PlaneShift
Support => Complaint Department => Topic started by: Prolix on May 21, 2008, 11:51:56 pm
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Dang, who do you have to know to get the heads up on these things? Is there some sly developer putting in bad code every six months and leaking it to his friends? I still haven't figured out how the last ones were done -- not that they work anymore. Guess I should spend more (some) time parsing code to find bad data checking/broken routines.
Done grousing, now to be more serious.
A one year ban is all well and good but is it enough? Is it possible to uniquely identify a player by his ip which may be dynamic? Certainly you can lock that account for a year and any others that you know about but that will not prevent someone from having multiple accounts.Even with a static ip, like I have, it is possible to use something like tor to disguise your ip so it is almost impossible to ban a player.
Here is a suggestion, lock the account so that characters cannot be created or deleted, remove all cash/items, set all stats to 25 and all skills to 0 and finally set up a debt such that 90% of income goes to paying the debt and the debt equals the amount that was gained by the exploit. Now some of the characters on the account may not have been used for the exploit and they will have no debt but all the other punishments will remain in effect.
I am getting pretty tired of all these cash exploits trashing what economy that there is. I understand that that is the price of development but I think more should be done than just ban a few accounts and maybe wipe some cash from everybody. Halfassed measures get halfassed results.
NB guess I was not quite done grousing :)
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You assume everyone is like you. However, those people exploiting the bug identify with their characters. The average bug exploiter is stupid, and likely uses the same account. Getting their character, the one they identify themselves with, banned is a serious punishment for them.
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I have one character I generally play and 4-5 other accounts. If my main were banned for however long I would just play another if I wanted to stick around until the ban wore off and then my main would be no worse for wear. What is a year? goes by in a blink for an old guy like me, a long time for a kid. I did not say you could not ban on top of all the other punishments but to have your main crippled appears worse to me than just put in stasis for a while.
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The noobs see it as an attack on their ego. It is worse for them. They want to socialize with their friends through their main character. Getting banned seperates them from their online "friends", it is just like house arrest for a little child. It is terrible for them ;).
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not to go into details, but every account is logged to any IP that is used to ever log in with that account, same with these forums. then there are sites that you can enter IPs into that tell you exact street information as to where that IP was used at that time, for anywhere in the globe.
its not hard to make a profile of who you are, where you are, and what you are doing.....
contrary to popular belief, you are not anonymous on the internet. your actions do come with consequences. :)
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Another game i played issued punishement in an interesting way - accounts were not banned or deleted just silenced, unable to interact with merchants, unable to gain experiance, unable to trade or conduct any useful activity - effectively locked out of play.
Can you imagine the torment of being able to enter a game, wander around and not do anything except walk or sit...
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not to go into details, but every account is logged to any IP that is used to ever log in with that account, same with these forums. then there are sites that you can enter IPs into that tell you exact street information as to where that IP was used at that time, for anywhere in the globe.
its not hard to make a profile of who you are, where you are, and what you are doing.....
contrary to popular belief, you are not anonymous on the internet. your actions do come with consequences. :)
There are anonymizing solutions that can make your life much more private. Essentially every connection to an account on your server from someone using one of these will have a radically different ip. Now you could ban accounts that appear to connect from all over the world but some people may have a valid excuse such as frequent business travel. Also people, especially university students, move a lot they also change providers. As for exact street location neko please pm mine to me you should have it available from when you made sure I wasn't Zanzibar. It shouldn't be too hard. Especially if you know my domain name.
You know Donari, I really doubt it is noobs exploiting bugs. I think it is the same people over and over again. Then again "house arrest" isn't that bad if you get to keep all your toys.
piprees, sounds like what they did on some t4c servers!
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What about dynamic IPs? I actually doubt common ISPs will hand out detailed IP-info on any random request - or say are you guys collecting all the information about place of origin and whatnot for every IP just in advance and in any case?
I as well doubt the latter (or at least do hope you dont), so would you please enlighten us whats the data you gather from every single player?
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Hmm on the IP thing --I've made posts from other locations than simply my home... does that not mess up your data?
And I agree if you ban someone's IP what is to stop them from calling up there internet provider and requesting a new IP?
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then there are sites that you can enter IPs into that tell you exact street information as to where that IP was used at that time, for anywhere in the globe.
Heh, I'm sure the RIAA would love to hear about that, it sounds like a major boost to their lawsuit-spamming.
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I doubt Neko's description is very accurate, still though I would like to hear an official statement about what sort of data is collected. Any possible?
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again, I stated:
not to go into details
as I don't know all the details on it, and I would liketo try to refrain from saying somethin that isn't true. :)
but sites like http://tools.whois.net/whoisbyip/ are fun tools and there are many more like it.
as far as I know, any IP ever used to log is thrown into some DB that matches Ip to what account it was used. Any time that Ip changes, an new record is added to relate account to new IP.
Even with your dynamic IP, unless you are really careful, you will slip up, and log in to your multiple accounts through the same IP, and when that happens, there will be two records for that IP matched to two accounts. sooooo, it's not that difficult to figure out who's using multiple accounts for things... and then there's simple observation of suspected accounts through the ability to monitor the game through dev/gm chars that are invisible.
bottom line is simple. cheaters will be caught and they will have to live with their punishments when they are caught. they can't get a way with it forever.
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Arguing about ips wont fix anything. Report bugs and don't exploit them.
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Hmm okay another question...what about people that have multiple people playing from the same IP? like family or something? I mean is it fair if someone's brother cheats and now his little sister can't play?
I am just wondering so that we can be fair to all. or is this an issue if it happens the sister needs to contact Kerol and you just deal with it on a as it happen bases?
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Oh man! I still don't know what happened with the last exploit! :-\
I think that just banning the account that exploited for a year would be enough, and all of the exploited money was erased. If an alt is used to exploit, then there wasn't really any gain if the money was deleted, and then a main being banned would be more than enough punishment.
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...Guess I should spend more (some) time parsing code to find bad data checking/broken routines...
I think this is a good opportunity to mention how this should have been handled. If you were to find a bug that gives you an unfair advantage over other players it is an exploit. If you were to find one the appropriate thing to do is to contact a GM through /tell, IRC, or petition. What you should not do is tell everyone on your buddy list then go off and rack up tria, stats, items, etc. Anytime this has happened since I have been around the guilty are caught and usually innocent people suffer. So please, if you come accross an exploit be sure to share it with a developer or gm and not with others. In the end we all lose something on the deal.
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Hmm okay another question...what about people that have multiple people playing from the same IP? like family or something? I mean is it fair if someone's brother cheats and now his little sister can't play?
I am just wondering so that we can be fair to all. or is this an issue if it happens the sister needs to contact Kerol and you just deal with it on a as it happen bases?
In my experience, the GM team does a damn fine job to ensure to the best of their ability that only the person(s) actually violating the rules are the ones being punished. Bans aren't just given out willy nilly. A lot of time and effort goes into the research and reasons before ban are ever issued. Contrary to what some people may want to believe, the staff are good caring people who were all once just regular players like the rest of you who through time and dedication to the project, have been given the opportunity to ensure that the rest of the player base and all new comers to the game are able to enjoy the game and not have to worry about exploiters, of griefers ruining their fun.
:)
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Hehe okay Neko thanks...and hey I never said they were doing a bad job! if anything I think they do a great job! I just was wondering if the IP ban was the best way to go about bans...don't get me wrong cause yes I am all for bans on cheaters, I mean its game after all and if your going to cheat you are only cheating yourself out of the fun of the game. (yes evening mining for plaintinum can be fun if you bring a friend and RP ::| ) Not that I know of any other ways to ban people cause an account ban only makes it so they have to make an new account or whatever...anyways yeah I've said my peace I'll shhh now ;)
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Well I half-jokingly suggested there might be a rogue developer, part of the team, but my thread is mostly about policy and what should be done. Any time there is that much money floating around it gets passed out into the player base and distorts things horribly. This is the third or fourth time it has happened in my experience and previously it seemed to me that only half measures have been taken.
I do not suppose all the banned character's transactions for the periods they were abusing the bugs will be reversed. Sure they will have their ill gotten gains stripped and money spent on training will have no effect but it is the rest that concerns me. How long are character transactions kept? Are they logged in such a way that forensic accounting can track them? And what about large glyph purchases that have been just dropped on the ground for a crony to pick up, can they be tracked?
How easy is it to launder dirty money in PS?
Anyway, I believe what I suggested would be appropriate. Of course what I really think should happen and should have happened long ago is unmentionable. I do support the developers right to do as they see fit but I do not have to agree with it.
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To set your minds at rest and to make people think twice before exploiting such bugs. Trades can be tracked, picked up/dropped money and items can be tracked, transactions with NPCs can be tracked. It all leaves a distinctive audit trail that you can not avoid leaving your mark on it. You can not launder money in PS.