Musician Archive
Thread: Suggestion on how to stop Afk buff-bots
Padtai wrote:
If buffs required the dancer (or musician) to play a randomly generated code made up of a sequence of flourishes, that once played, would confer a buff, this would stop people being able to park a permanent buffing "bot" in cantinas. I'm sure people have discussed why bots are good or bad elsewhere, but after trying to play a musician and a dancer, I agree that afk buffbots (some even offering free 24/7 buffs) taking the fun and purpose out of being an entertainer.
Sothe idea i'm suggesting is that siimilar to how you have to enter a codeto deleteharvesters, you get a code made out of 8 flourishes you need to play to confer a buff. Code would be different every time and I'm sure there are sufficient combinations of the 8flourishesto generate enough variations so thatsomeone could not just write a macro to automate buffs.
The idea is that you just have to be at your keyboard to enter the correct sequence of flourishes. Also, instead of waiting some unknown number of minutes, the buff would be faster, determined only by how fast the dancer (or musician) could do the right steps/notes. I think that would make it up to the rest of the player base that they'd lose the chance to get buffs 24/7--now more players might choose to be musicians/dancers. And i'm not too worried about those losing their 24/7 buffs--after all, buffs were supposed to be special, not routine.
So comment on this... would it work? Or is it going to make it less fun to be a musician (or dancer)?
I read this, and I asked myself "Didn't I just reply to this earlier?". Then I realized I had replied in the Dancer forum...
lol well at least on the dancer forum the correspondant said he/she had kicked it to the dev's (or someone else's similar idea) as part of the official list from the class. And you never know.... the dev's actually do hear us--for example, I know i've talked to a csr about 2 specific thigns that have now been changed.
Early on, I complained about getting tef'd as a medic and how /open could take someone's clothes off (at least form teh POV of the person who typed it...made them bald too). I know those are things that have since been changed--so I think when enough people get on about something, the Dev's DO hear it and do write fixes. It just takes a loooong time b/c they are spread kind of thin. And the docs continually complained about getting a low stealth buff--now buffs generally can be overwritten. Wasnt' exactly how most docs wanted the change to happen but it was something.
So they listen...and maybe there are less dancers/musicians so they get to those classes last but I know the afk problem is on their list somewhere. If they fixed /open, sure they'll have time to deal with some larger issues as well.
So that's why I think it is not pointless to brainstorm here... b/c we're just giving them customer feedback.
When I first read the title of this thread, the thing that went into my mind was "Besides the ritual burning at the stake...." 
Anywho, I absolutely love this idea and I think it can really help us. The only issue I see, along with Dev correspondence and what the Devs continually bring up with our suggestions. Coding. I'm not terribly computer-programming savvy, so help me out here. Would it be difficult to code this into the game? Just something I think we should discuss and be aware of, seeing as the Devs tend to be "busy" and have to take as little time as possible in putting these helpful things in the game.