Bot Farmers, High-End Weapon Pricing, the GW Economy, & Anet

there has been a huge outcry about the recent ai updates to gw but try and view it from anets perspective.

the gw economy has been artificially inflated by bot farmers. im not talking about a person who runs 2-3 comps from his/her dorm room. im referring to the people that invest in 50-100 computers that run bot programs 24/7 for gold and then sell that gold on sites like ebay.

for an economy in an mmo to have reasonable prices for high-end items [<100k for gw], the amount of gold being released by anet must roughly equal the amount of gold thats coming back into anet through money sinks like armor, runes, dyes, etc [less gold that players have will mean that players will be less willing to spend large amounts of gold on said weapons]. since this is obviously not the case, and there is probably an absorbent amount of gold still out there, prices for most high-end items will remain unreachable to the masses [the casual gw player]. anet has tried to remedy this problem by introducing inscriptions and making rare drops from prophecies & factions available in nighfall but even with these new measures in place the amount of gw gold that has been botted probably far outweighs the amount being spent on gold sinks. also, there will always be a select number of high rollers that will always be willing to spend large amounts of gold [ie. 100k+xx ectos] for rare/new weapons. supply and demand plays a small roll because demand will always outweigh supply for rare weapons, its just a matter of pricing.

if the economy stays inflated, the ai update will have been in vain [cause i dont see any other reason why they would have updated the ai other then to curb gold bot farming] and casual players will never have access to rare weapons. but if prices for high-end items all drop well below 100k [except crystallines & dwarven axes, theyll always be 100k+], anet might think theyre doing something right.


edit - there are obviously other factors that contribute to the economy but my analysis is just from a very specific perspective [bot farmers & highend weapon prices] as i dont feel like writing a thesis long post about every aspect of the gw economy.

In regards to Prices of items >100k:

There has already been threads as such posted, flamed and closed.

As for the AI update to curb gold farming "bot"-i think you are talking about sweatshop gold farmers:

Players who ebay will continue to ebay, nothing will change except ebay gold prices. As long as such players or those who are super rich from pre nerf farming continue to choose to pay high amount of gold for some vanity items just because they can afford to do so, Prices for those items will continue to cater to the demand, making it out of reach for most players. The rich control the high-end market, unless Anet decides to rain ecto and make crystallines drop everywhere, the rich will just find some other rare item to indugle on Just because they can

To complaint about this is the same as complaining why we all cant afford to drive Lambogini's to work.

But since the OP is praising/justify Anet for the AI nerf to farming, it really depends how you look at it. In the end, regarless of what anyone say, those who chose to stay with the game will have to live with the changes....or Shout louder than the opposition in hopes of changes.

Uh..

So maybe someone at Anet realized that the AI sucks and decided to fix it? I'm not sure how you can pin intent on any update.

Anet could also just ban the accounts that I have been posting to NCSoft. While they are at it, they could also just ban the scammers I have reported there.

But they dont, Beetletun still remains Bottletun.

(90% of the avatars in that town are bots, easily recognized by starter armor skin, lvl 20 and guildless, plus the fact they move the exact same route)

You should try going to the ice caves, monks go in and out of the international part with starter armour, and always come in go out then after a few times they end up running to storage on the exact same ruote..

The ai update will encourage people to ebay money. Farming for it has become too irksome for people to actually go do it themselves. Anet meant well and it is fun to play against the ai, but it will just help gold farming and selling on the net not hinder it.

You forgot skills. For old characters this is the greatest money sink of them all, because they don't really need new weapons or armors.
One misconception in my view is that farmers only produce gold. Obviously they also "farm" items and runes - a greenfarmer can make way more gold per hour (selling to players) than a Minotaur bot. It is assumed but unproven that farmers shift the balance of goods and gold in favor of gold.

How come? Sounds more like a guess. There may be some collectors around, but they can't display their wealth. Other than collectors older characters need new weapons less an less.

Anyway, I'm a bad farmer, but I can make 10k per hour. So 100+xx ectos translates to 16+ hours of playing for an extraordinary item. Not too much - try the insane time demands of WoW for a change...

This is too true. It's not a matter of bot farming or anything of the sort that makes prices high it's the players that make prices high. Those of us who can afford to will pay a higher price for a vanity item. The analogy of Lamborghinis is quite apt. I see several threads like this crop up at least a dozen times for every chapter release. This is not a loot intensive game. With inscriptions now it is entirely possible to match, mod for mod, a blue item to any high end gold item. The skin is what you pay for not the mods. That being said why complain about prices when you can be just as competitive,albeit uglier, as the guy who can afford to drop 100K or more on a crystalline sword? If you can't afford the skin you want welcome to the world. Go get yourself a collector's weapon and mod it with the appropriate mods. I hear that 15^50 is dirt cheap now.

If the AI changes were just to eliminate botting, there is a problem.

Just go to Yohlon Haven (international)

Although I didn't stick around to watch to see if all of them followed the same path, enough did, and almost all of them mo/w lvl 20 with tats and nonsensical names and/or no guild.

The bots have invaded NF

The AI doesn't affect bots like it does real players.

Bots will just kill whatever over and over again, for measly pickups. I'll bet the only change that Anet has caused with this AI update is an increase in Ebay gold prices.

I laugh my arse off when I think how stupid Anet programmers are.

First off who is Areanet? What game do they make? Secondly the AI is bugged. The responses are correct logically, move when you're hit, run when you need to heal, but the instructions are implmented in goony ways, like when monks run right at you. That is a bug, an unexpected interaction between two or more instructions. There is probably an instruction that says, run x distance when you are below y amount of health. Then you chase after them, they keep running keeping them from regening hence the Forrest Gump on crack running behavior we are seeing. The monk bug is likely an instruction that says when you are targeted run but stay within healing range. This of course does not specify a direction and if they are body blocked or the terrain prohibits them from running away from you they run towards you. The instructions just need to be refined a little more. The AI changes do make botting harder because the scripting for the bots now have to take into account the new AI behaviors, which, because of their goony implementation, is difficult. I'm sure that ANet is doing all they can to iron these bugs out but when you are talking about an AI script that can be a lot of code to consider plus the possible interactions with other instructions within the script for every change you make. AI is just plain difficult to code. For all you complainers though how about you go take a programming course and see just what it takes to write an AI with even simple behaviors.

Just to give you a quick and dirty example here is what AI statements look like when broken down to simplest terms without all the math involved.

IF health is below 50% THEN Run
IF target health is below 50% THEN fight

These are called IF/Then statements and are a very basic programming statement. Now here is where it gets difficult. What happens when both of those statements are true? If there is not a seperate statement for that instance then the computer must interpret the instructions as best it can, or, more often than not just give up and crash. The AI script in this game is likely a hundred or more seperate statements. Imagine all the possible interactions that are there and then tell me that you could prepare for all of them and release a bug free product if you had the necessary skills to program.

Programming is not analagous to plumbing in any way shape or form. You don't get unexpected pipe interactions. A more apt analogy would be a diagnostician. You would indeed pay for their services to diagnose whatever ailment was bothering you, however you also cannot expect them to be 100% accurate every time when many diseases share the same symptoms.

My aim wasn't to be a smart aleck, well with the exception of the typo thing but that's a pet peeve of mine and I'm sorry you're feelings got hurt over it be sure that I'll make an effort to keep such things to myself in the future, but rather to educate you in just why things are the way they are. You're expecting perfection on the first run. How many patches do other games end up having to correct various and sundry problems? You pay for those as well but do you complain about them as vocally? I doubt you do. Programs take refinement, particularly AI. I'm sure that the people you "pay" to program are doing their level best to correct the errors in their code, but it is unreasonable for you to expect it to be right the first or even the second time through when you are talking about something as complex as AI scripting.

Sr0b0, you make alot of assumptions. Those saddle sores must be huge from being up on that high horse so long.

You have no need to "educate" me on how things are. My analogy was not to compare programming to plumbing, but for services paid for that I don't have the skill set to complete myself. You had a long rant on how "I" should try the AI programming to see how difficult it is. Get your arguments straight before you try and support them with unfounded example.

On your other point, I am vocal on bad software that I have paid for. If something is bad, I'll complain about it. Anet should have tested that update a heck of alot more before pushing it out.

Somehow I doubt GW is coded using BASIC, probably C++ with assembly/machine code for compute intesive tasks. I also highly doubt the AI is just a hundred or a couple of hundred conditional statements.

More than likely there are thousands of conditionals that make up the AI in GW. Just imagine a thousand or more people trying to work together, even though they all speak the same language, how well will they work together? How often will personality conflicts arise (read: conflicting coding)?

Coding AI is one of the hardest things to do in programming, however when there are easily found problems just playing the game for a few hours it leads me to wonder just how much testing the AI had before being released. It makes me feel that we (the average GW player) are doing the Beta testing of this product for A-net.

I have been programming for almost 30 years, and I understand what it takes to make a game like GW work, unfortunately very few players in GW understand this.

Only time will tell if the changes to AI will affect the economy in a positive or negative way. I think the change in AI is a great leap forward to marrying the PvE and PvP aspects of this game, making the jump to PvP for PvE casual players will be easier and less stressful if the AI reacts more like real players.

Sigh...people just never satisfy with what they're given.

Here's a little story I heard in Church the other day: A man freed an angel. The angel says thank you and grant him a single wish. The man said he want happiness for the rest of his life. Then the next day, he lost his job, his wife ran away, his house got repossessed, and he's forced to live on the street.

You won't realize happiness until you lose them.

If you're not satisfied with what you have, wait till one day a hacker come along and take all your stuff.

Anet already provided good weapon for casual players. There are plenty of crafter weapon that only cost 5k to craft and have the same stats as the high end items. So what difference does it make?

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On the other note about bot farmers...how much money does it take to have 100 computers that's capable of running Guild Wars? A computer capable of running GW cost about $300, 100 of them is 30,000. Electric fee per month will be well over $100. Also need 100 copies of GW, that's 30*100 = 3000

$30,000 + 3000 + 100 monthly, but how much can you really gain every month to cover this cost?

Yeah lightblade, I go out and buy a new computer every month to play GW, and I buy a new copy of GW every month too, to make sure its fresh. :P

The only recurring expense a farm system would have, using your example, would be that electric bill.

I have been giveing this some thought and I would have to come to the conclusion that all this is between ArenaNet/NcSoft and Ebay as it shouldn't be you the casual or real gamers who should suffer becuase of all of this.You can play the game and what else is there in between quests and missions if you don't want to PvP?

So incorrect.
in china, where undoubetly a lot of gold farmers are, computers are MUCH cheaper, and I bet cyber cafe managers dont pay NEARLY as much as you think.
there are TONS of cyber cafes in china, do you really think every one has enough money to spend that much monthy? no.
what i'm sayin is, in foreign countries computers and power source are much cheaper than you think. a bot farming business is very lucrative because of this.

Hmmmm...

We seem to have some delete happy "admins". Care to explain what rules I violated?

A good admin is an accountable admin.

My only concern is as follows. To what extent will GW go to stop them? Will they keep going until the game is not viewed as playable or worthwhile? I ask this because I came from SWG, and those from there, know that they have ruined the game beyond recovery and it's on life support as is.

I invested almost 2 years of playtime and would not like to invest my time again, only to have it all wasted. To that end I play the game with the idea in the back of my mind it could all go poof tomorrow. And constantly look for alternatives.

I figure that to be my best hope.

China do have lots of gold farmers, that's true.

But computers are NOT much cheaper than here in US. Just how many of those computer parts are actually produced in China? NONE! Nearly all computer parts are produced outside of China, either from Taiwan (Gigabyte, Abit, and Asus) or US (Intel, ATI, Nvidia, AMD). It's only recently that China had start making their own brand of computer chips, but they're still not good enough to run GW. So all computers in China are foreign imports.

Last time I was in China I looked around for a GeForce 7800GTX, and found it on sell for 4000RMB. It's nearly the same as the price here in US, and some online retailers sell at an even cheaper price.

Not all products in China are cheaper. Only those that are actually produced in China.

Eh normally when posts get hijacked into "Chinese bot farming" wars, the the admins here stop it. Because there have been hundreds of threads on it and they never really offer a viable solution to the problem. Not to mention they are full of generalizing stereotypes. If your post was not in regards to bots then I dunno, they'll have to answer you themselves. Also they may have other reasons than what I stated. :S

There have been so many threads about this subject, my view is simple, its almost impossible to nerf the farming industry while keeping the masses happy, you nerf the farmers, then prices go up because ectos and shard prices go up

We got a little out of hand. They are just trying to keep things harmonious here that's all.

You can discourage farming by making it hard and more time consuming but you can never get rid of it.

A common view is that the new AI was brought in to nerf farming.

Player who did enjoy farming for personal gain : Ah screw this it's too time consuming now to get enough gold for my FOW - off to ebay I go

Professional farmers : Hmmmm...ah ok - farming has been nerfed the only difference to me is that gold has gone up in value so I should charge more for it. The demand hasn't changed at all - in fact it's increased because Anet nerfed farming for the casual gamer. WOOT!

Who cares if an expensive item is over 100K or if it's just 30K, it doesn't matter if it's very difficult to get 30K - all Anet has done is lowered prices maybe - and so what? No major difference to pro farming and they have successfully pissed of the casual farmer forcing them to consider ebay for their FOW armor addiction.

Really I don't care anymore - I used to play this game everyday - the AI (both monster and hench) is so screwed up now that I haven't played in 2 weeks
(apart from 5 minute dives to see if they've fixed it yet)... and I own nightfall with all that lovely content that I couldn't care about because it's a pain to play with broken AI.

This has been a disaster patch - farming was nerfed for casual farmers and AI problems introduced. Bad enough to turn off an everyday player from playing....good luck with Chapter 4 guys but I won't be buying it.

Anet should just step up and take some responsible action. Admit their failures, and roll back the AI until they can fix what they tabled.

Also...

Actually show they give a crap about the rampant Ebaying of their in game currency. We still have not got a straight answer as to why Anet staff is not willing to contact Ebay, and work with them to get their content off the auction block.