We’ve concluded the maintenance process and all our game servers have been returned to service.
We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience while we worked to remedy this issue.
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potbs-fan.co.uk
21/02/2008
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A tactic arose recently in regards to port contention. Players (and their alts) would take unrest missions and hold onto them. Once they all had unrest missions, they would turn them all in at the same time, and push a port all the way from peaceful to having a port battle scheduled.
The reason we have these missions in the first place is to allow rich players to spend their money in ways that directly impact the game world. As secondary goals, missions create markets for items that dont necessarily fit into ship production, and create a demand for those items. Also, the missions drain money out of the economy in a purely voluntary way. These things are all basically Good.
The problem is that we clearly never intended for players to be able to take a port from 0 to 5k or even 10k unrest instantly. While were biased towards attackers (we like PvP!) this goes well beyond bias and into the realm of insanity. Defenders should be able to draw a line in the sand, declare a port off-limits, and enforce that with doubloons. Thats not currently possible. Worst of all, this tactic can be used on new player ports just as easily as on ports in the Antilles. New player ports are intended to be harder to attack, and this process circumvents all the tuning we did to make that the case.
The big issue in the current system is that the requirements for the mission are only checked when you take the mission, not when you turn it in. Weve changed that so that we test for mission validity both when you take the mission and when youre completing the mission. This means that while the unrest missions can take a port into Open PvP, you cannot reach the point at which we schedule a port battle solely via the unrest missions. Once you hit Open PvP, the unrest missions will be considered invalid and you will not be able to turn them in. This change is going into Testbed on Thursday, and is expected to go live this Monday. We would roll this out sooner, except that the changes required are fairly widespread, and we need to make sure its adequately tested.
While it will be good to get the short-term fix out, were already making plans for a longer-term series of changes to clean this issue up for good, and make economic unrest more like what we originally envisioned: a way for traders to contribute meaningfully to their nations cause, and an incentive for traders to risk travel through PvP areas. This series of changes begins with a complete overhaul of our creaky old delivery mission system into something more shop-like, making it both more powerful and more streamlined. Those initial steps are coming up in 1.2, and everyone at FLS who has the misfortune of working with the current delivery system is eagerly anticipating them.
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potbs-fan.co.uk
20/02/2008
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While I knew that we’d be facing trouble from goldfarmers and goldselling spammers from the moment we launched, some part of me was still surprised at the volume and aggressiveness of the spammers. Our GM staff is keeping up with them, but every minute they spend dealing with spammers is a minute longer someone with a legitimate problem is waiting in the queue.
The thing about spammers is that they’re adaptive. You shut down their access at one point, and they pop up again somewhere else, whack-a-mole style. This means you have two options for dealing with them: you write systems that adapt along with them, or you involve humans in the process. We’re going to be doing some of each.
I want to point out, by the way, that I’m not going to talk in any detail about system approaches to dealing with spammers, for a very simple reason: if I tell you what steps we’re taking, I’m also telling the spammers, and giving them a head-start on adapting to our plans before they’re fully underway. I don’t believe obfuscation can actually stop spammers, but it can give us a little more time, during which we can firm up our defenses.
That leaves involving humans in the process. That’s essentially what we’ve been doing all along, with our GMs tirelessly banning spam accounts as quickly as the spammers create them. However, this is ultimately a losing battle: We add more GMs, they respond with even more spammers. We have to streamline the process if they’re ever going to get ahead.
On your end, we’re adding the ability to report spammers with a single command. Right now, you’ve got to use the support ticket system, which involves leaving the game. When we make it hard for you to report spammers, we discourage you from reporting them, and your reports are the final line of defense. We don’t want to discourage you.
On our end, we’re revising the process by which GMs are notified of a particular spammer, so that they can quickly look up the spammer’s activities, confirm they’re spamming, and remove the account with a single click. If you think the process on your end to report a spammer is cumbersome, you should see what the poor GMs have to go through.
The goal is both to get the spammers out of the game as quickly as possible, and also to clear out the clogged support system so the GMs can spend time helping players.
Naturally, there are back-end, systematic changes we’re making in a number of places, including our logging system and our chat system, to try and catch the spam before you even see it, and handle the spammers before they have a chance to annoy even one player. That’s the stuff I’m not going to talk about further.
At the end of the day, your feedback and diligence in reporting problems was, and continues to be, the keystone of our efforts to fight spammers and gold sellers. You’ve got our thanks, and our continued commitment to support and protect our customers to the best of our ability.
Thanks
potbs-fan.co.uk
18/02/2008
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