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Episode 75 - Favorite Anime
Favorite* anime.
Alright I must reply to Rym's news:
Why should macros/bots be banned from mmorpgs? Well... it was said on the show that <paraphrase> 'if you can program a simple bot or macro to play your game (an understatement), then the game is pointless and "what are you doing?"' So hey, whats wrong with aim bots in counterstrike? or wallhacks? or map hacks? FPS games can be advantage hacked pretty easily. All you need is a map hack to find the enemies, and an aim bot to shoot them. You could just play a deathmatch and leave your computer. You could also get a strafing bot to just move you left and right. But my point is... it's a question of morality. If you yell at CS cheaters but applaud MMO botters, wh- what are you doing?
Favorite animes, what are yours?
Here are mine:
Blue Gender (Scared me shitless)
Cowboy Bebop
Dragonball (Not Z, although i still like that)
FLCL
Full Metal Alchemist
Gankutsuou
Ghost in the Shell
Zoids (The first 2 series)
I only recently started getting into more anime than what's fed to me from the TV.
Alright I must reply to Rym's news:
Why should macros/bots be banned from mmorpgs? Well... it was said on the show that <paraphrase> 'if you can program a simple bot or macro to play your game (an understatement), then the game is pointless and "what are you doing?"' So hey, whats wrong with aim bots in counterstrike? or wallhacks? or map hacks? FPS games can be advantage hacked pretty easily. All you need is a map hack to find the enemies, and an aim bot to shoot them. You could just play a deathmatch and leave your computer. You could also get a strafing bot to just move you left and right. But my point is... it's a question of morality. If you yell at CS cheaters but applaud MMO botters, wh- what are you doing?
Favorite animes, what are yours?
Here are mine:
Blue Gender (Scared me shitless)
Cowboy Bebop
Dragonball (Not Z, although i still like that)
FLCL
Full Metal Alchemist
Gankutsuou
Ghost in the Shell
Zoids (The first 2 series)
I only recently started getting into more anime than what's fed to me from the TV.
Comments
Ninja Scroll(The Movie and the Series)
FLCL
Berserk
Gad Guard
Azuamnga Diaoh
Anwyay, bots are not cheating. Most bots don't break the rules of a game. MMORPG bots especially do not break any rules. But there are also plenty of aimbots which don't cheat either. But it is still wrong to use aimbots in multiplayer fps games. How can this be? A contradiction! No, read on.
An fps is a game of skill. The purpose of a game of skill is to compare the skill sets of different human beings with each other. A bot is called a bot for a reason. It's a robot, not a human being. If you use a bot you aren't playing the game, you are just watching a robot play the game for you. Imagine us playing basketball outside, but Michael Jordan plays for me. That's what using a bot is like.
The reason that using a bot in a game of skill is wrong is because it defeats the purpose of the game. I don't want to compare my skills with those of a computer. It's the same reason you don't want to play baseball against someone on steroids. You know that steroids have more skill at baseball than you do. Trying to compare your skill against the skill of steroids is just stupid, pointless and un-fun. But it's not cheating. The computer that plays Chess doesn't cheat. It's just a different opponent. But in some games, different opponents have advantages based on their very nature that make the game pointless or silly. And that is why aimbots in fpses are no good.
Bots in MMORPGs are ok because it's not cheating. It's having the computer play the game for you. And most importantly, it's not a game of skill. It's a game of mindless, monotonous tedium. I still don't understand why people keep playing them. They are a waste of time, money and life. I'll stick with my skill-based games.
All the dude was doing was letting a bot level for him. This doesn't affect any other player in the game in any way.
Scott, I think the primary reason people start to play is to explore the world. MMO's are somewhat the only type of game that allows for that kind of world exploration. WoW is a robust, engaging world, so it's neat to start it. But the reason why people keep playing, you've said it already: the reward structure is designed to drag you in. The problem is it's not worth it to design a game that has the world exploration, but not the addition aspect.
Yes, there is a distinction between fps and mmorpg botting but nonetheless, the result is the same, the person who is using the bot is getting an unfair advantage. It doesn’t matter if an mmorpg can be boiled down to tedious button pushing, the fact remains that a bot can do this tedious button pushing more efficiently. Thus, botters can play longer, because they can do whatever they want as long as they check up on their character every once in a while and kill enemies more quickly because attacks and magic casts are timed more accurately. Its simply unfair to the non-botter and causes the non-botter not to level as quickly.
The other argument presented is that the actions of the bot are within the confines of the rules of the game. This is true, but would you want to play poker with someone who had an odds calculator with them even if they played their hands according to poker rules?
As for my favorite anime:
Gundam X
Nadesico
Ronin Warriors
Suzuka
Escaflowne
Rah Xephon
And to the rest, my bad.
But despite the stupidity of MMO leveling up, it is how the game runs. People waste time to level up, the biggest time waster = greatest player. Bots defeat the idea of wasting time, and skill really is no factor so it renders the game useless. People like MMORPGs, don't ask me why, but the unwritten rules are still rules (or at least they are with a dictatorship).
Don't get me wrong, I really don't think the guy should have been banned. There should have just been a small penelty, like knocking him down the ranks that he had earned from botting. And using bots constantly I think would be a waste of a game; if your going to do that, then why play or even pay for it at all? Using bots isn't a bad thing and should be used to a degree, just not all the time.
[whips out flamethrower]
Oh wait, it IS an advantage. I just realized. Someone who spends their time doing other more productive things than pushing a button repeatedly has a huge advantage over someone who wastes their life away incrementing integers in a database somewhere.
Yup. Not playing the MMO is an advantage all right. But is it unfair? I don't think it's unfair. But people who do sit their all day might try to argue that it is. But that's because it makes them feel stupid. Imagine a race between 100 people. 99 people just start running. One guy is smart and figures out a better way and wins. The 99 people will whine about it being unfair. The reality is that they are just stupid and the one guy outsmarted all of them. People who claim MMO bots are unfair are really saying that they are stupid and they don't want to have to accept it. By agreeing it is unfair you make them feel good about their stupidity. Thus, they will continue to be stupid as it has been validated by other people as being not stupid.
Bad medicine is needed.
I also submit that it's unfair to adults and people with outside lives to DISALLOW botting. Kids and college students have almost unlimited free time to spend leveling their characters. People who work 9-5 have far less time to do so. They are thus at a severe disadvantage in a game where the sole determiner of power is the amount of time spent doing repetitive tasks in game.
In a well-designed game, bots wouldn't be an issue simply because no one would want to miss the fun of playing the game itself. The fact that anyone would want to bot in the first place says that there's something seriously wrong with the game.
CA-CHING! $$$$
Rym, I accept cash, cheque and Visa. Please pay at your earliest convenience.
I also don’t see 9 to 5 jobs as an excuse to bot. If a person decides to play 24 hours a day, they will be rewarded within the game. As with anything in the world, you get more out of something the more time you put into it. I don’t condone people playing 24 hours a day, and Blizzard realized not everyone can play for that long when designing their game. Blizzard created a system where you get more experience points from kills the longer the time you are away from the game. Thus your point, in the case of WoW, was taken into account by the game designers allowing people to stay caught up with friends.
Also the 9 to 5 argument implies that events like the Olympics are inherently not fair. Many athletes train full time in preparation for the games, and by your reasoning, those who are unable to do this because of work should be given a means to “catch up.†Should they be given performance enhancers or have something to do the training for them?
It seems that the main argument for botting is that it is within the confines of the universe of the game. Yet, on a previous podcast, you two talked about the unfairness of using unintended shortcuts in Mario Kart. If an unintended shortcuts are unfair, why is unintended bot usage of players in MMOs not? I am sure Blizzard did not intend for people to use bots to play the game for them.
But I really wanted to mention the Anime "Now and Then, Here and There" as one of my favs that hasn't been mentioned. *runs back to work*
Your Segway analogy is flawed. If the rules of the race were "who can run to the finish line the fastest" then the person with the segway is cheating. No question about it, you have to run in a running race. If the rules of the race are "whoever gets to the finish first wins" then the people who use slower means of transportation are just stupid.
Levelling bots in MMOs neither modify game data with additional software, nor do they modify the source code of the game itself. Therefore bots are not cheating. What if I got one of those drinking birds and had it press the key on my keyboard over and over again? Then I'm not even using any cheat software at all, not even a macro editor. I'm just having a drinking bird play the game for me. How is it cheating to have someone else play for you? If my robotic friend and my drinking bird friend can't play for me, is it ok if my brother plays for me? If you want to make a game only humans can play, make a game only humans can play. Don't enforce discriminatory rules in your terms of service.
Just one of the many reasons I am anti-WoW is because they attempt to enforce rules via their terms of service rather than by the source code of the game itself. Dont' want people botting? Change the source code of the game so that botting is not a possibility. Don't want people shooting at each other from rooftops? Change the game so it can't happen. One of the joys of videogames is exploring the code which the developers have created to see just how much you can do within the rules set before you. Artificially limiting that experimentation aspect ruins a video game. See Zelda 1 and Metroid 1 if you don't know what I'm talking about.
On the issue of Mario Kart DS I think we need some clarification. When the game was new I was under the impression that the developers had made major errors in the coding of the game. I thought that they coded the game in a way that enabled very powerful driving techniques that were never intended. I was wrong. All of these techniques and shortcuts are actually intentional and integral to the game. If you play Mario Kart and you do not use these techniques then you are the stupid guy using your feet when you could be using a race car.
Olympic athletes aren't a valid comparison either. Firstly, those competitions involve skill. I submit that there is no skill involved in WoW leveling. Second, you speak of training. Training implies striving to increase one's abilities or skills, which again has no bearing on WoW. The only factor in how powerful a character is is how long the player has been playing that character. There are no nontrivial tactical decisions or physical skills involved. Being good at WoW is nothing more than a function of time: no amount of skill or talent will change that.
As for "unintended shortcuts" in Mario Kart, my personal opinion was that they are within the game and thus perfectly valid. I don't recall if Scott felt otherwise, but in similar arguments the two of us have had in the past, he went with the philosophy that "it's valid and fair, and it isn't cheating. It's perfectly within the rules. It IS cheap, but that's a different argument." I have no problem with people using these "cheap" shortcuts.
If you want to try a different tack, let's look at it in terms of tort. How does another player leveling via a bot affect you in any way? How is another player leveling via a bot any different, from your perspective, from a player who sits up all night leveling?
How is a bot leveled player ANY different from a non-bot-levelled player?
If you can't show that it affects you, directly or otherwise, then you can't logically argue against allowing others to do it.
I apologize for my misuse of affect or effect in this post.
Chess is a test of knowledge, skill, and talent in regards to Chess itself. It is a direct competition between players. If I compete directly against a player who is using a bot to make his moves, then I'm actually playing against the bot. If the stated intent of the game was to play against the player, then it is cheating, and therefore disallowed. If the stated intent was simply to play chess, then it doesn't matter who my opponent is, and thus it is not disallowed.
WoW is not a game of direct competition, either. There are moments of direct competition, but bots play no role there. Bots are used solely against the environment, and thus incurr no unreasonable costs in terms of other players.
As for the second post, how are all of the situations you've described unique to botting? The same effects come about from people who have nothing better to do than to play 18 hours a day every day. It doesn't matter if a bot or a human does it: the effect is the same.
There have been stories of groups of people who, to level up a character for an event or guild, would play in shifts so that the character itself was leveling 24/7 day after day. This would have the EXACT same effect as botting that character. So how is it different? How can botting be justifiably banned without also banning this?
What if a man decided to play the game 24/7? Or swapped in and out with his wife 24/7? What if a whole family shares an account, and as a result it's active 24/7? How are any of these situations any different from using a bot?
Every effect you've described occurs with or without bots. If bots were somehow prevented from playing, then the gold farmers would just hire more players to farm manually, and the so-called "power gamers" would simply continue to play near-maximally.
The game must be designed to function properly assuming the possibility of every player acting perfectly optimally and being active 24/7. If overactive players, bots or otherwise, can break the game (rising prices, extra gold, whatever), then the game is inherently flawed in the first place for not having taken into account the possiblity of full character actualization.
If WoW doesn't want bots, then it must create a system of leveling that cannot be automated. In-game rules have to be enforced in-game. The moment you punish a character out-of-game for an in-game offense (banning a player for botting or shooting at people from rooftops), you've broken one of the cardinal rules of good game design.
The fact that botting is the optimal solution to leveling in WoW speaks volumes of the quality of the game.
There are many situations, at least in my view that it is not the case. There are many unspoken rules in games that should be adhered to in the case of fairness. You shouldn’t disconnect from online games when you know you will lose for the sake of your stats. Is that person cheating by disconnecting, probably not, there isn’t an explicit rule in the manual and the games is not coded in a way to prevent this in many games. Is it unfair? Yes, especially to the people who have earned their record. You shouldn’t have characters on both sides of a PvP based MMO. Does the game prevent you from doing that? No. Thus, is it cheating? No. Is it unfair to spy on opposing teams? Yes. Especially in games where stats are important to players, which is the case with WoW, there are guidelines that people should follow even if not stated in the manual or coded to prevent it. The quality of the game is not the determining factor.
I also don’t argue that sharing of a character to level up can have the same effect as botting. Again, is it fair? No ( that is if you feel cheating and fairness can be distinct from each other.) Because I don’t make the banning policies for WoW, I cant really answer “How can botting be justifiably banned without also banning this?†Nonetheless, I feel this action should also be deterred. I also agree that if faced with the prospect of a gold farmer losing his bots that he would hire players. I also would feel this to be a detriment to the game.
I agree with the fact that WoW would be better if it somehow prevented the use of bots. However, your expectations are unreasonable that you would be able to have a computer not able to perform the same actions as a human in a keyboard driven game. There are always finite number of characters, actions, enemies, and attacks that one can have in a game. And there will always be a means to optimize the interaction of a character with a programmed enemy. At the very least, even if a bot is not as good as a human, they will still be able to get some sort of return from the bot, if they simply use it to improve a character at times where the human would not be able to play. Gamers can be pretty smart and they will always find a means to make things easier for themselves.
Some rules can't be enforced in any reasonable game-inherent way. These must be enforced by the players or referees themselves, and still must be clearly defined. What's the line? If botting is banned, what about macros? What if I bind a key to do what the bot does, and sit playing the game as a normal person, just pushing fewer buttons? What if I just bind a key to doing two actions instead of one? Three? Eight? What if I'm playing two characters at the same time, but with no bots: just switching back and forth on two PCs?
If you can't define a line, then you're attacking something that can't be solved with a "rule."
Take my complaints about people disconnecting from losing races in Mario Kart DS. I don't like people who do it. It annoys me. I'd love to see Nintendo implement some form of in-game punishment for it. But, I accept it as part of the game. They have the right to do it.
My point is simply that botting is no different from other "destructive" actions in the game. You can't disallow one and allow the other without being a hypocrite. Furthermore, in WoW, a bot is in fact identical to an optimal player: there is no difference between an extremely dedicated player and a bot. This indicated a broken game.
All games have a finite number of possibilities. Part of game theory is understanding how these interact with one another and mapping the sum of all possible outcomes. It is possible, however, to create a game that requires a greater degree of human intelligence. No AI is yet even close to being able to play many games as well as humans can.
If WoW would be a better game without bots, it would also be a better game if you removed all the good (read: playing optimally or near-so) players.
I agree that botting should be deterred. This must, however, be done within the game itself and within the rules of the game world. Vary the way monsters attack. Allow for difficult-to-script-for events. Do SOMETHING. But do it within the game.
Just to get this out of the way, I generally agree that using a script to automate functions in an MMO is perfectly fine. Having a script that makes you move towards and automatically attack the nearest enemy is just fine...
However, what if someone writes a script that allows them to do something in the MMO as fast as the computer can process? Generally, there is some amount of processing time that prevents players from doing things in the game at the speed of code; however, when I played Star Wars Galaxies, there was a problem with people writing macros that did things in the game faster than any human could actually do it. So, some monster spawns were permanently camped, and even if you could sneak in, a lot of people had looting scripts that operated faster than you could possibly loot.
So, what if a script gives an advantage that is not simply automating a function you would normally perform, but rather give you an actual advantage?
And trying to get back to anime........
I saw Initial D for the first time last Sunday, anime on-demand. I thought it wasnt too bad, a little odd. The main character was watching the racers and saying "what's the big deal?" then goes on his route to the hotel and races himself. But oh well. What's with the music? It's so crazy and it feels like it doesn't fit at all. It's hip-hop-ish, I'm not sure but it sounded like they had changed the music from your descriptions. OH GOD the 3d models were killing me!! They can't draw?! But, as I have said before, oh well.
OMG you are watching the US Initial D! OMG stop now!!!! For anyone who doesn't know there is a debacle surrounding the Americanization of Initial D. When Tokyopop brought it to the US they wanted to turn it into something huge by getting it on TV and everything. They got rid of all the Eurobeat music and replaced it with shitty shitty hip-hop made especially for the US version of the show. Then they "tricked out" all the races with special video effects from the 80's. If you get an Initial D DVD you will notice the menu lets you choose between "classic" and "tricked out". You are watching the tricked out Initial D, it sucks it sucks it sucks OMG it sucks.
As for Intial D, I would have to agree that the music is definitely bad in the US version. If you haven't yet, I would suggest checking out the live action version with Jay Chow. Its just as over the top and funny.