PlaneShift
Gameplay => General Discussion => Topic started by: Thiridant on September 30, 2004, 04:30:48 am
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I have to aske this question.
I have played a few MMO-RPGs and I have found myself surrounded by bad players.
Bad players are L33ter players, cheaters , ebayers and etc.
How will this be controlled?
Whats PS\'s stance on naming avatar\'s?
Will there be instancing like in Guild Wars and EQ2 to give this game single player richness and a tiny bit of privacy?
And what about the use of bots will that be fought?
I guess since this is a free game I should just shut up but I\'m just curious?
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Such excellent questions. So excellent in fact that they have been answered before.
Look around a little.
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i Think the games rp enforced meaning no numbers in names.,
so i dont think l33ters will be a problem also, how are Ebayers idoits ? selling of 8-bit worth of memory for C.H.C. (cold hard cash) isnt that bad isn\'t it ?
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Bad players are L33ter players, cheaters , ebayers and etc.
How will this be controlled?
As for the cheaters, PS has a unique set of programs that are to catch all unnormal behaviour. Mapmodifications and client modifications are very easy to detect as the client needs the server\'s approval for just about everything it does, and so it will be sending lots of malicious data that the anticheat will pick up and report. As for bugs, well... We can only hope the bug finders will report the bugs rather than use them. Or it will just take a while longer to discover who the cheaters are, and ban them. As for cheating in general, try and look at the page called \"Cheating\" on the main site.
The l33ters and ebayers... Well, as long as you\'re not l33t in public and breaking the rules by calling people idiots and whatnot, there\'s not much anyone can do. Names, however, do need to follow the \"Roleplay Only\" rule. And by roleplay only, I mean a REAL name. Not \"GodOfThunder\" or \"SuperAssassin\". Those are nicknames, and they\'re lame. A name generator has been provided to give incompetent players a good name. :)
As for the ebayers. I don\'t really see them problem with them. If people are willing (and stupid) enough to buy stuff for real money, then I say let them. But that\'s not really up to me. That\'s for Talad to decide.
Will there be instancing like in Guild Wars and EQ2 to give this game single player richness and a tiny bit of privacy?
It\'s a MMORPG. Why do you want single player things?
And what about the use of bots will that be fought?
I\'m not sure of the details on this one, but such things can easily be monitored, and spotting someone who has been playing non-stop for 72 hours (just to make an example) shouldn\'t be too much of a problem.
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Yeah but most people won\'t be stupid enough to run a bot for 3 days straight.
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Originally posted by KameZero
Yeah but most people won\'t be stupid enough to run a bot for 3 days straight.
I\'ve played MMORPGs since I was 12. I\'m sure I could amaze you with many stories about how stupid people can be. :)
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I agree with Grono...
I think it was Einstein who said
\"The only constant in the universe is human stupidity\"
Never underestimate the possible stupidity of others.
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Another good quote along the stupid line is: \"No one has ever gone broke by understimating the inligence of others.\"
I really like that one.
The problem with bots is that the people who use them are not always stupud -Lazy?- Hell yes, but not always stupid. They tend to take their lazyness into hyperwork mode and spend hours trying to make the bot\'s AI look like a real person. Now if they had only invesed that time in the game they would be more powerfull and have some friends or real enemies to PK instead of preying on the weak like old lame wolves.
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In one beta testing game I used to play there was a guy using a macro to mine iron ore. I sat there watching the iron fall to his feet and decided to get rich off him so I proceded to pick up all the ore. The next day he was still there and about 3 people were crouded around (wasnt a well know game and was small) all trying to get rich off him. After they had all left I got an Amazon to chase me over to him and then teleported away, I then took the short 10 second stroll across the map and he was being stabbed in the back and just ignoring the Amazon untill he died. Then I ran back to town and he had respawned but was still trying to mine the rock but was stuck in a building.
Just an example of what can happen to you if you leave the game going for more than 2 days. It is pretty obvious when someone is using a macro on a game like Tibia since they seem to have mystical rapidfire fishing rods ;)
Maybe PS could have a system where if a character is doing exactly the same thing and seeming to move every 1 second no more no less then they get kicked of something like that
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Then you just add a random number generator and wait that number, or do that other tasks and then proceed with the mining.
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I guess we\'ll just have to deal with bots, and hope that people don\'t use them too much.
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Random Events help to prevent boting. For instance that your pick axe breaks but can easily be fixed or a rock golem attacks you. In Neocron there was a time where you would just need to press one button to research an item and you could do it over and over again until your inventory was full (or your blueprints gone). To prevent a bot doing this for you they made the window move everytime (or 2nd time) you clicked the start button (and you needed something else to research - didnt play that long though).
I think thought that in Planeshift bots wont be a that big problem (since i think there are many people who keep an eye on suspicous players and the game itself doesnt foster bots with an experience-system afaik)
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The best way to avoid bots is PVP. Bots are easy kills. My snipers in another MMORPG killed many bots, and the flames I got from the owners added a lot to the fun of it :D
(but not everyone likes PVP and so I doubt that there will be unlimited PVP in Planeshift ... or will there? :D)
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Azasello - Outside of duels and \"arenas\" it\'s no PVP.
Bots will not be a problem, that\'s why we have GMs in-game.
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Pegasus, the pick breaking and the golems, wizards etc, are from runescape aren\'t they? I had wondered at the reason for easily mended pick axes myself. Stupid game really, also, it never stopped bots, there were heaps.
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to go along with the quotes before i have a nice one \" stupid is as stupid does\"
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Originally posted by Adeli
Pegasus, the pick breaking and the golems, wizards etc, are from the game-that-shall-not-be-named aren\'t they? I had wondered at the reason for easily mended pick axes myself. Stupid game really, also, it never stopped bots, there were heaps.
Yeah the golem and pick axe are from the game-that-shall-not-be-named. I still have an account there i created like 3 years ago. Back then you could easily use auto mine (and many people did). I checked it out like 2 weeks ago and apart from the graphics and those random events not much has changed (it still is the same treadmill and probably will always be).
PS probably doesnt need things like random events because boters will be visible to a \"trained eye\".
Edit: Removed 1x \'probably\' ;)
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Just because it is from runescape it doesnt mean its a bad thing
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Originally posted by Adeli
I agree with Grono...
I think it was Einstein who said
\"The only constant in the universe is human stupidity\"
Never underestimate the possible stupidity of others.
Einstein actually said:
\"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I\'m not sure about the former.\"
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Thankyou Clopy!
I\'d forgotten the other half, I knew it didn\'t look right, but I was tired and confused. It\'s my friend\'s favourite saying.
Einstein was great, in that regard.
I wasn\'t saying that just because it is from runescape, it is bad, I was just asking if that\'s what he was talking about. I even have an account there, but haven\'t been on it for many months.
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Originally posted by Gronomist
Bad players are L33ter players, cheaters , ebayers and etc.
How will this be controlled?
As for the ebayers. I don\'t really see them problem with them. If people are willing (and stupid) enough to buy stuff for real money, then I say let them. But that\'s not really up to me. That\'s for Talad to decide.
I definitely see a problem with this, and it\'s called \"harvesting\". If ppl. just sell their stuff on ebay and other ppl. actually want to spend real money on it, I\'m fine with this (though I doubt paladin will be fine with that :D ).
However, in other games there are groups of ppl. \"playing\" for the sole purpose of harvesting things that they then sell on ebay. These ppl. actually destroy the game because they
1) frequent public places to harvest, thereby ruining the experience of others
2) actively drive off others if these enter the harvesting zone, usually done by creating trains and driving them towards the player
3) clog the server for their own selfish interests, thereby stealing other\'s resources, just like SPAMmers.
Therefore, I wish the most draconic punishments possible to be placed on them on the first occurence. At least a permanent ban!
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Originally posted by Seytra
Originally posted by Gronomist
Bad players are L33ter players, cheaters , ebayers and etc.
How will this be controlled?
As for the ebayers. I don\'t really see them problem with them. If people are willing (and stupid) enough to buy stuff for real money, then I say let them. But that\'s not really up to me. That\'s for Talad to decide.
I definitely see a problem with this, and it\'s called \"harvesting\". If ppl. just sell their stuff on ebay and other ppl. actually want to spend real money on it, I\'m fine with this (though I doubt paladin will be fine with that :D ).
However, in other games there are groups of ppl. \"playing\" for the sole purpose of harvesting things that they then sell on ebay. These ppl. actually destroy the game because they
1) frequent public places to harvest, thereby ruining the experience of others
2) actively drive off others if these enter the harvesting zone, usually done by creating trains and driving them towards the player
3) clog the server for their own selfish interests, thereby stealing other\'s resources, just like SPAMmers.
Therefore, I wish the most draconic punishments possible to be placed on them on the first occurence. At least a permanent ban!
Um, first, what has paladin got to do with people using ebay??? It can\'t detect stuff like that -_-.
And secondly, yeah, sites which you can buy stuff off usually ruin a game, as it destroys the economy. Just look at SWG for a good example. You can buy 100000 credits for about ?15. That\'s enough to get the best armour, weapons, vehices, house, and other amazing extras. So basically, every newbie who starts the game can get powerful fast. Also, you don\'t see many people running around who havn\'t hit the few mill credit limit.
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Originally posted by Xordan
Um, first, what has paladin got to do with people using ebay??? It can\'t detect stuff like that -_-.
I think it can, albeit indirectly. Because what happens after the stuff has been sold via ebay is that it\'s going to be given to some other player for zero (or almost zero) return. This is highly unusual behaviour and therefore readily detectable.
The same goes for putting things into chests and having other ppl. take them out again. :D
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idiot control? are you telling me there might be people who dont know how to role play.....no way.
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Originally posted by Seytra
Originally posted by Xordan
Um, first, what has paladin got to do with people using ebay??? It can\'t detect stuff like that -_-.
I think it can, albeit indirectly. Because what happens after the stuff has been sold via ebay is that it\'s going to be given to some other player for zero (or almost zero) return. This is highly unusual behaviour and therefore readily detectable.
The same goes for putting things into chests and having other ppl. take them out again. :D
This kind of behaviour is readily detectable by a human person. Doing it in an automated process is another matter though. That starts to sound like you need AI techniques for that.
Greetings,
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Originally posted by jorrit
This kind of behaviour is readily detectable by a human person. Doing it in an automated process is another matter though. That starts to sound like you need AI techniques for that.
I was thinking about a rather simple approach, like:
1) person gives item of value (may also be money) to another person.
2) the other person gives nothing or only items of low value (including money) to the first person within a given time, say, 24 hours RL time
Or
1) person places item of value in some crate
2) another person takes the contents of the crate
3) the other person neither puts anything of equal value back into the crate, nor does it transfer anything else to the first person (directly or indirectly).
The key might be to trace the movement of each item, at least the most recent 20 different persons that owned it, NPCs not included. However, this might not be feasible considering the resources, so it may be reduced to items of considerable value, which will be a lot rarer.
Also, if you do this trace, you can easily spot ppl. who do this kind of thing frequently, which will always happen with harvesters (they do nothing else). You just need to attach some statistics to each char, in which you log the number of \"dubious transactions\", and if they go over a certain threshold, a \"harvester alert\" is triggered.
An AI would of course be helpful, but the moral implications of creating one aren\'t nice.
@ mikewsnc: idiot control: you can set the \"idiot level\", just as you can set brightness level. Also, there can be \"idiot correction\", as with gamma correction. It\'d be a neat feat. :)
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Originally posted by Seytra
I was thinking about a rather simple approach, like:
1) person gives item of value (may also be money) to another person.
2) the other person gives nothing or only items of low value (including money) to the first person within a given time, say, 24 hours RL time
I don\'t think you should punish someone for being kind and just giving something for free to someone else. Strange as it may sound to some people, this actually does happen :-)
Also, if you do this trace, you can easily spot ppl. who do this kind of thing frequently, which will always happen with harvesters (they do nothing else). You just need to attach some statistics to each char, in which you log the number of \"dubious transactions\", and if they go over a certain threshold, a \"harvester alert\" is triggered.
Yes, that might be possible.
Greetings,
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I definitely agree with Jorrit on the first point.
Just the other day, I join an Ultima Online shard.
After trying to work out what to do, a pc walks up to me...\"hi are you new?\" when I said yes he told me to follow him.
In the next 10 minutes he proceeded to craft me an entire set of exquisite leather armour, a sword and shield, a cloak and robe, and let me use his dyes to colour them, tamed a horse and gave it to me, went on the first quest with me, and then took me to a suitable place to build a house.
I don\'t think people like this should be punished for helping out a fellow player. I myself always helped out newer players when I played Diablo 2.
I guess we have to hope that the community (albeit a larger version of it) is mature enough not to have some ruin it all for others. If I\'m rambling, it\'s due to two hours sleep, before a whole day of uni, so sorry.
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Agara may fit the profile of a harvester because she does the crystal drops.. your going to get lots of good people flagged for this because they give money to newbies to help them out... if I create a new char then I would definitely have my other chars give them stuff like \"a gift from a rich uncle\" as I can put it in RP, I usually help my new chars out so I do not have to do all the newbie stuff for a couple of days that can take a couple of hours with help.... but anyway, I do not really care if ppl are buying PS money on ebay, that\'s just a stupid thing to do imo. & if harvesters are crowding out other ppl being rude ppl will report them to gms & if they do not respond (like they are a bot) then the gms will probably kick them for inactivity for a couple of hours or whatnot...
edit: Exactly Adeli, I would always help out newbies in other games. if I was board I could always find some ignorant newb to help out... That\'s just how I am..
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I wasn\'t talking about common stuff. I was talking about things that have value for advanced players, not for newbies. I doubt anyone will just give away their newly found \"Sword of 1337\", it it were worth a pterosaur or two.
Edit: If you do, please contact me! :D
Quest reward items of really difficult quests, stuff like that. Nobody is going to buy a leather armor or a horse (an ingame one, that is) on ebay IMO.
And I doubt that any community of significant size will ever be mature enough to police itself appropriately. I\'ve not heard about one MMORPG where this was the case.
Also, there are entire company-like establishments in places like Corea that have ppl. working to harvest in MMORPGs, and then sell the stuff on ebay. So it\'s not a minor thing, it\'s more like organised crime to me.
Anyway, harvesters powerlevel to the level at which the most interesting items are most frequently being dropped by mobs, and then they grind these mobs repeatedly, carefully selecting the party members for highest drop rate. Once they have gained too many levels to get decent drops, they let themselves be killed repeatedly to loose the extra levels, so that they can harvest again.
Clearly, this is, at best, abuse of the system.
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Beside the problems with legit behavior, your low-give-away protection is easy circumvented. Its enough to make two trades. First the seller buys some normal things overpriced from the buyer and then sells the ebayed item for the overcharge.
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I think some people are blowing the issue a bit out of proportion. Any and all resources/time placed into developing a program to catch harvesters and then warn/ban them can be placed into far better endeavors. I would rather have new content/fixed bugs/real cheating issues adressed than us making sure to catch that guy who makes money off game items. Maybe someone would like to point out where the community actually gets hurt? Sure it creates competition for monster drops/quests but wouldn\'t there be some already. If a certain monster drops a good item, everyone out to make some currency is going to attempt to kill the monster if they can. And I don\'t think harvesting will be a real problem in a free game. People buy items because of one reason: They don\'t have alot of time to play so they buy the best of what they can instead of earning it so they can enjoy the game for their monthly fee. If there\'s no charge, there\'s no impetus to make sure you\'re moving quickly in the game to justify your monthly expenses. While I don\'t believe harvesting is right, I really believe attention is better spent elsewhere.
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Exactly, infact, I really do not think minor cheating is much of a threat @ this stage, I\'d rather have more fetures then less cheaters, I\'d only wory about the cheaters who violate others acounts...
but anyway, there\'s a famly matter I have to go....
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@ zinder: This is true, and I hadn\'t thought of that. However, I suppose that we can detect this as well if we track items of value and the flow of money. It\'d only need to track substantial amounts of money, because if an item is worth 1,000,000 tria, the buyer is going to not perform 500,000 transactions with only 2 tria overpricing. They are going to do, at most, around 20 transactions, which would be 50,000 tria overpricing on each transaction. Therefore, the item either has to be worth about at least 10,000 tria to not trigger the detection, which will still be a substantial value to effectively lose, or these sums alone will trigger the detection.
@ AgentZ: I believe I have listed the damage to the community in my earlier post:
Originally posted by Seytra
1) frequent public places to harvest, thereby ruining the experience of others
2) actively drive off others if these enter the harvesting zone, usually done by creating trains and driving them towards the player
3) clog the server for their own selfish interests, thereby stealing other\'s resources, just like SPAMmers.
As always, one single harvester will not do much harm, but as I stated, they are becoming an entire industry in some MMORPGs already.
I however agree that the percieved value of game items will be lower due to the lack of fee involved, but the time factor can still create substantial percieved value.
@ Zeraph: Of course I\'m not saying that harvesting will be a problem at the current stage of PS, but if the problem is being known and being thought about, design decisions and program hooks can be made that later on facilitate easy addition of more powerful detection. Also, the earlier things are implemented, the longer they can be tested and improved, which will be a benefit once they need to work.
I agree that we will have bigger problems with bots and conventional cheating for the short-term future. However, I think cheaters are a really bad thing regardless of the state of the game. Just look at what the crystal hunt mods have caused, and the crystals are totally useless! If we \"let slip\" immoral behaviour of any kind, the impression is created that it is tolerable, thus lowering the inhibition barrier, leading to a generally low standard of morale, which will eventually drive off players.
More features are nice, certainly, but I do not want them if the cost is ethical behaviour, and thus an enjoyable atmosphere.
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Thanks, I must have missed them.
In response to your reasons:
1. Public places are exactly that. With your logic, anyone out to kill monsters will ruin your experience despite whether or not they harvest the items to sell.
2. As far as I am aware, there\'s no harvester credo which commands they drive off other plays and monster-kill with trains. In fact, in every mmorpg I\'ve played, trains were caused not by harvesters, but by assholes in places you can\'t get anything of value.
3. Everybody has a personal interest. You\'re not playing this game for your mother are you? Maybe you\'re playing it for your best friend who doesn\'t have a computer? The fact is, we all have personal interest in the game. And there\'s no shortage of people who play games just to screw with other people in the game and cause grief.
Also, who says harvesting is \'unethical\'? There\'s no universal ethics or we\'d all be slaves. Your reasoning holds almost no weight and the benefits of focusing on other aspects of the game clearly should take precedence. Every effort should be made to thwart mods or unfair play but killing monsters like a normal player for a different reason isn\'t as much of a crime. I\'d compare it to arresting pot-heads. We have much bigger fish to fry and places to allot our resources.
edit: Just so you know, I say this out of the assumption gil farming is as small a problem as I saw in FFXI or less so which I believe it will be. However if it grew where they took over entire maps...I\'d agree there would be a problem.
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It is nearly impossible to stop them with ingame observation of money flow. There are so many ways, in essence most which works in RL to wash money can work ingame too.
For those who go as open as you stated in your list, you dont need special ingame observation. They have so much effect on others expierence, they reveal themselves and you can ban them.
But small ops need to be addressed otherwise. They are not as easy to see, but can have a similiar effect en mass.
For them you need ebay and the likes to add planeshift items to their restricted/forbidden lists and enforce it.
In short i think education of players and work of GMs are more usefull against this problem than a software solution.
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I think a constant supervision of transactions is a gross waste of resources. I also don\'t find it necessary.
I agree entirely with AgentZ on this one, you make very valid points.
Seytra: I for one, would willing give away a highly powerful item if I had no need for it, nor desire to sell it. I\'d give it to friends, guildmembers, anyone I knew who could benefit from it.
An example: Tyralus has slain a ferocious beast that was guarding the \'Red Staff of Uber Doom +5\', Tyralus is not adept at any way of magic, so would not benefit at all from posession on this object. I would willlingly give the item away if I knew someone who could benefit from it, just to help them, not charge them some obscene amount of \'circa*\' for said item. This is my way of playing and I would hate to be flagged as a cheater if I were to procure three of these staves for three magic using friends.
circa: I have a thread stating my preference of this term.
\'Why not circa?\'
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I think i know where seytra is coming from, when i played eq and was lvl21 dru i was over in East Karana (huge zone with lots and lots of mobs) hunting crag spiders, well for those that don\'t know crag spiders drop lots of spider silks which were pretty valuable to high lvl crafters, well I was having a good time and then this one lvl 57 druid comes running by me with the whole zone trained behind her, after getting stomped by the train and getting back i saw that she dropped everything in the train and was just gathering the goods, well i let it go that time and the next two, but finally i asked her to stop, she replied by saying that I needed to go find a different zone because she was harvesting things to sell and if I stayed she would be happy to keep killing me with trains until i couldn\'t hunt in that zone, this really burned me because she wasn\'t getting any xp and she was going to make me go find another good place to play which could take hours due to all the running and binding and hoping you don\'t die out in the middle of nowhere where you won\'t find your body again, so I ended up just logging out for several days and didn\'t see her on when I tried again
what seytra said about driving people away from what should be public places (like newbie hunting grounds or a good thick spawn spot) is very possible, if the area spawns a certain mob that the drop is usefull then a harvester wants that mob all to themselves as to lessen the likelyhood they will miss the spawn, the best way to get it all to themselves is to be a prick to anyone in the area (i.e. training people, kill stealing, and constant verbal abuse) , of course we can\'t hope that there will be mods and devs on very often and if these things occur the people being affected will report the offensive prat and not be driven away from the game
just some thoughts
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Seytra is absolutly right. Harvesters are a very real and dangerous threat, and should be dealt with in every way possible. They CAN and DO destroy games. If you don\'t believe this, you have never played a game with this problem. It is a fatal mistake to dismiss the issue as harmless.
The very biggest problem game I know of with regards to harvesters is Lineage II (for reasons due to certain aspects of the mechanics of the game which I wont bother to go into, and the developers absolute refusal to acknowledge and deal with the problem). This game is essentially dead now, due in large part to harvesters (though certainly the game has other core problem issues).
Don\'t kid yourselves. For harvesters, collecting resources and selling them on ebay (or where ever) is their JOB, not something they do for extra cash or as some kind of minor hobby. This is how they make their living, they work at it all day long, and they take it very seriously. They care nothing for the community, roleplaying, the economy, your enjoyment, or any other aspect of the game except how it affects their ability to collect as much resource as possible as quickly as possible and turn it over for real world money.
The developers, IMO, should do everything possible in their power to discourage harvesting/ebaying. And yes, this will require them taking time out from coding other aspects of the game to deal with the issue. It\'s too bad, but that\'s the way of it just the same. It hardly makes any difference if the coders add in an awesome feature if no one ever sees it because they\'ve all been driven away by harvesters.
To some extent, it might be possible to handle harvesters through GMs, but I wouldn\'t rely on it solely (especially in a game that\'s free, and in which the harvester players can create a new account the minute they first feel threatened). It should also be possible to catch them through database data mining. Harvesters *should* stand out in the database via the amount of resources they collect (presuming the database keeps a running total of these values, which I dunno if it does or not), which would be an order of magnitude higher than most other player\'s values, I would think.
Ron
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Data mining is something that I have always had in the back of my mind to do. There is a pretty good article on gamasutra on this that explains a pretty good system on how to do this. So at some point we will have a data mining system to make sure that people play fair and the game is balanced out in terms of skills/spells and equipment.
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If by \"killing by trains\" you mean running around collecting monsters behind you until you have 10+ then they all start attacking ppl behind you? if there is no PvP in public places then a good way of harvesters killing other players is by trains, why not just make trains unforgeable.
Such as were can be no more then 3 to 5 monsters fallowing a char without them starting to fight each-other over the player.
Or make them disperse when they are clumped together & not attack other players immediately.
Wouldn\'t this be a better way of controlling this sort of thing?
Also, did I miss something or isn\'t PS going to be RP oriented, many of the the stuff you are talking about would benefit powerlevels & make them \"leet\", however this will not help them get better @ RP. aren\'t the GMs going to be looking out for powerlevels & discourage newbies who think they are l33t? So aren\'t a lot of the games you are talking about with these problems mostly non-RP oriented?
:D I just know I\'ll probably get flamed for this but whatever...
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@ Zeraph: Yes, this is what I mean.
Your suggestions might be an option to limit indirect PK, but the harvesters might just overrun the area to keep killing every MOB until no player bothers to come there anymore, which will have the same effect, only take longer.
Also, they could group and have several small trains instead of one large one.
Furthermore, if this was implemented, ppl. could just get a train of three harmless monsters and simply walk the dungeons of doom without fear of ever being attacked by anythign of serious size... :D However, if the MOBs in the train would start killing each other, that might be realistic, but only dependant on the \"cooperation level\" of the MOBs, and also can be abused by players to let the MOBs kill themselves, so that they then can take the loot without any danger. If, however, there would be no loot if a MOB was killed by another MOB, that would not be usable for anyone but griefers.
And yes, PS is trying to be RP oriented, but the problem is that you still need fights and public spawn points, mainly to provide for questless danger and recources for the economy. :(
@ AgentZ: As Bobkat and RonHiler have already answered your objections to my reasons, there isn\'t much for me to add. However, I\'d like to see how some universal ethics would make everyone be a slave? It is my opinion that there is no objective, universal ethics, but there is a subjective universal one, which will be the same for everyone, regardless if they act on it or not. This, however, is OT so I\'ll just shut up about it.
@ Acraig: it\'s good to read that the issue is being thought of and going to be adressed.
@ Adeli: You wouldn\'t be flagged as a cheater, because, contrary to the harvesters, you\'d spend considerably more time doing other things. As with everything, the system, however it will be implemented, needs to be fine-tuned and also will generate false positives as well as false negatives. However, just as with the conventional anti-cheat systems, the false positives can be addressed if the system is tuned well so that there will be very few of them.
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Their objections have alot to do with MPKers (Monster-Player killers, or indirect PKing) not harvesters. I have suffered quite a few deaths in other MMORPGs because of this and I\'m 100% against it and GMs taking action against it. I believe MPKing is a /real/ threat against the community and takes the enjoyment from the game. However people farming for items/money or to sell on ebay isn\'t nearly as serious a problem. I guess I can\'t sum up my opinion anymore and that\'s all I have to say. Focus on the crimes that hurt the community.
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Well, so harvesting is like grinding (hurts the economy and relation / realism), with additional side-effects of (at least occasional) MPK and griefing (because the ppl. doing the MPK were harvesters, and did it to secure their turf). Doesn\'t make it any better IMO.
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Originally posted by AgentZ
Their objections have alot to do with MPKers (Monster-Player killers, or indirect PKing) not harvesters. I have suffered quite a few deaths in other MMORPGs because of this and I\'m 100% against it and GMs taking action against it. I believe MPKing is a /real/ threat against the community and takes the enjoyment from the game. However people farming for items/money or to sell on ebay isn\'t nearly as serious a problem. I guess I can\'t sum up my opinion anymore and that\'s all I have to say. Focus on the crimes that hurt the community.
Hey AgentZ. I\'m not sure I really am getting your objection. Do you mean that other players lead high level trains to your bystanding character, thus putting him in danger?
That is a grief issue, you are right (presuming it\'s done intentionally). I wouldn\'t say it\'s a bigger issue than harvesters, but that\'s a matter of opinion, hehe.
However, that\'s a relatively easily solved problem. Trains are caused by an AI that doesn\'t know when to give up, and transfer of aggro is caused by poorly thought out AI routines. In Asheron\'s Call (for instance), a MOB will chase the player, but ONLY the player they first aggroed (unless attacked by someone else, at which point they might transfer aggro to the attacker, or they may not). After some amount of time (if they don\'t catch their prey), they give up and begin to run back to their spawn point. During this run back period, they won\'t aggro another player (unless attacked). Once back at thier spawn point, they return to a normal idle state where they aggro based on distance (or being attacked, of course).
This has the effect of you never being engaged in combat unless you want to be (or you wander too close to an idling MOB).
I have seen trains that transfer aggro to bystanders (Lineage II and EQ just to name two). This is just poor design, IMO. The AC system always seemed to me to work the best, and it\'s the system I have always intended to use in my game. Not sure what the plan is for PS, maybe one of the devs will illuminate us :)
So I think your problem is easily solvable, it\'s all a matter of how you program your AI.
Ron
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Just a side note: I don\'t think harvesters would affect realism, enhance it yes, detract no.
Think about it. The world is not a happy place where everyone co-exists peacefully. Greed runs rampant, and some people are just jerks.
Your objections are about the economy, rp and realism, if they rp being a harvesting jerk would that solve your problem? I think jerks stuffing the economy for every else is extremely realistic. But that\'s just my cynical opinion.
So I pose a question:
Do you want a realistic world, or do you want a happy, pleasant dream world?
You can\'t have both, that would be impossible. So decide. Wherever there are people, there will be jerks.
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Originally posted by Adeli
Wherever there are people, there will be jerks.
Indeed. That\'s why there are ignore lists.
However, your assessment of the damage a harvester does is naive.
Yes, they skew the economy. Okay, perhaps a game can live with some people buying 10x the resources they really ought to have. It\'s annoying and unfair, but not game breaking (probably, although I bet ya I could make an argument that it might be).
Worse, however, is their effect on the area around them. Harvesters are territorial (they want NO competition for the resources in the area, it would slow down their harvesting). Now suppose you have to do quest A, which involves killing Mob B, and Mob B happens to be in an area infested with harvesters.
Just ignore them and go kill Mob B, right? No. If Mob B drops any significant resources, you\'ll never get at it, the harvesters will be taking it down before you get within 100 meters (and even if Mob B does not drop resources or is instanced to you, it doesn\'t matter, you\'re still in their territory). And even when you do get close, you\'ll be \"warned\" away from the area (the \"warning\" depends on the PvP system of the game in question). Should you attempt to ignore or fight back (should the PvP system allow fighting back), you\'ll get ganged by the harvesters and repeatedly killed or harrassed until you leave. So now your quest is broken. You cannot complete it, and you never will.
Oh, and don\'t think you can reason with them. They don\'t care about your quest. They care only about collecting the resources Mob B drops so to sell them. Depending on how the macro system works, they may not even be at the keyboard to hear your pleas.
Do you think I\'m making this up? Not at all. The scenario I just described is *common* in Lineage II, it personally happened to me a number of times, and judging by the player boards at the time, I wasn\'t the only one (could be fixed by now, I dunno, I stopped playing that game a long time ago, heh. Maybe the devs finally acknowledged the problem and did some tweaking by now).
And that is only ONE example of how harvesters can directly affect your quality of play, I can come up with more if you like.
I think you underestimate the effect they have. Most likely because you\'ve never actually had to deal with them having a direct effect on your quality of play.
Every game has harvesters (I think). The trick is to mitigate their effect on the world. In Lineage II they were awful because of how the macro system, quest system, and PvP system were set up. In AC I hardly noticed them because they had little direct effect on my play (other than to skew the economy toward the high end, forcing the devs to concentrate thier updates on the high game, leaving casual players like me with the same old content month to month). In SWG harvesting is practically ENCOURAGED, hehe (they have in-game machines for it and an in-game ebay system), I guess on the presumption that if everyone is doing it and it\'s part of the built in game mechanics then it\'s not an issue (an interesting approach, I\'m still unsure how it really panned out).
One way to completely qaush harvesters is to have no resources at all, which is the approach taken by City of Heroes (they sorta do have resources, but you\'re limited to a max of 8 or 12 of them total per character, not something a harvester can make money from). I think there are NO harvesters in CoH :) But that system wouldn\'t work for a fanstasy based MMORPG like PS.
Ron
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Originally posted by Adeli
Just a side note: I don\'t think harvesters would affect realism, enhance it yes, detract no.
Think about it. The world is not a happy place where everyone co-exists peacefully. Greed runs rampant, and some people are just jerks.
Indeed, nobody will deny this. However, the problem is that they don\'t RP anything, they probably don\'t even know what RP is (nor would they care). The other problem is that they don\'t adhere to the game rules and game mechanics, just as cheaters. If they would sell the harvested stuff ingame, for ingame money, that\'d be perfectly OK with me. But that\'s not what they do, of course, because ingame money isn\'t going to do anything for you IRL.
Originally posted by Adeli
Your objections are about the economy, rp and realism, if they rp being a harvesting jerk would that solve your problem?
Yes, it absolutely would, but, as stated before, they don\'t.
Originally posted by Adeli
I think jerks stuffing the economy for every else is extremely realistic. But that\'s just my cynical opinion.
So I pose a question:
Do you want a realistic world, or do you want a happy, pleasant dream world?
You can\'t have both, that would be impossible. So decide. Wherever there are people, there will be jerks.
I want neither. A totally realistic world would be bothersome, frustrating and, on top of it, boring. After all, one plays games to not be encumbered by RL constraints and all the tedious things that accompany it.
An all-happy dream world would be boring for it\'s lack of conflict, which is what, by the nature of the human mind, is important. Conflict, however, doesn\'t need to escalate into anything more violent than a hot discussion, but that wouldn\'t be an option for an RPG, and also would be too unrealistic for my primitive mind. Therefore there sould and will be jerks, but they should be RP\'d jerks, not real ones. This is a great difference.
You can have highly entertaining RP with an RP\'d jerk, but you\'ll never get anything entertaining or even RP out of a real jerk, whether ingame or not.
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I think I may have a few solutions. First off, prevent people from collecting large amounts or resources at a single time by limiting the amount of stuff they can carry. (e.g. by wieght and size, the way a lot of current RPGs do. This also makes the game more realistic.) Second, prevent people from collecting huge fortunes by limiting the number of coins they can carry at any given time. Since the currency in this game is in coins, this would also be realistic. I mean, a small leather pouch can only hold so many coins. This money could than be deposited into a more permanent stash somewhere, or better yet, into bank. If the devs implement a banking system into PS that would also be a good way to keep track of large transactions. Third, while this might not be very noob friendly, I think that weak and non sentient monsters should not give out money. I always thought it was funny when you killed a blob, or rat or spider, and it spawned 250 gold. ive never known anykind of creature to keep money on them. (Well maybe the blob if it happened to crawl over a coin and soak it up.) In fact, these kinds of creatures should drop nothing, not even items. (I know, not very noob friendly.) But mobs of lesser creatures then could not be used to harvest off of. Well those are my ideas for now, if you see any flaws in them, feel free to say so.
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Originally posted by Shadowfalcon
I think I may have a few solutions. First off, prevent people from collecting large amounts or resources at a single time by limiting the amount of stuff they can carry. (e.g. by wieght and size, the way a lot of current RPGs do. This also makes the game more realistic.) Second, prevent people from collecting huge fortunes by limiting the number of coins they can carry at any given time. Since the currency in this game is in coins, this would also be realistic. I mean, a small leather pouch can only hold so many coins. This money could than be deposited into a more permanent stash somewhere, or better yet, into bank.
I don\'t think that this would help much, since harvesters would then just create dummy accoutns that are used to only transport / keep items and money. Since the game is free, there\'s nothing stopping them, unfortunately. :( Also, there must be some form of secure storage (in fact, we\'re talking about carts and houses, so that\'ll solve any such limitations easily).
Originally posted by Shadowfalcon
If the devs implement a banking system into PS that would also be a good way to keep track of large transactions.
That would be true, however, they\'d most likely come up with a banking bot that keeps doing small transactions, of random value and at random times, maybe even doing some random movement in between each.
Originally posted by Shadowfalcon
Third, while this might not be very noob friendly, I think that weak and non sentient monsters should not give out money. I always thought it was funny when you killed a blob, or rat or spider, and it spawned 250 gold. ive never known anykind of creature to keep money on them. (Well maybe the blob if it happened to crawl over a coin and soak it up.) In fact, these kinds of creatures should drop nothing, not even items. (I know, not very noob friendly.) But mobs of lesser creatures then could not be used to harvest off of.
Harvesters aren\'t going after the lower creatures anyway, they go after the ones that yield the highest effective value in the shortest time, which will be high-level MOBs.
The idea of having MOBs only drop things that they realisticly could drop, has been discussed already, and AFAIR was generally accepted. In fact, newbies will most likely not get any money or artificial items off any of their kills for a long time (i.e., until they kill their first somewhat sentient creature).
*sigh*
We could always impose level restrictions on items, but that would hurt realism. There still are some things that we can do for some items (like maluses for not having the appropriate (and realistic) properties, like strength), but that\'ll cover nowhere near everything.
The options we have collected thus far are, AFAIR,
1) lots of GMS, who actually care about the community and RP
2) sophisticated AI design and programming that will lessen harvesters tools to drive off players
3) databade mining (far future)
4) PS being less kill-intense, and having only very few public spawning points, and therefore being less harvestable in general, which IMO is, however, only likely to shift harvesting activities to other professions, as harvesters don\'t care whether they\'re fighting or mining.
@ Everyone: please add whatever I may have forgotten or what may have been posted on unrelated threads.
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My biggest problem would be with solutions that hurt the community. Limiting spawn points hurts everybody. When I\'m looking to skill-up, I don\'t want to have to compete with not just harvesters, but every other player trying to skill up a weapon. Another problem with limiting money/items is that some players farm mobs for the game. When I want to buy a new sword, I don\'t go skill-up and hope to god something drops. I go out and fight monsters I know drop money/items of worth so I can sell. We have to keep these things in mind when we decide on courses of action. Nothing beats GMs and Players who pay attention and care about the game.
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Originally posted by AgentZ
My biggest problem would be with solutions that hurt the community. Limiting spawn points hurts everybody.
Yes, there was a discussion about how to increase RP and decrease grinding and powerlevelling, and limiting public spawn points was one part of this. Instancing quests and randomising quests were others. After all, PS tries to be different, and a big part of this is to actually give back a meaning to the \"RP\" in MMORPG. Of course there will be some ways to increase skills, but they\'ll hopefully differ from the endless \"kill this, kill it again, kill some more\" scheme that dominates the MMORPG world ATM.
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Well, for realism, monsters should drop whatever they re using, such as if a oger is carrying a sword to attack you it should drop a sword & a dead body, maybe a leather ogre shirt if it\'s waring a shirt, however the death or-ea may prevent you from getting it, blobs should drop \"blob goo\" & squirrels all squirrels should drop squirrel remains, it\'s not right for one to drop meat & another drop coins, maybe monsters have an attraction for money, like eat it as food or somthing...
Limiting what you can carry is a nice way of doing it. & realistic...
have to go...
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Originally posted by Seytra
Yes, there was a discussion about how to increase RP and decrease grinding and powerlevelling, and limiting public spawn points was one part of this. Instancing quests and randomising quests were others. After all, PS tries to be different, and a big part of this is to actually give back a meaning to the \"RP\" in MMORPG. Of course there will be some ways to increase skills, but they\'ll hopefully differ from the endless \"kill this, kill it again, kill some more\" scheme that dominates the MMORPG world ATM.
And that\'s great, but without some sort of importance on skill, to me atleast, there\'s less to do. I enjoy killing monsters and skill-ups, and grinding can even be fun at some point. Looking back and seeing how much stronger your character is because of the work you put into it is rewarding. A change is nice, but I like to see some importance put onto killing creatures/team work. Besides, who wants to take a knight with low sword skills to a battle with a dragon? Skill-ups are necessary to stay current. That\'s my opinion atleast.
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Ron, you missed my point.
I never claimed they weren\'t damaging, in fact I avoided that angle entirely.
I went for the angle that it\'s realistic, and it is...
Seytra, I never said a real world...
I said realistic, as pedantic as it is, there is a difference.
To sum up, there is nothing we can do, bar rely on the power and righteousness of the GMs.
On another note...
Those harvesters, could just be the best rpers you\'d ever meet... You\'d be surprised how often someone will turn to harvesting when it suits them... no matter how RP orientated they are.
\"I just need 50 more spider silks for that robe... better go to spider forest and camp there until I get them...\" Things like that could tempt an RPer to harvest...
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Adeli makes the exact point I\'ve been trying to make. If camping spawns for items to sell is harvesting, then by all means I\'m the worst of them all. Whenever anyone needed something in FFXI, they went out and killed the strongest monster they could solo continuously to collect on drops. Unless PS offers all items through easily completable quests, I can\'t see why many people won\'t turn to harvest some monsters for a limited amount of time to afford new gear.
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@ AgentZ: Of course there is satisfaction in getting better at things, I will not deny this. It is important to me, as well. However, it must not be the only thing that can be done, because otherwise we might just play this game:
http://www.progressquest.com
:D
In fact, the game \"ShadowFlare\" was like this, and it was just lame IMO, just like Diablo. The levelling aspect of the game IMO needs to be countered by other factors like RP and story, exploration and whatnot. I\'ll happily explore a vast area without killing a MOB every 2 metres. There need to be other things to do as well, like crafting and such, and plenty of these. I enjoy fighting, but I see it as a secondary activity. It surely is fun to occasionally toast some MOBs, but there are just as many times I only want to see some nice graphics, or to explore some well designed area, or to do totally useless things in-game.
@ Adeli:
There sure is a difference, but I don\'t think it is very important for the point. A perfectly realistic world would be an exact copy of the real world, and thus wouldn\'t be worth entering, because it\'d simply be too tedious to put up with it, even if you\'d be able to select where and as what you start out, which would, however, be unrealistic.
Therefore, I don\'t want a perfectly realistic world, either, because there are many unrealistic things that in essence make the game a game, like getting rid of tedious things and of repetitive, unwanted requirements and constraints. Also, the presence of GMs is a totally unrealistic thing, but it is highly important regardless of the world\'s realism.
@ Adeli / Agentz:
I seem to continously fail to express what I mean. :( While I don\'t particularly like the idea of harvesting to then sell the stuff, I totally acknowledge it\'s realism and also it\'s legitimacy. If anything, miners, farmers and hunters are doing it as their profession, and it\'s perfectly valid.
That is not the problem, because these harvest for ingame purposes, and they still RP. They RP someone who has the strong desire to get the money for the gear they want, ingame. Fine, I\'ll occasionally do the same, as long as it doesn\'t get too repetitive to be reasonable.
The fundamental difference between these and the harvesters that I actually classify as such is that the latter don\'t play the game because it\'s a game, they don\'t enjoy it and they don\'t care. Most likely, they have never said one single word in-character. They don\'t care about anything, and they don\'t harvest for ingame purposes. They don\'t want to buy new gear for their chars, unless it improves their harvesting ability. They live off the community, without giving anything back, thus they\'re parasites.
While the \"I need this to buy / make my new gear\" ppl. actually enjoy the game, will engage with others in some RP way, and also will participate in the game economy (whether by selling, giving away or whatever the \"harvested\" stuff), thus enriching the game world, the actual harvesters don\'t do anything like this. The only times at which they might speak (if they actually speak the laguage of the game community) is to tell the buyer the instructions on how to get the stuff, or to tell gamers off \"their\" harvesting grounds. They don\'t give back anything to the community. They do nothing but harvesting, because it\'s thir RL job to harvest the game.
To make it clear: harvesting is OK with me when it
- is done to get ingame results, like sales or items. This would be, at worst, powelevelling
- is done in socially acceptable ways, so that other ppl.\'s gaming experience will not be less enjoyable due to the harvesting activity. (like if someone comes along and asks you to let them kill that MOB for their quest, and you cooperate)
I also absolutely acknowledge that \"having fun\" is not an ingame thing (after all, the character getting beaten up will hardly classify this as \"fun\"), but it is something tha\'s being shared by various means (mostly by having fun with others, which will therefore also have fun).
Of course, some ppl. get fun out of griefing and other malicious activities, but these are universally seen as being \"bad\". Therefore, there is a distinct difference between \"ingame harvesting\" and actual harvesting.
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Basically, I agree completely with Seytra.
I think there is a confusion in terms here (which I find is not uncommon when talking about MMORPG systems, the terms so often are really very undefined, heh).
When I say \"harvesting\", what I\'m referring to is the practice of collecting resources to sell for RL money (generally through an auction service like E-bay). I DON\'T mean collecting resources for sale in game (for in game currency) or for normal in game use.
You may say \"there\'s no difference between the two\", but I think there is.
To sell game resources in the outside world, you have to collect much more than any other player can reasonably get (otherwise you don\'t have a market, the players could get their own resources by themselves). Further, to make a living doing this, you have to collect said resources quickly and efficiently so that you have enough turn around to pay the rent (I just looked it up, 1 million adena (the Lineage II currency) sells for about $20 on ebay, and LinII has about the slowest money collecting system I\'ve ever seen on an MMORPG, so you can do the math on how much a harvester needs to turn over to make a living harvesting in LinII, and the corresponding level of damage they are doing to the community).
This will very often involve using exploits/cheats, and certainly will involve exclusive access to as high drop/low risk area as can be found. And THATS why the practice is damaging. Anything that affects a harvesters ability to gather resources as fast as possible must be eliminated, and that especially includes interference/competition from other players. A harvester will make any player who interfers with their income life miserable until that player stops interfering with them. And that will mean greifing them in any way possible (including exploits) until they go away.
Now, contrast this with someone collecting resources for in game use. In this case, there\'s generally no particular hurry to get resources, and certainly not at the level a harvester needs. I myself am very often a resource collector (as I tend to favor the crafter professions in MMORPGs, which usually involves a good number of resources). I don\'t need anywhere near the level of resources a harvester would need (by orders of magnitude!). I can collect, using perfectly legal and ethical means, and if another player is in the area, it\'s no big deal, even if they are interfering with my collection process, I can move on and look somewhere else.
And that\'s the difference. The game is *designed* for the latter, it is certainly not designed for the former. One is normal game practice, the other is destructive and disruptive.
Ron
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Okay, we understand one another now... I was thinking of harvesting in a broad sense, not just for profit on ebay or something.
I agree those people are big jerks...
It\'s funny... I am to be a hunter, and thus am expected to harvest in a way... but I look more forward to being able to RP with friends and my guild.
I actually worry about how much I\'ll have to hunt to fulfill my role.
Upon realising what you meant exactly I agree with you both.
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Just a suggestion for ebayers :
If you cant track the people who sell, frigthen the ones who buy :
Imagine you say : if we get to know that you bought an item with real money we delete it from your char (or even ban the char) do you think most people will still take the risk to give away real money for nothing (at least I wouldnt).
And just a little question : wont there be any required skilled to use a weapon ? i mean, if my char is totally new will I be able to buy and use a 1337 sword ?
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Originally posted by leji
Just a suggestion for ebayers :
If you cant track the people who sell, frigthen the ones who buy :
Imagine you say : if we get to know that you bought an item with real money we delete it from your char (or even ban the char) do you think most people will still take the risk to give away real money for nothing (at least I wouldnt).
Good point, one should punish both parties.
Originally posted by leji
And just a little question : wont there be any required skilled to use a weapon ? i mean, if my char is totally new will I be able to buy and use a 1337 sword ?
I think there shouldn\'t be any, since why shouldn\'t you be able to use it? If it were too heavy you\'d get maluses, but they don\'t usually weigh more, so such a restriction would be totally artificial, which would OMO be very bad, despite almost all games using this approach.
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I was intending to make a similar topic to this one, but it\'s already been done for me apparently! :P
This weekend I participated in the free Guild Wars World Preview Event, and while I was pretty impressed by the game, I was somewhat surprised by the antics of the people playing it... It was especially bad toward the end of the event--the chat spamming going on was simply astounding. It wasn\'t even the usual \"WTB INSERT ITEM NAME HERE, INSERT OTHER ITEM NAME HERE, INSERT THIRD ITEM NAME HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!\" stuff. It was just completely useless, random trash like \"BELIEVE IN THE HEART OF THE CARDS AND THE GAME WILL NEVER END!!!!!!!!!\" :/ All this has me wondering whether free MMORPGs tend to attract, for lack of a better phrase, a lot of immature arseholes. I hope this won\'t become a problem in PS. :(
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I tend to think it isn\'t whether the game is free or not that attracts those types of gamers. I think those gamers will exist in every game. However, it is more how the community deals with or tolerates or promotes or whatever those types of gamers that allows them to flourish and ruin the game.
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Yes, the community in conjunction with the GMs. The GMs have the power to mute / ban offending players, and if the community actively assists them and cooperates (instead of letting themselves be drawn to spam by the spammers), then it can work out. Obviously, you need lots of and caring GMs for this, but I think PS might be able to pull it off because of it\'s highly involving nature which can AFAICS only be reached by Free Software.
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I\'m glad I know who the GMs are currently, and know they can be trusted, I\'ve played many games where the GM\'s are corrupted and as bad as the rest of them.
I think you should be able to pick up said sword, but not able to -wield- it, at least not efficiently...
Without skill, could you fight well?
eg. you train with a shortsword... one day you get a bastard sword, you wouldn\'t know how to fight with it, you could hold it, but it would be useless. Different swords should require more practise to maintain fighting ability, plus heavy swords should relate to strength as well as skill.
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This is why the community needs to keep a close check on the GMs.
Of course, if you find a substantially different weapon you\'ll not be able to use it to good effect, but this is independant of your level-equivalent.
However, if you are trained with a short sword, and you then find a uber short sword of doom that still is a short sword and thus feels like one and is handled like one, why wouldn\'t you be able to use it, even if you\'d be a total newb?
It\'s not like going from a short sword to a bow, which should be difficult regardless of the current level.
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Originally posted by Seytra
Good point, one should punish both parties.
Thank you :D
Originally posted by Seytra
Originally posted by leji
And just a little question : wont there be any required skilled to use a weapon ? i mean, if my char is totally new will I be able to buy and use a 1337 sword ?
I think there shouldn\'t be any, since why shouldn\'t you be able to use it? If it were too heavy you\'d get maluses, but they don\'t usually weigh more, so such a restriction would be totally artificial, which would OMO be very bad, despite almost all games using this approach.
To me a 1337 sword doesnt need to be heavy, but it can have magical powers that can bend your will, damage you physically (let\'s say it was forged in a volcan and still burns if you dont have the good skill to hold it the right way) ... If you dont this system you can have total newbies with the best cape and sword that PK you because you didnt think such things could happen in Newbs\' island ... anyways, do anyone know what the devs decided on this point ? I didnt find it ...
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Originally posted by leji
Originally posted by Seytra
Good point, one should punish both parties.
Originally posted by leji
And just a little question : wont there be any required skilled to use a weapon ? i mean, if my char is totally new will I be able to buy and use a 1337 sword ?
I think there shouldn\'t be any, since why shouldn\'t you be able to use it? If it were too heavy you\'d get maluses, but they don\'t usually weigh more, so such a restriction would be totally artificial, which would OMO be very bad, despite almost all games using this approach.
To me a 1337 sword doesnt need to be heavy, but it can have magical powers that can bend your will, damage you physically (let\'s say it was forged in a volcan and still burns if you dont have the good skill to hold it the right way) ... If you dont this system you can have total newbies with the best cape and sword that PK you because you didnt think such things could happen in Newbs\' island ... anyways, do anyone know what the devs decided on this point ? I didnt find it ...
I don\'t think that this would be a bad thing. I mean, if the newb would find some way to rule-abidingly and morally acceptably acquire such a sword, then why should they be denied it\'s use? If they then use it to grief or other unacceptable things, then they will be punished just as anyone else. I don\'t think it\'s any difference whether you get griefed by a high-level player or by a total noob.
After all, the reason why most of these restrictions are in place is because the game system is flawed, and thus might not be able to present adequate opponents to you. However, this can be addressed by other means that are not artificial restrictions, and if someone gets around it by a lucky chance, then so be it. The greatest chance of such a thing to happen is through ebayers, and the second greatest chance is through cheating, both of which are activities that are neither rule-abiding nor morally acceptable, so the only one left is indeed pure luck, which IMO is OK.
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I have to agree with Seytra here, if you find it, use it.