Macroing

@Mordakai , I agree with you fully. As currently designed, any of these methods are fine. My problem is with the design, which is why I keep trying to think of ways to improve it, but it was too late a year ago. This is what we have.

 

Several of the JRPG MMOs that I played had CAPTCHAs. I'll try to dig up one. All I know is that it ran off a few players, but didn't affect gold farming or skill macroing at all.

WoW was starting a CAPTCHA-like function on their Battlegrounds back when I was still playing that. It worked for about a week. No idea if its still around or not.

There is also posts like this AMA, where they actually ask about CAPTCHA. As they note, it would reduce but not eliminate any botting.

This could easily be replaced with a buff to earn/apply more experience up to a certain amount (experience, not time). And we coudl get rid of that annoying bar on the main screen.

 

Apparently your just blinded by your own vision of should be.. I don't have endless time, I work 10 hours 5 days a week. You missed the part about I grind as you call it with all skills turned off...therefore I have xp to use..

 

That's what I'm saying, Mordakai. If you don't have endless time, you are macroing or you're at a disadvantage to the other players that are.

I'm not macroing. So you're getting a huge advantage over me and anyone else that's not macroing. That's not right. The game should be designed to either STOP you from macroing, or STOP you from WANTING to macro. That's the point of this thread.

 

Buffs for faster skills, bonus skill training sessions, a plate of fresh cookies... so many good quest rewards that do not need to be XP. XP could still be there, but only in the sense of time and understanding. Play more and slowly pick up skills faster, similar to a level but not used to decide if I can hit something. Bah, so many mechanics that just went the wrong way in my opinion, but I still plan to have fun.

 

if you can macro afk to gm then gm means nothing, even if you earned it honest way. Games that hold no sense of accomplishment inevitably become a bore.

 

You know I love ya Insin

But the issue is more in depth than just your case. And Baron is more than just a Time thing.

Do you like power levelers? How bout I hire some RMT guys to get xp while I afk macro on a gustball at the start of the scene?

Macros bring down the quality and meaning of actualy getting those skills.
I see most high level guys now and are not impressed cuz I know they prolly just macroed their skills up.
Cool a program skilled your character up for you.

where do you draw the line?
How bout macroing a repeteable quest and get 50mill in gold then then give it out to the public /rolleyes

 

Macroing hurts a lot more than just skilling up.

Also theres a lot of backend way to stop this instead of throwing alerts in our face though.

 

When they stop it on the backend, I'll stop suggesting they stop it on the frontend.

Right now I assume SPO mode is really just macro mode for most players.

 

I don't afk train anything and the 24/7 botters never caught me (2 came close). I don't like macro'ing at all, but it is part and parcel of any use based system as we pointed out before it was even implemented.

 

I wasnt really talking about you, but I know not everyone can play 60-80 hours a week.

My issue extends beyond skilling up really. Macroing in other areas is what can really hurt this game.

 

oh i am not disagreeing, i hate it.

 

Well isn't that how it used to be before people in these very forums asked, no *demanded* that skills be use based? If memory serves, the Devs opted to accommodate the people who wanted use based skills, the people who did not like having to pay an increasing amount of gold to train higher levels, by giving us the system we have now. Sometimes you gotta be careful what you wish for. Because the change to use base skills opened the door to macroing and the afk people leveling up.

 

I love the use based system. Chris had said that the reason they went to it was because he *thought* he'd figured out a way to make macroing not be beneficial. What the devs have said is that the people that macro are hurting themselves as they get to higher levels because it drains their XP pool. Which is one reason we have XP still. But in reality it's just making players more powerful as they sleep or go to work. They come back and they can kill more stuff and are more effective in pvp. If my choices are 1. go to work and don't advance my character, or 2. go to work and advance my character, I'll take option 1.

So what if I need to go back out and grind more? I'd have to do that anyway! (not yelling at you, just using exclamation points for emphasis, while answering the common responses that people give to this logic)

 

I have one simple principle that I think applies in here as well as it does in real life. It goes like this:

If you can easily automate something, you probably should.​

Translated in the game context, this does NOT mean to support "cheating". Firstly, it is quite debatable whether or not macroing a repeated movement is actually cheating in any way if you're already earned the XP, besides I can think of quite a few legitimate and important ways of practicing certain skills that involves repeating some action over and over -- katas in karate-do and archery target practice come to mind as a couple of examples, out of probably hundreds.

What it does mean is that if playing a game involves a lot of easily scriptable repeated movements, then something is seriously wrong with the core game design. If the required actions for leveling are so trivialized and dumbed down that they can only result in ultra-boredom and RSI, then I see absolutely no reason to put any blame on those that circumvent it by macroing.

I think one of the root causes of this situation is that leveling is tied to quantity, not quality. Case in point; in the ranged skill tree I can get a certain amount of XP and exercise my core ranged skills by killing lots and lots of red spiders. However if I want to really train them especially at higher levels, the amount of shots is going to become a bottleneck (I am not going to expend the XP I have earned, because my shot count is too low), therefore I need to fight as sloppily and badly as I possibly can; turning on autoattack and shoot while running around, because it is really the number of arrows wasted that counts, not how skilfully I am actually killing the critters. I find this totally insane and absurd.

So while in principle I like @Browncoat Jayson's suggestion that leveling one's fighting skills should involve some level of aggro, I'd like to expand on that and propose that experience gains should also related to the quality of attack. Delivering 250 points of damage via one well-prepared critical shot should improve a skill roughly the equivalent amount to 30 half-hearted shots performed while running backwards, delivering roughly the same amount of damage. In the big picture this would not change the core mechanics (because the average DPS stays the same) but it would perhaps favor actual player skills, i.e. one could potentially level more easily by playing skilfully instead of trying to play as "badly" as possibly (as it is now).

 

It's cool, I don't feel yelled at by you. Besides, if you *were* yelling at me I'd just slug you right in the kisser

 

I think that might be the key to this whole thing. We need to think of a way to make the more you macro result in having to grind more, not less.

I know that's kind of what @Chris was trying to do, but it's not working. We need something more direct, more obvious, more in your face. We need something that just literally makes it so the moment you repeat the same things over and over again you realize that it's counter productive to do that and you're actually going backwards from where you're trying to get to. We need something that makes it so people that play "fair" and do not macro are the ones that get to grind less.

 

How bout macroing Farms? and Fishing? and Mining?

like I said where do you draw the line with macroing...

 

That is why CAPTCHA is so appealing to me.

 

Use based systems = marcroing..... If you want macroing to go away then a means of spending the xp needs to be sorted... till then .... macro's will prevail.