Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Box/Bot perma camp issues

This topic has been closed.
    • 59 posts
    June 11, 2019 5:41 PM PDT

    Tekzan said:

    The devs have pointed out that the scripting in Pantheon will be limited in order to address this issue.

    Half if not more of the scripting can be done with a gaming keyboard's own scripting system these days, let alone something more sophisticated. The in game scripting code has nothing to do with it.

    • 59 posts
    June 11, 2019 5:47 PM PDT

    Ziegfried said:

     Botting needs to be a bannable offense, same with running scripts. I think multiboxing should be punishable as well so it's unfortunate imo that VR isn't taking a stand against that type of behavior. Multiboxing and botting/scripting go hand in hand except in those cases of the odd player using only 1 extra character. Multiboxers can be extremely disruptive in a zone. Perma camping a spot is something that is worth discussion in my view because that type of behavior is also harmful to the community...but real players actually need to swap out members as people go to work/sleep/etc so it's not nearly as damaging as a multibox botter who can continue the camp indefinitely. Also the multiboxer is one person hogging content meant to be enjoyed by multiple people, sure in terms of subscriptions the multiboxer pays as much as a team of actual players but the hidden cost is the damage to the community as those groups of actual players get denied content and quit. Since VR is trying to build a community focused game that is why I have concerns about allowing multiboxing.

    I totally agree with you in spirit. Reality says that there is no legal way to detect, prove, and enforce it with any reliability unfortunatly.

    • 22 posts
    June 11, 2019 10:36 PM PDT

    Darck said:

    Ziegfried said:

     Botting needs to be a bannable offense, same with running scripts. I think multiboxing should be punishable as well so it's unfortunate imo that VR isn't taking a stand against that type of behavior. Multiboxing and botting/scripting go hand in hand except in those cases of the odd player using only 1 extra character. Multiboxers can be extremely disruptive in a zone. Perma camping a spot is something that is worth discussion in my view because that type of behavior is also harmful to the community...but real players actually need to swap out members as people go to work/sleep/etc so it's not nearly as damaging as a multibox botter who can continue the camp indefinitely. Also the multiboxer is one person hogging content meant to be enjoyed by multiple people, sure in terms of subscriptions the multiboxer pays as much as a team of actual players but the hidden cost is the damage to the community as those groups of actual players get denied content and quit. Since VR is trying to build a community focused game that is why I have concerns about allowing multiboxing.

    I totally agree with you in spirit. Reality says that there is no legal way to detect, prove, and enforce it with any reliability unfortunatly.

     

    I agree with you in this also, and with the changes in technology today, VR could easily detect and prove out when people are perma camping drops with out there characters logging off or on or swap people in and out of the group. It would be as easy as setting up some log analytics through OMS or Splunk, they can even dashboard this stuff so the GM's can see it in real time.

     

    • 124 posts
    June 11, 2019 11:35 PM PDT

    Chanus said:

    Also it almost never actually happens that a community bands together and the griefing just continues unabated.

    The reason being people want to play the actual game. They don't want to be responsible for being the police force against bad actors. That's the entire purpose of a GM staff.

    You can never completely eliminate the potential for trolls, griefers, and bad actors, but it is foolish to design a game that explicitly allows for them in the name of some mythical community.

    Community is built around people playing together and helping each other. That exists in open world, DPS-race games. That exists in instanced games. Each has its benefits and each has its problems. The idea that community can only be fostered in a game environment that promotes trolling and griefing is ridiculous. 

     

    I never stated that its a good thing, i'm just stating that community is not powerless. As mentioned in other threads and in this one too, there are guilds that permacamped or blocked acces. How are those different from the situation described here. Generally it is seen as a bad thing concerning fair play, but it is just that which can also be interpreted as good. Cause from the guilds point of view they are helping their friends get what is needed and help their entirety to grow. Is it fair to the rest of the community? no, not in my eyes. But there is something to be said from both sides.

    In the end, you are playing a game in real life with real people. In the real world the exact same thing happens, except we are used to it. Rising gas prices? Its done because they can, do you see the entire world rising up because of it? no. In the end, its not a matter of words, its a matter of actions. either from the community or staff member. The majority is in power, just a matter of seizing it.

    • 2756 posts
    June 12, 2019 2:14 AM PDT

    In real life, companies stop their customers from fighting each other to get to their products.  It's doesn't make for happy customers or better revenues.  Many stores have addressed the nastiness caused by 'contention' on Black Friday, for example.

    Also, when companies themselves misbehave, there are consumer representative groups, ombudsmen organisations and government departments that step in once the whistle is blown and/or the alarm is raised.

    No one expects or really wants communities to take matters into their own hands, beyond alerting the authorities or maybe demonstrating when the authorities don't act quickly or decisively enough.

    In game, as in life, it is not inevitable or desirable that communities have to police themselves. The environment would become toxic and repellent long before the players manage organise a way to discourage bad behaviour with enough effectiveness.  If it manages to.  Some games have whole guilds of toxic players circumventing any pressure the rest of the community could apply.

    VR know exactly what can and will happen if they just leave it up to 'the community' to somehow handle unfair or un-fun behaviours.  From what they've said, I have confidence there will be clear policies and guidelines and they will have a robust setup for handling things like botting and perma-camping.  As robust a setup as is possible, anyway.


    This post was edited by disposalist at June 12, 2019 2:15 AM PDT
    • 31 posts
    June 12, 2019 6:00 AM PDT

    As someone who primarly boxed in EQ (6 boxes), there's a difference between "BOXING" and "BOTTING". Wherein I control all 6 of my boxes with hotkeys, and someone who is botting is not controlling their characters at all. I rarely post on these forums, but I see this topic come up a lot.

    I haven't read through anyones responses other than the devs, but obviously someone controlling multiple groups of characters isn't boxing, and should be reported. However, you may dislike boxing, but there is no escaping it in 2019. Anyone can do it, and it will happen. I personally have no issues with it, in fact if someone came up to my box group asking to join, I'd gladly drop a box for a human player.

    And that leads me to my last point, most of the time (even in EQ nowadays) players that box are more than happy to not have to box. Human players are more desirable than boxing for most of us, and I was a pretty proficient boxer taking downed named mobs, large pulls, etc...with ease in the hardest group zones. It's still annoying having to control a healer on one set of keys, separate from my dps, separate from pulling, cc, and so on.

    • 13 posts
    June 12, 2019 6:00 AM PDT

    Yes, botting / perma camping has gotten totally out of control in EQ (at least on the FV server anyway). And yes, it's a real pain when the person makes it completely impossible to get something as simple as a slow mount. I've been back on FV for something like 4 months now and the same person is always at the named mobs camping it for sale in the bazaar.

    My 2cp worth :-

    Something should definitely be done to curtail this in Pantheon even before it does become an issue. With EQ it was to be expected since its been around so long and there's just too many max level characters running around with nothing to stop them from perma camping the lower level mobs. Community intervention did work in EQ but we should realise that this was way back when people actually cared enough about each other and/or reputations. These days, in game after game that I've had a chance to play, the general trend seems to be "Who cares ?", i.e people don't give squat about camps or perma camping something, even if it means the whole server suffers for it. And yes, the community can step in but this is dependent on having sufficient numbers online and willing to actually assist. IMHO, this is unreliable at best.

    Having GMs around is a solution but we should also realise that there is a real life cost impact to the devs since they would likely either have to hire people to sit there and be GMs or parse out GM duties to existing staff. Cost impact either way.

    The only solution(s) that I could think of (I may have mentioned this is another post some time ago) was to implement a first tag system on the mobs, or allowing people who have done a certain amount of damage to the mob to also be entitled to the loot applicable to their particular class. E.g. if I'm camping a mob for a particular drop and a max level pops in on respawn to gank it, then I would at least have a chance at the drop if I manage to do say 25% of the damage as an example. I am by no means saying that this is the ultimate solution (I'd be happy with some other solution, any solution at all) but I have seen some games implement this and it seemed to at least cut down on the ill-will from perma campers if not completely eliminate perma campers. The last time I suggested this, counter arguments arose with key words such as "Competitiveness" and "Care Bear" being thrown around. The argument about Competitiveness, I suppose, being that if you can't do enough damage to the mob to kill it then too bad, you don't get the kill/drops. I fail to see how a e.g. level 50 can possibly out-damage a max level 110 toon. I have no idea what the whole care bear thing was about; to be honest I get visions of the little teddy bears I used to get for my niece when I hear those words.

    I certainly do hope that the devs come up with a solution for this though since Pantheon seems to have potential. But I try not to get to me too much, e.g. in EQ after the first couple months of countless ganking by max level toons, I just gave up and would leave a camp the moment one of them pops in, and go do something else. No point in getting my blood pressure up over it. One definite impact it has had on me though is that I have not spent a single dime on EQ in the time I was back. Normally on F2P games I would buy stuff from the store or sub if I play the game for longer than a month; not this time though.

     

    • 2138 posts
    June 12, 2019 7:24 AM PDT

    Blockchain could help in this situation in being able to track ownership.

    Tag the "lore" , "bind on equip", or "no trade" as a back door gate or a one way on the blockchain and you have a situation where one character can get it, trade it, but never get it again on that char- linked to that IP address and CC account. Which would create a situation where if a character wanted it, they would not want to give it up knowing that if they did so, it would be permanent.

     

    No need to use krono, we are all adults here- mostly, lol.

    • 297 posts
    June 12, 2019 7:50 AM PDT

    The simple solution is to not make any progression-required or rare loot occur in a situation that is both reliably-repeatable and also able to be controlled by a single player/group/guild indefinitely. There is no reason I can think of not to have "any tag counts" on progression-related mobs so long as the progression can only be achieved at a certain point for a character - i.e. eliminating the possibility of having a group of characters achieve the progression they otherwise wouldn't be able to simply by being present and throwing a single rock. 

    Rare loot should just not be obtainable only from a single, repeatable source; or, if it is, implement some sort of lockout system once a character has obtained the loot. I don't agree with permament lockouts, and frankly think the idea of permanent lockout is nonsense, but a reasonable temporary lockout - say a day or a few days - would prevent a character being able to sit on a camp and prevent others from accessing it. I think the simplest way would be to have the locked character's damage simply not count for kills until the lockout expires, allowing the next-highest damage done to count for the kill (as DPS race seems to be the model VR want to go for, even if I don't entirely agree with it).

    Competition is fine, but unfair competition ruins a game. This is a game after all. It should be fun and engaging to play. The challenge should come from the game itself and not in your ability to outmaneuver bad actors. 

    • 627 posts
    June 12, 2019 8:06 AM PDT
    I do think its in order to limit the chances of drops on the same named mob, when killed again and again within 24 hours.

    So the first kill = 100% normal drop chances
    Next kill will reduce drop chances with 20%
    Third kill by 40%
    And so on..

    This will in the end limit camping the same spot and force players to continue on to New content. If a boss mob spawns every 1 hour, it will take some time before players hit the wall of a low chance to drop. So more players get to enjoy they content.
    • 297 posts
    June 12, 2019 8:45 AM PDT

    What is the reason for lowering the chance instead of just preventing the chance for a period of time?

    I can't think of any legitimate reason a character should be able to farm rare loot in the first place, so I don't see why they shouldn't just be locked out for X days after obtaining it. If you merely reduce the chance each time, you don't disincentivize sitting on the spot. You just make it harder for someone to legitimately obtain the loot for the first time.

    This would have to be separate from farming things like tradeskill materials, of course, which has a legitimate purpose.

    If a group wants to sit at a spawn until every group members gets one drop, I think that's a legitimate purpose for sitting at a spot, so each person's loot lockout should be individual and specific to loot they have received. 

    Can this be exploited? Sure. But not nearly to the extent if there were no lockout.

    • 627 posts
    June 12, 2019 10:02 AM PDT
    Well i think a lockout is gamebreaking, in the sence of limiting players too much. Players will tend to just leave a grp much faster. Thats why minus %drop chance would "fit" better becsuse you still had a chance it just got smaller.

    Also if you spend a good amount of time getting to the buttom of a dungeon, then you might want to stay for longer than just 1 kill.
    • 297 posts
    June 12, 2019 10:06 AM PDT

    Do you see how reducing the chance after every kill just makes it harder to obtain the loot legitimately and incentivizes holding the camp for a longer period of time though?

    Instead of holding it because you're farming the item, you're now holding it because now that you've gotten your shot at the camp, it takes longer to get the item you want. How is that a better system?

    • 125 posts
    June 12, 2019 10:16 AM PDT

    benty said:

    As someone who primarly boxed in EQ (6 boxes), there's a difference between "BOXING" and "BOTTING". Wherein I control all 6 of my boxes with hotkeys, and someone who is botting is not controlling their characters at all. CUT


     /CUT It's still annoying having to control a healer on one set of keys, separate from my dps, separate from pulling, cc, and so on. CUT.

     

    Bently you don’t get to redefine boxing in your favor. Boxing is two machines/two keyboards(or a tesmart hardware switch). Okay I guess multiple exe’s open on a pc now, but when youve got so many exe’s open that some are playing themselves in the background and not visible, yet still auto attacking- this is the grey zone of botting/boxing.

    If you have a keystroke that tells more then one of your characters to perform an action simotaneously, this is the foundation of bottling. For example: having all of your characters assist and cast with one keystroke.

    It’s pretty safe to assume that if you’re using a 3rd party app or program to automatically duplicate or even send various keystrokes to various characters simotaneously. This is botting regardless of what’s enforced by the Eula.

    ABOUT THE NECRO

    received a short suspension that’s already lifted, most def a employe/friend/family IMO. I don’t have much faith in the company, They’re just more about hyping hardcore gaming elitism because that’s who puts the most $$ in their pockets. I don’t think many practicing programmers/modelers are in an admin position there- it’s kinda a gaggle that’s dancing on a grave of a great game. It’s a huge bummer, when enough passionate builders get administrativly moved out of leading Positions and the passion for having something wholesome and fun is no longer a tenant. It becomes a situation where a bunch of advertising degrees argue over what way to make sure this once blue ribbon heffur keeps lactating.  

    They just don’t get the craft, so it’s not their fault they don’t really get why it was prize Winner to begin with. “community support? You pay us to have access to/keep the servers up, is that not support enough”

     

    sorry for the novels friends I honestly shorten my posts.

    • 1428 posts
    June 12, 2019 10:20 AM PDT

    Grayel said:

    This is open world design. Sadly, situations like these were not uncommon in EQ1. 

    This is where ‘reputation ‘ is supposed to provide consequences from the cimmunity, but that is not always effective. 

    There were guilds that monopolized spawns  

    There we’re players that would physically block access (Ogre toons) by sitting in entryways (because of toon on toon collision you couldn’t bypass them)  

    Kill stealing, access griefing, etc... this was all part of good old original EQ .  

    Hopefully, VR will be clever with some of the sins of the past  But truly, this is what open world design is, there are advantages and disadvantages with all systems  

     

     

    all the more reason to play on a pvp server so i can do something about it.

    • 627 posts
    June 12, 2019 10:49 AM PDT
    @Chanus content lockout is just one setp in a bad direction, look at wow and how bad their system is. Its not what we want in Pantheon..
    • 2752 posts
    June 12, 2019 11:28 AM PDT

    BamBam said: @Chanus content lockout is just one setp in a bad direction, look at wow and how bad their system is. Its not what we want in Pantheon..

    Perma camping is pretty much content lockout in the opposite direction, serving the few rather than the many. "Lockouts for thee not for me."

    • 627 posts
    June 12, 2019 12:12 PM PDT
    An open world game with player limits of once pr. Week or one item pr. Day an such really talk against each other. But I Agree, lockout and content monopolizing is really bad for a game on general.

    I just really hope it can be fixed without another lockout on content.
    • 90 posts
    June 12, 2019 2:42 PM PDT
    I think it could be a simple matter of area-wide loot tables, instead of per mob.
    If each boss or named mob within an area is killed, instead of having a single loot table for that mob, it pulls the table from a larger pool.
    So, instead of, for example, the Fungi Tunic always dropping as a rare on the Fungus King, all mobs within that zone, area, or tagged a certain way, would have a chance of dropping the rewards.

    This is the only way that contested, open world content is going to work. It prevents perma-camping specific items from specific mobs, which is the problem in the first place. So long as the specifics get removed, in regards to which boss drops what, the problem goes away.

    Example:
    Zone A has 4 bosses in it that will drop loot from a shared loot table. If any boss is camped, one can simply go and camp another boss for chances at the Zone A loot.
    It solves the permacamping for single mobs, but doesn't help solve things like a guild controlling an entire zone. However, you make the zones big enough, and with enough named mobs/bosses, one would need a sizable guild to camp and entire zone.
    • 22 posts
    June 12, 2019 8:52 PM PDT

    After reading through all the posts, i think i could live with loot lockouts for X number of days if you have already gotten the item to drop. it is a whole lot more tolerable then the alternative of having some nerd perma camp the item for weeks if not longer at a time, just locking us out of the drop in a much worse way.

     

    • 2756 posts
    June 12, 2019 11:09 PM PDT

    stellarmind said:

    Grayel said:

    This is open world design. Sadly, situations like these were not uncommon in EQ1. 

    This is where ‘reputation ‘ is supposed to provide consequences from the cimmunity, but that is not always effective. 

    There were guilds that monopolized spawns  

    There we’re players that would physically block access (Ogre toons) by sitting in entryways (because of toon on toon collision you couldn’t bypass them)  

    Kill stealing, access griefing, etc... this was all part of good old original EQ .  

    Hopefully, VR will be clever with some of the sins of the past  But truly, this is what open world design is, there are advantages and disadvantages with all systems   

     

    all the more reason to play on a pvp server so i can do something about it.

    Doesn't that just mean the highly organised botters and 'bad' guilds have even more tools to grief the wider community and to deny content, etc?

    • 153 posts
    June 13, 2019 3:18 AM PDT

    Its so easy to tell if a group of players is scripted/glided/botted, mainly being every action will be the same, the characters wont hardly move ever unless its standing or sitting, and if you want to throw a wrench in it just dispel them =) works everytime

    • 9115 posts
    June 13, 2019 4:00 AM PDT

    Darck said:

    So.. just reporting the player will provide proof of illegal action? Will they require installation of spyware operated by VR?

    Again.. good luck with that.

    No, reporting the player will alert us to their time-stamped data including location, account details, history, any previous warnings/flags and allow us to review their actions, chat logs, unusual behaviour, including timing of clicks/actions etc. and contact the person or make a decision if we believe we have enough evidence or shadow them with an invis GM account to see first-hand evidence for ourselves.

    The community will play a huge part in helping us identify and eliminate bots and scrips so reporting will be a very effective way of letting us know you have found an account breaking the rules.

    Multiboxing, on the other hand, is allowed. Regardless of your opinion on multiboxing it has been discussed to death and multiple threads have official replies from me and other team members so please search for them rather than continue it here.

    • 297 posts
    June 13, 2019 4:51 AM PDT

    Disscord said:

    After reading through all the posts, i think i could live with loot lockouts for X number of days if you have already gotten the item to drop. it is a whole lot more tolerable then the alternative of having some nerd perma camp the item for weeks if not longer at a time, just locking us out of the drop in a much worse way.

     

    That's kind of the thing. There's no perfect answer that's going to be the best for all situations. I think taking the approach of what allows the most people a fair attempt at loot/progression is the way to consider these things. Open World DPS Race with no other restrictions is honestly the worst possible solution. It basically guarantees the strongest own the content, and that is the exact result you get every single time it is done in this way.

    But you can build off that with reasonable restrictions to allow for more fair gameplay. I think rare loot lockout timers that are temporary but sufficiently restrictive are the simplest and most equitable way to accomplish this. One can still stay at the camp after getting the loot and continue to get XP, or help the rest of their group also get the loot. What one can't do is lock down the camp indefinitely in order to repeatedly farm the loot for themselves. 

    Alternative ideas would be making the loot No Trade, Lore, or restricted to those present at the time of the kill, but this simply changes the result from farming the loot now and selling it later to farming the loot now and selling spots in the group or the loot rights. The loot is still accessible this way, but people don't play the game for the challenge of earning enough money to buy the privilege of experiencing content from other players.

    One could set up their own group or guild to lock down the spawn and rotate out players of their choosing, but with a sufficient loot lockout, this will only serve a purpose for a limited amount of time until the camp is no longer providing the rare reward, so the group/guild will move on to another target.

    There will always be ways players find to work around restrictions, but if the restrictions are designed correctly, the reward of working around isn't worth the time involved and so will happen less frequently. It would be idealistic to say you could eliminate it completely so that anyone can walk up to a camp and earn their reward at will (without instancing), but I think designing for that ideal is the way to go.

    • 297 posts
    June 13, 2019 4:56 AM PDT

    The alternative, of course, is to not have single points for obtaining loot, but in some cases you would want Lord Thingamabob to drop the Staff of Thingamabobbing and it wouldn't make sense for Sir Notalord to have it.