It's tedious making an autobasher. Parsing all that information takes hours, and testing it takes hours. I'd say each area I make takes me probably the better part of a week because it's so boring.
I created my entire autobasher from scratch in 25 minutes.
Including area parsing and pathing? If so, then you are a much better coder than I.
If they're worried about gold generation, why not create a threshold for gold income for the imperian month?
Example: You still have people you sell your creatures to, but you only get so much gold per imperian month from giving them corpses. You then either reduce the amount of gold you get from killing a mob or remove it all together, forcing people to either bash what they need and move onto other things, or actually focus more on the hundreds of quests you have around Imperian for income.
I like that you've implemented the artifact upgrade tokens, since you technically have to have the artifact in the first place in order to upgrade it. So, by allowing us to get those tokens through other means allows other fighters who are afraid of the big arti monsters to have a chance of hope knowing if they save up enough, they can join the higher tiers without have to dish out thousands of dollars doing so.
I can imagine you love your promotions and the slight bursts of money you get from them, but the reason why restaurants and the tobacco company and other things have so much money is because they hook their customers and have them repeat smaller purchases over time instead of investing large portions occasionally.
It's easier for someone to be like, "Hey, I'll spend 10-15 bucks this week getting something," instead of "well, I'll save and drop 500 dollars to get the artifact I wanted."
I'm probably the only person I know who bashes as much as I do without one. But even I have some automation. The way I have it set up is it'll keep hitting stuff when the basher is enabled until everything that matches the current target in the room is dead, but I still have to do the first hit and I still have to move manually and set targets.
Pretty much this. I don't "true" autobash, but I bet I could without anyone knowing. I mean, I have a module in my client that will send me an SMS to my phone whenever someone sends me a tell, and it's trivial for me to add code that would allow me to SMS back and have the contents of the SMS sent as a tell...
You can try all you want to stop me from autobashing, but I can implement so many checks and alarms and "I'm really here seriously guys" things that you will never, ever be able to stop me from autobashing.
@Gurn I think you were using some oldschool client(ALclient or something?) last I spoke to you. That's possibly what is making it take so long. Mine isn't really the most feature-rich basher around, but it's pretty solid, and the primary bits took maybe a few hours. Thing about the way I chose to make mine, is that it works for every area, without additional setup. With Mudlet you have a full map at your disposal, so it's rather easy to just walk around hitting every vnum in the area(in numeric order, since most of the areas are built in manners where that is an intelligent way to move), and add "bash until room is clear" and you're done.
Regarding the topic at hand, it's a complicated issue. I understand the concerns that people raise, but I think people tend to sometimes forget just how much gold you need in Imperian. Even with my rather impressive dps in DP and my warhorn, it takes me many hours of bashing full speed to be able to afford my third change monolith. Just tested. I bashed for 30 minutes and killed 267 mobs in DP. Made about 29000 gold. In a hypothetical situation where I could bash DP all the time, that'd be about 58000 gold per hour. That is less than 4 credits an hour. At that rate, it would take me 25 hours to get my third change mono. I don't know that I like the idea of people being able to bash while blatantly AFK, but I also hated the obscure as hell afk check messages that were in use for a while. Not sure that any solution that just involves moderating AFK bashing will actually be that effective for the reasons listed above.
A few small suggestions I can think of that would help. I think moving the gold away from the turnin of boss mobs and instead having it distributed to the players involved in killing the boss would help, and having that gold amount scaling to some degree with the number of participants would be a bonus step to lend some sort of value to the bosses that everybody involved in a boss bashing party would enjoy, not just the person that gets the killing blow. In addition to that, consider pumping up the quest xp of bosses that aren't easily farmed, since getting people together to bash individual bosses is harder than making large Nindzar bashing parties.
Another suggestion would be sort of along the lines of what someone else has already mentioned. Bashing with a party is easier with PATH GROUP, but having someone else hitting mobs slows my bashing by a relatively large amount, especially for people with long attacks. I don't know enough about the new bashing system that was added a few months back to one of the other games to really compare it here, but some sort of system that benefited bashing teams, something more interesting than the 5% bashing stones, would also contribute.
Last idea is that you might consider adding some spawn areas with mobs that are very high in difficulty, and apply some sort of mechanic that enforced restrictions on how you bash it. Like having mobs that will split their targeting, instead of just all targeting one person, with some sort of mechanic where they remove any other players that attempt to bash in the same room. Maybe they make use of waterfall or fear effects to remove all players beyond the first two in the room. There is, in my opinion, a big gap that duo or 4-man bashing could fill.
@Jeremy You have expressed interest in adding more "daily" or "weekly" quests, with more interest rewards than just gold. The only really good way I see to cut down on the prevalence of autobashing is to make active bashing/questing more appealing. Now is your chance.
As just an example of the sort of bashing area I mean, with some slight theme for context:
Imagine a quest that generates a temporary, randomized 4-man only labyrinth. Off-plane, but also timed, so it can't be used as a way to hide from the world for too long. While in this labyrinth, you are subject to an Underworld style special death sequence, with a specific duration that prevents you from corpse-rushing the boss. Maybe include some other mechanic to prevent you from corpse-rushing the meat of the dungeon as well. Special, more exclusive feeling prizes at the end, like more vanity things, mounts, and possibly lessons(since there are IMO too few sources of lessons in the game). There are almost certain ways you can build credit purchases into the system, just as long as it is done judiciously, and in moderation.
tl;dr Give us <x>-man raids in instanced dungeons with interesting prizes and we will power-bash less.
I think if you just made one normal mob in an area unkillable, you would figure out who the autobashers are pretty quick. Don't give him a special name or anything, just a regular mob that patrols about. Anyone at their PC will figure it out pretty quick.Plus watching someone sit there and try and kill a mob for an hour would be hilarious.
I think if you just made one normal mob in an area unkillable, you would figure out who the autobashers are pretty quick. Don't give him a special name or anything, just a regular mob that patrols about. Anyone at their PC will figure it out pretty quick.Plus watching someone sit there and try and kill a mob for an hour would be hilarious.
One of my favorite things right when I came back used to be using the Earthquake ritual to block off paths and then watch people just stand there not moving for five minutes.
I think if you just made one normal mob in an area unkillable, you would figure out who the autobashers are pretty quick. Don't give him a special name or anything, just a regular mob that patrols about. Anyone at their PC will figure it out pretty quick.Plus watching someone sit there and try and kill a mob for an hour would be hilarious.
One of my favorite things right when I came back used to be using the Earthquake ritual to block off paths and then watch people just stand there not moving for five minutes.
But then you get a hopeless blonde like me who'll sit there for five minutes repeately typing "sw" and wondering why its not working :P
I think if you just made one normal mob in an area unkillable, you would figure out who the autobashers are pretty quick. Don't give him a special name or anything, just a regular mob that patrols about. Anyone at their PC will figure it out pretty quick.Plus watching someone sit there and try and kill a mob for an hour would be hilarious.
This would be trivial to bypass via triggers once you knew that it existed, though, just like pretty much any other anti-autobashing mechanism.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
I think if you just made one normal mob in an area unkillable, you would figure out who the autobashers are pretty quick. Don't give him a special name or anything, just a regular mob that patrols about. Anyone at their PC will figure it out pretty quick.Plus watching someone sit there and try and kill a mob for an hour would be hilarious.
This would be trivial to bypass via triggers once you knew that it existed, though, just like pretty much any other anti-autobashing mechanism.
It would be kind of hilarious to watch the people that get caught by it though >.>
I think if you just made one normal mob in an area unkillable, you would figure out who the autobashers are pretty quick. Don't give him a special name or anything, just a regular mob that patrols about. Anyone at their PC will figure it out pretty quick.Plus watching someone sit there and try and kill a mob for an hour would be hilarious.
This would be trivial to bypass via triggers once you knew that it existed, though, just like pretty much any other anti-autobashing mechanism.
Ya know, I'm still waiting for someone to create a system so bad ass that it will basically play the game for them. Like, it responds to people that try and talk to it with emotes, spaced out so it seems like someone is typing. It offers to take others bashing with it, and goes bashing at random times. It'll check its vialbelt to make sure it has enough health sips, and go by more if it needs it. I got a feeling you could make a pretty damn believable AI bot if you had the scripting know how.
@Veratyr I had two scripts, one that would emote random messages based off my class and location (was tweaking it to do emotes based off season as well) and the second script would read off pre-written RP scripts so I could effortlessly repeat "rituals".
@iniar I was thinking more along the lines of something that would use keywords and select a response from a list, and have whatever it says be vague enough to apply to a wide range of topics. Worst comes to worst, people just think your a rambling nutjob or something.
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(Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."
(Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."
Regarding the topic at hand, it's a complicated issue. I understand the concerns that people raise, but I think people tend to sometimes forget just how much gold you need in Imperian. Even with my rather impressive dps in DP and my warhorn, it takes me many hours of bashing full speed to be able to afford my third change monolith. Just tested. I bashed for 30 minutes and killed 267 mobs in DP. Made about 29000 gold. In a hypothetical situation where I could bash DP all the time, that'd be about 58000 gold per hour. That is less than 4 credits an hour. At that rate, it would take me 25 hours to get my third change mono. I don't know that I like the idea of people being able to bash while blatantly AFK, but I also hated the obscure as hell afk check messages that were in use for a while. Not sure that any solution that just involves moderating AFK bashing will actually be that effective for the reasons listed above.
A few small suggestions I can think of that would help. I think moving the gold away from the turnin of boss mobs and instead having it distributed to the players involved in killing the boss would help, and having that gold amount scaling to some degree with the number of participants would be a bonus step to lend some sort of value to the bosses that everybody involved in a boss bashing party would enjoy, not just the person that gets the killing blow. In addition to that, consider pumping up the quest xp of bosses that aren't easily farmed, since getting people together to bash individual bosses is harder than making large Nindzar bashing parties.
As just an example of the sort of bashing area I mean, with some slight theme for context:
tl;dr Give us <x>-man raids in instanced dungeons with interesting prizes and we will power-bash less.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."