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Comments
The aforementioned ideas are mentioned to show that a lot of the excessive clicking that makes up the monotony of mining can be massively reduced. Since a lot of users here are having trouble imagining what a world without fire beetles could be like, I attempted to show them. Scripters will always power through the clicking, it doesn't matter to them if it's one click or a thousand clicks. The devastating efficiency of script mining is made possibly first and foremost by runebook mining, and to a lesser degree by fire beetles.
Sure, even in my preferred scenario, scripters could still find a way by setting up miners to walk along pre-programmed routes. Yet at the same time, this method is fraught with greater risks, and their efficiency and their impact is severely diminished. You and other users were telling me earlier that scripters don't use fire beetles because of the risk of losing them. Now imagine how much riskier it would be for them if they had to have a pack animal in tow and couldn't readily recall away with it. How much less efficient would that be for a bot?
But this isn't merely about killing scripting. It's about increasing the value of the reward while making the process a little less efficient from a logistical point of view, that reduces the impact of scripters and at the same time provides better depth and meaning to the long-dead miner playstyle.
That's not going to happen. Get real.
I am not trying to be condescending when I say this, but there is a concept here that you don't have fully worked out yet. We've all been buzzing around a certain principle, that when you make it harder for the scripter, you make it harder for the players, and when you make it easier for the player, you make it easier for the scripter. But the edge that scripters will always have over the non-scripters is their ability to power through clicking. If you turn a 1-click process into a 1000-click process, it's the non-scripter that has to endure the mounting dreariness of each and every click; the scripter on the other hand couldn't care less, because, like you correctly said, they will readjust their script and move on. My message to you is that by taking certain steps to reduce the # of clicks in a process, we're evening the playing field between the scripters and non-scripters, but at the same time, paving the way for new logistical challenges that make it harder to script efficiently. This is a key point: my goal here isn't to end scripting. because I believe that is impossible; my goal as far as scripting is concerned is to reduce its efficiency. Recall-mining and fire beetles are far bigger threats to efficiency than a simple auto-mine function.
You are completely wrong in your statement above. Perhaps you are thinking that it if ore went straight into the pack horse, it is easier to script. Yes, that is one or two extra lines of code the scripter does not need in their script. But in a situation where pack horses are a necessity, the scripter does not care if 10 clicks are involved in moving the ore from backpack to horse, or if 0 clicks are involved. If anything, a self-interested scripter would want mining to be boring and have as many clicks as possible in order to discourage competition from non-scripters (to be clear, I'm not accusing you of being a self-interested scripter).
Again, you are failing to take into account that in my preferred scenario, recall-mining would not be a thing, and that a lot of my points rests on this assumption. A miner would have to walk to the mountain and then walk back to the forge. Yes, even this is possible to script, but a) it's less efficient and b) fraught with greater risk. If you are going to respond to me again, kindly acknowledge this point - you don't have to agree with it, just acknowledge it, so we don't have to spend any more time clarifying it.
The pack horse, just like the fire beetle, is in danger of being killed - this is the exact point that you and other who disagree with me have been making. This does reduce the efficiency of script mining.
Seriously listen to yourself. You're talking about killing mining for everyone to get rid of people taking advantage of flawed, monotonous gameplay. Even if it was no longer profitable to script mine and the scripters "went away", they'll be back the moment it becomes profitable again.
Tell me honestly, if you don't care if the market is flooded and mining is killed, why are you so fixated on scripting? Think about it. They're not preventing you from mining. They're not getting in your way or even interacting with you on the off-chance you happen to spot one. So if you're not concerned with the one thing that they do that hurts all miners, which is over-saturating the market with resources, then how exactly are they affecting you? How are they ruining your personal single player adventure?
Who wants to kill being able to recall into my mining caves and doing my usual 60 minute mining ?? Back off jr. Stop trying to ruin the last fun thing I got to do!!!
I happen to like mining.. chopping wood is for getting my mind off what's going on around me, fishing is my go to if I want a little surprise pop up...
Look.. the pirate ships are fine.. yes I think that is where more of the 60k deeds are from that are showing up. Ore elemental's are fine, I do wish for a way to get the Taint and the rest of those regs outside of idoc's! I never liked those hunts...1 time was enough.
I am not thrilled when I go in a huge cave/passage in malas and get 90% iron ore and barely find anything above gold. Unless I use a tool and or a gar pick... Even the big gems are slow to get..
I am super tired of ask for 1 small boon and have to give up 10x that in things you have or do in return... This has been the UO motto after the first creator dev was kicked off. For once id love to just get a small adjustment in the higher end ore to stick around longer.. if I find a verite or val spot and only get 10 pieces and loose 1/2 of it due to my 105* miner not making it. This would peve off the Pope too.... and he don't play UO.
Respectfully, Lady Storm, this isn't just about you. I have a fire beetle. I have runebooks with mining spots. I have abused the gold elementals in Blackthorn's Dungeon and I have benefited a great deal from all of these things. Now I am advocating that they be nerfed. If the True and Honest™ players are actually being honest with themselves, then they should be able to see past their own personal self-interest and realize that sometimes a playstyle, while perfectly legitimate, can still exist contrary to other playstyles or even to the integrity of the gameplay itself. I do not see anyone here shedding tears for the playstyles of old upon whose bones our own playstyles now stand. Since no playstyle is therefore sacred, instead let us look to the gameplay itself and ask: is it fair? Is it challenging? Is it rewarding? Does it contribute to a multiplayer/community dynamic? My answer to all of these questions is "no".
I feel similar about mining back in ye old day. In 2000 I was trying to mine out of the Minoc Mines, sometimes without a pack horse. The risk of losing ore from dragging it to the forge was prevalent because of how many players were running around. It was fun in its own way, though it's not the exact situation I would want to see come back. Aside from a few easy buttons tossed our way over the years, the fundamentals of mining have never been looked at or optimized. This is why I have a hard time seeing the fire beetle as a proper UX improvement and not as a game-breaker that nullifies the entire point of smelting altogether.I think it's important to emphasize though that the main problem with scripting is that they oversaturate the market with resources. The more resources we have floating around without a stronger economic demand to consume those resources, the less valuable they are and the less viable/meaningful mining is as a playstyle altogether. My point with a lot of the suggestions I put forward is that, we can decrease the efficiency of scripting, and at the same time streamlining the manual mining process. Instead, mining has become more efficient in all the wrong ways.
Your focused on scripting... While I go mining the old fashioned way.. packies and fire bug in tow.
While you think your ideas will curb the scripters it will not...even back in the days before all the new fangled equipment and all scripters were in full swing. They stood there mined another player/character came in (usually a red) picked up their load and off they went.
It wont work. They will figure a way to exploit it and we honest mining people will be hurt because your aimed to get them when it would be way better to make the market for it poof...
Think about it. When it is hard to get the price goes up and more desireable to the scripters to get. But if it was all too easy to get and the price hit the floor the value for them would be worthless and they would go to a more lucrative venue
You say that, though you either cannot or will not respond directly to my points. Scripters can adapt, yes we are agreed on this. I have also said that in my ideal scenario it would still be possible to script. However the efficiency of scripting would be severely limited by my proposals and no one can honestly deny this. If a pile of ore has to be walked to a forge and cannot be recalled, it will absolutely harm the efficiency of scripting. Still possible to script, again yes, but bots excel at repetitive tasks, not tasks that require more complex decision making. So my proposals get rid of the little repetitive stuff and add challenges that humans are better equipped to solve.
It genuinely kills me to see you say this. Do you really not see that what you are saying here completely undermines your entire argument?
Answer me this, because no one else has been bold enough to answer. Why are you concerned with scripting at all? Why does it bother you? How are the scripters harming you? How are they obstructing you from mining? They're not bothering you, right? So what's your beef with them?
Does anyone remember what the problem with script mining is at all? Or have we hated it for so long we don't remember why we hate it anymore? Script mining over saturates the market with ores, it lowers the values of the ores, it makes the mining playstyle less viable for your True and Honest™ players. So if you are going to propose that the value of ores be annihilated, you are directly attacking the viability of mining for the True and Honest™ players. But worse than that, you seem not to see that if that were to happen, the scripters would indeed come back if ores ever did gain value again. If you don't care about ore values then why do you care about scripting?
My suggestions increase the challenge to players in a way that decreases the efficiency of scripting, while increasing the efficiency of certain parts of the mining process that scripters already power through anyway. Your suggestion is to kill mining so the scripters go away. What you are saying is extremely unreasonable.
Once again, I have never claimed that scripting wouldn't be possible with my suggestions, and have even noted it. I am talking about reducing the efficiency of scripting by changing the gameplay, which is definitely possible, and my suggestions go a long way towards leveling the playing field.
Deraj has never once claimed that his ideas would stop scripters. And frankly, his ideas aren't making things easier for them, they're already bypassing all the clicking anyways. Making it less painful for those of us actually sitting at the computer isn't helping them. They're not there, and they don't care. It's a few lines of script for them.
And frankly, I find it rather inappropritate that you're taking a simple discussion and twisting it into some type of subtle accusation that he's a scripter and uses illegal macros, which is not the case at all.
AUTO MINE helps both
AUTO FILL PACKIE helps both, scripters will now use packies
doing away with fire beetle hurts honest player, scriptors do not use
doing away with recall hurts honest player, scripters will just rewrite their scripts
He thinks that mining requires a lot of key strokes where in fact with the cc and a small macro requires very few strokes and I am told that the EC can basically do his AUTOMINE function so please tell me he know anything about mining. Does he know what a recall script is which most scripters use and yes miners recall to their fav mining spots too. Does he know what a rail is. there are some really complex scripts out there and he will do nothing to stop them all he will do is hurt the honest player and make it easier for the scripter to make more money. He says that people will not address his points and there have been many address his points, he just doesn't want to hear it. But yet he will not answer basic questions when it comes to resource gathering or even how to do the basic things but yet he say he knows how to "FIX" UO.
There are only 2 ways to fix this problem
#1 ban all scripters/multiboxers and we all know that will never happen, EA depends to much on their money.
#2 Allow all players to use scripts and make the playing field equal and again we all know that will not happen, see #1.
And we could also throw in the SHUT DOWN RMT SITES and we all know that will never ha[ppen for the same reason as stated above.
If knowing how things really work is considered being narrow minded then I guess I am narrow minded.
Congratulations on your 20 year run. To answer your question, I can stop him from recall-mining with my suggestions, which I bolded in your quote. I cannot stop him from programming a route, which the scripter you observed would have to do if he wished to continue scripting. This brings up many possible risks such as running into monsters. His pack horse is exposed. The complexity of the decision making logic he has to include in his script increases considerably as now he has to deal with such issues as how to get back to the forge when the packhorse is full at any given point in his route. His overall yield is undeniably diminished from having to walk rather than recall and if fire beetle smelting is removed from the equation, the yield is diminished even more. To reiterate, bots excel when it comes to repetitive tasks. But walking around a mountain, filling up a packhorse, and walking back to a forge is not as simple as recalling around with a fire beetle. Is it impossible to script? Doubtful. But the situation I described is far more complex from a decision-making angle than our present situation.
You seem to be having a lot of trouble with this concept. Auto-mine and auto-fill are less clicks for the player. This is undeniable. You're telling me now that it's easier for the scripter. Yes, it is 2-3 less lines of code in their script, I acknowledged this in an earlier post. Except, there is barely any impact on yield. Both the scripter and the True and Honest™ player are benefiting from this, except this wouldn't change the scripter's reality of having to now transport that ore back to the forge. Streamlining this part of the process will not have a significant impact on yield for either of them. The difference is now the the player's life is a little easier, and the scripter continues to be indifferent because they never cared about the number of repetitive clicks their bot had to do while they slept anyways.Absolutely I am. But at the same time, I also want there to be more demand for sources. I want players to be able to jump on their miner, pound some rocks and hack at some trees and make a tidy profit for their time. The scripters will still be off doing their thing, but their yields won't be the same. They will not be able to over-saturate the market with resources and as a result there will be a greater demand and greater rewards for the True and Honest™. I want trade, a better economic ecosystem, scarcity of resources, and player interaction. What I don't want is all of us living in our little single player bubble worlds filling up our houses with piles of 60k ingots so we can literally throw them in the garbage for clean up points. This is a sign that things are messed up.
Not really, this is more like dismissing all of my finer points and pretending that it's addressing my "whole" point, which doesn't make sense because you are unable to dismantle anything I've said. This isn't just about prices, this is about trade and economy. Restoring the value of ore is a part of that. If you cannot give me a reason why scripters are detrimental to the gameplay, you have no place in this conversation.I could offer a snarky reply to your snarky question, but in all seriousness, yes. I am very familiar with macros. I play the CC with no real interest in the EC. Auto-mine, no matter how you want to spin it, is a superior and no-brainer way to improve the UX over "holding my finger on a key" as you suggested. Scripters are already auto-mining, so what's your beef.
How is script mining harmful to UO's gameplay and your experience?
Maybe you should go back and reread. WOULD you please use your brain do you really not know why cheating is bad in a game are you serious? How old are you? Seriously, how old are you that you would even ask that.
"Cheating is detrimental to UO because ______________"