What's your honest opinion about bots?

[_SGA_]

Hello,

If you know me you know that I were in a sro private server business from 2011 to 2017 and I made some very successful servers like Iceworld Online, Excalibur Online, II CIVILIZATIONS etc.

When I were in the server business I never been able to understand what players really want, especially when it comes to botting.

After I made Excalibur Online, botting was forbidden and there were 1500 real active online players, none botting, but almost everyone were asking for a bot and crying that there is no bots compatible with the game. Player retention were like 1 in 150, because the second they understand the botting is not allowed, they were deleting the game in lightning speed but still there were about 1000 players happy to play without bot.

Than I made II CIVILIZATIONS and bots were allowed, player retention was like 20 in 150 a lot better. But guess what, again everyone is complaining that all the players are botting and that there is no activity. What's really strange is they were the same players!
The same players complaining that there is no botting allowed in Excalibur were complaining that botting is allowed in II CIVILIZATIONS.

Than I left making servers because I can't understand what the players really want. Now I started playing on TRSRO and it's same, again everyone is complaining that botting is allowed.

I can't quite understand what do you guys really want? I never been able to understand the players truly, because it seems like they change their opinion every 5 seconds.

I'm not around since 4 years but I see nothing is changed and it's even worse now.

What's your opinion on this topic? Do you guys really want bots or not?

King Regards
SGA

[phluby]

I dont like botting at all, but a nonbot server needs to be well adjusted i think...

[Finsterlord]

Thank you! Personally I don't like bots and multiple char abuse.

I'm also not understanding players. What I understood is that players go crazy for "hyped" servers that usually have very bad server concepts. They are hyped for the beginning but after 2-3 weeks they realise that these servers are totally pay2win and that they don't have a chance to catch up. I simply could tell them in advance by reading the advertisement thread.
On one hand they complain about pay2win, on the other hand they don't value the donation-free servers. So I can't understand...

Perhaps there is one thing I understood:
They only have "fun" when they can "dominate". Usually equipment or item mall advantage is needed in order to be "good". They enjoy dominating and humiliating other players...

When others are able to catch up, it usually gets boring for them and they quit the game. Maybe that also explains the non-stop server hopping because they always hope to be dominant in the next servers to come.

It can't be helped and I gave up on most of the psro community/players.

[Judgelemental]

This game is old enough already.

Most of us have jobs/families, etc., we aren't 14 anymore.
Most of us have moved on already. We cannot sit all day long hand grinding for exp/sp/items.

My suggestion is add leveling boosts, events, etc., something that will make hand grind rewarding. If I get 0.01% experience per 50-100-200-500 mobs, I just lose my patience and close the game.

I prefer a game where you can bot for X amount of minutes (using an in game bot, for instance there's one like that from Jade Dynasty, called "esper", where you can bot as long as you have enough energy) then you're on your own.

This game kind of asks for it, the game offers no other ways of leveling. Questing and FGW are something, but not quite enough.

Goldbotting, botting with 8 chars having 10+ parties should be strictly forbidden. I think 3 characters are enough and there's also one thing: you have to wander around to find monsters.

Imagine if they were grouped up consisting of 3-4 monsters in a pack, respawning much more rapidly. It would speed things up, however the SRO atmosphere would not be the same.

How about you reward hand leveling instead of punishing bots?

[Smukke]

I love botting. I can't think of a bigger waste of time than hand grinding.

[fenster3000]

Bots are stupid af, but Silkroad without bots is boring af aswell.

However, this is not surprising at all because SRO is way too old and
Joymax never cared about improving the gameplay mechanics. In addition, SRO is an asia grinder. This means that the game wants us to grind as much and as long as possible. But most
people in western countries do not like that mechanic. That is just how it is. Then why have they started playing? Because SRO is F2P and always had a special atmosphere. Just go to Jangan, turn on the ingame music and you know what I mean.

 Spoiler

This in combination with the outdated gameplay is the main reason why most people lost the motivation grind by hands. Sooner or later botting became standard in SRO. However, back then people at least "played" the game every now and then. Doing CTF, Unique Hunts, trading etc.. In fact you could always find people waiting for uniques. Especially in the evening. But this changed because even the side acitivites are way to repetitive. At that point people just continued botting instead of
doing side stuff.

Any other game people would have already stopped playing. But thanks to our beloved bots they just continued botting. I know tons of people that told me that configuring the bot is more fun than playing Silkroad. Without bots SRO would be dead by now.

Just take a look into the past of SRO.
Everytime Joymax did (aka pretended) something against bots
the servers were literally empty. Joymax/JCP "Anti-Bot-Campaign" in spring 2017
is the perfect example. Instead of playing by hand people just stayed offline at all.
Nobody was there for PVP, Uniques etc.. All they did was connecting their stall chars
Some people even took the chance and left the game at all.

But as always: There will always be some people that love handgrinding SRO.

[JustNrik]

Many people may think that botting killed silkroad, but that's not true. Joymax did by making this game so dull and monotonous. They did improve leveling after the years by reorganizing the quests, adding faded beads in FGW, but that's still not enough at all.

SRO Still lacks proper level up system that modern mmo have, like raids, more solo/party dungeons, areas with higher xp rates (similar to dungeons but they aren't instances but actual map areas), more uniques/raid boss, etc. More original quests that aren't just "kill X mob", "get X items" or "deliver X to Y". And that's just the top of the iceberg.

[Senox28]

For me the thing which killed game was bot + pay2win. I left ISRO in 2008, but already in those times it was hard to compete against people who could buy Premium for instant login, tons of astrals and so on (as I remember silk items weren't tradeable yet).

Botting is like skipping grinding+dropping phase. The only thing you have to do then is alchemy, trades with other players to get best possible items.
Private servers added activity like dungeons etc. so botting 24/7 is not that much effective. Well imo then server could be that you start with max level, decent set to make a dungeon/kill unique and earn from it.

Server shouldn't be pay2win, for me the only way is to make Silk Items untradeable and add some kind of way to get it from game activity. Nowadays you can just see "wtb elixirs for silks", "wtb sos for silks". From my memory Project Pearl (cap100 if you want to google it) did something like this, that you couldn't trade anything from Item Mall. Most of things were visual like model switchers, titles, avatars.

People will always cry no matter what you do, for me there are 3 types of players: People who buy everything with his $$$, People who want bot 24/7 and get everything with that and people who don't rash in everything and enjoy handgrinding on low levels.

Overall I'd like to see Non bot + Play2Win sever with some features to take break from grinding

[esenrik123]

Originally Posted by Judgelemental

This game is old enough already.

Most of us have jobs/families, etc., we aren't 14 anymore.
Most of us have moved on already. We cannot sit all day long hand grinding for exp/sp/items.

My suggestion is add leveling boosts, events, etc., something that will make hand grind rewarding. If I get 0.01% experience per 50-100-200-500 mobs, I just lose my patience and close the game.

I prefer a game where you can bot for X amount of minutes (using an in game bot, for instance there's one like that from Jade Dynasty, called "esper", where you can bot as long as you have enough energy) then you're on your own.

This game kind of asks for it, the game offers no other ways of leveling. Questing and FGW are something, but not quite enough.

Goldbotting, botting with 8 chars having 10+ parties should be strictly forbidden. I think 3 characters are enough and there's also one thing: you have to wander around to find monsters.

Imagine if they were grouped up consisting of 3-4 monsters in a pack, respawning much more rapidly. It would speed things up, however the SRO atmosphere would not be the same.

How about you reward hand leveling instead of punishing bots?

I agree with this comment.

[iDevcon]

bots are awesome they save time and good for lazy people xDD

[konthoofd4]

I don't understand why people choose to join low rate servers where botting is allowed. I guess these people like SRO as an 'Idle game' instead of an MMORPG.

I still believe that SRO can be a fun game in 2021 without botting, but with some adjustments. I played Origin Online for a while when the population peaked due to Covid19, and I think it was the best SRO experience I've ever had.

[ionutz0522]

Originally Posted by konthoofd4

I don't understand why people choose to join low rate servers where botting is allowed. I guess these people like SRO as an 'Idle game' instead of an MMORPG.

I still believe that SRO can be a fun game in 2021 without botting, but with some adjustments. I played Origin Online for a while when the population peaked due to Covid19, and I think it was the best SRO experience I've ever had.

The best SRO experience was in cap 80, 90, 100, not nearly due to Covid19.
I feel like crying when i remember when all the server went to Lord Yarkan (cap 80), Demon Shaitan (cap 90), Medusa, Roc (cap 100) ! Oh, what a beautiful time...
That's all i had to say ^^

BTW @ i played all your servers, Vortex here (if you remember)
Cheers

[_SGA_]

Originally Posted by ionutz0522

The best SRO experience was in cap 80, 90, 100, not nearly due to Covid19.
I feel like crying when i remember when all the server went to Lord Yarkan (cap 80), Demon Shaitan (cap 90), Medusa, Roc (cap 100) ! Oh, what a beautiful time...
That's all i had to say ^^

BTW @ i played all your servers, Vortex here (if you remember)
Cheers

I still remember your nickname

[coyotelucas7]

I believe that after you really "learn" how SRO is, you'll lose the joy for the game. Back in 2005, I was 10 years old and could even understand a word in english, I had so much fun interacting with another people from my own country and killing weasels, frogs, stone lions, etc... When I was finally able to chose a good build to play, I started to understand what this game was about, that you had to buy a pick pet, a premium and something that would play automatically for you... after I had all this, I believe that SRO changed, it was not more about the fun, it was just to be better than some people and start farming...

I believe to make this game good again, everything should be changed, like quests, the grinding model (it's so bad that you have to lose days to level from one level to another killing the same mob), the triangular conflict, stop these boxes from pservers (it's just a money laundry)... the whole game needs a rework, it's not hard to do, the community just need to stop playing those **** servers and join in one that has someone that just care about the good times (hard to find, but not impossible)

[ionutz0522]

Originally Posted by _SGA_

I still remember your nickname

Are you going to start a new server in the near future ?