SHAME ON YOU!

[Itchy]

There are topics and pages and pages and pages and pages of comments and complaints in this forum about NCSoft's management policies concerning their own rules of conduct regarding botting.  Players comment, players suggest, players are involved with the problems concerning the BOTTING and ADENA SELLING on the classic servers.

IT IS OBVIOUS NCSOFT DOES NOT CARE ABOUT BOTS OR ADENA SELLERS.  NCSOFT IS BENEFITTING FROM THE EFFORTS OF THESE CHEATERS BY TAKING MONEY FROM THEM IN LIEU OF BANNING THEM! 

But NCSoft, are you getting more money from your bots than you are from your live playing members via VIP contributions and L2Store purchases?

You can't butter your bread on both sides, NCSoft.  You have rules.  YOU NEED TO ENFORCE THEM!!  You are OBVIOUSLY not enforcing them!!  Every field is full of BOTS.  No live playing member has a chance of easy hunting because we have to compete with ALL THE BOTS!

Lineage II is bleeding real players daily. people are quitting and going to other games or non-NCSoft servers to get away from the extremely poor management on official servers.

Don't you people on NCSoft staff and management get tired of seeing the same old tune in your forums?  DO YOU EVEN READ YOUR FORUMS?  I don't believe you do!!!  so SHAME ON YOU NCSOFT! for continuously punishing your real live paying players by allowing bots to overrun the servers!!!  SHAME ON YOU NCSOFT for not enforcing your own rules!!!  SHAME ON YOU NCSOFT for not bringing your management up to acceptable levels of competence!!

SHAME ON YOU NCSOFT!!!  If i didn't love this game as much as i do i wouldn't play it.  but i am disappointed more and more every day as more and more bots infiltrate the fields.

PLEASE INSTALL A LIVE GM ON THE SERVERS TO GET RID OF THESE CHEATING PARASITES!!!!  PLEASE DO SOMETHING!  RESPOND TO YOUR PLAYERS IN THE FORUMS, ACKNOWLEDGE THE ISSUES THAT ARE BEING REPORTED TO YOU!!!  STEP UP YOUR MANAGEMENT OF THIS GAME AND START DOING WHAT'S RIGHT FOR YOUR MEMBERS WHO CONTINUE TO PUT OUT THEIR CREDIT CARDS AND CHECKBOOKS FOR YOUR GAME!!!  DO BLOODY SOMETHING!

IT IS NO LONGER ACCEPTABLE TO HEAR FROM NCSOFT STAFF THAT "WE ARE WORKING ON IT!!!"  THIS IS NO LONGER A VIABLE EXCUSE!!!  YOU HAVE HAD THREE AND A HALF MONTHS TO FIX THIS AND NOTHING IS BEING DONE, THE PROBLEM GROWS WORSE DAILY!!!  DAILY!!! DAILY!!!  AND WHY??????   BECAUSE NCSOFT DOES N-O-T-H-I-N-G ... YES, NOTHING.. NOTHING AT ALL ... TO FIX THE PROBLEMS!!!

Your attempts at making programs to block third-party bot scripts are not working!!!!  it's time for you to do something new!!!   put feet on the ground and fix this!!!

@Juji

@Hime

@NcsoftFTW

DO SOMETHING PLEASE!!!  OR IT WILL BE FOREVER SHAME ON YOU!!!

Sincerely

VERY ANGRY PLAYER

 

P.S.  Anxiously awaiting a REAL response from NCSoft.  No longer is it acceptable to see a canned copy/paste generic response to these issues.  NCSoft MUST get involved!!!!

[Boombox]

"We understand that their behavior can be frustrating and we appreciate your patience, as these investigations take time. After we investigate the matter we will take appropriate action, based on our findings.

However, please understand that privacy concerns prevent us from discussing our methods or the results of our findings.

Thank you for your time and understanding."

 

 

/s

[Sariat]

So there's this theory in the book Atlas Shrugged (I KNOW SOME OF YOU JUST SCROLLED PAST THIS, SCROLL BACK!).  Here are the bullet points:

• Money is a substitute for time.
• We give people money because they do stuff faster than we could do it ourselves.  They essentially create time for us.  Instead of making my quilt myself, I pay someone, and I concentrate on something I'm good at.
• People who create HUGE amounts of time, such as the people who invent cars or planes or even a better tilling disc, get paid a lot now.  They only get to enjoy all that extra time while they're alive.  We get to enjoy it for as long as it's used.
• When the inventors of all that extra time don't ensure the world actually gets to use all that extra time (such as by polluting, sabotaging, lying, etc), but still collects all the money (or extra time) the unsuspecting public thought they'd be getting, well that person is stealing from us.

The good folks at NCSoft had invented a method to create time for us, the players.  They have a VIP system that allows for extra drops.  This allows people who want to pay for the efficiency to pay for the efficiency and get more time.  But then NCSoft drops the ball.  We don't get what we pay for.  We don't get any extra efficiency.  We have to run 4x as far between mobs because there are bots all over claiming them.  What is it called when you take money for something you don't provide?  There's a word for that?

Oh yea.  Stealing.  Swindling.  Conning.

[Itchy]

@BoomboxThat is exactly the type of canned copy/paste response i referred to.  there is no discourse in that. there is no dialog. there is no communication with the playing community with that kind of response.  we don't care what they do with them, as long as they ban them.  there is no way it takes time for these investigations.  they have tools available to them to show all players logged in.  not hard to bounce through the odd suspicious bot type names and jump to them, see that they're bots and ban them. or just go stand in dion and watch the constant stream of naked elves running through to the field to die and delevel.  go to any of the hunting areas, plains of dion, south of giran, death pass, hardin's academy, plains of the lizardmen, all around hunter's village to name just a few that i know of.  a live GM with boots on the ground in game can to go any and all of those places and see floods of bots with more arriving daily.  it isn't rocket science and requires no "investigation" other than going in and looking!  

these "investigations" do not take that kind of time, NCSoft.  you think your playing community is stupid? 

i am really looking forward to some real conversation with NCSoft on these issues.  canned copy/paste messages will not be tolerated.  i am really looking forward to some real effort on NCSoft's part to solve these problems.

where are our NCSoft representatives that supposedly represent the players?

BTW there is one bot party that i have been seeing for at least 2 weeks.  the lead character is [moderated].  i know i have reported that character at least a dozen times, if not more. i report it every time i see it.  i am limited to reporting only one because of the pathetic reporting system.  yet, the 10 reports we were told would ban a bot have not yet banned that bot.  yet another lie from NCSoft.  reporting bots in game makes no difference.

another point.. so many people say, bots have been in L2 forever, why raise such a fuss now?  maybe it's time to change that reputation of the Lineage II game to something more positive like.. wow.. no bots! they really do enforce their rules!  good game, NCSoft!!  but until NCSoft gets off its ass and does something proactive against the cheaters and parasites, that will never be its reputation.

don't lie to us that it requires some lengthy investigation.  you are told over and again in your forums by your live playing members there is a problem. all you need do is take a GM into the game and see it for yourself, @NcsoftFTW

tired of the lies. tired of the ploys to get more money from the players. tired of the inaction and excuses.

still an angry player...

[Sariat]

@Itchy On the matter of the reputation of Lineage 2, I remember about six months after the game first came out, a friend of mine, Marru, was at the local GameStop.  He mentioned he played Lineage 2.  The clerk responded, "Oh, isn't that that game with the huge botting problem?"

[Lawman]

1 hour ago, Itchy said:

There are topics and pages and pages and pages and pages of comments and complaints in this forum about NCSoft's management policies concerning their own rules of conduct regarding botting.  Players comment, players suggest, players are involved with the problems concerning the BOTTING and ADENA SELLING on the classic servers.

I had to laugh.  You are right.  There have been thousands of comment and complaints on this topic.  You think adding to the stack with your comment will make a difference??? Good luck with that.  

BTW, it's not 3 1/2 months, it's 15 years.  Given the history of bots in Lineage II anyone who played Classic expecting anything but servers full of bots was fooling themselves, especially after it was announced that the servers would be F2P/P2W.

Having said that, your comment, though angry and at this point singularly unnecessary, was extremely well written and I do appreciate the effort you put into it. Just don't expect anything to come of it.

[Itchy]

11 minutes ago, Lawman said:

I had to laugh.  You are right.  There have been thousands of comment and complaints on this topic.  You think adding to the stack with your comment will make a difference??? Good luck with that.  

BTW, it's not 3 1/2 months, it's 15 years.  Given the history of bots in Lineage II anyone who played Classic expecting anything but servers full of bots was fooling themselves, especially after it was announced that the servers would be F2P/P2W.

Having said that, your comment, though angry and at this point singularly unnecessary, was extremely well written and I do appreciate the effort you put into it. Just don't expect anything to come of it.

3 1/2 months was referring to when these classic servers went live. 

one could have hoped that NCSoft would have realized and understood its past mistakes and corrected them when they opened a new server. apparently not.  i do know botting has been an issue with this game since the beginning. i saw them in january 2004 on Lionna when i started playing there. i've seen them all through time on the various different servers my toons got merged into. it has never ended.

which leads me to believe NCSoft pays no attention to its own forums.  they just set it up for us to have a cry fest whenever the spirit moves us.  i want to be the squeaky wheel, a catalyst to start getting some kind of rise out of NCSoft, a response to why they are managing their game so poorly.  i doubt it will happen, i harbour no delusions of grandeur. but i'm hoping. and if enough of us jump on this angry bandwagon they might, maybe, possibly, hopefully eventually see us.  i am angry that i paid for VIP 4 and can't use it.  i am angry that NCSoft is playing con games with my hard-earned money.  i do not intend to maintain the VIP4, it will expire and i will not renew it. i have better things to do with my money than give it to this greedy self-serving incompetent company.  i hope others will make the same choices.  hitting NCSoft in its bank account might encourage them to sit up and pay attention.  we'll see...

 

[Punish]

2 hours ago, Sariat said:

So there's this theory in the book Atlas Shrugged (I KNOW SOME OF YOU JUST SCROLLED PAST THIS, SCROLL BACK!).  Here are the bullet points:

• Money is a substitute for time.
• We give people money because they do stuff faster than we could do it ourselves.  They essentially create time for us.  Instead of making my quilt myself, I pay someone, and I concentrate on something I'm good at.
• People who create HUGE amounts of time, such as the people who invent cars or planes or even a better tilling disc, get paid a lot now.  They only get to enjoy all that extra time while they're alive.  We get to enjoy it for as long as it's used.
• When the inventors of all that extra time don't ensure the world actually gets to use all that extra time (such as by polluting, sabotaging, lying, etc), but still collects all the money (or extra time) the unsuspecting public thought they'd be getting, well that person is stealing from us.

The good folks at NCSoft had invented a method to create time for us, the players.  They have a VIP system that allows for extra drops.  This allows people who want to pay for the efficiency to pay for the efficiency and get more time.  But then NCSoft drops the ball.  We don't get what we pay for.  We don't get any extra efficiency.  We have to run 4x as far between mobs because there are bots all over claiming them.  What is it called when you take money for something you don't provide?  There's a word for that?

Oh yea.  Stealing.  Swindling.  Conning.

That is a very enlightened perspective... 
<mind blown>

[Itchy]

I know that someone from NCSoft is monitoring this forum topic.  I saw the change from the name of a bot to {moderated} in a previous post.

What i'd like to know is why we are not yet seeing any kind of response from NCSoft?

~Still angry...

[GodEmperorRump]

14 minutes ago, Itchy said:

I know that someone from NCSoft is monitoring this forum topic.  I saw the change from the name of a bot to {moderated} in a previous post.

What i'd like to know is why we are not yet seeing any kind of response from NCSoft?

~Still angry...

Priorities am I right? Can''t have people knowing who the botters are!

[LifeChat]

I just pk 2 bots at forgotten temple and they brought pk char(40+) to pk me and other people.Hahaha  

BOTS have protection from a PIMP.They pk the whole temple just for botting.

[mixa]

lal, this "boi" must be new to retail xF

[Shreekz]

It's a free game. There will be bots. It's always gonna be a constant battle between ncsoft blocking them and bot programs finding ways around the xigncode. I find it very amusing when people say ncsoft are running the trains and selling the Adena. Are you the same people that think your govt are purposefully killing people to control the population?

[Itchy]

17 hours ago, GodEmperorRump said:

Priorities am I right? Can''t have people knowing who the botters are!

Yes!  Must protect bots at all cost!  Bots being protected over normal real live players I guess is par for the course and must just be accepted as NCSoft's standard.

Trying to find a place to hunt again today.  Nothing anywhere that isn't full of bots.  Nothing.   I guess @NcsoftFTW is still involved in their time-consuming ongoing investigation...

~Still Angry

[November]

On 1/23/2019 at 1:28 PM, Itchy said:

There are topics and pages and pages and pages and pages of comments and complaints in this forum about NCSoft's management policies concerning their own rules of conduct regarding botting.  Players comment, players suggest, players are involved with the problems concerning the BOTTING and ADENA SELLING on the classic servers.

IT IS OBVIOUS NCSOFT DOES NOT CARE ABOUT BOTS OR ADENA SELLERS.  NCSOFT IS BENEFITTING FROM THE EFFORTS OF THESE CHEATERS BY TAKING MONEY FROM THEM IN LIEU OF BANNING THEM! 

But NCSoft, are you getting more money from your bots than you are from your live playing members via VIP contributions and L2Store purchases?

You can't butter your bread on both sides, NCSoft.  You have rules.  YOU NEED TO ENFORCE THEM!!  You are OBVIOUSLY not enforcing them!!  Every field is full of BOTS.  No live playing member has a chance of easy hunting because we have to compete with ALL THE BOTS!

Lineage II is bleeding real players daily. people are quitting and going to other games or non-NCSoft servers to get away from the extremely poor management on official servers.

Don't you people on NCSoft staff and management get tired of seeing the same old tune in your forums?  DO YOU EVEN READ YOUR FORUMS?  I don't believe you do!!!  so SHAME ON YOU NCSOFT! for continuously punishing your real live paying players by allowing bots to overrun the servers!!!  SHAME ON YOU NCSOFT for not enforcing your own rules!!!  SHAME ON YOU NCSOFT for not bringing your management up to acceptable levels of competence!!

SHAME ON YOU NCSOFT!!!  If i didn't love this game as much as i do i wouldn't play it.  but i am disappointed more and more every day as more and more bots infiltrate the fields.

PLEASE INSTALL A LIVE GM ON THE SERVERS TO GET RID OF THESE CHEATING PARASITES!!!!  PLEASE DO SOMETHING!  RESPOND TO YOUR PLAYERS IN THE FORUMS, ACKNOWLEDGE THE ISSUES THAT ARE BEING REPORTED TO YOU!!!  STEP UP YOUR MANAGEMENT OF THIS GAME AND START DOING WHAT'S RIGHT FOR YOUR MEMBERS WHO CONTINUE TO PUT OUT THEIR CREDIT CARDS AND CHECKBOOKS FOR YOUR GAME!!!  DO BLOODY SOMETHING!

IT IS NO LONGER ACCEPTABLE TO HEAR FROM NCSOFT STAFF THAT "WE ARE WORKING ON IT!!!"  THIS IS NO LONGER A VIABLE EXCUSE!!!  YOU HAVE HAD THREE AND A HALF MONTHS TO FIX THIS AND NOTHING IS BEING DONE, THE PROBLEM GROWS WORSE DAILY!!!  DAILY!!! DAILY!!!  AND WHY??????   BECAUSE NCSOFT DOES N-O-T-H-I-N-G ... YES, NOTHING.. NOTHING AT ALL ... TO FIX THE PROBLEMS!!!

Your attempts at making programs to block third-party bot scripts are not working!!!!  it's time for you to do something new!!!   put feet on the ground and fix this!!!

@Juji

@Hime

@NcsoftFTW

DO SOMETHING PLEASE!!!  OR IT WILL BE FOREVER SHAME ON YOU!!!

Sincerely

VERY ANGRY PLAYER

 

P.S.  Anxiously awaiting a REAL response from NCSoft.  No longer is it acceptable to see a canned copy/paste generic response to these issues.  NCSoft MUST get involved!!!!

Howdy, I do agree botting is an issue here, though these of some of the questions I have had to ask myself when it comes to this topic. AKA Food for thought

Side note #1, I do agree they should have live GMs'.

Side note #2, not naming bot's or botters, we have seen some of the ones we have reported get banned (not all).

1. How long do you think it should take to ban someone correctly or incorrectly ?
   1. this means that they will only be able to log in on the website to gain access to support.
      1. Please keep in mind, if you ban people to swiftly, you will have a different problem on your hands.
      2. Please keep in mind, that if you ban people to slowly, you will have the current problem on your hands.
2. How long do you think Support should take to respond someone who was banned correctly or incorrectly?
   1. This means that the player is unable to log into the game and is forced to speak with support only and await their verdict to their appeal.
3. What do you consider botting? is it just unassisted gameplay or a much worse concern?
   1. This needs to be globally defined and accepted by all (at the very least NCSOFT defines it here for GW2)
4. At what point in the investigation process would you like for them to invest time?
   1. During the initial banning step?
   2. During the unbanning step?
5. How would you feel more comfortable about banning someone?
   1. Going to the forums and openly posting about it
   2. Going to support and privately posting about it
   3. Reporting them in game?
      1. Modifying the report feature in the game?
         1. If so how?
6. Should they add a GM, what hours should they be on?
   1. Prime times?
   2. 24/7?
   3. 16 hours a day?
7. Do they need to add a Live GM to each server? Or one that jumps around from server to server?

Like I said, just some of the questions that I ask myself every time I see this question or topic come up.

[Itchy]

2 hours ago, November said:

Howdy, I do agree botting is an issue here, though these of some of the questions I have had to ask myself when it comes to this topic. AKA Food for thought

Side note #1, I do agree they should have live GMs'.

Side note #2, not naming bot's or botters, we have seen some of the ones we have reported get banned (not all).

1. How long do you think it should take to ban someone correctly or incorrectly ?
   1. this means that they will only be able to log in on the website to gain access to support.
      1. Please keep in mind, if you ban people to swiftly, you will have a different problem on your hands.
      2. Please keep in mind, that if you ban people to slowly, you will have the current problem on your hands.
2. How long do you think Support should take to respond someone who was banned correctly or incorrectly?
   1. This means that the player is unable to log into the game and is forced to speak with support only and await their verdict to their appeal.
3. What do you consider botting? is it just unassisted gameplay or a much worse concern?
   1. This needs to be globally defined and accepted by all (at the very least NCSOFT defines it here for GW2)
4. At what point in the investigation process would you like for them to invest time?
   1. During the initial banning step?
   2. During the unbanning step?
5. How would you feel more comfortable about banning someone?
   1. Going to the forums and openly posting about it
   2. Going to support and privately posting about it
   3. Reporting them in game?
      1. Modifying the report feature in the game?
         1. If so how?
6. Should they add a GM, what hours should they be on?
   1. Prime times?
   2. 24/7?
   3. 16 hours a day?
7. Do they need to add a Live GM to each server? Or one that jumps around from server to server?

Like I said, just some of the questions that I ask myself every time I see this question or topic come up.

1. how long to ban someone may be a judgment call.  NCSoft staff members have claimed in the past in the forums that they have developed software that detects third-party programs.  it is clearly in the rules that third-party programs are not allowed.  if they do, in fact, have such detection software, employing it to discover whether a bot is being run by a third-party program would constitute immediate ban.  a rule was clearly broken. once they find the IP of third-party program users it should be a simple matter of isolating all accounts being logged from the IP making the investigation that much simpler and more efficient.

    A.  if they see someone they aren't sure is a bot then take time to investigate.  relying simply on a bot detection software system is hazardous. trying to automate bot detection will never work. there will always be someone somewhere who will write a new program to get around whatever detection system NCSoft currently uses.

2. NCSoft usually sends out verification email as soon as a member submits a ticket.  i would think one to two business days would be a reasonable amount of time to investigate and respond to members who were wrongfully banned.  It isn't a very time-consuming investigation.

3. Botting is any system that allows game-play without hands on. a program, a script, anything that allows someone to run more than 3 clients per PC that auto-plays while they go off doing other things.

4. Time should be invested during the initial banning to ensure they are not, in fact, banning legitimate players.  if actual bots are banned, i doubt they will come back and appeal 35 separate accounts banned for botting. they will just go make new ones and start over.  legitimate players would be quick to appeal especially if they have invested real dollars in the game.  when people appeal the initial investigation needs to be reviewed and then either upheld or reversed.

5.  I'm not quite sure what you're asking in this one.  I'll try to answer to my best understanding.  Forums are not a tool for reporting specific bots by name.  as we have seen at least once in this thread names are {moderated} so this would be ineffective.  reporting them in private support tickets has clearly been done by many people. sometimes it works, sometimes not.  it doesn't seem NCSoft is very consistent with investigating and responding to the reports.  obviously NCSoft is not going to tell whomever made the report what the results of the investigation is, nor would i expect them to, however some consistency on their part should be implemented.  obvious bots have been reported repeatedly and are still filling the fields in-game. 

the in-game reporting system is a nice feature but needs to give live-playing members more latitude.  going into a field full of bots, having the limitation of 6 reports per day per character with 30-minute cooldown between reports is not efficient.  only limited numbers of bots can possibly be reported with the in-game system the way it is now.  i'm sure NCSoft designed the reporting system this way to help alleviate abuses however it is counter-productive to actually being able to report bots.  i would like to see the in-game reporting system opened up for more efficient use by live-playing members to make it more effective in working with NCSoft to get rid of the bots.

NCSoft seems to rely most heavily on player reports for bots.  this is a great imposition on the live-playing members and highly frustrating when live-playing members open support tickets, report bots and then see no results.  live-player morale for helping NCSoft get this issue under control drops, live-players get frustrated with NCSoft's inaction against the bots and then they stop reporting.  the bot population increases, NCSoft continues to do nothing about it and the frustration grows to the point where live-playing members throw their hands in the air and quit the game.  it becomes a vicious cycle.

6.  What hours should a live GM be present?  Whatever hours it takes in the beginning to get the problem under control.  normal daytime working hours should be sufficient once it's under control. 

7.  should there be one GM for each server or one that just bounces around?  i don't know how NCSoft is structured so i don't know how many people they would have available for this task.  but it would seem once the problem is under control one person could handle the four servers.  logging in at random times of day, patrolling the known hotspots, going through the login lists looking for known IPs and obvious bot names, using the tools available to them, the job should be diminished from "investigating" to "monitoring" once they do an initial sweep to rid the servers of the obvious bots.

Bots are not hard to spot. stand in dion on any given day and you'll see between 20 and 30 of them running through naked to go delevel.  go to any of the fields and see that they are everywhere, in some cases several bots auto-targeting the same mobs at the same time.  GM's have skills and abilities on their characters that can be used to "test" bots.  //summon a character away from their current location and watch. if they auto-target a mob and run off they are 99% positively not a live player.  if they hesitate and/or speak, they are likely live.  of course, i'm sure a hesitation and/or speaking can be programmed into a script fairly easily but GMs have skills and abilities to test characters in the field.

Ultimately, however, NCSoft needs to get off its duff and start doing something proactive.  what i've seen so far is their attempt to build an auto-detection system that has not yet been effective, nor will it ever be effective as long as people are able to continue writing script programs to get around such a detection system.  NCSoft relies too heavily on its live-playing population to report the bots and then NCSoft takes weeks or longer to "investigate" while the bots continue terrorizing the servers.  this investigation is not complicated and there is no reason for it to take that kind of time.  NCSoft putting the burden of reporting on the live-players is unfair.  it is a time-consuming and frustrating process that is costing NCSoft many live players who are overly, and rightfully frustrated with the system as it is and they quit playing. 

NCSoft gets the big bucks, they should be doing this on their own.  it is, after all, their rules ergo their responsibility.

thank you for your thoughtful dialog.

[BlacKxStaR]

This is my last post.

I am an old player, I was from the first day of this server, I have vip 4 in my main and in my box too, buy 2 times the run of 50% exp of 30 days FOR EACH CHARACTER. I came with a competent enough CP, WE ARE ALL VIP 4, one even with 2 VIP box 4.

And I feel deeply scammed by this game, they said that there would be a level cap of 70 ... it was not like that. This is very important to maintain the balance and that the pvp are more interesting.

They said they would control the bots ... it was not like that.

Simply the content is boring, the system of limited sieges (a single castle to come), which point has to have 50 level 3 clans with the same logo? Just let the clans climb easy to recruit more people instead of doing this nonsense.

Anyway, the drop that spilled the glass was to see a bot lvl 70, a guy is going to use that character against me and my cp in the siege surely, without having tried in the least to climb.

Sincerely, the experience in illegal servers is much better, more immersive and the GMs are active and you can see them moving around the cities and spots.

There is no one left of my cp, there is nothing left for me in this game, what a bad way to say goodbye to him.

[Itchy]

1 hour ago, BlacKxStaR said:

There is no one left of my cp, there is nothing left for me in this game, what a bad way to say goodbye to him.

I am sad to see you and your CP leave.  live players are what make the game interesting.  but i understand your decision.

@NcsoftFTW doesn't yet seem to have caught on to the fact that we are tired of being lied to, we are tired of having our money scammed from us, we are tired of the lack of enforcement of their own rules.  It seems they only enforce the rules against live-playing members of this community but bots are special, bots are fine, bots are adored by NCSoft.  when people are allowed to cheat to advance in any game it is no longer a healthy and balanced playing environment.  NCSoft has allowed this ruin of Lineage II.

NOTE:  Day 3 of this thread. 

1. No response whatsoever from @NCSoft

2. Bots continue to be rampant in all hunting areas.

3. VIP4 investment continues to be wasted on time spent looking for someplace to hunt without being KS'd by bots.

4. Bot reporting system completely broken.

5. Adena sellers now naming themselves with " we sell adena " type names. Adena seller reporting button not being used effectively to investigate these scripted bots who invade every aspect of game play chat from open chat to PM to mail.

Still waiting for an intelligent and viable reply from NCSoft staff concerning these issues.

~still an angry player

[November]

1 hour ago, Itchy said:

1. how long to ban someone may be a judgment call.  NCSoft staff members have claimed in the past in the forums that they have developed software that detects third-party programs.  it is clearly in the rules that third-party programs are not allowed.  if they do, in fact, have such detection software, employing it to discover whether a bot is being run by a third-party program would constitute immediate ban.  a rule was clearly broken. once they find the IP of third-party program users it should be a simple matter of isolating all accounts being logged from the IP making the investigation that much simpler and more efficient.

    A.  if they see someone they aren't sure is a bot then take time to investigate.  relying simply on a bot detection software system is hazardous. trying to automate bot detection will never work. there will always be someone somewhere who will write a new program to get around whatever detection system NCSoft currently uses.

2. NCSoft usually sends out verification email as soon as a member submits a ticket.  i would think one to two business days would be a reasonable amount of time to investigate and respond to members who were wrongfully banned.  It isn't a very time-consuming investigation.

3. Botting is any system that allows game-play without hands on. a program, a script, anything that allows someone to run more than 3 clients per PC that auto-plays while they go off doing other things.

4. Time should be invested during the initial banning to ensure they are not, in fact, banning legitimate players.  if actual bots are banned, i doubt they will come back and appeal 35 separate accounts banned for botting. they will just go make new ones and start over.  legitimate players would be quick to appeal especially if they have invested real dollars in the game.  when people appeal the initial investigation needs to be reviewed and then either upheld or reversed.

 

Everything so far I basically agree with, though we haven't determined how much time is required for the initial investigation (which I do agree, determining a bot is relatively simple). The other thing im not sure about is that a botter wont try to appeal 35 accounts, I would assume that the rule of thumb here is that they are getting caught quickly enough to make it not worth their while to appeal 35 accounts (perhaps pre 35/40 level). Though if they notice that people who are appealing are getting unbanned at a high or higher rate, they would turn to that as well.

 

1 hour ago, Itchy said:

5.  I'm not quite sure what you're asking in this one.  I'll try to answer to my best understanding.  Forums are not a tool for reporting specific bots by name.  as we have seen at least once in this thread names are {moderated} so this would be ineffective.  reporting them in private support tickets has clearly been done by many people. sometimes it works, sometimes not.  it doesn't seem NCSoft is very consistent with investigating and responding to the reports.  obviously NCSoft is not going to tell whomever made the report what the results of the investigation is, nor would i expect them to, however some consistency on their part should be implemented.  obvious bots have been reported repeatedly and are still filling the fields in-game. 

the in-game reporting system is a nice feature but needs to give live-playing members more latitude.  going into a field full of bots, having the limitation of 6 reports per day per character with 30-minute cooldown between reports is not efficient.  only limited numbers of bots can possibly be reported with the in-game system the way it is now.  i'm sure NCSoft designed the reporting system this way to help alleviate abuses however it is counter-productive to actually being able to report bots.  i would like to see the in-game reporting system opened up for more efficient use by live-playing members to make it more effective in working with NCSoft to get rid of the bots.

NCSoft seems to rely most heavily on player reports for bots.  this is a great imposition on the live-playing members and highly frustrating when live-playing members open support tickets, report bots and then see no results.  live-player morale for helping NCSoft get this issue under control drops, live-players get frustrated with NCSoft's inaction against the bots and then they stop reporting.  the bot population increases, NCSoft continues to do nothing about it and the frustration grows to the point where live-playing members throw their hands in the air and quit the game.  it becomes a vicious cycle.

I admit I have a typo, should read reporting, not banning. I agree, they rely heavily on players given their lack of a live GM(s).

 

1 hour ago, Itchy said:

6.  What hours should a live GM be present?  Whatever hours it takes in the beginning to get the problem under control.  normal daytime working hours should be sufficient once it's under control. 

7.  should there be one GM for each server or one that just bounces around?  i don't know how NCSoft is structured so i don't know how many people they would have available for this task.  but it would seem once the problem is under control one person could handle the four servers.  logging in at random times of day, patrolling the known hotspots, going through the login lists looking for known IPs and obvious bot names, using the tools available to them, the job should be diminished from "investigating" to "monitoring" once they do an initial sweep to rid the servers of the obvious bots.

Bots are not hard to spot. stand in dion on any given day and you'll see between 20 and 30 of them running through naked to go delevel.  go to any of the fields and see that they are everywhere, in some cases several bots auto-targeting the same mobs at the same time.  GM's have skills and abilities on their characters that can be used to "test" bots.  //summon a character away from their current location and watch. if they auto-target a mob and run off they are 99% positively not a live player.  if they hesitate and/or speak, they are likely live.  of course, i'm sure a hesitation and/or speaking can be programmed into a script fairly easily but GMs have skills and abilities to test characters in the field.

Ultimately, however, NCSoft needs to get off its duff and start doing something proactive.  what i've seen so far is their attempt to build an auto-detection system that has not yet been effective, nor will it ever be effective as long as people are able to continue writing script programs to get around such a detection system.  NCSoft relies too heavily on its live-playing population to report the bots and then NCSoft takes weeks or longer to "investigate" while the bots continue terrorizing the servers.  this investigation is not complicated and there is no reason for it to take that kind of time.  NCSoft putting the burden of reporting on the live-players is unfair.  it is a time-consuming and frustrating process that is costing NCSoft many live players who are overly, and rightfully frustrated with the system as it is and they quit playing. 

NCSoft gets the big bucks, they should be doing this on their own.  it is, after all, their rules ergo their responsibility.

thank you for your thoughtful dialog.

The rest I effectively agree with.

[Itchy]

1 hour ago, November said:

Everything so far I basically agree with, though we haven't determined how much time is required for the initial investigation (which I do agree, determining a bot is relatively simple). The other thing im not sure about is that a botter wont try to appeal 35 accounts, I would assume that the rule of thumb here is that they are getting caught quickly enough to make it not worth their while to appeal 35 accounts (perhaps pre 35/40 level). Though if they notice that people who are appealing are getting unbanned at a high or higher rate, they would turn to that as well.

how would bots appeal a ban? hi, i wasn't using a script program on any of my million characters so please unban me? if they do this individually for each account it would be incredibly time consuming. cheaper, less time involvement and more expeditious to just make new characters and start over. and get banned again. and wash, rinse, repeat. once they get banned often enough they'll catch on. bots aren't tolerated.  move on to something else.  @NcsoftFTWjust needs to make the determination that they will actually actively do something about it and make it happen.  apologies if i sound snarky. i don't mean to.  i just don't see someone taking the time to appeal that many accounts when they could be feeding their greed by being parasites in-game. 

[Itchy]

It is rumoured that NCSoft is profiting from the bots and adena sales.  if this is true they will find themselves with servers full of bots making money. no live players, no NCoin, no L2store purchases, just bots.  i don't know if revenues from bots will make the difference in what they are earning in sales. if it doesn't they'll bankrupt this game.  i don't math but this just seems like simple common sense.

[GrannyChill]

Botting is a business.  Business exists only with customers to buy product.  If all real players leave, business fails.  If no real players buy adena, business fails.  The only people to blame for the bot situation is the real players who are too lazy to earn their own, so become the vital customer base the botting business is built on.

[Sieger]

This is taken from Wikipedia :

 

Unfortunately Lineage 2 ended up releasing a classic lineage 2 server, in 2018, that was plagued with massive bans on legitimate players from its over tuned auto ban algorithm. The launch of the game feuled an unprecedented frenzy of wide eyed players looking to continue their Lineage 2 adventure. Spending tons of money in the cash shop, only to be banned inappropriately. While watching bots run all over the servers, these victims dealt with an incompetent support and appeals department of NCSOFT which only replied in copy paste responses.

 

GG

 

[qtpi]

1 minute ago, Sieger said:

This is taken from Wikipedia :

 

Unfortunately Lineage 2 ended up releasing a classic lineage 2 server, in 2018, that was plagued with massive bans on legitimate players from its over tuned auto ban algorithm. The launch of the game feuled an unprecedented frenzy of wide eyed players looking to continue their Lineage 2 adventure. Spending tons of money in the cash shop, only to be banned inappropriately. While watching bots run all over the servers, these victims dealt with an incompetent support and appeals department of NCSOFT which only replied in copy paste responses.

 

GG

 

Good thing this was on wikipedia and not these forums, elsewise the moderators would have deleted that post.

[Itchy]

4 minutes ago, qtpi said:

Good thing this was on wikipedia and not these forums, elsewise the moderators would have deleted that post.

it's on this forum now.  nicely done.

NCSoft needs to see the truth of what their business model is doing to the game.

8 minutes ago, GrannyChill said:

Botting is a business.  Business exists only with customers to buy product.  If all real players leave, business fails.  If no real players buy adena, business fails.  The only people to blame for the bot situation is the real players who are too lazy to earn their own, so become the vital customer base the botting business is built on.

not everyone buys adena. not everyone buys OP items from L2Store.  sadly though i agree with you that without a customer base the businesses would fail. if people stopped spending real money to support the bots they wouldn't be there. 

On the flip side, if NCSoft would simply enforce their own rules the bots wouldn't be there.  if NCSoft enforced their own rules and banned all the bots there would be no business therefore no customers and people would be playing more fairly in a more balanced environment.  so, business models or not, it still all goes back to NCSoft, the developer and host of this game with rules they are not enforcing.  They need to step it up.