The bots cause a massive deflation on almost all goods. Said goods, namely enchantments would be priced way higher due to a lesser supply if there were no bots. Getting an artifact weapon/belt to legendary or even a regular artifact would be way harder, the way it is intended by the way. People are not supposed to get their items to legendary quality within a day, only botters ill gotten goods make it possible and this is a disadvantage for those who choose to NOT hop onto the exploiter-bandwagon. Not to mention, that farming and selling enchantments (which used to be a great source to get AD), is now pointless, because the bots are not humans and can farm 24/7, so their supply will outweigh the legit-farmer's by tons, but that is a different story, for another lovely evening.
Its a twisted web. Bots make getting the millions of RP necessary to refine an artifact possible, but they are also the reason that refining an artifact to legendary takes millions of RP. If bots couldn't sit and farm enchants and items all day, the devs probably would have made the grind for artifacts a little less lengthy. So bots are both the reason for it, and the function that makes it still possible.
I would love to know of anyone who has actually used only their own drops to level an artifact to legendary - no AH, no trading, nothing but drops. Even if said person exists, they probably wouldn't be of much more value to the community to a bot anyways because they'd be farming 24/7.
If you take advantage of the unlimited ways to make things harder, you attract bots because making it easier is going to be very attractive. If you make things easier, the bots have really no purpose because you won't buy something you can get in a couple days farming, so they go away - BUT the game becomes really boring.
The bots don't really bother me. i can live with the random tell and email, and the PE spam is easily avoided by not being in Zone chat there (there is very little value to it anyways). That said, a chat filter for specific terms isn't a bad idea still. I just dont think it would work.
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beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
I would love to know of anyone who has actually used only their own drops to level an artifact to legendary - no AH, no trading, nothing but drops. Even if said person exists, they probably wouldn't be of much more value to the community to a bot anyways because they'd be farming 24/7.
Hey there. Am I of not much "value to the community"?
Technically, I don't have any legendary artifacts. I have several on different characters that are now fully refined, but keep getting spans of <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> luck for actually taking them all the way up and I'm waiting on a pres ward sale to grit my teeth and deal with it.
I haven't used purchased stacks of enchants or peridots for artifact refinement. I'll cop to buying peridots to make plaguefires because I just want to make the thing and use it and be done with it. Artifacts, they're more of a long term gain.
The double refinement weekend allowed some interesting tricks. If you took a rank 1 union artifact, boosted it up to rank 59, and plopped it into another spanky fresh union artifact, that one got ranked up to 81 with no crits. If you happened to have more than one Eye drop on a single character, it wasn't so tough to fully refine a Sigil of the Devoted, for example. And if you got a Greater Mark of Union on every run it took to get those Eyes, that's a fairly good chunk of RP right there. I try to run the Phantasmal Fortress on all my characters most weekends. It doesn't take that long. Consolidating resources on the lucky ones allowed them to get some nice stuff, which will be nicer once I get more wards.
bioshrikeMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,729Arc User
edited October 2014
Personally, I feel that there is a pretty simple solution:
==> Add a feature that prevents you from getting tells or emails from anyone NOT on your friends list or in your guild, (obviously still allowing admin/system messages though).
<::::::::::::::)xxxo <::::::::::::::)xxxo <::::::::::::)xxxxxxxx(:::::::::::> oxxx(::::::::::::::> oxxx(::::::::::::::> "Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark Official NW_Legit_Community Forums
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bioshrikeMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,729Arc User
Wouldn't that mean no more dungeon delves with premade randoms?
I am referring to tells and in-game emails only - you'd still be able to see everyone in zone, lfg, and other "global" channel. As magenubbie pointed out, it would only address part of the issue.
<::::::::::::::)xxxo <::::::::::::::)xxxo <::::::::::::)xxxxxxxx(:::::::::::> oxxx(::::::::::::::> oxxx(::::::::::::::> "Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark Official NW_Legit_Community Forums
Is so hard to think for a system that report botters?.
- Let's say that you press right click on a character and there's an option called "Report bot", so a Dev, GM or whatever log into the game one hour per day and see a list of people who have been reported as boters (sorted by the amount of people that reported that guy) that are online, so let's say we have 'xyz' reported by 75 guys as a bot, the GM go to where 'xyz' is, spect him, send him a messages (obviously making that a GM's message is always shown, no matter what filter you have) and if he continue attacking and moving for more than 15 seconds ignoring the GM he get a ban for a week and the next time it's forever, and let's put a limit, making you able to only vote once per day, so botters don't start to vote on normal persons to avoid being spected by a GM.
- Another option would be to have a team of GM's that do the job manually, just log and start to visit some random maps and instances one hour per day, each one of them.
To the topic, the BEST solution to getting rid of the spammers? Get a few interns to simply sit in game and watch for them. Bots and spammers are NOT hard to find for a human, but are impossible to stop with filters and programming. Get a few trusted folks to sit in the popular bot spots (Blacklake, Sharandar, PE) and just start banning people. Once they start losing their accounts in rapid succession, it will no longer be profitable for them to keep making them.
I'm not sure this would work, I've had a good look at the spammers and I've noticed that some names only appear once.
I don't know if they're used again but they weren't used within the next 10 minutes or so (while many other names with the same message did appear).
I tried getting my head around how they did it (after spending 3 days in-game blocking them, to see if it was worthwhile, if that would lessen the 'flow'). There's too many of them to think that it's some guy leveling them to lvl15 just to post spam. Also some of the names and handles didn't seem random, they seemed like actual real names. With seeing so many names that looked real, it got me thinking it might be too many to have been ppl who have had their accounts hacked, so maybe they have found a way to use other peoples accounts 8O lol.
It really is perplexing though, they must have a program that lets them change their level, cause i really can't see them doing it themselves (too time consuming) and I don't think that many people have had their accounts hacked.
without a single bot in this game, how many people would have legendary/r10/perfects?
I do not believe the game was intended to have players use 3rd party sites to bot for them so they can have legendary/R10s in a week.
This game is only casual-friendly because of the bots. Refining was intended to take ages.
As for the spammers, they are here because the bots are here. No bots= nothing to sell= no spamming.
I am not so sure that casuals would actually get enough AD to make a lot of major purchases on the AH, even from passive AD generation and playing two hours a day for their dailies and a few main quest story lines.
But I was very interested in what you said here; very insightful and an eye-opener to me:
Neverwinter is my first ever MMO, so I know nothing about other, similar games.
But, yes, it seems obvious now; the game is almost pre-designed to be farmed by Bots.
But, as you predicted, I do not like your suggested fixes as they would penalise ME. And I am a 100% legitimate, non-exploiting, paying customer. Leadership was finally just starting to pay dividends after all my investment. So I REALLY do not want it nerfed in any way at all.
But Neverwinter is not truly "designed for Bots", of course; it is designed to be F2P. And, of course, the design of all that passive AD generation and AD from Dailies is calculated and designed really quite well to give legitimate F2P casuals enough AD to buy their Scrolls of Identification at low level and unlock the level 60 Campaigns and so on without spending any actual cash. As long as they actually play. They just won't have any Shared Bank Vault Slots, Re-Training Tokens, Extra Character Slots, Account-Wide Mounts, Greater Bags of Holding, interesting DLC packs like Knights of the Feywild, The Dragonborn Legendary Pack, Scourge Warlock Booster Pack and other cool but non-essential stuff we "Pay for Convenience" and "Pay to Enjoy More" people can get from the Zen Market.
But, honestly, after spending so much time and energy and between €600 and €800 on Zen in eight months (I forget exactly), I do not care about Farmer Bots and their effect on the AH. Not at all. All I really care about is having my gaming enjoyment spoiled by Pirate Bots and Spammers flooding the Chat channels with their obnoxious <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>, sending me TELLS, fake friend requests and bogus e-mails and generally being a complete nuisance. A player-side filter would solve MY problem for me quite easily.
And, you know, after I'd been playing for a few months and started to really get a grip on the game, my Guild Captain and I were looking at the AH and I was musing about how come so many things were so cheap and cost less than the Zen equivalent - like Greater Bags of Holding for 220k AD, when 1000 Zen at the time cost 376k AD. He suggested sales allowed it. I said, nah, the numbers still don't pan out. 750 Zen is still 282k AD, so after the 10% cut, there's no way anyone is making any profit on 220k for a GBoH.
I suggested, maybe it is Cryptic putting stuff up, to stimulate the AH so that everyone can enjoy the mini-games of AH Trading and Professions? Like some people play the Gateway Dice Game etc (I don't, generally - I prefer the live server game)? I did not know about Bots at the time.
Who knows? We all know that there are actual things in the real world like Industrial and Commercial Espionage, so why not have "Double Agents"? I am not suggesting that this is the case, and I have no idea of the legality of such a thing. But, morally, I don't see a problem. If a company actually owned apparent "3rd Party" Sites and also strongly discouraged their use, they would still get the income stream they would otherwise lose by selling AD etc themselves. Perma-Banning anyone who used one of such a company's "3rd Party" sites might constitute entrapment, but I don't think blocking any lines of income haemorrhage like that would be morally wrong.
But, as I say, I do not really care about Bot Farmers. I only care about their spam in-game.
The only time actual Bots annoy me personally is when they end up on my PvP team with a 5k GS, or in a Dungeon Delve party.
But Neverwinter is a great game. It takes as much of my time as Skyrim did for two years. But I would enjoy it a whole lot more if there was no irritation in Chat and e-mails from Pirate Bots and Spammers.
I tried getting my head around how they did it (after spending 3 days in-game blocking them, to see if it was worthwhile, if that would lessen the 'flow'). There's too many of them to think that it's some guy leveling them to lvl15 just to post spam.
It really is perplexing though, they must have a program that lets them change their level, cause i really can't see them doing it themselves (too time consuming) and I don't think that many people have had their accounts hacked.
They use Bot progammes to run the characters; they run through from the beach to PE, talk to Knox and do the Crown of Neverwinter, like the rest of us. Then they spam Blacklake Terror Skirmish for up to 18,000 AD per hour during the Event. And they farm the area of Professions Nodes, change Map Instance and do it all again, then go back into the Skirmish Event. Over and over and over and over again.
They level up like this, just like you and me. But they are controlled by a sophisticated programme. They never get tired. They never get bored.
THOSE BOTS ARE OUT THERE!
They can't be bargained with
They can't be reasoned with
They do not feel Pity
Or Remorse
Or Fear
And they absolutely
WILL. NOT. STOP.
EVER!
Until Neverwinter is dead!
They'll be back! :cool:
At level 11, they can Invoke. So they get AD and more XP that way.
Level 15 must be some sort of "sweet spot" - they can do everything except ride a mount and get an artifact, and they have also "qualified" for spamming human beings with their obnoxious crapola.
And, of course, it is possible to passively level a character after level 11 by Invoking every hour. Also gives them AD they can sell and they do not have to do a thing.
That is why there are so many of them at level 60.
I'm not sure this would work, I've had a good look at the spammers and I've noticed that some names only appear once.
Yeah its been said before, that it wouldn't work at all. People keep suggesting it though. You can sit there and do this yourself. Ignoring/Reporting all the spammers. It blocks the whole account every time you ignore. So you never see a character on that account spam again. But they keep coming, almost non-stop. An ingame moderator/intern/whatever doing the same thing with a ban button wouldn't be any different.
They use Bot progammes to run the characters; they run through from the beach to PE, talk to Knox and do the Crown of Neverwinter, like the rest of us. Then they spam Blacklake Terror Skirmish for up to 18,000 AD per hour during the Event. And they farm the area of Professions Nodes, change Map Instance and do it all again, then go back into the Skirmish Event. Over and over and over and over again.
They level up like this, just like you and me. But they are controlled by a sophisticated programme. They never get tired. They never get bored.
THOSE BOTS ARE OUT THERE!
They can't be bargained with
They can't be reasoned with
They do not feel Pity
Or Remorse
Or Fear
And they absolutely
WILL. NOT. STOP.
EVER!
Until Neverwinter is dead!
They'll be back! :cool:
At level 11, they can Invoke. So they get AD and more XP that way.
Level 15 must be some sort of "sweet spot" - they can do everything except ride a mount and get an artifact, and they have also "qualified" for spamming human beings with their obnoxious crapola.
And, of course, it is possible to passively level a character after level 11 by Invoking every hour. Also gives them AD they can sell and they do not have to do a thing.
That is why there are so many of them at level 60.
hehe nice post, glad you didn't 'terminate' it too soon
I didn't realise their technique was so advanced, to have a program that could do all that, shows how much I know about 'stuff' lol.
Yeah its been said before, that it wouldn't work at all. People keep suggesting it though. You can sit there and do this yourself. Ignoring/Reporting all the spammers. It blocks the whole account every time you ignore. So you never see a character on that account spam again. But they keep coming, almost non-stop. An ingame moderator/intern/whatever doing the same thing with a ban button wouldn't be any different.
Yeah, true, like I mentioned, I 'ignored' maybe 100 of them over the 3 days (not obsessively though) just to see if it would cut down on the amount, but it didn't. Then one time while waiting for my girlfriend I just looked through chat and noticed that there would only be the odd one that would spam repeatedly, (5 times and then it seemed no more), while all the others seemed to spam once then that was it.
The spam doesn't bother me that much, (I've actually taken them all off of my list in case it slows my loading... somehow) but I wouldn't mind the chat filter as mentioned in the OP. I can also see how people have a love/hate relationship with them because of how they keep the prices low in the AH, but at times their spam can make Zone Chat almost unusable.
hehe nice post, glad you didn't 'terminate' it too soon
I didn't realise their technique was so advanced, to have a program that could do all that, shows how much I know about 'stuff' lol.
LOL! Yes, great set of films.
I had no idea what a "Bot" even was until I saw it mentioned on this forum. And I could not understand how a "Bot" programme could even work. So I decided to find out.
All MMO game companies know all about them and take steps periodically to purge them. There are documentaries on YouTube with MMO Gold Farmers explaining the dynamics of both sides of the business, without going into any details that could be exploited by lay men like us. Or the police!
It is HUGE business. It's not just a few hundred people with a few free accounts each, there are whole server systems and arrays of PCs logged in running the farming programmes all day long, 24/7/365. They know where all the quest destinations are, where the Professions Nodes are and I suppose they have AI to kill anything hostile, loot the node, clear the map, change instance and do it all over again. But it is part of the reality of F2P games now.
I have even had one TR Bot with a 5k GS in PvP, constantly taking the same route, flailing away wildly and getting killed in 0.6 seconds, getting up at the camp fire and charging straight back in to do it all again, long after the rest of us had given up as we were 13k average against a 18k, five Legendary Guild Team. It was really quite comical.
But this is why I and a lot of others would really like some sort of Chat Filter System we could configure to block their spams. because, as I say in the OP, "Report as Spam" is just squashing a single ant at a time, leaving the nest with an army of workers streaming out all day and all night long.
And whatever steps are taken to Terminate the Bots, were all know but One Truth:
THEY'LL BE BACK! :cool:
PS- there is a Foundry Quest called something like GOLD SPAMMER - everyone should play that for some light relief and the psychological placebo of feeling like you are doing something. I think it is eligible for the Daily Foundry quest as well.
I think it's Neverwinter that's been hacked.
I feel the need to throw in my two bits. It might as well be here. I've been watching the spambots' @handles and they aren't the usual random generated accounts. Also the behavior of the postings in general seem to indicate something to me. A bot will log on, post a message for one parasitic gold seller site once, then another will appear posting a single message for another site. then you won't see them again. A possible reason for this is to limit their exposure so they won't collect enough "report spam" flags to be banned. If they were hacked accounts or burn accounts it wouldn't matter so much. My guess is that it's to not alert the player they have access to from getting banned. I've also been wondering how the spammers have access to so many player accounts. I can't imagine that such an incredible amount of people would use a disreputable random site to buy in game resources and get hacked when you can buy directly from the game with a measure of security. The thing that we know all these people have in common is Neverwinter itself. While it's pure speculation, if there was indeed a backdoor into the server where a bot program could log on to a random account and spam a single message before logging off again in milliseconds, it would account for the behavior I've seen and the multitude of different non-randomized @handles. It also would make sense that a single entity was running multiple gold selling sites and using the same method. If PWE was serious about cracking down on the spam, perhaps they should check if any of their employees (likely past employees) with access are moonlighting as gold sellers.
No matter if I'm correct or not, that spam is really annoying. So much so it has me posting this reply and wondering if my account is safe.
Gonna close this down as it's past its age limit. If more than 30 days have passed since the last post in a thread, please start a new thread or find a more recent thread that matches your post content.
ROLL TIDE ROLL
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
Comments
While not going into specifics, the article linked does address the reasons why other regions in that list besides China and Russia are banned.
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
Its a twisted web. Bots make getting the millions of RP necessary to refine an artifact possible, but they are also the reason that refining an artifact to legendary takes millions of RP. If bots couldn't sit and farm enchants and items all day, the devs probably would have made the grind for artifacts a little less lengthy. So bots are both the reason for it, and the function that makes it still possible.
I would love to know of anyone who has actually used only their own drops to level an artifact to legendary - no AH, no trading, nothing but drops. Even if said person exists, they probably wouldn't be of much more value to the community to a bot anyways because they'd be farming 24/7.
If you take advantage of the unlimited ways to make things harder, you attract bots because making it easier is going to be very attractive. If you make things easier, the bots have really no purpose because you won't buy something you can get in a couple days farming, so they go away - BUT the game becomes really boring.
The bots don't really bother me. i can live with the random tell and email, and the PE spam is easily avoided by not being in Zone chat there (there is very little value to it anyways). That said, a chat filter for specific terms isn't a bad idea still. I just dont think it would work.
Hey there. Am I of not much "value to the community"?
Technically, I don't have any legendary artifacts. I have several on different characters that are now fully refined, but keep getting spans of <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> luck for actually taking them all the way up and I'm waiting on a pres ward sale to grit my teeth and deal with it.
I haven't used purchased stacks of enchants or peridots for artifact refinement. I'll cop to buying peridots to make plaguefires because I just want to make the thing and use it and be done with it. Artifacts, they're more of a long term gain.
The double refinement weekend allowed some interesting tricks. If you took a rank 1 union artifact, boosted it up to rank 59, and plopped it into another spanky fresh union artifact, that one got ranked up to 81 with no crits. If you happened to have more than one Eye drop on a single character, it wasn't so tough to fully refine a Sigil of the Devoted, for example. And if you got a Greater Mark of Union on every run it took to get those Eyes, that's a fairly good chunk of RP right there. I try to run the Phantasmal Fortress on all my characters most weekends. It doesn't take that long. Consolidating resources on the lucky ones allowed them to get some nice stuff, which will be nicer once I get more wards.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
==> Add a feature that prevents you from getting tells or emails from anyone NOT on your friends list or in your guild, (obviously still allowing admin/system messages though).
"Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark
Official NW_Legit_Community Forums
I am referring to tells and in-game emails only - you'd still be able to see everyone in zone, lfg, and other "global" channel. As magenubbie pointed out, it would only address part of the issue.
"Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark
Official NW_Legit_Community Forums
- Let's say that you press right click on a character and there's an option called "Report bot", so a Dev, GM or whatever log into the game one hour per day and see a list of people who have been reported as boters (sorted by the amount of people that reported that guy) that are online, so let's say we have 'xyz' reported by 75 guys as a bot, the GM go to where 'xyz' is, spect him, send him a messages (obviously making that a GM's message is always shown, no matter what filter you have) and if he continue attacking and moving for more than 15 seconds ignoring the GM he get a ban for a week and the next time it's forever, and let's put a limit, making you able to only vote once per day, so botters don't start to vote on normal persons to avoid being spected by a GM.
- Another option would be to have a team of GM's that do the job manually, just log and start to visit some random maps and instances one hour per day, each one of them.
I'm not sure this would work, I've had a good look at the spammers and I've noticed that some names only appear once.
I don't know if they're used again but they weren't used within the next 10 minutes or so (while many other names with the same message did appear).
I tried getting my head around how they did it (after spending 3 days in-game blocking them, to see if it was worthwhile, if that would lessen the 'flow'). There's too many of them to think that it's some guy leveling them to lvl15 just to post spam. Also some of the names and handles didn't seem random, they seemed like actual real names. With seeing so many names that looked real, it got me thinking it might be too many to have been ppl who have had their accounts hacked, so maybe they have found a way to use other peoples accounts 8O lol.
It really is perplexing though, they must have a program that lets them change their level, cause i really can't see them doing it themselves (too time consuming) and I don't think that many people have had their accounts hacked.
I am not so sure that casuals would actually get enough AD to make a lot of major purchases on the AH, even from passive AD generation and playing two hours a day for their dailies and a few main quest story lines.
But I was very interested in what you said here; very insightful and an eye-opener to me:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780551-Suggestion-Pirate-Bot-and-Spammer-Control&p=9310591&viewfull=1#post9310591
Neverwinter is my first ever MMO, so I know nothing about other, similar games.
But, yes, it seems obvious now; the game is almost pre-designed to be farmed by Bots.
But, as you predicted, I do not like your suggested fixes as they would penalise ME. And I am a 100% legitimate, non-exploiting, paying customer. Leadership was finally just starting to pay dividends after all my investment. So I REALLY do not want it nerfed in any way at all.
But Neverwinter is not truly "designed for Bots", of course; it is designed to be F2P. And, of course, the design of all that passive AD generation and AD from Dailies is calculated and designed really quite well to give legitimate F2P casuals enough AD to buy their Scrolls of Identification at low level and unlock the level 60 Campaigns and so on without spending any actual cash. As long as they actually play. They just won't have any Shared Bank Vault Slots, Re-Training Tokens, Extra Character Slots, Account-Wide Mounts, Greater Bags of Holding, interesting DLC packs like Knights of the Feywild, The Dragonborn Legendary Pack, Scourge Warlock Booster Pack and other cool but non-essential stuff we "Pay for Convenience" and "Pay to Enjoy More" people can get from the Zen Market.
But, honestly, after spending so much time and energy and between €600 and €800 on Zen in eight months (I forget exactly), I do not care about Farmer Bots and their effect on the AH. Not at all. All I really care about is having my gaming enjoyment spoiled by Pirate Bots and Spammers flooding the Chat channels with their obnoxious <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>, sending me TELLS, fake friend requests and bogus e-mails and generally being a complete nuisance. A player-side filter would solve MY problem for me quite easily.
And, you know, after I'd been playing for a few months and started to really get a grip on the game, my Guild Captain and I were looking at the AH and I was musing about how come so many things were so cheap and cost less than the Zen equivalent - like Greater Bags of Holding for 220k AD, when 1000 Zen at the time cost 376k AD. He suggested sales allowed it. I said, nah, the numbers still don't pan out. 750 Zen is still 282k AD, so after the 10% cut, there's no way anyone is making any profit on 220k for a GBoH.
I suggested, maybe it is Cryptic putting stuff up, to stimulate the AH so that everyone can enjoy the mini-games of AH Trading and Professions? Like some people play the Gateway Dice Game etc (I don't, generally - I prefer the live server game)? I did not know about Bots at the time.
Who knows? We all know that there are actual things in the real world like Industrial and Commercial Espionage, so why not have "Double Agents"? I am not suggesting that this is the case, and I have no idea of the legality of such a thing. But, morally, I don't see a problem. If a company actually owned apparent "3rd Party" Sites and also strongly discouraged their use, they would still get the income stream they would otherwise lose by selling AD etc themselves. Perma-Banning anyone who used one of such a company's "3rd Party" sites might constitute entrapment, but I don't think blocking any lines of income haemorrhage like that would be morally wrong.
But, as I say, I do not really care about Bot Farmers. I only care about their spam in-game.
The only time actual Bots annoy me personally is when they end up on my PvP team with a 5k GS, or in a Dungeon Delve party.
But Neverwinter is a great game. It takes as much of my time as Skyrim did for two years. But I would enjoy it a whole lot more if there was no irritation in Chat and e-mails from Pirate Bots and Spammers.
They use Bot progammes to run the characters; they run through from the beach to PE, talk to Knox and do the Crown of Neverwinter, like the rest of us. Then they spam Blacklake Terror Skirmish for up to 18,000 AD per hour during the Event. And they farm the area of Professions Nodes, change Map Instance and do it all again, then go back into the Skirmish Event. Over and over and over and over again.
They level up like this, just like you and me. But they are controlled by a sophisticated programme. They never get tired. They never get bored.
They can't be bargained with
They can't be reasoned with
They do not feel Pity
Or Remorse
Or Fear
And they absolutely
WILL. NOT. STOP.
EVER!
Until Neverwinter is dead!
They'll be back! :cool:
At level 11, they can Invoke. So they get AD and more XP that way.
Level 15 must be some sort of "sweet spot" - they can do everything except ride a mount and get an artifact, and they have also "qualified" for spamming human beings with their obnoxious crapola.
And, of course, it is possible to passively level a character after level 11 by Invoking every hour. Also gives them AD they can sell and they do not have to do a thing.
That is why there are so many of them at level 60.
Yeah its been said before, that it wouldn't work at all. People keep suggesting it though. You can sit there and do this yourself. Ignoring/Reporting all the spammers. It blocks the whole account every time you ignore. So you never see a character on that account spam again. But they keep coming, almost non-stop. An ingame moderator/intern/whatever doing the same thing with a ban button wouldn't be any different.
hehe nice post, glad you didn't 'terminate' it too soon
I didn't realise their technique was so advanced, to have a program that could do all that, shows how much I know about 'stuff' lol.
Yeah, true, like I mentioned, I 'ignored' maybe 100 of them over the 3 days (not obsessively though) just to see if it would cut down on the amount, but it didn't. Then one time while waiting for my girlfriend I just looked through chat and noticed that there would only be the odd one that would spam repeatedly, (5 times and then it seemed no more), while all the others seemed to spam once then that was it.
The spam doesn't bother me that much, (I've actually taken them all off of my list in case it slows my loading... somehow
LOL! Yes, great set of films.
I had no idea what a "Bot" even was until I saw it mentioned on this forum. And I could not understand how a "Bot" programme could even work. So I decided to find out.
All MMO game companies know all about them and take steps periodically to purge them. There are documentaries on YouTube with MMO Gold Farmers explaining the dynamics of both sides of the business, without going into any details that could be exploited by lay men like us. Or the police!
It is HUGE business. It's not just a few hundred people with a few free accounts each, there are whole server systems and arrays of PCs logged in running the farming programmes all day long, 24/7/365. They know where all the quest destinations are, where the Professions Nodes are and I suppose they have AI to kill anything hostile, loot the node, clear the map, change instance and do it all over again. But it is part of the reality of F2P games now.
I have even had one TR Bot with a 5k GS in PvP, constantly taking the same route, flailing away wildly and getting killed in 0.6 seconds, getting up at the camp fire and charging straight back in to do it all again, long after the rest of us had given up as we were 13k average against a 18k, five Legendary Guild Team. It was really quite comical.
But this is why I and a lot of others would really like some sort of Chat Filter System we could configure to block their spams. because, as I say in the OP, "Report as Spam" is just squashing a single ant at a time, leaving the nest with an army of workers streaming out all day and all night long.
THEY'LL BE BACK! :cool:
PS- there is a Foundry Quest called something like GOLD SPAMMER - everyone should play that for some light relief and the psychological placebo of feeling like you are doing something. I think it is eligible for the Daily Foundry quest as well.
Knox ends up in tears, though...
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
I feel the need to throw in my two bits. It might as well be here. I've been watching the spambots' @handles and they aren't the usual random generated accounts. Also the behavior of the postings in general seem to indicate something to me. A bot will log on, post a message for one parasitic gold seller site once, then another will appear posting a single message for another site. then you won't see them again. A possible reason for this is to limit their exposure so they won't collect enough "report spam" flags to be banned. If they were hacked accounts or burn accounts it wouldn't matter so much. My guess is that it's to not alert the player they have access to from getting banned. I've also been wondering how the spammers have access to so many player accounts. I can't imagine that such an incredible amount of people would use a disreputable random site to buy in game resources and get hacked when you can buy directly from the game with a measure of security. The thing that we know all these people have in common is Neverwinter itself. While it's pure speculation, if there was indeed a backdoor into the server where a bot program could log on to a random account and spam a single message before logging off again in milliseconds, it would account for the behavior I've seen and the multitude of different non-randomized @handles. It also would make sense that a single entity was running multiple gold selling sites and using the same method. If PWE was serious about cracking down on the spam, perhaps they should check if any of their employees (likely past employees) with access are moonlighting as gold sellers.
No matter if I'm correct or not, that spam is really annoying. So much so it has me posting this reply and wondering if my account is safe.
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
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