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why does botting exist in mmo's? (n00b psychology)
Kevan_f
Member UncommonPosts: 65
well, my answer is that playing those games is not so fun.
When playing the game is just a chore and an obsession to increase numbers, better make the pc play alone instead of draining my precious hours on silly timesinks.
let's imagine any mmorpg as an idle game.
the core of the game is just a skinner box, push the button and have more numbers more loot, more something.
but it's not so fun, probably just a compulsion. something I'd easily let a pc do. A repetitive, boring task that is just...well, grind.
When playing the game is just a chore and an obsession to increase numbers, better make the pc play alone instead of draining my precious hours on silly timesinks.
let's imagine any mmorpg as an idle game.
the core of the game is just a skinner box, push the button and have more numbers more loot, more something.
but it's not so fun, probably just a compulsion. something I'd easily let a pc do. A repetitive, boring task that is just...well, grind.
Comments
If the game is so boring that you want to run a bot to play it for you, why on earth are you still playing the game in the first place ?
Botting is incredibly selfish, it impacts the game play of everyone else who is not using a bot. ESO at launch was a fine example of that.
Botting for me became the game. "Can I make this bot run 24/7 without dying and returning as much loot as possible?" I then started selling scripts and earned quite a bit on it. Selling scripts between 5 and 12 dollars each. It was among the greatest "soloplayer"-experience I've had.
IMO it's still one of the best MMO's I've ever played (if not the best).
It's just catering to people who want to level up skills quickly whilst at work/out etc.
I've never had an issue with it as I'm not a competitive person when it comes to non skill based activities. When it comes to purely time based advancement I couldn't give a rats ass what they do.
It's why I don't have a problem with XP pots in other games.
Other than that, I put it off on laziness. Players, especially the I want it all, I want it now types, buy gold, this, in turn, has the gold sellers adding more bots to games, which we end up having to deal with. I know there are a million excuses out there; I work, I have kids, I this, I that I have heard it all. I have been gaming for quite a while now, through a military career, and now a career as a contractor while going through school, and I still find game to game, and I have never used a bot or bought gold to do so. I am not lazy when it comes to my leisure activities. Or maybe I just do not tie my ego to a game. Either way, I don't bot.
I know there are other exceptions out there, I have not played all the 'heavy grind games' but the original version of L2 was my only experience and the only case where I could (and did) look the other way and not give a spit who was botting or not.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
I point 2 main reasons imho:
- Bots for money. is not to play the game but to make real money with it.
- Bots to lvl up and get rich in-game. Theres is a few types of players, one of them are the cheaters. The 1st thing a cheater do when start "playing" a game is search for a cheat to gain advantage to other players, its the way they play and they dont even think is wrong do it.
I allways hated and never understand the cheaters, i have real life friends where cheating is a normal mechanism in any game, allreay give up trying understand because i just cant get it.
A game is to be played by the rules, dont like the rules, dont play it. Pretty simple to me.
I'm not a botter, I simply skip all the mmorpg and arpg genres because I really hate repetitive tasks and brainless timesinks.
but nobody can't deny that it's just a matter of a filler system: no sufficient content for player to play more than few hours, than just make numbers stack.
Probably someone likes it as it is, as happened to me for a ocd period of loot addiction to d3.
But when you realize that it's just a waste of time doing the same thing (skinner box system), botting appears totally reasonable. just play the game in the parts you like because it's menat to be...well..fun.
...although someone believes that sitting 24/7 doing meta, painlessly done by a bot, is something to be proud of.
edit: someone talks of fair play, sport, etc.
we're talking of numbers: passive boosts to a char.
the concept of different gear because of how much luck/grind you have done ingame is opposite to " fair competition".
mmorpgs are not esports, as long as there is any difference othen than players skills.
there's nothing fair in mmorpgs.
And...talking about morality of botting?
let's consider microtransactions, p2w, or simply good players who have a life and can't/don't want to grind 24/7 to keep the pace. bah
that a nice self righteous quote but not everyone has the same time options. i don't like some bots that exploit things or ruin the game for others, depending on how it done it fine. if game makers ever made it were your toon played itself while you were away an called it a feature doubt many would complain an others would call it revolutionary.
truthfully i would love something like that not for combat so much but for passive skill training/crafting/trading kind of thing, were their was no npc or very little an player bots that were afk or active if you wish were running towns/cities. then when you came back again you play however you want knowing that you were always making progress.
Most devs have replaced a lot of the fun with a gamblers focus on getting loot and while getting loot can be addictive it is not as good as general fun as you play.
It isn't really the grind either (even though repeating content many times for a specific loot can be annoying), it is the general mechanics like combat and group dynamics that needs improvement.
A game does not have to rely on bribing it's players, Guildwars for instance didn't and it was huge a rather long time because it was fun.
Some parts of MMOs can still be fun but they need to improve things, particularly the long term fun. Now I feel that the devs only think about hooking players short term with bribes to get them spend a sum in the cashshop but they don't really try to keep the players longer then 6 weeks.
MMOs should be able to be more fun then games like GW, AC, DaoC, EQ, Lineage and a bunch of other older games and they are but only for a very short while. There is a reason people stayed longer in those games and it ain't the audience in itself, it is the games. Those games were fun in themselves, not just for the loot even if of course they had it's boring parts as well. The genre should become more fun with time, not less.
Not a justification, but a reason behind.
One can be that you trolled about: people want an easy win.
BUT there is another, and the other is obvious too; it was being discussed above: boredom and repetitiveness.
mmo's and relatives live because of obsession-compulsions-completionisms, but only very few really like it.
I played a thousand of hours diablo 3, almost the same in wow+gw2, read lots of reviews in the years and find a genuine interest in this kind of games.
It's not to difficult to understand that in part it was fun...but a huge part after that was that "it had to be done" in order to progress.
It's simply the skinner box system. not fun or pleasure, just "exploiting" a human mind bug, if we can call it so.
A hamster wheel, carrot on a stick, a endless treadmill, so on: chasing numbers, trading them with hours of real life time.
Level up paragons, loot that legendary, reroll it, find an ancient, level up gems, go up in higher grifts.
And in doing it, the existence of the META demostrates that the game is no more fun, very soon: we play just to get the best result possible, doing boring tasks, just because is more remunerative.
the meta is the death of gaming for fun. it's the legit form of cheating.
Those unable or unwilling to spend more time may opt to bot in order to keep up or gain an edge.
They may also partake of the cash shop for the same reason.
One reason EVE appealed to me is the continuous skill training, not all that dissimilar to botting in terms of letting me keep up while having a life. (and it only cost me $15 a month)
They even added a way to make ISK while not playing, planetary interaction. Once set up you only have to harvest now and then and sell your wares. (there's also moon mining, but corporations control most of that...hmm, much like oil or minerals in the real world.)
People hate to fall behind when they can't play, I should know being a progression junkie myself.
So rather than bot (I won't play games that permit them) or pay urserous amounts in a cash shop I just won't play those games. (except EVE of course)
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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multiple playthrough, currency, low droprates, no respec on chars.
everything relies on slowing the game down till boredom comes.
The reason is I want to feel like whatever achievement I have managed is mine to own.
There is however nothing wrong in others cheating but trying to justify it as because the game is mind numbing and forcing me to bot and so on..... really you're going to say that it's okay to cheat.
Not judging cheat by all means but there is no great answer here. Human beings cheat because they can.
Oh I did cheat after all trying to catch a horse in BDO after like 40 times I got it stuck and caught it. Yeah was not really happy with it but just realised I'm a hypocrite. I did not try to justify it I know I cheated.
Ofcourse for some it's just about being better than others... but cheating kinda defeats that so it's rather silly.
To counter this, players are willing to spend real money with botters to save time grinding. As long as developers put in grind walls and time sinks, you will have players willing to spend money to avoid them. Botting isnt going away any time soon.
Both ESO and GW2 had initial problems with them, ESO had people standing around in the same spot in a dungeon where the bosses spawned and GW2 had some world events like Claw overbotted, both had the mentality that everybody gets a medal. Both have improved those things though but it is the mentality of the average MMOP in themselves that creates the problem.
I would like to see a few MMOs who had a mentality closer to Guildwars: not very time consuming but with higher difficulty instead. A good player there got more in an hour then a bad got in a week.
Rewarding people for showing up have many problems and botting is just one of them.
Eves solution works, it has it drawbacks but it still better then most.
GW2s problem really were made by ANET when they nerfed the entire game after the first beta weekend. They both nerfed the difficulty a lot but they also made it far easier to get a gold medal on a DE, now you get lots of those for events you don't even notice you are doing, in the first beta weekend you just got a slim bronze reward unless you made an effort and while it still is possible to make a bot farming events like that it is hard.
The formula is pretty easy: Time consuming + easy = bots.
There are many different solutions that fixes that, even if my preference would be making the game so fun that people rather play themselves.
I could write more about it but it would be more of the same arguments so time to hit the pub. Happy st Patricks day everyone.
There is really no need to over think things.
Greed and laziness certainly have something to do with it but the question is why it isn't more fun to play so some people bot the stuff they consider boring. And why certain games makes it so easy to do just that.
If we want to get rid of botter there are 2 options and getting players less greedy just isn't in the book, you might as well try to make everyone be nice on the internet.
You can make mechanics that makes it harder for the botters. And both mechanics that detects and ban them as well as mechanics that forces the players to actually make an effort and a real contribution to get something worthwhile.
You also can make playing either more fun or have less time demanding grind. The more fun the parts of a game is the less need to automate your gameplay. Games that are less time demanding and not so focused on grinded gold have less bots, like the original GW.
We as players can also report them. And if you really must have a very boring time consuming grindy game you could actually include some kind of botting when the player is online, like TORs companions collect stuff for you... Then at least you have an equal playingfield so they don't mess up the games economy.
It is easy to understand why some people bot in certain games but the thing to think over is how to get rid of people getting unfair advantages for botting.
bots allow people to save time for more interesting activities, skipping something perceived repetitive and numbing.
let's assume that, instead of a bot, people freely use exp/mf boosts (already sold in most f2p games, perfectly legit and same function of a bot: save time for fun instead of grind)
if everything needed to get to top level/gear/reputation is just time and repeating same things, the game is shit.
at least for me.
gaming can be much more than a compulsion/greed for higher numbers.
http://progressquest.com