Thread: Botting - why?
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Old 04-23-2012, 04:39 AM   #24
KaVir
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Join Date: Apr 2002
Name: Richard
Home MUD: God Wars II
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Re: Botting - why?

If they can revisit the content, and it's worth doing, then it's not really non-repeatable. By non-repeatable I mean things like quests which only award exp the first time you complete them, or which give special items that aren't worth having more than once.

You can provide repeatable activities as well if you wish. But if players can advance through repeatable content, they will bot. If players can grind something, many of them will bot it instead, so if your goal is to eliminate botting (which was the point I was responding to) then grinding really needs to go as well.

Yes, that's pretty much what I'd consider non-repeatable content, although I like the idea of using content to access features - some players would still create "recharge" bots, but at least they wouldn't be able to advance through botting, and they might even turn it into a service (I actually like bots that offer useful services to other players).

I think it really depends how much time you want players to spend advancing. To quote :

"Imagine a mud in which it took 1 week to create enough content to provide 1 hour of entertainment. Obviously you're going to lose the content race, at that rate you'll never keep up with the players - but you don't have to. If you spend 50 weeks developing some really cool non-repeatable content, then you've got a game where players can reach the top level in 50 hours. Then you can add repeatable and sandbox end-game content. If players decide to bot the end-game content, and it doesn't give them any advantage over the other players, then does it really matter?"

Agreed, although it's one of those battles you can never really win. If you introduce rules and policies, players call you a tyrant and a bad administrator - and if you don't, they accuse you of being lazy and a bad administrator. But I've found the latter does at least result in much friendlier player relations.
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