Artisan Archive
Thread: If macro sampling is so wrong...
Lairs and POIs cause no build areas around them. If you can clear them - you should be able to build (if the area is flat) - but there are also areas that are no build for no apparent reason.
Placing harvesters can be really tough, I agree. But, macro sampling is going to get nerfed, and probably take hand sampling as we know it down with it.
Bianca Minola
How do you suppose they'll go about it? Nerfing it that is. I don't do it. I tried once and it sucked. I'd rather build a harvester and log off 
I don't think they'll nerf the macro side of it - more likely they'll raise the time between samples to the point that noone will sample unless they must.
I would like to see some system where you can only pull up a certain amount of an Item at a time. If you could only pull100 of a resource, and then you must change resources, macro sampling would be killed. If you needed more than 100, you could sample 100, change resources sample 1, can change back to sample more.
Bianca Minola
I've already made a post about this. The solution is easy! Simply make AFK dependent on mouse movement or actual keyboard input instead of in-game commands. This way, if someone has a looping macro running and go to bed, they go AFK after a while, and then get booted.
No unfair disadvantages to those NOT exploiting it, but nips the whole exploit in the bud. Bam!
Also keeps the looping macro functionality in place for those of us who find it useful, which I do.
-----Fuzzy Animator
I hate macros. Probably because I' macro challenged, but I like "doing" the game. I hope they don't nerf hand sampling, it's an integral part so far.
There have been places I got that "not permitted" thing, but just moved on.
BiancaMinola wrote:
And if you read the LIVE Dev posts, you would notice that Holo said AFK macroing was against the intent of the game.
I tend to believe that he is the one who would know what is intended, and what isn't.
Bianca Minola
That's nice, glad to hear the devs doing 180's on every issue. Just remove the artisan from the game then, they serve no purpose.
OK, I'm not sure if you are just being reactionary, of if you want to discuss the issue.
I approach the problem from'WHY do people AFK sample?' And Ibelieve that the answer is becaused it requires no effort andproduces great rewards. If that is the answer then I have no problem with them just killing AFK sampling all together.
If the answer is because sampling is boring - I feel the same way. But you don't have to AFK sample, you can buy the resources.
If the answer is because harvesters are inefficent, or too time consuming to maintain, I'm closer to agreeing, but I think the problem that needs to be addressed is the harvesters.
Why do you AFK sample? If it's to get a leg up without actually playing the game - you get no sympathy from me when it's removed.
Bianca Minola
That's nice, glad to hear the devs doing 180's on every issue. Just remove the artisan from the game then, they serve no purpose.
I'm glad the the developers can re-think their position on issues that were not as apparent in the beta. Its the happmark of a flexible mind that can respond to changing situations.
I won't give everyone a lesson on server planning but think of it this way: a particular server can only support a finite number of client connections. Now the servers can effectively support more players than the max number of client connections because not all players are going to be on at the same time, its a statistical game. When a player never logs off they effectively remove a slot from distribution which means that the total number of players that a server can support has been reduced. This isn't a one to one thing. Removing that one slot from distribution reduces the number of players the server can support by more than one. This means that if there are enough AFK samplers or others who don't log off when they are not playing the number of players the server can support is drastically reduced and Sony has to buy more servers and bandwith and then pass the const on to you.
Everyone has been whining about server stability. Have any of you considered that when they were designing the thing they probably didn't sit down and say "Lets design it with the assumption that half the user population will never log off. Ever." Since all but the last part of beta wasn't open to the great unwashedand the servers bounced regularlythe full impact of a herd of AFK samplers wasn't fully expressed.
If it were me I'd drop the macro string lengthdown to 512 bytes and drop the /load command from the clients altogether. That still leaves space for simple and useful macros and deals with the macro issue altogether.
Null Tensor
You wanna know why I AFK sample? Because I can. What's the difference if I spend 30mins doing 4 destroy missions, and set up 4 harvesters for 12 hours and log off, or if I spend 12.5 hours AFK sampling, both while I'm at work? If I set up harvesters, I might get more resources, but it's EASIER to just set up my AFK sample and go to work. I don't have the goddamn time all the 18yr old college students that live in the dorms do; I have a 2-10pm job, and have to get up at 7am to drive my girlfriend to work so I can have the car to drive to work later, so I set up the AFK sample at 2am when I go to bed and let it run till noon the next day when I get to play for an hour, and set it up again when I go to work for 8 hours, and get to play for another 2-3 when I get home. Granted I can play on the weekends, but most of that time is spend grinding away because I can't sell a single **edit** piece of armor because I can't make chitin yet because I can't make the panels and I can't afford to buy them yet because I can't sell a single **edit** piece of armor, etc. Armorcrafting needs some serious work, nobody can refute that. Look at the forums if you don't want to believe me.
Fact is, there really is no benefit to AFK sampling. I have 10 lots; small house (1), factory (2), 2 wind generators and 3 chem harvesters. I have 3 lots left, so I could go hunting for a decent steel spot, which I did, and you know what I found? IT WAS IN BESTINE! Answer me this, how am I supposed to gather THAT resource? Hmm? Oh, well I could AFK SAMPLE! Der, don't be an idiot about this; I'm not going to NOT gather that resource because the jackasses at SOE have decided what IS and ISN'T an "intended" way of gaming. I'm not cheating, and I'm not doing anything that the game doesn't allow me to do with its OWN tools and utilities. There's NO WAY I can set up a harvester for that resource without wasting thousands of credits that I don't have and tons of time flying around the planet, or to other planets, to find a resource that I could just sample in my home town. It's not worth it. And I'm not going to do it just because it will make you happy.
And I resent you even thinking that I do this to get a "leg up" on other ppl or to be l337. I'm not playing this game to be better than anybody, which should be very **edit** obvious in my going armorcrafting over weaponsmith. I'd get an even bigger leg up if I travelled around and set up harvesters instead of AFK sampling. Untill the devs can 1) not put the highest % of a resource in an unbuildable area or 2) make harvesters MORE attractive than AFK sampling (mind you, not nerf the **edit** out of sampling), then I will continue to AFK sample, and believe there's NOTHING wrong with it.
Make a GOOD point, and I'll actually give you some merit.
- Cry me a river.
- Read my posts about server sizing and resource consumption.
Thank god they put practice crafting into the game. I was having nightmares about what the artisan grinders were doing to the database indexes. At least then the little monkeys hitting the cocaine lever won't be hitting the databases.
Null Tensor
Have any of you considered that when they were designing the thing they probably didn't sit down and say "Lets design it with the assumption that half the user population will never log off. Ever."
This is just stupid. This is an MMO of STAR WARS! What the hell did you think, that this game would have like 1400 people a server like Camelot? Get real, and get some common sense. They KNEW it would explode like it did, and the reason Eclipse was so crappy was not because of AFK sampling. That server has had issuses since day one, and there's AFK sampling on EVERY server, not just that one.
And don't you even DARE bring up that stupid ass argument of server slots. I'm still paying to play this game, and in SOE's eyes, an account = an account. You are NOT special, and neither am I. If I choose to play that way, whether I was actually at the keyboard or not makes no difference. You gonna tell all the loser 17-18 year olds that don't have a job and live at home still that they should log out once every few hours just to be nice?
Using your own logic on taking up server connections, I'll say this. There's guilds that set up cities. Player cities take up HUGE spaces in the game, and when all those ppl log off, there structures are still there. If that spot is the highest % concentration of a resource, I am now unable to set up a harvester there, as is the rest of the server. Do I bitch about that? No, I just sample there instead of setting up a harvester.
SOE dug their own graves with the systems they put in. If you can't build a harvester, according to some people, you just simply shouldn't be able to sample at all. Blow me. As I've said before, due to the removal of schematic revocation, there is no longer a use or place in this game for the Artisan. Remove them, or give them a use. Period.
The gathering of resources in this game was a good idea that wasn't thought out at ALL. This is the company that bought you EQ for god's sake, I refuse to believe that they simply couldn't contemplate that people would AFK sample, just destroy harvesters instead of keeping them up, or the barrage of other stupid ass obvious "exploits" that people thought up.