Hi there... I recently got hit with a 10% experience loss for afk scripting. I noticed i lost thousands of TDPs in addition to actual stats. I'm confused... isn't this like... a double penalty? Not only do I lose the TDPs, and I have to work hundreds of ranks to get back to ZERO on my TDPs (out of the negative). But I also lost a bunch of specific stats? Is this meant to be like a permanent penalty? Or is there something I'm not understanding about the way this penalty is assessed?

Thanks for the response Persida! So this is a permanent penalty, IE you lose the point of the stat, and the opportunity to earn that stat back (as the experience you gain will only help you get back out of negative tdps)?
Man, seems pretty harsh. Has that always been the case or is that a new(er) thing? Also, do these punishments ever fall off? For example, if the 1st afk script punishment was from half a year ago. And the second one was recent. Will an account reflect ONE scripting violation (and regain privledges) within 6 months? Or do they have to wait another year? (So they'll have gone 18 total months total with 2 warnings)
Thanks for your input!

> Stat loss does not add TDPs back the way you'd get them back if you were using a stat wipe potion.

Are you sure about that? With the way TDPs are handled since 3.0*, this would require incorporating a specific exemption to the system and remembering precisely how many TDPs were lost to stat penalties.

*The system no longer uses dead reckoning to track TDPs. Instead, every time you rank a skill, circle, train a stat or just type 'tdp', it recalculates your TDPs based on current stats, circle, skills and race.

>>Are you sure about that?

Yes. We're not talking about any other type of stat loss than the removal of stats done as part of the afk scripting penalties. In the case of those, the stat point is removed and no TDPs are put back in its place. It is a different system.

-Persida

>>So just to be clear:

>>Character 1 has X total ranks and has never received an AFK scripting penalty.

>>Character 2 has identical ranks as Character 1 but has (at some point during its history) received one 10% AFK scripting penalty.

>>Does Character 2 now have fewer total TDPs than Character 1 despite having identical ranks?


No, Character 2 would not have fewer total TDPs than Character 1 in this scenario.

What was being said is that, at the time of the penalty being applied, the negative TDP amount that the penalized character sees does NOT also include the TDPs from the outright-removed stat points. That negative is only reflective of the TDPs still spent into stats that remain on the character, but the currently reduced skills do not support.

That means it is not a functional 'double penalty'. You do not have to re-earn the TDPs from the stripped stats 'twice', as there is no negative TDP value assessed and applied for them, the stats were simply removed outright, so you earn them back totally normally. By the time the character with the penalty earns their skill ranks back up to what they were before the penalty, they'd have both worked off their TDP debt (the amount that reflects the stats they still have) AND earned back the positive TDPs needed to buy back the stat points that were removed outright when the penalty was applied.

-Persida

Maybe I'm being obtuse so a little help here (and yes, I realize these aren't real numbers but they make it easy)

I have 10 in every stat and take a penalty that takes me down to 9 in every stat

As a result I now have -1000 in tdps and 9 in stats.

Now I have to work back to 0 before I can start earning back to 10 again.

That means it takes 2000 tdps to get back to 10 in stats.

The only way it wouldn't be a double penalty with permanent damage to your character is if you stayed at 10 and had to pay back -1 in every stat before you could begin gaining again.

This is why people check tdps against stats when characters are bought/sold, you can never make back that loss.

>>>That means it is not a functional 'double penalty'. You do not have to re-earn the TDPs from the stripped stats 'twice', as there is no negative TDP value assessed and applied for them, the stats were simply removed outright, so you earn them back totally normally.

Yes, you earn them back totally normally, AFTER you pay your debt off from the skill loss. After paying it off, your skills could be the same as they were, but your stats will still be lower. It's permanent loss for that character.

Personally, i'm fine with that, but call it what it is.

>> Didn't Persida just state that it was NOT a permanent loss for the character?

Yes, but math seems to have a disagreement with her.

^
This is why people choose to cancel their subscription/subscriptions and/or offer their characters for sale instead of dealing with the afk hit.

Not to mention that the afk policy is decades behind from where it should be. But "woo" to punishing players for playing in a game scoped around (microtrans)I mean, enjoyment.

Afk hits in DR are like IRS audits = lame and the "parties" still some how get paid twice

AFK hits on a game which has struggled to build back it's player base from the last DR AFK witch hunts, is probably not the "smartest" choice of action. Recently, the Game literally went from having 800+ players logged on to around 400. It's a pretty good indicator what afk hits really do for game health.

It also seems rather interesting to me that when people were losing weapons to pvp or death, the death hand was created, thus "getting rid" of all the upset people felt for losing potentially plat-heavy/expensive weapons.

But yet here we all are spinning our mental tires on a mind numbing topic of AFK script checks and how they work.

I don't feel suggesting how people might alternate one punishment for another is helpful. A prime account is much more invested in DR compared to a f2p. One pays an estimated 450 dollars a year to play, not to mention additional events. The other is free and getting a "heavier" plat tax on a character that's only allowed to have x mount of plats in the back to begin with. Har.

I feel the afk policy needs to just be abolished allowing everyone the same rights to game play and advantage. And the AFK policy needs to molded into or combined with the player conduct policy. Thus if someone is disruptive, problematic, etc it would allot for the appropriate resolutions and GMs to address issues on a much more balancing platform.

You've gone Missing

>>Thus, looking for solutions that might appeal to both ends of the spectrum.

Solutions such as?

I do feel it (getting rid of the afk policy and combining it into a conduct policy) would benefit a lot of different elements and dynamics of the game. By allowing other players to develop into higher ranks and circles it puts pressure on the game development, which has lacked for HLCs, to move forward. i.e. creatures, hunting areas, guild end game issues, pvp, and development for new content.

It also gets rid of the qq "I was busted for AFK and I quit" Thus subjecting the eyes of other players to read endless rants about the "policing of policy" and how it wasn't fair. Which these rants are written in a manner that puts a disturbing thoughts in any readers mind. i.e. am I next? Are they targeting for me?

And it also allows for GMs to be seen through the eyes of players as supportive team members of the player community rather than the policy-popos.






You've gone Missing

A post was hidden. Please discuss the content of posts and not your opinions on the poster, unless you'd like to take this over to the OOC Conflicts folder over in the Social Side.

Also, this thread is straying pretty far off topic from the original question. Since folks seem to really want to continue discussing afk scripting policy, we've been allowing the wandering of the topic a bit, but please remember that the last thread about this had to be shut down due to increasingly constant and flagrant forums TAC violations in the posts. Don't let this one go the same way, please.

-Persida

So, as a consideration maybe, I'm curious what you all think is a bigger offense - someone who griefs a newbie until they quit, or someone who afk scripts?

It feels like policy isn't handled evenly, and the punishments for policy violations don't seem to be in line. People being AFK strikes me as far less problematic than some of the other policy offenses out there. And as a reminder for all conversation regarding AFK characters, there is a WIDE margin between 'someone who 24/7s but is regularly responsive on the gweth, forums, or discord', and 'running a 20+ character botfarm'. And to extra underline the point, someone who 24/7s can still choose to RP when they want to, while someone who chooses to quit cannot.

The sort of people who would end up desiring to do enforcement are exactly the people who should not be doing it, and the ones forced to do so because they did not want to do it will burn out and leave.

As far as whether they're mutually exclusive, it doesn't matter whether they logically are, it matters whether players perceive them to be.

Right now player opinion of staff seems to be pretty low. This isn't exactly a new situation for DR to be in, of course, but it's a bad one to be in when they're bleeding subscriptions over enforcement of policies not even Lyneya seems to agree with.

That this is happening before, hopefully shortly before, a much-needed update to policy makes it feel that much more unjust to a lot of player

>>So, as a consideration maybe, I'm curious what you all think is a bigger offense - someone who griefs a newbie until they quit, or someone who afk scripts?

>The way people act and the way people play are both part of a game's culture.

>Both examples have a negative impact on the game's culture. The culture shift they cause, the message about a game's culture they present to everyone, and the audiences they attract are often different, and I don't see a value in determining which one is worse, because the important part is that they're both bad.

I completely disagree that there's no value in differentiating the two. There is a limited pool of resources (e.g. GM time) and they should be spent effectively.

I'm very interested in what negative outcomes you see around those two examples (griefer vs afk scripter).

>>The sort of people who would end up desiring to do enforcement are exactly the people who should not be doing it, and the ones forced to do so because they did not want to do it will burn out and leave.

I disagree that GMs hired with the intent to focus more on handling policy issues/enforcement would a mindset geared toward ruining a player's day. Admittedly, this is because I don't think the policy itself is geared toward ruining a player's day, but maintaining a positive game culture. Anyone feeling like their day was ruined because they got caught AFK scripting ruined their day themselves; they should not have been afk scripting to begin with.

>>Right now player opinion of staff seems to be pretty low.

I disagree with this completely. At worst/best, I see some players' opinions on Simutronics itself being low, because, as an organization, they're putting a heavy focus on microtransaction events (and those players would rather see a focus on X, Y, or Z). That is completely different than the GMs themselves.

>>I'm very interested in what negative outcomes you see around those two examples (griefer vs afk scripter).

Not enforcing either side of the policy results in players being taught that kind of behavior is permissible, and the end result of implying either is permissible is that the game's culture goes in a negative direction. A "people who play DR are jerks" view of the game's culture is as damaging as a "no one who plays DR is at their keyboards" view of the game's culture, since both tell people that it isn't worth engaging with anyone (along with other issues).

>>I would also suggest, respectfully, that this issue could be addressed separately for Plat vs Prime. I'm not saying I don't see value to your input here Tev, but you are coming from a remarkably different perspective.

It's not a Plat vs Prime issue at all. The question is "how should policy be enforced and what is good/bad for the game's culture." Players get script checked in Plat like players do in Prime. In fact, the Plat script checks are even harsher, so if anything players who play primarily in Plat should be more invested in this discussion and the way afk scripting works than those in Prime.

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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.

>> A "people who play DR are jerks" view of the game's culture is as damaging as a "no one who plays DR is at their keyboards" view of the game's culture

The problem is, you can encourage growth in the right directions, but you will NEVER completely erase people perceiving either of these circumstances. Some people play to script, and chase numbers, and even while at the keyboard are not going to sit and giggle/huggle/snuggle/chat with the others in the room. Likewise, you're always going to have players roleplaying the bully, players having a bad day, or other circumstances that have them come across as the player being a "jerk" to someone with a limited perspective. All people are judgmental, by nature, it is in our coding to perceive and make decisions on the world around us, even subconsciously. It is a survival instinct.

Instead of focusing on things that have a negative perception, conversations about scripting (not necessarily AFK, even, in this impact example you gave) should focus on the actual hard impact it has on the world et al. If there is a mechanical or developmental burden on more of the population shifting to the higher rank ranges. If more people earning more of their own currency (not bought currency) will at least move towards balancing out an inflated and broken economy, instead of widening the division of wealth.

So at least in this instance, I propose the people campaigning against people scripting, seemingly mindlessly, to invest the energy of their campaign into instead building something positive. Build up the environment. Engage others that seem open to engaging. Create interesting, intriguing, appealing conversation and happenings. Create the environment you would like to see. Maybe you'll even stir some of the 'zombies' into becoming socially involved members of the text community.

How we can address AFK scripting at a systems level, both in terms of lessening the impact of long-term experience gain and decreasing the need for long-term experience gain, is something that I've been pulled aside to talk about multiple times both in the past and present. We have been and continue to look at the issue from the level of "we do not want the game incentivizing this behavior."

However, my opinion on whether the game incentivizes this behavior is irrelevant to the rules of the game. I am a developer, it is not my responsibility or privilege to dictate policy. There is a rule in place, for longer than I've been a GM in fact, and that it has come as a surprise that we will enforce the rules of fair gameplay is a bit odd to me.

By all means, it is fine and good to discuss what fair gameplay is, what the shape of the rules are, etc. But the system level stuff is not sufficient reason by itself to try and dismiss policy, and the enforcement of the policy should be seen as an inevitability rather than a surprise.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

>>Very relevant insight I would say - given that the policy regarding penalizing scripters is, I feel, strikingly worse than the policy regarding penalizing consent violators. I'm curious to hear if the consensus is that AFK scripting (in it's various forms) is worse than griefing (in it's various forms). <<

I think the idea at the time was to make AFK scripting counter productive by having the penalty assessed in terms of exp. I'm not sure people would find lockouts escalating to banning any less harsh if that's what they were still doing.


>>I don't think this is necessarily true, though again, this seems to be repeated as fact often. <<

It's a pretty solid inference. Why wouldn't you think it would be true?


>>I think this relates to my question about griefing quite directly, truthfully, in that I feel there is a large impetus to AFK script because of how directly AFK scripting benefits one's capacity to either grief, or not be griefed. If AFK scripting did not confer such a direct benefit towards PvP, I personally believe it would not be nearly as prevalent, or, if were still prevalent, have less of an impact. <<

For sure. If AFK scripting didn't give one an advantage people would do it a lot less. The two choices are, IMO, to do PvP scaling or to set a daily limit (achievable in a short time) to exp gain so that afking doesn't really pay off.


Mazrian

>It's a pretty solid inference. Why wouldn't you think it would be true?

Because I know a great many number of players who 24/7 who are also event chasers, and participate heavily in the RP community, and are very interested in the lore/RP. I also know of a great number of players who don't 24/7, and who are not remotely interested in RP/events/lore. I don't think these are the exception to the 'rule'.

>For sure. If AFK scripting didn't give one an advantage people would do it a lot less. The two choices are, IMO, to do PvP scaling or to set a daily limit (achievable in a short time) to exp gain so that afking doesn't really pay off.

I agree!