So, in the light of @Johnny 's recent feedback https://royals.ms/forum/threads/add...ing-miracle-auf-haven-10.186184/#post-1086945, I quickly brainstormed for an alternative that can affect the whole market. The problem with hackers is that they return like salmons after the ban. Even low-level chars can purchase tons of CS/WS from FM stores or set up hired merchants to sell hacked goods. It only takes them a few minutes to remake a random character to restart their daily routine. However, Hackers don't have the time to sit with a chalkboard and manually sell all the hacked items via trade function & smega all day to buy WS/CS. They are forced to use the FM shops, disguised as normal grinder & mercher to sell the hacked goods. They normally pray that their goods will sell quickly before their dayfly characters get banned for suspicious activity so they can pass the mesos to other hidden accounts. But what if they cannot simply reenter the FM merching scene as easily as before? The idea is to add a tedious, manual-labor requiring task that should at least take a good day's work which grants the permission for any existing or future character to access FM rooms. It should be a once-off criterion that never needs repetition once completed. Possibly make it apply to the whole account? If you are a legit player, this will add a day's (maybe more if you merch with multiple chars) trouble and tediousness in your journey. But if you are a hacker, every time you or your shop in FM gets reported, you will now have to spend a full day PER CHAR just to enter the FM scene again. At the same time, this change may encourage casual players, who normally don't bother reporting hackers, to actively report the suspicious stores in FM knowing that it'll add so much work and tediousness to that hacker - unlike before when reporting hackers barely made any difference. For the hackers who pass the hacked items to legit characters for sale (cough economy), it'll be much easier for us legit players to detect them since they'll be selling tons of unique drops in stacks while they are never seen at the grinding site. With the same logic, if they start using their legit characters to buy an equal amount of inflated WS/CS from the market, it'll be easy to flag them since there's a clear record of their merchandise. This change will possibly cease the whole market for a day or two but it shouldn't cause detrimental harm to the server's economy. For the "task", I leave it in the hands of staff to come up with brilliant manual labor that cannot be abused by the hackers. Edit: Here's my own suggestion for manual labor. It has to be something tedious but something that cannot be abused with automated tools (bots/hacks). I think Henesys PQ fits perfectly for this manual labor. Spoiler: Henesys PQ This PQ was and still is the most dead PQ on the server. However, it contains RNG factors (random position of plants) and requires manual effort + teamwork for completion. It's not cancer-inducing like LPQ (stage 8) and even low levels can participate in this PQ. If an untradeable certificate, for entry to FM rooms, can be rewarded after completing the PQ about 5 times, it'll add enough tediousness for hackers while forcing legit players to experience one of the oldest nostalgic PQs in the game. Assuming hackers will still return to the FM scene, this change will still slow them down but may possibly revive the dead PQ, fueled by the hackers themselves. They won't be able to hack inside the PQ with peers so there will be no choice but to help out real newbies who need to fill up the party.
I think this would be a large nuisance to new players joining the server to realize they must put in a day's work to browse the fm. Many players get their first impressions of a server by browsing the market even if it is just window shopping. A few reasons I can name may be: 1) The fm is one of the easiest places to assess the popularity of a server. Players can get a feel for how active the community is by how populated the rooms are. Although there are several players that own multiple shops that skew the represented appearance of our population, the vast majority of players only own 1 shop at a time. 2) A new player starting out usually has no feel for what kind of items there are or how godly equips can get within a server. When I started out, I quickly made a trip to fm stores just to see what kind of equips, scrolls, etc. are like in the server before making my decision to continue playing. There is no other place in the game where you can see what kind of items are valuable. I feel that for many people trying out a server, the first impression is very important. If they have to really put in a day's work just to look around the fm, then they might just uninstall fearing that there may be more stringent restrictions to keep them from playing. I think a more legit-friendly restriction would be that players should complete a task in order to open an fm store. To me it seems more fair that if they want to sell their goods, then they must put in some initial work for it. This would allow players to freely browse stores normally while also keeping hackers from being able to set up theirs so easily.
The issue with hackers setting up their own store isn't as serious because the worst inflation comes from hackers purchasing every inflated cs/ws as well as other valuable currency items from other people's hired merchants, using their short-lived, low-level characters. If we cannot prevent them from accessing every store in the market, it will hardly affect their course of action. I agree such a task may not be seen as the most appealing concept in the eyes of new players. However, we have reached a serious stage where we either need to accept a little extra inconvenience to counter the rampant cheaters or provide utter freedom at the cost of a ruined economy and overall balance in the server. Keeping a good impression on the influx of daily newbies is very important but should we let the server decay in its current state for the sake of "convenience"?
HPQ was one of the ideas I pulled out of my thumb. There must be tons of other ways to apply a day's worth of manual labor as long as they are followed by decent rewards. For e.g, providing free basic pet and auto pot equips with 1~2 week expiry time. Usually, newbies need to save a few days' votes to buy the cheapest pet and necessary pet equips. As a result, they cannot spend that nx to buy decoration nx. Wouldn't true newbies find it a fair trade?
NO. I am so sick and tired of legit player punishing bullshit half measures to mask the lack of autoban. Stopgap after stopgap is introduced and nothing changes....except the dwindling good will the playerbase has for this server. I'm sure this is coming from a place of caring, so please don't misunderstand my frustration to be with you personally, but if I have to jump through hoops just to access a core function of the game, I'm out.
Although I understand that rampant hacking is a huge issue without an autoban, I think a day worth of tasks would be too big of an inconvenience to any new player joining the server. The FM is where many new players go to sell random equips/scrolls/fame or beg for mesos for a bit of funding at the beginning so I would want a player who actually plays the game to do this task naturally, without added effort. It should only be added effort if the player is truly a hacker. However, I'm sure if it was so easy to distinguish a player from a hacker, there would already be an autoban in place. Instead, I would rather we target the registration process. I think the problem lies in that it is too easy to create an account because you simply need an email and we all know how easy-to-make and disposable emails can be. Although many people may disagree with this proposal for the sake of anonymity, I think a good counter method would be to do signup requiring social media, as I do not believe most people have fake social media accounts and hackers would have an added step of having to make these extra social media accounts in addition to their extra emails. Also, I believe most social media platforms have tools in place to counter spam accounts or suspicious activity so we can lean on these measures. E.g. Facebook registration requires a photo be submitted and it uses face recognition to compare your photo with your live face + I heard facebook AI detects 'spam' accounts as any account with fewer than 20 friend requests. As a side note, maybe we could use a similar method where the number of friends you have on buddy list could be what allows you access to the fm? I don't believe hackers would want to reveal the ign of their other hacking accounts and I doubt they spend time making friends.
Pls, lets make a difference within what staff did b4 and this kind of suggestions, its really not the same, PLEASE. theres hasnt been a single, not even one stopgap(speaking of ingame public changes ofc) introduced to actually adress rwt issues so far, most of them were to nerf hardcore players, it seems that several ppl actually think that legit hardcore players are the main problem(LOL). Actually autoban could deal with hackers, but not with RWTers in general(theres several rwters that are not actually hackers) So pls, stop taking changes directed to screw rwters/abusers along with previous changes, theyre not the same, cannot be "sick and tired" about something that is being suggested barely a few times(never actually considered), and OFC, nothing gonna change if they keep pointing the wrong target. Not saying anyone have to accept this idea, lets just meassure it with a different bar.
We all acknowledge the hardwork staff are putting to implement a fully functioning autoban but reality is reality. I'm one of the people who, for the past 4 years, optimistically reminded the complainers that autoban is still coming, and that we should just wait for its arrival but we are heading into mid 2021. I also mentioned that a consequent reward should be preped to compensate and encourage newbies to take this task. How would this be player punishing if it entails proper reasoning along with decent rewards? If you haven't noticed, autoban isn't a father Christmas thing that will arrive on one random day. It's been gradually implemented over the past years yet hackers are still everywhere. "Lack" of autoban is no longer the right excuse hence I'm trying to save this dying server with a possible solution that can still throw a middle finger at the face of hackers in the presence/absence of an autoban. You say nothing will change but I'm more than confident that it actually will produce a massive difference.
The RWT situation is somewhat separate and is bottlenecked by the unfortunate reality that we only have one admin who investigates these reports in their free time. This is not going to change until they train another admin to take a share of the work and unfortunately dedicated players have more or less stopped reporting due to the difficulty with gathering evidence for these cases. I agree that targeting the registration process would be more friendly for existing players. Though the current proposed change would definitely make FM spot botting harder lel
Regarding the addition to the registration process, doesn't it cost extra on the server's end to add such a service? For example, a guildie once suggested the addition of sms verification but he immediately gave up on the idea when he looked up its cost. I'm not sure if sns verification works differently. Whitelist applications are already controversial due to privacy exposure. I met many who gave up applying for it when they heard about the requirements. With ingame tasks, at least an ingame reward can be provided but what can the server offer as the compensation for the extra identification step that forces a profile exposure?
