Tree of Savior Forum

Why current trade restrictions do not stop RMT, and a proposed alternative: the Market License system

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#41

[quote=“Derael, post:39, topic:153681”]Also selling account is not that harmfulfor the game economics from the start, comparing to selling silver.

I’m not even sure why it’s prohibited. It was classic move in lots of MMOs to sell your account when you stop playing to compensate part of the time wasted on the game with money.
[/quote]

The difference being that on a subscription based game(which is what I consider ‘classic’), the developer isn’t really losing income when an account transfers hands.

However, in a micro transaction based game, all of the income is from buying items from the cash shop. If you buy an already decked out account from a player, you aren’t buying the items from the company.
You are effectively duping everything that the original owner bought by granting it to a new person.

So it’s actually really harmful for games economics. Not in-game, but for the longevity of the game/company income.

#42

Consider that kToS is not distributed through Steam, so it’s easier to perform account selling here.

Also as I said, I don’t understand how it hurts the economics of the game.

#43

Oh, I haven’t though about this. But you know, if player is ready to spend few hunderds dollars for an account, he will most likely spend a few more money in cash shop.

Players usually buy accounts for unique items, saving their time and +30 top weapons than for cash shop items.

Also token is kind of subscription as well.

The player who is buying account won’t play the game otherwise, probably. So it’s still not that bad.

Im tired of IMC only caring about Gold Sellers
#44

This I like far better than what currently is. You earned my like!

#45

OP is legit. Thanks for the idea!

#46

Great suggestion! Hope IMC sees this :smile:

#47

It’s better than what’s currently being used which is good enough to get a like from me. I’m really dreading dealing with the system that I heard was going to be used as of this post. u - u;

#48

This idea needs more attention really
I can see the potential of this being useful to our system right now :thumbsup:

#49

Tanu Flower, Shredded piece of cloth or any other loot that is required for collections/crafting but drops at ridiculously low chances.

#50

i forgot about those, don’t know how that tanu flower was agony. but those items also have a limited demand of 1 per account.

#51

I just think that this trade restrictions shouldn’t apply to your team ! and COMMON whats with that team bank!!! is that a joke???!!! limited slots OK but only one is slap on the face and trade between your characters in the same account shouldn’t count.

#52

@STAFF_Ethan @Staff_Julie @STAFF_John

The thing is, right now, with the strategy that is being implemented by the staff of this game, I feel like I’m playing a solo game.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s still a good game and I enjoy it, but the limitations are crippling and the workaround is too expensive for what it is, and even then buying it isn’t even satisfactory.

I mean, 30 items traded per token? 5 items in the auction house? If you play in a small group, you may see items that are looted by some, but may be useful to one of their party member. The 30 items cap would be blown in a couple of weeks that way. Same for the auction house, it makes a long term auction all but useless. And the 30% tax is really not reasonable for all players who don’t want to pay (I don’t know how much) a month, just to try and avoid gold sellers that will manage to find a way anyway…

(That’s not even talking about the dungeon process, with the random party being awarded more xp than a premade group).

All in all, I think these choice are more counter-productive than not, and prevent this game from becoming a legend like Ragnarok Online was, and it COULD be.

You are reactive, you resolve problems at an amazing speed and are very receptive to our input. We like that, I’d even say we love that.

It would be really nice to have the staff give us an answer about these issues, since I don’t remember seeing such a thing yet.

Apart from that little problem, keep up with the good work, this game is good but can be amazing.

#54

Hi, as others have said, some people don’t like questing, while some do.
So instead of that, how about visited regions?

The more places you travel to, the higher amount of silver you can move.

Bots couldn’t just run around the whole map exploring cause they could run into mobs and of course seeing a lvl 1 person running around in a lvl 90 area would raise suspicion.

Also, no matter what you do, whether grinding, dungeoning, or questing, you will always travel to higher leveled areas as you gain more levels.

I think it would cover all playing styles :smiley:

#55

Simply creating a pathing route for the bots to follow is completely within the current botting technology. Map routes would provide absolutely no protection. The bots wouldn’t be level 1 trying to run around in zones they don’t belong. That doesn’t even make any sense - normal players don’t do that, and my system wouldn’t penalize them any. Why would bots explore zones above their level? They just bot to an appropriate level, and then do the exploring.

I doubt that there even exists this hypothetical no-quest no-dungeon player above level 150 at this time (with the exception of teleport kill bots). Grind exp in certain level brackets is so bad as to be almost non-existent. I don’t want to say it can’t be done, but anyone who would rather do this than play the game has to be in a truly extreme minority.

If you’re fancying this yourself, you’ll never make it to the top. You’ll lose your mind six months in, in one of the gaps where there is nothing, absolutely nothing, worthy of grinding. Everyone else uses thousands of exp cards and dozens of dungeon runs to escape these brutal dead-zones.

As I’ve said before, I view this hypothetical player being forced to, well, play the game, as an acceptable casualty.

#56

You are assuming something you shouldnt. Dungeons can be completed manually for the bot account. All this will lead to is making harder to detect bots. They will not warp around anymore but quest, jump around a bit. Heck they can even party.

You don’t see that right now, because it isn’t necessary. If you take world of warcraft for example there are bots that are raiding there. They move out of mechanics perfectly etc.

If you want to you can even let them do the perfect dps rotation and if the program acts up - most bots should be supervised by a person at all times. It isn’t a big deal to supervise 20-100 accounts at the same time.

So yes the prep work is bigger and they become less visible, which in itself is already a good thing. Often persons are annoyed by the presence of bots or what they believe is one.

However I believe the biggest part of the asian gold-seller grinding is done by e.g. students. They don’t farm manually anymore but maintain maybe something like 4-8 accounts on their second monitor. These are bundled by the popular gold selling sites (they mostly don’t farm it on their own) and act as middleman between buyer and grinder.

For a student with 4-6 accounts it isn’t a big deal to even do the dungeons manually once per bot. Heck you could just take your level 150 bot and start with the level 50 dungeon for example.

I don’t like the idea mainly because it would lead to items you get early being untradeable for proper value because you could technically not have finished enough main story for it.

Just think about all those early items (reachable within 12 hours) that are simply worth half a mil.

1 Like
#57

By your own admission, this would substantially increase the amount of labor needed to make a bot workable, making the loss of a bot more aggravating and painful to its owner - yet you don’t like the idea?

Dungeons are just one of many necessary hurdles to clear - a level 100 bot would be required to do what, two dungeons? I haven’t mentioned missions yet, although they might be worth including. Even if they were, visibility wouldn’t drop much at all, when you think about the other things I intend to make bots do in the open world.

What about the reams and reams of story quests? How easy do you think those would be to automate? These represent the overwhelming majority of “prep work” a bot would require, to be certain.

As for killing early sales of things like vubbe fighter blood, well, I’d call that an acceptable casualty - these items are prime targets of bots, no? They swarm them like flies. I view attacking the accessibility of easily-botted, high value goods to be prime necessity in any comprehensive anti-RMT package. Does that not make sense to you?

Real players will simply have to wait another 30 or 40 levels to sell them. This really isn’t all that bad. They don’t have anything to spend the silver on at that level, anyhow.

#58

Botters share routes a lot or sell it to each other. There are literally people selling things a gold-seller needs for their bot.

If mainquesting was mandatory, then quest by quest that would be achieved and fully automated aswell.

If x is needed then the route will be tuned so it meets x.

It is just my opinion that not everything should be up for game “for the cause”

#59

TL;DR ?

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#60

How would you script bots to do quests with highly randomized elements?

I don’t doubt you can, eventually, do almost anything via automation, but looking back on the hundreds of quests that required me to go to a vague area to collect or interact with a thing that might be on the opposite side of the map, or might be two steps away, and to consider the tendency of certain boss fights to one-shot players with randomly chosen abilities, well.

This is a much greater task than you seem to think. The pathing routines you’re require are several orders of magnitude more complicated than the current technology we’re seeing from ToS bots, and the number of these hurdles bots would have to pass is dramatic, particularly for seller accounts that would expect to move tens or hundreds of millions of silver.

Tell me - have you ever seen a comprehensive quest-bot in any major MMO?

Aside from all that, the whole spirit of this thing was to isolate activities players specifically engage in that bots do not, and gate market access behind what was isolated. How would you go about that task, personally?

#61

I am on a freshly installed PC, but let ma inspire you with MS-Paint:

Zone-Clearing Example.jpg1152×648 78.2 KB

To get you through the steps:

Orange is the highway or we could call it transportation mode. You use that to tell your bot how to get across the zone. That is often done by walking and dodging sticky stuff.

In this example you would select a point on the orange line and there switch to coordinate based movement. Keep in mind I have no clue if the ToS bots are doing it like that yet. It is just how it usually goes.

Coordinate based movement, because you gotta poke around for questmobs and stuff like that. Technically it is way more complicated and I couldnt write that stuff myself, but from what I understood there are two ways. One segments the map automatically and creates waypoints on its own, the other is checking if “movement” leads to a change in coordinates. If you cant go to the left, bot tries to go left nothing will change so another direction is chosen.

If the quest for example is kill 10 mobs, then it hangs around in combat mode until it has done that. Afterwards it returns to the highway (or gives the quest back).

Now you think other quests can become more complicated, but bots are highly sophisticated - they have all the game data availible to them. How much HP% does your target have, how many targets there are, how many targets you are engaged with, how far they are. If you need to use a questitem on mob X at 20% HP, then you would disallow high dmg nukes, on mob X (depends on the quest) and keep hitting him gently until <20% is reached then quested. If interaction is needed you can move to that waypoint straight and interact.

Afterwards you let him go back to the highway to the next quest/npc etc. You do that zone for zone until you have something that savely levels your bot from 1-WhatYouDesire and don’t share it. Or sell it and make tons of cash.

To answer your comprehensive quest bot: Does Archage count? :wink:

Archage had a free one from 1-30 including all quests IIRC. Don’t nail me on the level though I just plugged that one in and tested it. Got stuck twice during the whole process and was created by a single user (the plugin - not the bot).

I am confident though that sophisticated bots alread exist, but you have to understand those are businesses that have them. They don’t share it. Chances are high you have encountered bots and not recognized them.

Edit: I should mention that objects often have a place and therefor the bot can go there. So if it is pick plants you go to the coordinate. If it is an item a mob might drop… well that item lands in your inventory and is therefor countable by the bot. If not you let the bot do it until the quest-step changes. Millions of ways.