I've been discussing with guildies why the KP rate on other servers like SEA or Taiwan are so high, and we ended concluding that the publisher companies are the ones messing all the stuff,
having less or non rules against botting or
non active GM's around to stop all the illegal stuff.
What i've seen on other games which they literally can't stop botters as they want, but to minimize all this "money around" the game is putting NPC's to sell stuff for players, like the Casino NPC event you guys made with 1k zeny per box. What the server needs aside balance and content is to reduce zeny considerably off the game, and the only way is putting NPC's on game, make people buy stuff from it, something that won't affect any class professions on the game and KP spenders.
I'm of the opinion to put an NPC to sell Infiniums/Blessing powders/Lucky Powder for a reasonably prize. Cause i doubt KP spenders actually buy those to sell them on AH (not worth). There's items on Kafra Shop that simply are not worth and it's better if you put an NPC to be able to sell them.
There are several things to comment:
Botters & active GMs:
ODIN has many botters as well. Just go and check the mermaid sites and you will find a few. You can check the AH about who sells mermaid DNA and how many and you can check the ranking system as well. Some of the botters didn't even have the muse to create a fake guild. And reporting them doesn't seem to help either.
To sum it up: WarpPortal / Gravity doesn't seem to be willing or capable to stop that.
In fact, they supported it partially. They increased the stacking maximum of certain items and gave players access to larger bags ... rather than granting a larger Kafra Storage that can't be used along the way.
And it's not about punishing those guys. It's about eliminating the possibilities to bot!
Inflation:
Keep in mind that a normal trade between players doesn't change the total amount of cash in game. The money is only transferred from one player to another. So it's never a source of an inflation. The two existing ways that prices go up is either by increasing the cash total in the game or by an decreased number of players.
The former means that you get a zeny quest reward or that you sell items to ingame merchants. The latter means that the zeny total is shared among less players => ergo more zeny per player.
Just by adding more zeny-sink merchants, you don't solve the issue. You have to limit the income AND make sure that the income is spent for ongoing / returning demands (pots, repair cost, AH fees, etc.)
If you're able to farm & sell Dayr stuff for 3 zeny per piece in order to buy Infinium, Lucky Powder, etc. from a zeny-sink merchant later, you achieved nothing. After a certain amount of time, such a player has satisfied his demand for the zeny-sink stuff (infinium, etc), but is still able to farm & sell Dayr stuff. .
Monopolism:
Another severe problem in MMORPGs is shared with the real-life economy. Money tends to be accumulated by a small number of persons.... in case of RO2, the Kafra Shop accelerates that a lot.
As I said earlier, normal trades between players don't affect the zeny total. Kafra Items however are tradeable! Since there's a demand without a real supply for f2p players, those Kafra sellers sooner or later become so wealthy, that this group will start to trade items with a stable value (costumes, etc.) to abnomal prices that f2p players will never reach at all.
The seedrunes made this even worse! It's because the rune-removers are kafra-only items and the combination with unbalanced seeds resulted in a HARD limitation for f2p players and that resulted in the cost per seedrune we have today.
That's why a good game keeps the pay2win items temporary, untradeable and/or cosmetic.
To sum it up: It's the GREED of the Kafra shop owners (both on SEA & ODIN) that ruined the economy in the first place.
Introducing zeny sink merchants now doesn't solve the eiltary monopolism that was caused. It's an exchange of one stable currency with another. That's of course, unless the sold items are either temporary (lose value) or cosmetic.
Solution:
In order to stabilize the economy and to prevent bots / macros, you can concentrate on the following list:
1. Make hiding classes visible during gathering
That should have been implemented almost 2 years ago. Yes, that would make it harder for Artisans, but that's quite ok.
2. Random respawn zones / times and stackable spots
If Yggdrassil, Pillarnium or Gold Ore is on the same spot on every channel, there'll be bots.There are random respawn locations already, so just use this more often. And channels don't have to match exactly.
Use "stacks" rather than simple respawn times. Collectables should replenish themself slowly stack per stack. Early gathering only gives you the currently restored amount. Farming / botting the same spots results in a much lower outcome than finding a "fresh" spot.
3. Focus on merchants & special sales:
A crafting design is a monster drop? - Then you missed a flavorful way for a zeny-sink. Every item that is found not bought hasn't reduced the in-game cash. And if the found item is sold, the total rather goes up .
That's why I would even go so far to remove all the Dayr Desert gear drops and let merchants sell the Scorpion // Desert Storm gear instead. Less stress to find them (good for noels) and no zeny grind.
To limit the access to certain items, introduce special sale offers. Either a gambling system à la Diablo or Torchlight (random item boxes), temporary "first come first serve" items like in Borderlands or event-based special reward (f.e. Osiris designs as a daily- // union- // event-reward).
4. Increased overall drop chance, but a level-dependant decrease
Decrease the drop chance if the monsters you kill are far below your level. Bots usually avoid harder monsters as they require a higher attemtion. It's still fair: Lower success chance, but a faster kill ratio.
To prevent super rare items, increase the overall drop chance. More incentives to do the Khara quests early or to kill monsters of your level for an extra income,
5. Nerf mermaid and balance pets in general
Field pets ought to be weaker than dungeon pets. Farming indoor forces players to at least reenter the dungeon (hard for bots). Mermaids don't deserve to be grade-3 and the DoT shouldn't have a 1sec trigger.
More generally: Redo the pet system. It should be impossible that a lvl 4 pet can increase your DPS by more than 20% (just compare DoT vs. buff pets) and that heal pets are better than class skills.
6. Inconvenient at base, but a cost for convenience
I mentioned the bag size and item stack maximum. And stackable Thief pots? It's also a mystery, why a 30% Thief Pot is free of cost (as well as the guild bonus), but a 10% Pontera buff isn't? Buffs are better than pots in general, because bots can't simply return to refresh the buff.
Redo the attendance rewards (coins // daily-buffs instead) and make relevant items buyable / craftable => another zeny-sink. Guilds shouldn't give passive benefits either: A luck chance bonus, XP boost, lowered repair cost, etc could all be transformed into buffs (*cough* activated in a guild housing *cough').
Many players like to have more Kafra Flight stations => Perfect feature for a zeny sink. Some don't like the gear durability loss, but a faster loss and a bit more cumbersome repair kit usage (only the selected itemis repaired) and you've stopped most "combat-related" bots. Just make sure that there's an adequate warning.
7. Avoid stationary fights
I suggested that you become ML when you complete the main quest. RHD should then be your place to go. Thereafter clear Bapho, Arena, CoA, AoD and Chaos dungeon to level up. The advantage is that dungeons force you to move to the next target ()they don't respawn). Just use Osiris Temple as a reference. Increase the monster count the further you get into a dungeon and you prevented the "first room farming" issues.
For field monsters: Scatter them over a wider area (see mukas), reduce the respawn times (see one-spot mermaid farming), mix-in ranged attackers (need special care) and make monsters "smarter" in general. They could use hit-&-run tactics, place bombs (see marinespheres), place stackable debuffs that require either special pots or cross-class support, etc. etc. Anything that forces a specialized reactions every few minutes makes bots less likely (especially if it's based on the in-game visual, not just on the overlay icons).
8. Introduce more (repetitive) quests
Current quests are uninteresting and have at least a daily limit. So further lower the drop chance of monsters unless a certain quest is activated and even introduce quests without a special limit (other than finishing). Then you'd have to turn in (maybe even use the newly added Kafra flights) to do it again. You can even invent a "random quest" option in analogy to RHD.
All in all, it's not that hard to implement a stable economy and a bot-free game. You just have to be willing to learn and remove the common pitfalls. But if a screen shake or map zoom has a higher priority, it might take a while >_>
Edited by Greven79, 09 October 2014 - 05:52 AM.
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