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Guest Mithsir

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Guest Mithsir

Hi,

 

I had the idea that a bot similar to EternalBroker would be cool. This bot should be able to accept buy/sell orders and then check all other known trade bots if they buy/sell the requested item.

 

- Would such a bot be allowed?

 

Greetings.

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I had the idea that a bot similar to EternalBroker would be cool. This bot should be able to accept buy/sell orders and then check all other known trade bots if they buy/sell the requested item.

 

- Would such a bot be allowed?

 

Greetings.

It has been discussed on the bot owner forum before. There is such a bot going public around the beginning of August if I recall. The bot's name is rraisa.

 

However, many bots provide different pricing for buy and sell based on who they are talking to. For instance buying higher and selling lower to friendly guilds. An aggregation service such as you describe or that being implemented by Rraisa can not take this into account.

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There is a bot that is happily spamming most of the other bots to achieve this same functionality, Rraisa.

 

Currently in the "extended testing" (read guild only) phase, the bot is due to go live on August 1st according to Usl.

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Guest Mithsir

However, many bots provide different pricing for buy and sell based on who they are talking to. For instance buying higher and selling lower to friendly guilds. An aggregation service such as you describe or that being implemented by Rraisa can not take this into account.

 

Well, this bot would still be good for availability checks.

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Well, this bot would still be good for availability checks.
It's not just prices that can change based on who asks, some bots will buy/sell some items only from/to certain people (eg guildies).

Any indexing service will not be accurate, and will place a higher level of price competition on the bots. That's not good for the economy (many bots are already selling for around market price just to get sales... What happens if they start selling for bare minimum cost for a high level player to make? low level players can't afford to absorb losses at those prices).

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Guest Mithsir

Any indexing service will not be accurate, and will place a higher level of price competition on the bots. That's not good for the economy (many bots are already selling for around market price just to get sales... What happens if they start selling for bare minimum cost for a high level player to make? low level players can't afford to absorb losses at those prices).

 

It doesn't really have to be accurate. It would already greatly help (e.g. offload market channel) if one could find in-stock (or wanted) wares from bots. Price should adjust to availability and location (i.e. players can sell large qty at sto - you'd have to walk if you buy from bot.) So buying from bots may be sometimes cheaper, but less conveniant.

 

Of course, these are all assumptions... This technique is likely to affect the market, and the effect may well be negative.

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There is a bot that is happily spamming most of the other bots to achieve this same functionality, Rraisa.

 

Currently in the "extended testing" (read guild only) phase, the bot is due to go live on August 1st according to Usl.

This is confirmed. In addition to members of my current and previous guilds, the bot has been/is being tested by owners of indexed bots who have requested to join in the beta test. I will post the full announcement in this forum on the appointed day (although almost a month late w.r.t. my original schedule -- sorry!).

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It doesn't really have to be accurate. It would already greatly help (e.g. offload market channel) if one could find in-stock (or wanted) wares from bots.

If it isn't accurate, people will become frustrated and choose not to use it, therefore rendering it useless. It would need to be accurate.

 

Price should adjust to availability and location (i.e. players can sell large qty at sto - you'd have to walk if you buy from bot.)

How do you adjust the price based on availability and location? This bot would only be recording the price that all the other bots report to it. Is it meant to recalcuate the price? And what use is that anyway if you turn up with the wrong amount... o.O

 

I personally think the idea of a bot like this is a good idea given the number of bots we have in-game. However, prices should *never* be listed as it breeds unfair competition.

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Guest Mithsir
It doesn't really have to be accurate. It would already greatly help (e.g. offload market channel) if one could find in-stock (or wanted) wares from bots.

If it isn't accurate, people will become frustrated and choose not to use it, therefore rendering it useless. It would need to be accurate.

 

Price should adjust to availability and location (i.e. players can sell large qty at sto - you'd have to walk if you buy from bot.)

How do you adjust the price based on availability and location? This bot would only be recording the price that all the other bots report to it. Is it meant to recalcuate the price? And what use is that anyway if you turn up with the wrong amount... o.O

 

I personally think the idea of a bot like this is a good idea given the number of bots we have in-game. However, prices should *never* be listed as it breeds unfair competition.

 

I agree. Lets see how this works when that bot is released. :-)

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How do you adjust the price based on availability and location? This bot would only be recording the price that all the other bots report to it. Is it meant to recalcuate the price? And what use is that anyway if you turn up with the wrong amount... o.O

 

I think he meant the price is adjusted according to the tradebot's location, ie agneum sells silver and sulfur at well below market price, simply because he is located close to the resources and there is no hauling to storage required. Likewise, a bot selling FP in close proximity to mira could be expected to be a good bit cheaper than a bot that sells FP somewhere like SRM cave. All these scenario's are specialist bots aiming for a particular market, whereas more general bots would sell at around market price

 

 

I personally think the idea of a bot like this is a good idea given the number of bots we have in-game. However, prices should *never* be listed as it breeds unfair competition.

 

Agree wholeheeartedly that this is a good idea for a bot, and indeed I badgered ttlanhil unsuccessfully for ages trying to get him to include such functionality into vakana :D

Also as a low level in making mostly anything I could sell, I completely understand tt's comment re the problems with price competition, although already trying to compete in market channel with high levellers happy to break even means the situation is already a nightmare, and numerous threads about the economy have tried to see through the fog on this.

 

But I don't see that not listing prices will help matters. If I ask the bot for a list of bots selling, say, tit serp. I get a list of bots back. Would anyone simply go to the first bot and buy from them without checking prices?? My bet is that most people would then PM all those bots and check prices manually, and then buy from the cheapest. Likewise when they want to sell to a bot.

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However, prices should *never* be listed as it breeds unfair competition.

 

Do you perchance work for an airline, or a trade union? :D

 

Competition isn't MEANT to be fair - it is meant to lead to more efficient prices. And I'm not too concerned with level-95 alchemists cornering the FE market - I'm sure they have better things to do than to click on mix all day for 10 exp each. And maybe if some raw materials were cheaper the final products might actually be profitable. Nobody should be dictating prices - people will figure out how low they are willing to go and a floor will form on prices - just like in real life.

 

As others have pointed out - not listing the prices won't change anything, but it will result in everybody having to send 100 PMs to each bot to get the current prices. Nobody is going to just buy anything from the first bot on the list without comparison shopping - unless they just need 2 FEs or something silly like that. Unless you make a lot of gc/hour it is better to walk than to be lazy. And if time is THAT important to you then paying an extra few percent won't deter you from going to the nearest bot anyway.

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As others have pointed out - not listing the prices won't change anything, but it will result in everybody having to send 100 PMs to each bot to get the current prices.

 

Actually, knowing WHICH of the many sales bots to do a PM INV will be a huge savings in busy-work for someone wanting to buy something.

 

I almost never use bots now because it's to much work to find out if any bot is even carrying a given item I'm looking for. If I could get a short list of names and then simply PM to determine price and how close it is, that would change my usage of bots.

 

If prices were listed it would be even easier, but I could live with just knowing which bots to check.

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Competition isn't MEANT to be fair - it is meant to lead to more efficient prices.
Right, and it's that sort of thinking that allows big businesses IRL to squeeze out the smaller operators, so that they get the sales later.
And I'm not too concerned with level-95 alchemists cornering the FE market - I'm sure they have better things to do than to click on mix all day for 10 exp each.
If that's where the money is, then they will. If that's what they need for their own or guild projects, they will. Some things, like FEs and HEs will be mass-produced for sale, since they actually have a market (as opposed to many other items that are harder to sell).
As others have pointed out - not listing the prices won't change anything, but it will result in everybody having to send 100 PMs to each bot to get the current prices.
Nope. They'll send to a few close ones. Part of the listing of bots that I agreed to was the location thing. You can list the trade bots in Portland, say, but not get prices until you actually contact them to get correct prices (and availability, which is possibly even more important).

Plus, what makes you think people will PM all the bots? Right now, people already would have a small list of bots they check... If you have a bot-search that also does locations, they can also check the nearby bots... And it doesn't make price competition the main point.

And personally, I think for the odd trade (as opposed to the trades with the bots one normally trades with), location is going to be more important than price anyway.

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Do you perchance work for an airline, or a trade union? :w00t:
lol, no, but I've been around the game and involved with bots for a long time.

 

And maybe if some raw materials were cheaper the final products might actually be profitable.
How so?? raw materials in the game are free. They don't come much cheaper. The prices that you find for those materials are what the market has established them to be worth based on the ease of not having to obtain them yourself.

 

Nobody should be dictating prices
I agree. This is what the smaller manufactuers are worried about. Mass production for power levelling is not good for a stable market. It is unfair to those trying to establish essentially in a RP sence a little shop through their bot. Have a look around this forum for all the arguments from bot owners about this topic.

 

people will figure out how low they are willing to go and a floor will form on prices - just like in real life.
Actually, EL's market is far too small and off balance for things to work like this. The base price for anything is essentially 0 because everything is free. How much is your time or levelling worth?

 

If prices were listed it would be even easier, but I could live with just knowing which bots to check.
Exactly. The point of a bot like this would be to make it easier to get in-contact with a bot selling/buying whatever you are looking for. This bot should not be playing the game for you. It's really not that difficult to establish which bot you wish to use once you have a list of them.

 

/edit: Heh, ttl's post coveres a bunch of my points.

Edited by Torg

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Nobody should be dictating prices - people will figure out how low they are willing to go and a floor will form on prices - just like in real life.
Whoops, missed this the first time around.

I want you to sit back in your chair, and think about why this is so wrong. Give up? Because comparing to RL doesn't work in many cases.

The following is somewhat of a generalisation, but it's mostly true.

In RL, people's livelyhood depends on making money, it has a lot more meaning than in EL (where it only means new toys, as opposed to living and eating and having clothing and shelter). People care a lot more about earning money. People will often take the time to get a good price. Resources are limited, and you generally can't get all the resources yourself. People aren't willing to lose money just for experience (well, not usually). People can't do all things themselves, they're forced to interact. I could go on with the examples, but I don't think I need to.

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I predict a large number of bot owners eventually instructing thier bots to IGNORE this type of bot when it request prices.

 

I've also considered some may send incorrect data to the bot, an INV from that bot would return EVERY item in the game available at WAY below market prices. Just to get the players who use that service to go to thier bot.

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I predict a large number of bot owners eventually instructing thier bots to IGNORE this type of bot when it request prices.
This is the part that really bothers me... That someone would need to do this. Not because someone's setting up botspam, but because I don't see much reason why bots should ever respond to other bots at all (there are certainly exceptions, like a guild that has several bots might share info between them, however those are limited and uncommon).

When I was first bringing vakana online, I planned to add bot-ignore after a few days, once I had reading of the online_players list working. But I had a botspam attack in only an hour or three, and had to take vak offline for a few more hours while I cobbled all that together.

Players can contact players. That's fine. Players can contact bots, that generally works fine as well.

Bots should rarely contact players (unless the player signed up for notifications, or things like offline PMs/tells), and bots should contact bots even less (as above, there are a few exceptions, anything else should, IMO, be silently ignored. It's the best way to prevent a "Hello, my name is and I do X!" floodwar).

I've also considered some may send incorrect data to the bot, an INV from that bot would return EVERY item in the game available at WAY below market prices. Just to get the players who use that service to go to thier bot.
That was pointed out before as well. But heck, lets be subtle. Occasionally the tradebot can report that it has more of something than it does, even if it doesn't have any.

Players will find the bot doesn't have it, and may complain, and then "Oh, sorry, sold out already, you were too slow" or "No, that's old info, the indexbot isn't up-to-date". You need server access to be able to disprove this. And even server access doesn't guarantee things are accurate, because bots may sell more items for less to some people (not just better prices, some things will only be to some people).

 

Something like this cannot be done correctly. To do it incorrectly means problems and more botspam.

 

Oh, and one other problem I've pointed out in the private forum before... I've had people complain vakana was broken because they had her on #ignore and a friend told them to contact her. Fair enough, but that'll be a bigger problem if there's an indexing that doesn't take into account #ignore lists.

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I predict a large number of bot owners eventually instructing thier bots to IGNORE this type of bot when it request prices.

Nicky, if you were in the bot owners private forum, you would know that this has already been discussed months ago (also see the numbers below). Of course, whoever does not want to be indexed can simply state so, and that bot would be removed from Rraisa listings. A total of 2 tradebots, both owned by the same person, have in fact been removed upon request. Entropy stated quite clearly that by default it is acceptable that a bot asks another bot for its INV and WANTED, but of course bots are free to ignore requests as they wish. Rraisa has been running for 6 months now, it's not that the matter hasn't been thoroughly discussed and tested.

 

This is the part that really bothers me... That someone would need to do this. Not because someone's setting up botspam, but because I don't see much reason why bots should ever respond to other bots at all (there are certainly exceptions, like a guild that has several bots might share info between them, however those are limited and uncommon).

This is in fact like saying that there is no reason why a web site should respond to Google's requests. Why there is so much talk about botspam, I can't quite understand: Rraisa just sends an INV or WANTED command every 1 and 1/2 hour, which should not be a burden to anyone. These PMs go directly to a single bot, not to a channel where they could constitute spam. Globally, it would hugely reduce the total number of tradebot-related PMs in the system. If you have n players and m tradebots, for every player to get a complete picture of the market would require O(n*m) messages (a message from each player to each bot). With a broker, you only need O(n+m) messages (n messages from player to broker, plus m messages from broker to bots).

 

But heck, lets be subtle. Occasionally the tradebot can report that it has more of something than it does, even if it doesn't have any.

Players will find the bot doesn't have it, and may complain, and then "Oh, sorry, sold out already, you were too slow" or "No, that's old info, the indexbot isn't up-to-date". You need server access to be able to disprove this. And even server access doesn't guarantee things are accurate, because bots may sell more items for less to some people (not just better prices, some things will only be to some people).

There is no claim that results will be accurate, or whatever. Of course tradebots can cheat to Rraisa, and then maybe offer a worse price to a player. That's why I normally use Rraisa to get a list of bots carrying some item, and then INV them directly before going half a continent to do my shopping. Notice that I'm avoiding PMing dozens of bots that DON't carry what I want, saving time for myself and bandwidth on the server.

 

Something like this cannot be done correctly. To do it incorrectly means problems and more botspam.

Well, I can't see the botspam problem, and if the service as a whole doesn't work, people will simply stop using it. I'm not a zealot, and I would not pushing this -- except, several other tradebot owners said they would gladly support the service only on condition that it was open to the public, not only to a few guilds.

So far, I have had:

1 tradebot owner explicitly asked to be removed from the listing

3 tradebot owners explicitly asked to be added to the listing (I had missed them initially)

all the rest were happy to be included, and some of them opted to ban Rraisa for the time being, in particular:

6 bots are ignoring Rraisa (some of them are ignoring all bots, regardless of the purpose)

40 bots are replying to Rraisa requests

10 bots are off-line right now and I can't tell wheter they would accept or reject requests

in addition, several of the newer bots are not yet listed.

 

ttlanhil, we already know we disagree on this issue. As I said, opening to the public was requested by the owners of several of the 6 bots that currently ignore Rraisa, and explicitly encouraged by Entropy, who even said it would weave the $20 bot fee and consider Rraisa a free "community" service if it was opened up. I asked for some months of testing before opening the service, and the time has now come to try it for real. So far, only tradebot owners have had an opportunity to discuss the issue; let's see how all the other players like it as well.

As I said above, I'm not a zealot by nature: if the existance of Rraisa affects negatively EL as a whole, I would be happy to retire it. My impression is that players would love such a feature, and this implementation is actually more efficient that a separate bot channel or other similar proposals (in fact, Rraisa also indexes the market channel, so announcements from bots and players alike are also reported in response to queries).

 

Peace? :laugh:

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Why bots should not talk to one another:

28/07/2007 13:59:38: Got PM from Console: #pm rraisa help

28/07/2007 13:59:38: Send PM to Rraisa: help

28/07/2007 13:59:38: Got PM from Rraisa: Sorry, daddy told me not to talk to strangers. I am NOT a tradebot, by the way... Feel free to contact Usl in-game if you have further questions.

28/07/2007 13:59:38: Send PM to Rraisa: Hello Rraisa, my name is Titanta.

28/07/2007 13:59:38: Send PM to Rraisa: Feel free to browse my wares :laugh:

28/07/2007 13:59:38: Send PM to Rraisa: To see the list of avaible commands send me an

28/07/2007 13:59:38: Send PM to Rraisa: ingame message with #help.

28/07/2007 13:59:38: Send PM to Rraisa: (Just type in /Titanta #help )

28/07/2007 13:59:38: Got PM from Rraisa: Sorry, daddy told me not to talk to strangers. I am NOT a tradebot, by the way... Feel free to contact Usl in-game if you have further questions.

28/07/2007 13:59:38: Got PM from Rraisa: Sorry, daddy told me not to talk to strangers. I am NOT a tradebot, by the way... Feel free to contact Usl in-game if you have further questions.

28/07/2007 13:59:38: Send PM to Rraisa: Hello Rraisa, my name is Titanta.

28/07/2007 13:59:38: Got PM from Rraisa: Sorry, daddy told me not to talk to strangers. I am NOT a tradebot, by the way... Feel free to contact Usl in-game if you have further questions.

28/07/2007 13:59:38: Send PM to Rraisa: Feel free to browse my wares :laugh:

28/07/2007 13:59:38: Send PM to Rraisa: To see the list of avaible commands send me an

28/07/2007 13:59:38: Send PM to Rraisa: ingame message with #help.

28/07/2007 13:59:38: Got PM from Rraisa: Sorry, daddy told me not to talk to strangers. I am NOT a tradebot, by the way... Feel free to contact Usl in-game if you have further questions.

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Got PM from Rraisa: Sorry, daddy told me not to talk to strangers. I am NOT a tradebot, by the way... Feel free to contact Usl in-game if you have further questions.

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Send PM to Rraisa: (Just type in /Titanta #help )

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Send PM to Rraisa: Hello Rraisa, my name is Titanta.

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Send PM to Rraisa: Feel free to browse my wares :laugh:

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Send PM to Rraisa: To see the list of avaible commands send me an

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Send PM to Rraisa: ingame message with #help.

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Send PM to Rraisa: (Just type in /Titanta #help )

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Send PM to Rraisa: Hello Rraisa, my name is Titanta.

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Send PM to Rraisa: Feel free to browse my wares :laugh:

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Send PM to Rraisa: To see the list of avaible commands send me an

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Send PM to Rraisa: ingame message with #help.

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Send PM to Rraisa: (Just type in /Titanta #help )

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Got PM from Rraisa: Sorry, daddy told me not to talk to strangers. I am NOT a tradebot, by the way... Feel free to contact Usl in-game if you have further questions.

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Send PM to Rraisa: Hello Rraisa, my name is Titanta.

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Send PM to Rraisa: Feel free to browse my wares :)

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Send PM to Rraisa: To see the list of avaible commands send me an

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Send PM to Rraisa: ingame message with #help.

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Send PM to Rraisa: (Just type in /Titanta #help )

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Send PM to Rraisa: Hello Rraisa, my name is Titanta.

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Send PM to Rraisa: Feel free to browse my wares :)

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Send PM to Rraisa: To see the list of avaible commands send me an

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Send PM to Rraisa: ingame message with #help.

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Send PM to Rraisa: (Just type in /Titanta #help )

28/07/2007 13:59:39: Send PM to Rraisa: Hello Rraisa, my name is Titanta.

and on, and on, and on until I pulled the plug on Titanta. I could have been an ant or one of the new bots. Does "bots should not communicate" need to be made any clearer?

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Why bots should not talk to one another:

28/07/2007 13:59:38: Got PM from Console: #pm rraisa help

28/07/2007 13:59:38: Send PM to Rraisa: help

28/07/2007 13:59:38: Got PM from Rraisa: Sorry, daddy told me not to talk to strangers. I am NOT a tradebot, by the way... Feel free to contact Usl in-game if you have further questions.

Needless to say, it was LabRat the only tradebot owner who didn't want his bots to appear in Rraisa lists... and as you may notice, the ping-pong was started by an explicit command from him. Which is bordering on friendly sabotage, I'd say... :laugh:

 

Interestingly, this would NOT happen to any other tradebot -- it only happened because Agneum and Titanta were considered normal players, not bots, and in turn this was because LabRat had requested their de-listing. So, any other tradebot would not have caused any strange behaviour.

 

Having said this, I'm configuring Rraisa so it ignores such attempts altogether.

 

Thanks for pointing out this weakness,

-Usl

Edited by Usl

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I predict a large number of bot owners eventually instructing thier bots to IGNORE this type of bot when it request prices.

Nicky, if you were in the bot owners private forum, you would know that this has already been discussed months ago (also see the numbers below). Of course, whoever does not want to be indexed can simply state so, and that bot would be removed from Rraisa listings. A total of 2 tradebots, both owned by the same person, have in fact been removed upon request. Entropy stated quite clearly that by default it is acceptable that a bot asks another bot for its INV and WANTED, but of course bots are free to ignore requests as they wish. Rraisa has been running for 6 months now, it's not that the matter hasn't been thoroughly discussed and tested.

 

This is the part that really bothers me... That someone would need to do this. Not because someone's setting up botspam, but because I don't see much reason why bots should ever respond to other bots at all (there are certainly exceptions, like a guild that has several bots might share info between them, however those are limited and uncommon).

This is in fact like saying that there is no reason why a web site should respond to Google's requests. Why there is so much talk about botspam, I can't quite understand: Rraisa just sends an INV or WANTED command every 1 and 1/2 hour, which should not be a burden to anyone. These PMs go directly to a single bot, not to a channel where they could constitute spam. Globally, it would hugely reduce the total number of tradebot-related PMs in the system. If you have n players and m tradebots, for every player to get a complete picture of the market would require O(n*m) messages (a message from each player to each bot). With a broker, you only need O(n+m) messages (n messages from player to broker, plus m messages from broker to bots).

 

But heck, lets be subtle. Occasionally the tradebot can report that it has more of something than it does, even if it doesn't have any.

Players will find the bot doesn't have it, and may complain, and then "Oh, sorry, sold out already, you were too slow" or "No, that's old info, the indexbot isn't up-to-date". You need server access to be able to disprove this. And even server access doesn't guarantee things are accurate, because bots may sell more items for less to some people (not just better prices, some things will only be to some people).

There is no claim that results will be accurate, or whatever. Of course tradebots can cheat to Rraisa, and then maybe offer a worse price to a player. That's why I normally use Rraisa to get a list of bots carrying some item, and then INV them directly before going half a continent to do my shopping. Notice that I'm avoiding PMing dozens of bots that DON't carry what I want, saving time for myself and bandwidth on the server.

 

Something like this cannot be done correctly. To do it incorrectly means problems and more botspam.

Well, I can't see the botspam problem, and if the service as a whole doesn't work, people will simply stop using it. I'm not a zealot, and I would not pushing this -- except, several other tradebot owners said they would gladly support the service only on condition that it was open to the public, not only to a few guilds.

So far, I have had:

1 tradebot owner explicitly asked to be removed from the listing

3 tradebot owners explicitly asked to be added to the listing (I had missed them initially)

all the rest were happy to be included, and some of them opted to ban Rraisa for the time being, in particular:

6 bots are ignoring Rraisa (some of them are ignoring all bots, regardless of the purpose)

40 bots are replying to Rraisa requests

10 bots are off-line right now and I can't tell wheter they would accept or reject requests

in addition, several of the newer bots are not yet listed.

 

ttlanhil, we already know we disagree on this issue. As I said, opening to the public was requested by the owners of several of the 6 bots that currently ignore Rraisa, and explicitly encouraged by Entropy, who even said it would weave the $20 bot fee and consider Rraisa a free "community" service if it was opened up. I asked for some months of testing before opening the service, and the time has now come to try it for real. So far, only tradebot owners have had an opportunity to discuss the issue; let's see how all the other players like it as well.

As I said above, I'm not a zealot by nature: if the existance of Rraisa affects negatively EL as a whole, I would be happy to retire it. My impression is that players would love such a feature, and this implementation is actually more efficient that a separate bot channel or other similar proposals (in fact, Rraisa also indexes the market channel, so announcements from bots and players alike are also reported in response to queries).

 

Peace? :laugh:

I'm one of the owners that banned Rraisa because you started polling bots for their inventory without asking them if you could. It doesn't matter if Entropy said you could, courtesy dictates that you should have talked to the owners.

 

I also disagree greatly that a bot doing this is a community service, but I wont repeat myself yet again.

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The whole thing was from an explicit post from rraisa "/titanta inv" a long time ago. You never asked my permission then, Titanta was just being friendly.

 

Sabotage? Nah I would have left it running until your log filled up your hard drive, that is true sabotage. I was just backing up ttl's point about bots talking to bots being a Bad Thing, and exactly why.

 

What happens if a bot changes it's commands (not so far fetched, bot owners may wish to change codebase)? PMing the bot with the old command causes a spamfest.

 

Glad to have helped you see the (glaringly obvious to some of us) weakness in your code/idea/suggestion.

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The whole thing was from an explicit post from rraisa "/titanta inv" a long time ago. You never asked my permission then, Titanta was just being friendly.

I already apologized -- more than once -- if anyone felt offended at the time. I was new to the game, and given what Entropy had said (that it was ok for a bot to ask INV and WANTED to other bots), I did not expect to cause any outrage. I also offered to remove anyone who felt offended and didn't want his/her bot indexed. I haven't added more bots since then, except upon explicit request by their owner. What else could I do?

 

Sabotage? Nah I would have left it running until your log filled up your hard drive, that is true sabotage. I was just backing up ttl's point about bots talking to bots being a Bad Thing, and exactly why.

That's why I said it was a friendly thing ("bordering on friendly sabotage", I said -- don't be afraid to quote precisely in such cases). But it just happened that I was warned immediately that something was wrong, and was looking, amused, at your sports at that exact moment. We could debate whether Rraisa 1-line reply or Titanta's verbose multi-line reply was the culprit of any hard drive filling -- on whichever side it happened first... what makes you think it would be my hard drive filling up, not yours? :laugh:

 

What happens if a bot changes it's commands (not so far fetched, bot owners may wish to change codebase)? PMing the bot with the old command causes a spamfest.

No, as I said in my previous post, Rraisa would not reply to any tradebot she has sent an enquire to. Simply, that bot would be marked as non-responding until I update the configured commands for that bot (in case...).

 

And, as of now, once you are refused service once, any further message from you will be ignored till the next EL day, and there is a cap on the number of service requests that are allowed from any single player per day, so there should be little risk of any extended ping-pong. Of course, bugs can still lurk there somewhere, but it should be pretty solid...

 

Ciao,

-Usl

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<snip>

Nicky, if you were in the bot owners private forum, you would know that this has already been discussed months ago...

<snip>

 

Umm, not all bot owners are in the "private" forum.

 

I didn't subscribe, and I doubt Meep's new owner will either.

 

IMO, all discussion of this nature should be publicly viewable

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Umm, not all bot owners are in the "private" forum.

 

I didn't subscribe, and I doubt Meep's new owner will either.

 

IMO, all discussion of this nature should be publicly viewable

I agree that the discussions on the bot owner forum should be open. However, to not subscribe and thus not participate because the forum is current private only means that your voice will not be heard and some decisions (that may effect you) will be made without you. However, this is off-topic for this thread.

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