Regardless of Xcom's past hypocrisy and the fact that he's helping ruin the current world by botting, I agree with his points. I take back calling you a moron, Xcom, you were just being a jackass before.
The magnitude of a bot's advantage wouldn't really change even if tasks were completed instantly. I mean, yes, their numbers will be higher, but the same goes for the humans. Some things would be unaffected - the game would simply be made more playable for humans.
For example, let's say a human player only harvests their carrots once every 24 hours while a bot harvests the carrots 3 times every 24 hour period. Now let's take away the hourglasses, making harvesting instantaneous. The player still only harvests their carrots once every 24 hours, just now that task only takes 5 minutes instead of 30 minutes of work. The bot also still harvests their carrots just 3 times - the work doesn't matter to them either way because they are machines.
Keep in mind we have the curio system. He's not talking about removing the hourglass on the bucket grind LP system.
This isn't the solution to botting, and I don't think Xcom was trying to say it is. People can and will still bot even if the hourglass is removed (or made shorter with higher stats). This would make the game more playable and rewarding for human players, though. When I played, there were many times I didn't bother harvesting my crops because there was too much to harvest, it would take too long. If I could harvest without the hourglass, I might actually be willing to harvest more often, which would actually help me catch up to the bots.
Of course, grinding is still a shitty system and making this change won't magically give Haven worthwhile end-game content. It's a piece of the puzzle to make the game fun for average humans, though.
Duderock wrote:I haven't fully figured things out yet, but if there ever is a solution to botting, I believe it will involve tying character progression to social interaction and making objects have an emphasis on qualitative elements rather than quantitative. In other words, make the amount or quality of the object irrelevant and focus more on its effects. That way, bots would only be effective if they are programmed with an adaptive AI, which is rare.
I also agree on this, though it is vague. Character progression should be meaningful, not just a contest of who has more free time to waste grinding. If character progression required actual human input and effort, bots would become obsolete and fade away. Of course, that's easier said than done since a bot can easily be programmed to perform any pattern or work with any constants. The character progression needs to be incredibly innovative.
by Duderock » Mon Aug 11, 2014 3:29 pm 
