~Ainran Has Fallen~

[MagicManICT]

Actually, you just need to go to (A)dventure->La(n)dscaping->(H)arvest. This cursor works on anything that is harvestable: crops, dreams, and wax. Now it's just one click per field to harvest, whatever you need to do to sort the seeds (or not if you're just keeping it random for filler food), and then one to plant. Still an awful lot of clicking, though, but just not as much as you make it out to be.

If they import the "fluid stack" system they talked about a while back (having stacks of seeds, stacks of flour, etc), then this will be a bit of a moot point, but the issue will then be how to keep qualities equal. From playing with Salem, this has issues of its own.

SimFarm: Been years, probably a decade+, since I played, and I didn't play it much as I found it boring compared to some of the other games. It was pretty automated, but I don't recall enough details to expound on exact mechanics. It was more about farm management than about simulated farming, similar to the way SimCity 2000 played. Digging around for the manual and can't find it, but I did find that it's listed as abandonware.

[Eemerald]

tbh I played last world in EC with no one botting. was fine early world...mid world more than half the members dropped due to the way the town functioned and how the core players were, which is very dedicated and we did everything by hand...lag hit it would take me 3 hours to farm enough food to keep the animals in town alive, but I did it, even though I was drained by that stage, I didn't want to give up on what we had built up. and still my core people continued battling on, doing the very basics so at least our animals didn't die and wall checks. to the point where I had serious problems with my hands and fingers from the excessive clicking required to do the farming to keep animals fed. and if it weren't for xcom joining us towards the end an botting those fields to keep animals fed, I'd have just quit it, cause it wasn't even the issue of it being repetitive, which I often like, but lag combined and then the pains it created to my hand was just not worth the effort.

I still don't like using a bot, because I like to do my stuff by hand, but i'm grateful that xcom can do the big ass fields we have for our animals, or do bulk wheat which are huge fields for the town, and it isn't to merely stay on top, it's just to keep everyone fed and not starve to death because of the nature of how the town is run.

Anyway I think the discussion for and against is getting relatively circular, and unless changes are made its relatively pointless discussion.

[morrogoth]

Here is my take on botting and this entire discussion:

I personally do not bot, even if logging for trade is tedious, but that tedium is when i get a chance to just think about my day and catch a break. But i cannot condemn people who find it boring to tend to bricks, fields, or logging/foraging to use a bot. But if your botting to gain an unfair edge that unbalances the game, instead of removing the tedium, then it should be fixed. Maybe if there was a system like in a few other games I played, where players who had no attack skills can be relatively safe from pvp to a point. But another popular game, minecraft, at first the creators were completely against modding, but then, once they noticed the playerbase's creations were adding more to the game, they lightened up the restrictions. Maybe if the scripters could collaborate with the developers, then maybe the botting problems would go away.

I love this game, and everyone in it. It is quite unique and its player base is diverse. I would like this not to turn into a flame war over a very moot point. Tonky, if you do not like to deal with botters, then do not, but arguing about it in a slightly immature way is not helping your point at all and not to step on your toes because i would like to get to know everyone in this thread in game, but you really do not have a dog in this fight unless your gameplay is directly affected by botters, and I mean your entire SG's qualities have dropped to 10. Xcom, if you have the skills, which from what I read, it seems you do, then use it as you see fit and maybe take some advance courses and design your own game. Emm, you made alot of finer points which were missed, but I will not digress too, but I agree, and lumping an entire world/village together with a few player is quite bad. Thjissnal, I agree. Kaios, lol. Ramones, do what you do best, although i am no where near able to trade with you unless you need a strong back. Gunnar, your point is valid too, but sits in the same position as Tonky's and unless your being adversely affected by botting you too do not have a dog in this fight. Patchuli, I loved Unreal World and rejoiced when they released it for free, but that game is quite brutal, especially when one small accident can have an entire village after you. I used to hire guys from one village to follow me to wipe out another, fun times.

The games playerbase dropping is not just due to it being tedious or new players getting slaughtered, in my opinion, its dwindling because this generation of gamers cannot appreciate the game for what it is, being spoiled by spoonfeeding mmo's like maple story, where the game bends over backwards to give you everything in hopes to keep you playing. I have indulged in many indie mmo's that spoonfeed its playerbase, and i can honestly say they do not stay long on my hd. But if you do not like botting the most painfully clear choice is not to bot, or allow botting in your village. like it was said in another thread "I will play the game my way." But from where i sit, the world is really huge, and resources are not as scarce as the world regenerates, so a few bots running around should hardly be enough to detract from anyones gameplay. and if your gameplay is ruined because joe blow across the world bots, then im sorry to say that you should not play games. Because if its not botting, then it will be killing new players, or animal bashing, or trolling, or twitch hunting. where will it end for you? where the only thing you do is log in and stand there watching the terrain change? of course this game is buggy, and needs some refinement, but like you said tonky, the devs are making 0 profit from this game, so I really doubt they will make massive game changes this late in the game in light of V2. so my point is to play it or not.

end of rant.

[AnnaC]

My main issue with botting, is that it uses outside tools to overcome obstacles in the game. Of course, there are some interface issues that make things much more tedious than they need to be, but in general, since Haven & Hearth is an open world survival game, the whole point is overcoming and balancing economic and logistical issues. Before botting, there was a balance between finding a sweet spot between scale of your tasks and efficiency. Organization of farm plots and placement of industry structures and containers was a primary component of gameplay. Botting and the extreme usage of alts and other forms of automation make this much less of an issue as the balance of ease of use doesn't come into play, allowing scale to increase well beyond what it should, and throwing the whole balance out the window.

The increasing scale of economic acquisition and production that botting allows irreconcilably damages the balance of the game as a whole in the long run.

Not that I don't understand why some botting comes into play; as I've said this game has tons of interface issues that cause unnecessary tedium. Also since the start of world 5, there has been no significant additions or gameplay changes in the game; when everything in-game has been done, there is nothing left but the meta-game to find growth and development.


@Emerald: yeah I know that feeling, although maybe not as extreme. World 3 I was the last active person in my village, and I couldn't keep authority up and feed the animals both. Had to make some hard decisions, tear down a lot of banners and kill, sell, or release a lot of animals.

@MagicManICT: oh I didn't know harvest cursor worked on non-crop items, gonna have to try that! But it's too bad that cursor icon sucks and is hard to aim accurately; especially in a crowded garden of mixed crops.

[julian12it]

Uhhh, why do you guys care so much about bots? They've been here since W3 come on now -.-

[Tonkyhonk]

No one was really talking saying everyone botted until you kept pressing the issue.

I guess everyone knew it before that you are botting curios/pearls very hard.

Which big faction isn't on other hand?

Ramones said this generalization which you argued and read more into anything said to force opinions and "promotion" of botting. Sure maybe he wasn't right to say that big factions were botting, but generally speaking, the "big" factions in population are/were AD and Dis, both of who are known to bot heavily.

i have always disliked seeing all those bot threads, too. (but then, it also helps to keep track of who are botting and what scripts are being discussed and shared in public.) ive seen posts here and there that mentions botting without hesitation for quite some time now, which is a big change on the forums, as you seem to remember the community consensus against botting in the past.
also, with that quote, they were first talking about botting curios/pearls, which AD denied of using in this very thread, even though they are/were originally known to be botters.

Do please cut your childish rage behavior and give one solid reason behind your argument. The listed reasons you gave for why you hated botting came down to the simple dislike you have towards botting. No other reasons given other then:

"first of all, the game was not meant to be played by bots"

and

"i do not like to meet bots in game. i do not enjoy playing with bots. i do not like my villagers to be bots, either. (i enjoy watching players too.) and when i get murdered by a player who gained everything by botting up, it really sucks lol"

If you want to be taken seriously you should at least give one simple reason why bots ruin haven. Clearly I disagree with you and think that bots are good for haven. It brings enjoyment to me in both scripting and there use and most likely for anyone else who uses them to. Maybe you should try it out and give your opinion on the matter from both sides of the matter. Having a blind hate towards botting is as foolish as stubbornly trying to hang on to old ways of thinking. Maybe its time to rethink your hate towards bots and try them out.

Also you should be careful how you throw around the word kid. Most likely I'm older then you.

orz....
please read my posts again then. i repeated over and over that the major dislike towards botting is coming from lack of player interactions and my own. it comes down to why i play this game and not sims.
i do not find fun in material (yet virtual) achievement by botting. many players who put priority on material satisfactions instead of player interactions (or process of reaching material achievements) tend to choose to "win by any means" which is making this game downhill with abuses and exploits imho, comparing how the community was like before. the "repetitive tasks" or "boring routines" used to drive many of those away to other games. i do not see the difference between "botting to achieve certain stats" and "bug-abusing to achieve certain stats", and i do not see an end to this race.

and, my personal reason, please note that this is not to force 'my game' to others, but to tell you again how "trying out bots" suggestion of yours is invalid for me because you dont seem to get it.
when i feel i cannot afford countless clicks to feed animals, i slaughter the excess animals. when i feel it is too much to harvest and replant all the farm, i decrease the farm. i do not rush to brickwalls when i cannot, though i try to asap. this game for me is about choosing what to do and what not to do. when something dont get done, we talk and think and choose what to take and what to give up, or how to divide work. (it really shows each players true nature.) having a bot slave who does everything effortlessly is not the solution i seek, though i can imagine it would be much easier, easy doesnt always mean fun. if i want that solution, i would probably be playing another game. would you still call this a blind hate towards bots because you probably do not find it fun to give up on something you have or want to have? or would you still insist i should still have the choice whether to bot or not to bot?
---edit: i just saw a post by AnnaC before submitting and it seems she has summarized this part better---
for long, i did not care how others botted, they hardly affected my game except for the fact that my chars wont ever make it when raided. as of late, i see the change, as some players start botting. "oh dont worry, ill bot it later. (so everyone does whatever one likes.)" "hey, lets bot this and that, everyone is doing it" kind of talks increased and driving me away from certain people to play together, and it has been harder to find a place to play my way when i join a village with strangers and/or new(ish) players which leaves me to hermit with a few.

oh and lets not talk about age, im not telling you how old i am, and you do understand my implication of "kid" and i wont object how you see me immature either.


@morrogoth,
i see your point. but its not about the quality dropped to 10 that i find issues with. you seem to be connecting this more with resource wise influence. its more about the community threat to me, if im using the word correctly, which seems like slowly narrowing the paths to allow "my game" to exist. where will it end? probably never because i always find something or someone to rage against, right?
or maybe, as ramones said, the game is, or games in general are, turning into something else for those that need everything on a silver platter that im the one who should leave.

@AnnaC,
very well put. you summarized up neatly what i have been trying to say. sometimes i really wish i learned english more seriously.

[morrogoth]

@morrogoth,
i see your point. but its not about the quality dropped to 10 that i find issues with. you seem to be connecting this more with resource wise influence. its more about the community threat to me, if im using the word correctly, which seems like slowly narrowing the paths to allow "my game" to exist. where will it end? probably never because i always find something or someone to rage against, right?
or maybe, as ramones said, the game is, or games in general are, turning into something else for those that need everything on a silver platter that im the one who should leave.

Sorry if there was any sarcasm i what i was saying, I did not mean for there to be any. But my point was, that you are probably living in some nice out of the way part of the hearthlands where you can game "your way" and probably have little to no interaction with anyone posting in this thread at all. and for my remark about where will it end, it was a broad opinion of the state of the forums since I first read them. where someone or something will rage on something and start a down hill decent into complete redundancy or circled logic. I personally do not know you, nor have had any contact with you besides this thread, so how can i paint you as a rabid crusader? Im taking the entire argument into consideration as a bystander, and see the flaws of both sides, which is purely natural. but if the advocacy and general consensus of botting is a bad thing, then shouldnt the game creators just stop allowing the modifiable unofficial clients to connect or ban them outright? That is just my opinion.

[_Gunnar]

@ Gunnar

First off you didn't answer any of my questions that was directly pointed towards what you posted. Also I dono how I could have missread something when I asked a question directed directly towards you.

Second I don't agree with your statement about how botting have ruined the hunting grounds for the people that live in the areas you describe so its arrogant to state that I first have to agree with you before you can continue the discussion. Bot or no bot your being denied foraging in that area because someone else uses it. If you really want to get rid of them then you should use some convincing. The same way everyone else in this game have to. Try diplomatically solve your problem and if it doesn't work out, use some of that MC and stealth skills you had skilled towards and do something about it. Just because people forage with bots it doesn't automatically give you the right to dictate new server rules over them. The only reason your being denied curios is cause they have moved in and use these areas more efficiently then you are. In the end it all comes down to territorial conflicts and has little to do with bots.

Well I think that I have answered all your questions in what I've already posted. Of course you don't agree with me, but considering the evidence that I have I don't think that its reasonable to do so. The point is foraging can be far more efficient when using a bot - why else would you have written one, lol, and that means that those botting it are far more likely to be the ones "using" each 20 minute respawn than those not using it. Of course perhaps you would then say that everyone should just use it, but then random social interaction would be all but totally dead which is the other reason I dislike it.

Thanks for your tips on diplomacy I was totally unaware that existed...

I'm not dictating any rules btw, merely pointing out why the forage bot is qualitatively different to others. I think I've said everything that I need to say and of course since you maybe aren't using the bot as much as others you don't see the problem I'm pointing out, so I think we'll just have to agree to disagree at this point.

[By the way, if anything forage botting would drop the value of flots, eidels, bluebells, pearls, so traders would have more of them per product sold, not less.]

[Xcom]

Before botting, there was a balance between finding a sweet spot between scale of your tasks and efficiency. Organization of farm plots and placement of industry structures and containers was a primary component of gameplay. Botting and the extreme usage of alts and other forms of automation make this much less of an issue as the balance of ease of use doesn't come into play, allowing scale to increase well beyond what it should, and throwing the whole balance out the window.

The increasing scale of economic acquisition and production that botting allows irreconcilably damages the balance of the game as a whole in the long run.

This is a very interesting concept and I think it does merit some form of negative feelings towards botting. It does up the mean acquisition of wealth over the average player. I fully can understand that if it played a bigger role over the gameplay as in dictated the structure of how people could manipulate the world around them. DIS did that W6 with statues going cross the world with no limitations. Both in the output of steel they could produce and the Authority mechanics letting them upkeep the minimalistic drain villages have.

Other areas as in pvp it could dictate the LP income and the AGI / CHA stats which are the dictating factors in combat. Some other areas as in giving less tedium in maintaining a larger herd of animals or cycling farms faster giving faster quality growths and so on. But do any of these changes really make that big of a difference in the general game play of the average Joe in haven. Not really. These changes give a small edge over those that do use them over the ones that don't. Just cause you bot does it mean you win the game in any form or another? No cause how the hell do you win haven and why is it so bad having so much material wealth. It doesn't affect anything other then give slight better odds in pvp or in the size of ones base. The only few times it does matter is in the case of DIS es expansion plans with infinite steel resources and broken authority drain mechanics which till this day still haven't been fixed.

But one thing I really do disagree with is the fact these issues are not the players fault. You cant blaim the playerbase for trying to max out there ability's. If the system is flawed then there is no way to prevent the individual for taking advantage over that very system. Bots aren't the only limitating factor here. Everyone seems to forget that Enders client is deamed cheating in the eyes of the vanilla client users. Then there are those that think minor scripts that help reduce clicks or other tedium should be added to help reduce clicking and so on (e.g. pathfinders, ground item pickup tools or fast drag items in and out of containers). Some like the idea of minor scripting like barrel fillers. Then there are those like me who likes the idea of going full out and enjoy scripting and build advanced AIs then playing the game like a regular person would. The range is vast and depending on where you stand you throw stones at the lower casts who likes more automation then you do and mock the traditionalists that likes less automation and more vanilla then you are. When I see people complain I can see this exact pattern repeat itself over and over. It should also be noted with a strong hint that no one can blame you for trying to enjoy the game for the way you like it and if your smart you can avoid getting stomped over by the ones that play the game differently from the way you do.

Like said before its up to jorb and loftar to dictate these mechanics by intelligently make changes to the game to allow for limitations on how you can abuse the system. But unless your directly affected by bots like for example silly combat bots that could hands down rip apart a village singlehandedly you shouldn't complain unless your directly affected by it.

Just to give an example why botting isn't that bad for haven as I am most likely the type of player that sits in the most polar botted side of the spectrum. I enjoyed haven in vanilla. I didn't play the vanilla client but I did start out with the Enders client. After about 6 months of playing vanilla I wanted more. The whole concept of making more excited me and gave me motivation to log on to haven and do more cool stuff. In the end I wanted so much that I wanted to make something so big it was even well above my own personal limitation. Could I have done this same task with others, no. Simply put there wasn't anyone around that wanted the same things I wanted. Would I have dug as much clay, mined as much metal or farmed for a full year in my old W6 base solo. Hell no I would have quit. I would have gotten sick of repeating the same old tasks as they would outgrow my attention span fast. To many rudimentary repetitive tasks would have killed my enjoyment.

So are all types of bots bad for the game? Yes if jorb and loftar ignores them and let them rampage across the world ruining some aspects of the core of the game.

Are foraging bots bad? Not really as curio studying is limited by the amount you can study at the same time.

Can we blame the playerbase for wanting to bot? why, its not hacking and creating infinite springs of item fountains. The bots are still limited by the same mechanics as the rest of the playerbase.

What type of botting is detremental for the game then? Simply put, game breaking bots that exploits a system and causes an imbalance. So how do you deem a bot to be game breaking. Thats up to the devs and the community to determine so if you find a specific type of bot to be detrimental. Give a clear explanation and backup your argument with some more gunpowder then your personal view of it.

@ Gunnar

Your right about the flots and bell prices driving down giving some advantages to the traders, so ya it does deflate the value of items a bit. But oddly the prices in W6 are the same as this world so dono if things have change much.

But in the end I think intelligent gameplay can take advantage of the situation and give you an edge over the bot foraging that's happening around your area. Its just a new problem that have to be dealt with differently from old known straight forward problems.

[LadyV]

Alright I guess Ill chime in here. Can we bot? Yes. Is it wrong? Yes. Is it my place to tell you how to play? NO.

So why is it wrong? Quite simply your not playing the game. Whats the point of an MMO if a program is doing things for you? Its no longer you competing with another person. Its your program doing the work.

The argument that because we can and the developers have done nothing to stop it is not valid. You can forge documents, have calculator do a math test for you, or use a device to evade the law but none of these things make it right. Just because a thing is possible does not make it right.

Is the game tedious with chores? Yes. But we are playing in time setting where it was mostly subsistence farming and hunting. The concept of mass production was not a staple of everyday thought. To expect modern outcomes in a game of this period is missing the point.

Don't get me wrong botting has benefits and does allow creative scripting/programing. It does however remove Human competition.

As I mentioned in the first line its not my place to tell you how to play. I have my views and you have yours. Play as you will but acknowledge the fact it diminishes the people in the game. And I do believe the whole point of the game is people interacting and competing.