I feel like a thread needs to be made about this, not sure if this is common or not but here it goes. This bot is easily the most difficult I have used, and I have used 6 other buddy bots, some of them I've been using off and on for years. But I can usually go back and be able to set things up after an hour or two of research when i return to a game. Exilebuddy is honestly the least user friendly thing I have ever seen. Between out of date everything and the massive amount of data that you have to pour through to find an answer to anything, I'm not surprised that income is a bit of an issue with ExileBuddy. No wonder you're having to raise prices and such, there is no way I would consider going another month with this thing. Honestly, with zero coding experience I find myself lost more often than not with this bot, and I don't really understand why. Simple shit like getting loot rules to work, but it just flat out doesn't. Simply getting the bot to recognize stash tabs with the name "5" just took me 20 minutes, and I didn't even do anything for it to fix itself. Lack of default buttons for many of the plugins and a general lack of tips within the bot program is just not attractive to someone who is relatively new to the game and the bot. This is just my two cents, probably worthless to the vets around here, but it's something to think about. If you're having income troubles, I can definitely see why.
You're definitely right, the forum is a mess and the bot ain't user friendly, but newcomers have to consider that botting a game they don't know is gonna hard hard. The game itself has restrictions, which we try to fix/balance and provide users the most "easiest" perspectives in terms of configuration. But the game has sort of deep mechanics, which makes plugins hard to customize. Some people want stability, others want it fast, others want to do X, some others do Y... The addition of all those little features makes plugins really messy, just look at advanceditemfilter. But some options are necessary and used by thousands of botters, even tho it's hard to config. I agree that the bot itself aint user friendly, but people have to deal with it Back in the days, EB was a simple grindbot because 90% of the game was grinding areas. Lter they added, maps, leagues, strongboxes, etc etc etc and the game becomes more and more difficult to handle by the bot and a few plugins without generating conflicts... DealWithIt <insert david caruso memes here>
Been at this for a couple of weeks. I feel like its not terribly difficult, someone just has to go through and compile all the up to date information from the various threads. i.e. Create some packages for the common builds and plugins used for those builds. I leveled bladeflurry assassin, flameblast elementalist and cyclone marauder in the last couple of weeks and they can all run maps with no issues, relatively efficiently. So I think the bot works fine, but the knowledge is spread out.
I don't disagree that it works, because it does. It's just issues like stash tabs and such. For instance today I'm leveling a marauder, and it will do fine for hours, then suddenly it decides that all tabs are full and can't continue so it shuts down. So when I look at it, the tabs it has been using all day are empty, but the bot just broke itself with no rhyme or reason. Things like this are almost impossible to find answers for, and as of writing this I'm still dealing with this issue. I still can't get AIF or the native item plugin to sell any rares, EVER, and I'm using one of the most popular rulesets for AIF on the forums. Compiling the up to date data would be awesome, including plugins like AIF and Flask helper with settings already setup (native quicksilver support? cmon) would do wonders. As far as buddy bots goes, this is just the most scattered and unorganized one I have used and I think that's pushing a lot of people away from using it. I've already gotten PMs asking if I know of another bot for PoE (I don't) because they are frustrated with these quirks as well. I guess the point of this post was, if you could make it easier to get it off the ground and doing basic stuff and just making it easier to get started would probably increase revenue. I know the team is limited here and I don't want to insult the work you have done, because I'm sure it works very well once you are versed in its quirks. But making a plug and play type bot for new comers is probably just as important as making some new plugin to make mapping faster as far as getting subscriptions goes.
V-Lock, just keep in mind that the community is infested with people just wanting to be spoonfed. Its the same people answering and the same people giving explanations. Its especially frustrating for these helpful people when they have a F.A.Q or a Troubleshoot post or someone has answered all the questions you could possibly imagine 2-3 pages in from the initial post. Please don't take this as a direct message to you, but 90% of the people are like the described above. I will be frank, it took me about a league of botting to get an full grasp of how to set it up to my liking. The following league, it was super easy to pull currency. I was able to play a few builds that I really wanted to but barely started to min/max stuff but was confortable spending exalts here and there. The next league (this one), I have more currency than I know what to do with (since i don't RMT and simply bot to gear my own toons and try builds). When I first started I was questioning how people were bringing in over 1exalt a day (which is really nothing...). Now that I am pulling 2-3 exalts per day on 1 account (simply currency alone - not including items that I could flip for more), I see that the possibilities are endless. EDIT: The monthly sub was a pretty strategic move. I was a lifetime key holder for over a year before they made the change. But honestly, now that I know how to do it and set everything up, all I really need is a 1 month sub at the start of a new league to get all the currency I wanted and then unsub until the next start league.
I saw this thread and had to respond. I've been using Buddy based bots for a very very long time now - I've seen prices change along the way, it happens in every aspect of life so why shouldn't it happen here. THAT BEING SAID - I do agree with the OP in certain terms. I don't believe that Exilebuddy fits the premium pricing structure of the other bots. Exilebuddy is basic-featured and extremely difficult to broaden upon without scripting knowledge. Does it work? Yes. Do I use it? Yes. Will I continue to use it? Yes. Is it worth the cost in comparison to other bots? Absolutely Not. Exilebuddy is horrendously over-priced for what it is when you compare it to other Buddy bots.
This is so true. Hands down with any bot and I couldn't agree more any other time. But sifting through 290 pages to find out why AIF isn't functioning properly or selling per the rules that have been set up, only to find that it isn't an AIF problem, but a comlib, oldroutine or another plugin problem. All the while every single one of these say they "may work with 2.4+" while we are well into the breach. At some point it isn't about being spoonfed but it is about setting up actual roadblocks to make a new user able to utilize the program. Like I said, I've used several of these different bots across different games, at no point should one take over 3 months to get the hang of (I think that's about how long a league lasts). But, this is my opinion, not necessarily fact by any means.
You unfortunately also fall in the category of people who complain yet won't provide a logfile. In the AIF thread I asked you to provide a logfile of your issue, yet you didn't provide one. How do you expect people to help then? It's the cold harsh reality here that if you don't provide a log you won't get help. Only with a logfile attached it is usually possible to track down specific issues, we aren't clearvoyant and we can't read minds. If no log is provided, all that's left is to try and guess what the issue may be and that usually leads one down the wrong track. Advanced is in the name of AIF for a reason, I mean look at the game it self. There are tons of affixes and suffixes to items, tons of currency items, tons of other items. PoE isn't as simple and dry as D3 for example where it's just about getting (ancient) legendaries. Thus AIF is complicated to set up and use properly because the game it self is complicated. That's why you also see a lot of people telling new guys to "learn the game first" before starting to bot, PoE has such a high amount of depth that a bot for the game will never be as simple as "download, click start, come back later to tons of currency". The game & the bot requires a considerable time investment from the user to get up and running. It's frustrating at first but once you're over the hump it's oh so worth it. The community here can get pretty toxic, and I'm no exception to that as you can see from my post history. That toxicity comes from the simple fact that most people aren't willing to invest any amount of time into anything and just "want things to work", yet that will never be the case for Exilebuddy. With everything that is available in Exilebuddy as a platform, the pricetag is more than justified. No other of the buddy bots offers as extensive an API as EB. The things you can do with EB you can only dream about for other bots. Could the EB forums use some more love? Of course, it could do with guides for the popular plugins, it could do with stickies with frequently asked questions and so much more. Unfortunately EB is pretty low on the totempole from Bossland and you barely if ever see anyone (outside of the main devs) post here from the rest of the buddy staff. Another thing is, 99% of the people that get help and get things working stop posting once their setup works, which leaves only a few individuals that actually go out of their way to help people - and those few in turn get jaded pretty quickly with the same questions being asked over and over. In the end, what it all boils down to: If you have a problem, provide a log and describe your issue in detail, add in some screenshots of your settings etc. Noone is going to help you when all you post is "it doesn't work for me". The old mantra "if you can't spend 5minutes of describing your issue, why should anyone spend more time trying to help you" holds true for EB.
I don't disagree with anything you said, and I apologize for not responding with a log file, I actually haven't been back to the AIF thread since I made it due to some unrelated hardware issues. I do agree that EB is an extremely powerful bot, but it can't be denied it is heavily disorganized and NOT user friendly. As mentioned earlier, someone said it took them an entire season to get it to their liking. While that's awesome, and impressive dedication, I think for every one of those stories there's several more of the ones that can't get it figured out in the first month sub and decide to go a different way. The post wasn't meant to be derogatory in anyway, I'm sure this has taken an unfathomable amount of time to set up and operate the way it does. I just thought it worth saying that with the price increase, an increase of people utilizing the bot could help as well. And for that to happen, to attract new comers, it shouldn't be this difficult to get started. This being said, thanks for the thought out post and doing what you can to try and help people get started.
I don't really want to get too involved in this but I had to pick this apart because I felt you unknowingly agreed with the OPs post. I think this was what the OP was trying to say. I think OP's point was that all the other Buddy bots 'just work' and this one doesn't, and that people don't want to invest extra time into a bot they pay the same amount for as the one next door. Extensive an API? That's not what it is and you know it. It's a less-developed, almost open source application in comparison to the other bots. The only reason it is this way is because the amount of work gone into making it user-friendly is less than the other bots. So it portrays the image of being more open to user modification and additions - that is all. Can you do more with it than other bots? Yes. you might be right - but most of the time that isn't an end user desire. Such as this case.
