Bots, lets talk about them.

[Kaios]

(LadyGoo pwned u lel) but shouldn't you be old enough to handle it?

Did you really just say LadyGoo "pwned" me and attempt to call me a child in the same sentence? I was serious about that question because I don't know why you think they don't care about botting, they have always said they dislike bots but cannot do anything about them.

[APXEOLOG]

I was serious about that question because I don't know why you think they don't care about botting, they have always said they dislike bots but cannot do anything about them.

Because this is bullshit. There are many standart things that can be done to reduce botting. Also J&L always generate interesting and fresh ideas so i think they can invent some crazy mechanics to deal with it. I think they just don't think that bots are the top priority fix here (And i totally agree here. As i said, bots didn't cause 100 online instead of 2000 or at least 800 left after subscription announced).

[Kaios]

Because this is bullshit. There are many standart things that can be done to reduce botting. Also J&L always generate interesting and fresh ideas so i think they can invent some crazy mechanics to deal with it. I think they just don't think that bots are the top priority fix here (And i totally agree here. As i said, bots didn't cause 100 online instead of 2000 or at least 800 left after subscription announced).

You seem to have changed your tune a bit regarding this.

Bots will always be. You can outlaw them, but cannot defeat it.

Although I do agree with you that bots aren't the main cause of the drop in population.

[Avu]

There is no way to make botting less desirable.

If the effort required to achieve x goal is so trivial a bot would bring you no advantage over not botting then you also do not have enough of an obstacle to provide challenge to the player. If you remove enough obstacles you are basically left with no game at all. Game is about systems and beating those systems. Nothing to bot nothing to play.
Legalized botting is getting something for nothing. It's better to have something than nothing. Something has value nothing has no value.
Fair competition against those that bot can only happen if you bot as well.
A competition between botters is only a competition of the better bots.
Playing without challenge or competition can be fun for only so long. Larpers will disagree.

Please disprove any of my assertions. You keep claiming you can make botting less appealing I bring forth that even if you do that solves fuck all. So anyone got balls enough to actually engage with my argument?

And main drop in population is lack of new blood keeping things stale. But I don't see a way out of that without turning the game into pay to win so yeah.

[dafels]

As i said, bots didn't cause 100 online instead of 2000 or at least 800 left after subscription announced)

Arheolog is right ,not defending botting, but that devs should focus on adding new features to the game, and you guys should stop whining about botting since the problem is acknowledged years ago and it's been discussed for years and I'm pretty sure the devs will work on preventing botting in future when it is actually the priority, but right now I think we can put aside it, until they implement the things that have been needed since world start - siege, kingdoms, foraging etc.... Let them have fun with their bots and stop being obsessed with them. I hope the devs ignore these bot threads so they don't waste time on what has already been discussed for years repeatly. And the devs shouldn't be scared to add new things that can be bottable, don't take the fun away from the rest of the server, because of few baddies that can't play the game on themselves. If the gameplay gets more limits and less freedom because of these baddies, then the game is going to be shit( Look at salem for an excellent example with their overcomplex mechanics and limited gameplay)

[Shrapnelx]

There is no way to make botting less desirable.

If the effort required to achieve x goal is so trivial a bot would bring you no advantage over not botting then you also do not have enough of an obstacle to provide challenge to the player. If you remove enough obstacles you are basically left with no game at all. Game is about systems and beating those systems. Nothing to bot nothing to play.
Legalized botting is getting something for nothing. It's better to have something than nothing. Something has value nothing has no value.

Hm.. very good point, i didnt see it that way at all.

I honestly have no idea how this problem would be solved if thats the case, im fresh out of ideas.

But just to point out, the current farming mechanics would still benefit from some type of improvement, botting or not its still a frustrating mess to deal with daily.

[Patchouli_Knowledge]

So let's put down things that we have seen so far.

• Cause 1: Bots are caused by tedium of gameplay.
  
  • Example 1: Farming can end up being a tedious cycle of repeated actions for one food.
  • Detail 1: Players do not have a harvesting command buffer that lets them queue actions ahead of time
  • Detail 2: Some items manufacturing contains a large amount of player prompting or restrictive element.
    
    • Steel manufacturing
  Cause 2: Bots are caused by encouragement of wide play and manufacturing characters.
  
  • Observation 1: The curiosity system currently allows players to insert curiosities onto newly created characters and ticking off study time while they are logged off.
  • Observation 2: Should the curiosity system be changed to only allow online time to tick off study time, botters will change their method to keep their characters logged on to circunvent the restrictly.
  Cause 3: Bots are used to gain a quality and/or numerical over other players.
  
  • Example 1: As mentioned above, a botter can create a large quantity of characters and/or combatants that a player that is manually play cannot create.
    Example 2: A botter can create some extremely high level characters that can, as a squad, solo an entire village of soldiers with potentially little to no casualties.

Also I would like to point out some things

Notation 1: The developers do not approve of botting but prefer to focus their attention on gameplayer to also, hopefully, discourage botting.
Notation 2: This thread is not about racism or past grudge so please keep mentions of such topics and potential side tracking to a minimum. If you need to discuss it, please post it in a separate topic, thank you.
Notation 3: It is highly encouraged for the developers to at least join one or more factions as a guest to see how politics and gameplay from a faction is like.

[Amanda44]

You know APXEOLOG is right, this thread is funny, the botters laugh in the faces of the devs, the devs don't approve of botting but do nothing to prevent it other than ruining the game for everyone by adding complex and boring mechanics, there are players who want botters banned but then admit to using bots themselves because of the tedious mechanics and the solutions offered by players is more automation which means they can leave their farming/digging/w'e chars to get on with it while they do something more fun on another char or something else completely ... which is a bot isn't it?!

Whole thing is just one big joke.

[Patchouli_Knowledge]

Either way, bot vs developer combat has been going on for a very long time, not just Haven but for virtually every online multiplayer game out there. Even chess! In this instance though, the developers essentially just decides not to fight them directly.

[dageir]

The difference between botting in HnH and in RuneScape or WoW is that in the two latter games you keep you character no matter what and the damage to others is not huge.
Botting in HnH is very damaging since it is a permadeath game. Why should I spend time or money with this game if I know there would come a buffed, pimped up character and tear down my wall in a short time and instakill me?
It is all about customer confidence in the project. It is in my case low.