Two things that MMORPG creators never seem to see coming, but that happen every time.

PuckInmortali

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Nov 8, 2021
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Hello! Let me start out saying that I think MO2 is fantastic. I thank Star Vault for having the guts and the passion to bring us this game, which is sorely needed and conspicuously absent from the genre. Kudos to you. I also need to state that I have no knowledge of the things already present in the game, or planned before release, to combat the issues I will discuss. I just know that they are seemingly ubiquitous in the MMORPG genre. Now, on to the post...

The two things that MMORPG creators never seem to see coming, but that happen (nearly) every time, are: 1. player population in the first two weeks (or so) of release, and 2. exploiters, hackers, bots, and gold sellers.

1. The population problem: I assume that this is, ultimately, about money (as colors almost everything). You don't need a business degree to understand that expenses are a fundamental concern and result in limitations. However, I would like to suggest that if SV could somehow find a way to reduce this problem significantly, they would create an abundance of goodwill, which will translate into revenue later. Especially, and let me hasten to add, coming off the heels of New World's release (I know NW is a different type of MMO, but there is a lot of player crossover between games). Solve this problem, or at least minimize it, and you will gain customers which is particularly important in a game with a subscription fee. So, SV, I am rooting for you. Please do not allow release to be a nightmare of queues, lag, and crashes.

2. The problem of cheating jack*sses: As they are slowly (too slowly) losing ground in their "new world", gaming degenerates are looking for a new host to infect. They are 100%, and without a doubt, coming for MO2. SV is surely aware this, but so is every games company, and most of them fail (to a greater or lesser extent) to deal with the problem. And, again, this is probably a money issue. Generally speaking, far too little seems budgeted to fight these types of bad actors. I offer a different, probably cheaper solution--ban hard, and ban often. I don't just mean a 24 hour suspension, no, no, no. I mean a permanent ban with an option for appeal. Exploiters, gold sellers, botters, etc. do not give a single rip about your game, your hard work, your passion, or other player's enjoyment. They exist to destroy, perhaps profit, and then move on when forced out. I say expedite this process through frequent and immediate bans, starting day one. In doing so, you garner more of that goodwill, which I have to believe equals money in the longer term.

Thanks for taking time to consider these concerns and accepting this, albeit preemptive, feedback. I look forward to playing MO2 for years to come.
 
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Tzone

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May 16, 2021
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The closest to cheating Ive seen is lag switching which nothing happens to them for doing it. Even if its very obvious. Its really annoying fighting people who teleport but your know they are EU or NA and not AUS. AUS players might hit you from farther away but they dont teleport. Its pretty obvious they are doing it since they have perfect ping in town and outside of combat.

Really need a packet loss kick in this game or to lower the ping spike threshold.
 

PuckInmortali

Member
Nov 8, 2021
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The closest to cheating Ive seen is lag switching which nothing happens to them for doing it. Even if its very obvious. Its really annoying fighting people who teleport but your know they are EU or NA and not AUS. AUS players might hit you from farther away but they dont teleport. Its pretty obvious they are doing it since they have perfect ping in town and outside of combat.

Really need a packet loss kick in this game or to lower the ping spike threshold.

That's great, if that is all. Maybe SV runs a very tight ship--it sounds like that may be the case. However, I will say this: If it can be exploited, if it can it broken, if it can be manipulated in unintended ways to benefit unscrupulous players, it will be. That's just a fact in these types of games. No amount of social pressure will change the exploiter or the gold seller (obviously), and small penalties do not deter them. If you leave an obvious avenue for abuse in your game, such as New World's use of the family sharing option through Steam, it will be exploited heavily (and it was). That is why I advocate for a quick, decisive and severe response, and I hope SV defends their game vigorously.
 

Evelyn

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Jan 6, 2021
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Haha you should have seen the game pre-EAC. Lag switchers were the smallest of problems by comparison to fatmages running as fast as a horse and machinegun headshot longbows from underwater. Game is in a better state now than it was 6 months ago but it does bear saying that it won't be enough to rest and I am sure SV is more than aware of that fact. I do not envy being Henrik.
 

Piet

Well-known member
May 28, 2020
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Hello! Let me start out saying that I think MO2 is fantastic. I thank Star Vault for having the guts and the passion to bring us this game, which is sorely needed and conspicuously absent from the genre. Kudos to you. I also need to state that I have no knowledge of the things already present in the game, or planned before release, to combat the issues I will discuss. I just know that they are seemingly ubiquitous in the MMORPG genre. Now, on to the post...

The two things that MMORPG creators never seem to see coming, but that happen (nearly) every time, are: 1. player population in the first two weeks (or so) of release, and 2. exploiters, hackers, bots, and gold sellers.

1. The population problem: I assume that this is, ultimately, about money (as colors almost everything). You don't need a business degree to understand that expenses are a fundamental concern and result in limitations. However, I would like to suggest that if SV could somehow find a way to reduce this problem significantly, they would create an abundance of goodwill, which will translate into revenue later. Especially, and let me hasten to add, coming off the heels of New World's release (I know NW is a different type of MMO, but there is a lot of player crossover between games). Solve this problem, or at least minimize it, and you will gain customers which is particularly important in a game with a subscription fee. So, SV, I am rooting for you. Please do not allow release to be a nightmare of queues, lag, and crashes.

2. The problem of cheating jack*sses: As they are slowly (too slowly) losing ground in their "new world", gaming degenerates are looking for a new host to infect. They are 100%, and without a doubt, coming for MO2. SV is surely aware this, but so is every games company, and most of them fail (to a greater or lesser extent) to deal with the problem. And, again, this is probably a money issue. Generally speaking, far too little seems budgeted to fight these types of bad actors. I offer a different, probably cheaper solution--ban hard, and ban often. I don't just mean a 24 hour suspension, no, no, no. I mean a permanent ban with an option for appeal. Exploiters, gold sellers, botters, etc. do not give a single rip about your game, your hard work, your passion, or other player's enjoyment. They exist to destroy, perhaps profit, and then move on when forced out. I say expedite this process through frequent and immediate bans, starting day one. In doing so, you garner more of that goodwill, which I have to believe equals money in the longer term.

Thanks for taking time to consider these concerns and accepting this, albeit preemptive, feedback. I look forward to playing MO2 for years to come.
Ya I would say so far so good on both. They are planning for a huge amount of people that's why they did all those stress tests and even when it ran perfect ran another and left debug mode on the server to lag it more and figure out any other way they could improve. For the second issue there was a whole guild of cheaters before and they not only acknowledged it but acknowledged their anti cheat wasn't enough and got easy anti cheat because of it.
 

MolagAmur

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Jul 15, 2020
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#2 is my biggest concern and I know will happen. I'm just hopeful SV handles it in the correct way (not that I know what that is). For example, if there is a dupe...do you always rollback the server and punish everyone for the better good? Do you have a good system in place to track dupes? Do you just let the server run while trying to ban all the cheaters/dupers you find?


New World had a major dupe problem. They seemed to fix the problem and ban them, but at the same time they chose to disable auction house and trading for a couple days which made them lose a LOT of players.

There will be cheats and dupes and I just hope SV has a solid game plan on how to deal with it before there are 30 youtube videos about it and thousands of negative Steam comments. With New World people can just take a break and come back later no big deal, but MO2 has a subscription so people have to spend money to get back into the game. That will make it even harder.
 

Tzone

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May 16, 2021
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#2 is my biggest concern and I know will happen. I'm just hopeful SV handles it in the correct way (not that I know what that is). For example, if there is a dupe...do you always rollback the server and punish everyone for the better good? Do you have a good system in place to track dupes? Do you just let the server run while trying to ban all the cheaters/dupers you find?


New World had a major dupe problem. They seemed to fix the problem and ban them, but at the same time they chose to disable auction house and trading for a couple days which made them lose a LOT of players.

There will be cheats and dupes and I just hope SV has a solid game plan on how to deal with it before there are 30 youtube videos about it and thousands of negative Steam comments. With New World people can just take a break and come back later no big deal, but MO2 has a subscription so people have to spend money to get back into the game. That will make it even harder.
NW had a army of customer support hired just to go through and personally check out suspect accounts to see where it all came from before handing out bans.

The only dupes in MO2 involve the server crashing and rolling back. So to dupe you need to know when a server will crash or make it crash so far in MO2. Which is similar to ARK dupes.
 

MolagAmur

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The only dupes in MO2 involve the server crashing and rolling back. So to dupe you need to know when a server will crash or make it crash so far in MO2. Which is similar to ARK dupes.
Haha. I'm gonna quote this sometime in the future.
 
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PuckInmortali

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Nov 8, 2021
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#2 is my biggest concern and I know will happen. I'm just hopeful SV handles it in the correct way (not that I know what that is).

Exploits will happen, this is a given. However, SV's response to that is what remains to be seen. Having played many MMORPGs for a very long time, I can say that the "we will not punish you for our mistakes" philosophy is completely disastrous when it comes to this issue in a sandbox game (especially). I know that SV does read the boards, and I hope they take notice of this:

We all know you will not be able to stop every exploit, despite your best efforts. Some of these abuses will be moderate annoyances, whilst others could have major negative consequences for many of your rules abiding, subscription paying, players. From one passionate sandbox MMORPG player to another, please take the hardest of stances against cheaters, and make that stance abundantly clear to everyone who plays your game. Permanently ban exploiters for any obvious abuse. Allow for an appeal process after that, so that potential mistakes can be remedied. You've taken a bold stand with the design of MO2, which I greatly respect. Now, be bold in your response to those who seek to ruin it for you and for us. Thank you.
 

Anabolic Man

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Sep 7, 2020
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The closest to cheating Ive seen is lag switching which nothing happens to them for doing it. Even if its very obvious. Its really annoying fighting people who teleport but your know they are EU or NA and not AUS. AUS players might hit you from farther away but they dont teleport. Its pretty obvious they are doing it since they have perfect ping in town and outside of combat.

Really need a packet loss kick in this game or to lower the ping spike threshold.

That will change, becuase Henrick announced that they not allow Packet stacking by changing download rate. You will get thrown to the Login screen. Also unstable connections such as wireless lan will not be tolerated. You will get thrown to the login screen with the massage plz use a stable cable connection. That will make lagswitching impossible in future. Henrick said that they can see if packages are stacking up.

There can be cheaters in every game, but MO is a subscription based game with paid and active GM's, who are paid to get rid of such players.
It's not COD. If a player is banned, he loses his character, the materials, his house and so on. It takes forever to level your character.


The Gm´s have tools to
to measure the speed of players, if they try to trick the server into thinking that an Ogmir is an Alvarin or such things.

Starvault invested in an Anticheat program and the GM´s have Tools aswell. Cheaters are mostly only a problem in Games without active GM´s on the server, which don´t have toold to identify cheaters.

I would not play MO2 without a subscription model with paid GM's trying to get rid of such players.
All of the Free to Play games are unplayable, if they not pay for active GM´s
 
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Najwalaylah

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A person (ostensibly human) who plays or would want to if he was allowed has been threatening for a year to release certain ex-words "at release" of Mortal Online 2 to 'everybody', and I have reason to think Star Vault should be aware of this, so I'm disingenuously assuming the naïve attitdue:

Uh, haha, they must have taken care of that, by now.​

And others have been advertising all kinds of cheats for MO2 since the earliest Beta — with what veractiy or success, I don't know.

And this thread is archived, because I worry that it will get deleted and to forestall it being deleted; it's archived. What would be the point?
 

PuckInmortali

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And others have been advertising all kinds of cheats for MO2 since the earliest Beta — with what veractiy or success, I don't know.
...

Yeah, this is not atypical. What I mean is that there are communities of online degenerates that target games for exploits/hacks/cheats/etc, and this is what I want SV to be ready for. Certainly, they are aware, but if wider genre history is any indicator, they may not (again, may not) be prepared. I advocate for SV to clearly outline their response to exploiters for the community, and to err on the side of harshness as opposed to tolerance. They may not be able to fix every exploit before release, but they can certainly fix every exploiter with a permanent ban.
 

ArcaneConsular

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The biggest problem won't be insane hacks it will be more subtle botting and macros. You don't see it know because none cares but once the games launch's there will be tons of woodcutting, mining bots etc. Gold farming. What not. Now I know many think it's impossible in a pvp game but it's not like bots really have feelings to hurt. Kill them and they'll be out there the next minute mining again in their predetermined route. Since rocks and trees are static it won't be hard
 

Najwalaylah

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The biggest problem won't be insane hacks it will be more subtle botting and macros. You don't see it know because none cares but once the games launch's there will be tons of woodcutting, mining bots etc. Gold farming. What not. Now I know many think it's impossible in a pvp game but it's not like bots really have feelings to hurt. Kill them and they'll be out there the next minute mining again in their predetermined route. Since rocks and trees are static it won't be hard
Might not be impossible even if they're not static. But what you said goes for many ATK miners, as well, without hurt feelings and maybe a change of route, maybe not. /yawn
 

Anabolic Man

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The biggest problem won't be insane hacks it will be more subtle botting and macros. You don't see it know because none cares but once the games launch's there will be tons of woodcutting, mining bots etc. Gold farming. What not. Now I know many think it's impossible in a pvp game but it's not like bots really have feelings to hurt. Kill them and they'll be out there the next minute mining again in their predetermined route. Since rocks and trees are static it won't be hard

You can kill them in a full loot game.
 

ArcaneConsular

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You can kill them in a full loot game.

You could buy it simply wouldn't be worth the murder count to kill a boy carrying a few gold worth of materials. You'd be harming yourself more than the bot at that point and the bot would be right back at it the next few minutes.
 

PuckInmortali

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In today's stream, Henrick stated that they have "zero tolerance" for exploiters and that those who do so will be "permanently banned." This is fantastic news. Good on you, SV.