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Bots and nodes
Yajnho
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Consideration should be given to eliminating competition for nodes.
First, allow a character to harvest a node regardless of other players harvesting it.
This will eliminate competition for nodes, making node harvesting bots less profitable. It will decrease the sales of raw materials for both in game and real world cash, because the players who want the mats will be able to go get them. There will still be players who are lazy, but overall demand would go down making mats less profitable for bots.
Second, restrict how often each node can be harvested by each character.
This will encourage more exploration by actual players while making Bot programing more difficult. Bots could no longer infinitely harvest a single zone. If each bot can harvest each node only once a day, each bot would be considerably less profitable.
Furthermore, frustration of actual players would go down considerably, since their mats would not be stolen by a bot hidden underground.
Because of the high skill requirements to make high end goods, I think the economy would remain strong.
This is clearly not a total solution to the bot problem, and anti-bot programming on the server side would still be needed. But decreasing the bot driven angst of your paying customer base can only be a good thing.
Please give this some thought.
First, allow a character to harvest a node regardless of other players harvesting it.
This will eliminate competition for nodes, making node harvesting bots less profitable. It will decrease the sales of raw materials for both in game and real world cash, because the players who want the mats will be able to go get them. There will still be players who are lazy, but overall demand would go down making mats less profitable for bots.
Second, restrict how often each node can be harvested by each character.
This will encourage more exploration by actual players while making Bot programing more difficult. Bots could no longer infinitely harvest a single zone. If each bot can harvest each node only once a day, each bot would be considerably less profitable.
Furthermore, frustration of actual players would go down considerably, since their mats would not be stolen by a bot hidden underground.
Because of the high skill requirements to make high end goods, I think the economy would remain strong.
This is clearly not a total solution to the bot problem, and anti-bot programming on the server side would still be needed. But decreasing the bot driven angst of your paying customer base can only be a good thing.
Please give this some thought.
1
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you mean instancing all stuff for each individual?
then everything would have to have longer timers - to prevent aknyone staying on an node or place or area too long0 -
Yajnho✭✭✭not instancing, just make each node harvestable by each character once a day, or once every 12 hours. Really any time frame that discourages designing bots to run from node to node, and encourages player exploration is suitable. That way when you find a node you can harvest it, whether a bot has been there or not. Right now part of the problem is that the bots limit everyone's access to a node by instantly harvesting it. This is doubly good for the bot because he has the resource and no one else does, driving up its value in both in game and real world currency. If he can harvest it only once in a given time period, and so can everyone else- the bots advantage in harvesting is minimized.
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This is clearly NOT a solution for dungeon bots, just harvesting bots.0