DiabloFans

Well, I'll start off by saying that I am a botter. Do I value my account? To some extent, but would it ruin my life if it got terminated? Nah. So a little bit about me and why I choose to bot; I am active duty military serving overseas. I work in a very high tempo environment and my time to play is limited. Some of you feel that this is a valid reason for me to enjoy the game less than you do. I think we can all agree that end game is where the enjoyment comes from. Having the gear and paragons to run GRs with friends and push some higher GRs is what I bot for. I cannot afford to sit in front of my computer for 16 hours a day grinding out materials and levels and gear to ultimately get to the part where I can enjoy the game.

I don't have 1000 keys sitting in my bank or pages full of mats. I am barely over 1000 paragon, but fairly close to 1500. Yes, I do have really good gear. No, I am not even ranked on the leaderboards. I don't play for bragging rights or to flex my epeen at the end of the season. I have botted fairly conservatively. 8 hrs most in one session and most of the time anywhere from 2-5 days a week randomly selected days.

As Chainer said, in the current system, even at my current paragon level, most people do not want to group because my PL is considered low. So my ability to play outside of a small group of friends is limited. This essentially bottlenecks the community into different tiers that are not even based on skill, but on time put into the game. The community gets smaller by the day and different aspects drive different people away, but I can assure you that the botters, even the 24/7 ones helped sustain the community. Many of you condemn botters, but at the same time you have benefitted from botters. You do not suffer the consequences of account closure but in some way, running in that group with a botter you benefitted. Should all accounts be wiped then? Ignorance is one thing, but a lot of you are being very hypocritical. You celebrate the bans when you benefitted in the end. Botting is not the problem here. Bots provide a means to and end. Most bots cannot run past GR80 roughly, so these people you feel threatened by on the leaderboards did not have the bot get them their rank. Like I said, the bot provided a means to afford that opportunity for them to rank but it did not get it for them. So this brings me back to my original statement. I don't have the means to put in the same amount of time as a streamer. You want a competition based on skill, but currently skill is not the determining factor, its time. But I should be at a disadvantage because I cannot afford to use donations or my mom and dad's savings account to support me? I'm not knocking people's lifestyles but right now Blizzard has dictated that these are the factors that will divide the playerbase.

TLDR: I'm a botter, ban me idc.

I probably play this game more than most, and I can honestly say that botters have never bothered me (nor did I ever play with one). I dont care about the leaderboards as there is no gain to be on them. The ones that bother me are the dumb asses that close non-bonus acts and then flame you for three hours because you kicked them. I do bounties about two hours a day and I usually run across 3 idiots per day that close non-bonus bounties. these are the people I want to see banned!!

Quote from omfgkittens»

Quote from Chainer88

If anything botting makes the game better.

cmon dude....

Quote from Thaya»

To be honest, Uglytoes does have a point.

There are two types of botters: those who do it for competitive reasons (to gain an advantage over other players, to crush the leaderboard/paragon ladder, etc), and those who do it for convenience reasons (the only purpose is to make the game more fun for themselves, they don't care about the leaderboards or paragon race or whatever; people who "lack time" or are just straight up too bored of TX rifts/bounties all fall into this category).

People who bot for competitive reasons are directly malicious to the games competitive integrity, and they will cheat and bot whenever it is not too risky (most common reason being "well, everybody else does it, so will I"). The only way to fix this type of behavior is directly punishing it. The risk of losing an account is virtually the only thing keeping this type in check, but the efficiency of this strategy only depends on how active Blizzard is with updating detection and banning. It is, however, very possible to scare away all of these (even a single big banwave at the end of each season will be enough).

People who bot for convenience are a more interesting phenomenon. For them, the game is simply not fun if they are forced to play the intended way (e.g. a statement like "if I do get banned, I don't care, because these bots/cheats made the game significantly more fun for me, I acknowledge the risks and I believe it's worth it"). The intent itself isn't malicious - the intent is just to make the game more enjoyable for themselves. These players don't really damage the competitive environment simply because they don't participate in it (generally). Now the most important thing is, these players aren't afraid of getting banned - they literally state that they aren't. If you do ban these players, especially without fixing the things that they are willing to lose their accounts for, you are more than likely losing them permanently. From a developers point of view, it's much wiser to first fix the core issues that created this group, and then proceed to warn and/or ban people. (This is exactly how they handled their recent banwaves in WoW, for example.)

Note that I'm not defending anyone and my point isn't that any one type of botting/cheating is justified. I'm not making a "this is ok"/"this is not ok" statement. I am just analyzing two things which I think are different, and I am doing it from developer standpoint. I think this might explain why their bans were quite selective, and the bias towards competitive players can be clearly tracked. Those players will still come back (most of them), just on different accounts.

That is 100% correct.
I've seen both types of botters. The second one we have in our clan (why he isn't banned i have no idea, admins know he's a botter). He's barely playing. Has been banned in season 2 for botting, still he bought another account and just "idling" there now. He never pushes leaderboards, barely participates in any clan activities. He's p1200, and he botted whole season 4 AFKing with his monk , up to p800 i believe. He's just a strange "filler". I think he completely lost interest in the game itself and just runs bot to check what gear it found.

Some interesting points raised by Thaya and LordofDestruction regards types of botting, reasons why and ideas on changes/improvements to the game.

If everyone cheats, no one cheats.

Followers in WoW are legal quasi-bots that can aid progress and perform some tasks automatically. There was also a similar system in the Star Wars MMO. These things were integarted into the respective games with no issues whatsoever (well, ok, one can argue Garrisons destroyed the concept of an MMO but that's another discussion).

Maybe a solution (in addition to the great ideas from LoD) could be the introduction of automation of some tasks via a 'limited use' legal bot system or the ability for your followers to do some stuff for you on CD with stripped down results vs. doing it manually?

Quote from Jokerfiend»

He doesn't have a point and it's entirely moot. His point could literally reflect anything, anywhere. All it shows is his morality. Its beating a dead horse. Cheating perverse the point of the game. In any aspect, in any form. If you have to cheat to get by, then what is the point? Why can't get he enjoy the game for what it is? Get where he can get? He isn't playing the same game legitimate players are, he is playing an entirely different game.

Jokerfiend, please read the replies from bagstone and Thaya (as you did). I do respect you for having a different opinion than me, and most likely a lot of the community agrees with you, but please take in consideration what they have written (in a more formal and better way than what I am capable of).

I say this, not as an insult to you or other, but come on, take it easy. It's just a game. We like it, therfor we cheat (D3Helper guilty here). And even so, I and other "cheaters" have contributed in form of communities and groups, and tried our best to be welcomming to other people. Ultimately it's the community that keeps the game alive, sadly the D3 community is having a hard time these days with too much elitismn and hostility towards people.

Can't we just play and have it fun? Why is it so bad that you have to go to such extremes as making parallells to a WW?

To be honest, Uglytoes does have a point.

There are two types of botters: those who do it for competitive reasons (to gain an advantage over other players, to crush the leaderboard/paragon ladder, etc), and those who do it for convenience reasons (the only purpose is to make the game more fun for themselves, they don't care about the leaderboards or paragon race or whatever; people who "lack time" or are just straight up too bored of TX rifts/bounties all fall into this category).

People who bot for competitive reasons are directly malicious to the games competitive integrity, and they will cheat and bot whenever it is not too risky (most common reason being "well, everybody else does it, so will I"). The only way to fix this type of behavior is directly punishing it. The risk of losing an account is virtually the only thing keeping this type in check, but the efficiency of this strategy only depends on how active Blizzard is with updating detection and banning. It is, however, very possible to scare away all of these (even a single big banwave at the end of each season will be enough).

People who bot for convenience are a more interesting phenomenon. For them, the game is simply not fun if they are forced to play the intended way (e.g. a statement like "if I do get banned, I don't care, because these bots/cheats made the game significantly more fun for me, I acknowledge the risks and I believe it's worth it"). The intent itself isn't malicious - the intent is just to make the game more enjoyable for themselves. These players don't really damage the competitive environment simply because they don't participate in it (generally). Now the most important thing is, these players aren't afraid of getting banned - they literally state that they aren't. If you do ban these players, especially without fixing the things that they are willing to lose their accounts for, you are more than likely losing them permanently. From a developers point of view, it's much wiser to first fix the core issues that created this group, and then proceed to warn and/or ban people. (This is exactly how they handled their recent banwaves in WoW, for example.)

Note that I'm not defending anyone and my point isn't that any one type of botting/cheating is justified. I'm not making a "this is ok"/"this is not ok" statement. I am just analyzing two things which I think are different, and I am doing it from developer standpoint. I think this might explain why their bans were quite selective, and the bias towards competitive players can be clearly tracked. Those players will still come back (most of them), just on different accounts.

Quote from Jokerfiend»

I work, I workout, I read, everyday. I have a wife and 2 kids. You choose to be a service member. My father was a Master Sgt in the Air Force. While I don't know what it's like to serve, I do know what it's like to live with it. How much I had to sacrifice while a father had to move around every 2-3. Friends, Family, Stability. I had none of that shit as a child. Anyone that mentions service in anything beyond when asked, is asking for curried favor. You want your service to be an excuse, otherwise why mention it? Literally has no bearing on the situation at hand. Diablo 3 is a time sink. You don't want to invest into a time sink. Don't fucking play the game. Simple as that. If you have to cheat to get by, then this game isn't for you. Just move on.
Your logic of cheating could be literally used for any walk of life, in any situation. It's like saying I steal because I work hard, but don't make enough. Yet, I am sure if someone broke into your house, you wouldn't let that shit go because they have it hard. Having it hard isn't an excuse. And you damn well know it.
D3 faults aren't a reason to cheat. It's another excuse. You cheat because you want too. And you cheat because it's easy. Nothing else, nothing more. If you didn't care, you wouldn't post about it. You posted to rub in peoples faces. I don't buy it. And I'm not going to let you have it either.

You need to take a chill-pill mate. And doing parallells to stealing and such is not a valid comparison. It does not affect you (other than the illusion of competition), so why going ballistic now?

And it's fun you saying that having it hard is no excuse, I could say: Having it hard gives you no excuse to act like an asshole towards others.

He is not tryint to make up excuses, he simply explains his point of veiw and why he have chosen what he did.

At least it's better than you people who cannot even have a fruitable discussion about the matter.

If this game had been anything like a competative game, or massive online game I would get it - it would affected you if people cheated. But Diablo 3 is game with some very, VERY simple multiplayer elements. Basically it is a singleplayer game with a simple leaderboard. Still you people who has not experienced real world problems like work, family, responsibilities and who take the game way too serious than what it's meant to, come here and spew hatefull messages to and about people who ultimately does not affect you. If anything it tells more about you than these botters who bot for the fun of it / to enjoy the game for their own means.

D3 community, or rather Diablofans is one of the worst communities I have ever withnessed. There is so much hate, envy, arrogance and betterknowing here. Seldom is there a good discussions where points of veiws from different camps are enlightened. Usually it is the "moral keepers" who sits on their high horse and pass judgement upon the "filth" of the community for destroying their sacred multi...singleplayer experience.

I wish leaderboards where never introduced, then the community - specially this one might had been a nicer place where we could have nice discussions.