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Finally I found a game I really like, and then the bots moved in.
Miner-2049er
Member Posts: 435
I've been jumping from game to game of late, Vanguard, TR, AoC, RoM, TCoS, and finally I've found a game that I really like.
I like my class, I like the look and feel of the game, I enjoy the crafting, I love the aerial gathering, I enjoy the PvP. It's nothing super special or ground-breaking I know, but I enjoy it.
But now this Bot infestation is just killing it for me. I remember how I watched in interest the first bot I saw in the game, but then there was another and another, then they started groups of 2, and even 3. Now there are bots that have learnt to gather.
It was once annoying when other real players stole my kills but these kill-stealing bots steal everything.
I was making money gathering but my income is collapsing as the same players put stacks of 1000 on the Broker every night.
I can't begin to compete any more. What's worse is I know the Bots on the other side will soon be ganking me in the Abyss.
It's so depressing that a game I genuinely enjoy is being ruined by so many cheating players and with so little effort from NC soft.
I'm a level 36 Chanter and I was enjoying the game but it's starting to feel as if I'm the only one actually playing the game as is meant to be played. Clearly I'm not the only one, but where I was levelling tonight the bots literally out-numbered the real players; and when I was in Morrheim there were three stalls advertising Gold and one advertising Power Levelling. Yes you too can let your character become a bot, kill the economy, steal my kills, gather my nodes and take you to level 40 then sell the Kinah owned to another player who's looking for a short cut.
I've been really enjoying the game, but it just feels broken, and this evening I can no longer bear to play it 
Comments
Its to be expected with an NCsoft title. They always have horrible customer support with vitrually no GMs on staff. Nothing you can do either.
I personally hated the game, tried it since launch till a couple weeks ago. I really did try to like it, but thats another story. The bots and before anyone comes here and says theres next to none, are terrible. It is BS if anyone says it isn t a problem. Literally my whole guild that ent to Aion from various games mainly DAOC has left, and won t return.
Thankfully its gonna get better just be patient.
They even hired Jennings to go smash the bots - you can read the full article here if you want....
http://www.aionsource.com/forum/news-announcements/89946-mmorpg-article-real-money-real-problems-ncsofts-game-surveillance-unit.html
I quit L:2 for that very reason.I saw more bots than real players,again the same reason i quit SRO.
I spent two straight weeks of hard effort writing down those long gibberish names and continued to send them in to NCSOFT.After i kept getting emails that not once showed they cared at all,i gave up and vowed to never support them again,because it is 100% accurate to say they are unorganized or they really don't care.
It could be the GM's or the avenues that your reports take to get to someone who actually does care,but fact is i sent in probably 14 days at 6-8 names a day that is a lot and not once did any get banned.
There is a writer on this site who claims he got hired by NCSOFT, i would not beleive much of his biased comments,becuase i have witnessed it first hand and gave them the proof and they showed zero action,so believe them if you want,but i think any blind man can look around their games and use their own judgment.
A PERFECT example,i quit FFXI because i could not take it competing against the RMT fishing,that is where i needed to make gil.About a month or two later my friend tells me to come back ,he says they got rid of the bots.Well he was 99% correct,it went from seeing them lined up across water fronts and 10 fold in towns at waterways to literally none.SO YES it is 100% possible to limit them to at least a non noticeable status,you will NOT see that kind of effort from NCSOFT...i guarantee it.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I quit L:2 for that very reason.I saw more bots than real players,again the same reason i quit SRO.
I spent two straight weeks of hard effort writing down those long gibberish names and continued to send them in to NCSOFT.After i kept getting emails that not once showed they cared at all,i gave up and vowed to never support them again,because it is 100% accurate to say they are unorganized or they really don't care.
It could be the GM's or the avenues that your reports take to get to someone who actually does care,but fact is i sent in probably 14 days at 6-8 names a day that is a lot and not once did any get banned.
There is a writer on this site who claims he got hired by NCSOFT, i would not beleive much of his biased comments,becuase i have witnessed it first hand and gave them the proof and they showed zero action,so believe them if you want,but i think any blind man can look around their games and use their own judgment.
A PERFECT example,i quit FFXI because i could not take it competing against the RMT fishing,that is where i needed to make gil.About a month or two later my friend tells me to come back ,he says they got rid of the bots.Well he was 99% correct,it went from seeing them lined up across water fronts and 10 fold in towns at waterways to literally none.SO YES it is 100% possible to limit them to at least a non noticeable status,you will NOT see that kind of effort from NCSOFT...i guarantee it.
You are basing these "facts" on... what exactly?
The saddest thing is that I don't want to bash this game, I want to play it.
I've barely even been looking on MMORPG.com lately because I've been having so much fun in the game. But why do they just allow the game to get infested. It takes about 10 seconds to identify a bot even if it's got a sensible name. In just a couple of minutes I can tell you on Telemachus Europe we have Terut (Gladiator), Gysiss (Gladiator), Moaske (Assassin) - all in Besluslan. You don't need a special unit to find them it's obvious by the way they move, the way they keep sitting for just 3 seconds then get up again, the way they tag your mobs when they're 80% dead. It's like watching a robot in real life, it really is that obvious.
I've been playing this game for 2 months and it's got worse and worse, then I'm supposed to hope it will all be fixed by some guy.
I really want to believe this but it justs seems like a pipedream. Since I enjoy the game I'll be back to check soon, I'lll keep checking till my sub needs renewal, but if it still looks like it did tonight I just can't muster the interest to play anymore.
Bots are bad and they are getting rid of em but what i can't understand is how its ruining your game. They are very easy to outdps and steal mobs from. Also just put the spot you find em on the forum and the other faction swoops in and kills em off.
You can't see how they ruin my game, let me help you.
1) I play an MMO because I like to interact with people, you can't interact with bots.
2) As a casual player I need to find a niche to make money and i enjoy my own 'hobby' of gathering. With gathering mobs now invading they take my nodes and sell the mats cheap.
3) It's nice in an MMO to feel people have gone through the same levelling journey as you. Would you willingly accept a game where a subset of players were just freely allowed to skip the levelling
4) Also it's a PvP game so there is going to be some competition. You try your best to win some battles even if your play time is limited, but it feels increasingly meaningless if you realise you can't compete. Remember it's not just the bots, the bots are often powerlevellers and gold sellers in turn whilst they're levelling. Is it fun to play a game where for no reason you're at a disadvantage for playing fair?
5) I really don't JUST blame NC soft, i'm equally frustrated by all the lazy cheats and that also takes it's toll. On a day where football is on the front of the news because of cheating you should realise that the presence of cheats is not always something we can just ignore. Surrounded by an army of cheats just makes my wonder just who I'm playing with.
I'm already fed up and you have the audacity to question how it can ruin the game, well I'm sorry you don't see it. I guess I just have to hope the other faction will clean up. yeah that's going to work because the other faction is only made up of honest players just looking to help me out.
there were bots in every single mmo i have played so far and goldsellers and havkers and cheat programs and. I somehow manage to play them and enjoy them i must be very special person. what annoys me more than the above are the whiners
All MMOs have bots aion is is Just a bit easier... WoW has people spelling out websites on the floor of the trade district.... for days they will lay there... I think you can handle ignoring a bot
Lvl 75 Black Mage/White Mage ffxi
Lvl 80 Druid WoW
Lvl 34 Ranger Aion
I know how the OP feels. I want to like the game but botting and gold buying is ruining it for me. I see more and more people who are obvious gold buyers (equipped in full gold gear with +10 enchantments on them) while RMT sellers set up stores to promote their websites sitting around every major hub (yes they usually get banned but sometimes it can take a week which just makes people think their are no actually full time GM's on servers).
The economy on my server just reflects the amount of kinah these companies have introduced into the game. Buying gear off the broker is fast becoming unaffordable for casuals and with the harvesting bots its harder to find a source of income. I think the damage has been done now and im not sure it fixable tbh.
I could probably ignore it if the street where I live was full of litter (trash) but I'm pleased that some of my council money goes to clearing it.
We pay a monthly fee for these games. They've employed hundreds of people to make these games, they should be prepared to pay a few people (per server) to keep each server free from such trash.
As a casual player who actually enjoys farming (but hoping to make some money from it) it is without doubt the single biggest issue for me in the game. I've already spelt out clearly already why I find it hard to ignore bots. Perhaps you can ignore them but then again pehaps your play-style is different. For all I know you're one of the gold buyers who benefits from their trade.
As for the comments that they're in every game that people keep making. Well I've never seen a game with as many, not even close and my list of MMOs was up to 14 at last count.
Can I just reiterate that I'm enjoying the game, I really like it, I want to play it. But I chose an MMO for a reason, I want to play with real players and in some zones in the game there are literally (yes, literally - I know what it means) more bots levelling and gathering than actual players. I just wish I could take you to the Whispering Forest in Beluslan on Telemachus Europe so you could see exactly what I mean.
normal situation:
player A gets a rare drop and decides to sell it on broker for 100k
player B, C and D are interested in the item but none has 100k.
one week passes player B loses interest figuring he wont be able to buy it, C and D are saving money to be able to get it. A seeing none has purchased it, drops the price to 80k.
player C gets the item because he saw the price drop first or saved 80k first etc.
bot situation
player B wants the item, he rm trades, gets 3m. buys the item for 100k. He even buys the set. He owns noobs in abyss with his epic skillz
player E has a similar drop, puts on broker for 150k.
bot sees the increase in price for this particular item, starts farming the place where this item drops.
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oh and there is the farming side of this which is a lot more obvious, i was able to outdps any bot with my sorcerer, even if they were higher lvl but not so much with my templar.
I need more vespene gas.
Really? I'm surprised. At first, the lag time between report and final response was ugly -- I could go back to where I'd filed a report on 'Fjghjdh' sitting out in front of the Hall of Prosperity in Sanctum with an RMT website up on his store banner, and he'd still be there four or five hours later -- but all of the 97 reports (varying from one to four RMT 'stores' at a time) I've filed on the NCSoft support site have eventually gotten me an email with "We have investigated your report and removed them from the game" from a GM. And the response times have been getting much better; reports I filed this weekend had the offender gone in as little as five minutes. Now, I do screenshot the offenders with my mouse hovering over the time-of-day icon so it shows the current time and attach that to the report, so there's clear and unequivocal proof that the people I'm reporting were doing what I'm reporting them for, which could make a difference -- and having the screenshot there makes it easier to copy the name into the webform when I'm filing the report, too.
they honestly just didn't have the amount of GM's required at launch to battle the bots and gold spam. Now that pretty much handled the spammers and the bots are now starting to go away due to banning.
There is a bug in the way that the private store banners work that makes the RMT 'stores' visually annoying and harder to ignore (it makes other stores annoying sometimes, too). The goldsellers figured out how to get the special characters that Aion uses for team leaders to designate mobs (i.e., large digits, smiley faces, hearts, etc. floating above mobs' heads) and stick them into the banner for their private stores. Unfortunately, there is a bug in Aion's rendering engine, in that these symbols do not get clipped by geometry. For example, in the image below, you can see the banner of a goldseller private store (I've erased the website name) -- but above and to the left, you can see the symbols on the banner of another goldseller private store outside the structure I'm in, with the symbols visible through the wall (although the regular text on the store banner, and the banner itself, is clipped):
The bug appears to be a general rendering issue, because higher-quality items (greens, blues, golds) that get inserted as a link (a game feature that lets you put a color-coded <item name> link in chat that can be clicked on to display the stats of the item) on their store banners also display the colored links through walls. On the other hand, the special symbols not getting clipped by geometry also makes them easier to spot -- I found and reported two RMT stores that had set up on a lower balcony fronting the south side of Sky Canal in Sanctum after having the symbols in their store banners appear when I was in the Alchemy craft area making potions.
SAme her ei really tried had a 25 and a 28 cleric. I just felt it combat system dull and really no enjoyment from the massive amounts of rinse and repeat grinding.
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ..." - Thomas Paine
normal situation:
player A gets a rare drop and decides to sell it on broker for 100k
player B, C and D are interested in the item but none has 100k.
one week passes player B loses interest figuring he wont be able to buy it, C and D are saving money to be able to get it. A seeing none has purchased it, drops the price to 80k.
player C gets the item because he saw the price drop first or saved 80k first etc.
bot situation
player B wants the item, he rm trades, gets 3m. buys the item for 100k. He even buys the set. He owns noobs in abyss with his epic skillz
player E has a similar drop, puts on broker for 150k.
bot sees the increase in price for this particular item, starts farming the place where this item drops.
-------------
oh and there is the farming side of this which is a lot more obvious, i was able to outdps any bot with my sorcerer, even if they were higher lvl but not so much with my templar.
I completely agree with everything you said I'm just saying from the general perspective that people have they complain about them stealing mobs and such. Your the first to bring about the economic percussion they bring.
The only games I have played with lots of bots are the Korean games. My main game is LOTRO and bots are almost non-existant (as are the gold spammers) and are dealt with quickly. Two years ago I came from Maple Story to LOTRO thinking that gold buying was normal (as MS was my first MMO). So I bought some in game money from the company I did business with in MS and received it through the mail in LOTRO. The next day I got a nasty mail from a GM telling me that if I did that again I would be banned. Turbine takes gold selling seriously. NCSoft does not. That is the difference.
Turbine also has a fraction of the servers that aion. Same with population. It is a lot harder to respond to situations and hand out bans when there is a higher volume of players.
Thank you for telling us this story.
I'm really please to hear that Turbine have the right approach. Assuming I let my subscription to Aion die - due to lack of tangible action to solve this problem - I may well take a look at LOTRO.
I tried again last night to play this game but once again found myself levelling beside 6 bots and 2 real players.
I still really like the game but just cannot accept the community of cheats that have settled there.
Unlike Lotro, Aion is a competitive game, you won't see people cheating to cook better or people cheating to brush their teeth, you will find them in sports, and competitive enviroments.
The more pvp a game, the worse is the cheating. People will literally put piles of shit on their heads if they get +10hp with it.
Turbine also has a fraction of the servers that aion. Same with population. It is a lot harder to respond to situations and hand out bans when there is a higher volume of players.
The counter argument to that is that Aion should have more resources to fight the problem.
The PvE game vs PvP game argument isn't all that relevant and is frankly just an weak excuse for a company not doing its job properly. If anything, the main difference between the game types is that normal players get more riled up about cheating in a PvP game, while players in a PvE game will be slightly more tolerant, because botting doesn't affect their performance directly. It's an issue a PvP game should take more seriously because people care more about it.
How intergral the economy is to character progression is the real driver of demand, which is the main factor in the per capita prevalence of these bots/spammers. For example you don't see much gold spam in Warhammer (even when War's population was higher) because gold is of a very low value in the War meta game. Game designers planning games with a high reliance on the game's economy should be planning ahead on ways to counter bots because it's inevitable that they will arrive. Taking into accounts Aion's popularity, (and therefore access to resources) and focus on PvP (making the issue one that will resonate with the playerbase) this is something they should take more seriously than they appear to be currently taking it.
Edit: Just read the post saying that NCsoft had banned 16k accounts. Fair play.
MUNDO!!
Turbine also has a fraction of the servers that aion. Same with population. It is a lot harder to respond to situations and hand out bans when there is a higher volume of players.
Do you have proof that NCWest Aion has more subs than LotRO, link? As far as I know LotRO does not release sub numbers. So, the point that you tried to make is irrelevant.