Aion Riftshade

I would like to address both the delay of update and the state of the gold sellers/bots.

TLDR; If you gonna delay the update, give us an all inclusive event.

Do more to fight bots/gold sellers and give us clear information on what you are doing to battle them.

First of lets start with the delay of the update.

You based the judgement of the delay based on the feedback on the forum which seems to be based on less than 20 players?

As anyone who come around here can see, forums are a dying media. Most players get their updates from discord.

With that the unofficial discord asked the very same question regarding the delay and the ration of people who voted for delay was 197. While people who voted against it was 511. So I'm quite unsure how you can say you are listening to the community, when the vast majority did NOT want the delay.

Along with this, the speculation are currently that the update will be 16 of August based on Daevas pass and the new event. This is another thing, this event is to level a new character. Lets say you are an average player, this can be done in a week or two if you are new and start without extra gear or Kinah. Someone who is making an alt, this can be done in less than a week.

So the majority of us are just waiting for the update now, as there are little to no encouragement to keep farming what is currently available as we know the update is just around the corner.

If you indeed plan to push the update out on 16 of August, why not give the current enviroment a reason to play? Give us an event that is inclusive for lvl 50+ as well. Such as the drop event, AP event, Stigma drop etc. As currently I personally feel I might level a character and then take a break till 2.0.

----

Now for Botting/gold seller. I'll try to keep it breif as the complaints about them been extensive.

I would like to know why are Lv5 players allowed to use the LFG which is global? The instance that allow a group is Fire temple - Lv27+. So why isn't the LFG limited to level 20 or 25+? If you argue that they might want group before Morheim/Eltnen, sure. There's the "Shout" function for that area. At the current setup, we have to mute 3-5 different gold seller from each page, each day. By pushing this level cap higher it would most likely reduce this.

But the real issue lay with the bots. Why does it feel like so little is being done against this? It have gotten so bad that they are using teleport command without having to worry. The ingame report for "Auto hunting" seem to do absolutely nothing, as when I was lvling my character, I reported a group of bots multiple times per day, for 4 days. Yet they were still happily farming without a care.

I know it's a war that is not possible to win as the bots will always come back. But at this rate it feels extremly discouraging to play at all as it feels like a waste of time as it would be better to just go work a day and then buy kinah and get 10 times the amount you would've if you farmed a whole day. I've had friends who decided to quit because of the amount of bots just while leveling. I also believe this is a larger issue on the current patch than it will be on 2.0, especially based on the fact that stigmas are such a pain to get currently.

I'm also confused on how it comes that the bots are able to use the teleport location command as this have been disabled on "retail" as far as I know? Since you know how to resolve that part, why is it still enabled?

The main thing over all is that it really feels not enough is being done to battle this.

So could you please give us, the community some feedback on how you are battling the bots? What are the steps you plan on taking in the future to reduce this? As ignoring it will for sure harm your game.

Quote from xenrayzxon

The ingame report for "Auto hunting" seem to do absolutely nothing

Exactly. It's a discontinued feature that doesn't serve a purpose. It's not submitting any data right now. If you want to report bots, you need to do it via the support, although it would make much more sense to re-implement the Report Auto Hunting feature, because people are discouraged to jump through the hoops of making a support account, logging in, gathering and uploading evidence, and submitting a ticket, when we could accomplish the same thing by simply pressing one button, directly in the game.

It's needlessly inconvenient to report bots. The feature is there, it just got discontinued when Gameforge took over. We have a solid base, we're just not using it, because reasons.

However, people also have the wrong mindset when reporting bots. They expect them to be banned instantly, or at least as soon as they get a reply on their tickets, but that is not the case.

Closing a ticket is not the same thing as solving the issue at hand.

People need to be patient, and that's another underlying problem. If they see that bots don't get immediately banned, then they're discouraged from submitting further reports.

Part of the reason why you're seeing bots teleporting through leveling and questing areas is because their level 50 counterparts get banned regularly. It's a straight fact, but the tinfoil in the Aion community is as strong as it's always been, so they're dismissing those facts by spouting nonsense instead.

Quote from xenrayzxon

I'm also confused on how it comes that the bots are able to use the teleport location command as this have been disabled on "retail" as far as I know? Since you know how to resolve that part, why is it still enabled?

They're not using teleport commands. The teleportation behavior is relying on specific targets - they can't use coordinates to teleport around, and their teleportation abilities are limited to what seems to be right about 40 meters.

They still have to walk if the distance to their next target is longer.

Quote from xenrayzxon

The main thing over all is that it really feels not enough is being done to battle this.

Gameforge is a profit oriented business. Most of those need to not only take raw earnings into consideration, but also expenses.

GF is known to cut costs in order to raise profits, and GMs (or staff in general) do cost money. Developing and implementing counter measures for botting costs money.

It would raise the quality of the product, without doubt, but the company is notorious for sacrificing the quality for profit. Sure it kills sair product, but it pleases the stakeholders.

Good post. More needs to be done against bots/cheaters.

Example:

having voluntary GMs in the game that ban the obvious (teleport-hacking) bots would already be a massive step-up.

Quote from Auxi

It's needlessly inconvenient to report bots. The feature is there, it just got discontinued when Gameforge took over. We have a solid base, we're just not using it, because reasons.

However, people also have the wrong mindset when reporting bots. They expect them to be banned instantly, or at least as soon as they get a reply on their tickets, but that is not the case.

Closing a ticket is not the same thing as solving the issue at hand.

People need to be patient, and that's another underlying problem. If they see that bots don't get immediately banned, then they're discouraged from submitting further reports.

Thank you for letting us know about this, as it gave the impression that it was working.

I do indeed agree that people want insta bans which is common in private servers, but not quite how it work on most official games.

But with the amount of bots, it is indeed to much of a bother to make a ticket per bot/group of bots. As it would most likely result in an significant amount of time to report the ones you see each day. I feel if the report auto hunting was working as intended, and they recieve x amount of reports which would help passing out punishment and locate the bots.

Quote from Auxi

They're not using teleport commands. The teleportation behavior is relying on specific targets - they can't use coordinates to teleport around, and their teleportation abilities are limited to what seems to be right about 40 meters.

They still have to walk if the distance to their next target is longer.

Part of the reason why you're seeing bots teleporting through leveling and questing areas is because their level 50 counterparts get banned regularly. It's a straight fact, but the tinfoil in the Aion community is as strong as it's always been, so they're dismissing those facts by spouting nonsense instead.

Back in the days this was done through a combination of the shugo console if I remember correctly. That's why I was under the impression of a "Teleport command". But I am uncertain on how it work these days. But I do also feel there must be some sort of conflicting data between the user and server that could be use to instantly kick these players. However I guess this could have the side effect of affecting people with high ping as well.

Quote from Auxi

Gameforge is a profit oriented business. Most of those need to not only take raw earnings into consideration, but also expenses.

GF is known to cut costs in order to raise profits, and GMs (or staff in general) do cost money. Developing and implementing counter measures for botting costs money.

It would raise the quality of the product, without doubt, but the company is notorious for sacrificing the quality for profit. Sure it kills sair product, but it pleases the stakeholders.

Yeah this is the unfortunate truth with profit driven business (Which is all now days). I feel like the line management for this game could provide the feedback of that it would have a possitive effect of the game and prolonge the life of it and profit.

This is just speculation on my part, but I feel they must've lost a lot of players due to the negative effect of bots. The feeling of being left behind if you do not spend real money for kinah is quite overwhelming in this market. The feeling that what you can make is not sufficent to be worth the time you put in. This will push people to either go for illegal activity or quit. (No I don't say it's the only two options, but the effect it will have on a big chunk of players.)

But yeah I guess on paper the bots look like players. More activity = More profit, in the stakeholders eyes.

So the game look more alive than it is, and they don't have to spend money to get rid of bots. Win/win.

Very unfortunate as the players who are passionate about the game will have to take the punishment for the greed.

Come on ,let the botters enjoy this new Event first before 2.0 starts so they can be prepared for it and be lvl 50.

197 vs 511. It means that many people want a postpone. It means that many want faster.

Firstly, for me, more important value is - how many people voted in total. Also, I did not check, if in a pool was also third option like "I do not care".

Later, after all happened U can say about not listening the community. They made a postpone using a few weeks solution, because more than 1/3 want it. I think, if this value could be highier, like 1/2, so they could probably make bigger break between patches.

By the way - in every possible way people try fight against a postponed patch. It even made You a way of honor, to stop their decision, because U wanna better place for free AP from PvE groups near BT. Big XD

Bot problem is for GF/NCS - if they want have a healthy game. I think such fight is very important, because in my opinion Classic is OP and gained a big opening success. If they wanna go forward and gain a big success from Classic EU, they will fight with botitng and cheating.

People can just create multiple accounts and vote as they wish on this forum, doesnt matter to them if its against forum rules or not.
If we count that useless poll as data then this > Data < should matter too lol.

Only people that wanted this patch to stay longer is the ones that dont know anything about 2.0 or why would it be better.
Most important is if people would have known how different will be this mental custom patch compared to original AIon 1.x, im sure most people would have voted for 2.0 to be first version in EU.

They want to counter bots so much now we have an event that helps them level up even faster , while we see 0 efficient solutions countering bots.
I slowly start to believe to ppl that say ncsoft does the botting unofficialy in KR for extra profits lol , and using it as an excuse for making the game more grindy and force ppl towards shop too.

Hello,

Good post, we kinda all agree.

No point tho, we won't have any feedback.

We're just talking together, as players. CM's / P.O are not here to adress our concerns.

They're only here to milk us with the least effort as possible.

Please reread last Drestam's sentence in the delay announcement :
"we hope you enjoy your time on our Custom 1.9 Version!"
What is this if not just shitting on us ? Game is awful.

Servers are getting dead, Uptade should have been done already, and the game is missing some end content, lot of ppl stopped playing, they are waiting for the next patch... That they will play for a whille and then they will leave it again if you keep the low content and the almost 0% drop rate, with siel, bcs without it well it is a 0% drop rate. Leveling events should had been done whene the update come up with the new class, unless you pretend do to another one at the time, just using logic.

Kinah Drop/reward in dungeon and in quests should be rised, just saying, same goes for stigmas maybe.

But must important.... DO THE UPDATE.... The Game is BORING GDDU!