I enjoy this game most of the time, but on many occasions I have become extremely frustrated and disheartened by the hundreds of, what I have become completely convinced, are characters being controlled by 3rd party programs. Having only recently returned to Lineage 2, I have concerns about 3rd party programs and their use. I felt like I had to raise the issue publicly.
I have not played 'Lineage 2' for many years before I recently returned to the game only two weeks ago. The release of C4 is roughly the point in time that I draw reference about past experiences of the game, 'Lineage 2.' I know that this subject is not entirely new as I have witnessed many instances of both individual characters being automated by 3rd party software as well as whole groups of characters being controlled by such programs when I played the game many years ago. However for some reason it seems to me that there are now literally hundreds of software controlled characters, forming veritable armies of clients that are consistently located in core leveling and questing areas, at all time periods and on all days that I have played the game. I know I can not declare that I know for a fact that 3rd party programs are being used however I have become increasingly convinced that I am correct is assuming that there are many clients being controlled by 3rd party programs by a great many characteristic examples, such as;
Every time I visit the town of Heine, I have clearly seen that on one pier in particular a large amount of individuals that number over 40, (I counted them and I stopped counting at 40), have been fishing what appears to be the same target location. The characters that I have seen fishing in this location, continue to do so without pause or delay and continuously ignore any social interaction by use of either general chat or by means of private messages that I and others have made towards them. In my opinion, this lends credibility to my theory that these characters are being controlled by a 3rd party program as opposed to a living human being.
There are blatantly obvious groups of Dark Elf Summoner characters that are so numerous I could only describe them as armies consistently located in the different area's of the area called 'The Wall of Argos.' Every time I have visited the area in game there have always been many, (I would estimate between five and twenty) of these characters in each of the mob spawning area's, at any one time, all appearing to move in exact unison to attack the areas mob's as they re-spawn. I am convinced, that these characters are (at least mostly) automated botting programs. These dark elf summoners all seem to be generic as from what I can tell, most of them have the same face/hair choices. I have not seen the characters return to town for any kind of re-supply or rebuffing. A player controlled character would almost certainly take advantage of supply items as well as the newbie buff which is now provided for free until level 85. I am convinced that these characters are controlled by botting programs and not a human being, and I am also convinced that they are all connected as it would appear that due to their sheer weight in number, they need no support from buff or consumable item.
My questions are as follows;
Firstly, I apologize if this thread is written incorrectly or perhaps posted in the wrong place, if it is so, where should I direct any questions and concerns regarding the issue of people that are suspect of using 3rd party software to automate control of their characters in this manner; as well as the issue of areas becoming too overcrowded by the large groups of these characters that I suspect to be automated by 3rd party programs of various types?
I am interested in learning if I'm alone in my concerns, or if the in-game problems caused by this subject does indeed hinder and frustrate some or many of the games legitimate players as much as it does myself?
As the characteristic behavior of these large groups of characters matches the known behavioral patterns of 3rd party botting programs; What action, if any is being taken by NCsoft to reduce the impact these large groups of 3rd party program controlled characters have on legitimate players who are trying to enjoy the game?
In support of the EULA of the game, a player friendly community and the actual intended in-game experience created by NCsoft itself, what action (if any), can be taken by legitimate players to combat the above issue? - (In my opinion, the current method of using the 'Bot Report' button seems to be ineffective because the amount of characters I suspect of being controlled by 3rd party programs is so large that I would not be able to play the game properly as I would have to spend a large portion of my play time targeting individual bot controlled characters and reporting them. I have reported a moderate amount of these characters already by use of the provided button, however many of these reported characters are always easily seen to be in the same places doing the same activities, even a week after I have reported them).
What would Lineage 2 admin suggest that a player should do if they find it too difficult to complete a quest goal or other objective because of a lack of available mobs caused by the large groups of almost identical, ever-present, ever-active, and ever-synchronized bots. (by bots, I mean the characters that behave in a manner that is, (as I have learned from my own research), characteristic of being under the automated control of 3rd party software).
Can the admin of Lineage 2 at least sympathize with the huge levels of frustration to players; as well as the added hindrances to character progression; Which is a result of certain key areas of the game world being permanently "Owned" by these groups of (suspected), characters that are automated by 3rd party software usage?
When will the legitimate players of Lineage 2 no longer face these issues?
And lastly, until such a time as this issue is resolved, could NCsoft possibly place the mobs needed for the progression of the various quests that are recommended along the path to level 85, in some other locations in the world which would further grant players the ability to complete their quests within a reasonable amount of time. (It can be so very hard to collect enough quest items, when the other characters hunting the same mobs as you, seem to have the gift of being able to instantly target a mob immediately upon that mobs re-spawning in, doing so milliseconds before it has even fully appeared visually).
I apologize if this thread seems to be just another repeat of previously discussed issues; However, I feel that this subject must be resolved and until it has been, it will continue to be raised as a facet of the game which takes away from the enjoyment of new or returning players who desire to make legitimate progress as they explore the amazing world of Lineage 2. I do NOT believe that NCsoft does nothing about this issue. In fact, I believe it to be quite possible, that the game Dev's who work upon the ever-evolving game of Lineage 2, may be continuously angered and frustrated by the problems caused by all kinds of 3rd party software that players ask them to resolve. I know that NCsoft tries to deal with people using 3rd party software or scams and exploits, in ways that would be considered to be cheating by legitimate players and game Dev's alike.
The point of this thread was not to complain, it is instead to ask for professional advice about the subject and what solutions the game admin would suggest as well as to allow me to further express how much this issue slows my game progress and takes away some of the enjoyment of playing the game. (And maybe, many others as legitimate players, feel a similar way and share my concerns about this subject).
Nothing you say or do will fix the bot problem. My advice to you and anyone, is to just walk away from the game. Live your life without the ever angering bot dilemma interrupting your daily life. Check back every now and then to see if it's fixed, which it won't be, then carry on once again. Same results in game will happen with this method, but you will be happier on a day to day basis.
you are almost 100% correct.
This game is full of bots in many xp and even questzones, sometimes to a point they swarm the fields making it impossible for players to xp/quest.
you are however wrong when it comes to fishing.
When Ertheia expansion came the whole fishing process was overhauled.
Fishing is now for everybody 100% automated.
you euip fishing line + bait, you walk near water and a skill pops up on your screen.
fishing now also gives a bit xp
all those people at the water are sleeping or at their jobs and earning xp, its not botting
in the past I had days where I play 4/5 hours in the evening and then fish 17 hours, its free xp :) + you can make your own stews
I am interested in learning if I'm alone in my concerns, or if the in-game problems caused by this subject does indeed hinder and frustrate some or many of the games legitimate players as much as it does myself?
No, you are not alone.
As the characteristic behavior of these large groups of characters matches the known behavioral patterns of 3rd party botting programs; What action, if any is being taken by NCsoft to reduce the impact these large groups of 3rd party program controlled characters have on legitimate players who are trying to enjoy the game?
The only action taken by NCsoft it's reducing all adena/drop amount or %. Increasing in the proccess, the frustation of their few legit players.
In support of the EULA of the game, a player friendly community and the actual intended in-game experience created by NCsoft itself, what action (if any), can be taken by legitimate players to combat the above issue? - (In my opinion, the current method of using the 'Bot Report' button seems to be ineffective because the amount of characters I suspect of being controlled by 3rd party programs is so large that I would not be able to play the game properly as I would have to spend a large portion of my play time targeting individual bot controlled characters and reporting them. I have reported a moderate amount of these characters already by use of the provided button, however many of these reported characters are always easily seen to be in the same places doing the same activities, even a week after I have reported them).
Not to mention you need to wait 30 min everytime you report one, and only have few reports available per account/clan.
When will the legitimate players of Lineage 2 no longer face these issues?
Probably never, if it was not done in all his life (11 years until now of Lineage2), I don't beleive will happen anytime soon.
Creating a real anti-bot system cost money/time, changing some numbers cost nothing. Has this action fix the problem? No.
In my opinion, if they ever get a real working anti-bot system, they should delete completely the entire db, as even legit players has take advantage of the existance of automated 3rd party software (even without knowing that fact).
With such long declaration you should go and kill all bots. Well seriuosly, every one knows that bots are destroying this game but they still do it. We just pray to greate Elpy that some day lieration will come. Ask Steaven Seagal for help.
GET OVER IT
For the past 11 years they exist! Obviously they will ALWAYS be here until the game closes shop, so stop complaining and enjoy the game in every way you deem fit! Stop focusing on the people abusing the game, if you are legit be proud of yourself because you are better than anyone else who has touched a program. Thank you.
GET OVER IT
For the past 11 years they exist! Obviously they will ALWAYS be here until the game closes shop, so stop complaining and enjoy the game in every way you deem fit! Stop worrying about what other people are doing, if you are legit be proud of yourself because you are better than anyone else who has touched a program. Thank you.
Hypocrite, you are saying that ppl shouldn't care what the others do, but you care if the others post about bots....hmmm yea, g t f o.
I'm speaking of ingame and box existence not forum posts, you will see the word bot ingame every 60 seconds. Also I do not care who posts what. You being so offended by a bot topic is interesting.
GET OVER IT
For the past 11 years they exist! Obviously they will ALWAYS be here until the game closes shop, so stop complaining and enjoy the game in every way you deem fit! Stop focusing on the people abusing the game, if you are legit be proud of yourself because you are better than anyone else who has touched a program. Thank you.
Let's say I need to go to Wall of Argos and do my quest. Can't. Not enjoyable. Let's say I need to go to Varka Silenos outpost to do a quest. Can't. Not enjoyable. Let's say I need to go to Ketra Orc outpost to do a quest. Can't. Not enjoyable. Why can't I do the quests? Because there are 4 bots to every mob. The mindset of GET OVER IT is why there are so many bots. Nothing was done for so long that they figure whatever ban waves happen will just stop (which apparently they have stopped) and they just bring in more bots to replace them. I try my best to ignore the bots, but when I want to make a new toon, it is impossible to enjoy the lower lvl areas. So you......... GET OVER IT.
Also you saying get over it they will always be here..............Interesting.
I've awakened 2 toons In less than a week last week, not my fault your a noob and can't get around it. Your whining about 1-85 which takes 2 days max, get over it.
I've awakened 2 toons In less than a week last week, not my fault your a noob and can't get around it. Your whining about 1-85 which takes 2 days max, get over it.
That is good for the old players....But what about the new ppl...or lack of new players. How many new ppl have we mentored just to see them stop/log off and never come back after hitting lvl 70 or 75. Once a new player hits said lvl and is going along with the in game quests and sees the mass field of bots....well most of us know what happens after that.
Let's say I need to go to Wall of Argos and do my quest. Can't. Not enjoyable. Let's say I need to go to Varka Silenos outpost to do a quest. Can't. Not enjoyable.
Lineage II its not a quest in Wall of Argos.. you can remain.. 2 or 3 days with out runes there leveling and then you have the level to continue in another area, why you will come back?
If you cant leveling from 6x to 7x your character... how you will do now the 99 to 100?
Bot's in Town Bots Everywhereeeeeeeeee
Do Something for this! You Should Banned all this Bots!! we cant even take the Buff from the Event For god sake!!
Bot's in Town Bots Everywhereeeeeeeeee
Do Something for this! You Should Banned all this Bots!! we cant even take the Buff from the Event For god sake!!
I gave up on NCSoft caring about bots after they told me to report every name individually when I asked them to look at XXX area (I think it was Silent Valley, back in the day), I told them I'm not going to spend an hour going through all of them, verifying that they are bots and reporting them (I will not blindly reporting everyone I see), then the GM replying that they can do nothing until someone reports...
I'm still wondering what GMs actually do...
Also, I've sent videos and pictures, of botting moments, especially of those players who were in notable clans. As far as I know, none of them have been banned as a result.
I then resorted to PKing, which doesn't work that well, because it only costs them a little time to just ignore me recover the XP, and a lot more time for me to work off the red, plus it adds up when I get more and more PK counts. It's also not viable anymore at higher levels as I will never kill them, if I use a lower level PK character, with their automated heals :/
For Wall of Argos, there are free spaces (at least on Chronos) if you go deeper in towards the south east corner. I'm guessing it's too much of a hassle to program their bots to navigate all the way there.
I haven't really looked at GoG recently since I just came back to the game, but I never really liked that place anyway :P
Guys, come on there is another official NCsoft LINEAGE 2 server called ****** it is a NO bot server give it a try and you'll see how a normal server looks like ... jeez many ppl leave to that server and they dont complain any more because GM's do care about that server !
Full bot clans farming clan hall sieges, and since they spam their scripts to enter fast, - there is no way for a legit clan to compete with them.
Or make instances no limit, or at least increase it 2x
Do something :mad::mad::mad:
It's not actually impossible - you just need to get your timing right. Bots just run the script in loop, so it's possible for a legit player to click in at the right time - but the window is very small, a second or two at best.
Today me and my CP took fortress of the dead on Naia, with exactly that precise timing approach.
Don't get me wrong, bots/scripts should be made detectable and auto-bannable.
When there were still the daily words of wisdom from the Adventurers' Guide, he said among other things: "Remember, behind every character there is a real person". And behind every bot there is a bad person. Do not only kill the character but the person. Delete all accounts that can be attributed to a botter. And I really mean delete, not ban. Like ArenaNet does. Make them terminally dead so that they can't be unbanned again under a new regime.
In a b2p model the company look to have the game clean of hacks/bots as this kind of practice will avoid people to buy their game and at the end touch their income.
In a f2p+cash shop that's another history, here botters can spend 100$ every month and they will be untouchable, as banning/deleting this players will touch their income, so we will not see this on this game/model.
Do you guys really think it's hard to control the 5 or 6 bot festival party zones in 5 servers? or to make some script that check db and when someone makes actions ingame (move, hit, pickup) for more than 24h in a row nonstop (that's humanly not possible), delete this account and all accounts that have gather the ítems from this bots?
You need a lot immunity for 'bot's theards' for 100,000 lineage players 30 crying on forum about bots, they play 1h per day and still crying about they can't get items, beacuse bots and truth is , they can't beacuse they are weak. l2 since ever was for ppl that playing 10h per day, from those real l2-players nobody cry about bots. If you getting report 99% it's enemy reporting beacuse can't handle war. I think senior GM's already know it, thats why in game is automatic system for detect bots, not baning beacuse all randoms crying on forum.
I wanted to install game client after a 1.5 year break,
It won't happen, cu in another year :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:;)
The game has had bots for 10 years. Even when you had to buy the game and pay a monthly fee to play, it was full of bot trains. What the hell will you be waiting for... i have no idea. If you're interested in playing, just play.
Beacuse those fake crying kids, ncsoft wasting a lot money by baning real ppl on main chars, they stopping play and pay for ncsoft and those who reported, will never spend even 1$ on game. I understand ban 'farm bots' it's good beacuse those ppl don't use adena from farm for play, but selling for $ and living by it, they all should get perma ban for IP, but what interes Ncsoft have in baning 'real' ppl that paying heavy money to ncsoft, if all others (99% that pay for ncsoft) using 3rd programs, and 2-3 bans will nothing change, just less money, less population, and everyday less ppl ? Since last ban wave, a lot main ppl lost account, did ncsoft count how many $ they lost by those bans? ppl stopped farm , buying runes and VP beacuse they are afraid about bans, and now they stopping play and think what to do, while others enemy risk their accounts and getting high lvl's
Beacuse those fake crying kids, ncsoft wasting a lot money by baning real ppl on main chars, they stopping play and pay for ncsoft and those who reported, will never spend even 1$ on game. I understand ban 'farm bots' it's good beacuse those ppl don't use adena from farm for play, but selling for $ and living by it, they all should get perma ban for IP, but what interes Ncsoft have in baning 'real' ppl that paying heavy money to ncsoft, if all others (99% that pay for ncsoft) using 3rd programs, and 2-3 bans will nothing change, just less money, less population, and everyday less ppl ? Since last ban wave, a lot main ppl lost account, did ncsoft count how many $ they lost by those bans? ppl stopped farm , buying runes and VP beacuse they are afraid about bans, and now they stopping play and think what to do, while others enemy risk their accounts and getting high lvl's
CAN YOU shut your bs? bots there were even when game was p2p. Afraid? You know why people who repot don't want to spend ? because this game is full of automates **** bots and no sane person will spend money on a game where bot trains farm adena for their master. Not banning bots is just a ******* incompetence which ****** this game, and made sooooooo many l2 fans leave the official servers
Servers would die if the cheaters / bots got han hammered???: Spoken like a true and active Bot! More older player would come back and new player would come. Screw the cheaters Play the Game like it was designed to be played. And paying for accounts til lvl85 is a very good idea to stop the auto create accounts.
^ Yep. I know a ton of people and wast majority don't bot. The few that do, or have done, are well known and only create further disbalance. Banning them would be great for everyone. Would encourage regular players to play more and older players to come back.
I don't have bots , i'm just not baby-cry ****** and i know reality in l2. Most ppl don't buy runes beacuse they play 2h day, wating 70$ for rune 200% if you play 2h day, the other one buying rune 200% and he want use 100% of it beacuse for 90% ppl here, 70$ is big money, so still... baby-cry ******s will not pay to game...
I don't have bots , i'm just not baby-cry ****** and i know reality in l2. Most ppl don't buy runes beacuse they play 2h day, wating 70$ for rune 200% if you play 2h day, the other one buying rune 200% and he want use 100% of it beacuse for 90% ppl here, 70$ is big money, so still... baby-cry ******s will not pay to game...
Wast majority of people I know, don't bot, and yet many of them still buy items from l2 store. Also the amount of time someone plays doesn't have much to do with him buying or not buying runes, botting or not botting. I know many people that don't play much and still buy items from l2 store, and many people that do play alot and still buy items. And just as many people in both camps that don't buy items.
In fact I'd say that botters are way less inclined to buy anything. As they don't spend the time playing, scripts play for them. And on top of that, they are at risk of loosing everything invested by getting banned.
Regular players want to be as efficient as possible with the time they have, and they are more likely to buy a rune and get as much from those few hours they exp as possible. While a botter can leave his char whole day and whole night and achieve the same or more, without buying anything, or investing any time.
Saying that bots shouldn't be banned is just stupid.
And so is waiting for the game to be cleared of bots to start playing. It hasn't been for the past 10 years, it's unlikely to ever be.
I log in and I don't get spammed by bots. I walk around and I don't see bots. What bots are you guys talking about. Oh, that's right, I don't play L2. I play that other game that was supposed to be L3. Nope, no bots there.
You what? DH clan will grow bald if bots will be removed as it is. Who would farm events and gainak village for dark stone? :D:D:D
P.S save only protection,but I imagine it would be with the top players will not talk specifically :D
Bott issue's unresolved
Buggs unresolved
all due to one thing , this :
MMO maker NCsoft has initiated another part (the "final phase") of its restructuring plan announced last October by eliminating some internal customer support positions from NCsoft West. Those positions will now be covered by what the company calls an external provider.
An affected NCsoft employee tells Polygon (http://www.polygon.com/2015/4/9/8378313/ncsoft-support-layoffs-austin) that the company has cut 16 jobs from its Austin office. The anonymous former employee claims that the office's entire customer support team has been let go. http://www.gamepolitics.com/category/topics/ncsoft#.VWGbmK0w-mb
NC soft is so untalented in seeing potential in a game that could be so much more then all the JUNK they are making now , that they are literally not just letting bots take over their game and make money on their back, but they also kill their own clients off by letting the bots run loose, idiots that's what they are.
I've been wondering if the GM oversee the Olympics, because sometimes it feels that this does not occur in fact. See the heroes of each class most or all are ******* users, third party program which in the rules of the own NCsoft is forbidden. Is it laziness? Or is it to overlook, namely, are seeing all this occurs, but prefer to stay quiet, since the heroes mostly buy lots of Ncoins to ... Has no way of knowing, but it is fact and notorious know it's easy to know who uses the so-called Bot, simply observe the chars, they are very mechanical in his way to fight, the sequences is the same thing, changes according to who will fight. For example:
1-you take a Erthéia the skill of Feoh, Hide them is boring, but when NCsoft has given this skill for this class and race, she knew that the human player commit mistakes, but takes a Erthéia that is being controlled by a Bot, you'll see that there's no way to get her, and has no way to beat her.
2-A Feoh, wants class easier to know that this using just Bot look like she fights, is very mechanical, especially when combating the Tankers, they stop attacking once the tanker uses the UD that reflects 100% damage, i.e. a normal player would take even a little to realize ...
To sum it all up, the game is dead and finished. No point deleting Bot is collecting items, adena down or evolving, if not also the Olympics remember, players want to be strong, you want to go to the Olympics and have a cool game. Even a person who is well equipped, even playing in her hand, she would be all right to fight against another player, because the other player is better than her, not always the level of equipment will help, at least this is my vision. NCsoft West didn't realize it only hurts her image.
Want to see examples of Bot, notice the Dagger when they use the skill of Clones, appears several clones of them, see the char takes the enemy will always target the original, even having multiple clones on top of him, a normal player would take, and would take it first, but get the target of a dagger with various clones? Yesterday I saw the fight of two daggers and two used clones, were many clones, but even so the two could get the target of the enemy without making mistakes. I saw a Feoh that uses *******, and the Dagger used clone, and yet the Feoh took his target. Sincerely, discourages the game a unique shape and gradually the game will die, if at least the Olympics had an inspection, or even GM did chars to fight and analyze the struggles, or watching the struggles of everyone, especially those who become heroes, and especially of those who are heroes for many months, would realize that players already perceive honest.
I've been wondering if the GM oversee the Olympics
Are you referring to the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil? Because I know the GMs didn't make it to the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.....perhaps you mean the winter Olympics?
Are you referring to the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil? Because I know the GMs didn't make it to the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.....perhaps you mean the winter Olympics?
Good afternoon (Using Bing translator)
Well, I put wrong, but I think you're smart enough to know what I'm talking about, the Olympics of the game. As everyone knows, most of the heroes be they in any server using third party programs which are banned and yet having acknowledged it and knowing that NCsoft West does nothing, that is, it kills the game, people benefit of the Bots spread to pick up items and adena, and with this stay equipped, already fighting pvp using such programs , and also in the Olympics do nothing, it kills the game.
The funnier than if GM watched the fights would see the standards of scripts, because they have the same pattern, before entering the time-and after that won the fight, there is no identical patterns. Let's review, as an Aero Healer can take own target heal change of target, then grab your own target and heal, that in speed that a human being would have difficulty, even that he create macros, stand a chance of error, simply view the struggles of Aero Healer and Feoh and Othel, have distinct patterns, all fighting in much the same way. But do what, the game ending and the GM that are employees of NCsoft West seems to not like the job. So the Lineage will never make it on the number of players of WOW, because there they act all the time, are much more efficient.
I assume the dev team has noticed the sea of bots in wall of argos. OH the bots are still there, but rather than ban all the bots, they instead simply disabled the quest how can you be so lazy?
also i am pretty sure the bots are not there for the quest because there are many more monsters for them to kill that give out the quest update, they are specifically camping every single spawn of the one eye type and the antelope most likely because their is a bug in the loot tables and they are getting some very valuable item every at .00000001% drop rate.
It is very easy to deduce by simply being a real player. You will find a magical invisible line the bots never cross to hunt the other types of monsters that update that exact same quest you disabled instead of banning the bots.
On this side of the line is the specific eye type and antelope type on the other side of the line the monster type changes even though it still would update the quest. Another clue would be the fact that there are hundreds of bots filling the entire area so many that it makes it impossible for any bot to actually complete the quest anytime this decade even though they are there 24/7. They will however kill and loot every single monster of those 2 types that spawns with 100% certainty.
I am sure ncwest is not stupid or naive and that you realize there are hundreds of bot accounts infesting each server.
I am also sure you are aware that reporting these bots as a player is impossible because of the sheer number of bots and the limited number of reports we are granted.
I am also sure you actually do not follow up or investigate the reports anyways.
I am 100% sure of every bot train i see is 100% a bot train breaking the rules some are so blatant as to name each character in the train bot1, bot2, bot3 etc..
So my question is why? Can you be honest to your customers and atleast explain it? I mean clearly everyone who plays this game has come to accept the fact that we have no choice but to co exist with all the hundreds of bots.
so why are the bots allowed to persist? Lack of resources to fight the war? Do they actually play a vital role in the revenue stream in some twisted manor? (aka preal players who bot, use the money the bots earn to then buy nccoin from players who play legit and have means To earn adena anymore thus in a way the bots drive the ncoin sales)
Why is there no volunteer GM program to help fight the bots? I love detecting and finding bots. I would love to volunteer with no pay just to spend a few hours every day/week ferreting out the bots to ban them.
So again I ask why are the bots allowed to persist? we all know that you know they are there and that you do nothing to to stop them, we accept it even though it is frustrating and we hate it.
I understand resources are short, so why is there not a program for people to volunteer to become a GM to help manage some of the ongoing issues?
Pls Gms ban all bots, yesterday i played all day with my sub in wall of argos and many dark elf summoners was there, i cant hit a thing, pls ban those bots!!!!!!!!!!!
LOL!!! u kidding me? i saw this post http://boards.lineage2.com/showthread.php?t=266121
i saw more than 50 bots there yesterday!!! u think i will do this burocracy for all those bots? rly? just pay a gm to log in and go wall of argos he will see many bots teleport then all to some distant place and test all if they act like a bot just ban ****@!!!!!!!!!!!
I am pretty sure the GM's have given up on manual detection, aka you report a bot the gm goes over and checks the player and decides if bot or not. At this point I think all they use is some sort of automated detection system that they only update and run 1/2 times a a year for mass bans.
It is a losing war, i believe the bots now even have automated account creation, so no sooner than bot is banned the program is creating a new account and sending out the next bot to replace it. What ever it is it is pretty clear it is far easier for the bots to be made and replaced than for gm's to figure out if someone is a bot and to ban because it is 100% obvious the gm's do not bother to ban bots anymore.
I mean ANY MORON can find 50 bots in 30 minutes in this game at any given time. So clearly the gm know there are bots everywhere and they just don't care or have given up.
That is also why they don't even bother responding to these bot threads just pile them up to pacify people and do dmg control for public relations.
If the GM;s did half as much effort to police the game as they do to police the forums there would be no bots....
The GMs do ban bots. They just ban them before a big update or change. Time to clean the database, ban some bots. Time for the game update, ban some bots. Time to hire a clown, ban some bots. Time to find out who buys from the NCStore, ban some bots. We are getting a visit from NCSoft Korea, ban some bots. The snack guy is here with 25 cent sodas, forget the bots.
Bots was a big problem since open beta. From time to time they do mass ban's. Ppl who played this game more than 5-6 year's somehow adapted to all this spamm/mob absence/huge amount of RMT etc. How?
Many of them became boters too, lol , others getting fun killing bots, some ppl stop paying atention to bots. In my opinion bot problem became most destructive to game, when bots can back to boting spot after death automatically. You can PK all loc whole day, and when you tired like hell and stopped, you can see same situation like was 8 hour ago ... Very frustrating!
Also ppl who can see you in hide at Oly, or ppl who suddenly get many billions adena from day to day and many other such things. Do NCSoft care about such activities? Actually yes (imo). We can see many cheaters/bots banned durring years, even big clans was banned with CWH. But why we receive all that spam everyday, and can see all that bot's everyday? Personally I don't know which reason for this - spammers/bots too smart, or NCSoft have not enough man source/aspiration to solve this problem.
So, bots - very big and wide problem, but any player can meet biggest problem - be accused as bot. After NCSoft fired old Support Team and outsorced to incompetent copy-pasting crew, many thing's are changed. Any legit player not safe anymore, believe me or not. And in my opnion it's bigger problem than all bot's/RMT/cheaters etc. all together.
Im sorry to say that but NCSoft accept bot in Lineage 2.
In fact they not "accept", they "tolerate" bots.
If they did not want the bots they simply banished them all. But they don't.
Long ago the NCSoft has a script that detects bots.
They control the bot population and from time to time they run another script that ban a percentage of bots in the game. NCSoft use bots to control the server economy balance (items, adenas, basic material, recipes, etc.).
It's not a real time ban but a programmed ban. Bots get ban offline.
For a bot user it's a lottery.
So much so that they hamper bot report. Now they ask to report bots opening a ticket in the website support area. Report a bot take a time nowadays.
The ingame bot button has quantitative and temporal limitations.
Nowadays the ingame bot button is for nothing, they just did not take it off because community will complain if they did that.
Maybe if certain character have an X amount of report from different IP they include the reported character on next ban hammer. I don't know.
Nowadays I guess the bot problem became to same serious issue in every games we notice in Lineage 2.
But while 99% of MMOs are fully instanced, Lineage 2 is a sandbox so, bots are very visible here and even hold up us more often.
I guess one of the biggest problem here as it is everywhere, that the company doesn't have enough employees to keep clean the servers constantly and to be sure, that they didn't ban wrong accounts.
I just did check, NCsoft support team got under a week over 20.000 Support Ticket under a week. If example they have 20 employees constantly in the office and we count to solve a problem need atleast 10 minutes but often need 30 minutes or more. They simply doesn't have time to solve every issues, while 1-2 another reports arrive.
But still they could permanently check and ban popular bot zones as Wall of Agros, Dragon Valley, Garden of Genesis, Guillotine Fortress.
Because Monastery of Silence, Garden of Genesis, Guillotine Fortress are often so crowded with bots, that the players simply can't play there.
I know, that GMs are work and also know, that harder year by year to trace the bots since they more and more pick up the behavior of players to remain undercover.
But example Juji and Hime who mainly the connection between the NCsoft and the community of Lineage 2. Could make a poll, that which location are those where we players would play, but the bot groups hold up us and they would ban in this zones the bots with higher priority (example Guillotine Fortress) and which zones what less popular by players (Forgotten Temple) which would get lower priority.
I guess this would be a useful and walkable way both to players and the NCsoft.
I guess one of the biggest problem here as it is everywhere, that the company doesn't have enough employees to keep clean the servers constantly and to be sure, that they didn't ban wrong accounts.
I just did check, NCsoft support team got under a week over 20.000 Support Ticket under a week. If example they have 20 employees constantly in the office and we count to solve a problem need atleast 10 minutes but often need 30 minutes or more. They simply doesn't have time to solve every issues, while 1-2 another reports arrive.
As someone linked above (http://boards.lineage2.com/showpost.php?p=3487880&postcount=50) , NCSoft West has 16 Employees in Support Team. April 9, 2015 they was fired, and NCSoft West Lineage 2 Support Team now outsourced. So, now they can be 50 or 100 or even 300. But what quality? With old team, even so small, I knew one thing - if it's happend and something going wrong - you can always count for their help! It's took time, sometimes alot. But they always help. During 11 years of playing I has alot problems, even was banned once, for mistake, because moved house to another country, and they think acc was sold. But all my problems was solved by professionals. I MISS YOU GUYS!
Now what? Who our Support Team? How they experienced in NCSoft West Lineage 2 version? Do they already created character in Lineage 2 or not, lol? All I can say, they answer more faster, with names like Edrick/Gedrick/Pedrick - looks like bots, no? And they answer like bot's, same answer from different GM, on different petition. GM? No, they not a GMs even.
We fighting 11 years with bot's, because of lazy/infirm GMs, now NCSoft West using bot's to ban last legit people. GF.
I have said this a billion times to the whole bot discussion. The main reason there are so many bots is that IF they happen to be banned, they create new accounts and bot those up in no time. No one is actually IP banned anymore because of internet cafes and such.
Do I think NC could manage the problem better? Absolutely. However how much do you think they are going to spend on support for an eleven year old game? Let's be realistic here. Let's not forget it's Korean based and not even advertised anywhere in the USA.
Anyways, the cheating is out of hand and if it was managed anything like these forums are now it'd probably be better. Surprised this thread hasn't be hammered shut already just for TALKING about bots.
There was so many modifications at the NCsoft West nowadays. Yes there was layoffs in April of this year, but NC also did hire more new employees as I did read and in their job sections they recruit still many new employees.
But we sadly don't know what is going in the background. Maybe NC works some bigger service projects who knows.
1Peri1 the Football/Soccer is an over 120 years old game, but people still play and make more money as never before.
Regardless, how old is a game, just count how much incoming it make. But for this need some services too.
Lineage 2 currently enough good to make much more money as now, if the services would be better in the Anti Cheat section and the Advertising would be better also.
What I notice, that NC bans nowadays the Adena sellers more faster than the Adena farmers.
While the Adena farmers works in really simply way, they operate in a game until its financially to them.
So if they would get regular bans, before they could rebuild their farmer army to send them on higher level farm spots, probably wouldn't be financial to them operate here.
Also sadly, but probably there is still many dumb player who use to buy items or Adena from them after they surprise, that they get hacked some weeks or months later.
Let's ban all botters, servers will die in 2 months and 'legit' players can finally play.
From what I have heard from the non botters, the servers are going to and are anyhow because, they are fed up with the lack of getting rid of the constant spamming of whispers, open chat, and the botting, in all places of the game. It is not that hard to get on the game to go to these places and zap your ban hammer to these players. We have some lazy people who run this game or just do not care. Not to say that rumor of some of their bots are the ones out there and maybe that is why they are not doing their job. So what will be the difference your right. It is sad to see this happen to a game people seem to come back to when they leave it, or the ones who have been playing for 11 years because of their friends, or even because they like the game style. Lately this infested game of what they call bots are running the show, no matter how much adena has been dropped on the ground they are here. Live people cant even make a living with what is dropped here but the game has still catered to the programs to sell it. The honest GM's that do not have your parties out there get on the game not just to give buffs at Fantasy Island but physically play and bring the ban wagon and get rid of these infested pains in the arses couple times a week if you have too. Our blocks are full... Is it not true that level 20s are not suppose to to be able to even whisper or am I mistaken on this?
Yes its a little annoying, that since the new update did release wasn't a real big banhammer. While the new update would target the open field areas, GMs should take care about them much more.
Juji had a promise to us in last year November, that the ban waves starts and it will constant.
What I can say, that from November when was the public bot massacre in Talking Village until to March the ban waves did work well, a lots of bots disappeared.
But since second half of March this progress did stop.
We could read the news, that in April at the NCsoft West was huge reorganization, more employees did lay off, but as I heard also from news more new employee joined to NC staff.
In April I wrote a mail to Juji, did ask him will any effect to Lineage 2 of this reorganization to the Lineage 2. He did answer me, that no.
But did happen more changes and who know how much will happen also and what will their effects.
I`d like to comment what i consider a serious problem in server, and in particular in Guillotine.
As a spoiler, i get items there, but several days ago i was attacked by pks (player killers), which even seems to be managed by bots. The reason why I think like this is the **** that as soon as I get there, no matter if i`m far from where they are (later i`ll explain where they are settled), I am attacked.
These bots are stablished behind the bridge where teleport from clan hall send you, and after using skills which able you the enemy to loose target, they attack again, even if you are pretty far from that bridge.
In addition, it seems that these people who are botting 24 hours a day, wisper me injuring and with rude modes. As proof of this, here is a screen of what they say:
GF = Guillotine Fortress
Whit this, and all this generaliced problem in this server, i really feel no keenness about wasting my money.
Its good now the server for free, but I`m sure there is other ways to earn money getting benefits and keeping the game as before.
Finally, I`d like to add that this bots problem is generally given, as all know, in the whole map (Garden of Genesis, Nornils..and so on). Even in sieges, they don`t bother about just playing. Instead, they settle a bot party at the entrance of Stchuttgard, as a particular example.
They really should implement a "ban first, ask questions later" approach
It would waste them less time to not need to do indepth investigations BEFORE each ban, and instead only spend time investigating who *isn't* botting AFTER banning, since a large # of botters would just make new accounts instead of wasting their time petitioning...
It's pretty easy to spot a majority of bots by eye, you can deal with the consequences afterwards at your own pace.
Except this won't happen, because NCWest *needs* to show that they have a healthy population to NCSoft Korea... Even though everyone knows the truth...
New flash to NCWest: We actually have healthier servers than Korea. One of their more populated servers have had castles taken and held by 2 people...
Your only indication to success should be sales from the store, not # of players.
Now, here is the solution Korean players have come up with to get rid of bots:
Perma red bot killing parties
However, this may also have contribute to their servers' abysmal populations. Kids theses days have no patience to level up the hard way it seems. And the adults who do, have slowly left gaming one by one, as other life priorities take over.
They really should implement a "ban first, ask questions later" approach
So, blind/tired GM can ban you for nothing, and GL talking to outsorsed AION/Gildwars2 new Lineage2 support. Btw, they doing such right now.
But you not playing anymore, looks like, so you don't care about?
All locs crowded by bots, and we must waste our time to report/petition bots instead of playing? ... Weird
So, blind/tired GM can ban you for nothing, and GL talking to outsorsed AION/Gildwars2 new Lineage2 support. Btw, they doing such right now.
But you not playing anymore, looks like, so you don't care about?
All locs crowded by bots, and we must waste our time to report/petition bots instead of playing? ... Weird
Oh I care. But I stopped getting mad about it.
I still report 10s of bots a day, I don't bother to check if they get banned or not anymore.
And don't start about talking to NCSoft support.... even *before* they were outsourced, it felt like I was talking to a robot with no individual thinking whatsoever.
I have reflected my concerns to them about needing players to manually report bots before anything is done and have received conflicting responses from them, some saying they *do* do checks without reports, others saying they require players to report before they can start investigation... I have no idea which is true, but obviously whichever it is, it doesn't work for the real players of the game.
Please on Chronos server, log an unmarked character (unmarked as being a GM). Port to Mon of silence. Port to Greymore. Go to the top of the ramp. Stand there for 2 mins and observe ........PLEASE. Then please go to GF (Old execution grounds) and make one pass through the fortress......PLEASE. Then if you feel inclined, make just one pass through fairy settlement. May take a total of around 10 minutes. Just a simple request to check out the game. Please.
It seems that our "automated friends" are back to other places...
Every single room in Harnak is taken by bots and....it reminds me of the old Catacombs..lol
Off the top of my head the botting grounds are:
- Bloody Swamp
- Giant's Cave
- Harnak's
- Nornil's Cave and surrounding areas (i.e. all the strongholds)
- EG
- Fairy Settlement (both sides)
- Garden of Eva
I haven't been to the higher level stuff yet, so I cannot comment on them...
These are pretty much *every* xp spot except the really endgame stuff.
It's completely ridiculous the bots can bot out in the open with almost no fear of repercussions.
The only time I have noticed that bots log off is the night/morning before weekly maintenance. I guess the bots aren't smart enough to not spam the log in server when it's in maintenance mode... So they switch the bots off before they sleep.
I personally do not comprehend the reasoning behind a person being compelled to bot, but if anyone does, please enlighten me so that we may address the cause instead of the effect, which is people botting.
Off the top of my head the botting grounds are:
- Bloody Swamp
- Giant's Cave
- Harnak's
- Nornil's Cave and surrounding areas (i.e. all the strongholds)
- EG
- Fairy Settlement (both sides)
- Garden of Eva
I haven't been to the higher level stuff yet, so I cannot comment on them...
These are pretty much *every* xp spot except the really endgame stuff.
It's completely ridiculous the bots can bot out in the open with almost no fear of repercussions.
The only time I have noticed that bots log off is the night/morning before weekly maintenance. I guess the bots aren't smart enough to not spam the log in server when it's in maintenance mode... So they switch the bots off before they sleep.
I personally do not comprehend the reasoning behind a person being compelled to bot, but if anyone does, please enlighten me so that we may address the cause instead of the effect, which is people botting.
They not only bot out in the open, they have taken over all XP spots. If you go to Monastery of silence you get killed on the spot. GF is completely full again. Fairies is getting full again. Forget Harnaks! It is really sad after such a good job of clearing them not long ago. I understand that they just make new bots, but they can get banned as well. I don't understand why they aren't.
I talked about Harnak because it was much better before last week, at least during the morning now it's a complete waste of time ... full of bots and PK chars to protect them.
The adena increase in some of these areas is the reason for the botters to come back, sadly.
Just forget about those locs, and don't walk there - because one day Juji will tired of all this complains and go there to make a demonstrative clearing. And your char can be thrown in the jail also. And outsoursed "support team" answered you, after 12 years of playing without boting something like : "we believe it is in the best interest of our service that the account remain permanently closed". Incompetent idlers!
The only time I have noticed that bots log off is the night/morning before weekly maintenance. I guess the bots aren't smart enough to not spam the log in server when it's in maintenance mode... So they switch the bots off before they sleep.
These bot owners are just being on safe side, it is like setting up a list of items to pick up (and not to pick up all from the ground), as GMs put invisible items in the drop and bot still can pick them up and get fast ban.
But while picking invisible item means 100% fast ban, simple login spam during maintenance does not harm at all, at least no one will ban you or draw their attention to you just because of that fact.
But of course it is best to take all measures what you can, against ban .
You know we all know bots are there and the GM's do too... the question we all would like to know is why is nothing being done about it.. Cronos is worse ever that I remember it being. Cutting the drops for people who do not use programs have not worked but, made it hard to make money in the game, and sometimes depressing to play even though we continue to play because we are hoping you will change it back. With this not stopping the use of programs and the farming, why not put back the increase of adena back to what you took from the people? Anyhow back to original question why is the problem not being resolved, it doesn't take much to ban them, I think a few people that I know have mentioned ways to do it and know how. Maybe you should hire them they would even do it free they said and they told you this. :)
You know we all know bots are there and the GM's do too... the question we all would like to know is why is nothing being done about it.. Cronos is worse ever that I remember it being. Cutting the drops for people who do not use programs have not worked but, made it hard to make money in the game, and sometimes depressing to play even though we continue to play because we are hoping you will change it back. With this not stopping the use of programs and the farming, why not put back the increase of adena back to what you took from the people? Anyhow back to original question why is the problem not being resolved, it doesn't take much to ban them, I think a few people that I know have mentioned ways to do it and know how. Maybe you should hire them they would even do it free they said and they told you this. :)
I would do it for free if they gave me the power... or at least a special channel for me to communicate with GMs to inform them of bots... I want to report bots so much, but 90% of the time I don't bother anymore, because I know little to nothing gets done even if I spent 10min documenting each bot group with pics, videos (with commentary) and filing the report... oh yes I do that, when I feel like it (i.e. when I'm bored out of my mind)...
I got an idea on solving the bot problem;
and here it goes.
It's the idea of 'Bot Police!'
For each Clan leader who wins the siege and occupies a castle,
S/he gets the authority to recommend 3 x 'bot Police'
There are many castles in L2, Aden, Giran, Dion, Gludio, Rune, Innadril
...etc.
Once a Month at a set server time, the voting begins.
Each clan leader gets 5 votes but cannot vote for 3 x characters
s/he has recommended(just to be fair) but can only vote
the characters recommended by other clan leaders.
They have 24 hrs to make their vote and after 24 hrs,
10 x 'Bot Police' are appointed and their ID Goes 'BLUE!'
so that s/he stands out from the rest.
A 'Bot Police' is a level 99+ player character that has
the power to Kill without going 'Red' or 'chaotic'
But there is a Rule.
The Bot police approaches A moving and hunting Character
and starts recording.
and says 'Hi' within 10 yards of distance.
If the character doesn't respond in 10 sec by saying something
intelligible, the bot police is allowed to use its full power.
Yes, S/he can kill without any penalty and any character
that gets killed more than 3 times in 1 hr gets 24hr ban from the server.
and any character that gets killed more than 10 times a day
in the same area in this manner gets 1 month ban from the server,
and that character's IP gets sent to GM for the PERMANENT IP-Address-Ban.
As for reward for Bot police, for every 100 kills, s/he gets a potion of vitality 5 hr.
Well, I don't know if my idea is perfect or not, but here it is.
I am sure there are many ways to improve upon this.
I got an idea on solving the bot problem;
and here it goes.
It's the idea of 'Bot Police!'
For each Clan leader who wins the siege and occupies a castle,
S/he gets the authority to recommend 3 x 'bot Police'
There are many castles in L2, Aden, Giran, Dion, Gludio, Rune, Innadril
...etc.
Once a Month at a set server time, the voting begins.
Each clan leader gets 5 votes but cannot vote for 3 x characters
s/he has recommended(just to be fair) but can only vote
the characters recommended by other clan leaders.
They have 24 hrs to make their vote and after 24 hrs,
10 x 'Bot Police' are appointed and their ID Goes 'BLUE!'
so that s/he stands out from the rest.
A 'Bot Police' is a level 99+ player character that has
the power to Kill without going 'Red' or 'chaotic'
But there is a Rule.
The Bot police approaches A moving and hunting Character
and starts recording.
and says 'Hi' within 10 yards of distance.
If the character doesn't respond in 10 sec by saying something
intelligible, the bot police is allowed to use its full power.
Yes, S/he can kill without any penalty and any character
that gets killed more than 3 times in 1 hr gets 24hr ban from the server.
and any character that gets killed more than 10 times a day
in the same area in this manner gets 1 month ban from the server,
and that character's IP gets sent to GM for the PERMANENT IP-Address-Ban.
As for reward for Bot police, for every 100 kills, s/he gets a potion of vitality 5 hr.
Well, I don't know if my idea is perfect or not, but here it is.
I am sure there are many ways to improve upon this.
Feel free to make some suggestions plz.
1) Too easy to script against
2) Silence != bot
3) many top clans *are* the ones who cheat => no bot police
Don't take the easy way out, bots are not instantly recognised all the time. As I mentioned above, I take my time observing, and noting all the bot behaviours, if they pass a threshold I report them.
*if* the bots I report get banned eventually, the 10min I spent getting a party of 7 bot group banned is worth it... That's a big *if* I know...
No I am not employed by NCSoft. No NCSoft did not request for such 'service' from me.
We always hear comments like 'NCSoft do not ban bots' or 'reporting bots are useless'. I was unsure whether to believe this, so toward the end of last year I decided to run an ongoing test. The game is full of bots, but I picked a solo one in an 81-85 region (because I level many Sub-R alts there). I have submitted at least 3 or 4 detailed tickets over a span of about 8 months, and to-date all my petitions have proven ineffective. Investigations on one bot pending 8 months? Come on. Since the bot is still at-large at the same spot (and all conscious officials or players alike should be able to tell it is running on an external program), either the outcome of their investigations favour this illegal player, or simply no one in NC Administration is bothered to truly investigate and shelved the matter. NC : Specific names/request nos. will not be posted here, this post itself is not intended to constitute a petition. I hope to read the feedback of fellow players in open forum, on the way you have handled the issue.
The reported bot is a singular awakened dagger dwarf in immortal, placed to farm gold at a very widely-used 81-85 region. It is not part of a bot-train. It kills & picks, it has no accompanying picker. Nothing special about this bot, just 1 out of thousands on Chronos. The point is I gave all the specifics and even followed-up on my initial complaint, and this bot with the same name is still at the same location for 8 months (if not longer). A banned bot may just be replaced by another bot, but at least I know action was taken on the initial one I reported. It has obviously garnered so much gold for its player by now.
Yes I know the game is no longer subsciption-based. L2Store = Get Out of Jail Free card?
Request #XXXXXX
________________
May 21, 04:45
Greetings,
Thank you for your follow-up response. Players that have been reported for potential violations of the User Agreement will be investigated thoroughly. Please be aware that investigations may take some time as we gather the necessary information.
Yeah 8 Months 1 Bot. Which part of the matrix are u having problem hacking Neo
For privacy reasons, we are not able to provide specific information about what action is taken in response to this report.
Why would any player need to know the specifics?!! What are you talking about?! It-is-still-there, I can target it every day! Means it's not banned and still botting- is there any other appropriate action for BOTTING other than banning?
Please do not reply back to this response as these tickets are no longer monitored, past this point. If you still require our assistance, please submit a new ticket.
Submitted 3-4 tickets on separate occasions from different accounts
Status : Unresolved
I gotta say, I used to just shrug these posts off 'till I rerolled my dual class and can't find a spot to xp at 85. Harnak seemed best cuz high lvl wartags can't gank but EVERY room was botted. Today I will pk and see if they just come back till I find a grp that doesn't. So ya, new players won't stick around.
What you can do: Tie the issue to Ncsoft, not L2. Ncsoft has many other products including Blade & Soul which will eventually be ported to the US.
Use the real media, not these forums. There are plenty of established web sites that get a lot more viewership. When you see posts about Ncsoft products make sure to discourage people who do not accept this type of behavior from a company.
Any review or commentary, whether it be video, chat, or post, make sure to add in your 2 cents about how Ncsoft treats it's game and customers.
What you can't do. Reporting the issue in game or posting about it here won't get you anywhere. Your NOT going to change these issues which has been around for so many years.
Lineage 2 would be a great game if there wasn't rampant cheating, instead it's a decent game. For some reason people like cheating at hard games. They don't want easy games. They don't want actual hard games. They want to enter a cheat code to make a hard game easier (and are willing to pay!). Human nature, have fun!
I have said this a billion times to the whole bot discussion. The main reason there are so many bots is that IF they happen to be banned, they create new accounts and bot those up in no time. No one is actually IP banned anymore because of internet cafes and such.
Do I think NC could manage the problem better? Absolutely. However how much do you think they are going to spend on support for an eleven year old game? Let's be realistic here. Let's not forget it's Korean based and not even advertised anywhere in the USA.
Anyways, the cheating is out of hand and if it was managed anything like these forums are now it'd probably be better. Surprised this thread hasn't be hammered shut already just for TALKING about bots.
Yep,this is like the 058324584305340th post about bots and such.
Bots will never be banned forever. Just deal with it guys.
Yeah,GMs may totaly manage them better,but they just don't care. They log once every while and ban a few-random bots just to make people happy,and this is most likely to happen when we're close to a new patch (as it happened in the few weeks before I.O.)..
The real deal would be actually striking and banning ALL the know botters from servers (not the one botting in MOS,who just care about MOS?) who actually ruin ur real game everyday at end-game.
But ehy,who cares? The bot plague actually ruined and killed the server (no new players are gonna play in our server since you have NO WAY to get some adenas and NO WAY to exp after 61+ since WOA/varka/ketra are TOTALY OVERFLOWED with bots) but as far as the pros 99+ keep wasting tooooonz of $$$ in the shop,everyone is happy.beside the casual and not-willing-to-pay players.**** those players.
I believe there are 2 main reasons the bots have and always will override the game.
#1 It would take 100's even 1,000's of man hours ($paid employee hours to prevent the constant cheating) You would be fighting against determined people including companies dedicated to exploiting and adena selling. It just won't happen.
#2 Why Paid Employees? There where some disputes and legal issues over some banned accounts a long time ago. It changed some of Ncsofts policies. It means while you see obvious cheating everywhere they need to document each case with proof to defend themselves should it be necessary.
I was able to get several accounts banned in the past, one notably stands out, but it's rarely ever worth doing.
So what did it take? Use the report button...done? Send an E-mail....?
This is what it actually took. Over 100 complaints, multiple people reporting, several months of effort, multiple attempts to contact GM's, several calls to Ncsoft, tons of E-mails, and support tickets. (Which even back then...they where "Not supposed to deal with in game issues or be aware of any problems).
Was it worth it? Kind of. This was a botter in nova who consistently tried to control one of the best solo play areas in game.
Laughably he claimed to have server transferred, but I did receive an actual confirmed GM response.
From Ncsofts standpoint it's probably just not a good investment at this point. This isn't an issue of removing a few accounts. They would have to investigate and ban 1,000's of accounts on a monthly basis (which with free to play could easily be 10,000).
And for what? To have an older game that not many would play anyway.
The Bot issue is nearly the same as GPotatoes ha ck problems. Farmers got access to the Rappelz database and constantly logged into people accounts 24/7 stripped them and sold the items.
They tried to "Group all the Hacked" posts into one thread .... sound familiar?
They constantly made bland statements that it would be fixed and against their policies to conduct such activity (they only admitted it after 2 years of constant hacking, many players hacked multiple times)
They where slow in resolving the issues and where never able to keep up with the farmers.
Even the reason for the issue is the same: Farmers are more motivated and will do anything to keep their business running. To the Game Company meh, we'll spend our time making other products, and running promos.
FYI: My problem was different from the Admins. When I got to my first higher lvl quest dungeon, I couldn't find a single REAL PLAYER, and somehow they can't find the bots QQ (Every single room was filled with bot parties)
Hellen Keller turned to me and said....I think there is something wrong here.
The Bot issue is nearly the same as GPotatoes ha ck problems. Farmers got access to the Rappelz database and constantly logged into people accounts 24/7 stripped them and sold the items.
They tried to "Group all the Hacked" posts into one thread .... sound familiar?
They constantly made bland statements that it would be fixed and against their policies to conduct such activity (they only admitted it after 2 years of constant hacking, many players hacked multiple times)
They where slow in resolving the issues and where never able to keep up with the farmers.
Even the reason for the issue is the same: Farmers are more motivated and will do anything to keep their business running. To the Game Company meh, we'll spend our time making other products, and running promos.
FYI: My problem was different from the Admins. When I got to my first higher lvl quest dungeon, I couldn't find a single REAL PLAYER, and somehow they can't find the bots QQ (Every single room was filled with bot parties)
Hellen Keller turned to me and said....I think there is something wrong here.
I moved this post into the existing bot thread, since that's what you were talking about here.
Kinda sad though.......Trolling the forums looking for posts about the issue instead of being in that dungeon (with full bot parties in every room, it's just sad the handling of the issue, and probably the real reason it exists)
And before anyone resorts to..... use this procedure..... blah blah....
I am expert in this............ let me refer back to this.........
This is what it actually took. Over 100 complaints, multiple people reporting, several months of effort, multiple attempts to contact GM's, several calls to Ncsoft, tons of E-mails, and support tickets. (Which even back then...they where "Not supposed to deal with in game issues or be aware of any problems).
That was to get one bot group removed. (While the entire Island was full of bots -- and reported)
Ncsoft said the same thing back then too ;) Blah Blah use the report button
That was with PAID accounts, imagine how worthless it is to get today's farmers free accounts banned :)
Trolling the forums looking for posts about the issue
is exactly what my job is.
And although I'd love to do this:
instead of being in that dungeon (with full bot parties in every room, it's just sad the handling of the issue, and probably the real reason it exists)
it's handled by a different team. If you'll allow a bad analogy it's a bit like asking the accountant at Coca-Cola to fix the flavor of New Coke.
Mr. Casey I would like to tell you or if you would like, take notice about the bot issue. The player base is desperate.
And complaining makes them feel better. I know better so I've stopped long ago.
A lot of people like myself tell the players that, they have no idea how NC works. To just stop, and enjoy the game, or leave and have a different game experience with an another company.
So therefore players use the profanity. It doesn't help, but they do feel better. Do not take that away from them.
Based on the energetic job that that BusterCasey is doing on the forums- I wish he/she could be transferred to a position in charge of bot removal or even banning those toons constantly spamming adena for sale. We might actually get some results that we could detect.
Also, I must say that BusterCasey clown avatar scares the heck out of me- could you imagine a gm looking like that showing up next to your to question you about potential botting activities? It would scare you out of the game!
But seriously, the most disappointing aspect of the dang bots is: Prior to a major update- NCSoft can and does ban the bots or at least scare them so much the don't show up. Also, when R Gems were on sale in the NC store - EG didn't have any bots (about the only place for a dwarf spoiler to get the R gems). So I know that they can keep the game clean- just for some reason they let down after an update. Then the people that don't care about rules, cheat all the rest of us out of the means to obtain gear/funds available for the end game. I just don't understand why NCSoft wont take lead in the industry and eliminate the cheaters. They can but just don't.
P.S. yes I commented on a moderator- but please don't close this- it was meant as a complement.
It's handled by a different team. If you'll allow a bad analogy it's a bit like asking the accountant at Coca-Cola to fix the flavor of New Coke.
The point stands correct. The "Way" Ncsoft has Handled the issue. Other games don't have this issue. They spent time legally fighting and tracking down private servers, but not as much action against companies selling bot software.
The lack of effort seeped into the game long ago. There was NEVER any reasonable effort to stop this even when every account had to be paid for.
The fact that is took months of effort to get a single bot group banned is inexcusable.
It's the players fault as well. (At least party, MOST players did NOT participate in this type of activity). However, as it became a lost cause years ago more and more cheating became part of normal game play.
Ncsoft's lack of effort helped remove legitimate players and turned many legitimate players into cheaters. They simply got fed up with fighting it and joined in.
There is an issue of "Trumped by Reality"
While bots have been removed over the years, the fact has always remained, the system is ineffective. Telling someone to "use the report button" is a necessity, but at the same time Reality Proves NCsoft is not capable and/or willing to do anything.
When I see an entire dungeon of 100% bots, no words are really necessary by moderators, admin, staff.
Reality speaks for it's self. NCSoft is a failure.
Spend an entertaining half hour on Talking Island and watch the swarms of dark elves running about mindlessly. Stop your overblown RMT guys.
I don't really care about the lvl 1-85 bots. It takes a bot 3-5 days (fully automated scripts) to get 1-85. So banning them anywhere before lvl 85 is just playing cat and mouse as cheaters can always make more accounts using automated software.
What would really do it is: if you ban the high levels, people will be scared to even do it in the first place.
Make a log of the cheaters, let them simmer in glory for a short while, maybe even let them buy the NCCoin stuff, then bam, banned.
I have made this suggestion before, and I will make it again:
Don't even bother with most of the players on the server, just focus on the top players, track their interactions, and punish any illegit behaviour. I can guarantee you that you'll can ban a large # of them. You need to show cheaters, that they'll never get to the top, that will remove the motivation for cheating. If they want to cheat and stay mediocre... let them, they're not affecting the grand scheme of things anyway.
The Automated quests walk you through several areas. When you reach around 70 those quests direct to wall of Argos and Silenos as the correct quests and locations for those levels.
That is when newer players are faced with the real horrors of botting. They would port to those Areas as instructed, (Given arrows to them and quests) where they first encounter quests they can't even do.
That is probably one of the main reasons so many mentee's "Mysteriously" leave once they reach the 70's.
The correct path is Stakato/Forest of dead instead.
I understand your point though and how it's more significant to ban higher level bots, but it would require a little more.
FYI: This is in the control Panel for my own Online Rpg
Interval between posts. Within the selected period the user will be unable to post a new message.
No online Game or Chat Room should ever exist without some type of policy like this. (Lineage II had almost no chat restrictions for many years)
It allows you to set the length of time before sending new messages.
(As a welcome back to L2 the first thing I encountered upon log in was spam scripts selling Adena) It gives a very bad impression to new users. Especially those who are familiar with other games with this type of issue. In most games I wouldn't stay 30 minutes after that if I didn't log out immediately. It's a sign of major issues (Has any game ever had this type of issue and resolved it?) I don't recall any of them ever fixing it.
I have made this suggestion before, and I will make it again:
Don't even bother with most of the players on the server, just focus on the top players, track their interactions, and punish any illegit behaviour. I can guarantee you that you'll can ban a large # of them. You need to show cheaters, that they'll never get to the top, that will remove the motivation for cheating. If they want to cheat and stay mediocre... let them, they're not affecting the grand scheme of things anyway.
Never happen, because ~80% of NCWest $ from those "players". But from other side I know, they doing this from time to time and looks like method based on "mighty" korean random, or drunk GMs, or very stupid script, because legits are also "affected".
I guess buster has been hired because the playerbase of this awesome game has dropped so much due to imo the negative forum posts AND the grossly understood problems of bots, scripts, cheats, hackz, program use and rmt.
I dont knock the players, I always have knocked the people responsible for enforcement.
I dont find Buster a problem, wish more employees did their JOB.
but its obvious something is wrong with so many legit players quitting over the last couple years, and most of my friends who quit wasnt due to getting banned :) It was unfair competition/rulez not enforced.
Stop RMTing, and also, tell your friends to stop RMTing.
There is an issue with "Blaming it on the players who cheat/RTM"
Originally almost everyone was legitimate. Players that where known to be cheaters got PK'd, they where not allowed in larger clans, and where generally hassled by the community.
As the cheating continued because of NCsofts lack of response it began to grow. People knew you "could" be banned, but the chances where extremely low and it would probably be months or years, if it even happened.
Over time the legitimate players begin to give up. They had to fight for spots, PVP became dishonorable (most old legit players had respect for players and the game)
You couldn't do AOE in catacombs due to all the bots. The market was impacted and botting went viral.
So now there is rampant cheating everywhere because that is the standard for this game. All those legit players left, and what was left behind was mostly just trash.
With the Free to Play model change, it brought in new players. I would suspect the same exact situation happened though.
Massive cheating only leaves room for a few hardcore players and a lot of trash. Sadly that's all L2 will probably ever have to offer at this point.
Based on the energetic job that that BusterCasey is doing on the forums- I wish he/she could be transferred to a position in charge of bot removal or even banning those toons constantly spamming adena for sale. We might actually get some results that we could detect.
I do respect Buster's enthusiasm and activity level here in the forums, as it's the best we've seen around here in a long time. Probably too late. I think for forums, he may be a bit too sensitive, which is what makes it hard to like his actions for a lot of us. But, if he could take this same enthusiasm and self motivation to the game as a bot banner, then I would agree he'd be useful and have a point to his very existence with NC West. Forum mod is cute....it's nice to have some power. But in game is where we really need someone of this caliber.
I do respect Buster's enthusiasm and activity level here in the forums, as it's the best we've seen around here in a long time. Probably too late. I think for forums, he may be a bit too sensitive, which is what makes it hard to like his actions for a lot of us. But, if he could take this same enthusiasm and self motivation to the game as a bot banner, then I would agree he'd be useful and have a point to his very existence with NC West. Forum mod is cute....it's nice to have some power. But in game is where we really need someone of this caliber.
From what it seems Buster is getting a taste of what we (real players) encounter every day. We wake up, log in, go to our quest areas and well......what do ya know, bots are still there. Buster wakes up, punches the clock, goes to his office, and well........ what do ya know, bot spammers have jacked up the forums again. Get used to it Buster.............they never give up.
Do you want to stop the bots?
Stop buying adenas from these third party sites.
While there people buying adenas from those guys, we will see bots farming them...
Do you want to buy adenas? Sell Ncoins, its easy and legal.
Have you thought about it the other way around?
The server used to be mostly legits.
As botting grew out of control, and botting became one of the few avenues to being a "Top" player, more and more people gave up on their morals and did the same thing.
Adena was never an issue before, why? Because people crafted items; people quested for recipes and parts; people fought for control over limited resources (i.e. boss jewels).
Now, many of those avenues have been shut down, crafting? lol, maybe for R99, it's not worth the time crafting for anything lower most of the time. Quest for recipes and parts? Lol, what quests? Raids? Nope, drops are all nerfed to smithereens.
So now, after so many years of bots running around unchallenged, the server economy has accrued a *massive* amount of adena that is disproportional to the server's actual population. So prices are bound to be higher what can be afforded by natural accumulation of adena via quests/hunting, unless you're lucky with drops.
Summary: Bots created the inflation that made players resort to RMT to afford *basic* equipment.
Notice how adena spammers are selling adena for something like $7 for 220m? My salary is way above $7/hr, let's say I make $28/hr. That means unless I can farm 880m adena in 1hr, it's more beneficial for me to buy that adena.... That also implies that the botting population can *SUSTAIN* that demand, i.e. 880m/hr, or they'll be unprofitable... I can only imagine getting 880m/hr by having more than a few bot trains running at high levels.... That is only for 1 bot owner, now imagine a handful of them forming a company, then imagine more than a few companies... that's hundreds, if more than a thousand bots, on servers with only a few thousand online players at any given moment...
Now, the top players are not all bad apples. Some may have even only committed minor offences (buying a couple hundred mil of adena, which is nothing theses days apparantly). But if you can punish those top people, appropriately:
- buying adena => remove purchased adena x 2, if adena on hand is insufficient... negative adena? lol, this may be a good time to introduce bank loans? :P
- Botting => Remove all the xp/sp/adena/drops(or their equivalent value in adena) gained by botting x 2. If the person botted non-stop from lvl 1, just ban it.
- Pvp scripting => 1st occurrence: 7 day ban, you can petition against this, if successful you'll lose the 1st time mark. 2nd occurrence: perma ban, no petition is allowed (unless 1st occurrence petition was successful, in which case a 7 day ban instead). 3rd occurrence (if 1st occurrence petition was successful): perma ban, no more excuses.
This way people will know that cheating will not get you to the top, which is the original reason why people cheat: they want to have a shot at being the best.
Stop RMTing, and also, tell your friends to stop RMTing.
First you have to understand most of the bots in this game are not there for RMT....it is the active playerbase that runs bot trains to feed their main character. They get to pretend they are legit as they get geared up from the bot trains... There are thousands of bots in this nearly dead game, and because of the cash shop you really don't need to buy adena from that idiot who sell adena from his webpage...
So thousands of bots...you think 1 guy is running them to sell adena lol? Try most of the top players each have their own bot train to feed their mains gear/adena etc....
But sadly NCSOFT puts more effort into policing the message boards than they do the actual game, and you get silly excuses like "bot control is another department sorry.... I mean what on earth company says hey we know there are bots all over please report them oh btw you can only report 8 times....for the thousands of bots hahaha. I mean it is so obvious what is going on and has always gone on. No wonder most every high player is a cheater...you either cheat or you get owned. So most people quit, and the few left are all a pile of cheaters....funny thing about cheaters too they are like liars after a while they don;t even realize they are cheating anymore. but ya jo blow has 45billion adena to trade for abundance oh and honest he got it legit they all did playing the market don't ya know! Do the math anyone on how many years a player has to play to make 1 billion adena let alone 45.... Do experiment track how much adena you make going from level 98-99 or level 99-100....i done it with drops.... oh and it takes months to get to level 99-100 you will make -64 million..... YES MINUS you actually use more adena in shots than you get from drops...that was with 100% drop boost from destiny pack too lol.
I know some career liar who thinks everyone is gullable will come here explain how he has 45 level 85+ accounts and every day for the last 9 years has has logged in to do the oly on all his accounts and like after all that he used his marks to buy 50 thousand items with his marks to make 1 zillion adnea, and how everyone else is just a crybaby and wants the game easy and how he is a true warrior and earned it....which they did with those 5 bot trains they keep running 2/47...but they think everyone is stupid and gullible and it feeds into the ego i am better than you you are just weak and cry alot. you cheat we know it basic math and testing by the few players who REALLY do play the game confirm how much horsehit you are full off lol.
Do you want to stop the bots?
Stop buying adenas from these third party sites.
While there people buying adenas from those guys, we will see bots farming them...
Do you want to buy adenas? Sell Ncoins, its easy and legal.
Again guy 99% of the bots are not being ran by adena sellers lol. They are run by the top players who use the bots to feed their mains so they can pretend they are legit and better than you.
I got 390 billion worth of gear, you are just a cry baby and don;t know how to play this gamE! I played the market i am so smart, i ran xxx quest 40 billion times with 90 thousand accounts it is easy you just are bad.
walk around man there are like easily 30 bots for every real player...it aint the one lone adena seller left in this game running 2000 bots lol.
But sadly NCSOFT puts more effort into policing the message boards than they do the actual game, and you get silly excuses like "bot control is another department sorry....
I remember when the person who ran that other department was active on the forums.
I doubt if someone buying adena from those spammers in town, it's so stupid even for newbie players. Gift system, which many players asked for years, imo almost killed adena RMT segment, and all those spammers shouts, looks like agony. But rare items affected by RMT still, I think. And this is direct responsibility of NCWest to manage this. Fighting spammers in towns it's like fighting windmill. The biggest problem as was mentioned above, a huge anount of players who running bot trains for themselves. They make very big damage to NCWest business. From one side they don't need to buy NCCoins, because they use botted adena to buy any items from NCStore, from other side, because of huge income every day, they pretend to be a top (best) players, and many legits (who buy NCCoins) just quit crowded by bots servers.
Solution just one - more competent gms in game, more staff involved in bot problem, and more radical actions to violators. It's takes $ but not spending money to protect your business, your'll lost it very fast.
Also, NA Lineage2 need advertising also. But only when bot problem will be managed to suitable level atleast.
I leave the game 6 months ago due to only software pvp can win in this game, I log today and read some posts from new Community Manager and he take some actions to prevent people talking about bots.
The developers take any actions to stop automated PvP to allow people who use hands to play to be a competitive players or the game still the same?
Based on old community managers who use the same tatic, I think the game still the same...
Thanks folks"
Colorado, Chronos - The legendary healer who play this game with ten fingers.
From a Standpoint of joining the game recently, there are no players in this game. I mean literally almost no one is playing this game.
The Seed was full of bot parties one after another, the Garden, MOS, Argos, Silenos, from high level to low. Every now and then I came across a live player outside of town in solo areas, but it's a shallow experience.
Sure, you could claim there are higher players partying, people in town, there are shouts, but it's a small handful. This game is destroyed by bots.
It's a shame because it's still better game play than Echo of Souls, Cabal 2 and games released today.
Ncsoft would have better off shutting the game down and not leaving this disgrace to stain their company reputation.
From a Standpoint of joining the game recently, there are no players in this game. I mean literally almost no one is playing this game.
The Seed was full of bot parties one after another, the Garden, MOS, Argos, Silenos, from high level to low. Every now and then I came across a live player outside of town in solo areas, but it's a shallow experience.
Sure, you could claim there are higher players partying, people in town, there are shouts, but it's a small handful. This game is destroyed by bots.
It's a shame because it's still better game play than Echo of Souls, Cabal 2 and games released today.
Ncsoft would have better off shutting the game down and not leaving this disgrace to stain their company reputation.
Thanks for info, I'll still out of game after read this.
sometimes i really wonder what people consider actual "bots" in this game and what the definition of "boting" is since i see constantly the same scripted players online in the same spots when i go solo-grinding and spoiling with my character. i don't understand what you mean with "bots" and "bot banns" since it's always the same and nothing changes! constantly the same anoying adds with adena sales, constantly the same scripted players doing the same zones as CP's . are macro's considered boting too !?!? is scripting a pt of 7 ppl to farm certain areas considered boting or not!?!? i mean you really have to go to the very core of the meaning of the word to find a real solution since you also have solo-grinders like me who like to play most of the time alone and do instances with random pt's . it sometimes feels like the entire hate against bots gets smashed into our heads (solo-grinders) instead while you keep on seeing new 'hero' shouts once every 2-3 minutes. now the altar quest (among the only few adena quests) is also locked down and destroyed . who benefits from this? again bots and the ones who scripted them . who loses again? the player base who's trying to farm / spoil and gain adena while at the same time gettins spammed constantly to buy adena until even your block-list gets so over-saturated with blocked names. is this what's become of this beautiful game? are people really going to destroy this game just so they can sell adena and take all adena farming spots!?!? honestly at least the game developers could finally make a real guide for the real legit ones on how to make adena, level up and get your gear avoiding buying adena or kissing someone's *** for it. not as if anyone cares or does something about it since it's more a business (for getting that shinny weapon and shinny armor) than a game but thank you for reading!!!
(video showing a bot party non stop in raiders crossroads)
So, here I come and the haterz will say: "OMG leave with it" ; "QQ more"... Those are prolly the ones buying adena somewhere on the internet to these companies (which some belong to our dear ncsoft).
One thing is you see bots farming on their daily and you just care but you do nothing against them(maybe u pk some but nothing else). Another thing that I find a LIL bit different is : you see bots, you do 5 different tickets about those bots, you take screenshots, you send them to the hard working gms, YOU RECORD VIDEOS and you send them to the same gms and you get those kind of automated replies to your tickets saying: "Thank you for your concern" or "we take this reports very seriously" or "we are investigating the suspects". LIES! I sent them the video and not even 1 visualization was made by them.
And we can see how much they care: I made the 1st report 1 week ago. I log and there is the same bot party shown in the video doing the night shift ( because the day one is assured by the same company toons but farming manually).
Now if I wasn't a customer that pays, I kinda wouldnt expect they would give a **** bout me. But I do pay. And I'm not speaking singularly. Many people are in the same situation, I believe.
Well not another cent from me! You can count on that! If everyone would do the same, they would either adopt another philosophy or shut this game for once.
1. high lvl BOT will not let you farm becouse theyr higher dmg on mobs you will not be able to claim the loot frome your ataked mob.
2. they ar parrasites makeing lag makeing adena end sellit for $ ( you shod sue them !).
I Suggest you developer a verry good Anti-Bot sowftoer and updateit weak by weak.
Tnx for your attention and i hope the securrity department will make this project .
LOVE and PEACE ! :)
1. high lvl BOT will not let you farm becouse theyr higher dmg on mobs you will not be able to claim the loot frome your ataked mob.
2. they ar parrasites makeing lag makeing adena end sellit for $ ( you shod sue them !).
I Suggest you developer a verry good Anti-Bot sowftoer and updateit weak by weak.
Tnx for your attention and i hope the securrity department will make this project .
LOVE and PEACE ! :)
Been this way since C1 and it will not change. Also, using such programs in the United States to monitor a PC is illegal as it violates the privacy protection act; it would be considered a root-kit.
GameGuard is already a rootkit. The NA version however, has most of it's functionality (keylog protection, known cheat software detection...etc.) disabled to comply with international privacy laws. But it's still a rootkit embeded in your system, that does nothing but cause problems.
Memory scanning bot protection is weak. It's easily bypassable by simply changing the signatures of your cheat, the cheat maker will almost always win the cat and mouse game...
The best method is by means of heuristics, having the server automatically detect potential bot behaviour and either inform GMs of it, or ban on the spot.
A few heuristics I can think of, and also use to determine bots:
Inhuman *active* online time: if character is online actively (moving around, fighting...etc) for more than X hrs (I'd say 20hrs is a good start)
Inhuman reaction times: human reaction times are 100ms or more. Ofcourse we sometimes get lucky, or even train it to be lower; some people can get it down very low, if they can anticipate things, but it will not be consistently low. If server can detect bot reaction times are inhuman, consistently low, or even just smack on consistent (it's always 100ms), that's a good indication of bot behaviour. Even if bots get programmed to a more human-like reaction, it's a win for legit players, especially against PvP scripts.
Lots of bots do not include the full geodata of L2, they tend to walk into things alot... The game client actually has path finding implemented (not perfect but it's there), but bots do not. Server can detect the frequency a character runs into things, and flag them for GMs to look at.
This is a questionable one, but almost all legits use soulshot/spiritshots... flag any player who isn't using ss for prolonged periods of time.... At least make bots less profitable if they're forced to use SS to appear less bot-like. Exceptions: iss buffs (to account for buffpets), heals.
Inhuman autofollow. Bots do not auto follow like normal players do. Instead of being "dragged" by the person you're following, bots will actually move directly towards the destination of whoever it is following. This is especially apparent when the leader of the bot group is a slower character than it's members (e.g. orc leading a bunch of elves), it's members will move ahead of the leader and arrive before the leader.
Patterns. Some bots follow patterns to a t. A good example are the elemental stone farmers in SoA: They always move in the same direction, they have exactly the same waypoints coordinates, they will move towards the closest energy seed even when logically they wouldn't see one spawn (e.g. behind opaque obstables, right behind it as it runs off). From this a good heuristic may be to detect how many times a character hits EXACTLY the same coordinate within a time span. This would hinder almost all quest-based bots as well.
There are definitely more, but from experience, NCSoft (at least NA division) will not give a rat's ***.
So I hope at least players themselves can use this to help distinguish bots.
but from experience, NCSoft (at least NA division) will not give a rat's ***.
This.
Quite why they don't care seems to me thus far to be more complex issue.
It will be money, it always is, but quite how allowing bots creates more income for NCSoft I have yet to fathom.
I am not done thinking on the subject, nor have I returned to this game for long enough to observe as much as I need. However from what I have seen so far:
1. A developer cannot, will not (and should not) put a game out there for "free". It's a product, and as consumers of that product we must (and should) pay for that work.
2. Following directly from 1. If it is not "pay to play" then it has to derive income other ways. Simplistically with a shop it is "pay to win" (or at least compete).
3. On the face of it, the money anyone sends to the RMT guys, does not end up at NCsoft in any way. (I'm suspicious by nature, but the idea that NCSoft owns those RMT's borders on paranoia even for me).
4. A large proportion of the botting isn't even RMT it is "top" players supporting their mains with botting. Exactly what proportion I couldn't yet guess.
5. The quests and (boosted) xp is confined to specific areas of the game, this bottlenecks all the bots and any legitimate players into the same areas. (nobody much xp's in say ToI any more, but that's only an example, there are plenty of other places).
6. XP is hard to come by and one of the main sources of income for NCSoft must be the various methods sold to boost it.
The first thought I have from the above is that if xp and its acquisition is harder, then people will be more likely to pay for it the harder it is to get. So if the areas with the most xp are full of bots you are more likely to pay to get that xp because you cannot get it with the normal grind. There are probably other reasons, but that to me is the most obvious.
So the short answer for xp is: Selling products that increase xp gain is a major part of NCSofts income, if getting that xp without buying those products is made harder (by bots) so much the better.
The second thing people want is adena, so if we assume that (3 above) RMT isn't going to NCSoft, the question arises why then do they not simply put a straight trade of dollars for adena in their own shop instead of putting items that people then sell for adena? The only answer I can yet imagine is that they want to "appear" as if they were not doing that. Or perhaps some economist can point out more clearly than I that such a direct injection of adena from nowhere would merely create inflation.
The end result though, is that I personally refuse to pay anything at all, whilst I have to put up with bots (and RMT spam) that are not being actively fought in any meaningful way. It is not that I wouldn't pay, as mentioned above I believe I (and everyone else) should contribute something, it is that I won't pay in principle whilst they allow this mockery to continue.
All of which, for me, will prove ultimately pointless, since I will simply chalk it up to experience (ha xp :P) and go and spend my time on something else.
Without seeing the inside information, conversations, meetings, etc it's difficult to determine exactly why things occurred. It's an issue that has been going on for years and the choices back then determined what is here today.
When L2 started there where a lot of farmers, sometimes with rotating shifts to play nearly 24/7 in a lot of areas. Banning these accounts was more difficult because they where manned by people (at least for a majority of the time.) Many may not have even been using automated software, but they where still farming to sell on 3rd party websites.
A few chronicles in automated software started replacing the farmers and some players. This was never dealt with properly and is a major neglect for many companies.
In order to be effective the process needs to be immediate and have a lot of manpower behind it. One of the issues that seemed to arise is proper documentation of every offender. The method for correctly identifying and dealing with this issue was never efficient.
When it became well known there was mass cheating and it would take months, years, or you may never get banned it was open season.
So who did an amazing job? The amazing job was done by the Farmers and 3rd Party Websites. While they may be in violation, and doing the wrong thing on many levels including many copy right infringements, their UNSTOPPABLE MOTIVATION destroyed Ncsoft.
They delivered in games sales immediately around the clock, the advertised constantly both inside/outside the game. They even run Google Paid advertisements.
They updated their software immediately whenever patches came out to prevent their software. The truth is they where motivated by money and got whatever done they needed to, and ran everything.
Meanwhile NCSoft sat around with hands tied, few employees, and no real motivation to solve the issue.
Is it is a money issue. However, the old...I have no supporting data or statistics, but NCsoft makes more money of the bots opinion was merely pulled directly out of someones ****** and regurgitated repeatedly. It was a line used in the past a lot.
It did a reach point though where they probably would have had to ban over 50% of their paid accounts at one point.
Today if they banned everyone who cheated or bought from 3rd party sites they would probably lose over 98% of the accounts.
I saw some of the old clan members lists from when I played years ago. All completely offline. All of them sick of the botting for years in the past. I'm still in contact with some and it's the reason they refuse to play.
I tried to return to L2, but I just don't think I can do it. They did an excellent job revamping the starting areas with quests, visuals, a faster pace etc, but it's unplayable in it's current state.
I resolved the issue myself though, I left the game I was trying really hard to play, spent $60 on Diablo 3, and haven't looked back since. You know it's a failure when your own customers are trying hard to use your product, but they just can't. I see no future for L2.
I see no future for L2.
What a shame, it was a beautiful game at the outset, unbelievably large world you could do almost anything in. Now, something else. Sad.
The day NCSoft West does something against "Bots" and "Scripts" will be the death of lineage....not.
Lineage 2 could be an amazing game, we know its a grind fest, but now it's just a money dump and NCSoft West knows it. They will continue to milk all the players and RMT players.
One day (when L2 closes), we will have a GM that plays, that removes bots on a weekly bases, that actually gives a rat's *** about L2. Until then Play or ignore.
Memory scanning bot protection is weak. It's easily bypassable by simply changing the signatures of your cheat, the cheat maker will almost always win the cat and mouse game...
Weak? I bet it does not exist at all. I have never seen any "signature"-based detection of any popular bots since 2009(at least 5 of them, 99% of bots using all the same software through years). The only problem is protocol changes once per game chronicles update, you need 1 min(or few days) to fix this (depends what bot this person use).
I would call it "lion and half-dead mouse" game :D:p
Here are two great ideas that not only will help but am pretty sure
they will solve the bot problem once and for all.
1. Have an active GM in 24 hours base daily - probably a shift
every 6-8 hours.
2. Prohibit the bot advertisements and you close their bussness.
By closing their bussness they have no reason to exist.
Now you will ask me how they (The developing team) will do that?
It is very simple. In game there is a sensorship so if someone says
a bad word for example its being replaced by *** They can
do the same with any advertising in all channels , party room and
privet shops. So if someone use the phrase for example:
110m = 3USD.
With the sensorship will become just *** so if they can not pm
their bussness they can not shoot it they can not put it in party
room and they can not put it in privet shops you close their
bussness. And BOT problem solved there you go!
I ask players who are against bots to vote in favor of my ideas,
we need as many votes as we can get. More votes more chances
those two ideas have to be implemented.
PS FOR PLAYERS: please do not use this thread for more ideas or
describing your opinions about it, thank you kindly
PS FOR ADMINS: If u dont know how to do that i give u an idea there is
a function in C that is called char *strstr(const char *haystack, const char *needle)
this function finds the first occurrence of the substring needle in the string haystack.
The terminating '\0' characters are not compared.
1. Have an active GM in 24 hours base daily - probably a shift every 6-8 hours.
They recently fired many of their support staff, and outsourced to asia... What makes you think they'll invest back into this? In fact I'm sure that there are GMs 24/7, but their company policy is crap so nothing gets done. Plus from my own experience, outsourced CS is terrible and they do the *very* bare minimum as required by their contract.
2. Prohibit the bot advertisements and you close their bussness.
By closing their bussness they have no reason to exist.
Now you will ask me how they (The developing team) will do that?
It is very simple. In game there is a sensorship so if someone says
a bad word for example its being replaced by *** They can
do the same with any advertising in all channels , party room and
privet shops. So if someone use the phrase for example:
110m = 3USD.
With the sensorship will become just *** so if they can not pm
their bussness they can not shoot it they can not put it in party
room and they can not put it in privet shops you close their
bussness. And BOT problem solved there you go!You obviously have no idea how chat filtering works. Its *very* easy to juke the filtering system they have in place. They can try to revamp the whole filtering system, but phat chance of that happening. Chat spam filtering is not a trivial problem to solve. Just using your example, if you just put in a filter for "{number}m = {number}USD". It can be easily bypassed by doing something like "110 m = 3 U S D", and we're back to the cat and mouse game of adding more and more filters as adena sellers make different variations of it.
They actually have a decent system to stop it, only 85+ can PM people. The problem is... back to bots, 1-85 is easy for bots to attain, and they probably have 10s of backups incase their chat spammers gets banned.
PS FOR ADMINS: If u dont know how to do that i give u an idea there is
a function in C that is called char *strstr(const char *haystack, const char *needle)
this function finds the first occurrence of the substring needle in the string haystack.
The terminating '\0' characters are not compared.your minimal knowledge of C does not make you a "know how" on this topic, so don't make it seem like you do by flaunting something you can search on google in a couple of seconds.
I'm not trying to make you look bad, but you did not construct your arguments with enough research and facts. Please try again, but with better research and keep in mind the feasibility of your suggestions as well :/ (e.g. telling them to respond instantly to bot reports is completely infeasible)
Great ideas here nice guys(more vitality=2013 event mentor gave 500%vit you dont even want to imagine the situation-2nd evered or a group of team that goes and kill the bots y that worked in the past too and more and more)i dont bot i will not bot (and this is probably i am with 10 mils and no armor at 99 level ) anyway YOU CANT CLOSE A COMPANY THAT HAVE LIKE 150% PROFIT FROM BOTS wake up for **** sake. i was trying to xp my dual at fairies y sure go find a spot R.I.P xp i was lucky enough to hit 10 mobs per 10 minutes you think that some1 cares about bots?really you guys you think nc soft care's about l2?please calculate the real money that "nc soft" makes on each event.jesus you keep qqing for bots and ****s yok we cant farm we cant xp we cant do anything either you play without bot(like me and you are just playing for fun not trying to reach any goals or anything, or farm zaken tezza freya gf (like every1 top semi geared player does)or just leave the server.you think busty cares about the suggestions?wanna bet taht he is eating popcorn and loughs with you guys.they MAKING TONS OF MONEY ALL TOP PLAYERS AND ALL GM'S MODERATORS AND EVERY1 it;s they're job you cant shut down they're job leave your lie
dear Game Masters ( GM)
I want you to know first who really enjoy the game and pay every month my PRESTIGE PACK . This makes me a farm where the adena increases greatly and that place is called GARDEN OF GENESIS .
Unfortunately the place is full of bots . and it is difficult adena farm . Please take action because I am paying 15 bucks for legally adena farm.
This same bots owner have PK vigilantes, who kill everyone has ks mobs.
Again guy 99% of the bots are not being ran by adena sellers lol. They are run by the top players who use the bots to feed their mains so they can pretend they are legit and better than you.
I got 390 billion worth of gear, you are just a cry baby and don;t know how to play this gamE! I played the market i am so smart, i ran xxx quest 40 billion times with 90 thousand accounts it is easy you just are bad.
walk around man there are like easily 30 bots for every real player...it aint the one lone adena seller left in this game running 2000 bots lol.
Yes this is 100% true. when I returned to the game to GoD after 4 years since interlude, this was the biggest difference I noticed about bots : they aren't mats farmer/gold seller-owned. Because so many players use bots, I think real pro gold companies (except for a few, like that irritating one on Chronos) got fed up and left to concentrate on their other games. Remember those CN guys from old chronicles in manti set & maingauche?
This change may not be visible to everyone, especially if u played continuously into GoD till now, and if the change came gradual. But for me with a vacuum of 4 years, the difference was very obvious.
I have an idea, if the lineage sell adena with NCoin, May we can broken the market of that pages how sell adena for 4 bucks, dramatically reducing the amount of bots. Becouse that page use the bots for the adena for sell in the real life.
Another idea is start a campaign Antibots, giving pk to all bots... We need recover us server, is realy necessary, we can't pass more time looking away, we have to do something.
Pleace NCsoft do something!!!
i hear suggestions, pleace coment. Can not remain silent, talk is your right...
They recently fired many of their support staff, and outsourced to asia... What makes you think they'll invest back into this? In fact I'm sure that there are GMs 24/7, but their company policy is crap so nothing gets done. Plus from my own experience, outsourced CS is terrible and they do the *very* bare minimum as required by their contract.
You obviously have no idea how chat filtering works. Its *very* easy to juke the filtering system they have in place. They can try to revamp the whole filtering system, but phat chance of that happening. Chat spam filtering is not a trivial problem to solve. Just using your example, if you just put in a filter for "{number}m = {number}USD". It can be easily bypassed by doing something like "110 m = 3 U S D", and we're back to the cat and mouse game of adding more and more filters as adena sellers make different variations of it.
They actually have a decent system to stop it, only 85+ can PM people. The problem is... back to bots, 1-85 is easy for bots to attain, and they probably have 10s of backups incase their chat spammers gets banned.
your minimal knowledge of C does not make you a "know how" on this topic, so don't make it seem like you do by flaunting something you can search on google in a couple of seconds.
I'm not trying to make you look bad, but you did not construct your arguments with enough research and facts. Please try again, but with better research and keep in mind the feasibility of your suggestions as well :/ (e.g. telling them to respond instantly to bot reports is completely infeasible)
You understand why thier cat and mouse game always loses? NCSOFT plays like a fatlazy cat using thier own version of "botting" to try to make everything with a simple stupid automated system. How about this for cat and mouse, you pick random filters like who has been only for xxxx straight hours attaining xp then ban hammer. OR simply log into your own game each day gm your way through town ban the bot spamming everying in each town? this stuff isnt hard and it doesnt even take much time.
Wanna make it hurt? You check IP for discovered bots match them up to any "legit players" drop the hammer on all. Walk through the usual bot area auto ban do it every so other week or so. These bots are so obvious there should be no investigating.
This is exactly the reason I've left the NCWest servers 4 years ago already (in favor of ******) and from the looks of things nothing has changed since.
I am disgusted to recently come back to the game and see an expansion of bots in game. I would like to make it clear to the GM's the fields Stronghold are so OP with bots. They mostly use the same setup with a summoner in all of their groups.
Yesterday i somehow was surprised to be able to find an empty bot free stronghold field for xp'ing. Guess what happened next.
1. I find a Stronghold bot free spot for grinding for a few mins only.
2. Bot player comes to my spot and parks all his characters to my spot.
3. I tell Bot player please leave and Bot player ignores me and laughs.
4. As you know I can sit and compete and loose half XP/time or move on.
5. Hope something will be done with Bots in Stronghold fields.
GM's if you can't seem to rectify the problem then please allow it to drop into my hands and i'll be happy to do your garbage work if you really care to do something about it. Or alternatively you can give me the contact details of your superiors so i can have a lengthy discussion about the cobwebs in the corners of lineage 2 hanging around for some time. Or 3 you can pass on the thousands of player complaints and their concern to your superiors and make sure that player voices are heard and not going out through the other ear.
Those who care for the game want to ENJOY it and not get ruined by BOTS. Like I said if you care about the game do something about it for the real players that log on and spend time to grind instead of unfairly being out performed by bots who don't spend the time.
I look forward to your constructive reply with some action or promise that something is being done about it or as stated above I can take care of the garbage.
This is exactly the reason I've left the NCWest servers 4 years ago already (in favor of ******) and from the looks of things nothing has changed since.
I look forward to your constructive reply with some action or promise that something is being done about it or as stated above I can take care of the garbage.
regards
L2 Fan
Are you expecting this response?
Dear Customer, after 14 years of constant complaints and issues regarding this matter we came across your post and it inspired us to change everything. For the past 5,110 days we have been unable to do much about this situation, but tomorrow "Might" be different.
After how much time, after writing a petition GM begins ban bots ?
On server Shilen I regularly write petitions against bots spending is from 1 to 4 hours of personal time, but passes 1 week and this is bots are not banned, does it make sense to write these in a support petition against bots ?
Information on the timing of the investigation in a support as you know do not give, so I ask this question here
LOL, they don't ban bots....same bots have been running in GOG on Chrono's server for 2 months.
That was cute though, thanks for the laugh!
Please tell me.
After how much time, after writing a petition GM begins ban bots ?
On server Shilen I regularly write petitions against bots spending is from 1 to 4 hours of personal time, but passes 1 week and this is bots are not banned, does it make sense to write these in a support petition against bots ?
my limited understanding is that bots/accused players get flagged 1st time a gm see them....who knows how long that is/takes...then sometime later the gm checks again...whenever that is to confirm a bot(maybe 2nd person)...Then it gets escalated to final check to ban...imagine ig during one of these checks the player wasnt botting? flag removed...if it is still botting or afk/stagnant and no reports just stays in flagged status until someone does namechange or gets reported again.
I get the point you want something to be done especially with a direct affect to your game play, but what is the point really?
Even if you are successful there is an open door for an infinite amount of bot accounts to be created without any real repercussions.
It may be a different situation if there where a few bots and you wanted to help remove them, but that is not the case.
I could easily discover 400 bots in a matter of minutes. There are entire dungeons full of them.
Let me say for you, what the company can not!!!
Dear Customer, we are aware of the issue, but are unable to handle this situation in an effective manner. Our policies, financing, and resources simply can not hold back the overwhelming bots who are fiercely dedicated to automating the game.
While we put some minor effort into resolving this we never really had an effective way to control it. By now we hoped that you would have realized this obvious conclusion and just accepted the bots or left the game with all the others.
Guys lets face it, bot problem situation ll never be fixed, unless nc west ll start paying for anti-bot/frost protection, like other nc soft servers already do, no matter how many toons they ll ban/block, proffesional botters ll never stop create new toons for spam or farm gold,
a serious anti-bot protection will solve like 80% of the problem, if bots cant log in game, problem is solved, any other action vs bots has no point at all.
i see almost all of this post and i don't see a answer of the GM'S or a administrator of the game...
Uhh, long story short, this thread is the solution to the problem of the boards being flooded with comments about the mechanical elephant in the room of Lineage 2.
Roughly speaking, it's easier on the ever-shrinking administration for this game to censor/minimize comments about bots by throwing all of the threads opened about different aspects of the problem into this thread. So, for example, you'll see a dozen or so comments in this thread that look like non-sequitors because of that. You'll also see a bunch of comments with a final line that reads "edited by Bustercasey." My best guess as to why you won't see any admin comments in this thread would be that they've never had a fully-formed, successful anti-cheating strategy at any point in the history of the game, much less one that they can convey to a large audience successfully.
The most active admin on our forum conveys himself as a clown. Literally. Look at his profile picture. You want admin response to your issues? Here's a clown for you.
I have not played 'Lineage 2' for many years before I recently returned to the game only two weeks ago. The release of C4 is roughly the point in time that I draw reference about past experiences of the game, 'Lineage 2.' I know that this subject is not entirely new as I have witnessed many instances of both individual characters being automated by 3rd party software as well as whole groups of characters being controlled by such programs when I played the game many years ago. However for some reason it seems to me that there are now literally hundreds of software controlled characters, forming veritable armies of clients that are consistently located in core leveling and questing areas, at all time periods and on all days that I have played the game.
I'm in the same situation. I took about 3 years off and came back a few weeks ago. I can honestly say the problem is MUCH worse that it ever was in the past.
These are just my opinions and could be wrong, something to think about anyway...
The problem is that way back when, most full bot parties were chinese farmers with the occasional real player using it for a few of his characters, buffers and such and spamming cp pots when that was a thing (and yes I know there were some who had full parties). These days I'd bet a large percentage are also real players who use their bot parties to make adena for their 'legit' characters. This imo is because the game is now free and so there is really nothing to lose. If your bot party gets banned, just create 7 more free accounts and start over again. Back in the day $105/month for a full bot party just to make you adena wasn't a good option for normal people unless you were into the RMT game to make that up. Farmers could pay for those accounts, regular players for the most part could not so the number of full parties was much lower.
Since there was a lower amount of obvious bots around, it was easier to report them, and if I recall the bot button was not limited to one per IP every 30 min. I don't know how much of an effect this really had on eliminating bots, but it made me feel better at least. Right now, with literally thousands of bots, and yes I have also seen Argos and it makes me sick to watch a 50 de summoners in a spot 2 or 3 real players could cover, it's very hard to report them.
Does NCSoft really expect me to spend literally hours just in one hunting spot writing down names and typing them into the support website? Or months using the bot button? Shouldn't it be pretty obvious that 50 de summoners in an area that 3 people can cover are not real players? What 50 players would stand around day after day in one spot and share the 10 mobs that spawn in that area? Does NCSoft really need me to tell them I think they are bots and then they spend days checking them out (if they do at all)?
For people who say just get over it and try to pretend they don't exist or just go somewhere else, in some cases that can be done, in some cases that cannot, and either way there are quests that help you level that cannot be done at all because of the bots. Multiple areas of the same level hunting grounds are filled with bots so that sometimes just moving somewhere else doesn't work, and you spend more time trying to find mobs than actually killing them. This makes the game more frustrating than enjoyable. Take your PK character into a group or bots and you get automatically attacked by all of them. Mark then with a summoner might work for small groups/solo but you have to spend the time getting rid of them instead of actually leveling, and in some groups the healers are high level and even with a summoner or training you just cannot kill them.
I remember back in the day training farmers in the catacombs was actually fun. A lot of times they would even fight back. Now it's just frustrating that you cannot get rid of them and your only option as a legit player is to spend time looking for a spot you can actually play in. If you are a casual gamer, you spend most of your time just looking around, or running from mob to mob before the bots get it first, not actually playing in any kind of optimized way.
Again, just some thoughts from another player who recently returned and isn't very impressed with the bot situation. Your mileage and experience may vary. I don't expect this post or thread to make any difference at all, but it's nice to rant from time to time and see that others are just as frustrated as I am.
Uhh, long story short, this thread is the solution to the problem of the boards being flooded with comments about the mechanical elephant in the room of Lineage 2.
Roughly speaking, it's easier on the ever-shrinking administration for this game to censor/minimize comments about bots by throwing all of the threads opened about different aspects of the problem into this thread. So, for example, you'll see a dozen or so comments in this thread that look like non-sequitors because of that. You'll also see a bunch of comments with a final line that reads "edited by Bustercasey." My best guess as to why you won't see any admin comments in this thread would be that they've never had a fully-formed, successful anti-cheating strategy at any point in the history of the game, much less one that they can convey to a large audience successfully.
The most active admin on our forum conveys himself as a clown. Literally. Look at his profile picture. You want admin response to your issues? Here's a clown for you.
Every time I visit the town of Heine, I have clearly seen that on one pier in particular a large amount of individuals that number over 40, (I counted them and I stopped counting at 40), have been fishing what appears to be the same target location. The characters that I have seen fishing in this location, continue to do so without pause or delay and continuously ignore any social interaction by use of either general chat or by means of private messages that I and others have made towards them. In my opinion, this lends credibility to my theory that these characters are being controlled by a 3rd party program as opposed to a living human being.
The fishing system is now automated
You can fish only on certain locations.
Im sorry to say that but NCSoft accept bot in Lineage 2.
In fact they not "accept", they "tolerate" bots.
If they did not want the bots they simply banished them all. But they don't.
Long ago the NCSoft has a script that detects bots.
They control the bot population and from time to time they run another script that ban a percentage of bots in the game. NCSoft use bots to control the server economy balance (items, adenas, basic material, recipes, etc.).
It's not a real time ban but a programmed ban. Bots get ban offline.
For a bot user it's a lottery.
So much so that they hamper bot report. Now they ask to report bots opening a ticket in the website support area. Report a bot take a time nowadays.
The ingame bot button has quantitative and temporal limitations.
Nowadays the ingame bot button is for nothing, they just did not take it off because community will complain if they did that.
Maybe if certain character have an X amount of report from different IP they include the reported character on next ban hammer. I don't know.
Just an another opinion about NCSOFT bot policy.
NcWest server is pure business.. they allow the use of bot programs from dec 2011..anyway server still alive thx to the money of this top bots, nothing new i m bored of write the thing who all know, they only want fresh money they dont care about situation and be the worst l2 server in the world, change server or aaccept it, no more options. ;)
What else makes me sad about this is not only these Bots, but has players using ******* to fight in the Olympics, the COC and so become heroes, achieve the coveted item of the COC and so on, and then there are the chat mocking as if it were the best, superior to everyone. Ie, players who do not play, leave the game completely in automatic due to a third party program that is forbidden by NCSoft, but she's not even there, is not worried about it. Perhaps for fear of losing money because these players using ******* to fight PVP, Olympics and COC are usually the owners of the Bots that are leveling, catching item of mobs and adena. NCSoft should use a little brain, as if she could actually fight Bots users *******, other players, aliais, several other players would again be like to play Lineage 2, for who is away from the players, is the NCSoft West itself, as several of my friends, by the way every month buying Ncoins stopped just play for it. For if we ordinary players and honest can identify players who use ******* in the Olympics, COC or PVP, how does NCSoft can not? How difficult? The game will close as well and who loses is responsible for the game themselves, who may lose their jobs, out of sheer laziness to do everything right, a friend of mine plays on the official WOW and it shows me they are efficient GM's Blizard, he not even allow nothing wrong, but to do what is right?
What is wrong with you?
You realized you cannot win the fight against bots and you started randomly banning accounts hoping to hit some bots also?
Don't you think people that pay your salaries deserve more than that?
How would you feel if IRS would put a freeze on your account prior to you receiving your salary for supposedly not paying your taxes, then make you submit a request to free up your account even if it's clear to both you and the IRS that you paid all taxes on time? OFC it is just an account in a game, not my way of putting food on the table, I just wanted to help you out with logic you clearly do not posses.
The level of care for your players is a really bad joke...
Like others i will not even bother to get back the account I lost even if it was just a low level dwarf used to store all the lousy no good items you fool us into paying ncoin for, I will just spend my money somewhere else before I invest even more time in this hassle you call a "free to play game"...
How about you other people (playing legit)? Are you going to keep spending money here?
(FOR THE POLL: 1 means really bad, 4 means really good)
As I said in the previous thread which got deleted, The bans were related to WTFast. Some kind of conflict between wtfast servers and NCsoft auto bans methods happened which resulted in the banning of about 20% of the real players for 15 days (if not more, I do not know every real player across all 5 servers) but all were players using WTFast to lower their ping.
If they think keeping those 20% banned for 15 days, when clearly a mistake happened, is better for the game then fine. Who am I to question their decision?
Meanwhile bot trains are happily free farming in sh2, sh3, eg and all the other usual spots. But no worry, nothing went wrong on the banwave from friday night. Every ban methods are working as intended.
respectfully,
A slightly annoyed player who has no friends to play with anymore for another 11 days.
It don't matter anymore, L2 Forums and the game are going down the pooper, bans or no bans, deleted posts or not deleted post....it's only a matter of time before the plug is finally pulled on this corrupt game. Then I can finally do a happy dance. In the mean time I'll just enjoy what little fun there is left in the game and I'll continue to walk that line here on the forums until Buster grounds me again for something silly!
I give you absolutely right. I have been banned and have not returned the character when I have banned me, my friends and family clan and other people went to play the European server because it is easier and the game is enjoyed, you do not have to go through these frustrations and concerns, it is time that you devote to it and eventually earns nothing. the rules are not clear or confusing I think for example:
They put to sell a pack prestige or rune to get exp and adena etc for many items? so you try to get the most out and receive a ban? after you used real money or $ you win them with hard work, I say this is not at all clear that selling a rune and say just for three hours but he is ban, also knows how to play, to my opinion you insentivan putting Rune to sell a 200% 7 days but if you use these 7 days full boteando ^ ^ these same lies they ban you and you have to redo up spending another character.
Good summing given the massive ban of months and this people this by going the server to play the European or other pvp server.
I wish some GM Moderator or someone replies to this post that made the friend, and I saw many post but no GM answer anything.
I can't find the thread either, but as previous stated by Juji, the bans were UNRELATED to ping-reducing programs. If you believe you were wrongfully suspended, please contact Customer Support. We will investigate your petition and if we continue to conclude your account was in violation of our Terms of Use, your account will not be released.
yep been 100% legit for 10 years and poof in middle of oly DC and 14 day ban... When i asked about the detection methods i was told they cant tell me in fear the info could be used in the future. My real question is if someone like myself who is 100% legit and has prided themselves on the fact, gets a ban for using a program that they have not used, then there is a problem with your detection methods..... Just blows my mind some random moron can say with 100% certainty that i was using a 3rd party program when im sitting here at my PC and KNOW factually that i have not and will not use any program. Calling someone a liar to their face when u are the one who doesnt have all the facts. Then you send them off to jail for a crime they didnt commit while any GM who wasnt a lazy POS could log in and jus hit people with the hammer who are really using these programs and cheats.
Funniest part to me is in the messages it refers us to read the EULA and TOS which clearly states using these programs is a permanent ban, yet we all got 14 day bans for some odd reason? maybe Nc Soft screwed up and didnt want to admit it so they just stick with a 14 day and pretend that we did something wrong? Just seems like the guilty party here is NCsoft for handing out bans without just cause....
yep been 100% legit for 10 years and poof in middle of oly DC and 14 day ban... When i asked about the detection methods i was told they cant tell me in fear the info could be used in the future. My real question is if someone like myself who is 100% legit and has prided themselves on the fact, gets a ban for using a program that they have not used, then there is a problem with your detection methods..... Just blows my mind some random moron can say with 100% certainty that i was using a 3rd party program when im sitting here at my PC and KNOW factually that i have not and will not use any program. Calling someone a liar to their face when u are the one who doesnt have all the facts. Then you send them off to jail for a crime they didnt commit while any GM who wasnt a lazy POS could log in and jus hit people with the hammer who are really using these programs and cheats.
Funniest part to me is in the messages it refers us to read the EULA and TOS which clearly states using these programs is a permanent ban, yet we all got 14 day bans for some odd reason? maybe Nc Soft screwed up and didnt want to admit it so they just stick with a 14 day and pretend that we did something wrong? Just seems like the guilty party here is NCsoft for handing out bans without just cause....
Let's get this sorted. I sent you a private message!
Let's get this sorted. I sent you a private message!
Question now, is why KTP was banned in the first place?
Do you know how many players are in the same situation as him?
I have no one to play with anymore since last friday meanwhile bot trains are happily farming all over the map.
Ok , ok , ooook..
- Sow it comed to this ?
- What is this GMs geting low pays in money or what ?
GMs wake up , what ar you doing , thausens of bots ar on NAIA SERVER,
you cant do your quest becouse bots ar over dmg your quest mobs (wall of argos , varka silenos outpost, ketra , etc...(the list go on and on) and you shod chek GARDEN OF GENESIS like OMG do you evem know what is happening there :)) ?
Ok here is the deal this bot thing and gm thing is starting to smell fishey its allmoust like NCSOFT "is makeing profit out of this" and the problem is that people ( real human players) ar paying real money for N Coins, i am wondering if you guys (GMs) ar showing your interest becouse we (the real human players) don't see any immprovments! THE SERVER IS FULL OFF BOTS PLS DO SOMETHING , THANKE YOU FOR YOUR TIME .
Im new in official server, i came here looking for some durable server that not closing, and i thought this was better than private, but my surprise is no!!! is worst lol, every place u go is full of bots and gm dont care, u cant pk them all is lost war,
I love how Buster is amazing at deleting, editing, and banning people from forums. But when someone mentions the word "bot", s/he's nowhere to be seen....
Not blaming him/her personally, most likely NCSoft is telling him/her to pretend s/he doesn't know of the bot problems...
It's sad though, ever since open beta, NCSoft has not *ever* put on any show of strength against bots. Their "mass bannings" are way too late, and I have sources (i.e. RMT farmers) telling me that they knew ahead of time and shifted their assets to minimise loss.
I'm not really sure why NCSoft has such a nochalant attitude against bots, especially now when bots don't even pay their bills... bots turn away *all* new players, even private server players are being turned away (see above), and bots are causing existing players to quit or join the ranks of being a cheater... L2's legacy is turning from being an EPIC Mass PvP MMORPG, into a game mainly consisting of bots...
When private servers with their crappy Java code (ok I haven't looked at their code in a while, but it was definitely crappy a few years back) can retain just as many, or even more players than official... when official is f2p... there is something seriously WRONG.
Please explain to us why, exactly, it takes so long to ban a single bot. So long that the bot would have long earned its keep before being banned. I'm not talking about days, I'm talking about MONTHS. The bots keep at it 24/7 with immortal gear in a full 7 man party, not using soulshots, ALL THE WAY TO LVL 99+.
I don't even want to talk about non-farming characters that bot for XP (i.e. actual players in actual clans). We're not even there yet, since you can't deal with bots with names like "Asdfasg46", in immortal/requiem gear at lvl 99 and not having used a single soul/spirit shot in their entire digital lives.
Your GM team is a disgrace to all GMs in the world, and should not be paid a cent for all the work they did *not* do. In fact, you should sue them for damaging the image of the game and company. Unless, ofcourse, NCSOft has a policy of not banning bots...
hi guys, im back in game, i havent played since late GOD and while leveling up i noticed phantom summoners crowding every daily zone making it quite hard to get them done, i can still do it but im just concerned about the state of the game, if you go for example on FOD or Ketra its like wtf... at least 3 phantom summoners on your screen killing mobs constantly, srsly wtf with that? dont gms catch any botters anymore? its not like its hard you just tp anyhere and there they are, if not botters dont tell me ppl have a phantom summoner for every daily in the game and just spend all day doing them. Any 1 has an answer to me, a new arrival about this subject? cuz in my point of view new players that dont know l2 come and see this sh*t and just leave because it is actually discusting u cant even kill a mob w/o 2 summoners trying to ks it.
edit: excuse my english its not one of the best out there.
This is why there are very few real players left. Been this way for a long time and it will never change no matter what NCWest claims it is doing. GM's do not get in game and there are only 3 or 4 people handling Lineage 2.
Have to say this really does annoy me too.
As soon as you start you're in Bot Island formerly known as Talking Island.
The whole game has been nerfed until you're 80+ so all that early content is redundant and you're rushed through with easy quests to get you there.
Trouble is it makes it easy for the bots too.
High levels have been placed on chat and shouts to try and stop some of the adena sellers yet they simply use bots and the easy level up system to get higher and negate the chat restrictions. Meanwhile people like me restarting, could do with being able to shout for help and info and can't.
so after 8 years in this game, I now realize that there is no way for the legit players like myself to catch up to the bots and RMT users. All the Hero's and big clans on Chronos yell I'm legit! yet have 3+ toons 99+/99/80/80 ect and 100's of billions adena. Been filmed botting and report so many times and nothing happens. in last event the chances for anything worth a crap was very bad. I opened 1600 bags and got nothing worth talking about. The. the adena drops are crap and raids drops are mostly crap as well. I still find it funny how some Hero's get banned and Unbanned a few days later for botting as well. NCWEST is failing this game. Allowing scripts in PVP and bots to run game.. ITS NOT THAT HARD. I CAN FIND BOTS IN ABOUT 30 SECS AGTER I LOG IN...
WAKE UP AND DO SOMETHING.. DEAD GAME NOW,,,NO REAL LIVE PLAYERS JUST SCRIPTS PLAYING.
I highly recommend to stop playing here. unreasonable bans from ncwest to legits or not legits players with absolutly no support whatsoever killed the game.
This is probably the last NCSoft game I will touch... I'm only back in game sometimes because of nostalgia
The way this company treats its customers is the worst I've ever experienced. It's not like I'm a f2p leech either, I've played since open beta (3 active subscriptions), and I have also bought some NCCoin after that (about $200 in total). So that's ~$4300... not an insignificant amount...