So paragon is why we all play daily to push, obviously. We get on to socialize with the buddys and push, eventually and or attempting to rank due to a mass amount of paragon points (+5 main stat a level). The bots advantage is they are able to farm bounties which leads to obtaining near perfect items in a shorter time frame, Also spamming t10's for keys and farming 70's for 72 hours straight. In the end of the season if you truly pushed hard you had a decent set of gear Regardless of Botting or Playing legit. But even with perfect gear Paragon Completely outweighs minor upgrades your lacking as appose to someone having 1500 x 5 = 7500 more main stat than you. ALL DUE TO CHEATING.
So why not simply cap paragon contributions at 2000. Let them level past 2000 to prove they are amazing at pushing a simple command button, however after 2000 cap the advantage you obtain from levels besides a number on your character portrait. Would still be high enough for people to play 6-8 hours a day everyday and to just barley get to the cap before the season ends.
It would give diablo 3 the competitive edge we all strive for and not a forced way to be number 1 by botting. Sure a few of the main guys are against bots, but we all know the majority of the leader board is 3rd Party Programs users who lack the time to compete legit, so they simply download a program and ruin it for whats left of the community.
Blizzard is by far one of the best company's worldwide for gaming and I'd hate to see a game like Diablo 3 sink due to a simple fix.
Even making it temporary would allow us to least compete until blizzard resolves the issue.
Please let me have the paragon levels to hunt for, if not there is nothing that keeps me playing. Sure, the ladder is fun, but only to see how high I can get on GR, not what place on the leaderboards I get. As stated in other topic, even with insane paragon levels, the difference would not be greater than 3-5 (MAX) GR levels if you have the same gear and player. At some point you will have all the gear in the world, but still could not get any further due to lack of paragon levels. Paragon levels are fun and ticks my power-creep / progression feeling, and I feel that I can allways get further or get some more damage / defence by playing a little more. And it's also more fun than farming hundreds of hours for an item that never drops. Remember how it was to try getting WoH back in earlier stage of game? That was not fun, please do not let that type of gameplay return!
Play because you want to, and stop worrying about what everyone else does. If it was a massive online game I could understand it, but basically it's a singleplayer game with some leaderboard functionality. I rather wish the devs to focus on creating new and fun stuff to the game, than using all their time and rescources catching guys I could't care less about - since it ultimately does not affect me.
personally I don't let the leaderboard bother me at all if anything I look at the top leaders just to be curious and perhaps some jealousy why I cant be on (even at the lowest ladder) in my cynical opinion its just a "who got the biggest dick" contest that ppl use to belittle others on chat. Full disclosure I'm 12K+ para and my top solo clear is 67 I don't care to go higher not for blood shard capacity but as a "requirement" in order to join some of the snooty clan. As for bots.. I don't care if they exist they have no affect on my gameplay I play with ppl to socialize and get on voice chat for some good natured ribbing and teasing good time are done when playing drunk. Just quit whining about bots or other ppl who put 10+ a day, in a way I kinda sense that anyone thats higher than u, u assume they are bots keep ur jealousy in check and carry on.
the topic from a person. who will never be 2k, else you will never post smth like this. 2k is so easy now lol without any cheating
2k is possible, but "easy" is relative. Approximately 100 (NA) / 300 (EU) people are paragon 2k+ at this point (not counting China which has XP buffs and Korea which focuses more on non-season). But more importantly, stop throwing this insult around that this argument only comes from people who will never be 2k. Here's a video from Empyrian, ranked #89 paragon worldwide at the moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llPluMsxE7M
This is not a topic by the "paragon losers". Many of the top paragon ranked players in the world don't like this, but they just have to do it. It's a necessary means if you play competitively.
This simply shows that the amount of players, who really tryhard the leaderboards is less than 50 players per class per region.
Paragon has basically no influence on the leaderboards. It is not the reason why someone does 5+ grifts more than you. It's simply just a scapegoat.
That is true, but it's a result of paragon. In the first two seasons (and part of S3), there were so many players and clans competing. As of now, the first page is dominated by one clan in each region, and many people in those clans are confirmed or at least alleged botters. Many of the "legit players" have left the race and mentioned paragon, botting, and Blizzard's inactivity on those matters as the major reason (for example: Quin, and he even brought this up in a chat with Wyatt at Blizzcon IIRC).
Your last sentence is simply wrong in that regard; paragon has a massive impact on the leaderboard. The conjunction of those three things (paragon/botting/Blizzard not doing anything about it) is the number one reason why many of the competitive players left (they said so themselves), and why the competition is so small as you observed correctly now.
if you look through the bots forums you will learn that, with a bot, you wont be able to get more than ~150bn xph (thats what the top few people claim to get). farming with a decent group gives you way over 500bn xph. i hope you can do the rest of the math yourself.
Bots don't farm XP. Bots farm keys, which is about one third of your in-game time. And during that one third of your in-game time it gives you the time to get eight hours of sleep... and then go back to 16 hours of GR farming. Note that top groups get way more than 500bn XP per hour, more like 1.5b (I heard some streamers say they peaked 2.3b per hour on one day with 106+ no-boss runs).
The point of bots is simply to not having to spend time farming Nephalem Rifts for those keys you need - especially for the GR fishing at the end of the season when they just open 100 rifts and play only one of them.
Please let me have the paragon levels to hunt for, if not there is nothing that keeps me playing. Sure, the ladder is fun, but only to see how high I can get on GR, not what place on the leaderboards I get. As stated in other topic, even with insane paragon levels, the difference would not be greater than 3-5 (MAX) GR levels if you have the same gear and player. At some point you will have all the gear in the world, but still could not get any further due to lack of paragon levels. Paragon levels are fun and ticks my power-creep / progression feeling, and I feel that I can allways get further or get some more damage / defence by playing a little more. And it's also more fun than farming hundreds of hours for an item that never drops. Remember how it was to try getting WoH back in earlier stage of game? That was not fun, please do not let that type of gameplay return!
Play because you want to, and stop worrying about what everyone else does. If it was a massive online game I could understand it, but basically it's a singleplayer game with some leaderboard functionality. I rather wish the devs to focus on creating new and fun stuff to the game, than using all their time and rescources catching guys I could't care less about - since it ultimately does not affect me.
I agree with that assessment. I'm also against a cap. A cap is the band-aid fix solution that's not really a solution, and it's being brought up all the time. I think paragon should always give some benefits, and it's fine if they keep it "infinite", but the benefits are too large at this point. Make paragon levels only award 2 main stat after level 1000, or unlock some other benefits (cosmetic or whatever). Note that any of those solutions will not impact 99.9% of the players, we're only talking about a few hundred players of the top who are forced into running no-boss speed GRs for 18 hours a day if they want to compete for the number 1 spot. That's not fun (they said so themselves), but it's the only thing to do. And since farming GR keys is about one fourth to one third of a player's necessary activity, and bots excel at doing this, and Blizzard hasn't done anything about botting, many players are resorting to bots.
This game is competitive? LOL that's a good one.
Anyone who believes that is living in a bubble for the past what? a year now?
Enjoy spamming GRs 3 months 24/7. This is not an end-game, this is a complete spit in the face.
As for the 2k cap, i agree with the first reply - if you can't reach 2k, don't put cap on other players.
The only real solution is to have the impact of paragon greatly readuced - something that Caldesann already took care of partially and in a decent way.
But the, if Paragon are useless on progression terms (more power), why people should bother doing them?
Atm bots are becoming more a conveninece thing than anything related to progression. yes, they can farm you a lot of keys while you sleep so your playtime will be optimized into GR pushing/farming, but that's it.
Leaderboards are not that affected by paragons, and the race is really between a vey small bunch of players while majorty simply don't care about them - they journey is plenty of rewards for people who casually play the game and gives a lot of satisfaction through clear objectives and cosmetic rewards.
To answer OP question. To minimalize botting the game needs to become fun again not just a mindless grinding. That's it. And that is in the hands of developers, not us.
the problem isnt really the botting tho. do you even know how "top players" are farming?
..
they farm 18 hours a day, no breaks at all.
...
they have a way better understanding of greater rift mechanics and how to make good progress (OP wouldn't be able to get even close to their results if he had para 3k + perf equipment).
...
sure, they bot at night to get keys and maximize their grift time.
..
but if a legit player put in 18 hours per day, he should still be able to get 90% of the botters result with the farm style i stated above.
And how does this not make botting the problem ? - All you say is just verifying the extreme proportions of it.
personally i always have seen botting as just a convenience and catch up tool, for casuals. I am a casual, i dont play 10+ hours a day usually, i have a family, i work, depending on day i have church, family get together, birthdays, but i still made it to almost 900 paragon, fairly easily, far more than i did last season, which was about 750 ish (without botting)
Each season seems to get easier and faster for paragon, next season i'll push for 1000+. Botting is just for those times when you are gone for a day, or at work or sleeping, to make up those gap in times so that you arent falling behind your friends, i felt that a real disadvantage last few seasons by people who can play more, I'd be at para 400 and they would all be 600, so by botting that gap closes really fast, and allows me to have more fun when i do have the time to sit and play for 10 hours sometimes on the weekends.
Do i NEED to bot? no...do i want to? sure its pretty lucrative, gives me stupid amount of crafting mats, bounty mats, allows me to cherry pick drops, auto-salvage, auto-town run, oh and the hundreds of keys too, and thats usually within a few nights worth.
Would i miss botting if it was outright stopped? no probably not, i understand why its bad and why all the negative stuff but i also can see all the good it does on a personal level, i dont see it as bothering others or my friends, it aucutally helps enjoy the game more, because when you look at it, you are wasting 100's of hours doing the same things, monotony, i mean yeah thats the game, thats how these games work, but if i can cut down the time i sit in front of the screen doing those things over and over and over, and i can be sleeping or working, its a pretty easy choice.
I'm neutral on bot thing, bot if you want, dont if you dont, it is what it is. I still have fun in this game and thats really what matters. I haven't even logged in the last month having completed season journey and geared 4 toons to 70+ gr, there wasnt a lot to do till next patch. Also been playing more wow and shadowbane emulator server.
The problem is that this game has moved way too close to being an MMO with escalator grind mechanics such as farming crafting materials etc. and this is not what Diablo was supposed to be about, in my opinion.
Item hunting is one thing, Diablo 2 did that well, but without trading of crafting materials, or trade in general, farming and grinding has become an obnoxious disease infecting this game.
Grinding for attunements and other not fun aspects of WoW were removed, so why on earth is grinding so rampant in Diablo 3 in 2016?
In what world is it fun to hit a Grift ceiling limited entirely by your gear, and have your only path to "progression" be perfectly rolled ancients, higher augmented gems, and more paragon levels? This is fun to who exactly? Maybe I am missing the point, but all of this has culminated in spikes in bot usage.
Why not use a bot under this design? Blizzard tossed "competition" into the mix and left behind all the problems that make it unfair. If I could wake up and have 5,000 of each crafting material waiting for me, I could roll better ancients and I could "progress", but spending the majority of my time "farming" so that I get to spend very little time practicing higher GRs, is not only unfun, it's unfair.
It's pretty obvious that the design direction of this game has moved towards MMO with no off ramp in sight, so botting is the only way to combat the BORING.
yeah thats kinda how i felt this season, botting while i slept i could get say 2k breaths and then i could hop on and roll gear for an alt get all setup, and progress. Now without botting, obviously I'd have to play those hours, and not nearly as efficient, and with breaks, stops and pauses along the way, 2k breaths is a decent amount, but can get 1-2k breaths per hour solo, but just using numbers as example.
My point is, I constantly ran into points where progress was so slow because of the lack of time i could put into it, and rather than just do a tiny bit of progression at a time, botting allowed me to run for hours, then gear up and get over that hump, and then i could play to 70gr+ legitly and make progress and have fun. Progress in d3 comes down to mats like deaths breath, and then bounty mats, crap ton of both (1000's) are needed.
So to me it was more a mix of the 2, botting and legit play, so that i could get all the mats, and keys, and then be able to play and have fun, and run grifts with friends, and have 800 paragon to max out my alts from level 1, which of course makes it easier.
It also allowed me to gear alts up quickly, because its like any other rpg, once you have done the grind the first time, or few toons, gearing that 4th alt is just so boring and tedious that botting is amazing cuz now you can just set it and forget it, till its decent level and then can play in end game
So i saw it more as a tool to use that smoothed my progression so that if i wasnt able to play for a day, or a night, just fire up a bot, and i could at least gather mats, so when i had the time to play i could play legitly and have toons ready to go.
So i guess botting basically removes the "boring" bits, which i guess kinda defeats most of the game's core, which again begs the question...how to make the grind aucutally fun/interesting again?
@OP: Even if all botters are banned on regular basis, there is account sharing. As long as you have an uncapped stat (in the current state of the game - paragon levels) directly bound to time spent and giving advantage to the players who raise it, you can't have fair competition. It's simple as that.
If the developers of this game value the competition, they have to solve the paragon problem. The community has presented to them plethora of valid solutions.
If the developers of this game don't value the competition, the players like you are left with a few choices: 1) stop competing, 2) continue to play and somehow measure your performance taking in account the uncapped stats, 3) become a cheater yourself. Again, it's simple as that.
I haven't read the majority of posts, but the OP should care more about his own gameplay than others. In 2.4, the leveling system is so freaking easy, it is so easy now to paragon farm. 2.4.1 will even be easier. Legit players now have over 2K paragon levels. I have gained over 500 PL's in 4 man groups doing GR85-90. me personally, I dont bot and my friends dont bot. I am the lowest level, and I am at 1700+ now. I do everything in 4-man groups, that is bounties, rift key farming, and paragon farming. When my buddies are not on, you will see me in public games doing bounties, etc., with my speed monk. I get sick of reading how those that only play 1-2 hours a day, think that everyone higher than them bots. A lot of us enjoy the game and use the games mechanics to level up.
just ban botters from the leaderboard, that's all we're all asking. i don't care if they can play, just give them something similar to a vac ban so we don't have to see them waving their perfect ancient weapon around.
just ban botters from the leaderboard, that's all we're all asking. i don't care if they can play, just give them something similar to a vac ban so we don't have to see them waving their perfect ancient weapon around.
It would first have to be determined that they are a botter. How would you do that?
Man, Humanity hasn't changed. In the 1800's, anyone that was different, they burned at the stakes as witches, now, anyone that has a high PL, or is at the top of the leaderboard is a bot and you demand that they get banned. Give it a rest! I play this game more than most, and I have NEVER seen a bot, and I play with some pretty high players. If you play more, and at higher levels, you will have a perfect ancient weapon too!
Blizzard got this software called warden, which detects cheaters and flags their accounts accordingly.
This is in place, and has been for a long time.
Now what Blizzard choose to do with them is another thing, just making them not appear on leaderboards would be the soft punishment, getting D3 account banned the most likely, but banning their b.net account would be the best long term solution by far.
Bots arent hard to spot, just join a public game outside normal game hours and ask "who here is not a bot?" and see if u get any answer.
I usually see several every night I join some public rift games, drop some legs they cant pickup on ground to see how they behave erratically.
People who play more will always have an advantage over us, normal people.
People who play "efficiently" will always have an advantage over us.
My issue doesn't lie with Paragon (well, it could be changed a bit to make it more interesting, but that's another issue). My problem lies with GR being the absolute best place to farm XP.
If we could do our stuff outside of GR without being so inefficient (XP-wise), I would personally not care if some team did GR 100, 150 or even 200... A real endless dungeon, some meaningful exploration... if we had interesting activities outside of GR, I suspect that the outrage would be less intense.
Set dungeon is somewhat a first step --- however, I don't find them particularly interesting or fun.
Anyway, I'm not really in favor of a Paragon cap (game shouldn't be balanced around the existence of bots!). I'm more in favor of having more things to do.
From my point of view, Diablo is not a competitive game. If I wanted to compete, I would pick a game that was designed around it.
So paragon is why we all play daily to push, obviously. We get on to socialize with the buddys and push, eventually and or attempting to rank due to a mass amount of paragon points (+5 main stat a level). The bots advantage is they are able to farm bounties which leads to obtaining near perfect items in a shorter time frame, Also spamming t10's for keys and farming 70's for 72 hours straight. In the end of the season if you truly pushed hard you had a decent set of gear Regardless of Botting or Playing legit. But even with perfect gear Paragon Completely outweighs minor upgrades your lacking as appose to someone having 1500 x 5 = 7500 more main stat than you. ALL DUE TO CHEATING.
So why not simply cap paragon contributions at 2000. Let them level past 2000 to prove they are amazing at pushing a simple command button, however after 2000 cap the advantage you obtain from levels besides a number on your character portrait. Would still be high enough for people to play 6-8 hours a day everyday and to just barley get to the cap before the season ends.
It would give diablo 3 the competitive edge we all strive for and not a forced way to be number 1 by botting. Sure a few of the main guys are against bots, but we all know the majority of the leader board is 3rd Party Programs users who lack the time to compete legit, so they simply download a program and ruin it for whats left of the community.
Blizzard is by far one of the best company's worldwide for gaming and I'd hate to see a game like Diablo 3 sink due to a simple fix.
Even making it temporary would allow us to least compete until blizzard resolves the issue.
the topic from a person. who will never be 2k, else you will never post smth like this. 2k is so easy now lol without any cheating
every time you open a rift you have to type in a captcha
Please let me have the paragon levels to hunt for, if not there is nothing that keeps me playing. Sure, the ladder is fun, but only to see how high I can get on GR, not what place on the leaderboards I get. As stated in other topic, even with insane paragon levels, the difference would not be greater than 3-5 (MAX) GR levels if you have the same gear and player. At some point you will have all the gear in the world, but still could not get any further due to lack of paragon levels. Paragon levels are fun and ticks my power-creep / progression feeling, and I feel that I can allways get further or get some more damage / defence by playing a little more. And it's also more fun than farming hundreds of hours for an item that never drops. Remember how it was to try getting WoH back in earlier stage of game? That was not fun, please do not let that type of gameplay return!
Play because you want to, and stop worrying about what everyone else does. If it was a massive online game I could understand it, but basically it's a singleplayer game with some leaderboard functionality. I rather wish the devs to focus on creating new and fun stuff to the game, than using all their time and rescources catching guys I could't care less about - since it ultimately does not affect me.
personally I don't let the leaderboard bother me at all if anything I look at the top leaders just to be curious and perhaps some jealousy why I cant be on (even at the lowest ladder) in my cynical opinion its just a "who got the biggest dick" contest that ppl use to belittle others on chat. Full disclosure I'm 12K+ para and my top solo clear is 67 I don't care to go higher not for blood shard capacity but as a "requirement" in order to join some of the snooty clan. As for bots.. I don't care if they exist they have no affect on my gameplay I play with ppl to socialize and get on voice chat for some good natured ribbing and teasing good time are done when playing drunk. Just quit whining about bots or other ppl who put 10+ a day, in a way I kinda sense that anyone thats higher than u, u assume they are bots keep ur jealousy in check and carry on.
Please Stop making Stupid People Famous
2k is possible, but "easy" is relative. Approximately 100 (NA) / 300 (EU) people are paragon 2k+ at this point (not counting China which has XP buffs and Korea which focuses more on non-season). But more importantly, stop throwing this insult around that this argument only comes from people who will never be 2k. Here's a video from Empyrian, ranked #89 paragon worldwide at the moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llPluMsxE7M
This is not a topic by the "paragon losers". Many of the top paragon ranked players in the world don't like this, but they just have to do it. It's a necessary means if you play competitively.
That is true, but it's a result of paragon. In the first two seasons (and part of S3), there were so many players and clans competing. As of now, the first page is dominated by one clan in each region, and many people in those clans are confirmed or at least alleged botters. Many of the "legit players" have left the race and mentioned paragon, botting, and Blizzard's inactivity on those matters as the major reason (for example: Quin, and he even brought this up in a chat with Wyatt at Blizzcon IIRC).
Your last sentence is simply wrong in that regard; paragon has a massive impact on the leaderboard. The conjunction of those three things (paragon/botting/Blizzard not doing anything about it) is the number one reason why many of the competitive players left (they said so themselves), and why the competition is so small as you observed correctly now.
Bots don't farm XP. Bots farm keys, which is about one third of your in-game time. And during that one third of your in-game time it gives you the time to get eight hours of sleep... and then go back to 16 hours of GR farming. Note that top groups get way more than 500bn XP per hour, more like 1.5b (I heard some streamers say they peaked 2.3b per hour on one day with 106+ no-boss runs).
The point of bots is simply to not having to spend time farming Nephalem Rifts for those keys you need - especially for the GR fishing at the end of the season when they just open 100 rifts and play only one of them.
I agree with that assessment. I'm also against a cap. A cap is the band-aid fix solution that's not really a solution, and it's being brought up all the time. I think paragon should always give some benefits, and it's fine if they keep it "infinite", but the benefits are too large at this point. Make paragon levels only award 2 main stat after level 1000, or unlock some other benefits (cosmetic or whatever). Note that any of those solutions will not impact 99.9% of the players, we're only talking about a few hundred players of the top who are forced into running no-boss speed GRs for 18 hours a day if they want to compete for the number 1 spot. That's not fun (they said so themselves), but it's the only thing to do. And since farming GR keys is about one fourth to one third of a player's necessary activity, and bots excel at doing this, and Blizzard hasn't done anything about botting, many players are resorting to bots.
This game is competitive? LOL that's a good one.
Anyone who believes that is living in a bubble for the past what? a year now?
Enjoy spamming GRs 3 months 24/7. This is not an end-game, this is a complete spit in the face.
As for the 2k cap, i agree with the first reply - if you can't reach 2k, don't put cap on other players.
The only real solution is to have the impact of paragon greatly readuced - something that Caldesann already took care of partially and in a decent way.
But the, if Paragon are useless on progression terms (more power), why people should bother doing them?
Atm bots are becoming more a conveninece thing than anything related to progression. yes, they can farm you a lot of keys while you sleep so your playtime will be optimized into GR pushing/farming, but that's it.
Leaderboards are not that affected by paragons, and the race is really between a vey small bunch of players while majorty simply don't care about them - they journey is plenty of rewards for people who casually play the game and gives a lot of satisfaction through clear objectives and cosmetic rewards.
To answer OP question. To minimalize botting the game needs to become fun again not just a mindless grinding. That's it. And that is in the hands of developers, not us.
personally i always have seen botting as just a convenience and catch up tool, for casuals. I am a casual, i dont play 10+ hours a day usually, i have a family, i work, depending on day i have church, family get together, birthdays, but i still made it to almost 900 paragon, fairly easily, far more than i did last season, which was about 750 ish (without botting)
Each season seems to get easier and faster for paragon, next season i'll push for 1000+. Botting is just for those times when you are gone for a day, or at work or sleeping, to make up those gap in times so that you arent falling behind your friends, i felt that a real disadvantage last few seasons by people who can play more, I'd be at para 400 and they would all be 600, so by botting that gap closes really fast, and allows me to have more fun when i do have the time to sit and play for 10 hours sometimes on the weekends.
Do i NEED to bot? no...do i want to? sure its pretty lucrative, gives me stupid amount of crafting mats, bounty mats, allows me to cherry pick drops, auto-salvage, auto-town run, oh and the hundreds of keys too, and thats usually within a few nights worth.
Would i miss botting if it was outright stopped? no probably not, i understand why its bad and why all the negative stuff but i also can see all the good it does on a personal level, i dont see it as bothering others or my friends, it aucutally helps enjoy the game more, because when you look at it, you are wasting 100's of hours doing the same things, monotony, i mean yeah thats the game, thats how these games work, but if i can cut down the time i sit in front of the screen doing those things over and over and over, and i can be sleeping or working, its a pretty easy choice.
I'm neutral on bot thing, bot if you want, dont if you dont, it is what it is. I still have fun in this game and thats really what matters. I haven't even logged in the last month having completed season journey and geared 4 toons to 70+ gr, there wasnt a lot to do till next patch. Also been playing more wow and shadowbane emulator server.
The problem is that this game has moved way too close to being an MMO with escalator grind mechanics such as farming crafting materials etc. and this is not what Diablo was supposed to be about, in my opinion.
Item hunting is one thing, Diablo 2 did that well, but without trading of crafting materials, or trade in general, farming and grinding has become an obnoxious disease infecting this game.
Grinding for attunements and other not fun aspects of WoW were removed, so why on earth is grinding so rampant in Diablo 3 in 2016?
In what world is it fun to hit a Grift ceiling limited entirely by your gear, and have your only path to "progression" be perfectly rolled ancients, higher augmented gems, and more paragon levels? This is fun to who exactly? Maybe I am missing the point, but all of this has culminated in spikes in bot usage.
Why not use a bot under this design? Blizzard tossed "competition" into the mix and left behind all the problems that make it unfair. If I could wake up and have 5,000 of each crafting material waiting for me, I could roll better ancients and I could "progress", but spending the majority of my time "farming" so that I get to spend very little time practicing higher GRs, is not only unfun, it's unfair.
It's pretty obvious that the design direction of this game has moved towards MMO with no off ramp in sight, so botting is the only way to combat the BORING.
Fix this game please.
yeah thats kinda how i felt this season, botting while i slept i could get say 2k breaths and then i could hop on and roll gear for an alt get all setup, and progress. Now without botting, obviously I'd have to play those hours, and not nearly as efficient, and with breaks, stops and pauses along the way, 2k breaths is a decent amount, but can get 1-2k breaths per hour solo, but just using numbers as example.
My point is, I constantly ran into points where progress was so slow because of the lack of time i could put into it, and rather than just do a tiny bit of progression at a time, botting allowed me to run for hours, then gear up and get over that hump, and then i could play to 70gr+ legitly and make progress and have fun. Progress in d3 comes down to mats like deaths breath, and then bounty mats, crap ton of both (1000's) are needed.
So to me it was more a mix of the 2, botting and legit play, so that i could get all the mats, and keys, and then be able to play and have fun, and run grifts with friends, and have 800 paragon to max out my alts from level 1, which of course makes it easier.
It also allowed me to gear alts up quickly, because its like any other rpg, once you have done the grind the first time, or few toons, gearing that 4th alt is just so boring and tedious that botting is amazing cuz now you can just set it and forget it, till its decent level and then can play in end game
So i saw it more as a tool to use that smoothed my progression so that if i wasnt able to play for a day, or a night, just fire up a bot, and i could at least gather mats, so when i had the time to play i could play legitly and have toons ready to go.
So i guess botting basically removes the "boring" bits, which i guess kinda defeats most of the game's core, which again begs the question...how to make the grind aucutally fun/interesting again?
Captcha to open a (greater) rift or complete a bounty?
@OP: Even if all botters are banned on regular basis, there is account sharing. As long as you have an uncapped stat (in the current state of the game - paragon levels) directly bound to time spent and giving advantage to the players who raise it, you can't have fair competition. It's simple as that.
If the developers of this game value the competition, they have to solve the paragon problem. The community has presented to them plethora of valid solutions.
If the developers of this game don't value the competition, the players like you are left with a few choices: 1) stop competing, 2) continue to play and somehow measure your performance taking in account the uncapped stats, 3) become a cheater yourself. Again, it's simple as that.
I haven't read the majority of posts, but the OP should care more about his own gameplay than others. In 2.4, the leveling system is so freaking easy, it is so easy now to paragon farm. 2.4.1 will even be easier. Legit players now have over 2K paragon levels. I have gained over 500 PL's in 4 man groups doing GR85-90. me personally, I dont bot and my friends dont bot. I am the lowest level, and I am at 1700+ now. I do everything in 4-man groups, that is bounties, rift key farming, and paragon farming. When my buddies are not on, you will see me in public games doing bounties, etc., with my speed monk. I get sick of reading how those that only play 1-2 hours a day, think that everyone higher than them bots. A lot of us enjoy the game and use the games mechanics to level up.
just ban botters from the leaderboard, that's all we're all asking. i don't care if they can play, just give them something similar to a vac ban so we don't have to see them waving their perfect ancient weapon around.
It would first have to be determined that they are a botter. How would you do that?
Man, Humanity hasn't changed. In the 1800's, anyone that was different, they burned at the stakes as witches, now, anyone that has a high PL, or is at the top of the leaderboard is a bot and you demand that they get banned. Give it a rest! I play this game more than most, and I have NEVER seen a bot, and I play with some pretty high players. If you play more, and at higher levels, you will have a perfect ancient weapon too!
Blizzard got this software called warden, which detects cheaters and flags their accounts accordingly.
This is in place, and has been for a long time.
Now what Blizzard choose to do with them is another thing, just making them not appear on leaderboards would be the soft punishment, getting D3 account banned the most likely, but banning their b.net account would be the best long term solution by far.
Bots arent hard to spot, just join a public game outside normal game hours and ask "who here is not a bot?" and see if u get any answer.
I usually see several every night I join some public rift games, drop some legs they cant pickup on ground to see how they behave erratically.
People who play more will always have an advantage over us, normal people.
People who play "efficiently" will always have an advantage over us.
My issue doesn't lie with Paragon (well, it could be changed a bit to make it more interesting, but that's another issue). My problem lies with GR being the absolute best place to farm XP.
If we could do our stuff outside of GR without being so inefficient (XP-wise), I would personally not care if some team did GR 100, 150 or even 200... A real endless dungeon, some meaningful exploration... if we had interesting activities outside of GR, I suspect that the outrage would be less intense.
Set dungeon is somewhat a first step --- however, I don't find them particularly interesting or fun.
Anyway, I'm not really in favor of a Paragon cap (game shouldn't be balanced around the existence of bots!). I'm more in favor of having more things to do.
From my point of view, Diablo is not a competitive game. If I wanted to compete, I would pick a game that was designed around it.