suggestions

Tonight I just had a weird idea, what if all along, the problem with bots2 and bots4 and why people kept leaving them isn't because so and so wasn't participating and what have you, but because there's sometimes nothing to hit for energy or cs or it would take too long to make targets yourself. On top of that you have people attacking each other just to get those resources. That real wars are garbage and people really just want to play alone and not be bothered. That is why I'm restating why we need a PvE system sooner rather than later. With a PvE system we can break the cycle bots2 had, which is the same trend bots4 is heading. We can get higher levels involved along with lower levels and have fun again!

Sorry for the long post to state the obvious, I just wanted to try and nudge Ender into trying to make PvE again. I intend to hear an 1,000 word essay on why we won't get one by 2030 or so. By then maybe Rio will be out of debt from the Olympics! Hahahaha.

I think PvE would be a really interesting change for the game. It's a not-completely-formed idea I've kicked around in the back of my head for awhile in that I haven't completely solidified my thoughts on it. I do have some things worked out though.

To set expectations, my current focus is on making the new player experience better so that I can justify doing some advertising for the game (in the hopes that it will improve conversion rates). After that, I think PvE would be a reasonable next large project.

I think they'd work together well. It's more of a greater good thing to me. PvE would make the current players happy and keep new players more involved. New player experience only helps the newer players.

Mind you this is a 100% PvP game with no players. So it's about as dead as 90s MMOs. Should've realized that before you made the game. You should've known you'd experience higher player turnover especially with the not-so-helpful crowd on here that leave forums dead for months at a time and only care about their own priorities. Priority should've been to help more players, listen to their needs, and now its just floR's shit all over again. Maybe you should've played the game for one month just by yourself and you'd see just how boring/annoying it has all become.

I also think PvE should be the top priority even before an enhanced new player experience. After all, bots4 doesnt have truly new players. Virtually all players come from bots2 so they know the basics. I think introducing PvE can add to the game much more than tournaments. Those already existed in bots2. PvE dont. That would bring some players back to the game I'm sure. And monthly competition would become more interesting.

For the new player topic I have a suggestion. When I start playing a new game I like to read the manual. I have that patience yes. However many people dont have it and I understand. But I think bots4 really needs a manual/guide. Time is needed to write the manual and unfortunately time is more scarce than money sometimes... So my suggestion is to do a community effort to write that manual. Let's gather a work group to do it.

Ofc I want to participate on it. Ender would be the project leader. I'm sure Zal would like to participate too. I invite other people to join: Rene, Fishwick, Jans (where are you oldman?), Otto, Myriad, Shoegazer, dragonrose, Benny, Bazza, Lyrad and shoyuken.

So Ender, if you agree with my suggestion please send an email to every people that want to participate with a link for a doc where everybody can edit it. Than lets see how it evolves :)

I'd also suggest to open it up to the community as a thread to see what people want out of a PvE system. For example, a preliminary build of it could be:

• Bots are set up similar to training bots, just with higher stats at their respective levels.
• The balance issue with the speed of fighting whores vs PvE bots would have to be addressed. Nobody will attack a bot that takes 30 seconds to finish for say, 30 energy when they can get that in one second with buffs. The options for this are A) get rid of PvP entirely since nobody really cares about it, B) have fight limits on the PvE bots so say, autoclickers can't just abuse them all day + people can just use them as added targets, C) have a preference in the workshop where you'd rather have your bot as a PvE bot which increases your daily fight limits (say to 1,000 fights or something) or a PvP bot that can attack whores etc. PvE bots could still be hit by PvP bots or we could just take that out. Maybe having a separate Hall of Fame would be helpful. This wouldn't result in a need to divide clans as say half the players could be PvE and half be PvP. Or we could just have it added on to PvP and not care so long as we get the energy calculation per fight right.
• Of course the downside to PvE would be higher xp gained.

• What should the energy given be? I'd say somewhere around 50 or so and have the limit as 1,000 fights per day. So max 50,000 energy gained per day. It'd take around 3 hours at 10 seconds per fight. Max gained per month = 1,500,000 energy. Or we could lower it. But that sounds like a good enough option for most players in comparison a lot of people would rather have 1 hit whores. PvE wins could count separately so not to mess up the PvP fights HoF. But this also helps high levels help the clans they are in versus just having a bunch of level 40s etc. Plus 3 hours per day x 30 = 90 hours played, which is a fair amount for most legit people on this game.

  And yes, we need a manual. I'd help.

  Just saying that you don't need to figure everything out yourself Ender. Once you have more suggestions/votes then you can focus better and hopefully give us a time in which it'd be done. I'm sure if we all did this together with public consultation we could have it in place by the end of August. You're not alone Ender as much as I deride you and you don't care for my suggestions at all, I'm just trying to motivate you, and all this motivation takes up as much as my time as yours and Esv's here. It just feels like yelling is all since you're against having a team helping you do things.

just good idea! i hope its not too late

FWIW, I have a pretty specific vision for the game. I'm very much open to feedback on it (as I hope would be obvious by any long-time reader of this subforum), but I'm generally opposed to a "design by committee" setup where each change has to go through some voting process, or where I have to debate/defend my ideas. I already do that at my real job, so part of the fun and motivation for me is being able to create the game I want to create using bots2 as the core mechanics/backdrop. It's fine to disagree with this approach, but I'm also okay with some folks being upset by this - I know I can't please everyone, but I can be clear about my intentions of my role here being benevolent dictator for life.

Regarding what I should work on next, I think PvE would mainly benefit existing/past players, but would do little to draw in new players. This is why I think a better signup flow, more hand-holding earlier on, etc. is more important at this stage. The game needs to be able to attract completely new players in order for it to continue having a playerbase. The bots2 playerbase can only get us so far. It also happens to be the case that my ideas for the new player experience are 100% solidified and mostly implemented at this point, so it would be a little silly to change course now.

Anyway, as I said in my first post, I will work on PvE (in time). I only clarified that it was not my next priority.

Ender what do you think about the manual idea? Or are you already doing one?

The manual could be a wiki?

I tried doing that with Jans some 5 years ago when the game started, it didn't get very far.

http://bots4.net/forum/1/591

I'm open to player-created documentation. A couple wikis have been started in the past, but they tend to not gain much traction. In general I don't think too many people read manuals/docs, so I think time is probably better spent making things more intuitive and simpler. I definitely won't stop folks from proving me wrong on that though.

Regarding what I should work on next, I think PvE would mainly benefit existing/past players, but would do little to draw in new players. This is why I think a better signup flow, more hand-holding earlier on, etc. is more important at this stage. The game needs to be able to attract completely new players in order for it to continue having a playerbase. The bots2 playerbase can only get us so far. It also happens to be the case that my ideas for the new player experience are 100% solidified and mostly implemented at this point, so it would be a little silly to change course now.

Probably a catch 22 in the fact that benefiting current and past players(such as myself) with a PvE element would likely do new players just starting (who have no idea about the PvP aspect of the game) by leading them down a PvE path where in later they could venture into the PvP aspect.

Agreed though that changing course from Plan A to move to Plan B when A is nearly complete and could benefit B as well as vice versa, then no sense in not finishing A then moving to B.

Dear Ender:

Hurry the hell up.

• The Entire Game