I'm just going to quickly address two points that come up quite a lot:
1) "What about TurboHUD".
TurboHUD and bots are two different issues, and they're treated differently by Blizzard. This includes about how they respond to those issues on the forums, and the history of account actions taken. Our letter and this thread is about botting. I don't think there are two different opinions about bots (unless you're a botter), something you cannot say about other issues. Therefore, please keep TurboHUD and other things out of this message, as it makes the issue more blurry and might result in a vague response. If we put the spotlight on one very specific issue and the community speaks as a whole, chances are significantly higher to get a strong response (i.e., hopefully *action* and not just *words*).
2) "Some people on the list have done X and shouldn't be allowed to sign it".
I guess those people on the list are the streamers. They're often being called out for exploiting, botting, or other violations of the ToS (I am not including TurboHUD here and refer to point 1) - keep it out of this thread). However, when they use exploits they usually do this to force Blizzard to act against it (example: blood shard exploit). On the other hand, all people on this list, especially the streamers, have a history of speaking up publicly against botting. Look at it this way: with this letter we are urging Blizzard to act. We are reminding them of their EULA and asking them to take action against those who violate the rules of the game. Why should anyone who is playing this game competitively violate those rules and then join an open letter which will eventually jeopardize their progress?
It's okay to have your own opinion and you're free to express it in this thread. But please do refrain from accusations for which you have no proof, and keep this thread on topic (the botting issue). Those are my only two requests, thanks.
ok, here's "proof", back in classic, alkaizer admitted to account sharing with multiple people in order to achieve p100 world first back when the paragon system was first added to the game after a bit of an investigation, due to his play time being near to 24 hours a day for the duration of time it took him to get that p100, he denied botting and eventually said it was due to account sharing, ergo he broke the rules by sharing account information with others which unless it was changed recently is against the EULA.
Empyrian has abused many exploits that have been discovered over the period since seasons were added, and even had the play time average of someone who used a bot during the blood shard fiasco.
wujido recently had his leaderboard ranking wiped and his account suspended for the use of the hellfire amulet exploit.
your prose is regarding enforcing the EULA/TOS of diablo 3, with regard to botting in particular, but should it not apply to all breaches and as such should it not be prudent to have signatories that have not abused ANYTHING in game for personal gains, otherwise what is the point, the open letter is then just a mirror of blizzards apathy towards the subject, by all means they could have a different viewpoint on the subject after having sanctions placed on them for past misdeeds and as such want to make positive changes, but as i said, i dislike the fact that known cheaters are "supporting" this which is absolutely hypocritical to the point being made and the change being asked for.
as i mentioned in my previous post, i have no issue with the contents of the letter, in fact i am fully aware of trying to force blizzard to pull their heads from their collective rectal cavities, and actually tackle this problem properly, my issue is with the aforementioned.
I agree with literally everything put in the letter. Good job taking a stand on this issue.
The new metagame has made botting extremely convenient to the point everyone that wants to seriously compete has to do so.
Bots are not efficient. Bots do stuff for you so you have more time to play efficiently. It's not like people that spedrun 75+ and farm 550b xp/hour are betterthan bots; it's that these people have a bot that farms by itself 30b XP/hour and GR keys/mats on top of that for 10+ hours/day.
I agree with literally everything put in the letter. Good job taking a stand on this issue.
The new metagame has made botting extremely convenient to the point everyone that wants to seriously compete has to do so.
Bots are not efficient. Bots do stuff for you so you have more time to play efficiently. It's not like people that spedrun 75+ and farm 550b xp/hour are betterthan bots; it's that these people have a bot that farms by itself 30b XP/hour and GR keys/mats on top of that for 10+ hours/day.
Look at the new video from mannercookie, where he shows RoSBot in action. It is highly efficient.
I have, thanks for the suggestion, and it just confirms what I had suspected.
A bot can do what I do for most of my playing time (I play solo) as efficiently as I do. Well, more efficiently because the bot will never be distracted.
I feel sad now. I mean well done whoever put that piece of software together, is impressive to see in action, but go to hell for making me feel even more worthless.
Look at the new video from mannercookie, where he shows RoSBot in action. It is highly efficient.
Yes, it was more like "not efficient as full group play". But the point was about bots letting players to "skip" the time-consuming part of the game and focus solely on progression.
You're not a streamer or a Mod on a well-known D3 site are you? If not, no. Unless you've also been caught in some rediculous ploy to cheat/exploit/bot the game in which case that's apparently catered to.
Regardless if some of the names have used THUD or botted, they can still be against it and want the rules to be enforced. They don't have to be "pure and clean angels" to believe in banning botters. Trying to discredit what they are saying like that is called poisoning the well, and it's a childish rhetorical device, drop it.
Actually, it's not 'poisoning the well'. Hypocrisy is defined as "Claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform." which is exactly what, from my count, 10/26 are doing, and I haven't heard of the others... You can't have your cake and eat it too.
My real problem, with every single post about botting/cheating/exploiting/thudding is? It gives these malicious acts a face. While you think you're doing a good thing by making a community aware of a problem, you are FEEDING the problem. How many of those nasty botters heard about thier bots from these forums? Or the official Blizzard forums? Who knew what thudding was? Granted, they aren't hard to find once you start bringing up 'botting' and 'ros', a quick google search will do that for you, but you've now credited the site with informing the masses that it works. (The actual definition of poisoning the well' btw.)
The issue of botting is simple; can it be stopped? No. Why not? Because it's infectious. How do you know your best buddy isn't a botter? Ho many people have reaped the rewards of a botter without ever using one? What good is a banwave? Seasons reset your characters anyways, and even if you're not inclined to wait until the next season, people like Gabby just reload and keep on truckin. I don't agree that botting is good for the game, and I can agree with the sentiment of this open letter, but I would be alot more selective of who signs it, and what they actually represent.
(Side note and a little OT): Can we stop posting D3 has issues when you become the top 1%? Kuz that doesn't exactly represent but the smallest portion of the community.
Botting is too good and it needs to go. There's not much to it. Whoever is defending botting is probably a botter himself.
I'm not calling for a witch hunt because i was a botter myself at various points in the past, both in d3 and in other games. not that it really matters but yeah. I'm just saying that Blizzard should take action.
Why people use THUD? Basic D3 HUD is bad and not informative. Maphack part of THUD is a "cheat", but all others - simply interface upgrade. As for bots...Well, bots do nothing in D3 after RoS. A slight advantage is not worth of possible account ban.
Most people I know only play the game because they can bot. The problem is the amount of boring grinding you have to do just isn't worth it to most people so they'd either quit or bot. You would probably lose about 50% of the "players" if you banned bots and if you included thud I imagine that number would go up to 70%.
I'm just going to quickly address two points that come up quite a lot:
1) "What about TurboHUD".
TurboHUD and bots are two different issues, and they're treated differently by Blizzard. This includes about how they respond to those issues on the forums, and the history of account actions taken. Our letter and this thread is about botting. I don't think there are two different opinions about bots (unless you're a botter), something you cannot say about other issues. Therefore, please keep TurboHUD and other things out of this message, as it makes the issue more blurry and might result in a vague response. If we put the spotlight on one very specific issue and the community speaks as a whole, chances are significantly higher to get a strong response (i.e., hopefully *action* and not just *words*).
2) "Some people on the list have done X and shouldn't be allowed to sign it".
I guess those people on the list are the streamers. They're often being called out for exploiting, botting, or other violations of the ToS (I am not including TurboHUD here and refer to point 1) - keep it out of this thread). However, when they use exploits they usually do this to force Blizzard to act against it (example: blood shard exploit). On the other hand, all people on this list, especially the streamers, have a history of speaking up publicly against botting. Look at it this way: with this letter we are urging Blizzard to act. We are reminding them of their EULA and asking them to take action against those who violate the rules of the game. Why should anyone who is playing this game competitively violate those rules and then join an open letter which will eventually jeopardize their progress?
It's okay to have your own opinion and you're free to express it in this thread. But please do refrain from accusations for which you have no proof, and keep this thread on topic (the botting issue). Those are my only two requests, thanks.
ok, here's "proof", back in classic, alkaizer admitted to account sharing with multiple people in order to achieve p100 world first back when the paragon system was first added to the game after a bit of an investigation, due to his play time being near to 24 hours a day for the duration of time it took him to get that p100, he denied botting and eventually said it was due to account sharing, ergo he broke the rules by sharing account information with others which unless it was changed recently is against the EULA.
Empyrian has abused many exploits that have been discovered over the period since seasons were added, and even had the play time average of someone who used a bot during the blood shard fiasco.
wujido recently had his leaderboard ranking wiped and his account suspended for the use of the hellfire amulet exploit.
your prose is regarding enforcing the EULA/TOS of diablo 3, with regard to botting in particular, but should it not apply to all breaches and as such should it not be prudent to have signatories that have not abused ANYTHING in game for personal gains, otherwise what is the point, the open letter is then just a mirror of blizzards apathy towards the subject, by all means they could have a different viewpoint on the subject after having sanctions placed on them for past misdeeds and as such want to make positive changes, but as i said, i dislike the fact that known cheaters are "supporting" this which is absolutely hypocritical to the point being made and the change being asked for.
as i mentioned in my previous post, i have no issue with the contents of the letter, in fact i am fully aware of trying to force blizzard to pull their heads from their collective rectal cavities, and actually tackle this problem properly, my issue is with the aforementioned.
edit: spelling
I'm sorry but this is just a well written idiotic argument. What someone did in the past does not make them who they are today, just because a person jaywalks doesn't mean they are a thieves, or I guess a botter would be more like a rapist/murderer in this case.
---
[ It's an analogy, I'm not saying botting is akin to rape/murder or even jaywalking, they are just all illegal, but a jaywalker probably doesnt need to be in prison [account closure/removed from society] ]
--
Have you ever read the EULA TOS .. I have I was "Account Closed" under the account I play on today. How does this happen you might ask, perhaps I cheated or broke the TOS.. Well Blizzard never told me despite countless trouble tickets, a couple reviews (which resulted in nothing) they realized they made a mistake and reopened my account two months later. People get accused of doing things they didnt do all the time. (Sorry offtopic) My point is that in the Terms of Service violations are basically anything Blizzard does not like because they make it very clear that they can ban you for " no reason at all. "
----
Besides all that.. So many people violate ToS without even knowing it, now the names you mentioned may have done so knowingly, but because they have violated ToS does not make them botters. Botters and Modding (which I dont think exist, by this I mean straight up hacking items) are what I consider the top violations, Blizzard I'm sure would include the Real Life Threat category, labeling them as the same as botters makes botting not look as bad. AND you are completely ignoring all the good things these guys do with helping other people, putting out game mechanics testing, and SPEAKING OUT AGAINST BOTTING. Empyrian made a video "The Paragon Problem" to draw attention to the drawbacks of how Paragon system works which is the main cause of Botting. I don't know everything he's done as far as exploiting, but I know that people get mad at people who exploit on streams which tends to the be the reason Blizzard finally acts on an issue. On PTR people exploit all over the place and it sucks if you like climbing the leaderboards there but if it werent for countless people cheating on PTR, many exploits would've reached Live, the GR exploit had it not been so widely known would've just destroyed the season.
---
I pride myself on not cheating and I have watched former friends/clansmen reach the top of the leaderboards or hit top paragon knowing they used exploits and have to listen to people talk about all the great things these people have done, but its just so much sweeter when you hit the top of leaderboards and you don't cheat. Problem is Blizzard makes it nearly impossible to be at top of leaderboards without some violation of their own Terms of Service. Paragon umpteenhundred required is BS.. Remove the experience gear and lessen the strength or ease of paragon and botting wont matter nearly as much.
-
Ahh dang it Morty can you fix the Text Spacing on your forum
I I'd let this bot run for a month.. would that make my wizard viable for GR pushing yet? If not I really don't consider botting the biggest issue at hand.
I have always been divided on this issue, because i see both sides so well, and have been on both sides (legit vs botting). My problem is (and this is 99% of the time the main excuse given) is that dont have the time to play 8 hours a day, or sometimes 4 hours a day, consecutively...botting solves that problem, you just set it and forget it, come back after work and clean out bank, shard, tally up loot, and then go again
Its the ease of the act and how simple it is that draws people in, and once you start it becomes addicting, it starts as a way to solve this time problem, to catch up to your friends you tell yourself, to get all your mats so you can gear your toons..and it snowballs from there, and it very easily becomes a daily routine, and even new toons you level up, the first thing you do is run them through the bot for a night or 2 for gear, its almost like cherry picking and farming specific items and you dont even have to do anything but hit a few buttons and start it up
On the other side of this argument, its wrong and cheating and i fully understand why people/blizzard do not want people to do it, it allows a very unfair advantage, and there's no way legit players can keep up, and these bots and software are so advanced that its super efficient, and they get updates every week, so the line between legit and bot is not really an issue as far as efficiency in farming
I would love them to find a way to ban bots, and proactively ban them, not just in waves would be a good step
And lastly the problem with botting is burn-out...botting is great initially, but once you have botted for awhile you start to get all the best gear, have 1000's of gems, breaths, keys, mats, billions of gold, and then you get to a point where all your gear is ancient on all your toons, you have all side-builds gear, accessories, there's such a slim amount of items (totaling less than 10 for example) that you still/want that now even the bot struggles to give you anything because you have..everything
So it just speedens the time it takes to gear out, max out, and be "done" by quite a bit, what takes months with legit play, when you might play a few hours a day, and not even every day...to 8-10 hour bot runs every day, the gear and mats is exponential, full stash, full ancient sets..and for what? besides ranking up leader boards..there's literally nothing else end game wise to do...so what really is the point in getting to the "end"...and then having it all?
Though I do recognize the idea behind the letter, it really loses a lot of credibility for me when I see the names that signed it.
When it's the so called top 1% of the 1% of the community that voice their opinions, I say this loosely since they have yet to show any valid proof of those claims, merely accusations.
Again to the idea of the letter, I agree that breaches in TOS should be punished.
But I must admit, it just really makes me wonder to true motivation behind the letter?
And if *imo* this poorly worded letter is the most appropriate way to reach those within Blizz that has the powers of change?
ok, here's "proof", back in classic, alkaizer admitted to account sharing with multiple people in order to achieve p100 world first back when the paragon system was first added to the game after a bit of an investigation, due to his play time being near to 24 hours a day for the duration of time it took him to get that p100, he denied botting and eventually said it was due to account sharing, ergo he broke the rules by sharing account information with others which unless it was changed recently is against the EULA.
Empyrian has abused many exploits that have been discovered over the period since seasons were added, and even had the play time average of someone who used a bot during the blood shard fiasco.
wujido recently had his leaderboard ranking wiped and his account suspended for the use of the hellfire amulet exploit.
your prose is regarding enforcing the EULA/TOS of diablo 3, with regard to botting in particular, but should it not apply to all breaches and as such should it not be prudent to have signatories that have not abused ANYTHING in game for personal gains, otherwise what is the point, the open letter is then just a mirror of blizzards apathy towards the subject, by all means they could have a different viewpoint on the subject after having sanctions placed on them for past misdeeds and as such want to make positive changes, but as i said, i dislike the fact that known cheaters are "supporting" this which is absolutely hypocritical to the point being made and the change being asked for.
as i mentioned in my previous post, i have no issue with the contents of the letter, in fact i am fully aware of trying to force blizzard to pull their heads from their collective rectal cavities, and actually tackle this problem properly, my issue is with the aforementioned.
edit: spelling
I agree with literally everything put in the letter. Good job taking a stand on this issue.
The new metagame has made botting extremely convenient to the point everyone that wants to seriously compete has to do so.
Bots are not efficient. Bots do stuff for you so you have more time to play efficiently. It's not like people that spedrun 75+ and farm 550b xp/hour are betterthan bots; it's that these people have a bot that farms by itself 30b XP/hour and GR keys/mats on top of that for 10+ hours/day.
I have, thanks for the suggestion, and it just confirms what I had suspected.
A bot can do what I do for most of my playing time (I play solo) as efficiently as I do. Well, more efficiently because the bot will never be distracted.
I feel sad now. I mean well done whoever put that piece of software together, is impressive to see in action, but go to hell for making me feel even more worthless.
You're not a streamer or a Mod on a well-known D3 site are you? If not, no. Unless you've also been caught in some rediculous ploy to cheat/exploit/bot the game in which case that's apparently catered to.
Actually, it's not 'poisoning the well'. Hypocrisy is defined as "Claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform." which is exactly what, from my count, 10/26 are doing, and I haven't heard of the others... You can't have your cake and eat it too.
My real problem, with every single post about botting/cheating/exploiting/thudding is? It gives these malicious acts a face. While you think you're doing a good thing by making a community aware of a problem, you are FEEDING the problem. How many of those nasty botters heard about thier bots from these forums? Or the official Blizzard forums? Who knew what thudding was? Granted, they aren't hard to find once you start bringing up 'botting' and 'ros', a quick google search will do that for you, but you've now credited the site with informing the masses that it works. (The actual definition of poisoning the well' btw.)
The issue of botting is simple; can it be stopped? No. Why not? Because it's infectious. How do you know your best buddy isn't a botter? Ho many people have reaped the rewards of a botter without ever using one? What good is a banwave? Seasons reset your characters anyways, and even if you're not inclined to wait until the next season, people like Gabby just reload and keep on truckin. I don't agree that botting is good for the game, and I can agree with the sentiment of this open letter, but I would be alot more selective of who signs it, and what they actually represent.
(Side note and a little OT): Can we stop posting D3 has issues when you become the top 1%? Kuz that doesn't exactly represent but the smallest portion of the community.
Botting is too good and it needs to go. There's not much to it. Whoever is defending botting is probably a botter himself.
I'm not calling for a witch hunt because i was a botter myself at various points in the past, both in d3 and in other games. not that it really matters but yeah. I'm just saying that Blizzard should take action.
I totaly agree, Down with botters!
Why people use THUD? Basic D3 HUD is bad and not informative. Maphack part of THUD is a "cheat", but all others - simply interface upgrade. As for bots...Well, bots do nothing in D3 after RoS. A slight advantage is not worth of possible account ban.
Most people I know only play the game because they can bot. The problem is the amount of boring grinding you have to do just isn't worth it to most people so they'd either quit or bot. You would probably lose about 50% of the "players" if you banned bots and if you included thud I imagine that number would go up to 70%.
^ Can you expound more thoroughly. it seems you're the only that seems to understand what you posted.
"TurboHUD and bots are two different issues, and they're treated differently by Blizzard." Seriously ??
Both are cheating applications, and both impact the game in same way when they both are left untreated by Blizzard.
I'm sorry but this is just a well written idiotic argument. What someone did in the past does not make them who they are today, just because a person jaywalks doesn't mean they are a thieves, or I guess a botter would be more like a rapist/murderer in this case.
---
[ It's an analogy, I'm not saying botting is akin to rape/murder or even jaywalking, they are just all illegal, but a jaywalker probably doesnt need to be in prison [account closure/removed from society] ]
--
Have you ever read the EULA TOS .. I have I was "Account Closed" under the account I play on today. How does this happen you might ask, perhaps I cheated or broke the TOS.. Well Blizzard never told me despite countless trouble tickets, a couple reviews (which resulted in nothing) they realized they made a mistake and reopened my account two months later. People get accused of doing things they didnt do all the time. (Sorry offtopic) My point is that in the Terms of Service violations are basically anything Blizzard does not like because they make it very clear that they can ban you for " no reason at all. "
----
Besides all that.. So many people violate ToS without even knowing it, now the names you mentioned may have done so knowingly, but because they have violated ToS does not make them botters. Botters and Modding (which I dont think exist, by this I mean straight up hacking items) are what I consider the top violations, Blizzard I'm sure would include the Real Life Threat category, labeling them as the same as botters makes botting not look as bad. AND you are completely ignoring all the good things these guys do with helping other people, putting out game mechanics testing, and SPEAKING OUT AGAINST BOTTING. Empyrian made a video "The Paragon Problem" to draw attention to the drawbacks of how Paragon system works which is the main cause of Botting. I don't know everything he's done as far as exploiting, but I know that people get mad at people who exploit on streams which tends to the be the reason Blizzard finally acts on an issue. On PTR people exploit all over the place and it sucks if you like climbing the leaderboards there but if it werent for countless people cheating on PTR, many exploits would've reached Live, the GR exploit had it not been so widely known would've just destroyed the season.
---
I pride myself on not cheating and I have watched former friends/clansmen reach the top of the leaderboards or hit top paragon knowing they used exploits and have to listen to people talk about all the great things these people have done, but its just so much sweeter when you hit the top of leaderboards and you don't cheat. Problem is Blizzard makes it nearly impossible to be at top of leaderboards without some violation of their own Terms of Service. Paragon umpteenhundred required is BS.. Remove the experience gear and lessen the strength or ease of paragon and botting wont matter nearly as much.
-
Ahh dang it Morty can you fix the Text Spacing on your forum
I also like how they justify snapshotting as perfectly fine, when its VERY clearly not intended to work like that.
I I'd let this bot run for a month.. would that make my wizard viable for GR pushing yet? If not I really don't consider botting the biggest issue at hand.
I have always been divided on this issue, because i see both sides so well, and have been on both sides (legit vs botting). My problem is (and this is 99% of the time the main excuse given) is that dont have the time to play 8 hours a day, or sometimes 4 hours a day, consecutively...botting solves that problem, you just set it and forget it, come back after work and clean out bank, shard, tally up loot, and then go again
Its the ease of the act and how simple it is that draws people in, and once you start it becomes addicting, it starts as a way to solve this time problem, to catch up to your friends you tell yourself, to get all your mats so you can gear your toons..and it snowballs from there, and it very easily becomes a daily routine, and even new toons you level up, the first thing you do is run them through the bot for a night or 2 for gear, its almost like cherry picking and farming specific items and you dont even have to do anything but hit a few buttons and start it up
On the other side of this argument, its wrong and cheating and i fully understand why people/blizzard do not want people to do it, it allows a very unfair advantage, and there's no way legit players can keep up, and these bots and software are so advanced that its super efficient, and they get updates every week, so the line between legit and bot is not really an issue as far as efficiency in farming
I would love them to find a way to ban bots, and proactively ban them, not just in waves would be a good step
And lastly the problem with botting is burn-out...botting is great initially, but once you have botted for awhile you start to get all the best gear, have 1000's of gems, breaths, keys, mats, billions of gold, and then you get to a point where all your gear is ancient on all your toons, you have all side-builds gear, accessories, there's such a slim amount of items (totaling less than 10 for example) that you still/want that now even the bot struggles to give you anything because you have..everything
So it just speedens the time it takes to gear out, max out, and be "done" by quite a bit, what takes months with legit play, when you might play a few hours a day, and not even every day...to 8-10 hour bot runs every day, the gear and mats is exponential, full stash, full ancient sets..and for what? besides ranking up leader boards..there's literally nothing else end game wise to do...so what really is the point in getting to the "end"...and then having it all?
I'm Mikhail and I approve this message. https://youtu.be/15bNDZ6oMzk
MeatHeadGaming - YouTube - Twitch - Facebook - Web
So Cheaters writing an open letter to urge Blizzard to take action against cheating.
Though I do recognize the idea behind the letter, it really loses a lot of credibility for me when I see the names that signed it.
When it's the so called top 1% of the 1% of the community that voice their opinions, I say this loosely since they have yet to show any valid proof of those claims, merely accusations.
Again to the idea of the letter, I agree that breaches in TOS should be punished.
But I must admit, it just really makes me wonder to true motivation behind the letter?
And if *imo* this poorly worded letter is the most appropriate way to reach those within Blizz that has the powers of change?