Not looking to like justify using bots, or to be against them. Rather, I would like to discuss why companies take a weird stance at times.
For example. > WOW WoW had Buddy bot. It was safe, it worked. But Blizzard knew about it, and went after the creators. Murdering the project. > Black Desert It had some weird bot (I think a German dude wrote it). Whatever. The company went after the dude, the bot ceased to exist.
All good, right? Well, not really. Meet the other crowd. > Guild Wars 2 There have been bots since release. They are 100% safe and worked great. There was one blanket ban around 2018 March (I think?) where the "head of security" (some autistic weeb faggot) decided it's okay to ship literal malware in the client. If their malware found any bot framework, trace, even if it wasn't for GW2, you got suspended. I do not approve of their efforts, as it is lazy, invasive.
> Final Fantasy XIV The worst offender. Bots have been a thing since forever. They work SUPERB. They work so great, you can actually do the game from level 1 to max level. It can level all your characters automatically. It can do raids, dungeons, trials, it can mine, farm, do _everything_ literally. Square Enix took no action against the bots whatsoever.
So, what's your take? Why do you think Square Enix or Arenanet never took a proper action against bots?
Corporations want full control over their live service products
Nathaniel Green
well I get that, but read the last two. Arenanet, and Square Enix did and does nothing to prevent botting. I understand why one company would take action. But why not take action? What's the rationale? IMO botting pretty much ruins game economy, just for one...
Noah Wood
Whatever counter mesaures you take to stop bots they release updates for, you can't beat bots.
Jayden Hall
but couldn't you just do kind of ban waves? if I remember correctly, WOW did that for a long time (years even) before taking things to court.
Owen Hughes
yeah and it obviously didn't work
unless you're shipping malware with your client, there's no real way to determine a who's a bot or not.
Julian Bailey
They're incompetent or indifferent. No company would want to make bad games that don't sell, but it still happens. Similarly, if a company doesn't possess the means of solving a live service problem, or the solution is outside the boundaries of profitability, then it won't happen. It could just be deemed a non issue by that company.
Justin Adams
>Bots in MMOs >No mention of Runescape
Dominic Phillips
You can't beat them, the goal is to make a game not create anti cheat.
Also if you somehow do manage to stop all bots so the rmt can't make money they will DDOS your servers over and over again.
Hunter Russell
Go on, I just posted my personal experiences.
> did I bot I did try the products, yes. But I never botted long-term. I was interested in the workings of each product. How they are built, designed, how they handle pathfinding, waypoints, etc. I am more interested in the programming aspect than anything else.
Brody Garcia
Fucking grinding bullshit this is why MMORPGs are dead.Nobody has enough time or wants to invest time for some pixel just so he can fully enjoy all the content.Fuck ilvls and fuck powercreep. FFXIV might as well be a single-player games filled with bots considering every zone is dead and there's barely anyone talking in open world apart from hunt and saying hello in instances.And on top of that having a trading post attached to a server is the most ridiculous thing with preposterous prices and I hope bots farming shit to at least lower them.They still make money from subs even if its bots right?And nobody would notice because nobody communicates anymore apart from their little cliques in their in-game houses and specific raids. MMORPGs are such a meme
I botted runescape for years. I hate botters but I have a lot of fun writing bot scripts for some of the larger frameworks out there so as a result I only ever really botted irrelevent things where I wouldn't really bother other people.
Never ever got banned
Joshua Watson
Blizzard wanted all the money the Buddy Bot guys made. BDO is basically a game that encourages AFK grinding and likely followed the same rationale as Blizz in going after the guy. Arenanet are simply incompetent at addressing the problem. XIV is a subscription-based game so their bots are still technically paying them.
Thomas Sullivan
If a game is so shit that the task is better off automated then it's probably not even worth playing anyways
I played ffxi for many years, when Square cracked down hard on bots the servers were being ddosed for a months and account theft exploded with them selling off items and transfering gil.
It got so bad they had to release account tokens, then they slowly let the bots come back.
William Lopez
How can you skip Lineage 2?
Thomas Peterson
Botting typically disrupts whatever "market" there is on online games that allow trading, whether it be from third parties trading IRL currencies or just items being devalued by sheer prevalence of what are supposed to be rare items. This generally has a negative impact on players who don't bot or pay said third parties.
Christopher Phillips
You wouldn't have bots if the base gameplay didn't require an absurd amount of time to reach max lvl and gear so you can play the "endgame" through the most inane and repetitive experience out of any genre.Because everything is tied to gear Tiers meaning the lower ones are trash so you want to skip the contest as fast as possible because you know it's a waste of time.The bots are doing the tasks people absolutely hate to do and will continue to do as long as there's repetitive tasks to artificially increase hours played and think "oh wow I spent 60 hours just this week! haha this was a great purchase!".The genre killed itself let the bots thrive
I'm 27 and I sound angry because I used to love this genre and constantly play it with my irl friends.Mass pvping in L2 was some of the best memories that I still think about before bed.
Logan Clark
>adding and closing PHP tags in your code with no separation of concern
Im just curious about how powerful the thing really is. I see the gil farming bots all the time in game and always wondered what other sort of things they had access too
Henry Jenkins
You actually can, but it would be a hassle to normal players as well.
Aiden Baker
What is the rsdwvs stance on the venesualan?
Caleb Sullivan
I've never used a bot but they don't really bother me as long as they aren't doing anything with pvp or fucking up the economy.
Dylan Lopez
>as long as they aren't doing anything with pvp or fucking up the economy. They literally always are by definition
Jose Edwards
Fucking Chinese
Jose Taylor
>It can do raids, dungeons, trials, do everything literally
ah so you must be the bot that does shit dps compared to a real player
I just mean people like this user who are just screwing around. Not people using it to ruin the game for others.
Jacob Wright
Chinese destroy every game they get into. Good thing they're mostly isolated from the rest of the internet.
Juan Sanders
Squenix don't actually care about their game because it's basically singleplayer anyway.
Justin Taylor
Fully automated gathering, crafting, questing, grinding, etc. Bot can also teleport you but that's high risk for a ban. It can also repair your gear automatically on the spot meaning dark matter and menders are irrelevant. Oh, and it can execute rotations and stuff flawlessly too.
I mostly use it for crafting, but it's nice to have my rotation done for me in savage.
>let's discuss fuck off back to resetera, discord tranny.
Connor Butler
Bots are annoying. I don't play MMOs so that I can play with fucking bots.
Aaron Mitchell
>Chinese destroy every game they get into
Oh I know, I remember when Brazilians were the worst people to play with because of chat spamming but compared to the Chinese they really aren't that bad. Chinks will straight up take the game offline if they aren't happy.
Jack Reyes
????
Jason Ward
Well, I remember it taking a stupid amount of time to even properly "farm" for even the most basic recipes. Maybe their answer was just make that even worse and further down drop rates to make bots have to run for longer? Idk, either way the game is gay as fuck and I stopped playing maybe 6 months after release.
Christopher Price
If he's doing bad dps he isn't botting properly
Anthony Barnes
Isn't php pretty popular
Gabriel Richardson
>If their malware found any bot framework, trace, even if it wasn't for GW2, you got suspended. You also got banned if the malware found an empty string among your stuff. Literally an empty file got you banned for 9 months.
Landon Allen
Seriously though if your game is so fucking simple that a bot can play it by just repeating rotations and responding to numbers in memory you're playing a bad fucking videogame.
Blake Turner
>goldfarming in runescape nicely >making $70-100 a day for doing nothing >faggot comes off vacation >bans my whole farm >vpn >crashes nonstop keeps exiting clients >refund >run on my own IP again >chainbanned >write my own scripts >banned again it was nice passive income for a while
Elijah Reyes
I liked some of the ideas with 0x10c, where botting would become part of the core gameplay - programming or just scripting your computer to do things in response to various situations while you were away.
I think that could still be done well in an Eve-like game.
Evan Parker
Programs must be the following in order to receive the golden seal from a company:
>100% liability free for the company >Safe, easy to access and use and from a trusted source >Directly involve an increase in the process of or actual sales of the game >Easily controlled on part of the company
Blizzard's anticheat is fairly strong now and detects most hacks (even if it doesn't act upon them). Multiboxers are given an unofficial pass because it increases sales numbers - an arbitrary acceptance is allowed for users who do not use simultaneous keystrokes but also do not actively search for and punish users that do because that would be lowering sales numbers. They can easily ban accounts that become a problem. These accounts are most likely sold to third parties, which in turn continue giving Blizzard money in the end.
Buddy Bot streamlined the game experience, allowing players to experience the content faster and did not directly increase sales numbers for the game, in fact risking players unsubbing faster because of its efficiency.
The fact is, a business is a business and they will do what they need for their own self interest. What's the vile part of this isn't that fact, but rather, the shift in philosophy so many of these games have taken - from providing a fun experience for the customer out of passion-borne business to treating their customers like faceless cows at McDonald's, caring about very little but min-maxing their profit. This reflects subscription numbers from then and now. Soul versus soulless.
David Morris
I don't want to grind endlessly so I don't play MMOs anymore. I did bot in RS for a little while though. I was farming money by running law runes and I used a macro recording program to record my clicks/keypresses. I would run it for a few hours a day and never got caught.
This. Bots are a byproduct of boring non-engaging gameplay.
Carter Butler
This. Heartbreaking in WoW, going out to do World PvP, only to get instantly gibbed by five Arcane Mages all moving in unison, only to be told it's not against the rules and never see that player get banned.
Ian Cook
it can literally do anything. I am not kidding. and no one cares about it. I mean I wish Square removed all bots and the game economy would return to normal.
other than that, IMO the game would need 5 characters/dungeon, +1 DPS per each, to speed things up. but I guess most wouldn't agree.
Ryan Cruz
mentioned earlier that I only wrote the ones I knew, seen, etc. I know there are sooo many others. feel free to share, post.
Aiden Martin
problem is, in FFXIV, economy adjusted to the bots lol.
not really. the bot does insane DPS by default, but if you shell out an extra few $, you have an "ACR" profile which is top-tier DPS.
yepp, same blanket ban here mate. the dude at Arenanet who introduced this "detection" still pisses me off. literally a useless hack.
Liam Sullivan
If there is, at any time, a conceived possibility of making a task easier, most people who do said task outside of the challenge will attempt to make it easier if they've the ready tools and ability to do so. It could literally be as easy as a quest for picking up three eggs or something like a puzzle matching sequence. If someone can hack it, they will, because it's an impulse in humanity to overcome challenge and evolve beyond then. This impulse doesn't do so well in games, as these challenges aren't meant to be overcome, but met and passed. Its purely the mindset of the player, which itself has evolved from enjoying a challenge to wanting to be rid of it. Too many people only care about instant or simple gratification. They're not wrong to feel this way, but I personally cannot find a valid reason to want to rob yourself of an experience if you made the decision to approach it. Either play the game as intended or don't. Pure and simple.
Justin Stewart
I've always wondered why companies did not apply the webzen approach like in MU Online.
Caleb Barnes
Botting is often a symptom of the game having very unpleasant progression experience, filled with pointless, non-memorable activities and structured around daily grinding as a way of padding subscriptions and player activity. Some companies will acknowledge them but if it will earn them some smackaroos, they're fine since that's the point of developing and maintaining the game anyway. They will only take action once their profits is directly or indirectly (such as base consumers becoming disgruntled) affected.
Bots also make shit on the market/AH super cheap, which is great.
Ryan Collins
ok but what if it was 5 arcane mages not moving in unison? In the end of the day its 5 characters vs 1. Get 4 friends. 5 people will beat 1 guy controlling 5 every time unless that dude has somehow managed to gear out all 5 of his mages and is pretty good at the game.
Landon Wright
RS bots get banned upon recognition
Ethan Hughes
>Yea Forums hates video games >Yea Forums hates fun >Yea Forums bots in video games
Color me fucking surprised.
Angel Rogers
everyone bots in FFXIV though. some just admit, and some don't.
Luke Perry
If it was one dude and four keyboards or four programs he was very quickly tabbing in and out of, I would be more impressed than offended. That level of coordination is rightfully earned.
Landon Rodriguez
This is the correct answer. It's always either a business decision or a technical competency issue. Maybe an MBA was trying to get a bonus by hitting certain sub numbers and didn't want bots (and the sub) removed from the game?
Landon Russell
I mean guy is upset he is met with an unfair fight in world pvp. I get it, that player has 5 characters vs your one, But what if me and 4 of my mates decided we'd camp the plaguelands all day. We'd ruin your world pvp experience just as much as any multiboxer could.
Easton Ramirez
bots also make gold harder to earn for the regular working player. All herbs and ore on nostalrius were monopolized by bots. In RS every single money making method is made less lucrative by bots. If you aren't botting, then your time is being cheated by those that are.
Josiah Diaz
I remember reading the US Navy was developing an AI to play WoW 10~ years ago. Wonder whatever happened to it.
Ian Gomez
I liked botting since it gave me time to do other shit while progressing my game. I wouldn't have been as rich in D2 if it wasn't for botting or have multiple chars in WoW.
Grayson Nguyen
bots ruin games and communities and are for people that don't enjoy games but enjoy bragging about what they have in the games
Alexander Peterson
>botting in MMOs
for what purpose
Bentley Garcia
well, it's been a 'cult' now for so long, the prices on market and everything has been adjusted to the usage of bots.
Ethan Morales
>chinks are better and cheaper than bots
Jordan Lopez
>ffxiv bots any relevant lol
Lucas Jackson
If you bot casually, say 2-4 hours at a time and aren't completely afk during the process, you will most likely stay safe. Then you have the actual bot farms which makes accounts, bot heavily and trade all the shit to another account before they are banned. Rinse and repeat.
Bentley Davis
RMT is probably the biggest reason. Anyone who bots without that goal in mind, however, just don't like the game enough that they want to work for rewards themselves, but continue to play in said game because of some form of attachment.
