Rules changing: away-from-keyboard rule specifics

[Charon]

I have been watching/reading this thread as it has developed and while I agree that those who like to AFK/semi-AFK gold farm ruin some of the good spots for people to farm and the economy; I don't see an easy way for any of the Admin to make this more difficult or stop without making it more difficult for those of us who do it the legal way. Harsher penalties would be great, however, it is easy for someone to fail to answer the AFK checks correctly and end up receiving a punishment they didn't earn and the AFKers will do their penalties and go right back to the activity that got them there because the profits will always out weigh the punishment unless it ends in a perma ban from the shard/deletion of account.

I think the best way to fight this activity is to report it and let the Admins deal with it. If you believe someone is AFK put in the ticket and let the +'s of the shard take care of the issue.

I also think that public shaming should not be off the table. stockades with throw-able tomatoes would go a long way to shame those caught cheating and give the people they are cheating against some satisfaction in dishing some semi-harmless revenge.

- If you cant answer correctly in 3 tries in a minute you probably need to move on to Tetris
- If a GM isn't on what the offence occurs they can do anything about it, if they don't witness it, their hands are tied. Trust me I've paged on people and got that response.

Public shamming should be on the table, make the player squelched and immobile an have afk checks while they are in the
stocks.

Heavy penalties for being afk should be implemented so they don't necessarily think they can just continue what they were doing.

[Sir Blood]

I have noticed that if you are doing a task like mining etc over a long period of time and then back away and hide (also stop the script and go afk), the AFK checks can still occur. Happened to me. I had been mining for a few hours, hid and backed away for at least a couple of minutes before I left to goto the bathroom. Came back to find an AFK check...

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While this one is a while back... One time I was in the middle of a life or death battle, if I had stopped doing what I was doing for 10 seconds I would have died. Matter of fact I DID die while trying to respond to an afk check...

Simple solution, drop a spell kind of like the druid spell circle of stones, just a larger area of effect. Effects are 'invincible' 'skills forbidden' 'spells forbidden' and it will prevent any status effects from killing the player (or just heal them of them)

This would give the player a safe zone for dealing with the AFK check, and keep whatever they are fighting from wandering off.

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I for one have a problem with some of the 'stupid' capcha phrases. Some of the time I can't make sense of them L overlapping I, L overlapping 1 and a 4 can all look identical if they overlap much at all... S and 5, 0 and O... there are numerous issues I have happened across.

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AFK checks really do need to have something to catch your attention. People can argue all they want to about it will be easy for an anti-afk program to detect... That is fine, let them detect it, make the test be completely random. Just be careful if it is color specific, some players are color blind and will automatically fail it...

I have 3 monitors. I commonly have 2 or more different games up and a web-browser etc. I have been known to mute the UO window and watch a movie or play Star Craft.

While there will be a few players that will say, you shouldn't be doing other stuff while scripting have never been bored out of their minds doing mundane very repetitive tasks... (like make 360 rune books and 50 full spell books...

[Nick]

*Ignors everything and asks... you play starcraft II....?

[Cengaver]

Oh wow many post and many concerns,

"afk" means away from keyboard, but i think "afk" means, must be away from komputer for this game because

Ewerybody away from keyboard sometimes, away from keyboard meaning, i am busy at this time and i cant response in short time, we playing at working or at watching film etc. but near by computer!!!

i think response time critical, actually i never seen autoafk check before, 1 time colibri comes and said hey!, i think this is manual check

i saw wery long replys in this post, my choice is, leave as is, but maybe some modifications

afk marketing messages 1hr and 12per day good, but "12tile range with others speech" is not applyable
only afk check on gatherings (exp, gold, item, ore, log etc.) for felucca and trammels
ewery 10-60min random afk check repeat time range + 2 to 4 min respond time, 1min is short, 5 min is long i.m.o.

if afk check and jailing going be "free", its makes turmoil and nobody playing with in comfort

last words: i know ROBOT SCRIPTS, self running, self targeting, self killing, self looting, self repairing, i can modify this script for ewerything, 7/24exp in fel, or 7/24 gathering, or 7/24 kill monster, are you imagine 100player afk with this script somewhere in server

[Silent]

Hello everyone!

Would just like to bump this thread once more. Has everyone noticed, shard economy and item value have suffered immense fluctuation due to what I believe is the Covid-work-from-home-dual-monitor shard actual pandemic.

We continue to see mass scripting on economically important areas and not just "bally jumping" but dungeon running etc.

There was a lot a talk before but nothing changed, I proposed that the players should get bumped while entering balron areas or while doing other activities like running dungeons with the simple bump on the top of the screen with the 3 word captcha like it used to happen for gathering skills. that would force players to "touch the keyboard" every once in a 15-30 min (lets be honest thats not even that much)...

Nothing happened so far besides "catching stones" and therefore I am bumping this once more.

So basically lets just cut to the chase -> whats the plan ?

[x_the_jackal_x]

I hate when I am doing things like mining where I am manually using last object last target and I get the captcha. It has triggered on me as many as 10 times in 20 mins when toggling 2 buttons manually while mining. Sorry I can move my fingers so fast lol!

[dreamstalker]

i thought biggest doorknob i ever saw (dumb not meanin nething bout everyone gets a ....) was the guy runnin a macro in doom to collect daemon bones....then i got corrected checked into making the tmap books to put on vendor....thing is the infernal map sells for 2.5 mill ancient sos sells for 1.5 mill then the low cost resources just for chits sake we will say 10k tops so why make a tmap book that no one is buying for 50 ed that costs almost that to make.....can yall see where the economy / shard is heading? and when i try to help the +'s do their job (i dont get paid eruo's to run the shard) i get a silly message sayin.....tyvm for your input we will continue to keep an eye on anyone suspected of doing anything illegal and/or unattended. just a thought yall may wanna vary your times of being on by at least a few mins and even perhaps try being on for just lil longer then 15 mins in wc to talk bout nothing that is goin to help the economy or hurt the (i was there but being as i didnt get the alarm over my loud speaker (or blue tooth) that says hey i just saw a + show up better stop what im doin in the bathroom and get runnin to the computer within 60 secs so i dont wipe and find im in jail..... not positive not that good of a script writer but from the talk i have heard over the last ummm to damn long to brag about i am sure they cant all be unfounded rumors. dont know what yall can or should do bout it but id hate to see what happened to jiffy pop popcorn once microwaves showed up.....happen here....unfortunatly some of us can see it comin others cant hope to be here another to dang long period of time go by before it does though. 20+ total years of playin n uoex is by far the best ive seen how bout fluctuating the mana regen/use or even go to fel rules in one respect...if u want somethin u gotta run for it oh well habd n merry christmas

[apocalypse]

That was an interesting run on sentence, that had to be after a couple wobbly pops.

We need Bernie to come with his mittens, and take the power from the top 1% of the shard and return the power to the people!

[Silent]

Its not about power, its about people who are actually playing being able to have a solid economic stability and not be outrun by bot scripts...

They guy who just refereed the mining would not be having this issue if he was macro-teleporting has it was previously reported has a fail of the system.

So in fact he gets more afk checks by playing than not

[apocalypse]

I agree, I guess I meant bring the power back to the people who play and put effort into the game, like you said.

There is obviously some genius scripts out there, that make you rich with little actual effort.
What does an honest player do, join the dark side?

[Nick]

In the end-game I have spent a lot of my time on two things; working on my house (which I had never built before) and trying to make scripts with razor to do things hands-free. I get a lot of enjoyment out of both. I will say a lot of hands-free income scripts work well because of travel spells, and making it so, you can not travel spell more than 5 times in 10 min is probably the best thing that could be done to fight inflation. As those of use that are good as scripting and have jobs that allow can make a few million a day with little to no effort, and that adds up to billions in the market each year.

I have never failed an AFK check because the game is upon another screen whilst I am writing a paper for school, in a Microsoft Teams meeting for work, running on my treadmill, watching Netflix and it is very easy to monitor the toon and be present for a +GM AFK check.

[Xavian]

What does an honest player do, join the dark side?

Yes.

[Wil]

Has it occurred to those of you who are complaining that your way is not the only reasonable way to play the game? That overcoming repetitive tasks through scripting could just possibly be one of the reasonable ways?

Some shards strictly limit the allowed scripting engines so that players have to do most repetitive tasks by hand. No autoloot, no scripting the weapon leveling process. You can have that if you want it. It's available on other shards. But I'm really glad it's not the situation on this shard.

Nix's anti-tamer stance left a damaging mark on the shard that persists to this day. An anti-scripting stance would be worse. I get that a lot of you like the 220 dexer play style. And more power to you. But you'll find the shard a lonelier place if you run the rest of us off.

[Xavian]

Script all you want, but keep in line with the Codex. Setting an alert to know when you are being AFK checked is not in line with the Codex unless you are actively monitoring the game.

4c. You have to actively monitor the game while running a macro that results in any gain of wealth or resources.

If you can totally miss an AFK check when they chase you for 60 seconds, you are not actively monitoring the game. At best, you are passively monitoring, but likely not at all. Sure your script can actively monitor the game, but the rule states that you must actively monitor the game.

The AFK checks should absolutely be harder to script. It's far to easy to beat via script right now. I had suggested via help ticket that the question change. I suggested basic math questions using single digit number. Using only addition and subtraction gives you 180 possible questions that way instead of the 1 current question (that I've seen). Can this be scripted? Yes. Is it harder to script? Kind of, depending on how you do it. Definitely more coding involved though.

AFK checks should have more variability for their answers and be more difficult to detect via script. If you are following the rules and actively monitoring the game, answering the check will not be difficult whether you script or not.

For anyone wondering... Yes I script, extensively. My farming, leveling and gauntlet scripts are fully automated and could be run AFK for days. Have I ever been caught AFK? No, because I don't AFK. Also, no my script doesn't alert me to an AFK check because I actively monitor the game.

[Wil]

Script all you want, but keep in line with the Codex.

There certainly are a lot more active scripts running this year. Almost suspicious. But then I remember: there's a pandemic on. With so many of us isolated at home, monitoring a script during waking hours is much, much easier than it used to be. Or than it will be 6 months from now when we're all vaccinated and returning to school and the office.