Game Guides Archive
Thread: Recursive Sampling... aka Infinate loop sampling.
Interesting...
In fact, I'm at work right now at a job that actually pays me during the down time, thus allowing me to GET PAID to post here on the boards, but not quite 'free' enough that I can acutally be playing a game. Were I home, I wouldn't be wasting my time posting, I'd be playing.
...your excuse is?
'Kiddo'...is this some lame attempt to insinuate somehow that a) I'm a child, and b) The things I've said are somehow thus unworthy?
Which one of us is gleeful at the potential to cause someone else harm? Which one of us is completely unable to respond with any logical argument- instead resorting to inane 'quotes' reducing everything said to 'blah blah whine cry' nonsense?
You're right. I shouldn't have called you 'Sir'. I should have called you 'Little Boy'. Run along now, and mommy will come change your diaper soon so that you won't be so disagreeable.
If anyone here believes that it is perfectly acceptable to log on your Character,and click a button,Walk away and "earn" xp while being afk.
Then you will also agree that it is perfectly acceptable for someone to take your character,and level that character up for you.It is the same thing ,Your character is being developed at no cost to you personally.
Even better,Someone could just level a char to full,Fill him with gear and hand him to you.I had a buddy who played aShaman in eq to like lvl 46,then some guy he knew in game in a guild for more advanced than his own gave him a lvl 60 Shaman(pre-pop) loaded with High end Velious gear and a few choice items from Ssra.Time and itme again he would justify it to me as he had played the class to 46 and knew enough.
Whether it is the system or another person doing the work for you,it remains the exact same thing,People who are to lazy to accomplosh somehting themselves simply abuse a system not intended for such use.The Macro system was not put in game to give people free xp,That is a down side to having a system that is as useful as SW:G's is.With EQ you hotkeyed Speech,or clever emotes,maybe spells.I am sure they could nerf this system to kingdome come and stop this looping,but then of course the Macro system would be a lot less useful.Being able to Macro in a UI button to swap a suit of armor in an out all of a sudden cannot be done since the command was removed thanks to looping.
It is things like that ,that hurt the gamers ,Thatall the loopers like to say do not get affected.the people that are using the system as it was intended,will be effected when the system is removed because of those that abused it.
ThereIs_NoSpoon said:
There's an easy way to partially relieve the tedium of sampling while at the same time forcing people to actually be at their keyboards to sample. Make it so you can't repeatedly sample in the same place for a long time.
After 5 samples (or 10 samples, or even just one sample) make it so a PC has to get up and move to a new location. It can be a client-specific thing. Another PC could sample in the same place, of course, but after X number of samples, he/she too would have to get up and move.
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I was just about to mention this, and I'm replying to this post so that maybe the devs will see it and take it into consideration. I'm also an Artisan, and have been grinding away at sampling every now and then, but I also feel that to sit in one place and constantly get samples is kinda ridiculous and should be given the "diminishing returns" treatment.
Not taking sides on the macro sampling though, I have my feelings for and against it...
A better macro.
/stand; /sample; /pause 3; /sit; /pause 28;
/ui action toolbarSlot00;
Put it into the first slot of your toolbar. Using this macro will sample once, rest to full, then repeat. To stop the macro just take it out of the first slot. You now have an infinite macro that you can stop in less than 30 seconds when you are ready to return to play. AND once you return to play you are fully rested and recovered.
I am against the devs changing this for 2 reasons. 1 beginning artisans won't have the monetary means to buy multiple harvesters. Changes in the resources sampled ( diminishing returns ) would also effect harvesters. ( they obviously use the same function if manual and harvesting are the same )And I know those using harvestors won't like that.
I think harvesters should have a bonus to sampling as opposed to a surveyor manually sampling. There should be more of a reason to use a harvester then just being able to sample more than one resource. ( multiple harvestors ) also consider that anyone putting up resources is selling what they don't need for there own crafting skills.
I am pretty sure that the forage skills given to medics and scouts is pretty useless. as the medics need harvesters too to keep up the demands of their profession. Cost of resources needs to take into account cost to procure them Someone using a macro has higher costs then a single harvestor as someone using a harvestor can go and do other things IN GAME while harvesting materials. While someone manually sampling cannot. In the 8 hour time period you can make alot of money doing missions. even more if you take easy ones like kreetle and gorgs.
You should not be upset that someone is afk. IF you are smart you have more than one character anyway so that if a server is down or unavailable you can go to that one. IF the afking becomes a problem ( 15% or more people doing it ) I garantee the DEVS will remove the /ui command which is what makes the loop possible.
ok.. I haven't read ALL but first two pages...
1. the in-game macro was place for us to use... using 3rd program.. that is a bad thing...
2. Hand gathering (macro or not) WAS better than harvestors for a while.. now you have higher delay between macros and higher action/mind usage per harvesting by hand. Thus.. it is SLOWER to harvest by hand than to use a harvestor.. (at least vs medium) thus far I can get around 5k ore a day via 50% harvestors... BUT by hand I get maybe 2-3k a DAY.. if I were to macro.. not worth my time 
thus it is not much an exploit.. before you can get around 6-7k a day.. but the devs change that.
3. Gaining EXP and "unlimited" resource... hehe.. well.. you be surprise that the dev does have a "little" tricks to curve all that.. one.. survey only raise survey exp.. which does not use in any other tree.. all that do allow you to survey farther.... no problem there.. the resource gather can be use.. but you need different type.. so instead of setting up 3 different harvestors that you need and get all three one day.. or spend 3 days harvesting the same amount.... pretty balance..
4. You don't want to run a "macro" in the wilderness... since random spawn tend to kill you (even with auto defend) sometimes those instant death appear... same goes for town... (but I notice less and less good stuff "spawn" near town.. so I guess they are woking on that too...
Good macro UD_Delt.
I think I will switch to that one. Thanks!
UD_Delt you are the man!
I just tried out your better macro for sampling. I named it "Better_Life_Through_Better_Sampling"
My previous macro had the two pauses of 520 and 320 for a total of 840 seconds. During this time I sampled 9 times.
With your macro using the dead time between samples I can cycle my 9 samples at 35 seconds each for a total of 315 seconds.
THATS A 266.6 % INCREASE !!! OMG. Thank you.
I did change the short pause to 2 seconds and I changed the long pause to 33 seconds. I have 27 battle fatigue, no armor, 1300 Action, 438 quickness, and 388 stamina.
I guess I ama PG to most, though I just like games and play them a bunch, I am not concerned with 'efficiently' advancing, I just like to jam and see what I can find in any game. I play too many games to get upset over any ones faults, if I get tired of dealing with them if they don'tget fixed I just move on, it's a buyers market; whereas a game that gets TLC keeps my money becauseI like to pop in and see what's going on as long as the game is up and running. However, the people trying to argue that the economy won't be affected simply are not hard-core enough gamers to know the fact that this has damaged the economy in virtually every game with a gathering-oriented economy.
I am not against being able to get short-term amounts of resources that way, that is a nice little feature to keep the flow of play going ("oops, I need to stop doing what I was doing and gather some water for more stimpacks, may as well grab a snack...", or throw in laundry quick; whatever, for a few, here and there) but it has got to be prevented for overall gathering.
The pop-up idea mentioned earlier is a fantastic idea, the bestway I've seento handle the macro-eco-crash problem.
Regardless of how much CGs try to milk thelame ' accesibility' argument, the core of any game is people who actually do have some consideration for thier avatar (i.e. most gamers are not really CGs, despite thier not being 1337). For a game with such a player base to succeed it has to provide some balance in character advancement and also must have a scaled reward system (i.e. doing something 'successfully' tends to provide some 'reward'; doing something cooler or longer has a cooler and/or betterreward). It has been the bane of such games to give freebies to newbies.Look at AC2 now,read the old boards, it is a great model for what I'm talking about here; if they had listened to the community beforedestroying allpossiblesense of accomplishment in the game because anything you worked for was given free to newbies they would not be in a rebuilding mode 
.
Nothing demolishes long-term suspension of reality more than having your long, hard work become trivial and superfluous because every new player is getting it free (except not being able to play becuase of crashes or bugs or the like, of course 
); long-term suspention of reality is the lifes-blodd of MMORPGs.
Sabonis-sr wrote:
You too are added to the cry baby list of consumers complaining to other consumers because they are using there account with SOE to an extent greater than yourself
You completely missed the point of my post. I didn't complain about macroing. In fact, I am considering using it myself. I believe I specifically said that I didn't have a problem with macroing.
"Trying to flame on me because you are jealous that I have chosen a style of play that interferes with what is ideal in your world will not **hmm feels like I've said this before** get you anywhere excpet on my s*** list when the problems you have should be directed towards SOE. Also I am not "getting away" with anything because this is not an exploit, and like I said in the previous post it is not a loop hole in the EULA, read it."
I'm not jealous at all about your playstyle. I also never said anything about this being a loophole in the EULA. I don't have problems with macroing. I guess you weren't able to actually read what I wrote.
"Don't lay your hang-ups on me, if you can't get on a server that is a matter for you to discuss with SOE, I have paid my subscription fee and shall use it to the fullest extent possible while remaining withinthe EULA."
You're perfectly entitled to. I don't have a 'hang up' about it, I merely mentioned it as a concern.
"Also I am not the type of person to get amusement out of others not being able to play because I am logged in, that statement only applied to SkydogHex and now it applies to you as well. I am amused by it because I think you guys are whiners and you are trying to dish off your issues to the wrong party, me, a paying customer of SOE. Go ahead and get yourself all riled up, butt hurt and flame the hell out of me, because I find that amusing as well and a good time killer for when the servers go down."
Well, you are in fact exactly that kind of person. You think it is appropriate to deny someone the ability to play the game because you don't agree with them. Furthermore, if there ever WAS a situation where he couldn't get into the game because it was full, and you were on doing your afk thing, then of course all of the OTHER people trying to get in would also be unable to play. Guess you sort of didn't think about that.
The entire point of my point - which you clearly and obviously missed - is that just because something IS NOT AGAINST THE LAW OR THE EULA does not mean it is a moral 'right'. That is your attitude. Your entire justification for what you are doing is founded solely on this basis. You don't even try to justify things like whether or not it damages the economy, or whether or not your playstyle might lead to others not being able to play AT the computer so that you can play AWAY from the computer. Well, that's not entirely fair - you DO address that last point, only to say that you don't care because it's SOE's problem.
That, sir, is the definition of a selfish and immoral person. You don't care whether or not anything you do might contribute to someone else's problem, as long as you have someone else that you can point a finger at that might be MORE responsible. You don't find anything wrong with doing something as long as it isn't strictly prohibited, and equate morality to a strict 'legal' definition. Of course, I have no idea how far you would take this if there were no laws, period. Would you steal? Would you rape? Would you murder? I can't make those kind of predictions - but one thing your behavior DOES tell me is that I couldn't rule out the possibility, either.
So, I'm on your list, eh? Well, from what I can tell, that's not difficult to do. All I have to do is disagree with you. Furthermore, since there is absolutely nothing you can do specifically to me as a result of BEING on your list, I suppose I won't waste any time worrying about it.
Read the last line of my post again. If somebody doesn't force you to do the right thing, you won't do it, because your definition of right and wrong is focused (at least in this case)...on the fact that you aren't prohibited from macroing. Whatever you might say about the evidence that SOE intended to support macroing, it is ALSO quite clear that they have a cap on the number of people who can play at any given time, and it would be absurd to suggest that they intended any significant number of those valuable spots to be taken by people who aren't actually there. So again, my original post...I say that if SOE ever decided it WAS a problem, they would 'fix' it. I don't know if they care. I don't know if the problem is actually a 'problem'. It might be a 'problem' but be so small that it doesn't need a 'fix'. I don't know about any of that. I just know that you wouldn't care either way no matter what the evidence suggested as long as you could 'get yours'.