Anti-Bot and Market Coalition

[Redagio]

Hello to all Aion Source members and visitors. I am a new member, so to speak, to your vast community. I came from Lineage 2, a practical hell-bound community with a demolished economy and an even worse botting situation. I was a clan leader there for 3 years starting in about 2004. I lead that clan along with an alliance that survived the clan/alliance reformations when switching to a different chronicle and helped lead 3 other alliances. I quit since then because of the community's corruption, lies, and crocked ways of doing politics and mindless warring. Plenty of Adena (in-game currency) purchases being made and through that, gaining a lot of control over markets because there wasn't a band or pact for merchants that kept them together and organized, disabling single wealthy players/clans to gain total control of the markets and castles. This would, of course, supported botters to the maximum and allowed them to gain large profits from taking advantage of the unstable and tarnished community within all of the servers. Some did better than others but bots still were allowed to roam the servers unchecked and unchallenged because at that stage in the game, they were unbeatable.

Anyhow, I come to you all today to try to get some preemptive support for a movement I wish to create. In response to Elliot's translated pages, (Read What They Read, See What I See and Read What They Read, See What I See) I want to create a coalition that will successfully fight and drive back the botters by combating them in the market. Normal players are their prey; they feed off of us to make their money. The premise is that they go out, farm materials, sell the materials/sell crafts, gain tons of Qinas (in-game currency), then sell them for real money irl. Cutting them from the source, Qinas, will hurt them the most rather than slaying them out in the fields or asking the greedy corporate giant NCsoft to deal with the situation expecting them to deal with it in the same manner as Blizzard does here in the states. Truth is, they more than likely will not because they don't have the customers here in the US/EU like they do in Korea and then with botters filling in those empty slots, that should be filled with faithful players, NCsoft sees profit and will allow the majority of them to continue, banning a few to appease the populous.

How do I want to combat them? This coalition I want to create will be filled with all the major legion leaders and emissaries of those legions from each server and each side (Asmodian and Elyos). I personally can only oversee and take care of a single server but I would hope that when the release comes, someone will step forward and take care of the other servers. There will be bi-weekly meetings in which all of whom are invited, can attend and throw in their two cents about how the market should be run. All that will be discussed within meetings is what base mats, crafts, and special mats should cost (in ranges) and allow the legion leaders to instruct their people what they should price their items. Doing this will allow all normal and not-so-hardcore players to afford the items in-game. This can more than likely be easily achieved by creating a store and viewing Aion's suggested price that is displayed within the store. This price is usally 1/3 of what the NPC merchant would sell it to us for which means that the value should be that price +40% to +55% meaning that we should expect a 5% to 20% profit. The only downfall is that people will attempt to take advantage, buy our items at the lower prices, and then sell them at higher prices. Those who'll do this is the ignorant (those who don't know of our plan) and those who just want more money. It won't work though because nobody will buy their overpriced items because there will be so many legions in agreement still pricing items lower, people will ALWAYS buy the less expensive items therefor forcing all other players to sell at our prices if they want to make any money at all.

The other step in this plan is to require all of the coalition merchants to put up a special tag within their store title. For example, I could name my store "H0t iTem$ cH3aP" and since I'm part of the coalition, my store needs to read something like: "*!* H0t iTem$ cH3aP" the *!* is the tag that signifies that this store is human owned and should be purchased from before a store that doesn't have this tag. As long as the store owner is human, they can put the tag there. This will allow players the freedom of buying from honest, hard-working humans rather than from botters.

How will people even know what the symbol means? Word of mouth. The legion leaders will be the ones to tell their clannies and their clannies will tell other newcomers who either aren't a part of the coalition or aren't in a legion at all. The downfall here is spies - people who are botters finding out and taking advantage and putting the tag in their stores as well. The first step in combating that is changing the tag every month. The second step, if the botters are just mimicking our store tags all the time, we'll instruct the legions to place all of their stores in a single location. If they belong to a legion in specific, they must place themselves in a certain area of their choice within each city. It should look like a large circle of stores that look like they're preparing for a raid. This will somewhat exclude non-legion players but this is for the greater good. This will give another visual for players to purchase from honest players again.

Ok so re-cap. Keeping the prices low with the coalition will force the server to keep prices low as long as the coalition remains large, strong, and loyal to the pact. Keeping prices down allows everyone to purchase items at a profitable and still affordable rate. Keeping these items affordable will prevent players from being forced to purchase Qinas from botters. Tagging our auction house bids and personal stores will allow players to only buy from non-botters and with plan B will too allow players to only buy from humans. This will lessen the amount of Qinas even available to be purchased by humans anyway. The botters will also have to raise the prices for the Qinas to where it would discourage people to buy the in-game currency in the first place. It's almost a fool-proof plan and the only way for it to succeed is for us all to work together to accomplish such a large goal esspecially since Asmodians will not be able to contact Elyos players in-game and vice versa. we would have to have meetings in TS/Vent and post the updates within a forum in the Official Aion Forums and here, in the Aion Source Forums.

This ABMC (Anti-Bot & Market Coalition) cannot really be formed until the actual game releases and everyone knows what server they'll attend. Currently, I wish to bring this to everyone's attention here is just to get feedback, suggestions, and criticism. I know that this concept is almost next to impossible because people will be hard to inform in-game and hard to trust to get to keep selling at the prices that are suggested. The figures I gave above shouldn't be necessarily the formula we should go by but instead just an example. Expect some conflicts and some disagreements but such a worthy deed will bring us all together and once the bots have been at least pushed back first, let's be human and cut each other's throats to the maximum then. As of right now, I'm giving the general Aion population the benefit of the doubt that we can work together for a common goal for as long as possible. Caring for your fellow man is indeed a rare expression heard and much less practiced but I'd like to atleast try and fail over not trying at all and definitely failing.

[Neon]

:d that's a lot to read - you should try to condense your points down or the majority of people won't read it.

There are also major problems with your plan - for example if you do successfully make a coalition where human players set up shops with !*! there is nothing to stop bitters from displaying this too. You can tell who the bitters are when they are farming but not in town. Changing the tag every month isn't going to help at all, and it's not as if bitters are too stupid to move their character around either.

Again - you think that by making things more affordable people won't buy gold - and that's just a silly idea - ofcourse they will. Asking as there are rare or desirable items out there that are hard to get people will buy gold to afford them. Common materials and items are not important. Even if you can get rare items to be cheaply avaliable you havn't succeded in anything. You will get rid of botting and gold sellers but only because you'd have destroyed the Market.

Your intentions are good but without a change in tactics you're just wasting your time.

[Kaycy]

This system assumes that established or "high end" guilds are completely devout and don't hack or bot. Sadly, from my gameplay experience (without wanting to judge you or your guild) , this is not the case.

[Redagio]

yeah you're right. Legions would have to be established first and not to mention, people would have to actually read these forums and the official forums where I also plan to post this idea. I know this is a lot to read but there's a lot to it too... Not sure I can really reduce it much. You have a good 2 and a half months to read it :P

And I'd doubt too many botting clans will participate but then again, the coalition is here for market control and enforcement. I'd only expect elite legions and legions well on their way to support and join. Not to mention honest... another term hard to come by but like I said, benefit of the doubt.

[iaredrew]

There's enough walls there to build a small village of text.

[smartdot]

i think your not really taking into account human nature here. No matter how low you price the items, there will always be people buying currency unless you can remove the bots entirely (only NCsoft could do it). People want the greatest reward for the least effort. Also, this could work, but only if every non botter was made aware of this. Also whats to stop the botters from underpricing you? they're bots, they can have multiple accounts going, and they will gather automatically, where as you will be making less profit because you will have to work harder. Im not saying that this is a bad idea, im just saying the chances of it working are almost zero.

[Mr Mage]

Wall of text crits you for 500%.
In theory a very good idea keeping all the shops human controlled and within a certain price bracket range should keep the prices from sky rocketing with inflation. I think you would need to change the human controlled shop tag more often than once a month.

However in practice I can't see this working because people are selfish and greedy they will pay for the best equipment even if it means real money trade.

[Anticitizen 1]

im going to agree with the general consensus that this is well intentioned, however unless we had every single aion player going along with this it would never work correctly.

We can only hope NCsoft will in fact do something.

[Shuu]

Originally Posted by Redagio

Lot of ****

everRed wanabee eh?
Give it up already,like it was said in "Hated" video from eR,"you can't match China",sad for you but true.
Even tho I had a huge respect for what eR did,they miserably failed,so will you.
Oh and count me in too to buy your items with uber low prices in order to sell it at farmer's prices after.

Originally Posted by Mr Mage

people are selfish and greedy.

Hell ye I am.

[Redagio]

why is a tramp (no offense) trying to give advice and negative criticism anyways? Maybe I am being too optimistic about this endeavor, but there's no reason to be rude about it Shuu. And good luck purchasing my items period seeing as how I state I'm Elyos and you're asmodian. I'd also say that it's people like you that the bots would be allowed to survive and I'd imagine you'd be proud of it.

Yeah, I know that NCsoft is the only power that would be able to blow a mortal wound to the botters but if NCsoft is going to run this game like Lineage, don't expect anything but a few botters being kicked each month.

There has to be something we can do as players to attempt to oppose the bots. giving up and doing nothing obviously doesn't work. If we the masses cannot handle not being greedy, we can atleast tag our auctions and stores. I was claiming once a month also because I'm sure it would be difficult notifying hundreds of players of the ever changing "human tag" and have them update their stores and auctions. If anything, the tags would be a little bit damaging but not to the effect of driving the masses of bots to lose profit.

[Shuu]

Originally Posted by Redagio

why is a trampy s*ut (no offense) trying to give advice and negative criticism anyways? Maybe I am being too optimistic about this endeavor but there's no reason to be rude about it Shuu. And good luck purchasing my items period seeing as how I state I'm Elyos and you're asmodian.

You re not optimistic,but either retarded,either living in your own dream.
And be sure I will have farming parties in both side

[Ravrohan]

I think its a really good idea, and it shows someone is thinking of ways that WE can fight against bots. NCsoft needs to do something to restore their image after L2's bot heaven and Tabula Rasa's flop, so I'm hopeful that they'll wake up. But even if they do they won't be able to get rid of all the bots, the players will need to do something about it too. Kill them in the field and kill them in the market, whatever makes it harder for them to do what it is they do. Everyone complains about bots, not everyone wants to do something about it.

I'll encourage my legion to go along with this and try to help out, as long as everyone has access to the powerful high end items whether from pvp, pve or crafting no one group of people can dominate everything and in turn, ruin the game for everyone.

[Shuu]

Originally Posted by Ravrohan

Everyone complains about bots

No I'm not.
But I could complain about NCsoft's inability (read : no will) to do something about it.

[Mark]

Shuu's signature is almost too hawt for AionSource.com. :3

[Abapollo]

its like socialism, beautiful when u talk about it.
i think its not gonna work n i dont wanna be the 1st to put my money in test n w8 to see expensive items being sold when i just sold cheap ones.
but in case it comes to work, wudnt be a problem to help