New crafting proposal ...

[zick]

I had an idea for a new crafting proposal to make it "harder" to just macro your way to crafting all sorts of stuff at one NPC.

First, I propose that each crafting NPC can only make one type of item (I'll explain in a minute*), so that you can't just craft the "greatest sword ever" in the very first town if you have all the ingredients. Think of it as the guy in Kill Bill who made the sword. The bride sought out this guy in order to have him make her a sword. A sword from any other guy wouldn't be good enough. So each player should have to seek out a guy to make the sword/armor/clothes/etc. that he wants. Maybe the NPC's house should have stuff on display that he/she might make.

*Second, each single type of item has many variations. These variations are based on the ingredients thrown into the mix. Think back again to the sword maker in Kill Bill. He had some shorter swords and longer swords, some with red hilts and some with blue, but they were all samurai swords. Ok, so based on that example if you give a Crafter 4 iron nuggets you get a short sword, give him 8 and you'll get a long one. Throw some rubies into the mix and you'll get a Jeweled Sword, which is worth more than a regular one. Also along the same line is the fact that two metals can be mixed by a chemist-type NPC into an alloy which is stronger (meaning a heavier attack) and may have a tighter molecular structure which means it may be resistant (or resist at a slower pace) degradation from normal wear and tear. Also certain metal mixes may be resistant to certain elemental forces as well.

I was thinking also that the ores that you find as drops are small enough and light enough to carry a bunch in your pocket, but in their raw state are useless. You need to take these to a chemist who can refine them into ingots (as opposed to nuggets), an ingot being much heavier. You can only carry a couple to the sword-maker, meaning you'll have to make a couple of trips to your house and back before you've handed over enough metal to make a sword (eliminating the macro-ing). The server could maybe keep track of how much stuff you have given to the NPC.

Swords aside, lets say there's an NPC that makes gloves, if you give her 4 pieces of leather you get fingerless gloves, 8 will give you regular gloves. Add some fluff (maybe the fur of Fluffies) and they'll be padded gloves ... fingerless gloves might have +4 def, fingered +7, fingered/padded have +12 (just examples, you can come up with your own).

Maybe there should also be a way to recycle your sword, or break it down into its parts. Maybe in the process of recycling you lose some of the stuff that went into it. A sword that took 8 ingots to make when recycled only makes 5 ingots, or something ...

Discuss ...

[Jaxad0127]

That doesn't eliminate macroing. A bot would just need to keep track of how much it gave and how much is needed.

[Crush]

Is this a proposal for eAthena or for TMWServ?

[zick]

Is this a proposal for eAthena or for TMWServ?

TMWServ, definitely!

@jaxad: A bot may be able to keep track but if a player can only carry 3 ingots at a time and a sword requires 6 to make, the player will have to go back and forth to a storage point (home, bank, etc.) in order to get the required ingredients. This sort of makes crafting quest-like, making the creation of an item more like a quest instead of just sitting there hitting buttons on a dialog box.

This could be used for crafting food with a chef NPC too. He could say something like "You've got the ingredients to make a sandwich ... Oops you don't have any cheese. No sweat, I got some in the pantry over there. I'll get started on making this sandwich if you go fetch me some cheese." So now in order to get something made you have to complete a task as well.

[Jaxad0127]

@jaxad: A bot may be able to keep track but if a player can only carry 3 ingots at a time and a sword requires 6 to make, the player will have to go back and forth to a storage point (home, bank, etc.) in order to get the required ingredients. This sort of makes crafting quest-like, making the creation of an item more like a quest instead of just sitting there hitting buttons on a dialog box.

I still don't see how that's supposed to prevent botting.

This could be used for crafting food with a chef NPC too. He could say something like "You've got the ingredients to make a sandwich ... Oops you don't have any cheese. No sweat, I got some in the pantry over there. I'll get started on making this sandwich if you go fetch me some cheese." So now in order to get something made you have to complete a task as well.

Language processing would help, for a little while, but it could still be programmed around (but not as easily).

[Crush]

Everything can be automatized by a bot. Making things more complicated doesn't make botting impossible. It only makes it more challenging.

I would rather like a crafting system which does not use NPCs but allows the player characters to craft themself. Otherwise crafting skills wouldn't make much sense. I think it would be best to make the crafting itself very userfriendly (just a few mouse clicks, even for making bulk items like potions) and make collecting the ingredients the real quest. Most ingredients should not be obtained by killing monsters but found laying around in form of bushes or ore veins which can be harvested by the player characters. High level ingredients should only be found in remote areas full of dangerous monsters so that the real challenge is to dodge the monsters while searching for resource deposites.

[Shaggy]

Presumably these bushes/ore-veins would be depletable

[Crush]

Yes, of course. I imagine them harvestable once and then they respawn at a random location in the same general area so that you have to search for every unit of material.

Not like in runescape where you harvest metals by clicking on the same lump of ore over and over again for hours.

[zick]

I've never written a bot so I don't know, but I was thinking that a bot could only answer the questions not walk all the way back to a storage site and pick up the items needed and then go back. I thought a bot just clicked the answers on a dialog box.

Along the lines of the missing ingredients at a chef ... what if the smith forgot that he lent his hammer to someone as soon as you finish bringing all the ingredients. After you've brought all the ingredients, he'll say "Oops ... I forgot I lent my hammer to Steve in 'Town X' ... I can't start until my hammer is returned. Maybe you can go retrieve it." or whatever.

[Shaggy]

No problem for a properly programmed bot

[mon]

How about a craftsman that can make a lot of things from the same type materials but different quantities. And every time you go there, the selection is rearranged. And that instead of a text box, make it into a picture box.

I'm thinking of the idea used in some online banking when you enter the pin on the onscreen keypad. The numbers are always rearranged in random so any type of recording - keylogging or mouse tracking will be useless. Unless they are willing to program the bot to recognize pictures aside from location. This could take some time.

[Jaxad0127]

How about a craftsman that can make a lot of things from the same type materials but different quantities. And every time you go there, the selection is rearranged.

As long as it's text, a bot can handle it easily.

And that instead of a text box, make it into a picture box.

I'm thinking of the idea used in some online banking when you enter the pin on the onscreen keypad. The numbers are always rearranged in random so any type of recording - keylogging or mouse tracking will be useless. Unless they are willing to program the bot to recognize pictures aside from location. This could take some time.

Still not good. Even if the client only sends the coordinates back to the server, a bot would only need to do some OCR to find them. Pictures only is bad for usability.

[zick]

Sorry to revive an old topic, but I had another idea along this same line.
So bots can recognize text sent from the sever to the client, but as MON mentioned what about pictures. What if instead of using a dialog box filled with text sent from the server, whenever a player interacts with an NPC, images are displayed (like a quote bubble or thought bubble) based on what the server says that NPC should say. These images could be randomly placed on the screen so that if the the player is using a mouse to interact with the client, he isn't always clicking in the exact same coordinates. Also if you're using a keyboard or gamepad, the images could be given a random focus value so that even if they are displayed in the same area on the screen, always just pressing left once and hitting "Enter" doesn't always render the same result. Yes, these images would have to be included with the client's graphical data but they could be reused, like all shop NPC's can use the same "Buy" "Sell" "Leave" bubbles ... Or maybe the client could dynamically combine several images together at the same time, like maybe an image of an item being sold with an image of the price ... Just an idea and I know it would be a lot more work but could possibly cut down on botting.

[Jaxad0127]

Images only is a usability nightmare. Besides, anything in client data can be emulated by a bot, and so is useless. Bot protection needs to be done server side.

[Crush]

I think there are less interesting things than NPC interaction people want to automatize.

When people feel the urge to automatize things in an online game it is usually because these things are boring and repetive and thus rather perceived as work instead of fun. In this case a good game designer does not think "how can I force people to play parts of my game which are not fun?" but rather "how can I change this aspect of my game to be more fun for the player?".