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Do Mods/GM's care about the situation of bots?

AceDotAceDot
Mabinogi Rep: 510
Posts: 9
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in General Chat
It has come to my attention that there are countless numbers of bots running on Alexina server. Almost 24 hours a day, 7 days, there are bots spamming conflict HM with 3 alts.
This is not only known to most high level players but surely GM's can't turn a blind eye to this disgusting situation. Not only is this creating needlessly rich players who put in no effort into the game, but also it generates a massive amount of gold. From what I have heard from other players, the bots generate somewhere between 50-70million gold a day. For far too long this has been going on, wouldn't you agree?
What I would really like to know is, why has this continued? Not too long ago another player (who won't be named) was attempting to sell him scripts and has been bragging in public about how rich botting conflict has made him.
Does Nexon America not care about the state of the game? Nexon Korea has cracked down on hackers and cheaters and yet here we are, with at least a minimum of 4 bots running conflict all the time.

Do players and GM's still care about the state of this game? And if they do, why hasn't anything been done yet?
GretaSherriZeoTabariImaizumi

Comments

  • EllisyaEllisya
    Mabinogi Rep: 5,525
    Posts: 485
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    edited May 10, 2017
    Those are not bots but players who use multiple clients though. Well, you can call them as 'bots' if they are the one who's making golds and sell for actual money illegally. Plus, Nexon Korea actually lets player use multiple clients without any 3rd party programs (cheating), which is kinda funny since we don't allow ppl use that. (Nexon KR's certain game actually advertises in game that player can have access of multi clients up to 3 ; Kingdom of Wind)

    In addition, KR server's Conflict mission got nerfed with gold.
    [Past] 4900 / 6860 / 9800 / 14700 / 19600
    [Present] 1200 / 1680 / 2400 / 3600 / 4800 (Basic to Elite; yes only 3.6k for hard mode)


    Now, we are not sure whether we'll get this nerf as well or not but then as you know... Nexon America is kinda tricky with updates like they skip certain patch and keep what we have..

    Not to be rude or something, as a player who've been playing over 9 years here, the answer I can give, even though myself is not Nexon related personnel, they don't really care about it. Well, they don't even give their opinion about current server status (such as official announcement about server merge or anything; except when that soluna blade incident happened) but just stream with upcoming stuffs. It's better to forget or keep pushing your idea and voice through feedback section or ticket system.
    Greta
  • GretaGreta
    Mabinogi Rep: 51,805
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    edited May 10, 2017
    Ellisya wrote: »
    In addition, KR server's Conflict mission got nerfed with gold.
    [Past] 4900 / 6860 / 9800 / 14700 / 19600
    [Present] 1200 / 1680 / 2400 / 3600 / 4800 (Basic to Elite; yes only 3.6k for hard mode)

    They need to do this in NA.

  • AceDotAceDot
    Mabinogi Rep: 510
    Posts: 9
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    Ellisya wrote: »
    Those are not bots but players who use multiple clients though. Well, you can call them as 'bots' if they are the one who's making golds and sell for actual money illegally. Plus, Nexon Korea actually lets player use multiple clients without any 3rd party programs (cheating), which is kinda funny since we don't allow ppl use that. (Nexon KR's certain game actually advertises in game that player can have access of multi clients up to 3 ; Kingdom of Wind)

    In addition, KR server's Conflict mission got nerfed with gold.
    [Past] 4900 / 6860 / 9800 / 14700 / 19600
    [Present] 1200 / 1680 / 2400 / 3600 / 4800 (Basic to Elite; yes only 3.6k for hard mode)


    Now, we are not sure whether we'll get this nerf as well or not but then as you know... Nexon America is kinda tricky with updates like they skip certain patch and keep what we have..

    Not to be rude or something, as a player who've been playing over 9 years here, the answer I can give, even though myself is not Nexon related personnel, they don't really care about it. Well, they don't even give their opinion about current server status (such as official announcement about server merge or anything; except when that soluna blade incident happened) but just stream with upcoming stuffs. It's better to forget or keep pushing your idea and voice through feedback section or ticket system.

    Okay, well first of all. I feel like it's this mentality that pushes this botting nonsense into the zone where people don't give a crap and therefore nothing is done. I understand that there will be nerfs for Conflict gold gained.
    But no, where you're wrong is, there ARE bots, and of course I'm not saying all of them are, but there are people who run scripts to repeat the same thing over and over again. Have you seen the party board at any giving time or been at Tail altar in different channels, sometimes they respond yeah, but most times they repeat the same thing over and over again. If that's not botting I have no idea what is.
    And to touch on the second idea that you present that we should just "forget" and how nexon doesn't care. Shouldn't we try to bring judgement on those who are cheating? I know this is just a game, and I understand where you're going with that idea of just not caring and just dismissing it. But really, its affecting a lot of people and its pumping a lot of gold into the game, it's affecting my play and you want me to just ignore it like everyone else does? Doesn't this idea seem really obscure to you? The fact that we should just allow people to cheat?
    So what stops me from botting, or you, or anyone else? Where do we draw the line at what is alright and what is not? If the Gm's don't do anything, we should at least bring this more attention so that they realise that it's a bigger problem than they think it to be.

    Also, I agree that the conflict nerds need to come in much faster, but I feel that it will only reduce the amount of gold being pumped in, but not punish those who have made millions of gold using that method. We either allow bots entirely since we don't know where to draw the line of banning someone or we start banning people for these thing.
    GretaRetryTwelie
  • TheDumbOneTheDumbOne
    Mabinogi Rep: 3,790
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    im still worried about the spam bots in dunby asking to visit websites...let alone passing that for something more recent.

    wouldn't it be awful if they lowered sm gold for everyone, just becuase its a lazier faster method?
    again... these people cant even get rid of the simplest spam bots... this is exactly what they'll do, if they do anything.
    and theirs to many freinds i know who get gold this way fair and square who cant even hold on to ANY money.

    just removing free content.
    they just need new GMs, that solely get rid of bots, like a BMs....

    TwelieImaizumi
  • AceDotAceDot
    Mabinogi Rep: 510
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    TheDumbOne wrote: »
    im still worried about the spam bots in dunby asking to visit websites...let alone passing that for something more recent.

    wouldn't it be awful if they lowered sm gold for everyone, just becuase its a lazier faster method?
    again... these people cant even get rid of the simplest spam bots... this is exactly what they'll do, if they do anything.
    and theirs to many freinds i know who get gold this way fair and square who cant even hold on to ANY money.

    just removing free content.
    they just need new GMs, that solely get rid of bots, like a BMs....

    Well, the gold changes have been already done in KR, so I think it would only be a matter of time before they are implemented in NA, if they ever decide to implement it that is. But yeah, there are spam bots promoting gold selling websites. And these bots won't go down because Nexon won't IP ban people, but even still, people can work around that. You ban one spam bot, they make another one to replace it, doesn't take long for them to take down a chat spam bot.
    But looking at the bigger picture, I feel like this is a step towards the right directions, bots are bad, no matter how you look at them and people should care more and if they care, they should voice their opinions. If one person whines about a problem, it's just tossed aside, but if many people persist and urge the GM/Mods to take action, then we can get even a response, even a no and why they say no is good enough.
    But to say that we need new GM's might not totally be wrong. People who are dedicated to improving the state of the game could prove to be very useful.
    GretaTheDumbOne
  • AwwPicklesAwwPickles
    Mabinogi Rep: 1,515
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    edited May 10, 2017
    I'm pretty sure the gold spammer bots are being dealt with but knowing how they work once an account gets banned they'll just make another to replace the one that was removed.

    I haven't seen any SM bots AFAIK but I've been pretty much inactive, logging in once on a red moon.
  • TheDumbOneTheDumbOne
    Mabinogi Rep: 3,790
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    AwwPickles wrote: »
    I'm pretty sure the gold spammer bots are being dealt with but knowing how they work once an account gets banned they'll just make another to replace the one that was removed.

    I haven't seen any SM bots AFAIK but I've been pretty much inactive, logging in once on a red moon.

    still, everyone been making posts to get rid of gold bots.
    i just dont think the team capable of that if they cant even get rid of these tiny ones, or that they just be seen differently for getting rid of only a certain group and allowing the others bots to spam up a storm.

    which makes the only way to get rid of gold spam is to get rid of the gold given in shadow missions, and that probably will 100%.
    it kinda stinks, its like saying if anything free happens in this game it hast to be under a certain limit.... maybe thats why most end rewards that arent events have absolutely nothing
  • ShaeliShaeli
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    The spam bots get blanket-banned two or three times a day, but new ones show up and replace them like 10 minutes later. It's an endless game of whack-a-mole; the only solution is to deal with the supply and not the suppliers.
  • PolicromaPolicroma
    Mabinogi Rep: 6,730
    Posts: 564
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    edited May 10, 2017
    AceDot wrote: »
    TheDumbOne wrote: »
    im still worried about the spam bots in dunby asking to visit websites...let alone passing that for something more recent.

    wouldn't it be awful if they lowered sm gold for everyone, just becuase its a lazier faster method?
    again... these people cant even get rid of the simplest spam bots... this is exactly what they'll do, if they do anything.
    and theirs to many freinds i know who get gold this way fair and square who cant even hold on to ANY money.

    just removing free content.
    they just need new GMs, that solely get rid of bots, like a BMs....

    Well, the gold changes have been already done in KR, so I think it would only be a matter of time before they are implemented in NA, if they ever decide to implement it that is. But yeah, there are spam bots promoting gold selling websites. And these bots won't go down because Nexon won't IP ban people, but even still, people can work around that. You ban one spam bot, they make another one to replace it, doesn't take long for them to take down a chat spam bot.
    But looking at the bigger picture, I feel like this is a step towards the right directions, bots are bad, no matter how you look at them and people should care more and if they care, they should voice their opinions. If one person whines about a problem, it's just tossed aside, but if many people persist and urge the GM/Mods to take action, then we can get even a response, even a no and why they say no is good enough.
    But to say that we need new GM's might not totally be wrong. People who are dedicated to improving the state of the game could prove to be very useful.

    You can't IP ban people in the age of VPNs. It just isn't going to work. The bots will get right back in and innocent customers will get chased away.

    What they need to do is implement a system to quietly censor any phrase with certain keywords in it. The bot would see their message going through, everybody else would see nothing. Have a live GM keep an eye out on crowded areas and add any new gold-seller domain to the blacklist for this. While they could just register a new domain, that does take time and effort beyond just making a new bot, and if they are reduced to making domains of random character strings, nobody's going to remember how to get to their websites anyway.

    Could this potentially be abused for the wrong purposes? (Such as what people have recently seen with social media networks?) Sure, but if the whole Sabina incident is any indicator, it's not like we've never seen GMs abuse the system before. May as well get something out of it.
    Shaeli wrote: »
    The spam bots get blanket-banned two or three times a day, but new ones show up and replace them like 10 minutes later. It's an endless game of whack-a-mole; the only solution is to deal with the supply and not the suppliers.

    The problem here is you pick on legit players more than the bots. That said, I think shadow-mission gold could use a re-balance. Have the longer, tougher missions give more gold while the super-short missions give smaller rewards. (Like, why do Their Method and Shadow Cast City not give better rewards? That doesn't make sense to me.)
    Faybal
  • AlmostNotsuperAlmostNotsuper
    Mabinogi Rep: 3,240
    Posts: 288
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    Policroma wrote: »
    Shaeli wrote: »
    The spam bots get blanket-banned two or three times a day, but new ones show up and replace them like 10 minutes later. It's an endless game of whack-a-mole; the only solution is to deal with the supply and not the suppliers.

    The problem here is you pick on legit players more than the bots. That said, I think shadow-mission gold could use a re-balance. Have the longer, tougher missions give more gold while the super-short missions give smaller rewards. (Like, why do Their Method and Shadow Cast City not give better rewards? That doesn't make sense to me.)

    I'm not sure we're even talking about the same people at this point. I still see a lot of the same characters around the Taill altar spamming conflict. People are using the same terms to refer to the groups spamming sms, the bots spamming advertisements, and the ones killing field monsters (if they still exist). It's kind of confusing. The ones spamming sms have definitely not been banned, at least, not permanently. Probably not at all.

    I agree that conflict should be nerfed, sadly. It's just too easy and too quick nowadays. It's not an ideal solution, but it's the easiest and most realistic one, I think. Buffing the rewards from longer missions would be counter productive though. The people spamming sms with alts can still do this with longer missions. If only conflict is nerfed, then they'll go back to BFT2 or shadow wiz instead. The only downside is that they have to move their alts a little more, but they still get around the same gold for the time invested. I guess they would be a little more limited by the cooldown on FH too. Oh no.

    The way I see it, there are only three good ways to solve (or at least mitigate) this problem. 1.Keep people from playing on multiple accounts at once (doesn't look like Nexon can do this, and if they can, they aren't willing to). 2.Shift rewards from mission completion to monster drops, so these people benefit less from dragging alts along (nerfing the gold rewards of missions sort of does this). 3.Buff enemies and/or nerf players so content can't be soloed so easily. (While you're at it, fix that channel changing glitch that recovers HP, MP and SP, I've seen them using it to avoid using pots). The best we can hope for is probably a mixture of 2 and 3.

    It would be nice to see GMs doing something to help with it though. Maybe make those troll bombs we used to have a GM item, and pay someone to spam it on people who sit around taill altar spamming for hours every day in a group of homogeneous characters, usually all basically beginners, with some easy life skill talent at expert, who never communicate or otherwise behave as a person normally does. At the very least, it would slow them down, or make them leave an alt behind. It's not so harmful as a ban either.
    ZeoGreta
  • ZeoZeo
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    I'm not sure we're even talking about the same people at this point. I still see a lot of the same characters around the Taill altar spamming conflict. People are using the same terms to refer to the groups spamming sms, the bots spamming advertisements, and the ones killing field monsters (if they still exist). It's kind of confusing. The ones spamming sms have definitely not been banned, at least, not permanently. Probably not at all.

    I agree that conflict should be nerfed, sadly. It's just too easy and too quick nowadays. It's not an ideal solution, but it's the easiest and most realistic one, I think. Buffing the rewards from longer missions would be counter productive though. The people spamming sms with alts can still do this with longer missions. If only conflict is nerfed, then they'll go back to BFT2 or shadow wiz instead. The only downside is that they have to move their alts a little more, but they still get around the same gold for the time invested. I guess they would be a little more limited by the cooldown on FH too. Oh no.

    This, people will just continue to find another SM such as Shadow Wizard and use multi-client by throwing some alts in for gold and make millions out of it and not get disciplined for this. While nerfing conflict may be a good situation as it's the easiest way for more players to earn gold.. if it get nerfed, some players will just resort to Shadow Wizard or something with their alts to earn millions in little time as if nothing has happened.
    The way I see it, there are only three good ways to solve (or at least mitigate) this problem. 1.Keep people from playing on multiple accounts at once (doesn't look like Nexon can do this, and if they can, they aren't willing to). 2.Shift rewards from mission completion to monster drops, so these people benefit less from dragging alts along (nerfing the gold rewards of missions sort of does this). 3.Buff enemies and/or nerf players so content can't be soloed so easily. (While you're at it, fix that channel changing glitch that recovers HP, MP and SP, I've seen them using it to avoid using pots). The best we can hope for is probably a mixture of 2 and 3.

    It would be nice to see GMs doing something to help with it though. Maybe make those troll bombs we used to have a GM item, and pay someone to spam it on people who sit around taill altar spamming for hours every day in a group of homogeneous characters, usually all basically beginners, with some easy life skill talent at expert, who never communicate or otherwise behave as a person normally does. At the very least, it would slow them down, or make them leave an alt behind. It's not so harmful as a ban either.

    I do hope Nexon would at least do something about people using multi-client so they actually get disciplined... we have some players in Alexina server who were using some sort of script to go the squire missions and such with more than 20 alts so they can easily get the materials to sell and such... why are something NOT being done about those things as well? I agree with you on the part about GMs.. it'd be extremely nice to have some GMs around and try to do something to help fight against those kind of players.
  • PolicromaPolicroma
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    edited May 10, 2017
    I was referring to the idea of getting rid of bots on the supply side instead of the spammers: This hurts legit players more than the bots, who will just create more bots and script themselves through pretty much any change (as they have been doing for years). Getting rid of the supply side will force the players to work that much harder just to keep up. It will make the gold bot issue WORSE as people will get frustrated and turn to the bots for gold. You basically make customers for them. Add new gold sinks? OKay. Clean up exploits and balance drops? Sure. But don't hurt legit players.

    (Just a quick note, I prefer to solo, so I don't really run conflict that often. My fave is DFC2. I don't personally lose out if the rewards are nerfed.)

    And as far as bots go, IMO there is no difference between the spambots and goldbots. They are cogs in the same machine. I say if they have no customers, they have no reason to bot, therefore you need to get rid of the spam, or at least make it horrendously difficult to spam. And unfortunately the ONLY way to do this is to have a live human on it.
    Faybal
  • TwelieTwelie
    Mabinogi Rep: 3,840
    Posts: 272
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    edited May 10, 2017
    TheDumbOne wrote: »
    im still worried about the spam bots in dunby asking to visit websites...let alone passing that for something more recent.

    wouldn't it be awful if they lowered sm gold for everyone, just becuase its a lazier faster method?
    again... these people cant even get rid of the simplest spam bots... this is exactly what they'll do, if they do anything.
    and theirs to many freinds i know who get gold this way fair and square who cant even hold on to ANY money.

    just removing free content.
    they just need new GMs, that solely get rid of bots, like a BMs....

    I agree with this. Is that not essentially removing a way for normal players to make reasonable amounts of gold without slaving too much or buying nx and selling nx items? This needs to be handled differently. A nerf might help stop bots, but it'll also stop players. If it's a small nerf, I'm more open to it. But if it's nerfing gold drop to the ground.... Not that into it.
  • OpalthiraOpalthira
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    You can never get rid of bots.
    They are a plague that cannot be stopped.
    Even if no one buys things they will still exist.
    I mean have SEEN their prices? 1mil=$5.
    You could just join a conflict spam party afk at the altar and get that much for doing nothing in an hour.
    The gold bots are next to worthless in this game and there's no reason to worry about them.
    I'd be more worried about the players using scripts and 3 alts to get near 4mil an hour and then leave their game on all day.
    4x24= 96 mil just from leaving your account online for a day.
    These people could ruin the marketplace for other players by buying up all the gacha items for horrendous prices which could end up as the new norm.
    Making it so that people who dont get alot of time to play have to grind hours if not days just to get an item.
    Heres to hoping this doesn't happen.
    ZeoTwelieAlmostNotsuperSherriFaybalCraftkidImaizumi
  • TwelieTwelie
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    AceDot wrote: »
    And these bots won't go down because Nexon won't IP ban people

    Wait, what? Are you serious??
  • TwelieTwelie
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    edited May 10, 2017
    Policroma wrote: »
    What they need to do is implement a system to quietly censor any phrase with certain keywords in it.

    Could this potentially be abused for the wrong purposes?
    In another game I played there was a censor where you could personally choose what words cause a message to not appear, and it was case sensitive. This way each player could block bots if they want to as they come up and try to use different combinations of words. This puts the power into the player's hands to decide what they want to filter out. It also makes it harder for gms to abuse, if implemented correctly.

    ^ I think a version of this might be helpful if they don't want to police those spamming bots in dunby/belvast. Wouldn't work for the actual gold bot spammers, but it's a start.

    SherriRadiant Dawn
  • PolicromaPolicroma
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    edited May 10, 2017
    Twelie wrote: »

    In another game I played there was a censor where you could personally choose what words cause a message to not appear, and it was case sensitive. This way each player could block bots if they want to as they come up and try to use different combinations of words. This puts the power into the player's hands to decide what they want to filter out. It also makes it harder for gms to abuse, if implemented correctly.

    ^ I think a version of this might be helpful if they don't want to police those spamming bots in dunby/belvast. Wouldn't work for the actual gold bot spammers, but it's a start.

    That's actually a really handy idea.
  • TwelieTwelie
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    Policroma wrote: »
    That's actually a really handy idea.

    I appreciate it.
    I'm just really tired of seeing them around, honestly. I don't have the friend-list space for blacklisting, and I think they're an eyesore.
  • OpalthiraOpalthira
    Mabinogi Rep: 7,595
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    Twelie wrote: »
    Policroma wrote: »
    What they need to do is implement a system to quietly censor any phrase with certain keywords in it.

    Could this potentially be abused for the wrong purposes?
    In another game I played there was a censor where you could personally choose what words cause a message to not appear, and it was case sensitive. This way each player could block bots if they want to as they come up and try to use different combinations of words. This puts the power into the player's hands to decide what they want to filter out. It also makes it harder for gms to abuse, if implemented correctly.

    ^ I think a version of this might be helpful if they don't want to police those spamming bots in dunby/belvast. Wouldn't work for the actual gold bot spammers, but it's a start.

    Black Desert did this.
    Never found it actually worked though.
    Lets say you choose to block www.

    The bots can just type it as ww.w or any other form of entry to work around your phrase block its just a never ending cycle.
  • HarukariHarukari
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    As someone who only gets their gold from shadow missions because they don't have money for NX for gacha/reforges to sell.
    I would be highly disappointed if they nerf'd shadow mission gold rewards.

    I understand the bots have gotten out of hand, but it shouldn't be ruined for others. :/
    TwelielostheavenZearaImaizumi