bots are bringing the economy down...

krisst0f

One of the neat ideas about this game was the market economy... It was very interesting to watch how prices fluctuated since beta and even how specific items became an alternative currency (keys, wards) to bypass the AH cut. Talk about emerging behaviors...

Unfortunately, in the last few months, and in particular since module 2 releases and the heavy farming of skill nodes by bots, I feel the economy is in jeopardy.

Go to the Auction House and search for "enchantment, rank 5" of any kind and you will see pages and pages of auctions of 99x the same items, mostly by the same users. Bots clearly are farming like crazy and ruin it for all of us.
Pretty soon I suspect parties of bots will farm dungeons to collect blue marks from these nodes... That will be the end of the "economy" Cryptic have brought us and should be proud of...

With all the data that is being collected, it should be pretty easy to detect these patterns. Maybe it is time to invest in a team dedicated to counter these bots and bring them down at the first infraction, including deleting (yes deleting) these items...

added: I suspect these are the same users that spam the chat rooms advertizing $ for AD btw...

Any comments?

tang56

Personally I think the blue marks are too stupidly rare compared to the epic marks so I'm fiiine with bots farming them.

paigegabriel

Considering Neverwinter is a 'FTP' game, I doubt they will make dedicated moves towards hunting down and coming up with teams and ideas to combat the botting system. Yes, it is easy to detect a botter (in PvP AND PvE), but as there is nothing implimented to report obvious bot accounts (so and [email]so@rrhhtttjjekkelwlwwl@generic.com[/email], for example) the most we can do is ignore it; there is no world PvP to shut down botters, but through personal experience I've found sending a friend request scrambles and freezes most bot programs. Good luck.

sockmunkey

You dont even have to search the AH. Just do a search for Goblin warrens. It seems to be the new farming place. For the last few weeks there have been a consistent 100+ level 60 rogues hanging out there.

rollingonit

The suggestions about making the skill nodes lootable by the whole party, while helpful for legit players to not get into some race to open them, it could allow parties of bots to do the same.

degraafination

Here are my responses...

1) I'm not for or against botting/macros/farming. Some people do it, others don't. I, personally, am not smart enough or tech savvy enough to do it. It's also against the TOS.

2) Botters make items cheaper. Get that? Cheaper. Less expensive. More supply and less demand makes items more affordable.

3) I truly believe the new refining system was made to combat botters putting up stacks of Rank 5s. Now, there's so much involved now in getting enchantments higher that we're going to be seeing lots more stacks of Rank 4s. The stacks of 99 5s will soon be bought out.

My two coppers.

pitshade

The 99 stacks of enchants has happened before. It persisted awhile and apparently Cryptic made some changes and they disappeared. The economy took a hit for awhile but slowly rebounded. Before Module 2, they were starting to reach the level they were before the stacks appeared. Given that people bought the stacks, broke them up and sold them individually for a profit and that rank 5s were so easy to farm post Feywild when mobs started dropping rank 4s, it took a long time for the number of 5s to decrease.

As for individual nodes being farmed, they've done that since Beta. Every so often Cryptic does something and shuts it down, then the botters find some other dungeon instance to do it with.

Frankly, I despise the botters. Sure, they make things cheaper, but they also make it harder for people to earn AD spending time in the game. With a 40 hour work week, I could make 2-3 rank 5s a night. There's no way I could sell the efforts of my work for as low as they did and finally I just switched to farming enchants for my own use.

aaronjf

krisst0f wrote: »

One of the neat ideas about this game was the market economy... It was very interesting to watch how prices fluctuated since beta and even how specific items became an alternative currency (keys, wards) to bypass the AH cut. Talk about emerging behaviors...

Unfortunately, in the last few months, and in particular since module 2 releases and the heavy farming of skill nodes by bots, I feel the economy is in jeopardy.

Go to the Auction House and search for "enchantment, rank 5" of any kind and you will see pages and pages of auctions of 99x the same items, mostly by the same users. Bots clearly are farming like crazy and ruin it for all of us.
Pretty soon I suspect parties of bots will farm dungeons to collect blue marks from these nodes... That will be the end of the "economy" Cryptic have brought us and should be proud of...

With all the data that is being collected, it should be pretty easy to detect these patterns. Maybe it is time to invest in a team dedicated to counter these bots and bring them down at the first infraction, including deleting (yes deleting) these items...

added: I suspect these are the same users that spam the chat rooms advertizing $ for AD btw...

Any comments?

I don't know what rock you have been hiding under, but bots have been an issue since just after "open beta". They have been a nuisance and will continue to be until PWE/Cryptic does something to stop them. So far, reporting the same handle w/ infinite 99 stacks of enchants has done nothing since day one (apparently an above poster thinks something had been done to hinder them. I must have quit before that happened so just talking about my play exp). Not sure what more needs to be done on the botters side to get some attention/discipline..

walk2k

the stacks of 99 enchants are not from bots, they are left over from the so-called "Caturday" duping exploit in beta. as you can see they are back at it again with the new Marks, possibly by duping the leadership boxes, nobody really knows how they are doing it this time (and those that do are not saying obviously..)

mconosrep

walk2k wrote: »

the stacks of 99 enchants are not from bots, they are left over from the so-called "Caturday" duping exploit in beta. as you can see they are back at it again with the new Marks, possibly by duping the leadership boxes, nobody really knows how they are doing it this time (and those that do are not saying obviously..)

Or it could just be that botters with X thousand invocation/leadership accounts invocation for coal wards happened to get X thousand level 60 gift packs.....

imsmithy

Went to do Sharandar Dailies today , there were literally dozens and dozens if not hundreds of what I can only assume to be bots spamming the arcane reservoir to spam the profession nodes and regular chest in there, go there and stand at the woman who gives you the arcane reservoir quest for a couple of minutes and you'll see what kind of bot problem we have .

beckylunatic

imsmithy wrote: »

Went to do Sharandar Dailies today , there were literally dozens and dozens if not hundreds of what I can only assume to be bots spamming the arcane reservoir to spam the profession nodes and regular chest in there, go there and stand at the woman who gives you the arcane reservoir quest for a couple of minutes and you'll see what kind of bot problem we have .

This has been going on since before the module launch. I don't really know how else to report it since it's not a problem with an individual.

I figure they're just going for the first node, since it's arcana and the vast majority of the bots are CWs.

imsmithy

beckylunatic wrote: »

This has been going on since before the module launch. I don't really know how else to report it since it's not a problem with an individual.

I figure they're just going for the first node, since it's arcana and the vast majority of the bots are CWs.

Oh haha today's the very first time I ever noticed it , then again it's the first time I've ever really stopped there for any amount of time because I was talking to a guildy , but yeah , not a individual , whole parties of bots are doing it , so many of them .

dzaims

Pardon my ignorance, not being a pro-level gamer, but are these 'bots' you're referring to actual scripts being run, or just poor, sleep-deprived game farmers?

walk2k

dzaims wrote: »

Pardon my ignorance, not being a pro-level gamer, but are these 'bots' you're referring to actual scripts being run, or just poor, sleep-deprived game farmers?

they are scripts. google it.......

but even bots dont get 99 stacks of green marks in the first 2-3 days. the dupe exploit is back, question is will PW do anything about it. last time they only rolled back 6 hours or something after everyone and their mother was doing it. I have a feeling the exploiters will be more careful to keep their secret this time.....

mconosrep

walk2k wrote: »

the dupe exploit is back, question is will PW do anything about it. last time they only rolled back 6 hours or something after everyone and their mother was doing it. I have a feeling the exploiters will be more careful to keep their secret this time.....

If there is a dupe exploit then smart exploiters would only use it at times like this wen they can maximize their earnings.

zebular

. . . . . The discussions of exploits and exploiters are not allowed on the forums. Instead, report such bad behavior through the proper methods as outlined in the Rules of Conduct, Section III. Thanks!