The end of camping (in Changelog)

It came to my attention recently that the use of cheats to improve the odds of being the first to click on a spawned rare has become widespread if not ubiquitous among campers.

Reluctantly, I have made rares spawn directly into auctions instead.

Very Nice change.

Nuf said.

wow

nice change

does it really need to cost a BA when going to stores now?

Since this is the end of camping, how about a visit to the store NOT charging a BA?

and a botcheck?

I visited a few times and did not get charged BA for it.

pay attention when you visit the store... no BA was part of the change

gotcha...=P

whoa. too bad that non-campers can't get the rush of hitting the store at just the right time and catching a rare, anymore.

how about the rare ammos? still go to the store?

so does the money from these auctions go to central bank or is it gone from the game?

about time.. Jon thanks for cleaning out the abusers it was harsh but what else could you do (V)Oo(V)

/me wonders who was cheat/camping...

/me slaps him/her

Best day ever in CB!!

wow this is insane..... good change make it fair for all of us...... kinda wierd tho

rare ammo goes to auctions too but only for 1h instead of 1 day

and uhm will this be listed under blackmarket auctions or what under the auction "home" page

I think camper will have to put some gears and do like everybody...

'' FIGHT ''

and does BM still need to be there? I can see it both ways, but now, every weapon will be in there. lol

Congratulations

I never quite get it why most people think the existence of campers makes it unfair to other players just like what EBS mentioned.

Wow!

I like the change, but am surprised by it. Now, CB is just fighting and forging. And for some like me, fighting doesn't have much of a purpose...

the game is now 1 dimensional. why didn't you just highlight the rares or make them look different? a drastic change like this to the balance of the game making usd even more of a factor is very foolish imo. now anyone with deep pockets can buy there way to the top. sounds familiar right? only now there is no counter. can a NUB receiver just sell all that cb$ they get to dawg so we can get cb3 rolling already?

wow. *shock*
there goes my plan to camp post-nub. not that i'm complaining... what had to be done has been done.

/me sees no point in a black market vote anymore

What!! what am i gonna do now? camping was the only thing in CB for me i was playin to buy Black Card Situation. I......I dunno what to say. There has been a huge change in the game i dont know how to cope with this...... i cant fight i have no NUB anymore noo no noooooo!!

congrats jon; you've either just made cb2$ more valuable as USD is the only way to compete; or you've made half the players want to leave...

i have decided what im gonna do and thats find another online game.....Goodbye CB

I agree with gaza, you raised teh cb2:usd rate and you have driven more people to leave cb. The best player is the one that has the most usd. With that said, i can smell another change that will end cb for good.

i think this sucks.... :(

You peeps need to suck it up and move along :) nice change i wuv it.

Wow, this totally surprises me. Changes were made to the game making it easier to sell my beloved Gyaxx, and now changes are made to the game that ends the other activity I was going to participate in. Not sure what I will be doing now until this can be properly digested.

Ban the cheaters!! I love this change : )

but dont leave sefton :(

What would happen to a rare if you sold it to the store? Will it stay in the store or go to auctions?

This game should be closed to newbs, cuz they wont be able to go anywhere if they are not willing to spend usd.

Please don't assume all successful campers have been cheating. I cant' speak for all, but I can speak loudly for one. I've spent numerous hours watching Sefton camp. His first ELB on 2, I thought he would faint! Bash your cheaters, yes they deserve it! But remember... there are some out there with pure skill. Those will be the ones who take this blow the hardest.

Would it not be possible to redesign the Weapon and Armor shop pages to make it more difficult for campers to cheat so as not to penalise those legitimate campers?

I think I speak for most of the CB2 community in that I have always been impressed with Sefton's ability to both camp and fight.

Out of all the campers, ONLY he would use his camping skills to make his character better. The rest would sell for cb2 then USD or directly for USD.

Its a shame that Sefton again gets the shaft yet again. But still I do like the changes as a whole. Including not having to spend a BA to get more bolts for my axbow.

i like what u said wld....good wording....
im taking this hard...i love to camp..even tho im not all that good but i can get things every once in awhile...

Sefton my not be a cheater but just because he isn't a cheater dosn't mean that every other camper is not or the majority. Sorry Sefton, you don't really have a bright future in CB2 now.

But hey, theres still (for now) camping in CB1 : )

same for me Ranger...i would fight...then camp for awhile...
but sefton sold gyaxx cause i guess he wanted to camp more and now camping is gone....im srry sefton...

only a fool would camp during his NUB period

the people claiming this shafts new players are stupid, duplicitous, or both

i have NUB and im not a fool :(

nobody said NUB's would suffer jon. they are now the only people who can keep up with USD spenders. they gain the most

The only way to make it hard to cheat is too make it so easy that the difference between cheating and just camping is non-existent. This could only be accomplished by a method like the one Megaman suggested.

As for the Black Market, it is still of great importance. Mainly because it is our only way to choose which rares we want more of. It's the only Democracy within this Jonocracy. So please don't question whether we should have it or not.

wow...this is kinda wierd and takes 1 of 3 aspects out of the economic forfront. It used to be loaning, forging and camping, but now its the 2 formers...i dont know if this was good or not, but i do know that it will be about who has the better real life job, so they can spend usd on cb...

Mage Blender Who has the most usd blender

it's very good for loan business i predict

I think this is a fabulous change, but I would like to take this time to say I vouch for Sefton in that he was NOT using technological means to aid his camping. He describe several of his tactics (such as shrinking the screen so that longer-named items wrapped and were easier to find). All of his means were "clean".

Other than that, I am surprised this change took this long. I am convinced some of the "cheater" methods have probably been in use since CB2 started.

"the game is now 1 dimensional. why didn't you just highlight the rares or make them look different?"

People will never be as fast as a computer. And why don't you go see Jon's opinions in other topics on a colors ability to fool a computer?

but how could they cheat....i dont think u can make a autoer for this game like runescape u can...

undertow there was no computer camping it was still people. in fact i am willing to bet i could beat anybody to a rare and i don't use the cheat. it really was not as strong as people think

Fat Tony, I said what you said in another thread, and here's another news flash: It has always been that way. CB1, CB2, ... CBn. Where N is any positive integer greater than 3 that you can possibly imagine. When your primary foe is human (which makes this game fun), money will always talk.

Okay, how about this:

Since you CAN'T USE IT ANYMORE, what was the cheat?

Maybe people will have a better grasp on whether this was a good idea or not when they understand what actually was going on.

if i am correct they used a text highlighter to bold the rares and make them stand out to the eye

Undertow, see here

whoever used that must have been blind cuz all rare armor was at the top of each category. And rare weapons were at the top or very close to it. im pretty sure that was just a lame rumor.

google toolbar is one of the easiest ways

but you can get a lot more sophisticated than that

If you can highlight it, you can click and submit.

I have automated 2 or 3 web sites for work. Yes, a camper would have to still answer the bot check, but from there, a click and submit could be instantaneous.

Several campers had perfect the "method"...the intervals in which to check the store. From there, there was a lot of, "Oh man, I _just_ missed it!". Cheats helped win out for the latter.

Yeah, check out this thread.

I did some part time camping to up my gear and loved the thrill of
catching a rare but never cheated myself. Something did need to be
done but I think this may have been a bit harsh. What happens if
a rare is sold to the store? Does it go straight to auctions or can we still
get lucky and find it in the store?

you can still camp,,,, on compound bows LOL (v)oo(V)

there's one way to find out what happens to rares when you sell it to the store...

There's a nifty little javascript that disables highlighting..and disabling javascript to be able to do so would technically render playing CB2 useless.

You can sell rares to the store and buy them back. i just tried.

Take a look at Auctioneer, there are 2 items that have spawned as rares today and are now in the auction which is done by Auctioneer, but the strange thing is there is one auction that was done on August 24. Was that a test? Some people said in channel it could have been black market but if that was the case then the current tulka gloves that spawned would be on the list too. Ironicly therealkiller who won the auction of the cloak of istar was banned, so we got no input from him :(

I figure I might as well throw my 2 cents into the fray, too:
I don't camp, I've never camped, I've never had any intention of camping, and to be quite honest, I have very deep USD pockets and could easily become (if I wanted) that USD spending player buying my way to the top that so many complain about.
You would think that this makes me happy.
Honestly, though, I hate this change more than any other I've seen since I started last January. This isn't a typical "CB always changes, so adapt or fail" change. This is a "wiping out one of the cool aspects of the game" change.
Just one player's opinion, that's all.

Thanks to Monkey who bought me supportership and leave me to where i am today...fun fun fun game i must say and the people are very nice too (a.k.a my clanmates)

barzoo. . .you said it best.

i just had an idea.. how about making auctions from spawned rares have the buy now of what the store purchase would have been?

After thinking about it.I maybe like a bit less the change.

The best change is to lower the visit you can make to the shop in a minute.My point is you cannot just camp you have to fight to,and in the same way fighter have more chance to grab something in the shop.

B.T.W. the NUB is very to high. Come on 154% for some players.For the not US spender we have no chance.That why we have alot of multi.

*cough* we?? lol

is that a confession, jordan?

WE=CB Community

no i think u said it best Fat tony

USD Blender!!! All the way

now maybe I have some slim chance of getting, I mean bribing people with CB2 cash to gp listen to my music at acidplanet :) ..hey but if I not,
I got good news, Jon just saved a bunch of money on his car insurance

Unbreakable; i thought about that; then realised that it would be pointless; because you could set it up exactly the same as you would buying from store...

when i come to think about it even though i have a nub but it isint that high even when i started out....if you're gonna put a nub make it like 100% instead....thats my idea..

im having mentees goes almost to my score mpr and pr...what in the heck is that crap?

i don't plan on spending a dime of my usd here (except _possibly_ supporter items, which i will probably trade cb2$ for) and i think i'll do just fine...

no you couldn't how would you there are always tons of rares you have to use your eyes to check the time gaza

there is no secret to camping! you only go in and out of the store. . .

Oh please, for crying out loud, this is a good change.

The reason why it will become USD Blender(if that's even going to happen) , is because some of you OFFERED USD in the first place !

So stop bashing Jon for bringing good changes, and be more ethical on game play, just STOP SPENDING USD !! (Except Jon's supportership :P)

out of all these posts, around 3 people like the change. . .now tell me this, is it a good change when 80 people dont like it and 3 do?

Sorry but this is currently the best change ever made since I've played CB 1 and 2. =)

Camping has always been unfair, why ? Let's say you're a good camper, I know camping is very hard, etc and need a lot of work but think about how much can you get per month ? 10 mil, 15 mil or maybe more ? I still remember back then in CB 1 with Shabbleflab, in CB 2 there was Goju jim and his girlfriend, in 1 month of camping, they have enough money to buy the best character in the game with the equipment (only depends if the owner wanted to sell it or not). 1-2 months of camping, compared to 8/9 months of fighting now.

The best camper vs the best fighter, in the end, the best camper would have much more valuables than the best fighter. The best camper can buy the best fighter's character and still have lots of leftover money.

Not a cent of USD spent from me. And I must admit I've done pretty well on both CB1 and CB2. Maybe not the top, but eventually you never no.

Great change, sad to see the camping element removed, but that's how the wheel spins. /shrug.

so should we kill the first usd spender?..i tihink so

how do you make a poll? i want to see some numbers on this change.

NK, do have any idea how many current players have their supporterships and/or supportership items because I'm willing to exchange USD for nominal CB2 $ amounts? What I'm tired of is unwavering "USD is bad for CB2" type bashing.
When Jonathan refunds everyone their supportership $ is when you can tell them to stop voicing their opinions. We all know he (Jonathan) is a big boy and can handle it just fine.

I like the change.

The game is about fighting :)

BURN

Nice contribution Tony.

The change is not agains US spender.In any sort of game,market,life they will always have money spender to go to the top.It s agains cheater that make a kind of living of camping none stop.The shop is suppose to be for everyone not just for 4,5 or 6 peoples.

again sorry for my english.;-)

As much as it changes the landscape of CB, I believe this is indeed a good change. Sure, we'll all miss camping a little bit, but with the identified problems, this was necessary to make it fair for everyone. If someone can highlight and/or check rares and submit near instantly, CB loses part of its greatness- its fairness for all. Kudos Jon for doing this, even though I'm sure it was difficult.

And on the USD taking over, what are you talking about? How do you honestly explain that? Several points:

1. Old system of rares from the store that were then sold to the highest bidder from professional campers (I would guess was the case at least 75% of the time) encouraged USD. Campers were greedy people. They sat at a computer, and instead of playing the game would enter the stores repeatedly. Maybe it was a little fun for them, but profit was their motivating factor. So not all, but a good number of them wanted USD for their new rares.

2. USD is the easy out option for the player that's lazy. They want the rares without doing any work or fighting. Putting rares in auctions means they can't make USD deals with a camper, but now must seek out a loan service or a person selling CB2. It doesn't seem like much, but I imagine it'll hamper quite a few of our lazy USD buyers.

3. Auctions are fair. No longer will a Chatmailed bid of USD secretly usurp your bid in forums. If you have the high bid with your hardearned CB2 cash, you are doing much better than in a FS thread where you never know for sure you're winning or being outbid.

4. These are base rares we're talking about. No one is going to take over by using USD to buy CB2 cash to go to auctions to buy a base Adam, okay?

5. USD users are impatient. They want to skip waiting and working and go straight to Go. A simple auction time wait will probably send quite a few of them to the FS/WTB forum, where they usually hang out anyway.

I hope those made sense to you all. I just don't see how people are connecting this change with the takeover of USD. Could someone try to use a little logic and explain why you say this? Thanks. Hope you enjoyed reading.

BarzooMonkey, I wasn't refering to people who are spending USD for supportership or helping others to gain supportership. To me, I value USD more than CB2, if you help others to gain supportership and demand some in game cash in return, I would say fair trade, and very noble of you.

But the term USD Blender, isn't just merely that, it's about people who buys accounts, rares or whatever just because they are fully loaded. It's nothing to do with helping others who doesn't have paypal or USD anymore.

USD spenders are not lazy, that is a biased view by a long shot.

USD spenders are those who have the extra money to use to better their characters.


Just like outside.

Money makes the world spin, even fake ones.

yup adds a whole new meaning to " Central Bank " doesn't it ? :) (v)oo(V)

Tony, stop being an idiot.

At least 10 posts here say they like the change. I was one of them. I count for at LEAST 437 people. That means at least 446 people like the change. So stop blathering.

Again, I see the classic "not calling the rose by its proper name". (Tony, don't worry, I don't expect you to get it).

Camping was flawed. There were cheaters, and then there were folks like Sefton who were playing it fair. Doesn't matter. As soon as an operation is found that can be exploited, it has to stop. If someone found a bug in forging that was such that ther was no fix, Jonathan would have to stop it. What else do you suggest?

We still have rares, we still have a vibrant economy, and we still have carnage. What exactly is the problem here?

And where the Hell is NSFY???? This is HIS HOUR!!!!!

Since we've removed the rares to spawn in Auctions, how about we add the "Rares Store" that a few of us have mentioned I the past.

Items would be sold at the estimated market price, if more are bought the price will go up appropriately, or just make it a static price. Just a thought :)

Although I love this change, there are cases like Sefton where legit campers are being penalized because of this change. Why isn't there a restriction put into place on how many rares you can purchase from the store within a 24 hours period? Like 1, maybe 2 if it is rare ammo. That way you cannot abuse the system but you can still camp...Thoughts?

If camping is dead why did i just score a katana, and seeker arrows from the store eh? Answer me this.

those item did not spawn, they were sold to store :)

How about just programming the store so rares are highlighted for everyone. That evens out the playing ground.

Jon had a no-win situation here.
On one hand, he wants to promote a free economy and allow players to have fun doing things other than just fighting all the time
On the other hand, he wants *people* to play, not bots or cyborgs.

So he did what any good leader would do. He cut his losses. Having people play (and not bots) is more important than allowing people to cheat. There's no way to stop people from autocamping the store... therefore, camping has to go. He made the choice that's better for the game as a whole, even though it meant throwing away an entire player class.

Too bad for campers. It sucks big time.

Do you think he didn't know the kind of reaction he would get? That a percentage of the richest players would ditch the game and that it would send shockwaves though the economy?
Of course he did. Of course he does. He did it anyway.

He made the tough call and we all have to deal with it. (Himself included)

Strange indeed...I thought Jonathan explicitly said that rare ammo will span to Auctions with a 1-hour time limit?

Glory is right

like a said before limit the visit to the shop in a minute

Lettuce Head, the highlighting was not the extent of the issues, I would bet.

correct Chet

Nice change :)

Jordan, that would kill camping just as assuredly. A camper can correct me if I am wrong.

what was the exact cheat then?

Yes i want to kill camping not the shop...

I am not sure Megaman, but I have written code (in weak Foxpro, no less *grin*) that can select checkboxes, choose drop downs, click buttons, and submit forms.

Believe me -- if _I_ can do it, your fifth cousin twice removed's dead monkey can do it.

I think everyone who read Almuric's contest thread about the Firefox Search Highlighter add-on knew about highlighting. Just like Verifex's script (which is awesome btw) can do some stuff for you like auto-shrink forum threads, you could easily make a script to auto select any highlighted checkbox and auto-click to purchase, after entering the bot-check in manually. That is why I suggest that you limit the store rare purchases to 1 or 2 a day and then you don't have complete dominance and not really a chance to own the store so to speak...

then i'll say it again...how about making auctions from spawned rares have the buy now of what the store purchase would have been? thoughts?

Mega how does that change camping?

they stop camping stores, start camping auctions.

but you cant cheat this way

Megaman, then you would have people camping the auctions instead of the store. With having to click a link to get to the item and then buy it who ever has the fastest connection stands the best chance of getting it and that doesn't sound fair to me.

If you can program your browser to click check boxes and submit a form, then you can program is to click a link and click Buy It now.


So, it doesn't stop anything.

You can't create a script to click all the links in the auction (no botcheck to slow then down) and click the BIN link? That would be even easier for them. That could all be completely automated.

logan that is the way it was in the past. after the botcheck you gotta load the page no difference in that respect

camping in auction that will be very expensive.Hello

since there are always rares in you cannot highlight the rares from the auctioneers i believe it would change things

Does bring up an interesting point that has been brought up before... Why not let it spawn in the store, but make it market price? Not saying I dislike the current scheme (I think it is perfect), but then the rares would still be in stores, if that is what people are hung up about...

Not a lot of difference between that and the current scheme, though...

Well, even though this has been all decided, I see people throwing out random ideas. Hope you don't mind, but here's another:

Instead of letting people camp rares, have them be randomly awarded. Set checking the store back to costing BA, and then just 'give' a random rare to say every 100th store checker. Even that number could be random. Just have them, after leaving the store, have a message saying congratulations and have the item appear in their items. Not sure how hard that would be to work out, but it was just my zany idea of the day.

Camping was probably the funnest thing for me while playing cb and i wasnt very good at it.Probably want see much more of me on cb.I am not quitting but I guess i will keep my eyes open for more games like gunz.

how do you determine market price except through an auction?

you can't. you can approximate, but that's not good enough here.

Megaman, not sure how much I need to extrapolate on this, but apparently more than I have.

I can write an application that automates IE to walk multiple pages, including frames, and manipulate anything I want. My HTML and Internet-based programming skills are...non-existent. And yet I can automate almost any site in a day or two. It's a lot of trial and error, and stuff might change day to day for a large site like eBay or Amazon, but so what? If I stay on top of it, I can keep a program running against the site (except for botchecks) for as long as I want. As long as the navigation remains constant (which it does here), I can get there.

I can show you code samples if you think you can read Foxpro. Stores, auctions, my mom's closet....If IE can navigate it, I can automate it.

Does that make sense?

Sorry, Jonathan. I thought you were already making a "best guess" market price in some scenarios by using previous auctions. And yes, that would fail as time goes on if you didn't use auctions. Sorry to sully the waters.

Ok, here is another possible change to this. How about you still spawn stuff in the stores, but, instead of the price for rares in the stores as being a BIN price, it would begin an auction listing for the person who first decided to buy it. The auction time would be small, maybe 20 mins or less. That way you still have the thrill of camping, but you force the market price through the auction listing...maybe a lame idea, but I thought I would throw it out there anyway.

i can read Foxpro i think try me. lol

good idea put the rare in the store at the Maybe half of the NW in Item overwiew
like:
BTH 1m
ELB 2m
BONE 1m
Morg 2m
Corn 1.5m
tough to buy more than one rare in the same day

I said above that this change is bad for casual campers, like myself, who could catch an occasional rare to help advance their characters. Aside from that, this is a very good change! I might not catch cheap rares, but I'm also no longer tempted to waste vast amounts of BA camping!

I've noticed lately that the full-time campers are getting faster and faster at catching the items, apparently due to these cheats, which made it impossible for casual campers to catch anything. So, I suppose that's why this change was needed.

I have a request: under the auctions screen, could we have an option to view only items for sale by the auctioneer, similar to the current option for the black market items?

It seems to me that those putting out alternate ideas are those campers that camp and then sell for USD. Bah, go away. The game is much fairer now.

I never camp. :) Just trying to think of a way to help Sefton out. I know how much he enjoys camping.

i'm not a camper who sells for USD regularly. and as a USD spender who are you to talk Ranger

Here you go, Kitty. This finds out if a certain SSN is from someone who is in active military duty (an important distinction for a collections law firm):

-------------------------------
Admin Edit: Oh my poor eyes - I've cut Suts "stuff" out as it was throwing all the post wonky. I'm sure he'll be happy to email it to you if you ask him to. G_Beee :)

Megaman, Ranger buys USD, I don't think he sells for USD.

And Glory, I like your idea for rares to spawn in store, but get transferred to auctions when bought. But it's kind of over-complicated, and essentially the same as what it is now.

I was very much like Sefton, camp to support my char in fighting. Now, there's no other way to support my gears other than using USD which I don't want to do.

I have a suggestion, why not make the spawned items auction for only 10 mins in the auction or maybe less. This way at least there is still some camping element in it and you can't cheat at the same time

Instead of wading thought that, just research the IE Document Object Model (DOM). What you see, you can manipulate. It's that simple.

Heh, looks like I no longer really have a reason to play Cb =\ shame too, I really enjoyed the game, but here is how I saw it.

1) I started playing CB2 with hopes to be #1...eventually
2) Found forging was a great way to increase NW
3) NUB came out so top player goal was completely killed
4) Learned camping
5) Here is the winner! Now not only can I not enjoy the game by camping, BUT I can't go back to fighting becuase I am 500K MPR off with no NUB.

Can this really make the game more cookie cutter style? How about we just ditch forging and all gear other than rares. Then it can be tank or mage blender.

way to blame the NUB for your failure to not suck

Spaceman, camping wasn't removed because Jon wanted to ruin the game for you.


Campers were cheating, a cheating that is not something Jon can code a stop to.

Highlighting was just the start of the iceberg, you wasted the first part of your game not fighting, do not complain about the NuB, they are getting to the point you would be if you had kept fighting.

What about buying a high MPR character?

There are a few I see out for sale right now.

Selling and buying characters is one option I dont see people talk about much.

I don't care about the NUB really, what I was trying to get across is that if you played the game and took a different approach other than constant fight, then you are semi-screwed. I'd also like to point out other than loan services, Econ clans are pretty useless now.

Change month is also not over.

What about adding another botcheck after clicking "purchase these items"? Not sure if someone offered this idea already, and I'm not sure if this would fix the problem... but wouldn't it stop people from having something automated click the buttons needed since there is another botcheck to go through, evening out the playing field again?

if you camped for N months then you got N months of increased income

whether that was a good trade or not isn't affected by whether camping still exists

Good point about the econ clans Spaceman. However, weren't they pretty much useless before the change? Also, I love Ranger's idea about buying a high MPR char. I just happen to know somebody selling one. :P

another change coming? it will probably be the last

Spaceman, you say, "then it can be tank or mage blender"...

Assuming you left enchanters out as an oversight, what you are, in essence, saying is:

"Gee, thanks for making this game be mainly about fighting..."

God bless you for saying exactly what this game should have been and should be about for now and for ever.

If you have trouble with my reasoning, please read the URL you've dialed up in your browser.

Carnage. Forever.

Sut, if the game is all about fighting then why do economic clans exist? Keep you opinions exactly that, because it isn't a fact.

So, now that the cheater campers have been thwarted...Does this mean we will see an increase in (old cheater campers) multis banking serious cb2 and sellilng it for usd rather than ill-gotten rares via camping? Makes me go hmmmm....

jonathan made a change yall...stop giving ideas.....camping is gone...

indeed carp

i wonder what the next change is gonna be. . .
Anyone smell a contest? i do

we should have called this thread "Fat Tony's first change month"

alas, hindsight is 20/20

... do get a clue before you hit the Submit button again, Tony

Highlighting is cheating? People have been doing that since the Google Toolbar came out. That's well over a year. There must have been more to it. Unless Jon is getting really slow in his dotage. :p

And Sutekh, you suck. If you're going to make a wide post like that, manually make your lines shorter. This thread is effectively unreadable for me at this time of day. Double :P and a phththth on top.

Oh, and I like this change.

A lot.

HAHAHAHA HAHAHA HAHA HAHAhahahah haha. HA! My CB experience just got boosted like crazy. HAHA ha! Neeya!

I am a bit curious on what people see as the change in CB2-USD now that "spawned" rares won't be sold player to player. Any ideas on what that will bring?

Market prices will drop tremendously imo. There will be less usd purchases because most people will buy and use the item, rather than turn around and make a fortune off of it. There will of course still be the cb2 sales for usd.

w00t! awesome change! way to go Jon!

Spaceman, you say (to me):

"Keep you opinions exactly that, because it isn't a fact"

Where did I say my word was fact? I spoke my mind. Obviously that means it is my opinion, nothing more, nothing less.

I speak forcefully, and will continue to do so. If you wish to speak with a mealy-mouth, then you may feel free to do so as well. I just won't listen.

If you aren't prepared to speak strongly, then, in the ever pertinent words of the indomitable Dave Lister, "Why bothah?"

So you'll speak loud and rudely, but not listen in return? Very very mature of you. We don't you just throw a temper tamtrum and call me names while your at it. I'm actually going to shut up, I really don't want to fight or argue. You win, Cb is a fighting game.

Sutekh Owns.

Bligarookaka.


Yeah, I said it. And, I'll say it again:

Bligarookaka.

It is still an Economy Game.
If you hadn't sold your CB2 that you earned from Camping for USD, then you'd have had enough CB2 to buy just about any character, fully equipped as well.

Fat_Tony, you sold CB2 today for USD and hinted that if I ever needed something to let you know and you'd get it for me.

I see the prices of rares going down, it won't happen immediately, but it will over time. I also see the value of USD going down as well.

IMHO, this is exactly what Jon wants. Io remove the element of USD in the game, that doesn't come his way via namings, supporterships etc.

Thta's just it...I didn't call you names. I had a discussion with you. My manner is loud and forceful (neither of which are rude).

Have you seen the utterly fantastic film (in my opinion), "Kung Fu Hustle"? I thought it was great (my opinion only, of course). Some days, when called out like this, I feel like The Beast. All I care about is fighting the good fight -- finding a worthy adversary. I'm waiting for that Buddha Hand to drive me into the ground, and I will then know I have met my master (just my opinion, though).

If you require some perspective, then all I can say is, "don't take it personally."

And Mikel, I figure Jonathan's "want" has precious little to do with this. If the camping process had not been compromised, this change probably never would have happened. Oh wait, that's just my opinion...

...then again, maybe it isn't. People have been complaining about camping for a good three years now -- no change. Jonathan made the change NOW because the internal workings of campings got gummed up. He has traditionally ACCEPTED camping. It took me several whiny posts just to get more BA used per camping trip back in the day. Oh, you think I whine now? BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! My past self looks at me now and shouts, "I crush you, weak future-self! You give Sutekh a bad name!"

Mind you, that's just my opinion.

yall just stop arguing and fighting and all other stuff...he made a change...its not like its the end of the world people..

Well, the price of USD to CBD is affected by three things. Supply, demand, and what you believe. Now most people tend to grasp the first two, but many fail to consider the last. Let's take Diamonds for example. Are any of you ladies wearing one right now. If you are then you might want to shut you eyes for the next paragraph.

Diamonds were once a rare commodity with a high demand. This of course made them very valuable. Then the Dutch got their hands on a chunk of Africa and found diamonds... lots of diamonds. With all the independent miners selling off their lot, the price of the gem fell. Once they realized this they decided, clever little capitalists, to band together and make a monopoly. However, this monopoly isn't just based on controlling supply in order to regulate price, but they also heavily advertise to "create" the value of the diamond as well. The diamond is far from the rarest gem in the world and it's value is a mere fabrication.”Diamonds are forever” Bah.

Now if you really would like my opinion on what will happen to the price of CBD, I'm afraid all I can offer are mixed results. The supply of USD and the supply of items or cash available for USD are to be considered.

We can pretty much assume that the amount of USD available to buy up items will still exist as the same.

The amount of items available for USD may become less over time as the people who want to actually use the rare items from spawning will actually get them first without camping middlemen.

However, in the short run we have the regular flow of change month quitters. These people will keep supplying the USD blenders with a large supply of NW and cash that "must" be sold no matter how badly the price stinks. These are the people that make the USD blenders an even bigger problem then they would have been had they just played the game. Instead they allow money earned by a multitude of characters' fights to be poured into one character. The many become one and that is how they beat you with NW.

Let us also not ignore the NUB. Now I only bring this up for economical reasons. The NUB player gets cash rather quickly. Their weekly earnings are high and that means the value of that money is less to them. Not only that but they do in fact bring more money into the economy at an ever increasing rate. The value of CBD will drop in comparison to the USD as time goes on for this reason alone.

Good thing there is one last factor to consider, which is the fact that money paid to the auctioneer for those spawned rares will take money back out of the economy almost as fast.

It's hard to say what will happen to the economy, but I'm sure your own perceptions will have a large effect. If you think that the the game balanced is ruined and you leave because USD now owns the game, then you will only succeed in making this come true buy selling out. Please consider the third factor of economics before you go and do something rash.

Sweet!!!!!!! I can get use to change like this +)
Loved, best change ever...ahha

Thank you Jon
Best wish
Ice

Sute, Frog Style.... ;)

Personally, I really feel CB2 needs some goals. It's a fighting based game, but the only goal is to be number one. You get exactly two shots at that, When you first started playing on Jan 1st (or until your NUB runs out) or if you decide to buy a top ten character with USD.

For the majority of players, this is not achievable.

There's always forging, but to what end? It's not worth it to bump your own items, as there's no reason to fight, and what else is there to spend CB2 money on? Sell it for USD?

GL, I believe it was toad. *smile*

A very good point... The only reason I have stuck around After selling Cougars is the community -- Eurotrash Guy stands no chance at ever reaching even the Top 25 I shouldn't think...

What other goals can there be in a human-based game? Remember, some people really enjoy clan fighting, so that is a goal of sorts...

The only reason why I don't like this change is because it decreases the number of "outlets" a person can do other than fight. I know this is meant to be a fighting game, and it is. The only thing I would like to point out is that a person can only click fight so many times. People need something different to keep them occupied for a time until they feel like doing what they normally do. In this case it would be going from camping to fighting, or from chatting to fighting. Since camping is gone, you can do one of two things. Fight, or chat. Fighting will get boring, I know because I'm bored of it :P That will only leave me the option to chat. The only problem with that is what if the people you talk to aren't on? "You just leave and do something else to pass the time" would be the answer. Over time, people will come on less often, and perhaps stop coming all together.

What Jon should've done was to put a restriction as to how many times a person could visit the store, but that is just my opinion.

As for USD, I think it should only be used to get supportership and namings, that's it. My reason, it creates an unfair advantage. Just look at the top 10 players, all of them have used USD in one way or the other.

I don't care what you guys say; because I'm quitting.
If some of the points above have already been said, I was just too lazy to read all 170 replies.

Ex CB Player,

Bean

Doh! I feel like I've thrown a dagger into my arm! ;)

Clan fighting is good, It's where I am at the mo. Well that and trying to beat Johnnywas round the room!

ouch for campers but better for clan fighting indeed :P

I'm in the top ten ever so often Bean. So sometimes when I look up there I see at least one person who kept his money to himself.

Can we have the store purchase log back? I need to find out who has been "camping" all the arrows from the store, so that I can CM a USD bid for them.

: )

Camping and fighting both are the best part of CB. It's very unfortunate that camping has to be removed from the game. Here is some camping facts:

1. Campers spent a lot of time in CB, and I mean a lot more time than any normal players whether it be fighters or forgers.
2. You need dedication and perseverance in order to be good campers.
3. You have to be quick.
4. The thrill of camping keeps many players in the game. (the adrenalin rush when you see a rare and waiting for the browser to tell you that you got it or lost it)
5. Same routine all the time. answer bot check, pgdn, pgup, home, end. click buy.
   
   In my camping time, I wasn't aware that google toolbar can enhance your camping until Almuric posted about it a while ago. I have never use any other aids in camping. I memorized most of the prices of the base rares and look at that prices range when visiting stores. I also memorized the position of the items in the store, if it changed, it means the store went into refresh or there are some purchases made. That's my camping secret. Yet I still managed to get quite many rares and beat those players with the aid of Google toolbar and such.
   
   Now it's all gone and I will definitely miss it.
   

Too bad those players that might of used those tools arn't getting punished.

I'm in agreement with Coolwater. The thrill of seeing a rare in the store is, well, thrilling. :) Without that, I almost won't bother going to the store. What else is there to see?

A suggestion to the change is to let rares still spawn in the store but at a much lower rate, like 1 rare every 2-3 days. That way, it will not be worth it in terms of time invested for camping. But the thrill of finding a rare in the store remains.

And i had just started camping, too bad it happened before i could get my first real rare
Back to occasional fighting then.

What about making a chance of 1 in x (50.000) or so to get a random rare while fighting?
This would still give the chance to have your adrenaline to the ceiling when it happens (like camping)

it's true Phaete, one thing camping added to the game (at least in my uber-feeble attempts at it, never got anything better than seeker arrows)
was adreneline style excitement, sure we still have the warm numbness of killing over and over and over and over.....(ad infinitum), but it lacks the rush that I used to love about CS (nothing like a head shot (or 20) to brighten up a boring day), and came to enjoy when ever I braved the scary world of camping...

Maulaxe: just go to a user page, there click on store purchase log and clear the user id box.

Read my post about no ba now for store visit=free money in General. It explains pretty well what can happen now that there is no ba spent to visit store.

As I suggested before, the best solution I can think of is to let the rares spawn into auction for 5 minutes or maybe less. In this way at least you can bid on it and wait for 5 minutes in the hope that no other players outbid you.

I really loved camping. In CB2, I'm not that good at strategy and didn't/don't get much of a thrill from fighting that I do/did from finding a rare in the store.
I have made posts previously in forums saying that although I loved camping, is was disheartening to see all the rares camped by the same people (me included). I dont know if there is an alternative better than the current one- but what about limiting store visits to 100 per day, or making rares spawn at a rate much slower to the current rate. I'm not sure if that would make a difference, but It is change month. How about trying it for two weeks then reevaluating to see if it worked. It just seems like we've moved from one end of the continuum to the other. There should be a happy medium. Maybe not though.

Great change imho, this greatly reduces USD sales and promotes auctions since everyone will be paying a market price for their gear which will drag general prices down helping new players to afford stuff.

Maybe we don't need black market anymore, with rares spawn direct into auctions. Everyone has the chance to get the spawned items now.

Blackmarket has noting to with chance to get items, it has to do with controlling what items do spawn. As you have absolutely no control on what items spawn in store/auctions (only how many), the blackmarket still has a function.

The 'show only rare items' in store log, and the display of BA in store however, they do not have a real function right now ;)

no no no shadow black market is the only thing that allows us to look and see what items are most needed and make them spawn

If anything usd usage is gonna go up, since people are going to be less willing to take a loss on their stuff and more willing to make a profit.. at least thats how I see it.

I see USD per million cb2 rising because all the money that did go to campers will now go to Jonathan and disapear forever. USD prices will rise due to lack of cash, and rares will sell cheaper because no one will hoard them like many campers did. Also campers don't sell if the market is low, auctions do.

Guess what - I think it is a good change! Long overdue. Campers have no one to blame but themselves - Jonathan never listened when regular players complained - it took campers to get camping eliminated.

I am a suspicious paranoid person by nature and have always believed that many if not all of the successful campers were using technology to aid them. I am not a programmer but I do have visual basic and was able to write a program that would load the store page; then after answering the bot check the program would parse the page and make a BEEP if there were anything with "elven" in it.

That was enough of a test for me to make it clear that it was easily doable, i.e., you could write a program that was sync'ed with the system clock to go to the store every 90s or whatever and parse the page for rares. Yes you would have to fill out bot checks but you wouldn't have to look, and I think there would also be a a way to select the rare and hit return automatically. I didn't try that but there are people much smarter than me playing so I assume they could do it.

No I never bought anything like this although I was miffed enough many times to go ahead and try to develop the idea since it seemed the only way to make camping go away was for someone to really dominate/exploit it.

I will miss the excitement of finding a rare even though it really had gotten to the point of being impossible these days. It's too bad future players will never have the opportunity to know the excitement of seeing an ELB or Corn in the stores and getting it!

what happens if an auction for a rare doesn't sell? does it just disappear back into the netherworld?

(this is a hypothetical question, except maybe for explosive shots)

I think someone somewhere will bid 1 cb2 for a rare no matter how useless it is.

If an item that gets into auction doesn't get bid on then it disappears indeed.

It has happened a few times with some black market auctions

*sigh* now i have no reason at all to ever come back to cb2...

there are reasons I regret the necessity of this change, but seeing people leave who only came to camp and sell for USD warms my heart.

Jon, I hate to be the one to tell you, but word on the street is that you have no heart... :)

Hurting those people who spent a lot of time and effort on this game and wished to keep doing so by trying a new character to challenge the top with a mage team, camping for CB2 to add insane NW, are just the causalities of the war I imagine.

Jonathan has a point, there are people that come here just to camp and sell for usd or sell for cb and then sell that for usd.

ahha is this mean USD price gonna go up up up +).
Sweet, now my CB2 would worth more ahah.

I Love this change even more now.

I like the idea of having the rares spawn in auctions, but for a much shorter time. Perhaps an hour or, by my thinking, less even than that. I really liked stumbling into a cool piece of gear when going into the store for ammo or a starter cab, etc. I think also that this would give folks with out a ton of cash a chance at some better equipment. It seems that shorter lived auctions would keep us truer to the original concept of the game as well.

All that said, Thanks and keep up the good work, Jon.

Jonathan, you are a [non-pg]. :) I mean that in the worst way possible.

DLL: if I were you I'd be scrambling to figure out how to delete my post...too bad you can't.

novice, with all do respect, i've been on cb for 2 years, and know full well how things work around here.

*due

... then you should have known that you can't protect your assets by sending them away when you're about to get reset :)

I thought you'd catch that....

I remember when i first heard about camping (and yes i bagged it) but was told that camping was a part of the game and to stop bagging people for spending hours looking for rares. So i tried it and found i could do it too. Why dont we have a compromise here.. can be easily done by botchecksif you go to enter store you get a botcheck if there is any rare ammo and a series of botchecks for rare items-the more botchecks the rarer the item making it a skill based activity which will make people increase the speed and accuracy of typing, this will benefit all.

if we click on auctions link there is has all the Blackmarket things and i was wondering if there could be a link placed there for items that the store spawns?

the negatives outweigh the positives, flipper

could the auctioneer be made available under the search by user link or even a link similar to the blackmarket auctioneer link on auctions?

i understand you can find the auctions by looking through auctions and then bookmarking the link
just thinkin'

Jon I just have to say: You've made CB fun for me again.

and the end of camping did this how Reebok?

does Dest count as someone that 'quit' due to objections to the new change?

Mega I've been pretty vocal about my problems with camping in the past, but to save you the effort of going back and searching for them, here's just a couple of my reasons.

1. Camping is mostly responsible for the "Pure USD Player" Someone who only plays for a profit.

2. Camping (and just rares spawning in general) is the only way in CB you can basically get free money. Not a problem in itself, but when you have a couple people making HUGE amounts of money while your average fighter has to save for a month to be able to afford just one rare I see a problem there.

I don't really feel like explaining any more, so I guess you'll have to be happy with that.

I second Reebok. :)

reebok FTW!(and just so i dont get fined due to any confusion that means For The Win...)

so i guess you never saw a FB mage with a NUB did ya?

Mega,

One game problem at a time.

First camping, then the NUB. We are on our way to a much better game.

And yes, this is my opinion, shared by most of the community if you bother to read the posts on the subject.

Jonathan, this was the best change you've ever made.

This totally eliminates players who simply get on to camp and sell their items for USD. They aren't truly CB players, but rather those who would use the CB economy for their own personal gain. Nothing wrong with that, in my opinion, except that this is a GAME. It is intended to be played as such, not used as a tool to make money.

However, I feel for the honest campers - flipperkill, CoolWater, Landshark, and Sefton in particular. I tried camping once, and I loved it - I just don't have time to do that due to college. Granted, this change was necessary, but this was the one area in which they truly shined.

I simply would like to see if there could be something to replace camping. The concept, not necessarily the actual action. The concept of devoting yourself to a competitive activity with high rewards...I don't know how to explain the concept I am thinking of, but I loved the rush. It was a fascinating, integral part of CB, and it will be missed.

If anyone could think of a way to replace camping, please, start a thread and talk about it. I, for one, would pay Jon to try and develop something to replace it - if for no other reason than for the sake of the campers I mentioned above.

In summary, I totally agree with the decision, it was entirely necessary, but I will miss camping and it removes an important section of gameplay for some. I hope deeply that Jon will find some way to replace it or make up for it.

Thanks for reading this post, to all of you who scrolled down this far ;)

Any thoughts, Jonathan?

you think camping was unfair Ranger because you've never done it. it took FAR more time and energy then hitting down arrow then enter 160 times every 3 hours so the rewards were FAR better than hitting down arrow then enter 160 times every 3 hours. i'll tell you what is unfair USD is now (outside of the NUB) the only way to add NW faster than you that is why you are so happy. look at the major USD buyers around DAWG Mikel and yourself oh yea your all in the same clan. takes pure genius to see your motives here Ranger.

Mega,

Great change to the game.

Don't let the door hit you in the butt on your way out :)

who said i was leaving?

"Jerry!! Jerry!!"


/me smells a fight.

/me smells a sudden reduction in the amount of money those Economic Clans are gonna make,
not that it really makes any difference how much they make, other than for bragging rights ; P

yeah, most of you take campers way to much for granted. It wasn't easy and it wasn't a "quick" way to make money.
The tops guys spent over 1,200 BA a day and that's a lot harder to do camping then fighting.
You complain on bot checks? We had over 100% bot checks per BA. Also whenever we sold whether it be USD or Cb, the money eventually found it's way back to the game. I'm still waiting for someone to explain the effects of all this CB cash going to Central bank and not players.
Also, I don't plan on quiting; I think I'll sit back and watch you players create posts next month on how you think NUB is unfair while the campers of CB lost everything.

Just out of curiosity. . . who "cheated"? Im sure the three best campers land shark, spaceman, and sefton didnt. . .so who did?

...they all did tony

LOL - taking campers for granted! You're right - a lot of people did take it for granted that there would never be a rare in the store and stopped looking.

I'm going to miss these little fellas - such big chips on their shoulders.

As I said before, where's all of your money that you made from camping? If you didn't sell it out for USD, you'd be one of the wealthiest players in the game.
Again, this hits the Major USD sellers the hardest and for that, I'm overwhelmed with Joy. You people don't realize it, but you created alot of the unbalanced problems in the game today. By selling for USD, nubs can come along (if they have a nice pocketbook) buy up whatever they want and pass up all of those that have been working their tails off since Jan 1, and I'm a perfect example of that. :)

As what happened with me, good things don't last forever. So you best have back up plans.
If you are really into making money off of the game, you can switch to forging now... darn.. I forgot you had to keep your MPR small to take advantage of max regen rate... Well work your way up.. or use that money you made from camping and buy a decent character.

Mikel, you sound more and more redundant every post. Name 1 newb that I sold something to. Also, I'm not complaining about my money, I'm financially ok, I'm talking about YOU, the common fighter who will put his money in auction and never have another player touch it. Also, I'd like to point out that pointing a finger saying, "You sold for USD, you ruined the economy!" is utterly stupid, the economy makes it's own choice. Also most of my cash that I "wasted" went into Cb1. I only sold about 1/4 of my cash for USD and put a some of that back into the game via CB1.

/me waits for next change

I am going to sound harsh, because I mean to. I am going to explain how some of us see/saw camping.

Let's say that, for some strange reason, I can make money off of picking splinters off of pieces of wood and classifying them. I spend all my time doing this. Once on a while, I get a really cool splinter that I can sell for more. Doesn't matter how I use the proceeds -- I am in it for the sheer splinter enjoyment. Other people think it is boring, but I love the rush.

Then, some people find ways to find the best splinters by cheating. They use methods that a lot of us do not use. That way they can make a bigger profit.

A man comes in and sees that the splinter business is unfair. So he stops the splinter business. He is not stopping it in order to to affect the residual operations... He is stopping it because it was not fair within the splinter community.

Now I will go back to being myself. Picking splinters sounds like just about the most boring waste of time I could ever possibly imagine. Oops, there is one thing I can think of that would be more inane -- defending the practice when it has clearly become compromised and unable to be made fair. That would have to take the cake as silliest endeavor ever.

I don't care what campers say. I really don't. You got gains by being persistent. By finding a niche. And ultimately (at least for some of you, hence the shutdown), by _cheating_. It's gone. Good riddance. And no one knows the ramifications just yet. Do what the rest of us are doing and simply wait and see. If that isn't good enough for you, then I have two syllables for ya: buh-bye. I won't miss you in the slightest.

You see Sut, what I do not get it, when a tourney admin on CB1 was found to be cheating using a bot to buy up all the rares, he was banned and camping continued. Camping was not suddenly shut down. You say this was not a bot, I say what is a bot but an automated script that generates a desired result without effort. That is what was happening, someone or someones were using a Firefox extension to auto select highlighted text, then auto click a link. The only non-bot portion of the script was the botcheck itself. So yah, the human had to interpret the check, then the "bot" took over and did the rest. I will bet hard USD cash that if they COULD have automated the bot check they would have, but Jon has worked hard to make that difficult. So they took the easy road. So I do not understand why the cheaters were not banned and camping simply continued. Its what has happened in the past. There is case after bot related case of precedence.

So in your splinter "anaology" the guy comes along find that someone is cheating, tells all the other honest splinter hunters about it, they come along and smash the cheaters hands repeatedly with a sledge hammer till there is nothing left but pulp, then continue to pick splinters. Hey if you can make stuff up so can I :)

Cheaters ruin the game, blame the cheaters not the outcome.

I say ban the cheaters and let the game continue as always

Thing is the cheat is semi transparent. But it is not hard to point out the abusers.

i second sefty "Hoorah"

I have to agree with you there, it would be difficult to spot mrwuss, but at the same time, looking at posts and the methods that were used to spot the bots on cb1, could not have been anymore difficult than that.

Excellent point Sefton, and if there were a way to tell the aided campers from the "clean" campers, I am sure Jonathan would have chosen otherwise.

Folks, Jonathan has stood by camping for THREE YEARS PLUS (read: since the game's inception). Why is no one considering this fact? Second fact: Jonathan is very, very intelligent, especially when it comes to seeing patterns and drawing lines. If he could have done this in a more equitable fashion that solved the problem, he would have.

Sefton, when someone swipes a pair of DBs out from under you, can you tell if they have used a technological aid? Does it not make you mad to think they might have?

Mrwuss just put it best... Campers, face your own community, find out what went wrong, and get closure. Place blame, cry, gnash your teeth, whatever -- camping is no longer a part of Carnage Blender.

Jon has a strong head on his shoulders, please people let Jon deal with the issues created.

In the end this maybe his solution, all campers used highlighting, lame as it is.

From the word on the street, once the botcheck was passed (the limiting factor) the cheaters were using a script to highlight the rares and make all other items come out as something like xxxxxxx.

Then another script was just buying all the items that did not have the xxxxxx in the name. It got to the point where they would just enter the botcheck and BOOM, if a rare was there, it was snatched up.

Now please tell me how you can tell which of the campers were using that type of scripts?

I think an easy way to tell if a camper cheats is his purchase time. It doesn't sound difficult to put someone under "watch" where if they buy a rare 1 second within entering the store then they get booted. Of course, don't tell the camper.

There is no question that I would prefer not to have a rare swiped out from under me by anything but simply a camper who reacted faster than I. If someone would have asked my opinion though I would rather there still be camping even if they could or did cheat. Because the cheater still has to enter the store, there rare still has to be there, because if I enter the store and it is there, they only have a few seconds to come in behind me and beat me. The store spawned randomly, and since it did, there was always a chance I entered and bought before they entered at all.

Now its my turn to be harsh. You and I Sut will never have the chance to be #1 or even top 10 in CB without the NUB or spending USD. I understand there could be other goals, and that you may be pursuing them, however; I wanted to show you that you could be #1 without NUB without USD and without tanks. That is no longer possible no matter how many times a day you click fight. If you can live with it, go right ahead, but don't say I should have to. I may or may not. But just because you can doesn't by any stretch mean I or anyone else should.

OK well the bots did about the same thing Ranger, accept they got passed the check. Basically it is virtually impossible for a human to do all the operation necessary to accomplish a find, click and buy operation in less than a second, whereas a bot or script could and probably did. Thus, utilizing the same techniques that showed the bots as faster than humanly possible, could have been used in this case. GRANTED, this is my outside opinion based upon posts on CB1 regarding the methods that were used to track down bots. I very well could be wrong in that the server may not know how long it takes to buy an item from when the store was entered. So not being an expert, this is my opinion only.

Oh someone post again i'm bored. "Go Sefty defend us all."

Maybe we can take the old

Turn a cheater in, with proof and the world is a better place in the end. This is a community, cheaters need to be gotten rid of, even if it is not means of an admin's actions to get rid of them.


I am fairly certain if I was to be given a good chuck of proof that someone was a cheater, I would no long interact with them in any manner.

Hey mrwuss I am with you 100%. And as much as I would like to say, they beat me they cheated, I cannot. I am fast, I have always been fast. I am good at patterns, and in the short term random nature exhibits patterns that are smoothed out in the long run. Those two skills certainly helped me to be a good camper, but I do not have access to any tools that would allow me to offer proof. I swear to you if I did I would have posted it LOUD and clear. I also would not desire to interact with someone who cheated. I think Monty cheated. As soon as it became clear to me he had no desire to change, I stopped trying to help him or interacting with him. The community eventually created such an outcry there was only one resolution that would satisfy. I think the same would have been done with a known camping cheater.

I have heard rumors that a former camper of extraordinary skill used a girlfriend that was a bot. If they suddenly reappeared and starting to rule the camp, I would post LOUD and clear.

I am all for the communiting doing its bit to eliminate undesirables of any sort.

I know from the coding side of things, it would not be hard to record the timestamp of the botcheck pass and then subsequent purchase by user. I would assume that Jonathan knew this was occurring otherwise he would not have taken the measures he has. I am torn on this one because there are those like Sefton who camp to better their character, but they are rare imo. Also, Jonathan could flag accounts that purchase faster than humanly possible and either give them a warning or ban them altogether.

Any half decent botter knows the rand() and sleep() commands. Checking the timing does not guarantee that you catch all cheaters, it only helps the smarter cheater get rid of his competition.

This is so sad... I'm half-tempted to sell my rare ammo to the store just to give somebody else a cheap thrill. That said, I hope Jonathan has another way to keep CB$ in circulation, because even the ever-more-ridiculous NUB won't make up the difference if real rares like Corns take all the money out of players' hands.. as has been said before. I look forward to seeing the rest of this change month, and I hope that it will be less painful...

what bartjan said.

after analysis of the logs, the only one I could ban for clearly inhuman behavior was mchaos.

tell us who the suspected cheater is, 10 of us CB'ers will go to his/her house and watch them camp an item without hacks, and see if they really can do it, or just search the computer for scripts or hacks, or just beat them up...=P~~

Mchaos hasn't done a lot of camping, how can he be inhuman?

<RS>What if items become images, instead of text?</RS>

JS beat me to it...the images would cache after the first store visit of the day...so it shouldn't bog the system down too much...

Cache once a day: train bot once a day.

How would a user tell the difference between a rare image and a common image, if the images must be different each day?

In other words, how many images of an elven long bow can you find, for which each user agrees that it definitely is an elven long bow, but do look similar enough to another bow for a bot?

I just wanted to mention that there seems to be a bug in this auction system.
I wanted to bid on an AXbow later today, but the bow doesn't show up anymore. From the list of auctions by the auctioneer it seems it's still there, but when I click on the hyperlink I get a server error.

(this link http://www.carnageblender.com/gc/view-one.tcl?classified_ad_id=31189 )

...cmon man, an image with the words Elven Long Bow, with the same script as the bot checks.

There is a reason why botcheck words are 3 or 4 letters long, and are chosen from a large dictionary...

Is it to build our wee vocabularies?

then how about having the nicknames of the words? MH ELB BTH etc etc

Still a too limited dictionary...

If the image text were to change size and font and relative location within the image it would make it almost impossible to write a script to auto-select the box with that image. Just an idea. The coding side of it shouldn't be too hard for Jonathan.

Unlike what they usually say, Size Does Not Matter.
A bot does not (have to) process the page the way you see it, but most likely uses the DOM and parse the page as a tree of elements, with the image and box in question sitting nicely next to each other.

Obviously all the items in the store would have to be images in order for this approach to work. I was definitely not implying changing only rares to be images...That would be silly. :)

that is retarded on so many levels...

So would the prices Glory. Anything that can help you identify the item would need to be turned into an image as well.

My only complaint is why couldn't this change been on Dec 31st.

I never said it was a good idea, just an idea. Sheesh. :P

A half-baked idea is okay as long as it's in the oven. ;)

Does the use of the auctioneer imply that fight $ rewards need to be bumped up a couple of percentage points to flow the cash back into the economy? Or will this be another method to avoid inflation?

Can we just give everyone a full set of rares and be done with it? :)

Just another idea. how about when a rare item spawned, a random alphabet or char is added to the name of the rare item?

Caedmon...if Jon's a socialist, I haven't seen evidence there of.

I've made my economical prediction and my final judgement on this change.

For the sake of making this NOT usd-blender I think this was the best possible change. With the near elimination of the people who play the game only to sell what they have for usd, or at least eliminating these individuals from owning the majority of the wealth, you have cut the supply of items and money up for usd sale.

This will mean that a person who offers real money for game (fake) money will find it harder to locate people willing to sell to them. This will result, as long as you quitters stop selling out, in people not getting as much as they have been per dollar.

Yeah, it's so should suck if your the one trying to buy themselves a high NW character with loads of NW, and yeah it's going to be so appealing to sell out and make some hefty cash. However, let me ask you this, how long does it take the average player to accumulate 1 million CBD. Does it take an hour, a couple of hours, even a day. No, and people who can buy a months worth of CBD for a few hours of pay are getting too good of a deal. You are all under-selling your selves. I don't know about you but if you want a months worth of my money and xp, you batter damn well be willing to pay nearly a months rent.

No more middle men to come between you and the item you want. No longer will you be outbid simply because someone will pay real money over game money. This is the best change ever.

If you think the price of cb2 will even make it back to 20 usd per mil you are up in the night Vestax; let alone people paying 500 usd for a few million cb2. I think the highest anyone on cb2 ever paid for 1 mil cb2 was around 40 usd and that was only for a short time.

mmm... text money.Yeh sure like that's of any usd value.I think some people are just a bit too absorbed into this game.

I don't care, that's my asking price and it should be your's too. That is if I was ever willing to sell out in the first place.

Exactly BBQ Flavor. You might think I'm crazy for asking that much, but I I'm in no rush to sell either. It's the people who give hundreds of usd for text money that will shock you the most. I prefer to separate the reality from the virtual.

You pay for movies that are not tangible, you pay for video games that are also not real, the list goes on and on....

$1,000,000

Yeah I really want to pay usd for this text *drools*. Nope I doubt that'll I'll be convinced text money has any value.

... hundreds of $ for concerts and sporting events that are over in an hour or 2... drinks that are quickly gone... who is anyone to judge what an individual spends his or her entertainment budget on...
How much do people spend to play WoW or Guild Wars or the like?

I guess your going to compare it to buying food and water next. ^.^

Food and water are necessities, and aren't really all that entertaining :)

I dunno it furstrates me to see people buy virtual currency.However I have sold it before... the whole idea just puzzles me some what.I mean I could think of someone saving and buying something like a new addition to their house, a vacation, or mabey even a motorcycle.It just seems, in the softest terms I can find, "odd".

/me hums "it takes diff'rent strokes to move the world..."

It is not the money you are paying for, it is the time the other person used to make they money.

Just like virtual items, the time taken to obtain those items.

Currency is currency, no matter what form it is in.

And try not to fool yourself, you are not a better person because you do not spend USD on a game. And if you consider yourself a better person because of that, then you are a fool.

:'O

It seems you are trying to drive away everyone...i know you dont intend to do that but you are...ban the hackers and go on...all these changes do nothing but disscourage most of the time...i think i just may quit cb...(Change Blender)

We are more than happy to ban the hackers. If we know who they are.

"odd" people

How many times has that been stated?

The script did not leave a trace, it was a simple interaction with the browser to remove the user from the game, minus bot checks.

I keep dwelling on the word "reluctantly" in Jons original post. What would happen if a user was only allowed to buy one rare (from the store) per ## hours. This would:
1. allow limited camping
2. make storebots less attractive
3. spread the wealth.

there you go Tyr 1 rare item a day ..make them become particular about what they grab and make them think twice at buying a pair of dirty underwear..with like 100 BA for the store separated from the regular BA..just another retarded suggestion ,there are so many no one will notice this one either

I never camped, but I really miss it. I wish it came back. Oh wait! I should have posted this in the Retarded Ideas Thread. Nevermind.

camping's gone; that may suck; adjust or quit...
USD is part of the game; so some of us can't go and buy up all the cb$; that's part of life; we are not born equally...
I don't necessarily agree that USD should be part of CB; however it is; so I use that fact to the best i can...

Just stop it! Things change, so what! Make a Camping Blender if you miss it so much! If you all would complain about fresh water and air running out, it would be much constructive then complaining about a GAME!!!

Sorry for my lousy english, but i am a self thought!

all of yall need to just get over it....

spam deleted; thread closed