You might want to add the constant goldseller spam in Neverdeath Graveyard to your opening post. That clearly shows, those botters don't give a damn about Cryptic/PWE rules.
And if Cryptic/PWE would really bann a noticeable number of botters per day, shouldn't the numbers of open instance of Neverdeath Graveyard or Ghost Stories decrease too?
But it rather looks like those botters numbers are increasing massively. Only numbers in decline at the moment are the player numbers.
So can we please see some real GM action in game now?
'ls ad change' was not about bots (that was spin), it was about 'selling zen'. With 20 toons at max leadership, that's 200k ad/day, so 2.5 days per VIP level, took around 30 minutes per day. So 1.5 hours of clicking, 500k ad. Trivial really. How do you sign people up for a 'pseudo-subscription' when they can generate it with 1.5 hours of clicking? Granted, it took some investment and forsight and 6-8 months to get to that point. The other option was to just go subscription right out, but that topic is banned from discussion (please don't delete my post, I'm not advocating subscription model).
As for 'really fighting bots', ultimately, it's not possible to win that fight. They are so bound up in this bot-fight thing, they turn off dungeons (because it's bottable), take rewards from foundry (because it's bottable), nerf dragon-hoard enchant drops (because it's bottable), etc etc. There is really NOTHING they can do to stop bots besides: 1. Manually doing it with GMs. A continuous fight of banning accounts, new bot-accounts get created, banning, etc. Tons of manual labor, possibility of mistakes and banning real people, an escalating man-vs-machine war, where the machine will win. 2. Create quests that are 'completely random' and require 'human understanding of language'. Go to x, do y, read book z, then answer some riddle, and have all that be random and make sense. Sort of morphing the 'captcha' into the game. (Well, I guess they could just put a captcha on quest turn in, bleh, that's not immersive enough for a game imo). This kind of 'tech' doesn't exist as far as I know; but something I would think the f2p world would pay for...
At least one active GM in PE and one active GM in Neverdeath Graveyard could put the hurt on those botters right there. And in PE, that GM could also keep the zone chat on a more civilized level...
To level a new character up to farmer material takes some time, even when those bots run 24/7. Hitting their bots at the farming grounds will slow them down. But before banning the bees, they should follow the flow of the honey to the bee hives and the queen... so to speak. Tagging those farmer accounts and then watching where the AD or RP stones go, to the real collecter and seller accounts, to the buyer accounts.
Not impossible, and it would really fight the botters and not the regular players.
I do believe in killing the messenger...
Want to know why?
Because it sends a message!
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tripsofthrymrMember, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,625Community Moderator
At least one active GM in PE and one active GM in Neverdeath Graveyard could put the hurt on those botters right there. And in PE, that GM could also keep the zone chat on a more civilized level...
To level a new character up to farmer material takes some time, even when those bots run 24/7. Hitting their bots at the farming grounds will slow them down.
Exactly this, plus a functional mechanism for players to tell these GMs about new bot locations (they level up in Blackdagger Ruins now, they have been in the Sharandar mini dungeons in the past).
Comments
And if Cryptic/PWE would really bann a noticeable number of botters per day, shouldn't the numbers of open instance of Neverdeath Graveyard or Ghost Stories decrease too?
But it rather looks like those botters numbers are increasing massively. Only numbers in decline at the moment are the player numbers.
So can we please see some real GM action in game now?
bots are chinese + game is owned by chinese bank
As for 'really fighting bots', ultimately, it's not possible to win that fight. They are so bound up in this bot-fight thing, they turn off dungeons (because it's bottable), take rewards from foundry (because it's bottable), nerf dragon-hoard enchant drops (because it's bottable), etc etc. There is really NOTHING they can do to stop bots besides:
1. Manually doing it with GMs. A continuous fight of banning accounts, new bot-accounts get created, banning, etc. Tons of manual labor, possibility of mistakes and banning real people, an escalating man-vs-machine war, where the machine will win.
2. Create quests that are 'completely random' and require 'human understanding of language'. Go to x, do y, read book z, then answer some riddle, and have all that be random and make sense. Sort of morphing the 'captcha' into the game. (Well, I guess they could just put a captcha on quest turn in, bleh, that's not immersive enough for a game imo). This kind of 'tech' doesn't exist as far as I know; but something I would think the f2p world would pay for...
And in PE, that GM could also keep the zone chat on a more civilized level...
To level a new character up to farmer material takes some time, even when those bots run 24/7. Hitting their bots at the farming grounds will slow them down.
But before banning the bees, they should follow the flow of the honey to the bee hives and the queen... so to speak.
Tagging those farmer accounts and then watching where the AD or RP stones go, to the real collecter and seller accounts, to the buyer accounts.
Not impossible, and it would really fight the botters and not the regular players.
Sci-fi author: The Gods We Make, The Gods We Seek, and Ji-min