Bots and Gold sellers

[Kattrina]

No one helped pay my bill... actually, I lie, I got broke pretty fast in that game... I hate to say it, but my mom ended up paying a lot of my bill. She's in love with farming, and she doesn't mind lending me some gold to make a repair.

Anyways, it wasn't the healer's fault either, it was just the mechanics of the game. I wore plate, and I wore very nice and expensive plate. Plate armor was expensive, and the higher the quality of equipment, the more it took to repair. My armor would lose durability just from getting hit, and that plus an occasional death (cause it happens to the main tank) would make the 20 gold repair. The 50 gold one comes from when we're trying out new content and have to die a lot trying.

Anyways, if they had some kind of gold sink, I think it'd be a decent idea. Money going to NPCs for minor things like repairing makes it so that money is somehow leaving the system. Otherwise, we'd just have tons of inflation.

Going off what Mr. Sabre said, I really really hope they don't make it so that if anyone wants to have this piece of uber gear, you need to take it from this world boss that spawns once every some odd days, and only the best and most elite guild ends up keeping it and no one else will ever get to get a piece. That'd just be lame.

[Sabre]

Shouldn't be too rare, yet shouldn't be close to common either. FFXI's Sky is the perfect example. Gather up 12-18 lv70+s and you can get pieces of the best armorset around. It's not amazingly hard to beat any of the 4 gods, nor Kirin (The "God of the gods"), so it allows more common and laid back Guilds/Linkshells to get some of the really cool and great gear. But, FFXI's system does make the big pieces, the bodies and legs, extremely hard to get on some servers because of intense endgame Guilds going after them daily.

Personally, I like the fact that it took me almost 2yrs to get my full set of Paladin endgame armor (Koenig), because it showed how long I endured endless hours of camping with my Linkshell and how we finally reached the "prime". And once I had that armor, I got to wear it, being the first NA on the server with it, which was awesome~ Sure now, there are 20+ PLDs with that armor today, but it's something that really sets you apart~

[Aleena]

L2 had alot of bad money sinks, soulshots/spirit shots were WAY more costly that item repairing ever could be.

wow also did a good job with instance dungeons, with L2 the dungeons weren't instanced so for all the areas taken up by bots they pretty much made it so you had one less place to grind.

[Calindor]

ywah, but players crafted the money sinks in L2, the only stuff that went to NPC's was for consumables and stuff with the mammon/ancient adena

[Kattrina]

Yeah, I think for it to be a true money sink, the money needs to completely leave the system.
Money goes in from farming and drops, money swishes around inside the system by passing hands for various reasons, then the game has a money sink, some way that the players drop the money to an NPC or something that will take it out of the player's hands forever.

[Bakedgoods]

i was more annoyed at clans in L2 then botting.
i got pushed out of more clans and cata's by clans then by bots. bots you just whack them and they log or train them til they give up.
clans, they try to use force and power to get you out of your spot. if you kick thier *** you feel good but then they declare on you clan and the leader has no spine or balls and kicks you out of clan for not letting them kill you.

[Glacius]

Originally Posted by Calindor

hmm well small bots like that arent a huge problem, in my time on wow i never saw them or RMT as a huge problem...but in L2 you cant do anything without ebaying..you can never expect to get top gear unless someone gives it to you.
Go to any town and you see trains of 9 bots that look rediculous following each other around, they farm all the best exp spots...a lot of the bot trains now have like a lvl 80 dagger that is actually played to guard them and kill anyone that tries to kill them. ALL the raid bosses have bot parties logged out at them, as soon as the raid spawns, the bots log in, kill it, log off...its rediculous, and if aion got even half as bad as that i wouldnt play it

That does sound pretty miserable.

FFXI was bad back in 2004 when I played heavily. The economy was practically driven by gil farmers/botters so in order to keep up gear wise you were almost forced to buy gil online. There wasn't many NA Endgame LS at that point so making money endgame was tough. Most of the JP LS had a monopoly on all of the valuable HNMs.

[Sabre]

Yeah 2004 was a brutal time. Caitsith got it's majority of gilsellers/farmers around that time too, about halfway through 2004. Luckily, we were just then starting to take over the HNM scene in my LS, so luckily money wasn't a big issue. But I definitely feel your pain, even in 2003 and the first half of 2004, it was so hard to make money in that game with JP HNMLSs owning really all the big materials and crafted armors on the server. Verm Cloaks and Scorp Harnesses were around 25mil I remember..insane. In 2005 they became like 8mil lol

[mrpica]

i played on a free lineage2 server before i went retail
and on that server u could use bots , only to heal and buff
u were aloud to have 1 logged in but i had about 8 or 9

buffs lasted 1 hours even dances and songs so i was always fully buffed with a bishop behind me to heal me ( was nice in pvp )

i played retail on hindemith and yes its was crowded with frikking bots
if u ask me , they should instant ban all players with names like ( ghtrrrew )
i mean there isnt a normal player playing with a name like that , in lineage2 i must say , the admins are just ignoring the problem cuz its so obvius , but i gues they bring in a lot of money , trains with 9 players have to pay 9 times

and the funny part is that a friend of mine had a buffer acount banned
he couldnt run 2 clients since at that time he had a crappy computer
so he used l2walker , never on auto buff or heal , he did it all with his hands and HE got banned
and in the catacombs there are sometimes 9 bots walking in a row buffing and healing etc and they could just do what they want

[Gravity]

Lol, this would never happen.. but they could have a system in which a GM could lock logging in for 5 minutes, and message players in game, saying "Please log out now as the server will be shut down for 5 minutes." Then after 5 minutes kick everyone left in the game. If they did this every few hours, botters could only bot for that long.By only being down for 5 mins it really wouldn't hurt normal players unless they are in a siege or raiding. And to fix that they could give a warning 30 minutes beforehand, so players don't plan anything big during that time. And if you don't log out in time, you lose all your current gold and items, exept equipped ones of course. Then the only problem would be those who afk. And they could make it so that afk people get kicked after 15/20 minutes of afkness.And if you afk after the warning then you deserve to have your inventory wiped, for being dumb!

Jeez that took forever to type with colors. ):

[Calindor]

you really want to play a game that tells u to log off several times a day, and most bot parties in L2 have a high lvl char thats actually played to protect the bots from pkers. And over half the people who bot use in-game botting, they sit at their computer and let the bot run, and watch it, but they dont do any of the actual work

[Gravity]

Originally Posted by Calindor

you really want to play a game that tells u to log off several times a day, and most bot parties in L2 have a high lvl char thats actually played to protect the bots from pkers. And over half the people who bot use in-game botting, they sit at their computer and let the bot run, and watch it, but they dont do any of the actual work

Actually, most of the gold farmers do not sit at their computer. They run multiple computers at a time, 24 hours a day, for basically until they restart their computer or get disconnected. Sure, they check it every so often, but they don't sit at their computer the whole time, or even most of the time. Especially those in L2, because they know they won't get banned. I've had guildies who used the L2 walker for WEEKS straight, logging off to restart computer or update their gamegaurd pass. And most, (Not all) of the people who sit at their computer are the ones who do it for themselves, the ones who won't farm or Ebay items/currency, but need cash because of the gold farmers who inflate prices up and over the rainbow. Or those who level alts while they're leveling their main, etc. So yes, if this kind of system was implemented, it would help cut down on gold farmers. Because I don't care about the botters who do it to level themselves, or to help themselves make money, only thing it hurts me is they can probably kill me easier, but once your at the level cap it doesn't matter. I care about the ones that ruin the economy. And those are the gold farmers.

And oh no, I have to log off for FIVE minutes , my gaming experienced is ruined. Honestly who cares? 5 minutes? Gives you enough time to get off your lazy butt and make food or something. So yes, I would GLADLY play a game where I have to log off for 5 minutes every 3 or 4 hours, or 9 hours, or even 1 hour, if it would reduce the amount of gold farmers and help the economy stay at least somewhat balanced.

EDIT: But none of this matters anyway, because this would never happen. It's just a thought I'd figure I'd tell everyone, because I thought it was interesting.

[Endrance]

As a side note, in China Ingame Money Farming is almost to be equatable with slave labor, although those poor ingame money farmer people actually think they're actually doing something legitimate. They're even complaining about people who complain about them. **** those ahole RMT company bosses. Anyone who's supporting that by buying ingame money for real money should be ashamed of themselves, taking aside the cheating/unbalancing unfair part they're maintaining as well. People like that talking about balancing a game in forums is a joke.

[aznlj2001]

I GOT AN IDEA...HOW ABOUT THIS.....
this is actually implemented in one of the game i played years ago..

anyway..what the idea is that the system will give you a image and ask you to type in those characters from that image in. you get 3 tries...
if you do not enter those characters into the box...you will be kicked out of game..
if you do not get it right after 3 tries..you will be kicked out of the game...

not if you are just plain stupid and can't read the chars..they are pretty easy words..
and just got kicked out..fine...log back in again..no big deal..
on the other hand...a bot program will have no idea what char is in that image...so highly unlikely to get the char right...

how about that for a change?....of course this idea is implemented in the King of botter country...china...

[Calindor]

oooh i think thats a great idea aznlj2001, it would also help control lags...you know how those games send out a message every hour or 2 saying "You've been playing for a long time, go get a life"...instead of those messages it could give you the code to enter, and they could do it like forum registration pictures so programs can't read them. It would kick all afk people off, and when they get back they'd just have to relog back in...It should give you like 5 minutes to enter the code, and it shouldnt pop up in the middle of your screen, that way it wouldnt interfear with playing

and endrance i know what you're saying, but if its part of the game and people are doing it/i think its worth my money instead of the time/effort it would take me to get what i'm buying otherwise...i will do it. I would prefer it not there at all, but i'll take any advantages i can get, and however you look at it...if you can buy some ingame currency and get away with it 100%, then it is an advantage.