So, I figured I'd start this thread. Yes, there are selfish purposes behind it (as a prospective web game designer ), but I also think this would be a cool discussion. Given that we're all... here... it's pretty obvious that none of us really like the mindless busywork that Neo attempts to make you do. That's why we have auto'ers. Why sit there at the lever of doom, over and over again, when you can use a script to do it for you -- and there's no way to tell which method was used. The same goes with restocking, the thrift shop, etc. This set me wondering: What could Neo, or hell any game which suffers from a "script problem" have done better? What would you put into a game that makes it less enticing, or not even possible, to cheat by using external programs? I am not talking about anti-cheat measures. Because, honestly, if the game is worth playing, chances are it's worth cracking the prevention methods and cheating too. What I'm talking about are features and properties built in to the game which discourage dishonesty because there's little reason to use scripts in the first place. Two examples: Neopets suffers from a problem with people auto-pricing items. Solution? Make an auto-pricer built in. Simple. Travian suffers from people using a script to find 15 croppers. Solution? Tell people where the best land is and let the players concentrate on fighting over it, instead of mindless clicking. Unfortunately, there are some harder questions.... I'll start things off with a question for you all... What could Neo have done to keep autobuyers away? And well, I don't have an answer for that. What are your thoughts?
solution, decentralise the game from its market orientation. Wanna battle dome? it costs money. Wanna make your pet look cool? it costs money. Wanna make your house look cool? It costs money. Wanna complete are of the quests? It costs money. Wanna train your pet? It costs money. Creating a system to reward a users efforts in a non monetary fashion would prevent a lot of people from autoing. Example of non financial rewards TNT could have done: * Everytime you win a 1player battle dome fight you have a chance of getting a non tradable item at the end of the fight. The stronger the enemy you fight + the amount of times since your last reward = the prize when you get it. For example you could get 5 tiki tokens which can be used on the mystery island in the place of codestones. * Everytime you upgrade your player house you have a random chance of having a random piece of furniture placed within your house which is like a "Ghost furniture" it would stay in your house for as long as you wanted but if you attempt to remove it then it would dissipate (therefore you cannot sell it or store them) etc. etc. I know that TNT have "random events" where you can get NP, paint brushes, your pet morphed etc. when your browsing the site. But it's a shit system which hasn't been updated in like 5 years and more to the point it doesn't reward those who put a lot of effort in. I guess the more time online = more chance of getting a random event but the reward is not indicative or a reflection of what you've done. If you've been played for 4 hours that day non stop doing quests, chatting on the boards, battling in the BD and playing games then get a half decent (non tradable) reward. Not 1 codestone or a pile of soot. Mind you, you can never completely remove outside cheaters from a game who are in it simply for money. Take me for example, the only reason I ever came back to play neopets was so that I could auto buy and then sell the NP I made. I didn't care a bit for the game. It's almost impossible to remove that element from the game but as I said. IF you can reduce the market and finance aspect from the game and shift the focus more onto content and storyline then it dries up the demand for autoed NP and therefore reduces people like me coming in to auto to make a profit as there is no one who wants it in the first place. YAY I wrote a massively long and useless post. BTW I made this all up on the fly, so don't rip on my ideas. I spend longer baking a turd then I do on my ideas.
Hey man. I'm here . And don't worry, because I'm rambling too. That's how brainstorming works bud, and then somebody goes, "HEY! That's actually a good idea!" and then everybody is happy . You have an interesting approach. The question that this begs, though, is: Why wouldn't people just auto those activities instead? What makes those so special -- the idea is the same; automate browsing to cheat systems which reward frequent playing. Obviously, one answer to the problem in general is to slap reCAPTCHA on everything, since it's generally considered unbreakable. The problem is there are guys in developing nations who will solve ANY captcha for as little as two or three bucks per thousand captchas. Which means a super strong captcha only stops time sensitive things, like restocking, but not things like automated one player battling. And then, what happens when it does get broken? One idea I've been mulling over is to simply make things legal, or even provide your _own_ scripts as a site. Marapets has made a decent chunk of change doing this: For about $5, you can buy an upgrade which will auto-price things in your shop. Completely legal, completely integrated. And that's the one advantage you have, as a site, over the scripts... the integration. Solving restocking is easy... just make the shopkeepers less stupid. And make the market more unpredictable. e.g., have unlimited stock of certain items at prices actually reflective of what they're selling for in user shops, then randomly retire items (permanently or for 1 year +). Any ideas on battling?