Bots Will Rule This Game

@evillego6

What I'm assuming is that someone in the marketplace that sells 100k gold for $30 is publicly a gold seller. That forum account has to link up with activity in the game. That can't be changed, the gold has to come from somewhere in the game and therefore it's completely traceable.

A person selling gold outside of the marketplace using their own site would really be stupid because they would have no way to market themselves to the SOTA community and they would be at a competitive disadvantage that would likely force them to sell below the current $30 rate per 100k.

So someone that is botting would have to do so without awareness and at a disadvantage and competing with everyone else. It doesn't sound like a profitable business strategy to me, but whatever, perhaps some gold sellers will just be stupid and try it.

 

I know... its a double edged sword.

 

Ever heard of money laundering? yeah... they are doing that. Like I said before... professional goldsellers have been gaming the systems for years. This game is just as vulnerable if not more so than others. Im sure they will catch some of themm but most will likely go undetected. And once theyve been caught once, they will make a new account and up their game so they dont get caught next time.

Goldsellers provide a service primarily to the casual players. As long as a game caters to casual players, the goldsellers will always have a market and a reason to keep doing it.

And that the problem with games nowadays, they know they can make more money by catering to casuals, so they will always do it, nevermind the scammers...

 

What's your point?

Yeah. All that's true. The devs are aware of it. If you see something, report it.

I really do share your concern, none of my posts have been designed to say otherwise. But it's a lot like trying to stop people from hacking, it's just a fact of life that it's going to happen.

 

Sorry.. I just have a deep personal hatred for bots and gold sellers because they destroyed one of my favorite games of all time.

 

Well you're not alone. I hate them too. I put exploiters right up there with them. I've reported quite a bit of exploitation over the last 6 months.

I pride myself on playing fair in all aspects of the game.

 

I agree with you mostly, but there are gold selling sites that specialize in gold sales, which is more what I meant by selling on third party sites than Joe Botgamer creating his own third party site to sell on. I won't direct anyone to those sitsz, but their existence is known well enough. The top gold selling site is currently offering 100k SotA for $118, a 15% off discount! The fact that their price remains so high is probably an indication that they're at least selling at that price enough to justify it.

I imagine some might say (not suggesting you) that if one is stupid enough to buy at that price, ah well. But it appears at least that the most prominent gold selling company out there is unconcerned what the marketplace valuation is for the gold they have. They seem perfectly willing to offer the gold at a ridiculous price and profit off the otherwise unaware.

I've seen players, both here and on Steam, informed that the marketplace exists. It may seem like common knowledge to most of us, but there are players who rarely, if ever, visit the forums. I suspect that number will increase as well as the game launches. And googling buy shroud of the avatar gold doesn't yield the marketplace as the first result.

Again, I do agree with you in large part, but I think what you state assumes a fully informed and forum engaged playerbase. The marketplace does what you say for some of us, but I imagine the botters aren't players selling via the marketplace, or at least not botters of the more dangerous sort. A player here and there botting isnt a huge concern. They'd probably be running some standard script found online and probably are the most easily caught because of it. I think sites like I referenced above are the sources of the most serious botting problems. Those that create custom scripts and bot as a full time business. LB himself said he's purchased igg and I assume since it's a violation of most EULAs he's done so from sites like the one I referenced.

There's also the added security one might feel buying from a company that backs their transactions with a guarantee as opposed to in game trades which have no guarantee being offered with transactions via the marketplace. Igg buyers have long used these sites and they may feel an extra level of protection in dealing with them. They may also just return to them out of familiarity, rather than searching the forum for a marketplace. I'd suggest for the majority of people, the assumption would be that the game does not allow RMT unless otherwise made aware, and may go to sites like these based on the probably fair assumption that this game, like every one for the last 20 years, considers RMT outside the EULA.

As a side note, I would like to see the marketplace turn in to something like shroudmarketplace, something much more than the current forum allows. I think it'll be necessary as the game gets more popular and would serve the population as a resource better than its current format. It'd be great to have a link somewhere prominent on the website as well, to make player to player transactions more apparent.

Hopefully this isn't coming off as me saying you are wrong. I'm having fun discussing it with you because you approach the topic critically and I genuinely appreciate your perspective. I'm just replying with thoughts I have. I'm not suggesting you're wrong or I'm correct. I'm here to read others opinions and to learn from them, not to present myself as an expert.

 

Sadly it is.
I love the modes, don't get me wrong. And I for sure don't want them to go away. But we should non the less use every method to make it as hard for bots as possible.

 

Seems like you havent understood the system of the game: This is Selective-Multi-Player, Means Multiple Ways to Play. Play in multiplayer mode or go single player, in which mode nobody ever could camp a gathering node unless by yourself. You better stop craing hysteric before you understood the mechanics.

 

You missed the boat on that one, they are already here. BUT there is not enough profit in this game, yet, to make them as much of a nuisance as you've seen in other games. One of the reasons for this is the Crowns, the other the very low player base.

???
Breakable containers don't respawn.

...and they yield waaaaaaaay too little to be of any value to farmers.

The only way to bot a scene of breakable containers would be to switch scenes like going from one Brittany district to the next over and over in SPO/FPO. The yield is less than resource mining though, so don't see how that would be an issue since no farmer would go the less profitable route.

This is already the case, sorta. The resource nodes are static, yes, but they are also randomly distributed as which of those nodes are active at any point of time. So if a scene has 30 nodes then maybe 10 of those nodes are active, and only by harvesting a node would a different one spawn.
...and it is set up that way exactly to prevent bots.

Completely agreed.
I've argued for roving spawns for years here. Adding high level roving spawns with less loot which patrols areas is a great way of creating tension and preventing bots. The human player can keep vigilant and see the roving patrol and thus avoid them if needed while the bot would have a harder time doing so.

So it would add spice for the players while being detrimental to botting = win win

My old suggestion is for the Rowing Spawn be tied to the yield/loot of the scene, so every X thousands of gold generated produces Y roving encounter. So the more effectively a scene is looted/harvested the more and the more difficult roving patrols are added.

That would not work here though. Over 80% of the player base, according to the devs, are playing solo.

 

Breakable containers DO respawn. Ive seen it. And what someone else mentioned... loot you get from single player is allowed to cross over to multiplayer. Goldseller heaven right there...

I promise you that if those 80% were forced to group, they would have no trouble adapting. In fact some of them would probably still find a way to solo. The game is also not released yet, once it is that current 80% will quickly become a minority.

 

We have to keep in mind that selling stuff is legal in this game.
Botting isn't.
But one thing isn't compulsorily connected to the other.

 

Is that a sustainable business model? Perhaps at $118 for 100k the answer is yes.

Just like you can buy anything at "retail price" or you can be a smart shopper and look around first to size up the available opportunities, there will always be people out there that are suckers. Maybe it's worth it to these sites if only they get a few people that pay them $118? Irregardless, the impact to the game when this happens seems immaterial to me. What I'm more interested in is what happens to the website customer when they find out they've been taken for a fool? Do they EVER go back to that website and purchase something like that again? I don't know that they do. Most people take great offense at being price gouged, but literally fooling someone into thinking they are getting a deal when the complete opposite is true, that's not how you get repeat sustainable business.

I wouldn't trust any "guarantee" that came from a third-party site in this business. Let alone if they were selling the way you described above. But sure, some players might fall for that too.

No, you're bring up interesting points. I'm looking at this more on a macro level though, and what the impact is to the game. In my opinion the net result is that players have a more transparent way to trade here in the forum marketplace that keeps prices low and keeps buyer and seller history semi-public.

 

Nope.
If you are talking about barrels and crates then those only spawn once with the scene. If you break them and stay in the scene they don't respawn.
Instead the scene itself must be instanced again at which point the crates and barrels will be re-created with the scene. Something which usually takes hours.
(There are ways to make a scene reload to get new spawns, but that is too detectable for good bot farming).

So again, farmers will never aim on the breakable containers. There is no profit there.

But...
If you want to get your knickers in a twist you should rather look at all the salvageable weapons and armor from NPC merchants. They do respawn with a frequency and they can be made to scraps which then become resources when combined with harvested ones. Thus a farmer would want both a harvesting bot and a salvage bot
Which they already do.

So please for your own sake skip the breakable containers which is a non issue (no bot profit) and go for other stuff (which has profit).

Nope. This game is designed, sold and implemented as selective multiplayer where a BIG part of the enjoyment is to be able to play solo.
Forcing players to group against their will is not even an option on the radar.

Also farmers often are much better at grouping than regular players so wouldn't really solve anything.

 

edited, thanks @Sir Frank
AFAIK botting is ok as long as you are attending it. Unattended botting is banned. Selling outside of the official marketplace is also banned.
Some entities will fall trough the cracks, but the way the game is instanced it is very easy to parse the server data for patterns that reveal for profit botters.
If you notice that mod and devs have left this thread alone, it is because they are confident it won't be too much of an issue to cause serious damage to the game. There are systems in place and they will never hint toward what those systems are or how they work.
Persistence has already arrived, and who has been hurt by botting so far?

 

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...-macros-or-botting-allowed-of-any-kind.75893/

 

Thank you @Sir Frank for posting a link to our previous announcement! To note, we do not condone botting or macros of any kind that are going to circumvent the balance of the game as has been suggested here. We actually have some pretty good tools, and diligent team members, to handle these cases before they get out of hand.

 

They already have tools in place to monitor who is earning how much gold and where/how they are earning it (pure mob drop, selling to NPCs, etc). With these tools they had already identified groups that were exploiting, regions where drops were too good for the challenge rating, and more. They were thus able to tune those areas as desired to resolve not only issues with botting and exploiting (for which bans were issued) but also solve the core problems that allowed the bots\exploits to flourish.

Once you have the tools to monitor economic activity down to individual players, you can keep a pretty good handle on the bots issue. Accounts are easily flagged for investigation or further monitoring. These are tools a lot of those other MMO developers overlooked or had to add in after the fact, in which instrumentation across their already large and complex code bases and trying to establish metrics and trend lines across hundreds of thousands to millions of players already in the middle of playing is a monumental task.

The SOTA guys got their tools in early. They've got the smaller early enrollment player base to build metrics and trend lines on. They are doing it in a way that doesn't let the bots dictate their game design. They can use the bots to find flaws in and tweak their designs, but the bots are not in control. They are doing it right.

As for quitting games for need of grouping... yes, people will do it. I know a good many people who quit Final Fantasy 11 because they couldn't progress very far without a group. I love the option to group, but when I am forced to, the game is no longer very compatible with my professional and family life which prevents me from actually scheduling game time.

 

1. It's not just an MMO.
2. They aren't broken in single player.
3. Optimization hasn't happened.
4. LOL. No.

 

This thread kinda went out there.

Think i disagree with some, agree with others.
Botting = lots of gold for sale.
Lots of gold for sale = cheaper prices for people to buy.
Cheaper prices to buy gold = more gold on average player.
More gold on average player = decreases value of items bought for gold.
Decreased value of items bought for gold, while the gold price increases to compensate.

If everyone has 100 gold, this bow sells for 10g. if everyone has 1000g, its worth 100g. The bow itself hasnt changed.
If botting got out of control, and this bow is suddenly worth 50k, that sucks for any player NOT buying bulk gold (becomes a must). And why would i sell the bow for the 100g its worth, when someone with millions will buy it for 50k like nothing?

THAT being said, i think Port can control bot's pretty well by just making sure they enforce the bans. Aslong as they are diligent (and i believe they are) The botter has to make more then the value of the game, each and every time they setup an account. While having a character(bot) starting from scratch each time. And time = money.
So 45 dollar account. Lets say 6 hours to hit a point where bot can run steady enough. (at current rate) about 150k gold to break even? That would be.. At best rate i know of for a 6 hour character, somewhere around 10 hours of unattended botting to break even.

So really it comes down to port having the systems in play to catch the majority of botters whithin 12 hours. And i believe their methods of catching would only increase as time goes on.
So while im sure theres some... i think its controllable, as long as they intend to stop it from getting out of control, and when they enforce they enforce hard. ( i know the publicized bans they deleted all accounts and all stuff associated with them as well).
Personally i hope that includes the purchased item ( lets say i bot, sell 100k here, 100k there, 100k there ) I think it would be fair if when they ban me, they also remove the 100k to the person who bought, and publicize it. That would sure discourage it.
And any player who fairly got the money, (its pretty easy for them to tell if your an active person) wouldnt need to worry.

But i think the argument botters are *good for the price of things, and good for us consumers* is wrong. All it would do is drive the cost of items up in game, making it rougher for anyone who doesnt purchase gold.
least thats how i interpret it.