Free to play = infinite bots

Deleting items isn't the best solution imo. I would be pretty sad, if I had bought an expensive weapon from a bot-farmer, without knowing it, just to lose the items a few days later.

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Magnicon2 wrote:

-The difficulty of the game will not stop them. Expect to see them in HC if the game gets popular enough.

Really? You think your average bot programmer can write an AI to play PoE on hardcore without dying?

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Silty wrote:

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Magnicon2 wrote:

-The difficulty of the game will not stop them. Expect to see them in HC if the game gets popular enough.

Really? You think your average bot programmer can write an AI to play PoE on hardcore without dying?

Average bot programmers are not the issue. It is the one or two excellent bot programmers who publish their bot.

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Average bot programmers are not the issue. It is the one or two excellent bot programmers who publish their bot.

I would agree that's where we start running into problems

Lets aggregate solutions a bit:

* Make expensive orbs to drop only in last difficulty (harder to bot)
* Slight orb droprate progression, you don't need all that many orbs at teh start anyway (and newbies will waste em!), the difference should be there but not too steep and you should still be able to get a few basic orbs. There is no way to buy high-end orbs anyway via merchant
* I guess they will need at least 1 person online (3 at least or 4 employed) at all times to monitor for bots

Probably best detection-point would be to monitor sales, if you can prove external transactions taking place you ban. And that should also be the cue. Maybe include in rules that you are also exposing yourself to item-deletion when you buy stuff for money? That would invalidate pay-to-win ebay in all regards. Might be its not fair but it is a way to do it.

Problem is always when ordinary players get hurt. There will be a lot of players that will even want to play this game purely solo.

We might need some way to flag botters when they start spamming ingame chat. Easiest way imho.

I really hope GGG can pull something off the hat.
Gold sellers and bots ruined a lot of decent games
for me including GW2. On the side note I don't think
free to play is the problem - popular games are
often (if not all the time) infected. Be it f2p, b2p
or p2p at the end does not really matter.

GGG should pay a bunch of people to oversee leagues being played. They could take into account the length of a login (more no. of hours played = more likely to be a bot) but also the number of "players" involved in erratic, bot-like behaviour.

Gamemasters might have the right of asking you questions and ban you for a limited time if you don't answer WHILE playing the game. If the toon is standing still it's obvious that player is afk.

If repeatedly banning an erratic bot-like account doesn't solve the problem, I suggest the following (if it's feasible, of course):

As soon as said character is launched into "bussiness", gamemasters should modify their league to a pvp one and permit other players to hunt and kill those bots.

A different approach might envision the other end of the botting enterprise: profit. As soon as their profits dwindle, they will move on to a more profitable victim.

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ongZ wrote:

Deleting items isn't the best solution imo. I would be pretty sad, if I had bought an expensive weapon from a bot-farmer, without knowing it, just to lose the items a few days later.

Boo. This post makes me angry. Frankly, if you pay money for items in this game you are encouraging bot farmers. So I am going to give you mean looks and fart in your general direction and not be upset when/if items you bought get deleted.

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Trapperkeeper wrote:

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ongZ wrote:

Deleting items isn't the best solution imo. I would be pretty sad, if I had bought an expensive weapon from a bot-farmer, without knowing it, just to lose the items a few days later.

Boo. This post makes me angry. Frankly, if you pay money for items in this game you are encouraging bot farmers. So I am going to give you mean looks and fart in your general direction and not be upset when/if items you bought get deleted.

I meant traded. I'm not going to use real money, although I do not have a problem with people doing it, as long as bots are being dealt with.

Thanks for the counter-argument, Morrigan. :)

I admit my experience with such things is bad at best, lethally optimistic at worst. It stands to reason that bots/scripts could bypass something as simple as a Captcha, and I'm sorry that your attempts to use it as an effective means to police content came to little effect.

I'll bow out of this one. Definitely not my area of expertise. I suppose for now I have to keep the faith that it IS one of GGG's areas of expertise.