GGG Please Figure out how to stop Boosting (screenshots included)

There's a simple solution to this problem, although it might be difficult for the programmers to implement. Simply have monster hp and rewards scale dynamically based on the number of nearby players. Problem solved, right?

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MrDDT wrote:

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Cacia wrote:

Botting is also bannable. Unlike boosting.

Will be interesting to see this implemented. A game which is free to play and people are going to be banned for botting.

Somehow i dont think it would work. Unless they are planning on banning ip addresses and lets face it there is ways around that.

Email accounts are easy to make up and ip addresses can be changed and lets face it a lot of botters tend to use internet cafes and in certain countries these are in abundance as it is the easiest way to play games.

Even with /players n, we'll still eventually have bots. The questions we need to be asking are:

How sophisticated do bots need to become before they're even useful? Already the curve here will be much steeper than it was in D3.

Does a party of 6 bots get more loot per time spent than a party of real people?

You can never chase them off. No game in history has succeeded in banning them; that's a losing battle. All you can do is tune mechanics to favor real people as much as possible.

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Stretch163 wrote:

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MrDDT wrote:

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Cacia wrote:

Botting is also bannable. Unlike boosting.

Will be interesting to see this implemented. A game which is free to play and people are going to be banned for botting.

Somehow i dont think it would work. Unless they are planning on banning ip addresses and lets face it there is ways around that.

Email accounts are easy to make up and ip addresses can be changed and lets face it a lot of botters tend to use internet cafes and in certain countries these are in abundance as it is the easiest way to play games.

You cant solve botting. Its impossible.

If you are forcing them to run bots to pretty much do everything a player would do. Then thats the limit you can bother with it.

If someone writes a bot that can run around killing mobs on the map and grabbing items. Then other than banning there is nothing that can be done to solve this. It will be exploited no matter what rules without just causing everyone to stop playing or no loot to drop while playing the game.

That's my point.
So botting is bannable. Boosting isn't. Boosting should be fixed before the worry about changing the system to curb botting.

If botting is the only problem with the system. I think the system is working great. Right now this isnt the case.

Also in any case so far listed I've yet to see no problems (save for mine of course) outside of botting. All of them have issues, like /players n is an issue not counting botting.

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Zakaluka wrote:

Even with /players n, we'll still eventually have bots. The questions we need to be asking are:

How sophisticated do bots need to become before they're even useful? Already the curve here will be much steeper than it was in D3.

Does a party of 6 bots get more loot per time spent than a party of real people?

I wouldn't think they would need to be sophisticated in the slightest since every orb has a chance to drop from any mob in the game, you could just have them farm orbs and quality gems in normal difficulty, or farm loot as well and just deposit it in the stash for someone to manually sort through later.

And as for their effectiveness vs real players that's kind of immaterial. Pretty sure you wouldn't see botting on a massive scale like D3, WOW etc. but I'm sure some people wouldn't mind supplementing their orb income with a little botting while they sleep/work etc. especially if the grouping loot exploits get fixed.

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MrDDT wrote:

I dont think 10 (or whatever random number you use) levels is the issue here.

I boost right now, its very easy to do. I can get a toon to level 60 in about 12 to 13 hours (yes Ive timed it).

This will simply make it so people will level up alts (or have friends do it) and then boost.

I'm not sure you understand what my suggestion was. You are saying that people will level up alts, but what I'm saying is let a level 1 in with a level 70, but treat that level 1 like a level 60 for experience purposes.

If you understand how the current experience penalties/boosting works, you'll know that a level 1 in with a level 70 gives about a 94% boost at the cost of 50% more life per mob. Something that makes it VERY attractive. If you treat that level 1 like a level 60, that bonus for exp is now 115% at the cost of 50% more life on mobs. Not worth it. **Note that this is ~58% of the exp pool, yours would be 50%. They're very similar solutions.**

I'm pretty sure your way would be too big of a hit to exp bonuses, and honestly, I think my way would as well, I think a scaling model that only caps 5 levels lower at lowish levels and scales to 20 levels or more at the top end would be best. Your way could be adjusted easily, as well, so it's not like I'm saying your way won't work.

The bottom line is your solution and my solution do essentially the same thing, punish those who are fighting alone in a party. Although I'm fairly certain mine would be less of an issue to implement as it follows the current exp sharing model more closely.

That said, either solution would fix a lot of the current problems.

I personally have no problem with the loot bonuses and would be more than ticked if they made too much of a change to it. I've stated adamantly that forcing players to be close to get item bonus drops (like the current exp sharing) only rewards botters as they'll have bots running right behind them boosting the loot drops, whereas legit players will either not have boosted drops or will have constant competition for those drops. It's pretty bad news either way.

First things first.

The first problem was leeching and it was slightly solved.
The problem now is boosting, lets solve this one and then think about bots (these are always in advantage over legit players).

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Amarena wrote:

First things first.

The first problem was leeching and it was slightly solved.
The problem now is boosting, lets solve this one and then think about bots (these are always in advantage over legit players).

The point is, you have to consider bots when you solve this problem, if you don't you can end up making bots stronger than non-botting players. The solution is to put a cap of some sort in place that prevents someone earning virtually all of the exp, it's a pretty easy fix and GGG will have it ready soon, I imagine.

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TehHammer wrote:

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MrDDT wrote:

I dont think 10 (or whatever random number you use) levels is the issue here.

I boost right now, its very easy to do. I can get a toon to level 60 in about 12 to 13 hours (yes Ive timed it).

This will simply make it so people will level up alts (or have friends do it) and then boost.

I'm not sure you understand what my suggestion was. You are saying that people will level up alts, but what I'm saying is let a level 1 in with a level 70, but treat that level 1 like a level 60 for experience purposes.

If you understand how the current experience penalties/boosting works, you'll know that a level 1 in with a level 70 gives about a 94% boost at the cost of 50% more life per mob. Something that makes it VERY attractive. If you treat that level 1 like a level 60, that bonus for exp is now 115% at the cost of 50% more life on mobs. Not worth it. **Note that this is ~58% of the exp pool, yours would be 50%. They're very similar solutions.**

I'm pretty sure your way would be too big of a hit to exp bonuses, and honestly, I think my way would as well, I think a scaling model that only caps 5 levels lower at lowish levels and scales to 20 levels or more at the top end would be best. Your way could be adjusted easily, as well, so it's not like I'm saying your way won't work.

The bottom line is your solution and my solution do essentially the same thing, punish those who are fighting alone in a party. Although I'm fairly certain mine would be less of an issue to implement as it follows the current exp sharing model more closely.

That said, either solution would fix a lot of the current problems.

I personally have no problem with the loot bonuses and would be more than ticked if they made too much of a change to it. I've stated adamantly that forcing players to be close to get item bonus drops (like the current exp sharing) only rewards botters as they'll have bots running right behind them boosting the loot drops, whereas legit players will either not have boosted drops or will have constant competition for those drops. It's pretty bad news either way.

Actually, the current exp rate (level 1 with a level 70) would be .46% share for the level 1 (rounded to 0 in game) and 99.54% (rounded to 100% in game)

The mobs give 164.24% exp of a normal solo monster. Not 194%
This also ONLY happens when the level 70 and the level 1 are near each other. Which is likely not the cast most of the time.

In your system, the level 70 and the level 1 (now considered level 60) the level 70 as you said would get 58.9493% of the exp and I'm guessing the level 1 would still get 0%? (But if not 0% it would be 41.0507%, which would be major easy to boost lower level players so I know this isnt what you want).
However, the level 70 would now only get 97.27% of a normal solo monster while killing a monster that has 150% HP.
Again only applies while near each other.

Yours also has issues with lower levels. Think level 11 and level 1 (or now level 1 for your theory).

The level 11 will get ~141% of a normal monster solo. In a duo party (assuming they are close)
In a 6 man party (Him and 5 boosters) they would get ~227.66% of a normal solo monster.


If you use your scaling. Again you have a problem at higher levels

Duo, 80 with a level 1 (now considered level 60)
109.56% of solo exp (assuming they are close)
80 with 5x level 1s is 120.38% of solo exp. Again same issue.


So again in your system you would have to do 2 major changes.
1)Scaling system (which I think is better IMO)
2)Change the range at which you get exp, or cap of some type.

Again this brings it right back to my system. You have to cap players wondering off and solo killing getting huge bonuses.

You could even cap it at like +10% of party share max if not in range of other party members.

With my system you might even had to add more of a bonus to being in a party (I think they should slightly, and raise the HP of monsters, something like +65%HP but give a +85% exp bonus, instead of +50%HP and +65%exp bonus)

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TehHammer wrote:

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Amarena wrote:

First things first.

The first problem was leeching and it was slightly solved.
The problem now is boosting, lets solve this one and then think about bots (these are always in advantage over legit players).

The point is, you have to consider bots when you solve this problem, if you don't you can end up making bots stronger than non-botting players. The solution is to put a cap of some sort in place that prevents someone earning virtually all of the exp, it's a pretty easy fix and GGG will have it ready soon, I imagine.

I agree and disagree.

Yes you have to think about bots, but you dont have to over think it.

Bots is going to be an issue no matter what you do. Simple as that. You cant screw over everyones play because there is someone out there that can make a bot do stuff. Just as you cant screw everyone over because there could be a map hack, or a speed hack.

You going to cap max speed at 30% movement speed because there could be a speed hack that sometimes will be effected by capped speeds while other speed hacks wont?
Its what you are asking for with bots.

If bots are found or the ONLY problem. Then sounds like the system is working out pretty well.

What you do want to do is make it kinda harder for most bots, without punishing overall gameplay.

If someone is writing a bot that has to follow picking up loot and or killing mobs. Then sounds to be like that's pretty good bot and not much GGG can do about it other than maybe detect botting programs.