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Do Mods/GM's care about the situation of bots?

Comments

  • AlmostNotsuperAlmostNotsuper
    Mabinogi Rep: 3,240
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    Opalthira wrote: »
    You can never get rid of bots.
    They are a plague that cannot be stopped.
    Even if no one buys things they will still exist.
    I mean have SEEN their prices? 1mil=$5.
    You could just join a conflict spam party afk at the altar and get that much for doing nothing in an hour.
    The gold bots are next to worthless in this game and there's no reason to worry about them.
    I'd be more worried about the players using scripts and 3 alts to get near 4mil an hour and then leave their game on all day.
    4x24= 96 mil just from leaving your account online for a day.
    These people could ruin the marketplace for other players by buying up all the gacha items for horrendous prices which could end up as the new norm.
    Making it so that people who dont get alot of time to play have to grind hours if not days just to get an item.
    Heres to hoping this doesn't happen.

    I agree with you entirely. As I mentioned before, people in this thread are talking about different groups, but the ones that concern me (and the OP) the most are the sm spammers in taill. I don't know if they're botting or not, and I don't care (although I do care that this game is so broken that it's probably possible for a bot to spam something like conflict). It's broken either way.
    Policroma wrote: »
    I was referring to the idea of getting rid of bots on the supply side instead of the spammers: This hurts legit players more than the bots, who will just create more bots and script themselves through pretty much any change (as they have been doing for years). Getting rid of the supply side will force the players to work that much harder just to keep up. It will make the gold bot issue WORSE as people will get frustrated and turn to the bots for gold. You basically make customers for them. Add new gold sinks? OKay. Clean up exploits and balance drops? Sure. But don't hurt legit players.

    (Just a quick note, I prefer to solo, so I don't really run conflict that often. My fave is DFC2. I don't personally lose out if the rewards are nerfed.)

    The reason I keep proposing that we focus on the supply side, is that it's the easiest way to stop both bots and people who drag alts along. What else can be done?
    Nexon seems unable or unwilling to stop people from botting.
    Nexon seems unable or unwilling to stop people from dragging alts along.
    The best way to stop these groups is to make sure they can't make so much gold alone so easily. Honestly, I'm surprised more people aren't upset that combat in this game has been dumbed down to the point that even a bot could solo what used to be one of the most difficult missions available.

    Besides, if we could fix the problem of gold flowing in uncontrollably from only a few sources, I think things would even out over time. As long as trade and equipment repairs continue, gold sinks will keep working. In fact, when it comes to managing inflation, the one thing that might be as important as controlling gold generation, is keeping trade going. This is a big reason why life skills could really use a fix. If people can make gold without generating gold, and if people have to pay a proper cost (through repairs mostly) to generate gold, then players will likely generate less gold overall, not to mention the increased efficacy of the bank and personal shop fees as gold sinks if gold is moving around more. It's not like we don't currently have some of this, but it could be a lot better. Right now, most of what people buy and sell comes from NX purchases which ignore the gold generation fee entirely, and encourage more gold generation. I'm not saying that NX items shouldn't be tradeable, but everything worth having (except for one or two endgame items that you'll probably never see for sale anyway) should not come solely from gachas and the like.
  • SherriSherri
    Mabinogi Rep: 18,615
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    Mari's economy is bad already so I don't know what to say.


    Personally, it would be fun to have an alt with me who can heal/buff/2x rewards/etc.
    I wouldn't use it to spam SM 24/7 though, that is cheap as.. hamburgers.
    And why go through all that in the first place?
    Plus I don't have multiple computers and I doubt mine can handle more than one Mabi.
    And it's just plain dumb in general.
  • FaybalFaybal
    Mabinogi Rep: 1,775
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    Policroma wrote: »
    And as far as bots go, IMO there is no difference between the spambots and gold bots. They are cogs in the same machine. I say if they have no customers, they have no reason to bot, therefore you need to get rid of the spam, or at least make it horrendously difficult to spam. And unfortunately, the ONLY way to do this is to have a live human on it.

    I actually think this is a good idea. Getting rid of the need to purchase gold means that bots wouldn't need to exist to advertise their gold-selling services.
    Destroying spams, such as adding spam limits (Like you could only spam 3-5 times before a 10-30 min. timer is invoked) could help, but it could also get backlash from players who are genuinely trying to get gold for themselves. I think dungeon gold drops could be increased, since it's a little more difficult and impractical to bot lengthy dungeons (such as Peaca int. for example); with the new 4-person max update and dungeon monster nerfs, botting would become harder to accomplish in dungeons, and most dungeons of that level of difficulty can't be easily soloed. That leads to the passes situation though. Instead of destroying their source, just limit their access to the source and provide another source of gold and drops for actual players.

  • FaybalFaybal
    Mabinogi Rep: 1,775
    Posts: 97
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    [/quote]

    Black Desert did this.
    Never found it actually worked though.
    Lets say you choose to block www.

    The bots can just type it as ww.w or any other form of entry to work around your phrase block its just a never ending cycle.[/quote]

    Or just have it where it filters out all punctuation to where ww.w is equal to www (and so on and so fourth. Ex. Filter out 'cheap' or 'gold' or 'com')
  • OpalthiraOpalthira
    Mabinogi Rep: 7,595
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    edited May 10, 2017
    Faybal wrote: »


    Black Desert did this.
    Never found it actually worked though.
    Lets say you choose to block www.

    The bots can just type it as ww.w or any other form of entry to work around your phrase block its just a never ending cycle.

    Or just have it where it filters out all punctuation to where ww.w is equal to www (and so on and so fourth. Ex. Filter out 'cheap' or 'gold' or 'com')

    That would imply that you could filter out a million combinations of w's followed by a random letter or number mixed into the w's.
    Nexon already tried to add a filter in chat the prevents you from typing message that are similar.
    That filter is unable to stop the bots from spamming.
    There is no cure for bots. Even if you have game that has NO TRADING in it they will still exist in your game.
    The last time I was on Black Desert there were still bots even though there is no possible way to gold sell in that game.
    Because the marketplace is set by the devs/game itself so you can't set an trash tier item for any price.

    tldr; Its not easy to filter out a million inputs.
  • AceDotAceDot
    Mabinogi Rep: 510
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    edited May 10, 2017
    AwwPickles wrote: »
    I'm pretty sure the gold spammer bots are being dealt with but knowing how they work once an account gets banned they'll just make another to replace the one that was removed.

    I haven't seen any SM bots AFAIK but I've been pretty much inactive, logging in once on a red moon.

    There are easy ways around the Conflict HM spamming bots; almost all of the ones who do the work are Human's who final hit and with final hit reforges you can re-use the skill in 2minutes. Not to forget the alts, the 3 alts need to be at least EXPERT talent, lets not forget that. So even if you ban the alts out or even better the main one, you can stop the conflict gold bots from operating.

    Harukari wrote: »
    As someone who only gets their gold from shadow missions because they don't have money for NX for gacha/reforges to sell.
    I would be highly disappointed if they nerf'd shadow mission gold rewards.

    I understand the bots have gotten out of hand, but it shouldn't be ruined for others. :/

    Faybal wrote: »

    Black Desert did this.
    Never found it actually worked though.
    Lets say you choose to block www.

    The bots can just type it as ww.w or any other form of entry to work around your phrase block its just a never ending cycle.[/quote]

    Or just have it where it filters out all punctuation to where ww.w is equal to www (and so on and so fourth. Ex. Filter out 'cheap' or 'gold' or 'com')[/quote]

    Also, I don't think that spamming bots are too much of a problem, sure they congest the main "all" chat in crowded areas but those are hard to snuff out but say for the conflict spammers, as i mentioned above in response to Awwpickles, banning their main character will prove to be almost immediately effective.

    Also, I really appreciate that everyone is sharing what they think about this situation, I really hope that something can be done about these gold bots, and yes I understand that stopping the amount of gold gained is a good way to go on with things, but the best method i believe is to just ban those conflict Bots.


    EDIT: I have no idea how to edit that to fix it, lol. Sorry guys
  • AwwPicklesAwwPickles
    Mabinogi Rep: 1,515
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    edited May 10, 2017
    Twelie wrote: »
    AceDot wrote: »
    And these bots won't go down because Nexon won't IP ban people

    Wait, what? Are you serious??

    It's not they won't IP ban people it's they can't IP ban people.

    In this day and age all ISP assign dynamic Ips atleast in most of America. You literally have to pay extra for a static IP.

    Now with dynamic IP is really easy to change.

    A simple unplug of your modem/router for a good 5 mins would effectively allow your isp to assign you a new IP address, another way is to forcefully change the last integer on your MAC address for your router and reboot the modem, this will forcefully assign you a new IP.

    Now imagine nexon starts IP banning.

    Moment when suspect is IP banned what's the chances they just switch their IP?

    Now that old IP is potentially blocked and recycled given to another unsuspecting ISP customer.
    Now that person who did absolutely nothing wrong is now banned from nexon games without even knowing it.

    What's even worse is if they ban all accounts associating with the Old IP, now you just banned some poor souls nexon account just because they had the misfortune of obtaining a banned IP from their isp.

    Do you see where I'm going with this?

    You would do more harm than good with IP banning approach.

    IP banning is like Pickles saying "Oh all bots are from Comcast ISP, lets just ban all accounts who use Comcast as ISP. But wait Comcast gets their IPs from level 3 Communication, let's ban all level 3's IP addresses " Boom now 1/6th of entire world's IP addresses is banned from nexon.
    PolicromaTwelieAlmostNotsuper
  • TheDumbOneTheDumbOne
    Mabinogi Rep: 3,790
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    still when all said and done its not that i dont want all bots gone, its i want to see they can handle getting rid of what was already there.
    but instead of choosing to getting rid of any bots,
    we get rid of a slight free content benefit.
    gold is the free service for players.

    although with getting rid of gold all markets would crash (in a good way) go back to working prices, like the old mabi days.

    - Remember when they gave us the free ability to get rid of bots on our own with the "get rid of bots event" and everyone didnt want it, cus all u had to do is group kick anyone
  • TwelieTwelie
    Mabinogi Rep: 3,840
    Posts: 272
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    edited May 10, 2017
    Posts have been merged, Please do not spam posts.

    Opalthira wrote: »
    Twelie wrote: »
    Policroma wrote: »
    What they need to do is implement a system to quietly censor any phrase with certain keywords in it.

    Could this potentially be abused for the wrong purposes?
    In another game I played there was a censor where you could personally choose what words cause a message to not appear, and it was case sensitive. This way each player could block bots if they want to as they come up and try to use different combinations of words. This puts the power into the player's hands to decide what they want to filter out. It also makes it harder for gms to abuse, if implemented correctly.

    ^ I think a version of this might be helpful if they don't want to police those spamming bots in dunby/belvast. Wouldn't work for the actual gold bot spammers, but it's a start.

    Black Desert did this.
    Never found it actually worked though.
    Lets say you choose to block www.

    The bots can just type it as ww.w or any other form of entry to work around your phrase block its just a never ending cycle.

    Yeah, that's what I was referencing, but I wasn't sure if it was against forum rules to do so, as it'd be "advertising competitors".
    I found it worked great, because you just have to go through a couple censors.
    Aka:
    www
    w w w
    w.w.w

    etc.
    Worked great for me for a long time before I quit. And I was regularly speaking in world chat all the time with no bot spam, same as with in major cities.

    I know, I know. It's really only a temporary solution. Bots can come up with many numbers of inputs, and I realize the heavy flaws.
    Honestly, I'm surprised more people aren't upset that combat in this game has been dumbed down to the point that even a bot could solo what used to be one of the most difficult missions available..
    It's not that I'm not upset, I just don't know how they'd balance it while making it more fun. Hp sponges and higher defense aren't fun. Even if they were what stops the bots from still doing it with good gear? Mechanics are the problem, and I don't know the fix. Therefore, complaining is useless as I really don't add anything to the discussion.
    Faybal wrote: »
    Destroying spams, such as adding spam limits (Like you could only spam 3-5 times before a 10-30 min. timer is invoked) could help, but it could also get backlash from players who are genuinely trying to get gold for themselves.

    Spam for the same text or similar text? Cause I spam chat saying stupid things to friends really fast but I don't really copy messages. And even if this was the case, the bots could still circumvent it by just saying different things, such as:
    "buy our mabinogi gold from (site here)!"
    "I love mabi money from (site here)!"

    etc. And if you tried to block that out, you would halt normal conversations that happen to have similar words repeated.

    Man. I just don't know what to do, honestly. Mabi NA doesn't seem keen on hiring more staff to solve this problem. Heck, there are a bunch of problems that haven't been solved in actual years.
  • lostheavenlostheaven
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    I think the bot problem has gotten way out of hand as well. It doesn't seem to look like Nexon cares at all either.
    Nerfing the gold given from SM's would seem like the logical thing to do, but it hurts other players too much. Why should everyone be penalized for the actions of a few? Limiting a person's ability to make gold in the game will make people not want to play the game. We're thrown all of these shadow crystals & encouraged to use them as well.
    Maybe they can put a time limit on how many times you can spam a mission in a certain timeframe instead. I mean you can only do 3 lord missions a day? Then you can still make gold but the bots will have to find another way to make their gold. The bots will always find another way though. There's no real way to deal with the bots & that's the ultimate problem.
    GretaTheDumbOne
  • TheDumbOneTheDumbOne
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    the other issue is the problem i see
    is gold is a currency thats traded,- and if gold in a sm goes down, prices will go down,- but the value will just change to match the prices...

    the issue people r having is how sm bots are ruining the market by bringing in to much gold.
    wont the flow of gold not change even if u lower it, becuase we will just revalue how much gold is worth>?

    the only issues i see changing is the repair rate to dura lost in sms.....
    cuase a see people carrying stuff that takes 100+ per point to repair.
    which is more "free content" un-used...-or difficult to enjoy using.
    Twelie
  • TabariTabari
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    Here's an idea that would stop all bots in the game, but I don't want to happen and will get so much flack... shut down the game.
  • TwelieTwelie
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    Tabari wrote: »
    Here's an idea that would stop all bots in the game, but I don't want to happen and will get so much flack... shut down the game.
    Oh. I mean I guess you can't get inconvenienced when you're dead.

    You right.
  • GretaGreta
    Mabinogi Rep: 51,805
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    edited May 11, 2017
    Tabari wrote: »
    Here's an idea that would stop all bots in the game, but I don't want to happen and will get so much flack... shut down the game.

    Lol, ouch. Nothing else but that? D:
  • TwelieTwelie
    Mabinogi Rep: 3,840
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    Greta wrote: »
    Tabari wrote: »
    Here's an idea that would stop all bots in the game, but I don't want to happen and will get so much flack... shut down the game.

    Lol, ouch. Nothing else but that? D:

    It's the only option. Clearly.


    :^)
  • AlmostNotsuperAlmostNotsuper
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    TheDumbOne wrote: »
    the other issue is the problem i see
    is gold is a currency thats traded,- and if gold in a sm goes down, prices will go down,- but the value will just change to match the prices...

    the issue people r having is how sm bots are ruining the market by bringing in to much gold.
    wont the flow of gold not change even if u lower it, becuase we will just revalue how much gold is worth>?

    the only issues i see changing is the repair rate to dura lost in sms.....
    cuase a see people carrying stuff that takes 100+ per point to repair.
    which is more "free content" un-used...-or difficult to enjoy using.

    As your mentioned, there are two problems here. Inflation, as the market is flooded with gold, and a concentration of gold in the hands of people who get it far faster than others through unscrupulous methods. Both can be fixed by making it more difficult to generate gold, and by making sure people have to use gold sinks.

    Although, no effective change can be made to accomplish this without affecting the game for everyone, it doesn't have to be done in a way that ruins the game for everyone. The trick is to make sure it affects botters/alt draggers more than legitimate players. I think the best ways to do this are to make missions/dungeons more difficult (so bots can't handle it, and alt-draggers can't solo), and to shift gold rewards from mission completion to monster drops (so alt draggers don't get any significant amount of extra gold anyway, and legitimate solo players still get something extra for soloing).

    I'm sure 'make missions more difficult' sounds like it could be bad, but when I say this, I mostly just mean that monsters should act faster so they have a chance to hit use before they get nuked. And of course, skills that allow us to nuke monsters no matter how quickly they react, with minimal risk, should be nerfed.

    Honestly, I don't know anything about bots. I have difficulty imagining bots are sophisticated enough to spam dungeons, if only because they'd have difficulty navigating the rooms. However, it seems perfectly realistic to me that a bot could destroy a short, linear mission like Conflict with FH. Just use FH->normal attack until FH ends or there are no more enemies to target->exit->get mission again->repeat, unless it gets stuck on a stonehenge or dies by the unluckiest of chances. So I support nerfing the conflict reward (even though that would mess with legitimate players), but it would be better to fix the thing which makes this possible (FH), so it wouldn't be an issue.
  • AceDotAceDot
    Mabinogi Rep: 510
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    TheDumbOne wrote: »
    the other issue is the problem i see
    is gold is a currency thats traded,- and if gold in a sm goes down, prices will go down,- but the value will just change to match the prices...

    the issue people r having is how sm bots are ruining the market by bringing in to much gold.
    wont the flow of gold not change even if u lower it, becuase we will just revalue how much gold is worth>?

    the only issues i see changing is the repair rate to dura lost in sms.....
    cuase a see people carrying stuff that takes 100+ per point to repair.
    which is more "free content" un-used...-or difficult to enjoy using.

    As your mentioned, there are two problems here. Inflation, as the market is flooded with gold, and a concentration of gold in the hands of people who get it far faster than others through unscrupulous methods. Both can be fixed by making it more difficult to generate gold, and by making sure people have to use gold sinks.

    Although, no effective change can be made to accomplish this without affecting the game for everyone, it doesn't have to be done in a way that ruins the game for everyone. The trick is to make sure it affects botters/alt draggers more than legitimate players. I think the best ways to do this are to make missions/dungeons more difficult (so bots can't handle it, and alt-draggers can't solo), and to shift gold rewards from mission completion to monster drops (so alt draggers don't get any significant amount of extra gold anyway, and legitimate solo players still get something extra for soloing).

    I'm sure 'make missions more difficult' sounds like it could be bad, but when I say this, I mostly just mean that monsters should act faster so they have a chance to hit use before they get nuked. And of course, skills that allow us to nuke monsters no matter how quickly they react, with minimal risk, should be nerfed.

    Honestly, I don't know anything about bots. I have difficulty imagining bots are sophisticated enough to spam dungeons, if only because they'd have difficulty navigating the rooms. However, it seems perfectly realistic to me that a bot could destroy a short, linear mission like Conflict with FH. Just use FH->normal attack until FH ends or there are no more enemies to target->exit->get mission again->repeat, unless it gets stuck on a stonehenge or dies by the unluckiest of chances. So I support nerfing the conflict reward (even though that would mess with legitimate players), but it would be better to fix the thing which makes this possible (FH), so it wouldn't be an issue.

    I understand that nerfing of mission gold rewards is something thats already been implemented, but what I don't understand is why people won't every mention banning these players. And yeah, something more complex as dungeons probably can't be done since it's randomly generated, whereas, as you mentioned, conflict is straight forward.
    I say this again, Ban the alts/main who is final hitting and then that solves a majority of our problems.
    Getting an account to have fh cd 20 Reforge as well as having enough damage to finish the mission is not something that comes cheap, therefore, if the main account which does most of the work gets banned problems are solved.
    Unless I missed a comment you and several others have made before, I don't see why banning players will be the "Go to" option.
    It doesn't hurt legit players, and it hurts bots.
  • BlissfulkillBlissfulkill
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    Tabari wrote: »
    Here's an idea that would stop all bots in the game, but I don't want to happen and will get so much flack... shut down the game.

    giphy.gif

    tumblr_m6lbwkkfTZ1rss05ao1_500.gif
    Yokkaichi
  • AlmostNotsuperAlmostNotsuper
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    AceDot wrote: »
    I understand that nerfing of mission gold rewards is something thats already been implemented, but what I don't understand is why people won't every mention banning these players. And yeah, something more complex as dungeons probably can't be done since it's randomly generated, whereas, as you mentioned, conflict is straight forward.
    I say this again, Ban the alts/main who is final hitting and then that solves a majority of our problems.
    Getting an account to have fh cd 20 Reforge as well as having enough damage to finish the mission is not something that comes cheap, therefore, if the main account which does most of the work gets banned problems are solved.
    Unless I missed a comment you and several others have made before, I don't see why banning players will be the "Go to" option.
    It doesn't hurt legit players, and it hurts bots.

    I think most people find it distasteful. One reason I've been avoiding mentioning it, is that talk of banning players who appear to be dragging alts tends to devolve into warnings of a witch hunt, since people don't think Nexon has the ability to tell for certain whether these groups of spammers are all the same person or not. Another reason is that I'd just like to see the game improved so this isn't a problem anymore. It's a much more effective, lasting solution.

    Personally, I think it'd be too much to perma-ban these guys. While I'm sure Nexon could monitor the accounts to confirm that they're transferring gold or items to each other regularly, there's really no way to be 100% certain that it's a single person abusing multiple accounts (though it is apparent beyond a reasonable doubt). And even if they are doing this (and they probably are), as you mentioned, FH sets like theirs are not easily obtained. These are actual players, even if they are trying to cheese the game in the sleaziest way possible. I think a temporary ban for 2-5 weeks would be appropriate. Preferably right when a new update is released, for maximum regret. This seems perfectly reasonable, given that people were temp banned for abusing some crappy event for gems a couple years back.

    And of course, I'd still want FH nerfed. Better to fix the exploit than to leave it and keep having to punish people for abusing it.
  • BuffalosBuffalos
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    edited May 11, 2017
    Personally, I think it'd be too much to perma-ban these guys. While I'm sure Nexon could monitor the accounts to confirm that they're transferring gold or items to each other regularly, there's really no way to be 100% certain that it's a single person abusing multiple accounts (though it is apparent beyond a reasonable doubt).

    It should be painfully obvious to everyone involved if a group is botting and exactly who is getting the gold generated. The gold is ultimately going to be steamlined to one player's bank account, where it will sit and wait to be spent in the market normally. Those are the accounts that need to be banned in the long run.
    If they find a player named "asiugakjb" has sent "legitnamehere" 100m over the course of a few trade chains of similar alt names within the time span of a week, that is fairly clear evidence of something shady happening with asiugakjb and legitnamehere.
    MirralChanTwelie