The AFK elephant in the room.

[Pups323]

I know name/shaming/witch hunting isnt allowed, but can we take a minute to talk about the giant afk elephant in the room?

I did a quick tour of marjame ravine and found every lair had 1-2 people at it. No one responded to tells, and they stayed there for 48+ hours at a time.

I check when i wake up at 5 am, when i get home at 4 pm, and before bed at 10pm.

So I wonder to myself how prevalent the problem is so i did a quick survey and found the same issue in kamhir drift, and morimar basalt. Even to a lesser extent in inner/outer raz.

A seemingly endless supply of people drinking enough red bull to kill the same lair every 5 minutes for 24/7.

Now i have taken to STF to report said people a few times. In fact, every day for almost a month straight. And guess what, my list of over 20+ people who do this 24/7 are still there.

So my only conclusion is this activity must be allowed. I've heard in the past this was punished and people recieved bans, but I am just not seeing it.

[Mithlas]

I actually use lair reives to skillup sometimes, so I'm guilty of camping at least one spot. I was working on magic skillup for my GEO, and was camping one of the lair reives. Someone came by once the reive started and simply blasted it away. I attempted to chat with them, but I got no response. After two or three spawns of them repeating their actions (I believe they were running from Reive to Reive) and just ignoring me, I simply left the area.

[Pups323]

1 person actively camping a lair and chating isn't exactly what i was talking about. More so the 20+ people who are 'not so actively' camping it and dont respond to tells but manage to kill it 24/7 for days straight.

I myself use lairs/colonizations to skill up as well since they have 0 evasion, but like you if someone sent me a tell they would get a responce.

[peculiar]

1 person actively camping a lair and chating isn't exactly what i was talking about. More so the 20+ people who are 'not so actively' camping it and dont respond to tells but manage to kill it 24/7 for days straight.

I myself use lairs/colonizations to skill up as well since they have 0 evasion, but like you if someone sent me a tell they would get a responce.

a) Why do you care?
b) How are they hurting you?
c) Why should someone respond to you if they don't want to? Just because you respond that means everyone has to?
d) How do you know they aren't just zonked there and afk most of the time? Just because they are there doesn't mean they are THERE the full time.

Lastly, why would you actively seek to get people banned for something that has almost no impact on you at all?

[Pups323]

a) i care because it means i have to find different lairs so i can participate in to actively farm (and see B)
b) if i cant find a lair to farm i cant get bayld/skill ups/skirmish pops/cloaks
c) you dont have to respond to me, but if a gm shows up and you are still farming and not responding to him dont be suprised if you get a vacation
d) i dont know if they are there 100% of the time, just the 3 times a day i check, see my above post...but lets be serious, there are magically 20+ individuals with the stamina to farm 24/7? come on how stupid do you think we are.

Because it actively affects the economy and availability of HQPB (devs think there are a lot more than there really are), prices of skirmish items, etc. There would be a lot less ergon weapons if only legit ones were allowed. Its not the person who is buying's fault, they have no way of knowing where it came from, but at the same time, but if only 1 ergon had been made to date the developers would be more likely to acknowledge the need for alternative forms of acquiring HQPB.

You can try to justify it all you want, in the end its cheating, and against the ToS, just because the STF seems to be super laxed and not banning for it doesnt mean they shouldnt.

[detlef]

You're probably right that AFK bots (and let's be real, that's what they are) skew the number of HPB (it's not HQPB, please don't let that catch on). As I recall they did a sweep many months ago to catch reive bots as well as people who were farming JP afk. I'd thought that they had remained vigilant since then but I guess not? I've not checked the usual spots on my server but I wouldn't be surprised if SE has been slacking.

That said, I've made 2 Idris and it was absolutely horrible finding HPB to buy after said sweeps. The supply was horrible and you were stuck buying maybe a single here or there which is not fun when you need so many. So I'm sure a ton of what I bought was botted and I even refused to buy from certain people at the time but that just made me finish slower.

I'm not convinced that SE would adjust the acquisition methods or quest requirements unless some absolutely massive exploit was being perpetuated and that's clearly not what this is. Those people you see out there are taking real, serious risks with their accounts and that's why there are so few of them. It's actually funny because after they made their last sweep they went ahead and nerfed Courier Coalition from... I want to say 16.8k Bayld to 10k something Bayld today. So no, I don't think what you're recommending would affect SE's balance at all.

[dasva]

That said, I've made 2 Idris

Geez just making 1 epeoltry made me want to slit my wrist. How'd you do it man

[detlef]

GEO is incredible and my group needs the crutch so that's why I felt it was necessary. As for how it was funded, I'd say one of them was fully funded just from selling etched memories when they were hot. The other thing I did was Couriers on many, many mules daily. The AH update has made things a lot easier for both buyers and sellers. I think people are more willing to convert and sell now that it isn't necessary to bazaar.

I think I'd prefer for SE to go easier on these people for now while they find a longer term solution to keep people creating new bayld. Hopefully something beyond just the WKR event they have periodically.

[OmnysValefor]

a) Why do you care?
b) How are they hurting you?
c) Why should someone respond to you if they don't want to? Just because you respond that means everyone has to?
d) How do you know they aren't just zonked there and afk most of the time? Just because they are there doesn't mean they are THERE the full time.

Lastly, why would you actively seek to get people banned for something that has almost no impact on you at all?

Don't even need to read pups' reply to answer this.

A) Care because the game should remain fair to everyone.
B) Botting does indeed negatively affect the economy as a whole, while positively lining someone's pockets.
C) Sure, one person not replying, 5 people not replying.. Okay but no replies is pretty suspicous.
D) If she sees them attacking the reive, they're probably there.

[dasva]

GEO is incredible and my group needs the crutch so that's why I felt it was necessary. As for how it was funded, I'd say one of them was fully funded just from selling etched memories when they were hot. The other thing I did was Couriers on many, many mules daily. The AH update has made things a lot easier for both buyers and sellers. I think people are more willing to convert and sell now that it isn't necessary to bazaar.

I think I'd prefer for SE to go easier on these people for now while they find a longer term solution to keep people creating new bayld. Hopefully something beyond just the WKR event they have periodically.

Yeah guess buying it would be easier if you had a decent supply and was making the monies. I got real stubborn cause someone said it couldn't be farmed so I did. I did the courier mule thing too as well as multibox reives which led to using the parts for multibox balyd skirmish runs. Fun times