Hey guys lengthy post incoming and just to clarify, I have no background in economics or anything similar that will be relevant to the question I'm about to ask.
Now with that being said, I would like to ask a real legitimate question, a thought I had yesterday.
Bots in the game causes more gold to be pumped into the game.
So from what I know: Bots get quests/rapport rewards > NPC gives them gold > boom, game now has a "player" with extra 300 gold. Multiply that by let's say... 100,000 bots, we now have 30 million gold generated that's held by these 100k bots. Again, just a scenario. Idk how much gold a bit generates, it's probably more than 300 gold let's be real lmao.
Players who RMT buy up these gold. They then use the gold to buy crystals, crystal prices steadily shoot up to now where it's ~600 gold per 100 crystals(95 after game tax) on US West.
1 mth + ago, AGS did a ban wave on these bots and it was decently effective. Market prices for crystals dropped to ~300 per 100 crystals.
So finally we get to the part where I want to legitimately ask, is AGS purposely letting the bots run rampant now because they realised that having bots doubles the price of crystals?
Because now, if players want to buy crystals, they'd have to spend twice the amount of gold. And if they run out of gold, they(non-RMT) buy Royal Crystals from the shop and sell them for gold to buy crystals.
Now yes, they do get more gold per 100 Royal Crystals BUT the sheer fact that legit players make less gold than bots are the REAL problem here because now, legit players can never match the bots in gold making as they are online 24/7.
Thus, non RMT players will buy Royal Crystals and sell them for gold then use that gold to buy Crystals and that means more money for AGS. Is this the real reason why AGS is letting bots run freely?
So now that I got to the main point of my question, I'd like to offer some thoughts on how to rectify the situation.
So first. I think
1) Employing real GMs who actually sit in game to at least ban these fucking bots running openly in Vern and every other city's Chaos Dungeons and other maps standing on triports and farming mobs. They're fucking farming openly and nothing is done to stop them, been going on for months lmaooo.
2) Players who RMT will continue to RMT, this is something that cannot be stopped but can be heavily discouraged by perma banning players who RMT. They don't bring any profits to AGS anyway and by continuing to RMT they are hurting the game(encouraging gold sellers to bot more) and its economy. Fuck these people and we could care less about what they think. Just perma ban em no questions asked(if found guilty of buying gold from gold sellers)
3) Implement some sort of verification system that is difficult to bypass. KR has KSSN and that alone deterred bots heavily. While I know Global can't implement the same level of security(such as KSSN), I think at least a 2FA would be the start of something and in a good direction.
If what I theorized above is true and AGS is purposely letting bots run rampant due to more profits from players buying Royal Crystals, then we now know why the bots have been increasing and fake methods such as "banning VPN" (it doesn't work btw, bots already bypassed that in 1 day) is just a smokescreen by AGS to show that they are "trying" to combat bots while in actual fact they are not.
Hi
/snsd, this is a simplified cross-post from
/kpop. I tailored it towards SNSD. It’s a bit long, so I apologize ahead of time.
I’ve gotten a few questions over the last few months about how exactly I stay on top of Soshi news and information. Here’s my list of recommendations, in order of most important to least (the first 3 are the best):
- Twitter: There really isn’t a single website that is more influential and important to the spread of information than Twitter. Sources directly tweet and respond to thousands of people simultaneously. From here, you often hear the fastest news, most recent pictures, and leaks/spoilers to upcoming events/music. The difficult thing about twitter is that there is no centralized representative, so there are major “Big Name Fans” in each fandom. A few good ones off the top of my head are:
For SNSD:
- @Real_Chichinhu
- @ch0sshi
- @haljung
- @MoonSoshi9 (I think he’s also a Redditor. Yup: MoonSoshi9)
Beyond that, there are twitter accounts associated with almost all major fansites (@sosiznet), fanmade photo sites (@flying_petals), and actual artists (none for SNSD ☹). You can add whoever you want depending on your preferences.
- Hallyu8/Forums: Sometimes Twitter is overwhelming. Some fans tweet all day, so news can be lost amidst personal and random information. Forums have always been a great place for fans to come together. It’s nice because it’s a more distilled form of information that doesn’t disappear if you don’t read it within a certain amount of hours. You can backtrack on your favorite artists after a long day of work or after being away for weeks. Moreover, hundreds—if not thousands—of fans try their best to quickly post new information to notify others. Thus, it helps bring together people of different fandoms and bias groups to post the pictures and news they find. Lastly, it helps fans communicate with each other—both Koreans and Non-Koreans. This is helpful because people vent their frustrations, express their happiness, and are able to read translations/subs of news articles/videos before they’re even released on Allkpop or other congregates (usually hours to days before).
After 6Theory, the major forum site last year associated with Allkpop, “disappeared,” the best forum site now is probably
Hallyu8.com. Just recently, Hallyu8 just began their “New Members Appreciation Week,” encouraging the community to reach out and invite new people, so I’ve seen a huge spike in new users making it an opportune time for others from here to join if they wanted to. I would check out
this page with all the links to artist’s/idol’s threads. For SNSD,
this is their thread link. I guarantee that if you are a major fan of SNSD, you’ll love the thread for the sheer amount of camaraderie and similar enthusiasm.
Lastly, a
personal plug, we’re trying to keep track of newcomers and help acclimate them to the community, so if you could: 1)
Post a reply with your username and mine (Referred by: sx21) on
this page, 2) Post a 411 so the community can properly welcome you
here, and 3) Say “Hi” in the SNSD thread. Fellow fans and members will welcome you with open arms. If you jump in and start posting, you’ll see why forums are a great community.
- Tumblr: Tumblr is great for sharing new pictures, gifs, and fanmade edits. It hurts itself because there aren’t really that many that discuss Kpop. People like OnionTaker used it as a platform to start a community, but these types of situations are rare. For SNSD, there are some great ones like ggoh.tumblr.com who makes new content and answers questions. Furthermore, tumblr is great because it has a search tag function. If you replace the #### with a group name or idol you like, you can find all the recent posts tagged with it: www.tumblr.com/tagged/#### This is how I find the most recent gifs for people on Reddit when they ask during a comeback. Put “SNSD” in there, and see all the most recent gifs made by the community. Put “Taeyeon,” and you’ll only find content related to her. Also, this helps find tumblrs associated with your interested by seeing who submitted those posts.
- News Aggregates: There are good news aggregates and bad ones, depending on how they present the news and how nonbias they are. My favorite to visit is probably Koreaboo (by our very own fiveSeven_). Koreaboo (like Soompi, AllKpop, etc) is a news aggregate with information from all areas of Korean Media (not only music). KB is very professional with their wording and timings, without losing their quality. The biggest issues with these sites are that they aren’t always up-to-date with information, sometimes even days to weeks behind when news is actually released, and can’t possibly cover all the information about all your favorite artists. They need to (understandably) choose what is appropriate and post the most important.
- Special Sites: First, Omona is a more unfiltered approach to Kpop news. They are a bit quicker and they don’t take themselves as seriously as the sites above. Second, NetizenBuzz is run to provide recent reactions from Korean Netizens by directly translating articles and comments. Not all the comments are worthwhile/rational, but they give a good glimpse into how Korea is reacting, instead of only reading international opinions on Reddit or Allkpop. Third, Reddit. We have our own /Kpop, which provides barebones news, past throwbacks to MVs/music, and have some discussion. It is generally the most mature Kpop environment I’ve found on the web, simply because it emulates the rest of Reddit/the type of members it attracts. However, because it’s user-driven it might be the sparsest for actual up-to-date information. Also, check out related reddits like /Korea and /koreanmusic. Lastly, SeoulBeats is a great site to read editorials and more lengthy discussions. While the quality has gone done over the years, it nevertheless is the best site for actual written content. I may not agree with everything posted, but they are valid opinions of someone else.
- Korean Sites: There are numerous Korean sites that help keep people informed. The obvious Newsen, OSEN, Navar, Daum, etc are good for those who can read and understand Korean, but not everyone can. Moreover, it is hard to translate all those articles and reactions no matter how hard we try. Other sites, like fanmade sites for photos (ShiningSmiles, Seople), often require a KSSN to gain access, but you try to e-mail/tweet them for permission. I can discuss this in another guide in the future.
- Chatrooms: Most major communities have a chatroom, but they are often hard to find. Some, for example, are: /snsd, Hallyu8’s ustream room via their Artist Thread, SSF’s Sbox.
- Soshified: The biggest international SNSD site that has slowed down from the mayhem of a few years ago. It still has a stable forum/gifting portion, and an assortment of past SNSD media/subs. The staff members are active and still writing/working. I expect a comeback to rejuvenate this site.
I purposely left out how to access K-Media (Video, Pictures, Subs, Torrents, etc) and fansites because I felt that this guide was already too long. I’ll try to write another one up in the future if this first guide is well received or people request it. If not, I can just leave this here for any newcomers, and keep it at that. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns via comments or PM.