bot improvement suggestions

[louis1016]

I just got around to trying the latest bots, and I must say that I believe bots are almost near perfect. In my opinion the best state of the bots would be to be as player like as possible when it comes to capability. These bots have always been overpowered when it comes to its capabilities and advantages over players and the spell casting interupt change is a really nice step. The only changes I would like to request are to keep the balance of having a bot in your group vs having a player in your group more fair.

1 - The bot death penalty is a big improvement, although it seems that not all of the res effects are active. My ogre sk for example did not just lose any stamina or hp , but his other vital stats were lowered. I also do not think their mana regen is halted like it should be as well. If these changes were implemented along with a respawn timer that could be changed by the server admin we would have a pretty good bot death penalty. Another idea I would love to see although I doubt it would ever be implemented is maybe a price you pay to spawn bots and then an upkeep price every 15 minutes or so similar to how eqlive uses mercs.

2- One of the biggest issues I have with the current bot system is that bots do not grab aggro from wandering mobs. I know the argument is that people can afk and level, but I think there can be ways to solve that with maybe a rule in the db or some kind of afk check of some sort. Bots not grabbing aggro gives the bot owner a huge reason not to ever group with another player. You can put your bots anywhere you want without having to worry about wandering mobs giving a really artificial feel to the whole bot system. Bots for the most part follow you pretty well in my opinion and we still have the #bot summon command so why cant this be implemented?

3 - Melee misses - I believe that the bots are still not missing anywhere close to players of the same level. This makes a bot group of level 1-10's killing machines that are twice as powerful as players of the same level.

4- class tweaks - Some classes currently dont perform some functions that they should. Bards should be able to mez, for example, and clerics should be able to cast invis vs undead. There are probably others but I dont remember.

These are the changes that I think would solve the problem of the artifical feel of the bots and the advantages having bots in your group vs grouping with players. It would be even better to maybe one day have individual exp per bot that you can pay or group to raise, but thats just wishful thinking.

All in all the bots are near perfect and I thank everyone working on the bots for all the good work they have done with all the recent changes.

[Taurinus2]

Post periodic updates on your progress on coding these. Once you have a good start, others may join in and help you finish it.

[bad_captain]

I'm glad you enjoy using them. Since I've done a lot of work in these areas, I thought I would chime in.

1- As far as I know, bots get the full rez effects that clients get. If there's an effect that's not working, then we definitely need to look at that. The only issue I see with how it is currenly, is that bots always respawn with their items equipped, and don't require a corpse run. I guess an additional timer to simulate a corpse run or from bind would be okay, but having to equip bot equipment again might be a bit much for what it's worth. Ideally, bots would leave corpses and would need to be rezzed, but that's a low priority right now.

2- A rule could be added, but it would be really hard to prevent exploits, and would be a major headache.

3- I fixes this issue so that bots use the same code as clients for misses a while ago when there was a problem. If you can provide some parses showing bot misses are much lower than clients, maybe I can take another look.

4- Many of the limitations are due to the spell handling code, and the lack of intelligence bots use their spells. I've done some work on this, but it's a major project. But specifically, bards ahould be able to be given mez, but would probably require some special coding rather than just adding the song to their lineup. As far as cleric casting IvU, they should be able to via #bot command. If not, it could probably be added pretty easily copying the regular invis spell command. You dont want the cleric running around cadting IvU all the time.

Overall, I guess I still don't see how bots are so overpowered, as I can think of many ways they are deficient. And if you've had a tank merc on live, you wouldn't consider bots overpowered. I tested a tank merc with a shaman, and didn't have to heal it unless I pulled more than 3 mobs at a time up to level 33. If I can see a parse where bots significantly outperform equivalent clients in offense or defense, I'll investigate.

I appreciate the feedback, even if I may not completely agree with you. But it would help if you were able to provide some evidence for your argument. With 2 jobs, a 4 year old, and a 9 month old, I don't have the time to investigate everything, nor do many others. I will take a look if you provide some more info.

[bad_captain]

I guess the biggest benefit bots have it that they always have max skills for their level, but if you play it right, they shouldn't ever have more than 5 points per skill more than a client if you keep your skills up.

[louis1016]

Thanks for the reply, I dont mean to sound like im complaining or anything, i love the bots and youve fixed so many things that were wrong over the last year and if it werent for the work youve done on these bots me and probably many others wouldnt bother running our own private servers. My RL schedule has me tied up but I'm currently in the process of learning c++ and I hope to eventually be able to contribute to the bot code myself once I really have the time learn what I need to learn

Heres some more feedback to your reply

1 -I'm real happy to hear that the bot res effects are supposed to work like client res. I was thrown off when I saw that my ogre SK at lvl 50 still had his maximum STA and HP though, I'll test it out again tonight and see if it happens again. Maybe clients dont lose STA from res effects? i dont know for sure but anyway I guess its really not that important. If any bot summon timer can be implemented at some point that would really solidify the bot death penalty in addition to the res effects. As of now, if my bots die, i can summon them back immediately and send them immediately to deal with any hostile mobs that might otherwise attack me while I'm running to zone out. At least with a few minutes in between clients will really feel like if everyone in the group died you would have to stay safe and possibly zone out while waiting for the bots to recoup from death.

2- As for the bots getting aggro, is there a small change I can make to my server code to make them get aggro? If this is something that can easily be done then that would be great but otherwise I suppose I'll wait until I learn more c++ to be able to do this myself.

3- Honestly i havent checked out the bot misses recently but I didnt see anything in the changelog to indicate a change so i assumed they were still hitting 99% of the time. I'll look into it again tonight and provide parses if theres an issue.

4- I understand the bard mez would be pretty hard to do and I suppose its not really that necessary. The cleric, however, does not cast IVU with the bot command, saying I need the other classes to do it. I wasnt sure if this was intended or not but it would definitely be nice getting IVU from my cleric bots.


Tonight I'll look into the misses/res effects and see what i can parse. Thanks again for all the time and effort you put into all this, its much appreciated

[Taurinus2]

I would like to point out the following in regard to #2.

I am not a griefer, but if I were my job would be made easier by this change because I no longer have to train a player - training their bot(s) would get the job done. Or, even better, have my bots do it for me.

I also would no longer have to camp a contested mob, because my bots can do it for me. The number of mobs I could tie up in a zone would be limited only by the number of bots available to me.

In other words, it would bring the same problems that multi-boxing brings, but it would make it only worse.

It would be fine for a personal server, but I do not see this as being appropriate for general consumption.

[Criimson]

Originally Posted by louis1016

2- As for the bots getting aggro, is there a small change I can make to my server code to make them get aggro? If this is something that can easily be done then that would be great but otherwise I suppose I'll wait until I learn more c++ to be able to do this myself.

Hello there is a variable under rule_values in the DB "Aggro:SmartAggroList". Set this to false and Bots will agro like a PC

Criimson

BTW I am back. What with having a new baby in Sept my time was very limited, but I am getting more time so will begin helping again on the bots.

First I am going to be adding bot commands per class with a help window for each class that lists said commands.

[louis1016]

Ive been using the bots lately a lot and it looks like the res effects are pretty good and working as intended.

The smartaggrolist actually doesnt seem to change the bots aggroing npcs, i tried this out a few times last night, you can go in the field of bone and sit and send all your bots to attack mobs in the pit one by one while you sit far away and they will attack and kill any mob without any regard for the mobs that should be aggroing them immediately. I understand why this wouldnt be changed however.

One thing I noticed that would probably be easy to add and would be great is if bots would sit and med if they run out of mana in combat. It really is a pain when my cleric bot runs out of mana, but wont sit to med to get another heal out if I want my other bots to still attack.

[Criimson]

Oh yea that wont ever be changed. The reason is in the bots pathing. Since they follow you travelling through walls at times if they agroed by distance theyd cause crazy trains. The option in the DB will cause them to agro through actions (ie healing spells will cause agro to be generated).

I am still getting my new laptop configured (picked it up this weekend) so havent gotten the source code Dled yet, but I'll look into the medding when I do. I am pretty sure I know where to look in the code for that.

[Criimson]

Double Post

[bad_captain]

That appears to be a pretty easy change. I'll be testing it to make sure it doesn't affect anything else.

[Kultivater]

I didn't want to piss people off with starting a new thread, so I'll post it here:

I wanted to report a bug in the shaman class for bots. It seems that if they have a regen buff on you, they won't heal you at all(not even outside of fights). This is a major pain because you have to make sure you click off the regen during a fight, plus, it's smarter to keep it on until the mob has been slowed/dotted because if it's healing you, it won't cast anything else but the heal. So far this has been the way of things up to level 30. I'm not sure if things will change as the bot gets new abilities, but, based on my knowledge of the class, I'm betting it won't.

Edit: I wanted to add that outside of fights, they won't heal you even if you click the regen off, which is perhaps the most annoying part, because if you're low on health, you have 2 options: waste plat on heal pots, or sit there and med.

[bad_captain]

Originally Posted by Kultivater

I didn't want to piss people off with starting a new thread, so I'll post it here:

I wanted to report a bug in the shaman class for bots. It seems that if they have a regen buff on you, they won't heal you at all(not even outside of fights). This is a major pain because you have to make sure you click off the regen during a fight, plus, it's smarter to keep it on until the mob has been slowed/dotted because if it's healing you, it won't cast anything else but the heal. So far this has been the way of things up to level 30. I'm not sure if things will change as the bot gets new abilities, but, based on my knowledge of the class, I'm betting it won't.

Edit: I wanted to add that outside of fights, they won't heal you even if you click the regen off, which is perhaps the most annoying part, because if you're low on health, you have 2 options: waste plat on heal pots, or sit there and med.

This should be fixed in Rev 2132. Let me know if you still experience this problem. There may be an issue with your spell lists.

[louis1016]

ive been playing with the bots again as of late

A+ job on the stances, finally our casters dont waste all their mana on any mob. I also like the group messages that was a nice addition.

Some things that would be nice would be setting passive mode on melee characters to stop meleeing like mentioned earlier and maybe a command to change all your bot stances at the same time? Like a #bot stance all 0 or something.

I also was wondering how hard it would be to implement a snare/root/dispell command for the respective classes. I might try to copy the format of the other class specific command spells and see if I can do it myself.

Also would it be possible to tune the bot roles code so the needed buffs will only be cast on the classes that need it? For me this issue is making me play with the bot finish buffing rule on but if this was finished it wouldnt be as necessary.

I also have a question about raids. I havent really tried raiding with the bots yet, but how functional are they? Would I be able to down bosses with a reasonable amount of bots considering we dont have a CH chain?


EDIT - I also keep experiencing almost everytime I zone where my bots stop moving or responding to anything until I drop them from group and then reinvite. Im not sure whats causing it but it wasnt ever doing this before.

[bad_captain]

Originally Posted by louis1016

ive been playing with the bots again as of late

A+ job on the stances, finally our casters dont waste all their mana on any mob. I also like the group messages that was a nice addition.

Some things that would be nice would be setting passive mode on melee characters to stop meleeing like mentioned earlier and maybe a command to change all your bot stances at the same time? Like a #bot stance all 0 or something.

I plan on adding it, just as I plan on adding more things based on stances. I want to mirror live mercs as much as possible, and melee not attacking on passive is one of those things.

Originally Posted by louis1016

I also was wondering how hard it would be to implement a snare/root/dispell command for the respective classes. I might try to copy the format of the other class specific command spells and see if I can do it myself.

They shouldn't be too hard. They are supposed to snare if the mob is fleeing already, so I'm not sure if you would need that (if your bot has the spell, of course).

Originally Posted by louis1016

Also would it be possible to tune the bot roles code so the needed buffs will only be cast on the classes that need it? For me this issue is making me play with the bot finish buffing rule on but if this was finished it wouldnt be as necessary.

I've started work on this, but it requires a lot of work to get it for specific buffs (not just spell effect like is currently in there). I was working on this for the hate magnifying spells for melee and reducing spells for casters. I've worked on adding spells through level 90 or 95, so this has been kind of added into that works since it's spell related. I plan on finishing it at some time, but it's just part of a larger project that has taken a lot of time.

Originally Posted by louis1016

I also have a question about raids. I havent really tried raiding with the bots yet, but how functional are they? Would I be able to down bosses with a reasonable amount of bots considering we dont have a CH chain?

It really just depends on your tank and how you set up your groups. I have made it in the EPs based on one cleric and a backup healing Shaman. I haven't made it past any of the EP gods, yet. I think I would need to add another cleric or use a rotation to get much further. I have added a command for my tank to use defensive, which helps a whole lot. Eventually I plan on adding heal rotations. I think they will be required to do anything difficult with a default database.

Originally Posted by louis1016

EDIT - I also keep experiencing almost everytime I zone where my bots stop moving or responding to anything until I drop them from group and then reinvite. Im not sure whats causing it but it wasnt ever doing this before.

I haven't seen this. Do any of the bots die before zoning, or is it just all of the time? I'll try to test this out some more to see if I can get it to happen.