State of the Bot Address

[Rezin]

the only time there is only 9 people online are the very early hours of the morning, dawn, its 1130 in the morning and theres 25 people on already, and just because you and your associate bot half of your zoning force, does not mean the rest of us do, so don't assume half of the online mud population is bots

[Kir]

lol... so I am not to assume that half the population are bots, yet you are allowed to assume they are all real players. The face palm happened so fast I almost gave myself a black eye. You can read the forums right? where most people are admitting to multi-play or botting?

I am actually starting to think you are doing this on purpose. There are individuals who bot who would like to see botting kept illegal so they will continue to have the advantage over players who "play by the rules". Basically akin to drug dealers who would lose their entire business if drugs became legalized.

the only time there is only 9 people online are the very early hours of the morning, dawn, its 1130 in the morning and theres 25 people on already, and just because you and your associate bot half of your zoning force, does not mean the rest of us do, so don't assume half of the online mud population is bots

[Gnua]

we are complaining about is the domino affect making botting legal is going to have...
it just creates a new avenue of abuse for people who already try and abuse the game

How about we try and see if there is a domino effect? Given that so many people already bot, what new avenue does this create for people who allegedly abuse the game? People who currently multi are already constrained by their scripting abilities and/or their ability to manually operate multiple charcters. Legalized botting wont change these current constraints.

[Aemon]

why don't we just create some scripted bots you can hire in game, like neverwinter nights or something?

I'd gladly rent you a healbot at a rate of 5,000 coins/hr or some other reasonable market rate. Just feed it and drag it by fountains occassionally.

I think this is an interesting idea, we can have a whole sub-economy of scripters leasing chars to the highest bidders.

Bots at their most fundamental level are force/group augmentors.

[Dyl]

Why not just put them in game with quests to gain loyalty.

[gulca]

I think one big reason why some ppl are against legal botting even when it has been going on for years is this

1. If you are caught cheating now, the imms can tear you apart, and that would be the end of you and hopefully everyone associated with you.

Now if bot/multi/share are allowed, imms has no more valid excuse to put a stop on these crazy players. The lesser pk oriented group would be forced to play the "inn-sit while these aggressors are on style" forever and ever.

So, here is a suggestion. We make botting legal for a period for testing. We make some botting scripts available for anyone who want to try out. We put a clause behind all these.

If any players are found to spend majority of their time to solely cause pain onto others, they (and anyone associated) can be subjected to one of the following
1. eq zap
2. eq and coin zap
3. legend status zap & -10 ranks
4. pdelete (ie clan delete)

Now, this would mean the Tim, Lottie, Nate play-style would need to stop. You cannot just go murder all option anon even if you know these are controlled by your clan tag enemies at that time. I mean you can, but your chars will have to risk being thrown out of the game.
 
These kind of players are always around and no matter what rules we have, their sole purpose is to cause pain on unsuspecting players for their own enjoyment. We will just have to nip them at the bud as they appear, but I'll like to give everyone the benefit of doubt.

[Rezin]

how about we just have the staff get online and use whatever tests they used to take all of your clans equipment to test how many people are bots?

[Chisul]

Might be worth noticing, but most of the shouts on the shout channel are for mid level chars. Might be a sign of people returning to the mud.

[Rezin]

not really fair to assume just because you and your clanmates are blatant cheaters that everyone else is, I personnaly can't say 'I didn't start botting until this happened' I don't cheat, and if the people I play with on a regular basis did cheat and use bots...they must be very sophisticated scripts with full interactive capabilities, and if that's the case, you may want to adopt there script so you and your whole clan don't get shamed in front of the whole mud again

you use the excuse, sorry the mud was just to hard for us, we had to break the rules to gain an advantage, which is bad enough, but then you try and justify it to yourselves by assuming everyone else finds the mud a lil to hard as well and has to resort to cheating, I think the only real solution is obvious, we need to implement a difficulty setting for you

[Rezin]

how about instead of trying to implement legal botting, maybe you guys could try out playing by the rules like the rest of us for awhile?

if you guys want to see the result of making botting legal, have a chaos day, let everyone know it is specifically for the testing of what would happen with bots legal

I still don't see any legit reason why making bots legal would help the mud, 90% of the games content can be done with a small group of 5 friends, with legendary characters and all the gear thats around now that never was, there is no actual reason you and your goons cant compete like the rest of us

you have convinced yourself that by punishing these people who broke the rules for botting and them quitting was something bad for the game, as if getting rid of these people cost the game some huge portion of the population, by your own accounts 90% of your entire clan had already quit by the time you were using bots, they didn't quit because someone in your clan was using bots and everyone got punished, 1 guy took over everyones characters and then started assigning human players as 'operators'??  so as I see it by punishing this clan, we have only really lost 1 person out of the population, obviously he is a cheater so good riddance, you were able to handle and compete on the mud and do well while all you had was human players, your players just like every wipe eventually got bored and quit, now you are asking the staff to change the rules so you can maintain all your unique and great equipment even tho you no longer have the people to do it legally, isn't that how the equipment ebb and flow works?  you are super active with lots of people, you get lots of great stuff and dominate, as people start getting bored and quitting, the eq starts to decay and go back into circulation for someone else to be king of the hill for awhile, that is what u want to change, you want to be able to make sure 1 guy in the clan stays active and runs everyones characters as bots all wipe just so you can maintain dominance, honestly I don't see how this is even being considered, the only real answer is, lets start taking the mud populations tips that certain people are botting im sure that people complained about your clan botting for months before they were actually punished

well lets have the staff take that more seriously, we can treat it like child protective services, if someone gets it suggested that they are botting, a 34+ gets assigned to observe wisinvis for a bit, its not hard to pick up on someone botting

[eddiex]

I really can't believe that some people are saying don't allow botting. If people are already doing it and at a extreme advantage why would anyone say, no i love to be at a constant disadvantage.

Bot charmies created by imms really a solution?  I doubt it,  Why does anyone want to have something coded for them when they could have more control over the intricacies of the process?  Because they are too lazy?  And other players will certainly bot freely regardless.  I would rather control my own potentiality on same level.  This also ignores the fact that playing 2 chars is a completely different experience and has its own challenges and rewards.

In regards to Aristox question:
I doubt allowing bots and multiplay would increase or decrease the amount i played during the wipe.  I usually burnout due to hardcore mudding and return at some point a few months later for more casual mudding.  However, I would enjoy the mud more than i currently do without question.  As a Clan leader who does not break the rule of multiing/botting i am at a severe disadvantage to the cheaters who cannot be policed effectively.

Someone mentioned this earlier and I think everyone needs to consider where some of these range of opinions come from.  We have both casual and hardcore  contributing to the input on this thread.  One thing i know for sure, the greater number of knowledgable players and leaders helps maintain the population of this game.  I remember playing 16 hours everyday to become the first legendary character EVER Onysablet.  And my clan zoned hardcore everyday.  When all the clan leaders get too fatigued or bored with the game, there becomes a mass exodus of players and this is expedited by the anti-bot war.

For those of you who believe allowing botting will create a pk problem and only be a burden to the casual players, I caution you to temper this extreme belief.  Not everyone on this game is a malicious asshole and there is ALREADY a Don't be a Dick policy that i think was mentioned at the beginning of this wipe.

[eddiex]

And one more thing.  The people you are scared of becoming raging assholes with the legalization of Botting/Multiing, THEY ARE ALREADY BOTTING AND MULTIING.

Mentality 1 (don't allow botting):
I love to be super hood and don't give a shit about upward socio-economic mobility.  I keep it G.

Mentality 2 (allow botting):
bapt the hood i'm tired of this shitty ass generic cereal.  All those hedgefund babies got it easy.  If i only had some of their money, I'd do some amazing shit.

[Gnua]

if you guys want to see the result of making botting legal, have a chaos day, let everyone know it is specifically for the testing of what would happen with bots legal

The last time I explored on chaos day, Sancho chewed me out for "breaking the chaos day rules". I think I was this close to giving him a piece of my mind and winding up abyssed in chaos day.

Anyways, the #1 argument against botting seems to be: then the imms wont have a "rule" to justify zapping/deleting tim and lottie. The #2 argument seems to be: the botters will bot more thus escalating the problems. How about we give it a try and make an informed decision instead of speculating?

As far as I know, lottie did not get deleted for violating the botting rule. His who got gimped for being an aggressor (a new anti-pk rule), he insulted an imm, and got deleted.

[gulca]

As far as I know, lottie did not get deleted for violating the botting rule. His who got gimped for being an aggressor (a new anti-pk rule), he insulted an imm, and got deleted.

I cannot say for Hoss, but it is implied that Mumu is just being a bad boy for the past few weeks before deletion, bringing nothing to the existing player base except to make many ppl either quit or not play the mud.

Mumu isn't going to stop anytime soon.
Mumu isn't expecting to be able to continue his spree till end of wipe. 
Mumu is just waiting someone (most prob Hoss) to take the bait and then throw out the blame game and quit in style.
Mumu's un-timely insults just fast forwarded the inevitable ending that's all.

[Rezin]

botting can't be policed?

we don't have any 31+ staff members that are willing to donate some time to observing suspected botters? it doesn't take much to pick up on whether someone is a bot or not, and yeah we could site ban the aemons and ppl of the game and they would just get a new ip and go right back at it, well how many times of him running a 10 man bot group for a week, being figured out, getting stripped and deleted for it, before he gets tired of losing all his chars and equipment?

and I don't know who implemented this don't be a dick policy your talking about, but I don think everyone got the memo, theres a general attitude from the haves to the have nots on this game thats rude and not doing anything positive for the game

im really kinda disappointed that people who have done such great things on the game like being the first legendary and what not, want to make such a fundamental change to the game by allowing people to run bots, does anyone see that this goes against everything this game is about?

we allow botting and multing and then we have 30 clans have 10 characters each all run by 1 chieftain, I don't see myself as continuing to play and put time into being a mortal if this crap goes on

you people have put yourself into this mentality that just because you bot and multi that every single other person on the game does, far from the truth, some of us have been playing a long time and haven't lost our integrity or respect for the game and the other players

if its really a question of having staff available to actively police the botting issue as I said, we need a j edgar to get in there, have a @mud.arctic.org email as a tipline for suspected botting, if no tips are forthcoming right away, I don't see any issue with following different groups randomly while wiz invis, its not hard to tell if a person is playing with bots if your watching for it and seeing how the group interacts, obviously this person shouldn't have the final decision on everything, so lets say he observes it and picks up and logs what he considers botting activity, report it to your overseer thats in charge and let them see the log and observe it for themselves, after that if its decided its an issue, deletion for every single character involved in the botting, if its in a clan, delete the clan, once these punishments and policys are implemented, I think people in the same clan together will watch each other for themselves and not want to be punished for another guys greed and impatience, they can report them himself even offer up damning evidence, if the tip leads to the discovery of a person botting, only the perpetraitor is punished instead of the whole clan