Planning: Multi-Faction Point Bot System

I am getting together a group of people to work on a multi-faction point bot system for Pande and all 4 Alien Playfields (13, 28, 35, 42). The driving force behind this project is the reality that the player population is not what it used to be, newbies are quite often left out of content and forced to buy lootrights to everything and Sector 42 raids are not accessbile/an option for a large portion of the Rimor community.

Some starting concepts/ideas:
- Shared points across multiple playfields: Meaning vets/experienced players could help with pande and apf 13/28/35 raids and use those points (in some form) for loot in sector 42
- Scheduled raids (Pande and all APF raids would be on advance-notice schedules and only raids done via the system at the designated times would be granted points)
- Some form of alt looting and/or alt point sharing system

There are many factors to be considered in such a system (from both a PvM and a PvP mindset) and as a result it would be beneficial if we had experienced people from all 3 factions involved. Additionally, we'll need bot coders as well as a bot host so I'd like to get those individuals involved from the start.

If you are able to fulfill any of the needed roles (experienced players/raidleaders, bot coder, bot host) on the planning 'committee' please reply to this post along with your weekend availability to be on Teamspeak (in EST or GMT). My plan is to give this a few days and then hold a Teamspeak discussion on March 17th or 18th to go over the scope of this project in a bit more detail. It would probably be something good to sit in on if you're on the fence about whether or not you wish to participate as well.

There are specific people that I would love to have involved with this project but I have not reached out personally to all of them yet. So please do not think that because I have not contacted you that I wouldn't appreciate/want your help.. that isn't the case. This thread is just a starting point.

And btw, please don't troll my thread :) This is actually a serious post.

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Volunteers thus far (just a list of what people have stated they can do with this project:
- Mireiawen: Bot Hosting, Forum Hosting
- Wakizaka: Raid Leader, Very Limited coding
- Notcrattey: Raid Leader
- Arguru: Bot coding

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Originally Posted by Traderjill

There are many factors to be considered in such a system (from both a PvM and a PvP mindset) and as a result it would be beneficial if we had experienced people from all 3 factions involved. Additionally, we'll need bot coders as well as a bot host so I'd like to get those individuals involved from the start.

If you are able to fulfill any of the needed roles (experienced players/raidleaders, bot coder, bot host) on the planning 'committee' please reply to this post along with your weekend availability to be on Teamspeak (in EST or GMT). My plan is to give this a few days and then hold a Teamspeak discussion on March 17th or 18th to go over the scope of this project in a bit more detail. It would probably be something good to sit in on if you're on the fence about whether or not you wish to participate as well.

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While I got some coding skills and been working on my own lil project for a while, it certainly isn't ready for such big things in some time. Too busy staying alive and making RL creds to get it going... If I get the base running anytime soon though, I can publish it if C++ code is any use to others.

Anyway, I can provide some platform to run bots, I got several Linux hosts around on dedicated networks that should be stable enough most of time. And I can host forums as well like I've done to some other projects (Neutnet, S42, Pande) like this so far.

As of Teamspeak, I don't have such, and not hugely interested in installing or using either. Kinda useless without mic or speakers attached... During weekends I can make relatively plenty of time if I got enough advance notification though.

+1 for a great initiative.
I can help you on the raid-leading side if you need, don't have time to code personal projects atm but if you do need another pair of hands I can see what I can move around and make it happen.

Love this idea.

If you find java developers everything you listed could be accomplished with the API in my sig

Don't have time to personally do development though, the only bot system I am maintaining atm is Dnet on rk1.

In the (very small) chance someone does use my API for this, let me know because I got some POC code for config files/external modules and stuff

In all likely hood though its probably going to be built off the PHP bots just because they are more popular...

PS. waki thanks for keeping a link to the 2008 TL5 forums, I totally lost the image I used as a avatar for that :D

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Originally Posted by Maxisolja

PS. waki thanks for keeping a link to the 2008 TL5 forums, I totally lost the image I used as a avatar for that :D

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A pleasure bud. :)

Make sure you do tara

I had a thought. And I'm gonna have to apologize in advance because I have a feeling this is going to get rambly.

One of the things that's really frustrated me in the past about trying to get things like this going is there's always a percentage of people who'll take one look at a points bot, turn their nose up, and not even give it a try. Sector42 raids are the example that immediately comes to mind: even with a bot that chose winners by a weighted roll rather than a straight up bidding system, it was impossible to coax some people into joining. Why does this matter, you might ask. If they don't like it then they can go do their own thing leaving the rest of us to get on with the raid right?

Well here's the thing. Even those of us in still-active orgs have to admit the activity overall (ie. outside just our orgs) has lessened over the past year or two. I can therefore imagine it sometimes being genuinely difficult to get bigger raids like S42 going. At least with org raids you can count on a larger proportion of people being willing to come along and help, because they're willing to do it for their orgmates. But it's not necessarily going to be as easy to coax them into doing the same for complete strangers, especially if their personal experiences when it comes to teaming with strangers have been bad (come on, we've all been in that one Neutnet-spammed raid that we thought couldn't hurt and turned out to be a disaster, or something similar). The fact that the remaining population is spread across a wide array of timezones only makes things worse.

So here's a suggestion: in order to maximize the pool of available raiders you can draw from and make your raids more attractive to people who might otherwise not bother with them, alternate the rolling system between raids. What I mean is this: if for example you do Sector 42 raids on Saturdays, then one week use the points to roll, then the next week use a flat roll, then the week after roll using points again, and back and forth like so. It's the only way I can think of to keep both sides of the points debate happy, and I'd rather see people teaming together again and similar levels of inter-org/inter-alliance/inter-faction mingling to what there used to be before endgame raids were instanced, instead of hearing people using points as an excuse not to even try participating. They might find that they have fun, but they won't know unless they at least try. The right mindset helps too, of course. But the hardest and most frustrating part of it is to get them to try in the first place when they seem to hate points so much.

If you guys can figure out other ways of achieving this, then even better.

/2cents. Nao I go get coffee. :B

I agree with some form of non-point raids. I dont like em. Just my opinion of course.

In a way implementing your own token idea. Very nice jill.

Sec 42 should be flatroll. Regardless however I will try to help with leading if you need it.

Coder reporting, great initiative. :)

I updated the original post with what people have stated they can do to assist with the project.

I will be reaching out to some of the more active Clan, Neutral and Omni orgs this weekend to see if I can get a rep to help out with the details of how this will work.

Argu, I will contact you this weekend (assuming you're around) to talk as regardless of what can be planned/decided, nothing works unless we have a coder to make the plans a reality.

just use bebot. there's builtin raid functions for everything you'd ever need to run point and raffle raids in the default bot installation and there's a guy on here that can do all the custom module coding for a couple mil creds. great guy, great coder. forgot his name tho. he had a post in the rimor/atlantean markets a couple months back.

EDIT: and with bebot, unlike budabot, the lead developer isn't permabanned from AO :)


EDIT2: alternatively, you can ask Demoder if bot# is close to public release, and if it is, use that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lazy

just use bebot. there's builtin raid functions for everything you'd ever need to run point and raffle raids in the default bot installation and there's a guy on here that can do all the custom module coding for a couple mil creds. great guy, great coder. forgot his name tho. he had a post in the rimor/atlantean markets a couple months back.

EDIT: and with bebot, unlike budabot, the lead developer isn't permabanned from AO :)


EDIT2: alternatively, you can ask Demoder if bot# is close to public release, and if it is, use that.

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Judging from the OP she's looking for a custom, from-scratch work, which I'd also recommend for a project this size, so 'even' a few of Buda's default modules will be taken out of the equation or heavily modified.

If I'd code this, I'd use Budabot for two reasons. First one is obvious, I'm known with it all the way so coding will be a breeze. Secondly, the grand majority on RK2 runs Budabot in both orgs, and for tower/tara/raidbots. Bebot is rare, I think I've only once seen a bot running it.

And yeah, Tyrence is permabanned afaik but this hasn't hindered development so it's kind of a moot point. Especially since he's resigned from code contributions since about a month or so. Even then, Budabot has been an open source project for a loooong time and anyone is more than welcome to step up and start committing their contributions. New people cone and go quite frequently. :)

As for the current state, I'll admit I've been out of the development loop for a couple of weeks, due to being sick as a dog. :P Marebone and myself have been set as owners in the svn so we can assign new contributors if they feel up to it, and code commissions still happen on a daily basis. In short, Budabot is far from 'dead' and we got some cool stuff in the works for 3.0 last time I checked.

But yeah, I'll log on AO this weekend, you know where to find me. :P

Bot# isn't near public release yet, but it's quite successfully powering Itemsbot, and almost ready to power Helpbot plus a myriade of projects which have yet to be fully revealed. Bot# is designed to be very scalable.

I've been focusing on getting the core features to work & interact the way I want, to make it easier for people to build upon them. Feel free to send me a PM here or on IRC (nick: Savagedlight) if you have questions.

my hate for budabot outweighs my love for arguru, so imma say use bebot until bot# is ready, but that's just me. hell even the entirely unsupported and unmaintained vhabot would be better.

oh noes, not agian!

Well, with the increase of one team runs, i don't think that will be viable for MANY orgs that i know on clan side.

This is a newbie friendly content, but we all know that besides S42 and maybe S35, everything else can be done on a single team including beast.

I had an awfull experience with my main Xkeeper on raidbots regarding beast loot, wich i tryed to accumulate points for a BoC for over a year and i only got my hands into one after the instanced content.

Good luck with that tho, but imho those bots are just a killer for casual players, AO introduced instanced content for a reason.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rigister

Good luck with that tho, but imho those bots are just a killer for casual players, AO introduced instanced content for a reason.

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Stuff like this is why I suggested alternating the loot rolling system. That way players for whom a points system doesn't work can still come along and participate. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lazy

my hate for budabot outweighs my love for arguru, so imma say use bebot until bot# is ready, but that's just me. hell even the entirely unsupported and unmaintained vhabot would be better.

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I lub you too. <3

But I'll be the last to admit that Budabot is the 'best' one out there, I think every bot has it's own strengths and weaknesses for specific purposes. So yeah, if Budabot doesn't work for your org/purpose then by all means use someone that does. We're not making any profits off it, so honestly we don't care who uses it and who don't, we just try to deliver a nice bot that people can use if they want. It's all a hobby. :)

But as for this system, I doubt the average user will even care what bot we use. Especially, since it's all gonna be custom work I think. So even if you have any bad experiences with the default Budabot implementation of stuff, you won't notice much of that in the raidbot. If this gets kicked off I think the only part of Budabot that will be used is the 'core', used for stuff such as authority validation, connecting to the AO chatserver, command handling. Stuff the average user doesn't even notice or think of. That said, it's likely Budabot will perform near equally in this than Bot#, Bebot or even IGNbot, so it doesn't make *that* much of a difference. The only reason I'll still opt to use Budabot in that case is because I'm known with the code, making it a breeze to write the modules, instead of switching to Bebot for instance, and re-learning the various functions, or in the case of Bot#, an entirely different programming language. That'll mean a LOT of time, while it'll pretty much mean no difference towards the end-user.