There still around. Southsun cove, pride point way point in the water on sea of sorrows.
Theres a bunch there been at it 24/7 all week.Been reported buy a number of people.
What sort of botting activities are they running? More of the new wave of nodebots? Or has someone noticed the bots event farming, or mob-jumping?
Any reports on their specific activities would be greatly appreciated. There seems to be quite a lack of anything other than the nodebots, due to the obvious pointlessness of farming mobs for anything other than the occasional porous bone.
It’s interesting to see the reaction of newer players like Ganon, in regard to how obviously broken the reward system is. Is it possible they will take the clamps off the drop rates again over the Christmas period, with it’s expected influx of new players, to offer up some sort of incentive and raise new player retention?
If I were a new player, regardless of prior experience in MMO’s, the state of the returns and increase in wealth in this game would be quite the disincentive to continue playing.
Unless the assumption is that the lack of generated wealth through playing events, killing monsters, etc, would simply make new players buy gems to convert to gold for purchases on the BLTC. But surely the escalating costs of high tier crafting mats can only creep so high, before the simple lack of new materials coming into the TP from the game world cannot meet demand, no matter how high the price?
Sigh. I should studied economics or some such thing. I would dearly love to understand what the intentions and long-term goals are here.
It’s almost like they have sprung uncannily back into existence with a remarkable new script that serves only the quick and elegantly simple function of rapidly supplying the TP with mats. The ease and rapidity they employ to swim in and out of existence to perform their market function almost implies some sort of, dare it be conjectured, intimately associated origin or connection within the game framework, operating seemingly from within.
Not that bots would ever be used to bolster gem sales in the currently manufactured market to supply a starved and driven demand…
So many of us are in the same boat, squirrel. We gave back as much as we could to thank them for their efforts; alot of us bought as much as we could afford from the gem store on release to give back to the team that made this for us all. I myself bought more than I should have at the time – character slots, storage space, just to try and balance the debt I felt I owed them for delivering such an astounding game after waiting so very long.
Unfortunately, this is all far from the hands of the developers to control, and has been since before release, it seems.
With NCsoft flailing in the market, closing up shop where they can, the doors were left wide open for someone like Nexon to step in and set the wheels in motion to profit from their subsidiary ArenaNet’s incredible title.
The ‘steering committee’, for want of a better expression, that came in from Nexon obviously were not daft enough to go live with this crippled system that we have now, but it was quite definitely going to happen before the end of year. The snap changes to things like the dye system in the last few BWE’s should have very much alerted us all to what was happening. I was too caught up in the heady atmosphere of the imminent release, soaking up the world far too much, and not paying attention.
I find myself going back lately to drift around in pre-searing Ascalon, thinking of the future of the franchise, and all I can come up with is, “I hope this does not go the way of CoH”.
I wonder what Mr O’Brien makes of the new direction this title has taken since June. There seems to be some irony in leaving a giant like Blizzard behind for the freedom to take new directions, only to end up at the last behooven to the crudity of rapid monetization…
From an interview on KTR with Izzy Cartwright on the 5th December:
“Izzy: Yes, we collect all manner of data from observing the economy, gameplay, and sever (sic) load. We use this data in a number of ways. For instance, we can see where players die the most so we can start adjusting content that is too hard at early levels. As for the economy, we’re always watching how different items drop, from where, and how often. This lets us really see the ins and outs of our economy and how things like monthly events or weekends play a role in our ever changing economy.”
Statements like this should really reinforce to people on the fence with this one that the developers are constantly monitoring data streams, and something like the loot dearth that has been witnessed since the 15th November patch, if unintended, would have set major alarms ringing for them without any necessity for forum-based bug reports from players.
The confessed dodging of this vital topic on the Reddit AMA by Chris was very much a telling indicator of how little input that part of the team must actually have on the majority of the game’s direction now.
Despite the futility, the main hope with keeping the thread alive is the simple spread of information far and above the relief of airing grievances in relation to the topic.
The longer the thread can stay afloat, the more people will hopefully give it a cursory glance over after experiencing the issue with the game itself, and at the very least continue to make a voice heard in opposition to the cynical, gradualist removal of all possibility for growth and expansion without resorting to simple cash transactions in a game that we all paid full price for.
I think that is a key point to bear in mind: that the reward for effort process was, and is, a fundamental design feature of this product, the same as most MMO’s, and it’s a very risky thing to remove and replace with this insipid bot flux market manipulation.
It is blatantly obvious that in the return-crippled environment that we have, the conveniently-returning 24/7 bots will be the only real source of materials/items to the TP for the masses to grudgingly buy up with real money conversions to gold to cover the monstrously inflated cost.
It is my hope that if it is demonstrated openly that we are aware of the patterns and methods they employ to increase gem sales; if Nexon’s return on this venture is marginalised as much as possible by people exercising a protest by non-participation, then it will be at the least a small success.
I’m sure the monetization process is now horrifyingly lodged like the parasite that is deep under the skin of the dev cycle in relation to future content/fixes, and most likely has been since June of this year, but it would be nice to show our animosity in some small way to those few who would so openly and cheaply bleed our long-awaited world of Tyria.
Once more, in the hopes that there are any of the incredibly talented people who gave so much of themselves to this game reading this, I am so very sorry for you – even more so than I feel for myself and the rest of us who followed every detail of the creation of this game for so many years. It must be a truly wretched thing, to watch something so grand and full of promise be stained and cheapened so quickly.
Vlad,
Check the following link please:
After 15th of November nothing was ever the same. Reduced drops, increasing gems value non-stop until now. Basically, if you need gold, buy gems and trade for gold..:)
Thanks for that link, RedBaron.
Now I’m off to sit, sulk, and brood over what has become, and even more depressingly, is yet to come.
Terrible to think that in a few years this will all just be another dot point achievement in the chest key fairies’ portfolio.
DR=“Diminishing Returns”? It could very well be that this is broken and not resetting properly, however, with the notable silence from ANet, it makes me think the change was more intentional than not. Lowering drop rates like this breaks the marketplace, it breaks crafting. If they keep the drop rates like this, they have to do something to bring the marketplace in line.
For instance, currently it would take hours of farming to be able to afford to buy a single ecto on the market. Salvaging rares and exotics to get ecto is…well…let’s just say you need to get them first. “Very few drops”=“next to no salvage”=“pretty much no new ecto in the market”=“Skyrocketing price of ecto”=“Way too expensive to craft”
The net result is a non-functioning marketplace and crafting becomes nothing more than a means to power-level, which it is essentially now. Drop rates HAVE to be drastically increased to fix these critical game mechanics.
You are so close here. The answer is right there in your comment.
Skyrocketing prices for required materials, lack of funds at hand to purchase, but wait! Luckily there’s a place you can wave your magic card and have all the gold you need to buy the materials you used to be able to obtain through, you know, playing the game and having fun.
Thanks to the Nexon fairy for gutting the process, and turning it into a simple cash for reward treadmill.
Every day I wonder how the devs are feeling – you know, the ones that poured so much of their time and skills into this amazing world, wondering how they must feel behind the scenes watching the strip mining starting up in earnest.
they didn’t intentionally do anything, it’s just something made up to be negative about by people who are disappointed in the game for in my opinion the wrong reasons.
I obviously meant the decrease in drops that wasn’t intentional. :p
I am just incredulous that someone could read through the entirety of a thread of this scale, encompassing an issue that is so fundamentally important in the context of the game itself, and come out with something like this.
If this issue with the drop rate decreases, and all it entails for the mechanics of all player’s existence within the game, was unintentional, how on earth could a team of developers who have put more than half a decade into producing this game not pounced upon it immediately, fully aware as they are of the repercussions upon their product and vitally important player base?
As for the glibness of the opening sentence, a little more thought put into your arguments would be greatly appreciated, instead of wholesale dismissive summations.
I think concentrating this thread anywhere other than this forum would be a bad move, as this issue, and it’s rather far-reaching implications for the entire game, is quite beyond the realm of a simple bug.
I think it is vitally important that you all keep firmly in mind that this is in no way a bug.
The current pattern that loot scaling has followed through the initial bot flourish (which stayed in it’s heavily infested state despite much player outrage for some time before suddenly being ‘attended to’) whilst the ‘unfortunately necessary dr changes’ were instigated in reaction to the large bot population, through to what we have had now since Lost Shores in terms of heavily reduced loot/materials, is no absolutely no way accidental, or a by-product of poor coding or haphazard mistakes.
Bots served their purpose, and will continue to do so through these current and pending cycles that are proceeding quite according to the plan, sadly enough.
To me, the thing that rankles the most is the fact that yes, Nexon, Maple Story is free, so you can turn your monetization queen loose all over it to sprinkle her chests and rainbow keys to her hearts content, but there are alot of people that paid full release price for this game so that we could have unlimited access to it in it’s entirety.
Crippling our returns for input in such a cynical and cheap fashion to drive people to pony up for gems to regain what we once had included in our box price is just foul.
I still feel rather bad for the dev team, however. Such a beautiful realization of Tyria they have crafted. Seems a terrible loss to have it so tainted so soon by these unscrupulous new 14.7%’ers.
Phooka, despite everything the continuing existence of this thread entails, you wrenched a grin and a giggle out of me.
Many thanks.
Will have to start logging in more to see what the bot activities are re-tooling to, and watch some tp prices. Rather sorry state of affairs when the only real impetus to log in is monitor the throes of the game’s economics post-Nexon monetization.
Ok, so now it’s switching back and people are noticing odd bot behaviour and reappearances. Which should mean a reinstatement of certain types of mats and other drop rates soonish to get the tp supply cycle rolling again… I really hope I’m wrong about what they are doing here. Would be nice to not have base tactic cynicism superceded (merriam-webster approved variant) yet again.