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

[dr_mike]

What matters is that it is the same across multiple accounts at the same time when they are multiboxing on a computer.

 

No, it's not.

 

If they change the mac address and then run 20 accounts on the computer it shows the same "new" mac address on all the 20 accounts. Very easy to catch them this way.

 

You may be missing the point I was trying to raise. Changing a MAC address is like breathing. Hackers discovered that trick decades ago. If a true hacker or exploiter was reading this thread and saw this, they would be laughing at you because they're already doing it and have done so since day one.

 

Again I'm not trying to be negative. Just trying to get folks to realize that this test has already been bypassed and resolved.

Edited August 30, 2016 by dr_mike

[Thoronmir]

Has Bioware definitively stated that multi-boxing is an exploit?

 

I ask because similar claims of multi-box exploiting were made on the LOTRO forums, and Turbine basically said that multi-boxing in and of itself wasn't an exploit, and wasn't against the EULA.

 

All The Best

I've never seen anything in SWTOR declaring multi-boxing, per se, in violation of any rules. However, as in LOTRO (a game in which I multi-box frequently to give alts Hunter transports, Kinship invites, grinding slayer deeds, etc.), you must adhere to the "One-Keystroke-One-Action" rule. Of course, LOTRO makes multi-boxing easier by allowing multiple versions of the client to run on a single machine, as long as you're logged into different accounts (e.g., I've had as many as five LOTRO accounts running at the same time on one computer).

 

In summation: Multi-boxing = okay. Multi-boxing with some techo-wizardry that lets you mirror keystrokes across multiple accounts = bad. Also, all botting = bad. Pancakes = good.

Edited August 30, 2016 by Thoronmir

[PlasmaJohn]

The exploiters are running 20 or more accounts per computer through the multiboxing program. All of those accounts will share the mac address of the computer. It doesn't matter if they change their mac every day, all of the accounts will share the same mac.

 

20 unique clients? That would have to be a hell of a rig. Last time I looked the TOR client glommed all the memory it could (32-bit process so between 2 and 4Gb) and requires its own 3D card. Unless you're claiming they're running something other than a client per login. Now that would indeed be a TOS violation (Reverse engineering the netcode and macro'ing)

 

Regardless, it's trivially easy to create virtual interfaces, each with a separate and unique MAC address. This is why nobody considers it for use as a unique machine identifier.

[DreadtechSavant]

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.

 

WHY? I have 5 accounts on my PC. Never more than 1 account is online at any one time. I cannot get more than 1 account active on the same PC at the same time the launcher won't allow it , yes I tried, to guild invite one of my own alts into my guild.

It is not against any rules to have more than 1 account (I pay for two as subs the rest f2p) BW even let you use the same security key for up to 5 accounts and have done since day one.

 

As for the rest of your post, still offer no proof at all to anything you say (BTW its the same guy) I did look into this and I found just 1. Most had zero crew skills because they are not at the required level to have crew skills and most of the level 60's also had zero crew skills because if they did they could not delete the character and make a new free one because if crew skills are max BW don't allow you to delete and remake a new free toon. Sending out crew on missions even doing so 24/7 is still not an exploit.

 

Also after all the so called character making credit exploits this guy has complained about now going back over two years has had zero impact on anything in the game as far as goldsellers, GTN prize or anything else. The only impact is on the us, the actual players.

 

You even state in the post I quoted above how things have gone up in the last 3 months. REALLY?, you mean after the nurff to blue lockboxes, after the nurff to slicing, and still not changed even now after the nurff to treasure hunting. All the things you lot previously blamed for said inflation. Clearly you don't have a clue DO YOU>.

[DarthSpuds]

When you combine it with the crewskills generating credits through lockboxes and items that can be vendored for a profit they control the entire economy.

 

They don't control the economy.

 

All The Best

[dr_mike]

All of those accounts will share the mac address of the computer.

 

You're still missing what I'm saying. They won't be sharing a mac address.

 

If I;m running 20 connections from my computer, I can get it to show 20 different mac addresses at the same time.

[alginnzor]

Either way, fixing the problem in the game is best. Randomize the mission list. Adjust the missions to reward items and not credits. Profit from crewskills should come from interacting with other players and the gtn, not by interacting with vendors.

[CaptRogue]

Either way, fixing the problem in the game is best. Randomize the mission list. Adjust the missions to reward items and not credits. Profit from crewskills should come from interacting with other players and the gtn, not by interacting with vendors.

 

 

If it gives items, you still have to VENDOR them which means credits. *rolls eyes* Let it go Mr. Credit seller. Move on to another game.

Edited August 30, 2016 by CommunityDroidEU
rude

[psandak]

something that just occurred to me as I was typing a completely different response: maybe these missions are the way they are to entice botters and goldspammers to use them...so they can be tracked, caught, and shutdown. The reason I think this might be the case is because this issue is cyclical: the missions generate more credits than they cost to run, after a while they are nerfed, next expansion they are again generating more credits than they cost to run, after a while they get nerfed again.

[Transcendent]

You may well be right.

 

The alternative is to make the items gained worth 1 credit to vendors, lower the cost of the missions to compensate, remove the credits from the missions.

 

That way, if you are running the missions to gain crafting materials (or more to the point the crits), you're not really losing anything at the end of the day. If you're running the missions to sell the crits on the GTN, again it isn't something that affects the player by doing so (albeit a small cost reduction in running the missions countered by not being wise to vendor blue materials).

 

I'm still failing to see exactly what they are gaining by vendoring items, surely they'll be working at a loss? No doubt I'm missing something and there are specific missions that give on average more than you spend. Then again, I only run the missions for crit materials for crafting.

 

Either way, even if BioWare do move to make things more frustrating for the normal players, the credit sellers will likely have a long list of thing they can automate to gain credits. So they need to go after the credit sellers directly. Heck if Blizzard can go directly for the cheat software people, I'm failing to see why EA can't get behind their games and really start pushing to get the sites shutdown (I mean we've ALL seen the spam of one particular credit seller site that probably installs spyware on your PC, or worse.)

[The-Kaitou-Kid]

Either way, even if BioWare do move to make things more frustrating for the normal players, the credit sellers will likely have a long list of thing they can automate to gain credits. So they need to go after the credit sellers directly.

 

Pretty much this. To put things in perspective for those that think nerfing crew skills is going to "fix the problem" of credit spammers and multi box bots, I can think of specific instances in the past where bots were going after not crew skills, but enemies in the open world. I removed my detailed explanation as I highly doubt Bioware would want that kinda thing posted on the forums, but the point of the matter is it's not out of the realm of possibility for them to simply farm open world enemies with a basic scripted rotation. They could bot a lot of things, so targeting crew skills isn't going to do anything but move the bots to something else.

 

They need to figure out a reliable way of detecting the bots and target them directly instead playing a Whack-a-Nerf with the game's credit sources, because the only people they really hurt by doing that is the legitimate players. The bots will always find another way.

[alginnzor]

Pretty much this. To put things in perspective for those that think nerfing crew skills is going to "fix the problem" of credit spammers and multi box bots, I can think of specific instances in the past where bots were going after not crew skills, but enemies in the open world. I removed my detailed explanation as I highly doubt Bioware would want that kinda thing posted on the forums, but the point of the matter is it's not out of the realm of possibility for them to simply farm open world enemies with a basic scripted rotation. They could bot a lot of things, so targeting crew skills isn't going to do anything but move the bots to something else.

 

They need to figure out a reliable way of detecting the bots and target them directly instead playing a Whack-a-Nerf with the game's credit sources, because the only people they really hurt by doing that is the legitimate players. The bots will always find another way.

 

Randomizing the crewskill mission list isn't a nerf and would go a long way to stopping those multiboxers.

Edited August 31, 2016 by alginnzor

[The-Kaitou-Kid]

Randomizing the crewskill mission list isn't a nerf and would go a long way to stopping those multiboxers.

 

Randomizing the crew skill missions would be fairly harmless (if only annoying), sure, but it would barely do anything to the bots as well. Fairly certain they can look for certain pixels on the screen and click according to that, so they don't need the crew skills to be in exact order. They can just match the pixels with the name of the mission, which is unique for each mission, and write their scripts according to that. At that point randomizing the crew skill missions does absolutely nothing to the bots outside of making them slightly change their scripts.

 

So, no, it really wouldn't go a long way to stopping the multiboxers. That's ignoring the fact that, again, even if they couldn't do crew skills there are things they can go after in the open world that are just as easily botted and profited from.

[alginnzor]

The multiboxing program sends the same clicks to all screens. So randomizing the crewskill mission list would mess up their plan but just to be sure they should remove credit generation through crewskills. Then crewskills can then perform its intended purpose of generating items to use or be sold to other players for a profit, not to vendors. Edited August 31, 2016 by alginnzor

[Transcendent]

The multiboxing program sends the same clicks to all screens. So randomizing the crewskill mission list would mess up their plan but just to be sure they should remove credit generation through crewskills. Then crewskills can then perform its intended purpose of generating items to use or be sold to other players for a profit, not to vendors.

 

Again, you miss the point. You're specifically asking for normal players, the genuine players to be on the recieving end of a credit source nerf.

 

I'm not sure what your motivation is here, but judging from your posting history it certainly isn't in favour of the genuine players, and only in favour of aiding credit sellers. By making such a change, it only hampers the genuine player base of the game. Ultimately by removing sources of income from the game will result in the opposite effect for credit sellers - no players left to buy those credits gained by surreptitious methods.

 

That's what will happen with constant nerfing of credit sources for the legimitate players. I couldn't give two ***** about the credit sellers losing a source of income.

 

Absolutely credit generation could be removed from crew skills, but then all the credit sellers have to do is simply spend some of those ill gotten gains, boost companions up to rank 30-50 fairly cheaply (automated of course, because why put in any effort), then farm the materials to sell on the GTN. Thereby gaining credits.

 

The point being made is that BioWare need to go after the credit sellers directly, be it banning by detecting multibox / scripts or by more real world methods that are available to them (shutting down websites, reporting Paypal accounts so they can be closed down and funds claimed for costs etc). Not by punishing the legitimate players of the game.

 

That is the point you are so clearly ignoring and / or missing.

[Andryah]

Again, you miss the point. You're specifically asking for normal players, the genuine players to be on the recieving end of a credit source nerf.

 

I'm not sure what your motivation is here, but judging from your posting history it certainly isn't in favour of the genuine players, and only in favour of aiding credit sellers. By making such a change, it only hampers the genuine player base of the game. Ultimately by removing sources of income from the game will result in the opposite effect for credit sellers - no players left to buy those credits gained by surreptitious methods.

 

Accurate assessment, IMO. He clearly has an agenda to shut down credit fountains for actual players. The fact that he disguises it as some crusade against bots is unconvincing.

 

Bots in MMOs are perpetual in nature. They are like insurgencies that run just under the radar and when you squelch one insurgency, another pops up somewhere else. What you do NOT do in the case of an insurgency is penalize innocent citizens while prosecuting the insurgency.

 

Clearly, the studio does work to track and ban bots, likely whole networks of characters associated with said bots... because if you want to crush an insurgency, you do so via gathered intelligence such that you can roll up a whole ring, rather then just banning specific characters/accounts. Some players are of the view that their play experience in an MMO should be pure in their minds, absent any signs of bots, exploiters, spammers, etc. That view is completely unrealistic, as these issues are driven by humans, and humans are cleaver creatures who will find another channel for their efforts every time you shut one down. Of course.... unrealistic expectations by players is not new to MMOs.

 

I do agree that these ongoing threads about "X" being exploited by "Y" are very likely false flag efforts by exploiters who want to narrow the options for players and hence widen their potential customer base.

[alginnzor]

They fixed treasure hunting but didn't ban the bots because you still see them standing in front of vendors 24 hours a day. The developers may have done that on purpose to see what the exploiters would do next. It is obviously they moved onto slicing crewskill lockboxes and vendoring the items because they are still standing in front of vendors 24 hours a day and they all have two skills, treasure hunting (now fixed) and slicing (fixed soon, hopefully)

[Holocron]

They fixed treasure hunting but didn't ban the bots because you still see them standing in front of vendors 24 hours a day. The developers may have done that on purpose to see what the exploiters would do next. It is obviously they moved onto slicing crewskill lockboxes and vendoring the items because they are still standing in front of vendors 24 hours a day and they all have two skills, treasure hunting (now fixed) and slicing (fixed soon, hopefully)

 

 

I wish they would just ban you. You have no interest but to hurt players through nerf mongering.

[LordArtemis]

I was disappointed to hear that boxes were nerfed with respect to credits, but happy to hear that heroics were restored.

 

I always felt that if there was any move needed to reduce credit flow into the in game economy there were likely better targets, like the group bonus for heroics (though I admit that carrot is a pretty good incentive to group), and perhaps some ways to create better credit sinks.

 

I have to admit, however, that is seems odd that this kind of post seems to pop up from time to time, posts that seem like attempts to reduce credit earning ability for regular players.

 

I would say a good counter would be to substantially increase the amount of credits paid for non-heroic, non-tactical group content. Just my personal slant.

[Lunafox]

I'm not a native English speaker. Sorry for my English. However, who told you slicing missions a day could gained 2 million credit? Have you ever test it? If not, please test and post your result. My charactor has just earned 600K per day. There is no profite for doing this. I just want to say, slicing mission is not the reason that cause the inflation of game economy.

 

Could you please choose another colour to write in? That blue is making me go blind. Thanks.

[Jamtas]

We don't need to nerf ways players make credits - we need to introduce some credit sinks back into the game.

 

• The recent companion gift one was a good idea, but shot itself in the foot with the price tag put on it for a character perk and not legacy perk. (though these are one time sinks. But when priced too high, aren't sinks, they are bypassed items.
  
• Nightlife event with new items would be a good sink
  
• desirable items purchased from vendors and not just cartel market.
  
• new stronghold
  
• flagship encryption available for purchase with credits from a vendor.
  

 

I feel like the only thing taking money out of the economy right now is the GTN tax/commission. With the high rate of credit generation, that just isn't enough.

[LordArtemis]

We don't need to nerf ways players make credits - we need to introduce some credit sinks back into the game.

 

• The recent companion gift one was a good idea, but shot itself in the foot with the price tag put on it for a character perk and not legacy perk. (though these are one time sinks. But when priced too high, aren't sinks, they are bypassed items.
  
• Nightlife event with new items would be a good sink
  
• desirable items purchased from vendors and not just cartel market.
  
• new stronghold
  
• flagship encryption available for purchase with credits from a vendor.
  

 

I feel like the only thing taking money out of the economy right now is the GTN tax/commission. With the high rate of credit generation, that just isn't enough.

 

Some great ideas IMO.

 

Temporary boosts that increase XP by 100 percent, damage increase (against NPCs), credit increase, movement speed, etc would work IMO. I think temporary boost consumables as credit syncs tend to be very effective.

 

They could open up the appearance designer kiosk for credits, or allow credits to purchase coins......

[Icykill_]

I wish they would just ban you. You have no interest but to hurt players through nerf mongering.

 

Agreed

[katanaacredus]

They fixed treasure hunting but didn't ban the bots because you still see them standing in front of vendors 24 hours a day. The developers may have done that on purpose to see what the exploiters would do next. It is obviously they moved onto slicing crewskill lockboxes and vendoring the items because they are still standing in front of vendors 24 hours a day and they all have two skills, treasure hunting (now fixed) and slicing (fixed soon, hopefully)

 

Since you have been on the offensive for nerfing or completely removing every legit player income source, alginnzor (and several other names used), it still appears to me that you are in fact one of the RMT credit sellers tiring to remove any and all income from legitimate players so your bot income is easier to sell.

 

Maybe if they just ban people that try to push for nerfs the game would be better off. That would be a GREAT fix!

Edited August 31, 2016 by katanaacredus

[DreadtechSavant]

I have now put alginnzor on ignore as well as the OP (though think its the same player) If we stop posting in this thread and every other thread by them the threads will just die a natural death. After all it only us continue to post here keeping it going. So yep my last post here. Edited August 31, 2016 by DreadtechSavant