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Q&A Ft. MapleStory's Investigation and CS Team
Comments
My question is why haven't the investigation teams have not taken to pursuit to those who distribute such cheats and if so, why has it taken so long for any action to for them to be dealt it?
Clearly they are the source of what makes a majority of cheating easily available. It damages the players trust of Nexon America because there is no visibly of moving forward to truly fight against cheating but to only clean up the easier mess or do things that are only short-term. Such examples of this are events being handled poorly or re-occurring errors that were supposedly patched previously. Most of us players are aware that anti-hack measures such as moving towards Nexon Launcher and Hack shields, or in-game hack detection has done nothing. Along with patches and maintenance doing very little that creators of these cheats can have their tools back up and running within hours if not minutes.
I know that question may push towards a bit of the legal department along with the development team, but it's not excusable for such things to go on for years if not the past decade. But I also have to say why has this conversation been going on like a broken record? It feels as if being aware isn't the issue it's about taking action and we as the players are seeing none of that. It feels as if player morale has been the lowest as it has been due to such loose enforcement of the Terms of Use, Code of Conduct and whatever else that it may break.
Whatever the case may be, I find it inexcusable that hackers are continually to run rampant to this day. This is why me and many other players refuse or try to not buy NX due to the poor quality of service whether it is customer support or in-game stability (bugs, client crashes, lagging/crashing servers).
People report that they get teleported there while training or farming. No GM speaks to them, either before or after they're sent there (according to their reports, anyway). Some manage to find a quest to teleport them out, some have to wait for Live Chat to free them.
Are GMs teleporting suspected botters there now, instead of the famous White Room?
Why?
If the player is found to be botting, they should be banned.
If they are found to be innocent, they should be freed.
Leaving them in the cell is either too lenient or needlessly harsh, and also generates work for the ticket/Live Chat GMs.
If it's not GMs teleporting people there, but rather griefers, then Nexon should do something about this particular hack.
It's demoralising to see, as they've even now started spamming meso selling sites using smegas. They even have the nerve to sell items in FM also...
THIS needs to be acted upon, and preferably... As soon as possible.
I can answer this question, as there are court documents and proof somewhere, but believe it or not Nexon has tried to deal with the source of the hacks and bots by law suit and whatnot, but due to both the website and the people running it being outside of the US, they can't pursue it as hard as they would like, it would take an anti-hacking law that expanded into gaming (like the korean laws and I think the UK have something similar) in where ever they are based in for nexon to attempt a full pursuit of punishment.
Preface: The last paragraph states the intention of this post--to shine light on suboptimal solution and addresses a recurring concern that has been popping up over the years. Although this is about bans, it’s not about just one individual, one incident, one case, and etc--this is about solving a problem and creating a positive attitude towards Nexon’s investigation and Customer support team. I understand if this is deemed to be beyond the scope of this Q&A but I truly believe that it is still worth reading as a new perspective can be gained and a discussion can be started.
More than 1.5 years ago, there was an incident that is now referred to as the "December Cube Exploit". Since it has been a very long time, I’ll provide some context--an exploit (not involving any hacks, just abuse of a bug) was found on December 19th, 2015 that resulted in the ability to produce an unlimited amount of Red Cubes and Black Cubes. Shortly after, those who abused this bug were banned. A few weeks after, on January 6th 2016, those who were deemed to have benefitted from this exploit through the trading of these items and some of those who came in contact with these items briefly were permanently banned. With only one known case of an appeal being successful ( http://puu.sh/wRGFc/6d32c7bbb1.jpg ), the rest found no success in bringing to light the flaws of the investigation (multiple accounts were missed, accounts that weren’t logged on during that time period were banned) and multiple people who were extremely funded were banned (e.g. UberLegends, Rachel, Azaiea, and etc from Windia). Even a quick glance at their accounts will reveal that these individuals could hardly benefit from these exploits--their equips were already near perfect (Bonus potential legendary and had very good stats, Tyrant equips were upwards of 13 stars with many at 15 stars). As most Maplers would know, Bonus Potential and enhancing Tyrant equips is done after the regular Potential is done.
One of them reached level 250 a while before the incident and 2 of them were very close to level 250 so they they had very little to gain and very much to lose from this. A sample of “Rachel”’s damage a month before the incident can be seen here:
About a year ago, the same exact exploit occurred ( https://www.reddit.com/r/Maplestory/comments/506gyz/a_plea_to_nexon/) but this time, only those who actively abused the exploit were banned--those who came in contact and even storage mules for these items weren’t banned. Logically speaking, if it was seen that, at the time, the scope of the exploit wasn’t severe enough to ban beyond direct offenders, this leniency should’ve been shown, retroactively, to those who were banned on Jan 6th, 2015 due to the December version. It’s not unreasonable as we’ve seen President Obama commute the sentences of nonviolent drug offender in the context of today’s world.
Even if we did assume they did benefit in some form from the exploit--after 1.5 years, how useful would these equips be? Let’s take the Arcane Weapon Exploit that occurred earlier this year as an example (even though it was claimed that all the exploited items were removed): after a year or 2, these items devalue enough for these individuals to be release with no impact on the game balance.
My question to you: Can old cases of permanent bans ever be reconsidered in today’s context. For investigations where the evidence isn’t black and white--investigations where assumptions are made, can those assumptions be presented to the accused so they can attempt to prove/disprove these assumptions. Nexon’s customer support make very valid arguments/cases but not always sound (i.e. If the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true vs If the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true AND the premises are definitely true). It makes little sense to keep those who were permanently banned for taking advantage of hackers obtaining Tyrant capes, 6 years ago, banned. Most of these people never came back and it became a lose-lose situation as the population declined. Given how passionate those who were banned during the December Cube Exploit have been even after 1.5 years, it’s hard to believe that these people will ever negatively impact the game. Here’s also an interesting note to end on: One of the people that was banned during the incident was recruited to be a moderator for Basilmarket for their positive contributions (white hat, responsible disclosure of site vulnerabilities).
A more direct question: why is hacking given potentially as light of a ban as 2 weeks? I have seen many players using hacks to attack the entire map, and farm nodes/elite drops only get 2-4 week bans. This length of time seems more appropriate to a macro botter (that is a bot that doesn't hack).
As another asked already. How is downloading third party programs that are obviously not allowed given such leniency?
While we're on the topic of hacking bots... these "players" eventually have to sell their ill gotten gains. Is there any effort to see where these accounts are funneling their items and banning their sales front? There are frequently obvious hacker shops in the fm and even when reported nothing is done about them, or if there is it's far too late to be effective.
There's also now suspicious transactions in the auction house. Is this being looked into? People are selling valueless etc items such as shrimp from aquaroad for billions. This is likely a new "safe" way to sell mesos. We can't report the players because there are no names in the auction house...
We still do not know if you guys plan to fix these long standing bugs and frankly, it's unacceptable how it's been so long and there's no information or updates on them. Some of us want to move on if you don't plan to fix things.
Firstly, I'm sure everyone would like a reply to this one.
What is the investigations and CS team doing within the hopefully near future to become more transparent with the player base?
Secondly
Why is it so difficult to redistribute an item to a player if something unfortunately happens to it?
Now I'm not talking about a player destroying their items with a scroll or the likes, but more for the players who accidentally drop an untradeable item or get hacked and lose their items. Other game companies are so helpful to these issues and will give players back their items, sometimes within 24 hours. However, with Nexon if this happens players who submit a ticket or go to live chat about this are basically told that there is nothing that they will do since they don't replace player mistakes.
Lastly,
When players report a glitch through tickets or live chat, what is the requirements before the teams put the glitch on their list of "to be addressed", as well as what is the process of testing the reported glitches?
Two glitches that I can think of are actually ones I reported that deal with shade, which are still not fixed to date.
In case that gets removed for "naming and shaming", here's the relevant bit:
(The opening post shows dozens of bots in one FM map.)
Tbf, companies that are able to restore your stuff after you get hacked are in the minority.
Not to mention it could end up like Mabinogi's Solun*shot*
So my question to the investigation team is: Why is there such a large inconsistency in terms of how exploits are dealt with, and why are permanent bans given out to individuals when the better solution is to remove illicit items?
If one wants to become a Maplestory GM, what company should one apply to?
People from EMS will defenetly remember this. GMChaos and smega's?
We've reopened this discussion with the response that we've gathered from our CS and Investigations team. Apologies if an answer could not be provided to your question in this round of Q&A. We would like to hold more of these in the future in our hopes to provide Maplers with more insight into our constant battle with illegitimate players and the support that is provided. Thank you to everyone who participated in this Q&A by submitting your questions!
Q: Are there any future implementations on revamping the autoban system? Currently it appears to be banning a number of legitimate players?
A: We know that there have been various cases of the anti-cheat system in MapleStory targeting legitimate players in the past. Most of the time this is in part due to new features, skills, item interactions, etc. introduced in game updates that inadvertently trigger existing criteria we have set in place. It’s difficult to predict when things might be triggered this way. We may test things extensively on our end prior to an update, but in a live environment things sometimes find a way to go wrong. Thanks, ‘Murphy’s Law’ . These cases are somewhat rare in frequency, and when it happens we are usually aware of the situation rather quickly. The investigations team will immediately reverse any of the blocks that are placed on the accounts, and those blocks have no bearing on any ban history. We also investigate what may have caused those mistaken triggers and work with our developers to remedy that situation as soon as possible. We understand our system isn’t perfect, and we are continuously working to improve it. If you ever find yourself in such a situation, we encourage you to submit a ticket about your case and we are more than happy to look at it.
Q: Are there any sort of 'second chances' being implemented for those that have been temporarily banned/removed off rankings? I know MapleStory has done so in the past, even lifting the bans off of permanently banned players.
A: The second chance program initiated a few years back was an experimental program to see whether or not abusive players from the past could learn from those mistakes and play the game without the use of third party hacking programs. We have since finished the program and concluded our analysis. At the moment, we do not have any plans on reviving that program again.
Q: Is better training being done on the customer support teams to better assist us? Most GMs seem pretty incompetent on the happenings of in game events or items. Most don't seem to even play the game or have an understanding of it. They give inconsistent answers or simply copy and paste a response.
A: MapleStory is a complex game that requires a lot of time and dedication to keep up-to-date on new systems, content updates, etc. Many of our agents are cross-trained to handle multiple titles, which depending on the workload, can make it a challenge to remain an expert. To address that, we will be making efforts to ensure that our agents take the time to understand the game, the events, new content, and even our internal policies better, without compromising our ability to provide the players the answers they need in a timely manner.
Q: For players who sell items for illicit currency such as Paypal (PP,) Western Union (WU) and other forms of money, how come those players don't get banned right away. I've seen players trying to sell on a daily basis through hire merchants or shop permits.
A: We understand that RMT (Real Money Trading) is a big issue which does have a negative impact on both our business and game economies. To put it simply, it’s difficult to catch RMT activity happening outside of the game. Those transactions that you are describing happen through back channels and alternate accounts that are not linked to player’s main accounts. We simply do not have as much oversight on those transactions, which makes it difficult to conduct these types of investigations. In order to take any proper action on accounts involved in this activity, we need to have solid evidence of those transactions linked to the accounts. That alone takes time, which explains why you don’t see them get banned right away.
Q: Are the investigations regarding the December 2015 Cube Exploit ever going to resume? Many players were unfairly banned for coming in contact with items they had no clue were exploited, without any way to avoid it.
A: We are no longer investigating this issue and we consider the matter closed.
To add a bit of transparency regarding the December 2015 cube exploit, I’d like to share with you some of the criteria we used for investigating the issue. First of all, there were a set number of players taking direct part in the exploit that allowed a player to exploit a hot time reward box, which gave players an unlimited amount of miracle cubes. Those accounts have been permanently blocked with no chance of release. The investigation didn’t stop there, as the team had to look for associated accounts involved with the exploit. We looked into the movement flow of items that were obtained by and given to direct exploiters for upgrade, but we didn’t place blocks solely on that. We had to look at other criteria as well, such as IP association, the quantity of items received from direct exploiters, and whether or not there was indirect trade activity or other types of behavior indicative of malicious intent to profit from the exploit. If any account fit these criteria, the accounts were found to be associated or tied to direct exploiters and were blocked.
Last year, the investigations team was made aware via forums and other social media channels of player's concerns about the resolution of this case. The team took another look into the investigation of the December exploit to see if appropriate actions and decisions by investigators were taken at the time. We came to the conclusion that the actions the investigators took to look into the accounts were appropriate. Because of that we consider the matter closed.
Q: Why are botters not being banned and roaming freely? They are always taking over maps in every channel which ruins gameplay experience for normal players.
A: We do our best to catch and ban the players that violate our Terms of Service and continue to explore different methods to improve our abilities to do so.
Q: Are there talks in introducing the CAPTCHA text verification system back into GMS that is currently present in the other versions of the game (KMS, MSEA)? As far as I am aware they were removed because players used the "Lie Detector" USE item to pester players.
A: We did in fact at one point of the service utilize a “Lie Detector” CAPTCHA system, whose purpose was to combat botting. But players ended up abusing the system during boss battles, jump quests and other normal instances. So we removed the CAPTCHA as it was ultimately ineffective. At this time we do not have any plans to bring back the lie detector, but we can certainly take another look at the item, see if it can be improved upon to prevent abuse, and put it up for consideration in the future.
Q: Why isn't Live Chat available around the clock, as befits a Global service?
A: We understand players enjoy this service due to preferred direct Player-to-GM interactions and quicker resolution times. Unfortunately at this time, we can only accommodate the hours that we currently have for live chat. We'll continue to take a look at our operations as a whole to see if it could possibly be feasible in the future.
Q: Why aren't hackers permanently banned on their first ban? Being someone who has reported and gotten various hackers banned it always disheartens me when I see them back. These players know exactly what they are doing. You don't accidentally download and use hacks and they do the same thing when they are back or until they hit 250 in which they start doing it on a mule account.
Q: How is the length of bans determined? A more direct question: why is hacking given potentially as light of a ban as 2 weeks? I have seen many players using hacks to attack the entire map, and farm nodes/elite drops only get 2-4 week bans. This length of time seems more appropriate to a macro botter (that is a bot that doesn't hack).
A: Ideally, we'd like to give an abusive player the benefit of the doubt that they had a moment of weakness when it comes to their decision making when deciding to use third party hacking tools. Also, we'd like to think that a minimum term of a two week suspension plus possible rank removal, is enough of a reason for a previously innocent player not to continue their cheating ways. Unfortunately, we understand that's often not the case, and we'll have to take a deeper look into that. Also, keep in mind that we take repeat offenses for hacking very seriously and will often institute a no-leniency stance on those accounts. At the end of the day, the lengths of the ban are based on the type of offense and frequency, and the Sr. GM is final arbiter when a decision needs to be made concerning ban leniency.
Q: Why do people who have been banned for botting/hacking get to keep all their "progress"? The worst part about people coming back from a ban is that they lose nothing. This is why you have so many people who hack/bot and do not care because they know even if they get banned they'll still have everything after the ban. I know de-leveling players may cause issues but there has to be something else that can be done. People who bot or exploit should have all goods removed after their ban and more.
A: To put it simply, it's easier said than done. Any kind of item, currency, progress, or purchase removal is a very tricky and timely process. This is especially more so in cases where a player may have had their account taken over by a third party source and used for hacking/botting. We can look at ways to see if removing gold, items, and EXP can be done for banned players in the future. However, in the priority of things, doing this will mean that we can’t do something else that would more benefit the players.
Q: Why aren't shops in the free market investigated? There are loads of shops that scream "hacker/botter". They are filled with elite boss items, legendary items and spell trace usually. A lot of these shops have been in business for years and are making thousands of dollars off your game. It wouldn't be hard to look into the shop owners and see what trades are being done to and from the player. You would get a large stream of accounts connected to it that are going to be hacking mule accounts and you'd also get the player's main.
A: We do investigate Free Market shops. Often times it is difficult to identify if the item was obtained through illicit activities.
Q: Is it true that Customer Support agents are measured by the number of tickets they close and/or live chat conversations they complete?
If so, is there any mechanism in place to make sure their motivation to help the players and the game is higher than their motivation to close the case ASAP?
If it is not true, how do you explain the cases in which people got brushed off by CS agents, only to get a completely different response once the issue was escalated to a Senior GM, or the CM took notice?
A. We do not solely rely on the number of tickets and chats completed to quantify an agent’s overall performance. There are multiple attributes that we use to measure performance, with most being quality based.
Please keep in mind that each agent has different personalities, methodologies, and ways of going about a solution. Sometimes an agent may not make the right decision when responding to a ticket or chat. That is why Senior GM’s exist: to identify where an agent may have erred in their response and to coach them on proper handling of the case. For the most part these same CS agents typically have gone above and beyond to assist a player and solve their issue. But when one agent’s response is taken, usually out of context, and displayed publicly on Reddit or a forum in a mocking or demeaning way, it gives a false impression that the agent doesn’t care or worse, doesn’t want to make things right for the player.
Q: Does it ever hurt or demoralize you to read, hear, or witness the things people say about you? Assuming you know the things people say about you?
A: Of course it does. Contrary to popular belief, we’re not robots. We swear! Rather than see it as a mountain of negatives though, we try and use it as motivation to strive to make a better game for the players.
Q: My question is going to be this... When are you going to be a lot more pro-active in dealing with spammer bots in Towns and FM (Meso sellers, basically) and dealing with bots killing mobs in various locations?
A: Everyday we are catching and investigating players that violate our Terms of Service.
Q: What is the investigations and CS team doing within the hopefully near future to become more transparent with the player base?
A: Participating in events such as this. We do work with our community manager, Arwoo, very often to share appropriate and transparent messaging when various hacking incidents or major exploits arise. We also are continuously trying to improve our messaging in tickets and live chat responses to give a clearer picture to the player about any ban issues that players come across.
Q: Why is it so difficult to redistribute an item to a player if something unfortunately happens to it? Now I'm not talking about a player destroying their items with a scroll or the likes, but more for the players who accidentally drop an untradeable item or get hacked and lose their items. Other game companies are so helpful to these issues and will give players back their items, sometimes within 24 hours. However, with Nexon if this happens players who submit a ticket or go to live chat about this are basically told that there is nothing that they will do since they don't replace player mistakes.
A: Investigating claims that something disappeared by accident can be very subjective at times. It's hard to discern off of the player's word alone whether a player's lost item was an accident or not. We understand where other game companies are coming from when they restore items for players, because of the way their item movement is structured there's really only few avenues for an item to be removed from the player. With a system like MapleStory, a player can drop an item to trade, destroy an item through various forms of enhancement, sell the item via market, and so on, to where it's easy for a player to make a false claim without proper investigation. Keep in mind, we do restore items in cases of unintended removal such as illegal access to the account or mistakenly written item descriptions. In those cases, we have to do a very thorough investigation to verify the claim.
Thank you,
-Maple Team