suggestion on anti-hacking

There are a lot of hackers in Mapleroyals, gm could offer Random Rewards to those people who report hackers successfully. It is a good method to encourage and motivate all mapleroyalers to fight against hackers.

(if you have any suggestions, please leave your suggestions here for GM reference.)

 

Spoiler

My suggestion to staff is to fix their priorities.

Really, there's no good reason why we STILL don't have autoban after almost FOUR YEARS.

I get it. There's literally one guy who can make the autoban system. And I get it. Royals wouldn't trust people to outsource dev work. But come on. Does anyone seriously believe that we STILL wouldn't have autoban if it was the top priority? And it isn't. It gets pushed to the wayside by the smallest, most inconsequential things like event map requests and control panel aesthetics lmao. Form takes precedence over substance. The tiniest things cause more and more and more delays until we end up here, three years and nine months without autoban. And counting.

Incentivizing non-staff players to report hackers misses the point. We shouldn't have to report hackers. GMs shouldn't have to ban hackers in the first place. Before January 1, 2017, most hackers were automatically banned without anyone lifting a finger. And the strongest motivator for people is intrinsic. The non-staff players who have been the most dedicated in going around checking for hackers, botters, what have you are the ones who genuinely care about the game, the players, and the community, not any sort of external reward. But I daresay that every single one of them has or will burn out. You realize that no matter how hard you work to stay ahead of all the cheaters out there and their ill-gotten gains, you're NEVER going to beat the hackers in the channels next door. You will get very disillusioned with the game when you take a step back and realize how long it's been and realize the choices that the people in charge make. You can build yourself on this game for years, put in the hours to make your meso with OP but legitimate methods that require well deserved hard work to set up. And staff will nerf you over and over. And the hackers are still there.

So you realize that ultimately, the problem is with staff and its backwards priorities. And there's nothing you can do to change that.

 

https://royals.ms/forum/threads/making-autoban-a-development-priority.161534/

 

I report hackers out of my own free will and I do not expect any rewards. However, sometimes it is really demotivating and demoralising when scenarios like this occur.

Disclaimer: This post is not to hate on anyone mentioned. Instead, it is to hopefully remind staff on how urgent auto-ban is required.

On the 22nd of July 2020
Made reports on multiple hackers and tagged Becca since she was online. Her reply was this




and then proceeded to post this on another thread



ok, I get it, tagging you might cross a thin-line/your boundaries and I apologise about it. Also, I agree that we all have commitments outside of the game. However, I quote from you "you are not screaming into a void, we can hear you."

On the 23rd and 24th of July 2020, I went back to the area(s) to check if the hackers were still there, and they were.

On the 25th of July 2020, Johnny replied and finally banned the hackers



72 hours of ungoverned hacking. Some of the passionate players that actively play this game left because of this.


TLDR; my point is
I understand that staff have commitments outside of the game and can't respond to the mass number of reports coming in daily. Since that is the case, shouldn't the auto-ban system be a top priority?
Imagine how much more free time staff will get. Also, with all these hackers running around, the economy for farming is so bad, people in the game are just relying on hackers to mass farm items/scrolls because they sell them for a bargain in the free market. And simultaneously, legit players just flock to leech story because no farmer wants to sell their hard farmed items for so cheap because the hackers will just undercut the farmers easily. Legit players that farm will slowly move towards leech story just because they can't obtain a competitive price in the market.

 

Since my name was mentioned above, I feel somewhat obligated to respond to this thread. I get it... everyone is frustrated, so are the other members of staff, and to no surprise that includes me. As an active player that also plays this game, I agree with what most of you have said and it is pretty demotivating at times to play this game with the constant battle of nerfs, while having no autoban in place.

I'm not sure about others but I try to set aside almost a minimum of one hour per day just going through report abuse, banning hackers, occasionally hosting events and whatever else the scope of a gm intern allows me to do along side spending time on my legit character (without this I don't think I would even be motivated to even be on staff). Like others said above, we all have commitments outside of the game but I try to make some time everyday. I also just want to thank all the players that use report abuse to help keep MapleRoyals as clean as possible, without you guys there would be so many more hackers.

Spoiler: To put some numbers in perspective on how hectic Report Abuse can be

https://royals.ms/forum/threads/staff-changes.150359/
I joined staff on January 31st 2020, its been about ~219 days and I answered about ~1800 reports

Thats about ~8 reports answered a day from me alone on average (majority of the reports are for hackers and many have more than one)

And to no surprise we are quite understaffed at the moment, so if you are a passionate community member that wants to assist the community you should apply here:
https://royals.ms/forum/forums/staff-applications.66/

 

Disclaimer
My apologies if this post seems targetted towards you two. Please be assured that this is not my intention. On the contrary, I greatly appreciate 95% of the times where staff replies promptly to my reports. What I've read from the 2 replies are basically insufficient manpower in the team itself and insufficient manpower for the auto-ban system. Correct me if I'm wrong, but to quote the above post, three years and nine months without autoban. And counting.

I also want to clarify that this isn't a petty argument about the reports, but rather auto-ban will save the staff so much more time.

My reply to Becca
From what I've read in the "Get it off your chest" post, I've somewhat guessed that it wasn't directed at me. Also, I do not think that sleeping is demotivating and demoralizing to me. However, I think that 3-4 days is a fairly long time. Thank you for sharing your personal life, I now have more understanding and can look at it from a different perspective. I wish you the best in achieving your goals in life.

Back to the main purpose of this thread
Players play the game to enjoy the nostalgic content. Players shouldn't be doing things that a GM/auto-ban system should be doing in the first place, so I don't agree with players being rewarded.

 

i think royals just need more staff(especially Admins and GM's) to help fight ToS breakers as much as possible

Spoiler: also we need to unite the community

community is pretty much separated apart , some think RWT to friends or inside guild is fine, some think boting helps the market, joining in some guilds doesn't make you ToS breaker anymore...
we need to get together and fight fairly without double standards

i've seen a lot of maplestory servers ( some of them are more then 15years around) and all of them constantly race-fight with ToS breakers without much of success

autoban system almost never showed some positive outcome outside of KMS and thats because KMS got actual life punishments for ToS breakers. (in CMS,GMS i saw ToS breakers go as far as useing the autoban system as guidance to make their illicit activities more legal and that just turned to huge false ban waves )

i also agree with some kind of reward-motivation for GM's and Royalers who make detailed reports, because is quite discouraging to go against all the ToS breakers voluntary. (kudos for those who dedicate their time not to play the game and just fight-deal with ToS breakers on daily basis voluntary big thank you )

Spoiler: edit

is not just maplestory with such ToS breakers, all the games around dealing with same issue
noone has implemented "autoban system" without constantly GM/player report fights
what surprised me the most recently was when i got the FALL GUYS for 19,99€
to see the amount of cheaters willing to pay € aswell just to cheat and ruin the game for all other , despite getting nothing for that other then ruined game run to random players ...

 

Well since this thread is asking to reward people who report hackers actively here's my two cents.

I have been taking the time out my day to report bulks of hackers, sometimes cleaning whole regions at a time, And let me tell you. I haven't been doing that with some anticipation of a reward or a pat on the back.
My reasoning might be simple but it is true, I love the community and I believe that my actions better the server as a whole, The economy, The slightly overworked Gm's, and our newer coming players.

Should we reward players going out of their way to report hackers? Probably not. Setting rewards for reporting players is encouraging them to go report happy and step away from their gaming experience to actively hunt hackers. Time-consuming, and can lead to burnout: Resulting in less legit players playing and enjoying the game as it should be. Not to mention the frustration that shows its cracks on the community who grows tired from the lack of transparency when it comes to game development.

If you really looking to reward those who go out of their way and put their time and energy on the line, Please carry on with the current energy the GM interns have brought to the team. We want more transparency and to know that our reports are not just bandaging a huge issue, Rather than us being involved as the foundation that keeps the server intact while the development of the auto-ban continues. The Gm development blog is a step in the right direction!

After reading some of the comments here I would like to thank the Gms who honestly didn't sign up for the number of responsibilities the players hold you accountable for. Please stay as passionate as the day you submitted your gm application ❤️

 

I am offering one free muffin (with choice of style) to everyone who successfully reports a hacker. Pick up only, though.

To be serious, the autoban IS highest priority and is getting the most work done. But most anyone experienced in software development knows that you can't hyper focus on one project and not burn out. Really, that goes for many tasks in life, both day to day personal things, and at work. I've been a victim of that myself. So every now and then a refresher is needed and something else gets worked on. Aside from just working on many different things, we still do want to release new ways the community can interact, and new things to do in game. On top of improving things through QoL changes, fixing bugs, helping players with odd issues, and all the other externally visible duties it is a lot of work but rest assured we are busting our butts to try and bring you all the greatest experience possible, in game and out!

 

Thanks for letting us know. As 3 years and 9months is a fairly long time, will it be possible for any staff member to share with us the progress of it? (Without revealing too much and soonTM)

 

Unfortunately there's nothing much we can share here without leaking stuffs to the hackers who are lurking around so that their behavior change too drastically and make our life harder.

But we have already started trialing out our autoban features, just that the "autoban" part isn't in because we are still adjusting the logic. So far, almost everything is near 100% accuracy (sometimes with some false alerts, so we have to continue monitoring and making adjustments).

 

Thank you so much.

 

Okay I have to comment on this asinine expectation that a report/gm tag should be an immediate response. In this case there is a complaint about a 72 hour response time. This complaint would be 100% valid if the context of what was done those 3 days was presented. Make your report and move on, it isn't your job to be the police and just comes across as pandering beyond that point.

 

I stated above that the point wasn't about the 3 days report. I have reports that go unanswered for 9months, but that is beside the point. If you read the posts above, you will realise it is more about the absence of the auto-ban system than a petty complain. The pictures were also used for an example.

edit
also, it ultimately comes down to how passionate you are for this game. If someone is destroying something that you love despite making a police report, won't you feel upset about the system?

 

I miss the abundance of Shiyui posts like this.

I agree it’s really unfair for legitimate but OP methods to get nerfed. Some people played this game for years building up to do some things like summon farm or Quad Ulu 1 (myself included) only for it to get nerfed. Why do anything cool in this game anymore if it could just be deemed op by out of touch staff members and nerfed?

 

I think your screenshot missed out on the first thing I posted. Also, I also needed some context to show that the staff are busy with other priorities, and hence why we need the autoban system.



In the next post, I even apologised if they thought that it was a petty complaint. However, if you feel that this is a petty complaint, we can agree to disagree.

 

Yeah but you still spent like 30+ minutes screenshotting, formatting a post quoting specific gm's, and complaining about their 3 day response time, then spent 2 minutes actually typing about autoban. if you actually wanted to talk about auto ban, you would've spent the majority of your post talking about that and not mention in your reply how you had reports unseen for 9 months. You could've deleted the first 80% of your post and replaced it with "autoban would be faster than the insanely slow 3 day response time" and you'd not only save yourself time but also not force two gms to waste their time defending themselves, time that they could have spent fulfilling the Amazon Now levels of speed and reliability you're expecting from a small group of unpaid volunteers.

The game you're passionate about doesn't exist without them, and they're doing their best.