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akromatik
Member Posts: 1
Greetings, adventurers!
I recently received some interesting news that I thought I'd share with you all
We know that dealing with cheaters and exploiters is frustrating to everyone out there who plays by the rules. As fellow gamers we experience that frustration too, and as a company, we strive to make sure that the integrity of our games is preserved as much as possible for all to enjoy.
While we may not make an announcement every time we ban a series of accounts for violating our Terms of Service, we want to reassure everyone that we are always on the lookout for individuals or groups who may be breaking these rules. Using third-party programs to automate gameplay (i.e., “bots”) is expressly prohibited by our Terms of Service. To that end, we have recently identified and banned several thousand accounts for botting in Neverwinter.
As always we will continue to cultivate a safe, fair and enjoyable online experience for all of our valued players.
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Dealing with bots is a daily battle so I know it is not often mentioned but every once in a while these reassurances and bits of news regarding actions taken against malicious users is truly appreciated.
I'm not sure that banning the bots is worth it. At some level I think the bots are needed because they pushed down the prices in AH to reasonable levels. But thats ofc Cryptics fault by making everything BoP and not releasing new dungeons like CN so people can farm and get AD to afford the crazy prices.
But I also don't like the idea of people botting and making money. But that seems like an necessary evil to keep the players happy with the system we have now.
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hahaha! glad to hear it!
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I just hope the process for detecting and nuking bots allows for appeals. There are RARE instances of legitimate players being banned for botting in previous MMOs I have played. Again, this is a rare occurence, but it can happen.
Just playing a bit of devil's advocate here, based on my experiences and by no means am I attempting to speak negatively of the company!
myles08807 said, "Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling . . . we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!" . . . Now, get off my lawn, you kids!"
pointsman said, "I don't rue the game. In fact I don't feel any regret for the game at all."
looomis said, "I don't like people changing to alts and then bragging about their mains like schizophrenic role players."
Then ban'm!!!
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Indeed, many true bots will still complain, but sometimes legitimate players accidentally get banned. It is pretty rare, but it can happen, unless Cryptic has some failsafe way to ensure accounts are botting. It is not always easy to discern.
myles08807 said, "Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling . . . we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!" . . . Now, get off my lawn, you kids!"
pointsman said, "I don't rue the game. In fact I don't feel any regret for the game at all."
looomis said, "I don't like people changing to alts and then bragging about their mains like schizophrenic role players."
This is cruel and unusual...
And I like it!
Thanks for your consideration - (even though it likely won't be considered)...
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We now have "the great divide" between the old players who already have the good enchants and artifacts thanks to the former low prices on RP items, and the newer/future players who don't have a chance at all at obtaining those same items at any point due to the insane prices of RP items or the shear grind involved at obtaining the items manually over time. Sure, they can eventually grind out an artififact to purple (not a big deal, but still far more significant than it used to be) or get a few Rank 8's maybe, but if you ever want to do the same thing on even a second toon watch out, you got months/years of shear grind ahead of you- or spend literally hundreds of real dollars to get RP items from the zen store or ZAX for AD. Which is just stupid.
This isn't such a huge deal for PvE, as getting a 14/15k+ gearscore is entirely possible from dungeon grinds & boons and a little extra effort, but 16k+? Greater or Perfect weapon/armor enchants? HA! Not a chance at PvP versus high GS "already-have-their-great-gear" players.
It's obvious that the Zen store already provides straight up advantage with some things like certain companions, but to say it's just "convienient" to spend money on an abysmal amount of RP for how much actual $ is spent is ludicrous.
For a start at the very least do something else in Dread Ring & IWD like you did in Sharandar and create a reason to keep going back there and spending the currency they gave. Shar giving Feywild enchants is great. Dread Ring gives you a minimal amount of RP from the daily dungeon. IWD until just recently was useful to grind HE's for R4/R5's but you already killed off that good thing. You should not only bring that back but add something else.
TL;DR: In your fervour to combat the bots don't forget that real people also play this game and would like the opportunity to advance their characters through actual means. If you destroy all of those means there is no hope or sight of progression and very little reason to continue playing.
Yay only several hundred thousands to go, not too mention the daily new ones they created since, keep it up.
If they do that, they will probably lose half of the neverwinter population lol, When I run into a well-geared player and ask how they farmed their gear, many have told me they used gold sellers...
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Check out my foundry, titled "Akro's Gone Wacko", featuring our ex-CM Akromatik!: NW-DL8J7BY5T
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This is very true. Obviously it's good to deal with bots, noone wants people benefiting from automated work while other people have to grind it out for themselves. They've been benefiting way more than they should've been able to. However they used to provide rp at a rate that still took a very significantly long amount of effort to actually get and what I'd like is a legitimate way to refine stuff to the same level. A lot of the stuff not provided my bots is either a big hassle to refine or extremely cost inefficient.
There's also mess-ups of the new refinement system such as normal fey blessings costing 80k in the old system, but 300k in the new system. That's a huge cost increase for a system that was meant to benefit us. The coal ward supply being cut off also reduces any of the benefits of the new system and makes entry requirements significantly higher.
Most of the R5s are from people who bought stacks when they are cheap and resold individually to make a small profit on each enchants - this supply will eventually run out, and it will become increasingly hard just to gather a large enough quantity of enchants/refining points to actually do anything
|| Axios Guild Leader || Neverwinter Trade Forum Moderator || Infernal Paragons ||
Check out my foundry, titled "Akro's Gone Wacko", featuring our ex-CM Akromatik!: NW-DL8J7BY5T
Erza Moonstalker | Lara Moonstalker | Julie Marvell | Erza Moonhunter | Annie Hellangel | Jenn Moonstalker
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If mark drops were more frequent I wouldn't have a single complaint.
But no matter what there is no justification to botting.
If you bot you get banned. If you buy from third party sites you should get banned.
Deal with the game as it is or don't play. Ask for changes but never go outside the bounds of the game to get what you want. The only system which is truly nonamiable is an unfair system.
I play by the rules and I expect everybody else to as well. If you don't it hurts me as I am the one dealing with the brundt end of the consequence stick as the speed of advancement only become a problem when people bypass it by violating the rules.
I'm not a huge fan of the pay for play time model but as far as I am concerned if you are at least paying PWE/Cryptic the game is going to get better for me so it's not horrible...
But if you are putting money in bot pockets I don't want you here.
People actually tell you in-game that they have violated the game rules?! That sure shows either arrogance, immaturity, or some combination of the two!
myles08807 said, "Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling . . . we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!" . . . Now, get off my lawn, you kids!"
pointsman said, "I don't rue the game. In fact I don't feel any regret for the game at all."
looomis said, "I don't like people changing to alts and then bragging about their mains like schizophrenic role players."
It is the only way to stop botting though. Make it not profitable. Unless they do this, banning bots is the equivalent of of saying "now now don't do that", it doesn't really do anything. Even Blizzard with it's Warden system doesn't manage to stop bots from banning botters. It's a hard choice because you will lose some players going after those that buy from 3rd parties, which is why it isn't done, but it's the only thing that has a chance of being effective.
Some people bought from 3rd party sites. Those people don't necessarily affect you in anyway. They'd still be able to pay for legendaries. But some just used their legitimately earned AD to buy stacks of rank 5s on the AH. They didn't violate any rules, they just picked the cheapest most convenient way to rank up artifacts. Without the bots, it's an inconvenience mess if we ignore the cost increases. Tbh even with the bots it was more of an inconvenience that it should be. You should be able to put a stack of wards in the slot when upgrading so that you don't need to keep reslotting it, you should be able to put a stack of rp items in the refinements slots. That would be life so much easier instead of something that is just horrible to endure. Most people don't notice how bad it is since they won't get past epic artifacts which isn't even 10% of the way to legendary. They see the easy progression up to that point and don't see an issue. The high end players don't like the latest changes at all.
It's understandable why they did it at least to me, but if they wanted a nicely working system, they should aim at proving rp in some way at a similar progression rate in a convenient way. We shouldnt have had to turn to bots for convenience. Basically we need more rp put into the system if people are to ever to be able to compete with those that just get out their wallet and spend absurd amounts. It isn't a requirement to do well in pve or even pvp. But it is if you want to stand a chance against those top players if you get matched against them.
I've personally bought some stacks of rank 5s myself. It took time to get the AD, but it was super convenient. It wasn't really for me to decide how the rank 5s were obtained which most of us probably didn't realise they used an exploit though it makes sense now. I did question it but others seemed to think that it was just a way to sell a lot of supply. Basically I want rp and the game is kind of stingy if you want legendaries in your lifetime and it's not very convenient. Epics do a good enough job for the majority, but they're still inferior and it's not entirely realistic to catch up to those that do have legendaries already.
It's understandable. It already costs way too much to max out your character artificially. It's not something I've wanted to do for risking both my account and card details though. Plus even then it costs a lot...
From all the posters, only hfgtfsdfs gets it.
Congratulations.
Now, to explain further:
Botting is bad.
PWI/Cryptic set prices and lack of true MMO farming possibilities are way, way worse.
It is an issue of practicality: we should go with the lesser evil.
no one is happy about price increases. We should all be happy people who break the rules and exploit the system are found and penalized though.
If low prices come from something that is against the rules, i generally won't purchase it, just like i wouldn't purchase a "hot" stereo from someone who broke the rules of society.
It's a morality issue, not a monetary issue.
Second, to people who are complaining that this will drive up the price of enchantments (which it has): there is a flipside to this. All of the enchantments YOU acquire throughout your normal gaming will be worth considerably more. This will enable the average player to acquire weapons and armor much more easily as selling off a handful of rank 4's that you've acquired will net you 2-3 times as much as before.
After Crypitic closed the loophole that allowed people to use the old refining system enchantment prices skyrocketed. I was actually happy about that. Now I could run around Icewind Dale doing Heroic Encounters and collect all of the Rank 4 and Rank 5 Black Ice enchantments that dropped and sell them for a decent amount. I felt like the time I invested in farming was now actually a viable way to earn AD, whereas before, when a stack of 99 R5's sold for 70k it was not at all worth it.
Unfortunately, Cryptic then had to go and nerfed enchantment drop rates in IWD. One step forward, two steps back.
Please, Cryptic. Provide a bot-proof way of farming enchantments. One that will allow players to make good progress on their upgrading so long as they are willing to invest the time and effort to do so. Currently there is no such a way which is why many are lamenting the banning of bots.
Of course you can.
Let me provide an example. ANy first year physics student can tell if a simple platform bridge will collapse under a given weight without actually going out and building it.
1) I wholeheartedly disagree. The refining system is borked thanks to a lack of refining points. It takes 656,640 refining points to upgrade 8 lesser enchants into one perfect. That's 3,648 rank 5 enchants, or 10944 rank 4 enchants, or 32,832 rank 3 enchants.
Read recent patch notes. Rank 4 and 5 drop rates have been slashed across the board, and profession nodes are now useless. How long do you think it'll take someone to find some combination of 10944 rank 4 enchants and 32,832 rank 3s? Short answer: It's not gonna happen.
2) I wholeheartedly agree.
3) I disagree with your first sentence, but agree with the rest. If you see something that's promising but needs improvement by all means suggest away! "Deal or go away" doesn't work.
4) I wholeheartedly agree.
5) I somewhat agree with your first sentence and wholeheartedly agree with your second. Giving Cryptic money is no guarantee things will get better. How much money has Cryptic made since leaving beta? Oodles, and yet PvE is in worse shape and more unbalanced now than when it went live. Given the current status on preview shard this won't change anytime soon. Thank you PvP for ruining a great PvE experience! [/soapbox]