harvyst
01-07-2005, 01:31 PM
I must say, I'm fairly disappointed with yesterday's patch. On Unrest, we have a big problem of "ye old Alchemy bot" overruning the market. So I believe some of the changes were designed to discourage the botter. The problem is - these changes actually discourage the real live human Alchemist, while leaving the botter relatively untouched.
Allow me to explain this.
Yesterday's patch changed a few things about alchemy. Our tier 1 and 3 ? spells now take 20% mana, our tier 2 and 4 ? spells take 30 % mana. Tier 2 and 4 increase durability. Tier 1 and 3 increase progress. Now our book and beaker icons power change remain relatively unchanged - I can boogie on them all night long and not loose power. But lo, if I hit ? - I am in a world of hurt. And yet, ? is the best way to raise durability. And if a ? event comes up that I want to counter to avoid looking stupid (The Chemistry table almost NEVER kills, so there really is no need to counter) - I loose so much power it makes me wince. Another thing that happened is it seems I get a lot more negative rolls. Not negative events - just negative rolls. -100, -50 happens a lot more frequently now. So I desperately need durability - and the one buff that actually really affects durability is now a mana sucker.
I'm a tier 5 alchemist, and there's another issue. We never got our tier 5 buffs when we dinged 40. In fact, no class did. So our tier 5 buffs - which should have increased progress - are missing. We're using tier 3 buffs which are grey. If we could use our tier 5 buffs we wouldn't spend so much time fighting the negative rolls - we could move more quicker towards the ending. But alas, they're not there, and there's never been an explination for the lack of tier 5 buffs from SOE.
The end result of these two issues is that there is now no reason to counter events. The best way to get through it seems to be hit beaker-book every tick, endlessly, never hitting ?, never responding to events since they don't seem to give any boost and you won't ever die from them, and accept that you'll end up with about 75% pristine rate. If you try to fight and maintain pristine using ?, you'll loose all your power and end up medding for about a minute, in which you could've nearly completed another wash so it's pointless to fight for pristine.
How does this affect the botter? Well, not much. They change their code to hit beaker-book, and it just takes a bit longer for them to complete, but since they can go to work and leave the bot running, the lower pristine rate doesn't hurt their profits that much. After all - they are making so much liquids that they can afford a smaller profit margin.
How does this affect the real live human alchemist? Well, it's deadly. It's boring to sit there hitting beaker-book without trying to counter events. It's boring to know that since beaker-book tier 4 don't raise durability much that it's pointless to try and regain pristine. It's boring to know that the fate of my wash is totally in the hands of the computer.
On top of this, it takes longer. Now I used to run an order based business. I'd get an order - say, 200 washes. Now since roots can be a wash, oil, or resin, I'd keep it raw until someone puts in an order, then go churn it out, because someone may want 300 oils, another may want 200 washes, you never know what's hot today. This was okay until yesterday. I'd tell the person, okay, see you in an hour, I'd go do it, then we'd do the trade, they're happy, I'm happy, I don't sit AFK in my room, they get exactly what they want and don't have to wait for someone to put stuff up in vendor.
But now it's taking me 1 hour to do 9 stacks. That's ~7-8 minutes per stack. That means it's taking me longer to fill orders, and customers get restless when there's a long delay between ordering and the fufillment, especially if they just want to get their grind on. So they get grumpy because it's taking longer - and the orders are piling up.
I'm also rethinking my raw to resource strategy. Before I would do 1 raw = 2 liquids deals. Now I'm thinking against it. The reason is, I'm only getting 75% pristine rate. Before I was walking away with about a 95% pristine rate so there really was a nice margin of profit for me to do a 1 for 2 deal. Now it's more like I get 1/4th back from the deal - it's just not worth it. It's worth more to me and my time to search the broker and buy the resources or go harvesting myself than to grind for no money on other people's materials at this slow pace. But people are cheap, they'd rather I use their resources.... I'm going to have to start telling people no. Because it's not worth my time to turn 4 stacks into liquids and only get 1/4th back for myself.
But a bot can still do the raws for liquids thing, because they want the raws to get xp off of while they are at work. Again, they are mass producing, so their margins can be lower. Whereas I only ts when I'm pushing the buttons, so my patience is lower, and my expected reward for my effort is higher... they just come home from work and sell everything they've made while they were working.
Anyway.
This whole thing also hurts the last class that needed to be hurt more... Sages. I can't guarantee pristines anymore. So my failure rate for pristine ink - which they now NEED for app IV - just went through the roof. 25% failure rate on reagents. 25% failure rate on dyes. 25% failure rate on the ink. Which means ink just got more expensive and more people are going to stop doing it. Sages already have a hard time getting ink and affording ink. They don't need ink to become twice the price it is now!
I am disappointed.
This whole situation could be fixed with a few changes.
1) Put in tier 5 buffs. There's no reason they should not be there. This will speed things up a bit.
2) Make reactions more deadly. Like the forge. You NEVER hear of a forge botter. If you want to get rid of bots - make them pay attention! If they have to counter that event that their bot program can't see - they'll give up after a few deaths and go away. Or at least it'll stop their progress every hour or so as they die and lie on the floor spamming keys.
3) Reduce the power consumption of ?. I can't counter events with it - it just takes too much mana. I don't know why this one item takes up nearly 30% of my mana, and if I get more than three ? events during 1 wash, I can't counter.
If you do these 3 things, it will reduce botting in Alchemy. It will reduce the aggrivation of the human alchemy players. It will make ink less gruelling than it is today (it will still suck, but at previous suckage levels).
Anyway, that's my 2 cp.
Allow me to explain this.
Yesterday's patch changed a few things about alchemy. Our tier 1 and 3 ? spells now take 20% mana, our tier 2 and 4 ? spells take 30 % mana. Tier 2 and 4 increase durability. Tier 1 and 3 increase progress. Now our book and beaker icons power change remain relatively unchanged - I can boogie on them all night long and not loose power. But lo, if I hit ? - I am in a world of hurt. And yet, ? is the best way to raise durability. And if a ? event comes up that I want to counter to avoid looking stupid (The Chemistry table almost NEVER kills, so there really is no need to counter) - I loose so much power it makes me wince. Another thing that happened is it seems I get a lot more negative rolls. Not negative events - just negative rolls. -100, -50 happens a lot more frequently now. So I desperately need durability - and the one buff that actually really affects durability is now a mana sucker.
I'm a tier 5 alchemist, and there's another issue. We never got our tier 5 buffs when we dinged 40. In fact, no class did. So our tier 5 buffs - which should have increased progress - are missing. We're using tier 3 buffs which are grey. If we could use our tier 5 buffs we wouldn't spend so much time fighting the negative rolls - we could move more quicker towards the ending. But alas, they're not there, and there's never been an explination for the lack of tier 5 buffs from SOE.
The end result of these two issues is that there is now no reason to counter events. The best way to get through it seems to be hit beaker-book every tick, endlessly, never hitting ?, never responding to events since they don't seem to give any boost and you won't ever die from them, and accept that you'll end up with about 75% pristine rate. If you try to fight and maintain pristine using ?, you'll loose all your power and end up medding for about a minute, in which you could've nearly completed another wash so it's pointless to fight for pristine.
How does this affect the botter? Well, not much. They change their code to hit beaker-book, and it just takes a bit longer for them to complete, but since they can go to work and leave the bot running, the lower pristine rate doesn't hurt their profits that much. After all - they are making so much liquids that they can afford a smaller profit margin.
How does this affect the real live human alchemist? Well, it's deadly. It's boring to sit there hitting beaker-book without trying to counter events. It's boring to know that since beaker-book tier 4 don't raise durability much that it's pointless to try and regain pristine. It's boring to know that the fate of my wash is totally in the hands of the computer.
On top of this, it takes longer. Now I used to run an order based business. I'd get an order - say, 200 washes. Now since roots can be a wash, oil, or resin, I'd keep it raw until someone puts in an order, then go churn it out, because someone may want 300 oils, another may want 200 washes, you never know what's hot today. This was okay until yesterday. I'd tell the person, okay, see you in an hour, I'd go do it, then we'd do the trade, they're happy, I'm happy, I don't sit AFK in my room, they get exactly what they want and don't have to wait for someone to put stuff up in vendor.
But now it's taking me 1 hour to do 9 stacks. That's ~7-8 minutes per stack. That means it's taking me longer to fill orders, and customers get restless when there's a long delay between ordering and the fufillment, especially if they just want to get their grind on. So they get grumpy because it's taking longer - and the orders are piling up.
I'm also rethinking my raw to resource strategy. Before I would do 1 raw = 2 liquids deals. Now I'm thinking against it. The reason is, I'm only getting 75% pristine rate. Before I was walking away with about a 95% pristine rate so there really was a nice margin of profit for me to do a 1 for 2 deal. Now it's more like I get 1/4th back from the deal - it's just not worth it. It's worth more to me and my time to search the broker and buy the resources or go harvesting myself than to grind for no money on other people's materials at this slow pace. But people are cheap, they'd rather I use their resources.... I'm going to have to start telling people no. Because it's not worth my time to turn 4 stacks into liquids and only get 1/4th back for myself.
But a bot can still do the raws for liquids thing, because they want the raws to get xp off of while they are at work. Again, they are mass producing, so their margins can be lower. Whereas I only ts when I'm pushing the buttons, so my patience is lower, and my expected reward for my effort is higher... they just come home from work and sell everything they've made while they were working.
Anyway.
This whole thing also hurts the last class that needed to be hurt more... Sages. I can't guarantee pristines anymore. So my failure rate for pristine ink - which they now NEED for app IV - just went through the roof. 25% failure rate on reagents. 25% failure rate on dyes. 25% failure rate on the ink. Which means ink just got more expensive and more people are going to stop doing it. Sages already have a hard time getting ink and affording ink. They don't need ink to become twice the price it is now!
I am disappointed.
This whole situation could be fixed with a few changes.
1) Put in tier 5 buffs. There's no reason they should not be there. This will speed things up a bit.
2) Make reactions more deadly. Like the forge. You NEVER hear of a forge botter. If you want to get rid of bots - make them pay attention! If they have to counter that event that their bot program can't see - they'll give up after a few deaths and go away. Or at least it'll stop their progress every hour or so as they die and lie on the floor spamming keys.
3) Reduce the power consumption of ?. I can't counter events with it - it just takes too much mana. I don't know why this one item takes up nearly 30% of my mana, and if I get more than three ? events during 1 wash, I can't counter.
If you do these 3 things, it will reduce botting in Alchemy. It will reduce the aggrivation of the human alchemy players. It will make ink less gruelling than it is today (it will still suck, but at previous suckage levels).
Anyway, that's my 2 cp.