Bots getting out of hand

    You need to start doing something about all the bots in the game, they're filling both the world and the general chat and are now heavily ruining the market by inflating everything discouraging most legit players from using the market cause everything is getting too expansive(even played who used all of their EP efficiently since launch and bought VIP as soon as it was up), on the other hand, people bypass this by buying gold on gold farming websites advertised by the same bots.


    I'll probably get a 'we're doing our best to fix the situation by blocking bots as our system detect them' answer but that's not enough, you need some actual people looking over the game and ip-banning bots as soon as they appear or find a real solution to the problem cause at this rate you"re going to start losing players. Might as well do something about all the people who actually buy gold? Since so far I've never heard about anyone who bought gold being banned and most start thinking you don't give a fuck and do whatever they want.


    It lasted for weeks now and you don't seem to be doing anything so I decided to rant about it, though you'll probably just ignore it, unless...what If I told you people don't need to buy your cash shop items anymore to transfer money into gold? since they can just directly buy it from websites? would the profit loss motivate you to do something about it?

    Buying from bots is a risk that you will be banned in the future when GF starts doing something (I bet it starts in 6 months), someone who spent money on this game won't risk doing it.



    Quote from Nekavrad

    Since so far I've never heard about anyone who bought gold being banned and most start thinking you don't give a fuck and do whatever they want.

    Have you heard about player that bought dzenai from these sites?

    ZBHdWgB.png

    I assume there will be some kind of anti hacking tool implemented ones this game is fully released. This should at least reduce the amount of boots (and make a lot of people angry). Until then we have to wait. This is unfortunatelynoting that can be solved immediately.


    There will probably be no bot hunters. I mean most people in the support aren't even paid for what they do.

    They are like cockroaches, there's a lot of them and they like to hide (not really the hard to kill part, just gross).


    Quote from Nitros

    I assume there will be some kind of anti hacking tool implemented ones this game is fully released. This should at least reduce the amount of boots (and make a lot of people angry). Until then we have to wait. This is unfortunatelynoting that can be solved immediately.


    There will probably be no bot hunters. I mean most people in the support aren't even paid for what they do.

    It's implied they will have one according to Frequently Asked Questions about the game


    As far as bots go, the most we can really do is just keep reporting them. I'm sure their support team is swamped right now with all the billing/server-related issues. Personally I do not find it a permanent solution, as you kill one another will take its place, but it may provide useful logs for the support team to create filters/keywords to counteract these bots.

    Only thing I found was:

    Quote

    Will you also use XIGNCODE?

    For now, we cannot provide you such information on which anti-hack tool will be used

    What exotically are you referring to? I have not seen any anti cheating tool boot up with the game. Not to mention there needs to be a user agreement about this according to German law.


    Edit: Just read the the "will have". I guess you were referring to the future.

    Quote from Day

    Buying from bots is a risk that you will be banned in the future when GF starts doing something (I bet it starts in 6 months), someone who spent money on this game won't risk doing it.



    Quote from Nekavrad

    Since so far I've never heard about anyone who bought gold being banned and most start thinking you don't give a fuck and do whatever they want.

    Have you heard about player that bought dzenai from these sites?

    If this goes on for 6 month the game will be dead by then.

    And personally I didn't since I don't really communicate with anyone beside my guildmates but I heard from them that they know some people actually using these websites.

    'reporting them' sound like hell considering each time I block 3, 6 more appear lmao

    Quote from Nekavrad

    'reporting them' sound like hell considering each time I block 3, 6 more appear lmao

    Yes, that's why I described them as such. But in order to filter out bot messages you need to know their messaging patterns outside of the obvious and simple ones.

    Text is not that easy to filter unless you are talking about a regexes. There isn't a real life text analysis program behind it and there probably never will be. If they manage to stop people from staring SW with third party tools it probably already kill a lot of them.

    Quote from Nekavrad

    I heard from them that they know some people actually using these websites.

    I wonder who could be that stupid to say such thing. Just simply report that player if you feel bad with it.


    Quote from Nekavrad

    If this goes on for 6 month the game will be dead by then.

    Nah, we have around 15k players if not more and they're still playing.



    I am still wondering why won't Gameforge censor each of the site? Let's say it's http://WWW.WEBSITE.COM, then you censor:
    http://WWW.WEBSITE.COM

    WEBSITE.COM

    WEBSITE,COM

    WEBSITE;COM

    WEB SITE;COM

    W E B S I T E.COM

    etc.

    Webiste owners can't change its name so easily, because they're general MMO trader sites, not only SW-wise. They can tell someone to predict any possiblity and it's done. It shouldn't take more than 30 minutes of free time and can be done in few days if someone really doesn't have time for it. Of course there's a chance that bots will find way to dodge filter - in that case they can just add that possibility to the system after it has been reported.


    I can be blind, but it seems like it can solve the problem and I believe its doable for such big company.

    ZBHdWgB.png

    easier way to do it, censoring com COM c o m and C O M as well as the lower cap/upper/space version of each website doing it. Then it would be about tracking down those who did buy before they start throwing gold earned from non-legit ways into the economy.

    The thing is they can still avoid it by putting commas etc., that's why it should be censored in dozens of ways. Afterall they won't be able to catch every version of it, but it will atleast make it harder for bots to promote site and harder for people to catch the original name and type it in web browser.

    ZBHdWgB.png

    I guess I'm already used to the bot spam for playing MMORPGs the past years, so the spam issue is not really what gets my attention. What I really am worried about is 1 USD for 4m, while you pay 20USD (or more, if you're Canadian) for a costume set which would be sold for 25m or less (depending on which class) & take a while to sell at the market. RMT is pretty much paying less for more gold and faster.


    I'm not sure where they're getting their megaphones from, but I assume it's from the daily login thing, so I guess for the next time they change it, megaphones should be removed - instead, implement a way for people at end-game/level cap to get them via dzenai or grutin gold. The reach the average player (non-payer) has is too low due to the difficulty to get megaphones and it won't even affect gold sellers.


    About making a regular expression pattern to filter out gold spammers: this won't happen. We gotta have in mind they're natural cheaters, they are capable of making advanced bots so they're pretty much able to bypass the filter by adding some new characters between the URLs and stuff. If I recall correctly, aeriagames was developing a gold seller auto-detecting tool with the same basis, which, of course, wouldn't work unless a community manager/game master updated the common advertisement string every time. What _could_ work using regexp is making it identify messages with -let's say- 60%+ similarity to the previous ones and mute them for saying the same thing over and over.


    In the end, the best way to fight them is lowering their reach (by removing their access to megaphones, local chat, adding mute time for repeated messages and/or adding requirement to send mails) and making it easier for people to block them.

    Maybe set a level cap for using megaphone cause half of the time it is just gold selling site in the chat. Also are they even getting ban since most of the time it is the same guy.

    The Bots themselves is only one half of the problem; the source of the bots (the people who own and operate the bots, the resources, and the Gold-selling websites themselves,) is the more pressing issue and is too often overlooked.


    The people who own the Bots and respective websites HAVE to be the main target, because focusing on the advertising bot accounts is a waste of time and resources- go after the source.


    I mean it's not like the people who operate these bots and websites are hiding or anything; they have websites, twitter accounts, various other forms of social media, etc. They have the biggest balls I've ever seen, and i don't know why they've been allowed to exist for as many years as they have. Heck- Goldselling websites even have professional-level Customer support... seriously that's insane to me when you think about it.


    One half of me is convinced that Publishers and game companies are in on this because of how large of a conglomerate Gold-selling has become- but then the rational side of me knows that that's crazy... why would Publishers and Game companies be involved in Black Market Gold-selling and Virtual item trading? Crazy right?


    Right?

    I see a lot of people complaining about bots. I mean for the general chat I just hide all in the settings, and as for not being able to make money that's a myth. I'm making money quite fine, and I'm not even max level yet. I guess people love excuses on why they're not succeeding (real life, or in a game)

    LBaNbab.gif

    GameForge has every right to send out notices to Goldselling websites, and there's prescience of Game Companies and Publishers working with Payment Vendors like PayPal and American Express to help cripple goldselling websites' ability to accept those payment options.


    There are even notices ordering those websites to remove currencies/merchandise attached to respective intellectual properties.


    Here is one such example from 2011: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/…o-hobble-mmo-gold-sellers

    Quote from Samuro

    I see a lot of people complaining about bots. I mean for the general chat I just hide all in the settings, and as for not being able to make money that's a myth. I'm making money quite fine, and I'm not even max level yet. I guess people love excuses on why they're not succeeding (real life, or in a game)

    What if I told you the money you're making is most likely due to the inflation caused by the huge amount of dzenai the gold sellers inject into the market? For the past week, my daily profit by selling the same exact item increased like 3 times the value, but still can't do as much much with the incredibly higher amount.


    You're being fooled by the big numbers, while your acquisitive power is decreasing.



    Quote from Neoyoshi

    GameForge has every right to send out notices to Goldselling websites, and there's prescience of Game Companies and Publishers working with Payment Vendors like PayPal and American Express to help cripple goldselling websites' ability to accept those payment options.


    There are even notices ordering those websites to remove currencies/merchandise attached to respective intellectual properties.


    Here is one such example from 2011: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/…o-hobble-mmo-gold-sellers


    As you said in your previous post, those guys have some balls and also don't give a shit if they're considered the cancer killing the industry. You can see they don't give a shit about the games they make a living from when they're devaluing gold price on a daily basis. Every time I visit Rucco Town 1M is at least 10 cents cheaper - I don't doubt they'll start selling 5M for 1 US$ soon.


    What bugs me the most is how most of the publishers are money-hungry and trying to cripple the competition (like purchasing publishing rights for a game and never publishing it just to keep your own with no competition. AKA the recent case of SEA licensing of SoulWorker), but they never target the gold sellers. I know there are dozens of them and they're always changing names and domains, but still... this is some weird stuff.


    How far can they go from the ToS, btw? Can they include a clause telling the players to agree with strict and punitive measures against real money trading? I mean, in a way the agreement/user contract can intervene with business out of the game and its portals?


    I know some games can force people to accept non-disclosure agreement about tournaments and events, so it'll affect any external website and social media. There really must be some legal actions they can take against them. Any judge would consider this an illegit business.


    Edit/complementing: Is there really no precedent on this matter, btw?

    No just stop it.

    LBaNbab.gif

    Stop what? Elaborate, please.

    You just came in, threw some fallacies into the discussion, now you don't even make sense anymore.