announcements

It's been exactly 6 months since my last patch notes post, so I figured it's about time for me to comb through my code commits to the game's repository and piece together a collection of the player-facing changes.

Features:

• [August] Remaining energy in battle log: The remaining energy of the bot that lost energy is now shown in the battle log (from suggestion).
• [October] Expanded showroom settings: There are now 3 showroom filtering options instead of 1: (a) Hide "too strong" (renamed from "Show only equippable"), (b) Hide "too weak", and (c) Always show uniques (from suggestion).
• [November] Tarnished label: Introduced the tarnished label, which is retroactively applied to a clan's win if it's later discovered that a significant portion of that clan's energy was gained through cheating (see details and discussion).
• [December] Emoji reactions: Added emoji reactions to the forum (from suggestion).
• [December] Global buffs: Introduced a global buff system. These are time-based (as opposed to the existing quantity-based) buffs affecting all bots. To kick things off, I've enabled global double exp through New Year's Day (you can disable it like a regular buff if you want to minimize exp gain). After that, there will be a rotating global buff every weekend.

Bugs:

• [December] NaN ratio sorting: Fixed an issue that caused incorrect ordering when sorting clan profiles by ratio when there are NaN bots.

Misc:

• [August] Trophy display order: Trophies awarded at the same time now tie-break sort order in a more intelligent and visually appealing way (from suggestion in IRC, I think).
• [October] Unicode support: Emojis, etc. are now supported in forum/clan posts, bmails, and bot/clan profiles 💃 (from bug).
• [November] Buff bar order: This now matches the shop order. Buffs that can't be bought are placed first (from suggestion).
• [November] Buff colors: Names of buffs are now colored based on "rarity".
• [November] Already-owned buffs: The purchase button is disabled for buffs you already own (from suggestion).
• [November] Workshop save button: Moved the save button on the workshop page (and clan ranks page) to the left (from suggestion).
• [November] Improved simultaneous page request performance: I eliminated a long-standing problem known as session blocking. This was particularly noticeable if you triggered a long-running page request like a documentation page load that triggers a cache refresh; while that request is running, your other windows would get stuck.
• [November] Anti-cheat: Invested substantially into the game's anti-cheat system as a result of the November cheating in order to keep competitive aspects of the game fair.
• [November] Locked/reset bots in HoF: After having removed these bots from the HoF in 2018 (context), they're now back (context).
• [November] Bad word filter: To help keep the game fun, friendly, and welcoming for new players, there is now a "bad word" filter (it's fairly light, see motivation).
• [December] HTTPS: The game now runs on HTTPS instead of HTTP (see discussion).
• [December] Headings in bot/clan profiles: These are now allowed in formatting (from suggestion).
• [December] Forum post links: Individual forum posts can now be linked to. Use the link icon next to the post timestamp to get the link for that post.

Finally, there was a request last month for me to share more about what's coming up. I typically don't do this because I start and stop a lot of ideas depending on how complicated they turn out to be, time, motivation, and so on, so this helps me avoid making commitments that I can't keep to. That said, as an online game player myself, I understand it's fun to get glimpses into what might be coming next. My request is to treat all of this as directional ideas, rather than committed features. I may not end up exploring them further anytime soon for many reasons. In no particular order:

• Counting you!: It occurred to me recently that I have very poor analytics on how the game is doing day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, retention, and so on. The online history page takes a stab at that, but in general is kind of useless given how many players often create and play and share many bots. This is still preliminary, but I did some work on clustering bots to try to get a sense of how many actual "people" are playing the game each day. I ultimately want to be able to set specific metric goals for myself to grow the game. Depending on how this turns out, I'll probably end up sharing this data and using it to get a sense of how the game is trending, growing, reacting to updates, and so on.
• New player experience: I've talked about this one for awhile in various places, but I'd like to make the game more welcoming for new players. This covers a lot of topics, e.g. I've seen "still on HTTP" mentioned as something that was potentially scaring off new players. Other aspects include reducing barriers for entry like the need to create an account before playing (imagine a "play as guest" option). Analyzing dropoff of new players could be interesting to explore too. After improving all this, I plan to look into ways to promote the game, both paid and unpaid, with the ultimate goal of growing the size of the game's playerbase.
• Bot management: Earlier this month, I began soliciting feedback on managing many bots. Many players have more than one bot, with some players having many, many bots. See that thread for all the fun details, but I ultimately want to make your game account here more like an MMO account from which you can manage many bots (rather than each bot having its own separate login). This would unlock a bunch of fun possibilities, but is made complicated by (a) needing to do some sort of migration from the existing system and (b) the many bot sharing use cases that don't exist for something like an MMO account. I'm thinking of this project as "big risk, big reward" - if you have ideas or feedback, please share on the thread I linked.
• Discord server: IRC is super outdated and it's time to move to Discord. I have a basic server setup, but I've been holding off on opening it up to everyone until I (a) port over the Jane functionality to a Discord bot instead of IRC bot (need a carrot!) and (b) decide whether to block this on the bot management stuff mentioned above. I'd like the Discord server to have a deep integration with the game where you can link your bot (hopefully "account") with your Discord account. If the game's account structure is going to change, I should probably get that done first. But if that's going to take awhile, then maybe it's not worth waiting for. This is what I'm figuring out.
• High-level content: A couple aspects about high-level bots have been discussed on the forums recently. I believe the main ones were (a) new exp drop(s) which would retroactively apply to bots above a certain level and (b) new equipment. Both of these require carefully running a bunch of numbers to ensure balance, so it's a bit of a slow process. It's a bit of a niche feature since most players are lower level, but I still think having high-level content is important and fun (I did, after all, build Project X in the bots2 days). This is something I'll keep poking at.
• Clan competition: I've noticed the game is at it's best and most active when the clan competition heats up. I want to help facilitate more ways to make this happen, whether that's lowering the barriers to compete, having more ways to compete, or making competitions more interesting or even rewarding (being careful with balance to avoid a cycle where the top clan can too easily hold its position). I have some rough ideas for this that I need to kick around more, but for now I just wanted to share that this is something I'm thinking about and recognize it as something that's important for the lifeblood of the game.

Finally, if you have ideas for the game, there's never been a better time than today to post about them in the suggestions sub-forum. I read every post there (though I may not reply, see my recent post about what to expect when posting a suggestion). Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Weekend buffs. :(

The main time I don't play a lot. :P

Oh well, nice to see additions.

I think your addition of adding global buffs broke the buff order display.

I think your addition of adding global buffs broke the buff order display.

Global buffs are actually intentionally first. Regular buffs should then follow their updated-in-November order. Does that explain this or are you seeing something else?

Correct. You updated them to follow the order of purchase in the trophy page (with the unpurchasable ones first). I think you accidentally reverted it back to that when you added global buffs.

https://i.imgur.com/1MCBJtN.png

"reverted back to your old order" meant to say, sorry.

Thanks for the update Ender. Looking forward of what’s to come!

Great job, Ender! It's obvious that you're pretty invested in the game right now. Keep up the good work!

Forgot to say good work Ender :) Hope you have a good holiday ^_^

Not to be a downer Ender but in the current gaming climate there are some major changes that need to be put in place before you can hope to increase the player base.

Firstly, increasing stash needs to be more accessible. You need to rework stars, or reduce the price of stars, or create a new donation reward at a much lower price point that provides the current bonuses stars do.

Secondly, it needs to be competitive to have a main bot. This means buffs/tps need to be reworked. If you added a cheaper donation tier and/or another way to get stash within the game (trophy rewards, some number purchasable with kudos) you could rework stars to provide cheaper access to buffs (I have also suggested in the past that buffs should be time based instead of fight based, although this will completely kill dumpers, you could provide both options).

Next you need to consider the new player experience, and the two major things that come to mind are fight speed and the showroom.
Fight speed has a simple solution: unlock faster fights by reaching certain milestones, or simply let players select the speed they want to fight at in the settings page.
For the showroom: The first thing that comes to mind is a Wishlist, possibly supported by the current star bonus being reworked into a cheaper alternative. If an item on your Wishlist spawns in the showroom, it should automatically purchase a copy of the item and place it into your stash (you could pre-pay for the item to ensure the kudos requirement is met, and you could also lock a stash space for the item or leave it up to the player to manage). You shouldn’t need to be on the showroom page for this to function. If multiple players are online and want the same item you could provide it to all of them, or select someone randomly. Due to the high number of players wanting the same items it might be best to give it to everyone.

These suggestions are not currently complete ideas, but should offer a framework of what you need to consider if you truly want to grow the game. I can’t see any scenario where these things aren’t addressed in some way if you want to attract new players. Especially since the new player experience is currently 100 fights with 300% fight speed, xp and kudos (which isn’t currently achievable at any other point in the game), followed by being told you need to reset or buy stars for more tps.

I'm particularly interested in what can be done to increase clan competition. With Apex turning more and more inactive, I'm really concerned with the chances to enter again in a period where a clan dominates for 2 years resulting in low activity and basically a dead game regarding clan competition. I hope that this doesn't happen again.

You could leave that clan...

In bots2, I left Rapture for a couple months and joined BnW instead.

Sure... we'd just merge the two clans very soon after and reinstate me in the owner role... but the point is: you're allowed to shake things up.

Just... puttin' it out there.

Maybe a couple of you go to Strung Out? Apex gets their fire back... and we could have a FOUR clan race, maybe...

Just... puttin' it out there...

Of course, what will actually happen: Clan Tarnished will will itself into an unstoppable force and sooner than you think topple you galoots while the rest of the game gives up the moment their precious Apex meets the newer, shinier Apex.

And we will.

...because someone has to.

As far as clan competition is concerned, maybe instead of worrying about keeping the system as-is we could lower the barrier to entry or change things up energy-wise because I find that the two major barriers to "making a #1 clan" are these:

1) Resources: These can be dumpers or low ratio bots or high ratio bots, but in order to gain lots and lots of energy, you need an army of these. It takes considerable time to even make an army of low ratio bots but these can be used by others and make your time not that worthwhile to do them vs. dumpers. The meta right now is public low ratio bots which is good for new players but that could change in the future.

2) Finding people that actually want to score a lot: There's very few people on this game that actually know all the ins and outs of doing this and when a few that do quit then there becomes a huge vacuum because a lot of bots/clans just go into limbo and cuts down on any new players learning too.

Couple of major ideas that likely won't get made but could massively change the clan races so that everyone could participate:

1) Fishwick's war month idea but as a permanent thing. Instead of just having every bot gaining energy without clans though there could be an automatic clan that every bot gets pushed into at level 20 without kudo cost etc. and is an infinite clan in a way. All those bots could stay in that clan or leave and since the top 20 would only be rewarded for anything it wouldn't change the clan race at all either. This way all inactive bots could gain energy and be useful to everyone. There could also be an optout in the workshop for it. Or just do Fishwick's idea as is. I just thought the infinite clan thing that people could join/leave would be a good idea too.

2) Infinite energy like clan score was in bots2. Since people don't seem to like diplomacy on this version of bots, this is a combination idea of them together. Attack limit would stay the same as is but instead of having say, 3k energy on one bot and 200 on another bot etc. you could just attack any bot in any clan for max energy. This wouldn't effect buffs either but would probably allow people with way too many trophy points gain a lot more energy. On top of that it would heavily favour low ratio bots too. Probably more problems with autoclickers too. The only real good part about this idea is that the amount of bots that needed to be clanned would be heavily lowered and would also heavily lower the need for building a bunch of resources for people.

But these ideas use the energy system as is. We could just heavily lower the barrier to entry + amount of time it takes to get going and doing useful things along with a better tutorial etc. but that might be seen as catering to new players + casuals. But this idea would probably end up with the most amount of new activity vs the other energy ideas people have suggested which would probably just have the same people take advantage of it. I always liked the ideas of allowing train bots or PvE elements become an energy option too. Right now the game is too dependent on the activity of the people on it and how often they upkeep clans/want to annoy each other etc.

Since I have the goal that Lusitania lasts a long time (more than Escapism for example) and stay competitive, I can't leave the clan. However, if any of my team mates decide to leave to shake things up, like Samuli did with Torment, I will understand. Well, you Mal and then Asmodeus did leave Lusitania and created Tarnish now, so it already happened. I do hope that Tarnish becomes a successful clan and beat us at some point.

Asmo did bring up another subject that I thought I'd expand on here and that's how the game generally rewards inactivity vs. activity (for trophy points at least). I'll use my own bots as an example + say, the bot Stefoon.

1) So this month I did 750k, 716k, and 617k on 3 different bots that I had made a few days before I used them. From this I gained about 600-1,000 trophy points from the usual 100.0 ratios etc. platinums/golds/silvers/bronzes. Of those points, I used the 45 trophy point cost Dark Energy II on my bots, so let's say 750,000/32,000 per buff = or around 23 buffs used times 45 = 1,035 trophy points used. Now here comes the problem with this:

2) For 750k energy I am likely to gain a top 10 plat and a top 10 clan platinum and gold trophy worth about 270 tps. I used about 4 times that amount to get them. In the case of my 617k bot, since it is in 11th place, I get only two gold trophies, the same as a bot that gained around 1,000 wins and 75k energy while I did around 20k. For both these efforts both bots gained 180 trophy points even though I did 20 TIMES THE WORK.

3) To regain back the 1,035 trophy points I lost, I'd have to get 2 gold trophies per month + my 270 trophy points from my top 10 for around 5 months or more to do another 750k energy this way. That doesn't give me much incentive to keep playing on these bots does it?

4) A bot with high trophy points, say Stefoon like I said before (not soloing you out, you just have 19,000+ trophy points so you make a nice example), a bot that has idled a lot but gained a lot of platinums for just being in a top clan/tournament wins etc. has a major advantage if they chose to start scoring. With the platinum discount, this one bot could use about 475 Dark Energy II's if they wanted and gain 15,200,000 energy if they chose to.

5) So what is the way to combat these problems? One is to just keep making bots and rotating them out. One is to just idle bots in number 1 clans and gain more platinums. Another is to just idle all your bots and gain energy/trophy points for doing jack shit forever. NONE OF THESE THINGS FOSTER ACTIVITY ON ONE BOT. In fact it's far more useful to just idle all your stuff and not care and then come back a year or two later and go ham lol.

I'm just pointing this out because it may not be thought of too much by you Ender but it is an activity problem that should be addressed. In a weird way your trophy point/buff system has actually led to more inactivity than activity lol. Ways of changing this could be to make everyone gain the same amount of energy and get rid of the energy buffs (the other buffs are fairly useful), increase the amount of points bots gain from actually doing major activities (like say if I got 500-1,000 points back for a top then then that would incentivize me to keep scoring), having idle bots not gain trophies or have a minimum energy ratio for them to get them, or a combination of things. As it stands though there's no real incentive for a new player to keep playing after they "blow their load" if you will lol.

Could reduce the cost of buffs by 50% \o/

What people usually do to gain TPS is some stat runs, int and STR. But yes, you can accumulate tps by inactivity or by just using dumpers to score (much slower but more sustainable).

I think how the system is designed right now enables different strategies and makes you to do a choice. Get fast energy but waste all your TPS? Build dumpers with some TPS to score longer in the same bot? Before start scoring, accumulate TPS? Use several bots using 250% energy? It all depends if your goal is to climb Hof energy or just go flat out in one month

Enable 250% energy buff for a full month. Not a final a solution but could be fun.

Would been cool if the low tier buffs was removed, the middle tier buffs made baseline in the game, and high tier buffs changed to 150%, would make buffs less important, and costly if you want to go down that route.

Or nevermind, just increasing the default/base battle speed would be enough, just feels so good when having even the lowest buff :)

The issue with suggestions about buffs is that Ender doesn't want them in the game in an "always on" fashion. So he's likely having an internal debate with himself on what to do about them.

Personally I agree that they all should be removed. Remove the entire Buff Point system. Leave the Trophy collection as a way of displaying achievements.

Set the game speed at 250% as the new 100% (or even 200% as base would likely be applauded as plenty).

Then place the main 4 remaining buffs (250%) in the buff bar as permanent and togglable.

This would remove any need for "extra" buffs like Hastened (though you could hand them out as "special" ones same as now with much smaller usages (10-50), and could result in some neat and unusual global buffs rather than just rehashing ones we already have access to (albeit on a permanent on state like you have now).

Yes please, I like your take on it much better :)

The only major con about making buffs able to be toggled off and on and I'm guessing infinite since there would be no trophy points to limit them would be that it would allow everyone to score forever with a currently finite amount of energy. So if I had like 5 level 60s I could just attack everything all the time in that range and not let anyone else have anything because the energy is finite. I think if we were to make buffs a new standard speed etc. then we should at least do the infinite energy idea with just the current attack limits in place. That way everyone can score as much as they want. The other way people would easily just grab all the available energy and the game would die even faster with nothing to do energy-wise.

Btw, the easiest option would be to just increase the trophy points a bot gains for a top 10 energy score by around 750-1,000 and maybe make a better way for higher level bots to get Kodiak/speed buffs outside of buying stars. That way more players will continue to use buffs every month and continue on the same bots they're on.

The issue with suggestions about buffs is that Ender doesn't want them in the game in an "always on" fashion.

Seems silly then to suggest permanent 250% xp/speed/energy etc.?

I think there is a bit of depth to the game as far as buff management goes. That is, it's best to buy one buff every day and choosing which buff to buy and which speed buff to use to deplete one of your buffs in time to buy a new one adds a bit of complexity. Also I think that trophy point management is a commonly overlooked area of the game. For a long time I used to only use the Tier I buffs on this bot to preserve points. After going idle for long periods and with time I obviously no longer have to, but I feel a lot of people these days just use the biggest buffs and then complain when they run out and see that buying stars or starting a new bot is the only solution.

I think permanent buffs would be too much power creep for the game and would give those with excess amounts of time on their hands too much of an advantage. Temporary buffs level the playing field a bit so you can play more but your time won't be rewarded as much. However permanent buffs might be a good idea for a new server. At least to give everyone a leg up until some sort of equilibrium is achieved.

Agreed on buff management/prep being one of the only remotely interesting bits of strategy when it comes to scoring (and even levelling these days). Obviously it would be nice if everyone had 1000% energy buffs forever but the current setup does reward properly planning a bot for the long term, rather than just building a bot, scoring on it indefinitely and never having to think about anything except clicking fight again. Would be a shame to completely lose some of the only depth the game has.

One way to make clan competition better would be to reduce the number of bots that gain trophys in the clan from 20 to 5, this would result in many more active clans I think. Just an idea.

Uhm, reducing the clan energy from top 20 to top 5 bots in clans.

Seems silly then to suggest permanent 250% xp/speed/energy etc.?

Yes, I understand the irony. However, I also recognize that the game has progressed to the point that the likelihood of people playing buffless is slim to non-existent.

One way to make clan competition better would be to reduce the number of bots that gain trophys in the clan from 20 to 5, this would result in many more active clans I think. Just an idea.

That was done initially when Ender altered it from 100 to 20. Recognizing that the mass majority of people playing often play on 2-3 bots. You're effectively pushing the clan race between multiple clans of 2-3 people. Not sure that would achieve much other than more resentment.