Im beginning to fear US Aion cant do much about bots

[Saiba Starr]

Theres botters in every mmo, deal with it. Do your part and report, hopefully the staff will do theirs.

[Sheen]

Originally Posted by Tae

Truth is, you'll never get rid of bots. Ever. Even in WoW, there are so many botters, it would blow your mind.

I know an entire guild that has been botting since Wrath. Not a single person banned. This is a war you can't win.

WoW at least puts in an acceptable amount of effort to stop botters. Their major tactic in fighting botters though is essentially removing their importance. Sure, you can argue that to a degree it makes the game too easy and that's fair. However, even if there are bots in WoW, nobody cares. It has virtually no impact on most players because they are self sufficient with daily quests, gathering, etc.

[Dandune]

Originally Posted by xinner

If you spot a bot, press the report bot button

If everyone does this, Aion will be a better place

While this sounds fantastic, it can also be abused.
Someone doesn't like you and they just press the report button.
Mass petitioning wars in L2 made quite many people banned that way whether they were cheating or not.

Your idea is based on the presumption that everyone will play fair.

[Exoth]

Originally Posted by Dandune

While this sounds fantastic, it can also be abused.
Someone doesn't like you and they just press the report button.
Mass petitioning wars in L2 made quite many people banned that way whether they were cheating or not.

Your idea is based on the presumption that everyone will play fair.

Won't there be some investigation before they just ban anyone who is reported? That would suck if a group of 10 people hate you and all report you as a bot if you get banned without any investigation. I hope that is not the case.

[Teemu]

In most Asian countries where Aion was released there was free period, during which to play you didn't even need to buy client. This basically asks to be botted. However in western release you wont play without buying the game for normal game price first, so getting banned hurts botters much more here. Now that free period is over on chinese servers, even there botting isn't totally out of hands.

[Draconais]

They could make botting software unable to work with Aion. And if people manage to get around that, make something that detects botting software and then auto life-ban.

[Tae]

Originally Posted by Sheen

WoW at least puts in an acceptable amount of effort to stop botters. Their major tactic in fighting botters though is essentially removing their importance. Sure, you can argue that to a degree it makes the game too easy and that's fair. However, even if there are bots in WoW, nobody cares. It has virtually no impact on most players because they are self sufficient with daily quests, gathering, etc.

I'm confused. Are you saying game makers should give you everything you need with hardly any effort? Or anyone who can level themselves and make their own money should not care about botters?

[Sheen]

I wouldn't be surprised that some innocent people got banned in L2. Mostly though people cry foul when they were really up to something no good. Also people abusing bots by being in a bot group, but not actually botting on that character. Trying to circumvent the rules by reaping the rewards of botting, but being safe. I know a few times entire groups were banned for botting this way, even if some chars weren't botting.

[RAUBEZ]

china did not ban goldselling to forgeign countries
just in china so there can't be money laundering

also that cellphone thing and proxy ban was ace
it won't be added but would be so cool

[Sheen]

Originally Posted by Tae

I'm confused. Are you saying game makers should give you everything you need with hardly any effort? Or anyone who can level themselves and make their own money should not care about botters?

I'm not saying game makers should do anything. I'm just saying unlike some games where a bot train can monopolize whole areas of monsters you might want to farm, or kill bosses, it's not like that in WoW. Bots dont stop you from raiding, i've had no abnormal experience doing gathering, and i have all the money for repairs, etc. from daily quests. I never have to go to the AH which is where botting could affect me by affecting prices.

Sure to some that's easy, but that's a personal opinion if one doesn't like that.

[Chalky]

The only way to deal with bots is to ban them and keep banning them as fast as possible so that it costs the gold sellers as much as possible.

I'm not sure how the game works in Taiwan (anyone able to shed light on this?) but with our game you have to buy a $30 copy of the game in order to create an account, which makes it much more expensive to keep pumping out new accounts than it is somewhere like China where you can make new accounts for free then pay by the hour.

This means the situation will always be better for us simply because the bar is raised for how much investment it takes to start a bot farming network.

If you think about what it takes to create a bot, they have to buy a $30 account, then bot with it for at least a couple of weeks in order to reach a level where they can farm well. During those couple of weeks, they will be making no money from the bot, so if they are caught during that time then the gold farmer loses the $30. They then have to spend another $30, and spend another two weeks getting it up to a decent level to farm.

There is a tipping point there, where if you ban them frequently enough the bot farmers spend their whole time trying to get bots to the right level to farm, and lose far more money buying new accounts to replace the ones that get banned than they make through selling their gold.

It's not a simple case of "no matter how many you ban, there will always be more". It's an economy, people trying to make a profit where there are costs and margins. You just have to stop it from being profitable and suddenly all the botters go off somewhere else that IS profitable. And that's all you need, just make it easier to go somewhere else and it's problem solved.

[Anuxinamoon]

Have you seen those gold farmer documentaries? They buy pallets of game boxes. Pallets!

No box can stop that force

[Chalky]

Originally Posted by Anuxinamoon

Have you seen those gold farmer documentaries? They buy pallets of game boxes. Pallets!

No box can stop that force

Is there any reason why all of those copies can't be banned before they are able to turn a profit off the farmed gold?

[SinBoy]

Originally Posted by Anuxinamoon

Have you seen those gold farmer documentaries? They buy pallets of game boxes. Pallets!

No box can stop that force

do you have a link to that documentary?

[MatTripp]

Originally Posted by Zavinris

There are also still proxys. It will cut back slightly on the bots for those companies that dont use the proxy. We will see less bots than the asian companies anyways because selling in-game items is not illegal in those countries. However, China just announced it becoming illegal there a couple weeks ago.

Actually if im correct i read in a post that NCsoft has been banning accounts outside of the US using proxies ( http://www.aionsource.com/forum/gene...ts-banned.html ) Im not exactly sure to how true it is. So if this happens then there will not be proxies used onless you want a ban right off the bat.

Originally Posted by TOloseGT

I think there's a difference between "alot of bots" and "NCSoft indifference'. NCSoft is banning bots, that's the silver lining everyone is looking for. They didn't do much for L2, but if NCSoft wants Aion NA/EU to succeed, then they are on the right step. As long as those bots get reported and they get banned, in the higher levels we shouldn't see any get through.

It's up to the community, as well as the GMs, to combat the botting problem. If we remain vigilant in our reports, and if the GMs hold up their end of the bargain, Aion should be fairly bot-free.

+1 to this post! I agree and have always thought the exact same on bots, it's not just up to the Company, it's also up to us to help find and report bots!