Botting discussion

[Zampfeo]

There is one thing I don't understand, why do some people fight against any kind of anti-bot measures so hard?
Is it because all that time you invested developing them would go to waste?

From what I've gathered, most people think all the game dev time gone towards bot-busting would go to waste. I personally kind of agree, though I do think botting is holding HnH back. But, so are a lot of things(A single-threaded server design that can only handle ~1,000 concurrent users being a big one). And, at this point, what's holding back HnH is sort of irrelevant because the devs have made it clear they aren't interested in increasing the player base and the player base they do have is going to play regardless of botting.

[Ardennesss]

Keep in mind that both of these games also have RMT to deal with, which is not the case in haven.(not gonna explain why it's relevant)

yeah... right... not the case.

Let's see at eBay:
runescape 195 results
EVE Online 105 results
Haven and Hearth 3 results (and it's actually showing some art supplies)
Seem like they do have to deal with it and haven do not.

Hafen has RMT, you might want to upgrade the rock you're living under to a newer model.

[Okocim]

yeah... right... not the case.

Let's see at eBay:
runescape 195 results
EVE Online 105 results
Haven and Hearth 3 results (and it's actually showing some art supplies)
Seem like they do have to deal with it and haven do not.

Hafen has RMT, you might want to upgrade the rock you're living under to a newer model.

I never said there is no RMT in haven, I said that J&L does not have to deal with it since the scale is marginal.
If hurling insults is all you can do to hold up your statement I feel sorry for you.

[wolf1000wolf]

I never said there is no RMT in haven, I said that J&L does not have to deal with it since the scale is marginal.
...

It's not so much that jorbtar don't have to deal with it since its marginal but more rather that RMT is working as intended?

[kabuto202]

There is one thing I don't understand, why do some people fight against any kind of anti-bot measures so hard?
Is it because all that time you invested developing them would go to waste?
Would you miss your bots that much?

Same reason the popo fights against legislature that holds them accountable. For all their bellowing about "anti-botting doesn't work" the reality is that they want to be able to bot freely and blatantly. It's probably largely why they play Haven over similar games, and they don't really give a fuck about the impact it has on other people. Which is a shame, because as a game I feel like Haven is a lot better than most of its larger competitors.

The whole "wasted dev time" excuse, is just an excuse. The amount of "wasted dev time" that has gone into reworking the same features over and over again to make bots less impactful appears to have far exceeded taking an anti-botting stance, and if the innane bitching in every announcement thread is anything to go by also had the added detriment of making those features less enjoyable for the non-botting playerbase (although it could just be people buttmad that their bots are less effective now).

[VDZ]

For all their bellowing about "anti-botting doesn't work" the reality is that they want to be able to bot freely and blatantly.

I have never botted, outside of the default convenience macros Ender's and Amber offer (load nearest smelter with 12 coal from inventory rather than right-clicking 12 times, pick nearest forageable etc) and a convenience edit back in Legacy that turned night vision on by default (I was living in a cave and those were pitch black in Legacy). I do however frequently run debugging tools in the background and more often than not I have the procmon driver loaded (only way to unload is a full reboot), and it really annoys me when games refuse to run because of that. I've also been inconvenienced by anti-botting and anti-cheating measures in other ways before (getting kicked for legit activity, in-game captcha).

[kabuto202]

I do however frequently run debugging tools in the background and more often than not I have the procmon driver loaded (only way to unload is a full reboot), and it really annoys me when games refuse to run because of that. I've also been inconvenienced by anti-botting and anti-cheating measures in other ways before (getting kicked for legit activity, in-game captcha).

Who are you responding too? Did you accidentally reply to the wrong thread? Cause pretty sure me and the other guy were talking about "any kind of anti-botting measures" and you seem to be complaining against the most intrusive anti-cheat systems which literally no one here is advocating for.

[Rebs]

I think botting helps with development. and tbf if these botters just suggested certain botting functionality in the base game I am sure some would be added, just look at the default area selecting for farming.

Not saying the highly complex bots should be made into the base game.. More the simple repetitive tasks that people use bots for could be added, like the 4 branches into a oven/ 12 coal into the smelter, and at that point, they are not really bots just functions.

As the devs have said it revels issues with certain mechanics which they can work on improving. However, I do believe most people in this thread are talking about the few cases of extreme botting. No one cares if you use a PBot destroy bot or a brick wall builder bot, but they do care when people use bots to automatically complete production lines of mechanics.

And as the devs have said, they would never be able to ban all botters, and more than likely if they managed to get some anti-bot stuff working it would only affect the undedicated botters who can't be arse to find a workaround. Just look at Runescape botting. You will still end up with people doing the extreme just fewer people doing the acceptable botting.

How about we just make botting easier for everyone to use. add PBot to be in base game, why the hell not..

[SnuggleSnail]

I think if all the coolest bots and clients were open source the exact same people would end up being relevant in terms of PVP/competition, and you therefore should be more concerned with what's fun than competition. It mostly only sucks for the people actually trying to do dumb competitive shit, as they need to maintain clients & make blatantly OP bots whenever they're obviously necessary. That said, it would be cool if some mechanics were more balanced around bots existing

[kabuto202]

Not saying the highly complex bots should be made into the base game.. More the simple repetitive tasks that people use bots for could be added, like the 4 branches into a oven/ 12 coal into the smelter, and at that point, they are not really bots just functions.

In essence you're right. The difference between a bot in the traditional sense vs something like macroing is autonomy. Automatically loading up a smelter from nearby container fuel is fine, because that's automating a single task out of a long session of gameplay and in practice doesn't actually give you an unfair advantage. Meanwhile a bot running in a different tab/VM/EC2 instance/etc who does nothing but reload/fuel the smelter with ore and fuel every time it finished a cycle so it can operate at peak efficiency 24/7 and then sends a screencap DM on Discord whenever it runs into an issue is not, as it basically gives you another "person" in your village to do shit for you who doesn't have to kept happy allowing you to effectively scale infinitely. At that point you're basically playing an RTS while everyone else is playing an RPG.

Granted permitting macroing and banning botting does add a level of complexity to bot detection as you can't use several low-hanging heuristics, unless macroing is only permitted through the use of on an internal system.