Well, I'm pretty sure so is everyone else. Their numbers and impact is simply too great to ignore or even "work around". They control too much of the in-game market. They completely dominate entire areas of Aden. They make achieving anything in Lineage a moot point. In short they are destroying this game. But if you're here reading this, you probably already knew that.
We've all done our due diligence and reported every last cretin we come across. For some /accuse is as much second nature as pumping a heal potion or an escape scroll. Yet the effect has been next to none. We call in Monitors. We beg and plead for their attention for the most obvious of offenders. Nothing happens. They're still in game the next day...and the day following. The week following...and then the month following and beyond.
So what can we do if the tools at our disposal are not working? Make a new one.
To that end I think we, as players, need to take a drastic steps and take a VERY clear stance to this. Enough of this the auto-response "It's being looked into" line. We KNOW better, because it's NOT being looked into. It shouldn't NEED to be looked into. The evidence is RIGHT THERE in front of your face and you "need" nothing else to act on. The recent interview with Lemoncobra is evidence as to how glaringly obvious the disconnect is between what the happens in game and what actually reaches support persons.
So the next time you call a Monitor or a GM to "take care of" a VERY obvious cheating player or bot...make a record of it. Keep the date, the time, and every word you exchange with them from beginning to end (including how long it takes them to even get back to you). Wait a reasonable amount of time (2-3 days I think is the maximum time it should ever take, and ideally it should be done that day, that hour, that minute if the offender is obvious enough). If nothing comes of your attempts (be it that the player in question remains or a monitor refuses to respond to your inquiry), send an email with all the information you recorded to Fracas personally. Let him know that this person, responsible for maintaining the integrity of the game, is either DELIBERATELY enabling cheating or is not performing their job duties and should be addressed immediately. It is NOT acceptible to allow a cheater to operate for months on end before it is FINALLY removed from the game. The impact a cheater can have in a SINGLE day is great enough.
We, as players, have every reason to suspect the actions and integrity of the in-game staff anymore. They are DIRECTLY responsible for ensuring the timely removal of game-damaging influences. Bots and cheaters are at the very top of that list. When they continually and repeatedly fail to perform this vital job function then we can only conclude that they are either incompetent and should be disciplined in some fashion (or removed)...or they are directly aiding in the very problem we want addressed. The 3rd party market is more than large enough to be a temptation to those individuals in a position to aid the process, and while I dislike placing blaim on Monitors, the problem of negligence on their part is simply too obvious and frequent to be ignored as simple misunderstandings.
The ToS and EULA that we, the legimate players of Lineage, adhere to without question is a 2-way street. We must follow it...and NC must enforce it. If either party are negligent in upholding their end, actions can be taken. Fracas should be made aware that we ARE NOT going to tolerate this kind of apathetic negligence when it comes to botting and cheating. If they need to take drastic measures to get this game in better shape then per the ToS / EULA it is their responsibility to take them.
Yes this sounds extreme, yes it sounds hostile, but nothing else has proven effective. As we have no intention of simply walking out enmass, an interim step must atleast be attempted. So to you, my fellow Lineage players, I encourage you to make your frustration known. Let them know when the staff is failing to perform their job. Let them know that we have had enough.
(oi this got long!)
yes that was long, however,
yes that was long,
however, I have had a monitor ban an account after i told him to investigate it since all it was doing was b2s+heal itself while mops were attacking it.
I told monitor to come and see.. he came,, then he came out of invis to show me that he was thier, and told me to go on my way since he will take care of it, sure enough that 60+ elf is no more.
but sure enough, that monitor is no more either since now i dont see him on anymore(must have got promoted, or fired for making the company lose money lol) QQ I think it was monitor72 or 9x
..:: My Blog ::..
Okay. Done. I'm happy to
Okay. Done. I'm happy to note down report times.
I, for one, would also like to organize a bot-hunting pledge. Everyone can throw in an alt that they don't care about or play too much. They don't even have to be high level, just as long as there's a bunch of us. We can set up meeting times and log in and wipe out all the bots in the most commonly botted areas.
Fabulous stance Feandel
Fabulous stance Feandel "applause" its not too long and not hot tempered enough. i agree with it all.
sometimes i havebeen tempted to go to pk server just to hunt bots.
i certainly hope this can be resolved and responsible parties punished.
Mol
I've just waited...and wait
I've just waited...and wait and continued waiting. There is a particularly obvious cheater that I keep tabs on on a regular basis (as we all do, or nearly so) and every day, without fail they are in game up to no good. If cheats as obvious as 2-cell hacking, no spell delay, no stun on damage, bots that never vary their actions, get locked up or stop functioning properly (or at all) aren't worthy of immediate attention and discipline, the fact that it is over-looked for so long and so often is just not excusable. Not anymore. NC's current method of attacking these cheaters in mass bannings is just not effective. They are allowed to operate and do far too much damage to simply "wait for the next wave".
If a monitor comes to them in game, we know and tell the monitor "You can't do that without cheating", the least that should happen is a 24 hour suspension pending a more thorough investigation. Period. That is the bare minimum. Let the cheaters know that if a PLAYER spots you cheating, that's as good as a Monitor or a GM seeing you do it. Yet we've all witnessed cheaters acting with impunity and nothing ever happens to the vast majority of them.
As I said, the ToS and EULA are a 2-way street. We only have to follow it so long as NC is willing to enforce it. Well...NC is failing to enforce it. I'm not advocating cheating...I want them to get up, dust themselves off and ENFORCE it.
Yeah, the cheaters are kicking your collective butts Fracas and Co. , but you might as well just roll up the game and shut down the servers if you're just going to lay down and play dead because they are proving difficult to stamp out. Stop working harder at catching bots...work smarter. Give themselves enough rope to hang themselves. Use their strengths against them. They want to automate playing the game, automate catching them. They want to abuse the system to their advantage, use that same style of abuse to kick them right back. No stun delay when hit? Hit them harder and make their persuers move even faster. Auto-rebuff when cancelled? Morph them into a no-casting no-item-usage morph and send them packing. No spell casting delay? Silence them. 2 or more cell attack range? Paralyze them and teleport them off to distant lands. Speed hacking? Reverse their directional controls. Up is down, right is left. Better yet, randomize them! Teleporting to regions that are blocked? Teleport to "special" regions from which there's no escape. The ways to catch and/or undermine these cheaters is only as limited as your imagination and I hate to think that any of you are really that narrow-minded.
And lastly...set up sting-ops. In game staff posing as players to catch cheaters who "magically behave" when a Monitor or GM shows up. Use them to check in on your OWN staff to be sure they haven't become complacent or joined ranks with these cheaters.
Most people that know me pretty well, know that I have a spot of a temper but that I control it very well. So when I speak my mind it is very obvious that I've just about had enough.
Wait...What??
I've pretty much given up
I've pretty much given up ranting about bots and hackers. NC does what they do. I understand it's all they can do with the resources they have.
My disgust is now primarily with all the people who forgive and forget when these accounts are taken over by real people.
How many people who you know were bots just a few months ago are now player controlled get lots of v.v on global every time they log in?
If I were NC I would not take us seriously when we complain about bots and hackers. I would be sitting in Austin going "If you are going to just forgive them and work with them why should we not do the same?"
I was approached recently by a known bot pledge that wanted to help me at a siege. I told them if they showed up with anyone I knew had botted I was simply leave. No accomplishment in this game is worth legitimizing cheaters ... in my sometimes, but not often, humble opinion.
Seeing how I may just start
Seeing how I may just start the game up again, I really can only express an opinion from an outside view. But if someone is botting, there isnt much you can do from what i heard, they continue to buy things with the money players spend on the items.If a bot buys and item from a bot, that money is still in circulation within bots, but eventually after they buy so many potions from it. It will run out. If people just stopped buying items from bots they might stop. Its practically an impossible thought. But as i remember from forever ago you can buy N-Zels and N-Dais all from stores. So it cost like 5k more, why not just do it? Harder items will be harder to sell, and since bots can sell cheaper, the priceswill go up. But why not try to make a player sell to player and player buy from player economy? Make a list of people that arent bots, seeing how ive heard there are only like 400 or so. And buy from them, support them. Be smart when you play 2. Like why B-dai this +9 item when i can sell it to someone who has a +5, that way it helps the players, and maybe stops or puts a slow to bots. Just ideas.
Made a double post, editing
Made a double post, editing to appologize.
Good work Fend, it all
Good work Fend, it all sounds good to me. Not sure if they will go for it. I hope they change something soon. The "System" now don't work.
Thats why I like to see events with "mops" that may not be in the bots data base so it gives us a chance to get the x2 drop prob', . SKT4 some Parts of TOI, DVC etc etc are farmed by bots. They will be the ones to gain the small drops that sell, and plenty of them over this weekend. So the event is better for them not for us. Unless some folks get lucky of a boss.
Seem though they can out match Adena just in getting the base items like nzel, ndai, rings, books etc. We get 1 big sb, but they made so much $$$ in on week alone on things they got and sold it don't matter there still 3 steps ahead.. Suxs so bad!
Good luck everyone
Fj
My Semi Used Blog o.o <--Drugs in my water!
I have been thinking about
I have been thinking about how we can combat this stuff a lot lately as well. I have been collecting and posting screenshots of powerleveled characters.
I think we need a web site where people can contribute to about all of this and organize bot-hunting events, and I would consider putting this as a section on my blog (for LOA anyway). http://www.coaden.com , by the way.
I don't have a lot of
I don't have a lot of experience with websites, but if I get the sense that enough people are into the idea of committing one character for bot hunting, I'd probably learn. Then we could post up hunting times. I'd even level up a royal to put everyone in the same plegde.
it dont take a rocket
it dont take a rocket scientist to determine whos botting.. but also a guy who only worked guarding sheeps or eating donuts... wont do any good either... so NC are fked either ways.. and so we are fked too.. result is.. Everyone should look aside from TOS/USLA, look at it as a law protection for NC and nothing more. Go Bot, Hack, Harras players and sure.. ur gonna get banned.. the bots wont..
have a nice day
How does one tell who is a
How does one tell who is a bot and who is cheating? What is the best way to tell if you haven't been playing very long or very often? Just for those newbies or people that aren't rocket scientists... best way to tell pls. B
Walk in front of them and
Walk in front of them and stop, do no actions at all(no spells/hits), if they walkthrough you they are probably using walkthrough hack, try a couple of times to be sure. This can happen if 2 ppl are doing an action and they enter the same cell but if someone is stationery I don't think it can happen other than maybe with storage dwarfs.
If they are using a 1 cell morph and attacking things from 2 cells away that's a hack
If they respond no instantly when you type slfniawo;fje;wofjaw;bot;eraw;oroafrwaeo;irj;efe or instantly respond
no
no
no
no
no
no
no
when you type
bot
bot
bot
bot
bot
bot
bot
eg the exact number of times you type it they are botting with auto response on
theres a number of other ways but those ones are so obvious its pathetic they arent banned
I am pretty sure the only
I am pretty sure the only dwarf that can be walked through is south west giran dwarf. Sauram I think...
I walk thru that guy like 5 times a day.
Got Blog?
Even if people are
Even if people are constantly walking through things it can still be questioned if it's a hack or not they are using. Especially in towns. Well, at least from Monitor's point of view.
It's because seems the collision check is only made in client side, so when you lag your client does not have updated info of the locations of other people and NPCs. And to allow relatively smooth game play even with some lag, the server most likely allows the "burst moving" of characters when it receives pile of packets from the player. Otherwise you would constantly tele back a step or two if you would have even minor lag. Combining these two, when player has some lag s/he can walk around and through people and monsters even with legit client. Another way I seem to be able to walk through NPCs is when my client has a hick up. Example if I tele at Oren dwarf and start walking to OTV teleporter next to the message boards, my computer gets a hick up when it loads the huge hotel or something and I often manage to walk right on top of the teleporter O_o
What comes to 2+ cell swing hack, few years ago when I was playing Lineage with computer that just and just fullfilled the requirements of the game, heavy load for my computer caused situations where monsters were shown in differend location than they really were. It really escalated into huge problem when our pledge went to kill Giant Ant Queen and eventually the GAQ was shown to me like the other side of the screen, heh. I was like what the others are swinging when the queen is right here and soon someone asked what am I doing swinging thin air at the other side of the screen. Of course I do not know if I really was registered to hit the thing in the server. Anyways, seems like again the server does not check if the player really is at swinging range as people can hit things with these hacks further than they should be able to, but the client more likely just sends a command me_player.hitAt(target) or something and server processes it without a question. I do not think this kind of system would have any reason to be in the server or then again there is set some window for lag (that could be removed in my opinnion if that's the case). If there ain't any check at all (how I afraid it is), people could basically swing at the target from other side of the screen with hacked clients >_<
So the system is originally built trusting that the client/connection encryption is never broken and server trusts that whatever commands it gets from clients are legit. However, already at end of beta times there were talks of program that decrypted the client encryption -_- Basically this means, that people can alter the client and remove example the collision check altogheter as we see with players using walk through hacks. Also speed hack exploits the feature in the server that allows smoother playability with minor lag. There are ways to detect speed hacks in the server side tho, but it again needs CPU usage from the server that apparently has been wanted to be saved in the old games like Lineage. CPU power should be well available nowadays tho and speed hack prevention/detection should be something that's included in nProtect/Game Guard Fracas said to be finally implemented to Lineage US soon.
But of course it is quite obvious in constant walk throughs when players are still able to hunt without problems that it's not the lag that's allowing them to not collision into things, heh. Just mentioning that it might be something NCA is hesitant to ban people for, because it might be difficult to be completely certain if the player is lagging or hacking. In general they would need to add a lot of server side checks to get rid of most of the hacks and some of them would not even require that much processing from the server I think (like can this player really cast this spell, or can the player really teleport from here to there). These checks could also be used to detect the players trying to cheat after the checks are implemented.
Server side collision detection between moving objects is however something that might never come in Lineage as it can be quite heavy process and is currently included only for static objects, like environment and such. Anyone know if these hackers can actually walk through doors? I assume that at least doors are protected with server side collision, otherwise sieges etc. would be quite insane as well as hackers could just walk right through Diad, heh. The same method could basically be used also for moving objects, but understandable it would require a lot more processing.
But yeah, unless all the increasingly available server processing power ain't going in to handle the enlarging world of Aden, it should be used to prevent the blooming cheating to allow more enjoyable game for us all by cutting the wings of cheating.
--------------------------------------------
Have fun, but let others have too :)
Most of that is true, which
Most of that is true, which is why I don't classify walk-through hacking as blatantly obvious.. It can be done in game legitimately, just not in a controlled fashion, or usually. Two people collaborating to walkthrough can do so rather effortlessly. That being said, walking through 2 people in a row (or more) is pretty much impossible without lag (and the server usually ports you back if it actually is lag). I have the feeling this hack is tied closely to the next cheat.
No-Spell-delay hacks are fairly obvious simply by the number of spell/actions cast at once in response to a real-time action (ie no lag had occurred prior to casting all the buffs) and that they continue to react in realtime before and after each "spell-casting surge". To that end, I think I have a pretty good idea how the that particular hack is working (but not one to fix it without opening up another can of worms for legit players).
Speed hacking, similar to the previous two cheats, is also pretty obvious. The server ports you back to your original location in the event of extensive movement during lag. Moving more than a certain distance over a given period of time should send off warning bells. Doing so repeatedly for extended periods of time should get attention immediately.
Teleporting hacks are EXTREMELY obvious. This one should be caught INSTANTLY. Locations in Lineage are hardwired to allow or prevent this action. In particular FI and ToI. If you appear or disappear from anywhere outside of designated zones of FI, you are cheating (other than logging out I mean). In TOI, you can only ever appear on the x1 floors. No where else. If your last x number of positions (in this case all you really need is 3, your current and previous 2) don't include the entrance from the previous location you are cheating. Plain as that. That this particular hack is even used and evades detection for even 30 minutes (to say nothing of weeks or months) is in excusable.
When it comes to "attacking" from a distance, you will not deal damage to your target unless you are within the proper range server side. Standing infront of a 2-cell hacker proves that they are 2-cell hacking because the target they attack dies with them never having entered valid melee range.
Wait...What??
I was fighting in ToS.. and
I was fighting in ToS.. and accidently canceld a de(bcup) that was near my enemy..
needless to say the De(Bcup) started to auto buff all the spells and the mage followed suit with its mage spells the SECOND i canceld him,
and then i go, "lol auto buff.."
ane he responds "no, i buff myself".
ya right.. i just ignored him and went on to deal with the enemy at hand..
now plz.. if you are hunting minding ur business and a cancel is thrown ur way (by accident) thier is no way you are gona react that FAST and buff urself. with the mage buffing the melee as well in rapid succession..
well anyways.. the point is! 1. I suck at aiming
and 2. you will never be too far from a hacker or botter..
..:: My Blog ::..
I sent Fracas an idea for an
I sent Fracas an idea for an easy and foolproof way of catching walkthrough hack. It came out of something I experienced with hackers perpetrating against non-hackers.
In Ancient Giant Ruins I started noticing that at the very entrance of AGR there would be 10-50 guardians, effectively blocking any way into SOE, and causing me to have to escape. At first I thought that it was probably just someone who got in trouble and had to run out with them aggroe'd on them, even though normal people would know how to deal with that without clogging the entrance to their own detriment.
It wasn't until I ran into this problem again and saw a suspected-hacker pass through them with impunity that I realized that it was done purposely to try to prevent people from entering.
But it gave me an idea that this would be a great way for GMs to be able to catch hackers with very little doubt. All they have to do is go to a major botting area and cause a large spawn of mops enough to block an enclosed passage, such as in DVC. Anyone who walks through them will surely be hacking.
No word yet from Fracas who has apparently not logged onto the forums for several weeks.
in dvc bots will kill thru
in dvc bots will kill thru them not walk thru them lol
..:: My Blog ::..
My experience watching bots
My experience watching bots is that most bots (including those in dvc) attack based on order of value and what is attacking them.
Certain targets elicit immediate attention (for example, some bots will break off from heading right into the caves if a Drake is on screen when they arrive). If I were to guess, each type of monster has a "value" and it goes from end of the spectrum to the other based off of these assigned values (for example, Ogres have high values and are the first thing targetted if they are not already engaged).
What does this have to do with DVC? Slimes have little or no target value. In general they are ignored. Spawn a wall of slimes in their way and if they walk through all of them to get to something on the other side, you have your walkthrough hacker caught red-handed.
The problem is...they can spot GMs and Monitors even if they are invisible and "deactivate" certain cheats to avoid detection. This includes the very hack they are attempting to catch them using.
Wait...What??
Slimes was exactly the idea
Slimes was exactly the idea I was getting at. That, or spawning some kind of other senseless mops, like lawful snowmen that a bot wouldn't bother killing.
The monsters are not dragged
The monsters are not dragged to the entrance of AGR, they migrate there.
Got Blog?
What I observed is not a
What I observed is not a natural occurrence.
i know monitors used to
i know monitors used to spawn unkilllable mops like bugbear, and have a bot hit it for over a minute before banning it. The bug bear would be saying something like, "Don't hit me, you can't kill me" But the bot would keep hitting it o.o...
In your case it may not
In your case it may not be...
But it is not uncommon, on Ken at least with our lower traffic in these areas, to see the entrance to AGR swarmed with mops. Anytime spawn migration is north, they all end up there.
Got Blog?