Should MMOs PERMIT LEGAL BOTS to prevent botting? [Brighter Shores]
21I’ve been covering Brighter Shores for a few weeks in a few different videos, and I would be remiss if I did not cover the contents of the 26 March PC gamer article “RuneScape creators' new MMO has an unorthodox solution for the inevitable waves of bots: Giving you a 'legitimate way' to bot the game yourself.” This is a pretty controversial way to look at the botting problem, and at face value it is something that I imagine most people are going to reject; however, it seems from the comments I got on a poll I ran that people are actually all for an “automated” system they just don’t like it being called “botting.” People seemed to be ok with the idea of retainers/assistants/workers that go out and do things for you, but not you going out and doing things for yourself.
Personally, I think the idea of legit botting to be a good one. Very few people are going to enjoy every aspect of the game. Maybe you want to cook and do alchemy but you don’t want to mess with fishing. So you set yourself to fish every night. Now, while purest and/or hardcore MMO people will say it's an MMO then buy your fish from someone who does their fishing, and while I do agree with that statement, we need to ensure that we don’t neglect the solo players or we will soon not have a population. Another developer once said “Our game won’t be for everybody, and that’s ok” and I think designing a game for a core/target audience is important; however, your game has to be for enough people that you can keep the lights on.
No disrespect to the Mortal Online 2 community because many of them are welcoming individuals, but when you have an elite white knight guard that condemns new player feedback be the proposed ideas will “kill the soul of the game” well when you have on average 1,000 concurrent players the only thing your game has is a soul, but no bodies. I’m not the authority on how many concurrent players you need to be considered a “massive” game, but I do know that 1k isn’t it.
So, an automated system that helps solo players stay in the game, is a system that helps guilds recruit those players. While it's not impossible to recruit a person if they aren’t currently playing the game, I feel pretty confident in my assessment that it's easier to recruit players to your guild if they are in the game, rather than having to recruit them to the game.
What do you think? Is this going to be a make/break for you? Does the idea of legal bots deter you? Or does it make it so you are more likely to play Brighter Shores and other games with this level of automation?
PC Gamer Article:
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/mmo/runescape-creators-new-mmo-has-an-unorthodox-solution-for-the-inevitable-waves-of-bots-giving-you-a-legitimate-way-to-bot-the-game-yourself/
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