Heroic/Epic Otto's Boxes need immediate attention

[SouthernGent]

There are also people, more unscrupulous than me, who have duped thousands of AS and so the cost to launder boxes for AS is negligible.

True dat.

[myliftkk_v2]

No assumption needed. We've seen them do it before. (Hint: F2P launch).

Its easy.

Two hints in the post you quoted were "cross referencing" and "algorithm."

The real time consumption here has already been historically demonstrated, so also no assumptions made. Instead of mass banning which other games do (along with posting the literal number of accounts gone to set an example re: GW/GW2/EQ/EQ2 historically) they chose the route multiple times in the past to INDIVIDUALLY log into EACH CHARACTER and scrub it clean of ill gotten items. This is done under the misconception that those folks will still hang around and spend money later, when they proved they wont by gaining items free they were supposed to spend money on in the first place to acquire, through obvious non intended means.

Thus they allow the ForumDDO™ banter of "cant possibly know" continue, as its great conversational furniture to couch the obscurement of the issue in, with attempts to avoid the obvious severity of population dip that would occur if they took the correct action here to stop the duping. All anyone objective needs to determine the lack of effectiveness of previous "actions taken" is to observe its occurrence yet again, with a higher level of severity than previous instances.

Any attempted counterpoint is of the usual variety round these parts, confusing (or purposely conflating) the difference between time consumption and level of difficulty. Any claim of sameness here is a red flag for blind defense. They are choosing the added time consumption on purpose.

Those who understand this historical timeline of events will see the ease in which this can be done has already been demonstrated in this very game. Those who dont will continue to claim the usual buzzwords they saw someone else post that one summer in that one place which are not relevant here in this conversation (such as "spaghetti code" and "monumental undertaking." )

It's actually not as easy as you suggest to fix the issue if one doesn't have a pretty intimate understanding of atomic processes all the way down to locking strategies on the specific dbs in question.

The underlying software problem behind duping is simple, a machine loses track of exactly what the value in some register is due to incoming process conflicts. Why the machine can lose track is because outside a very deliberate strategy to keep track, and that strategy gets very technical very fast, it takes multiple levels of transaction security to get right. It's analogus to stopping an individual running a counterfeit/change scam that used to happen at a register in person (for those who have read up on the history of scamming/counterfeiting) with being able to just kick them out for being too cute by half. At one point, most every free shopping cart in existence out there had (and probably still has) similar logical holes, to list a different example on how widespread this kind of problem is (why I roll my own stuff for anything that requires exact accuracy). There's also a real expense to implementing such a strategy, because it's not cost free.

What is much easier, and here's where I will agree with you, is trapping the issue after it happens where cross-ref is possible (certainly box purchasing has a record of provenance that can be interrogated). That's a mitigation strategy that can work when a new access strategy proves problematic to implement with the talent one has. Upon discovery, it would be pretty simply to just lock an account nearly immediately, and if one was wanted to be eyes in the sky about it, one could sweep box history so many minutes looking for discrepancies and essentially eliminating the effect of the problem altogether.

Let's just say SSG won't be using repeatable reads anytime soon.

[john0]

I remember a while back they did a ban hammer to people exploiting the ravenloft saga xp. Perhaps they will be able to do the same for this.

I’m not sure how much of a negative impact it’s caused as a whole to the servers but If it was to the point where it’s gone too rampant I would first blacklist the exploiters (we could categorize them to issue different banning severity) then rollback the servers, impose the ban hammer, give a compensation event like the one they did for wayfinder.

Again I don’t know what others feel about this exploit, perhaps some don’t care, some feel angered/cheated etc etc. I’m a bit mixed, but those that are heavily exploited need to be acc deleted, as well as their associated mule accounts

[KoobTheProud]

There may be a slight fallacy here, you may be assuming that buying AS from the store is the main way of obtaining them, hence the value calculations. I have made thousands of AS and I have never bought a single one.nor have I duped any, I have made them on the ASAH selling craftining mats and so it would not cost me anything in $ if I spent 2000AS on a box.

At times I do ask myself why I bother with the ASAH as there is so little that I want to buy, I have had additional gold rolls when there is a double xp weekend an also bought a few tomes, but I make AS far quicker than I can spend them. Maybe I just like the wheeling and dealing - I have done this in every MMO that I have played but always got to the point - I have all this money, and there is nothing to spend it on.

There are also people, more unscrupulous than me, who have duped thousands of AS and so the cost to launder boxes for AS is negligible.

It gets complicated due to the fact that shards can be acquired in-game without monetary expense, the fact that shards go on sale from time to time making their cost in points less for those shards, and the fact that DDOPts can be acquired in-game via non-monetary processes at a somewhat significant rate.

The endpoint however remain pretty consistent when you factor in how hard it is to obtain large amounts of shards and DDOPts through non-monetary processes. A dedicated points farmer can get several hundred points per heroic life. A dedicated shard farmer can get a lesser amount than that depending on luck per heroic life.

When you look at the astral shard costs in play on the ASAH in the current wave of duping it is clear that just one transaction there would cost an effective farmer a year's worth of farming or so. For obvious reasons that makes legitimate farming vastly inferior to whatever duping process is creating the illegitimate wealth in the current wave.

[SirValentine]

A script kiddie could write the algorithm.

Proving you don't know what you're talking about.

[Chai]

It's actually not as easy as you suggest to fix the issue if one doesn't have a pretty intimate understanding of atomic processes all the way down to locking strategies on the specific dbs in question.

The underlying software problem behind duping is simple, a machine loses track of exactly what the value in some register is due to incoming process conflicts. Why the machine can lose track is because outside a very deliberate strategy to keep track, and that strategy gets very technical very fast, it takes multiple levels of transaction security to get right. It's analogus to stopping an individual running a counterfeit/change scam that used to happen at a register in person (for those who have read up on the history of scamming/counterfeiting) with being able to just kick them out for being too cute by half. At one point, most every free shopping cart in existence out there had (and probably still has) similar logical holes, to list a different example on how widespread this kind of problem is (why I roll my own stuff for anything that requires exact accuracy). There's also a real expense to implementing such a strategy, because it's not cost free.

Let's just say SSG won't be using repeatable reads anytime soon.

Its far easier than you describe and you even hint that this "difficulty" once again is conflation between difficulty level of task and time consumption/cost of task completion. This happens often when software ends up in the hands of a care taker, and most if not all of the original coders are gone.

It is not a question of if they can or how, but a question of devotion of resources -vs- return. Its very easy to aggregate expenditure -vs- return numbers on the next projected p2w purchased-grind-mitigation scheme coming down the pipeline. Its not so easy to aggregate those numbers on fixing an exploit such as this, because how customer retention generates a profit often confuses people who have not worked loss prevention at the corporate level. By the time the loss occurs, the task proposal is deemed too late, too high cost, too resource intensive etc... and the priority is ramped down in favor of meeting a deadline for something that historically turns a more tangible profit. This is precisely the worst mentality to have in this situation, as it does nothing to stop the next occurrence of the exploit, with slightly different semantics (as we have seen historically - I mean this is not DDOs first duping rodeo).

What is much easier, and here's where I will agree with you, is trapping the issue after it happens where cross-ref is possible (certainly box purchasing has a record of provenance that can be interrogated). That's a mitigation strategy that can work when a new access strategy proves problematic to implement with the talent one has. Upon discovery, it would be pretty simply to just lock an account nearly immediately, and if one was wanted to be eyes in the sky about it, one could sweep box history so many minutes looking for discrepancies and essentially eliminating the effect of the problem altogether.

That would at least be a start. Its better than logging every single character on individually to scrub the ill gotten gains off characters (are they really going to edit PLs off toons?), then moving forward as if the same bad actors they allow to hang around won't take full advantage of the same type of issue again when opportunity presents itself to do so (and it is proven they will historically - I mean, how many times has this conversation been had lol). How many of these same folks were involved in the saga-palooza version, who are now involved in the box-a-palooza version? I'm betting theres significant overlap here.

[Chai]

Proving you don't know what you're talking about.

Then premise up and post a counter point. Ill put my loss prevention knowledge up against whatever premise you can bring, and we can have an equal footing discussion.

Ill start by saying that for 3 MMO companies I worked for in this capacity, we literally brought in a temp freshman college student on as a JR-Dev to write the algorithm. It was more than sufficient to catch the majority of the bad actors.

[Sho-sa]

Again I don’t know what others feel about this exploit...

For myself the cheating represents a continual push to move DDO toward bad quest design; monsters with inflated hit points and saves to compensate for the rampant cheaters, long narrow hallways filled with monsters, endless door-opening, unsatisfying raids, changing previously good quests into bad ones, and so forth.

Cheaters do affect the rest of us in a most negative way. They rise in power, much faster than normal, leaving normal players and especially newer players unable to enjoy the game as originally intended. New players can't/won't stay and the cheaters constantly complain about how easy the game is until the point they get bored and leave, and due to their negative impacts on the game there is no longer a player base to support a DDO which is fun to play. And by fun to play I mean reasonable quests and people still left online to play in groups.

A game company's ignoring of rampant cheating has the same effect upon the game world as a city which does not police its broken windows.

[SpittingCobra]

Ok, just to understand your point. Player A buys 1 box = like $50 to SSG. Player A then duplicates said box 50x, and sells/trades/gives them away; one of the people they sold to (Player B) was planning on buying a box, but instead gets three duped boxes for a lower price (say AS). There's now ~46 boxes generated without being paid for (given Player A paid for one, and Player B bought AS to pay for their three). Everything else is lost profit? Even worse if the AS were duped lol, which seems likely that some people have given the hilarious prices some people pay for stuff on the ASAH. If Player C was going to buy a box, but instead picks some up for free (trading raid items like a poster earlier) than SSG just lost $50 and they're already losing money with ~45 duped boxes still on the market.

How is SSG profiting immensely?

It seems like too much boring hassle to do something dishonorable that could be punishable too, yet some are so pathetic and desperate that they do. Cheating kills the game, so why do that when you want to play it? Some people aren't about playing for fun, but about competition for ego approval and end up torturing themselves in a delusional self appointed race to prosperity and glory. But where is the glory in cheating? If you are just having fun, you are the real winner!

If you are cheating to "keep up" you won't be feeling like a winner even if you win, in fact, the more you win the more a loser you will feel like, and you will probably cheat even more to try an compensate for that, it turns into a downward spiral until you end up compromising the very reason of playing in the first place, to have fun - and will somewhere along the way get very frustrated no matter what the end result it.

Cheating isn't worth it.

Game economies are similar to RL economies in some regards. These days you can "make' real money simply be creating your own crypto-currency, hyping it up, and than putting it into circulation. Just like cheaters duping boxes or game money or what-not, it is such a a hassle that you will most likely end up paying more than your returns in the long run (a work around isn't easy - I know of a guy who was the manager of an electric company and put about 100 computers in a basement somewhere and siphoned off their electric bill to make himself a billionaire, but not everyone is working at an electric company as its manager to do that.. he will probably get testicle cancer in the long run and die holding his nuts!)

No one escapes the consequences of their actions, otherwise the actions would not be meaningful. Each act resonates an energy signature in the bio-magnetic fields of the life form involved. The additional signatures attract new waves of reality. This means that cheaters are creating for themselves a reality they will not enjoy.

Don't try and trick reality, in the end you are just fooling yourself

...

[Duskofdead]

Experiencing all the built up content and trying different builds is the best part of this game. Skipping all that by cheating so you can get to the middling at best "endgame" scene is a terrible idea. How long ago was that WoW south park episode? And people still don't get it. There's nothing much to do once you have everything.

I agree with the spirit of what you are saying, but at the same time, I don't feel the way the game is being designed makes what you are saying feasible.

If reaper didn't give any special xp or gear quality or character enhancements and was instead simply a challenge mode, and if the most coveted items from raids were rare special cosmetics or appearance customizations for characters and items, I would agree there is no need to entertain the idea that more casual or newer players who are not established in the "meta" have a need to be accelerated there.

But that is not the case. No access to the toughest parts of meta requiring very well built toons effectually locks you into 2nd or 3rd class charactership in DDO.

[louissan]

I will be as plain as I can be: cheaters must be banned.

No ifs.
No buts.
No meh.

I don't care how much it takes -- nor should SSG and this problem should be their number one priority right now.

A game's (MMO or otherwise) success, financial returns, longevity, you name it, are based on two things (amongst others of course ): reputation and fairness.

When cheating goes on in this way unpunished, reputation goes down the drain and fairness is reduced to my greatgrandma's worlwide ranking at the 1500m freestyle.

--

I do not know what backend(s) SSG uses. I do not know how much is logged. But there should be some traceability, the ability to run audits and build replays. How hard is it to log the use of stones over time for every single toon, and rebuild a history of leveling, leveling speed, joined over the aforementioned use of stones? Add the presence of elixirs (though those can be probably be inferred by the XP/hour amounts, though this would not be 100% reliable), etc, etc.


The superheroes from the Vault will probably read this post (just like they have done on their own counterpart to this very thread) and laugh it off. But I wonder: why has the site suddenly has gone into "registered only" mode?

[Question2005]

Then premise up and post a counter point. Ill put my loss prevention knowledge up against whatever premise you can bring, and we can have an equal footing discussion.

Ill start by saying that for 3 MMO companies I worked for in this capacity, we literally brought in a temp freshman college student on as a JR-Dev to write the algorithm. It was more than sufficient to catch the majority of the bad actors.

Everytime someone claims that something is "impossible" (or extremely difficult/etc) for SSG to do, it always boils down to the same arguments :

-DDO is old, so its impossible

-SSG is a small studio, so its impossible

-DDO is not like other games, so its impossible

To be honest, considering that almost 100% of SSG's resources are apparently devoted to pushing out expansions instead of fixing bugs, its no wonder there are so many bugs in the game. Imagine what Windows would look like if Microsoft focused on releasing a new version of windows every 2 years instead of fixing bugs.

Fire on Thunder Peak is how many years old now, and there is a simple grammar error in the raid text that was never fixed. Why? Expansions take priority. IIRC its something like "The Nevalarich..." (which makes no sense grammar wise, thats a name, it's like referring to Cordovan as "The Cordovan...").

And the bug where players need to click the who tab to see player names in LFMs? Thats how many years old now? Many workarounds have been suggested, but SSG can never find time to work on this because they just keep prioritizing expansions instead.

If they spent less time on expansions and more on fixing bugs/updating old content, the game would be pretty well polished now.

[LavidDynch]

For myself the cheating represents a continual push to move DDO toward bad quest design; monsters with inflated hit points and saves to compensate for the rampant cheaters, long narrow hallways filled with monsters, endless door-opening, unsatisfying raids, changing previously good quests into bad ones, and so forth.

Cheaters do affect the rest of us in a most negative way. They rise in power, much faster than normal, leaving normal players and especially newer players unable to enjoy the game as originally intended. New players can't/won't stay and the cheaters constantly complain about how easy the game is until the point they get bored and leave, and due to their negative impacts on the game there is no longer a player base to support a DDO which is fun to play. And by fun to play I mean reasonable quests and people still left online to play in groups.

A game company's ignoring of rampant cheating has the same effect upon the game world as a city which does not police its broken windows.

Spot on! Considering what the previous dupes set in motion with half of the population running around with sov1 pots x40 hours and thus progressing their toons about 2-3 times as fast as non-whales or non-dupers which I suspect later on lead to the racial-life hamster wheel, tougher raids etc ... What monster of a hamster wheel will be next when Otto´s is the new gold standard?

[HungarianRhapsody]

I will be as plain as I can be: cheaters must be banned.

I'm cool with that. I'd also like to see people who don't cheat allowed to remain in the game.

Turbine/SSG has a bad track record for that. Banning people who aren't cheating has happened repeatedly when they ban large waves of players.

[louissan]

I'm cool with that. I'd also like to see people who don't cheat allowed to remain in the game.

Turbine/SSG has a bad track record for that. Banning people who aren't cheating has happened repeatedly when they ban large waves of players.

hey you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs

[FTPDDO]

hey you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs

And you don't make an omlette with bad eggs - you throw them out.

[ggmarquez]

hey you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs

but if you just start breaking eggs, and don't stop until every last egg has been broken... you have neither an omelette, nor any eggs remaining. in fact all you will have is a mess...

[HungarianRhapsody]

And you don't make an omlette with bad eggs - you throw them out.

I'd really like to see the good eggs not get thrown out.

[Duskofdead]

I'd really like to see the good eggs not get thrown out.

What good eggs are we all worrying about?

People who loaded up on excessive amounts of suspiciously cheap XP stones, and used them?

[HungarianRhapsody]

What good eggs are we all worrying about?

People who loaded up on excessive amounts of suspiciously cheap XP stones, and used them?

Nope. The people who never bought boxes from third parties but get caught up in whatever botched script SSG uses to try to find cheaters like the previous times they tried to ban lots of cheaters (Mayban was the worst fiasco, but not the only one). SSG has a bad track record of banning people who never cheated because they wrote their script poorly and didn't bother to have anyone check the results before banning.