Ghost Strategy

[Sibernetika]

He was referring to lurk referring to himself as number 1..I was in the chat when this was discussed

Everyone keeps thinking I'm refering to lurk as cheating (in the game chat) but this is not the case. This started with someone else stalking me 3-4 times a day, while I could maybe get a retrace after every 5th hack, if I was lucky. I didn't know what was going on, so I reported as a bug, only to find out that it was something more than one person was doing and it wasn't marked as a bug or a cheat.

Lurk has said he has been honest about doing this from the start and that it wasn't a secret and yet I never knew about it. Come to find out, there was a few people that didn't know about it, and they to were upset to find out this was why they couldn't retrace these players. The only reason I mention Lurk is because he is No. 2 on the board, so its easy to reference and it demostrates how effective this is.

Because myself and others were unaware of this, I decided to test it and document the details so I could post it here and make sure others know they can do this and how to do it. Essentially, I'm leveling the playing field.

Then why are you referring to number 1 doing it? When it's well established that number one used a far more reliable and not such a back waters method.. Such as self hacking in which you can reset your shield any time you want.. All you need is to find your smurf account on the world map..
Don't have to go as crazy as to change your sleeping patterns like someone boasts he has done to purely take advantage of the 3 hour shield

[TheLurkingRage]

I think that if someone is constantly active for more than 12-16 hours a day , they should be temporarly banned for a day, maybe 2 days. These numbers can vary, but this is the best solution that requires no actual change in game mechanics and will discourage players from doing this.

Your solution is absurd. Temporarily banning players for playing for a prolonged period of time? Really? That's flat out stupid and extremely discourages playing the game even more. To counter the shield, you just need to sit on your ass and retrace/connect to the target's network for 3 hours at most and you'll get to hack them. Ez. But to counter a smurf minmaxer like iblitx, it takes months to counter because you've to make another account just to go up against him, because of the way the search works that prevents you from seeing everyone in the game.

[TheLurkingRage]

Read my post here where I explained how the online shield works more than a month ago: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1278&start=30

Just because not everyone knows about it because they can't be bothered to study the game's mechanics and learn all there is to learn about the game, doesn't make it a secret. This is all info available to the public should they chose to dig deep enough to find it, but I guess perhaps what you meant is that info might be accessible, but not necessarily easy to find. Players have utilized this method since the beginning as far as I'm aware, in fact you can see old reports of people being online here on the forum, with the most reported players being Arch when he reached #1 and Crack when he reached Elite rank. There hasn't been a single player that I'm not able to hack whether they use the shield to their advantage or not and when I made my run to the top, I actually went head to head with my competition, which was Crack and Arch for the most part so there was a sense of fairness being able to hack each other, but with iblitx it's a different story because he's literally hiding his network from the rest of players by staying low leveled and high rep, making it impossible for any first time player to counter what he's doing, while the 3 hour shield can be countered regardless of how experienced you are.

[nocturnalbamf]

I think that if someone is constantly active for more than 12-16 hours a day , they should be temporarly banned for a day, maybe 2 days. These numbers can vary, but this is the best solution that requires no actual change in game mechanics and will discourage players from doing this.

Your solution is absurd.

I feel like there are only a few people that would be upset about this, you included. Majority of people don't play this long in one day, so it wouldn't affect them at all. Whats wrong for calling it quits after playing for half a day. You still get a 3 hour shield from the world map after a "successful" attack. The only difference is retraces are still possible, which it should be. The retrace prevents constant stalking like in my case. The guy probablly wouldn't have attacked me much if I kept taking his rep on my retrace, but no since he knew I couldn't fight back, he just kept harrasing me.

I like how you keep refering to Blitz as cheating when he really isn't preventing you from attempting to hack him. You can create a new account and get around his level and try as many times as you want, with you though as your link says. You only have 8 windows max. Only if people find you at those windows, but also like you said, you could get a friend or even a second account to view your network and reset the clock, essentially extending your shield without being vulnerable. With both accounts running the shield, you would have 2 accounts constantly being invisible. Blitz doesn't have this ability, furthar more Im also taking advantage of what blitz is doing to stay below the level of my harraser and to stay away from you since you take advantage of this. This has given me the ability to climb the ladder with ease since there are only 2 people that have been able to hack me (one of which can no longer find me on his own). Well staying low and running this exploit has given me the ability. 4 or 5 days in and only 6 people have attempted my network with only 2 succeeding.

[PerseVerAnce]

To counter the shield, you just need to sit on your ass and retrace/connect to the target's network for 3 hours at most and you'll get to hack them. Ez.

Someone shouldn't have to spend 3 hours sitting there spamming retrace while the other person can just go AFK.

[TheLurkingRage]

I feel like there are only a few people that would be upset about this, you included. Majority of people don't play this long in one day, so it wouldn't affect them at all. Whats wrong for calling it quits after playing for half a day.

Anyone would be upset if they got temporarily banned for simply playing and trying to progress in the game. There shouldn’t be such a punishment for playing for a prolonged period of time. For starters, end game upgrades take a long time to gather resources for, and trust me, with how broke everyone is up here plus the broken ass search, it takes longer than just 3 hours to fill up your resources. The game already discourages you to play by having such ridiculous waiting times and absolutely nothing else to do in the meantime, other than hacking for the hell of it and raising your rep, so it’d be stupid to take such action and further discourage playing the game.

Up here the search is extremely narrow and you’re forced to hack the same 20 or so players over and over again. The day before yesterday for example, I hacked KeNNy 5 or 6 times.

KeNNy's Core.png (75.57 KiB) Viewed 5015 times

My search consists of the following players for the most part (shown in order from most to least prominent in search):
1. Crack
2. KeNNy
3. lorin
4. K!NG
5. NerRad
6. Kurticus
7. Akuka_Mudia
8. SabSteR
9. RickBobby
10. ColdReset
11. B@t$
12. Acidwar
13. Azussa
14. Scorpion
15. SnipeK
16. BOPE
17. Jacques
18. Jahve
19. DJElectric
20. (and the odd ones that appear every now and then like Festr, PerseVerAnce, TheNebulator, Flash, Naptime and a handful of others more)

I cycle through these players everyday, with the richest and the one that I hack the least being Crack (ironically). I make about $700k and 20k B-Coins every hack in profit on average (including rep rank bonus for 3x cap and taking into account the compilation cost for next hack). My average compile times are 30 minutes long, so it takes me about 10 hours to get enough for a node upgrade and 15+ hours to get enough for a program Upgrade. This is all assuming I don’t get successfully hacked in the process, and if I do, then you could add another 3 hours to that. Due to the way the search works, by the time I’ve hacked the 6th player, the same player I hacked 3 hours ago appears again, so the cycle repeats again and again until I skip them in the search for players with more loot. Sometimes it takes millions to find players with more than $300k and 15k Bits, or I could settle with continuously trying to connect to an online player that has good loot, which usually turns out to be a waste of time because they either log off having spent it all, they get hacked by someone else, they pop a 9sec shield on or I get hijacked - sometimes even all of the above. It’s very time consuming to get anything done in endgame, so you’re forced to spend a lot of time hacking and/or use 9sec protection to gather enough resources and yet you want to punish players for merely playing the game the way it was designed to play? It would be nearly impossible to get anything done without credits if they completely abolished the online shield system or made your suggestion a reality. That's not to say that it doesn't need to be fixed in such a way that it can't be used to your advantage by staying idol the whole time, but rather your suggestion doesn't properly fix the issue.

I like how you keep refering to Blitz as cheating when he really isn't preventing you from attempting to hack him.

-_-
In regards to iblitx, aren’t we all in agreement that he’s cheating? I mean, the whole reason behind your tantrum is that players are “hiding” their networks and you want this fixed, so if that’s exactly what iblitx is doing by staying low leveled and high rep, why take any sort of stance in his favour and say he isn’t cheating when it goes against your goal? Again, to counter the shield you only need to spend 3 hours at most trying to connect to the target’s network and you’ll be able to hijack their connection and hack them, but to counter a smurf minmaxer like iblitx, you must spend months working on another account using the same trick as him to counter what he’s doing. You’re so out of the loop, that you don't even know iblitx can find his original level 40 account and hack himself, or that he is indeed unsearchable due to his ridiculous high rep and by very definition, hiding his network from the rest of players even within his level range.

I want this game to be as balanced and fun to play as possible, but nearly everything that everyone that hasn’t reached endgame or the top of the leaderboards suggests is arbitrary, nonsensical and counterintuitive. For example, some want to extend the network reboot time despite the fact it’s already hard enough to defend as is and you can hack anyone within the 3 minute time frame (yes, including Acidwar whom I farm without the use of wraiths, having to 2x ram each gate, or shockers). Others want the wrong programs and nodes nerfed or buffed such as buffing Battering Rams and nerfing Turrets even though like I said, it’s already hard enough to defend as is. Others demand more updates without ever having spent a single penny on the game, piggy riding off everyone that has at least bothered to purchase the smallest credit pack to support the game. Then in your case, you want to make the gaming experience of endgame players completely miserable by punishing them for trying to make any sort of significant progress in the game... facepalm.

Truth is that much like everyone that complains about not being able to defend against Shockers or Shurikens, you simply lack the experience to know what you’re talking about and how your suggestions would impact the game.

The retrace prevents constant stalking like in my case. The guy probablly wouldn't have attacked me much if I kept taking his rep on my retrace, but no since he knew I couldn't fight back, he just kept harrasing me.

Oh and btw, the dude who’s “harassing” you isn’t “harassing” you on purpose (unless he is by doing it through his ReadMe entries or the in-game chat) because it’s the search that’s matching you up against him and he’s most likely got no other options or is climbing rep and hacking everyone he can, so he's got to hack you repeatedly over and over again. I can tell you that all rep climbers I ever faced wouldn’t stop hacking me if I took their rep, so I doubt they woulda stopped hacking you if you did take their rep.

It would be greatly appreciated if you got rid of your imperfulous beliefs about me. I didn’t exploit the online shield system to reach the top, so don't point the finger at me and say stuff like "if you do the same as him, you too can reach the top and boast about how good you are!". Stop basing your arguments on assumptions and don’t spread rumours - instead do some research yourself and learn everything you can about the game and others you talk about such as iblitx and myself, thank you.

[TheLurkingRage]

To counter the shield, you just need to sit on your ass and retrace/connect to the target's network for 3 hours at most and you'll get to hack them. Ez.

Someone shouldn't have to spend 3 hours sitting there spamming retrace while the other person can just go AFK.

The shield certainly needs to be better balanced out, and it shouldn't reset just by someone viewing your network, however fact remains that it indeed can be much more easily countered than smurf minmaxers.

I support the idea of a better search and shield system, not to abolish the shield system and make the p2w route the only way of making any sort of significant progress in the game. Many times that you upgraded your Turrets and Guardian, you'd appeared on my search and were online. Without the shield protecting you I could've taken all that juicy loot from you. Sometimes we don't appreciate what we've got until it's gone.

[PerseVerAnce]

I support the idea of a better search and shield system, not to abolish the shield system and make the p2w route the only way of making any sort of significant progress in the game. Many times that you upgraded your Turrets and Guardian, you'd appeared on my search and were online. Without the shield protecting you I could've taken all that juicy loot from you. Sometimes we don't appreciate what we've got until it's gone.

I would say this also ties in with the whole poor defense vs attack balancing issue. If the defender wasn't just completely screwed against all but the poorest attackers, then the abolishment of the shield system wouldn't be as significant of an issue.

But that's a whole other can of worms which isn't appropriate for this thread.

[nocturnalbamf]

plus the broken ass search

Perhaps its broken cause everyone is leaving their game up and running and can't be search.....you are a hypocrit.

I use to hack multiple people that had profitable resources to upgrade my net, not the same over and over and over again no matter what resources Then I hit this ceiling of people doing your strategy, and I couldn't hack them back. They would hack me several times a day with no discouragement of me being able to hack them back or the game preventing them from doing it. With them stealing large amounts of profit and my rep, my only alternative was do adapt to the same strategy, burn the excess resources and hack lower level players constantly while remaining at the same level. So because of what you do, causes others to do it and essentially creates more blitzkriegs as we have no motivation to level up with the cheaters and being farmed.

So I repeat this issue is causing all the other issues, including the two you are complaining about, smurfs and broken searches. Congratulations! Thanks for making it easy to point this out.

[nocturnalbamf]

It would be greatly appreciated if you got rid of your imperfulous beliefs about me. I didn’t exploit the online shield system to reach the top, so don't point the finger at me and say stuff like "if you do the same as him, you too can reach the top and boast about how good you are!". Stop basing your arguments on assumptions and don’t spread rumours - instead do some research yourself and learn everything you can about the game and others you talk about such as iblitx and myself, thank you.

BTW I never had any beliefs about you with the sole reason that you've never hacked me and I've never been high enough to be around you. I don't know where this "me not liking you" part started. My only assumption is your sub concious thinking it from the thought that you know is an unsportsman way to play. The only time I've ever mentioned you is when I say that you do this, and your #3 on leaderboard (i believe I originally said #2 so sorry for giving you more credit than you deserve). And I only mention you because of your rank and to sell the efficiency of this strategy, plus you admitted to doing it so be proud of your statements and not offended by them. So I would greatly appreciated it, if you would stop trying to make this all about you and stop trying to pass on the cheating baton to Blitzkrieg on this thread. Make your own thread about blitz and his strategy, or since your bored with your account. Make a new one, climb to level 28-31 and take his rep away from him because he doesn't leave his game running when he's not playing and you could find him on the map more than people can find you