Question of the Day, December 18, 2010

[BabyRaptor]

No, they shouldn't. It screws over the people actually playing, and beyond that, what's the point? You bought the game to play it.

People say "I can't stand leveling, it's too slow/boring/ETC." OK, find a game that doesn't make you level. Don't play a game that makes you do something you don't enjoy. Common sense.

 

[Sneaklemming]

Bots means macro farming = real money trading = black market = bad.

 

[daskat]

No, it unbalance the game, damage the in game economy and violate the copyrights of the developers. Also is against the TOS

 

[Hippobatman]

Bots aren't intended to be a part of the game, and they create an unfair advantage over those who want to play the game as the way it was designed. Thus are bots a bad thing, which shouldn't be allowed.

A lawsuit is a bit too much though. IP-ban the fellow so he can't play anymore, or something.

IP addresses can be changed. It's very, -very- easy to do so. If that's not what you mean by IP ban, then perhaps I've missed something.

Yeah, fine. I don't have the correct wording for it, but just permaban him somehow. Make him not play the game or something.

My main point is: Bots are bad, lawsuit is too harsh.

I'm drunk, goodbye.

 

[The Night Shade]

I think that in some games people should be allowed to use a bot but only in the games that you can't fight another person

 

[Absimilliard]

I have next to no experience with WoW, so I'll stick to commenting on bots in MMOs from my main source of experience with these, which comes from my MMO of choice, Guild Wars. In GW, people use bots for the PvP fights, which are team-based. As anyone can imagine, using a bot in these will highly affect other players. And no. No, they are not as good as other players. No. They are not as good as any of the NPCs in the game. Using bots in this way definitely affects other players, and it's selfish and inconsiderate.

 

[runedeadthA]

People can whatever they want with something they've paid for provided it doesn't negatively affect others. And no, it does not hurt you other players when someone grows faster than you without "earning it." Being offended or annoyed or whatever is not the same as being harmed.

Still, I almost voted for the "Why would you" option because playing a game that feels like work to the point that you instead create a machine that plays it for you seems utterly ridiculous. I guess this is why WoW and its ilk have never been able to hold my attention for extended periods.

I'm fairly certain that the people who use these bots want to skip the boring parts (i.e 99% of the game ,"It gets better at lvl 80!" My ass.) I imagine there is some interesting activity that can only be accessed after harvesting the 5,000,000 bear arses required and I think its perfectly acceptable to want to skip that sh*t.

I think it hasn't quite clicked that if they find the game boring (which grinding is), they can STOP PLAYING. It's not like they have an obligation to blizzard to keep playing.

Come to think of it, the only MMORPG with fun game play I've played is Vindictus, which is a hack N slash and is instanced anyway...Food for thought.

 

[Vainglory]

It doesn't so much hurt them, as it does ruin other players experiences. It ruins the economy of the game too.

 

[Kilo24]

Using bots for an edge in competitive multiplayer purely to win should be disallowed.

But players who use bots to ease grinding are usually cutting out the least fun parts of the game. I'm more inclined to side against the developers when they make a game that strongly benefits from repetitively doing the same thing over and over again. The stuff that bots can do is rarely deeply challenging to a human player (unless it's just a mechanical execution challenge), it just sucks up time.

If a bot can reliably run a given section of the game and that section is beneficial enough to repeatedly run to motivate a player to do so past the point of actually playing it himself, the developer probably got lazy somewhere. Perhaps by designing the section to be too easy, perhaps by making the reward system based on repeating the same damned thing over and over again, or perhaps by making the section without enough random elements that a human mind is required to adapt to it, but the desire to use bots can usually be connected to the game design.

I do think that if bots were more widespread, we'd see better game design in general instead of Farmville-esque reward mechanics or Blizzard's love of random drops in WoW and Diablo.

 

[The Cake]

I think bots would ruin most games. But I think it would be interesting to see a game where bots are not only allowed, but encouraged. They'd have to be integrated into the design. Perhaps be in-game created and trade-able or something. Could be cool in a way.

I choose other. While I feel that in games like WoW, where your only limitation is time, and a bot can bypass that limitation, a game like KoL where you're limited by turns, botting isn't a problem, and is perfectly accepted. (there are a few exceptions)

tl;dr, botting isn't always a problem, it depends on the game.

 

[XT inc]

I say it should be okay, sorry to break the game, but it's the devs job to take the grind out of it. Who the fuck designs a grind anyway. Make the leveling system fun and entertaining, not some run around like a tool to find a piece of ore go clank clank clunk your mining has gone up by 1 repeat over 500 times. It's late, I'm tired, and no I don't have a solution for how to fix it.

Stop making us grind, there should be a damn difference between having fun putting the time in to get something out of it and grinding meaningless crap. If it were a fps and you wanted to unlock cook pistol mods and special abilities or skins or what ever than you'd have to practice with that gun and do challenges and whatever. At least that is fun, no just some arbitrarily high number on a arbitrary task like just get 50,000 pistol kills for gold plating.

 

[Yureina]

In principle, no.

In practice, I couldn't care less. Bots that farm endlessly will still never be remotely at the level of quality that actually skilled players can muster. I'd like to see a bot who farmed mining or herb nodes all day, everyday, in WoW try to make the kind of cash I could pull when I played.

Play smart, not alot.

 

[ZephrC]

I absolutely think they should be allowed. They should also never be used. If the game isn't fun, why are you paying to play it, and if the game buries it's fun behind hours and hours of tedium than it's just not worth it. Do something else.

If anybody even wants to use a bot to play your game, it sucks. A lot. Knock it off.

 

[DoW Lowen]

I've seen stories where rich couples who enjoy MMO's together, but don't have the time to always play it all the time actually hire people to farm for them. When I watched it, it actually didn't seem like that ridiculous of an idea.

 

[Firia]

Hmm, I dunno. See, with WoW that is designed to suck up time so the player stays in the game world for month to years on end, there are some tasks that would be GREAT to have a bot. Like, harvesting bushes, minerals, and fish. I dunno if that's what they do in the game (never played myself), but it's been in plenty other MMOs I've played before. The strictly time sink bits are bot worthy. Gold farming? Hell no. Standard gameplay? no.

As the game is currently designed, I'm betting bots break it. So a bot function would take weaving into the games infrastructure when it's being developed.

 

[MurderousToaster]

I clicked other because I wanted to select all the "No" boxes, but couldn't.

Why the fuck should some idiot be allowed to get the advantage over legitimate players by getting a computer program to play the game for them? Everyone who uses one of those bots should be banned from the game, end of. If they're going to abuse their ability to play the game, they should have that ability taken away from them.

 

[justcallmeslow]

I think bots would ruin most games. But I think it would be interesting to see a game where bots are not only allowed, but encouraged. They'd have to be integrated into the design. Perhaps be in-game created and trade-able or something. Could be cool in a way.

I choose other. While I feel that in games like WoW, where your only limitation is time, and a bot can bypass that limitation, a game like KoL where you're limited by turns, botting isn't a problem, and is perfectly accepted. (there are a few exceptions)

tl;dr, botting isn't always a problem, it depends on the game.

Yeah, good point. I think it's fine in KoL as well. I haven't played in a while, but from what I remember the economy there would be much harder to subvert or ruin. And the devs have found creative ways of dealing with fallout from exploits too so they'd be able to fix it. In WoW it's easy to flood the AH with low price rare goods and mess up how much things are worth.

 

[Towels]

Stuff like this and selling in-game gold for real money are good reasons I don't like playing MMOs anymore.