Avian Gamers Network

I thott that some of you would be interested in following the growing discussions in the game designer community over Thottbot and how it could ruin the play experience for Explorer personalities. As I'm more of an Achiever and Socializer, I only can see the potential difficulty in a purely abstract sense. To me, it seems that Thottbot makes the game better for 95% of the people, worse for 5%...

The pros:
- Allows casual players to advance faster
- Levels the info-hoarding playing field
- Amazing architecture, cool to see how the idea works

The cons:
- Makes the level treadmill shorter... quickens the time needed for the Devs to add new end-game content
- Takes some power away from the info-hoarders who enjoy that part of the game
- Lessens the Msytique of the game experience

Discussion of Thottbot and how it affects WoW:
http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2 ... l#comments

Discussion of wether it lessens the fun for Explorers, and asks what Explorers really want:
http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2 ... eal_e.html

Bartle's paper describing the four main gamer archetypes:
http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm

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--The Hermit

okay, I run cosmos.. it "connects" to thott...

how does it ruin explorers? is there a feature I am not running or loaded up?

It doesn't show me anything I don't usually see...

I am missing something, aren't I?

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SW:TOR - Mantison Gunslinger, Ironmant Trooper, Manni Jedi Knight
WoW - Dalaran - Manni 85 Mage, Ironmant 83 Warrior, Mantison 80 Hunter
SWG - Chilastra Retired Mantison, Commando / TKA Master aka Trogdor !!!!

Do you really have to ask?

Good point, old man...

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SW:TOR - Mantison Gunslinger, Ironmant Trooper, Manni Jedi Knight
WoW - Dalaran - Manni 85 Mage, Ironmant 83 Warrior, Mantison 80 Hunter
SWG - Chilastra Retired Mantison, Commando / TKA Master aka Trogdor !!!!

if they want me to keep paying every month, they better bust their asses to continue adding content

I couldn't give a f**k about "l337 d00ds" with egos who want to hoard info about a multiplayer game

if you want the mystique to survive, don't go to thottbott! this statement prettymuch sums up my perspective. it's there if you want to use it. if you want to discover everything yourself, then don't go to the site. one thing I really enjoy about WoW is that it has made some great headway to leveling the playing field between hardcore players and casual ones, TB only takes this equalization a bit further.

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I look at Thotbott as a tool. I find it endlessly frustrating to spend 2 hours hunting down an NPC. I get joy out of doing quests, reading lore and achieving skills not from hunting around for a guy that I have no idea where to even begin to look.

A lot of the time the Lore gives you pretty direct directions to the NOC other times none at all. Thotbott help me play the game. Do I grind faster? Yes but to me this is just an bonus not my goal. I want to play the game and for me playing does not mean running around looking for some dude that was right upstairs from me to begin with.

As for the d00ds. Thankfully I dont have to deal with those guys in this game so I really do not care if someone is 'uber' or not. Let them play their game and I will play mine.

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Moge

Mantison there is an option in Cosmos that you have to activate. When activated cosmos will gather data for thottbot... that is how they get their information. This particular option was broken a long time ago... at that time I disabled it and have not reactivated it.




ya mean makes the game more casual friendly? Because that is what it does. When I step away from my hunter in Darkshore for a 2 or 4 weeks, it is hard to get back into the swing of things as far as missions go. Just to many details forgotten. Thottbot gets me back up to speed. It is a convenience. To be honest I think it should be a feature provided by the game company... paid for by my subscription.

Screw that. Go work for the CIA or NSA if you have this issue. Otherwise, power to the gamers... information for the gamers.

I don’t think so. I use Thottbot all the time... and this games Mystique blows me away. Maybe it is the manor in which I use Thottbot.... but what ever it is, I don’t find the above quote to be true.



As you can see I think Thottbot is great. It is a source of information… right and wrong is just in the way you use it. If you use it to do every mission, don’t whine saying the game is not intriguing. I use it when I am stuck, or when I don’t have time to figure out what monster had the best drop % for the item I am looking for. That is how I use Thottbot and I love both it and WoW. Features like Thottbot should be provided by the game company.

Of course thottbot is evil and will probably kill you. Everything that's good is bad for you in some way.

I'm using thottbot as a help when I can't find NPC's/quest items/drop locations. I do however enjoy exploring new areas by myself and thus I usually read the quest log first and go look for things for a while before using thottbot. This way I've found lots of interesting spots and NPC's and even some quests here and there, all of which I would never have seen if I had known where I was going.

Personally I am an info hoarder and wouldn't mind thottbot being gone, but right now it's there and I take advantage of it when I feel like it. It takes away a bit of the mystique, yes, but only if you let it.

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"It's sort of a philosophical question...if a tissue fails to modify a skill that doesn't exist, and no one is around, will any devs hear you screaming?"

i love it. it doesn't take away anything but frustration.

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2 Locks, 2 Pally's, 1 Priest, 1 Warrior, 1 Hunter and 1 Mage walk into a bar...

If it is just a website, how is it any different from Alakhazam and Casters Realm, other than it is directly fed info from the game, all those sites tell you where and when and how to do quests and such.

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SW:TOR - Mantison Gunslinger, Ironmant Trooper, Manni Jedi Knight
WoW - Dalaran - Manni 85 Mage, Ironmant 83 Warrior, Mantison 80 Hunter
SWG - Chilastra Retired Mantison, Commando / TKA Master aka Trogdor !!!!

It would be nice if I could create an account.

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Dalaran: Arindel - Frost Mage (Mining/Alchemy)
Dalaran: Roran - Paladin (Weaponsmith/Blacksmith)
Dalaran: Baine - Rogue

I can't even begin to tell you how often I use thottbot.

That's more than every day. The second webpage I open every morning is thottbot.com

But then I rarely use it when playing

I do not see the problem with explorers at all. Their fun is ruined when they use thottbot, but that's their own fault. I think Explorer fun does not suffer if other people are using thottbot, the same way Achiever fun is not dminished when other people achieve something. The only gameplay style where other people's behaviour plays a significant part is that of PVP/PK, but that is hardly impacted by the existanece of thottbot.

In other words, thottbot is a boon to the WoW community, and cannot be bad.

Edward

I like the text pattern's very nice

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President Green Team Racing (GTR) YRM
My website link.

So, follow-up question...

Why don't all the game designers build tools like this directly into the interface? Why not have "endpoints" to every quest easily visible on your HUD, ala SWG?

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--The Hermit

I felt Endpoints like SWG had, was extremely boring. SWG felt like we went from point to another via a straight line. You knew exactly where to go so there was NO thinking, NO researching the mission documents. Every mission became a clone of the previous million because all you were doing was traveling to the next endpoint. Despite the somewhat change of scenery all the objectives seemed the same.

(What happened to mountains and rivers making the planets seem even bigger… i.e. destroying the A to B straight line)

In SWG there was also a lot more competition between players. If you did not use the best tools your competition would bypass you in your crafting endeavors. The access to the information needs to be a bit difficult, making it to where one did not use it 100% of the time like a HUD overlay…. Instead it needs to be such that one has to stop and look the info up… and for example see that the item you are looking for drops in this large area.

In WoW you have to look around. But your contact person is labeled with the golden "?" to make it easier to spot out… yet not as easy as the column of light in SWG. If you are having a very hard time and are lost as to what you are supposed to be doing, you can go to thottbot… but sense most things occur in a small range of locations due to NPC movement, you get a spray of locations to hunt instead on only one location.

SO endpoints like SWG: no
Game designers building their own thott-like database inside the game: yes

How d oyou get Cosmos/Thotbott to be more effective?

use the /tloc x, y command? I installed Cosmos the other day and it's very helpful, but I haven't seen it help me with my quests too much. I see how it tracks the inventory to quest items and a blinking circle on the mini-map for finding a courier.

Btw, that was a fun mission. a Level 30 paladin, a level 32 warrior and I34 Mage) took on the courier and the 4 35 guards (quest in Southshore/Arathi highlands -- Plague?) and came out on top. The frost mage is really starting to show some great crowd control abilities.

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Dalaran: Arindel - Frost Mage (Mining/Alchemy)
Dalaran: Roran - Paladin (Weaponsmith/Blacksmith)
Dalaran: Baine - Rogue

Thottbot's magic (and difference form other similar endeavors) is that someone running Cosmos can feed EVERY encounter, EVERY quest, EVERY drop and EVERY item's detailed info directly into thottbot without any work other than turning the option on in the Options menu. This way, all the information is continually updating itself.. a closed system without any pain by the users. If the devs change the location of a spawn, or change an items stats, it will automatically be updated on Thottbot. Beautiful, from a systems architecture point of view.

To make Cosmos even better, there are a number of extra addons... there's a downloadable add-on that does put every quest direction onto your HUD, pulling directly from the thottbot database. There's a hundred other UI addons, (like the Troll->Common translator also given). Most of these aren't given with the default Cosmos install, so you have to hunt them down to install them.

I love the "Shard count" addon for warlocks -- it shows you the number of Soul shards that you've drained peoples souls into(which you need to summon pets, make lifestones, and do a number of other cool high-level spells).

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--The Hermit

Thottbot is just magelo+allah's, in EQ terms (still my longest MMO experience).

Magelo is an item database from EQ, that limits itself purely to items, so you find an item on Magelo, tab over to Allah's to look up how its gotten.

I don't see anything wrong with it. Its used for specfics, in specific circumstances. I suppose one could go to it and find all sorts of stuff they "shouldn't" have, but that's purely subjective. If it makes their game a happier experience, without impacting my experience, what do I care?

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Fintara, NE Druid
Bellia, NE Hunter

Because it's boring.

If it is turned on by default, people will no longer even pretend to have read the quest description, you just run to the glowing point. It robs you of every pretense of exploring. If it's turned off by default people will tell you how to turn the option on whenever you have a question about a certain quest. The number of players directing you to an out-of-game source like thottbot is considerably smaller.
Thus it will limit your enjoyment of the game, reducing explorer fun, reducing player interaction.

Making a game fun is walking the fine line between frustrating the player and boring him to death. You need to throw fine-tuned challenges at him. Thottbot helps alleviate the times when you somehow miss the important clue or cannot see the forest for the trees (or the admittedly not uncommon misleading or just plain wrong mission descriptions).

Edward

What if the developers made you go to the in-game library to use their own game supported database? Like simulating research?

Wow, that's an interesting idea...

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TheMole
Section 5
Section 5
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Now Playing: WoW
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Great idea, Cyrus. I like that one.

You're completely correct, Master Edward. Raph Koster defines fun as "Learning that is not too hard, and not too easy." That thin-line in the middle is all-important in good game design, it seems.

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--The Hermit

That would be cool. I can see it working for SF-based games, where you can actually pull things out of the game DB. For a fantasy based game you would need tons and tons of ingame text to do it properly.

But it's actually a cool idea.

Edward