Lineage II

i was reading a thread on the L2 forums http://boards.lineage2.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=1140309&an=0&page=0#Post1140309

and i saw replies where people were saying that the bot problem isnt ncsoft's problem ..... Who's fault is it then? I personally think it is their fault just due to the fact how many bots there are (so i hear), i just find it hard to believe that NCsoft has a hard time finding them.

I guess that depends on how you view it. Why single out L2? WoW glider is the most used bot program ever made. They even went to court with the makers of the bot, not that it helped.

Who's fault is it? That is a tough call in all honest because we (the players) don't know anything about their internal workings. What do they do? How many people are required to do "something" effectively. How many people do they have? What sort of software do they use, what counter measures are in place. What internal controls do they have? How is that all effected by falling subs and lay - offs and company consolidations and other projects?

You can't really say until you know those answers.

How much of it is the players fault? Well the majority I would thinkas you agree when you log in and click that EULA that you are not going to do it to start with.

So now as legit player, the majority of my monthly sub goes to paying for anti-bot measure rather then customer service and patches as it should.

So really whos issue is it? 

We know "something" is done because several poster HERE have been banned and its a regular complaint on L2blah.

So we can assume that "something" is being done by NCSoft. Of what, we can NOT define as we have no information to support any agrument. 

We can also assume the players continue to try to circumvent whatever the company does. Proof is in the very existence of bots in all MMO's.

So who's "fault" is it? Who writes the bot programs? Who updates them when anti-bot software is implemented? Who loads them and uses them? Who buys new accounts when theirs is banned for botting?

Its like saying that NCSoft is responsible for players buying gold. Its silly to hold them responsible for behavior the player KNOWS (they agree by clicking "I agree") is wrong and against the spirit of the game or the gold company that sells the gold who KNOWS its against the EULA to do that BUT they violate the agrement anyway and sell third party.

Its like saying the police are responsible for you speeding. You have a license, you agree to the terms of the privilage of driving, you see the posted signs on the road but you do anyway. Then you say its the cops fault when he pulls you over for violating the speed limit and you loss your license and have to pay a fine.

Its all part of the attitude of people not excepting self responsiblity and figuring as long as they don't get caught its "ok" then blaming someone else when there is a problem with said behavior by the individual.

I dunno, its a silly question IMHO but its an interesting topic as it has more to do with the moral / ethical behavior of the players more then the company and I'm looking forward to the replies.

Originally posted by Torak

I guess that depends on how you view it. Why single out L2? WoW glider is the most used bot program ever made. They even went to court with the makers of the bot, not that it helped.

yeah Blizzard is doing something, and i dont see threads on the forums everyday complaining about the number of bots, like in L2.

Who's fault is it? That is a tough call in all honest because we (the players) don't know anything about their internal workings. What do they do? How many people are required to do "something" effectively. How many people do they have? What sort of software do they use, what counter measures are in place. What internal controls do they have? How is that all effected by falling subs and lay - offs and company consolidations and other projects?

You can't really say until you know those answers.

How much of it is the players fault? Well the majority I would thinkas you agree when you log in and click that EULA that you are not going to do it to start with.

So now as legit player, the majority of my monthly sub goes to paying for anti-bot measure rather then customer service and patches as it should.

So really whos issue is it? 

We know "something" is done because several poster HERE have been banned and its a regular complaint on L2blah.

several posters? I am the only who has made a thread about being banned, ive never seen another thread like it.

So we can assume that "something" is being done by NCSoft. Of what, we can NOT define as we have no information to support any agrument. 

well you can always log on and try to level passed 70, i hear thats where all of them are.

We can also assume the players continue to try to circumvent whatever the company does. Proof is in the very existence of bots in all MMO's.

So who's "fault" is it? Who writes the bot programs? Who updates them when anti-bot software is implemented? Who loads them and uses them? Who buys new accounts when theirs is banned for botting?

lol so its the bots fault for botting?

Its like saying that NCSoft is responsible for players buying gold. Its silly to hold them responsible for behavior the player KNOWS (they agree by clicking "I agree") is wrong and against the spirit of the game or the gold company that sells the gold who KNOWS its against the EULA to do that BUT they violate the agrement anyway and sell third party.

talking about botting, not buying gold. One you can stop easier then the other.

Its like saying the police are responsible for you speeding. You have a license, you agree to the terms of the privilage of driving, you see the posted signs on the road but you do anyway. Then you say its the cops fault when he pulls you over for violating the speed limit and you loss your license and have to pay a fine.

this metaphor has nothing to do with what im asking/saying.

Its all part of the attitude of people not excepting self responsiblity and figuring as long as they don't get caught its "ok" then blaming someone else when there is a problem with said behavior by the individual.

blaming a game company for not banning bots that are reported every week/day ....... i dont think anybody is trying to pin the blame on anyone who does not deserve it.

I dunno, its a silly question IMHO but its an interesting topic as it has more to do with the moral / ethical behavior of the players more then the company and I'm looking forward to the replies.

 

 

i didnt say the botting problem in ALL games. Your first few paragraphs felt like thats what yu thought i meant. And i dont see how its the player's fault, when i see people reporting, killing, and doing all they can against bots. And they see the same bot, botting in the same area for months. You did alot of rambling about things that arent relevant at all for the question i asked.

Originally posted by tvalentine

Originally posted by Torak

I guess that depends on how you view it. Why single out L2? WoW glider is the most used bot program ever made. They even went to court with the makers of the bot, not that it helped.

yeah Blizzard is doing something, and i dont see threads on the forums everyday complaining about the number of bots, like in L2.

Who's fault is it? That is a tough call in all honest because we (the players) don't know anything about their internal workings. What do they do? How many people are required to do "something" effectively. How many people do they have? What sort of software do they use, what counter measures are in place. What internal controls do they have? How is that all effected by falling subs and lay - offs and company consolidations and other projects?

You can't really say until you know those answers.

How much of it is the players fault? Well the majority I would thinkas you agree when you log in and click that EULA that you are not going to do it to start with.

So now as legit player, the majority of my monthly sub goes to paying for anti-bot measure rather then customer service and patches as it should.

So really whos issue is it? 

We know "something" is done because several poster HERE have been banned and its a regular complaint on L2blah.

several posters? I am the only who has made a thread about being banned, ive never seen another thread like it.

So we can assume that "something" is being done by NCSoft. Of what, we can NOT define as we have no information to support any agrument. 

well you can always log on and try to level passed 70, i hear thats where all of them are.

We can also assume the players continue to try to circumvent whatever the company does. Proof is in the very existence of bots in all MMO's.

So who's "fault" is it? Who writes the bot programs? Who updates them when anti-bot software is implemented? Who loads them and uses them? Who buys new accounts when theirs is banned for botting?

lol so its the bots fault for botting?

Its like saying that NCSoft is responsible for players buying gold. Its silly to hold them responsible for behavior the player KNOWS (they agree by clicking "I agree") is wrong and against the spirit of the game or the gold company that sells the gold who KNOWS its against the EULA to do that BUT they violate the agrement anyway and sell third party.

talking about botting, not buying gold. One you can stop easier then the other.

Its like saying the police are responsible for you speeding. You have a license, you agree to the terms of the privilage of driving, you see the posted signs on the road but you do anyway. Then you say its the cops fault when he pulls you over for violating the speed limit and you loss your license and have to pay a fine.

this metaphor has nothing to do with what im asking/saying.

Its all part of the attitude of people not excepting self responsiblity and figuring as long as they don't get caught its "ok" then blaming someone else when there is a problem with said behavior by the individual.

blaming a game company for not banning bots that are reported every week/day ....... i dont think anybody is trying to pin the blame on anyone who does not deserve it.

I dunno, its a silly question IMHO but its an interesting topic as it has more to do with the moral / ethical behavior of the players more then the company and I'm looking forward to the replies.

 

 

 

i didnt say the botting problem in ALL games. Your first few paragraphs felt like thats what yu thought i meant. And i dont see how its the player's fault, when i see people reporting, killing, and doing all they can against bots. And they see the same bot, botting in the same area for months. You did alot of rambling about things that arent relevant at all for the question i asked.

Bots are a huge problem in all MMOs not just L2. I illistrated that with Blizzards battle in court that yielded them nothing.
 

It is the players fault...they load the bots. How can you not understand that? Players = "fault" of botting. Bot makers = "fault" of botting. Owning company = does what it can with availible resources / budget.

We don't know what NCSoft does, we don't know how many accounts they ban. Its their game they can run it how they like. Like any customer you can show approval or disapproval with your wallet.

You are far from the first to post about being banned from L2.

I like to ramble and you enjoyed reading it, don't lie.

Yes it is NC Soft fault. I left L2 long time ago when I realized they were doing nothing against them. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

I was grinding near gludio and in a quiet place I found this scene: 2 bots. one of them was some type of warrior, the other one was a healer. The warrior was dead, and there was a spider attaking the healer. I asked if they needed help, they didnt answer. I waited, and the only thing the healer was doing was healing herself. After 1 hour or so they were still there, warrior dead, healer self healing. I asked again, they didnt answer, I said I was about to report both of them. Didnt answer. I reported both bots. The next day they were still there, warrior dead, healer selfhealing, exact same spot. I closed my account little time later.

First of all you have to understand that botting is not the problem.

The problem is that L2's design is extremely condusive to RMT. RMT = Real Money Trade, ie. farming adena and selling it for real life currency.

Botting is just a tool that the adena farmers use to collect adena to sell. Bot programs simply give adena farmers the means to control countless characters at once, maximizing the amount of adena they can farm for sale on Ebay, etc. Because of this you see temendous bot populations.

Which is where the conflict occurs...

As L2 is almost an entirely non-instanced game (which is a good thing), these bots clog up in-game hunting grounds in their endless pursuit of adena to sell for real money. So, real players often find that there aren't any adequate XP locations available because bots (adena farmers) have already taken them up. PKing the bots is useless because they always return (-4% means nothing when you gather XP 24 hours a day while AFK), and actually YOU get punished for going red!

So who is to blame?

The players who buy adena? L2 is a great game on many levels, but many players view its brutal, elitist economy as no more than a barrier to the "good stuff". Why spend countless hours leveling a dwarf and leaving a bloated L2 client connected with a buy/sell shop open in Giran every night when you can just drop a few dollars at Ebay on all the adena you'll ever need?

The adena farmers (botters)? They are just making a few bucks supplying a demand. The opportunity is there, the tools are readily available, it's easy and worth the trouble, why not?

The admin team? How many bots is it physically possible to ban per hour? How many GMs should the NAL2 team hire exclusively for banning bots? What is the false positive ratio for bans? What GM wants to get trigger happy with the ban button only to face a legion of legit, angry players who were mistakenly banned?

All these people share some blame. Greed, laziness. But the true blame falls on the shoulders of the dev team.

L2's bot epidemic is epic in scope. In what other MMO do RMTers play such a significant role in the game world? Adena farmers influence every player in every part of the game (well, at least after lv20 now in Gracia).

They dictate market prices on everything. They completely dominate the 7signs system in every way, gouging the price of Ancient Adena and Mammon consumables. They clog up all worthwhile hunting grounds. Especially dungeons. ESPECIALLY 7signs dungeons (I swear the 7signs system was specifically engineered for RMTers). I even see them in popular "outdoors" hunting grounds, 9-man bot trains competing with archers/nukers in VoS/FoTD/IoP/etc. The adena they sell leads to ridiculously overpowered items that often reduces endgame to an escalation of "who's willing to spend more at IGN.com".

Adena farmers have their tendrils in every aspect of the game and I blame NCsoft's dev team for deliberating pushing L2's design in a direction so susceptible to corruption.

So what do we do? At this point there's no going back. Bot subscription numbers undoubtedly provide an indispensible, irreplaceable source of income that, even if NCsoft was a company of integrity, will never get cut off.

As a player you can fight it, ignore it or give in to the dark side and buy some adena yourself. Most likely, all of the above.