Botting disscussion.

[Caspa]

Re: Botting disscussion.

Just like the gold farmers in WoW Blizzard is facing a double edged sword, on the one hand bots and websites that sell in game stuff for real world $$$ are ruining the economy and causing strain on the servers as well as annoying the players. However they also offer a service that some will happily pay for, clearly blizzard are letting it slide a little bit so that those who are willing to pay for these services will continue playing and not just quit because it takes actual effort to get those things otherwise. It is painfully obvious to all that it would be extremely easy for them to ban botters and spammers with ease yet they continue un-molested so it's quite clear that Blizzard either thinks that the pros outweigh the cons or that it would be too much of an investment in time/resources to fix the problem for a game that isn't bringing in any revenue.

One key thing that I think D3 will rock for is that there won't be any duping, Blizzard fixed that with WoW and they will surely use a similar system for D3.

 

[Gul Dukat]

Re: Botting disscussion.

One key thing that I think D3 will rock for is that there won't be any duping, Blizzard fixed that with WoW and they will surely use a similar system for D3.

From your mouth in to Gods ears!

I sincerely hope it will by so.

On the other note i i do not agree that goldselling sites bring any good to any game, more people will leave because of the constant spam and the fact that it ruins any games economy that the amount of folks that will stay because they can pay for there uber gear.

Also you could get people to do it for free for ya. Get some applicatione forms out ad select some 10 players per realm to by GM's and give them say a free subscription to say wow or a free game copy or what ewer.

 

[Caspa]

Re: Botting disscussion.

Exactly, the solutions are nearly infinite yet nothing serious is ever done about it. A simple button to report a spammer would be awesome, as soon as the spammer gets x number of reports they get banned. They would last 5 seconds...

 

[Black Lotus]

Re: Botting disscussion.

Every rune past Lo is dupped/botted. You use Bers as your currency (all of them are non-legit), why would you suddenly dislike botters?

 

[juju]

Re: Botting disscussion.

Every rune past Lo is dupped/botted. You use Bers as your currency (all of them are non-legit), why would you suddenly dislike botters?

You find hr's whitout bots... i have found around 15 hr's in this ladder... and i havent seen any dupes in 1.13 So botters really should play another game than D2 :whistling:

 

[JustAPlayer]

Re: Botting disscussion.

C'mon ... u live in this world right? Money makes this world spin so if a chance to make money out of D2 exists be sure that sooner or later someone smart and eager enough will take it. There is no way to really stop botting ... they can stop known programs but not all programs. Just google over the internet for how many requests to create bot or dupe methods are there ... and for real money. Be sure that for some of them the answer was received and it is not public.

You want to do something about it? Just hunt dia or baal bots. That's about all you can do.

 

[Black Lotus]

Re: Botting disscussion.

The three most wanted runes are Lo, Jah and Ber (also the most valuable).
While Lo's value is 'confirmed' by HF quest (in cube, 1 Lo=2 Ohm=4 Vex=8 Gul, and the bnet prices are virtually the same) which, in some way, makes Lo available by HF. As we can see, Ists ain't being cubed to Gul, as Gul=Ist+pul (Ist+um at most).
Say, if you run a classic char to switch it to exp and make a HF quest (to avoid baal q waiting in public games), which might take 10 mins for normal, 10 mins for nm and 5 mins for hell HF, it will take about 25 minutes per 1 rune, 25*11=275 per Gul and 2200 (36 hours) per Lo. You may, however, use 8 cd keys to rush 7 chars simultaneously: 10+10+5*7 to separate HF reward = 55 minutes per 7 runes, 86 per Gul and 12 hours per Lo (of course, by this point, you will addinionaly have 8 ists, mals, ums etc but i don't consider them because Ist's price is much higher than 1/2 gul, which renders cubing useless. If you cube all runes from HF, you'll get 2 Lo however). This is a natural, confirmed value of Lo, making it not quite a HR, but some very rare HF reward.
So the bnet's demand on Lo is satisfied by HF quest, and if there was another source of Lo (which took, say, less time per Vex-Ohm-Lo), like killing, chest hunting and such, its value would be lower.
What about Jah and Ber? How many Bers did you find this ladder? Jah and Ber is used in every second runeword (some even twice), how many do you use? Did you self find all of them? Jah's cubing price should be 64 guls (80 ists), but it's lower than 2*Ber, which gives me an idea that nobody cube it. There's another, more than 6 times effective way of getting Jah (considering the demand on Jah and Lo is the same, a bit of simplification), and in comparison with cubing Lo it's about 1 Jah in 16 hours for 8cd-key case and 46 hours for soloing. Is it possible to get Jah every 46 hours on average of some rune hunting? Just curious.

 

[Black Lotus]

Re: Botting disscussion.

Nodoby to counter-argument my feelings?

 

[snickersnack]

Re: Botting disscussion.

Exactly, the solutions are nearly infinite yet nothing serious is ever done about it. A simple button to report a spammer would be awesome, as soon as the spammer gets x number of reports they get banned. They would last 5 seconds...

Bonus: if someone pisses you off, all you need to do is find x-1 other friends to report him too, and he's banned.......

Within a week, there'd only be x players left. x players in a spam/ban stalemate!

 

[SeCKSEgai]

Re: Botting disscussion.

I was going to avoid posting here, but ...



It doesn't really matter what the botting does to the botter himself, that's not really the point. What does matter is how it affects other players around you.

Botting:
causes unnecessary server strain
an unfair advantage in pvp
an unfair advantage in competitive pvm (ladder)
effects the trading market

If everyone was running bots then surely the servers would be far more laggy, thus offer a rather bad experience for any human being still playing on them. Blizzard is offering their bnet services for free in the intent to serve their humans fans, not a bunch of scripts.

Bnet is in my view a place where everyone is supposed to have somewhat equal conditions while playing, competing and otherwise interacting. Botting means that you've got both an item and a leveling advantage compared to the players who actually follow the TOU.
You're supposed to earn your rewards yourself, not send your "robot" to work and take all the money he earns. Your coworkers will not look favorably upon you when you take over that ill deserved boss position, not after the fact that it is the "robot" who has done the work needed for the promotion. It is especially true in a company which has a clear policy against using such "robotic stand-ins".

The effects on trading is a lesser concern for me as I today trade very little. But I'm sure that bob who just found his first griffons would be slightly more happy about it if not all of his friends already had three of them ... each.

The above is pretty much why I made the switch to SP. The final nail in the coffin of my bnet life was the greed of a "friend" that botted constantly, charged me for EVERY rush (as in every forge), and yet I was the one he could trust to transfer all his botted goods...

Considering what I've seen people charge for items (I can't believe someone is willing to pay over $100 dollars for one diablo 2 item, but apparently people are). Sure, I'm aware they're bugged/duped or whatever and can't be found/crafted, but still... the game never even cost that much.

I think D2 and WoW have given Blizzard a lot of experience in dealing with the offshore 3rd parties selling virtual items and the effects they have on their players. I don't see D2 seeing any huge improvements in stopping the rampant spam and botting, but D3 (as said elsewhere in the thread) is practically guaranteed to implement a better system.

 

[sighoth]

Re: Botting disscussion.

glad i made this topic, its nice to hear diffrent opinions on it, To the guy that said all bers are duped, well thats just silly. Hr's are uncommon but not so uncommon they never drop, maybe for some people but ive found my share this ladder, as im sure many others have. I have never seen duping done, alltho i know it happens. Back onto the botting, i Think blizz will do alot to combat this in D3, they seem to learn from there mistakes. The problem being, If blizzard make a mmo, theres going to be someone somewhere who will code a bot for it, its inevitable, I will admit to botting wow, and i did that for pure profit before glider shut down i never paid my subscription fee out of my own pocket, Never. Id bot for enuff gold to sell to pay my subs then a little more for my own use.

This may go agasint the game i understand that, but gold in wow is nothing like the rune currency we use in diablo, For example, you cant buy anywhere near the best gear with gold, You actually have to raid for it. That in my eyes is how D3 should work, if blizz makes it so people cant solo the best mobs in the game then the items botted wouldnt be so valuble. Thats my way of thinking. As for D2 botting, im still agasint it. Theres really no reason to do it when you think about diablos end game its just gear, Once you have the gear theres nothing to do but admire your wealth from ure stash, So i wont bot.

 

[Shanksie1337]

Re: Botting disscussion.

raids in Diablo would suck, you'd be pretty much turning D3 into WoW or WoWLite.

I personally play d2 because i don't have time to raid, and like the fact that i can get the best items without a "team". I also really like the fact that BoP / BoE doesn't happen in D2 aswell. Sure the items are relatively harder to get - odds on Ber + Jah dropping are much lower than running a 10/25 raid boss who has a much smaller loot table for item xx. But this is balanced by the fact i can use the enigma on whichever chars i want, instead of having to raid on every char i want to gear up.

Getting OT here, hopefully D3 will stop bots but whether they are successfull or not, i guess only time will tell.

 

[SeCKSEgai]

Re: Botting disscussion.

@sighoth - 1.13 is a poor example of the "rune-duped" experience of previous patches. The drop rate was insanely low. To give you an idea, I found one vex, and one ist season 5, and yet I had plenty of runewords and runes from trading. Runewords were more accessible then because the market was flooded with duplicates.

@Shanksie - I totally agree, my biggest frustration with Wow was needing a team to get your coveted items. 5 man raids I didn't mind so much, but when you need 20+ for a single raid, its easily a time-consuming a frustrating experience. Having to wait and get everyone assembled is bad enough, but then all it takes is one poorly skilled player (Leeroy Jenkins ring a bell) to ruin it for everyone.

Not only that, but even after a successful raid, only a select few will reap the rewards unless you're part of a dedicated clan - but even then, you may never get the items you need.

I really didn't like the linked on pickup of items system in WoW, but binding itself wasn't bad when you could choose which character to bind an item to.

 

[Joeyzon]

Re: Botting disscussion.

Every rune past Lo is dupped/botted. You use Bers as your currency (all of them are non-legit), why would you suddenly dislike botters?

So then...the Lo rune I found in my Single Player NonLadder game last night is a DUPE???? Darn...thought I had some good luck finding that...but since it's a dupe....

 

[Shanksie1337]

Re: Botting disscussion.

yeah joey, BL's rant is a little extreme - especially as s/he found a hr pretty much straight after posting. Sometimes theory just can't explain reality (ish).

 

[Black Lotus]

Re: Botting disscussion.

I'm not so familiar with English, but in Russia, 'every rune past Lo' would mean 'every rune after Lo, excluding Lo, not taking Lo into consideration'. This might have different meaning in proper English, and I apologize for that ignorance. Although I guess you're playing dumb with me, I'll ensure you that no item in the game can be self-found and duped at the same time. It is either was dropped from monster or chest or cubed, or was copied from the one which was dropped from monster or chest, and never both at once. If you found it, it is not a dupe. Gratz.

However, if you read my post entirely, you should have realized that phrase was about Sur+ HRs, Jah and Ber especially, since I pointed at understandable origin and price of Vex-Lo, and incomprehensible price of Jah, which is of the same value as Lo (12 vs 10 ists), probably of the same demand (used in every third runeword, like Lo), but cannot be cubed up. We find Lo sometimes, but its market price says that dropped Lo 'costs' more than a cubed one (or at least the same).

Virtually every player owns enigma, some even two for different str reqs and defs, and there are many other yammie runewords like Last Wish, and I have just only one simple question: are all of them self-found? If not, they must have bought them from other sources. The some kind of "Oh I don't need all that Jahs I found to meet my demand on enigma, faith, dream and such!" source. So I was curious to know if there are many living people who did self find more Bers(+Surs) or Jahs than they actually utilized, to have an opportunity to sell it to those who didn't. I, personally, found 1 Ber this ladder but yet have about 20 traded ones in runewords/on mules, which means there's another man who found and sold 20 Bers right after he finished the build setup. This is unbelievable. Much more unbelievable than a pack of bots running say LK or travi 24/7 to bring some HRs to the market (probably, some sites' market, you know, those sites).

The fact that HRs drop sometimes, as sighoth states, or that Joeyzon has just found a Lo in single player, does nothing to prove that botting has no influence on bnet rune prices. I'd happy to know that those will be the same with no bots running around, but I'm suspicious about that.

 

[Joeyzon]

Re: Botting disscussion.

Yeah...I was just being silly to be honest...I know the Lo I found wasn't a dupe...and I want you to know Black Lotus, that I facepalmed myself as soon as I hit the "post quick reply" button and realized your statement actually does EXCLUDE Lo from your dupe statement. It's all good.

And to keep this on topic, I do single player self found, and I do ALOT of repetitive MF runs to various different spots. A friend of mine suggested to me that he could set me up with a bot to do the runs for me. All I had to say to him was, "What fun would that be?" To summarize it for everybody...a bot that finds Tyreal's for you just wouldn't be the same as finding one yourself. And I doubt very seriously that the bot will do the "touchdown end zone dance" that you will do when you find it for yourself.

 

[Shanksie1337]

Re: Botting disscussion.

BL to put it simply

pretty much no runes are duped, the vast majority are botted - ie a legit find, from a bot playing whilst the "owner" is at work / in bed / at the pub etc etc. Botting has every influence on rune prices - and everything else - be it griffons / CoA / DWeb etc etc etc

However there is simply no way to know whether the HR was botted or found "legit" but to most players the fact it wont "poof" is good enough"

Plus even botters need some items that are worth nothing relatively - shako / hoz / tals items etc etc etc, and the only way to pay for these is to split the hr's into Ists.


Botters pretty much effect everything major in the D2 economy

 

[Black Lotus]

Re: Botting disscussion.

pretty much no runes are duped, the vast majority are botted

Well, I didn't accentuate on the dupe method, I cam believe in 1.13 there's no dupe at all. Just mentioned rune prices were messed up with their rarity (not much like in 1.12, but still noticebly), as many use Bers as a currency along with claiming "we're fine without botters". Possibly, I made my posts weird with the word of 'dupe', but I just wanted to show that without botters we could never buy our first enigma so easily, and especially pay 20bers for some crafted gloves.

 

[SeCKSEgai]

Re: Botting disscussion.

Items are still duped - just not with the same frequency as before - look at how often East and Europe still spawn Dclone.

I actually had a helluva time on bnet this ladder getting an engima and ended up switching to SP before I got my first HR drop. The economy would have been a lot better without all the botters - values wouldn't be so skewed.

Unless you spend real world money on in game items, botters don't make things easier for you in game, they make it harder as they end up adjusting supply and thus affecting demand - season 5 it was a lot easier to get your first enigma because the market was flooded. This season item values are much more all over the place, making trading more difficult. I worked my *** off in game and would have had more luck finding the hrs than trading uniques and socketables. It's a tad painful when uniques once valued at an HR or more suddenly drop to a fraction of the price yet HRs go up, further adding to the disparity.

When the market was flooded with Dupes, prices were stable as it took something very rare to be expensive. With botters, your own self-found items and runes are just a fraction of what they bring in, thus making your stuff worth less.

When you compete with bots, you'll never be as efficient. It ultimately depreciates your finds as they would otherwise be worth a lot more.

While I hated the poofing from season 5, at least back then getting your standard equipment could be done without any special finds. It was the special high end stuff that would cost you (high end charms, awesome crafts, a few uniques). With the newest season.

With the new season, with so many bots running rampant, just getting the "basics" (runewords like enigma end up being basic as they're required for a number of builds) was a struggle. Without a lot of help or a lucky find, you were in for a long grind.