Multiing

[Dagda]

Great points RaVan.

I don't believe botting should be allowed.  I think it would be helpful however, if there was an imm with the time and skills necessary to do this, to introduce 'hirelings' that are smarter charmies that help (minorly) to fulfill a grouping role.  This would be especially useful for lowbies trying to level up.  Of course, this type of time for an imm possibly puts this out of the range of likelihood, but I would think that it would solve the 'need' that folks have for multiing.

[RaVaN]

"Of course, this type of time for an imm possibly puts this out of the range of likelihood, but I would think that it would solve the 'need' that folks have for multiing."(Dagda)

  I would disagree.  The amount of time immortals want to put into this game would tend to be Real Life available time and The Players. 

  Basicly, it boils down to this:

  This game feeds off itself.  If you have a fun playerbase that polices it's self and refrains from general asshattery and just enjoy this great free game that has been made...the immortals WANT to improve that game fun and more people want to be immortals to add their game creations.  The more people are just plain asses to the immortals, incessantly whine/gripe/complain/accuse/abuse to those same immortals about things the less those immortals want to do anything.  The fun needs to be there for both immortals and players.  Without that fun, the game dies...either by the immortals moving away from the main playerbase and doing what they think is "right" versus being involved and seeing where the playerbase wants to go.  The more drama the less time they have the less the game grows and the more restrictive crap gets added to the game and less fun things added, and the less other people want to immortal to deal with that same crap year after year.

  Aristox and Hoss both have pointed this out before.  They are open to ideas, they want to see the game grow...but there is a right way of trying to get an idea looked at and a wrong way.  There has been a lot of examples of players going about it and just being dicks about it.  The same thing goes with problems in the game that occur.  The absolute best way is to have a concise well thought out idea and present it in a nondickish way.  It'll either fly or it won't.  I used to think Hoss saying TL.DR was just a dismissive jerk thing to say, now that I put some rational thought into it and what was being written...it's really the only way to do business.  The majority of things people post can be boiled down very simply instead of the tomes some of us type up each post.

  That being said, one thing I really would like to see implemented for immortals at all levels is more interaction type stuff for fun. Was thinking this the other week when Aristox came on and heal buffed the mud I shouted something about "Where were all the evil immortals the harmed people when they logged on"  and Aristox poofed and harmed me (healed me after) and said "There you happy!" or something similar.  Fun stuff and I think it would be fun for all involved if there were more silliness like that.  The problem always stems however, when people just can't take a joke or accept that things happen sometimes...then accusations and stupidity reigns...the game stops being fun on all levels and players and immortals start bleeding off.

Anyhow...just some things for people to think about.


   

 

[Jorquin]

bot armies are highly ineffective, i'm yet to see any mass of scripted bots that are in any way efficient

they usually end up dead, and often are inferior to real players. quite often the really good players refrain from this behaviour.

i'm sure if i wanted i could make a ten man and go zoning with a bot posse, maybe i'd get caught or maybe not.  the fact is though i don't want to do it.

if i had absolutely noone to play with, i'd make one character through a proxy and just play two characters at once with no triggers or scripts.

my opinion is that any amount of characters you can play by hand is legit, playing 2 characters at once takes practice. playing 3 takes skill, and playing four is nearly impossible to be anything but awful and obvious. its when triggers, scripting and bots become involved that the banhammer needs to be brought down. sometimes the autobots just aren't the good guys.

[Hoss]

I added a poll to the thread, and encourage you to spread the word to players to vote.

[Alecto]

I think perhaps we are looking at this the wrong way.  Multi/botting is already going on, rather than making it legal, keep it illegal, but control the sentencing for doing it.

multi-ing/botting with 2 chars: 1 week for both chars in the abyss
3 chars: 4 weeks in the abyss
4+ chars: auto delete all characters

That way if someone feels like risking doing a little multi-ing the penalty is (relatively) minor for using only 1, but an army of FinBots (tm) would be permanently removed.  Players can decide how much they want to risk it, and the powers-that-be can make their own decisions about enforcement.  (i.e. some guy with two level 3s in the solace sewers can be ignored, while someone botting Sleet or pk-ing every other active can get the maximum sentence)

[Hoss]

Multi/botting is already going on, rather than making it legal, keep it illegal, but control the sentencing for doing it.

This is exactly the thing I do not want the staff wasting time on, being a police force. If we allowed multis at any tier it would need to be player-policed.

[Grifter]

I'm not sure if it would be too hard to implement, but I also like the idea of some sort of in-game hirelings/henchmen, but I would tend more toward them being NPC followers than to them having to be paid for. 

At Level 10, it's conceivable that a character has earned themselves enough of a reputation as a heroic rat and earthworm slayer that lowly NPCs might be anxious to join them in their quest to rid the land of slightly larger rats and worms - perhaps even a dreaded gully dwarf or two.

If these were limited to one per person, counted as a member toward the maximum group size, and were limited to zoning only, I think they could prove helpful in rounding out groups when no one is online, while still not replacing the experience of real grouping when there are enough people on.

These could be available either from the Inn or from a nearby room bar, and be available in a few of the less complicated guild choices ( cleric, druid, warrior, barbarian, thief, & mage), be given training equipment to start, but with the option of equipping real gear, and have level scaled skills training and spells (all guildmaster spells, no book/charm/tablet spells), and have a static mid-range abiliity score array, depending on guild choice, they could be very useful without breaking the game.

They could disappear if the player dies, recall when the player does, and instantly drop all items and quit service if the player attacks or is attacked by other players.

This would allow a lone cleric to blind/stab for experience, provide some mediocre bashing to help with a self-healing mob, or give a lone scout some cure critical wounds or a tank to get through the toughest few beasties in a zone, without breaking the balance of the game too much.

It could also act as a packmule, with the built-in risk of an enemy clan or random pker attacking you and making your NPC drop all your loot at their feet and run away.

I think that, with some testing to make sure they are power balanced, it would add a lot to the game for people that just want to log in briefly and run a zone, without necessarily taking away from anyone running real groups or upsetting the balance of clanwars.

[btown]

I don't like botting or multing, but I think the fact that others can do it and get away with it due to better programming or proxy or whatever, if you cant police it  just allow it

I know I will personally make a unknown bot clan just to kill other bots... so sounds like fun to me!

All the best clans have botted to get to where they are, MINE BSP FINN clan, all main leaders bots. leaves smaller clans at a huge disadvantage. 

I think maybe let it be legal for the rest of the wipe just to see how it will transform the mud, it could bring back huge playerbase since you will be able to roll your own healers and do your own zoning/exploring without relying on the other 20people who still play this game to follow.

[Willoe]

I personally voted yes for a couple of reasons.
A. Like it's already been stated, it is already happening, those that are good at it are almost impossible to catch, and frankly its not worth the time to try. Time would be better spent trying to make this game better then investing time in punishing/policing people/possibly losing more players.
B. The player base is low, and being able to possibly play multiple characters will help zoning continue. I know the argument here is that then multi's/bots could take spots of real players in a group, and I can tell you right now that I would MUCH rather have a real person then some crap bot in any of my groups. I'm sure most leaders will agree.
C. Those that are doing it now and aren't getting caught have a HUGE and unfair advantage to those of us who are following the rules. By allowing it, it can level the playing field for people. When people vote I urge you to consider that this is ALREADY happening, and it will continue to happen, the question is do those that chose to follow the rules want to even out the playing field and maybe bring back some fun competition/pvp to this game!

Anyway just ranting at this point, I hope everyone votes.

[eli]

I voted yes. Multiing happens anyway and I agree with Willoe that those that do it now without getting caught have an unfair advantage. I'm on a several month break at the moment but would likely play more if I was able to multi. I may not have the scripting prowess to multi well but it would be something new for me in Arctic which for someone who has played since 1997 is awesome to think about.

This reminds me of marijuana laws. Yes, its illegal but a percentage of the population doesn't care. Just like arctic with multiing. You can pass laws against it but it likely won't stop people. Sure here and there someone might get caught then damned or deleted but those are the folks that are smoking the joint out in the open not the ones who have devised an elaborate filter to change the smell of the smoke and confuse law enforcement (Hoss).

Hope that made sense!

[reed23]

What is our real problem?  Is the issue we are faced with is that multiing is rampant so we just want to make it legal, or is the issue that there is 0 playerbase and we want to allow multiing because there are no groups out there.  If the latter is the real issue, I would suggest going the charmie rout.  I think it may not be a bad idea to have a charmie shop where you are able to buy a main-tank, healer, etc.  Make it 5k per charmie, and the most charmies you can buy at 1 time is 1-2.  Once they are dead, they are dead.  Make it class specific with skills and everything.  Make it semi gear dependant so you would have to gear the charmie.  Once the charmie is dead, its dead, and you would have to go buy another.  I would not allow the charmies to be involved in PK.  It would be only for zoning purposes.  It would require some skill/thought as you are essentially controlling 2 classes (your char and the charmie) through 1 char (i.e. subject to lag/etc. constraints).  This would allow a 3 man group to essentially have a 6 or 9 man group depending on the limit per charmie.  Charmies would also have no entering/kw constraings (as corpses, etc. do now).  Last thought on this, I would maybe phase in the charmie situation throughout a wipe.  First 3 months of wipe would only allow 1 charmie.  If the mud was dead 6 months into the wipe (like now), maybe allow 2.

If the problem is we are giving in to the multiing situation, I would strongly suggest caping it at 2 per IP address.  This would prevent someone having 100 lvl 10 mages, walk in a room, l.bolt a nobash char and walla, gear.

[Hoss]

Great reading so far. A few points:

1. @eli: of course an Arctic player connects it to weed, so typical.
2. Mercenary/Charmie system: I do not hate this idea, it has merit. I think a few online MMO games have done this well by allowing you to select a heal, dps, tank option as a side kick. I will throw this out there before you all get too excited, this option wouldn't be coming anytime soon(tm). As you know Aristox and I are working on the lube project and I would not want to implement another half-assed system into the game (see most changes in the last 3 years).
3. What issue are we trying to solve? Good question, at the moment I think we are trying to solve both.
   • This wipe hasn't been the most exciting (see Ilya's dick count), adding to the attrition of active players. I don't however think that allowing multis is a permanent solution to this, more of just a little bandage.
   • Players using multis is going to continue to occur, regardless of whatever system we put in place. I will reflect on this more after the poll has completed and your votes have been counted.

[muddeer]

I voted no.  To me, what made Arctic special was that the best players were the ones most knowledge about the game:  The people who put in the time and the effort to learn the zones and figure out the game mechanics.  I rather not have the best players be determined by who can code the best bots.

The way I see it, the single biggest problem right now is the lack of new players coming in.  I think you'll keep more veterans interested staying if there's more new blood flowing in.  And the biggest reason for the lack of new players, other than the competition from other games, is that fewer people are playing lower level characters; there's no one for newbies to group with and to help them.

Of course, existence of the rank system is what's causing this.  But there are other smaller reasons as well.  It used to be that after too many deaths, due to hp loss, characters eventually became "trash."  So you had leveled up another one.  And with death penalties being so harsh and the game mechanics being more difficult, it also took more time to level up; you had to spend more time at lower levels.  Yes, people complain about the trash pkers and the xp grind.  But the player base and game mechanics can have some control over the trash pkers.  And to new players, all those low and mid level zones are not "grinds."  They are new and  fun.  Moreover, the more you know about the game, the faster you level anyways.

So, I'm suggesting that Arctic get rid of the rank system and bring back the tougher death penalties/game mechanics.

edit:  I'm not saying this will make Arctic as big as it once was,; not with all those other games around.

edit2:  oh, and also get rid of youth spell; the aging of character was another reason for leveling a new one

[Hoss]

Stay on target red leader....aka im removing off topic posts.

[Super Tacoman]

it might be hard to believe but many people who spend a lot of time with online gaming are extremely anti-social.  i love arctic but i have little/no interest in joining a clan and instead just play with a small group of real-life friends.  one of my friends in particular flat out refuses to group with anyone else.  i dont think we are unique. 

arctic is largely a numbers game.  we have been targetted and killed by clans in every single wipe we have ever played.  including apoc and vm this wipe.  a myth even threatened to highlight me evil if i didnt tell him all my alts.  i would LOVE to be able to fight back against these clans, but with our numbers its impossible.  allowing some limited multiing would open up the game for us in a huge way and as i said, i think there are Many other players like us.