In-game Moderation? This is unacceptable.

I'm pretty sure this is the real reason why. Aside from wanting to have their presence known, this is the other reason anyway. Real easy way to catch aimbotters on the spot since the program isn't going to know not to target a GM.

While all the spam today was a bit annoying, Letting hackers know that they are actually out there doing something is good, I think it is a fair trade off.

If I had to guess as to why they chose to be visible is because of aimbotters. Hopefully they have some stats running on the hit detection that allows them to find folks who are doing nothing but head shots. Would be a lot more obvious for the programs to detect it was a GM and not shoot the model if it looked different from everyone else. Just a hunch

Agreed, pretty unprofessional but then those crazy game devs do like to behave like rockstars.

Honestly, if you want to catch a hacker why would you scare them into stopping their hacks. That just reduces the chance to catch them in the act.

I once read that WoW devs will actually monitor hackers for hours or days even to figure out how their stuff works.. That seems to be a far better strategy than bad scare tactics.

Was a real fun night, lots of back and forth between Vs and TR, I almost bought some station cash,
But a Script kiddie on VS just came online and wiped us out at a plant.
wallet went back into pocket.

They should wear nypd camo with guy fawkes face masks.....just a suggestion.....

Yeah, now I'm pretty certain I was correct in saying that:

Reminds me of the old days of Ultima Online, and the cloaked GM watching PvP.

Simple fact of the matter is we do lurk on the server and sometimes we do need to become visible. This is a small sacrifice we will ask you make to ensure fair gameplay.

Dumbest. Complaint. Ever.

They arent paid to play ******.

I agree. An extremly rare encounter with a CSR trying to keep the game safe & sane, and you run to the forums to whine?

It'd be nice if the moderators could look a little different to normal players.
Maybe they could have banhammers strapped to their backs or something.
Otherwise, I have yet to run into one, and if I did and died because he distracted me I'd probably realize what was going on and laugh about it.

Got into a firefight with someone using an Operator as cover yesterday, was pretty hilarious ^^

It was Operator. Corporal is a title anyone can get. Apparently the OP failed to read the message spam that was popping up every 10 minutes or so.

So we have endless threads about hackers and to do something, so they do and now we have threads like this.....WOW!

BEAR skipped his ANGER MANAGEMENT sessions.

Its cos GM's have a special gun that shoots out a galaxy at a hacker.

Question: When GMs are invisible is it still possible to run them over. I was out in the open on my own (not firing a weapon) in my prowler and kept getting the "Friendly fire message" perhaps I ran through a GM gathering in the middle of nowhere
FF

I like seeing GMs in game - it makes us players sure that the GM isn't actually drinking coffee and watching family guy on a second monitor while moving the mouse every 5 minutes to prevent logout (hello funcom). It's also a psychological effect because we can see the GM. It helps in reinforcing the belief that SOE is actually committed to dealing with cheaters. As well as the constant message spam.

The second effect this has is create a lot of pressure on the cheaters. I'm reading all the various cheating forums and cheaters are upset that there's no way to retain progress - they'll get to BR7-11 but inevitably get banned. This means that the only thing they get from cheating is upsetting people - and the majority of cheaters aren't in it for the trolling.

The OP does have a point however - having a hostile red Vanu chick stroll around the apm station, as fun as it is, is somewhat disruptive to gameplay. Players start shooting the avatar or ramming various vehicles into it. I would appreciate it if GMs had a custom avatar that isn't confused easily and doesn't collide with anything. Nothing fancy, a simple spinning elongated diamond would be enough. Any plans for that?

a bit of a contradictory statement. there's nothing fair about spending a salvo of liberator shots trying to kill a player that, in the middle of a heated battle, we won't know is a mod until after the rounds have already hit their mark and we don't see a kill. There's got to be a better way of doing this. There's no reason why anyone should need to try and read someone's name before wasting their shots especially while in the air.