My thoughts on bots and a plea to blanket ban all third party automation and develop the tools inhouse

[Adrienne]

4 minutes ago, Charles Bolivar said:

I'm not so sure I agree with you in regards to bots being necessary in order to free up time so as to teach new members the knowledge required to play the game effectively. Back before your time we did pretty well with just forums and IRC 😂 

Sure it helps, no doubt about that at all. Especially when it comes to the mind numbing tedium associated with a few tasks. But when I think back to say tS' first year and so of existence, we didn't have any bots ( or even really a functional milcom for that matter). Instead we just had a knowledgeable base of active members who learned the game mechanics and worked together in a manner which cemented tS as a military powerhouse. No bots at all. Indeed, the sole technical innovation might have been going from IRC to discord during that first year.

I'm not as young as you're making me sound 😛 I've been in this game a long time too. I've experienced plenty without bots. But just to elaborate on my previous example: I used to spend 3-4 hours every week or two during wars to keep track of member safekeeping manually. That's a lot of time. Is it doable? Sure. But can I be using that time much more effectively elsewhere? Absolutely. There's no doubt whatsoever that spending 3 hours a week with my members during a war is a much better use of my time than 3 hours a week on a spreadsheet. 

Edited February 10, 2022 by Adrienne

[Charles Bolivar]

12 minutes ago, Adrienne said:

Of course I do. When I said leveling the playing field before, that was in reference to my first post and had to do between hard-core and casual players. I talked in the above post our difficulties with tech too and how it is luck of the draw to get someone who knows how to code. I get that. That's why I shared all of that.

But I also don't believe you should effectively punish alliances for having those abilities to make things better/easier for them. Hell, one of our coders we have now has never coded before. He learned for this game and he is doing an incredible job. So this isn't something that people can't pick up if they truly want to.

I want a common set of resources to level the playing field. I just fully disagree with the solution being to level the field by taking rather than giving.

Hasn't decreased our gov or staff size at all. That is very situational and would hint at a different problem imo.

Tkr has always had a larger than average gov though, it's a tradition carried over and retained from the other game 👍

Just now, Adrienne said:

I'm not as young as you're making me sound 😛 I've been in this game a long time too. But just to elaborate on my previous example: I used to spend 3-4 hours every week or two during wars to keep track of member safekeeping manually. That's a lot of time. Is it doable? Sure. But can I be using that time much more effectively elsewhere? Absolutely. There's no doubt whatsoever that spending 3 hours a week with my members during a war is a much better use of my time than 3 hours a week on a spreadsheet. 

Sorry, I still remember the days when you were low level gov in TKR learning how to manage effectively so you will always be a young pup to me 😂

[Adrienne]

2 minutes ago, Charles Bolivar said:

Tkr has always had a larger than average gov though, it's a tradition carried over and retained from the other game 👍

Yes, we've always had a large gov. That doesn't negate the fact that our alliance gov hasn't shrunk because of increased technology. It's actually gotten larger over the years and we've even added a tech department.

2 minutes ago, Charles Bolivar said:

Sorry, I still remember the days when you were low level gov in TKR learning how to manage effectively so you will always be a young pup to me 😂

That was almost 5 years ago, old man 😛

[Charles Bolivar]

1 minute ago, Adrienne said:

Yes, we've always had a large gov. That doesn't negate the fact that our alliance gov hasn't shrunk because of increased technology. It's actually gotten larger over the years and we've even added a tech department.

That was almost 5 years ago, old man 😛

Exceptions do exist, and they shouldn't be used to disprove general trends. If anything, TKR's usage of a larger gov demonstrates the strength of utilising more members within the governance of an alliance. It grants an element of stability to the alliance which is lacking in those alliances run by only a few active gov members who are thrown into chaos when gov members retiree or leave for greener grass elsewhere.

And yeah, it was 5 years ago now that you mention it. How time flies 😂

[Adrienne]

1 minute ago, Charles Bolivar said:

Exceptions do exist, and they shouldn't be used to disprove general trends. If anything, TKR's usage of a larger gov demonstrates the strength of utilising more members within the governance of an alliance. It grants an element of stability to the alliance which is lacking in those alliances run by only a few active gov members who are thrown into chaos when gov members retiree or leave for greener grass elsewhere.

I don't think we're an exception. We're hardly the only alliance to have not shrunk over the years. My point is that if alliances have shrinking govs, that's a sign of other issues. It isn't due to increased technology alone. If it's temporary, might just be internal instability. Everyone has that from time to time. If it's permanent, that might be indicative of an over reliance on bots. That doesn't make all bots bad for the game or game health, just means some folks need to get their shit together and recognize that bots are tools, not replacements.

6 minutes ago, Charles Bolivar said:

And yeah, it was 5 years ago now that you mention it. How time flies 😂

I had just made high gov when you left. I've gone through the whole cycle since, to 2IC, leader, and been retired for nearly 2 years now haha. Time flies, indeed.

[Frog]

1 hour ago, Krampus said:

Unfortunately, this would not happen in this decade. Alex has very limited time for pnw as it is, seeing as how it takes an entire year to implement the smallest feature and/or push changes live to the api v3, even the notion of Alex putting together a team to have them make a bot sounds overly optimistic at best and downright unfeasable at worst, given his preoccupation with other things.  

Not an unreasonable ask imo considering he already needs a bot to handle the vip verification/roles on the discord server. And lack of QoL/alliance-management features in-game being the reason why bots are a necessity for 100+ member alliances in the first place.

I see no reason not to do it, considering the hell of a job API team is doing currently in regards of implementing much needed features. Main bottleneck seems to be vetting, which in an open-source system people can do to each other's contributions pointing out things they find suspicious, rule-breaking, unnecessary, w/e

But despite all that, yeah realistically, Rift is probably the closest we gonna get to it.

Edited February 10, 2022 by Frog

[Charles Bolivar]

23 minutes ago, Adrienne said:

I don't think we're an exception. We're hardly the only alliance to have not shrunk over the years. My point is that if alliances have shrinking govs, that's a sign of other issues. It isn't due to increased technology alone. If it's temporary, might just be internal instability. Everyone has that from time to time. If it's permanent, that might be indicative of an over reliance on bots. That doesn't make all bots bad for the game or game health, just means some folks need to get their shit together and recognize that bots are tools, not replacements.

I had just made high gov when you left. I've gone through the whole cycle since, to 2IC, leader, and been retired for nearly 2 years now haha. Time flies, indeed.

Yes. Over reliance on bots is bad. That's the point being made 😂

Edited February 10, 2022 by Charles Bolivar

[Adrienne]

3 minutes ago, Charles Bolivar said:

Yes. Over reliance on bots is bad. That's the point being made 😂

No, that was part of the point and one we've already agreed on 😛

You quoted my agreement even lol

[BelgiumFury]

49 minutes ago, Adrienne said:

I don't think we're an exception. We're hardly the only alliance to have not shrunk over the years. My point is that if alliances have shrinking govs, that's a sign of other issues. It isn't due to increased technology alone. If it's temporary, might just be internal instability. Everyone has that from time to time. If it's permanent, that might be indicative of an over reliance on bots. That doesn't make all bots bad for the game or game health, just means some folks need to get their shit together and recognize that bots are tools, not replacements.

I will barge in here, but I have been in Rose for a while. It seems that me and Adrienne share minds on a lot of issues. And once again i'll agree with her here.

  We have 18 people working in IA (It's a bit more but i deducted leadership and advisors, this is just high govt and down). I've been in many itterations of rose IA, I have lead IA (as low govt) for months. At one point a long time ago I was the only person doing IA in all of rose, nobody else did it. That was ofcourse a low point but we have had many peaks where we had less than 18 IA too.

During all these years our IA has (afaik) never been this big, and if it has it hasnt been by much.

Our econ departement consists of nine people (once again excluding leadership and advisors).

Our milcom departement consists of 11 people. Here too I am excluding advisors and leadership, in practice the number is much higher because when a war breaks out people (advisors) like Kurdanak, Valk, DTC and quite probably Potpie + a handfull others all come out of hiding and do milcom work too.

The idea that some people have that governments have shrunk is quite honestly not in touch with reality. 

Ill go one further, just yesterday we made an announcement because we need more people to keep the machine that is Rose turning. 

Instead of focussing on checking in game if we have wars declared on us during peace time, we can make out government members do more usefull things. 

Rose has a whole website (something like bknet but less in depth). We do not use bots to transfer bank funds, or demote and promote members, we do all of that in game. That however doesn't mean that we dont use bots. We do. We believe (well I believe, I am speaking in my own name), that the menial boring tasks should be automated. 
Our website was made by someone who didn't know how to code too well before joining Rose, now he has used it in his job applications. Yes it's something everyone can do. 

I believe it should stop at everything that actually commits actions in game. Spam messages, demoting people, logging in to seem active etc..

Every alliance who's govt is shrinking needs to look inward, because if we always need new people (we are literally always looking for more people, and I think / know TKR is too), I am wondering why alliances that are number 26 (hypothetical example, no shade to whoever that is) wouldn't need that because they have bots. 
 

Edited February 10, 2022 by BelgiumFury

[Charles Bolivar]

6 minutes ago, Adrienne said:

No, that was part of the point and one we've already agreed on 😛

You quoted my agreement even lol

Of course there is more context, and people will always disagree on interpretation of context because well, we are people. That's what we do.

But my take on this is that people have become far too reliant on bots, and that this reliance needs to be lessened. Not removed, but lessened. A good example would be say milcom bots which assist with providing targets. I have no issue with a bot which provides a target once a user manually requests it. Where I start to differ though is those bots which provide updates the moment a viable target leaves beige resulting in targets being slotted literally within seconds of leaving beige like we witnessed last war. I'd argue that such a bot effectively lessens the need for milcom gov post opening blitz. I'm not arguing for targeting bots to be entirely removed, because having to scroll through multiple alliances to find a viable target is just a chore, but having a bot which literally provides you a target without even asking does rob the game of its strategic and skill elements.

 

 

2 minutes ago, BelgiumFury said:

I will barge in here, but I have been in Rose for a while. It seems that me and Adrienne share minds on a lot of issues. And once again i'll agree with her here.

  We have 18 people working in IA (It's a bit more but i deducted leadership and advisors, this is just high govt and down). I've been in many itterations of rose IA, I have lead IA (as low govt) for months. At one point a long time ago I was the only person doing IA in all of rose, nobody else did it. That was ofcourse a low point but we have had many peaks where we had less than 18 IA too.

During all these years our IA has (afaik) never been this big, and if it has it hasnt been by much.

Our econ departement consists of nine people (once again excluding leadership and advisors).

Our milcom departement consists of 11 people. Here too I am excluding advisors and leadership, in practice the number is much higher because when a war breaks out people (advisors) like Kurdanak, Valk, DTC and quite probably Potpie + a handfull others all come out of hiding and do milcom work too.

The idea that some people have that governments have shurnk is quite honestly not in touch with reality. 

Ill go one further, just yesterday we made an announcement because we need more people to keep the machine that is Rose turning. 

Instead of focussing on checking in game if we have wars declared on us during peace time, we can make out government members do more usefull things. 

Rose has a whole website (something like bknet but less in depth). We do not use bots to transfer bank funds, or demote and promote members, we do all of that in game. That however doesn't mean that we dont use bots. We do. We believe (well I believe, I am speaking in my own name), that the menial boring tasks should be automated. 
Our website was made by someone who didn't know how to code too well before joining Rose, now he has used it in his job applications. Yes it's something everyone can do. 

I believe it should stop at everything that actually commits actions in game. Spam messages, demoting people, logging in to seem active etc..

Every alliance who's govt is shrinking needs to look inward, because if we always need new people (we are literally always looking for more people, and I think / know TKR is too), I am wondering why alliances that are number 26 (hypothetical example, no shade to whoever that is) wouldn't need that because they have bots. 
 

I think we have established that good older alliances have larger govs 😂

[BelgiumFury]

2 minutes ago, Charles Bolivar said:

I think we have established that good older alliances have larger govs 😂

I mean if you just wanna aim for mediocrity that's fine? But like, I thought people said bots were game breaking or some shit. If alliances wanna stay mediocre that's their choice, maybe they should look inward to figure out how to put the talented people they have to work then.

[Adrienne]

5 minutes ago, Charles Bolivar said:

But my take on this is that people have become far too reliant on bots, and that this reliance needs to be lessened. Not removed, but lessened. 

Then we're in complete agreement.

[Agent W]

4 hours ago, Adrienne said:

This. And you have 30 experienced players as well. We have over 150 players of all skills and experience levels and, as demonstrated by the size of our gov, we do put people to work. It's still a lot. However, if we can automate some of the tedium and make the lives of our gov and our members easier so that we can spend more time teaching them or working with our protectorates or any number of other things instead of doing responsibilities that could be handled by a bot instead, that's a better use of our time.

I downvoted your post @Mars because your "solution" is naive and because blanket banning third party bots is ridiculous. No one overarching bot can handle every alliance's individual needs and doing so discourages creativity and innovation. I also think it's likely a pipe dream that such a bot will ever exist. I do, however, agree it would be a good thing if there were a basic suite of tools available for any alliance to use. But alliances shouldn't be restricted to those if they have the skills, abilities, and desire to do more.

I agree with the general sentiment about discouraging over reliance on bots. You should not need the bot to do basic tasks and should know how to do things without them. But ironically, for many alliances, bots are a crucial tool in that they allow you to actually have the time to be able to teach your new members so that they can be independent thinkers within this game and learn how to play. Not to mention, they help you have the time to actually be able to spend time with and enjoy your community. And furthermore, leveling the playing field for casual players isn't the worst thing. This game would be a whole lot smaller and more boring without them.

This post sums up how I feel pretty well. It's unrealistic to expect that 150 out of your 150 members are going to either want to help or be able to help either. The usage of bots has allowed the time commitment needed from government to go way down, and in a world where bots can just do many things, why would we or should we expect them to not use the tools at their disposal. Not to mention, as Adri said, that time isn't necessarily spent doing nothing either. Speaking for myself as FA, I greatly appreciate that I have tools at my disposal, so I can spend more time talking with my allies and doing things like making forum posts.

Throughout the generations, people have decried technology. Standing in the way of progress has left many buried in the sands of time. Many people may not know this, but automation was even used by certain alliances in the old world. The world changes, the skills that are in demand do too. We see this trend even in the true world.

Bots don't necessarily have to be a bad thing. The minutae of these games has never been it's strongest or most engaging point. I'd rather have your average alliance member have time to meaningfully engage in their alliance's community, rather than be working in the spreadsheet mines. Similarly, i'd rather have the community have the time to create and influence, with things like radio shows, than be bogged down by things that don't matter.

[Agent W]

37 minutes ago, Charles Bolivar said:

Yes. Over reliance on bots is bad. That's the point being made 😂

I'd have to disagree with this "reliance" point. Do any of us still use a typewriter? Is using Microsoft Word relying on a crutch? The truth is, bots have arrived and been in vogue for a while now. It's not how we did it back in my day, but being a curmudgeon in the face of progress is generally not the play.

[Aglet Guyn]

I've never liked bots myself.

Are they not to blame for why I have to read Captchas every time I start a raid or war?

[Charles Bolivar]

3 hours ago, Agent W said:

I'd have to disagree with this "reliance" point. Do any of us still use a typewriter? Is using Microsoft Word relying on a crutch? The truth is, bots have arrived and been in vogue for a while now. It's not how we did it back in my day, but being a curmudgeon in the face of progress is generally not the play.

Do tS even use bots? Or did they also switch off on the second day of the war? 

But like I said, I'm not advocating for the removal of bots so I'm not sure what your point is?

Sorry old buddy but I just had to have a dig 😂

Edited February 11, 2022 by Charles Bolivar

[Joe Schmo]

5 hours ago, Charles Bolivar said:

I'm not so sure I agree with you in regards to bots being necessary in order to free up time so as to teach new members the knowledge required to play the game effectively. Back before your time we did pretty well with just forums and IRC 😂 

Sure it helps, no doubt about that at all. Especially when it comes to the mind numbing tedium associated with a few tasks. But when I think back to say tS' first year and so of existence, we didn't have any bots ( or even really a functional milcom for that matter). Instead we just had a knowledgeable base of active members who learned the game mechanics and worked together in a manner which cemented tS as a military powerhouse. No bots at all. Indeed, the sole technical innovation might have been going from IRC to discord during that first year.

 

 

Sometimes, I forgot how old PnW is. I mean, IRC? That's old.

[katashimon13]

Ugh... too much to reply am overwhelmed and cannot be bothered to waste time here... imma stick to the memes
(i had like 9 posts in multi quote)

@Mars no
i try to keep this game seperate from the rest of the internet and the entire internet seperate from rl xP
also we will die before we finish talking about things that are more interesting

@Adrienne i said that (and that and that too .. that as well) but in english 😧
i feel your pain/too soon

@Charles Bolivar forums ;3

i feel like i had another but... I am not going to go look for it yall have fun w srs posts

rawr

[Mayor]

10 hours ago, BelgiumFury said:

I will barge in here, but I have been in Rose for a while. It seems that me and Adrienne share minds on a lot of issues. And once again i'll agree with her here.

  We have 18 people working in IA (It's a bit more but i deducted leadership and advisors, this is just high govt and down). I've been in many itterations of rose IA, I have lead IA (as low govt) for months. At one point a long time ago I was the only person doing IA in all of rose, nobody else did it. That was ofcourse a low point but we have had many peaks where we had less than 18 IA too.

During all these years our IA has (afaik) never been this big, and if it has it hasnt been by much.

Our econ departement consists of nine people (once again excluding leadership and advisors).

Our milcom departement consists of 11 people. Here too I am excluding advisors and leadership, in practice the number is much higher because when a war breaks out people (advisors) like Kurdanak, Valk, DTC and quite probably Potpie + a handfull others all come out of hiding and do milcom work too.
 

I still remember you breaking down in my DMs during that time friend. 😅

tbqh it was prob just the bare minimum of us in gov at that time. I also can't remember a time when I had permanent Econ helpers, god bless everyone who always helped out since running that shit yourself is soul draining.

[Big Brother]

6 hours ago, Charles Bolivar said:

Do tS even use bots? Or did they also switch off on the second day of the war? 

I have it on good authority that bots are the only actually active players in t$.

Edited February 11, 2022 by Big Brother

[BelgiumFury]

48 minutes ago, Mayor said:

I still remember you breaking down in my DMs during that time friend. 😅

tbqh it was prob just the bare minimum of us in gov at that time. I also can't remember a time when I had permanent Econ helpers, god bless everyone who always helped out since running that shit yourself is soul draining.

Those were times, not always the great times but times nonetheless. I miss you buddy, thanks for everything you did / tried to do for me. 

[Charles Bolivar]

20 minutes ago, Big Brother said:

I have it on good authority that bots are the only actually active players in t$.

A sad day indeed.

Edited February 11, 2022 by Charles Bolivar

[David Sarif]

Hello!

As a bot developer, i just want to answer this topic.

About the raid finder, this is also depends on the AA for example in IoM we also teach how find a target in the old fashionable way, rely only on the bot is not a smart thing from my view.

For the warfare, it's the same thing i don't rely on my bot or other bot for manage a war only my little brain.

Econ : I find my self pretty good with the "automation" of this part, i'm lazy too.

Recruitment : I personally answer all in-game messages i receive from new players, but i have to agree about receving around 50 messages in the first 60 seconds.

 

The definition of automation (based on my conversation with alex) is where the bot automate a function (don't you say) and all bot i encountered until now (mine too) don't automate a function, it's just make your life easier but you still need to make a lot of thing on your own for use that function.

 

A possibile solution for keep track what a bot from alex, is to create a category-channel in the official discord server with all the bot developer, where he can ask clarification or something.

[His Holy Decagon]

19 hours ago, Adrienne said:

I'm not as young as you're making me sound 😛 I've been in this game a long time too. I've experienced plenty without bots. But just to elaborate on my previous example: I used to spend 3-4 hours every week or two during wars to keep track of member safekeeping manually. That's a lot of time. Is it doable? Sure. But can I be using that time much more effectively elsewhere? Absolutely. There's no doubt whatsoever that spending 3 hours a week with my members during a war is a much better use of my time than 3 hours a week on a spreadsheet. 

He has a seemingly good talent with talking to people with a superior accent, as well as if handfuls of us aren’t adults, with kids, jobs, etc. I decided not to reply after he addressed my response, in a similar manner to you.

[Big Brother]

7 hours ago, Charles Bolivar said:

A sad day indeed.

For who?