What if the reason the population is decreasing is because of bots

General Discussion General Discussion
65

I started grinding expertise for maybe 3 weeks half heartedly before gypsum patch and got to an average of 530. Abandoned it to do other stuff. Gypsum released and without ever actually focusing on gypsum I got my jewelry to 580 a slot. This patch came out and I’ve run all my orbs, got ran for free in company and sold slots occasionally making 30k and doing hours of dungeons. I still have 1 mutation left.

Months? Grind for months? You must be salvaging your gypsum or something because I’m almost 600 expertise without even really trying to raise it. I just play the damn game.

66

I can understand this. You’re only rewarded on e your expertise hits 600. Sadly.

67

False.

68

I started doing chest runs before the December patch. I do 3-4 gypsum a day. I also some days ran solo runs every couple hours when I had time to try and get more. I have run normal dungeons a few times and have done 5 mutations. My average expertise is still 566. I have 3 slots over the 590 mark. Don’t know what to tell you. Running chests is a complete crap shoot. Some people get expertise upgrades every chest. Some people get a few a day. Some of those few a day are on weapons that I don’t use.

I can only tell you what I have done and what I have gotten for what I have done. Your experience != everyones experience. I also just “play the damn game” and have focused on my expertise everyday for over two months.

69

This is Silkroad Online all over again. The game was decent for its time. Very grindy, but it was fun nevertheless.

But the grind, and the massive amount of bots for RMT purposes and progression even for regular players because of the ridiculous grind killed the game. Not to mention, lack of support from the creators, a buggy mess in dungeons, getting disconnected, etc. A simple google search can shine some light on this. We’re talking about SRO here.

What I see happening in NW is deja vu, except with SRO it happened over a period of few years. Here, with NW, it’s happening in a matter of months.

Who the hell thought that increasing the grind and catering only to PvE would fix the game, while completely ignoring player’s pleas to fix bugs, de-syncs, lag, clunky as F*CK combat, and more that is wrong with the game?

One thing that drove me away, quite a bit actually, is copy and paste of structures, enemies, and environments. So much time was spent to design a pretty beautiful world, even though it’s small, and the copy and paste just ruins it. So much.

I think in the past people were more forgiving when it came to MMORPGs, but now because people have already lived through grinds and buggy messes, people are not so forgiving anymore. A recycled MMO package with the same bull$hit, no thank you.

Next please, learn from the past. Clearly, that hasn’t happened in NW.

4 Likes
70

Oh, and bots are quitting botting this game because it’s not profitable anymore for the botters.

Here’s proof:

  1. 1k gold 4 usd

  2. [5:02 AM]

I mean 10k gold is 4 usd

  1. [5:02 AM]

I make 5 usd daily

  1. [5:02 AM]

X 30 days

  1. [5:02 AM]

150 usd

  1. [5:02 AM]

No profit

2

  1. [5:03 AM]

Electricity net bot acc price …

  1. [5:03 AM]

Cant make money with nw

3 Likes
71

Haha silkroad is the first MMO I played after switching from hardcore FPS games like Battlefield & Wolf ET.

I loved that game, the market system, the enchanting of weapons and SoSun legendary weapons that had nice looking auras which made them feel special. The bots at first wern’t to bad but they did what Amazon are doing with occasional ban waves. But for the most part they stopped taking action as the Bot numbers eventually made up a significant portion of the player numbers so they stopped banning them altogether. That killed the game.

Its very bad that they have announced farm bot accounts will just be blocked and not banned because they already have a way around the block… I dunno how much more of Amazons shenannigans I can take.

1 Like
72

I enjoyed SRO quite a bit. The game as a package, skills, environments, world bosses were very nice to look at. The caravan system was awesome as well. It was rewarding PvP.

If they remastered the game, included anti-bot mechanics, reduced the grind a bit, introduced new content, and more I would go back to it in a heart beat. It’s a nostalgic game to me. More so than WoW.

1 Like
73

How about no gate keeping at all?

Why not let players experience everything without artificial barriers?

So what if EVERYONE gets bis gear in a few months?

The game has the potential for a lot of build variation and perks combinations, let your client experiment to its heart content, and if they get bored at least they had FUN.

In trying to retain players AGS only managed to kill and anger their own player base.

1 Like
74

I don’t really know what to believe. The numbers I see on Steamcharts looks ridiculously low. It can’t be that bad.

75

I sincerely doubt this. In fact most likely the bot population is increasing, while the actual player pop decreases. All due to the incompetence of the the ones in charge. So many player hostile decisions have been made, and they seem to stick to those decisions. But you know, it’s their game they can do with it what they want.

See the thing is this: you can NEVER force anyone to do something they dont want to do, unless you enslave them. Obviously enslavement is out of the question so AGS has no options left if they want to increase player pop: they gotta make something that people WANT to do, but they aint doing it, people are leaving. It’s like romance, you can’t force it. AGS did a great job seducing us initially, but then almost immediately after the marriage they started neglecting appreciation for us. In my honest opinion.

76

Its that bad. The game is in a downward spiral due to bad decisions and poor coding. People see what the game really is… a contentless time gate grind fest with poor coding and performance. The only shining star is the graphics and sound. Gameplay always trumps graphics.

77

Yes, take monster hunter as a example. Lot of gear not that much more content but a new meta starts every x months.

78

I understand the no gatekeeping deal, but I don’t think the game is ready for that. What if they time gated mutations and got rid of all other orbs? Or just let it be free reign.

Make m10 dungeons drop a super rare 530 GS item. Grind to m10 would be easier and all BiS gear BOP would be widespread lowering gear gap which is fine.

But there would still be a reason to run the dungeons even at full 625. Then of course, they’d have to impliment something of the sort of umbral shards being able to up crafting range from 595-600 to a gauranteed 600 or something or crafting would die.

And for PvP you’d need to add umbral to OPR and some way to gain a super rare 630 GS item. Maybe have the winners of OPR get a chest that has a 10% to drop it but it requires 600 average expertise for one box and 625 average expertise for the other. Give caches based on expertise.

(No time gate on dungeons would make 600 expertise easy as fuck, which is fine.)

79

Fuck it. Make never ending scaling GS and the more you grind the higher you climb but exponentional umbral shards at 650 that make it damn near impossible. Every season add a new tier with same.scaling system.

80

That’s It.

81

I love your theory, it implies directly that there are no more players, only bots, which is, most likely, the near foreseeable future.

Soon enough the game will run on bots only, and AGS will scream at the peak of their lungs that the game is a success, when in reality there is not a single human player left.

1 Like
82

Unfortunately that is not that answer to all of their problems. This entire mutation update was too soon. The only purpose it served, and the reason they rushed it out the door, is they were hell bent on resetting everyone’s gear score that either crafted or bought gear. They couldn’t do it in the December update because of the backlash so they hid it in mutations.

Let me ask you what would be more fun… this mutation system of locked time game still with dropping 99% garbage loot and only having one dungeon a week… or … them keeping the gear score/expertise where it is and getting rid of orbs, scaling ALL the dungeons in game to level 60, populating them all with appropriate loot, and just letting people play them and get what they get when they get it?

Like my answer isn’t the answer to all the problems either but I think for this specific update its a better and more fun solution.

83

It’s bad and will get much worse once some much awaited games release this month.

I’m guessing the current population will halve by the end of the month. Pretty impressive really.

1 Like
84

the population is not just dying on low pop servers though. We are a high pop server and players are going inactive in our full company like crazy. at least 50 players have stop playing since this last patch in just my company. Our company daily elite runs have gone from 40 to 50 players to down to 18 today. I sure hope ags can turn things around but they were warned this would happen. I will say the majority of players have left the game recently due to the 10 percent weekly rent. They can’t pay 6k a week and abandoning the houses just made them mad so they left.