suggestions

@Ender... and all bots and teams... As a returning player from B2 in 1998, I already feel like throwing it in... my clan Funny Farm, my long term projects, hi ratio pawn clan and everything else I suffered to build... Unscrupulous cheaters, still getting away with online spamming attacks at bombardment level... cant fight, cant train, intercept, Nothing! Try another bot? Nope!... its a target too... I know, "wah wah wah"... But Seriously! Not happy Jan!... Who of my old Bots friends would I want to invite back at this rate when the childish games of sardistic nobodies still exists today tbh!... wow. Can I suggest... (first time ever yay for me)... At least make a buff or a code to stop repetitive online attacks at maybe 5 or so for Kudos purposes etc.. and then maybe give them a gold medal like the "dickhead" award... maybe call it "Calm Down You Psycopath!" Dan Dan the Cant Bot Man :-( Long Live AoC! "For Those About to Bot!.. We Salute You"

Who is attacking you and why? And if it annoys you, return the favor?

C'mon, PeeT. Aren't we tired of pretending like no one knows? There's been a very consistent and persistent amount of griefing going on against certain people. And as much as I'M not worried about those griefers trying to be "sneaky" and use anonymity of game to harass people... seems most everyone around me feels some need to have video evidence or whatever before even thinking about reacting. So... they're all gonna end up just quitting. C'est la vie.

Talking about the buff idea, that'd be an interesting idea in itself, maybe a "counter-attack" buff where you could gain say, 25% or 50% of stat points (that can't be used for freaking etc.) when you're online/offline but it only works if a bot attacks you. I could see it being used for dumpers but since it'd be a limited time buff of 1,000 fights or so then I'd doubt people would use it on their main bots very much against their own dumpers. Or maybe it could also just reduce the stats of anyone attacking you by 25/50%, which may work better since it wouldn't affect the stat points of the main bot.

This would also reduce the amount of people that'd get hit by tournament bots with higher absorb/weapons/armors since they'd be reduced by 50% to make them similar to a normal bot at the same range. Like say a level 100 freaked tourney bot with I dunno, 270 str armors and answerers reduced by 50% would make the likelihood of a normal answerer bot being able much higher.

Just saying it might actually be a good buff idea and reduce griefing on the game.

Yeah PeeT... dont ya miss us old friends that wanna play a gentlemans game of combat? not these pissy week multy target attacks over and over for no use... waste of 2 bots or more.

Also, onlining people probably just shouldn't be allowed by.game.

Game simply shouldn't let you hit another bot online. It's just not a healthy game mechanic to completely disallow another player to effectively even be allowed to play. Kinda silly game lets people, imo.

Thanks Zal... It Must Relate To BOTH being online to stop hinderance. Offline hits whatever. I can barely play, who needs evidence or videos... I am actually docking all bots into a dump clan and preparing to sign out... waste of time and money. Dan.

I am sure something can be done about online attacking, it's just wrong that some people can totally "lock" you out from being able to play the, that is just bad.. both for the game and the persons affected.

Thanks Fully Tarnished, Agent69... Hits online are needed for kudos but there should be a max online fight limit

Correct Smeagol... being "locked out" by high dex/con 1 minute hits all night. Its useless and I cannot promote this game to others when it is this disfunctional. Dan.

Can I also suggest we differentiate random online hits for kudos/poke and offline clan fights for energy... And possibly create some live arena where we could battle and gamble our stakes in the roman bot colosseum kinda thing?... I dunno... ideas... Whatever... Most My Bot Being "Bot Blocked" so all I can do is wait and hide, thanks. Dan.

Hits online are needed for kudos

I... think this might be it, actually.

You don't raise your own kudos and tend to just go "kudos hunting" when running low, eh? I've... seen you had some interesting target choices in the past...

Best guess now: you hit someone a few times fairly recently... and they've decided to insecurely grief you incessantly "to make a point" and prove they're "not to be messed with" or whatever.

However, seems kinda freaking silly and self-defeating to also, at same time, work in the shadows and hide. So... more of a prove to themselves thing, I guess, and less a prove to anyone else.

That's where I'm landing now, at least, and is my working theory. :P

Thanks for the discussion/ideas on "onlining". It's always been one of the more contentious parts of the game. It's super frustrating to be on the receiving end and, as some of you have pointed out, has likely driven some players away over the years.

There's a fine line to walk. This is ultimately a PvP game at its core, and attacking other players is a supported mechanic. However, when a game mechanic can be used not just for competitive gain but also to effectively lock another person out of playing the game entirely, that feels to me like a game design problem worth solving. If I make changes, my goal would be to mitigate the specific griefing tactic of onlining while preserving PvP overall.

One idea I have is "sanctuary" status.

The rough idea is that if you're online and attacked a certain number of times within a certain amount of time, your bot would receive sanctuary status, making it immune to further online attacks for a brief period.

I think this kind of approach (vs. debuffing the attacker in some way) is needed because people have many bots. If the attacker switches to another of their own bots to continue attacking, the target would still have sanctuary status.

This kind of system would depend entirely on getting the parameters right. The main ones we'd need to tune, test, and get feedback on are (a) the number of attacks to trigger sanctuary (5 attacks?), (b) the time window in which those attacks must occur (10 minutes?), and the duration of sanctuary immunity (20 minutes?).

This is a starting point for discussion. I want to be clear that I'm putting this out there just as an initial idea to get the conversation rolling on a potential solution. So I'm not committed to this specific idea, but I am committed to finding a way to address the "lockout" problem. I'm eager to hear your constructive thoughts on sanctuary status or other potential mechanics that could achieve the same goal. Let's focus on how we can make the game better for everyone.

Maybe 5 times within a timespan of a server hour. Like if you are online 5 times in an hour, you can't be attacked for the rest of that hour. ie. you get attack 5 times from 11.10 till 11.15, you are protected from 11.15 till 12.00 or you get onlined 5 times from 11.05 till 11:45 you are protected from 11.45 till 12.00. So you can only be onlined 5 times in an hour.

This is ultimately a PvP game at its core

I very much disagree. I think it stopped even pretending to be such whenever it ceased stop trying to prevent people from fighting their own bots.

Even with the addition of freaking and the changes preventing "real bots" from even being able to compete with "tourney bots" or whatever... the game functionally doesn't allow for "honest" fighting amongst bots if players wanted to start "going all PvP" and instead the game would simply ask for freaking/workshopped bots being effectively mandatory across the board and players to spend all their time "dumping" energy onto bots we never log onto.

Tournaments and clan race are really just akin to global leader boards in a game we PvE everything.

The "PvP elements" at this point... are almost solely just used for griefing purposes and not to advance our position in the game (and, really, almost never even to harm someone else's, really).

So... WHY? Why be able to online at all? So that... we have the option to steal someone's kudos when it shows them in the showroom?

I... just think if someone is online then they shouldn't be able to be hit at all. If the game allows for levelling people's bots or stealing offline (and asking they consider insurance) or simply draining them relentlessly of energy out of pure spite... I sorta get it. We can sorta pretend it's PvP or whatever... but online? Just let people feel like they're at least free to play how they wanna play and won't have to worry about some schmuck trying to grief them during their gaming session, imo.

It's a tough one, onlining does suck in general and, along with some other sketchy practices, just serves to make people upset and not actually be worth the attacking players time in terms of beneficial in-game reward for doing it.

But it feels like we're asking to get rid of all the friction in the game recently which might make the game noticeably more... bland? A lot of the things people complain about are what gives the game a bit more depth. If we remove everything that lets people "express" themselves in any way that isn't just clicking fight again vs an easy bot, I could see more people quitting out of boredom instead of frustration.

The best/most rewarding experiences I've had playing bots have been beating people that were salty enough to online/drain/level me (cough gpof, sam cough). Nothing beats just continuing to score, letting someone waste their own time and still beating them anyway. Or fighting back using your own strategies to waste more of their time than yours.

I'd probably be all for removing or limiting the ability to online people, as it really is the least defendable of all the bots deadly sins. Definitely wouldn't do it with a buff or anything like that, just a clear lockout like the fight limits when certain conditions are met (5 attacks in 10 minutes seems fine to me in that case).

Just hope that we don't end up on a slippery slope to remove everything else that can be used to make the game vaguely more interesting than cookie clicker.

Just hope that we don't end up on a slippery slope

I just hope some slippery slope fallacy doesn't prevent an obviously good thing from happening because of some fictitious "threat" that doing a good thing might theoretically result in you drinking the blood of puppies or whatever.

Ender's been VERY adamant that it's a "PvP game" and we should all feel free to attack each other. There's... just no worry here, I think. Yes, I very much have my own opinions, as others might... but what does that even matter?

Here, the matter is simply about onlining, I think.

Obviously... well, you know I don't appreciate any "benefit" to it even existing and think anyone would actually be hard-pressed trying to defend its existence in the game at all, so far as benefit to quality of the gameplay experience.

It's just a huge negative overall. Not even close, I think. Seems unbelievably easy to me here...

Let's turn bots fully into a single player game and all hold hands while we press train again together! Taking away one of the only actual player interactions in an online text game sounds absolutely ridiculous. Also, you know who will always dislike PvP games? People who aren't good at them. It's not going to appease everybody and it's ok to not like it, there are going to be people who quit or don't even really start regardless what kind of catering happens. Also as fish stated, this is where there's a lot of space for triumph/satisfaction etc for some. It's basically the only aspect of the game that has any dynamics whatsoever instead of static clicking fight/train again.

beating people that were salty enough to online/drain/level me (cough gpof, sam cough)

I think you're mistaken, you lost to Ville cheating!

See, the problem with people (even Ender) thinking this is a PvP game is that all the PvP aspects that we've come up with over the years have pretty much only proven to drive people away from playing the game. The reason for this is simple: most people think this is a casual text based game they piddle around with when they're working/watching a show or something. And for the most part the game reinforces this: you join a clan then fight easy bots to gain energy or make dumpers you use against yourself to gain energy. There's pretty much nothing positive about making nothing but tournament bots or something to fight other people with other than to piss them off and make them leave. Thus the end result if everyone did that on this game would be 0-1 players rather than like 20-50 lol. We likely would've kept hundreds more people over time had we changed the game towards PvE and made it more casual but for all the suggestions etc. I've talked about that for years all I heard is the same arguments against it. Now there's another player that came back, suggested something similar, and yet again we go over the same points and the end result will just be another person that leaves the game.

I should stated that if PvP was more progressive or done in a different way like Dan suggested it would work better. Games like Diablo 2 did it by having both players agree to duels (except hardcore mode) then they'd have their duel and be done. The majority of the game was still heavily PvE based but PvP was there for the insane people that wanted to min/max builds and fight one another. It just needs to be less of an annoyance that you can inflict on anyone at anytime for any insane reason is all :/

Let's turn bots fully into a single player game and all hold hands while we press train again together!

Lmfao, probably won't be long at this rate.

Onlining is funny and normally wouldn't last for over an hour and is a rare social event something this game IMO is lacking, it's given me some of my biggest laughs on here especially when fifty was onlining me for not letting him use my RW's. In all honesty complaining about it is the worst thing you can do as it means people will probably do it more to you.

Leaving kudo "bots" online when dumping/repairing is a nice QoL too so you dont take 1 million kudos when you need 200k for example.

Also, you know who will always dislike PvP games? People who aren't good at them.

Or... I'm just trying to be actual realistic here.

Almost the only "PvP" ever happening in this game is griefing.

I remember bots2, thanks. The game didn't even let you fight your own bots... or, well, tried to not let you (and it was supposedly even against the rules!). There was an actual case it tried to be "PvP" then. At this point? Why are we trying to kid ourselves? This game's so not PvP and every single person pretending like it's important to "remain PvP" is going to throw a giant hissy fit if anyone was going to actually attack them... but... WHATEVER.

Even if we want to pretend this game is any kinda "PvP" whatsoever... that doesn't mean it has to let you attack people online and interfere with their very ability to even play the game.

Just going to throw this out there:

Dan is trying to play the game and have fun.

Guardian Angel aka Zach quit the game and here he is saying how much he likes messing with people.

Gpof says he likes the PvP aspect of the game but literally spends months upon months using dumpers and joins the biggest clan in the game every time so he's guaranteed 1st place trophies. Yet somehow he's for PvP when he does little to none of it and wants more people to do it.

Everyone else is pretty much for doing something about onlining so far other than them. But I'm just showcasing this as an example of people who actually enjoy griefing versus those that don't. So far I've heard no compelling complaints that griefing/onlining is a good thing other than "lol it's funny to PvP and you all are a bunch of wimps and should be giant a-holes instead!".

And you all wonder why people leave the game :P

Why is everything you say so narrow minded and self serving Zal?

Guardian Angel aka Zach quit the game and here he is saying how much he likes messing with people.

I didn't say this, but if your definition of me "messing with people" is attacking other bots with my bots to test how good they might be and have fun on a game then yes I enjoy it. I also enjoy rivalries and a bit of banter, something that without I doubt this game would have survived for so long. Onlining can be annoying yes but in 14 years of the game I dont recall any times where someone has been onlined for more than 60 minutes, it doesn't make any sense to do so. Although I have lost months in the past where I was onlined and it slowed me down at the end so you could argue it was a good play tactically.

Gpof says he likes the PvP aspect of the game but literally spends months upon months using dumpers

More nonsense, what do dumpers have to do with PVP? Gpof is probably the biggest player in the main PVP contest on the game which is the tournament(where bots fight other players bots who would have thought).

And you all wonder why people leave the game :P

Most established players I know that have quit is due to boredom or lack of updates, not because somebody attacked their bot.

Will echo what someone else said which is these posts about cancelling PVP interactions normally come from those who really suck at PVP so selfishly try to get it all cancelled. I personally dont see onlining as big a problem as is made out to be and more just a sign of healthy rivalry and competition.

Will echo what someone else said which is these posts about cancelling PVP interactions normally come from those who really suck at PVP so selfishly try to get it all cancelled.

Can we stick to trying to actually talk about the issue of onlining people and stop with weird slippery slope fallacies and silly ad hominem attacks?

Even though I would be very surprised if anyone else in this game has the credit I do when it comes to competitive games.

Anyone ever read Playing to Win? It's phenomenal, if ya haven't. It's funny to me because I've no doubt that many here would argue I'm being the "scrub" here. But... that's not right. See... I'm not ever interested in pretending a game is something it's not. I'M actually looking at what the game is demanding and recognizing that - absolutely nothing more.

In bots2, I very much tried to abuse the PvP elements and shrugged my shoulders and said "get good" if anyone ever complained about any of it. It was a different game. THIS game today? It's just not the same. The game's changed... the players should recognize that and simply stop pretending it's the same as it once was.

But... that's still kinda getting sidetracked, isn't it?

NO GAME should let another player prevent someone from even being able to play! That has ALWAYS been completely terrible design. There's... not really even the beginning of a good argument for it... which might be why everyone has been so quick to keep trying to change the topic and obfuscate this discussion, eh?

Gpof says he likes the PvP aspect of the game but literally spends months upon months using dumpers and joins the biggest clan in the game every time so he's guaranteed 1st place trophies. Yet somehow he's for PvP when he does little to none of it and wants more people to do it.

Only thing you got right was that I use dumpers, which of course I'm going to when it's competitive. I also breathe air. Do some research if you're going to make ignorant claims like this. I left Eternal while they were still winning the majority of months, which coincidentally led to one of the longest ongoing sessions of PvP on here between Zach and myself, and later on during that, more of Escapism was involved too. I remained in Escapism for nearly 4 years of straight losses and only ceased to because the clan was claimed by the bots IRS. Long before that as Fish hinted at, him and I did a fair bit of onlining and such to each other as well, tons of that and leveling took place in those days. I've also had a couple of lengthier battles with Luth. There are probably several other instances I've forgotten but those were the longest/most noteworthy I can recall. Scored a big month for Atreides as well for a little bonus. Oh, and a fun month where I pretty much exclusively attacked actual bots/players. Also I don't care if others participate in it or not, I only care that it's an option.

Even if none of this was the case, does one really need to participate a bunch in the activity being talked about to comment on it? By that logic we should discredit all of the tournament conversation from anybody without tournament bots.

NO GAME should let another player prevent someone from even being able to play! That has ALWAYS been completely terrible design.

My enjoyment from playing any blue control deck would like to disagree :^)

Draw-Go is child's play. Old MTG had REAL lockout decks. And you know what happens when you land your Stasis and your opponent knows they aren't going to be able to have another turn where they can do anything? You win. Game's over. They quit... because of course they do - why wouldn't they?

...could you imagine if Magic: the Gathering didn't let your opponents concede? That would be.... an unplayable nightmare, eh?

I guess that's not true. But... cards like Stasis and Winter Orb definitely woulda been banned quicker than the Ante cards.

This thread has moved on a bit from just onlining and onto the role of PvP in the game. I think there are two main perspectives being expressed, and I think both are valid.

On one hand, I agree that the game, especially the monthly clan race, has largely become PvE-focused with the meta of building and managing dumpers and other types of resource bots. On the other hand, I also recognize the PvP angle and how that can fuel rivalries and interest in the game, whether through leveling someone's tournament bots, taking their energy, or onlining them. The satisfaction of overcoming a human opponent is real and valid. My goal isn't to eliminate this friction. I agree that taking all of that away could make the game bland, and definitely don't want it to essentially become cookie clicker.

That said, I do think it's important to differentiate between healthy, competitive friction and mechanics that are unhealthy for the game...which brings me back to onlining. The core issue with onlining is that it can be used to completely lock another person out of playing the game. As was noted with the MtG analogy, you can concede in that game; in this game, you're stuck. That feels like a design problem.

I know the slippery slope fallacy was acknowledged when it was brought up, but I don't believe that fixing one obviously frustrating game mechanic will lead to the removal of all PvP - I can make targeted improvements to specific aspects of the game. I have to take the recurring feedback of onlining driving people away from the game seriously, even if some players have enjoyed it or found a way to overcome it in the past.

As I've mentioned in other threads, with all changes, I'm trying to find the right balance that rewards long-term investment while still making the game accessible and fun for a wider base of players. I suggest we focus this discussion on the specific problem of onlining. How do we mitigate the "lockout" effect while preserving a healthy PvP environment? My sanctuary idea was one starting point, but I'm open to hearing more concrete, constructive ideas on that or other ideas.

Honestly, wow... anyway... Thanks Ender for your diplomacy and guided interest in clarifying system enhancements / downfalls... I love the challenge of PvP on here, surprise attacks with red love letters to see who is interested and make friends for nefarious purposes right?... Its not about losing online hits, we can all rebuild a bot and carry on... BUT HOW CAN YOU REBUIILD WHEN YOU CANNOT PLAY AT ALL! For Days Mate!... How about... I would LOVE to tick a box that allows "online fights", receiving a challenge and fighting to the death in an "online arena" scenario? with bonuses for being completely destroyed?... I reckon THAT would be cool... If not there needs to be a maximum "online attacks" limit... We have a limit on the "offline" PvP/PvE attacks. Dan.

How do we mitigate the "lockout" effect while preserving a healthy PvP environment? My sanctuary idea was one starting point, but I'm open to hearing more concrete, constructive ideas on that or other ideas.

This basically gives power to a bots owner to decide who they want attacking it "oh you are attacking my easy to beat level 70 shamshir ratio, I will just log in and click every 59 minutes or so", whilst even at 5 fights limit you could be onlined for 20 minutes still so raising the amount of fights would seem pretty pointless. Best way to look at it is the more you try to stop onlining in this way the more power you give to a bots owner over who attacks it, which I think is awful especially when it wouldn't eliminate onlining totally.

Don't want to go off topic but the leveling of tourneys is basically onlining on steroids and would much rather see an effort to fix this personally, you are wasting 5 minutes of your time to waste 2-3 hours of your victims(it's just paid in advance so to speak), whereas onlining is a 1:1 ratio of time wasted.

A simple fix for your problem Zach would be to expand on mine but to make the Mindreave buff usable when you're offline also against attackers. That way one could leave their tourney bots with a 1,000 fight Mindreave 3 with 25% xp gained and it would reduce the xp gain the tourney bots get. That way it would waste more of the attackers time/wins. Maybe we could even make a Mindreave 4 and have it at 0-10% but I could see it being used for dumpers instead (unless the cost was high, like say 200-300 trophy points or something). Could make it so that the Mindreave 4 buff only works on bots level <50 too since that's where most of the leveling occurs.

An easy effective way would be durability loss on gear when onlining someone, lets say 25% per fight (yep me thinking out loud), could make it a toggle in settings.. if you don't mind getting onlined leave it off, if people harassing you then turn it on and they lose 25% durability per fight. This way people just wanting to get some quick gold can still get gold (assuming they are onling their own bot for gold).. and would stop harassment.

A progressive stacking buff on the attacker (when targeting an online bot) that adds time to the fight (say a 15 second delay of your bot is currently in time out) and grows by 1 seconds each time you attack an online bot within a 10 minute time range could be a decent method for accomplishing all the goals of this thread. (Would need to be a on a specific bot ID basis for each infraction you are onlining people)

This basically gives power to a bots owner to decide who they want attacking it "oh you are attacking my easy to beat level 70 shamshir ratio, I will just log in and click every 59 minutes or so"

Then... God bless ya?

If some new player has a level 70 crap bot and wants to stay online constantly to try and exploit the system? Cool, imo.

But let's be real: NO ONE actually has control over winning matches against someone that wants to beat them - not on any kinda scorer or something you'd actually play on. If someone really wants to... they can freak/workshop and build a "tourney bot" that beats anything you're actually trying to play on. Let's not pretend "bad builds" even really matter in this game and the victim "deserves it" or whatever. We're all playing on completely vulnerable bots.

And... hot take: threat of leveling tourney bots and the encouragement to at least have them at specific levels kinda serves as a huge check against this game going completely off-the-rails.

Finally, I appreciate how one might personally feel levelling tournies is "worse," but... it kinda isn't even remotely the same thing. You talk about the amount of time it might cost ya? That's... game activity. You're kinda... saying it Promotes Game Activity. Players being able to sit on tournies forever is actually kinda bad and discourages game activity. Onlining people discourages game activity and, as Ender stated, absolutely is not rewarding enough to the perpetrators to remotely compensate for the impact on the victim.

And if the game is suffering overall then we're all just worse off overall.

I'm still completely for the game simply not letting you online people AT ALL. But... my vote would, at least, be for whatever compromise limits the ability to online people the very most. Simple to me. Easy call.

My personal opinion is if you step into a PvP arena as a PvE player, you can't expect to not get hit. I think as far as this game goes, getting onlined does push you to either retaliate, move on (IE swap bots), or log off (and not bother coming back if it continues to happen every time you are on).

I can understand that the general consensus of the game has geared us to push towards a more PvE style, but the game's mechanics is still PvP in the sense we have to build those bots for us to attack (Ender doesn't supply the game with bots to attack for clan based achievements), nor does the game (Environment) own the control of those bots, the players do.

Again, finding the balance is what Ender is wanting between healthy online competition and greiffing (which I am completely against as well), but removing the ability to attack an online bot is absurd and would have detriment adverse effects for a lot of people (myself included). (Niche case but I like to stay online with my Ratio bot incase someone else attacks it and I can reequip the gear as XP isn't based on online/offline).

This basically gives power to a bots owner to decide who they want attacking it

Besides... defending bots also won't ever have any power so long as the game encourages anonymity.

Unless it's Luth hitting ya (respec), the players in this game are gonna try and hide and pretend they are innocent of such actions. The 2 or 3 hours someone spends on a tournie bot doesn't even compete with the unbelievable amount of time most spend on a "main," ya know? And... let's be real: almost all these attacks tend to be made by throwaway bots with absolute meaning to the attacker.

And the response of "hit them back" then becomes pretty absurd if that's... hitting some throwaway bot which absolutely no one cares remotely about.

Onlining people just... shouldn't be allowed at all.

Whatever the case, I think I said what I think and my stance is clear. So... yeah.

Kudos to Ender here, imo. Whatever happens, that seems right to say.

cheers,
The One and Only

You also set up a scenario that allows people who don't like you to log on to the bot you are attacking and stopping you from doing so if you aren't attacking your own bots (which you aren't at the moment).

In my experience online attacks are pretty isolated, and cases to the extent that OP has been experiencing are extremely rare. Even during the heated Apex vs. Lusitania rivalry, on-lining was a line we didn't really cross.

The only example from my recent playing experience is from when I was attacking easy-beat bots of an Apex member and ignored their orders to stop. While incredibly frustrating when its happening to you, dumb things like this only serve to fuel clan/player -related rivalries and the motivation to log back in and try to win. As seen with the strong and passionate views around recent changes to the monthly race, the game is at its best when a rivalry with some meaning is active.

Sanctuary status seems like a good idea for those who want to sit on the sidelines enjoying their single-player world and lvl 100 NaN plats, but imo clanned bots shouldn't be able to have this status. All is fair in love and (clan) war.

when I was attacking easy-beat bots of an Apex member and ignored their orders to stop.

I mean... dude.

Some "PvP" we got here when players legit think it's okay for other players to demand bots that were made to lose aren't even available to be hit by other players.

Who are we all trying to fool here? The "niche" example above even? It... kinda is a legit basis for an argument (sorta)... but even that is actually about attacking your own bots and not having other people be able to attack your stuff.

Even more... this is just beyond absurd. I just went through all this and I was fully prepared to "go to war" and play all the "PvP" you folks wanted! We JUST went through this...

Who are we all trying to fool here? This is beyond insane. It was about 15 seconds that I started to return fire before you all threw up a white flag... quicker than I even said would happen.

The sad fact is this: your clan does NOT "want PvP." It simply feels safe from anyone hitting YOU and you like the option of potentially bullying other players. I'm sorry, but this is all completely ridiculous.

But... WHATEVER.

Seriously, pretend you actually like PvP. Cool. Seriously, whatever. I love PvP, too.

Ever... play a shoot 'em up PvP game recently? There's a reason spawns are so much better and try to avoid players instantly dying. There's a reason that players tend to be invulnerable while spawning into a game. Because... people that want to play PvP want to actually be able to PLAY.

This is supposed to be a discussion about ONLINING people - which makes it so another player can't even PLAY the game. THAT is just absurdly terrible (whether you're not worried about I happening to you or not doesn't shouldn't even matter). There's just not even the beginning of a sensible argument for that being anything but a detrimental aspect of this game. This isn't rocket science or a complicated issue here, tbh.

For goodness sake... the game literally even shows you when someone is hanging out in the showroom - it's kinda insane that the game so actively tries to make the playing experience terrible, when you think about it (very much making a small community and some kinda "social contract" basically mandatory to avoid what really would be a completely miserable playing experience for anyone that isn't just really into trolling/griefing).

But... WHATEVER.

Let's pretend we actually were looking for some kinda compromise here, maybe? Or... maybe just can we stop completely trying to derail any possible conversation?

If, however, you really wanna complain about this or that and not add to any potential ideas here at all... maybe make a new thread just to complain about how "PvE players" are "ruining the game" or whatever? Just... some thoughts.

Mal I don't think throwing baseless accusations at groups of people and being so passive aggressive and negative about things is really helping anyone come to any practical solution. With all respect I find your posts incredibly hard to read becuse it seems to be a lot of typing for not very much point although I do try my best. Typing stuff like "but... WHATEVER" and "I mean .. dude" are needless IMO and irritating, some might call it forum onlining!

I personally feel the problem here for most is the theoretical idea that you could be stopped playing "forever"(which I totally agree has no place on the game) rather than the actual real problem of the odd player being attacked for 20 minutes or so online which I would guess most players have experienced after a dispute with another player, which is annoying yes(especially when both bots have broken weps) but it's normally quite rare and brief.

The only practical solution I see without having massive game changing consequences is if extended onlining of over 60 minutes or so is reported to Ender he could investigate and maybe punish serious offenders starting with warnings, although personally I think time would be better spent elsewhere.

Maybe a cooldown for online attacks, let's say you can't online attack for 30 minutes after doing an online attack.

Maybe a cooldown for online attacks, let's say you can't online attack for 30 minutes after doing an online attack.

Again this would give players the power to stop people attacking a bot if they log on to it which could be a tool to use as another reverse form of onlining, not to mention the general frustration this would cause for players just trying to play the game whether its getting kudos or leaving your RW online etc.

Seems like minor issues, can just log them off and that is solved.

Players would be able to log on their bot when it was being attacked and make it untouchable, I personally think that's a huge issue. It would make bot building and repairing much more of a hassle too, there are many scenarios I could think of where this has a negative effect. Imagine you are attacking a friends RW and they log on to check how many attacks are left then forget to log off and afk etc.

I don't think thats minor, that's happening every day vs someone being onlined maybe once every few months. With how exceptionally rare griefing is through onlining, I really wouldn't expect to see any impact at all on any of the ways people are already playing the game

Agreed on some overly verbose posts just being repetitive and not adding anything to the discussion, keep it constructive and as short as you can while still getting your point across.

Thanks for all the additional feedback. Reading through this helped me refine my own thinking.

My "sanctuary" status idea was a defender-focused solution. I'd dismissed attacker-focused solutions in my head because many people have many bots, so you could always just switch to another bot to attack someone. After reading feedback though, I'm realizing it's not an either-or situation. Attacker-focused penalties could still be an additional layer of friction for the person doing the onlining. A determined player with many bots could still work through it of course, but maybe they wouldn't be able to. Anyway, I'm now open to incorporating attacker-focused aspects as well. The suggestion about a stacking time delay that affects the attacker's ability to initiate any battle (whether against an online bot, offline bot, or trainer) seems particularly interesting since it creates a real opportunity cost for the onliner.

I hear the points about using sanctuary status being gamed to protect bots. I think this risk will be manageable with careful tuning. The protection needs to be long enough to be meaningful, but not so long that gaming the system by attacking yourself becomes a worthwhile use of time. I could also introduce randomness into the duration or thresholds and/or provide no in-game feedback about how much time left your bot currently has sanctuary status for. Realistically, if this does end up becoming a significant problem, we can cross that bridge and iterate on it later.

With all that in mind, here's where I think I'm at for principles for any solution we land on:

• The change should be targeted at sustained harassment: You should still be able to snipe at another online bot (whether another player's or your own) a few times for kudos, as part of a rivalry, or whatever. The solution should be invisible to most players engaging in casual, normal PvP, and only activate in extreme cases of ongoing, targeted harassment that results in another player effectively being unable to play for an extended duration.

• The change should be to game mechanics, not manual enforcement: I want to focus the solution on game mechanics to disincentivize or prevent the behavior, rather than rely on manual policing of individual disputes. That scales better and allows me to focus my time on other stuff that benefits all players.

• The change should preserve PvP while mitigating griefing: As I mentioned before, I think the psychological aspect of PvP and the rivalries it creates/fuels is healthy and valuable for the game. The goal is just to fix the design flaw where one player can prevent another player from effectively being able to play the game at all. I'm confident we can make a targeted improvement that preserves the core PvP elements of the game.

Lastly, a brief meta note on the discussion itself. I appreciate that the majority of the feedback has been constructive and focused on the ideas. Let's do our best to focus on the substance of the ideas rather than the way they're being said. Responding to the core of people's arguments will always be more productive.

A progressive stacking buff on the attacker (when targeting an online bot) that adds time to the fight (say a 15 second delay of your bot is currently in time out) and grows by 1 seconds each time you attack

This is the best game mechanic idea so far I think also, although maybe it should start after so many attacks as to not conflict with players genuinely just playing the game. I also think it should start at a 1 second delay(and then increase each time by a second) after last online attack to give the defender more chance to get their own attack in and defend themselves whilst again not being too intrusive to players attacking their own online bot. That being said I don't think it's really worth it when one online attack can last for 240 seconds.

Funny thing about a delay mechanic is that there is already a similar small difference between attacking/defending which favors the defender. When you have an attack interrupted, you still stay on an active fight link and can click fight again whilst watching the timer. An attacker loses that every time the defender gets a fight/train in and makes them need to continuously go back to the fight list and get lucky on their timing when your bot isn't already battling.

Probably still translates to "skill issue", but it's there.

I think at this point most ideas that'd work have been stated and you just have to pick one and go with it Ender ;) Not really sure if more roundabout talking will help anything unless someone comes up with a new idea.

Yup. Sounds like a lot of good ideas have been shared and you just need to make a choice and work out the kinks.

The divide in control is easy to see here... I can get 20 kids to log on with my spare bots and "online" everything you have too... Not so its annoying, but maliciously use friends in other time zones to completely stop EVERY LOG ON even if I am winning the "online" fights... Useless logging on when nefarious people hold you at ransom and disfunctional. FIGHT ONLINE, WHO CARES... I ACTUALLY WANT MORE OF IT (PvP)... I would make 120+ level bots all day just to throw down in an open arena. Thanks Ender for your efforts and understanding how the platform has a coded flaw in the idea of PvP / Online / Real Player Fights and the need to differentiate PvP PvE which seems muddled up together in comments and playing field.

There’s the countdown timer favoring the defender as mentioned and you can further mitigate it by opening a second window and going to any other page during the fight so the attacker can’t tell when your fight will end or if your fighting at all if your fast they barely know when your fighting or not.

Getting onlined sucks but can be mitigated if your legit unable to play the game cause someone onlined you stop being lazy and use the tools available to avoid it

I don’t know your point I don’t really play anymore lol I’ve been online like 5x before and every time they got bored after 10 minutes of not doing anything to stop me play better

Sorry Ender for the aggravation of this ongoing issue and thanks for the official conduct warning... My Bad. BOTS4 is Awesome to play... I love it better than B2 to be honest... Happy to lose 1000 "online" losses... IF I COULD STILL "PLAY" or "PARTICIPATE" AT THE SAME TIME...

Tbf onlining people isn’t much of an issue anymore. Even attacking scorers isn’t that big of a thing anymore. The few instances it pops up seem to be direct retaliation or grudge against someone. It is still a PvP game at its core so if you want to be left along just be a decent person and the community in general won’t bother you.

It ends up being a lose lose in most cases as it is the person getting online is mildly hindered and the person doing it is wasting their own time for no gain. It’s not event a sustainable way of getting back at someone due to fight limits and in the case of using workshopped bots on scorers your just wasting the bots unrepairable gear for no real value.

The only time I’ve seen it used on mass to legit do anything in a month was Rene vs pothead drama and even he stopped fairly fast before he broke his tourney bots gear

Calling All Bots... You must help Ender so that the system helps you in return... This is an opportunity to fortify this platform and open up the spectrum of "actually" fighting online... I would wake up anytime and log on to a massive online brawl and completely destroy myself and anyone else possible... REAL PvP... just to spend a week fixing and modifying stats just to get smashed again any given chance... little bit like Fight Club... PvP will never be real here if we cant watch the attacking fight and see yourself die in the ring.. Cant adjust mechanics on the fly... Cannot even see the stats (script) of the fight that allegedly I am now stolen away from my journey and business... waiting blindly... red letters counting attacks with a message that should read, "sorry, your bot is busy being played by someone else right now, don't bother shopping your broke again, swapped armours and winning now yay!.. but hang on there buddy you can fight/train/spectate soon again in 3,2,.. Oops, internet too slow? Ran out of counter attacks and gigabytes bro?... try again in 20 minutes... or Days from now man, they own you!". Black screen sux, cant see my own fight, thats not PvP... so, I cannot explain it any better except to say the rhetoric in this post is very disappointing and unfruitful... I am over it already... All the best then and thanks anyway, Peace Love and Brown Rice... Dan.

Thanks everyone. Yeah, I think we've probably exhausted all the main angles of this topic. I have a good handle now on how I'll probably proceed. It should be relatively straightforward to implement (famous last words), so I'll try to work on this soon. No promises though on timeline - currently juggling a handful of different changes in various states right now. Stay tuned!