Game Guides Archive
Thread: DEVS: AFK Macro loops need to GO!
Looping Macros are great!
I'm a BH and if anyone knows anything about BH missions you can't afk grind them. But I use looping macros in my everyday life as a BH and I am thankful to have them.
I have an anti-afk macro that I run; called Macro snore. (Some of you rps might apreceate this.)
/snore self;
/afk;
/pause 1;
/afk;
/pause 300;
/macro snore;
This is mainly because I do most of my work at home and since there are no set hours I have to be ready to pick up the phone and do buisness when ever it rings. Because of thisI may have to quickly leave the game for a time even up to 1/2 hour in length. This macro allows me to quickly take my character aside to safety and leave him so that I can come back quickly and pick up where I left off. Is this wrong?
I also have a macro for my Novice Doc skill which allows me to quickly heal my wounds after dying in battle. I can continue to chat in gu and group chat while my macro heals me up in under 2mins when before it would take me up to 5mins because I'd forget to hit the heal comand after recharge.
I have other macros that loop for combat and rp stuff that I've been involved in and I'm never afk for those, but these help in allowing me to concentrate on other more important things ratherlike strategy rather than keeping my toon alive.
I'm not much bothered by afk entertainers mainly because most of the time they're there and if you start talking to them they'll talk back. But if you're bothered by spammers just do what I doset your game to not readtext by afk players.
The bigger problem is those spaming robots in Cnet and Eisly theres no way to drownd those out.
Forgive the double post.
Message Edited by Emperorrpa on 08-18-2005 02:07 PM
- AFK Entertainers a problem? Allow entertainers to record their performances onto datadisks which can be played back. These one-use datadisks would be equivalent to getting the buff, perhaps with a slightly shorter duration or potency than if you saw the real thing. The entertainer now has a greater chance of guaranteed income by selling performance disks as opposed to hoping for tips, or hoping that another entertainer won't AFK next to him without a covercharge.
- AFK combat a problem? Don't allow macroing more than a certain number of combat commands in a chain. (WOW does this by limiting to one spell cast per macro.) So even if you do recursive macros, it won't work. Bottom line is people shouldn't AFK a core part of the game. (See below before complaints.)
- The grind a problem? Take a hint from GuildWars and have two types of servers: the standard server, where you have to grind your xp, and a role-play server, where you can use blue frogs to gain any skills desired. On these servers, you can put in some kind of respec system where you earn 'respec points' every day, and those points are used to jumble your character, so you can't have people changing their toon twelve times a day (but they still can change it regularly).
- The grind still a problem for casual players? Another hint from WOW (I think DAoC did something like this, too): allow increased (double?) xp to be earned for a short period oftime when you log in. The length of time is based on how much you've played in the past week. It could act like a persistent buff on your character. Once it runs out you're back to normal xp. This way a casual player has a little way to catch up to his 12-hr a day friends.
- The grind still a problem? Maybe the game isn't for you...
The grind in SWG seems more than other games, for a few core reasons. - SWG's skill trees are not as linear as class/level systems, so progress is less obvious and more difficult to gauge. Plus, there are less 'levels." You can be a Master Commando after completing 26 skill boxes. Compare that to a level 50 character in a game like EQ2 or WOW, and you why progress seems half as fast (because, in a sense, it is, since you only get new skills when leveling up, and you level up at half the rate)
- Finding easy places to quest and hunt without traveling thousands of meters is not as easy to come across as in other games (such as WOW).
- In many cases, quests provide little tie-ins to progress, which would add an element to the game to distract you from the grind. EQ2 and WOW both have class quests which you need to do to progress at certain points or gain certain class skills, which helps distract from the grind. SWG has some profession-related quests (mostly with JTL), but it's far from a cohesive feature.
- The gains you get with new skills are less obvious from a gameplay perspective than in other games. Take WOW for example... Each skill or spell outlines exactly what it does -- how much damage, execution timers, cooldown timers. Progressing to the next higher skill is obvious and you can compare it to the previous skill. In SWG everything is so nebulous that you can't make heads or tails out of it. To quantify it you have to look at combat spam text; you can't just look at the tooltip over a skill and see it.
SWG is what it is... a game with some great things going for it (in no particular order, player cities, JTL, a rich crafting system, a player economy, a thorough non-combat game, and, of course, Star Wars), but there's still lots to fix...
Troilus_of_Bria wrote:
BountyZallonHunter wrote:
its all on how u look at it man they have the right to make the best of what the game has and thats just how they do it
Doesn't make it right, and it doesnt mean that it's intended to be that way. It's time it gets fixed.
Doesnt make it wrong either. I think AFK options need adjusting, but not to extremes. Removal of the /loot command is much less extreme then removal of the /macro and /alias commands.
I'm no elite player, very good or the like. Just a plain guy having fun with SWG. Ijust wanna sayto Troilus: I fully support u. What u stateinitially is the big problem of this game.No one can make me se anysound rationale in doing AFK grinding like u see in SWG in an online game u pay for.Its simply pointless to pay money while u sleep !!!Plain idiotic.
Itsa choice for the SOE who they want to earn the money on. If they have no mission with their game: they wont care.
Arboe wrote:
I'm no elite player, very good or the like. Just a plain guy having fun with SWG. Ijust wanna sayto Troilus: I fully support u. What u stateinitially is the big problem of this game.No one can make me se anysound rationale in doing AFK grinding like u see in SWG in an online game u pay for.Its simply pointless to pay money while u sleep !!!Plain idiotic.
Itsa choice for the SOE who they want to earn the money on. If they have no mission with their game: they wont care.
/ForceAura
/pause 30/systemMessage \#ff0000 !!! Time to restart the ForceAura Macro !!!
/ForceAura
/pause 30
/ForceAura
/pause 30
/ForceAura
/pause 30
/ForceAura
/pause 30
/ForceAura
/pause 30
/ForceAura
/pause 30
/ForceAura
/pause 30
/ForceAura
/pause 30
... etc ...
I can certainly understand the why people can't stand the afk spamming that goes on, although I can't understand why they still do it, Idon't know who bothers to read it anymore, if they ever did. I've learned to ignore the spacail, but I REALLY wish that it could be stopping in the chat channels so that people would actually use Planet and Trade. Planet could be a great resource for getting groups and help with quests, and as for the Trade channel, I know its for commerce, but really who monitors something that says come get your ent. buff at the Bestine Cantina over and over.
Now with that said......
Like QuantumArtist already mentioned, you can not stop afk macroing by removing looping macros, people are way to creative for that to stop them. They are proud of their macros and as soon as a change comes out in SWG, they start looking for a wrok around. For example, with the force aura macro mentionedabove, make that macro as long as can it can be andthen make as many copies of it as needed with /pause (the amount of time for the previousmacro to finish) at the beginning of it. You could make a chain, doubleing the pause each time,long enough to last most if not all of the night, and thats if they somehow put a stop to the easy work around that someone already mentioned of just starting a second macro at the end of the first and then restarting the first macro at the end of the second. I'm sure someone can point out a fix for this, but my point is there is always a way, even if its a kid with an Erector Set making something to physicallyhit F1 every 5 minutes.
Wo-dra wrote:
Like QuantumArtist already mentioned, you can not stop afk macroing by removing looping macros, people are way to creative for that to stop them. They are proud of their macros and as soon as a change comes out in SWG, they start looking for a wrok around. For example, with the force aura macro mentionedabove, make that macro as long as can it can be andthen make as many copies of it as needed with /pause (the amount of time for the previousmacro to finish) at the beginning of it. You could make a chain, doubleing the pause each time,long enough to last most if not all of the night, and thats if they somehow put a stop to the easy work around that someone already mentioned of just starting a second macro at the end of the first and then restarting the first macro at the end of the second. I'm sure someone can point out a fix for this, but my point is there is always a way, even if its a kid with an Erector Set making something to physicallyhit F1 every 5 minutes.
Actually, as long as there is the /macro command, you can always loop a macro. Even if they made it so you cant call the same macro, you can always have the first macro call a second macro, then have the second macro call the first. This way you can cycle 2 macros perpetually and continue to loop.
This unfortunately means that if you wanted to end recursive macros, you have to remove the /macro and /alias commands completely. The unfortunate part to this is any branching macros you would like called with different /pause times and so on for various functions will not be possible. Everything will have to be done manually.
Also, as mentioned earlier. Autoit and other 3rd party macro programs can work around this VERY easily, at a very hefty price to the game in terms of server lag.
Stopping /loot would probably stop 95% (5% forwhatever we have not thought of,but somebody will) of the afk cash grinders, but it would have little to noeffect on people afk leveling.
Right! By making it harder without the /loot command, much of the afk looters will simply melt away. However, the AFK combat grinders will also feel the pinch! There are MANY places in the game where the spawn rates are effected by how fast you loot dead bodies. The instant you /loot, another target apears. This allows AFK combat grinders to set an XP pace for optimum AFK leveling.
Denial of the /loot command will slow this process down DRAMATICALLY! Hence, much of the AFK grinding you see going on will cease because doing so will be slowed to a point where its nearly useless to do so.
Removingflourishish and such from macros would be punishing all entertainers instead of just the afk folks.
The best way to do away with the afk entertainers is to (and I've heard that something like this is in the works) have specific buffs for each proffession. One for carbineer, one for armorsmith, etc., etc. Then, accepting that people will macro, just give them to many options, making a fully macroed buff round take to long for most people wait, ie if you want a buff ask an active entertainer.
Wow, thats one of the best ideas I've heard yet for entertainers! Entertainers need a new sense of value to the community. They've really suffered in terms of desireability particularly since they removed BF. It will be good for them to have an arsonal of profession specific buffs to the point they cant possibly macro them all in a convenient "one macro buffs all" fashion.
5 star solution!
Message Edited by QuantumArtist on 08-21-2005 06:25 AM