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#51 1756492860

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Posted 04 August 2013 - 11:46 PM

EtNox has a point. i don't think botters would bother spending 15 minutes for each character they have to MANUALLY create, especially if there's a high risk of getting them all banned.


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#52 Themes

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Posted 04 August 2013 - 11:48 PM

There's no way I'm going to make any new characters if it takes me 15 minutes to get out of the training grounds while doing various anti-bot measures. Unless I come out of it a level 40-50 first class character I guess.

 

It may not affect completely new players, but even new-ish players who want to try out a new class or make a vend slave or something will be discouraged and any experienced players will be seriously put off.

 

Unfortunately without going all jRO it's going to be impossible for the GM team to prevent the botters creating new accounts and characters. The GM team have said they're putting more resources into banning the bots, we can let them know if we see anything and they'll keep doing things about it.


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#53 kbb93

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Posted 05 August 2013 - 04:47 AM

Scrap the whole 15-extra-minute idea. It hurts real players. It does NOT hurt bots. All it will do will hinder the botters for a few days until a new line of code comes out that can automatically run through the training ground. 

 

The reason bots are still rampant on the server is because the gardeners at Gravity take a 'trimming' approach instead of a 'pull the damn weed out.'

To effectively get rid of bots we need to look deeper into the problem and fight fire with fire: coding. Check out Segaia's post on this thread:

http://forums.warppo...n-thread/page-4

 

Regardless of the bot dispute on this thread i'll say again this is not the place to discuss it. We're supposed to be discussing how to improve the new player experience and all I'm hearing is updates that will deter them (and myself, actually).


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#54 Jaffer

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Posted 05 August 2013 - 05:57 AM



Scrap the whole 15-extra-minute idea. It hurts real players. It does NOT hurt bots. All it will do will hinder the botters for a few days until a new line of code comes out that can automatically run through the training ground. 

 

The reason bots are still rampant on the server is because the gardeners at Gravity take a 'trimming' approach instead of a 'pull the damn weed out.'

To effectively get rid of bots we need to look deeper into the problem and fight fire with fire: coding. Check out Segaia's post on this thread:

http://forums.warppo...n-thread/page-4

 

Regardless of the bot dispute on this thread i'll say again this is not the place to discuss it. We're supposed to be discussing how to improve the new player experience and all I'm hearing is updates that will deter them (and myself, actually).

 

Dude.  I don't know what your understanding of programming is, but I will clearly outline the issue with modifying the client/server code (aside from the fact that gravity doesn't really have the code)

 

 

 

All it will do will hinder the botters for a few days until a new line of code comes out

 


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#55 kbb93

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Posted 05 August 2013 - 06:38 AM

Dude.  I don't know what your understanding of programming is, but I will clearly outline the issue with modifying the client/server code (aside from the fact that gravity doesn't really have the code)

 

I'm not sure what you're getting at.


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#56 Jaffer

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Posted 05 August 2013 - 07:01 AM

I'm not sure what you're getting at.

 

Here:

  1. Gravity US doesn't have the code so they can't change how the client and server communicate.
  2. Modifying the communication code would simply require someone to open up WPE or a similar packet monitoring program, watch the incoming and outgoing packets and adjust the codebase to communicate similarly
  3. When you boil away all the details, it would be nearly the same as modifying the training grounds

 

It's not that the idea isn't well-thought or clever and it would cause quite a number of botters to get banned initially.  But it would be bypassed in the course of a week, the bot program would have new code merged in, and within 2 weeks all botters would be up and running again.

 

I think the best way to deter botters is to go through with a more indepth training grounds, but have GMs manually change things on a weekly basis.  So have 10+ NPCs that ask questions, and every week reorder the questions, rephrase them, or change them altogether.  Even if it only takes 3 days for botters to adjust, that's 3 botfree days a week, almost 50% of the week.  That'll greatly hinder the bot market.

 

And then make it so that if you have VIP you can bypass the training grounds completely.  So even if botters pay for VIP to go through, Gravity is making many many dollars and that's nice, then the botters can be banned at a later stage.

 

There is no easy fix nor is there really even a permanent fix to the bot problem.  We need to reward players for going to maps with rares and necessary drops.  I think turn ins for low levels at places that drop useful items would be great.  Start them low, push the bots out and raise the chance of them being reported.  Increase the supply of WoE items through incentive.  Removing the need for bots would be the most effective counter to botting.


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#57 Melkor

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Posted 05 August 2013 - 06:18 PM

..


Edited by Melkor, 05 August 2013 - 06:19 PM.

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#58 Melkor

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Posted 05 August 2013 - 06:31 PM

So, tell me what's wrong about it.

15 minutes to create a toon won't hurt people who are willing to play this game for years now.

15 minutes a toon won't hurt newbies which have no clue about this game whatsoever.

 

15 minutes a toon will only hurt people who are spam-creating them, which are most likely people requiring a ton of them -> most likely people which want to bot.

 

To reach our "no bots or at least an acceptable amount" goal we have to

A: Speed up the process of Bots banned.

B: Increase the number of people hunting bots.

C: Slow down/Cap the number of bots being created in a set amount of time.

 

Let's do some simple math:

A GM bans 50 bots/h.

We have 10 botters creating 20 bots/h per person.

 

200 bots/H are created, our GM needs 4 hours - or we need 4 GMs to keep up with 10 people.

 

A GM bans 50 bots/h.

We have 10 botters creating 4 bots/h per person (maximum possible).

40 bots/h are created, our GM needs less time to ban them then people have to spend on creating them.

 

But what am i even talking...you even protected ragial for "working as intended" when it's clearly abused for years. I guess you don't get why I even come up with "math" or something like this in a discussion about bots. In the whole wrong thread.

 

tl;dr, no time for flamers.

 

I completely agree with the "weekly customization" of the training grounds, but even then I daresay that the GMs will not have the time (nor interest) to undergo such a course of action.    

 

Eliminating the NEED for bots on the other hand, would be a very good idea.  The difficulty therein lies in the execution.  Some have suggested to me that highly botted items (SP items, bombs, starsands, etc) used for WoE only can be obtained only through battlegrounds or something.   I'm not sure about the efficiency (or capability) of this solution, but it's worth mentioning in this thread.


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#59 EtNox

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Posted 06 August 2013 - 03:33 AM

Eliminating the NEED for bots on the other hand, would be a very good idea.  The difficulty therein lies in the execution.  Some have suggested to me that highly botted items (SP items, bombs, starsands, etc) used for WoE only can be obtained only through battlegrounds or something.   I'm not sure about the efficiency (or capability) of this solution, but it's worth mentioning in this thread.

 

Taking the chance for lower players to farm stuff for woe-supplies at larger guilds - yeah, that's the real idea. Talking about "are we a pserver now" in other threads, and suggesting giving out basically free supplies for WoE is the best idea.


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#60 Jaffer

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Posted 06 August 2013 - 05:06 AM

Taking the chance for lower players to farm stuff for woe-supplies at larger guilds - yeah, that's the real idea. Talking about "are we a pserver now" in other threads, and suggesting giving out basically free supplies for WoE is the best idea.

 

We still use 2000+ bombs weekly on ET, Okolnir, etc.  Additionally, it really depends on the cost-effectiveness of the BG mats.

 

Now that the WoE scene has died down it may no longer be a good idea, though.


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#61 Melkor

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Posted 06 August 2013 - 08:36 AM

All right, flamer blocked.  No time for pointless inflammatory comments here.

 

That is true, but the hope is to bring the WoE scene back, or at least I presume it is.  Assuming that we could do that, getting players to farm supplies by doing BG would not only make real players get their own supplies, but would also inadvertently help them become better pvpers and players in general.  Perhaps if this was followed through, we  could lower the level limit of BG from 80 to 60 or something of the sort. 

 

Also it would have to be finagled so that "WoE bombs" would be obtainable only through BG and "PvM bombs" could still be made properly.  This might be difficult.  


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#62 Jaffer

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Posted 06 August 2013 - 12:39 PM

Well it'd be "WoE Bombs" and "Bombs you can use anywhere."


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#63 Themes

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Posted 06 August 2013 - 01:06 PM

Is there actually a way to separate the two?


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#64 Jaffer

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Posted 06 August 2013 - 01:22 PM

Is there actually a way to separate the two?

 

They can make items WoE only, since it corresponds to a map flag.

 

I can't imagine doing the opposite is hard, but why separate them.  BG Bombs are WoE only, brewed bombs have no restrictions.


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#65 Xellie

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Posted 06 August 2013 - 01:26 PM

They can make items WoE only, since it corresponds to a map flag.

 

I can't imagine doing the opposite is hard, but why separate them.  BG Bombs are WoE only, brewed bombs have no restrictions.

 

Because the items would have to have different ID numbers and the skill can only use the one that it is coded to take?

 

And p sure changing that would be a case of begging kRO / waiting 7 years


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#66 Themes

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Posted 06 August 2013 - 01:28 PM

Direct consumables I can understand, but something like bombs that are used through a skill might be trickier. I'm not really sure of specifics but like many things it's really hard to think up new ideas without actually knowing what's possible.


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#67 JohnNooodles

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Posted 06 August 2013 - 01:29 PM

Wouldn't it be better to give the ingredients to make the things and not just the supplies?  That seems way to cheap or easy to just get bombs and kinda restricting.  This way it's based of your success rate or a brewer's rate.  As long as the items are tradeable and not vendable.


Edited by JohnNooodles, 06 August 2013 - 01:30 PM.

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#68 EtNox

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Posted 06 August 2013 - 04:18 PM

The fun fact about the whole stuff is that turning iro into some sort of random pserver with infinite woe-supplies is plain out ridiculous.

 

Melkor's idea is plain out stupid because people will always bot something if it's possible to bot it. Removing some stuff from the list because it's basically for free will just push the botwaves somewhere else. Or even let them bot the same stuff, just at a new fashion (like it happened in BG).

 

Removing the need of bots is possible if we hand out 99/70 chars with full sets of gear and 30k supplies in kafra for talking to an NPC. But at the same time the whole need to play this game outside of WoE is lost. Do we really want to turn the whole server in a random woe-pserver?

 

There's only one possible way: Slowing down bot creation as much as possible and hunting efficient and frequently.


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#69 Xellie

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Posted 06 August 2013 - 06:09 PM

You realize the reason people bot is because they can leave it running all day? They don't CARE how long it takes. They're NOT THERE.

Real players do care, because they are there.

 

Making new chars take 15mins will annoy real players only. Botters will be like "o guess i have to bot an extra 15 mins hurrr durrrr"


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#70 Melkor

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Posted 06 August 2013 - 10:48 PM

You realize the reason people bot is because they can leave it running all day? They don't CARE how long it takes. They're NOT THERE.

Real players do care, because they are there.

 

Making new chars take 15mins will annoy real players only. Botters will be like "o guess i have to bot an extra 15 mins hurrr durrrr"

 

This.  I don't see how people don't realize that.  

 

But anyway.  The WoE bombs thing was just a suggestion from a friend of mine that I thought worth adding to the thread.


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#71 EtNox

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Posted 07 August 2013 - 07:01 AM

You realize the reason people bot is because they can leave it running all day? They don't CARE how long it takes. They're NOT THERE.

Real players do care, because they are there.

 

Making new chars take 15mins will annoy real players only. Botters will be like "o guess i have to bot an extra 15 mins hurrr durrrr"

 

5 minutes to create 10 bots vs 2 1/2 hours creating 10. What hurts more getting it banned during the next few days?

 

And 15 mins per toon "annoying" the real players? In a close to best case scenario it takes 3 days to 99/70 a toon, spending 10 minutes in 3 days "hurts", oh yeah...


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#72 Oda

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Posted 07 August 2013 - 07:09 AM

Part of the issue is that right now training grounds on both servers is more of a roadblock than a meaningful introduction to the game. Talk to NPCs, kill some monsters, even answer some questions makes the player feel like they are being held back from being part of the "real world". A better training grounds would remove the feeling that the player isn't at the meat of the game yet, which is why most MMOs start with an instance or some epic feeling story event that ushers players gently through the tutorial stuff without it feeling like people reading a textbook to you on how to play. 

 

Making the training grounds an adventure that happens to teach you a little about playing and what classes you can play as (while happening to take a little bit to complete). Optimally new players would gain a better appreciation of the novice class not as the crappy job you have before you really get started in the game, but a class with great undecided potential...


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#73 kbb93

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Posted 07 August 2013 - 07:43 AM

Spoiler

 

To go off of what Oda said...we should use this thread to start to piece together a story line that can be continued. I can't help but recall those cheesy RO episodes released way back when..

 

All of this would be proc'd by time.

It could start off with a scene where the novice character seems to be standing in an abyss [empty map]; all black surrounding him with no direction to turn. Suddenly bright lights start flashing [flasher trap emot] and the character has a foresight into what is happening in the Rune-Midgard [teleported to the top of Endless Tower?]. The character doesn't quite realize what is happening when Naght Seiger and [King? Satan Morroc?] start to converse all the while the protagonist seems to be hidden from the two. There is talk of bringing an end to all humans when suddenly the character wakes up in a room again [New Novice TG's]. The novice then enters the grounds all the while not being able to get the image of the duo out of his head.

 

There's obviously a lot of detail and different wrench's you could throw in there to stir up the plot, but a rough outline like above would be a good place to start.


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#74 Xellie

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Posted 07 August 2013 - 09:56 AM

5 minutes to create 10 bots vs 2 1/2 hours creating 10. What hurts more getting it banned during the next few days?

 

And 15 mins per toon "annoying" the real players? In a close to best case scenario it takes 3 days to 99/70 a toon, spending 10 minutes in 3 days "hurts", oh yeah...

 

It'd would piss ME off, and I'm a real player. I'm sure I'm not alone.

 

Like I said botters aren't "there" (so they don't care what happens at their comp whilst they're AFK or how long it takes) and they don't create bots one after another.... lol they run them all at once what are you smoking?! Where do you get that it would take 2 /1/2 hours  to create 10 bots when in reality they're making 10 at once which would still be 15mins? LOL


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#75 Jaffer

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Posted 14 August 2013 - 09:59 AM

Oh.  Uh, mercenary system.


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