Bots or Cryptic anti bot measures - what is more harmful to game ?

burkaanc

What do you believe causes more harm to your gameplay experience bots or anti botting measures by cryptic, such as leadership delay(thankfully removed), reduced RP drops in foundry, Dragon Hoard nerf, bound RP etc.

I believe that anti botting measures should never harm legit players, even if that means more botting, while botting should be reduced, punishing legit players for "crimes" they didnt commit is just unacceptable.

sentineltitania

Hate to say this... but Anti-Botting measures.

Bots actually gave everyone a chance to upgrade their stuff back then, even the casuals with the RP being so cheap. (Before they made the Hoard drops BoP). It's really sad to say, but it's what it is.

The Anti-Botting measures keep damaging the actual legit players and drive them into anger.

crixus8000

Bot's don't bother me. Sure it's annoying that players do it but it doesn't affect me as much as the botting measures do. As long as I could farm the same stuff as bots just slower I would be happy.

Plus they Kinda make the rp prices much more reasonable.

If cryptic want to stop bots then fine, but stop them...not the legit players.

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carrytiex

The excessive obsession of punishing players through supposedly trying to combat botters is detrimental as a game is for players enjoyment, and if you're focusing to much on way that lower this, then why should we play?

Bots on the other hand would destroy the economy if it weren't for the fact that the economy depends highly on them to keep moving in a way that is satisfactory for serious players. I've seen so much restrictions on players that I trust bots more than Cryptic to make the system work. if you can't even price your zen rp prices appropriate compared to their own rp/ad choices rather than player/bot choices, then how are we meant to rely on them for a stable economy without bots? All in all, bots are what I consider as bad in other games, but important for this one.

rayrdan

I honestly stopped caring :cool:
Its starting to be fun to see what they come up with.
In the end they will never kill bots for various reasons.

Just see the spam at the enclave...it would be easy to stop it definitely with a language filter... but still they are allowed to continue to spam

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schietindebux

1. Bots cause drop nerfs that bother legit players, while bots remain unaffected. You can't fight a botter with over 100 accounts. Any measure you take against someone like that has no effect over a 24h course because they can change accounts more often than a publisher can reasonably put up blocks in that same time segment. And these bots don't stop at 100 accounts.
2. Bots take away income from Cryptic. Less money=less assets to work on the game. Yes, blood rubies will always be expensive. But they were never meant to be the only alternative against botted drops either.
3. Bots control the market. While you think that may be a good thing, imagine how much AD you'd have to spend less if it wasn't for point 1 and you could farm your own RP and a reasonable rate instead of giving your AD to the bots.
4. Bots increase the load on the server. More instances for bots= less resources for instances with players on it= potential connection and lag issues and an increased requirement for money to keep the server playable.

So all in all I'd have to say bots are worse for the game than anything else. That's not to say that bad anti-bot measures are good either, but it all starts with bots and an -for whatever reason- unsuccessful fight against them directly.

I do know another way to handle it--->get rid of the AH

or make it like other mmo, reduce the possible places to put your offers into the AH to about 20 places a week for the hole account, so you only will be able to sell 20 stacks of xy a week from that account

or, like they already do as I wrote, just ban ppl who sell abnormal amounts of farming stuff, but this seems to be a semilegal kind of treatment since they ban ppl just suspicious exploiting the game with bots
one thing I really can´t understand
the ability to spam all channels by offering AD/gold/mats etc.
I mean, if I was the publisher I just would start to ban and conficate everything that is spammed over 5 channels offering cheap AD, just make it illegal selling AD out of zen store and conficate all these accounts and the things that are on this account, done

suicidalgodot

As it is, the current "cure" is far worse than the symptoms...

burkaanc

magenubbie wrote: »

Both are sides of the same coin. Bots must be fought. Failing to fight them directly results in drop nerfs. Drop nerfs result in more creative botting and unhappy players, who are secretly -and wrongfully- happy about the RP prices he bots create.

Here's a few things to think about before you say bots don't affect you:
1. Bots cause drop nerfs that bother legit players, while bots remain unaffected. You can't fight a botter with over 100 accounts. Any measure you take against someone like that has no effect over a 24h course because they can change accounts more often than a publisher can reasonably put up blocks in that same time segment. And these bots don't stop at 100 accounts.
2. Bots take away income from Cryptic. Less money=less assets to work on the game. Yes, blood rubies will always be expensive. But they were never meant to be the only alternative against botted drops either.
3. Bots control the market. While you think that may be a good thing, imagine how much AD you'd have to spend less if it wasn't for point 1 and you could farm your own RP and a reasonable rate instead of giving your AD to the bots.
4. Bots increase the load on the server. More instances for bots= less resources for instances with players on it= potential connection and lag issues and an increased requirement for money to keep the server playable.

So all in all I'd have to say bots are worse for the game than anything else. That's not to say that bad anti-bot measures are good either, but it all starts with bots and an -for whatever reason- unsuccessful fight against them directly.

there are a lot of better ways to fight bots,
smth like lair boss(as powerful as smth like 5man HE boss) kind of mobs as random spawns with better loot on map, smth that has strong special attacks that must be evaded, but weak auto attacks so normal players can kill them(TERA BAMs), but a bot(unless its a good one) would get wiped. simply transferring damage from monster autoattacks(hard to impossible to dodge depending on latency) to special power attacks(anybody playing action mmorpg should be able to dodge most of them) might help a lot
transfering RP from random drops to dungeons and quests(like vigilance quests rewards)
make stronger monsters drop better RP items
check bot patterns to check what else can be done to harm them without affecting normal players, instead of doing random changes - for example somebody entering instance 5x without finishing it is clearly a bot

there are few big design failures that led to a lot of these problems
1)dragon hoard was a failed design in the first place, it was a patch on the epic fail they introduced as artifacts and artifact equipment(not artifacts/artifact equipment itself, but too many pieces of it) it all but shouts "come bot this game" they should have added "bot special" to description
2)leadership is a failed design, in game currency should be earned by playing not gained from profession, professions should produce in game items, potions and stuff. and should be intelligent instead of this lazy mass producing of stuff like we have here
3)enchantment based gear progression instead of equipment based, if they never added enchants(radiants, azures etc) and there were just armor and weapon enchants game would have been much better off

beatannier

Especially this:

1. Daily Hoard drops limit
2. Daily gateway logins (notice ninja-nerf in last Patch NW.45.20150416c.8 to 256 (down from 500))
3. Random closing instances (how often while final boss fight)

makes me to vote for anti bot measures.

1. Bots used to switch accounts once the daily hoard limit is met and transfers RP beetween accounts aswell (BoA just causes to make more fake guilds), it only impacts casual players.
2. It only causes to make more fake accounts to avoid this limit.
3. This should never happen on fresh and fast (let it be <30 mins) runs, it only causes to make more bots as players want their reward, and the more they loose cause of closed instanced, the more bots are created.

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query523

I think we need to differentiate between bots for farming and profit and players botting out the more tedious game content to promote a character. Farming for profit hoards were already useless. Because they are BoA and only efficient for refining artifact equipment which is BoA. That is to say it is a non-traansferable currency. I am working here on the general assumption that the biggest bot complaint is the botting for profit as gold spam is really very irritating to the player and undercuts the zen value which is how PWE makes their money (to pay for servers and developers and maintainence and such). Botting for profit means you must bot either a) unbound RP or b) bound RP that can be used to refine unbound items.

torontodave

magenubbie wrote: »

1. Bots cause drop nerfs that bother legit players, while bots remain unaffected. You can't fight a botter with over 100 accounts. Any measure you take against someone like that has no effect over a 24h course because they can change accounts more often than a publisher can reasonably put up blocks in that same time segment. And these bots don't stop at 100 accounts.

So all in all I'd have to say bots are worse for the game than anything else.

Start banning botting IP's.

100 accounts are cheap for botters to get, its the 100 IP's that get costly. Reporting spam on accounts wont get us anywhere, reporting spam on IP's will.

I don't care about the individual RP farmer, I care about the IP's that are logging in/out of 300 accounts a day to gold spam protectors enclave with C_HEA P //NV E RWN T ER .,/ COM/ 1000/Peridot=/ $19USD

Once you've recognized that all the bots you're banning come from the same subnet, ban the subnet.

Once you've recognized that all the subnets you're banning come from the same source, ban the source C-block.

Once you've recognized that all the c-blocks you're banning come from the same country, *POST DELETED BY MODS*

argrosch

Without bots there is no need for anti-botting measures, so ->bots.

Although the botting measures cryptic implements are hurting players more than the bots. When the dropprates decrease the number of bots just increases and the income for them is just the same. While players, well...

burkaanc

torontodave wrote: »

Start banning botting IP's.

100 accounts are cheap for botters to get, its the 100 IP's that get costly. Reporting spam on accounts wont get us anywhere, reporting spam on IP's will.

I don't care about the individual RP farmer, I care about the IP's that are logging in/out of 300 accounts a day to gold spam protectors enclave with C_HEA P //NV E RWN T ER .,/ COM/ 1000/Peridot=/ $19USD

Once you've recognized that all the bots you're banning come from the same subnet, ban the subnet.

Once you've recognized that all the subnets you're banning come from the same source, ban the source C-block.

Once you've recognized that all the c-blocks you're banning come from the same country, *POST DELETED BY MODS*

do you really think ip ban does anything ? changing ip/mac address takes a minute + some legit player could get the banned ip address, even country ban wouldnt help, there are too many ways to avoid all that stuff

greatweaponarmy

The bots!!

Like omg they harm the game so much! We must take them down! YADADYADYAD!!!!

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burkaanc

magenubbie wrote: »

No point. Nothing a proxy can't fix. Besides, the huge amount of people who still live in the stone-age with a variable IP addy will be the people who will suffer for it. But they could look for accounts that were logged on from the same IP (or other similarities, there are dozens if you know what to look for) as spammers and start taking those out. Not the best method either, but it's better than what they do now. It would also mean a 100% increase in their workload, for which they don't have the manpower to keep up with.

stone age ? static ip for standard consumer is a waste if IP address, at least til the move to v6

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schietindebux

there are even mmorpg, that limited the chat, so no chat no spam, posting something means you should buy a coin, so no trashtalk anymore, no lfg, no goldsellers or ad sellers.....tbh you feel a little bit isolated in these games
I think the current changes are cräp, since you have huge ammounts of rp to farm , noone , who is metally sane would buy that much rp from zen store

setimoselo

The problem I see as a player is that there are moves being made by this developer team that we are assuming are for anti-botting measures.

For example, how in the world could you consider the dragon hoard nerf a anti-botting measure?
1. The bots farmed enchantments long before the dragon hoards came out
2. The dragon hoards made things bound to account
3. The dragon hoard enchantments actually made it easier for legit players to avoid bots (we could get things ourselves for free)

That move in itself was clearly an nerf and had no noble intentions from an competent team. A competent team would see nothing good could come from limiting that enchantment except to force people to buy those <sniped but they really are a rip off> blood crystals.

Bots can be bad for the game but there are games out there that handled the problem better. Cryptic seems to be using our bots assumption as an excuse to nerf our actual game play. Thats why I voted "anti-botting" measures.

rollingonit

setimoselo wrote: »

The problem I see as a player is that there are moves being made by this developer team that we are assuming are for anti-botting measures.

For example, how in the world could you consider the dragon hoard nerf a anti-botting measure?
1. The bots farmed enchantments long before the dragon hoards came out
2. The dragon hoards made things bound to account
3. The dragon hoard enchantments actually made it easier for legit players to avoid bots (we could get things ourselves for free)

That move in itself was clearly an nerf and had no noble intentions from an competent team. A competent team would see nothing good could come from limiting that enchantment except to force people to buy those <sniped but they really are a rip off> blood crystals.

Bots can be bad for the game but there are games out there that handled the problem better. Cryptic seems to be using our bots assumption as an excuse to nerf our actual game play. Thats why I voted "anti-botting" measures.

I said a long time ago; they would use bots as a red herring, to implement changes like this. It was obviously heading that way.

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ironzerg79

I just want to add that not all botters are gold farmers. There were (are) large numbers of "legitimate" players using bot programs to farm up RP.

I firmly believe bots hurts the game, but so does a mechanic (the current RP system) which encourages people find mechanisms to supplant it. I personally feel like then entire artifact equipment system needs to be overhauled.

vaelynx

schietindebux wrote: »

I do know another way to handle it--->get rid of the AH

or make it like other mmo, reduce the possible places to put your offers into the AH to about 20 places a week for the hole account, so you only will be able to sell 20 stacks of xy a week from that account

or, like they already do as I wrote, just ban ppl who sell abnormal amounts of farming stuff, but this seems to be a semilegal kind of treatment since they ban ppl just suspicious exploiting the game with bots
one thing I really can´t understand
the ability to spam all channels by offering AD/gold/mats etc.
I mean, if I was the publisher I just would start to ban and conficate everything that is spammed over 5 channels offering cheap AD, just make it illegal selling AD out of zen store and conficate all these accounts and the things that are on this account, done

That's stupid. AH is the most reliable way to get any AD, as well as the best way to get a lot of equipment and random necessary things. Plus, it's fun.

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feanor70118

I'm only voting 'anti-botting measures' because the ones in place are badly designed and hurt legitimate players - and I am not convinced that they are, in fact, anti-botting measures rather than anti-player measures at all.
The idea of limited DHEs' daily drop or by player time was the worst possible solution to the idea of bots exploiting them. Bots had already largely been stopped from exploiting them by binding items to account, no auto-pickup and drops disappearing after a certain time.
On the other hand, botters take up game resources, screw up balance among players, and undermine the long-term longevity of a free MMO, so by all means do everything to destroy them without harming legit players. This would start, by the way, with putting an actual spam filter on chat that hunts down and bans the spammers. And ll it takes is finding a few actual botters, rather than some people farming on days they have nothing else to do, to figure out how bots behave and to start really banning them. Cryptic's current measures are poorly designed, lazy and hurt players.
Three of my 4 pieces of artifact gear are legendary, and I got there with brains and effort instead of by cheating with a bot.
Of course, nearly all that effort was before the idiotic nerf to DHEs. That nerf hurts new players worse because they can't benefit from effort they put in before the change (yet another reason the nerf was one of the dumbest things they could have done).

burkaanc

magenubbie wrote: »

Agreed. Your -was it yours? I'm not sure, but I think it was- XP alternative would have solved a lot of the bot issues. Especially if also applied to enchantments. I guess Cryptic can't find a way to make money that way, even though we came up with plenty.

exp boosts

and to prevent bots from abusing exp when leveling enchants they could make it so if you chose to use exp for leveling enchant it becomes bound to account + additional RP rewards from every dungeon boss(so ppl who cant kill last boss still get smth valuable) and ppl get 2 ways to level artifacts - either grind quests for exp or run dungeons for RP

cryptic makes money from both exp boosts and direct sales of RP(though rubies are waaaaay overpriced for the number of RP needed) they should go for like 1/5 of their price at most

helpimblindinrl

Bots have only ever amused me whether they were camping the arcane reservoir, trapped behind the gate out in rothe valley, or endlessly killing the same mobpack out in black lake.I don't look at zone chat and its no great effort for me to block them if they should talk in trade or lfg.

While doing their inane bot nonsense they made refining points affordable. That meant I could upgrade my gear. Then they made the rp bound, that was monumentally irritating but at least you could get there through grinding and saving. Now you can't even do that. Finishing artifact equipment without an absurd amount of ad or real world cash is like a joke about xeno's padadox.

At least the botters have made regular rp cheap again. We all buy the cheap 99 stacks and we're all grateful for them because we all know exactly how tedious it is without them.

I think cryptic could go a long way making strong group content rather than trying to make the game economy harder on everyone.

grimah

I like bots.

Without bots the prices of refinement would too expensive and alienate much of the playerbase. And because cryptic introduced lots more artifacts and did not increase the acquirement of refinement stones the prices would be absurd if there were no bots, they are an important part of our current economy, and no doubt alot of the community would be disgruntled if it changed.