Why Should I Bot?

[Historm]

When you visit forums, on almost any server site, official or otherwise, the userbase is almost 100% anti-botting.

At one point, so was I.

I played officials since beta, and I was indignant about the people who used bots to play the game. I biased my views against known botters and I chose to avoid interacting with them. I joined guilds where I knew the people did not bot, and I made enemies of the guilds who did.

About a year ago, after renewal, after the game lost all attraction for me, I decided to see what this botting business was all about. I researched it and it was actually easier than I thought to find. "it" being openkore. I know some programming so maybe it was easier for me but openkore was not hard to understand. After a few tries I had my first bot up and running, a basic heal/buff slave arcbishit while I played my ruinedknight (c what I did there, cause in renewal, most classes are shit and ruined lol). It worked well. My support never needed to take a break, never let buffs run out -even imposito-, never complained about where I chose to level.

I developed better and better ai for my AB and ultimately, she is now able to attack viciously (agi/int build, +9 spike, bsb, duple light) and support at the same time (gear switch heal wand, cod, int/cast time gear, then switch back to attack).

Then I changed it backwards, *I* played the AB, and made my RK the bot. It was alot harder. I admit, the bot attacked like a merciless pro timing and getting better dps than I could, but I was probably better b/c I can decide where to move/route, while the best the bot can do is random walk or follow a preset path. Nonetheless, the outcome was impressive.

I obviously took the next step, I ran both my RK and AB on kore, and played a mechanic. After working out the glitches, my 3 man team was wrecking 50k hp monsters in a few seconds using nothing more than mace and axe based melee crits. I then moved 3 AIs plus me. People were starting to notice.

Notice what, though? I had people asking right left and center to join my party. I had parties with 4 - 5 other players alongside my little army and they did not even realize they were bots. These were people who would have sat twiddling their thumbs begging to get parties and getting rejected b/c they were noob or "built wrong" (battle chemist, agi/luk dancer, ect). A few of them let me know they hadn't ever had that fun of a party. I never told them it was all b/c they were being backed up by 3 bots who would never get impatient b/c they dragged the exp rate down.

That's my story. So, why should you bot?

1. Because everyone who "wins" at RO bots. I am sorry, but the honest to god truth is that the "top guild" on your server is being propped up by bots. You can be indignant about it if you want, and you can hate those people for cheating, but in the end you are only depriving yourself of friends you could be making.

2. Because RO was made to be botted. Yes, yes it is. The exp grind? No human should have to spend so much time on a computer in order to "beat" a game. The component (acid bomb, wss, edp) grind? Where do you think those 30k bombs came from? How do you think they were made? The repetition of the basic operations of this game destroys human beings.

3. Because RO was made to be botted. Literally. I don't want to belittle the coding efforts of the moderators, who have done an excellent job with openkore thus far, but RO is an easy game to program an AI around. The grid system makes routing easy. Skill cooldowns and cast times are short, using them to their best is something only the best players can do. But a bot can use them perfectly every time without fail.

4. Because when you program your bot, you are still playing the game even though the AI is controlling the actions of your character. It is acting according to your will, it goes to the map you direct, kills the monsters you decide. Openkore will not play the game unless you have told it to. An AI ran my AB, my RK, and my smith. But it did so as I would have played them, as if I were playing them. Not to digress, but I am religious, and I do believe in such thing as a soul. And honestly, kore played my characters the way I want to, in my heart of hearts, but cannot because my body gets tired, and my life requires attention. When the AI iterates through its list of decisions and actions, it always and only chooses what I would choose.

5. Because when you bot, you learn. Not only do you learn the intricacies of the game, but you will learn actual, real life applicable information. Such as programming PERL, creating decision trees, and coding etiquette.

6. Because when you bot, you are freeing yourself. RO is a GAME. It is a good game, and there are good people in it. But your real, actual life is more important. I know (knew?) people who live in their studio, camped at their computer for the sole purpose of killing GTB every hour. I there are people who blow off socializing at a party in order to make it home in time to grab the Valk mvp time. You need to let go some, and running a bot will help you understand that.

7. Because botting isn't cheating. In and of itself, the kore AI cannot do anything that you cannot do as a player. It cannot spam pots any faster than you can, if you can mash your keyboard fast enough. It does not attack any faster, or do any more damage than your character could if you controlled it. Bots do not break game physics. There are programs that *do* break game physics, and honestly, I think it is wrong. However, in that case it is a matter of fixing abusable glitches in the game (such as the old magnifier/move trick), it is the developer's responsibility to fix those errors.

There are many more reasons as well.

There are a few things to consider when botting that make it wrong, though. When you fail to program your bot properly, or when you intentionally program it to behave in an ill mannered way (KSing, looting, griefing at MvPs) you are very much in the wrong. If your AI represents your will then everything it does, effectively you do those things intentionally as well. Even if you did not intend for it to happen, if your bot loots someone else's raydric card, then YOU looted that card. If your bot drops 12 mobs on a newbie, then YOU mob trained the newbie. Poor programming can make you a the worst kind of asshole, the kind that never rests.

If you are a botter already, my best regards to you.
If you are not a botter, I would recommend trying it. If you choose not to, more power to you, but please don't deprive yourself of friends just b/c you are indignant about botting.

IF YOU ARE A MOD, OR A DEVELOPER OF OPENKORE (both current and previous):

THANK YOU.

Your program is great. Maybe it isn't the 100% optimized program it could be, but it is extremely functional and transparent. I sincerely hope that you continue working on it, adding in more features and more optimization. I hope the community helps you improve the program. I hope you are proud of your work, because you should be.

[EternalHarvest]

but I was probably better b/c I can decide where to move/route, while the best the bot can do is random walk or follow a preset path

More efficient algorithms could be implemeted, but since they aren't, I guess random walking and preset paths are good enough for most uses.

[andy12345]

I literally read from the first word to the last...., I've never seen such a big "thank you"... EVAR!
Hats Off to someone who took time off to write that