While the ban waves definitely happen, I think we can all say that the bots are back at it again. I think amazon/smilegate folks understand that bots are prevalent because there are a few easy ways to make gold in the early game (as evidenced by adjusting rapport rewards for early NPCs).
I think we can make a big dent in the botting problem by restricting selling in the auction house until your roster has a T3 character. If we remove the gold requirement on honing pre T3, there aren’t many reasons why gold would be needed by people just starting out in their lost ark journeys. Players would still be able to purchase items on the auction house so any players who want to spend real life money for gold to accelerate progress still have that option.
This change would greatly increase the barrier to entry for bots. This barrier to entry is what helps to combat bots in other MMOs that are pay to play or subscription based.
There might be some additional reasons why a brand new player would need access to sell in the auction house that we’d need to address, but this type of change I think would benefit us a lot in the fight against bots.
Botters are all T3. This doesn’t do anything at all except potentially punish real players. This is likely an acceptable solution to you because you are already at T3.
The bot problem is out of fking hand. They need a REAL solution. And they need that REAL solution fast.
where do you get the idea that botters are all T3? One walk around leveling zones says otherwise. There are people who bot in T3 for sure, but to say all botters are in T3 is just wrong.
My point is that this is not a reasonable ceiling or gate for them. I assure you - this will be more painful for actual players than for bots. If you were to implement this, you would piss off a large swath of the player base. And then the botters that are not already at South Vern will BE at South Vern by the end of the week.
I simply do not think that your idea would significantly curtail the bots and their illicit farming transactions. We don’t know what course corrections SmileGate / AGS is taking to deal with the bot problem – because they will not tell us.
