Game Creation Now Limited to Fight Botting
Posted 13 June 2012 by FluxApproximately eleven years after a similar measure might have helped save the Diablo II economy from Pindlebots, Blizzard has implemented a limit on the number of games an account can create in a short period of time. Here’s their official announcement, plus the update a few hours later, when they had to turn it off for more fine tuning.
This change was made to help reduce server strain and improve overall game stability, and we’ll continue to monitor the situation and make additional improvements as necessary. We’re currently working to find a solution that allows most players who are playing normally to create games without encountering this error, but will still limit some of the more extreme cases of rapid game creation. We appreciate your patience as we make these adjustments.
10:00 PM PDT- After looking into some reports from players it seems the limit may have not been working exactly as intended. Working properly you really shouldn’t see it, even in fairly normal ‘farming’ conditions, or reasonable amounts of character swapping. We’re shutting off the limitations off until we can take a better look at it tomorrow.
I doubt anyone will object to this. Well, anybody other than hackers/botters, anyway. And since the rest of us want them to object to things, no worries then?
Of course people can object to this. This will shut down alot of legit farming such as Goblin runs and XP runs that in no way is connected to botting/hacking. It will limit how people can play and enjoy the game.
Depends on how they set it up though, and it seems they did not succed with that on their first try.
Goblin runs are overpowered and not in line with the rest of farming.
This is fine.
Yeah, I agree that people will (and should) complain about this.
This is much worse than it was in D2 because they have set up a system where you have to go in and out of game a lot. For one thing, there is no in-game implementation of the Auction House, like in many games.
Also, Blizzard set it up so to do multiple quests throughout the acts, you have to constantly start new games. You can’t just jump around to various waypoints. It works fine, but cause a lot more legit game creation.
Not to mention that for anyone who cares about achievements (embarrassed to say I do), they have made achievements that are entirely based around act jumping. (Anyone try to get the conversations achievements without starting dozens of games back to back.)
They have created a game that makes more game creation a necessity and not are limited the number we can create. What a fail.
very well thought out and argued post
Yep, doing ZK The Realm of Shadow runs now for the Haunted achievement (only need The Tomekeeper.
Others that come to mind are ancient device in DS and all the mob’s/items for the Staff of Herding.
Wondering what the max games per minute it will be set.
I think this is a step in the right direction but also agree with you that it will have unintended and irritating side effects for legit users.
Additionally the only way you can quickly reset a vendor is to restart the game. I don’t do this a lot but have from time to time when trying to find a reasonable blue item. This again is potentially a problem for normal users.
You cannot call this “a fail” without first seeing how it works in practice for regular gameplay. Assuredly Blizzard has considered the fast creation of games for achievements, etc. and are taking that into account. If it turns out this impacts the “act hopping” activity you describe, then sure, raise hell. However, Blizzard indicated in the announcement that they do not expect this to impact us regular players at all once they get it fully tuned. In any event, the rare times regular players encounter this error should not prevent this system from moving forward if it indeed limits botting.
Me and my friends were banned from ‘regular gameplay’ within 15 game creations. This was not goblin farming, or game exploitation. It was achievement farming, and that is certainly “regular gameplay.”
You’d have to be insanely lucky to just stumble across Bashiok in Act 1 normal. I had a friend (who is also insane) farm for him for 9 hours straight just get that achievement, and that was with constant leave/join operations (some people are really into the nerd points).
The way the game is currently constructed, game limitations like this one hurt regular play much more than it does botting. If you have any experience with Diablo 2′s bots, you’ll understand how sophisticated they are. When these limiters are implemented, script is adapted to maximize. Key rotation, account rotation, MAC address changes, etc. Bot scripts these days are very difficult to counter.
In the end, the average player suffers. I feel that this is why they’ve decided to disable and re-evaluate the situation before making any permanent decisions.
To be more clear, I am definitely on board with the idea that this should not limit regular gameplay like you have described. I too have done some achievement farming, such as remaking numerous and rapid games to find the Watch Tower and the vendor event inside.
My point was merely that we need to see how this works in practice before touting it as a problem because Blizzard appeared to me to indicate an awareness of the potential impact on such regular gameplay, and further implied that we should not be affected once they get the system fully tuned. Game communities tend to cry foul way before they have any evidence that something is harmful (and even sometimes when it doesn’t affect them at all), and so I felt the need to point out that we should at least wait and see!
However, from your post and the fact that they unimplemented this system to work on it, it appears that it is not working appropriately. I still do not think this is a cause to flame Blizzard given that they have indicated that they do not want this to affect us, but I see from the posts here based on D2 experience that this is a tightrope Blizzard may not be able to walk at all.
I agree with you, most definitely. I’m curious about how the system was supposed to function. All we know now, of course, is that the original implementation was terrible.
As always, Blizzard’s methods to fight botting only hurt legit players. The cheaters will continue to cheat. The bots will continue to run, the dupers will continue to dupe, the hackers will continue to hack.
this
This is a bad change, period. It’s treatment for a symptom, not for the problem. Blizzard needs to remove (most) of the reasons people want to repeatedly join and leave games. Take anything of value near a waypoint and remove it. You should have to at least kill 50 monsters to find a treasure goblin or resplendent chest. Also, letting players refresh the items for sale at a merchant would improve server performance, rather than forcing them to leave and rejoin just to see the items. I’d be okay with this if it was something like 5 minutes or less to wait, but 10 minutes or even 15 is way too long, especially because I’m sure the system won’t warn you when you’re close to the limit; you’ll just suddenly be put in time-out.
Another point of view – same **** happened in Diablo 2 basically. If they keep this around, we’ll just have to adjust to it. Not the end of the world, but a stupid move.
Oh I have a great way to reduce a ton of game creation strains but Blizzard never reads.
Just remove public games where the player/s is in town and put them back on the list when they go out fighting again.
I wonder how many 100s of games I join where the player is afk/idle in town and I just quit and try a new game…I’m sure many many thousands of ppl do this all day long.
Do this first, Then figure out a bot solution.
Someone may just be waiting for someone to join their game to accompany them through a level. Someone like me. =)
Oh great this sh*t again.
I allready hated in Diablo 2
In D2 it was mostly anoying when muling, since we have a shared stash and you don’t have to do that, I’m 100% fine with it.
Muling seems pretty common in D3 still. Usually to distribute gear from the AH onto the right characters and keep stash space clear for new items.
Allowing transfer from the stash to characters, or directly from the completed auctions to characters would cut out a lot of game creation. The “sell” tab already shows character inventories and the stash so it would just need drag-and-drop and write access to the database.
Most likely Blizzard’s developers have already thought of this and the timelimits are an interim measure from the battle.net sysadmins.
I have three mules. StrMule, IntMule, and DexMule.
I love not being able to make games for no apparent reason.
NOOOO the single most annoying thing in Diablo 2 is back!! Well, it’s probably for the best..
No problem here. And the Goblin farming, which is stupid, will not suffice anyway since they will increase drop and drop chances for high lvl gear in early Inferno.
Great change to battle the bots.
It doesn’t “battle bots”. I doubt it has anything to do with that to begin with.
Please elaborate.
“I doubt anyone will object to this. Well, anybody other than hackers/botters, anyway. And since the rest of us want them to object to things, no worries then?”
You are so wrong there. People are already complaining by the droves.
Can someone explain how this stops botting? when a bot opens a game doesnt it stay in the game for several minutes?
People will bitch about anything
You must be new to this forum.
well, they make a game that requires you to play online and then they limit how often you can log in
pretty stupid system
Of course this doesn’t stop botting, just slows it down some.
I wonder if this change helps Warden spot botters, though? At least the botters need to reconfigure their bots.
I objected this in Diablo 2, because the best way to get items/XP was doing runs. Now we have Nephalem Valor and the max lvl is easily attainable if you just play the game through hell, so I’m happy about this limitation. It makes the way I always wanted to play D2 (and sometimes did, but had a nagging feeling that I could do this so much faster/better) actually the best way of playing in Diablo 3.
No it sucks its stupid. IT hurts legit mf runs who are not botting. and as far as imp runs are concerned.. out of like 500 ofthose I have gotten like.. 1 legendary. and 2 upgrades rest of the items went to friends who were with me or I sold or broke down. ITs not gamebreaking in anyway.
hurting those who need to do it to progress in act2.. try playing an inferno 2hand barb without spending 40 million.. then you will understand why many do the dam imp.
Try hardcore.