What lies in the future of Exilebuddy ?

[cyberbot]

I love Exilebuddy for its efficiency, ease of use, and it does not take control of mouse/keyboard like a pixel bot., but I think there are a few things that we all would agree this bot needs to have in order to make it to the next level.

In my opinion, the following list of items is probably of most importance and it will definitely affect the destiny and popularity of Exilebuddy:

1) Mapping! Mapping! I'm pretty sure this is the number 1 desired feature because it directly affects what item drops are available and experience gain. The number one competitor for Exilebuddy is already able to do this and I honestly think this is hurting the market for Exilebuddy bot. I really believe once mapping is implemented, a lot more people will pay for the bot, the forum will become busy again, and this is also the only way to attract a larger pool of plugin developers.

2) The sudden-stop-and-freeze problems need to go away (I'm not talking about the stuttering problems which can be fixed). This definitely affects how afk-able the bot is. I was explained that this issue is due to how the client works, but I hate to make the comparison again; this problem is almost nonexistent for the number one competitor to Exilebuddy, so I know these problems can be avoided.

3) Efficient Merveil/Vaal/Piety/Dominus farming. Bot should go straight to the boss, if not in danger.

4) The bot needs to detect summoning shrines and mobs with shield. Once they appear, the current bot will most likely need human intervention.

5) The current item filters for prefixes and suffixes need more work. I think they are so hard to use that most people are not utilizing them at all, so many of us cannot have the bot sell items efficiently and human intervention is required after a few hours to sell items.

6) (Maybe less interesting to people). Questing, auto leveling (choosing skills), or maybe even auto-equipping better items.

7) (Not too important, but this should be easy to add/fix). Better statistics collected by the bot. Basically, most of the stats collected by the bot are currently incorrect. Moreover, I think it is desirable for the bot to keep a list of looted items, so we wouldn't have to stop the bot and see what was looted. This point may not be important, but I think it is useful and is easy to implement.


I understand that many of these things are on pushedx's mind when he is developing the new beta. I also understand it is hard for pushedx to do all this on his own in a timely manner, but if the first few points in this list are implemented, the user base may grow beyond its critical mass and user-developed plugins may start popping out. Even though some of the features are already available from Exilebuddy's strongest competitor, I truly think Exilebuddy can do them better than any pixel bots can. I enjoy using Exilebuddy and I only want it to become better.

I would like to hear your comments too.

 

[darkbluefirefly]

Bots works well for farming for me.. i'm pretty happy. Mind you I run more then one, so I'm for pure profit.

 

[kevel]

I think the stutter and farming bosses, merveil piety dom vaal weaver etc without having to clear an entire map are the most important things. maps are meh to me. I would love the bot to run to piety only killing whats on the way and when she dies reset the instance and do it again etc same for merv.

 

[maths]

i totally agree with #1 #2 #3 and i dont mind about other stuff but #1 #2 #3 are really important in my opinion, but how the other bot pick up or should i say not pick up item make it almost unusable. it pick up, identify and sell stuff so slowly, leave so many stuff on the floor and waste so many map portal uselessly, that it make it not Worth it to use at all.

 

[IeU]

i agree with 1, 2 and 3.

For 4, they are easy to use and very versatile . . .

 

[pushedx]

The future of Exilebuddy is going to be user driven development for bot bases/plugins/routines, just as the other Buddy products mostly are. For that to happen though, a lot needed to change with how the bot is setup, so that is taking place in Beta right now. We will still provide basics for users to use, but we're sure with the right setup, our users can come up with bigger and better things than us.

It is indeed time consuming and a lot of work, but it's necessary. The code in Release has a very low ceiling for trying to improve the bot and add new features and logic. It made sense at the time it was written, and it served its purpose, and now it's outdated and being redone. It's almost cliche, but if we knew what we know now a year ago, then we would have avoided a lot of various issues, but that's not really anyone's fault; that's just life.

Release hasn't gotten many new features or existing feature improvements for a while, because it's now a waste of time. If the code being changed can't be used in the new Beta, it's not worth doing, because Release will be phased out as soon as possible once Beta is working like Release did, at minimal. There are a lot of issues with Release, but they aren't issues from us tinkering with the code, it's just natural software rot, as the environment in which Path of Exile exists is very volatile.

This presents another interesting problem with development, because if you have working code, and it suddenly stops working because of changes in the environment you are operating in, and you have a lot of other code built on top of that, you are forced into really expensive (think time consuming) code updates. That's pretty much been the status quo for working with this game since it was started honestly, and I don't expect it to change.

As of lately, it seems PoE development is slowing down some to a much more manageable pace, so we can actually focus on fixing the core issues rather than trying to band-aid issues that pop up from patches or trying to handle new game mechanics and features. Stability and maturity in a game is a very key part for bot development, and there's not really been much of either, as the game changes so much. I think before the 1.1.4 patch, we had a record 3 weeks of no patches that we're able to get beta progressed to the point it is now, which was very important moving forward.

Here's an analogy to look at Exilebuddy though, because people only look at it from one perspective, and they are missing out on the big picture of the project. Think about Exilebuddy being an all you can eat buffet, and any other bot that didn't provide a comparable API to the game was a specialty restaurant for some cuisine. If the buffet doesn't have a chef for the cuisine you want to compare to a specialty restaurant, chances are, it's not going to be nearly as good as the other. Now, if the buffet did have a chef in that cuisine, then you not only have something comparable, but you also have everything else the buffet offers as well.

If I was asked, in Release, what is stopping people from making a better bot than we provide, I'd say:
1. The gui. It gets in the way of the user and is overall not that flexible or even usable for development.
2. The core bot design. It's a mess and doing things is really hard and rigid.
3. Lack of API support for the big parts of a complete bot. (This is not true as much anymore, since the new API has been mostly worked into Release, but let's say before it was)
4. Not enough guides, docs, examples.

These were the main things that were the focus when rewriting the bot for the new Beta. Now, if you ask me, what's stopping people from making a better bot than we provide in Beta, I'd say: "nothing". If there is, once people start developing with it, we'll get it taken care of!

What Beta doesn't have yet, is the old bot completely ported yet, because there's no point in migrating everyone to the new Beta if it's using the same old code that has problems it currently does in Release. That's still being worked on, but looking past that, right now, Beta is ready for people to start doing things with. It's not fully finished yet, but it's in a state where new cool things can certainly be done. It's not set in stone yet, and a few things need updating, but it's certainly going to be a lot better than Release was. We never had a user guide for the old bot, so one of the first thing I made sure Beta has, is a user guide. A lot of the old code didn't have docs, but the new code does (you need to use intellisense). In addition, we'll have some threads to help get users pointed in the right direction, as you can see by my place holder topics in the guides section. I personally thing the new gui setup is a lot better already than what we had before, although I would like a theme change down the line to make it look more slick, but that's just aesthetics.

Anyways, point is, all the things that have been getting in the way of developers in the current Release are/being fixed in Beta. The bot we provide with Beta won't be a knock your socks off bot at the start, because you have to understand all the time has been spent rewriting the foundation of the project so better bots can be made in the first place. However, it will get back to getting regular feature updates and improvements, and have a design users can actually do stuff with.

What this translates to is, we now have everything we should need to properly support the features people have been wanting for a while.

We do have API support for maps, we just need a new bot base to handle the logic. The bot we provide in Beta is being worked on and changed to support it more easily than was possible right now in Release. As with other things, we'll provide the basics of being able to do maps, then users will make better things to do it instead.

The random stuttering issue boils down to movement, and changes are already in place right now to fix it. You can download the Beta, and start the bot in something like Ledge, and you should notice a huge difference. The bot is, however, also running at an extremely high ticks per second as well (it's unbounded), so it can be made even more smooth playing with the update rate. I'm not going to get into why our bot has different issues than any other bots, but there are technical reasons behind it with how the bot is setup to interact with the client. Rest assured, we'll do what is necessary to make things as smooth as possible.

When it comes to farming, that boils down to changing exploration from exploring the entire map, to simply trying to find its way to the next area and up to the boss room. The previous Beta commit contains exploration changes so this is now a possibility. There are still other issues with boss farming to be resolved, but those fall in with other bot changes to allow users to swap out logic, like exploration, which is also being worked on.

The same is true of quests. We have quest API support, and changes are being made to the bot itself to support doing them properly compared to how we have them now in Release, which is just a bunch of hard coded logic checks. Quest logic is going to be quite large though, so as mentioned before, don't expect it all to be supported at once, since it's too much to handle in any short amount of time; there's a lot of quest s states to code around. We will have proper support for them though in the bot.

As part of the inventory API update to make things more simple, users will be able to add in their own logic to swap gear if they want, but it's not going to be a default feature of the bot. The main case for better weapon equipping is new accounts trying to play through the entire game, and a bot base that focuses on doing that does not really belong in the same bot base as the generic grind bot we provide that simply goes around killing things and looting in this game. Remember that pretty much all other games have much simpler itemization, skill selections, and so on, so if PoE worked the same way, the bot would already have it. However, PoE is a very unique game in a sense, so a lot of the things you'd expect the bot to do, don't actually make sense in this game for the average case.

The other two points about shrines and mob shields and statistics are just logic improvements which are doable once the other more important stuff is taken care of. The new gui design will make it a lot easier to setup nice looking stat tracking in a way that doesn't force people to have things going on that they don't want, unlike how the stats is now in Release.

Now for the item affix stuff, that's going to end up being something users will make better if they want to. The whole design of the Buddy bots is such that users can change things and make better things using the provided API. As long as we have functional support for things, there is certainly more important things to make better first, before a system like that. We are still missing full item wrapper information for the intrinsic info, but that will be added later, as it's not a high priority right now.

Hopefully that addresses your thoughts about the future of EB. I know it always seems like it's a waiting game and "is X ever going to be fixed or supported", but the answer really is "yes". If you look at the change logs, the various threads being made about different updates, I think you should be able to confirm progress. Not everything being done you guys can see in a usable form yet, but you will once everything is worked out, which hopefully will be rather soon.

 

[maths]

ive read all your long past pushedx but cant understand why the bot cant run map and sacrifice piece, right now its possible to put a map manually and get into the map and then start the bot to run the map and its working #1 without any issues, all would be needed to do is to make the bot leave and return to the map area and put a map or sacrifice piece in the map device, im not a programmer and dont know anything about this, but it doesnt seems so hard to be done. map are implemented into the game for over a years now and its the most wanted feature needed right now for botting, i dont understand why you didnt make it work as soon as possible, because most of all other issue the bot have are somewhat easy to manage, the only think its missing is running map, the core of the bot work very fine if you compare it to others.

 

[IeU]

Did you not read it?

Indeed, it is possible, we just need some1 in the community to write a bot/plugin for it. The base/API is there, basic botting will be supplied by the team, everything else must be done by the community.

The future of Exilebuddy is going to be user driven development for bot bases/plugins/routines,

These were the main things that were the focus when rewriting the bot for the new Beta. Now, if you ask me, what's stopping people from making a better bot than we provide in Beta, I'd say: "nothing". If there is, once people start developing with it, we'll get it taken care of!

So, extras like maybe boss/map running or more complex notting, must be coded by the community.

 

[cyberbot]

Did you not read it?

Indeed, it is possible, we just need some1 in the community to write a bot/plugin for it. The base/API is there, basic botting will be supplied by the team, everything else must be done by the community.

So, extras like maybe boss/map running or more complex notting, must be coded by the community.

This is actually what I am concerned about. The POE gaming community is small to begin with and the Exilebuddy forum is quite quiet. I am worried that we just will not have enough critical mass to get the user-driven development rolling.

 

[IeU]

I do not agree with you, the community is there. If you check another hacking sites and the "other" bot, there is a ton being done by the community. From item filters, map hack, auto pot, stash sorter, auk scripts and etc.

I stand by to what pushed has said, there hasn't been a lot done, bcse the bot got hit by a detection, then at least 2 times rewritten, which put everyone developing anything back to step 0 due tons of api changes.

 

[cyberbot]

That is not true, the community is there. If you check another hacking sites and the "other" bot, there is a ton being done by the community. From item filters, map hack, auto pot, stash sorter, auk scripts and etc.

I stand by to what pushed has said, there hasn't been a lot done, bcse the bot got hit by a detection, then at least 2 times rewritten, which put everyone developing anything back to step 0 due tons of api changes.

But if you look at the other (larger) botting community for POE, I would argue very little has been done for the other bot specifically by the community. The most complicated thing is an interface to use the other bot more easily and it also includes a scheduler. Other than that, I can't think of any plugin/add-on that was developed specifically for the other bot. You may argue that they don't have a good API and this could make a whole of difference because Exilebuddy has the necessary tools for the developers. However, I also stand by my argument; the popularity of this game is nowhere like D3. If a small fraction of the total population is botters, then an even smaller fraction of the total population is developers; we might end up with only a few people who might want to spend their time to develop anything occasionally in their spare time.

 

[cyberbot]

If you check another hacking sites and the "other" bot, there is a ton being done by the community. From item filters, map hack, auto pot, stash sorter, auk scripts and etc.

"map hack, auto pot, stash sorter, auk scripts" are not specific to the other bot. We can use those tools now without any botting program. Though, I really like the other bot's item filters, but the reason is that their item filters can filter stats very easily. We can get there too, but pushedx will have to improve the filters for stats, and then we normal-users will be able to utilize the filters for stats more easily.

 

[maths]

the other bot item filter is what i dislike the most and why i keep using this 1 despite it cant run map, and by the state of everything ive read so far i doubt map will be added anytime soon to this bot.

 

[pushedx]

The bot we provide will always be worked on and improved, so you don't have to worry about that really in regards to user dev. I didn't mean the community is taking over development of the EB project, but rather supplement what we have been doing. We will have map and quest features, and the other things I mentioned in my previous post; it's just a matter of when. Adding them right now to Release would be a waste of time, and not be the least bit helpful short or long term. So it'll be added to beta, after the other things are updated to be a lot more usable first. Typically, when it's possible for us to dedicate the time to working on new features and improvements, that's what we most certainly do. We ideally don't want to have to keep rewriting core logic, so this time around, extra attention is being paid to try and avoid it in the future if possible. It's just unfortunate we've had to spend as much time with maintenance and band-aiding things before having to rewrite things, but that's just how things have worked out so far in this game.

Map support is still high priority, and is at the top of the list of the next things to add logic for, but there have been and currently are still other things that have an even higher priority. While some people might disagree with our priority and focus of things, we have to do what we feel is best for the project short term and long term, and we are obviously in a position to know more than users as to what is going on and why things are the way they currently are. I look forward to the day where we don't have to keep rewriting core bot things in this game, and more fun features and stuff can be done instead.

How much our bot is improved and new features being supported will always be dependent on client patches, the way game mechanics change, and other behind the scenes stuff, as it has been so far. Time is limited, and it has to be divided between a lot of different things, as once again, we're not just focusing on a bot for PoE; we're focusing on a botting platform for PoE. The difference is huge, and is the sole reason why certain bot features have not made their way into the bot itself yet. If we weren't providing an API, and having to maintain a lot of other stuff as well as the bot, development would be a lot different. However, the Buddy business model is the way it is, so this is what has to be done. There are pros and cons to it, but it is what it is.

Once we get the core stuff out of the way, we can get back to focusing on new and improved features and better support for things. That is all assuming the game doesn't drastically change again in a way that would force more large changes, but we can only hope.

Look at user dev as a more specialization of things. For example, it's pretty much impossible for us to write custom tailored CRs for every build that really make the most out of things across the various situations that arise in this game. Users who have experience with specific builds, would undoubtedly be able to create and share CRs that are better than the generic one we'll provide. In a game as diverse as this with all the various combinations of things, we'd never have enough dev resources to try and handle everything, given the smaller user base. We'll try to cover the main bot stuff, but there's a lot of things we'll just never have time for. So, if users want certain features faster than we can provide, they'll be able to do it themselves, but otherwise, people will just have to wait until/if it's done.

It's important we have everything setup in a way for user development to not only be possible in the first place, but also have it not discourage people from messing around with things. We won't know whether or not user dev will ever take off, but that doesn't affect what we have to do regardless. All we can do, is try to make sure everything is setup in way for people to take advantage of what's there, and we'll just see how things go from there. This puts us in the best position possible with the project, so that's what we're working towards (and we're getting there!).

 

[Thecamel]

Community ?

Yep I tried to help out this so called community and share some of the things if learnt over the many years of botting this game (and making money doing it). I was greeted with absolute disgust, To the point I took down my guide and my drive to write some profiles/plugins for this bot died with it (after all the bot works great for what I need it to do, (Farm,die, rinse and repeat).

I aint no Kick or rixx either I know that, but I can assure you with a community like that, Your never going to ever get a rixx or Kick community developer Ever, TBH if APOC wasn't getting paid I doubt he would be hang around replying to this thread.

If you want community development, id suggest you start showing each other some respect... And to honest the people im referring to probably wont even read this post, They are just too busy trolling the buddy forums looking for someone to insult to make them self feel better.

 

[Urgent2009]

Community ?

Yep I tried to help out this so called community and share some of the things if learnt over the many years of botting this game (and making money doing it). I was greeted with absolute disgust, To the point I took down my guide and my drive to write some profiles/plugins for this bot died with it (after all the bot works great for what I need it to do, (Farm,die, rinse and repeat).

I aint no Kick or rixx either I know that, but I can assure you with a community like that, Your never going to ever get a rixx or Kick community developer Ever, TBH if APOC wasn't getting paid I doubt he would be hang around replying to this thread.

If you want community development, id suggest you start showing each other some respect... And to honest the people im referring to probably wont even read this post, They are just too busy trolling the buddy forums looking for someone to insult to make them self feel better.

There are always the ones that don't appreciate the work you do in ANY community. It is stupid to say this community is all like that.. I don't know what happened to you, what kind of feedback you got from your posts but I haven't seen them. I haven't seen them and you probably would get a huge THANK YOU from me. You can say the numbers are low on this community but don't just say it sucks. You just keep doing what you are good at, knowing you help people, people that don't always comment on the stuff they use/like, people who missed it at the time and will discover it in the future, people who will join in the future etc. Don't throw it all away because of, what, 10 members who trash talked?

If you have the skill please do contribute because even tho there are asses out there are also people who like and use your work, trust me. Just focus on the right crowd...

 

[cyberbot]

Community ?

Yep I tried to help out this so called community and share some of the things if learnt over the many years of botting this game (and making money doing it). I was greeted with absolute disgust, To the point I took down my guide and my drive to write some profiles/plugins for this bot died with it (after all the bot works great for what I need it to do, (Farm,die, rinse and repeat).

I aint no Kick or rixx either I know that, but I can assure you with a community like that, Your never going to ever get a rixx or Kick community developer Ever, TBH if APOC wasn't getting paid I doubt he would be hang around replying to this thread.

If you want community development, id suggest you start showing each other some respect... And to honest the people im referring to probably wont even read this post, They are just too busy trolling the buddy forums looking for someone to insult to make them self feel better.

I searched your posts and saw what was going on. I think there are always folks in a group of people who don't always appreciate what other people have done for them; it is true for the D3 community, and it is also true in the real world. As Urgent2009 said, just focus on the people who would appreciate your work. I am in no position to tell you to contribute more to the forum, but I'd like to see you come back and just hang around. Maybe one day you will change your mind.

 

[darkbluefirefly]

Community ?

Yep I tried to help out this so called community and share some of the things if learnt over the many years of botting this game (and making money doing it). I was greeted with absolute disgust, To the point I took down my guide and my drive to write some profiles/plugins for this bot died with it (after all the bot works great for what I need it to do, (Farm,die, rinse and repeat).

I aint no Kick or rixx either I know that, but I can assure you with a community like that, Your never going to ever get a rixx or Kick community developer Ever, TBH if APOC wasn't getting paid I doubt he would be hang around replying to this thread.

If you want community development, id suggest you start showing each other some respect... And to honest the people im referring to probably wont even read this post, They are just too busy trolling the buddy forums looking for someone to insult to make them self feel better.

Dude, what are you going on about?
Most heavy botters don't share info beause;
1- money
2- money
3- money
I'm pretty sure if you were making money, making meaning more then 4 digits, you wouldn't want to share anything.. sharing is caring, GGG cares.

The bot is at a stage where you can freely develop, stop getting spoon feed. There are literally millions of guides to do the simplest programming examples, and the bot currently has the most easy way to program addons/etc. Its fucking ont he fly editing.. I don't think there are any bots that currently do that. And when you say a dead community.. you mean, a dead one because you are not making money? That's the wrong way to approach things. I know for sure there are written addons to make life easier, bot better, etc. It's just not being shared, why? Money. It makes the world go round.

 

[Ratz241]

Dude, what are you going on about?
Most heavy botters don't share info beause;
1- money
2- money
3- money
I'm pretty sure if you were making money, making meaning more then 4 digits, you wouldn't want to share anything.. sharing is caring, GGG cares.

The bot is at a stage where you can freely develop, stop getting spoon feed. There are literally millions of guides to do the simplest programming examples, and the bot currently has the most easy way to program addons/etc. Its fucking ont he fly editing.. I don't think there are any bots that currently do that. And when you say a dead community.. you mean, a dead one because you are not making money? That's the wrong way to approach things. I know for sure there are written addons to make life easier, bot better, etc. It's just not being shared, why? Money. It makes the world go round.

This.

Very rare I see someone posting the cold truth and making sense at the same time on this forum, this guy could not be more right.

I absolutely adore buddy bots because with their open API and how things run, it's actually possible to make your own 'bot'. My ideology with buddy bots is that you have a platform to create how you want your own shit to run and it really is a beautiful platform, if you can programme well, you can more or less create your own 'bot', using the buddybot API.

I remember when I used to be like a lot of people on this forum, begging for plugins or becoming frustrated that certain things were not running well, then I learnt to code and the amount of doors that began to open were to put it blunty... fucking insane. Once you can programme, most of your problems just fly out the window, automation becomes even more beautiful than before and you have more or less full control of it. I have only been botting path of exile for a week now, even though I have been goldfarming in a toss load of games for just over 7 years, including using the original Gatherbuddy on the original forums in 2010; let me tell you, it is almost blatant that most coders are using their own private plugins and will not release them on this forum because of the bank they are making.

Honestly, if you have problems or requests, take some time out and learn to programme, it is extremely frustrating at first but you may even begin to love it like I did, It's the reason I am doing a computer science degree now, because I saw the beauty of programming through a buddybot API.

"If you want a job done right do it yourself"

 

[Bakatonno]

This.

Very rare I see someone posting the cold truth and making sense at the same time on this forum, this guy could not be more right.

I absolutely adore buddy bots because with their open API and how things run, it's actually possible to make your own 'bot'. My ideology with buddy bots is that you have a platform to create how you want your own shit to run and it really is a beautiful platform, if you can programme well, you can more or less create your own 'bot', using the buddybot API.

I remember when I used to be like a lot of people on this forum, begging for plugins or becoming frustrated that certain things were not running well, then I learnt to code and the amount of doors that began to open were to put it blunty... fucking insane. Once you can programme, most of your problems just fly out the window, automation becomes even more beautiful than before and you have more or less full control of it. I have only been botting path of exile for a week now, even though I have been goldfarming in a toss load of games for just over 7 years, including using the original Gatherbuddy on the original forums in 2010; let me tell you, it is almost blatant that most coders are using their own private plugins and will not release them on this forum because of the bank they are making.

Honestly, if you have problems or requests, take some time out and learn to programme, it is extremely frustrating at first but you may even begin to love it like I did, It's the reason I am doing a computer science degree now, because I saw the beauty of programming through a buddybot API.

"If you want a job done right do it yourself"

Hi
Very true about people in the botting community keeping their tricks to themselves, rightly so. The possibility of making the bot truly custom is what got me to buy lifetime a few days back actually.
I'm just wondering if I should be starting to learn the bot codding now, or does it just make no sense ATM seeing as the new core with heavy code changes is behind the corner?
Where do I even begin?
Thanks in advance for any responses!