I signed on in Giran WH, went to run outside and got a PM by the time I hit the WH steps. This is getting beyond a joke.
Yet again NCNA's actions (or rather the lack of them) on this issue speak louder then any hollow promises that they make that they are looking into the matter. How about you stop looking into it and start doing something about it? As soon as /blockall becomes the only answer then you have lost another element of your game to adena farmers.
There is only one quick solution to this : restriction on trial accounts - no more than 1 toon that trial account can pm in 5 minutes.
exactly. Today it got really ridiculous - exactly the same pm from a new toon every ten minutes or so. I wonder how these people got hold of so many accounts. Isn't there some kind of restriction on how many accounts you can get? Even if they used a new email address for each and every account, isn't there some kind of overall limit on how many trial accounts have been handed out? Seems to me that for each account which went to a normal player seriously interested in trying out the game, 500 accounts went to somebody who just uses them for spamming.
A better way: Require that every trial account open the trial with a valid, previously unused credit card number.
Yes, this would inconvenience those who are trying to bring in a friend who may not have a credit card of thier own, but it would keep the farmers away from trial accounts in the first place because they wouldnt be able to sign up hundreds of accounts with one single card.
And for those who would whine about people who cant get a credit card, most, if not all banks in the US these days offer debit cards which also double as a "credit card" with its own valid number.
A better way: Require that every trial account open the trial with a valid, previously unused credit card number.
Yes, this would inconvenience those who are trying to bring in a friend who may not have a credit card of thier own, but it would keep the farmers away from trial accounts in the first place because they wouldnt be able to sign up hundreds of accounts with one single card.
And for those who would whine about people who cant get a credit card, most, if not all banks in the US these days offer debit cards which also double as a "credit card" with its own valid number.
How about making it something more like 3 accts? A lot of people do box buffers. Of course, most of thos only use 2 accts. But some use as more, so that they can use multiple buffers and run shops. Allowing 5 or 6 accts would help them, but that does pretty much allow a person to run a single bot group. Limiting accts per credit card to 2 or 3 would seem like a pretty good compromise to me.
2 words : IP BAN.
Cant be that hard or illogical ..
I've also suggested that before, but the nay-sayers always retort with the usual "You cant ban everyone, its pointless".
Domain bans would ban the networks that the spammers and farmers are connecting from in the first place. No need for individual ips, just ban the whole **** network/country thier coming from.
"But then they would use proxy servers to connect to the game."
There are plenty of "watchdog" sites that collect and maintain a list of known bad proxies. It wouldnt take long to implement one of those list, and quickly knock down new proxies which might spring up one by one manually and with regular updates of the watchdog lists. Proxies servers would only be able to handle so many connections and network traffic in the first place as well. Can you imagine what would happen to a single proxy server if every farmer tried to connect every single 9-man group from hundred upon hundred of accounts to one single server that more then likely, is on a poor network to begin with? Critical meltdown comes to mind, which a quick shutdown from the provider with the sudden increase of unwanted traffic.
"But then you'll keep legitimate players from those ips from connecting to the game."
"Cest la vie."
"The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few."
"Sacrifice one, to save many."
Kapish?
How about making it something more like 3 accts? A lot of people do box buffers. Of course, most of thos only use 2 accts. But some use as more, so that they can use multiple buffers and run shops. Allowing 5 or 6 accts would help them, but that does pretty much allow a person to run a single bot group. Limiting accts per credit card to 2 or 3 would seem like a pretty good compromise to me.
This can be a new rule that need not apply to those who have already registered. Only to new registrants, especially trial accounts.
I'm a no compromise type of guy when it comes to protecting systems, as you might have guessed from my previous post.
"But then you'll keep legitimate players from those ips from connecting to the game."
"Cest la vie."
"The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few."
"Sacrifice one, to save many."
Kapish?
You're so ****** you come to a point you prefer to shoot in the crowd and hope that the people who'll fall are bots? :(
Breathe the air, take a sunbath, ride your bicycle and feel the breeze...
Your "solution" is very similar to suggesting GMs shouldn't investigate and go in ban fury. I'm pretty sure my clanless scavenger has been reported a few times, fortunately NCsoft doesn't have that awful policy you seem to have.
FYI my IP is renewed every 24 hours. My provider works like that. Being forbidden to play because I got the wrong IP is unacceptable.
And as cheaters manage to use fake/stolen credit cards, they wouldn't be that much affected by IP bans. Legit players would pay for them, again.
Ban your own IP if you want but don't suggest it for others, thank you.
Domain bans would ban the networks that the spammers and farmers are connecting from in the first place. No need for individual ips, just ban the whole **** network/country thier coming from.
Oh, thats a great idea :)
Lets ban the whole comcast network... Then no one can play.
FYI my IP is renewed every 24 hours. My provider works like that. Being forbidden to play because I got the wrong IP is unacceptable.
When you get a Dynamic IP via DHCP, you get a (somewhat) random IP from a given *range* of IP addresses. You are NOT suddenly going to be given a completely random IP address that could be also shared by a server in another country.
So for example it would be possible to do a complete ban of IP addresses for a entire country (Known range of addresses, known problem source) and *then* ban a few specific IP/IP ranges if and when you need to stop a 'proxied' abuser. It would not take long at all before that abuser would run out of IP's that they could connect from. And after that, the amount of effort necessary to find/make a new proxy would rapidly rise making it inefficient and *much* more difficult versus the point-click-BOT crap we have now.
Banning China would solve only a part of the problem. Plenty of farms from the US, Europe and Baltic areas too. Not to mention that lots of adena that is on the market is being sold by players who quit. Same for equipment and accounts, they're not all farmer made.
Having the game actually require an unmodified L2client to even allow connection to the servers would be the best solution, would get us rid of all bot programs, zoomhacks and whatnot. If it has slight chances = no access.
Also, allowing data transmission only between the real, unmodified client and server, in coded form would make it harder to snatch the info.
But then they would have to make changes to the server/client software for this to happen. Using the weekly maintenance as a time to update the interconnect definitions. To prevent all unofficial clients from connecting.
But how long have we been saying this? And how long has this game been going and nothing has changed?
When you get a Dynamic IP via DHCP, you get a (somewhat) random IP from a given *range* of IP addresses. You are NOT suddenly going to be given a completely random IP address that could be also shared by a server in another country.
So for example it would be possible to do a complete ban of IP addresses for a entire country (Known range of addresses, known problem source) and *then* ban a few specific IP/IP ranges if and when you need to stop a 'proxied' abuser. It would not take long at all before that abuser would run out of IP's that they could connect from. And after that, the amount of effort necessary to find/make a new proxy would rapidly rise making it inefficient and *much* more difficult versus the point-click-BOT crap we have now.
Thank you Pain Amplifier. At least some people here understand how network bans work.
If one wanted to ban the whole NYC Verizon network from accessing thier resources, they could do so without restricting surrounding areas or other parts of the Verizon network not within the same ip range. I've done so very effectively on various forums to prevent constant spamming and **** attempts, as well as on my own network.
There are Legit people playing from China and all over the world. I have some in my clan, I'd be ****** if they were locked out from the game. I definately don't agree with ip bans.
2 words : IP BAN.
Cant be that hard or illogical ..
IP's are easy enough to change/spoof...
No they are not. If they were we wouldn't be looking at IPv6.
Change? IP's are NOT 'created' like someone getting a credit card or Trial Key. Nor can you just 'buy one' when you want one. Not only are IP's allocated in rather large blocks to businesses like ISP's or Fortune 500 type companies (Or large Educational entities) but the actual amount of viable IP addresses (once you remove all the 'in use' addresses is not limitless. (2^32 max, majority of them 'used'.)
Thus the actual number of ways to get around a ban of specific IP's is fairly small, plus you would then have to deal with a reseller who would in all likelyhood NOT want your 'business' as it involves too much work on their part constantly changing your IP or dealing with the fallout from your activities. (Bad customers COST businesses money.)
And spoofing? Only works in a 'one way' manner. Workable for email spam where you don't need the recipient to 'talk back' to your spam server. But for a game where the client and server need to constantly talk to each other it is just not possible. The server would try to communicate with the 'spoofed' address, and fail to reach you (duh! Your not there) and thus not only would you fail to login, you would also fail to do *anything* in game and your 'connection' would get dropped.
Thank you Pain Amplifier. At least some people here understand how network bans work.
Glad to find another kindred 'IT soul' in the pack of yes/no men replies.
I'm of the mind that network bans *are* feasible, but by no means should one consider them the 'magic bullet'. Although the 'farmer problem' is reaching such a level that such a 'ground razing' event such as banning entire IP ranges is rapidly becoming almost a necessity.
Yeah it might suck to keep some interesting international players out...but we have to face the fact that some regions/ranges generate the vast majority of 'issues'. And on top of that, the biggest of those has their own 'national' servers anyway!
Yes, I still think NC needs to loosen the economy a bit and make money and items easier to obtain in the lower levels, but it could do the most good just by ditching their current 'investigation methods' and find something that *WORKS*. Because what they have now just isn't quite enough. Most bots are easy enough to spot that they shouldn't be able to last 5 minutes before hitting the ban hammer. The higher in level they are the easier they are to see! (Especially when you have 9 of them in a group!)