This thread was created to discuss the way in which the administrative community has handled hacking reports so far. Recently I've noticed a recent influx of hackers throughout the abuse section in the forums. Anecdotically I've also seen a permeation of hackers throughout a lot of the fringe maps that are rarely visited by the common Royaller. All these instances of hacking begs me to question if we're underestimating the seriousness of the issue and how big of an industry it actually is in our community. There are a couple of things which should be observed. 1. I'd like to point out that the majority of hackers I believe do not hack to progress their characters, but rather they hack to farm items. I'd argue that they really do not care about being banned as long as they are able to transfer the contents of their account into their legitimate account. This is easily seen when you look at the state of their characters and their callously concocted IGNs. They do not plan to keep the account around and they most likely know it will be banned. I reiterate again, they only care for the items. 2. I also believe that the farmers are most likely legitimate players on this server who have established a fairly reputable account within the community. I'm not insinuating that all high leveled player with godly gear are hackers, but I do believe that there is a subset within that realm that most likely attained a lot of their wealth through illicit means such as this. The reason why I believe this plausible is due to the relative niche market that we occupy. MapleRoyals is a private server with a fairly small base of sub ~10000 players I'd estimate. There really is no market for real world trading here on a large basis. To invest that much time and effort to farm items within a niche market is not logical for anyone trying to make real money off of selling items. There just isn't a big enough player base. Then that leaves players who are heavily invested into the server already. 3. Another point I'd like to make is there just isn't a comfortable infrastructure to report hackers in game. The current system we have now obligates a player to go out of their way to take a screenshot, upload it onto a third party site, then fill out a form to report hackers. I'd argue that common players would just carry on and go about their way instead of having to deal with that issue. Would it be such a jump to just assume most people would rather just ignore the hacker as opposed to actively try to do something about it? Reporting in game doesn't seem to be an option and more importantly even if we report in game a GM would have to be on duty for it to be investigated. It's almost as if there is a good chance the hacker won't be punished. 4. What exactly happens to the hacker after he's been "banned." What guarantees are there that the hacker won't be able to return? Is it a MAC Address ban? A permanent IP ban? What happens to all the items they've accumulated thus far? Are logs being checked to find the networks of money transfers to find the true source of the account? Where have all the funds been allocated to? Have they been removed? I think there needs to be greater transparency with bans dealing with hackers. This will be beneficial for 2 reasons. 1. It would assure the community that we take a tough stance on hacking. 2. It would show to the public that hacking just is not worth it. If you're able to point out to players how much they are risking by hacking by showing all the steps that have been taken to ensure the offender won't be able to access the server and benefit from his/her illicit activities it would stop a lot of other potential hackers from attempting to hack. 5. Protect the anonymity of players who report hackers. - Why aren't we doing this? They shouldn't be exposed for doing the community a service. Why make them targets for hackers? It would be completely plausible for a disgruntled hacker that was caught to go after the whistleblower. These are some things that should be discussed at greater length. Often we talk about the state of the economy and the nature of the recent inflation but we fail to address some of the reasons for it happening. I urge all Royallers to show support here and prove that this community is all about equality. No one player should have advantage over other through illicit means. It makes the efforts and investments put in by legitimate players worthless. This being said I do realize that there is a lot of issues the staff is dealing with right now. To make matters even worse they seem to be severely understaffed to handle all these issues. This thread was not made to bash on the staff and the job that they are doing but rather it is a segway into possible solutions we can find to rectify this rampant issue. Let's first identify the source of these problems and see if we as a community can come together and solve it. We really need to improve the way we deal with hackers, both in game and on the forums. Thanks.
Everything you say makes sense except the fact that the GMs here ban IPs. I'm not a computer wiz but I think the GMs do a pretty good job on permanently banning every hacker forever as the IP addresses are banned, not just the account themselves. Correct me if I'm wrong though.
Yes I was under the same assumption but I'm more worried about all the items they've accumulated. I'd like a GM to answer if they get deleted and how they delete all those item once they begin to circulate in the economy. Also I heard VPNs might help them bypass IP bans? We need concrete information.
Yeah MAC Bans + IP bans are what they typically do to perma ban someone from the server & the only thing to get past this would be buying a private VPN & somehow spoofing your MAC Address if it's possible(?). Past that you would have to get a new ISP AND a completely new computer as well as starting from scratch.
Eh I googled this within 5 seconds. http://www.mpgh.net/forum/showthread.php?t=594986 Hope no one gets any ideas. =/
Not to mention private VPNs cost money, they also ban MAC addresses (I think), so regardless of the IP which can be changed if you know how, that computer is banned. Obviously no hackers is ideal, but at least it's very difficult for them to come back once banned. I will agree, there should be ways to report on the forums without having our accounts attached to it to the public. At the very least there should be a subforum where all threads are invisible to others except the GM's. You can see it, you can comment on it, GM's can comment on, they can see it, but others cant. Personally, I don't mind usually, but sometimes I have my e-mail open on one of my screens and take the screenshots and there's sensitive correspondence related to school/work. Ive been burned in the past because I am unable to use the screenshots I took because to make them safe to use in a public way I'd have to crop it, a big no no. Obviously the work around is me not leaving stuff open, but if only GM's see the screenshots, it's less of an issue, and if they need to use it later as proof they can then crop out the non-essentials as they currently do. Just my 0.02$
I agree with your argument about transparency, privacy, and accessibility for the community in reporting hackers. But there is a very strong limit on what a private server administrator can do regarding the true permanence of "permanent bans." I also think your second point is really interesting. It seems like a bit of a conjecture, but an investigation into where the hacker's items and money is leeched off to might reveal a lot of insight into illegitimate activity in the server (if such a thing is possible). Also seems like this would require a lot of manpower that the server doesn't quite have lol.
Yeah I guess my main point was that it costs quite a bit of $$ to get back into the game after breaking the rules harshly enough to get perma'd.
My initial thought was "wow who would even want to spend real money just to play on a private maple story server" then remembered that I just donated 20 minutes ago lmao.
There does exist a market for end game gear with real world currency, and the old method for the sellers was to make tons of accounts and vote abuse with them. You can actually make a fair amount of money from selling items ingame, which is why people will go to the lengths that they do to hack and abuse the system. As for higher leveled chars with end game gear, a lot of the time it's really easy to tell if someone has purchased their gear, such as when they pop up from nowhere or have gear or cash that seems unattainable for the amount of time that they've accumulated on the server. Example: https://royals.ms/forum/threads/ban-appeal.77891/#post-404249 https://royals.ms/forum/threads/ban-appeal.79529/#post-412577 https://royals.ms/forum/threads/ban-appeal.80381/#post-418827 This is the same guy, who was able to keep on playing after he was banned and dropped 3k pounds on this game.
Yes. But I don't have solid evidence like ss or whatever. Or say I don't wanna collect/report shit like this cuz some members in the community seem to be angry with me, and I felt upset with how admin/gm dealt with some reports/issues. Spoiler: "Angry with me" An example is that, I post a lucky scrolling result on the Accomplishment thread, and said "hope I will not get banned lol". A player said "hope you get banned" and expressed that she despises me reporting ppl. @wor***** Another example is that someone found fault with me in my selling thread. I showed the proof that he was wrong. And ofc he won't listen, and called me a sneaker cuz I reported hackers and RWTers. @Dom******
True but then why not remove that incentive to hack? As illustrated above players hack for monetary gain. If this is true why not go after all the accumulated funds? A ban does nothing in the long run if they are able to make billions in the process. Once again go after the money and make sure hackers do not profit from their acitivities. Then make sure the public knows the offenders been punished and $XXXX amount of mesos/items have been removed.
Well I think the current logic is that if an account is banned, then there's no point removing the mesos/items from it because it will never be retrievable. So there never really was an incentive to hack in the first place. And this turns into your other argument about the paper trail of where those hacked mesos/items went. Like I mentioned before, this leads to two questions: Is tracking the mesos/items of any account even actually possible? Do the GMs have enough manpower for in-depth investigations of every instance of hacking?
im guessing at this point new source doesnt have a working auto ban system or a system that is giving gm's msgs about potential hackers. When this is brought back into the game we should probably notice a big difference. I have played here for many years and i have barley ever noticed any hackers before new source. They permanently ban peoples mac adresses and ip adresses, however that doesn't keep you from playing the server. They also have logs for keeping track of trades and stuff so that they can trace if a hacker who got banned was just funding his "legit", if that was the case the legit chars would also be permanently banned along with all the accounts that is connected to this person.
I should have elaborated a bit more. It was under the assumption that the funds were being moved from their mules into their legitimate accounts and/or to friends. Its also plausible they are buying up white scrolls/chaos scrolls/ap resets thus driving up prices as well. In regards to your questions those are answers I'd like to find out from a member of the administrative team as well.
In regards to your first point, I'd argue that the reason why its rare to see hackers would be because they tend to stay out of the lime light. How often do people go to Omega Sector, Eos Tower, places rarely visited by anyone other than themselves. Also they tend to have this program that either auto-cc's their character or disconnects them if they detect anyone else on their map. In regards to your second point I agree that MAC bans and IP bans won't stop anyone tenacious enough to come back which is why tracing logs and confiscate all the hacked items would be the best course of action. Once again this thread was made so GMs can enlighten us about what they do with illegitimately attained funds and if they actively try to hunt down account(s) associated with them.
