The Forum

[quote="3D"]I agree with you, 100%. Lots of bad decisions, lots of things done that have actively driven people away. The question is: why would that be any different a second/third time around? Why would any of the feedback from people who know what they're talking about be listened to this time? One of the biggest issues has always been the 'i know best' attitude, to the point of ignoring the people appointed to offer help and guidance. Why would that suddenly change? fwiw I totally agree about the botting. Anyone caught should have had that char and any other char they've played banned. Unless they're going to actually address it though, people will always do it. Is that another thing that will magically change because of a reset? Or will it just be exactly the same as now?[/quote]

[quote="SALEM"]Everything you're saying is fair enough I just want to note that we're talking about things that could bring people back right now. The bad attitude was always there but I guess if we get another 5 years of playable Soma by rewinding and undoing bad decisions then that should be considered worth it as a short-medium term goal to keep the server running and populated. In the long-run then I think if true sustainability is what we're after we need Fin to agree to allow others (e.g. Foxtrck etc.) to make meaningful contributions to the development and running of the server. The elephant in the room is the fact that 'the good of the server' is a total lie/joke when you're refusing help and support from dedicated community members simply for the sake of keeping the GM team propped up as the sole contributors. [/quote]

[quote="RAVENSOUL"]I’m 100% with you on kicking out the cheaters and cleaning up soma, I’ve never understood why players cheat at playing games, pc, console, tablet, phone etc but let’s take a step back here. Finito made his post on January 30 it’s February 1 even I wouldn’t expect that quick a fecking turnaround and transformation of soma and be free from cheaters. Let’s just give Finito the time and our support. Keep posting the problems that need addressing but give him time. [/quote]

[quote="MIKELOWREY"]Yea I would say just actually ban blatant cheating for starters, as opposed to essentially encouraging it by actively ignoring it. A reset would undo a lot of the damage from these changes that as stated were strongly opposed and almost always totally untested so just guessed, then left to rot the UC away further. Stick to a stage of the server where balance was best. If it’s expanded from there then speak to the community, ask the community to join in with testing and listen to their feedback before implementing big changes. Would it be perfect? No. Would it be tremendously improved from the current state? Most definitely.[/quote]

[quote="SB99"]I personally think the only way to stop the botting issue is: - add fins bot (i'm sure he could make one easy enough) - PVE/PVP maps - community police how much AFK people can bot and everyone has the same opportunity to bot on the PVE maps - Crafting bots, remove barr profit from crafting? Tbh this is stupid but can't see any other way, @finito take a look at how much profit these craft botters are making a day while the rest of can't afford 5m for a weapon haha. Also think these changes should be added in after a wipe with a solid plan in place as outlined in foxtrcks post. Foxtrck/mickyc are perfect to build a server around, I don't know either very well but have always been nothing but gentlemen and have all genuine good intentions and no bias. The ONLY reason i would suggest fins own bot is because the usercount, as far as i can tell, is just people botting immune or pvping on one char and immune botting on another. I brought this issue up many times in the past but obviously was shot down by the black market sellers and botters, which is why an overall community approach can never work here. Get a team together, work it out and go from there with a solid plan. [/quote]

[quote="BIGBERT"]would be nice to hear Dan's thoughts tbh.......[/quote]

[quote="RAVENSOUL"]Removing Barr from selling what you craft just punished us honest crafters, I would usually burn through half mats then sell what I made with other half because it’s expensive just burning through just for skill. Can’t remember how long it used to take to generate 1 mil from crafting daggers, but of late I cba trying to get mats in abias with the many bot runners roaming there. Someone did post in another thread awhile back that they could farm elder for x amount of hours for x amount of millions at the time I was crafting they made more from elders than I would from daggers in same amount of hours.[/quote]

[quote="SB99"]Yea but imagine how much barr you could make while you slept with your 200k mats in your wh. Beats mags, right? nice and safe in town! maybe you are also botting immune at vafer getting those sweet drops with your 250recoil knuckler? or mayb you botting valk shaman everyday for unlimited holy water and sds/mac/virts? im ranting now but you get where im going with this..[/quote]

[quote="RAVENSOUL"]Yeah it wouldn’t surprise me if they have another character controlled by a bot collect Barr drops from one of the many mobs ingame while bot running, bot crafting or sleeping. It’s why I leave at times it’s demoralising seeing it happening. But if you think Finito or even iSylver doesn’t care about cleaning up soma your crazy, do you honestly think that Finito doesn’t get pissed off being told, seeing evidence or witnessing cheating with all the time and effort he continues to put into soma over these past 10 years??? He could easily just switch soma off and be hassle free I know I wouldn’t blame him for doing it, but he keeps working on soma, so please just give him time and our support if he asks for any help. But I know no matter how much he puts in place to stop these cheating bastards they will find some way to continue in some capacity it’s what cheaters do.[/quote]

[quote="SB99"]No I never said that Finito doesn't want to stop the bots/cheating. I do think that he would ban them all if he could. And that is the whole point of what i'm saying - you will NEVER stop the cheating, the games too old, the resources aren't there so the game should be adjusted to fix the issues to the point where it isn't just botters/blackmarket sellers and buyers (current usercount). Put everyone on an even playing field. The main point of everything I'm saying is that Fin/Dan need a trusted team around them. [/quote]

[quote="RAVENSOUL"]I get what your saying, but even if Finito created a working bot it just doesn’t fit well for me personally. I know everyone would be able to use it then but maybe it’s my old age but I thought the whole purpose of gaming was the challenge of the game, if some programme is doing everything for you why on earth are you playing games where’s the challenge where’s the fun in doing absolutely nothing??? Anyhow I do agree with another point you mentioned, I’ve seen in past work that foxtrck and MickyC have done and I completely agree if Finito needed help these 2 would be great for soma.[/quote]

[quote="SALEM"]I definitely don't think Fin releasing a bot is the way to go personally. On crafting I can think of a couple of options: 1. Just make mats way more accessible and the crafting rate fast to 150 although from what I remember from last time I played the rate then was pretty quick it was only really the lack of mats that was a problem. 2. Get rid of some of the grind of crafting by having a few special tiered mats and recipes that drop rarely/some from quests or whatever and then you have to craft a certain single special item for say 5.0-10.0 skill at a time. Have say 10-20 special items like that with increasing rarity of the mats/difficulty of the quests to get them. Each one would ideally only work at a certain skill range i.e. you can't just do the first one 10x, you'd need to progress through the recipes. Be cool if it was actually a useful and powerful item for a certain level range depending on which skill tier you were at. Not 100% sure how feasible to implement number 2 is or whether it is even a great idea but just a suggestion. By the looks of what Foxtrck and those Exodous guys came up with and got working though you'd be best off recruiting them and getting them involved with this server which just brings us back once again to opening up and allowing talented community members to have a lot more input.[/quote]

[quote="SB99"]On the botting topic, what's the suggestion to combat botting then? Just ban the cheaters does not and will never work. Hunting on soma is boring. That's why botting is the user count atm. If you think about it the user count is mostly 30-40 year olds which means job, wife/husband, kids and not a lot of time. The most logical thing to help and involve them is to give them a chance against the people with nothing but 3/4 chars on at once botting 247 purely playing soma for financial profit. My suggestion is to allow people the option to hunt on equal terms on PVE map with a smaller drop rate. Map would consist of leveling path etc etc. Other maps pvp enabled, better drops/ drop rate, can bot on them but no immunity, policed by community. This stops botters reporting botters for botting to the gms who waste anytime they have dealing with this. Making mats more accessible helps the normal guy but ultimately benefits the crafting botters more. [/quote]

[quote="OLM"][quote="SB99"]On the botting topic, what's the suggestion to combat botting then? Just ban the cheaters does not and will never work. Hunting on soma is boring. That's why botting is the user count atm. If you think about it the user count is mostly 30-40 year olds which means job, wife/husband, kids and not a lot of time. The most logical thing to help and involve them is to give them a chance against the people with nothing but 3/4 chars on at once botting 247 purely playing soma for financial profit. My suggestion is to allow people the option to hunt on equal terms on PVE map with a smaller drop rate. Map would consist of leveling path etc etc. Other maps pvp enabled, better drops/ drop rate, can bot on them but no immunity, policed by community. This stops botters reporting botters for botting to the gms who waste anytime they have dealing with this. Making mats more accessible helps the normal guy but ultimately benefits the crafting botters more. [/quote] What's the difference between giving everyone a bot and giving everyone a capped char with stat allocation? It's a terrible suggestion you wouldn't buy a game from the shop and then put it into auto complete mode and leave it, what would be the point? The only viable way to eradicate bots mostly (not fully) is severe punishments of deleted char and items with across al IPs that have access to that char, it would involve peer pressure from mates telling them not to bot and it would stop account sharing somewhat, sure the botters might never come back but who cares?, good riddance.[/quote]

[quote="BIGBERT"]"The only viable way to eradicate bots mostly (not fully) is severe punishments of deleted char and items with across al IPs that have access to that char, it would involve peer pressure from mates telling them not to bot and it would stop account sharing somewhat, sure the botters might never come back but who cares?, good riddance." it is possible to read a pc's motherboard, cpu and gpu's unique serial numbers and to then ban based in these numbers..............[/quote]