What is the practical purpose behind severe penalties for "illegal" botting?

In specific, slice/secure. Yeah I got busted, ruh roh. Don’t walk away from your computer for an hour with illegal triggers running and then go to bed children.

I’m new-ish to LOTJ, at least playing as much as I do right now, so educate me.

I have a skill that requires a ridiculous amount of time intensive “screen watching” in order to raise/adept.

While exercising said skill, I literally can’t do anything else. I can’t commnet, I can’t roleplay, I can’t explore, I have to watch my attempts on the screen and bullshit on OOC. Don’t tell me to go find a hippie roleplay drum circle to sit in so I can say-roleplay a bunch, they’re not everywhere or even viable (surprise: most people are botting other shit/not paying attention).

The only purpose me being AT the computer serves is to verify for a bot check.

What grand, nuanced gameplay is being preserved by cracking down harshly on someone trying to level a cornerstone class skill in a tolerable way? Why are SOME skills okay but not others? What’s all the logic behind this shit? Because it seems arbitrary as fuck to me right now. “Oh but science/engineering is REALLY boring, as compared to the joys of slicing, so sure you can bot those”

I’ve been busted doing the same thing Ryken. Mastering slice/secure is an extremely boring and grueling task. It is also the most time consuming out of all long winded class mastery grinds. Take flurry for instance, the bane that every combat main must tackle. It takes movement to execute, so you actually need a script to even bot it in the first place. You also have to practice it in public places, which comes with it’s own inconveniences. Flurry is still not as bad as slice/secure though, because you only have to master the one skill and you also have the opportunity to learn it from a combat leader and starting at 97%.

The investment needed and the bot restrictions add value to characters that do eventually achieve mastery. On the other hand it also creates a higher sense of loss for the character. I’m not sure if this is ideal or not. I can’t tell you why it’s okay to bot a whole class list of skills (science) that affect a plethora of different crafting abilities and not bot flurry or slice/secure. The class that is allowed to bot (engineering) also has the lowest chance of being murdered, statistically.

There was a time when you could use datachips to master flurry, but someone decided this was a bad thing. That was way before slice/secure were even introduced to the game. You do make a good point though. Do we really want our players holed up doing monitored botting during their play time? Is it that bad for slice/secure to be more easily accessible? What are the perceived negative implications on the macro level if boring, non-immersive game play like typing in two commands over and over again is declared legal to bot?

I have an easy way around this dilemma. When I want to bot something like that, I just use an alarm to ping me for bot checks, then play Counter Strike, League of Legends, or some other game in the background. Other players might not know how to do this easily. I can understand not wanting to sit there at your computer watching your character master slice/secure.

Personally I like the idea of more master slicers out in the game world stirring up trouble than being stuck in a cockpit in zombie mode.

Though, then again, I can see the other side of the argument to. Where do you draw the line on botting? I don’t think slice/secure botting has much of an impact in the big scheme of things. Personally I think botting that puts more credits into the economy has a much bigger impact. It creates inflation and burgeoning clan wallets, the type of wallets that don’t vanish with a single person’s death.

Anyway.. I’m rambling now, but I think it’s something worth discussing among the community for opinions and suggestions.

Being able to teach slice and secure and capping it at 75% would alleviate a majority of these issues.

Perhaps there is an opportunity here to expand the leadership skill tree with a high-level (Tier 4, Tier 5?) skill like “teaching_mastery” that enables teaching currently unteachable skills?

Things that should be bot-able:

Slice/secure
Research

As far as I’m concerned there is already a penalty for botting these things, that penalty being that other players can fuck with/steal from/kill you while you’re botting. That’s the consequence.

Things that should be bot-able:

Slice/secure
Research

As far as I’m concerned there is already a penalty for botting these things, that penalty being that other players can fuck with/steal from/kill you while you’re botting. That’s the consequence.

Yes and no. If you are in a clan, you could bot slice and secure in relative safety…doubly so if your clan has a Library as far as Research is concerned. I’ve seen a couple of those this era. However, this should not detract from the fact that at least research should be bottable. Slice and secure is really the Slicer’s Flurry. Don’t bot it, but at least make it teachable. Anyone who has gone through the hell of bringing slice and secure to 100% knows that even if it were teachable up to 97%, it would still take quite a bit of time to get it to 100% on both. The percentage gains are few and far between once you get up to the higher percentages.

Slice/secure definitely needs to be teachable. My last slicer took 112 hours to adept slice/secure. That is a pretty insane amount of time to have to be looking at the screen while entering 2 different commands repeatedly.

This isn’t a post about discussing what should or should not be bottable. We’ve plenty of those, and discussion of what should be bottable, teachable, etc is an ongoing thing between the IMMs. That said, the ‘practical purpose behind severe penalties’ is simple. To enforce the rules. Whether you believe it should be bottable or not is negligible. Until the time comes when said skills are deemed bottable/teachable, following help bot is your best bet to not have these severe penalties enacted upon you. We stated in changes 1247, which was posted at the beginning of the timeline, that we would be taking a more interactive approach to ensuring the rules are followed. An additional warning was posted by CoffinC in changes 1263, stating that illegally botting skills such as slice and secure would be met with harsh consequences.

tl;dr – follow the rules, no problems will be had.

So you literally can’t even supply one reason other than “rules is rules” that the rule exists in its current form? Isn’t that majorly fucked up from the standpoint of like, “designing a fun game for players to enjoy”? LOTJ isn’t a country with laws, it’s a game.

Yeah I know what the rules are and I know how to follow them, I’m asking you or anyone willing to give a logical answer why they exist and the philosophy behind them, if you can’t even muster one scenario up that serves as an illustrative example of the reasoning behind the rules then you’ve failed as game designers.

What’s more, if you just enforce “The Rules” that you can’t even provide a conceptual basis for their existence in the first place, then you’re just weird arbitrarily appointed bullies shitting on other people’s good time.

It’s not 1998 anymore, nobody gives a fuck that you’re a wizard on a MUD, the bullshit “RRR FOLLOW ALL RULES, IMMS ARE INFALLIBLE” shit is so stale and one of the worst aspects of this dying medium actively driving players away.

@Ryken: You were breaking the rules, got busted, and you are upset. I get it, but you should really tone it down a notch. The administrators aren’t paid to provide this game to us and contrary to what you might think, I don’t really think their goal is to fuck up your day. It’s not about you guy, so don’t take it so personal.

Speaking of 1998.. you should have been on Lotj back in those day. You have no idea what power tripping or corruption really is. Those of us who played in 1999 and the early 2000’s do. Just because text based gaming isn’t as popular as it once was doesn’t mean that all of a sudden administrators need to bow and supplicate to your every whim. We don’t need player -that- bad.

If you got caught botting something on your favorite graphical MMO you would get banned and lose whatever money you put into the game, so let’s put it in perspective. I’m guessing all they did that you find so harsh is reset your slice/secure back to 0. Big fucking deal. You botted it all the way up there in the first place, so what have you actually lost? Nothing.

The reason the high tier skills aren’t bottable is to make them more valuable and worthwhile to have. If every Joe Blow can easily get maxed out slice/secure, then it makes that character less valuable. Perhaps this isn’t even that big of a deal. The right way to approach it is to take your lumps gracefully and calmly express why you think this method is flawed, then offer an alternative and why you think it would be a better way. The wrong way to approach it is to go on an angry rant because you are upset you got caught breaking the rules.

Rules are rules and if they aren’t enforced they are meaningless. I’ve had my share of punishments and I haven’t always had the capacity to accept them with dignity and grace, so I can empathize with your situation, but pull it together man. The administrators put in a lot of time to keep this place running, creating new content, catering to players and clans, and the ugly job of enforcing the rules. I have a feeling they spend more time frustrated and stressed out with players and management than they do feeling self satisfied as they punish puny mortals while adjusting their “wizard” hat and cackling maniacally.

I guess all I can say to your rant is I’m sorry? At no point was anything said about being ‘infallible’ just that while the discussion of perhaps changing the rule is still ongoing, the rules set in place are to be followed. As for logical reason, The mechanic in the game was set up as a time sink because of how many things are affected by it. If every Tom Dick and Harry were meant to have it, it would be quick and painless. Do I think that it takes entirely too long? Depends. I’ve done it enough times that I just live with the fact that it will take a while. Depending on other mechanics, it can be faster or slower. I’ve seen people knock it out in as little as 3 or 4 days, I’ve seen it take people a week or two.

And, to quote you, “LOTJ isn’t a country with laws, it’s a game.” A free game, at that. Aside from your elevated blood pressure over being punished, I doubt any harm has come to you.

Relax. Enjoy the game.

I agree with Ryken entirely about the state of the rules, that they should be changed if the staff can’t justify a reason why it exists. However, civil disobedience isn’t a thing on LOTJ so there’s no real point to breaking them before they’re changed.

edit: terrible newbie unfriendly time sinks are a big part of the reason the MUD community is dying in TYOOL 2015 hth

I didn’t set out to flagrantly break the rules, I tried to slip one past the vigilant volunteer crew for an hour and forgot about my triggers and went to bed, I’m not even disputing that I broke the rules, I’m trying to have a discussion beyond that, holy hell, zoom out people.

I apologize if my ranting comes off angry, I’m honestly not that upset about it, just annoyed, I have a direct way of talking and am not very diplomatic when something doesn’t make sense to me.

Firstly Xavious, I didn’t illegally bot the skill all the way to where it was, I maybe got 3% before I got kicked to 0%, I’ve e-mailed an appeal to at least be set back to where I was because I honestly didn’t intend to let it go all night.

Also the game is collaborative roleplay, timesinks shouldn’t be the way you regulate access to what are perceived to be powerful abilities.

So in the above people, Frump and Xavious’ opinion, slice/secure is such a powerful ability that it necessitates a grind for mastery that is over 100 (Using Xeromus’ 1 data point that we have) “actually watching the game” hours? Can you provide specific examples of what can be done with slice/secure

that gives it this status?

It’s not material gain, because you can’t slice yourself a jedi or a set of armor, if we’re talking shit like ship stripping pirated ships, credit gain is moot when the fastest way to gain tons of credits is literally laying on the ground on a planet.

If it’s about the ability to “make things happen” or affect the game and its various plots (datatapping) than that’s something I think worthy of discussion. I guess I’m looking for more specifics, you haven’t really provided any. You just said it’s powerful and if every person was supposed to have it they would, which is more “We know better than you, don’t question us” shit that is already not conducive to a good discussion.

Bottom line, the reason I’m butthurt is that I started a character with the sole intent of making shit happen and was enjoying the idea of getting into some action and making fun things happen for people to enjoy (collaborative roleplay should ALWAYS be about presenting a character to the game world that makes the game world more fun for everyone else as much if not more than yourself), but I’m set back and nobody can fill in the blank.

“Uh oh, Ryken is illegally botting slice/secure. If Ryken illegally bots slice/secure, he’ll gain access to mastery level slice/secure faster. What that means is that his character is able to _____________, we can’t let that happen because ______________.”

Fill in the blanks, that’s all I’m asking.

@Ryken: I never said “slice/secure is such a powerful ability that it necessitates a grind for mastery.” What I was explaining was why a time sink was originally thought ideal in the first place which, to reiterate, is just to create a barrier for a top tier skill that makes it more exclusive. Personally I have no problem with this becoming a skill that you can bot unattended. Like I said in my first response to this thread, “Personally I like the idea of more master slicers out in the game world stirring up trouble than being stuck in a cockpit in zombie mode.”

I don’t think slice/secure is some over powered skill that is going to break the game if suddenly a bunch of master slicers pop up. People already bot it in the first place, because that’s the only way to even endure such a staggering grind, but they just use alarms and do other shit while it bots. To me.. I don’t see what difference it makes if they bot it attended or in the manner that I just described.

Honestly I figured by how emotional you were about getting reset, and how bad you seem to want slice/secure adept, that you would already know what it does mechanically. However, for the sake of “filling in the blanks” I can fill in the first one at least.

“What that means is that his character is able to _____________,”

Slice/Hack/Encrypt/Decrypt at the highest security rating which means, in theory, hack any lift (including clan bases),break any character’s encrypted history, slice any ship computer, and disable security on any secured location (landing pads/comm junctions/some other shit I might be forgetting?). You would also secure and encrypt at the highest levels, which means someone of equal or higher skill would be required to undo your slicing work.

“we can’t let that happen because ______________.”

This is the blank I can’t fill in and the root of the discussion. I don’t know how the community at large feels about the grind. I’m sure people who have completed slice/secure would love to keep the grind in place, so their skills are more exclusive. Those who haven’t completed it probably want the opposite. I never really play slicers, but love using their services, so I’m all for making it more widely available.

My last post is more about getting you to take a deep breath and let the sting of the reset fade before you go flaming the forums. It’s a basic fundamental of human interaction that people feel less inclined to give a shit about someone’s problem if they present it in an angry, agitated tone. It reminds me of when I use to work customer service for Verizon Wireless. I honestly would just hang up on those people and I was actually being PAID to help them. I’m more inclined to help someone if they talk to me on the level than if they are frothing at the mouth in a rage.

I get it though man. I’ve been pissed off about things before and over reacted. I just want to see this discussion go in a positive, meaningful direction. Maybe we should get more people from the community to weigh in on this and pressure the powers that be into changing it. So far I haven’t really heard anyone defend slice/secure as something that SHOULD be illegal to bot, so I’m wondering if there is anyone that actually does at this point. 😀

I’ve bot slice/secure on 4 characters and have gotten caught once, which got it set back to 0% from 97%. But then bot it back up. I really have no interest in staring at my screen for 100+ hours. #sorrynotsorry

Edit: I get that I’m breaking the rules and that it’ll probably get my account fined but I honestly don’t have time between work and life to monitor a skill on a text game that I think FROM A PLAYERS PERSPECTIVE shouldn’t have been illegal to bot in the first place.