Originally Posted by
Kiki.
People play for various reasons and they stay for them too. You can't shoehorn thousands of players into the same thing. I'd say the most common reasons are they have free-time and then as time progresses, they've made friends and so stay for them. The game itself is only incidental.
And Evony is flawed. There are bugs all the time and a lack of cohesion. I agree it is human nature to choose the easy way. People end up botting because farming is boring. There's no challenge or thought, just a repetitive and tedious task. Who'd want to spend time doing that? Personally, I didn't farm at all for my last two years playing, I'd just plunder, sell res/buy food, holiday or be sent food from alliance mates (I didn't bot at all until last 6 months playing and never on the main). People that want to play only want to play the interesting aspects of the gameplay which makes sense.
Cheat-free Evony won't happen, nor should it anymore. Those that want it need a reality check. If you look at the rules of the game, it'd be all but unplayable. Don't bot and don't share logins with anyone. That's pretty much a death sentence, particularly the latter. Months or even years of work could be wiped in a couple hours. Any skilled attacker is going to run an offline city through with ease, I recall thinking teams that reinforced a city that was offline was just giving me more of their troops to kill, not slowing me down at all. That's not going to help anyone. Do I like bots? Not especially but I understand the reasons for their existence. Personally, I'd want to see them scaled back in the functions they provide eg. resource hiding/defending but the other stuff I'm indifferent about.
The game has evolved and the people responsible are Evony and the players themselves. At this point, Evony should just embrace the "problems" and only by doing so can they regulate it in any real capacity.