[Lets have a talk]A more efficient way to ban bots, hackers etc

[greenfoxy21]

Yeah.

Only hope is reports and active GM’s checking strange logs and supiscioiuos things.

In ro i was known as bot hunter xD.
I farmed some areas that were beloved by bots … hydra cards, phenon cards and co.

Teleport Bot … run kill … teleport on 12 cells away from player!

On one day … i had an Gm ban 7 people xD.
Then he warped me into prison too “So now i will get a coffee.” and left me there for 30 minutes xD. Together with bots that were trying to run away from me. As they couldnt teleport xD.

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I think the “Like/Dislike” would be a nice feature for it.
A player received lots of dislikes? Get’s warped into prison for x amount of time.
After checked by an GM if he responds, when he’s runnign around ( and not obviously a bot).

–

Global will be hopefully our bot pranger … “Hey guy’s theres a bot here.”
Massive party!

[nizidr]

A player received lots of dislikes? Get’s warped into prison for x amount of time.

a way to ruin someone’s day by getting spammed dislikes by a group of bored players…
You put up too expensive/too cheap gem roasting service? Get them all the dislikes and go to jail while you are offline.

Way to get rid of competition instead of bots.

[FatePGN]

I’ll use an example from another game called Dofus. In Dofus, gear can also be modified. Ofcourse it doesn’t have enhancing or a potential system, but the stats can be modified (so let’s just say it has breiquetting/awakening and gems as that’s pretty much that’s what you do to gear in that game). When you search up an item, it’ll show every possible version of that item, at it’s cheapest possible price. Higher priced items won’t show up, so it’ll appear like this:

Now to bring potential in to the game and +1 - +? seems a little difficult and excessive. Perhaps when searching the marketplace you can have modifiers in your search option like:

1. When searching for a weapon/armor, you can choose these options:

• Highest Potential
• Lowest Potential
• Briquet % (choose a value)
• Has gem slots (choose a value)
• A check box for each color gems that you are looking for
• The enhancement value you are looking for

I think that makes it specific enough while letting you see more without really having to select something, and using a similar output like the Dofus marketplace, you can still see more than 1 iteration of an item, but it will still be the cheapest version of that iteration.

[greenfoxy21]

forgot about that…

[FatePGN]

i’m not sure if I agree with that idea either, but what they could do is after a person is jailed, they will be reviewed to see if they were actually botting/etc.

If they weren’t, then anyone that gave them the dislikes will be banned (be it temporary or permanent).

Then you can also improve on the idea, that the dislikes have to all appear within a short period of time, so as to prevent it flagging players that are just not very likeable.

[Snivs]

If you don’t wanna read the long post:

TL;DR: Give higher taxes to players earning more money, so that purchasing silver is heavily taxed when using the market or even 1:1 trading.

Extended Version: I have discussed several changes to tax in order to make it harder to purchase silver in this topic: Preparing for a Healthy Economy in the International Server:

Preparing for a Healthy Economy in the International Server

In the ingame economy, I think silver is pretty worthless and easy to come by, and when everybody can be rich, nobody is really rich, these are my suggestions:

• Make silver drops scale based on level difference, like experience, so, botters can’t just slow-farm silver low level mobs, this doesn’t address bots farming loot.
• Make instanced dungeons reward silver, an incentive to run dungeons in a daily basis.
• Create daily quests that reward silver, an alternative to grinding for money in endgame.
• Make Tax a more complex and iterative formula, like this:
  – Base tax = 0.80% = 0.08
  – Define multiple silver limits, each 10k, 20k, 30k… up to 100k, 200k, 300k… each 100k up to 1m, each 1m, 2m, 3m… up to 10m, each 10m, 20m, 30m … up to 100m, 100m, 200m, 300m … up to 1000m and so on.
  – For each limit that a sale suprasses, add an iteration for the tax to be calculated with it.
  – So your tax formula becomes: (1-BASE_TAX)^(1+ITERATIONS) (This is the iterativity I’m talking about).
  – Your tax is recalculated every time you get raw income (market sales, npc sales, silver from trades), based on the total amount of income you’ve earned from previous sales/trades that day. This makes it so that the more you sell/trade during the same day, the more tax % you actually have to pay, even if you sell bunches of cheap items.
  – Your total income tax is reset periodically, maybe daily, weekly or during maintenances.
  – This system emphasizes on avoiding players from getting extremely rich, while helping players with less who handle less money (mostly during the earlier levels), pay a lot less taxes than rich players.
  Example:
• Your base tax: 0.8% (it does seem low, but it scales up).
• You sell an item for 50k, you have 1 base iteration and suprased 5 limits so far (10k,20k,30k,40k and 50k), so you’re getting 6 iteratinons. Your tax is
  1-(1-0.8%)^(6 iterations) = 1-0.92^6 = 0.0471 = 4.71%
  Your taxes will be 4.71%, so your item will be charged for it:
  50,000 - 4.71% = 50,000 - 2355 = 47,645.
• In this same scenario, you sell another item for 100k, accodring to this system, you have already sold 47,645, so your total income will be 147,645 you have 1 base iteration + 10 iterations (10k-100k, the next iteration not being until 200k), meaning you’re getting 11 iterations, your tax is
  1-(1-0.8%)^(11 iterations) = 1-0.92^11 = 0.0846 = 8.46%
  Your taxes will be 8.46%, so your total income will be charged for it:
  147,645*8.46%=12,491.
  But you’ve already paid 2,355, so only 12,491-2,355 = 10,136 are applicable taxes, meaning you will earn 100,000-10,136=89,864, by making these calculations, you pay the same when you sell a single item for 150k, or several items for 150k in the same period (day/week/maintenance).
• Daily Income should tracked account-wide.
• Any amount of Silvers spent with an NPC should be sustracted from your daily income, so the more silvers you spend with NPCs, the less taxes you have to pay in your future transactions with other players.
• I’ve made an estimation spreadsheet, so you could try fiddling with the base tax, daily income and sales amount.
• Notice that the higher amounts of silver you recieve in a small period of time, the higher the taxes you will be charged, towards 900m, you are charged the following (when base tax is 0.8%: you get charged 30.89% which I consider fair for earning that large sum in such a short time period, while, when base tax is 2%, you get chraged 60.89% for the same quantity, which I consider way too abusive).

Please, let me know what you think about my ideas, Like if you want to let IMC know we want a healthy economy both for the company and the server.

Edit: an amount was wrong in the example calculation.
Edit: Corrected some percentages I wrote wrong.

While I am conscious it will not eradicate the issue, it’ll surely make it harder for gold sellers to provide large sums of silver in short timespans… like… oh, you instantly earned 100m silver? Here’s your 26% tax; You earned these 100m silver in different transactions? We can adjust these taxes to fit your total income, too.

The formula breakpoints can be adjusted to make it even steeper, so that players with humongous incomes (gold buyers), get much higher taxes, while not taxing players with lower incomes as hard.

I really believe this system can be tarnished as the server economy sees required, imagine 50% taxes when earning over 100m a day, sounds absurd, but 100m is a big amount to earn in a single day…

[Snivs]

These flags would require GM/Admin review, and I really, really, really don’t like the way that goes.

Let’s make botting not that worthy silver-wise, and then give big punishment to these who dare to bot.

[FatePGN]

Yeah, just thought I’d try to improve on the idea, but I think it’d be an excessive amount of reviewing to get anything done.

[nizidr]

Let’s make botting not that worthy silver-wise, and then give big punishment to these who dare to bot.

As long as monsters drop silver or items that can be vended for silver - there will be bots.

[quote=“FatePGN, post:14, topic:126544”]
I think that makes it specific enough while letting you see more without really having to select something, and using a similar output like the Dofus marketplace, you can still see more than 1 iteration of an item, but it will still be the cheapest version of that iteration.
[/quote]You forgot that Briquetting gives randomized bonus that makes each briquetted item unique. Do you think that it’ll be hard to find a variation that is not currently on market for RMTers to use? That means that your proposed system will achieve nothing it was designed for. What works fine for one game might not in another which is currently the case here.

[quote=“FatePGN, post:16, topic:126544”]
If they weren’t, then anyone that gave them the dislikes will be banned (be it temporary or permanent).
[/quote]Any automated system for catching/punishing bots has way too many flaws.You forgot about false positives. If you’ve met a player that mindlessly kills monsters and doesnt want to talk to you (a normal condition after you’ve grinded for 6-8 hours straight) and you flag them as suspected bot you risk being punished for false report yourself while you werent exactly wrong. So either system can be abused or it wont be used at all.

The only system that might work is just flagging suspected characters for personal GM review after character gets certain amount of reports. There should not be any automation ever. And even then system is prone to mistakes.

[quote=“Snivs, post:17, topic:126544”]
Give higher taxes to players earning more money, so that purchasing silver is heavily taxed when using the market or even 1:1 trading.
[/quote]I had a little conversation with you in that thread… Anyway i think that diminishing returns depending on grinding time in a grinding game (thats what your progressive tax system is in a nutshell) might alienate players towards devs more that they currently are.

[cielazer]

disabling the trade was a great solution against botters despite so many hate recieved from the players, i really like that you have to wait for a certain time to obtain the silver earned for selling items in the market.

it’s really annoying how these botters just keep coming back with new accounts because they hardly lose anything, ip blocking them won’t work either since the most of them already use a vpn…

[Snivs]

I had a little conversation with you in that thread… Anyway i think that diminishing returns depending on grinding time in a grinding game (thats what your progressive tax system is in a nutshell) might alienate players towards devs more that they currently are.

This does not apply to income from grinding, only from vending and trading, which isn’t all that alarmingly big as gold purchases tend to be. Anyway, less money around = lower prices. To me, that’s enough a win. not to mention that the 30% tax with a 20% token subsidy seems way worse, as you’re making it harder on F2P players to build any fortunes, that’s one of the things that made people actually disappointed. In theory, you’d have to be either buying large sums of silver, or serlling a ton of expensive drops (from botting) in a short timespan to incur in any high end taxes. Most players won’t, and these who actually do… well, they’re already getting a very large sum of money.

I tell you, the tax system is not something that players will notice (much less understand) first-hand. Players with low income will barely note it, these in the big leagues will learn to live with it, and the transition between the former two will be easier.

[nizidr]

This does not apply to income from grinding, only from vending and trading, which isn’t all that alarmingly big as gold purchases tend to be.

Btw, i just reviewed your proposed formula and found an error in the very 1st line of your math:

[quote=“Snivs, post:1, topic:126238”]
Base tax = 0.8% = 0.08
[/quote]And then you have many more calculus errors. For example:

[quote=“Snivs, post:1, topic:126238”]
You sell an item for 50k, you have 1 base iteration and suprased 5 limits so far (10k,20k,30k,40k and 50k), so you’re getting 6 iteratinons. Your tax is 1-(1-0.8%)^(6 iterations) = 1-0.92^6 = 0.0471 = 4.71%
[/quote]i’ll just note that 0.92^6 = 0.606. Then if you subtract that from 1 you’ll get 1 - 0.606 = 0.394 or 39.4% tax.

[quote=“Snivs, post:22, topic:126544”]
To me, that’s enough a win. not to mention that the 30% tax with a 20% token subsidy seems way worse
[/quote]While it is a poor implementation it allows to monetize for Nexon which seems to be the main focus behind the rushed game release. You progressive tax leaves very little room for monetization… well, they could make base tax 10% and reduce it to 5% for token users but that will be rather hard to comprehend and calculate for average player, so fixed numbers work the best for them.

[Snivs]

And then you have many more calculus errors.

I’ve written it so many times, but using 0.92^6 comes across as using a base 8% tax, we’re trying to use 0.8% tax as base, making the correct operation 1-0.992^6=0.0471=4.71% which actually is the intended calculation, you can see all the correct calculations by visiting the estimation spreadsheet, I’ll correct any typos I find, thanks for pointing these out.

[Snivs]

Leaving little room for monetization? The game is practically a money-making machine that will just get juicier as long as IMC doesn’t go all nexon-greedy on the international community. A satisfied customer is bound to bring more customers…

I don’t see how scaling taxes up takes off room from monetization, care to enlighten me?

[VnZzz]

I was thinking the same but was too lazy to write
Need to cut the problem at its reason/source.
Thank you Sir!

@nizidr
You can index itens by the name or name+number, the other things you’ll need to browse a little to find what you really want. In the end it will looks like Dragon nest Auction House.

[nizidr]

@nizidrYou can index itens by the name or name+number, the other things you’ll need to browse a little to find what you really want. In the end it will looks like Dragon nest Auction House.
[/quote]thats not what he implied by[quote=“FatePGN, post:7, topic:126544”]
Now the marketplace can easily be solved by showing only the cheapest of every item. This has been used successfully in other games such as Wakfu/Dofus.

There are way to many variables in ToS to use that system and as a result it cant be used to fight RMTers.

[VnZzz]

I know, its what im saying.

So you want a market where you can do a precise search?
You cand add some check box to filter it a bit i think. Something like gem, potential, etc…

But it wont stop gold sellers at all.

[Aizel91]

Hmmm, potential it might be, but i think the security should be strengthen within steam itself. I think TOS or IMC need to talk with steam so that its controllable and manageable. VAC never go wrong, but again, I dont know TOS will be under steam ? or is it going to be stand alone? apologize with my short knowledge and my proficiency of English.

[Nakano15]

I guess I got an idea that may be annoying.
If a player stays for too long fighting monsters on a field,
could happen something like fatigue that makes so the player
gets penalties on most statuses if the player does not find a place
to rest near a bonfire.

And since the bonfire placing system is an ass to make it work,
the bot could end up dying trying to place the bonfire,
then this is a really great way of combatting bots.

[nizidr]

I guess I got an idea that may be annoying.If a player stays for too long fighting monsters on a field, could happen something like fatigue that makes so the player gets penalties on most statuses if the player does not find a place to rest near a bonfire.

this system already exists: if you kill 1000 monsters on one map game will summon death reaper right on top of you and you’ll probably die.