I know who John Rambo was but I'm unfamiliar with the term "hard Rambo".

You want the devs to fire explosive arrows at the botters? I mean, apparently they're using giant hammers right now but I'm not opposed to something stronger.

If the botters are doing all this through filched credit card information then there is no winner, certainly not Zenimax.

Well considering the time and effort put in by the botters, I would say they are profiting.

They can transfer the ill gotten booty to a safe account that doesn't violate every line of the EULA and then sell it at their leisure.

After reading through the threads about crafting, guild stores, bots, an elegant solution seems to present itself even though it may seem a bit radical.

Currently, we have gold in the game. We get this in 1 to 4 coin bits from drops occasionally, or from selling (to vendors) stuff we pick up.

This cash is used for primarily:
Buying & feeding mounts
Buying consumables
Buying inventory space upgrades
Buying items off other players
Cash sinks


What if we just got rid of the money?
Then we wouldn't need: cash sinks for repairing, cash sinks for listing things in shops, we wouldn't need shops. The great auction house debate? Irrelevant.

There is no reason why feeding oats to your mount couldn't involve going and getting actual oats out of a crate or some other 15 second task. Inventory & bank space should just be set to a reasonable cap (like 300 each reasonable), grow with your character level, or be expandable by skill points (see merchant guild skill line example in skill lines section), independent of currency

Consumables such as potions drop from mobs and are craftable, don't really need to be on npc vendors. In fact increasing itemisation of the few things that people might actually need to buy from an npc vendor would alleviate this. Make it so that crushing racial armor always gives the gemstone for the style and you don't need to buy those either.

Really want a different economy? The guild store becomes a trading hall where people can set up trading x for y and currency becomes irrelevant. If currency has become irrelevant or nonexistent, there's no market for the gold farmers to sell and no reason to buy it. Demand for individual particular items is too localised and too specific to set up an effective real cash scheme and even in the event that one is set up, it would not have all the bots farming all the low lvl starter dungeons for soul gems as they'd need to diversify their farming to satisfy the 'real cash market'.

I've not fleshed this out particularly well but its an interesting concept

@Shimizu While that is an interesting concept, I doubt it would change much. It would just turn into an economy system that reflects what happened in Diablo 2. In diablo 2 there was a barter system like you describe because the games currency was worthless. So instead of saying an item was worth X amount of gold, people would equate value to the value of the most popularly traded item, the vaulted Stone of Jordan. The people selling things for real money, would put a price in US dollars on 1 Stone of Jordan, then other items were valued as being worth X Stones of Jordan.

Basically, the gold sellers would start selling Stones of Jordan for cash instead of gold.

Shimizu wrote: »

After reading through the threads about crafting, guild stores, bots, an elegant solution seems to present itself even though it may seem a bit radical.

Currently, we have gold in the game. We get this in 1 to 4 coin bits from drops occasionally, or from selling (to vendors) stuff we pick up.

This cash is used for primarily:
Buying & feeding mounts
Buying consumables
Buying inventory space upgrades
Buying items off other players
Cash sinks


What if we just got rid of the money?
Then we wouldn't need: cash sinks for repairing, cash sinks for listing things in shops, we wouldn't need shops. The great auction house debate? Irrelevant.

There is no reason why feeding oats to your mount couldn't involve going and getting actual oats out of a crate or some other 15 second task. Inventory & bank space should just be set to a reasonable cap (like 300 each reasonable), grow with your character level, or be expandable by skill points (see merchant guild skill line example in skill lines section), independent of currency

Consumables such as potions drop from mobs and are craftable, don't really need to be on npc vendors. In fact increasing itemisation of the few things that people might actually need to buy from an npc vendor would alleviate this. Make it so that crushing racial armor always gives the gemstone for the style and you don't need to buy those either.

Really want a different economy? The guild store becomes a trading hall where people can set up trading x for y and currency becomes irrelevant. If currency has become irrelevant or nonexistent, there's no market for the gold farmers to sell and no reason to buy it. Demand for individual particular items is too localised and too specific to set up an effective real cash scheme and even in the event that one is set up, it would not have all the bots farming all the low lvl starter dungeons for soul gems as they'd need to diversify their farming to satisfy the 'real cash market'.

I've not fleshed this out particularly well but its an interesting concept

Interesting concept really...Basically a game with just a barter system. You should look up Path of Exile which did away with gold and everything is bartered with there form of currency called orbs (which are supposed to be used as Crafting but there crafting systems sucks soooo bad its laughable and not worth mentioning). Gold sellers now just sell those orbs and/or items. Gold sellers will always find a way to sell something whether it be Gold, orbs, equipment, time, etc.....

Your ideas though....I would really like to see a game like that.

Skillet wrote: »

Seems to me that the Bot disease is a result of simple economic enterprise. People making money, its been around for hundreds of years.

- Developer creates great game, sells licenses, profits = Win

- Botter buys licenses, farms gold, sells gold (items), profits = Win

-Developer bans limited / selective bot accounts, who then go ahead and re- purchase new licenses to continue profitable business = Win Win

Here is the flaw in your logic...Zenimax REFUNDS the money on all accounts they ban. Yes, really.

Also, bots make the game less appealing, which means people are less likely to buy it or stick around.

So it is "lose" for everyone except the bots.

Bots are the disease, and I'm the cure....

Remove your tinfoil hat.

Developers lose money with all the employees they waste on security. Botters and gold sellers are criminals. They use stolen credit cards and compromised accounts. This should not surprise anyone.

Stop posting ridiculous conspiracy theories, because there's always a slim chance some poor, naive new player will think that it's true.

Skillet wrote: »

Seems to me that the Bot disease is a result of simple economic enterprise. People making money, its been around for hundreds of years.

- Developer creates great game, sells licenses, profits = Win

- Botter buys licenses, farms gold, sells gold (items), profits = Win

-Developer bans limited / selective bot accounts, who then go ahead and re- purchase new licenses to continue profitable business = Win Win

As long as both parties maintain profitability, the cycle continues.

Only way to break this is for the developer to hard Rambo all the bot accounts so that Botters can no longer be profitable. But in doing so, they give up a continuing supply of relicensing profit that Bots are actually providing.

It has to be something like this, else in todays technology, the Bot disease would already be eliminated.

Your premise is greatly flawed.

For one thing, botters use stolen credit cards, which get charged back, COSTING Zenimax money.

Every botter is a CC account that gets chargebacks, and huge fees for Zenimax dealing with said chargebacks.

silent88b14_ESO wrote: »

The customers of the spammers are victims because by the time they get their powerleveled character it is associated with gibberish-named alts that were used to gold/mat spam the rest of us and were reported. So when the devs catch up to that case their expensive PL's character is banned. The spammer meanwhile is sitting pretty selling all those rare mats the PL'd character's disposable alts harvested.

I tend to believe the "customers of the spammers" are the real culprits and root of the problem, certainly not victims.