lordgio1984Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 17Arc User
Everything you do to reduce gold sellers and/or bots is well done. I like NW very much, I've been playing here for about 2 years. I come from another online game, I won't write its name here but I'll tell you about how they blocked all the bot users and spammers. They were aware of the increasing number of players using bots and other not licit instruments to farm in-game values and/or items. They announced to the community that bots were not allowed in the game and that some restrictions would have been taken against those who used them. After that announcement, the silence: Bot users were increasing more and more, characters that were useless both in pve and pvp became quickly holy beasts. People playing honestly were totally discouraged as they see their own efforts totally overwelmed by bot users's easy and free growth. Many of us quickly ceased each pvp activity: it was totally useless: no matter how much you were good at pvp, if you were a honest, self-made player you were sistematically defeated (and often insulted as well). We finished to play in a strict circle of friends, that simply were not bot users. For weeks and weeks, they did not do anything to stop them, and we started to get more and more angry as they seemed not to have interest in stopping them. But it was just a wrong sensation of ours. Developers launched a sort of program that tracked the connections to the servers for a long period and it was able to find all the accounts that were driven by bots and... a nice day, after a patch, the ban-hammer hit them all with a perma ban. Temporary bans and other restrictions are not enough to stop bot users, as they continue with their activities after those restricions expire. But hitting them with a perma ban (and, therefore, they cannot have access anymore to the resources they have saved on their own accounts) would be the best therapy against them. Moreover, let's talk about "leadership" and about all those programs that auto run it. You've already removed ADs from it, but it's not enough. What about binding to the account everything that comes from it? You could also do the same with the items coming from the spoils of war that we drop from quartermaster enchantments. AH is full of items coming from players who farm them with bots and it's simply discouraging. I pray everyday for a nice perma-ban wave that would make this game much cleaner.
I agree, seems like us who have been loyal players keep losing more things with added restrictions but get nothing back....I guess they just want us to spend lots of actual money. Oh wait, I do that and still get nothing more as a benifit for loyalty.
> @two30 said: > Lock the Gateway for characters that haven't met these game-play requirements and bring it back up for the rest of us, please.
Require Captcha every time you change maps, open gateway or open AH.
It would be an irritation to us honest (non-botting) human players at first. But I bet most of us would accept a 5 second Captcha delay in exchange for the total elimination of bots.
I've seen this mentioned a few times in the past 2 years. I don't recall the devs ever commenting or considering it.
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.
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lordgio1984Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 17Arc User
Require Captcha every time you change maps, open gateway or open AH.
It would be an irritation to us honest (non-botting) human players at first. But I bet most of us would accept a 5 second Captcha delay in exchange for the total elimination of bots.
I've seen this mentioned a few times in the past 2 years. I don't recall the devs ever commenting or considering it.
Captcha is an exhausting solution and it would make most people quit the game. I play with 3 characters and often switch them, not counting how many times I switch maps. Moreover I play marginally with other 3 small characters (they do twice normal ToS) to gain and spare some extra ADs. I would go crazy at the second day, if they introduced captcha for each change of map/toon.
I sincerely hope they will find a more incisive solution, without causing annoyances or restrictions to legit players.
Excellent! I don't blame farmers/sellers (except for being annoying on chat and email) but the people who buy from them because it does disrupt the economy. However, someone once pointed out to me that those who work long hours should be able to spend their cash to buy stuff that compensates for the little time they can play. I believe that NW does give additional vacation xp, though, and items are available to buy through purchasing zen or arc money which pays for game development. So cheers for a clever strike in the ongoing battle.
You know what disrupts the economy even further? Bad design decisions that prevent new players from catching up to old players.
1. More people will get into it, therefor the supply will be high
2. New players will be able to enter in this systen aswell and get their refinement.
3. If players will do it, for boters will be less profit.
Remove it from gateway, make the auto proffesion ingame , there you have a higher number of players logged, more activity.
So what do you win ?
1. A new player gets in the system and affords upgrading.
2. There will always be a supply
3. We get rid of bots, by makin it far more accesible for players.
No matter how easy you make getting AD, there will be the lazy or ignorant that don't want to do it.. They will buy from Gold Spammers anyways. If you make getting AD easier it will drive up prices by an equal ratio.
The only thing you will change is making it easier to not put money into legitimate systems that keep the game Company in business and providing us a service and lower the number of people actually PLAYING the game, which increases the griping about high Queue wait times. Yes, they could monetize the automated system, but everything else they offer for sell would have to have their prices increased for them to make any money out of it. And the prices are already too high relative to the Auction House for informed individuals to buy Zen to get them. If the item can only be bought with Zen, then just make the Ad to get the Zen and boom.. done.. No need to deposit.
ANY method you do to make AD generation will benefit illegitamate AD generators more than anyone else... making the game less profitable for the Game Company, and thereby forcing them to make stupidly repatative content like Mod 10 for people to get what they want. Which makes people even more tempted to buy from Gold Spammers.
“Improvise, Adapt and Overcome!”
― Clint Eastwood, Heartbreak Ridge
Guild Leader of Ardent Justice HQ: Always recruiting People not Pixels.
Require Captcha every time you change maps, open gateway or open AH.
It would be an irritation to us honest (non-botting) human players at first.
But I bet most of us would accept a 5 second Captcha delay in exchange for the total elimination of bots.
I've seen this mentioned a few times in the past 2 years.
I don't recall the devs ever commenting or considering it.
This is probably quite literally the dumbest suggestion I have seen for this game so far. I change maps a lot and occasionally I open the AH to price something. Other times I check a price a few times a day to see if someone prices it far lower so I can get a deal. Other times I need to quickly buy some potions. This would be an asinine way to try and deal with botters since it would very quickly <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> off a majority of the players who the game needs to, you know actually play the damn game and use the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> AH.
TBH the bot spam really isn't that bad at all. Sure it's annoying but basically anything they do WILL affect legitimate players.
I agree with all those measures except limiting say and zone posts. With this new players will be unable to ask questions "for a few hours".
The game is NOT that complicated and what needs to be done for basic game play is stated in the early quests... although, they really do need to take a look at the early quests and instructions in game content to make sure of this.
In PE Zone chat I see more morons than helpful people.. so.. limiting access to PE ZOne Chat for new players might actually help them enjoy the game more. .
“Improvise, Adapt and Overcome!”
― Clint Eastwood, Heartbreak Ridge
Guild Leader of Ardent Justice HQ: Always recruiting People not Pixels.
Not everyone has the time to play 10 characters up to the point where these restrictions don't hold for them anymore. Hell, my main character doesn't even have an ilvl of 2.5k and I have been playing for months.
You're doing it wrong.
“Improvise, Adapt and Overcome!”
― Clint Eastwood, Heartbreak Ridge
Guild Leader of Ardent Justice HQ: Always recruiting People not Pixels.
Excellent! I don't blame farmers/sellers (except for being annoying on chat and email) but the people who buy from them because it does disrupt the economy. However, someone once pointed out to me that those who work long hours should be able to spend their cash to buy stuff that compensates for the little time they can play. I believe that NW does give additional vacation xp, though, and items are available to buy through purchasing zen or arc money which pays for game development. So cheers for a clever strike in the ongoing battle.
You know what disrupts the economy even further? Bad design decisions that prevent new players from catching up to old players.
Guilds help New Players catch up to Old players.. if they are decent and not just focused on Pixels (the guilds and the players).
“Improvise, Adapt and Overcome!”
― Clint Eastwood, Heartbreak Ridge
Guild Leader of Ardent Justice HQ: Always recruiting People not Pixels.
Make an auto profession and auto invoking feature , u can monotize the leadership/profession , you will not b the first to let features work on auto pilot, there are other games aswell tht to combat boting they had to accept these as features , and i dont see anythin about it goin wrong.
This or something similar to it is another way that the Gold Sellers have AD to sell... AND also the reason there's been a stupid amount of free ad in game that makes the AH's prices so high. In short, you don't know what you are talking about if you think auto would be good.
It is better to make things manual so there are less lines of code for bots to pick up on punishing us legit players who actually want to do things.
In NWN Classic often hack-er used bot programs were banned (and the players that used them) so that people whom weren't online didn't reap more benefits over those whom were online to actually play with others, and even roleplay with others. It was often a banable from a server offense to use bots for professions, or leveling.
If you're just going to autopilot everything why bother to play? Please log off instead, and do not contribute to the lag the rest of us have to plod through. That's what bot programs can do - LAG LIKE A (censored word). I hate 'em.
" I tried to figure out the enigma that was you, and then I realized mastering Wild Magic was easier." - Old Wizard in Waterdeep
"Why is it dragons only use ketchup? I'd like a little wasabi please. Us silvers like a variety of condiments."
"Don't call them foolish mortals. One, they don't learn from it. Two, It just ticks them off." - An Ancient Red Dragon
While we can’t share the specifics of these changes, new characters will be subject to the following restrictions until you have progressed a certain amount in the main quests
May I ask why it is a character unlock (removing the restriction) and not an account unlock? If I have played through the requirements I should have proven that the account is not driven by a bot. I really do hope that if you "ban" someone you don't only ban one character but the whole account.
THIS. Every legit account will have at least one character that has a lot of time put into. It would make so much more sense to impose HIGHER restrictions but only on ONE char to lift restrictions for the entire account.
If you're just going to autopilot everything why bother to play? Please log off instead, and do not contribute to the lag the rest of us have to plod through. That's what bot programs can do - LAG LIKE A (censored word). I hate 'em.
Or better yet, just go play one of the games that lets you be lazy and bot everything and leave NW alone.
Excellent! I don't blame farmers/sellers (except for being annoying on chat and email) but the people who buy from them because it does disrupt the economy. However, someone once pointed out to me that those who work long hours should be able to spend their cash to buy stuff that compensates for the little time they can play. I believe that NW does give additional vacation xp, though, and items are available to buy through purchasing zen or arc money which pays for game development. So cheers for a clever strike in the ongoing battle.
You know what disrupts the economy even further? Bad design decisions that prevent new players from catching up to old players.
Guilds help New Players catch up to Old players.. if they are decent and not just focused on Pixels (the guilds and the players).
Show me the guild that will just outfit all of their members with full rank 12 enchants, then.
When it comes to gateway there should be a captcha put on it. Yes they are annoying but it takes five seconds to type in the little box and prevents a computer program from using the system. If somebody wants to sit there all day and play SCA or do professions or what not to farm gold, AD, and gear. Then well Cryptic should hire them because apparantely they really want to work for them.
For the AH they should put a cap in there on items. I know that it would cut into legit players AD revenue, but it would prevent third party sellers from exchanging AD like they do. They ask you to list any random blue/purple item for 1 million and in house cost. To make the exchange of the AD. So you can't list a level 20 set of Agile boots of parrying (not sure if that is a actual item I'm just trying to make an example) That has really crappy stats on it for 1,110,000 Astrals. The cap would prevent this.
Just my opinions. In all honesty I have yet to see a free MMO that doesn't have some type of botting and exploits going on. Sadly to say we don't live in a fair and honest world. (Not that I agree with it)
THIS. Every legit account will have at least one character that has a lot of time put into. It would make so much more sense to impose HIGHER restrictions but only on ONE char to lift restrictions for the entire account.
Again, They have been monitoring the system, viewing logs and accumulating data. Nothing is stopping Cryptic from Perma Banning these people. Seems like they are trying to weed out the lower level Spammers/Bots by implementing these progress filters and placing the above rules in place (which in-turn can hurt new legitimate players just starting the game wanting to seek help in-game...by silencing them for so many levels). The good from this is, it will force the higher level bots out into the open (Someone will have to advertise) and they can grab their accounts as well.
These higher level accounts would have a bit more to lose I would think. The point is, will Cryptic follow through...or just keep killing off game mechanics players use? I keep asking myself...why would a company that knows who is exploiting and using bots not do anything about it. Instead just keep implementing hindering adjustments to the game mechanics that regular players feel useful and beneficial.
So many conspiracy theories pop into my head, I get dizzy.
Perma-Ban these bots and lets get to playing the game. So what if it makes it look like the games population drops. The game will get many more players in return and gain the ability to retain them if you do not cripple the mechanics any further.
So...this is interesting, but I feel it might screw over legitimately new players seeking for help. If they can't access the main two chats to talk to others or ask others' help, how are they to figure out what to do? Sure, there's the ole "playing yourself" but not everyone can spare the amount of time needed to get to the point where you unlock everything.
And no, it doesn't take a "couple of hours", it takes definitely a good 4 or more hours to get to that point, and not everyone has that many hours to spare on any given day.
Also, saying pre-existing characters would not get affected by it, is not true, as I've heard people getting some of their alts affected by it.
the only change in this that i have a problem with is the ability to trade i like to be able to help my friends be strong right out of the gate when i get them to play
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vampirecavyMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 55Arc User
EDIT: Okay I should clarify - this is actually a fairly large sized time investment, particularly for players who just want to make a guy to RP. Maybe making it just two of those instead?
The restrictions on /say, /zone and /emote are causing troubles all over already. Honestly, I've seen like one or two goldspammers in these channels through my time playing (at least a few years). They mostly come through in-game mail or whispers anyway.
Not only do these restrictions prevent new players from asking for help, which has already been mentioned. They also prevent people from communicating with their alt-characters, since apparently this isn't tied to account, but to the character directly.
I doubt that goldspammers are going to have a lvl 70 character sitting around on their account. It makes no sense to me that, when I already have multiple high level characters, I can't use these channels on a new low level character.
In addition, you're completely HAMSTER over a large part of the roleplaying community. I know it's probably a minority, but we're still here, and still very active. A lot of us make extensive use of low level alt-characters to play out our stories and act as actors in our plotlines. This is now impossible unless we tediously level up Every. Single. Character that we make.
This has been a "solution" to a nonexisting problem, in turn causing more problems than you've solved. Please, I really wish you'd reconsider this change.
Well, there is a lot less chatter from the Gold Sellers. Still a few coming through...if you inspect them, at least the 2 I inspected they were only level 15 with hardly no gear. I reported the spamming which blocked them. So I guess as low as level 15 they can circumvent the filters/rules put in place.
I am glad something is being done. the spammers are just terrible at times and make it hard to really read what is being said.. I report them all, when I see them.. gold/ad whatever it be sellers are the bane of all online games.. anyone caught doing it should be account/email/ip banned on the first offense.... no tolerance at all.
toward the restrictions.. to light.. should be harsher.. if its just blacklake.. that is to easy to complete.. it needs to be all the way up to towers at least... that way a bot user would not waste as much time leveling a toon that high.
but then again even that is not true.. I used to know people with level 99 bots in d2 that did it to get around level restrictions players would put on their games so they could join and spamm the room.
the auto profession idea posted by another member is just terrible.. it would not work as they think for it would make it even easier for the spammers to get more and thus newer players not wanting to wast the time with professions would still be tempted to buy from them.
there should be no simple easy way.. the easier it is the worse bots and selling will get.
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lordgio1984Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 17Arc User
Everything you do to reduce gold sellers and/or bots is well done.
Considering what a boring grind this game has become since it stated three years ago, and that botters only effect an legit customers is some stupid emails and chat spams we can simply ignore (and which could be removed without any inconvenience to them) and keeping prizes for RP, wards, etc. in the AH reasonable, any inconvenience due to such a stunt as this or captchas every n minutes is not acceptable.
Developers launched a sort of program that tracked the connections to the servers for a long period and it was able to find all the accounts that were driven by bots and... a nice day, after a patch, the ban-hammer hit them all with a perma ban.
English is not my native speech, so it's likely I have misunderstood... Summarizing: I should be thankful to bot users because they keep down the prizes on AH and, after all, they have the right to spam because, if I don't like them, I can just ignore them. Such a statement is worthy of just one answer, that is: lol. Maybe you don't consider that their activities disrupts the economy of the game and (even more important than the economy itself): they reduce the longevity of the game. People reach the top in a shot time, they get bored, they quit. Botters farm big amount of items (enchantments, RPs, event items, just to bring some examples): they overload the AH and, therefore, the prices drop. Players who farm and use leadership and enchantments like quartermaster, usually use their provents on their own characters, and the amount of RPs they farm is nothing in comparison with bot users's activity. They sell them when they are not in need of them anymore, and usually the earnings are low because the AH prices are undercut as there are too many items available to be bought. If you have to use them on you, there is no difference whether those items are bound to account or free; and even if you don't need them anymore, you should use them, for example, to refine a free enchantment and sell it. The game has been structured ina way that you have to take a certain period of time to reach some targets, if you want to grow faster you can shop from the game owners or just play more. Bot users simply damage the game owners because a big part of their expected earnings finish in the hands of the bot users... And if I were the owner, this would be a good reason to be very, very angry...
I didn't want to tell the name of my previous game but, considering that you're instilling the doubt that I've invented what I've said, you've just won the name of that game: the game was Drakensang Online, and this was the announcement of the permaban, on their forums:
In the end (but this is just a personal opinion of mine), it's better a game with less players but playing legit, than a crowded game where a substantial part of its customers use illegal ways to grow and even to gain real money from the game: and we both know that it's forbidden by the terms of service. Greetings!
So, now that we have these massive restrictions on new characters I find a bunch of my profession assets stranded for a while on a character I created this past week. Now I have to go level up that character through 3 of 5 possible quest lines before I can recover my profession assets... it would have been nice to have some sort of warning this was going to happen.
Why are these massive new restrictions on a per-character basis? I don't understand, once an account has a character that has reached level 70 shouldn't that be enough to remove these restrictions on newly created characters on that account? I guess I can see why you'd add these restrictions to totally brand new account... though I don't see how such severe restrictions are going to help new player retention... but for accounts with max level characters already? It doesn't really make sense.
At the very least, could you at least let us move our profession assets around our own account via the shared bank? Having to use the mail system only to move around these assets is just strange, why can't we transfer them with the shared bank?
We've seen crowded areas where bots flicker in and out of dungeons/instances (prolly not for nodes since most were removed). Getting to lvl 70 isn't something they'll have a hard time overcoming, so unlocking an account's new chars just based on having reached lvl 70 shouldn't cut it.
Hopefully, if their measures are effective, they'll realize it's going to crank up the prices and will introduce more AD gains or increase the ones we have. I could see having more drops from epic dungeons, for example. Bots shouldn't be able to reach the boss chest(s)...
Quick question. Did the exp rate get changed? I was doing influence runs with guildees tonight and none of the lower level toons were able to get much in the way of exp. One guildee went from level 6-8 in a run where usually that would be from 6-14ish
Comments
I like NW very much, I've been playing here for about 2 years. I come from another online game, I won't write its name here but I'll tell you about how they blocked all the bot users and spammers. They were aware of the increasing number of players using bots and other not licit instruments to farm in-game values and/or items. They announced to the community that bots were not allowed in the game and that some restrictions would have been taken against those who used them. After that announcement, the silence: Bot users were increasing more and more, characters that were useless both in pve and pvp became quickly holy beasts. People playing honestly were totally discouraged as they see their own efforts totally overwelmed by bot users's easy and free growth. Many of us quickly ceased each pvp activity: it was totally useless: no matter how much you were good at pvp, if you were a honest, self-made player you were sistematically defeated (and often insulted as well). We finished to play in a strict circle of friends, that simply were not bot users. For weeks and weeks, they did not do anything to stop them, and we started to get more and more angry as they seemed not to have interest in stopping them.
But it was just a wrong sensation of ours. Developers launched a sort of program that tracked the connections to the servers for a long period and it was able to find all the accounts that were driven by bots and... a nice day, after a patch, the ban-hammer hit them all with a perma ban.
Temporary bans and other restrictions are not enough to stop bot users, as they continue with their activities after those restricions expire. But hitting them with a perma ban (and, therefore, they cannot have access anymore to the resources they have saved on their own accounts) would be the best therapy against them.
Moreover, let's talk about "leadership" and about all those programs that auto run it. You've already removed ADs from it, but it's not enough. What about binding to the account everything that comes from it? You could also do the same with the items coming from the spoils of war that we drop from quartermaster enchantments. AH is full of items coming from players who farm them with bots and it's simply discouraging.
I pray everyday for a nice perma-ban wave that would make this game much cleaner.
> @two30 said:
> Lock the Gateway for characters that haven't met these game-play requirements and bring it back up for the rest of us, please.
I agree. Captcha is a simple solution.
Require Captcha every time you change maps, open gateway or open AH.
It would be an irritation to us honest (non-botting) human players at first.
But I bet most of us would accept a 5 second Captcha delay in exchange for the total elimination of bots.
I've seen this mentioned a few times in the past 2 years.
I don't recall the devs ever commenting or considering it.
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.
I play with 3 characters and often switch them, not counting how many times I switch maps. Moreover I play marginally with other 3 small characters (they do twice normal ToS) to gain and spare some extra ADs. I would go crazy at the second day, if they introduced captcha for each change of map/toon.
I sincerely hope they will find a more incisive solution, without causing annoyances or restrictions to legit players.
The only thing you will change is making it easier to not put money into legitimate systems that keep the game Company in business and providing us a service and lower the number of people actually PLAYING the game, which increases the griping about high Queue wait times. Yes, they could monetize the automated system, but everything else they offer for sell would have to have their prices increased for them to make any money out of it. And the prices are already too high relative to the Auction House for informed individuals to buy Zen to get them. If the item can only be bought with Zen, then just make the Ad to get the Zen and boom.. done.. No need to deposit.
ANY method you do to make AD generation will benefit illegitamate AD generators more than anyone else... making the game less profitable for the Game Company, and thereby forcing them to make stupidly repatative content like Mod 10 for people to get what they want. Which makes people even more tempted to buy from Gold Spammers.
― Clint Eastwood, Heartbreak Ridge
Guild Leader of Ardent Justice HQ: Always recruiting People not Pixels.
FOUNDER and OWNER of the SKT3K Channel: SKT Only Content 3k+. http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1228278/skt-content-for-the-non-elite-video-links-provided
This is probably quite literally the dumbest suggestion I have seen for this game so far. I change maps a lot and occasionally I open the AH to price something. Other times I check a price a few times a day to see if someone prices it far lower so I can get a deal. Other times I need to quickly buy some potions. This would be an asinine way to try and deal with botters since it would very quickly <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> off a majority of the players who the game needs to, you know actually play the damn game and use the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> AH.
TBH the bot spam really isn't that bad at all. Sure it's annoying but basically anything they do WILL affect legitimate players.
In PE Zone chat I see more morons than helpful people.. so.. limiting access to PE ZOne Chat for new players might actually help them enjoy the game more.
― Clint Eastwood, Heartbreak Ridge
Guild Leader of Ardent Justice HQ: Always recruiting People not Pixels.
FOUNDER and OWNER of the SKT3K Channel: SKT Only Content 3k+. http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1228278/skt-content-for-the-non-elite-video-links-provided
― Clint Eastwood, Heartbreak Ridge
Guild Leader of Ardent Justice HQ: Always recruiting People not Pixels.
FOUNDER and OWNER of the SKT3K Channel: SKT Only Content 3k+. http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1228278/skt-content-for-the-non-elite-video-links-provided
― Clint Eastwood, Heartbreak Ridge
Guild Leader of Ardent Justice HQ: Always recruiting People not Pixels.
FOUNDER and OWNER of the SKT3K Channel: SKT Only Content 3k+. http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1228278/skt-content-for-the-non-elite-video-links-provided
In NWN Classic often hack-er used bot programs were banned (and the players that used them) so that people whom weren't online didn't reap more benefits over those whom were online to actually play with others, and even roleplay with others. It was often a banable from a server offense to use bots for professions, or leveling.
If you're just going to autopilot everything why bother to play? Please log off instead, and do not contribute to the lag the rest of us have to plod through. That's what bot programs can do - LAG LIKE A (censored word). I hate 'em.
"Why is it dragons only use ketchup? I'd like a little wasabi please. Us silvers like a variety of condiments."
"Don't call them foolish mortals. One, they don't learn from it. Two, It just ticks them off." - An Ancient Red Dragon
For the AH they should put a cap in there on items. I know that it would cut into legit players AD revenue, but it would prevent third party sellers from exchanging AD like they do. They ask you to list any random blue/purple item for 1 million and in house cost. To make the exchange of the AD. So you can't list a level 20 set of Agile boots of parrying (not sure if that is a actual item I'm just trying to make an example) That has really crappy stats on it for 1,110,000 Astrals. The cap would prevent this.
Just my opinions. In all honesty I have yet to see a free MMO that doesn't have some type of botting and exploits going on. Sadly to say we don't live in a fair and honest world. (Not that I agree with it)
Oh and here's another good question, will players who buy a "Premade" character be required to do pre lvl 60 quests?
These higher level accounts would have a bit more to lose I would think. The point is, will Cryptic follow through...or just keep killing off game mechanics players use? I keep asking myself...why would a company that knows who is exploiting and using bots not do anything about it. Instead just keep implementing hindering adjustments to the game mechanics that regular players feel useful and beneficial.
So many conspiracy theories pop into my head, I get dizzy.
Perma-Ban these bots and lets get to playing the game. So what if it makes it look like the games population drops. The game will get many more players in return and gain the ability to retain them if you do not cripple the mechanics any further.
And no, it doesn't take a "couple of hours", it takes definitely a good 4 or more hours to get to that point, and not everyone has that many hours to spare on any given day.
Also, saying pre-existing characters would not get affected by it, is not true, as I've heard people getting some of their alts affected by it.
of the gate when i get them to play
EDIT: Okay I should clarify - this is actually a fairly large sized time investment, particularly for players who just want to make a guy to RP. Maybe making it just two of those instead?
Not only do these restrictions prevent new players from asking for help, which has already been mentioned. They also prevent people from communicating with their alt-characters, since apparently this isn't tied to account, but to the character directly.
I doubt that goldspammers are going to have a lvl 70 character sitting around on their account. It makes no sense to me that, when I already have multiple high level characters, I can't use these channels on a new low level character.
In addition, you're completely HAMSTER over a large part of the roleplaying community. I know it's probably a minority, but we're still here, and still very active. A lot of us make extensive use of low level alt-characters to play out our stories and act as actors in our plotlines. This is now impossible unless we tediously level up Every. Single. Character that we make.
This has been a "solution" to a nonexisting problem, in turn causing more problems than you've solved. Please, I really wish you'd reconsider this change.
But yes, a lot less spam which is nice....
toward the restrictions.. to light.. should be harsher.. if its just blacklake.. that is to easy to complete.. it needs to be all the way up to towers at least... that way a bot user would not waste as much time leveling a toon that high.
but then again even that is not true.. I used to know people with level 99 bots in d2 that did it to get around level restrictions players would put on their games so they could join and spamm the room.
the auto profession idea posted by another member is just terrible.. it would not work as they think for it would make it even easier for the spammers to get more and thus newer players not wanting to wast the time with professions would still be tempted to buy from them.
there should be no simple easy way.. the easier it is the worse bots and selling will get.
English is not my native speech, so it's likely I have misunderstood... Summarizing: I should be thankful to bot users because they keep down the prizes on AH and, after all, they have the right to spam because, if I don't like them, I can just ignore them.
Such a statement is worthy of just one answer, that is: lol.
Maybe you don't consider that their activities disrupts the economy of the game and (even more important than the economy itself): they reduce the longevity of the game. People reach the top in a shot time, they get bored, they quit.
Botters farm big amount of items (enchantments, RPs, event items, just to bring some examples): they overload the AH and, therefore, the prices drop. Players who farm and use leadership and enchantments like quartermaster, usually use their provents on their own characters, and the amount of RPs they farm is nothing in comparison with bot users's activity. They sell them when they are not in need of them anymore, and usually the earnings are low because the AH prices are undercut as there are too many items available to be bought. If you have to use them on you, there is no difference whether those items are bound to account or free; and even if you don't need them anymore, you should use them, for example, to refine a free enchantment and sell it. The game has been structured ina way that you have to take a certain period of time to reach some targets, if you want to grow faster you can shop from the game owners or just play more. Bot users simply damage the game owners because a big part of their expected earnings finish in the hands of the bot users... And if I were the owner, this would be a good reason to be very, very angry...
I didn't want to tell the name of my previous game but, considering that you're instilling the doubt that I've invented what I've said, you've just won the name of that game: the game was Drakensang Online, and this was the announcement of the permaban, on their forums:
http://www.bigpoint.com/drasaonline/board/threads/bot-ban-wave-2-release-136.53697/
In the end (but this is just a personal opinion of mine), it's better a game with less players but playing legit, than a crowded game where a substantial part of its customers use illegal ways to grow and even to gain real money from the game: and we both know that it's forbidden by the terms of service.
Greetings!
Why are these massive new restrictions on a per-character basis? I don't understand, once an account has a character that has reached level 70 shouldn't that be enough to remove these restrictions on newly created characters on that account? I guess I can see why you'd add these restrictions to totally brand new account... though I don't see how such severe restrictions are going to help new player retention... but for accounts with max level characters already? It doesn't really make sense.
At the very least, could you at least let us move our profession assets around our own account via the shared bank? Having to use the mail system only to move around these assets is just strange, why can't we transfer them with the shared bank?
Hopefully, if their measures are effective, they'll realize it's going to crank up the prices and will introduce more AD gains or increase the ones we have.
I could see having more drops from epic dungeons, for example. Bots shouldn't be able to reach the boss chest(s)...