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((Urgent)) Dev attention needed - Suspicous player activity on classic Risa map
monkeybone13
Member Posts: 4,640 Arc User
Risa classic map (not the summer event map)
Inside the cave on the southwest side of the map there is a large group of players standing there. I found this this morning before I went to bed and came back many hours later and this is still going on. (You can see the cave on the area map. As you beam in go left to the water and around the mountain on the west side and you'll find an entrance)
My observations:
All of these players are Federation faction.
A lot of them have the same phaser rifle on their backs, possibly the starter rifle you get on a new character.
When looking at their info (biography) a lot of them are in Light Cruisers.
Almost none of them are in a fleet. The few I've seen that are in a fleet are in the same exact fleet.
Some characters have very similar names: 'Greater Shade lvl. #' (where # is actual numbers such as 11, 32, 20, etc.)
What is going on:
Several characters will despawn at the exact same time then a few seconds later several new characters will spawn into the map. There is no beam in/out animation so I'm guessing they are logging the characters out. There is a beeping sound effect that keeps playing, it sounds like the sound effect that plays when you use a console. Every time this sound effect plays 1 or more characters log out. Then the sound effect plays a few seconds later and new characters log in. Some characters will have the level up animation play when the spawn into the map.
I also targeted a player character for a bit and noticed that it would target 1 of the other players for a split second, just before that character left. Then it would target another character for a split second and that character it targeted would leave. I targeted a different player character and same thing: it target others just before the left.
Basically what is happening is an endless cycle of characters switching into and out of the map. Since some characters level up as they spawn into the map I suspect there may be some sort of level up exploit going on.
My recommendation: look at the account activity on some of these accounts to see WTF is going on. This whole thing is disturbing.
Here is where the cave is located approximately to the beam in site http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c355/MonkeyGuts69/screenshot_2015-06-08-00-21-06_zpszesevqw3.jpg~original
Edit: I'm wondering if this could be causing strain on the servers and/or performance issues in the game.
Inside the cave on the southwest side of the map there is a large group of players standing there. I found this this morning before I went to bed and came back many hours later and this is still going on. (You can see the cave on the area map. As you beam in go left to the water and around the mountain on the west side and you'll find an entrance)
My observations:
All of these players are Federation faction.
A lot of them have the same phaser rifle on their backs, possibly the starter rifle you get on a new character.
When looking at their info (biography) a lot of them are in Light Cruisers.
Almost none of them are in a fleet. The few I've seen that are in a fleet are in the same exact fleet.
Some characters have very similar names: 'Greater Shade lvl. #' (where # is actual numbers such as 11, 32, 20, etc.)
What is going on:
Several characters will despawn at the exact same time then a few seconds later several new characters will spawn into the map. There is no beam in/out animation so I'm guessing they are logging the characters out. There is a beeping sound effect that keeps playing, it sounds like the sound effect that plays when you use a console. Every time this sound effect plays 1 or more characters log out. Then the sound effect plays a few seconds later and new characters log in. Some characters will have the level up animation play when the spawn into the map.
I also targeted a player character for a bit and noticed that it would target 1 of the other players for a split second, just before that character left. Then it would target another character for a split second and that character it targeted would leave. I targeted a different player character and same thing: it target others just before the left.
Basically what is happening is an endless cycle of characters switching into and out of the map. Since some characters level up as they spawn into the map I suspect there may be some sort of level up exploit going on.
My recommendation: look at the account activity on some of these accounts to see WTF is going on. This whole thing is disturbing.
Here is where the cave is located approximately to the beam in site http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c355/MonkeyGuts69/screenshot_2015-06-08-00-21-06_zpszesevqw3.jpg~original
Edit: I'm wondering if this could be causing strain on the servers and/or performance issues in the game.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
http://database.obsidianfleet.net/wiki/images/Devidian.jpg
Man thats creepy I look it up later. Perhaps they steal all our XP from the other Risa map.
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This is no joke.
Here is a screenshot of them (UI is off and no player names are shown) http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c355/MonkeyGuts69/screenshot_2015-06-07-23-57-28_zpsfdg75esi.jpg~original Edit: If you look closely you can see the sparkly level up effect on 1 in the middle.
A large quantity of them seem to be wearing the Odyssey uniform and possibly the default character customization (as in they created the character without ever bothering the customize its appearance).
Yea ok .. sorry for it just read weired.
On a serious note I hared rumour about EC generating by trading between players of different levels but havent looked into it. Perhaps the old risa cave is some hidden social hub" for such activities especially the with the level-number-named toons you mentioned.
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It also would not give anybody who is doing something he probably shouldnt a head start warning to do it elsewhere
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It's been going on for years.
...#LLAP...
I don't know. Pretty much all of them seemed to be between level 57 and 60. Even one that had 'lvl 32' in its character name was around level 57.
I stood there for a good half hour or so and not one ever said anything in local or zone chat. It was as if they didn't notice me, and possibly for a good reason. It's possible every single one of them are bots.
Its interesting to say the least but I have no clue what its all about, sorry.
Its just odd that those chars you mentioned look like they just stepped out of the char editor even though they have reached such a high level. I mean bot to level 60 first and the rescue the Azura and begin to play or right into STF?
The levelling thingy could easily be a side effect to what those bots do or players who interact with them do.
My advice is stay away from there and file a in game report. After your OP this will trigger attention in any case and I doubt our Game Masters will take cases of probable botting and/or exploiting lightly or are particularly open minded about who is to punish and who is not to on that map.
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There is no Foundry interact in there.
... are you sure?
...#LLAP...
Looking now...
No.. I'm wrong... there are several interacts in there. "Cave Plants"
The rapid and constant swapping in and out, not to mention the near max levels, of what appear to be generic characters, could be a possible botting setup to run Assignments or something of the like...
Run enough of them, especially short ones in quick succession, and it could potentially make some reasonable dilithium, that is if Assignments are available on the normal Risa map...
Some thought it was Dill farming for Zen conversion others for Ec but either way it was and by the looks of it still weird.
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We have a winner...
These missions have been available for over three years and despite reporting it on countless occasions Devs have done nothing about it in all that time...
...#LLAP...
Must be the most weird stuff going on Ive ever hared in correlation of the OPs described scenario. But ok, its STO so always room for a new low.
That would make more sense, however why hide in a cave in a bunch?
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Yes, the reason was to give the impression that what is going on there is legitimate and something the devs don't really want to look into.
It has nothing to do with ERP. What ERP'ers do you know that spend no time whatsoever customising their toons, don't use emotes, and do everything in private messages?
Go to Drozana and you will see what real ERP looks like. Here it is just a cover for power leveling/grinding dil in the foundry.
...#LLAP...
Just because the OP may feel slightly proud about having found an exploit, and thus mentioning it in public, doesn't mean he/she is wrong about the issue.
Indeed, I feel some sort of Dilithium exploit at work here. Would be nice if the Devs actually looked into this. If they had time to go to Japori, they have time to visit Risa.
Avoid casual scrutiny of - if there is indeed some botting operation going on - an activity that would be deemed to be against TOS and rightly shut down if attention was brought to it...
I imagine most players who would randomly visit Risa, just to see what's there, or clicked the wrong map during the Summer event, would likely not go looking into the cave in question - not even sure where it is myself, as I've never bothered exploring far, just as an example...
Maybe he was just exploring. I do that sometimes. Just run around one of the social zones and explore every nook and cranny. You don't know what you may find. Last time I was on that map, I found a NPC beach party going on in the beach to the South. So I joined in. If I found a random cave, I'd go in to explroe as well.
I never knew about this cave. But I may go have a look see now.
A Romulan Strike Team, Missing Farmers and an ancient base on a Klingon Border world. But what connects them? Find out in my First Foundary mission: 'The Jeroan Farmer Escapade'
Yea you are probably right. But that map is huge still and if bots would log randomly spread all over the island it would be less suspicious than the cave encounter where they are all in a bunch.
I could wrong but close proximity would be needed if there are any interactions between the bots or some players and the bots are going on.
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Noticed a "Dance Bot" on the dance floor at Risa, (weird looking Alien Gen half cat half anime toon, that obviously used the old tailor glitch, because it had a tail) and one of my Fleeties killed it by exploding one of those crawlers on himself whilst standing right next to it.
It lay dead, face down on the dance floor (with many players bouncing around wondering WTF?) for several hours, then suddenly it "woke up" and next thing you know, it's got a personal shield. :eek:
What was even creepier, was the fact that in the same instance, there were several "clones" of the at exact same toon/bot all standing around the dance floor. I'm told they were also there last year as well :rolleyes:
Ever heard of the practice called 'boxing' - that being the use of software to run multiple instances of the same game, all at the same time? Generally they'll move around in bunched groups, as it's simply easier to keep them all under control that way...
Being bunched up and hidden in a group wouldn't strike me as odd as, if someone's botting, they're most likely boxing also in order to maximise the output...
Oki, thx 4 info.
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Yeah. As I pointed out, not a single player said anything. None of the characters stayed in the map for very long, maybe 15 seconds or so at most. It was just characters switching out non-stop.
If they were roleplayers you'd think they would stick around for a while. And also as I said, several characters leave at the exact same time and a few seconds later several characters appear at the exact same time. None of the players moved at all. Post #4 you can see they are gathered in the middle of the cave. Someone said there were plants to interact with for foundry purposes. That could explain the constant interact sound I'm hearing but they didn't seem to be close enough to any plants. They just spawned, hung around for a moment, then a group of them left and another group took their place.
Edit: The reason why I was there was because I wanted to check out the old Risa map out of boredom. Found a cave entrance and went in to check it out.
Why I think that... OK, I stayed for maybe 10 mins chatting with another guy who was also trying to figure out what was going on there. In those 10 mins I noticed more than 5 players having with names written in Croatian or Serbian language, examples: Number 10, Number 26...
My guess is they are alts from the same fleet, probably Balkans region trying to gain something, I'm not accusing anyone but it looks very much like that.
EDIT: Removed the actual names, almost forgot about naming and shaming policy. Sorry.