Variable recall cooldown
Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2023 11:03 am
There's an overall problem with macroing/farming. Usually, this is called "that player is AFK macroing" but actually, we do many AFK checks and overall players are watching their screens. When I go check someone, I'm pretty sure I will get a response. Btw, with mostly +Kimane doing AFK checks, and me occasionally, some of you might have found some "blind spots" during the week. So I will be doing more AFK checks, at more random hours, and an automated AFK-check system could also be put on a higher priority (a more advanced one than the captcha for harvesting resources).
We've received suggestions to block recalling in to spots near Balrons, but the problem is that players would just move on to other spots that aren't yet blocked, are less profitable, but still profitable. And then we could block those spots too, but eventually we'd block out so many things, and nobody would be able to keep track of what's blocked and why.
A big part of the problem I see here, is that it's possible to recall around very fast (or using other recall-like spells). In regular UO with limited skills, travel by spell would be reserved for a selected few character types, but here it's possible to be everything at once, so it distorts the power of that ability.
There are 2 problems:
- It's possible to be in many places at once. With regular dungeon crawling, one can clear out a dungeon and then move on to the next level/room, or even go to a different dungeon. With fast travel it's possible to switch faster - just do the better monsters, then instantly go to a different dungeon and clear out the cream of the crop there, and so on. But with the way we have it, it's possible to recall every 2 seconds, basically monitoring and farming about 20 spots, and you do the full list in 60 seconds. Sometimes there's a monster at the location, so make that about 90 seconds to do the full circle. And although that is fun to do, it's just too powerful. With most spawn being timed at 5-10 minutes, one can farm the best 20 spots on the shard, as long as they're not in Felucca/Ilshenar or other recall-disabled zone.
- Doing AFK checks because of intense recalling is very hard, and sometimes close to impossible. Btw, I'd like to implement an automated AFK check system, but very soon there will be a script that can answer it with very good precision, and so we will upgrade it periodically - but we will probably always have to manually check players, to try new methods of getting people's attention. So I try to be creative, to "break" someone's script get them to slow down somehow, so I can do the AFK check. And that's extra mental work, and it's time consuming, and we have to do huge numbers of AFK checks. I have just tried to check a player, they're recalling around at an interval of about every 2 seconds, and so by the time I click anything or place an obstacle or do an eye-catching effect, they're already gone.
So I'm thinking in the direction of a variable cooldown for fast-travel spells (Recall, Sacred Journey, Nature's Passage).
This would be done in a way that, if you recall around to a few places, you could still do it without any interruption. But doing it many times, too frequently in a short amount of time, would accumulate as a debuff that persists for a while, making the recalls slower.
Option: Simple tracking of last number of recalls in X minutes
The server would keep a track of how many times you have recalled, let's say in the last 10 minutes. When you recall, if this number if less than 10, there's no delay. And then, for every recall above the threshold, there would be 1 extra second of delay. So if you have recalled 17 times in the last 10 minutes, there's a 7 second delay between being able to cast recall again.
The numbers could be tweaked a bit. With this configuration, if you need to bounce around 10 places and then be there for 10 minutes, there's no change. If you recall on average every 30 seconds, there's a 10 second delay. It gets saturated at a 23-second recall interval, where the delay also becomes 23 seconds, so it is not possible to recall any faster within a 10-minute window of time.
Baseline configuration:
- recall history kept for 10 minutes
- no delay under threshold of 10 recalls within that time
- 1 second delay for every recall above the threshold
- Maxes out at about 23-second recall interval
----------------------
Option: Another way, to make it similar to the Felucca mana drain:
Every recall applies a 10% slower-mana-regen debuff. Every 5 seconds, 1% of the debuff is reduced. Higher Intelligence would either make the debuff weaker, or make it reset faster. These numbers could be tweaked:
Baseline: Every recall applies 10% slower mana-regen. Reduces 1% every 5 seconds.
Stretch-over-time: Every recall applies 5% slower mana regen. Reduces 1% every 10 seconds.
Well, there's a problem with giving a mana-regen debuff, and then using Mana Leech weapons. So, either Mana leech would have to be ineffective when under this debuff, or it would all have to be designed to be completely separate from mana.
----------------------
Btw, I know that some of you who have just now gotten a hold of the script, it's annoying that we're changing it just now, after you finally got to play like those, who have macroed this for years. In a way, if someone makes a macro and gets to use it, it's fair that they get the benefits of having invented this machine. But also, it was perhaps a too big advantage for very few players for a long time.
I'm making this part of my 5-week plan, so I think we can discuss it for a week, and then it could be functional within a few days or a week.
Looking for input from you, from all types of players. I'd like us to figure this out "on paper" before it goes into coding. So, I'm going to do my best to read and understand, and possibly integrate, the feedback that I hear. I am definitely in favor of doing something, I don't want us to continue much further down the path where the only way you can get anywhere in this game is by running this macro.
We've received suggestions to block recalling in to spots near Balrons, but the problem is that players would just move on to other spots that aren't yet blocked, are less profitable, but still profitable. And then we could block those spots too, but eventually we'd block out so many things, and nobody would be able to keep track of what's blocked and why.
A big part of the problem I see here, is that it's possible to recall around very fast (or using other recall-like spells). In regular UO with limited skills, travel by spell would be reserved for a selected few character types, but here it's possible to be everything at once, so it distorts the power of that ability.
There are 2 problems:
- It's possible to be in many places at once. With regular dungeon crawling, one can clear out a dungeon and then move on to the next level/room, or even go to a different dungeon. With fast travel it's possible to switch faster - just do the better monsters, then instantly go to a different dungeon and clear out the cream of the crop there, and so on. But with the way we have it, it's possible to recall every 2 seconds, basically monitoring and farming about 20 spots, and you do the full list in 60 seconds. Sometimes there's a monster at the location, so make that about 90 seconds to do the full circle. And although that is fun to do, it's just too powerful. With most spawn being timed at 5-10 minutes, one can farm the best 20 spots on the shard, as long as they're not in Felucca/Ilshenar or other recall-disabled zone.
- Doing AFK checks because of intense recalling is very hard, and sometimes close to impossible. Btw, I'd like to implement an automated AFK check system, but very soon there will be a script that can answer it with very good precision, and so we will upgrade it periodically - but we will probably always have to manually check players, to try new methods of getting people's attention. So I try to be creative, to "break" someone's script get them to slow down somehow, so I can do the AFK check. And that's extra mental work, and it's time consuming, and we have to do huge numbers of AFK checks. I have just tried to check a player, they're recalling around at an interval of about every 2 seconds, and so by the time I click anything or place an obstacle or do an eye-catching effect, they're already gone.
So I'm thinking in the direction of a variable cooldown for fast-travel spells (Recall, Sacred Journey, Nature's Passage).
This would be done in a way that, if you recall around to a few places, you could still do it without any interruption. But doing it many times, too frequently in a short amount of time, would accumulate as a debuff that persists for a while, making the recalls slower.
Option: Simple tracking of last number of recalls in X minutes
The server would keep a track of how many times you have recalled, let's say in the last 10 minutes. When you recall, if this number if less than 10, there's no delay. And then, for every recall above the threshold, there would be 1 extra second of delay. So if you have recalled 17 times in the last 10 minutes, there's a 7 second delay between being able to cast recall again.
The numbers could be tweaked a bit. With this configuration, if you need to bounce around 10 places and then be there for 10 minutes, there's no change. If you recall on average every 30 seconds, there's a 10 second delay. It gets saturated at a 23-second recall interval, where the delay also becomes 23 seconds, so it is not possible to recall any faster within a 10-minute window of time.
Baseline configuration:
- recall history kept for 10 minutes
- no delay under threshold of 10 recalls within that time
- 1 second delay for every recall above the threshold
- Maxes out at about 23-second recall interval
----------------------
Option: Another way, to make it similar to the Felucca mana drain:
Every recall applies a 10% slower-mana-regen debuff. Every 5 seconds, 1% of the debuff is reduced. Higher Intelligence would either make the debuff weaker, or make it reset faster. These numbers could be tweaked:
Baseline: Every recall applies 10% slower mana-regen. Reduces 1% every 5 seconds.
Stretch-over-time: Every recall applies 5% slower mana regen. Reduces 1% every 10 seconds.
Well, there's a problem with giving a mana-regen debuff, and then using Mana Leech weapons. So, either Mana leech would have to be ineffective when under this debuff, or it would all have to be designed to be completely separate from mana.
----------------------
Btw, I know that some of you who have just now gotten a hold of the script, it's annoying that we're changing it just now, after you finally got to play like those, who have macroed this for years. In a way, if someone makes a macro and gets to use it, it's fair that they get the benefits of having invented this machine. But also, it was perhaps a too big advantage for very few players for a long time.
I'm making this part of my 5-week plan, so I think we can discuss it for a week, and then it could be functional within a few days or a week.
Looking for input from you, from all types of players. I'd like us to figure this out "on paper" before it goes into coding. So, I'm going to do my best to read and understand, and possibly integrate, the feedback that I hear. I am definitely in favor of doing something, I don't want us to continue much further down the path where the only way you can get anywhere in this game is by running this macro.
