I would really like everyone's thoughts on this.

username · May 2023

creampie said:

go play wow with your account bound this game isn t for you. you dont seem to understand what is a good mmo

Yea man good mmo = everyone bots everything, what great logic you have. And you wonder why those other mmos are doing just fine but UO has the population of braincells you have?

username · May 2023

The hypocrisy of some people:
"NO ACCOUNT BOUND! WE WANT TO BE ABLE TO SELL STUFF"
meanwhile...
AFK bot farms set & control the market, sell unlimited supply and for cheaper than legitimate players ever will...
Never change

Hmm, wonder what would happen to the bots that have ran these Slim veils for YEARS if they were 'Account Bound' from the start? Pretty sure anyone that defends non-account bound drops for new content at this point are just botting it themselves.

CovenantX · May 2023

tbh, those vendors with lots of shadowguard drops were probably people like me that farmed the hell out of it while you could double the drops, actually at one time you could get upt 6 chances at a drop for each character there with a minimum of 4 characters per run,, but that required you to run an 'illegal program' (which botters are already doing anyway) so, it's not unreasonable that someone just held onto a stockpile of drops. I had lots of drops that looked similar to those vendors at one point, but I also have lots of chars that use many of the same items.

I had over 60 slithers myself several years ago (i think it was around 2010-2012 ish? will have to check stratics if the post still exists), none of them were obtained through botting, now bots would likely have many many more than I would.. probably not slithers though, because they didn't all come from Medusa, they came from an EM event that eventually lead EMs to rarely or never use Medusa as an EM event boss. -I'll just say it paid off being the only non-sampire & non-tamer at the event... for once.

CovenantX · May 2023

Hehe, they could get rid of account bound completely if they did like....anything about bots. Mesanna said they could detect third-party programs, unless that was a lie.. why the hell aren't they doing anything about it?

'direct-to-pack' reward items need to be account bound if they're obtained by an EJ account.

Another thing that would curb botting is if they capped the amount of corpse loot a mob could drop based on the # of players with looting rights. I would say at Maximum a mob should never exceed a full party's worth of loot under any circumstance. (10 players), you get mobs that people get looting rights with 20+ characters dropping nearly 400 items when the mob dies. it's too much of a 'bonus' to not try to get the most out of it.

Garth_Grey · May 2023

2 days later

Image: https://forum.uo.com/uploads/editor/2t/xm28nzb22j1o.jpg

To put it into perspective, Skara has had more completed trade runs in the past 2 days, than Moonglow has had since it's inception.

CovenantX · May 2023

Garth_Grey said:

2 days later

To put it into perspective, Skara has had more completed trade runs in the past 2 days, than Moonglow has had since it's inception.

The devs are probably sitting back, thinking Wow, people really enjoy the trade-route content! Look at all the participation, but it's 99% bots.

Grimbeard · May 2023

If the Developers spent just an hour in game looking at stuff like this rather than player memorials to delete

Yoshi · May 2023

"shadowguard drops are now capped at 3 per encounter though no?

these items are prob from when you used to get double/triple drop from using the double party trick"

popps · May 2023

CovenantX said:

Hehe, they could get rid of account bound completely if they did like....anything about bots. Mesanna said they could detect third-party programs, unless that was a lie.. why the hell aren't they doing anything about it?

'direct-to-pack' reward items need to be account bound if they're obtained by an EJ account.

Another thing that would curb botting is if they capped the amount of corpse loot a mob could drop based on the # of players with looting rights. I would say at Maximum a mob should never exceed a full party's worth of loot under any circumstance. (10 players), you get mobs that people get looting rights with 20+ characters dropping nearly 400 items when the mob dies. it's too much of a 'bonus' to not try to get the most out of it.

I understand that, out there, there is quite a number of Anti-Cheats programs which Developers of games could, if they wanted, take advantage of for their games.... and, I understand, some of those anti-cheat programs are quite well rounded to stop players from being able to use utilities external to the game client....

But, probably, the very first thing which could probably stop the use of scripts would be ending for good the ability of players to sell in-game items for real money.... without the ability to make real money off of in-game items I wonder how many players would really bother to run BOTs and scripts....

If players stopped spending their hard earned money on in-game items for good, perhaps, hopefully, BOTs and scripting in UO would vanish like snow melting in a sunny day....

Yoshi · May 2023

popps said:

But, probably, the very first thing which could probably stop the use of scripts would be ending for good the ability of players to sell in-game items for real money..

"and how they going to stop that?

people make private transactions all the time in discord.

Completely impossible to stop a transaction occuring outside of the game"

popps · May 2023

Yoshi said:

popps said:

But, probably, the very first thing which could probably stop the use of scripts would be ending for good the ability of players to sell in-game items for real money..

"and how they going to stop that?
people make private transactions all the time in discord.
Completely impossible to stop a transaction occuring outside of the game"

Well, perhaps, just perhaps, a good way could be to address the "reasons" why players might be willing to spend their hard earned money on ingame items ?

Let's just look at "why" players might be willing to spend real money to purchase in-game items or gold, and once the reasons are found out, the Developers could make changes to the game so as to make it "moot" for players to be willing to spend real money on in-game items or gold ?

For example, if getting certain items in the game was to be too time consuming, and because of this, players could be willing to spend real money to buy them instead of having to spend countless of their time to get them in the game, the Developers could make changes to the game to make these items more readily available in the game so that players, rather then spending their hard earned real money to get them from other players, would simply get them from playing the game, even as casual players thus saving up their real money....

CovenantX · May 2023

popps said:

But, probably, the very first thing which could probably stop the use of scripts would be ending for good the ability of players to sell in-game items for real money.... without the ability to make real money off of in-game items I wonder how many players would really bother to run BOTs and scripts....

If players stopped spending their hard earned money on in-game items for good, perhaps, hopefully, BOTs and scripting in UO would vanish like snow melting in a sunny day....

Selling in-game items for real $ wouldn't be an issue if all the items were farmed legitimately, instead of cheated into circulation via bots or worse, dupes and/or rogue GMs, EMs, or Advisors (I believe the advisor program is suspended) I'm not against RMTs, I'm against the methods most RMTer's get the items they sell for $. - RMT goes on in every MMO, even the most popular ones.

Rule enforcement is the best way to curb cheating. for rules to even have a chance to be enforced in UO, another player has to page on the suspected cheater. . -this enables people that have 'power' to cheat with little to no chance of being caught. -anyone remember Clops? How long did he get away with doing what he was doing before he got caught?

popps · May 2023

CovenantX said:

popps said:

But, probably, the very first thing which could probably stop the use of scripts would be ending for good the ability of players to sell in-game items for real money.... without the ability to make real money off of in-game items I wonder how many players would really bother to run BOTs and scripts....

If players stopped spending their hard earned money on in-game items for good, perhaps, hopefully, BOTs and scripting in UO would vanish like snow melting in a sunny day....

Selling in-game items for real $ wouldn't be an issue if all the items were farmed legitimately, instead of cheated into circulation via bots or worse, dupes and/or rogue GMs, EMs, or Advisors (I believe the advisor program is suspended) I'm not against RMTs, I'm against the methods most RMTer's get the items they sell for $. - RMT goes on in every MMO, even the most popular ones.

Rule enforcement is the best way to curb cheating. for rules to even have a chance to be enforced in UO, another player has to page on the suspected cheater. . -this enables people that have 'power' to cheat with little to no chance of being caught. -anyone remember Clops? How long did he get away with doing what he was doing before he got caught?

I'm not against RMTs, I'm against the methods most RMTer's get the items they sell for $. - RMT goes on in every MMO, even the most popular ones.

Well, if there is real money that can be made from the game by selling in-game items and in-game gold, can we then get surprised if there might then be some players who could, perhaps, think about using ways that could make all that easier and faster ?

How old is now Ultima Online ? Some 26 Years or so...

If we are today, still lamenting cheating being used in the game, I need to think that getting rid of cheating is simply not possible, if 26 Years or so have not been enough to get rid of any cheating for good.

Hence, my thinking that, perhaps, taking away the reasons why players might want to cheat, that is, to overcome the time consuming and tediousness of the grinding often necessary to get certain, more valuable items, could then be an alternate solution....

If players could more easily and with less time involved be able to get the items they need, by simply playing the game, hopefully, they would not feel the need to spend their real money on the purchase of in-game items and in-game gold and, consequentially, there might not be some players wanting to use cheats, scripts and BOTs to get items to sell for real money because they would hardly find buyers....

That is at least how I see it.

CovenantX · May 2023

Right, but Mesanna claimed they're able to detect cheating, if that's true why isn't it dealt with by them via some automated system, if it's detectable as they say, it shouldn't be hard to disconnect players using detected cheats within a very short time after they've connected, instead of requiring another player to report it first? Unless it was a lie..which is totally possible. or maybe she meant specific types of cheats that are probably obsolete now? who knows.

I don't think it's possible to get rid of 100% of the cheating, but we're not talking about 100% of it (though that would be great), we're talking about the blatant cheating going on that is ignored.

I'd be hard pressed to think the devs don't know it's going on.

Pawain · May 2023

CovenantX said:

don't think it's possible to get rid of 100% of the cheating, but we're not talking about 100% of it (though that would be great), we're talking about the blatant cheating going on that is ignored.

I'd be hard pressed to think the devs don't know it's going on.

The problem is, as others have stated about this guy is that players talk to him. He answers. So a GM is going to come talk to me and I reply and then ban me because someone paged on me while I am doing a trade run?

Has anyone that is sitting at their PC and answered the GM been banned? Unless they were using items to block?

Right now I am on the internet on mulple pages, watching TV, playing 2 games. I am not allowed to multitask?

Sure he may be running macros or whatever, but he is there. You can dispute it, but are you at his house watching him? The GM is not either.

Maybe we should be required to Zoom with a GM every time we are paged on?

Grimbeard · May 2023

Pawain said:

CovenantX said:

don't think it's possible to get rid of 100% of the cheating, but we're not talking about 100% of it (though that would be great), we're talking about the blatant cheating going on that is ignored.

I'd be hard pressed to think the devs don't know it's going on.

The problem is, as others have stated about this guy is that players talk to him. He answers. So a GM is going to come talk to me and I reply and then ban me because someone paged on me while I am doing a trade run?

Has anyone that is sitting at their PC and answered the GM been banned? Unless they were using items to block?

Right now I am on the internet on mulple pages, watching TV, playing 2 games. I am not allowed to multitask?

Sure he may be running macros or whatever, but he is there. You can dispute it, but are you at his house watching him? The GM is not either.

Maybe we should be required to Zoom with a GM every time we are paged on?

So everything is user error except cheating which the burden of proof is shifted ?

Pawain · May 2023

Please troll somewhere else and stop pretending I say things that I do not.

But ya 90% of the things I say are user error actually are.

So you are saying there is no burden of proof? I page on you and the GM should just come ban you?

Thanks for your non contribution to the thread as your usual replies.

CovenantX · May 2023

Pawain said:

CovenantX said:

don't think it's possible to get rid of 100% of the cheating, but we're not talking about 100% of it (though that would be great), we're talking about the blatant cheating going on that is ignored.

I'd be hard pressed to think the devs don't know it's going on.

The problem is, as others have stated about this guy is that players talk to him. He answers. So a GM is going to come talk to me and I reply and then ban me because someone paged on me while I am doing a trade run?

Has anyone that is sitting at their PC and answered the GM been banned? Unless they were using items to block?

Right now I am on the internet on mulple pages, watching TV, playing 2 games. I am not allowed to multitask?

Sure he may be running macros or whatever, but he is there. You can dispute it, but are you at his house watching him? The GM is not either.

Maybe we should be required to Zoom with a GM every time we are paged on?

We have no way of knowing unless it's happened to us.

I've had a GM talk to me when I farmed blackthorn dungeon in the mage room once, I even farmed it after they added that 'teleport' to the cell and take poison damage thing they had in there (but the GM thing happen before that was in-place). I didn't get banned because I responded, but I also didn't have any program (aside from UOAssist) running anyway Nor was my character performing any actions other than sitting still waiting for auto-defend to kill the mages as they came close enough, that wasn't possible to do without a program after they changed the line-of-sight flagging, shortly before they removed all the spawn from blackthorn dungeon, so what I was doing wouldn't work anymore even if the spawn were there again).

Now if i had been using any illegal third-party program/client, I and anyone else should expect to be banned, regardless of activity. because that's in the ToS. (unenforced, or we wouldn't be talking about it)

-Note I was also always farming BT dungeon on the fel side, and several people tried to kill my sampire, most of them failing, I had no idea until after the fact, it turned out the only one successful killed my sampire was actually someone in my own guild (unguilded obv) because pvp was dead at the time, and we'd sometimes make a character no one knew for these purposes. to troll each other, since nothing else is going on...

Multi-tasking doesn't involve a third-party program to perform tasks for you, you'd be doing them yourself while juggling the other tasks at hand. -I'm not talking about that, if you're doing that with approved programs (manually) then it's perfectly legal, because you're following the rules.

According to Mesanna there's a (i believe she said 2 minutes but may have been 5?) timer you have to respond to a GM if one talks to you. and as I keep going back to, she also said third-party programs are detectable and advised people not to use them IF they are detectable, GMs should be able to tell the difference without even interacting with the player, and if that's possible why would it even require a player to page on a bot in the first place?

Pawain · May 2023

I am not qualified to speak on what they can and can not do, and how well it works.

I had a house issue once. They said the house had not been traded in the last x months but it was traded in reality a few hours prior.
He did tell me I changed my password a few hours ago, which I did.

So, ya they may have the ability to check many things but are the answers they receive correct and up to date.

Personally, I would hope they know what client is accessing their servers.
They could not allow anything but CC and EC and I would be fine. But I realize others want to use more advanced add ons.

Tim · May 2023

To put what they can and can't do into context

The only other game I play regularly is "PAY to play". I know players that spend hundreds a week on it and have seen players that must spend MUCH more than that.

It's easy to find cheat/bot programs on the web for it even though the developers are fighting against them. They are being seen to be used. Everything the bots gain can be purchased from the developer for cash so cost the developer a potential sale.

My point is if a modern game with a Big budget and a large finical incentive to stop cheats can't don't expect that Broadsword can.

PS No I don't spend money on it and should be able to catch up with the average player in a couple of years.

Grimbeard · May 2023

The fact that everything RMT sellers sell not in uo store making the game money is what drives conspiracy theories

CovenantX · May 2023

Pawain said:

I am not qualified to speak on what they can and can not do, and how well it works.

I had a house issue once. They said the house had not been traded in the last x months but it was traded in reality a few hours prior.
He did tell me I changed my password a few hours ago, which I did.

So, ya they may have the ability to check many things but are the answers they receive correct and up to date.

Personally, I would hope they know what client is accessing their servers.
They could not allow anything but CC and EC and I would be fine. But I realize others want to use more advanced add ons.

The house you're referring to wouldn't happen to be a castle on ice island would it?

Pawain · May 2023

CovenantX said:

Pawain said:

I am not qualified to speak on what they can and can not do, and how well it works.

I had a house issue once. They said the house had not been traded in the last x months but it was traded in reality a few hours prior.
He did tell me I changed my password a few hours ago, which I did.

So, ya they may have the ability to check many things but are the answers they receive correct and up to date.

Personally, I would hope they know what client is accessing their servers.
They could not allow anything but CC and EC and I would be fine. But I realize others want to use more advanced add ons.

The house you're referring to wouldn't happen to be a castle on ice island would it?

No comment. Some day Ill post it in Stupid things you did while playing UO. There is quite a silly story behind it. The sad thing is, they would have resolved it that day, if it showed that the house was traded. But the game said it was not. So, they had no evidence in my favor.

But I have it back.

CovenantX · May 2023

Pawain said:

The house you're referring to wouldn't happen to be a castle on ice island would it?

No comment. Some day Ill post it in Stupid things you did while playing UO. There is quite a silly story behind it. The sad thing is, they would have resolved it that day, if it showed that the house was traded. But the game said it was not. So, they had no evidence in my favor.

But I have it back.

Never mind, you must have edited your post while I was responding,

I seem to have misread your comment, and I knew you had it back because my guildy gave or sold it to you after we found out what happened with it.

Pawain · May 2023

CovenantX said:

Pawain said:

No comment. Some day Ill post it in Stupid things you did while playing UO. There is quite a silly story behind it.

I figured as much. I am aware of at least some of the story behind it though.

I'm curious as to the stupid things I did though. enlighten me. you can pm it to me if you like.

I meant myself when I wrote you. I was referring to myself in third person. I can see it was confusing to read. No one else did anything stupid.

Only me!

CovenantX · May 2023

Pawain said:

CovenantX said:

Pawain said:

No comment. Some day Ill post it in Stupid things you did while playing UO. There is quite a silly story behind it.

I figured as much. I am aware of at least some of the story behind it though.

I'm curious as to the stupid things I did though. enlighten me. you can pm it to me if you like.

I meant myself when I wrote you. I was referring to myself in third person. I can see it was confusing to read. No one else did anything stupid. Only me!

haha, sorry (it happened again!)

FarmerGiles · May 2023

You can still find this guy on Balhae. Scripting Shadowguard MOST of the day, AFK, 100% auto cycle from room to room to boss. Paged GM many times. NOTHING HAPPENS.

That's Level-100 cheating in gaming while this dev posts about Lv-5 BAGBALLS "exploiting game mechanics" blocking silly rabbits that bothers nobody....

Image: https://forum.uo.com/uploads/editor/ms/o0utjv7rkcfu.png

JackFlashUk · May 2023

popps said:

CovenantX said:

Hehe, they could get rid of account bound completely if they did like....anything about bots. Mesanna said they could detect third-party programs, unless that was a lie.. why the hell aren't they doing anything about it?

'direct-to-pack' reward items need to be account bound if they're obtained by an EJ account.

Another thing that would curb botting is if they capped the amount of corpse loot a mob could drop based on the # of players with looting rights. I would say at Maximum a mob should never exceed a full party's worth of loot under any circumstance. (10 players), you get mobs that people get looting rights with 20+ characters dropping nearly 400 items when the mob dies. it's too much of a 'bonus' to not try to get the most out of it.

I understand that, out there, there is quite a number of Anti-Cheats programs which Developers of games could, if they wanted, take advantage of for their games.... and, I understand, some of those anti-cheat programs are quite well rounded to stop players from being able to use utilities external to the game client....

But, probably, the very first thing which could probably stop the use of scripts would be ending for good the ability of players to sell in-game items for real money.... without the ability to make real money off of in-game items I wonder how many players would really bother to run BOTs and scripts....

If players stopped spending their hard earned money on in-game items for good, perhaps, hopefully, BOTs and scripting in UO would vanish like snow melting in a sunny day....

I assume you were not playing the game when they tried to add anti cheat program in the past

the mount of him. Rights infringements that were quoted was unreal, players crying as big brother will be watching them. Oh yes the majority that complained were running cheat programs

needless to say they never bothered

wonder what happened to Calvin c

Yoshi · May 2023

"people: Cameos are too expensive

people also: Stop scriipting shadowguard!

???"

username · May 2023

Yoshi said:

"people: Cameos are too expensive
people also: Stop scriipting shadowguard!

???"

Said no one ever. More likely we refuse to buy them from obvious bot farmers but at this point it seems as if that's the only people that sell them.

But do you know what people have said? (and you can check my post history for this one)

people: ToT items shouldn't be account bound because I want to sell them for huge profit
people also: I can't compete with the bots selling them cause they afk script on dozens of characters while I sleep to work for my 8-5

Howdy, Stranger!

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I would really like everyone's thoughts on this.

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