Game Development: Death

[APXEOLOG]

So bot zerging is the main problem of H&H currently.

Yep, for sure, bots are the reason we have 100 ppl online.

*P.S. tbh, bots are the reason we have 100 ppl online instead of 50. So you'd better be glad we have them.

[Jeff]

If there weren't bots, there would be players doing those tasks in their place. Meaning more social interaction, even if essentially forced. Unless such a player wants to do all of it alone, in which case, he'll spend the appropriate time on doing it. As it should be.
People want all the advantages of playing with multiple people - as far as production goes - without any of the risks and issues involved.
Essentially, they are nothing else than another way to cheat the system.
And like alts, there isn't much to be done, unfortunately.

[ramones]

People will always find ways to bot, but they mght do so a lot less if they have to be afraid of getting reported and banned.

"You keep stealing food. Let's cut your head, instead of resolving the issues causing the poverty!".

This is the reason the problems exist. Most of them. I wrote it in my previous post, which none even thought it had any value, or at least none responded to it.
Devs are solving consequential problems caused by either client makers or other things, which they could fix by making one and only allowed client with serverside functions/commands, that would prevent retarded auto hearth, auto curio, auto aggro etc.

[jorb]

which they could fix by making one and only allowed client with serverside functions/commands, that would prevent retarded auto hearth, auto curio, auto aggro etc.

This is factually incorrect. We cannot force a client upon anyone.

[lachlaan]

I'm curios, for those that do advocate botting as a solution to the grueling horribly boring chores we need to do : Just how much work would you want to put into developping your character? And how much work would you like your enemies to have to put in to be on par with you?

Furthermore, what happens to early, middle AND endgame if tasks no longer require more than a few minutes/hours/short amount of time?

What activities would people prefer to do ingame rather than stuff that would directly affect their stats? Cause if they limit your need to farm by slowing down hunger regen even more, people will , i suspect, whine even more. If they make low effort skyrocket a char , as long as it's uncapped and being better is desireable, people will still race one another to an imaginary finish line.

Sounds to me like we either want League of Legends indeed, or some quick respawn FPS game.

So i'm curious what solution would botters propose be implemented so they don't even feel the need to bot?

[Kaios]

So i'm curious what solution would botters propose be implemented so they don't even feel the need to bot?

None of that actually matters for many of the people who create the bots and scripts, they like to do it and so they do. A better question for them might be why don't they spend their time programming something worthwhile instead of bots for this game but who am I to judge.

As for me, I'd be quite happy if the "chores" simply took less time to do. Why does it take 10-15 seconds to slaughter an animal? I understand maybe a 5 second buffer time to catch mistakes but it takes too long. Metal axe actually affects tree chopping speed now but I still think it takes too long or rather uses too much stamina too quickly. Everything takes fucking forever to do and if it doesn't take forever it takes so much stamina that you are constantly drinking and starting again which adds to the time anyways.

[shubla]

which they could fix by making one and only allowed client with serverside functions/commands, that would prevent retarded auto hearth, auto curio, auto aggro etc.

This is factually incorrect. We cannot force a client upon anyone.

You can force server to only allow connections from default client.
Make source code private.
You would lose probably most of your player base though because default client sucks.

[lachlaan]

So i'm curious what solution would botters propose be implemented so they don't even feel the need to bot?

None of that actually matters for many of the people who create the bots and scripts, they like to do it and so they do. A better question for them might be why don't they spend their time programming something worthwhile instead of bots for this game but who am I to judge.

I can understand why a bot-scripter might enjoy using any game they can as an output for programming creativity, but not all botters wrote their own bots. So that still leaves 90% of botters (or i assume most people are just using other people's bots, faction shared perhaps) who do it simply to gain an advantage, or to avoid mind-numbing chores. We could take some feedback from both camps I think or we'll never get anywhere with the conversation.

LadyGoo mentioned "resolving the issues causing poverty" earlier, think that means she, and possibly other people would want to see chores cut down.

As for the people wanting to just gain an advantage there are other avenues of dissuading that aspect of it, I think. Jorb and Loftar just need to address each issue separately, since that's the only way to really shape mechanics to suit their vision of the game.

[venatorvenator]

Maybe it is time to think about a more proactive stance against botting even if it is not trivial to police those things. People will always find ways to bot, but they mght do so a lot less if they have to be afraid of getting reported and banned.

Just brainstorming here: isn't there a way to implement a subtle human verification check in the game? I don't know what that would be. Maybe bots tend to do repetititve tasks, or maybe their clicking patterns are too precise to have been made by humans.

And, of course, adopting stricter anti-alt policies, like removing accounts that share the same IP.

Neither would reduce botting completely since people could still make more complex bots and use proxies, but they would be less common. And if there's a permaban threat for botting, players might police themselves and report possible bots for the devs to take a closer look and decide for themselves.

That'd be unpopular and would make some people quit though, so trying to solve botting without promoting the game and increasing the playerbase wouldn't work out very well, I think.

[mamba]

Well, there are bots in every online games and people still play them, playing with the default client, that is a real turn off ( sorry devs, its OK to work on the core game and let the comunity moding the client cause they are doing a great job IMO).