Massive Progression Overhaul - Destroy Bots

[Robben_DuMarsch]

Characters should age and when a character reaches 60 in any stat they will begin to age quicker and after 50 irl days it should die imo

I like the direction this comment is heading, while the exact terms mentioned certainly need further thought:

Characters lifetimes being not unlimited by definition (like the human condition having a guaranteed 100% fatality rate) would give different, and most likely interesting, incentives compared to the ones we have with the current setting.

I've suggested old-age/death in the past. I believe Joco's post is a sarcastic reference to it, rather than a serious suggestion.

That said, I'm not sure if old-age/death would be enough, by itself, to create specialization and destroy botting. It may just make people bot even harder. However, it *might* represent a marked improvement over status quo, as it could make the full scale botting operations with dozens of alts performing fully automated production tasks far more difficult to maintain. It's a pain to create new characters to replace all the cogs in your bot-wheel.

Additionally, I recall Loftar saying that old age/death has been something they have at least considered in the past.

It's probably more likely to be implemented than my OP.

I'm skeptical of how much it would truly change the world for botters though - They would still be far and away higher than everyone else in stats.
Additionally, replacing a character that performs a botted task isn't very difficult, and if characters only die after several months, the increased cost to bot operations would be negligible.
My automated pearl-gathering bots in W7 were killed several times, and with decent equipment and a high quality curio, replacing them could be done in minutes of actual play, and hours of real life time.

With that in mind, I'd like to suggest that any sort of comprehensive progression overhaul should look heavily into time-gating mechanics. In essence what satiation and experience points were supposed to do (limit the rate of a characters progression) and turned out to be relatively ineffectual at accomplishing.

[Avu]

Providing kingdom buffs and caring for the community. Ruined game for everyone

At least dis isnt missing self-congratulatory...

There is good reason for bots. Game mechanics. Also they are somewhat fun to make. Even though my ones suck.

You are forgetting something important bots are you getting something for nothing. You can never beat something for nothing by lessening the effort it takes to achieve something unless that effort is 0 and then there is no more game. The only solution to botting is making it more effort than the reward is providing. Clearly game effort cannot be increased or actual players will suffer much more and bots will just be adapted. The only solution is enforcing bots removal and increasing the cost of such of a removal. If one could only have one char per account and every time his bots get caught he loses that account the cost might actually be higher than 0. It won't stop botting but it will reduce it and recover some costs. But it will never happen.

[Robben_DuMarsch]

Providing kingdom buffs and caring for the community. Ruined game for everyone

At least dis isnt missing self-congratulatory...

There is good reason for bots. Game mechanics. Also they are somewhat fun to make. Even though my ones suck.

You are forgetting something important bots are you getting something for nothing. You can never beat something for nothing by lessening the effort it takes to achieve something unless that effort is 0 and then there is no more game. The only solution to botting is making it more effort than the reward is providing. Clearly game effort cannot be increased or actual players will suffer much more and bots will just be adapted. The only solution is enforcing bots removal and increasing the cost of such of a removal. If one could only have one char per account and every time his bots get caught he loses that account the cost might actually be higher than 0. It won't stop botting but it will reduce it and recover some costs. But it will never happen.

As the developers have pointed out in the past, hunting down bots to punish botters takes time. Time they would rather spend doing other things.
I'd take issue with "the only solution" being to punish botters.

Perhaps that's the only solution without changing the game at all.

But if you try to get imaginative, I'm sure you could envision alternative progression systems where botting would be largely eliminated.
I don't suggest that my OP is the only such option. I can see why many people would dislike the proposal.

[Ukhata]

the big problem here is, its a game with a lot of manual clicking. that can be easily done by a bot.
its the clicking that is core for the game, and some peopl eenjoy it and others dont.
thus some bot it. and some dont.

as long as this distinction is there, there will be bots.
no amount of checking will stop this.
in the end, what is needed is people who enjoy the game for all the things in it. and not just people who just like to hunt and kill players/game for instance.
problem is noone can be trusted enough for decent relationships to come into being since everything is open worl/ killable region.
and this is core to the game.

so for now. we need to live with some people using bots (i used a bot to level out my village as well)
cant really be stopped.

[shubla]

Doing some farming might be fun.
But if you want to achieve anything greater you have to farm, A LOT. Every day.

[Avu]

At least dis isnt missing self-congratulatory...

There is good reason for bots. Game mechanics. Also they are somewhat fun to make. Even though my ones suck.

You are forgetting something important bots are you getting something for nothing. You can never beat something for nothing by lessening the effort it takes to achieve something unless that effort is 0 and then there is no more game. The only solution to botting is making it more effort than the reward is providing. Clearly game effort cannot be increased or actual players will suffer much more and bots will just be adapted. The only solution is enforcing bots removal and increasing the cost of such of a removal. If one could only have one char per account and every time his bots get caught he loses that account the cost might actually be higher than 0. It won't stop botting but it will reduce it and recover some costs. But it will never happen.

As the developers have pointed out in the past, hunting down bots to punish botters takes time. Time they would rather spend doing other things.
I'd take issue with "the only solution" being to punish botters.

Perhaps that's the only solution without changing the game at all.

But if you try to get imaginative, I'm sure you could envision alternative progression systems where botting would be largely eliminated.
I don't suggest that my OP is the only such option. I can see why many people would dislike the proposal.

I did mention that if you remove enough effort you are left with no game. Also people bot more than just character progression, item and structure progression also benefits from a lot of botting. I'm not saying that all those activities are fun, god knows I've botted carrots because I like my cows but if someone does it by hand and someone bots it the one that bots it has a massive advantage. In the end it's Jorbs and Loftars unwillingness to improve player experience that drives a lot of this shit and it's their unwillingness to police their own game especially considering the amount of shitheads/player ratio this game has ended up with over time. And like I already said it will never happen and it's a terrible pitty.

[jorb]

unwillingness

You have no respect for the time and effort involved. This is a huge project, and we are stretched as it is.

[LadyGoo]

Ye, Avu, sod off

[tyrtix]

beign this a free game, call for unwillingness of the devs is just... wrong.

[dafels]

Avu, you ungrateful sociopath.