The Bot Problem and Game Economy

AinGeal

The following is based on the assumption that gold sellers, as a business, understand certain business principles.

First is to Identify the source of the gold that gold sellers sell. Starting with just a single character, that character would have to first gather either gold directly (dropped, quest rewards, and chests) or items to be sold for gold.

So to remove the gold from gold seller is simple. Remove dropped gold. No more mobs dropping just straight gold. Next is to design quests to be too complex for simple bot programs to complete. Third is to ensure that the lock pick mini game is to complex for a simple bot program to do.

Do this, and you force the bots to grind for gear to sell for gold. This brings me to the above mentioned assumption. Given that single character, they would grind out a full inventory, then they have two choices. Sell to players or sell to vendor. Selling to vendor would be their best option for a couple of reasons.

- It takes time to sell to players. If that character is busy selling to players, it's not gathering more. Simply selling to a vendor to get back out there gathering will net them the best rate of gold/hour generated.

- The people behind the bots would have to get creative. Most people are against bots and gold sellers and they will not buy items from a gold selling account if they know it's a gold selling account. So no more names like "dkjaklfdj" and if a bot program isn't capable of working the trading mechanic of the game, then this forces a person to actually play that character.

Which brings me to the next part. Multiple accounts. You have bots do the gathering and have a player driven account doing the selling. Again, it takes time to sell. If it takes longer to sell than it does to farm (which it will), then the bots will be sitting idle with full inventories. It would be better to have all accounts simply gathering and vendoring than to devote even one to selling to other players.

So eliminate vendoring.

Vendoring is a huge way of earning gold in this game. I remember when I took my first character through. I used any drops/rewards that I could make use of and I vendored everything else. I acquired a pile of gold rather quickly and most of that came from vendoring off 90% of my inventory every time I filled it (which was almost once per quest with an eighty slot inventory).

So now your thinking, 'hang on, that's our main way of making gold. How will we be able to afford anything'.

Well first off, the prices of items sold by players will come down proportionally as the wealth of the average player comes down. That leaves items that are sold by NPCs which can be adjusted by the devs.

But then what happens to all those items if they are not being vendored? Well there is a way to deal with that. Repaired items lose max health over time. Eventually, unless replaced, items will break permanently. Deconstruction is the other item sink. Where you get mats from deconstruction. The amount of mats should not only be determined by certain passives (as it is now) but also by the remaining health of the item. The amount of mats you get back is always less than what goes into making it regardless of passives and remaining item health. This ensures a mat sink.

It would take some adjustments in quantities and percentages to balance it but if done right then the bots would take a sever blow and I believe the impact on players would be something that they could cope with. For the bots/gold sellers, they would be pigeon holed into farming gear to try and sell to players or deconstruct and try and sell the mats to players. This would make their lives difficult and reduce their gold/hour by a large margin. For the players, they would simply have to adjust a bit. Player's will have no problem earning gold from quests and chests. Player's will have no more of a problem selling items to other players than they do now. Player's will still be able to sell their crafting services or crafted items to other players. The only thing players would have to adjust to is having to replace their gear every so often. This will generate a better economic flow, even at end game and not just for character's still advancing.

Asawasa

sure glad ZOS went with the guild stores instead of global auction house. lord knows there would be bots, and gold spammers so rampant that 2+ months after release there would still be problems in game with these people.

thank you Zenimax for single handedly solving the botting and gold farming issues plaguing online gaming.

Censorious

You realise you are suggesting a complete re-structuring of the entire game-code from start to finish?
In other words: creating an entirely new game based on your suggestion?

Can you see how that might be a problem?

KerinKor

Asawasa wrote: »

sure glad ZOS went with the guild stores instead of global auction house. lord knows there would be bots, and gold spammers so rampant that 2+ months after release there would still be problems in game with these people.

thank you Zenimax for single handedly solving the botting and gold farming issues plaguing online gaming.

+1 .. it took me a couple of reads to recognise your apparent naive comment was actually sarcasm.

KerinKor

@AinGeal, so the tl;dr summary of your idea is to make normal players' lives a misery by destroying the economy and their ways of making gold in order to pay for things they need.

AinGeal wrote: »

For the players, they would simply have to adjust a bit. Player's will have no problem earning gold from quests and chests..

Quests are a one-time source and chests only exist is tiny numbers and often require groups to get them .. and that's your "adjust a bit" idea, really?

An entirely ludicrous suggestion where normal players become the casualties in the war against RMT .. this is collateral damage on a massive scale.

No thanks.

rawne1980b16_ESO

Elder Scrolls Online economy....

AinGeal

KerinKor wrote: »

@AinGeal, so the tl;dr summary of your idea is to make normal players' lives a misery by destroying the economy and their ways of making gold in order to pay for things they need.

AinGeal wrote: »

For the players, they would simply have to adjust a bit. Player's will have no problem earning gold from quests and chests..

Quests are a one-time source and chests only exist is tiny numbers and often require groups to get them .. and that's your "adjust a bit" idea, really?

An entirely ludicrous suggestion where normal players become the casualties in the war against RMT .. this is collateral damage on a massive scale.

No thanks.

A proper end game with repeatable quests.

The ONLY thing that players would have to do that's different than now is replace their gear on their max lvl characters every so often. Diminishing returns on repair isn't something that's new to the MMO genre.

Hawke

Wait, how can bots destroy an economy?

Elder scrolls doesn't have a server economy and it's a good thing too, otherwise the bots and gold farmers would actually affect how things are in game.

If your guild has a bot in it, boot his ass out. If someone bought gold and is buying up a lot of stuff, who cares, it is not affecting anyone but 5 guilds in total, and between 2500 people, no one may even notice it.

AinGeal

Hawke wrote: »

Wait, how can bots destroy an economy?

If you don't know the answer to that, then you don't know enough about economics and I'm afraid much of what I could say would be lost on you.

Hawke

AinGeal wrote: »

Hawke wrote: »

Wait, how can bots destroy an economy?

If you don't know the answer to that, then you don't know enough about economics and I'm afraid much of what I could say would be lost on you.

And if you read the REST of my post, you would have seen me mention the guild economy and that gold sellers don't make as big of an impact to the server as a whole.

Kublakan

The bots and gold sellers will be gone in less then a year. Money will make them to go. When it will be more costly to farm and keep buying new accounts because of the banning, they will move on to some new mmo coming out soon.

AinGeal

Hawke wrote: »

AinGeal wrote: »

Hawke wrote: »

Wait, how can bots destroy an economy?

If you don't know the answer to that, then you don't know enough about economics and I'm afraid much of what I could say would be lost on you.

And if you read the REST of my post, you would have seen me mention the guild economy and that gold sellers don't make as big of an impact to the server as a whole.

The REST of your post only demonstrated your ignorance to economics.

Hawke

AinGeal wrote: »

Hawke wrote: »

AinGeal wrote: »

Hawke wrote: »

Wait, how can bots destroy an economy?

If you don't know the answer to that, then you don't know enough about economics and I'm afraid much of what I could say would be lost on you.

And if you read the REST of my post, you would have seen me mention the guild economy and that gold sellers don't make as big of an impact to the server as a whole.

The REST of your post only demonstrated your ignorance to economics.

*sighs* Why does everyone pass out insults?

born2beagator

Is it just me or is there a noticeable lack of bots lately. I haven't seen one in at least a week

AinGeal

ig·no·rance
ˈignərəns/
noun
noun: ignorance

lack of knowledge or information.
"he acted in ignorance of basic procedures"
synonyms: incomprehension of, unawareness of, unconsciousness of, unfamiliarity with, inexperience with, lack of knowledge about, lack of information about;

I wasn't insulting you. I was merely pointing out an observation about your post and how it reflects onto you.

I believe the better question is 'why do some people have a kneejerk reaction to go against the grain?' (I have a feeling this expression will need more explanation but we'll see).

wrlifeboil

Asawasa wrote: »

sure glad ZOS went with the guild stores instead of global auction house. lord knows there would be bots, and gold spammers so rampant that 2+ months after release there would still be problems in game with these people.

thank you Zenimax for single handedly solving the botting and gold farming issues plaguing online gaming.

Guild store search.

That's all that needs to be said about why there can't be and isn't a global AH in eso. Can you imagine the time it would take searching for an item on a global AH?

Hawke

The fact that the stores are located within guilds only does not constitute any kind of economy at all.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/economy

: the structure or conditions of economic life in a country, area, or period; also an economic system

I can only assume this is what you are talking about economy.

Otherwise we are just talking about buying things from the /zone channel. Which would not have lasting effects on the server. I see 10,000 gold for vamp bites and the next hour I see them being sold for 1,000.

The fact that we have thousands of people on one server, 5 guilds and each of those guilds are different or possibly one being shared amongst people who use Real Money Trade services. The fact that inflation would probably never even be noticed.

People will sell at prices they can move the goods.

I do not possess ignorance, as I stated this in my post above, just less detailed.

The fact there is no centralized auction house HELPS us more in the long run to combat gold sellers.

Look on other MMOs. You see goods for 1-20 being through the roof because the people selling it, knows that people are creating alts and want to outfit them with the best equipment.

If Guild A is selling goods of that level range for 1,000 gold each item, that does not mean Guild B is selling em for that much. Each Micro Economy (for the guilds) is not dependant on one another.

I hope that helps elaborate my original statement.

AinGeal

Hawke wrote: »

The fact that the stores are located within guilds only does not constitute any kind of economy at all.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/economy

: the structure or conditions of economic life in a country, area, or period; also an economic system

I can only assume this is what you are talking about economy.

Otherwise we are just talking about buying things from the /zone channel. Which would not have lasting effects on the server. I see 10,000 gold for vamp bites and the next hour I see them being sold for 1,000.

The fact that we have thousands of people on one server, 5 guilds and each of those guilds are different or possibly one being shared amongst people who use Real Money Trade services. The fact that inflation would probably never even be noticed.

People will sell at prices they can move the goods.

I do not possess ignorance, as I stated this in my post above, just less detailed.

The fact there is no centralized auction house HELPS us more in the long run to combat gold sellers.

Look on other MMOs. You see goods for 1-20 being through the roof because the people selling it, knows that people are creating alts and want to outfit them with the best equipment.

If Guild A is selling goods of that level range for 1,000 gold each item, that does not mean Guild B is selling em for that much. Each Micro Economy (for the guilds) is not dependant on one another.

I hope that helps elaborate my original statement.

To start off, an economy is any system by which limited goods and services are produced, distributed/traded, and consumed by a defined group within a geographical area. A defined group could be as specific as individual governments when studying macroeconomics or it could be as broad as to include everyone. Governments, firms and individual house holds. In this particular case, the defined group would be the player base of the game and the geographical area would be defined within the game. Often trading houses will encompass the entire game and even cross servers (GW2 did this and continues to use a trading house even after switching to a megaserver design). The geographical regions within ESO are the zones since the zone is as wide as the chat will go (no global chat) when only looking at WTB/WTS chat. The guild trading houses define the geographical location to the entire game (since any two members can be at any different location) but limits the number of suppliers and consumers to just 500.

Oh and your posting of the definition of the word 'economy' works in favor of my defining of what an economy is.

You also contradict yourself. First you claim that the effects of those buying gold from gold sellers won't be noticed and then turn around and say that items will be sold at a price they will move.

Do you not see the contradiction there?

It's gonna be tricky to adequately explain this without going too far into detail with regards to how prices are determined in various types of markets but I'll give it a go.

Basically the short of it is this, if buying gold makes it possible for those people to buy an item for 50K, then people will sell that item for 50K. The seller is satisfied with the rate at which the item sells at the price they sell it for. As in, they may be able to sell quicker (and therefore sell a higher quantity within a given time frame) at a cheaper price but that may not necessarily equate to greater revenues.

For example..

Qty ; Price; Revenue

4; 8K ; 32K
5 ; 7K ; 35K
6; 6K ; 36K
7; 5K ; 35K
8; 4k ; 32k

Let's set the time frame to 1 hour. If a seller sets their price to 6K. At this price they are able to sell 6 units in one hour. Resulting in 36K per hour. They up the price to 7K but less people are willing to pay that much and as a result, they end up selling just 5 units. Their revenue drops to 35K. So they decide to go the other way. They lower the price to 5K. After all, if raising the price caused a decrease in total revenue, maybe dropping the price can increase revenue. So they sell the item for 5K per unit. At this price more people are willing to buy it and the quantity sold per hour increases to 7. But this has the same effect. The total revenue decreased.

The above is found in a monopoly. In such a situation, the effects of gold sellers/buyers would be strongest. In the competitive market that a trading house would bring, the effects would be weakest. In the oligopoly that this game has, it is moderately felt.

As you just saw, there is a balance that results in maximizing revenue. Now what if that person raises their price from 6K to 7K and the number of units sold per hour remains the same at 6? Well, now the seller just increased revenue. So they do it again. They'll continue to do so until they see a drop in revenue. What could cause this to happen? What could prevent the transaction rate from dropping as the price increases? Buying gold from gold farmers. For someone who plays honestly, that 40k they have might've taken days or even weeks. To spend 7K is a big chunk of their overall wealth. To the person who just bought 100K for $20, getting 100K within an hour, that 7K is relatively much cheaper.

Aside from the fact that these are third parties selling intellectual property without the permission of the property's owner (which I think is a felon), players buying gold from gold sellers will result in inflated prices that honest players will have increasing difficulty in being able to afford. The less competitive the market, the greater the impact this will have on the price of items.

Yes there is a lack in detail to your posts but that is not the problem. Your persistence in believing that the closer to a monopoly there is on a particular item, the less of an impact gold selling/buying will have only reaffirms the lack of knowledge (aka ignorance) you have on the basic concepts of economics.

WRT the part about lvl 1 - 20 items being overly expensive in other MMOs you already identified the reason in the same paragraph. It just lacked detail

Those same MMO will scale income with level. This means that max level characters will generate more gold than characters that are level 1 - 20 within the same time frame.

GW2 is a fine example of that. Max level quests reward larger amounts of gold and max level mobs drop larger amounts of gold. But you'll also notice that, on average, the lvl 1 - 20 items are still cheaper than the max level gear. It's just out of proportion. The lvl 1 - 20 items should be cheaper but they are not for the reason you already pointed out and I just elaborated on.

Imagine what would happen if income was constant regardless of level. Prices would drop. In fact I believe that prices for lvl 1 - 20 items, despite dropping, would end up higher than max level items. The max level items would drop by a greater amount, enough so to become cheaper than max level gear.

Why? Because there will still be a greater demand for the lower level gear than the higher level.

There are other steps that can be taken, both in addition to normalizing income or without normalizing income.

Take the quality system of ESO

White -> Green -> Blue -> Purple -> Gold

Leave gold as character bound. Make blue and purple account bound, and make white and green unbound.

Do this for non veteran gear.

Players will pass their used blues and purples down to their alts. this effectively reduces players with high incomes from the market for lower level items. This has the double effect of not only decreasing demand (which will decrease price) but the decrease in demand are players with max lvl mains and big incomes. That will certainly drop the price of those lvl 1 - 49 players who are passing through that level range for the first time.

Alternatively, have diminishing returns on gear repair. Since the other problem, aside from max characters generating more income, is once you geared your character that's it. You're done. First off, having to repair is a good gold sink and having to spend more to repair higher level gear is a good way to offset the increase in income that comes with an increase in level. Now add in diminishing returns on repair, and you off set the drop in demand for max level gear that often results. This will also mean that the players with max level mains and low level alts will have less gold to spend on those low level alts to gear them since they will have to continue to buy replacement gear for their main, even at max level.

WRT the 'micro economy' statement. Yes and no. I mean sure you do see it, I see it, but it's not that common and when you do see it, the price gap is a small (percentage wise). That's when you buy the item for the low price from one guild store and put it up for sale for more (but still undercutting the next seller) on another. In fact people already do this and that is why a difference in price like that is not too common and, when you do see it, the price is gap is small.

The other reasons are because of the WTS/WTB in zone and the fact you can be in up to 5 guilds. The value of items tend to be well known.


I'll end with a further explanation on price determination as dictated through supply and demand.

First I start with the part that everyone and their dog just loves to fall back on to pass themselves off as actually knowing economics.

Supply goes up and price goes down, supply goes down and price goes up. Inversely, as demand goes up so does the price and as demand goes down so does the price.

What people over look is the quantity and the relationship between it all.

Look up supply and demand curve and see how they move in opposite directions. The point at which they cross is the equilibrium price and quantity at which the product moves (buys/sells).

An increase in supply is a shift in the supply curve to the right and the point at which the supply curve crosses the demand curve will be at a higher quantity and lower price. A decrease shifts the supply curve to the left and the opposite happens to price and quantity. An increase in demand shifts the demand curve to the right causing both quantity and price to go up and a decrease in demand shifts the demand curve to the left and the opposite happens to price and quantity. This is a more detailed explanation of the underlined just above. Which is basically what everyone parrots.

But here is the full story of what happens.

Something causes an increase in demand. Say, an item gets a buff. This means more people want it and more people are willing to pay more for it. This shifts the demand curve to the right. The new equilibrium price and quantity is now higher than it was before. However, now that this item is selling for more, there is more profit to be made and more people start selling it. Supply curve shifts to the right. This cause the equilibrium quantity to go up again but causes the equilibrium price to come back down.

If both the demand and supply increase together, then you end up with that buffed item selling for the same price as before, there are just more of them being bought/sold.

Only when one of the curves shifts more than the other do you end up with a net change in the price but you can't ignore that the change in price of an item itself will cause a shift in either curve.


There you have it. Yet another long winded lesson in economics brought you by Ain'Geal.

Mablung

Hawke wrote: »

AinGeal wrote: »

Hawke wrote: »

Wait, how can bots destroy an economy?

If you don't know the answer to that, then you don't know enough about economics and I'm afraid much of what I could say would be lost on you.

And if you read the REST of my post, you would have seen me mention the guild economy and that gold sellers don't make as big of an impact to the server as a whole.

You are wrong. There is an economy on the NA server. Do you have zone chat?

Hawke

*sighs* I can't convince others of anything it seems. Glad ZOS doesn't believe the world is flat.

A guild of 500, or 10 guilds of 500 that have rampant gold purchasers are not going to kill the server by flooding the market with gold. It isn't possible.

If there are 50,000 people who play the game, and 100,000 different guilds out there, the chance of gold sellers killing 50% of the guilds' economy is so remote, I have a better chance at winning the lottery.

And yes, I have /zone chat, but when I say "Want to sell vampire bite for 100k, will not lower price", are you going to buy it? No. Why? Because even if you had 1 billion gold, you wouldn't waste your money.

That Daedric Motif being sold for 60k? Watch for it in the guild bank, you might be getting it for 40k.

Besides, it isn't the motif that will kill you.... it's the hearts you gotta watch out for.

alphawolph

Yeah, I'm no bot and I would hate this enough to not play it.

Khandi

alphawolph wrote: »

Yeah, I'm no bot and I would hate this enough to not play it.

Seriously.

KaedianEQ

This would certainly solve the botting issue, by driving the players out of the game and thus removing the customer base of both the gold sellers and ZoS as well.

JessieColt

Everything can be gained in game without buying anything from other players.

All it takes is time.

Buyers set the prices on items. If no one is willing to spend 100K for a racial, then the price will come down, no matter how much gold anyone has, or how they earned it.

It is a value perception.

I flat out refused to pay more than 40K for the Daedric Racial, and no matter how many times I saw it for sale for anything over 40K, I refused to give in and buy it for those offered rates.

Well, the price dropped, and I got it for 40K. Now I see it advertised for 35K, and the prices will continue to drop.

Am I upset that I see it advertised for 35K when I paid 40K? No. Because that was the value I placed and was willing to pay, and I do not begrudge others for their ability to get it for a lower price.

If I have a stack of ore/ingots to sell, and I set a price and no one is willing to buy them for that price, then I lower my prices.

If I do not adjust my prices, then I do not make a sale. I cannot make a sale without a buyer. So the buyer ultimately dictates the prices.

Building in artificial restrictions to try to limit the ability to trade and earn money will serve no purpose other than to cause players to leave the game.

p.hurst1b16_ESO

One of the things optimists in this game should take note of is the fact that bot activity has dropped severely. Now THAT is supply and demand in action. They are making more somewhere else.

zgrssd

Sorry, but as a Programmer I can tell you that multiple of your core asumptions are false.

AinGeal wrote: »

First is to Identify the source of the gold that gold sellers sell. Starting with just a single character, that character would have to first gather either gold directly (dropped, quest rewards, and chests) or items to be sold for gold.

Every coutner measure must be feasible for a MMO. If we stop botting but in turn double the time the server needs to answer requests or wreck the ingame ecconomy, this is a very bad deal. And chances are we are only making botting temporarily harder, not stopping it. But we kept all the downsides.
The loot lockout on devel bosses/open world bosses (especailly that it aims at this class of boss instead of specific ones) is feasible and quite ingenious I must say. I think this caused a serious drop in account/money making effectiveness and for a very cheap programming cost.

AinGeal wrote: »

So to remove the gold from gold seller is simple. Remove dropped gold. No more mobs dropping just straight gold. Next is to design quests to be too complex for simple bot programs to complete. Third is to ensure that the lock pick mini game is to complex for a simple bot program to do.

Sorry, but your ability to solve quests or pick locsk is not not nearly special enough that a computer programm cannot solve it. No computer game could ever be so complex that another computer cannot solve it.
There is a high treshhold (they have to parse images to get the data), but there is just plain no defense that can hold and there never will be.

AinGeal wrote: »

- The people behind the bots would have to get creative. Most people are against bots and gold sellers and they will not buy items from a gold selling account if they know it's a gold selling account. So no more names like "dkjaklfdj" and if a bot program isn't capable of working the trading mechanic of the game, then this forces a person to actually play that character.

They are already more innovative then you seem to understand.
The fight against Botting and Goldselling has been fought since before WoW came out and it will continue long after WoW and ESO are nothing but fond memories and entries in Wikipedia, however many decades from now that is.

Whatever "igenious, simple solution" you think you came up with: Forget it. They already encountered it. They propably though first of it. Chances are very high that they already have plans ready for every conceivable tactic Zenimax or any poster here can come up with.

AinGeal

zgrssd wrote: »

Sorry, but as a Programmer I can tell you that multiple of your core asumptions are false.

AinGeal wrote: »

First is to Identify the source of the gold that gold sellers sell. Starting with just a single character, that character would have to first gather either gold directly (dropped, quest rewards, and chests) or items to be sold for gold.

Every coutner measure must be feasible for a MMO. If we stop botting but in turn double the time the server needs to answer requests or wreck the ingame ecconomy, this is a very bad deal. And chances are we are only making botting temporarily harder, not stopping it. But we kept all the downsides.
The loot lockout on devel bosses/open world bosses (especailly that it aims at this class of boss instead of specific ones) is feasible and quite ingenious I must say. I think this caused a serious drop in account/money making effectiveness and for a very cheap programming cost.

Step by step break down.

- Remove gold dropped by enemy mobs (isn't it something like 1g anyhow?)
- Items sold to vendor are now valued at 0g
- Diminishing returns on gear repair
- Adjust gold from quests and mobs to compensate lack of mob dropped gold.
- Adjust upgrade mats rarity (%chance to be found, %chance to recover from decon) to compensate the demand shift that will take place as a result of diminishing returns on gear repair.

So which one of these can't be programmed in? Oh and none of this will "wreck in-game economy".

What's this lockout on bosses? Lower spawn rates? Boss only spawns when someone new enters the dungeon? Diminishing returns on drops the more a mob is farmed? All of which hurt the honest player too.

AinGeal wrote: »

So to remove the gold from gold seller is simple. Remove dropped gold. No more mobs dropping just straight gold. Next is to design quests to be too complex for simple bot programs to complete. Third is to ensure that the lock pick mini game is to complex for a simple bot program to do.

Sorry, but your ability to solve quests or pick locsk is not not nearly special enough that a computer programm cannot solve it. No computer game could ever be so complex that another computer cannot solve it.
There is a high treshhold (they have to parse images to get the data), but there is just plain no defense that can hold and there never will be.

I have yet to see a bot actually play the game. I have yet to see even one pick up a quest, do the quest, and turn it in. By bot I mean a character with the name "jkdfadja". I have yet to see one open chests as well.

I have heard of bots questing and there are even videos of it. That raises a question. Is it only specific quests and what makes them bottable?

Not to mention these bots are teleporting, speed hacking, and no-clipping through terrain. Did ESO have nothing in place to detect this?

I also use a Khajiit speak add-on that changes my character's text choices. Does that relate to the bot's ability to talk to NPCs?

The most I've seen are groups of bots running laps spamming an attack skill (hello biting jabs). This is because they must spam attack kill the mob before they die. They are not sophisticated enough to actually engage in a fight (dodge roll, block, interrupt, etc.). Yet all the visual clues are there. Hell there are even in game hints that can be always on. So where is the parsing of images there?

Alternatively I see bots running from node to node. The nodes spawn in the exact same location every time and are gathered by simply pressing a button.

AinGeal wrote: »

- The people behind the bots would have to get creative. Most people are against bots and gold sellers and they will not buy items from a gold selling account if they know it's a gold selling account. So no more names like "dkjaklfdj" and if a bot program isn't capable of working the trading mechanic of the game, then this forces a person to actually play that character.

They are already more innovative then you seem to understand.
The fight against Botting and Goldselling has been fought since before WoW came out and it will continue long after WoW and ESO are nothing but fond memories and entries in Wikipedia, however many decades from now that is.

Whatever "igenious, simple solution" you think you came up with: Forget it. They already encountered it. They propably though first of it. Chances are very high that they already have plans ready for every conceivable tactic Zenimax or any poster here can come up with.

I'm sorry but that doesn't address what I said (the part you quoted).

Hawke

I do like how there can be 10 bots running past a single simple chest, leaving it completely alone... I just waltz up and reap the benefits.

Speaking of chests... I wish there were more intermediate and master chests... if people can't open them, *shrugs* they can "sell" the information where the chest is or something...everyone wins.

Hawke

Oh, gold drops after a couple of weeks ago increased a LOT. I got 3 gold, now I get 4 gold per trash mob, and 15+ for boss mobs. Great stuff!

Or we can work it like Marvel Heroes and just not be able to trade currency at all.

AinGeal

Hawke wrote: »

I do like how there can be 10 bots running past a single simple chest, leaving it completely alone... I just waltz up and reap the benefits.

Speaking of chests... I wish there were more intermediate and master chests... if people can't open them, *shrugs* they can "sell" the information where the chest is or something...everyone wins.

Very true.

Is chest loot suppose to scale with pick difficulty? If so, I don't notice it.

UberTester

There are just so many bots exploiting so many bugs. It'll be months before this issue is fixed.