recently there have been many chatbots popping up. some of them are real fun but most of them are just really annoying. 2 very good examples are aVOIDable and McLayzor of which the first is constantly active.

aVOIDable is a chatbot that keeps making jokes on the pirate guild VOID or something. while this was funny the first week it is really just annoying now. it also does discriminating jokes once in a while (something with the Special olympics, i don't specifically remember it)
for a short while 2 weeks ago there was a chatbot called McLayzor which seemed to randomly insult oter players.

apart from these examples there are some other bots that Pop up from time to time with similar behaviour.
so is there a way to get rid of these bots at all? maybe kick players offline after they sat at a station for longer than 30 mins? or should bots just be reported and the owners banned for a bit?

ideas concerning this would be good. ist really annoying now.

/ignore "player name"

is an easy way to fix this.

Whether or not it's 'OK' to create a bot whose sole purpose is to insult another group of players is something the guides and devs will have to decide. Common sense would dictate "no".

McLayzor will insult almost anyone that passes through the sector, which is a little different from singling out another particular player group. This isn't a 'free pass' to be offensive toward others, but the two instances you bring up are not the same.

In a PvP game, there will be some degree of back-and-forth verbal "dueling". An example of how this type of thing can sometimes positively impact a game might be the sword fighting system from The Secret of Monkey Island.

It's a balancing act, and undoubtedly there is a line that is not to be crossed. Where that line is seems somewhat open to interpretation, but it has been made a little clearer by Incarnate's post over the weekend as it relates to the ROC.

For the length of time I've been here, verbal sparring has been a part of Vendetta and has been tolerated; this is different from trying to humiliate or discredit a particular player or group of players, which has never been tolerated when it comes to administrative action as far as I'm aware.

It would be prudent to mention that trying to "raise public awareness" on the forums of abuse by individuals or groups of players is also not tolerated. Support Tickets are the correct place to report abuse.

I'm not a big fan of these bots either. They keep sectors online and use server resources for no reason other than just.. making fun of people or whatever. The one reason why bots (in general) are not banned is because some people have done some interesting innovation with them in the past (the earliest example being "bountybot" from alpha, which added a bit of gameplay in a new way). But, bots that mock people over chat are not very innovative, or interesting, and still have all the other downsides of being bots (server overhead, server can't rebalance load as easily, very long sector uptimes can increase NPC navigation issues, etc).. aside from the whole "annoying" thing.

It's a pretty recent issue, at least for this length of time. People have made things like this in the past, but then shut it down after a week or two.

I had hoped these would kind of die out as well, and I've just been really busy. I also don't like making policy pronouncements if I can avoid it, but this has been going on awhile. Obviously, we can mute the characters involved, or contact the people involved. For the moment I'll just say that it's noted, and we'll look into it?

The shop and casino bots are pretty innovative and fun too.

MC LayZor was kinda fun too since it didn't just sit in a station talking trash. It would jump to a wormhole sector and if you are clever you can track it down and kill it.

@Bot-makers: You know, not every bot needs to sit in a station. If your bot only exists to chat and perhaps provide guild management/accounting functions, you'd probably get a bit more tolerance if you parked it in an empty sector. That way it doesn't degrade performance in sectors that matter, and it also avoids accusations of spying. Bonus points if it occasionally jumps to a different empty sector so that no individual sector is getting kept alive indefinitely. Just keep it out of hive and asteroid sectors, since you don't want to put unnecessary strain on the server.

And if it's purely a chat bot, just use an IRC bot that talks through the relay instead of an in-game bot, like how Ish and I handled classibot and noobot back in the day. That way no extra server resources are being wasted. IRC bots are also a heck of a lot easier to manage than leaving a VO instance running all the damn time.

Wait Mc layZor was a bot? I thought it was PaKettles new alt.

Someone failed the reverse turing test :)

Maybe there should be a "shot clock" like in basketball: if you don't shoot, mine, or jump in 2 hours (or 12 hours, or whatever), you are forcibly logged off? This would at least force some activity with bots, and make them traceable (and hence killable).

That already happens with F2P bots, and it's why shopie undocks from time to time.

Anyway, /ignore works for the chat bots. The ones that annoy me at the ones that sit in station sectors known to have problems with bots piling up.

In my defence vanatteveldt he said more than TheLaZyDj does in his interviews and weve seen that he's human.

aVOIDable is off. The joke has run its course and its not the intention to annoy the players of the game. If he comes back it will because we have something new and innovative to do with him. Anybody annoyed by him can at least take solace in the fact that he was on a full monthly sub and paying the game for the time he was active.

its not the intention to annoy the players of the game

That doesn't pass the laugh-aloud test. Anyone involved in 100 while aVOIDable has been on cannot have failed to have noticed the large number of players voicing their annoyance at this drools-on-the-paper retarded bot.

If you wanted to be more truthful, you could tweak the above statement to read, it's our intention to do whatever we like without regard to the fact that it obviously annoys many players of the game.

If he comes back it will because we have something new and innovative to do with him.

Bull****.

and its not the intention to annoy the players of the game.

What a load of crap. What was the intention if not to annoy and disparage? Did you seriously think TGFT and VOID members would delight in the 24/7 jokes entirely at their expense?

I'll take solace if Incarnate confirms it was subbed, otherwise forgive me if I find it more likely that someone clever enough to make a slanderbot is also clever enough to use a F2P account to run it, and then make a throwaway forum account to try to "make peace" only after you were likely contacted by the devs to shut it down.

/me ends rant

Disparaging is fine - cracking jokes about TGFT and VOID is entirely permissible on 100. I certainly encourage it. It's the repetitious, spammy nature of the communications that were the annoying aspect - not the content itself.

But in general, if you have both Greenwall and myself on the same side of an issue opposite you, rest assured you are dead wrong.

There has been no dev contact except in this post. There is a difference between people randomly complaining on 100 and someone taking the time to make a forum post. People will complain on 100 about anything but dont go out of their way to make a forum post unless it really bothers them. Incarnate was not in favor of it and it reached the point that it prompted a forum post. That is why I shut it down. Incarnate is free to confirm that the account was subbed if he chooses but it doesn't matter whether you believe.

Since the aVOIDable bot is no longer a topic of future discussion lets return the discussion to bots in general. This will be my last post on the topic and I will close by saying that I apologize to anyone offended by the spammy nature of the bot.

"forgive me if I find it more likely that someone clever enough to make a slanderbot is also clever enough to use a F2P account to run it, and then make a throwaway forum account to try to "make peace" only after you were likely contacted by the devs to shut it down."

I'm clever enough to do both those things and I would have told you to stick it where the sun doesn't shine instead of posting an apology.

You will be missed dearly aVOIDable, a moment of silence please everyone.