Ways To "stop" The Macro Harvesting

[Wytter]

how can macroers find where the random spawn points of ore would be?

They can walk around the map, then they'll suddenly get a server message saying "Add a new ressource of type a to x,y" - now they'll know where to go... Basically what anyone else would do.

[Phuzion]

Yes i know but im used to hacking more anti-hack oriented games in which you need things such as debuggers/memory scanners/packet filters hell even bypassing is a mofo.

 

I even use injection "i cant code my own though" and the open source thing i posted in another thread but ill make another one on it

 

The open source isnt gonna be good for the game in the long run. I believe 100% that it is helping right now but when it comes time for major updates right before the game goes public i would definately disable it and make some harsh changes to the game such as a nice encryption of packets and some way to prevent programs from opening while the game is running "most games use a simple cant alt+tab ingame to get to your progs" but that also needs more tweaking to be effective as there are many ways to minimize including codes that break the hold the game has over not alt+tabbing.

 

i am simply thinking ahead i know that right now all u need is a mouse and the internet to find everything about this game.

 

"btw ive never tried the dump method you mentiond i dont bellieve." im still relatively new to hacking since i cant code worth a damn yet.

 

 

edit-

 

also destroying macros will make way for hardcore hacks that can completely ruin a game. But thats too far ahead

Im just trying to keep the game safe cuz hackers love beta's "psst its the reason i came here in the first place " but i like the community and i feel that i am actually helping out in my own ways.

 

ooh ya i left out my point macro's are hard to stop because they just mimmick mouse clicks/kb press. They are easy to spot sometimes by ingame GM's as they usually wont answer

but on top of that i could just set up some packets to send whenever someone says something. "but thats limited to maybe 10 responses which is also kind of easy to notice.

[Guest Zeplin]

How random Roja? joker random?

 

Or random within a set visual radius?

 

Random on a Perticular map?

 

How will a normal user identify them?

 

What changes to the protocal will be implimented to do this?

 

even in the event you did make them completly random, The spawn points would need to be removed from the maps, and made completly server side, Otherwise, You will need an "ant" effect to find anything.

 

For examples sake, Lets say we are talking about Silver.

The silver themselfs would have to spawn, like say, A Random version of the particle effect/ a creature, which means, A client macro can just compare the item id/actor id/ Whatever is sent to it, with a predefined list of havestable items.

 

Then, Attempt a havest, If the havest returns successfull, continue till no longer successfull, Then Return to storage and deposit.

 

ANY visual effects/information on an item apearing/disaperance/etc can all be used to macro with an open source client.

Thats why, I suggest proxy

[Phuzion]

Macros would still work. Im pretty sure i could set up a proxy to counteteract. If you ever get a successfull proxy up from the hacker end its pretty much all joor values are belonging to me.

 

Macro's are just too damn annoying plain and simple.

 

well i gotta go ill be back in about an hour. im gonna blow off a few classes today im so darn tired.

[duran]

its starting to look like a misstake to make harvesting a skill. maybe we shouldjust strip away the skill aspect of it and instead just leave it to books, gear and nexuses to control who can harvest? that way the only thing that comes out of macroing is gold, and gold can be lost or used up

[Roja]

welll... how can macroers get around what ent just implemented with the new harvesting events?

[Guest Zeplin]

Macros would still work. Im pretty sure i could set up a proxy to counteteract

Counteracting with another proxy, Would not invalidate the checking. The rules would still be applyed to all the data, or even selected portions. And still catch advanced and simpile macros, Or at least allert a set of human eyes to check.

 

This is because all your data will be forced to run via the proxy (No direct server connections would be possible)

 

Macro's are just too damn annoying plain and simple.

Plain and Simpile macros, are the easist to create rules against.

[frak]

the server sees only ur commands u send to the server. He cant see if u use a mouse recorder or whatever. If u start searching for patterns in client/server communication to identify macroers, then only those that use mouse recorders can be found. Those who modify the client can use random breaks/timers and automagically react on events like a human player would do too.

 

the game should be changed in a way that makes macroing unecessary. Like for harvesting u send 1 "start harvesting" command. And then ur char harvests until the player or some other event stops the harvesting (like being hungry or another command from the client).

 

And add a max volume that 1 can carry (also to help the economy), so when harvesting e.g. sunflowers ull be full after 100 suns even if u can carry 400 emu.

[Ravenod]

It seems to me that macroing will always be around as long as one can do it.

 

So I say cap the harvest (as I mentioned in the General Chat post) per game hour. Maybe at first when you reach 120 successful clicks, that's it. No more harvesting ANYTHING until the next game hour. People can't macro if there is nothing to macro.

 

Put in a few quests here and there that once completed allows for your harvest cap to rise. After all quests are done, you can harvest XXX each hour.

 

I think it would

 

1. Increase the prices of basically everything.

2. Get people more interested in quests (if they aren't already)

3. Obviously stop macroing

4. Open the economy up to a broader range of people

5. Make the game more realistic (in terms of having to carefully choose what you want/need)

 

Thanks.

[frak]

So I say cap the harvest (as I mentioned in the General Chat post) per game hour. Maybe at first when you reach 120 successful clicks, that's it. No more harvesting ANYTHING until the next game hour. People can't macro if there is nothing to macro.

that will just increase the number of online players =P (2 char harvesting = double output per hour)

[Roja]

Ravenod, that idea was posed a very short while ago, here's what happened:

 

http://www.eternal-lands.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=8337

[Ravenod]

Yes, but 2 chars with same IP can (and does) get caught. And with the mods being able to see your last action, it would be easy to catch muling.

[Guest Zeplin]

welll... how can macroers get around what ent just implemented with the new harvesting events?

good question =) Im not sure how in depth we should take this discussion here, As it could infact have the reverse effect on what we are trying to prevent.

 

Delete it, If i go to far into detail.

 

Lets apply a few principals,

1.All maps are static, With static names, So a client can always see, which map its on.

 

2.There is always the #beam me up command, To return to a point of referance, On startmap. (Not that this is neccacry if you have referance points)

 

3.Clients always know there locations on the maps, x and y co-ords.

 

4.Clients can always find a target to havest, iron/silver/titanium, Just by looking at the map file, And comparing it to a havestable list. (harvestable.lst for example in the client)

 

5. Messages from the server follow a certain patern, And can be matched with events, like bitten by a bee, Or lost 10 health.

 

6. door locations are static, And have static links to other maps. (they can be hard coded)

 

This means in a logic sence,

 

File havest target.

Move from current location to havest target.

Havest :

- IF health drops bellow %specified ammount STOP/PAUSE, do another task Start again when health returns

- IF teleported to another map:

----Check location, If non-hostile, Walk back to target ELSE #beam me up

 

For pickaxe breaking =)

IF Receive the Event that Pickaxe breaks:

-STOP, move to storage, And get a new one

-Return to previous task

 

Combined with an auto-eat/static fruit havest, Would easilly counter act, What is currently implimented.

[Guest Zeplin]

the server sees only ur commands u send to the server. He cant see if u use a mouse recorder or whatever. If u start searching for patterns in client/server communication to identify macroers, then only those that use mouse recorders can be found. Those who modify the client can use random breaks/timers and automagically react on events like a human player would do too.

 

the game should be changed in a way that makes macroing unecessary. Like for harvesting u send 1 "start harvesting" command. And then ur char harvests until the player or some other event stops the harvesting (like being hungry or another command from the client).

 

And add a max volume that 1 can carry (also to help the economy), so when harvesting e.g. sunflowers ull be full after 100 suns even if u can carry 400 emu.

Normally frak, Client macro'ers make it for repeating specific tasks, For example, havesting iron.

 

Say for instance, it matches an iron run, Useing the same locations, to havest, And the same location at the NPC, Also the same id havested. That wouldnt just point to just a a key recorder.

 

However, If they did that, a few times, Over say 3 days, It could be point to a macro client, they could be taged, futher logs taken, And reviewed, Without even knowing it.

Then when they are noticed doing the same patern, pmed.

 

Of course this is incredably extendable.

[frak]

what i wanted to say was, if u start detecting macroers then they will rewrite their macros to look like human players (random stuff). ofcourse such a program cant be calld macro. its a bot.

[Ravenod]

Roja. I read that post link you gave me.

 

Everyone who was complaining and said NO to the idea either mentioned

 

1. they wouldn't be able to make 1000's of 'blank'

2. it would take to long to manu, advance, get money.

 

Everyone is so used to instant gratification on an extremely large scale. Players want realism only when it will get them something they want. If it in any way hinders what they have come to know as "normal progress" then they gripe.

 

I'll say this, and you can delete my posts on this thread if you want (cause I know it's probably not productive to the topic)

 

This is beta

Things have changed and changed again, and yet 100's of people still play.

Even with the new harvest rules, everybody got in an uproar, yet 100's of people still play.

You can't please everybody

This game's success does not hinge on the fact you can harvest infinitely

[Roja]

so, put plainly, there is NOTHING we can do to stop macroers in the game. ...outside of killing the game for everyone else(which is not an option).

 

Ok, so as someone here said, we should make the game so macroing just isn't necessary. Time to brainstorm down a new track I think. If that gets accomplished, that would mean an end to the repetative nature of the game I would think..because it is the mindless repetition that is macroed, and let's face it, that is utterly boring for the most part. If we can do that, and keep the game fun, then we will have succeeding in doing what no other MMORPG has done before

[Wytter]

I think we'd need to seperate macroing into 2 groups, as some people just don't get that the simpler macroes are killed now:

 

1: Simple macroes

 

- Will be disabled completely with the random events

- Would be easy to detect by a proxy

 

2: Bots

 

- Will suffer from random events - at first at least.

- Would be hard to detect, because even if they're not using random timings, the network latency will play a role in detecting. Therefore, detection really can't be based on timestamps, but on detecting large patterns in a complex system (not an easy task). Something like playing time/day thats spend on raising stats, might be an indicator of something fishy going on but it's not certain, as people can just log in from different IP's.

 

The best way I can think of is combining both. It's very hard to win the fight against macroers, especially if they know their sh1t.

 

Random events can be implemented in a more clever manner, however.

a: implement the bag-style harvesting (limited amount of ores per "bag")

b: Server-side harvesting cap per item.

c: Use a random event system that's in-context. You did good on the bees, mother nature etc. imho, as it doesn't seem unrealistic (allthough the rate of these happenings was too high). Furthermore one could imagine extending this behaviour to more aspects of the game - it doesn't have to cause you 50 points of damage (that was really uncalled for), but it should be able to i.e. disable your ability to make anything in the next 30 seconds.

As I've suggested before, having a system where several random events were implemented into the gameplay would make the game more interesting. For instance, random quests could even be implemented:

Mother nature asks you to water the flowers.

If you choose to water her flowers (get a watersack or whatever), you'll get an exp bonus (3000 points or so), if not she'll resist you and you'll fail picking her flowers more often.

You accidentially lose the bottle of wine onto the floor and it breaks. Please clean up your mess.

If you fail to clean it, you'll take damage on your next action.

 

The problem with random events is that they are still limited. Yes, you can have 1000 different random events (I'd love that ;-)), but at some point they're all known to the macroers. But perhaps they'll make the game so interesting that people would simply prefer playing the game instead of spending hundreds of hours to circumveint your anti-macroing techniques.

Making random events be rotated weekly (i.e. use these 100 random events this week, the next 100 next week, randomize, 100 random events, 100 random events...), it'd be a great addition to the game for the players, but might seem as overkill server-side.

 

And remember - we'll get xml-defined windows soon.

[Roja]

I agree with you Ravenod. And I think that perhaps that idea might be better than what we have now.

 

That's also a good idea on the random events wytter..how hard is that to do now? i'm sure we can get a lot of people to pitch in with those small little events and we'd be able to make 1,000.

[Wytter]

That's also a good idea on the random events wytter..how hard is that to do now? i'm sure we can get a lot of people to pitch in with those small little events and we'd be able to make 1,000.

I don't have access to the server source, so I can't tell how easy it would be to implement - it depends a lot on the design. Sorry. If he made it easily extendable then it would be fairly trivial.

[Leeloo]

Roja, all three ideas are good.

 

The random question: This can be worked around by macroers in two ways: 1. Having the macro know all questions and answers. Well, change the questions once or twice a month, depending on how many questions there are and how often people get them, and the old answers are useless. 2. Develop a peer to peer cheating system (i.e. other people answering the question for the macroer). This one is very advanced, and I don't believe we need to worry about that until we add one or two more zeroes to the online player count.

 

The truly random question (aka the cut'n'paste answer): By itself it is useless, very easy to program an autoresponder for. But thrown in between the other questions, it may help confuse a macro that's built to answer the normal questions. Can be improved by changing the text around the part to be cut'n'pasted.

 

Both of these are very easy to do.

 

The spawning ore:

 

The old problem with only outlines set to non-walkable need to be fixed first. But as I believe this is mostly done, it can be implemented. And it doesn't need to spawn in the middle of the room, although a bit more advanced, it is possible to check that it spawns on a walkable tile next to a non-walkable tile, so that it will be near (but not embedded in) a cave wall. On the other hand, it will change the visual appearance, and make mining more like hunting, and people might get lost in the big cave while looking for the silver spawn.

[Phuzion]

the game should be changed in a way that makes macroing unecessary. Like for harvesting u send 1 "start harvesting" command. And then ur char harvests until the player or some other event stops the harvesting (like being hungry or another command from the client).

Wouldnt help :-/ that would just make macro'ing more simple. its a lot easier to program the macro to click once than 10000 times.

 

ounteracting with another proxy, Would not invalidate the checking. The rules would still be applyed to all the data, or even selected portions. And still catch advanced and simpile macros, Or at least allert a set of human eyes to check.

 

This is because all your data will be forced to run via the proxy (No direct server connections would be possible)

macro's dont rely on anyting from the game exept maybe some colors for rock recognition etc "that is only in the more advanced macro programs" all it does is immitates keystrokes which would be almsot impossible to tell from a proxy.

 

The best way to kill a macro'er is to find him. "I would suggest a GM teleport command that can warp anywhere on any map" have a help channel that people can go to and file a report and if it sounds serious warp to him and commence a series of attention grabbing and if it doenst work boo-yah macroer away!

 

 

So I say cap the harvest (as I mentioned in the General Chat post) per game hour. Maybe at first when you reach 120 successful clicks, that's it. No more harvesting ANYTHING until the next game hour. People can't macro if there is nothing to macro.

 

Put in a few quests here and there that once completed allows for your harvest cap to rise. After all quests are done, you can harvest XXX each hour.

how would that stop macroing? it would just decrease the ammount that everyone could harvest. The macroer will still use his macro to do the same thing and still get the max ammt of ore/flowers.

 

The idea of infinite harvesting is kind of stupid, to be honest, A lot of people macro, or at least use autoclickers, which destroyes the economy, since infinite resources can come on the market.

So what if I adjust the limit to 200 harvestings/hour, but you will get full exp for those 200 harvests. After you reach the limit, you won't be able to harvest anymore.

I know a lot of you will say no, so if you vote no, give a GOOD reason.

  -Entropy

 

I like the limiting but i hope your not just doing it to stop macro'ers cuz it will not affect them only make their runs shorte. "they will still be recieving the max ammt of said item per hour"

 

good question =) Im not sure how in depth we should take this discussion here, As it could infact have the reverse effect on what we are trying to prevent.

 

Delete it, If i go to far into detail.

 

Lets apply a few principals,

1.All maps are static, With static names, So a client can always see, which map its on.

 

2.There is always the #beam me up command, To return to a point of referance, On startmap. (Not that this is neccacry if you have referance points)

 

3.Clients always know there locations on the maps, x and y co-ords.

 

4.Clients can always find a target to havest, iron/silver/titanium, Just by looking at the map file, And comparing it to a havestable list. (harvestable.lst for example in the client)

 

5. Messages from the server follow a certain patern, And can be matched with events, like bitten by a bee, Or lost 10 health.

 

6. door locations are static, And have static links to other maps. (they can be hard coded)

 

This means in a logic sence,

 

File havest target.

Move from current location to havest target.

Havest :

- IF health drops bellow %specified ammount STOP/PAUSE, do another task Start again when health returns

- IF teleported to another map:

----Check location, If non-hostile, Walk back to target ELSE #beam me up

 

For pickaxe breaking =)

IF Receive the Event that Pickaxe breaks:

-STOP, move to storage, And get a new one

-Return to previous task

 

Combined with an auto-eat/static fruit havest, Would easilly counter act, What is currently implimented.

 

Your thinking like me now best way to destroy something is to think like it.

 

what i wanted to say was, if u start detecting macroers then they will rewrite their macros to look like human players (random stuff). ofcourse such a program cant be calld macro. its a bot.

 

You can never stop hacks only delay them.

 

 

Phew thought id never get done with this post.

[frak]

the game should be changed in a way that makes macroing unecessary. Like for harvesting u send 1 "start harvesting" command. And then ur char harvests until the player or some other event stops the harvesting (like being hungry or another command from the client).

Wouldnt help :-/ that would just make macro'ing more simple. its a lot easier to program the macro to click once than 10000 times.

if u only have to click once, what would u need a macro for then?

 

u said urself u dont know programming. This is the programming forum

[Phuzion]

i have a basic knowledge of programming. i can dissassemble anything you put in front of me almost. Im the hacker who helps the game. A macro is good for say running it while your sleeping.

 

set up a few procedures such as deposit at bank and retrace path back to the rock etc etc pop some meat when hp low etc etc u get the idea. a macro is not an auto-clicker it is the level right below full blown bot.

 

 

edit-

 

Btw i also have a fight trainer that will be the next obstacle to overcome

[Wytter]

macro's dont rely on anyting from the game exept maybe some colors for rock recognition etc "that is only in the more advanced macro programs" all it does is immitates keystrokes which would be almsot impossible to tell from a proxy.

Whatever knowledge you may have gained from the macroing communities, know this: It's a lot easier to create a macro/bot when the client is open source. You don't have to do color or shape recognition or anything, it's right there in the code.

The open sourced client is one of the greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses of EL - I know I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the open source client for instance.

The best way to kill a macro'er is to find him.  "I would suggest a GM teleport command that can warp anywhere on any map"  have a help channel that people can go to and file a report and if it sounds serious warp to him and commence a series of attention grabbing and if it doenst work boo-yah macroer away!

#abuse

Besides, the best way to kill 1 macroing character is to find him. Nothing prevents him for making a new character (except from IP bans but they can be circumveinted).

how would that stop macroing? it would just decrease the ammount that everyone could harvest. The macroer will still use his macro to do the same thing and still get the max ammt of ore/flowers.

I agree, it wouldn't stop macroing. It'd slow down the pace of the game for sure, but wouldn't stop macroing - would be more of an annoyance. Besides, macroing is applicable to any part of the game, except from those requiring human interaction like quests etc. (That's why I suggested the short quest approach).

Your thinking like me now best way to destroy something is to think like it.

We already know how these systems work. Just look at the Ants if you want an example (they are AI controlled players, that will become NPC's, unless that plan has changed) ;-) What we need to figure out is ways to prevent them, without making the game annoying to play.

 

And btw. If you want to have a bot, remember to declare it in the main forums and get it accepted - otherwise, you will be banned. Furthermore you may not take advantage of this bot. Macroing is not allowed.

True wisdom is to be able to use your knowledge to the good of the game, and not abuse it. I could've created undetectable bots if I wanted to - but I prefer using my knowledge to help improving the game and I most certainly won't use my knowledge of programming to ruin the game.