Aion Riftshade

Hello everyone!

Please read and vote... I saw several bot threads which shows this is a major issue and people are annoyed. So, I wanna make my own for this suggested solution .

TL;DR:

- Limit the 1 hour free siel per day to characters up to level 20, whereafter they need to pay/gifted siel to continue gaining exp/loot/AP. <- Counters bots and allows returning players to still play with their friends but just without exp/loot.

- Disable talking rights on LFG without paid siel <- Counters gold spamming bots.

* Unlimited 1hour/day free siel and being able to level without siel was a nice idea, but it allows for too much abuse.

* If coding this solution is too hard, then there is an alternate version on the bottom of the post which should be easy.

Full:

We all know there are issues with botting right now. As someone who made the mistake to level a new character on Elyos in Atreia, I've encountered literally 100s of teleporting gladiators and chanters today. In Poeta and Verteron you can manage it as there are many channels, but afterwards it's annoying! Sadly, reporting them (I have sent about 10 screenshots of one or more groups per screenshot today alone), is semi-pointless as the bot owners just script in to make more in case of ban. And this doesn't cost them money or effort as it's all automated and at 0 cost due to not paying for Siel .

So, I've devised a strategy on how to deal with them once and for...all? By looking at world of warcraft of all places! They have a "trial system" of cap level 20. Why not implement the same?

Right now we have 1 hour of free siel, and then siel is off unless you pay or wait till 9am. My suggestion would be to limit the free siel of 1 hour per day until level 20. That way new players get a "trial" period, and bots will be forced to buy siel at lvl 20. A full group of bots will be 60 euro. Some bot owners will not pay that much and stop. Some bot owners will buy from other players (time consuming) and some will pay (expensive) but the number of bots will drop drastically which makes it easier for Gameforge to ban the remaining ones .

"But bots are good for the economy."

I disagree that they are good for our economy. They bring in a lot of inflation with the items they bring in, and the kinah they make end up going to a small portion of the community who are buying kinah. This small portion then can buy all the best items/enchants/manastones for higher prices which inflates prices making it harder for non-kinah buyers to get those in bulk. I don't think we need a reminder of the early days where some gladiators were buying a spear for 10s or 100s of millions and some had +10 armour/weapons when most people couldn't buy their skillbooks yet.

"But crafting mats."

As for crafting materials, I think there are better solutions for those than allowing bots. For example events with bags of crafting materials or increasing the drops in open world (5 tough rawhide instead of 1, ...)

Besides this, there are gold spammers, some go on for a day it feels like. Solution -> Turn off LFG rights if you dont have a paid siel.

The temporary siel was a nice idea. But it's allowing bots and spammers to reign free. We need a solution, they get created faster than they are being banned. And it's hurting the game. Even if you don't believe there is damage to the economy, it scares off new players and demotivates returning players. It also creates an extra pain point for active players who get annoyed with the "AP trading, Cheaters, bots, p2w(kinah buying)", this resolves some of the pain points :D.

I think only 1 type of legit player gets hurt with this solution, and that's the type of player who plays less than 1hr/day on one/each character. But I don't think there are many.

Alternate solution.

If coding siel's to cap to level 20 is too hard, then introduce a new energy that's active from Level 1-20 which prioritizes over free siel's energy but not over paid siel's energy. So that characters with active paid siels below level 20 dont have downsides.

Thoughts?

Thanks,

Divine

Honestly, it's not the free Siel Energy that causes those problems.... It's the flawed Item-Drop System we currently have to suffer from as well as the lack of support from the publisher.

You have to ask yourself why do people buy Kinah from Bots? Because it's way harder to make Kinah via farming. Why is that so? Because, in general, the Drop-System isn't rewarding. Not like it used to be.

Instead of restricting the free 1 hour Siel, GameForge should appoint GMs in game, people that are going from map to map, searching for bots and banning them. GameForge should change back the Drop-System, so trying to earn Kinah via farming feels more rewarding. I'm not saying that everyone has to get at the Kinah-Cap once per day. Also, they have to adjust some prices from the vendor/Soulhealer accordingly.

Your idea isn't bad per se, it just won't help to fight against the root of the problem

Many of the games I played over many years had a bot problem, and in most of the games that i played and QUIT, bots were at least a significant reason for me quitting.

I have reported tons of bots to gameforge in the old aion version by ticket, I hate botting and I wish I could just play a game in fairness. But your suggestions / thoughts are simply bad. Sorry, but if Gameforge cared enough for the problem to make so significant changes, it would be WAY easier for them to simply put someone to ban all the damn obvious bots on sight than to transform the game into your utopia.

Btw. there is a configurable spamfilter in the game client that does not seem to be activated for us. Check these forum posts about that one. Why do we not have it? No idea. It would be easy for those who are annoyed by goldseller spam to set up their personal filter to filter out the spam on their own without the spambots ever noticing that nobody sees them.

Removing Siel from everyone non-paying will NOT solve the issue and once again only hurt normal players like SO many other suggestions against bots. They will NOT CARE. They make enough money by those "I want the BEST stuff and I am not willing to earn it" people that they will just buy Siel. And then the prices for Kinah rise but it will not hurt them, because there will STILL be tons and tons of people who just pay the higher price. All you would do is make the kinahbuyers pay more Euro per million, the rest would stay the same.

Quote from PinkCake

Instead of restricting the free 1 hour Siel, GameForge should appoint GMs in game, people that are going from map to map, searching for bots and banning them.

Bots are getting banned, next day it's full again. I was at a festival during that time so I didn't see it, but apparently there was a big bot removal, and the next day poeta was camped with 100s of bots. It's a never ending cycle if nothing gets done at the root as you say. Kinah sellers will always have a lower price than for example the kinah you can get from selling tradables on aion shop, so some people will always buy from sellers. You can't have a GM be in every location, every map, every server, every channel at once, especially since these bots are TP'ing around.

Quote from PinkCake

GameForge should change back the Drop-System, so trying to earn Kinah via farming feels more rewarding. I'm not saying that everyone has to get at the Kinah-Cap once per day. Also, they have to adjust some prices from the vendor/Soulhealer accordingly.

I can support that but that doesn't change botting issue

Quote from Moondemon

Removing Siel from everyone non-paying will NOT solve the issue and once again only hurt normal players like SO many other suggestions against bots. They will NOT CARE. They make enough money by those "I want the BEST stuff and I am not willing to earn it" people that they will just buy Siel. And then the prices for Kinah rise but it will not hurt them, because there will STILL be tons and tons of people who just pay the higher price. All you would do is make the kinahbuyers pay more Euro per million, the rest would stay the same.

I doubt that there are many people who don't pay for siel either through cash or through gifted. And not dealing with bots is going to cause more people to leave than people would leave from my suggestion.

All the bots wouldnt suddenly have paid siel, it's too expensive to buy in bulk especially if gameforge bans them frequently, just isn't a smart ROI. And Buying from other players as not feasible as there isn't enough supply + Some would get scammed. You can see someone spamming LFG trying to buy siel for his/her bots, (also spamming from an account under level 20), so yes some would do it. But if theres a lot less bots, it means easier to ban the rest.

And if they all had to pay siel, it would give gameforge some money that they can use to support the game Maybe it allows them to justify getting a part-timer to go around solely banning bots. I'd assume they had the money to do it, but they're not doing it right now so maybe not

TL;DR -> getting paid siel on all bots would be bad ROI. GM flying around to look for bots is not efficient. Cutting most down through forced paid siel and then flying around to ban the rest makes more sense.

People seem to forget that paying for a game/subscription has never stopped bots and is merely a minor inconvenience to the gold sellers.

They are pushing their bots and goldselling websites so aggressively because it's very profitable. Paying for a few subs won't hurt them at all.

If people think that a paywall will stop them, then they have no clue how much money is actually flowing in and out of that business.

It's very profitable because it costs them literally nothing except some electricity. Paying siel changes that.

"A few subs"

There weren't this amount of bots in retail (more buyers as well Í know) However, buying gold pack in bulk, especially with the frequent coin discounts, was incredibly cheap. Much cheaper than siels. And like I said, some will buy siels, but there are 100s if not 1000s of bots. I doubt they're going to buy siel's on all of those. And if they do, it's going to make buying kinah less appealling due to high prices and will make regular banning actually become annoying rather than just have the script make new ones, and then people who want to p2w may be more likely to buy coins and sell stuff from shop.

As for people saying there should just be GM's flying around 24/7 banning bots. Well.

Now: GM flying around bans 5 groups of bots. Bot owner lost nothing. Script makes 30 new chars. Gameforge has to pay GM, gains nothing.

After: GM flying around bans 5 groups of bots. Bot owner lost 300 euro. Script makes 30 new chars. Bot owner spends another 300 euro. Gameforge has to pay GM, gains 300 euro.

How long do you think they're going to keep spending 1000s or 10,000s of euros on bots that get banned before they make money back? Bots arent profitable at low levels. So if they have to pay siel at 20, and get banned before reaching end-game, they wont "pay back" their investment.

As long as they can level for free, they will just create new ones after a GM bans them.

Quote from Sebivine

Quote from PinkCake

Instead of restricting the free 1 hour Siel, GameForge should appoint GMs in game, people that are going from map to map, searching for bots and banning them.

Bots are getting banned, next day it's full again. I was at a festival during that time so I didn't see it, but apparently there was a big bot removal, and the next day poeta was camped with 100s of bots. It's a never ending cycle if nothing gets done at the root as you say. Kinah sellers will always have a lower price than for example the kinah you can get from selling tradables on aion shop, so some people will always buy from sellers. You can't have a GM be in every location, every map, every server, every channel at once, especially since these bots are TP'ing around.

Quote from PinkCake

GameForge should change back the Drop-System, so trying to earn Kinah via farming feels more rewarding. I'm not saying that everyone has to get at the Kinah-Cap once per day. Also, they have to adjust some prices from the vendor/Soulhealer accordingly.

I can support that but that doesn't change botting issue

Quote from Moondemon

Removing Siel from everyone non-paying will NOT solve the issue and once again only hurt normal players like SO many other suggestions against bots. They will NOT CARE. They make enough money by those "I want the BEST stuff and I am not willing to earn it" people that they will just buy Siel. And then the prices for Kinah rise but it will not hurt them, because there will STILL be tons and tons of people who just pay the higher price. All you would do is make the kinahbuyers pay more Euro per million, the rest would stay the same.

I doubt that there are many people who don't pay for siel either through cash or through gifted. And not dealing with bots is going to cause more people to leave than people would leave from my suggestion.

All the bots wouldnt suddenly have paid siel, it's too expensive to buy in bulk especially if gameforge bans them frequently, just isn't a smart ROI. And Buying from other players as not feasible as there isn't enough supply + Some would get scammed. You can see someone spamming LFG trying to buy siel for his/her bots, (also spamming from an account under level 20), so yes some would do it. But if theres a lot less bots, it means easier to ban the rest.

And if they all had to pay siel, it would give gameforge some money that they can use to support the game Maybe it allows them to justify getting a part-timer to go around solely banning bots. I'd assume they had the money to do it, but they're not doing it right now so maybe not

TL;DR -> getting paid siel on all bots would be bad ROI. GM flying around to look for bots is not efficient. Cutting most down through forced paid siel and then flying around to ban the rest makes more sense.

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Nah man, I'm out of this discussion....

You have to understand that every cause leads to a certain action. Also: There are some normal players with siel energy using bots.

Good luck.

Quote from PinkCake

Also: There are some normal players with siel energy using bots.

My solution doesn't deal with the handful of player-owned bots, my solution deals with the infestation of 100s/1000s of bots from bot farms.

Quote from PinkCake

Honestly, it's not the free Siel Energy that causes those problems.... It's the flawed Item-Drop System we currently have to suffer from as well as the lack of support from the publisher.

You have to ask yourself why do people buy Kinah from Bots? Because it's way harder to make Kinah via farming. Why is that so? Because, in general, the Drop-System isn't rewarding. Not like it used to be.

Instead of restricting the free 1 hour Siel, GameForge should appoint GMs in game, people that are going from map to map, searching for bots and banning them. GameForge should change back the Drop-System, so trying to earn Kinah via farming feels more rewarding. I'm not saying that everyone has to get at the Kinah-Cap once per day. Also, they have to adjust some prices from the vendor/Soulhealer accordingly.

Your idea isn't bad per se, it just won't help to fight against the root of the problem

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If its harder to farm kinah, then prices should be lower? Your argument is irrelevant cuz of it. But to improve reward for instances could be good cause right now it feels unrewarding indeed.
GM's actions could be good, but looks like GF doesnt care at all, otherwise it happened many days ago.