AFK Reg Bots should NOT be allowed

[Conquistador]

never been a fan of anything that allowed you to not play the game and still get an advantage

[Waldo]

Ticks me off to be buying regs ( was doing alchemy only after 1 regent type) and some afk asshat pops in and buys the regent I'm after out before I can buy any..(target not found or some shit) even tho I had the vendor window open and was on the arrow key way before they even recalled into the shop. Resource gathering AFK by anymeans is the same imho, your screwing the person who is at there computer the one who may interact with another player.

Players made the game fun not bots.

[Zim]

Typically most bots are semi-manned, I've griefed / messed with enough to know. The AFK ones should be banned though.

[Hydroxide]

I propose all of us bot runners agree to

STOP BUYING REGS

for a two week period.

Let us end this whining, once and for good.

Since the last reg-vendor patch, without bots, it would be a huge pain in the arse to find npcs with regs. Do you really want to buy the vendor up on your own?

Here is the TEMPORARY solution to your problem: grief the reg bots when you can't seem to buy the regs before them. Griefing takes time and effort, but so does relentless searching.

Now that you have your precious reagents, sit down and think about the reason bots have to run so often or long in the first place. The last npc vendor patch made spending 1,000,000 on reagents go from (roughly, on average) a 4 hour process to a 20 hour process. To buy an adequate amount of product to handle demand, I must run my buyer for 40 to 50 hours per two to three week period. Prior to the patch, I was able to do this in 8 to 10 hours of buying.

All this patch did was send more business to private vendors (no 999 spawns for the casual UOSA player), and force more people into using bots of their own to buy reagents.

Let's revert this patch, and ease reg buying all together. Less bots, more regs.

"era accuracy" has been overlooked before. Let us overlook this, and bring back the doubling of items on npcs after buyout.

[MatronDeWinter]

I disagree with Hydroxide.

So, there was an era-accurate patch that made buying harder. Well, that's not changing anytime soon so you should just get used to it or find patch notes proving otherwise.

Now, "more people are using reg-bots and it makes me mad", well, this is a valid concern, but first let me address Hydroxides reasoning. The reason we should "embrace reg-bots" (if we can't revert patch) is because they provide a valuable service to players who want reagents but lack the time/patience to buy them?

Nooo. In OSI you would be out on your butt for AFK reg-botting and everyone here knows it. I think this activity is clearly resource collecting. I disagree with the "Well it doesn't "create" a new object" therefor "it's legal" idea that is associated with resource gathering right now.

I think that income disparity is of great importance to the economy of an online game. Allowing one person to profit whle AFK, even though the "profit" is coming from other players, is just asinine.

There have been other patches/mechanics added that implement NEA things which prevent certain motions from being automated. I don't see why this situation would be any different. If that isn't an option (and frankly, it's not a necessary one), you could just police it the same way AFK miners are policed.

[Halbu]

I disagree with Hydroxide.

So, there was an era-accurate patch that made buying harder. Well, that's not changing anytime soon so you should just get used to it or find patch notes proving otherwise.

Now, "more people are using reg-bots and it makes me mad", well, this is a valid concern, but first let me address Hydroxides reasoning. The reason we should "embrace reg-bots" (if we can't revert patch) is because they provide a valuable service to players who want reagents but lack the time/patience to buy them?

Nooo. In OSI you would be out on your butt for AFK reg-botting and everyone here knows it. I think this activity is clearly resource collecting. I disagree with the "Well it doesn't "create" a new object" therefor "it's legal" idea that is associated with resource gathering right now.

I think that income disparity is of great importance to the economy of an online game. Allowing one person to profit whle AFK, even though the "profit" is coming from other players, is just asinine.

There have been other patches/mechanics added that implement NEA things which prevent certain motions from being automated. I don't see why this situation would be any different. If that isn't an option (and frankly, it's not a necessary one), you could just police it the same way AFK miners are policed.

[Blaise]

I agree with Matron and everyone should be happy that they haven't patched in era-accurate reagent pricing.....yet.

There have been other patches/mechanics added that implement NEA things which prevent certain motions from being automated.

Clicking house signs as a ghost perhaps?

[Hicha]

I disagree with Hydroxide.

So, there was an era-accurate patch that made buying harder. Well, that's not changing anytime soon so you should just get used to it or find patch notes proving otherwise.

Now, "more people are using reg-bots and it makes me mad", well, this is a valid concern, but first let me address Hydroxides reasoning. The reason we should "embrace reg-bots" (if we can't revert patch) is because they provide a valuable service to players who want reagents but lack the time/patience to buy them?

Nooo. In OSI you would be out on your butt for AFK reg-botting and everyone here knows it. I think this activity is clearly resource collecting. I disagree with the "Well it doesn't "create" a new object" therefor "it's legal" idea that is associated with resource gathering right now.

I think that income disparity is of great importance to the economy of an online game. Allowing one person to profit whle AFK, even though the "profit" is coming from other players, is just asinine.

There have been other patches/mechanics added that implement NEA things which prevent certain motions from being automated. I don't see why this situation would be any different. If that isn't an option (and frankly, it's not a necessary one), you could just police it the same way AFK miners are policed.

Whats also interesting is that it is ok to afk buy regs which may be sold through an NPC vendor (which does not require your presence,) yet you cannot afk sell to NPCs.

You could argue that it is not a guarantee someone will buy from your vendor, however the same goes for the shopkeeper or NPC: no guarantee they will have the funds to buy the items from you.

[Wil]

You know, it seems like there ought to be a way to take advantage of the situation. Here you have a character following a rigid unattended routine in trivially accessible areas, part of which includes regularly withdrawing substantial amounts of gold from the bank. And all you have to do to stop the guy at a particular mage shop is stand on his bank spot.

In fact, if you leave him enough regs to recall back to the bank, he'll fetch another load of gold for you!

[MatronDeWinter]

You know, it seems like there ought to be a way to take advantage of the situation. Here you have a character following a rigid unattended routine in trivially accessible areas, part of which includes regularly withdrawing substantial amounts of gold from the bank. And all you have to do to stop the guy at a particular mage shop is stand on his bank spot.

In fact, if you leave him enough regs to recall back to the bank, he'll fetch another load of gold for you!

Unless the macro is clever enough.

Locked box with recall regs, have the cash on "float" or let the NPC auto-deduct from bank. Spam Buy every now and then while running an if counter >= x, recall and bank, recall regs in box won't count if auto-search containers is unchecked and the cache is cleared. Add in a form of call-guards macro (that isn't spam), dress like npc for good measure. As soon as their regs hit their backpack, they are gone, and you can't steal their recall from the box. Only murder them, for a hand full of recall regs..

It's as simple as, "if sysmessage = blocked ... then try another rune (in box), to counter the blocked runes,

Banking will take place in a no more than 8 seconds, so you better grab fast. Though, if I were the person macroing this I would create a one-way drop box (elevated tables etc), and recall and dump things off in the box over a patio fence to be extra safe.

I promise you that I could macro this right in front of your face without you being able to do anything but murder me and take a count.


The problem is unattended macroing, and the policy that determines "what" exactly counts as "resource gathering".



There is very little reason to actually farm on UOSA. I mean, why bother? If all you want to do is PVP, you can afford that easily by just running your two spare accounts fishing, mining, reg-buying, or whatever in the background while you "attend" the macro even though there is no possible way you could be looking in 2-3 different places at the same time.

I think that buying with the intent to resell should be illegal. Then, if you are playing one character, while another is macroing a resource gatherer, then you should be counted as AFK resource gatherer, regardless of how many monitors you claim to have. Just the idea of a GM allowing a clearly macroing person, more than a few seconds to respond is silly to me.

[Wil]

Unless the macro is clever enough.

Locked box with recall regs, have the cash on "float" or let the NPC auto-deduct from bank.

Razor can't float on object on the cursor (it isn't capable of it) and the vendors typically don't have the 2kgp worth of regs it takes to auto-deduct from the bank. You catch someone macroing with float, RPV it and you can get them banned.

IIRC the locked box won't work out too well either. They can drop regs in but can't take them back out at the bank without unlocking. It's possible to macro that, but a pain. Don't expect macro buyers who didn't bother with multiple bank recalls to do this either.

It's as simple as, "if sysmessage = blocked ... then try another rune (in box), to counter the blocked runes,

Even simpler than that - just make every second bank recall to a different spot. But really, the macro buyers out there now aren't bothering to do so...

I promise you that I could macro this right in front of your face without you being able to do anything but murder me and take a count.

If you're stuck in town with a blocked recall, I can town-kill you without taking a count. If you're outside your patio, why does the red character care about taking a count?

Plus, you have to *have* a patio. There aren't so many of them. You don't have a backup you can easily move to once I find yours... and if you're constantly popping back there on macro, it won't take too much effort to find yours.


Regards,
Wil