FYI: Gateway if unchanged presents possible problem with Gold Farmers!

[cduser]

Errrr.. I think the earning potential would be way bigger even when using PTC sites for farming
Or spamming those links on facebook for a fraction of a cent each click and let them add up
Really there are so many ways to earn money on the net that are way more effective than making houndreds of accounts in a game that takes so much PC power to handle

 

[Ludvig|MindArk]

if someone wants to go through the time and trouble for so little, I say let them! they obviously have no life so they need something to do

if they didnt get to do THAT, they might be programming viruses instead

 

[NightwolfAA2k5]

It'd probably be easier to just hack MA's account database containing everyones emails and distribute fake emails that ask the reader to install something dubious, which would then log the keys of the unlucky participant.

Then of course, the baddies would change the participant's password and sell off all assets while the original participant cannot access it - distributing the funds through a chain of avatars.

Something like this happened to me in that other game

Posted via Silvester's Litterbox

 

[lilac]

even if it proves to be unfounded, I'm glad the question has been raised so +rep to OP.

I'm sure that MA will at least take notice, see the responses people have given and add them to research and study they have already done in order to stop the potential from happening.

It never hurts to have the participants do all your lateral thinking for you...something MA have become very good at in the past years.

my thoughts exactly...

seems to me... the only real question is how fast the process can take place.
I'm thinking it would be too long for too little...

If not... a few additional dialogues could really slow the process down.

 

[Wolverine Queen]

Especially since you have to consider that every account has to have a new e-mail address and even if you ask MA to delete your avatar, you can't make a new account with the address you once used. Every account would need to have a new e-mail sign up as well, plus the wait for the confirmation e-mail...

http://10minutemail.com/10MinuteMail/index.html

 

[Grower]

havent read all replies but,

dont the new noobs have to finish the quests before they can actually come to PA?

thats what i would assume so they would have to use ammo guns etc to get out of there with the leftovers.

it would take some time to get some leftover pecs and loot over to calypso...

i dont see anyone abusing this if they CANNOT leave before the quests are finished

 

[jod]

No you dont have to do the quests,you can just tp straight over to Calypso if you want.

 

[Stave]

dont the new noobs have to finish the quests before they can actually come to PA?

they can leave whenever they wish

 

[-Archangel-]

http://10minutemail.com/10MinuteMail/index.html

Cool you get a new e-mail every 5 seconds
Oh wait,
it espires before you get the confirmation

 

[Naifas Anaconda]

0.1ped. i hid mine for some plucky explorer to find when i left.

One Rookie Seismic Bomb has a TT of 0.10 PED. You get two batches of 5, i.e. 2 × 0.50 PED. You need to use at least 5 Rookie Bombs to complete the mining mission (if you care to do so). I like to have the left-overs for keepers as a nice souvenir.

Ok, so, a new avatar can start in Calypso with roughly 1.5 PED. 200 avatars/day ~ 300 ped/day. 30$/day sounds already interesting.

But that's 200 avatars. 200 emails, 200 logins, many computers. And i bet a lot of red lights would start flashing at MA's office.

 

[karelmib]

Solution: all free items must have 0.00 PED TT Value

 

[Grower]

No you dont have to do the quests,you can just tp straight over to Calypso if you want.

so then this is all MA/FPC has to block..
problem solved

 

[Talania]

The people that do this farming don't need to make loads of money. They often live in countries where very little American Currency will go a very long ways.

As for how they could do 200 avatars.....maybe one person can't but a workplace designed to farm the peds could.

My first MMO I enjoyed a lot was ruined by farmers using programs to farm with multiple accounts on one computer and spam the sites in game that you could buy them from everywhere ruining the game.

The farmers would be banned and they would be back the same day.


If there is even the slightest possibility of this happening in EU I and all of you need to be worried.

It became a serious battle for that MMO and the values were about $100 US dollars a week for each farmer. The real money they made though was from selling the game currency and getting your Credit Card info from the website used to sell them.

 

[Talania]

They could make it a part of the TP process out that they have to go through an NPC that disarms them before they leave Gateway.


But I think that allowing them to keep the items would be okay since they are so low in value. It is just the ammo I am concerned with.

 

[lilac]

They could make it a part of the TP process out that they have to go through an NPC that disarms them before they leave Gateway.


But I think that allowing them to keep the items would be okay sinc they are so low in value. It is just the ammo I am concerned with.

I don't think it's 2 ped of ammo... but 20 pec that the guy gives...

if you keep all the bombs and free stuff you can get without completing another mission first... it's like 1.50 ped...

even if this would be conducive to a "farming center", wouldn't there be technology barriers at the present time?

 

[Talania]

I don't think it's 2 ped of ammo... but 20 pec that the guy gives...

if you keep all the bombs and free stuff you can get without completing another mission first... it's like 1.50 ped...

even if this would be conducive to a "farming center", wouldn't there be technology barriers at the present time?

No idea, don't know that much about the subject myself.

Just know I don't want to see Entropia having to deal with farmers.

 

[Harmony.]

when i left after i finished all the missions i had 3 peds more then what i started with (was a bit lucky with one loot of 1.6 peds though). That is a whole lot more then an hour of sweating so i can imagine some people creating avatar after avatar.

But with 3 peds per avatar, it would take like 300 avatars before it gets interesting. My guess is that MA would surely notice this and ban them all.

 

[Inifus]

Clearly you have never owned a domain name.

I can have 2 million separate email adresses if i want, 20 million, 200 million, on ONE domain.

As for ip adresses, the goldfarmers just renew their IP, rinse and repeat.

that is a very usual scenario in other games, such as d2, to avoid temporary bans.

I've never personally owned one, but I am a network administrator by trade and know how quickly you can establish e-mail addresses, especially if you are using template accounts in Server 2007. The time part I was talking about is waiting for MA to send that confirmation e-mail - they haven't exactly been known to be Johnny-on-the-Spot about getting those out in the past.

tho MindArk did banned complete countries (complete ip ranges thus) because of fraud. It wont stop them for doing it again.Only after sending IDś you could get back in the game

What would be more effective would be to block the MAC addresses, then even IP refreshes and proxies wouldn't help - they would need to get new NICs in order to make new accounts and that just isn't worth $0.03 / account.

when i left after i finished all the missions i had 3 peds more then what i started with (was a bit lucky with one loot of 1.6 peds though). That is a whole lot more then an hour of sweating so i can imagine some people creating avatar after avatar.

But with 3 peds per avatar, it would take like 300 avatars before it gets interesting. My guess is that MA would surely notice this and ban them all.

334 before they could withdraw, as that would be 1002 PED and you need to withdraw a minimum of 1000 PED.

The people that do this farming don't need to make loads of money. They often live in countries where very little American Currency will go a very long ways.

As for how they could do 200 avatars.....maybe one person can't but a workplace designed to farm the peds could.

My first MMO I enjoyed a lot was ruined by farmers using programs to farm with multiple accounts on one computer and spam the sites in game that you could buy them from everywhere ruining the game.

The farmers would be banned and they would be back the same day.


If there is even the slightest possibility of this happening in EU I and all of you need to be worried.

It became a serious battle for that MMO and the values were about $100 US dollars a week for each farmer. The real money they made though was from selling the game currency and getting your Credit Card info from the website used to sell them.

The thing is, most games forbid the buying and selling of currency, while it is a core part of EU. People buy currency in other games because they are too lazy to go and get it themselves, though it is readily available. In EU, currency sales are a part of the system and those that have tried to buy money outside of that system have been burned (https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forums/security/188160-account-locked.html). Considering that MA offers the same exchange rate OUT as they do IN, anyone that buys PED outside of the system for better than the normal rate should do so fully expecting to be scammed or locked.

If farmers do try this, they are either trying to scam players and only the foolish will fall for their ploy, or they are going to try and withdraw strait from Mindark. Being that MA has shown in the past how much info they track, do you honestly think that part of that 4-8 week withdraw window isn't used to check on where the PED came from if the withdrawing avatar isn't one that has deposited or deposited much? If it wasn't, I'm sure that they will be doing it now, just to guard themselves against being the victims of exploiters. As for if they try to scam players - if anyone thinks, like the guy in the link I provided, that they can legitimately get 1500 PED for $70, then I would like to sell them a really rare Lamborghini... just ignore that somebody put the words "Ford" and "Pinto" on it...

 

[truantduck]

Gold farmers will only infest gateway if EU itself produces more $ per hour than any of the other targets on the farm list.

At first glance it seems that the total value of farming gateway per hour would fall somewhere low on the spectrum.

 

[Haxtor moogle]

lmao @ this thread!

When I helped out as an ambassador for MA at the conventions we ran into a problem very fast. When more then 4-6 people tried to make an account on a computer it would be locked out and no more accounts could be made on that computer. We tried changing the IP address of the computers but it goes by the mac address of the network card I believe. You would have to change out your network card every 4-6 accounts created to make a ton of accounts. even then you might run into problems.

Besides the point that MA checks out your account before you can withdraw to make sure you haven't been cheating the system.

 

[Vaako]

Not only would they be draining the economy but also taking up very much server load... not very good for the game. I think they should make the TT of the bombs and ammo a 10th of what it is today but still as useful that would fix most of the problem.

edit: I know for a fact that a person with 0 level gets more than 2 PED from the ammo, bombs and mats

 

[lilac]

edit: I know for a fact that a person with 0 level gets more than 2 PED from the ammo, bombs and mats

can they get more than 2 ped without spending some first?

but aside from that... if you can only make 6 accounts from 1 network card, it's irrelevant.

 

[mrproper]

Ok, so, a new avatar can start in Calypso with roughly 1.5 PED. 200 avatars/day ~ 300 ped/day. 30$/day sounds already interesting.

But that's 200 avatars. 200 emails, 200 logins, many computers. And i bet a lot of red lights would start flashing at MA's office.

You can get up to 3 ped in TT value, and you have to effectively DO something to get that, it's not just click click click, it takes you about maybe half an hour to potentially gain 60 cents an hour.

It would be stupid to do, because sweating is easier and offers more.

 

[Vaako]

can they get more than 2 ped without spending some first?.

You would have to do some hunting, and i think you could get more PED than from sweating with the curent rates

 

[psychnosiz]

Trial & error would overcome most problems, and why does everyone just assume any decent hacker would grab-grab-grab-withdraw? They aren't players. I'm pretty sure they would test a lot more boundaries, all the bots and automation by farms would only come after a working method has been developped & tested. And they could find better ways imo.

Second, this forum has a sensational number of posts comparing MA to scammers. A poacher is the best ranger ... you'd assume they would give out money so easy to gather?

 

[SpikeBlack]

lmao @ this thread!

When I helped out as an ambassador for MA at the conventions we ran into a problem very fast. When more then 4-6 people tried to make an account on a computer it would be locked out and no more accounts could be made on that computer. We tried changing the IP address of the computers but it goes by the mac address of the network card I believe. You would have to change out your network card every 4-6 accounts created to make a ton of accounts. even then you might run into problems.

Besides the point that MA checks out your account before you can withdraw to make sure you haven't been cheating the system.

There is software available that allows the changing of the mac address of a network card. All you need to know is the correct structure to make it, you can even do it manually.

 

[Fredy Olafson]

i made all 3 types of missions from Calypso gateway and i can say i made a bit more than 1.5 ped ( i got ammo left , weapons 2 and some lyst ) but it took me more than 15 minutes and i used a few times the TP chip .
now if security at MA is as should be , all this thread is just a scary story for children .
1.for a start 200 accounts even with different IPs take a while(more than the famous 15 minutes that can crash the economy) to be aproved .
2. as some players said before MA could also register the MAC of newtwork cards so 100 IPs from same newtowrk card would be useless .
3. for those worring about the poor slave farmers that live in poor countries : those missions are borring as hell !
imagine your self doing those missions 200 times ! i would go crazy , lol .
so manual is not the soltion . a bot would be required , and here MA's security will have another chance to prove useful in case IPs fitering failed .
4. if succesfull bots would be made , that past the IPs filters and other security measures , you think that the owner wolud keep them only inside gateway ?
5. let's say somebody made 200 bots . that person would make a lot easier money buy selling the method , so it would be multiple bot owners with hundreads of avatars . now imagine how Calypso Gateway would look like
you think nobody wouldn't notice ? i am sure players would report extremly fast .
6. in case point 5 would be possible , imagine the problem for the bot owners to find thousands of names that look beliveble not like john 1 , john 2 , john 3 etc or like qrqr , ytryrt , eh4r645 etc.
7. i play from time to time a MMO free , but that has Item Mall , and the game is full of bots . the game is pretty known so the programmers are not some beginners . but such games are infested loads of gold bots because the programmers of original game ALLOW that . there are antibot measures , but if you got a player botting they first give a warning , a temporary ban etc . that's not tough measures . if you want to stop botting make it like MA does now : trace ingame currency and all the items and if someone buys ingame currency or items from guy who bots ban all persons involved in trade . but as i said, the MMOs have gold bots because creators tolerate such actions from players , because extremly tough security measures would make the game unpopular and they would lose some part of their player base , and they don't want that .

 

[Talania]

i made all 3 types of missions from Calypso gateway and i can say i made a bit more than 1.5 ped ( i got ammo left , weapons 2 and some lyst ) but it took me more than 15 minutes and i used a few times the TP chip .
now if security at MA is as should be , all this thread is just a scary story for children .
1.for a start 200 accounts even with different IPs take a while(more than the famous 15 minutes that can crash the economy) to be aproved .

If this is done with a third world country family it could be 12 people working on it with plenty of time......or could be an actual business set up to do it with people doing one step and handing off the account for the next step. All done 24 hours a day.

2. as some players said before MA could also register the MAC of newtwork cards so 100 IPs from same newtowrk card would be useless .

Mac address and IP adress can be changed. Mac's with software that clones and IP with a router.

3. for those worring about the poor slave farmers that live in poor countries : those missions are borring as hell !
imagine your self doing those missions 200 times ! i would go crazy , lol .
so manual is not the soltion . a bot would be required , and here MA's security will have another chance to prove useful in case IPs fitering failed .

If they are getting money for it rather then starving they will do it.
Also if the farmer collects everything and does no mission it would not take more then a minute or two then goes to Calypso and drops the items somewhere or gives to a main account then logs off never to log on again. This would be done over and over and would not be as easy to spot until too many farmers are doing it.

4. if succesfull bots would be made , that past the IPs filters and other security measures , you think that the owner wolud keep them only inside gateway ?

No, there would be new farmer avatars made repeatedly and one or two main accounts outside of Gateway.

5. let's say somebody made 200 bots . that person would make a lot easier money buy selling the method , so it would be multiple bot owners with hundreads of avatars . now imagine how Calypso Gateway would look like
you think nobody wouldn't notice ? i am sure players would report extremly fast .

Until there was more then a few farmers it would just look like new people arriving and leaving. After more start farming it would get to a point it would be obvious. I don't think MA monitors anything in here except special players they give the good loot to.

6. in case point 5 would be possible , imagine the problem for the bot owners to find thousands of names that look beliveble not like john 1 , john 2 , john 3 etc or like qrqr , ytryrt , eh4r645 etc.

The other MMO that this was a problem in they made random messed up names, often with numbers......MA doesn't have anything that monitors names made or there would not be names being banned until changed.

7. i play from time to time a MMO free , but that has Item Mall , and the game is full of bots . the game is pretty known so the programmers are not some beginners . but such games are infested loads of gold bots because the programmers of original game ALLOW that . there are antibot measures , but if you got a player botting they first give a warning , a temporary ban etc . that's not tough measures . if you want to stop botting make it like MA does now : trace ingame currency and all the items and if someone buys ingame currency or items from guy who bots ban all persons involved in trade . but as i said, the MMOs have gold bots because creators tolerate such actions from players , because extremly tough security measures would make the game unpopular and they would lose some part of their player base , and they don't want that .

The farmers don't like the set back but banning them doesn't stop them. They don't care about accounts that get locked because they usually have a way to keep the money account from getting banned somehow.

The real money they make though is from selling the stolen credit card info they get from selling the game credits on a website.

To do that they would just transfer the peds ingame to buyers that visit the website.

Website gets shut down...all avatars get banned....they just make a new website and accounts and start over.

 

[lilac]

If this is done with a third world country family it could be 12 people working on it with plenty of time......or could be an actual business set up to do it with people doing one step and handing off the account for the next step. All done 24 hours a day.

This is what i was referring to in terms of tech barriers... the overhead for several computers that could run CryEngine is pretty high for the folks who would work for such a small sum.

 

[LeWolf86]

Hmmm.... well unsure how easily it would be done.... but as OP said.... its not people from the US or any western nation that would do this... as the cost and time wouldn't be worth it....

You go to some countries where people live off several $ a day.... well then it could be an issue.... also power in these countries is cheap... much like everything else.... Hell in Phnom Pehn... and educated bank worker who speaks english + cambodian gets paid like.... I think $250 a month.... thats educated also.... not even talking about non educated....


I would hope MA could easily see the flags... as they need to monitor stuff better then other MMO's where their cash is at risk.... but.... how long did it take MA to stop/fix the argo sweat bug?