Are you ever gonna bring back the Gateway?

thecrowley · October 2017

The only reason that I'm not playing Neverwinter anymore is because I really miss the Gateway. I mean, I like the game itself, even though it has some hardcore p2w I like atmosphere of D&D which you capture quite nicely with some solo dungeons.

But I really, really liked the Gateway. As silly as that minigame was, I really enjoyed it. I bought lots of companions to make myself better in it. It was something I could do on my phone goofing off at work or at home watching TV and still earn some stuff for my characters in a game I really enjoy. And most of all: It was fun. I actually thought the minigame was really, really fun. Why not add a randomized code or something that bots couldn't pick up that you have to enter ingame to get the rewards? I wouldn't mind. I just really want it back.

It was pretty unique for an MMO to have that connection, that I could be active elsewhere and still earn stuff for my characters. So... are you ever gonna bring it back?

Unknown · October 2017

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jumpingmorks · October 2017

They are unlikely to bring it back because it's cheaper to leave it dead than pay someone to fix the issues that were being exploited.

rickcase276 · October 2017

Not to mention the server load that the gateway was causing.

oldbaldyone · October 2017

> @rickcase276 said:
> Not to mention the server load that the gateway was causing.

Easily fixed...very easily fixed. Set a request limit on data requests. Done.

Anyways don't hold your breath.

mentinmindmaker · October 2017

If they were to bring back Gateway it would have to be made non-exploitable, since Web solutions are very easy to automate.

That basically means that at least everything gained from Gateway would have to be BtA, or most likely no rewards could be allowed to come from Gateway. Also no crafting, no AH interface, etc since you do not want those to be automated. That probably would reduce the attractiveness of it dramatically

Since Gateway was a PC only service, it would have to be expanded to also cover PS4 and XBox, or the effort put into it would have to little benefit to be worth it. I guess the bigger number of users are on the consoles these days.

I also would like to see Gateway back, but I think Cryptic were right when they concluded it is more trouble than it is worth. It actually was a sad lession for the game industry.. you cannot make useful supplementary services for games on the Web since it will be automated to hell and back.

araneax · October 2017

I remember skipping my work to play on Gateway.

And hiding the tab every time my boss passed by my table.

Ah good times.

Got a lot of good gear for my companions too.

I wish they brought it back.

thecrowley · October 2017

Yeah that's what I liked about it too. I could goof off whenever and actually earn some neat stuff for my characters and companions. First time I've ever had a game with an app that actually interacted like that.

Really sad that it's gone, would definitely make me start playing again. I was going to but without the gateway I just felt like I lost a huge part of the game that I really liked. Plus as mentioned I actually thought the minigame was super fun. I don't really care too much about AH and crafting and mail, well a little bit of course, but I would be happy with just the minigame. And well, obviously managing crafting was really sweet since you could do it from work etc.

jumpingmorks · October 2017

oldbaldyone said:
> @rickcase276 said:

> Not to mention the server load that the gateway was causing.

Easily fixed...very easily fixed. Set a request limit on data requests. Done.

Anyways don't hold your breath.

This is a very old fix and not a very good one. You just end up banning legitimate users for whatever ban time you set to expire, it has to be an IP ban otherwise how can you tell a request from one user apart from another.

plasticbat · October 2017

It will not be back. If it comes back, it will not have the mini game. Since it is a web application, it is fairly easy to write a bot program to interface with the web application. There was at least one bot program to play that mini game and was shown in you tube. They don't want to do deal with the endless anti-bot cat and mouse measure to a web application. Any anti-bot measure will be broken.

When there is a bot, it does not even have to be 100% fully automatic bot. e.g. you as a person login manually. Run the program. When there is a reward, it alerts you to do something interactively.

thecrowley · October 2017

Well I suppose they could do some work around the rewards to make it so that you cannot sell any of it etc. Hell, make it useless cosmetics or only companion XP for all I care. I just want the minigame back. Or even better, keys or some stuff like that. Earn the keys ingame through specific tasks that you can use to open the chests in the minigame, so even if people bot it would require effort in the real game as well. Not only that, but does it need to be a web application? Wouldn't a mobile app be enough kinda? And yes I know they could bot that as well but still.

And I mean, people are gonna bot everything they can, I'm sure there are people with gliders playing the game itself as well. But I do think they have options to make more of a permanent solution to eliminate the need to keep chasing the bots around.

It's just sad really, they totally broke it

I found it incredibly enjoyable.

zebular · October 2017

I miss the Gateway also but not for why, I'm guessing Professions, most probably do. I miss it just for the ease of being able to see what my characters are equipped with or have in their inventory without having to log out and switch to them. As well as being able to check out the Guild Roster in a better format than in game.

Would love to see it come back with only "viewing" of Character Information, Equipment, Inventory, and Guild Data if its not an option to have professions, mail, and inventory management.

vida44 · October 2017

Maybe instead of fixing bugs for a whole month they could've fixed Gateway and bring joy to all botters...I mean players.

thecrowley · October 2017

We are not asking for them to divert any resources at all if it impacts the main game. Not even remotely.

oldbaldyone · October 2017

jumpingmorks said:

oldbaldyone said:
> @rickcase276 said:

> Not to mention the server load that the gateway was causing.

Easily fixed...very easily fixed. Set a request limit on data requests. Done.

Anyways don't hold your breath.
This is a very old fix and not a very good one. You just end up banning legitimate users for whatever ban time you set to expire, it has to be an IP ban otherwise how can you tell a request from one user apart from another.

I never said anything about banning people (I've been banned twice due to false positives, no thanks). Just set it that people can only make X requests a minute and after that, it stops taking requests. Similar to the way the in game AH does.

This of course is referring to the fact that they claimed the Gateway was removed ONLY because people were making huge amounts of requests, causing server lag. Bots, automation, etc were never raised as concerns by the dev team (course, the bot companion does seem to indicate otherwise).

preechr · October 2017

lol I never thought of the pet that way!

plasticbat · October 2017

oldbaldyone said:

jumpingmorks said:

oldbaldyone said:
> @rickcase276 said:

> Not to mention the server load that the gateway was causing.

Easily fixed...very easily fixed. Set a request limit on data requests. Done.

Anyways don't hold your breath.
This is a very old fix and not a very good one. You just end up banning legitimate users for whatever ban time you set to expire, it has to be an IP ban otherwise how can you tell a request from one user apart from another.

I never said anything about banning people (I've been banned twice due to false positives, no thanks). Just set it that people can only make X requests a minute and after that, it stops taking requests. Similar to the way the in game AH does.

This of course is referring to the fact that they claimed the Gateway was removed ONLY because people were making huge amounts of requests, causing server lag. Bots, automation, etc were never raised as concerns by the dev team (course, the bot companion does seem to indicate otherwise).

If I remember correctly, the date gateway was first taken down, there was a lot of bot farming loyal gear. AH was flooded with that. Probably, it was also the date the video of the gateway game bot came out. It was a kind of emergency shutdown instead of a planned one. However, my memory is not good.

thecrowley · October 2017

What if there was a limit on how many you could do per day and you'd have to spend Zen to raise that limit? Botters wanna profit, botters gotta pay up? I'd be ok with that.

rickcase276 · October 2017

I think it still all comes down to them having enough personnel on their side to be able to keep the Gateway running. You see how much maintaining is going on for the Foundry, so I doubt they would bring back another system that won't be maintained as well.

thecrowley · October 2017

Yeah the Foundry was gone for a while wasn't it? Is it actually popular now?

plasticbat · October 2017

No, they are not going to do it because new people knows nothing about it and they are not demanding it. They want many other stuff fixed. And the "new people" who are really paying are not using PC. We can dream and it is not going to happen.
Whatever that is not in console, it will not come back.

Unknown · October 2017

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Unknown · October 2017

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Unknown · October 2017

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Unknown · October 2017

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plasticbat · October 2017

joe123thewayward said:

plasticbat said:

oldbaldyone said:

jumpingmorks said:

oldbaldyone said:
> @rickcase276 said:

> Not to mention the server load that the gateway was causing.

Easily fixed...very easily fixed. Set a request limit on data requests. Done.

Anyways don't hold your breath.
This is a very old fix and not a very good one. You just end up banning legitimate users for whatever ban time you set to expire, it has to be an IP ban otherwise how can you tell a request from one user apart from another.

I never said anything about banning people (I've been banned twice due to false positives, no thanks). Just set it that people can only make X requests a minute and after that, it stops taking requests. Similar to the way the in game AH does.

This of course is referring to the fact that they claimed the Gateway was removed ONLY because people were making huge amounts of requests, causing server lag. Bots, automation, etc were never raised as concerns by the dev team (course, the bot companion does seem to indicate otherwise).
If I remember correctly, the date gateway was first taken down, there was a lot of bot farming loyal gear. AH was flooded with that. Probably, it was also the date the video of the gateway game bot came out. It was a kind of emergency shutdown instead of a planned one. However, my memory is not good.

plasticbat said:

oldbaldyone said:

jumpingmorks said:

oldbaldyone said:
> @rickcase276 said:

> Not to mention the server load that the gateway was causing.

Easily fixed...very easily fixed. Set a request limit on data requests. Done.

Anyways don't hold your breath.
This is a very old fix and not a very good one. You just end up banning legitimate users for whatever ban time you set to expire, it has to be an IP ban otherwise how can you tell a request from one user apart from another.

I never said anything about banning people (I've been banned twice due to false positives, no thanks). Just set it that people can only make X requests a minute and after that, it stops taking requests. Similar to the way the in game AH does.

This of course is referring to the fact that they claimed the Gateway was removed ONLY because people were making huge amounts of requests, causing server lag. Bots, automation, etc were never raised as concerns by the dev team (course, the bot companion does seem to indicate otherwise).
If I remember correctly, the date gateway was first taken down, there was a lot of bot farming loyal gear. AH was flooded with that. Probably, it was also the date the video of the gateway game bot came out. It was a kind of emergency shutdown instead of a planned one. However, my memory is not good.
The price of the loyal gear in the AH prior to the removal of the gateway was very stable and also on the pricy side. One would expect to see a rapidly declining price for any item being bot farmed in mass. If there was lag being caused by the gateway it was probably from some of the sites that provided realtime data and analysis on the game economy via auction house searches done through the gateway.

No, it was not in the pricy side at all. It was pretty cheap. The one that was expensive was Loyal Avenger. The other loyal gear were cheap. It was in 12K range. The bot was probably running for a while. Cryptic claimed there was an "emergency shutdown" because of the load. I personally did not believe that back then. I did not think the real cause of the shutdown was either the bot or the load. My conspiracy theory was "it was a planned shutdown" to get rid of gateway because consoles do not have gateway. I still do not really believe it was an "emergency shutdown". The timing was pretty perfect. However, what I believe what the cause was does not matter. Gateway will not be back.

mentinmindmaker · October 2017

I don't think Gateway was shut down for one cause only, but several factors contributed:
* No Gateway for the consoles so benefit only for the 'small' PC player group
* Massive botting, both of minigame, professions and AH
* Better things to use limited development resources on

mamalion1234 · October 2017

IT Would be nice to bring back gateway without : auction house option, inventory option, zen exchange option, professions and invokes.
I miss the sword coast adventures.

tripsofthrymr · October 2017

The Gateway was discontinued because, while cool and convenient, it was drawing too many resources from the development team and creating too many problems, mostly (in my estimation) due to botting and other automation. It was additionally stated at the time that the Gateway's development language (JavaScript) isn't the core technology used by the team, creating a further hurdle to maintenance.

The team faced the option to dedicate additional resources to solve the various issues the Gateway created, or close it down to focus development time on new content and game system improvements. Unless something significant happens to justify additional resources, the Gateway won't make the priority list. So, tell your friends to come play

mentinmindmaker said:
If they were to bring back Gateway it would have to be made non-exploitable, since Web solutions are very easy to automate.

Let's have a look at what the Gateway opened up to automation.

Professions

The design of the professions system rewards players for spending long hours in-game repeatedly kicking off tasks. That's not exactly compelling game play, and creates a problem for customer service to decide, "Is this a really dedicated player or a bot?" That leads either to some bots being allowed, or some legitimate players being punished, or both. In order to alleviate concerns about a hypothetical Gateway 2.0 being used to give some players an unfair advantage via automation, professions would need a rework to remove the many-small-tasks approach.

Auctions

Rumor has it that players were able to place a bid via the Gateway for several seconds after the game client closed out bidding. That disparity would have to be eliminated. It may be desirable to prohibit Gateway bids in the closing minutes of the auction to reduce automated auction sniping.

The Gateway was also used to scrape price trends for commodities. In private hands, that information allows serious traders an advantage. If the information is public and available to all, it's a cool feature that players can use if they want to get deeper into the game economy, or ignore if they just want to kill monsters and sell loot.

SCA

That was a cool mini-game. I played many times while binge-watching Netflix or waiting for a queue to pop. Never did find that Lightfoot Thief. In order to reduce the potential for automation, link the ability to make a run to in-game actions (e.g. complete a dungeon, get an SCA key. Complete a quest line, get a dozen SCA keys.)

I appreciated the Gateway and wish we had something like it again, but I don't expect to see it back any time soon.

thecrowley · October 2017

Agree on that last point. I mean, it was nice to be able to manage crafting from work but if it's a huge problem, screw it. I can live without it.

I do seriously miss Sword Coast Adventures though. I don't like many mobile games but I did like that one, quite a lot too. Plus it was really cool to earn ingame rewards while goofing off at work or while watching TV or on the train/bus etc. Or while driving (probably shouldn't say that).

I mean, they can limit it as much as they want, I don't care. I just want the minigame back

btairborne · October 2017

I liked SCA, but face it, the whole thing got exploited by botters so bad it's never coming back.

Are you ever gonna bring back the Gateway?

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