Posted by Striken

Them getting banned didn't give you a hint that you shouldn't continue what you were doing?

I made a thread previously, not the one that was closed

It's deleted, but marked as "Resolved", you can see it at the bottom right now. I was discussing the ban on my unidentified accounts, and from what I remember a certain administrator told me that it was okay to continue, and that it was probably due to using unidentified accounts, because it looked suspicious. Which is why I ended up using my 2 other main accounts

I was also under the impression that it was due to using 3 accounts, but that ended up not being the reason  

Posted by Aguzo

I made a thread previously, not the one that was closed

It's deleted, but marked as "Resolved", you can see it at the bottom right now. I was discussing the ban on my unidentified accounts, and from what I remember a certain administrator told me that it was okay to continue, and that it was probably due to using unidentified accounts, because it looked suspicious. Which is why I ended up using my 2 other main accounts

I was also under the impression that it was due to using 3 accounts, but that ended up not being the reason

Great. Now we have rogue admins in the system. “Certain” admin. Wow. This thread keeps getting better and better. Surprises allover. Who’s on who’s side? It’s just a mix. Dusty is sure to get a surprise when he views this thread. He hasnt been on since his posts from earlier.  

Posted by Reemas

Great. Now we have rogue admins in the system. “Certain” admin. Wow. This thread keeps getting better and better. Surprises allover. Who’s on who’s side? It’s just a mix. Dusty is sure to get a surprise when he views this thread. He hasnt been on since his posts from earlier.

Administrators for the forums, not in-game afaik. They were just giving me advice on how to deal with the ban. Only one gp replied, but it was with “send an appeal to toonslab” and “send the video to toonslab and await the reply”

I doubt dusty cares or needs/wants to involve himself in this thread, since he’s in the graphics department, and most likely doesn’t spend his day checking people for macros. From his previous posts, it sounds like he doesn’t have the full information on what happened.

I wonder if staff or toonslab can send me everything my client sent to their server on the day I was banned (messages, player actions, chat history, etc)  

Posted by Aguzo

Does it have to do with colors? Someone told me that they can also make a script that autoclicks the "are you still there" message
Probably a color detection bot, and they grabbed the color(s) from the message in-game

It can be done in many ways , colours , prompt directors some macros even alow you to upload the image into the program and once it appears it automatically does a secondary action you’ve set up in case it appears, it’s not rocket science anyone who bots frequently would have no problem in bypassing this message affectively, hence why I said it only really affects people who farm in a legitimate way as it’s just inconvenient  

Posted by 4-Lom

Fascinating. Quite a bit of strange banning lately that has come to my attention. People seem to not even get a warning anymore. There's also been a sort of 'pinch' on the money making in the game, which is pretty disappointing, leading to people scamming and exploiting things like the auto-farmer.

So far we've had changes including but not limited too:

• Revision (read reduction) of bug pricing
• Revision of bug appearance/rarity
• Revision of loot pricing
• Bugs no longer placable in houses without 'box/jar'
• Bug holding limit
• Loot holding limit
• Reduction in gralat spawn rates
• Regular increase in limited time purchase cost
• Drastic increase in VIP Alternate appearance cost
• Increased difficulty in daily quest (from 75 easy pyrats to up to 100 other baddies)
• Individual decreased Loot/Bug prices

Personal Rant

Spoiler

Last week when I saw the witch asking for grasshoppers, I was excited. I had calculated exactly how much she was going to give me (13095) and tapped the button to sell. I was shocked when it was a measly 8730. After months of collecting and holding onto the one kind of bug I thought I would make money on, it became apparent that I could have sold them at the same time I caught them and made more saving anything else! I felt robbed and cheated!

Let's be clear. It's not about 5,000 gralats or 100,000 gralats. It's about unwarranted change in a system that was never needed to begin with negatively effecting player experience. Suddenly making changes without warning in the user experience will cause all kinds of negative reactions. It breaks down like this...

1.) User happily performs behaviors for reward (perceived value of time)
2.) User forms a personal goal of a set amount (objective)
3.) User reaches that set amount and feels accomplished (positive user experience)

If you interrupt this system, it will cause a negative user experience, either causing the gameplay to become simple and boring or overly difficult and not rewarding.

Football Analogy

Spoiler

Imagine if you were playing football and were about to make the winning touchdown (six points in american football). Suddenly, the goalpost is moved and you have to keep running further in order to score. Not only does it feel unfair, it makes your effort as a player seem pointless.

So you get to the goalpost anyway, after running another hundred yards, and there's even 20 seconds more on the game clock. You've made it! Your team won! Only, they didn't. You only score four points and don't win because some one has arbitrarily made a change to the value of the touchdown mid-game without telling you.

I'm not suggesting that monetizing the game is easy, but there are ways that will incentivize in-app purchases without causing people to be angry or dissatisfied with the product. I've personally written dozens of ideas in this same forum previously and had zero feedback, so I'm not going to give more here. If anyone actually wants to hear some effective monetization strategies, feel free to msg me.

this is where the problem is...  

Dude the odds were kinda extremely against you here. You did everything wrong at the time that made it seem like you were botting.

First off you were using 3 accounts at the same time which by itself already raises a red flag. Second, you were zoned out watching TV which practically turned you into a robot. Mindlessly pressing the sword button and not paying attention to anything else on screen, you then missed some prompts that are there specifically to detect bots therefore flagging you as a potential bot for all the staff to see. In comes staff to check and verify and you claim you were so zoned out you didn't notice they had dragged you for 5-10 swings. Now that's quite a long time to keep going after being dragged. Most people will stop immediately.

Probably by the time you realized you were dragged and went back to your conveyer belts and said you weren't botting (which by at that point seemed extremely suspicious) the staff that was there was probably either gone or not paying attention to the screen because they were preparing to ban you. Either that or they did see you but by then it was probably far too late and everything seemed heavily not in your favor because for all the staff knew you could have been botting but just looked over to see you were dragged and stopped to say you weren't in hopes of not getting caught. It would have seemed very, very, very likely.

So yeah...you can't be mad at staff for doing their job because I, as well as anyone else, would have thought the same thing. You're unbanned now so maybe you'll be a little more careful to watch for those prompts next time you want to try cheating a little by using 3 accounts to farm. And yes, that is cheating considering not everyone has 3 accounts handy that they can use to farm at the same time giving them an unfair advantage to others. It might not be as bad as straight up botting or hacking and it's not enough to get you in trouble alone, but it's still considered a minor form of cheating nonetheless when you're using them to your advantage.  

Posted by Aguzo

Administrators for the forums, not in-game afaik. They were just giving me advice on how to deal with the ban. Only one gp replied, but it was with “send an appeal to toonslab” and “send the video to toonslab and await the reply”

I doubt dusty cares or needs/wants to involve himself in this thread, since he’s in the graphics department, and most likely doesn’t spend his day checking people for macros. From his previous posts, it sounds like he doesn’t have the full information on what happened.

I wonder if staff or toonslab can send me everything my client sent to their server on the day I was banned (messages, player actions, chat history, etc)

off topic but Dusty is in the all around devolpment department. He can do graphics, yes, but he also does leveling, scripting, and most likely gani and sound effects. He has also banned people that he has caught in the past if I remember correctly.  

By the way, Did you do the full duration of the ban or they unbanned you earlier?
Anyways, from what I saw from the other thread it seemed to be possible to auto farm using three accounts without using bots. However, since bots are also capable of doing what you had done manually then admins can't judge if you did use a bot or not. The dragging thing to check if you're a bot or not is interesting. I believe it doesn't mean you're not using a bot if you got dragged because maybe some bots allows you to get dragged? But, not getting dragged by the admin definitely means you're using a bot which wasn't the case in this situation. The admins decided to ban you anyways because they thought they have more evidence that shows you're a bot than the evidence that shows you're not one.
Remember that decisions by staff members has to be made in sucha games , we're not playing a well developed games that can detect bots automatically. I would suggest you to be more careful in the future Even if you know you're not cheating.  

Posted by ethacon

off topic but Dusty is in the all around devolpment department. He can do graphics, yes, but he also does leveling, scripting, and most likely gani and sound effects. He has also banned people that he has caught in the past if I remember correctly.

^-yes he's much more than just graphics. He actually does scripting, levels and development much more than graphics.

And yes he makes a lot of ganis and sound effects and has dabbled in the GP side of things. He's pretty much an everything-staff. But mostly development.

Posted by Saeed

The dragging thing to check if you're a bot or not is interesting. I believe it doesn't mean you're not using a bot if you got dragged because maybe some bots allows you to get dragged? But, not getting dragged by the admin definitely means you're using a bot which wasn't the case in this situation.

They drag you to see if you still swing your sword constantly. They do it to see if you notice. If you stop (which people who aren't botting do, because they got dragged away which is 1. Surprising and 2. Gives them a reason to stop since they're not at their farm anymore) then they assume you're not botting.

However if you continue to swing your sword and pay no attention to the fact that you were dragged away, it heavily implies you were using a bot since a bot wouldn't stop simply because they were dragged away from the farm.

In this case Aguzo said he continued to swing his sword 5-10 times after being dragged which heavily implies he was botting (even if he wasn't, it makes it seem like he was).  

Posted by Coco

^-yes he's much more than just graphics. He actually does scripting, levels and development much more than graphics.

And yes he makes a lot of ganis and sound effects and has dabbled in the GP side of things. He's pretty much an everything-staff. But mostly development.



They drag you to see if you still swing your sword constantly. They do it to see if you notice. If you stop (which people who aren't botting do, because they got dragged away which is 1. Surprising and 2. Gives them a reason to stop since they're not at their farm anymore) then they assume you're not botting.

However if you continue to swing your sword and pay no attention to the fact that you were dragged away, it heavily implies you were using a bot since a bot wouldn't stop simply because they were dragged away from the farm.

In this case Aguzo said he continued to swing his sword 5-10 times after being dragged which heavily implies he was botting (even if he wasn't, it makes it seem like he was).

Then why not make a better method of detecting bots? I've seen of several guilds farmbot actively, The message prompt really is just simply a extremely poor method of stopping bots, While it can stop people who just use simple bots to just press the sword, But you can just get a Aimbot to press the "Are you there" or even better yet get the bot to press everywhere on screen to make it hit all message prompts.

You could make it where graal will send a message to admins if there is a third party app on screen that is pressing on screen to which many other games besides graal has done, make it where the game won't start if there is a APK installed on the device, like Com2Us has done, Ect. Many other games developed good anti-cheat methods for farming and of the sort like speed hacking and ect, even zone has a system that I can detect if your speed hacking, Why is classic not able to make efficient ways to stop cheating seemingly at all?

In the entire years of Classic being around, Most advanced anti cheating method graal made, Is a message prompt that anyone who bots can just easily find a way over and only thing it does is annoy the crap out of people who actually farm.  

Posted by Coco

In this case Aguzo said he continued to swing his sword 5-10 times after being dragged which heavily implies he was botting (even if he wasn't, it makes it seem like he was).

I doubled check the thread and Aguzo never said "I swinged 5-10 times) etc. My bad if he did, I probably missed it.
All what I saw is similar quotes to this ome:

Posted by Aguzo

3. Moving my character is a solid defense, they just didn't take my word for it, and didn't bother to check my movements logs. Dusty said that I didn't move, no one bothered to check what the staff that banned me did.
.

Again, i'm not judging the decision that was made by the admin for few reasons:

• The staff aren't trained enough to face such situations. That's because it's voluntary work, no specific education is required.
• There are very few ways that the staff can do to check if the player is using a bot or not in this game.
• The players can do many things in this game that may look suspicious. For example the accusation of "long sword hack", when the actual clarification is abusing the order of movements and hit directions of the game-according to thallen

ETC.  

If this was any other noob the thread would be already closed

Summary:
-Using multiple device for user gain -Should be against rules.
- Overall ban seems fair (Considering swinging sword etc after dragged.Avoiding ban by using accs while banned on one of them(the one considered as warning) could also come into play.
- Staff overall could of handled it better(warping to place + quick check would be better than drag imo)-Or if dragging make them go alot away from farming bit.
- Fix could possibly be done on this case, by disabling sword on conveyor belt etc.  

Posted by Saeed

I doubled check the thread and Aguzo never said "I swinged 5-10 times) etc. My bad if he did, I probably missed it.

I believe she means when he was dragged he kept swinging his sword. In doing so, he appeared to be a bot and must have at least swung his sword 5-10 times. He may not have seen the screen at the time he was dragged and it was too late when he did take action.  

Having multiple accounts for main account benefit isn't technically cheating but nonetheless cheeky. They thought you were a bot, you acted like a bot and didn't pay attention to the "Are you there" warning which is doing what it's supposed to do.  

Posted by Rusix

Then why not make a better method of detecting bots? I've seen of several guilds farmbot actively, The message prompt really is just simply a extremely poor method of stopping bots, While it can stop people who just use simple bots to just press the sword, But you can just get a Aimbot to press the "Are you there" or even better yet get the bot to press everywhere on screen to make it hit all message prompts.

You could make it where graal will send a message to admins if there is a third party app on screen that is pressing on screen to which many other games besides graal has done, make it where the game won't start if there is a APK installed on the device, like Com2Us has done, Ect. Many other games developed good anti-cheat methods for farming and of the sort like speed hacking and ect, even zone has a system that I can detect if your speed hacking, Why is classic not able to make efficient ways to stop cheating seemingly at all?

In the entire years of Classic being around, Most advanced anti cheating method graal made, Is a message prompt that anyone who bots can just easily find a way over and only thing it does is annoy the crap out of people who actually farm.

It's not that simple. Dusty would know better than myself as he's the one who implements most of the stuff like this...but graal is ...weird i guess. It's not exactly possible to put something in graal to detect 3rd party apps. Dusty said that as far as graal knows, it's the only thing that exists lol. So I'll just leave it up to him to better explain why it's not simple and why the prompt and other things we've imprinted are pretty much the best we can do.
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Posted by Saeed

I doubled check the thread and Aguzo never said "I swinged 5-10 times) etc. My bad if he did, I probably missed it.

He hid it in a spoiler in an earlier post (dunno why it was in a spoiler):

Posted by Aguzo

I slashed maybe 5-10 times, before I noticed that I was dragged, then I said in chat “I’m not botting.”

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Posted by Saeed

Again, i'm not judging the decision that was made by the admin for few reasons:

• The staff aren't trained enough to face such situations. That's because it's voluntary work, no specific education is required.
• There are very few ways that the staff can do to check if the player is using a bot or not in this game.
• The players can do many things in this game that may look suspicious. For example the accusation of "long sword hack", when the actual clarification is abusing the order of movements and hit directions of the game-according to thallen

ETC.

The staff are trained by their GPAs how to handle such situations, and if they aren't sure they usually ask someone who would know better. They don't just make guesses or anything. It would be nice if there were better ways to detect bots but unfortunately as of right now there isn't (as I said before, something Dusty could explain better).

But I mean usually when a player is dragged away and they still continue to "farm" as if nothing had happened, that's a pretty damn good indication that they're using a bot. A normal human most likely wouldn't do that...unless they're zoned out watching TV while controlling 3 devices at the same time i guess. But how often does that happen?
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Posted by Reemas

I believe she means when he was dragged he kept swinging his sword. In doing so, he appeared to be a bot and must have at least swung his sword 5-10 times. He may not have seen the screen at the time he was dragged and it was too late when he did take action.

^
basically summarized. Everything about the situation looked super bad on Aguzo's end and like I said, anyone else including myself would have thought he was botting, too. It sucks botting can't be more easily identified...but it's not the staff's fault for thinking he was botting when it oh so very much appeared like he was.