Your opinion on host bots like Ghost springing up in all servers?

[Vicboy]

My opinion...

It started out as a host bot which hosted Empires. Empires was a really fun game and full house was a necessity.

It reached 3000 (Sadly, I missed the 3000 train)

a month later... It disappeared...

Then I started to see different kinds of host bots.

3... A month ago

6 three weeks ago

and now... 20 host bots, including multiples with the same map and people selling servers for hosting, now flood the list of Battle.Net

Is that a good thing?

For me, no. It's harder to find games that has a living human that can start the game anytime he feels like it than a game that will go in fullhouse which almost never does.

I've seen multiple host bots on their numbers of 10 after a whole week.

HELL no, I hate host bots, especially when they kick people just because the ping wasn't good enough. The ping doesn't explain much crap anyway.

You?

 

[H34DhUnT3r]

My opinion...

It started out as a host bot which hosted Empires. Empires was a really fun game and full house was a necessity.

It reached 3000 (Sadly, I missed the 3000 train)

a month later... It disappeared...

Then I started to see different kinds of host bots.

3... A month ago

6 three weeks ago

and now... 20 host bots, including multiples with the same map and people selling servers for hosting, now flood the list of Battle.Net

Is that a good thing?

For me, no. It's harder to find games that has a living human that can start the game anytime he feels like it than a game that will go in fullhouse which almost never does.

I've seen multiple host bots on their numbers of 10 after a whole week.

HELL no, I hate host bots, especially when they kick people just because the ping wasn't good enough. The ping doesn't explain much crap anyway.

You?

Can't be bothered by it, but that's mainly because I host all games I play myself. Besides the gamename pretty much shows that it's hosted by a bot, they all have the same name etc.

But like I said: can't be bothered by it no matter if I host or join..

 

[Jackal]

If the map is half-way decent, then I'm fine with it. If it is not (for example like that World War 3 map), it is irritating.

 

[Vicboy]

If the map is half-way decent, then I'm fine with it. If it is not (for example like that World War 3 map), it is irritating.

It's not bad. But there are new ones emerging that are really bad.

 

[Strilanc]

Host bots are desirable for a lot of reasons.
- A player host has an unfair advantage from reduced lag. An autohosted game will be much fairer in that way.
- Bots can host more games while your game is running. That could have consequences like fewer dota games in the list, because a bot can accept 30 players joining the same game and divide them into three instances.
- Bots can host the same game on multiple servers. Hard-to-fill games suddenly fill up easily.
- Capabilities like changing the game speed, changing the sync rate, shuffling and swaping players, tracking stats, and so forth.

I pretty much disagree with your assertion that more hard-to-find games in the list is bad. It's better than a list full of DOTA games.

That being said, bots aren't inherently good. You can program them to do some pretty ass-holish things. Right now someone has a bot (not a hosting bot, though) joining games and spamming "join X clan!" messages.

 

[Rapmaster]

I think they will start banning people who run these. There were some veiled warnings in the greeting message last time I logged on to battle.net

 

[nomadian]

a little bit concerning because surely it hacks into WC3 no? Otherwise it's good since it hosts maps that other people cba to wait to fill up type maps.

 

[Lobster]

I prefer them over the new spambots coming up lately. Anyone notice them?

 

[Genkora]

I don't mind them, I sure can play a lot of battleships now!