Prelude: World 12

[ghandhikus]

I really wouldn't mind captcha in game while playing just to get rid of at least half of the bots. I've played RPG MO for quite a time, and they reward you if you get captcha right, and temporary ban you if you don't answer a few of them. If I would get experience or learning points from solving captchas in game I wouldn't mind it really.

[Porterwake]

Can't wait for Friday!

[Zepar72]

This is only because the word 'grinding' has connotations of being unfun and when the process is fun other words are used instead. Various kinds of RPGs make repetitively killing enemies (and/or doing other activities) feel rewarding due to not only variety in the gameplay itself, but also a good reward system where the resulting character growth causes exciting gameplay changes (learning new skills, class changes etc). Grinding can definitely be fun as long as the benefit gained from the grind outweighs the tedium required.

The problem in my opinion is, people don't really want grinding to be gone. The best example is old mining change, and how huge turmoil it caused. Suddenly people couldn't just put a few supports and afk-mine them with bot, or even just by clicking and running a tv show in the background. The minesweeper minigame turned out to be too much, and "not everyone wants to play minesweeper" and "bots can do that too" arguments flooded the forums.
I'm pretty sure changing other things would cause the same reaction, from fishing, to mining or digging. Too many people are used to botting / alting those basic tasks, so any change for the "regular players" would cause them to rage and demand undoing the changes.
Having this game without bots and alts would be awesome, as it would slow down the server and force people to play using their char as they made it. But I think many people think otherwise.

[Liss12]

This is only because the word 'grinding' has connotations of being unfun and when the process is fun other words are used instead. Various kinds of RPGs make repetitively killing enemies (and/or doing other activities) feel rewarding due to not only variety in the gameplay itself, but also a good reward system where the resulting character growth causes exciting gameplay changes (learning new skills, class changes etc). Grinding can definitely be fun as long as the benefit gained from the grind outweighs the tedium required.

The problem in my opinion is, people don't really want grinding to be gone. The best example is old mining change, and how huge turmoil it caused. Suddenly people couldn't just put a few supports and afk-mine them with bot, or even just by clicking and running a tv show in the background. The minesweeper minigame turned out to be too much, and "not everyone wants to play minesweeper" and "bots can do that too" arguments flooded the forums.
I'm pretty sure changing other things would cause the same reaction, from fishing, to mining or digging. Too many people are used to botting / alting those basic tasks, so any change for the "regular players" would cause them to rage and demand undoing the changes.
Having this game without bots and alts would be awesome, as it would slow down the server and force people to play using their char as they made it. But I think many people think otherwise.

The cherry on top is the fact that most of botters who hate doing chores are playing this game for some REASON and the reason is PvP. Or should i say griefing since ganksquad of 4 polaks in hussar harness is more about murder than fighting. Hence the situation when botters are the most well geared and stacked players AND at the same time are bloodthitsty murderhobos constantly seeking for prey who cant really retaliate. Ultimatively this leads to unsiegeble villages and unkillable hermits just to let them play somehow. Hafen is a tangled ravel of problem and bots are root of them all.

[VDZ]

The problem in my opinion is, people don't really want grinding to be gone. The best example is old mining change, and how huge turmoil it caused. Suddenly people couldn't just put a few supports and afk-mine them with bot, or even just by clicking and running a tv show in the background. The minesweeper minigame turned out to be too much, and "not everyone wants to play minesweeper" and "bots can do that too" arguments flooded the forums.
I'm pretty sure changing other things would cause the same reaction, from fishing, to mining or digging. Too many people are used to botting / alting those basic tasks, so any change for the "regular players" would cause them to rage and demand undoing the changes.
Having this game without bots and alts would be awesome, as it would slow down the server and force people to play using their char as they made it. But I think many people think otherwise.

The minesweeper minigame already existed and still exists. As someone who mines manually (and plays the minesweeper game before placing a support), I hated the change because it rendered it impossible to mine out nodes or dig straight tunnels. (You know, the kind of tunnel you can navigate without having to use a bot.) This in turn increased the tedium in finding nodes (and made it harder to get to them once you found one) and simultaneously reduced the excitement of finding one (you can only safely dig so many tiles, and you may run into a 'wall' of potentially unsafe tiles very quickly). The problem was a lot worse for actual players than it was for bots.

fishing

This is an idle mechanic, not a bot mechanic. It's good to have at least some idle activities in the game (of course, they should require prior setup like fishing does) as it lets you be productive while focusing on other things.

Also, you put the wrong name in the quote, you were responding to me, not Melkior13.

[Zepar72]

The minesweeper minigame already existed and still exists. As someone who mines manually (and plays the minesweeper game before placing a support), I hated the change because it rendered it impossible to mine out nodes or dig straight tunnels. (You know, the kind of tunnel you can navigate without having to use a bot.) This in turn increased the tedium in finding nodes (and made it harder to get to them once you found one) and simultaneously reduced the excitement of finding one (you can only safely dig so many tiles, and you may run into a 'wall' of potentially unsafe tiles very quickly). The problem was a lot worse for actual players than it was for bots.

It made metal more rare, as you couldn't use metal (supports) to get more metal (botting / auto-clearing). It made mining and caving more challanging and it reduced how easy it is to have underground base. It also made prospecting with root a part of the game, instead of randomly mining every tile in caves (and then crying on forum, that you get cave-ins). That update reworked mining and people did all they can to redo it, which happened. It's obvious that any auto-botting change will change some gameplay too. And as you say, people hate that and use "bots will be even easier to use" argument. It can be used for literally anything.

[Enjoyment_2]

The problem in my opinion is

you should go to Inn and create your own thread called "My opinion on ..."
because the real problem with any announcements from devs is those ppl, who thinks it is a good time to speak with others. Idk if it possible, but it would be cool if we could limit 1 post in 1 announcement thread. so it would feedback-only, but no discussions...

[Liss12]

The problem in my opinion is

you should go to Inn and create your own thread called "My opinion on ..."
because the real problem with any announcements from devs is those ppl, who thinks it is a good time to speak with others. Idk if it possible, but it would be cool if we could limit 1 post in 1 announcement thread. so it would feedback-only, but no discussions...

First they came for the socialists...

[VDZ]

It made metal more rare, as you couldn't use metal (supports) to get more metal (botting / auto-clearing). It made mining and caving more challanging and it reduced how easy it is to have underground base.

It did not for the people using bots and alts! People using bots could just 100% perfectly minesweeper anyways without any risk of mistakes, and people having miner alts could just continue mining because who cares about a couple of concussions, or worst case hand their pickaxe to their next force-fed STR-only mining alt. The people hit the hardest by the change were people genuinely playing the game. It made metal more rare only to those who weren't using bots (which already existed before that change was even made so it didn't even slow down the botters).

And as you say, people hate that and use "bots will be even easier to use" argument. It can be used for literally anything.

It can only be used for things that add tedium. Bots handle repetitive tasks that require very little thought (including simple considerations repeated a thousand times as is the case for minesweeper). The more complicated the decision you need to make, the harder it is to bot. If that weren't the case, the big factions would be automatically PvPing using only bot decisions, but because it requires actual thought it's much better for players to do it manually. (Scripts are utilized in PvP, but only for simple tedious processes that are generally considered design flaws.)

[noseelol1]

A game that's starved for a large community implementing anti-botting features over fixing ongoing issues, and adding things to increase players base is doing it wrong imo.