Bots are the result of poor design. That people think bots are necessary is an indication of extremely poor design. Don't put things that suck in your game and you won't have bots. Don't put in things that can be better done by a macro than a player and you won't have bots. Don't make the acquisition of gold and items absurdly dull and time consuming and you won't have bots.
Nailed it.
OP is naive to think gold farming/selling is the only reason bots exist. Many regular players find routine game activities such as leveling up skills (DFO) or accumulating gold dull (almost all MMO's) so some turn to bots to play these parts of the games.
Remove this poor design and the bots will for the most part go away. So in the end, NCSoft is ultimately responsible for the existence of bots in Aion.
"Agreed!
How can someone say the company shouldn't bare any of the blame?"
Because the company is not the one buying the gold, it's the players.
But don't accept any responsibility for your behavior, blame it on someone else.
That's like saying it's ok to cheat because the possibility exists. If they didn't want us to cheat they would remove the possibility. At what point is it the player's responsibility to do the right thing? Or, do we just assume every player is looking for ways to cheat and will ALWAYS do the wrong thing unless systematically prevented from making bad choices?
Why do people say something without thinking? If you want to help, if you want to understand, if you want to talk to other people - try to understand first.
Bots are NCSOFT's fault and it's NCSOFT's problem. NCSOFT made the game currency an important aspect of the game which the gold sellers are selling to the playerbase. IF NCSOFT made the in game currency less important then gold sellers would not have any business here.
Typical example of game currency importance:
-Ever hear of Miraget's/Fenrir's set in Aion? Yes it is the ultimate PvE set you can get at lvl 50 after doing a long+boring+hard+annyong+EXPENSIVE chain of quest. Out of all this, only the rich can afford it. Each piece of that set costs millions.
-Ever heard of drop rates at end game? yes, they r rare as hell. Once you get a piece of gear guess what you do with your old gears? Sell or extract it, soulbound makes MAJORITY of the current ingame gears useless. You cannot trade down ur old gears or trade back 1/4 of it's cost because of the soulbinding system.
I've only given 2 quick examples without thinking too much. Now think about the game setup and how the game is designed. It's not the players who gave the currency market to the gold sellers, it's the game design and the devs who opened the door to gold sellers.
PS: I am an Aion player. Have been playing since headstart in Sept 2009 and plan to continue this way for some time in the future. I have 2x lvl50 chars and you can call me a fanboi/troll/noob/whatever you want, doesn't make any difference to me. I like the game, I enjoy the game ..... but don't like the game company ... they did not learn from their mistakes in Korea or China .... just a bunch of incompetents making decisions.
"Bots are NCSOFT's fault and it's NCSOFT's problem. "
Incorrect. But thanks for playing!
Again, bots and gold sellers are due to bad player behavior. It is the fault of the player who buys gold. No profit = no bots/gold sellers.
Maybe games should not require a player to spent 1000 hours in front of pc repeating the same pattern over and over to get 1 piece of gear. I dont say that games should be so easy that you can gain anything in a few days but not to make game so stupidly repeating
If you don't like the game, don't play the game. But don't cheat.
Oh I most certainly do blame NCSoft. That doesn't mean the botters and the buyers are off the hook, because they are obviously a big part of the problem. But the reason that company is called "NCSoft" is that it's soft on preventing cheaters and always has been.
Lets be real about one thing. The only problem is that there is a market for gold selling to begin with. The people buying is the problem. Ncsoft can't go to all its users houses and prevent them from cheating...
Bots are the result of poor design. That people think bots are necessary is an indication of extremely poor design. Don't put things that suck in your game and you won't have bots. Don't put in things that can be better done by a macro than a player and you won't have bots. Don't make the acquisition of gold and items absurdly dull and time consuming and you won't have bots.
Incorrect.
Bots are the result of player greed and laziness. Period.
If you don't like the game, don't play the game. But don't be lazy and buy your way to the end.
Bots and gold sellers do what they do for MONEY. No money = no bots/farmers/gold sellers.
sorry dude if someone bought gold and got better gears and kick ur butt , are u going to say its b/c they got better skill than u or go out and buy gold urself so u can compete?
If someone bought gold and got better gears just to kick my butt than I've already won.
It doesn't matter what others do, it is up to you. Do you cheat? Yes or No? Getting my butt kicked in a video game is NOT enough to make me change my values. Sorry if it is so important to you that you would sell out.
I played Aion for about a month after it was released. Yes, there were some bots, and some gold spam. But what I don't understand is why people blame NCSOFT. You know who's really responsible for the bots? And many of you aren't going to like this...but it's the PLAYERS fault.
It's 100% the fault of the players. Without a demand for bots and gold, there would be no market for gold sellers, thus they would die. Apparently there are enough Aion players paying for gold that the bots are still sticking around, 6 or 7 months after launch.
So stop blaming NCSOFT, or boycotting them. Start blaming the right people, the players playing next to you.
BTW, I haven't played Aion for about 6 months, so I'm by no means a fan boy.
I agree that it is the players,the problem is the players have no means to police themselves,so it is up to the developer to do it.
I witnessed first hand massive cheating in CODMW2 and the sad part was the other players who were not cheating either wanted to cheat or were giving praise to the cheat for being able to cheat.SO you know the players are not going to be on board,this is definite immaturity ,when you need to cheat yourself and others.
The reason why NCSOFT is partially to blame is because their stance has been one of laziness to just don't care.You know for a fact that if any half witted player were made a GM,he/she would do a 500% better job of cleaning up the game.FFXI/Sqaure put the control partially in the hands of the players and it has worked very well,definitely a lot better than NCSOFT.
Yes it still comes down to the players,but since the last 10 years,players are cheating as much as they can,it is not going to change,so we need help from the developers.
One idea i saw long ago in Silkroad was kind of cool,it could eventually be hacked as well,but it would make the GM work simplified,if they just update the program once a week and leave it all up to the players.This brilliant idea, involves selling players auto bots themselves.What these bots do is attract the botters to attack them but will easily kill the bots.They will utilize either a name tag or some other method that allows players to distinguish from a bot and a normal mob,however to the bots,they think it is a normal mob.Oh forgot to mention that the players launch these bot killers ,near a suspected bot.
This way al lthe developer has to do is update the byte code,so the hackers cannot fix their bots to not attack the bot killers,much easier than hiring GM's and spending thousands of hours looking over bot reports.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
guys, i really hope, you will come as witnesses to my trial after i rob a bank and will blame it on government for making money earning so dull and tiresome. just imagine it: i have to 5 days a week at least 8 hrs a day spend doing again and again some grind of same work, month after month! so no one can really blame me, that i went and robbed that bank, right?
It's 100% the fault of the players. Without a demand for bots and gold, there would be no market for gold sellers, thus they would die. Apparently there are enough Aion players paying for gold that the bots are still sticking around, 6 or 7 months after launch.
...
"Eh, that's a little like a politician saying that crimes are 100% the fault of the criminals, and if criminals would just quit committing crimes, there wouldn't be a problem."
Anything you said after that is just noise...
Are you saying crimes are NOT 100% the fault of the criminals?
If criminals did quit committing crimes then there wouldn't be a problem would there?
Not a very logical or well thought out response...
The OP is correct. If there were no market for in game items there would be no suppliers of in game items. Very simple, perhaps you've heard of supply and demand? You know, where people DEMAND stuff so others SUPPLY it? In this case it's Aion's players who are demanding and the gold sellers who are supplying. See how that works?
RMT is a player problem. Gold sellers are just making a profit from player's laziness/greed. If the players quit buying the gold sellers/bots/spammers/account hackers would all go away. They don't do this for fun, they do it for profit.
My statement is in no way defending or justifying the actions of criminals (or in this thread, botters). And I stand by my "noise". Sure, it would be wonderful if players just ceased to use bots or buy from botters entirely. An ideal situation, really. But sadly, it's so unrealistic that it's not even worth wasting time wishing for, and any remotely sane developer should be aware of this.
Enforcement and prevention is needed, and if I'm playing a game with botting problem, I think it's reasonable to ask that the developer move to stiffle the problem. In fact, it's something they should be anticipating before the game even hits the shelves. From the timeframe given, the OP is clearly referencing Aion's startup period, when people were demanding the company do something about the bots, but NCSoft clearly dropped the ball in dealing with it.
A Modest Proposal for MMORPGs: That the means of progression would not be mutually exclusive from the means of enjoyment.
Seems many folks are missing the point here. No one is claiming the players are blameless, of course they 'shouldn't' cheat but fact of the matter is, they will unless the developer's employ creative game design to make it unnecessary or put in policing mechanics to make it punative and disagreeable.
If a company choses not to do these things, knowing full well some players will cheat the system, they are ultimately to blame for their games being overrun with gold farming and bots (which still goes on in Aion despite claims to the contrary here) and ruining it for the other players who do the right thing.
Time for a stupid real world analogy at this point. Where I live its the law that you have to pay for your gasoline before you are allowed to pump it. It shouldn't be necessary, and people shouldn't drive off without paying, but fact of the matter is, they do therefore the law was put in place. Should a vendor decide not to follow it (they are free to of course) they are not allowed to call the police if someone drives off w/o paying.
Its called taking reasonable precautions to keep things safe and secure, and NCSoft is notorious for not doing so (ask most any Lineage 2 player)
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Its called taking reasonable precautions to keep things safe and secure, and NCSoft is notorious for not doing so (ask most any Lineage 2 player)
and yet is doing so (ask any Aion player).
And I still don't know why this topic is dragging on. It's a long-gone problem, it doesn't exist anymore, it's extinct, finished. Move along IMHO.
Because people still need reasons to bash Aion...and the reasons are becoming fewer and fewer.
I don't need a reason to dislike a game, but if I plan to discuss said dislike on internet forums I better have some evidence to back me up.
The single biggest problem with Aion will always be the pre-launch hype. I do not know WHAT the MMO community was thinking. Nothing in Aion's feature list EVER said it was going to re-invent the wheel. In fact, the only semi-innovative aspect was flight, and that is only because much of the dedicated MMO community is still ignorant of the F2P games that have implemented this.
Aion stands right now as a reasonably polished MMO, with competent launch offerings in both PvE and PvP. It is NOT as easy to level in as WoW. People mistake this as "grindy" and dismiss the game without a 2nd thought. The game itself requires very little grinding, and in fact turns into mostly Instance runs from 25 up. The "Journey" is actually one of the better ones I've played so far, plenty of group content starting at 17. It's just that when you get to the end, there's only like 1 instance and fort raids.
And what has even more impressed me is the Aion 2.0 trailer, because it shows that NCSoft is listening to their fans and even implementing features that most people never even thought about.
For those of you who aren't going to read this, I'll sum it up.
You are correct that it WAS the players' fault the first time. Way back in Lineage 2 when the game was botted all to hell the market for botting and gold-selling would be the proper place for blame. However, all these years later, after having so many users leave Lin2 BECAUSE of the botting and gold-selling NCSoft has continued to do absolutely nothing to stop it and has now released another game that is being exploited the same way. This time the blame is squarely on NCSoft for not learning and doing something about it.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Comments
"Bots are NCSOFT's fault and it's NCSOFT's problem. "
Incorrect. But thanks for playing!
Again, bots and gold sellers are due to bad player behavior. It is the fault of the player who buys gold. No profit = no bots/gold sellers.
If you don't like the game, don't play the game. But don't cheat.
^^
"The people buying is the problem."
Thank you.
If someone bought gold and got better gears just to kick my butt than I've already won.
It doesn't matter what others do, it is up to you. Do you cheat? Yes or No? Getting my butt kicked in a video game is NOT enough to make me change my values. Sorry if it is so important to you that you would sell out.
I agree that it is the players,the problem is the players have no means to police themselves,so it is up to the developer to do it.
I witnessed first hand massive cheating in CODMW2 and the sad part was the other players who were not cheating either wanted to cheat or were giving praise to the cheat for being able to cheat.SO you know the players are not going to be on board,this is definite immaturity ,when you need to cheat yourself and others.
The reason why NCSOFT is partially to blame is because their stance has been one of laziness to just don't care.You know for a fact that if any half witted player were made a GM,he/she would do a 500% better job of cleaning up the game.FFXI/Sqaure put the control partially in the hands of the players and it has worked very well,definitely a lot better than NCSOFT.
Yes it still comes down to the players,but since the last 10 years,players are cheating as much as they can,it is not going to change,so we need help from the developers.
One idea i saw long ago in Silkroad was kind of cool,it could eventually be hacked as well,but it would make the GM work simplified,if they just update the program once a week and leave it all up to the players.This brilliant idea, involves selling players auto bots themselves.What these bots do is attract the botters to attack them but will easily kill the bots.They will utilize either a name tag or some other method that allows players to distinguish from a bot and a normal mob,however to the bots,they think it is a normal mob.Oh forgot to mention that the players launch these bot killers ,near a suspected bot.
This way al lthe developer has to do is update the byte code,so the hackers cannot fix their bots to not attack the bot killers,much easier than hiring GM's and spending thousands of hours looking over bot reports.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
guys, i really hope, you will come as witnesses to my trial after i rob a bank and will blame it on government for making money earning so dull and tiresome. just imagine it: i have to 5 days a week at least 8 hrs a day spend doing again and again some grind of same work, month after month! so no one can really blame me, that i went and robbed that bank, right?
My statement is in no way defending or justifying the actions of criminals (or in this thread, botters). And I stand by my "noise". Sure, it would be wonderful if players just ceased to use bots or buy from botters entirely. An ideal situation, really. But sadly, it's so unrealistic that it's not even worth wasting time wishing for, and any remotely sane developer should be aware of this.
Enforcement and prevention is needed, and if I'm playing a game with botting problem, I think it's reasonable to ask that the developer move to stiffle the problem. In fact, it's something they should be anticipating before the game even hits the shelves. From the timeframe given, the OP is clearly referencing Aion's startup period, when people were demanding the company do something about the bots, but NCSoft clearly dropped the ball in dealing with it.
A Modest Proposal for MMORPGs:
That the means of progression would not be mutually exclusive from the means of enjoyment.
Seems many folks are missing the point here. No one is claiming the players are blameless, of course they 'shouldn't' cheat but fact of the matter is, they will unless the developer's employ creative game design to make it unnecessary or put in policing mechanics to make it punative and disagreeable.
If a company choses not to do these things, knowing full well some players will cheat the system, they are ultimately to blame for their games being overrun with gold farming and bots (which still goes on in Aion despite claims to the contrary here) and ruining it for the other players who do the right thing.
Time for a stupid real world analogy at this point. Where I live its the law that you have to pay for your gasoline before you are allowed to pump it. It shouldn't be necessary, and people shouldn't drive off without paying, but fact of the matter is, they do therefore the law was put in place. Should a vendor decide not to follow it (they are free to of course) they are not allowed to call the police if someone drives off w/o paying.
Its called taking reasonable precautions to keep things safe and secure, and NCSoft is notorious for not doing so (ask most any Lineage 2 player)
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
and yet is doing so (ask any Aion player).
And I still don't know why this topic is dragging on. It's a long-gone problem, it doesn't exist anymore, it's extinct, finished. Move along IMHO.
Because people still need reasons to bash Aion...and the reasons are becoming fewer and fewer.
I don't need a reason to dislike a game, but if I plan to discuss said dislike on internet forums I better have some evidence to back me up.
The single biggest problem with Aion will always be the pre-launch hype. I do not know WHAT the MMO community was thinking. Nothing in Aion's feature list EVER said it was going to re-invent the wheel. In fact, the only semi-innovative aspect was flight, and that is only because much of the dedicated MMO community is still ignorant of the F2P games that have implemented this.
Aion stands right now as a reasonably polished MMO, with competent launch offerings in both PvE and PvP. It is NOT as easy to level in as WoW. People mistake this as "grindy" and dismiss the game without a 2nd thought. The game itself requires very little grinding, and in fact turns into mostly Instance runs from 25 up. The "Journey" is actually one of the better ones I've played so far, plenty of group content starting at 17. It's just that when you get to the end, there's only like 1 instance and fort raids.
And what has even more impressed me is the Aion 2.0 trailer, because it shows that NCSoft is listening to their fans and even implementing features that most people never even thought about.
For those of you who aren't going to read this, I'll sum it up.
LESS QQ, MORE PEWPEW.
You are correct that it WAS the players' fault the first time. Way back in Lineage 2 when the game was botted all to hell the market for botting and gold-selling would be the proper place for blame. However, all these years later, after having so many users leave Lin2 BECAUSE of the botting and gold-selling NCSoft has continued to do absolutely nothing to stop it and has now released another game that is being exploited the same way. This time the blame is squarely on NCSoft for not learning and doing something about it.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.