The game is being exploited by multi boxing programs and how to fix it.

[jojobanutz]

Though I've no idea whether multi-boxing is involved, there do seem to be plenty characters still being used to run macros on mission skills on my server.

 

I'm on the Progenitor, if you're on that server, just take a tour of a few Med Stations and you'll see what I mean. There are characters planted at each med droid 24/7.

 

They all have odd names, often just jumbled letters. Most are Lv60, with achievements only in maxxed TH and Slicing.

 

You don't need to be a genius to see what they are doing.

 

Though you may have suspicions about the OP's motivation, he's correct about one thing. The predictability of the way Mission Skllls present available missions is what has allowed this exploit to become widespread.

 

Unfortunately the Devs have painted themselves into corner with this, they can't very well revert to the old way Mission Skills presented missions, ie a random selection. There would be a huge outcry. Maybe they could just have the missions present in a random order, but still have the full variety available.

 

I do think that this is a result of an over hasty 'fix', that did not analyse possible unintended consequences. The Dev team have a somewhat checkered history with such things!

 

The Slot Machine and the Overbuffed Companions say hello!

 

Edited August 27, 2016 by jojobanutz

[DreadtechSavant]

I am getting sick to death of this guy. Making a new account every time you start one of these threads is getting old very fast.

 

As before you offer no proof as you offered none when you did one of these with slicing, none when you did one with treasure hunting and yet again none now.

 

Yet again I dare say BW will come along in a few weeks/months with yet another nurff just in time you to pick your next "this is ruining the economy" thread. as they did with in game blue lockboxes, slicing, treasure hunting. Which BTW all had ZERO impact as you claimed it would if removed or changed.

 

You are free to believe what you want to believe but IT'S YOU WHO IS RUINING THE GAME. Slicing boxes still does not generate nearly as much as group players claim they get/make per hour. That's going by post here on the forums with players bragging they can make XXXXX amount per day & by just typing in google "SWTOR how to make credits", there are pages of threads about it, youtube vids and so on. Yet you come here and put this crap on here time after time.

 

It's bad enough that as a solo player I am constantly screwed over by BW when it comes to making in-game credits without been screwed over by other players.

Edited August 27, 2016 by DreadtechSavant

[CrazyCT]

Though I've no idea whether multi-boxing is involved, there do seem to be plenty characters still being used to run macros on mission skills on my server.....

 

{Every player standing near a med droid = macro-bot. K, got it.}

[DreadtechSavant]

Every player CrazyCT ? really?

 

I often stand by one when AFK, making coffee, answering a phone call or whatever. Generalizations like this really don't help. Even if your post was meant as a fun reply.

[masterceil]

CT uses braces as a sarcasm tag - not for the first time. Not as ubiquitous as /s I'll grant you, but the sarcasm was still pretty easy for me to see, and such comments are themselves ubiquitous on the internet - rarely does anyone take them as presenting a legitimate argument.

[lightSaberAddiCt]

Every player CrazyCT ? really?

 

I often stand by one when AFK, making coffee, answering a phone call or whatever. Generalizations like this really don't help. Even if your post was meant as a fun reply.

 

Really dont want to respond to the thread again, but you missed that CrazyCT was using the {} sarcasm tags

[CrazyCT]

Sorry for the confusion, Dread - as the previous guys said, I use the {} to indicate sarcasm.

 

Still, thought the sarcasm would have easily been spotted even without them.......

[Mowermanx]

Sorry for the confusion, Dread - as the previous guys said, I use the {} to indicate sarcasm.

 

Still, thought the sarcasm would have easily been spotted even without them.......

 

Even so, I've been doing a lot of stuff out on the planets, and I still see a lot of these guys standing at vendors, right out of the way. They are easy to pick as they have no achieves that normal players accumulate through playing.

[CrazyCT]

Even so, I've been doing a lot of stuff out on the planets, and I still see a lot of these guys standing at vendors, right out of the way. They are easy to pick as they have no achieves that normal players accumulate through playing.

 

{Remind me not to ever stand near a vendor when I go to get a coffee - wouldn't want to get banned cause that's the only proof needed for botting these days}

[CaptRogue]

{Remind me not to ever stand near a vendor when I go to get a coffee - wouldn't want to get banned cause that's the only proof needed for botting these days}

 

You're not being funny so just stop.

Standing BY the vendors is not the bots. It's the ones standing NOSE to NOSE with the vendor; with names that aren't names. They don't move. Examine them & they all have TH & Slicing maxed. They've leveled by killing creatures only, usually on like Hoth. They all seem to have the rare achievement, Czerka Crate (I forget what it's called.) at random times throughout the day. They all have the wealthy achievement too.

 

Quit assuming they're making this part up. You can verify for yourself; go to a random planet that has far out posts, like Taris. Go to all the Med droids.

That's all be discussed on another thread a long time ago. Those accounts are definitely bots. But not sure as to why they're still doing as TH has been nerfed & slicing was nerfed months ago.

[CrazyCT]

You're not being funny so just stop.

Standing BY the vendors is not the bots. It's the ones standing NOSE to NOSE with the vendor; with names that aren't names. They don't move. Examine them & they all have TH & Slicing maxed. They've leveled by killing creatures only, usually on like Hoth. They all seem to have the rare achievement, Czerka Crate (I forget what it's called.) at random times throughout the day. They all have the wealthy achievement too.

 

Quit assuming they're making this part up. You can verify for yourself; go to a random planet that has far out posts, like Taris. Go to all the Med droids.

That's all be discussed on another thread a long time ago. Those accounts are definitely bots. But not sure as to why they're still doing as TH has been nerfed & slicing was nerfed months ago.

 

You know why? 'cause some ******** keeps trying to get these things nerfed so that people give up on them. It's not about stopping bots. The bots can farm all day long without getting annoyed, it's the people who give up when it gets too much hassle to do it. And then the guy who's been campaigning so hard to get this nerfed can clean up, cause his bots are still working away, generating credits that he can sell to the people, cause it's now to hard to farm them on their own.

 

And all you guys can do is sit around saying "look, there's a bot, that guy on the forums was right, we need to nerf this right now".

 

Seriously, I can feel myself losing IQ points everytime I see someone agreeing with this leech.

Edited August 27, 2016 by CrazyCT

[Andryah]

You're not being funny so just stop.

Standing BY the vendors is not the bots. It's the ones standing NOSE to NOSE with the vendor; with names that aren't names. They don't move. Examine them & they all have TH & Slicing maxed. They've leveled by killing creatures only, usually on like Hoth. They all seem to have the rare achievement, Czerka Crate (I forget what it's called.) at random times throughout the day. They all have the wealthy achievement too.

 

Quit assuming they're making this part up. You can verify for yourself; go to a random planet that has far out posts, like Taris. Go to all the Med droids.

That's all be discussed on another thread a long time ago. Those accounts are definitely bots. But not sure as to why they're still doing as TH has been nerfed & slicing was nerfed months ago.

 

This comment, as with most, is not productive.

 

You are not a bot detective, nor is anyone else here. Nor are you a particularly good bot-prosecutor either, since you refuse to follow effective process with respect to bots in MMOs.

 

You can have valid suspicions, but you do not know anything as fact. There is a very real difference between suspicion (no matter how large) and fact.

 

The process for players here is simple: See something you think is suspicious.... you /report it and move on. There is literally nothing else effective or productive that you as a player can do.

Edited August 27, 2016 by Andryah

[grayblux]

I agree that something has to be done to stop multiple accounts running on one computer, because in the end that would solve everything. You cant just massively nerf the tradeskills and screw the average player over because of people botting. If you want proof do some research on it and you will see its a common method for botters in this game to run 20+ accounts and automate the tradeskills, I know we can't provide links so if you want proof, look it up. The one guy who was crazy about getting treasured hunting nerfed wasn't lying about there being hundreds of juggernauts newly created with max treasure hunting all in their ships. Its a viable way to make and earn credits while having little risk of the community report you or get upset. The tricky thing is it's like an unseen cancer that will keep eating away at the economy and making items more and more expensive. If you compare the market now to that 3 months ago its insane how much things have gone up.

[SiegePro]

I have a very simple solution to make gold farming much more difficult without mucking things up for people who are using the crew skill missions as intended.

 

Make credits a legacy based total like Cartel Coins are and then make them completely non-tradable. You could still trade items, so if you wanted to help get your friend geared up you can give them stuff, but the only way to actually exchange credits between legacies is by paying for items on the GTN.

 

Sure, the farmers could still get around this using creative GTN listings, but it adds some extra steps to the process which makes it more of a hassle (you can't just put in an order and get it in the mail) which will discourage it.

 

More important in the discouragement part is that this would keep the gold-sellers from being able to consolidate the credits gained by multiple accounts into a single pool to trade from. If someone orders ten million credits they can't pull 500k from 20 bots to fill the order, they have to have one bot with the full 10 million credits on it at the time the order is placed in order to fulfill the order.

 

It also means each time one of the gold-seller accounts is banned it takes all the credits on that account away with it because they can't shift them over to some other account that no one ever reports because they're not seen doing anything that resembles the bots.

 

Again, this won't STOP the gold-sellers, but when a client has to put a specific item up for sale at a certain price and then the gold-seller has to have a single bot account with the amount requested ready to go when the order is placed and has to worry about that account being flagged as a bot and deleted (taking all the credits it had amassed with it) the price is going to go up and that will in turn reduce how many credits they actually move and in turn bring the prices down on the markets.

 

And it has almost no effect on the typical player who is just earning credits for their own toons/legacy and could even be billed as a QoL feature for them as you no longer have to mail credits between toons on the same legacy (like I always do every time I make a new character so I can stamp a decent outfit onto them or to pull money from my toons when I see a 'must buy' item on the GTN that the toon I'm on is just a bit shy of).

 

The only extra hassle for the normal player would be when trying to help your friends out by giving them some of your own credits so they can buy that cool outfit they want, but there'd be nothing to stop you from buying the item yourself and then trading it to them (or sending it to them in the mail). On the other hand, your friend would also have access to all the credits earned by their other toons on the same legacy so past the first toon or two they shouldn't need all that much in the way of credits from you anyway).

[CaptRogue]

And all you guys can do is sit around saying "look, there's a bot, that guy on the forums was right, we need to nerf this right now".

 

Seriously, I can feel myself losing IQ points everytime I see someone agreeing with this leech.

 

Incorrect, I NEVER agreed with this leech. It irritates me also.

I was just pointing out something in your statement.

I too am tired of seeing crap threads pop up out of nowhere that after a bit of time get us nerfed into oblivion all because some credit farmer got mad another credit farmer beat him at his game.

 

This comment, as with most, is not productive.

 

Nor is yours, yet you fall back on the same statement over & over.

 

You are not a bot detective, nor is anyone else here. Nor are you a particularly good bot-prosecutor either, since you refuse to follow effective process with respect to bots in MMOs.

 

Actually yes we are. Even you yourself state below. A detective is someone who puts clues together. They do NOT try, convict, or sentence anyone. They present facts. That is what me & others have done. Just present facts. That are provable. You just like to pop in here & argue over & over about the same thing, not even contributing to the discussion.

You also assume too much. How are you to know I didn't follow "the effective process" in respect to bots?? You don't.

 

You can have valid suspicions, but you do not know anything as fact. There is a very real difference between suspicion (no matter how large) and fact.

 

Again, facts have been stated. You or anyone who reads this can go prove them as facts, on ANY server. But you for some reason like to just take up for the so called "botters". Almost makes you wonder if you're not in consorts with them.

 

The process for players here is simple: See something you think is suspicious.... you /report it and move on. There is literally nothing else effective or productive that you as a player can do.

 

INCORRECT. You can alert other players in game, or on the forums to check & verify if what you're seeing is correct or if they've seen the same thing. Then that brings more attention to the illegalities that are happening which then means more reports. So then BW has way more tickets on the same bots instead of just one or two maybe. Which then leads to heavier investigating & larger shut downs like they've done before.

 

It all really boils down to the fact you don't care or want anyone to know about this stuff in game Andryah. Which doesn't make sense since it's hurting the game & economy.

If you care about the game, bring the guilty to light so to speak instead of taking up for them.

[Mowermanx]

This comment, as with most, is not productive.

 

You are not a bot detective, nor is anyone else here. Nor are you a particularly good bot-prosecutor either, since you refuse to follow effective process with respect to bots in MMOs.

 

You can have valid suspicions, but you do not know anything as fact. There is a very real difference between suspicion (no matter how large) and fact.

 

The process for players here is simple: See something you think is suspicious.... you /report it and move on. There is literally nothing else effective or productive that you as a player can do.

So these chars scattered around the galaxy standing in the same spots for months on end, all 60, all have no achieves, all with alphabet soup names are just a coincidence?

 

Look, I don't usually post in these threads, and I know its not productive for prosecuting them by mentioning them here on the forums, but people denying that this is going on are either trolls or have an agenda and should be called out.

Edited August 28, 2016 by Mowermanx

[AllisonLightning]

You know, the bigger this thread gets, the more chance we have of another ridiculous nerf based on essentially a gold farmer trying to quash player means of using their crew skills to make credits? I don't want anyone to reply to me, I just essentially want to stop feeding the people who essentially ruined Heroics, which yes got un-nerfed but with the promise it'll come back at a later date and probably with all the bonuses properly broken down to 7k credits and no multiplied bonus. I think half the reason it got reverted was it was too big a job, it didn't get done completely and they're saving it for 5.0.

 

Every time we reply to these threads, they grow and Treasure Hunting showed direct causality between these posts and nerfs. So please, can we not feed them? People made the excellent suggestion pages back, I didn't reply the other day- if you want to post on identifying a gold farmer bot, start a new thread and bleed this one for any attention. Treasure Hunting was spammed and bumped for months, let's equate this with not standing in the red circles, okay?

[Yorioko]

Lets all suppose the OP here actually had his tin foil hat off for a week before he wrote........THAT.

 

Ok lets say this is as bad as he say and then the work around is alot easier.

Firstly the only way NOT to make credits in the game is to NOT play.

 

Secondly I can see all crafting and gathering skills having a possiblity to be devided into specialities.

[alginnzor]

This video explains multiboxing swtor. The man in the video runs three accounts on one computer with ease and that is just for a demonstration video. He calls himself Joe the multiboxer.

 

 

I checked around youtube and found other videos of people multiboxing. In one video the man is multiboxing 80 warcraft accounts on one computer. They should ban anyone running the multiboxing software. This has to be how they are running hundreds of accounts. The crewskill system definitely needs to change in light of this.

Edited August 28, 2016 by alginnzor

[CaptRogue]

I checked around youtube and found other videos of people multiboxing. In one video the man is multiboxing 80 warcraft accounts on one computer. They should ban anyone running the multiboxing software. This has to be how they are running hundreds of accounts. The crewskill system definitely needs to change in light of this.

 

Multiboxing is not illegal in this game nor is it illegal in WoW. In fact they actually don't care because each multiboxer, especically for WoW brings in another $20 sub per month. They raking in cash from one person.

 

As for your comment of crew skills needing changed, just stop. Seriously. There is NOTHING wrong with how the crew skills are now. Just because a few people cheat, you're going to reprimand the whole player base??

How are you expecting them to change it?? The only way to stop cheating from happening in crew skills is to completely remove them. You want that to happen?

 

Again, just quit feeding this credit farmer's troll post. Or yes we will have another large incoming nerf to the point the game is pointless in playing anything.

 

EDIT:

Your posting history sure is interesting. The only 4 things you've ever said on the forums are all about these topics. Seems like we have another competitor credit farmer. *rolls eyes*

Edited August 28, 2016 by CaptRogue

[alginnzor]

There is NOTHING wrong with how the crew skills are now. Just because a few people cheat, you're going to reprimand the whole player base??

How are you expecting them to change it?? The only way to stop cheating from happening in crew skills is to completely remove them. You want that to happen?

 

Multiple fixes have already been suggested. Randomizing the crewskill mission list would be a good start.

 

Tell me why would they would fix treasure hunting but leave slicing broken. All those bots always have two crewskills, treasure hunting and slicing. They are still standing all over the planets in front of vendors so they are obviously exploiting slicing crewskill lockboxes now.

Edited August 28, 2016 by alginnzor

[shadowrouge]

it doesn't matter what "FIX" BW comes up with credit farmers will find a way to farm fast credits. There is only one true way to make them go away or at the least slow them down. The community has to put a stop to it by "NOT BUYING THEIR PRODUCT". And to me the best way for BW to do this would be to ban the buyers. It's not going to happen so we have to learn to live with the fact. Since going F2P the sellers have moved in and will stay as long as there are people willing to buy.

 

If the community as a whole stopped buying it would then become non-profit for the credit sellers to stay.

[Andryah]

So these chars scattered around the galaxy standing in the same spots for months on end, all 60, all have no achieves, all with alphabet soup names are just a coincidence?

 

There is absolutely no way to tell for sure. We can suspect, even strongly so, but in the end.. only the studio can check, confirm, and take action. Since you can have free accounts in this game, it could very well be alt mules made by actual players for a variety of reasons. It does not however mean they are automatically bots. I'm not saying they are, and I am not saying they are not... because just like you.. I cannot tell for sure.

 

Players role here is to /report and move on. Spamming the forum over suspicious behaviors achieves nothing, hence non-productive and a waste of time.

[alginnzor]

There is absolutely no way to tell for sure. We can suspect, even strongly so, but in the end.. only the studio can check, confirm, and take action. Since you can have free accounts in this game, it could very well be alt mules made by actual players for a variety of reasons. It does not however mean they are automatically bots. I'm not saying they are, and I am not saying they are not... because just like you.. I cannot tell for sure.

 

Players role here is to /report and move on. Spamming the forum over suspicious behaviors achieves nothing, hence non-productive and a waste of time.

 

When there are hundreds of characters standing in front of vendors 24 hours a day then yes they are bots. You say "Spamming the forum over suspicious behaviors achieves nothing, hence non-productive and a waste of time" and you are wrong about that. Through posts on the forums we discovered the skill they were exploiting "Treasure Hunting lockboxes" and got it fixed and learned the skill they moved on to after it was fixed "Slicing crewskill lockboxes" and now we know how the exploiters ran hundreds of accounts, multiboxing programs.

 

The exploiters can run dozens of accounts on just one computer. I saw video of a guy running 80 world of warcraft accounts on just one computer with the same multiboxing program.

[SteveTheCynic]

At Fix #4, you can disguise your Mac IP addresses through multi server programs, will not work, also it would backfire on actual players. Like if you have 20+ people on a college dorm all using the same wi-fi to play SWTOR... ya they would all have the same IP adress potentially on that dorm, ik this because i was an RA at one and a MMO banned us all out because we had the same IP address, so you screw over actual players. Same at homes, me and my brother both play this game, if they see 2 people with the same IP address same thing can happen. So furthermore it screws legit players over.

Be careful of the difference between a MAC address and a Mac address and an IP address.

 

MAC = Media Access Control - a MAC address is the address within your local network of your Ethernet or WiFi card.

Mac = short for Macintosh, a reasonably successful brand of computers by Apple. There is no "Mac address" as such.

IP = Internet Protocol - an IP address is that four-numbers-separated-by dots (e.g. 192.168.1.54).

 

So a "Mac IP address" doesn't, as such, exist separately from a "PC IP address" or a

 

There are various ways to conceal your (public) IP address (reducing the effectiveness of IP filtering), and, indeed, IP filtering is bad in the presence of e.g. university dorms and ISPs that do "carrier grade NAT".

 

But the proposal is that the *MAC* (all-caps) address should be used. This address is unique - no two Ethernet or WiFi adapters have the same MAC address