Complete Automation = Complete Ruination?

[D1st0rt]

That was just an example provided by caco

[Epinephrine]

Sorry Epi and thestafferformerlyknownaswark, but automation fucking rules.

Why does it rule? Well, when you're an event participant, the most important thing besides having fun is that you have a game where all of the rules are consistant and honored. I've hosted deathmatch manually. It sucks. Not because I have to do tons more work with manual hosting--I'll willingly do it. It's because that one time you don't spec someone soon enough after X deaths and they get an extra kill. And the person who got killed complains that they were unjustly killed, which they were. That kind of inconsistancy ruins events for players.

I acknowleged in my original post that some things are useful for automation (lagouts, spec at 10), but overall automation is way overused in this zone.

I don't know if you were around in the age before automation, but more imaginative hosts could have their way with things. It wasn't just about hosting 'deathmatch every day'. Many, many different games could be hosted, and even deathmatch wasn't exactly the same every time.

For instance the winner of a deathmatch, could suddenly become the 'king' in a 'kill the king' game, or suddenly you could have a game where everyone was playing against a cetain squad who had super on in a free for all deathmatch. Perhaps the rabbit in ?go rabbit would get random prizes from time to time to make things interesting (using the prize function on a bot). Then you could also mix things around like having actually hard trivia questions in ?go trivia, instead of having it become a typing race.

Because hosts weren't constrained completely around the bots, things would not be so mechanical. There's absolutely no need for things to be 100% exactly the same every time and so on. This is a community, it's a zone where only 600 people play on weekends. It's not some pay game where 100,000s play every weekend. Let's add some variety to this zone, and add some human interaction.

Besides, it really doesn't take much longer for an experienced host to host without a bot, then using a bot unless you're hosting extremely complex games where you would need a host of extreme talent to pull off.

[Doc Flabby]

No human can do what the battleship bot does. It even can't do it some times

the best game i ever played in ?go battleship was pretty much manually hosted it the host used a twbot to restrict numbers of a type of ship on each freq, but that was it....And the aim was to kill the other sides battleship to win. It was alot of fun....

The difference here to what has been happening of late is the bot is used as a TOOL by the host. Not to run the whole show.

[cacoethes]

Ahh, getting called out for "not playing for a long time." Son, child, I owned a boxed copy of the original SS. And I started playing TW in early 01. Oh, and by the way, I write video games for a living. So I know all about the original zones (Alpha West for life, dog--AILENS squad owns you!), and I know all about game theory, and I know all about what it's like to be manually hosting games vs. automating games. So go finish high school before you start flexing on people.

And, wark, no offense, but, speaking of ERs generally AFK, I find it odd to see you write about the diligence (or lack thereof) in hosts hosting, given that I've been on staff for six months and have seen very little of it from you. IMHO a bad ER is a bad ER, and anecdotal evidence of hosts performing badly shouldn't be used to judge the entire batch. Bad ERs should be axed. Nuff sed.

And I didn't say it took more time for an ER to host deathmatch manually. I said it was more complex and led to the erratic enforcement of simple rules. And other games are impossible to host manually: hunt anyone? Zombies ffs? Conquer? I gurantee you that if you're hosting manually, and the game is more complicated than deathmatch, you've got at least two sets of macros to do the job. Well, wtf do you think a bot is doing?

You people dissing the automation in this zone: you're missing the fact that most of it is done pretty well, and the stuff that has been done not so well is continually tweaked and worked on. I'm not going to say that we have a round-the-clock team of elves in a workshop always working--in fact the process is manned by a team of volunteers (generally novice to intermediate developers) with a high turnover rate. However, did you not notice that there was a complete overhaul in the TWD system? And have you not noticed that new games--automated or using existing techniques--trickle into the system continually?

Automation is in TW for a reason: it addresses repetitive tasks. And far more often than not it is a solution and not a problem. For any one anecdote of automation causing problems in TW--either culturally or logistically--dozens can be cited in retort as to their helpfulness, from PubBot monitoring TKers, to Banner Boy harvesting banners, to Matchbot running TWD.

[cacoethes]

Sorry, Epi, didn't see your post before I replied...

Assuming that what you're generally saying is: hosted events have become stale and repetitive--I agree that the potential for that is there, and that relying too much on the self-serve, always automated, always the same "hunt" game can lend itself to that. But isn't that more of a problem with training ERs to think "outside of the box" than a problem with the bots?

If you want to see some very creative hosting using a highly automated environment, you should come play one of my balanceout games. Levs with rockets = $$.

[Doc Flabby]

I agree with alot of that the banner family, matchbot, pubbot, elim are good they automate repative tasks.

I think mine and other peoples issuesis the way the bots seem to be used to host some events.

events should not be considered repative tasks they should be special. That doesnt mean dont use bots, it just means dont use bots to run the whole show, make something about the event to make it special. (dont overhost hunt either, i think the quality of the hosting should count as well as the number of times for ERs hunt is easy to host, but starcon is not and requires more work)

[kthx]

Talking about getting offended too easily, when I said no offense. If you owned a box copy of the original SS then you owned a box copy of "sniper" which you should have known enough to put into this post. Playing TW in early 01 was already when some automation was already being put into place. So therefore I was correct in my assumptions that you don't exactly know what Epine and I were talking about. As for writing video games for a living, that really has nothing to do with this at all, as I am sure you aren't writing 2d video games that are completely multiplayer. Why would high school be brought up at all, I actually dropped out because High School isn't really about intelligence at all, it is about memorization, so I wasn't really trying to be "flexing up on you" whatever that means in engrish.

Now as for your second paragraph, you have been on staff for six months, congratulations until a few days ago I have been on staff since 2002 that is roughly one year after you started playing TW correct? It is true that I haven't really been exceedingly active during your short stay on staff so far, but I assure you that when I was active, I hosted nearly 250-350 events per month, and also created or helped create some of this zones more popular events during this time. I didn't have someone to code bots for me, so I used what I had in the first place. Freezetag is an example of a game that needed a bot module to work because of the insane amount of freq switching and prizing involved in it. Yet I used four zombie modules in an ever-looping system to make the game, with another bot to prize, yes the game took 5 bots to work, that is ingenuity. I also hosted Golden Gun manually at first, which is another game I created. Also Mission Tanks, which is tanks where I give both freqs a mission that they have to accomplish to win the game, Chocobo Ranchers was the game that really put me on the map as a host in the first place was as simple as Jav vs Wb deathmatch to 10 in baseelim2, Villagers where there would be a team of cloakers trying to take out a team of villagers in baseelim2, none of these games required any amazing bots to accomplish, they just requird a host who was a little bit creative and had the know-how and desire to do them. If you think I was a bad ER, then you really aren't very smart considering most people consider me to be one of, if not the best hosts ever on this zone.

If you think zombies are impossible to host manually once again you aren't a very good host, Epinephrine created zombies before there was a bot for them, and even now there are a handful of staffers who can still host it manually. Perhaps you should try hosting ?go ghoulgames where the zombie module doesn't work. I am sure that since you are such an old elite player you would already know this but. In ghoulgames ship numbers are designated by the frequencies people are on, so you can't *setship 3 to put someone in ship 3, you have to *setfreq 3 them. As for macros being the same as bots, you are right, bots are just doing macros for hosts, but macros also get the host more used to the commands that all hosts need to know, and make them better in the long run.

I think we can all agree to some bots being very useful and cool, yes, just like in real life in mass production, where machines can create things 10x faster than a human would be able too, the same with Banner Boy, and TK watching. But it also makes people extremely lazy and it loses human interection which is what this game was based around in the first place.

If you things bots are needed for everything that shows how weak of a staffer you are, things were hosted before you started playing that required hosting skill that an idiot like couldn't even comprehend, and that is what this zone became popular from, not because we got a bot to do it.

[cacoethes]

But Doc, people like hunt! Whenever I host it (and I host it a lot because *I* like it) I draw 10% of the zone population or more. I can host hunt in the middle of the night (USA) with <200 people in zone and still get 30 people to show up. Face it: people like some of the simple games!

[Shadowmere]

But Doc, people like hunt! Whenever I host it (and I host it a lot because *I* like it) I draw 10% of the zone population or more. I can host hunt in the middle of the night (USA) with <200 people in zone and still get 30 people to show up. Face it: people like some of the simple games!

Or then there is nothing else/better to do.

EDIT: And about you calling Wark a bad <ER>;

He was one of the most intelligent <ER>'s there has ever been, or ever will be. He developed few of the most popular events, which has actually some thinking involved (EDIT2: Unlike events like balanceout which are just grasped off with an addition/update of another event). Even though he didnt host much, when he did, he did it well.

Wark was never really "active" as an <ER> (atleast in the last year or so), but he definately was one of the best ones (Taking into count that I know how much he did for staff, regardless of his attitude. I doubt you know how much he has done?).

[Revolve]

caco u havent been playin since 01 stop lying lOol that was one of the funniest things ive ever heard ... i guess when noobies get on staff they think they're vets bahaha

[cacoethes]

kthx, when you start a post with "no offense" you're meaning offense. Maybe you should've stayed in HS after all.

And if my boxed copy of SS had a copy of Sniper in it then that's news to me. Must've thrown that bit away, along with the free copy of AOL they were handing out.

Face it: you've just become disillusioned and grumpy. And, oh man, you've been here such a long time, isn't it so much fun to talk about the "good old days?" Shit, kid, you'll be talking about them for the rest of your life. "Man things just aren't like they were." Well, no shit.

[Epinephrine]

Sorry, Epi, didn't see your post before I replied...

Assuming that what you're generally saying is: hosted events have become stale and repetitive--I agree that the potential for that is there, and that relying too much on the self-serve, always automated, always the same "hunt" game can lend itself to that. But isn't that more of a problem with training ERs to think "outside of the box" than a problem with the bots?

If you want to see some very creative hosting using a highly automated environment, you should come play one of my balanceout games. Levs with rockets = $$.

Actually if you read my post I'm talking about three seperate things:
1) 24/7 events is a bad idea. Restrict the events to make them special. Automation makes possible the 24/7 tourney which is stupid.

2) RoboHelp is stupid. It doesn't help most of the time, and it allows staffers to ignore people with real questions. I frequenty ask the bot what it told the person who asked the question (which everyone ignores) and the answer is completely irrelevant or missing the point. It doesn't take much time to answer a question, and staff should be encouraged to do so rather than rely on the RoboHelp or !tells.

3) Automation is good for highly repetative tasks as an adjunct to hosting a game. You having super levis in your game breaks out of the solely using the bot mold. If you were solely using one of the bot-hosted games you'd be hosting ?go prodem or ?go trivia or ?go hunt or whatever it is that the bot does EVERYTHING for you.

These games are fun in moderation, but because there are so many of them (many being the exact same game just occuring in different maps), people get tired of them. Because these are easy to host, and staff has quotas people get lazy and just use bot-hosted games and go afk. Because these games are stagnant and allow for no variation, things get boring.

I applaud the fact that you've tried to add some differences in your hosting, and I hope you continue with it. The bots should only be used as help so you don't have to use a zillion macros, but it's pretty boring to have most games in TW hosted solely by bots that do basically everything once you press !on. Besides there's nothing like hosting a very complex game while manually doing everything including lagouts while playing in the game and winning it

[Sufficient]

Sry to say it but only bots can handle laggers well enough for large events/leagues/whatever. That one reason is a huge (HUGE for more emphasis) benefit in favor of bots.

[cacoethes]

MB Epi. In response to your items:

1) IMHO people stay in this zone because of hosted events. There is an entire camp of followers for events, drawn from across the demographics, from pubbers, to squadders, and then there's some weird sub-group that does nothing but play hosted events. Hosted events are like candy, and I agree that too much candy is bad for the baby, but people do love their hosted events. And tourny is only hosted on the weekend. And it always has tons of people in it.

2) I kinda agree about robohelp, but I think it's similar to the robotic phone help when you call the phone company or whoever: it does field a lot of commonly-asked questions ("How do I shoot bombs?", or the #1 ?help call: "HOST <insert event> NOW YOU LAZY MODS!") while providing a level of frustration for people with more legitimate problems. However, at the end of every help message, it has the "type whatever if this didn't help you." And, for what I've seen in my time on staff, ZHs that use tells too often get berated by everyone else. So... I think robo needs tweaked, but it's not all bad.

3) Again, I think there's a real difference between training ERs to host properly and just leaving them with the bot. I had a great ZH training, but I just got left with the bot for ER. Luckily, I'm a highly-intellegent and good-looking chap, so I am able to come up with twists on games that are automated (burstwars waldo hunt!), but I agree that ERs need an initial mentorship that includes more than just their time as ZH.

However, I will stick to my original retort, which is that this entire argument--apart from being one ex-staffer's dissatisfaction with life or whatever--is a straw-man argument, which attempts to lump the idea of automation in general in with the behavior of poorly-trained or uninspired hosts.

[kthx]

As for the reason I have become disgruntled is because I see how this zone is turning out to be, and I don't like the results. I think the population drop speaks for itself, and don't tell me that 250 people just stopped playing this zone for no reason or because they got bored, because during 2003 we got an extra close to 250-300 people and this game would still draw in people. As for reminescing about the old times, you are right I do, arrogant juveniles like yourself who are trying to get mod I guess and say "staff is doing just fine guys leave them alone" when they obviously aren't and the playerbase says they aren't is just sad, and ignorant. So yes I do miss the good ole days when people were smart enough to play a hosted event without needed constant bot supervision to basically force them to do the correct thing instead of learning the lesson or not play. Now we have a zone full of newbies who will forever be newbies due to this.

People don't stay in this zone due to hosted events, sure there is a group that does but take away TWL and see how many real players end up staying, TWL is the reason people stay in this zone.

As for my dissatisfaction for life, you seem fairly quick to jump on me for "being in high school" when im not thing, sounds like an arrogant child to me who is way too full of himself for his own good. Im sure you will eventually take over PL's spot. Childish idiots like you is the reason staff is bad, nobody did all of this ass-kissing and pissanting to be promoted a few years ago. I am sure many mods that aren't staff anymore would attest to this.

Maybe after you host 5000+ events I will value your opinion, until then fuck off pub newb staffer.