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GreyElf

request to make a messenger bot to rate trade bots

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I have heard about the trust bot where players can enter information about players that scam or bag jump, etc. I know nothing about programming so this is a request for someone knowledgeable to make a similar type of bot to record trade bots that have no gold or no EMU. Of course it's important that this information is date and time sensitive. It will help those of us whose playing style is mainly harvesting, mixing and selling stuff. Thank you.

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What's wrong with trustbot?

 

And you have a budget for this project? Or do you expect the programmer, hoster and radu to give you this service for free?

(And when you talk with the coder, I hope you can be a bit more precise in what you want, and how you see this work)

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no budget, sorry. and I cannot be more precise because as I said I know less than nothing about programming, hosting, the internet, and computers in general. Just had an idea after a frustrating day trying to sell my essences using the bot site as guidance. If there was a forum for the bot site I would definitely say something there.

 

But now I've learned a couple of things. Thanks for the info.

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I coded/own Trustbot and could fairly easily add a noemu nogold command so that players can report trade bots which are out. However, I am very reluctant to make the bot ping other bots which would be the more accurate way of obtaining this information (bots talking to other bots seems wrong for a whole host of reasons). This new functionality would need to be approved by Entropy though.

 

What information would you like the bot to give back? I was thinking along the lines of /Trustbot status <bot> "Hi! This bot was last reported by x people as out of emu/gold y days ago".

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I coded/own Trustbot and could fairly easily add a noemu nogold command so that players can report trade bots which are out. However, I am very reluctant to make the bot ping other bots which would be the more accurate way of obtaining this information (bots talking to other bots seems wrong for a whole host of reasons). This new functionality would need to be approved by Entropy though.

 

What information would you like the bot to give back? I was thinking along the lines of /Trustbot status <bot> "Hi! This bot was last reported by x people as out of emu/gold y days ago".

 

That might be quite difficult, from where do you want to get the information, that the bot is out of gold coins?

 

Okay, you can get the free EMU and the free slots from most bots with the "inv" command and the amount a bot buys of an item with the "wanted" command.

 

but how do you want to rate that?

 

For example, a bot buys up to 10 leather gloves, which do not stack, but has only 3 slots left.

 

Is that good or bad?

 

A simple solution is, if you have found out with querybot or any other bot site, that a bot buys the stuff you want to sell, PM the bot with "inv" and you can see, if the bot has at least the EMU and the needed slots to buy your stuff.

 

No need for an automated rating of bots, who buy up to 10 leather gloves OR 10 steel chain mails OR 10 swords, but has only 10 free slots left.

 

That would be an absolutely useless feature IMO.

 

Piper

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I was just suggesting that if a player went to a bot and found it out of gold or slots they could report it so others could see. If every bot is consistent at displaying this anyway, then there isn't a need, but I'm not sure this is the case.

 

The problem I foresee is players misreporting in order to direct sales away from a specific bot. The only way around this is requiring many votes before displaying the bot as out, which defeats the point anyway. Any suggestions?

Edited by Minion07

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The problem I foresee is players misreporting in order to direct sales away from a specific bot. The only way around this is requiring many votes before displaying the bot as out, which defeats the point anyway. Any suggestions?

 

Very true, such a feature could be easily abused to give a specific bot a bad reputation, and, finally, when every Joe Noob does such kind of guerillia marketing, the whole data base of a trust bot for trade bots would be just spam, spam, spam and nonsense.

 

Thats why i fear, that there would be a lot of problems with rating bots.

 

Piper

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Thats why i fear, that there would be a lot of problems with rating bots.

 

 

From my understanding of the OP (which could be clarified somewhat), the idea is not to rate bots (that is definitely a slippery slope), just to save people a journey to one they can't use. The challenge is to prevent this being abused for market purposes.

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no budget, sorry. and I cannot be more precise because as I said I know less than nothing about programming, hosting, the internet, and computers in general. Just had an idea after a frustrating day trying to sell my essences using the bot site as guidance. If there was a forum for the bot site I would definitely say something there.

 

But now I've learned a couple of things. Thanks for the info.

Not sure which "bot site" you are referring to. If this is http://bots.el-services.net/ then there IS a forum where you can post (registration is simple). Just follow the link at the bottom to "hosting forums".

If you are using querybot (http://greypal.el-fd.org/cgi-bin/querybot), then you can easily see who owns the bot and who is hosting it. If you have a problem with one of these bots, your first action should be to pm the owner.

Since there have been a few cases where bots have been scammed out of large amounts of gc making owners hesitant to leave large sums on their bots. When owners use bots to buy rare to find and expensive items, they might not be aware if/when their bot is out of gc.

 

With respect to creating a 'trustbot'-like bot for rating trade-bots, I think the reporting players name should be listed when providing a 'last reported' message. Maybe also give a number on how many reports (on different bots) that player has made in the past week. This would cut down on false reporting/spam and make it possible for the owners to get in touch with the reporting player when the situation is fixed. Making the reporting anonymous is just asking for abuse imo.

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Why over engineer a solution? Make a list of bots that suck, on these forums or elsewhere, that ppl can search and then just skip those bots when they make their rounds to sell items. It's not up to you, the customer, to track down random joe sixpack offline bot owner to get them to free up emu, add gold or w/e all the while they're benefitting by advertising services they cannot provide. Don't advertise the purchase of infinite leather gloves or magic removals or wtf ever in the first place and problem solved.

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As noted above I know nothing about programming. Is it possible for a bot, any bot to keep a running tab of gc balance and EMU balance? Could this information be queried like we do with the #inv request? Or something along these lines. Of course there is still the problem of updating all the bots out there, IF this 'feature' is possible.

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As noted above I know nothing about programming.

Sounds like the perfect time to learn now since you have the desire and time.

 

Is it possible for a bot, any bot to keep a running tab of gc balance and EMU balance? Could this information be queried like we do with the #inv request? Or something along these lines. Of course there is still the problem of updating all the bots out there, IF this 'feature' is possible.
Bots are privately owned by players, not coded into the game. You can't make people care about the gc problem on their bot. Best you can do is inform others there is a problem. As said above, this bot would have to spam the other bots querying them for information (same information you would get by querying them). I don't know that I'd like my bot spammed continually for this information if I had one.

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As noted above I know nothing about programming. Is it possible for a bot, any bot to keep a running tab of gc balance and EMU balance? Could this information be queried like we do with the #inv request? Or something along these lines. Of course there is still the problem of updating all the bots out there, IF this 'feature' is possible.

After the big spartan_warrior scam, I doubt many people will publicly reveal how much gc their bot is carrying.

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As noted above I know nothing about programming. Is it possible for a bot, any bot to keep a running tab of gc balance and EMU balance? Could this information be queried like we do with the #inv request? Or something along these lines. Of course there is still the problem of updating all the bots out there, IF this 'feature' is possible.

 

There is a whole convo about owners not wanting the gc on bots to be listed, here. http://www.eternal-lands.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=56081&st=0

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if the bots could send email, they could send the bot owners one each time they're low on gc. lol

Edited by MilesBreezy

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