Greetings MapleRoyalers, I would like to float a potential solution that would allow players who have been banned for suspecting to be real world traders to have a defense. This implementation might be a heavy lift for staff to execute, but I think it provides value worth the effort. Solution: Net Worth Log. How the log works: The log is stored on the players computers. The transaction and server time will be appended to the log along with the output of the information encrypted with private key of the server. Players and staff can confirm that the transaction occurred and corroborated by the server by using the server's public key on the encrypted output and that output matches the plain text transaction. When a player is banned the staff can simply ask for the players account net worth log. Players will then share the log which captures their asset growth. Staff will uses a program to confirm valid transactions and check the growth or shrinkage over time to see if it makes sense. The program would need to match items against a database of items and their average and standard deviation of value in mesos. Staff can follow up on players that appear in recurring unbalanced trades. Net worth is still private until you are in a ban request. We should consider if players should be allowed to submit their net worth log confidentially. Instances that trigger appending to log: Add a button to "Game Menu" which reads "Log Account". The information logged is items (all or valued more than X mesos) on all characters and in storage for the account. Add a togglable check mark to in game trade which reads "Log Transaction". If a player adds an item from the list of high value items or the mesos on either side is greater than X mesos then the check mark will get checked on its own. Players may toggle the check mark if they wish to log a trade that the system doesn't register as high value just in case. The information logged is the players names, mesos traded, items traded, and in trade chat. Scrolling with a white scroll. The information logged is whether is was successful, the scroll it was used with, and the item it was used on after the resulting change if successful. Scrolling with a chaos scroll. The information logged is whether is was successful, the item it was used on after the resulting change if successful, and how the stats changed. Consider: Completing a boss run where high value items drop. (MW20/Auf Scrolls/Von Leon) The information logged would be the drops and players present. Consider: Completing Amoria PQ Bonus. The information logged are the amount of apples looted by each player. Consider: Amount of attack potions used in boss runs. Might be too much to log on this one. I tried to capture instances where net worth grows or shrinks. Please let know if I'm missing things. High Value Item List: 1 Billion Coins, White Scroll, Chaos Scroll, High Level Equips, Attack Gear, MW20, Apples?, APR?, ... others items we should discuss adding. The items on the high value list should not be droppable, so it forces players to trade them where the transaction will be logged. Please allow APR to be stackable in trades. Inheritance: If player decides to quit and give another player many high value items for nothing in return. This should be disclosed to staff on forums by both parties in the trade. A player shouldn't give away many items more than once otherwise it is obviously a real world trade. Maybe require staff approval before giving away items when quitting. Schedule in coordination with staff when Kerning drop party is going down. Players should log into each of their accounts and log that accounts net worth, so they have a starting point to go off immediately after this solution is implemented. Staff should also consider add a cooldown for each of the instances that trigger a log so it cuts down on the server encrypting and appending logs. Example cooldown would be only X high value trade per (day / week / month). This is so actual real world traders can't launder unbalanced trades with balanced trades in their logs. Chaos and white scroll should not have a cool down since they are already limited by how many the player has. I hope this makes sense, not too restricting to the free market, and is considered. I really like the idea because the accused player and staff have the same paper trail. I hope its not too resource intensive though to encrypt and log these things. Thank you, Roab
This implementation might be a heavy lift for staff to execute In my opinion/experience of watching the auto ban feature be implemented, if they commit to no new content and solely work on this feature, maybe in several years we’ll get a working prototype. These are unpaid volunteers, not a team of full-time developers, nor do we expect them to be full-time dedicated. I bet all of them have full time jobs and lives outside of the game too. I don’t mean to sound condescending but it is the reality of the situation. Our current server and code doesn’t offer a detailed logging system and they would need extensive time or resources to get one within a reasonable amount of time which may not even be worth their time compared to pushing out new content (ex. the retention/growth rate of spending 2 years implementing this vs releasing Pink Bean). Implementing a fully functional responsive trade log system would be great but we don’t have the manpower, means, or potentially even talent to implement one (I wouldn’t know how much knowledge/skill you need to implement one).
