Honestly, what's the deal with gold grabbing?

Sena

Sarapis said:

It's led to people optimizing the heck out of the combat system and pushing the required level of combat knowledge through the roof, which is the issue.

That happens even without automation though, automation just exaggerates the effect. Even in graphical MMOs with almost no scripting of any kind, PvP skills get more developed and strategies get more optimised as the game ages, and the barrier to entry gradually rises just from the playerbase alone (up to the point where it becomes entirely solved), separately from further balancing/development.

I doubt just piling on random afflictions would get you very far today, even if automation never became common.

Rip

What I find funny is that things that are considered bad game play, become "features" later on.  Small minor examples.

There was a time when speed walking to areas was frowned upon, now it's an in-game feature.

There was a time when you had to time bal/eq, now there an in-game queue...a feature.

There was a time you had to learn all the cures and set up something to cure, now it's a feature.

There was a time you had to test everything and learn, now there are in-game help files explaining everything.

There was a time you had to make your own maps...now it's a feature.

So...why are we having to pick up gold?  Why not make it a trait you can choose.  Name it "looter" or something...Grab shards and gold just like talisman pieces.

Some solutions to automation would be:
-Ban mudlet and change everything about this place...everything would have to be slowed down.
-Make Achaea turn based.
-Stop allowing people to trade gold for credits...no one would care if you auto hunt/harvest the daylights out of this place.
-Let people create things in batches instead of single doses, like milking venoms (oh wait...) mixing venoms..or wait...mixing toxins.
-Take away the crowdmap...
-Open PK always.  (This would be helpful to stop those pesky afk hunters)

or...

-Accept the fact that we have powerful scripting languages at our fingertips...and build game mechanics accordingly.

Now, I want everyone to pick up their keyboard and read the "Health Warning" printed on the bottom...typing is bad for your health.  End of story.

The only problem I see with people putting their character on auto pilot is gold harvesting to buy credits to buy artifacts while doing something completely different.  Credit sales = profits.

Stop allowing "dedicated" players buy credits with gold. Easy and simple solution.

I knew you back in the day @Sarapis...(read that 20+ years ago) you were indeed the best and most feared opponent and I bet still are.  Not all triggers = automation, I would say 90% of my triggers are merely echos or gagging text.

Anyway...long live Achaea!

Jules

Sena said:

Sarapis said:

It's led to people optimizing the heck out of the combat system and pushing the required level of combat knowledge through the roof, which is the issue.

That happens even without automation though, automation just exaggerates the effect. Even in graphical MMOs with almost no scripting of any kind, PvP skills get more developed and strategies get more optimised as the game ages, and the barrier to entry gradually rises just from the playerbase alone (up to the point where it becomes entirely solved), separately from further balancing/development.

I doubt just piling on random afflictions would get you very far today, even if automation never became common.

I am finding (next door in Imperian) that group combat is a great upramp for people like me.  This is because in group combat I will end up with a log and/or someone telling me to do X.  Then, later on, I get to ask those people (who know stuff) about my (relatively manageable, but thankfully, not propping a goddamned totem) role in the fight.  So I learn things in little chunks.  In short, please make Nish/icons/neat conflict where I don't gain infamy happen on the regular!  I can and will eat a death or two for something like that - or rainbow pudding/fairy nectar. 

EDIT:  and again, I say this as someone who played Achaea for 10+ years and was always *terrified* of combat (and still am, here).

Aalm

Regarding the thing with Ernam... I am probably going to get shot with a sniper rifle... but...

I went to one of "those" schools where there's a lot of ultra-rich, ultra-entitled brats that believe the world owes them everything because they came out of the right vagina. I am talking people casually discussing about taking a flight out to France -- for the weekend. Or multiple people who introduce themselves at orientation by telling you how many BMWs and boats their daddy owns, and then they get in a "group of friends" with each other that does nothing but talk trash about each other and back-stab each other and everybody else they come across. One scumbag was bullying anybody who he could, and when confronted with it screamed "Do you know who my father is?!" I loved the profs, loved the staff, but that stuff I could do without. Finding good friends was a nightmare. I haven't seen @Ernam be this bad on a regular basis.

You guys walked in on a multi-day vicious internet pissing match that had spiraled out of control, in a forum that's already known to be pretty harsh and unforgiving. I am not defending what Ernam said, because I myself didn't like it, but I do have to wonder if you're dealing with one of the sort of people I am talking about, or just a guy that went too far in internet grandstanding, and it didn't occur to him to edit it out before 15 minutes have passed. We've all had days where we said really dumb shit. Just saying.

Jules

Yeah, I'm glad there was a verbal smackdown from Sarapis, and I even wish it happened more often, but it's kind of rich for us to seemingly dismiss that 1) Ernam gets picked on so much that he's probably in reaction mode a lot and 2) we're the kind of place where that kind of needling is often merciless/incessant

Aktillum

@Aalm I see your point but I make way too much money to be humble about jumping on the opportunity to make internet memes.

Herenicus

Good luck out there, @Aalm  

Trey

Sarapis said:

Herenicus said:

Sarapis said:

Austere said:

If you know so many people that auto hunt,  you should report them.  There is no excuse for hands off hunting.  Dor is one thing,  but if people are seriously auto scripting entire areas,  that's bad.  I still do not believe this problem is as rampant as some people let on.  Maybe it won't take a coding god,  but as someone who has released public scripts,  half of our player base couldn't code a trigger to smile if their life depended on it.  

Few things make my day like catching a cheater in action and perma-shrubbing, so if you know people who are hands-off hunting while they do something else, by all means msg me or Tecton. Nobody will ever know who reported them, and believe me, it's very easy to catch once we start paying attention to that person.

Have you considered offering a modest bounty? There's honor among thieves, but only so much.

Yep, and I think we're going to do it.

Speaking of honor among thieves, @Profit robbed Salik for twenty minutes straight while he was autoforging and sent me the log with timestamps to turn over to Lycon. Was good times.

Masaryk

So, about that 175 gold...





*duck*

Rip

Just because you opened a huge can of worms @Masaryk, if you see me in game I will put two 00's on the end of that for you.  Hit me up when you are awake.

Ernam

Rip said:

Just because you opened a huge can of worms @Masaryk, if you see me in game I will put two 00's on the end of that for you.  Hit me up when you are awake.

I already sent him a credit for it, don't let him swindle you.

edit:

on another note, it's really funny how people get so pissed about such a small amount of gold, when the blowback from the MASSIVE (and numerous) nerfs to gold drops was virtually non-existent.  As far as I'm concerned, IRE is taxing my gold drops by about 75% right now.

Rip

Well I used to be able to rob 60k from denizens on a good day...now it's like, why bother.

Riashain

People aren't pissed about the gold. They're pissed about others blatant lack of common courtesy.

I'm (not really) amazed this isn't obvious.

Rip

Common courtesy...I am super nice and would never steal your gold from the ground. I will steal it right from your pack.  But really, the OP is asking why the gold grabbing, it's because people are running around with looting triggers, it's pretty simple or they manually grab it, it really doesn't matter.

Siduri

While I think it is essentially... silly to get your panties in a bunch over 175 gold, here are the things this thread taught me:
1) Doing players the courtesy of giving gold we autograb back is better form than running away with. So I was on the right track here.
2) How to make a trigger in mudlet to only pick what my own mobs drop, and so far this works perfectly find, thank you!
3) That Ernam got more balls than I thought he had. Cheers mate, bottoms up!

Trey

Rip said:

Common courtesy...I am super nice and would never steal your gold from the ground. I will steal it right from your pack.  But really, the OP is asking why the gold grabbing, it's because people are running around with looting triggers, it's pretty simple or they manually grab it, it really doesn't matter.

Thankfully you're terrible at capitalizing on shop keys.

Rip

@Trey, in all honesty, your two shop keys were the first I ever stole...AND I had no idea about "keylist"...First time for everything.

I am probably the nicest theft around, I want you all to play Achaea, I mean really it's a great game, has awesome people (sometimes) and in general is a great way to spent some spare time.

Dracen

Rip

@Dracen - You are reading...the worst derailed thread in history...do enjoy.

Masaryk

Ernam said:

Rip said:

Just because you opened a huge can of worms @Masaryk, if you see me in game I will put two 00's on the end of that for you.  Hit me up when you are awake.

I already sent him a credit for it, don't let him swindle you.

Hah, not hardly trying to swindle someone. Was just making fun of my situation that resulted in 7 pages of responses.


Or, on the other hand, maybe I should start charging people to post on my thread. 1 credit per post. I'm counting on you guys.

Bluef

Ernam said:

Rip said:

Just because you opened a huge can of worms @Masaryk, if you see me in game I will put two 00's on the end of that for you.  Hit me up when you are awake.

I already sent him a credit for it, don't let him swindle you.

edit:

on another note, it's really funny how people get so pissed about such a small amount of gold, when the blowback from the MASSIVE (and numerous) nerfs to gold drops was virtually non-existent.  As far as I'm concerned, IRE is taxing my gold drops by about 75% right now.

I'm sorry that people weren't more sympathetic about the fact that the enormous gold income from your 18-hour bashing sessions led to nerfs for everyone else. 

Ahmet

Sarapis said:

Ernam said:

Jules said:

No, you misunderstand.  Most people who are doing this *are* at least monitoring their character I think (they'd be silly not to), and I mostly have no desire to report them.  Just be less condescending/presumptuous towards guys like the OP (and me).  That's all I want from those players. 

I make way too much money to be humble on video game forums.  I know I'd be more popular if I was, but I simply don't care.

This may be the single douchiest thing I've ever seen anyone say on the forums. 

It's also the sort of thing that only someone who doesn't make a remarkable amount of money says, in order to cover up his raging insecurity. I have a number of actually very wealthy friends and aquaintances - people who sold companies for half a billion dollars+, early investors in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Uber, etc. Not one of them would ever say something so unbelievably asinine. 

#rekt

Shibumi

I read the whole thread, and I want to give my opinion which is...be nice to people if you accidentally grab their money, or RP either it was intentional or accidental, and have fun. 

I had "grabbing" problems with an auto grabber I made, and I finally switched to macro. This is mere common sense.

Anyway, I do not want to sound snappy to @Ernam who actually made some valid arguments, but way too lawyerish. I feel the urge to give my opinion because I had exactly the same problem with an ex girfriend of mine in US which was so much into this argumentative logic/law common law thing, which was nearly impossible to discuss anything, because there were always valid counterarguments. So I had to make my argumentative logic just to state the obvious. It was exhausting and meaningless.

By the way, she was not a RL gold grabber...

I was not aware of this kind of reasoning before getting in touch with the American culture and studying there. I mean, I find this argumentative logic fascinating, but extremely dangerous if not used properly and for good reasons.

As a matter of fact, logic has its faults, paradoxes, and this kind of legal reasoning should be used (especially under a common law approach) to prove a thesis and its opposite with the same easiness. I can, and I am pretty sure that many people here understand that 100%. We are all pretty smart Achaean, after all.

Setting aside the "douchbagery" of the @ernam comment about money (it is definitively unique...to be quoted/meme'd forever) I think that one of the precepts that should rule us all is neminem laedere.

It has logic counterarguments, by the way....


@Ernam I am suggesting you to publish a series of manuals like

- I make way too much money to be humble while fishing
- I make way too much money to be humble while hunting
- I make way too much money to be humble [whatever]

You created a character.

Rangor

If I come across someone in a hostile faction, I sometimes walk into their room, kill their denizen and/or take their gold. All manual guys.

Caladbolg

Is fully automated hunting even illegal if your at the keyboard though?

Antidas

Caladbolg said:

Is fully automated hunting even illegal if your at the keyboard though?

Technically, yes. That being said, the rules are there to prevent people who turn on automated scripts like auto bashing and then walk away from their computer - the intention isn't really to prevent people who want to do that and then sit there and watch to ensure that nothing goes wrong. Not only is it basically impossible to prove so long as the person at the keyboard is really at the keyboard and actively paying attention, I honestly don't think the admin team would be too upset about it if thats what they were doing.

Trey

I make way too much money to be humble about forging.

Sarapis

Sena said:

Sarapis said:

It's led to people optimizing the heck out of the combat system and pushing the required level of combat knowledge through the roof, which is the issue.

That happens even without automation though, automation just exaggerates the effect. Even in graphical MMOs with almost no scripting of any kind, PvP skills get more developed and strategies get more optimised as the game ages, and the barrier to entry gradually rises just from the playerbase alone (up to the point where it becomes entirely solved), separately from further balancing/development.

I doubt just piling on random afflictions would get you very far today, even if automation never became common.

It's all theoretical of course as there's no way to backtest here, but I don't think peoples' ability to react quickly gets better over time, and that's the main reason afflictions would overwhelm people. It is very very hard to keep up with manually with curing afflictions against someone good while maintaining an offense and healing. It's wonderful to have a deep theory of PvP combat, but if you can't stay alive you can't execute on that theory. The flip-side is that the difference between peoples' reaction times after some practice is not that large, which meant that the gap between the really good people and the competent people was a lot smaller than it is today. It's just a much higher mountain to climb today.

It's also why all of the original systems from Tranquility's onwards were focused almost entirely on dealing with afflictions. 

Aodfionn

I feel like everyone owes Ernam some thanks for creating an amazing, amazing meme.

Nim

Automation has its roots in the same ideals as manual combat, though - balance chasing. It's just that while attacking might have one or two balances (blademasters have it weird here, since they have off-balance strikes that also cost balance - I wish there was an OFFBALANCE option to prevent striking while on balance), curing has four or five balances... and then all of these balances are only one or two seconds most of the time, often not more than four (except tree and class curing).

It's difficult enough chasing one or two such balances actively, impossible to manage five of them, so people automate. Not just curing - affliction loop aliases seem pretty common too, as well as on-balance queueing, etc. It's not exactly bot vs bot, but definitely cyborg vs cyborg.