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Oct
31
PK Farming wrap-up.
This is a final note that we are, for the moment, wrapping up our investigations in historical "PK farming", or the process of cheating to increase the PK stat by repeatedly killing a drone "alt" running on another account (in some cases, thousands of times). This practice is not welcome in Vendetta Online. The PK stat has little inherent value in gameplay; but it still carries a perceptual value within the community, as an indication of experience and skill.
After concerns over the issue were raised by people within the community, we started the research process in our logs, and found half a dozen or so suspicious cases that merited further investigation.
The fact that we found a number of cases of different individuals meant two things:
1) The issue was common enough to require a "policy" response. We couldn't just deal with one person quietly, or even two: we had to create a response we could apply more broadly and fairly to a larger group of people, and potentially maintain moving forward.
2) The individual cases still required considerable time to investigate. People kill each other all the time in VO, and there are a lot of factors to consider in identifying this kind of behaviour. We wanted to be absolutely sure we didn't punish anyone inappropriately, so some depth was required.
Because this process was so time consuming to research and correlate (and we're already busy), some people were "punished" before others. This only resulted from the "luck" of who was in more recent logs, or had cheated on a grander and more easily-verified scale. The order and timing of our actions was simply based on when we came to some certainty from log data.
While investigating the individual cases, we found some people had been doing this kind of thing for as far back as we had logs (about a year). This presented a conundrum: for these players, we couldn't really provide any realistic count of the person's "actual" PKs vs their "fake" PKs. So, in fairness to the apparently overwhelming majority of players who don't engage in this kind of activity, we zeroed the PK stats of the people who had been definitively cheating.
This wasn't a step we took lightly, some of these players had been with us for a long time. Regardless of how this issue came to light, we probably would have come to the same conclusion on the appropriate minimal action. It seemed to be as fair as we could be; if we had had older log data available, we might have tried to do more to mitigate the punishment, but that simply wasn't possible.
Above and beyond this, some individuals really kicked up a controversial mess in regards to the "cheating", with the issue basically being used by different factions to troll one another, both in-game and on the forums. This further elevated the level of controversial hysteria over the problem, and gave everyone a headache. So, above and beyond their stat resets, two people also earned week-long mutes (now well expired).
In some cases that were suspicious and not conclusive, we've elected to continue monitoring the respective individuals. In a few smaller inconclusive cases, usually "newbie" types, we also sent out email warnings; but the lack of receiving a warning doesn't mean we aren't monitoring.
The level of controversy and player-consternation over this issue was really not warranted by the problem itself. This situation definitely used a lot of developer time, and inspired considerable irritation in the lead developer (me). But, my final administrative actions and choices were not without methodical logic and forethought, while trying to take the minimum corrective action that I could, that was the fairest to the overall playerbase.
I do wish I had delayed until we could apply all administrative actions at the same time, across all the involved players. Although this might have drawn out the controversy, it would have at least defused any accusations of "reactive action" based on the timing of various punishments. Instead, we just took action as we found certainty in each case, day by day, week by week, which led some to believe we were reacting to the requests of different factions. This was not true, and there is another simple reality to keep in mind:
We never, ever take administrative action without verified information from our own logs. We welcome player reports and tickets on issues, but they are considered "advisory" only. Specific times and dates help, as it allows us to more quickly zero in using the server logs. But, to put it simply, beyond the first report of a problem.. the number of factions writing tickets has no bearing on what actions take place. Once the ball on this issue started rolling from our initial investigation, we would continue until we had verified every case we reasonably could.
Moving ahead, we are doing more rigorous monitoring of this kind of activity (and other cheat-driven activities), as well as extending the total length of our logs, along with the type of data they store.
In closing, we ask that people try to enjoy the game as it is. Especially if you want to see the game evolve into something better. We simply don't have the resources to dedicate to this kind of issue on a regular basis.
If you genuinely have a concern about player-cheating, bring it to us, quietly. That's the best way to address the issue. Chances are, we may want to quietly enable extended monitoring on that individual, and you splashing accusations across the public forum may reduce the chances of our detecting definitive cheating.
Finally, a situation where half a dozen people over a given year, were exploiting a situation that resulted in little or no gameplay impact, does not imply we have much of a "cheating" problem as a whole. But, we remain vigilant to the possibility.
That's all for now, have fun everyone.
- Guild Software, Inc.
After concerns over the issue were raised by people within the community, we started the research process in our logs, and found half a dozen or so suspicious cases that merited further investigation.
The fact that we found a number of cases of different individuals meant two things:
1) The issue was common enough to require a "policy" response. We couldn't just deal with one person quietly, or even two: we had to create a response we could apply more broadly and fairly to a larger group of people, and potentially maintain moving forward.
2) The individual cases still required considerable time to investigate. People kill each other all the time in VO, and there are a lot of factors to consider in identifying this kind of behaviour. We wanted to be absolutely sure we didn't punish anyone inappropriately, so some depth was required.
Because this process was so time consuming to research and correlate (and we're already busy), some people were "punished" before others. This only resulted from the "luck" of who was in more recent logs, or had cheated on a grander and more easily-verified scale. The order and timing of our actions was simply based on when we came to some certainty from log data.
While investigating the individual cases, we found some people had been doing this kind of thing for as far back as we had logs (about a year). This presented a conundrum: for these players, we couldn't really provide any realistic count of the person's "actual" PKs vs their "fake" PKs. So, in fairness to the apparently overwhelming majority of players who don't engage in this kind of activity, we zeroed the PK stats of the people who had been definitively cheating.
This wasn't a step we took lightly, some of these players had been with us for a long time. Regardless of how this issue came to light, we probably would have come to the same conclusion on the appropriate minimal action. It seemed to be as fair as we could be; if we had had older log data available, we might have tried to do more to mitigate the punishment, but that simply wasn't possible.
Above and beyond this, some individuals really kicked up a controversial mess in regards to the "cheating", with the issue basically being used by different factions to troll one another, both in-game and on the forums. This further elevated the level of controversial hysteria over the problem, and gave everyone a headache. So, above and beyond their stat resets, two people also earned week-long mutes (now well expired).
In some cases that were suspicious and not conclusive, we've elected to continue monitoring the respective individuals. In a few smaller inconclusive cases, usually "newbie" types, we also sent out email warnings; but the lack of receiving a warning doesn't mean we aren't monitoring.
The level of controversy and player-consternation over this issue was really not warranted by the problem itself. This situation definitely used a lot of developer time, and inspired considerable irritation in the lead developer (me). But, my final administrative actions and choices were not without methodical logic and forethought, while trying to take the minimum corrective action that I could, that was the fairest to the overall playerbase.
I do wish I had delayed until we could apply all administrative actions at the same time, across all the involved players. Although this might have drawn out the controversy, it would have at least defused any accusations of "reactive action" based on the timing of various punishments. Instead, we just took action as we found certainty in each case, day by day, week by week, which led some to believe we were reacting to the requests of different factions. This was not true, and there is another simple reality to keep in mind:
We never, ever take administrative action without verified information from our own logs. We welcome player reports and tickets on issues, but they are considered "advisory" only. Specific times and dates help, as it allows us to more quickly zero in using the server logs. But, to put it simply, beyond the first report of a problem.. the number of factions writing tickets has no bearing on what actions take place. Once the ball on this issue started rolling from our initial investigation, we would continue until we had verified every case we reasonably could.
Moving ahead, we are doing more rigorous monitoring of this kind of activity (and other cheat-driven activities), as well as extending the total length of our logs, along with the type of data they store.
In closing, we ask that people try to enjoy the game as it is. Especially if you want to see the game evolve into something better. We simply don't have the resources to dedicate to this kind of issue on a regular basis.
If you genuinely have a concern about player-cheating, bring it to us, quietly. That's the best way to address the issue. Chances are, we may want to quietly enable extended monitoring on that individual, and you splashing accusations across the public forum may reduce the chances of our detecting definitive cheating.
Finally, a situation where half a dozen people over a given year, were exploiting a situation that resulted in little or no gameplay impact, does not imply we have much of a "cheating" problem as a whole. But, we remain vigilant to the possibility.
That's all for now, have fun everyone.
- Guild Software, Inc.