What is actually allowed regarding AFK-Farming?

If the game didn't have PvP then I couldn't care less if you cheated to your heart's content.

But you can't have competitive PvP (especially when one player can take gear from another) and allow cheating as well. That destroys the PvP element.

There are other flaws. I feel like this system encourages grinding and makes the game less fun, and the early stages of the game in particular are less fun. The first few hours of a game are crucial because you don't want to drive away new players.

 

You mean, the one group they were grinding on in graymark forest of 4 or so elves no longer allowed you to go to the rest of the massive zone, fighting all the other elves including patrols of them, encampments of them, lone scouts and other rag tags especially when it was only in the one zone?

Would it have made you feel better just to know they did it manually, would that enhance your gameplay experience?

P.S they were spamming stealth to level stealth, because it isnt usable in combat so can only be used once every 30sec and is one of the longest skills to level.

You do take damage standing on the wagon (we only mainly do this so we can pull an extra patrolling elf or 2 from far away since its so slow and can only do on one small group of enemies at a time and for los in general) i do this as well so do many others (beacause we can, you'll get over it everyone that has a problem with it haha) and the only reason you dont take damage is if enemies aggro onto pet first from him being closer to them. There is no exploit just some harmless, very slow, grinding with your pet as dps and tank.

The only thing is i forget sometimes to switch back to SP and end up doing it for a little bit in multiplayer before remembering and switching.

Why because, you, dont like it?

Would you rather that person be there and do it manually but covering a wider area and having less enemies for you or anyone else to attack, since they are no longer afk on one little group that respawn every 5min or so but continuously hunting half the map?

Smh.

why is your nose so out of joint over what someone else is or isnt doing?

 

playing devils advocate here, andrew:
what if it isn't considered "cheating" in the first place, by the devs?

yep. if i can't pick up my bow from the very start, and hit things every once in a while, and not have to worry about only haveing five arrows, and missing five times...then the game will SUCK for the first several days, to month, for me.

 

If the devs allow it, then I suppose you can say it isn't cheating, but it still creates the problem that the only way to compete with others doing the same is to do it yourself. So you either macro yourself and destroy any sense of accomplishment, or you don't macro and you can't engage in PvP.

It is a poor design decision either way you look at it.

 

Where has it been proven that this player was AFK macroing? Simply because someone stated they didn't answer a whisper or respond to a trade window? That's stupid logic. Even worse is to say to call
them out on the forum when they may not even use it. So you can feel good about yourself getting someone banned that may have been there the whole time and just didn't feel like talking to you? Nice. This
is why I want to kill players even more.

 

For that matter, I ran into someone in this very thread doing the same thing in the same zone the other night. I watched a few seconds, was intelligent enough to realize he was there without opening a trade window, figured out
why he was doing that and moved along to a patrol less than a screen away where I was brutally slaughtered by 5 elves.. so saying that one group is the whole zone is a lie.

 

Noting here in my notes on everything:

Doctor mephistos weakness in PvP: 5 elves!

 

ROFL

 

When the use-based system was first implemented it was said that there would be a way to discourage macroing. I don't think we'll know for sure if this is true until Release 23 after the wipe.

But yeah, we don't want anything like what you're describing in this game. I hate that too.

 

It was only assumed the person was macroing because they didn't answer a whisper or a trade window. If someone opens a trade window on me mid-fight I don't think I'd respond in a pleasant way or answer them repeatedly sending me whispers.

That trade window BS happened to me all the time in another game because you had the heroes thinking they caught a bot when in fact I always grind when I play that certain class and it is extremely annoying.

 

Oh man you played a left clicker in hello kitty island adventure also? Yeah I feel for you, but as soon as you get a rare purple unicorn card it will make pve much easier cause you can switch to a support special to farm an knockout at the same time.

Yea we need an auto deny toggle here as well

 

That PvE clickin' is serious man!

 

Chris said the only system to prevent macroing is that you need experience before you can get skill gain, so he assumes this means there is no benefit to running a macro.

I explained that you can use your active playing time to try and maximize XP and then use macros when you sleep to focus on specific skill gain. It is still an unfair advantage, but he doesn't think it should matter.

I brought up that macros can get you both XP and skill gain, and he had no response.

There is no game out there on the planet that has stopped macroing, and macros are not the only problem with use based advancement.

The people who cite they were great in UO in turn bring up and defend macros. They liked cheap and easy gains. People feel like they worked in UO because apparently everyone did it and it didn't matter once everyone hit cap and was on level ground.

This game won't have a cap. This game isn't UO and we don't have a clone of UO systems. Saying "I liked this in UO so we should have it" doesn't necessarily make sense for SotA.

 

I love the use based system, I think it makes this a better game in so many ways.

But a huge reason I only played UO for a few weeks was because of macroing. I hated seeing all the scripting and players standing in the streets doing the same thing over and over again. I wanted to roleplay, not script my way through character advancement so I could finally compete.

So I'm right with you enderandrew, but I hope your solution is not to take away the use based system - cause I love it.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but I'm sure we can find it collaboratively with this development team. My advice to you would be to wait until R23 after the wipe and see what happens, see what improvement there is, if any. Then come back and rally the troops. I say this only because I know that's when the developers will be ready to listen, they've decided already that we won't know enough about player behavior until then.

 

The devs already said that one of the reasons why they've changed to a on-use-based system was because there were a lot of design issues in the game where the team felt like those issues could be resolved if they had the on-use system in the first place. The fan-base asking for it was just the tipping stone.

So how you feel about the gains or the development time for this change is irreverent. The devs saw advantages and wanted to try it out.

If you're asking for a 100% fair PvP system in an RPG, you're dreaming some unobtainable goal.

 

and yu dont spend anywhere as much gold to learn the more advanced skills, just buy them for 100 gold and use them..

 

I agree with this.. Although some measure still could be put in as a draw back to the above mentioned tactic, though it should not interfere with overall Item ( and/or ) Pet abilities.

 

I also think perhaps a focus drain exponatial decrease could be put in place for any spell/glyph that is used continuously in a row. ( Abuse Control ).
So there would be a fixed amount of spell/glyph uses per time frame allowed before your focus starts dropping exponentially until either you move ( Change location )--change spell/glyph.

So for the most part it would not effect anyone/anything until someone starts spamming the spell ( Like the OP's complaint ) and of coarse this is not a fool proof method but it would certainly help and would also force the player to be more resoursefull in finding ways to defeat a situation and/or monster

 

That's the exact type of punitive mechanic that punishes the average player (role playing, just for fun, a fight that requires it) and does absolutely nothing to stop the determined abuser.
There are many times when casting something continuously in a fight is in fact the right thing to do, especially if it's your specialized role to do that.
I understand the desire, but this type of thing has been tried before, and zealously, has done far more harm than good.

 

Part of the answer to this (from @Chris) is that when your pet is summoned, you unstealth, and when you stealth your pet unsummons (is that a word?).
So that part is a bug.

As far as afk macroing, I still maintain that Portalarium is aware.