To the Devs: is Botting Funding you

[iamahh]

the crazier solution is to democratize bots by somehow providing NPCs to any player, similar to RTS units, so HH would become the first of a genre, MMO-survival-RTS... you could even command NPCs in combat, creating little armies, RTS style

[infectedking]

Well most of fresh or not very experienced players don't care that much about botting, but if you're playing this game for 6 years and while playing 10h/day other people have 2 or 3 times higher stats than you becouse they are botting pumpkin pies 24/7 it really makes you quit and realize this game is pointless becouse you can't bot.

I actually have to disagree with you on that tbh, highest stated people are ones who don't even really bot from what i've seen actually, i guess some which are above average have some bots helping them but the strongest ones aren't botted it seems. Also banning botters would lower the population even further considering many people bot because they're just tired of the same maintenance grind of farming and some other things.

-1 from me on this, I think would be worse off for the game which doesn't have that big of a population to really cull of a % of it.

[Gensokyo]

highest stated people are ones who don't even really bot from what i've seen actually

Yes, someone else bots for them.

[joojoo1975]

B) No. We have answered this a million times, not least in our PAQ. You are asking us to design machine administered turing tests, and you have no idea how deep the philosophical question underlying that problem runs. We may target bots opportunistically if we feel like it and find a good angle of attack, but imagining that we can entirely remove automatization is naive, and for that matter not desirable. Not even the most draconian regime I can imagine -- biometric verification of player identity, say -- is any sort of meaningful gurantee against botting. Not even close. There is no obvious and simple heuristic which identifies an account as running a bot. Far more significant game developers than us have attempted and failed at this task. .

To me. it may not be so much as a total annihilation of botters but those who flaunt such actions especially on the forums you should target once in a while. And of course the constant updating and redefining(What I believe you do to a point) of your game, as you say, to specifically deter botting is a big plus. But the philosophy of "We try to take botting as a sign of a broken game mechanic, rather than as a sign of broken players" I believe is somewhat askew. Some of the people Bot, not because of broken game mechanics, but because they want to cheat and be the best. and some of the stats thrown out in Trash talk on the Forums, may be Blusterous to say the least, I still feel have a seed, if not a root of truth in them. As developers, you can look into some of the accounts, and if indeed they do have Titan stats, doesn't that make you scratch your head just a little?

Also, perhaps controversially, I do not believe that botting fundamentally and significantly -- at least not in the forms I have yet seen it -- threatens or undermines the normal and intended game experience. It's a far bigger issue as perceived than in reality.

Jorb a long time ago(I Think I recall) made a statement to the saying "what do you want us to do, kill the bot/exploiters all day long or develop the game." but unfortunately I cannot find such quote, so if you never said a thing, never mind. But if you remember such statements, then though you may not think it's to the core of game play or reason, you have to agree it does significantly affect game play. Especially since if you want to make a better game that makes botting obsolete you have to find out where they are botting in the first place and see what, if anything, can be improved. But then again, Cowards are gonna cheat no matter what, you can't improve gameplay to stop Cowards from being Cowards.

[dafels]

hurrdurrr.... botting is funding this game ... hurrdurr

[shubla]

B. do you ever plan to eradicate botting for good?

Eradicating botting is impossible.
It could be made restricted, formally not allowed, but people would still bot.

Only disadvantage that normal game experience might have from botting is stuff like pvp. Your neighbour might have stats that are nearly impossible or impossible to reach without you botting. But is killing your high-statted neighbours defined as normal game experience in HnH. Maybe not.

Defining whether or not botting affects the amount of money that the game produces in an increasing or decreasing way is impossible. Most likely not in a negative way.
How many players that would pay a lot of money for apparels and subscriptions really have quit HnH with a sole reason of somebody using bots? Probably none.

But then again, Cowards are gonna cheat no matter what, you can't improve gameplay to stop Cowards from being Cowards.

Somebody might say that it is idiotic to use many hours a day grinding beetroots for your cows when you could code a bot to make this for you, and use that time for fun things in game, rather than some boring chores that can easily be automated.

Also designing a mmo without things that would be easy to bot is probably impossible. Because to provide players thousands of hours of content, you have to make them repeat things, such as farm beetroots, a thing also called as grinding, easy to automate.

[infectedking]

highest stated people are ones who don't even really bot from what i've seen actually

Yes, someone else bots for them.

Actually that isn't true, highest stated fighter ingame (publicly known atleast) is 0% botted or bot assisted. To say otherwise is actually very uninformed Sir.

[jordancoles]

A) No clue. We don't know how many bots are run. I'm fairly sure we lose players who dislike botting as well, so it's a coinflip. Why pay if you're automating all tasks anyway?

B) No. We have answered this a million times, not least in our PAQ. You are asking us to design machine administered turing tests, and you have no idea how deep the philosophical question underlying that problem runs. We may target bots opportunistically if we feel like it and find a good angle of attack, but imagining that we can entirely remove automatization is naive, and for that matter not desirable. Not even the most draconian regime I can imagine -- biometric verification of player identity, say -- is any sort of meaningful gurantee against botting. Not even close. There is no obvious and simple heuristic which identifies an account as running a bot. Far more significant game developers than us have attempted and failed at this task.

Also, perhaps controversially, I do not believe that botting fundamentally and significantly -- at least not in the forms I have yet seen it -- threatens or undermines the normal and intended game experience. It's a far bigger issue as perceived than in reality.

Legacy botting was some next-level shit and I'm positive there are some pretty crazy setups in Haven 2.0, but you're right, the average player doesn't really see the affect of it aside from the characters with infinite stats running around

[razfen]

Botting in general isn't that much of a problem i'd say, at least not on such a small scale that most people perceive. Problem is there's people out there who run bots at a much larger scale, with 10s of headless clients being ran on a remote server 24/7 (looking at you, archeolog). If someone runs a pumpkin pie bot for instance, so be it, but when your entire village is automated, i start questioning where the fun is in haven.

You have to draw a line somewhere, cuz even small things like picking up clustered mussels IS botting as well, just on a smaller level.

[MagicManICT]

If someone runs a pumpkin pie bot for instance, so be it, but when your entire village is automated, i start questioning where the fun is in haven.

For some people, this is the fun part of any game... figuring out how you can min-max engineer the thing, even if it doesn't net you a lot of profit or make for the best possible play. After all, engineers and scientists for the last two generations have been designing chess programs that are effectively the same thing as Haven bots. They were all ultimately losers until about 20 years ago when Deep Blue premiered and ultimately beat Kasparov. For the first time ever (in human recorded history), a machine beat a top ranked chess player*. People haven't quit playing chess online "because bots," though.

Yes, there are bots out there. Yes, bots can ruin an economy of a game. However, bugs are more likely to destroy a game than bots are. Bots are like horseflies. They hurt and sting, but overall don't do much damage (unless a game is so poorly designed that the only choice is to bot). Bugs are necrotic flesh eating away at the heart. I think that's a fairly reasonable metaphor.

You have to draw a line somewhere, cuz even small things like picking up clustered mussels IS botting as well, just on a smaller level.

Sure, sure. And even when you draw that line, can you really enforce it? After all, according to the game mechanics and interface, even using a custom client is botting if you turn on any of the "click saver" features. Some games even ban for this when detected. Is it extreme? Depends on the game. Haven and a lot of other MMOs... yes. For the ARPG that does this, no, as it doesn't save much in the way of clicks, and can provide more than a little competitive edge.

*Note: almost a decade earlier, a computer had beaten a former Grandmaster, but later lost to the current Grandmaster, Kasparov.