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Botting and Bots
qweniden
Member Posts: 151
Do they negatively effect you? How?
Comments
Yes they have a negative effect. Among other things they kill steal, monopolize resouce nodes, spawn camp, and boss spawn camp with faster "reflexes" than a player has. Bots bring nothing positive to a game.
I have never really had a problem with bots. If anything they're an easy kill. There wouldn't be a need for them if games werent so grindy.
Bots can only thrive in games with poor design.
whose players are of of low moral fiber.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Bots can thrive in any game because there are always people who want the highest level/best loot/most money without any work. And most bots sell off their goods or characters.
Most of the time if I see a game has lots of macro players, I quit. It makes the game uninteresting, it lets you know there's people all through out the game getting stuff they haven't work for, and it really makes you think less of the community of that game as a whole.
I dont think it directly impacts any player. however indirectly it can drive down a market in gathered materials or deplete a resource by over hunting an area. I think most players dislike bots because it effects the integrity of the game
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
I love bots,
They give me competition on the AH markets, competition is healthy any business owner will tell ya.
They keep the lands monster and animal free, for the rest of us to pass with no issues.
They give me something funny to watch while im running around, nothing like spazzy robot movements.
They keep the gold business flowing to give me a place to buy my gold when I do not feel like grind farming it for weeks on end.
Yep... I love the bots
I feel more strongly against people who create super scripts. I'm talking about people who write a script to raise a character for the sole purpose of selling that character. It adds pointless randoms to game communities who are usually completely withdrawn from the community itself. I don't feel strongly against people who use bots for personal gain as long as they are a part of an MMORPGs community. In games such as World of Warcraft where level and items aren't as much of a factor as player ability, I feel that bots are rendered pointless. I know most people in WoW can tell if you raised the character yourself or not just by how you play.
I bot all the time its awsome.
Do what................?
WOW is all about gear and level and less about skill.
You have your opinion and I have mine. Please look up my character Nathaneal on Mal'Ganis. I recently quit WoW (or at least taking a break). I quit because I can no longer compete in the game. I had all the best items in the game for the time i was playing. I have a frostwyrm mount and i was gladiator for the last 2 seasons.
Like I said you can have your opinion but World of Warcraft is a game based on player ability and what class you play. Certain classes are better than others, certain players are just more skilled. Items are almost never a factor. I know because I've always had the best, but I've never been the best.
If you can't figure out how much they effect gameplay, then you need to sit down and figure it out yourself.
Go play some NCSoft games and then you won't need to ask such a dumb question.
A classic response indicating an inability to articulate a cause for concern.
Aren't you a charming little pumpkin.
Aren't you a charming little pumpkin.
LOL, that is the best response I ever seen.
I never really understood how a player let a bot intimidate them and gameplay. I personally do not care if someone bots or not.
People say it inflates the economy, so what. Most games we will take wow for example since it has already been brought up in this forum.
WoW AH prices sometimes get inflated by bots. Who cares, the armor you need comes from arena points and honor, or from a raided instance. You really shouldn't be buying anything on the AH anyway. Money has become so easily available through daileys and other means that it isn't a concern at all.
If you wanna bitch about how much a flask cost, then why aren't you making them yourself. People complain because people are lazy. Machines are doing a job they do not want to do, yet complain when they pay the price for it.
Normal players do not care about bots, we get our armor through the means given to us, and make alts to provide ourselves with anything that our mains may need in terms of consumables.
Bots are ok, let them bot. Isn't bothering anyone except the lazy people.
Aren't you a charming little pumpkin.
LOL, that is the best response I ever seen.
I never really understood how a player let a bot intimidate them and gameplay. I personally do not care if someone bots or not.
People say it inflates the economy, so what. Most games we will take wow for example since it has already been brought up in this forum.
WoW AH prices sometimes get inflated by bots. Who cares, the armor you need comes from arena points and honor, or from a raided instance. You really shouldn't be buying anything on the AH anyway. Money has become so easily available through daileys and other means that it isn't a concern at all.
If you wanna bitch about how much a flask cost, then why aren't you making them yourself. People complain because people are lazy. Machines are doing a job they do not want to do, yet complain when they pay the price for it.
Normal players do not care about bots, we get our armor through the means given to us, and make alts to provide ourselves with anything that our mains may need in terms of consumables.
Bots are ok, let them bot. Isn't bothering anyone except the lazy people.
And the lazy people should be botting like me
Yeah, I can't say I haven't botted past some boring grind times in other MMO's
I no longer use because I don't really care that much about about buying things or leveling.
It is true though, that bots are there mostly due to poor game mechanics.
Wouldn't be a need to bot for money or levels if the game was actually fun to play.
If you can you should
Basically clicking away text windows ruins every MMO, try to have fun instead of rushing things. Without story and lore all there is left is a bunch of mechanics.
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It depends on the bot. For example, i doubt if i use a fishing bot in WOW (fishing IS TEDIOUS in wow, i do NOT use a fishing bot ONLY because i worry about getting ban), it would impact my ability to DPS in a raid.
Botting has no effect imho. You guys just can't stand that the botter make all of what you 'achieved with hard work' in your mmo look meaningless.
yeah well youre on the not worth talking to list , cuz you obviously missed the point of balance, wich is a pillar for any serious MMO .
Have fun in your own little world , youre ignored .
This is prolly the truest statement regarding bots I have ever read.
MMO's and not just MMO's but games in general are ment to be nothing more than a way to waste your life. All in all it is pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
I play MMO's just out of boredom and I really do not like to hike and bike, so my hobby is games. Nothing more than something to pass the time between the hours of when my kids go to bed and when I go to bed.
***That being said there are a lot of people that someone got it stuck in their heads that the game is life. These are the people who honestly think someone botting for money is affecting them.***
The game mechanics are crap, therefore the game is boring and tedius, so people invent new ways to get what they want, without actually having to be there.
People get mad, because they have to "work" all that time to get what a bot gets with no effort.
Who really cares though, it's a game. You are suppose to be playing it to have fun or to work for a goal. The bot is not affecting either of these.
If they do affect these then refer to the lines between the *'s.
Games are meaningless (albiet fun) waste of ones life. A bot has no life to waste, just don't get made at the bot for that.
Personally I agree with Forumfall. Though, I will admit I've written used bots (I'm a game programmer by trade) before, but never for RMT or character selling. The main game I did it with was Vanguard, mostly because the game was far less enjoyable than writing a bot to play it for me.
Which I think is the core of the issue, really. I think botting is a symptom of the real problem, rather than the problem itself. The real problem is that the devs of most MMORPGs (especially those that are based off MUDs, either directly (EQ), or indirectly (which are based off other MMOs that are based off MUDs) have made a game with gameplay so boring and tedious (Press auto attack key, press hotbar key 1 through hotbar key 9, repeat until target dies, press target nearest enemy button, press auto attack key, press hotbar key 1 through hotbar key 9, repeat....ad infinitum) that people would rather write software to dredge through it than play it themselves. To me, if even one person in your customer base is willing to write software to avoid having to play your game, you have failed in a very critical manner. You have failed to make a game with fun core gameplay (WoW et al do not have fun core gameplay, as most people enjoy the meta-game aspects of these games, such as socialization, progression of character, and item collection more than the core gameplay which is the hotbar combat (i.e., the activity in which you're forced to engage in 99% of the time, and to progress etc.)).
Of course, I always made my bots such that they ran away and would go idle if anyone came too near, and they would never kill steal, or get in the way of other players. But then again, I didn't care if the bot actually gained me levels or not, so much as it functioned correctly and was fun to watch playing.
Asking Google for "quote trust earned" gives this AI Overview answer: Trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets. The basic concept here is simple: don't treat all user-supplied reports the same. A game company should allow users to earn its trust. If a user reports something and the game environment is improved as a result, such as by a bot being investigated and banned, then the user's trust score increases. If a user lies, like by participating in a campaign to mass-report a player for botting because of social drama, then trust score decreases.
It should be obvious how identifying users who make factual, helpful reports should be good for a game: it allows better use of time for game masters (or plain old customer service) who investigate reports.
For example, a simple system to help identify and ban bots:
1) a character accumulates three reports of botting from highly-trusted accounts
2) someone with a highly-trusted account has just emoted towards or spoken to this suspected bot (such as using /say local chat when no other characters except the suspected bot are nearby)
3) result: a game master receives a high-priority task to quickly check the results of #2 to see if the suspected bot seems to be ignoring the player (as one expects a bot to do). If the bot is still acting like a bot, then the game master initiates a conversation with the bot in a way that a human would not ignore. Example: special icon next to the game master's name; interface override so that the game master's message is visible even if the suspected bot only has their combat log open, with whispers hidden.
4) if the suspected bot acts like a normal human (because they are, or because the bot's controller receives an alert and takes over the character), then request a reasonable explanation for why there was no interaction with the human after #2.
5) if there is no response to #3, then ban the bot; or at least give a short suspension, because it might be someone who stupidly decided to run a bot for a few hours on their 2-year-old account.
This system can obviously be strengthened if the game can detect bot-like behaviour itself, like farming the same mobs or resource nodes for hours at a time, not having the same variations in behavior as a normal player, or the timing of ability use. But this post is just about the trust system.
The value of trust
We want to plan for the possibility of bots fighting back and trying to confuse the system. The reason a trust score system can work is simple: trust is valuable for players who make genuine reports; it has little value for bots. Earned in drops, lost in buckets. Suppose a bot decides to act like a real player 99% of the time: it reports other bots that other players are already likely reporting (so it probably isn't actually harming those bots); it submits chat reports of players who use bad language to gain trust that way; and most of the time, it avoids false reports.
But 1% of the time, it gets weaponized like an Internet DDOS botnet to try to harm real players. Perhaps this is meant to be a deterrent for players who try to report or interfere with these 'dangerous, highly-camouflaged bots'. The key, or perhaps the limitation, is that even highly-trusted reports would still always be investigated when they result in serious action against an account. Even for minor penalties, like an immediate chat squelch in public channels after being reported a bunch of times, reports would still occasionally be investigated. This might just be 5% of the time, but again: earned in drops, lost in buckets. If a botnet uses its accumulated trust to harm a player with bad reports, then the trust gets lost when the action is investigated. Maybe not the first time for a minor penalty, maybe not even the 10th time, but eventually it happens: and then the system can look for patterns in bad reports to identify other members of the botnet.
(This is, incidentally, the kind of thing that YouTube needs to help fix those comments on YouTube about financial advisors that get 2k upvotes from botnets. A normal person does not upvote those comments. A few normal people might accidentally upvote one such comment; but they won't participate in clustering to upvote these comments the way a botnet will.)
Well, I think that's it. I guess also look at IP address or other identifying characteristics so if an account gets hacked, its trust score is harder to ruin. If you are or know a game developer, you should definitely use this system and tell other people about it. Here's to banning of bots. For great justice!