The amount of botting in this game is out of control.

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Tunks, May 19, 2017.

  1. Millianna Augur

    I do not believe it makes them any money. They got to pay someone to delete all those bot potions and someone to activity work on any code.
  2. kookoo Augur

    I was playing ( boxing 4 toons ) in firiona vie last week , in FM west sarnak fort , when a player started to pull around me , after some time I asked him why he was killing the mobs I was killing since 2 hours .

    he told me *** wow I thought you were another botting group *** , he didn't even sent me a tell ( I got audio trigger for tell on all toons ) , or /shout .

    so we need to be carefull saying someone is botting ( I personally never seen any yet ) .
  3. Aurastrider Augur



    Its my belief that this is the number one reason they are not more aggressive towards bot groups. From a financial stand point chase loot increases the krono demand but the drop rate is so low that it probably does not help with krono sales from non bot groups enough. When you add bots farming non stop 24/7 this produces more rares into circulation which means more money for DBC. Some would argue that increasing the number of rares would devalue them but because they are still pretty rare overall it does not impact the value in a negative manner. Just my belief though and could be wrong as to why they are not more active in removing botters from the game.
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  4. Midasa Elder

    Maybe make the chase items no drop. One still has 30 minutes to sell in general chat, for instance but they would have to be at/near the computer to sell it or lose it.
    Jumbur likes this.
  5. Bigstomp Augur


    Which they can do automatically with their bot programs. That's about the most lenient punishment possible.
    code-zero likes this.
  6. Zuno New Member

    Prison server. Still do not understand why this is not a thing since its in EQ2 lol
  7. Aurastrider Augur


    They have a prison server? Do they at least provide soap on a rope?
    Janakin likes this.
  8. VZRetro Lorekeeper

    I've never liked the free to play since it came out. Speaking only for myself, I don't like it because I am way above the free to play limits, which means I am still forced to pay to play (which doesn't bother me at all).

    What bothers me is that as a paid member, I still have to buy expansions while all of these free to play people get those expansions for free just for waiting until they become free. Sure, they have limits on what they can do, wear, etc. but they are still able to farm plat for kronos, activate for a month without any money out of their pocket, go past the limits, rinse and repeat... They do not contribute to the game and get what paid members have to pay for for free. Just to put a spin on the point, go over to DCUO (another Daybreak game) and you will quickly notice that paid all access members get ALL expansions for free while free to play players have to pay for them. EQ is the exact opposite and it shouldn't be that way in my opinion.

    That is why I hate free to play, I'm all for getting rid of it and going back to being a pay to play only game like it was. It would eliminate a lot of the troubles I see being discussed here, with some tweaks of course. I think the idea has potential. But I still think a lil bit of quality GM time on each server to monitor for actual bots would be the best way to put a stop to them. Wishful thinking though, probly not gonna happen...
    daranged and Jumbur like this.
  9. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    Well, botters can also just make a new account and start over from that, an actual ban will at most punish them with the additional time it takes to create a new account. A ban punishment will probably add 5 more minutes to that sentence for an RMT botter, but a ban has an increased probability of driving cheaters away for good, that would otherwise consider giving cheat-free EQ a second chance.

    Unless they start legally suing RMT botters, I don't see how DBG can punish them much harder...?
  10. FurySoul Augur

    Sure, but at least its something and im sure its quite annoying to lose that amount of time. At in current live environment it would take around a month to regain 104 levels and max AA. On top of that, there is a question of will the FTP accounts lose their ability to regain the max AA. There may be some Gold status AA grinding necessary as well.

    All in all I think its a pretty lenient, but fair/acceptable punishment which discourages rule violations yet doesn't punish so harshly to encourage loss of players.
  11. Felicite Augur

    How about random "actual conversation" checks while playing.. like reCAPTCHA?

    /s
  12. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    I often have problems guessing correct with those, and Im not a robot. :confused:

    I was thinking of something like:

    "hi this is GM banhammer and this is a bot-check:" and then say stuff like:" link you primary weapon!", "what is this zone called?", "link an achievement you completed recently!" something like that...
    And as long as you can come with a response(any response!) that makes sense in the context, like for example: "I don't know what my newest achievement was, it might have been a slayer-achievement..." then he would know you are not a bot...

    I doubt the EQ-bot programs can give meaningful answers in a conversation...
  13. FurySoul Augur

    I am personally opposed to the idea of forced communications to prove a position. There is a good chance I will ignore all communications if I didn't initiate it. It's not an anti social thing, its just a principle thing. I spend plenty of time in raid settings and helping guild mates and rando's, when I get to doing stuff by myself I would rather not be bothered.

    I am positive the devs have a way to distinguish bad actors without interacting with players. How else did they create their lists for past ban waves???

    And for clarity, if a GM suspected a player of "botting" instead of people trying to use communications as a verification process in order to dole out punishments, why not just port the group to PoK or someplace safe and away. Use the systems to check for illegal software, and use in game time alleviate problems.
  14. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    "Before you can loot this chase item please click on all images containing clowns" heh heh
    Kajira, Treygolas and Felicite like this.
  15. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    Well, if the have an effective way of detecting botting without communication, then that would be even better. Suddenly being questioned while playing can be somewhat disruptive. It was merely thought of as a final test, so that the cheater can't come with any complaints afterwards. But if such a test isn't needed to determine botting then, they can skip it.:)
  16. Warpeace Augur

    Got a good laugh hearing a Warrior was suspended for afk killing with a pet. It actually made me wonder if the GM went to suspend the account they misspelled the name considering how many similar names are out there now.

    Anyway back to the pitchforks and torches for botters!!!
  17. svann Augur

    They used to have a special room they transport you to if they think you are a bot and you do not respond. If you still dont respond when you are in the cat room with no way out then you are a bot.
  18. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    A sudden port to the cat room, would be a pretty funny bot-check indeed!

    Anyone who doesn't go: "LOL WUT!???" is surely a bot! :D
  19. Jyve Augur

    One weekend I /really/ enjoyed people botting vendor/buyers.
    Pre-offline, I'd leave my trader on the machine next to me, glance over every now and then, tweak prices, not much. If I priced something cheap to clear some space, I'd see the same toon appear in front of me. Do odd little 10-15 degree turns, forward a bit, pause, forward a bit. Work down the list.
    A few times of the same toon doing exactly the same movements I thought "oh, this must be a bot, he's coming to loot my cheap stuff and then resell" And that's exactly what he'd do.
    So I wondered how his script worked and did a test.
    Priced something low, watched him come over, and as moving into position, I raised the price a bit to match other vendors. Still bought the item, wandered off.
    So did it again. Really low price, as he came over, jacked the price up to silly numbers. the bot still bought it.
    20 goto 10
    Was obvious he never did a check before hitting buy, only when first looking.

    A few million later, he ran out of money.

    Didn't work a few days later, I guess they updated their scripts.

    but yeah, the movements of toons being botted, it's very obvious. Especially dragging a mob near them and watching them jump across. Then accidentally highsunning that mob and NOT hearing about it in /ooc or tells
    Treygolas and Mediik like this.
  20. Apricots Lorekeeper

    The amount of botting on Firiona Vie is simply insane. There's a bot army of ~20 that sits in Chardok regularly, and as I type this there's a bot group in Frontier Mountains. The group in FM will evacuate to Wall of Slaughter if you approach them. They'll sit there for about 10 minutes and then camp fire back and resume botting activities.

    Some bard was having an off-day the other day and kept accidentally doing bad pulls, and one bot group happened to die about 20-30 times before the owner returned; due to their unfortunate position relative to the clumsy bard. The botter spoke to the bard and promised to turn off his scripts. He's the one botting in FM this morning.

    Due to Daybreak's extremely lax stance on botting, they are particularly brazen these days. Botting with active hacks porting them between one location and another.

    It's sad seeing a game which I've loved for so many years and have such fond memories of devolve to this level. I expect this in a F2P Asian game, but my beloved EQ is too good for it. Honestly.
    Corwyhn Lionheart and Ghubuk like this.