Monday's Auction House Investigation - Follow Up

dezstravus · May 2013

Hey All,

I wanted to post a follow up to Monday's investigation and maintenance. If you're interested in hearing about what happened, and what was done, read on!

Early on Monday, we received player reports about suspicious items on the Mindflayer Auction House. Specifically: A high volume of enchantments in stacks of 99. In response to confirming this, we shut down the auction house immediately so that we could investigate and ensure that if any issue was discovered, it would be contained.

Upon investigation, we discovered that the items had been earned through automated farming of crafting material nodes. After determining this, we spent a considerable amount of time reviewing the areas that were being farmed. The first thing we noticed is that the rewards were tuned a bit high, even for regular gameplay situations. Based on that data, we tuned the rewards down slightly for better parity with other methods of earning income. We also made some changes to the placement of crafting node spawn locations, specifically at the beginning of zones, to reduce the effectiveness of bot programs.

During the maintenance, we worked to ensure that any potential economic damage was cleaned up immediately. While the Auction House was offline, we had a team of people actively removing any items that were gained through these illegitimate means. Additionally, any accounts that were determined to be botting were banned permanently. As of this moment, we are confident that we have removed all illegitimately earned items and currency from the economy and auction house.

Our next steps will be to continually monitor for the use of automation programs with the goal of minimizing their effectiveness, as we are committed to ensuring that game mechanics surrounding character progression and the amassing of riches remain fair and balanced.

As a reminder, for any issues or suspicious players that are discovered in the future, please feel free to let us know via our Support Ticket system. You can contact our support team by creating a ticket at support.perfectworld.com, or be sending an email to customerservice@perfectworld.com.

Thanks for your patience, support, and hard work in reporting these issues to us!

Sincerely,

Dezstravus and the Neverwinter Team

drakonlord56 · May 2013

I get the funny feeling that the gold peddlers are in the game in full force. They're looking to build up a cache to sell for real money. Mark my words, and wait for it.

nojo2211 · May 2013

I for one appreciate the detailed and professional update. More of this please.

poac1 · May 2013

Laughable, tons (as in hundreds) have been doing this since launch. But no problem, they got one guy...

abomin · May 2013

Thank You dezstravus

But why can't all the nodes and chest be placed randomly around, when someone uses it? It would stop a lot of the bots camping a spot.

durenas · May 2013

Not even WoW has random node spawns. With random spawns, you would have nodes that are impossible to get to, nodes that are in the floor, in midair, or in lava.

labbb · May 2013

What ? I need to get on the mailing list to find out about these BEFORE you fix them

poac1 · May 2013

durenas wrote: »

Not even WoW has random node spawns. With random spawns, you would have nodes that are impossible to get to, nodes that are in the floor, in midair, or in lava.

Sony instituted random node spawns in the most recent expansion, it's viable if you code in unit collision and functionality with axis. Took about 2 months to polish and work flawlessly, and they only have 8 active developers.

dalaigh · May 2013

It may be easier to watch for resource node camping and flag the camper for PvP if they harvest the same node some (random number within ranged limit) times in a row. Players will watch for and jump on a character being flagged while node harvesting.

Resource node camping is not necessarily proof of botting but it is rather rude to other players. Getting to attack flagged node campers gives the community something to do (it creates content).

dezstravus · May 2013

poac1 wrote: »

Laughable, tons (as in hundreds) have been doing this since launch. But no problem, they got one guy...

Hey Poac!

Our investigation involved banning far more than a single account. Once we identified the process that was being used, we did a search to identify other accounts that were doing the same. Additionally, if an account was closed, any items that it had up on the auction house were removed during the Monday night maintenance. Thanks for requesting clarification!

lostmarbleshere · May 2013

dezstravus wrote: »

Hey Poac!

Our investigation involved banning far more than a single account. Once we identified the process that was being used, we did a search to identify other accounts that were doing the same. Additionally, if an account was closed, any items that it had up on the auction house were removed during the Monday night maintenance. Thanks for requesting clarification!

Ok what about the items transfered to other toonz and mules did you get them also. Because you do know they also use stuff like that. Are those toonz banned

zylaxx · May 2013

dezstravus wrote: »

Hey All,

I wanted to post a follow up to Monday's investigation and maintenance. If you're interested in hearing about what happened, and what was done, read on!

Early on Monday, we received player reports about suspicious items on the Mindflayer Auction House. Specifically: A high volume of enchantments in stacks of 99. In response to confirming this, we shut down the auction house immediately so that we could investigate and ensure that if any issue was discovered, it would be contained.

Upon investigation, we discovered that the items had been earned through automated farming of crafting material nodes. After determining this, we spent a considerable amount of time reviewing the areas that were being farmed. The first thing we noticed is that the rewards were tuned a bit high, even for regular gameplay situations. Based on that data, we tuned the rewards down slightly for better parity with other methods of earning income. We also made some changes to the placement of crafting node spawn locations, specifically at the beginning of zones, to reduce the effectiveness of bot programs.

During the maintenance, we worked to ensure that any potential economic damage was cleaned up immediately. While the Auction House was offline, we had a team of people actively removing any items that were gained through these illegitimate means. Additionally, any accounts that were determined to be botting were banned permanently. As of this moment, we are confident that we have removed all illegitimately earned items and currency from the economy and auction house.

Our next steps will be to continually monitor for the use of automation programs with the goal of minimizing their effectiveness, as we are committed to ensuring that game mechanics surrounding character progression and the amassing of riches remain fair and balanced.

As a reminder, for any issues or suspicious players that are discovered in the future, please feel free to let us know via our Support Ticket system. You can contact our support team by creating a ticket at support.perfectworld.com, or be sending an email to customerservice@perfectworld.com.

Thanks for your patience, support, and hard work in reporting these issues to us!

Sincerely,

Dezstravus and the Neverwinter Team

While I appreciate your confidence I am not. A simple google search will show that only a small portion of these cheats, exploits and damaging economic activities persist.

Might I suggest a simple Server Wipe (it is a beta) and a fix to your code.

allaerra · May 2013

Thanks for keeping us informed Dez.

kevinf08 · May 2013

Thanks for the information Destravuz. My curiosity is now satisfied.

ocampusmaximus · May 2013

Is there a way we can report bots? Because those parasites are making a mess out of PvP.

klixan · May 2013

Thank you for this info, it makes me feel much better about the game. Because it's very frustrating when you don't know what's going on. I'm especially happy to see the bans starting to take effect. I've seen a few forum posts of late asking why so and so was banned, which is always a good sign. So thanks again and please continue to keep us updated.

bytemybut · May 2013

dezstravus wrote: »

<Upon investigation, we discovered that the items had been earned through automated farming of crafting material nodes.>

My other account was banned with no Email saying why... I had been farming an area for a lot of hours but not 'botting', During this time I was leveling killing the monsters there and getting loot from the resource nodes. I also did some PVP during this time + quested also. I hope upon investigation of my case you guys can tell if I was botting or just going into an area over + over and not using an automatic program. At no stage did I think that what I was doing was an exploit or illegal play.
I instigated a bit of a discussion a couple of days ago if anyone wants to see it ..
http://www.reddit.com/r/Neverwinter/comments/1fb01i/banned_for_farming_selling_stuff_on_ah/

How much longer should it take to get a reply to my emails or get my account reinstated ?

Unknown · May 2013

This content has been removed.

stormysg · May 2013

Well done.

stormysg · May 2013

bytemybut wrote: »

dezstravus wrote: »

<Upon investigation, we discovered that the items had been earned through automated farming of crafting material nodes.>

My other account was banned with no Email saying why... I had been farming an area for a lot of hours but not 'botting', During this time I was leveling killing the monsters there and getting loot from the resource nodes. I also did some PVP during this time + quested also. I hope upon investigation of my case you guys can tell if I was botting or just going into an area over + over and not using an automatic program. At no stage did I think that what I was doing was an exploit or illegal play.
I instigated a bit of a discussion a couple of days ago if anyone wants to see it ..
http://www.reddit.com/r/Neverwinter/comments/1fb01i/banned_for_farming_selling_stuff_on_ah/

How much longer should it take to get a reply to my emails or get my account reinstated ?

send them a ticket, no point posting here.

tojop · May 2013

Props to you guys for being not only fast to act, but actually transparent about what happened/what was done. You need to keep talking to these people in the only language they understand: BANHAMMER

bytemybut · May 2013

tojop wrote: »

Props to you guys for being not only fast to act, but actually transparent about what happened/what was done. You need to keep talking to these people in the only language they understand: BANHAMMER

BANHAMMER is fine except it looks like they hammered a lot of innocent accounts at the same time (mine included [Incident: 130527-001678].

And before I got banned I saw plenty of bots running in my PVP matches, it was getting really bad playing with 2-3 bots on my team sometimes. You would think that those guys would be easier to ban and get it right than it would be finding bots in the game farming resource nodes. Unless they have sorted out the PVP bots since my account was banned on 27/5/13.

erambo · May 2013

My account was hit with a ban, I have sent emails to neverwinter but have not gotten a reply as to why I was banned now seeing this post I can see they banned me because they thought i was botting. I have never botted in any game I have ever played.

I play all my games legit though, I honestly never thought of node farming and grinding lower level mobs, was exploiting anything since i did the same in every mmo i have ever played. I only played for about 2 hours at a time while I listend to a podcast and I was already done grinding that area since the exp wasn't so good.

I have sent 3 emails to support with no-reply i'm confident if my account was looked into, you would see that I didn't bot, you can even check my mail and you will see alot of the enchants that I did list and sell, came from this account and I saved all my enchants from 1-60 and sent to that char to sell so when he hits 60 i would have enough AD to buy some gear from the AH.

pestilence149 · May 2013

dezstravus wrote: »

Hey Poac!

Our investigation involved banning far more than a single account. Once we identified the process that was being used, we did a search to identify other accounts that were doing the same. Additionally, if an account was closed, any items that it had up on the auction house were removed during the Monday night maintenance. Thanks for requesting clarification!

Considering I wasn't even botting or exploiting why in the heck did I receive a banishment? It seems like you hardly investigated any of the accounts you did close Monday, myself and others were banned Monday without any form of notification are you able to explain this? And or the massive attempts at trying to get in contact with your customer support to resolve this issue? Honestly between the amount of posts I've seen I highly doubt my ticket will ever be resolved or my account unbanished even though I played legitimately.. Seriously dezstravus this update made me more sad then happy to see how happy you folks are about the blanket permanent bans on legitimate players.. Answer your customer service this is becoming ridiculous.

pestilence149 · May 2013

Honestly, it seems if anyone was farming nodes legitimately, like I loved to do during the professions event so I did not have to mass gather all the time, but I farmed it by hand with no form of bot program and got a ban even after spending 100$ irl Cash? Can't you tell the difference between a paying player and an automated free account? Anyone who has put real time and money into a game is not going to cheat and exploit yet you STILL banished me without notification and still a non existant customer service to get ahold of... Seriously guys we are getting choked!

stantheman10 · May 2013

bytemybut wrote: »

BANHAMMER is fine except it looks like they hammered a lot of innocent accounts at the same time (mine included [Incident: 130527-001678].

And before I got banned I saw plenty of bots running in my PVP matches, it was getting really bad playing with 2-3 bots on my team sometimes. You would think that those guys would be easier to ban and get it right than it would be finding bots in the game farming resource nodes. Unless they have sorted out the PVP bots since my account was banned on 27/5/13.

If you seen them report them via ticket better safe than sorry.

pestilence149 · May 2013

Seriously, look at the amount of innocents posting here for killing lower-leveled mobs and farming nodes while LEGITIMATELY PLAYING, seriously get your head out of your arses and start lifting some of these unjustified banishments, you should be able to tell who was botting and who was not, who farmed for 1-2 hours, who farmed for 10+ hours? I think you will find the discrepencies. Seriously now its 5 days with no reply, and I hear avg wait time is minimum 10 days, woot.

travail01 · June 2013

Here's the thing. It's great that you guys acted quickly to shut down the AH, discover the cause of the "illegitimate" items, and ban the accounts of those involved; However, if you're going to implement sweeping bans using an automated process search, you have to have the customer support in place to deal with the accounts who are innocent, and who were legitimately farming nodes without botting.

When you use a process search to implement wide sweeping account bans, some innocent people will inevitably be caught in the crossfire. You should know this from all of the other exploit fixes you've gone through in Neverwinter, as well as the many other games that Cryptic/PWE have been a part of. To fail to provide an adequate customer support system, which can promptly deal with the issues of those innocent accounts caught in the wake of these bans, is irresponsible.

-Travail.

brutikusiv · June 2013

dalaigh wrote: »

It may be easier to watch for resource node camping and flag the camper for PvP if they harvest the same node some (random number within ranged limit) times in a row. Players will watch for and jump on a character being flagged while node harvesting.

Resource node camping is not necessarily proof of botting but it is rather rude to other players. Getting to attack flagged node campers gives the community something to do (it creates content).

Best fix! /signed /approved /cheer

illemortem · June 2013

dalaigh wrote: »

It may be easier to watch for resource node camping and flag the camper for PvP if they harvest the same node some (random number within ranged limit) times in a row. Players will watch for and jump on a character being flagged while node harvesting.

Resource node camping is not necessarily proof of botting but it is rather rude to other players. Getting to attack flagged node campers gives the community something to do (it creates content).

This idea makes me cackle with glee.

I fully support it.

pestilence149 · June 2013

I would have to agree Travail, if you were going to imply the ban sweeps you should of been full aware of having banned legitimate players how are you going to deal with this? We are still waiting patiently Cryptic!

Monday's Auction House Investigation - Follow Up

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