Whether they legalize afk scripting or not, it's here to stay and I'm not sure why pretending it's not is helping anyone at all. This is more or less a parallel situation to prohibiting narcotics, except it's harder to see what the downside is now. People are already unresponsive to other players much of the time as it is and letting GMs focus their attention on development rather than enforcement kind of seems like a no-brainer.

More to the point, someone has already afk'd from 1-200 in Prime. I sincerely doubt that's the only success story.

Consider this scenario: someone says they're going to afk script out of game to several GMs. In game, a GM could script test them, know for certain that the responses were automatic, and per policy couldn't do anything about it. So having the prohibition at all seems kind of silly from that perspective, right?

This fundamentally comes down to time/effort/cost expenditure/advantage equations and the "I'll quit" comments are a thinly-veiled attempt to extort the outcome you desire. Whether it's because you feel you have an advantage isn't really material, because at the very least you're objecting to the possibility of someone else having those advantages over you.

The number of genuinely new players coming to this game isn't significant, statistically or otherwise. Arguing that they're unlikely to stay because of "bots" is facetious at best. We all know that the game's adjustments to try to make afk scripting more difficult make major systems far less accessible to actual new players. That and syntax puzzles are going to be enough to drive them off without the 16 afk bodies in the Empaths' Guild making much of an impression.

For what it's worth, writing triggers that alert you to script checks is silly from an effort standpoint. Just write them to respond without your input. Or do what most people have been doing for years now: squelch everything with regex so the only things you see are people talking to you, hits done to you, creature death messaging, and anything else irregular.

>>it's harder to see what the downside [of scripting] is now

Prime's economy is on fire heavily due to the amount of scripting/multi-boxing. The way the game scales out is also a reflection on the long-term effects of heavy scripting. Anytime people post "a few months ago hunting area X was empty but now it's swarmed with folks help us please," that's because people flew through lower ranks, often due to heavy [and often afk] scripting.

---

Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

>>Prime's economy is on fire heavily due to the amount of scripting/multi-boxing for the last 10 years.

Correct. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to have it go on another 10 years, though.

>>the damage is already done

I'm not big of defeatism, so the "well, the damage is done so no stoping things now" doesn't really sell for me.

>>"Flew" as in took several months to years of 24/7 scripting does funnel people to an end game, but that's not bad in itself.

Sure it is. Not only does it top-load the game with people who reached the "end" states way too fast, it actively harms those who take the game slower, because there's less of a drive to fill out all the middle parts of the game (since people barely take the time to enjoy the view as they fly on by scripting).

---

Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

> Correct. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to have it go on another 10 years, though.
> I'm not big of defeatism, so the "well, the damage is done so no stoping things now" doesn't really sell for me.

I kind of disagree. You have to have a bigger drain if you shut off the faucet. Failing to do so just cements the current state. I think inflation is the easier and more natural response, but if the GMs want to create a sink then awesome. Let those with the chips cash out and then start over.

In reality, I don't think anything will change. The current state is to make plat less and less important as they shift to untradable event currencies for the really good stuff.

> Sure it is. Not only does it top-load the game with people who reached the "end" states way too fast, it actively harms those who take the game slower, because there's less of a drive to fill out all the middle parts of the game (since people barely take the time to enjoy the view as they fly on by scripting).

If you enjoy the grind, then that is the reward. If you don't, then why should you grind for years to be able to play the game in the way you want? I worry that the long-term players forget that this is supposed to be fun not an unpaid job.

> because there's less of a drive to fill out all the middle parts of the game

I want to address this specifically. Development has always been slow in this game, but it's very obvious development resources are highly constrained right now, especially for the actual game rather than the MT events. Giving them the option to make a new system that affects everyone would be better than developing a system targeting mid-tier players. They can only do that if they have a narrow range to target.

> Given the cost of some alterations in Prime, let alone limited-edition festival items that offer unique features/aspects/scripts/etc, I think that is what they're doing.

Maybe, but I you're going to need a bigger drain than that. With minimal effort, it's possible to farm that in a week. 5000 platinum once a year for a dozen people isn't going to cut it.

> If the grind is boring, fix the grind.

We're in agreement on this, but scripting is going to be the status quo because it does just that. I think it's a great idea to develop a game that's more engaging than typing .hunt. I don't know if it's possible considering the medium, but narrowing the ranges at least makes it doable. Likewise, flex works, and dailies could work too. Reward the account number more than the time doing rote commands, especially if the gains are locked to that character in a non-powercreep kind of way. Again, I'm not sure if that's possible.

You also have the problem of incentives. Hiders and outfits could have been stealth feats. Instead, they're monetized on top of the sub.

> Encouraging GMs to have an attitude of "just develop end game content and let people afk script" doesn't resolve the "the game is boring until X"

It kind of does if you greatly reduce the time it takes to get to X.

>> Players who want to AFK script for extended periods of should be aggressively encouraged to move to TF.

This isn't a solution. Want to buy something on the trader tables? Too bad. If you don't get it yourself, you're probably out of luck. Maybe the tiny playerbase would help you, but why stop their scripts to bother? Maybe if there were a shared shard for trader tables, but there's already too much plat in circulation even without TF bots.

The bottom line is you're still putting players in permanent time out, and now they're likely going to have to spin up multiple accounts to be self sufficient (even more reason not to help you, because now you've exponentially increased the work required). Who would want to pay more and work more for the same outcome? Oh, and now you're pvp open forever, too. Good luck?

Prime's population isn't even all that helpful, so I don't see why an even smaller playerbase that's mostly AFK is going to be a better option. I keep hearing people calling for moving scripters to TF, but nobody's calling for moving RPers to plat. My guess is that you don't want to pay more to be in a smaller community, which is exactly the problem with TF.

>> Prime's economy is on fire heavily due to the amount of scripting/multi-boxing.

I think this is more due to the fact that plat has been devalued in favor of MT event items.

>> DR is a lot like watching the combat log of any other MMO

The amount of work required to overhaul systems makes the change unlikely. Of course, there are quick solutions. We could increase XP gain, or decrease cap, but of course that still doesn't stop bots.

Well thought out regex gags just means you can bot in peace with a black wasteland of a screen until something pops up that requires your attention. With the amount of scroll, you've pretty much got to gag things just to see the bot checks anyway. Intricate regex means more obfuscation in afk checks which probably hurts the legit player more than the bot, tbh. Solomon's bot checks come to mind here, and those definitely drove folks away when they were "caught" while ATK.

>>IMO, the issue isn't scripting, it's excessive scripting from people scripting AFK. There's no difference between me typing attack manually 1000 times or a script doing it when I play for 1-4 hours a few days a week, but a script running 24/7 throws the game's progression expectations out of whack.

My problem with this is "excessive" is a subjective statement. The policy is black and white, scripting is ok, but you must be responsive. The hours is a consideration too. Once you start passing 1k ranks, 1-4 hours a few days a week means maybe 1 rank a week. People like progression, and imo that's not meaningful progression. Again, we could increase the xp gain, but it still doesn't solve regex ninjas.

>>I keep hearing people calling for moving scripters to TF, but nobody's calling for moving RPers to plat.

I'm hearing people calling to move afk scripters to TF, which to me is notably different than people who do things through scripts.

You don't hear people telling RPers to go to Plat to RP (beyond that not being the best idea for various reasons), because there's a difference between breaking policy and wanting to do what the game offers. Now, if people were posting going "I want more GM attention and events that are more close-knit and tailored to the needs of a very select group of players," then maybe you'd get people saying go to Plat (currently a bad idea, but at least that's what Plat is marketed as).

>>I think this is more due to the fact that plat has been devalued in favor of MT event items.

Prime's economy was garbage well before current MT events came out. Nothing being sold as end-game loot for MT events would have seen the light of day as non-paid-quest-end rewards.

>>My problem with this is "excessive" is a subjective statement.

I disagree. There are a certain number of hours humanly expected to be put into a game. If you're able to afk train 24/7/365, that's excessive.

---

Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

>Brhodes: I keep hearing people calling for moving scripters to TF, but nobody's calling for moving RPers to plat. My guess is that you don't want to pay more to be in a smaller community, which is exactly the problem with TF.

I think this point is valid insofar as it underlines that everyone is keen to point the finger at other players who aren't playing the game the way they do as being the problem population that should leave. There should be a middle ground solution somewhere between 'botrealms' and 'permabans for doing something other than larping'.

>My point is that there are things you could do to minimize the need to script. Imagine a world where the hourly drain cycle didn't exist. Instead it was a 24 hr drain cycle. Once you're locked in everything then you're no longer incentived to script that day. You can instead just play.

Many, many solutions for how to mitigate the need to script have been proposed. They were all shouted down by players who want the grind or to be able to enjoy the benefits of having spent so long grinding. The flipside of this, of course, is that telling players to just get better at PvP or to constantly put together your own story lines, is also not a good solution.

Chiming in to say that there are several of us on staff who are reading this thread. (And we're very glad that you're having a conversation even when you disagree, instead of turning it into a thread that needs to stop!)

We don't give names, we don't even really give numbers, but I wanted to give you a tiny bit of feedback on what we're seeing when we do end up warning someone for inattentive benefit gain.

If we have issued 25 warnings for scripting in the last 2 weeks, 2 of those players have noticed their status change and responded within an hour. In the rest of the cases, the player's script keeps trying to run for much longer. The longest lapse we've had in the last 2 weeks between the warning and the logout or indication that the player noticed their change in status was over 50 hours. Longer than 2 full days. There have been several others who spent over 24 hours with their scripts grinding away in the cell.

I really do feel sympathy for folks when there's an emergency that pulls them away from the screen. I've read several responses in this thread from folks whose scripts teach them well but require the occasional input to keep running. I know that my not-great scripts, even the one that just kept me logged in by typing "look" over and over only needed me to smack the ESC key to stop. There are probably other possible solutions that will enable people to grind the numbers to their hearts content while remaining responsive, too.

Iocanthe
Doing stuff

Almost every month, we end up with at least one test a day, and some days, multiple tests. MANY people pass, which is actually what we hope for every time. Some people pass because our test was too similar to one already in a scripter's database, and their script triggered a response that got them off the hook, for now. (It isn't that hard to see when this happens, and we'll check them again with a different style of test later.) The number 25 was random but easy to set up a ratio for a peek at what we're noticing behind the scenes.

But yes, we are testing, and we're delighted when we get responses - and when we don't get responses, some of what we're seeing is kinda depressing!

Iocanthe
Doing stuff

I remember back in the late 90s and early 2000s when the Cleric's and empath's guilds in the crossing were buzzing with life at most hours of the day. The Crate in Riverhaven was equally as busy and likewise the Green in Ratha. But lets face it those days are long gone. The oppurtunity to Roleplay or even just chat while you run your training scripts are long gone.

Policy needs to change to suit the times and playerbase. Now I am not calling for full on Fallen type scripting in Prime but there are too fewer player in DR these days to be so set in our ways that we cant modify policy a little. The Changes could be as simple as if you get caught AFK scripting GMs will put you in a cell and no further action is taken. Or maybe you have to fail a certain number of Script checks before you go into the cell.But surely with the declining numbers in DR we need to make some changes.

>>I'm really trying to see the downside of changing policy, but I'm having trouble.

AFK scripting definitely breaks immersion for those who enjoy RP in DR. Seeing bots walk back and forth through ball rooms with zero reaction, or enter a room and listen to a class, only to leave it five seconds later and return in a minute to do the same, or watch empaths braid vines while characters bleed out in front of them are certainly reminders that people are botting their way to greater numbers, and could care less about the other players around them. Of course, there are plenty of other things that break immersion that have nothing to do with AFK scripting, but AFK scripters aren't helping.

High numbers of unresponsive AFK scripters are detrimental to retaining new players as well. Most new players, or even ones returning from a long hiatus – who are almost never returning so they can AFK script, but almost always so they can find old friends, make new ones, or RP an interesting character – are looking to make connections with people. Some will seek out mentors or go to the Elanthipedia, but a lot simply ask the people they see around them, usually at the empath's guild or near their own guildhall. If those people don't react, the perception is that the game is dead, or that the community is cold, or otherwise so boring that everything must be scripted, since that's all they see.

I'm sure there are issues for those who enjoy competitive PvP too, or for people who have played a long time and followed policy, or for people who might enjoy finding a niche in the game's economy without AFK scripting, but I can't really speak to those.

Ideally, some changes to the separate DR servers would be a good solution. If The Fallen were the same price as Prime, included in Prime, allowed transfers from Prime, and/or allowed a binary PvP stance (Open/Closed) with some stipulations – these would probably go far in making the communities of DR happier. Making a Platinum-like RP server the same price (or nearly the same price) as Prime would be a great solution too. I think I'd jump over there immediately, if the price were more reasonable.

It seems to me that the current policy is actually a good balance for most of Prime's players. The policy is that AFK scripting comes with consequences, though empirical evidence suggests that the policy is not strictly enforced. It seems that if one is AFK scripting in a non-disruptive way, they're most likely gaining every advantage for doing so with a very small likelihood that a GM will, out of the blue, script check them. If, on the other hand, one has a serious reputation for AFK scripting, has bots constantly running through the most public areas, has been reported for other policy violations or harassment, that person may find themself facing (just) consequences for making the game less enjoyable for others.

I also suspect that at least some of the people who are very invested in having the AFK scripting policy for Prime changed, instead of moving to The Fallen (especially if they were to allow changes in PvP stances and reduced the price), are people who are selling characters and resources, many of whose buyers are probably returning players looking for good RP and not wanting to start from circle 1, or people like me who are invested but not playing a HLC. While I have nothing against this personally, it is frustrating to have some of these AFK scripting advocates say that changing the Prime policy will make Simu more money, when Simu could easily offer the resources being exploited by AFK scripters (e.g. higher ranked characters, rare metals, crafted equipment, plats) in the Simu store and generate revenue that could then be put toward development, hiring staff, or pleasing the corporate overlords. There is little difference to me whether a player buys a character from someone who botted that character to 150th circle, or whether someone pays for a token at the Simu store that boosts their circle to 150, sets their skill ranks to min reqs for that circle and awards them a corresponding amount of TDPs, in terms of pay-to-win jealousy. I'd just rather see the money go to people who are trying to make the game more fun and immersive.

>>I also don't think that people who don't regularly roleplay aren't active in the community in other ways. We should strive to be as inclusive as possible. If someone's not messing up your game experience, why target them with this outdated policy?

I agree. If you're training somewhere where there's not a lot of people waiting on you to hunt or craft, if you're not at your keyboard 100% of the time, I don't think you should have to worry too much – and even if you do get caught, how bad are the consequences really? It's hard to imagine that one of the most long standing policies of Prime would lead to a lot of rage quitting from people that just won't take getting a slap on the wrist for AFK scripting.

What people like me are asking is that you follow your own advice here, and just be responsive to the game environment when you're running scripts in Prime.

>>Once you're locked in everything then you're no longer incentived to script that day. You can instead just play.

That might work for exp gain, but scripting for money will still happen.

>>If someone's eating dinner or watching tv while they play, they're probably going to fail a script check.

I script while at the keyboard. I might be watching Netflix in one window while seeing text fly by in Genie on another, but I'm at the keyboard. If they're in another room eating dinner, yes they can (and should!) fail a script check.

>>I'd imagine a lot of folks turn on the game when they get home, do whatever they're gonna do for the evening, then turn it off when they go to bed. Those people are probably going to fail a script check, and they should with the current policy because they're not checking the game every 5 minutes.

I don't agree that "a lot" of folks do it, but otherwise I agree that some people "set it and forget it". This is the incorrect way to script in the game. Some level of attention is necessary.

>>moving players to TF is an even worse penalization than the current policy, because you're basically exiling them forever and they have to pay more money to boot.

AFAIK, this is already something that was done to players in the past. "You're banned from Prime for breaking policy but you can always go to TF if you want" is a thing.

>>Just saying, a lot of assumptions in that post spouted as fact.

If you are claiming that "you script but you're not AFK," then those points being made aren't about you. As someone who scripts a lot, I've never taken "afk scripting is bad for various reasons" personally, because (1) I agree and (2) it isn't a threat to me.

---

Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

>I might be watching Netflix in one window while seeing text fly by in Genie on another, but I'm at the keyboard.

I was checked in the not too distant past, and I've seen logs of people who were checked, and I can definitely say that even at their spammiest, some script checks could quite reasonably be lost in general scroll. I think I was actually quite lucky to have noticed my check, which wasn't particularly spammy or noticeable, and checking back at my logs, I didn't respond until about 6 or so messages into the thing, which was almost 1m after the check started. In the last few days, I know of someone who was sent an RP hook by a GM, missed it in the combat scroll, and then got a script check as a result, which they passed only when the script check became quite spammy.

There's sort of a culture of 'don't talk about this', as people feel it'll either bring script checks down on them or that it's nothing but talk of 'how to avoid script checks', but I think this sort of conversation should be had with players and staff. We need to figure out a way to incentivize people to play, despite the game mechanics being an enormous grind, and we need to figure out a way to prevent people from 24/7'ing botfarms, despite the game being easily multiboxed (and indeed, historically multiboxed by people). Checks are not going out to the low scroll environment of people RPing having a drink with peers at an inn, and frankly, that activity isn't what most people spend most of their time IG doing.

To that end, as recently said by a redname, script checks that are easily regex'able are probably not good script checks, just like a half a dozen lines of random text over the course of a handful of minutes is probably also not a good script check, as it is SUPER easy to miss even if you're staring at your screen. This game produces a ton of scroll - short of whitelisting every single message I should expect and squelching all of it, I don't really envision an easy to catch any checks if I'm hunting, let alone hunting with people. That I'm discussing ways to make it easier for me to notice script checks, to me, suggests that there's an issue that starts before even getting to AFK, because I'm sitting here, ATK, somewhat worried that I will miss any future checks.

So, how this ties into 'what the players want'? I want some recognition about 'how the game is played', and for me anyway, how even when I'm ATK with the game window visible, the Story Window is not a great place to get a hold of me in a lot of situations.

Please refrain from insinuating that the GMs are being unethical.

It's fine to post to ask for more of something, or less of something, or for something to change. It's not fine to post to say that you think that the GMs are blatantly breaking the rules they are required to abide by in order to be GMs. If you think that is occurring, the correct place to sent that information is to dr-feedback@simutronics.com, not the forums, so that any situation can be investigated and handled as appropriate.

-Persida

Don't forget if you multi-account and the accounts are linked somehow (email/billing not sure to be honest) if you get caught the mark applies to all your accounts as well.

>>I see now that the people advocating the policy don't see how draconian it is. There used to be a stipulation that script checks "fell off" after a year, but as far as I can tell that's no longer in effect.

AFK warnings are still only counted within 365 days of each other. This has not changed.

Scripting policy is also not being suddenly enforced, or enforced in any way differently than it has been up to this point. I've never really understood why at least a chunk of players decided it wasn't being enforced anymore, other than some folks vastly misinterpreting a quote from one post by one GM made quite awhile ago and holding on to that interpretation of that post no matter what any other GM has said since then, but that perception has really tainted a lot of this discussion, and a lot of the wider player perception about the scripting policy as a whole.

Please know that exactly nothing has changed about our scripting policy or its enforcement since we did away with the escalating lockouts years ago. The penalties stated in POLICY and NEWS items are the only penalties involved. No character or account gets flagged as anything other than having failed the AFK check and gotten a warning for it, no additional scanning of that character or account occurs purely off of previously failing a check, no exclusions from anything in game happen.

Please continue this discussion of what players want to see done with regarding to how AFK scripting is handled with all of the above in mind. Scarmongering based off of rumors, misperceptions, and the potentially doctored logs that sometimes get shared between players is not a good basis for the community to form and share ideas that can alter policy going forward. I'd really like for us to be able to keep this thread open, but more importantly, I'd like to keep this thread honestly constructive and potentially useful in the staff review of policy. It's going to be really hard to take much into account if a lot of what is being said is being based off of significantly skewed premises to begin with :(

-Persida

I think it's ok to simultaneously respect that people want different things from the game while also acknowledging that certain things they might want don't work for the game environment.








Mazrian

>>The social side of the game depends on people being around and paying attention, and without the social side a lot of people (even people who think they don't care about that much) are going to quit or not even start.

I get that, I really do, but not everyone plays the game to be outwardly social. This, however, a game with numbers attached to everything. As the player you responded to referenced, extended periods of doing absolutely everything you can with no progress is frustrating, and this is a game of years, not hours. The experience system was modified around scripting, then scripting methods modified around the experience system, until it became the monster it is today. While some people being unresponsive might be a bit of a drag, so is the feeling of never being able to be competitive. That frustration will absolutely take a toll on every aspect of your gameplay, and you see it frequently tint social interactions.

Also, nothing personal, but I feel like a player on the tier of Mazrian's character commenting that social interaction is more important than being able to be competitive is a bit biased. Like a 1% standing on his soapbox saying you don't need money to be happy in front of a soup kitchen. Love ya Maz, just the feel I got from your comments. If the experience system isn't going to change, policy needs to. Something needs to happen. After all, your train of thought focuses, again, on keeping those new players that come to the game only for RP, and not on keeping the competitive players or those that like to write scripts, optimize, etc. There is a whole thread that shows the diversity of the people playing the game, and why they play it. Stop ignoring the other half.

>Don't forget if you multi-account and the accounts are linked somehow (email/billing not sure to be honest) if you get caught the mark applies to all your accounts as well.

Sorry, I missed this one in my debunking post. This is also not accurate. If you have hardlinked accounts (we can link by IP as well as billing and other information), AND that link was previously requested and noted in your logs before your bust (in-game staff can't see this info to link your accounts, only onsite can, so we have to request this information from them and it then gets added into the logs that in-game staff can see), then the busts between your linked accounts up to that point will be considered the same as if they were all on one account.

That does not mean that all characters on all of those accounts get the penalty applied to them when one gets busted for afk scripting. What it means is that the character that was busted for afking gets treated as though all of the busts on all of the linked accounts up to the point of that new bust were on the same account. So if the account that the character got busted on had no previous afk busts within 365 days, but one of the hardlinked accounts had two afk busts within the same 365 days, the character that just got busted would get the penalties of a 3rd afk bust within 365 days, instead of it being treated as a 1st bust.

If two hardlinked accounts are afking at the same time and both get busted, or one of the linked accounts gets busted for afking and the other is actively gaining benefits from that afking, that's when you'll see the penalties getting applied to more than one of the hardlinked accounts at the same time.

-Persida