How to Fix Resource Farming Exploitation

[Balinor of Pk?]

Balinor's idea is to end scripting all together.... doesn't sound like a fix to Resource Farming, alth

Seriously? I never said anything of the sort. There's 2 scripting programs out that I've heard of. And if the major old one was discontinued, you lose 99 percent of the scripts. Which ends most of the scripting. Then all you have left is the real scripters, which is probly only one percent of the entire problem. The economy would right itself fairly quickly, the problem is, you'd lose a TON of accounts because the people who can't script, but use scripts religiously, would just quit. It would be worse than mass bannings.

 

[Woodsman]

the problem is, you'd lose a TON of accounts because the people who can't script, but use scripts religiously, would just quit. It would be worse than mass bannings.

Which goes back to the question of: Rather than having the devs spend god knows how much time to come up with a solution, test it, go back and revise it some more, test it again, and then finally implement it, why not use the mechanisms that are already in place: Have the GMs deal with people who are reported for scripting. This is a tried and true method - in the past, they investigated people exploiting the system, and they banned them and all of their associated accounts.

If there is a cap or restraint on resources, the moment that word gets out that any major changes are coming to resources to deal with scripting, the scripters might go into overdrive before it hits their shard. Then again, if it slows down everybody's resource gathering, the scripters are still ahead of the game.

Any changes short of banning their accounts will not affect their ability to script.

 

[Woodsman]

Can I ask why people would rather come up with complex systems or fixes rather than just asking BioWare to ban the scripters and all of their associated accounts?

Right now it seems like the speed limit is 60, there are folks doing 80, and so the response is to lower the speed limit to 40. That doesn't actually do anything - the people who were traveling above the speed limit are still going to be traveling above the speed limit.

 

[HD2300]

the problem is, you'd lose a TON of accounts because the people who can't script, but use scripts religiously, would just quit. It would be worse than mass bannings.

Which goes back to the question of: Rather than having the devs spend god knows how much time to come up with a solution, test it, go back and revise it some more, test it again, and then finally implement it, why not use the mechanisms that are already in place: Have the GMs deal with people who are reported for scripting. This is a tried and true method - in the past, they investigated people exploiting the system, and they banned them and all of their associated accounts.

If there is a cap or restraint on resources, the moment that word gets out that any major changes are coming to resources to deal with scripting, the scripters might go into overdrive before it hits their shard. Then again, if it slows down everybody's resource gathering, the scripters are still ahead of the game.

Any changes short of banning their accounts will not affect their ability to script.

Caps are a once off cost solution. Similar proven cap systems that work are already in place such as with the escort quests.

The GM banning strategy would be an ongoing cost, and has been in place for the last 10 years and is proven not to work. Implementing a cap based system would not take long, unless you are challenged. So the cost effective solution would be Caps. Another alternative would be a diminishing returns systems.

Although you would still be able to script, instead of 1 account, you would need say 12 accounts to script 24/7. Which may actually benefit EA, as more accounts = more profit.

Will they do anything other than token bannings? No, because randomised resources shows that they value scriptor accounts more than real p(l)ayers.

 

[Woodsman]

The GM banning strategy would be an ongoing cost, and has been in place for the last 10 years and is proven not to work.

Banning a ****load of accounts, and deleting all items, resources and houses tied to somebody scripting does have an impact, especially if you make sure and go after everything tied to the person doing the scripting.

And the GMs are already an ongoing cost as it is, because they are already there and on the job.

No, because randomised resources shows that they value scriptor accounts more than real p(l)ayers.

There is one odd thing that makes me slightly agree with you: BioWare refuses to go after the most blatant of the low-hanging fruit. The search engine and book scripters are doing it right in front of everybody, and it's a running joke in-game. People openly joke about it in-game.

That's not meant to be slander at the developers: Those scripts/bots have been reported time and time again, they have been mentioned publicly here on Stratics over a year ago, they were acknowledged by Cal and his spreadsheets, Jeff alluded to them in the producer's letter last week.

Somebody with Twitter ask Jeff about the scripters, please.

 

[Zyon Rockler]

The main problem is, resources never run out. The next is, the resource spot never moves and then the next would be, the character never gets tired and can repeat the same action endlessly.

I really don't know if this is a problem or not, with fixes being so easy there must be other underlining issues. For example: The importance of having a scriptor.

One thing they could do is stop recalling so that you can't do it to many times, like 1 recall every 10 minutes for a series of 10 minutes could begin some type of spell penalty, so that after several hours, you just would not be able to recall anywhere.

The character should get tired randomly and you should have to go to a bed and rest. Players that are active would be able to do this while scriptor's characters would fall asleep.

Also, they could get hungry. This could easily be incorporated into mining and lumberjacking and even fishing. Your character could request a random type of food and not allow you to go back to mining or lumberjacking until it was satisfied.

The resource could run out and never replenish. So, the guy goes once, that spot is done for the day. This would be another quick fix.

Also, you could add spawns, where if you cut a tree, a tree fellow would spawn depending on the type of wood you were gathering, randomly and kill the scriptor. Same thing with ore. This seems to work with fishing. Then just use the tools as a guarantee for the spawns, like your gargoyle axe or if they brought in some type of magic hatchet, like a tree fellow axe or something.

I would have like to have seen the trees and ore deposits done differently. These guys can mark a book and then use that book every day because the trees never move. They can do the same thing with ore.

I would have liked to have seen the mountains become mountains, elevated land with trees and grass. Mines would have only been holes dug into the sides of these mountains.

The spots would have moved around on server up. So, mining spots could be completely closed and new ones opened. Then they could have been more like dungeons.

Also, one of the things I think about is random tree spots and plants. Like, imagine every day you wake up and the server has changed all of the trees and all of the plants.

Each plant, its' own individual type with a resource. For example: A Bloodwood Tree would spawn and it would have BloodWood or a Nightshade plant and it would have Nightshade.

So, these things could be randomized and look like what they are, rather than a static map, that never changes.

If you have a tree and a plant, even a stone or other object when the server goes down, as it brings itself back up, it could change those objects.

 

[IMTHEWHITERABBIT]

To get back on point,

Lumberjacking and Mining need revision because they are being manipulated by mass farming.

The mass acquisition of ingots and boards then allows profitable abuse of the Player Crafted Item -> NPC for gold system.

.


Allie

PLEASE TELL WHAT SHARD HAS AN ABUNDANCE OF INGOTS AT A FAIR PRICE, so I can x-shard and buy them all up. THERE ARE NO INGOTS IN LARGE QUANITIES ANY WHERE.

 

[Viper09]

PLEASE TELL WHAT SHARD HAS AN ABUNDANCE OF INGOTS AT A FAIR PRICE, so I can x-shard and buy them all up. THERE ARE NO INGOTS IN LARGE QUANITIES ANY WHERE.

Which I guess would beg the question as to why they wouldn't sell them on player vendors...

I brought this question up many times because I just don't understand why craft with the resources and sell to npcs when players are more than eager to buy the resources.

 

[Raptor85]

PLEASE TELL WHAT SHARD HAS AN ABUNDANCE OF INGOTS AT A FAIR PRICE, so I can x-shard and buy them all up. THERE ARE NO INGOTS IN LARGE QUANITIES ANY WHERE.

you'd need a time machine back to before the bod changes were announced, it suddenly became more profitable to keep the ingots for bods and demand for valorite and other high end metals skyrocketed.

 

[Perma Fried]

PLEASE TELL WHAT SHARD HAS AN ABUNDANCE OF INGOTS AT A FAIR PRICE, so I can x-shard and buy them all up. THERE ARE NO INGOTS IN LARGE QUANITIES ANY WHERE.

Which I guess would beg the question as to why they wouldn't sell them on player vendors...

I brought this question up many times because I just don't understand why craft with the resources and sell to npcs when players are more than eager to buy the resources.

Here's my guess:

Scripters irritate people to the point that they'll literally take hours out of their day to hunt them down, file reports, page GM's, etc.

So maybe over the years the scripters have learned that they're less likely to get caught by remaining as low profile as possible. They may make less $ selling to npcs but they're far less likely to get catch compared to being that vendor(s) who always has 10k of every ingot for sale or any other player to player transaction that becomes suspicious over time.

 

[Balinor of Pk?]

I think it was Woodman that said it best, I just skimmed, but putting in a cap limits no one but you. Scriptors will get the cap every day 24/7 days a week. You'll get it once a week when you are mining to make one suit. A cap limits nothing but YOUR ability to get resources, scripters will still get their caps every day all day long. And the only thing it will do is skyrocket the price of ingots. You'll make a little more cash, but the scripters will make a FORTUNE. Guaranteed.

 

[pgib]

We could start with a button in the help panel saying "report a scripter": press, pop out the target cursor, choose the target, thanks, end.

As it is now the help dialog is very confusing.

"Is the scripter harassing me? well, no. But it is exploiting game mechanics. Maybe. Anyway i don't need help: ì'm actually helping you!"

Button A -> report scripter -> target the char -> thanks
Button B -> report cheater -> target the char -> thanks
Button C -> report offensive language -> target/choose from chat -> thanks
Button D -> request in game assistance -> you gotta be kidding me...

 

[allie_oops]

I didn't disappear I'm going to make a video and a full report of where the exploitation potential lies, and exactly how fast script lumberjacking/mining can be.



It's good to see so many of you , aside from Balinor and Woodsman grasp the idea of a resource cap.

It has no potential of hurting you. You'd have to Lumberjack/Mine for about 14 hours to hit the proposed cap. That's what a script can do in about 4-5 hours.

It only hurts scripters.

A side benefit is if the scripters wanted to continue farming the quantity they do now they would be required to open many more accounts. Meaning more money for EA, and an increased fiscal strain on actual farming operations.



Paired with monitoring Heartwood, since Saws/Kits are so desirable right now, it's a great way to put the low end script kiddies out on the street, and take a bite out of the more organized script kiddies.


I'll report back once my research is done, on both systems. Or if this thread needs a good ol fashioned bump

Hugs and Knowledge,
Allie

 

[allie_oops]

Here's my guess:

Scripters irritate people to the point that they'll literally take hours out of their day to hunt them down, file reports, page GM's, etc.

So maybe over the years the scripters have learned that they're less likely to get caught by remaining as low profile as possible. They may make less $ selling to npcs but they're far less likely to get catch compared to being that vendor(s) who always has 10k of every ingot for sale or any other player to player transaction that becomes suspicious over time.

Bingo. It's all about the dependability of selling to NPCs with the current system. Continued profit at a set cost allows you to forecast, and exponentially grow.

Instant cash beats waiting for players to buy something any day.

 

[allie_oops]

Can I ask why people would rather come up with complex systems or fixes rather than just asking BioWare to ban the scripters and all of their associated accounts?

Right now it seems like the speed limit is 60, there are folks doing 80, and so the response is to lower the speed limit to 40. That doesn't actually do anything - the people who were traveling above the speed limit are still going to be traveling above the speed limit.

You can train a new Lumberjacker on a trial account in under 1 day So clearly banning accounts is not the answer.

If the idea of a resource cap feels complex, I'd be happy to field your queries and break it down for you.

The system needs fixing silly, it's as obvious as daylight... to most of us

 

[Woodsman]

If the idea of a resource cap feels complex, I'd be happy to field your queries and break it down for you.

Making resources more valuable by imposing caps won't hurt multi-account scripters.

A side benefit is if the scripters wanted to continue farming the quantity they do now they would be required to open many more accounts. Meaning more money for EA, and an increased fiscal strain on actual farming operations.

It won't strain them. Even if a scripter under your system does in 4-5 hours what a legitimate player does in 14 hours, you forget one key thing: Scripting resources is easy real-life money and requires very little time every day.

If somebody is making $2,000 a month scripting after the costs of their accounts are paid for, and under your system they have to open up 20 more accounts to make that same $2,000 a month, they'll do it in a heartbeat, because it's only $200 more a month for those 20 accounts. It's not like they are paying taxes on it anyways.

I'm trying to be careful about what I say because of the Stratics TOS, but I really don't think you have a grasp of how the bigger scripters work or how easy it really is and how very little time it actually requires once you are up and running.

If they have to open up 20 more accounts and spend $200 more a month on account costs, they aren't going to sweat it. Most of the bigger scripters probably have literally dozens of fully skilled accounts that are dormant because of UO losing players over the years. They won't even have to train up new accounts.

 

[Woodsman]

I didn't disappear I'm going to make a video and a full report of where the exploitation potential lies

If there is in fact an exploit, then ban the people doing it. It used to happen in UO - people used to be banned for exploits and the exploits closed. That may surprise some, but it's true.

You can train a new Lumberjacker on a trial account in under 1 day So clearly banning accounts is not the answer.

A trial account is not allowed to mine or lumberjack colored resources, so they aren't going to be able to mine or lumberjack colored resources on the freebie accounts.

If the actual person was truly banned, and barred from opening up additional accounts ever again, we could see real progress.

You're making this more complex than it needs to be. If people are exploiting, deal with those people rather than imposing a brand new system that affects everybody.

 

[Theo_GL]

Please respect that this thread is not about your opinion on scripting - on either side of the fence.


Raptor85, in response to

Limits are never a proper answer, It always ends up punishing players as well and rarely has effect on scripting. scripting's cause is a core problem with the system. The design of the system is
1. simple and repetitive
2. rewards time spent significantly more than effort




If you set an obtainable ore/wood amount at a level that would require 5 hours of constant gameplay (ie 5 hours via script) to do , you would not effect even 1% of the playerbase. I can say this with confidence.


The problem is how easy these systems can turn their resources into NPC gold to be honest, if they just bulk sold the resource on the player market our game would not suffer the consequences of a continual influx of new currency derived from it.

That doesn't help. Lets say you limit mining, lumberjacking, fishing to 5 hours a day. A script will simply switch from one to the other getting in 5 hours of each. Multi client across 4 diff accounts and you are still running non-stop.

Limits are not the answer. The answer is not making these things so hard to achieve to the 'casual' player.

What if each swing of the axe brought 20 ore instead of 2 in Fel? What if you could work to locate a val vein and then once found - mine up to 1000 ore before reset?

If the system were like this - anyone needing ingots could get them easier and thus not need to resort to buying from a scripter. With less need for scripters - they stop scripting.

I haven't seen ingot scripters in quite some time but they have picked up again now that bod bribing and runics are needed again. They go where the money is to be made. Remove the extreme scarcity and they go away.

Look at mining Gems - completely ridiculous to gather them in any quantity necessary to craft with. You HAVE to buy from a scripter because who can mine 100-200 blue saphires needed to make jewelry? No one but a scripter. Make it easier to obtain - and I'll gather them myself. Scripters will move on.

 

[Raptor85]

I haven't seen ingot scripters in quite some time but they have picked up again now that bod bribing and runics are needed again.

Any of the prodo shards, check out the backfaces of the north minoc mountains, and the orc-fort facing side of the mountains by cove. Can hop on any time of day and find them around. They basicly just moved out to out of the way locations like that when resources were randomized, makes them less likely for players to stumble across and kill or report but gives the exact same resource haul now. There's actually MORE of them on the more dead shards like origin, mass mine/lumberjack them there and crossshard the resources along with anything else to sell as it's safer than shards like atlantic. The ones you're seeing now are the small timers who aren't smart enough to hide, people scripting it for personal use hoping to get a few easy mil off valorite hammers, this will last until for a month or two until the price of runics completely crashes or something new comes along.

 

[Ezekiel Zane]

From a FoF way back when.

ORIGIN - Ultima Online - Main

August 10, 2007

"Why did you randomize resource spawn in this publish?"
This change is getting more debate right now than the PvP changes, so here's Wilki with the scoop:

"The resource change was made for several reasons, but mostly because of the obvious one: "Rare" resources aren't very rare if you can recall to a runebook full of them and collect as many as you want on demand. Besides just not making a whole lot of sense, we felt that this would limit any future systems that might rely on certain resources being more rare than others.

That said, there seems to be a little confusion about what we actually changed in Pub46. We didn't just do a one-time randomization of resource spots so that players have to create new runebooks of rare resource spawns; instead, as a resource is mined, it has a chance to respawn as something else when it restocks. The actual odds of finding a particular resource type has not been changed, with the exception of the 4 rarest wood types, which will now spawn much more frequently as follows:

Frostwood has increased from 0.1% to 1%
Bloodwood has increased from 0.2% to 2%
Heartwood has increased from 0.3% to 3%
Yew has increased from 1% to 5%

Some things that we're considering for the future:

[highlight]Making the rarer resources spawn more often in the more dangerous locations
Adding some chance to get better resources from lower end resource spots (perhaps based on skill)
Increasing the amount you can get from a resource spot for the rarer resources (for example, if you found a valorite spot, it'd give considerably more ore than an iron spot)"[/highlight]

Obviously the highlighted items being considered for the future never made it into the game.

 

[Macrophage999]

The price devaluation on NPC vendors only happens with stacked items, commodities, like ingots, gems, wood, etc.

It doesn't happen on shields, bows, tables, etc. That's what needs addressing.


There's a big difference in making a calculated amount each hour, then waiting for players to buy things. Might as well do both, but from an organization standpoint it'd be silly to rely on the player market when you can manufacture you're own gold.



Convincing you of this being a real issue is not my concern, lol. The point is to show a flaw to the Developers that allows bulk gold to be created.

Nothing more.


Flaws need attention drawn to them when they have the potential to ruin things... yes people are doing this, I didn't just make this up.

You don't have to believe me, just believe the math

Price devaluation does happen on commodities, shields etc. It's just it takes forever to sell 500 of them since they don't stack... And even more time to craft... No one serious would ever believe that scripters make money from selling crafted items to the npc.

Moreover, scripting or not, getting 25K normal wood in one hour is a good figure. That sells for 50K on the npc, not 300...

 

[Raptor85]

you sure? there are seperate vendor systems for commodities and normal items on all shards, not sure which one stuff like sheields use, but the one used on siege for all vendors, as we dont have special commodity ones ,every time a vendor is bought out of an item it restocks without double the amount within the hour, but the price NEVER changes under this system. Cant say for certain how it works on other shards though, but then it's not a problem here as we can't sell to vendors anyways.

 

[Macrophage999]

you sure? there are seperate vendor systems for commodities and normal items on all shards, not sure which one stuff like sheields use, but the one used on siege for all vendors, as we dont have special commodity ones ,every time a vendor is bought out of an item it restocks without double the amount within the hour, but the price NEVER changes under this system. Cant say for certain how it works on other shards though, but then it's not a problem here as we can't sell to vendors anyways.

I have actually never sold over 500 unstackable items to a npc, but I did buy over 500 shields to fill in bods, and price did go up.

 

[Raptor85]

ok, the vendor system must be completely different there then, i dont remember it doing that back in 06/07ish when i was last on prodo shards, but then that was quite some time ago. On siege though prices dont change, only quantity available does (everything starts at 20, if it doesnt sell out in a hour it drops in half, if it does it doubles). Could have sworn that's how all blacksmith vendors worked.

 

[Balinor of Pk?]

I like how allie tries to make it look like her opinion is the only one that matters and is right, when she can't even grasp the concept of supply and demand. If you limit the resources with a cap, the price skyrockets and you make mining/lumberjacking the biggest target for scripters in UO. Guaranteed. Notice how you don't see a lot of people scripting bods lately? Cause everyone and their brother is going to be doing it, and getting a hammer now is about as hard as dropping a gold check in the trash. They all went where the money is. There's no money in bods anymore except for maybe getting powder...