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i'm wondering if these are real players or bot, they have strange names and same price (25.905.470) at very rare drop.
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Possible. But it seems strange to me. In the post I refer to the strange names (the first 4), consisting of 7 letters each. What a coincidence. Another coincidence is that they all sell at the same price (almost as if there is a personal advantage behind only one person).
it is possible that they are secondary characters, even if it seems difficult to equip them all 4 (there were 5 on the other page of the market) with weapon, armor and counterforce for "farm" astera raid. And i don't even seen them around colhen and raid, so I have doubts that is.
You are sayin something like → I am ok with that big company that use illegal methods to make "abyss shards", other smaller companies sells those things for too much money and I want those as cheap as possible.
Bots are one of the reasons that market is dead in the 1st place since they kill the prices...
one of those "alts"
It's nice to see that intelligence on the forums still exists.
yes, of course they are. all bots on NA i have seen (chinese like names pingfangxing, laijun1 that run donegal and random names egjkgdf, ohfdkh that do raids) have abysmal stats, so when i say bots cheating is implied.
Actually people do run these and all raids regularly. It's just that the drop rate is "abysmally" low (pun intended) that to receive a supply sufficient for the current user-base it requires bots to repeatedly spam hero mode cheating to obtain enough drops.
Now if Nexon was committed to reducing the number of bots they should also consider increasing the drop-rate. Else you see what happened when the bots disappeared for a few days on NA: People mega'ing begging for the bots to come back.
OJ chunks were back at 20m ish a day or two after the bots disappeared, two to four times the price they were while the bots were active. If Nexon hadn't run so many people off maybe we wouldn't need them, but sadly we do.
Granted Steam doesn't give a perfect picture because the Nexon Launcher exists, but Vindi's numbers definitely aren't steady, the forum is less active than ever, especially in individual character forums and the for sale sections where you used to have to bump your thread daily to keep it relevant, the reddit is crawling along, and outside of peak hours there's just not much doing in game. Let the bots die and prices will become even more absurd.
You make it sound like that is a lot... How long were lv 80 fangs 200m a piece? The only reason lv 90 weren't crazy high for a long time was the introduction of the seal shop. (And even then weapon feathers were >200m for months, while orange weapon shards were >50m.)
All the bots are doing is making the poor get poorer and the gold buyers and NX buyers get richer. If we got rid of the bots for good there would be some time needed for things to level out, but soon enough the rich would spend all their money trying for +16/17 or fashion. The poor would get some of that gold and be able to afford, gasp rings or belts etc.
Eventually things would get to the point where folks would start farming again since it would be worth it. But till then no one will run S3 dungeons, etc since who wants to spend the time to earn 100k if you are lucky?
And at least back in the S2 days bots weren't as rampant as they are now. They are worse than they were even in the lv 60 days where mael es went from ~50m to 2 m.
And yes to help with this nexon should reduce the cost to buy mats in the seal/guild shops/etc, and they should put lv 100 mats in. But we know that wont happen till lv 105 comes and some new mats = 3x current mats come out.
But yeah 40+ pages of botted steel, 40 + of lv 100 weapon ess etc isn't helping anyone but the gold sellers. (And oddly these botters really have to be one tight nit group. I have never seen bots not undercutting each other like these ones.)
Yes, bots are worse than they've ever been, and so is the population, and without those bots 90, 95, and 100 items would all be so ludicrously priced that no one but the old school Vindi rich would be able to afford them.
You're absolutely right that the seal shop being properly updated would be the kind of fix that would keep people farming and grinding for a guaranteed reward, but Nexon won't do that. The 95 mats that are there have prices that again are ludicrous. No one is going to pay 1k seals to put together a 95 weap when they can farm, get some okay drops, and buy what they need from the MP for far, far less.
You're right that prices used to be pretty high back in the day, but you also had full parties running content and people didn't mind carrying on trains. It wasn't a rush to gear, and people weren't locked out of raids by the QB wall. QB wouldn't be such an issue except for the fact that if you don't mega no one has any idea that a non-QB battle is even up because people either don't check the board or just glance by non-QB boats when checking the QB menu.
Nexon has done everything in the world to make the bots necessary. They've banned and harassed major content creators, they've region locked large numbers of people out of playing, they forced everyone to Steam or the Nexon launcher--neither of which are viable for some to the point of many quitting--and they've pushed new content without taking into account the adjustments that need to be made for the lower populations of East/West/Aus despite a merger.
I don't know why it's difficult to get, but getting more for your money is good for everyone. It means that if you already have tons of it you have more buying power, and if you don't then it takes less grind for you to earn enough even without major drops to get what you need. What's better for the majority of players: being able to earn a mil or so a day and having chunks at 8m or being able to earn that same amount and having chunks at 25m?
The saddest part is that there are so many easy fixes to make the bots irrelevant and gearing a smoother process but Nexon doesn't see the forest for the trees and refuses to make the changes they need to for that to happen. As long as they don't the lesser of two evils is having the bots stocking the MP and keeping prices reasonable. It will never, ever benefit anyone other than the richest players sitting on billions on multiple chars to have items that cost 100m+ to put together, scrolls at over 100m like we had at one point after the S3 population drop off, and outfitters selling at 500m plus when the gapchas are still in the shop. For the majority of what few players are left the bots are beneficial, it's that simple.
This reply became way too long, feel free to read it or not.
I don't know how much gold you think the average person has... but just try to make a new character capable of doing >15% DPS in macha without any gold/rune etc from your older characters.
By lv 90 you might have made ~15 m if you got a lucky enthu or two es. If you bothered to make crafting to lv 100... you likely are in the hole.
So you have your free "amazing" +12 gear... only you can't get past fish. You don't have enough gold to make a dul weapon let alone runes to make it a +10.
Cost -> well you can run regina -> fish every day. Lets just say 10 raids a day. Lets pretend you manage to get 1 orange a day. => ~2 mil a day with a bot infested market. (Almost all the scrolls you get are chump change, since the dead/subdue drop so little.)
Ok you do that for 2 weeks and now have 2 runes from the seal shop + enough to make dul weapon that isn't complete crud. Now you still need to spend ~15 m infusing to get the crit/bal max rolls that makes going to dul worth it for the stupid crit+bal reqs.
Course it is going to take ~8-14 runes to manage a +10 so you can start working on that. So that is a few months gone. (Or you can buy two for ~150 m on the market due to bot inflation on all old event/nx items...)
Now scrolls... Well I assume you want to get rings etc and make it so you can run the new content, so you decide to go valor + spirited. Course you need runes for spirited... Anther few weeks of playing.
So at this point you likely have spent ~3 months to get a +10 lv 95 weapon. Bots really helped you right. (Still can't get into what you need since you need the good rings with scrolls at ~+12 + belt/earnings.
Now lets remember what it was like before.
1) you still had to run ~1 month of raids to be able to buy the feather ess from the seal shop.
2) while doing those raids you would have managed to earn lets say 5m per day instead of 2 m per day.
3) NX/old event items were selling much much less. (IE cat growth box = ~25-40m instead of ~150).
4) the scrolls you got would have sold for ~5x what they are now. => means you can then buy cheap scrolls instead.
From what I see anyone that is starting the game fresh could get into the newer raids ~2 months sooner than anyone in a bot infested community.
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How is that not the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer?
Just looking at where the gold goes. Steel was literally 60 pages of 10-100 stacks of bots. Normal sellers would undercut, but I more often then not always see folks dipping into bot posted items always.
Lets just say that out of everyone buying everything 40% of the gold goes back to the player, 60% goes to bots. And lets pretend the gold sinks = exactly what new gold is brought into the game by the players and not the bots.
If you are like me... you boom your weapon ~20 times+. So lets just guess that was just 20 steel + 1 ess + 2 shards. So what ~100m per boom.
Now best case scenario. I am managing to get 40% of the gold back since bots are taking 60%, and 40% goes to someone at least why not me?
So that means I will now have 800m and my weapon will be where I want it. Great.
Lets do pants -> (say that is 800m, but again I get all 40% of the gold spent back) => now I am at 320m...
rise repeat you are broke but maybe have some good gear, the bots have all the gold.
The only way to make gold now is to post things less than botters. (Which is dirt cheap as you said). Or sell NX/event items to the folks that are buying gold from bots.
This isn't beneficial to anyone but the botters. (In the botters mind gold/dollar just needs to pay off their electricity bill. Everything else is profit.)
1 oj per 10 raids is a bit optimistic, even with a badge, vip, pet, guild core and camp. and if you wanna make money from the seal shop, thats like 1000 raids, which could take 3 or more months if youre being realistic. 3 months to sell one decent guaranteed thing. cool.
my best source of money has been nickels and dimes from non raids, but to go that route turns this from a fun game into a soulsucking nightmare job. it wouldnt really change things to get a rare every raid, but theres gotta be a middle ground to close the wealth gap.
so basically, ive given up hope and subsist on free stuff from events and carries from whales. but in that regard, the game is getting easier, what with constant events and the add damage buff from rise.
Bots are inconvenient in that they devalue items which newer players might depend on to make gold and contribute directly to mudflation, which itself contributes directly to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
I'm not really sure which edge of the sword is preferable in the context of the game's current state.
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That said, bots haven't touched the element stone market and haven't made too much of a dent in the steel market, so S2 and OS farming are still great ways to make a lot of gold for anybody. For reference, I generated and sold 136 damascus steel @ 4.8m each at the end of S4 - 120 of those were directly from OS, the other 16 were raid drops. So that's around 650m just from doing Onslaught on one character for one 4-week long (iirc) season and running a few raids here and there. If you do OS on multiple characters, your income multiplies appropriately. 6 tickets per day is roughly one hour if you don't have to wait too long for queues (you usually don't if playing in the evenings). That's not much of a time investment and is all that's required to avoid overcapping on tickets from day to day, though at some point you will need to burn through the excess prior to season end. Yes, you need a 2x seal pot to make this efficient but they're fairly cheap when you consider the payout (don't have to buy with NX, people sell them for not much gold) - the pot also doesn't tick down while you're offline so depending on your schedule and assuming you don't afk in Colhen 24/7, one pot can literally last you multiple seasons. That's value if I've ever seen it.
Granted, you wouldn't be wrong to say that people need their steel for reforging, but selling it all at first can easily fund enough counterforce for a newer player to make their way into level 100 raids - or it may allow a player to forego reforging and simply buy out a set of high enhance gear, and then once they've hit that baseline acceptable power level, they can start hoarding steel for further reforging.
All of this is to say that, despite the presence of bots, it's still more than possible for anybody to make significant gains if they put in the time and effort. If your response is "but i don't wanna do onslaught"... well, ok. Don't say it's impossible to make money though. Gotta take advantage of whatever opportunities the game offers at any given time.
Event abuse and MP flipping are also viable ways of making bank, if you can be bothered to put in the effort.
And don't forget that the only way you are selling your steel is by undercutting the bots. Right now, 2/21/19 10:10 pm (PTS), there are 81 pages of steel posted. 19 posts (less than 2 pages) of those are of normal sellers the rest are all by bots at 4876543... The only reason you are still making gold selling steel is because the bots are still selling a ton at that price. (And somehow the bots aren't competing against themselves.) If we didn't have bots steel would easily be at 20m+ per or much more.
The only place the bots are giving folks more gold is on NX and old even items. Everything else the bots have devalued to a price that only helps themselves.
(Side note to folks, I said 1 orange per day of runs. But then said they are basically earning ~2m per day. Orange was more meant to mean something of worth, not really a orange pillar of light. IE steel/scrolls etc all count and when you average it out I figured ~2m per day with bots controlling the prices on things. And that is without VIP/extra luck/40% dps. Just what someone with the +12 gear can shoot for to earning per day.)
Again, this is just my experience and I am in no way saying it is exemplifies or represents the current game state in relation to bots, but thought I'd share.
Maybe. I think it would be an interesting statistic to see - average seal gain per match across the entire server.
From what I've seen, even poorly geared players can catch a lot of high seal games if they queue at the right time simply due to the nature of OS matchmaking; and if they take the time to learn the mode, they can contribute to their own success regardless of their gear due to the mode's mechanics. My win rate at the end of every season so far has been right around 50% or a bit lower - nothing crazy impressive.