Public dungeon bot campers - the problem and a solution

Kazarr

The problem: Groups of three bots (often with random letters for names, exactly like the gold farmer spammers) stand at the boss spawn in public dungeons and kill the boss as soon as he spawns, making it extremely difficult for normal players to earn the dungeon achievement and receive soul gem drops of their own.
I have started a second character after getting my first one into veteran ranks and every single public dungeon instance I have been in has had bots camping bosses, this is already a major problem and they will spread very soon to the 50+ dungeons and the highest tier of soul gem (if they are not there already - I have seen groups of them grinding on npcs to level in Eastmarch so it will happen in the very near future)

The reason for the problem: Gold farmers have identified soul gems as a high value low risk item which can be farmed easily and repeatedly (disrupting regular players and reducing their ability to get the items for themselves in the process) and which is then converted to ingame gold by selling to other (innocent) players - which I assume they then sell for out of game currency.

The solution to the problem: Remove soul gems from public dungeon boss loot and introduce a series of daily quests, one for each tier of soul gem, which reward something like 5 soul gems for completion.
This will not stop the gold farmers from collecting the gems but it will limit them, and it will restore the public dungeons to their intended purpose and make life a lot less frustrating for your regular customers.

fliptrik

I posted this on another post and thought it maybe relevant here as a discussion for suggestions to resolve the BOT issue. let me know what you think.

"one suggestion I can come up with is to have the bosses only drop loot once per person with a guaranteed loot table. I see a few people wanting the blue and moving on so just make the boss drop the blue item every time and a soul gem along with a bit of cash and potions. then that player is "locked" from looting it again.

another suggestion is to have the dungeons "phase" for you when you have killed the end boss. so that you are in a version that spawns the normal mobs but not the boss anymore. it is used all over the place for the quests so im sure it can be implemented for dungeons. effectively my last suggestion but without the hassle of having a tough mob there with no loot on it anymore.

for either of these the end bosses will have to be toned down a little as they are very tough solo and since there will be less players around (especially once everyone is levelled) it could be near impossible to kill single handedly unless you out level it and the loot is useless anyway.

TLDR: 1 loot set per person per character end of story (with guaranteed blue drop). regardless of whether it locks or phases you from the boss.
"

TheRedMage

If I were going to say that its denial of loot, its more the boss armor/wep rather than the soul gem as nothing is stopping you from buying an empty one and filling it or looking for chests.

Heck i don't even get boss kills anymore in public dungeons but i'm swimming in filled soul gems from group dungeons/chests.

Although I don't see the harm in lowering the sell price of filled/empty soul gems to 0 so they can't exploit that, as a possible fix.