Banned?

[Nikodemus]

The auto attack feature only encourages "botting" and besdes it isn't realistic at all. Give me just one example where that is useful and I'll give you 10 more where that is useless, anoying and even geting in the way of certain tasks.

the auto attack is extremaly helpfull when your char suddently stops attacking. It is a rare bug, where you char starts attacking and suddently stops, more, he may not even deal a single blow but the NPC will attack you since you pressed /attack. Funny is that it is so rare that some poeple don't even believe it exists, but i can assure you it does. You may not realise it if you aren't looking at the system messages, because the animation ins't that good. So the feature of auto attacking is really saving your life.
From other side it is really annoying when you are casting spells.
I have no ideas how to make it work as it should and when it should.

[Syilph]

@ Nikodemus: That bug happens alot, actually, and the way to go around it is to hit the attack shortcut again [if you have a /target clear command in it] or to deselect the target, select it again and start another attack. None of the aforementioned things should pose a problem if the player is at the keyboard. But, yes, it is a bug and the auto-attack compensates for it. The problem is that it only compensates for the effect, and does not fix the cause. That bug should be fixed instead of implementing a new feature that will compensate for it. Especially since this feature has certain "issues".

@Janner: Yes, I have been killed a bunch of times by monsters while talking to somebody and that is really annoying. But, I still don't like the auto-attack feature. Why? Because it does nothing. It will save you from a monster that deals low damage on your character [and in this case it is useless because you would have survived anyway or you would have to type a reeeeally long phrase to give the NPC the chance to kill you], but it won't help you if the npc do you a higher damage, because of the long delay until it kicks in [I, at least, will recieve 6 hits ort so until my char starts fighting and usually, after it starts fighting, considering that the NPCs that do me any damage at all have quite some high HP values, it won't be able to finish the fight before he wakes up in DR]
And now some statistics:
Having a maxed stats char, there are only a few monsters that do you any considerable damage: Ulbers, Mean Tefusang, Brigand, some rogues [excluding gladiators and the like since they don't have "agro", meaning they won't chase you around if near a spawn]. Try pulling an auto-attack stunt on these monsters mentioned above and check the results.
Btw, this goes for any stat levels, the only difference is that the list of "deadly NPCs" will be proportionally larger.
So, yeah, this "feature" is only useful for farming PP and for making automation scripts [or bots, as we like to call them] easyer since you'll only have to do a macro for looting while the game "takes care" of all the fighting part.

[lordraleigh]

I would say that auto-retreat(making the character leave from a monster spawn point after some minutes of idleness) is much less exploitable than auto-attack.

[Nikodemus]

@ Nikodemus: That bug happens alot, actually, and the way to go around it is to hit the attack shortcut again [if you have a /target clear command in it] or to deselect the target, select it again and start another attack. None of the aforementioned things should pose a problem if the player is at the keyboard. But, yes, it is a bug and the auto-attack compensates for it. The problem is that it only compensates for the effect, and does not fix the cause. That bug should be fixed instead of implementing a new feature that will compensate for it. Especially since this feature has certain "issues".

Actually hitting attack again is not a right way out at all. You can really not realise it and i wrote why. There is also a matter of lag which may cause finding out if you are still attacking or not hard.
But i agree it should be fixed, rather than finding walkaround which also doesn't work perfectly.

[The Wandering Djinn]

The actual cause of all these problems lies in the way that NPC Mobs appear in the game: at fixed spawn-points. Kill the NPC Mob, wait a certain amount of time, and the exact same NPC Mob re-spawns at exactly the same co-ordinates of the sector map, as the one you (or any other players you are taking turns with) just killed.
Calling them NPC Mobs is a little strange 'cause they aren't all that mobile as things stand now.
It's the endless re-spawning at the same fixed spawn-points that invites, tempts and aids and abets the "botting" behaviour that some players think to try and get away with.

No doubt there are sound reasons for having fixed spawn-points for NPC mobs and I think they stem from having a relatively small map area in the game so far. I hope that as more of the eight levels of the hollowed out stalactite known as Yliakum are realized and explorable, that the system of fixed spawn-points gets replaced by random spawn-points, or paths -like the ones that Harnquist follows.

[Kalika]

I was playing planeshift and fought in the sewers Than I has to go away and I forget to log out of the game. The next time I came back, I was banned 30 days because of using scripts? I haven't run any script and because I was away I haven't move! I didn't do anything.
If this is your practice to welcome new players, than I must say it worked. I feel welcomed 

im sure you forgot to log out of the game. i dont mean to sound sarcastic case im really not. however for the future i advise that if you wanna walk away in an area filled with blood loving npc's that you would log out...i know that if im not playing the game for more than 5 minutes wherever i am i just exit. plain and simple. it takes up my memory anyways

oh and you can always check your logs or send a pm to a gm if you ahve questions. i honestly dont understand why someone, anyone, would post a thread about getting banned without a really VALID reason, and if Tarel is indeed correct...well maybe this serves you a lesson in what NOT to do next time 

[0die]

i think that that "standing a distance away and waiting on the monster to attack you and you auto-defending yourself" and BOTTING are TWO different things.

Botting has a negative stigma to it, in the past BOTTING implies that you download or created yourself, a script/program that plays you toon for ya while you are not there.
Botting is severly frowned upon in almost all online games.

The stratigic placement to where monsters throw themselves at you is nothing more than that, it is NOT SCRIPTING, BOTTING or anyother form of modifying the orginal code of the game.

Ok, so the GM's don't want anyone to "benifiet in anyway" while they are afk. Don't make monster chase people. But to bann them for playing your game in a manner that you programed it?

 

people will go afk. go afk around monster? yeah, if they aren't afraid of dying by them.

My issue here is people being ACCUSED/labeled as using SCRIPTS. You know what, if a player is labeled a script user for this, WE ARE ALL SCRIPT USERS.

[ThomPhoenix]

The guy said it!
Let's all park our characters near the NPCs, that will result in dozens of players standing around, powerlevelling as mindless drones, literally, but who cares because the code allows it so it's fine!
Normal players won't be able to attack rogues anymore, because there are a bunch of "afk" "players" standing around them and they attract the rogue immediately when he spawns, but who cares, because the code allows it!

So...

Is it so hard to log off when you need to go away for 10+ minutes?
Is it so hard to move away from the "agressiveness zone" when you go away for a couple of minutes?

It's not, believe me.

[Garile]

My issue here is people being ACCUSED/labeled as using SCRIPTS. You know what, if a player is labeled a script user for this, WE ARE ALL SCRIPT USERS.

Who is being acused here? It's been said here why the person is banned and anyone who read it will know it was not for using scripts. It would also not be public knowledge if the person didn't start a thread about it himself so noone is being "labeled"

The only thing you can disagree with is that the devs call the offence botting really. It doesn't change however that it has been decided and made public knowledge that it is an offence in the eyes of the GMs/devs. If you don't like the rule ask for it to be changed. Don't say it's unreasonable that someone got punished for breaking the rules.

[Idoru]

The only thing you can disagree with is that the devs call the offence botting really.

I dont think they even label it as botting do they?

It comes down to the plain and simple rule of not exploiting a flaw in the design of the game to get an advantage.

[Garile]

Well it was mentioned by one of the GMs, but true it's not even mentioned in the first posts so why such an extreme reaction to that word goes beyond me.

[Krann Omins]

firstly, i am wondering, as i haven't gotten gmwarnings or such since chat console format was changed, do gm messages appear in all channels? like if he/she was in system?--i guess probably, eh?... Anyway either way from what tarel said seems the person was lying about being afk, or about botting, just from the still attacking rat when out of range... unless it was like when the rogue in the valley path just outside hydlaa will try to follow a person far beyond his range, or the deal where even tho the npc attacks the player it shows your stance change as the first message... But that seems like a pretty remote possibility... especially if the player was already lying about being a noob... unless they registered & created the character long ago but only played it now.. which seem like a bigger stretch....(assuming character created long ago is why you say the person isn't new- seeing as time in game for them = time afk )
moving on; i agree randomer spawning would be good, that having been said i can't really say that removing auto attack, or the agro-mob modeswould make the game better, more realistic or funner or anything...

[emeraldfool]

How about if the 'auto-attack' feature is disabled after say... 5 minutes or less of inactivity (not moving your character around or something).

That way, you can prevent people from exploiting it without any noticeable changes to gameplay.






P.S. Here's a scenario, something that's bound to happen to me eventually:

I'm within aggro-range of a mob, but have to leave urgently. I remember the rules and so I log-off first. That's all fine. But then, later, I want to log-on again.

Now, for me, it takes 20+ minutes to log-on, and while doing so it takes up about 95% of my CPU's processing power, so I can't do anything else. Now, since I'm not brain-dead, I'm not exactly content to sit and stare at the loading screen for over 20 minutes, so I go off and do something, like get a snack.

Then, supposing the servers are running fast today and I log on in ten minutes, or maybe I get held-up in whatever I'm doing, and I don't realise the game has started running.
Since I'm in aggro-range now, I get attacked by the mob, and the infamous process begins.
I come back, expecting to find a loading screen with a full bar, but instead find I've been banned. "Oh no"


How could that be my fault?