Any one can please confirm : NO AFK macroing at launch?

I just wish to make sure that if I bother to really put time into the game at launch to level up to a competitive state, that there will be at least some effort to prevent players from being logged in all day and doing macroing.

Also this concern extends to people who will get paid for leveling multiple accounts at once with many computers on the same IP ? They are not technically afk macroing because they will keep the windows active in order to prevent being caught, is there a measure against this ?

Will this be punished, if yes, please say how ; that would greatly alleviate my disquietude.

 

Well you've already hit upon the crux of the matter.
That is, what about people who are not provably "afk".

On the topic of macroing programs, I am going to save the argument and state that it is a given that you -cannot- accurately detect and defend against them. Only the bad and well-known ones get caught. So assume they are there, always will bet here, and will be utilized.

So with that assumption:
How do you catch them? How do you fairly determine that they should be punished?

Say someone is in a forest for 12 hours a day, running the same loop, killing the same monsters.
Is it a bot, a gold farmer, a powerleveler, or a legitimate player? Assuming you want to punish the other three but not the fourth, you have to make some sort of distinction, especially since you specified you dislike powerlevelrs.

So now we have to somehow devise a test that will catch three of them, but not catch the fourth one.
And remember, you can't use chat to do it (they may have the chat window off).
If you try to do it by standing in front of them and talking so they see the text over your head, what if that's turned off as well?
Or if their camera is looking the other way and they don't see you?

Let's say that you have a gm command that forces the camera forward and forces chat to show.
Do you have staff online at that second that speak the players language?
Not just be able to use google translate but actually speak it so that there's no chance of confusion?

You might argue a legitimate player wouldn't run the same circuit for 12 hours nonstop, and i'd disagree. If that's the "optimal" circuit to run, that's exactly what a legitimate player would do who is intent on competetiveness.
Now you could get a little further by going after players who are on 24 hours/day, but what happens when its a communal account? More than one player uses it, say a household with children or something.



Pointing out there is a problem with macroing is easy.
Devising a solution is rediculously difficult. It's far from a solved problem.

So a better question would be, what ideas do you have that you'd like to argue that portalarium should implement?
Everyone has a different idea how to stop this stuff, and the minute portalarium proposes anything people will find ways to rip it to shreds. So it's easier(read: more likely to make everyone happy) if we devise an idea and discuss its merits as players then lobby for it's implementation.

 

With single player online the interesting thing is bots will never be reported by the community, so they will thrive 1000x more then other MMOs. It will be totally on the devs for detection.

 

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the ToS/EULA mentioned one real life person per account (as is the case with most every online account). I can not access the game right now, so I can't check.

 

Ist already against the EULA:
"
You agree that you will not, under any circumstances
...
• Use cheats, automation software (bots), hacks, mods or any other unauthorized third-party software designed to modify the Game experience;
• Exploit the Game or any of its parts, including without limitation the Game Client, for any commercial purpose, including without limitation (a) use at a cyber cafe, computer gaming center or any other location-based site; (b) for gathering in-game virtual, items or resources for sale outside the Game; or © performing in-game Services in exchange for payment outside the Game, e.g., power-leveling;
...
"

 

Whilst you might never catch them all, the biggest gap in detection and punishment usually comes down to companies not having enough well-trained support staff policing what's going on, and trying to rely on the much cheaper, but way less effective, automated systems. It's almost traditional now in mmos to cut back and woefully fail to resource, or even back up the actions of, in-game support staff, because it's cheap.....

 

If there is monitoring software, it will detect the macro loops, because they never change. If someone is repeating the same sequence of actions every 17.3 seconds, it's not a human controlling the avatar. Humans cant be that exact every time, and there will be minute variations in their patterns, no matter how precisely repetitive they try to be. As long as monitoring software is just 'monitoring software' and not 'banhammer software', it should be ok. Software picks out Avatars with uniquely repetitive actions over a period of time, refers to a human Mod who follows up and takes action if necessary

 

To save discussion, points like this is why i said, "On the topic of macroing programs, I am going to save the argument and state that it is a given that you -cannot- accurately detect and defend against them. Only the bad and well-known ones get caught. So assume they are there, always will bet here, and will be utilized.".

Because for every detection method you can come up with, i can point out examples of how people have evaded them. It is -trivial- to program in delays into your macro and have it vary out where it clicks, how it targets, to switch up what skill order it uses, to vary what route it takes.
There will -never- be an automated detection system that will catch the people who do this for a source of living, which is what the original post seemed concerned with. Those people are always caught by staff in-game.

Except that only covers people who perform in-game services. I.e. powerleveling an existing character in-game. Right now, portalarium allow selling of characters/accounts (see player marketplace). And nothing says you can't buy a new account, level it up to 70, then sell it, and under current writing, that is perfectly allowable.

Likewise, something being against the EULA is never an effective barrier, especially when profit is involved. Because they just factor that risk into the prices. If they can level 3 accounts a week and on average 1 gets caught a week, they just sell the other 2 at a higher price to make up for it.


Like i said, my point in these posts was to point out while everyone would like to see these things implemented, it is rediculously difficult to propose a well-rounded solution that either hasn't been tried already, and that doesn't require inordinate assumptions or manpower to implement in a fair and balanced fashion. So the question is, given those restrictions, how do we get the best result for putting in the least portalarium manpower?

And since they are keeping an open gate between SPO and MPO for resources, the answer is pretty much nothing, since it's all on them. One of the biggest helps is the community self-policing, but we won't even have that as free manpower.

TL/DR: They'd love to, but if it was that easy it'd be done already.

 

well, they could certainly separate the SPO and MMO economy, at the least.

 

So Razer keyboard looping while attended. Legal or not at launch. Devs please give us an answer

 

Macroing aside, and I'm sorry OP to go off topic a little but that's a pretty interesting idea, it would incentivize interaction between players and the possible conflict over resources while ensuring that SPO players are not left in the cold being able to do everything a MPO player can do just in a different market.

Clarification would be nice however as Portalarium have a partnership with Razer who are advertised on the main page I suspect the answer is going to be its allowed although as systems develop up to launch how effective it will continue to be may be debatable.

 

If larger games can't/won't prevent and eliminate botting, I'm not sure how this one will be any different. Of course there was only one game I ever played that was successful at cleaning house with gold farmers/sellers, Dark Age of Camelot, in it's early years, before EA took it over. There were several hundred thousand people playing at that time. MJ was vigilant against them. I never saw a gold spam advertisement in any of those early years I played. Only after EA took over was it a problem. Even when Warhammer came out the banning of gold farmers commenced from day one and you'd get a message about a gold farmer banned. It's possible but you just have to want to get rid of them, and stay vigilant. Whether it's worth the time, effort, and money to spend on it for this game, we'll have to see. I hope to not see gold spamming, but if I do I, hope the ignore list is unlimited lol. I think a lot games set themselves wide open for botting really though with the tedious, mind-numbing grinds, that make playing a chore.

 

Again people need to stop reading into the "grey" areas - Macroing using ANY tool is against the EULA, as is using them to sell ANYTHING for profit.

They are very clear - Do it, Get Caught, DLTDHYOTA.

Looking for clarification on what you think are loopholes will NOT get answered because their EULA is very simple and to the point. They have the power, if you get caught CYA. Look at the statement made by number4, he could already be shut down, as he clearly states he uses a mechanic to run the game while he is asleep - - -

Again stop looking into the grey areas for loopholes, or asking them. If I were them I would do just as they are - point you at the EULA, and let you go - I would also be flagging accounts for deeper scrutiny based on their actions in this testing phase.

The first person who comes to these forums and cries about being banned should also have their access to these forums removed so they do NOT have a voice here.

If you have asked port for this answer, and did not get an answer you liked asking on the public forums will not solve you dilemma.

Simply stop reading into it or looking at what you perceive as grey area and let it go.

 

You agree that you will not, under any circumstances
• Use cheats, automation software (bots), hacks, mods or any other unauthorized third-party software designed to modify the Game experience;
• Exploit the Game or any of its parts, including without limitation the Game Client, for any commercial purpose, including without limitation (a) use at a cyber cafe, computer gaming center or any other location-based site; (b) for gathering in-game virtual, items or resources for sale outside the Game; or © performing in-game services in exchange for payment outside the Game, e.g., power-leveling;
• Use any unauthorized third-party software that intercepts, “mines”, or otherwise collects information from or through the Game or the Website, including without limitation any software that reads areas of RAM used by the Game to store information about a character or the game environment; provided, however, that PORTALARIUM may, at its sole and absolute discretion, allow the use of certain third party user interfaces;

The full Agreement can be viewed here:
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=47863


should read the rules of the game you play, and stop being entitled teenagers and assuming things.

 

@FireLotus here is another person who thinks Afk macroing is the correct thing to do based on your company showing a picture of a keyboard and their logical and reason brain say its ok.

 

Sorry for not being able to reply I was wearing a donkey hat and was punished in a corner of the abyss for a week

I appreciate the very well worded replies to this thread and the difficulties in creating a sound economy for our game, but I don't think we have a choice considering we are not creating a "wow" factor here and are hoping the game will outlast its creators. This was mentioned many times that we'll be different than other games but we're setting it up exactly the same.

The problem I see currently is not a logical one but a budget one, can't hire mods and GMs, well yes then its time to focus on how an automated system can make the job easier for them, almost worry free.

I've named countless ideas that were never taken into account because I am targeting a gaping typhoon in the meta-game. There is noone who's task is to fix those things because well other companies have gotten away without it and the fact that we secretly hope that this game wont be popular enough to be targeted by those game-breaking groups is to say the least quite disturbing.

This is usually taken care of by the community manager, but FL is currently helping along creating the game. It's merely my opinion but I think its something you attack preventively by setting an example, not something you try to stop once some people have driven profit and decide to invite their friends to help along.

This type of meta-commerce has driven UO and so many other games to the ground. For most casual gamers I agree this isn't much of an issue, nothing forces you to be social in a game with such compartmentalized gameplay. But here we're attempting to have some roleplay, we pretend the single player experience will be amazing.

Again merely my opinion, but I've been pouncing about it since the first releases, there needs to be a clear separation between single and online economies, and furthermore a separation between full open pvp economy and the regular one. I don't wish to repeat myself but I appreciate the difficulties that can arise from attempting such fixes, but the cloud based unity allows such things. You can record anything a player does and ask the computer to analyse while the GM sleeps.

O course having only one layer of analysing isn't going to work, but the game will be clearly able to see if a player had been farming gold with the same pattern for a week and then systematically gives 1 million gold to some people without an apparent in game exchange. This will be obvious with a 2 layer scan, and then its up to the player to convince he's been playing the game and not been giving millions to seemingly random players who they have never even met in game before.

In fact my vision of it all is huge, probably too big for Port to consider it... it seems like a mountain to overcome but I think this issue is more critical than even a well functioning combat system. The world needs to make sense, and not become like another divide and conquer venue.