This morning the folks on Ken had an interesting idea. With a smaller population it is easier for the jerks to keep their hands in the market, and they do so mostly (if not entirely) via /shop mode. As such, it was proposed that on Ken we try disabling /shop mode entirely and leave the economy in the hands of those who are online, at their keyboard, and making use of $ chat (read: real people).
I want to make it clear that shop mode is something I can tweak on a server to server level, meaning LoA and Dep folks need not weigh in here lest their comments are constructive to the idea on a conceptual level. This was brought up by Ken players as an idea for the Ken server.
So, rather than leave the discussion on Ken's global chat we decided to bring it here as well. Assuming I can turn it off completely, what do yah think?
It's certainly an
It's certainly an interesting idea... I say lets try it for a month or two. If it doesn't work, we can always put it back... Right? o.o
Interesting Idea.. ..:: My
Interesting Idea..
..:: My Blog ::..
Its hard enough to sell some
Its hard enough to sell some items with it.. And then take it away? =/
I guess my opinion is biased because I am one of the people that have a hold on certain aspects of the market through my shop char...
I would prefer a revamp to the market system (as suggested over and over by many people) and....
The removal of Global/Tradechat ENTIRELY! global just causes more trouble than its worth, and if it was removed tradechat would become the new global (macro'd global) and would need to be removed to.
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Anyways, besides all
Anyways, besides all that...
Do it. Remove /shop mode for a lil while and see if it fixes anything, we can always turn it back on.
(And just because I like to make sure everything gets covered...)
This would be slightly Racist (im not sure thats the correct word, maybe discriminatory) to those people that cant talk on Global or tradechat to sell their items because they do not speak English and global chat only allows the english character/letter set.
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Well, there are other
Well, there are other options for people who don't speak english and it is not that hard to learn some basic words and just copy & paste them into the chat line.
If you are one person that 'control' the market for an certain item then you'll soon be known as a person who specialized for one or a few items of a certain type.
I like the idea and I see a chance that it will work.
It worked before the bots were there, now let's see if it works with bots too.
This does punish the very
This does punish the very FEW legit players from that server, another proactive approach would be to hit more "select few(select groups) who control the economy" with the ban stick!
Completely agree! I hate
Completely agree!
I hate seeing these fixes to fix things that wouldnt be broken if the culprits were removed (banned) for their obvious breaking of the rules in other aspects of game play...
(FYI, the reported Shop on Ken server that had both a phone number and an email address to 'sell' the items they had in the shop mode... the shop is still there, months later, it was never removed. Good work team!)
We can keep fixing fixes that need more fixes to fix the fixes later on... Or we can remove the cheaters...
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Firebug wrote:This does
Punish? Not really. We did ok with out /shop before. Sure it's convenient but this looks like an interesting way to experiment with breaking the bot-blackmarket.
I would suggest decreasing the globalchat level restriction back to 30 during the experiment if this is possible on a per-server level (without breaking Dep/LoA)
It would be nice if they
It would be nice if they lowered the tradechat requirement without lowering global to try to force people to sell stuff on tradechat where it belongs.
I like the idea of the
I like the idea of the idea.
It will take some pretty heavy policing of global because people won't keep the "marketing" to tradechat.
So what if they don't? It's
So what if they don't? It's not like they do now.
Macro's wont run via Global - as long as folks aren't spamming... and then there's always /exclude.
I can't see it as being a problem given how few of us there are these days.
I actually think this will make tradechat a lot more useful. Currently I never use it.
Well spamming is exactly
Well spamming is exactly what I'm worried about.
My /exclude list is full.
This sounds like an
This sounds like an interesting concept. I am for giving it a trial run, to see if there is any improvement. We survived long before we had shops to sell/buy stuf in, granted there is a hell of alot more items available now. As long as it is reversable if it does not work out lets go for it.
Yeah, but your /exclude list
Yeah, but your /exclude list is probably like mine....also full, but at least half the names on it haven't been played in years.
Remember, we all got by not only before Shop Mode, but also before Tradechat. I say give it a try...if it gets the bots to (mostly) move to Dep or LOA (o.o) then I am all for it!
Besides, it will force me to level my pathetic royal (my normal shop character), since he can't global. LOL!
I wish it was only people
I wish it was only people who haven't played in years.
I actually have to do a lottery every time I want to add someone to see who gets to come off.
Im for disabling the shop
Im for disabling the shop mode.
I sell my stuff via shops, but it seems the only people that buy my stuff were resellers.
but like Sk8 pointed out you really shoulld work on the automated players.
I really like the idea and
I really like the idea and am all for trying it out. I have sold my junk via global since the beginning of time and really only use shop mode when feeling lazy as I prefer to know a human is buying my stuff, thus usually use global anyway.
Cainna
Its not a bad idea for a
Its not a bad idea for a temporary fix, but in the long run, when/if shop mode is put back into effect, the bots will just come back to use it as strongly as ever. UNLESS NC were to somehow use the temporary fix to further assist in their investigations, then this would be a somewhat useless activity, unless the decision were eventually made to never go back to having the shop mode.
I don't personally use shop mode simply because I suck at prices without Willie2 helping me, but also for the same reasons that Khaine and Cainna pointed out. I like to sell stuff inexpensively to real people, but find that when I do, they get bought and resold at a higher price. I also hate the idea of bots buying my stuff - not that I ever have that much to sell anyway.
I know there must be plenty of legitimate reasons for taking such a lengthy time to investigate each accused bot, however, like anything else, there must come a time when an educated decision MUST be made.
An idea I would propose to NC is to put a time frame on their investigative process. From the time of the first accusation of a player, maybe set a 3 month time frame for investigation and if there is enough evidence at that point to indicate PROBABLE botting practices, put a temp ban on the player while conducting further research by going into their past activities. I don't know how practical of an idea that is, so don't go tearing me apart about it, its just a thought that might be worth looking into.
As far as your idea... It
As far as your idea...
It seems like way more investigation, and a way longer investigation process, than is actually needed. I agree, some bots hide it well, some bots talk back and are monitored, and those bots are hard to say: Yay, or Nay.
But 90% of the bots arent. 90% of the bots hunt on endlessly without saying a word, or even pretending to care that there are others around them, talking to them, 'sharing' their monsters, or even hitting/mapling them. 90% of the bots show off their hacks, walk thru and two cell, and dont even care. 90% of the bots are obvious, and 3months is to long. They should be banned within the hour, if it requires some form of approval from a supervisor before the ban can actually be handed out, then it should take a day instead of an hour. But 3months? Thats just ridiculous.
And as someone that heal 'bots' himself...
There is no way a person, or even two people, could heal/control the mage the way these heal botters do. Staying exactly one cell away from the tank (even if that puts them in a spot where a monster is hitting them, they still stand there healing themselves and the tank. Real people wont do that.) Its just not possible to control a mage the way these heal bots are controlled. It is so terribly obvious its a heal bot and not a heal 'mage' that its painful. These should be removed on site as well, they dont take a 3month investigation process... Banning their heal bots would really really really slow down their money making, their leveling, and everything. Even if you cant prove the tank is cheating, the heal mage is.
If you (Fracas) or your team, dont believe me that these heal slaves are just too good at doing what they do to be real players, watch me for a while. Dont even tell me you are there watching. Watch the way my heal mage is controlled. Watch how close it stays to the tank, or doesnt stay. Watch how they move independently, not together. Then look at how these heal bot mages are controlled. If that doesnt show you what you need to know, then I dont know what will.
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Yeah, I was being generous
Yeah, I was being generous in my 3 month time frame and really just pulling a "for instance" out of the air. Doesn't take us in game more than 15 minutes to realize someone is botting - do not really understand why it takes months to investigate it.
Oh Gwennie! You just made
Oh Gwennie! You just made me literally laugh out loud....
"investigations"???? Surely you jest! ROFLOL There were two bots who played the ENTIRE EVENT hunting in Abyss Lake...8 days straight, apparently non-stop. I played a lot, at all times of the day and night, both at home, and at work...they were ALWAYS there. I wasn't the only one accusing them, or reporting them to monitors for using hacks (can't tell you how many times they walked through me, a mop, and Vala). They were stealing mops and drops like mad the entire event, and since they could literally walk right though you, you couldn't even block them off. I think ZBlueBirdZ may have even gotten a monitor to acknowledge him, but those 2 bots were still there, even the next day. My wife was pissed enough that for the first time since she started playing, she actually was talking about just quitting or at least looking into other games.
The sad part is, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that even if they are NOT botting, they are still violating TOS because they had to be account sharing.
One thing I definitely agree with you on...it absolutely scorches my a** to be in shop mode selling things at reasonable (cheap) prices, only to see that bots bought most of my stuff to resell.
hmm maybe though i do leave
hmm maybe though i do leave my shop on for a while when i go afk and its good for me to make adena while afk.. .. not sure
1: Take your bot banning
1: Take your bot banning chat to anoher thread please.
2:Taking away /shop takes away a lot of play/lvling time, as you have to actually sell the stuff, instead of letting it sell while you sleep, are at work, or whatever.
3: What's wrong with letting market forces do their thing? If the bot prices are too high, don't pay them. If somebody else wants to sell something slightly below bot price, don't pay it. If the "real people" on the server stick together, forming their own market with reasonable prices, then the market will come around. Nothing says we have to use GTV.
4: On a server with a population this low, many of the items are going to be very hard to attain. You can spend your life trying to get them yourself, or farming the adena to buy from the bots. Either way, it's gonna be a long process, unless you can talk "real people" into helping out.
5: I don't see any way possible that removing /shop will stop the bots from farming, controlling the prices, or spamming the hell out of the trade channel. The same guy who takes the time to set up the shop for the botted goods, will take the time to sell them by alternative methods. This will almost certainly result in massive spam. (inventory full of pledge letter spam, YUCK!!)
Finally, I'm glad to see that some effort is being made to address the concerns of the "real players", but in this case, I don't see removing /shop as being the solution.
The "problem" with #3 is
The "problem" with #3 is that many people aren't aware of which shops are bot characters. I know several, but I also know there are some flat out greedy people that don't bot and just want to jack up the prices. Sometimes, unless you take the time to sit around watching them log in and out of multiple characters, it is very difficult to know if that newb prince is a bot prince or just some greedy semi-anonymous real player. Add to that the fact that people also know that if they try to give other live players a break by selling reasonably, a bot is likely to come along and buy it only to sell for ridiculously high.
Taking the 5 minutes to set up shop is a lot less live time than having to global (no macro) - with or without hunting - and actually interact with people - some live person still has to be there to respond to a transaction request.
Trade channel is easily shut off. Global can be illegally spammed, but that could provide another "check" for NC (assuming they are serious about dealing with bots). Otherwise, the bots would really have no choice but to transact their business with a live person on their end if there were no shop mode.
Frankly, I think Ken server needs to learn to work together, but the likelihood of that happening with people's temperaments (and many of the egos) is pretty slim. Disappointing, too, since I think we have a basically pretty cool group of people. :)
Quote:1: Take your bot
Why?
If NC would man up and ban the damn bots we wouldnt need ANY of this.
We wouldnt need to remove shop mode. We wouldnt even need to discuss it. So why discuss 16 things about removing shop mode when we can just discuss one thing that solves it all.
Because NC doesnt want to remove the bots. They would clearly rather discuss ways to alter the game AROUND the bots. Something I have said over and over and over absolutely should not be done. When you start changing the game around the bots, the bots win.
Guess what, the bots won.
(I had quite possibly the worst weekend of my life... Forgive me for my attitude these last couple days.)
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Everyone has the right to an
Everyone has the right to an attitude like this sk8. It is very disheartening to LEGIT HONEST players that watch these punk cheaters pass them by and never look back. What ever happened to the "we banned x number of players posts, or we got an Adena King Pin Posts??" Empower monitors to make a Ban right then and there on the spot (it could be just a 3 day ban until it is investigated further to verify) All of this "we are observing x player" is total crap. Take some action. I personally would not care if I got a temp 3 day ban(and an investigation proved my innocence of course), as long as I see some kind of damn action is taking place!
I Havent used shop mode this
I Havent used shop mode this time to sell things, though I did try it in December when I was back for the month. It is very handy. And I do have many things I need to sell, but I do agree with Public above that removing it would take from what little hunting time I have when I am on. And it would be much harder for me to find the things for sale that I want. If it helps remove the bots I would say go for it. BUt I dont see how this would work as an end solution. There are several obvious bot sellers there. I mean how many people do you know get 300 zels a day to sell unless they are running many hunters at once. And there is another one that seems to always have 10 or more Elven T-shirts for sale at once. How long does it take to get one, let alone 10.
Oh. That's the guy selling
Oh. That's the guy selling them at 31k right?
Well that's easy - he buy's 'em from MLC at 30k ea. and re-sells 'em at 31...
You can buy zels at MLC for
You can buy zels at MLC for 30k??
Yes the shop on the bottom
Yes the shop on the bottom floor of MLC sells nzels for 30k.
lol you did not know about
lol you did not know about that? been that way forever!
I like the idea of stopping
I like the idea of stopping shop mode and finding out if it would also help the bot problem.
I stopped using shop mode mainly because of other shop chars buying my things and selling at higher prices.
There are plenty of high level players on Ken to get the super high priced item that bots now sell in stores.
If you walk around GTV, you can see the obvious shops owned by bots.
I say, let's try it!
Well that was debunked
Well that was debunked yesterday when a botter globaled and sold a nb sc in like 10 seconds.
I didnt know he was a botter till it was brought up and then I stopped pming him offers. That sc was up to 5 mil when i stopped. They were 3 mil a few weeks ago and I never remember them being more than 1 mil when i played last. Im sure whoever offered the 5 mil bought it, if not someone else who offered more did cause he never pm'd me back.
Botters will still be able to sell thier stuff. They have nothing better to do than moniter thier bots anyways, so im sure they can pick up a english lineage to (whatever language) lineage dictionary and hack a couple "selling X wis me offer" or "sell X for X mil" lines every few minutes. Heck, instead of having thier shop character in gtv they can bot it somewhere on mainland while globaling/trade chat selling spam. They will still make money because they have what the average players want and they are the only ones providing most of those items.
I can get 1 nzel in the
I can get 1 nzel in the ocean floor every hour on average.
So you figure that schoolmoney botting team down there pulls 120-150 per day.
not to include all the raw adena and rare drops.
Only a legit (greedy maybe but legit) guy would run to mlc and buy 30k nzels and jack them up to 31k.
if you remove shops it will
if you remove shops it will not make any difrence on the bots it will hurt the people who just stand and need a item right here and now.
some people will be spawn globe for days (more then the do now).
so if a new guy/girl start the game the have no chance for getteing a low lvl spell book couse the cant
go get it in shop and people dont globe the got a 40-100k spell book for sell.
Remove the bots its alot easyer...
www.cornerbnh.blogspot.com
Thats the whole problem
Thats the whole problem here. They just want to put a band-aide on the problem instead of really curing the problem. NC should be looking into ways to get new people to be interested in there game or it will die faster than they can imagine. Who wants to play a game that so bot ridded that it isn't even really fun to play , when you have to make a dash for your drop just so some bot don't pick it up before you can? Taking out shop mode is another band-aide for the cure. The bots on test just stand around in the towns and spam there wares and thats all you will have if they do away with it on this server. And like posted above , IF you get a person to play this game how are they going to sell anything they might get as a drop if they can't trade/chat what they got other than spend time in a town and spam their drop for sale instead spending time lvling so they can use global or trade/chat. NC you should really check to see if you have a backbone and do what other online games do and ban bots, the other games ban bots and they still have very many people playing becuase now they are happy and happy players keep playing and you won't have to keep hearing the same things over and over about the bots So have someone check right up the center of your back to see if there is a backbone there. And guess what there are only so many band-aides in a box and it won't be long and your box will be empty
Hmm. To be clear I was not
Hmm. To be clear I was not proposing this to get out of banning bots. This idea was brought to my attention by members of the community and I found it interesting. We decided as a group to bring it up here for discussion.
Since it appears giving this a whirl will do more harm than good, we will pass on it for now. Thank you all for taking the time to contribute.
Fair enough, thanks Fracas
Fair enough, thanks Fracas :)
I still say you should bring
I still say you should bring those mops out that one hit kill a bot o.o. After using the flypaper mop, then spawn a 1 hitter and let it drop then bring the ban stick!
I want to be able to buy
I want to be able to buy from Korean players whether or not they speak English. There is a non-negligible number of them on Dep
that idea i ok i guess.. i
that idea i ok i guess.. i know im answering kind of late...
if the bots are controlling the economy is bc ppl get desperate and buy from bots since it sux having to hunt ur own stuff...
example... ab book, as, etc...
anyway....
i kind of thought about this idea of removing shop mode..... and i think that it would b a better start to just remove shop ... but not buy
for example... bots control the price on scrolls etc... if they realize that they are the only ones with bzels for example, they put them at higher prices...
Id say if they remove only shop mode.. they wouldnt be able to "suggest" a price... just seems that everybody thinks that the gtv prices.. are the real prices...
If we use only the "buy" option... then we can pay the price that we think is fair/ the real price.
that can be tried as well
but again, its just my idea, what yall think?
CReDeNcE Blog
One of the problems with
One of the problems with that idea is that you need the item in order to buy it.
Ya that is what sucks for
Ya that is what sucks for that. There should be a catalog of items that one can pick and choose from and add it to their buy list.
OK well my question is this,
OK well my question is this, If we shut down the markets, ok thats find and dandy, but, are we going to change the Global and Trade chat back to lvl 30 so that ppl with low lvl chars can continue to hunt and try to lvl while trying to sell an item??? Now that being asked i would like to make a comment. I think the thought is good, must look AWESOME on paper, but, i played test for a while, and there were bot players standing in town SHOUTING, when the players were pined they were dead still shouting on the ground, using the auto speak hack, come on now, how much more obvoius can they be? i mean thats whats going to happen on ken server. the best bet is just to ban them. i know of 4-5 bots that have been in the resistance area for 3-4 months now. i know this because i have been accusing them since i seen the hack sunbust across my entire screen.. i play a mage i know that sunbust doesnt go that far. when the mop is on the other side of my screen and the player is barely on it to begin with. i have talked to monitors 44,36,67,77,and 76, now these bots are still there, i understand that the monitors are watching more than one server, and that it take a while to go threw all the bots..which got me thinking..
1) why doesnt NC have more than one monitor on?? how about putting one per server to take care of each servers needs. less stress on that one monitor, and more action against the bots.
2) how about adding 2monitors per server one for bot observation and one to hand problems with the players?
now i know that costs nc money.. this is just an idea and i think it might be good..
MuddyWater
www.muddymudpuddle.blogspot.com