suggestions

tl;dr: If you have a ton of bots and want to give feedback on a system that could potentially make it easier to manage them all, read on.

This game is a bit odd in that any reasonably advanced player almost surely has more than one account, if not hundreds or even more in some cases. If I were designing this game from scratch today, I'd probably have designed the user model differently so that the standard setup is for every player to have a single login account, which can then be used to play a number of different bots. Think about how in an MMO you typically have a single login that lets you access a number of characters - it'd be something like that. However, that ship has mostly sailed at this point. It's still in the back of my mind as a pipe dream, but it would be an enormous undertaking which would require reworking almost the entire game, not to mention needing to figure out how to migrate all the existing "single bot" accounts into this new world.

Rather than do all that, which I think is mostly infeasible (or at least sufficiently expensive that it's not likely to get done as long as I'm a full-time employee elsewhere for most of my waking hours), I've been thinking about how to make incremental improvements on top of the system that exists today. Essentially, it would be a feature that would allow you to link many bots together. I wanted to throw a couple ideas out there and get feedback from players on two main categories of things:

• How it would work (i.e. the basic mechanics of how you would engage with such a feature)
• What benefits it would get you (i.e. why you as a player would want to use such a feature)

HOW IT WOULD WORK

• Registered email - I'm thinking that having the same registered email on all of the bots would be a requirement. This would be necessary to link, but not sufficient. I think the fairly obvious use case that makes this not sufficient is when person A owns a bot and is in control of its registered email, they can comfortably grant access to that bot to person B. Person A is in no risk of losing that bot as long as they control the registered email. However, this doesn't mean that person B should have any sort of access, visibility, or relationship to any of person A's other bots with the same registered email.

• Main/alt bot designation - This is where the "main" and "alt" concepts come in. I think these will be pretty understandable terms for most people. The idea is that you would designate a single bot is your "main" bot. You could then designate an unlimited number of other bots as "alts" of that main bot. Performing this linking would require email verification. So say I have 5 bots and all of them are registered to the same email. I can then say I want bot 1 to be the main and then bots 2-5 are all alts. I can then break any of those links if I want to. And if I change the email on any bot, the link breaks.

WHAT BENEFITS IT WOULD GET YOU

• Shared bmail inbox - All linked bots would share a bmail inbox. Bmails would look like they're all from/to the main bot (maybe with an indication of the alt like a "via" field or something, e.g. "from Ender, via EnderAlt".

• Common forum identity - When posting from an alt bot, the post would appear as if it came from the main bot (again, maybe with "via EnderAlt" or something). No more confusing threads where someone's replying multiple times under different names because they're moving around bots throughout the day. Or no more hassle switching to your "forum" bot to reply if that's something you do today.

• Shared settings across bots - Some settings probably make sense as global settings that would be shared across all of your bots. Other settings might still remain per-bot if that's logical for them. I'll need to think about this more, but the main point is that this setup would allow for shared settings where they make sense.

• True player profile - Rather than a profile for each bot, a player would have a single profile which showcases their fleet of bots with all of their individual accomplishments, trophies, etc. There's a lot that can be done here and I haven't thought about it a ton.

• Discord linking - I've mentioned wanting to setup a Discord server for the game. One of my main holdups has been that I want to have a deep integration with the game's user system where you use OAuth to link your Discord account with your bots4 account. This kind of integration could be used to power a lot of fun things, but it would be annoying to have to do the OAuth linking for every single bot you own. The main/alt system would solve this.

• More in the future - There are probably a ton of details I'm glossing over, but hopefully the above ideas give you a sense of what I'm roughly imagining for this feature. I expect it's something that could be expanded on even further over time, especially as it starts to get used and people think up more ideas. I expect it would be a solid foundation from which more could be built on.

Disclaimer: I'm not looking to fully hash out the entire design in this thread, but rather gather enough input on things I hadn't considered or thought about for me to go off and figure out more of the details. I also reserve the right to scrap this idea completely if I decide it doesn't actually make sense, or would be too expensive to build, or something else!

Thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing everyone's ideas.

I like this very much. I don't know if this is possible or easy to do, but since sharing bots is very important and risky, I think it should exist the possibility of granting access to your own bots to some users. Example:

I want to share my windumpers with some members of the clan but I don't want them to have access to my other bots. In this case, for the Cr bots I would allow the main user account of some of my clan members to have access to them. These bots would appear in a section of the user that could be: bots that you have access to.

In this way, password sharing isn't necessary, and only main user could make changes to the bot like reset, edit profile, etc. if you want to take out access to the bots, you just have to remove the users allowed by unticking them.

However, maybe this isn't possible because right now you need to know the pw and login in the bots. This system would need that you can access the bots without doing a login which should be pretty hard to do.

Btw, I like to have different profiles in the bots. For example Lyrad, I bought it and I want to keep that profile.

Also, there should be a way to change your main user bot if you want to sell your main. You would designate one of your alts as the main in this case.

I have just registered 3500 bots and am in the process of adding emails and changing the settings on them all. Originally I was changing the name colour, adding an email, changing all the settings to how I like them and making a forum post. I quickly discovered it was taking about 1 minute per bot to do all this, and would end up taking around 60 hours just to have the settings as I wanted them. I decided to settle with just changing the name colour and adding emails (this is still going to take 10-15 hours all up). Anything that can reduce this time investment in any way I am definitely in support of, especially since I want to do this again and think I am already developing PTSD from the 900 or so bots I have done so far.

Star management I think it would be nice that you use all your stars on the bots and that you shift them around freely. Or with a smaller time frame then 5 days.

Multibotting Most players play on more then 1 bot at a time. How will you facilitate that?

Shared access +1 for esvs idea on that. Would be nice if you can share access with an other 'main bot account'

Registered email - I'm thinking that having the same registered email on all of the bots would be a requirement. This would be necessary to link, but not sufficient. I think the fairly obvious use case that makes this not sufficient is when person A owns a bot and is in control of its registered email, they can comfortably grant access to that bot to person B. Person A is in no risk of losing that bot as long as they control the registered email. However, this doesn't mean that person B should have any sort of access, visibility, or relationship to any of person A's other bots with the same registered email.

People could simply not share their main bot? Pretty sure this is already common practice. Besides that, if someone has no special attachment to any specific bot to keep it private, they can simply make a separate bot that's sole purpose is to serve the function of being a "main" bot.

Performing this linking would require email verification.

I think it would be sufficient for the main and alt to already have the same email so long as setting the main still requires the verification. This would make it far less tedious so you only need to verify once for this. Also make it so the alts have to initiate/opt-in to being an alt from their own end with a checkbox or toggle kind of thing. Having the alt do that part would be to prevent any far reaching malicious moves from a non owner. One such move being to take control of somebodies main who quits/goes dormant and then trying to claim other bots they never had access to which belonged to the original main bot owner.

Unless you think of a unique flaw with not having separate verification for linking in that scenario, I sincerely hope you choose not to have it. I dread the thought of needing to do double the verification emails for every bot.

Another thought is to have a checkbox next to the e-mail registration spot in settings, this checkbox would be for enabling the bot as an alt to that emails main bot if applicable when you register the email. This would avoid the need for doing two rounds of email verification on new bots even if you decide to still make the linking require it.

Thanks for all the feedback so far! I'm going to try to comment here as replies come in to keep refining my ideas.

I think it should exist the possibility of granting access to your own bots to some users.

I'd need to think more through how this would work, but in theory it should be possible to grant/revoke another main restricted (no bmail, no settings, etc.) access to a subset of your bots. Maybe in a V2 of this system though.

Btw, I like to have different profiles in the bots.

Ack on the desire for still having some sort of per-bot profile option.

Also, there should be a way to change your main user bot

Yep, I envision this being something that can be changed. Maybe with some sort of cooldown.

Anything that can reduce this time investment in any way I am definitely in support of

Makes sense. So some sort of bulk bot management feature, e.g. "I want to change the color of all my alts". Might be a V2 feature, but the feature makes sense.

use all your stars on the bots and that you shift them around freely

I'm not totally against this, and this would deserve a separate thread if I went down this path, but I'd probably want to combine it with permanently locking the stars to the registered email. Also need to be careful about adding too much more benefit for stars.

Most players play on more then 1 bot at a time. How will you facilitate that?

It would work the same as today. The main/alt designation would be just for linking purposes, but then you would otherwise log into each bot with individual passwords just as you would today (at least initially, in the spirit of incremental improvements - maybe one day this would change, and it would still support simultaneous bot playing). Note that an additional login method (likely passwordless) would need to eventually be added to support the the "grant/revoke" stuff discussed above.

I think it would be sufficient for the main and alt to already have the same email so long as setting the main still requires the verification.

This was my original thinking. It would also be a much simpler system. I'm not against this, but I need to convince myself it addresses most players' needs.

I think it would work out totally fine for any new player setting up from scratch. I also think it would be okay for a chunk of existing players (ones that have a lot of bots, but never share with others). However, I think (assume?) there is another chunk of existing players for whom this change might be less desirable (ones that have a lot of bots and share with others). I could be wrong, but I'm assuming that there are players that have a bunch of bots registered to their own email, which are then used frequently by other people (friends, clanmates, etc.). I am assuming that person would not want those bots to be alts of their main, at least with the V1 of the system where there's no sort of restricted access. You wouldn't want your friends, clanmates, etc. to have access to your shared bmail inbox, be able to post on the forums as you, etc.

Please let me know if I'm overthinking this because a workflow of "use email verification to make a bot your bot a main; every other bot linked to that email is now an alt of it" would be dramatically simpler to build and for players to understand. I just want to make sure it would actually be used/desirable, or that players could at least warm up to this setup.

I dread the thought of needing to do double the verification emails for every bot.

Understood. Even if I don't go down the route discussed in the above 3 paragraphs, I think there could be ways to do alt linking in bulk, i.e. not involving tediously making changes on each bot. It would be nice to avoid having to support that though, which is an argument in favor of what you proposed.

While we wait.. possible to make the 150% battlespeed the default speed? :)

While I haven't read all of this yet, here's a random idea for clans for people with lots of bots:

Instead of the currently long and annoying accept one bot at a time process, maybe have the ability to see all your bots then if one of your bots has a clan (let's say you want to make a low ratio bot clan), then you can invite/accept your own bots (for no kudos charge maybe?) from that list and accept them all at once. So for example:

Bot1 is the clan owner
Bot2-25 is the bots you want to accept
You click their names with checkmarks
You hit accept all
All the bots are now in the clan.

Reason I suggest this is it would heavily streamline dumper/lower ratio bot clan creation. Instead of logging in and applying 20 bots then having to accept them all one by one, you can do it all in one tab effortlessly in probably under a minute. No idea how hard this would be to do but I think it might be worth it with the sheer amount of dumpers and low ratio bots people have. And dumper clans tend to get deleted/redone over and over again so it'd be even more useful for them.

I am assuming that person would not want those bots to be alts of their main, at least with the V1 of the system where there's no sort of restricted access. You wouldn't want your friends, clanmates, etc. to have access to your shared bmail inbox, be able to post on the forums as you, etc.

I didn't consider the all-in-one forum, bmail, etc would be inherent. I wouldn't even want to have some of those 99% of the time personally. Perhaps the main bot could toggle which of those features are enabled, maybe even on a per bot basis if that seems feasible. Being controlled from the main would prevent the need for more verification checks. Toggled off by default would be the way to go, especially if the alt bots can turn on the link in the way I suggested.

Yeah, clanning 500 ziz bots was too much for me. If something could be made to make this easier, I support that.

What if you had a main, alt and "open".

Your main and alt would show messages, forums, settings, etc. Main would control all bots, alt could be for more trusted "friends" or your extra scorers.

The "open" bots would be barebones. Workshop, showroom, training, fighting, trophies.

A full list of all bots with checkboxes like previously mentioned would be amazing.

I think a 2-3 day temp transfer of stars to your own bots, is fair. Maybe even a "you can only move around 10 stars per day to your own bots" maximum with a 2-3 time-lock after.

Can we also relax the 5 bots per IP restriction?

I believe this was originally implemented to reduce spamming online bot creation.

Instead of the currently long and annoying accept one bot at a time process, maybe have the ability to see all your bots then if one of your bots has a clan (let's say you want to make a low ratio bot clan), then you can invite/accept your own bots (for no kudos charge maybe?) from that list and accept them all at once.

Makes sense. Could go into the bucket with the other bulk bot management features for a V2.

I didn't consider the all-in-one forum, bmail, etc would be inherent. I wouldn't even want to have some of those 99% of the time personally.

Curious to hear from someone that would not want these features. Other than for bots shared with other people, what are some use cases for wanting separate bmail inboxes and forum identities across your own personal not-shared bots?

What if you had a main, alt and "open".

A third tier of bots could make sense because it's sounding like there are 3 discrete cases (naming TBD):

• Main: Your main/identity bot. I think this is an important concept to bring to the game that could be used for a bunch of other stuff.
• Alt: Your bots that ARE NOT shared with others. Has shared bmail, shared forum identity, and more.
• Open: Your bots that ARE shared with others. No shared bmail, no shared forum identity, etc.

This might also be better than a fully-fledged permission matrix system where you can individually permission "I want to give access to features X and Y for bot 1 to person A, features Y and Z for bots 2 and 3 to person B, etc.". Although that would be flexible, it would probably be a nightmare to maintain (for me) and understand (for you). A simpler tier system that satisfies the (hopefully) majority of use cases might be preferable for everyone.

Other than for bots shared with other people

That is definitely the main reason. But outside of that I will often bmail myself build plans for the respective bots so I don't forget what I'm doing with them (sometimes they're put on the backburner for months and such).

I like Carter's idea of adding another tier, especially if it's easier to implement. Maybe the whole system could be akin to clan ranks but for alt bot permission levels or something :p Hell, maybe copying the clan page setup/layout is a way to do it. Already is able to show and list 100's of bots, there's the permission matrix which could have the settings replaced with whatever features/privileges, and the "owner" would be the main.

That is definitely the main reason. But outside of that I will often bmail myself build plans for the respective bots so I don't forget what I'm doing with them (sometimes they're put on the backburner for months and such).

Yeah. If assuming this creates the case where we can't bmail ourselves (or our other bots in this case), it would become a little tedious for those of us that do bmail builds to ourselves. I also do this a lot.

Random thought about the bot builds: If bot builds were ingrained into the game or one could make a login for Bots4Unauthorized, one could maybe make it so they could SAVE their bot builds and give them names/organize them so they could be seen at any time rather than bmail bot builds or have to redo them over and over again (or maybe you could just do the builds in your clan forum/put links in a notepad currently?) This would be easier if all your bots were able to be managed together, you could then just bring them up at any time if you saved them. You could call it the "Bots Planner" ;D

Random thought about the bot builds: If bot builds were ingrained into the game or one could make a login for Bots4Unauthorized, one could maybe make it so they could SAVE their bot builds and give them names/organize them so they could be seen at any time rather than bmail bot builds or have to redo them over and over again (or maybe you could just do the builds in your clan forum/put links in a notepad currently?) This would be easier if all your bots were able to be managed together, you could then just bring them up at any time if you saved them. You could call it the "Bots Planner" ;D

I play on several devices and build a lot of bots, usually all being built in multiple stages of completion. I bmail the build of the bots final stats to each individual bot so that I have a reference that moves with that specific bot so at anytime I am working on it I can just go to the post office of that bot and have the build to refer back to.

I do keep a lot of things on notepad, excel, etc. on my Google Drive, as well as some builds bookmarked, but often bmail of the build on the bot is simpler and easier to go back to.

Everything nos said pretty much.

A cool feature would to be "public" or "private" with your list as well.

Like a "See all bots under this owner" or "Go to owners profile" type deal.

Reasons : Your scorers to be public but rws to be private. Or simply showoff your collection 😅

Administrivia: Someone reported chat being broken (thanks!), I deleted the post and the couple after it responding to it because it's off-topic for this thread. I made note of this in the existing HTTPS bug thread (https://bots4.net/forum/3/7430) and will followup there.

Thanks for all the additional comments. I've been thinking about this topic a lot over the past week or so and continuing to brainstorm. Just to share some details, I'm thinking about both the rough proposal I've outlined in this thread (as a reasonable starting point for evolving the system) as well an "end state" that would be nice to eventually reach. It's an interesting puzzle to figure out the right sequence of changes to transition the game from the current user/bot model to the desired end state in a way that's easy to understand for everyone, keeps it possible (or even easier) for players to do things they do today (in particular: creating lots of bots + bot sharing), and so on. Stay tuned...