Sooo Bots Anyone?

[Foyan]

No AAA title will ever be free of botting. That is a given. Think of one and it has bots in it. The question is whether their presence is so significant that it completely skews the economy or not. L2 is a prime example of the former, WoW is an example of the latter.

Lineage 2 had a host of other issues which magnified the impact that bots had on the game economy, namely the way drop tables worked and the magnitude of the level grind, which it shares with more than a few "Korean" MMOs of the past.

Having a customer service on hand which cracks down on botting effectively is stopping at the halfway house. Game design has as much of a hand, if not more in softening the impact of botting on the game. ArenaNet has been effective in this area with GW because game design helped control the impact of botting while they mass banned frequently, at least till I played a while ago.

Aion may make a break from L2's legacy and the presence of bots may or may not impact game experience for the average player in a significant way. Without hitting 6 months past the NA release, it's not possible to make an objective call on whether this will hold. The level grind in Aion is supposedly a fraction of the intensity of L2, but how drop tables for items and resources are set up is a big part of how things will pan out.

Crying hoarse right now won't make any difference in the long run. Working bot programs will always be around. A bot will always outfarm and outgrind you, no matter what. Tuning the resource and item/upgrade drops and making quest awards on par with item drops (in stats if not looks) will go further in reducing the impact of botting on the game.

[Zedek]

Originally Posted by Livvy

Money isn't content , the way you obtain it is . You can still trade but you don't have to if you're not into it . The biggest mistake folks make when discussing gold/bots /gear etc. is that they think those things are actual content.They're not : money and gear is a means to an end .Bots and goldbuying occurs when that money isn't the means anymore but has become the endgoal itself .

What is the point on trading and earning money if its worthless? Thats not fun at all. In the last game i played, Age of Conan, i had more money than my whole clan together. And i couldnt spent it on anything worth it. -> i quitted

[Livvy]

Originally Posted by Zedek

What is the point on trading and earning money if its worthless? Thats not fun at all. In the last game i played, Age of Conan, i had more money than my whole clan together. And i couldnt spent it on anything worth it. -> i quitted

Obviously you need money-sinks ( be it epic gear, mounts etc. ) but you are mistaken the actual trading compnent is being content by itself . Trading is simply a tool - or a passtime - it has nothing to do with progression ( or shouldn't have anything to do with that ) . If you make progression depend on how good a trader you are : bots galore . Because that means no cash= no progression.

[Zedek]

There was no massive need for the best gear in L2. You could level to 75 without having A grade.
Whenever there is something people can not afford some tend to cheat even if its not needed.
So its not just happening if you cant proceed otherwise.
That said, i dont care if i need the money to proceed or not. I want something usefull i can spent the money on because i usually have a lot of it. Otherwise i lose interest in the game.

[Livvy]

Originally Posted by Zedek

There was no massive need for the best gear in L2. You could level to 75 without having A grade.
Whenever there is something people can not afford some tend to cheat even if its not needed.
So its not just happening if you cant proceed otherwise.
That said, i dont care if i need the money to proceed or not. I want something usefull i can spent the money on because i usually have a lot of it. Otherwise i lose interest in the game.

You can't be serious anout L 2 . You need to amass huge amounts of adena from lvl 1 onwards . L2 is a pure grind-game .

[Zedek]

Yeah its a grind game. But still its not like you have to be an trading genious to be able to get high level. When i started the game together with my friends we had d grade at level30, c grade at 50 and b grade at 60 and with b you could level to 75 which was the max level in the old days. And it was my first MMORPG aswell which means in the beginning and until i was about level65 i had no idea how to realy make tons of money and i got about 1 year after that point realy good in earing adena.
So no you need to grind mobs like hell in L2 but the adena isnt something that can stop your progression. It can just make it easier.

[Sultan]

Originally Posted by Livvy

You can't be serious anout L 2 . You need to amass huge amounts of adena from lvl 1 onwards . L2 is a pure grind-game .

actually you are both right. you needed to grind a lot for money and xp yea, but it was in fact possible to use B-grade (cheap lvl 52+ items) up to lvl 75+, especially if you were only a support class.

[firevortex]

Originally Posted by Crystic

ok -.- .. this is your rationalization based on the assumption that in the game botting is totally cool and anyone can do it without repercussions.

lol. ok i give up on you. you obviously have reading comprehension issues. my INITIAL post is direct at marks comment about the motives of bot users which i dont agree with been "laziness" and "greed". where did i condone the action of bot users? point it out to me please?

Originally Posted by Crystic

People who are competitive want to be the best in the game, they want to be the best so much they go to absurd and unreasonable lengths in order to do so. That’s why they bot, because they even though they want to be the best in the game don’t have the ability themselves to do so thus they must rely on a software/hardware based program to do it for them. Coinciding with this botting they in their competitive nature buy gold so that while leveling they don’t have to worry about farming gold either so they can just enjoy the fun parts of the game that aren’t found to them to be boring.

right...why are explaining my point to me again?

Originally Posted by Crystic

Point was that botting is not totally cool and only is ok to be done while buying gold when you can’t get banned for it. It’s not the fact of buying gold or botting but buying gold and botting together. Buying gold in WoW you can get away with sure, but buying gold and botting which you described as casual players doing, nope. That's not being competitive, that's called digging your own grave. Shall I give you a link of how easy it is to be banned from WoW for using a bot like program? There ya go - Banned from WoW for using a programmable keyboard

now your saying its ok to bot and buy gold as long its not done together and wont get banned for it? LOL

[Mark]

Enough. Bots are a problem that will be dealt with accordingly. Arguing about them here is a waste of time and effort on your parts. NCsoft has got the message already and is working on fixing their mistakes.

Thank you for reading.