As the title says,partys on Naia server that bot to 99 are allready 90+ and think it's safe to do it because they set fuction autologoff when someone targets them,so impossible to report them.
What gms have to say about that?I know only 1 case that has been banned for 14days(dont know the reason of ban),all others continue to bot.
Areas for awakened partys are specific,so a gm control on toons that stay online exping more than 3 hours cant be that hard.
They are the same people that abused oly system and xp system and exploits all these years,now it is the last chance to catch them for good,or force them to play like other players.If you let them continue,they will remain the force of server for long long time,having the strongest 99lvl partys,all heroes and all their time free to go gang the others that lvl and do first the new raidbosses for the new items ect ect.
If Ncwest wants to make Naia server friendly to legit players and not server ruled by botters and cheaters you have to start banhammer now.
Well since it's F2P maybe they should add perma ban?
Losing a lvl 90+ will hurt a lot. Nc should just announce a new bot policy and maybe things will change.
Their policy was to perma-ban before they switched to this temp-ban policy. It didn't stop people from botting/cheating at all because NCSoft didn't enforce their EULA until it was too late for it to really have any significant meaning or effect.
Now, here's an opportunity for NCSoft to stop the botting/cheating while the cheaters still have reason to cheat (to level to 99).
Do you honestly think that NCSoft will stop the cheating this time around, unlike last time?
NcSoft never realy cared about bots. I come from a private server(low rate) where you whoud get autoban at login if you tryed to log whis bots. Only thing working where clikers and cp spammers(a gift from the staff after some well placed forum QQ). In 4 years+ on that server i never soo a single bot.
I even tried a hight rate where not even the cp spam was working :mad:
If some private onwers admins can do such a thing, then surely this whoud not be a problem for a company whis a lot more founds and experts, don`t you think?
I understand why they din`t cared about bots in the past; bots=payed account. Now whis this f2p policy a change is required. Making an example is easy, just ban some old well knowed exploiters/boters and be done whis it. You don`t need to care about then anymore. Ban them when they are lvl 99, no1 buy vitality and stuff from NcShop at that lvl=> 0 income from their kind+strong msg for other bot fans.
That's right,now game is f2p,traffic is too high and Nswest still says that is illegal to bot.
Why not push aside the cheaters?
Force them to lvl as we do and equal battle with us for everything in game,or quit,who needs them.They arent nothing else than a bunch of toons that gang others on evenings because they take all lvls from midnight to next morning when they bot.
Leting them continue unpunished,will be true dissapointment for us,so i hope gms will start checking awakened toons that stay many hours on xp mode and/or lvl too fast.
It's really in NCSoft's best interest to ban bots. If they don't, it will just be potential money lost for them in the coming months. Level-capped players probably aren't going to be buying anything, and they're probably not going to continue playing for long once they run out of things to do. But tbh, the damage has probably already been done.
Well actually most of the player bots (not farmers) are the major income for NCWest atm.
They spend a sick amount of money for the XP Runes and the Vit Items to win the lvl race at all costs.
Well actually most of the player bots (not farmers) are the major income for NCWest atm.
They spend a sick amount of money for the XP Runes and the Vit Items to win the lvl race at all costs.
there are far more casual players buying useless **** than the relatively few players racing to 99. Trust me, if the high level botters were the largest part of the L2 Store income, L2 would be getting ready to shut down.
If the policy in this matter will not change. A Innova servers will commence in full swing can handle to this that the players will go away again. Because now you have a choice. And really I think that every hour of transition to the IP ban serverach and it is not so much ginasytkowania with that. The same as botting should be perban or IP-ban not for 7days or 14th
log another account near them with some low lvl and target them all day
This could be an idea from players part,but we also need to stay on our toons,find free room,battle with wars and stay xp.
And it is gms job to prevent the all-time botters/cheaters.
I know those players buy tonz of xp runes and vit pots but when they hit 99 they wont have anything else to buy and their only concern will be to gang the other players and not let them lvl,so in the longterm they are a loss for Ncwest income(and they were always a loss since most people left servers because of them exploiting/botting to win on everything).The propability also for other players stoping buying from coins store is visible,if they realise their efforts and money are meanless since they cant lvl as fast as the boters=they wont get same strong skills in time=they will not be able to win on pvp against boters.
Ncwest must choose 1 policy that will be standard for all.Either boting will be allowed for all,or it will be not allowed-but ALL boters have to get punished,not only the ones that happened to be online during some check -.
People were saying how Bots/Cheats were ruining the game when it was P2P. People left by the thousands and NC never seemed to care. Sure they said they were banning accounts by the hundreds, gave us a bot report button and even posted on this site how they were going to clean it up. But eventually people realized that they really had done little if anything.
Now they make it F2P because there were hardly anyone left. Lots of people from Private servers have come here to experience the offical game expecting a superior experience. This is a golden oppurtunity for NC to show these people what they were missing by playing private server. Instead NC has disappointed them by providing a frustrating experience at best.
I believe that NC really doesn't care to provide a "fair" enviroment. It's all about the money in the near term. Typically Asians are more willing to invest in "long term" success but i guess Europe, South/North America is not a market they are really interested in for the long term. They just want your money.......now!!! and if you leave and never play another NC game again fine...they've proved over and over again that they really could care less.
They have proved to themselves that they can screw their paying customers around until they all mostly quit and if they make the game F2P they will get them back and then some.... so why not just keep investing as little as possible and keep taking the money in.
In short NC will do nothing about the Bots/cheats etc. They may tell you they are banning accounts like crazy but don't believe them.
My suggestion is that the game is free but you must stomach the bots and cheaters. If you are OK with wasting the time invested in your character then stay here but remember that you will not be able to compete in the end.
I mean really read the offical forums...not exactly a bunch of happy gamers... and where is NC in all of this....AFK as usual....lol.
People were saying how Bots/Cheats were ruining the game when it was P2P. People left by the thousands and NC never seemed to care. Sure they said they were banning accounts by the hundreds, gave us a bot report button and even posted on this site how they were going to clean it up. But eventually people realized that they really had done little if anything.
Now they make it F2P because there were hardly anyone left. Lots of people from Private servers have come here to experience the offical game expecting a superior experience. This is a golden oppurtunity for NC to show these people what they were missing by playing private server. Instead NC has disappointed them by providing a frustrating experience at best.
I believe that NC really doesn't care to provide a "fair" enviroment. It's all about the money in the near term. Typically Asians are more willing to invest in "long term" success but i guess Europe, South/North America is not a market they are really interested in for the long term. They just want your money.......now!!! and if you leave and never play another NC game again fine...they've proved over and over again that they really could care less.
They have proved to themselves that they can screw their paying customers around until they all mostly quit and if they make the game F2P they will get them back and then some.... so why not just keep investing as little as possible and keep taking the money in.
In short NC will do nothing about the Bots/cheats etc. They may tell you they are banning accounts like crazy but don't believe them.
My suggestion is that the game is free but you must stomach the bots and cheaters. If you are OK with wasting the time invested in your character then stay here but remember that you will not be able to compete in the end.
I mean really read the offical forums...not exactly a bunch of happy gamers... and where is NC in all of this....AFK as usual....lol.
Probably the best post I've ever seen on these boards.
People were saying how Bots/Cheats were ruining the game when it was P2P. People left by the thousands and NC never seemed to care. Sure they said they were banning accounts by the hundreds, gave us a bot report button and even posted on this site how they were going to clean it up. But eventually people realized that they really had done little if anything.
Now they make it F2P because there were hardly anyone left. Lots of people from Private servers have come here to experience the offical game expecting a superior experience. This is a golden oppurtunity for NC to show these people what they were missing by playing private server. Instead NC has disappointed them by providing a frustrating experience at best.
I believe that NC really doesn't care to provide a "fair" enviroment. It's all about the money in the near term. Typically Asians are more willing to invest in "long term" success but i guess Europe, South/North America is not a market they are really interested in for the long term. They just want your money.......now!!! and if you leave and never play another NC game again fine...they've proved over and over again that they really could care less.
They have proved to themselves that they can screw their paying customers around until they all mostly quit and if they make the game F2P they will get them back and then some.... so why not just keep investing as little as possible and keep taking the money in.
In short NC will do nothing about the Bots/cheats etc. They may tell you they are banning accounts like crazy but don't believe them.
My suggestion is that the game is free but you must stomach the bots and cheaters. If you are OK with wasting the time invested in your character then stay here but remember that you will not be able to compete in the end.
I mean really read the offical forums...not exactly a bunch of happy gamers... and where is NC in all of this....AFK as usual....lol.
No they really did perma ban the botters. My entire clan was banned in c4 b/c they cracked down on a certain program and people logged in for 24 hours, and really they only started using it because they couldn't keep up with the rest of the server pvp wise and level wise unless they did. I was the only one who hadn't done it and even I had thought about it b/c I just didn't have the time to keep up with them, and a friend and I were the only ones not banned on the day they cracked down. How can you have an I told you so when a level 6 clan is suddenly gone, ALL of them? Ncosft didn't care that they'd lost 30 hardcore players that day, they didn't bat an eyelash, who knows how many they actually banned that week total and most of them probably did it for the same reason my friends did, b/c they were competing with gold farmers and had to have a way to fight them. They were competing with botted farmers and players on a daily basis and said ok well if they're not going to do anything we'll just have to do it too, THEN NC soft cracked down, after years of doing nothing to the CNdevil clan or any others who were level 60 in prelude.
This is why so many people quit, they watched their friends get banned for just trying to compete it was like ncsoft preferred the farmers over the legit players, and being a healer I had no defense against anyone at that time so I was forced to quit along with them. I see a lot of people complaining about the login attempts but if any of you have been to a low level area and SEEN the utter chaos of the hundreds of bots being created every few hours you would understand THAT is the problem not the new and returning players clogging the server.
The farmers know that NCsoft can't possibly offer people a max level character fully geared but they can, and they see dollars in it. They have to. NC will not make as much money off this game as they can until they lock down new account creation and crack down on the botters. I doubt even the mentors being logged in creates as much lag as that does. Although it really sucks when you are in a group and suddenly your tank loses his mentor buffs because their mentor logged out, maybe that should be fixed huh?
I think ncsoft should ban the 90+ botters because they perma banned everyone of my friends and many many others for just trying to even the playing field and we all know most of these bots are proxy run from a country that shouldn't even be playing on our servers to begin with. But they will wait, until you guys decide to try to catch up with them the same way they got past you, by using the same bot programs the same way. Then you'll all be banned too and you can have your wow I can't believe I thought NcSoft wouldn't ban me after they didn't ban those guys but they WILL ban you don't be fooled into thinking they won't, you haven't payed nearly as much as some have and ncsoft banned them like a blink, so expect the same. One of them was paying for 6 accounts and they were ALL gone. Those 9-+ botted characters will be sold 1 by 1 as they max out and whoever made them will make a TON of money because someone WILL buy them, change their name and it will never end. It makes you wonder if NcSoft has been taking a yearly cutback from the big gold sites just to not ban their IP's, they had to do something when they broke their own game, b/c the private servers were owning them bigtime. No botters, events, good customer service.. and some even banned brazil and china entirely, which is always nice.
They won't take a page from the private server guys though, as a company they have to absolutely hate them, and you would think they'd hate the adena farmers too but they continue to allow them repeatedly to make the game less enjoyable for the people who really just enjoy the artistry and the game mechanics, so they must prefer them over us. Really? I see 12 bots every 20 minutes in this game and I can only report one of them every 30 minutes? I'd be better off recording a video of the game and sending you a list of their names so you can see for yourself they ARE botting. I really do believe they WANT the adena farmers there. How else can you explain the fact that they waited literally years for these adena farmers to get ahead and powerhouse the entire game and only cracked down when the legit players finally got fed up and started botting too, and kicking the **** out of the farmers with their strength, taking BACK the good hunting spots for people who were actually playing not just making money off the game. The hated big time farmers, the ones with pkers that you couldn't possibly defeat because they were in the best gear in the game had already sold off their max level characters and were making new ones, at least 3 times over, had bot parties running in every catacomb there was, always taking the best rooms there and in TOI not to mention countless little tiny dwarf operations for core mats and there was maybe what, 4 clans that could compete with them and most of them were perma banned. They pretty much killed off the players brave enough to police a situation they were doing nothing about. Don't wonder why that killed the game down to 2 half full servers, NcSoft screwed themselves and I trust they'll do the same again even if you guys complain till you turn blue. Nobody I ever knew could come back on their characters even if they wanted to because THEY were PERMA banned, and none of them will start new because they HATE this company. They got me back in Aion then lost me again when I realized you can't pvp on cryengine unless your computer has some sort of supercooling graphics system. Fixing my healer and making the game free gave me interest and an opportunity to come back that I was not willing to give before but I can see where this is going and frankly I don't want to watch it happen again, it was REALLY very sad to see a company screw over so many people who loved this game so much. I'm glad it's free, so when they screw it up I don't have to wish I'd never gave them a penny ever again, and I won't buy 1 thing until I see something done about the bots and the mentor system. Hopefully SOME day they'll prove me wrong and make sense in their decisions but at this point I seriously doubt it will ever happen, and even if I was banned for voicing my opinion on them I ALWAYS have other games to play. I just love this one the most and it has nothing to do with the company that manages it, and everything to do with the awesome people who made it..who are ALSO gone now too, for the most part. Just like them I won't bat an eyelash when it hits the fan, I'm just here to enjoy the game I loved for as long as I can before they find a way to screw it up for me again, then I'll be back to paying for games with companies that know how to make their players happy.
...Don't wonder why that killed the game down to 2 half full servers, NcSoft screwed themselves and I trust they'll do the same again even if you guys complain till you turn blue. Nobody I ever knew could come back on their characters even if they wanted to becau I'm just here to enjoy the game I loved for as long as I can before they find a way to screw it up for me again, then I'll be back to paying for games with companies that know how to make their players happy.
I was level 62 in prelude. Never botted on NA Servers. (I was an EE, so finding a party was easy and leveling was easy). Hitting 60s in Prelude isn't that hard, just alot of grind.
Botting was probably the death of Lineage 2 SEA (Southeast Asia). Every Server, every zone was full of botters, running 9 man trains. They lasted like what? 13 months? Nobody was interested in playing. You couldnt farm or grind in any of the zones. Going red was exactly what these botters are waiting for, because they'll have higher level toons logged near their bots. When you go red, it's pinata time.
I've seen some bots at present on the new servers, fairly obvious, but nothing as worrisome as before I left. No large 7 man bot trains on every floor of every room of Toi, Cruma, etc.
It's not the botters legit players should worry about, it's the resurrected Adena Trading. Worst thing that can happen is a Farmer clan taking Aden. So please, don't buy or it's far thee well L2 once again. (this time for good probably, unless of course if NCwest gets smart and starts selling adena and items)
Most wont want to hear this but NCsoft did eventually get the botting issue under control prior to the release of GOD but it was too little too late at that point. Somewhere around the Gracia update the number of bots went from hundreds in every XP spot to a mere handful scattered on the server. I think that they will once again correct the issue but right now with the launch of GOD and the overwhelming list of bugs to fix, petitions to answer and events to manage they have put botting low on the priority list of things to address. Lets hope that once again it wont be too little too late when they focus on this problem.
Most wont want to hear this but NCsoft did eventually get the botting issue under control prior to the release of GOD but it was too little too late at that point. Somewhere around the Gracia update the number of bots went from hundreds in every XP spot to a mere handful scattered on the server. I think that they will once again correct the issue but right now with the launch of GOD and the overwhelming list of bugs to fix, petitions to answer and events to manage they have put botting low on the priority list of things to address. Lets hope that once again it wont be too little too late when they focus on this problem.
They took till Gracia to Fix it? LOL... (I left in C4-C5..just before the Dinosaurs....when one introduces Dinosaurs..one is out of ideas)
People were saying how Bots/Cheats were ruining the game when it was P2P. People left by the thousands and NC never seemed to care. Sure they said they were banning accounts by the hundreds, gave us a bot report button and even posted on this site how they were going to clean it up. But eventually people realized that they really had done little if anything.
Now they make it F2P because there were hardly anyone left. Lots of people from Private servers have come here to experience the offical game expecting a superior experience. This is a golden oppurtunity for NC to show these people what they were missing by playing private server. Instead NC has disappointed them by providing a frustrating experience at best.
I believe that NC really doesn't care to provide a "fair" enviroment. It's all about the money in the near term. Typically Asians are more willing to invest in "long term" success but i guess Europe, South/North America is not a market they are really interested in for the long term. They just want your money.......now!!! and if you leave and never play another NC game again fine...they've proved over and over again that they really could care less.
They have proved to themselves that they can screw their paying customers around until they all mostly quit and if they make the game F2P they will get them back and then some.... so why not just keep investing as little as possible and keep taking the money in.
In short NC will do nothing about the Bots/cheats etc. They may tell you they are banning accounts like crazy but don't believe them.
My suggestion is that the game is free but you must stomach the bots and cheaters. If you are OK with wasting the time invested in your character then stay here but remember that you will not be able to compete in the end.
I mean really read the offical forums...not exactly a bunch of happy gamers... and where is NC in all of this....AFK as usual....lol.
Where do you think the adena traders get their gold? FROM SELLING BOTTED CHARACTERS AND ITEMS..duh. Maybe some **** legit players for it too, but mostly it's the bots. Of course it's the bots. I'm fine with every single one of them getting banned even the legit players at this point should know better than to use a botting program, and buying adena and high level characters you don't know how to play is just LOL, and VERY obvious. You deserve to lose it all if you're promoting the problem and then some are whining out of one hand and buying adena out of the other. They wouldn't be here if someone wasn't keeping them in business. You're pathetic and deserve to lose it all. Especially since this game allows you to dual box which is something you cannot do in most every other game. L2 should just sell adena on the galleria keeping it cheaper than the gold sites and there'd be NO more bots or flooded servers. Since they obviously can't efficiently ban the ones doing it there has to be something they can do.
Most wont want to hear this but NCsoft did eventually get the botting issue under control prior to the release of GOD but it was too little too late at that point. Somewhere around the Gracia update the number of bots went from hundreds in every XP spot to a mere handful scattered on the server. I think that they will once again correct the issue but right now with the launch of GOD and the overwhelming list of bugs to fix, petitions to answer and events to manage they have put botting low on the priority list of things to address. Lets hope that once again it wont be too little too late when they focus on this problem.
They fixed it or bots were less 'cos the game was dying?
And now that is popular again bots are magically back in big numbers.
They fixed it or bots were less 'cos the game was dying?
And now that is popular again bots are magically back in big numbers.
True... i have just created a new toon, and when u get lvl 20+ and u go to ruins (agony/despair) to do the quests, u will just see lots lots of bots... they dont allow u to enjoy the game... its more and more coming. It looks like matrix reloaded in the burly brawl part... Nc soft lost a lot of players to private servers, cause they were free... but now if they dont resolve this issue fast, probably will loose all the players... i know that they have lots of things to do, but whats the point of fixing bugs, getting more updates, if ppl cant play cause of bots...
If you want to know how many bots and new accounts there are, roll a pr or an Sr, run it to ruins of agony or despair, round up all the bugbears or trackers and run them in a circle.. you will have every single bot in the area following you within half a minute, at least 20 or so and each of those bots will move on to the next area before your report bot button's timer is gone. It takes 3 hours to get to 40, and you can make 2 million adena..that's pretty fast if you can run 10 bots every 3 hours they're making millions every day botting that quest chain. They load up on crystals from gear drops for even more. You can't pk them because they have blessing and they autolog if they don't. To top it off if you're crazy enough to roll a dwarf expect someone to try to pk you assuming you're a bot because they do it to my dwarf all day long, but unlike a bot, I fight back and I'm well geared so I'll probably win and I don't ks and steal your drops, so know the difference. A dwarf wearing brigadine probably isn't a bot because you can't buy it in the shops in town. Also, I have no numbers in my name and my charcters name is rare because it was made in prelude and just decided to level her up some more for better crystals. The bots are lined up at the gatekeeper in gludio front to back just waiting for their turn and it is so silly nothing is done about it. They ks you and steal your drops when you're leveling and if you're melee you get it double b/c they are ksing you and so are the casters and archers who aren't botting. I feel very sorry for the new players who don't stand a chance against them because they can't possibly hit the mob hard enough to keep the drop when 7 dwarves are beating on it too.
After the vast majority of players had already left because of them.
By the time NCSoft banned the farmers, the damage had already been done - the servers were left with a fraction of the populations they once had and it never recovered until now.
Even then, the only reason why the farmers didn't come back was because there wasn't enough population to sell their characters/adena/items to. It wasn't something that NCSoft did to somehow make the farmers stay away after they were banned - the farmers simply chose not to return.
Now that the server populations have recovered somewhat due to the game going F2P, the farmers are back. It's not a coincidence.
I love this game and a silent tear drops down each time I read stuff like this...
It would be such a nice and competitive place if things weren't like this.
What it really annoys me,its that after so many years and Ncwest ''actions'',major clan of server and top partys keep their position by doing exactly the same thing the past major clans and partys did,bot everytime the lvl cap is raised ganging people who will try approach their areas and run botrains for adena when powerlving is over.By the time Ncwest starts the bans,3 years have pasted,they ruled server on these years and did bot alt toons in case they got banned.Unless they get bored with game and go play somewhere else,they have always new alt ready to replace the banned one,or some other people that saw what you have to do to rule in server botted to be ready and take their place.
The question would be maybe..then why we all dont bot?Since we clearly see,gms start banhammer when they do and dont do anything for long periods.My answer is,people that dont bot,dont do it because they dont like it.Once you started,game has no meaning to you,it becomes just hours that you watch computer by turn getting bored(in the old days they didnt even watch),when you finish lvls you bot for adena,for items,for everything.
There were 2 things that made people quit from our servers,the so hard grind for lvl and adena and the fact that the ones that first would bot or cheat using programs sometimes most people didnt knew,would stay free to rule server for ever.
We are on GOD update and we see it again,grind after 86 is too hard since the vit pots from the events dont work,adena making is a joke and top partys remain top using the same methods.........
I was level 62 in prelude. Never botted on NA Servers. (I was an EE, so finding a party was easy and leveling was easy). Hitting 60s in Prelude isn't that hard, just alot of grind.
There really was no such thing as a 60+ exp party in prelude. At least not in the manner you speak. Certainly a few players did so, butyou make it sound like it was common place and the norm when it was the exact opposite. The only thing you could grind on to get that high were bloody queens, and you certainly didn't need a party to kill them, much less bring an ee who, as a class, had practically zero abilities in prelude. EE was one of the most useless classes until like c4. Easy grouping in prelude? What for? For kiss of eva?
I think, that after 7 years, I am done with this game. The servers are full of bots, not new players or returning players. How do we know this? Look at party matching. On chronos you are lucky to see 1 full page up at any given time. In september during a double exp event there were almost 2 or 3 full pages of people lfg. This was when the servers were light and considered empty. Yet now the servers are so full you cant log in, nobody is lfg? Hate to break it to you, but the solo spots at 80+ are still garbage, and are only marginally better at 85+. Why arent people lfg? because nobody is there. Just a bunch of **** bots. I'll be ****ed if I legitly grind to max level in 6 months time, while using the cash shop every week for exp and vit, while ncsoft sits around and lets people bot to 99. I've already done that before, trick me once shame on you. trick me twice shame on me.
There really was no such thing as a 60+ exp party in prelude. At least not in the manner you speak. Certainly a few players did so, butyou make it sound like it was common place and the norm when it was the exact opposite. The only thing you could grind on to get that high were bloody queens, and you certainly didn't need a party to kill them, much less bring an ee who, as a class, had practically zero abilities in prelude. EE was one of the most useless classes until like c4. Easy grouping in prelude? What for? For kiss of eva?
I think, that after 7 years, I am done with this game. The servers are full of bots, not new players or returning players. How do we know this? Look at party matching. On chronos you are lucky to see 1 full page up at any given time. In september during a double exp event there were almost 2 or 3 full pages of people lfg. This was when the servers were light and considered empty. Yet now the servers are so full you cant log in, nobody is lfg? Hate to break it to you, but the solo spots at 80+ are still garbage, and are only marginally better at 85+. Why arent people lfg? because nobody is there. Just a bunch of **** bots. I'll be ****ed if I legitly grind to max level in 6 months time, while using the cash shop every week for exp and vit, while ncsoft sits around and lets people bot to 99. I've already done that before, trick me once shame on you. trick me twice shame on me.
Maybe no people returning. I can't argue on that (altho my best friend did so after f2p - 84 cardi)
With mentor buff there is no need to party till high lvls.
New players are still low lvl and soloing is way better choice. As an EE I AOEd so hard my friends told me "hey, why did you lvl so fast"
All the high lvl ppl in my clan (lvl 9) are doing clan groups rarely getting some randoms.
Another thing is new players comming from privates are not used to use the lfg system like the newly implemented auction house.
Ofc this is how I see the situation. You have the right to have your own oppinion and quit the game. As for me I am enjoying it pretty much.
I browse forums when I am at work and I have to admit this is the one thread worth reading all the long posts.
I was one of those no lifers in Prelude with 70+ character, fiercely fighting farmers.
Saddest thing was, clans with high ambitions but no resources would make deals with them ;/ While NCsoft doing nothing, I think it's around C1 when first wave of top players quit just cause they felt like everything was against them(more and more farmers) with no help from anywhere. Anyway finalElf can write you a book on this era and how much help there was from official side.
Fast forward to Hellbound, only lazy player wouldn't have a little train running somewhere farming adena so you can easily pay for your timecards. Close to non actual farmers, because players took over this roll. So we have this huge chunk of players that used to see nothing is done to farmers, becoming farmers them self. And you would be crazy if you reroll or start new character without using a bot at that time.
And this is now when sp*m decided to get his head out of him *** and start banning people. (maybe pay checks from CN stop coming as it wasnt profitable for them to farm on servers where people farm them self)
Anyway where are you now sp*m? Looking at adena prices right now, this is an open season to ban farmers. Or we going to wait until actual players start using bot as something given again?
Maybe no people returning. I can't argue on that (altho my best friend did so after f2p - 84 cardi)
With mentor buff there is no need to party till high lvls.
New players are still low lvl and soloing is way better choice. As an EE I AOEd so hard my friends told me "hey, why did you lvl so fast"
All the high lvl ppl in my clan (lvl 9) are doing clan groups rarely getting some randoms.
Another thing is new players comming from privates are not used to use the lfg system like the newly implemented auction house.
Ofc this is how I see the situation. You have the right to have your own oppinion and quit the game. As for me I am enjoying it pretty much.
I browse forums when I am at work and I have to admit this is the one thread worth reading all the long posts.
Perhaps. Perhaps some people didn't ever open the character actions window (Alt+C) and therefore don't even know we have manual and auto party matching.
But there are 4k+ of people online FFS (Naia) and partymatching is always empty, except those rare times when server is congested, then you can see ONE full page of rooms (some only advertise selling) and a SINGLE page of waiting list.
There really was no such thing as a 60+ exp party in prelude. At least not in the manner you speak. Certainly a few players did so, butyou make it sound like it was common place and the norm when it was the exact opposite. The only thing you could grind on to get that high were bloody queens, and you certainly didn't need a party to kill them, much less bring an ee who, as a class, had practically zero abilities in prelude. EE was one of the most useless classes until like c4. Easy grouping in prelude? What for? For kiss of eva?
I think, that after 7 years, I am done with this game. The servers are full of bots, not new players or returning players. How do we know this? Look at party matching. On chronos you are lucky to see 1 full page up at any given time. In september during a double exp event there were almost 2 or 3 full pages of people lfg. This was when the servers were light and considered empty. Yet now the servers are so full you cant log in, nobody is lfg? Hate to break it to you, but the solo spots at 80+ are still garbage, and are only marginally better at 85+. Why arent people lfg? because nobody is there. Just a bunch of **** bots. I'll be ****ed if I legitly grind to max level in 6 months time, while using the cash shop every week for exp and vit, while ncsoft sits around and lets people bot to 99. I've already done that before, trick me once shame on you. trick me twice shame on me.
That's what I think as well .As you said in one of your previous posts before it got deleted,we begged them to take our money,they don't want it.
L2 is not a game that can simply just go F2P like any other game,it's particularly vulnerable and it's best defense has always been subs .
I'm not going through that mess again.Not again.
The servers are full of bots, not new players or returning players. How do we know this? Look at party matching. On chronos you are lucky to see 1 full page up at any given time. In september during a double exp event there were almost 2 or 3 full pages of people lfg.
Me not defending NC and your right in most cases, but there are new players and/or returning players as well, in my old clan 4 ppl came back after a long break, and i meet several new players who where asking for mentor-thingy, and im quite sure they dont bot.
And NC is "fighting " the bots, on their own kinda ironic way .. look at the new ingame announcment ^^ - maybe we get enough gms to handle the peditions or the adena spammer one day .. even if its beyond my understanding why a gm needs a pedition to notice a botter/cheater.
True enough what everyone's saying. Though in the end it's always the fact that gold sellers only exist because people buy it. Stupid mindless people, they don't know the consequences and probably don't even think about it.
Every single town i go to there's atleast 2 spammers, shout and trade chat. They harass me in the message system which SHOULD only be available if they were on my friends list, likewise if i try to reply them with rant my messages can't be delivered, yet they can shout to me through it easily 3 times a minute if they want to. I've never gotten high enough in ye olde days to see the full extend of botting, also, it being Gustin it was never a big enough server for it to properly thrive like on the EU servers. Even then it was a serious problem and nothing was to be done, once there was a fishing event... Giran was FULL of botters all fishing lmao, took them days to even notice it then let alone take action. There were botting parties that i'd report and only dissapeared after days, but only after i would report them, if i wouldn't they'd happily be there 24/7 always.
Even now i run into low-tech bots, christ they even got their own clan (without clantag). Log in per 4, party up in the middle of MoS, and bot awaaaay. There was a person there, almost certaintly didn't know english but smart enough to try and get me to pk or flag his orc tyrant again when he was on low health... after 2 earlier PvP's in an attempt to get them away, somehow they magically reappeared on the exact spot they usually log-in/out. Honestly NC needs to take actions, bots are automated they should pick up on that. In Aion, for instance, one would not be able to give L2 equivilant to shout/trade chats until a certain level (say 2nd class). This, if anything, would make the goldsellers more obvious in the sense they'll prolly bot there first.
But really now, what is being done, what can be done.... as people say a good many private servers have managed to crack down on botting almost completely and yet NC, which isn't living off charity donations but up until recently actually on full-time paying costumers, can't manage it? I find that hard to believe... granted they will probably have their problems, but if they can have 10 GM's with ban rights just check every town and major exping zone every now and then they'd be able to get hundreds or thousands of bans within days easily.
I don't care you have petitions backed up, i don't care you're trying to organize an event or decide what you put in your ingame shop. Money will come by itself if you reward the players with proper gameplay, that's what private servers live off, no enjoyable environment, no income. Get the staff in the field and start fighting botters, make a presence and make yourself be heard/seen or even without that just make botters dissapear. You don't need to have a sledgehammer blow to get them all at once as is described, we're striving to have a good game here and if botters can be convinced to stop botting by seeing other botters get banned at an ever alarming rate, then the goal from the player's standpoint is achieved. We don't strive for all botters being banned per-se, we just want to see them GONE, whichever way that gets achieved by.
there is really no point on doing this.. most of the bot parties especially are pretty much adena farmers from sites that specialize on selling adena and stuff via internet for real cash, meaning they prolly have PAID bots and even scripts and stuff to overcome things such as gameguard, ip bans, etc. if they get ip banned they'll get a way to get overit and just set bots with advanced scripting and stuff like that to auto quest/teleport/farm and all that stuff..
for the record I DONT support bots, but what im saying is, if you want to have a happier gaming, ignore them, or pretend their part of the game to keep farming populated or smth, after all, IMO the best part of this game IS NOT farming, but pvp, clan wars, raids, etc etc all that stuff that bots cant do (normally, at least i havent seen any...yet)
There are lots of ways to fix it, if you didn't have to worry about new bots being made every few minutes (eliminate new account creation on chronos) then the higher level bots would be a cake walk to report and remove. Chronos would be a nice place for returning players who haven't been banned b/c they might actually see someone they remember, and probably have a better chance of being mentored than these random newbs that have never played flood every towns shout for a mentor then leave a week later penalizing their mentor for 7 days. Yes gm's can move around the world to wherever they want and they do. I can't see why it's been so hard to detect the botters if they're being reported, you CAN petition you don't have to use the button. Make a video of what happens when you try to report them, don't have to target them till the last minute.
On a sidenote, I'm pretty sure the level cap was 60 up until c3 or c4 when they raised it to 65. There was no subclass when I quit, and 65 was the cap in c4..I know this b/c i was melee grinding an SE up in Blazing Swamp because I had no offensive skills and GC, TOI and FG were full of bots and too many Pkers..you got pked just b/c the castle lords thought it would be funny to park his dragon right above FG and nuke all the buffers and people resting. EE didn't get aoe till recently and there is no way you got groups "easy", maybe you joined the game with friends who took pity on you or something lol... mine made me reroll to SE b/c EE was so useless until they got pvp buffs and party recall...then we had 3 other EE's so it didn't matter. However you got there, congrats.. I KNOW it wasn't easy even if you can't remember. I have nothing but love for my fellow mana batteries who stuck around this long... I know I couldn't take it anymore, and I HAD offensive buffs, you didn't.
I knew finalelf. I doubt he could tell me more than I could tell him b/c back then we were the same level, pretty much fighting the same people most of the time. I ran with him a lot back then. Farmers DID participate in territory wars. CNDevil was at the very first seige on Bartz, which I believe was either Dion or Gludio, Blue Dragons was one of the ally's I can't remember the others. I was just in a clan back then we hadn't even joined an ally..there was a huge pvp battle that went all the way to Giran to DV, even across the bridge and over by hardins academy. It was SO fun...probably the biggest battle I've seen other than the first Seige of Aden. SO many reds and dead bodies, people dropping gear left and right because when you flagged you had a chance to drop if you died. I know people quit over that day but it was epic to watch.
In the old days it used to be Chinese farmers. These were real people playing real toons. Personally i didn't care if they sold Adena for real life currency because in my way of thinking they had "earned" that Adena and could do with it whatever they wanted.
AND>>>>> it was alot of fun fighting Final Boss and company. Or the farmer overlords that protected their young...lol...maybe the best time i ever had in this game.
The economy was a bit out of wack but people could live with it. Eventually Final Boss and company was banned by NC because of player complaints (i'm almost positive that the bulk of complaints came from people that had the intention of running bots).
The MRT basically came from the west. At first they sold to the Chinese companies and then branched out on their own. The problem was that now you had bots 24/7 and basically they destroyed the market. When the Chinese ran the money trade they were limited to human play and while they would shift employees (i believe it was 9 pm EST and you would see abunch of toons heading back to the guards to delevel and a bunch of new toons arrive to take over their locations) it was limited to human endurance. Now that bots were at it 24/7 the Adena became more affordable and the prices of goods started to escalate beyond what most legits could afford. Similarly with drops. Once upon a time very few could afford top anything because it just wasn't available...eventually it got to the point that people would expect top grade as soon as they arrived at that level. Legits also benefited somewhat because ebayers (a name for peeps that bought Adena) also paid a lot more for goods that legits had or manufactured.
While you can say that botting doesn't affect you it does create a situation where you will be unable to competem because you will not be able to afford the best equipment the instant heal pots, the scrolls of escape,mana pots, etc.
While there may be a slight edge on being able to play your character better than someone else Lineage 2 really comes down to equipment and pots. Believe me you will not be able to be competitive against people that run their own bots or people who frequent the MRT.
Therein lies the problem. You can complain all you like...cry a river and NC will not put the resources into detecting or banning. So eventually, when u realize that you are not competitive and cannot make enough Adena to buy what is necessary what are you going to do?
Maybe by the time you have reached this level NC will come up with some combo pack that you can buy from them that will level the playing field...
Yeah I didn't care either. It's always bothered me more the ones who buy the adena, bot on the fly and refuse to admit they're the ones causing the problem...but again it would not be that difficult for them to catch them because the average player see's 20 or so a day without even trying to find them.
-Edit because I forgot to mention I saw 2 groups of tagged players that are supposedly and american alliance botting today, seen them griefing people for spots before too. I expect these guys are high levels rolling alt accounts because they're free now, nonetheless gj hypocrites, if i see one of you whining in shout EVER I'm going to call you on it.
I don't care you have petitions backed up, i don't care you're trying to organize an event or decide what you put in your ingame shop. Money will come by itself if you reward the players with proper gameplay, that's what private servers live off, no enjoyable environment, no income. Get the staff in the field and start fighting botters, make a presence and make yourself be heard/seen or even without that just make botters dissapear. You don't need to have a sledgehammer blow to get them all at once as is described, we're striving to have a good game here and if botters can be convinced to stop botting by seeing other botters get banned at an ever alarming rate, then the goal from the player's standpoint is achieved. We don't strive for all botters being banned per-se, we just want to see them GONE, whichever way that gets achieved by.
Signed.
It's a nice hope to have T_T;; But seeing lack of ANY progress regarding the botting/farming issue (seriously - are you freaking blind? try level character to 40 and you will encounter every single type violation), obviously who ever in charge to keep this this clean, doing horrible job.
As quoted, we dont care if you do try, because it DOES NOT work. If you fancy system dont work, get your gloves on and get out on field, show some presence, start banning bots who are not reported, because there are plenty of them, you dont have to look for more than 2 minutes.
I have witnessed all the ban hammers. My opinion is that L2 came to the point of almost being abandoned by NC Soft (cause just 500 people were playing in 2 servers), because of the massive bans. Immediately after the hammers, the population drop and the lack of activity was extremely noticeable.
I'm not encouraging NC Soft to let botters get away with it...I'm just mentioning the obvious truth and the recent path of Lineage.
They let farmers bot freely, then when people did the same thing they started banning them. And when you ban couple of people who are leaders of their community it all starts fall apart.
On a sidenote, I'm pretty sure the level cap was 60 up until c3 or c4 when they raised it to 65. There was no subclass when I quit, and 65 was the cap in c4..
levelcap was 75 since the start of prelude. Many years later raised to 78, then 80, then 85 .. and now 99.
They let farmers bot freely, then when people did the same thing they started banning them. And when you ban couple of people who are leaders of their community it all starts fall apart.
Plix plox dont let it happen again!
And you prefer to have the so called ''leaders of their community'' free for ever to bot to gain again distance from other players in terms of lvls/skills and gear?
And let's not forget,these ''leaders of their community'' took this ''title'' when Ncwest banned the previous leaders of their community and they found the ''throne'' empty.
Ofcourse players left L2 when they saw that to keep up on lvls and adena they should bot too and then suddenly get banned while people from enemy clan were never banned and continued to rule in game by cheating.
- Naia = Teon + Franz + Luna (oh man, what did you expect from these 3 servers merged into one?)
- NC didn't actually care when the game had monthly subscriptions and player base was smaller. Will they now?
- It is a common secret that many players who were banned for botting and only, before 2010, had the chance to get their accounts back, by petitioning (DrTulp do you hear that?)
- Naia = Teon + Franz + Luna (oh man, what did you expect from these 3 servers merged into one?)
- NC didn't actually care when the game had monthly subscriptions and player base was smaller. Will they now?
- It is a common secret that many players who were banned for botting and only, before 2010, had the chance to get their accounts back, by petitioning (DrTulp do you hear that?)
Yes I do. I think the worst case was when a bunch got banned I believe on Bartz. They were caught red handed and all accounts were banned (by a junior GM) They petitioned and NC reinstated all the accounts plus gave them items so they could catch up on the exp that they didn't get while banned. |Then the same characters were spamming the global chat telling everyone who would listen that infact they were botters. Lots was written on the boards c/w screen shots (i believe) but nothing was done.
It's so sad a game loved by so many is being run so badly.
I don't see how hard can it be for a single GM to do some checks on every major grinding location twice a day. For God's sake how hard will it be to ban account shouting in every town. Yes I know they will just create another but I doubt it takes much effort to just make a quick banning spree trough all the towns taking like 15 minutes...
Yesterday a friend of mine told me "hey, wanna have some fun", I said "Sure". Then he took me right in front of Goddard where we found like 10 destroyers each of them with a baby buffalo one-hitting mobs and mindlessly wandering around. When he removed his dagger and flagged on each of them for a while they eventually flag back and he killed them (probably some glitch in the bot). After a while each of them comes back from town on foot and start the mindless wander once again. He got like 20 kills and we got bored. I got a lot of screens, reported some of them and will probably make a vid today if I am not too lazy.
If it takes a casual player no effort to find bots, how hard can it be for a GM.
Its not that hard to catch a bot/pvp-cheater now its even easier to know who use programs, but who knows these people pay a lot of many for premiun suscription.
theres bot trains in game and bugged quest npcs everywhere but admins are using their time to send me forum messages that accuse me of cheating for posting on the forum about the bugged npcs in cruma.
dude i new a kid that got perma banned at lvl 25 for leeching in a party, not actually botting, and now full on botters are getting 7-14 day bans, are you f***ing kidding me?
Typically Asians are more willing to invest in "long term" success but i guess Europe, South/North America is not a market they are really interested in for the long term. They just want your money.......now!!! and if you leave and never play another NC game again fine...they've proved over and over again that they really could care less.
I find it hard to see it that way. There's alot of money being made from L2, when considering private servers.
If they were smart they would have opened a donator server, with accelerated rates and a few new pvp oriented events - similar to the instant satisfaction experiences that high rate pvp private servers offer.
There is a huge market for it - consumers would jump on the opportunity to play on a official high rate where you know that the servers wont suddenly wipe within a few months.
I assume the reason ncsoft hasn't taken advantage of this is because their players base would be sporadic and short term, rather than a predictable, for sure investment. This game is backed and viewed as a investment - and its being milked for everything, hence the gold farmers. Perhaps if the investors knew how bad of a job its being miss-managed and how much revenue they are missing out on, they would do something.
tldr: L2 and its handlers are the problem not all of NCSoft and NCSoft West
Riddle me this Why is it that every game thats listed on your NCSoft Launcher other than Lineage 2 has dealt with their bots/rmt quite successfully. From Aion to Guildwars if youre associated with bots or the gold they've farmed youre likely to get banned somewhere down the line.
For example Aion launches with an awful RMT problem, its so bad players start quitting by the thousands. Banhammer goes down, half the "top" players and legions get perma banned and the visible bot population is reduced to non-existent .
In Aion, if youre running a kinah bot it will get banned along with youre main and every proxy character you tried to wash it with. The Bot, the owner and everyone in between gets permaed. They wont even let you put another Aion account on your NCSoft account in some cases. RMT does exist in Aion but its mostly between real players selling kinah to each other on vent via paypal. If you buy from a botfarmer in modern Aion, kiss your account goodbye.
Lol Guildwars created a grim reaper animation that slays cheaters as they get banned so everyone knows what they did. Dhuumed! Guildwars at launch had an awful problem as well, it was addressed.
So tell my why is it possible to bot in plain view in this game? Im new to L2 and thats not rhetorical question id really like to know lol. Theyre everywhere i go and ive never seen anything like it.
I think they should implement CAPTCHA in-game every time someone reports a bot. Give them 5-10 minutes to input the correct words or your automatically logged off.
-Not possible in Non-PK zones, so shops are safe.
-Can only be used once every 30 minutes to the same person, so it isn't bothersome and won't be abused to legit players.
-If the person has lots of reports in their history and gets logged off every-time, they can automatically ban the account.
-Cannot log off until CAPTCHA is inputted correctly. This will stop bots from logging off and on before the time ends.
-Certain time limit before being able to log in again after being caught botting.
-Cannot be used on characters who are not in combat so being AFK is fine.
Feel free to add in more good and legit rules to this.
I believe this will help the bot problem, maybe not fully, but is a good start without having to have GMs everywhere (which I don't see much if any after the initial launch of F2P).
Note: Posted in the Bot thread, but hopefully more people see this.
tldr: L2 and its handlers are the problem not all of NCSoft and NCSoft West
Riddle me this Why is it that every game thats listed on your NCSoft Launcher other than Lineage 2 has dealt with their bots/rmt quite successfully. From Aion to Guildwars if youre associated with bots or the gold they've farmed youre likely to get banned somewhere down the line.
For example Aion launches with an awful RMT problem, its so bad players start quitting by the thousands. Banhammer goes down, half the "top" players and legions get perma banned and the visible bot population is reduced to non-existent .
In Aion, if youre running a kinah bot it will get banned along with youre main and every proxy character you tried to wash it with. The Bot, the owner and everyone in between gets permaed. They wont even let you put another Aion account on your NCSoft account in some cases. RMT does exist in Aion but its mostly between real players selling kinah to each other on vent via paypal. If you buy from a botfarmer in modern Aion, kiss your account goodbye.
Lol Guildwars created a grim reaper animation that slays cheaters as they get banned so everyone knows what they did. Dhuumed! Guildwars at launch had an awful problem as well, it was addressed.
So tell my why is it possible to bot in plain view in this game? Im new to L2 and thats not rhetorical question id really like to know lol. Theyre everywhere i go and ive never seen anything like it.
for the exact reasons you listed. They don't like banning 1 bot here and one bot there, it's inconsequential. They prefer to watch the bots,decipher their network then drop the hammer on them. Exactly like they did on Aion, and exactly like they did in L2 a year ago. The issue is F2P, it brought new farmers and it gave them infinite accounts which makes it a lot more complicated to police. And generally when the hammer drops even the regular exp botters are too scared to bot so ... it gets better.
Ive red all this post and it was quite interesting and worth my time so i thought that i should say something 2. Well ive started to play here only after god release and from what i see its not that terrible but i wont deny that they exist, that i havent seen em and that they should bee banned. And empty party matching doesnt mean that there is tons off botters among new characters, its just lots of players who are not used to new things (I came from Lithuanian privates, now there servers change chronicles so fast that they dont have time to fix bugs and things that doesnt work, so i think lots of newcomers doesnt trust new features or are used to think that they dont work, prsonaly it took me 2 weeks to start using party machmaking), so players under 80lv rarely use party machmaking hey just shout in party places TOI ect, and ofc we shouldnt forget clans who are leveling and partying toogether.
Well i hope that I will give something possitive into this thread.