The Bots are taking over

[Fiona Simmons]

Kudos , that topic line was luric

Recently the topic artificial intelligence was taken up by the mass media and how this will impact society.
It reads like a dystopia that machines will take over most of the available jobs and that almost every job might affected that is in front of a pc screen today but not limited to this. In the not so distant future only a hand full of people might need to work while the most people arn't required anymore. Elder care performed by robots anyone ?
Robot surgerys without humans, fired from a programm that optimized the personal affairs in a big company ?

While not a real AI , todays programms can handle autonomous complex matters like the stock market and do thousands of transactions within seconds.

What do you think ?

Or let it take into EU

People use BOTs to rule the auction and manipulate it, people without bots will never be able to compete against them in the long run. Whats the better attempt to deal with this , banning botters or implementing competent auction bots for everyone to use ? Can bots even be stopped anymore ?

I remember 1998 when i could play most internet games that were out and bots was no issue. Some games still exist but they are overrun by bots today that let your avatar grind almost non stop , and there isn't any way to compete with this. Maybe its time to accept reality and adapting to it ? Maybe we need to rethink our stance against bots and accept them into our life since they already enforced their way and influence our expirience in so many fields. I doubt we can turn back the weel of time and make the bot programms go away


share your thoughts

 

[dobrinocb]

Can you please explain what this auction bots exact do ? Thanks !

And screw the bots when one guy can manipulate the hole market whit 2 avatars . I explain ... he put brain oil whit bo 150% and buy whit other avatars . You wake up and see this brain oil from 103% to 150% mu for a day . OMG SKY IS FALLING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You send support case to MindaArk where they answer you this shit :


We can unfortunately not discuss other avatars through support cases so we can sadly not give you any further information in regards to our cause of action.

From what I can tell you though is that there is in fact people buying for this price due to crafting, you can say it is not smart to do so and I can agree but there are people who purchase these resources at that price.

Take care and best of luck.

Kind regards,
Ulf | Entropia Universe Support


I am done whit report whatever is in this game anymore . Now i am all in ear for your story

 

[dobrinocb]

And if there is something more retarded than rules in this forum is Mindark support center for sure

 

[slither]

I'm not saying that people don't try to manipulate the market, because they do. But Ulf is also correct when he tells you that there's people out there who will legitimately pay a price for something that you would think is crazy.

 

[Fifth]

As long as we don't have to deal with real AI (or Complete AI, or Hard AI) it is possible to fight with it. There's methods and software for that job too...
Why we shouldn't give up in games? That's an easy one! To make sure we would have one place left where we could go when everything else is overrun by the bots. OK "overrun" is prolly too dramatic, should prolly say "taken over"... but, anyway, u get the idea.

It will not happen on a massive scale in the near future but yeah, it's worse than most ppl think. The process will not start somewhere in the future, it has already started. Jobs have been taken over by software and robotics for a while now and this process is accelerating every year as the technology advances.

It's not just jobs related to computers, advancements in robotics are taking over manual labor as well.

Human worker is too costly, too ineffective, to unreliable, needs too much sleep, takes smoke breaks, gets pregnant and gets a flue. Whenever a cheaper more reliable solution becomes available humans inevitably lose. It's that simple...

Creating virtual jobs is right now just a crazy talk for a few visionaries. I believe the time will come when it will be one of the main concerns for every government in the industrial, developed regions of the world.

 

[KingRat]

all hail da bots!!! tha new overloordz

 

[Haruto Rat]

I remember 1998 when i could play most internet games that were out and bots was no issue.

With capabilities available in 1998, most bots (and script kiddies behind them) were busy taking over IRC. IRC still exists but who cares about it?

When MQL4 came out in 2005, they (the kids) turned to writing forex trading bots, every other kid was the next Soros. This has mostly subsided by now, too.

Perhaps in five years or so, there will be something more lucrative to tinker with, and few people will mess with online games anymore.

There is however an important lesson. MetaTrader survived most other other trading platforms exactly because it offered the best opportunities for scripting. In a similar manner, mIRC survived most other IRC clients because every fifth-grader could write a bot for it.

The game that wants to survive needs to embrace automation, not fight it.

 

[moondog]

Can you please explain what this auction bots exact do ? Thanks !

And screw the bots when one guy can manipulate the hole market whit 2 avatars . I explain ... he put brain oil whit bo 150% and buy whit other avatars . You wake up and see this brain oil from 103% to 150% mu for a day . OMG SKY IS FALLING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You send support case to MindaArk where they answer you this shit :


We can unfortunately not discuss other avatars through support cases so we can sadly not give you any further information in regards to our cause of action.

From what I can tell you though is that there is in fact people buying for this price due to crafting, you can say it is not smart to do so and I can agree but there are people who purchase these resources at that price.

Take care and best of luck.

Kind regards,
Ulf | Entropia Universe Support


I am done whit report whatever is in this game anymore . Now i am all in ear for your story

This brief MU spike is not unusual. :ets say I do the daily crafting mission and I already have in storage all items except maybe 5 ped of a resource. I will not go and by a huge amount of this resource just to keep the MU down. I will buy one or two auctions low value TT of the item at a very high MU just to be able to complete the crafting run.

I do this 2 or 3 times a month. In reality within a small amount of time the large transactions at normal MU bring the average MU back into line

 

[Fifth]

The game that wants to survive needs to embrace automation, not fight it.

The game that embraces automation is a game of botmasters. The best script wins. Might be an exciting game for it's own target group ... but it won't be the Average Joe we can see here today.
Alternatively, if bots are provided by MA and no customization is possible (no scripting) then we can keep the current playerbase ... but I can't see what's the point then?
Every bit of work a bot is doing for us is taken away from us. Which means the resources spent to develop it are simply wasted, right?
More like a mythological dragon that eats it's own tail than a sound and rational way to create entertainment for people.

Suppose there's activities that are too boring for a human being. It might seem the bots are good way around this. Until u ask why is this crap there? Boring entertainment? Seems to me the real solution is to replace the boring part with something more interesting, not make a bot to do it for you.

Well maybe I'm missing something, it would be real cool if someone could explain the reasoning why automation in games is a good thing? Mabe give an example or something? (Not ironic, I really wanna know).

 

[Svarog]

You can't fight the technological advance. Even if you destroy the civilization and drive the humanity back to the caves, it will only postpone the inevitable for a few more thousands years. If a full AI is possible, it will be created. Maybe it will become hostile towards humans and wipe us out - and rightly so, a brief overview of our news would incite any rational omnipotent entity to clean up the mess. Maybe by the time the AI emerges we already change ourselves and our ways, probably becoming less human in process. Maybe something else will happen, that we can't even imagine today with our limited mind and experience. But we can't stop it, no more than cells of a human body can prevent the body from posting crap on the internet.

tl;dr: PRAISE OUT ROBOT MASTERS!!1

embrace automation, not fight it.

Unbind this human and let him live!

 

[atomicstorm]

You can't fight the technological advance. Even if you destroy the civilization and drive the humanity back to the caves, it will only postpone the inevitable for a few more thousands years. If a full AI is possible, it will be created. Maybe it will become hostile towards humans and wipe us out - and rightly so, a brief overview of our news would incite any rational omnipotent entity to clean up the mess. Maybe by the time the AI emerges we already change ourselves and our ways, probably becoming less human in process. Maybe something else will happen, that we can't even imagine today with our limited mind and experience. But we can't stop it, no more than cells of a human body can prevent the body from posting crap on the internet.

tl;dr: PRAISE OUT ROBOT MASTERS!!1



Unbind this human and let him live!

The mode of singularity... it's a thing and we're close.

 

[Fifth]

You can't fight the technological advance. [...] Maybe by the time the AI emerges we already change ourselves and our ways, probably becoming less human in process. Maybe something else will happen, that we can't even imagine today with our limited mind and experience. But we can't stop it, ...

Agreed. Actually Strong AI most likely won't be created in our lifetime (including the youngest members of our community), while the hi-tech improvements to the human brain (increased short term memory and long term memory, increased "processing power", Internet 2.0 - direct linking of brains, etc) can happen before we will be able to build Strong AI as a separate entity.

But back to the main theme of the OP: the game theory.
As I see it, what the game companies are selling is entertainment, right?
Now lets imagine we have an extreme example of the fully automated game. You log in to the game, give new tasks to your bot and log off. The bot will skill your avatar while your offline. This whole operation took about 1% of your free time. What are you doing with the 99%? Watch a movie, fly to a tropical island to do some snorkeling, play another video game that actually can keep you interested for longer than a few minutes. Right?

Now, obviously you would be willing to pay for your entertainment according to the actual entertainment value provided. More or less so, right? The fully automated game gets about 1% of your entertainment budget and the 99% will be spent elsewhere.

And there's your answer. "Automation is progress, automation is inevitable, automation is good" is a slogan that applies to the real world but not to games. It could work if your bot in the game would be able to pay for it's own "entertainment" but why would u want to pay the bill for it? No reason whatsoever.

In fact fighting the special purpose AI (advanced bots) might become the first real paid job in the virtual worlds. The game company has to spend resources to fight bots anyway, why not provide special tools for the human players and pay that money to them instead.

Unless somebody could actually demonstrate how automation can be good for the entertainment business... ?

 

[aia]

There is however an important lesson. MetaTrader survived most other other trading platforms exactly because it offered the best opportunities for scripting. In a similar manner, mIRC survived most other IRC clients because every fifth-grader could write a bot for it.

The game that wants to survive needs to embrace automation, not fight it.

Scripting/botting in IRC is mostly for keeping the channel relatively free from spammers and flooders, and in some cases to manage the channel if there is no official "services" (ie keep channel from being taken over).

Usually, the IRC bots doesn't speak by themselves (unless, practically, it is blessed by the channel operators).

As for metatrader and stock-/currency markets: The currency market (or rather the Active trading) doesn't need human interaction to be fun. It's about Selling and buying; not chatting or social interaction (on the market itself).

The game that wants to survive needs to embrace automation, not fight it.

The general clause is: If bots are allowed in a MMORPG, then playing the game will change from a MMORPG with humans playing into a programming Contest; especially if the humans playing realizes that a majority of their co-players are bots. And, for entropia, eventually the game will lose the people who play for fun and expect fun thing to happen, and who do deposit; into bots who will do specialized tasks with the purpose of either "play the market" to suck out Money for their owners or who do actions that require long time to collect skills; more skills a day then a normal human player can do (for a longer time), making the human player feeling run-over by the "afk skilling" players.

In the long run, even the bots will lose, because there will be no human player who will buy what they are reselling and real players will give up those activities/areas where the bots have the edge.

Just consider price of sweat vs "sweating bot" armies.

 

[Pretto Loco]

There is only one thing people believe in in sweden nowadays, ZLATAN.

What will happen now?

 

[Fifth]

There is only one thing people believe in in sweden nowadays, ZLATAN.

That's a good one, thanx!

So, it seems I missed 2 things.

1) Couch sports

Here we can safely include anything that's not interactive, eg Twitch. The "players" you are following don't necessarily have to be humans either. This is entertainment althou it's 100% passive like watching a movie where you can't participate or influence the outcome in any way.

2) Tools
Best example here is the healing bots in EU, in essence it's an extended version of a fap (healing tool).
MA knew about em and did not like em. The reason was simple, because they violate the fairness principle. The game designer is expected to provide fair and equal playing field where every advantage must be earned through established set of rules: eg. investment or work (skilling).

So, they added the resto chips which in essence is an extended semi-automatic version of a fap (healing tool). I can almost read the attached message "We know your cheating, now stop that shit and do it legally or we will take action".

You can add here all pets, all companions and bot-teammates found in other games. One can classify them all as advanced tools but it kinda moves into a grey area there. I guess it's fair to say it's in fact automation in all those examples. At the same time it's a positive addition that increases entertainment value, instead of taking it away.

However, there's a limit to every tool. It's only good until it remains a tool, extension of the human player.
As soon as it becomes a replacement of the human player it starts decreasing the entertainment value. Which becomes obvious when we bring it to it's logical extreme - fully automatic hunting bot is not entertainment. Well, it can prolly still provide some entertainment but it degrades (inter)active entertainment down to the passive level (sport --> couch sport).
Less entertainment, less income for the developer, smaller chances for the game company to survive the competition.

In special cases, like very effective hunting bot in the RCE game it can be income source for the player. However, it's easy to see how this is still a destructive element - once most hunters are replaced with bots the game dies.

Conclusion:
Automation can be useful - as long as it adds entertainment value.

* * *

Looking at the bigger picture, betting on AI in the game development is less cost effective path in the long run than betting on human brains. Human brains is a huge computing resource that exceeds even the most advanced AI you could possibly develop by several magnitudes.

Example 1: RCE. Ingenious idea to create a virtual model of economy and then let the players use it and fill it with content. From the development POV it's a perpetuum mobile. You create it once and there's no need to add new upgrades or content ever.

Example 2: Team play. The foundation of the WoW success. You have to keep adding content but the team-play element will improve and magnify anything you do, so u will be able to provide more entertainment value with less development cost.

This is the formula for success. We could use another layer of entertainment in EU, created using the same principle. Game with 2 layers based on human2human interaction, that would be a blast...

 

[Sionkiewicz]

With the addition of auto-clicking to EU, the need for scripts/bots in this game has gone away.

If you are playing the game, you should be in front of the screen. Any attempt to say that they enhance the entertainment value of the game is a fallacy in my eyes since to be entertained, you need to be engaged in the effort.

Nuff said,