Exilebuddy operations have come to an official end today.
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I'm sorry this news has taken so long, but there were numerous unavoidable things going on behind the scenes for the company that caused repeated delays in the resolution of this matter. Today, we were all able to get on the same page, get pending issues worked out, and start the process of moving forward past this project.
This post will be a short version of several things I've been wanting to talk about the past few weeks but couldn't until we had an official resolution worked out. There's a lot to ending a project, both on the business side, and management side, and those things are outside my role and what goes on in these forums. I'm sure a lot of people won't be able to understand everything, but I'll try to clearly express what led us to where we are now.
[-]
The decision to end Exilebuddy came about from my request on June 28th to Bossland. I know this will come as a huge surprise to a lot of people, so I'll try to explain in the simplest possible way and then elaborate how I came to that decision so soon, and why I feel that's the best course of action moving forward.
The best way to express this decision is with the following:
I started taking apart this game in 2012, with the dreams of doing everything I saw done in D2 in its "spiritual successor". I joined the Exilebuddy project in July 2013. In short, this has been an amazing 5 year project for me, and a 6.5 year run with this game. I did not think it would last this long, but I have dedicated almost 7 years of my life to this game now.
It really has been a dream come true, but this project was only a stepping stone in my joinery in life, not the final destination. It's quite literally my first real bot project that I saw through pretty much from the start to end, and I have gained an indescribable amount of experience and knowledge as a result. Right now, I feel like it's the perfect time to move on, and continue working on achieving the future I want.
[-]
This banwave provided me the opportunity to take a step back and look at the big picture.
While the banwave itself was unfortunate, it's not the main reason the project is ending. We have been through a number of project ending events already, so this event would have to rank #4 so far.
We've hard to work really hard to get to where we were at, so no one understands better than us what it takes to find success in this type of rough environment. Rebuilding after a banwave is never easy, but it's not something impossible and the road ahead has always been challenging so it'd be nothing new for us.
However, now that the project is basically 5 years old, the game environment itself has just had a major change, and the prospects of future potential with the project have finally been seen, it was clear to me it was time to move on. I could not see myself spending another 1, 3, 5 years on this game/project given everything I've already been through (4 major expansions a year ).
If we were to continue, we need to take a 3-5 year outlook on things, and that would most likely require about a year (if everything went as expected) to get where I envision us needing to be if we wanted to play the long game in this new environment. While the current problems posed would certainly be interesting to tackle, and I do think we are capable of tackling them, it would also take some time, but there's no scenario where I think it ends up being worth it.
As a result, I feel it's best to move on now. We had a really tough, but amazing run, and I'm extremely proud of our work and where we ended up. It's not easy seeing projects go, especially one that you've invested so much of your life into, but I have no regrets about anything because we got to do things our way.
[-]
In this last section, I'll briefly talk about the banwave itself. I don't want this post to get too long, so some time later I might have a postmortem going over a lot more things in detail. For now though, I'll just share a few comments on the matter.
There's no way to know 100% how they got us. However, I still strongly believe it was a new server sided system, but it's really hard to prove. I feel like I have a convincing case now as to how they could have got us, but it's pretty complicated, and needs its own post with a lot of context for people to understand the real problem.
The short version is, I think they are now looking at skill data (that includes move actions) on the server in a way that was not possible before (most likely due to limited resources) and doing some type of analysis that allows them to differentiate bots from players. However, this system is still in the early stages, but it was good enough to trigger the targeted botting cleanup we've seen the past month. In time, I think they will develop this system further and getting away with botting will be exponentially harder than it has been in the past, but that's just my opinion.
On the client side of things, I'm positive they are making subtle client changes to detect people changing the game and it's data. I think we'll continue to see the fallout of these changes this upcoming week as bans start to roll out for people not heeding the latest cheating warning. Right now, I have a logical explanation for everything except 1 specific case of people who got the warning, but there's always that margin of error from what people say vs what people actually did. I'm sure I could verify some of these things myself, but there's no point other than for my personal entertainment.
I know this isn't too much to go on, but what matters most is what we got away with in the past with what we have, is no longer good enough anymore, especially as a public bot with a lot of our logic sitting in plain sight.
[-]
That's about it for this post for now. I'm sure a lot of people would love more information about things, but this post is already long enough as it is. Bossland got an 11 page document from me, and this post is almost 3 pages. There's plenty more I'd love to write about, but for now I need to wrap this up.
I do want to say thank you to everyone in the community, past and present, for their support and involvement with this project. It's been a roller coaster of a ride, but we've reached the end. For now, I'll be taking a break away from things, but I do hope to continue my bot development endeavors with Buddy in the near future!
[-]
I'm sorry this news has taken so long, but there were numerous unavoidable things going on behind the scenes for the company that caused repeated delays in the resolution of this matter. Today, we were all able to get on the same page, get pending issues worked out, and start the process of moving forward past this project.
This post will be a short version of several things I've been wanting to talk about the past few weeks but couldn't until we had an official resolution worked out. There's a lot to ending a project, both on the business side, and management side, and those things are outside my role and what goes on in these forums. I'm sure a lot of people won't be able to understand everything, but I'll try to clearly express what led us to where we are now.
[-]
The decision to end Exilebuddy came about from my request on June 28th to Bossland. I know this will come as a huge surprise to a lot of people, so I'll try to explain in the simplest possible way and then elaborate how I came to that decision so soon, and why I feel that's the best course of action moving forward.
The best way to express this decision is with the following:
I look at where I've been, where I am, and where I want to be. If where I'm going is not leading me to where I want to be, then it's time to change paths.
I started taking apart this game in 2012, with the dreams of doing everything I saw done in D2 in its "spiritual successor". I joined the Exilebuddy project in July 2013. In short, this has been an amazing 5 year project for me, and a 6.5 year run with this game. I did not think it would last this long, but I have dedicated almost 7 years of my life to this game now.
It really has been a dream come true, but this project was only a stepping stone in my joinery in life, not the final destination. It's quite literally my first real bot project that I saw through pretty much from the start to end, and I have gained an indescribable amount of experience and knowledge as a result. Right now, I feel like it's the perfect time to move on, and continue working on achieving the future I want.
[-]
This banwave provided me the opportunity to take a step back and look at the big picture.
While the banwave itself was unfortunate, it's not the main reason the project is ending. We have been through a number of project ending events already, so this event would have to rank #4 so far.
#1 - The compiler update at the start of 2016. I spent 6 weeks rewriting things. If there were any time to give up, this was it, but we didn't.
#2 - The initial flagging issue right from the start (2013 - 2014) due to the way the bot was coded and how it broke the game. We had less of an investment into the project at that time, but we could have easily given up and tried another game.
#3 - The failed lifetime business model coupled with high maintenance costs (2015 - 2016). We did have a temporary shutdown for a few days, but we got a second chance with a new business model and hired additional help, so it was double or nothing at this point.
#4 - The start of the new era of GGG/Tencent kicked off with a massive cheater cleanup that is still ongoing (2018). The last cheater cleanup happened in 2015, but it didn't pose a problem to us since we worked through it and saw no side-effects.
#2 - The initial flagging issue right from the start (2013 - 2014) due to the way the bot was coded and how it broke the game. We had less of an investment into the project at that time, but we could have easily given up and tried another game.
#3 - The failed lifetime business model coupled with high maintenance costs (2015 - 2016). We did have a temporary shutdown for a few days, but we got a second chance with a new business model and hired additional help, so it was double or nothing at this point.
#4 - The start of the new era of GGG/Tencent kicked off with a massive cheater cleanup that is still ongoing (2018). The last cheater cleanup happened in 2015, but it didn't pose a problem to us since we worked through it and saw no side-effects.
We've hard to work really hard to get to where we were at, so no one understands better than us what it takes to find success in this type of rough environment. Rebuilding after a banwave is never easy, but it's not something impossible and the road ahead has always been challenging so it'd be nothing new for us.
However, now that the project is basically 5 years old, the game environment itself has just had a major change, and the prospects of future potential with the project have finally been seen, it was clear to me it was time to move on. I could not see myself spending another 1, 3, 5 years on this game/project given everything I've already been through (4 major expansions a year ).
If we were to continue, we need to take a 3-5 year outlook on things, and that would most likely require about a year (if everything went as expected) to get where I envision us needing to be if we wanted to play the long game in this new environment. While the current problems posed would certainly be interesting to tackle, and I do think we are capable of tackling them, it would also take some time, but there's no scenario where I think it ends up being worth it.
As a result, I feel it's best to move on now. We had a really tough, but amazing run, and I'm extremely proud of our work and where we ended up. It's not easy seeing projects go, especially one that you've invested so much of your life into, but I have no regrets about anything because we got to do things our way.
[-]
In this last section, I'll briefly talk about the banwave itself. I don't want this post to get too long, so some time later I might have a postmortem going over a lot more things in detail. For now though, I'll just share a few comments on the matter.
There's no way to know 100% how they got us. However, I still strongly believe it was a new server sided system, but it's really hard to prove. I feel like I have a convincing case now as to how they could have got us, but it's pretty complicated, and needs its own post with a lot of context for people to understand the real problem.
The short version is, I think they are now looking at skill data (that includes move actions) on the server in a way that was not possible before (most likely due to limited resources) and doing some type of analysis that allows them to differentiate bots from players. However, this system is still in the early stages, but it was good enough to trigger the targeted botting cleanup we've seen the past month. In time, I think they will develop this system further and getting away with botting will be exponentially harder than it has been in the past, but that's just my opinion.
On the client side of things, I'm positive they are making subtle client changes to detect people changing the game and it's data. I think we'll continue to see the fallout of these changes this upcoming week as bans start to roll out for people not heeding the latest cheating warning. Right now, I have a logical explanation for everything except 1 specific case of people who got the warning, but there's always that margin of error from what people say vs what people actually did. I'm sure I could verify some of these things myself, but there's no point other than for my personal entertainment.
I know this isn't too much to go on, but what matters most is what we got away with in the past with what we have, is no longer good enough anymore, especially as a public bot with a lot of our logic sitting in plain sight.
[-]
That's about it for this post for now. I'm sure a lot of people would love more information about things, but this post is already long enough as it is. Bossland got an 11 page document from me, and this post is almost 3 pages. There's plenty more I'd love to write about, but for now I need to wrap this up.
I do want to say thank you to everyone in the community, past and present, for their support and involvement with this project. It's been a roller coaster of a ride, but we've reached the end. For now, I'll be taking a break away from things, but I do hope to continue my bot development endeavors with Buddy in the near future!
