Rules changing: away-from-keyboard rule specifics

[Charon]

@Wil

My turn to cherry pick a quote form you
"If it can be ironed out, it would mean that while you could start an AFK script, the activity would terminate in half an hour or an hour."
So are you saying that it is ok for someone to camp Gnaw for instance for a half hour to an hour and other players need to stand by and just wait for them to be ported out by an AFK Check? What about Balron spawns where players port in kill port to next kill rince n repeat. We are all supposed to be good with that and just wait? How about events areas? Everyone cool with waiting for AFK players to time out??

Is there a big unreported problem with folks porting in and kill-stealing at the Balron and Gnaw spawns? Perhaps some automation is in place to prevent it and you think I'd unwind that automation? No? We don't need to solve problems that don't actually exist.
It is a problem, that's the thing. Recently I was at Gnaw where a player was AFK walking slowly back n forth kill gnaw for an extended period of time. I ported out and came back with blockable items to hold them in the corner while I fought Gnaw
took 15mins before the player noticed aka came back to the computer. So yes it is a problem.


We do also have a taking turns rule. I don't believe I suggested changing that one, but if you think you saw some words please feel free to quote them.
Agreed whole heartedly , this rule should NOT change

And you know, if there is somehow a big problem with folks breaking the taking turns rule, that too could fall to non-punitive automation. Make mobs already engaged in combat when you arrive by spell be unattackable just like late arrivals at the champ spawns.

Agreed, all it should require is a PM from the GM to remind the player to play by the rules, repeated reminder may result in further action, not a common issue though.

[Possum12]

So if I understand some things correctly the "gathering" type AFK checks have a chance of being generated whenever one double clicks a shovel,pick,axe or fishing rod etc. So like an X% chance every time you do the action.

While I do not pretend to understand the game mechanics and how all those sort of things work, player not a programmer here.

Could not a similar method for AFK gathering checks be utilized for gold farming/ weapon leveling?

Right now whenever someone kills a creature a check is already being made to determine whether the player has a levelable weapon wielded is it not? So why not generate a chance of a automatic AFK check whenever a creature is killed.

Surely this would make AFK gold farming etc a bit risky?

Not sure how achievable or playable this would/could be?

If something along this line was possible then maybe the higher gold yielding mobs could give a greater chance of a check.

Actual GM checks would not need to be quite so frequent then, freeing up their valuable time for other things.

[PaPa]

i kinda like that auto afk check idea Possum12 said but would that be for every monster in the game? and if thats the case i would hate to do champs just the amount of monsters you kill there would be triggering a afk check every few min.

[+Colibri]

I wish I could reply to every post and in more detail.. i like how we're having this discussion here on the forum, so we can all hear each other before changes being implemented (and me not being a proxy for numerous tickets).

• Although AFK stands for away-from-keyboard, in this context it is not paying attention to the screen. Maybe we could re-brand it as some other word/abbreviation. Watching paint dry is mandatory - there's no other way for us to know whether someone is physically at the keyboard, but is scrolling through facebook or watching youtube. You can also be putting out a fire, as long as you're watching the game screen so you can reply to an AFK check, that's all good.

  

  firefighters.jpg (38.91 KiB) Viewed 6751 times

  See here, fellow colleagues. I can play the game while I am running into the burning building. All I have to do is answer the question when some weird sparkles show up.
• Skill training actions (that don't make any kind of profit, including making steps for the achievement) are intended to be excluded. Actually, a great thing to do here would be to make skillgain engaging and entertaining, in which case it could then also be required to be at the keyboard. But that's for another discussion...
• This is not whether scripting is alowed or not. It's allowed. It's just about the details of what you need to be watching the screen for, and how we do the checks.
• Current automated checks are coded so that if you respond well, they start getting less frequent (but still, one can fire just 5 minutes after the previous). If you fail one or a few, they will become more common, for a while, until you build up some good reputation again. The manual AFK checks currently don't follow this formula, but i will make past data available in the checking tools, so that we can occasionally skip a player who's been checked a lot recently and was always here. Right now, we sometimes skip a player, but it's just based on data in "local memory" (in the brain).
• Even basic movements (between two chest in a dungeon, to check whether something has spawned) can be the profitable part of an activity. Even if the computer just makes a sound when it detects something, and you come to steal it personally. I remember an old issue of stealing the titan's hammer AFK, although it was not allowed to hide in the area, there was a blind spot just far enough for the script to pick up when the hammer spawned (actually not visible in the screen with normal settings, but a script did detect when an item with that graphic & hue appeared). I did a manual spawn of the hammer at the time, the player moved in to steal it right away, but wasn't responding. So this player was just idling there for weeks, they were actually making great profit while AFK.
• Announcements: simplification of the announcement-no-spam rule is also on the table, yeah. Overall, i would include it in the non-afkable actions.
• Communication in dungeons: yes it would be great if players responded to hails of other players. We often get tickets that someone is AFK, but we do a few checks and the player always responds right away. There are 2 reasons why it's not required for players to respond to those hails: if the non-responding player could end up in jail because of that, there's huge space to exploit the system and get other players jailed (well, such incidents could be audited, but I think it would be just more work and complications). And #2, I just spent about 4 hours with +Kimane to tell her all about afk checks, what to watch out and so on. I've seen some cleverly written macros that made it seem like there's a player there, but if you try to actually do the conversation all you get back is a random "oh, yeah i'm here", "i love the shard" and so on But I've already thought about redirecting AFK reports from tickets directly into the anti-afk system.
• @Coalfire: sorry for the scare, this was actually +Kimane's first afk check
• Check intervals are and will be random. can be in another 3 minutes, could be 24 hours. but if you have a good reputation, it's a random duration in the span of 5 minutes - 24 hours, if you have a bad reputation it's 5 minutes - 1 hour.
• "PK not possible" - yeah that's why nobody gets killed by a player. If it were technically possible to do so, and there would just be a rule that it's a jailable offense, over the years there would be a lot of players jailed because of that. And well the AFK rules are changing, and they can even evolve into something much more useful. But it's not possible to disable AFK activity - unless with some dead man switch that can't be scripted.
• @Silent - balron zone & gumps. I don't quite understand what you mean - usually with balrons, the common practice is to recall around in only those dozen spots.

AFK checks overall have to be:
- easy to notice with the eye. While i was reading, i got an idea that a check has to go from being barely noticable (not to obstruct) to slowly becoming more and more visible (which by nature, is also more obstructive).
- hard to detect with a macro (more in the Alerter scripts below).
- non-obstructive, not to get you killed. (Players will be immortal when an AFK check is being done. And while reading through this thread, I remembered that same should go for pets). Maybe also that your character is cloned (so that you don't lose your turn) and your actual character is in a safe place, to answer the question.


Penalties are also intended to be updated/overhauled
- Penalties are something that I have to think about and write down. Input is welcome... generally speaking, the penalties are little at first, than become greater, and there's cooldowns... about what we have right now, just needs to be simplified.
- There will be no public shaming... this isn't the middle ages. Oh wait... well, some might just go on a bathroom break, while others intentionally try to cheat. There is very little information that gets through a computer screen, and staff not being able to take days and weeks to handle each incident. So all we have to work with, is whether the player responded or not. (There's also the middle ground: player who responds right after being pulled to jail, in which case we usually skip the penalty part (PaPa, sorry about your bad experience) and show how an AFK check looks like, so that you can know what to look out for).
- About other kinds of penalties, like removing gold or tools, those are rather hard to script and easy to get around by cheathers (e.g. keep most of your tools in a toolhouse, inside your house somwehere, and it wont be eaten by the penalty... unless if the script removed all tools from all your houses & exex, which can be a kind of steep penalty ... well perhaps it's easy to script, but the problem is to fully test and then rely on the functionality... it adds a lot of complexity.)


Alerter scripts
Although it's not the priority, there will definitely be different kinds of checks from time to time, to break any such script. And perfoming new kinds of afk checks will likely have to be manual. Just recently I did a few checks with a giant rainbow mongbat... that sure scared some people, fortunately there were no heart attacks.
- There is the technical possibility of making afk checks very noticable (not just by scripts, but also for example with a Phone App that sends a notification when you're being checked) ... but i think that defeats the point of this being a game.
It's possible to make a script that plays some sound when you make an overhead message, or if you get moved outside of your regular spots. That's why in the future, there might be a book that pops up... or some other random puzzle. The problem in the long term is that there is a limited number of ways of how to capture the attention of a player, and it also not being detectable by a script. But maybe, from time to time, we can make something new and creative.
- It's partially conntected to the problem of some parts of the game being boring, and there's much we can do on that topic. But I think it's the wrong move to allow boring tasks to be done AFK, or make them less boring by making it easier for people to go AFK


Btw i am a bit worried about discussing these things in the public, and about how much of the internal workings of the AFK checks i reveal (and other functionalities of the shard). Our shard has inspired several others, and with it a lot of our successful practices have been copied as well.. So henceforth, let it be known that shards that adopt the same ideas soon after, that they probably got it from here

[Wil]

Alerter scripts
Although it's not the priority, there will definitely be different kinds of checks from time to time, to break any such script. And perfoming new kinds of afk checks will likely have to be manual. Just recently I did a few checks with a giant rainbow mongbat... that sure scared some people, fortunately there were no heart attacks.
- There is the technical possibility of making afk checks very noticable (not just by scripts, but also for example with a Phone App that sends a notification when you're being checked) ... but i think that defeats the point of this being a game.
It's possible to make a script that plays some sound when you make an overhead message, or if you get moved outside of your regular spots. That's why in the future, there might be a book that pops up... or some other random puzzle. The problem in the long term is that there is a limited number of ways of how to capture the attention of a player, and it also not being detectable by a script. But maybe, from time to time, we can make something new and creative.

Hi +C,

As an experienced software developer, let me point out the obvious: Anything you do on the screen to catch the player's notice will be different from the expected behavior of the game. Anything that diverges from the game's expected behavior is detectable by a program. The program doesn't need to know what an AFK check will look like, just that it will look different than the expected screen. Unexpected gumps and mobiles are particularly easy to detect. Fireworks and text bouncing around the screen is harder to detect but then as you've heard here that's hard for live players to deal with too.

Now, for whichever knucklehead wants to jump in here and say something non-constructive like, "Oh, you must be a cheater," let me suggest that (A) shut up and (B) you've totally missed the point. My point is that I think trying to defeat the alerting mechanisms folks come up with is a losing proposition. There's just no way to make it hard enough for the scripters without impairing the live players. Regardless of whether you think it should or shouldn't be cheating, it's a game the enforcer can only play to lose. You escalate that sort of arms race and the scripters are likely to get better at responding than the live players.

I think the smarter move is to level the playing field: make it straightforward for anyone to set an alert on the AFK check but make it hard to script a correct response. Randomization like you talked about with a big enough pool of options is good for that. Yes, it changes the rule and yes it sets a different dynamic for the game. But it's much more enforceable with a much lower risk of a "false positives," which means not doing harm to someone who actually was following the rules but fouled up the afk check.

Anyway, I've said my piece and I'll let it be.

Regards,
Wil

[PaPa]

Wil i do think passing the AFK check is the issue most of the afk scripters arnt realy sleeping and passing the AFK check its teh people who have a script set up to notify them of the AFK check and then run back to the game and pass the afk check. and yes anything you see or read in game can been picked up by a script like the number of items in back pack or any journal. as for things like a puff ball you physical see the poof but it dont make a journal entry yes you could make a program that could watch the entire screen for a total over all color coverage diffrance. This is way out of the range of easy uo or razor or uosteam. and you would have to do this for every spot on your ruine spots and make sure the program can tell the diffrance between a mob spawn or a AFK check. Yes it is totaly posible to do this but i can bet that not even .005% of the people here coudl do that.

So again i say its not about passing or failing the AFK check its about detection of the AFK check in the first place.


I believe a GM can cast any spell with out actually announcing the spell.

Or even when the GM puffs in and out of hiding thats not detectable.

Fireworks, are another good one blow off like 10 fireworks wands at one time you can see it just cant detect it

lol i could see it now, +coli use fireworks or puffballs and someone makes a program to detect it but since anyone can use firework wand that person gets a bunch of false positives cuz people start blasting off fireworks all the time that would be funny if you could see the AFK'ers face "darn i just got up and my detection script keeps goning off but theres no AFK check"

+coli
if/when you do implement the new AFK check you should start over with the trust part of who gets AFK checked and how often. Im going to bet that at least one of the people you afk check and they pass are only passing cuz there script notifies them of the afk check.

[Charon]

Wil

Now, for whichever knucklehead wants to jump in here and say something non-constructive like, "Oh, you must be a cheater," let me suggest that (A) shut up and (B) you've totally missed the point.

You just knew I was going to jump all over this.

A) Not a chance
B) Sure didn't

You believe it should be easier for AFK players to be alerted they are being checked, but harder for the script to respond?
Wow, what an epically horrible idea. YES lets make it easier for them to get back to the computer! Jesus ……

- Auto afk checks should be harder to detect and even harder for script to respond.
- Punishment should be far harsher than they are now.

*runs off to find ice cream for his cake*

[Wil]

Wil

Now, for whichever knucklehead wants to jump in here and say something non-constructive like, "Oh, you must be a cheater," let me suggest that (A) shut up and (B) you've totally missed the point.

You just knew I was going to jump all over this.

If you wish to self-identify as someone who believes folks who disagree with you are not just wrong but wrongdoers, far be it from me to argue.

You believe it should be easier for AFK players to be alerted they are being checked, but harder for the script to respond?
Wow, what an epically horrible idea. YES lets make it easier for them to get back to the computer! Jesus ……

I would have more respect for your opinion if you could articulate why you think clear alerts that you're being AFK checked are a bad thing without employing straw men or circular reasoning. I would have even more respect if you went back to first principles, the reasons afk scripting is bad in the first place, and reasoning forward from there explained why requiring the player to respond within 60 seconds (regardless of other factors) is insufficient to solve those original problems.

[PaPa]

IT all comes down to SEEING the AFK check and NOT hearing it and then going to the game and passing it.

That is it!

There is no arguing anything else.

IF a player is warned about a AFK check that defeats the point of the AFK check.

No matter how easy or hard the question scripts are not being answering the question, the notified player is.

[Charon]

Oh Wil...

I was one of maybe 3 people that implied that you could be cheating (since you seem so adamant that penalties should be almost non-existent). You know darn well who you were talking about with the knuckleheads comment.

My points are this.
- Auto afk checks should be easy enough to see but not overbearing.
- Auto afk checks should be extremely difficult for scripts to detect and near impossible for scripts to respond to.
- Failure of any afk checks means go to jail and await your fate.
- Jail sentences should be much harsher than they are now.

One thing to consider is maybe certain spawn locations cannot be recalled into, only out of, kind like Ish is.
Maybe you can recall in a screen away and walk to rest to the spawn. This would minimize scripts porting players into and out of locations.

Just some thoughts.
Flame on.

[Nick]

I think the ideal fix would be making it so that if you recall in somewhere and kill anything with-in 90 seconds you have a 180-second wait to use any travel spell again. This would hard nerf the recall leveling and gold/bone farming all over the world which is the main source of farmed welled on the shard.

This would severely hurt my income stream because I almost never farm grind for gold (at least not since Wrong was Nerffed into a wast of time, and gauntlet now requires not just a scull but typing and teleporting tiles), if I need want more gold I watch Netflix/twitch or play call of duty while I rune script level [claimall hands-free. I have a second screen that is to easy to walk away from another player if I recall in on them or respond to an AFK prompt. the Auto ones are easy to recognize (do wish they were bigger and maybe flashed, only ones that can be a pain are GM manual ones because in a mob with Razor spam on-screen and AOE WW dmg numbers they are hard to notice (unless they have that huge orange Ogaboga with them)

Lets keep the anger, name-calling, and pontification to a minimum lol.

Nick

[Atienne Navarre]

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.

[patrix]

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[culichi]

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 so want to see the real scofflaws get a perma ban or a crippling jail sentence but its so hard to keep population up as it is that raising up drama with multiple perma bans would likely hurt a lot more than help. what always used to keep me in line was that nyx would ban people from her awesome events if they were major rule breakers maybe we could bring back something like that. if you have a tendency to break afk rules you get banned from auctions and lose tc vendor privileges for a while. heck id go even further and say you cant even try to steal the monthly titan hammer but that might be too much coding work. how about being a jerk bans you from ed store as well and even prevents you from claiming donation bonuses.
i can accept that scripters have a huge advantage in the game that i dont because thats really my fault for not learning how to write scripts. what really bothers me is that some people are so damned greedy that the scripting advantage just isnt enough they also have to run scripts while they sleep or are off doing other stuff.

i was in the mood for a rant

[Silent]

[*] @Silent - balron zone & gumps. I don't quite understand what you mean - usually with balrons, the common practice is to recall around in only those dozen spots.

You could simply determine a tile area from which a player could be gumped with an afk check, for balrons they are within an area of spawn therefore one could be automatically checked if entering that area either through recall or walking. A classic 3 letter perhaps (not sure if it was on this server, if not I can explain)

this would leave you guys free to check other things rather than wasting time balancing the economy manually