The Elder Scrolls Online

mkopec_sl said:

How bout making a game that people actually want to play without botting?

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The only problem with that idea is that the majority of the botting issues in my experience have been with gold farmers who aren't playing the game for fun. Admittedly this was mostly experienced in eastern games. I guess people who bot to level are annoying too. The most fun fix for that was always open PvP.

Tuco_sl said:

Have you ever botted in a game?

I'm not huge into botting, but I know personally it can be a lot of fun to play a game, build up your guy, learn the skills, encounter the world, and then set up a bot to run overnight and do shit while you sleep. You then wake up, try to decipher how it succeeded and failed, fix its problems and then set it up to run again. It's like a game within the game, and for most MMOs it's actually more interesting and difficult to set up a bot than it is to grind in PVE.

Note that I don't condone botting and don't bot in MMOs, but I am a robotics programmer and work with AI all day. I just wanted to argue the idea that the choice between playing and botting is a false choice. Perhaps the most botted game ever is Diablo2, and no one can contend it's not fun to play.

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Back in the DIKU mud games you could make some super fun bots. I really enjoyed that stuff for a while. In graphical games it's harder, but not very hard for real coders. There is a sort of satisfaction, as you said, to making the damn thing work and not get stuck.

Cinge_sl said:

The current default UI is horrible and also suffers from consolitis with all the menus and things like the Q wheel.

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Someone's apparently working on that. I hope they work quickly.

I'm going to be working on creating an add-on that replaces the quick-slot menu. The add-on will essentially allow you to bind whatever key-binding you want to each of the different quick-slots (I think 10 total?). For now, I'm just calling it Quick-Slot-X or QSX for short.

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mrmoneda_sl said:

Someone's apparently working on that. I hope they work quickly.

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Where did you see that? I've probably raised more complaints with the Quickslot UI design than anyone on the closed beta forums. Last I heard the API didn't support modifying how it worked.

mrmoneda_sl said:

Someone's apparently working on that. I hope they work quickly.

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This would be pretty huge. So many PVP consumables to keep track of. Keep us posted!

The UI has always been horrible with Elder Scrolls games. This one was no different and was a big turn off when I initially started playing. I've never appreciated the fact that I had to get an addon just to be able to see the information I wanted to see, in these games. Though with this being an MMO, I hope that it will spoon feed the dev team into the most popular design decisions. Similar to how DBM has guided UI changes in WoW over the years.

Botting is accepted in EQ1 because it generates a lot of free revenue for SoE. Nothing more and nothing less. The game is old so why would the dev's care about a practice that makes them more money for doing nothing? A good handful of raids in EQ1 can be done with bots or your raid can be supplemented with them. The guildleader in the guild I was raiding with last year had at least 6 characters running at all times during our raids. Our guild wasn't doing bleeding edge content but it was still helpful having 40 in a night's roster on a slow night as opposed to just having 30. You wouldn't be able to do the later tiers of RoF with bots in a reliable fashion though.

Every time an expansion hits, those bot-loving nerds have to shell out hundreds of dollars and/or grind/pay-out-the-nose for Krono to acquire subscription time to play those said characters. If those guys like the game that much and like taking it up the ass that much, SoE sure doesn't have a problem with it.

Rescorla_sl said:

Where did you see that? I've probably raised more complaints with the Quickslot UI design than anyone on the closed beta forums. Last I heard the API didn't support modifying how it worked.

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Second-hand post from a private forum. I hope it's possible. That Q wheel screams "CONSOLE DESIGN" every time I look at it.

mrmoneda_sl said:

Second-hand post from a private forum. I hope it's possible. That Q wheel screams "CONSOLE DESIGN" every time I look at it.

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It also violates ZOS own design mantra that they want you to play the game, not play the UI. It's clearly obvious the Quickslot radial UI was designed for console controllers. The problem that creates for PC users is that for every consumable you have slotted except for the default one , you have to take your eyes off of the action in the middle of the screen and look at the radial UI to select the consumable you want to use. In other words, one of their core UIs violates their UI design mantra.

The greatest bot in history known to gamers:


EZ Macros was right behind. 8x8 on a boat in UO ... oh man, those were the days. Well, until you got tagged by a water elemental spawn or stuck on another boat that was 8x8 macroing as well.

Speaking of botting, with current rules I'm quite convinced world first emperor(s) will probably generate a lot of drama forums wise since the actual mechanics are kind of dumb and /or heavily exploitable.

Though I'm somewhat curious to see how the PvP scene will be RvR wise. US scene was always easier because of language (you can wrap a lot of chaps under the same language), while getting a strong EU scene is always harder (since some countries don't speak English at all, I'm looking at you France). What was strong in GW2 was the Vizunah server, a french only community who topped most of the RvR scene for months only with french speaking people. I strongly think RvR-type PvP is the lowest common denominator skill wise but when you have hardcore organized structures like PRX hitting your matchup it's always both frustrating and impressive on a game where map domination is essential.

Call me a shill but I'm kind of eager playing TESO release PvP wise (mostly because I'm a MMO launch addict). Hell, I don't really care about lore or PvE but I'm eager to see how communities will cater around campaigns. GW2 wise (it's RvR right ?) nowadays we have a strong french RvR community (the Vizunah one, called "Grand Cross" leaded by Troma) kinda undefeated since PRX moved back to US server, and on the other side we have PRX, a strong PvP community with nice recent feats on GW2 (and also lame feats like "first WoW's AV" on WoW, etc) but who clearly made their stomp mark when they played on GW2 Eu server matchups. Therefore, I'm quite curious to see how Zenimax will deal with the RvR scene. To me this game PvP wise will be a TORtanic 2 (SWTOR's Ilum) but who knows, sometimes a lot of bad game design decisions can nullify themselves into a somewhat okay-ish game. Who knows really, magic formula sometimes comes from a wreck.

The strategic problem of GW2 was that supply lines did not really matter and so just zerging around was the best strat. I see some of the same problem but at least the teleport network might add some strat to where you attack. But yeah... nothing as unskilled as a big ball of zerg in GW2. One good leader and a pack of autoattacking fools could do fine until they hit a reall RvR guild.

Twitchguy going through werewolf quest from start to end. Adventure zone info coming VERY SOON. Ability to change FoV in first person. Ability to pick up weapons/armor in the world as well as more items. Turning off buffing to cap in pvp as it can hurt in some cases as you get to higher lvl. Also working on a fix to make sure groups don't end up in different phases!

anyone have a closed beta account they are willing to lend or beta key. Let me know- Looking to try out my new rig on it. Want to be able to play with ultra graphics first day so i dumped around 500 into some upgrades for my comp.

Tuco_sl said:

Have you ever botted in a game?

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I never have, but I don't think it's a big deal where crafting and selling are concerned. Sitting and repeatedly announcing in /zone "WTS Abbreviated Chestplate of the S.O.B." can get old and boring, and time spent collecting mats considered, avoiding carpel tunnel in crafting isn't really an unfair thing. Those who can write good PvP bots should just work on AI to make PvE more challenging.

Note that I don't condone botting and don't bot in MMOs, but I am a robotics programmer and work with AI all day. I just wanted to argue the idea that the choice between playing and botting is a false choice. Perhaps the most botted game ever is Diablo2, and no one can contend it's not fun to play.

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Python, Matlab, Python, Matlab... Ugh. I'm sure your job is amazing, but from the impression I've gotten (which could be wrong), the actual coding must get humdrum right about the time you become efficient at it. I'd probably write code generators just for the chance to use languages with fancier features.

Then again, I grind at doing complicated stuff in C++ for no reason and never actually make anything just to prove to myself that I can do this or that and then get bored. So, my impression of anything productive matters about as much as a mouse fart.