Bots and Botting
" Regarding this in particular: I believe they actually have someone on staff whose job is specifically to try hacking the game, and then to tell them if and how they succeed so that they can fix it. Bots are trickier to recognize than outright hacks, I suspect, but if some sort of captcha ends up being implemented (maybe with the map runes and mouseclicks instead of alphanumeric characters, to keep things immersive), I think area transitions would be the best place to put them. I have wandered through insanity;
I have walked the spiral out. Heard its twisted dreamed inanity In a whisper, in a shout. In the babbling cacophony The refrains are all the same: "[permutations of humanity] are unworthy of the name!" |
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" Yes, I have heard/read about this somewhere on the forums or possibly one of the developers' interviews (probably read it in the forums somewhere). I hope he/she/they hack the #$%! out of the game so that actual players and other cheaters won't be able to! :) It should be mandatory for players to have a high level character (88+) and have done the highest level content before they are allowed to post comments about end-game content, end-game balance, and what's "OP"
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::: INTRO :::
I'm an old D2 botter, I used bots or automated process in some games but not all of them even though I could have. You must first understand WHY people bot. Botting cannot be stopped, but it can be diminished by fixing what bot users see as being a problem. :::: PVP ::::: Take Equal level characters of the same class with similar gear, normally, the person who has played his character up to level 90 will have more gameplay experience than the guy who bought it all, therefore, wins anyway. Thing is PVP lovers often see PVE as a waste of time. DCUO did something right by having PVP and PVE gear being two different things. PVP Gear could be bought with PVP currency owned by playing pvp matches. This could be a solution to stop PVP lovers to want to get a bot just to get geared / level up in the PVE world they don't like. :::: PVE ::::: Some Quest or areas can be so boring, you want to skip them entirely. It can take too long to find upgrades, may they be practical or simply aesthetic. Lack of reasons to farm low level difficulties / acts * * In Diablo 2, when you start, you can gather gems and low runes and sell them in batch or upgrade them to trade them for something good. In some other games where nothing worth trading can drop in lower difficulties, once you find out, you just want to get carried and powerlevel your way up there. Then you will most likely grind the same spots, wich gets boring, wich leads to botting. ::: OUTRO ::: Nothing ''amazing'' outlined in my post, i know, but I tought i'd give my 2 cents as an ex-botter that didn't use my bots for profit like gold spammers do. --
It is by will alone that I set my mind in motion |
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" They would still need a decent understanding of the currencies and their prices. Also, as a general rule of thumb. Judging from my 8 strait years of experience with d2. If someone wants to bot bad enough, there is nothing you or GGG can do to stop it except hand out bans and warnings when and if you detect them. |
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Why not just require a captchya to log in the game and nothing else, problem solved.
Edit: Also, instead of requiring a captchya after every area transition, require one to access the stash and talk to a vender every 60 minutes. Last edited by Superman#3399 on Jul 11, 2012, 4:57:29 PM
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" Duping was the real problem in D2 because it truly flooded all the highest-tier items into the market at a rate exponentially higher than the game actually generated the items. While I'm not a proponent of botting, it really only gives a particular player an amount of items proportional to what another player would get in the same amount of time, multiplied by the number of bots. Clearly this would result in one player having a disproportionate amount of "wealth" to an honest player, but it wouldn't affect the economy on nearly the same scale as a player taking a GCP and duping an entire stash worth in the blink of an eye. Additionally, many of the currency items are also consumables, which could lead to the ultimate currency items being 20% quality skill gems...and I guess bots leveling skill gems would be pretty lame, but that's not the point I was trying to make as far as the economy goes. |
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" You're probably right in saying that duping was the main problem that ruined D2's economy (although D2 also simply lacked sustainable gold sinks in the game in the design), but in D3 farm bots are currently the biggest problem and that's what ruined D3's economy. I am simply suggesting that farm bots may do the same to PoE's economy if they get out of hand, that's all. We just have to hope that they don't due to the game's innate currency system, mechanics, or GGG's security/preventive measures. It should be mandatory for players to have a high level character (88+) and have done the highest level content before they are allowed to post comments about end-game content, end-game balance, and what's "OP"
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"Gold sinks? If gold was ever meant to be D2's currency, it failed almost immediately. People started bartering very early on.. No need for gold sinks when you have a barter based economy.. |
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" I would say that the bots in D3 are able to have a larger impact because the auction houses have centralized the item pool, and by extension the pricing. Blizzard stripped the depth from D3 in an attempt to turn a money-making scheme into a game (rather than vice versa); that's the game's biggest problem. The problem the auction houses create is that botters can put up a ton of stuff for sale all at once, then use that newly acquired wealth to purchase even more items from the AH...and before you know it the botters have so much wealth that they can control the pricing and availability of items/resources, and they can do that because the AH is where everyone goes to get their items. Bartering takes a lot more effort and is not nearly on the same scale as a game-wide AH. As Simonizer said, I'm not convinced that gold was ever realistically expected to be D2's player-to-player currency, especially considering that you could sell a junk armor to an NPC for as much as 35,000. Gold was useful for any players looking to buy from NPCs (particularly early-game) and also for gambling (late-game), and it was also used for repairs. It had functions. |
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" It failed all right, but the important thing is knowing why. IIRC [if I recall correctly], there were only 2 main gold sinks to D2 gold: 1) Repairs 2) Gambling for items. The repairs were decently cheap so it wasn't much of a sink. Gambling items were okay (e.g. gamble for high level Tiaras/Diadems if we were able to get to such high level characters to be able to gamble them), but uniques in general were better unless you get really lucky, so that wasn't much of a gold sink either. Couple that with the fact that in D2, you can go to the secret cow level and bring an inventory full of armor and sell them for 34k+ gold each, the sinks weren't able to keep up with the influx of gold. Edit: Lol, my comp crashed so I couldn't submit this post and thus never got to read Aixius's post. But ya, we're both saying the same thing and I agree with everything you said. Well.. except I think that gold in D2 was originally intended to be used as a currency, but they just did a poor job doing it/designing it, that's all. Blizzard's original intent for the use of gold as currency or not is different from the reality of whether it actually ended up being used as currency. But at the end of the day, I digress and it doesn't matter. :) It should be mandatory for players to have a high level character (88+) and have done the highest level content before they are allowed to post comments about end-game content, end-game balance, and what's "OP" Last edited by Athoy#5214 on Jul 12, 2012, 3:09:43 PM
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