Ghost Cams

[drinkbeerallday]

These need to be eliminated prior to or along with Pub 57.

End of story. It's been a huge problem with the game for years and they've applied band-aid fixes over time, but now it is time to fix it once and for all.

 

[Morgana LeFay (PoV)]

Not sure I understand what you are talking about? Is this a KR thing?

 

[Rix/\]

Definatly, it ruins what could be the best pvp aspect of the game by giving raiders an unfair advantage.

They give something to encourage them to use scouts instead of resorting to lame exploting tactics

 

[drinkbeerallday]

Not sure I understand what you are talking about? Is this a KR thing?

large guilds buy 4, 5 (or more) AOS buddy account codes (9.99 for 30 days)

then they renounce young status and put the characters in t2a at each altar

they run a script to check the altars and notify them if the characters have been exorcised. then they return the character to the altar. either that or the script does the entire job for them including returning the chars to the altar. the script will report this information to the guild UOAM server. some guilds use a special website.

when an account gets banned (which rarely happens) they simply open up a new one.

some guilds pay someone for the service so they don't have to deal with the hassle.

this will become a huge problem after Pub 57 when people start going after replicas.

 

[Traveller]

These need to be eliminated prior to or along with Pub 57.

End of story.

Agreed. This dev team is trying to dispel the bad work of those who came before them, but if they don't fix the years old exploits it's all in vain, nobody will trust them more than the previous teams.

 

[Salty Pete]

Garbage like this should be coded out of the game.

How about simply adopting that code from the invasions that pops people into Jehlom. When you die, you'll be instantly transported to Jehlom. That way no one can whine about not being able to get back to their guild/spawn group as they can res, bank and get back to their spawn before their bodies turn to bones.

*edit*

Also, I think ghosts should be automatically bounced to jehlom once they enter a champ spawn area.

If Ilsh and Tokuno need the same coding it won't be a game breaker for people being sent to Jehlom.

 

[Divster]

bleh I think being instantly teleported on death would be a bit extreme, maybe a timer of sorts to give people a chance to be ressed without destroying the groups spirit hehe but nothing too long, say a minute or 2 or simply the duration of the corpse? or simply not allow a ghosts presence without thier corpse being in the champ/dungeon area?

 

[Nastia Cross]

Garbage like this should be coded out of the game.

How about simply adopting that code from the invasions that pops people into Jehlom. When you die, you'll be instantly transported to Jehlom. That way no one can whine about not being able to get back to their guild/spawn group as they can res, bank and get back to their spawn before their bodies turn to bones.

*edit*

Also, I think ghosts should be automatically bounced to jehlom once they enter a champ spawn area.

If Ilsh and Tokuno need the same coding it won't be a game breaker for people being sent to Jehlom.

That would never fly. They made the Exorcism spell for a reason, use it.

Do you even do champ spawns? Do you know how annoying it would be to be sent to Jhelom every time you die? How could you possibly defend against a raid if your members are being bounced out? Are you seriously trying to kill pvp for anywhere except at the lame gate? Raids are about the only real pvp action we've seen on Ches in weeks... sheesh.

 

[Kellgory]

It's been a while since I've seen a ghost cam, but then again I stopped doing spawns on a certain large East Coast shard where ghost camming was a major problem. A simple fix would be to have it where if you log into a char in a champ spawn area as a ghost and corpse has already decayed then you get instantly teleported to a shrine (before you could see if anything is being done). Almost like how they have it now that if you log out in the Moonglow inn and then log back in, your teleported to jhelom.

 

[Lady Narsil]

I think getting teleported at death is a really bad idea. I agree with the poster above. There would be no way to defend a spawn or pvp if this was happening. Maybe if they logged in as a ghost in a spawn area they should be teleported but not just because they die there. That would kill any chance of pvp on some shards.

 

[Nexus]

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.

 

[Viper09]

As mentioned earlier within this thread here, how about something like the logout timer. If you are not resurrected within X minutes, you get teleported out of the dungeon and cannot re-enter unless you are resurrected.

 

[Tomas_Bryce]

Yeah, I kind of figured.

Just because the person pointed out the obvious flaws in your rather messy solution does not mean they cheat. Learn to accept valid and reasonable criticism.

Few points to remember are:

1) that the skill scrolls will be given out during the earlier levels of spawn
2) anyone that has done damage to the champion (even if you heal it completely) will have a shot at getting the replicas.

1 and 2 will lower the significance of end spawn crashes which is one of the benefits of a ghost cam. However, they still need to be gotten rid of. Free accounts not able to enter T2A would work great.

 

[Tomas_Bryce]

How exactly is pointing out why your solution sucks is defending cheating? *scratches head*

Never mind, don't bother responding. Don't think I am really interested, Petey.

 

[AesSedai]

Drinkbeerallday: ... I agree.

Sadly the first thing the new champion spawn announcements made me think about were how ghost cams killed the interest of doing them for many non-cheating players (I would've much preferred to enjoy the addition rather than be reminded of the system's flaws).

The whole Felucca spawn area should be like it was in the beginning: All ghosts are insta-exorcised from the area.
Booting dead people after a short amount of time would be a good one too, if groups can't handle the thought of losing a player for the 1-3 minutes it would take to rez and return to the battle.
(Of course I always thought it pretty silly to have virtually no penalty for dying, especially in PvP, other than a few gold coins taken from our bank. Sometimes killing people is an excellent strategy in battle... it allows the numbers on each side to fluctuate, heh.)
People will still try to monitor while unattended but we could kill stealth bots.

 

[Tomas_Bryce]

I don't think booting people after a bit would work. Seems like scripts would be able to adapt? For a while on Atlantic they were using stealthers. It was fun killing them but it is a bit of work finding them all.

I think the ultimate solution is if they could make it so that an account that has not been charged cannot enter t2a! Not many people are going to be pouring in hundreds of dollars a month to run a ghost cam.. i think.

 

[Nystul]

The dev team don't care about things like this. If they did it would have been fixed how many years ago? :x

 

[Babble]

I think the last developers argued that with the exorcise spell players themselves could police their spawns. They stated that ghost cams are legal and if you find illegal ones page a gm?

Though maybe talk to a developer and come up with different ideas, but from what I understood from the developers statements ghost cams are sort of an intended feature.

Would not be the first time developers ideas were wrong or stupid, but convincing them can be tough.

Personally I would go with the idea of teleporting ghost out if there is no corpse on the same subserver, but if developers accept ghost cams I doubt they will do anything.

 

[Tomas_Bryce]

If I remember correctly they said that they support the ability of being able to spy as a ghost. Not quite the same as a ghost cam but does limit the number of solutions available.

 

[AesSedai]

- Yeah but at least if they're stealthing we could detect and kill them (and ~ police them ourselves).

The flaw with booting after awhile that I was thinking of, is that some will still try to script it out (if booted run back to spot until booted. if need to be alive then rez then return until booted... ah but if they need to be alive then we can kill them and initiate the boot timer; yet any timer that appeases those that have to stay in the area would likely be long enough to give a cheater a glimpse of the spawn).

I still really think the dead should just be booted like we were in the beginning (and I wish I knew the reasoning for removing that effective method. Did many people get angry because of choke points because they only used one way to reach a spawn? I don't know, but I didn't understand it).

(I mean, doesn't that seem more strategically sound than having everybody at war only out of it as long as it takes to get rezzed? At least this way it would take an additional 30 seconds or maybe even a few minutes to return to battle.)

Even with disallowing young accounts from entering Felucca champ areas, you would still have cams, I think.
People will just rotate their secondary accounts or guilds will get the off-hour players to donate a character. Sure it would be risky if they end up getting banned... but really, how many ghosts have been banned for observing an area (even when they're name makes it extremely obvious)? I dunno, but I recall plenty of protesting against ghosts like that in the past.. that is, until most probably gave up and considered if fighting for a lost cause.

 

[AesSedai]

- 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).

 

[laurlo]

As mentioned earlier within this thread here, how about something like the logout timer. If you are not resurrected within X minutes, you get teleported out of the dungeon and cannot re-enter unless you are resurrected.

sounds like a good idea to me

 

[Kellgory]

The problem with the ghost cam bots and exorcism, is that by the time you see the ghost and cast the spell, it has already recorded what type of spawn and the candle count.

I have no problem with someone checking the spawns as a ghost at least if you have spirit speak you can see them coming. Maybe make it where if your a ghost in T2A or any of the champ spawn dungeons without a corpse they can cast exorcism directly on the ghost and expel them to the nearest shrine. Unless they changed the rules, I believe now you can only expel them if they were within so many tiles of the alter.

 

[Nastia Cross]

The problem with the ghost cam bots and exorcism, is that by the time you see the ghost and cast the spell, it has already recorded what type of spawn and the candle count.

I have no problem with someone checking the spawns as a ghost at least if you have spirit speak you can see them coming. Maybe make it where if your a ghost in T2A or any of the champ spawn dungeons without a corpse they can cast exorcism directly on the ghost and expel them to the nearest shrine. Unless they changed the rules, I believe now you can only expel them if they were within so many tiles of the alter.

Changing exorcism to a target spell is actually a good idea. Better than the timer or automatic removal for ghosts.

 

[Bombastic Fail]

Maybe if they logged in as a ghost in a spawn area they should be teleported but not just because they die there. That would kill any chance of pvp on some shards.

Not a good idea either. Do you want punished for lagging out and dying or client crashing and then having to come all the way back?

 

[Gellor]

I always love these type of posts.

It always ends up as "if you are a raiding guild, you MUST be ghost cam'ing"

I hate to break it to people, I know of at least two successful raiding guilds through the years that manually checked every spawn either as a ghost, a hidden char, or even a stealther.

Do cam's exist, I think they do although I've never seen one.

I have yet to see a reasonable solution to the problem. I can't really think of a reasonable solution

If you knock ghosts out, you've still got hiders and stealthers. I've used stealthers and NEVER been revealed while checking spawns.:loser:

Booting a char that has logged out ends up hurting those who have connection issues.

Add in that most "raiding" guilds have LARGE memberships... to the point they could just leave chars logged in at every spawn ready to raid. Is banning large guilds the next step?

 

[drinkbeerallday]

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

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

 

[drinkbeerallday]

- 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.

I disagree with what Mr.Tact said.

There should be a Fog of War in Dungeons/T2A. People shouldn't be able to plant ghosts for spying purposes. Attended or not.

 

[Crysta]

Never should have removed the "kicked out for a half hour upon death/can't enter when dead" rule from when they came out that was designed to keep this exact problem from happening.

 

[Flutter]

It's not the ghost cams that are the problem, it is the program that runs the ghost cam that gives guilds updates on candle counts and status that is the problem.
If someone was manually logging in characters at the various spawns this wouldnt be an issue.

 

[Kat]

As mentioned earlier within this thread here, how about something like the logout timer. If you are not resurrected within X minutes, you get teleported out of the dungeon and cannot re-enter unless you are resurrected.

The problem is, not all spawns are in dungeons. Teleporting the dead player to Chaos Shrine or a town healer once his corpse has decayed and have them unable to move until rezzing, should sufficiently solve the problem.

 

[phantus]

- 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.

I disagree with what Mr.Tact said.

There should be a Fog of War in Dungeons/T2A. People shouldn't be able to plant ghosts for spying purposes. Attended or not.

Tact agreed with a lot of things that got him out of doing work.

 

[Kat]

It's not the ghost cams that are the problem, it is the program that runs the ghost cam that gives guilds updates on candle counts and status that is the problem.
If someone was manually logging in characters at the various spawns this wouldnt be an issue.

While I agree that the 3rd party program is a huge problem, ghost cams alone, have been a problem for years.

 

[Faeryl]

Well... my friend and I are talking about this right now, and we got the idea that when the spawn is initiated, it exorcises the area of ghosts and after that point until the spawn is completed, no ghosts can enter the area. Also have a timer on the ghosts of players that die during the spawn (we're thinking 5mins?) so that they can't come in and die, then spy on the spawn.

 

[Sindris]

Get rid of Ghost cams and THAT might actually get more people into Fel to do Champ spawns. As it is, no one who is not ridiculously geared for PVP will even bother attempting it. Why bother when you KNOW you're going to be raided by guilds who do unattended monitoring of the spawn sites?

Doing regular patrols of the sites is one thing, but monitoring sites unattended using a program that acts like an alarm clock when a spawn reaches a certain point and then running in and taking over that spawn when its 80% done is just griefing in my opinion.

 

[drinkbeerallday]

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.

 

[Petrify]

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

 

[Viper09]

A thought occurred to me. If there was a fix on this that resulted in removing ghosts of some sort out of the dungeon as opposed to making the 3rd Party Program useless, what are we going to do with the Exorcism spell that was implemented to remove ghosts from champ spawn areas?

 

[Nystul]

A thought occurred to me. If there was a fix on this that resulted in removing ghosts of some sort out of the dungeon as opposed to making the 3rd Party Program useless, what are we going to do with the Exorcism spell that was implemented to remove ghosts from champ spawn areas?

Nothing :X

 

[Viper09]

Nothing :X

Aww, but it is a potentially fun spell that could have been built up to be a lot more.

 

[5% Luck]

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!

 

[Thashinel]

You can't just make this for ghosts, but for live chars too. Do you realize how many ninja/stealthers there are on the island that do cam work too?

They likely simply run on a rail, walk to the altar, check it, and walk back, fully stealthed.

Simply making it impossible log into a champ area or fel t2a area spawn would make it a lot more challenging for those that have stealthers or ghosts that get teleported to a RANDOM location, not simply Jhelom or a shrine where you can rez at and then use your book...put the person in a deep forest, away from all the healers.

This would cause less people to log out when they die in a champ area or t2a, yes, but it would also make ghost cams a much more tedious task.

 

[AesSedai]

- Risk v Reward

That is the spirit of Felucca & battling in UO, right?
Great loot shouldn't come so easily.

 

[Sindris]

- Risk v Reward

That is the spirit of Felucca & battling in UO, right?
Great loot shouldn't come so easily.

? I know this is a popular mantra chanted by people who enjoy PVP, but what does it have to do with illegal, unattended observation of champ spawn altars using scripts?

If I decide to do a champ spawn I run the risk of being detected by a bot that will alert someone to come to their computer and take action? Is that the risk you mean? And what about the reward? Oh yeah, the cheaters get rewarded with the scrolls they jack from the people they detected with the aforementioned illegal script. The way people cheat and hack and dupe, I wonder if EA is giving subscription discounts to encourage it.

 

[AesSedai]

Sindris: I was trying to be blatantly sarcastic to those that know my persona

I hear over and over the 'R v R' (err, Risk / Reward) mantra.
And I consider ghost cams to be nearly zero risk for the cheaters' reward - and this is something I surely dislike, and think is a significant detriment to the overall game (I mean we are talking the control, via cheating, of the top level skill gains in the entire game here with powerscrolls); and I know it to be contrary to the pure spirit of gaming.
(I've complained about this issue since it began; as well as many other various forms of game-spirit-killing cheating in UO )

 

[Tomas_Bryce]

Even with disallowing young accounts from entering Felucca champ areas, you would still have cams, I think.
People will just rotate their secondary accounts or guilds will get the off-hour players to donate a character. Sure it would be risky if they end up getting banned... but really, how many ghosts have been banned for observing an area (even when they're name makes it extremely obvious)? I dunno, but I recall plenty of protesting against ghosts like that in the past.. that is, until most probably gave up and considered if fighting for a lost cause.

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.

 

[Sindris]

Sindris: I was trying to be blatantly sarcastic to those that know my persona

I hear over and over the 'R v R' (err, Risk / Reward) mantra.
And I consider ghost cams to be nearly zero risk for the cheaters' reward - and this is something I surely dislike, and think is a significant detriment to the overall game (I mean we are talking the control, via cheating, of the top level skill gains in the entire game here with powerscrolls); and I know it to be contrary to the pure spirit of gaming.
(I've complained about this issue since it began; as well as many other various forms of game-spirit-killing cheating in UO )

Damn, my sarcasm radar is usually so good too. My bad

 

[Splup]

You can't be in T2A or fel dungeon as a ghost if your corpse has decayed. Problem solved.

Should not be to hard to make since sacrifice can already check if corpse is at same area.

Ofc. This leaves hidden player cams but that's another thing.

 

[Traveller]

I feel sorry for this dev team. They TRY to do some good work, but have inherited so many unfixed problems from the previous teams that every time they do something lots of old problems get in the way.

Draconi, Leurocian, Regine, I really feel for you, but now the ball is yours, and so is the responsibility. Wish you luck.

 

[Anakena]

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

Automated cams (ghost or stealther) are removing a lot of risks for raiding guilds too :

- the risk to not notice a champ is being worked
- the risk of raiding too late or the risk to have to launch the raid in a hurry (unprepared)
- the risk of uncertainty (raiders do know who, wich guild and how many are working the spawn)
- the risk of being noticed while scouting (giving opportunity to prepare defense)

Having a complete view, via bots, of what is happening on all spawns, give the raiders the time to prepare the raid, to agree on first targets (prolly already targeted by spawn) and eventually in wich order they will raid when different spawns are being raided.

If the spawn is worked by too many people, the wannabe raiders may as well decide not to raid.

I can't believe you dared to speak about "risk of getting crashed/scouted" when automated cams are just a negation of almost any risk for the raiders.