[PASS] Rule #7 has got to be changed.

[DarkWater]

You want to know what the worst part about the rule is? It makes people guilty before they are innocent. If you play this game with family members you are guilty of breaking the rules and it is how much someone likes you, if you are allowed to play. Of course coming from slicer and wombat that is not surprising. You should not have to be best friends with gm's to play this game as a family. Because the minute you are not friends with a gm is when this rule will be used. Until then, you are fine. This will make the gm's look abusive.

Understand this, automation was created by people to m8ake grinding easier not for multiplying. When the devs put batwings and teeth at 100 and 150 is when you got major automation. they did this because the magic system is broke.

I will stop with this, if 1 player with 10 characters can break the system what would a 100 players with 1 character do? human playing will always beat automation. So unless you want to cap this game at 100 characters. You need to fix you gameplay and stop blaming others because of your laziness. you should encourage multiboxing, because it gives you an idea of how to deal with larger groups.

[AnonDuck]

The wording may not be the best, but you do realise that if it is rewritten the way Mistakes proposes, I could setup one automated grinder on each and every map without breaking the rules. This would allow me to make millions of GP per day, thereby re-igniting the inflation problem and causing even more changes to content making things more expensive and GP harder to get.

And you know people will do this. If the rule is changed, I will be the first.

[DarkWater]

The wording may not be the best, but you do realise that if it is rewritten the way Mistakes proposes, I could setup one automated grinder on each and every map without breaking the rules. This would allow me to make millions of GP per day, thereby re-igniting the inflation problem and causing even more changes to content making things more expensive and GP harder to get.

And you know people will do this. If the rule is changed, I will be the first.

But you make it so no families can be in the game and playing at the same time. Every family is guilty before they are innocent. If you want to make this server ever take off, you will have to remove that rule. It will make the gm's do something they don't want to. There will be a called of abuse. It will pit the gm's against innocent families. This will get ugly. It is just a matter of time before before this rule bites someone in the butt.

But you do make a good point, the current system can not support the communities needs. There is no difference between 10 people using 10 characters each and 100 characters using 1 character each. If you can not program the server to be able to hold against the 10 people with 10 character each, then you are completely screwed with the 100 people with 1 character each.

When we start to get around 300 people, we will start using guilds more. The guild will be set up where the more you give to the guild, the higher your rank in the guild. You will have 100 people are focusing wealth into one pot, it will be 1000 times worst then any multiboxing. So unless you are going to stop group working together to form wealth, your rule is going to fail anyway. It is why my clan has soo much stuff, we share everything. We all work together. You are completely screwed when more groups like mine, using only one character per player, and can do everything you are trying to prevent. With out ever breaking the rule. The really funny part is that my clan has very little money. It never did have any. We never collect it.

The last part I want to touch on, "This would allow me to make millions of GP per day." I know you are a programmer so I will try to tell you how to fix this if you are role playing. The Game Master controls all aspects of the game. Money is worked like this.

Money reserve->Game Master->Quest items->player->expenses->game master-> Money reserve.

The game master controls every aspect of money in the game.

For example. If a character wants to cash in 1000 items, the computer only accepts 100 items per ip per day. This way a family can play but is limited to what they can collect at one time. The family is not guilty of anything because it is a limitation on everyone. There is not gm incursion because it is done by the server. It is immutable.

The game master can also limit the number of items collect by the person, after a certain point, per day, the drop rate slows down. Once again, done by the server, can be made by ip.

The game master also controls the price. The price that I am willing to buy items is directly related to how much cash I have already entered into the game. If there is too much cash, the price paid per item depends on the total cash in the system. If you need to reduce the cash, you just simply buy the item for less. If there is to much cash, item A now sells for less.

This is just a few ways to limit the gold going into the system. With out proclaiming people as guilty.

Lets now talk about how to get money from the player to expenses.

When you screw up the first part and you allow the players to have all the gold, like this server did, so they could start magic. You need to remove it.

Best way to remove the gold is to simply steal it back. A simple quest saying all the gold was stolen by a wizard, you go find the wizard and the gm allows only the limited amount to be recovered. It is not really the best system but it does work.

You can limit the amount of gold per person. If you only allow a character to carry no more then 10,000 gold at one time. The rest must be stored in the bank. All transfers for selling items go into the bank account, issued to the character as checks. Characters can get checks from the bank, that can be used to trade. In no pen and paper role playing game ever created, has one character ever been allowed to carry more then a 10,000 gold. Why, because of the weight of it. Once you have the gold only in bank accounts, you can properly tax it. Rates can go has high has 50% per ip account. Once again, done by the server.

How costly something is depends on how much gold the ip has. If the ip has a large amount of gold, then the prices for things go up. If the ip has a small amount of gold the prices go down. Simple and effective.

Next is to offer the carrot. This game has an insane attachment to rares, but with a simple and basic economy ultra rares makes people bot to get the items. A lot of people mass collect rares during special events. These people then drive up the price and sell these items. This is only allowed because the items can not be gotten any other way and you do not control how many character per ip can do the quest. A family needs to be able to play the quest, but there has to be a limit. There needs to be a balance between ip and rares collected from quests. You also need to stop items from being unobtainable. You need a better economy before you can have ultra rares.

The next best way is to allow trading of items for items. Money only works because it is universal. If you made it so the players could trade items for items, you would create a system that did not need cash for the lower levels to game items. For example, for a character under the level of 20, they can trade an npc 20 maggot slimes for a piece of clothing. 30 gloves for a piece of armor, ext. You can limit it by level. This will create a second level of money that is not used by the upper levels.

As for your mass botters, like you said, they need to be controlled. The server keeps tracks of all the kills and item picked up. After a certain point, the server starts to do server sided limitations. See above. If they character continues to go down that road, tax rate can be increased on stored money. Taxes on items in storage, taxes on character items when they log back in. They have to pay x dollars to keep the items, held up by the law enforcement. At a certain point they have to get a permit to hunt for items, they have to check in all items before they can sell them or trade them. If that does not slow you down, the Game Master will simply start to break your weapons and armor. Trust me, I can keep this up, until you want to change your mind.


If you enforce all these rules, I guarantee you could not get a million gold per day. You would actually created a system in which your character would end up poor.

But see my way requires two things. First, you do not blame the people making the money. You only make the system more flexible to them. Two, complexity of the system will be make it impossible for people to abuse the system. You need to program your way out of this problem because as more people play it, you will start literally having 1 bot per map. When groups start to pool their resources, you will have a failure of the system. When the first family to get banned for rule number 7, you will have a failure of the system. When people stop playing the game because it is nearly impossible under the current rules to get anywhere, you will have your first failure.

I made a promise I would keep my mouth shut. But I just hate to see one stupid rule cause the failure of the game.

[AnonDuck]

Even with such limits in place (Which at a glance seem to be good ideas, by the way) it still would not prevent one person from running 50 clients and gathering more xp and resources than a person with a single client.

[argul]

Even with such limits in place (Which at a glance seem to be good ideas, by the way) it still would not prevent one person from running 50 clients and gathering more xp and resources than a person with a single client.

Sure, someone who plays 2 hours a day, gets more money as someone plays 1 hour a day

But what is actually the problem?

It is not that some players get rich or that they have more items than other players.
The problem is the server load and latency.

If the server needs to run 100th of bots for every technical-competent person, the latency and load of the server is very height, so that human players feel it is laggy and unjoyful to play.

So in my opinion we do not need to make strict rules a la "everyone who plays may either ask their family or have 2 bots instead."

We could setup other ways (i mean more powerful ways!) for gms to check if it is 100 humans 1 char each, of if it is 10 human 10 char each, or even 1 human having 100 chars.

My proposal for such a gm check could be this:

A gm could have a command to warp multiple players into the botcheck area at the same time.
And then the gm tells the people to split up and make 2 equal groups (or 3 or 4...).
Humans will either argue or all will run randomly until it nearly fits and then start arguing.

What would 100 bots do? (Of course you can write programs, so that all the bots make up decisions and it works.)
But this is just an example, gms could think of other ways of checking groups as well. (Typical questions, where interaction is needed, or for some immaterial stuff, "Why do you like pinkies?")

This proposal (if done right ) could help on the problem of multiboxing.

[DarkWater]

[quote="MadCamel"]Even with such limits in place (Which at a glance seem to be good ideas, by the way) it still would not prevent one person from running 50 clients and gathering more xp and resources than a person with a single client.[/quote]
Once again, if the server can not handle 1 player with 10 clients, you will never be able to handle 100 more players, please stop taking new players if lag and game play is broken. Let's cut to the chase. If you need to slow down experience, the you simply make the player rest 24 hour after x amount of experience per ip. Same can be done for items. After x amount you stop getting items and exp. Once again you should program out of this problem. I could write up a system to reduce exp, money, and items. If you want me to.

[Acegi]

DarkWater: Seriously too long a post! Correct me if I have misunderstood your idea, basically, the gms/ghp would limit total player (from 1 ip's) growth/gains? Personally, I'm against any limitations on a character's potential. In practice, a single player working their hardest for the longest period of time should always do better than other players which I hope everyone finds reasonable.

I don't think GMs should control a game cap. Their jobs are to ensure rules are abided by. It's the content devs jobs to make the game turn the way they intend. If they design a quest that pretty much begs botting (current players now should be able to guess an example) or don't test thoroughly enough then it's their fault non-botters cannot keep up. If the developers need testers they just need to say the word and ask, I'm certain there will be volunteers.

argul: Afaik, the server has no problem with 100 extra players. It's not a hardware/software limitation it's the GHP not wanting players to be too rich or have too many items. The reason is that there is an assumption that quests would have to be designed to be harder (or require more items/money) to complete. This is a flawed assumption in my opinion. Why should a quest still be harder for those that have already worked for it even unintentionally?

[DarkWater]

Acegi, when I say game maters it refers to pen and paper gm. Not the server gm's. The server acts as pen and paper gm. Sorry for confusion.

As for the above restrictions would only be needed for people that abuse the game. The average player should never reach the set limits. For example, setting the max per minute experience to let's say 32,000 experience per min. No 1 player could reach that. 2 players could in the grave yard. 3 could pass it up quickly in the graveyard. Same goes for drops per minute. 60 drops per minute could not be reached by one person.

As long as the limits are set to maximal results that can not be reached by normal play. Most would not see the limit, but the limits have to be reasonable. You need to stop the abusers not players. Once we start to program to control the abuse we should not have a problem.

[Jenalya]

Once you have the gold only in bank accounts, you can properly tax it.

You need to stop the abusers not players. Once we start to program to control the abuse we should not have a problem.

Putting more and more restrictions on players, like taxes, limits, and quests you need an incredible amount of stuff and money to complete, tempts people to use botting.
Game play, that requires hours and hours of slaying the same monsters, is just less fun. I don't say, things should be easy to reach, but not dreary and frustrating.

I really don't get the point, why it should be a problem, to gain some wealth for putting some effort in the game.

Personally, I'm against any limitations on a character's potential.

it's the GHP not wanting players to be too rich or have too many items. The reason is that there is an assumption that quests would have to be designed to be harder (or require more items/money) to complete. This is a flawed assumption in my opinion.

Agree!

[DarkWater]

If done correctly the average player should not even notice. The would only apply to extreme players. Like slice that would use 1 account per screen to rake in millions. Any if my suggestions would have to fit a normal family of 4. So unless you can collect more then a family of 4 collecting 24 hours a day for months on end, you will not notice it. Hell if done right, Dayve would not notice the effects. We are taking about limiting to the top 1% so the bottom 99% can play.

The current powers that be are using personal grudge to attack those around them. Which is just not right. So unless you are thinking about collecting an extreme amount of items and money, I would not worry about it.

[yourmistakes]

i'd like to thank everyone who voted or posted here, it seems our voice has been heard: http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 12&t=11676

as for the people who do multibox: please don't run huge automated stacks in the graveyard, or this rule will be back just as fast.

[Platyna]

Automatons are still illegal. And this is not going to change.


Regards.

[Reid]

i'd like to thank everyone who voted or posted here, it seems our voice has been heard: http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 12&t=11676

as for the people who do multibox: please don't run huge automated stacks in the graveyard, or this rule will be back just as fast.

I wonder, you forget that we was on TMW

[Alons]

Nice ideas on here.

You need a better economy before you can have ultra rares.

Putting more and more restrictions on players, like taxes, limits, and quests you need an incredible amount of stuff and money to complete, tempts people to use botting.

The reason is that there is an assumption that quests would have to be designed to be harder (or require more items/money) to complete. This is a flawed assumption in my opinion.

Agreed. I would add that IMO the problem on inflation is not because a great demand, but because low offers. As Crush said before on another thread, the problem is that when a player reaches 1kk gp he/she will have nothing to spend it on. It's just kept, hoping to find a good trade to get something he/she doesn't have yet. And that money reserve will get bigger and bigger unless we have more ways to spend the money. And by more ways of spending the money, I refer to spend the money on something USEFUL. Players are not stupid, they know when something is worth or not to be paid its price. Just add things that are priced accordingly with players' demands.