spam- On Bots.

[HGMspam]

Hello all,

I guess it is about that time again for me to make my usual bot post. :cool: I have been reading all of the threads about bots. Each one had a different take on the bot problem. Some were about policy (posting bot names, or how to catch them) and others were about how reporting did not work. I am basically going to try to cover all of the bases here and give you a “State of the Bots,” report.

The GM team has only been running at half capacity lately because of our big move. We are all here in our new home and ready to get back up to full speed. So expect some empty voids where some notorious bots use to roam.

Ok, now for skinny on bots: I am going to list some facts about bots, bot removal, reporting methods, and GM policy.

1. Gameguard works! No tool will ever stop all bots from working. Gameguard has stopped many 3rd party programs from working. Yes, I know which one it has not stopped. Look at it this way, if there is only one enemy for me to combat, it is much better than 20 (amount of high level botting programs before GG.)

2. Posting bot names: We will never, ever, ever, ever, post the names of the characters that are banned from service. Why? The simple answer is the owner of an account is free to smear their own reputation, but our company will not wade into the briar field of helping people make fools of themselves. Everyone has the right to make a fool out of themselves but NCsoft and Lineage 2 will not help them. This self imposed privacy rule may be strict but it protects everyone. (There has been many times that I would have loved to shout that “SoAndSo2020” was banned but realized that I would open the flood gates to many more problems in the future.)

3. Posting bots banned numbers: Here is another thing that deep down I would love to do. But what does it accomplish? Some folks would go “See I told you so! They do ban accounts.” Others would say “Pfft! Those numbers are fake.” So this post is the closest you will get to a banned disclosure until someone in marketing or production feels they need to say. So here it is… The GMs have banned more accounts than some MMO’s have concurrent users.

4. Reporting bots: Reporting bots is important, but this is not our only method of catching bots. (I will talk about testing methods later.) Reporting bots helps us identify problem areas. You should not expect to be able to report somebody and have them disappear instantly. It does not work that way. Your reports move that bot or group to a top of a list of characters “to be tested.” You can report bots anyway you like but you do have to include at least one bot name. You do not have to put in every name you see in a train for us to take action. “SoAndSo is in a bot train,” is just fine. I have seen posts where customers have said that they have had their petitions closed out because they could not list all members of a bot train. I am looking into this as that should not happen.

5. Testing Methods: We have several tests for bots. Some of the tests are obvious and others are not. Some of you that have been tested may know what I am talking about. (I will talk about false reports later.) We have some tests that are GM side only. This means it is non-invasive and you will never see it. These tests are the ones that really identify bots. Most of the bot tests you do see are very simple tests that try to break a bots routine.

6. False reporting: False reporting of bots has always happened. This is something we are quite aware of. This is one of the reasons that bot banning is not instant. We take account termination very seriously and do not want a loyal customer banned. I have seen some discussions where customers are afraid that they could be mistaken for a bot just for playing normally. This will never happen. As long as you play this game as it was intended you will not be removed from service. I have also seen discussions where a customer was reported several times (falsely) and had their game play was interfered with because of a GM test. Some of our tests are invasive I will admit. I am working on changing that as long as it does not sacrifice our service. In a perfect world you should never have to speak to a GM.

7. Finally I would like to give a big thanks to all of my hard working GMs that make this process possible. Believe it or not all the GMs are here to help our customers.

Well folks I hope this alleviates some of the question you may have had. I know I have not covered every conceivable question about bots so I will leave this thread open for questions. Forum rules still apply.

[TLuirn]

Yay! Enough people yell for a few years and EVENTUALLY you'll get a response!!

jkjk

Thanks for taking the time to let us know some tidbits.

[Lorak]

Nice post Spam.

I do have one question though. This system is good for 24/7 farmer bots.
But what about regular player botters? Those who might play live for a few hours, but then bot for several hours sleeping.

I guess we should only report them when they are botting. But by the time a GM arrives to test latter they may be playing. Just wondering what is the best way to report or handle these 50/50 bots.

Lorak

[Woodsman]

Another question I'd like to ask. What about ebayers and known farmers?

I remember you saying that NCSoft is targetting ebayers as well as farmers. I also reported a couple of them. Will Ebayers and farmers if caught be subject to a ban or not?

[TailChaser]

Just curious, when you DO ban a bot do you have to type in some command or do you have a special hammer (with SA ban) and you target the bot and "boink" them on the head with it and that account gets banned? Wow that was a long sentence. Pant pant pant pant GASP :D :D :D

[Kiranya]

Good point Tailchaser. :D

I would love to see an in-game character with a massive hammer with the letters "BAN" inscribed in GOLD on the head.

What they should do is include execution squares in town centers... ye know... to maintain order. Convicted cheaters will be sent to the execution square, and an announcement is made for everyone to show up within the next 15 minutes to witness the "execution". So after the time is up - the in-game gm slams down the ban-hammer... and the cheater in question goes up in smoke. :D

[Skyler]

Nice to see a post from you Spam, and quite informative too... I would say it is also somewhat reassuring.

I think one problem is the delay between GM's response/reading the petition and when the petition was sent. You could see someone botting or cheating and then page on it, but anything from 1-24hours later the GM reads/responds to it. That cheat could well be long gone, playing normally or doing something completely different. This probably results in an awful lot of GM's missing the point where they can nail the cheat.

I also believe it's very hard for the GM's to catch the real players who cheat compared with the constant afk farmer bot groups. The casual players botting support characters for a raid or pvp are much harder to catch. The GM's should try to catch these particular people as they are the ones who really destroy other peoples gameplay. It would also be nice for GM's to catch those who use programs to see other peoples stats or gain other advantages which aren't visually obvious or automated.

One question I think many people want you to answer or act on Spam would be this;

Why has there been no server side encryption or authorisation to prevent 3rd party programs from continuing to work. This would back up GameGuard nicely and should make for a clean game (depending on update frequency I'm sure but certain methods could be automated). Are there any plans to introduce such a thing as this would do almost all of your bot hunting work for you by stopping them.

Unfortunately a drawback to this is by adding it you will prevent the cheats from cheating yes, but those that have already cheated will keep the character, the items and whatever else they gained from their cheating. Given things on most servers I'd say that's probably not an ideal solution either, but I'd certainly love to see it.

Perhaps have a few weeks of a major blitz on bots and cheats then start the encryption or another prevention method to make sure they don't come back.

I would still also like to offer a small tour and discussion with you or any other HGM about this problem. It would be nice to give you a few examples and show you how I believe you might be able to improve your detection. You don't have to give away any secrets I simply would like you to see somethings from my eyes and they could end up helping.

Keep up the good work and thanks for posting all that ;)

[Terance]

thanks for showing us that your still awake !

btw - dont worry too much about intrusive testing, i think its pretty funny :p

[Splatter]

What i want to know, and i'm shocked no one asked yet.

It looks like from what some have said on the boards. People are starting to use a new tactic to grief. Where clans are reporting other clans for botting. The purpose of this is to mess with seiges...

Have you seen this new type of griefing tactic, and what are you doing about it?

[Terance]

[ QUOTE ]
What i want to know, and i'm shocked no one asked yet.

It looks like from what some have said on the boards. People are starting to use a new tactic to grief. Where clans are reporting other clans for botting. The purpose of this is to mess with seiges...

Have you seen this new type of griefing tactic, and what are you doing about it?

[/ QUOTE ]

you read all his post right?

he adressed that

[Lord Chaos]

[ QUOTE ]
Why has there been no server side encryption or authorisation to prevent 3rd party programs from continuing to work.

[/ QUOTE ]

Simple answer, because its not easy to do very foolproof and NCSoft NA doesn't have a development team for Lineage 2.

[Splatter]

No he didn't. He talked about false bot reports, and how such reports won't result in a ban. But not about how some are using this as a new tactic in griefing. And what will be done to stop this, and what penalty some players may face for such reports.

[Lord Chaos]

One thing I'd like to know is why you do not take example of the other competitive areas around the world, and put extra scruteny on the top of the top, especially those who are put out as public figures for fame and such. There's nothing more damaging than reading selfproclaimed botters or bought bot characters become glorified because they made sub class, hit level 75 or became the Lord of Aden.

Its like in the real life, in the olympics you have alot more scruntiny on the participants than there is in the minileague...and it makes alot more difference if the olympic winner cheated.

This would probably restore more faith than anything, and also go after the real problems on the servers, the hardcore cheaters.

[soltyspl]

[ QUOTE ]
1. Gameguard works! No tool will ever stop all bots from working. Gameguard has stopped many 3rd party programs from working. Yes, I know which one it has not stopped. Look at it this way, if there is only one enemy for me to combat, it is much better than 20 (amount of high level botting programs before GG.)

[/ QUOTE ]

One enemy ? Please... Excluding two major bots, in two main versions each, you have new small contender from Germany, amongst other small thingies (like l2wh tool to sniff warehouse data). I assume you at least know them all.

What GG stopped - are macro programs. They are stopped because GG blocks certain API calls (the same reason why legitimate programs are broken by GG). If you think that shareware tools like macro express or type-it-in (rotfl, really) were your enemy... The only remote enemy you had was ACTool. And besides crafting shots it was barely useful for anything. A bit irritating to program anything more complicated in it, too easy to break on very simple things (like every other macro tool). Saying that GG helps with botting in L2 is abit like saying that flu medicine helps with cancer ...

As for other older things like L2King - its adventure in NA stopped when it went p2p, afaik. It's not developed anymore. Nor is L2Rich or L2Mate. Competition (and a bit of authors' greed) wiped them out, not GG. Out of curiosity, I'll ask in a few places how did they work (macro based, or sniffers). I wonder how it will relate to your official opinion.

GG stopped/caused compatibility problems with much, much more stuff, than it helped with. It acts like rootkit. It disables some core parts of security suites (PG for example, rendering it effectively useless - that's something that shouldn't happend). It does ugly things that are no longer possible on WinXP 64bit. And you can safely bet they won't be possible on Vista (Longhorn). Accessing physicalmem object by anything other than drivers (to bypass paging, among other things) is no longer possible in 2003 sp1 either.



Anyway, discussion about GG aside, the results (or lack of them) in game should be how you're judged. And after 1.5 years, your team's performance is dismal. A couple of months ago you, together with Tisirin, made claims about banning 100+/day, 1000+/week (don't remember which of you made which, or maybe it was only you, doesn't matter really). Are you still backing that up ? Don't forget official quaterly figures that hasn't moved a bit in any direction for quite a time, time that has passed since OB, and deserted noob towns. And of course your 3 naturally leveled lvl70+ chars (quite an achievement even for someone lifeless and jobless, and you're not such person). I also doubt that adena inc. would buy again so many new accounts on a weekly basis to cover banned ones. Too many things doesn't add up. Not only that, your claims are not reflected in game, at all.

On most of the MOO releated forums, this game is a living joke in terms of bots, pro farmers, bannings and GM performance. For a good reason.

It's easy to make cute reassuring post on the borads once a few months. Effects are nowhere to be seen though.

My $0.02

PS.
And the most ironic thing - port 7777. You know, that port that people have been asking about changing since closed beta (for whatever reason, private server admins have no problem with it - maybe they simply care a bit more). Anyway, it often requires proxying. GG broke it. There're people out there that have to use [selfcensored] to be able to play this game at all.

[cyzco21]

I thought you weren't allowed to come in here and name programs like that :eek:

[soltyspl]

[ QUOTE ]
I thought you weren't allowed to come in here and name programs like that :eek:

[/ QUOTE ]

They are not developed (and don't work) anymore. The ones I listed anyway.

[Lorak]

He only named the ones that aren't used /updated anymore. So they don't work anyway.
The one that does work and causes 99.9% of the problems is not named. Sadly thats the one that not only works really,really well. But is also the one that NCSoft seems incapable of getting rid of.
:(

Lorak

[cyzco21]

[ QUOTE ]
There're people out there that have to use [censored] to be able to play this game at all.

[/ QUOTE ]

Isn't this one too, or am I just TEH DUMB!!??

[soltyspl]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
There're people out there that have to use [selfcensored] to be able to play this game at all.

[/ QUOTE ]

Isn't this one too, or am I just TEH DUMB!!??

[/ QUOTE ]

Naah, you're not. It's the most secret, unknown name of the covertly developed bot, that no one playing L2 knows about. I'll self censor it to make you happy.

*sigh*

[cyzco21]

Oh, I don't care if you list it man, I just didnt want you to get in troubles for it. :D

[Terance]

[ QUOTE ]
No he didn't. He talked about false bot reports, and how such reports won't result in a ban. But not about how some are using this as a new tactic in griefing. And what will be done to stop this, and what penalty some players may face for such reports.

[/ QUOTE ]

Griefing False Reports is simply a subcatagory of False Reports,

he said, that noone will be banned if they are not botting,
that includes people who are reported falsely,

also,
as far as i see it,
unfortunatly, they cant punish people for false reporting,
because they have absolutly no way of proving malicious intent,

[Iskan_Dar]

hm, I have a seperate question to ask. when it comes to reporting a bot, how exact do we have to be in naming them? it seems to be a new tactic to name bot some unreadable combination of iiillliillliillililil or something similar. extremely hard to read in the first place, made harder when you are trying to grab it on the fly.

[Terance]

[ QUOTE ]
hm, I have a seperate question to ask. when it comes to reporting a bot, how exact do we have to be in naming them? it seems to be a new tactic to name bot some unreadable combination of iiillliillliillililil or something similar. extremely hard to read in the first place, made harder when you are trying to grab it on the fly.

[/ QUOTE ]

personally, i click on them, which targets them,

then you have their name right on your screen, and its not moving,

then i do a pm, to test that i have typed it correctly,

then i submit it to the GM

(after you have pmed you can hit " to bring up the name you just pmed,
then you use the arrow keys to go back and delete the ", then you type, /gm and a space, and everything after the space, (the name in this instance), appears right in the GM pettion window,
so therefore you know it is spelled perfectly)

[Lorak]

I have been told that using %target works as well if you have them targeted.

haven't tried it yet though.

[Caleria]

Nice post, ty for taking the time. :)

Yea as spam said the current situation is not too bright. read up there for some obscure reasons they are at about 50% support capacity. Not even 100% was close to enough support for the problems we are facing.

People always forget good things really fast.
Before the move the ingame support concerning bot reports and the success rates were not too bad. Better than they ever were actually. I don't want to use the word good here... Not going to do that while players are not afraid to write into their signatures that they bot every day, not hesitate to post half-censored screenshots of their desktops with running bot programs. Not while players have to drive a pro farmer group out of every place they want to hunt at and while the positions of most influence are almost all posessed by admitting cheaters.
Well I said not too bad. Petitions were being answered shortly after I sent them. 10 minutes average, and before that I could soemtimes witness the teleport investigation, in some cases even see the group disappear. That was very satisfying for the moment, although there is a new bot account created for every one thats banned.

I have no reason to doubt that the vague numbers they released about banned account are true. If they wanted to make numbers up they would have done it already and given us what most of us wanted to see for so long.

A thousand accounts per month sounds a lot... do some basic maths. Lets say 1080 bots banned in june... we have 9 servers say 120 bots on the average server (9*120=1080). Now june has 30 days which leads to incredible 4 banned bots per day and server (4*9*30=1080). If they only ban 4 bots each day on your server, why should they make that numbers up, honestly?
To ban one 9 man bot party per server and day (which would be pretty good and possible through a month... there are more than 30 farmer parties on Erica at least ;)) they would have to raise to 2,430 bans per month. That doesnt include the newly activated accounts over the month.

Now... don't trust statistics you didn't manipulate yourself. ;) I'm just juggling with numbers here... More than 1000 can be a pretty high number. But we see why buying new accounts can currently not harm a farmers business... they make more cash a day than a GM could ban.

Of course it is important that every case is reviewed carefully... and of course it also takes time to investigate all cases in which no evidence can be found... but only 4 confirmed bans per day and server... I'm afraid thats way too slow. :o I myself report more than 4 bots per day.



Thanks for the reporting procedures updates... you guys should know best which information you need. :) A while back a GM would ask me to list more names in the party after I reported only one of them... maybe you chaned the guideline... you must have better tools to extract char names than a player has by watching a moving line of IiJj|lLoO0 and so on. Will save me a lot of time and nerves when I only have to report one party member in future.


GameGuard... never had problems with it. No real problems at least. I hear a lot of ppl blaming gameguard for crashes but my game crashed even way before GG was built in. ;) Well it might wreck a lot of useful tools but also reduces the ways to break into the game, making it easier for the GMs to spot the weakpoints of the porgrams.
And SS crafting scripts are cheats too... low quality cheats of little effect, but its the same scheme. Anyone who switches from such a program to -the- big cheat tool only proves the point that cheaters in their attitude remain the same no matter which tool they use.

So what remains to be said... I hope you can get back to 100% again as soon as possible... at the moment its terrible. :p and after that further increase your testing methods... or send a screenshot of an elpy with a threat to murder it over to korea and demand they turn GameGuard into something that deserves the name. ;)

Cal

Ps... what an epic spammage... sorry for typos... soo tired. ^^

[Elrohir]

What's a bot?

*Looks up innocently*

[cyzco21]

BOT = Bank of Thailand?

[Choch]

More in depth response to come sometime this weekend if I get more freetime ^_^

My main problem with the bots is that there are SO many that have been around for months, to almost a year now and they are still going. This means their existance and lack of getting banned is unrelated to the move to Austin.

I have always given the GMs kudos to whenever they banned some "notorious" farmers on Bartz, and they have banned 2 mid-sized infamous farmer rings, or at least parts of them.

But its the fact that as far as I can tell, the farmer maps I drew are accurate for places a GM can go anytime to find a bot that I have a problem with....The GMs should know where the bots are...and they should go there and ban them without the need for player reporting...100% hasn't happened on Bartz in the past 6-8 months as far as I've been able to tell.

Also, spam may I suggest that you re-implement the policy of a GM always giving their name even if they just close the petition and don't intiate a conversation with the player...I think that was one GOOD aspect of the in-game support that has gone away. I'd like to know who's speaking to me when they give me a message and then auto-close the petition =/

EDIT:
Good to see you survived the move...the location should now be "Austin" I hope...either that or "office next to Tisirin's...WTS Deodorant! T.T" not "CA...bla bla" ^_^

[Wyzeguy]

I'm glad they let you out of the box, spam.

[HGMspam]

Ok I thought I would check out some of the responses tonight so I can keep up!

Lorak- Report bots when you see them or if they interfere with your play. No one should have to give up their play time just hunting for bots... that is what GMs are for. As for part time bots (P/T) they should be reported too. I can not get too deep into our bot procedure as we like to keep it secret but I can say that it is split into two forms. The reported bots are given quick and easy tests. This determines if they should added to our reports. Reports are generated seprately and investigated by different GMs with different tools. So F/T bots do get caught quicker because they are online all the time but P/T bots will get theirs in the end.

Woodsman- Ebay and farmers are a whole different story but yes they get banned just like botters. (I would like to go into it but that is a whole different thread. I'm sure Sarge would love that challange next month.)

Tail- personally my favorite way to ban bots is the Warcrier life drain ban button combo. Crit for 100k! Ban!

Splatter- I was refering to using as bot report as a griefing tactic but I did not want to spell it out for the griefers. :)

LordC- You right, cheaters should not be glorified. We have done our best to keep cheaters out of the lime light but we have fell short. Sometime they fall through the cracks until they already have the lime light that the best we can do is take them out after... a la Ben Johnson the olympic runner... he did have the gold medal around his neck until it was yanked for steroids after the race.

Soltypl... let me answer Iskan-Dar's question first and I will get back to you.... no need to make him read all the words I have your question... was that a question? or complaint?

Anyway Iskan_Dar- It can be tough to report those names. That is why they do it. When sending in a petition the best way is to have a name. If you wanted you could write down the name as you think it is (you can use the tricks to find the name that the folks after you mentioned) and send a support ticket through the web site. With the support ticket you can use more words to discribe the situation. Like giving us the /loc. Then again I don't want you spending your free time making bot reports instead of playing. I still remember when "I" and "l" were the same font.....ahh the good ol days.

Soltypl- 2 bot programs (same bot program one with client and one with out) and a little one from Germany? That all share the same code branch right? So I'm now fighting Coke, New Coke, and Coke Classic. Slap a different sticker on the outside we have a whole new product.

As for the other programs L2K and L2R... more stolen code that had coders that got tired of constantly cracking our new code. I read their sites too. So I count that as a win for GG.

As for my cute reasuring posts. I don't think they are cute. I feel that I have been pretty blunt with the audience here. As for the actions of the GM team being noticed... I think it is pretty obvious. Where did this bot discussion come from? What triggered it? I hope that it was not just the arrival of our new CM. Bots were put on the back burner during or move over the last month. Bots were right around 60-70% of our service time usually and we knocked it down to 10% for the move and stuck with recovery, quest, and major violation issues. Not many bots have been banned in the past month.

As for Port 7777... I don't care if someone has to use {the progam} to bypass their schools network, they will have their accounts shut down just the same for using it, if it is found.

Anyway, I apologize for going on a tangent. Any anger that steams from my post is not directed at you Soltyspl it is pointed at the dead horse I have have to beat. The GG discussion is over as it is staying. The 7777 discussion is gone because you can no longer DL IP from napster illegaly and schools are slowly learning about how the internet works. We will continue to battle Coke, New Coke and Coke Classic, and if Mtn Dew pops up I will drink it too.

And at this point I refuse to use spell check. :)

[RustNC]

BACK IN THE BOX, YOU!

[Darkmotion]

Greetings,

[ QUOTE ]
BACK IN THE BOX, YOU!

[/ QUOTE ]

Who let the shoe guy in here ? I wear 9's.

*bows*

Always nice to see you, Orc Lord.

Doctor.
Doctor.
Doctor.
Doctor.
Doctors, please !

Have Fun ! ™

BoardPK
Official Board Devil

[/ QUOTE ]

[FinalCut]

[ QUOTE ]
Hello all,

I guess it is about that time again for me to make my usual bot post. :cool: I have been reading all of the threads about bots. Each one had a different take on the bot problem. Some were about policy (posting bot names, or how to catch them) and others were about how reporting did not work. I am basically going to try to cover all of the bases here and give you a “State of the Bots,” report.

The GM team has only been running at half capacity lately because of our big move. We are all here in our new home and ready to get back up to full speed. So expect some empty voids where some notorious bots use to roam.


[/ QUOTE ]
Taking into account that some botters have been reported for the past 6 months and never got banned I cant actually see any difference between you guys running at full speed and not running at all.
[ QUOTE ]

Ok, now for skinny on bots: I am going to list some facts about bots, bot removal, reporting methods, and GM policy.

1. Gameguard works! No tool will ever stop all bots from working. Gameguard has stopped many 3rd party programs from working. Yes, I know which one it has not stopped. Look at it this way, if there is only one enemy for me to combat, it is much better than 20 (amount of high level botting programs before GG.)


[/ QUOTE ]
Look at it this way. If 99% of the cheaters runs the only program that GG dont stop... whats the point?
I agree that it is better to stop some programs but I can only think of one reasonable explanation about why you guys dont stop the most common botting program. And I dare anyone to come up with a decent explanation.
If I were running a MMORPG and I had to put effort to prevent a cheating program from working I would choose the most commonly used. Yeah GG may have stopped some cheats that 1% of the cheaters used to use... big deal.
[ QUOTE ]

2. Posting bot names: We will never, ever, ever, ever, post the names of the characters that are banned from service. Why? The simple answer is the owner of an account is free to smear their own reputation, but our company will not wade into the briar field of helping people make fools of themselves. Everyone has the right to make a fool out of themselves but NCsoft and Lineage 2 will not help them. This self imposed privacy rule may be strict but it protects everyone. (There has been many times that I would have loved to shout that “SoAndSo2020” was banned but realized that I would open the flood gates to many more problems in the future.)


[/ QUOTE ]
This is false, privacy have NOTHING to do with character names, and with its actions. Character names and its actions are public.
Besides the consequences of making bans publics can easily be observed just by taking a look at other MMORPG sites where bans are public.
The only reason, and yes this is obviously especulation, why a company would want to keep the data about their efficiency at doing their work private is cause they know that making it public would be embarrasing.
If you were making that info public you wont be able to lie about it. That means if every month a list of banned players would be published then everybody would know how good or bad you are at it. Even if most companies have no problem about being "abstract liers" they do have a problem in being blatant liers so instead of making a false list, they just choose not to make any list at all. That way they dont really feel that they are lying and at the same time dont have to deal with the consequences of making the result of their work public.
[ QUOTE ]

3. Posting bots banned numbers: Here is another thing that deep down I would love to do. But what does it accomplish? Some folks would go “See I told you so! They do ban accounts.” Others would say “Pfft! Those numbers are fake.” So this post is the closest you will get to a banned disclosure until someone in marketing or production feels they need to say. So here it is… The GMs have banned more accounts than some MMO’s have concurrent users.


[/ QUOTE ]
Agree, numbers without names are pointless. Anyway most players knows who cheats on the server they play. So actually if cheaters would be getting banned there would be no threads about names, numbers, etc.
The sole existance of those threads shows that you are not doing what you want us to believe that you are doing :)
[ QUOTE ]

4. Reporting bots: Reporting bots is important, but this is not our only method of catching bots. (I will talk about testing methods later.) Reporting bots helps us identify problem areas. You should not expect to be able to report somebody and have them disappear instantly. It does not work that way. Your reports move that bot or group to a top of a list of characters “to be tested.” You can report bots anyway you like but you do have to include at least one bot name. You do not have to put in every name you see in a train for us to take action. “SoAndSo is in a bot train,” is just fine. I have seen posts where customers have said that they have had their petitions closed out because they could not list all members of a bot train. I am looking into this as that should not happen.


[/ QUOTE ]
Reporting is almost useless. I would love to say that reporting is the way to go, but after months and months now I'm sure that reporting is pointless.
The time it takes for you to answer is just unacceptable. Actually right now I HAVE A PETITION GOING FOR... 2 DAYS!
I saw 2 bot trains today and I couldnt report them because of that...
Even if I understand that we cant expect that 2 seconds after a report the guy/s get banned I think that you do all the investigation and banning stuff really bad. When *I* report a bot I ussually use the following convention:
if I say *seems to be botting* that means that he may or may not be botting and I didnt take the time to follow him around enough
if I say *is botting* is because the guy/s is/are botting. No dang doubt about it. Sometimes I've seen bots stuck in the folowing scenario
monster a ROCK botter ROCK monster B
the bot targets monster a and get stuck against the rock, since he cant reach his target the botting program tries to target a new monster, so targets monster B but since there is also an obstacle to get to monster b the proccess repeats and targets monster a again. Over and over and OVER AND OVER.
When I'm watching something like that, the idea of reporting that guy knowing that the GM is NOT going to watch him at that very same moment seems pretty stupid to me. After the report with any luck the guy may get banned in 2-3-4-5-6 month and thats sad, knowing that he could have been banned in 10 seconds but because of lack of GM, lack of time, lack of methods or whatever that guy is going to get away with it... is just disheartening
[ QUOTE ]

5. Testing Methods: We have several tests for bots. Some of the tests are obvious and others are not. Some of you that have been tested may know what I am talking about. (I will talk about false reports later.) We have some tests that are GM side only. This means it is non-invasive and you will never see it. These tests are the ones that really identify bots. Most of the bot tests you do see are very simple tests that try to break a bots routine.


[/ QUOTE ]
Erm sorry I dont buy it. There is no way whatsoever to tell a bot from a player besides observation AND interactive tests that you guys never perform. With interactive tests I mean something like... and obstacle course... like teleporting the botter to some place like execution ground (cause there are a lot of "obstacles" there) and asking the botter "Please go trought that arc that looks like a door" "please walk by the edge of the stair" you get the point.
Again: there is no way whatsoever to atomatically tell a bot from a player.
anyway as I said earlier: if botters would be getting banned there will be no need to speak about publishing names, testing methods, gameguard or whatever. I wouldnt care less about all that if botters would be getting banned.
This is nothing more that deviating the attention from the real issue here: botters should be banned.
[ QUOTE ]

6. False reporting: False reporting of bots has always happened. This is something we are quite aware of. This is one of the reasons that bot banning is not instant. We take account termination very seriously and do not want a loyal customer banned. I have seen some discussions where customers are afraid that they could be mistaken for a bot just for playing normally. This will never happen. As long as you play this game as it was intended you will not be removed from service. I have also seen discussions where a customer was reported several times (falsely) and had their game play was interfered with because of a GM test. Some of our tests are invasive I will admit. I am working on changing that as long as it does not sacrifice our service. In a perfect world you should never have to speak to a GM.


[/ QUOTE ]
Agree and I think that is important for you to let everybody know that if players dont break the rules in any way there will be no way in heaven they get banned. No matter if 20000 people report them.
I for one feel really safe cause I know that I never did and I'll never do anything that may get me banned. (Besides posting here :P)

[ QUOTE ]

7. Finally I would like to give a big thanks to all of my hard working GMs that make this process possible. Believe it or not all the GMs are here to help our customers.


[/ QUOTE ]
I will thank them the day I see that botters are not around like they are now. And when botters get banned instead of interviewed.
[ QUOTE ]

Well folks I hope this alleviates some of the question you may have had. I know I have not covered every conceivable question about bots so I will leave this thread open for questions. Forum rules still apply.

[/ QUOTE ]
Not at all but thanks for trying.
As I said the point is not talking about botters, methods, gameguard, etc etc. The point is to log in to play and see day after day that botters are not there anymore.
Honestly I think that it will never happen. Day after day I have to see how powerleveling services, bot trains, adena buyers etc can brag about what they do with no fear whatsoever.
I have to see how the very few botters that gets banned get a new account bot again and get to 65+ in no time, by the time you realize that and ban the botter again the message would be clear for him: it was worth it.
So so far I have to see day after day that you guys do too little too late.



It is a shame that my english is not good enough to really express what I think about all the botting issue.
The only thing that prevents a player from botting in lineage 2, sadly, is the player itself.

[HGMspam]

And dually good to see you Mr. Motion

Final your English is excellent and your point is taken.

Any questions? I will answer questions. :)

Please don't put me in the box... I swear I will be good... I swear.

[HGMspam]

Almost forgot to reply to Choch...

You are right. There are farmers/bots that have been around for quite awhile. We pick them off when we can.

The GMs, Myself, Rust, Sarge, Tis, everyone that has a hand in making decisions for this game know what the problems are. How to solve the problems is the real question.

[Elrohir]

[ QUOTE ]
Greetings,

[ QUOTE ]
BACK IN THE BOX, YOU!

[/ QUOTE ]

Who let the shoe guy in here ? I wear 9's.

[/ QUOTE ]
*Sticks size 12's up on the desk*

That's Proudfeet!

[TombGuard]

[ QUOTE ]
Nice post Spam.

I do have one question though. This system is good for 24/7 farmer bots.
But what about regular player botters? Those who might play live for a few hours, but then bot for several hours sleeping.

I guess we should only report them when they are botting. But by the time a GM arrives to test latter they may be playing. Just wondering what is the best way to report or handle these 50/50 bots.


Lorak

[/ QUOTE ]

they wll still get banned. it was like you robbed $1000 and I robbed $10,000 from bank. we are comitting an offence !

[TombGuard]

[ QUOTE ]
Good point Tailchaser. :D

I would love to see an in-game character with a massive hammer with the letters "BAN" inscribed in GOLD on the head.

What they should do is include execution squares in town centers... ye know... to maintain order. Convicted cheaters will be sent to the execution square, and an announcement is made for everyone to show up within the next 15 minutes to witness the "execution". So after the time is up - the in-game gm slams down the ban-hammer... and the cheater in question goes up in smoke. :D

[/ QUOTE ]

sigh.....did you read spam's post? all offended names will not not be announced. no one got the rights to know who and who was banned.

[Elrohir]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Good point Tailchaser. :D

I would love to see an in-game character with a massive hammer with the letters "BAN" inscribed in GOLD on the head.

What they should do is include execution squares in town centers... ye know... to maintain order. Convicted cheaters will be sent to the execution square, and an announcement is made for everyone to show up within the next 15 minutes to witness the "execution". So after the time is up - the in-game gm slams down the ban-hammer... and the cheater in question goes up in smoke. :D

[/ QUOTE ]

sigh.....did you read spam's post? all offended names will not not be announced. no one got the rights to know who and who was banned.

[/ QUOTE ]
Is your sense of humor in the shop or something? :mad:

[Choch]

Do you collect statistical data to where the botters are hunting, what group setups they are using, etc?

I ask because many of the professional (not player) bots use the exact same setup and bot in similar places. If you track all of this sort of data you can more easily investigate until the next trend occurs.

Do your GMs do regular runs of the high pop bot areas, if so do you track them?
For example, the bugged mobs in ToI thing in C2. Now the GMs were supposed to visit there and unbug the mobs on their own (if I'm not mistaken). Now I do give credit because after a few petitions, they did start unbugging the mobs when I petitioned. However, they were ALWAYS bugged in my experience (even when i sat there for hours bigbooming the mobs while I waited for a petition to be answered), which leads me to conclude that GMs weren't doing even semi-regular (every 4 hours) runs through ToI unbugging the mobs. So my point is that maybe while they were supposed to be doing those runs on a semi-regular basis, I don't think it was actually happening, at least not on Bartz.

As far as how to solve problems, I think one decent place to start would be monitoring and banning those using bot programs to macro their sell messages....as in those that repeat their messages when the messages exceed the amount allowable in a macro. Will the bots eventually catch on to this? Of course. But if you tracked say all of the accounts doing this for 2 weeks and then banned them all you'd get a large amount of bot accounts, even if it is just their shop accounts, its still something.

I have several other ideas for how you can combat bots that I don't think you've been doing (I didn't nkow about what I just mentioned until others posted it on the boards here) but I don't think this is the place to get into toooo much detail ^_^

(but yes, I'd be surprised if the "show me this skill" or "tell me your level" actually worked lol)

Oh and I assume you know how when BD/SwS bots go afk they keep singing indefinitely at exactly the same intervals....I'd say that's a prime sign of botting and something you should be able to write a script to detect....or at the very least see in game and take as prettttyyy good evidence for at least further investigation...

I notice you included Rust as a person who has a hand in making decisions for this game.....wouldn't that mean that he actually does something...and wouldn't that mean he couldn't be the producer because that would contradict his job description!

But yeah, perception IS reality when it comes to this sort of thing...when people see bots/farmers running rampant at HIGH levels for months it makes them think, well the GMs obviously aren't banning them because then there'd only be low level bots/farmers (from prior bots/farmers being banned)....and that does seem to me to be the only logicial conclusion one could draw...

[TombGuard]

I'm am taking this thread very seriously, this is not a thread for humous.

and if you want still want to argue, please pm me, dont flood this thread with nonsense.

[Elrohir]

[ QUOTE ]
and if you want still want to argue, please pm me, dont flood this thread with nonsense.


[/ QUOTE ]
Who's arguing? Certainly not me. And, I do what I wish.

[FatesHand]

HGMspam,

Thank you for posting.

I played beta into release, took 6 months off, and returned a few months ago.

What I take from your post is the sense that the GMs are making a genuine and sincere effort to address the problem of BOTs, with the tools you have.

With all respect, I can only conclude the tools you have are inadequate at addressing the problem. I don't feel NCsoft as a company, is nearly as concerned by BOTs and their effect on our game as we are.

Thank you for doing what you can. Hopefully the CEO's, COO's and other letter Execs. understand we don't feel what is being done is nearly enough.

-Fate

[Kaldonius]

Very, very informative post guys. I find it interesting, however, that I have seen many non-farmer, non-afk, real player bots being banned in the past week, yet the fulltime afk farmer bot parties are still running rampant through catacombs, necropolises, TOI, GC, and the Lair. What I would really like to know is this, why is it that I have seen 5 real players get banned in the past week, but not a single bot party I see and report every day. I really think GMs should simply go to congested bot spots, such as Giant's Cave, where there is a fully afk bot train PER ROOM running 24/7 and watch them for ~20 minutes or so in their invisible mode and just ban them all.

On a seperate issue, I am concerned with most of the first tier's GM's game knowledge...or lack thereof, I talked to one GM about an issue with certain mobs and he/she had *no* clue whatsoever about the attributes of mbs (2x hp, physical resist, and whatnot) and it was *very* frustrating to talk to a Game *Master* about an attribute in *their own game.*

[CharlieN]

I have a question :)

How viable is it to reinstate the manor system as it was in C2 ?

Reason being, is as im sure you have already read the post made by galrhan here (http://boards.lineage2.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=335508&page=0&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1#335508), youll note that his reasonings for instuting the manor as it was, had a very VERY large impact on the farmer's dwindling numbers...

Any thoughts on gal's post ? (cross posting...love it :P )

The farmers would be shot to hell with C2 manor back again, which would virtually eliminate all non-competative botters. (Farmers)
The only botters left to deal with are the english speaking competative NA players, which are far and few between.

[Woodsman]

The smart farmers dont let their bots run around without an human supervisor. Thus when the GM's check them out, they can give all the proper responses and avoid being banned.

[FinalCut]

[ QUOTE ]
And dually good to see you Mr. Motion

Final your English is excellent and your point is taken.

Any questions? I will answer questions. :)

Please don't put me in the box... I swear I will be good... I swear.

[/ QUOTE ]
Ok I have a few very simple questions (that kind of question that you can answer with yes/no)
Will some day GG stop the most common botting program?
Will some day the servers get cleaned? (and this doesnt mean that 100% of the botters should get banned. It mean that AT LEAST the most blatant well known botters should get banned fast. When you take 6 months to ban a guy the message is clear: botting is worth it.)
So then again will we see the day when botting wont be worth it?
Should we, legit players, keep paying for this game and you will make it so we all play by the same rules. Or we should accept the fact that nothing will ever change and move to something else?


Thanks.

[Pixie_]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Quote:

5. Testing Methods: We have several tests for bots. Some of the tests are obvious and others are not. Some of you that have been tested may know what I am talking about. (I will talk about false reports later.) We have some tests that are GM side only. This means it is non-invasive and you will never see it. These tests are the ones that really identify bots. Most of the bot tests you do see are very simple tests that try to break a bots routine.



[/ QUOTE ]

Erm sorry I dont buy it. There is no way whatsoever to tell a bot from a player besides observation AND interactive tests that you guys never perform. With interactive tests I mean something like... and obstacle course... like teleporting the botter to some place like execution ground (cause there are a lot of "obstacles" there) and asking the botter "Please go trought that arc that looks like a door" "please walk by the edge of the stair" you get the point.
Again: there is no way whatsoever to atomatically tell a bot from a player.
anyway as I said earlier: if botters would be getting banned there will be no need to speak about publishing names, testing methods, gameguard or whatever. I wouldnt care less about all that if botters would be getting banned.
This is nothing more that deviating the attention from the real issue here: botters

[/ QUOTE ]

Not true.

[0utKast]

Well HGMSpam all you say is true and has Honor on it, players do diserver this kind of action and clean job.

But isnt NCSoft forgeting something? The Human factor.

All criminals can not be treated as the same, real life shows us that, but GMs in lineage2 are so blind to show some good work they get blind to all the factors that should count.

My husband received a email some days ago saying his account had been caught fighting monsters afk using a 3rd party program, after he answers saying that toon was a level 1 dorf that only did sellshops, one of ur gms asked sorry adn then rephrase saying the char was using 3rd party program to sell shop.

For that his account got banned, and the others on his master account suspended, well tough luck one of that accounts was mine.

We emailed everybody we could find on official emails, asking apologize, that we were not professionals, that was the first time he ever did it, and that he understood the reason but pls not to make me pay (his wife) for his huge mistake.

Till today all he gets is default messages, saying "u used a3rd party program you account is closed this is not something that will chance" NA support, UK support, all of them use same answers.

So if a GM realy was interested on the human factor he would try to see if the both accounts are same person or not, he could go server and investigate if one is a known female player and the other doing ilegal into game a male char.

So my question is, we having serious issues as a couple, cause he brought me into this and I never did anything wrong. First just to know why someone that always bring good to the server/game goes down with that when there are professional farmers, bot trains, as he tells me when server resets on the next 3 seconds of coming live u already see dozens if not 100+ sell shops in villages, he tells me thats a program and I have to agree cause its human impossible to set shop in 3 secs especialy when their shop title has nothing to be with what they realy selling.

More we have in our possession a email of a player caught hunting monsters, where first GM tell him he is banned, then he apologizes, then GM tells him he will have a 2nd chance and says to player he will have to change names.

If you want that I can give it to you.

So now u have 2 real ppl, that play game since first days or prelude, that had all their friends online, totaly depressed because what happened, I even blame him every hour cause I lost my account, his account is banned fine, but because my account is on his master account I get suspeded, and 1 week after noone answers me if its a suspend banned account, or if they will give it back at least mine.

SO HGSpam, if all the boters are criminals, they diserve "life" no questions asked, fine I dont give a dam, he did something ilegal he pays, but me? Why me, cause we arre married? Thats not even fair.

He created me this new account so I could log into game and chat with friends, I need it like a fix, this game has the power to make you addicted and in the end they dont look at a player as someone, they just shoot to kill.

I hope posting this doesnt make to make me suspended or banned cause Im wife of a ex "Dead Man Walking", but if it does once more is not fair, Im a real person, I never did anything wrong I dont diserver to get life, just cause my husband got it.

Regards

[Wyzeguy]

[ QUOTE ]
The smart farmers dont let their bots run around without an human supervisor. Thus when the GM's check them out, they can give all the proper responses and avoid being banned.

[/ QUOTE ]

to respond to this, I'll quote part of spam's
[ QUOTE ]
We have some tests that are GM side only. This means it is non-invasive and you will never see it. These tests are the ones that really identify bots.

[/ QUOTE ]
Non-invasive tests that you never see are the ones that really identify bots.

Reading this gave me some comfort that the HGM staff aren't total amateurs.

Watching in-game animated behavior to try to distinguish cheater from legit, despite what some self-proclaimed expert players claim, is error prone both for false-positive and false-negative.

But, given the actual information sent between the client and the server, to distinguish machine from natural is statistically trivial.

And we should keep in mind, what your character does in game, how they're named, how they behave, how they respond when pmed or pked, etc. has nothing to do with the anti-bots rules. Those rules are all about how you use the client to interact with the server.

[Wyzeguy]

Outkast's situation, of being a spouse of a Eula breaker is an unfortunate one.

Of course your account should be banned, Outkast, sorry. Else the hardcore-cheaters could be risk free, simply by only using alternate accounts to cheat. And IMO the afk-shop botters are a close 2nd in terms of annoyance, behind the player/cheaters (the profarmers rarely harm me).

In the real world I live in a city where a massive proportion of one segment of the population is behind bars (something we do in the USA). And when a man goes to prison, also punished is the mother who loses her child, the baby who loses her daddy, the spouse/gf who loses her support. In game, as in real life, the lawbreakers need to know that they may not be the only ones to suffer the consequences of their actions.

Make your husband sleep in the garage for a week or two.

[LordDurham]

Spam... as I stated in another thread. NCSoft should turn their attention on bots in the level 50+ areas. Cut off the top end and the botters have lost a great deal. Removing the low end bots at level 20-30 does nothing to stop them as they will be right back there within a couple days (only takes 1-2 days to level to 20+).

Also, the high level bots are the ones that really hurt the economy in the game.

Target the higher level bots first then once that is cleared up go after the lower levels.

[0utKast]

[ QUOTE ]
Outkast's situation, of being a spouse of a Eula breaker is an unfortunate one.

Of course your account should be banned, Outkast, sorry. Else the hardcore-cheaters could be risk free, simply by only using alternate accounts to cheat. And IMO the afk-shop botters are a close 2nd in terms of annoyance, behind the player/cheaters (the profarmers rarely harm me).

In the real world I live in a city where a massive proportion of one segment of the population is behind bars (something we do in the USA). And when a man goes to prison, also punished is the mother who loses her child, the baby who loses her daddy, the spouse/gf who loses her support. In game, as in real life, the lawbreakers need to know that they may not be the only ones to suffer the consequences of their actions.

Make your husband sleep in the garage for a week or two.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree, I know its the end, this will is making me look harders into my marriage, to see he didnt think on me when he did it, if so same could happen in futur on rl, and forgive me the males but I had best friends online that i never though i would lose.

But the question I make to Head Game Master Spam is why I see a 2nd chance given to a botter and I with a account clean cant have a 2nd chance? This is why Im furious, its says suspended, but everytime i try to know anythng about my account they treat it as a master account, and say it got caught using 3rd party program to sell shop so ur banned. But I didnt, even not having done anything wrong, im on my knees asking sorry for something I didnt do, and they default answer with no Heard, no Soul, no nothing, just treating me as a toon, or a cartoon.

Life sux can tell u that when we see we cant do nothing, but to answer your family suffering cause they have a criminal in house, they do so, but they allowed to keep their living, even the criminals get out after1, 10, 100 years...

My point is I didnt do nothing, my husband did, so what can i say or do? I decided to go Austin to main offices to ask apologize, they need to see a face to know they dealing with a Human with feelings, if that doesnt work then I just wanted to know why am I less then the one that got a 2nd chance, as I said if HGSpam gives me a mail adress I will send him the email om quoting.

Regards

[Caleria]

Interesting case outkast.

First it was not your account but two of his accounts that were banned. I assume that he registered and paid for both accounts in the family with his data.

It surprises me that bot shop actually get banned... which is a great help for us legit shoppers... good to know. :)

It is also good to know that all accounts of cheaters get suspended. If they would have had that policy a while ago we could close the interview/spotlight case right away.

I'm sorry to hear that a game caused problems in your marriage, but I can see where it comes from. I hope your husband learned his lesson.
But if you look at it from the companies point of view they have no reason whatsoever to reactivate your account. They are not going to spy out your private life to verify your claims. A cheater got banned and both his accounts were suspended, period. If every cheater could get his accounts unbanned with family members as an excuse (made up or real) the GMs would have a lot more work, not getting them any further. And even now they'd have to work a lot faster.

Only thing thats left to say is: Don't cheat, be safe. Your husband knew he would get banned if he used a bot shop and he lost both his accounts to it on one of which he used to let you play.

And remember its just a friggin game. Your husband didn't deliberately destroy your toons, he probably didn't even know it would affect his second account as well. But it was certainly not the GMs fault you have issues in your family.

Cal

[0utKast]

As I said in emails to support i totaly understand that, they cant go and investigate if the 2 accounts on 2 diferent ppl for real, that will turn a 1 hour work ban in dozens of days, but I am ready to go and proove myself to their company, I tried to phone tons of times but all I get is a message "leave ur message after the bip" and of course they never phone back.

Shops are not banned cause if they were, when u see server back up and u see dozens of sell shops its a auto program, no way dozens of players log in 3 first seconds of server online and put sell shop. He got banned cause before this all happened, someone whisper him "u selling itens to cheap, that way I cant sell mine" so we guessing that person report the sell shop when he saw the reset shop being so fast after all the 4 itens were bought.

I came here post so Spam could look with human eyes to my problem, to tell me what I can do to proff myself to them so they dont have to move a finger, I didnt come to say I dont agree. I do agree with this policy, they doing the right thing. But please understand my side, this game was my life while my husband works, I dont have a job cause I have a physical problem, so now I get banned all my friends online must be thinking Im a criminal and thats like a "end of life to me" still Im ready to do whatever is needed, my husband told me he will take me to Austin and he will tell he is guilty of charge but not me, GMs dont have to do nothing but just listening to us.

Anyways Sir HGM just say something, even if it is to tell me im also a criminal cause I married one just say it, dont do like the other GMs that only repeat always the same default message.

Regards

[MalineII]

The thing that I find very interesting about Outkast's case is this botter who allegedly got a second chance. It smells fishy. The only scenario I know where a botter may have their account re-opened is if it is found (after new evidence is introduced) that they never botted to begin with.

I think that person was just trying to spread rumours, or was playing on an illegal private server where other policies may be in place.

[Wyzeguy]

After this ban, are you in some way prohibited from starting a new account?

This time put it in your name, your visa, your email, and tell hubby to keep his bots away (which I imagine that he'd feel pretty stupid and sorry to mess up something that's this important to you).

Your friends will still be on-line. They'll forgive you, and hopefully will help you get on your virtual feet again.

[0utKast]

Yea I created this new one, but how can I play from 0 all over, took me 2 weeks to get level 14 when i playied prelude, no friend will loan me gear knowing why i got banned. But yes that is a way to do it.

Regards

[Splatter]

You said you had friends in the game, talk to them... Tell them what happened.

As far as the time goes to grind back up to what level you were... I wouldn't worry about it to much..

Took me over a year to reach lvl 26, so your far ahead of me.

[Wetzel]

[ QUOTE ]
Nice post Spam.

I do have one question though. This system is good for 24/7 farmer bots.
But what about regular player botters? Those who might play live for a few hours, but then bot for several hours sleeping.

I guess we should only report them when they are botting. But by the time a GM arrives to test latter they may be playing. Just wondering what is the best way to report or handle these 50/50 bots.

Lorak

[/ QUOTE ]

LOL, you are wanting to report someone that's not botting for botting? Because you think they are botting when they are asleep? But they are not botting when you see them at the time? And you don't think that you are getting results in your bot reports?

Where's your sign?

[Caleria]

I'm pretty sure your friends will help you out outkast... and with the new newbie benefits which you certainly got youre back to lvl 40 on-time. :)

Cal

[Lord Chaos]

[ QUOTE ]
And remember its just a friggin game.

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe some of you guys should remember that very same line.

[Caleria]

Excuse me please but there is a severe difference between whining about bot abuse and a divorce.

Cal

[0utKast]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
And remember its just a friggin game.

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe some of you guys should remember that very same line.

[/ QUOTE ]

You cant understand the reasons, but for some ppl virtual life is more then a game, I cant realy tell you why, but imagine you being the ugly duck that noone even speaks with, and in virtual world if you a nice person everybody loves you even without asking you a picture, its my adiction to feel wanted for so many ppl as a friend, im sure you could never understand it.

Regards

[Twinkles]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
And remember its just a friggin game.

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe some of you guys should remember that very same line.

[/ QUOTE ]

You cant understand the reasons, but for some ppl virtual life is more then a game, I cant realy tell you why, but imagine you being the ugly duck that noone even speaks with, and in virtual world if you a nice person everybody loves you even without asking you a picture, its my adiction to feel wanted for so many ppl as a friend, im sure you could never understand it.

Regards

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, I can certainly sympathize with you Outkast. I know of two real people who were suspended and threatened of suspension. In both cases my friends were BOT killers. Those who trained mobs onto a known botter. These friends did not always report the bot and when they did report nothing happened. Eventually, the leaders of these bots got their clan members to report them for botting AFK. Hence, one was banned permanently for botting which she never did. The other was reported as a botter and the GM talked to this person several times. Now with the personal confrontation went further than 1st tier GM because he more or less told them what he thought of their abilities. The higher tier GM was more informed about the situation and made things better. The point of all this is known botters will use the GM petition against you. I base this on my personal information.

I am sure there are others who know of cases similar to what I have mentioned. My suggestion to you OUTKAST is to write them a letter of try to get them online and ask them to PROVE that you were botting. I would also tell them your Husband has no knowledge of the game. Not telling you to lie but if your hubby doesnt know anything about the game how does he know what a bot program is? I would try to reason with the company along these lines. I doubt very seriously that GM can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you actually used a 3rd party program other than you confessing to using it. Any other suggestion I have I cant post due to the strict censorship of NCSoft but hopefully you will figure out your civil alternatives.

[0utKast]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
And remember its just a friggin game.

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe some of you guys should remember that very same line.

[/ QUOTE ]

You cant understand the reasons, but for some ppl virtual life is more then a game, I cant realy tell you why, but imagine you being the ugly duck that noone even speaks with, and in virtual world if you a nice person everybody loves you even without asking you a picture, its my adiction to feel wanted for so many ppl as a friend, im sure you could never understand it.

Regards

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, I can certainly sympathize with you Outkast. I know of two real people who were suspended and threatened of suspension. In both cases my friends were BOT killers. Those who trained mobs onto a known botter. These friends did not always report the bot and when they did report nothing happened. Eventually, the leaders of these bots got their clan members to report them for botting AFK. Hence, one was banned permanently for botting which she never did. The other was reported as a botter and the GM talked to this person several times. Now with the personal confrontation went further than 1st tier GM because he more or less told them what he thought of their abilities. The higher tier GM was more informed about the situation and made things better. The point of all this is known botters will use the GM petition against you. I base this on my personal information.

I am sure there are others who know of cases similar to what I have mentioned. My suggestion to you OUTKAST is to write them a letter of try to get them online and ask them to PROVE that you were botting. I would also tell them your Husband has no knowledge of the game. Not telling you to lie but if your hubby doesnt know anything about the game how does he know what a bot program is? I would try to reason with the company along these lines. I doubt very seriously that GM can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you actually used a 3rd party program other than you confessing to using it. Any other suggestion I have I cant post due to the strict censorship of NCSoft but hopefully you will figure out your civil alternatives.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thing is they didnt tell me or my account did bot, but my husband account was acused of it, so cause my account was in same master acount of my husband they tell me I have no chance. They told me mine was suspended, my husband account banned, thing is I cant get them to answer me if im having mine back, they always answer with default messages linked to master account, so I asked to take issue to a HGM and they still answer with same default messages.

That was why I came here trying to see if Spam would look on it. Anyways my husband never xp bot, but he did use 3rd party program to sell shop, so he is guilty and I dont care what happens to him, he has fingers to try to solve his issue. But me in my account im clean, only sin is to be married with this nerd that got me on all this nightmare.

Regards

[Wyzeguy]

I think, Outcast, that anyone on the boards with an ounce of sensitivity knows what you're talking about. It's a virtual world, it's just a friggin game, but the relationships are real.

Also you mentioned a physical problem. I've known 3 people who were disabled who played mmogs, including one who was terminally ill. I cried as hard at his passing as I would at any RL friend's. But during his time in game, he could get around and interact just like everyone else.

In the game, we are all able-bodied, in the prime of life ('cept the dorfs), and powerful. And you are judged in game, but instead of being about what car you drive, where you got your degrees from, etc. it's about what you can do in game. So it's a great equalizer in that sense.

So, yes, we can identify and sympathize with your situation. Virtually everyone on the boards here plays the game, too.

And seriously, leveling up now will go very quickly, even without help from your old friends (altho I bet some would be happy to help out). Perhaps a good chance for you to try a new race/class combo, too.

[MOGMAN]

as a player since release, this game holds a special place in my heart, as well as my life. it was a pleasure to read HGMspam's post. i have dealt with this problem since i began play and as intrusive as it has ben to my gaming experiance, i have lived with it. knowing that as difficult a task as it is to address this problem, i have re-assured confidance that something is being done about it, and that will strengthen my commitment to Lineage 2.

OutKast, i am sorry for your missfortune, and that you were innocently caught up in a violation another made. but to know that someone using a 3rd party program to get an edge, no matter how slight, and getting baned for it, really helps a 100% legit player like myself continue to enjoy and appreciate the efforts of the staff and Lineage 2.

[0utKast]

[ QUOTE ]
as a player since release, this game holds a special place in my heart, as well as my life. it was a pleasure to read HGMspam's post. i have dealt with this problem since i began play and as intrusive as it has ben to my gaming experiance, i have lived with it. knowing that as difficult a task as it is to address this problem, i have re-assured confidance that something is being done about it, and that will strengthen my commitment to Lineage 2.

OutKast, i am sorry for your missfortune, and that you were innocently caught up in a violation another made. but to know that someone using a 3rd party program to get an edge, no matter how slight, and getting baned for it, really helps a 100% legit player like myself continue to enjoy and appreciate the efforts of the staff and Lineage 2.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know I totaly understand and I agree, finaly they doing mass work and I guess its a fair price i need to pay to see things better.

Regards

[Wyzeguy]

[ QUOTE ]

I know I totaly understand and I agree, finaly they doing mass work and I guess its a fair price i need to pay to see things better.

Regards

[/ QUOTE ]

Okay, you served your time in the penalty box.
Now go get off yer boards and level up!
Game on!

(Hint to Mr.Outkast 1-800-flowers & Godiva chocolates usually helps when I screw up)

[Iodine]

I only read spam's post:

Not posting the banned players names as part of a self imposed privacy policy is the epitomy of foolishness. Go back through history, the most effective punishment for criminals and to satisfy the masses is public humiation. Maybe if you knew you botted and all of your accounts that got banned would be listed you might not do it. The names should be posted after the final investigation is determined, and if for some odd reason it is unbanned, then just simply delete the name off the list, or have another list for false bannings so people can clear their name easily. Not doing something like this is as I said, foolish policy.

[Lord Chaos]

[ QUOTE ]
really helps a 100% legit player like myself continue to enjoy and appreciate the efforts of the staff and Lineage 2.

[/ QUOTE ]

Uhm, lol. Thats the saddest and dumbest statements I've seen in a while. It doesn't help you other than a brief feeling of wuhuu.

And to the rest, next time you want all these extremist measures for these problems, think of these people whom you mention who have invested so much in this game and are much more into their online existance getting banned innocently or for minor infractions, just to satisify this craze, which only serves to strengthen the worst of the lot.

[Lord Chaos]

[ QUOTE ]
Not posting the banned players names as part of a self imposed privacy policy is the epitomy of foolishness.

[/ QUOTE ]

Name me another major MMORPG out there that does it.

[ QUOTE ]
Go back through history

[/ QUOTE ]

No, because real life crimes are nothing like any of this.

[Wyzeguy]

[ QUOTE ]
I only read spam's post:

Not posting the banned players names as part of a self imposed privacy policy is the epitomy of foolishness. Go back through history, the most effective punishment for criminals and to satisfy the masses is public humiation. Maybe if you knew you botted and all of your accounts that got banned would be listed you might not do it. The names should be posted after the final investigation is determined, and if for some odd reason it is unbanned, then just simply delete the name off the list, or have another list for false bannings so people can clear their name easily. Not doing something like this is as I said, foolish policy.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm gonna try one last stab at this.

Public humiliation may be a deterrent in some cases in real life, but even there it's really better at feeding people's sense of moral outrage. Only moralistic crimes (solicitation, lewd behavior, etc) seem to actually generate any humiliation, as publicity of drug charges and hiphop murders seems only to sell CDs...

In the case of a ban, it's no deterrent at all. Because the person won't be publically humiliated.

Either they don't care and just level up a new bot team for adena-harvestIGEing.

Or they were one of the 1337 players (or L337 wannabes), and they're banned. You can put their heads on pikes outside Aden, but the player isn't there to see it. So why would they care?

Most likely, they're done with Lin2. Maybe they come back with a new account, but only if they choose to tell anyone will they even be linked to the banned characters. E.g., on the boards here Maline recently rerolled with Maline2, but if she didn't use basically the same name and the same avatar, we'd be none the wiser (and for the record, I have no reason to think she was banned, i'm just e.g. for that you can reroll your identity).

I think the only kind of humiliation would be to give real-world identities "Bubba Jenkins* of 122 Roosevelt St, Huntsville AL, bigbubba@aol.com, had 8 accounts banned for 3rd-party software use." Because then it'd show up on a google for that guy, so there's opportunity for humiliation. And there's not an elpy's chance in Anthara's lair that'll happen (thankfully).

Listing banned people is dumb idea that would serve no useful purpose.

*And obviously that's a made up person, cuz, like, I don't think they even have internet in Alabama yet.

[MalineII]

AFAIK you get banned for evading a ban via a second account. :D To me the only time I'd want a list of banned people - just so I can point to it and say "Hah, I'm not on it!"

I think that nobody who doesn't already believe that the GM team is doing something would believe any list or statistic they put up, privacy policy aside. People say some bot trains stay active: Others attest to certain bots disappearing after reports.

Most people, I believe, have already decided on the version of the story they want to accept. Not only would it be extra effort for doing no good to publicise names or statistics, the chance of a false positive (no matter how easy you make it out to be to clear your name, being fully legit means a lot to some people) and of course the fact that it would break loose all hell with people accusing NCSoft of making statistics up, lying and/or not doing enough would really not be worth the bit of info the longer I think about it.

[Iodine]

If it deterrs them, is arguable and you're probably correct, it will not. However it will show that something is actually being done, and as said before, NC NA is largely just a PR firm for Lineage2. That would be a good move for Public Relations without a doubt.

I don't think you can name other games here, but one I am thinking of is another Korean based MMORPG and it has no problems with hackers like L2 does.

[MalineII]

You are allowed to name other games in the context of an existing discussion.

Multiple players have reported bots disappearing. There is - I find - no reason to disbelieve them (in fact I reckon there would be more reason to disbelieve it coming from an NC employee). Something is being done, and I at least don't need statistics that would probably not be meaningful without a very detailed context.

[Lord Chaos]

I really doubt that, unless its utterly small or something so noone bothers.

It just isn't going to happen and nor does it help.

[Woodsman]

There is only on egood way to make sure evildoers dont do the crime. Catch them.

Take people who like to speed on highways. They know they can get caught and sometimes it happens. For them it is part of the fun. The fun stops when they get caught everytime. On some higways there are computers registering how fast it took you to go from A to B. You drove to fast? you get a ticket.

On those roads speeding is dropping dramatically.

Same with catching botters. You must catch them and make sure everybody knows that botters will get caught no matter what. Right now, everybody believes that botters have a good chance of escaping justice. Professional botters probably rely on the time it takes to catch them. If it is cheaper to just make a new account and start all over then to hire a person to control the botters, they will do it.

Publishing data about the botbanning progress might help in bringing the message that botting is bad to the would be botters.

[Lord Chaos]

eh, that kind of policy has nothing to do with speeding, first of all people don't get killed in computer games and secondly, this catches everyone indiscriminatly, much different than this.

[Woodsman]

[ QUOTE ]
eh, that kind of policy has nothing to do with speeding, first of all people don't get killed in computer games and secondly, this catches everyone indiscriminatly, much different than this.

[/ QUOTE ]

Every time I drive that road, I am caught indiscriminataly. Worse, my privacy is taken away from me and the owner of the computersystem can track how I travel through the country. This system requires me to make a HUGE sacrifice.

But it does help against speeders. Especially since it is well known which roads are protected this way. The knowledge that it exists and works helps prevent speeders to speed.

Until then, everybody knew that it was impossible to stop speeding. Just as we all KNOW that it is impossible to stop botters. But this system changed that idea about speeding being something that cannot be controlled.

If NCSoft wants to get rid of the bots, they will need have to catch more botters consistently. They also need to inform us about that. Because if people know they will get caught if they cheat, they wont.

[Lord Chaos]

Try and read up why it won't work. And its also been stated that it won't happen. Its also been shown that no MMORPG out there does it.

Also it would be a major marketting bummer for NCSoft.

[Woodsman]

[ QUOTE ]
Try and read up why it won't work. And its also been stated that it won't happen. Its also been shown that no MMORPG out there does it.

Also it would be a major marketting bummer for NCSoft.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know the reasons why they dont post names, why they dont post numbers of accounts banned. They are all true.

But there is the problem of us not believing that they make a big dent in this matter. Prospective botters dont believe that they will get caught either.

So new people will try and old ones will return to try again because they are convinced they can beat the system.

You need to change that perspective if you want to stop botting.

[soltyspl]

[ QUOTE ]
Soltypl- 2 bot programs (same bot program one with client and one with out)

[/ QUOTE ]

No, that would be 1x2. What I mean - 2x2 + something extra.

[ QUOTE ]
As for the other programs L2K and L2R... more stolen code that had coders that got tired of constantly cracking our new code.

[/ QUOTE ]

If they were sniffers, there wasn't too much to crack. If they used the same approach as in-game versions of current bots - I don't know. Intriguing, minimally. We'll see.

[ QUOTE ]
As for Port 7777... I don't care if someone has to use {the progam} to bypass their schools network, they will have their accounts shut down just the same for using it, if it is found.

[/ QUOTE ]

Point was - NC could have changed this in a moment. It was obvious & logical move to make. Like priv server admins do. Technically trival, takes a moment and you have more happy customers after that. "Schools will learn..." reasoning is just.. silly. It wasn't dead horse when L2 was in closed beta, and it's not dead horse now either (although much less alive ;) ). People grew tired of asking and complaining too.

It's offtopic here though.

As for anger in my post - it's not directed at GG (it's only first part of the post anyway) - I generally "got used" to it. I only repeated few facts. Considering what major bots can do know, including free version of one of them - GG at the moment doesn't do a thing (and hasn't done a thing since it was released). When you decided to use GG in NA after all, King and the others were already song of the past.

It's easy to make bold statements (about your tests, amount of bannings, hard work, even your characters). Much harder to back it up in game. As I said previously - so far effects are nothing to be excited about. There's no excuse for well known botters to be still present in game, pro-farming alliances to be present on any server, large bot trains to be constantly present in mid & high level dungeons for months or the same dwarves advertising the same long stuff with second precision shouts. There's no excuse for Giran's E area to be the botting factory central either. Not after 1.5 years.

If you say ... [ QUOTE ]
Report bots when you see them or if they interfere with your play. No one should have to give up their play time just hunting for bots... that is what GMs are for.

[/ QUOTE ] ... then please, teleport yourself to any 40+ hunting dungeon and do your job.

Let's see how L2 will look in a month from now.

There's one thing I hope though - that general understanding of Lineage 2 by NC team has improved since the times when dual dagger user was awarded the 2nd prize in a screenshot contest.

[ QUOTE ]
By Caleria:
A thousand accounts per month sounds a lot... do some basic maths

[/ QUOTE ]

Per week, not per month :)

[ QUOTE ]
The only scenario I know where a botter may have their account re-opened is if it is found (after new evidence is introduced) that they never botted to begin with.

[/ QUOTE ]

Naah, if you play "I'm so in love with L2" and guilty cards nicely, regardless if you really botted or not, you have a chance of being unbanned. I know few such cases. Depending on offense type, I think it's not bad thing after all - it's not such a big deal to give another chance to someone who advertised "too much" in Giran or even casually botted. Pro-farming and selling adena for real money would be another matter.

[Skyler]

I'd also like to assume that once you do ban someone their address, credit card and name all become blacklisted and they cannot open a new account using these things.

That is a good deterrent to those who believe that botting is worth the risk because if they get banned they can bot a new character. If you don't allow them to open a new account or you make it harder for them to do so it makes the ban far more meaningful. Of course they could use another creditcard or pay another way but at least this would help.

There is no need to post names/details of anyone they ban, no need for even a headcount it's a pointless waste of time.

If they post stuff like that but we continue to see bots we get more disheartened because we believe we are being lied to. If they don't post stuff and we see bots around we just assume they do nothing but that's better than thinking they deliberately do nothing and lie about it.

The reality is they do do something and some players who have cheated from my server have definitely been banned. It's a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of cheats we have but it is still some caught cheats.

Many of the "dont care what you think" portion of the cheats have the attitude of "this game sucks playing it is a waste of time". I don't understand that attitude because they spend time and effort cheating and they do still play the game for many hours per day when they aren't afk botting. So it must surely be worth some time. I believe it's just a poor excuse.. If the game is so bad why don't they play one which is easier to level, or a completely different style of game like CS.

[Monstrosity]

Didn't read everything in here about the botting issue BUT..
I find it extremely funny that with all this talk about how you ban botters and so on, at the same time you interview the biggest botter the Erica server on his takes of the subclass system.

Very funny, you guys have a sense of humor =)

[Iodine]

block chinese ips

it can't be "that" hard, didn't EQ ban malaysian ips?

maybe it would not work exactly as planned, but if the admins discovered a player was from china he could ban it on that alone, because the person would be illegally accessing the server

but we all do need to get real here, the obvious reason why ncsoft doesn't "crack down" on bots, is because I would be willing to bet, the bots bring in half of their income. I think this has been mentioned before.

As a PR firm nc na just does as little as possible to satisfy the public, without actually making a dent in the bot population, in order to keep their income. I've only played 2 months or so, but I know I've seen atleast 40 people who have been botting (I do have a list) since I started (and probably before) there is no excuse why they are not banned. I would be willing to bet every single player knows bots that have been around for as long as they have if not longer.

[Maitreya]

Well I reports bots, only usually when I am soloing because in a group I don't have time unless I am resting or something, have seen bots banned, and I know that they investigate.

For one, I wanted to stick around one time to see what happened to a bunch of bots...I was hoping a lvl 3000 character would show up and punch the bots...and poof they were banned...but that isn't what happened. Well anyway, I petitioned and then the bots stopped like 10 minutes afterwards. The bot train ran up to me all creepy like, and just stood there. Then sometimes I would hear one say out loud GM, then something in a foreign language. They stayed like that for like 20 minutes and then kept fighting afterwards. After 5 days, I have never seen that bot train again. Plus about 30min after the bots started fighting again, I got my petition responded. The petition said thank you for your continued support in helping stop violators, we will look into this matter. (Or something like this, but I know they used continued.)

Sure I have seen botters be unbanned for like 6 months but usually those botters bot, and sometimes have a user behind the controls, so this may cause difficulties.

I for one hate bots, and would love for 100% of them to be gone. They make the game so unfair, by creating high level characters faster than humanly possible and make PvP unbalanced which is terrible for a PvP based game. I belive that the GMs do work at the bot problem, but probally player problems such as bugs that need attention right away get done first instead of bot reports. The infamous bot program evolves to L2 and so makes it even harder for it to be stopped.

I would just like Anthras to be able to run around aden and have a detect bot skill and eat botters... That would be sweet, and he would have a purpose in NA since I don't think anyone soon will take him down.

[Caleria]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
By Caleria:
A thousand accounts per month sounds a lot... do some basic maths

[/ QUOTE ]

Per week, not per month :)

[/ QUOTE ]

So it was ~30 bots per day and server... sounds more reasonable anyway. :) Since even I have seen full bot parties disappear and with only 4 per day I'd have been too lucky. ;)

Gogo account suspension storm wave. ^^

Cal

[0utKast]

Gogo account suspension storm wave. ^^


Xizz got caught in the wave, can someone through me a life boat? :p

[Lord Chaos]

If you want to stop it, stop the ones at the top. Has the double benefit that they are usually also the ones making the game crap to begin with, especially since they don't have to care much about equipment or level for the most part.

[Lord Chaos]

Bah, they're still around in force, regular bots, bots from every alliance there is...and of course those who knows how to run the system and have protection.

Anyway, if people spent half the energy on actually making the game fun, there might be more life on the server.

[kellogg]

Dear HGMSpam,

I must admit you do got some cahones posting a topic like this considering the current situation regarding bots. Your move aside the present bot situation is worse than ever. I claim this not using any scientific method but by pure observation. This might not be completely accurate but I see bots increase day by day. Let me comment on a few things you said.

[ QUOTE ]
Hello all,

I guess it is about that time again for me to make my usual bot post. :cool: I have been reading all of the threads about bots. Each one had a different take on the bot problem. Some were about policy (posting bot names, or how to catch them) and others were about how reporting did not work. I am basically going to try to cover all of the bases here and give you a “State of the Bots,” report.

[/ QUOTE ]

The simple fact that you have to make a post like this only goes to prove that the current situation is less than desirable. The point is that your post (As appreciated as it might be) do nothing for me. You can post this topic again and again but unless I see a reduced number of bots in the actually game this type of post just feels hypocritical.

[ QUOTE ]
The GM team has only been running at half capacity lately because of our big move. We are all here in our new home and ready to get back up to full speed. So expect some empty voids where some notorious bots use to roam.

[/ QUOTE ]

We all understand that this have been a contribution factor to the increase of bots lately and you do have my sympathy for not being able to run at 100%.

[ QUOTE ]
Ok, now for skinny on bots: I am going to list some facts about bots, bot removal, reporting methods, and GM policy.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
1. Gameguard works! No tool will ever stop all bots from working. Gameguard has stopped many 3rd party programs from working. Yes, I know which one it has not stopped. Look at it this way, if there is only one enemy for me to combat, it is much better than 20 (amount of high level botting programs before GG.)

[/ QUOTE ]

No offense HGMSpam but it do not take a rocket scientist to use the search button and find your previous posts regarding Gameguard. How you became such a convert is beyond me but the corporate hammer seem to be in effect. Of course, I can understand this as we all have to defend the business we are in. But to go on about how effective this is makes one wonder how all the bots manage to run around.

[ QUOTE ]
2. Posting bot names:

[/ QUOTE ]

---> SNIPP

[ QUOTE ]
3. Posting bots banned numbers: Here is another thing that deep down I would love to do. But what does it accomplish? Some folks would go “See I told you so! They do ban accounts.” Others would say “Pfft! Those numbers are fake.” So this post is the closest you will get to a banned disclosure until someone in marketing or production feels they need to say. So here it is… The GMs have banned more accounts than some MMO’s have concurrent users.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ohh is that so? And what game would you be referring to? Maybe it's Horizons - Empire of Istaria in which case I would not be surprised if your statement is accurate

---> SNIPP

[ QUOTE ]
Well folks I hope this alleviates some of the question you may have had. I know I have not covered every conceivable question about bots so I will leave this thread open for questions. Forum rules still apply.

[/ QUOTE ]

You know what HGMSpam, it really does not, at least for me. Why not present an idea for stopping the third party programs we all know are the ones causing the problems. Once you guys get to the bottom of those, let have this discussion again and I am quite positive that you will get much better feedback. But if all you want to do is reassure us that things are happening when we can clearly see they are not you might as well "Stay in that box you" as Rusty said.

Regards
~K

[Caleria]

uhm... yea...

just wanted to add that it seems to be a little better with response time now... my petition was closed after ~15 minutes just as before the move (I can happily live with that). Have you "unboxed" the rest of your team yet spam? ;)

Cal

[KarasHur]

To be completely honest....

Do you honestly think stopping things now will have much of an effect on the atmosphere of the servers?

Simply stopping the programs won't change much since many people are already 70+.

The only way to truly make a difference is to detect and ban....on a large scale.

Or, simply make botting pointless and reduce the level and adena grind.

(imo)

Either way, keep fighting "the good fight". I'm sure it's frustrating at times. But, you didn't address this issue:

XXX farmer group is using a bot program. It's obvious to everyone. THey play 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They run around in a perfect 9 man train that mysteriously walks around all objects in the way (autofollow doesn't do that). They are reported all the time, but aren't banned since someone is watching the screen. What do you plan to do (if anything) about those situations?

[shine123]

[ QUOTE ]
Simply stopping the programs won't change much since many people are already 70+.

[/ QUOTE ]

... errr... removing bots wont change much? are u suuuuuuuure?

[CantoScav]

The funny thing is, botters use 3rd person software, which means wether they respond to testing or not, they should still be banned.

I hear all the time about bots talking to players(yes, they've wised up a bit there) and that players will no longer report them because they are obviously there monitoring the progress.

I begin to wonder at that point about what GMs are actually testing for when we report for botting. Are they checking to see that someone is actually responsive to the game environment, or are they looking to see if the person is using 3rd party programs, or do the GMs look to see if both parts are true?

If they pass the Responsiveness test, and they fail a 3rd party program test, will action still be taken?

Should I be reporting them for both 3rd party usage and Botting?

What about the Farmer Clans that are running 24/7 killing raid bosses? I know that one such clan is gone from Lionna already, but another has popped up in its place. Hell, I wouldnt be surprised if the farmers get together to start doing Antharas regularly in the fairly near future. I'll be looking forward to Sarge's "Interview" with the leader of the Farmer Clans that organize that one.

[ryooshi]

[ QUOTE ]
You know what HGMSpam, it really does not, at least for me. Why not present an idea for stopping the third party programs we all know are the ones causing the problems.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, I'll defend Spam on this score. Firstly, Lineage2 is a Korean based game. They get all their patches and storyline stuff from there. They probably have as much control over that end of the situation as we do, which is to say none at all.

And yes, the bots are driving us crazy. Do you honestly think the Koreans care what we think about the bots? If they did, they'd have already pulled the plug on the botting programs themselves, not making the NA GM's suffer with listening to us complain, feeling our pain, but having their efforts hamstrung by the game developers.

Game Guard isn't a success, period. In fact, I'm laughing at it for being useless right now. Sure, it stops the bots and prevents players from hacking the game and seeing my stats... and that would be like saying Windows XP doesn't have the "blue screen of death". ;) How do I know it's a complete flop? I just step outside of a town, that's how.

It's gotten so that hunting for the simple joy of hunting.. or doing any sort of quest requiring hunting is an experience in running one's legs off and lots and lots of praying. This is something that really does have to be fixed.

Korea can sit and spin on this for all I care, we who play the NA servers need a better solution! If I knew the Korean language, I'd be chewing them up one side and down another for a better fix than what we've got now. Even if it's a client/server verifier! Something!!

[0utKast]

You guys should talk about ebay/ige to, for me is just as unfair as boting, hell I imagine without ebay 90% of the botters wouldnt exist.

Question is if most of you dont use 3rd party programs cause you defending not to, can we all put our hand in the fire that you all also dont ebay?

As they are doing hammer banning to players left and right as so well happened to me cause of my husband, they need to do the same to ebayers, then it would be a fair clean game. Anyone trading adena without geting a item back of same aprox valor would be baned, anyone selling ex. 1 silver arrow for 5m = ban, anyone with a history of all their toon life spaming ss and not using economy ending with top a grade = banned, anyone with +6 weapons geting investigate to see how many they crashed till then and if they had legal adena to do so....

Why dont do it? Cause its not that easy as ban ppl from suspecting they are cheater just cause they live in same house with one real one.

This game, policys are far from being fair, and the small one pays the bill cause the professionals sure are out there, and if they get banned they learn with mistake and 1 month later they have another hadfull of toons 50+ with hundred millions adena...

As I said before GMs are not Human, if they were they would look for each case as independent.

Regards

[Wyzeguy]

Ebay is just off the topic for the thread, it's surely a concern.

As with botting, I think the way to get ebayers is NOT from in game behavior. That works for you and me because that's the only info we have available. The GMs should have better tools, can set up stings,...

Moving items/cash without proper compensation is consistent with ebaying but in no way diagnostic. The fact is my alliance moves stuff around all the time for crafting, selling, trading-up equipment, and things like that. You may have lots of wealth moving between seemingly unrelated characters for perfectly valid reasons.

What they can do is identify the distribution ring and get people that way. Taking out the ring and their customers...

Just as with banning botters, this may be a deterrent but you have to figure that the major distributors will happily spring for new CD keys to keep in business.

[Zhryla]

I had a question, if you two box and your second account was reported, you responded to the GM and all was okie doke they know you're not a bot and what not, are you erased from their list or will they keep checking up on you, or only check in again if you are reported again? Not a big deal, I'm always more than willing to talk with GM's :D just curious though.

[0utKast]

Yes i totaly agree, but they can do like they doing to botters or botters family / friends, ban first ask later. So players would have to explain their wealth, like most countrys do, if they target you as rich they will want to see your bank accounts, if something is not right court of law with you and a huge fine.

Look at my example, after 1 year and 3 months of play and spaming SS, I have top b weapon and top a grade gear with some loan boots. Now after all this time not doing anything wrong myself i get a ban, so I see all those ppl walking around on server where you have prety sure they ebayied, some even told you so.

Now I need to start over, maybe less then a year to get again 60+ cause c3 is easy, but having to 1000% more then before being far from temptations, like easy adena, easy levels and so on. Am I insane mad with all, cause i see criminals walking free and myself in "jail" having to start a new life? I am, my will is to enter my new toon and camp every suspect I see and report him. Is that fair? No, cause I might coming to make someone suffer as much I did.

So in my thoughts, NCSfot must be a billion dolar company, they can get the best programers, to study the best hackers, and they have ebay/ige/[censored]... walking free, and the ones to pay are the players, most kids, that in 10% of the cases dont know what they doing cause their friends also do it, others even dont talk/read english good enough to understand something like EULA, its on spanish to but the world doenst go around that few languages.

NCSoft wins, ebay and others win, ppl like me lose it all, fair? Oh yea cause we live in a world where $ rules and heart/soul is nothing but a sad excuse of human definition.

For ex I have all my clan (I was clan leader) emailing support to say good things about me and how they need to see me as diferent of my husband, many friends also doing same either in online petition/ email support. What do gms always answer? We want to help you friend but he/she needs to write us directly....well yeah im doing that everyday, and everyday I get same answer "Master account xxxx got banned, your game account was there, so our decision is final and we might not answer you anymore cause once u banned ur no more costumer of us, so no more costumer support"

So? I have a heart, i Have a soul, but I dont have billions, thats why...

Regards

[0utKast]

[ QUOTE ]
I had a question, if you two box and your second account was reported, you responded to the GM and all was okie doke they know you're not a bot and what not, are you erased from their list or will they keep checking up on you, or only check in again if you are reported again? Not a big deal, I'm always more than willing to talk with GM's :D just curious though.

[/ QUOTE ]

They doing that to many ppl and we need to tx them for it, but if you not doing anything wrong you dont need to fear, cause they got a way to see u using a 3rd party program even if you answer to all they ask. I live with a person that got banned not questions asked while in shop mode using the evil program, so that means they now can see more then meets the eye. I also heard in korea GM staff can now see whats going on your screen in real time, that means big brother is watching you.

Regards

[Csphere]

[ QUOTE ]
On some higways there are computers registering how fast it took you to go from A to B. You drove to fast? you get a ticket.

[/ QUOTE ]

Where do you live? Is there a specific term used to describe the technology, for googling and such..

and on topic..

Consider what kind of percentage of the playerbase is held by the accounts that are used for botting, and the owner's main accounts. Now put yourself in NCsoft's shoes. They have problem that is dissatisfying a large amount of their customers. A problem which they could leave alone and maintain their population growth (http://boards.lineage2.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=342175&page=&view=&sb=5&o =&fpart=1&vc=1), or they could fix, and ruin the only method that the bots can earn their money, and the only way spoiled powergamers can have their fun. None of the people in these categories would have any reason to buy another account, would they?

They are doing something about it, but only enough to be able to say they are taking action without losing their numbers.


Edit: I'm pretty sure it boils down to what I just explained, and the fact that the development team is not located anywhere near where botting is considered an issue. The amount of money at steak here is enormous, I don't see what else my $14.95/mo could possibly say here to influence NC.

[Caleria]

There have been short periods of time when the infamous bot tool was unable to log in at all due to changes in the game mechanics.

Do you think that stopped the farmers? Really? Are you sure? Serious?

Of course not.

There is far too much money in farming to stop doing it even without bots.
They sent manned parties to hunt, with dual or tripleboxed support chars. They did not even want to stop for one day waiting for the patch for the bot tool.
The profit margin for farmers is -gigantic-. And it's not the poor worker in china who chashs it in. It is not going to hurt the farmers companies one bit if they'd have to hire two or three times as many employees. It would just be an inconvenience.

The prices for adena would slightly go up and the market would balance again. Instead of seeing one farmer playing 9 toons we would see three farmers playing 9 toons, working in shifts 24/7.

I think losing the farmer accounts is the least thing they really worry about... wont happen, I can assure you. ;) As long as people offer such enormous sums there will be someone delivering it.

In the end it's just a problem of our globalized society... there are enough people around there world who would gladly do the job of a bot for a hand full of cents... as well as people who don't mind exploiting them.

Cal

[MOGMAN]

[ QUOTE ]
You guys should talk about ebay/*** to, for me is just as unfair as boting, hell I imagine without ebay 90% of the botters wouldnt exist.


[/ QUOTE ]

i 100% agree with you on that OutKast. i also theorise the virtual game goods market and exploiting the game with 3rd party programs go hand in hand. although eliminating one will not 100% eliminate the other, it takes both to thrive into the issues we face today. i understand this is off topic, but becuase these two are so closely related, i don't see how you can talk about one without talking about the other.

[Greywolf005]

Spam, I know this post is purely dedicated to bots, but regarding Galrahn's second part of his post, do you forsee any changes to the manor system? Will NA have any autonomy to fix the manor system to better fit the NA market?

Thanks in advance,
Art

[Galrahn]

[ QUOTE ]
Spam, I know this post is purely dedicated to bots, but regarding Galrahn's second part of his post, do you forsee any changes to the manor system? Will NA have any autonomy to fix the manor system to better fit the NA market?

Thanks in advance,
Art

[/ QUOTE ]

I must of made a pretty good point, or at least been able to repeat a good point expressed on this forum in C3, because that makes 2 people who represent staunch enemy clans of mine who have asked about the manor aspect, or in game economic aspect, or fighting the farmer problem.

Many of us believe the Bot and farmer issue is linked, mostly because the vast majority of players who use bot programs are also farmers. In the case of Sieghardt, the real problem we are seeing in game is the enormous farmer bot party doing RAID bosses, which allows them to set the value for the premier A grade loot.

As long as farmers control the prices for full A grade pieces on our server, people will continue the RMT path as an escape to finish their high level a grade sets. After all, the rest of the legit population that has to actually schdedule events like Raid Bosses can't compete against the 24/7 botted party crowd constantly doing them.

The economy is a very important aspect of the bot/farmer issue, i hope that NCSoft takes a look at that when addressing the problem, because the truth is the C2 economy almost completely killed the farmer population on our server, and it is no coincidence Sieghardt had the most active manor systems of any NA server in C2, both from the seed player and manor manager perspectives.

[Greywolf005]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Spam, I know this post is purely dedicated to bots, but regarding Galrahn's second part of his post, do you forsee any changes to the manor system? Will NA have any autonomy to fix the manor system to better fit the NA market?

Thanks in advance,
Art

[/ QUOTE ]

I must of made a pretty good point, or at least been able to repeat a good point expressed on this forum in C3, because that makes 2 people who represent staunch enemy clans of mine who have asked about the manor aspect, or in game economic aspect, or fighting the farmer problem.

Many of us believe the Bot and farmer issue is linked, mostly because the vast majority of players who use bot programs are also farmers. In the case of Sieghardt, the real problem we are seeing in game is the enormous farmer bot party doing RAID bosses, which allows them to set the value for the premier A grade loot.

As long as farmers control the prices for full A grade pieces on our server, people will continue the RMT path as an escape to finish their high level a grade sets. After all, the rest of the legit population that has to actually schdedule events like Raid Bosses can't compete against the 24/7 botted party crowd constantly doing them.

The economy is a very important aspect of the bot/farmer issue, i hope that NCSoft takes a look at that when addressing the problem, because the truth is the C2 economy almost completely killed the farmer population on our server, and it is no coincidence Sieghardt had the most active manor systems of any NA server in C2, both from the seed player and manor manager perspectives.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree Gal, I believe they are highly correlated. You take away the need to e-bay from players and the farmers have no profit. I liken it to a real world situation. Terrorist funded from middle-east oil would be done overnight if the U.S. decided to implement alternate energy sources that we have had technology for years. It would instantly de-centralize the power the middle east holds. The only thing that holds us up is the greed of politicians and big oil companies.

(This is just an analogy, please do not take this in context as I hate to bring RL politics into the game)

[GordonGreedstein]

HGMSPAM, Please address the issue of PRO-FARMERS, not just bots! Pro-Farmers (who may or may not use bots) are the major evil! Botting is just one of the tools they employ!

[Ventx]

[ QUOTE ]
HGMSPAM, Please address the issue of PRO-FARMERS, not just bots! Pro-Farmers (who may or may not use bots) are the major evil! Botting is just one of the tools they employ!

[/ QUOTE ]

that is off topic, one thing at a time please? Bots are easier to ban, and I'd rather they are gone (majority are farmers) first.

[Lorak]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Nice post Spam.

I do have one question though. This system is good for 24/7 farmer bots.
But what about regular player botters? Those who might play live for a few hours, but then bot for several hours sleeping.

I guess we should only report them when they are botting. But by the time a GM arrives to test latter they may be playing. Just wondering what is the best way to report or handle these 50/50 bots.

Lorak

[/ QUOTE ]

LOL, you are wanting to report someone that's not botting for botting? Because you think they are botting when they are asleep? But they are not botting when you see them at the time? And you don't think that you are getting results in your bot reports?

Where's your sign?

[/ QUOTE ]

hehe, worded badly. But I explained what I was trying to say somewhere else.

Basicaly was pointing out how much more difficult it is to find and ban partime botters. Not the 24/7 farmers.

In that while you may report them for botting(while they are botting) a few hours later when the GM gets around to it , they may not be.

That is what I was asking about. My question was understood by who it was addressed to.

So you can have your sign back.

Lorak

[GordonGreedstein]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
HGMSPAM, Please address the issue of PRO-FARMERS, not just bots! Pro-Farmers (who may or may not use bots) are the major evil! Botting is just one of the tools they employ!

[/ QUOTE ]

that is off topic, one thing at a time please? Bots are easier to ban, and I'd rather they are gone (majority are farmers) first.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's not off-topic. All the high level farmers have 1 bot-train leader that is attended by a live person. The rest of the toons are botted.

It's important that the GMs learn to distinguish between a fully botted party and a party with an attended leader running an unattended train because they need to run tests accordingly (i.e. a player response shouldn't trigger a false negative that the train is running botted toons).

[Iskan_Dar]

sigh, and speaking of bots and third party programs, why isn't something done about botted afk stores? exactly how hard is it to notice someone shouting the same two line message at an interval just long enough NOT to get them chat banned for periods of 4 hours of more? yeah, they are more of an annoyance than anything else, but still. it should be REAL easy to catch them out. pm 'em right after one of their shouts, if they don't respond, kick 'em. if they immediately come back in, set up the exact same shop, and continue to shout the exact same message, they are a bot, ban 'em.
not only would you help clear the air in Giran (how many people turn off shouts and trade in Giran?), but you'll be hurting the botters and farmers where they live, by taking out their shops and their stuff. a hunting bot that is banned is an inconvienence, a shop bot that had 100 million or more in adena, mats, and other valauables when banned should REALLY hurt.

[Mr_X]

I see the OK SargeNC Lets talk about Bots thread has been replaced by this thread.

Is this to move the focus away from things which may be done to the game to reduce bots (like reinstating the Manor system as it was in C2 or reducing the customisation of the game for Korea) and get it more focused on the Bots themselves?

This is a pity.

The best thing which could be done to the game to reduce bots is to go back to the Manor system as it was in C2. But this will not happen because NC's masters in Korea won't allow it.

Meanwhile the GM's here will continue to efficiently and effectively hunt down the individuals using the [censored] program whilst at the same time totally ignoring the 'Professional Botters'.

Oh well.... .... .. .. . . . .

[Ventx]

[ QUOTE ]
sigh, and speaking of bots and third party programs, why isn't something done about botted afk stores? exactly how hard is it to notice someone shouting the same two line message at an interval just long enough NOT to get them chat banned for periods of 4 hours of more? yeah, they are more of an annoyance than anything else, but still. it should be REAL easy to catch them out. pm 'em right after one of their shouts, if they don't respond, kick 'em. if they immediately come back in, set up the exact same shop, and continue to shout the exact same message, they are a bot, ban 'em.
not only would you help clear the air in Giran (how many people turn off shouts and trade in Giran?), but you'll be hurting the botters and farmers where they live, by taking out their shops and their stuff. a hunting bot that is banned is an inconvienence, a shop bot that had 100 million or more in adena, mats, and other valauables when banned should REALLY hurt.

[/ QUOTE ]

actually i have seen 2 instances on these boards of english players getting banned because of using botted shops. They do ban them, but the point blank obviousness of some of them that keep doing it really does me in. I mean who can spam lines more than in game macros will allow? Does NCSoft believe people can write the same repeated line at 400 words a minute?

[KarasHur]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Simply stopping the programs won't change much since many people are already 70+.

[/ QUOTE ]

... errr... removing bots wont change much? are u suuuuuuuure?

[/ QUOTE ]

Most long term players are already 70+ from botting. Get rid of the bot program and they are still 70+.

Farmers will farm with or without bots. It will just be more work.

Sure, you would see a small difference in gameplay, but the damage is already done for the most part.

[huxley]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Simply stopping the programs won't change much since many people are already 70+.

[/ QUOTE ]

... errr... removing bots wont change much? are u suuuuuuuure?

[/ QUOTE ]

Most long term players are already 70+ from botting. Get rid of the bot program and they are still 70+.

Farmers will farm with or without bots. It will just be more work.

Sure, you would see a small difference in gameplay, but the damage is already done for the most part.

[/ QUOTE ]ummm ya but what stops the account farmer groups of 9 from botting to sell the characters for money on ebay...

[PameanWraith]

Even with a bot program, the time involved in leveling a character to make it worth the investment of purchasing an account makes the venture, on its own, not very profitable.

[Greywolf005]

[ QUOTE ]
Spam, I know this post is purely dedicated to bots, but regarding Galrahn's second part of his post, do you forsee any changes to the manor system? Will NA have any autonomy to fix the manor system to better fit the NA market?

Thanks in advance,
Art

[/ QUOTE ]

bump... still looking for clarification.

[MacLeod]

[ QUOTE ]
1. Gameguard works! No tool will ever stop all bots from working. Gameguard has stopped many 3rd party programs from working. Yes, I know which one it has not stopped. Look at it this way, if there is only one enemy for me to combat, it is much better than 20 (amount of high level botting programs before GG.)

[/ QUOTE ]

Then why doesn't NCSoft go the extra mile and knock that one out too? If the programs are disabled, there wouldn't BE any bots and we wouldn't even be having these discussions. :confused:

~Mac~

[Tsili]

[ QUOTE ]
The thing that I find very interesting about Outkast's case is this botter who allegedly got a second chance. It smells fishy. The only scenario I know where a botter may have their account re-opened is if it is found (after new evidence is introduced) that they never botted to begin with.

I think that person was just trying to spread rumours, or was playing on an illegal private server where other policies may be in place.

[/ QUOTE ]

I play on Erica. I personally know (in game) several people who where rightly banned for botting and reinstated. They got caught red-handed, but came up with some explanation that got them off the hook. This happened several months ago. Most of those accounts are still played. I know one person, who was controlling bots, now has a level 75+ toon. Not surprising, since there were 2 siblings who could play almost round the clock, each botting the others toon.

I never ratted them out, because they were in my clan, but I was secretly happy the accounts got banned (even though I really liked them as friends). I thought maybe there was justice in this game. I was shocked when they were reinstated.

After the first group got unbanned, their "explanation" to NCSoft was used to help get others unbanned.

[Caleria]

I don't think that at that time it would have mattered what you actually replied to the GMs, you have been unbanned either way.

I've done some research on boards of the cheating community from that time (not o-boards, they are all wannabes there) and I've seen reports of so... unreal reasons to get unbanned... I either that was faked although I have no reason to assume that or you could have gotton your second chance with any reply that contained something slightly better than an insult. ;)

Actually those people took that as an invite for free botting, which I think is the reason the GMs changed that policy.

A second chance was a good idea imho, stop the cheating and keep the customer and their friends, also no more dramatic false positives... but it got known and was exploited to a point where it got unacceptable.

My theory on "unbans"... no conspiracy needed to explain.

Cal

[Nooblar]

Yup, I know people who got banned for botting and unbanned and people who botted and never got banned. The bots that actually dissappeared? Who knows if they quit or got banned, but why would anyone assume they got banned permanently when you see people who got banned for botting and got reinstated? Thus my cynicism in the whole matter of NCsoft doing anything about botters.

[MadRussian]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
1. Gameguard works! No tool will ever stop all bots from working. Gameguard has stopped many 3rd party programs from working. Yes, I know which one it has not stopped. Look at it this way, if there is only one enemy for me to combat, it is much better than 20 (amount of high level botting programs before GG.)

[/ QUOTE ]

Then why doesn't NCSoft go the extra mile and knock that one out too? If the programs are disabled, there wouldn't BE any bots and we wouldn't even be having these discussions. :confused:

~Mac~

[/ QUOTE ]
The most effective boting program (the one we cannot call by name :)) does not use Lineage clent at all. They simply reverse engineered L2 communications protocol and wrote their own client without all the graphics we see. So L2 server can't even know it's running. Not even talking about disabling it.

Blocking this one is going to be very tuff job as they will need to change protocol that can create whole bunch of other problems with the game.

I know that protocol in C3 was changed. But don't know by how much. However this bot program was ready the day C3 went public. Perhaps you can recall unusually high number of bots first fiew days. Probably all boters were trying it out.

But even if they will change protocol again, there is absolutely no assurance that it will not be taken apart fiew days later. As long as you can sniff protocol and trace the program, there is always a way to figure out how it works. There is also a good possibility that the people who wrote this bot have insider information from the game developers.

And the claim that GG works is an empty statement. As someone already said, they disabled whole bunch of usefull programs that don't harm the game and screwd up things that have no relation to their game at all by messing up with Windows on operating system level. So it's more harm then good. In fact more appropriate name for Game Guard would be COMPUTER VIRUS.

[Dovesongs]

it is painfully obvioius when some one is botting....

I say screw all the "bleeding heart crap"

you see a nine man train running for mob to mob before they even pop and picking up loot before it even drops....their local ISp id is banned for life....no comments questions or BS...."YOU have been banned for violation of the agreement" period!

no bots = no Ebayers
no Ebayer = prices get real

it a serious problem fix it.

[Woodsman]

[ QUOTE ]
The most effective boting program (the one we cannot call by name :)) does not use Lineage clent at all. They simply reverse engineered L2 communications protocol and wrote their own client without all the graphics we see. So L2 server can't even know it's running. Not even talking about disabling it.

Blocking this one is going to be very tuff job as they will need to change protocol that can create whole bunch of other problems with the game.

I know that protocol in C3 was changed. But don't know by how much. However this bot program was ready the day C3 went public. Perhaps you can recall unusually high number of bots first fiew days. Probably all boters were trying it out.

But even if they will change protocol again, there is absolutely no assurance that it will not be taken apart fiew days later. As long as you can sniff protocol and trace the program, there is always a way to figure out how it works. There is also a good possibility that the people who wrote this bot have insider information from the game developers.


[/ QUOTE ]

Hmmm, they could use an encryption tool for Li2. One that changes codes on a daily basis and is embedded deep into the client. It could be based on the date or a code given when you acces the update client and the time Gameguard jumps in.

[MadRussian]

[ QUOTE ]

Hmmm, they could use an encryption tool for Li2. One that changes codes on a daily basis and is embedded deep into the client. It could be based on the date or a code given when you acces the update client and the time Gameguard jumps in.

[/ QUOTE ]Yes, technically it's possible to make protocol more secure and harder to break. However nothing is 100% bulletproof as cliend code still can be disassembled and reverse engeneered. Second problem is that communications layer of code should be drascally cganged on both sides. Unlike GG that is an external isolated mudule written seprately, changing protocol will require serious changes to the core game code, that is much more difficult to do considering how and where this code is written :)

[Tsili]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Hmmm, they could use an encryption tool for Li2. One that changes codes on a daily basis and is embedded deep into the client. It could be based on the date or a code given when you acces the update client and the time Gameguard jumps in.

[/ QUOTE ]Yes, technically it's possible to make protocol more secure and harder to break. However nothing is 100% bulletproof as cliend code still can be disassembled and reverse engeneered. Second problem is that communications layer of code should be drascally cganged on both sides. Unlike GG that is an external isolated mudule written seprately, changing protocol will require serious changes to the core game code, that is much more difficult to do considering how and where this code is written :)

[/ QUOTE ]

If encryption could work, then great. The problem is that it should have been implemented in the program design phase. The fact that it wasn't is a noob mistake. In todays world the most important design issue is how do you prevent cheating.

I use to play Ascheron's Call, achieving a respectable level (156) after several years of play. At that point I lost interest, because now that I was catching up to the botters and exploiters, people assumed that I had botted my levels also. I came to L2 for a new game, were everyone would start out equal. What a joke. NCSoft really dropped the ball on this one.

[Lorak]

Yep,
And while it is nice that the GM's are working to ban the botters. It really doesn't help in the long run.

Most botters have a spare character they level on the side.

Thier levle 70+ gets banned? so what. They have a 60+ one waiting in the wings.
Play that one, start another one in backgroud.

They always have a high level toon in thier pocket to keep playing. If they can get away with it for even a few weeks. They suffer no loss at all and just keep churning out toons to replace the banned ones. Meanwhile amassing a nice backroll they equip thier new toons with, or sell to ebay/or IGE.

So unless they are working on banning the "L2texas ranger" outright. nothing will get any better.

Sad but true.

Lorak

[MadRussian]

I see just 2 sides of this problem that affects me. First are the prices on equipement that are skyrocketing. Second one is that most valuable hunting areas are taken by farmers.

On the positive side I can tell that couple of days ago I've been passing one area that was always full of individual bots before. I even trained the mobs in advance to bring them a little present, but when I got there, there wasn't a single bot in the area.

So I guess our GMs in fact started to do something about it. I hope this trend will confinue. :)

[Ventx]

[ QUOTE ]
Yep,
And while it is nice that the GM's are working to ban the botters. It really doesn't help in the long run.

Most botters have a spare character they level on the side.

Thier levle 70+ gets banned? so what. They have a 60+ one waiting in the wings.
Play that one, start another one in backgroud.

They always have a high level toon in thier pocket to keep playing. If they can get away with it for even a few weeks. They suffer no loss at all and just keep churning out toons to replace the banned ones. Meanwhile amassing a nice backroll they equip thier new toons with, or sell to ebay/or IGE.

So unless they are working on banning the "L2texas ranger" outright. nothing will get any better.

Sad but true.

Lorak

[/ QUOTE ]

when they ban, they ban any accounts registered with the same type of information. If you registered both accounts with a Credit card, that credit card is banned and both accounts are banned. Yes there are ways around it but at least the botters lost a $50 account with a high level botter on it. It gets pricy.

[Lorak]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Yep,
And while it is nice that the GM's are working to ban the botters. It really doesn't help in the long run.

Most botters have a spare character they level on the side.

Thier levle 70+ gets banned? so what. They have a 60+ one waiting in the wings.
Play that one, start another one in backgroud.

They always have a high level toon in thier pocket to keep playing. If they can get away with it for even a few weeks. They suffer no loss at all and just keep churning out toons to replace the banned ones. Meanwhile amassing a nice backroll they equip thier new toons with, or sell to ebay/or IGE.

So unless they are working on banning the "L2texas ranger" outright. nothing will get any better.

Sad but true.

Lorak

[/ QUOTE ]

when they ban, they ban any accounts registered with the same type of information. If you registered both accounts with a Credit card, that credit card is banned and both accounts are banned. Yes there are ways around it but at least the botters lost a $50 account with a high level botter on it. It gets pricy.

[/ QUOTE ]

When you realize that it is easy to get a ton of CC numbers. You are right that it is easy to get around. Also, when botters are reselling thier adena for hundereds upto a few thousand a month. $50 is chump change.

Don't get me wrong. If banning is all they can do now. Then Ban away. But until they can stop the 3rd party program. It is just a vicious circle.

Lorak

[Iodine]

I've decided its not worth reading all of these posts on bots since the bots I've been reporting and pking for 2 months now still play. And I am not a odd case, it happens to everyone, none are ever banned. It usually takes a whole day for them to even respond to my petition.

[Caleria]

Why do you make up such stange stories Iodine? oO

Cal

[Skyler]

I assure you Iodine some have been banned. But at the same time it is a small number compared to the amount who cheat. Still.. they have caught some.

[Dovesongs]

[ QUOTE ]
Thier levle 70+ gets banned? so what. They have a 60+ one waiting in the wings.
Play that one, start another one in backgroud.

[/ QUOTE ]

you ban someone's ISP they have to move to a new ISp to make a new chracter, ANY character that comes from that address is not allowed to log in.

That means if they two box on the same network they are still screwed...

[Elrohir]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Thier levle 70+ gets banned? so what. They have a 60+ one waiting in the wings.
Play that one, start another one in backgroud.

[/ QUOTE ]

you ban someone's ISP they have to move to a new ISp to make a new chracter, ANY character that comes from that address is not allowed to log in.

That means if they two box on the same network they are still screwed...

[/ QUOTE ]
Ban an ISP??? WTH?

[Dannyn]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Thier levle 70+ gets banned? so what. They have a 60+ one waiting in the wings.
Play that one, start another one in backgroud.

[/ QUOTE ]

you ban someone's ISP they have to move to a new ISp to make a new chracter, ANY character that comes from that address is not allowed to log in.

That means if they two box on the same network they are still screwed...

[/ QUOTE ]

I hope you meant IP, but even that won't do much good since many people get dynamic IPs.

[Iodine]

[ QUOTE ]
Why do you make up such stange stories Iodine? oO

Cal

[/ QUOTE ]you think I lie? I would name names but sarge is a wuss about that. The bots I report still exist and I did it for almost 2 weeks straight then gave up, but still do it occasionally.

[Caleria]

I don't doubt you report them and they are still playing... and I don't doubt they look like a bot party to you...

Although it is totally not true that no bots get banned. Farmers are no exception either.

That the group remains in place could have the following reasons I think:

1) They don't bot (unlikely if they are farmers but not impossible).
2) The GMs want to see who all the farmed and traded adena and mats go to (2 months is too long for such an investigation tho, but remember there was no GM support for quite a while because of the move).
3) Professionals (farmers) are very experienced when it comes to GM investigation I think. They probably figured out quite some tricks to make it as hard as possible to verfy they are botting.

The truth is out there, Iodine. ^^ I doubt it's solely one of those reasons, maybe something completely different, maybe a mix of all.

I doubt it helps to report them every day. They know you suspect them and I'm sure they have a list with all those names. Just produces unnecessary work.

Nothing wrong about a little reminder every other day ;) ... or just asking an official if bot reports aren't handled as usual currently for whatever reason.

Cal

[GreatnessElite]

This is ridiculous! I get on my pker just to kill some bots before my subscription ends and so I go to ruins of agony thinking there are only like 1 or 2 bots..... Wow...Gm's? You there? Coffee break isn't 1 year. There are tons and tons and tons of bots there, it was unbelieveable, each single bot had the same stuff and and were all dark elfs. Half of them, I saw a bit ago delvling on guards in Gludio. This was insane, seriously, more and more will quit if they see these botters.
Here are a few because I had my petition up for a while but no gms came :confused:.
Names of botters:
wjygz
affcd
gfdaf
xcgfhr
qoptem
HiHiHiH
Bobobobobo
AVictir
HuPimg
Askin
afsk

There were more but I logged.... This is a main reason I am quitting but I love Lineage 2 . I am truly sad. This game had so much too it, my rl friends and I were oppsessed(since first day of North American Closed beta). Finally, the thread broke. I will miss Lineage 2(all da good memories and experiences) but will come back only if something is being done because it very obvious. :confused: :eek:

[GreatnessElite]

Well I went back to Ruins of Agony with my main and saw the same exact people still going. Except, there were more than last time :confused:. Anyway, I was trying to train one and accidently pked soooooo now I have a total of 6 pks.... Which means if I die, it will be bad. Good thing I have a secret hiding spot :). Btw, all those bots I reported were on Erica(if the gms even care).

[LordDurham]

Iodine... I believe you... in fact our clan has done the same on Kain. Reported many bots... and then we keep seeing them.

We have been seeing an increase in bots lately (not a decrease).

We also have stumbled on Clans that bot on Kain. Members of well known alliances that bot to level and farm. This is just as bad if not worse than adena farmers. Don't get me wrong... they are both bad and they all need banned. However, clans that bot and support botting (en masse) are simply cheating to get ahead on a wide scale... how would a clan that plays legit ever keep up with clans that run constant bot groups to level their players and farm? These clans are cheaters... no other word would descibe them.

HGHSpam... you havent said anything lately... whats happening? Bots are out of control and I personally know a ton of people ready to quit the game due to them... and so many have passed on the game because of the bots.

Its rather silly that one program cannot be stopped (L2Wa****)... maybe NCSoft should consider contracting a company like Even Balance - PUNKBUSTER (http://www.punkbuster.com) to stop them (if NCSoft really wants to stop them). Since L2 runs on the Unreal engine... it wouldn't be that difficult for Punkbuster to be integrated into the game...

[LordDurham]

And for those thinking or saying... "We already have GameGuard" and thus believe PunkBuster wouldnt help.

Understand GameGuard (www.project-gameguard.org) is now run by United Admins and isnt being actively updated. It also never was as effective as PunkBuster. PunkBuster is the serious anti-cheat software... it was the first and is the best. They actively update for each game. Punkbuster also has been developed for other Unreal games such as America's Army and RavenShield. So making a version to work on L2 wouldnt be that difficult.

PunkBuster is the answer to stop programs like L2Wa****.

[Caleria]

Lol... I get an [biggest adena sale company] ad displayed on the united admins page. :)

It's provided by google so it's probably my cookies that make it appear... yet to see advertising for cheats on an anti cheat page is hilarious. ^^

Cal

PS: seems I have to get rid of those **** data miners again... or surf L2 pages less often. ;)

[LordDurham]

[ QUOTE ]
Lol... I get an [biggest adena sale company] ad displayed on the united admins page. :)

It's provided by google so it's probably my cookies that make it appear... yet to see advertising for cheats on an anti cheat page is hilarious. ^^

[/ QUOTE ]

Well... the thing is Game Guard is the second rate stuff. It never was as good as PunkBuster (which is still top dog and will remain so).

Ask anyone in the FPS games who is the best Anti-Cheat software and they will say PunkBuster.

The folks who run PunkBuster are good folks that honestly started out wanting to stop cheaters. Their program is solid and works very well in games its used in.

There really is no other choice... and if NCSoft is serious about stopping the 3rd party programs... PunkBuster is what they need to look into.

[Dovesongs]

Several programs are available to get rid of nasty mal ware and spy wrae,

the best of which are

HIJACK THIS
CLEAN UP
SPYBOT-S&D

you can getthem here:
Anti-jack (http://www.greyknight17.com/spyware.htm#prevent)

[GreatnessElite]

Ya lets get PunkBuster! Maybe than the bots will go away and you will gain some more subscriptions back.

[MadRussian]

And they [ QUOTE ]
...
These clans are cheaters... no other word would descibe them.

[/ QUOTE ]
These clans are obviously a single person operation on multiple accounts controlled by a single robot program. Having a clan is just a matter of convinience to have a WH where there they can dump all the materials they gather. And a statemebt too. Like you can talk all you want, you can PK all you want, you can report to GMs all you want, but we are still here alive and well. I take this as an insult to the gaming community and to me personally. And you can PK them all you want. You will only help them. Less deleveling for them. You will only disrupt their operation for fiew minutes. They will wait untill you are gone and continue their work as usual.

Meanwhile NCSoft is doing stupid things like disabling minor macro programs that can only prevent regular players from making soulshots or spamming trade chat. But it doesn't stop or affect REAL bots even a little bit. Then NCSoft brag that it's a MAJOR advancement in their fight against bots. What a bull!!!

Sad. All I can say.

[uNDeRPaNTS_GNoMe]

come to aden on kain. you will see so many bot clans all on af that its really sad.

10 or so people running right behind the other in town, all in a very straight line.

i dare you to tell me these are legit players and not bots.

[LordDurham]

Thus why NCSoft should implement PunkBuster.

Show us that NCSoft is seriously trying to stop 3rd prty programs and bots. Prove to your loyal customers and future customers that you do not want this element in your game.

Bust the punks... get PunkBuster! :)

[GreatnessElite]

[ QUOTE ]
Thus why NCSoft should implement PunkBuster.

Show us that NCSoft is seriously trying to stop 3rd prty programs and bots. Prove to your loyal customers and future customers that you do not want this element in your game.

Bust the punks... get PunkBuster! :)

[/ QUOTE ]
Ya show us. Many people quit because of the cheating reason.

[Stilts]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Thier levle 70+ gets banned? so what. They have a 60+ one waiting in the wings.
Play that one, start another one in backgroud.

[/ QUOTE ]

you ban someone's ISP they have to move to a new ISp to make a new chracter, ANY character that comes from that address is not allowed to log in.

That means if they two box on the same network they are still screwed...

[/ QUOTE ]

There is a huge problem with banning ISP's. You could actually ban an entire city and hundreds of players. Not good.

[Caleria]

Erm... do you get paid by punkbuster? :)

I think you underestimate the size of farming business. They can hire whoever they want to break whatever protection they want.

Why should NCSoft invest into a new protection if it get's disabled in most likley less than a day and we are left with the very same situation as before?

At a certain point you have to compare cost and result, also known as efficency. The farmer will not go away whatever you do since their customers demand their presence. Even if they would spend hundrets of thousands of dollars to disable even the last macro program... the farmers would play themselves since hireing sweat shop workers costs them the least.

While the bot program is active tho they at least have a rather easily detectable reason to ban. While when they'd not be botting the GMs must investigate all item transfers, gather tons of data and finally ban based on a construct of assupmtions.

Maybe you could get rid of player botting with a new protection... but a pretty small partactually does bot afk. Leveling services are far more popular anyway. And those would be a lot harder to catch without bots. And without bots the farmers would be totally out of control.

Just a few thoughts,

Cal

[MadRussian]

This brings me to general thoughts about this game. This game invites bots because it's very time consuming and every effort is made to slow down the progress of character developenent with hunderds of different hurdles in every aspect of the game. I think that absolute majority of players don't want to play this game "the way it was ment to be played" and demand faster progress. This means top equipement, huge amounts of adena, and as a result bots, eBay, accounts for sale and leveling servces. And this is the only way they can have fun here.

Now in C3 they made progress somewhat faster, but this made problem only worse. People move to higher levels faster and need more and more expencieve equipement and more adena. And bots are catching up with it and even move ahead of this trend.

And without it many players would simply quit. Not everyone has tolerence level high enough to do mindless grinding day after day with no or very little results. I, personally, quit this game for good at leat 5 times :). For the same reson - progress is too slow and this game is too time consuming. I have a feeling that I am going to quit it one more time soon. ...Perhaps only to come back again a little later... :)

[Dovesongs]

I thikn I was the one who accidently said ISP when I meant IP...sorry guys....brain malfunction....

MMMO's that are too easy lose subscriptions fast...

[LordDurham]

[ QUOTE ]
Erm... do you get paid by punkbuster? :)

I think you underestimate the size of farming business. They can hire whoever they want to break whatever protection they want.

Why should NCSoft invest into a new protection if it get's disabled in most likley less than a day and we are left with the very same situation as before?


[/ QUOTE ]
Hell no I don't get paid by PunkBuster. Likewise, since you are taking an oppositional stance... I could ask you if you profit from Botting? :eek:

I know PunkBuster works... I have seen it in action in other games. Large developers and publishers have put their trust in PunkBuster... EA, ID, UBIsoft and others.

They may get past it after the first day... but then PunkBuster will catch them the next day. PunkBuster is relentless. I have seen it in other games they support.

What would drive Farmers out of business? Adena prices are too high and people stop buying. The ONLY way to increase that price is to make it more expensive for them to farm... and the only way to do that is to have a program like PunkBuster that stops a large amount of farmers and/or make them buy more and more accounts and level over and over again.

PunkBuster + GM intervention is honestly the best way to curb the current trend if not stop it.

[GreatnessElite]

Sorry to bring this up but I am mad. :mad:!!! Okay, I reported 11 bots just a bit ago(like 2-3 days ago), 7/11 get banned. I was so happy and thought the devs actually cared BUT the next day I log in to see that all the bots that were banned were back in the game except 2! One of those two just made another account and changed one letter in the name and had the same stuff and came back to the same place AGAIN. This is making me mad! I don't think they are actually trying to ban. Seriously, mostly all the bots I report are either banned for one whole day or not banned at all.

[Elrohir]

What makes you feel they were banned in the first place? NCSoft won't tell you one way or another if someone was banned. Perhaps they were merely on vacation and came back.

[GreatnessElite]

A ton of bots going away for one day after I have reported them and have been botting 24/7 for a while? Weird. Vacation? I don't know. But it seems highly unlikely 5000000 bots go on vacation for one day right after all this happens. Anyway, ohwell, I am quitting so I guess I won't have to complain anymore(I still will cause I want to play Lineage 2 so badly but this problem is making me stop).

[Elrohir]

[ QUOTE ]
A ton of bots going away for one day after I have reported them and have been botting 24/7 for a while?

[/ QUOTE ]
Coincidence? By their own admissions, bot reports take a long time to investigate. Most likely, longer than 24 hours.

[GreatnessElite]

Well I reported like 10-20 bots probably 1-2 months ago. I see that they are still there.

[Elrohir]

[ QUOTE ]
Well I reported like 10-20 bots probably 1-2 months ago. I see that they are still there.

[/ QUOTE ]
So? That doesn't answer my question. Some are there months after you reported them. Others are gone in less than a day. I'm not seeing a pattern here....

[ThomasCovanent]

Can I have your stuff? :)

[Elrohir]

[ QUOTE ]
Can I have your stuff? :)

[/ QUOTE ]
I already gave it all away :p

[Darkmotion]

Greetings,

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Can I have your stuff? :)

[/ QUOTE ]
I already gave it all away :p

[/ QUOTE ]

YOU IDIOT !

Your new sig is so choice... You have my pardon.

Let's just go steal you some more stuff to give away.

Have Fun ! ™

BoardPK
Official Board Devil

[/ QUOTE ]

[Elrohir]

[ QUOTE ]


YOU IDIOT !


[/ QUOTE ]
I got in trouble for saying that... :(

[Lothlian]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]


YOU IDIOT !


[/ QUOTE ]
I got in trouble for saying that... :(

[/ QUOTE ]

Me too! :(

[Darkmotion]

Greetings,

Muahhaahhahahaahahhahaha !

I can also say ***.

Have Fun ! ™

BoardPK
Official Board Devil

[/ QUOTE ]

[MalineII]

At the risk of putting my foot in my mouth, I always have to think of donkeys when someone says "***", and it winds up giving me weird associations.

:mad:

[Lothlian]

Poke the smiley! Oh, wait...

More links in emoticons!

[Darkmotion]

Greetings,

[ QUOTE ]


:mad:

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, this is the cue for either Loth or SirE to quote me on the fact I can say ***, and tell me YOU IDIOT back at me.

That's why I get away with it.

Have Fun ! ™

BoardPK
Official Board Devil

[/ QUOTE ]

[Elrohir]

[ QUOTE ]
Greetings,

[ QUOTE ]


:mad:

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, this is the cue for either Loth or SirE to quote me on the fact I can say ***, and tell me YOU IDIOT back at me.

That's why I get away with it.

[/ QUOTE ]
Dumb ***...

[Darkmotion]

Greetings,

[ QUOTE ]

Dumb ***...

[/ QUOTE ]

Was about time.

Lazy bot ! Hahahahahahahhaahhaha !

Have Fun ! ™

BoardPK
Official Board Devil

[/ QUOTE ]

[Elrohir]

I got in trouble for that one, too... :( (<--don't poke)

[shine123]

maline got me checking all smilies for links...

so, how bout them bots?