The Buddy Store...Worst Idea the Buddy Team has ever had?

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As i already explained here https://www.thebuddyforum.com/thebuddystore/174199-project-store.html , it is not possible to offer you a Lifetime Bot and make it an Mercedes S600 for 25 EUR.

 

Really doubt the users requested anything of the sort and how does the store protect users? Developers/sellers yeah, but users?
As for the lack of force, that's reliant on people's better nature which is something that should never be relied on. Eventually we're going to have to choose between learning to code, shelling out money, or using shoddy profiles/plugins

 

Listen guys, no one needs to user the shop. Its an additional offer and a method getting extra stuff for your bot if you want it, without the need to search for stuff all over the internet.
The bot can do what it could do before and I also do not see an issue if DEVs who invested hundreds of hours developing something turns that into money.
Its a question of mentality of some users who want to get everything for free.
Buddy Store is open a couple of days, lets see how it goes. If it turns out that there are issues with it, we will fix it. If it turns out that it changes the community completly into a way we do not want to see it, we will also take action.
Prices will also regulate themself. If a 3rd Party Product is worth 40$ people will buy it.
Personally I buy ALL of my software, not matter what it costs. If I need it for my work, I pay for it. Everything else is STEALING!
I also like the idea farming with a botbase that is 40$ and that not everyone has. Makes the outcome for me even higher if its not for free and not everyone is using it.
Last but not least if a free product had issues in the past, you could kindly ask the developer if he would fix the issues and that could have take weeks.
Now I paid for a product and pressure on the dev to help me and fix stuff is much higher.

A lot of things are still for free, and you can still create your own stuff. HB Botbases and profiles stay free and 3rd Party Products where already sold in the past, only on other pages and not here.
The only thing - in my opinion - that has changed is the way to get stuff, it's much easier now.
No need to remember SVN logins or webpage logins from 3rd Party Pages to get an update and a lot more advantages for the users and devs.

If you like it - USE IT. If you do not like to support it, use the system like before!

 

Last attempt at reason. Not going to get into a fight with staff, not stupid.

EDIT: Posted in this response because I said I wasn't going post more.

Yeah and in my travels looking up topics about the cash shop you are the only user I've come across that is actually happy about this. You my friend are what is known as a whale.

 

I'm a user and I requested it. I've emailed and pm'd staff about it before a few times.
How does it protect users? Well, if I'm googling for a botbase from some dude I've never heard of.. and it's using a dll.. I'd be skeptic to use it. Whereas on the store every new revision has to go through an approval process. They make sure there's nothing evil in the code. If something is in the store - I'm safe to use it. Nor do I have to sign up for crap and give them my email and other info blindly trusting not only them, but their payment systems.

Free or paid idc. Tbh most botbases, routines, profiles etc that are worth it are already paid elsewhere. Stick with free singular or bgbuddy if you'd like - they aren't going anywhere. It works. Tyrael is still free too.
I just prefer some other routines myself for some classes and have no problem paying for their hard work. Especially when I profit off of it either in game by pretending I'm just THAT amazing of a healer, or by real life monetary value.

I'm all for supporting developers when I can. I have a legit windows 8 os, office, visual studio ultimate 2013, resharper.. I don't see how that's any different than supporting people that spend hundreds of hours developing and maintaining things for a bot. You pick and choose your tools - HB is no different. Resharper increased my productivity, as did BGFarmer from Millz. I paid for both. I could use the built in one, I could pray someone released open source, I could learn to code my own, or I could pay. That was true 6 months ago and is true still.

There's an open source world for software in general, just like there is here. Sure some more devs will choose to switch to paid models (than already have on their own websites). Some will not. I don't see a problem with that. In fact I see the quality of 3rd party software increasing considerably. Even products that were elsewhere have more motivation because now word is out on the official forums; not only did their potential user base just expand a bunch, they can focus on developing the product instead of maintaining a website, svn, and auth / payment systems.


But hey! I guess only time will tell :3

 

I would just like to offer my two cents. I think a lot about this is based on fear. I will admit, I am in the same boat. The fear is that free will no longer be available. If every botbase, plugin, and profile creator can make some sort of money, then what is left to the community that is not able to create their own botbase, plugin, or profile? Also, will this deter HB development? Why add more functionality when Plugin A or Botbase A has this functionality already? Afterall, I would assume HB is taking a percentage, even if it is small, for facilitating the sale. As someone mentioned earlier, there is no subscription for HB, so new revenue is by new sales of the bot or donations. Once these slow down, any good business knows that they have to reinvent themselves to create cash flow.

Lets face it, profiles of today, that are free, may not be valid 6 months or a year from now. Will there be more free ones? Sure. Will they be somewhat bug free? Probably not. That is the risk you always take using something that is free.

If you want to sell your product, be my guest. If you want to overprice your product, enjoy. You will probably make a decent amount from those that have the expendable cash on hand and have no patience to wait until the market levels the prices. Time will tell. Time may also discourage. Not to try and get into hypothetical situations, but what is the incentive once sales drop off? Will we still be receiving once a day, week, month updates? Or will the developer suddenly become silent?

There are way to many "what-if" situations that no one, not even the HB site creators could possibly answer. Time is going to be key here.

Lastly, I dont agree with this change nor do I disagree. I am not a contributor and have been using all free stuff for years. I do not have the time to contribute in a useful manner. I appreciate all that has been done in the past by developers of HB, plugins, botbases, and profiles. I only hope that the fear is not real and that everything continues as before. If people want to make money as they did before selling stuff privately and now on the BuddyStore, more power to them.

 

I also support this idea. However, I do hope we don't end up like another bot for League of Legends. But I have faith in this community more than I have at the other one, so I do not see that happening.

 

Actually, BotOperator, we are being forced to use the shop. The bot doesn't ship with any questing profiles out of the box. So if we want to quest, we must use the shop to obtain questing profiles. Even if we don't have to spend money on these profiles, we still have to use the store.

You pay for all your software? That must suck spending money on freeware so you don't feel like you're stealing.

 

It is not true, Buddy profiles are still available via svn https://subversion.assembla.com/svn/buddy-profiles.honorbuddy/trunk/ (source code for Singular is also available)

 

Incoming wall of text.

First and foremost I can see both sides of the fence on this as I have been the person on the other side and not a community developer.

I myself only gained community dev status less than 6 months ago, I would call myself one of the babies of the group.

Now, like Bossland and BotOperator have said before. This was requested by users and developers alike. We (comm devs)were asked what we thought about it and gave our opinions. Alot of us had concerns and were worried about how people would take it. Fast forward some. The store is here! A lot of us are excited about it and are scrambling to provide the best service we can to people who are using our free products as well as Paid ones. I myself have both free and paid products available and provide support for another product. Stress has ensued this weekend let me tell you.

Now lets rewind some. We (comm devs) have signed a legally binding contract with Bossland GmbH for our ability to put any paid product on the store. This not only protects them it protects every user who uses the store. We have to apply to be a community developer. Our products have to be approved by the BuddyStaff. Our products have to be supported by us as we are contractually obligated to do. I know ryfto said something about someone just stopping support for a product. That is fine and dandy except in theory we can have a lawsuit filed against us for this and would have to appear in court in Germany if I am not mistaken(do not quote me on this). Either way you slice it I feel as though I speak for most Community Developers out there, we are not trying to do a get rich quick scheme here, if we were this would not be the place.

Now let me talk from the user side.

I have been around botting for a long time longer than most people on the forums. I started in EverQuest the original EQ botting after about expansion bazillion and one i was tired with EQ and moved on to wow. I used Glider and someone to this day still have my account that Glider was used on(cheers for me) I found HB and thought wow what an amazing bot this is I purchased it and lurked on the forums never creating an account cause why would i need one when I can just leach stuff have made for FREE. I mean FOR FREE i can use awesome stuff people made who know a lot more than me and earn 733t goldzors and ROFLstomp people in wow......So i thought. 2010 I decided to be a little active and post some as why night i had been botting with HB for a few months i may have had some questions and contributions. I lurked for a while longer still leaching profiles and routines. Finally I became a lot more interested in Botting and playing multiple accounts at the same time. CLU came around as a combat routine and I had my real first chance to help give back to the community. Granted I had 0 coding skills but I told the CLU team I was there to do whatever I could. So...I tested....and tested....and tested every chance I could get to help improve the routine. Time went on PureRotation came out and I decided I was going to learn to code I was going to help. So I dove in headfirst, I helped make quite a few of the rotations fluid a lot of the healing I did my best to help optimize.

I gave back....I gave back to the community and it felt good. So I took my knowledge I had gained and tried to find something that the community really needed. I found ProfessionBuddy and the lack of profiles for professions. So I started. I release one and was happy I released another and was even happier. Then I realized how much time i had in them and how little time I spent doing what I used to enjoy. Log in to the forums see what issues came up fix the profiles update sit and wait for people to complain. For people to whine and complain that what I was providing for them was bad that I needed to fix it. I NEEDED to fix it, I am doing this for you, for people to use to help them and it began to feel like a burden. A burden to help and to give back to the community.

In the past year I have seen this whole community become ungrateful for the services people who do not get paid to help provide. There are thousands upon thousands of profiles for HonorBuddy that people provide for free, that hundreds of people use and yet a handful will thank them or donate to them to show them how appreciative they are. On any given day you can look at the bottom of the Main forum page and look how many users are logged on and how many guests....imagine the guest count every day are people just leaching, not even thanking someone for what they are helping to achieve.

We are all here for one reason on this forum. That is to Bot WoW. How you do it is your own choice, but I know how my style has changed and the people who have influenced that style are amazing people.

I just want everyone to think before you open your mouth about a developer or a staff member or for that matter any person you reply to on a post. There is someone on the other end who is a person, who has their own issues and comes to these forums to get away from things for a bit. We all play a game and should be thankful that we can bot it the way we do.

 

You pretty much nailed it.

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I totally get where users are coming from. They paid once for a superior product, and are now learning that many of the addons that actually make the product superior require an additional purchase for what they should have already owned. Furthermore, this sets a precedent that all future code can be done for profit, making contributors less likely to release what they create for free. I'm not trying to refute those points in any way.

What I want people to understand though is the ridiculous level of value they're still getting out of the product. They expect hundreds of man-hours of updates, additions, and new logic for free beyond their initial purchase. The world doesn't work that way. Modern bot bases, combat routines, and plugins have become complex enough that they have practically branched into their own projects. I've watched these developers put 8+ hours a day into these projects, so it feels a little pathetic when people complain that the developers ask for ANYTHING in return. I actually believe that developers would be within their bounds to ask for a subscription fee, but that's another debate entirely.

The community has enjoyed free (and privately low-priced) products for a long time, which makes it frustrating for people who have become used to that standard. That said, personally speaking I feel like the currently available prices in the store (which some see as largely overpriced) are what they should have been all along. Here's the cool thing though: If you don't feel like products are worth that much, don't buy it! If nobody is buying the product, then the price will naturally come down. What you guys worry about though is that people actually WILL buy it... and that's because people actually DO value it at that price even when you don't. And unfortunately, when you're not willing to spend as much as everyone else in the community, you'll miss out -- life's like that.

 

It is not working for me at all... there are just NO profiles in HB. i open my HB, i click load, HB store.. and nothing.. at all. While i enabled Brodiemans 3 days trial. Thanks guys. This is exactly what i payed 30eurs for. Great update. Im so glad!

 

Tyrael will remain free at least .

 

Your bot base is not showing aswell.. D:

 

may be he reply but i agree with first post , in the past i allready use Cr from Weischeiber, what's the difference since his fisrt CR, synapse and the new one ? just a good reason to get cash ?

 

Your analogy is bad and you should feel bad!
Try this analogy:
Amazon allows 3rd parties to sell their wares on amazon.com. If you buy something from a 3rd party through amazon.com and it is of bad quality, Amazon.com is FULLY RESPONSIBLE. Same goes for the buddy store: If you buy something from a 3rd party through the buddy store, the buddy store is fully responsible. And that is a dangerous place to be in.....

 

Yes you are partially correct. We are contractually obligated to provide a working product. So the developer of said product or in your reference the 3rd party seller would be obligated to produce a product of quality and not crap.

 

I haven't played WoW in some time but I have to say I was a little weirded out when I first bought some of the better CCs. Having to buy from some random person that says they will give me a product that will only be useful for as long as that person is willing to maintain the project is a bit un-nerving.

As a non-programmer and someone that didn't really want to buy something somewhere random I think it will make these product more accessable to all and hopefully will causes the prices to come down a bit. As long as the buddy team has a way to keep the work alive if the person decides to give it up that is a huge step in the correct direction. There is nothing worse than spending ~$100 for a CC to have the person later decide they don't want to keep it updated anymore.

 

I can see it from your viewpoint, but you should also consider that you're more or less paying for the work they've already done -- not the work they will do in the future. This is personally why I believe projects that require maintenance should be monthly fees and not just one-time payments. A subscription plan is a lot more straight forward and easy for the buyer to understand. Should either party decide they no longer wish to continue, you just stop making payments and everyone's happy. Honorbuddy is fairly unique in that we are largely a community of single payments, and we're fortunate for it. However, I think that has led to some misunderstandings about the value of the work that the community developers create.

 

I would like to point out and voice a few things.
To save a few precious moments I will confess I am not a dev. I have no coding skills, nothing special I am a dummy.

First of all I would like to point out I see many of really great questions and concerns this leaves me feeling even more trusted with the community here, I haven't been on many forums but over the years they add up. This kind of concern is good for all parties involved. I love statistics and I love social science and things of that nature.

This tug of war between who is right and what is wrong has been gone at it from the wrong point of view or approach. If we had all of the information laid out on the table from all parties who have any interest or concern a better educated opinion could be stated. For instance I'm curious on exactly how much money do so called private profiles pull in each year to each developer. This kind of data is important to know so you can get a feel for other possible questions.

I've searched the internet high and low because when I'm not casually botting my accounts I'm playing games like RUST or DOTA2. Now rust is a frustrating game when your playing it totaly legit and your pretty sure that your just paranoia is kicking in but in all actuality it's true foreshadowing of a player using aimbot. After enough frustrating game play I decided to go and track down all the bots I could and I actually found some interesting things that many of these " companies " all share. Many of them are only renting or leasing the program in sessions up to sp many months. I know this is different then what we are surrounded by but even several other mmo game styles are following this trend I'm not saying it's right or wrong but it's trending for sure.

Another fact I wanted to add in is something I truly believe deep down inside and that's community. Each person including the "dummy " ( me ) needs to play his part. This social phenomenon happens specially here for me through testing and playing with each profile, spending an unnecessary amounts of time thinking of ways to improve on the ideas so it can be stronger build better developed.
Many folks may continue the support of these ideas and thoughts flowing back to developers to feed in actuality their own twisted addiction ( like mine ) the curious conclusion would be which scenario becomes reality? Does the community just stop giving out suggestions or ideas? Is it a mix? Does this limit the flow of ideas at all? Should ideas be sold? In the end how the community feels about not just the community but also their own neighbors will decide in when honorbuddy becomes another extinct and uncategorized beast they lays of sediment and other internet debris.
All I'm really saying among all the bullshit I can fling is that some of the community made these developers, some respect them so much that they continuously try and find ways to improve on original ideas and work. If not for this community where would it be?
And again I'm not saying that this is right or wrong or that there won't always be trials and free testing and giveaway or whatever it may be. I'm just saying, as long as we are considered a community we are all apart of this. Many friendships have developed here many deeper then people you see on a regular basis away from the computer. The last thing I want to see is this place disappear over a decision that wasn't thought out as well as it was eloquently proposed.
I shouldn't have to address the obvious reasons behind that.

Another thing to keep in mind is world of warcraft will not last forever, not everyone in this community will sell gold or account or whatever. Some of us use this casually. Which means when world of warcraft is done you could see a dramatic trend in dynamic shifts.

At any rate I felt I cared enough to write a book with no obvious agenda other the. What's best for the community that I actually enjoy being apart of. With that in mind I'll leave you with a story to contemplate at your own amusement level.


A guy told me a story about his highschool highlights one time. He was telling me due to his shear size he was nominated to become the guy who held the otherside of the wheel chair. Backing up for just a min, the school had no elevator, no ramps, no ease of access. A guy broke both legs and at this point in time no one volunteered. The class actually organized the whole situation for the guy, this is community. Later I would joke with him about what kind of an asshole he truly was to prevent him from going on to become the worlds leading physicist.

You can take whatever you want from this story, criticize whatever you will and however you want.