This post has been created to inform the players in a concise manner of GM policies, how we enforce them and what customers can do to get speedy and reliable service.
Policy List:
Below is a list of the most common policies that customers ask about.
NO mercy policies!
All of the policies in this section will lead directly to an account ban.
<ul type="square"> Macro/bot policy:
Absolutely no 3rd party programs or files are allowed to interact with Lineage 2. This means no bots or spamming programs. The most common GM response for “botting” is a total account ban without appeal on the first offence. Also the use of altered client files is strictly prohibited.
Game Masters have a strict rule set they must follow while investigating bots. GMs have several “tests” that must be preformed before any administrative action can be taken. If action can not be taken right away suspected “botters” are put on a watch list.
Adena, item, and account sales policy:
The sale of Adena and other in game items for real money is forbidden. Any advertisement, attempted, and/or actual sale of any in-game Lineage 2 items could result in a permanent ban of all related accounts on the first offence. All lineage 2 accounts are non-transferable. This means that an account will always belong to the one person that originally registered it on PlayNC. The sale of a game account constitutes “account sharing,” which is also not allowed.
The purchasing of adena or accounts has been vaguely enforced in the past. Usually buyers only had accounts cancelled when their particular transaction was damaging in itself. We wanted to concentrate on those that sold these items. This may be changing very quickly. Since the demand for black market goods is so high removing the people that sell these items is tough since the business is so lucrative.
Unauthorized access of an account policy: (aka. Stolen account, hacked account)
Accessing of someone else’s account will lead to an account ban to all accounts related to the theft of the account. There are no exceptions to this rule. An account belongs only to person it is registered to on PlayNC. Accounts are non-transferable.
Impersonating NCsoft personnel policy:
The impersonation of any NCsoft personnel or any of its affiliates’ personnel is strictly prohibited. If anyone is found doing this in anyway (up to and including just having a character name starting with GM or ending in NC), it will lead to an account ban.
Gross exploitation of the game policy:
The use of any game bug, misuse of a system tool, or defect abuse that causes major damage to the community will have all accounts participating in the use of this bug permanently banned. The definition of a gross exploitation is at the sole discretion of the Head Game Master team. This includes (but is not limited to) exploiting private stores and attempted duplication of items.
Two Strikes!!
The following lists of policies are 2 strike policies. The first strike is a 72 hour account ban with a written warning sent to the customers e-mail address on file. The second strike is a total account ban.
<ul type="square"> Moderate exploit use policy:
The determination of a moderate exploit is up to the sole discretion of the GM team. These exploits include (but are not limited to) Lucky skill exploit, misuse of the trade, party, or friends list, and Death re-spawn.
Intent to defraud a GM policy:
If anytime it is proven that any player had tried to defraud a GM they will be given a temporary or permanent ban depending on the extent of the act.
Three strikes!!!
The following lists of policies are 3 strike policies. The first strike is a verbal warning from a GM. The second strike is a 72 hour account ban. Third strike is a permanent account ban.
<ul type="square"> Language Violation policy:
Most language violations are covered by three strikes. Language violations will no longer result in just a chat ban, but will use the three strike rule explained above. Violations include: Profanity filter evasion, vulgar language, chat spamming, the advertisement of other games, and inappropriate character or clan names.
Please note: The use of racist, sexist or threatening speech could lead directly to a 72 hour or permanent ban. This at the sole discretion of the GM team.
Line of sight exploits policy:
Using the geometry to catch monsters in place they can not fight back and can kill them in safety, in the game, is illegal. Other names for this activity are: Perching, bugging and sticking.
Petitioning a GM and Customer Support
/gm = 911.
/gm should only be used for emergency service. /gm should only be used to solve in-game problems that need the attention of a GM.
This is not a place to ask game play questions. You should not use /GM to ask what the next best weapon is or how to get to Elmore. It should also not be used to simply pester or waste the time of any customer support agent.
All incidents of misuse or the /gm command will be noted on your account and action may be take to prevent future misuse.
How to petition with the best results:
Always try to include as much of the problem in the subject line as possible. This means detail, not quantity. We need properly typed names, and specifically identified actions. Every player has five petitions per character per day.
Examples of effective petitions:
<ul type="square"> Bot report: /gm Bot named Xxxloveme2xxX
Harassment: /gm rudedork is using vulgar language.
Quest: /gm QuestName – MobX doesn’t spawn
Examples of ineffective petitions:
<ul type="square"> Bot report: /gm There's a guy been hunting for 2 days.
Harassment: /gm Someone's bothering me in chat.
Quest: /gm I think my quest is bugged.
The difference is subtle, but important.
How the GM system works
GMs are present in-game around the clock, although invisible. They patrol the game world and can intervene in any violation they observe. However, they spend most of their time responding to petitions. You can find out who is online by typing /gmlist. GMs cannot take petitions by request. If you have an outstanding issue via support email, in-game GMs can access those issues if you provide them with the incident number.
There is a three-tier GM system.
<ul type="square"> Tier 1: Information Gathering
These GMs responds to petitions. It is their job to collect information from the player regarding their issue. If the issue requires disciplinary investigation, they escalate. If the issue requires compensation investigation, they escalate. If the issue is a bug report, they direct the player to support site. This pretty much leaves stuck petitions. The first tier of GMs have very limited authority.
They are outsourced, but they are in constant live contact with the next GM tier. If they have any questions or issues, they are able to get guidance from a second-tier GM within moments.
Tier 2: Investigation
These GMs perform the bulk of the investigation for an issue. This is primarily done via preliminary research. Based on the information gathered from the first-tier GMs, an investigative GM can often find the cause of an issue before re-establishing contact with the player. Preliminary investigation accounts for most of the time that passes between first contact with support and follow-up contact.
Sometimes, an issue can’t be entirely resolved without further contact with a player. In this event, the GM will re-establish contact with the player, and pursue the issue from the point where the last GM left off. Second-tier GMs should not be asking players to begin their issue from scratch – although this may prove helpful if the issue is particularly complicated.
Second-tier GMs do not re-establish contact with the petitioner over disciplinary matters. We’re unable to discuss the details of any actions we take against other accounts. You may notice a sudden change in the behavior of the player you reported. If so, that means a GM became involved. Certain disciplinary measures can be handled at the second-tier, such as chat bans. More serious penalties require escalation to the final tier.
Second-tier GMs should re-establish contact with the petitioner over compensation issues – even if the answer is no. There is some leeway to this stance, depending on our workload. Certain compensation & quest issues can be resolved by the second-tier GMs in-game. Most will require escalation to the final tier.
Second-tier GMs should only rarely close your petition asking for more information if they come to your issue while you are offline. Our current policy is to monitor a player’s status until he/she logs in again.
Tier 3: Compensation, Discipline & Resolution
There are Head GMs specifically assigned to certain servers. They make the final decision regarding item reimbursement, and serious disciplinary actions such as temporary or permanent account suspensions.
They review all of the data and reports compiled by the prior GMs. They will perform verifications of these reports, then make decisions accordingly.
Primary Issues
Many of these issues are inter-related, so instead of addressing our responses to each of them in turn, simply refer to the following section, “Recent changes to the GM system.”
<ul type="square"> Miscommunication
Players have reported simple issues becoming needlessly complicated (or even resulting in further losses!) due to being misunderstood by the first-tier GM.
Initial Response time
No one likes to wait when they have a problem. Pretty simple.
Resolution Time
Players are given a very broad estimate when it comes to response time, ranging from hours to days.
GM Knowledge
Players have reported that they’ve had to explain basic game mechanics to GMs before they were able to proceed with their issue.
Face-Time
Players want to know what’s going on. It’s difficult to feel like they’ve gotten the whole story when they receive an automated message.
Some recent changes to the GM system, based on player input
<ul type="square"> Authority
Our team has recently granted greater compensation authority to certain second-tier GMs. This is to expedite the resolution of clear-cut cases of item/xp loss resulting from known issues. This solves the problem more quickly for the player, and it leaves the Head GM tier more time to focus on more complicated issues.
New First-Tier Procedures
We have recently implemented very specific new procedures for our first-tier GMs, designed to minimize the chance of miscommunication. This includes not only the way they communicate with players, but the way they communicate with the next-tier GMs as well.
Improved Communication
We are working to improve our communication with the player-base regarding disciplinary issues. We want our players to know what constitutes a violation, how to report it, and what to expect from the GM Team in response. This extends beyond disciplinary issues as well.
Increased Specialization
We are increasing our specialization in certain disciplinary issues, to speed up investigations of account intrusions, farming rings, etc.
Notes about some important issues
<ul type="square"> About “automated responses”
Technically, there is no such thing as an automated response. There are one-way responses. However, when these are used, it is only after a GM has reviewed the issue, and hand-written a reply. There are some pre-established responses available to the GM staff for limited, known issues that are easily resolved, but even these are only used after GM review.
About illegal farmers
We conduct massive operations designed to wipe out entire rings at once. This can take a very long time, and will result in you, the honest player, seeing the same names you reported days ago. Or longer. Also, not all investigations are successful, as farmers develop increasingly sophisticated counter-measures to evade our efforts to catch and ban them. Also, we are more tight-lipped about this issue than others because any public discussion of who we catch, how we catch them, when we catch them, etc., will only help them have a better understanding of how we operate. And that’s not a good thing.
About conspiracies involving Adena Inc., NC, Area 51, Bigfoot, and Fox Mulder’s sister
Great list, though what is the procedure for "bot checks"...you are aware that this game has rightclick targets, double rightclick attack-assist built into the game, and if someone uses those, they look very much like a bot in action (running after everyone elses target). Also, when people use those during places like crumagrinding, they tend to pay very little attention to the game after many hours of play.
So what exactly are the procedures and what are we to watch for?
About conspiracies involving Adena Inc., NC, Area 51, Bigfoot, and Fox Mulder’s sister.
OMG...that means I was wrong about you being married to Fox Mulders sister, who had a baby with bigfoot, who then became the head of Adena Inc. and the director of Area 51???
My world is shattered!!! :(
Accounts are non-transferable.
So if someone else have written their info in your account info during creation (like if someone else got your key for you), you're basically up the creak if you hadn't noticed this?
Most language violations are covered by three strikes. Language violations will no longer result in just a chat ban, but will use the three strike rule explained above. Violations include: Profanity filter evasion, vulgar language, chat spamming, the advertisement of other games, and inappropriate character or clan names.
This one needs more clearing up. :(
1. If I for instance say "Hey, I tried World of Warcraft today, its a pretty cool game", other player "Where's the beta", me "at www.blablablabla.com (http://www.blablablabla.com)"...I am effectively punished? or are we just talking about real advertisement, like me running around screaming "go to game XXX at <insert URL>, leave L2, it sucks"?
2. Evading profanity filter. This one is bad...I mean really bad, the profanity filter works like hell and often doesn't remove a word for various reasons (capitol letters, etc., heck sometimes even when plainly written for some reason)...how exactly does this work?
I wish you really didn't have a filter, its bad, too many words, and its a pain to communicate in other languages when the filter filters out loads of either whole or parts of our words. Not to mention some of the english words as well. :(
And in general btw...how does this rule applied, does it applied only if the one its directed against complains or can it be anyone...and what is vulgar in NCSofts vocabulary...here in our country we seem to have a vastly different standard for vulgarity than you do. :/
The purchasing of adena or accounts has been vaguely enforced in the past. Usually buyers only had accounts cancelled when their particular transaction was damaging in itself. We wanted to concentrate on those that sold these items. This may be changing very quickly.
PLEASE change this!!!!!! This is probably the single best thing you can do to stop the farmer problem. Ban characters who buy adena, delete the adena they buy (or the items they buy with that adena), etc etc.
The purchasing of adena or accounts has been vaguely enforced in the past. Usually buyers only had accounts cancelled when their particular transaction was damaging in itself. We wanted to concentrate on those that sold these items. This may be changing very quickly.
PLEASE change this!!!!!! This is probably the single best thing you can do to stop the farmer problem. Ban characters who buy adena, delete the adena they buy (or the items they buy with that adena), etc etc.
Targetting the customers is the only way to get rid of the farmer problem. And tell us about it. make sure WE know that we will get caught and we get banned if we try to Ebay or IGE.
We conduct massive operations designed to wipe out entire rings at once. This can take a very long time, and will result in you, the honest player, seeing the same names you reported days ago. Or longer. Also, not all investigations are successful, as farmers develop increasingly sophisticated counter-measures to evade our efforts to catch and ban them. Also, we are more tight-lipped about this issue than others because any public discussion of who we catch, how we catch them, when we catch them, etc., will only help them have a better understanding of how we operate. And that’s not a good thing.
Fantastic post guys and thanks for all the information!! :)
While I can fully appreciate you point on being "tight-lipped" regarding your successes, is there any way to give a little information?
This could be a small part of the weekly update e.g. "On server [xx] we have been greatly assisted by players in identifying and targeting one of the larger adena rings. I now have great pleasure in announcing that all accounts have been identified and banned. On server [xx] we have had similar success with 2 smaller operations. Keep up the good work guys and keeping reporting the suspected professional adena farmers! It's a long process but we do get there with your help"
In my opinion, at the moment we don't know how seriously this issue is being taken because we don't see anything; you could be banning 1 or 1,000 accounts a month as far as we know! It's annoying to constantly report professional farmers when it appears no action is taken.
A little look at the big picture would help fill this expectation gap.
Yes, it does actually (I hope you noticed I edited in more concerns).
One tiny thing though "I hate to say “Trust us, you’ll know if we’re testing you,”"...Beyond massive epileptic screenflashing, how do you get the attention of someone reading (or whatever) while rightclick away on someone in cruma for instance?, last I checked there was no rule in the EULA about being responsive or being observant of the screen.
Heh, after some 12 hours of cruma grinding, most characters tend to become monotonous unresponsive drooling automotons, ROFL.
The purchasing of adena or accounts has been vaguely enforced in the past. Usually buyers only had accounts cancelled when their particular transaction was damaging in itself. We wanted to concentrate on those that sold these items. This may be changing very quickly.
PLEASE change this!!!!!! This is probably the single best thing you can do to stop the farmer problem. Ban characters who buy adena, delete the adena they buy (or the items they buy with that adena), etc etc.
I fully agree - very good point Arigato!
At the moment there's no in-game down side or risk to someone buying adena. Indeed, on Bartz an hour ago there was someone in Dwarf Town shouting in chat about buying adena and waiting for it to be delivered!! He was a little unhappy in that they were late in delivering and was talking about sueing them. :eek:
What exactly is that going to help, even if you get rid of it, you just pee off even more players, crash even more clans, and just leaving farmers and the pro's at hiding it. Its been tried in other MMORPGs and failed quite miserably in stopping it.
And btw, I don't think Ash meant that he was going to IGNORE adena buyers, just that he wouldn't be focusing his attention on them. Its alot better to ban an adena ring, chinese farmers and 100 billion adena, than to ban 100 english players and 100 million adena. (oh and the farmers buy new accounts = more development money at least, LOL)
What exactly is that going to help, even if you get rid of it, you just pee off even more players, crash even more clans
You "pee off" cheaters and the clans that cheat. Which is a wonderful thing -- I don't think "keep the customer for the sake of keeping the customer" is a way to do business. I'd much rather have a game with one server where nobody cheated than a game with eight servers full of losers who think the rules don't apply to them.
Yes, we'll lose a lot of players, and a lot of clans, and good riddance to bad rubbish.
That won't stop anything, more will come. And eventually it will just end the game, it doesn't work. Taking out the source does alot more damage with minimum impact on the game. And it also gets rid of the farmer problem. Going for the buyers will *never* solve the farmer problem, ever.
That won't stop anything, more will come. And eventually it will just end the game, it doesn't work. Taking out the source does alot more damage with minimum impact on the game. And it also gets rid of the farmer problem. Going for the buyers will *never* solve the farmer problem, ever.
You can't take out the source, you can only stop the demand. You need to let it be known that cheating = banned. You could ban every farmer in the game, you could block every non-US IP, you could do any kind of check or test you want -- the money is SO good they will simply work past it.
The only way they will leave is if they can't make a profit -- and the only way to do that is stop buyers. The best way is to make sure buyers know that they are only destroying their character by buying.
Some cheating will always go on -- but this will reduce most of it.
Take it to another thread please, this isn't the place for it. But you're dead wrong, the demand won't decrease to any signifigence, nor will it remove farmers. But if you want to debate the supply and demand, lets start another thread, this isn't the place for it.
First off Great Post Ash, first time NC has finally made an all out post covering most concerns of players.
Second off Arigato you can try and ban the people buying the adena, but just like the farmers if someone wants to they will find a way to do it, farmers will get more creative in the way they sell adena, how they pass it off in game and everything else.
Honestly if you make it so expensive that where the farmers have to rebuy the game 100x every month, they will stop doing it, cause eventually if you ban them enough times the profit will taper off and they will stop cause it will end up costing them to much.
Honestly if you make it so expensive that where the farmers have to rebuy the game 100x every month, they will stop doing it, cause eventually if you ban them enough times the profit will taper off and they will stop cause it will end up costing them to much.
I imagine they steal the game -- either stolen CD keys, or use a CD key generator. And they can never lose money as long as they abide by the rules long enough to amass a bunch of adena, then offload it all at once. E.g. as long as they wait until they have $200 worth of adena before selling any of it, then sell it all at once over a span of a few hours, they are guaranteed to make a lot of money.
Ok i didnt know where i should have put this but i am gonna put it here and someone will move it or somethink but that is not that i was gonna talk about..........
well i was gonna talk about what should be inproment to the game like you know when you are making some stuff whit you Dwarf he should not stand there like a idiot and do nothing well i am playing a game named Asheron's Call to and the tinkers/makers there always clap there hands and this whould make a little sence.....:D
and yea there is one think that is buging me realy mutch and that is when you put you new boots on it change even the gauntlets change to but when you put a help up nothing heppend that should be the same whit the boots and the gauntlets and yea OMG way in earth didnt you guys put MANA potions in to the game from the start!!!!!!!!!! well i am gonna stop now i am just geting this here on the run so other players can shot some ideas in here to.... and dont make fun off me cuse i cant right perfectly
...like buffs. If a person already has 1 strike in a category, and we find that person doing something else mischevious from another category, we are not limited to simply giving that person the first-tier warning for that category.
Offline resolution
Often players do not need to be online to have their issue resolved. If we believe the player will need to be online, we will let the player know in advance.
Pending Petition lock-up
If you have an outstanding petition, you will be unable to submit another petition with that character.
Lower the number of petitions to 3. When a GM shows up if they find the /gm holds merit and it was a legimate complaint or issue no petition is wasted. If it was a non-issue or doesnt hold merit there goes on of your petitions. So the intent is still their that it will allow users to petition as often as needed while not letting anyone abuse the system.
I only sugget this because a friend got stuck last week. He petitoned GM. The GM "unstuck him" and without saying anything closed the petition. He then petitioned again because he was still stuck. GM without doing anything else said issue resolved and closed the petition. He then petitioned again and said I am still stuck, you never unstuck me. There went 3 of his 5 petitions for 24 hours over 1 issue. God forbid he got stuck 3 more times (as the lag was bad that night, it was during the isp matience) he would have had to log for the night.
Ok i didnt know where i should have put this but i am gonna put it here and someone will move it or somethink but that is not that i was gonna talk about..........
well i was gonna talk about what should be inproment to the game like you know when you are making some stuff whit you Dwarf he should not stand there like a idiot and do nothing well i am playing a game named Asheron's Call to and the tinkers/makers there always clap there hands and this whould make a little sence.....:D
and yea there is one think that is buging me realy mutch and that is when you put you new boots on it change even the gauntlets change to but when you put a help up nothing heppend that should be the same whit the boots and the gauntlets and yea OMG way in earth didnt you guys put MANA potions in to the game from the start!!!!!!!!!! well i am gonna stop now i am just geting this here on the run so other players can shot some ideas in here to.... and dont make fun off me cuse i cant right perfectly
Ash, good info! Thanks, but there are a couple of areas of confusion.
Regarding hacked accounts, the way it's worded it sounds as if PlayerX hacks PlayerY's account, both players get their accounts disabled. Is that right?
Also .. evading the chat filter. We've all seen this:
I'm sure you know by now that sooo many people find the chat filter random at best. Here's another great example, one of my clanmates told someone to "be patient, young grasshopper!" which came through as "be patient, young gr-_--_-pper!" - which of course prompted my clannie to spell it out, thus "evading the word filter".
We won't ban playerY's account in most cases. We try only to ban the bad guy not the victim. Now if the person that was hacked because they used a powerleveling service or downloaded a bot... he/she is not really victim now is he/she.
The chat filter has been under construction forever. We know it is not too functional but we have been working on it. Heck 923 is filtered.
The GMs are human they are looking for the real offenders not the guys who said as.s.
The GMs are human they are looking for the real offenders not the guys who said as.s.
Thank you; that makes sense, I was just looking for official confirmation.
I suppose as a follow up to hacked accounts, is there a set policy for reimbursement? I recall seeing a thread here where a player has his account hacked while he was using it and lost everything, and is/was having problems getting any kind of item recovery.
...like buffs. If a person already has 1 strike in a category, and we find that person doing something else mischevious from another category, we are not limited to simply giving that person the first-tier warning for that category.
*clap* *clap* *clap* *clap*
Oh what the heck *standing ovation*
Update !
Personnal insults
Personnal insults against NC personnel subjects you to a 48 hour removal of your board viewing and posting rights. They are not limited by this, as more aggro towards them can result in a Permanent Ban.
ROFL Dude, you had to know i was gonna add this one in ;)
But how about repeated personnal attacks on users ?
I hope I don't get anyone in trouble with this.
I reported a violation the other day, and had to log.
When I got back online, after a little while I got a message
from a gm, "nice kill." Totally made my day.
Now this doesn't mean I know the result of a disciplinary action.
For all I know, it could have referred to the elpy I one-shotted.
But it gave a warm feeling in the belly, not unlike that of having
a couple strong ales. :D
The purchasing of adena or accounts has been vaguely enforced in the past. Usually buyers only had accounts cancelled when their particular transaction was damaging in itself. We wanted to concentrate on those that sold these items. This may be changing very quickly.
PLEASE change this!!!!!! This is probably the single best thing you can do to stop the farmer problem. Ban characters who buy adena, delete the adena they buy (or the items they buy with that adena), etc etc.
I totaly agree for every adena seller banned there should be an adena buyer banned too, as long as people are not afraid to buy they will, and as long as people buy someone will be selling, it doesn't get simplier than this.
Also, not all investigations are successful, as farmers develop increasingly sophisticated counter-measures to evade our efforts to catch and ban them.
Not to sound rude or anything but.. if you call a single person standing inbetween 10-12 computers that are all botting, and going in between them when there is a problem.. 'sophistication' isnt the right word.
One of your 'tests' is probably to try and communicate with them. A nice, big, GM box pops up and BAM! The person knows there is something wrong.
Just for some odd reason, GM boxes pop up on ALL of the bots screens, on his 10-12 computers. He will call for assistance where he is at with his other 'watchers'
It might be an idea to give us the community some information about your results. We don't need to know the details but we like to know if and when the GM's score a succes against pro-farmers, botters, ebayers and griefers.
So how about a counter? So and so many people banned, warned every week/month.
This would give us an idea how effective you are in doing your job to cleanse these people up. Plus, it would tell griefers/botters/ebayers that they will have a good chance of being caught in the act and that they risk getting banned.
Impressive. Glad to know that I won't be getting anything that sounds automated when read the next time I deal with a GM. Also kudos on taking the initiative on this. Has helped restablish my faith in the management. =P
<wait for GM window to pop up>
<wait X amount of time, then type in "hi">
<wait x amount of time, then type in *random excuse*>
<play loud sound to alert person>
Then the guy comes and talks with the GM. (this is from a UO script though)
Nice post, Ash! Thanks for opening up the lines of communication and letting us know that you folks are on the ball! Things are getting better every day!
The purchasing of adena or accounts has been vaguely enforced in the past. Usually buyers only had accounts cancelled when their particular transaction was damaging in itself. We wanted to concentrate on those that sold these items. This may be changing very quickly.
PLEASE change this!!!!!! This is probably the single best thing you can do to stop the farmer problem. Ban characters who buy adena, delete the adena they buy (or the items they buy with that adena), etc etc.
I totaly agree for every adena seller banned there should be an adena buyer banned too, as long as people are not afraid to buy they will, and as long as people buy someone will be selling, it doesn't get simplier than this.
We actually agree 100% on something. ;)
I think buyers should be held accountable just the same. The minute you start hurting the buyers the sooner you will curb the problem.
Just a quick question about the whole
/gm XXX is botting (exploiting/harrassing/etc)
do the GMs actually record these names somewhere?
Every time I hear about someone trying to report this, the GM asks "how can I help you?"
then "what was the player's name?"
It would seem that both pieces of info were in the initial report, yet it's asked anyway.
I had an issue with this a few days ago, reporting an exploit. by the time the GM responded with the "what was the players name?" question, the player had disconnected... hopefully it was still recorded.
I will say that I was pleasantly surprised with the response time on the GM tho, it took all of 2 minutes for a reply.
Well I have seen the number of exploits go up and farming go up since C1 I see very little to no enforcement of any policies and won't hold my breath, I have seen many players drop items after being killed while on Gustin when the server was crashing and player could not heal only to hear the GM'S say I can't help I need a screenshot, I can't is the most GM's are doing these days and very little else.
My wife and I play on two seperate accounts. We share adena all the time. We're also working on building a large pool of money through commerce.
How will GMs be able to distinguish this activity from buying adena? Won't it look the same on your logs? And if there is no mercy/appeal, arn't you saying we're basically screwed? Please advise.
What are you going to do about MMORPG.com that is supporting companies that sell in game items online like Enotts?? I started a thread there trying to persuade them to stop. But they would'nt listen, and the whole community chose to say, it is natural to sell for real life cash. Check mmorpg.com forums under SiteSuggestions, the topic named "MMORPG.com is the Bane of mmorpgs",started by Cstriker.
recently i was involved in a trade that i shuld have never traded for. it was the 3 day after i reactivated my account my hopes were high that i would make a combeback and level my scout, but i was tempted to get that nice high d grade bow and level, so i looked around town and shoted wtb light x bow. well i got pmed by a seller named Laurenel i went to meet up with her at giran and she showed me the bow. i offered my salamander set and 1.5 mill. she said shure, so i placed the item in the box and double checked,after confirming she cancelled, and opened trade box again, so i placed the same offer, and accepted, but she cancelled again and said hurry up im in a hurry, so the third tme i placed the same offer and tried to make it a fast trade, no t knowing that the box was empty the received my item and adena... and i reveived None...... i was heart broken all my hard work went to waste after that trade, she wouldnot pm me back
i petitioned to gm, but they did not help me all they did was im sorry you will have to wait, and say ending petition... basically my character has no weapon or adena to buy a decent bow to level with she has no armor and i have lostfaith in the gms able to help me theses gms should have the power to talk ot other people concerning abuout game trades, its not fair that things like this happen, people make mistakes, and mistakes can be corrected.... the gms that responded to me just gave me a hard time and i wasnot even helped at all
basically i have pettitioned for gm 2 days ago and it took them about 2 days to respond, after i was moved up to a higher tier, or my case was escalated by GMbradley, i was moved to a higher tier named GMhayashi, then harrased by him saying that i wanted freebies, so her moved me to anther gm Named GMRhyolite he did kind of helped me until he gets to a point where he called me an unaware person afer that things got kind of rowdy and flames came up. so hes like im sorry i cannot help you on this situation and he said happy hunting.... further insulting me because i have lost my salamander mail and boots +4, and 1.5 million adena. after he said that, he disconnected me from the server, a box that said you have been disconnected from the server poped up after he ended petition....... how rude of him to do that. waht an abuse to his powers........
I'm just waiting for WOW to come out, Blizzard will be and has been very good at customer support, NCSOFT will learn a hard lesson when the US and Euro players change over.
<i>I'm just waiting for WOW to come out, Blizzard will be and has been very good at customer support, NCSOFT will learn a hard lesson when the US and Euro players change over.</i>
I will be cancling my account and playing EQ2 the day it comes out. Hope you have more fun in WoW then you did here. I have hated this game since the day i bought it and i have told everyone i know not to play it
i offered my salamander set and 1.5 mill. she said shure, so i placed the item in the box and double checked,after confirming she cancelled, and opened trade box again, so i placed the same offer, and accepted, but she cancelled again and said hurry up im in a hurry, so the third tme i placed the same offer and tried to make it a fast trade, no t knowing that the box was empty the received my item and adena... and i reveived None......
Have you ever heard of taking your time? Your trading items for other items... It's not a thing you just rush through.
not knowing that the box was empty
Once again... Look to see if there is items for trade before you click "OK". If you don't see items and click "OK" please tell me how this is a GM's problem? It was your fault for clicking "OK".
These are very simple things to do. Good Luck, Have Fun.
the funny thing about the gms is that they always had an excuse saying please hold on or like stall or something and during my case the upper tier gm said happy hunting and he purposely dissconnected me from the server what an A** nice help GM's i really appreciate it that now i have completely wasted my time lvling and making money and loose it to a scamm thanks for the help NOw i am quitting this game and im over your B** s*i* on oyur limits on what things oyu can and can not do your gms for christ sake, how can oyu guys not interfere with the trade???? there is obviously a flaw in your system, letting people like this take advantage....
This may have been noted already, but i'm too lazy to read this whole lengthy forum.
How about implementing a reward system for the successful reporting of botting, adena sales, etc
I recently saw a blantant sale of adena in the form of a 11m emergency dressing. I took several screen shots of the incident and created a violation report and submitted the images. I took the screen shots, chose the 3-4 best ones, converted them to jpg's and uploaded them to NC. This took me quite awhile due to the necessary conversion (5meg max attachment) and the meager 128k upload speed.
Over the course of the next few days, i received a couple of short, polite emails saying essentially "thanks, we'll look into it" and "if you see it again, let us know"...
I don't know about the rest of you, but i would like to see some sort of compensation for my efforts... maybe i'm just being greedy...?
All this is fine and dandy, but the bottomline is I really don't give a crap anymore about some kid using a bot to get exp in this over-inflated Time sink of a game.
I do care about the fact that FARMERS control area's of this game and you can't even hunt in them without getting stunned and trained and your mobs being healed.
Fix the **** farmer problem NC.
Get rid of the professional farmers (goto Leto Lizardmen Overlord area if you want to see about 30 of them 24/7..) and change the **** EXP curve, it is borderline sadistic.
At this point I am so gone when WoW is released because NC refused to change the game for the NA population.
at the moment 779 listings on ebay alone for Adena 38 accounts for sale, 16 bots listed for sale.
ok is it legal to do this NCSOFT?
I see no effort to stop this on your part, Remember this is not Diablo 2 and can't be compared to it.
1. It's online only without private games/areas
2. every server has an economy and all players are effected by sales of items and general trade.
3. We pay $14.95 a month for a service.
if not then why have you not contaced EBay in an official manner regarding this?
Ebay works with Microsoft and many others to enforce copyright laws and stop violations and I'm sure if you ask they will work with NCSOFT
We are part of the E-Bay VeRO program. This is the only way a company can effectivly remove listings from E-Bay on a daily basis. The only reason there are still listings on E-bay is because it takes 1-3 days to remove any listing from E-Bay. We report bad listings everyday.
at the moment 779 listings on ebay alone for Adena 38 accounts for sale, 16 bots listed for sale.
ok is it legal to do this NCSOFT?
I see no effort to stop this on your part, Remember this is not Diablo 2 and can't be compared to it.
1. It's online only without private games/areas
2. every server has an economy and all players are effected by sales of items and general trade.
3. We pay $14.95 a month for a service.
if not then why have you not contaced EBay in an official manner regarding this?
Ebay works with Microsoft and many others to enforce copyright laws and stop violations and I'm sure if you ask they will work with NCSOFT
We are part of the E-Bay VeRO program. This is the only way a company can effectivly remove listings from E-Bay on a daily basis. The only reason there are still listings on E-bay is because it takes 1-3 days to remove any listing from E-Bay. We report bad listings everyday.
at the moment 779 listings on ebay alone for Adena 38 accounts for sale, 16 bots listed for sale.
ok is it legal to do this NCSOFT?
I see no effort to stop this on your part, Remember this is not Diablo 2 and can't be compared to it.
1. It's online only without private games/areas
2. every server has an economy and all players are effected by sales of items and general trade.
3. We pay $14.95 a month for a service.
if not then why have you not contaced EBay in an official manner regarding this?
Ebay works with Microsoft and many others to enforce copyright laws and stop violations and I'm sure if you ask they will work with NCSOFT
then how come this listing was allowed to actualy finished being actioned and sold?
Ok that makes sense now, I figured it could not be legal just for the fact that in order to install the game on your system you agree to the terms of the EULA and if you fail to follow the rules your no longer using a legal copy and should by all rights remove it from the system.
I have tried reporting them myself some time ago but it's an endless battle to no end.
They try the old you are paying for the time not the account, but accounts are non transferrable and belong to NCSOFT even my account is the property of NCSOFT and in order to give it away I would need written permission from them to do so.
Just a minor correction, it is not illegal, it is against the rules, which means NCSoft can terminate your service and deny you service.
They cannot however claim that you break any kind of legal code, nor is it illegal for me to run, own or otherwise use Lineage 2 even if I have been denied service by NCSoft.
We are part of the E-Bay VeRO program. This is the only way a company can effectivly remove listings from E-Bay on a daily basis. The only reason there are still listings on E-bay is because it takes 1-3 days to remove any listing from E-Bay. We report bad listings everyday.
at the moment 779 listings on ebay alone for Adena 38 accounts for sale, 16 bots listed for sale.
ok is it legal to do this NCSOFT?
I see no effort to stop this on your part, Remember this is not Diablo 2 and can't be compared to it.
1. It's online only without private games/areas
2. every server has an economy and all players are effected by sales of items and general trade.
3. We pay $14.95 a month for a service.
if not then why have you not contaced EBay in an official manner regarding this?
Ebay works with Microsoft and many others to enforce copyright laws and stop violations and I'm sure if you ask they will work with NCSOFT
then how come this listing was allowed to actualy finished being actioned and sold?
plus it was reported to NCsoft and a screenshot and link supplied ??
not to mention i even knew the name of the character being sold
Why is it then that, if i do a search for everquest i don't find full pages of eq equipment/money/accounts? and i find dozens of pages of lin2 adena/accounts/items?
The only way you are going to fix this farmer, adena/item selling is by activating what should have already been done a few patches ago, where if a player reaches say level 40, gets the skills for that level then delevels to 39, they shouldn't be ALLOWED to keep those skills.
Once the player reaches level 40 again, they would have those skills reactivated so they can use them because they are level 40 again, but you do not have to rebuy them with SP as it's just been deactivated till u hit the required level.
This will stop all Farmers / Griefers etc because they will not be able to use level 40 skills at level 20 and farm mobs in dungeons / EG etc areas. This is how i have seen it, and this would make the game better for everyone, and there will be more spots open for lower levels players to do quests, and fight in.
Using the geometry to catch monsters in place they can not fight back and can kill them in safety, in the game, is illegal. Other names for this activity are: Perching, bugging and sticking.
and what about monsters they can't move already as I seen it many times? It's easy shoot them down and they don't fight back because ncsoft wasn't able to fix some certain locations many months :eek:
My wife and I play on two seperate accounts. We share adena all the time. We're also working on building a large pool of money through commerce.
How will GMs be able to distinguish this activity from buying adena? Won't it look the same on your logs? And if there is no mercy/appeal, arn't you saying we're basically screwed? Please advise.
Yeah, this does seem to be a problem. My clan shares tons of money/items all the time.
I just gave 1 of my clannies {his dwarf alt} a full Brig set and Tarbar, he didn't pay me for the stuff though. We are working together to get tons of mats to make stuff with though. 3 of us have a mini Cartel where the other 2 gather mats and I make/sell the items from those mats and deduct whatever they owe me from their share of the profits.
We have 2 clans {main and sub} and we all have at least 2 toons. When clan dues are to be paid {for either clan}, we use our various toons to pay these fees.
----------
I have noticed that most farmers are now in clans. I think they are using this to help make it look like the situation I just mentioned with our clans.
I don't see how allowing people who delevel to keep their skills and use of D and above grade gear and allowing them to poison folks to 4hp is not encouraging them to farm. (not to mention the griefer PK town campers)
You are helping them in every way to have an easy avenue to farming. They keep the optimum level for the drops and kill stuff in one or two hits.
Surely limiting gear to your level, as well as skills, still gives a large amount of leeway for those who want to twink. A level 20 with a decent D grade bow is surely still going to do hideous amounts of damage?
Making rules is one thing. Actively allowing people to flaunt those rules and giving them the tools to do it in game is another. No Gast Bow/Power Shot 25 at level 15 = a LOT less farmers.
Why is it then that, if i do a search for everquest i don't find full pages of eq equipment/money/accounts? and i find dozens of pages of lin2 adena/accounts/items?
Seems like there is a problem .......
No, there isn't, Everquest is an old game and most people have learned to sell through EQ sites and professional sellers like IGE and other companies.
L2 is fairly new, and not everyone has migrated to better places to sell yet.
I don't see how allowing people who delevel to keep their skills and use of D and above grade gear and allowing them to poison folks to 4hp is not encouraging them to farm. (not to mention the griefer PK town campers)
You are helping them in every way to have an easy avenue to farming. They keep the optimum level for the drops and kill stuff in one or two hits.
Surely limiting gear to your level, as well as skills, still gives a large amount of leeway for those who want to twink. A level 20 with a decent D grade bow is surely still going to do hideous amounts of damage?
Making rules is one thing. Actively allowing people to flaunt those rules and giving them the tools to do it in game is another. No Gast Bow/Power Shot 25 at level 15 = a LOT less farmers.
If up drop below lvl 20, you lose D grade Expertise, the same applies to other grades as well. This was done in C1.
laughs Looks like a viable alternative, I love Lin2, but the devs still can't make things right even in a sequel.
Hope the devs keep working hard though, Lin2 is poised to lead the market, pending Wow's public release.
Well, its against the game rules and Ebay rules. But it is not ILLEGAL, as in real life laws illegal, NCSoft couldn't sue someone or put them in jail no matter how many accounts they transfered or sold.
Not to mention the EULA is not a legal binding document, it is more of a tool for the company to avoid legal entanglement.
wait a min on that three strikes section it says no advertisement of other games, does that mean we're banned from even talking about them? (if it does thats just sick)
You find it extremely healthy for people to talk about other competitive products in your space?
What do you think would happen if you went in a restaurant and used their microphone to say to everyone how the other restaurant on the other side of the road is better? would you expect you would be allowed to discuss it with the rest in there? or would you be introduced facedown to the pavement with an advise to go eat at the other restaurant?
I'm sure you can talk about them. To use Darraess's example, you can say to your dining companions "the steak I had at RestaurantX was much better" but if you stand on the table and yell "Try RestaurantX! This place sucks!" you're likely going to get kicked out.
NO GM action on offensive names!!!
Perhaps if they SPOKE english they might understand why the following ARE offensive:
Woah0tboobies
MrAnus
MrAhole
BrassBalls (steelballs and other xxxball vairients, seems common on dwarves)
hairyballbagginz
hunglikeamule
BeefCurtains (female labia slang) (maybe its meatcurtains)
The above are REAL names seen arround Dion during one 4 hour session on Hindemith. Woah0tboobies has beem petioned by my girlfriend 6 times as offensive over last 6 weeks. No action. (did get 3 "woahotboobies is not in log", even after pointing out in re-petitions that it is a ZERO between the h&t )
IT DOES NO GOOD TO REPORT THESE NAMES as OFFENSIVE.
GM's usually auto reply "Name is not offensive",
PLEASE ASH, set some standards on these names.
(also use of l33t spellings should count so we do not mearly change BeefCurtains to B33fCurtains)
Not to sound prudish, but how many accounts must NCsoft lose when parents pull their childern from game
because they see um, "amply modeld" DE females running arround named Woah0tboobies and BeefCurtains??
NO GM action on offensive names!!!
Perhaps if they SPOKE english they might understand why the following ARE offensive:
Woah0tboobies
MrAnus
MrAhole
BrassBalls (steelballs and other xxxball vairients, seems common on dwarves)
hairyballbagginz
hunglikeamule
BeefCurtains (female labia slang) (maybe its meatcurtains)
The above are REAL names seen arround Dion during one 4 hour session on Hindemith. Woah0tboobies has beem petioned by my girlfriend 6 times as offensive over last 6 weeks. No action. (did get 3 "woahotboobies is not in log", even after pointing out in re-petitions that it is a ZERO between the h&t )
IT DOES NO GOOD TO REPORT THESE NAMES as OFFENSIVE.
GM's usually auto reply "Name is not offensive",
PLEASE ASH, set some standards on these names.
(also use of l33t spellings should count so we do not mearly change BeefCurtains to B33fCurtains)
Not to sound prudish, but how many accounts must NCsoft lose when parents pull their childern from game
because they see um, "amply modeld" DE females running arround named Woah0tboobies and BeefCurtains??
Very similar point.
If something is chat filtered and censored here, then do not allow people to use that for a name.
I would get a perma ban if I mentioned some of the names I see on Erica.
W-T-F {without the dashes} is both a clan and a player name on Erica. We have a thread about the player being an idiot and it's censored by moderators.
NO GM action on offensive names!!!
Perhaps if they SPOKE english they might understand why the following ARE offensive:
Woah0tboobies
MrAnus
MrAhole
BrassBalls (steelballs and other xxxball vairients, seems common on dwarves)
hairyballbagginz
hunglikeamule
BeefCurtains (female labia slang) (maybe its meatcurtains)
The above are REAL names seen arround Dion during one 4 hour session on Hindemith. Woah0tboobies has beem petioned by my girlfriend 6 times as offensive over last 6 weeks. No action. (did get 3 "woahotboobies is not in log", even after pointing out in re-petitions that it is a ZERO between the h&t )
IT DOES NO GOOD TO REPORT THESE NAMES as OFFENSIVE.
GM's usually auto reply "Name is not offensive",
PLEASE ASH, set some standards on these names.
(also use of l33t spellings should count so we do not mearly change BeefCurtains to B33fCurtains)
Not to sound prudish, but how many accounts must NCsoft lose when parents pull their childern from game
because they see um, "amply modeld" DE females running arround named Woah0tboobies and BeefCurtains??
Why dont you enforce this then? we see the farmers EACH and EVERYDAY. We petition obvious bots and nothing happens. Sorry to say you have lost another customer...
lets stop playing for 4 months and let the farmers sell adena to other farmers hoho~
(which will never happen)
Farmers = players = 15$ per month
Bots = bots/players = 15$ per month
(usually 1 person has a group of bots with them...thats a whole lot of money going to NCsoft...if MCsoft gets money they are happy)
^^^^^^^^^^^^ If you can get money like that...would YOU honestly stop them from doing what they do?
Suggestion. SERVER MERGE between the smaller servers ie. Hindemith and Devianne because as a player of Devianne the server's population rapidly decreasing and well...that sucks.
I know the GM's can't comment on specific action taken in any given petition case for bots and the like, but how about publishing weekly stats on how many accounts have been warned, banned, and terminated?
It would show that GM enforcement is active without disclosing information on who the action was against.
By not releasing any information on GM policy enforcement, it gives the impression of no activity. I think most people will agree that is looks like NCSoft is actively endorsing ebaying of in-game items and bots. We see the same bots week after week... People petition then repeatedly but they're still here.
Just a simple little counter like "24 Warnings, 47 Bans, 590 Tterminations this week" and we'll know that bot/macro bannings aren't a myth.
Ummm, I got to the 2nd tier of Gms, and they said I wasn't involved. When I was...after re petitioning I got hold of GMAdigha where she said I "agreed to a trade of 5000adena for my glaive" where i sent in a screenshot of me accepting 5 million adena...and when my friend petitioned about the same scam/**** (seeing 5mill adena and recieving 5K) the SAME GMAdigha said he didn't even trade she said "The logs show you sold your duals in a private shop for 5000 adena." I am very confused and dissapointed because this scam/**** is going around and over the past 3 days over 30 people have lost millions of adena each. And every sinlge one has petitionedm gotten to the 2nd tier, and was shot down. Just wondering Ash/Spam, why whould 30+ people be "Selling their gear" worth millions to the *same* person for 1/1000 of the price? each and every time??? The other GMs need to rethink some of theire policies....and yes im whining about this everywhere till i get Ash or Spam or Mistryl to reply...becasue they are the GMs who actually get stuff done. And the counter idea for how many accounts have been banned/terminated for botting/farming is a GREAT idea.
This may of course be a moot point, but why report anything? I just reported a person who attempted to scam me out of my Mithril Dagger by pm'ing me asking me if I wanted him to show me how to dupe it? Based on all the information I've seen, that alone is grounds for being banned. What do I get back though, a standard form saying that it is something that needs to be resolved "in the community"... Well, are not the GMs the police in this community? If so, then would not the police respond to a break-in attempt with more than a phone call saying that it was up to 'the community' to prevent such a thing? If this is the best we can expect from the GMs, then why are they in there? The only real action I've ever seen from a GM is in the moving of some one stuck, and even that takes a long time to get accomplished.
Like I said, it's probably all moot, but after all I got was a "standard form" basically telling me to go away, I got a bit upset.
Well, are not the GMs the police in this community?
Well, yes and no, they are the police when they need to take action to protect the interests of NCSoft, and they are the police when they need to protect the players from RL crimes that might happen in their game, specifically for the second part they have to take action only against reported offencess.
In game they are nothing, they are there to resolve game stoping issues, like when you are stuck, receive the waves of whining for whatever reason and give an impression that they are probably listening, but maybe not.
They are not there to protect you from in game crimes that only affect your toon, scaming has been repeatedly reported as a non EULA or ToS breaking action, as long as the scammer is only taking advantage of player brain flaws and not game mecahnics flaws, saying he can dupe an item for you is not bannable, the action of duping is, and as you have allready determined by yourself that he was lying he did nothing against the game rules.
He tried to take advantage of your greed and your acceptance of cheating so to scam you, obviously either because you don't posses those traits at least not at that extent to risk your item, or because his scam was terribly obvious, or even both, you decided not to go for it, good for you, others will get scamed, oh well they shouldn't want to cheat in the first place, no sympathy from me.
Unauthorized access of an account policy: (aka. Stolen account, hacked account)
Accessing of someone else’s account will lead to an account ban to all accounts related to the theft of the account. There are no exceptions to this rule. An account belongs only to person it is registered to on PlayNC. Accounts are non-transferable.
Can this be explained a bit more?
Would this rule apply to someone accessing 2 different accounts (no disputed) from the same IP address?
Would this rule apply to someone using 2 accounts in a way of “duel boxing” running 2 accounts on 2 computers side by side?
Would this rule apply to someone failing multiple times to log in with wrong password to another/own account?
Would this apply to someone purchasing/trading for an items in game that might have came from a hacked/stolen account?
Only the fourth of part of your list has some merit to ask all the rest are totaly irrelevant with this rule.
When an account is hacked, GM's will use all the resources avialbale to identify if the hacker has accounts and bann them, whatever happened to the items and the toon of the hacked account is not going to be reversed, and an account owning items from the hacked account will be banned only if it can be proven that it had a connection with the hackers account.
Extreme example:
Lets asume i don't even play L2, but i know you from some other game or online acivity or even IRL, or i just happen to find you Login and password and i want to be a *****.
I log in, throw everything you own on the ground, dissolve your clan, scam clan mates from their items adena, go on a killing spree and accumulate max karma on your toon, and everything else i can think of and log off.
Now even if it is proved beyond any doubt whatsoever that your account was hacked and you are totaly inocent....
Im sure most of the GM's are doing what they can, they also have a set of rules that must be followed. They cant bend the rules for one person, keeping in mind yes, they should look into it more deeply, which I am sure they already are. Just keep asking them about it, or follow the issue till its resolved.
Not that I would use the geometry, line of sight thing to kill monsters by "perching," but could you tell me where those spots are so I could go watch for offenders? OK just kidding.
I think you need to do something about all the scamming in game, take the duplicate name scam. you say we must take care of the problem ourselfs. lastnight a scam such as this was committed, it was reported straightaway to the report bad player GM. what else could the victim do, you can't kill the other player in town, cos you get killed by guards, you can spread info around about the name of the scammer but they just make a new Char and scam again. The only option ingame is to follow the person you think has brought the goods and kill/grief them, which is not really fair. What I think you should do is take the item from off the Char that has it and return it to the original owner (as long as there was no other trade), if it was a trade/gift etc the trade can be done again and the trader can not complain again if he falls for the same scam twice. or another would be for us to report the scam you trace the other Chars owned by this person and mark them all red as a warning to others this person is not honest. If in Real life villians become know by what they do and who they hang round with in a game like this we have no way of knowing who the Villians really are so how can we roleplay. We can not roleplay we can only become victims with no police to go to, no courts to take them to trial, no stocks to lock them in.. What can we do to roleplay victims.
I did the Black Lion quest so often I got 10 of the Lion's Eyes - I wanted to see if there was a next higher level reward (ther isn't). I saved all the cargo boxes (over 600) and spent an afternoon opening them. While doing so, my program crashed. Upon return, my 10 Lion's Eyes were gone. I petitioned the GM about it.
Prior to my petition, I spent a minute drafting a concise memo of what happened. The GM contacted me shortly thereafter and clarified some points (and perhaps made sure I was honest...which is fine with me!). Again, I attemped to keep the communucation clear and unemotional.
Upon investigating my claim, the GM returned my 10 eyes. This occured within 24 hours, even though it was a holiday weekend. Throughout the whole process (including multiple GM levels), the GMs were polite and professional. I found the interaction process to be a good one and was fully satisfied with the results.
NCSoft, I know you get plenty of upset people who let their emotions get the better of them. I wanted to pass you a compliment. This is a GREAT game (I'm an old toot, over 3 decades of gaming experience) and you are doing a fine job. Thanks!
Make the GM actualy write, and not give out those bot/auto msg. I find that extremly insulting (makes it look like your not listening to your clients).
I hear NCsoftNA is run out of a cave on Mars where everyone wears earmuffs all the time and very dark sunglasses.
GMs need to be in touch with the player community. Out-sourcing may save the company money, but you lose so much for that extra greenback, especially when you are supposed to interact with your customers on a daily basis. Every GM should write a letter of introduction to be posted on this website. Otherwise, hire some people I don't have to charter an international flight to meet. If you don't understand the point I am getting at, that would be the problem
You know what? I will spell it out. Too many of the GMs are out of touch and out of reach. Cut the auto response, and that includes scripted respnoses. And if the volume of petitions is too much for the current staff you have two choices: hire more GMs, or find more competent replacements. For the record: I consider even one problem GM to be too many, and NCsoftNA should feel the same.
Very true. Ive had 1 single gm actually get me a response that wasnt automated. The rest were just automated words that made no sense and didnt even pertain to my problem
Well these are all nice post and to know we are being helped is great.. Now for the real question. What actions do you take against your own GM's for participating in the Dominant clans on the gustin server. For example: you have GM's that are members of EA(gustin server). How fair is this? You know i am right and all others should know. The game is very challenging on its own. We dont need GM's helping dominant clans out. I guess this explains how they got all that nice gear too.. Hmm.. What say you to this.. Oh and there is screen shot of the GM's pm'ing a player to.. so ya cant deny this one.. Its on [censored] because it would just get deleted from these threads.
so it is a little while since this thread was near top but i got an idea
the first tier gms supposedly patrol the game to make sure nothing is happening that breaks rule, but spend most of their time answering petitions, why not have two sets of tier 1 gms, one set answers petitions the other does nothing but patrols, that way the gm's can actually catch some of these things as they happen instead of having to wait until it is too late because it took a while to get to the petition.
likewise the gms should be people who have played the game before they became gms, then they'd know exactly what a player has gone through, as it is now they have perfectly made chars given them as a gm, they get the best sets and such without even working for it, this lead to the "i have no troubles so why should they" syndrome causing gms to be very impersonal.
DUEL DAGGERS WOULD BE SWEET! Like elektra :p and ITEMS WONT DROP WHEN U DIE! GOD! PISSIS ME OFF! U DIE AND DROP SOMETHING. I DROPPED MY GAITERS, BOOTS, AND GLOVES ONCE BUT GOT THEM BACK! PPL WOULD FEEL CRUMY IF THEY LOST SOMETHING THEY WORKED HARD FOR :confused: :confused: :confused:
The non-sequiter above notwithstanding, one of the best things that could happen to the GM support staff is that there would be more of them. In fact, most of the "grunt" GM work (such as handling the "Help, I'm stuck" petitions and the initial investigation of bots) could be handled by volunteers.
This idea was stolen from Sony and their EQ Guides Program. Basically, players apply for the position, and are required to pass a screening process, which includes knowledge of the game, game trivia, sample scenarios where GMs are involved, written communication tests, etc. If the applicant passes, they are given a "Guide" character on a server different from the server(s) that they have other characters on.
Guides act as first-contact GMs, answering simple Customer Service problems, directing issues to higher-tier GMs as needed, or directing players to the technical support forums, un-sticking characters, moving to locations where problems are reported to do the initial investigations, handle those player disputes that are not GM issues, etc.
Especially if the Aden-Guides were given the ability to do initial bot investigations, unstick characters, and resolve simple issues (such as teleports between TI and Gludin when the boat crashes, etc.) it would do much to relieve the higher GM staff's workload and allow them to concentrate on more serious issues.
I've read over how to go about petitioning for bots and haven't checked on how to do it in a long time. SO I decided on the petition list so I thought I could use the report a bad user option in game and report a name that I thought was a bot in the disputs among players. I AFK then come back to find I've been loged out, and when I relog in I can't play. Tell me I made a mistake in petitioning the wrong way plz so anway I copyed the right example to petition bots the proper way, what ever I did I shouldn't get banned out of playing L2 WTH happened!? :eek:
Stormy please play whichever game you want but please don't try to ruin it for those who enjoy it as it is.
Sure, farmers and bots are a nuisance, but it's similar in every other MMO on the market. So it cannot be related to the drop rate of items or anything.
If you would increase normal drops I'd have to quit. Does that surprise you?
I'm playing a dwarven Bounty Hunter, a class thats more than able to gather all resources one would need to get equipment suitable to the level of his char (that means NO brig set at lvl 20). Even with the current drop rates hardly anyone wants to party me for the skills I have, there are too many materials on the market so my class is not very popular. Of course all these materials come from the farmers who flood the market with them, but thats another story.
You see, its already possible to get all the items and money you need by playing a dwarf. I'd almost bet that you do not play a dwarf or even have one to constantly party with but yet you come here to complain. Maybe you should just get a clue before you rant about things.
Anyway, with more drops for non-dwarf classes my char would get even less appealing to be invited into a group. I'm unable to solo at lvl 60 and will never get any good pvp skills... why should I keep leveling if everyone would get drops?
I've seen ppl who leveled to 75 with gear suitable for lvl 35 chars. So there is absolutely no problem with not wearing top equipment. What do you complain about?
Stormy please play whichever game you want but please don't try to ruin it for those who enjoy it as it is.
Sure, farmers and bots are a nuisance, but it's similar in every other MMO on the market. So it cannot be related to the drop rate of items or anything.
If you would increase normal drops I'd have to quit. Does that surprise you?
I'm playing a dwarven Bounty Hunter, a class thats more than able to gather all resources one would need to get equipment suitable to the level of his char (that means NO brig set at lvl 20). Even with the current drop rates hardly anyone wants to party me for the skills I have, there are too many materials on the market so my class is not very popular. Of course all these materials come from the farmers who flood the market with them, but thats another story.
You see, its already possible to get all the items and money you need by playing a dwarf. I'd almost bet that you do not play a dwarf or even have one to constantly party with but yet you come here to complain. Maybe you should just get a clue before you rant about things.
Anyway, with more drops for non-dwarf classes my char would get even less appealing to be invited into a group. I'm unable to solo at lvl 60 and will never get any good pvp skills... why should I keep leveling if everyone would get drops?
I've seen ppl who leveled to 75 with gear suitable for lvl 35 chars. So there is absolutely no problem with not wearing top equipment. What do you complain about?
That's BS
Cheaters have nothing to do with drop rates. There are cheats for every single game around, being that game hard or easy.
Cheats have everything to do with:
a) the company lacking the skills, the efficiency and everything else (lol) that is needed to prevent cheating. When cheating goes rampant like in erica server this is mostly due to the "Nothing will happen to me" feeling. If cheaters would have been banned right awat from day 1 most people would think twice before running a bot. But when, like in erica, a girl get 2 temporal bannings for botting is like saying "Go ahead, bot all you want, you will get to 75 in a few weeks and we will ban you 6 days" gg
Something really weird is happening in erica but thats another story.
b) Useless, abstract policies that dont deal with real cheating scenarios. One would think that is as easy as saying "0 Tolerance policy to third party programs" right? Well, cheaters on erica got organized. They shared accounts and choose someone to run the bots every night. Now, is the policy taking into account the following scenario:
player a and player b buy an account. They run a support class bot on that account. They level their main char with the help of that account but they don't run a bot on their main chars. So lets say that even they don't run the bot on their PC but remotely on another pc. Would that be bannable? Who will get eventually banned in that scenario? The support char? all chars?
c) The cheaters themselves. They dont need excuses to cheat. Is a big lie the good old "I cheat cause the game is too hard" The truth is that they cheat cause nobody is preventing them to do so, and because they dont care. That's the way they play. They don't see anything wrong in cheating or if they do, they just take their chances.
I am not complaining for anything, I just answer to ppl who complain about bots. And I express a logical opinion that if u want to fight a problem u have to fight it's cause not the symptoms. Everybody is free to disagree. And I think everybody is free to express his ideas. This is the communication all about. And by the way, Zeus747 I did not had any intention to ruin your game! :-) It is a game after all!
I am not complaining for anything, I just answer to ppl who complain about bots. And I express a logical opinion that if u want to fight a problem u have to fight it's cause not the symptoms. Everybody is free to disagree. And I think everybody is free to express his ideas. This is the communication all about. And by the way, Zeus747 I did not had any intention to ruin your game! :-) It is a game after all!
1. Increase adena and item drops!
2. Make all items available through drops from regular mobs
3. Decrease the prices
Have a look in WOW. Blizzard has something to teach you after all!
st0rmy, these things that you are asking NCsoft to do will not stop "adena farmers and bots". If you think WOW is so great, do you mind telling me how is it that IGE is able to sell WOW currency???
1. Increase adena and item drops!
2. Make all items available through drops from regular mobs
3. Decrease the prices
Have a look in WOW. Blizzard has something to teach you after all!
st0rmy, these things that you are asking NCsoft to do will not stop "adena farmers and bots". If you think WOW is so great, do you mind telling me how is it that IGE is able to sell WOW currency???
1. Increase adena and item drops!
2. Make all items available through drops from regular mobs
3. Decrease the prices
Have a look in WOW. Blizzard has something to teach you after all!
st0rmy, these things that you are asking NCsoft to do will not stop "adena farmers and bots". If you think WOW is so great, do you mind telling me how is it that IGE is able to sell WOW currency???
People buy Diablo II items for quarters on Ebay still, you can believe that they buy gold on WoW. IGE doesn't just put up numbers because they have spare time.
I just wanted to bring this up so the GM's can see what they should be doing.
This post has been created to inform the players in a concise manner of GM policies, how we enforce them and what customers can do to get speedy and reliable service.
Policy List:
Below is a list of the most common policies that customers ask about.
NO mercy policies!
All of the policies in this section will lead directly to an account ban.
Adena, item, and account sales policy:
The sale of Adena and other in game items for real money is forbidden. Any advertisement, attempted, and/or actual sale of any in-game Lineage 2 items could result in a permanent ban of all related accounts on the first offense. All lineage 2 accounts are non-transferable. This means that an account will always belong to the one person that originally registered it on PlayNC. The sale of a game account constitutes “account sharing,” which is also not allowed.
The purchasing of adena or accounts has been vaguely enforced in the past. Usually buyers only had accounts cancelled when their particular transaction was damaging in itself. We wanted to concentrate on those that sold these items. This may be changing very quickly. Since the demand for black market goods is so high removing the people that sell these items is tough since the business is so lucrative.
It's pretty easy to see how many people are gone. If you been playing for a couple of years and have a good number of people on your friends list, just check and see how many of them are on. Or look at the ones that are offline and try to remember the last time you saw them online.
Check the lowbie areas and see how many real players are there, not the "mindless" ones running around. Check the mid grade areas and see how many new players are there vs player alts or sub classes. When I log on and see my server is "Heavy", I know that just means that the"mindless" ones are back in force.
Your perception isn't a guarentee of statistical proof. That's all I'm saying. Because I'll tell you this: The people I know aren't quitting. They're busy with real life now, as I am, and intend to come back when they're done and they still have much to do in this game, as I do.
I ain't discounting a population loss, but I am doubting its evidence.
Man I wish I could agree with you. The people on my friends list were not just people that I put there idlely. These were people that I was partying with all the time. Now, they just aren't there. I wouldn't be so upset if it were just a few of them, you expect some looses over time and IRL issues getting in the way. What bothers me is that it's most of them. There are 30 people on that list that I have not seen online in almost 2 months.
This saddens me greatly.
Though I think the one that bothers me the most is the young man in my clan that simply disappeared one day, with no warning at all. He's in the Air Force, and I can only pray that nothing horrible has happened. His toon will remain in my clans roster until the day he returns, or the server is shut down........ :(