Hey guys!
Follow me with this, think about it!
Many MMORPG failed because:
1. No content or just simply a bad game.
2. Pay to win from cash shop.
3. Gold selling.
I'm gonna tackle just the 3rd one, Gold selling in this post.
No one, literally no one can make a game 100% bot proof (auto farmer bots). No matter the system in place, there will always be someone smarter than them to get around the system.
The only way to stop them is to just disable trading between players and market prices are dynamically fixed (minimum and maximum price of a item) by an automated systems that takes into account the whole prices put by the players or just simply manually put them by the admins.
Black Desert online now survived just because this. Everything you have you your account is purely your work (or teamwork).
Archeage was a perfect game at it's roots, you had almost everything you wanted from a MMORPG and failed because of cash shop the first round and then because of the gold selling. One player could simply kill 10 players in one shot because of its P2W gear.
I know it takes allot of fun out of the game, I realize this but this is the only way that someone tested until now and it works.
Gold selling is an industry now, very profitable and there are huge sums of $$ to gain from it. They will ruin the industry if we let them.
Think about it, all the MMORPGs are doomed to fail because of the artificial player progression (gold selling or cash shop).
MMORPGs are games for hardcore players mostly, it takes time, guts and brains to be in the front. This is at the foundation of any MMORPG.
AOC has the chance to change the market and I hope it does.
I salute you!
Let me think about that one for a second. NOOOOOOO
To be sincere, I expect more arguments from you.
You are not this kind of person.
Maybe I have a bad idea with no trading between players, but the fact is, gold selling and bots ruins any sandbox games.
Another ideea
For example make on server with trade another with no trade.
Or one server for casuals and another for hardcore players where everything is hard to obtain anything and nothing p2w.
This way, the companies can make cash from the p2w server and keep population in hard servers. They can test better what tactic to make.
Let's make this topic a brainstorm.
Are you guys not bored of flaming?
To be sincere, I expect more arguments from you.
You are not this kind of a guy.
To be fair, if it hadn't been a troll question, he'd probably have given a better answer.
I raised a problem, and we need to think about it.
As i said, i know what trading is for a MMORPG especially AOC and that it's the backbone of the game.
The first solution that came to my mind was stop trading. But keep in mind, in BDO the only way to trade between players it's thru the auction house that has fixed prices for every item (i think it's an automated system that increases/decreases the price range based on demand). You cannot select from who to buy in AH, it takes at random one from all the sellers/buyers
I'm ok if someone says that it's a bad idea if they come with another solution/argument better than mine.
You cannot police the bots and trading, you need an army of Game Masters to do this and still fail.
Just look at Blizzard with WOW, even they with their big budget could not stop the gold sellers. And in WOW you could not buy top gear but you could buy boosts in raids and pvp and subscription.
Guys this will kill the game, no mater how good it is.
Based on the experience of other MMORPGs, unfortunately yes.
P.S. Can you guys just stop trolling?
You are not able to participate at a discussion like mature human beings?
Right. 5 years into development and someone comes in wanting to change a core design feature. Gets a resounding no. Keeps pushing. More nos. Must be the everyone here trolling.
Based on the experience of other MMORPGs, unfortunately yes.
P.S. Can you guys just stop trolling?
You are not able to participate at a discussion like mature human beings?
Right. 5 years into development and someone comes in wanting to change a core design feature. Gets a resounding no. Keeps pushing. More nos. Must be the everyone here trolling.
It's people newer to the internet, they don't know the etiquette.
- Troll posts trolly nonsense.
- People get wound up.
- Troll laughs and carries on.
- Troll gets called out as a troll.
- Etiquette now dictates that the troll stops and preps a different thread about more trolly nonsense.
But, people don't seem to observe that any more, they just keep pushing on the same topic, even after the "getting called out" step. It's the death of the internet, for sure. It's doomed to die, unfortunately.
Based on the experience of other MMORPGs, unfortunately yes.
P.S. Can you guys just stop trolling?
You are not able to participate at a discussion like mature human beings?
Right. 5 years into development and someone comes in wanting to change a core design feature. Gets a resounding no. Keeps pushing. More nos. Must be the everyone here trolling.
If you would have read what i said it can be done without changing the core mechanics developed 5 years ago.
It does not change the game at it;s roots.
Removing the economy from a game is the most phyrric of victories over botters. There are many other solutions to bots, all of them imperfect, and few of them as disastrous. I would wager that you would find that almost everyone you will meet here is more willing to accept imperfect solutions that let some bots through, than the loss of a robust player-driven economy.
If you have a central market that adapts properly to demand (which BDO's does not), you will not defeat bots. The design of Ashes and separation of nodes and the core design premise of separate interconnected node economies is not compatible with price regulation, and attempting the sort of top-down price regulation BDO uses will make it nearly impossible for node economies to adapt, due to a variety of factors:
1. Whether there is demand (or to some degree supply) for various resources (at all) will vary in varying locations, and vary seasonally.
2. These location's prices cannot be tuned without sales, unless you rely on prices elsewhere, which requires some level of linking prices between nodes (even if not 1:1).
3. Linking prices between nodes destroys the local economic variance that is the core design intent of Ashes and is incompatible with the game's vision.
The only way around these fundamental limitations, is authoritative calculations by developers about what prices "should" be in each region, taking agency away from players, and ensuring that whenever the calculations diverge from player intents or activity in any way, that parts of the economy grinds instantly to a halt. Even if they're good, it can't be instantly responsive.
The central market price regulation in BDO is life support for a fundamentally flawed economic design. Attempting to apply that life support to Ashes would bring it down to that level, and regardless of whether they fully understand every implication, the majority of players here can see how painful that system would be.
This is why you get the responses you do, and why no-one is taking your suggestion seriously. We would all rather have a robust player-driven economy and let Intrepid fight bots, than kill the economy and erase the node-based individual economic structures that define Ashes, and have no bots at the cost of the economy.
Every solution is imperfect, but yours has a large negative impact on the game experience. Worse than all but entirely unchecked botting. To most people, this is intuitive, and that is why everyone assumes you must be trolling. (But in case you're not, I've 'taken the bait'. If this is insufficient, though, I won't go further. Far too much education would be required, to be feasible.)
This is the first mature response to the post.
I salute you sir.
Ok, my suggestion does not work, but what can be done?
This is the answer I want us to get the bottom of.
We must think about it, let us put here suggestions good or bad.
Gold selling and botting must be tackled somehow from design, using automated systems or something.
This is the point that I'm trying to make.
I don't want to brag but I've played too many MMORPGs (starting in 2003) and i was demolished when I've seen the system being abused and ruining the game that I put years in it of work and dedication.
6-7 years I've been a leader (200 player clan in Lineage 2 and thousand of other players passed along the years) another 8 as a player. I was a team player, I loved to talk to my community, to motivate them to play together. I even bought allot of gold from p2w shops and gold sellers
To be sincere, I expect more arguments from you.
You are not this kind of a guy.
To be fair, if it hadn't been a troll question, he'd probably have given a better answer.
I raised a problem, and we need to think about it.
As i said, i know what trading is for a MMORPG especially AOC and that it's the backbone of the game.
The first solution that came to my mind was stop trading. But keep in mind, in BDO the only way to trade between players it's thru the auction house that has fixed prices for every item (i think it's an automated system that increases/decreases the price range based on demand). You cannot select from who to buy in AH, it takes at random one from all the sellers/buyers
I'm ok if someone says that it's a bad idea if they come with another solution/argument better than mine.
You cannot police the bots and trading, you need an army of Game Masters to do this and still fail.
Just look at Blizzard with WOW, even they with their big budget could not stop the gold sellers. And in WOW you could not buy top gear but you could buy boosts in raids and pvp and subscription.
Guys this will kill the game, no mater how good it is.
What are you even talking about. You didn't play bdo if you don't know about the bots in the game.
This is the first mature response to the post.
I salute you sir.
Ok, my suggestion does not work, but what can be done?
This is the answer I want us to get the bottom of.
We must think about it, let us put here suggestions good or bad.
Gold selling and botting must be tackled somehow from design, using automated systems or something.
This is the point that i'm trying to make.
If you have the experience in how to program those things, just offer whatever you know.
SongRune does, but said 'let us wait'. I guess I should have given a similar answer to start with instead of letting it go on so long that she had to do it? (sorry sis)
You'd have to define what exactly you wanted the outcome to be, as well. And it can't just be 'no bots ever!' because distinguishing a repetitive economic actor from a person who has downloaded a bot script to run occasionally and plays in a small friendgroup with Discord is going to trigger too many false positives.
So some people have responded 'let it be, we'll just kill them'. I'll add 'Escrow and transaction tracking' and beneath that 'manipulate the economy so that the bots become NPC-like and focus on punishing those buying Gold instead'.
Combine the two options and you've got the start of a solution.
To be sincere, I expect more arguments from you.
You are not this kind of a guy.
To be fair, if it hadn't been a troll question, he'd probably have given a better answer.
I raised a problem, and we need to think about it.
As i said, i know what trading is for a MMORPG especially AOC and that it's the backbone of the game.
The first solution that came to my mind was stop trading. But keep in mind, in BDO the only way to trade between players it's thru the auction house that has fixed prices for every item (i think it's an automated system that increases/decreases the price range based on demand). You cannot select from who to buy in AH, it takes at random one from all the sellers/buyers
I'm ok if someone says that it's a bad idea if they come with another solution/argument better than mine.
You cannot police the bots and trading, you need an army of Game Masters to do this and still fail.
Just look at Blizzard with WOW, even they with their big budget could not stop the gold sellers. And in WOW you could not buy top gear but you could buy boosts in raids and pvp and subscription.
Guys this will kill the game, no mater how good it is.
What are you even talking about. You didn't play bdo if you don't know about the bots in the game.
The bots in that game if they don't get banned they do not ruin the market for everyone. At one point if the account is banned (and they ban allot of them) you lose all.
To be sincere, I expect more arguments from you.
You are not this kind of a guy.
To be fair, if it hadn't been a troll question, he'd probably have given a better answer.
I raised a problem, and we need to think about it.
As i said, i know what trading is for a MMORPG especially AOC and that it's the backbone of the game.
The first solution that came to my mind was stop trading. But keep in mind, in BDO the only way to trade between players it's thru the auction house that has fixed prices for every item (i think it's an automated system that increases/decreases the price range based on demand). You cannot select from who to buy in AH, it takes at random one from all the sellers/buyers
I'm ok if someone says that it's a bad idea if they come with another solution/argument better than mine.
You cannot police the bots and trading, you need an army of Game Masters to do this and still fail.
Just look at Blizzard with WOW, even they with their big budget could not stop the gold sellers. And in WOW you could not buy top gear but you could buy boosts in raids and pvp and subscription.
Guys this will kill the game, no mater how good it is.
What are you even talking about. You didn't play bdo if you don't know about the bots in the game.
The bots in that game if they don't get banned they do not ruin the market for everyone. At one point if the account is banned (and they ban allot of them) you lose all.
BOTS DONT RUIN THE MARKET IN BDO LMFAO. What do you think happens when bots are running around everywhere killing things and selling items on the market.
What was your gear score in bdo ima judge you right now.
To be sincere, I expect more arguments from you.
You are not this kind of a guy.
To be fair, if it hadn't been a troll question, he'd probably have given a better answer.
I raised a problem, and we need to think about it.
As i said, i know what trading is for a MMORPG especially AOC and that it's the backbone of the game.
The first solution that came to my mind was stop trading. But keep in mind, in BDO the only way to trade between players it's thru the auction house that has fixed prices for every item (i think it's an automated system that increases/decreases the price range based on demand). You cannot select from who to buy in AH, it takes at random one from all the sellers/buyers
I'm ok if someone says that it's a bad idea if they come with another solution/argument better than mine.
You cannot police the bots and trading, you need an army of Game Masters to do this and still fail.
Just look at Blizzard with WOW, even they with their big budget could not stop the gold sellers. And in WOW you could not buy top gear but you could buy boosts in raids and pvp and subscription.
Guys this will kill the game, no mater how good it is.
What are you even talking about. You didn't play bdo if you don't know about the bots in the game.
The bots in that game if they don't get banned they do not ruin the market for everyone. At one point if the account is banned (and they ban allot of them) you lose all.
This is because there is no Market to ruin. That thing in BDO is a 'regulated money transfer' system which are not the same. And now you're in 'my' territory so I guess I'm giving BDO economic failure dissertations today?
The bots ruined the Market before it started by forcing the system to go this way. For those unaware, the BDO Central Market did NOT originally work the way it does now and was just effectively Escrow. That doesn't mean it was working well because BDO's itemization, even early on, is just too painfully bad for it to matter.
Agree.
Maybe then:
1 a more report bot/gold seller/buyer system. Something that will point them out.
2 or for the admins to implement for themselves a well made tool for interrogating the databases so that large sum of gold between the accounts to be easily monitored and reviewed. An automated system of red flagging different pattern in the accounts.
3 a transparent database where anyone can see what anyone has and report from there if there is something weird going on with the gear. Then the admins can review them with our help of pointing them out.
4 a transparent database that shows maybe number o mobs killed, or resources farmed, the bots could appear there and can be reported again by players
5 bans should only be given by the admins not automated by system, so that no one can exploit them.
Intrepid is not going to tell us how they intend to implement systems. They've made that clear and they are correct to do so.
Your list is barebones and bare minimum stuff, if those aren't being implemented it's probably because they've gone to the entirely upper levels. And if we discuss useful schema, which for some reason seem to be implemented, then all we've done is given botters more options to get around the schema.
This is one of those places where you have to let things go wrong a little bit first, and do the usual manipulation of programmers. The overall discussion of ideas of this level is not helpful to Intrepid.
3 and 4 don't work because you should never give players any access to a transparent database for that sort of thing in a game meant to have competition if the game itself is not designed around it.
Comments
To be sincere, I expect more arguments from you.
You are not this kind of person.
Maybe I have a bad idea with no trading between players, but the fact is, gold selling and bots ruins any sandbox games.
For example make on server with trade another with no trade.
Or one server for casuals and another for hardcore players where everything is hard to obtain anything and nothing p2w.
This way, the companies can make cash from the p2w server and keep population in hard servers. They can test better what tactic to make.
Let's make this topic a brainstorm.
Are you guys not bored of flaming?
To be fair, if it hadn't been a troll question, he'd probably have given a better answer.
I raised a problem, and we need to think about it.
As i said, i know what trading is for a MMORPG especially AOC and that it's the backbone of the game.
The first solution that came to my mind was stop trading.
But keep in mind, in BDO the only way to trade between players it's thru the auction house that has fixed prices for every item (i think it's an automated system that increases/decreases the price range based on demand). You cannot select from who to buy in AH, it takes at random one from all the sellers/buyers
I'm ok if someone says that it's a bad idea if they come with another solution/argument better than mine.
You cannot police the bots and trading, you need an army of Game Masters to do this and still fail.
Just look at Blizzard with WOW, even they with their big budget could not stop the gold sellers. And in WOW you could not buy top gear but you could buy boosts in raids and pvp and subscription.
Guys this will kill the game, no mater how good it is.
Then it's doomed to die unfortunately.
Ahhh another crystal ball
Where do people keep getting these. I want one
so early??
P.S. Can you guys just stop trolling?
You are not able to participate at a discussion like mature human beings?
And, we'll go with it until the end. Right into the very fires of Mount Doom.
Right. 5 years into development and someone comes in wanting to change a core design feature. Gets a resounding no. Keeps pushing. More nos. Must be the everyone here trolling.
It's people newer to the internet, they don't know the etiquette.
- Troll posts trolly nonsense.
- People get wound up.
- Troll laughs and carries on.
- Troll gets called out as a troll.
- Etiquette now dictates that the troll stops and preps a different thread about more trolly nonsense.
But, people don't seem to observe that any more, they just keep pushing on the same topic, even after the "getting called out" step. It's the death of the internet, for sure. It's doomed to die, unfortunately.
If you would have read what i said it can be done without changing the core mechanics developed 5 years ago.
It does not change the game at it;s roots.
If you have a central market that adapts properly to demand (which BDO's does not), you will not defeat bots. The design of Ashes and separation of nodes and the core design premise of separate interconnected node economies is not compatible with price regulation, and attempting the sort of top-down price regulation BDO uses will make it nearly impossible for node economies to adapt, due to a variety of factors:
1. Whether there is demand (or to some degree supply) for various resources (at all) will vary in varying locations, and vary seasonally.
2. These location's prices cannot be tuned without sales, unless you rely on prices elsewhere, which requires some level of linking prices between nodes (even if not 1:1).
3. Linking prices between nodes destroys the local economic variance that is the core design intent of Ashes and is incompatible with the game's vision.
The only way around these fundamental limitations, is authoritative calculations by developers about what prices "should" be in each region, taking agency away from players, and ensuring that whenever the calculations diverge from player intents or activity in any way, that parts of the economy grinds instantly to a halt. Even if they're good, it can't be instantly responsive.
The central market price regulation in BDO is life support for a fundamentally flawed economic design. Attempting to apply that life support to Ashes would bring it down to that level, and regardless of whether they fully understand every implication, the majority of players here can see how painful that system would be.
This is why you get the responses you do, and why no-one is taking your suggestion seriously. We would all rather have a robust player-driven economy and let Intrepid fight bots, than kill the economy and erase the node-based individual economic structures that define Ashes, and have no bots at the cost of the economy.
Every solution is imperfect, but yours has a large negative impact on the game experience. Worse than all but entirely unchecked botting. To most people, this is intuitive, and that is why everyone assumes you must be trolling. (But in case you're not, I've 'taken the bait'. If this is insufficient, though, I won't go further. Far too much education would be required, to be feasible.)
I salute you sir.
Ok, my suggestion does not work, but what can be done?
This is the answer I want us to get the bottom of.
We must think about it, let us put here suggestions good or bad.
Gold selling and botting must be tackled somehow from design, using automated systems or something.
This is the point that I'm trying to make.
I don't want to brag but I've played too many MMORPGs (starting in 2003) and i was demolished when I've seen the system being abused and ruining the game that I put years in it of work and dedication.
6-7 years I've been a leader (200 player clan in Lineage 2 and thousand of other players passed along the years) another 8 as a player. I was a team player, I loved to talk to my community, to motivate them to play together. I even bought allot of gold from p2w shops and gold sellers
What are you even talking about. You didn't play bdo if you don't know about the bots in the game.
If you have the experience in how to program those things, just offer whatever you know.
SongRune does, but said 'let us wait'. I guess I should have given a similar answer to start with instead of letting it go on so long that she had to do it? (sorry sis)
You'd have to define what exactly you wanted the outcome to be, as well. And it can't just be 'no bots ever!' because distinguishing a repetitive economic actor from a person who has downloaded a bot script to run occasionally and plays in a small friendgroup with Discord is going to trigger too many false positives.
So some people have responded 'let it be, we'll just kill them'. I'll add 'Escrow and transaction tracking' and beneath that 'manipulate the economy so that the bots become NPC-like and focus on punishing those buying Gold instead'.
Combine the two options and you've got the start of a solution.
The bots in that game if they don't get banned they do not ruin the market for everyone. At one point if the account is banned (and they ban allot of them) you lose all.
BOTS DONT RUIN THE MARKET IN BDO LMFAO. What do you think happens when bots are running around everywhere killing things and selling items on the market.
What was your gear score in bdo ima judge you right now.
This is because there is no Market to ruin. That thing in BDO is a 'regulated money transfer' system which are not the same. And now you're in 'my' territory so I guess I'm giving BDO economic failure dissertations today?
The bots ruined the Market before it started by forcing the system to go this way. For those unaware, the BDO Central Market did NOT originally work the way it does now and was just effectively Escrow. That doesn't mean it was working well because BDO's itemization, even early on, is just too painfully bad for it to matter.
Maybe then:
1 a more report bot/gold seller/buyer system. Something that will point them out.
2 or for the admins to implement for themselves a well made tool for interrogating the databases so that large sum of gold between the accounts to be easily monitored and reviewed. An automated system of red flagging different pattern in the accounts.
3 a transparent database where anyone can see what anyone has and report from there if there is something weird going on with the gear. Then the admins can review them with our help of pointing them out.
4 a transparent database that shows maybe number o mobs killed, or resources farmed, the bots could appear there and can be reported again by players
5 bans should only be given by the admins not automated by system, so that no one can exploit them.
Cmon ppl, let the ideas come!
Your list is barebones and bare minimum stuff, if those aren't being implemented it's probably because they've gone to the entirely upper levels. And if we discuss useful schema, which for some reason seem to be implemented, then all we've done is given botters more options to get around the schema.
This is one of those places where you have to let things go wrong a little bit first, and do the usual manipulation of programmers. The overall discussion of ideas of this level is not helpful to Intrepid.
3 and 4 don't work because you should never give players any access to a transparent database for that sort of thing in a game meant to have competition if the game itself is not designed around it.