in praise of bots
by Alphaville Herald on 21/05/04 at 1:08 pm
by humdog
for uri: You Are My Sunshine
why are there bots in tso? comments about bots in tso seem mostly limited to value judgments relative to their relationship with the tso rules, such as they are. i think that a case can be made the bots are necessary to the game, given the economic realities of tso. bots are an unintended consequence of tso’s dysfunctional social interaction/culture design.
bots exist because a regular sim treading the straight and narrow cannot make enough money through the means afforded in the game to pay living expenses that staying in the game on more than a vegetative level requires. i mean by this that a sim can go nowhere on the initial 10k provided on the first day. a sim with 10k is not attractive as a roomie. a sim with 10k cannot afford a house. a sim with 10k is essentially a homeless, drifting personality dependent upon the hospitality of large houses.
now i know that somebody is going to say: humdog you are clueless! humdog! houses want sims to visit because it is through visitors that that sims make money! humdog you peabrain!
i am fully aware of the relationship between visitors and money. i understand it. so sit down already.
it seems possible to say that given the ridiculously small amount of money given to sims upon first landing, that more astute sims may turn to scamming other, less able, sims. scammers seem to intuitively understand the economic limitations of the game and prey on other, more desperate sims by playing that card. the unspoken foundation of scamming seems to be: 10k simoleans means nothing here. we can fix that, and here is how: insert scam here. many people in game hate scammers, including me, but it is unfair to say that they exist for no reason. it is unfair to say that a high probability of scamming has not been designed into the game as an unintended consequence. if the economic structure of tso were less ridiculous, there would be nothing for money houses, porno queens, and house scammers to do. they exist because the game says that they can exist. the game says that they will exist.
for those who are not acquainted with costs in tso, i give a few examples:
article of clothing: approximately 4-8 thousand simoleans each
small lot: 3-9 thousand simoleans
toilets: 2000 simoleans
showers: 3000 simoleans
refrigerators, stoves, food processors can cost up to 7 thousand simoleans, and refrigerators must be restocked constantly.
houses must be built, and there are charges for that.
while i know that things can be bought for better prices from local merchants, the truth is that it costs money to be a sim, if the sim does not want to be a drifter.
on the other hand, most jobs available to sims do not pay wages in line with the expense of being a sim. most sim jobs are low paying drudge jobs like waitress, robot factory worker, etc. task jobs do not pay well, either, and task jobs like telemarketing, solving logic problems, making preserves, etc., are dependent on the amount of skilling that the sim has accomplished in the task related area. a sim solving a logic problem with 6 logic skilling points will solve that problem for less than 100 simoleans. the wage for the logic task is completely out of line given the amount of time that a sim must spend skilling at logic in order to acquire 6 points. the other point that must be mentioned about skilling is that the more points a sim has, the longer it takes to make progress towards the next point. this is a sort of perverse and kind of sadistic game functionality.
all of the above suggests that there is no reason for any sim of sound mind to want to play the game in the way that the game has been designed.
if the 10k landing money suggests a strong reason why scammers exist in tso, then the skewed work to reward ratio suggests why bots exist. with a bot, a player can circumvent the time and effort that the dysfunctional game design requires of the player in order to make progress in the game. with a bot, particularly the nyk bot, a player can progress.
there is no reason not to use the bot: the game design is inconsiderate of players, and between the lines of the rules, user agreement, and activities provided, there is an un-written statement that tells the player that the game design does not respect the humanity of the player. the game wants to use players like slaves or rats, and it also views women primarily as sexual objects. the game pays slave wages, and makes the wages useless towards acquiring anything worth having. the bots level the playing field. they are yet another unintended consequence of the game’s design.
this makes sense to me.
MattyS
May 21st, 2004
hey,
About the jobs I know a guy in TC who runs 3 sims in top level of the robot factory. And he has fun doing it and he makes 6k for 40 min
just a sim
May 21st, 2004
Ack. dont you understand. Alot of us started out when all anybody had was 10000 simoleans. The best part of the game was making more. I mean actually getting the skills and spending the time to make the money needed. It kept us in the game a while. Once you have all you need what is there really to do other than sit and stare at the fish!
Cocoanut
May 21st, 2004
The game views women primarily as sexual objects? Where do you get that from?
humdog
May 21st, 2004
i believe rather that the burden is on you, coco, to explain to me why women are NOT
seen as sexual objects in tso world.
RB
May 21st, 2004
It’s pretty obvious Coco. TSO is jusy one big rubbish stereotype about everything. lol.
Re: article subject
TSO is death without sellers.
- RB
Cocoanut
May 21st, 2004
You’re the one who brought it up, Humdog: “The game . . . views women primarily as sexual objects.” Care to explain?
coco
TBT
May 22nd, 2004
Hey MattyS,
I’ll quote you…
“About the jobs I know a guy in TC who runs 3 sims in top level of the robot factory. And he has fun doing it and he makes 6k for 40 min
”..
Do you think a measly 6,000 simoleans betwen 3 sims within 40 minutes is good? You poor fool if you do…
Heck before the maze got butcherd and WITHOUT the help of bots I could easily by myself, using both sims one logic and one charisma, earn about 50,000 to 70,000 simoleans per hour er well 45 minutes. I knew many who were much faster then me that made about 100,000 per hour WITHOUT using any bots..
TBT
May 22nd, 2004
“and it also views women primarily as sexual objects”
Hmm and the problem with that might be? LOL
Ok Coco let me have it, I’ll still love you afterwards ;-D
Cocoanut
May 22nd, 2004
Hey, I’m not gonna object to you still loving me!
coco
Me
May 22nd, 2004
This is so obvious, that I don’t know why it hasn’t been pointed out yet.
The game was created to be a social game. That’s why you start out with so little money. Essentially it forces newbies to be social and bunk with others. This is also why job objects pay so little UNLESS many people are doing the same thing. Same goes with skilling.
This all isn’t supposed to encourage sims to use bots, it’s supposed to encourage us to be social.
RB
May 22nd, 2004
And thier forced try hard attempt at utopia is a failure. You can’t make people live together.
- RB
CherryBomb
May 22nd, 2004
I’ve been playing TSO for a while, now, and you know what has been my big money-maker? Just being plain nice. I just hang around chatting, and when people leave the game, they give me all their stuff.
trailblazer
May 22nd, 2004
[quote]The game was created to be a social game. That’s why you start out with so little money. Essentially it forces newbies to be social and bunk with others [/quote]
I think that is why TSO failed miserably, the offline game was about building houses and adding objects etc, when I used to read The Sims forums people wanted the game online so they could build etc and show off their talent real time, hold parties with real people not NPC’s etc, those that went to TSO found out that you can’t do that when you start playing,no getting a lot, building a house etc right off the bat, and that more than anything drove most people off the game, many new players told me that,they eventually left.
TSO basically took away the main thing that made the offline game so successful (along with custom content), like Sim City The Sims was a game for people to create, and that is what created it’s appeal, the ROSEBUD cheat I bet was used by at least 90% of The Sims players, the Sandbox type gameplay is what many players loved a outlet to create and build, many new players didn’t want to roomie, they wanted a lot and house of their own, and with how long it would take a casual player to make simoleans, having to skill constantly, low payouts meaning hours and hours of doing money objects, the high cost of items,most either bought their money from ebay or left, many new players chose the latter.
I bet The Sims 2 will have the same formula as The Sims, there will be a Rosebud cheat of some sort, people will build and share their creations on the Maxis site, and it will be a big hit, while TSO flounders, like New Coke, take away the original recipe, people won’t like it.
trailblazer
May 22nd, 2004
[quote]The game was created to be a social game. That’s why you start out with so little money. Essentially it forces newbies to be social and bunk with others [/quote]
I think that is why TSO failed miserably, the offline game was about building houses and adding objects etc, when I used to read The Sims forums people wanted the game online so they could build etc and show off their talent real time, hold parties with real people not NPC’s etc, those that went to TSO found out that you can’t do that when you start playing,no getting a lot, building a house etc right off the bat, and that more than anything drove most people off the game, many new players told me that,they eventually left.
TSO basically took away the main thing that made the offline game so successful (along with custom content), like Sim City The Sims was a game for people to create, and that is what created it’s appeal, the ROSEBUD cheat I bet was used by at least 90% of The Sims players, the Sandbox type gameplay is what many players loved a outlet to create and build, many new players didn’t want to roomie, they wanted a lot and house of their own, and with how long it would take a casual player to make simoleans, having to skill constantly, low payouts meaning hours and hours of doing money objects, the high cost of items,most either bought their money from ebay or left, many new players chose the latter.
I bet The Sims 2 will have the same formula as The Sims, there will be a Rosebud cheat of some sort, people will build and share their creations on the Maxis site, and it will be a big hit, while TSO flounders, like New Coke, take away the original recipe, people won’t like it.
humdog
May 22nd, 2004
i agree with trailblazer. i had experience with sim city and sim world (think that was the name)in the past.
the most interesting thing there is to do in tso is building. i find the social stuff kind of annoying mostly because it is required, and also because it is so rigid. my avatar rarely skills anymore because it is just so fucking boring. why do i want to sit there staring at a cartoon playing with a computer? why do i want to watch an avatar play the piano? where is the satisfaction in that?
there is a lot about tso that reminds me of fritz lang’s movie metropolis.
re building: although restricted in possibilities, building has the most flexibility in the game. i would not blame a person who likes building for buying simoleans.
i think that the designers made a major mistake to tie variety in social interaction to earned charisma or whatever points. it seems like it would have been more interesting to permit the sim access to a basic vocabulary of social interactions and then “train” the sim by dropping interactions not used and adding more interactions of the sort that the sim used more frequently. i understand that this is a pain in the ass to set up, but i think it would have created a more satisfying world.
i also suggest that the sim economy be re-structured to be more in line with average sim wages. there doesn’t seem to be a middle class in tso, economically. tso seems very much like france before the revolution of 1792.
the game is also weird because you have a social situation where everything is tied to american middle middle class values: sims either accept them without question or they rebel against them without question. but everybody is still tied to them. everything in sims is idealized based on middle-american middle class values. it’s like everybody just landed from iowa or something.
it is so fucked.
Ian
May 22nd, 2004
Humdog – trailblazier, GREAT OPINIONS… I totally agree, however….
The sims lives on, because of greed, popularity, and money(in this case, this is different than greed)… You see, the sims online has become like a “high school”, it is whoever can make the most friendships, be the talk of the town, or the top “house”. I mean think about it, why would houses want roomies to do “3hour+ shifts”? To work at something until you achieve it in a make believe world where noone has seen your face or possibly know your real life name, or to become #1 and everyone will know you! Greed also plays a factor…for example, when people reach that #1 house slot, they might want to sell it, skill and shop category seem to be the best for this. But people want a lot of money and will rebuke your offer and laugh in your face (no exageration). People want the big bucks and will do anything for that too. That is the reason why those “$1k per object” houses exist, because they want to be popular, and use greedy sims to get there. Then there is MONEY, which also intertwines with all of this greed and popularity. Sim Money can not be earned so quickly to aquire that rare or house lot you always wanted? So what do you do…Call Simolean Sellers! Without them, this game would be long gone dead…. Simolean sellers, make it possible for you to get that cannon, gnome, pet statue, build your lot or whatever your fancy is. Simolean Buyer leads to greed because sims will see that wow she has a lot of money, I have to get that too, thus they will either buy simoleans or work as a money whore at those 1k per object houses.
Cocoanut
May 22nd, 2004
I agree with Trailblazer.
I also like humdog’s idea about training the interactions.
As for everything being tied to American middle class values, well – the game does originate in America, and America tends to be tied to American values, and “middle class values” is really just another way of saying “prevailing American values.” Not sure what other values you would want anyway.
coco
Dyerbrook
May 22nd, 2004
It’s sad that you’re still on the Marxist kick, MT, thinking that economics explains everything about the Sims. I think it is worth looking at large skill or money-making lots in the top 10 or so that make lots of money just through visitor points, if they have 8 roomies all collecting. It’s enough, or almost enough, to keep house, fill the buffet, etc. Factor in that they all work the job objects themselves, i.e. boards, they still generate more cash than they know what to do with. Some of the evil and malice in the game emerged because Sims had more money chasing too few in-game high-end objects and experiences.
Sims on ebay now run around $9.00 per $100,000 or more or less, and in fact you’d need to spend probably a few hours every day for a month, the price of one month’s subscription to TSO, to board enough at about $300-400 to make the $100,000.
What I’ve never understood is why Maxis didn’t offer rich people’s packets, where you could buy the simoleons from them instead of ebay.
TBT
May 22nd, 2004
dyerbrook,
Are you nuts thinking those top houses make more money then they know what to do with? The MAXIMUM that a bonus is is $3,000 so *IF* they had 8 roomies that’s only $24,000 and who says that they have to share or pool it? That $3,000 per sim gets eaten up daily by feedig those 100s of hungry sims several times per hour and fixing the things that break from constant usage and when they break its always in the 100s or 1000s to repair. They aren’t the money making machine you seem to think they are.. And if they were they would have no nEed to buy simoleans which many top houses do on a weekly basis..
I DO agree with your last paragraph as I’m surprised maxis just doesn’t implement asystem for people to buy simoleans in-game like other online games do.. They’d make more from that then they do on subscriptions LOL..
RB
May 22nd, 2004
100% agreed with Trailblazer, Humdog and Ian.
TSO is laughing stock of the MMPORPG community for the reasons in those posts.
- RB
trailblazer
May 23rd, 2004
I thought the whole “Roomie” concept was the stupidest thing about TSO, nobody wan’t to be a roomie for the most part, everyone that started playing TSO I am sure wanted their own lot and house, like in the offline version, and it’s not like this would be just temporary a month or so, nope with the low payouts of TSO and the high cost of items it would be many months before a casual player could even think about having their own place, if your a power player and played 15 plus hours a day everyday you might get to the independent owner status quicker.
Not to mention if you roomie at a skill house or other lot the owner sometime make you feel guilty for leaving, or treat you as more a employee than a roomie, demanding you be there to keep the place open and giving roomies shifts (Oh joy what fun, you leave your real job just to come home and log on for a virtual one), I just never one that considered spending 4 hours of game time catering to sims demanding food and having to entertain them, just so I can maybe get a hour or two to go out and try and earn my own simoleans to have my own place so I can get my own slave labo errr I mean roomies.
Is it no wonder people are leaving this game, I rather go back to my offline version and use my cheat and build again, yeah I might not get to chat with people, but hey thats what yahoo is for, and as was noted before, spending hours watching my little virtual Sim read or workout could have been better used in I don’t know playing a game that was actually fun and enjoyable, I finally woke up and said this game is just stupid,boring and has no point, I had more fun playing the offline sims than I ever did playing TSO, I made friends on TSO and chatted with them, but I still do that on yahoo without paying 10 bucks a month.
RB
May 23rd, 2004
Your anti roomate comments would agree with this very old entry in my blog T.B :
http://www.rbs-blog.com/archives/000006.html
It was stupid way back then. It still is a lousy part of the game.
- RB
humdog
May 23rd, 2004
these are all very interesting comments.
i agree about cost of repairs to houses. the frequency of repairs required to houses is also stupid. the other no doubt amusing situation to EA designer-sadists about repairs is that sometimes making repairs to electrical fixtures like lights or sound equipment is dangerous, and there are no warnings. sims are sometimes killed doing electrical repairs.
Ian
May 23rd, 2004
RB please IM me on Yahoo I added you to my list….
Johnny Lace
May 23rd, 2004
If we ignore the #1 reason for bots: simoleans represent RL value at sites such as ebay, the most biggest reason for bots to appear in the game is not sims being poor, it’s money making being an utter bore.
10k starting money may not see much. Within a few weeks of play, every sim can be pretty rich. Allow me to explain. A smart new player who plays 1-2 hours a day (most new players will… the newness of a game always causes an addiction heeh) will:
* maximize a skill in 1 week.
* make around 10k an hour doing job objects (pizza, solo whatever)
* probably make around 50k a week this way. All the while he is chatting with others, making new friends etc.
* have made around 400k In 2 months of game time. This is enough to own a size 8 lot and have it filled up with decent stuff.
I.e. a new sim will have acquired the endgame in 2 months. After that they have nothing left to do. Games that only require 2 months of play time (at 10h a week)… what more can you wish for?
In the first weeks, sims are dead poor. After a half a year, sims have so much money they don’t know what to do with it (they hire sickly expensive designers to create their house for a few hundred k hehe)
Face it, there IS no middle class
Ian
May 23rd, 2004
Johnny, 10k an hour on Solo objects? it is like 3-4k if you are lucky and not afk…and that is if 11 other people are jobbing with you. Good points, maybe that is why Maxis keeps lowering payouts.
Johnny Lace
May 23rd, 2004
Dang, is it that low? I recall playing pizza & code for around 10k an hour though (and maze around 25k an hour or so…100k as mentioned above seems a bit over the top with me. That’s more than 1 maze every 20 seconds which is downright impossible.) . But I haven’t played pizza or code for over a year, so my info might be dated a bit
Ian
May 23rd, 2004
I recall replying to this but what I basically said was…
With this declining payout and decreasing payouts, it is not possible to make more then $4k/hr… per single job object
Mitchell
Jun 28th, 2004
Hello,
I come to this site alot, I play TSO way more than SecondLife, and this is my second time commenting.
I found this article when I was bored, I use a laptop and a program The EYE to help people get visitor time, and stuff.. but I do not use it much to make money.
I do admit, I have used bots that I programmed myself to do single job objects and have it work with The Eye, but because the TSO screen now moves when ur on for a while, I use only The Eye, but I still program bots for fun, with no purpose, some bots are like Auto-Cook bot to cook every time there is not much food, and various other “dumb” things.
It is possible to make more than 4k an hour, I have been at Chalkboard Sanctuary in Blazing Falls for an hour, and I made 5k in about 50 minutes with logic maxed and locked at 10.99
Bots are a gamers dream, some like GIR cost TONS of money, I program myself, and thought about making bots, but I bought a bot called The EYE at mysimsonlinecheats.com and run it on my laptop, and I am typing this on my desktop with a nice flat panel screen.
Buying Simoleans online is almost like using a bot.. I know a trader/simolean and rare seller. Mr. Simoleans and lifeisanapple guys both use bots, lifeisanapple uses GIR, and leaves it running on multiple computers non-stop yet he only makes less than $1.5k a month in real life, yet still pays for hosting and stuff.
I think that bots and macroing is a way of gaming, and the game companies should learn, it is very easy to code human thoughts and stuff a human learns from a method into a game.
You click, then move the mouse up a few pixels, and click. A human memorises it, so then the bot will do the same.
Lots of bots come with free updates, and stuff.
I know I talk alot, but I really want to be heard, and based on other comments that are rude and racial, I can tell that the comments are not moderated, and are not removed.
Johnny Lace, I do not pizza or code or anything like that, as I only have one account for TSO, I used to have two, and I never once mazed with them, as I did not know how and liked doing single job objects.
I think auto-green bots are good for someone like me, I am a young adult, and I do not have a life in real, as in I do not have many friends or anything due to social disorders.
These use of different bots are good for auto-greenup because I have puppies, and they need me, I have three of them to think about, and I play with them, and take care of them. I need to use auto-green and auto-stay-alive bots to keep the client alive while I am taking care of the dogs, so I can simple come back, turn off the bot and continue gaming.
But please, do not abuse the use of bots, they will get more and more updates.
I have found on my own research (members area of my sims online cheats site, and from someone I met online) a trick to let me lock energy and social at all green. It involves of only allowing one side of the bed to be open (either left or right, not top or botton), and then you can simply stay green.
But, bots do have bugs, like my laptop just accidently had this bot select learn to use on someone elses board, so it is good to keep an eye on your bot if you do use them, so that way you can make sure that you know its working properly.
Also, if anyone wants to know what happened to the deagolsoft site, that was work of me. Deagolsoft was one of the best maze bot makers, and also made phatmoneybot.
Best Reguards,
Mitchell
Botcode
Jun 28th, 2004