This game is geared towards people playing several chars to feed everything to 1 main char, basically a bit like a bot train but with the difference that we do it manually and play 1 char only at the same time with the human breaks we need to remain healthy and cope with real life.
Bot trains play several chars at the same time, operated by a host of workers in shifts 24/7 in full auto mode.
Bots will always win because they will always produce much more of everything than normal players.
Reducing in-game rewards will only drive normal players to the bot companies arms…
Normal players are AGS/SG customers that are being penalized by using a product that AGS/SG are not capable of delivering in good conditions (bot free).
There are many ways of fighting bots, many probably involve using more resources (human and material) and GM’s in-game per server swinging the ban hammer but making a product worst for the regular customer to compensate for its uncorrected flaws is not the right answer.
From a purely business perspective, I believe AGS/SG are losing a huge amount of money because a lot of people tend to buy cheaper gold from external sources other than the in-game shop. And we all know that this game is a gold hog due to the honing system…
Investing in more active policing measures in-game will quickly produce a better investment return for AGS/SG. The bot spots are all well identified, they are so obvious that any GM could ban hundreds per working hour.
No wonder bot numbers are increasing wildly, NA was first but I already notice the same trend in EU. This game is so demanding in materials and other resources that human players have great difficulty to keep the pace of incoming content. To be honest, this is a bot dream scenario, a free-to-play great game with many resource hungry customers…
Please, do not penalize normal players (customers) to fight the bots. Fight the bots to deliver a better product to your customers (players).
Thanks.