mercenary AI player BOT (like escort NPC)

[Blagoroden7812]

I'm against bots but what about helping NPC, simple class orientated escort NPCs, healer, DD, tank. You can't give them commands, they simply supporting you, just like some quest escort NPCs.
1st of all they are not minions, pet or something like that
2nd they can use basic commands based on class they are
3th they can be hired from Mercenary NPC located in every major city, or separate zone like westfall, duskwood ...
4th you can choose different classes Ai player bots from Mercenary NPCs, like fire mage, frost mage, feral bear, feral cat, and so, but only simple builds, fire mage will cast only firebolt, frost mage will cast only frostbolt
5th level of the supporting NPC is the same as yours, but they have fixed HP, MP, armor, and skill dmg based on level
6th you can have only one supporting NPC
7th supporting NPC can be normal and elites
8th you have to pay fee to use them
9th if they dies you need to hire them again
10th every NPC in the game have its own skills, HP, MP and so..., so we can even use them as supporting NPC, like Lady Sylvanas, or Thrall. You can call supporting NPC something like - spirit of Thrall, spirit of Stormwind guard ...


Thats only basic suggestion.

[Obscurus]

It's called NPCBots, and already implemented for TrinityCore 3.3.5 and works for Cata too.
https://github.com/trickerer/Trinity-Bots/

That and Dungeon scaling down to solo, would be great.

Although it may make the life of many working people a lot of easier, it greatly departs away from the original vanilla experience this server strives for.

So, I highly doubt it.

[Axoc]

No

[Blagoroden7812]

No or Yes its not the answer. The question is how to attract more ppl to join the server. No, 30-100 ppl online is not the answer. Same ppl raiding over and over again is not the answer. Playing solo is not the answer. My idea is not the same as NPCBots, but whatever. We need suggestions how to make server enjoyable from the beginning to the end, from lv1 to lv60, not everyone have time for dungeon party to be formed, not everyone have 2-3 or more hours free time.

Fashion (Transmogrification) is a good answer but how much that makes game better
Mirage Raceway is good but how much ppl are there
World Boss: Nerubian Overseer is good but only for high lvl players

Its easy to say "NO" or "YES", just say why "No" or why "Yes"

[Kazgrim]

Your initial question wasn't "how do we attract more people to the server", it was "what if we added bots to help the player level". The two are not the same question. Just clarifying that.

Here's why I say no to this idea; WoW is not meant to be solo'd. There is content locked behind playing as a team, whether it be dungeons, raids, or elite level quests. Just because you may have trouble organizing a team to clear this content. doesn't mean it should be accessible through solo play (which is what bots basically are). It changes the meta. Why try to interact with players to ask for help when I can easily hire an NPC who will; Not split xp, not roll on loot, and is always available.

[Warrians]

Your initial question wasn't "how do we attract more people to the server", it was "what if we added bots to help the player level". The two are not the same question. Just clarifying that.

Here's why I say no to this idea; WoW is not meant to be solo'd. There is content locked behind playing as a team, whether it be dungeons, raids, or elite level quests. Just because you may have trouble organizing a team to clear this content. doesn't mean it should be accessible through solo play (which is what bots basically are). It changes the meta. Why try to interact with players to ask for help when I can easily hire an NPC who will; Not split xp, not roll on loot, and is always available.

As much as i may agree with you in the core, WOW was designed with massive population in mind - Maybe almost half of it will not work without massive population and thats why you see less and less "elite" content the more you progress in the wow patches.

System BOTS are indeed problematic, but if they were to scale with the player using them, they would create a better experience than being boosted by a level 60 does. And that is what i find in most low population servers, as veteran players dont seem to reserve some slots here to hold back characters of given roles at distinct level ranges. (In my old place i had a rule to have only one character to play freely, and devote 9 to have 3 tanks 3 dps and 3 healers, at what i considered to be "low", "mid" and "high" levels ). Its a lot of work, but helped to mitigate the issue.

When it comes to SYSTEM mercenaries (Something im used to since everquest and RO) , i dont see how a npc with a cost, that will just perform one action, can be any more damaging than what players actively DO here, supported by the rules, which is to run two clients with a second account alt backing them up, either at max level or just leveling both together. Its the same thing to me, but in the way it IS done, its free, while if it was supported by the system it could have a cost and generate one more resources sink.

What are hunter and warlock minions if not system BOTS? Limiting what they can do and how well they can perform might be the answer. Such limits do not apply when you use an alt to play with yourself, and its there.

[Deadcrow]

Hunter and Warlock are the exception rather than the rule. The entire class is built around pets, which have a depth that ties back to the class itself. A rando NPC would be similar to an easy button for some classes who were never designed to have a pet tank.

[Kazgrim]

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Warlocks and hunters are a class, their pets have already been factored into the balance blizzard established. Just because somebody grabs their level 60 alt to do XYZ for their low level alt does not justify creating a botting system. We shouldn't be thinking of ways to further separate players from playing together, and I believe bots would be a further detriment rather than a solution to getting groups formed.

[Blagoroden7812]

Please understand me, most of the time we play alone, more than 90% of the time. We only play together when we need elite quests, dungeons or raids. Its a fiction that WOW is team based game, thats a biggest lie WOW devs created, even Vanilla remains solo exp, pls understand that. Idea for loot roll is to force you to repeat dungeon over and over again, thats a dev trick, its not bad, but its only way to extend gameplay, and when theres not enough ppl online it becomes impossible, waiting in Stormwind for someone 60lv to come online and help me is not the answer, maybe you are sleeping right now or you are at the school, work whatever, most of the time we are waiting and eventually going offline, and whit time we are leaving.
I'm just give you an option to remain more time online, not waiting but playing with mercenary NPC, and whatever you say after that keep in mind that when you are lv60 more than 50% of the time become WAITING, AFKING, CHATING in general.
All i want is to extend gameplay by trick ppl to stay online longer doing something not waiting, or asking random ppl to help me when they are not interested, because they are to high lv or are in different zone.
I understand Blizzard logic, but that logic is based on 5000-10000 ppl online, You have 30-100 ppl online, and pretending that this is Blizz like server is only self-delusion, because you CAN NOT follow Blizzard logic. Is it RIGHT alliance and horde to play together, answer is NO, but its good answer to make ppl play longer and together, thats give more chances parties to be formed (IS IT RIGHT - NO, IS IT GOOD - YES), You already broke one of the major rules that Blizz created.

[Torta]

I'll make this very easy for you, guys.

You have only one full-time developer on Turtle WoW and I don't have spare time to work on Companion AI because for the next year I'll be 100% busy with the expansion content.

This is what you want is not a 5 minute task. So it's a no. MMO means you have to play with other players, even if there are less than 500 players it's still possible to find a friend or ask someone to help you out.

It take more of an effort to gather a group but at least you will remember their names after disbanding it and jumping to a different zone.

[Blagoroden7812]

Sorry Torta, i understand you, i know its a big task working over custom expansion.
My problem was with the sever population, and no you dont have 500 players, but much less, its really hard for me to find a party if it comes to elite quests.
Even with the new expansion the problem will remains, the population will stay low, maybe not at the beginning but later, think about it - Why do we need blood elves when we have Burning Crusade servers, why do we need Goblins when we have Cataclysm servers.
This expansion is for Self satisfaction, it wont make existing game better, and end content will remain same. Taking DB from different expansion to make custom one will make the game client heavy and still 32 bit, not 64, thats the main reason why i'm against that custom expansion. The server is 64 bit, but game client working with only one computer core is so out of age.

[Torta]

We have stated our vision of the game and project's future many times: extending Vanilla instead of moving to the next expansion which would make old content useless. I'm happy to have even a few people sharing the same ideas and will keep on making server for our tiny but dedicated playerbase.

Taking DB from different expansion to make custom one will make the game client heavy and still 32 bit, not 64, thats the main reason why i'm against that custom expansion. The server is 64 bit, but game client working with only one computer core is so out of age.

We are not taking DB from different expansion, we're doing our job properly and manually. Not even speaking that DB is a server-side asset, not a client one. Client-side mods are very light-weight. Client size will increase max to 1GB or even less. Many players use more custom mods than we're adding officially.

This x32/x64 thing just doesn't make any sense, I'm sorry. It's been like this since years.

[Mac]

In my experience, there definitely are enough players to do dungeons, but it kind of depends on when you play. For me and where I'm at, the server's busiest times are night for me, so my options are pretty limited.

That said, bots aren't a good solution because they'd hurt the community on this server. The whole point of the game is you rely on others to do the bulk of the content. Community is important to the game: when I see people asking or talking about private servers on places like r/wowservers, the community being friendly is definitely one of the criteria for whether or not a server is good. People want a server where you have players who are famous (or infamous) for their personalities, and everyone kind of know each other. Otherwise, they could just play a single player game. Heck, you can run your own personal private WOW server with bots and play it single player if that's what you want. The difference between diplomacy and bots is diplomacy helped the community by taking the two separate player groups and merging them into one (so instead of two smaller communities on the server, you have one big one), while bots would definitely hurt the community. The Horde and Alliance split really only matters the most on PVP servers anyway, but Turtle WoW isn't a PVP server.

My alternative suggestion is, instead of bots, add weekly quests to the game for level 60 so players have something more to do while waiting for groups (there already is a bit to do solo at 60, but this would add more). Since there's a custom quest creator where players could build these quests, it'd be feasible since Torta wouldn't have to do all the work, and adding quests is a bit easier than adding a completely new feature. Weekly quests could give tokens that you could then use to buy armor on par with the kind of stuff the Argent Dawn already offers. The tokens could also buy you consumables, so raiders have incentive to do these quests. I recommend weeklies over dailies because dailies put pressure on players to develop unhealthy playing habits where they feel forced to play when they don't want to, leading to burn out. The quests could rotate every week to prevent too much repetitiveness. There's already a weekly in game with the orphan quest, so it is doable. Just a suggestion, though.

[Blagoroden7812]

I dont understand one think how can u miss my point.
I dont speak about BOTs - NO, NO and NO
I speak about IA player bot (LIKE ESCORT NPC), a shitty single NPC with very basic actions.

EXAMPLE:

1. Theres a Mercenary NPC, or Turtle (minion) thats been given at the start
2. This NPC or Turtle have different quests when speak with, like:
- KIll 100 enemies with this escort Frost Mage (example 1)
- Kill 200 enemies whit this escort Holy Paladin (example 2)
- and so and so
3. when u accept one of the quests, the quest giver will give u whistle (like children week quest), whit this whistle u can summon the escort NPC, and do his quest (ONLY ONE ESCORT NPC)
4. when u complete the task speak whit the escort NPC to finish the quest, take ur reward and take another quest if u want.

All this is good for me because:
1. its not good only for 60 lv player its good for everyone
2. when u doing any other quest, u can always do any of escort quests given by mercenary NPC
3. How simple action ESCORT NPC can harm UR community, hes not NPC BOT with complex algorithm for actions.
4. NPC BOT are actually like real players, armor, HP, MP is based on equipment and level.(I'm against that)
5. ESCORT NPC are NPCs whit fixed armor, HP, MP like hunters or warlock pets, the look is based on model thats chosen for them (if Torta chose hunter black gorilla pet to have ID model of Lady Sylvanas, and change that in server DB, ur black gorilla pet will be Lady Sylvanas)

PS: If u speak again and again about BOTS u miss the point at the start, my post says: (like escort NPC). More clear than that i can not be. Pls try to understand what i mean, because i see only some kind of BOTfobia, when ppl hear the word BOT.

[Deadcrow]

That's the rub. What is a player controlled escort npc but simply a long way of saying bot. The whole point of the this server slow and steady pve, no shortcuts, having a minion bot would just let someone cheese the game and steamroll the experience. More power to you if that's your thing, but that isn't what people want on this server. Most of the player base and the devs are against it.

[Blagoroden7812]

Most of the server so called core players are devs friends and donators, even u...

[Torta]

Insulting our players is the first step on the road to ban. Closed.