Note: This post assumes AGS fixes up their re-entry system.
AGS. I think a good band aid fix for the bot issue would be random 15-30 minute maintenances with a 30-60 minute warning (so the botters dont have time to prepare), even just for NAWest.
This would allow players a window to get in before the botters and queues come back. I don’t really see any negatives other than slightly reduced play time.
you do know some raids last longer than 15-30mins. are you going to compensate their lock outs now due to the ‘random’ maintenance ? Team wipe and retry for example
Maybe a 60 minute warning would be better altho im not sure if thats too long.
And sure, I don’t see why compensation is a bad idea, I mean, we are being punished for them struggling to deal with bots tbf.
Honestly anything less than perma banning the RMT users is going to be circumvented…
If there is money to be made then people will do what they can to keep the cash cow going…
Take the money away, no excuses perma ban any one who RMT’s ANY amount…
I am sure after the 2nd or 3rd time starting over they will find a new game to cheat in… after botters are making less dough then they will find a new game to exploit…
honestly what would work better is a text prompt like the afk thing, that appears somewhere on the screen randomly small enough to not get in the way of people in raids and stuff. just have a button that the player must click with their mouse within like 15 minutes, if they dont click it then they get sent back to the server select screen (not force quit out of the game), bc some people are afk.
personally don’t like the idea of having more maintenances or forcing every player off because of a problem ags/sg won’t fix. whatever their solution is it shouldn’t hurt the players in anyway or ruin their experience, this maintenance solution definitely hurts the player experience. it’s just super frustrating getting kicked off a game, any game. and in my case my pc takes like 2-3 minutes to start the game and having to do that multiple times a day would just add to the frustration, i would end up quitting. but if your solution was implemented it might as well just boot everyone off the game or to server select without maintenance downtime.
That’s a good improvement.
I think the people behind the bots could just write an extra script that detects the random screen tho.
then just have it be a complex enough puzzle/capcha
Maybe I am overestimating or you are underestimating the capability of AI/bots, but I am sure there have been bots that were designed to bypass very complex puzzle/capcha already.
Why wouldn’t something like mandatory 2 factor authorization to log in work? Or a required OTP code to login.
I wish I would have screenshot my wait in the queue this am. I attempted to login at 7 am, a full 1 hr and 45 wait (15,300+) in queue. This cannot be sustainable no matter how fun the game is. They need to change the monetary system in game. Diminished returns = less interest in botting a game that doesn’t pay ?
Simply tossing in a random maintenance in hopes of throwing the bots off won’t cut it. I’ve seen after a regular 3-4 hours maintenance every Thursday early morning that a person with a bunch of sorcs or zerkers would show up in north vern’s port krona literally less than half an hour since the maintenance finished and servers opened back up.
Unless the patch itself had some backend changes and EAC updates then the bot-makers/owners don’t experience any problems. But what it could be is sending a handful of bots first as sacrificial lambs and if they make it into the game with no issues, then the rest of the bots will come in a bit later on as they funnel in.