Why not throw the ring into the sea?

"

Next step, those chronically online... those doing mirror-services and doing hundreds if not thousands of mirror services a day / league. Come on! Wake up. It's a business. Perma ban. You've perma-personally banned people for words.

"

Maggituete wrote:

Spoiler

First of all, thanks for answering. It is not a trap, I genuinly didn't understand what data-mining 10 years of data regarding trade has had to do with anything else on the list.

I think I understand now. The data mining allows botting to be easier/possible? I guess that 10 year old data still doesn't matter in that case. Based on changes to items, popularity of items etc your data from last league might even be obsolete already.
I agree that bots are a problem. a solution to reduce botting is something I can't come up with since I have no clue about the current complexity of a bot and how hard it is to detect them.

Now to a few things that I don't understand, mainly probably because you feel complied to use fancy words or abbreviations that are hard to understand, even after googling it (if I google BSD, I get a german government branch for example). Not everyone here is a native english speaker, mind you.

So what is BSD? Would be a good thing to have an idea about since you use it as a comparison.

What are anti-cheat measures supposed to do? Block every 3rd-party tool that can influence your game? Stop the game from starting while other tools are running on your system? Stop scripts?

And then to the things I am not 100% in agreeance with:

Why do we need to be able to save/import/export passive trees? You are making it sound like PoB should stay, so you can use that without importing a passive tree into the game. While it would be a nice little QoL-change, I think speaking of a must have here is not necessary. Also, it looks like this will be a thing in PoE2, at least there is thoughts about implementing such if I remember correctly.

information on how x item affects your character - We do have that already. Just because there is not an arrow up, arrow down thing like in other games, it is still there (I am using it ingame quite a bit). Since there is no soulbind, put items on and see how stats change? Or do you want a list of all the attributes an item can change in PoE in a pop-up while hovering over it?

And finally my biggest gripe:

"

Next step, those chronically online... those doing mirror-services and doing hundreds if not thousands of mirror services a day / league. Come on! Wake up. It's a business. Perma ban. You've perma-personally banned people for words.

First of, words are probably easier to track than actual RMT and therefore, if a person writes something that is against ToS, a ban is totally justified.
But at what point can you say that a person is doing RMT (which should be the only bannable thing)? I personally have had a phase in my life when I was chronically online, playing an MMORPG for up to 12h a day without a break. Never did any RMT but did trade a lot, made a lot of ingame currency as well. Should I have been banned in that game?
If a User who is online a lot offers a mirror-worthy item to be mirrored without a fee, should they be banned? Probably not. So you would need to seperate a person who offers an item to be mirrored from a person who does a mirror service with a fee. How to detect that though if people tip the person who is offering it for free?
Those are just my thoughts way to early on a sunday morning, I am sure the matter is more complicated than that if you look behind the scenes. If they just start wildly banning people, they might get a random hit but it will mostly affect people who have nothing to do with the problem.

Spoiler

I was gathering open-source intelligence on the mirror-tier market. Managed to create a database that links mirror-tier items to a person (physical or moral).

Unsurprisingly, the largest group has the largest inventory.

Unsurprisingly, the people that where lieutenants of that group and came out saying "WE DO RMT, WE SELL IT TO X, DO SOMETHING!". A rough estimate, these cheaters contributed to about 1/3 of the total inventory of that group. Inventory that was never removed from the game and that group still benefits to this dayy.



All of that was previously reported by MR.B. MR.B's problem is that he rants and gets too excited. So, it's hard to follow, especially when a video is longer than 15 minutes (all of them are longer).

Regardles...

Nothing happened to MR. X.

Nothing happened to the group... and more importantly, nothing happened to the mirror-tier items that were created through cheating. In short, they cheated, admitted to cheating, and still get to profit from those items.

When I see this, I make a post on this forum. I show a graph and people freak out. They quickly realize I could connect the dots and that's usually the hardest part for a lot of people. Just look at this post.

So... People from that group hop in this form and start inventing accusations out of THIN AIR and rage baiting and doing ad homminem. Doing everything in their power to get the post removed. The post gets removed because "it was too controversial". 😵‍💫

I keep digging and I find a group of bots all named in succession.

Fake-name-A
Fake-name-B
Fake-name-C

All the way down to Z. I report that and nothing happend.

That bot farm is directly connected to MR. D a co-founder with MR.X. IF you are keeping up with math that's roughly half or more of their inventory.

Fast forward almost a year...

I see nothing's happened, so I send my database to MR.B

I'm hoping MR.B will assemble a team to gather even more information so we can present that to GGG. At first, he was happy to finally show in an easy manner how to link cheater A with RMT group A, but then he cut off all comms.

After the stream I start to read on the messages I've received. Many people asking for the database. One of them, MR. C wants it because... and I quoute: "hi, idk if you know me, but some ppl from slavic _ _ _ alternative that also have deep connections with botters / rmt have asked me if you could share the database with them, they could also help with inputs i assume"

🤦‍♂️Now, this guy is monumentally dim.

I guess most of us hope that criminals are masterminds, but in reality, that's often not the case.

MR.C is using weapons of mass destruction on the market, and nobody cares, and everyone needs to work harder to deal with the inflation he causes just so that his friends can pocket more money through RMT.

Got it now? or are you still confused about something?

Spoiler

Now, if this is what I can do with 0 budget and an afternoon of gathering open source (literally getting the ads for these mirror-tier items, reading reddit, reading this forum, etc)... imagine what a multi-million dollar company like GGG could do with a week or a year of work by actual developers or if they took a multidisciplinary approach.

I'm sending the database to GGG now. I hope all of the alphabet fake accounts get a ban, I hope MR.B gets investigated, I hope MR.C gets a ban, and I hope MR.X finally gets a ban. I hope to see 1/3 of the inventory get deleted because the creators themselves said it was done through cheating.

As a side note, if MR.B gets investigated and nothing happens every single person on this game needs to sub to him, just as a thanks and because it would prove that his strategies work and he is 100% legitimate. MR.B apologies in advance, but I must know the truth. Hell! Maybe MR. C is directly naming him on his guild to implicate him into something he has nothing to do about... I think this would me, so I'm going to call myself "MR.A". I just want this game to improve and for us to have a fair playground, because right now it's just toddlers fighting MMA fighters.

Or, or, or... GGG can choose to do nothing, and we will see how that plays out... but I got a feeling that it's just going to get worse. A lot worse. Who knows... I could be wrong on this maybe i have Cassandra's curse? 🤣

"

BlackMarshes212 wrote:

"

Maggituete wrote:

Spoiler

First of all, thanks for answering. It is not a trap, I genuinly didn't understand what data-mining 10 years of data regarding trade has had to do with anything else on the list.

I think I understand now. The data mining allows botting to be easier/possible? I guess that 10 year old data still doesn't matter in that case. Based on changes to items, popularity of items etc your data from last league might even be obsolete already.
I agree that bots are a problem. a solution to reduce botting is something I can't come up with since I have no clue about the current complexity of a bot and how hard it is to detect them.

Now to a few things that I don't understand, mainly probably because you feel complied to use fancy words or abbreviations that are hard to understand, even after googling it (if I google BSD, I get a german government branch for example). Not everyone here is a native english speaker, mind you.

So what is BSD? Would be a good thing to have an idea about since you use it as a comparison.

What are anti-cheat measures supposed to do? Block every 3rd-party tool that can influence your game? Stop the game from starting while other tools are running on your system? Stop scripts?

And then to the things I am not 100% in agreeance with:

Why do we need to be able to save/import/export passive trees? You are making it sound like PoB should stay, so you can use that without importing a passive tree into the game. While it would be a nice little QoL-change, I think speaking of a must have here is not necessary. Also, it looks like this will be a thing in PoE2, at least there is thoughts about implementing such if I remember correctly.

information on how x item affects your character - We do have that already. Just because there is not an arrow up, arrow down thing like in other games, it is still there (I am using it ingame quite a bit). Since there is no soulbind, put items on and see how stats change? Or do you want a list of all the attributes an item can change in PoE in a pop-up while hovering over it?

And finally my biggest gripe:

"

Next step, those chronically online... those doing mirror-services and doing hundreds if not thousands of mirror services a day / league. Come on! Wake up. It's a business. Perma ban. You've perma-personally banned people for words.

First of, words are probably easier to track than actual RMT and therefore, if a person writes something that is against ToS, a ban is totally justified.
But at what point can you say that a person is doing RMT (which should be the only bannable thing)? I personally have had a phase in my life when I was chronically online, playing an MMORPG for up to 12h a day without a break. Never did any RMT but did trade a lot, made a lot of ingame currency as well. Should I have been banned in that game?
If a User who is online a lot offers a mirror-worthy item to be mirrored without a fee, should they be banned? Probably not. So you would need to seperate a person who offers an item to be mirrored from a person who does a mirror service with a fee. How to detect that though if people tip the person who is offering it for free?
Those are just my thoughts way to early on a sunday morning, I am sure the matter is more complicated than that if you look behind the scenes. If they just start wildly banning people, they might get a random hit but it will mostly affect people who have nothing to do with the problem.

First, to answer your remarks:

Spoiler

1. Yep, it was a trap. Here you are doing exactly what I foresaw you would do.
2. BSD? I wrote Battle State Games (BSG) and specifically told you they where the developers of Escape From Tarkov. Still you say Google couldn't find anything? 🤣
3. There are millions if not billions or trillions of people in middle-earth. Who cares what you or I think, the only people that matter in this discussion are in the Fellowship of the ring. We are not the main character here.

Second, datamining / bots / rmt are all linked.

Spoiler

Data mining gives you information on how to best approach the game.

Bots in short, bots:

✅ 🤖 are market makers.
✅ 🤖 amass wealth for the owner(s).
✅ 🤖 amass currency needed to craft mirror-tier items.
✅ 🤖 get added to people's friend list, for fast and easy trades.
✅ 🤖 offer items with a markup (that's their profit).
✅ 🤖 drive the price of items UP (not only because of the markup, but also because RMT sellers don't care for the tiny currency items... they care for the top tier ones, because those fetch the highest dollar-per-item)
✅ 🤖 are dumb simplified auction houses. They provide the owners with asynchronous + automatic trades. They just go in and collect when they need, like getting something from the mail box.

RMT is the final link is how binary data becomes real life currency. It's the reason why they fight the market so hard to always increase the price of everything (even when the demand is going down, because people stop playing 2 weeks into a league... Want people to stay longer GGG? How about a fair playground? that's a start)

Finally, I can give you a concrete example... but I must preface with this: Sadly, due to GGG's policies I need to protect the identity of the people involved. Sorry, but that's the way it is. Regardless, by the time you read this GGG would already have this information and my database at their disposal. I guess their reaction or not will speak volumes. So... let's create 3 hypothetical names. MR.A (me), MR. B, MR. C, ... MR.X. You get it, everyone is a green frog that looks exactly the same as the other person with an alphabet letter to distinguish them.

Spoiler

I was gathering open-source intelligence on the mirror-tier market. Managed to create a database that links mirror-tier items to a person (physical or moral).

Unsurprisingly, the largest group has the largest inventory.

Unsurprisingly, the people that where lieutenants of that group and came out saying "WE DO RMT, WE SELL IT TO X, DO SOMETHING!". A rough estimate, these cheaters contributed to about 1/3 of the total inventory of that group. Inventory that was never removed from the game and that group still benefits to this dayy.



All of that was previously reported by MR.B. MR.B's problem is that he rants and gets too excited. So, it's hard to follow, especially when a video is longer than 15 minutes (all of them are longer).

Regardles...

Nothing happened to MR. X.

Nothing happened to the group... and more importantly, nothing happened to the mirror-tier items that were created through cheating. In short, they cheated, admitted to cheating, and still get to profit from those items.

When I see this, I make a post on this forum. I show a graph and people freak out. They quickly realize I could connect the dots and that's usually the hardest part for a lot of people. Just look at this post.

So... People from that group hop in this form and start inventing accusations out of THIN AIR and rage baiting and doing ad homminem. Doing everything in their power to get the post removed. The post gets removed because "it was too controversial". 😵‍💫

I keep digging and I find a group of bots all named in succession.

Fake-name-A
Fake-name-B
Fake-name-C

All the way down to Z. I report that and nothing happend.

That bot farm is directly connected to MR. D a co-founder with MR.X. IF you are keeping up with math that's roughly half or more of their inventory.

Fast forward almost a year...

I see nothing's happened, so I send my database to MR.B

I'm hoping MR.B will assemble a team to gather even more information so we can present that to GGG. At first, he was happy to finally show in an easy manner how to link cheater A with RMT group A, but then he cut off all comms.

After the stream I start to read on the messages I've received. Many people asking for the database. One of them, MR. C wants it because... and I quoute: "hi, idk if you know me, but some ppl from slavic _ _ _ alternative that also have deep connections with botters / rmt have asked me if you could share the database with them, they could also help with inputs i assume"

🤦‍♂️Now, this guy is monumentally dim.

I guess most of us hope that criminals are masterminds, but in reality, that's often not the case.

MR.C is using weapons of mass destruction on the market, and nobody cares, and everyone needs to work harder to deal with the inflation he causes just so that his friends can pocket more money through RMT.

Got it now? or are you still confused about something?

Spoiler

Now, if this is what I can do with 0 budget and an afternoon of gathering open source (literally getting the ads for these mirror-tier items, reading reddit, reading this forum, etc)... imagine what a multi-million dollar company like GGG could do with a week or a year of work by actual developers or if they took a multidisciplinary approach.

I'm sending the database to GGG now. I hope all of the alphabet fake accounts get a ban, I hope MR.B gets investigated, I hope MR.C gets a ban, and I hope MR.X finally gets a ban. I hope to see 1/3 of the inventory get deleted because the creators themselves said it was done through cheating.

As a side note, if MR.B gets investigated and nothing happens every single person on this game needs to sub to him, just as a thanks and because it would prove that his strategies work and he is 100% legitimate. MR.B apologies in advance, but I must know the truth. Hell! Maybe MR. C is directly naming him on his guild to implicate him into something he has nothing to do about... I think this would me, so I'm going to call myself "MR.A". I just want this game to improve and for us to have a fair playground, because right now it's just toddlers fighting MMA fighters.

Or, or, or... GGG can choose to do nothing, and we will see how that plays out... but I got a feeling that it's just going to get worse. A lot worse. Who knows... I could be wrong on this maybe i have Cassandra's curse? 🤣

Again, we cannot confirm or deny any identity. It's against forum policies. Any resemblance to an actual player is pure coincidence. I just named the frogs alphabetically.

It would be incredibly frustrating if I could name a frog with a letter of the alphabet and be able to use most of the letters on the alphabet and match it with real players... Spoilers, I can. That should give you a hint of the magnitude of the problem.

Now, what SHOULD happen is GGG takes this retrospective, observational, and outdated database and attempts to create one of their own. If I did it with little to no programming knowledge in an afternoon, I'm sure they can do a much better one in less than a week.

My final words.

I love this game. All of this effort comes from a place of love. I think, if we all had a full ring none of us would be special, and truly special players will rise naturally through their God-given talent and hard work. I also think that if we get a full ring and there is no need for third-party tools we are going to be learning so much about how an actual market place works. A fair market place. A marketplace with actual rules that are truly enforced. Now, that sounds like a better experience and a better place to be for all of us.



Or, or, or... we can continue to hide the sun with our thumb. 👍☀️😎

Gonna touch grass now.

"

It's either the one dude that only does ad hominem or the one dude that pretends to have a language barrier, refuses to use google or chatgpt to help him understand, demands an ELI5, then complains about the ELI5, but writes better than me. 🤣