Dancer Archive

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Ihareo wrote:

Rayill, all your answers assume only Entertainers AFK.

My whole point is that the ability to go AFK is one that all professions use, and eliminating AFK will ricochet through the game like that speedball from MIB.

Now apply all your solutions to a player with his/her guild in the deathwatch bunker, or fighting the deathstar, or the corvette, or even just hunting in a hostile wilderness. The player gets logged out, and the whole team suffers, rather than just setting a simple defence macro and doing any of the things above.

I repeat AGAIN, removing AFK solves one big problem, and causes several bigger ones.

There is NO other MMORPG that is still active that boots an AFK player. There is however a few dead ones that did.

Another thing to concider is that there is a line between play and work. That is the line SWG crosses on several points. What I'm saying is that causing players even more grief by forcing everyone to relog everythime they stand up, all because a minority abuse the system will push that work/play line even further into the work category.

Message Edited by Ihareo on 12-29-2004 09:45 AM

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Ihareo wrote:

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Petronela wrote:
Ok, I don’t care if I get flamed or not but I really am getting very tired of this “AFK entertainers are needed because of the supply and demand” BS.
I can’t even begin to count how many times I have danced in a group with sometimes 5 or 6 ATK masters yet many times hours go by before any of us is asked for single buff.
For that matter before any of us is even noticed as a player rather then NPC.
And I don’t want to hear the “off peak hours” reasoning either, because I play off peak hours many times and guess what, so are other entertainers.

I have always been a supported of enforced AFK status idea, but I would also like the /dump command to be tied to it.
System finds you AFK, all your macros get dumped and you get booted to character screen where you belong.
If you are able to heal or not for the 15 minutes before the system kicks you out is irrelevant.

I really don’t understand why so many people are “crying wolf” about lack of entertainers to heal them if AFK plaque is cured.
Why not give us a chance first and if we fail then cry about it?

Deli’ah
*is having a really bad day*

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In short? We HAD a chance in the beginning, and FAILED. And now, with an even smaller subscriber base than in the beginning, it looks pretty grim.

You are opposed to the idea that AFK ability is needed, provide a solution that cures EVERY SINGLE PROBLEM THAT AFKing SOLVES.

AFK ability is meant to be a buffer in case Life happens. Take for example this little gem: if an AFK person get's bumped aoutomatically, every subscriber who has children just got cut out of the game. That's a pretty huge chunk. Why you ask? Because when your kids need you, it isn't alwase for under five minuites! And what if that person is in the middle of hostile territory? Guess what, next time the player logs back in, their DEAD.

The BAN AFKing!! War cry DOES NOT TAKE THESE THINGS INTO ACCOUNT! You only see the AFK buffbots. I understand why you don't want them here, I agree. But to ban AFK ability whole hoc will create way bigger problems than it solves.

Here for your reading pleasure is a short list of things that take longer than it would take for the computer to boot you, but not so long that it would make a huge difference in game terms (yes this is a repost)

eat a Sandwitch

Use the resrtoom

answer a phone call

change a diaper

answer the door

check the mail

take out the trash

hug your children

say goodbye to a loved one as they head off to work

take a stretch

restart your computer

make lunch for your kids

send an email

check the forums

start the laundty machiene

start the dishwasher

turn off the lights

pick up the livingroom

put a bandaid on a hurt finger

get a glass of water

sing a lullabye to your children

say hello to a friend

make a phonecall

write a forum post

check the forums

send out a general tell to the planetary chat

clean up a spill

pick up a take out dinner

have a short argument

read you children a bed time story

unsubsscribe to City of Heros (because they do not allow recursive macros )

put a bill in the mail

do a short homeworlk assignment

stick your son in the corner for pushing his sister down

prepare a short meal

suffer from a bout of morning sickness

brush your teeth

find you son's shoes

call customer service

check your calender

hook up your joystick (for JTL yay! )

hang up the laundry

check the rulebook

scan a drawing

re-rout your router

clip your toenails

clip your fingernails

comb your hair

take a quick shower

or check on your kids 'cause they're being WAY too quiet.

Now that's a small list of things that ww will no longer be able to do if we are forced offline every time we go AFK.

The fact is, when you think of AFK, you think of the buffbots spamming "PLZ HEAL ME!" and "TIPZ PLZ!!"

You aren't think about all the ramifications. All the little things and ways it can backfire.

As I said over and over I am all for solutions that make every responcible player happy, but so far what is at the top of this list is the best possible solution.

It PUNISHES the Buffbots, and DOESN'T HURT ANYONE who is being responcible or just needs to do any of the things on that list.

Message Edited by Ihareo on 12-29-2004 08:20 AM

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I’m not exactly sure of the time frame here, so if someone wishes to correct me please go ahead.
But there always was, is and I’m sure will be a reasonable time window before system find you idle and boots you.
If I remember correctly the game does not boot anyone the moment their fingertips leave the keyboard.
If someone needs to be gone longer than that why bother even trying to play and not just log off and come back when RL permits?
We all have RL and I have absolutely no problems with putting mine way ahead of the game, any game.
It’s not as if I’m forced to do any special rain-dance to log back on, I just log back on when I have the time to play.
*shrugs*

Deli'ah

I really doubt driving is what kicks you out afk. Perhaps its lag from everyone else being afk using bandwidth on their part or yours. And if your out somewhere hunting and have to go put your daughter to bed its a better idea to sit and log out in a safe place. It would be your own fault for not being at your keyboard when you were attacked. Now if your child needs to go to bed you know what time it is and can plan in game accordingly to move to a safe location and log out the proper way.

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DeathsEgo wrote:
I really doubt driving is what kicks you out afk. Perhaps its lag from everyone else being afk using bandwidth on their part or yours. And if your out somewhere hunting and have to go put your daughter to bed its a better idea to sit and log out in a safe place. It would be your own fault for not being at your keyboard when you were attacked. Now if your child needs to go to bed you know what time it is and can plan in game accordingly to move to a safe location and log out the proper way.

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No driving doesn't boot you.

But if you commit the crime of not doing anything during a cross planet drive you WILL be booted.

Message Edited by Ihareo on 12-30-2004 08:32 AM

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rayill wrote:

If you just hit your button for Auto-run to head towards your harvestors but don't sit there to guide it can log you out for inactivity. However, if you are actively guiding and you get booted, that is typically server side lag or some other issue that is causing you to get booted. Well, I could be bugged on that note. Wouldn't be the first time.

I still hold that if you are not actively in the game playing then it's not the game's fault it read you as being AFK. If you are honestly grinding in your house on a crafting profession (and I've done my fair share of crafting professions), then you won't get booted for inactivity. Why? Because you are actively booting the mouse.

Just to clarify somthing, I was booted while I took a break to post somthing here (all that clicking make my hands hurt *pout*) and I forgot to set my NoBoot macro,soin the space it took me to write two or three paragraphs, I was booted.

I know how to use recursive macros, and yes, they can be an asset for crafting if you are just grinding in practice mode. However, you should still be doing something in game to actively work. If you are not, then you are being inactive, even if a program is running. Reading the forums and answering posts is not playing the game. Therefore, you can either be in game working to become an Armorsmith or you can be reading the forums and replying to posts.

I beg to differ. One can very easily craft for ten or fifteen minuites, then alt tab out and come here to read and post. I do it all the time. I'm not even close to the fastest crafter, but I get the job done.

I understand that people are busy, but leaving in AFK playstyles will not make the game better. Any reason that people go AFK means that there is a reason for them not to be there. If they are just quickly getting a drink or running to the bathroom, they won't be gone long enough where this is an issue. Any other reason is a reason to not really have to worry about it. If the system is logging them out for being inactive for too long, then it is trying to actively free up server resources. If more of the truly AFK people were booted, you may not see the ones who are actually active being booted due to lag issues. Load times would be drastically reduced because your computer wouldn't have to process 100 afk toons spamming and skill-animating in one spot for hours on end in locations. The minor problems that this would cause are almost moot at this point.

Did you even read my solution or did you just hop on the bandwagon? It would elimitant the AFK playstyle by removing all benifits. It would ALSO take care of thrid party programs by searching for actual key strokes rather than simulated strokes, so the only way to bypass it would be to physically be at the keyboard. People can leave their character where they are and do a few things, then come back and resume, and get NO reward for the time they were AFK.

Hundreds of people are not going to clod the cantinas AFKing for NO benifit. Buffbots who can't buff, can't recieve tips, can't get XP, can't speak and can't loot are not going to stay there. And even if they did, they wouldn't affect anyone, because a player who isn't getting buffed, isn't going to keep trying at the same bot, he'll move on to a differen't one.

And the best part is, this solution ONLY Affects AFK play stylers, rather than the alternative which affects EVERYONE, especially those who aren't guilty of Buff botting.

I'm not saying that your ideas are not good. If the developers had thought of something similar over a year ago, then I think the ideas would be truly meritable. However, at this late point, I don't think what you suggest would actually help anyone. It would allow exploiters to continue to hide under the AFK guise. I'm not saying all AFK people are exploiters, but there areexploiters that are hiding behind that tag.

Thank you for that. And if you can explain to me how in the world it would NOT stop AFKers, please tell me, because I am very dedicated to finding a good, solid solution to the problem that doesn't involve punishing the entire player base.

Just to recap, AFKers would get:

NO money,

NO xp,

NO looting,

NO speaking,

And this is only effecting people that are NOT at the keyboard, so the rest of us are still in the green.

Where is this plan not stopping AFKers?

Also please don't come back with the "removing recursive Macros" will get rid of them Because they WON'T and here's why.

1. I can MacGuyver somthing to keep hitting my keyboard out of kitchen items.

2. I can program my Joystick to activate keyboard buttons.

3. Third party programs are virtually untraceable, redily available, and would be unnaffected by the removal of recursive Macros.

4. A player can write a 3 hour macro in about 5 minuites that's NON recursive. All the have to do is meander by every once in a while and restart it.

To counter your immediate counters,

1. I am not very bright, and I'm not very motivated, so if I can do it, so can almost everybody else.

2. What are they ging to do, remove Joysticks? There went all the JTL players! Bye bye!

3. I know they can ban you for using thrid party programs. But if they can't catch or stop or punish the guilds that use the SWG hack program that lets to walk faster than a swoop and gives you 10 combat seconds for every 1 actual combat second (I know where to download it, and no I'm not telling anyone where it is, that's cheating of the worst kind), what makes you think they can catch, stop or punish the people that are using the simple KeyStroke mapper programs?

4. They can also reduce the pause time of macro commands, that is true, but you don't need to have long pauses to write athree hour macro.

I apologize if this post sounds angry I really am. However I am getting extremely frustrated with the sheer amount of people that oppose my ideas for a better game with no reason given. Or worse, the ones who tell me their reason for the opposition, but their reason is directly counter to somthng said IN the post, so that reason would be null and void if they had read the whole post. Another group (not here mind you) is the ones who oppose an idea just to preserve the status quo. Not that they like the status quo, but they are terrified of change, even change for the better.

Anyway, like I said. If anyone can point out just how it would fail to stop AFK stylers, please tell me. I don't mean repeating the same 'It wouldn't do anything!!' line, because that give no information, and speaks of somone who is too lazy to think things through.

Padtai actually had a good start, but there has been no follow through. But she is rite, if they could make the auto healing in Med Centers and Cantina's more widely known, and a little faster, but not so fast as to eclipse Entertainers, that would take care of the need to be able to have entertainers at all times. The problem is, at what point do auto healing facilities eclipse Entertainers?

Message Edited by Ihareo on 12-30-2004 08:49 AM

Message Edited by Ihareo on 12-30-2004 09:13 AM

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Ihareo wrote:

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rayill wrote:

If you just hit your button for Auto-run to head towards your harvestors but don't sit there to guide it can log you out for inactivity. However, if you are actively guiding and you get booted, that is typically server side lag or some other issue that is causing you to get booted. Well, I could be bugged on that note. Wouldn't be the first time.

I still hold that if you are not actively in the game playing then it's not the game's fault it read you as being AFK. If you are honestly grinding in your house on a crafting profession (and I've done my fair share of crafting professions), then you won't get booted for inactivity. Why? Because you are actively booting the mouse.

Just to clarify somthing, I was booted while I took a break to post somthing here (all that clicking make my hands hurt *pout*) and I forgot to set my NoBoot macro,soin the space it took me to write two or three paragraphs, I was booted.

I know how to use recursive macros, and yes, they can be an asset for crafting if you are just grinding in practice mode. However, you should still be doing something in game to actively work. If you are not, then you are being inactive, even if a program is running. Reading the forums and answering posts is not playing the game. Therefore, you can either be in game working to become an Armorsmith or you can be reading the forums and replying to posts.

I beg to differ. One can very easily craft for ten or fifteen minuites, then alt tab out and come here to read and post. I do it all the time. I'm not even close to the fastest crafter, but I get the job done.

I understand that people are busy, but leaving in AFK playstyles will not make the game better. Any reason that people go AFK means that there is a reason for them not to be there. If they are just quickly getting a drink or running to the bathroom, they won't be gone long enough where this is an issue. Any other reason is a reason to not really have to worry about it. If the system is logging them out for being inactive for too long, then it is trying to actively free up server resources. If more of the truly AFK people were booted, you may not see the ones who are actually active being booted due to lag issues. Load times would be drastically reduced because your computer wouldn't have to process 100 afk toons spamming and skill-animating in one spot for hours on end in locations. The minor problems that this would cause are almost moot at this point.

Did you even read my solution or did you just hop on the bandwagon? It would elimitant the AFK playstyle by removing all benifits. It would ALSO take care of thrid party programs by searching for actual key strokes rather than simulated strokes, so the only way to bypass it would be to physically be at the keyboard. People can leave their character where they are and do a few things, then come back and resume, and get NO reward for the time they were AFK.

Hundreds of people are not going to clod the cantinas AFKing for NO benifit. Buffbots who can't buff, can't recieve tips, can't get XP, can't speak and can't loot are not going to stay there. And even if they did, they wouldn't affect anyone, because a player who isn't getting buffed, isn't going to keep trying at the same bot, he'll move on to a differen't one.

And the best part is, this solution ONLY Affects AFK play stylers, rather than the alternative which affects EVERYONE, especially those who aren't guilty of Buff botting.

I'm not saying that your ideas are not good. If the developers had thought of something similar over a year ago, then I think the ideas would be truly meritable. However, at this late point, I don't think what you suggest would actually help anyone. It would allow exploiters to continue to hide under the AFK guise. I'm not saying all AFK people are exploiters, but there areexploiters that are hiding behind that tag.

Thank you for that. And if you can explain to me how in the world it would NOT stop AFKers, please tell me, because I am very dedicated to finding a good, solid solution to the problem that doesn't involve punishing the entire player base.

Just to recap, AFKers would get:

NO money,

NO xp,

NO looting,

NO speaking,

And this is only effecting people that are NOT at the keyboard, so the rest of us are still in the green.

Where is this plan not stopping AFKers?

Also please don't come back with the "removing recursive Macros" will get rid of them Because they WON'T and here's why.

1. I can MacGuyver somthing to keep hitting my keyboard out of kitchen items.

2. I can program my Joystick to activate keyboard buttons.

3. Third party programs are virtually untraceable, redily available, and would be unnaffected by the removal of recursive Macros.

4. A player can write a 3 hour macro in about 5 minuites that's NON recursive. All the have to do is meander by every once in a while and restart it.

To counter your immediate counters,

1. I am not very bright, and I'm not very motivated, so if I can do it, so can almost everybody else.

2. What are they ging to do, remove Joysticks? There went all the JTL players! Bye bye!

3. I know they can ban you for using thrid party programs. But if they can't catch or stop or punish the guilds that use the SWG hack program that lets to walk faster than a swoop and gives you 10 combat seconds for every 1 actual combat second (I know where to download it, and no I'm not telling anyone where it is, that's cheating of the worst kind), what makes you think they can catch, stop or punish the people that are using the simple KeyStroke mapper programs?

4. They can also reduce the pause time of macro commands, that is true, but you don't need to have long pauses to write athree hour macro.

I apologize if this post sounds angry I really am. However I am getting extremely frustrated with the sheer amount of people that oppose my ideas for a better game with no reason given. Or worse, the ones who tell me their reason for the opposition, but their reason is directly counter to somthng said IN the post, so that reason would be null and void if they had read the whole post. Another group (not here mind you) is the ones who oppose an idea just to preserve the status quo. Not that they like the status quo, but they are terrified of change, even change for the better.

Anyway, like I said. If anyone can point out just how it would fail to stop AFK stylers, please tell me. I don't mean repeating the same 'It wouldn't do anything!!' line, because that give no information, and speaks of somone who is too lazy to think things through.

Padtai actually had a good start, but there has been no follow through. But she is rite, if they could make the auto healing in Med Centers and Cantina's more widely known, and a little faster, but not so fast as to eclipse Entertainers, that would take care of the need to be able to have entertainers at all times. The problem is, at what point do auto healing facilities eclipse Entertainers?

Message Edited by Ihareo on 12-30-2004 08:49 AM

Message Edited by Ihareo on 12-30-2004 09:13 AM

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gera wrote:

Simply, when /join and /disband commands are removed from the game macro system. Buffbots will go. Simple and easy. If there were still buffbots, CSR's can ban them easily after telling them hi and noticing 3rd party letting them join.

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rayill wrote:

The reason why I don't believe that what you propose would work is the fact that there is are a few entertainers here that frequent these forums that have already developed sophisticated in game macros that would continue to work as long as AFK did not boot you from the game. If these people are choosing not to speak on this issue, then I am not going to bring their names into the discussion.

The reason I bring it up is because if one person can figure out how to do it, even if it is sophisticated macros that allow it to work, that means that all it takes is one person who would want to abuse it to find out the way to do it. All this person has to do is to distribute amongst the few dedicated people who want to work around the intended in game systems, and suddenly the plight has moved no where.

I know this is terribly vague, but just peruse back on the forums. What you suggest would not stop what some of them have created to show how badly the AFK problem can be. What you suggest is a good idea to stop the majority of AFK that is needless and not hurting those who don't abuse it. What your ideas allow to continue is those who would exploit because they could still hide. As long as they allow any type of AFK whatsoever to exist, no matter how nerfed it may be, there will be those who will exploit it and use it to gain an advantage.

I'm a terribly jaded Dancer. I look at the entire picture with a huge glass of pessimism. I look at the worst case scenario. The problem is that the Developers also have to look towards the worst case scenarios and plan to stop them. They are seeing this in hindsight.

I really do feel what you suggest would have been wonderful to implement before the rampant abuse of the macro and afk systems. At this point, they have to do something drastic to change the playstyles of those who are playing. Stopping recursive macros and ridding the game of AFK is very drastic, and it will force change. Personally, I hope that they use the time after they pull it to revamp the macro system and the afk system, possibly in line to what you suggest. I just don't feel that what you suggest can work at this point. Too many people are used to finding ways to exploit it, especially to legitimately exploit it with approved in game mechanics.

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Message Edited by Ihareo on 12-30-2004 11:05 AM