I don't see how that invalidates asking about the rational behind a diff topic. Sure, 'botting' is an issue, but my question was whether that was the main reason they won't implement more quest-related AD. You seem to already know of the dev's intent, but I'm not gonna trust anything that's not from the source.
I'm not talking about the dev team's intent, I'm talking about what already happens with current quests (people bot them to completion) and what would happen if you rewarded AD for static quests, people would bot them to completion and obtain AD times however many active connections their network would support. Basically the same situation as scripting Leadership tasks to obtain AD.
e: note this isn't really any different from obtaining AD through invoking though, so the problem isn't really "oh gosh you should/shouldn't reward AD for quests," it's the people who are doing this via automation on a scale of hundreds of times what normal players do.
Well, as I KEEP saying, a hard and decisive look needs to be taken at ANY individual w/ 20 or more toons on an account. Acutally, 16 might be an even better number. Check out those guys, log and analyze their login patterns, playing patterns, etc. and I'm pretty sure you'll find a goodly amount of the botters/cheaters/abusers.
After all, You just don't NEED that many toons... unless you're doing something besides playing the game normally.
And once those accounts are identified, they need to be kicked out and locked out. After pertinent info has been gathered, i.e. ID, address, credit cards nums, etc. Then use said info to KEEP the slime out.
You're not looking very closely at AD spammer text, they obviously just make new accounts every couple of minutes. There is no reason to spend Zen to unlock extra character slots on one account when you can just register hundreds of them. The solution is probably to just refuse connections from proxy servers period.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
Just curious, but do you know if this 'botting' issue is the main reason the devs seem hesitant to implement general quest AD?
Direct confirmation has never been given to Community Moderators behind those decisions but as others have said "whatever a player can do a bot can do." So yes, it is safe to assume that is a very real concern the developers have and they weigh that in to every decision they make.
As pjz99 said, bots automate account creation. It is not that spammers and botters are not banned but they they can and do create accounts as quickly as they are removed. As always this is very normal in any MMO. There is no easy solution and all the "solutions" players come up with tend to be solutions that plain old don't work (capcha's) or fail to consider the economic costs and impracticality side of things (the amount of staff required to keep up with bot generation renders such suggestions so far past the line of impractical that they would kill the game by removing all profit)
That being said, spammers are muted by reporting spam so report away and certain staff members do ban within the game but bots make accounts as fast as they are banned so it really is a never ending battle which buys a few moments but never solves anything.
If any of you have this notion that bots are just random people in their mother's basement please take that notion and throw it in the trash can. They are in fact an industry built on knowing the cheating scum of the player base don't want to play fairly. The number one thing players can do to stop bots is to not buy from them because as long as there is a market they will continue to tap it and no matter what defenses MMO companies devise it only takes a very short period of time for bot developers to find a weakness.
In the war between weaponcrafting and armorsmithing armor is always playing catch up. It was true thousands of years ago and it is true today regarding computer technology. It is simply a fact of life that it is easier to look for a hole in a defense than it is to anticipate every possible way you could be attacked.
Thanks for the insight, all. I haven't been around NW enough to know how much of an issue automation is here.
Well, I hope the devs think that one (prob good) way to mitigate bots, then, is to make in-game pricing more reasonable, and sooner rather than later. In this case, I take that it'd be better just to lower (or eliminate) fixed costs than try to implement more currency sources. Both can address the issue of players feeling too stressed to afford things w/o resorting to bad methods, but the latter type of change could just proliferate botting.
In light of my first reply, it would be the diff between making all campaign quests give AD vs. just eliminating AD sinks in campaigns. They don't quite have the same implications, but both address the general issue.
There is no easy solution and all the "solutions" players come up with tend to be solutions that plain old don't work (capcha's) or fail to consider the economic costs and impracticality side of things (the amount of staff required to keep up with bot generation renders such suggestions so far past the line of impractical that they would kill the game by removing all profit)
There is an easy solution actually, and that is (as a lot of other businesses do) to refuse connections from public proxy servers. From there it's not a big deal to identify and filter the IP ranges used by the more tenacious spammers.
e: If you have a lot of legit/paying users who just not able to play unless through a proxy, you can whitelist those and then deal with any further abuse.
I really don't see the issue with adding AD to all quests in the game. Most you can only do once and you can't do it again. Daily quests can't be run more than once a day so even if people do bot these, they can only do them once a day. So, I just don't see the big deal about not adding AD to all quests in the game. Allowing players to earn AD for actually playing the game. I want to be able to earn all my daily AD limit without the need to do a single dungeon or skirmish or pvp match. That is what people want. Adding more dungeons and skirmishes is great and all but people don't just want to do that in order to get our daily AD limit. I haven't played since the leadership change because I just don't want to spend all my time in game doing the same thing ( dungeons and skirmishes ) just to get my little bit of the millions of AD I need. You guys at Cryptic just take your time and drag your feet as much as you want to about this. There are plenty of other games out there and more on the way everyday that we will move to because you can't seem to get your game in order or your rear in gear about these changes.
They are in fact an industry built on knowing the cheating scum of the player base don't want to play fairly. The number one thing players can do to stop bots is to not buy from them because as long as there is a market they will continue to tap it and no matter what defenses MMO companies devise it only takes a very short period of time for bot developers to find a weakness.
The problem I see with this is that by taking away a means honest players have of making headway in the game in order to combat botters, who have shown infinite adaptability, you actually risk increasing the potential market for the botters. I've never bought any AD from a third party seller and I'd more likely just stop playing before honestly doing that. But I can't deny that especially with the recent changes to leadership making it more difficult to get a few AD for some minor upgrades it has created a slight temptation for the first time.
I know there a likely more changes coming down the road. Hopefully it'll include at least some reward for solo casual players other that just rotating characters and pressing Ctrl-I. Which honestly seems to be the only reliable way to get AD now with being forced to do PvP, group dungeons, or skirmishes.
Maybe maybe diversifying the ways players can get sufficient AD instead of cutting back the ways they can get them would do more to reduce the market for the botters more than limiting how people can make them.
One way to see how much more AD is floating around in PC than in Xbox One is by looking at the difference in the Zen/AD Exchange (ZAX):
Xbox One ZAX: 140 AD per Zen PC ZAX: 400 AD per Zen
Imagine what this means for a player who wants to convert Zen to Astral Diamonds to buy something, say a pet, from the Wondrous Bazaar. That player will have to spend almost three times as much Zen on Xbox One as they would on PC!
Um I think he got that backwards. If you had lets say 1k AD and went to buy zen on the xbox ZAX you would get more zen than a person on PC would. I haven't played NW in a bit but I am a avid STO player and we have the same system minus xbox but if I was a player I would love to have the exchange at 140 per zen over the 400 per zen. just saying but then again I may be misreading this but I don't think so.
I'm sure I'm not the first one to say this, but if monthly premium for Neverwinter, let you have your AD feature back in leadership for that account. I would purchase a monthly premium, maybe more then one. I was about to purchase a premium right before they removed the leadership ability to acquire AD. EVERY other major MMO has a method to acquire "game money" if you grind for it, this has a limit. Look at Everquest, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings online the list goes on. The dedicated can still grind for their gear. On Neverwinter it's well known, if you have good gear you paid $$ for it. That doesn't apply to other games.
One way to see how much more AD is floating around in PC than in Xbox One is by looking at the difference in the Zen/AD Exchange (ZAX):
Xbox One ZAX: 140 AD per Zen PC ZAX: 400 AD per Zen
Imagine what this means for a player who wants to convert Zen to Astral Diamonds to buy something, say a pet, from the Wondrous Bazaar. That player will have to spend almost three times as much Zen on Xbox One as they would on PC!
Um I think he got that backwards. If you had lets say 1k AD and went to buy zen on the xbox ZAX you would get more zen than a person on PC would. I haven't played NW in a bit but I am a avid STO player and we have the same system minus xbox but if I was a player I would love to have the exchange at 140 per zen over the 400 per zen. just saying but then again I may be misreading this but I don't think so.
Why do you think PWE wants to add more value to zen : |
There is no easy solution and all the "solutions" players come up with tend to be solutions that plain old don't work (capcha's) or fail to consider the economic costs and impracticality side of things (the amount of staff required to keep up with bot generation renders such suggestions so far past the line of impractical that they would kill the game by removing all profit)
There is an easy solution actually, and that is (as a lot of other businesses do) to refuse connections from public proxy servers. From there it's not a big deal to identify and filter the IP ranges used by the more tenacious spammers.
e: If you have a lot of legit/paying users who just not able to play unless through a proxy, you can whitelist those and then deal with any further abuse.
I'm really not sure what you're talking about when you're referring to "proxy servers". What I AM Sure ABOUT is the following research:
In the last couple of days, I reported/blocked all of these addresses for gold selling, and wrote them down. So I don't know about IP's, but what I SEE is a consistent pattern of nonsense e-mail origins. If this is what you get when you are using a proxy server, then well, gee, It is simple. You put a couple of humans into the mix. On a daily basis these poor souls review all the new people who have registered, and then they delete this sort of account, and hopefully block it.
IT should go without saying that all existing accounts that have this e-mail format should ALSO be blocked and deleted. Come on guys, this isn't rocket science. If I can find patterns in a couple of days, then they should be pretty damn obvious to all and sundry. Bite the bullet, do what is NECESSARY to harass the CHEATERS, NOT the HONEST players.
Oh, and as to the nonsense Of ANYONE NEEDING a proxy to play through... Really?
The ad economy in mod5 xbox one was perfect if you aske me. Xbox One ZAX: 300 AD per Zen. Well, it was between 290 and 350 AD per zen but it went down to 121 after the nerf of ad.
I never used the leadership for making ad but instead was farming a lot epic gears in dungeons and salvaging or selling them for a fair price.
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.
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.
It's because there's a 50% off sale in the zen store on thursday and monday.
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.
It's because there's a 50% off sale in the zen store on thursday and monday.
Uh huh. So explain to me where all the AD's came from. More Zen should mean AD to Zen exchange Rate goes DOWN, not UP.
ZEN supply is probably lower right now, since player with ZEN are holding it back for the 50% sale. And since there's now a higher demand for ZEN, players with more AD are also willing to "pay" more AD for ZEN. Supply and demand.
Btw. i bought most of my ZEN for the sale at 370 AD for 1 ZEN, and i even added some more at around 400 AD for 1 ZEN. The 50% ZEN sale was on the calendar early, and there were even several threads about this in the general forum.
Anyway, after the sale, the ZAX will probably go back to around 400 AD per 1 ZEN. And this doesn't change the fact, that the players still need more ways to generate AD.
Again, could the Devs please think about: + adding Stronghold Vouchers to Leadership + adding rAD to daily quests or give some feedback about this? Thank you.
Demand for zen went up a lot (people preparing for the sale, so the lower bid zen sell orders got fulfilled (or cancelled and relisted with prices raised since the sellers can see the demand is going up), and now you see the higher bids. Not really anything mysterious there.
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.
I do believe in killing the messenger...
Want to know why?
Because it sends a message!
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kreatyveMember, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 10,545Community Moderator
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.
My opinions are my own. I do not work for PWE or Cryptic. - Forum Rules - Protector's Enclave Discord - I play on Xbox Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official. Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
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.
Comments
e: note this isn't really any different from obtaining AD through invoking though, so the problem isn't really "oh gosh you should/shouldn't reward AD for quests," it's the people who are doing this via automation on a scale of hundreds of times what normal players do.
As pjz99 said, bots automate account creation. It is not that spammers and botters are not banned but they they can and do create accounts as quickly as they are removed. As always this is very normal in any MMO. There is no easy solution and all the "solutions" players come up with tend to be solutions that plain old don't work (capcha's) or fail to consider the economic costs and impracticality side of things (the amount of staff required to keep up with bot generation renders such suggestions so far past the line of impractical that they would kill the game by removing all profit)
That being said, spammers are muted by reporting spam so report away and certain staff members do ban within the game but bots make accounts as fast as they are banned so it really is a never ending battle which buys a few moments but never solves anything.
If any of you have this notion that bots are just random people in their mother's basement please take that notion and throw it in the trash can. They are in fact an industry built on knowing the cheating scum of the player base don't want to play fairly. The number one thing players can do to stop bots is to not buy from them because as long as there is a market they will continue to tap it and no matter what defenses MMO companies devise it only takes a very short period of time for bot developers to find a weakness.
In the war between weaponcrafting and armorsmithing armor is always playing catch up. It was true thousands of years ago and it is true today regarding computer technology. It is simply a fact of life that it is easier to look for a hole in a defense than it is to anticipate every possible way you could be attacked.
Well, I hope the devs think that one (prob good) way to mitigate bots, then, is to make in-game pricing more reasonable, and sooner rather than later. In this case, I take that it'd be better just to lower (or eliminate) fixed costs than try to implement more currency sources. Both can address the issue of players feeling too stressed to afford things w/o resorting to bad methods, but the latter type of change could just proliferate botting.
In light of my first reply, it would be the diff between making all campaign quests give AD vs. just eliminating AD sinks in campaigns. They don't quite have the same implications, but both address the general issue.
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e: If you have a lot of legit/paying users who just not able to play unless through a proxy, you can whitelist those and then deal with any further abuse.
The problem I see with this is that by taking away a means honest players have of making headway in the game in order to combat botters, who have shown infinite adaptability, you actually risk increasing the potential market for the botters. I've never bought any AD from a third party seller and I'd more likely just stop playing before honestly doing that. But I can't deny that especially with the recent changes to leadership making it more difficult to get a few AD for some minor upgrades it has created a slight temptation for the first time.
I know there a likely more changes coming down the road. Hopefully it'll include at least some reward for solo casual players other that just rotating characters and pressing Ctrl-I. Which honestly seems to be the only reliable way to get AD now with being forced to do PvP, group dungeons, or skirmishes.
Maybe maybe diversifying the ways players can get sufficient AD instead of cutting back the ways they can get them would do more to reduce the market for the botters more than limiting how people can make them.
Why do you think PWE wants to add more value to zen : |
[removed handles - naming & shaming isn't allowed]
In the last couple of days, I reported/blocked all of these addresses for gold selling, and wrote them down. So I don't know about IP's, but what I SEE is a consistent pattern of nonsense e-mail origins. If this is what you get when you are using a proxy server, then well, gee, It is simple. You put a couple of humans into the mix. On a daily basis these poor souls review all the new people who have registered, and then they delete this sort of account, and hopefully block it.
IT should go without saying that all existing accounts that have this e-mail format should ALSO be blocked and deleted. Come on guys, this isn't rocket science. If I can find patterns in a couple of days, then they should be pretty damn obvious to all and sundry. Bite the bullet, do what is NECESSARY to harass the CHEATERS, NOT the HONEST players.
Oh, and as to the nonsense Of ANYONE NEEDING a proxy to play through... Really?
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Xbox One ZAX: 300 AD per Zen.
Well, it was between 290 and 350 AD per zen but it went down to 121 after the nerf of ad.
I never used the leadership for making ad but instead was farming a lot epic gears in dungeons and salvaging or selling them for a fair price.
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And since there's now a higher demand for ZEN, players with more AD are also willing to "pay" more AD for ZEN.
Supply and demand.
Btw. i bought most of my ZEN for the sale at 370 AD for 1 ZEN, and i even added some more at around 400 AD for 1 ZEN.
The 50% ZEN sale was on the calendar early, and there were even several threads about this in the general forum.
Anyway, after the sale, the ZAX will probably go back to around 400 AD per 1 ZEN. And this doesn't change the fact, that the players still need more ways to generate AD.
Again, could the Devs please think about:
+ adding Stronghold Vouchers to Leadership
+ adding rAD to daily quests
or give some feedback about this?
Thank you.
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.
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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