Poll: botting in games

[Hamish Durie]

alright so i was sitting down and talking with two friends and the subject started to veer towards botting in games and the argument went on for hours.
so what I am asking is is it a good idea should you do it and would you bot if you could

 

[FalloutJack]

Well, for starters, game servers have rules against it, so in strictly administrative terms, it's a bad idea. But on a more personal note, and the reason I never did this, what's the point in setting yourself up to bot? You're basically not-playing the game you have in front of you. You may as well not have it.

 

[shadowslayer81]

No.
It ruins the game, games are meant to be achievements from your personal skills, not what program you grab from the internet.

 

[thiosk]

There are some games people like, but theres lots of repetitive clicking. Browser MMOs are egregious in this respect. Consider Kingdom of Loathing, where the vast majority of long-term players bot nearly continuously. Its necessary, and the folks running the game allow it, because without that botting all those folks would quit.

 

[GodofCider]

alright so i was sitting down and talking with two friends and the subject started to veer towards botting in games and the argument went on for hours.
so what I am asking is is it a good idea should you do it and would you bot if you could

My personal opinion is that if you're already at the point where a bot is integrated into the game, then why are you playing the game? It'd be like programming a robotic vacuum to clean around your home while you're out:

You come home. Yup, place looks pretty good. Oh it missed some around the edges there. Take off autopilot and use it for a while. Reset it to autopilot.

Fun times.

But, then again, fun is relative; so what ever floats your boat I suppose.

No.
It ruins the game, games are meant to be achievements from your personal skills, not what program you grab from the internet.

Personal skills read as: whomever has the most free time is the better player.

 

[badgersprite]

alright so i was sitting down and talking with two friends and the subject started to veer towards botting in games and the argument went on for hours.
so what I am asking is is it a good idea should you do it and would you bot if you could

My personal opinion is that if you're already at the point where a bot is integrated into the game, then why are you playing the game? It'd be like programming a robotic vacuum to clean around your home while you're out:

You come home. Yup, place looks pretty good. Oh it missed some around the edges there. Take off autopilot and use it for a while. Reset it to autopilot.

Fun times.

But, then again, fun is relative; so what ever floats your boat I suppose.

Pretty much this. If the game is so not fun that you have to go away and do other stuff while something else plays for you, you can't be getting much enjoyment from it, in which case, stop playing. It's a game. What sense of achievement or fun are you getting out of it? Is gaming so important to you that you have to find ways to force yourself to keep playing something you don't care about?

 

[Adam Galli]

Botting is terrible and it ruins games.

 

[Odd Water]

There are some games people like, but theres lots of repetitive clicking. Browser MMOs are egregious in this respect. Consider Kingdom of Loathing, where the vast majority of long-term players bot nearly continuously. Its necessary, and the folks running the game allow it, because without that botting all those folks would quit.

If some games are made where it is REQUIRED and ACCEPTED to bot, then they seriously need to rethink how they are making games. A game is ment to be played. Stuff like Botting and Gold Farming are really ruining things.

 

[archvile93]

alright so i was sitting down and talking with two friends and the subject started to veer towards botting in games and the argument went on for hours.
so what I am asking is is it a good idea should you do it and would you bot if you could

My personal opinion is that if you're already at the point where a bot is integrated into the game, then why are you playing the game? It'd be like programming a robotic vacuum to clean around your home while you're out:

You come home. Yup, place looks pretty good. Oh it missed some around the edges there. Take off autopilot and use it for a while. Reset it to autopilot.

Fun times.

But, then again, fun is relative; so what ever floats your boat I suppose.

No.
It ruins the game, games are meant to be achievements from your personal skills, not what program you grab from the internet.

Personal skills read as: whomever has the most free time is the better player.

You pretty much sum up what I would've said, though I would have used a more fun analogy than vacuuming since nobody likes that, but they have to do it if they want a house that doesn't smell. Your analogy seems to inadvertently suggest that MMOs are addictions that aren't played because they're fun but because you start to have to. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go try to figure out why I felt compelled to bring this up.

 

[Odd Water]

Back in like 1999 on the N64 I had the RPG game Quest 64. I remember you auctally raised your agility or dodge stat by the amount of running you did in game. As you got further in game the higher the stat would go from all the running around exploring and questing. My second time playing it I thought right away to go to the first "big & open non-danger no-enemies" field there was besides the first town. I set it up by using a rubber band to hold the joystick to the side so character would run in a circle. I then went to bed, and school the next day. Had a freaking end game high stat in the agility/dodge or whatever it was. This is the one and only time I can every think of I did anything that remotly counts as botting. And this was a single player at home game. This pretty much is just the same as someone using a mod for their own gaming like on Oblivion or something.

 

[LadyMint]

I feel like if a game requires botting in order to succeed, then the game is not really worth playing. I know there are people out there who are obsessively competitive and will do anything to retain their King of the Hill title, but any game that's worth my time will make room for me to still feel a sense of accomplishment by my own efforts.

Botting does ruin games because it allows you to simulate an effort you should be making when you have your full attention on the game. I can see how it would be a desired thing to do--quite a few MMOs have some seriously tedious things to do just to get to the actual "meat" of the game. I tend to find ways around those tedious moments, but it would be nice if developers would examine those issues that lead people to bot their way through certain parts of their content. Having to gather Hundreds of resources to craft a single item, for example.

 

[Dags90]

Botting is a decent solution to games with stupid/random item systems, like Diablo II. Without botting and duping, the gear grind of late game would've been beyond tedious. Even if you didn't use bots or dupe directly, you were benefiting from the increased numbers of items floating around for trade making high end items more accessible. This was especially so for new players.

Pretty much this. If the game is so not fun that you have to go away and do other stuff while something else plays for you, you can't be getting much enjoyment from it, in which case, stop playing. It's a game. What sense of achievement or fun are you getting out of it? Is gaming so important to you that you have to find ways to force yourself to keep playing something you don't care about?

Botting rarely plays the entire game though, like in the aforementioned Diablo and MMOs like WoW. Bots are relegated to the tedious parts of the game (farming and leveling) while the player enjoys things like PvP.

 

[Bon_Clay]

Well one game where I actually LOVED bots was Diablo 2. I never used one myself and don't have any interest in it really since I don't mind the grind, and I'd rather play the game for stuff then just instantly get gold and items when I return. Feels like I actually earned it, and the process is fun itself.

But in that game bots were your best friend, they would do Baal runs that you could follow along with, gaining huge amounts of XP without having to have a high level friend play with you all the time. And Chant game bots did nothing but give you really good buffs to lower level character so you could go level on your own or with other people. Those were essentially bots set up for the sake of charity.

Playing on hardcore would've been almost impossible without them. On that it was all the humans that were total assholes and the bots helped you out. People would use programs to TPPK you or other cheats and tricks to murder you any chance they got. Without bot runs it would take you years to reach max level, human lead runs were sometimes very rare and often dangerous as hell.

The other type of bots that became more common later on were spam bots, which just went into games or private messaged you a chunk of text advertising some website where you could buy items. These got really annoying when it got to the point where every room you made without a level restrict had 5 of them pop in, spam their crap, and then leave. But I would rather put up with them than have the other types of bots not in the game either. They really ended up becoming an integral part of the game and community.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

What do you mean by "botting?"
I gather from glancing at some of the other posts it refers it setting up a bot to play for you instead of what I initially thought you meant which was setting up AI 'bot' opponents.
So if my guess is correct than I can only say, where's the fun in that?

 

[SuperNova221]

Well, only game I can relate this to is EVE Online. In which case, no, I've never done it, mainly because it's againt the EULA and the sites that sell them, well, they don't look so legit. In EVE though, farming for ISK, it simply isn't fun. Not for me at least. But what you can do with that ISK (PvP) is fun. So I can see the justification of botting, if it's to avoid tedious parts of a game that are just farming for levels, money etc, to enjoy the good parts. But I still see it as part of the experience of the game. So I'm not actually sure on my opinion now that I'm thinking about it.

 

[thiosk]

There are some games people like, but theres lots of repetitive clicking. Browser MMOs are egregious in this respect. Consider Kingdom of Loathing, where the vast majority of long-term players bot nearly continuously. Its necessary, and the folks running the game allow it, because without that botting all those folks would quit.

If some games are made where it is REQUIRED and ACCEPTED to bot, then they seriously need to rethink how they are making games. A game is ment to be played. Stuff like Botting and Gold Farming are really ruining things.

I would encourage you to give the kingdom a try. The interface is neat, at first. But for the deeper strategy of the game, none of the clicking is truly required.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Well, only game I can relate this to is EVE Online. In which case, no, I've never done it, mainly because it's againt the EULA and the sites that sell them, well, they don't look so legit. In EVE though, farming for ISK, it simply isn't fun. Not for me at least. But what you can do with that ISK (PvP) is fun. So I can see the justification of botting, if it's to avoid tedious parts of a game that are just farming for levels, money etc, to enjoy the good parts. But I still see it as part of the experience of the game. So I'm not actually sure on my opinion now that I'm thinking about it.

Laughably enough, botting in Eve is hard as hell, and most botters have to watch their bots non-stop, as any player who is found to be botting (Not hard to tell) is instantly mobbed, destroyed, and possibly harassed for weeks.


Eve also is a glaring example of why botting is usually banned: player economies.

 

[Scabadus]

I've occasionally set up some tradeskilling macros in an MMO while I go off to have dinner, easy credits if you do it right, but I rarely use programs that let you go completely AFK.

However (and don't tell anyone) I do use a special PC gamepad that I can program with macros in some games, again most useful in MMOs letting me fire off special attacks with precise timing or navigating to specific hotbars in a split second.

 

[viking97]

the only real positive arguement i've seen to botting so far is "it allows the player to skip the boring parts and just enjoy the game"

this kinda makes me think the game makers should focus on making the whole game fun
but then i'm reminded of yahtzee's comment that "taking the grind out of an mmo sounds good and until you think about it, grind is the thing that keeps people playing mmo's for so long"

and yes that was quoted from memory, its from the tabula rasa review. please be impressed.

 

[Hamish Durie]

um yeah i bot but only in one game runescape, now don't jump to conclusions the only reason i bot is to lvl up a character and then sell it for juicy profit
yeah i know it's bad but then mabye they shouldn't have made runescape so bloody grindy also im heling people who actually want to play this game