Bots

[jtpitner]

I would like to talk about ideas to get rid of the bots. I was wondering if something like they did in Runescape back in the day to stop them would help every couple of seconds the ground in runescape shifts and how hard it would be to do something like this?... Bots just ruin the trading. Also the Battles..

[TeckXKnight]

Bots are frowned upon in Haven but the developers have reached the conclusion that there is no simple, elegant solution to rid us of them to any meaningful degree. Any test that interferes with botting tends to also be miserable for regular players and it's often not worth sacrificing the experience of the player to inconvenience a bot.

Many games have tried to deal with bots but their solutions have generally been fraught with failure. Runescape, for example, is still ripe with bots that grind skills and crafting resources.

Pay walls, such as we've seen in games like WoW and Guild Wars 2 also don't stop bots. Having admins on 24/7 banning bots is impractical and a waste of man power, as we've seen in games like Mabinogi and Ultima Online. I'm trying to remember what game it was that would throw up captchas every few minutes to try to discourage bots but all that ended up doing was alienating the player base and, inevitably, making the game forgettable and worse off for it.

Unfortunately, the reality of it is that if a process follows a logical sequence then you can program a bot with that same logic, regardless of whether it is simple or complicated. If a process follows an illogical sequence that cannot be followed by a bot then it probably cannot be followed by a player either.

The one solution that I have seen work is also the dumbest method I've ever seen. Flight Rising expends no small amount of manpower and effort to track bots and only opens registration for new players maybe twice a year for 24 hours at a time. Bots who register and are caught get banned and simply cannot rejoin. This also blocks players from joining the game at any time other than when the registration windows are open and creates a huge mess of problems on its own. Not to mention that the game is awful and all of that expended effort should have gone to adding content to the game rather than worrying about salvaging a non-existent economy.

Another solution that is almost entirely effective is to create a gameplay experience that is not conducive to bots. MOBAs are not bot friendly not because a bot can't mimic anything a player could do, but because the level of code you would need to play the game successfully is beyond reasonable. If you could program a bot to play the game meaningfully then that is a probably the point where you should be earning millions of dollars a year at a bleeding edge robotics company rather than programming bots as a hobby. This is the type of the solution that JLo are hoping to incorporate into Haven. Essentially a game that discourages bots on a gameplay design level. No bandaids.

[McJager]

You still see bots in Mobas. Had one the other day that ran around autoattacking things and retreated at 50% hp. Was funny, But ruined the experience for a new player. I agree that bots should be gotten rid of but I've been against bots since the beginning. What's also funny is every game you mentioned I've been a part of and witnessed every single form of bot you can imagine. WoW having first aid bots in Battlegrounds, Runescape having auto-miners,Gathers, Dragon killers, Mabinogi and Ultima having the damn farmer bots, I'm really hoping to see how JLo (Which ftr is a perfect name) deal with it. As for the captcha's thing I believe that was Runescape with their random events deal, It's also been incorporated in a few other games... I believe Anarchy online, But it's been a decade or so since I've messed with that game.

[overtyped]

Bots are frowned upon in Haven but the developers have reached the conclusion that there is no simple, elegant solution to rid us of them to any meaningful degree. Any test that interferes with botting tends to also be miserable for regular players and it's often not worth sacrificing the experience of the player to inconvenience a bot.

Many games have tried to deal with bots but their solutions have generally been fraught with failure. Runescape, for example, is still ripe with bots that grind skills and crafting resources.

Pay walls, such as we've seen in games like WoW and Guild Wars 2 also don't stop bots. Having admins on 24/7 banning bots is impractical and a waste of man power, as we've seen in games like Mabinogi and Ultima Online. I'm trying to remember what game it was that would throw up captchas every few minutes to try to discourage bots but all that ended up doing was alienating the player base and, inevitably, making the game forgettable and worse off for it.

Unfortunately, the reality of it is that if a process follows a logical sequence then you can program a bot with that same logic, regardless of whether it is simple or complicated. If a process follows an illogical sequence that cannot be followed by a bot then it probably cannot be followed by a player either.

The one solution that I have seen work is also the dumbest method I've ever seen. Flight Rising expends no small amount of manpower and effort to track bots and only opens registration for new players maybe twice a year for 24 hours at a time. Bots who register and are caught get banned and simply cannot rejoin. This also blocks players from joining the game at any time other than when the registration windows are open and creates a huge mess of problems on its own. Not to mention that the game is awful and all of that expended effort should have gone to adding content to the game rather than worrying about salvaging a non-existent economy.

Another solution that is almost entirely effective is to create a gameplay experience that is not conducive to bots. MOBAs are not bot friendly not because a bot can't mimic anything a player could do, but because the level of code you would need to play the game successfully is beyond reasonable. If you could program a bot to play the game meaningfully then that is a probably the point where you should be earning millions of dollars a year at a bleeding edge robotics company rather than programming bots as a hobby. This is the type of the solution that JLo are hoping to incorporate into Haven. Essentially a game that discourages bots on a gameplay design level. No bandaids.

That twice a year registration isn't a bad idea.
Jorb and loftar wouldn't do that however, because that would get rid of some botting but not all. It would really just punish the small guys, and let the guys that register 100 accounts at once to roam free, plus it would hurt the game.

[McJager]

I don't think he was suggesting that they do a twice a year recruitment thing... That's a horrid idea for Haven. What's our active player base now? Two to three hundred? By active I mean on every single day.

[mernil2]

I'll make myself the devil's advocate but bots exist just because H&H gameplay is very repetitive.
It's very rewarding to spend few hours to code a bot, and spare oneself a shitload of time afterward.

A 100x100 brick wall is 4475 bricks! Who honestly has fun harvesting 4475 clays, putting them in a kiln, to finally build the wall ?
Who has fun harvesting 600 straws and 300 stones for a mansion? or taking care of a 40x40 tiles field every few days to feed the village?

That's hundreds of hours of doing the exact same thing and there is no fun in it, life is too short for this.

Plus the realization of these tasks can lead to conflicts; Who, as a lawspeaker / chieftain, of a village of 5+ persons never had issues motivating citizens to go gather clay, or wood, or whatever resource the village needed ?

Casual gamers playing 5 hours a week don't want to spend half of their gaming time doing boring stuff.
While bots won't complain and gladly do the same thing night and day so you and your villagers can do what you please. Fishing, griefing, hunting, raiding, farming, pantsing noobs, you name it...

To prevent bots, the game must ask players to be relatively clever which isn't the case most of the time in H&H.
The game is great, don't hear me wrong, but the main tasks are just too time-consuming and don't require much attention.

Now of course some persons will have an advantage because of programming skills that others don't have, though lots of developers share their code in Wizard Tower, and most of basic tasks are covered (gathering wood / harvesting field / hunger bots / ...).

[McJager]

Casual gamers playing 5 hours a week...

Those exist? Also, I happen to be a fan of doing repetitive tasks such as gathering thousands of clay, Building walls, Mansions, Etc.

[TeckXKnight]

To prevent bots, the game must ask players to be relatively clever which isn't the case most of the time in H&H.

It is erroneous to assume that even if the game was infinitely clever with constant fun for players that people wouldn't make bots. If someone wants to gouge out an advantage, they will bot. Sometimes people will do so just to prove that they can, out of boredom, or out of sheer malice for the game.

A lot of players in Haven hide behind the excuse that they only bot because some tasks are boring, but there are reasons why bot scripts were in faction clients well before they went public. It's no secret, having bots gives you an advantage over a normal player. Unless you minimize or eliminate that advantage then players will happily run 30+ bot clients to let them "win" the game.

[mernil2]

It is erroneous to assume that even if the game was infinitely clever with constant fun for players that people wouldn't make bots.

Bots are made because the game isn't clever enough AND has no limits.

For instance, in H&H any character can eat 500 pounds of food in a few hours without any problems (that's even if he's not too greedy).
Food is attributes. Attributes is power. Right?
Obviously, this leads to hunger bots because you need to be hungry.
And also to farming bots because then you'll need mass food.
To make bigger farm you need bigger village, have a brick bot...

Now what if food could actually perish, and if a character could only eat a few pounds of food per in-game day ?
There is not much interest in making a bot then, right?

Sure there'll be boters. I personally like coding. And I would still have fun doing so.
But that wouldn't make my robot enhanced characters totally imbalanced compared to "legit" chars.

[mvgulik]

2e post by TeckXKnight +1

[whatever mode]
Any technological solution to a social/cultural problem ... Is doomed to fail (unless your name is Bid Brother of course).

A other, 180 degree, route would be to build in a rudimentary automation system into the game from the start. (will fail to, of course.)

To bad that raising a whole new generation that's less prone to cheating* (11'th commandment ?) might only work for ... well *sticks wet finger in the air* ... Haven 11.0.
Hold on ... That just takes way to long. so lets forget about that idea. (it's not like the whole World is at stake here.)

*) Competing/winning with a vengeance.



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