I too don't understand why they did not just remove professions and the auction house from the gateway. SCA was fun. Being able to sort guild members by last login time was useful. AFAIK you can't do that kind of sorting in-game. So we actually lost functionality.
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someonediesMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,257Arc User
Aside from punishing players what good does it do?
No information, gateway had been down for over two weeks without mention. Nothing said about how the companion gear will be earned now and no information about how this helps combat botting. How does this help anything anyway? Bots will go in game now that gateway's out of the game.
Will you next remove leadership all together?
Jeez
I am the monk, martial skill transcends the battlefield
It is my my life style, my doctrine and my state of mind,
You fight well, but without focus and discipline, you will fall.
Yeah, this sucks. No doubt about it. But please keep the comments civil. No need to resort to personal insults here.
Seriously? You guys do this like it's nothing, don't care about the concequences? (And this is just 1 in many incidents) I've logged over 5400 hours in this game, and i don't even wanna think about how many money i've spent. I personally feel like i've been scammed by nothing more than low-moral criminals.
You want US to act civil?
-Stump
Aye, he's just the messenger, not an employee of Cryptic or PWE. This wasn't his call. He has the right to ask the posters to be civilized in their discontent--as that's his duty as a mod.
So yes, he DOES want you, and the rest of the forums, to act civil. You can disagree without being completely disagreeable or trying to burn down the world in your ire towards this decision.
What do you mean you tried? Are you joking? I never saw you try using captcha! It's specifically made to keep bots away AND it works on every platform! You tried nothing! You went into the meeting and the first idea was "just shut it down, i'm tired of this shi*". Getting the cowards way out again! First dropped armors on dungeons can't be sold, then remove coals from tarmalune and make them bound, then make another mod that is exactly the same as the other (daily quests ftw) and now this! You're just murdering yourself really!
Hmm.....were you actually at the meeting? No? Then frankly you're making assumptions. Also, please do a little more research--it's been shown that captchas can be fooled.
It's always a resources battle. You can't keep just throwing resources and time at a problem indefinitely. Sometimes you can't continue to put the resources into a losing battle, and a wise commander knows when to concede the field and call a tactical retreat--or cut off something that's costing more in resources than they can well afford.
It's called: to win a war, sometimes you have to concede a battle. The war on bots and other assorted undesireables in MMOs is about as old as MMOs themselves. They fought the good fight. It's done. The game will survive without the gateway, as it did before the gateway was even implemented.
ROLL TIDE ROLL
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
SCA was fun but never had time to do it much since it took 30-45 min for epic missions. Always looking for that Avenger gear but never got any. If Loyalty gear is now gone for good, that is a very sad thing. But now we are in the same boat as the PS4 and Xbox players..
I'm not too concerned about the gateway personally, i usually do my leadership in game 1-2 time a week and that's sufficient for me.
What I'm concerned about is when they realize bots will move to in game will they remove in game leadership too?
I am the monk, martial skill transcends the battlefield
It is my my life style, my doctrine and my state of mind,
You fight well, but without focus and discipline, you will fall.
Aye, he's just the messenger, not an employee of Cryptic or PWE. This wasn't his call. He has the right to ask the posters to be civilized in their discontent--as that's his duty as a mod.
So yes, he DOES want you, and the rest of the forums, to act civil. You can disagree without being completely disagreeable or trying to burn down the world in your ire towards this decision.
Some of us like to watch the world burn
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beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
I laughed, I cried, I kissed SCA goodbye. I enjoyed the SCA games, the dice concept was pretty frickin awesome tbh. Shame it can't live on somehow. I feel like the bot thing is a fanatical witchhunt for you guys now. Burn everyone to kill a botter...
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someonediesMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,257Arc User
Aye, he's just the messenger, not an employee of Cryptic or PWE. This wasn't his call. He has the right to ask the posters to be civilized in their discontent--as that's his duty as a mod.
So yes, he DOES want you, and the rest of the forums, to act civil. You can disagree without being completely disagreeable or trying to burn down the world in your ire towards this decision.
Some of us like to watch the world burn
indeed
Dead ๐ช
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mutjinninjaMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 93Arc User
I predicted this from day ONE. As SOON as they said they took gateway down due to bots, I KNEW they lacked the resources and manpower to do anything other than a Defcon 1 solution. That's how it's always been. They "evaluate" a class or item or mechanic..and then obliterate it with the wrath of God because they can't be bothered to listen to players' intelligent solutions or just because they don't feel like spending more than a week thinking about it.
I can tell you exactly what will happen now. They killed gateway because of bots. You know what bots will do? MOVE IN GAME. Already, the past few days have been incredibly laggy and filled with SNRs and D/Cs because the bots are have automated in game professions for their bot armies.
So what does this change accomplish? Exactly nothing. Except hurting actual players and moving all the bots who were overloading gateway to overloading the actual game client.
I'm so happy that I've restarted WoW. At least they don't seem to abuse their players as happily as cryptic does.
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ironzerg79Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,942Arc User
What do you mean you tried? Are you joking? I never saw you try using captcha! It's specifically made to keep bots away AND it works on every platform! You tried nothing! You went into the meeting and the first idea was "just shut it down, i'm tired of this shi*". Getting the cowards way out again! First dropped armors on dungeons can't be sold, then remove coals from tarmalune and make them bound, then make another mod that is exactly the same as the other (daily quests ftw) and now this! You're just murdering yourself really!
@brun2000 Do a quick Google search for "Captcha and bots" and tell me what you see. There's plenty of software out there than can defeat captchas...it's non-sense to think that's all it would've taken.
I predicted this from day ONE. As SOON as they said they took gateway down due to bots, I KNEW they lacked the resources and manpower to do anything other than a Defcon 1 solution. That's how it's always been. They "evaluate" a class or item or mechanic..and then obliterate it with the wrath of God because they can't be bothered to listen to players' intelligent solutions or just because they don't feel like spending more than a week thinking about it.
I can tell you exactly what will happen now. They killed gateway because of bots. You know what bots will do? MOVE IN GAME. Already, the past few days have been incredibly laggy and filled with SNRs and D/Cs because the bots are have automated in game professions for their bot armies.
So what does this change accomplish? Exactly nothing. Except hurting actual players and moving all the bots who were overloading gateway to overloading the actual game client.
I'm so happy that I've restarted WoW. At least they don't seem to abuse their players as happily as cryptic does.
I've had a constant 40-60 ping with no DCs at all. If the bots were causing the lag you're describing then it would affect everyone. Sometimes it isn't Cryptic's fault that you have trouble with their servers.
I want the companion gear in game NOW. Tradebar store, cheap. Ditto thief and dog. If yall dare to make them zen purchases it will not go well.
Or what? You'll make nasty posts?
You hold your breath on that. See if it helps.
I don't really see the problem. Make them 20-30 tradebars and be done with it. I'd buy keys instead of having to buy the gear off the AH. It's a perfect solution.
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sigillmacfinnMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 111Arc User
& has anyone seen the price of Loyal Avenger gear on the AH now ...............
What do you mean you tried? Are you joking? I never saw you try using captcha! It's specifically made to keep bots away AND it works on every platform! You tried nothing! You went into the meeting and the first idea was "just shut it down, i'm tired of this shi*". Getting the cowards way out again! First dropped armors on dungeons can't be sold, then remove coals from tarmalune and make them bound, then make another mod that is exactly the same as the other (daily quests ftw) and now this! You're just murdering yourself really!
@brun2000 Do a quick Google search for "Captcha and bots" and tell me what you see. There's plenty of software out there than can defeat captchas...it's non-sense to think that's all it would've taken.
What about limiting the time you can be logged in on gateway /day or how many accounts per IP etc.
Trust me, they did not try everything. They took the very easy way out because it profits them.
Kitten you, kitten all that you love and cherish, and kitten your god forsaken puppies.
Outright horrible decision, that I can't possibly get behind from any reasonable angle.
Badly done, very very badly done, I am actually probably going to lose the currently second in command in my guild because the SCA was one of her favourite parts in this game.
I frown upon the extremely flawed arguments you used to excuse this terrible and user-unfriendly decision.
The stars are falling, and the old gods silent as death, with the blood sworn to rip you down from the night sky, what cost will pose too high?
*cough cough* companion gear earned through foundry participation *cough cough* (SCA was really cool, I'm gonna miss it too!)
"I don't know, I'm making it up as I go..." Featured Foundry Quest:Whispers of an Ancient Evil [v3] - NW-DQ4WKW6ZG Foundry Quest: Harper Chronicles: Blacklake - NW-DCPA4W2Q5
In game botting for professions may or may not be a problem. This was a problem when AD was being generated directly but there is less incentive for gold sellers to bot RP. On the other hand, there is not much else left for them.
A lot of real players used gateway for practical professions because manual in game was a nightmare. Some portion of these real players will now feel discouraged and quit, unfortunately.
They could build the dice game back into a tavern in game or something.
What do you mean you tried? Are you joking? I never saw you try using captcha! It's specifically made to keep bots away AND it works on every platform! You tried nothing! You went into the meeting and the first idea was "just shut it down, i'm tired of this shi*". Getting the cowards way out again! First dropped armors on dungeons can't be sold, then remove coals from tarmalune and make them bound, then make another mod that is exactly the same as the other (daily quests ftw) and now this! You're just murdering yourself really!
Actually Captcha has been broken for years, we covered that in the other thread.
However my 2c :
!) Someone really needs to retrain the whole company in "Timescale and Resolution" handling including BASIC customer notification. 2) as @andorrabell and several others said there needs to be clear and above all FAIR placement of the Loyal gear, shepard and Thief in game, and PROMPT detailing and notification of what and how within a very small time scale. If it takes a month to implement fine, but the actual planned route has to be discolsed sooner rather than later... the way the notification for every step of this should have been.
On a side note lets go over the mechanisms and issues raised by this...
You claim Botting and strain on the game plus exploiting, and wish to combat it.
You were offered several times both simple ways that may have helped or routes the gamebase would accept, you were also offered several times by obviously qualified coders and developers help outside of a public forum.
You were "chinned" several times by various folk with vast experience in dealing with large scale public interaction on how poorly your issue handling and front-facing interactions were, and also requested by many of us that while we would understand that whatever the official reply was it may not be able to be mechanically detailed it would have to be factually fleshed out rather than a "fluff" piece.
End result...
Gateway closed, botters now fully in game causing stress on login and play servers.
Offers of help ignored ( if you were that worried there's a simple little thing called an NDA, I think I sign about 6 a year usually for things even less "proprietary" than Gateway would be ), suggestions by the gamerbase of how to alter gateway to still be useful and even counteract the impetus some players felt for botting due to profession tedium ignored.
As for the "official blog"... that's not even a Fluff Piece never mind a proper response to several points raised. The gateway is down, what harm would it have been to actually specify now which sections were being exploited... we don't need to know how, but knowing where and how badly would at least be a salve to some of us.
That... that however would be too courteous and gracious, instead we receive what seem to even a newer player like me the continual unending screed of "Tough, accept it, not saying nuffink" and as someone said nicely timed so everyone is gone out the office and no one can be questioned until Monday.
As I said in the other thread, if I tried that sort of timescale and communication practice in my line of work I'd never work again and/or be lynched by the crowd... yet at the same time considering some of the clients I've worked for in the past I know for a fact it's possible to make announcements without leaking anything unintended, even things like the simple fact that a certain game had a gold date way in advance of their own announcements because when you want to do a multiple site live launch across 3 countries you kind of need a few months lead time to confirm and set venues for it never mind said date.
What do you mean you tried? Are you joking? I never saw you try using captcha! It's specifically made to keep bots away AND it works on every platform! You tried nothing! You went into the meeting and the first idea was "just shut it down, i'm tired of this shi*". Getting the cowards way out again! First dropped armors on dungeons can't be sold, then remove coals from tarmalune and make them bound, then make another mod that is exactly the same as the other (daily quests ftw) and now this! You're just murdering yourself really!
@brun2000 Do a quick Google search for "Captcha and bots" and tell me what you see. There's plenty of software out there than can defeat captchas...it's non-sense to think that's all it would've taken.
Well there have been other suggestions. Let's not pretend this was the only way out. Longterm several systems surely need to be redesigned to make them less appealing for bots, but even short term you could have disabled / reworked some functions and kept the Gateway intact.
1) Disable VIP incentives on the Gateway 2) Disable the ability to post auctions on the Gateway 3) Limit the numbers of times per day to use the ZAX exchange on the Gateway per account 4) Limit the number of times you can start professions tasks per day based on their duration (shorter durations = less times) 5) Nerf the ability to acquire the Lightfood Thief and Companion Gear after each obtainment for a day. Meaning after your first get you are less likely to get another and much less likely to get a third after two and so on.
What's really bad is that the environment to bot professions and other stuff ingame is long set up and well developed. The only reason bots were using the Gateway is because it's more convenient. Don't think one professional botter will suffer. They will just switch back ingame. Devs only "nerf" the legit player with this, the bots will continue in another way.
And since the devs know that, it's safe to assume "bots" were not the only reason for this change.
So... Question. We know professions can be disabled, so why exactly are you shutting it down entirely when professions could be removed. This makes it much harder to check Guild players last time online and much harder to flip through characters to find things. Also it means no companion gear until you all get around to adding it to the loot table. It's already massively increased the prices on companion gear.
This also effectively kills the AH data for <font color="orange">banned website</font> which was a very helpful tool for many players.โโ
Comments
Dead๐ชNo information, gateway had been down for over two weeks without mention. Nothing said about how the companion gear will be earned now and no information about how this helps combat botting. How does this help anything anyway? Bots will go in game now that gateway's out of the game.
Will you next remove leadership all together?
Jeez
It is my my life style, my doctrine and my state of mind,
You fight well, but without focus and discipline, you will fall.
More threads by me / Click on it
My Support Warlock/Temptation Thread
-Stump
It's always a resources battle. You can't keep just throwing resources and time at a problem indefinitely. Sometimes you can't continue to put the resources into a losing battle, and a wise commander knows when to concede the field and call a tactical retreat--or cut off something that's costing more in resources than they can well afford.
It's called: to win a war, sometimes you have to concede a battle. The war on bots and other assorted undesireables in MMOs is about as old as MMOs themselves. They fought the good fight. It's done. The game will survive without the gateway, as it did before the gateway was even implemented.
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
What I'm concerned about is when they realize bots will move to in game will they remove in game leadership too?
It is my my life style, my doctrine and my state of mind,
You fight well, but without focus and discipline, you will fall.
More threads by me / Click on it
My Support Warlock/Temptation Thread
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
i miss the SCA it was funny game
Dead๐ชI can tell you exactly what will happen now. They killed gateway because of bots. You know what bots will do? MOVE IN GAME. Already, the past few days have been incredibly laggy and filled with SNRs and D/Cs because the bots are have automated in game professions for their bot armies.
So what does this change accomplish? Exactly nothing. Except hurting actual players and moving all the bots who were overloading gateway to overloading the actual game client.
I'm so happy that I've restarted WoW. At least they don't seem to abuse their players as happily as cryptic does.
You hold your breath on that. See if it helps.
The Harbingers' Forums - What Class Are You - Search The Neverwinter Wiki
Trust me, they did not try everything. They took the very easy way out because it profits them.
โ โ โ โ โ โ โ Gankdalf The Icehole โ โ โ โ โ โ โ
Outright horrible decision, that I can't possibly get behind from any reasonable angle.
Badly done, very very badly done, I am actually probably going to lose the currently second in command in my guild because the SCA was one of her favourite parts in this game.
I frown upon the extremely flawed arguments you used to excuse this terrible and user-unfriendly decision.
Featured Foundry Quest: Whispers of an Ancient Evil [v3] - NW-DQ4WKW6ZG
Foundry Quest: Harper Chronicles: Blacklake - NW-DCPA4W2Q5
This was a problem when AD was being generated directly but there is less incentive for gold sellers to bot RP.
On the other hand, there is not much else left for them.
A lot of real players used gateway for practical professions because manual in game was a nightmare.
Some portion of these real players will now feel discouraged and quit, unfortunately.
They could build the dice game back into a tavern in game or something.
Sopi SW Youtube channel pvp brickabrack
However my 2c :
!) Someone really needs to retrain the whole company in "Timescale and Resolution" handling including BASIC customer notification.
2) as @andorrabell and several others said there needs to be clear and above all FAIR placement of the Loyal gear, shepard and Thief in game, and PROMPT detailing and notification of what and how within a very small time scale. If it takes a month to implement fine, but the actual planned route has to be discolsed sooner rather than later... the way the notification for every step of this should have been.
On a side note lets go over the mechanisms and issues raised by this...
You claim Botting and strain on the game plus exploiting, and wish to combat it.
You were offered several times both simple ways that may have helped or routes the gamebase would accept, you were also offered several times by obviously qualified coders and developers help outside of a public forum.
You were "chinned" several times by various folk with vast experience in dealing with large scale public interaction on how poorly your issue handling and front-facing interactions were, and also requested by many of us that while we would understand that whatever the official reply was it may not be able to be mechanically detailed it would have to be factually fleshed out rather than a "fluff" piece.
End result...
Gateway closed, botters now fully in game causing stress on login and play servers.
Offers of help ignored ( if you were that worried there's a simple little thing called an NDA, I think I sign about 6 a year usually for things even less "proprietary" than Gateway would be ), suggestions by the gamerbase of how to alter gateway to still be useful and even counteract the impetus some players felt for botting due to profession tedium ignored.
As for the "official blog"... that's not even a Fluff Piece never mind a proper response to several points raised. The gateway is down, what harm would it have been to actually specify now which sections were being exploited... we don't need to know how, but knowing where and how badly would at least be a salve to some of us.
That... that however would be too courteous and gracious, instead we receive what seem to even a newer player like me the continual unending screed of "Tough, accept it, not saying nuffink" and as someone said nicely timed so everyone is gone out the office and no one can be questioned until Monday.
As I said in the other thread, if I tried that sort of timescale and communication practice in my line of work I'd never work again and/or be lynched by the crowd... yet at the same time considering some of the clients I've worked for in the past I know for a fact it's possible to make announcements without leaking anything unintended, even things like the simple fact that a certain game had a gold date way in advance of their own announcements because when you want to do a multiple site live launch across 3 countries you kind of need a few months lead time to confirm and set venues for it never mind said date.
*slow clap... reeeeaaaaalllllllllllyyyyyyyy sssssssllllllooooooowwwwwwww clap*
1) Disable VIP incentives on the Gateway
2) Disable the ability to post auctions on the Gateway
3) Limit the numbers of times per day to use the ZAX exchange on the Gateway per account
4) Limit the number of times you can start professions tasks per day based on their duration (shorter durations = less times)
5) Nerf the ability to acquire the Lightfood Thief and Companion Gear after each obtainment for a day. Meaning after your first get you are less likely to get another and much less likely to get a third after two and so on.
What's really bad is that the environment to bot professions and other stuff ingame is long set up and well developed. The only reason bots were using the Gateway is because it's more convenient. Don't think one professional botter will suffer. They will just switch back ingame. Devs only "nerf" the legit player with this, the bots will continue in another way.
And since the devs know that, it's safe to assume "bots" were not the only reason for this change.
This also effectively kills the AH data for <font color="orange">banned website</font> which was a very helpful tool for many players.โโ