Character level

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HaLLanHype
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Post by HaLLanHype »

True but people would play for leveling up high skills and spells also
imorgado
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Post by imorgado »

Please, consider this:

I'm a weekend player and a full time botter.

Why?

Cause there is those kiddies who keep playing (or botting), everytime of day. Building huge guilds. Killing all good monsters and grabbing their loots. Selling raw materials for a expensive price (why one sword costs 5k and one steel costs 50k if I need 10 steels to build the weapon?). These kiddies grow in levels and power very fast.

And about the average player? This is a game not the life, we must go in to play not for level up. Leveling is a result of play not the inverse.

We must upgrade with experience (real) not with levels.

Using my idea (as posted before) and the formula that Kyokai said before (thank you for de comment ;-). We should create a game more funny.

I didn't like the idea of bot leveling (or growing without level), cause this generate one big problem: LAG.

Players must login to play, not keep logged to grow yours characters.

That is the reason for implemente the system

First 10 points (normal)
Next 10 points (reduces experience gain in 10%)
Next 10 ponts (reduces in 10%)
Next 10 points (reduces in 20%)
Next 10 points (reduces in 30%)
Next 10 points (reduces in 50%)
Next 10 points (reduces in 80%)
Next 10 points (No more XP in this row)

If you want to keep playing cause there are funny people, you're in a quest, you're leaning a new combat tactic. Talking with you future husband in game. Ok.. keep it playing.

We want a game played with humans not with programs.

This will not kill bot needs, but will reduce dramaticly.

Put a great miriade of resources in shops even is rare or expensive (in UO when you buy too much in a short period, the shop stock of material is over.) Should be a good idea that shop only will be refilled after some player sell raw material or in another day in game. Same happens if I came in a shop with 1000000 of logs. Nobody will buy so much. Then the shop dealer will say. I can only buy 100, I didn't have money any more.

This will stop the botting for itens to sell.

:-D
Catfish_Man
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Post by Catfish_Man »

Another idea would be to make the [experience, skill points, whatever we're using] be based on how difficult it was to do. So if your level 50 character with the Sword of Infinite Death +712 goes and kills a level one monster thousands of times with a bot, he'd get 0 experience. If your level one character killed the same monster, they'd get normal experience. This avoids bots based on the assumption that humans play better than bots do (which may or may not be true), so if a bot were playing a hard encounter, they'd tend to die a lot. Similarly leveling up spells could be based on a combination of how much effect they had (in damage prevented, hp healed, damage dealt, etc...) and what circumstances it was used in (how strong the monster is relative to you [or was if it's damage being healed, although that could be a pain in the ass to track], etc...)

<edit> another (more annoying) method would be to have a message that was periodically sent to all players, and anyone not responding within, say, 10 minutes would be kicked off the server. As stated this seems a bit too annoying, but maybe it could be refined </edit>
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Kyokai
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Post by Kyokai »

My plan is to make combat enough fun that players will not want to use bots :D
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Talaroc
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Post by Talaroc »

Oooh, they still will want to. A lot of the time, people who bot aren't in it for the fun of it, they just want to build omni-characters and get ludicrously powerful (or spam people). The carrot alone won't work; there's gotta be a stick in there somewhere, too. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about how bots work to effectively suggest one.
WakkaCraft
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Post by WakkaCraft »

The solution to bots is simple enough. Periodically, a mod ought to wander around greeting other players at random. If one doesn't respond, and continues to move along hunting, the mod sends a whisper/tell to the player asking for a response. If still no response is recieved, the mod sends a message that appears on their screen rather than their chat box. If this doesn't get a reponse, the player is assumed a bot and their account is deleted. Simple as that.
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ElvenProgrammer
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Post by ElvenProgrammer »

I think that using strong security protections, such as encrypted keys could help keeping bots away for a while...
imorgado
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Post by imorgado »

The Wakka method was used in RO servers is a liitle secure, cause every kind of programmer can do a program that see the windows and answer.

The criptoghraphy will be used by bot client too (see openkore example) we use open source method, everyone has code acess.

We can only be bot proof if protections are client independent (as experience method that I propose )
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ElvenProgrammer
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Post by ElvenProgrammer »

My idea was:

Well probably we will have a patch updater right? This will download and overwrite your binaries right? In the binary for every version there's stored the client private key and in the server its public key so we can perform authentication. A bot not knowing the private key wont be able to connect.
We're an open source project but this doesn't mean we have to release the current key the client is using.

:cry:

But if I think at it more it could be avoided because a bot could let the client login and then work. The only solution would be encrypting all the packets so the bot can't add his values but this will mean a lot of overhead for both the server and the client I think, anyway it will be secure until someone finds a way (hex editor?) to get the private key from the client binary. Probabling changing the key and moving it somewhere else in the code weekly will help keeping bots far enough.
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Bjørn
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Post by Bjørn »

The the dynamic updating applies only to the data, not to the executable itself. Besides, people should be allowed to compile their own, modified, client and play the game with that, and distribute it, etc. I mean that's the idea of free software.

I don't think it makes sense to start fiddling with private/public keys. Instead, if we see people botting in a nasty way (not all forms of botting are nasty by default), we can just shut down their account.

An automatic experience growth check could be used to generate alerts to which moderators could respond, but it probably shouldn't start acting on its own.
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Aacheron
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Post by Aacheron »

I think your efforts are very noble, but futile. Simply put, some people are pricks, and no mistake. They get greedy and addicted to powergaming/munchkining, and throwing a proverbial wall in front of their efforts will only encourage the worst cases to break the wall or circumvent it, causing you people to throw another wall in their face, this time better (and more time-consuming to design/create/invent/utilise), though they'll still crack it in the end.

It's like copy-protection on music-CDs - the hackers and crackers are always that one step ahead, since the protection in itself is there to prevent what the hackers are doing; it's reactive while the hackers are active. The point being, you can only do so much until it starts to impair on the normal guy's game somehow, like making it more annoying or more error-prone, etc.

With growing player capacity you will ultimately have to face the horrible things like bot-players and munchkins, a total overthrowing of monetary economy (happens to _every_ MMORPG; I'm just dreading the day Blizzard's noble efforts won't stop the tide...), and such. The game will become an elitist place where newbies have to sacrifice their lives on the altar of TMW to be able to compete.


Just face it, it's reality. I mean, this won't be a problem with low player counts, so encourage players to interact and talk, socialise, while there's still very few of them. The game will thus receive a "socialise"-feel to its environment, as people talk a lot, etc. Introduce more "graphic chat"-feel and "roleplaying in the sense of the word" instead of hack'n'slash - the carrot of the game should be playing and experiencing, not merely leveling up and kitting out.

If you've read about the GNS theory, you should know Gamist players cause trouble in the long run, as they're there for the grand prize in the end, not the trip itself. At least if I paint a caricature.
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