"Open Letter against Botting"I want to AFK

[DavidKim]

http://d3cab.org/
http://www.diablofans.com/forums/di...discussion/136973-open-letter-against-botting

Dear Diablo III Development Team,

This is a message on behalf of the portion of the community that engages in the competitive aspects (such as Leaderboards and Conquests) of this game you created - the players who love the game to the point where they dedicate large portions of their free time to playing it; who want to have at least something to show for this dedication; who want to have their names up there on the Leaderboards; and who want to see rewards for the countless hours of gameplay they spend on Diablo III.

You’re making this incredibly difficult for us.

We all know that beating the highest possible Greater Rift tiers requires a large number of attempts in addition to the time investment that is needed to get the appropriate gear. This involves a lot of grinding, be it for Keystones, crafting materials, Infernal Machines, or Ancient Legendaries. Such is the nature of the game and that is not the issue. The actual problem lies in the vast amount of people who try to get around doing this dirty work - the ones that use bots; the ones that can log into the game to hundreds of Greater Rift Keystones, Legendary crafting materials, or Infernal Machines every day, without having lifted a finger for any of those. It should be obvious that this provides these players with a huge advantage over those of us that choose not to bot, but put at least the same amount of effort into the game and advancement of our characters. This feeling is extremely disheartening. We all know that it is incredibly hard to beat the botters and even impossible if they were to step up their gameplay to a higher level of efficiency. They can get a huge lead on you every single night. This knowledge reduces the incentive and desire to participate in the Leaderboard competition until eventually the Diablo III competition becomes a farce altogether. Thus, those of us that love the game and have been dedicated players since the start become increasingly frustrated with it until we simply give up on the entire competition, or create our own, virtual “bot-free” competition by ignoring all known botters.

To prevent that, your very own End User License Agreement, which we all agreed to, states that players may not use bots such as these, even giving “the automated control of a character in a Game” as an example for such a prohibited program (Section 1.C.ii.2. of Battle.net® End User License Agreement, http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/legal/eula.html). Enforcing this agreement is your duty and yours alone. If you don’t, it will only go to show that you don’t care. It has been months since the last major action taken against botters and, consequently, Season 3 was dominated by them. Our friends lists contain more and more people who are online for more than 20 hours a day, despite them having to go to work or school. Even if detecting the actual bots running on people's machines or identifying them by their in-game behavior was impossible, their log-in times should be more than enough to warrant additional investigation. Nobody can play for 23 hours every single day.

Even if that were infeasible, at least let us report botters so that you may investigate their behavior. It has come to a point where it is quite obvious that certain high profile streamers are botting off-stream and some are even admitting so themselves in public chat rooms. These players are viewed as examples by the community, so what kind of message does that send? To us, it sends the message that not only is it apparently legal to bot, but that the game even requires it to be competitive. That is undoubtedly not how you want Diablo III to be seen, especially with how far we’ve come since the issues of the original release.

Of course, we would prefer any action against botters to happen immediately upon them being discovered. However, we are aware that this is likely infeasible. Thus, we would propose any action against botters to take place approximately two weeks before the end of a Season, coinciding with the “Season Ending” announcement, as to not give botters the time to catch up to the legitimate and fair players again. The latter would then still be able to fight for the clean Leaderboards, as they would if botters didn’t exist.

Still, with no action having been taken for so long, sending out a message to the entire community sooner rather than later would be a good idea.

Please, if you have the same love for the game that we do, do something about the botters. It cannot continue like this. We cannot continue like this.

Signatories (in alphabetical order):
Alkaizer, Angzt, Anuiran, Bagstone, DatModz, DameVenusia, Deadset, Destitute, Empyrian, Flux, Ghostwheel, HolyKnight3000, HorstSchlemmer, Jaetch, Leviathan, Lt. Lunatic, MannerCookie, MeatHeadMikhail, Menagese, N3rdwards, Nachten, Natsuma_z, Neinball, Quin69, Thunderclaww, Wudijo, Zero(pS)

 

[Nyynuh]

As if this will help them anyhow.

 

[Lockets]

I wouldn't actually have a problem with banning people who bot and have top 100 leaderboard positions. That might be unpopular around here but I don't want to spoil anyone elses enjoyment.

They haven't shown what the issue is with the 99% of botters who just like D3-idlegame and possibly wouldn't play otherwise. I have 0 interest in pushing leaderboard positions so how do I in anyway hurt the community?

I also think they underestimate how much of the community is actively botting, lol. I'm not sure banning all of us would be good for the game long term at this point.

 

[aizet]

Paste them the latest Trinity improvements, so they can get familiar with the resent changes, as well as butthurt application.

 

[Mr Gumby]

This is a botting forum, I don't imagine you will get much sympathy from many people here.

 

[tnguye56]

"dislike" Us botters have jobs and contribute to real life which is what matters!

 

[sjenkins]

..."The actual problem lies in the vast amount of people who try to get around doing this dirty work - the ones that use bots; the ones that can log into the game to hundreds of Greater Rift Keystones, Legendary crafting materials, or Infernal Machines every day, without having lifted a finger for any of those."... We had to Hit "Login button" and press Start. That's 2 finger lifts right there, what a math major...

 

[Tr87]

I see their point and i respect it. But holy shit the ladder would be a dull place if the only ones on it were the full time streamers and the high school dropouts with enough free time available to actually stay competetive.

 

[alainbuddy]

Botting was like a breath of fresh air to me, without it, I would have uninstalled this game years ago. When you spend 5 billion gold rerolling an item, you get that sinking feeling that this game is just stupid... but when you bot, you're like, meh whatever, I have 100 billion gold so no worries.

Botting made this game better for me and allowed me to feel accomplished without sucking the life out of me. I can watch my kids, clean the house, do errands and even leave for the weekend without feeling like I am missing out on stuff in the game. Gaming for me has always been an addiction and with this, it's not all bad. My wife surely appreciates it.

The day will come, I always tell myself, that I'll get banned. They did catch my friend who didn't bot because he tried the hellfire exploit and immediately got rid of it, yet they still flagged him. Life's a bitch.

 

[Defqon]

I like how MannerCookie's signature is there yet he was perma banned for expoiting. How dumb can you be?

 

[Redemption]

botting does help you get stronger.. but doesnt make you a better player so to speak.. it still takes countless hours to evolve to game play in order to beat the highest grifts.. the highest ive done with the bot is 65.. ive read a report of 67.. if its true or not i cant confirm.. however i can tell you this.. 70+ is the minimum for top of the leaderboards.. and the bot wont get you there.. so if you run it.. you earned it.. maybe not the gear.. but the rift itself yes.. the leaders.. especially streamers have BiS gear all ancient with nearly perfect rolls.. it almost seems like blizzard gives them better drop chance to advertise their game.. why should we feel sorry for capitalizing on an opportunity to play on a level playing field with streamers? i sure dont! is it our fault non botters dont jump on the opportunity to hop on the band wagon and benefit along with us? NO! and yes.. it is the working class that makes games like this possible.. without us the high school dropouts.. the 30+ year olds living with mom and dad.. wouldnt have a game to play! we cant stay home and play the game 18+ hours a day.. and when we get home we are tired.. we are basically the slaves for the nation.. to punish us is to turn your back on your country because simply without us.. this country doesnt exist.. when money doesnt mean shit how are the rich and skill-less going to survive? they arent used to hard work and are lost without us.. business savvy wont save them in the woods when they are starving and cold.. just sayin lol

 

[anonym23]

botting does help you get stronger.. but doesnt make you a better player so to speak.. it still takes countless hours to evolve to game play in order to beat the highest grifts.. the highest ive done with the bot is 65.. ive read a report of 67.. if its true or not i cant confirm.. however i can tell you this.. 70+ is the minimum for top of the leaderboards.. and the bot wont get you there.. so if you run it.. you earned it.. maybe not the gear.. but the rift itself yes.. the leaders.. especially streamers have BiS gear all ancient with nearly perfect rolls.. it almost seems like blizzard gives them better drop chance to advertise their game.. why should we feel sorry for capitalizing on an opportunity to play on a level playing field with streamers? i sure dont! is it our fault non botters dont jump on the opportunity to hop on the band wagon and benefit along with us? NO! and yes.. it is the working class that makes games like this possible.. without us the high school dropouts.. the 30+ year olds living with mom and dad.. wouldnt have a game to play! we cant stay home and play the game 18+ hours a day.. and when we get home we are tired.. we are basically the slaves for the nation.. to punish us is to turn your back on your country because simply without us.. this country doesnt exist.. when money doesnt mean shit how are the rich and skill-less going to survive? they arent used to hard work and are lost without us.. business savvy wont save them in the woods when they are starving and cold.. just sayin lol

Structure your wall of text please.

 

[TarasBulba]

DB is providing a great service to automate the unnecessary and boring parts of the game, blizz should thank DB for making their mostly boring game more fun for players.

 

[MrPeeg]

I simply cannot play D3 without DB anymore, and would have totally quit long ago if it wasn't for DB.

 

[Thebotchannel]

Quin botted in season 2. His entire crusade is because of an irrational hatred towards Gabynator. Yes, the guy exploited and used iot to get top paragon, but he's using this sensationalism to generate views for his twitch channel and youtube channel. That's all.

 

[markend]

I honestly hope that the big streamers and all of the people who came up with this get banned for botting too, most of them do it as well, just hope the karma gets to them. Because of this letter Blizz is going to have to take action against botting. I hope they realize how bad it would be for their streams to look like such a hypocrite. There is absolutely no way for someone with a full time job and/or other responsibilities can keep up with 18+ hours of grinding per day. It's just not feasible.

 

[demonD]

Don't give those hypocrite streamers more attention than them deserved, they are the very persons who use all kinds of *****/hack/exploit on daily basis. To fish a right 70+ Grift they need to burn hundreds of stones per day, what do you think where they come from? To avoid "dead end" maps and to scouting for pylons they need to use THub and coordinate via vent/TS. You think they really care about fair game environment? Not a single bit! it all comes down to $$$, more viewers = more $$$, this is just one of their pathetic attempts to grab more viewers. We always will be business as normal, move along guys.

 

[Eddy889]

DB is providing a great service to automate the unnecessary and boring parts of the game, blizz should thank DB for making their mostly boring game more fun for players.

Totally agree!

One thing that has not yet been mentioned:
If it wasnt for all the botters, how much do those retards like Quin think their channels would drop in subscribors and weekly views ? Yeah they would maybe lead the charts, but they would stop making the excessive money they do. I watched Quin when i tried to optimize my monk, why would I care if I was banned ? I bet a lot of people could sign that too.... But oh well they probably dont thing about this because their pride clouds their economic judgement.

Blizzard most probably wont ban us, why ? simple as stated previously their servers would loose plenty of users rapidly, very rapidly. Same reason why ban-waves are getting rarer in WoW. Blizzard is a publically traded company. Shareholders wont check why subscription or user base dropped, they simply know it did and that is usually enough to scare a few % off. With a huge company like this the losses in cashflow this will cause will run in the several tens to hundred millions. So yeah ..... im not worried. Blizzard is not stupid....

Aside from all this as mentioned botting wont allow us to go beyond a certain rift level, any most of us have jobs to do with which it is impossible to actually play this game to a degree which is enjoyable. So if someone bots for his/her gear and then clears a rift on 70+ he did it with skill. The gear yeah its grinded, the same brainless grind everyone else does, but for us a programme takes care of it.

I find it funny that they shout out like this as previously stated we all know they exploit wherever they can. Isnt fishing for a perfect rift just as much damaging the game physics or the intended gameplay? (else wed be able to pick which rift we want from the start, right?)

Little troll idea: lets write a letter, signed by a bunch of ppl demanding leaderboards should be set to the average of 10 rifts which have been completed in a row, let it be 5. Those guys would instantly quit.

Same shit, different colour.....

Happy Botting my friends !

 

[austinpower]

Most people who signed on the letter were d3 twitch streamers. They acted like smart, fun and friendly, but they're retarded. They didn't realize that most of their viewers are botters. Botting people always give/donate money and subscribe on those streamers' channels. If bots get banned, those streamers will probably lose a lot of viewers. So why against the bots?

 

[Defqon]

Blizzard will definetely continue to ban however from my experience they do 1 big ban wave a year in d3. Blizzard's games are all heavily botted / exploited with hacks. Lots of people bot in d3, wow, hearthstone, heck people even win/loss bot in starcraft for portraits not to mention the map hacks.

We had a large ban wave earlier on in the year already for d3 though with this letter it could put pressure on blizz to do another. A large percentage of us botters are already flagged as most people have their bots running as often as they can.