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  1. #1

    Bot, a natural response to game design flaws?

    Hello, I'm here to talk about the worst "problem" WoW players face today: Bots. This tool was very popular amongst PvPers, but today we can even see a few running heroics and even raids. Players from Europe and USA complain about this problem, and the appearant lack of action by Blizzard is making the problem worst. But, why do players use bots in the first place? Think about it, you are playing a game (an activity that occupies your mind, and makes you have fun), but instead, you put a machine to do that for you, illogical? Maybe not.

    The gaming philosophy has changed. Back in time, games were designed to be fun and quick. Think about Mario Bros. you have a challenging enviroment, you have to overcome everything, otherwise you will have to start over again, and in the end, you finish the game. After that, there is little you can do, of course you can find secret levels, beat the game faster, but the game won't last many months, so you buy a new game.

    Today's games have a new design approach, they are made to keep you playing. Think about all the updates, expansions and even subscriptions, it means you will always have something to do in the game, right? WoW is the perfect example, a huge success (even tho declining year after year) for 8 years, you always have something to do in game. So here lies the point of this topic, "something TO DO".

    By developing a game following psychology patterns (check the internet for those), you hook the players and order them to perform some task. If you don't believe in it, try to remember that time you were in the main city, with nothing to do, and it came to your mind that it would be cool to raise your fishing skills to max. Of course this is just an example, but WoW is designed to have a huge pool of "jobs" you can/have to perform in order to shine in game or to not die of boredom.

    Reputation grinds, gear farm, Honor, Conquest grind, Valor/Justice grind, rare drops grind, etc etc etc. Today in 5.1 patch we see the points been converted into items upgrades, what is it if not an "you have to grind in order to be competitive in PvP/PvE"? Ask yourself, do you run Warsong Gulch because it's fun to play a battleground for over 8 year, or because you have to if you want to have that feeling of accomplishment "yay, I got new gear", andstay conpetitive until the next patch hits?

    If in Mario Bros. (example) the journey was fun and the end was rewarding, in WoW the journey is not fun, but you have rewards all the time. Of course there are TONS of fun stuff in WoW, but once you HAVE TO do this over and over again to satisfy your need, it becomes as boring as playing Sonic for the 10x time, it becomes a job. Of course there are some players who actually enjoy the repetition, but not everyone. Players are starting to realize that, as each day more and more players complaing about the fact the grind is terrible and boring. For someone who has been playing for 7 years, I can clearly notice that there are more and more complains about this subject each expansion.

    So, you like to recieve items, and would like to be able to kill a player, or kill the boss boss, but you do not want to have a second job in your life, what do you do? Some players cancel their subscription, others employ BOTS.

    Are bots a real problem, or a natural reaction to the game flaws? A player wants to have fun above all else, not to have a part time job in order to have fun later, and repeat the process each patch and each expansion. I have never used bots (afraid they will somehow catch me), but I understand the people who use it. Don't you think if the game was designed to be fun, and not a repetitive job, players would enjoy playing it and don't use bots?

    So, what is your opinion?

  2. #2
    Deleted
    As much as cheating on counter strike is a reaction to other players being better than you.
    Botting = cheating, if you do it to shortcut the games progression path or perceptively level the playing field does not change that fact.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by Drakesong View Post
    in WoW the journey is not fun, but you have rewards all the time. Of course there are TONS of fun stuff in WoW, but once you HAVE TO do this over and over again to satisfy your need, it becomes as boring as playing Sonic for the 10x time, it becomes a job.
    I disagree with you right there. I don't do anything in WoW that I don't enjoy. If you are - then that is your own issue. So many people forget that WoW is a game...which no one is forcing you to play. It sounds to me like you just don't have much will power.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by yjmark View Post
    I disagree with you right there. I don't do anything in WoW that I don't enjoy. If you are - then that is your own issue. So many people forget that WoW is a game...which no one is forcing you to play. It sounds to me like you just don't have much will power.
    I thoroughly agree with yjmark. If you don't enjoy playing the game, then don't. There's no good justification for spoiling the game for others by cheating. Cheats belong back in single player games, not in a multiplayer environment.
    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
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  5. #5
    Free Food!?!?! Tziva's Avatar
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    If you think some grindiness is a "game design" flaw, you're playing the wrong genre.

    MMOs are built around the concept of the carrot on the stick. Lazy people are always going to try to automate their way to the reward. It doesn't matter what the means is to achieving the end, whether it is points or badges or items or quests or minigames or mob-slaying.

    The only way to stop botting would be to remove all the compelling reasons people play in the first place.


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  6. #6
    Deleted
    botting is in my opion for lazy players or people who cant play that game in the first place.
    either way its cheating too make up for someone incompetence

  7. #7
    Titan vindicatorx's Avatar
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    I would say bots are a natural response for people wanting nice stuff without working for it just as they do whenever they can.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Tziva View Post
    If you think some grindiness is a "game design" flaw, you're playing the wrong genre.

    MMOs are built around the concept of the carrot on the stick. Lazy people are always going to try to automate their way to the reward. It doesn't matter what the means is to achieving the end, whether it is points or badges or items or quests or minigames or mob-slaying.

    The only way to stop botting would be to remove all the compelling reasons people play in the first place.
    You sir, summed up my view on MMO's. I concur and dont like competing against a machine (i.e. a bot). MMO's were not intended to be played by machines but by people. I hate playing against machines or else I would of just stuck with Playstation or xBox or my old Atari.

  9. #9
    Not surprised people bot in games with ridiculous amount of grinding(korean MMOs.... diablo 3), mostly because of bad gameplay. There's usually nothing to do in said games besides grind with no real endgame content.

    WoW? Not so much. There's so much more to do in WoW than your typical grindan' MMO.

    Anyone who thinks WoW has any form of grind in it has never played anything like Lineage 2 or Diablo 3

  10. #10
    Deleted
    I dont blame someone wanting to focus on the things in-game he finds fun, and let the bot do the things he finds tedious.

  11. #11
    Herald of the Titans
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    But bots don't let you 'reap the rewards', you don't see a bot guild beating Method to heroic kills, nor are the people who win the arena invitationals played by computers rather than people.

    Bots mostly exist to farm things that can ultimately be turned into RL cash for the person using it, or for people to automate the parts of the game that they don't want to play for the purposes of stroking their epeen. (The people with actual skills don't need to, it's trivial to get the basic honor or dungeon gear for someone who is actually good at what they do. And the gear won't fix a bad player). Blizzard has been taking steps to reduce the amount of time you /have/ to do things you don't want to do, I've been playing in MoP fairly casually and am still mostly keeping pace with people who are going crazy trying to do every daily on 10 characters every day.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Trollfaced View Post
    I dont blame someone wanting to focus on the things in-game he finds fun, and let the bot do the things he finds tedious.
    That rule can only be applied fairly in a single player arena. It doesn't matter if I'm using invincibility and noclipping in Doom, it doesn't hurt anyone else. But once you start cheating in a multiplayer game like WoW, you're negatively impacting other players, and should therefore be stopped. Botting warps the economy. A player who farms his ores the way you're meant to, makes hardly any money, because a botter has spammed the market with hundreds of stacks of cheap ore.
    Last edited by Mammoth; 2012-11-27 at 11:30 PM.
    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    you're likely wrong, and we don't care anyway.
    Source

  13. #13
    Good post, OP. But as Tziva pointed out, grinding is the basis of WoW. For WoW to be unappealing to bots, it would have to be a completely different game altogether.

    I do believe, however, that automatically detecting bots is not as difficult as Blizzard has lead us to believe. They simply haven't invested the time and effort needed to eradicate bots.
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  14. #14
    No one bots raids/dungeons. Those are multiboxers and it is perfectly fine.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by xanzul View Post
    No one bots raids/dungeons. Those are multiboxers and it is perfectly fine.
    Wrong. There are bot configs that provide competitive dps, superior healing and decent tanking. A machine is better at evaluating when to do what.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Howard Moon View Post
    I do believe, however, that automatically detecting bots is not as difficult as Blizzard has lead us to believe. They simply haven't invested the time and effort needed to eradicate bots.
    I imagine the biggest issue they have is false positives. If lots of players start getting banned for appearing to be bots, when they're not really bots, Blizz will be in a whole heap of trouble.
    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    you're likely wrong, and we don't care anyway.
    Source

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by xanzul View Post
    No one bots raids/dungeons. Those are multiboxers and it is perfectly fine.
    Their were bots running dungeons in WotLK. Your ignorant if u think otherwise.

  18. #18
    There are people whom will always cheat if they have a means to do it and think they won't get caught. The problem is the attitude of players, not the game design. Players only think raiding is worth their time and everything else is beneath them, so therefore* they shouldn't have to (be forced lol) do any of the mundane foundation work to reap the reward at the top. It's just another form of laziness and nothing more. If they could bot their way through heroic raids they would, just to sit in some capital city in all their ill-gotten gear and brag about it since that's all that matters to them.
    Last edited by Justignoreme; 2012-11-27 at 11:54 PM. Reason: derp grammar

  19. #19
    Bots are a natural response to human nature flaws.

  20. #20
    Deleted
    tl;dr because from the title alone I could extract I have a very opposing understanding of why people use bots.

    i did skim over it though.

    Bots are a symptom of human beings being inherently selfish, inconsiderate, lazy creatures.

    finding excuses for their wrongful behaviour is just part of the package (also see "clever use of game mechanics")

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