GM Silent Dawn: attitude to players and rules

[prsm]

It's either you don't understand my question or I can't clarify what I am asking. ok, lets try this way. I am not about auto-attacking, I am about following ("to walk") or mimic ("repeat turns and smiles"). In what case (I want examples) any of those "can be used to gain xp or abuse others"? Just once again, I am about standard functionality of the TMW client.

Second, I don't like how the abusive / impolite GM's answer "ban them then if you can" is ignored in this conversation.

I think what you want is a black and white blanket statement, I won't give one. You can't cover every scenario in the written word.

[DefinitelyNOTMrWho]

GMs should enforce the rules. The rule says NO AUTO-FOLLOW.

I think it's pretty clear to anyone that the GMs were not ellected because of their thinking capabilities. They were ellected to be tools.

I bet someone bribed Silent Dawn not to ban those offenders. "Nepotism" is what made this game suck and it still does.

[Celestia]

I think there is a big difference between the letter of the rules and the spirit of the rules. In the case of fooling around in town I don't think it is a big deal, more of a person tried to get a GM to ban others an got upset when the GM would not. Or at least that is how I take Silent Dawn's remark to ban them if they can remark. I don't see it any different then how I react to beggars by making fun of them with insane counter offers as an alternative to getting upset. Like the other day when a person was begging for 500 gold, I was offering them 500 gold for their pants {jean chaps}, which made the difference between people getting annoyed with the beggar to making fun of them. The game is supposed to be fun and the complaints come off to me as petty and missing the point as it is not like we are talking about bat cave or red slime botting but fooling around in town.

[Crazyk8e]

Sadly there is no way to only follow for a good reason. If only there was a way to script the game so if it detected mob fighting whilst someone was following another it would kick them. The uses of following have unfortunately been ruined by those who used it to fight mobs. It is handy when you are helping someone by showing them a new place and for entertainment in town. Sad to see it gone and for people to take the rule so seriously as to destroy the fun for people in town.

[Hello=)]

Sadly there is no way to only follow for a good reason.

There is no way to ensure knives are only used for good. Everyone can use knife to stab their neighbor. Is it valid reason to forbid all knives? I do not think so. Many tools have both good and bad uses. Autofollow isn't anyhow different in this regard. It also not inherently harmful on it's own. Certain particular uses are. They have to be discouraged.

If only there was a way to script the game so if it detected mob fighting whilst someone was following another it would kick them.

You should learn computer science a bit before trying to voice such ideas. There is theory proven by Alan Turing which basically claims that one program can't check another program behaviour and make reliable conclusion about program properties. It has been proven for simple case and covers other more complicated cases as well as consequence. In our case script is one program and bot is another program. Obviously, script can't make definitive conclusion if observed entity is a bot. At this point you should start to suspect why it's up to GMs to do some botchecks.

[Crush]

If only there was a way to script the game so if it detected mob fighting whilst someone was following another it would kick them.

You should learn computer science a bit before trying to voice such ideas. There is theory proven by Alan Turing which basically claims that one program can't check another program behaviour and make reliable conclusion about program properties. It has been proven for simple case and covers other more complicated cases as well as consequence. In our case script is one program and bot is another program. Obviously, script can't make definitive conclusion if observed entity is a bot. At this point you should start to suspect why it's up to GMs to do some botchecks.

I think you are misinterpreting the halting problem. This is not about completely analyzing one program with another. This is in this situation impossible anyway, because one program is running on the server, the other is running on the client, and they only communicate via network.

It is just about recognizing a pattern in the behavior of two clients (one sending move-messages which exactly match those sent by another client seconds earlier) to detect that one is auto-following the other and then kick the follower when the followed sends an attack-message. That's not a difficult problem at all.

[Hello=)]

This is not about completely analyzing one program with another. This is in this situation impossible anyway, because one program is running on the server, the other is running on the client, and they only communicate via network.

Hmm, you're right. So script haves even less options for checks so it sounds even worse.

It is just about recognizing a pattern in the behavior of two clients (one sending move-messages which exactly match those sent by another client seconds earlier) to detect that one is auto-following the other and then kick the follower when the followed sends an attack-message. That's not a difficult problem at all.

Sure. But it only covers one very narrow particular case of botting. And then ... it also could be interesting way to play pranks on noobs .

[Crush]

This is not about completely analyzing one program with another. This is in this situation impossible anyway, because one program is running on the server, the other is running on the client, and they only communicate via network.

Hmm, you're right. So script haves even less options for checks so it sounds even worse.

It is just about recognizing a pattern in the behavior of two clients (one sending move-messages which exactly match those sent by another client seconds earlier) to detect that one is auto-following the other and then kick the follower when the followed sends an attack-message. That's not a difficult problem at all.

Sure. But it only covers one very narrow particular case of botting. And then ... it also could be interesting way to play pranks on noobs .

Nobody was talking about an universal bot detector. Crazyk8e was talking about one specific scenario where a program could indeed be used to enforce a rule.

[Hello=)]

Nobody was talking about an universal bot detector. Crazyk8e was talking about one specific scenario where a program could indeed be used to enforce a rule.

Hm, okay, in such case Crazyk8e haves point. But still it can be (ab)used to play nasty pranks on noobs. So I think it's better not to kick players but rather issue alert to GMs who can check what's going on (and apply punishment if botting detected).

[Cassy]

*sighs*

"No cheating" is a rule that exists in all games and (ab)using the client's follow mode as a cheat tool to gain more EXP & drops is cheating.
Following and imitating people in town for fun, without any fighting activity, is clearly no cheating.
Do we really have to write such obvious things in the rules, including every scenario *points at prsm's post* ?

The rule actually is "no cheating" and not "no use of follow/imitation mode".
The GMs, or Silent Dawn in this case, are doing the right thing.

IMO it's wasted time to again discuss about it.
Time that could be used for other more important things.

[Hello=)]

The rule actually is "no cheating" and not "no use of follow/imitation mode"

I think it should be made more clear in formal rules though.

[Cassy]

The rule actually is "no cheating" and not "no use of follow/imitation mode"

I think it should be made more clear in formal rules though.

Well, by now we know what you want to be changed but can you also give an example how?

[Nard]

The discussion a about auto-following is a long time one. I am glad to know that GMs made their their look on it a bit less stiff; the interpretation was more strict a year ago.
The auto follow was never clearly defined, and was totally forbidden until now.

Some relevant topics :

TMWC, may we please have a ruling!:viewtopic.php?f=12&t=17545&hilit=auto+following
Auto-follow, is it time for a change? :viewtopic.php?f=12&t=17549


Some quotes:

I would like to thank everyone for the feedback here, it never hurts to address rules to ensure that they stay fresh. Even if they remain the same!

Prsm

After reading what GMs have said here, I have changed my mind about auto-follow.

I remember that botstacks used to claim to "be using only autofollow" to avoid getting caught. I now understand how much work (and argument and frustration) that was for GMs.

It's grand to theorize about things, but in the end this is about how to enforce reasonable rules. If those people who are responsible for enforcing the rules tell us they need this tool, and if that tool doesn't break normal gameplay, then let's keep it.

That said, GM's are not morons, nor do we just apply the rules without consideration of circumstances. If someone is using autofollow in town we would ask them to stop, followed by a kick from the server if not heeded. We wouldnt immediately jump to banning without considerable provocation.

BC

[Platyna]

Axalix, one of the reasons we broke up with Platyna was because we trusted our GMs to be able to think.

Trying to enforce the literal interpretation of the rules all the time was the reason we had such a huge botting problem a couple years ago.

Actually why you took over the server was well explained in numerous other threads (power crave). Huge botting problem was because developers tried to bend the rules I set driven by the care of wellbeing of the community.

Regards.

[Nard]

Axalix, one of the reasons we broke up with Platyna was because we trusted our GMs to be able to think.

Trying to enforce the literal interpretation of the rules all the time was the reason we had such a huge botting problem a couple years ago.

You are still unable to prevent botting. You were more able to do it after Platyna added a single word in the rules. Unfortunately the new rule is mostly applied to a feature that is harmless and was a source of fun for players

Actually why you took over the server was well explained in numerous other threads (power crave). Huge botting problem was because developers tried to bend the rules I set driven by the care of wellbeing of the community.

Regards.

Some developers, maybe, those who pretend to be hackers (I have a better opinion of what hackers are). Huge botting was caused first by the absence of morality of some players, by the content nature which became oriented more on huge grinding than on story, humour, and gaming.