Tree of Savior Forum

SUGGESTION @ IMC: An Effortless Bot Regulation Method

Suggestions
#1

I’m not sure if anyone has suggested this before, but I have seen a market system in another game I played that seems to be working very well.

So my idea is to abandon silver as the currency for trading and only use TP as the trading currency. I know this is an unusual system, but it is by far the easiest way to restrict bots without putting all these trading restrictions and harm the game play.

First of all, lets talk about how would the economy work.
If trading between players and the market only accepts TP, it means that the trading currency are regulated by IMC (i.e. only IMC can “print” money out for players to use). Bots will not be able to just simply make accounts to farm for silver and sell to players. The main reason why bots are so effective is because of their numbers and also long hours of no stop farming. The catch is, most of the farming is done at early levels and they do not require any advance logic to sort out what they got. They simply collect silver and pool it into one account and sell to player. But with TP being the only trading currency, bots are limited to collect materials or equipment and sell to players for TP. Once the bot have TP, then they can sell to other players for money (assuming their rate for TP is lower than buying from IMC). Effectively, this will limit gold seller’s ability to collect things to sell to players for real money (TP in this case).

Now you may ask at this point “where on earth do the TP come from for F2P players?”. This is where it might sound awful to some, but I believe it is how F2P games work. The TP will come from players who bought TP and use it to buy items in the market. The TP circulates around through market and personal trades, and now we got a monitored in game economy where IMC knows exactly where the TP came from and went to. At our current state, fortunately, we all have TP on us because we are paying players. So there are already TP floating around the game for the market to develop.

So with silver being excluded from trading, silver will act as purely progression in game. For example using silver for attributes, equipment upgrades, pots, teleport, etc. TP (just like all other F2P) will serve as means to speed the progress (tokens, buying items on market), convenience (port scrolls, soul crystals, etc), and cosmetics.

With that being said, some players will still think it’s not fair to have no way to get silver other than farming. This is a point where the community can chip in to decide. I think a trading NPC (directly to IMC) can be created to trade silver for TPC or TPC to silver. When you trade TPC to silver, this of course do not require any restrictions. However, for trading silver to TPC, IMC can implement a 7 day wait period for all new accounts made and / or a 2 day wait period for IMC to confirm the account is not a bot. This way, IMC can trace where the TP are being introduced to the economy. If this system were to be implemented, the TP amount will have to be adjusted so the cheap items are sellable on market as well. I personally have no idea what the exact ratio is should be changed from the current TP haha.

So in conclusion, with TP being the trading currency, the trading and market restrictions can be lifted as there no longer is a need for them. If the trading currency is monitored by IMC, the need for advanced script in detecting bots diminishes. Instead, IMC probably only need a small support team to pick out bots / provide support to tickets regarding TP related problems.

Hopefully this will spark some ideas and help make this game feel less like a single player game. In all honesty, I’m a fairly casual gamer with full time job coming to this game with a group of friends. We think it has potential and as many people have pointed out, the maps and sound tracks are great. But with the current limitations, it feels like we are playing a single player game more than a MMO.

Lets see what you guys think about this suggestion, feel free to give any feed backs.

edit: realised it is more suitable in the suggestion section.

#2

Sellers can get the tp the same way. Bot for items = earn tp, Sell tp.

#3

To bot for items and sell = restricted by the market (i.e. there has to be some players who has the TP to buy the items from bot in order for bot to make TP).

Unlike the current situation where bots just farm silver straight up with no limitation and sell to players.

#4

You mean the current situation where paying players buy tokens and put them on the ah? That gold sellers buy to run their business? Sounds almost exactly the same to me.

#5

The gold sellers are not buying tokens and reselling tokens for profit. gold sellers are farming silver from grinding (i.e. no limitation on how much they can get) and selling it to player. How is that the same?

1 Like
#6

Because is both examples despite the method. The gold sellers help IMC generate more profit by either being involved with tp purchases or token purchases.

#7

My post is not arguing whether gold sellers help IMC generate profit or not. My post is providing a suggestion to eliminate bots…

If you want to say IMC won’t change cause bots help them make money, then that is a totally different question. I don’t have an answer for that.

#8

That is kind of my point either system allows the gold seller to function, and as long as the system is functional for them they will require bots. So while you have proposed a alternate system i believe it will have the same issues as the current one as the model doesn’t change much.

#9

The alternative I have proposed limits bots’ ability generate things (in this case TP) to sell for real money. Comparing to the current system (unlimited income source), my alternative is controlling the bots without actual scripts or monitoring.

The main point of my post is about how bots will have to earn real money through the market where the currency is determined by the amount of TP within the system. So bots can not just simply generate income through thin air and magically collect a billion silver to convert that into real money. The TP as trade currency will automatically restrict bots vs the current no restriction.

At the end of the day, bots will still remain. That is true.
But what I am concerned with is to what extent will we be affected as a normal player. I personally prefer to have normal trades and market again so it feels like an MMO. I believe this alternative system will help us win those functions back rather than just simply complaining about IMC and expect them to have an anti bot system implemented any time soon.

#10

I believe the point of this post is that bots will be limited to how they earn “tradable income” which will only be through farming ITEMS rather than this unlimited pool called silver. Therefore these bots now farm for ITEMS and then post it on AH or trade in game for TP. However if bots are farming nothing but items, then by the rule of supply and demand, they will be competing with themselves (as far as price is concerned). Therefore they will do nothing but drive the prices down for these items.

The only way for these bots to really make any worthwhile TP is to progress in the game and farm for higher grade or level items. However with bots, being that it’s a numbers game, will constantly compete against each other over and over again (price wise), these prices will drive itself down again.

Therefore by doing so, the market alone could make it not worthwhile for these botters to make new scripts to farm for items as it requires a transaction from another player to purchase this farmed item. They only lose out if these posted items are never sold. And it doesn’t help the likelihood of it being sold if they simply flood these items over and over again.

They also would have to rework their scripts to make these botters post on AH and know what to price it at which in turn takes research from someone and or the person must research the market and post it themself.

Having to monitor the market constantly for price change MIGHT make it a tad inconvenient and not as worth it to these gold seller companies because of all the work they have to manually do in order to sell these items i.e generate tradable income.

All in all, a market is always changing, so if the botter was posting an item at x tp, then the flooding of the items will only drive these prices down. By doing so these bots are essentially going to have to essentially play the game because the item may simply not be worth the time.

So in short it’s almost counter productive to have mass sets of bots farming the same items to attempt gain tp because it is dependent on other players to purchase these items. It may not fix the botter problem, but I can definitely envision how it makes it that much more difficult and inconvenient to farm tradable income. It will make it extremely inconvenient to change and rework a program due to market prices constantly changing due to the influx of items they are introducing to the market.

It also will take more man power to adjust for the ever so changing market. Therefore HOPEFULLY making it simply not worth it to try to farm for tradable income in this game.

I like this idea, and I think IMC should consider reading it and possibly building upon it. Especially if it helps us remove this current trade restriction. I’m all for it.