Possible fix for Dungeon Bots?

Chili · April 2014

You get a quest at the start of the dungeon to kill the boss mob and get the blue item that boss would drop as a quest reward and the boss only drops a soul shard and nothing more when you kill it.

I think this would stop the bots, allow players who want to farm shards to do so, and give everyone the blue item to trade, use for themselves/alt or use as a crafting mat/research item.

An alternative would be to have the blue item sent to the player via mail once they get the achievement for completing the dungeon if designing quests for all the dungeons would be too much work (laugh) for the devs.

What are you guy's thoughts?

Shimond · April 2014

What do you think the bots are doing?

Farming soul gems. That's the only reason they're there - full soul gems vendor for a good chunk of cash

Chili · April 2014

I see, I assumed it was for the blue/green items to break down for crafting mats to sell. Never crossed my mind that soul gems were the target. I've always wondered why soul gems were so easily obtainable completely removing the need to ever buy one from the vendor or use the skills to refill empty ones.

seaef · April 2014

Shimond wrote: »

What do you think the bots are doing?

Farming soul gems. That's the only reason they're there - full soul gems vendor for a good chunk of cash

It blows me away that there is market for it. How lazy do people have to be to buy full gems. You can fill twenty in about five minutes by killing wolves or some other wandering creature.

Shimond · April 2014

cfurlin wrote: »

It blows me away that there is market for it. How lazy do people have to be to buy full gems. You can fill twenty in about five minutes by killing wolves or some other wandering creature.

They're not selling them to players. They're vendoring them to NPCs.

All this is, is gold farming. That's it.

grizzbi · April 2014

Shimond wrote: »

What do you think the bots are doing?

Farming soul gems. That's the only reason they're there - full soul gems vendor for a good chunk of cash

Then remove soul gems from bosses! How long does it take to change the loot tables for all the bosses of this game? It's a high priority matter, isn't it? I don't get why it takes that long. That said, there's probably a good reason.

Jade · April 2014

I've had similar thoughts as well. Just add events like in group Dungeons. Make the timer 12 hours or something. Kill the boss, event over, quest is gone, can't repeat till timer is up. No one needs to grind in those dungeons anyway.

Shimond · April 2014

grizzbi wrote: »

Then remove soul gems from bosses! How long does it take to change the loot tables for all the bosses of this game? It's a high priority matter, isn't it? I don't get why it takes that long. That said, there's probably a good reason.

Agreed, really shouldn't be there in the first place. I think NPC vendor only is fine. The empty ones are pretty cheap and the full ones are there for the lazy&rich.

That said, removing them is a short term solution. They'll find another way (or just keep doing the same thing anyway and vendoring whatever DOES drop).

grizzbi · April 2014

Shimond wrote: »

That said, removing them is a short term solution. They'll find another way (or just keep doing the same thing anyway and vendoring whatever DOES drop).

Not sure about that: botters are looking for stacking items, not blue items. It would really help to kill their profits.

Lord_Hev · April 2014

Fix: Instance only to solo and actual groups. Like the Group dungeons, but on a smaller scale that can be solo-ble. Perhaps scale the enemies if you enter with a group.

Krell · April 2014

grizzbi wrote: »

Then remove soul gems from bosses! How long does it take to change the loot tables for all the bosses of this game? It's a high priority matter, isn't it? I don't get why it takes that long. That said, there's probably a good reason.

I doubt it's that simple. If they remove soul gems from bosses, for example, all it does is punish all the other players. Meanwhile, the bots will just move on to the next-best source of farmable income, whatever it is. It's what they do.

grizzbi · April 2014

Krell wrote: »

grizzbi wrote: »

Then remove soul gems from bosses! How long does it take to change the loot tables for all the bosses of this game? It's a high priority matter, isn't it? I don't get why it takes that long. That said, there's probably a good reason.

I doubt it's that simple. If they remove soul gems from bosses, for example, all it does is punish all the other players. Meanwhile, the bots will just move on to the next-best source of farmable income, whatever it is. It's what they do.

Are you serious? You can buy empty soul gems and make a stack of filled one in less than 2 min. Are we talking about the same thing?

By the way, giving filled soul gems to players because it's sooo difficult to fill them is already a bad idea.

The soul gems problem is such a little thing compared to the bot one, that I don't get your point at all...

Chiren · April 2014

They could even just have the boss drop an empty soul gem, I would even argue that it shouldn't be full to begin with. If we get a soul trap spell - maybe the game should be designed to encourage us to use it.

Krakenheim · April 2014

Simple solution, Eq2 did it. You only get anything (loot, xp and achievement) once for any public boss.
And another good mechanic also is TAG, my quest my mob.

Krell · April 2014

grizzbi wrote: »

Are you serious? You can buy empty soul gems and make a stack of filled one in less than 2 min. Are we talking about the same thing?

By the way, giving filled soul gems to players because it's sooo difficult to fill them is already a bad idea.

The soul gems problem is such a little thing compared to the bot one, that I don't get your point at all...

You claim that removing soul gems from bosses should be a high priority matter. I'm simply pointing out that it's probably not that simple. Bots will find something else if you remove their best source of income. I don't care about the soul gems, personally.

Yesteday I was one bot teleporting around different ressource nodes (iron ore, jute, etc) in one area, then disappearing. I guess they're trying different things, too.

Requiemslove · April 2014

AUTO-BAN

Why not this? It would be a feature put into the game that detects character's movements and actions. Looking for excessive repetition for a sign that character is a bot [as in endless boss farming] and upon finding such behaviour, AUTO-BANs the account. Now understand I know players like to craft, so gathering resources would not be in the AUTO -BANs definition, though resource gathering and no movement, sticking to the same resource location, would be. I also know, being a MMO player myself, players like to get something worthwhile from boss NPCs, for killing them, so no, killing a boss 5-10 times in the space of an hour, would NOT be in its definition. But standing still, attacking a boss as soon as it spawns, and staying there for hours and hours and hours [if not forever] would be. I don't know what the DEVs have got in mind, to do about the bots and gold-spammers, but this is what I would like to see. It should be obvious to the devs that players act randomly, and have whims, go to many different places, do quests, go traipsing over the hill yonder to see if there's a chest or some hidden easter-egg to discover, they are NOT repetitive in the way bots are. And like to get to a higher level, and find out what the next zone is like. Bots don't do that. This is the feature I would have if I was involved in an MMOs development.

METALPUNKS · April 2014

Heres my fix. If you stand around for a a certain amount of time even if you using skillls and weapons you go into that mode that you go into when coming out of be revived and the only way to get out of it is move your feet for a bit.