I really doubt that the AD sellers are even "playing" the ZAX a bit. They farm RP, sell it over the AH for AD, then sell the AD for real money, and use the AH again for the exchange. Nothing cryptic or mysterious here either.
They also tend to steal it back from some of the less smart people they buy from.
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AD to Zen Update... just logged off. The exchange is currently running At 497 AD to ONE Zen. It was around 420 AD to one earlier today. I have no idea what was done, but obviously it needs to be UNDONE.
The increased in money supply (ADs) is causing an overall price inflationary pressure due to the value of AD being decreased. When the economy has more money but chasing the same amount of goods, people are generally willing to pay more for the same item. I see it as the signal is to short AD and long Zen (or other items) etc. And this is already taking effect when alot of the players are currently farming the elemental weapons. How much further the prices of stuff will go up after those players resume their routine AD earning activities are up for guesses.
AD to Zen Update... just logged off. The exchange is currently running At 497 AD to ONE Zen. It was around 420 AD to one earlier today. I have no idea what was done, but obviously it needs to be UNDONE.
The increased in money supply (ADs) is causing an overall price inflationary pressure due to the value of AD being decreased. When the economy has more money but chasing the same amount of goods, people are generally willing to pay more for the same item. I see it as the signal is to short AD and long Zen (or other items) etc. And this is already taking effect when alot of the players are currently farming the elemental weapons. How much further the prices of stuff will go up after those players resume their routine AD earning activities are up for guesses.
No, it's pretty much entirely the zen store sale. Once the sale is over it'll drop to 400 or less.
I really doubt that the AD sellers are even "playing" the ZAX a bit. They farm RP, sell it over the AH for AD, then sell the AD for real money, and use the AH again for the exchange. Nothing cryptic or mysterious here either.
Why on earth would you assume this, anybody with a lot of AD would flip it regularly.* The AD/zen rate rises and falls pretty predictably, e.g. right now. There's zero risk, zero loss. You would have to be really dumb to not flip your AD if you had a lot of it, and I don't think dudes that can figure out how to totally automate playing this game, in every aspect, are dumb.
If you have a really large amount you can even manipulate the AD/zen rate if you feel like it.
*I certainly would and do
e: AD/zen is literally the simplest form of commodity trading that can exist, there is one commodity and one currency and it even has a floor and a ceiling
...If you have a really large amount you can even manipulate the AD/zen rate if you feel like it.
*I certainly would and do
e: AD/zen is literally the simplest form of commodity trading that can exist, there is one commodity and one currency and it even has a floor and a ceiling
While I've never had this amount to play with, my understanding is that any one account maxes out at 25,000 Zen. That's not anything like enough volume to influence the current exchange rate.
...If you have a really large amount you can even manipulate the AD/zen rate if you feel like it.
*I certainly would and do
e: AD/zen is literally the simplest form of commodity trading that can exist, there is one commodity and one currency and it even has a floor and a ceiling
While I've never had this amount to play with, my understanding is that any one account maxes out at 25,000 Zen. That's not anything like enough volume to influence the current exchange rate.
Any one account...... Most AD dealers don't have one account, they have multiples. A 25k per account is no barrier. They have accounts (more than one) to spam with. They then have other accounts (once again, more than one to hold the zen/ad.
Think of it like this, for yrs in the USA, banks had personal accounts insured by the Fed for 10k ea. The theory was, it would make banks more 'secure" for personal account holders, if they knew that they would always get up to $10k, of their money back if the bank folded. So if you were fortunate enough to have more than $10k, to stash in a bank, why would you go over that $10k in one account? The smart person either opened another account or banked at more than on bank and had accounts capped at $10k ea.
Of course with all the shenanigans that NW has been up to, it's not so far off from what the S&L scandals of the 80's were or the recent "too big to fail" HAMSTER of the housing bubbles have been. The "Fed insured" isn't worth the breath used to promise it, most bank customers either got left holding an empty bag or merely got pennies on the dollar despite being "insured". Cryptic/NW has sort of did the same thing to the AD/Zen stuff lately, they punished the honest players and despite all the back flips to "fix" things they have only rewarded the bad guys.
It's been a while since I've bought zen with RL $ (ever since my frustration with M6+ at least), but back then (and it might be that way still) you could buy zen and hold it outside a set game, you had a "PW/zen" account that you transfered into games of your choice as you wanted,(like STO instead of NW etc.). There is no freaking way I would buy zen right into NW at this point, I would only single purchase it in because NW's "Federal insured" isn't so ensured.
Earlier in the thread people were talking about bots and they can do anything a player can do= true (to an extent). But what do bots do better than anything a real player does? Short, repetitive actions. (they can do long, but it takes much more programming and usually the reward vs. effort of the programmer makes them not bother doing so)
It's been proven that bots can run skirm and dungeons, it's a limited instance with boundries, that has a set goal. The mobs aren't "random" nor are the bosses "random" enough for a bot to not be able to get through. That's the biggest complaint from the players actually, the repeated "grind" of doing the same dungeon over and over.....that's what bots do BEST!=GRIND!
So if NW actually was trying to combat those evil bots and make it hard on them, or the effort not rewarding enough for them, what would you do? Make dailies reward AD? No. (that's what they have done with campaigns, a weekly AD reward for doing dailies) Have repeated runs of skirms or dungeons reward a AD amount, i,e, "grinding" them? No (but that's what they have done isn't it? Even though the player say it's boring) Have PvP have repeated queing AD rewards? (even pvp can be botted, just not as easily as other non-randomness things), and yet...that's exactly what they did isn't it? Grinded the AD rewards for PvP....
So how is it they are fighting the Bots again? They punished the players....but the inhibiting the bots how? So they shot off all the actual players big toes to slow down a robot...how did my toe being amputated slow down a robot?
So to reward players actually playing in a "time played"=rewards basis as they have claimed they wish to do, what would be the best way to do that? In a way that makes it most hard for botters to do so fast and easy enough to "exploit".
Why it's actually quest rewards! Every quest giving a little bit of AD as you go along. Quests run in arcs: Do this for me and return, do that for me and come back for a reward, now do this, do this next thing and i'll send you to see bob with a recommend so he can reward you more for his chore. You aren't actually "grindng" the same repetitive move over and over, something a bot is for. It's true a Botter could program for it, but it would be a long and entailed process to do so.
Bots like to do, hit key A 3x>go to map location Y and hit key B 4x> go to map location access node with F key until node gone...etc etc. Then do it all over again endlessly. With a quest arc, it's a once-through thing, there isn't something to rinse repeat. The only way the programmer could do a rinse-repeat is program every single motion used during the arc for the bot to do 1 time! Then they would have to create another character to bot it through again, which could be done...but the effort! Very few would bother, and even if they did..they would get to some point of running the arc 1 time as they progress through the levels and then run out of the arc and have to delete that toon for another to do so.
Why do you think dungeons can be automated but quests cannot?
You didn't read my post, I said they CAN be programmed for, just far more intensive work. Consider what a dungeon has to be programmed for,que the dungeon, if it's started by a npc then choose the choice that starts it.Progress step by step through the map way points, slaying the mobs. When a slay condition is met, move on to way point B>C>D. Until boss or any sub bosses are met, kill them, then access the chest. Exit the instance, repeat.
So what does have to be programmed for a quest arc? Talk to npc and make appropriate choices, proceed to map coordinates and kill/collect whatever they wanted for quest completion. Return to npc, make talk tree choices for reward. Now that quest is in the can and defunct, not repeatable. So if there are more in the arc from that npc, same appropriate talk choices, go to new coordinates and kill/collect new quest requirements, cash it in, now that one is in the can and defunct, and so on and so on. It can all be keyed for, just lot's and lot's of more key strokes. Then on to the new npc and the same process, but as each step is completed, there is no rinse/repeat in steps like a dungeon is.
So to program it for a bot to do a quest arc, they got to do 100's and 1000's of steps all one way>>> you couldn't rinse repeat it with that character like a dungeon/skirmish or a daily could be done. They all have a finite set of steps that are just done over and over to the end of time. The quest arc have 1000's and 10s of thousands of steps that eventually end, but aren't repeatable by that character.
The only incentive for a botter to do all that lots of labor would be bits and pieces of AD at each step..then reach the end. What do they do then? The only repeatable aspect at that point is delete that character (by that time L70) and start over again with a L1 to wend it's way through all that all over again. Keep in mind a low level character get's lots less AD for things they do than a L70. For however long that L1 took to get to L70 again it's AD earn potential is greatly reduced. Also keep in mind, when they met the refine cap each day they would have to have a bot smart enough to stop running quests until the daily flip to continue on leveling once again, so that lower earning potential is spread over weeks and months.
The actual programming of that could be done, true. But it would be a huge PITA, for far slower rewards other routes offered to bots, and it would have an end. They then would have to send another character through all that once again, then delete it etc etc.
If you were a kid mowing lawns for cash in the summer, what would you rather? Mow 100 lawns at $1 ea or 1 lawn for $100? Those 100 lawns would include all the wear and tear on the mower, the gas to run the mower, the time and travel to each lawn, the time to mow the lawn, all the hauling of clippings etc etc. A real PITA. By the time you finished those 100 lawns if you hadn't collapsed by then, you would have it all to over again, the 1st lawns had regrown.
That 1 lawn for $100 would only have all the expenses 1x time lawn, done in one day. Then have the rest of the week to enjoy your summer before you had to do it again next week. That's what currently it is for Bots, they are doing that $100 lawn over and over again until they hit $36k, then take a break and send in their cousin to do more lawns until I cashes out at $36k, they send in all their family to do this each day starting at 3 am.
Which one would break either you or your mower first? Which route would a botter take, all those 10s of thousands of steps 1 time through then delete, or dailies or skirmishes or dungeons or even ghost stories for the RP>AD? by their nature botters are lazy...they are using a machine to "play" the game for them They are letting the computer programs they have developed "work" for them and reduce the grind. If they had to break a sweat programming all those steps the quest arcs would require, I'm betting they would rather take the easy route
Why do you think dungeons can be automated but quests cannot?
You didn't read my post, I said they CAN be programmed for, just far more intensive work.
I think you greatly underestimate the capabilities of the dudes scripting this stuff and their patience. Also the value of their time vs. their return on investment.
Case in point: 3rd party spammers are advertising for items and AD on the X-box side. This requires either cracked x-boxes or (possibly more likely) PCs emulating multiple x-boxes to run their bots on. And you think they're too dumb/lazy to script some quests. They don't even have to script very many, just up to whatever arbitrary point and roll over to another brand new automatically-created account.
how odd that the forum filters the word for circumventing computer security "hacked" but okey doke
How about we reset the economy instead by making Astral Diamonds obsolete for both xbox and PC and introduce another currency on both platform instead? Call it New Astral Diamonds. Old Astral Diamonds can no longer be used on the Auction House but can only be used on the Wondrous Bazar. Items purchased with old Astral Diamonds will be Bind to Account. All dailies, rewards, salvage and zen exchange will be based on this new Astral Diamonds.
How about we reset the economy instead by making Astral Diamonds obsolete for both xbox and PC and introduce another currency on both platform instead? Call it New Astral Diamonds. Old Astral Diamonds can no longer be used on the Auction House but can only be used on the Wondrous Bazar. Items purchased with old Astral Diamonds will be Bind to Account. All dailies, rewards, salvage and zen exchange will be based on this new Astral Diamonds.
Good luck getting any of the longtime players with large legitimately-obtained AD stockpiles to go along with that.
Interesting Idea. And, let it be said, the PLAYERS don't have a THING to say or ANY ability to stop such a process.
OR are we forgetting WHY we are in such a situation in the first place? Can you say Leadership NERF?
SO PWE and Cryptic COULD do such a reset. The problem of botters remains, however. Until such time as the spammers are locked out of NW, by whatever means, Or at least trimmed down to some reasonable level, a currency change will NOT help. The bottters will just start building new stockpiles, faster than any normal player can possibly keep up with.
Just in the last couple of days I have blocked/reported over 20 (Twenty!) AD spammers. PER day. Sadly these scum are alive and well.
So the question remains... HOW are these accounts to be eliminated? I've made suggestions on this forum, and a couple have been "ahem" edited, but something NEEDS to be done. I'm not a good enough programmer nor am I current enough with the technology to make "good" programming suggestions, but I've noted trends and made comments on same.
If I can see such trends, smart guys like "real" programmers should be tripping all over them. Simply figure out how to block and eliminate, and then implement. I really do NOT see what the problem is.
A base for the spam solution is allready in place, the "profanity filter". + make it editable for all players, so that they can add their own keyword and/or the latest spam message + filter the targeted messages to another chat channel/window, where we can check them later, to see if everything is working fine + and let us clear the ignore list with a single push of a button spammers only use an account once for their advertisement, and then use a new one for the next round. besides, looks like the ignore list is slowing down the game client too...
And 20 spammers per day? Really? Must have been a slow day... i get at least 3-5 spammers per minute on ignore, when i'm logging through my alt. characters, that are sitting in PE.
Anyway, it would be nice to see some official word on this topic again... Btw. what about adding rAD to daily quests and Stronghold Vouchers to Leadership?
SO PWE and Cryptic COULD do such a reset. The problem of botters remains, however. Until such time as the spammers are locked out of NW, by whatever means, Or at least trimmed down to some reasonable level, a currency change will NOT help. The bottters will just start building new stockpiles, faster than any normal player can possibly keep up with.
Of course Cryptic could reset everyone's currency and completely reboot AD if they wanted to, and I agree that third-party vendors are a really bad problem (not just with botting, because those that have very large AD reserves in the billions don't need to bot any more) but you also have players who legitimately obtained huge amounts of AD by (for example) spending money in the zen store and then selling the results ingame, or patiently collecting high value drops and selling them. It would be massively unfair to those people to just erase all their video game wealth, and there are people who literally wait for their paycheck to arrive each week so they can pour all their cash into Cryptic's store, you don't want to alienate them if you want to keep the game running.
ironzerg79Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,942Arc User
@magenubbie I like all these ideas. I especially like the idea of RP/Enchant drops becoming BtA. I like the idea enchantments available on the Wondrous Bazaar or Tradebar stores.
I however would add a trove of enchantments to the end chest of any Epic Dungeon, as additional incentive for people to legitimately farm these, as well as other loots to encourage trade via the AH, but nothing that's bottable. I think when done right, the AH is a great resource for legitimate players to trade loot, and we don't want to completely hamstring this avenue.
But on the AH matter specifically...
I think there should also be some limits set on the total amount of items PER ACCOUNT that someone can list on the AH. Maybe a maximum of 500 total items per account. A stack of 99 Enchantments counts as 99.
Characters who are unverified per your Karzov suggestion can't use the AH, and cannot receive mail from other players.
Any character under level 30 can only put up 50 total items. Level 30-59 get 75. Level 60 gets 100. And level 70 unlocks 200. You're able to purchase additional account-wide 100 slot unlocks for 200 Zen per 100, up to 500 total.
Let's be completely honest here...anyone who's not trading in bot farmed enchants or RP stones isn't putting hundreds and hundreds of stacks up on a regular basis. I can see this being an issue if you're saving stacks to sell on 2x RP weekends, but it would be matter of you more diligently replacing stacks as they sell...heck, it shouldn't really be a problem if bot-farmed RP was removed. You'd still have significant demand for these stacks.
"Meanwhile in the moderator's lounge..."
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vaporwalkerMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 19Arc User
edited December 2015
how about us legit players that buy stacks of enchants low and relist them to make some AD? you want to suggest to limit how much i can make on the AH by having a 500 item limit (as in 5 enchant stacks)? in order to progress in any reasonable amount of time, i rely on the ability to flip stacks of enchants and other things during the week.
you seem to not grasp the concept of playing the AH. I might buy 50-100 stacks of r5's at a low price during the course of a week or two and sit on them until the market goes up. a ton of legit players do this all the time. so if you think anyone putting up 100+ stacks at a time is a bot... I probably couldn't explain simple economics or time vs. reward principles to you.
and as far as "it would be a matter of you more diligently replacing stacks as they sell"... that sounds nice but that would benefit someone who is constantly in game. what about when you work? or when you sleep? or anytime you are not in-game? under closer scrutiny, that suggestion would benefit one group more than any others.... bots. because they are on 24-7 and all a programmar would have to do is a simple script to have the mules put up stacks/whatever as others sell.
I do not have an easy solution for bots, but what I do know is that whatever the devs are doing about them... it is not working and making legit players lives harder. which is hilarious because this is a game... not a job.
edit: one suggestion to alleviate the players while addressing bots is to get rid of the refinement system entirely. make meaningful gear/enchants drop from bosses and as pvp rewards. That would mean adding alot of content which this game (more than any other mmo I've ever played) seriously lacks.
so alot more content at various gear levels and getting rid of the refinement system (which doesn't even exist in the D&D world outside of this game. maybe overhauling the pvp system so it is fun and rewarding to players of all gear levels. oh and more balanced (not holding my breath)
ironzerg79Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,942Arc User
@vaporwalker all those stacks you're flipping are farmed by bots...if there were no bots, you wouldn't be flipping thousands of enchantments. In a discussion about anti-bot measures, your complaint isn't really valid.
"Meanwhile in the moderator's lounge..."
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vaporwalkerMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 19Arc User
edited December 2015
except for the fact that you can buy 8, 23, 30 enchants at a time from legit players selling non-full stacks cheaply. those add up and after awhile you can collect many full stacks this way. use your head.
edit: @magenubbie you are correct this is a mmo. and this have been done in every mmorpg with a player driven economy for over a decade now. it's part of the draw for alot of players. welcome to the world of mmorpgs
edit 2: and as far as botting, might wanna attempt to do what World of Warcraft has been doing for years and intergrate a way of detecting 3rd party software inside the game itself.
edit 3: and games like Warcraft (which is what NW is competing with "f2p" model or not) is light years beyond NW atm because a single raid there can have up to 14 bosses and there are dozens of raids and dungeons. Botting isn't so much of a problem there because players are not reliant on buying things to upgrade gear. Gears are dropped from all that content. People run raids to get upgrades. While in NW players are funneled into content to earn currency to BUY rp/enchants to upgrade their gear. if NW were to shift from players having to BUY over to adding more content so players can get meaningful upgrades from boss drops, it would go a long way in neutralizing botting.
vaporwalkerMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 19Arc User
edited December 2015
what i am saying is that the refinement system itself creates another currency: RP. zen can be somewhat regulated. rAD can be capped with limited ways to earn. but as a legit player you have three choices if you want to improve your character(s): 1. pay real $ to see instant improvement 2. try to make AD in the market to see gradual improvement 3. farm your own RP and go months without seeing any noticeable improvement.
players would like to see noticeable improvement in a reasonable amount of time (which is a fair want) so it would be better to do away with refinement entirely or to implement your changes the refinement system would have to be completely overhauled (so it doesnt take 3-4 months to fully upgrade one piece of artifact gear as an example)
to me the strength of the game is the combat system. the refinement system is not compelling gameplay. at all.
shift upgrades from being primarily bought to being earned by boss drops and you gut the bot market.
making all RP bound to acct/character does not fix the problem by slowing down players character improvement to a snails crawl.
as a dps class, if I played for 4 months putting alot of time into my character and see no noticeable increase in my damage output I wouldn't be compelled to keep playing.
the only way this game will survive is to attract a steady stream of new players, but at the moment this is extremely unfriendly to new players.
there has to be a better way to combat bots than to make it harder for your playerbase. period.
1. Make all enchants BOA (enchantments and runestones) - this will destroy bots, period - ffs what's the hard part here ? 2. Make Dragon Hoard's work as they worked just bind the freaking drops to account ! again....ffs what's the hard part here ? 3. Add higher lvl enchants and RP items to the dungeon drops (GMOPS, SMOPS all kind of RP gems and whatnot) again...read above...
These will destroy bots, just wipe them off in few days. To add to it, it will make folks wanna run dungeons not only for salvage (that's the 99% of the items we get from the dungeons, and a full reason to even do them). Guys that do not want to run dungeons, can farm enchants and RP from Fey's and Dragon Hoard's.
Best of both worlds, all players have something to play for - bots are dead (they will still poke around as long as the game is BASED on griding).
I know there are other things that has to be taken into account making the change. But does it really take a mastermind to make it real?
Nancy - Dragonborn, SM Guardian Fighter A proud member of "mythical horde of DPS GFs"
1). Is SW more dps or tank based? 2). Yes. I am panzer! 3). Get ACT if you want to celebrate your epeen. 4). Horniness will not stand between me and what I believe - "MM"
1. Make all enchants BOA (enchantments and runestones) - this will destroy bots, period - ffs what's the hard part here ? 2. Make Dragon Hoard's work as they worked just bind the freaking drops to account ! again....ffs what's the hard part here ? 3. Add higher lvl enchants and RP items to the dungeon drops (GMOPS, SMOPS all kind of RP gems and whatnot) again...read above...
These will destroy bots, just wipe them off in few days. To add to it, it will make folks wanna run dungeons not only for salvage (that's the 99% of the items we get from the dungeons, and a full reason to even do them). Guys that do not want to run dungeons, can farm enchants and RP from Fey's and Dragon Hoard's.
Best of both worlds, all players have something to play for - bots are dead (they will still poke around as long as the game is BASED on griding).
I know there are other things that has to be taken into account making the change. But does it really take a mastermind to make it real?
Using this concept, NO one could trade their enchants, peridots, runestones, etc. for AD. Terrible idea. And then there are many of us, myself included, who don't run dungeons. Not because they're boring, or that I don't want to... I CAN NOT RUN THEM.
My best equipped toon is now, after this weekend, 2.4 K. Two point four thousand points. I've been playing that toon SINCE LAUNCH. I keep asking myself every day... "should I quit this grindy, messed up, bot infested game?"
So far, the answer is NO. But it's been close, especially w/ the AD nerf. On any given day, the only AD I make are thru invocation. That's it. Sometimes I PvP, but since there's no tier system to separate a 2.4 like myself from the big dogs running 3.5 or better, PvP is VERY frustrating. I do run some of the weekly quests, but even getting all 5 is only 15K AD PER TOON.
Skirmishes? Dungeons? Not happening. I figure I'm going to need to get to at LEAST 3000 pts... that's where most of my guildies are at. So far all the suggestions here on page Eight have been similar... make NW more like WoW. Bad idea on SO many levels.
So again. Dev types need to go look at account handles. As a suggestion they can pull my Entire Ignore list, as it is FULL of ONLY AD spammers. That should give them about 150 examples of the kind of handles spammers use. Then block and DELETE (after a week or so) all the spammer type accounts. IF someone actually complains, set up a system where they Can Call in, Give a credit card number, have NW verify it, and allow only ONE, maybe TWO accounts per card. Also lock out proxy server use and ONLY accept Account applications from users w/ REAL email accounts... netzero, Hotmail, yahoo, etc.
This is NOT rocket science. Why is it NoT being DONE?
But RP is a cancer in this game that has to be stopped or done differently to make things better.
They sell RP directly from the zen store and judging by the frequency of spammers advertising for refinables, it makes a lot of money. Not that I particularly agree or disagree, but I don't think you'll get anywhere with this idea with Cryptic.
First, I doubt that anyone actually buys RP from Cryptic. Nobody, regardless of the contents of their wallets, can be that naive when bots sell it for less than 10% of Cryptic's price.
If nobody is paying money for RP from the zen store then the spammers wouldn't price them remotely similarly, but they do /shrug
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ironzerg79Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,942Arc User
1. Make all enchants BOA (enchantments and runestones) - this will destroy bots, period - ffs what's the hard part here ? 2. Make Dragon Hoard's work as they worked just bind the freaking drops to account ! again....ffs what's the hard part here ? 3. Add higher lvl enchants and RP items to the dungeon drops (GMOPS, SMOPS all kind of RP gems and whatnot) again...read above...
@kemi1984 If my computer had an "I agree" button, it would be broken right now from all the mashing.
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If you have a really large amount you can even manipulate the AD/zen rate if you feel like it.
*I certainly would and do
e: AD/zen is literally the simplest form of commodity trading that can exist, there is one commodity and one currency and it even has a floor and a ceiling
Any one account......
Most AD dealers don't have one account, they have multiples. A 25k per account is no barrier. They have accounts (more than one) to spam with. They then have other accounts (once again, more than one to hold the zen/ad.
Think of it like this, for yrs in the USA, banks had personal accounts insured by the Fed for 10k ea. The theory was, it would make banks more 'secure" for personal account holders, if they knew that they would always get up to $10k, of their money back if the bank folded. So if you were fortunate enough to have more than $10k, to stash in a bank, why would you go over that $10k in one account? The smart person either opened another account or banked at more than on bank and had accounts capped at $10k ea.
Of course with all the shenanigans that NW has been up to, it's not so far off from what the S&L scandals of the 80's were or the recent "too big to fail" HAMSTER of the housing bubbles have been. The "Fed insured" isn't worth the breath used to promise it, most bank customers either got left holding an empty bag or merely got pennies on the dollar despite being "insured". Cryptic/NW has sort of did the same thing to the AD/Zen stuff lately, they punished the honest players and despite all the back flips to "fix" things they have only rewarded the bad guys.
It's been a while since I've bought zen with RL $ (ever since my frustration with M6+ at least), but back then (and it might be that way still) you could buy zen and hold it outside a set game, you had a "PW/zen" account that you transfered into games of your choice as you wanted,(like STO instead of NW etc.). There is no freaking way I would buy zen right into NW at this point, I would only single purchase it in because NW's "Federal insured" isn't so ensured.
But what do bots do better than anything a real player does? Short, repetitive actions. (they can do long, but it takes much more programming and usually the reward vs. effort of the programmer makes them not bother doing so)
It's been proven that bots can run skirm and dungeons, it's a limited instance with boundries, that has a set goal. The mobs aren't "random" nor are the bosses "random" enough for a bot to not be able to get through. That's the biggest complaint from the players actually, the repeated "grind" of doing the same dungeon over and over.....that's what bots do BEST!=GRIND!
So if NW actually was trying to combat those evil bots and make it hard on them, or the effort not rewarding enough for them, what would you do?
Make dailies reward AD? No. (that's what they have done with campaigns, a weekly AD reward for doing dailies)
Have repeated runs of skirms or dungeons reward a AD amount, i,e, "grinding" them? No (but that's what they have done isn't it? Even though the player say it's boring)
Have PvP have repeated queing AD rewards? (even pvp can be botted, just not as easily as other non-randomness things), and yet...that's exactly what they did isn't it? Grinded the AD rewards for PvP....
So how is it they are fighting the Bots again? They punished the players....but the inhibiting the bots how? So they shot off all the actual players big toes to slow down a robot...how did my toe being amputated slow down a robot?
So to reward players actually playing in a "time played"=rewards basis as they have claimed they wish to do, what would be the best way to do that? In a way that makes it most hard for botters to do so fast and easy enough to "exploit".
Why it's actually quest rewards! Every quest giving a little bit of AD as you go along. Quests run in arcs: Do this for me and return, do that for me and come back for a reward, now do this, do this next thing and i'll send you to see bob with a recommend so he can reward you more for his chore. You aren't actually "grindng" the same repetitive move over and over, something a bot is for. It's true a Botter could program for it, but it would be a long and entailed process to do so.
Bots like to do, hit key A 3x>go to map location Y and hit key B 4x> go to map location access node with F key until node gone...etc etc. Then do it all over again endlessly. With a quest arc, it's a once-through thing, there isn't something to rinse repeat. The only way the programmer could do a rinse-repeat is program every single motion used during the arc for the bot to do 1 time! Then they would have to create another character to bot it through again, which could be done...but the effort! Very few would bother, and even if they did..they would get to some point of running the arc 1 time as they progress through the levels and then run out of the arc and have to delete that toon for another to do so.
Consider what a dungeon has to be programmed for,que the dungeon, if it's started by a npc then choose the choice that starts it.Progress step by step through the map way points, slaying the mobs. When a slay condition is met, move on to way point B>C>D. Until boss or any sub bosses are met, kill them, then access the chest. Exit the instance, repeat.
So what does have to be programmed for a quest arc?
Talk to npc and make appropriate choices, proceed to map coordinates and kill/collect whatever they wanted for quest completion. Return to npc, make talk tree choices for reward. Now that quest is in the can and defunct, not repeatable. So if there are more in the arc from that npc, same appropriate talk choices, go to new coordinates and kill/collect new quest requirements, cash it in, now that one is in the can and defunct, and so on and so on. It can all be keyed for, just lot's and lot's of more key strokes. Then on to the new npc and the same process, but as each step is completed, there is no rinse/repeat in steps like a dungeon is.
So to program it for a bot to do a quest arc, they got to do 100's and 1000's of steps all one way>>> you couldn't rinse repeat it with that character like a dungeon/skirmish or a daily could be done. They all have a finite set of steps that are just done over and over to the end of time. The quest arc have 1000's and 10s of thousands of steps that eventually end, but aren't repeatable by that character.
The only incentive for a botter to do all that lots of labor would be bits and pieces of AD at each step..then reach the end. What do they do then? The only repeatable aspect at that point is delete that character (by that time L70) and start over again with a L1 to wend it's way through all that all over again. Keep in mind a low level character get's lots less AD for things they do than a L70. For however long that L1 took to get to L70 again it's AD earn potential is greatly reduced. Also keep in mind, when they met the refine cap each day they would have to have a bot smart enough to stop running quests until the daily flip to continue on leveling once again, so that lower earning potential is spread over weeks and months.
The actual programming of that could be done, true. But it would be a huge PITA, for far slower rewards other routes offered to bots, and it would have an end. They then would have to send another character through all that once again, then delete it etc etc.
If you were a kid mowing lawns for cash in the summer, what would you rather?
Mow 100 lawns at $1 ea or 1 lawn for $100?
Those 100 lawns would include all the wear and tear on the mower, the gas to run the mower, the time and travel to each lawn, the time to mow the lawn, all the hauling of clippings etc etc. A real PITA. By the time you finished those 100 lawns if you hadn't collapsed by then, you would have it all to over again, the 1st lawns had regrown.
That 1 lawn for $100 would only have all the expenses 1x time lawn, done in one day. Then have the rest of the week to enjoy your summer before you had to do it again next week. That's what currently it is for Bots, they are doing that $100 lawn over and over again until they hit $36k, then take a break and send in their cousin to do more lawns until I cashes out at $36k, they send in all their family to do this each day starting at 3 am.
Which one would break either you or your mower first? Which route would a botter take, all those 10s of thousands of steps 1 time through then delete, or dailies or skirmishes or dungeons or even ghost stories for the RP>AD? by their nature botters are lazy...they are using a machine to "play" the game for them
Case in point: 3rd party spammers are advertising for items and AD on the X-box side. This requires either cracked x-boxes or (possibly more likely) PCs emulating multiple x-boxes to run their bots on. And you think they're too dumb/lazy to script some quests. They don't even have to script very many, just up to whatever arbitrary point and roll over to another brand new automatically-created account.
how odd that the forum filters the word for circumventing computer security "hacked" but okey doke
OR are we forgetting WHY we are in such a situation in the first place? Can you say Leadership NERF?
SO PWE and Cryptic COULD do such a reset. The problem of botters remains, however. Until such time as the spammers are locked out of NW, by whatever means, Or at least trimmed down to some reasonable level, a currency change will NOT help. The bottters will just start building new stockpiles, faster than any normal player can possibly keep up with.
Just in the last couple of days I have blocked/reported over 20 (Twenty!) AD spammers. PER day. Sadly these scum are alive and well.
So the question remains... HOW are these accounts to be eliminated? I've made suggestions on this forum, and a couple have been "ahem" edited, but something NEEDS to be done. I'm not a good enough programmer nor am I current enough with the technology to make "good" programming suggestions, but I've noted trends and made comments on same.
If I can see such trends, smart guys like "real" programmers should be tripping all over them. Simply figure out how to block and eliminate, and then implement. I really do NOT see what the problem is.
+ make it editable for all players, so that they can add their own keyword and/or the latest spam message
+ filter the targeted messages to another chat channel/window, where we can check them later, to see if everything is working fine
+ and let us clear the ignore list with a single push of a button
spammers only use an account once for their advertisement, and then use a new one for the next round. besides, looks like the ignore list is slowing down the game client too...
And 20 spammers per day?
Really?
Must have been a slow day... i get at least 3-5 spammers per minute on ignore, when i'm logging through my alt. characters, that are sitting in PE.
Anyway, it would be nice to see some official word on this topic again...
Btw. what about adding rAD to daily quests and Stronghold Vouchers to Leadership?
I however would add a trove of enchantments to the end chest of any Epic Dungeon, as additional incentive for people to legitimately farm these, as well as other loots to encourage trade via the AH, but nothing that's bottable. I think when done right, the AH is a great resource for legitimate players to trade loot, and we don't want to completely hamstring this avenue.
But on the AH matter specifically...
I think there should also be some limits set on the total amount of items PER ACCOUNT that someone can list on the AH. Maybe a maximum of 500 total items per account. A stack of 99 Enchantments counts as 99.
Characters who are unverified per your Karzov suggestion can't use the AH, and cannot receive mail from other players.
Any character under level 30 can only put up 50 total items. Level 30-59 get 75. Level 60 gets 100. And level 70 unlocks 200. You're able to purchase additional account-wide 100 slot unlocks for 200 Zen per 100, up to 500 total.
Let's be completely honest here...anyone who's not trading in bot farmed enchants or RP stones isn't putting hundreds and hundreds of stacks up on a regular basis. I can see this being an issue if you're saving stacks to sell on 2x RP weekends, but it would be matter of you more diligently replacing stacks as they sell...heck, it shouldn't really be a problem if bot-farmed RP was removed. You'd still have significant demand for these stacks.
you want to suggest to limit how much i can make on the AH by having a 500 item limit (as in 5 enchant stacks)?
in order to progress in any reasonable amount of time, i rely on the ability to flip stacks of enchants and other things during the week.
you seem to not grasp the concept of playing the AH.
I might buy 50-100 stacks of r5's at a low price during the course of a week or two and sit on them until the market goes up.
a ton of legit players do this all the time.
so if you think anyone putting up 100+ stacks at a time is a bot... I probably couldn't explain simple economics or time vs. reward principles to you.
and as far as "it would be a matter of you more diligently replacing stacks as they sell"... that sounds nice but that would benefit someone who is constantly in game. what about when you work? or when you sleep? or anytime you are not in-game?
under closer scrutiny, that suggestion would benefit one group more than any others.... bots. because they are on 24-7 and all a programmar would have to do is a simple script to have the mules put up stacks/whatever as others sell.
I do not have an easy solution for bots, but what I do know is that whatever the devs are doing about them... it is not working and making legit players lives harder.
which is hilarious because this is a game... not a job.
edit: one suggestion to alleviate the players while addressing bots is to get rid of the refinement system entirely.
make meaningful gear/enchants drop from bosses and as pvp rewards.
That would mean adding alot of content which this game (more than any other mmo I've ever played) seriously lacks.
so alot more content at various gear levels and getting rid of the refinement system (which doesn't even exist in the D&D world outside of this game.
maybe overhauling the pvp system so it is fun and rewarding to players of all gear levels.
oh and more balanced (not holding my breath)
use your head.
edit: @magenubbie you are correct this is a mmo. and this have been done in every mmorpg with a player driven economy for over a decade now. it's part of the draw for alot of players. welcome to the world of mmorpgs
edit 2: and as far as botting, might wanna attempt to do what World of Warcraft has been doing for years and intergrate a way of detecting 3rd party software inside the game itself.
edit 3: and games like Warcraft (which is what NW is competing with "f2p" model or not) is light years beyond NW atm because a single raid there can have up to 14 bosses and there are dozens of raids and dungeons. Botting isn't so much of a problem there because players are not reliant on buying things to upgrade gear. Gears are dropped from all that content. People run raids to get upgrades. While in NW players are funneled into content to earn currency to BUY rp/enchants to upgrade their gear.
if NW were to shift from players having to BUY over to adding more content so players can get meaningful upgrades from boss drops, it would go a long way in neutralizing botting.
zen can be somewhat regulated.
rAD can be capped with limited ways to earn.
but as a legit player you have three choices if you want to improve your character(s):
1. pay real $ to see instant improvement
2. try to make AD in the market to see gradual improvement
3. farm your own RP and go months without seeing any noticeable improvement.
players would like to see noticeable improvement in a reasonable amount of time (which is a fair want)
so it would be better to do away with refinement entirely or to implement your changes the refinement system would have to be completely overhauled (so it doesnt take 3-4 months to fully upgrade one piece of artifact gear as an example)
to me the strength of the game is the combat system.
the refinement system is not compelling gameplay.
at all.
shift upgrades from being primarily bought to being earned by boss drops and you gut the bot market.
making all RP bound to acct/character does not fix the problem by slowing down players character improvement to a snails crawl.
as a dps class, if I played for 4 months putting alot of time into my character and see no noticeable increase in my damage output I wouldn't be compelled to keep playing.
the only way this game will survive is to attract a steady stream of new players, but at the moment this is extremely unfriendly to new players.
there has to be a better way to combat bots than to make it harder for your playerbase.
period.
1. Make all enchants BOA (enchantments and runestones) - this will destroy bots, period - ffs what's the hard part here ?
2. Make Dragon Hoard's work as they worked just bind the freaking drops to account ! again....ffs what's the hard part here ?
3. Add higher lvl enchants and RP items to the dungeon drops (GMOPS, SMOPS all kind of RP gems and whatnot) again...read above...
These will destroy bots, just wipe them off in few days. To add to it, it will make folks wanna run dungeons not only for salvage (that's the 99% of the items we get from the dungeons, and a full reason to even do them). Guys that do not want to run dungeons, can farm enchants and RP from Fey's and Dragon Hoard's.
Best of both worlds, all players have something to play for - bots are dead (they will still poke around as long as the game is BASED on griding).
I know there are other things that has to be taken into account making the change. But does it really take a mastermind to make it real?
A proud member of "mythical horde of DPS GFs"
1). Is SW more dps or tank based?
2). Yes. I am panzer!
3). Get ACT if you want to celebrate your epeen.
4). Horniness will not stand between me and what I believe - "MM"
My best equipped toon is now, after this weekend, 2.4 K. Two point four thousand points. I've been playing that toon SINCE LAUNCH. I keep asking myself every day... "should I quit this grindy, messed up, bot infested game?"
So far, the answer is NO. But it's been close, especially w/ the AD nerf. On any given day, the only AD I make are thru invocation. That's it. Sometimes I PvP, but since there's no tier system to separate a 2.4 like myself from the big dogs running 3.5 or better, PvP is VERY frustrating. I do run some of the weekly quests, but even getting all 5 is only 15K AD PER TOON.
Skirmishes? Dungeons? Not happening. I figure I'm going to need to get to at LEAST 3000 pts... that's where most of my guildies are at. So far all the suggestions here on page Eight have been similar... make NW more like WoW. Bad idea on SO many levels.
So again. Dev types need to go look at account handles. As a suggestion they can pull my Entire Ignore list, as it is FULL of ONLY AD spammers. That should give them about 150 examples of the kind of handles spammers use. Then block and DELETE (after a week or so) all the spammer type accounts. IF someone actually complains, set up a system where they Can Call in, Give a credit card number, have NW verify it, and allow only ONE, maybe TWO accounts per card. Also lock out proxy server use and ONLY accept Account applications from users w/ REAL email accounts... netzero, Hotmail, yahoo, etc.
This is NOT rocket science. Why is it NoT being DONE?