Bots and Gold sellers

[Ecronyte]

I do agree they need to police the game very hard. But You can't ignore the game design. Its like a shopping mall leaving all the lights on and the doors wide open during the night, and letting the police deal with any burglary problems. The mall is creating more of a problem for the police than there needs to be.

Likewise Aion can discourage Bots from the design end, so that their game is easier to police in the end. You can't make a huge mess out of the game design, and hope for GMs to clean it up later.

L2 has waaaay more bots than WoW (relative to live players) because gold isn't essential to advancement in WoW as it is in L2. You raid for most your gear in WoW, everything binds to you, so you can't buy it from farmers that run bosses. In L2 you can buy anything and everything off the market.

Not only that but gold in WoW is much easier for someone to earn. In L2, gold is insanely hard to earn, unless you are playing the market heavily.

I just hope Aion has addressed the game design issues that attract farmers. I don't expect to be without Bots, but I would prefer the game doesn't encourage them.

[Haubix]

Originally Posted by Shinkotetsu

Greed is also something to factor in, making money "soulbound" as you mentioned Haubix, almost sounds as if it would slightly support the greed factor, and I say that because since you can't "trade" money, people wouldn't be willing to part with it so easily, especially if they can't send/transfer money to an alt. No matter the case, human greed will influence prices.

I understand that point very well. I didn't intend support the greed factor with my idea. In my opinion it's the best idea to prevent china farming. But regarding the transfer-money-to-alt-problem: I don't think it's a big problem. If you need the money to buy better equipment for your alt, buy it with your main char and send it over. If you want an alt char for trading only, you can buy items which have a good buy/sell-ratio, send them to your alt, sell it there and sell it from your alt. It's a bit inconvenient, but hey... it works :P
Sure this is also a method for china farmers, but if they sell/buy items to get money from one char to another, they won't harm the economy, they would support it.

[gguus]

Bots aren't really a problem imo, it's the gold sellers and the people who buy the gold who screw over the market. Because of the huge amounts of currency, prices will go up, which is no problem for the gold buyers, but people who don't buy gold will get in some serious money problems. These players also tend to just buy up the whole market and resell it for more, kind of sucks imo.

Farming bots (in the beginning at least) will cause the opposite effect, because of the flood of materials and items, the prices will go down, which is only better for the normal players. However, eventually prices will go up because of the huge amount of currency so well yeah... my advise would be to just start your own bot train lol. Which will result in even more items and money and an even more screwed up market

Quite the dillema =)

[SYG]

To date, I have only ever seen one single MMO that had no gold sellers, and I think it had something to do with the PvP/death system.

In this game’s play, when a player died, they dropped every single piece of gold on them and several items/weapons/armor/etc. that were equipped on their character/in their inventory. The most expensive items had a higher percentage rate of dropping and soul-binding did not exist. People had to run around with expensive gems/stones/rings that were essentially “useless” except that they were worth a lot of money. These items could be used as Death Items, and would drop upon death instead of an epic weapon or armor that player wanted keep. As level increased, the more items you dropped upon death, up to 10 or so I believe. This happened regardless of whether you died to a mob or a player, and if you were killed by a player, that player could loot the gold and items off of your corpse. Now, this game DID have plenty of bots on it, but they were purely for leveling characters, never for selling gold.

Now, I am not advocating this system, as it had problems of it’s own, but this is just an example of how I think a game CAN be made in such a way that makes it unsavory to those who might want to be gold sellers (I have never played L2, FF11, or lotro, so I’m not sure how their PvP systems were. If they were similar to this and yet still had gold sellers, please correct me).


I suppose they could set up a system that was the exact opposite, as has been proposed on this thread: A system in which nearly everything was either soulbound or had a very specific price and could not be traded for any thing except other objects/gold “set” by the programmers to be in that price range. But, I think such a system may make crafting and professions fairly difficult unless it was done perfectly.

[sonicwhip]

dont worry about botters and gold farmers,their are many gms in game scoping out botters everyday,and giving them a ip ban for life.
p2p games also handle bots way better,they have more advanced systems to detect the programs.and almost everyday their are about 20m gold salvaged by the devs and nc which was used to sell in gold selling websites.
if they ever see bots are getting outta hand they might compensate actual players for that,or get a better bot detection system and more anti bot gms.
so all we honest players gotta worry about is having fun and reporting and suspicious behavior to customer support.
hope this helps.

[platino]

depend how server community will react to botter/ebayers.
in clans dont care bout it that will encourage players to do that stuff.
that is main problme of L2 now.
game have 3 or 4 years.most ppl is end content already.so any new player come if he want to get up fast will ebay a toon or gold to get faster lvling.

aion every1 will start from same lvl at beggining,so isnt much incentive to bot/ebay because every1 in on same lvl in everything

[Evenstar]

Originally Posted by SYG

- Make gold drops become lower and lower as you grind for longer amounts of time. If someone has only done one hour of grinding that day, they should get much larger gold drops than someone who has been grinding for 20 hours straight (Of course, the 20 hours person would still have more gold, but at least the non-bot would not be so far behind the botter as they would have been).

That idea seems very unfair to those who don't mind farming for long periods of time to buy gear or materials like me and in fact will favor those who do little for maximum rewards. Punish the hard working, reward the less... And no game is ever gonna limit how long someone wants to play or farm. You will never gonna get rid of bots or gold farmers it's just part of online games. Where there's something fun and enjoyable someone will always think of a way to profit from it.

[Necrosis]

Originally Posted by sonicwhip

dont worry about botters and gold farmers,their are many gms in game scoping out botters everyday,and giving them a ip ban for life.
p2p games also handle bots way better,they have more advanced systems to detect the programs.and almost everyday their are about 20m gold salvaged by the devs and nc which was used to sell in gold selling websites.
if they ever see bots are getting outta hand they might compensate actual players for that,or get a better bot detection system and more anti bot gms.
so all we honest players gotta worry about is having fun and reporting and suspicious behavior to customer support.
hope this helps.

I ended up laughing at this.

1) There is nothing to indicate GMs are scoping out anything, the game isnt out and NCSoft has yet to make a claim.

2) IP Bans are a joke.

3) A game that isnt free still guarantees NOTHING.

4) Everything else you say is pure hope and fantasy with no basis for such claims.

[Yakuzan]

As bots saw that NcSoft was taking very little action against bots the bots can almost shout "I'm a bot botting all day long and selling it all on Ebay!" while looting stuff and they wouldn't get caught.

[platino]

in L2 bots r banned by gm but they take time to investigate if is really a bot and by the time they r banned they made alot of gold to sell that pay for 4 or 5 account more
also u have the 9 man bot party with 1 active user.when a gm contact any of those players person that is running bot talk with the gm.

sometimes happen mass ban that ban 90% of bots.
i saw that happen already but by norm bots will happen sooner or later

[davidmoore]

I don't see too many botters on WoW. I play from 3am to 6-7am EST which I'd think would be prime botting time. Anyhow, I think botting takes away from the game definately and something does need to be done about it. Most people are competing with others within game to be the first to level cap, or to have the most money or best armor. Botting makes the game unenjoyable because these competative people are getting owned by 24hour machines. I only invest maybe 10 hours of my time to WoW a week, if that. So botting doesn't bother me because I'm the last to do anything. I'm the only person I know with a non-epic ground mount and I'm 68. IP bans are worthless, i believe account deletion is the key. Also, tracking credit card info and blocking that credit card from being used again could also help. Although game cards would bypass that.

[Kiyosuke]

its funny to me. We have here a fairly large community of MMORPGers, and we all see to have differant desires of what would be the best game. And, while we can debate all day about what is the best MMO should the grind be light or heavy, should pvp have rewards or just kind abe there etc. But, wel all seem to agree that this ebaying crap and botting is bull****.

I just have to say, I don't get it. To me buying gold online is like using an AIMbot in an FPS, it defeats the purpose, and anytime you do well using this illgotten loot you have to know that if you were legit you wouldn't be able to beat that mob/player.

I can understand if 3 years after the game is released you go on ebay and grab some cash to move through the lower lvls quicker. I still don't like it but I can understand why you would do it.

I've heard people rationalize this **** as, "some people liek to play MMOs but they don't have the time so they buy money so they can enjoy the game when they do have time to play it." Well **** them, they shouldn't be playing. (if thats you I'm sorry if you're mad but I mean it.)

Anyway, I agree with what many here have said, you really won't be abe to stop this. Unless the game sucks and carries no market share so it is a waste of everyones time. Aside from that, I am a fan of banning accounts. But how to go about that in a truly effectiv emanor is a good question.

People have suggested limits on trading, where items must be fairly priced (this I can agree with) and where you can't just trade loot ( I have a slight problem here).

My problem with not trading loot, is I play with friends. If my friend needs a new bow that he can't afford and I'm not saving fdor anything new (at least not in the immidiate future) me helping him helps us both.

[Kyuzo]

Actually, buying gold/adena online makes a lot more sense than using Aimbot in counterstrike. Still doesn't make it right.

People work, get tired, and decide that they'd rather spend that 15 bucks an hour they made on an amount of gold and adena that would have taken them 2 weeks to make.

Again, I'm not saying its right. Personally, I believe its cheating, but I can understand someone who does it.

[Knite]

Originally Posted by Kiyosuke

But, we all seem to agree that this ebaying crap and botting is bull****.

Originally Posted by Kiyosuke

I can understand if 3 years after the game is released you go on ebay and grab some cash to move through the lower lvls quicker.

erm... huh? How is that any different from buying from day 1? You are still going against what you said- achieving something that you couldn't on your own... or didn't have the patience for. It's ok if you see both sides of the argument, but Saying its Bull**** and in the next breath saying its sometimes ok is a bit hypocritical

It's like... I think people who steal should have their hands cut off... unless the product has been on the market for 2 or more years, then I can kinda see where they're coming from.

[Ecronyte]

Well knite, he wasn't saying it was alright at any point. It is just more understandable 2 or 3 years in. And I get what he is saying.

I guess its like being rich and stealing food, compared to being very poor and stealing food. It isn't right in either circumstance. But it is certainly more understandable in one rather than the other.

It depends a lot on the game. But if you look at a game like L2. There is very little you can do at low lvls. Except PvE stuff. But even PvE is very lonely in L2. There may be a few alts, and a very few new players running around, but for the most part L2s starter towns are deserted. New players have months if not years of grind to look forward to until they can start PvPing seriously, or to go to sieges. Gear and lvling costs are insanely high and the market is inflated. If they Ebay, it isn't to get a leg up on the competition, it's just to stay affloat. Its still very wrong. Since a lot of the people who are high lvl with good gear worked very hard to earn it. And the Ebayer did not.

But I can certainly see the difference between the jerk who Ebays to get ahead of his piers, and the guy/gal who Ebays to have piers.

Does anyone know if NCsoft has said anything about items binding or anything like that. I think I heard somewhere that the market would be totally player driven. If that means the item system will be just like L2, I am very very concerned.