Botting, Multiplaying

[Belrath]

Hello everyone.

First of all, I'm not accusing anyone personally about anything. These are just my own toughts and feelings about the state the mud is in.

Botting.
I feel like this has gotten really outta hand. I mean it wasn't tolorated at all in the old days and it's even against the rules as it should be. I dont mind people going afk for a while in groups to put kids to bed, getting food, bathroom, ciggy etc. But nowadays people are gone for hours. Sometimes people don't even know they are in a group. Triggers are made that you can just tell them to follow you and they do and start botting, giving leader the full control of their chars. All this has slowly lead to problems like bots not healing self, not entering things. If get shocked, never log back in to get corpse etc etc.

This has lead to that we have less and less leaders who are willing to deal these kinda situations and also other people in groups that are awake need to take alot more responsibility.
This has lead to that we have less and less players who like to group in these 'bot-groups'.
This has lead to that we have less and less groups in overall.
This has lead to that we have less and less players online in overall since atleast to me, the groups are the most fun part of the game.

Multiplaying.
Since most immortals are gone nowadays and nobody keeping order and see that the rules are followed, people has started multiplaying. Needless to say this is just bad. I really don't understand why people have to resort into such behavior. "No cops! No rules! wohoo! lets go crazy!" Perhaps it's just the human nature. *shrug* If everyone would start multiplaying, that would kill the mud really fast.

I really love this game and the people in it. Always makes me happy and lifts my spirit after a hard day to get into relaxing group and do stuffs together. And just really having fun. Nowadays I feel like the fun is totally gone from groups. Anyone can solo all day long but to me it's not the point, I want to group with people. And now I'm sad.

Take care.

---Bel

[cnl]

Bel - you raise some good points.

Regarding multiplaying - I support hard deletions personally. With no warnings. I have zero interest in playing a game with multiplaying myself. That's my 2c on that.

Regarding botting in groups - I understand why it's gotten how it has but I have little interest in personally leading bot groups or even participating. It's very unrewarding as a leader and perhaps symptomatic of the fact that the game needs a boost in end-game challenges. To be honest when I started Sloth bot groups were already in full swing but there were often a core of people present. I've seen groups now where the leader dies and the whole group just stands there and lets them shock. If I run a group these days it's a generally a small group.

Regarding people solo botting areas and running over other chars, killing the mob I've been fighting and then not even being at the keys to respond. see my response regarding multiplaying. Honestly this has demotivated me more than anything else.

I'll save my other thoughts for another thread to keep on topic.

[Ezekiel]

Agreed Bel- I have logged on to lead less and less lately. And when i do, I try to keep it to small groups because as a group expands, it will be about 6 people (out of say 9) are all botting in the group at once. It's demotivating as a leader and makes me want to just log off if I'm just leading someone's bot script around all day.

I used to log on for community and to see what we could kill in a suitable amount of time. I used to love leading eq groups, as there wasn't much push to help midlevs after the 9x40's had all their equipment. The botting nature though has led even the mid levs to adopt the 'follow and forget' mentality. I will say 'beacon back' and they will not respond, so I'll move on to the next in the list of beacons...and then that person similarly does not respond to beacon back to their mob (while I'm trying to balance the uptimes on mobs). It comes off as selfish because- while I'm not needing or calling anything- I'm being expected to lead/kill a mob for someone who chooses not to be there, but still have their mob on the kill list. It is super frustrating and disheartening.

And on to multiplaying- I, too, support Fuligin's stance with it. Multiplaying has always been known as the largest rule that stands above all. Anything in regards to it should be hard deletion. There is just no room for it in a mud.

I, too, agree with Fuligin about the botting experience being overbearing. I have been run over by multiple people solo before. I explain in tells 'Hey, I'm in this area", and their bot script just keeps on killing with no response. Is that the game we want- AI killing for your character with no regard to creating a negative experience in the global, open environment? Doesn't seem like much fun to only meander back a few times a day and see what your script netted you (how does that feel like an earned process in any aspect and is that what we're encouraging)? And if that IS enough for you, should that come at the cost of knowing that gain may have run over someone who was at the keys, maybe causing their log off, etc. when frustrated?

I understand power creep has made it easier to solo, and caused group OP even larger. This means in a typical group setting (and often in solo settings even), anything can be killed. This means there is little to no risk while grouped while having a half proficient group leader. No risk means that people are less likely to feel the need to pay attention while grouped and that their contribution to killing the mob (burning mana, circling, etc). will be less noticed because the mob is dying at fast pace anyway. So the end game being beefed up would definitely help. The problem has gotten so rampant (bot runs with people both solo and grouped)- I would recommend imms raising sceptre in each area to legendary and saving state and making that the default. Before the power creep, that was about the power balance. It may seem harsh by 'current' standards, but it certainly was not then before the power creep. That level of difficulty was spot on. It was why we needed people to be in groups and flourish and learn the game- not bot.

I understand with power creep, people get older and have less availability as we age, etc.- all the reasons that cause people to bot more. Hell, the game is called Sloth for a reason. That being said, I do not just want to take a 'personal' stance on this and have to be the hall monitor for who is actually at the keys and who I need to ungroup. That is similarly demotivating. The difficulty of the game and group necessity that followed allowed for this botter weeding out process naturally for group leaders because lack of participation stood out. Now, leading just feels like a community tax with no reward (or community tax penalty if you're leading around botters), since I can kill just as fast- if not faster- due to power creep.

Leading and groups have long been the lifeblood of muds. You have leaders that are less inclined to lead here because they can kill as proficiently solo and groups, can kill everything more efficiently 2-3 man (even epics). This is because you can rely on those 2-3 to be at the keys due to the nature of the danger in killing large mobs in such a fashion. When you disenfranchise decent-sized group leading or gloss over it, you spit in the face of groups and make the communal aspect die. This slowly leads to mud death. This story has been written by plenty of muds before us and we are no different.

This isn't a long diatribe about what's wrong and yelling into the void. I love a lot about this mud still and would prefer solutions over complaining, which is why I mentioned the sceptre idea. I know it's not an easy problem to solve for the imms (since the power creep has been created naturally over time and area building/modifying takes much longer to balance). Seeing that, I figured the sceptre idea was the easiest way. I hope any other recognition of the tenants going on here also have solutions listed.

[cnl]

some random additional personal opinions on the state of sloth. feel free to malign them, me, or both.
--

# bot groups, leaders and players - aka take some personal responsibility

the current state of bot groups in sloth is directly the result of what has been tolerated by both the group leaders and the players in them.

leaders should lead.
you set the standards for your groups.

players should play.
grabbing a glass of water, replying to an email or taking a phone call is one thing. getting in your car and driving off somewhere, leaving your computer at home botting sloth for you is another.

# afk tank bots shouldn’t be a thing

this is boring as heck and lazy. play with the people present even if that means you have to work harder than grabbing an afk bot with join triggers. or grab some corpses for mares and go pry that abyssal cloak from the jaws of the shadow dragon even if you have to crawl out on the stumps of your arms and legs.

# power creep

power creep is real and people underestimate how much more powerful a fully upgraded and equipped 9x40 reborn is vs a regular 9x40. one of the reasons i don’t join as many groups with fuligin as i once did is because it trivializes the battle for others. almost any area that groups run for xp i can run solo for xp - and a fair amount of the epics at that. but even a non-reborn 6x40 char with some drachma eq seems more powerful than the mud is balanced for.

i don’t have a good solution to this. zeke suggests upgrading the entire mud equivalent to legendary. maybe? legendary often feels like a slog to me rather than more dangerous but it could make some areas more interesting esp for hard hitting / thin mobs. something needs to happen but i fear what it really needs is quite a lot of involved and probably unpopular balancing work to get right.

# chop

i don’t have any real suggestions here. i just wanted to say i don’t like chop.

# quests

i really really really appreciate the work put into running quests. thank you idjit
that said, i personally think quests should be smaller/shorter but harder, have less drachma and the occasional unique item. uniqueish. i haven’t been able to attend them much lately, maybe they have gone this direction.

# death xp loss should be much, much greater

if i die and shock my xp loss is about 100 mil~ that’s like 2 minutes xp for me if i’m being lazy, normally less. most of the time it actually costs me more potential xp to wait for a raise than to quit out, grab my eq, and get back to killing. i will repeat that - it costs me more potential xp to wait for a raise than to quit out, grab my eq, and get back to killing.

this should be like 1.5B xp loss for a 9x40 char, 3B xp loss for a 9x40 reborn char imo. honestly even 3B / 6B seems reasonable to me but i admit that several sequential deaths at this rate may be hard for some to stomach.

# mud bonuses

far-gate and no-cap xp have been on basically since i started playing. let’s just accept reality and have these turned on permanently by default. it’s become the defacto standard years ago. why pretend otherwise. people just wait and won’t play while they wait for things to go back to normal if they’re not up - and i like having the option of hitting large mobs instead of competing with newbies to run an area like seam.

# hypocrisy

a lot of players have benefitted from the way things have been and i think there is real validity to the complaint of those coming in later of why we can’t do that too.

i have benefited in small and large ways from some of the things listed above.

all said, sloth is still a fun game with a lot of content to get through and if it's a bit unbalanced in the end-game maybe so what? - didn’t we strive to become grossly overpowered?

# groups

back on the topic of groups - i think the heart of sloth has always been its community and players. if there's one thing we should figure out how to get right it's groups

[Insomnia]

Many MUDs (and the original DikuMUD actually) lower the exp you get per kill as you gain levels, e.g. when you're level 10+, you get literally 0 exp from level 1 mobs. We could apply a similar logic to solo kills, and also require everyone in the group to be present in the room / engaged in the fight in order to get full exp, thus incentivizing people to group instead of soloing. Doesn't solve the automation problem though.

I read somewhere on this forum (or maybe heard from someone) that the rank system was originally designed to not only give you more fun and rewards, but also make the actual gameplay more challenging. At some rank levels you were supposed to stop being just a "protector of Bal Harbor" but started to actively defend Jord against evil forces (hunting you specifically). Having an unexpected element like this would break a lot of botting/automation. Imagine high-level creatures regularly coming out of nowhere and attacking the strongest players without warning. This would actually add so much fun, I'd love to see something like this.

[cnl]

i don't think we should break soloing in sloth to try drive people to groups.

soloing has its place and i think that would be counter-productive if it wasn't viable for skilled/dedicated players to get decent xp rate running solo.
i think whether it's in a group, or playing solo, - those who take on the biggest challenges should have a shot at the biggest rewards.

perhaps we need a test instance of sloth running for limited time windows where we can all try out some different configs just for kicks

[Ezekiel]

# hypocrisy

a lot of players have benefitted from the way things have been and i think there is real validity to the complaint of those coming in later of why we can’t do that too.

i have benefited in small and large ways from some of the things listed above.

all said, sloth is still a fun game with a lot of content to get through and if it's a bit unbalanced in the end-game maybe so what? - didn’t we strive to become grossly overpowered?

# groups

back on the topic of groups - i think the heart of sloth has always been its community and players. if there's one thing we should figure out how to get right it's groups

While I acknowledge both of these are very valid at the same time, both of these are contradictory by nature. To fix groups, you have to make balancing moves somehow, and difficulty wise that will seem unfairly oppressive to those when installed. This goes for changes in any mud. The balance on the weight always should favor what keeps groups alive, even if at the cost of some solo struggles, even though it's just a hard spot either way.

And it's not about 'eh, allow for some unbalance in the end, you worked for it'. That argument cannot be relied on if the extent of it leads it to be a group-killer. It's about people being less inclined to log their characters because of that feeling you described where it feels pitiful to group with that char viability wise in a group. If you really value groups more heavily than solo in keeping the mud alive, the power creep cannot be chalked up to whataboutism or hypocrisy in fixing it. I do enjoy the overpowered nature of 9x40 max reborn, but I can feel the death of a thousand cuts when it comes to groups, hence the thread.