Question for the Bot Gods...

[Fixerspy]

/me prostrates herself and begs the attention of the Gods...

Admist all the flames on the forums recently are several good questions and suggestions... Which Preserve the Existing bots, Which Preserve the PvPers content, Which minimizes PvMers concerns IF/When a raid is shut down, and Which Encourages PvMers to join PvPers at battles...

The following Specifics were suggested by others in Tchaalina's Thread. Post #'s 118 , 122 , 124 , 125 129 , and 135 are a few references on the discussion that aren't completely flame broiled and have some amount of clarity.

In a nutshell...

1) would it be possible to award Tara Points (or PvP points) to those that attend towers? Note: This includes both the PvP and PvM camps... given to Everyone that does towers. Example: give 0.25 points per hour of pvp, or 1 point for 4 hours of pvp... This would allow part time / casual / pvm players to have an impact on the game and give them a sense of reward for their efforts. It would also reward those whom support their faction most via pvp. Other examples in the references posted above... If pvp points are awarded... can we use a point conversion system similar to existing conversions already used in some bots? i.e. take points and 'exchange' them for points that can be used for bidding?

2) IF / WHEN a raid is shut down... is it possible to award 1 or 2 special points to those that were at the raid and were impacted by the raid closing? Logic being that giving them a few points for the headache, and giving them a chance to earn pvp points inplace of raid points, would go a LONG way to minimize the grief that exist now between the pvm and pvp camps and would encourage more active PvM participation in towers... Again, this would allow part time / casual / pvm players to have an impact on the game and give them a sense of reward for their efforts. Other examples in the references posted above.

3) Review the various Raids... and re-asses which Raids CAN be done by Anyone (privately or publically) without penality... i.e. Mercs, Smug, Eel, etc. Other example in the references posted above.

A lot of the people in the PvM community have gone thru Pure Hell to engage in a public dialog and then postulate and put forth these suggestions. Please note that all of the above suggestions can be implemented Within the Existing Rule Struture for the bots...

If these Token measures were enacted in some form... then both the PvP and PvM communities can continue to enjoy using the existing bots under the existing rule structure... instead of suffering the growing hostilies towards one another over access to game content.

Please keep in mind that this thread is only a recap of some good suggestions made recently in other threads by several members of the PvM community (at great personal expense). Yes... If any of it was implemented there would be a need to see how best it could be done... i.e. tweaking these rough draft suggestions into a working solution.

This request is being made as a multifactional request, as all the factions can benefit from this. Due to the Power of the existing Bots ingame... By default they Control Access to Game Content. Access to Game content is a very serious matter. Please give this request and these questions / suggestions for tweaking the 'system' very serious consideration.

/me bows... then sinks slowly to the ground in misery... wincing from the pain of numerous burns and bruises...

This is a serious attempt, Within the Existing Rules, to bridge the gap between the PvP and PvM factions ingame. Please refrain from needless flaming... please give the Gods (i.e. Snowbunnie, Roedran, Guild leaders, Raid leaders, etc. etc. etc.) a chance to review and respond.

Thanks.

Edit in hopes of clarity:

What are you trying to change? (Im not being sarcastic, im seriously asking, what exactly is it we are trying to change here, is it bnet, is it the talked about terror tara bot? is it a whole new bot?)

Ok. It is about ALL of the bots ingame (Omni and Clan...) where PvM Raids CAN be shut down in support of Tower battles and / or Tara. As far as clan is concerned... it would include Bnet and the upcoming Tara and APF Sector bots

It is a request by the PvM community to 'tweak' these bots so that SOMETHING is given to PvM / part time / casual players to compensate them for the Disruption of gameplay and shut down of access to content If / When bots are shut down...

Please note: We of the PvM community have worked very hard (and endured Pure Hell from Flamers) to try to find ways to address our concerns without having to ask for changes in the existing rules or cause additional ingame conflict by introducing new PvM bots or having PvM players banished from the existing bots...

By default Tchaalina has become the Champion / moderator of these concerns for the Omni faction and I have become the Champion / moderator for the Clan faction... i.e. authoring and hosting threads to discuss the PvM concerns...

[Revelator]

Wow, a short post for once. To answer some of the questions:

1) Points for PvP would mean spending time making sure that the people who are getting points for killing omnis or towers are in fact there killing omnis or towers. And without a rather large cadre of extremely tough minded and harsh mods and RLs, I don't see how a system could be made that wouldn't seriously hamper the efficiency of the omni/tower killing part of the raid.

I'd be interested in hearing suggestions for making such a system efficient, easy and fast to use and foolproof though, since it's one of those ideas you would love to see work.

2) If a Bnet raid is already in progress, i. e. the blob is moving cheerfully along to the zod/tnh/beast when the call to arms comes, I don't really see anything wrong per se with giving points for a kill that didn't in fact happen. Definitely something to discuss.

3) Bnet is the only Clan Rimor pointbot currently in use. On clanside, every single RK unique is FFA, except for Tara (but no points at Tara). Want to do mercs with a bunch of friends? Feel free, none of my biz. Eel has been FFA for a long time now, and all the other uniques have never been controlled at all.

[hexone]

good idea...but to hard to put something like that together...

[hudnik]

1- that point is intreging, but how to implement sucha ting easly and make sure it isnt exploited is the real issue


2-that kinda makes sense to me as well, again not a mod here, but i can defintly see the point in it.

3- cept mercs (and pand), i think all the uniques are open for all atm, and the main concern here is of small and medium orgs being trampled over by bigger players- which is one of the reasons mercbot is there.

[Zorro]

I think killing Hexous at any time, anywhere, should award 1 point on Bnet.

[Nemeria]

Wow, a short post for once. To answer some of the questions:

1) Points for PvP would mean spending time making sure that the people who are getting points for killing omnis or towers are in fact there killing omnis or towers. And without a rather large cadre of extremely tough minded and harsh mods and RLs, I don't see how a system could be made that wouldn't seriously hamper the efficiency of the omni/tower killing part of the raid.

I'd be interested in hearing suggestions for making such a system efficient, easy and fast to use and foolproof though, since it's one of those ideas you would love to see work.

Just wanted to pop in and maybe (sorta) help clear up how you could do this. This is the basic system that Tnet uses over on RK1 (giving points for tower wars attendance), and yes the concern that there might be /afk point farmers there is very real. The way that Tnet's countered that (and it seems to me to be a very efficient, effective one) is by introducing a rally system.

Basically points are awarded at every rally. There is a time limit to get to the rally, once there the raid leader uses some kind of arcane bot mojo (I don't understand how bots work....I can just see the end results) which checks to see if all the raid members are within assist range of the raid leader. Anyone not within assist range gets kicked from the raid, once the check is complete and any afk'ers are kicked points are awarded.

Naturally there are screw ups from time to time...but these can easily be corrected after the war is complete. Seems to me to be quite easy and painless to use, although who know's about what sort of coding difficulties it may entail.

Anyways, hope that clears things up a bit

Cheers,

-Nemeria

[Tantxa]

if I make the bot for Tara, there will be no point reward for Tower's, it's a nightmare to administrate and very open to exploitation. If someone can come up with an intelligent and feasable method of doing it I'll consider it. And feasable does not include having a raid leader doing "raidadd" for every person at a tower battle.

I wont be giving point rewards for Raids shut down, but as with Bnet, tl5+ Towers will be taking presidence over Tara. Perhaps there may be a chance of a Bnet point reward for Raids shut down for towers, but I wont be dealing with that, and I doubt I'd support it, people shouldn't need incentive to show up for tower battles.

Pande and Tara are as far as I can remember, the only Locations where clans still it as a faction rather than in small groups or guilds. Mercs Eel The EFP and DAV etc Uniques are free for all within guilds or small groups, how omni's administrate that is none of my concern. the bot I intend for Tara will not allow private raiding outside of the bot by clan members and attempting Damage teams out of the bot will result in a ban from the bot, and I mean to discuss it with the Bnet Admins (whilst I haven't spoken to them about it yet, I hope to be working with creaters of Bnet) about making bans stretch both bots.

[Tantxa]

Just wanted to pop in and maybe (sorta) help clear up how you could do this. This is the basic system that Tnet uses over on RK1 (giving points for tower wars attendance), and yes the concern that there might be /afk point farmers there is very real. The way that Tnet's countered that (and it seems to me to be a very efficient, effective one) is by introducing a rally system.

Basically points are awarded at every rally. There is a time limit to get to the rally, once there the raid leader uses some kind of arcane bot mojo (I don't understand how bots work....I can just see the end results) which checks to see if all the raid members are within assist range of the raid leader. Anyone not within assist range gets kicked from the raid, once the check is complete and any afk'ers are kicked points are awarded.

Naturally there are screw ups from time to time...but these can easily be corrected after the war is complete. Seems to me to be quite easy and painless to use, although who know's about what sort of coding difficulties it may entail.

Anyways, hope that clears things up a bit

Cheers,

-Nemeria

I'd like details of that... if you could get me in touch with the guy who came up with that system, that'd be great

[Oldolf]

I think killing Hexous at any time, anywhere, should award 1 point on Bnet.

Have been suggestet, but then the pvp`ers would have extremely more points then any others as Hexous is living 90% of his time at reclaim.

[Oldolf]

if I make the bot for Tara, there will be no point reward for Tower's, it's a nightmare to administrate and very open to exploitation. If someone can come up with an intelligent and feasable method of doing it I'll consider it. And feasable does not include having a raid leader doing "raidadd" for every person at a tower battle.

I wont be giving point rewards for Raids shut down, but as with Bnet, tl5+ Towers will be taking presidence over Tara. Perhaps there may be a chance of a Bnet point reward for Raids shut down for towers, but I wont be dealing with that, and I doubt I'd support it, people shouldn't need incentive to show up for tower battles.

Pande and Tara are as far as I can remember, the only Locations where clans still it as a faction rather than in small groups or guilds. Mercs Eel The EFP and DAV etc Uniques are free for all within guilds or small groups, how omni's administrate that is none of my concern. the bot I intend for Tara will not allow private raiding outside of the bot by clan members and attempting Damage teams out of the bot will result in a ban from the bot, and I mean to discuss it with the Bnet Admins (whilst I haven't spoken to them about it yet, I hope to be working with creaters of Bnet) about making bans stretch both bots.

Sry to say, but here we see a (you have any bot at all atm?) futhure bot coder that thinks he is the chief of staff...it`s not what you mean that will be implementet tough, but what the faction you making the bot for. If 80% vote no points, then it is no points :P

[Macharim]

1. As people have said very hard to administrate but if the RK1 system works as said seems a good solution.

2. Raids shut down should award points even if not finished. Reward people for time expendedand don't rob the PvM crowd of their fun just because the rest of us go to ours. The loss of loot is punishment enough for not coming to towers. :P

3. At least on Omni side a review of what mobs are on the bots.When Smug was removed from Mercbot I had great misgivings about it but it seems to have worked out very well. Maybe let Mercs go the same way, keeping Mercbot up for it's great community gathering power but not connected to the other bots or pvp. Though if the PvP points would count on Mercbot as well that would be a great incentive for those undecided to come try how it feels to get sniped by 20+ clanners.

[O_o]

Like Rev sayd, you can not back up the numbers where engaging the Towers. It was allways and will be an issue to find out where is at the rally/area and who not. Leeching allways happend then. When you go to the PvP you should NOT be foreced todo so. You rather should mind to your faction. This goes for all kind of players, PvP or PvM players.

Engaging a PvM mob ( like in pande ) and then the Raid is forced to go to defence ..., I dont see any problems to give the whole raid the awarded points. Tho we did allways regather after LCA Wars the Beast/Tnh/Zods. So I dont see any point there really.

And to Terror. I didnt got my ass off to get claners to tara and actually holding it against OT. I rather join with my guild another bot where Flatrolls stillhappend. I do not say I going to make dmg team but those pointbots in general are crap, hands down. Peps leaving when they got there phats. They forced to idle in bot to get pts and when they win they go ( either way they havnt help a jack ). Noone is going to support your bot that I swear. We not got our ass blank for seeing yet another tara clone like at past. Then you can defend your own chicken.

/msw

[Trajal]

Points for pvp.. wasn't something like that tried in the past by clan and failed miserably? Was quite some time ago as I recall... We've always been fairly allergic to that within omni, never needed it in the past. Probably don't need it now, except for the fact that a huge number of high level omni with massive experience in pvp have total apathy for the majority of the omni bot moderators and raidleaders.

[Sylverbane]

Points for pvp.. wasn't something like that tried in the past by clan and failed miserably? Was quite some time ago as I recall... We've always been fairly allergic to that within omni, never needed it in the past. Probably don't need it now, except for the fact that a huge number of high level omni with massive experience in pvp have total apathy for the majority of the omni bot moderators and raidleaders.

Clan have never used a point bot/system for towers. It has been suggested but turned down everytime by a majority vote.

Nemeria that idea of using rallys and /assist or whatever does sound very interesting. However we have to keep to why its being done. If the points are to be used as tradeables to things like Beast then maybe its worth a try...But still lots if details to clear out but i do like that...

[Tantxa]

Sry to say, but here we see a (you have any bot at all atm?) futhure bot coder that thinks he is the chief of staff...it`s not what you mean that will be implementet tough, but what the faction you making the bot for. If 80% vote no points, then it is no points :P

I was speaking about my bot, if I make a bot, I'll take suggestions, but if I don't wanna code something in, I'm not gonna code something in.

As for whether or not Ihave any bots, I did on RK1 and a couple of private raid bots that get used between a group of peers, but no I don't have a full faction bot on RK2 as of right now.

[Fixerspy]

thanks to all for being civil and taking part in the dialog...

1) as for the PvP points... I'm sure there will be much discussion as to how they are used.

Maybe they can be converted into points to be used on one of the raid bots...

Maybe they can be used in a Promotional way... i.e. ACME guild is Auctioning off (insert whatever chessy or uber item you wish here) start your bids now (using pvp points of course).

Maybe the pvp point tally will simply be nothing more than a Badge of Honor that tells Everyone (via !history in bot) the real deal. This badge of honor can be used in several ways... people that wish to 'apply' to become Raid Leaders / Mods might be required to have XX number of pvp points first... applicant wishing to join a pure pvp guild might be required to have XX number of pvp points... maybe guilds will use the pvp points to determine whom in guild best deserves tower space... or who gets that uber item(s) that they have banked for the past month in guild bank... etc etc etc.

2) verification of pvp to prevent abuse...

hmmm.... the tricky part... maybe require that people turn /anon OFF during a battle... so the bot can use a combination of /list type feature and /rally feature to determine whom is actually in the combat zone and not afk...
maybe have some type of !dead or !rezzing feature with a 5 minute grace period for people to rezz, buff, and get back after they die...

better use of the !teams feature to register whom is on what teams... defianately make it easier for raidleader to give orders to specific team leaders... used in conjuction with !dead (i.e. when !teams or !players is done would show status by team with status of it members too... would be easy to see and record status of Everyone at battle...

Say the RL dies in battle... and he wants to review stats while he rezzes... Example of suggested reporting feature output:

RL 'JoeBlow' types !dead
RL types !teams (or whatever)

Output
Team 1 -
JoeBlow (Enforcer) DEAD
SallySue (Doctor) PVP
G.I.Joe (Keeper) PVP
Bubbles (Meta) PVP
Phatty (Enforcer) PVP
Skinny (Adv) PVP

Team 2 -
JoeBrown - (Shade) PVP
BettySue - (Meta) DEAD
Fixerspy - (Fixer) AWOL
etc.
etc.
etc.


you get the idea. now the RL sets the rally at the CT (or where ever) and 2 minutes later kicks me because the bot has determined i didn't make it to the rally...

guess I shouldn't have gone afk to smoke that cig...

Anyways... just ideas in progress... I sure that tweaking the code will be a PAIN but doable...

[Silq]

I like the theory of points for pvp, but something inside me cringes at it. Even though it would benefit me greatly as I rarely go to raids, so the time I spend pvping would help me to maybe upgrade my kit, it would have to be really carefully thought out and enforced. /assist range is a very clever idea, needs a bit more than that perhaps though, as often ppl get to rally then afk (you see them standing there when everyone else moves out), and nothing to stop someone sitting somewhere after moving out and blaming CC. As it is, the numbers on the field are usually around 60-80% of that in bot, could end up thinking we have a force alot stronger than it actually is.

I hated mercbot with a passion, it was the means to an end, though I liked and supported the principle of it, it was ruined by the whining, biatching, greed, immaturity, always irritating and sometimes offensive spam in the chat - s'why I stay from public raids, unless I'm feeling particularly thick skinned. Maybe times have changed, but I remember a time when chat in gimpy could be a bit like that and put me off (it's way better nowadays - thank you clan ^^), and I would hope that it doesn't get innudated with obnoxious point-farming brats who feel a need to spam their every complaint and practice their swearing while mom's not around. Not that I'm saying all raiders are like this, far from it, and the outzone raids I've been to have been well conducted (so indeed maybe times have changed), I just like that the ppl who go to pvp have a different outlook and it shows for the most part. As I've said before, if someone comes to pvp reluctantly or their heart's not in it, I'd rather they didn't come at all.

In fact I think I'll stick to my original 'bots shouldn't be shut down for pvp' feeling, I know that won't happen, but that's the only thing giving true freedom of choice. First the attempt to 'encourage' people to pvp by shutting down bots, now the attempt to bribe and placate them with points. Just feels wrong. I've seen a couple of posts by people getting flamed or feeling a lack of encouragement when they try pvp, perhaps this is what should be addressed instead. Deal with the cause rather than react to the symptom. This is something the pvpers and leaders on clan side have put effort into, keeping it positive and helpful, and I personally feel it has made some difference, and laid some good groundwork for where we are now (this was before Hexous kicked all this off, so has nothing to do with bot closure).

Giving points for abandoned Beast raids seems fair enough, no problems with that. As with perhaps making mercs independant from other bots, but that's omni call. We never had that debate as the bots went offline, and were simply not replaced.

[Nemeria]

I'd like details of that... if you could get me in touch with the guy who came up with that system, that'd be great

Hmmm...the lead tnet admin atm is (I believe) Xyboc/Nekrid....might try sending him a PM...I'm sure he has more info for you

Could also try Filijokus or Aylash...they both seem to know everything that's going on with Tnet

[Silq]

... applicant wishing to join a pure pvp guild might be required to have XX number of pvp points... maybe guilds will use the pvp points to determine whom in guild best deserves tower space...

This idea I like, having the rewards set up within guilds themselves, that way any controversy over leeching points, afking, etc will be kept within the guilds and others don't have to hear it. In fact it would create a form of self-policing amongst guild members to make sure those points for that tower spot/alien loot/however the guild chose to use those points, are fairly earned.

It would also give guild leaders a way to give incentives for their guilds to pvp, and fairly allocate tower space.

Finally, people are motivated to pvp at a guild lvl and it doesn't become tied up with point farming for raid loot, which is where I forsee problems.

[Tantxa]

Sry to say, but here we see a (you have any bot at all atm?) future bot coder that thinks he is the chief of staff...it`s not what you mean that will be implementet though, but what the faction you making the bot for. If 80% vote no points, then it is no points :P

I just read this again, and realised the hostillity. What about me saying what I intended to do IF I made the bot for tara came off like I was acting like the "Chief of Staff" I'm looking to produce a bot that will help us remain dominant at Tara, something that rewards people who can make it to every tara raid, without making it so people who can't make it to every tara raid, can't get their shot at the GPH they want so badly.

anyone that goes to Tara just for the PVP shouldn't care what points system we use, and people that go for the loot, should have some way of increasing their chances of getting it. We did it for a long time using the system I'm suggesting, untill one guild (which is currently under completely different management now, I'm not showing any hostillity toward that guild) got greedy and with breaking us appart eventually cost us our dominance at Tara.