Collection of methods to stop dupers and cheaters

[hawkeye_pike]

Why not start a threat to collect ideas about how dupers and cheaters could be stopped? I've seen some pretty good ideas on this board. I've written down what seems doable and reasonable. Feel free to add suggestions!

• Cross-sharding seems to be an issue. Do not allow certain items to be transferred to other shards (like runic kits or anything else that is object to duping).
• Certain items should be bound to an account and not be tradable (like runic kits). Trade manufactured goods, but not the runic kits!
• Trial accounts should not be able to own certain items. (I would even go so far to say that trial accounts should not be able to own ANYTHING. It is enough when they can walk around and watch things.)
• Do not put items into the game which are too rare and too hard to get. Those items create an imbalance and encourage dupers. And those in existance should be bound to a character.

 

[Halister Marner]

Something I saw in another game, was a group of players who went around updating prices for common items, and doing a weekly report on the economy done through the games tradepost/market system.

For UO, it would be interesting if a group of players got together to create a Luna watch, gathering info on commonly sold items, price ranges, and compiling a weekly state of the economy. For example, when the current dupes appeared, a weekly state of the economy would allow comparisons to previous weeks, and when odd trends or market floods start to appear, they would be easily recognized, allowing greater recognition and disclosure to the general UO community.

This is something the players themselves can do.

 

[Basara]

Hawkeye...

I do think that trial accounts should own some things - after all they need to experience the game. However, I do agree with you that certain things should be off limits...

1. BOD books.
2. BODs that take 70+ skill to have the ability to fill (I.E. colored BODs). If the character gets to 70 before the trial is up, each BOD given that would have been colored and/or large results in an IOU BOD, that can be dropped onto the appropriate crafter NPC type to be exchanged for the real deal.
3. Doom Artis (except on TC) (minors should be easy enough to get)
4. Vet rewards
5. Items that the trial account can't use due to subscription (an AOS trial/buddy account can't put SE or ML items in their pack, etc.); especially items that were presents/pre-order bonuses (you shouldn't be able to give a trial account a Charger or soulstone token, for instance)
6. most rares (but those would have to be coded per case, which would be a pain)

Make transfers open to vet-reward-eligible accounts only, and in addition to making many things non-transferable, set limits to transfers by characters - say, 2 transfers a year, per character, +1 per 12 months of consecutive active time. This would allow a 1-year account to go "PVP touring" to 1 or 2 other shards before returning home. The next year, if the account was constantly paid on, it would get an extra jump, etc. This would help limit use of "bought" inactive accounts that might be used in duping schemes.

 

[Der Rock]

Something I saw in another game, was a group of players who went around updating prices for common items, and doing a weekly report on the economy done through the games tradepost/market system.

For UO, it would be interesting if a group of players got together to create a Luna watch, gathering info on commonly sold items, price ranges, and compiling a weekly state of the economy. For example, when the current dupes appeared, a weekly state of the economy would allow comparisons to previous weeks, and when odd trends or market floods start to appear, they would be easily recognized, allowing greater recognition and disclosure to the general UO community.

This is something the players themselves can do.

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i would LOVE, if KR had such a good sell/buy systeme like WOW, ingame auctions.
the vendor systeme we have now is not usefull for us, and the cheater cheat the vendor fee anyway.

 

[timbeOFbaja]

If they can identify duped items then they should be able to be notified the moment a dupe is created or within a short amount of time. Simply banning dupers at the time of the dupe is all that is required.....none of these silly work around. THAT'S THEIR JOB!! It's just absurd that we're getting beehives and cocoa seeds but nobody can spare a minute to write a trigger to resolve this forever.

As far as the 10 year old code excuse. I've heard enough of that. The code from 10 years ago was before 90% of what exists in the game was even on the design table. That may fly with your executive bosses who don't get why you lack the ability to wipe out these stupid problems, but it's not going to fly with a crowd of technical players who KNOW you're just being lazy.

 

[RoycroftLS]

As far as the 10 year old code excuse. I've heard enough of that. The code from 10 years ago was before 90% of what exists in the game was even on the design table. That may fly with your executive bosses who don't get why you lack the ability to wipe out these stupid problems, but it's not going to fly with a crowd of technical players who KNOW you're just being lazy.

Yes, the code from 10 years ago was made before a lot of the features (and hence problems) existed in the game. Did the original programmers ever consider people would be trying half the exploits that exist today? Probably not, so the code isn't inherently designed to prevent such nonsense from happening.

And most programs release a completely new version every 3-5 years. Why? Because the old version gets too dated and too obfuscated to work with anymore.

That said, if you or anyone else think they can do better, they are hiring a game designer:
http://www.uo.com/fof/fiveonfriday119.html
Put your money where your mouth is.

 

[Lady_Mina]

the good method is...if they would stop having fun banning the traders and buyers.
And cutting down the UO population of honest players.

And get to work and start running test to find those bugs.

Several people have given them clues..and even a website with 6 duping methods...(some even got banned for it)

And then they come up with the excuse 'we don't want to warn the dupers that we are releasing a fix'...

A fix is a fix...i don't think dupers care when the fix will be there (IF).
They'll just continue what they're doing till they fix the bug.
They don't care if the devs would announce a fix or not..they just go on , expanding their money...

 

[Hoffs]

As far as the 10 year old code excuse. I've heard enough of that. The code from 10 years ago was before 90% of what exists in the game was even on the design table. That may fly with your executive bosses who don't get why you lack the ability to wipe out these stupid problems, but it's not going to fly with a crowd of technical players who KNOW you're just being lazy.

I don't really agree. The code is old and was written in the early days of MMORPGs. Since then new things have been added, but that is not necessarily beneficial because it means many hands have been working on it and the whole thing is probably something of a spaghetti with nobody totally sure how everything works. And the basic framework - networking code and database handling - is probably as it came out originally.

If the code were rewritten I am sure they could implement many new procedures, error-checks and utilities with the benefit of a decade of MMORPG operation and perhaps state-of-the-art development tools, but it is something you just cannot do by mucking around with the old code - or at least it would take longer to do it that way.

We see numerous times how apparently simple changes take a long time or just introduce a multitude of other bugs along the way, all perhaps indicative of a code that is a bit of a mess and not properly structured and/or class based. A good example is the Siege ROT. You would think it is just a matter of changing one or two variables to increase the daily gain allowance, but apparently not.

However, rewritting the entire UO code is a major task and one that is not likely to happen for a game which is viewed by its owners as having a limited lifetime.