[SYG]

Hello everyone :)

I have been lurking here for a while, and this looks like it will be a really awesome game. There is just one thing that worries me…

I hate bots. They ruin games. I am hoping bots do not ruin this one. Otherwise players will simply bot for gold, levels, items, crafting skills, and whatever else is of value in the game. I would like to start a “theory thread” for people to come toss around some ideas that will help make botting unprofitable or otherwise unattractive in Aion.

Some of my ideas may be a bit far fetched, but:

- 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).

-Make most solo grind-based gear of “useable” quality, but not the best. Make most of the “good” gear only achievable by quests, group endeavors/dungeons, PvP, or other activities that can not be botted.

-Make trade skills require some form of “quest” or some such that must be completed before each item is crafted.


Any other ideas or suggestions others can come up with would be nice. :)

[Soraan]

Well, botting/hacking is not a huge worry, the reason why people are so worried about it is because all the free MMOs use Gameguard..a "Hacking Prevention System" that everyone and their mom can get past. From my experience, games that are P2P are much better with hacking and botting, and have GMs who sole purpose is to seek out these people using them and suspend/delete accounts. NC Soft is a trustworthy company, I wouldn't worry~

[Kyuzo]

Soraan said:

Well, botting/hacking is not a huge worry, the reason why people are so worried about it is because all the free MMOs use Gameguard..a "Hacking Prevention System" that everyone and their mom can get past. From my experience, games that are P2P are much better with hacking and botting, and have GMs who sole purpose is to seek out these people using them and suspend/delete accounts. NC Soft is a trustworthy company, I wouldn't worry~

LoL, you obviously haven't played L2. NCsoft's biggest P2P game, using gameguard, that was ruined by botters/farmers.

[Niteo]

One thing soraan L2..... its p2p and its as botters galore.... oh and so does wow.... the only difference between the two is that wow actually kicks botters L2 doesn't.

I like some of your ideas..... don't like the gold one though...... there are alotof people out there like me who don't mind getting on a game and playing it for 15 hours straight jsut for the fun of it.

I think it would be easy to do any somes of money that are larger than a certaint amoun t should be made through a in game bank now why you may say. I think each item should be giving a maxed Value..... Eplanation below this. now if a person was giving you 5m gold you had to give them something of equal vaul either gold or items that ake that value. this will stop scammers to a point and will also stop gold selling o a point.


Item value.
let say a Apple is droped nowa store will buy it for lets say 20gold now in private sale you can charge up to 4 times that so 8gold max.... this sytem will be hard t figure out cause you will have to place a value on everthing a min and a max also with item upgrades you will have to factor in wat upgrades were done to it hw many times it took to get the up grade to the lvl its at and so on all these different things come into account. tis will stop gold farmers and there buyers. the reason is no one is gonna want to pay for 5m of gold for lets say 20bucks then have to give up a item that worth 1 to 3 m by its self norm. some people may but it gonna cutdown on it.



Botters:

Botters there are alot of problem with this, if NC soft use Game gaurd then the people allready have a by pass for game gaurd now all they need to do is work out the bot system which wont be to hard I am sure they can re configure a bot for a different games and add in features like clim and fly it will take them 4 to 7 weeks max and they have a bot. in sense the bot never changes inless the updates it, the only thing that changes its the bypass for game gaurd. I want tem o make there owne security system like WOW did and i want the to monitor people play time in 24 hour intervalse so if a char players more than lets say 5 hours in one day doing one thing like grind or trade lvling and auto AI is sent to the like a mog that asks you questions about your account questions below.

5 questions total

1 wat lvl is your char (this give you 5 options to choose from or you have to write it in)

2 wats your first name (options or write it in

3 age ( options only)

4 answer to secret quesion ( writing in only)

5 logging password ( writing only)

Of course these questions will be place in random order each time they come up, you also have 5 to 7 mins t write the info in.

1st time court 24 hour lock of account

2nd time court 48 hour lock of account

3r time court lock of account for ferver review ( in this time you can feel out a request for account reactivaion forum and withing 3 days you accounts back up.


these penalties apply if you do not enter the information with in the time or you enter the worung info in more than 3 times.


nw befor people say anything... these random AI cause you to be immune from monster so you don't take damage after you have entered the right info you can choose to either go back to town or stay and continue to fight. also the Random AI questionare happens only if you have been doing the same thing for more than 5 hours this does not mean it will appear on the 5 hour mark it can appear at anytime between 5 to 8 hours. Also for those who are doing intanse or are in a group intance this random AI questionare will NOT pop up. Also lets say you get court once and it happens agin for wat ever reason mistake or not it will oly be counted as your first offense you mst be court agin with in a week periord for you to go to the second stage of the offense and then withing 3 weeks for the 3rd. info below


1st offense 1 week cool down time
2nd offense 3 cool down time untill you drop to 1st offense in which you mst wait another 1 week to get fully cleared.
3rd offense 4 weeks to 2nd and then another 3 to 1st then 1 week to fully cleared ( also if you get court with in the 4 weeks coo down of 3r offense your account will be deleted)

Bonus of not begin a offender.
FL (Fully cleard) get 100% exp
1st offense 90% exp
2nd offense 70% exp
3rd offense 40% exp
4th offense DELETED


pls comment :P

[Soraan]

Oh I had no idea L2 was overrun by botters..the people in my Guild just talk about it's PvP..And I thought GameGuard was for F2Ps.. @_@ Aion better not use GameGuard..invest the extra money to get a better prevention program

[Anuxinamoon]

Quote

- 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).

There is always a way around plans like this. Say I'm a gold farmer. All I would have to do is have 2-5 characters depending on the cooldown time for the gold thing to de-activate; and just play each for an hour. Because you usually have like 1 person manning 5-10 bots (in commecial farming businesses) it would be too easy to just switch out characters every hour. =(

There will need to be a trading middle man. All trades go though an auction house. Items are priced On or Near Offer (10% below or above server price) and gold trades are not allowed or contract a harsh ingame tax. (30-40%) That way prices on the server are regulated all the time, so someone can't just sell a pice of junk for 1 mill to a gold farmer. That way it will make sure most trades are monitored and legal. Though it will obblitterate player shops and player trading. =(

[Necrosis]

SYG said:

Some of my ideas may be a bit far fetched, but:

- 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).

-Make most solo grind-based gear of “useable” quality, but not the best. Make most of the “good” gear only achievable by quests, group endeavors/dungeons, PvP, or other activities that can not be botted.

-Make trade skills require some form of “quest” or some such that must be completed before each item is crafted.

None of those will stop botting/farmers. It will not only make things worse for legitimate players, and as a result, will lead to higher demand for farmers. I dont think I need to explain why.

The solution is not modifying the game (for the worse), but policing it. And policing involves hiring and training a large staff in a category most companies dont want to invest in, especially when it's purpose is to reduce their customer base. Spending money to reduce profits is what it boils down to, and suddenly history makes sense.

[Cynthe]

Hmm lotro was hunting the farmers real hard at first, but now the game has gold farmers galore. I get 3 tells an hour at least, sometimes more on weekend days. -.-;;
I'd be shocked out of my socks if Ncsoft could somehow eradicate them.

[Fayeth]

GOld Farms and Botters will happen in every game. Like always they will be slow at 1st then pick up speed.... shouldnt waste time with a prevention system so much as an enforcing system. Some games jsut ddint do anythign abotu the farmers whiel ther banned accounts and locked areas out etc. Hopefully NC will have a good group of peopel working to remove botters from the game.

[Knite]

Exactly. Make it so hard to for them to aquire an amount to sell (by banning accounts and throwing their "hard earned" money into limbo). I don't really have suggestions to help this other than common sense... Yes that Dwarf named 589h2njsh85 who looks exactly like the Dwarf named H6h3hK9d is a bot. Yes, that entire line of Dwarves who are attacking the same NPC guard over and over to de-level themselves are bots. (l2 people will know what I mean by those instances...)

[SYG]

Nice ideas everyone! Keep them coming. :)

I like the idea of asking a random question to people every 5 hours. Something like “What is your character’s name?” or “What class are you?” in which you would have to enter in the answer within 15 minutes or have your character logged off for you.

Also, this is a PvP game right? ;) How about they make it so that if you are killed, you drop all of the gold currently on your character? This would encourage actual players to go hunt gold farmers and bots. How’s that for deterrent?

[Saito]

bots on NC softs lineage 2? NAW! why would you think that!





Lets hope this will never happen to Aion...

[platino]

every mmo have bots and gold farmers/sellers.
if u expecting that any mmo will be bot free that will not happen ever,because will always exist ppl that will pay money for gold and of course will exist ppl that will farm to sell to that person.

would be nice to have aion bot free but i doubt that will ever happen mmo without bots

[Haubix]

Why not make gold "soulbound" (you can't trade it)? What do you need a currency for? Buying items, selling items. For whom? You.
If you want to borrow money to someone (who is obviously saving money for something), you have to buy the specific item (if you have enough gold) and you'll in the players debt, or let it be.

/discuss

[Shinkotetsu]

It would just make more sense and most likely less frustrating all around to make drop rates/market prices balanced between how much currency is generated through grinding/questing, whatever your means of making money. 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.

As Saito's ss's have pointed out as well, L2 is extremely bot ridden, especially on Lionna, with the farmers generating the majority of the mats needed to craft, recipes, and other misc items especially currency. Farmers farming currency and selling it to players inevitably leads to price increases as we all know, making it even harder for newer players to be legit (not saying they can't, but makes it a bit harder), some may stray to the dark side thus adding to the problem. Just a side note, I'm not some "holy'er than thou" person, you play how you want, I don't care as long as it doesn't directly hinder my experience. As far as bots go in Aion, like others have stated within the first few months, maybe not even that long, they'll have a bot program, period. Farmers/botters are a very high possibility, but until the final game mechanics are set in stone, I wouldn't worry to much about either. The game might not require massive amounts of currency that take hours upon hours to get just to buy one item.

[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]

Shinkotetsu said:

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 :D

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.