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how do you stop cheating?

waynekinnewaynekinne Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
Honestly in this day and age of trolling, perfect bots, and internal sales how on earth will this game function with all of these features? I have a list of a few questions of what can be done to stop this.

1. Players cheat at pvp. What is to stop a guild from having people get on their alts to force a metropolis node from being destroyed? For example you could just have 25 players join to defend and then they just go out naked and die over and over or open doors for the enemy or sit in a siege weapon and refuse to fire it on the enemy. being 25 players down on your defense or attack could easily just ruin this whole experience. People could initiate attacks on their own city at oddball times so that no attackers show up. You could flat out pay some gold farming company to do this sort of crap for you. What is to stop this?

2. How do you stop the massive influx of gold sellers that happen in every game? How do you stop the massive influx of resource farming bots that always come on release? I remember in wildstar you couldnt even grab a resource node because before you could get past mobs and get to it some bot would zoom in and grab it.

3. What about the server bloat that ALWAYS catches devs by surprise followed by the mass migration away from the game? It seems to happen every time. A new game releases. New players far exceed any expectations. Servers fill to bloating. Slowly new servers are added. There end up being way too many servers. The migration happens and 70% of the players are gone after a few months. Servers are dead and the devs wont allow free server transfers. Servers are "in the works" of being combined but for some dumb reason it takes months. Finally the low pop servers just die completely and eventually the game after about 2 years. What will be done to stop this before it happens?

The ideas for the game are amazing and sound great so i am curious what can be done about this sort of behavior.

Comments

  • NerrorNerror Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    Dedicated and online GMs actively monitoring the servers. Steven promised we'd get that. Wildstar didn't have that. Most MMORPGs don't have that. Also the banning of gold-buyers, not just gold-sellers. Combined with other things like no free/trial accounts should mitigate a lot of the cheating and gold spam.

    Bots will have to be really good to avoid being spotted by an active GM, once reported.

    The servers being at first bloated and then too empty is a problem. They acknowledge and know the problem is there, from several statements. All we can hope is that they act on it quickly.
  • mcstackersonmcstackerson Member, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    edited January 2021
    1. Nodes are only able to be sieged during prime time windows which are based off the server's location and there is a period of time (ranging from 2-5 days) between when the siege is declared and when the attack begins so the node being attacked has chance to prepare.
    2. they have monitoring set up so they can keep an eye on player trading and notice suspicious activity.
    3. Hasn't happened yet so not sure how they will want to handle it yet. You can assume they will take the worse possible approach if you want.
  • DamoklesDamokles Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    Concerning the server problem:
    Give people the ability to change servers for those on dead servers .
    a6XEiIf.gif
  • FuryBladeborneFuryBladeborne Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    edited January 2021
    1. A player can only claim citizenship to one node at a time.[5]
    Only one citizenship may be declared per account, per server.[6][7][8]
    This may have changed to one citizenship per account.[9]
    Changing citizenship has a cooldown of two weeks.[2]
    https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Citizenship

    2.There are inhibiting factors. The game is not free. Steven believes in perma bans. We will have to see how it goes.

    3. This isn't cheating, but I am waiting to see how they handle it as well. The only game that I have seen handle this problem well was the launch of GW2 using temporary servers. However, IS does not really want to use such systems. So, we will just have to see if they refuse to open too many servers on launch day as Steven has talked about. Or, if they come up with other ideas.
  • waynekinne wrote: »
    1. Players cheat at pvp. What is to stop a guild from having people get on their alts to force a metropolis node from being destroyed? For example you could just have 25 players join to defend and then they just go out naked and die over and over or open doors for the enemy or sit in a siege weapon and refuse to fire it on the enemy. being 25 players down on your defense or attack could easily just ruin this whole experience.

    Well, they've said they want to see spies and espionage, so I don't suppose this would be classed as "cheating". Bad form and unsportsmanlike, for sure, though.
    This link may help you: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/
  • maouwmaouw Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    Damokles wrote: »
    Concerning the server problem:
    Give people the ability to change servers for those on dead servers .

    Kevin Jordan has warned that allowing this will lead to a culture of expecting server changes, players demanding to change servers because they're not happy about their server.

    reading the wiki about server populations, it looks like the plan is to raise/lower threshold levels (like exp required to level up a node, etc.) according to the inflation/deflation of a server's population.

    I'm leaning more towards what you're saying tho. I think server merges are going to become unavoidable.
    I wish I were deep and tragic
  • maouw wrote: »
    I'm leaning more towards what you're saying tho. I think server merges are going to become unavoidable.

    How would a server merge work in AoC?
    This link may help you: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/
  • NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack
    daveywavey wrote: »
    maouw wrote: »
    I'm leaning more towards what you're saying tho. I think server merges are going to become unavoidable.

    How would a server merge work in AoC?

    I'm not sure about a merger, but I can see Intrepid making the call that a servers population is too low, and informing players on that server that they have a month or so to pick a different server to transfer to.

    There is no real way of being able to take citizenship across to a other server, nor castle ownership. It would be a waste of time to even try, imo.
  • maouwmaouw Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    edited January 2021
    The Ancients reawaken on the dead servers, there's a huge APOCalypse again, the gods open portals to Sanctus again and everyone goes back to Sanctus. But this time you have your inventory/levels!

    But yeah, what do you do with all the inactive accounts? They obviously didn't make it to the portals, so maybe you take all the inactive characters, interbreed them into Tulnar and throw them underground. (Maybe that's how the Tulnar never made it to Sanctus in the first place) :p

    Or you could treat all inactive accounts the same from all servers: after 6 months (?) of inactivity they get moved to a server dedicated to being a limbo Sanctus (Let's call it Sanctus Chi coz it sounds cool) When they eventually do log in to Sanctus Chi and walk through the portal to return to Verra, they can choose to return to the server they were last in (if it still exists), or automatically get dropped into the server with the lowest active population. Forced to make new friends. New guild. New Raids. New me. (Potentially a brand new server, if you just closed 3 and opened 1 undeveloped server)

    To preserve guilds/friend groups, maybe you form a party/guild in Sanctus Chi, kick all inactive accounts in the guild, and the guild/party is dropped together wherever the leader gets dropped.

    You'd have to limit the items/gold that players can take with them through the portal though. Maybe add a vendor in Sanctus Chi where you can spend all that excessive gold on exclusive cosmetics for hefty prices.
    I wish I were deep and tragic
  • maouwmaouw Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    maouw wrote: »
    The Ancients reawaken on the dead servers, there's a huge APOCalypse again, the gods open portals to Sanctus again and everyone goes back to Sanctus. But this time you have your inventory/levels!

    But yeah, what do you do with all the inactive accounts? They obviously didn't make it to the portals, so maybe you take all the inactive characters, interbreed them into Tulnar and throw them underground. (Maybe that's how the Tulnar never made it to Sanctus in the first place) :p

    Or you could treat all inactive accounts the same from all servers: after 6 months (?) of inactivity they get moved to a server dedicated to being a limbo Sanctus (Let's call it Sanctus Chi coz it sounds cool) When they eventually do log in to Sanctus Chi and walk through the portal to return to Verra, they can choose to return to the server they were last in (if it still exists), or automatically get dropped into the server with the lowest active population. Forced to make new friends. New guild. New Raids. New me. (Potentially a brand new server, if you just closed 3 and opened 1 undeveloped server)

    To preserve guilds/friend groups, maybe you form a party/guild in Sanctus Chi, kick all inactive accounts in the guild, and the guild/party is dropped together wherever the leader gets dropped.

    You'd have to limit the items/gold that players can take with them through the portal though. Maybe add a vendor in Sanctus Chi where you can spend all that excessive gold on exclusive cosmetics for hefty prices.

    This solution is exploitable if you want to change servers, but a 6 month (?) inactive account requirement should be enough to dissuade intentional server changing.
    I wish I were deep and tragic
  • ariatrasariatras Member, Founder
    Catching cheaters is a costly endeavour. Many companies go lazy and just use something like EAC or one of the equivalents. That doesn't stop hackers. Never has, though it stops Mac and Linux users from running a compatibility layer more often then not.

    The best solution an in-house anti-cheat software, and active GMs that look for these. Account flagging to look into when someone plays several hours straight. (I do that sometimes, and if it's legit, it doesn't matter. It's just so they have a filter of people to check)

    And when it's quiet, and the GM's don't have a lot to do. But they're still "on the clock" in-game events are always incredible.
    l8im8pj8upjq.gif


  • Wandering MistWandering Mist Moderator, Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    waynekinne wrote: »
    Honestly in this day and age of trolling, perfect bots, and internal sales how on earth will this game function with all of these features? I have a list of a few questions of what can be done to stop this.

    1. Players cheat at pvp. What is to stop a guild from having people get on their alts to force a metropolis node from being destroyed? For example you could just have 25 players join to defend and then they just go out naked and die over and over or open doors for the enemy or sit in a siege weapon and refuse to fire it on the enemy. being 25 players down on your defense or attack could easily just ruin this whole experience. People could initiate attacks on their own city at oddball times so that no attackers show up. You could flat out pay some gold farming company to do this sort of crap for you. What is to stop this?

    2. How do you stop the massive influx of gold sellers that happen in every game? How do you stop the massive influx of resource farming bots that always come on release? I remember in wildstar you couldnt even grab a resource node because before you could get past mobs and get to it some bot would zoom in and grab it.

    3. What about the server bloat that ALWAYS catches devs by surprise followed by the mass migration away from the game? It seems to happen every time. A new game releases. New players far exceed any expectations. Servers fill to bloating. Slowly new servers are added. There end up being way too many servers. The migration happens and 70% of the players are gone after a few months. Servers are dead and the devs wont allow free server transfers. Servers are "in the works" of being combined but for some dumb reason it takes months. Finally the low pop servers just die completely and eventually the game after about 2 years. What will be done to stop this before it happens?

    The ideas for the game are amazing and sound great so i am curious what can be done about this sort of behavior.

    1. This has been addressed by Steven quite a few times. Simply put, the amount of resources needed to siege a city will be substantial (around the same amount required to get a node to the level of the node being sieged) so I doubt anyone would be willing to waste those resources on fake attacks. On top of that, sieges will take place during the prime time of that server so you can't just initiate an attack during off-peak times and hope nobody turns up.

    2. You stop mass gold selling and bot abuse by limiting the demand for them with fair gameplay design. The majority of people resort to bots and gold selling in WoW Classic because the amount of grinding required to raid in that game (the only real form of character progression) is insane, to the point where it becomes a full time job. Why spend 8 hours a day doing mindless farming when you can get a bot to do it for you? Reduce the amount of pointless grinding and you'll reduce the amount of players using bots or selling gold.

    3. Intrepid are very aware of this issue and will only put up new servers if absolutely necessary to handle more players. Of course, there will still the potential for "dead" servers to occur but I'm confident the devs will be able to deal with it.
    volunteer_moderator.gif
  • AtamaAtama Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    edited January 2021
    Don’t forget the biggest obstacle to gold sellers... AoC will require a subscription and there are no free trials.

    So... Every gold seller account needs to pay up front each month before they can even get started, and if they get banned it really stings because whatever paid time left on that subscription is dead money. That all makes Ashes an unattractive game for gold sellers.

    That’s why the occasional request to consider free trials gets shot down quickly by players who don’t want to crack the door open for these bots.
     
    Hhak63P.png
  • maouwmaouw Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    Atama wrote: »
    Don’t forget the biggest obstacle to gold sellers... AoC will require a subscription and there are no free trials.

    So... Every gold seller account needs to pay up front each month before they can even get started, and if they get banned it really stings because whatever paid time left on that subscription is dead money. That all makes Ashes an unattractive game for gold sellers.

    That’s why the occasional request to consider free trials gets shot down quickly by players who don’t want to crack the door open for these bots.

    Yep!
    It forces the black market price of gold to cover the subscription fee - further discouraging buyers
    I wish I were deep and tragic
  • maouw wrote: »
    The Ancients reawaken on the dead servers, there's a huge APOCalypse again, the gods open portals to Sanctus again and everyone goes back to Sanctus. But this time you have your inventory/levels!

    And in Server-1 Node-A, there's a House that's owned by Player-1.
    In Server-2 Node-A, the same House is owned by Player-2.

    You're shutting down Server-2, so who do you give the house to? It's not Player-2's fault that you're shutting down their server. Should they lose the house they put that much investment into? You can't give the house to both of them.

    And all the Freeholds in Server-2. Where do they go? There are already Freeholds in those locations on Server-1, so what happens to the Server-2 Freeholds when it's shut down? Those players who've put all that time and investment into them just lose them?

    And Castles, Mayors, Patron Guilds, etc.


    I just don't see how a server merge would be practical without pissing off an entire server of players.
    This link may help you: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/
  • daveywavey wrote: »
    maouw wrote: »
    The Ancients reawaken on the dead servers, there's a huge APOCalypse again, the gods open portals to Sanctus again and everyone goes back to Sanctus. But this time you have your inventory/levels!

    And in Server-1 Node-A, there's a House that's owned by Player-1.
    In Server-2 Node-A, the same House is owned by Player-2.

    You're shutting down Server-2, so who do you give the house to? It's not Player-2's fault that you're shutting down their server. Should they lose the house they put that much investment into? You can't give the house to both of them.

    And all the Freeholds in Server-2. Where do they go? There are already Freeholds in those locations on Server-1, so what happens to the Server-2 Freeholds when it's shut down? Those players who've put all that time and investment into them just lose them?

    And Castles, Mayors, Patron Guilds, etc.


    I just don't see how a server merge would be practical without pissing off an entire server of players.

    Server merges should be voted by the players of the server that is going to be closed.
    Their freehold goes into their inventory as a blueprint like any other.
    The charater gets transfered and they get to find a place in the server they are transfered to. Nobody gets their freehold destroyed because a new player came.
    It's not fair, but a server where the population is low will die out eventually due to not being able to keep Nodes up or do any other content apart from the already unlocked one.
  • maouwmaouw Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    yeah, I'm curious what the minimum population is to be able to have a functional community.

    Someone said ~300 (?) population required to prevent inbreeding (*cough*Tulnar*cough*) maybe a similar number is required to sustain a functional economy?
    I wish I were deep and tragic
  • MaezrielMaezriel Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    Nerror wrote: »
    Dedicated and online GMs actively monitoring the servers. Steven promised we'd get that. Wildstar didn't have that. Most MMORPGs don't have that. Also the banning of gold-buyers, not just gold-sellers. Combined with other things like no free/trial accounts should mitigate a lot of the cheating and gold spam.

    Bots will have to be really good to avoid being spotted by an active GM, once reported.

    The servers being at first bloated and then too empty is a problem. They acknowledge and know the problem is there, from several statements. All we can hope is that they act on it quickly.

    This is the big thing really and something I'm incredibly exited for. I remember when GMs actually existed in WoW and it wasn't just me using in-game email to overseas support staff whose only job is to send me a link to a third party site.

    Far too many online games have moved to full automation to save on cost and I do understand that for very small companies it might be near impossible to hire a full GM staff but having one makes all the difference.
    ZeFuP1X.png
    If I said something that you disagree w/ feel free to say so here.
  • daveywavey wrote: »
    maouw wrote: »
    The Ancients reawaken on the dead servers, there's a huge APOCalypse again, the gods open portals to Sanctus again and everyone goes back to Sanctus. But this time you have your inventory/levels!

    And in Server-1 Node-A, there's a House that's owned by Player-1.
    In Server-2 Node-A, the same House is owned by Player-2.

    You're shutting down Server-2, so who do you give the house to? It's not Player-2's fault that you're shutting down their server. Should they lose the house they put that much investment into? You can't give the house to both of them.

    And all the Freeholds in Server-2. Where do they go? There are already Freeholds in those locations on Server-1, so what happens to the Server-2 Freeholds when it's shut down? Those players who've put all that time and investment into them just lose them?

    And Castles, Mayors, Patron Guilds, etc.


    I just don't see how a server merge would be practical without pissing off an entire server of players.

    How about a new server is spun up. Everyone from Server 1 and Server 2 get transferred to it. The even get to keep all their stuff. There would have to be some way of storing things set up though.
    Then both populations get to build up that new server from the start again. Maybe increasing XP generation for a while to make things happen quicker.
    That would be easier than figuring out which person gets what. Everyone gets the chance to build up the world how they want.
  • NoaaniNoaani Member, Intrepid Pack
    daveywavey wrote: »
    maouw wrote: »
    The Ancients reawaken on the dead servers, there's a huge APOCalypse again, the gods open portals to Sanctus again and everyone goes back to Sanctus. But this time you have your inventory/levels!

    And in Server-1 Node-A, there's a House that's owned by Player-1.
    In Server-2 Node-A, the same House is owned by Player-2.

    You're shutting down Server-2, so who do you give the house to? It's not Player-2's fault that you're shutting down their server. Should they lose the house they put that much investment into? You can't give the house to both of them.

    And all the Freeholds in Server-2. Where do they go? There are already Freeholds in those locations on Server-1, so what happens to the Server-2 Freeholds when it's shut down? Those players who've put all that time and investment into them just lose them?

    And Castles, Mayors, Patron Guilds, etc.


    I just don't see how a server merge would be practical without pissing off an entire server of players.

    How about a new server is spun up. Everyone from Server 1 and Server 2 get transferred to it. The even get to keep all their stuff. There would have to be some way of storing things set up though.
    Then both populations get to build up that new server from the start again. Maybe increasing XP generation for a while to make things happen quicker.
    That would be easier than figuring out which person gets what. Everyone gets the chance to build up the world how they want.

    When they do eventually have to do server mergers, this is how I expect them to work - with the addition that players/guilds may be able to pick a different server for a limited time period if they want.
  • WokalWokal Member
    I play Elder Scrolls Online (switching between WoW and ESO).....and in ESO i find out other types of cheats, that I am curious about will be possible in AOC.

    Lag Switches and macro scripts.

    When i got a tanky char in heavy armor, with 30k ish health and die instantly when 1 enemy charges on me, i read the dmg profile after and see the last 6 atttacks did 2.5k ish dmg each, meaning he wouldve done 15+ attacks instantly as soon as the charge lands.

    Will this type of cheat/exploit be possible in AOC? I really want an mmo whith good pvp....there is none out atm.
  • PenguinPaladinPenguinPaladin Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    Alot of potential botting somewhat goes out the window with true open world pvp as well... see a bot fishing 24/7? Start killing it every time you see it.
  • PeggysuegotParriedPeggysuegotParried Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    You can't stop it, only hope to contain it. Having nodes randomly spawn might slow down some of the scripter bots, Live GM's is a HUGE plus as long as they have enough of them. The single most important thing they can incorperate is LOGS! If someone is suspected of cheating and they recieve a report in game, have visual logs to see EVERYTHING that player did and who he traded with.

    Cheaters are a satain on today's gaming fabric, My brother even showed me some "Undertectable" software highly advanced aimbottting, see where everyone is and much more, and they wanted 50.00 Euro a month lol. Some people take it that seriously.. Maybe they should practice more instead of cheating , but alas that's not the age we live in.

    Biggest thing is protect the Economy!
  • darthadendarthaden Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    You will never stop all bots but Ashes will have anti-bot technology built right into it's core systems. Every server will have different levels of development for different nodes plus the dynamic weather system. The same bot program might not work on different severs due to mob spawns being different if your farming spot is in a village on one server but a metropolis on another. If your bot farm is in a cave it's going to be awfully funny if that cave gets flooded during spring or frozen over during the winter.
  • NiKrNiKr Member
    Otr wrote: »
    Can bots survive in a PvP game?
    They have lived in L2 for its whole existence, so they definitely can. Especially if it's gonna be beneficial to all the botmakers to go all-out on bot design/coding.
  • darthadendarthaden Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    Otr wrote: »
    darthaden wrote: »
    You will never stop all bots but Ashes will have anti-bot technology built right into it's core systems.
    Can bots survive in a PvP game?

    They just run back and continue after death. Ran into this playing BDO. Found A obvious bot (a wizard only using his dagger stab to kill mobs) killed him multiple times and he was back in a few minutes everytime running the same loop using his dagger stab.
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