Raise the quality of plugins / loot rules and profiles

[Bulzap]

We got some really cool profiles for sarkorth for all classes and a few other profiles and the people who have been making thoose have done a great job so far So thanks a lot to them.

But lets face it, a profile / lootrule made by only volunteers is unlikely to be as complete , perfectionized, free and supported as if they were being paid by the demonbuddy company. Forexample giles loot rules have probably already taken a lot of time but before its going to be complete its probably going to take even more time than already invested in the project. The majority of people need a incentiv to keep on working on a project and devoting tons of hours into it. Currently some of the developers are asking for donations, but I think most of the users feel as they already paid for a product which should be complete. It also leads to a closed development where developers will keep the profiles for themselves or charge money for it as Farix did.

My suggestion is to the company behind demonbuddy to pledge a bounty every week for maybe 200 dollars or a combination of paymenth and additional keys to the winner.

The winner could with a weekly poll where users could vote which profile/plugin/loot rules that deserved the xxx dollars.

I am sure that the company behind demonbuddy can afford it and that it will make the higher quality of the product attract more customers to pay for the price. With the old prices of between 25 -50 dollars per users the improvements would only have to attract like 5 users if the prize was 200 dollars to be worth it.

ps. I am aware of that demonbuddy is not currently for sale.

Feel free to comment on my suggestion or make new suggestions on how we can encourage developers to make higher quality and profiles for other areas of the game.

 

[Zoinx]

$200 every week? How much money do you think the buddy team is making?

You realize they aren't selling new sessions, so there is no new money to be coming in to offer these 'incentives'. They do message developers and compensate them, you just don't see it, it's all dealt with privately between the developers and the profile/plugin makers.

 

[GilesSmith]

I think we should encourage DemonBuddy devs to continue providing updates, bug-fixes, optimisations, new core features that are too big/too complex for plugin developers to do themselves (eg random dungeon exploring), and provide us with more functions that plugin developers can "plug into" to alter behaviour. Some of the DemonBuddy work itself should focus on features that plugin developers have had to do to avoid bugs/poor optimisations - for example things that were needed to make Sarkoth runs work well (a good Sarkoth run should only need to be a simple .xml routine that DemonBuddy can handle itself, really... you know, options to disable combat, enter a cellar, enable combat, prioritise mob-names or skills based on class - all would be useful things to be able to do in an .xml routine alone).

But I like how the current system allows, and encourages, the community itself to be the ones that actually come up with areas to bot in and develop routines, rules, provide all of the different options and requests that users want, because there are POTENTIALLY gigantic amounts of possible areas you can bot in, routes you can take, loot rules you require, and everybody always wants something slightly customised to their own unique tastes - no developer can provide all of that, it's why the really successful games allow the players to mod the game!

As for the money thing - all it needs is a forum rule against users requesting money for anything/trading anything (and in fact I believe that rule already exists). That way developers won't think "Hmmm... I've spent a few days on this... I *COULD* give it away, but maybe people will donate some money for new updates? Let's try"... instead it'll be - release it, or don't bother making it. And there will always be plenty of people that want to develop things for free to fill in the shoes of anyone that only wants money. Look at modding communities around the internet, there's always huge numbers of people in any community that want to dive in and expand things, improve things, just for fun, or just for a bit of temporary internet glory!

I'd also encourage the community to try their hand at developing - a few weeks ago I'd never done anything more complicated than making excel spreadsheets. Two weeks ago I was tweaking .xml files to improve slightly buggy routines people had put here. A week ago I was creating complex rulesets in .xml form and starting to debug item problems in DemonBuddy. A few days ago I was installing Visual Studio 2010 and have made a couple of (small) plugins for DemonBuddy. I'm now pestering Apoc to make a couple more internals of DemonBuddy open to plugin developers so I can make a loot-plugin that bypasses loot rules altogether. If everyone had a bit of motivation (and willingness) to just dive into it and start trying to make their own routines, rules, and eventually even plugins, rather than waiting for "the experts" to do it for them, then we'd be up to our ears in routines for every different area possible, and Blizzard wouldn't have the easy life of a single cellar or map they can monitor to catch botters

 

[Kane49_2]

I'm now pestering Apoc to make a couple more internals of DemonBuddy open to plugin developers so I can make a loot-plugin that bypasses loot rules altogether.

Told you, we can make that happen im just not sure if its worth the effort, msg me in irc if you want more info

 

[Bulzap]

$200 every week? How much money do you think the buddy team is making?

Hawker said that you should expect over 1000 post if a banwave was happening and I doubt that he expect that every single person would post and that 100% of the customers ( some are inactive) would get banned. So I suppose that give us a idea of that it got a earning of atleast 50k for demonbuddy. 200 dollars ( it was just a number anyway - as I mentioned the paymenth could also just be in extra honorbuddy/demonbuddy keys) doesn't seem as a huge procentage as a "payment" for something that is necessary for the bot to be attractive. And I am certain that if this bot stands out as a excellent bot ( its already good, but got room for improvement) your going to sell tons of keys the 10th (if it open at that date) - I suppose you dont need even need to get 1 % of the playerbase who is currently using other products over to you before it have been a success.

They do message developers and compensate them, you just don't see it, it's all dealt with privately between the developers and the profile/plugin makers.

Nope I didn't : ) and I am actually really glad that you guys do compensate some of them. I understand that the accurate amount may need to be private but I think you could be more open on that there could be a possible small reward for making a really good profile/plugin/whatever

 

[Kickazz006]

The issue that I see here is that I have every quest in the game done...

the only thing that the users have to do is copy/paste, add some extra moveto's and waittimers and bam it's finished

I don't exactly see the issue? Maybe people being lazy and not learning how to copy paste the 'my location' and copy/paste a waittimer?

hrm...

 

[Cukie]

The issue that I see here is that I have every quest in the game done...

the only thing that the users have to do is copy/paste, add some extra moveto's and waittimers and bam it's finished

I don't exactly see the issue? Maybe people being lazy and not learning how to copy paste the 'my location' and copy/paste a waittimer?

hrm...

Where are these so called quest profiles? Because the ones here ~~~>http://www.thebuddyforum.com/demonb...profiles/55957-dev-copy-d3-questing-kick.html do not work very well. No matter what difficulty or quest point I try it at, it has NEVER completed a single quest for me. 90% of the time it ends up running into a wall and staying there until I manually stop DB.

 

[Kickazz006]

Where are these so called quest profiles? Because the ones here ~~~>http://www.thebuddyforum.com/demonb...profiles/55957-dev-copy-d3-questing-kick.html do not work very well. No matter what difficulty or quest point I try it at, it has NEVER completed a single quest for me. 90% of the time it ends up running into a wall and staying there until I manually stop DB.

they are dev copies bc the generated dungeons don't work atm... which the devs are fixing.

But the code itself works with moveto's and waittimers... as I haven't tested them.

It's clearly stated in every post in that thread that those are not supported and are dev copies only

These profiles are ​

not AFK at all

, mainly due to random dungeons -- I'm releasing them now so that you can use the code to make farming profiles easier. Please, give credit to Kickazz006 if you use these profiles as a reference or copy / paste into a new profile!

If you run these - do note that they are currently ​

***Not supported*** and I will not be taking qq's on them. This is a developer's copy!

 

[GilesSmith]

The issue that I see here is that I have every quest in the game done...
the only thing that the users have to do is copy/paste, add some extra moveto's and waittimers and bam it's finished
I don't exactly see the issue? Maybe people being lazy and not learning how to copy paste the 'my location' and copy/paste a waittimer?
hrm...

So users can already have a profile that can run every single act/quest in the game, if only they weren't so lazy and would edit a couple of moveto locations? Damn those lazy users!

they are dev copies bc the generated dungeons don't work atm... which the devs are fixing.
But the code itself works with moveto's and waittimers... as I haven't tested them.
It's clearly stated in every post in that thread that those are not supported and are dev copies only

Kick's current questing QQ list:
* Multiple quest dump
* Multiple task dump (in current step ofc)
* loadprofile tag
* exploredungeon ofc
* execute C# from profile
* the 'run' box like bw has that lets you query stuff - ie: ZetaDia.WorldInfo.IsGenerated
* Ignore profile in combat, unless it's a combat tag ... this way I won't have to add stupid long damn waittimers to compensate for low dps toons
* also, i'll need a useobject incombat true ignoremobs true (or something like this) tag - for this 1 quest inparticular: <link removed to public> - Act 3 @ catapult #3
* a way to dump another yellow ! if we already have a quest in our log / available (various acts) (I guess this is the same as multi quest dump)
* act 3 has a couple of these where you have 2 quests but you don't know what the extra quest is

So users can't have a profile that can run every single act/quest in the game, because DB doesn't yet support the random dungeons (or some of those other issues you list)? ... Damn those lazy users!

Paint me confused

 

[smurg]

The issue is the lack of power that is derived from profiles. You can't do anything in a profile.

That's why "profiles" are actually moving to plugins with basically a null profile. Have access to more powerful functions.

In a profile I was writing, the compiler/interpreter, etc was completing ignoring condition statements and wait functions.

 

[Cukie]

they are dev copies bc the generated dungeons don't work atm... which the devs are fixing.

But the code itself works with moveto's and waittimers... as I haven't tested them.

It's clearly stated in every post in that thread that those are not supported and are dev copies only

[/B][/B][/B]

Yes, I understand the point that they are Dev only basically. I was just trying to understand your logic by calling users lazy because they are "not learning how to copy paste the 'my location' and copy/paste a waittimer?". My point was you said that the only thing user have to do is copy/paste something that is not supported yet from my understanding. Maybe I am missing something, but it seems like you are contradicting yourself, as Giles pointed out in post #9.

Edit:
I have also been trying to get an update on the status of random dungeon implementation here ~~~~>http://www.thebuddyforum.com/demonbuddy-forum/58701-status-random-dungeons-fix.html

 

[zippysticks]

What they need to do is release a complete DB API list so we know what all the commands are =)

 

[Kane49_2]

What they need to do is release a complete DB API list so we know what all the commands are =)

Its a .Net app, its all freely available

 

[heartspains88]

I completely second OP, even some sort of fun forum competition just to spice things up a bit would be cool.