suggestions

Here is my suggestion for stars:
Stars reduce the cost of buffs by 10% per star on the bot. This will allow players to have a true "main" that doesn't need to be reset/abandoned when TPS run out. Stars would also remain valuable on dumpers. Stars could continue to grant stash.

Suggestion for stash:
Allow players to buy up to 3 additional stash spaces with gold. This gives players without stars an opportunity to freak their bots without completely diminishing the value of stash from stars as some set-ups require multiple sets of armor.
Alternatively the 3 additional stash spaces could open up from reaching certain milestones (level 20, 50, 100 or wins 1k, 5k, 10k, ect) giving new bots/players a bonus for playing the game.

Second suggestion for stash:
Update Top Monthly trophy rewards to include an additional stash (tourney winner, top monthly energy, top monthly clan (just the top 20 contributors), ect. Might have to limit the number of stashes earnt this say (eg 10) and/or make new trophies with a unique ID so that 1000's of stash spaces aren't given out when it goes live.

Throwaway suggestion for buffs:
Allow buffs to be stacked, it's a little painful being close to running out of a buff and having to settle for a lower tier or missing out on buying a buff that day. This could also be limited to 3-5 times so buffs don't get stacked out of control.

+1 from me anything that changes things up and helps people to progress in gaining levels or energy is a plus point

I like the idea of having 4 stash spaces for all bots (maybe just have it available for all bots rather than a requirement?) since it would help the majority of low level/newer players, even some higher level players, play for longer if they had an extra set of armors available all the time rather than the annoyance of only having one and then having to rebuy the other 3 or so when they break (say they all have 1,200 durability and break around the same time).

It would also help people make more freaked bots, yes, but the ones that know how to do that probably already have 100+ stars. It would just reduce the amount of star transfers they did. And since this idea wouldn't let you gain any armors by ordering it'd be no real different than just camping a bit more. Probably would help everyone on the game. Or ruin the game with freaked bots, one or the other.

No one fights real bots or anything, right?

Not sure those "freaked bots" matter for anything other than Potentially being ratio whores that are much more convenient... and if that means easier access to targets for all the levels... that seems good to me.

So far as buffs? Firmly disagree they need more empowered and offer any kinda "solution" for getting better access to energy.

For goodness sake, just make all fights instantaneous and pure point-and-click at that point and any win with any bot whatsoever gives you 1,000,000 energy... meh.

Honestly, super unpopular opinion, I'm sure, but... I don't even think the buffs are a positive overall (minus the energy change really being helped by how much easier it is now to raise whores and almost necessitating them).

Yeah, having a backup set of armor is a big reason for the suggestion. The reason I specifically mentioned freaked bots is because the best way to score tends to equip the armors you use to have the stats for your weapon (to reduce durability loss when fighting with the bot) and only using the freaked armors while offline. To do this effectively you would still need an additional 4 stash spaces for STR armors so stars still retain a fair amount of value in this case. At the very least 1-2 stars so you have space for backup weapons would still be useful.

When talking about buffs, it really doesn't change anything (except the stacking suggestion). Even if you have 10 stars on your bot and buffs are free, you are still limited to purchasing 1 buff per day. If you are going for top energy you should have enough TPS for a full month of buffs anyway, so nothing changes there. All it does is allow you to use the same bot each month instead of having to make a new one, or spending a bunch of time resetting your bot (losing wins) just so you can continue using your namesake/favorite scorer.

I also agree that buffs likely have a negative affect on the game overall, but they are a part of the game and most players probably want to keep them. My main focus is finding a way to make having a main bot a viable option, while letting stars stay valuable and expanding the options for increasing stash.

Hey, I'm the new scrub in town that has no idea what's going on atm. Appreciate all the input, however.

Cheers

The other reason I think moving the value of stars mainly over to buffs is that anyone with the right strategy and time can get enough TPS to be a competitive scorer, while it's currently impossible to acquire additional stash spaces without stars. It would effectively remove the P2W aspect from the game when it comes to scoring, more people would be able to make effective tournament bots, and it's honestly kind of weird for a game with stash to have no way to increase it within the game. Stars would probably become mandatory if going for top level, but anyone going for top level likely already has stars.

I do think the game could benefit from more people having access to more stash, you either have essentially infinite amounts if you're in a top clan, or you will likely never have more than 1 space which isn't great.

Making 10 stars mean free buffs for life is wild and makes the game more pay to win than it ever has been.

Free buffs shouldn't make the game more P2W as it is reasonably easy to build a bot with enough TPS to afford a months worth of buffs. At least it is a lot easier than it currently is to increase stash. Ender obviously wants stars to be valuable and this seems like the easiest way to make stars retain their value but move the value from a mostly functional benefit into a more QOL benefit. It also allows people like me who value their main bot very highly to keep using it as a main bot without having to reset it all the time. The connection players have with their favorite bot should be rewarded not punished.

I don't believe anyone disagrees that your connection to a particular bot should be punished...

A few things - firstly I agree with Fish that giving discounts to TPs for owning stars would be too OP. I think there are enough incentives to buy stars already without adding further incentives.

Regarding extra stash space for non-star owners - again that is a massive change which would significantly reduce the usefulness of stars, so it won't happen imo.

On the other hand I agree that it sucks you basically have to build a new bot every month or few months to ensure you have enough tps to score with. Ender has said before that he wanted buffs to be temporary, instead of 'always on' things. However, scoring on a bot depleted of tps is essentially akin to handicapping yourself so very few will do it just because they want to have a 'main' scorer. I say the best way around this is to reduce the cost of the Dark Energy buffs, say to half price. Either that or increase the tps rewarded for clan related trophies.

The argument that free buffs would be too op doesn't make a lot of sense since anyone scoring seriously already has 100% buff uptime. If Ender didn't want buffs to be permanent he shouldn't have introduced them in the first place. No-one is going to be able to compete against someone that can fight 250% faster and/or get 250% more energy per fight.

To be honest I actually agree with a lot of this the part I don't like is extra stash for hitting milestones or top energy etc that seems like overkill.

10% would be way too much per star to reduce the cost of buffs, I think 1% would be better with a cap since some people have a hell of a lot of stars already.

Without going on too big a rant about the tp system, I was talking the other day with Nos I think about 180 tps for spending the whole month using tps and winning the clan race for example seems way too low, also not just scorers I literally have to buy tp's to play at a pace I want on this bot or not play and let them build which IMO is also wrong. I'm not going to reset a level 417 bot to build tps and then level it back to 417.

I agree that everyone should be able to freak their bot to some extent regardless of stars I guess you can use 1 stash space to slightly freak lol but it's not the same ofcourse. Stashing buffs to a certain limit, yeah why not.

Regarding extra stash space for non-star owners - again that is a massive change which would significantly reduce the usefulness of stars, so it won't happen imo.

If you look at the people buying stars in the past year it so I'd say probably only about <10% of them were new players that would actually use the new stars for stash space/armor ordering. The other 90+% would be high level bots like you or SMeagol or Luthrin or others etc. that have been buying stars for the sake of getting more trophy points to train more. So I think the idea of it "massively" changing the game is false since barely anyone in the lower levels use or buy stars because of the influx of stars out there in the major clans to begin with.

It also wouldn't reduce the usefulness of stars since they wouldn't be used for ordering armors in this sense. You'd still have to camp for all your items, it'd just be to have an extra set of armors for scorers or trainers etc. To compensate for "loss of usefulness" Ender could increase the stash space to 14 and think of the first 4 stash spaces as beginner spaces (change from 1 to 4) and the other +10 as star spaces, like it is now. I don't see how it'd massively change the game or have less people buying stars overall since like I said, you high levels are the main cause of that. There's probably already enough stars on this game to give every bot in the top 2 (heck probably the top 4 or 5) clans 10 stars+ each probably. The motivation for most people to spend money on this game at this point is next to nothing outside of buying bots or TPS gain.

I like the idea of a few unlockable stash spaces through some means of gameplay.

I think there may be a bit of recency bias creeping in, for most people the trophy points are just the icing on the cake. Imo the greatest benefit that stars provide is the extra stash space. The ordering is nice, but pretty slow. If there were 3 extra free stash spaces, it would mean I would need 3 less stars on basically every bot I own, which would be a lot fewer stars I would need to own overall.

Free stash spaces would give scorers a huge advantage, especially when using uprapers. Uprapers costs 1 or 2 stars per bot, because they need stash space. Also players with a kudos line or RW line would be greatly benefitted.

Although i like the idea of free stash spaces, i don't think they should be free but kept as an incentive for stars. Tbf, stars don't give much other advantages then stash.

It sorta feels like the design really wanted to feel that the ordering of items was supposed to be the main incentive for wanting the stars...

Maybe start by improving on the clunkiness of the ordering system then, if you wanted to make stars feel better?

Honestly, feels like if ya gots 10+ stars then you should be able to instantly order anything without the quantity limit or anything, imo - granted, that's assuming there was also a 48 hour delay before any stars placed on bots took effect or something...

Just definitely don't agree exacerbating the perks from trophies is a good route to go in general.

If anything, I think that Dark Energy one should flat-out just not even be a think and should be nerfed much sooner than buffed.

Yeah its a very good point with uprapers, ratio whores and kudo chains - having 2-3 extra stash on a low level scorer doesn't sound too impactful, but when a player gets 300 extra stash across their 100 bots that is going to be incredibly powerful.

Not a fan of any amount of stars being required to make buffs cheaper, but just halving the energy buff cost might work. It's the only buff that you're kind of mandated to purchase a 250% every day because you're in a short term race on a relatively throwaway bot. New players find that after a few weeks of scoring their bot is kinda useless, so at least they could last twice as long before having to start resetting for plats.

It's probably too late to talk about Dark Energy not being a thing (records would never be able to be broke), so just making it easier for anyone who wants to score to have closer to a 100% uptime makes sense.

Making it 100% uptime is effectively the same exact thing as getting rid of it altogether, if you try to erase any costs associated with having to do so.

Heck, making it a perma-bot on every bot (no purchase necessary) would actually even be beneficial, imo.

I certainly don't mind a mechanic that would encourage attacking for energy...

The problem here, imo, is that someone doesn't like the cost of tps to try and effectively make it a perma-buff, so they're trying to shift that cost towards purchasing of stars? Meh.

If it's supposed to be a perma-buff... then it should just be a perma-buff...

Isn't this the point though and probably why Asmodeus thinks the game is pay to win, why should you need to buy 200-400 usd worth of stars just to use a clan of uprapers or 1000+ usd worth of stars just to use some ratio whores and play optimally, if every bot had stash everyone would be able to access these things a lot easier. I agree though stars only real benefit is stash so they would need some other incentive which is why I dont think making buffs a little cheaper is a terrible idea, not to mention you would still need more than 4 stash on certain bots anyway.

Lets be honest though this will never happen.

I'm okay with the extra stash.

But making the buffs cheaper is another matter.

It just feels clunky.

Ultimately, the problem there is said to be the mechanics encourage you to try and abuse them as much as possible.

The conclusion then is... to try and bypass those mechanics, effectively, by purchasing stars. That's fine if the argument is that stars should be incentivized more by game, sure. Instead, it's somehow that it would be beneficial to all players or whatever? It just doesn't all add up.

If the mechanics in game that encourage you to reset and such are bad then THAT area could potentially be addressed, sure. Whatevs.

If the "necessity" of buffs is problematic then that could potentially be addressed, sure.

I just don't think this suggestion passes the smell test, tbh. Unless, again, you simply think stars should have more power and greater effect or whatever... and that's actually totally fine, if that's the case.

But if this is an argument towards making game more Pay-to-win or whatever? Then just say that's the case and be done with it, imo. That's totally reasonable, actually.

But if we just don't like the "necessity" of those buffs? Well... then shouldn't THAT actually be addressed by any kinda "solutions" being proposed?

And, for the record, I'm always on the side of whores and "freaked bots" and all the other nonsense.

No one fights real bots. It's silly to me that we often pretend like enabling the strategies of how the game actually plays and will always be played is ever problematic.

Oh no, further enabling whores and uprapers and freaks will occur? Who cares, imo. Those are... the real players in the game, tbh.

Can you explain to me what difference there is between someone resetting their bot every few months for tps (losing wins, losing total energy), someone who buys stars for tps so they can continue using the same bot or making buffs free for people with 10 stars on their bot?
In all cases you are ensuring you have enough tps for one buff per day, the only difference I can see is that players that don't want P2P their bot never have an opportunity to go for highest wins/energy/level.
You can't bake the energy buff into the base game because then everyone will just buy the speed buff. You can't even get rid of buffs because the biggest incentive to buy stars at the moment is for the tps.

Here is my really wild suggestion:
Remove stars entirely. Make the current bonuses from stars earnable in game.
Create a new donation incentive that lowers the price of buffs and add reset the lockout for transferring between bots on the last day of each month. As a measure of good faith give people that currently own stars a 10% conversion rate (rounded up) between stars and the new incentive.

the only difference I can see is that players that don't want P2P their bot never have an opportunity to go for highest wins/energy/level.

This is a pretty huge difference for me, I've never spent money on bots and don't really want to. I've profited ~10 stars over the span of about 13 years from bits of work and sales here and there. It shouldn't really take me 13 years to be able to qualify for free buffs when its such a huge decider in pretty much the only competition in the game (energy/clan race), and when someone else can just drop $100 and get that instantly. Cash cows/whales help fund lots of games but it shouldn't buy them the advantage of being the only people allowed to compete for the top ranks.

You can't bake the energy buff into the base game because then everyone will just buy the speed buff.

Kinda true, I'm sure some would, but assuming you still only get 1k 250% energy attacks per day, it wouldn't be anywhere near as much of a dealbreaker. Making a fight go from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds isn't really a game changer in the way 16 energy vs 40 energy is because people aren't clicking that quickly anyway.

You can't even get rid of buffs because the biggest incentive to buy stars at the moment is for the tps.

I don't think this is true for like 90% of star buyers. Stash is king and is the real benefit to owning stars. TP's and Ordering items is fairly irrelevant to most. There are 2 maybe 3 bots in the entire game that buy stars for tp's.

Create a new donation incentive that lowers the price of buffs

This is just pay to win and messes with the meta way too much. With a decent setup at the minute you can reset for about 5 plats in like an hour, which would cost $50 to buy the same amount of trophy points through stars (probably much more, when you consider other trophies you get while gathering plats). I think most people would rather just earn some plats than buy tp's for a scorer.

Forget everything else, methinks.

Ultimately, would it simply be fair to say that the root problem here is rather simply that you think the game's mechanics and asks are extra punishing on anyone trying to be a top clanscorer?

It feels to me like that's actually the problem you seem to be trying to address, no?

From that perspective, I hear ya.

I just get lost when it's suggested this isn't trying to simply shift the current asks/costs from game to that of purchasing stars for buffs to effectively replace (bypass) the current trophy system.

I'm basically suggesting that if the problem that exists is the way the trophy system works then the solution should probably be a modification to that system, as opposed to attempts to be able to bypass those game mechanics altogether - lest we truly are simply pushing for an ability to purchase our way out of stuff - which really is a very valid stance to have.

Chiming in late with some general thoughts on some of the topics raised in this thread. They're tricky topics to balance:

• Avoiding pay-to-win: I know different people have different opinions on where the line between "just a cosmetic upgrade" and "straight P2W" is, but I like to think the game currently has a reasonable balance. Any changes need to be careful not to upset this balance.

• People that have already bought stars: Putting myself into the shoes of someone who spent money on the game, I'd be annoyed if I'd done so to get X benefit, then X changed substantially, became available without spending money, etc. That's not to say X is untouchable, but this is something that needs to be handled carefully.

• The game's future financials: Looking at 2021/2022/2023 game financials, I've lost $3,585.78 keeping the game online during this period. Part of this was game activity (and thus donations) being lower and part of it was from higher-than-usual expenses for advertising (which I've since stopped because it wasn't attracting many new players AFAICT), but ideally I'd like the game to become profitable again (the pipe dream is for it to make enough for me to work on it full-time). I'm open to monetization changes in support this goal, but that's lower priority for now than just making the game better for everyone.

So all that to say: I'm not going to be changing anything anytime soon with monetization, but it's not out of the question, and if I do so, I'll do so thoughtfully keeping the above in mind.

P.S. "If Ender didn't want buffs to be permanent he shouldn't have introduced them in the first place." made me giggle. :) I don't think anyone building online games has ever been able to successfully predict exactly how something will play out, how meta will evolve over a decade+, etc. I think my thought process in 2011 was "Xbox achievements are cool, I should add them to bots4" and then "EverQuest buffs are cool, I should add them to bots4" and then "hmm, how should buffs be purchased? ooo how about achievement points?". So not very well thought out unfortunately.

Hindsight is 20/20 but in a game like bots where efficiency is probably the most important part of being competitive it was inevitable buffs would become meta-defining.

When it comes to stars I believe the most sensible setup would be to add the buff cost reduction to stars in addition to the current benefits. Make stars reduce the costs of the buffs by 10% per star up to a cap of 70% so the benefit from reaching 15+ plats retains it's value, and allow players to earn some amount of stash by playing the game.

Stars are also too expensive for what they offer. I feel that moving the value of stars to a more QoL proposition may make them more palatable in the mind of newer players, or players that cannot stomach the idea of spending $10usd for a single stash space.