I wanted to take some time to write up what I learned at both GenCon and at the meet and greet Saturday night there. I am sorry if it is a bit long, but some of the people at NcSoft were kind enough to lend me an ear for quite a long time and I feel that as part of the user community, I would write my feelings and thoughts after this meeting.
First, to those of you all who couldn’t come, you missed quite a nice time. The GenCon show is awesome. People dressed up as their favorite fantasy characters, lots of people who share our love for both electronic games and board games. I did the show in one day, but since I am not a card / paper pencil game player, it was easy to do.
NcSoft had a very nice display, around 12 or so computers all running the different offerings that NcSoft has. Lineage II was lucky enough to have the game running on one of the big flat screens overhead in the booth and there were some real players there playing the game. NcSoft’s booth was well manned and there were people representing all of the games. Every one of the booth personnel was nice, and in great spirits. I also met the new Head of Marketing person there.
During Saturday, the booth had a lot of traffic. Quite a few of the chairs were taken with people checking out the different offerings and even more of the show goers watching the flat screens.
The meet and greet was excellent too. They had it in a brew pub right around the corner from the convention center. Easy walk, lots of people and Indy is very nice around that area. Lots of places to eat, have fun and very family friendly. The meet and greet was on the second floor. You needed to have a reservation, and upon getting there, I understand why. There was a limited area to hold the event. They supplied free pops and for the first 2 hours, nice food was brought out every so often by the staff of the brewpub. During this time, people from the different games would come in and shout out the names of their servers, trying to find others that play their games and hopefully people on their servers. I met some people from Bartz there along with 1 other server. It was a grand time. NcSoft people were also there, chatting and mingling. I met one of the nicest ladies from City Of Heroes there who works for NcSoft. If this is the type of people they have on the other games, they are in good hands.
Now, on to other things.
I had two very long conversations with Lineage II’s support people. I give them credit because they not only took time for me, but I sat in on another session from other Lin2 players talking about the same issues. The support staff was not only professional, but they do care. I believe they play when they can, but they care a whole lot about our game and our problems. I also came away with a better understanding of what problems we and they face.
A couple of things really stood out. One was obviously the problem we have with non-players in game. Call them what you will, but they are as much a problem for us as they are for them. When we discuss the issues here, there are a lot of suggestions that come up on the boards. I can say that each and every one of the suggestions that have merit have either been discuss or is being used to a great or lesser degree. The real problem is the shear scope of the problem. The GM staff is dealing with a large number of these issues daily. They have some great tools in place and they use them. They also review problems and have others that double check what is going on before they issue a ban. One of the things I thought was most interesting is that the reports made in game are compiled together and those names that we do report go on a list that someone takes a closer look at. This is supplemented by some of the reports they are running internally that look at flags in the game that may indicate that there is a problem with an account usage. Then, when they have the documentation to back them up, they throw the ban hammer.
We talked about how to really get rid of the problems, but the task is made much, much harder because of what NcSoft is really fighting. They are in a fight with a very, very motivated group of programmers and others who make a good deal of money from their work. The bad guys can leverage a lot more programmers for a lot less money than any company, much less NcSoft, to get in to and get access to the game. The movie 300 comes to mind with the Spartan being NcSoft and Perssian King and his army being our other friends.
Another issue is credit card usage. The prevailing thought here was “why should NcSoft kick them, they get the subscription fees?” Well, guess what, stolen credit cards are a hugh issue for the entire world and online game companies are no exception. NcSoft not only loses the month’s payment (charge backs) from the stolen credit cards, they also now have someone in game for a month putting money and items into the economy and then disappearing when the account is banned. This process is repeated over and over again. NcSoft actually looses on multiple fronts, so thinking that having them in game helps their bottom line is crazy talk at best.
I can say that I took my best shot and discussed each and every idea that has come up here. A bit of background if I may, I have been playing Lineage 1 and 2 for going on close to 5 years. I am also a Network admin, have been in computers, security, the internet, routers, etc for well over 25 years. So, I started with the IP bands, the automation checking, the reporting system, the tracking of items, stupid game names, farming of mats, billing, GameGuard, the client and I am sure, some other things too. They are doing all of it and there are very long discussions at NcSoft about these and newer / better ways to do this. The GMs, support people and actually others sit around and talk thru the good and the bad of every idea. They really want our game play to be the best it can. The problem goes back to the money and motivation of our non-player friends. They are even more motivated, have more resources and certainly more people to work on getting around everything that is put in their way to make more money. The bad guys also learn and adapt quickly. If they start doing something that points them out to NcSoft, they change tactics. Some tactics are better than others, some not so. They also have a good memory of what tripped them up last time. So it is a war of sorts, between us, NcSoft and our friends. I also got the feeling that NcSoft actually gets the short end of the stick because they get shafted for fake accounts and I would assume, there is some customer churn because of the perception of there being such a problem in the game.
All in all, what I came away with from all of this is they do compile the ideas from the forums, discuss and dissect them to see what are the ramifications of these ideals and take the best of them to use. They do hear our pain and they have some people there that try very hard each and every day to do their best.
In closing, I don’t think Lineage II’s problems are unique. In fact it seems that almost all online games out there have the same, exact issues. We, as the user community need to help out where ever we can and give the people at NcSoft as much information as we can when we see cheating, etc. so they can do what they can to remove the problems.
I again want to thank the people at NcSoft and specifically the people from Lineage II for listening and talking with me. To have to listen to me for hours discussing what they have had to discuss for 3 plus years and still be sane is very impressive. Our concerns are heard and being dealt with. I don’t know if I could do some of their jobs day in and day out. I would think some days I would feel overwhelmed and unable to effect change. The frustration at not being able to stop the **** leak must be extremely taxing on most people.
Unfortunatley, by the time I arrived at the NC Soft Meet and Greet, Zhanig was elsewhere and all I found were City of X Players. I was looking for tired, somewhat obsessive and pained L2 players but everyone I ran into was happy and bouncy and festive.
That is when I knew something was wrong.
Unfortunately I didn't get to meet any L2 players (and I suppose Zhanig was in the "glass room" sitting down and having a beer.)
Incidentally, I won one of the drawings and got a "City of Villains" Flask.
Thanks for the write up Zhanig. Hope you don't mind if I add some of my experience (was kind of waiting for yours as it has more meat to it).
I had a nice conversation with Spam and also got to meet the new Marketing guy. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to speak with him at length.
I found out a few interesting things about our game. One, is that NC is extremely protective of the game as it really is their flagship product and they want things to be "just so".
Lineage and Lineage 2 are so Iconic that it isn't out of the question to see similar games advertised as a "Lineage type game".
They are very careful with how they disseminate information. So much so that our team doesn't get information any quicker than players. And in many cases they don't know what will be included in our version until it actually comes in.
To that end, once NC NA gets something new, they then need to "double check" that it is correct because they are dealing with information that has been translated from Korean by somebody that might not know the game as well as our developers.
In addition, the development of our game is handled a little like "Saturday Night Live" (if I am to understand the process correctly) in that NC Korea has a team of artists and writers that all work on thier own ideas. They then submit them to see if they fit in with the "larger picture". For instance, an interesting thing is that Airships were actually slated for the game and might still be slated for the game for all we know. However, our team won't really know anything until they get the info first hand.
Another thing that has been pointed out is that there are similarities to certain items in game to other game's/comic's intellectual Property. The Demon Sword of Zariche is one of them.
When this was first announced, many people noted that it looked like other swords in other stories.
There is a very good reason for this. In Korea, they don't have the history of protecting such intellectual property like we do. It is considered acceptable to use other images or ideas as it is "no big deal". Interesting enough, in the renaissance composers did this all the time and would freely borrow melodies from other composers with no fear of being called a "thief".
So it makes sense that you will see similarities in L2 when compared to other games, stories, comics, etc.
Spam told me a story that when the game was first being developed, NC Korea sent a marketing poster to NC NA with a character in the center that was pretty much a copy of Yoda. They didn't realize that our side of the pond would have issue with that and they had to change it.
In any case, I also got the feeling that they really did care about the game and they are just working with a different type of company in order to give us the best they can.
Thanks Spam for the time that you gave me. Wish I could have spoken more with you. Also, sorry I missed Zhanig. I was down the street at a P.F. Changs and didn't realize that the party started at 6:00. Got there about 7:30.
Well i guess ill put my 2 cents in on the Gencon 07 at indy.First I would love to thank Our GM Spam for making a grand and glorious Apearance (WAS A BLAST WOOT). Our new marketing director for new insight into the games and all the effort being placed to Clean up Lineage 2 and restore the support process for concerns of the players. I will cut some of this post short due to most of the obervations of other players has allready beeen stated in this Thread. It all comes down to NEW MODS in the Forums and New structure In NCSOFT and we will regain our pleasure Gameplay BUT this comes with a PRICE. We need to ban together to report locations on these bad Groups and Keep up the Pressure and disrupt there game play as much as possible. TRAIN TRAIN TRAIN the deader the better. I have great faith in the new support we are getting and Will as allways continue to Support the efforts of players trying to recover our Game.
Thanks for a great Time at GENCON 07 Indy NCSOFT!!!!!!!!!!!
I took a bunch of pictures with my wife's digital. I didn't realize till later that inside pictures of lots of movemeny screws them up. (older digital). So I have lots of blurs but no shots except for the overhead banner and the Guildwars StandUp.
I was told there were live GMs in game but that they are also responsible for helping everyone else too. So, while they can not drop everything for one /bot report, those reports are compiled up and put on a further investigation list.
Here are a couple of issues.
Farming is allowed and in fact, in Korea, there are many legit players that do farm mats and delevel their dwarfs down again and again to keep farming the same mats.
AutoFollow / multiboxing is allowed.
having stupid names is allowed.
what is not allowed is true automated botting and the selling of ingame items for real world stuff.
So, keeping that in mind and that fact that someone could also be griefing another player or even better another clan / alliance, they must research these sightings. while I am sure they could ban anyone for anything, if they started to do that, everyone would leave rather quickly so that isn't an option either.
There is also a manager monitoring the GMs in game from their screens (kind of like a star wars setup) so the manager is seeing and knows from the logs what the other GMs are doing at all times, and if not, they have the logs of what they did.
That is why when you report a bot, the more information the better for the teams there that research this stuff. If they are in fact doing something that is bannable, then they will ban the account, there was not even a hesitation on that response. but they are not just going to go banhammer cause you or I say so, which I like cause I could get pissy too if I was pk'd alot one night and wanted revenge.
I think you missunderstood that question though, but your answer was also of interest :)
I meant the fact most of the bots are obvious bots, just by looking at them, or doing the "target their mob" and they change to another mob.
So, what I mean is, live GMs going around in the world throwing the ban hammer on those kind of bots and the allmighty catacomb bots. Not responding with a immediate ban at our petition, that would be crazy. I mean themselves doing it. You would only need 2-3 active GMs doing this in the same server for a couple of hrs and you would have cleaned all the catacombs.
I know its allowed to farm. But the bot trains we see are so different from "played" bot trains its extremely easy to see the difference.
I think you missunderstood that question though, but your answer was also of interest :)
I meant the fact most of the bots are obvious bots, just by looking at them, or doing the "target their mob" and they change to another mob.
So, what I mean is, live GMs going around in the world throwing the ban hammer on those kind of bots and the allmighty catacomb bots. Not responding with a immediate ban at our petition, that would be crazy. I mean themselves doing it. You would only need 2-3 active GMs doing this in the same server for a couple of hrs and you would have cleaned all the catacombs.
I know its allowed to farm. But the bot trains we see are so different from "played" bot trains its extremely easy to see the difference.
What was their response at that?
You know, that is an interesting question. I'm sure it has something to do with the "process". However, maybe one of the people going to PAX wouldn't mind asking it?
a couple of hrs and you would have cleaned all the catacombs.
For what a few hours, a few days?
I meant as a previous poster said. That a few GMs has that as job, a few hours per day.
That would make it really hard for the bots, and at least they would have to script forward something similar to real player movements to prevent those GMs from banning them. That should take some time at least.
And I bet most bot programs has some kind of autoresponse, and I also bet most GMs can send a PM at the same time to several players. There should be several ways to battle those scripts, when they would eventually implement this part soloution.
I think you missunderstood that question though, but your answer was also of interest :)
I meant the fact most of the bots are obvious bots, just by looking at them, or doing the "target their mob" and they change to another mob.
So, what I mean is, live GMs going around in the world throwing the ban hammer on those kind of bots and the allmighty catacomb bots. Not responding with a immediate ban at our petition, that would be crazy. I mean themselves doing it. You would only need 2-3 active GMs doing this in the same server for a couple of hrs and you would have cleaned all the catacombs.
I know its allowed to farm. But the bot trains we see are so different from "played" bot trains its extremely easy to see the difference.
What was their response at that?
Pirates of the Caribbean - its a matter of leaverage /Pirates
Lets take it from their side, so we will work with 1 gm for sake of argument. How many toons total could a single gm do in a single day of work. We will say a solid 4 hours since I am sure there is paperwork, snacks, a bit of meetings, etc.
It takes say maybe 30 minutes per ban cycle (you have to be sure), and you get, at most 9 total toons. At this point we have 72 bots per day. Something to be proud of.
Now take this same person and he can run reports, check off names, look for bot-scat, and more importantly, follow the flow of items as they move across accounts. Run this for a week and you could hit 1000 accounts or more and within that, you also may get that one top dog that is holding the loot. Now you have not just gotten rid of the lower levels, but you have also made some of their time worthless.
I would sure love to do a /gm and in 1/2 hour or so, they appear in game w/ the mighty glow hammer. See that group in front of me disappear and whoosh it is a wonderful Aden day. But that wouldn't accomplish more than making me happy.
I dont agree with you.
But you seem to have your point of view rock solid, so I dont wanna take a unnecessary discussion about it if I cant convince you to start with.
Did you speak to them at all about it?
Im curious about their point of view and approach.
Honestly, I didn't have a point of view. This was the direction the conversation went towards. I tried to make an example of what I understood was being said. None of this is a quote or anything, just what I took away from the dicussion.
It takes say maybe 30 minutes per ban cycle (you have to be sure), and you get, at most 9 total toons. At this point we have 72 bots per day.
If it takes them 30 min to determine if a bot is actually a bot then they are failing. I guarantee that I can successfully detect a bot / 1 active char with 8 man auto-party within 5 min. Its not difficult.
They could easily start doing this in the highest lvl catacombs. Do it for 2 weeks 1-2 hrs a day. By the end of those 2 weeks, I bet there would be only a few left. It takes time for even bots to get to a high enough lvl to go to those catacombs.
Once the high lvl catacombs are fairly clean you move to the next lvl down catacombs. Do the same process except spend 1/4 of your time combing the catacombs that have been "cleaned".
Repeat this process of pushing down the lvl of the bots until they are all D / C grade. At this point, you will only need to spend about 1 hr running through the higher lvl catas and the rest of the time can be spent on the lower lvl ones.
Not only that, but if they have scripts that run to logically link characters to botting then why couldnt they do both?
Ok Zhanigz, well that was odd, very odd then. I cant understand how it would take that long for them, I cant believe that really.
Because I definately agree with teedoff, it should be done really easy in the catacombs, you dont have to run around to see the bots there. And as he says, work upwards and down.
Shouldnt be a problem at all.
I guess I see it differently. I see higher level clans running groups down there and they are not botting, just grinding mats. I will give you this, I see some and say hey, you are a bot, but there again, you have to be sure with a background check. You can't just stand somewere and make a blanket judgement, you have to look at the logs on that toon for a bit and see what they are doing and what they have done.
Farming is not bannable, only automating the gameplay with out of client apps.
But as you said yourself, you see clans down there farming as well, and you know they are clans, and not bots... How do you know that then? :)
There are several ways a normal lineage2 player can determine if a catacomb party are bots or not. Because of the ways the characters react and act. If a frapsed video of that isnt enough for "background" evidence... I dunno what is.
And Im quite sure the GMs has access to more sophisticated methods of determining wether a character is a bot or not.
Im pretty convinced I wouldnt have one single wrong about a bot party or no bot party, scanning through all the catas in my server.
And for each example I can come up with one that will show you wrong.
We do have an older man, disabled (back issues) in clan. He played almost 20 hours the other night. He won't type back in chat, but if you get on vent, he is talking away. He works an area hard. Is he a bot then? Some would say yes and ban him quick. Others that know for sure, says you can.
Again, farming for mats is not against the rules. Running multiple accounts in an area is not against the rules. The automation part is.
The other thing I don't think I made clear was if NcSoft is doing it on a one by one w/ a gm logged in and running around, they won't put a dent in the problem. If, on the other hand go to the logs and reports and follow the toons interactions, they can ban vast amounts at once. Which is it we really want to happen?
I want the vast banning and am willing to give up the one by one stuff. It is a matter of scale and hopefully a matter of getting the biggest hit to their pocketbook at the same time. Gettting the little ones in the cats means nothing to the cheaters. Getting the money banks does.
Don't forget too, we are talking about just one server, one gm. NcSoft needs to think about all the servers. Again, you have limited resources as compaired to our automated friends. You need to apply as much technology as possible to level the playing field AND not piss off the real customers who were just working the problem.
Again, you have limited resources as compaired to our automated friends. You need to apply as much technology as possible to level the playing field AND not piss off the real customers who were just working the problem.
You repeated this statement in the original post and that got me wondering. That means that the farming companies are making more money from Lineage 2 than NC Soft does, and have more resources to counter any measures NC takes? If that is true we are truly doomed.
Another issue I have always wondered about: I always thought that botting cannot be effectively stopped with GM's and such. I believed that it can only be stopped on software level. So, I am wondering (no programming background :) ), is it impossible (from a technical point of view) to write the code in such a way that the server knows it is communicating with an original client and not a fake/modified one (thus rejecting the use of 3rd party software)?
Again, you have limited resources as compaired to our automated friends. You need to apply as much technology as possible to level the playing field AND not piss off the real customers who were just working the problem.
You repeated this statement in the original post and that got me wondering. That means that the farming companies are making more money from Lineage 2 than NC Soft does, and have more resources to counter any measures NC takes? If that is true we are truly doomed.
Another issue I have always wondered about: I always thought that botting cannot be effectively stopped with GM's and such. I believed that it can only be stopped on software level. So, I am wondering (no programming background :) ), is it impossible (from a technical point of view) to write the code in such a way that the server knows it is communicating with an original client and not a fake/modified one (thus rejecting the use of 3rd party software)?
I know nothing about writing programmes either but I would think if it is possible to write a programme to check for correct software it would be just as easy to produce a programme that sends false information which is accepted by the initial programme.
As a programmer, I could also discover what the server expected to be sent back and code that into my personal client.
It is not about the money, but think about the difference of income levels in the other countries. Here, 40k buys one programmer for a year, over there it buys 40 programmers for a year.
And if you say, ok, lets go that way and buy the 40 programmers, would you really trust the keys to the kingdom to them? Because you would need to lay bare all of the codebase. I barely trust my bank, you think I would trust 3rd parties with my bread and butter.
it is true, he could be botting. Trouble is, I have been in his parties and seen what he does. Hell, I could be botting pie too for all anyone anywhere knows. How can you really be sure about anyone other than those that sit next to you.
Same problem for NcSoft. How do you know for sure and how do you get the biggest bang for the buck?
Again, farming for mats is not against the rules. Running multiple accounts in an area is not against the rules. The automation part is.
You are just repeating yourself... ^^ And I was right in the beginning, you cant be convinced.. (:
But I will try some more for the fun of it.
Now Im repeating a bit, but you seem to be stuck on the fact real people also farm mats, Im trying to point out its not the farming of mats that should give you the ban hammer. Its the obvious differences between a bot part and a real player party.
Here´s just some points however.
#1.
Use logs, while looking at said characters.
#2.
Use special tools I bet they have while looking / investigating the said catacomb characters. For example regular players cant stand at the same position, nor can they detect a mob before it spawns, nor do they detect you targetting the mob in question.
#3.
This doesnt mean they wouldnt be doing the regular checks as well.
#4.
Ofcourse there are real players farming mats, they just dont behave as bots. (I know some people dont talk back ingame, but there are other ways to determine wether they are bots or not.....)
#5.
Cleaning the cats from the higher catacombs first will net huge losses for the bot owners. Time == money.
#6.
Investigate the newly banned accounts, to reach the source (or as you put it, the banks, just as they do now with the petition system).
#7.
I not saying: Lets ditch the petition system and work only with this, Im saying be flexible and have several approaches.
Don't forget too, we are talking about just one server, one gm.
When were we ever talking about one gm and one server? ^^
Dont look at it so narrowminded, try to see it all at once, not one thing at a time.
And yes Madders, its how you put it, a battle of coding. endless battle on the software part. Counter this, counter that... etc etc.
Hehe
Nope, I am not convinced at all. What I am saying here is what I believe is happening behind the scenes at NcSoft. You have to believe that I feel your pain too. I am in this game same as you. I have the same issues and the same feelings. The difference is I think I have more of an idea of how much work they are putting into this to remove our friends and make our game experience better.
I have tried to respond with what I was led to believe. Not how I woudl fix it. All of these points were ones that I spoke at length about.
The problems are hugh for all game companies. We are not the biggest problem game nor the least problem game.
Lets just hope they will find a way some time in the future, but adressing our concerns to them personally is great. And I really enjoyed to hear they are taking our suggestions under consideration and are working towards a goal.
And.. they care.. hehe (:
But as you said yourself, you see clans down there farming as well, and you know they are clans, and not bots... How do you know that then? :)
There are several ways a normal lineage2 player can determine if a catacomb party are bots or not. Because of the ways the characters react and act. If a frapsed video of that isnt enough for "background" evidence... I dunno what is.
And Im quite sure the GMs has access to more sophisticated methods of determining wether a character is a bot or not.
Im pretty convinced I wouldnt have one single wrong about a bot party or no bot party, scanning through all the catas in my server.
With groups of bots it's easier to say, but I can tell you that when I play my scavenger without clan, there are a lot of players that are "sure" that I'm a bot and train me or even report me. When one player goes near each bot of the area, stops the time to write down its name and goes to another, it's clearly to report them. Yet they only write names, they don't verify anything. Fortunately, no GM do the same thing with a ban hammer instead of writing names.
However I think it could be useful if a GM would indeed go to high level areas and accelerate action on the account on obvious bots. If there's a doubt, he lets it to other GMs to investigate and quickly goes to the next group. IMO it is particularily important to do that now at high level areas because that's were they hurt the more, and that's were they cost the more to their owner. If it's quick and easy to recreate very low level bots in starter villages, I assume it takes more time to go back to Pagan.
That's for massive botting. But don't forget that a lot of players use 3rd party progs at a lower scale because they affirm that they can't be touched. Not only to level a character faster, but there are progs rotting the PvP scene and they can't be detected by a player. And as there needs to be a petition to investigate... their feeling of invulnerability doesn't appear to be challenged. Thus they spread.
I agree that the single player bots are much harder to detect, but how many of those do you find in a high lvl catacomb? The obvious bots are the ones that run full parties that move like syncronized swimmers. They detect trains of mobs before they could ever see them and run out of the room. They switch targets when you select a non-aggro mob they are running to.
I guess I see it differently. I see higher level clans running groups down there and they are not botting, just grinding mats. I will give you this, I see some and say hey, you are a bot, but there again, you have to be sure with a background check. You can't just stand somewere and make a blanket judgement, you have to look at the logs on that toon for a bit and see what they are doing and what they have done.
Farming is not bannable, only automating the gameplay with out of client apps.
Zhanig, no one is saying farming is bannable. I think that was a very non-factor thing to mention really. When people refer to farmers, they refer to people who farm using automated characters or farm raids using toons that have been leveled in bot trains. Yes, I know the term can mean both are the other, but if you call an afro american the "n word" I'm pretty sure they don't need to whip out the dictionary to know what you're talking about. This is semantics, no need to argue it.
Farmers (noun): Players who collect materials and currency with automated characters, or lock down raids with toons that were leveled using 3rd party applications.
@ MrTeedOff: +1
I'll say the discussion was a failure because those are developers/GMs/businessmen and they know what they need to do and the ramifications of everything they can do. Most intelligent posters on this board can see the inaccuracies of some of the suggestions. The major qualm is that they actually put these petitions in a queue for investigation and are very bad at their job. SOE implemented the same type of petition system in EverQuest but if I report some player that is running a buffer on MacroQuest they almost always respond (in PM and/or on the scene) within 1-2 hours and I never have to worry about seeing such a toon in game again.
If you want I can log in right now, make such a report just to test their reaction time, and use the /time function to document the current time of report/reply in the screenshot. There is absolutely no comparison between L2 GMs and the GMs in EQ/WoW and many other games. They are totally outclassed, and made to look like they have absolutely no experience at doing what they were hired to do. Maybe it's a matter of inefficient "procedures" but any company with a brain would have made the necessary changes by now.
L2 is way too grind dependent to have a game company be so slow at investigating and ridding the game of these automated toons, when they take up easily half to 95% of the mobs in some popular leveling area and their protectors stronghold you with level, gear, and number of players advantages.
BTW the same SPS that there was a thread about and that I've reported (with replays and screenshots) is still AFK leveling in Valley of Saints. I think he'll be S Grade soon. NCSoft, quite frankly, should only develop their games and let other companies manage them. They do a very poor job. No empathy/sympathy is warranted, IMO.
Must be horrible to be totally outclassed as professional GMs by PServer GMs.
And for each example I can come up with one that will show you wrong.
We do have an older man, disabled (back issues) in clan. He played almost 20 hours the other night. He won't type back in chat, but if you get on vent, he is talking away. He works an area hard. Is he a bot then? Some would say yes and ban him quick. Others that know for sure, says you can.
Again, farming for mats is not against the rules. Running multiple accounts in an area is not against the rules. The automation part is.
The other thing I don't think I made clear was if NcSoft is doing it on a one by one w/ a gm logged in and running around, they won't put a dent in the problem. If, on the other hand go to the logs and reports and follow the toons interactions, they can ban vast amounts at once. Which is it we really want to happen?
I want the vast banning and am willing to give up the one by one stuff. It is a matter of scale and hopefully a matter of getting the biggest hit to their pocketbook at the same time. Gettting the little ones in the cats means nothing to the cheaters. Getting the money banks does.
Don't forget too, we are talking about just one server, one gm. NcSoft needs to think about all the servers. Again, you have limited resources as compaired to our automated friends. You need to apply as much technology as possible to level the playing field AND not piss off the real customers who were just working the problem.
Flag on him and see what happens? If someone flags on you and you are a normal player and don't say anything I hope they finish you off. I did such a thing to an SH in VoS. Sitting around afk with her SE doing very bottish behavior. I killed her, she rezzed and tried to PK me, I killed her again. 6 times in a row. Hope it was worth it. If I send a tell to a player and they don't respond, I will flag on them. If they don't respond then, I'll probably kill them - especially if they're in a spot me or a friend wants to camp.
I often don't respond to PMs, but I always respond if a player flags on me. No it's not the "rang rang why hit meee!!!" type of auto response.
And I've seen many end-gamers leveling their subs and buffers on 3rd party programs in VoS. Yes, I flagged on them and didn't get the usual "OMG UR SO KOS U SCRUB!!!1!!1" type of response for them. After a couple hours of running through, I came back and they were in an afk area and she says she had to restart and wants the area back.
3-4 Days later:
xXHeroXx: Gratz xXA***ukerSubXx on Noblesse!
Then there's the archer/PP duo there that runs around killing mobs for hours and every once in a while you can get a response out of the Archer, but never the PP. She is busy running around spamming pickup - even on the drops from the mobs you kill.
As far as talking on Vent while afk leveling/farming - Lol. It's not like no one has been caught doing such a thing before. Back problems don't prevent you from typing > "hi.
But there too, there is no rule that says I have to type to you at all. I never infered his back interfeared with the area between the chair and the keyboard. If he doesn't want to answer people, his choice.
so here we are again at the time issue. The response from NcSoft was they compile the info, do traces on the people w/ the logs and do other compairsons to get more info and then, during a ban window, take care of a mass group of bannings. I see more logic in their way because of the numbers game. If they are saying they can effectivaly ban 100x more people their way than the ones and twos of sending out a gm to look into each pm, then I have no problem with that. Something is being done, and it is more effective.
I think we don't know the full scale of the issue as players. I don't know how many accounts get banned each round. I was led to believe a whole hell of alot. If this is the most effective way to do it, then cool.
Yea, I have been flagged by people running by there too. I solo the first two valleys a lot. But here, you are helping out too. But I don't have to respond to you, especially if I think you can take me out. I would rather let you go red and have to deal with that end of it. I will just grind a while longer and have the SP I need at next level.
I know stories of some people being powerleveld too. They don't concern me cause they will leave the game soon enought when they get tired of the game. If they get caught in the ban system, so much the better.
I am with you on the issue. I am with you on the frustration, but I do believe them when they say that the shere number and detitication of our friends is awsome. I think that is where the real problems lie. There are a hell of alot more of them that us.
The farm thing was more of a reference to how we can just look and say automatically, you are a bot. You are behaving as a bot, staying in the same area for very long periods of time, doing the same thing over and over. These are the people that should not be caught up in a mass banning and that is one of the things the research does, make sure the toons being banned are the bad guys and not true players.
But there too, there is no rule that says I have to type to you at all. I never infered his back interfeared with the area between the chair and the keyboard. If he doesn't want to answer people, his choice.
so here we are again at the time issue. The response from NcSoft was they compile the info, do traces on the people w/ the logs and do other compairsons to get more info and then, during a ban window, take care of a mass group of bannings. I see more logic in their way because of the numbers game. If they are saying they can effectivaly ban 100x more people their way than the ones and twos of sending out a gm to look into each pm, then I have no problem with that. Something is being done, and it is more effective.
I think we don't know the full scale of the issue as players. I don't know how many accounts get banned each round. I was led to believe a whole hell of alot. If this is the most effective way to do it, then cool.
Yea, I have been flagged by people running by there too. I solo the first two valleys a lot. But here, you are helping out too. But I don't have to respond to you, especially if I think you can take me out. I would rather let you go red and have to deal with that end of it. I will just grind a while longer and have the SP I need at next level.
I know stories of some people being powerleveld too. They don't concern me cause they will leave the game soon enought when they get tired of the game. If they get caught in the ban system, so much the better.
I am with you on the issue. I am with you on the frustration, but I do believe them when they say that the shere number and detitication of our friends is awsome. I think that is where the real problems lie. There are a hell of alot more of them that us.
The farm thing was more of a reference to how we can just look and say automatically, you are a bot. You are behaving as a bot, staying in the same area for very long periods of time, doing the same thing over and over. These are the people that should not be caught up in a mass banning and that is one of the things the research does, make sure the toons being banned are the bad guys and not true players.
But you're sitting here telling us you talked to the GMs about some things and came away with rhetorical outcome to the conversation. Like I said, any intelligent poster on this board could have said that. There is nothing in your OP that a newbie could not have known by using the search function in this forum. HGMSpam made a very long post about some of these problems some time back in this forum (coupld/few months). Your conversation with the GMs was little more than wasted time - but at least you actually got to see that they existed.
The root of the problem is not that there are more of us than them, or some other stupid B.S. The root of the problem is that NCSoft fails horribly at their job, their GMs at least. GMs are theoretically not supposed to wait to log in to look for cheaters only when they get a petition. They are supposed to be the server police, not the player base itself. NCSoft utilizes the playerbase like their employees and give many players the impression that it's their responsibility to police the server. I should not have to report a bot to have that bot banned, when that bot is afk killing in the most obvious place ever (in town during the event)and exhibiting obvious botting behavior.
I have seen email replies form NCSoft and they do basically what I do when I see someone I suspect as botting. They send PMs and "motions" to your toon and if you don't respond to them they ban you - plain.. and simple... If you don't respond to another player, and a GM comes up to you and PMs you and you don't respond to the GM, you will be banned. There is nothing that the general playerbase does that the GMs don't do. Ofc they have access to logs, etc. but the gist is that they are as human as we do and use the same tactics to test legit gameplay in more than 50% of those situations.
If you are running multiple accounts that's fine, you can use macros and whatever. But if you are standing there chatting to a GM while you SWS+BD is dancing along with the PP/SE buffing IN SYNC then something is wrong. I expect them to be of average intelligence.
And yes, MrTeedOff is right. It would be EASY to start at the top and work your way down, and you don't need an ARMY of GMs to do that. Go to Martys right now and look at every room and see who's killing there. If NCSoft cared as much as they said they could have easily put a stop to this a long time ago. 2 GMs each can spend 45 minutes on every server doing through various/diverse leveling zones and easily kill 100+ bots a day. They don't, and for that I don't think they deserve the empathy or sympathy of anyone.
I pay for this game, why the hell should I play and do part of their job for them. ESPECIALLY when they are very slow and suck very much at handling the situation themselves.
I'm not frustrated or furious, I'm just not buying it because there are foolproof ways to deal with the problem. The #1 suggestion is for them to actually log in the game and do what they need to do. Not log into giran looking for salers (which is infinitely more difficult than finding bots even if easy itself) cracking jokes with other players.
Unfortunately, I had to leave GenCon early this year on Saturday so I missed the Meet and Greet, but I still made many visits to the booth (without declaring I am so-and-so from such-and-such server). First thing I did was make note of how NCsoft was marketing L2 compared to years previous.
14 day trial codes. Check.
Cool videos of L2 being played. Fail.
L2 swag for general public. Fail.
Thursday - 0 of 9 PCs playing L2.
Friday - 1 of 9 PCs playing L2.
Saturday am - 2 of 9 PCs playing L2
Saturday pm - 3 of 9 PCs playing L2 (this is good)
Content being shown when playing L2? All low-level grinding focused around newbie towns where the pig event was going on. Was this a good way to show what L2 was about? I don't think so. Back in 2004 they were not logged into the real servers. They had created level 65 characters for people to play around with C grade equipment. There were 6 computers running L2 on one side of the booth. This was a good start, the only problem being that there were not any people to interact with.
The last couple of years they have used low-level toons on Lionna or Devianne (can't remember which). While you get the interaction element, they don't get to see high level content. Last year I decided to run around and PK some qwerty dwarves around Dion, and was soon told not to "go to crazy" with the karma.
During conventions I believe they should invite a bunch of people (who can't make it to the con) to the PTS, give them some maxed out toons, make it a siege weekend, and then have several different toons for people at the conventions to play and mingle with the people invited to the PTS. I believe a more full experience of what L2 can offer will result.
I have visited the NCsoft booth every year that they have been at GenCon. Pretty much it's the same discussion every year. It is always the same idealistic "we hate bots and want to ban them all" comments.
I believe their dedication. However, I am unsure if their in-house employees and outsourced GM tier have the same level of commitment. There is really no excuse for someone being reported for months for botting to still be able to level 24/7 and go through their main class and a subclass, become a noblesse, and then a Hero. Unacceptable.
But back on topic of the Meet and Greets. They should do these every year. It is a reward for their most loyal players.
I think Trensharo is right. Relying on the players to drive the process is the wrong way to do it.
I think that using petitions to find the "hot spots" would be best way to do it. Since GMs can't just run around the whole map 24/7, it would make sense for players to send in petitions. The more petitions you have for a single location, the more attention GMs would pay to those locations. Right now, catacombs are the "hot spots" for bots. Clean those out and new "hot spots" will pop up.
Along with this, GMs could then patrol potential "hot spots" doing preventative maintenence. It would probably be similar to what police do IRL.
I give them credit because they not only took time for me, but I sat in on another session from other Lin2 players talking about the same issues. The support staff was not only professional, but they do care. I believe they play when they can, but they care a whole lot about our game and our problems. I also came away with a better understanding of what problems we and they face.
A couple of things really stood out. One was obviously the problem we have with non-players in game. Call them what you will, but they are as much a problem for us as they are for them. When we discuss the issues here, there are a lot of suggestions that come up on the boards. I can say that each and every one of the suggestions that have merit have either been discuss or is being used to a great or lesser degree. The real problem is the shear scope of the problem. The GM staff is dealing with a large number of these issues daily. They have some great tools in place and they use them. They also review problems and have others that double check what is going on before they issue a ban. One of the things I thought was most interesting is that the reports made in game are compiled together and those names that we do report go on a list that someone takes a closer look at. This is supplemented by some of the reports they are running internally that look at flags in the game that may indicate that there is a problem with an account usage. Then, when they have the documentation to back them up, they throw the ban hammer.
We talked about how to really get rid of the problems, but the task is made much, much harder because of what NcSoft is really fighting. They are in a fight with a very, very motivated group of programmers and others who make a good deal of money from their work. The bad guys can leverage a lot more programmers for a lot less money than any company, much less NcSoft, to get in to and get access to the game.
Quite a few easy situations to prevent it lol,
I guess they were briefed with a "fairytale" to tell you on this, in the end it comes down to game profits, get rid of all those players and they are in the negitive, truth be it!
As a programmer, I could also discover what the server expected to be sent back and code that into my personal client.
What if that "what was expected from your client" changed every, say 5 minutes. And you had to have the real client connected to know the change? Would that be possible?
If the mechanism is in the client, then unless they invested in some type of serious outside security device, then I don't see how they could do this. At some point, the hackers will figure out the sequence and the seed. Once known, then we are back to square one.
I don't believe they gave me a fairy tail. I think he spoke from the heart and we telling me they are doing bannings on a very large scale. The problem is that the next day, the group is back. They track the sale and use of online cards, they look for patterns to help make the next round more efficient, they look to get the biggest hit.
I still report in game. I see a group, I report it. When he spoke about this, he said they do go onto a check out list. Fine, then my efforts are doing something.
I can't say I like everything I heard. I can say that what he said made me want to stay and continue to play knowing they were trying.
Perhaps we are looking at the wrong end of the stick. NcSoft NA may be doing all they can and more, but the parent company should also be stepping up and helping out here. They are the ones with the vested interest in keeping us here.
As for money, our automated friends do not pay with real credit cards. NcSoft looses money on all fronts from them here. That is why I don't see any motivation on their part to allow them in game.
I was gonna make a long and detailed post, but im quite tired after being up so late last night. This is gonna be based upon past interviews/chats that have been in connection with the NC staff.
Firstly, lets face it, NC are fighting an uphill battle and are currently loosing and there are several factors that have caused this.
The size of the GM team, there isn't enough staff to sort through the sheer ammount of reports every day that come in.
Petitions.
One of the GM team pick's up your petition from an out of game application (this was revealed ages ago due to people asking why the /gmlist didn't work). The go to each of the accounts in the database and mark a flag next to the character's listed for further investigation. They then send a pre-written message to the person who petitioned because it would take alot of time to write back the same message to every player every time a bot was reported. Plus, replying the same thing to every person would be down right annoying and time consuming.
Investigation
Lets say it takes 30-40 mins to investigate a user, this would include getting the name off the list, reading up on the history of the character e.g if they have been flagged in the past for anything, had any petitions against them, what the outcome was etc. They would then go in game and port to the user, the GM investigating will then observe the actions for, lets say, 5-10 mins, and make any observation notes. They will then perform tests and see if they match and confirm their observations. If the player is clean then they will have to write a short report on the tests conducted and results, if the player is found to be using 3rd party software then a report is written and the account is then flagged for banning.
Final Check
There will be a higher GM checking down the "Flagged for banning" lists and confirming and denying the ban requests after reading through the reports and maybe checking in game to confirm everything. He/she will then issue the ban's.
So, thats a long process for 9 players (if it was a train), now think how many players and more inportanty, bots, on a single server. If there is only a couple of people with the ability to check and then ban an account it's going to take a long while.
"IF" NC had the manpower to do this effectively it would be a decent system, but the fact is that the team isn't big enough to carry out this process quick enough is an issue and it's showing, not only the players are seeing it, but the botters are seeing it and are getting bolder and bolder to the point now where they are taking over rapidly.
TAKE NOTE: This post is based on information given out for everyone, this might not be how things are carried out and i might be compleatly wrong, but i do believe the staff is too small to cope with this growing issue.
I am not here to "backup" NCsoft. It is obvious that L2 has problems with bots. It is also obvious that the core mechanics of a free for all economy based on farming is going to spawn bots that farm, and lots of them because of the low drop rates available in game. There have been bots in this game for years! The bot program's proticol adapts.
If NCsoft changes something then the bot will change something. If NCsoft finds a way to "detect" a bot, within a few hours the bot program will be updated to bypass such detection. It isn't as easy as just checking if it is the real client or not, because on the code side of it, generally, everything looks fine. There is a slim chance for an oddity to show up, and you have to investigate to find it. Graphically bots do seem easy to spot, I will give you that much. But hell, none of us really know whats up even if we pretend to. We can guess with 100% certainty, but a guess is still a guess.
Could NCsoft NA really be doing the best they can with the resources that are available to them? Sure! As a player do I think that they have the best resources? No! Do I think there is room for improvement, of course! And of course I am going to blame the company for my complaints of issues I have with a game that they put their name behind. I think that is obvious to all parties.
If I was going to guess, most bots get banned because the user screwed up setting it up, not the program itself. Human error maybe? I definately agree that virtual selling is a HUGE business and having bots make it possible for 1 player to do the job of many. Cutting down costs and creating larger profits. I think that is basically undeniable according to simple economics.
NCsoft can write all the code they want. But once it is written it will be cracked. It is harder to write secure code than to crack "secure" code. Because is is basically the difference in reading a book and writing a review or opinion article based on it, or actually writing the book. The book may have taken years, the opinion article, a good part of a day...
Is NCsoft spoonfeeing us BS? I hope not! But who can really say except NCsoft themselves, the only people that really know how they handle bots.
Thanks for the write-ups btw...I enjoyed reading them.
NcSoft looses money on all fronts from them here. That is why I don't see any motivation on their part to allow them in game.
You realise they make up at least 60% of all accounts paid for on this game right? how are they making ncsoft lose?
By causing 100% of the players who find rampant botting and adena buying offensive enough to quit. Not only 'gamers' but 'casual' players as well. (Something the Korean playerbase has in larger numbers than the NA playerbase ever had.)
NcSoft looses money on all fronts from them here. That is why I don't see any motivation on their part to allow them in game.
You realise they make up at least 60% of all accounts paid for on this game right? how are they making ncsoft lose?
By causing 100% of the players who find rampant botting and adena buying offensive enough to quit. Not only 'gamers' but 'casual' players as well. (Something the Korean playerbase has in larger numbers than the NA playerbase ever had.)
The damage is already done if you cannot see it, people wotn be coming back.
IF they are to do a MASS ban and to get rid of it and to make people come back to the game, it will be around CT1 and SERVER TRANSFERS.
Other than that, they have NO REASON and cannot justify banning it, most of us are just used to it now tbh. The rest already quit.
Not to mention most people said they would never bot or anything liek that but the fact is people get to 80 using it, what are they ment to do waste 1000 hours grinding it or let themselves work, most people have already given in sadly
The whole thing is non-sense and despite being obviously well educated and as friendly as a person can be - you have been had.
The games design is the problem and that could have been addressed a long time ago
I am 100% certain of this and anyone from NC can contact me, I could stop almost all botting with a few months. Just me one person and not by banning anyone directly
The problem is so simple to rectify
I am currently writing a white paper on it, and in that paper I discuss game theories and list about 15 definite ways to reduce/stop botting. But the most definite way is to design your game correctly - in NC's case the problem came up after they wrote the game so some rewrite is necessary but certain it could be done
The credit card line is nonsense also, yes its real prevents them making money and in some cases cost them a little but they amount being made from the far out weighs that
Not to mention most people said they would never bot or anything liek that but the fact is people get to 80 using it, what are they ment to do waste 1000 hours grinding it or let themselves work, most people have already given in sadly
What are the suppose to do? Play the game to enjoy it and stop imaging there is some importance on that artificial number.
When people work out their level means nothing more than the type of content they will be facing the better.
Frankly I find 70+ far less fun than the 55-65 range and someone using the idea they "need" to make level 80 as an excuse for botting is sad. Those people should be banned and it is easy to find them
You want to know one real easy solution - Write an Script that tracks users logged in over 24 hours and prints report of their exact location over 10 minutes. The GM could then take 10 seconds out of his work, spawn on that point, follow the user and ban instantly if botting. It is extremely easy to work out and no amount of programmers working against NC can change that fact
red tape makes the corporate world go round man. you cant just one-man-army go killing botting, and such. it leaves no witnesses, no paper trail, no recorded declaration of your intention and report on your follow through.
it leaves nothing to audit.
no way for your superiors to criticize you.
so despite your plan or thesis on commando-ing botting, no matter if it works or not, it is irrelevant.
Hardly. NC already run daily reports and that is just one example - I have many. Its something I have invested a lot of time in and I am a professional IT person/DBA
red tape makes the corporate world go round man. you cant just one-man-army go killing botting, and such. it leaves no witnesses, no paper trail, no recorded declaration of your intention and report on your follow through.
I never suggested anyone do that. I know ways to stop it without having to ban people - I said so. I just gave the report as an example of a technique that could be used as a stop gap
But just so we are clear, I am fully aware of the humor of your post, even if it does not seem that way :p
Post your report here.
I, being in IS and security and networking for 30 years would love a chance at seeing the silver bullets. i am also sure that all of the other online games companies would love to see it..
There aren't THAT many botted accounts per server.. even if you say that 1/4 of all toons logged in on bartz are botting (which frankly I think is far too high), you're talking about ~700 toons, most of them in some form of group, most in full-sized groups in catacombs.
This isn't rocket science. Any person with a highschool diploma and a few months of experience playing the game would be able to easily identify these accounts.
You do not need some sophisticated technical methodology. It's an exceedingly simple and straightforward problem to solve. If you gave any one of us the authority and power to identify botters, I guarantee you at least 50% would be positively identified within a month - that's one person, covering all servers.
Once you establish that you are serious about botting, far fewer players will do it in the first place.
The whole thing makes me angry and I think NCsoft has burnt bridges with many gaming enthusiasts over this topic.
And this is where I disagree with you.
It is a far harder problem. It is though less now (I am speaking from an outsider looking in, not from corporate logs, etc) because I think this game is getting a bit long of tooth and there is much more money to be made from the newer games and from blech, WoW.
Yes, if you had GMs in game, 24/7 on every server, running around all the time, you may in fact be able to band these people quick enough to make a difference, but at what cost? Will the end user pay say twice as much per month to play this game to support such a labor intensive solution. Maybe, maybe not.
NcSoft also has some very real concerns about the over all health of the economy within each server. Like it or not, the streams of mats that come in thru these automated players effect us all, from the base price of coal and stems all the way to the A and S grade items.
There is also a very real problem with certain groups of legit people running bots to grind themselves or their clan up. This I believe is one of the hardest and one of the worst examples of the problems in the game.
Then, if you refer to my recent post in the mis. section, we come to find out that there are in fact 3rd parties out there infecting people's pc's to get their account info long enogh to strip them and sell the stuff in game for real money.
All in all, I still believe there is no magic bullet. I do think there are issues in the basic game that only Korea can fix. I think there are issues in the game mechanics that make this problem worse in L2 than in some other games. I also belive that there will always be cheaters out there.
But, I would still dearly love to read this report and if it is this cut and dry than a public vetting of it should not hurt it at all.
Post your report here.
I, being in IS and security and networking for 30 years would love a chance at seeing the silver bullets. i am also sure that all of the other online games companies would love to see it..
Seriously!
Its a little more complicated than that but when its finished I will post a link
Network security for 30 years? As in you started in the 1970's?
The solution only needs to be technical to fix it long term - short term it would be easy to clear out the botters - it could be done in a few weeks
But the game theory or design is all wrong - games should be made so the nature of the game reduces or eliminates it
You do not need some sophisticated technical methodology. It's an exceedingly simple and straightforward problem to solve.
Not true, you would surprised how sophisticated the cheaters are getting. Like I said short term run around banning - that is easy but seldom last. Lets not forget NC themselves have done that several times already to with no lasting success
If you gave any one of us the authority and power to identify botters, I guarantee you at least 50% would be positively identified within a month - that's one person, covering all servers.
The first thing most gamers in L2 would do is ban people they do not like or in opposing clans and then worry about botters. Plus don't forget the majority of people complaining about botting on these forums have botted themselves at some point. I personally never have and I feel you and some others would work for the good of the community but its something NC really could not do.
First of all, please forgive my broken English, since English is not my primary language…
This is my first and only MMORPG game that I play, I start the game since C3, I don’t know what other game’s content look like…I been reading the official forum since I started playing the game…
I agree with some of the players here said the game design is somewhat causing our soulless friend problem.
The game is all talk about level and gear. So the player who has more time to grind will has a lot high chance to own the game, but that is not mean they truly have the skill (I mean true skill to play the game, not the in game skill).
In my opinion, the high level toons should not have a lot higher attack power than the lower level player. Don’t get me wrong, I am not that native to think Lineage 2 will change the game design.
Let say there are 2 nukers, one is A grader and the other is C grader. If they both using the same magic, the magic power should not have a lot different, may be just a little, but the A grader will get a better casting speed/reuse time than the C grader, because the A grader has more experience for using the same magic. In that case, it will create a fair battle situation, at least the C grader have a chance to fight the A grader, or may be win the dual. On the other hand, if the A grader is not legit, because that person is lack of practicing, that person may have chance to loose, then it will turn the game base on the player skill and not level…No matter what grade the player is, if the lowbie has a chance to confront the high grader, that is less need to have a power level botter…
cause I like the fact I need to pvp 200 people to get baium, or the fact I can go gank my enemies in pagans, or I can spend an hour or so at heart fighting over who gets anthy or or or
if I wanted to play instance everything safe xp games ... I d go play them
78 I had my built my first processor/memory/readout and wrote the assembler code to make it say hello. From there I got into robotics, actuators, servo controls, etc using microprocessor controls and them moved to true computers in the early 80's having the TI-994a in pieces before my first IBM PC w/ the origional books that had the asm code in ther for the bios.
Hacked / cobbled together my first floppy disk controller when they came out and them moved into networking and computers and out of robotics in the late 80's as the money was much, much better.
Now, just a lowly systems admin at a magazine publisher :)
You want to know one real easy solution - Write an Script that tracks users logged in over 24 hours and prints report of their exact location over 10 minutes. The GM could then take 10 seconds out of his work, spawn on that point, follow the user and ban instantly if botting. It is extremely easy to work out and no amount of programmers working against NC can change that fact
this is a grind game.
If you want to get to 70+ in as little time as possible, then you need to keep your chr out XPing for as long as u can.
If I go and grind for 4-9 hours a night, I don't log off, just stand in town, that would make me a bot right....atlest from your stand point it would.
what you're saying is, if I'm out XPing for 7 hours, I'm have a GM port in next to me, interrupt my game play/grind time, to challenge me.
And this is where I disagree with you.
It is a far harder problem.
I know you think so, but I have not seen anything to convince me of this. In fact I have seen many things that convince me the opposite is true. See below for example.
I think this game is getting a bit long of tooth and there is much more money to be made from the newer games and from blech, WoW.
And yet, WoW has far less of a problem with this. I've simply never seen botting in WoW. Never. I've never seen botting or any sort of third party **** in Guildwars - and there you have by far the greatest incentive to do it - there are cash prizes of considerable value at stake. So what does this tell you?
That games with a far greater challenge, far greater population sizes, and far greater incentives for this kind of cheating, apparently have very little trouble dealing with it. Yet here we have Lineage 2, where, as you say, frankly it is not a glamorous product and the currency market is probably dried up, and yet there are bots EVERYWHERE, constantly. You cannot play more than ten minutes without finding at least a party's worth.
but at what cost?
Again, judging by competitors, apparently the cost is acceptable. WoW charges the same monthly fee as this game, and their servers accomodate a similar number of players. Guildwars charges NO monthly fee. Go figure.
Will the end user pay say twice as much per month to play this game to support such a labor intensive solution.
I would suggest that the relevant question to NCsoft is: how much revenue do we lose by banning bots? How much would we gain from returning players or new players that no longer quit due to the rampant botting in our product? Which of these two numbers is bigger?
Unfortunately it is my feeling that, at this point, the first of these two figures is the greater one. Ergo, NCsoft will not take action against botters.
But here's an additional question: how many more subscribers would they have today, if they had shown even the tiniest bit of concern over rampant botting four years ago? This problem is literally in the EXACT SAME PLACE it was when this product launched, with regards to this issue. Actually I would say it is worse. At launch, there were botters, but at least it was viewed as taboo and risky behavior. Now, it is so common and so entirely without consequence that even hero's can bot. No matter. I almost feel it is taboo for me to *not* bot.
And yet, WoW has far less of a problem with this. I've simply never seen botting in WoW. Never.
I'm sorry but I've seen this statment before and it just boggles the mind why some people think that no one bots in wow.
WoW has the largest community of any MMO with many servers to accomodate that community. You can do a search and find numerous sites that sell WoW gold. Now, if there are so many servers and presumably a large market to purchase these materials as well as powerleveling in WoW but no one sees any bots, then how is it happening?
SOMEONE must be botting in WoW. May I suggest the best place... instances.
Botting is very widespread in wow, snag is you just dont see the bots. When a game is instance based bots can go hide in instances and nobody is none the wiser, in l2 instances are few and quirky so bots end up in catacombs where everybody sees them
And you guys know botting is widespread in WoW how?
Selling in-game currency is not the same thing as using bots to level up all your characters. And wealth is WoW is much much much easier to acquire. I never said that WoW currency is not traded. I said botting is not a problem in WoW.
First of all, if droves of people were farming instances non-stop on automated mode, it would be apparent on the auction house, because there would be a ton of BoE purples. But there aren't. They are rare, even on the most densely populated servers.
Secondly, since leveling is most efficiently accomplished through quests, if tons of characters were being leveled by bots, you would see them outdoors. But the truth is that the game is designed in such a way that botting your character is just not particularly desirable or efficient.
I don't know why you would make defenses or excuses for NCsoft in this regard. I have probably played every mmorpg of even modest popularity since EQ1 was in beta. (I am not proud of this - it's a sickness!) I have never seen a game where botting was as widespread as it is here, except for Shadowbane. So it is fair for me to say that, over 5-10 years of experience, NCsoft is just about the worst there is in the marketplace, on this subject. (But it isn't even NCsoft, it is particularly the NCsoft NA team in charge of L2, and specifically their management.)
Remember - we're not even setting the bar so high as to say "zero bots". We're simply saying - why don't you give people at least the slightest reason to reconsider botting? Botting is a de facto, commonplace, out-in-the-open way of leveling characters in this game right now.
Look, its not as if botters feel the need to go someplace remote. And we know, with servers so low population, there are hundreds of places you could go where you are unlikely to ever see another living soul. Nope. They can go to the most desirable, most crowded, most visible spots on the server - catacombs. Why? Because they have ABSOLUTELY ZERO worry that anything will ever be done to them.
That is NCsoft's fault, it isn't a hard problem to solve, and doesn't require technology. If they would at least ban a botter or two a month there would be some deterrant effect. Right now its as if NCsoft had a big banner on their website that says: "we know our game is a grind, so please bot."
And you guys know botting is widespread in WoW how?
Selling in-game currency is not the same thing as using bots to level up all your characters. And wealth is WoW is much much much easier to acquire. I never said that WoW currency is not traded. I said botting is not a problem in WoW.
First of all, if droves of people were farming instances non-stop on automated mode, it would be apparent on the auction house, because there would be a ton of BoE purples. But there aren't. They are rare, even on the most densely populated servers.
Secondly, since leveling is most efficiently accomplished through quests, if tons of characters were being leveled by bots, you would see them outdoors. But the truth is that the game is designed in such a way that botting your character is just not particularly desirable or efficient.
I don't know why you would make defenses or excuses for NCsoft in this regard. I have probably played every mmorpg of even modest popularity since EQ1 was in beta. (I am not proud of this - it's a sickness!) I have never seen a game where botting was as widespread as it is here, except for Shadowbane. So it is fair for me to say that, over 5-10 years of experience, NCsoft is just about the worst there is in the marketplace, on this subject. (But it isn't even NCsoft, it is particularly the NCsoft NA team in charge of L2, and specifically their management.)
Remember - we're not even setting the bar so high as to say "zero bots". We're simply saying - why don't you give people at least the slightest reason to reconsider botting? Botting is a de facto, commonplace, out-in-the-open way of leveling characters in this game right now.
Look, its not as if botters feel the need to go someplace remote. And we know, with servers so low population, there are hundreds of places you could go where you are unlikely to ever see another living soul. Nope. They can go to the most desirable, most crowded, most visible spots on the server - catacombs. Why? Because they have ABSOLUTELY ZERO worry that anything will ever be done to them.
That is NCsoft's fault, it isn't a hard problem to solve, and doesn't require technology. If they would at least ban a botter or two a month there would be some deterrant effect. Right now its as if NCsoft had a big banner on their website that says: "we know our game is a grind, so please bot."
As I've said:
There is a large population. Regardless of how easy it is to make money, it is available for purchase. Regardless of how easy it is to level, leveling services are available.
So if you were a businessman who had to supply to all those servers and all those customers, would you hire people to control all those "toons" in order to make money and level these characters or would you automate some of it?
But sure that is conjecture. There are either quite a few live farmers or quite a few bots.
My guess is bots.
And as you don't want to draw attentioin you go into instances.
edit: just did a search, found out that these types of bots do exist in WoW (and there's even video out there) so as the Don of my own WoW gold company (or whatever) I think I would rely upon automation so that I didn't have to pay many people.
Sorry I am at lunch break and don't have time to see if any of this was brought up but I wanted to respond to this one..
Use special tools I bet they have while looking / investigating the said catacomb characters. For example regular players cant stand at the same position,
What does this mean? stand at the same position? If you mean all in the same spot? I know you can block other toons (except when porting) but I also know that where a toon is standing on my screen is never where it is standing on my other screen so I wouldn't always use this to judge bots. (also I didn't know bots could do that lol)
nor can they detect a mob before it spawns,
Are you saying they fight it before it spawns or just target it and run towards it before it spawns? Would a /target mobname /attack macro target something before it spawns, if it happens to be the next mob of that kind to target? (I honesly don't know)
nor do they detect you targetting the mob in question.
Now this one I KNOW a macro can't do. I have hit the next target - attack macro at least a few times when some poor fellow was on the next mob and lordie do I feel like a re-re. :(
Also thought I'd add.. it is more difficult to tell a live player from a bot now that things like Nostromo and gaming keyboards are permitted as long as someone isn't "afk." Well that would mean if I am not incorrect that someone could loop an in-game macro forever and as long as they are able to answer a PM they are OK. So things like perfectly timed looped macros are not against the rules anymore.
Also, to use the example in the thread someone gave about a fighter killing and a healer spamming pickup and only 1 responds. Well I have that situation often because I have 2 accounts and 2 computers. A lot of the time I will just have my hands on 2 keyboards and one is hitting next target / attack and the other is hitting an assist macro, a follow macro or a heal macro. To try to keep an eye on messages from other players (just in CASE someone tries to label me as a bot) I keep one screen clear of damage/loot and one not. So teoretically someone could talk to both and I could easily miss a pm on only one of them. :/
Good suggestions but easier solution
Don't allow PvP to occur in PvE areas - problem solved.
Ah, and then by some mystical force those C-grade nukers will stop being nonfactors in PvP where it is still allowed: olympiads, sieges, arenas... not.
I have a better solution for you. Don't allow PvP at all :p
nor do they detect you targetting the mob in question.
Now this one I KNOW a macro can't do. I have hit the next target - attack macro at least a few times when some poor fellow was on the next mob and lordie do I feel like a re-re. :(
Target the fellow, hit /assist - and you will see what's in his target :p
Ok,
There are entrie sites devoted to powerleveling / selling / buying wow gold out there. It is (the entire online game selling gold industry) > 1 billion real world dollars industry. I want to say closer to 4 billion but I dont' have the link handy. Instances hid botting from the general population. Here, with the lack of instances, it is much more in our face hence, we feel there is a greater issue in our game. I can tell you I report those players I know are botting, but I know know that there are certain clans that will mass report players from other clans just to get them kicked out of the game, not because they are botting or in fact doing anything wrong.
From Nc's side, they have to research all of these reports, or at least which ones they feel credible and then decide to ban / not ban.
I have seen bots in every game I have ever played online, if there is something people are willing to pay money for, then there will be someone out there who will try to earn that money. Here, at least, Nc not only admits to us up front they know of the issue, but they also work on banning. The problem is they can't or maybe won't post the bannings and the reasons for the bannings, and that is more likely the reason that most in the user community feel it is out of hand. I have noticed, in the cats, that with the server merge, more of it came over but that was because on the other servers it seemed to be more or less accepted. On Bartz, the users there have tried very hard to keep the server clean and healthy. Now, recently I have seen far fewer in the cats and about. With the recent ban on Bartz (read this week) I hope now to see even less, but to read about it on the other sites, quite a few accounts got banned.
Definitely overlooked the entire point of that post. :(
And anyway, ** wmany years have you played WoW? Since your entire argument is conjecture, I think experience is relevant. :)
Just one question here, You have been in the game for a few months or just joined the fourms a few months ago?
Just wondering how many years you have actually been in the game is all...
Well, again, I do not know why you folks are conflating currency trade with botting to level your characters. They are two different things. Yes there could be some overlap when the currency farmers are using botting software.
But you identify currency traders mostly thru system logs. The amount a currency trader produces will vastly exceed what even a hardcore, unemployed gamer will produce. This is the golden rule that has been outlined by arena.net, SOE, Blizzard and other companies. Using this, they parse system logs and, through software, can identify which accounts warrant investigation.
They can't keep complete pace with the professional currency traders, but they create a transaction cost to their business, at least. Probably you will never eliminate this problem unless you turn to a sanctioned format like SOE Exchange.
What I have been talking about is the fact that the vast majority of botting that players encounter is the result of other players not wanting to level. And there is no disincentive to bot because the likelihood that NCsoft will choose to punish you for leveling your alt this way is minimal / non-existent.
So what I am taking issue with is that this is the only game I've played besides Shadowbane where it seems the devs have decided they just don't mind players that level AFK.
And when most of the botting takes place is such obvious areas as the Catacombs (they don't even bother to enter a RIFT or anything because they are so comfortable with NCsoft), it just adds insult to injury. I have gone on anti-bot runs on Bartz. Do you know how long it takes me to identify each and every bot in three or four catacombs and kill them? It's a matter of hours, and most of that will be travel time frankly. This is not rocket science.
"Hi, are you a bot?"
...
"If you are not botting please let me know."
...
*hit the player and flag*
...
"OK last warning, if you do not respond I am going to assume you are a bot and train you."
...
*train mobs, fake death, rinse, repeat*
It's easy and fun.
As far as how long I have played, I played from closed beta through to C2. Then I came back quite recently. I think it requires less than one week before you conclude that the game is run rampant with bots. Do you think it takes longer to see what a prevalent problem they are?
And I can tell you there are times when I wouldn't answer you at all depending on what things I was taking care of at that time. Nor, should another player ever have to answer another player. But on Vent, I would talk in a sec to anyone. Hell, I may not even answer you cause I don't like your clan, your name, or I am in a pissy mood that day. Doesn't make me a botter.
As far as adena transfer, with the game being this old, there are plenty of people in the game with billions of adenas in their warehouse from just playing the market. The transfer of their wealth to whomever is nto against the rules, so you not only have to get the logs to pop up that, but then you wouldhave to follow that adena trail and all who came in contact with each piece of adena. Those report and those queries take a lot of time, effort and review and I bet there are times NcSoft still gets it wrong and has to turn an account back on. I am sure they don't do it on purpose, cause the manpower wasted re-reviewing each case puts an ever larger strain on the GMs and all the other things they have to deal with.
The two things go hand in hand. If it was just botting for level, pure and simple. The botting woudl go away on its own as those toons get to level 80 / 85 and or, you being such a lower level, would never even see those toons botting in those area since you couldn't even get to them unless you were summoned.
The botting is somewhat used for levels, but it is really used for making adena. Most all of the cata groups that are botting are doing it and being controlled by some member of a clan smoewhere in the game. This is so they can afford the S grade stuff, the stones, the shots, and everything else it takes to be competitive.
Yea, I saw what Sony did to Star Wars. I was there too in closed beta until they did the big change and screwed up their game. Now, with the ingame money, they still have bots, because of the materials you still need. They are there alright, in fact I believe I posted a link to a story about a guy that paid for his 3/4 million dollar house with the profits made from Star Wars.
Definitely overlooked the entire point of that post. :(
And anyway, ** wmany years have you played WoW? Since your entire argument is conjecture, I think experience is relevant. :)
See Zhanig's post.
Also, I've played WoW on and off since closed beta.
If you want to talk about my experience with the game over time then that is quite some time. If you want to talk about my experience with the game as solid hours, well no, I can't say I have the same experience as I have with L2.
I still stand by my post. Botting is a problem in WoW it just isn't an immediate problem for the players.
And I can tell you there are times when I wouldn't answer you at all depending on what things I was taking care of at that time. Nor, should another player ever have to answer another player. But on Vent, I would talk in a sec to anyone. Hell, I may not even answer you cause I don't like your clan, your name, or I am in a pissy mood that day. Doesn't make me a botter.
I don't know why you keep trying to find a 100% perfect or infallible solution. We aren't issuing the death penalty to a person in real life. We don't need to get it right every single time. All we need to do is give the vasty majority of players a reason to think twice about botting.
All the times I have done what I described in the previous post - I was always worried I might get it wrong. Because I don't want to train mobs onto normal players that are just xping obviously. I have never once gotten any kind of msg like "wtf did u do that?" or anything like that. The bots, and they were bots, just die, and that is that.
Is it possible I could make a mistake? Yes. Will my method reveal a bot accurately more than 9 times out of 10. Yes.
Again, this is not criminal justice or a legal proceding. It is a simple matter of taking some disciplinary action to reduce the rewards of botting, increase the risks of botting, and create a disincentive / deterrant to do so.
Very simple. Non technical. You I/T folks need to take a class in organizational behavior or behavioral pyschology and this problem will be solved right quick. =P
Target the fellow, hit /assist - and you will see what's in his target :p
It isn't a macro if you are manually targeting someone. I am talking about macros. The fact that I am bad at multitasking is unrelated. lol
There is no macro that automatically targets nearby players. There is also no macro that turns your butt around instantly if someone suddenly targets the mob you are already targeted on. An /assist /next target would just move you to a different mob than the one that person is attacking. It wouldn't stop you from attacking a particular mob the second someone targets it.
Thus the "bot runs in a circle" game. :)
OH and speaking of bot games.. I remember a long time ago some kid thought I was a bot and dragged a train my way. I of course saw it coming so I stopped attacking and just let my mob whack at me for a while as that guy/girl got smashed to death by the train. The person was yelling "attack! attack! Why won't you attack?" and I just stood there laughing to myself.
So um.. don't train unless you are sure it is a bot because it can backfire if it isn't. lol
And I can tell you there are times when I wouldn't answer you at all depending on what things I was taking care of at that time. Nor, should another player ever have to answer another player. But on Vent, I would talk in a sec to anyone. Hell, I may not even answer you cause I don't like your clan, your name, or I am in a pissy mood that day. Doesn't make me a botter.
I don't know why you keep trying to find a 100% perfect or infallible solution. We aren't issuing the death penalty to a person in real life. We don't need to get it right every single time. All we need to do is give the vasty majority of players a reason to think twice about botting.
Excuse me. I was here from closed beta, continuesly. I am the leader of a clan, holder of a clan hall and the only one that can take stuff out of the clan warehouse. You are very correct I take that very seriiously. By banning me, NcSoft would effectiviy take a very rare resource out of the game, they would screw over 90 people who have worked hard trying to build themselves up and they would have taken the years I have played this game and thrown them away. I think that is serious.
Yes, the solution needs to be elegant and 99% perfect or you are just trying to be a Texas SharpShooter. This is a very large part of why they are very careful about bannings. In fact, the only time I can remember in the last 2 years where they didn't really research everything was the one day GMSpam came into game himself, went down into the cats and just did a clean up.
Great day, everyone was yelling on Hero Speak, boards were buzzing, but you know, even then, supposidly good accounts got caught up in the sweep.
The false postivie of what ever solution is made has to be extremely low, or we risk loosing the few players we have here, which isn't good for NcSoft nor is it good for the player base as a whole.
Don't allow PvP to occur in PvE areas - problem solved.
Absolutely 100% completely and unequivocably opposed to this. Your suggestion undermines the verymost basic premise of this game.
No it does not - it undermines your interpentation of the premise of this game. When this game was created it was incorrectly believed that PKing would not be a big problem so they just used a Karma system.
It has since become obvious to many that it is a huge problem - the general solution for the non-PKing type is easy - play another game. And as a result Lineage II's customer base declines by the year.
So I understand some good players would prefer to keep things as is - hence the suggestion do what all other MMO's do - create PvE servers and PvP (normal) servers. The customers decide
Don't allow PvP to occur in PvE areas - problem solved.
Absolutely 100% completely and unequivocably opposed to this. Your suggestion undermines the verymost basic premise of this game.
No it does not - it undermines your interpentation of the premise of this game.
Not his. Koreans'. If they had not wanted to keep it...
And with your suggestion you still didn't solve the problem that had been complained about. Let me remember: the problem was that a C-grader is nonfactor in L2 PvP.
When this game was created it was incorrectly believed that PKing would not be a big problem so they just used a Karma system.
It has since become obvious to many that it is a huge problem
Something that is "obvious to many" is not always true, like in this case. PKing is a very tiny problem, smaller even than killstealing, for example (and is one of the solutions to keep killstealing under control).
- the general solution for the non-PKing type is easy - play another game.
No. The general solution is "don't mess with server politics until you can afford that, and just ignore all other PKs".
And as a result Lineage II's customer base declines by the year.
L2 is old. Still, it has a vast (one of the biggest in the industry) player base in Korea on servers with exactly the same PvP rules. Think about it.
Field PvP is not the reason why people avoid NA version of L2.
cause I like the fact I need to pvp 200 people to get baium, or the fact I can go gank my enemies in pagans, or I can spend an hour or so at heart fighting over who gets anthy or or or
if I wanted to play instance everything safe xp games ... I d go play them
I see so you give a few of your person opinions and the means a valid suggestion becomes a "fail suggestion"
Sorry but that is not the way the world works, it does not revolve around you
The fact is the majority of people who play Lineage II do not want people being able to PK them, inclucing many who enjoying PvP, and decisions about the game should be made on the majority of the community.
Of course if you actually read the discussions you will find it says changes should be made like all the major MMO's splitting the servers so there would be BOTH types of servers. Meaning if you want to fight to do normal game activities you could.
The topic is one NC are going to have to address if they have any hope of saving Lineage II or ever getting Lineage III off the ground
78 I had my built my first processor/memory/readout and wrote the assembler code to make it say hello. From there I got into robotics, actuators, servo controls, etc using microprocessor controls and them moved to true computers in the early 80's having the TI-994a in pieces before my first IBM PC w/ the origional books that had the asm code in ther for the bios.
Hacked / cobbled together my first floppy disk controller when they came out and them moved into networking and computers and out of robotics in the late 80's as the money was much, much better.
Now, just a lowly systems admin at a magazine publisher :)
Hey that is cool. I have only been IT since about 1997, I started working at Maxis on Sim City 2000 and then went to Microsoft working in "Back Office Support. I did that for awhile before moving into different system admin roles and eventually DBA. I work as primarily a Oracle DBA now but I do a little of other stuff also.
I started in the gaming industry though and I keep close connections with it
Good suggestions but easier solution
Don't allow PvP to occur in PvE areas - problem solved.
Ah, and then by some mystical force those C-grade nukers will stop being nonfactors in PvP where it is still allowed: olympiads, sieges, arenas... not.
I have a better solution for you. Don't allow PvP at all :p
How is that relevant to that discussion at all? Why did you even quote me when your comment has nothing to do with mine?
C grade Nukers should go into the Lvl Restricted PvP fights if they are having a problem...
Well, again, I do not know why you folks are conflating currency trade with botting to level your characters. They are two different things. Yes there could be some overlap when the currency farmers are using botting software.
Easy answer because they are not using some obscure definition of what "botting" is that only you and maybe a few others are aware of
It is obvious in this thread that they consider "botting" - using a third party tool to control your character to accomplish SOMETHING within the game - that something is irrelevant.
That is what people have always defined as botting and they still do.
What I don't understand is why this is a point for you? What difference does it make what someones goal is when botting? It makes no difference if its to make money to sell online or to level a character - its still botting and causes the same problem for those in the game. An automated character is killing things or doing things that interferes with them somehow
But you identify currency traders mostly thru system logs. The amount a currency trader produces will vastly exceed what even a hardcore, unemployed gamer will produce.
You are assuming the system is recording logs of transactions. The truth is, that is not the standard in the gaming industry and mining the SQL on this scale is not easy.
And there is no disincentive to bot because the likelihood that NCsoft will choose to punish you for leveling your alt this way is minimal / non-existent.
Not his. Koreans'. If they had not wanted to keep it...
No its his - it was his post. The Koren developers have spoke about this many times in depth. Read their opinions on it and you will see what I mean - they are very unhappy with the way Pking and things of that nature are occuring. Why they have not done anything about it is anyones guess but when you look at the decision to merge the servers money becomes a very possible answer
And with your suggestion you still didn't solve the problem that had been complained about. Let me remember: the problem was that a C-grader is nonfactor in L2 PvP.
That is not the entire train of thought of this thread and that question is easily asnwered - go into a level restricted PvP area or level up
Something that is "obvious to many" is not always true, like in this case. PKing is a very tiny problem, smaller even than killstealing, for example (and is one of the solutions to keep killstealing under control).
Where as that may be true sometimes it does not apply here. PKing, griefing and botting are all big problems in Lineage II and many, many people have left the game because of them. In regards to PKing it is so easy to correct and yet cost the company so many potential customers by not doing so.
No. The general solution is "don't mess with server politics until you can afford that, and just ignore all other PKs".
What a load of nonsense. People get PKed all the time who have absolutely nothing to do with "server politics". In fact most people PK others with High Level characters just because they can.
L2 is old. Still, it has a vast (one of the biggest in the industry) player base in Korea on servers with exactly the same PvP rules. Think about it.
Read my post and ask yourself - does it look like this guy has not thought about it? If you answer "yes" you seriously need to spend some time on self reflection
[quoteField PvP is not the reason why people avoid NA version of L2.
Not the only reason but a huge factor. If your assumption that was not correct were right then games like WoW would have more people on PvP servers than PvE (normal) but guess what - they don't. In all the MMO's where there is a choice the PvE servers are almost twice as populated. This fact is replicated across MMO after MMO and the people in the industry have taken note.
Just not NC - hence a quickly dying customer based and server mergers,ect
Warhammer Online will almost certainly end our beloved game
Not his. Koreans'. If they had not wanted to keep it...
No its his - it was his post. The Koren developers have spoke about this many times in depth. Read their opinions on it and you will see what I mean - they are very unhappy with the way Pking and things of that nature are occuring.
Whoa! They are?
I've never seen anything like that. Reference please.
And I'm sorry but with all due respect, I've played this game since Prelude and the amount of pk'ikng that goes on is so miniscule as to not even make mention it.
Also, please keep in mind that before I purchased this game I did my research, realized it was a harder game with a lot of pk'ing and went in accepting that with the idea that I would only play about a week. Just wanted to try it out.
I feel that it is a bit unfair for players who go into a game that is "about" something and then wanting to change it.
Now, having said that, I am all for choices and support the idea of their limited pvp server for those people who actually want a more controlled pvp enviroment. However I think it would be an injustice (of sorts) to change this game which has allowed a certain style of gameplay to thrive since the start.
And as the CM's and Gm's would say "take it in game". I think that says a lot.
This game is not now and never has been "about" that sort of thing.
Yes, it has always occured but it has never been an intended part of the game - hence the Karma system
And one more time - I suggested they create TWO DIFFERENT types of servers like all the other MMOs have
I'm not going googling for references either, you can do it yourself if you actually care - the developers have mentioned it many times in articles, its not new. In fact if you read the recent article from PC Gamer discussing L3 the top guy mentions it there...
PKing miniscule what a laugh
And you are right the "Take it in game" does say a lot - it says they don't care, leave them alone and just keep paying your montly fees
This game is not now and never has been "about" that sort of thing.
I was always under the impression that this game is and always has been about open pvp aimed at "hardcore mmo players". It even says this on the website. To add non-pvp servers would undermine this game's entire concept.
The team doing L3 are totally different people than both the original and current L2 dev teams, so I would also like a link to an L2 dev saying what you say, because I am unable to find it on google (I am implying it doesn't exist).
No it does not - it undermines your interpentation of the premise of this game. When this game was created it was incorrectly believed that PKing would not be a big problem so they just used a Karma system.
It has since become obvious to many that it is a huge problem - the general solution for the non-PKing type is easy - play another game. And as a result Lineage II's customer base declines by the year.
I'm on the most crowded NA server we have right now. I have been PK'd once. (I subsequently found him and killed him and got his bow - yay for player-driven content. Oh we later had a fun chat and get along fine.)
This is an "obvious" and "huge" problem how?
Also, please provide source material substantiated your knowledge that the developers did not intend for this to be a PvP game.
Excuse me. I was here from closed beta, continuesly. I am the leader of a clan, holder of a clan hall and the only one that can take stuff out of the clan warehouse. You are very correct I take that very seriiously. By banning me, NcSoft would effectiviy take a very rare resource out of the game, they would screw over 90 people who have worked hard trying to build themselves up and they would have taken the years I have played this game and thrown them away. I think that is serious.
Again, I feel you are thinking too much like a programmer, and this is not a programming problem. It is a behavior problem.
Do you notice how you make assumptions about my position?
Where, for example, did I say that a permanent ban is the appropriate first step to take when identifying a bot? How about booting them to login screen? How about a 1 hour ban? How about issuing a warning to the account? There are any number of disincentives that could be used.
Looking at the problem from your point of view, no constructive action is likely to ever be taken. The way you have framed the problem, we are required to develop an automated methodology that is 99.99% accurate under any conceivable circumstance, and once identified, the toon must be permanently banned. No wonder you think this is a daunting challenge. =)
But it needn't be that complicated at all. You can certainly take a rough justice approach, combined with an incremental approach to punishment, beginning with gentle warnings (even a private message with no other action), and incrementing to tougher sanctions.
For example, let's say my approach is only accurate 90% of the time. What are the odds that I would incorrectly identify the same person 4 times in a row?
(0.10)^5 = 0.00001 = 0.001%
Hey look, if I save perma-ban for the 4th offense my method is now 99.999% accurate. So I've met your requirement for precision in the end, even while relying on a method that only works 9 times out of 10.
So, here, I'll make a specific proposal:
1st offense: GM issues warning by pm, as follows: "Hello. I am sending you the message because your account is suspected of botting. If I do not hear back from you within 10 minutes, a first warning will be issued to your account. If you believe you have received this message in error, please respond to me now."
2nd offense: "Hello. This is the second warning you have received for suspected botting. You can remove this warning by responding to me at this time. Please be advised that a third warning will result in your account being logged out, with a 1-hour temporary ban enforced."
3rd offense: "We regret to inform you that your account has been identified as a repeat-offender for third-party, unattended gameplay. If we do not hear back from you within the next 10 minutes, a temporary 1-hour ban will be applied. If you believe there has been a misunderstanding, please reply now."
4th Offense - 1 week ban
5th Offense - perma ban
Now tell me honestly, under that regime, do you think there is any likelihood that your account will be perma-banned? Of course not. You can give players all the benefit of the doubt in the world. Bots can't hold conversations with you. =)
Actually, if you look over the posts I have here, I have brought up numerous ideas, all of which I felt at the time and some I still do, have actually better merit than that which is in this thread.
You are right, it is behavorial. It is the game mechanics and the North American ideal as to how to get to end game that the Koreans did not take into account or didn't care about.
I have been trying to post those arguments to the suggestions here as to where there is a hole in them. There will be a hole in all arguments, but NcSoft must find the ones with the fewest that do the most good for the them and for us.
But in the end, it is the game mechanics, especially at this late date in the game, which drive the issues. If level was not so critical, if items were bound to you or somehow controlled, and if mats were not the chocking point that they have been for so many years, then this game may have been different.
I want the bots out of here too. I do know how to put together the messsge to support with time, screen show, and description so they can do their thing, but I am only one person. Imagine the 30k we have just this system, then multiply it out over all the other servers, and then all the places in this land of ours called Aden, and the task takes on new dimensions.
Yes, more GMs would be wonderful. But we have what we have and they do what they can. It is up to us to make it better until a better game / company comes along.
Til then, the ideas have to work within the boundries as we have them now in the game with the blending of the Korean attitude towards the game.
I have been trying to post those arguments to the suggestions here as to where there is a hole in them. There will be a hole in all arguments, but NcSoft must find the ones with the fewest that do the most good for the them and for us.
Well we can agree on that note. I appreciate the important role of devil's advocate. =)
Again, I feel you are thinking too much like a programmer, and this is not a programming problem. It is a behavior problem.
Everyone knows its a behavioral problem but explain something please - how can a game developer change the morals of a society?
Obvious asnwer they can't which means they have to write code to protect their user base against them
But it needn't be that complicated at all. You can certainly take a rough justice approach, combined with an incremental approach to punishment, beginning with gentle warnings (even a private message with no other action), and incrementing to tougher sanctions.
That would be good, and so would designing the game so it would not be necessary to begin with.
I for one back your ideas on how to help the game right now as it is, my points are really made with thoughts to future chronicles or even L3
So I've met your requirement for precision in the end, even while relying on a method that only works 9 times out of 10.
Your calculations depend on inaccurate assumptions by your equation you are just as likely to make certain mistakes with perm banning as you are of not doing it. The obvious flaw is your assumption you would not pick the same person 4 times in a row incorrectly which you very well might.
Personally though I doubt it and I would say your method was fair enough to at least base a working model of ingame checks on
Now tell me honestly, under that regime, do you think there is any likelihood that your account will be perma-banned? Of course not. You can give players all the benefit of the doubt in the world. Bots can't hold conversations with you. =)
I hate to tell you this but some botts do in fact answer you and they use languages that are highly unlikely to be understood by you.
I still think your ideals about this are sound, but you make some assumptions yourself
The one that stands out to me is this - how can a programmer think like anything other than a programmer and more importantly what do you believe a programmer thinks like? I ask because you seem to have some idea and judging by these post it is not a positive one
The problem is not changing the morals of the people who play the game it's changing the corperate mentality of those who provide the service.
No one wants to ban paying accounts in a game that is this old....
Financial suicide.
Bots are what they are and until L3 as the population dwindles there will be less and less incintive for NC to take any action at all.
The accounts are paid - the corperation can hide behind the "police yourself" aspects of a PVP game and comfortably rake in $$$ taking no action to protect the rights of the legit.
Everyone knows its a behavioral problem but explain something please - how can a game developer change the morals of a society?
Obviously modifying behavior does not require a change in the moral fabric of society. That is an absurd response. All that has been discussed is the implementation of penalty or punishment for undesirable forms of gameplay. Modifying behavior does not mean changing someone's life. It means putting in place difference incentives or deterrants so that the same person, morals unchanged, will arrive at a difference conclusion.
ie, Sam thinks botting is fine when there is no consequence to doing so. He's not even sure it's against the rules frankly.
ie, When Sam learns that there is a very good chance his account will be permanently banned if he bots, he thinks twice about it.
ie, When Sam learns that his friend has been permanently banned for botting, he decides its just not worth the risk anymore, and stops botting.
Did Sam have a moral epiphany? Did Sam's entire society change? Obviously not. I think it takes away from the rest of your argument when you go into these grandoise and totally unrelated tangents.
That would be good, and so would designing the game so it would not be necessary to begin with.
Yes that is a legitimate criticism, but not one that is likely to be helpful at this stage in the game's life.
Your calculations depend on inaccurate assumptions by your equation you are just as likely to make certain mistakes with perm banning as you are of not doing it. The obvious flaw is your assumption you would not pick the same person 4 times in a row incorrectly which you very well might.
Well, first, there is certainly nothing inaccurate about my math. Secondly, you did not understand what was being said.
So, once again, what I said in that case was that someone would not receive a ban until they had received 3 prior warnings. Therefore the relevant questions is: what are the odds that you would mislabel a legitimate player as a bot four times in a row? The answer I gave you is the correct one. There was no "obvious flaw" (the math was accurate) nor even any "assumption" whatsoever - I told you the exact probability that I would make a mistake. And the answer turned out to be: virtually never.
This was in response to outrage expressed by some over what they perceived to be an unacceptibly crude 10% rate of "false positives". So it was designed to explain to them a way in which you can work with a technique that crude (or even more crude), and achieve a very refined and reliable result, simply by breaking your decision down into progressive stages.
In other words, in between "ban him" and "don't ban him" exist all sorts of variations of "keep an eye on him."
I hate to tell you this but some botts do in fact answer you and they use languages that are highly unlikely to be understood by you.
I have never received any response from a bot. If and when the software evolves to the point where it provides standardized responses in foreign languages, I think the GM's can learn which bot software is being commonly used, and which standardized responses it tends to give. The goal is not to pass a fluency test, it is simply to see if there are some spontaneous responses or whether the player is being automated. (Note that if the botting software does change to incorporate some standard text respones, that will make them even easier to identify.)
The one that stands out to me is this - how can a programmer think like anything other than a programmer and more importantly what do you believe a programmer thinks like? I ask because you seem to have some idea and judging by these post it is not a positive one
My point was that, rather than struggling to devise some impossibly perfect automated algorithm, one can simply use some common sense and some ground rules and accomplish the same (or better) result.
If you want to reserve a perma-ban for the 10th offense or the 20th offense I don't particularly care. A lot of the benefits will be realized simply by having *something* in place, even if it is as simple as a msg from a GM that essentially says "We know you have been botting. Please stop so that we don't have to take further action."
I imagine this arguement has been heard over and over in the NcSoft offices. I highly dought there is anything brought up that hasn't been discussed and ran through thier legal department.
However it's always nice to see people with passion for the cause even if the subject has been discussed thuroughly many times.
Viva La......oh nevermind Diablo III is officially anounced I actually have something to look forward to now.
I don't see any reason why it would have anything to do with their legal department to be honest. If they wanted to end the game tomorrow and cancel every subscription, they have every right to do so. I suspect if you scan the EULA you will find language reinforcing that.
Not his. Koreans'. If they had not wanted to keep it...
No its his - it was his post. The Koren developers have spoke about this many times in depth. Read their opinions on it and you will see what I mean - they are very unhappy with the way Pking and things of that nature are occuring.
Ah, and that's why they added a PK weapon, and then added another one in the next update. Sure. Not.
Why they have not done anything about it is anyones guess but when you look at the decision to merge the servers money becomes a very possible answer
They have done something. They put guards into the levelling areas around starting villages, they added a PK protection buff. But they don't and won't remove the ways absolutely the most PKing is done now - because it's not what their Korean players want.
Concerning the L2 NA server merges affecting L2 development.... lol. NA is not a source of considerable revenue for Lineage 2.
And with your suggestion you still didn't solve the problem that had been complained about. Let me remember: the problem was that a C-grader is nonfactor in L2 PvP.
That is not the entire train of thought of this thread
You have replied to that particular message stating that you are about to solve the problem for that particular message. You can check that by yourself.
Something that is "obvious to many" is not always true, like in this case. PKing is a very tiny problem, smaller even than killstealing, for example (and is one of the solutions to keep killstealing under control).
Where as that may be true sometimes it does not apply here. PKing, griefing and botting are all big problems in Lineage II and many, many people have left the game because of them.
Botting is. Griefing is, although much smaller than botting. PKing isn't (well, it was... like 4 years ago, but not anymore).
In regards to PKing it is so easy to correct and yet cost the company so many potential customers by not doing so.
Who told you that it would be "easy to correct"? If you just disallow hitting the white toons, the game will become a griefer's paradise, lol.
No. The general solution is "don't mess with server politics until you can afford that, and just ignore all other PKs".
What a load of nonsense. People get PKed all the time who have absolutely nothing to do with "server politics". In fact most people PK others with High Level characters just because they can.
Please tell us which server you are from, which clan you are in, and which PKs from which clans cause so much trouble to you.
L2 is old. Still, it has a vast (one of the biggest in the industry) player base in Korea on servers with exactly the same PvP rules. Think about it.
Read my post and ask yourself - does it look like this guy has not thought about it? If you answer "yes" you seriously need to spend some time on self reflection
I answer "it looks like this guy knows nothing about the game how it's played now, has no idea how his 'easy' changes will affect the game, and, basically, is just full of hot air".
Field PvP is not the reason why people avoid NA version of L2.
Not the only reason but a huge factor. If your assumption that was not correct were right then games like WoW
L2 is not a "game like WoW", sorry. In L2, you are supposed to grind your way to top slowly with decent cooperation of your whole clan. If you cannot stand the annoyance of a couple of PKs in your newbship, you won't be able to stand the grind for your levels, the grind for your wealth, the grind for your clan's skills and so on. You would quit soon anyway.
I don't see any reason why it would have anything to do with their legal department to be honest. If they wanted to end the game tomorrow and cancel every subscription, they have every right to do so. I suspect if you scan the EULA you will find language reinforcing that.
You are kidding yourself if you think any company in the US does anything before consulting thier legal department. No matter what thier EULA says, there are always people looking for the opertunity to make a quick buck.