Mars

game admin is simply unable to bring himself to do anything meaningful about automation and based on his responses i dont think he even made the effort to follow the different blatant violations of his own rules, let alone grasp where the playerbase stands on the many different issues and come up with solutions. if nothing else, the lowest hanging fruit would be the spam new nations get. its been unanimously criticized because its simply common sense it doesnt benefit anyone on any level. if nothing has been done about something as straightforward as that, what are the odds of fixing other more complex issues? i would say not very good but time will tell i guess.

youre beautiful just the way you are, never change

it all sounds so... boring

HoF > TKR > everyone else really theres also a few smaller groups that can def handle themselves

i didnt say anything, first time i see anything like it so i figured maybe others find it interesting too and to be honest i meant to post it in the borg locutus thread since its a locutus admin panel screen shot (or at least i think thats what its called)

i dont think its worth sacrificing game health and the benefits of having something like an standardized inhouse bot or series of bots and tools overseen, verified and distributed by the game admin just so you can accomodate people that want to learn to code with full access to this particular browser games api. i totally understand what you say but cant that person maybe just code and submit it for verification and integration if its required? or do something for the test server? in fact cant alex post some stretch goals and features he wishes to see implemented in the future, and people can just develop those or pitch in for everyones benefit? there are certainly other ways to go about it and there will certainly be at least a few bored coders with nothing to do lurking around. i cant play pnw anywhere else yet there is tons of other motivations you can find to learn to code. i honestly dont see how that aspect would be a priority over having a good game and i see the advantages of standardization, oversight and ability to align bot/tool development with game design as too valuable to even consider letting go just so people can randomly develop bots that automate and have all manner of intended and unforeseen impacts on the game. but there is probably degrees to it, like you could let some features be public for everyone else to use, maybe the very harmless ones and people can still use pnw as a motivation to learn to code. my two cents it should be very very simple elements with little to no game impact.

but you do understand how taking what i asked to its logical conclusion illustrates everyone is in fact not on equal footing at all since how you interact with the game and timecost of doing ingame actions is directly dependent on your access to third party tools that have little to no admin oversight most of the time? since you only type a command in slack to do something it would take me a few minutes to do unles you have access to the same tools? in any case, i think thats the issue, and theres def levels to it. you have random player with no discord, through random players with discord in small alliances with no bots, alliance leadership with access to simple bots up to borg who who had access to tools reserved for him and his group, it seems. none of those distinctions have anything to do with the game, and the experience is wildly different. my idea is that instead of having your experience depend more on your access to tools and less on your actions ingame, to flip that on its head and i honestly feel thats common sense. you brought up a great point and is what i pitched right in the title, inhouse tools. you called them 'open source suite for tools', i think we mean the same thing. and thats good. now, what i also advocate is an eventual phasing out of all third party tools and democratic access to standard tools curated, compiled and verified by alex and staff. it doesnt need to be now, ive mentioned before he should consider a 6months-1year-2 year plan with certain goals. the reason for this is i hope directly apparent, it would be highly beneficial to the game to be able to address any automation directly, nerf it, buff it, remove it game wide and discord wide. of course this could be possibily done by basically reaching out to all the bot makers and their code out there, and centralizing wanted features in a single bot that has access to the api block access for everything else. people would be able to submit new functionalities for the botand they can be debated upon and development can go forward as a two pronged approach because of how discord and bots affect gameplay and meta so much, and the actual alliance page. now i think blanket ban on third party software and developing inhouse tools isnt such a big devil. imho two things i would also like to point out off the bat is 1 alex gets no access to discord channels through this and cannot perform moderation based on it, and alex or staff wil have to show real tact and have a very conservative approach to what features they add and their impact on meta and experience at large. so please for the love of god, dont make it another locutus, strip it back.. a lot and maybe put your own twist on it that works to give depth and drives involvement, not mindless automation like there is now.

sorry, i realize i came off as a bit of an !@#$ in the last part and went on a tangent, i dont want to be unfair and i look at this as a common effort, even if it is in a sense a battle of ideas. i think we actually might agree on more things than we disagree on, just would have different ideas on where to draw the line, and thats just fine. I dont want bots completely gone, just very critical about the need for them in a lot of instances and how they affect gameplay, and youre not the bot advocate my last post seemed to be directed at but do appreciate when bots make up for poor game design decisions. i will ask this on the leveling the playing field comment though, can we use tkr bot?

For the sake of this thread being more then a circlejerk, and the discussions here leading to some meaningful observations to better informed changes, i think there should probably be some future threads on specific aspects of what bots are used for and if they are desireable or not. General statements do give an idea of where different people stand relative to the issue at large but hardly provide indepth insight or suggestions that can be directly applied or used to create new guidelines. Apart from recruitment bots, i think theres more or less a consensus that spam is bad.

i appreciate you pitching in, its really what is needed and the main goal of this thread is really to bring the topic up for discussion and get an idea for what the different alliances or cultures around the game think about it as i feel its a good time for alex to have feedback on the issue. As a side note, a downvote 5 seconds after posting a wot, where you clearly didnt even read past the first sentence doesnt really convey good faith but maybe thats just because of me being as loveable as i am. I understand why my post can come off like that though, or is that, but to throw it back at you, i think youre being naive if you think bots make or break this game. And it applies to alliances as well. Ive played hundreds of games, took part in esports and i cant think of any title where anything even remotely like this situation occured, the playerbase becoming so reliant to 3rd party botting software as to where they feel their game would die without it. In fact i think if you take a step back and think about it objectively like you never played this game before, it all gives strong stockholm syndrome vibes. But again maybe thats just me. For what its worth, if you delete all the bots tomorrow myself a bunch of other people and groups wouldnt really care, in fact we would enjoy the game way more. But of course people who actually play the game through the website and want time investment and skill to amount to better outcomes are not important, and whats important is to cater to the people who dont want to do any of that but have the same outcome. Name me one ingame activity right now that knowledge and time investment cant be matched or surpassed by a bot command in discord. In fact the more i read the more i have a feeling that if someone incorporates the 10mbs of game into a discord bot, alex can pretty much delete pnw.com Also i dont understand the whole fixation on catering to bot makers and holding them in such praise, while completely downplaying raiders with thousands of wars and competent players that dont need a bot. The first display creativity and innovation while the latter are just dumb for not waiting for locutus to be scripted. Well im sure you can channel that coding creativity and innovation to a coding game or whatever, theres tons of us who know nothing about code are here to play pnw, on the pnw website. We want a better pnw game, not better borg bots. You can streamline any game or software by being 'creative and innovative' around it, just that most if not all will just ipban you if you do. In any case, at least we all agree there needs to be some adjustments on how bots interact with the game, to some arbitrary degree, but please take into account that some people get satisfaction from grinding a game and having to use their brain to do it to get ahead of those who dont and they count at least as much as those who dont want to do anything but still not get left behind. sorry if i came out a bit aggressive in this rant, it wasnt really directed at adrienne just a rant. Another important note, i think discussions on the topic would work better if focused on specific examples. General statements like bots are bad or bots are good easily fall apart in some scenarios and make complete sense in others. They also seem to sometimes lead to what can be pretty confusing statements both from myself and others.

Firstly, i cant share things i dont have. i see those screenshots just now. Not only they are not even related to the borg exploit issue even remotely, they dont even really address spankys issues with his discord server/bank or really show anything spanky hasnt already shared or said in RON radio show. Secondly, my 'narrative' is me posting the different information that surfaced and screenshots. I used words like 'alleged' 'accusations' 'it seems like' etc. What are you suggesting exactly? See what i think is suspicious and not say anything? Hopefully borg has nothing to worry about anyway and all of this is just a giant misunderstanding. For what its worth ive dmed borg a while ago to hear his side from him directly but he doesnt seem interested in interacting with me and hasnt responded as of yet, up to him really. Would also like to point out and maybe focus on this : I didnt even say 'borg exploited' anywhere, in fact *get ready*: BORG said that and DYANA said that and NPO said that, so maybe talk to them about why they said what they said. Also dude, what is up with your last screenshot? What you did is take a bigger screenshot of an evolving conversation, cut out the beginning part where NPO didnt really understand what was happening and say 'here they didnt even say it was an exploit' let me make it super easy for you, if you keep reading towards then end this happens: I mean really, the whole screenshot is right there for everyone to see, i think you just missed the last part. So if youre trying to make an arguement npo didnt say borg exploited... it says right there 'borg did the exploit' To go over it again so its super clear: Do i know if anyone is lying or not? borg, dyana, npo? No, i obviously dont. Do i think its suspicious as hell? Yes i do. Have i ever said 'borg exploited'? No, i have not. Has borg said he exploited? Yes. Has dyana said borg exploited? Yes. Has NPO said borg exploited? Yes. Do these screenshots exist? Yes, they are in this very thread. Should they be hidden because borg is beyond suspicion? Not really. Should i not say everything if i know of possible evidence towards an exploit happening in the game? That would be against the rules and dishonorable. Unless something new comes up this is my last post on this matter. Good luck to alex borg spanky si and whoever else.

agree to disagree on some of the other points youve made in your post, and thats just fine of course. What i would like to point out though is there seems to be a consensus on changing things at least a bit, and it seems something like an open source bot or a bot overseen by alex seems to be common ground and a good place to start. Another idea that seems to resonate with a bunch of people that dont share a single perspective is to start adding more features into the game as opposed to having them provided by player controlled bots. Easier said than done, admittely. I think the exact manner on how to address some of the issues the game has right now is a bit of an open ended question, hopefully alex goes through community feedback and develops a mid-long term plan and a general picture of where he wants to be 6months-1year-2years down the line. I also hope that he finds a way to guide community efforts and talent towards clear common goals that serve the game at large, as opposed to letting everyone do what they feel brings most personal gain.

gl hannah is great

how about you dm me your ig and we can talk about things less boring than pnw rawr

ive stated that one individual nation using the bot or not using it is not the issue, or at least it doesnt hint to a larger problem on its own. but once you have full alliances using the raid bot, the situation is different. why i talked about the meta at large and how it is affected overall. main idea is that theres a limited pool of potential targets that gets shared between everyone. once you artifically raise the succes rate and ease of access of a large group, competency is less rewarding overall as theres less incentive for it.

how do bots even help with any of those? Im just asking because funnily enough you mentioned 3 things i dont even know you could use bots to make them 'less menial' like protecting bank for sure only requires having an offshore and im not sure how bots are related to that. would like to mention though that the whole offshore system is broken as well, but at least it doesnt rely on bots to work. auditing members i assume the bot would just pull the nations build and different improvements and stuff? dont think thats even much of an issue, all of that information si already on their nation page. something that can easily be added to an alex bot im sure, though if it was me id remove it just so instead of typing out !audit 'nation id', you would go to pnw.com and simply have a look on their page. not gamebreaking at all though tbh recruitment, is that recruitment bots? because those are objectively cancerous and should be done away with 100%. Spam is spam As a side note, every game has tedious aspects people will do away with if given the chance, and i think if you let this process run its course it ends up with one guy one upping everyone by developing a button that does everything, and everyone else doing the same because doing any of the tedious tasks becomes meaningless since theres no stakes involved. Also i think im still being misunderstood, im all for making the unnecessary parts that end up being tedious just because of bad game design better through automation, im just against it being done on third party software and think more consideration needs to be given on how those affect the game at large. Im also saying there needs to be serious reconsideration on whats not making up for bad game design and just automates what should be actual gameplay, which in a text game is a lot of times. going through text and having that inform your future actions.

i dont think commands 'for finding raid targets' fall under that category, im sure both the war system and the raiding meta could be improved in a number of ways, or that you can develop a fun system that has all of those commands but expands the gameplay in some other direction. What i think is that it is not in a good place right now, and i pointed at what i think works against the current setup. To simplify, what im arguing is the relationship between third party bots and the game needs to be revisited, why i think moving from third party to inhouse developed tools would be better and what i have been able to identify as issues with the current system. I also believe development can go a million different good ways and a million bad ways. I think its a good moment to rethink the approach to development going forward and seriously consider the harder road of not outsourcing this development to third party code, but find ways to engage the community in the development of the actual game and an alex controlled universal and democratical bot that he can fully oversee. to answer your question specifically, if i had to give an all encompasing defition of 'commands that affect the meta', though i dont think i can deliver on a definition that would do it justice for ALL the issues out there, i would say it comes down to it providing an unfair advantage to those who dont use it or eliminating key steps needed to achieve a goal. Whats more important then the definition though are its effects, and i would more focus on that. If the effect is you can play the game by not playing the game, theres a problem. If the game involves you taking specific steps towards a goal and the software you are using enables you to skip those by having the bot compile large amounts of information and extract what you need i would say that falls under commands that affect the meta as well. Cant take it that seriously when otherwise respectable and long standing members of this community like adrienne downvote the post 5 seconds after me posting it. I doubt most of the initial downvotes had the time or will to comprehend and internalise what i typed out and thats fine, this post isnt directed at you. I understand the knee jerk reaction though, and with the attention and reading comprehension deficit going on in the world these days i cant even blame them. My hopes are after the initial fight or flight instinct wears off, they will calm down and really read what im saying, maybe we can have a meaningful discussion on it as a community, since i feel thats more important right now then however many downvotes i might or might not get in this thread. Main reason why i dont particularly care about downvotes and really wish i get 1000 of them but spark a discussion is because i feel its a good time for a hard reset on how alex handles the relationship between the game and discord, and i feel that with a little bit of inspiration and understanding and with the guts (of course to the extent his time/resources allow) to actually assume responsability over developing these tools under his own oversight, we could be in a better place 6months, year, two years down the line. The dev community would also have to change their approach from developing their own tools to helping with development of the game and alex controlled bot, which some might take more satisfaction in, others will not see the merits of working on something that benefits the game at large.

im not sure what stuff you are referring to? Maybe not directed at you, but for everyone with reading disability. Im not saying remove everything bots do, i just said remove third party bots and have one main pnw one thats controlled by the owner of the game, remove bot commands that affect the meta and start adding the positive different quality of life changes bots bring into the actual game on the game website. Again, there is a huge difference between 'delete bots and everything related' and what i just typed above. If anything its elegant.

taken Exact quote is 'remove all third party automation and bots' and develop the game and inhouse bots that are not player controlled. I would like to humbly point out there is a pretty big distinction between the two, since one keeps your quality of life changes, just makes it so they can only be handled by authorized, alex controlled discord bots, or incorporated into the actual website. Also would you please tell me if you would be against it just because the function you use would now be on the website or alex bot and why? And is going 'ingame' to play a game an actual inconvenience? If not, dont you think its important not to misrepresent what i say if youre gonna go through the trouble of typing a response?

This is will be even more unpopular then i thought haha, guess people really love bots. I am wondering though, why does the time and effort that go to making bots not go to making the actual game better. And why not have an Alex owned discord bot he can get different people to help with.

Yes, i know, nobody asked for my opinion but i honestly think what im about say is in line with what at least a good chunk of the community thinks and will affect gameplay positively overall. Im also aware this will infuriate another chunk of it, but thats only because it makes things a bit harder and brings back a lot of the 'inconveniences' that automation did away with. This is not about locutus alone, but bots at large and as a full disclaimer i dont know code or am very familiar with how bots work, except that they rely on api keys. I feel we are at a bit of a crossroads right now with locutus being removed from the pnw discord and alex trying to weight in on the whole borg situation, so im thinking its probably the best time for the community and game admins to consider doing away or at least changing the limits on what automation can do outside the game, who develops it and how it affects gameplay at large. I will go a bit into the different functionalities bots have, why a lot of them are harmful and how developing the game and its scope is the answer and not player controlled third party discord bots. Raid finder: I have been an enthusiastic new player in arrgh looking to make a name for myself and stack the bank before locutus was a thing. We had a 'raid finder bot' around for ages and none of us even went through the trouble of fixing/using because it was not needed. It wasnt what we wanted to do and didnt appeal to us at all. Because it was fun without one and because having a knack for finding good targets and keeping up the grind was what differentiated the good raiders from the bad. This is back when top loot was 4b, and pushing for the leaderboards meant something, because you knew the trouble everyone went through to get there, you knew it was out of the scope of what the average player or alliance was willing to do and thats what made it meaningful. Ask anyone involved and competent with raiding from before locutus and after, they will tell you bots and specifically locutus is what killed the whole experience overall, coupled with nerfs to piracy of course. Suddenly years and hundred of raids experience didnt count at all, you could type in a command and that would be better than what you would be able to piece together on your own. The total possible loot pool started to be shared with tons of those who were not willing to put any effort into finding targets, they would just type in a command and get targets fed to them. While this might not mean much on an individual basis, with a good raider being able to outperform a dude who only found targets through bot, if they both used the bot. But having a full alliance use it just means they constantly drain the total possible raid pool with zero effort. When borg started creating his long line of 'raiding alliances' that relied on locutus, he flooded the game with people who would otherwise not be willing to engage in the whole process. That heavily affected raiding and i feel was deeply unfair to all the people who did it manually, in the actual game for years. I feel like having the game hidden behind a fog of war, with the player simply being unable to poll together and specifically extract the information he is looking for with a bot is a good thing, and would make raiding meaningful again, not just something all alliances do by default because they have a bot. The entry level of player engagement and effort required to raid in this game right now is simply non existent. It is zero effort, and while one nation wouldnt be a problem, whole alliances doing it just drains everything to where its all meaningless. The game will be better without it. You will have less overall people raiding but more actual raiders who get heavily invested in it, precisely because its not as easy as using a bot command. If this raid finder thing is that important just add it to the game page, but honestly, it is not. Its arguably harmful and dilutes the whole experience. Arrgh does not use locutus for instance, and started using a bot out of necessity, with a good chunk of people not using it at all. Warfare: Pretty much all of those points made above echo in this category, with the distinction competence in this field is shared between membership and leadership, and setting up wars and helping people coordinate in them is what differentiates the good from the bad. Though in this section, there is no shared loot pool to drain so the effects are less apparent. What i would like to point out is that KT does not use bots and i think thats part of why they constantly out perform everyone else. What im willing to bet is they will outperform people even more if they didnt have the bots to bridge some of the gap. That gap should be bridged by competence and experience, and theres little incentive for it if you can more or less 'get there' through bots. If suddenly everyone is as good as their own actions and organisation, there will be an incentive to get good, or die. The bot currently only serves as a life raft for the lazy and incompetent and should more or less be done away with as well. Econ: I wont comment too much on this, econ bots have caused problems and issues time and time again and lead alex to situations where he cant know what happened because he has no oversight over 3rd party software and what commands they receive. Maybe some extra quality of life stuff is desperately needed but for the love of god, add it to the game, on the game page. Would also like to point out Yarr does no automation and is arguably the biggest or one of the biggest offshores and banking services in the game. Recruitment: only thing to say on this is IT IS CANCER. Every new player gets spammed 1000 ingame messages when they first join. Its pointless and an issue as its one of the first things you find out about this game. Bots are spamming you things you dont even understand and thats somehow fine. Now for my suggestion, blanket ban ALL automations and spam bots and remove any links between discord and the game page that affect the meta in any capacity. Develop your own benign inhouse discord bot you have full oversight over, with no purpose other than helping manage the community and providing some admitelly needed game to discord information, but always keep it aimed at things that do not affect gameplay or the meta at large. From may layman understanding this could be as easy as a hardcap on api requests. One big downside from all of this would be losing wartrackers, so making a pnw wartracker on the page would be very useful. Seriously analyze how the different functionalities of the bot affected gameplay and figure out what you want to add to the game and just add it to the game, on the game page, were the game should unfold for everyone. In any case, discuss.

reached out to NPO for comment and they were kind enough to provide us with their perspective on this from the time it happened. this is a direct dump of their council channels from the day before and day after the exploit the yellow rectangle is about the time eric got banned

i dont report you 'falsely' and this is not a report. ive reported locutus in the very beginning because i thought you making a third party script that provides unfair advantage and selling it to the player base was wrong and warranted admin action. still stand by that to this day, at least youre providing it for free now, which just makes the situation even more complicated. as for me having others do anything, i dont even know what youre referring to, i just leaked your high gov chat from my discord name straight to pnw main chat, didnt need or want to hide behind anything. also i have never brought up what made me lose respect for you in public ever, wouldnt want to tarnish that beautiful reputation of yours and tbh i doubt anyone would really care. but as ive said before, as far as the bot is concerned its not personal at all and could be anyone else, i would feel the same. i just think locutus is cancer and harmful to the game experience on multiple levels, but that is not the point of this thread. in fact, the point of this thread is multiple people in your camp (including yourself) pointing you as the man behind the npo exploit. so, are you the person who found the exploit? if not, did you have any part in the whole npo transfers prior to alex knowing about it and why do we have multiple people being pretty sure it was you, one of the people directly involved in it and part of your staff (dyana) saying it was you, and why the hell did you even say that yourself in your own private chats only to delete afterwards, and no mentions of it being a 'joke' anywhere? Would like to say ive only provided facts and my own interpration of them, have not lied or made up a single thing, and used words like allegedly where they were needed, so i dont think ive been unfair in my presentation, if at all, just because i dont want my own feelings on the matter to get in the way of a good expose.

As an update, after talking to a few people involved or in the know, it seems one scenario seems most likely, going by what we know so far. Borg found the exploit, borg let Eric know about it and oversaw the whole operation. Multiple people on different sides of the whole thing seem to agree Borg was 100% the guy who brought the exploit to the table and the mastermind behind the whole scheme. The money ends up with borg henchman Dyana in Mythic, to the surprise of Mythic staff which immediately reports the situation to Alex. Dyana apologizes for the situation and directly points fingers at Borg. Eric (npo banker who made transfers between the different offshores) gets caught by Alex so Borg switches up and helps alex fix the exploit, Eric gets banned and points fingers directly at Borg. Later Borg admits truth to his close circle only to delete messages, and have this surface now after disagreements in their camp.