Phone support can't help me with in game issues. But we're not supposed to say anything about cheaters here, and putting in tickets does nothing. HOW THE HECK CAN I GET BIOWARE'S ATTENTION????!!!!

The cheating on Zakuul in the gathering areas is ridiculously bad. People (gold sellers) have figured out how to play and move outside the environment. Yes, I am putting this here because mayb,e maybe it will get a DEV'S attention and they'll DO SOMETHING about it!!! I tried tickets... 3 times. I get the standard, automated response. But nothing has changed. They're worse.

BIOWARE STOP THE GOLD SELLERS FROM GETTING ALL THE MATS IN ZAKUUL BY CHEATING. please???

I am TRYING to get a devs attention. I hope this works. They need to take a human and go there and see what's happening. Watch the un-attended companions who are looking at the floor becaus ethe player us UNDER the floor.

PLEASE??????

Phone support can't help me with in game issues. But we're not supposed to say anything about cheaters here, and putting in tickets does nothing. HOW THE HECK CAN I GET BIOWARE'S ATTENTION????!!!!

 

The cheating on Zakuul in the gathering areas is ridiculously bad. People (gold sellers) have figured out how to play and move outside the environment. Yes, I am putting this here because mayb,e maybe it will get a DEV'S attention and they'll DO SOMETHING about it!!! I tried tickets... 3 times. I get the standard, automated response. But nothing has changed. They're worse.

 

BIOWARE STOP THE GOLD SELLERS FROM GETTING ALL THE MATS IN ZAKUUL BY CHEATING. please???

 

I am TRYING to get a devs attention. I hope this works. They need to take a human and go there and see what's happening. Watch the un-attended companions who are looking at the floor becaus ethe player us UNDER the floor.

 

PLEASE??????

I've seen the same thing you have, gathering nodes being harvested and disappearing with no characters visible on the map on Zakuul. They've been doing the same thing on Yavin IV since 3.0. I've reported it. Lots of other people have reported it. EAWare doesn't care.

I've seen the same thing you have, gathering nodes being harvested and disappearing with no characters visible on the map on Zakuul. They've been doing the same thing on Yavin IV since 3.0. I've reported it. Lots of other people have reported it. EAWare doesn't care.

I've also seen this on Yavin. Suddenly a companion will appear, usually Ashara or Khem, which is fine, the class is usually a stealth class, but I never ever see the quick purple outline I usually do with players who go stealth nor do I hear the stealth. They just appear and disappear. I don't mind players gathering nodes, but Bioware/EA needs to get rid of these damn gold sellers. Bad enough they spam gen chat on fleet with their credit for money spams, but we get them butt camping the nodes too.

Are you sure they are indeed cheating?

A player character does not necessarily have to be near their companion for them to harvest a resource, nor do you need to be in the range where you would be able to harvest the resource yourself. In fact, when I see a player character remain standing near their companion while that companion is harvesting a node, I usually take it as indication that the player is not very experienced, because it's entirely useless to do so.

In my experience a companion cannot be goaded to harvest a resource once he or she is in combat, but they will finish harvesting a resources if they are attacked while they are already charging the harvest ability. The only thing that does not work is a group of mobs in-between the companion and the resource. Also, a companion's path finding ability is poor even compared to an inexperienced player.

Now, Zakuul has one unusual property: No level sync. The mobs in the swamp of are level 62, but a player character and their companion will still count as being level 70. Since the threat range and reaction time of a mob depends on the relative level, it's perfectly viable to send you companion to harvest a node 50 meters away right in the middle of a group of mobs, while you are already moving in the opposite direction to another node. They will attack your companion, but only after they started harvesting the resource. Once they are done harvesting the resource you set them to passive, upon which they will follow you and might "teleport" to you depending on how far away you are. If the distance is great enough the mobs will start "evading" you and you leave combat. That is, if you are not a stealther, in which case you can instantly leave combat as long as you "Force Cloak" or similar ability is off cooldown.

Therefore it's not necessarily cheating when companions suddenly disappear after harvesting the node, that's not necessarily an indication that there is no player character on the map, it merely means the player character may be far away. If you don't see any player characters listed on Zakuul they might simply be not your faction.

What really annoys me is players who systematically use the alley another player punched through the mobs. I remember situations in heroic mission areas where someone followed my biochem and harvest the mobs I've just beaten while I was still in combat. But while that may be unfair and display a lack of sportsmanship, it's still not cheating, it's not like they are exploiting a bug. I prefer to stay away from other harvesters and do not make it a race when I see another player running towards a resource node, but simply seek a less contested area.

It's a bit more difficult to avoid competition on Zakuul, because the areas do not have a PVP instance; I sometimes use the PVP instance of Yavin IV for node harvesting, because it's far less busy. You used to even get a bonus for the resource not being harvested for a long time.

Are you sure they are indeed cheating?

Am not sure whether this is the same thing. This is something I recorded maybe a year ago or so, and somewhere else, but was reminded of it by the posts in this thread. So at the risk of breaking the 'naming and shaming' rule:

Are you sure they are indeed cheating?

Yes. How? Because I see them harvesting nodes while still in stealth mode. Because I see nodes disappear with no characters OR their companions anywhere to be seen. Because I see nodes being harvested in a split second, even after Alacrity was tweaked to no longer affect your gathering channel time. Because I have seen them teleport in-game. These activities happen both on Yavin and on Zakuul, and have been for literal years now. I've sent in tickets about them repeatedly, but it's always the same names on the same bots over and over (when you can even see the bots in the first place). EAWare obviously doesn't care, because the ones on Yavin have been there for literally over two years straight now without interruption.

Are you sure they are indeed cheating?

You don't even know what's OP is talking about, do you?

Yes. How? Because I see them harvesting nodes while still in stealth mode. Because I see nodes disappear with no characters OR their companions anywhere to be seen. Because I see nodes being harvested in a split second, even after Alacrity was tweaked to no longer affect your gathering channel time. Because I have seen them teleport in-game. These activities happen both on Yavin and on Zakuul, and have been for literal years now. I've sent in tickets about them repeatedly, but it's always the same names on the same bots over and over (when you can even see the bots in the first place). EAWare obviously doesn't care, because the ones on Yavin have been there for literally over two years straight now without interruption.

It does happen that a resource node is wrongly displayed as present on your screen even though it is already harvested... in which case it will eventually disappear for no apparent reason.

If you have a bunch of player characters that do that for years and very systematically they probably do belong to a gold seller ring. But they don't have to be cheating.

I've also seen this on Yavin. Suddenly a companion will appear, usually Ashara or Khem, which is fine, the class is usually a stealth class, but I never ever see the quick purple outline I usually do with players who go stealth nor do I hear the stealth. They just appear and disappear. I don't mind players gathering nodes, but Bioware/EA needs to get rid of these damn gold sellers. Bad enough they spam gen chat on fleet with their credit for money spams, but we get them butt camping the nodes too.

At least i´m not going crazy. The other day i saw someone do just that, no purple outline and just showed like an instant login+harvest the moment I started harvesting.

I´dont mind other players farming, i even wait if i see a player killing mob that is too close to a node to see if the player was after the node. In Yavin there are several that like me do the dailys and harvest on the way. But bots/hackers/spammers... Considering is very easy to spot the GTN sales of the bot gathered mats, tracking down the accounts involved should not take that long.

To answer the poster's question:

Section 15 of the ToS, second half concerning third party arbitration. Linked to in the footer of this very page.

I kind you not.

We're supposed to tell you to send a PM directly to Eric but from the threads concerning cheating during the last couple of weeks, they appear to not acknowledging them.

But I do agree with the other posters here. What one person calls cheating may just be due to misunderstanding of what's allowed. I;ve got screaming kids here at the library and trying to actually read today isn't going to happen.

Considering is very easy to spot the GTN sales of the bot gathered mats, tracking down the accounts involved should not take that long.

Wanna bet? There's been a possible dupe bug for over a year now that raises its ugly head every so often. That may be what you;re seeing. On Shadowlands, we used to have someone who loves listing 30 to 40 stacks of Completed Bounty Contracts, a thousand each at a time. Haven't checked lately.

They're not cheating in the way that they are abusing a glitch to get an advantage, but the farming bots on Yavin 4 (that appear to be on all of the servers I've checked) are pretty bad. You can recognize them easily:

• They all have a ì in the name
  
• They are all sith assassins
  
• They always roam the exact same routes (for instance, one south of the temple ruins in the far west, one north)
  
• They 'act' incredibly brain-dead in combat even against other players (pvp instance)
  
• They never ever ever reply to whispers
  
• They have an incredibly low achievement score, literally only what it takes to get one class to 70 and another achievement for "earning" 10 million credits
  

It's clear they're farming resource nodes to make money for gold selling schemes.

EA/BW has been informed of this long ago, but apparently they choose not to act. So don't get your hopes up about anything being done.

I've seen the same thing you have, gathering nodes being harvested and disappearing with no characters visible on the map on Zakuul. They've been doing the same thing on Yavin IV since 3.0. I've reported it. Lots of other people have reported it. EAWare doesn't care.

IT really does fall under they BW just doesn't care.

Like the above said. I have reported and seen these actions for so long now it must be OK to do.

If it's not the invisible, under the world cheaters it's the bots on yavin that have been farming slicing nodes in all instances for years.

Report them and nothing ever happens to them. I've even went so far as to go to the PVP instances and attack them. Seeing how long I can keep them in combat. Their bots and they always do the same thing, over and over and they run the same routes. They never say anything no matter how long I keep them in combat or where I drag them.

bw has little to no intention to get rid of the bots or the cheaters you mention. They might claim they want to but it's never really done.

Just have to either deal with it or join them.

Considering is very easy to spot the GTN sales of the bot gathered mats, tracking down the accounts involved should not take that long.

You need to re-evaluate your observations on this part.

It is incredibly easy for a player to set up a materials gathering operation using crew missions now days, and just park in your stronghold and continue to rotate through a long list of characters and reinitiate crew missions every 10 minutes or so.

Why is this the case now? Because it is relatively inexpensive to raise companions to influence 40+, and you can have 8 companions now on any character that is level 66 or higher. It is also fairly easy to level up crew missions as well, after you have kicked up the influence levels. The high influence and high companion count means any given player can churn out literally hundreds of green materials in an hours time span. Same with blue and purple mats, at a slower pace, but still very efficient compared to prior years. And this is a good thing as crafters need the mats and crafters are enabling players to largely bypass the GC nonsense.

Anyone gathering mats in the field is doing it wrong now days. The raw cost to gather green level 10 mats from crew missions is about 350-500 credits per piece (depending on your actual crit rates, which can be as high as 25% now).

Note: I am not weighing in on the "they are cheating" or "not" debate here..... only acknowledging that it is not only possible, but highly efficient and desirable for players to create crew mission driven farming businesses now days, and do so without ever leaving their stronghold and without violating the ToS/EULA.

As for alleged cheaters... our job is to report them if we see them, via in game reporting... AND move on. The studio will evaluate and determine from there. It is impossible to tell for sure in many cases if you have an actual botter in play, or just a player who loves doing the same tedious things over and over again for some form of gain. And personally, if I were going to camp nodes out in the field.. I would simply park stealthed characters near known node spots and check every 10 minutes and harvest with a companion. You don't even have to move. You could stay in stealth, and in a safe and unobservable spot and send the companion in to do your harvest (which would in fact make it appear as if it was a stealth harvest). But again.. this would be a stupid slow way to go about gathering mats in 5.0. Note: I'm not defending cheaters.. simply observing that there are ways to do this that are legal but appear illegal to the casual observer.

Hey there,

 

First and most importantly, we are actively looking into the reports about what is happening on Zakuul so thank you and all the others who have reported it to us.

 

I did want to use this opportunity as a reminder on how to report these issues. Definitely submit a bug report/contact CS if you see something suspicious. It is possible that you may get a standard response, but that does not mean the issue wasn’t forwarded onto the dev team. In fact, CS forwarded this very issue to us from player reports! Also, as some others have mentioned in the thread, send a PM via the forums to myself and/or Tait and we can pass on that information. We do our best to respond to all of our PMs but even when we don't, know that we are reading them and sending them on. Especially when it relates to potentially serious issues such as exploits.

 

Thanks everyone.

 

-eric

mmocat .com. What are you doing about this site, and the few sites like it. Yavin has become a home for these farming bots. I have tried to follow some of these bots. These are NOT players. This has been going on for sometime, and the same websites are still active. One would assume BW or EA would legally attack them in some way. But I have heard nothing. Are they taking advantage of a loophole? What will it take to get an intern (some kid you dont need to pay) to moderate fleet chat for these people? To look at Yavin at least once a day? Ask your player base. We would support any action that would go after these sites. Hell, use us. However, you are "dealing" with it now, its not working, time to change it up.

You need to re-evaluate your observations on this part.

 

...

 

I'm not defending cheaters.. simply observing that there are ways to do this that are legal but appear illegal to the casual observer.

Point taken. My expression was not correct and the scenario you explained is valid (lots of my mats i gather that way, but never in a selling mats bussines scale). Still, for a Dev/Admin to corroborate each case SHOULD be relatively easy.

Even if they find a way to stop them they just find another way. One suggestion I saw from someone was to introduce a system similar to Plex and wow tokens. Yet no matter what there will always be gold / credit farmers. WoW still deals with them and I doubt even they will truly get rid of them. I don't know if EVE has them as I've never played but the only true way to get rid of them is if players stopped using their services.

Until that happens they will always exist in every MMO in some form as they are always adapting to what the game companies do to stop them.

It does happen that a resource node is wrongly displayed as present on your screen even though it is already harvested... in which case it will eventually disappear for no apparent reason.

 

If you have a bunch of player characters that do that for years and very systematically they probably do belong to a gold seller ring. But they don't have to be cheating.

You are completely off-topic re: Zakuul-cheating. I welcome you to go to Breaktown, stand there for a few minutes and see for yourself what is happening. Then, after you acquired the necessary knowledge about the topic discussed here, please come back to post again.

I guarantee you, if you look for yourself, you will immediately understand what the OP is about. This breaktown scenario is the most bizarre thing I have ever encountered in this game. And just as a hint: Don't focus so much on the nodes. They will disappear anyhow. Instead, look what the mobs are doing. That's where it gets interesting, as they are constantly getting aggro'd, but they don't know by whom. They get marked grey, but they remain red in the code/system and immediately attack you, even if you are not close enough for aggroing them. Just as if the game engine is searching for the nearest player, because someone must have aggro'd them, even though there is no one. It's quite the scenery. Have fun!

I always thought that when a node disappeared it just meant that someone on another instance of the planet was harvesting it. thats not the case?

No. The nodes are unique to each instance of the planet / zone your in

Since the threat range and reaction time of a mob depends on the relative level, it's perfectly viable to send you companion to harvest a node 50 meters away right in the middle of a group of mobs, while you are already moving in the opposite direction to another node. They will attack your companion, but only after they started harvesting the resource. Once they are done harvesting the resource you set them to passive, upon which they will follow you and might "teleport" to you depending on how far away you are. If the distance is great enough the mobs will start "evading" you and you leave combat. That is, if you are not a stealther, in which case you can instantly leave combat as long as you "Force Cloak" or similar ability is off cooldown.

 

Therefore it's not necessarily cheating when companions suddenly disappear after harvesting the node, that's not necessarily an indication that there is no player character on the map, it merely means the player character may be far away. If you don't see any player characters listed on Zakuul they might simply be not your faction.

I'm sorry sir, but you can't harvest from 50 meters away. If you aren't in range to click the node yourself (10 meters), neither can your companion.

Yes. How? Because I see them harvesting nodes while still in stealth mode. Because I see nodes disappear with no characters OR their companions anywhere to be seen. Because I see nodes being harvested in a split second, even after Alacrity was tweaked to no longer affect your gathering channel time. Because I have seen them teleport in-game. These activities happen both on Yavin and on Zakuul, and have been for literal years now. I've sent in tickets about them repeatedly, but it's always the same names on the same bots over and over (when you can even see the bots in the first place). EAWare obviously doesn't care, because the ones on Yavin have been there for literally over two years straight now without interruption.

^ THIS, times infinity! I have myself reported the same 2 bots on Yavin IV multiple times, all to no avail. They are there 24/7/365, exploiting slicing nodes. It sickens me to think of the BILLIONS of illegally obtained credits these bots have collected over the years.

They're not cheating in the way that they are abusing a glitch to get an advantage, but the farming bots on Yavin 4 (that appear to be on all of the servers I've checked) are pretty bad. You can recognize them easily:

 

• They all have a ì in the name
  
• They are all sith assassins
  
• They always roam the exact same routes (for instance, one south of the temple ruins in the far west, one north)
  
• They 'act' incredibly brain-dead in combat even against other players (pvp instance)
  
• They never ever ever reply to whispers
  
• They have an incredibly low achievement score, literally only what it takes to get one class to 70 and another achievement for "earning" 10 million credits
  

 

It's clear they're farming resource nodes to make money for gold selling schemes.

 

EA/BW has been informed of this long ago, but apparently they choose not to act. So don't get your hopes up about anything being done.

Absolutely spot on. I have reported this exact behavior on Bergeren Colony multiple times, and the same 2 Sith Assassins are there 24/7/365 exploiting the slicing nodes in the PvP instance of Yavin IV.

Even if they find a way to stop them they just find another way. One suggestion I saw from someone was to introduce a system similar to Plex and wow tokens. Yet no matter what there will always be gold / credit farmers. WoW still deals with them and I doubt even they will truly get rid of them. I don't know if EVE has them as I've never played but the only true way to get rid of them is if players stopped using their services.

 

Until that happens they will always exist in every MMO in some form as they are always adapting to what the game companies do to stop them.

As a veteran of EVE Online, I can tell you that adding Plex into the game actually accelerated ISK farming and RMTs for EVE. So.. no... that won't fix the issue with RMTs. Nor will a studio selling credits directly to players for real money.

Time now for a metaphor: We as MMO players, via metaphor, have to accept that there is no way to force the extinction of roaches. Take away one food, and they simply gorge on something else and find clever ways to escape the light. You fight roaches using time proven methods. You detect, you track them to their nests, and you apply insecticides profusely to at least keep the population in check. But it's silly to think you can actually completely drive them to extinction.

Where there is a will, and a demand.... THEY will find a way to flourish to some degree, no matter what.

Hey there,

 

, send a PM via the forums to myself and/or Tait

 

Thanks everyone.

 

-eric

Wait, isn't Tait leaving/left?