Thanksgiving 2017 Event - The Rise of Bots

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Greneth
Wizard
Posts: 237
Joined: 30 Aug 2017 19:55

Re: Thanksgiving 2017 Event - The Rise of Bots

Post by Greneth » 29 Nov 2017 11:57

Saimon wrote:
petros wrote:Thanks for the feedback! Different events focus on different things, and they also evolve over time. The original Turkey event used a location stone to help people locate turkeys. The criticism in that first event was very similar - that it encourages botting and there was no interaction. We also ran it over 2 weeks initially, which was very tiring. Over time, it evolved into working together with others to roast the turkeys properly. Separate "events" were created so that you could have 1 week races, but could participate in either one. It was able to evolve to become better because of feedback like the one in this thread.

The focus of this event was to get people to explore the "unique" aspects of the game more. Finding more unique rooms, npcs, and races allow you to get to know the game better but also explore places that you otherwise wouldn't have explored. It also makes use of the speech mechanism, which up to this point has only been used in the auction house. I think there are many ways that we can enhance events in the future to take into account the speech mechanism, but invite your feedback and ideas around this.

So keep the feedback coming, especially if you have ideas for how to make it better. Happy Gobbling!
The event is OK with one exeption. There shoukd be counted only unique rooms in each domains. What we have now is the competitions between the script provrammers. Who will write a beter script that cover more areas and is fasger and more effective than others player scripts. Your idea Petros was good but allowing people score the same npc after an hour or so, distorted it fully.

Except most of the top players all move manually, the smart ones anyways. Setting a script for this event isn't the brightest idea, any number of things can go wrong because you're not always just running one or two areas. You can get tired, get blocked, chased, trip on a rock/puddle and that instantly ruins the script. Not to mention that without some kind of a delay most clients crash, lag out or don't record properly.

Pranjali who was faster than any of us by FAR was using copy and paste until she took her little break. It's just easier and faster to do it manually.
Last edited by Greneth on 29 Nov 2017 12:09, edited 1 time in total.

mallor
Rising Hero
Posts: 371
Joined: 27 Jun 2011 13:20

Re: Thanksgiving 2017 Event - The Rise of Bots

Post by mallor » 29 Nov 2017 12:07

Greneth wrote:
Saimon wrote:
petros wrote:Thanks for the feedback! Different events focus on different things, and they also evolve over time. The original Turkey event used a location stone to help people locate turkeys. The criticism in that first event was very similar - that it encourages botting and there was no interaction. We also ran it over 2 weeks initially, which was very tiring. Over time, it evolved into working together with others to roast the turkeys properly. Separate "events" were created so that you could have 1 week races, but could participate in either one. It was able to evolve to become better because of feedback like the one in this thread.

The focus of this event was to get people to explore the "unique" aspects of the game more. Finding more unique rooms, npcs, and races allow you to get to know the game better but also explore places that you otherwise wouldn't have explored. It also makes use of the speech mechanism, which up to this point has only been used in the auction house. I think there are many ways that we can enhance events in the future to take into account the speech mechanism, but invite your feedback and ideas around this.

So keep the feedback coming, especially if you have ideas for how to make it better. Happy Gobbling!
The event is OK with one exeption. There shoukd be counted only unique rooms in each domains. What we have now is the competitions between the script provrammers. Who will write a beter script that cover more areas and is fasger and more effective than others player scripts. Your idea Petros was good but allowing people score the same npc after an hour or so, distorted it fully.

Except for most of the top players all move manually, the smart ones anyways.
Shhh! The event is not over yet! :D

Darken Rahl
Apprentice
Posts: 33
Joined: 26 Oct 2017 11:42

Re: Thanksgiving 2017 Event - The Rise of Bots

Post by Darken Rahl » 30 Nov 2017 19:59

I don't hang the event maker, it is fun that something happens.
But I kinda dislike the type of the event.
Rather the event of the lifeless people.
People who has a work in RL and cannot be online 18h/day has no chance whatsoever to ever win
an event like this.The scripters and prolly there are some botters as well.

So how will you plan events in the future to make it even for those who only can play let's say 5h/day?
How do you plan to prevent the botters and scripters next time ?

User avatar
Kitriana
Champion
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Joined: 04 Mar 2010 04:46
Location: United Kingdom

Re: Thanksgiving 2017 Event - The Rise of Bots

Post by Kitriana » 30 Nov 2017 21:17

events like the stamp event really encouraged interaction and non botting activity. plus it was over a long period of time which had people coming back each time new stamps were available
If something I wrote sounds confusing ... assume you misunderstood it.

mallor
Rising Hero
Posts: 371
Joined: 27 Jun 2011 13:20

Re: Thanksgiving 2017 Event - The Rise of Bots

Post by mallor » 01 Dec 2017 20:54

Now, after all the madness is over I have time to address this properly, or more specifically the misconceptions about the event expressed in this or other posts on the forums.

First of all, the event was grindy, the event was spammy, no slightest doubt about that. However several things that have been said here are not quite true.

1. There is no incentive to interact/socialize and share or trade items and information.

That is not entirely correct. Myself, Zugzug and Enabegam cross referenced our races charts to push EE to compete with Greneth. Since both myself and Zugzug are not neutral, we pushed EE with information we had. In case you didn't notice the battle for rank 1 unique races was epic and nails biting, only at the very end Greneth managed to find 2 more races and win when he was 300 301 behind. We literally dug our lists and logs to see where all the unique races are to fill missing races for EE. Same goes for unique rooms/NPCs, we shared information to get to higher ranks.

2. Event promoted scripting and botting.

Sorry, incorrect as well. Script would be the worst thing you could do for this. Bot is even worse. Believe it or not, but most efficient way to grind gobbles were quick path aliases. That's right, manually created, go e, gobble all, go nw, gobble all... etc. Then you move to next area and do exactly the same. You absolutely had to be 100% attentive, because you would spend more time travelling than actually grinding areas. So once the path is over, quickly run to the other location. I'll say it once again, manually.

3. Newbie areas were hit constantly.

Nope, you didn't have to kill anything to win this event. I'll repeat it again, no killing required AT ALL. Gobble flag would reset automatically exactly 1 hour after you gobbled an NPC. So gobbles farming would require running as quick as possible through densely populated areas and gobble everything, then returning in exactly one hours, rinse and repeat. Grindy? Sure. Newbies suffering from it? Absolutely not. If you grinded areas which had blocking NPCs you had to kill, you were doing it wrong in a very first place.

4. Event was competition for script programmers.

Nope, see answer to point 2. Whoever figured out quickly all they need to do is to find most populated areas, like Silver Forest, and run them as quickly as possible eventually won. Whoever started messing with smart scripts and stuff, eventually lost.

5. Winners of the event lived in Terel Forest.

The stupidity of this comment I've seen somewhere on the forums is matched only by its blatancy. I'll use the blasphemy of this comment to explain the winning strategy.

First of all, the people who were high on total gobbles were also high on unique NPCs/rooms/races. That is not coincidental, to win on total gobbles you had to explore, a lot. Or have previous knowledge of the game. Why?

Very simple. As any other activity on most online games, this was about min-maxing and optimizing. You had to find an optimal route to farm gobbles fast and for that you had to explore all the domains. The following factors were important:

- Density of the NPCs.
- No blocking NPCs, no time waste to kill. It would be better to find less dense area with no blocking NPCs.
- Quick navigation between the areas, if you had to take more than 2 ships, reconsider.

Terel Forest was only one of the areas literally stuffed with NPCs, but it wasn't the only one. Since you had to wait a whole hour to be able to gobble the same NPCs again, you had to find another 7-10 of similar areas. And guess what, to find them you had to literally go through entire domains looking for them, hence exploration, NPCs and races.

For instance for Calia, start with running Thalassia, swing to Satyrs, skip Argos, kretans and dephonia, Argos is not dense enough, kretans and dephonia NPCs block. swing to forest area to the north, on the way go to Edoral tunnel and undead area.

To gobble in more "complex" areas you had to write scripts with all kinds of complex conditions, which would slow you down considerably and you would still lose time killing blocking NPCs. The time you would waste to kill 1 NPC could yield you up to 100 gobbles easily.
You had to find enough of those areas to run for a round of one hour, then rinse and repeat. The typical run would look something like this:

- Run your quick alias.
- Manually run to next area as quick as possible.
- Rinse and repeat.

You had to be attentive all the time, simply because running between areas took considerably more time than actual farming.

Now it does look to me the author of the aforementioned comment himself spent all his time in Terel Forest freezing his brain over, wondering why it doesn't work.

Bottom line, the event was grindy and spammy, no doubt, but it wasn't only about grinding and spamming. For me personally it wasn't at least, at some point I've decided glittering stone is all nice, but my goal was maximizing QXP gain. So I've abandoned Terel Forest completely (there goes the theory!!!) and moved to thoroughly explore other domains for good gobble routes. Then I proceeded to getting as high as possible in almost every domain, competing with 5-6 different people for top 3 in every domain, reacting to scores changes and adjusting my routes on the fly.

Kvator
Champion
Posts: 686
Joined: 02 Sep 2010 21:25

Re: Thanksgiving 2017 Event - The Rise of Bots

Post by Kvator » 01 Dec 2017 21:04

Point 2 - sounds like primitive scripting for me lol. You know bots are also done manually at the very beginnig :)

Nevertheless - it doesnt matter how manual u are if the effect is basically bot-like (a.k.a running zombies)

mallor
Rising Hero
Posts: 371
Joined: 27 Jun 2011 13:20

Re: Thanksgiving 2017 Event - The Rise of Bots

Post by mallor » 01 Dec 2017 21:39

Kvator wrote:Point 2 - sounds like primitive scripting for me lol. You know bots are also done manually at the very beginnig :)
So every time I run from AA to bree with a quick alias it's botting? :roll:
Kvator wrote: Nevertheless - it doesnt matter how manual u are if the effect is basically bot-like (a.k.a running zombies)
So when you grind mobs you're a running zombies as well?

Raelle
Great Adventurer
Posts: 166
Joined: 18 Jul 2017 19:31

Re: Thanksgiving 2017 Event - The Rise of Bots

Post by Raelle » 01 Dec 2017 22:54

shared many giggles with various turkeys, got to know some new folks, and came out with a whole checklist of creatures to look for in the future. Could have done without 10 days of lag, but all in all, not bad! Fun.

socializing (outside of passing giggles) happened more towards the end, as we chose "sides" and tried to help various front-runners (go Greneth!).



mallor wrote: Then I proceeded to getting as high as possible in almost every domain
.................

Greneth
Wizard
Posts: 237
Joined: 30 Aug 2017 19:55

Re: Thanksgiving 2017 Event - The Rise of Bots

Post by Greneth » 01 Dec 2017 23:11

I think adding a team option would be a great feature if this is event is ran again or something similar, let people party up.

mallor
Rising Hero
Posts: 371
Joined: 27 Jun 2011 13:20

Re: Thanksgiving 2017 Event - The Rise of Bots

Post by mallor » 02 Dec 2017 08:17

Greneth wrote:I think adding a team option would be a great feature if this is event is ran again or something similar, let people party up.
MEGA SPAM = MEGA LAG :D

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