt cheetos cheese there so it looks like i am their but i cant talk becuz i am in the shower but they think im playing bewcayse of my cat so like ur going to ban me for that>>!>!>!!?!!??!!?!?!?!
I get it. I do. L2 players like their cheap Adena and they like their bot programs. You folks can now go back to the time honored tradition of shouting down another person in the suggestion forum who is trying to put forward a constructive idea that might make the "Insta-7X's" in this game less laughable.
Absolutely. I don't know a single person in L2 that can't tell who is a bot and who isn't with remarkable accuracy within 15-30 seconds.
One of my first interactions with a real player in this game, after starting it a few weeks ago, was getting PK'd by a guy who accused me of being a bot. His justification? "You're not using SS while hunting". Without ever bothering to actually talk to me to find out that maybe I was a noob who couldn't afford to spam consumables.
I'm not sure the so-called bothunters are any better than the bots sometimes.
Actually, if you report someone selling adena in shout, the GM's will get them out before you get a reply. They will work faster on them than they will the bots. When I was in Giran getting ready to set up shop I saw someone was advertising their adena for sale along with the website. I reported it. Less than 5 min he was gone, then I got a reply from the GM. The next day the same thing happened again, this time with a different char. So far I haven't seen anymore shoutouts for adena since then.
That's not strictly true, I remember bots shouting for hours about how they were gonna kill the GM's in Giran...
What the player base needs IMO is to actually *SEE* a GM. I don't care if it auto replies with, "I'm busy with something right now, please use the petition system for your issue"
Actually seeing a gm, or NC Soft representative would inspire the players and they may start to believe that something is being done. I don't doubt it's being done behind the scenes, but sometimes you NEED to see it. (Please note, botted GM's are unacceptable to me, and I will petition them)
The EULA is essentially the law. The law says don't bot. What we appear to have at the minute is lawlessness with absolutely ZERO police presence.
Yes, there are plenty of players who don't know what is what. As I said, the most obvious detection methods for hunting bots are...
1. Movement patterns (once you get used to it, it's easy to spot just by this)
2. Assisting patterns (requires some testing on your part).
3. Auto-replies
For town bots, it is
1. Illegal actions (message length, message frequency)
2. Speed of restock (not reliable unless you knew that the store actually sold something just prior to the restock and a restock was performed: I know I look just like a bot when I get up and sit back down to check my shop)
Names, SS, replies to whispers or local etc. are all unreliable and honestly shouldn't be used.