Bam_Bam wrote: »

This ended when they implemented new coding to stop the farming bots. Plus, a lot of the original development team left for pastures new.

This is the correct answer. The epicness you see in some of those videos was from the beta, the botapocalypse at launch killed all that.

As far as the "light attack" comments, you have to realize that most of the beta videos were from short test weekends where everyone had to start from scratch. And since those were public beta weekends, many of those players were indeed new.

However, as one of the super secret Psijic Order beta testers that had 24/7 access to a dedicated test server for 5 months before PC launch, i can tell you first hand that there were many, many, many epic battles with hundreds of players in the same spot fighting and there certainly was no lack of slotted skills.

zyk wrote: »

@SirAndy you should know as well as anyone that the game has no 'anti-bot code'. I can't speak to what beta was like, but it's clear from the forums in 2014 that Cyro lag was a major isssue as early as April 2014 and there were widespread complaints and talk of PVP 'dying' before june 2014, weeks before the infamous lighting patch that some theorize also included alleged antibot code.
The truth is that the amazing game people remember from launch is based on the excitement, hype and promise. Live, it never lived up to its potential and the forum history proves it.

The game *has* anti bot code, which was hastily implemented right after PC launch.
April 2014 *is* PC launch, which coincides with the bot assault (which many of us warned ZOS about during beta).

Like i said, not only was i there for PC launch, i was also secretly testing the game 24/7 since October 2013. We were under NDA and could not publicly talk about our beta testing, but since that NDA was lifted at PC launch, i can tell you now with absolute certainty that my memory is not clouded by some misty fog of nostalgia.

ZOS did indeed cobble together quite a lot of anti-bot measures which resulted in the first real negative performance impact, the second being the lighting patch you refer to, which came several months later.

But at that time PvP was already a lag fest compared to the in-house beta ...

zyk wrote: »

SirAndy wrote: »

The game *has* anti bot code, which was hastily implemented right after PC launch.
April 2014 *is* PC launch, which coincides with the bot assault (which many of us warned ZOS about during beta).
Like i said, not only was i there for PC launch, i was also secretly testing the game 24/7 since October 2013. We were under NDA and could not publicly talk about our beta testing, but since that NDA was lifted at PC launch, i can tell you now with absolute certainty that my memory is not clouded by some misty fog of nostalgia.
ZOS did indeed cobble together quite a lot of anti-bot measures which resulted in the first real negative performance impact, the second being the lighting patch you refer to, which came several months later.
But at that time PvP was already a lag fest compared to the in-house beta ...

Yet there has been an ongoing bot problem for years... Sorry, without proof, I'm not going to believe that alleged bot code that doesn't work is causing all the problems.
Besides, your timing is off because botting didn't, initially, slow down until the summer. They remained an obvious issue well after there were widespread complaints about Cyro lag.
I recall botting and spam wasn't initially solved through technical measures, but rather through better account verification. This mitigated bots effectively until B2P.

I won't argue with the uninformed, carry on, nothing to see here ...