Doom

[Riddlebox]

Alright usually I dont try to let things get to me, but this is just something thats been driving me nuts lately.

I know its just a game and if i dont like it I should leave, so dont bother trolling me on that.

But to my point. Almost anyone that has hunted in doom has been interrupted by a scripter, some of them are kind and stop there script to say sorry, some dont stop there script and still say sorry before they tele away again. My problem is with people who seem to not even notice, when they recall or sacred journey onto you, take half your kills, claim them, then tele away before you can do anything. I try not to dwell on it, there are plenty of spawns in doom and other places, but its still not cool when there are 5 different people using the same script in all of the high profile spots like the devourers and liches. People just fill a runebook up with all the doom spots, some get creative and switch the spots around a little bit, others will simply put a rune every 20-30 steps and let it run.
Seriously?

There have been multiple times where my kills have been stolen, so every now and again when i truly suspect someone is afk, i page. What i have found though is the GM's always respond to me and say that, that person was indeed there at the screen. Sure, they are there at the screen, but what are they really doing? watching tv? watching a movie? talking to there friends? maybe they are taking care of a child or sibling? Is that really playing the game? Just because you can look at the screen when a GM pops up, stop your script, and say hey doesnt justify what people are doing. I have stood next to someone before while they sat in one spot not tele'ing away because of a rotting corpse, the script doesnt register that monster so the person just gets frozen to one spot until they realize and tele away. Well ive sat next to them while they stood there letting it attack them, after a few minutes i paged, by the time my page was answered the person must have noticed and got away. My point here is you arent playing the game, the game is playing itself while you do something else and reap all the rewards. Plus a page doesnt do any good, if anything it just wastes a Gm's time.

So my feature request is to make doom unmarkable. Script levelers are not going to stop scripting, and GM's arent going to run around doom all day playing "cop" so in my opinion that is the only solution. Especially considering how many custom items are in doom, you shouldnt be able to mark all of the stealable spots and check them twice daily like i used to do. So i dont know, theres my beef, there was a lot more that i wanted to say but it would simply do no good at all.
Hope I didnt come off sounding like a troll, was just bothering me a bit.

[Elyril]

While i agree with you, Making doom un-markable wont fix the problem. Simply making doom unmarkable, the semi afker's will move to another dungeon, and annoy another group of people. I dont weapon level in doom BECAUSE of scripters, and as soon as doom is made unmarkable, then they all flood into where i do level weapons.

The only real way to fix this is to place a rule that you cant runebook script level, but there is no way to enforce or check that, and like you said, this is a game, and while most people will enjoy playing it the way its meant to be played. There will always be a group that wants to make it as easy as possible to amass the most wealth and power possible for reasons unknown to the rest of us.

I like easyuo and its reduction of repetative clicking. But some things i dont like scripting for the simple fact that it takes away the satisfaction of doing it yourself. I have almost every skill to 120 and the only one i actually feel proud of is lockpicking... Raised it before i knew about scripting... so raised it by hand from 1-116 or whatever im at now.

[Riddlebox]

Oh believe me, i know what youre saying, it definitely wont fix the problem. thats why i said scripters are going to keep scripting. I just think it would be an acceptable sacrifice, Doom has the fastest spawners that Ive seen with very high experience mobs all around it, along with all the custom items and what not. I think if it was made unmarkable then only spawn campers, and people who actually run would remain. This would make it much more fair in my opinion because if two people ran into each other, say me and "joe", i would simply reverse my direction and run through the dungeon the other way to get to some different mobs. Since people can mark all the spots, I run to one place to someone killing some devourers, then by the time I run to say some liches along the east wall they are already showing up there as well. Throw in multiple scripters and all the spawns are drained accept the lower bats and skeles.

I mean yeah, it has its up and down swings, there are days where i may only see one scripter through out my 1 hour session in doom or whatever, which is great. Im just saying, some days are worse then others, and today when 3 people appear in the same empty spot i figure it was time to suggest something even if it goes un-noticed.

[Lagos]

I feel the need to apologize. I am in the process of writing my own script, and have been using it today and yesterday. I feel that I am one of the prime people you are talking about, and will own up to it. I have just started working on a function in the script to detect if there are other players nearby so that my scripting does not interfere with you.
As a partial answer to your question, yes, when I am running my script I am at the computer, and yes, I have a dual monitor setup. at times while running it, I was reading code I had written for a different script I was writing, for some I was reading this forum, and for some I was chatting on facebook, so no, I was not paying total attention, but neither was I running to the store for chips or napping.
I humbly beg your forgiveness if I tele'd onto you and stole kills. I hate it when it is done to me, and I am deeply sorry if I did it to you. I would hope that anyone else that your complaint applies to is just as apologetic. I am looking into ways to detect players, to avoid them, and trying to figure out why this one rotting corpse seems to make my script think it's worth killing... As it gets better, it should become less intrusive to the point of not being intrusive at all (save for if you ran up on a spot that should have liches but now does not because they were recently killed that is.)

[fingers]

Imo, the problem here is divided in two:

the AI of the monsters: at about 20% health, most run for cover, meaning that the player leveling a melee weapon is at a great disadvantage. Lich, lich lords and devorer of soul dont run away, wich makes it immensly easyer to run a script and actually get the kills without paying too much attention.

Possible solutions: Make the AI stop monsters from running away; and/or: create other areas with a similar number of lich, lich lords and devorers; and/or: make doom a place where players can't recall; and/or make melee weapon gain faster than bows.

Risk vs reward ratio a lich, wich is inoffensive and killed in one or two shots, gives 64-68 xp, Yamadon gave me 58, Monsterous Grizzle (the boss, the one with 17k hp) gives 54 xp.

Possible solution: make it worth for player to kill diverse monsters and getting a fair reward in xp. For an example, if the hardest monsters (paroxysmus, ice wyrm and a few baddies in +V's delirum hunting zones gave up to 200 xp, well an easy prey such a lich should give at the most 20xp.

That would certainly stop the annoyance caused by hunting scripters to the majority of respectfull players we hav here. As a matter of fact, perhaps the ultimate solution would be to make the use of scripts illegal in a hunting activity.

Have a nice one all.

[Riddlebox]

Oh it is quite alright. I know who notices and who doesn't. Thats why I didnt say any names.
I'm cool with the scripting for the most part, there isnt really much you can do about it, my problem is it just seems to be getting more and more popular. In the past 3 months ish, I've seen the number of scripters go from a select few to a good sized handful now, thats just my theory based off observation, im not saying I keep a tab on everyone and anyone who enters, but you do notice when there is a new name recalling around.

I am fine with the dual monitoring, thats all well and good if youre there and are paying atleast minimum attention to your journal, I know people have busy lives and need to multi task every now and again and want to make the most out of there time so that is understandable. Its just I too dont like to kill steal, so when im running down the east wall and someone appears in front of me, even though i was technically on my way to kill those monsters, im not going to go and start attacking, they did get there first, its just dissapointing when every spot you go to has a different person in it. I know thats just a downside to inflation of the player base and i should just deal with it, but things can be done to even out the playing field a bit.

Ultimately, it may sound like im just complaining, but I'm just trying to get people to look at it differently. I stopped teleing around with my script because it made me lazy, i started to find new things to do like play Call of Duty while i leveled, which wasnt fair, i wasnt playing the game and didnt deserve the experience i got from it. I also knew there was no real way to know where people are going to be, I hated getting kills stolen from me so I realised i shouldnt even take the chance of doing it to others even if they were okay with it.

[Lagos]

Okay, is this a complaint about "scripters who tele in, steal my kills, claim stuff and tele out" or a complaint about "scripters?"

When a person scripting interferes personally with your game-play, i can understand why you would be upset. What I cannot understand is why you would be upset about the mere existence of people who attempt to automate activities.

There are many many portions of this game that I love. Else I would not be playing it.

The slowness of leveling a weapon (to me) almost insists for some way of optimizing gains to speed it up/make it more efficient.
So I check around and I find out that liches are the most efficient way to gain weapon xp.
I find out that doom spawns them the fastest.
And after a week of doing it I realize that I have a low attention span for endlessly killing of liches, and I get bored. Suddenly this is an aspect of the game I no longer find fun. I could just not level weapons. Or I could take 2 years to get a single weapon from 1 to 100 (so far in the last year, I have started leveling 3 separate weapons. none have gotten farther than level 38)

...Or...

I could use my brain, and write a script so that I could automate a repetitive task so that I could chat with friends online or look over stuff on this forum while killing liches.

Now, i already said that I do not approve of scripters ignoring other folk who are not scripting, teleporting in and taking their kills. I already agree that that is not acceptable, and am modifying my script now to prevent that.

[Riddlebox]

I did not intend for this to be a complaint at all which is why it is in the feature requests. I simply voiced my experience and opinion and somewhere in there it must have come off as a complaint. By all means, keep scripting, do your thing, I simply wanted to suggest something. Sorry if I've offended somehow.

[Lagos]

Riddlebox, you posted while I was typing my rant, so I hadn't read it while I was typing. Thanks for clarifying, though I still suspect that some of the other posters might have been complaining about scripters in general. I've been on the internet long enough to know that someone will always disagree with something you are doing/have done, but sometimes clarification can at least thin the herd of that sort of thing.
Like you, I was just attempting to get people to see things a little differently. Some people think "why play the game at all if yer just gonna script stuff"

the answer is usually "because I like most of the game, and scripted to get over a part I don't like." Almost everyone can agree that they don't like repetitive clicking, and will script to save on that (i.e. Blaze's HealR script, very good, might I add...) This is just an expansion on the same principal. you write scripts to increase your fun. to either avoid something unpleasant, or to make yourself better. I know for example that no matter how fast I can type [bandself (or use CTRL-Q) I will still die if I go up against Travesty in melee. On the other hand, with a heal script I can suddenly type [bandself as fast as my 220 dex will allow, allowing me to laugh in that pixie's face as my shattered ribs and burst spleens regenerate so fast Wolverine would cry himself to sleep in envy.

[Riddlebox]

Hehe no problem, glad there is no confusion.

And you have brought up a good point, Like i said before im fine with scripting for the most part. Without Blaze's HealR I would surely not be able to do half of what I do now.
I have heard of many fabulous scripts that sort things, loot things, will even move your house around if you wanted to. Along with all the resource gathering scripts can offer they are wonderful tools, I do not deny that. Yes an auto attack script is great, I just think that the fastest/most rewarding place to level weapons shouldnt be so easily manipulated.
But, whatev.

Another alternative is making a few more spots that offer good experience creatures, similar to doom, although i know the staff is very busy especially with the holidays coming. Im not asking for anything hehe, just a suggestion to think on for the future.

[fingers]

True that I can understand why, under the actual circumstances, a player really wanting to get his weapon to a high level would use the scripts for this boring and unchallenging task. Liches are uptimum for gains, but minimum for challenge and pleasure. Not to mention that if you happen to have cash irl, you can buy +10 lvls and avoid the task.

It is a little bit like th Mage Inquisitors quest. Most certainly some of the most challenging and exciting foes, but min. 21 days including min. 30 hours of active hunting, while the reward is < a day in boring and easy doom.

[Elyril]

Yea, i think the best solution would simply be to add in more areas that offer good weapon experiance, and/or lower the amount of experiance a weapon needs to max. *shrug*

[Danilo Thann]

IMO weapon leveling, through scripting, should be illegal, on the grounds that half of the so called scripter's are doing it to turn a profit. Leveling some one else's weapon for them, is nice, but as far as i know unattended macroing for a profit of any sort is and always has been illegal; this is why I side on the side I do.

I have raised a weapon from 1 to 100, in less then a years time; and while it was a lot of work it was worth my time. As of now I'm raising another weapon, a Darkened Sky, and when I do play I try to gain 1-2 levels on it a day, before I get bored. I of course level my weapons manually, here and there when I can.

Ultimately a persons style of play is what sets the stage, with concerns to weapon leveling. By all means Lagos use your brain to your advantage and write a script to better your game play. But it is my opinion that you are bending the rules, and becoming lazy by doing so, when you take away the tedious part of UO gaming.

The economy is broken because we can Legendary every skill. Where is the fundamentals of relying on others to keep our adventures afloat? The gold in our bank sits there because we are not spending it on new armor, better weapons, certain supplies like: arrows, Mage-reagents, Necro-reagents, band aids, and looted items off of monsters we kill. That, for me, was half of the fun of playing UO. Adventure and Social Economy. This is dead now it would seem. (still no fix, not that I'm saying there is one to be made; but it's still broken)

Old school veterans; older then my character, who relayered most of their gear, used to dash through Peerless Bosses and sell GoC items & finished GoC's to build their gold profits. This killed economy even more, as well as the reason for even playing, since every new Tom, Dick and, Harry had a GoC item in their first 2 weeks of playing, by simply learning taming and or selling Orgs and make millions in profits. I love UOEx because of its ability to grant me and others hours of fun. But, at the time, it was not so much fun for me to notice newbies wearing gear I was only just learning about. Even more frustrating to find out that downing Peerless was no easy task for a melee fighter. I did not envy them for the way in which they had made their gold. No, I felt cheated that my way of doing something was the so called long road without the grand reward at it's end. New players, IMO, should not be better suited for battle then a 7 month veteran who has been playing every day and learning the ins and outs of combat. Ultimately, in the end I gave up my grudge and just pushed onward to where I am at now; one piece shy of the GoC items i need; all in less then 2 years time, without the use of more then a mule as a mount & coin purse. In the end we got a fix, thank you +C, I feel better.

Now we are in the time of the Weapon Leveling Scripters, who aren't actually doing the weapon leveling to deny the tediousness of weapon leveling manually, or for themselves. No, most are doing it because they can charge some one, who doesn't want to level their weapon themselves, 25k - 100k per level after level 25 on a weapon. Or they can make just about the same amount of gold, as they could of selling a GoC, on a fully leveled weapon with all of its points unspent.

Scripting is not bad, but the intentions behind it need to be looked at more closely. Is it disruptive to the UOEx community when a Script user is leveling a weapon and watching a movie? I think it is, since there are people who are actually playing the game as intended and not being rewarded for their efforts.

Furthermore, I like the idea of granting certain monsters more XP and some of them less XP per kill. Perhaps +V could start a new bounty system, that grants a XP reward for a weapon. Kill this type of creature and this many of that type of creature and gain a 1000 xp reward scroll. Allow it to be repeatable ever 6 - 8 hours and wallah more fun... and that's why we are here.

I'd also like it if monsters in Fel granted more XP per kill. Even a slight increase would make more sense then what is currently the case. The monsters are a little bit tougher to kill, so naturally the reward should be a little better, IMO.

Perhaps we could also use Magdah's, or whatever the second clone of malas is called, Doom area. Thus in turn making it like Fel, and restricted to no recalling in or out.

In the end this is just a lot of words written down for potentially nothing, due to the fact that it's up to the GM's to make a choice on this. I do hope they are at least reading these words.

Sincerely,

-Danilo Thann- "GM" 'The Harper's Guild'

[Riddlebox]

Hehehe I could not agree more Danilo,
With just about everything you said.
I would love to see fel monsters give a slight bit more xp then tram, it makes sense because fel monsters are technically "harder" then trammel, it should give just those few extra points, i would gladly start leveling my weapon in fel or what not if this were the case.

Like i said before, just something for the staff to think on.
Keep the ideas coming

[fingers]

IMO weapon leveling, through scripting, should be illegal, on the grounds that half of the so called scripter's are doing it to turn a profit. Leveling some one else's weapon for them, is nice, but as far as i know unattended macroing for a profit of any sort is and always has been illegal; this is why I side on the side I do.

I would love to see every scripts banned when it comes to hunting. Sure I am guilty as anyone as I have a druid macro for spawns and a loot macro to grab keys in Citadel. Granted I know that I am always attended, I know for a fact that it's not everyone that can say as much. But it's not easy to prove that someone is attended or not. For that reason, I would be fine with trashing my macros if using them in hunting was deemed illegal.

Old school veterans; older then my character, who relayered most of their gear, used to dash through Peerless Bosses and sell GoC items & finished GoC's to build their gold profits. This killed economy even more, as well as the reason for even playing, since every new Tom, Dick and, Harry had a GoC item in their first 2 weeks of playing, by simply learning taming and or selling Orgs and make millions in profits.

This, I couldn't disagree more. I completed the GoC quest 19 times. I wear 4 GoC parts and sold 15. I would evaluate the average selling price of them at 7 mil per (the very firsts at 10 mil or 200 eds and, for the most part, 4.5 mil-8 mil or 100-120 eds). The first time I completed it, I had no good armor and just a Cu Sidhe. Killing Grizzle would require between 30 minutes and an hour (depending how many times he would kill me and my Cu Sidhe) and I needed about 60 tries to get my first bones: http://uoex.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4 ... 7209#p7209. If you fought Ice wyrm, I am sure you can have a good laugh imagining me with my single Cu Sidhe and my poor armor and bow, tring to get his spike.

All that to say that, for my first GoC to be completed, it took hundreds of hours of hunting. For my few last ones, even with my best gear, a pack of 6 good imps and all the experience, there is no way I could have acheived it in less than 30 hours of hunting. And even then, to make it in 30 hours, I would have need incredible luck on the drops for jade, bones, stones and fang. With some bad luck, just thoses 4 peices can take more than 30 hours.

Now, even taking it really easy, I can do 250k an hour just hunting in balrons. That's 7.5 mil for 30 hours. About 50% more than a GoC quest running really well. Doom gauntlet? Well 300k an hour + whatever artifact I get (not to mention the insane amount of tokens). I never did bees, but what would 30 hours of taking care of bees equal to? Organics, never did them either, but my guess is that one doing the organic quest wouln't need hundreds of hours to grind his first 10 mil. I solo barracoon, ice, and a few others in less than 30 minutes. Thats 150k gold + one or two scrolls averaging what, maybe 100k (10-50k for 110's all the way up to 2-3 mil for 120 archery-lore-taming)? In the present time, a good spawner will definitly average 500k an hour, that is wayyyyyyyyyy more than the GoC quest has ever generated for me, even pre-nerf of the GoC. Yet, there is one big difference in the challenge of starting a druid script and taking a coffee while waiting for the champ to pop vs fighting paroxysmus and his 3000+ damage breath and tons of ogre lords and other baddies.

And the most ridicoulus thing over all that, is that one only needs to donate (let me laugh a second... DONATE, lololol!) to get in days what I never could even dream of in the 292 days and 12 hours of active playtime (1220 days total) I had here.

Ultimately, in the end I gave up my grudge and just pushed onward to where I am at now; one piece shy of the GoC items i need; all in less then 2 years time, without the use of more then a mule as a mount & coin purse. In the end we got a fix, thank you +C, I feel better.

Me too, I feel super good! I had a session of 6 hours in doom for 1 mil gold, tons of tokens and 9 artifacts including jackals that I sold to a "donator" (hold on, I need to laugh again, d-o-n-a-t-i-o-n, to give something without expecting anything in return, llolololollol!) for 65 EDs or about 2.5 mil. I can now do ridiculously easy tasks, with 0 chance of being killed, and make more profit in a few hours than I used to in a week of GoC hunting. Thank you! Thank you! I feel better too!

Furthermore, I like the idea of granting certain monsters more XP and some of them less XP per kill. Perhaps +V could start a new bounty system, that grants a XP reward for a weapon. Kill this type of creature and this many of that type of creature and gain a 1000 xp reward scroll. Allow it to be repeatable ever 6 - 8 hours and wallah more fun... and that's why we are here.

I'd also like it if monsters in Fel granted more XP per kill. Even a slight increase would make more sense then what is currently the case. The monsters are a little bit tougher to kill, so naturally the reward should be a little better, IMO.

Yep, risk vs reward, variety, fun... But I would'nt hold my breath. Here is an almost 2 years post I made concerning weapon leveling: http://uoex.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2369

I doubt that ANYTHING that would make a 100 eds +10 levels on your weapon deed less desirable would find any attention here.

In the end this is just a lot of words written down for potentially nothing, due to the fact that it's up to the GM's to make a choice on this. I do hope they are at least reading these words.

Well said!