This a Bot

Thousands of accounts is good for them.

In a F2P game, one of the main objectives is too sell the idea of popularity

In regards to bots and such.
What is GGG stand on multiboxing?
And macro hardware/sofware?

If a person uses 4 pcs and 4 chars and macro keyboard + macro mouse?

Its still a human playing.
So its never really making any *botting* involved.


But as far as botting goes, it will always exist.
GGG cant prevent people from making homebrew bots that uses instant-flasks at below 30% HP.

(for the record i dont bot, but i do understand why people would do it and i dont blame them. Its 100% human nature.)

So, I'm a bit confused as to what he was doing - From what I read, he would put up 5 Thicket Bows in the vendor, which would result in the '5 of a kind' recipe. This would show him the sockets on the bow, and if they were desirable, he'd take it. If not, he'd keep the 5 bows and...'juggle the items sold.' Does this mean he'd buy something from the vendor? Or does he mean swapping out one of the thickets from the recipe for a different one? If so, it seems like you'd need a LOT of thicket bows to do this.

If so, rather than hiding the sockets, couldn't the devs just keep the original result of the 5 bows static, so it would not change based on other variables?

Maybe I'm thinking too simplistically - not sure how something like this would be done, and I don't quite understand what he was doing in the first place. I understand what the goal was, not the process.

Lol, I do something like that, but I didn't think it was nefarious. Basically, I have 3 tabs of bejeweled, and I pick and choose gems that give me a +20 attribute onyx amulet. But I figure, if you took the time to collect so many gems or thicket bows, you deserve that opportunity. As long as, you are doing it, and not a bot.

"

MonopolyLegend wrote:

So, I'm a bit confused as to what he was doing - From what I read, he would put up 5 Thicket Bows in the vendor, which would result in the '5 of a kind' recipe. This would show him the sockets on the bow, and if they were desirable, he'd take it. If not, he'd keep the 5 bows and...'juggle the items sold.' Does this mean he'd buy something from the vendor? Or does he mean swapping out one of the thickets from the recipe for a different one? If so, it seems like you'd need a LOT of thicket bows to do this.

If so, rather than hiding the sockets, couldn't the devs just keep the original result of the 5 bows static, so it would not change based on other variables?

Maybe I'm thinking too simplistically - not sure how something like this would be done, and I don't quite understand what he was doing in the first place. I understand what the goal was, not the process.

The exploit isn't about just five bows -- it's about choosing five bows from a larger set of, say, fifteen bows.

So if you have some bows numbered:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f

You present five of those -- let's say bows 1 2 3 4 5 -- and the vendor generates a new bow offer.

1 2 3 4 5 -> new bow: 4 sockets

If you like it, you take it. But if you don't, you swap one of the five bows you offered with one from your inventory. So maybe now your new offer is 1 2 3 4 6. And now since your set of bows to trade is different, you're presented with a new offer.

1 2 3 4 6 -> new bow: 5 sockets

It turns out that you can make, from choosing 5 bows out of 15 bows, 3003 different combinations.

1 2 3 4 7 -> new bow: 4 sockets
...
and so on
...

The exploit is time consuming and bothersome to do manually, but the bot has the patience to see what it can get from all combinations of the starting group of bows. Then it can go and actually trade in the best combination it found. Remembering what item should be generated for a given combination isn't the problem -- it's how many combinations you can make from a relatively small group of starting items combined with the ability to see what you'll get for each of them.


see also:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/33590/

"

Interesting wrote:

Thousands of accounts is good for them.

In a F2P game, one of the main objectives is too sell the idea of popularity

Chris has stated that part of why he wants such a high initial character slot count is to encourage fewer accounts for GGG to manage.

The idea of popularity is not what bots convey, but rather the illusion of population. Most gamers can easily spot the difference.

"

MonopolyLegend wrote:

So, I'm a bit confused as to what he was doing - From what I read, he would put up 5 Thicket Bows in the vendor, which would result in the '5 of a kind' recipe. This would show him the sockets on the bow, and if they were desirable, he'd take it. If not, he'd keep the 5 bows and...'juggle the items sold.' Does this mean he'd buy something from the vendor? Or does he mean swapping out one of the thickets from the recipe for a different one? If so, it seems like you'd need a LOT of thicket bows to do this.

To answer the 'juggle the items sold' part, I actually took 6 items to the vendor, and rotated through which item was not being offered (6 different possibilities). This was far more efficient than taking 5, trying to sell that set, going back to the stash and back to Greust 5 more times just to accomplish the same feat. But as caps said, it wasn't about 5 items, or even 6, it was about a full stash page of items (18 when doing bows).

As to some of the odds behind it, and why it's not very efficient to do it by hand:

If I was doing bows, I would fill a stash page, which was 18 bows. 18, choose 5 (in statistics) is (18*17*16*15*14) / (5*4*3*2*1) = 8568. Odds of getting a 6S are 1:306 so I would see about 28 6S in a full stash page. Odds of seeing a 5S are 5:306 so I would see about 140 (again, given a full stash).

Fusing odds and Jeweler's odds seem pretty close (with the exception of 6L, they're way tougher to get with a Fusing than a 6S is to roll with a Jeweler's), but 6S items have a chance to roll 5L a 2nd time if the first time rolls no links, so it's a bit better. Assuming these odds are identical, the odds of getting a 5L on a 6S are 1:46 (a little better than 50/50 given the ~28 6S we can expect) and on a 5S, on average I would see more than 1. This is a bit higher than I saw, but not by much.

Also, for research's sake, I attempted to use chromatics, alterations, augmentations and jeweler's, all of them failed to change the reward in the recipe. I don't know that I ever tried different vendors (Greust in ruthless vs. Greust in Merciless, for example), but the recipe seemed to be tied to the bow and not anything on the bow, such as a mod (which would also imply that it would be hard to compile a recipe that would reward with a specific item unless you could actually see the results, which soon you won't be able to).

Also, for fun, filling a stash page with chestplates gives you 24 items and a total of 42,504 unique combinations, giving about 139 combinations that would result in 6S items.

If you just wanted to get a 6S, you'd want to have enough items to get at least 306 combinations, preferably more (11 items would give you 462 unique combinations and would be a good place to start). If you did this by hand, you'd probably average 1 6S an hour, not exactly rewarding...

I'd be willing to bet the devs have their own bots.

I mean that's how most product testing is done, it's faster, more efficient, and requires less overhead.

All he did was test the game in a more efficient manner than the rest of us.

He was able to provide GGG with more data in a few days than any 10 players would in a month's time.

That being said I think "botting is bad... mmmkay?"

I'm sure OMWAB could have done most of his farming without scripts, and that's the problem which GGG will be fixing. A lot of Chinese labor can emulate this script, and farm a lot faster than he can alone, and if the exploit remains, there will be cyber-sweatshops for this game.

I'm wondering about the follower thing which OMWAB has going, I've wanted to dual-box myself for exactly the same reason, but of course, I give my keys to all my friends and I still need more. :(

The increased toughness, experience, and loot from multiplayer games makes it worthwhile to group up, but when you just want to efficiently level and farm without having a bunch of trustworthy friends at the same level, it's quite difficult. In other ARPGs there could be a setting to virtually increase the difficulty to that of a full group, but only for one or two people. I don't know whether this is planned, but I can see a lot of people doing experience trains or "multi-boxing" for just this reason.

I see, thank you for clearing that up. I'm no mathematician, so the number of combinations was pretty surprising to see. In any case, removing the sockets from sight until the transaction is completed, while somewhat inconvenient compared to the current system, is more consistent with the rest of the game. For example, when you roll an item with your orbs, you don't have a chance to see what it will become - you have to do it and hope you get lucky. Same thing with this vendor recipe.