Lifeday event almost over and nothing was done to address the cheaters who gained vast amounts of cxp from botting and running macros that would throw snowballs for hours on end. Can't be that hard to spot people who've gotten 100 plus command levels from snowballs. I guess cheaters do win.

Never seen one on Harbie but that would be great for us. so many times recently there's nobody around and you can't throw the same snowball at an npc or droid for the reward unless it's reset by another snowball. The bots would actually help us then. What server are you on? Heck turn it around to a good thing for you and follow them. More CXP and decos and LS/DS for you that way.

It's a 15% chance to earn 20 CXP, and 0% if you are throwing it a droid that already has the buff. The buff lasts for five minutes. That would mean a 15% chance to earn 20 CXP every five minutes. I mean, I'm sure that it could be done, but I never saw this as a problem on Harbinger either.

It's a 15% chance to earn 20 CXP, and 0% if you are throwing it a droid that already has the buff. The buff lasts for five minutes. That would mean a 15% chance to earn 20 CXP every five minutes. I mean, I'm sure that it could be done, but I never saw this as a problem on Harbinger either.

 

You know You can remove buff from companion and throw him again?

Bots ruin everything and plus I bet Bioware is still on vacation that's why nothings being done

Lifeday event almost over and nothing was done to address the cheaters who gained vast amounts of cxp from botting and running macros that would throw snowballs for hours on end. Can't be that hard to spot people who've gotten 100 plus command levels from snowballs. I guess cheaters do win.

 

I frankly don't see how this can be done. Once the droids have the snowball buff it takes quite a while for it to wear off. The droids despawn after about 5 minutes, usually while the first buff is still active, and don't spawn again for quite a while.

 

I suspect what you're seeing is a person standing around, manually throwing snowballs at droids as they spawn while eating a sandwich at their desk.

I frankly don't see how this can be done.

 

1: target companion

2: throw snowball

3: mount

4: dismount

5: wait 12s

6: goto 1

 

Is it worth it, though? 15% chance for 20CXP every 12s averages to 900 CXP per hour. If the bot runs 24h you get as much CXP as someone who grinds uprisings for 5h straight and then logs off, but you can't play the game or do much else on that PC and also risk being banned.

Edited January 8, 2017 by Mubrak

I frankly don't see how this can be done. Once the droids have the snowball buff it takes quite a while for it to wear off. The droids despawn after about 5 minutes, usually while the first buff is still active, and don't spawn again for quite a while.

 

I suspect what you're seeing is a person standing around, manually throwing snowballs at droids as they spawn while eating a sandwich at their desk.

 

You know that a second p;ayer (bot) throwing a snowball at any given target "removes" your snowball debuff from that target, meaning that you can hit it again,

 

This means that even using just the snowball grenade that has a 15 second cooldown, two bots could alternate throwing snowballs at a single target 3 times (almost 4 times, depending on timing) a minute. Multiply that by 5 minutes is between 15-20 times over 5 minutes. Even 15 times in 5 minutes is 180 times an hour, 4,320 times a day (24 hours), 30,240 times a week and 120,960 for four weeks.

 

At an average of 15%, that 120,960 times would yield approximately 18,144 packages. At 20 CXP per package, that is 362,880 CXP over the four weeks.

 

And that is only using the snowball grenade. You can at least double, almost triple, those numbers if the bots have the snowball cannon also.

 

Now, I'm not saying that everyone is running bots, or that those bots ran 24/7 for the entire four weeks, but the numbers do prove that bots could easily rack up a huge amount of CXP and therefore many CXP levels.

1: target companion

2: throw snowball

3: mount

4: dismount

5: wait 12s

6: goto 1

 

Is it worth it, though? 15% chance for 20CXP every 12s averages to 900 CXP per hour. If the bot runs 24h you get as much CXP as someone who grinds uprisings for 5h straight and then logs off, but you can't play the game or do much else on that PC and risk being banned.

 

But Johnny can run that bot while he is at work, sleeping or any other time he cannot actually play.

 

Does he risk being banned? Yes, but BW does have a reputation for not doing anything about bots. How well deserved that reputation is, is debatable.

I mean, do you guys have any "hard" proof that these are bots. Couldn't it be possible that they're actually players? I know, personally, that I ran around and threw my share of snowballs. There was even a convo going, with the ppl throwing snowballs. *shrugs* maybe I'm just too innocent, and believe the best in ppl.

I mean, do you guys have any "hard" proof that these are bots. Couldn't it be possible that they're actually players? I know, personally, that I ran around and threw my share of snowballs. There was even a convo going, with the ppl throwing snowballs. *shrugs* maybe I'm just too innocent, and believe the best in ppl.

 

Hard proof? As in, activity logs that prove that "bot A" threw a snowball exactly every 15.2 seconds and that "bot B" did the same? No.

 

I can tell you that I farmed only a few hundred parcels, over the course of about a week and a half, and at various times of the day due to my schedule.

 

It made absolutely no difference what time I was on. There were at least a half dozen "players" I could count on seeing throwing snowballs.

 

I saw a player advertising in trade the other day that he had 8,000 snow covered parcels for sale. How many players rack up 8,000 parcels if they are "actually playing"?

1. Use Snowballcannon at companion

2. Click off debuff

3. Repeat after 5 seconds

 

Yes if ppl setup bots it can be 10 ranks in tier 1 per day. But the higher u r the longer it takes. With cxp boost u get 25 cxp and with DvsL u get 28 cxp. Im doing it while waiting for PVP pop its good cxp, but botting it....

LOL

 

No one here noticed that the snowball debuff is broken?

 

Debuff changes nothing now. You can get parcels from targets with the debuff. Relate it with what those cheater do now.

 

You don't believe me? Just try it.

 

BUT NO

 

It would constitute an exploit. Safer to hack it like those people I guess.

Edited January 8, 2017 by fatsi

Clever people can almost always find ways to apply bot mechanics to MMO game content. This is a given.

 

It is literally impossible for a studio to put all game actions under constant surveillance for review/action. Simple pragmatics.. doing so would slow down everything about a servers ongoing activities with players.

 

Therefore.. IF this is actually a real concern for you.. and not just YOCRTB (yet another conflated reason to *****)... then report the player(s) you observe and do so in an accurate and concise fashion so that it can actually be audited and if validated.. actioned by the studio.

 

Threads like this provide no remedy to the issue... only a pedestal with which to criticize the studio and complain. Be part of the solution... report and move on.

Edited January 8, 2017 by Andryah

Hard proof? As in, activity logs that prove that "bot A" threw a snowball exactly every 15.2 seconds and that "bot B" did the same? No.

 

I can tell you that I farmed only a few hundred parcels, over the course of about a week and a half, and at various times of the day due to my schedule.

 

It made absolutely no difference what time I was on. There were at least a half dozen "players" I could count on seeing throwing snowballs.

 

I saw a player advertising in trade the other day that he had 8,000 snow covered parcels for sale. How many players rack up 8,000 parcels if they are "actually playing"?

 

Well, to be fair, I was selling 3,000 parcels at one point. I admit I thought about a macro, but ultimately didn't. With the snowball cannon and normal snowball I amassed that amount in about three weeks? A fair amount of using my companion, though still did throw at other players.

 

Even if you're actually playing the game, it's not hard to gather parcels. My cannon and snowball were on my quickbar, and I would throw them at anything whenever I remembered to.

 

 

That being said, I did have about a 2-4 hour period each night from Dec 13 - Dec 25 where I would be just standing on the fleet for Hannith's giveaway events. (12 days of christmas event that she hosts on BC every year), where I could just chat and throw snowballs, so that helped too.

LOL

 

No one here noticed that the snowball debuff is broken?

 

Debuff changes nothing now. You can get parcels from targets with the debuff. Relate it with what those cheater do now.

 

You don't believe me? Just try it.

 

BUT NO

 

It would constitute an exploit. Safer to hack it like those people I guess.

 

It is working. You cannot get another parcel if they have YOUR debuff on them. If someone else hit them, (very common in areas with everyone pelting each other) your debuff is removed and replaced with a debuff from someone else. Tested this on my companion in my stronghold so no one else could hit him. After 100 hits when he had the debuff I got 0 parcels. After 100 hits after removing the debuff each time I got 16.

How is this even a problem? With how low the CXP gains would be and nothing economy or game ruining to other peoples enjoyment involved why even care?

 

Considering how poorly ranked is being handled lately ( they might disqualify/ban the cheater but their play during the match has actually affected a score someone might have gotten had they not been there - crazy to think they haven't patched these exploits after all this time and yet waste time on a **** system like GC ) I really don't see this as a concern what so ever.

 

As for macros I'd be more worried about people using the same methods for crew skills than bloody snow balls.

Edited January 8, 2017 by MeNaCe-NZ

It is working. You cannot get another parcel if they have YOUR debuff on them. If someone else hit them, (very common in areas with everyone pelting each other) your debuff is removed and replaced with a debuff from someone else. Tested this on my companion in my stronghold so no one else could hit him. After 100 hits when he had the debuff I got 0 parcels. After 100 hits after removing the debuff each time I got 16.

And someone who can get a bot in this game, and make it use an ability every time it is available can easily clear the debuff caused by it as soon as applied. Clearing someone else's debuff would prove much more difficult, which was probably why you didn't get credit from the snowballs you threw to all the targets with the debuff in the past. So it is broken, if not that broken. I mean, I hope it is. Since if this was intended, it means they don't care about these cheats. Edited January 8, 2017 by fatsi

I mean, do you guys have any "hard" proof that these are bots. Couldn't it be possible that they're actually players? I know, personally, that I ran around and threw my share of snowballs. There was even a convo going, with the ppl throwing snowballs. *shrugs* maybe I'm just too innocent, and believe the best in ppl.

 

This.

 

How does the OP know they're not players?

Even if people are macroing... so what? How is it cheating? They are spending that amount of time in the game doing that one thing and that prevents them from spending their time on other things.

 

When I'm bored, I just run around the fleet spamming my snowball and cannon and get quite a bit of CXP. Does that mean I'm cheating, too?

 

I think I've earned almost 4 whole levels with just snowballs alone. This mixed in with other CXP earnings, of course. It's hard to keep track.