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5 spammers in Hene ch 1 and yet....nothing.
Every day. Every. Single. Day. Henesys is filled with spammers. It's nothing new, yet it never changes. Despite the regular occurrence, there is no one there patrolling this and stopping it. I don't understand why there isn't a gm there to ban them on sight. It's not like it's a hacker that changes maps or is hard to detect - they literally stay in one spot and spam over and over relentlessly. I can't have a conversation with anyone there because it's buried instantly.
I know these aren't the same spammers every day, which means they do get banned and remake, but considering that there is some awareness that these spammers are there, there is nothing done about the fact that it's still nearly 24/7 that it's going on.
On top of that all, I get at least one of these spammers that I'm unable to blacklist or unable to report, and I fail to understand why I get these errors. It makes no sense, and leaves me stuck with the spammers.
I also don't understand why nothing is done about the websites in question that are spamming hene and spamming smegas. It's like nexon doesn't care. These spammers aren't hidden, they're right there in your face. So why isn't this monitored?
Comments
Careful when you talk about it, I've been screaming and crying about the fact that we want it to be fixed and I got a "warning" for "argueing" and such, lol, just careful when you're talking about this kind of subject (hackers/botters) which for Nexon will never ever talk, nor do something about it, lol.(you also might get ban, but of course, they'd tell u that you "broke" the rules, yeah more like breaking the rules for talking about things that they (Nexon) don't want to hear...)
Careful when you talk about it, I've been screaming and crying about the fact that we want it to be fixed and I got a "warning" for "argueing" and such, lol, just careful when you're talking about this kind of subject (hackers/botters) which for Nexon will never ever talk, nor do something about it, lol. (you also might get ban, but of course, they'd tell u that you "broke" the rules, yeah more like breaking the rules for talking about things that they (Nexon) don't want to hear...)
You received a warning for flamebaiting other users into arguments which, yes, is very much against the rules of the forum.
Specifically, you were warned regarding this comment where you instigated a fight with another forum user and accused them of abusing Flag Race teleport skills. Even more specifically, you were warned after this comment where you harassed Ariel after they told you to act civil. I should point out that you were not warned immediately after the first comment, you were only told, politely, to stop fighting, and you chose to attack a moderator over it.
Discussing issues with hacking and bots is fine. Accusing others is not. The rules are very clear on this subject and enforcement of the rules has been consistent; we have places to report players, and the forums are not that place.
Any chance you can go after people who use hacks the way you go after people who violate forum rules??
Not to flame or anything, but I just find it absolutely hilarious that people who don't follow "forum rules" are instantly warned/banned by moderators, while players who violate terms of service gets away scot-free with zero consequences. Is being mean to others on forum doing more harm to the game than people using botting hacks that lag the server and inflate meso market/economy?
There have been several (for the lack of better word) posts about players complaining about hackers ruining the game. They were all reported through tickets and in-game reporting system. Every time, the response is that you're all trying hard to combat hackers, or that you'll pass on the message to the devs. The hacking problem is being dealt so poorly that you guys can't even stop hackers who reach lvl250 in new euro reboot and in lab servers. It's been several years since the hacking problem was mentioned by community, and the way these players blatantly used hacks to get to lvl250 in couple days recently tells the entire game community that devs just gave up on this issue. So I want you to answer these questions, if you care enough about the game to answer anyway.
1. What were the devs' responses whenever you guys passed the messages about the hacker problems?
2. Why aren't the spam botters who are advertising meso sites on CH1 Hennesy of every world, not getting instabanned? I know it's against the terms of service to do that since I got warning for even joking about it on the forum. Why can't you just add the name of meso sites to bannable words? Or at least make them censored words?
3. I know that botters move between different maps to avoid detection, and I'm sure devs know this as well. So is there ANY plans from the devs about how they're going to combat this problem?
Sure, the answer to your question is: I'm not a GM. I have never been a GM. I do not have GM powers, nor any insight into Nexon's enforcement policies (beyond what has been given to us with regard to ban duration), auto-hack detection, or plans to alter aforementioned strategies. I'm a normal player.
As a software developer I can guess at the extreme difficulty in stomping out bots and just as a hunch I can tell you that the reason they aren't instantly banned by a GM sitting in Henesys is because that would be a terrible enforcement policy which would ignore all of the meso farming bots and leveling hackers.
They do blacklist various spam sites, which is why bots use special characters (including backslash and forward slash) to replace letters. String detection is easy to implement, but equally as easy to get around. Leet speak has been used to circumvent censorship for as long as I've been on the internet. And censoring individual words is difficult because this can lead to censorship issues with legitimate players (we had issues with this in the past, before players compiled multiple lists of commonly censored words which were interfering with normal gameplay, and Nexon adjusted the censor to be less restrictive).
Security is a very tough issue, especially in games because the trade-off for a more secure connection is speed. Quite literally; the difference between a fast UDP connection and a secure TCP connection is that a TCP connection is slower, while a UDP connection is less secure. Ideally the focus would be on blocking hacks from working entirely; blacklisted words and direct GM intervention are very low on the effectiveness scale. But blocking hacks from working entirely is significantly more difficult than doing either.
Computers aren't magic, and you can't just make things happen by yelling until they happen.
Regardless, since I have no knowledge or access to Nexon's workflow, code, coding practices, or anything other than the tools I have as a moderator, I can't answer your questions to begin with. I tried my best, but as far as these conversations go, that doesn't seem to be enough.
How is having a GM instaban spammers a terrible policy? If anything, it's a GOOD policy and shows that nexon is doing something to combat these issues. The spam botters are just as much of an issue as the hackers are. They clog up henesys and they also spam smegas.
I think it would also boost the morale of some of the users if we actually saw something being done about at least one of the issues at hand, and banning spammers is simpler than banning hackers, as the spammers are a million times easier to notice. I just don't see why there can't be someone patrolling the area. If it's a known issue, GMs need to nip it in the bud. If spammers see they get auto-banned, eventually it will stop because they aren't going to get away with it.
I also suggest nexon starts investigating sites like the ones that are being spammed in-game and find a way to put an end to it. They need to do something, and right now it seems like they are doing nothing.
Edited to add: In response to the bolded part - hackers ARE being ignored. I see the same hackers day after day in the same maps and nothing is done about them. They're becoming so wide spread that hackers are now moving into more populated maps right in front of everyone. Gold Beach is now loaded with hackers, and GB is a questline most users go through. They're running out of "hidden" maps and are now hacking in the open. The other day I saw three hackers on the same map. THREE.
Nothing is being done. Nothing.
Because sitting in Henesys means you're not patrolling other maps, like Gold Beach where you saw three hackers the other day. Bots change the maps they use to avoid getting caught as easily.
Bots are getting banned because there are different ones created every so often. Yes, things are being done, they're just not instantaneous or magic.
Enjoy the broken game folks. The only way to survive is swipe that credit card
But I don't see anyone patrolling the maps loaded with hackers either. If anything, the number of hackers is continuing to rise because nothing is done about it. I used to see hackers only on way out of the way maps, now they're in gold beach, sleepywood, sand rats at ariant, etc, where people go frequently because they are so many that the other maps are already being used by hackers.
They're out in the wide open now, how are they not being caught? And I still fail to see why watching for these spammers isn't effective. If they get insta banned because someone is watching them, they'll stop. They don't get banned, so they don't stop. They have no reason to stop.
GMs are invisible. And the way you can tell they get banned is the same way you can tell spammers get banned:
Anyway what I think is that sitting in one area and banning just moves them to another area, or worse off, completely misses the bots already present in other areas.
If a GM did sit in Henesys 24/7 and banned bots on sight, you'd be right back on here complaining about them also not sitting in Gold Beach, or Ariant, or wherever else they are. And then eventually they'd move out of Henesys and into, I dunno, Leafre maybe.
They already get banned, and they don't stop. So clearly there has to be a more effective solution.
Alright, you're right, and I'm sorry first of all.
But what about the biggest problem of this game which is hackers?
They're so many people who reach lvl 250 in Henesys Park, I see them everyday.
And what about those botters which spam their mesos site every single day for 10+ years? It's literally been 10+ years... and yet, not a single solution, how is that even possible... I'm really curious and would like to get an answer to that question...
A solution isn't easy to come up with. If it were, thousands of security specialists would be out of a job. There's a reason we have an entire field behind what's essentially scrambing words around with algorithms.
A cynic would say there isn't a solution at all; hacks evolve just as much as security measures, and ultimately the job of a security program is to try to make it as difficult as physically possible, combined with in-game measures that make hacking less worthwhile. Then of course there's the trade-off between making hacking difficult and making legitimate gameplay easy, as evident with chat filters.
So the answer to your question is that there's been solutions. Quite a few, actually. The big issue in computer security is that not all of those solutions work (well, if at all).
'
That's pretty much the truth, I mean come on, it's been 10+ years... and yet, not even a single solution? how is that even possible? o_O