Are you ready for the new BARD class?

[Xaklor]

that video contains footage of a hacked unity client.

[Platformz]

It’s really important to watch the entire video before making a comment on it. It causes a lot of misunderstanding.

[Gotgot]

I’ve been using those on my rogue, to get some fame boost, plus maxing my current characters faster. Maybe I should use my only 7/8 for something else, but I want my bard to be a more active character, so I can truly get the experience of playing with one for a while.

[BaadGuy]

I find it sad that Bard won’t be playable on Flash, but I wish they still let people use it. In my opinion it’s too early to get rid of the flash version. Even though I have an overall smoother performance I do get more crashes with exalt still.

For those looking for more info on what “boating” means and the effect that such hacks have on fame gain and other parts of the game at large, here’s a recent video that will provide additional perspective:

It’s pretty absurd how spaghetti the game can be in securing some areas. How come you can join a realm IP or portal directly using its IP even if they don’t exist in the nexus as he shows in the video? How come it lets you join a portal that your character isn’t even next to… that’s some very basic stuff, you know.

[Twitchystr]

Boating? That’s got nothing on duping chests…

[Nevov]

Wait so what’s going to happen on Flash ? People will see it ?

We can see the announcement on Flash at least :

But serious point,… is it that once you create a Bard, you are going to be unable to play using Flash?

Or is it that you can create a Bard on Exalt, and play it on Exalt, but still be able to play on your other characters using Flash?

[Twitchystr]

I’m going back to school when bard comes out :pepecry:

[Skandling]

It’s really important to watch the entire video before making a comment on it. It causes a lot of misunderstanding.

The video causes a lot of misunderstanding? I am not suprised. 20 minutes is a long as many television programs and I have no interest in sitting through all of it when it starts off with such a misleading statement.

I have already made my views on this clear: although Unity will not end hacking entirely it will become much harder, so much so that I doubt it will ever happen on the same scale again. And it is far too early to be judging it, based on the current Unity client. It’s quite possible, likely even, that hacking prevention measures have not been enabled yet. There are many reasons for this but the simplest is there’s no point trying to aggressively stop hackers now when they can just switch to the Flash client.

[Niegil]

although Unity will not end hacking entirely it will become much harder, so much so that I doubt it will ever happen on the same scale again.

Sure some shitty niche hacks like straight cult staff might not exist now, but that’s not why cheating is an issue. The core feature already exist and are extremely fleshed out already (autonexus, autoaim, no client debuffs, etc).

It’s quite possible, likely even, that hacking prevention measures have not been enabled yet.

It will always be bypassed, that’s the nature of cheaters.

There are many reasons for this but the simplest is there’s no point trying to aggressively stop hackers now when they can just switch to the Flash client.

Yeah sure, because changing policies takes so much effort.

[Platformz]

It’s really important to watch the entire video before making a comment on it. It causes a lot of misunderstanding.

The video causes a lot of misunderstanding?

What I meant was, not absorbing someone’s entire statement before responding -> causes a lot of misunderstanding. I’m guilty of this and I end up saying really dumb things.

I swear, it’s impossible for me to get a message across unless I spend literally 10 minutes per sentence

[WindowsHD]

Releasing Bard at this stage of development is a really bad idea. They should’ve shelved it for the time being like the new in combat system.

[Skandling]

There are many reasons for this but the simplest is there’s no point trying to aggressively stop hackers now when they can just switch to the Flash client.

Yeah sure, because changing policies takes so much effort.

It’s not about changing policies. It’s just that at this point strong anti-cheat makes little sense.

As I noted while Flash is still an option nothing in the Unity client will stop cheating. There’s also the danger that anti-cheating measures might go wrong (it is after all a beta) and cause more problems that they solve, or even if they work they might be reported by users as bugs. Other anti-cheat like client token checking might cause problems with the existing Flash-based checking, as Unity and Flash clients are not being updated at the same time.

[Seelpit]

But serious point,… is it that once you create a Bard, you are going to be unable to play using Flash?

Or is it that you can create a Bard on Exalt, and play it on Exalt, but still be able to play on your other characters using Flash?

The latter. Don’t forget that they’d have to re-order the Flash character select screen for Bard, otherwise we’d have them uglily stick out just above the end of the screen!

^{At least, I’m presuming that. I doubt they’d end Flash support very suddenly.}

[Textbook]

There are many reasons for this but the simplest is there’s no point trying to aggressively stop hackers now when they can just switch to the Flash client.

Yeah sure, because changing policies takes so much effort.

It’s not about changing policies. It’s just that at this point strong anti-cheat makes little sense.

It is about changing policies. You’re fixating on Unity just being the big bottleneck for hackers, when there’s already cheats out for it, and even if there weren’t it’s not a matter of if, but when, cheats will be created.

How do you fight this battle of cat and mouse? You don’t. You don’t keep trying to throw more resources at the virtual arms race because it is a waste of time when the actual policies against cheating will just feed the cheaters the ammo they need (weak punishments, unbans, etc).
So you change the policies, so that cheaters actually see proper punishment when they are caught that discourages them and any other potential cheaters from doing so, and they aren’t able to wriggle their way out of it.
It’s very clear the current system isn’t working.

[BaadGuy]

People caught hacking in-game should get a permanent ban on first offence but an essential condition for this to happen is that there should be no room for fake evidence or mistaken decisions imo. It’s lazy to rely on your own playerbase, alone, to moderate your game.

A valid possibility is in-game moderation with enough power to unrestrictedly follow, spectate and investigate reported individuals. Since this of course isn’t a google forms entry level responsibility, DECA would need to actually put people from their team on this.

I believe they aren’t doing a better job at this at the moment because they are a relatively small group of people and can’t keep up with the problems fast enough. But I have faith that when they get to it they will choose good methods to make it harder to exploit the game somehow.

[XBookwyrmX]

Oh man, this is something I wish more people not only realize, but internalize. In this day and age of immediate gratification (and I’m among the younger generations saying this), it can be hard to understand the sheer amount of thought and effort that comes mainly from smaller groups of people, and those who create forms of entertainment only one example.

There is something to be said about the basic structure and policies of a company, but I don’t feel that DECA is trying to cause people pain. I have played other games witnessing this painfully similar scenario. Although not outright dying, they inherited a stagnating game well past it’s prime. They had to have had some kind of vision to bother.

In the midst of this controversial new character and the unknown future of Flash support, they are getting hammered by veteran players with grand visions, expectations, or mere preferences of their own. Not all are even unreasonable, but the fact of the matter is, the developers had an idea at some point to do this. As someone with some experience heading a few teams with projects, it can be difficult to predict the butterfly effect that will undoubtedly spur from making even a small decision.

You then put in the work bringing your collective idea to life, and with all the programming of this weird game’s coding, it takes time, even more so with the limited crew they have. Completely undoing everything because of an angry fan base, no matter how justified, is devastating, even for larger, wealthier game developing groups. And letting a fan base run a game is quite chaotic. So many conflicting opinions…

In conclusion, even as a player of Rotmg who’s been around long enough to become loosely dedicated, I at least appreciate the raw effort this crew has for a game in this situation. I see the comments thrown out that they ignore player feedback or are dooming the game, but I also see how much they’ve done since acquiring it from Kabam. And they are ultimately the ones in charge.

And on a small separate note, I’ve mused about how the game will be if most of the veteran player base left. They are commonly the vocal ones, but what of the mid-era and new players who aren’t as used to how the game used to work? Perhaps we have a “changing of the seasons” at hand, if you will. Not as a conspiracy theory, mind you, but as a thought I’ve toyed with.

(I also acknowledge that if anyone even bothers reading this, I guarantee I’m getting ridiculed/hated for it. But I wished to say something that has plagued my mind revolving this mentality that spurs far beyond the reaches of Rotmg.)

[Textbook]

People caught hacking in-game should get a permanent ban on first offence but an essential condition for this to happen is that there should be no room for fake evidence or mistaken decisions imo. It’s lazy to rely on your own playerbase, alone, to moderate your game.

there should be no room for (…) mistaken decisions

@Unicorn

Anyways, as it currently stands, I don’t find support itself to be reliable enough for making harsher changes (you propose permanent ban on first offense which I don’t mind, another idea I had in my head was character/fame wipes for the character that cheats were used on). At least in the past, they have mistaken what is obviously not cheats for cheats, while also unbanning actual cheaters because those cheaters harassed/exploited support enough.

So this needs to be addressed and fixed as part of putting better policies into place, because otherwise it’ll just lead to a whole other controversy, or be effectively no change, or both.

It’s lazy to rely on your own playerbase, alone, to moderate your game.

A valid possibility is in-game moderation with enough power to unrestrictedly follow, spectate and investigate reported individuals. Since this of course isn’t a google forms entry level responsibility, DECA would need to actually put people from their team on this.

They can do this now. I know there are fairly easy ways for them to catch cheaters that don’t involve player reports.
They simply don’t
There’s a lot of things they could act on that they don’t act on. As to why? They just probably don’t see it as a priority (or they don’t have enough manpower, but that is a pretty big lack of manpower that should have been addressed ages ago if it has been this consistent + so limiting to where simple things that would drastically help out the game are put on the backburner, so…)

[BaadGuy]

Anyways, as it currently stands, I don’t find support itself to be reliable enough for making harsher changes (you propose permanent ban on first offense which I don’t mind, another idea I had in my head was character/fame wipes for the character that cheats were used on). At least in the past, they have mistaken what is obviously not cheats for cheats, while also unbanning actual cheaters because those cheaters harassed/exploited support enough.

Yes. I believe not perma-banning people is reasonable if they only accept reports from players. That’s like, amateur modding. And people can easily fake any evidence. A few hours of work faking evidence and you’d get someone banned for life.
This is the reason I said it was lazy to rely on the players to moderate the game. Another point is that the few good players who keep reporting hackers will never, ever, be enough to catch even a minuscule portion of people who are breaking ToS. The game hasn’t had any decent modding for years at all, we literally do all the work and it’s pointless. Anything is better than nothing.

They can do this now. I know there are fairly easy ways for them to catch cheaters that don’t involve player reports.
They simply don’t
There’s a lot of things they could act on that they don’t act on. As to why? They just probably don’t see it as a priority (or they don’t have enough manpower, but that is a pretty big lack of manpower that should have been addressed ages ago if it has been this consistent + so limiting to where simple things that would drastically help out the game are put on the backburner, so…)

I don’t think so. I would say the same as you if I had enough information, but since I don’t know anything about their team I simply assume in good faith that they are doing what they can at the moment.

Maybe it’s possible for them to get their support team (employees who deal with and respond to tickets) to investigate reported cheaters in-game. Maybe they don’t have enough people, or maybe they don’t have enough time, or both.

Maybe they don’t prioritize it like you said. But I doubt it’s the case since it’s of their best interest to keep the game free of exploits.

[Niegil]

it’s of their best interest to keep the game free of exploits.

lol

[BaadGuy]

I don’t mean to blindlessly defend them, just pointing different reasons as to why the game probably is in its current state now. Everything about this situation can and should be dealth with in a better way. That’s what I said in the first half after all