Keep your "macros" to your self

I dont feel targeted, my concern is removing a mechanic because its a path to other things. almost everything can equal to a negative aspect of another. (If anyone can understand my babble…)

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  1. What is specifically the problem?
    Answer: Some players may be using scripts to play the game while they themselves don’t have to play the game.
  2. How much of a problem is this auto-clicking/botting for yourself?
    Answer: For me personally? On a scale from 1-10? 10.

2a. What makes it a problem for your gameplay?
Answer: I lose out on supply to request baskets, lose ability to complete in prestige.

New 3. How does it change your gameplay?
Answer: It doesn’t really. Just vastly decreases motivation to play the game. Feel like if I wanted to play competitively I’d likely need to multi box with bots.

  1. What is the ethical border between abuse and optimal use of gameplay?
    Answer: Optimal use of gameplay should be something that any player not using a script would be able to achieve in the same amount of time but with more complexity. Abuse is, as mentioned, playing the game while not having to actively devote time to the game.
  2. How many people are applying dubious gameplay?
    Answer: Unclear, need WS to do investigation.
  3. How specifically does it affect the game and its community?
    Answer: Messes with economy and prestige values.
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You got hush money from the bot mob. “Quiet, you see. Or bad things will happen, meh ya see”

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I think root cause is on regen bombs :smiley: Same that Xaldafax did mention.
But combining regen bomb, self working script and minter seem to be way for coin casting now. Removing minter would still keep temp alt creating for coin casting.

When minter was introduced I was surprised that game got sort of npc merchant, but it did seem to be necessary for players to be able to do exo surfing easier.

To me it would be interesting if game client would have own scripting possibilities and players could sell their scripts in shops or even better if those would work in some craftable mining robots and so on. Maybe that wouldn’t be possible to bot on external programs :smiley:

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An Analogy to Modded Minecraft Servers and Some Opinions and Suggestions

As many know there are numerous kinds of modded Minecraft servers. Some allow AFK resource farming (iron golem farms or fishing for example) and some don’t. Both kinds of servers seem to do ok and attract players that like whatever rule set the server has. The important thing, in my opinion, is that these servers tell you up front what the rules are, let everyone on the server have easy and inherent access to whatever the rules allow, and enforce the rules with bans.

In the Boundless analogy the server owners (the Boundless developers) need to (1) decide the kind of server they are running, (2) need to make sure the community understands the rule set that is allowed, (3) need to make ensure that all players have more or less the same access inherently to what’s allowed by the rules and (4) lastly need to enforce the rules (player sanctions) or make rule breaking impossible (development solution).

The Boundless devs do a good job at this with, for example, afk xp farming via mass crafting and active regeneration bomb farming. Everyone knows these things are allowed and everyone has about the same access to them inherently in the game.

In my opinion, the same good job being done by the devs on afk xp farming via mass crafting and active regeneration bomb farming should be brought to bear on afk resource gathering/xp farming using bots/macros.

In my opinion again, the devs should decide what they want to do here and either make these activities impossible from a practical point of view (Turing test every 30 minutes or whatever interval is needed to weed out afk players) or allow these things and bring some tools in game to do them so everyone can participate (like Minecraft inherently allows anyone to build an afk iron farm if they want). Going back to the Minecraft modded server analogy, either of these rule sets is valid but will appeal to different players.

My personal view is that I would probably enjoy Boundless either way but what I don’t enjoy is some people afk macro/bot farming while I refrain from these activities due to ethical qualms and technical challenges. This feels like I’m losing the game to cheaters and makes me nostalgic for my favorite modded Minecraft servers.

Looking at the big picture, Boundless may want to do some market research and try to forecast what would happen if they had more than one non-test server option for players (modded MC servers with different rule sets are huge and maybe this model would help Boundless?). Would having Path of Exile-like 3-month seasonal servers (see this GDC talk-good watch while mining https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM_5S55jUzk and this classic one too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHHg99hwQGY ) reinvigorate Boundless with an influx of returning players for the seasons or would it just dilute an already moderate player base? Would having hard servers (for example one character per account with only one skill page per character with no Gleam Club bonuses and no ability to buy cubits for real money but maybe a Gleam Club membership as a requirement to access the server) bring back dormant players or again just dilute the current player base?

For my part I think I would enjoy a harder experience where one account/character cannot do everything to really create a game environment/economy where teamwork is required to do anything substantial and there is a robust market for everything.

Anyway, I’d like to end with a word of support for two Quality of Life improvements related to this:

  1. Please put in a craft all option so I dont have to do 30 mouse clicks for a mass craft
  2. Please put in an option so you can toggle sprint on and off, say with the shift key. That way you wouldn’t need to press two buttons to sprint and this would cause less fatigue. I believe WOW has this and I miss it here.

Let’s not cure the disease by killing the patient here. What percentage of players are even botters? If this is a fairly low number, please don’t make drastic changes to Boundless 2019 to correct the behaviors of like 3 individuals. As in please no nerfs. Find a better way. Make pants not nerfs.

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They monitor the chrysominter currency generated pretty thoroughly from what I understood. It’s why we see mint values change when they decide it should/if it should/etc

It’d be pretty easy(i assume) to see who/if any one is generating staggering amounts of coin and seeing what they’re dumping in to it and then going through their play logs to see what they were doing and if it would be considered acceptable or not by them.

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No one knows the answer…
But what i do know is that some scripters as i witnessed yesterday share their script on discord

Anyone can use google how to apply it.

So worst case theres soon over half active players with scripts on servers.

GREAT

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Isn’t sharing…caring…:smiley:

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I think you are missing the point that a whole variety of dynamics in this game direct and encourage people to play a certain way that results in the type of problems, conflict, and a variety of other things. The objective of everyone should be to fix these problems and help make the game better instead of putting their own interests ahead of the game.

By fixing the problems the game becomes better for everyone. If we fixed resource distribution we wouldn’t have people using regen bombs to get around the problem. etc… etc… with each problem.

So in reality while it might be 3 people in your example that are directly cheating using the bot, a whole other host of people are doing a variety of things to get around grind, conflict, etc instead of playing the game. Solving the problem helps everyone.

No I agree with you that any problems need to be solved, just not at my expense. I’ve already lost so much with this game in the name of of “For the Greater Good.”

I don’t want to spend 6 hours looking for pinkish blue gleam nodes on a planet for a build that takes thousands… I want to just use a regen farm and get the job done in 20 minutes so that I can get back to doing things I actually enjoy :joy:

They could just make the Chrysominter reward based on a curve or something… such that after you’ve thrown in a couple million of something you get diminishing returns for a little while.

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Is it actually deemed cheating by boundless terms?

You’ve mentioned fixing resource distribution several times now. Could you elaborate?

:small_red_triangle: Using a script that can change block properties (ie: make umbris ore glow or make all other blocks glass so you can see the ore = like the xray one for MC)

:small_red_triangle: Using a script that can give you the coordinates of specific resources

:small_red_triangle: Using a script/macro/bot that can stay connected 24/7 to level up, get XP, earn coin

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Woah that’s some serious script! I thought it’d be more like AoE hammer x5, Regen Bomb, Repeat…

I know at least two of those have already been made/used

I couldn’t care less about an auto-clicker tbh

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Yes this is what the script is. I do not believe there are scripts able to be made for Boundless to use x-ray vision nor coordinates to specific resources. I could be wrong though I have not come across them myself.

There already is

There are scripts you can write for boundless to only see resource noods such as gems?

Yes, there are ones that you tell it the item, and you’ll get coords