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Thread: Intrusive player-run bots

  1. #21
    I agree, flyer, that it could be done by a couple of observant people who have good knowledge of the other side's twink population.

    On the surface, it's merely prudent planning.

    But the deeper conundrum is that it's a much more sophisticated method to gather information at an unprecedented rate in order to manipulate success rates in war based on low turn out. So, what the perpetrators of this data mining are doing is bypassing the intended mechanism of PVP to acquire sites with little to no effort.

    To some extent both sides do this naturally:

    One side attacks, the other side defends, one side wipes, the other side goes on to win.

    The side that wipes often is demoralised and logs off, so the natural progression is to win by attrition which is enforced via psychological tactics.

    The difference between this (call it the natural state) and the data collection methodology, is that via data mining on player behaviour, the perpetrator of the data mine (and co-conspirators) will know exactly when the other side will be at it's most vulnerable, which will greatly influence that side's ability to defend.

    This problem wouldn't be nearly such an issue if:

    1. the population was significant enough that either side could reliably put up a defence/offence in most timezones
    2. a significantly greater portion of the population PVP'd
    3. players didn't stoop to the level of multiboxing for PVP

    It's hard for a non-PVPer to grasp the impact of #3, but here's just some rough numbers for you and a couple of generic scenarios for comparative purposes.

    Scenario 1: an org with 3 twinks decides to bring war to an open site fully planted. They join a bot, send out some Dnet's, spam some friends to join, and after logging their froob alts for buffs and spamming some other orgs for potential warriors, they organise teams and assign two callers, one guy logs a fixer, they invite the toon to the team, he fgrids, they swap him to T2, and then he provides Fgrid to the other 3 guys in T2.

    The 8 guys arrive to site after 25 minutes of planning.
    One of the guys can't open his site because he doesn't want to lose it, so he'll just help PVP.

    After 2 minutes of play, one guy needs to AFK because his wife aggro's.

    Now there's 6 guys pew pewing towers, and it takes about 30s to kill a tower when everyone is timing perks, but on average it actually takes closer to 45s. The CT will take 10 minutes of flat out damage to kill. Total time from war launch to CT kill is just over an hour.

    This is common, at least it used to be common.

    Scenario 2: Guy says to his chum, lets go wax site X. guy 1 logs a fixer and 5 crats. Buddy logs 1 fixer and 5 crats. They don't even need a single OSB to function, so within 1 minute, both teams are ready. Since each guy always plays with the same team, they already have callers and macro's built for each toons hotbar. They run from the Fgrid exit to the site, and start pew pewing.

    With 10 crats, 2 fixers, 10 primary crat pets and 10 secondary crat pets, they can level a tower in under 14s. it takes the two people controlling 12 chars between them 8 minutes to kill a fully planted site. From logon screen to Planting a CT is less than 15 minutes.

    Opposition didn't even have time to finish their activity and log their twink to defend before the CT was down.

    When war was previously about rallying a group of people, getting a chance to PVP with other well respected server PVPers, using superior calling, superior tactics, impeccable timing and insane luck to keep a doctor alive during an intense kite to produce a wipe on the opposition... war is now about DPSing a tower site so fast that PVP is not even an option.

    It's no wonder there's objection.

    Adding bots to it to time these events and squeeze as many site kills as possible into an info mined low-population window.. I mean, do we even have to go there?

  2. #22
    ZoMg111! Illuminati!11

  3. #23
    Thanks Knuckle, I only did a few towers waaayyy back. And I understood some of what multiboxing allowed in NW, in so far as the PVP aspect was concerned.
    It never occurred to me to consider the expanded aspects, which it should have.

    And as you say, now throwing data mining on top of all this. Kinda makes me sick and has me second guessing renewing my subs and I only PvM for the most part. A rock thrown into a pond will always cause ripples.

    I sincerely hope, FC are aware of and trying to find some kind of fix for all of this.
    Granted, I doubt multiboxing will be killed even if they reneg on their previous statement of it being allowed.

    But things like datamining and the rest, should really be considered a severe threat to the game.
    Freqflyerdnt (Fix) - Codney (MP) - Fiddlybit (Crat) - Breaker117 (Enfo) - Spasticdent (NT) - Fiveof9 (Keeper) - Maleshai (Advy) - Tacitblue (Shade)

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    Quote Originally Posted by Lazy
    clearly, it's all because arbalest is clan-only. all the omnis pvpers went clan for arbalest and all the omni pvmers went clan for the 35% xp buff so now the ratio of clan to omni is 9:1 herp derp clan favouritism herp derp devs are clan.

  4. #24

  5. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Psikie View Post
    I don't see it as that big of a deal on the alts list.
    Then you've never had yours used against you. As someone who used to play different factions on different servers back when there was more than one, I'd like to be able to log all my toons in once in a while without being threatened by some idiot jumping to false conclusions.
    :E

  6. #26
    Quote Originally Posted by Ahndracorvid View Post
    Then you've never had yours used against you.
    No not really. Im pretty easy to find, the majority of my toons are Psi-something, all in same org. Doesn't take rocket science to figure out who my alts are. That's also a good thing imo, anytime I roll a new alt 9 out of 10 times I get invited and teamed by someone who recognizes my naming convention. I have no reason to hide who I am or my alts. Can't think of any reason it would be used against me unless I was banned from one of the bots I am on.

    @Knuckle- I understand why it seems like a compounding issue to you. If you are on the receiving end of blown up towers by 2 MB players it probably gets frustrating. Does it kinda make you want to stop doing towers sometimes?

    Just think if battle station players didn't frustrate and farm pvm greenies (not you of course) maybe it wouldn't have made them stop going to bat station and start going to towers multiboxed. Just a thought.

    The online logging is not that big of a deal really. Any chat bot can do "last seen" or "online". This sort of intelligence gathering has been going on for over 10years in notum wars. The intended mechanism of towers is to destroy the CT and claim the field for your side/faction. If you can accomplish that with little to no resistance great. Just because defenders are not there or can not mount a defense in time is NOT the attackers problem. IMO if you have a tower and you want to keep it, you should be ready to defend it 24/7, not just defend when it's convenient.

    Multiboxing is a dead issue, I may not like it but I have no choice to deal with it now. Same with open inspect, there are players to clever to be stopped and if you can't beat them, at least it's not just limited to a select few now and anyone can join them.
    ~Anyone can level, but only the wise gain experience~

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  7. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by Psikie View Post
    No not really. Im pretty easy to find, the majority of my toons are Psi-something, all in same org. Doesn't take rocket science to figure out who my alts are. That's also a good thing imo, anytime I roll a new alt 9 out of 10 times I get invited and teamed by someone who recognizes my naming convention. I have no reason to hide who I am or my alts. Can't think of any reason it would be used against me unless I was banned from one of the bots I am on.
    Good for you.
    :E

  8. #28
    I used to add PvPers to my friends list, but that was for other reasons.
    When I hit their towers, I could see what they were logging to defend with, and what alts or friend's accounts they were logging to buff themselves.

    As far as intrusive player-run bots:
    The users enjoy these threads for attention.
    Zone-monitoring bots have been up for years. Correlating logon/logoffs is trivial.
    FC is never going to do anything about it, nor multiboxing.

  9. #29
    I feel like this thread has gone off its original course which was the discussion of 2 specific things:

    1. The alts command.
    2. Live monitoring of in-game chat via unofficial means (i.e. you don't have the rights to monitor said channel in-game normally from a toon).

    The first is debatable, I get that.. but the 2nd is the bigger problem. Since I posted my original post I've received plenty of people messaging me that they're aware of the existence of #2 and even some convincing evidence of said existence. I'd just like to encourage those people (and any others) to come forward and spam funcom with this information/evidence. Players really shouldn't be going that overboard and using hacks to view chat channels in game.

    There's also mention that there was a clan bot that was taken offline. If someone could get in contact with me, I'd be curious to know what specific functionality was found to be in violation of EULA as that might be used as part of the case for the issues I'm inquiring about here in this thread.
    You can find me at:
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  10. #30
    Im still trying to wrap my head around #2. How someone could intercept messages between 2 players. For example if you had a separate chat window opened and were logging it I can see some potential there, even though it would require some intrusion into client or server. But if you are just using /r and not logging the messages...it's hard for me to understand how it could be possible. Unless im looking at the symptoms backwards?
    ~Anyone can level, but only the wise gain experience~

    *Bronto Burger, serving 10,000 high level noobs daily*

    http://wolf-brigade.webs.com/

    My Story

    Don't feed the Mensa Tralalalala

    Everyday I'm Shuffling.

  11. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by Psikie View Post
    Im still trying to wrap my head around #2. How someone could intercept messages between 2 players. For example if you had a separate chat window opened and were logging it I can see some potential there, even though it would require some intrusion into client or server. But if you are just using /r and not logging the messages...it's hard for me to understand how it could be possible. Unless im looking at the symptoms backwards?
    Not two players. Imagine someone able to live monitor your org channel without having any toon in your org. I'm being told that there's a couple ways to accomplish this. The first having to do with something that isn't working properly when toons get removed from an org, the second having to do with I dunno exactly even though it has been explained to me about 10 times this week. Something to do with manipulating data packets coming from funcom's servers. Apparently once you understand what to look for, figuring out and deciphering other data is cake.
    You can find me at:
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  12. #32
    The symptoms descried on this thread reminds me of code injection, or known as SQL injection which is common these days and can be caused by simply adding unknown requests to friendlist to any outdated applications that can be exploited.
    This is nothing new and with google everyone can finds out how these techniques are being performed, and what the symptoms are.

    Btw, taking down tower sites is easy and everyone with interests should be able to do it without using any form of bots. And i dont think this hacking techniques is intended for ingame notum wars only, but for something more serious like gathering private data for own interests or benefits. It can be credit cards numbers, passwords, email adress, or monitoring activities etc, etc.
    However, i hope for OP that this is not the case, and that im wrong
    . . . everything in creation is impermanenT

  13. #33
    Since it is invasion of privacy and an infringement to your/our econimical investment it is only fair (just and right) that FC-provide the offenders irl-credentials. Then things can be taken from there.

    Quote Originally Posted by Lliers View Post
    I can't think of a good middle-ground solution.
    Implement more of the playerbot-features to the game. Improve raid-interface and looting/lootsystem. Allow nodrop-stuff from corpses (not inventory) to be transfered into a account-wide folder since players already get lootrights. More 'return to ncp' to get rewards. When it comes to the surveilance I am not sure what can be done, but I think FC should handle disruptive botting. {edited}
    Last edited by Anarrina; Sep 25th, 2014 at 17:12:34. Reason: just don't start.

  14. #34
    I'll find usefull that bot, maybe it will help me to sort alts... how can i access it? :O
    *Rooh*

    {edited for inappropriate content}

  15. #35
    While I can see a problem with using such kind of bots - I also find is very effective and useful.
    For example, we all know that there are TONS of players that share accounts with friends or org members.
    Such tool can help you find out or confirm the fact that your orgm8 started sharing account with someone outside of org and prevent information leaks by performing an org kick.

    If Funcom would care about account sharings and deal with them appropriate way - then I'd barely see any use of bots like these, since it doesnt really matter if you know alts of specific person.
    But when someone buys an account of opposite faction and starts playing it using it anywhere including PvP (I bet all PvP community knows whom am I talking about here) and Funcom does totally nothing - I find this bot functionality extremely useful to be at least warned and prepared at some aspects of the game.
    G.F.B.D.
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  16. #36
    Edited for clarity:

    Let's say I opted to share my account with a real life friend, full well knowing its against the EULA. Why would I share my account with someone that I know is capable of 'spying' or whatever and doing my own org harm? I wouldn't. That would be pretty idiotic on my part. So my suggestion to orgs who have found that they're having some sort of epidemic occur is to choose your orgmates a tad more wisely.

    An organization's failure to properly screen their applicants is not an excuse for virtually violating the privacy of pretty much every active player in game. I can't believe this is even an argument that someone can bring up in support of such an alts bot. And regarding people selling accounts... really the same thing. What type of people sell their accounts, toons still in org? I get that sometimes bad apples slip in to every org but this should be an exception situation, not the rule. Again, if you're finding that you've got multiple members selling their accounts then you need to think about the type of people you're inviting to your org.
    Last edited by Traderjill; Sep 25th, 2014 at 20:57:46.
    You can find me at:
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  17. #37
    as a victim of multiple cyber stalkings i wish fc or the bot owner would do something about this. Please kill it or limit access to only yourself.

  18. #38
    How the hello does this new forum work.. anyway I had this weird thing happen to me.
    I sent tell to some guy next to me looking with almost exact same clothes! Then I alt-tabbed and saw some guy had sent me msg about us having almost same looking clothes! Hahaha
    [Robosapiens - 220eng] [Melchran - 220nt] [Mirkku - 207agent] [Litina -157doc] [Fatina -157fix] [Notatina - 116trader] [Lotina - 110nt] [Notina - 95enf] [Tupu - 95sold] [Hotina 76agent] [Clotclown - 43agent] [Melchram - 30agent] [Jytina 21trader]

  19. #39
    I doubt anyone has hacked private chats considering how often people refer to me as "fat" in game.

  20. #40
    Quote Originally Posted by Pafpuf View Post
    I doubt anyone has hacked private chats considering how often people refer to me as "fat" in game.
    ayyyyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeee lmao

    http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...Aw#ActualImage
    Dysfunktion.
    Trypants.
    Setup.
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    Two dead boys got up to fight.
    Back to back they faced each other,
    Drew their swords, and Shot each other.
    A deaf policeman heard the noise,
    He came and killed those two dead boys.
    If you don't believe this lie is true... ask the Blind Man, He saw it too.

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