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EA what exactly is the problem?

DENNAR

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
It is not dupers. They are scriptors. A BOD scriptor can net $2000/month per account, $1000 from tailor bods and $1000 from blacksmith bods. If you have 10 accounts, even after you pay $120 for all 10 accounts it still nets $20000/month. This is consistent with the bucket loads of runics everywhere.

I also believe they are scriptors not dupers because it should be very simple to do a search for valorite runic LBODs.

We are both correct--scripters is how they got the original bods for a nice reward--but then the items or bods were dupped so they had an unlimited supply of them.
 

Viper09

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Such guilds can, and have, be banned. The entire guild, so be careful what you join.

Banned players seem to be like bad pennies, they keep turning back up. So, in my uneducated opinion, making it no longer possible to do whatever they were banned for would seem the better option.
Agreed. Banning people is not a permanent solution, only a temp solution. People will still cheat and banned cheaters can easily return with a new account. A way to block and prevent cheating is the best solution.
 

Lynk

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Agreed. Banning people is not a permanent solution, only a temp solution. People will still cheat and banned cheaters can easily return with a new account. A way to block and prevent cheating is the best solution.
I can say with a great amount of certainty that if a few of the clearly obvious speedhackers were banned for speedhacking, word of mouth would get around and people would slow the **** down.
 

Exgirlfriend

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
:) Yep.

The important thing is providing correct information to the players (in this kind of discussion, the amount we can communicate is small).

For instance, the current step the design team is taking is rewriting our game systems to limit accessibility to trial accounts for P58.

Speedhacking is another step being taken on by the engineers, but something I can't talk about or release a timeframe for.



When should we expect to see P58, A rough time frame would be nice to know

thanks.
Ex
 

Viper09

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I can say with a great amount of certainty that if a few of the clearly obvious speedhackers were banned for speedhacking, word of mouth would get around and people would slow the **** down.
Perhaps, but perhaps they will just stop blatantly using it and just be careful.
While I agree they should start banning some popular players who speedhack, a way to block the programs would be more preferred.
 

Nystul

Lore Master
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
They arn't going to and won't touch "speedhackers". Todays "speedhackers" are laughable compared to real ones of the past and a true speedhack don't exist. If anyone wants to argue about it enjoy wasting your breath as I won't bother wasting my time in defense over something they won't understand.

I think they would rather target bigger problems like people who run operations where they can abuse trial accounts & scripting programs to farm billions of ingots/wood and tens of thousands of special gems a week. I remember when doing things like that was an actual decent means of money making a long time back. Now that's left for the scripters for the most part who can provide onehundred fold a normal casual player could, and at a reduced cost.

It would be nice to one day be able to use a bag of sending again though. Sucks going to doom for example and taking 8 deaths losing 72k in insurance or something w/o being able to make it back during your normal gameplay. But if bags of sending wern't "nerfed" a casual player could have sent back at least half of that for playing the game like a normal person.
 

GarthGrey

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Ea should make a cheat get it posted on the cheat sites then ban every one who uses it. After a few times people will stop going to those sites.
No, EA should offer cash to the Webmaster at xxxxUO.com and gather up some ip addresses, and then compare them to the ones on this very websight, and realize just how many hypocrites there are registered at Stratics...
 
A

AesSedai

Guest
- What would that prove? My point being: some people will visit those websites without ever partaking in cheating in a game. An obvious reason why, would be that they like to be aware of what cheaters are up to.

By the by, I have never visited these websites because, as long as I can knowingly avoid it, I do not want to contribute in any way towards supporting those that profit from cheating in a game (and I assume they have advertisements on most of these nefarious websites). I have always just used Stratics to hear about the various methods of cheating that people indulge in to abuse the game and its rule-abiding community.
 

Harlequin

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
No, EA should offer cash to the Webmaster at xxxxUO.com and gather up some ip addresses, and then compare them to the ones on this very websight, and realize just how many hypocrites there are registered at Stratics...
I suggest a hostile buyout. Then add code into said scripting program that will send a silent page to the UO server whenever cheaters use it in UO.

To carry it further, slap on a Non Disclosure Agreement clause to do it silently and don't let anyone know, then when p58 hits, wham!

Hey...wait a min...erm...didn't Drac mention something about things he can't talk about?
 

dukarlo

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Ooh! Pick me!
Meanwhile, no, I can't discuss things that are happening behind the scenes. Although people from this thread should be assured that we haven't stopped our efforts, are in fact stepping them up, and that cheaters make up a fraction of the playerbase even if people want to convince themselves otherwise.

Perhaps you could tell us why EA refuses to actually take action against speedhackers. The players know who is cheating you certainly must be able to tell whats going on on EA servers so what IS the problem? Years of this is getting real old. Getting this same old canned message isnt stepping up efforts its burying your head in the sand. The simple fact is EA refuses to put any effort into enforcing its game. Im sorry I dont wanna see the same people that have been cheating for years still playing when you put some system into place to cap speed or whatever your gonna do since they will be the first to start finding ways around it. These players should not be playing EA servers

 

Lord_Puffy

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
The problem is people who have absolutely no patience and continually makes posts such as this. Not that it really affects whether they fix a bug or stop a cheater, but if it were me, every post like this one would move the fix one day into the future. I guess if you really want to see what they are doing, get the cheat programs yourself and start running them. If you get away with it for more than a month, then maybe nothing is currently being done, but if you get caught and/or banned, I guess you'll have your answer!!!

I'll leave the comments I had written about the appropriateness of your user name, at least for now, but I must say from what I've seen of previous posts, it is very fitting (OK, so I didn't let it rest completely, but sometimes I just don't know when to let things go!!!).

You do realize how ignorant that sounds right?

I cant even believe how you could actually think like that, where is the logic in that one?

I am failing to see it.
 

Lord_Puffy

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Draconi:

Here is an actual fact for you. At one time I had at least 12 accounts running at one time. I now have ZERO. I left UO mainly due to the cheating and the lack of action against them. I know others who have done the same. Over the years posts on stratics that were about cheating have had tens of thousand of responses and probably hundreds of thousands of views. Most of us left without answers and more frustrated than when we posted.

As one poster noted--imagine running bods for years in the hopes of getting a good reward only to find the duppers have saturated the market making the running of bods basically worthless. The team initiated the Bod program and made the crafter Bod dependent. Then you turned your backs on them and let the duppers win.

There are other areas that can say the same as the Bod runners. I decided I would not financially support a company that took the actions in the manner EA does.

I wonder how many others left and how many accounts you lost only to allow cheaters to prosper in UO.
QFT

*raises hand* 8 accounts.

And 3 RL buddies with 4 accounts each.

so theres 20 right there.
 

Fluffi

Slightly Crazed
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
We look forward to seeing a drop in certain repetitive activities by just reducing the abilities of trial accounts. It's not a magic bullet, but it'll help.

The trial account changes are a fantastic first step, and I appreciate that you guys aren't going to keep us informed of future developments, but try to look as this from the viewpoint of the conspiracy theorists for a minute:


They know that you know about programs "like less-difficult UO".
They know that you know how they work.
They know that regular changes in the UO code would eliminate these particular applications.
They wonder why daily/weekly trivial changes have not been implemented.
They interpret this as EAs' implicit acceptance of the the cheat programs.


NB.
I am not a programmer, so maybe "making regular, random bit-changes" is not as easily achievable as I imagine.
If this is the case, why not just say "sorry guys, we can't do that because..."
If such code changes are achievable, why not implement them?
 
D

Drawde2

Guest
"Eliminating cheat programs and cheats would bring more players in the game and would keep more players in the game as well."

How??

Since most players PVM how does cheating effect them?
Prices of items, for one thing. The cheaters either get so many of one item it lowers the price of the item, or they corner the market and sell the item for more than most can afford. They can make gold worth less simply by bringing so much of it into the game they can buy whatever they want, which means the sellers raise their prices to make more money, since people are abviously willing to pay that price. Which means an honest player has to spend that much more time earning gold to buy the item. They can also sell the gold for real life money, which does the exact same thing, since the people who buy it don't value it as much as someone who spent time in the game earning it.

Then there's sense of accomplishment for doing something. Some people like earning things in the game, but what's the point if everyone else in the game has it as well, for much less effort? Or, most of the people with it scripted the process, and now many of the players think you are a scripter as well, since you have that item.

Then there's things like the BODs. Many smiths would like to get a valorite hammer, and maybe sell a couple good pieces. But how do you do that if the scripters have flooded the market with them? Or just plain refuse to buy ANYTHING from others, since they have their scripts to do everything for them?

And then there's the cheaters who control the spawns at places you want to camp. They wipe out monsters before you can even get to them, making it to where you can't do anything in a reasonable amount of time, since you now have to kill mongbats to earn money.

These things happen all the time because of the cheaters. And this isn't even going into the PvP arena.
 
U

UOKaiser

Guest
Prices of items, for one thing. The cheaters either get so many of one item it lowers the price of the item, or they corner the market and sell the item for more than most can afford. They can make gold worth less simply by bringing so much of it into the game they can buy whatever they want, which means the sellers raise their prices to make more money, since people are abviously willing to pay that price. Which means an honest player has to spend that much more time earning gold to buy the item. They can also sell the gold for real life money, which does the exact same thing, since the people who buy it don't value it as much as someone who spent time in the game earning it.

Then there's sense of accomplishment for doing something. Some people like earning things in the game, but what's the point if everyone else in the game has it as well, for much less effort? Or, most of the people with it scripted the process, and now many of the players think you are a scripter as well, since you have that item.

Then there's things like the BODs. Many smiths would like to get a valorite hammer, and maybe sell a couple good pieces. But how do you do that if the scripters have flooded the market with them? Or just plain refuse to buy ANYTHING from others, since they have their scripts to do everything for them?

And then there's the cheaters who control the spawns at places you want to camp. They wipe out monsters before you can even get to them, making it to where you can't do anything in a reasonable amount of time, since you now have to kill mongbats to earn money.

These things happen all the time because of the cheaters. And this isn't even going into the PvP arena.
Dont want to counter act the statement and am sure you are right in many of youre statements. But looks like you mean dupers not scripters in youre first 3 paragraphs. Maybe it's too earlie for me just wanted to clear that up a bit. Dont want everyone get confused between scripter,duper,exploiter,and Cheater i will category it elsewhere as cheating can be anything from doing these things to using 2 accounts to own someone.
The camp thing is also rude young players that dont know how to share spawn and can be done with any decent character as well it's just bad manners.
Am just nickpicking the obvious so don't mind me.
 
D

Drawde2

Guest
Cheater is the broad term. Dupers, scripters, and so on are all forms of cheaters.

As for my use of scripters in the first three paragraphs, people use scripts to farm for gold, items, and get BODs. Many cheaters dupe them as well. Scripts aren't just limited to gathering resources. Scripters could make a script to kill swoops for gold, including running to the bank to drop it off and going back to farming swoops.

As for camping monsters, I'm more familiar with the EQ version of it, where people script an entire group of six and camp the individual monster that drops an item. I can still see someone doing it in UO as well, killing everything in Destard farming hides, for example. A good script often reads things that never shows up on the screen, like the maphack in Diablo II showed where unique monsters were in parts of the map you've never been to. The script could then run the speedhacked character to each dragon as it spawned. Or it could just be a group holding the entire dungeon. Just examples that are applicable to UO.

If cheating was allowed "because the cheaters aren't doing anything to you, just killing monsters," this sort of thing would happen. And don't you think a cheater will have the best possible character they can to do these things with? Which means they're better equipped than many normal players, so can often kill the dragons before you can. You'd then be reduced to either farming mongbats, or buying the gold they've been farming, in order to buy the items they've been farming.

Even if a cheater isn't directly affecting you, they will indirectly do so. What happens to the price of player sold items when the cheaters farm gold 24/7, and spend it all?
 
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