Client Upgrade Team is *Back*

It likely would detract from the social element, but no more so than trade-skilling (speaking as a 250 smith, 250 miner, ~200 brewer), or the practice of duo boxing for farming purposes. The social element would still be there for those who want it. And an applied exp penalty for use of bots over real players can incent players to sacrifice a bot for a real player in a group.

But I think you hit the nail on the head with the casual player. I personally have spurts of activity in game. Sometimes I can be online for many hours each day over a six-month stretch. Other times I can be online only for a few hours a week over the course of a similar time frame. Spending a full hour forming a group and getting everyone buffed isn't a viable option for a casual player who has only a couple of hours to play. Bots are a great option for those players.
 
It's rare for me to have trouble getting a group. Sure, I might not have the highest quality, raid-buffed, ideal composition, on-or-above-tier group, but there's virtually always somewhere for me to go and get decent XP and fun with other people. Half the time I get groups, there have been people in Athica for 30 minutes or more just waiting for the optimal group to come along, with a few others regularly OOC'ing for groups. Even most of times, I get a group because others are looking for more, and despite the other 7 people "LFG", I'm the only person who sends them a tell. I've quite enjoyed bringing sub-65's to new places because they're the only people willing to take a suboptimal group. I really enjoyed having a sub-65 run for 20 minutes to get to my janky Citadel group and still poop himself over the exp. He contributed, too!

Anyway, I say this because having bots to fill out major group roles would virtually end the drive for most player's to try to group at all unless it had *serious* drawbacks compared to having live people. Why bring a fresh 65 to anything when you have old reliable botty-bot-bot there? I'm not against the idea completely, but it'd be an awfully delicate balance to strike.
 
With that many devs I'm assuming you don't need more software engineer/coder type volunteers?

Send in an application if you are serious!

The majority of things take an intimate knowledge of our codebase, but there will likely be lots of peripheral stuff needing done.
 
When this is finally implemented will I have to hunt down a copy of underfoot? also from how it looks this will actually make the game run better (at least the feature list linked seems to make it seem like that)
 
IIRC, you can download right now, directly from sony and then run the sodpatcher to convert. you wont need to hunt down a specific version anymore.
 
Anyway, I say this because having bots to fill out major group roles would virtually end the drive for most player's to try to group at all unless it had *serious* drawbacks compared to having live people. Why bring a fresh 65 to anything when you have old reliable botty-bot-bot there? I'm not against the idea completely, but it'd be an awfully delicate balance to strike.

Seems to me basically all the complaints about bots are the same as boxing. So make them count as boxes? Different geared characters aside, letting people run a bot would just be a less efficient/lazy way of 2boxing (or a nice bonus if someone cant 2box). I mean if you're gonna run a bot instead of a person, I'd imagine most people would just run a box instead as well. I do agree you'd need a very delicate balance to make them good enough to be used but not so good you would regularly take them over a real person.
 
Just chimin' in to say that this is hella neat and I hope you guys get it finished up, I'll definitely take some nostalgia time to play again if you do.
 
Just be like KLS and they just let you see everything without deving for a year and no questions asked.

I'm some sort of aberration or something.
 
I gotta say it's a really fun project, and the talent on the team is amazing. I can ask the most obscure SoD/EQEMU/whatever question, and someone will know it.
 
Good to see you lurking, Wiz!



You dev for a year or so, get access to the source and spend another few months getting intimate with it.

Just be like Tao and GM for a year or so, admin for a little over two years, get told you have source access, and then frantically pull the power cord out of the back of your computer before they can tell you how to access it.

*probably has access and doesn't know it*
 
I don't know why people keep saying boxing or bots would discourage grouping or the social aspect of the game. There are tons of people that just go out and duo for cash or just to not have to deal with others.
 
Mercs cost money, that alone would probably dissuade a lot of people who are still saving for things like charms when they can just dual box instead.

People who have their really good charms are probably capable of getting much better group members than mercs and tackling harder more rewarding content.

In the end it's a moot point though because any sort of thing like this wont go in for 3.0.
 
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