rapticorMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,078Arc User
With the release of Module 6 I've been looking for reasons to even keep bothering with Neverwinter. Earning a bit of AD via Gateway was about the only thing that was keeping me interested. Now that's gone and so am I. I will not be playing this game, or spending any more money on Zen, while the Leadership profession remains removed from the Gateway.
Thank you Cryptic for freeing up whatever time I was spending with Neverwinter so I can spend it on games that don't seek to punish their players with every module/expansion release or patch.
I really enjoyed NW when it first came out but those days are long gone. Now everything is designed around getting players to spend as much money as possible. It's like a mobile game disguised as a PC game.
congratz with this leadership remove from gateway you make the in-game server become laggy because of bot now operate in-game
good luck with your ZEN selling i hope cryptic got the money they wanted to make when they make this decisions, but it's not gonna be my money for sure
RIP NEVERWINTER, it's about time to move on
Not Epic enough to have my posts on the the thread removed. (Thanks, lewstelamon01. You're the only one cowardly enough to do it, the way it was done.) I wish I kept a copy of it. Wait til I finish the "Ballad of Neverwinter", 'cos that's going up on YouTube. :P Guess Cryptic doesn't want the nOObs to know the truth. Makes sense, though. They've come across as the bitchy girlfriend that can't take any criticism.
Everyone, it's a money grab. That's all. It "kills" the botters (not realizing they have MASS surplus of raw AD) and forces genuine players to buy Zen. The economy is inflated, but it's due to the ridiculously RP requirements, bad choices and bugs.
Weapon and Armor enchants REQUIRE a coal at each upgrade. Enchants and Runestones require Pres Wards, but the RNG (Random Generator) has been buggy for well over a year, so your Success Percentages aren't accurate. I have the excel sheets to prove it. I know it, you know it and they know it. Artifacts require INSANE amount of RP to level, as do Artifact Equipment, but if you want to play with the big boys, you have to get it. If you don't have the AD or RP, to the Zen market you go.
Take the old T2-3 armor, for example. When Sharandar came out, the new armor was marginally better than what we had, but the cost to purchase, once again to quote Andy, "was astounding." Nobody bothered with it. Then, Dread Ring came along with their gear. Guess what? Same problem: marginally better stats, but not worth the cost in grinding to purchase. Then, came IWD. Now, THAT armor was worth replacing your old gear with, but since we didn't bite before, with the previous mods, they FORCE you to CONSTANTLY grind to get black ice to keep it "powered." That, in turn, requires you to give up precious professions slots you need for leadership to get AD, to refine Black Ice. Now, unless you've been in, from the beginning, like I have and have 48 heroes spread across 6 toons, that's not a viable option for you to keep up Black Ice refinement and make your AD quota. Can't make your AD quota to get the HIGHLY expensive Refinement Stones required to upgrade your gear, go to the Zen store.
But honestly, ask yourselves, what's in the Zen market you REALLY need? Once you get your Ioun Stone and your mount, the only thing you need to get are coals and pres wards. Both are fairly inexpensive, per a game standpoint, but the amounts required to coin a phrase from Andy, "astounding." I'm not going to drop 50$ for 150,000 RP to level some item in a game, that in 6 months will be obsoleted to make room for the new stuff. I'm not going to buy more companions, as I have all the ones I already want, other than the Lightfoot Thief, but I've given up trying to get that one. I have Ioun Stones for the 2 toons I play, but I'm not about to buy more for the four other toons I have, 'cos thanks to the Damage/HP increase to mobs in Mod6, they won't survive. I play to enjoy it, not to get frustrated. I have a Heavy Howler, I don't need another mount.
The prices for coals, pres wards, GMoPs, etc. are ALL DEFINED by Cryptic, not "the market." There was a time when a coal cost 250k on the AH. Can't have that, so they made them BoA. Greater Vorpals, R10s, etc cost an arm and a leg, due to the INSANE requirements to MAKE them. That's all defined by Cryptic. *NOBODY*, not even PWE is going to sell a product for LESS than it cost to make. It's not going to happen. So, until R10 enchants don't cost 2 million minimum to make, the cost isn't going to do down. If Cryptic didn't define the market, why do GMoP go for more on the AH, than they go through the in-game store? People NEED that AD, so they're NOT going to sell something for LESS than it's worth on the AH and there are actually people STUPID enough to buy them from the AH. On the AH, a GMoP should go for 70-80k, NOT 110k-115k, like they do. Do the math. The person selling STILL gets the 100k it's worth and there are people BUYING them.
imho you should be working on replacing ad from leadership to in game rewards, passive afk profession shouldnt be bringing ad to game. leadership could be bringing RP and stuff, but new AD in the market should be brought by playing - preferably by low and mid end players, while high end players bring gear to trade for that ad. to reduce costs for playing ppl there should be a chance for acc bound marks of potency in dungeon reward chests, and unbound as a boss drop (green for below 70 dungeons, rare for t1 and epic for t2) with bazaar setting a limit to the price
I think I will just move on to Skyforge. I love D&D very much, especially the early-mid 80s advanced style. This game to me has begun to punish the regular or pay to play player base while trying to control "botting" way too much. I suggest your devs and tech figure out another alternative. You have bashed and nerfed the regular player trying to get and strive for what they need into nothing after implementing it yourselves on good intentions. I will move on...HAMSTER on this game....Mod 6 and your lack of listening to player feedback still at this point in time made my decision. Take care noobs to the design of a $ making MMO. You all have a lack luster group there or it would show,. Mod7 is trash.
This is another in a series of well intentioned and poorly thought out changes to "fix" the economy. This change WILL reduce the amount of AD in circulation. It WILL lower AH prices on items. And while those intentions are good (although I seriously doubt they are motivated by anything other than trying to get more of our IRL money into investing in Zen). It will ALSO make Gateway essentially useless for most dedicated players who already have their Professions maxed. And, worst of all, it appears to us to be another giant EFF YOU to your players.
Over the past few months, you've decimated the ability to progress gear. You killed the drop rate of refinement items for reasons that are unfathomable and were never explained. Then you made a snap change without considering the consequences and made it WAY TOO easy. Then you hamstrung it again...Slap ouch. You raised the time it takes to complete leadership tasks to effectively make them less profitable....slap ouch. You made the best PvP gear in the game (the stuff that takes weeks of dedicated effort to grind out AND waste tons of resources investing in Black Ice to level 5 to get and make) and you GIVE IT AWAY. Now you decide to make the gateway a much less useful tool for those of us who access it from work to try to get AD. You guys are making some AMAZINGLY poor decisions from a PR and gameplay perspective. Coupled with your inability to produce well planned, tested and executed updates, you guys should be bending over backwards to keep folks happy, NOT alienating your core.
What this change won't do is stop farming from the professionals. They will simply modify the tools they have been using in other MMOs for years will now consume even more server resources by constantly logging in and out to tend to their farms. You think the daily evening lag spikes are bad now? imagine them around the clock as the servers are treated to a steady load of mindless bots logging in, logging out, logging in, logging out...
I urge you to reconsider this change. You need help in coming up with a solution to the problem, LAY OUT THE PROBLEM AS YOU SEE IT AND ASK THE COMMUNITY FOR SUGGESTIONS. Contrary to what zone chat makes it appear, there are some very smart folks who play the game and would love to see it stay around. Don't keep shafting the folks who like your game...ultimately, you guys are the ones who end up suffering.
Dittos, dittos and dittos. I had my own rant but this is so on target it bears being quoted over and over. This is bigger than just the Gateway issue, as Forgottenshado so eloquently points out.
Well, this thread has a common thread, so I'll toss what might be a curve ball (4 pages of the same post is a bit too much for me atm) The gateway was Neverwinter's unique thing, and leadership is the only path that has reasonable long-duration tasks. So that's the one I go to when passing out and/or when work is getting stressed. I would be okay with captcha-style verification for any AD related tasks, or even any leadership related tasks. That would put a dent in the gateway botters while still allowing those of us who legit use it to still have the same access. And, to make sure I fit in with the forum, who decided the on the 3 max for everything but gather and craft/forge/etc? I could see the rare tasks having the limit, and some of the high level tasks, but having the vary the low level work is annoyingly worthless, IMO. As to the potential changes to leadership, I would recommend reviewing the rare leadership tasks. There's maybe 3-4 that are even close to worth it. Why waste so much time on creating completely useless or wasteful tasks?
It really amazes me to read so many posts of people that are clueless about programming language, they make these wild assumptions, uninformed, uneducated opinions about bots and about what they can and can not do.
The bots that are farming AD are a web based designed and coded for Browsers that run HTML, JAVA and CSS and so on, they can be programmed to mimic any web based application that runs of a gateway server, even mimic human movement of what we would do with a keyboard and mouse.
Most people don't even realise there are 100's of billions of bots (spiders) running through the Internet every day preforming the most basic search engine tasks of someone looking at cars for sale, to some of the most complex database serve commands that require calculations in nano second for complex multi tasked processing.
It doesn't matter if you add in extra login measures to enter the neverwinter gateway, bots through careful coding will and can access browser based server gateways by bi-passing such basic measurements.
These farming bots are web based scripts with command-lines to perform the same takes we would if we were manually using the gateway ourselves to work on our professions, but to repeat the action over and over.
So before you say well ban the users using these bots, explain to me how do you think Cryptic Games are going to find out how which user is using a bot that is enbeded into the web browser performing the same tasks we would, if logged in ourselves to the neverwinter gateway.
Do you think Cryptic is going sit there and try hack every account users PC or Mac to see who has a bot script installed on their browser just like any other normal based web script or plugin. Don't forget a smart bot developer most likely knows how to Mask their IP, or rotate it, or even completely hide it in may other forms, so throwing out the suggestion, get someone to look at the IP Addresses on the game server(s) to see who is spamming in game chat windows or even using bots, these AD bot farmers have most likely now covered their tracks in this digital world. Killing of one IP that could be fake will not solve the problem.
They only way to stop these bots from farming professions for AD is to create a VPN through a Citrix base client with a rotating RASC KEY, costing $100's of 10000's to setup for developer and even a cost to the end user (the gamer), but than you would haven't a web based gateway server any more giving all gamers access to their neverwinter account.
So before you start tapping out letters on your keyboard to give your amazing insight on how Cryptic Games should take care of the people are using bots to farm for AD, ask yourself this question, are you even qualified to give advise for such an issue.
In saying all that, I total agree with everyone posts when saying killing off Leadership professions through the gateway is a huge mistake, so huge in fact, this is a shot in Cryptic Games (neverwinter) foot that they will never recover from.
It really amazes me to read so many posts of people that are clueless about programming language, they make these wild assumptions, uninformed, uneducated opinions about bots and about what they can and can not do.
The bots that are farming AD are a web based designed and coded for Browsers that run HTML, JAVA and CSS and so on, they can be programmed to mimic any web based application that runs of a gateway server, even mimic human movement of what we would do with a keyboard and mouse.
...
Yes, a web based bot is easier but the program itself can be and it botted. Just do a web search. A capcha would slow down the bots and is the easiest way. There are statistical analysis techniques to recognize bots that a web search could help you write. Anything that can be mimic'ed can be recognized as automated. I have my own way to kill bots that I would happily share with a neverwinter developer. I used it on my own forums and went from hundreds of spam posts to about 20 a year. And those look like a person created the account and then gave the account to the bot. I only blocked registration. It can be done, it can be done cheaply in a way that isn't 100% but would cut huge percentages of it. Simply put in a bot detector and lock the account for a day. Record the IPs and look for patterns there. (You can't just block a bot's IP since it might be a real, unrelated person an hour later.)
And that's ignoring all the spam that's in the game. Just look at the accounts and IPs of the spammers from the in game chat and in game email and you can track down who the gold sellers are. One person, with employee access to the servers, spending a few hours a week could wipe out 95% of the problem.
As I see it, a captcha would make the most sense when logging in. Having to enter one each time you start a task wouldn't actually improve the gateway.. It'd also drive people ingame, again, and if these are bots, well. Doesn't help.
About bots causing lags; yes, they can. If they ARE carefully optimised, it's possible they won't. But knowing the NW servers, they'd suffer anyway. Especially if the amount of logins peaks because multiple bots per user are running.
EDIT: Oh nevermind the captcha. For login, they'd login manually and then just go for automatic mouse moves and keystrokes.
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treesclimberMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,161Arc User
Captcha idea on gateway, not in game, i hate that HAMSTER, at least i have the right to play freely in game just because of stupid bots, I honestly dont know what's lvl 25 leadership players problems, you have to login for the prayers anyway, just put Battle Elemental Cultists, Destroy Enemy Camp, Protect Magical Goods on your probably 8 slots, people with leadership lvl 25 probably have the assests to down all the missions to 12 hours, that's almost 24k AD a day for no effort, stop moaning, i've been doing footmans for selling until now, have you checked the decrease on their price? Yeah, doing 5000/day now, i'm so trilled -.-".
By the way, as an addition to the comments I've previously made: If you as a company (speaking to Cryptic and its representatives here) are wanting to take Leadership down because of bots, etc., can anyone explain to me WHY half the time that I go in on my browser or phone to set up other tasks that I'm leveling at the time, freaking Gateway doesn't work for ANY tasks at all? Since the latest patch, about half the time all tasks are empty, just as leadership is. So it appears to me that Cryptic just doesn't want gateway to be used at all. Which, if that's the case, why not just say, "Hey guys, sorry. It's costing us too much to maintain the website and we're not getting enough back on it, so we're killing the entire thing." That looks like what's happening here in reality. (I already commented about the Leadership schtick in the first place)
A paid app for android and ios (not too expensive <say, 2-5$ are still fine>);
Better. But please, PLEASE with task queue! It's a pain to maintain more than 2 characters using the phone. If they went that way, sending the browser version to heaven wouldn't be a problem. ALSO they'd get rid of any botter who used the gateway up until now. Kill three flies with one sweep as they say. Money, usability, problem solved.
EDIT: Or make the app free to begin with Users are putting enough money into this game already.
Well looks like the only way for people that work to remain competitive is to run in game bots while we work instead of doing tasks in gateway nice way to handle the problem guys. The release of Skyforge into open beta 2 weeks ago, a game with similar combat, and game style (aka direct competition to Neverwinter) and your pushing away of half your player base shows us how short sighted the dev team and management of this game is.
Right now due to school and work, the gateway is my only contact with the game. My focus has been building up leadership to 25 which isn't going to happen if I'm forced to log into the game, go to each of a whole five characters, and then do leadership tasks that way.
Since pre-mod 6 it seems the developers want to punish players rather than focus on how to just deal with bots. The continued "screw all players" rather than just the bad ones attitude by the developers is making it so that if I could every come back (i.e. breaks et al), why bother?
Just 5 characters? I've got 18... Good thing I never invested a cent into this.
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gattafuriosaMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1Arc User
Hallo, non credo che ci siano milioni di bot che usano autorità, io che lavoro tutto il giorno, non potendo usare il gateway per la leadership, non potrò andare avanti ulteriormente nel gioco. La vostra politica mi sembra disonesta anche perchè ho pagato 237 euro per questo gioco, per questa cifra avrei dovuto giocarci almeno 4 anni. Ogni volta che avete implementato un modulo avete rovinato il gioco rendendolo via via sempre più noioso ed impossibile da giocare senza spendere cifre folli.(non parliamo poi della Lag continua, che non mi ha permesso di giocare ad ice wind) Sareste più onesti se non lo chamaste free to play, ma pay more more for play, a questo punto fate pagare un abbonamento, oppure siete contenti del continuo calo di persone in game? Peccato eravate partiti bene, attenendovi alle regole di D&D ma poi siete scaduti. So che questo post non verrà letto, ma ci tenevo a dirvi dopo tanto troppo tempo che avete rovinato un bellissimo gioco.
Okay, I guess we should explain a few things to some of you nOObs. Botting didn't kill the economy in Neverwenter. It helped, but it didn't kill it on it's own. Cryptic did it.
Now, let's all gather around the campfire so we can heal, as potions of healing are worthless and pray for useless Ardent/Celestial Coins, while I tell you a story..........
[cue Lucas wipe to dream scene]
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there was a place called Neverwinter and within it, there was the Forgotten Realms. Now, while the Forgotten Realms was a wonderful place, full of adventure, it was governed by the great and evil, but mostly incompetent, Lord Cryptic. Now, Lord Cryptic tried to be a just ruler, but he just couldn't seem to get his act together. Numerous bugs, exploits and bots invaded the Realm, but Lord Cryptic was more concerned with flash and spectacle, not to mention hoarding as much exchange as he could get his hands on for his currency, Zen, than to the happiness of his Serfs. If Lord Cryptic didn't like something, he lifted the greatest artifact in all the Realm, the Transcendent Nerf Bat of Ao and swung it with all his might. But Lord Cryptic was not worthy to wield the artifact of the God, Ao, who blinded him for his petulant arrogance, so Lord Cryptic would swing the Transcendent Nerf Bat of Ao, at anything and everything, in an attempt to make things "better." Then, the unspeakable happened, a horrific event that would eclipse the shadows of the Spellplague and bring the realm once again, to it's knees and near extinction. The echoes of the devastation of this day can still be felt through out the cosmos.
That day will be forever known as Caturday.
Now, Lord Cryptic, if anything was a greedy miser. He never wanted to spend money on his subjects. He only wanted them to pay their taxes in the form of Zen and Lord Cryptic ruled MANY lands. The Lands of Champions and Star Trek come to mind. All of these lands are based off the same Engine, 'cos Cryptic is a narrow-minded ruler and if he can re-use something, over and over, to trade more of his currency, Zen, he will do it. In the land of Star Trek, upon which the Land of Neverwinter was made, there was the largest vendor in the realm called the Auction House and with it came some of the DUMBEST vendors known to man. It was discovered that if you put a NEGATIVE negative bid on an item, not only would you get the item, but you would get the money, as well. This exploit was discovered and fixed, but not before nearly tearing the economy of the Land of Star Trek apart. All seemed well......
Until the people of Neverwinter realized that the Ferengi were now running the Auction House of the Forgotten Realms. Instantly, the price of Zen SKYROCKETED, over double what it was (it was around 230 AD per Zen, at the time). With all this ill-gotten currency, the people of Neverwinter, realizing the stupidity of Lord Cryptic, began selling cats, the best companion at the time for most classes, for 10 Gold, instead of the 800k in Astral Diamonds they were worth. By the time Lord Cryptic learned of his mistake of not fixing the Auction House, before creating the Land of Neverwinter, a fix he knew about and knew had to be done, a YEAR before, quickly covered the Land of Neverwinter in a darkness that seemed an eternity, hoping to fix his mistake.
Thousands of Level 1 nOObs died during the onslaught of Caturday, achievements were lost, profession levels revoked, gold taken, exploiters permanently banned (it actually turned into a 3-5 day ban, 'cos of whiners who "didn't know what they were doing") and so much more, it hurts to think about and like Fight Club, we are never to speak of it again. Now, when the light was returned to Neverwinter, Lord Cryptic ran into a problem. A lot of his subjects were upset at his negligence and demanded compensation and tribute, for his incompetence, but Lord Cryptic was a miser and not known for giving things away freely. But his subjects were upset and threatening to leave. Lord Cryptic, however, came up with an ingenious plan. I will give them something, that's actually useless and costs me nothing, to appease the masses.
The Postal Service of Neverwinter was busy that weekend, doling out the following to the subjects of Neverwinter.
[Stone of Health] - The only thing of value and lasted a week.
[Cape of Catastrophe] - A transmutation item, that looked awful and was pointless.
[Dwarven Facemask] - A vanity item that was lame and served no purpose. A blatant rip off of Phantom of the Opera, to this day, I've yet to see a subject of Neverwinter with the courage to wear one.
[Teleport Scroll] x5 - Teleportation scrolls to the Protector's Enclave, as it was too difficult to jump on your mount and ride to the exit of the Zone you were in to get to the Lagclave.
[Adventurer's XP Booster] x2 - Useful only if you had characters under 60, 'cos at the time, we didn't have the HAMSTER-poor bonus items we get from level gain after 60, as there WAS no level gain, after 60.
Finally, Lord Cryptic granted each subject of Neverwinter a title. Now, this title gave no royalty, no land, no fiefdom, it was just that, a title. From that point forward, each subject would be forever known as a "Caturday Survivor", for surviving the incompetence of Lord Cryptic for not fixing Auction House exploit he knew something about, long before.
And the rest, they say, is history.......
Utterly EPIC & brilliant!!!!!!!! Had to read it 3 times haha.
I don't know if this is a coincidence but I'm in Australia and the game has been completely laggy and unplayable for me the last 4 days. All other online games are normal. I'm sure this has something to do with people having to log in for stuff they would otherwise do on the gateway. Oh, and all the in-game bots now
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bigredbrentMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 155Arc User
haha you people complaining are peasants. The leadership amount doesn't rake the AD like the honest way of buying boxes and selling what you get. There is a huge choice of lockboxes available too. I made 2 mill off 15 Black something boxes. Get yalls petty hustle out of here. I am glad their nerfing and suspending you bot heads
haha you people complaining are peasants. The leadership amount doesn't rake the AD like the honest way of buying boxes and selling what you get. There is a huge choice of lockboxes available too. I made 2 mill off 15 Black something boxes. Get yalls petty hustle out of here. I am glad their nerfing and suspending you bot heads
Oh? What makes you think we use bots? Also, not everyone has the time to play the game all day. Unlike you, some people do have a life outside Neverwinter.
what a insane change, you guys own the gold seller sites i guess.
the only people this benifited is botters now i have to consider wether i want to keep playing or spend all my time loging in waiting for server generated ghost lag managing my chars to make ad to upgrade chars i get no time to play because instead of managing them in background while i play my main now i have to spend all my time jumping char to char never playing or use a bot and have it jump chars for me while im afk.
what were you guys thinking? how can we make sure strongholds launches with botters in the best position posible?
you already made lvling bots from 60-70 easyly feasable for most classes with the damage change to mobs then you go and destroy the only thing people used gateway for lol
if cryptic dosnt run the gold sites it needs to look at were payments have come from into its employes bank accounts because happening when it dose it seems very much like certain entitys positioning themselves for maximum market share of new module
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Thank you Cryptic for freeing up whatever time I was spending with Neverwinter so I can spend it on games that don't seek to punish their players with every module/expansion release or patch.
I really enjoyed NW when it first came out but those days are long gone. Now everything is designed around getting players to spend as much money as possible. It's like a mobile game disguised as a PC game.
good luck with your ZEN selling i hope cryptic got the money they wanted to make when they make this decisions, but it's not gonna be my money for sure
RIP NEVERWINTER, it's about time to move on
Not Epic enough to have my posts on the the thread removed. (Thanks, lewstelamon01. You're the only one cowardly enough to do it, the way it was done.)
Everyone, it's a money grab. That's all. It "kills" the botters (not realizing they have MASS surplus of raw AD) and forces genuine players to buy Zen. The economy is inflated, but it's due to the ridiculously RP requirements, bad choices and bugs.
Weapon and Armor enchants REQUIRE a coal at each upgrade. Enchants and Runestones require Pres Wards, but the RNG (Random Generator) has been buggy for well over a year, so your Success Percentages aren't accurate. I have the excel sheets to prove it. I know it, you know it and they know it. Artifacts require INSANE amount of RP to level, as do Artifact Equipment, but if you want to play with the big boys, you have to get it. If you don't have the AD or RP, to the Zen market you go.
Take the old T2-3 armor, for example. When Sharandar came out, the new armor was marginally better than what we had, but the cost to purchase, once again to quote Andy, "was astounding." Nobody bothered with it. Then, Dread Ring came along with their gear. Guess what? Same problem: marginally better stats, but not worth the cost in grinding to purchase. Then, came IWD. Now, THAT armor was worth replacing your old gear with, but since we didn't bite before, with the previous mods, they FORCE you to CONSTANTLY grind to get black ice to keep it "powered." That, in turn, requires you to give up precious professions slots you need for leadership to get AD, to refine Black Ice. Now, unless you've been in, from the beginning, like I have and have 48 heroes spread across 6 toons, that's not a viable option for you to keep up Black Ice refinement and make your AD quota. Can't make your AD quota to get the HIGHLY expensive Refinement Stones required to upgrade your gear, go to the Zen store.
But honestly, ask yourselves, what's in the Zen market you REALLY need? Once you get your Ioun Stone and your mount, the only thing you need to get are coals and pres wards. Both are fairly inexpensive, per a game standpoint, but the amounts required to coin a phrase from Andy, "astounding." I'm not going to drop 50$ for 150,000 RP to level some item in a game, that in 6 months will be obsoleted to make room for the new stuff. I'm not going to buy more companions, as I have all the ones I already want, other than the Lightfoot Thief, but I've given up trying to get that one. I have Ioun Stones for the 2 toons I play, but I'm not about to buy more for the four other toons I have, 'cos thanks to the Damage/HP increase to mobs in Mod6, they won't survive. I play to enjoy it, not to get frustrated. I have a Heavy Howler, I don't need another mount.
The prices for coals, pres wards, GMoPs, etc. are ALL DEFINED by Cryptic, not "the market." There was a time when a coal cost 250k on the AH. Can't have that, so they made them BoA. Greater Vorpals, R10s, etc cost an arm and a leg, due to the INSANE requirements to MAKE them. That's all defined by Cryptic. *NOBODY*, not even PWE is going to sell a product for LESS than it cost to make. It's not going to happen. So, until R10 enchants don't cost 2 million minimum to make, the cost isn't going to do down. If Cryptic didn't define the market, why do GMoP go for more on the AH, than they go through the in-game store? People NEED that AD, so they're NOT going to sell something for LESS than it's worth on the AH and there are actually people STUPID enough to buy them from the AH. On the AH, a GMoP should go for 70-80k, NOT 110k-115k, like they do. Do the math. The person selling STILL gets the 100k it's worth and there are people BUYING them.
It's not rocket science.
The gateway was Neverwinter's unique thing, and leadership is the only path that has reasonable long-duration tasks. So that's the one I go to when passing out and/or when work is getting stressed. I would be okay with captcha-style verification for any AD related tasks, or even any leadership related tasks. That would put a dent in the gateway botters while still allowing those of us who legit use it to still have the same access.
And, to make sure I fit in with the forum, who decided the on the 3 max for everything but gather and craft/forge/etc? I could see the rare tasks having the limit, and some of the high level tasks, but having the vary the low level work is annoyingly worthless, IMO.
As to the potential changes to leadership, I would recommend reviewing the rare leadership tasks. There's maybe 3-4 that are even close to worth it. Why waste so much time on creating completely useless or wasteful tasks?
The bots that are farming AD are a web based designed and coded for Browsers that run HTML, JAVA and CSS and so on, they can be programmed to mimic any web based application that runs of a gateway server, even mimic human movement of what we would do with a keyboard and mouse.
Most people don't even realise there are 100's of billions of bots (spiders) running through the Internet every day preforming the most basic search engine tasks of someone looking at cars for sale, to some of the most complex database serve commands that require calculations in nano second for complex multi tasked processing.
It doesn't matter if you add in extra login measures to enter the neverwinter gateway, bots through careful coding will and can access browser based server gateways by bi-passing such basic measurements.
These farming bots are web based scripts with command-lines to perform the same takes we would if we were manually using the gateway ourselves to work on our professions, but to repeat the action over and over.
So before you say well ban the users using these bots, explain to me how do you think Cryptic Games are going to find out how which user is using a bot that is enbeded into the web browser performing the same tasks we would, if logged in ourselves to the neverwinter gateway.
Do you think Cryptic is going sit there and try hack every account users PC or Mac to see who has a bot script installed on their browser just like any other normal based web script or plugin. Don't forget a smart bot developer most likely knows how to Mask their IP, or rotate it, or even completely hide it in may other forms, so throwing out the suggestion, get someone to look at the IP Addresses on the game server(s) to see who is spamming in game chat windows or even using bots, these AD bot farmers have most likely now covered their tracks in this digital world. Killing of one IP that could be fake will not solve the problem.
They only way to stop these bots from farming professions for AD is to create a VPN through a Citrix base client with a rotating RASC KEY, costing $100's of 10000's to setup for developer and even a cost to the end user (the gamer), but than you would haven't a web based gateway server any more giving all gamers access to their neverwinter account.
So before you start tapping out letters on your keyboard to give your amazing insight on how Cryptic Games should take care of the people are using bots to farm for AD, ask yourself this question, are you even qualified to give advise for such an issue.
In saying all that, I total agree with everyone posts when saying killing off Leadership professions through the gateway is a huge mistake, so huge in fact, this is a shot in Cryptic Games (neverwinter) foot that they will never recover from.
Yes, a web based bot is easier but the program itself can be and it botted. Just do a web search. A capcha would slow down the bots and is the easiest way. There are statistical analysis techniques to recognize bots that a web search could help you write. Anything that can be mimic'ed can be recognized as automated. I have my own way to kill bots that I would happily share with a neverwinter developer. I used it on my own forums and went from hundreds of spam posts to about 20 a year. And those look like a person created the account and then gave the account to the bot. I only blocked registration. It can be done, it can be done cheaply in a way that isn't 100% but would cut huge percentages of it. Simply put in a bot detector and lock the account for a day. Record the IPs and look for patterns there. (You can't just block a bot's IP since it might be a real, unrelated person an hour later.)
And that's ignoring all the spam that's in the game. Just look at the accounts and IPs of the spammers from the in game chat and in game email and you can track down who the gold sellers are. One person, with employee access to the servers, spending a few hours a week could wipe out 95% of the problem.
About bots causing lags; yes, they can. If they ARE carefully optimised, it's possible they won't. But knowing the NW servers, they'd suffer anyway. Especially if the amount of logins peaks because multiple bots per user are running.
EDIT: Oh nevermind the captcha.
A paid app for android and ios (not too expensive <say, 2-5$ are still fine>);
Better. But please, PLEASE with task queue! It's a pain to maintain more than 2 characters using the phone. If they went that way, sending the browser version to heaven wouldn't be a problem. ALSO they'd get rid of any botter who used the gateway up until now. Kill three flies with one sweep as they say. Money, usability, problem solved.
EDIT: Or make the app free to begin with
Since pre-mod 6 it seems the developers want to punish players rather than focus on how to just deal with bots. The continued "screw all players" rather than just the bad ones attitude by the developers is making it so that if I could every come back (i.e. breaks et al), why bother?
Utterly EPIC & brilliant!!!!!!!! Had to read it 3 times haha.
https://www.google.com/recaptcha
Oh? What makes you think we use bots? Also, not everyone has the time to play the game all day. Unlike you, some people do have a life outside Neverwinter.
the only people this benifited is botters now i have to consider wether i want to keep playing or spend all my time loging in waiting for server generated ghost lag managing my chars to make ad to upgrade chars i get no time to play because instead of managing them in background while i play my main now i have to spend all my time jumping char to char never playing or use a bot and have it jump chars for me while im afk.
what were you guys thinking? how can we make sure strongholds launches with botters in the best position posible?
you already made lvling bots from 60-70 easyly feasable for most classes with the damage change to mobs then you go and destroy the only thing people used gateway for lol
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/9489863