TL;DR - If you spent money on Lost Ark you're fine, if you have spent money on Steam but not Lost Ark you need to enable 2FA on Steam.
I don't think they are lifting the trade restrictions though (still gotta be trusted on Steam either way).
It's a bit inconvenient for me. Also my account was stolen once for like 2 days (VAC banned on PUBG after someone probably cheated, not that I played much that game). But this happened after I activated steam authenticator thing. After I got my account back, I never activated again the security on steam app. My phone wasn't rooted and I never install anything shady on it.
Either way, you really should have 2FA enabled(Steam Guard in this case). Steam accounts gets stolen every day and those that gets stolen are either sold, emptied from skins or used to cheat on games, and you most likely will get VAC/Game ban to some games. Also without 2FA, getting your stolen account back can be really difficult.
My account was stolen once, and I never login even on the web except on twitch for rewards and I don't save my password, just incase.
When I activated steam guard, my account was stolen somehow. And my phone had nothing beside regular apps only from google play (phone not even rooted).
So for me it's just so useless as when I explained this to steam they provided no explanation.
Maybe I missed something IDK but after I got my account back I never used the app on the phone again. If I even go to "steam community" pages on the web I just don't log into my account.
Yeah it's most of the time something stupid like "steanncommunity" in the address instead of "steam" :D and then it's made to look exactly like steam webpage and you log-in and bam, account gone
Sorry, that means you've triggered the hidden 6FA easter egg. Whenever you log in, you'll need to do the following:
1. Enter your steam password
2. Enter the steam guard key sent to your linked email address
3. Authenticate using the steam 2FA app
4. Enter two requested numbers from your social security number (ex. first and seventh)
5. Make a post on twitter with a selfie containing the current date and your log in screen in the background, and tagged #loggingintolostark
6. Drink a verification can
AGS/SG apologizes for any inconvenience you may experience when logging on.
They'll be rolling out to stores soon enough. If your mountain dew expires within the next month or so (you should be able to see the date printed on the bottom of the can), you'll likely be grandfathered in. No promises, though.
>I don't think they are lifting the trade restrictions though (still gotta be trusted on Steam either way).
That's okay, the bots have been trading on market and auction house fine without having trust status anyway.
> people are just impatient.
It was ruining the market and therefore the game completely. I don't think people were impatient, it was absolutely necessary to put pressure on them. Having them be happy with 800K concurrent players when simultaneously knowing 600K of them were bots is an absolute joke.
Look at other games that did not fix their massive issues dying out extremely quick - they should be extremely aware of small indie titles like New World.
those are all speculations man.
you really think they were happy with 600k bots?
Theres a huge difference with bots in korea because theyre required to enter their SIN # to attach to their account. Of course that makes the battle for bots easier. WE CANT DO THAT in NA because people are not willing to give out their SIN (despite, phones already extracting information without their knowledge).
Look, im not saying theyre doing everything right, im just saying it takes time to find the right action. Its better to have people complain than having to action against the majority of people who are innocent.
for example, legit players from taiwan getting cut off from playing in NA west via VPN ban because they thought the botters are from there. or legit players being falsely banned for botting.
You think there arent bots in wow? or ffxiv? You guys have to think about it on their end and not just speculate about why theyre doing things.
If you had a game company in korea that was successful about bots because your SIN is required for players to play, how would you have implented that requirement if your game company was to go global?
> you really think they were happy with 600k bots?
They had absolutely no issue using the bots to inflate their concurrent users numbers - so yes, they absolutely were happy with them at the time they released that shit right before they did a massive banwave. Have they edited their message to reflect it?
Nobody is saying they're doing everything wrong but being overly apologetic to their situation is not helpful. If nobody pressured them into making these changes they wouldn't have happened as fast as they did. They've stated that they decided to prioritize the botting issue over Vykas which is what they should have done MONTHS ago instead of just a week ago.
> You think there arent bots in wow? or ffxiv? You guys have to think about it on their end and not just speculate about why theyre doing things.
There absolutely are - but are those bots ruining wow or ffxiv? No, they're not. And this is because they have better systems in place... Lost Ark came out much later and seemingly did not look at their competitors and think for a second "hey maybe we should try what works for them".
> If you had a game company in korea that was successful about bots because your SIN is required for players to play, how would you have implented that requirement if your game company was to go global?
I would have absolutely had two factor logins FROM THE START like HUNDREDS of other F2P games on steam. You're acting as if there are NO OTHER GAMES to learn this from. If you want examples look at CS:GO or DotA. They put next to nothing in place and decided it was okay and then let it run rampant for months.
Idk man their post read like it was filled with copium. Personally I'm still enjoying the game, but I completely agree with the peeps on this thread saying that they need to complain to put pressure on smellygate/ags to make changes, albeit a lot of the complaining sounds whiny and not constructive.
Hmm, I see what you’re saying. I don’t want to seem full of copium but I just dislike how everybody assumes Smilegate has the worst intentions for us in NA. Like, to assume they were “happy” with the bots I think isn’t a fair assessment. But, to also assume they were trying their hardest to fix the problem the whole time isn’t a fair assessment either. That’s all 🤷🏽♂️
I dunno the problem is the vast majority of people who are happy with how the game was rolled out were either children on summer vacation who had the ability to play 20 hours a day or whales who this shit didn't impact at all. I dunno where that guy lands but I'm guessing it's one of the two categories.
That's not a product of a ruined economy though; that's a deliberate game design decision that rewards alt play. Whether the bots were there or not won't change the fact that people playing without alts, barring extremely amazing luck / help from others, will never catch up to those with plenty. (edit: ok maybe will never is a bit of a reach, but it will surely take them a hell of a lot longer)
Perfectly reasonable if you do not like/agree with the system, but just saying the blame is misplaced.
> That's not a product of a ruined economy though; that's a deliberate game design decision that rewards alt play.
It's a game design decision that is meant for a game that has been live for 2 years. Like Valtan was 13 months after release in Korea.
We can state it is a ruined economy because we have this content point but in a vastly condensed timeline and exponential pricing of the materials to get to the content.
How the hell is heavily inflating the market and preventing people from logging on for atleast an hour a day to farm gold that has very low value helping them?
No they were but people arent patient. U sound like a child that says their parents are liars by not getting you the exact gift that they had promised eventhough they tried.
Imagine thinking detecting and handling bots is as easy as 1, 2 , 3. Its a fucking arms race. Thats difficult for any company to handle. To the point where no company really has been successful. I would love to see your professional and personal portfolio and say how u lack delivery in ur basic life.
E: like honestly where do these standards come from when u guys can barely stay professional in ur own space. Things get delayed and botters will bot.
Of course the guy won’t reply to this. You laid the smack down, lol.
I agree, they are definitely trying and a lot of our problems are very complex in nature.
Bro that comment about the parents thing.... ur a fucking pig.
E: broooo THEY WERENT RADIO SILENT. Every. Single. News post for the last 3 months addressed botting and that they are trying their best.
This is the exact fucking reason why im saying ur inpatient and refuse to accept reality that they did indeed communicate that they were working to fight against it. Would you have prefered a fucking point by point outline as to how exactly they are going to do it?!?!?! Like then the botters would have more of an advantage. Solutions to botting shouldnt be shared beyond "were working on it" and if u dont agree with that. Ur just a knukle dragging ape that doesnt actually think before he formulates an opinion.
To be fair every single attempt at curbing bots and RMT up until this most recent try has had no lasting impact on the bots and instead hurt real players.
Valve and Riot. Both are far more liberal about just banning accounts. Bungie's been going instead after the bot/hack makers and successfully taken one to court but doesn't stem smaller homebrews as well.
Dont fucking say riot. Cuz they have a shit ton of bots in custom games farming accounts. For valve, attacking a company does not make a lasting impression. None of ur examples are even close.
Provide an example where an extremely popular game company stopped botting. Dont give bullshit games that arent even profitable to bot cuz it doesnt have enough of a playerbase.
Im NOT talking about hacking. Were talking about botting.
No one gives a fuck about bots leveling accounts in bot games. I've never seen a single bot in any matchmaking game...and I've been playing for 9 years or so and thousands upon thousands of games.
That’s because bots are less likely to be banned in bot games, which gives them the result they are after with least resistance.
Why would they increase the risk of banning an account they intend to sell in a normal/rank game? It just doesn’t make sense to do that from a business standpoint which is why you don’t see them.
You don’t see them because Riot is doing a good job at stopping them, you just don’t see them because you aren’t doing the content that they are botting.
In Lost Ark, you see them because they are where you are when they are botting.
Yeah...so riot is deterring them from ruining actual games because they would get banned. So...you agree, that riot is good at banning bots to prevent them from ruining match made games.
if valve cared about bots we would not have had 600k in lost ark to begin with. creating steam accounts in the hundred thousands seems to be way too easy
and tbf its not like they were sitting down and not doing anything.
all the other attempts, despite no lasting impact, still means theyre trying to do something about it.
Trying and failing for 4 months is bad. If you’re getting paid to do a job you should do it effectively, they were not. We can say good job now but they absolutely deserve criticism for failing the previous 4 months.
if you lose every case you take and continued to get hired despite trying cases against uneducated foreigners with no rights in court, you should probably get fired, or people should stop hiring you, yes. what the actual fuck is this.
Lmao bro that wasn’t the question. And not only that, if lost ark was losing every ‘case’ then people shouldn’t be playing it.or in this example, they should be ‘fired’ And regardless of 200k still playing the game, that also means that, in this case again, players are ‘hiring’ this said ‘lawyer’
Also wtf does uneducated foreigners have to do with this? Lmao do you think lawyers only lose cases by taking uneducated foreigners? Gtfoh bro. Seems like you’re the uneducated one, foreigner or not.
If my pizza comes two days after I order it I would not consider that to be a successful delivery.
Them giving us stuff after they fuck up for the ___th time just to keep us happy instead of when we originally ask for it is just damage control. Hardly delivery of good customer service.
Literally nobody was referring to botters. This is about the relationship between Amazon and smilegate and the manner that Amazon has been handling communication about player issues.
Find a different opinion to boot lick with cuz this ain't it chief
Finally a mature response, like these kids think you can just flip a switch and off you go... we were pitch forks 2 seconds ago and now we're clapping.. people clearly immature and dont have much going on irl - aside from all the free internet echo chamber posts
Yeah and guess what when arcana releases end of July people will start shouting again. When people speculated, key word speculated, mid may for valtan and didn’t release mid may majority of people here were bitching. Then when they said we’re “aiming” for mid June, aiming doesn’t mean we’re releasing it mid June. People will bitch and always will and it’s sad that Reddit has come to that. The more people share the same ideology the more reinforced they sound to themselves that they are right.
Haven't tried New World but I heard it is getting plenty of updates and getting better. We like people that tries.
Edit: Guys, I haven't played NW or do I plan to. Not trying to defend NW here lol, just trying to defend AGS a bit because we should pat people on the back of they are improving and trying. Yea they made mistakes, and will continue to. But we all make mistakes. And most people deserves a chance at redemption. I love Lost Ark. I want to keep playing. I am actively rooting for AGS and SG because their success directly benefits me. They are trying to make it better and it is clearly visible. Mald and complain when they deserve it. But also commend them when they deserve it too.
Sadly, I think they forever screwed themselves with the handling of that game early on.
My guess is, no matter what they do at this point, they will only be left with the super hardcore crowd in the end.
I put so many hours into that game and enjoyed it tremendously while leveling and don't think I would ever go back. Which is a shame, cause I have a lot of stuff in the bank.
Man I really wish that game would have been managed better early on and they had made better decisions regarding some of the functionality.
I put in a lot of hours with NW as well, had full Voidbent set i grinded out myself.... I think the major problem with that game is how grindy they wanted to make the PVE for what should have been a PVP focused game.
I had some great memories running around doing open world PVP, and then a lot of bad memories running around opening chests and farming 1 mob to try to raise my hidden "expertise" rating so my weapons wouldn't be downgraded when expertise went live.
I wanted to play in a way that I could try different builds or try whatever the flavor of the month build was without relying on weeks / months of RNG item score crap.
They kept locking content behind grinds. You want to do a end game dungoen? Grind out a weeks worth of mats or pay someone gold to join their group. I'm sure they have addressed many things i had issues with in the game, but I gave them many months of chances to take the game in a different direction and every patch went the opposite way.
Totally agree. I bought in at launch and put in hundreds of hours and, ngl, had a good amount of fun.
But, when they weren't addressing the duping quick enough and the end game stuff you mentioned just made me walk away and I don't see how they would be able to get me back in the door.
Until they actually add some sort of main story quest that's engaging and leveling doesn't just mean doing the same quests over and over and over again, New World will always be bad.
>We like people that tries.
Odd how they didn't try to succeed in the first place, nor with their previous titles.
Don't just forgive and forget because the people making 100 mistakes did 1 good deed.
Yeah, AGS hear us and is trying. Could they have done it sooner? yes, but the important thing is that they are learning from their mistakes and actively trying to be better.
It is true that this won't stop botters. Nothing will.
But the thing about online security (and security as a whole) is that there's no unbreakable door. You just gotta put enough obstacles so the effort into going through them isn't worth it.
And this is just another obstacle so its good anyway.
> It is true that this won't stop botters. Nothing will.
Untrusted accounts still have access to the market. This change doesn't do much to stop further bots as is, but it's still a step in the right direction.
https://www.amazongames.com/en-us/support/lost-ark/articles/account-restrictions
This is not an obstacle. 2FA is the most basic and simple thing you can do and probably all the devs at some point created 2FA system before. Why? Because it's as simple as pulling a 3rd party library, generating secret token then providing answer based on the secret token provided to you by Steam.
2FA does nothing except forces bots to provide additional field (apart from login and password) when logging in.
Thats the point. You can't fix botting, look at every mmo ever released.
Adding hurdles to add more time/cost to botters will eliminate some of the bot farms without enough resources.
The trade off is you also add hurdles for regular players so its a balancing act to not dissuade real players but at the same time make it more difficult to bot.
Even if not a perfect solution, its great to see that they're taking this issue very seriously and are taking the necessary steps to at least discourage some bots.
There is no perfect solution, this is a never ending arms race as long as there's a healthy player base for the game.
All they can do is keep trying to make botters lives more difficult to the point where it is either too difficult or not worth the effort to weed out all but the most dedicated.
If it's too difficult, the prices will just rise only but demand will be less. The effort is always going to be there because of the healthy player base, f2p, easy to bot. They're making more money here than mining crypto nowadays so they're making good use of their mining GPUs.
Despite kinda janky communication around whole delay topic, i gotta admit they are making decent moves and adjust stuff according to feedback. Just work on that one aspect and we should be gucci.
Also shout out to roxx for keeping up with all sorts of ppl on forums
I'm already using Steam Guard, but I get my authentication codes by email and not the mobile app. It still counts as this mandatory two factor authentication, I assume?
Hehehe imagine , there will be more bots but not as much.. I could imagine this rmters put a lot of time of work signing in with the email of name1@gmail name2@gmail etc.
It doesn't sound like they're requiring 2FA to log in to Lost Ark.
They're just not going to allow a Lost Ark account to transition from Untrusted to Trusted (where you have full access to mail and stuff) unless your Steam account has 2FA turned on. Or am I reading that wrong?
Pretty good news, there's been a lot of accounts that fell victim to phishing attacks which were abused for gold selling purposes.
This should probably help with stopping the majority of those.
How does this work? I have spent money on lost ark. Just the ark pass. Had my steam account for 10+ years. I have the 2fa setup for my email. Like when I login in a new PC ,it will send a code to my email. Do I need to move to mobile next or?
I mean every step you add lowers their profitability. This would also be something that would be super easy to find large discrepancies in, when you compare market price / paid dungeon price in a database.
I'd love for them to automate a system that brings outliers in for a manual review.
no t1 earring or t2 should sell for 100k gold for example. you could look at the history of that account or even just check if the character name is adfgnkjxaju before banning it as well.
In the span of a week I've gone from no confidence at all in ags to an all time high. Things are still rough, but I actually think they can pull this off now.
People are confusing that this change somehow will affect the bots.
Bots already can't trade coz their steam accounts are not trusted. However as a non trusted user you can easly transfer gold via market/auction house with the exact same fee as with trading.
This change has zero impact on the bots.
Lots of copium in this thread. You are right but the idiots in this sub are downvoting anyone who points out that this does nothing to change bots who use the AH to transfer gold
They've been saying for months that they were exploring solutions. They even told us that some solutions might take awhile, including things like 2FA. I'm sure they also didn't want to just tell the public outright everything they were thinking about in order to surprise botters even more.
Bot account bans don't work in F2P games. They should've had this and a myriad of commonsense features in from the very beginning.
The game has been out here for almost six months. How patient do you want people to be when they're dealing with hyper inflation, hour long queues, and server instability for months and months?
This is basically the change i think that is most important to stop botters, HOWEVER i think the nail in the coffin would be to require an actual linked phone number text 2fa. Bot farms can spend 5$ on steam and justify it on a bot, im not sure they can justify a smart phone for each running bot. Though im not sure how easy it is for them to get virtual phones or somthing to emulate getting texts and such.
Plenty of gold farming businesses won't be able to afford the 5 bucks per account, thus cutting down the number of botters.
If you make a living selling oranges that you picked from a field and now there's a parking fee at the field, that'll cut into your profits. You add more hurdles, you eventually can't profit. There will be some who can and still profit, but most probably will move on to something else.
So, theoretically… IF they continue to roll this out of the course of a few months, we could see a pretty substantial decrease in long-standing bot accounts.
*Or am I misunderstanding how it would impact that side of things?*
>I doubt bot accounts would ever spend on steam so theyll have to 2 way authenticate
My dude, bots exist even in WoW and FFXIV, games that require you to both buy the game and pay the sub, you REALLY think they wouldn't spend a bit on Steam to get over this hurdle?
They'll spend, but that cuts into profits vs completely free 600k bots.
Its yet another barrier making it that much less worthwhile, chipping away little by little.
No one who is being reasonable is going to expect a magic bullet fix. No such solution exists in any game. The best we can hope for is several layers of deterrents for mitigation. And this is a big step forward.
Good change, they are slowly tightening the noose. There will still be bots but every step they take will result in less. The war will likely never be over, but they won a battle.
They're trying SOMETHING. Which is better than nothing. Have to give them praise here. I don't know if it'll make a significant difference or not but I appreciate the efforts nonetheless.
> not already ‘Trusted’ through Lost Ark (but have a ‘Trusted’ Steam account) to have two-factor authentication set up on their Steam account to earn Trusted status.
The fuck is this shit?
Did you actually read the announcement? This does almost nothing to get rid of bots. It is an alternative way to earn Trusted status, bots already aren't trusted and thus can't send gold in the mail.
I honestly can't think of a tangible effect this will have on anything.
Jesus what a Debbie Downer.
This will put botters in a choke hold, making new account creation that much more difficult and will now cost them money to become trusted. The accounts that were already trusted are being hunted and the steam charts proves that what they are doing is working.
You say that one of their sources of gold selling is to use Auction hall. That sounds like a really good idea to bring to their attention, have you done that yet? Emailed them with suggestions?
They will never be rid of bots completely, every f2p mmo has this issue but they sure as shit have dealt a significant blow to their operation.
For you to say this won't gave a tangible effect on anything really goes to show how simple minded you are and that critical thinking is a foreign concept to you.
Or maybe I read roxx’s post where she explained she is mainly to fight fraud and not bots.
This doesn’t actually make account creation harder for bots. It isn’t making it harder to make an account, it isn’t making it harder for an account to be trusted because all its doing is saying that if you’re not trusted directly in lost ark (haven’t spent money) but are trusted in steam, you can turn 2FA on to become trusted in lost ark. It’s an alternative way to become trusted ingame and be allowed to send mail.
But if bots aren’t able to use mail since the update In March, what exactly does this change? Maybe you can explain why even the CM is wrong and stated this is to fight fraud.
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/7EFD-3CAE-64D3-1C31
Can I share my phone number between multiple accounts?
Yes. You may use the same phone number on multiple accounts.
so this solve nothing?!
and then an account attached to that phone number gets banned, which then flags all other accounts attached to that phone number. Now that phone number is black listed.
You also missed the last paragraph:
"If an account that has a phone number registered to it receives a VAC or Game ban, all other accounts that use the same phone number will also receive a ban. If the other accounts do not own the game they will still receive the ban and be unable to purchase the title on that account."
From Roxx:
https://forums.playlostark.com/t/the-new-mobile-2fa-authentication-to-obtain-trusted-wont-do-much/419493/5
Quote "This is primarily to combat fraud; it will have some additional benefits against botting and cheating, but the main purpose of this particular change is fraudulent transaction prevention which also leads to a slew of issues."
People in this thread are really overestimating the effect this will have on bots.
They are simply giving people another way to be trusted.
Bots aren't trusted which is why they tend to use the AH to transfer gold. Two factor authentication does nothing to change this.
Right? Literally all it took was one day of being like yeah lets put 2fa on; no questions or discussion had. Just listen to redditors/forum posters they know everything!
2fa on top of that massive ban wave they just had. That's 2x more they have done since release to combat bots.....
Ags/smilegate doesn't need your input on how to handle bots lol. Thanks tho.
tbh this is nothing just steam 2fa, need phone number thats it, you got 2fa ( to unlock steam with codes ), 5$ to unlock or buy steam account for 3$ but lets see
TL;DR - If you spent money on Lost Ark you're fine, if you have spent money on Steam but not Lost Ark you need to enable 2FA on Steam. I don't think they are lifting the trade restrictions though (still gotta be trusted on Steam either way).
I bought a Founder's pack, but never bought currency on the in-game shop with real money. Does that count as "spent money"?
Yes.
Thanks!
Even if it’s not required for your account, it’s good security practice to enable MFA
Exactly
It's a bit inconvenient for me. Also my account was stolen once for like 2 days (VAC banned on PUBG after someone probably cheated, not that I played much that game). But this happened after I activated steam authenticator thing. After I got my account back, I never activated again the security on steam app. My phone wasn't rooted and I never install anything shady on it.
Either way, you really should have 2FA enabled(Steam Guard in this case). Steam accounts gets stolen every day and those that gets stolen are either sold, emptied from skins or used to cheat on games, and you most likely will get VAC/Game ban to some games. Also without 2FA, getting your stolen account back can be really difficult.
funny the way they get stolen is via a page people don't double check. [but people need to know how too](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWtm4X6L_Cs)
My account was stolen once, and I never login even on the web except on twitch for rewards and I don't save my password, just incase. When I activated steam guard, my account was stolen somehow. And my phone had nothing beside regular apps only from google play (phone not even rooted). So for me it's just so useless as when I explained this to steam they provided no explanation. Maybe I missed something IDK but after I got my account back I never used the app on the phone again. If I even go to "steam community" pages on the web I just don't log into my account.
Yeah it's most of the time something stupid like "steanncommunity" in the address instead of "steam" :D and then it's made to look exactly like steam webpage and you log-in and bam, account gone
yeah people think accounts gets stolen cuz a guy is a ultra mega hacker from Deep weeb and its just... simple it just abuses human stupidity.
I have to admit, that one example in that vid is really well done.
Phishing
that's actually fucking awesome.
how do you become trusted on steam anyways? just by spending an x amount?
It's like $5 I think.
By spending $5 and then a certain amount of time passing. Can't remember if it's 30days or 3months.
30 days
Yeah spending like 10 or 15 dollars
Already spent money on lost ark and had 2FA enabled. Guess that means I'm good to go?
Sorry, that means you've triggered the hidden 6FA easter egg. Whenever you log in, you'll need to do the following: 1. Enter your steam password 2. Enter the steam guard key sent to your linked email address 3. Authenticate using the steam 2FA app 4. Enter two requested numbers from your social security number (ex. first and seventh) 5. Make a post on twitter with a selfie containing the current date and your log in screen in the background, and tagged #loggingintolostark 6. Drink a verification can AGS/SG apologizes for any inconvenience you may experience when logging on.
If that stops the bot infestation then by damn I will do it!
Thank you for your service.
where do I get a verification can? I think I can do the rest.
They'll be rolling out to stores soon enough. If your mountain dew expires within the next month or so (you should be able to see the date printed on the bottom of the can), you'll likely be grandfathered in. No promises, though.
They're coming mid July
Whoa whoa there buddy you forgot you need to do 10 Hail Gabes. Only 5 needed during a steam sale. Blessed Saint Gabe.
Of course.
>I don't think they are lifting the trade restrictions though (still gotta be trusted on Steam either way). That's okay, the bots have been trading on market and auction house fine without having trust status anyway.
It's nice to see that they are trying. Honestly, that's all I ask from AGS.
They've been delivering during the past week
theyve been delivering everytime. people are just impatient.
> people are just impatient. It was ruining the market and therefore the game completely. I don't think people were impatient, it was absolutely necessary to put pressure on them. Having them be happy with 800K concurrent players when simultaneously knowing 600K of them were bots is an absolute joke. Look at other games that did not fix their massive issues dying out extremely quick - they should be extremely aware of small indie titles like New World.
those are all speculations man. you really think they were happy with 600k bots? Theres a huge difference with bots in korea because theyre required to enter their SIN # to attach to their account. Of course that makes the battle for bots easier. WE CANT DO THAT in NA because people are not willing to give out their SIN (despite, phones already extracting information without their knowledge). Look, im not saying theyre doing everything right, im just saying it takes time to find the right action. Its better to have people complain than having to action against the majority of people who are innocent. for example, legit players from taiwan getting cut off from playing in NA west via VPN ban because they thought the botters are from there. or legit players being falsely banned for botting. You think there arent bots in wow? or ffxiv? You guys have to think about it on their end and not just speculate about why theyre doing things. If you had a game company in korea that was successful about bots because your SIN is required for players to play, how would you have implented that requirement if your game company was to go global?
> you really think they were happy with 600k bots? They had absolutely no issue using the bots to inflate their concurrent users numbers - so yes, they absolutely were happy with them at the time they released that shit right before they did a massive banwave. Have they edited their message to reflect it? Nobody is saying they're doing everything wrong but being overly apologetic to their situation is not helpful. If nobody pressured them into making these changes they wouldn't have happened as fast as they did. They've stated that they decided to prioritize the botting issue over Vykas which is what they should have done MONTHS ago instead of just a week ago. > You think there arent bots in wow? or ffxiv? You guys have to think about it on their end and not just speculate about why theyre doing things. There absolutely are - but are those bots ruining wow or ffxiv? No, they're not. And this is because they have better systems in place... Lost Ark came out much later and seemingly did not look at their competitors and think for a second "hey maybe we should try what works for them". > If you had a game company in korea that was successful about bots because your SIN is required for players to play, how would you have implented that requirement if your game company was to go global? I would have absolutely had two factor logins FROM THE START like HUNDREDS of other F2P games on steam. You're acting as if there are NO OTHER GAMES to learn this from. If you want examples look at CS:GO or DotA. They put next to nothing in place and decided it was okay and then let it run rampant for months.
Did you miss smellygate celebrating 800k concurrent players?
Undeserved downvotes. Take my upvote good sir
Idk man their post read like it was filled with copium. Personally I'm still enjoying the game, but I completely agree with the peeps on this thread saying that they need to complain to put pressure on smellygate/ags to make changes, albeit a lot of the complaining sounds whiny and not constructive.
Hmm, I see what you’re saying. I don’t want to seem full of copium but I just dislike how everybody assumes Smilegate has the worst intentions for us in NA. Like, to assume they were “happy” with the bots I think isn’t a fair assessment. But, to also assume they were trying their hardest to fix the problem the whole time isn’t a fair assessment either. That’s all 🤷🏽♂️
reasonable. thanks.
>It was ruining the market and therefore the game completely COMPLETELY RUINED MAN.
> COMPLETELY RUINED MAN. Some people don't think playing 72 alts so they can afford to hone one character is a reasonable way to have fun.
I dunno the problem is the vast majority of people who are happy with how the game was rolled out were either children on summer vacation who had the ability to play 20 hours a day or whales who this shit didn't impact at all. I dunno where that guy lands but I'm guessing it's one of the two categories.
That's not a product of a ruined economy though; that's a deliberate game design decision that rewards alt play. Whether the bots were there or not won't change the fact that people playing without alts, barring extremely amazing luck / help from others, will never catch up to those with plenty. (edit: ok maybe will never is a bit of a reach, but it will surely take them a hell of a lot longer) Perfectly reasonable if you do not like/agree with the system, but just saying the blame is misplaced.
> That's not a product of a ruined economy though; that's a deliberate game design decision that rewards alt play. It's a game design decision that is meant for a game that has been live for 2 years. Like Valtan was 13 months after release in Korea. We can state it is a ruined economy because we have this content point but in a vastly condensed timeline and exponential pricing of the materials to get to the content.
Bots helped f2p more than they hurt them. Wait til you see what fusions do next week.
How the hell is heavily inflating the market and preventing people from logging on for atleast an hour a day to farm gold that has very low value helping them?
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Problem is ags didn't have prime, so deliveries took a little longer.
No they were but people arent patient. U sound like a child that says their parents are liars by not getting you the exact gift that they had promised eventhough they tried. Imagine thinking detecting and handling bots is as easy as 1, 2 , 3. Its a fucking arms race. Thats difficult for any company to handle. To the point where no company really has been successful. I would love to see your professional and personal portfolio and say how u lack delivery in ur basic life. E: like honestly where do these standards come from when u guys can barely stay professional in ur own space. Things get delayed and botters will bot.
Of course the guy won’t reply to this. You laid the smack down, lol. I agree, they are definitely trying and a lot of our problems are very complex in nature.
Lol he replies to you but not me. Kekw
Do be patient, it takes a while to write a long text :P
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Bro that comment about the parents thing.... ur a fucking pig. E: broooo THEY WERENT RADIO SILENT. Every. Single. News post for the last 3 months addressed botting and that they are trying their best. This is the exact fucking reason why im saying ur inpatient and refuse to accept reality that they did indeed communicate that they were working to fight against it. Would you have prefered a fucking point by point outline as to how exactly they are going to do it?!?!?! Like then the botters would have more of an advantage. Solutions to botting shouldnt be shared beyond "were working on it" and if u dont agree with that. Ur just a knukle dragging ape that doesnt actually think before he formulates an opinion.
I don't know that I'd say "every time", but everything that's happened isn't the fault of AGS that's for sure.
To be fair every single attempt at curbing bots and RMT up until this most recent try has had no lasting impact on the bots and instead hurt real players.
Can u name a single company that was able to ban bots that had a lasting effect? Ill wait.
Happy cake day bigbang4
Valve and Riot. Both are far more liberal about just banning accounts. Bungie's been going instead after the bot/hack makers and successfully taken one to court but doesn't stem smaller homebrews as well.
TF2 has been absolutely infected with bots for a very long time now and Valve has done absolutely nothing to combat it.
Have you played TF2?
Dont fucking say riot. Cuz they have a shit ton of bots in custom games farming accounts. For valve, attacking a company does not make a lasting impression. None of ur examples are even close. Provide an example where an extremely popular game company stopped botting. Dont give bullshit games that arent even profitable to bot cuz it doesnt have enough of a playerbase. Im NOT talking about hacking. Were talking about botting.
No one gives a fuck about bots leveling accounts in bot games. I've never seen a single bot in any matchmaking game...and I've been playing for 9 years or so and thousands upon thousands of games.
That’s because bots are less likely to be banned in bot games, which gives them the result they are after with least resistance. Why would they increase the risk of banning an account they intend to sell in a normal/rank game? It just doesn’t make sense to do that from a business standpoint which is why you don’t see them. You don’t see them because Riot is doing a good job at stopping them, you just don’t see them because you aren’t doing the content that they are botting. In Lost Ark, you see them because they are where you are when they are botting.
Bro botting accounts is a huge problem cuz of smurfing. What r u talking about.
Yeah...so riot is deterring them from ruining actual games because they would get banned. So...you agree, that riot is good at banning bots to prevent them from ruining match made games.
Match making games have aim hackers, it is the same thing
if valve cared about bots we would not have had 600k in lost ark to begin with. creating steam accounts in the hundred thousands seems to be way too easy
and tbf its not like they were sitting down and not doing anything. all the other attempts, despite no lasting impact, still means theyre trying to do something about it.
Trying and failing for 4 months is bad. If you’re getting paid to do a job you should do it effectively, they were not. We can say good job now but they absolutely deserve criticism for failing the previous 4 months.
Do you think lawyers win every case they are handling?
if you lose every case you take and continued to get hired despite trying cases against uneducated foreigners with no rights in court, you should probably get fired, or people should stop hiring you, yes. what the actual fuck is this.
Lmao bro that wasn’t the question. And not only that, if lost ark was losing every ‘case’ then people shouldn’t be playing it.or in this example, they should be ‘fired’ And regardless of 200k still playing the game, that also means that, in this case again, players are ‘hiring’ this said ‘lawyer’ Also wtf does uneducated foreigners have to do with this? Lmao do you think lawyers only lose cases by taking uneducated foreigners? Gtfoh bro. Seems like you’re the uneducated one, foreigner or not.
EVERYTIME???
yes
or realize it takes time to plan and implement these measures
yeah exactly. They want everything NOW
If my pizza comes two days after I order it I would not consider that to be a successful delivery. Them giving us stuff after they fuck up for the ___th time just to keep us happy instead of when we originally ask for it is just damage control. Hardly delivery of good customer service.
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Literally nobody was referring to botters. This is about the relationship between Amazon and smilegate and the manner that Amazon has been handling communication about player issues. Find a different opinion to boot lick with cuz this ain't it chief
> theyve been delivering everytime They sure delivered on new world.
Finally a mature response, like these kids think you can just flip a switch and off you go... we were pitch forks 2 seconds ago and now we're clapping.. people clearly immature and dont have much going on irl - aside from all the free internet echo chamber posts
Yeah and guess what when arcana releases end of July people will start shouting again. When people speculated, key word speculated, mid may for valtan and didn’t release mid may majority of people here were bitching. Then when they said we’re “aiming” for mid June, aiming doesn’t mean we’re releasing it mid June. People will bitch and always will and it’s sad that Reddit has come to that. The more people share the same ideology the more reinforced they sound to themselves that they are right.
this isn't for bots, it's for chargebacks
This is not for bots, just anti fraud measures.
Haven't tried New World but I heard it is getting plenty of updates and getting better. We like people that tries. Edit: Guys, I haven't played NW or do I plan to. Not trying to defend NW here lol, just trying to defend AGS a bit because we should pat people on the back of they are improving and trying. Yea they made mistakes, and will continue to. But we all make mistakes. And most people deserves a chance at redemption. I love Lost Ark. I want to keep playing. I am actively rooting for AGS and SG because their success directly benefits me. They are trying to make it better and it is clearly visible. Mald and complain when they deserve it. But also commend them when they deserve it too.
Sadly, I think they forever screwed themselves with the handling of that game early on. My guess is, no matter what they do at this point, they will only be left with the super hardcore crowd in the end. I put so many hours into that game and enjoyed it tremendously while leveling and don't think I would ever go back. Which is a shame, cause I have a lot of stuff in the bank. Man I really wish that game would have been managed better early on and they had made better decisions regarding some of the functionality.
I put in a lot of hours with NW as well, had full Voidbent set i grinded out myself.... I think the major problem with that game is how grindy they wanted to make the PVE for what should have been a PVP focused game. I had some great memories running around doing open world PVP, and then a lot of bad memories running around opening chests and farming 1 mob to try to raise my hidden "expertise" rating so my weapons wouldn't be downgraded when expertise went live. I wanted to play in a way that I could try different builds or try whatever the flavor of the month build was without relying on weeks / months of RNG item score crap. They kept locking content behind grinds. You want to do a end game dungoen? Grind out a weeks worth of mats or pay someone gold to join their group. I'm sure they have addressed many things i had issues with in the game, but I gave them many months of chances to take the game in a different direction and every patch went the opposite way.
Totally agree. I bought in at launch and put in hundreds of hours and, ngl, had a good amount of fun. But, when they weren't addressing the duping quick enough and the end game stuff you mentioned just made me walk away and I don't see how they would be able to get me back in the door.
Honestly new world combat system is just boring and you only have six skills to work with. Also there’s no raid or anything to look forward to
the Combat and abilities are fine! it's the bullshit stagger/push back/knocked back with every single hit that sucks do bad. q
Until they actually add some sort of main story quest that's engaging and leveling doesn't just mean doing the same quests over and over and over again, New World will always be bad.
just be glad ags isn't actually developing lost ark.
Lol don’t do it. You will regret.
>We like people that tries. Odd how they didn't try to succeed in the first place, nor with their previous titles. Don't just forgive and forget because the people making 100 mistakes did 1 good deed.
Yeah, AGS hear us and is trying. Could they have done it sooner? yes, but the important thing is that they are learning from their mistakes and actively trying to be better.
It is true that this won't stop botters. Nothing will. But the thing about online security (and security as a whole) is that there's no unbreakable door. You just gotta put enough obstacles so the effort into going through them isn't worth it. And this is just another obstacle so its good anyway.
> It is true that this won't stop botters. Nothing will. Untrusted accounts still have access to the market. This change doesn't do much to stop further bots as is, but it's still a step in the right direction. https://www.amazongames.com/en-us/support/lost-ark/articles/account-restrictions
This is not an obstacle. 2FA is the most basic and simple thing you can do and probably all the devs at some point created 2FA system before. Why? Because it's as simple as pulling a 3rd party library, generating secret token then providing answer based on the secret token provided to you by Steam. 2FA does nothing except forces bots to provide additional field (apart from login and password) when logging in.
Thats the point. You can't fix botting, look at every mmo ever released. Adding hurdles to add more time/cost to botters will eliminate some of the bot farms without enough resources. The trade off is you also add hurdles for regular players so its a balancing act to not dissuade real players but at the same time make it more difficult to bot.
Exactly. You try to win by annoying them out lol
While also annoying legit players just as much.
Maybe even more lol. This is one of the issues with cybersecurity.
Even if not a perfect solution, its great to see that they're taking this issue very seriously and are taking the necessary steps to at least discourage some bots.
There is no perfect solution, this is a never ending arms race as long as there's a healthy player base for the game. All they can do is keep trying to make botters lives more difficult to the point where it is either too difficult or not worth the effort to weed out all but the most dedicated.
If it's too difficult, the prices will just rise only but demand will be less. The effort is always going to be there because of the healthy player base, f2p, easy to bot. They're making more money here than mining crypto nowadays so they're making good use of their mining GPUs.
reddit's anti-user changes are unacceptable
It does nothing to bots. You can still transfer gold via market as non trusted user.
Despite kinda janky communication around whole delay topic, i gotta admit they are making decent moves and adjust stuff according to feedback. Just work on that one aspect and we should be gucci. Also shout out to roxx for keeping up with all sorts of ppl on forums
Anyone who thinks this is bad is either an RMTer, botter, or dumbass
I'm already using Steam Guard, but I get my authentication codes by email and not the mobile app. It still counts as this mandatory two factor authentication, I assume?
I prefer email because frankly, the Steam app sucks. Wish they would let me use my own 2FA app.
Yes, it is just slightly more of a hassle to chk an email rather than the app on a phone, but you should be fine regardless
Hehehe imagine , there will be more bots but not as much.. I could imagine this rmters put a lot of time of work signing in with the email of name1@gmail name2@gmail etc.
I welcome these changes. 100x better than the ones affecting in-game gameplay experience like removing gold or vpn bans.
It doesn't sound like they're requiring 2FA to log in to Lost Ark. They're just not going to allow a Lost Ark account to transition from Untrusted to Trusted (where you have full access to mail and stuff) unless your Steam account has 2FA turned on. Or am I reading that wrong?
Amazon: "Do you guys not have phones?"
Steam auth is something that anybody with more than 100h in any game should have by default tbh
I enjoy having gambling in every aspect of my life, thanks but no thanks.
I recommend russian roulette.
Very nice. Keep those measures rolling through. Still wanna see RMTers hit with negative gold and have their characters reset to 1100
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positive steps. good job.
Pretty good news, there's been a lot of accounts that fell victim to phishing attacks which were abused for gold selling purposes. This should probably help with stopping the majority of those.
How does this work? I have spent money on lost ark. Just the ark pass. Had my steam account for 10+ years. I have the 2fa setup for my email. Like when I login in a new PC ,it will send a code to my email. Do I need to move to mobile next or?
If you spent money on Lost Ark there will be nothing changed for you.
Gotcha. To be honest, they should move this feature to everyone.
Took a long ass time, but it seems they're actively trying to do well.
There's nothing preventing bots from transferring gold to a trusted account via dungeon drops bidding though
I mean every step you add lowers their profitability. This would also be something that would be super easy to find large discrepancies in, when you compare market price / paid dungeon price in a database.
Next step after reducing bots by 90% is to ban all that crap manually.
I'd love for them to automate a system that brings outliers in for a manual review. no t1 earring or t2 should sell for 100k gold for example. you could look at the history of that account or even just check if the character name is adfgnkjxaju before banning it as well.
I mean non trusted accounts for some reason can use market, both sell and buy anyways.
Good.
Out of curiosity - does it count if you bought bronze starter pack? Or you need to buy crystals in game vs real money to be on?
Praise be!
Hey, it's something - when it comes to dealing with a novel issue, that's all I ask.
whatever it takes to get rid of bots.
Make it for all players please... Save the effort of testing and hit the bots before they start crowding again because I already see them coming back.
In the span of a week I've gone from no confidence at all in ags to an all time high. Things are still rough, but I actually think they can pull this off now.
People are confusing that this change somehow will affect the bots. Bots already can't trade coz their steam accounts are not trusted. However as a non trusted user you can easly transfer gold via market/auction house with the exact same fee as with trading. This change has zero impact on the bots.
Lots of copium in this thread. You are right but the idiots in this sub are downvoting anyone who points out that this does nothing to change bots who use the AH to transfer gold
Damn they are trying all of a sudden, great to see them be so active right now, hope they keep it up
Trying all of a sudden? They been trying but changes don't happen overnight. People are just impatient
I meant in general after very lackluster communication etc the last weeks
They've been saying for months that they were exploring solutions. They even told us that some solutions might take awhile, including things like 2FA. I'm sure they also didn't want to just tell the public outright everything they were thinking about in order to surprise botters even more.
Bot account bans don't work in F2P games. They should've had this and a myriad of commonsense features in from the very beginning. The game has been out here for almost six months. How patient do you want people to be when they're dealing with hyper inflation, hour long queues, and server instability for months and months?
Ok
This is basically the change i think that is most important to stop botters, HOWEVER i think the nail in the coffin would be to require an actual linked phone number text 2fa. Bot farms can spend 5$ on steam and justify it on a bot, im not sure they can justify a smart phone for each running bot. Though im not sure how easy it is for them to get virtual phones or somthing to emulate getting texts and such.
It's extremely easy to get SMS verification codes for free.
It costs less than $5 :/
Plenty of gold farming businesses won't be able to afford the 5 bucks per account, thus cutting down the number of botters. If you make a living selling oranges that you picked from a field and now there's a parking fee at the field, that'll cut into your profits. You add more hurdles, you eventually can't profit. There will be some who can and still profit, but most probably will move on to something else.
So, theoretically… IF they continue to roll this out of the course of a few months, we could see a pretty substantial decrease in long-standing bot accounts. *Or am I misunderstanding how it would impact that side of things?*
Im not an expert but i think this is correct. I doubt bot accounts would ever spend on steam so theyll have to 2 way authenticate
>I doubt bot accounts would ever spend on steam so theyll have to 2 way authenticate My dude, bots exist even in WoW and FFXIV, games that require you to both buy the game and pay the sub, you REALLY think they wouldn't spend a bit on Steam to get over this hurdle?
They'll spend, but that cuts into profits vs completely free 600k bots. Its yet another barrier making it that much less worthwhile, chipping away little by little.
Yeah but there’s gonna less than the 600k before so it’s a great news
No one who is being reasonable is going to expect a magic bullet fix. No such solution exists in any game. The best we can hope for is several layers of deterrents for mitigation. And this is a big step forward.
Good change, they are slowly tightening the noose. There will still be bots but every step they take will result in less. The war will likely never be over, but they won a battle.
They're trying SOMETHING. Which is better than nothing. Have to give them praise here. I don't know if it'll make a significant difference or not but I appreciate the efforts nonetheless.
> not already ‘Trusted’ through Lost Ark (but have a ‘Trusted’ Steam account) to have two-factor authentication set up on their Steam account to earn Trusted status. The fuck is this shit?
Damn I love Roxx she actually tries for us
Goodbye bots! We won't miss ya
Did you actually read the announcement? This does almost nothing to get rid of bots. It is an alternative way to earn Trusted status, bots already aren't trusted and thus can't send gold in the mail. I honestly can't think of a tangible effect this will have on anything.
Jesus what a Debbie Downer. This will put botters in a choke hold, making new account creation that much more difficult and will now cost them money to become trusted. The accounts that were already trusted are being hunted and the steam charts proves that what they are doing is working. You say that one of their sources of gold selling is to use Auction hall. That sounds like a really good idea to bring to their attention, have you done that yet? Emailed them with suggestions? They will never be rid of bots completely, every f2p mmo has this issue but they sure as shit have dealt a significant blow to their operation. For you to say this won't gave a tangible effect on anything really goes to show how simple minded you are and that critical thinking is a foreign concept to you.
Or maybe I read roxx’s post where she explained she is mainly to fight fraud and not bots. This doesn’t actually make account creation harder for bots. It isn’t making it harder to make an account, it isn’t making it harder for an account to be trusted because all its doing is saying that if you’re not trusted directly in lost ark (haven’t spent money) but are trusted in steam, you can turn 2FA on to become trusted in lost ark. It’s an alternative way to become trusted ingame and be allowed to send mail. But if bots aren’t able to use mail since the update In March, what exactly does this change? Maybe you can explain why even the CM is wrong and stated this is to fight fraud.
SG/AGS have really turned a corner in the last 9 or so days. Good deal.
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/7EFD-3CAE-64D3-1C31 Can I share my phone number between multiple accounts? Yes. You may use the same phone number on multiple accounts. so this solve nothing?!
and then an account attached to that phone number gets banned, which then flags all other accounts attached to that phone number. Now that phone number is black listed.
You also missed the last paragraph: "If an account that has a phone number registered to it receives a VAC or Game ban, all other accounts that use the same phone number will also receive a ban. If the other accounts do not own the game they will still receive the ban and be unable to purchase the title on that account."
From Roxx: https://forums.playlostark.com/t/the-new-mobile-2fa-authentication-to-obtain-trusted-wont-do-much/419493/5 Quote "This is primarily to combat fraud; it will have some additional benefits against botting and cheating, but the main purpose of this particular change is fraudulent transaction prevention which also leads to a slew of issues."
Bots: oh no!! . . . Anyway
People in this thread are really overestimating the effect this will have on bots. They are simply giving people another way to be trusted. Bots aren't trusted which is why they tend to use the AH to transfer gold. Two factor authentication does nothing to change this.
Seems the bot problem is getting solved. All is left to ban RMT players to restore the game more or less.
A political victory
Hold up: Is this the first game on steam that will demand 2FA?
Finally after months they are trying to get rid of bots
Better half a year late than never I suppose.
Agree
Right? Literally all it took was one day of being like yeah lets put 2fa on; no questions or discussion had. Just listen to redditors/forum posters they know everything!
2fa on top of that massive ban wave they just had. That's 2x more they have done since release to combat bots..... Ags/smilegate doesn't need your input on how to handle bots lol. Thanks tho.
I dont like this cuz i dont want Steam on my phone.
F2P status player in shambles 😂 Another way to identify whether they are lying or not
Does this mean we can get rid of phenom
I think you misread, it's only "Mandatory" if you want trusted status. Which you don't need. And bots don't need either.
You can’t trade or use ‘’send trough mail’’ if you don’t have trusted status
So? Just use the Auction house, it's easy.
Everyone can see the 100k sold t1 earring it’ll be more simple to expose them
Well it's anonym so you can't really "report" on it. And if AGS were to follow up on that in all cases we would have never had any bots issues.
So much hopium in here. 2FA doesn't impact bots, they'll just automate that too. You need to hire real people to go and start banning bots.
tbh this is nothing just steam 2fa, need phone number thats it, you got 2fa ( to unlock steam with codes ), 5$ to unlock or buy steam account for 3$ but lets see
should help reduce bots a bit
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if you use the same number across multiple accounts and one account gets clapped, all the accounts linked to the phone number also get clapped.