Our AB botters (at least the ones everyone's upset about) permacamp key nameds/camps in popular zones for many many days/weeks on end They will set up, literally, on top of an existing group and, if they can, out dps them on all mobs - this happens daily They will steal any and all nameds - sometimes warping to the named (that happened to me, personally, many times until I gave up on those camps) They are active in the most popular bits of HH Also to be seen when key spawns due in places like VT ie any occasional spawn that drops anything still desirable There are about 8 groups belonging to the same person (that I can think of off the top of my head). It's amusing (almost) to watch them use the same scripts regardless of group Sometimes, yes, there is a person at the keyboard; usually not (if not, you send them a tell and get a standard response - usually 'cry me a river' IME) Personally, I'm not sure whether their main aim is to upset actual players; drive players away from the game or make cash (altho am not sure what cash they get from camping Great Divide wurms for weeks on end?)
I have an off the wall theory that the person doing that is attempting to get the automation program that they are using banned. They are extremely open with the practice and they make no secret about what program they are using. All they need to do is keep a good supply of f2p accounts to level up and a way to hide their location and both of those are trivially simple to do.
If he wants to demonstrate how botting software can be used to harass a server for months, then he needs to be much more annoying than that. Instead of a "mob killing"-script he could run a "get stuck and block doorways"-script. "you want to enter tofs, tough luck! I have a raid with growth-potions sitting here in the entrance hallway",or "yes! my "growthed" ogre absolutely have to sit here and absorb this raid-npc, have you considered not raiding this month...muahaha!", or the classic about standing on a ground-spawn, etc... you get the idea... and have a script just auto-generate new chars/accounts and warp to their "harass-spots", when the old ones gets banned. Killing mobs is too mainstream...you don't get GM-attention with just that(sadly )...and if you want change, you need to go where even GM's are powerless, you need actual DEV-attention. The fact that he hasn't even gotten a suspension yet, means he has failed to get their attention...or isn't trying...
I think they just figure they can get away with it. If anything they are trying to make it mainstream by showing how much they can do and still not get banned.
Sadly. I sort of wonder if they are more in the know on how Daybreak will do things then the average player. Or I guess it could just be a financial decision. They have made back any investment already so they can't lose.
I fear you've given him ideas..... He *has* been suspended, I think - a number of times. My only 'evidence' for this is that he (or chunks of his main bot army) disappears for a day or 3 and isn't in any of the usual places. It could be, of course, that his mummy just changed his router password until he does his chores...
I hope so! If he takes the bait and he starts acting like that, then DPG will have to remove him permanently, giving us a long term solution... Long term large scale zone disruption is a "crime" they won't forgive... DPG didn't spend months creating a zone, only for it to be un-accessible by the entire player-base, due to a single jerk.
I have an evolutional hypothesis. AB has become the “botting-server”, for the sole reason that the difference in time zones introduces an extra delay between a europeam player making a petition, and a US based DM can react. So the evolutionary preassure being lower on AB ends up letting the botters stay and evolve..
Interesting idea. It definitely is fair to say there seems to be something special about AB in regards to this problem. I wonder if the AB being a Euro server has extra consumer protections that makes it hard or impossible for Daybreak to permanently suspend the player in question. Just from casual reading I do know the EU has some pretty hardcore consumer protection laws. I wonder if the players being inconvenienced have any recourse to the same consumer protection laws? Maybe anyone with more knowledge on the subject of EU consumer protections can jump in with comments?
That may be the case. If so, I wish the devs would get creative. When I was in college, a bunch of us played a dungeon game, which was actually written in Basic. It was single player, but you could approach it in a kamikaze mode, where the games didn't take that long. We'd play in a group and hot-seat it, with everyone cheering on/jeering the guy in the seat. We decided to have some fun with one of the guys. He always chose the same character name. So we made some things behave "differently" when he was playing. Took him a while to catch on
We have "GDPR", which means that if a company does not abide by these rules, and store your data without your consent, or after you have written them and asked them to be deleted, then they can be fined up to 4% of their yearly revenue . It is awesome. I am in IT, and some years ago, we where all running around scrambling to make sure we where compliant, like a mini-Y2K. In reality, the severity, and the risk of loosing face is enough to drive a sound behavior, without any need for draconic enforcement. It is also called "the right to be forgotten". A new human right for the digital age :-D. Google does only enforce it in Europe, so that they are still storing data about europeans outside Europe; but that data is not available (without VPN etc) to Europeans; so while it is far from perfect, for 99.9 of all practical cases, it works with regards to person to person privacy; of course, with regards to analytics, US companies can still operate from US soil making analytics on europeans; it is just less attractive, because they cannot legally sell that insight to a company operating in Europe... I am convinced that there are no protections for Botters in Europe. They are in clear violation of Eula and good faith. I think it is a resource limitation issue.
Well there were individuals claiming to be from Europe who strongly defended credit card charge backs saying that Euro law protected them from any repercussions. I also know that P99 was able to operate for most of it's existence due to the server hardware being located in The Netherlands and even Sony couldn't get it shut down
A friend of mine just got banned for trying to recover a camp a group of bots stealed from him. This is insane.
I think automated groups have overrun every server. They are completely out of hand on the live server that I play on.
I'm guessing the friend trained them? They (the botters) video everything For some reason these videos (which don't always show an accurate picture; a friend got suspended for a big pull after they camped literally on top of him and took aggro on some of his pull mobs. His idea of fun is to fight 8/10 mobs at a time just because he can) seem to carry a lot of weight vs 'ordinary' petitions and logs So, sadly, training them is not the answer
Not sure if he trained the group, what i know he was very fustrated. He just got the camp after waiting so many days just to lost it from a group. He unsubbed 3 of his accounts because DB banned him. What i found amusing is these people already record on video everything, i mean, come on, what normal player records constantly gameplay sessions? Don't know if this is the case but i can understand if someone train a group of bots in fustration after stealing his camp. Why do anyone grief this way anyone in the first place? Some people seems to don't care about others. What i don't understand is why Daybreak punish legit players and do nothing about the use of third party programs that are again the EULA. They could just check the windows service names or a CRC check after each patch for those programs to know who are the ones running it. It's not that complicated.
Its not that they can't detect the botting software, they just choose to not do anything about it... Im honestly not sure, if it is a viable strategy in the long run to ignore botters, they are losing subs because of people being fed up with bots... I suspect they aren't thinking further ahead than the next few expansions. If DBG stopped accepting botting, Would the botters stop their paying account too and leave the game completely forever? or would they just play normally(non-botting) with their paid accounts? Depends on, if the botters actually like playing the game or care about it. Botters who doesn't care about the game are only in it for RMT-money, and are probably too cheap to sub anyway... Botters who do like the game, would continue to play legit(and pay) I think. I doubt DBG would loose that many paying subs if they disallowed botting...It would just be viewed as another "nerf", and botters would accept it.
They can make a Bot's Allowed Server or something like that for people that like to play this way hehehe. Then ban bots on longstanding servers. Anyway, I would never petition anyone who is botting, its DBs fault to not care to all market participants, if people can do it they will do it anyway, I think there can be a place for all, just be sure no one is griefing to anyone. Griefing was my main concern by posting this post. Something has to be done, seriously.
I will state a lot of speculative arguments below, to explore the possible dynamics. I have zero data, so the only value of what follows is for formulating hypotheses for future use. I would speculate that botters drive DPG income by consuming Krono. I have read on these fora that DPG for some accounting rule cannot claim krono income until the krono is consumed. If this is true, then there could be a business case for botters. That would mean that we are driving the botting economy by buying Krono from DPG. Lets assume for a moment that botters consume half the ‘Krono that is being consumed; getting rid of botters would then mean getting rid of half the Krono-income. Getting rid of Krono all together would hurt that segment of players that do not have real world funds to play, but can fund their gaming through in game purchasing of Krono; this being the moral argument for keeping Krono in game. I would speculate that removing krono (just by removing the option to buy new krono), would over time take krono out of the game, as it is consumed. This would likely impact the RMT economy, removing a semi-safe way of conducting trade in game. Having to buy loot via shady websites would likely deter a lot of people. But I would guess a lot of RMT would shift to PP, with botters then selling PP to fund the game, actually in the end just substituting krono with PP, but without DPG (and thereby us all) benefitting from it. In the end, there is a much simpler solution to the problem, that would instantly end player grief, and would also drive an increase in Krono consumption, and that would be to instance zones. I have never played on TLP, so I do not know if AoC would be the solution, but imagine that some form of AoC/zone picking was available on Live, and an unwritten rule could be formulated that called for botters creating one or several instances to play in, leaving the “normal” players to play in the main instance. And if the botters abide by this, they would not risk banning. (Not necesarily allowing botting outright, but like those implicit agreements we see in fictional TV where there is stuff the police do not interfere with, if no civilians are harmed). Perhaps formulated in a way that says that Guides/DMs will not police instances outside main instances, or something to a similar effect.