Ghost Cams

[Nexus]

it's free though. they probably actually lose money running the website.

The fact the illegal program in question is free doesn't matter, EA/Mythic is still loosing money because of it. They should hold that individual responsible for creating software purposely to disrupt and cause harm to their intellectual property.

 

[Fox (Europa)]

- Aye MrTact was playing with exorcism and stated that ghost cams were something like 'a creative strategy'. I'm sure he meant attended ghosts and not bots. Unfortunately only certain characters can exorcise and it was never made effective enough to prevent ghost cam bots from working. Then MrTact moved on and the issue has not been dealt with since.

Heh, I would consider stealth scouting the spawns to be a more creative strategy. Which actually happened before ghosts were allowed and made scouting that much easier. I didn't mess with stealthing because on a horse I could cover every spawn in very little time (I'm thinking about 2 or 3 minutes).

His last comment on the subject before exorcism was implemented was to the effect that he would monitor the fix and if it wasn't effective he'd revisit it.

Of course lots of people pointed out afterwards that exorcism was a total failure that had practically no impact on champs cams at all. Did he revisit it? No, of course he didn't; this is the UO dev team after all.

Fox

 

[Lord Kynd]

Ghost Cams aren't the problem it's the Illegal 3rd Party programs they use to make the Ghost Cams work. Cut 60% of the issues people have with UO off at it's head get rid of Script Programs ability to interface with the client. Short of that Take a page from Blizzard's Book. The Script engine that is popular in WoW or was, was sued by Blizzard and they were awarded 6 million in damages based on time spent trying to enforce anti-script policies, and loss of revenue from banned accounts, and loss based on people who quit claiming cheating as the reason.

You take a huge bite out of someone's wallet like that and the program will disappear.

you are totaly misguided aren't you ?
for one scripts are nothing more than complex macro's.
for 2 scripts do not interfer with the data being sent and recieved thru the client. makes it undectectable unless EA gets sneaky and invades your privacy(punkbuster).
for a 3rd.. the 'unmentionable program' (lol, everyone knows about it by now so why hide the name ? oh thats right.. censorship prevails in the world) anyhow... the program does not interfeer with UO, it is also a seperate proccess that runs on your computer, not EA's. hmm kinda like IcQ,Skype,Ventrillo,Teamspeak,internet explorer, windows... etc..
4.. even punkbuster wouldn't pick this up as a cheat program. even if it could it is very very very easy to change the filesize, icon, proccess name , ETC. so program like that do not reconize it.


if your lucky EA/Mythic might be able to do some sort of class action against the maker, but unlikly..
as far as WoW goes, this is UO not WoW.

i personally do not see how EA/Mythic, a company thats failing like the rest of the economy can really afford to waste resourses on something they just can not stop. Period.

to think you can honestly end this is like telling people they are forbidden to use system tweaks to improve performance. ( Tweak the world !!! )

the more publicity this 'program' gets the more mainstream and popular it gets also.

now you know why i am not on the 'fight it' bandwagon. better to just play and have the satisfaction of knowing you don't need to use such things.

we never really had a big problem with such things untill they decided to lift the 18+ restriction to the game and started allowing kids to play.

ghost cam's on the otherhand are a bit different, they are blaintently cheating.
scripting so you don't get carpeltunnel is healthwise.

actually being disabled i am more to fight for the use of scripts than to fight against it.. i find it quite hard to play with only one hand, but i still manage. ( love mouse macro's)

 

[Lord Kynd]

Actually I know for a fact that a certain guild on Atlantic managed to get many accounts banned. However, it is pointless because banning just meant setting up new free accounts and we would never notice the difference. As long as young accounts are allowed they will find a work around because it gives them the option to use BRUTE FORCE techniques. Also, a good ghost cam operation would require dedicated accounts and not just secondary real accounts. It would not be nearly as effective without a dedicated system running in my opinion.

you know something that would help is maybe a pop-up listing every player in the champ area, maybe not a pop-up but a listing of when someone enters the area or something simular.

 

[Setnaffa]

I agree they need to do something about it, but I wouldn't hold up a publish over it.

My idea would require two changes: 1) Ghosts have 15 minutes inside a Fel Dungeon before they are automatically excorcised to the entrance. 2) Ghosts cannot enter Fel Dungeons.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

Ghost Cams have been an issue since AoS, when they did away with the thing where death would move you to a town or to the Chaos Shrine.

It's been an issue for so long that I, for one, have stopped to think about it as an issue.

The most we can ever hope for is that they will somehow get rid of the illegal 3rd party program, and make people have to actually log in normally to activate their cams.

And I'm not really sure we'd notice the difference all that much.

-Galen's player

 

[Nastia Cross]

I still think the best idea from this thread so far was the poster who said to change the exorcism skill to a targeted skill. Most spawners are necro mages anyway, and if you don't have a necro mage as part of your group for spawns, you really should. You can talk until you're blue in the face about a timer on ghosts in spawn areas and what not, but honestly that is just lazy talk. Fact of the matter is in Fel you are going to get raided. Constant vigilance is required at spawns. There are game skills already in place to combat ghosts and stealthers. Use them. But like I said, I do agree that Exorcism could be beefed up as a targeted skill. Kind of like peacing where you target yourself to do area or target something specific.

 

[Thashinel]

My idea would require two changes: 1) Ghosts have 15 minutes inside a Fel Dungeon before they are automatically excorcised to the entrance. 2) Ghosts cannot enter Fel Dungeons.

Hmmmmm. And why wouldnt you care about the hidden/stealth cams that soley log in and out after checking the altar?

T

 

[Fox (Europa)]

Its pointless to keep coming up with ideas here, they have been hashed and rehashed for years with not one single dev team member ever posting in the dozens of threads on the subject. When Tact was looking at this there were two or three better ideas put forward which in his arrogance he ignored. Unless a dev says he'll look at this again then there's no point in suggesting fixes and anyway, let's face it, they don't care.

Fox

 

[Salty Pete]

Its pointless to keep coming up with ideas here, they have been hashed and rehashed for years with not one single dev team member ever posting in the dozens of threads on the subject. When Tact was looking at this there were two or three better ideas put forward which in his arrogance he ignored. Unless a dev says he'll look at this again then there's no point in suggesting fixes and anyway, let's face it, they don't care.

Fox

They are too busy working on other Mythic titles.

 

[Nastia Cross]

It's possible that they are working hard to make sure that the next publish actually works the first time.

 

[Experimental]

Its nice to see people willing to give up their rights to be in an area just to fix this disabling problem

But.

The best solution to me is taking regular precautions. Have a char from your guild every so often -once a day once an hour- excorsize and reveal every altar and PAY THEM WITH SCROLLS!

Ive sen it done Ive seen it work. The only thing these players get is oh so and so is a kool player. This can be an actual ranked and paid position in a guild. A pat on the back isnt incentive to keep this up. It does get you known in fel!

Used to do this with a guildmate of mine and it worked beautifully.
Specially to pi$$ off the guild who had placed the ghost or hidden char in the first place.

 

[Elric_Soban]

Agreed. Ghost cams do nothing but make the game just that much stupider. Fix them now, please.

 

[drinkbeerallday]

I don't see the problem, if you don't want the risk of getting crashed/scouted, do it in trammel.

if you want to raid a spawn in Felucca, scout the spawns on a living character.

 

[Harlequin]

I notice a lot of people here have ideas on how to fix this. It is an interesting and useful debate but in the end somewhat arbitrary.

Keep in mind it is the Dev's job to design a fix to the problem. It is our job to make sure the fix actually happens by making sure they know what the consequences of Pub 57 are.

Behind that cranky facade that you like to portray is actually a wise person. I agree with you, ghost cams are going to be a bigger problem in p57.

Although I can't think of an ideal solution, I am partial to booting dead players back to town like when champion spawns were initially added to Fel. But perhaps by adding a 5 min delay so that legit player with friends still have a chance to get rezzed.

Ghost cam scripters will be kicked since no one would rez them. Even if they script a way to get back to the spawn, it takes alot of work for a 5 min peek.

Should work for stealther cams too, coz they can be revealed and turned into ghosts.

There are probably other flaws with this that I don't realize (I think there's a reason why they stopped booting dead players back to towns, I can't remember). So as you said, I'll leave it to the devs to design a better thought out fix.

 

[drinkbeerallday]

Here's a simple, direct question to the Development Team: Will there be a solution to this problem (Ghost Cams) before Pub 57 goes Live? If not, please explain why not.