Tool_of_Society

Well when I made a suggestion that would improve gameplay for the player base your response is OMG NO CAUSE BOTS!@!!! That's what I'm talking about.

TLDR : If someone is creating hundreds of accounts to game the event then they already have the tools in place to create hundreds more to get around your "solution". It's interesting how people get so obsessed with screwing over bots that they end up screwing the legit playerbase massively more.

That site is a "tool" that has many issues. One issue is that it's clearly unreliable as it will report servers as down that are not down. That shows it's pulling numbers in a very unreliable manner. It also lacks anything resembling a history so it's impossible to see any real trends. You checking in at set times to just look at the number isn't anywhere near good enough to be considered data points. If you had bothered to look at my example you would see why your site is bad at giving "data"... I've played on Giran since day one so what? I can log in hundreds of characters but I don't have the tools setup to automate the creation of hundreds of email accounts and the corresponding creation of the character accounts while keeping all that information in a format that is usable to do mass log ins. Neither do you but you'd rather pretend the whole concept is super easy and can be done by anyone. Meanwhile whales which exist in vastly more numbers are using their real life money to gain massive advantages over you in game... People are getting banned for creating one account and leveling it up too fast in one day. Those are usually temporary bans because it's considered suspicious behaviour. Doing that with "hundreds" of accounts would be noticed. Interestingly I've been leveling up a BD to replace the sorc in my party and I've been seeing very few bots in the process. I got to OB before running RBs to catch up. It's been kind of creepy how few low level bots I've seen. Those bots I do see aren't using the coin costumes ever. I litterly have a list of names of bots that I would see every day when grinding and never once did they have a costume on. Seems like a waste opportunity to maximize income but the reality is those bots are disposable and spending time to get the quest item to get the costumes is time not well spent in the botter's eyes. There's far better bang for the buck to just head out and bot the usual spots. There is a guy... I know a guy who has won 20 times with the raffle and he exists just as much as yours!!! Your tool is not extensive nor transparent. It is decent when it's not getting things completely wrong. You said hundreds from the start not "dozens". You're moving the goalposts really far at this point. I never said that leveling one account to 20 manually is difficult or anything of that sort. I simply stated the fact that if someone is able to level hundreds of accounts to 20 then they have heavily automated the full process which means your "solution" would be irrelevant as the person in question already has the tools in place to make "hundreds" more accounts to log in.... I never said vpns or VMs don't work you're just straight up making stuff up all over your last post. If account limits are in place then there's no problem as people can't create hundreds of accounts on short notice for an event.... Giran has not been heavy at 12-2am cdt. Giran doesn't pick up until much later with heavy being more a 6am and later thing. I want to see where this stated by ncwest because limiting accounts based on IP is not practical as vast amounts of people are behind NATs and other things that would cause them to share the same apparent IP as dozens to tens of thousands of other people. It would be child's play for a botter to get around it. But a normal player would be screwed. EDIT : Holy cow I had no idea I was playing on Giran for a year and half already.. Amazing.

*Error facts not found* I played in closed beta and even then there were bots running around and gold sellers spamming. Back then there was no working bot report button for the NA servers. What you describe isn't even how the bot report button action works. What goes down is after a set number of people use the bot report button on someone it causes a captcha to pop up and if they fail to enter the proper captcha 3 times in a row (or if the timer runs out) then your character is given a debuff that kills every stat and xp. When it was finally added to the NA servers with classic the report button was abused in PVP so much that Ncwest was forced to raise the number of reports to spawn a captcha from 3 to 10..

Yes that shows an unverifiable number updated at an unknown rate with no history or any sort of really useful information. Also according to it right now TI is down...Here's an example of that concept done in a manner that would actually be useful for what you're trying to do with it. https://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility Regardless there's a thing some people call "prime time" for games/servers which is when the largest number of people are playing and that prime time for giran seems to coincide with Europe's time zones. To leap to the conclusion that it's actually only because some unknown people are logging in hundreds of accounts each to exploit the system is dubious at best. The point is you missed my point completely. Characters already have to be level 20 to even use the disguises which means automation is definitely involved in anyone doing "hundreds" of accounts. So switching to the number of disguises based on VIP level would have no effect on the cheaters while needlessly screwing over the real players who only have one or two accounts. Since there are "hundreds" of accounts being logged in for this event according to the OP then clearly the "throttle" you speak of isn't working or is made up. So on one hand OP is claiming people are creating hundreds of accounts to exploit the event and on the other hand you're claiming it's impossible because they are throttled. Considering the similarity of your name to the OP I can't help but wonder if you're arguing with yourself at this point. Certainly this is the first time I've seen someone claim there is a "throttle" on account creation.

If someone is logging in "hundreds of characters" it won't matter if it's one or four tries an account because at that point they can just log more over and over. Have you tried to register, setup and log in "hundreds of characters(accounts)"? It's not something you would do manually which means there's automation involved (and a lot of machines). At that point logging over to another set of "hundreds of characters" would just require a little more information being added in beforehand. Where are you getting the data point of the number of people playing? On giran in my experience when leveling there is always an increase of players in the wee early hours CDT (4am and past). That would be late morning for Europeans and later for those east of Europe. Always felt like an European server based on how the majority of people I meet are located there.

Hell here on Giran I've been trying hard to find the people buying steel for 9k adena each or any of that kind of stuff. No luck so far

On Giran prices are pretty much the same as prior to the event. Some things are little more expensive others a little cheaper. Nothing major in my experience has changed. Well other than my ability to afford to buy spell books for my buffers and weapons for my dps. I'd like to know if any of the +16 weapons being listed at +800m actually ever sell though. I've seen the same ones in giran for at least a week now. Maybe we're just looking for different things at different times. I generally scan the market areas 1-4 time(s) a day and I'm mostly looking at/for C and higher stuff. I haven't really seen enough A grade to have any real tracking information on prices. I have seen that B grade weapons in particular are cheap lately. Inflation is a thing in games regardless of server settings. The growth in prices has been along pre-event trajectories. I haven't spotted any abnormalities so any information you can give would be appreciated.

Umm so where does classic figure into that?

I multibox because that's what I find fun in games. In the first few months on my server I averaged 1 captcha a day with my group. I wasn't even farming that hardcore or anything. Just running around with my "train" was enough to get reported (and yelled at). Now I can run anywhere and people don't even bother. It's entirely possible that I'm just running past bots these days so there's no one there to care. I dunno. As for the spellbooks that's why I suggested a possible fix of having more areas drop them so at least you can maybe find a spot to farm? God doing ivory tower for my second job quests was just a nightmare on some of the characters. I had to straight up use my PR's bow on my orc shaman (and some others) as I was doing it's second class transfer quests (WC) because the pony bots were just destroying the quest mobs.

The report button works but it only applies a debuff for an hour if enough people report the character. Your reports only count as one so that's why it seems to do nothing even if you report daily. What you should do is take screenshots and file a ticket to report the bots to customer support directly. Frankly spellbooks should drop in far more places and/or at a much higher rate. It's silly how perfectly the system is setup for botters to exploit for adena farming.

Do you realize that your obsession with bots is not productive (at least the angle you're going with)? Bots are going to bot what matters are the real players and their game play experience. Improve the game play experience and fewer people will bot. You act like Lineage 2i is the only game to ever go from pay to play to free to play.... See the thing is the bots are having NO trouble at all with running around being bots. "easy to bot" is anything at this point based on bot populations. Currently most areas aren't even saturated on Giran. The areas that ARE saturated are locations where specific items drop such as cursed main gauche or spellbooks. Personally I'd like to see spell books being dropped by more things or purchasable off something for a reasonable price...

I started playing in closed beta and even then there were people botting. It was commonly known that the servers were going to be wiped before open beta/release so I was surprised by bots running around. As stated on my servers all the top clans botted and/or had bot trains they ran for adena. Also as stated the gold farmers were far more organized and would kill you if you were in their spot or messing with them. Do you realize that you're talking about a fraction of what was available in the era I was discussing? There were bot trains back then too but there was enough space you could find a cata/necro that had clean areas for gathering mob trains. It's almost like NCwest wants to severely limit the amount of leveling space to force conflict or make the game seem more populated or something..

The problem with limiting accounts via IP is that there is a wide range of reasons why thousands of people might end up sharing the same IP from the perspective of a game server. For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_address_translation One of my ISPs used a NAT for their entire service so litterly everyone who subscribed to that ISP had the same outside IP. Apartment complexes, condos, dorms and more will have a large number of people under the same IP. Even if they did limit one account per IP I could get around that easily as I have 8 desktops and a laptop which I could configure to use various proxies. I could also get other IPs via friends who already have services running on static IPs (I would just ask for them to setup a VPN or something for me). There are so many reason why companies don't even bother trying because they know it'll fail and cause massive headaches as people are outraged they can't play the game for "no reason" when in reality someone else is already playing the game on that IP. EDIT : Hardware ID locks are easily bypassed too as seen by the cheaters that are getting around HWID bans in forte nite and apex legends.

The reality is that during the pay to play era the gold farmers were actively using stolen credit cards and stolen game cards to pay for their bots. By the time NCsoft figured out that the charges were false the account had already served it's purpose. I always figured a good chunk of the sellers were just straight stealing CC info from buyers for this purpose too. One of the game cards I bought at the nearest best buy had already been used despite being sealed new in the box.. NCWest made things right though and the way the conversation went lead me to believe this wasn't unusual at all... It only happened once which isn't bad considering I had 4 accounts I was buying cards for every couple months.

No it had every bit as much. The only difference is that there were a LOT more areas at any given level that you could go to for effective leveling/adena. Basically every "major" player on the server botted. I would say outright every major player but I'm sure there were a handful that didn't. It was a bit of a game in a game to find the botting spots of the "leet players". Also back then the bot owners were far more aggressive about killing players so they would move out of the bot's area. If you messed with a bot train most likely some very high level characters would show up to kill you or train you. IT didn't matter much though because you could always move somewhere else to level up. When Necros/Catas were added it made the situation even better for the manual players because that gave you all kinds of opportunity for leveling and adena making. I miss the real old seven signs because with that system I had fun grinding huge AoE trains underground with my dorf via poling (with a SE cause VR actually worked back then). Sometimes farming with randoms but usually alone. The farming of green/blue/red whatever things that dropped which could be converted into Ancient Adena for sale to the rich people was a solid source of money that allowed me to get decent gear despite not having a CP or a clan to carry me through Raid bosses. Since I didn't bot I was always behind on levels compared to the "leetsauce" players (much like today on classic) so clans were never really interested in me. Meanwhile when I played world of world of warcraft years ago (there was no free trial etc) you would find +30 something level 1 characters floating in the air to form up URL addresses for gold selling sites and they would be up there floating forming different addresses in every single major city all day long with the same characters for weeks. That's hundreds of paid accounts just to make some gold advertisements on one server.

Oh wow are you serious? Because every pay to play mmorpg has bots galore including this game when it was pay to play.... If they wanted to kill bots they'd just make a throw away character to kill the bot's ponies. Kill the pony and most bots will be dead fairly quickly.. So you're probably closer to the truth.

Yeah no drop on PVE death was always dumb so that's why it was removed. It's a "sword" that cuts both ways as the botters would train real players out of their area. High level players would use it to grief lowbies. Seriously it was stupid with parties refusing to invite people unless someone the leader trusted would vouch for them and more. It just enabled a more toxic environment in general.

Typically how it goes on the live servers. Usually they go for the lowbie players because the high level ones can fight back.

Most mmorpgs have no where near +10 million active accounts. Not even WoW has that many....

The burden of proof is on you. I've left my accounts running afk for days at a time since looping was added. Banning people for using an in game function is dumb and I find any claims of such highly dubious.

THe explanations I've seen through search give me no reason to be worried about it. Alas people here keep implying that it's impossible to avoid and I'd like to know how. I've had people try and fail several times now so I am curious to know if those that tried on me were just failures.

I paid money to buy the game for each of my accounts and I paid for years of subscriptions on them starting with my first account in closed beta in 2004. So after putting 15 years of my life, effort, and money into my accounts you're just going to arbitrarily delete them....Yeah you need to rethink that. EDIT : Trying to enforce your suggestion would be a nightmare due to the ease of bypassing...

The bot report button somewhat does that already. Once enough people have used the bot report button on you a captcha will pop up and if you mess it up you get a debuff and unknown stuff happens in the background. In the first few months of the classic servers I was getting at least one captcha a day while leveling. The thing is if the bot program is of sufficient complexity it can answer captchas.. It's kind of sad but automated programs have an easier time answering captchas than me sometimes...

WoW has a ton of bots too. My favorite were the level 1's floating in all the major towns using their bodies to spell out gold seller sites. The most annoying would have to be those that run around under the map gathering all the harvest nodes...