An open letter to Nexon and MapleStory players

The world of hacking is always present in MapleStory. Always. You may not see it, but it's always there, slowly changing the economy, or allowing a select few to benefit. Occasionally though, hacking is thrust into the open by a radically game changing event. MapleStory experienced such an event this past week.

This is now the 3rd time that hackers have ruined a profit method that I've personally used.

Back when Chaos scrolls were still allowed in the mts (worth about 10-12k NX each), my goal was to run through the various area bosses that dropped them on 2x and 4x drop. Doing this I was able to make a handy profit via NX and convert to mesos when I needed it. Then the first Chaos scroll duping event happened. No more MTS-able Chaos scrolls, and the meso price for them dropped from 100m to 30m and continued to lower, making this inefficient.

Then I started to find that the best method for profit was Pieces of Time. Again, I used 2x and 4x drop to gain PoT's that I could sell for a decent meso profit. Much slower than the chaos scroll method, but at least it was consistent. Then hackers began to invade ToT and the deflation of PoTs was on, making it worthless in terms of profit vs time.

Finally we come to the GMS 6th anniversary event. lvl 64 maple weapons can be traded in for chaos scrolls. 3 weapons for each scroll. Going to places like Sage Cats and Book Ghosts seemed to be the best place for drops, and I settled eventually on Book Ghosts as I could clear the entire map before respawn. This worked pretty well, and even when I was paying for those "2x drop" usable items, I was able to make a very nice meso profit converting weapons to scrolls and selling them for about 15m each. Now hackers have destroyed this as well.

I've only listed 3, but there are surely dozens of examples others can give. MS is slowly losing its best revenue streams due to item deflation from hackers. I constantly have to alter my play, and find ways to avoid intervention from hackers. I've played the game over 4 years now, and have always had encounters that have hindered my progress... either by taking up maps that I would have trained on (ex: Wolf Spiders) or destroying my profit centers (the above examples).

I am now 100% done with buying NX, and 100% done with using the MTS for buying or selling. It's the only way that I feel I can hurt Nexon where it counts. It’s always been clear that the game is vulnerable in so many ways, and yet people continue to buy NX, and fund a company that time after time screws its user base by ignoring potential security risks, and refusing to truly understand its own game.

I urge everyone to pledge to do the same: Avoid any transaction that would benefit Nexon via NX use. I've already sent a letter to Nexon informing them of my decision.... but I'm at the point now where I truly believe that Nexon is incapable of saving this game.

Perhaps this is the curse of the 'free to play' game model, where you don't need to put down real money to enter the game world. To hack here, you risk nothing. On the off chance that you're caught, and your account is banned? ... Just create another one, seamlessly, and for free.

I know some legit players that have admitted to me that they will now attempt to jump onto any exploit/hack that they can find, as they are easy to perform, and free from Nexon's 'security' measures. Sadly, I find that I don't really have a counter-argument anymore when people tell me these things.

This is the culture that you have created, Nexon. And this is the culture that you, as a player, continue to fund when you buy and use NX.

Even if you alone are done with NX, and send stuff to Nexon, they simply don't and won't care.

Here's the problem. Ever since the birth of MTS, the majority of high end community players never did spend NX on the game unless they had no desire to merch for it. The people who spend money on the game are often uninformed of the world or just don't care about how much they expend on the game. Starting a boycott against Nexon never happened in the past, won't happen now, and will never happen in the future.

isn't protesting/boycotting against nexon's eula?

I'm interested in Nexon's response to this question: Is Nexon at all concerned with the legal ramifications of banning players who adhered to the ToS, especially those who have spent money on NX? America is a lawsuit happy society, where people are able to represent themselves in court, provided they have sound reasons for such proceedings.

I'm interested in Nexon's response to this question: Is Nexon at all concerned with the legal ramifications of banning players who adhered to the ToS, especially those who have spent money on NX? America is a lawsuit happy society, where people are able to represent themselves in court, provided they have sound reasons for such proceedings.

That's why they have that line in their terms of service stating they can suspend or stop providing services to customers at any time for any reason.

What do you really hope to accomplish with that letter. Honestly?

There is no MMO out there that is safe from hacks, and the ones who do a decent job of preventing their usage just happen to be the ones with a plethora of active gamemasters. Wherever software is involved, it can be reverse engineered, and thus tampered with. Though you seem to think that this is Nexon's fault, it isn't. Want to blame someone, blame the hackers. Beyond hiring a shitload of gamemasters and killing their profit margin, there is NOTHING they can do.

[SIZE="2"]*checks URL*:f6: This is not basil!!!

OT: It wont happen. Big part of the community doesnt care about hackers (they actually "support" hackers) so asking anyone to stop buying NX is useless.[/SIZE]

isn't protesting/boycotting against nexon's eula?

Oh the delicious irony of getting banned for that!

The world of hacking is always present in MapleStory. Always.

Not sure what you want from this. There are of dozens of these things, nothing has even come from them.

Seen this type of "letter" a dozen++ times and I've yet to see even a 1% success rate on any of them. All you're doing is just wasting your time.

You're just a drop in the bucket so far as they're concerned.

What do you really hope to accomplish with that letter. Honestly?

There is no MMO out there that is safe from hacks, and the ones who do a decent job of preventing their usage just happen to be the ones with a plethora of active gamemasters. Wherever software is involved, it can be reverse engineered, and thus tampered with. Though you seem to think that this is Nexon's fault, it isn't. Want to blame someone, blame the hackers. Beyond hiring a pomegranateload of gamemasters and killing their profit margin, there is NOTHING they can do.

[SIZE="2"]I agree with you. Chaos exploit thing and what happened during the last weekend wasn't mostly Nexon's fault. It was the retards that made the thing public that really messed up everything... Sure, there were people abusing this before the weekend but the way I see it it didn't affect us that much.

The problem are all those failures that fail at this game and feel the need to hack to accomplish something. (And by doing so they fail more)

The problem are all those failures that fail at this game and feel the need to buy mesos in a website. I remember someone say this while playing my friends DW: "Damm hacker ksing me... but don't ban hackers and don't do anything about those sites.... where/how would I buy my mesos?"

The problem are all those low-lifes that can't get a job so they must pay for/download hacks to sell mesos online. I don't get how can anyone say "Oh, theyre cool. Theyre getting money irl"...

People are the problem and there is little Nexon can do.
[/SIZE]

What do you really hope to accomplish with that letter. Honestly?

There is no MMO out there that is safe from hacks, and the ones who do a decent job of preventing their usage just happen to be the ones with a plethora of active gamemasters. Wherever software is involved, it can be reverse engineered, and thus tampered with. Though you seem to think that this is Nexon's fault, it isn't. Want to blame someone, blame the hackers. Beyond hiring a pomegranateload of gamemasters and killing their profit margin, there is NOTHING they can do.

Yes, hackers are at fault. However, Nexon's even moreso at fault for letting them run rampant with their poorly designed methods to combat hacking. Let's observe each of the ones implemented in the current game:

Auto-bans
Bans based on a poorly generated reactive mechanism that determines if a player's current actions are abnormal or not. When determined they are, the hacker is then banned for a week to a month to maybe three months tops. Auto-bans are not permanent nor do they ban the IP. This does not discourage the hacker. Instead, the hacker takes this as an opportunity and makes a work-around to prevent the auto-ban from triggering.

The Hack Reason GM D/C
For players that Maple deems to be questionable but want to be on the safe side (such as lagging), the game boots the player off for "The Hack Reason" and d/c's them. This does not ban the player. All it does is enforce an inconvenience. The hacker, just like with the auto-ban system, comes up with a work-around. This came and gave birth to a timed auto-CC which bypasses The Hack Reason d/c.

Report System
Legit players may report players they deem to be illegit. There's many many flaws with this system. First off, it only works once a day. This means if a player encounters more than one hacker a day, that player cannot report again. Second off, it costs mesos to report. If a player has no mesos on that account, that player cannot report. Third off, hackers also made a work-around with this by creating a hack that lets them automatically CC out of the channel when a player comes within range of them. This means if a hacker actually cares about being reported, players cannot even touch them to report them.

Lie Detector System (no longer in game)
When the Lie Detector System existed, it would allow players to enter in the names of botting hackers. If the question is unanswered within a specified amount of time, the hacker is then sent to town. Three major problems exist with this. It costs mesos meaning a player without mesos is unable to report them. Two, it requires the player to know the name of the said hacker. With all the i's and L's out there, knowing the exact IGN of a hacker proves difficult. Third, if the player is successful in sending the hacker back to town, it does nothing. Furthermore, hackers made another work-around for this. They have hacks that let them teleport back to the map they were in before they were sent to town and they get to continue botting away.

So, what's the best way to combat hacking?

Active GM's
With how openly hacking is talked about, having GM's monitor and interact with players allows them to figure out who's a hacker and who isn't. Granted, they ought to not ban right off the bat with knowledge of who is a potential hacker without research. This would solve a lot of problems and filter out a lot of the major hackers roaming each server.

IP Bans + MAC Address
Crush the hackers with IP bans. When they get ban, include their IP and MAC address. While I'm perfectly aware there are ways to bypass this, doing so requires a bit of work that the majority of script kiddie hackers do not care to associate with. This leaves only the big, bad, and dedicated hackers to change their IP/MAC addresses constantly, and those are for GM's to take care of. The innocent who get caught in the web ought will be solved through the next issue:

Active Non-template Responses
Get rid of the template responses, Nexon. Actually have more than 3 people work on answering tickets at a time. Players who get wrongfully banned or caught in the IP Ban net will be given access. On the other hand, illegit players reported through the ticket system need to be investigated and have proper action delivered.

All three of those are completely doable within Nexon America's abilities. However, they choose to not invest in more active GM's (and the ones that do exist only get paid a pitiful $9/hour), they choose to not use an IP/MAC Address banning system, and their Ticket System is horrid. This is as much of a fault of Nexon's as it is the hackers.

Completely agreed. Can't even enjoy the game anymore. Can't hunt in leafre because the channels are full of hackers. Can't hunt for pieces of time because they're worthless. Can't benefit from the event anymore for obvious reasons. etc.
Good on you for giving them a piece of your mind. And to hell with these haters, brah. Haters gonna hate.

Haters gonna hate.

You just won't get many people with the opinion that this effort is going to matter on this site.

I'm rather on the fence about this. On one hand, I whole heartedly advocate that this be posted in a blog or something to honor its uselessness. and/or pointlessness.
On the other, it does sound kinda like a discussion to me, more precisely an old, sour-hearted, disgruntled man's kind of talk with his best buddies complaining about the weather, but still classified as a discussion.

Let me be clear, though. I deny nobody their right to express their disagreement with Nexon, as we all have something to say in that department. I just think it's gone on for too long that it doesn't warrant a place in this subforum anymore.

I honestly worked for my scrolls, killing sage cats allllllllllllll day. I will not surrender them in fear of hackers, I earned them myself. I'm already mad that the Maple weps are untradeable, after working very hard for tons of polearms to scroll for a future Aran, they are now binded to my Cygnus Knight, and I will be unable to scroll them(at least, scroll them and make good use of them.)

This is getting old, Nexon Takes action against hackers, further limiting the legit players in how much they can enjoy the community.

Jagex did this with Runescape(although I heard they changed it back, I haven't played in awhile so I wouldn't know), where players became unable to trade things worth more than 5k(they were a pretty good company, and almost magically knew the street prices for every item, save the party hats), and Runescape then became ''Massively singleplayer'' for the most part, all in favor of killing bots. The only difference is that Runescape relies heavily on the mass production and economy of the players, so it makes more sense. For Maplestory, it doesn't feel that way.

I don't want to get falsely banned again, if Nexon can't ban the correct people, I'd rather them not take any action at all. I simply don't care about the economy with hackers in it any more. I just want to enjoy this event without getting banned. Besides, I don't care what anyone says, I'd rather pay 100k mesos for an exploited 10 starred 150 attack knuckle than spend 300k nx hoping to get an item that can't even come 20 attack close to it. Not that I have the balls to do it, but I would much rather do that, I don't care about equips in this game. They're simply an annoying obstacle that stands in the way of me having fun and joining parties(This varies to an extent, I like being useful in parties and not doing 50k damage at level 140).

If Nexon plans to ban anyone who ''has a lot of x'', they need to simply piss off. Hackers win, I don't care, just let me enjoy the game. Policing this is obviously too much for Nexon to handle, there must be millions of people who play this game divided in the servers, plus they probably have low amounts of GM's(a perfect example of why they have low amounts of GM's is because of the echo incident). I really don't care that some random jackoff exploited his weapons, that makes it better when he joins my party any way. As long as we don't revert back to the old days, where hackers arrogantly camped and vacced and ksed everyone all day, I am not too interested in the hack battle going on here. This still doesn't compare to back then, when entering the slime tree was impossible, and hackers ksed you for the lulz, hiding in the corners of the map.

MS right now reminds me alot of Diablo 1. The thing was a paradise for people modifying how the program sent data because a huge portion of the program ran client side.

What confuses me more then anything, I can understand why MS uses so much clientside processing. making the user do more work means cheaper server costs. But when this has become such a common occurance you'd think they'd have more then faulty and easily avoided countermesures. You can spend 5 min on GK and see just how easy it is to counteract all their safeguards.

The problem has become endemic though. A portion of the userbase likes it because it reduces the cost of things, letting them get better equips at a much lower cost. Actually stopping the hackers would realisticly require a complete recode of MS's client and server engines. obviously way beyond what any smart company is willing to do.

So you need to reactively deal with situations. Fine. but why in gods name, when you know this problem has come up do you wait 3 days, THEN deal with the situation with a response that basicly became harsher by your own inaction? :f6:

This is the part that confuses me, why wait? Why not push the big red stop button days ago, call in the coders from the weekend and fix the problem before you have to inconvince EVERYONE for your own inaction/stupidity?

Sadly it's easy to figure out why though. It doesn't matter. The small number of people who were actually negatively effected by this are a fraction of their users and their money.

It's pretty obvious as long as they keep making money they could care less, and thats really irritating. No amount of angry e-mails will change that.

I agree with you, Yet as you know already starting any form of boycott just wouldn't work.
People will always buy nx.

About hackers, they will always be in games even more so now its an actual business. Imo, that is where nexon need to strike im pretty sure they have some grounds to sue W8 and GK (i dont know anymore since i dont hack) forcing them to remove any hacks against maple.
Even through nexon acted poorly this weekend it isnt 100% their fault. I'm pretty sure its almost impossible to make a unhackable game (unless its like a flash game) And also they seriously need to sort out their cust. service its aweful.. my ign change has been stuck for 2 months now lol. could expire before it changes.