Exploit discussion thread closed by Seraphinn, disappointed

[Excellion]

I kindly suggest Seraphine used poor judgment in closing another discussion thread found here: https://forum.nexonm.com/forum/nexo...-write-better-security-than-the-idiots-at-bhg

Yes, the original poster could have chosen a better title, but he (or she) is clearly frustrated, as all community members seem to be, because we care! Respectfully, a response such as "As a Nexon employee, I care about the community and want to ensure everyone enjoys a fantastic gaming experience. If you are aware of any specific instance of cheating, please report it here <insert instructions>. Otherwise, please keep the conversation civil <insert why you feel the thread was inappropriate as sincerely I am unsure which response triggered the closure>.

If you close threads too aggressively, the player base will be driven off official forums and one of the private forums will become the dominate forums for the game. I have seen that happen with a prior game I played. The official forums literally would have 1 - 2 posts per week, usually from new players. That is in no ones best interests.

Respectively the problem is so massive it should not be upon the player base to notify Nexon 1 by 1 of suspected cheaters. Instead, perhaps Nexon can follow the footsteps of other quality companies which is to recognize some players EARN their high levels by spending a LOT of time playing daily, others buy their way to the top, both of which are cool. The issue is cheaters. How to find them?

1. Write a simple query to show a list of players with level 30 generals and level 11+ walls. It would take a moment of a developer's time with code looking similar to: SELECT * FROM PLAYERS WHERE general > 29 and wall > 10

2. Filter that query by exluding anyone who spent $500 or more on the game. That is not to say people who spend money don't cheat, but we are after the low hanging fruit which is the most blatantly obvious cheaters.

3. Next, take that list and run a few queries against it. We are looking for 2 things:

a. Players who run the game on pc's with a keyboard emulator to never get disconnected so they never get raided. With the game disconnecting players every 2 minutes, it simply is not possible for any normal human to stay connected for 8+ hours at a time on a daily basis. When you find players who stay connected for unreasonably long periods of time on a daily basis and there is no other activity conducted such as raids, it is extremely highly likely they are cheating. Can you expect any human to sit there and click every 2 minutes, hour after hour, and perform no other activity? Also, some players may have the keystroke emulator click certain patterns such as collecting resources.

b. Take a look at WHEN / HOW they acquired the loot for their walls and generals. Normal players should accumulate the loot over time via raids. A single level 11 wall typically takes days to gather the loot. If a player upgraded many walls in a single day, something is VERY wrong.

Dominations seems like a great game, but the core of any game is fair competition. When so many of the top players got there through exploits, there is no reason for others to play. The game is not fun, not competitive, and all hope of enjoying the game is gone. If a single max level player tramples your base and steals your hard earned loot once, we can deal with it. When it happens more frequently, or especially when it directly causes a war loss for your entire ally, it's game over and we need to move on to a game managed by a company who actively (and proactively) bans cheaters.

I hope Nexon quickly steps up.

Kind Regards,
​-X

 

[Porcupine]

a- A large amount of cheaters are big spenders and the company would lose much if they ban them all (money and population).
b- To make it harder on us, more time consumption and resources will result in spending more crowns.
c- They don't know how to do it
d- All of the above

Possible reasons why Nexon/BHG don't have a good security system.

 

[Old Farmer Bob]

Hmm not sure point A is true. Surely if cheaters are getting gold, crowns etc from hack tool, any money they pay for such tools does not go to Nexon. This should give an incentive for closing down cheaters so paying players can only buy legitimate crowns. I do suspect your point C is correct and if so Nexon and BHG should at least acknowledge the difficulties and say what they are doing to try to resolve ( state of nations post?).

 

[Excellion]

Perhaps the devs can put a catchpa in the "are you still there" check just to keep bots from self clicking the word yes? This won't solve the issue with all the cheaters but having random catchpas might help.

It already exists but like so many other things with the game it is VERY poorly implemented. I logged into the game when I woke up one morning and about 30 seconds later it appeared. If you want to catch people who are using an exploit to log in, wait until they have logged in 10+ consecutive times after an auto-boot. If you want to catch exploiters who are keeping their game active wait until they are active at least an hour.

As a follow up to my previous post where I shared a ticket was open for the player who jumped from level 100 to 168, CS responded as follows: "Thank you for providing the requested screen shots and bringing the matter to our attention. We will investigate the issue further to determine what further actions will be taken on this account. Please note that due to security and privacy restrictions, we are unable to provide any additional information where it concerns the findings and related actions of our investigations. "

On the one hand I can understand the response but on the other hand it seems unacceptable. It feels like a black hole where nothing is done. If I were to report a crime to the police, as a citizen I am able to follow up on the investigation and know if the case is being actively investigated, if the person/company is going to trial or jail, etc. Here we are asked to trust Nexon, when we know they have MAJOR issues, the largest I have ever seen or heard from in my gaming life outside of working with Indie developers who are exceptionally responsive to issues and quite transparent.

There are far too many major bugs and issues with the game such as the constant disconnects, they have gone on for months unresolved. Players are starting to go to the App Stores and give the game 1 star ratings as there is no action being taken by Nexon. The exploit issue is yet another area where we don't see any action. If we can't see the players being banned, and we still see them in game, every indication is nothing is being done other than to generate a copy/paste response meant to appease us. Sorry, it is just not good enough.

 

[adc10597]

support = monkeys

 

[Guest]

Thank you all for your responses and suggestions! I'll be sure to share them internally.

I totally get your frustrations, but we honestly cannot go into detail, especially here in the forums, with specific cases. Investigations into the reports do take some time since the support team sends all reports to the team in charge. While action may not be swift and immediate as we all want, action does happen. Should you see someone still active in the game who you suspect, do not hesitate to follow up on your initial ticket to report them again, especially if you have new screenshots to share as well.

 

[Old Farmer Bob]

Seraphine your response is appreciated but there is this sense that the responses From customer services are too little too late. This fantastic game is being destroyed by cheaters at all but the lowest levels and I think Excellion' s comment "Players are starting to go to the App Stores and give the game 1 star ratings as there is no action being taken by Nexon" is both true and telling. Some of the best and most committed players are leaving. I really hope you are able to fix this. Apart from the frustration of players it can hardly help your business model if crown buying players do so only through hacked crowns

 

[Guest]

Old Farmer Bob CS is the very beginning of the investigations team as they pass on reports from players to our internal teams who do the research. This is why it may at first seem that there may be a "lack of response". Behind the scenes they are being looked into.

 

[keegan]

Old Farmer Bob CS is the very beginning of the investigations team as they pass on reports from players to our internal teams who do the research. This is why it may at first seem that there may be a "lack of response". Behind the scenes they are being looked into.

Why nothing is being Done till now , Cs just applied a Copy / Paste Response or Give 300 Crown instead , Cs can't Imagine Our Pain

how long should be wait , i dont dare to climb my medals up forced to purchase 1or 3 day PT to keep them

if nexon / BHG can't deal with cheater tell us know , we are sick of cheaters many of us experienced to these issues


Nexon Forum Missed The best Contributor Like Eddie - HK - Aussie Guy - BooQuia - Bomboo CoC cuz they really sicked of Cheaters

 

[Cielmers]

Most of all the cheaters show some crown purchase receipt as a prove that they are not cheating. But nexon even with $10000 it nearly impossible to rush maximum level wall and general.

 

[Excellion]

...even with $10000 it nearly impossible to rush maximum level wall and general.

and THAT is a key point in itself, and an easy way to spot cheaters and exploiters

If anyone on Nexon staff played the game regularly, they would know level 11 walls are a clear sign of either cheating / exploiting / buying a LOT of crowns.

I have played the game every day since its release, and I play a lot as well. Perhaps there are some genius farming methods I am not using, but I find my approach is significantly better than most players (i.e. more efficient). I am industrial (max) age and have some level 9 walls. If you find any player with all level 9 walls, they are likely in the top 3% of all players with respect to playing time. If you find players with all level 10 walls, they are very high into the top 1%.

I kindly suggest if a player played 8 hours/day every day since game launch they would not have all level 10 walls, yet there are numerous players with all level 11 walls. Not remotely possible without buying tens of thousands of dollars worth of crowns. Someone needs to investigate anyone with all level 11 walls and determine exactly how those walls appeared. I made this request previously.

 

[Old Farmer Bob]

Errmm. Have you got your levels right Excellion. Level 9/10 are the red brick walls. All mine are either 9/10 and while I play regularly I don't consider myself that good. There are 2 or 3 ( I am not quite sure which) levels of white walls above ( the Dominations wiki entry says 3) and I think it's those you refer to. Otherwise quite agree with you

 

[ivan.]

It's the level 13 walls that are the sign of cheating because they're the ceiling. I don't know of any cheater that would crown cheat up to level 11 and stop, but if they do then that's really discrete.

When Industrial Age was first released you had players already with complete lvl 13 walls in the first week, and when this last Alliance Wars update released ten new additional wall pieces, those were max within hours. You have to remember that most cheaters are dumb. Just yesterday I posted a screenshot of one that was using lvl 13 walls to protect his factory.

 

[Magnifico]

Not that this invalidates Ivan's point, but I see at lot of level 11 walls on bases that I assume were maxed out by cheaters back when the Enlightenment Age was the final age. I guess these cheaters got bored and moved on before the Industrial Age rolled.