my account???

[GM-Ayu]

LONG POST WARNING, DO NOT READ IF YOU DON'T LIKE WALLS OF TEXT

but if you demand full explanations on how GMs work, live with my wall of text.

I think it can be a reason. Who would bot with a a lvl 99 and lot of good stuff?

GM-Altheridos wasn't botting, but he had a lv 99 character as well as being a GM, but he broke major rules of heRO in a different form but all for the same reason of "more items" in order to gain power through convenience without grinding to it all.

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I think Killouz and most people here are being slightly confused between dual client, LAN connection and other scenarios where there's more than 1 computer from 1 IP address. Let's go over this slowly so there's no confusion over the definitions.


What is Dual Client for heRO?

"Dual Client is when ONE PHYSICAL PLAYER opens up more than 1 client through *any methods* in order to play more than 1 character at the same time."

1) Autotrade does not violate this definition, because you do not need to open more than 1 client in order to autotrade. Your autotrader doesn't need a client open to be vending.

2) Multiple computers from the same address DO NOT ALWAYS mean dual client automatically. There can well be 4 computers, and 4 clients are opened in that address. However, as long as there's also 4 physical players present, that is all ok. The most common example of this is family members, or friends visiting another friend who also happens to be a heRO player, so they want to play together.


Old Case where GM revoked a ban because of this:

-After GM-Altheridos is demoted, he was still allowed to play in heRO with a special exception (same exception that all GM must face if they are demoted and expelled from the GM team for whatever the reason) in terms of the number of accounts that an ex-GM can have. In one of the GM team's regular checks, we found that Altheridos had more than the permitted amount of account from his IP, and therefore we banned him. However, GMs admitted fault, and revoked the ban and fine-tuned (rewrote to be more clear + precise) the rule on ex-GMs because Altheridos was inviting friends over to his house to all play heRO, and thus why there seems to be a lot of accounts related to his IP.

Point of the case: GMs do not automatically condemn any players just because we see that there's more than 1 account from 1 IP. This example isn't directly on dual clienting, but it shows that GMs do not automatically pass judgment purely on the ratio of account-IP.

(unrelated note: Altheridos was still banned in the end for another scenario, and sorry if I spell his name wrong... I can never get his name right.)


All in all, dual client involves the case when one player has MORE THAN ONE CLIENT open. Go by the rule: one client per player. Don't think about "IP" at all. 1 player for each "heRO.exe" regardless of computer, location, and anything.

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How do GMs treat screenshots?

I think we all realize that SS is one still picture and is hard to prove dual client. We never treat 1 SS be the "be all end all" of all arguments. You can easily see by browsing through forums that there's many cases in the past where players are reporting another player and posted 1 or even 2 screenshot, however GM team's responses are usually "we'll look into it."

SS itself does not validate too much: it only shows signs to the GMs that further investigation is needed. Usually, this means that log checking is necessary, since screenshot in most cases is trying to show what players have said (or the lack of). However, SS can't show the whole context. Therefore, think of SS more as evidence for GMs to have the need to go find MORE evidence.

Log checking sucks. We don't do it unless we are convinced that we need to. A SS showing some "suspicious signs" of rule breaking (botting, dual client, KSing, insults, etc) is enough to convince us that we need to do log checking.


That's why usually you'll see GMs asking for *multiple, unedited screenshot that has time stamps.* (screenshots that are unedited in heRO should naturally have the time stamp) to show that the problem is occurring, and more SS covering a longer period of time shows us the context of a situation better.


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Why can't GMs show evidence/how they did their check?

a) back to my previous post, we never show evidence on catching bots (though sometimes if it's extremely funny/hilarious, we show it for laughs and etc) if the bot is some lv 50 thief that no one knows about and people accept it fine. Now a well known player, and everyone demands evidence? We use the same standard: we never show those to begin with, unless under very special cases. In those cases, either Pandora or the GM holding those evidence/one who carried out the punishment, will decide based on context.

b) GMs promise anonymous and privacy to *ALL* players who has a report on other players, or even other GMs. Bloody mentioned this in his post already: targetting and reporting a well known players with good social ties in a server is very intimidating. Friends who are still in the server may target the reporting player with great negativity. This discourages other players for reporting on another in similar cases because they'll be scared, and GMs will have a harder time to find these out without help then.

Also, it's just far too embarassing to submit a report, but GMs in the end rule it out as "it's ok" or "not enough evidence" and the server sees the 'evidences.' The server may make fun of players who report often (be it accurate/helpful or not) as tattle-tellers or whatever. We don't want that.

c) Old and experienced players know to shush players on Main if Main starts talking about "oh look I got a bot check by _____ methods!" Not that sharing your "bot check experience" is against a rule, but if how the GMs do bot/dual client checks, then offenders can start thinking of countermeasures to act appropriately to get past the GMs.

(so if you want to share your "bot check experience" in the future, we prefer it if you do that privately instead of "GM Ayu bot checked me using this _____!")

GMs in heRO always try to find 'creative and new' ways to do our bot checks, macro checks, and dual client checks so that offenders have no way to be perfectly immune with the perfect countermeasures and action against the randomized checks.

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GMs only ban?

I think part of the responses on this one is because within a month, 3 "famous players" (there you go, that same 'defense' again >_<) have been banned within September.

why not just jail

a) Jail stops one *character* for inaction. The affected player can easily log on other character just to be off on their ways again. This is especially true against dual cliented. Heck with it, the very crime they offended is that they have more characters online at a time than they should. How is jailing a "punishment" by limiting one of their character, if we are trying to stop someone from having more than 1 character online at a time?

b) degree of the punishment affects the result, and I personally think that GM-Aki did the right thing by choosing ban. Dual client is really same in purpose as macro and botting: laziness for convenience. Think of it in these cases:

Hunting too difficult? Need a party. Party shares exp for less gain and items though, so let's dual client to have free slaves who won't take off the exp/items in order to have maximal gain.

Guild battles being tough? Need more players to help then. Can't recruit more players? Let's dual client so I have access to multiple characters to guard the castle as a 1 man crew (stationing them in various parts of the map so it's easy to handle small assault teams, which is more effective than it sounds since heRO is relatively a small server) In fact, this one is the main reason why heRO banned dual client in the past.


Bot is to hunt automatically because the player is lazy+greedy. Macro is to do other actions automatically because the player is lazy+greedy. Dual client is to make things easier with a 1 man party because the player is still, lazy+greedy.


Dual Client is 'not that bad' (or not as bad as macro/bot)

This one is another one of those opinionated things. Some other servers allow it too, but it's similar to having say donation items. Some servers think donation items are fine since they used up real money and ought to be thanked by the server, but you see that heRO never has donation gears with stats. This issue is one of those points where different servers choose what is acceptable and what is not, and actually many of our invites to others in RMS to try out heRO is declined because "your server doesn't allow DC" (DC = Dual Client)

heRO choose and decides as a community back then: dual clienting is NOT ACCEPTABLE.


I hope that this clears up some general "fear" of being wrongfully banned by GMs and some understanding on why GMs function this way. If there's even more questions or my explanation isn't clear, be sure to ask.