Why are all changes being made to slow scripters really only hurt the honest player?

[Al Thorin]

Ok, here we go.

Plucky, Arcus, anyone else with a scripter hardon;

You guys know what? You're as bad as scripters. You've got the blinders on, and makea point of being as close minded as humanly possible. Which, by the way, is far more effecient, because LOGIC would force some level of though.

Anyways;
Yah, cheating is cheating. Whoopdefricken doo. Ok, dang, that was simple!
I script things for myself. Yup. I cheat. Ok. Do -I- think it's wrong? Yup.

Ok then! On we go.
Do -I- care what you think about what I do? Nope. Does it bother me that you get upset about it? Nope.

So, WHY do I do it?
Several reasons. And hey, guess what, none of them make it right or wrong, they're just REASONS. You know, the WHY.
I do it to make a point. The same reason I will come here and say yes, I do it. I've spent ALOT of time checking out aspects of the game systems, and the mechanics. I know what I like, and what I don't like.
I started because nothing was done about it. Correct, what was done was putting additional limits on normal game play.
I've watched the same god damned scripter recall in and out behind my house for -YEARS-. Fing YEARS.
So you know what? Fine. I'm going to save myself a crap load frustration by doing one thing. I play for myself. I script for myself.
I will continue untill 1 of 2 things happens.
I get banned.
They deal with scripting.
Hell do both and I can move on.


And Jeremy, you should pass this onto the Devs;
Cutting their BOD running in 1/3 isn't going to fix it. The 24/7 buggers will just use more accounts. You seriously didn't think that cutting their speed by 2/3rds would really do anything did you?
End result will be EA gets more money (from the scripters), and legit players will get stuck dealing with a 10/5 second timer.
And that 10 minutes may not seem alot to you, but it adds up, and it's 10 minutes of 'corner time' for something they didn't do.

You want to slow scripters? Get original, get harsh, or log activity based on a tolerance.
Player mines up 5k ore in a day? Log it. (Imaginary number, pick 10k then). They do it every day, or at all hours? Watch them, make a call and ban them.
A player recalls 10 thousand times a day for a week? Check up on them, and odds are, yah got, ban them.
Someone's doing 10k+ BOD's a day, for a month? Ban em.

Seriously, there's alot of aspects to a scripter that simply are not done by normal people.
Pick the extreme end, and DEAL WITH THEM. You can't miss them, they're ALWAYS ON.

I know alot of this comes down to how much time/money can you spend on enforcement, but you're gonna have to get in there, and CHASE THEM OUT. Make a point, keep making it. I bet 2/3-3/4 of them will stop on their own accord, and you can be left to deal with the remaining.

There's -no- system you can put in place to stop scripting. There's not a tweak that'll hurt a scripter more than a average player that they actually -care- about.
9k deeds instead of 30k? Do they care? No, they arn't even there. If they want 30k, they'll still get em.

Get in here, and just beat all the extreme cases with a logging truck if you have to, but for goodness sakes, do it. There's scores of large well known scripters and operations. Shut em down.

The longer you guys try to adjust or create systems to be anti scripting, the more ungangly and unenjoyable game components you will have.

Program friendly, interactve and rewarding systems that don't relly on doing the same thing, for 5, 10, 15, 20, 485,000 times.
How about a BOD that requested a suit of certain mods? 100% LRC BOD!

Add content that's interactive, interesteing and VARIED. -Nothing- beats a script more than variance. I know you guys are capable of spicing things up, so SPICE THEM UP. Think fun, varied thoughts. Get away from the static sets of this and that. So what if a random set creates a unlikely or impossible task?

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

It's not as simple as you may think to stop scripting

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh yes it is.

Scripters do things in vast quantity continuously, or there would be no point to running a script.

Just add in sanity checks to the things that are scripted to limit how often they can be done over a certain period of time.

For BODs, don't slap a timer on how often you can turn in one BOD....just make it so a single account can't turn in more than say 100 BODs in one 24 hour period. Turn them in as fast as you want, but once you hit the limit, that's it for the day. No effect at all on an honest crafter, but removes the point to a script. I'm sure there'd still be people scripting the turn-ins to save on carpal tunnel, but with a hard max limit they would no longer be able to outrun an honest crafter.

Same thing with bags of sending. Lay off the stupid increase in charges by weight...which has basically ended the usefulness of the bags and also stopped all Ilshenar dungeon romps. Just stick a 20 use max per account in a 24 hour period and go back to one use, one charge. The average player wouldn't even notice that change, but it would again stop someone from just parking in an easy spot and letting a script send stuff back endlessly for hours.

Their way of fixing scripting is just too irritating, I'd rather live with the scripters than have them continue to "fix" UO like this.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

I'm actually suspecting that most of this outrage is not about the BOD turnin timer - while, yes, ten seconds is annoying, and 5 would be more bearable, this is one change that does disproportionately affect scripters. We're talking about people turning in 30k BODs a day- 5 seconds per hits them pretty hard, whereas your average player, even doing a set of 100 at once, is set back less than ten minutes.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, what annoys me most is that it's another example of a thoughtless heavyhanded way of trying to fight scripting that really doesn't help all THAT much and adds pointless irritation to non-scripters.

Sure, it'll slow them down, but it won't stop them and they'll still be able to turn in more BODs than an honest crafter.

 

[Connor_Graham]

"stopped all Ilshenar dungeon romps."

Uh, no it hasn't. No need for a BoS with most of the high end creatures. You still have to leave once an hour or so, but it certainly hasn't stopped me or my hunting buds in the least.

 

[Guest]

What gets me, is that they're trying to reduce the amount of gold/resources that comes into the game world by nerfing BoS and the Random Resource Change, but they still let the dupers dupe the hell out of 1 Mill Checks (Or even Checks for more than one Mill) and commodity deeds filled with 60k of a resource type. All they're basically doing is limiting the amount of gold a legitimate player can make, and make it a pain in the ass for us.

I've met a guy who had recently came back to UO after 8-9 years, and within the first week he already had a Castle, i asked him how he did it, and he gated me to his Castle. Each and every chest in the Castle was set to where anyone could look inside them (But not take) if they were accessed to the Castle, and each one was FILLED with 1 Mill Checks, some of them the old ass white color instead of yellow. He told me he got the money to buy his Castle/Suit/Etc by duping the hell out of the Mill Check he had in his char's bank from when he quit.

Last week i was killing Lady Sabrix and Lady Lissith in the Twisted Weald with my trained Shadow Dancer Black Cu Sidhe after i lured away all the spawn. I was there for about an hour to an hour and a half, i was mainly looking for good loot and ML Minor Arties, the gold i would throw on the ground in a pile. When i got done hunting there, i had 350k Gold sitting on the ground, and i didn't want to leave it there. Bag of Sending wasn't an option at all considering how nerfed they are, packies not an option at all, can't get them past the Changelings of the Twisted Weald Desert, so what did i have to do? I had to log off, log on my Stealth Assassin, sneak past all the spawn in the Desert, get to the gold, and proceed to move 20k gold at a time to a spot just near the Swoop spawn, just to go back and grab 20k more to move. It took me about 45 minutes to an hour to move all 350k to a reasonable safe place to get a packy to. That was annoying and frustrating as hell. Basically anymore, if i'm in a spot where i can't recall into/out of, and i have to walk past dangerous spawn to get in/out, i just throw the gold on the ground and leave it there until it decays or some other person tries grabbing it.

 

[the 4th man]

As much as you'd like us, and whoever you're trying to reach, to believe you're a form of salvation, you're a day late, and a dollar short. I'm sure the devs know scripters, and have some devs who actually work with scripts to abolish them.......and like a nasty virus, it's a challenging PITA.

As for yourself....well, let's just say you can't be trusted. You openly admitted to cheating, for whatever reason, it's still cheating. You know it, we know it. Your confession is your label, your signature. If you don't care, well, then why should we believe a word you say......be happy with your 15 minutes in the limelight, then go back to bottom feeding.

Your post should have been yanked...............sorry pal, scripters ruined this game......can't stand the punks.

 

[GarthGrey]

I still love your sig, but you should be banned from Stratics too, but you won't be...

 

[Sergul'zan_SP]

<blockquote><hr>

Lately all the changes that have been made seem to only affect the honest player rather than the targeted scripters.DEVS PLEASE PAY ATTENTION!!! The changes such as bod turn in timers bags of sending and others have done nothing to stop scripters.All your changes have accomplished is griefing the Honest player and make them suffer because of scripters.You need to get out of your narrow minded way of thinking on this topic.The only way to fix the problem is to use brute force activly pursue them and inforce the rules.

Im a known scripter i make no beans about it and why might you ask am i making this post?Becuase of the simple fact that scripters hurt this game.Not all scripters are like me i simply use it for boring task like skill gaining.But gold farming scripts kill this game.If your not sure how scripts work ask me ill help.But the lame attempts such as wait timers wont get it done.And heres why

Say you have ascript and its designed to turn in bods well since you added the timer all one has to do is simply this. Find the GOTO sub add in this (wait 12s) thats wait 12 seconds for those who dont know scripts.And guess what ya done the script in all of 5 seconds has been modifyed to fit the new timers.Congradulations EA?MYTHIC you stoped the scripters for a whole 5 seconds.

[/ QUOTE ]

"I cheat, but allow me to point out how you devs are screwing up the game by allowing cheaters to cheat!"

Sorry dude...not much sympathy for ya. The 10 second timer is not going to kill normal players at all...

 

[Guest]

It's going to annoy us more then it does any harm to scripters

=/

 

[AncientGeek]

<blockquote><hr>

I'm actually suspecting that most of this outrage is not about the BOD turnin timer - while, yes, ten seconds is annoying, and 5 would be more bearable, this is one change that does disproportionately affect scripters. We're talking about people turning in 30k BODs a day- 5 seconds per hits them pretty hard, whereas your average player, even doing a set of 100 at once, is set back less than ten minutes.

[/ QUOTE ]

If there are people turning in 30k per day a 5 sec delay cuts that number in half. They need to open a second account to reach zero impact. If they are filling 30k bods per day they are obviously using several accounts anyway. Why don't you just hard cap it at 500 or 300 bods per account per day. This would mean they need to pay for 60 accounts and train 60 legendary tailors to keep the same volume. There's no way that's cost efficent. No one else is going to ever reach the hard cap. Here you have a solution that is obviously vastly superior in stopping the kind of scripting operation you are talking about and has virtually no impact on the vast majority of players.

Your "only sets you back ten minutes" comment shows a certain level of naivate. It's not about the total time lost; it's about the frustration level of the "you must wait to preform that action" messages and the net result of making the game less playable and less enjoyable.

A hard cap is obviously a better solution with less drawbacks. I've yet to see anyone make an argument to the contrary. If you have one, please offer it.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

If there are people turning in 30k per day a 5 sec delay cuts that number in half.

[/ QUOTE ]

And if they ban the 30K BODs per day per character guy, then they wouldn't cut the number in half, they'd cut it to 0.

 

[alyssya]

OK if you can tell, and im sure theres some way to track it, why not leave the stupid timer off, catch the people turning in 30k bods a day, and ban them? simple nuff?

Even with the timer...if a NORMAL non scripting player turned in anywhere NEAR 8000 bods in ONE day, im SURE theyd be SICK of it, and not do it agian anytime soon...scripter however, yea day 2 same thing, day 3 same thing....just watch how many bods chars are turning in and actually INVESTIGATE suspicious chars/accounts!

~A

 

[Picus of Napa]

<blockquote><hr>

I'm actually suspecting that most of this outrage is not about the BOD turnin timer - while, yes, ten seconds is annoying, and 5 would be more bearable, this is one change that does disproportionately affect scripters. We're talking about people turning in 30k BODs a day- 5 seconds per hits them pretty hard, whereas your average player, even doing a set of 100 at once, is set back less than ten minutes.

[/ QUOTE ]

So in this case you set up 3 dummy accounts turing in all day...back on track for the scripters....and the normal players are behind. Given that filling those 30K bods a day is places a much greater time restraint on the scripter then turning in it would seem very reasonable that they have more then one account running, seems like a non issue for the bod runners.

 

[LAH Architect]

Truely enlightning the figure of 30k BOD turn-ins a day.

Maybe folks should be asking how he collects that many junk BODs in the first place and how many accounts are slaving away in a small house filling them ?

Banning of accounts mean nothing.... accounts can be easily started and there are many scripts that GM tailor for you in a day or less.

Hence, the idea of limiting an account turn-in limit to 500 or 1000 might work but for the hardcore scripting operations ; they can just split the turn-ins to many accounts across many shards.

E.g.

Account 1:
Automated Login to Shard A
Recall to house
Collect filled junk BOD book from farmhouse
Recall to NPC Tailor / Smith
Turn in 500 BODs at no delay (reaches cap for this account on this shard)
Logout

Account 1 :
Automated Login to Shard B
.blah
.blah
.blah
Repeat for all active farming shards

Switches to
Account 2:
Automated Login to Shard A
.blah
.blah
.blah

However, Scripters have a hardware limit (monitors, CPUs) for the turn-ins. I'm guessing their script uses an Optical Character Recognition software to tell which BODs to keep ? So this would mean that they can't use windows to multi-client accounts to turn-in BODs at <u>same time.</u> At any one time, they can only have one character on their monitor to turn-in their BODs. If they have three computers/laptops, the other two are probably on accounts slaving away to fill the junk BODs.

Also, the BOD turn-in delay timer can actually be a scripter trap. It will become very apparent that someone is automating the turn-in if a person keeps turning in BODs exactly 5 seconds for hours like a pattern. EA just have to seach their database for such info.

It's great that Jeremy has explained the severity of the BOD scripting operations. 5 seconds / 10 seconds is nothing to casual players. You still have to click on NPC to collect your next BOD and LOOK at it to see if it's worth keeping right ?

I really worry about the playerbase that we have currently when folks have become so accustomed to cheating using scripts and blaming it on developers and calling it bad design. These folks then start to rant and cry and pancake they can't cheat anymore and UO is not fun for them anymore. I hope the door slams into their soft bits hard when they are exiting

 

[Al Thorin]

Nope, no OCR is needed at all.

BOD's descriptions conviently display all needed info.

Even to check for getting a new BOD isn't a big deal, it's more of a 'try until a certain event happens, then act on it' procedure.

 

[Guest]

The windows multi cleint method is the only legal method of multi clienting because you can't play both charcters at the same time. You can't even run a script on the background client.

It however is not the only method of multiclienting.

Here's why I say the hard cap &gt; time limit.

With the time limit you can alternate between turning in on one char and filling on another, no real time wasted. This totally devoids any and all attempts by the devs to slow the scripters.

With a hard cap the scripter would need more characters with high tailoring to turn in bods to keep up the pace. If the hardcap is account specific then they need more accounts. if its character specific they build up tailoring on their turn in chars but have a significantly reduced "crap turn in bod" intake (the .1 tailors they use to farm crap bods so they can get alot of good bods via turn in). Then all you need to do is take BOD collecting away from trial accounts and voila. Perfect fix.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

I'm actually suspecting that most of this outrage is not about the BOD turnin timer

[/ QUOTE ]

You're partially right. Personally I could care less since I don't run BODs...but the whole concept you folks seem to be working under to "fight" scripting is just wrong and adds nothing but pointless irritation to the folks you should be trying to help...the ones who don't script the system.

 

[Guest]

I have to aggree, A hard cap of 100 bods per account turn it would work a long way against scripting.


And if some people want to load up on accounts. More money to EA so they can pay a few more GMs.


Good idea, this hard cap.....

 

[Connor_Graham]

"A hard cap is obviously a better solution with less drawbacks. I've yet to see anyone make an argument to the contrary. If you have one, please offer it."

A hard cap AND a timer hit the scripter on both ends. The hard cap limits how many a single account can turn in, while the timer limits how fast that hard cap can be reached before that particular computer the scripter is using can be used for another account. This means the scripter would have to open more accounts, requiring more equimpment, which all cuts into their profits. At the current street value of gold, it wouldn't take much for the scripter's profit margin to reach zero, or close enough to it that this particular venture is no longer worth the expense of continuing it.

 

[Babble]

You guys really need better ideas if you want to stop scripters.

Cheapest one steal from a freeshard with a captcha method.

Else set some routines and see who repeats actions for 5+ hours and then send a gm to look.
Oops ea in their wisdom are still saving cash by hiring as few gms as possible.

Another method would be to make your game more cheat resistant, but with the current rules we are far away from that.

 

[Guest]

Well there are 3 ideas

Limits.
Incremental timers
And code to recognize repeating.


They each would slow scripting.

Script
TURN IN BOD X100
Go to war mode, hide, cut cloth, (INTERRUPT routine)
Back to BODDING


Add in more GM's

with 4 ways to SLOW and ways to check and ban. Scripting would be inhibited.


But the funny thing is if you say, lets make a hard cap of 60000 Ingots a day of mining.

Then track over a 7 days of 420,000 ingots.
No other activity noted but mining over and over. LEADS TO BAN.

Dont you know by now, there are the 6 legit players that do this daily by hand nonstop.

Youd be hurting them.

 

[BajaElladan]

NO ONE is "driven to cheat!"

We all have some free will. Some choose to abide by rules &amp; laws, others choose to ignore and violate those rules and laws.

One key question must be...Who will enforce rules &amp; laws?

EA must find ways to enforce its own rules proclaimed in their TOS and ROC which they make all players consent to before they permit them to use their Service.

Relying on players to "behave" is utterly naive. Real world prisons and wars have taught us this.

EA has created a "virtual world." They MUST find ways to govern that world and enforce its rules, punishing those who violate those rules, punishing virtual crimes.

Some things players are incapable of doing, or at best severely limited. Devs must do what players are incapable of doing, or at a minimum, Devs must aid those players choosing to obey rules in catching &amp; punishing those who don't!!!

Elladan of Baja

 

[Guest]

That will never happen Bel. Its a game.
Seriously. The focus should be on the game play.

Make it less exploitable.

I agree if youre caught, your caught and something should happen.

But being a game, catching players isnt the course. Making it harder to exploit is.

I have no proof. JMO.

 

[Babble]

I said let gms check them out then decide.
Making a computer program to catch a computer program will always be a game of the better programmer.

That is why humans are needed to decide if it is a program or not, too bad ea does not really want to invest in humans.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

I said let gms check them out then decide.
Making a computer program to catch a computer program will always be a game of the better programmer.

That is why humans are needed to decide if it is a program or not, too bad ea does not really want to invest in humans.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thats the hard part. Investing. Then training. Then banning. Then a system to defend yourself for wrongful bans. Its really complicated. JMO.

 

[AncientGeek]

<blockquote><hr>

"A hard cap AND a timer hit the scripter on both ends. The hard cap limits how many a single account can turn in, while the timer limits how fast that hard cap can be reached before that particular computer the scripter is using can be used for another account.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is not true because running multiple clients simultaneously is rather simple. Obviously no one filling and turning in 30k bods is doing it on one client or even one computer. It's completely impossible because you need to be logging in and out constsntly to claim that many bods in the first place-- much less filling, sorting, turning in.

Besides the advantage of the hard cap is removing the annoying timer while still providing a much stiffer penalty to the industrial-scale bod turn-in.

 

[Al Thorin]

<blockquote><hr>

<blockquote><hr>

I'm actually suspecting that most of this outrage is not about the BOD turnin timer

[/ QUOTE ]

You're partially right. Personally I could care less since I don't run BODs...but the whole concept you folks seem to be working under to "fight" scripting is just wrong and adds nothing but pointless irritation to the folks you should be trying to help...the ones who don't script the system.

[/ QUOTE ]
"The longer you guys try to adjust or create systems to be anti scripting, the more ungangly and unenjoyable game components you will have."

I've been saying this for years, and just about every thing they have adjusted with the intention of slowing scripters has followed my comment.

 

[Guest]

The new bod timer will not hurt scripting (in my opinion). They are not usually running one account to begin with. It wouldn't be hard to have them grind a 120/120 (or more) on another account per shard and then basically split the bods to turn in between the two chars and effectively lessen the "delay" we all experience. Yes, they can completely script the transfer of bods, filling, turning in on multiple accounts without really any difficulty. So in my opinion, this may delay them for a few days but that will most likely be all the inconvenience they experience while those who do Bods without scripts are subject to some annoyance.

I agree the timer isn't "the end of the rope", but this and other changes are setting a trend with UO. These annoyances are adding up and honestly its not going to hurt most scripting at all.

What's the fix? To be honest I'm not sure what would help BoDs, its something that is gonna take a lot of careful thought and looking at it from all angles. The problem is that there is an incredible amount of gold to be made from Bods with the rewards as they are. Take out the ability to sell the rewards (or some of them) perhaps.

Not really the greatest solution at first glance I admit, but still possible for crafters to make gold and maybe actually encourage interaction like in the ol' days. Add some special dyes with limited uses to the rewards, make it so you can apply powder of fort, CBD, dye, etc in a trade window with of course the appropriate safety features for those who do not want their items altered. Scripters would have to start selling the armor and such instead of the kits and that at least means they have to take up more item space and more gold upkeep for more items on vendors as well as take more time in crafting those items as well as the resources as well as figuring out individual prices, etc. The only items that wouldn't be able to be traded in some form would be like tapestries, bear rugs and powerscrolls... frankly, powerscrolls aren't a big deal as if you are turning in the bods you should be the one interested in using the scroll. Taps and BR's? Honestly I see most for sale for like 5k so personally get rid of them or better yet make them sold on NPCs as a gold sink and replace them with consumable items. Consumables will last longer value wise than static items because as they get used, they go away. Special clothing/armor/weapon dyes, oils that add a temporary damage bonus to weapons or resist to armor, special cloth, special metals that give nifty hued items... heck... maybe even the hues from the dupes - of course that would need to be looked into to see the effects on true rares first.

*chuckles* Wow... *looks up at her long post* .. Yeah, I still get long-winded about my ideas to fix things with UO. *saunters off to find some coffee*

 

[Connor_Graham]

"This is not true because running multiple clients simultaneously is rather simple."

Yes, it's simple, but it's also limited to how many computers the scripter is willing to invest in in order to maintain the same level of productivity and profit.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>


Yes, it's simple, but it's also limited to how many computers the scripter is willing to invest in in order to maintain the same level of productivity and profit.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, I believe it is possible to do it without multiple computers depending on OS and set up although multiple monitors do make it easier to manage I imagine. An honestly even if it takes multiple computers, how "top of the line" would the computers have to be. I imagine they could pick up some really archaic pieces of junk that would still easily run UO and are really, really cheap via kraig's, ebay, used comp stores, etc.

 

[Babble]

Couldn't you run more clients if you run more virtual machines?
And that should not be illegal either or?

 

[AncientGeek]

I think you missed the point-- anyone doing 30k bods per day is already running multiple clients per computer on multiple computers-- you'd have to just to collect, sort and fill that many bods. Since a hard cap of 500 would effectively require 60 accounts to turn in 30k bods, increasing the time it takes to reach the cap of 500 will have no additional impact. It just can't be cost effective to pay for 60 accounts with 60 legendary tailors on it. With this hard cap, introducing new frustrating gameplay additions is unnecessary.

 

[Al Thorin]

<blockquote><hr>

This means the scripter would have to open more accounts, requiring more equimpment, which all cuts into their profits. At the current street value of gold, it wouldn't take much for the scripter's profit margin to reach zero, or close enough to it that this particular venture is no longer worth the expense of continuing it.

[/ QUOTE ]
...
With current prices an account costs 2 Barbed Kits. A Month.
Sorry, but that's a joke. There's a -long- way to go to drop their profits to zero.

 

[imported_Lord Kynd]

<blockquote><hr>

I'm actually suspecting that most of this outrage is not about the BOD turnin timer - while, yes, ten seconds is annoying, and 5 would be more bearable, this is one change that does disproportionately affect scripters. We're talking about people turning in 30k BODs a day- 5 seconds per hits them pretty hard, whereas your average player, even doing a set of 100 at once, is set back less than ten minutes.

[/ QUOTE ]

if you see this happening, why not get rid of them ?
obviously you know they are cheating in some way,shape or form.
and according to the TOS , EA needs no reason to discontinue service to someone without reason.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

I find it amusing that a scripter is the one who speaks up for the pain and suffering being endured by the "honest" players. No offense... the honest players should be screaming bloody murder themselves if this change really messes them up. Right?

[/ QUOTE ]

We did. Mythic ignored us and the "we want UO to be harder" Uhaulers poo-poo'ed us.

So many of us did the only thing left to us and closed our account(s).

Sure don't see any reason to come back yet.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

"With current prices an account costs 2 Barbed Kits. A Month.
Sorry, but that's a joke. There's a -long- way to go to drop their profits to zero"

And how many barbed kits would it take to add on another computer to handle the additional load? With a hard cap of say 1000 per account and 5 seconds between turn ins, how many computers would it take to get them back up to the same level of productivity?

And how many barbed kits would it take to make up for the loss in sales when players can get their own after the changes go in?

It's no joke, it's hard fact.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you have to add hard caps into a game/system, then you know that the game/system is broken and needs to be reinvented.

Simple truth many seem to be overlooking.

PS: If your going to state something as a fact, then you should do the math if your going to attempt to provide it as such. You can't really state a quest as a 'hard fact'. That's just silly.

~Rai

 

[Babble]

Not really a new notion
I know some that called hanse some harsh names for his bod stupidity and still not a lot has changed.
The highest end crafting items should be quest based maybe, but surely not rng based, but try telling that a game developer ...

 

[Babble]

Especially a game developer who was proud that a valorite hammer could be gotten once a year on a shard and then even could not produce decent items ....

 

[Connor_Graham]

"If you have to add hard caps into a game/system, then you know that the game/system is broken and needs to be reinvented."

I'd tend to agree, but we have what we have. No matter what we do, scripters will script something to take advantage of it to be able to obtain the high end rewards around the clock. At least we're heading in the right direction and making them easier for regular players to obtain so they no longer have the need to purchase them from the scripters.


"PS: If your going to state something as a fact, then you should do the math if your going to attempt to provide it as such."

I did. Cutting productivity for a single account from 30k Bods per day to the example of 1k Bods per day cuts productivity by 29/30th's. Extending how long it takes to turn in those 1k Bods also cuts into productivity. That's a cut in productivity that would shut down any real world production company. It would cease to be cost effective.


"You can't really state a quest as a 'hard fact'."

I didn't mention anything about quests.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

"With current prices an account costs 2 Barbed Kits. A Month.
Sorry, but that's a joke. There's a -long- way to go to drop their profits to zero"

And how many barbed kits would it take to add on another computer to handle the additional load? With a hard cap of say 1000 per account and 5 seconds between turn ins, how many computers would it take to get them back up to the same level of productivity?

And how many barbed kits would it take to make up for the loss in sales when players can get their own after the changes go in?

It's no joke, it's hard fact.

[/ QUOTE ]

I really think, making it easier for normal players to get wanted items on their own will hurt the scripters badly and it will bring some of the joy back in the game.

 

[Al Thorin]

A hard cap alone would do that alone, why would a delay even be needed?

And yes, a hardcap (not a delay) would severly limit what a scripter can pull in. What I would like to know, and I'm sure someone has the numbers somewhere, is 30k a month enough to limit the income? How many barbed kits would that generate?

 

[Connor_Graham]

"A hard cap alone would do that alone, why would a delay even be needed?"

It would limit the effectiveness of having a script doing it as opposed to human hands. In essence, a script couldn't do it any better or faster, and is a major hit to productivity. If no limit is placed on it, then one Bod could be turned in per second (figuratively speaking. i don't know how fast they can do it), which the human hand can't do, but a machine could, and would allow the scripter to move from account to account that much faster, still giving them a major edge and allowing for increased productivity. With a timer, that edge is taken away completely.

 

[Al Thorin]

I'm sorry, not to be all pesimistic and such but have you considered the following;

Running multiple shards on a given account.
Running multiple accounts -at- once.

While my first instinct is 'great', I can't help but to think, how can one get around the limits?

Now, granted, there's going to be other limiting factors, one being resources available. But then, if everything is done automagically, would it really matter?


A single char could do ~4000 bods in a given day. So if there was a cap of 1000, the other 3k could be made up on another shard.

The crafting time will be 10-20 seconds or so, so a scripter won't be delayed by it (they just craft at the turnin point, and fetch resources when they need them, a small ~8 seond delay every what? 10 minutes?)

Now, having to get more elaborate in the setup would be a good deterant if they were forced to have to set it all up again due to banning, but unless EA changes how they enforce, these changes won't affect a scripter.
They just become more elaborate, which doesn't even matter cause it's not done by hand to begin with.

I still see the delay to be more of an anoyance to players than anything else.
I havn't done BOD's because of the time and organization they require, and a time delay just makes it less apealing to do manually. To me anyways.

I've always been of the opinion, if you arn't willing to do it by hand, don't use anything else to do it for you. BOD's and collections fall under that, they both SCREAM 'Script Me' as far as I am concerned.
Nice -consistant- and -predictable- systems that's a bore many players and offer good rewards. Gee. I would have never guessed where that would take it.

 

[imported_Trokip]

Jeremy,

Let me start off by saying I am not a scripter. The worst I can be accused of is running a UOA macro for skill gain, while I ran to the restroom. I would consider myself to be a casual player spending 2 – 3 hours per day, 5 – 6 days per week in UO. I have spent over 35 years in the Business World providing Customer Service.

You state that you believe that most of the outrage is not about the BOD timer. In my case you would be right. But I still am outraged even though I do not even turn in BOD’s that often. This is in my opinion just another example of taking the easy way out and leaving the casual players holding the bag. Every attempt at slowing down or hurting the scripter(s) lately has only taken away something from the casual players and only created frustration and anger by a large number players (customers). In the recent past Standard Ore and Lumber locations have been eliminated in an attempt to hurt scripting, and they may well have but they also created several unhappy casual players who don’t have 24/7 to go looking for the ore they need. Are you saying that the UO staff does not have the creativity to figure out a better way than taking something away from everyone including the honest players? What about limiting the total amount of ore and lumber that can be gotten in a 24 hour day based on a players account? That way those who have a short period of time to spend in game each day would at least be able to get the types of ore and lumber they need without spending weeks looking and finally deciding not to bother. This is just one idea, there are probably dozens of others that would work without just arbitrarily stopping something that already exists. Now most recently, the Bags Of Sending have been rendered totally useless for sending gold. In a recent post a survey indicates that close to 65% or more of the players do not like the idea of not being able to use Bags Of Sending for Gold. . In guild chat and alliance chat I have yet to find one person who is happy with this change. As I stated earlier, I spent 35 years in business. If someone who worked for me came to me and said we are going to make 65% of our customers unhappy without even giving any consideration to alternative ideas, I would be asking them who they were going to be working for next. Never in my life have I seen a company so bent on its own destruction. Rule No. 1, Your customers are always right and you don’t just aggravate them for no reason. Again, why couldn’t you limit the amount of gold being sent by each player account in a 24 hour day? There must be a dozen alternatives. I just find it difficult to believe that getting honest, hard working, decent customers angry is part of anyone’s business plan. And so now what is next? Many players have told you and continue to complain about scripter(s) who recall or gate into locations. The key words here are Recall and Gate. And with the new BOd changes I'd bet this is going to make scripter(s) extremely happy. So based on your past solutions to scripter problems you will need to eliminate Recall and Gate as options won’t you? Why not go ahead and anger 95% of the customer base? So can you see why so many players would be cynical of any new attempts by the UO staff to control scripting?

I want to make two other points here.. First, no where in the Terms of Service, Code of Conduct or any other agreements with EA/UO does it say that Gold Farming, Mining or Lumberjacking is a forbidden activity. In other words if someone wants to spend 24/7 Gold Farming, Mining or Lumberjacking then more power to them. The rule being broken by scripter(s) here is UNATTENDED MACROING. Now for the sake of the economy, if UO deems it necessary to limit the amount of Gold, Ore or Lumber one person can gather in a day then so be it. But the present steps taken to restrict scripter(s) have come across as trying to stop those evil people who want to Gold Farm, Mine or Lumberjack. Second, Any number of players can tell you where the scripter(s) are. It is your (UO’s) job to stop the scripter(s) (UNATTENDED MACROERS), not to stop the entire player community from having FUN. There is a fine line between Challenge and Aggravation. Recently UO has taken that step over the line. If UO lost one honest customer because of these changes it was one too many. It only says that the Scripter(s) have won!

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

If you have to add hard caps into a game/system, then you know that the game/system is broken and needs to be reinvented.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree 110%. All these fixes aren't fixes, mainly annoyances and that's mainly to the player base. If I thought the delay timer would fix the scripting, I'd jump on it in a heartbeat and honestly wouldn't complain... it won't fix it though or hurt it significantly imo.

On a very quick search on eBay... mind you it may not be smooth as glass, but this would be able to run UO... $25 (+ shipping) with less than 6 hours to go and I bet there are a bunch of pretty similar systems or even better systems out there for under $50. Some of these scripters are pulling 5k a month easily.. so really.. them investing a one timer expense of $100 in a couple more computers to bypass the timer fix and a couple days to level some 120/120 toons... really, really... not gonna fix this problem.

Bods need to be fixed. So many things in this game are about ub3r items or profit. I'm a merchant at heart, anyone who knows me knows this, but this game would benefit from reducing the ability to pull a profit not being the reason to do things in game. Bod scripters do it for insane, mindless profit. If the insane, mindless profit wasn't there they wouldn't be scripting it.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

It would limit the effectiveness of having a script doing it as opposed to human hands

[/ QUOTE ]

No it wouldn't. Scripts still need to craft and sort as well, they just move around the order of those things and viola, the 10 second time matters not, they'll still turn in thousands of BODs every day.

<blockquote><hr>

If no limit is placed on it, then one Bod could be turned in per second (figuratively speaking. i don't know how fast they can do it), which the human hand can't do, but a machine could

[/ QUOTE ]

Not really, the scripts does not appear to be terribly faster than regular people, they just do it in the most optimum order, never tire and are consistent...and guess what this won't change with the 10 second timer at all, scripters don't care.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

<blockquote><hr>

If you have to add hard caps into a game/system, then you know that the game/system is broken and needs to be reinvented.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree 110%. All these fixes aren't fixes, mainly annoyances and that's mainly to the player base. If I thought the delay timer would fix the scripting, I'd jump on it in a heartbeat and honestly wouldn't complain... it won't fix it though or hurt it significantly imo.

On a very quick search on eBay... mind you it may not be smooth as glass, but this would be able to run UO... $25 (+ shipping) with less than 6 hours to go and I bet there are a bunch of pretty similar systems or even better systems out there for under $50. Some of these scripters are pulling 5k a month easily.. so really.. them investing a one timer expense of $100 in a couple more computers to bypass the timer fix and a couple days to level some 120/120 toons... really, really... not gonna fix this problem.

Bods need to be fixed. So many things in this game are about ub3r items or profit. I'm a merchant at heart, anyone who knows me knows this, but this game would benefit from reducing the ability to pull a profit not being the reason to do things in game. Bod scripters do it for insane, mindless profit. If the insane, mindless profit wasn't there they wouldn't be scripting it.

[/ QUOTE ]


You know your only highliting one type of scripter. Right?
Lots of people script that wouldnt buy another system or even search ebay.

The timer is a good idea. It slows scripters as a whole.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>


You know your only highliting one type of scripter. Right?
Lots of people script that wouldnt buy another system or even search ebay.

The timer is a good idea. It slows scripters as a whole.

[/ QUOTE ]

Right, one type of scripter. However every type of scripter scripts wouldn't you say? So, if someone is running a script constantly, adding a 10 second delay does what to them exactly other than just about nothing at all?

Especially when you weigh that against the annoyance for non-scripters and your 'good' player base, it doesn't add up into anything useful at all and only annoys the people who play the game as it was meant to be played.

If your scripting for the maximum gain/benifit, doing so every 10 seconds or whatever, your still getting the maximum gain out of your scripting. If your a player, sitting there tryin to turn in a bloody BoD, then your simply getting annoyed at the implementation of something that was worthless. This is of course regardless of how many computers/accounts you have/want to have scripting at once.

Break even for scripters, annoying as hell for players. Hmm, not shaping up to be a very good idea overall huh?
~Rai

 

[Guest]

Anyone who is turning in 30,000 bods a day... is not doing it to just have snazzy stuff in game as those items would be very quickly obtainable with the amount of gold profit coming in, in my opinion.

Yes, there are many types of scripters... I agree 100%, but are we wanting to focus on the small time folks or the large ones? Which ones are going to hurt the economy and the game the most? My point of view is that any scripter with half a brain who is doing it for RL profit is going to be able to step around this "fix". Don't get me wrong, I love the fact EA is trying to do anything about scripting, I really do... but the large picture needs to be taken into consideration if we are gonna help to put an end to the majority of scripting in UO. We have many things that have come to pass that seem geared to help combat scripting... lumberjacking changes, mining changes, bags of sending, this new timer etc... all of these damage and push the real players away from UO more than hurting the scripters. I personally think the new dragons randomly spawning may be another possible attempt to maybe try and hurt those who script barbed/horned leather (and they are out there if you visit Destard and the AW's spawns often.)

I'm not saying I could or anyone could fix scripting or the economy in a blink of an eye, but we need to maintain the player base we have and not push them away. Let's say the scripters don't get new computers and simply turn in as many bods that one every 10 seconds allows vs a normal player. Ratio/Economy wise it won't make a lick of difference. Scripters can still out perform everyone else, undercut what should be a nice profit and continue to sell. Scripting is a huge problem in UO and one of the reasons many players leave. I know its not a perfect solution but making the rewards charge-based items and character bound might take the mindless profit off of it. At least the scripters would absolutely have a lot more work on their hands if they had to go sell charges of temp to players or sell the crafted armor. Is it a perfect idea? Probably not but I think it would have more of an impact on scripting when it comes to bods. Far as the other scripting, that would have to be looked at individually... I don't see it being possible or realistic to STOP scripting, we have to find a way to make it less appealing or less attractive if we want the effects to lessen.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

I'm actually suspecting that most of this outrage is not about the BOD turnin timer - while, yes, ten seconds is annoying, and 5 would be more bearable, this is one change that does disproportionately affect scripters. We're talking about people turning in 30k BODs a day- 5 seconds per hits them pretty hard, whereas your average player, even doing a set of 100 at once, is set back less than ten minutes.

[/ QUOTE ]

So, here's the question. If you can tell (and it's reasonable you can) who is turning in 30k bods a day, why aren't you banning those accounts for scripting? Certainly there are 0 actual players that would be able to turn in that many, much less daily.

Is it that the companies bottom line / subscriber account is more important than the people that play the game fairly? I can think of no other reason for putting in bad design hacks as opposed to taking the necessairy action to fix the problem...

~Rai