Botting discussion

[meus]

Bots' impact is mostly the ability to detect and react - to changes in the immediate area (crops growing, animals being born or maturing, ovens or smelters finishing tasks) or to players passing by, attempting a siege, etc., and probably foraging some stuff which would anyway be little productive and of little to no use late-game.

None of these are anything that cannot be done by a (group of) player(s).

As long as there are no exploits (wall-jumping, desync, whatever), there is nothing to complain about, as it is quite easy to avoid any interaction with said "bad boy" bots.

We have custom clients, the game is open source, it will be possible to use bots. How many people are able to plug any logic into the game clients? Not many, and the involvement it takes justifies the results. Also, I doubt that bots induce any issues other than unfounded fear and/or jealousy. On the contrary - having someone(s) that bot and provide cheap high quality crops/materials/curios/foods/tools for trade is something nice, isn't it? They deliver progress and make the game easier for anyone that cares. It's also partly due to the "everyone will try to murder you on sight" paradigm that many guides support, which is also nice because it adds some thrill to the otherwise boring lonely hermit newb's life.

Devs have made great balancing for most of the game elements - e.g. botting one's way into a great continent-wide Realm provides bonuses to anyone in the area. This is proper addressing of such "issues", not policing advanced players.

[kabuto202]

The difference is doing something with a group of players is inherently more difficult and less capable of scale. People aren't going to want to constantly take shifts watching a timer, only train specific skills, never get loot, or otherwise interact with the more engaging elements of the game. Naturally as groups also grow larger there will be more infighting and inevitable splintering. Bots are in essence a way to get all the benefits of a larger group without the necessity of actually interacting with people which really seems to go against the whole spirit of an MMO (which is why in that spirit, I've suggested just allowing private servers). This isn't some shit

None of these are anything that cannot be done by a (group of) player(s).

As long as there are no exploits (wall-jumping, desync, whatever), there is nothing to complain about, as it is quite easy to avoid any interaction with said "bad boy" bots.

Okay. Then I'm sure you won't mind if Jorb gives my next toon 9999 stats, 1 bil sp, and all rare mats in the game 30 min into next world while I go on a murder rampage. I mean, theoretically if played long enough a large group of players can feed someone that big, so by your logic it doesn't matter that it was gained through an unfair advantage that most people don't have access too, that it was done so at a rate and with precision not humanely possible, and results in incredibly toxic experience to everyone within smacking distance of me. See how absurd that sounds?

[wolf1000wolf]

...
Also, I doubt that bots induce any issues other than unfounded fear and/or jealousy. On the contrary - having someone(s) that bot and provide cheap high quality crops/materials/curios/foods/tools for trade is something nice, isn't it? They deliver progress and make the game easier for anyone that cares.
...

This claim is debatable. The consensus seems that botted curios/foragables tend to make trade worse not better?

[meus]

For the "average newbs", easily affordable HQ curios and tools are nice to have.

Easily affordable HQ curios and tools don't seem nice to the "not so advanced botters" (makes their efforts go to waste), but then again - it's a kind of a competition. It drives quality up and prices down.

[czaper2]

How can we even be sure bots exist?

Have you seen one?

[wolf1000wolf]

For the "average newbs", easily affordable HQ curios and tools are nice to have.

Easily affordable HQ curios and tools don't seem nice to the "not so advanced botters" (makes their efforts go to waste), but then again - it's a kind of a competition. It drives quality up and prices down.

I'm still not seeing how botting makes trade goods more affordable for the "average newb". What can the average newb forage/sell that the botters even want?

Unless you're talking about having the sprucehats just buy game time tokens and using those to get these "easily affordable" HQ stuff.

[meus]

What can the average newb forage/sell that the botters even want?

Wall-grade Steel, Tar, Tar Sticks, Silk, Dragonflies, even Bricks - you name it. Even Bone Glue works sometimes.

Basically - stuff that takes time and is more of a chore rather than a skill-based challenge. It matters not whether they'll bot it or buy it from newbs - they have better things to offer, and to produce.

[Sevenless]

What can the average newb forage/sell that the botters even want?

Wall-grade Steel, Tar, Tar Sticks, Silk, Dragonflies, even Bricks - you name it. Even Bone Glue works sometimes.

Basically - stuff that takes time and is more of a chore rather than a skill-based challenge. It matters not whether they'll bot it or buy it from newbs - they have better things to offer, and to produce.

Gonna take a hot disagree on that. It's not that those items aren't desired, it's more that trading "isn't free". So you have to weigh the cost of setting up the bot vs the cost of what it takes to spend time trading and producing the trade goods. It's very easy for the cost of trading to outweigh the cost of setting up bots and making people want to buy little to nothing.

Imo the heights of faction<>hermit trade were in W10 (ant queens for ant farms, bulk iron for spiralling) and W5 (pearls mostly). Both queens and pearls were high density and easy to transport, which in some ways made them quite currency like. Currently with no iron spiralling mechanics, ant farms being a bit power creeped over, and pearls being global pooled, there is no good source of trade between the rich and the poor.

I will concede that silk is valuable, but due to silk being a timer based system it's out of the reach of most hermits who can't necessarily log in on a cycle like that. Especially since it's also related to tree pot cycling. Queens, iron and pearls were not tied to cycles when they were valuable, and steel was quite in demand back in W5 as well. But hermits weren't really able to produce it meaningfully as a player group and often purchased steel.

[KwonChiMin]

Wall-grade Steel, Tar, Tar Sticks, Silk, Dragonflies, even Bricks - you name it. Even Bone Glue works sometimes.
Basically - stuff that takes time and is more of a chore rather than a skill-based challenge. It matters not whether they'll bot it or buy it from newbs - they have better things to offer, and to produce.

tbh... most of those wares are being bought by factions/market owners only to keep hermits close to the markets for other trades (token related), its even a kind of charity... yes you can gather enough of those to buy semi-outdated tools, but you will always see quater-outdated tools/gear for a price of a little token.

[VDZ]

What can the average newb forage/sell that the botters even want?

Wall-grade Steel, Tar, Tar Sticks, Silk, Dragonflies, even Bricks - you name it. Even Bone Glue works sometimes.

Basically - stuff that takes time and is more of a chore rather than a skill-based challenge. It matters not whether they'll bot it or buy it from newbs - they have better things to offer, and to produce.

Gonna take a hot disagree on that. It's not that those items aren't desired, it's more that trading "isn't free". So you have to weigh the cost of setting up the bot vs the cost of what it takes to spend time trading and producing the trade goods. It's very easy for the cost of trading to outweigh the cost of setting up bots and making people want to buy little to nothing.

Imo the heights of faction<>hermit trade were in W10 (ant queens for ant farms, bulk iron for spiralling) and W5 (pearls mostly). Both queens and pearls were high density and easy to transport, which in some ways made them quite currency like. Currently with no iron spiralling mechanics, ant farms being a bit power creeped over, and pearls being global pooled, there is no good source of trade between the rich and the poor.

I will concede that silk is valuable, but due to silk being a timer based system it's out of the reach of most hermits who can't necessarily log in on a cycle like that. Especially since it's also related to tree pot cycling. Queens, iron and pearls were not tied to cycles when they were valuable, and steel was quite in demand back in W5 as well. But hermits weren't really able to produce it meaningfully as a player group and often purchased steel.

As a hermit, this is my experience as well. The only trade goods that seemed of interest to larger villages were localized resources. I also buy my steel (plus a horse per world) whenever possible because acquiring it solo is horribly unfun, forcing you to basically live on a timer for a while. I also haven't made any amount of silk since Legacy, and in Legacy I never made any significant amount, just enough to check out the mechanics and to occasionally be reminded that you need to repeat it many times to get anything useful out of it.

Tar and dragonflies were worthless for trade in w12. Bricks can only be useful if traded in very large quantities so I haven't tried trading those for ages (so not sure if a market still exists for them, I expect botting has made it worthless) but they've always been very low value.

Imo the heights of faction<>hermit trade were in W10 (ant queens for ant farms, bulk iron for spiralling) and W5 (pearls mostly).

I do have to say that the value of low-quality iron was insane in late W10. It effectively made doing anything other than mining redundant because you could just sell easy-to-get iron and get equipment, food and curios of all kinds at far higher qualities than a hermit can produce by themselves. I'm in favor of goods being worth something, but I think it went a bit too far there.