Are bots allowed ?

[Khildram]

Are people allowed to use bots to play on BGA?

I just had my first case of a player disconnecting during a real-time game, so out of curiosity, since the profile indicates the same country as I (where connections are quite good), I checked his profile.

The user shows 2041 games since december 31st 2021. Always with the same game (Azul). That's an average 17.75 game per day. From his reputation details he has regular "red hourglass"marks (between 0 and 5 per day) and then some disconnects marks where he looses karma (overall I think he may be maintaining between 100% and 80% karma as he lost karma 12 times over last 60 days).
From the same reputation page, I can see that he's only playing real-time games, so 17.75 games is a lot of games.

The profile really looks like bot activity to me. What do you guys think ?

[Silene]

18 games a day is totally doable for someone who has a lot of free time. Doesn't sound like bot activity at all. Especially since he goes over time sometimes.

[Khildram]

I agree, 18 games in a day is doable, that's about 4.5 hours if we count 15 minutes per game.

But that's an average for 115 days (weekends included) and always with the same game.

I understand one can be addicted to a game. But that seems beyond insanity. Azul does not have the depth of chess or an immersive videogame.

Also, one still has to wait for games to be available to be played (that user is not premium).

[Jest Phulin]

First, I am NOT a member of BGA staff, so this information may be inaccurate. But digging through the FAQ and TOS did not turn up any mention of bots. Cheating software was specifically prohibited in the TOS, as was creating multiple accounts to boost one's ranking and accessing the site through unintended methods. I believe it would be difficult to test a bot without doing these last two, and the bot itself could be considered cheating software, so it could indicate that bots are not allowed. Unless, of course, they are developed by BGA, such as the Can't Stop bot.

As to the suspected bot player: lots of activity restricted to a single game is not strong evidence of bot activity. The fact that the player times out rather than having consistent quick thinking times is more in line with a human player.

[Salvidrim]

I agree, 18 games in a day is doable, that's about 4.5 hours if we count 15 minutes per game.

But that's an average for 115 days (weekends included) and always with the same game.

I understand one can be addicted to a game. But that seems beyond insanity. Azul does not have the depth of chess or an immersive videogame.

Also, one still has to wait for games to be available to be played (that user is not premium).

What the heck do you mean "beyond insanity"?? I work a full-time office job I spend my evenings (5-6 hours) and weekends (8-12 hours) playing games (video games or BGA) while watching TV. And I'm absolutely certain I'm far from the most active player out there. My father is retired and spends entire days playing Hearts online while watching TV. That's 10+ games a day, almost every day, and Hearts games are a lot longer than Azul games. You need to take a step back and get some relative perspective, there is a wide variety of people and lifestyles out there in the world.

[Khildram]

What the heck do you mean "beyond insanity"??

My bad if that sounded offensive to people playing a lot. I didn't want to criticize that, I just felt that the playing behavior wasn't realistic.
I actually used to play videogames more than you, and now toned down and spend only around 40h per week.
I was just surprised that Azul wouldn't get old sooner than that... With the variety of games here, playing only real time to one game seemed strange.

But for sure there must be people that are addicted to Azul.

[ufm]

You surely haven't seen accounts playing a game 10k+ times yet. Here are quite a lot of them.
They are just that deeply into it.

[Romain672]

My bad if that sounded offensive to people playing a lot. I didn't want to criticize that, I just felt that the playing behavior wasn't realistic.
I actually used to play videogames more than you, and now toned down and spend only around 40h per week.
I was just surprised that Azul wouldn't get old sooner than that... With the variety of games here, playing only real time to one game seemed strange.

But for sure there must be people that are addicted to Azul.

At one point when you became good at a game (not necessarily by being first) because you played it a lot, you like winning against lots of players by being better than them. So even if you appreciate a lot less the game because you played it a lot, you still play it to have the satisfaction to win. And sometimes it became automatic moves, so your thinking process on that specific game is faster, and that make it more enjoyable.

[davypi]

Regarding the number of games played, back in 2000 or so, Yahoo Games used to be a great MP site. Some of the games could have 3-4 min down time I could actually run two games at a time by running multiple copies of the browser. With dual monitors a tabbing, I'm sure its much easier to do now days. (In fact, when I'm playing real time games with my Friday group, during down time between turns I will often go through and play my turn based games on my second monitor.)

[yarkm13]

So bots is allowed?

I have found wiki page for developers https://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/Bots_ ... telligence
So for developers bots are allowed