announcements

tl;dr: Give me ideas to work on!

Hello! As some of you may have noticed, I've been around a bit these past few weeks, chatting with some of you on IRC, etc. That's a result of me having (finally) taken care of a few small problems that were preventing me from working on the game.

In case you're curious/interested about the background: It started when I relocated for ~8 months during Covid. I didn't bring my desktop, but I bought a cheap laptop and did some small game development things on that. Not a lot though (obviously). Then I returned home, but I was still working remotely and got tired of swapping cables to switch between my work computer and personal desktop, so my desktop (which is my main development machine) stayed offline for a long time. Fast forward to a month or two ago. I bought a KVM (these devices are amazing if you have multiple computers), dusted off my desktop, applied new thermal paste to its CPU, updated its very-outdated operating system, and started finally poking at the game again. My first order of business was to do various infrastructure upgrades. We're now on PHP 8.2 and many of the various libraries/utilities that the game depends on have been upgraded to latest versions as well so that the game remains stable and fast (brag: I find the speed of everything in the game remarkable compared to the sluggish bloat I feel on many other more "modern" sites). The upshot is that all this behind-the-scenes modernization makes it much easier to do future development work.

That brings us to today. Now for the fun part! I'm looking to get back into actual feature development a bit. My track record isn't great and I know things have been slower in recent years, so I'm hesitant to make any big promises, but...hear me out:

What do you want done? I have some time off from work next week and want to spend a chunk of it on the game. I don't play this game and am not plugged into the day-to-day anymore, so I want to hear from all of you. Feel free to suggest stuff or +1 other people's ideas. You're the best people to know what's going to make you enjoy the game more, what you find annoying, what you always wish had been done, etc. And don't worry too much about whether something is going to be hard to build - I'd like to understand what people really want first. After that, I can think about the cost tradeoffs of building stuff. Of course though, smaller stuff is more likely to get done sooner.

I'll kick this thread off with my own ideas, but treat these as just a starting point for you to suggest your own:

• Move the game onto HTTPS so that you stop getting browser warnings
• Fix PayPal integration so that you don't have to wait for me to give purchased stars
• Revamp the designed-in-2010 UI to take advantage of typical monitor resolutions in 2023 (probably wider UI + bigger font...I find myself using 125% browser zoom on here)
• Move chat from IRC to Discord
• Change account structure so that you can manage a fleet of bots from a single login
• Daily quests, weekly events, etc.
• Promote the game more and optimize for new player stickiness/retention
• Train an LLM (a la ChatGPT/Bard) using forum data and do something fun with it
• Anything that was never implemented that you'd like done?
• Anything that's broken that you'd like fixed?
• Anything to improve mobile support? (maybe even an app one day?)
• Anything else at all?

The clan recruitment process should be adjusted where you can have a box system so you can select them all at once instead of individually clicking them (it’s so long doing that).

Maybe some new buffs? Like the 10,000 speed one we got ages ago…

Energy HOF decay monthly as most of the hof is long inactive players with bloated energy from years of doing nothing.

Ability to mass accept and kick bots from clans for tourny specifically.

Look at another xp drop at higher level as the current last one at 185ish is a bit low given the number of people well over 300 and even 400 these days.

Finish Renes shield rework since he is long gone and venerated disk at 400 is super low given bots with over 600 dex currently.

I would like to see something done about tournies - either easier mass accepting/kicking of bots from clans to support the current meta (http://bots4.net/forum/4/7726), or even better, to make changes to ensure this is no longer the meta.

At present tournies are ironically more about quantity of bots than quality. Basically it doesn't matter if your bots are 5% better than someone else's if they made 10x as many bots as you. So to counter this, you could force bots to be clanned for greater than 1 week in order to represent the clan in the tourney. So having >100 bots in a tourney would quickly become infeasible due to exponential treasury costs.

Some other things:

Automatic treasury donations - http://bots4.net/forum/4/6892

Clan journal filter - http://bots4.net/forum/4/7463

Allowing more clan ranks

Showing the last forum post/bmail when replying to a thread/bmail

Editing/deleting forum posts

Allowing re-ordering of stash items

More controversially I would also love to see captcha back or some other automated means to raise the barrier to cheating. I don't think there are enough players without vested interests these days to rely on player reports, and think that active intervention is a losing battle in the long run with only 1 game admin.

+1 Move chat from IRC to Discord

1. Sort the tourney so it isn't about lucky wins (make it at least 3 fights per bot)

2. I have a problem with trying to get passwords back (maybe look into that)

3. New shields/armour

4. Loads of good ideas in the suggestion threads

Absolutely anything that's new content, I don't care so much about fixes or ease of life things. The game is incredibly stale and needs something new like PVE or something there is no competition anymore either, when we created apex a couple of years ago I knew after a few months we would dominate for a long time quite easily and the game shouldn't be like this, I don't even play due to boredom and win every month.

• +1 Move the game onto HTTPS so that you stop getting browser warnings
• +1 Look at another xp drop at higher level as the current last one at 185ish is a bit low given the number of people well over 300 and even 400 these days. - And to give players the ability go get to 500 eventually :)
• +1 Ability to mass accept and kick bots from clans for tourny specifically
• +1 Sort the tourney so it isn't about lucky wins (make it at least 3 fights per bot), maybe even 5 fights.
• +1 Showing the last forum post/bmail when replying to a thread/bmail
• +1 Editing/deleting forum posts
• +1 Daily quests, weekly events, etc.

Promotion is never wrong, btw! Fresh blood or old skool blood is always welcome.

I think you should bring clan merge back also…

Absolutely anything that's new content, I don't care so much about fixes or ease of life things. The game is incredibly stale and needs something new like PVE or something there is no competition anymore either, when we created apex a couple of years ago I knew after a few months we would dominate for a long time quite easily and the game shouldn't be like this, I don't even play due to boredom and win every month.

For sure, competition would be nice. That might bring players back the game also. But what are you thoughts on PvE then? Fight with your whole clan vs a strong boss?

A few week (or months) ago on irc we had convo going about a second server. And maybe that server more like bots2 style, with cs and diplomacy.

I agree with the tournament suggestions of 3 fights 100% Also, if you can change energy to CS? Way more fun.

I like the pve part maybe gain so much energy per train win also so then there is something for us high levels to get other than just getting bored lol

But a clan boss that you all attack sounds good also

Could also make energy tied to your bot and not the clan so people in long dead clans can join new ones without losing years of work in some cases.

if doable sortable fighting list natively no need for extensions, remove targets with/without energy as a follow up to the first bit, to be shown the total amount of energy from the target if you are fighting them. Basically look at the extensions thread in forums and many of those would be appreciated natively stats for sessions aswell, ill think of other things and post back.

Customisable clan rank colours please :)

.. and a little x10,000 speed boost again as a present would be great too ;)

Wow, pretty excited about the future here.

-1. More options for builds, either in the form of new armaments or potentially some kind of rudimentary class system (maybe something like Natures from Pokemon, not necessarily suggesting skills/etc). A more robust assortment utilizing other stats would also be great just to mix things up -- battle mage bot, anyone?

-2. Mobile solution. A responsive web version could suffice. There are so many idle games these days, and I could really see myself grinding training bots on my phone.

-2a. Something that makes grinding more feasible throughout my work day. It'd be great if I could have my bot fight a training bot x-number of times and walk away . Maybe have some kudo cost/penalty involved for balancing/time gating (i.e. 50 battles for 100k repair deposit).

-3. It would be really great to have more than one bot on my account at once for trying alternative builds; just make it so we can only play one at any given time like other MMOs.

i agree with sj.. great idea also clan merg and wars would be great i also like the idea os cl.sc instead of energy and some new buffs!

An option to change your botname. Maybe for the cost of some TP and/or limit it to once a month/year/lifetime and email confirmation ofc. Limit it to players with 10 stars or more? Maybe some options/benefits for players with 10 stars or more. The only really option you get is 1 day ordering and some stash spaces.

I agree with suggestions for a second server. I think one of the issues with new player retention is they log in, see players online who are level 300+, then take an hour to get to level 10 or so, and think 'screw it'. New players aren't going to devote months to years of their lives to a game just to get on the same level as players who have been playing for years, especially when the player base is as small as it currently is.

I wouldn't mind a second server that has the "auto" train function.. like 10-50 trains per click, nothing crazy!

An auto train/click function kinda beats the whole idea of the game eh? So nay to that idea.

And that's why I also said "new server", so people like you can play like normal on this server. :P

Revamp of the energy system. More energy should be taken off strong bots, so that we stop this 'whore bots' meta once and for all. A la` real wars.

Temporary buff of stats. Since there are definitely best-builds for every level and fights end up at 50/50 given enough encounters, some situational buffs that increase stats temporarily or something similar, to give invested players an edge in certain situations

A new server would definitely bring bots backs to life, at least for awhile..

For sure, competition would be nice. That might bring players back the game also. But what are you thoughts on PvE then? Fight with your whole clan vs a strong boss?

A few week (or months) ago on irc we had convo going about a second server. And maybe that server more like bots2 style, with cs and diplomacy.

Yeah, possibly a clan-based trainer that scales off average clan level maybe with a large amount of hp which can be fought so many times a day, and after each fight it loses however much damage has been done in hp until it's beaten and you get energy and xp after each fight and maybe something when it's beaten too.

Quite like the idea of a new server with diplomacy and cs too but would like it to have a trophy system also and be a different colour personally just so it feels new.

That's just a couple of ideas I'm sure I could think of a lot more if I tried hard enough. Have suggested lots of stuff before which everyone liked though and nothing ever came of it.

Wow, 25 replies! This is awesome. Thanks so much everyone for all the feedback. It makes me happy to see that there are still so many people playing and interested. Here's an attempt to summarize everything I've seen in this thread so far, both to help keep me organized as well as to give you all some insight on my thoughts on each:

• Mass accept/kick from clans - Makes sense. I'll add this.

• New round of special buff - Seems reasonable. Watch out for a surprise!

• Game reset / energy decay - Makes sense that things have become kind of stale with over a decade of progress built up. Also makes it harder for new players to get a foothold. I don't really like the idea of anything that causes people to "lose" things (e.g. a game wipe or even decay over time). I remember one of the things that drew me to bots2 in the first place was the idea that I could keep making progress forever (at least back then, that seemed novel - many similar games at the time had monthly resets). So I think a nice middle ground could be something like the Diablo 2 (naturally!) season/ladder system where every so often (maybe every 3 months?), all bots get moved to a "non-ladder" version of the game. Those bots can still be played, but the idea is that they'd exist in a separate "universe" that no longer affects various game rankings. A new color for each season sounds fun too. There's a lot to figure out with this kind of change and it would be quite invasive, so think of this as more of a long-term idea rather than something you'll see this week.

• Exp drop - The scaling does get kind of wild at really high levels, so I'm not against this. I'll think about it.

• Shield re-work (and new items in general) - Taking a fresh look at item balance is probably indeed overdue. The part that scares me a bit with these kinds of changes is proper balance. I can only do so much testing myself. Maybe this is a good reason to introduce some sort of "beta" version of the game that people can use to test stuff like this and give feedback before it makes it into the real game. That's a bigger change too though, so TBD when this one would come.

• Eliminate quantity > quality tournament meta - I'm not against this, but I'd like to understand whether it's something that many people actually want. Requiring bots to be clanned for more than the treasury grace period seems like a reasonable (and quick) solution if we do go forward with this.

• Automatic excess treasury donations - I'll try to finish this one.

• Clan journal filter - I'll try to do this one.

• More clan ranks - Seems reasonable. It's unfortunately some of the oldest code in the game though and I'm afraid of how many assumptions about there being a specific number of clan ranks there might be baked into various places. I'll see if I can do it relatively painlessly/safely. If I do do it, it could potentially be tied as a bonus for "top" (by some measure) clans, or maybe just clan size or something.

• Showing the last forum post/bmail when replying to a thread/bmail - Showing just the last feels a little arbitrary, but maybe moving the reply/preview workflow to be embedded in the actual forum/bmail thread is reasonable. I'll think about it.

• Editing/deleting forum posts - I know these are pretty basic forum features, but I've gone back and forth in my head over time about them. I like the idea of the forum being a stable "record" that can't be modified in arbitrary ways after a discussion happened. I think allowing edits within a certain time window after a post (and if no one else has posted) seems fine though. Maybe I'll do this if I end up making the above change and re-working stuff. Open to feedback if this is something people have strong opinions about, maybe I'm in the minority.

• Stash re-ordering - The showroom code is a mess that I'm afraid to touch (probably one of the first things I wrote for the game), but yeah, this is reasonable. The way the showroom works more broadly (buying, selling, etc.) could probably use an overhaul in general. New players probably find it confusing.

• Add CAPTCHAs back - I went back and read some of http://bots4.net/forum/10/7227 to see if my thinking had changed since then. I'm not sure that it has. This is a sticky topic though and I recognize that removing CAPTCHAs was an unpopular decision. I think the heart of the matter though is players wanting a fair game. With that framing, CAPTCHAs are one way of potentially accomplishing that. Anti-cheating remains a very important topic, so I'll think about how best to handle this.

• Discord - I'll try to do this soon. I think it could help build up the community more.

• More fights per bot in tournaments - This is another one where I could use more feedback. More fights per bot pair basically means less variance in results, i.e. stronger bots will be favored. When I first added tournaments, my thinking for one battle per pair of bots was that it would be exciting to have some lucky upsets. Or perhaps folks feel the downside of being on the wrong side of an upset is too much?

• Password recovery - I accidentally broke email sending a couple weeks ago. It should be fixed as of May 31 though. Please post in the bug forum if you're still seeing issues though and I'll take a look.

• PvE - One day I'll come back to this. I need to think through exactly what it would look like though. This is another change that would probably benefit from beta testing.

• HTTPS - I'll try to do this soon.

• Daily quests, weekly events, etc. - I'll think about what this could look like.

• Clan merge - Let me know if more people want this. It feels pretty niche and sounds a bit involved to build, but a couple people mentioned it.

• Change energy to clan score - Sorry, not planning to tweak this system at this point. I'm not saying I'm against it forever, but it's very involved (it touches pretty much everything in the game) and very controversial. For now I'm looking more for "obvious" wins that will appeal to many.

• Leave clan without losing total energy - I'm torn on this one. Having a high cost to leave a clan is sort of by design, the goal being to form tighter bonds within a clan. Then again, maybe there's already a high enough social cost to leaving and maybe this would help stir up more competition. I'll think about it.

• Fight list sorting/filtering (+other extension features) - I'll try to get this one done, I know it's been asked for a lot over the years.

• Custom clan rank colors - I'll try to add this.

• More options for builds - I'm not against this, but these would be more invasive changes that would similarly benefit from beta testing like a couple other features mentioned.

• Better mobile support - I'll play around with the game layout and see if I can make it more "responsive". If there are any particular pain points that make it more annoying to play on mobile, let me know and I'll try to make sure I address them.

• Idle progress - I've actually gotten pretty into idle games myself, so I see the appeal of this. I'll think about how it would balance with active play though because obviously active battling is sort of the core game loop.

• Multiple bots on single account - I really want this for a variety of reasons and I think it's something people would really like (even if you don't realize that just yet!). It would be a really really big change though so I don't know when I'll get to this.

• Botname changes - Not against it, but not sure when I'll get to it.

• More star benefits - I'm open to this (and more broadly, changing how the game is monetized), but need to think about what the benefits would actually be.

• Real wars - Unlikely to happen. I'm having trouble finding an example thread, but I remember when I made it so that it became easier for bots to lose energy they acquired, it was one of the most unpopular changes that was pretty universally disliked. I see it as kind of a PvP vs. PvE thing. Some people like games with PvP; some prefer PvE. Despite this game revolving around attacking other player's bots (i.e. PvP), the way it gets played with dumpers makes it closer to PvE IMO. True PvP where there were real consequences from being attacked by another player didn't sit well with a lot of people (but I also recognize there are some that really enjoy that).

• Stat buffs - This is tricky to balance. All the of existing buffs intentionally do not offer any battle advantages. Just time/exp/kudos/energy. Introducing outcome-affecting buffs would be a bit of a can of worms I think.

Thanks again - keep the ideas and feedback flowing!

More fights per bot in tournaments - This is another one where I could use more feedback. More fights per bot pair basically means less variance in results, i.e. stronger bots will be favored. When I first added tournaments, my thinking for one battle per pair of bots was that it would be exciting to have some lucky upsets. Or perhaps folks feel the downside of being on the wrong side of an upset is too much?

Ender me and you once had a conversation in bots2 about how you were not winning the tournament despite having the strongest bot. And we both didn't think it was fair that bot named George won just because of levels

Now just think how others feel when not winning because of being unlucky

I think the strongest bot should 100% win the tourney if not then what is the point in trying build the strongest bot Lol

I hear what you're saying, but I think that situation was a little different. With the bots2 formula, it was flat-out impossible for me to win cat 1 on Project X. I think it's uncontroversial that the strongest bot having a 0% chance to win is bad. I think there's more room for debate though whether that should 100% chance or, say, 95% chance.

Ender, do you still have Rene's old data re: new shields/block formula? I recall Rene and I had decided on a few names for new shields eg. dragonbone bulwark, void wall, however I couldn't find them on my old spreadsheet I have available. I could help out doing some testing if you can find it. Alternatively maybe we could enlist ChatGPT to help test out any balance changes?

I think additional fights in tournament would be useless without changes to how bots enter currently. It would just further cement us never losing a tourny as we have the best builds spammed pretty heavily to 140 and enough bots in 150-cat 1 to never lose to anyone if we enter them all.

I think a decent alternative change would be to limit the total number of bots a clan can enter similar to the Energy limit of 20 per clan getting clan trophies. Granted people like me with an army could just enter multiple clans but it would be hindering your main clan from winning.

I do think that the game is super dead overall. I suggest the energy being tied to your bot as a change will help some that are still active being able to play with a more active clan. Ill throw Myriad under bus as an example. Granted he wouldnt leave Escapism but hes in a long dead clan and if he ever wanted to play somewhere more active he loses 10+ years of progress which isnt worth it.

As a benefit for new players. The hardest part once you get them in the door is keeping them here. Between the Trophy point system favoring long term activity and the amount of time fights and trains take perhaps looking at making the 150% speed buff the default fight speed.

You could also change how buffs work instead of a fight limit make it a 1x last x time buff I would say a 12 hour period as thats long enough for high levels to still get at or over 1k train value out of it.

Theres also the option of adding additional buffs and lowering the cost of current ones to compensate. For instance Slash all tier 1-3 buffs price in half and add a 4th tier priced where the current tier 3 is set for players that can afford it. Would help newer players with low tp still get benefit from buffs and a goal to work on for good buffs.

Another new player suggestion I can think of is increase the TP given from 1x only trophies. Not things like the 100-1k dex but things like message a bot make a forum post etc to give more free tp for a new player. That should limit it so its not too exploitable and give new players some extra tp to get them started.

Regarding tourney changes, I don't really mind if it stays as 1 fight per bot or is increased. I think if there are limits put on how many bots per clan can enter, then it would be reasonable to increase the number of fights to compensate for the reduced number of bots entering.

Re: quantity vs quality: for me personally the joy of building tourney bots is not in the building process itself, but rather the theorycrafting aspect and discovering new builds. Bots is already an insanely grindy game, and to add that requirement of building 10+ bots per category just to have a chance to win the tourney is not fun, and IMO goes against the idea that a tourney should be won by the best bot.

To digress a little, I would also still like to see the con rule changed or even removed altogether (http://bots4.net/forum/4/6485). For the purposes of making the best tourney bots, the min con rule paradoxically prevents some of the strongest builds in the game at multiple different level ranges. One shot bots are still easily made when you can have 0% absorb and -con gear, and I have not seen one convincing argument for why it should remain in the game.

+1 to idle progress. Maybe not as a part of the main game, but possibly as a seasonal mechanic, or the PvE part? It could be somewhat balanced by making you weaker and/or slower when idle, or make a built-in auto-clicker cost gold per use or something.

Whenever you get Discord up and running, let me know. My tag over there is AquaRegia#9152.

One thing I would like to see is

-Ability to buy items you cannot currently equip

It would be nice to buy able to buy things, especially uniques, and be able to visually work towards being able to equip them.

More and better ways to level up faster

Don't make an app, everyone does that and everyone hates it. Look at what Reddit's going through right now lol

You've kinda nailed all the big ones, and as a few others have suggested, the showroom is probably the place that might have the biggest impact. Being able to organize your stuff would be huge, and while I think it's a core part of the game, I think the showroom getting away from a global refresh might be really big, especially since the current version isn't really scalable. Even back in the bots2 days you'd see how difficult it could be if say even just 2-3 users were camping for something, imagine if that scaled to even 5, 10, more? You're already kinda luck based on getting equipment unless you spend money, and then if you meet all the requirements for an item and happen to see it in the showroom, you still might not get it just because you were too slow.

There's probably actually important to figure out actually, if promoting the game and enticing new players to not only try but stick around is going to be a big thing, the game should scale in some way right? I think bots was sorta balanced around having a very small active playerbase, and it still does, I don't know where I'm going with this, I'm ranting

Glad to see you back Ender, hope you're doing well and you weren't impacted by all these tech layoffs going on

So this is about how my experience has gone with working on updates so far:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbSehcT19u0

You start out wanting to do one thing, then realize some internal uninteresting-to-players thing really ought to be dealt with first, then you discover another thing, and so on. Yak shaving, for those familiar with the term. I had near-zero professional work experience as a software engineer when I started building this game in 2010. And now in 2023, this is really showing as I revisit some of the core game code. For instance, the battle code is a huge mess of ~800 lines of very very old-style tangled PHP that calls a bunch of other classes all of which have side effects. It does trainer battles, bot-vs-bot battles, and tournaments all in one place. Oh and of course no unit tests! I just held everything in my head as I built it and tested it extensively before deploying. In short, the code has become a bit of a nightmare.

But it's not all negative. I've been having a lot of fun jumping back into the code. I'm building up test harnesses so that I can safely modify core game logic with confidence and not worry about what edge case I've broken (yet inevitably I probably will eventually). So there is progress, but it's not visible and it's going to be some more time until changes roll out. I just wanted to share how things are going so far with this quick note. I'm back to work now, but I'll keep chipping away and making progress as time allows. My development environment is fully up-and-running which was really the big hurdle and I'm looking forward to building what y'all want to see.

In the meantime, keep the suggestions coming - a lot of these are really great. Some thoughts on what's been mentioned since my last post:

• IIRC Rene never shared anything with me for shields/block, but I could be forgetting. If someone wants to make a proposal of item/formula changes, I'd welcome that. That's how some past updates were done.
• I like the idea of changing the tournament meta of spamming as many quality bots as possible, whether that's requiring bots to have been in a clan longer than the treasury grace period (seems easier to build) or limiting the number of bots per clan that gain clan points (might not actually change the meta?).
• The more I think about making it so that you take your energy with you when you leave a clan, the more it makes sense for promoting competition. I'll very likely do this.
• Improving new player experience and increasing the early game pace is also something I definitely want to do.
• The buff system probably needs some sort of rework, e.g. using trophy points which are a sort-of finite resource to buy them maybe doesn't make sense. Needs a lot of thought though.
• I'm open to changing the con rule. I'm curious what issues that will bring about, but I suppose we can deal with them when we get to them.
• For idle progress, my rough idea is to do something like WoW sleep bonus. In other words, it brings 24/7 grinders and casuals just a little bit closer together (not the same) by giving a bit of a bonus to casuals while still giving 24/7 grinders the clear advantage. Definitely needs a lot more thought though.
• I have a Discord server up now, but I'm going to get Jane up and running there as well as some additional goodies before "releasing" it.
• Ability to buy items you cannot currently equip seems like an uncontroverisal nice change. Please speak up if anyone anticipates problems from this, but I can't think of any.
• Agreed on not making an app. As a long-time Reddit mobile user, I too am so annoyed by their app pushing. I'd like to improve the mobile web experience instead.
• Good points about the showroom not scaling if the game grows. I'll probably wait to revisit that though until if/when the game gets more active.

P.S. Very nice to see you both, DS and Emanuel (and everyone else of course)! It sure has been awhile. And thank you, I fortunately wasn't laid off but work has definitely been different this year. We'll see how things go.

Don’t want to sound like a Karen but I’m already quite disappointed to be honest with the scale of updates you’re proposing barring maybe new equipment there is no new content and it is a push to call that new content anyway.

Not saying I don’t agree with a lot of them them but they are pretty irrelevant let’s be honest, is buying equipment you can’t equip or keeping energy when you change clan really going to bring players that left the game after doing the same things for years back to the game when they have become completely bored of it(which is my personal relationship with the game) before we even talk about scaling the showroom on the size of the player base.

Don’t agree with changing the tourney I think it’s quite nice knowing the odd poorly built bot could sneak a win, it would become less accessible to newer or less experienced players and the favourite doesn’t always win in life that’s the beauty of sport and also gaming I guess if you like, not to mention it would probably just shift the power more to the already dominant clan. I still think the number of bots contributing to monthly clan energy should be capped to 10 like I did years ago in maybe 2014 I think when I was in the losing clan and people thought it was just because I wanted to win.

I can think of lots of similar quite game improving updates which would be cool but wouldn’t really tempt me back to play again, big exp drops at 350 and 400 as when you hit 400 unless you dedicated basically your life to training everyday for 12 hours you will get 1 level maybe 2 if you really no life it. Maybe some animation on the text when you do a big hit, newer more expensive buffs for players that have farmed lots of tp , news trophies e.g “can’t touch this” on trainer bots and many more, even some style of battle pass with certain buff rewards or trophy points maybe why not but at the end of it all you are just tweaking the game and not really adding to it where as I think a lot of players got bored of doing the same thing after so many years or have the feeling the basically completed most achievements in the game, as I’ve said that’s my situation anyway.

That’s only my opinion though and I’m sure people will disagree, it’s good you are thinking about working on the game no matter how challenging or ambitious the updates are, that’s if they happen at all anyway.

My goal with this thread is to get feedback from all of you, the players, so that I focus my effort on stuff that you all want to see. If there's something you want to see that's not being talked about, please definitely bring it up. I'm sharing my own thoughts on what's been suggested so far to be transparent (when I play smaller games like this, that's something I personally value as a player). For now I'm mostly aiming for less controversial ideas that aren't massive undertakings and that are consistent with my long-term vision for the game (in places where I have strong preferences). I know not every change will be interesting to every person, but my hope is that over time everyone gets at least something that they want to see and that the overall game quality improves over time. I won't be able to revamp the entire game overnight with tons and tons of new content that attracts back lots of old players, but I can make the game better over time and work towards bigger improvements in the long run. It's been a long time since I did active development work on the game and this is my way of starting to get back into things.

Perhaps a short term thing would be to update the weapons in general, if not armor as well. Add unique weapons to the mix and make more weapons in general.

You could also switch things up with adding CON as a req for weapons (or even armor?) as well. Switch on con as a req for STR or perhaps CON and STR for a weapon or armor. I remember enjoying BOTS2 quite a lot when I was younger but coming back to it I don't feel much... Excitement? Taking a look at the weapons.

Armor is fun to look for in regards to uniques and maybe getting an extra few stats, but unique weapons or unique takes as well just to spice things up would also be pretty nice as well. Even if you don't add CON as a req, just more variety in weapons, and possibly even armor/shields would be sweet.

Perhaps for the clan/tournament variability..

-Wager energy for tournaments success (Or perhaps even cost to get into the tourney) -Energy can be used for small training/battling exp/kudos buffs or clan wide buffs -Clan passive bonuses for having a total energy thresh hold req for every bot in the clan

Some sort of leagues/alternate server/reset could be cool. Old school RuneScape has had some success with them. You can change meta's up and maybe make them progress faster, shop camping be easier, etc

Don't think any sort of energy degradation makes sense cause the HoF is meant to be historical.

maybe add buffs that you can get when you train like one in a thousand or something.

This can be different depending on which bot you train against such as 1000 exp buff in 10 trainings or 100 extra energy per fight in 20 fights, gain 10 str in 1 hour (able to freak without stars?) a loot to play with here!

maybe one a lot rarer where you get a lvl directly when training against the hardest training bot 1 in 50000 on that maby? With this you get more out of training in high lvls when thers a chance of instant lvl even if it is very low

To piggyback off of Fishwick, instead of "Spending" or "Betting" energy

Set energy milestones out to infinity - each milestone awards one "Tournament" or "Power" point that can be used to bet on tournaments, spend on temporary buffs to increase training speed, efficiency, etc. That way Energy spending/loss doesn't wreck HoF but still keeps the Use of and spendature of the energy tokens for fun shenanigans that much better.

Could also perhaps include clans wars where each clan can spend said tokens to duel each other for clan rankings? Or bet tokens on an outcome of a clan v clan duel?

Could you delete bots thats been inactive for 3-5 years ? so people will be able to use their usernames and bot names

Bad idea, all these bots is what makes it a good game, always something to attack.. 75% of the bots have probably been offline for 5 years.. deleting all of them would suck.

i'm probably one of the newest players to join so i don't know all the terms/what things do as of yet - guess that'll come with time - but an appendix that explains the terms/what things mean would be handy

i also find the game isn't exactly "new player" friendly - no explanation of what you need to do when you start and the forum isn't exactly easy to navigate

then we get to xp - i haven't figured out yet how sometimes i earn 100k xp and sometimes i earn 100xp when fighting people that are my lvl

then we have kudos (hope i spelt that right) - frustrating to earn at low lvls when trying to lvl up. i might fight someone and earn 10-20-100k kudos YAY head to the showroom find an item and crack on - but most of the time i seem to earn 1 kudos and the auto repair is more than that so find myself spamming training to pay repair bills rather than getting new items to help me progress

% kudos you loose when you loose a fight seems steep too at low lvls when it seems Kudos is hard to come by

guess it's the downside to joining in with a game that's been around this long but as i noted not "new player" friendly

not really suggestions i appreciate that but wanted to say something

Sir trainalot sure its better to play against dead bots than real players

Dex Armours - Maybe half defense to strength counterparts Crafting of weapons somehow with quest points Better mobile support More buffs Shields that give stats Max kudos above 5mil Auto-distribute of stats if chosen Maybe other ways to train Boss fights for clans

Find "useless" items during training you can sell for kudos to help low levels, maybe base it off int or "train wins" and level to get more kudos

A mechanism similar to training except you work towards redis points instead of experience. Maybe call it "reprogramming" or something? Should shake up the meta a bit and give a reason to log bots who have haven't been logged in in years.

Summarizing some of what I've seen to give myself a reference (obviously no guarantees of what I will/won't focus on, but it's really great to hear about what's on people's minds):

• More itemization/variation, potentially unique weapons.
• Clan passive bonuses.
• Season/league system.
• Some sort of drop system from training.
• Streamline new player experience (documentation, hard to acquire kudos, too easy to lose kudos).
• More ways to gain redis points.

I'd like to see a revamp of the buff system, to not have it bound to trophy points but rather a "Daily" thing where we could pick one of the buffs that we want for that day. Think this would make people stick around and play lots more.. instead of waiting several years for the trophy points to build up. Just my 2 cents.

As a retired player I will give my opinion in this post.

I just log in to sign my main bot in tournament. I put a monthly warning in my calendar to not forget it, otherwise I wouldn't remember it most of the months. So currently tournament is the only thing making me log in.

When I saw this thread I was excited so thanks Ender for finally getting back to update the game. I can't remember when was the last time I hanged for a while in the game. I think this just shows how important is this thread.

Now that I have 2 kids, I just play games that I can play for 5min and leave, like Clash Royale and Marvel Snap. I can't spend like +30min in a game anymore, unless I don't sleep (as is the case of today). I don't see how I could return to play bots actively in my current situation. I don't use a personal computer no more, I just use my phone to play games. So no more bots playing when watching a movie in another window.

After reading all the suggestions, I like the restriction of bots signing in for tourneys to stop the meta of making tons of bots with the same build for each cat. I think adding new shields continuing Rene's work should be also done. I'm pretty sure he did share with you the list of new shields and the new absorbing formula. About leagues and resets, monthly energy resets already work like seasons, but releasing a new server every 5 or 10 years seems reasonable for me, so +1 to a new server to make old players back and new players to stick around.

To end my post, what prevents me of selling all my stuff is to have the resources ready in the case I play again or to give access to them to my sons if they want to test this game in the next 10-15 years. Which leads me to these questions: When they have the age to play will bots4 still be running? This thread shows it seems it will. Will they want to play a text game in 2030s? Definitely not but I will try to pass them my passion for the game and highlight what made me play for +10 years :)

Ah I forgot to say one account for multiple bots would be huge! Probably I have bots around that I completely forgot about them and having all the resources in just one account would be the best update in ages for this game in my opinion.

It has been a month since this thread has been made...

Are there any changes to the game? :)

Agreed about trophy points. It wasn't a very well thought-out system from the start. With some exception, they're not a very renewable resource, so I understand how tying buff purchases to a somewhat-finite resource is kind of unappealing. I need to think more on what I would actually change, but for now just acknowledging that I don't love the current setup.

Thanks for sharing your perspective, Esv. I hope your kids one day enjoy bots4 as much as many of us enjoyed bots2 growing up. :) As long as there are still people playing, I'll keep this running.

No user-visible updates have been pushed out yet, but I'm still chipping away at stuff when I can.

Make any attempts to bring more life to the game.

There is 10-15~ active players?

Two cunts own just about everything.

Fix the dumping system please I really don't want to spend hundreds of hours building dumpers I have more or less and hour a day would be fun to bring back something like clan score

Was thinking of a graph for each bot that goes off the daily database dump.

So when you click on someone's profile, it will say x amount of energy in the last 24 hours, week and month. Same with levels, wins, trains.

For energy, it'd be maxed out for the days of the month, but the others could be the last 30 days. Like the documentation page, but way less data.

Would be neat to see how much energy/wins you are doing in a week or something.

+1

As Emanuel suggested in another thread, add the Bots4Statistics to the game, would be nice not having to use extensions etc.

Love to see the effort come back around to take another look at fixing and updating things. I remember a very long list where it had priority v complexity, probably already building one again?

I have been away for years, recently came back here and there this year to train while watching Z Nation play 7 Days to Die.

+1 to more xp decrease steps for higher levels.

+1 for PvE elements. I'm not much of a PvP, so PvE things are more interesting.

I'll continue to find little pieces of this game enjoyable as it continues on. Love to see old names still active, amazing.

Can you get the verification emailing time down? It currently takes 15+ minutes if not a hour.

Remove the 5 day restriction on temp star transfers i.e. let us transfer them at any time and as much as we like :)

Or at least to 2 days.

Just throwing it out there because it would bring me and probably some other people back: make a second server like blue was to green on bots2 but make it more like bots2 (I know floR doesn't like that but eh). By this I mean:

• Add diplomacy back to clans.
  

• You can keep the EPH system, I don't care, but I think the old 2 CS per battle with a war going on was better or something similar because you didn't have to wait days for energy to be gained. You could go hard from the get go regardless and would add more activity to the game overall.

• You could also make train bots earn you CS or energy, thus giving trainers more to do (maybe half or less of a real bot). Or you could have people exclusively fight train bots and gain more energy/cs as they get higher (or maybe do the old bots2 thing with having to have 2/3 or 3/4 of str/dex requirement for weapons), thus making people only have to make one bot to play on (could get boring but so is fighting dumpers and whores really, at least this provides some challenge, especially if you add random variables to the training bots to increase str or something per battle, that'd be cool, probably not possible though). I think having people be able to focus on one bot more is a good idea overall though and would increase overall players since a lot don't think about having to make 100 whores/dumpers/other bots or something to support themselves (not saying you do, but it's implied).

  I'm sure there's more to add but I'll leave it there since I doubt you'll work on it anyway (not being mean here, you just probably want to focus on the main game itself). The only reason I add this is because I think older school players would like something like this and it'd be better to get newer players to come in and stay.

  Please feel free to shit on my ideas though :) I won't read them anyway.

I remember a very long list where it had priority v complexity, probably already building one again?

Good memory! I indeed used to have a spreadsheet with those columns (or something like them) that got synced to a forum thread here somewhere. Can't find it now though since it seems like the forums stopped getting indexed. My current tracking system (been using for probably a decade at least now) is just a big Google Doc. It has ~20 pages of miscellaneous notes and thoughts on various ideas. When I think of something or hear an idea I like, that's where it goes. And likewise when I want to work on the game, that's typically where I look first.

Can you get the verification emailing time down? It currently takes 15+ minutes if not a hour.

I haven't heard about this being an issue from anyone else. I also just tested it myself and got the email in a few seconds. If you (or others) are seeing this persistently though, start a thread in the Bugs subforum and I'll take a closer look.

I know floR doesn't like that but eh

FWIW I don't think this is true. I haven't talked to him in years, but I never got any vibes from him about being territorial. I think he was just ready to move on from running bots2 after a few too many headaches it caused.

On the email timing, it may be my syncing. It's supposed to update every 15minutes, but sometimes takes way longer. Just did one and it showed just a few seconds but took 30minutes to "show up".

Sorry!

About the flor thing, I thought one time you said something about him not wanting you to make bots4 like bots2 or something. But that was so long ago now, who knows.

Of the other ideas I've read, I think additions to the clan accept/invite system are long overdue. It's a pain to accept more than one bot at a time into a clan (you have to open 20+ tabs to make it faster if you want to accept 20+ bots) and invites are no better. I think a simple table of all currently applied bots and a checkmark box to accept/deny applications so you could do many at once would be quite helpful. Something like this:

Bot name Accept
Bot1 Yes
Bot2 No

Apply all

That sort of thing shouldn't be too hard to implement I would think and would reduce the strain on tournament/dumper/whore clans along with the new automatic treasury addition. On top of this you could maybe add an auto invite system or auto accept system with a max member count thing and that could reduce it even further (say I apply 20 bots to a clan and it automatically just accepts them, although I could see this being abused maybe). You could also apply the accept table idea to the kick system so you can kick more than one at a time.

This game is pay to win.

Get rid if that.

Make unlimited stash space free for everyone so we can all build top lvl bots so we can all compete equally.

Still make stars be able to order in gear.

This game for sure isnt pay to win. Example, there is a lot of free energy at the lower levels. And you can just keep training to get a high level. The one Who winst in monthly, is still the person Who clicks the most

Gee, that was rich coming from you.

Why so?

It is pay to win. If that isn't true then stop using the ratio whores and dumpers. Use train bots to level up and start fighting all the low level energy whore like you keep telling everybody else to do.

Why stop using dumpers? I have made them all myself and made most of my RWs by fighting crappy bots. Its not that hard to make them, it just takes time

Game is 0% p2w i could potentially agree pay 4 convenience but not to win. So basically your telling us, the people who made our own rws/dumpers and whatnot to not use them and play like ppl who havent committed the hundreds if not thousands of hours to speed up our progress ? The game has been and will always be "whoever has the most time to click consistently will win monthly that applies to trainers aswell but its not as linear due to overall xp u need to train vs grabbing free energy on a daily. Eps was a very good example when he had El Hefe he was training with min xp buff and got from like 402-412 in a very short period cant remember how quickly lol but his consistency was on point and we cant forget he was dumping on 1 bot meanwhile wd like 3 other of his dumpers XD

Atm it’s join apex to win because all the other clans like mount wario and pirate haven are just bad at the game and salty because of it. casts line

Hey @Ender! - any new updates or other things in the works?

Just throwing it out there that MrZal8 isn't my bot. Although I probably have said similar things in the past lol. That said, I'm all for a major shakeup in how things are done anyway. The reason the game doesn't have many players and has lost most of its active players is because of the well, for lack of a better term, toxic way things are done. You want to go after 1st? Go ahead, it's not pay to win, but they will come after you in probably more than one way. For all the talk of equal treatment etc. I've seen many a dirty trick used over the years even without taking into account all the cheating that has gone on.

Not saying that the ones who put the most effort in shouldn't win but making it more of a mountain to climb + the harassment people get doesn't help the more casual player who just wants to help out and have some fun. At this point the only people left are those that are A) on speaking terms and in Apex or B) those Apex and others have pissed off and quit or come in and wail about the status of the game to no avail and nothing gets done (see me, Pirate, others). Now this state of affairs isn't helpful to the game as a whole and will continue to decline as is. It's no real fun for Apex to fight nobody and nobody wants to fight Apex due to their probably 1,000+ dumpers and ratio whores. Ender could spend 1,000+ hours making new features for the game but this would still be its biggest problem. Apex members, others, and Ender himself may defend that it isn't their fault this is the way things are, but it is and without something truly new or different or a reset of sorts, nothing will change. It'll still be 3-10 people on at a time, doing absolutely jack shit other than getting Apex 1st or training or fighting a RW. I always thought of this as a design flaw that if you allow people to hoard too much on a multiplayer game then those who hoard the most will win, easy enough.

Sorry for the long rant and I hope it doesn't discourage Ender from adding to the game, it's just what I think. It's why me and many others just plain left. But it's fine, I'll go back to my hole now that I feel like I got this off my chest :) Keep up the good work Ender. If you figure out a new way to play the game or something, I might come back ^_^

Speaking from the perspective of someone who has scored primarily through dumpers for the most part I would say the way the game is designed right now is incredibly frustrating and overly tedious to play "meta".

Energy dumpers that are built to not get raped by random low level scorers is cool and secures you free energy. Downsides being the backend maintenance that goes into them. The constant need to repair them requires having kudo bots built and ready and constant retraining to keep them repair. Theres also the annoyance of every win you take from them for your main your gonna have to dump back onto them to keep eph at 60 long term. The other reason this has an edge is the fight times on average are lower than a traditional scorer as you can stack speed buff and DE3 plus you are fighting bots higher level to further increase the fight speeds.

I do wish ender would do something to change this as the many hours of upkeep make it quite boring overall. I believe the base fight speed should be increased as low level scorers take far too long per fight on average to accomplish similar numbers. They also have a serious disadvantage of 1 buff per day vs dumpers always having buffs.

I've set the monthly energy record twice with this last one pushing to 6mil. You know what I got doing that? A completely fucked sleep schedule problems with my wrist and a total loss of willpower to score seriously ever again. It made me hate playing bots and I took a few months to be very lazy as I just couldnt bother with that kind of monotony again.

The same could be said about the current tournament spam fest. Making the 75 I currently have I hated every minute of it even with Oldtime helping me camp equipment. Between waiting on stars to unlock to move around to the sheer bullshit some of these builds require to manipulate stats at certain stages for a 1% shift in win rate vs others. Or the chains of kudo bots you need to down rape kudos to the lower level cats. I dont recommend it to anyone to bother trying to get into it.

Ratio whores are probably the only true convenience in this game. They are the only true shortcut to leveling up quickly. Granted at the higher level end of the spectrum its still incredibly slow to level up but thats just the nature of the grind on this game.

At the end of the day thats the way the game is and as long as it doesnt change none of these issues will change. Right now though the clan race isnt even secured by any means its just a few people that happen to click more. At my peak Myself or chiseps could win it in a 1 bot clan if we bothered the same could be said of some players long gone.

To say its pay to win is a serious misguided attitude its more of pay for convenience at best. You could give everything I have to anyone from the other clans and they would accomplish nothing with it. Best example was trk coming in buying a ton of things that could of won any month and he accomplished nothing. Granted he started acing but even with that he didnt do much of anything of note. The game still requires you to actually sit around for days on end clicking and very few have shown they have the willpower to do it over the years.

Good at bots, that's neat.

I bet your parents are proud, they expected fuck all from you.

I might be a little old-fashioned (or just old), as I remember a time when not everybody felt entitled to be 1st place, and complain that there's work to be put in.

Win at life, or win at some random game... each with his own.

The p2w part is the stars that give you extra space to hold random gear to get builds that you cant get with out extra space. so if you have no start good luck having a bot win the tournament.

Thats just what i think but i could be wrong i have not played in a long time.

Takes some more time, but you can build a tourney with no stars. It, for sure is, more convinient to have stars, but no needs for them.

stars need to be monetized for the game to stay up lol and they arent p2w bcause they dont give you an advantage in the game its more convenient to stash/order more stuff and quicker. anything that cannot be attained in a game by farming/playing and can be biought straight up is p2w, like i said this game is more pay for convenience at most. in a case were lets say stars for example gave you a permanent lets say speed buff that doesnt run out then that i agree is p2w but just owning stars isnt p2w.

Hey @Ender! - any new updates or other things in the works?

Haven't had a chance to work on things too much in the past few weeks, real life has been hectic but I'm definitely still itching to get to some game coding work. I know things are going slower than folks would like, but I'm still monitoring this thread. Thanks everyone for understanding and being patient. :)

I like the mentioning of a second server, but haven't seen much discussion about it.

agree with suggestions for a second server. I think one of the issues with new player retention is they log in, see players online who are level 300+, then take an hour to get to level 10 or so, and think 'screw it'. New players aren't going to devote months to years of their lives to a game just to get on the same level as players who have been playing for years, especially when the player base is as small as it currently is.

Myriad's comment is spot on and I agree with it.

I think something like creating a second server that would eventually result in the same case after long term play (think bots 2 blue and green where blue eventually ended up just like blue) wouldn't be a solution.

I like the way Ogame runs their game (if you are familiar with that game). Perhaps something akin to that could be done. They maintain a "main server" and open new servers at regular intervals (you could set the time frame). The new servers have small changes (x2 speed, x2 resources, etc) and the rotate the changes each server. Once the server reaches "EoL" (I'm not sure if it's based on server age or player base) then they roll all the data from the servers they're shutting down into "Server 1".

Perhaps something like this could be implemented. I think it has a lot of potential and upside.

Was reading up on some of the updates here and it's so awesome to see how many players are getting in on the suggestions. That being the case, if it could be possible, perhaps there could be a test server at some point in the process -- given you mentioned having to rework a number of backend details, it could help provide you a larger base of testing so the game can become more robust as you progress.

It would be cool to see Blue come back.

Nos, what you describe is kind of like the Ladder from D2. Just a flat reset so everyone starts again from the beginning. Having folks here all start on one server then merge it into the main it would work like an estuary, everyone grows up together, then eventually move on out to the ocean (main server). It would stop the intimidation factor. Though how much new life would that foster? That's benefit v work to weigh.

This game is basically who can attack their own bots the fastest and the most

prove me wrong cunts

If mount wario could only hit their own bots, they have nothing to hit.... Yet, they end up 2nd/3rd most months and keep moaning about shit. Start building your own bots/dumpers and give us some damn competition.

Let's be real, 90% of active players left are already in Apex. There are only a handful of players who even bother scoring for other clans, such as Mount Wario. Without new players (who don't just end up joining us), there's never going to be any "real" competition. I think that's the main problem, a lack of new players who actually stick around. I'd love to see a more active player base again, but unfortunately, I just don't see that happening any time soon, if ever.

It's the same argument every time. Happened with escapism strung out and apex. I'm sure when we all go inactive the torch will pass to the next dominant clan.

Lol

“The torch” -Zizu

I’d compare it to a candle, a child’s first birthday candle.

Random idea I thought of just now: Instead of having people watch the showroom constantly, why not have a custom notification for a specific item you want come up when your righting kinda like the "You've been attacked 1 time" notification? So say you're doing some dumping/scoring/training etc., it could come up with "A Manic Cranium is in the showroom right now!" and then you could open the showroom and get it.

It doesn't get rid of the use of stars but does reduce the "pain in the ass clicking the showroom every 60 seconds" threshold.

Just an idea.

Hey, what's up next?

Bring back the showroom christmas hats and boosted armour chances :D

Ability to moderate clan forums would also be something nice :)

I just want more items!

Agreed about trophy points. It wasn't a very well thought-out system from the start. With some exception, they're not a very renewable resource, so I understand how tying buff purchases to a somewhat-finite resource is kind of unappealing. I need to think more on what I would actually change, but for now just acknowledging that I don't love the current setup.

With nearly every game these days having a successful daily reward system, with the rewards growing better each day. Something of that nature could be implemented.

A repeatable Bronze trophy for each daily login. Silver after 7 bronze daily in a given month. Gold after 14 days in a month and Plat on the last day of the month if you successfully logged in every day for the month.

Best suggestion, so far..

The game definitely needs a shake up.
I could see a new server being a bit of fun, or even a hardcore server, if your ratio ever drops below 1.00 then your bot is deleted.
Force more active management of bots.
Having all bots on one account could be a nice change.
Changing the scoring system is probably a good idea, at least so you have to actively use your main bot to score instead of dumping energy onto it.

The ability to see level 1 bots list. :P

Just going to type a few things out here:

Seasonal Servers, Energy and Dumpers
These servers would probably need to last between 3-12 months and could introduce new mechanics. One I would be especially interested in is a return to clan score and warring as bots2 had it.
I tend to get the feeling energy is a failed experiment at this point and instead of making the game more competitive has made it more insular. The major problem I am seeing with energy vs clan score is that one bot = one attacker per day in the energy system, where clan score allowed multiple people to share resources and attack the same bots throughout the day.
There is also the problem of energy being a finite resource, which means there is never a cap to sources of energy being valuable, and they actually scale much harder than they did in bots2. Every active member of a clan needs as many sources of energy as they are capable of draining each day, whereas clan score only required 3-6 (maybe a few more) whore clans, adding new members didn't change this much.
This leads us to dumpers, because of energy being finite it is much more important to protect the sources of energy you do have. Which leads people to creating near perfect bots at the minimum possible level to attack their own main scorer. This serves the purpose of making it nearly impossible for anyone else to take energy from your protected sources as well as making it harder for competition to organically form. New clans don't have these resources, and it's impossible to negotiate for access to these sources as it would have a direct negative effect on your own clans ability to score, under the clan score system you were able to pay stars to war other people whore clans and have access to resources you otherwise wouldn't.

Rework or Removal of Buffs
Due to the limited nature of buffs (only one buff per day, total of 1000 attacks) they are actually far more valuable on a dumper than they are on your main scoring bot. With an attack limit of 200, each dumper effectively has 5 days worth of each buff, allowing them to stack buffs and get greater benefit out of them. In contrast your main scoring bot only has access to 1000 buffed attacks per day before, which effectively makes buffs 5x more expensive than on a dumper bot.
My suggestion here is to make buffs time-limited instead of attack-limited. This would remove the disparity in value between scoring bots and dumpers, and may even make scoring bots have a slight edge in terms of buff efficiency. This doesn't fix the problems of energy scarcity and the reasons people use dumpers in the first place, which we discussed above.
I also suggest either increasing the discount on buffs, or making them free after reaching certain milestones.

Trophy Points
The previous point leads us here. Trophy Points (tps) as they are currently implemented are effectively a pay-to-play system at best, or pay-to-win at worst. They actively discourage having a main bot as the only way to get more tps is by winning tourneys (not viable on a scoring bot), clan competitions (previous point, more insular clans), resetting your bot (losing progress of wins, energy, levels), or buying stars (p2p/p2w).

Stars and Stash
I am going to be blunt here, stars are too expensive. Stars need to be cheaper and stash space needs alternative ways to be increased, or it needs to be increased by default.
The suggestion I have here is allowing everyone to have some number of spaces either by default (4-8), or purchased with gold, and allow stars to increase this further. Change the benefits of stars to include increased shop chances, cosmetic abilities (changing the ui colour, ect.), sound effects could also be considered (play a custom sound when fight finishes win/lose).
When consolidating accounts has been implemented a form of subscription could be considered with other, additional benefits.

Tourney
Pretty simple, make it a bo3/bo5, consider smaller weekly events which grant entries to the larger monthly event, and even a yearly world championship with lavish prizes. Could be permanent +stash, stars or even cosmetic identifiers on the fight pages/next to your name.

The Shop
Simple change here, increase the number of shops, tied to the last digit of a bots id, if the game became more active this would almost certainly be needed either way.

New Stats
Small footnote, adding new stats to the game could be a way to shake things up and add new equipment slots as well. Trinkets with crit/double strike or even stats like haste(speed up fights), xp boost/decrease, ect. Options are vast.

People are going to disagree with a few of these points but they way the game is now there needs to be a major shakeup. These ideas aren't fully fleshed out and could use some discussion to refine, but the basic premise of each should remain (things need to change).

Small addendum the increased shop chance from stars could be bot specific wishlist of 5 - 10 items that have increased odds of appearing each refresh, whereas if you implemented a subscription, once accounts are combined the same wishlist could be available account wide.

My largest concern with a lot of your ideas is that they greatly deter from the core game concept of being simple. I, like I imagine others playing, enjoy the pure simplicity of the game and attempting to add to many mechanics to it will greatly alter it's DNA and would thus not be the same game that people enjoy playing.

Are any of the update ideas I’ve read still ever coming to fruition? I see this thread was created almost a year ago, so I’m hoping that game updates are still coming. I just came back to this game after years and it was cool reading that there could be big implementations!

Bump, what happend to this?

Super bump

Pay double the points to get another buff within he 24h

I'd pay double tps to get an update to the game at this point

Been almost a year now.. did Ender.. ehm.. End? xD

Ender as done his usual,

Says he's going to do something and doesn't lol

Would be cool if there was a top 1000 HoF for Trains and Losses that awarded TPs.

I like that idea hof for trains and losses

Top 1000? That's insane considering the player base isn't that high you will eventually pass bots that in the hof. But maybe top 100 trains would be something even tho spamming infant would be a thing I'm sure xD

1 year 4 days later...

Sorry for my lack of updates here. ICYMI, I posted a development update at the end of last year. I'm going to try to start getting back into bots4 stuff and try to be more proactive about sharing updates like that. I also want to aim more at doing things that are meaningful to players rather than behind-the-scenes stuff. Sorry again for the lack of progress - bots4 is often the first thing to fall off my plate when real life gets busy, and I know it's frustrating as a player to not see updates for a game you care about!

Ed <3

Good to see, BOTS has to be in my top 3 games of all time.

Glad to see you back Ender, you really got to stay a bit more active just to tell us you're alive though. Every time we see you now it's like seeing Frankenstein's monster come alive for the first time. "IT'SSSSS ALLLIIIVVVVVEEEE!!!!" kind of thing :P

Hey, I chat in IRC sometimes! Well, not too often, but definitely more than on the forums lately. But yeah, I do want to try to be a bit more active on the forums too, I know people like to hear about what's going on / proof of life. Relatedly, getting the Discord server setup is fairly high on my list, so that will create an easier way for people to stay connected since I imagine most of us use that for other games/communities.

the mass accept and kick on clans would be nice to add some time soon.......

also out of curiosity its been a year since these things were mentioned.. have any of these changes been implemented?

A few smaller ones (e.g. custom clan rank colors and automatic treasury donations), but not nearly as many as I'd have liked to have gotten through at this point.

Just keep the lot happy with an event once upon a time, Ender. Like free hastened, double showroom chance, maybe double xp days?

Yeah, I probably should work some more of that stuff in regularly since it's a nice combination of making players happy and being pretty quick for me to do.

And the 4th of July is coming up. Seems like a great time for an American to celebrate.

1 year and 127 days later.. what are you working on Ender? xD

Daily quests, weekly events, etc.

bump

Would have been cool if we could get like a quarterly even buff.

Easter Midsummer Halloween Christmas

Or something similar, something to look forward to, make them last a couple of days :)

Christmas is coming make a wish :p

I wish I was a little bit taller...

I wish I was a baller

Shot caller.

1 year and 146 days later. Anything in the works yet ender?

The Announcements sub-forum is the best place to see what's changed! Nowhere near everything in this thread that's been discussed (and fits with where I want to take the game) has been implemented There have been a few relatively small changes over the past couple months that I haven't posted yet. I started batching update announcements earlier this year (e.g. June 2024 patch notes) to avoid spamming new announcement posts for every minor change.

Double showroom chance December !!! ;)