>>Earlier today, a person noted to me that the scripting policy was "ridiculous" in that many of the activities need to be scripted to advance.

I would just like to point out, to this unnamed person, and to emphasize to the forum community: Scripting is not forbidden. You can script all these items that are claimed to be required to advance. You cannot do it while not paying attention to the game. This always seems to get glossed over when people complain about the policy.

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TG, TG, GL, et al.

"Disagreement with the fundamental plan at this point is akin to supporting Richard III vs the Tudors."
-Raesh

>>I have been playing since Beta and I don't script. Yes I use macros

Macros are just short scripts.

The "I don't script so etc" argument is silly, anyway. All it means, at best, is that you're more comfortable with repetitive actions and/or you don't engage in parts of the game that require repetitive actions.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

I was actually talking to a few friends about this yesterday, the policy, and the way it impacts on people. I'll give my views here, and maybe it can help the future of DR, maybe get ignored, but its an opinion.

A couple of years ago I took a hit for scripting. I wasn't AFK, but I was writing up something for an event I had an hour later, so I was barely watching while hunting gryphons and missed the check. As I had warnings on other accounts I was hit quite hard.

At the time I was Speaker of an order, and putting everything I could into running events to make the game more enjoyable for others (like the Elanthics). After the heavy skill loss all I wanted to do was get back to where I once was. I stepped down from my position as speaker, and pretty much vanished from all roleplay.
It took me two years to get back to where I was, and those two years have shaped how I play now. My mentality has completely switched from roleplay being the key, and now number counting is habit. Two years of the same things day after day, habit easily sets in.

I'm sure some people will be reading this and saying "its your own fault, should have been paying attention, and so on, and yes it was my fault, I wasn't paying attention. I'm sure everyone has had their time not paying attention while a script is running, it happens, most the time its not an issue, sometimes people get hit for it. The aim of the post is to allow others and maybe people running DR to see the effects it can have on players, or did have on me.

The way players are punished for afk scripting now, in my opinion, doesn't work. If players lose lots of ranks they tend to leave, bin the character, or as I did, put everything into getting those ranks back.

I don't want this post to be just another person poking holes in something and not offering solutions, so here are my thoughts on a couple of different views....

Option One - Auto Locked Sleep Mode
As we know we can put out character in sleep mode in the game. Sleep mode makes it so you can't learn new skills at all. This suggestion would be something like being locked in sleep mode for a week on first warning, two weeks on second warning, a month on third warning, or something like that.
What would this offer? Generally the reason for scripting is to learn skills. If you can't learn skills, why run those scripts? Hopefully people would spend that week socialising, spending time chatting, doing things they don't normally do, travel a bit? shop? maybe even roleplay? Maybe they will even find they enjoy it, and do it more often even when they can learn again?

Option Two - Prison
This might take a bit more work, but would be similar to the above, but freedom would be taken away. What would happen would be the character hit with the warning would be locked up for X amount of hours/days. The time must be spent in the game, in a cell, with anyone else who is serving their sentence too, and with a room where people can visit through the bars.
I know there is a prison type room now, but you can't do anything in it. This idea would be that people would be locked up and serve their time. Friends could come to chat with them, enemies to laugh at them, leading to interaction, even new friendships, and more roleplay?
Obviously if they have to serve so many hours in the room while awake, they would need to be poked and prodded by guards now and then, getting a response to make sure they are "still alive".

That's just a couple of ideas I have, both based around the same thing. The idea is not to punish to the point people train harder, educate players into the way you want them to play dragonrealms. If you want roleplay and interaction, use these chances to steer people in that direction.

I'd very interested in hearing more views and ideas on this stuff, especially Simu and GM views on it.

I get it. I really do.

However, it was your choice to focus on getting your numbers back to where they were. You really didn't have to do that, nor does being an Order Speaker mean that you must do that. You decided that, at that point in time, that numbers were more important to you than the roleplay or events were.

>As I had warnings on other accounts I was hit quite hard.

See this is a big part of the problem to me. You admit to having multiple warnings across more than one account, that to me means that you had plenty of opportunity to correct your ways. That means you already got the less-severe warnings and it still didn't seem to dissuade you from doing it again.

>I'm sure everyone has had their time not paying attention while a script is running, it happens, most the time its not an issue, sometimes people get hit for it.

I will say quite plainly that this is poor logic. Just because everyone eats some candy from the bins in the supermarket; doesn't mean that it's somehow not stealing. Breaking a rule because 'everyone else is doing it' is still breaking the rule. You already knew that it was against the rules, you knew the punishments and still took that gamble anyways. Personally, I wouldn't have. But, you did and this is what came of it.

>Option One - Auto Locked Sleep Mode
>Option Two - Prison

Not bad suggestions. However, I don't really see a need for them. People who can't train are probably more likely to just not play than they are to join in some RP. Likewise, if they feel limited or restricted in their gameplay (like with the prison idea) they are once again probably likely to just stop playing.

I personally don't agree that Roleplay should be forced or provided. Most of all to players who choose to not follow the rules. Its like taking the accident-prone drunk guy off the forklift and putting him in the accounts department. It just doesn't make sense to me.

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* Zadraes was just swallowed out of existence by Elanthia.

>>Option One - Auto Locked Sleep Mode

This would just result in someone playing another character, if the lock only counts on the character busted for AFK scripting, or someone doing something else during that time.

>>Option Two - Prison

Same as the above.

IMO, I'd prefer seeing that you have to pay back a exp bits deficit before getting more skill. It would be similar to how EXP BONUS works except you'd need to fill X ranks worth of bits before seeing actual gains again.

>>Lots of people take pride in their scripting skills. Others enjoy having high sling skills. I take my enjoyment from playing without scripting. My take on it is no more or no less 'silly' than anything else.

Eeeeeehhhh... I'm comfortable seeing "I type things by hand and/or use shorter scripts in the form of macros" as a silly thing to take pride in.

>>You decided that, at that point in time, that numbers were more important to you than the roleplay or events were.

Yep.

I also don't really but the "I was such a strong contributor to the community that this happened". I don't feel I should ever get a pass because I work on epedia or ALAE things or etc etc etc.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

>>In order to advance you have to spend a massive amount of time training and less time role playing.

I agree as a whole, but I think players these days (myself included) just prefer grinding a ton. As you said, it's a community issue, not a policy issue. We prefer getting tons of money and tons of skills which leads to more tons of money. We're in a mad dash to stay at the top of the curve because that's where we feel all the fun stuff is located. A lot of this is the result of high end invasion mobs having exciting loot (need high end skills to kill those mobs), auctions always being super aggressive (need high end skills to kill mobs faster to provide the most money quicker), PvP mattering a ton (more skills!), so on.

We lack RP because the game culture currently severely encourages grinding. Because we grind, GMs need to up the bar for what we need to get the good stuff. Because the bar is upped, we grind even more. Etc.

>>If you want to role play you have to travel to only specific areas where something is happening and then be lucky to get a response from anyone anyhow. Then you sacrifice training time.

I do agree with this. Pretty much any time I'm doing something IG that isn't grinding, there's something in the back of my head going "haha, you're losing out on exp!"

Hell, when I realized ALAE zones had exp shut off, it felt like a gut punch. (Tangent: can ALAE's zones have this shut off, pretty please?)

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

I can say from my personal experience one of my most memorable RP was when I was very outspoken about the local government in crossing and the guards grabbed me up enforce and threw me into the dungeons, where I was stuck, with only gruel to eat and enjoy, little interaction except for a few discussions. It would have been a much better thing, if I could have been able to attempt to break out. Have to kill a guard with my bare hands, steal his sword, fight my way out as opposed to the hour I was in there interacting in the limited fashion with the GM who was controlling it.

I am definitely in agreement, an in game jail system that forces people to interact, or work together to get out, break out, forced to do work crew for clearing out certain areas until X amount of time has been handled would be way cool. Throw them in the mix in the penal colony that takes on other groups. Who knows, it is limitless.

Arct

I suppose some might see it as a reward, make it so they dont' gain experience and the longer they are in there, the experience starts to drop. Or money starts to get pulled from their accounts to pay for the time they are in the slammer.

Arct

I like the forced sleep mode suggestion, those who script do it to watch their numbers grow, locking someone out of being able to see their numbers increase is a penalty enough. I'd actually be in favor of making the locked sleep mode longer than 1 week/2week/1 month.

The issue with the penalties today is that it a 10% or higher completely destroys a character. You have permanent TDP loss. Sure, you can make the ranks back and you'll gain those TDP's back but the stat loss on top of the TDP loss is irreversible. This causes an already low player base to abandon their characters and either quit the game or start over.

The more people play this game and try to increase their skills, the larger the chance of receiving one of those warnings is. For people who have been playing a long time, there's an inherent risk in all that hard work going down the drain. Sure, it's your fault if you step away from the keyboard for 10 minutes because you got distracted by a phone call, a crying child, a nagging wife, but is time ATK really being taken into consideration?

Someone can play 6 hours a day for a year, and all it takes is 30 minutes of inattentiveness for a character to incur permanent loss. Doesn't matter if their eyes were glued to the screen for 5 hours and 45 minutes, you miss out on a check during those 15 minute distractions twice and you'll take that hit. Obviously the odds of that happening are extremely rare, but I'm using it as an example to point out that it doesn't matter HOW attentive you are (100% attentive 131,340 hours, un-attentive 60 minutes), if you falter for a moment and get checked at that particular point in time you get penalized. Now you have people quitting an already declining player base, lets not lose any more?

I'd rather see someone that fails a check for learning experience unattended be watched for a week or two before they go into warning/10% in a year. The big problem is long term Experience gain, not a 10-15 minute distraction that may happen over the course of a few days or a week.

Player A is randomly checked one day and fails his first check. That player is flagged for a week, and over the course of the next 5 days they get checked more frequently to make sure they're just not setting up their character to run. If they fail their probationary period, than give them their caution. The second time it happens give them their 10%

>>Somnium-visum: As we know we can put out character in sleep mode in the game. Sleep mode makes it so you can't learn new skills at all. This suggestion would be something like being locked in sleep mode for a week on first warning, two weeks on second warning, a month on third warning, or something like that.

The problem with just locking someone into "sleep mode" is that it doesn't adequately deter players from long-term AFK scripting. The benefits (ranks and money) outweigh the small chance that you will incur a minor penalty (not being able to gain additional ranks). The checks, themselves, are relatively infrequent and last long enough that anyone who is not completely ignoring the screen will probably respond in time.

Even if you do fail the check, you still get to keep the benefits that accrued while you were AFK scripting, and you can still earn additional money. Such a system could even create an unintended incentive to "get your scripting in" ahead of times when you won't be training anyway (vacations, festivals, etc.).


>>Clerixhax: is time ATK really being taken into consideration? Someone can play 6 hours a day for a year, and all it takes is 30 minutes of inattentiveness for a character to incur permanent loss. Doesn't matter if their eyes were glued to the screen for 5 hours and 45 minutes, you miss out on a check during those 15 minute distractions twice and you'll take that hit.

The trouble is that there is no easy way to measure "time ATK" or the quality of a player's contributions to the community. It's possible that someone who is following the rules 95% of the time can fail a script check during a brief distraction, but that's why the first offense is just a slap on the wrist, and you get a "clean slate" after a year. You have to fail a script check twice in a year before you start losing ranks and stats. I think that players who are getting busted often enough to lose ranks probably are AFK scripting a lot more than just the few minutes it took to fail those checks.

It's possible for a 95% compliant player to fail a script check twice a year. I guess it's even possible that the brief lapse in attention occurred while contributing to the community in some other way. Most of the time, when players complain about being busted for AFK scripting, they claim that they were only AFK for a few minutes. However, after a while, that starts to sound like the guy who, when busted for having drugs in his possession, claims that the drugs belonged to a friend.


>>Bennerr: I think it is a pretty poor idea to use the whole this is a role playing game to make the argument about scripting. . . . I just think it is mainly a community issue not a policy issue. If more people were around to interact with then the idea of role playing being dead in a matter of days or minutes would be irrelevant but to say it is not nearly dead now is in my opinion a falsehood.

Serious role-playing has always been a niche activity. It's like that in many online games. (Role-playing in a MUD is a niche within a niche.) Replace "role playing game" with "multiplayer game," however, and you have the same issue with chronic AFK scripting contributing to a decline in the overall player experience. (Unless, of course, you don't mind paying a monthly subscription for access to a mostly single-player game.)

In isolated areas, there are few other players to interact with, but in more popular areas, like Crossing, I have experienced the opposite issue: there are a lot of names on the screen, but few of them are "available" for interaction.

As you said, the problem boils down to incentives. Even if we had a bustling community in every area with ample RP opportunities, the players who like to focus on advancing are going to keep playing the same way. The players who enjoy role-playing (or socializing) have to choose between interacting and training. If they choose to spend time interacting, they will quickly fall behind the other players who are focusing on advancing. This puts them at a disadvantage in PvP, auctions, etc.

The act of advancing, itself, requires hundreds of hours of highly repetitive activity. This combination practically guarantees that many players are, at best, just glancing at the scroll while doing other things.

I wish that I had an answer. I am not sure that it's possible to design a system that completely removes the incentive to engage in quasi-AFK scripting for long periods of time without destroying other aspects that players enjoy.

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Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall rank!

Vote for DragonRealms on Top MUD Sites: http://www.topmudsites.com/vote-DragonRealms.html

My suggestion, make at least a once a year auction, that runs on purely something similar to GM received RPAs.

Personally I try and get involved in more story, and try running some of my own story things. However it's difficult and I've yet to get a feel for what sparks continued interest. Hoping to make another move here with September meaning fall is here.

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"I think anything that forces you to do something no sane adventurer would do just in order to train is ridiculous."
DR-SOCHARIS

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Victory Over Lyras, on the 397th year and 156 days since the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer.

>>Most of the time, when players complain about being busted for AFK scripting, they claim that they were only AFK for a few minutes. However, after a while, that starts to sound like the guy who, when busted for having drugs in his possession, claims that the drugs belonged to a friend.<<

Good analogy. It's also worth nothing that the 'kingpins' of the drug game, aka the top scripters in DR, are typically not the ones who get caught. It's the 'casual users' who often will be penalized the most by the current policies and policing methods.

End prohibition. End scripting policy. Stop busting casual scripters maaaaan. They're not the problem.

(Assuming it's even a problem, which is another debate entirely)

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>befriend clear all
You are now friendless.

>> It's also worth nothing that the 'kingpins' of the drug game, aka the top scripters in DR, are typically not the ones who get caught.

^ The 'kingpins' have scripts that are unbeatable. They will at minimum have it notify them if something odd happens.



Codiax.
Forged Weapons:
http://www.elanthipedia.org/wiki/User:Codiax#Codiax-Forged-Weapons

>>They aren't unbeatable.

That just means you don't know about them or how they function.

Codiax.
Forged Weapons:
http://www.elanthipedia.org/wiki/User:Codiax#Codiax-Forged-Weapons

> And while 90hrs is great start, it represents less than 1.5% of IG time. So you're leaving people to script the other 98.5% of the time.

Your decimal point is off. It's roughly 12%. That said, the numbers of GMs are limited. They have jobs that allow them to continue to do their hobbies, such as being GMs. I'm sure they also have to fill out paperwork and attend meetings and so on. On top of that, most people don't like it when events are regularly run at odd hours for the continental U.S.

tl;dr: The best way to get RP in game is to try to foster it yourself, rather than rely on GMs. And, when they do it, try thanking them instead of just demanding more.

It's sounding more like they are only counting GM run events.

- Starlear -

>>I'm not putting down what is being down by the GMs that are doing it. I'm suggesting the SIMU rethink their GM positions and maybe look at adding some additional spots for people that are event specific.

Pretty sure that it's a lack people and not a lack of open positions since most of the GMs fill 2-3 different positions. There are only so many people to do everything that needs done, and at the moment there seems to be much more work than there is bodies to do it.

If you believe you can do better, or have better ideas, they are taking applications.

I think a part time GM position to run events is highly unlikely to happen. There are so many reasons for this that I don't even know where to begin, so I'm just going to repeat that it feels as though you would be best served by trying to start your own RP storylines and trying to involve other people.

>If there was a more events-related position were a player could substitute their time as a player to make time to run a campaign of sorts, it might be a better fit for some (including me).

I'm pretty sure that is exactly what Orders are in DR. Players who are substituting playing the game in order to run events and roleplaying opportunities for both their members and the general population. I know I'm always interested to hear from others what sort of new events they think we should try and take on. You're more than welcome to come see Kasto and the Tavern Troupe if you want to talk about something fun and entertaining. I'm very interested in any sort of long-term 'storyline' RP ideas. I think it would be a fun thing to tackle.

Even beyond that, I've always found the Events Team here to be very accommodating for things which might not quite fit within Orders. I've worked with them a number of times for Rakash Moots and I know others who've had wonderful help from them with events they've had. All you really gotta do is drop them an e-mail, give them enough advance notice (I aim for a month or two ahead of time) and be patient on the response. I've always been pleasantly surprised at just how helpful and understanding they can be.

For me, I've always found it super easy to sit there and wait for someone (GM or player) else to do something that I can have fun with. However, it's been far more rewarding to take the initiative and do it myself. I don't really see a difference between something that is brought about by a Events GM or a player. Some of our most memorable moments have been put into motion by players, I mean...

Lavender.

Need I say any more?

So, to bring this full circle. I think if roleplay and events are that important to you, than you should really start exploring the many options out there instead of saying "they need to do this..." or "they need to do that..."

This, is part of the reason why I agree with the current punishments. If your grinding numbers by AFK scripting, those numbers are obviously the most important thing to you. Having those numbers take a hit for you breaking the rules seems totally fair and reasonable. You're still able to do events and go to fests/quests/whatever.

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* Zadraes was just swallowed out of existence by Elanthia.

>>Are there some magical GM powers that make their events different from player run stuff?

Canon.

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TG, TG, GL, et al.

"Disagreement with the fundamental plan at this point is akin to supporting Richard III vs the Tudors."
-Raesh