A Solution to the AFK mining that is crippling our economy.

[MatronDeWinter]

This is not a thread for miners to come in and say, "well, I'm ALWAYS at my computer while I mine". This is just a simple suggestion to end this free money train. I have killed 6 people today afk-recall macroing, here is my suggestion, and while I realise that it's not era-accurate, something needs to be done.

When a player mines for the first time a timer starts ticking. After X amount of time a gump pops up. The player has Y amount of time to answer the gump before being wisped away to macro-jail (was bucs den on Pacific). During Y amount of time, the player can still do whatever they were previously doing, so this will not effect running from PK's ect. The timer will only compare time to see if X is met when a player uses a pickaxe/shovel on a mountain, so the gump will never open unless someone is mining. The gump itself should have a randomly generated string of letters, and the player must enter those letters before Y amount of time has been met.

I head about this on some other shard years ago, and it sounds great to me. If you are macroing while attended, then this will be no problem, as you have Y amount of time to enter a few letters. I feel that this would drastically cut down on the staff-interaction for this type of problem, as well as help prevent these insane 3gp ea. ingot sales.

Discuss..

[Senses]

While I might be willing to agree with you that AFK mining is a problem, I'm not ready to concede that it is crippling our economy. It is much like saying the headache your getting from your brain cancer is killing you. The real culprit is being able to run multiple accounts.

Even if someone is truly attending a mining macro, they can still do so for hours on end with impunity while simultaneously playing the pvp and social spheres of this game. In the old days, most people, *yeah I don't mean you douche bags who ran 3 accounts in 1999 and love to come here and post about it just because you are in fact still douche bags,* had to choose how they spent there time online, and very few chose the rigorous boring life of a miner. This gave ingots value, and in turn smithing creations value.

In fact, this isn't just ingots were talking about. This is every aspect of crafting and trade. This is an hours worth of keg making for 2000 gold profit. This is Deadly Poisoning, a skill that is probably the most expensive in the game to GM, bringing back a couple gold in return. Crafting, and trade on this server has and always will be a back burner to PvP even though PvP really can't exist in any meaningfull way without the crafters supplying the difference between a good player and a bad one.

So yes, afk mining does cripple the already crippled economy but the solution really isn't some piece of code or even the players themselves policing and kiling all the macroers. So what do we have left, a server that on paper is pretty close to the t2a experience, but in practice, lacks so much of the depth that made Ultima Online so popular.

[MatronDeWinter]

While I might be willing to agree with you that AFK mining is a problem, I'm not ready to concede that it is crippling our economy. It is much like saying the headache your getting from your brain cancer is killing you. The real culprit is being able to run multiple accounts.

Even if someone is truly attending a mining macro, they can still do so for hours on end with impunity while simultaneously playing the pvp and social spheres of this game. In the old days, most people, *yeah I don't mean you douche bags who ran 3 accounts in 1999 and love to come here and post about it just because you are in fact still douche bags,* had to choose how they spent there time online, and very few chose the rigorous boring life of a miner. This gave ingots value, and in turn smithing creations value.

In fact, this isn't just ingots were talking about. This is every aspect of crafting and trade. This is an hours worth of keg making for 2000 gold profit. This is Deadly Poisoning, a skill that is probably the most expensive in the game to GM, bringing back a couple gold in return. Crafting, and trade on this server has and always will be a back burner to PvP even though PvP really can't exist in any meaningfull way without the crafters supplying the difference between a good player and a bad one.

So yes, afk mining does cripple the already crippled economy but the solution really isn't some piece of code or even the players themselves policing and kiling all the macroers. So what do we have left, a server that on paper is pretty close to the t2a experience, but in practice, lacks so much of the depth that made Ultima Online so popular.

Thats great and all, but you have to focus on one thing at a time. I believe this discussion could be continues in that 20 page "Ghosting a crutch for pks" thread

[Mistril]

This is not a thread for miners to come in and say, "well, I'm ALWAYS at my computer while I mine". This is just a simple suggestion to end this free money train. I have killed 6 people today afk-recall macroing, here is my suggestion, and while I realise that it's not era-accurate, something needs to be done.

When a player mines for the first time a timer starts ticking. After X amount of time a gump pops up. The player has Y amount of time to answer the gump before being wisped away to macro-jail (was bucs den on Pacific). During Y amount of time, the player can still do whatever they were previously doing, so this will not effect running from PK's ect. The timer will only compare time to see if X is met when a player uses a pickaxe/shovel on a mountain, so the gump will never open unless someone is mining. The gump itself should have a randomly generated string of letters, and the player must enter those letters before Y amount of time has been met.

I head about this on some other shard years ago, and it sounds great to me. If you are macroing while attended, then this will be no problem, as you have Y amount of time to enter a few letters. I feel that this would drastically cut down on the staff-interaction for this type of problem, as well as help prevent these insane 3gp ea. ingot sales.

Discuss..

A simple solution would be to take away some of the SysMessages mining leaves behind and just have it be open text so you can't make a marco in Razor for it. Granted there are other programs out there but according to some of the UOSA counselers they have protections in line to detect some illegal programs to this several sending packets, so that account would be flagged. My 2.3 cents. =o)

[venox]

agree

[tekai]

Isn't it better in the end though, that armor is cheap?

if it gets too expencive, people will make thier own smiths. (even those that use one account!).

and whyle you say a majority of people didnt use multiple accounts.. the people here- the hardcores- were the ones that did it.

O'lmanRiver

[MatronDeWinter]

Isn't it better in the end though, that armor is cheap?

if it gets too expencive, people will make thier own smiths. (even those that use one account!).

and whyle you say a majority of people didnt use multiple accounts.. the people here- the hardcores- were the ones that did it.

O'lmanRiver

There are third party programs that cannot be blocked/detected. Ones that provide a Journal string scanning tool to get past any hidding of the clients sysmessages. The "captcha" is the only way to prevent that from at least mining.

Tekai, if armor is cheap then people who legitimately mine/work, will not profit.

If ingots cost too much, people will NOT make their own smiths, instead they will rely on those already in business.

[Derrick]

Why don't you just report them?

Repeated AFK mining offenses are an account ban. Kill em, they will be back tommorrw

[Hemperor]

Reporting is certainly a must, I have seen the amount of shit Derrick removes from these guys if they aren't banned...pretty much everything they own.

[Daolin]

I guess it depends on the length of a timer. I'm not about to stare at my character non-stop like a hawk just because a 10 second timer can come up and flag my account. Its not easy to mine for hours if you really are attending. It can become a real pain because you can't get too involved with anything else. Your other choices can be limited quick. I talk in IRC, browse the internet, watch a movie on another comp, read books, etc... You're still stuck in that chair for a long period of time though. Nothing that will cover up my character mining, so I should essentially catch anything that pops up.

Now, attending AND doing all the automation is really a pain. This was an activity primarily left to noobs without any other decent choices for cash. I could just as well roll up a quick easy mode bard and make some quick cash that doesn't require any interaction or advertising.

As it is now, I feel mining is worth the effort vs. PvE. It is sort of a niche role. I think the better solution would be to limit accounts, but that is just beating a dead horse.


edit: I don't think prices will ever go below say, 4gp. If they drop below 5gp (i still sell at 6 currently), then i'm just going to automate creating/selling chain coifs or something equally profitable to burn through my ingots.

[Faust]

FYI, this wouldn't work as stated in the main post.

Razor can catch a gump and respond if there is a button or system message involved. The only way you could do something like this is to use methods such as bot preventions that forums use. For example, gump pops up with a random key word like "fish" for example. The player would have to say the word out loud for the punishment to not happen. I'm not saying that I support this in any way, but mainly just looking at it in a programmer's perspective.

A gump wouldn't be that bad of an idea for a GM to send to a player when suspected of afk resource gathering though.

[Hemperor]

I guess it depends on the length of a timer. I'm not about to stare at my character non-stop like a hawk just because a 10 second timer can come up and flag my account. Its not easy to mine for hours if you really are attending. It can become a real pain because you can't get too involved with anything else.

WELCOME TO ULTIMA ONLINE

ENJOY YOUR STAY

[MatronDeWinter]

FYI, this wouldn't work as stated in the main post.

Razor can catch a gump and respond if there is a button or system message involved. The only way you could do something like this is to use methods such as bot preventions that forums use. For example, gump pops up with a random key word like "fish" for example. The player would have to say the word out loud for the punishment to not happen. I'm not saying that I support this in any way, but mainly just looking at it in a programmer's perspective.

A gump wouldn't be that bad of an idea for a GM to send to a player when suspected of afk resource gathering though.

I am going to quote some sources for you...

Below is a quote from my main post... Did you even read it?

The gump itself should have a randomly generated string of letters, and the player must enter those letters before Y amount of time has been met.

Here is another from a few posts down..

The "captcha" is the only way to prevent that from at least mining.

A CAPTCHA or Captcha (IPA: /ˈkæptʃə/) is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer.

A gump wouldn't be that bad of an idea for a GM to send to a player when suspected of afk resource gathering though.

The idea is to take the GM out of the situation, thats what allows people to afk macro right now.

[Hemperor]

Matron meet Faust.

[RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR]

FYI, this wouldn't work as stated in the main post.

Razor can catch a gump and respond if there is a button or system message involved. The only way you could do something like this is to use methods such as bot preventions that forums use. For example, gump pops up with a random key word like "fish" for example. The player would have to say the word out loud for the punishment to not happen. I'm not saying that I support this in any way, but mainly just looking at it in a programmer's perspective.

A gump wouldn't be that bad of an idea for a GM to send to a player when suspected of afk resource gathering though.

I am going to quote some sources for you...

Below is a quote from my main post... Did you even read it?

The gump itself should have a randomly generated string of letters, and the player must enter those letters before Y amount of time has been met.

Here is another from a few posts down..

The "captcha" is the only way to prevent that from at least mining.

A CAPTCHA or Captcha (IPA: /ˈkæptʃə/) is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer.

A gump wouldn't be that bad of an idea for a GM to send to a player when suspected of afk resource gathering though.

The idea is to take the GM out of the situation, thats what allows people to afk macro right now.

I'm agreeing douche fags like Vlastsalav come in with there 'Attended Macros' and TBH I don't buy his bull shit I'm bettin' he gets up to take a shit once in awhile at the very least with that thing still running, then hes all up in the picture thread with his awesome car and his hot girlfriend.

/SIGNED