Again, nobody has to smile. but if it's in the ToS then you're right I guess. (but this is very wrong in my opinion) Also, I meant by saying "What's wrong with Robotic Play?" that there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG with playing maplestory while watching TV. This game was made for it, just like runescape. what do you suggest? watching the screen 100% of time? what's the point? (I would love to get a response)
I think we can all agree that macro botting (using programs to control your character) shouldn't be allowed, since it is unfair to players who play manually, and it will ruin the economy with tons of mesos & rare drops. If you don't agree with that, there is no need to discuss further, since I don't think there is a chance to reach agreement in that case. With that established, I will talk about what's wrong about manually playing without paying attention to the game screen. To other players and to the staff, this is not really different from macro botting. In both cases, the character acts in a mindless fashion with no awareness of the environment. If robotics play is allowed, any macro botter can claim that they are just manually playing without paying attention to the screen. And in many cases (such as summon farming), there is no easy way to tell them apart. This will cause huge problems in rule enforcement against macro botting. Moreover, MapleStory is not only about mindless grinding. Many (if not most) players enjoy its social aspect. Therefore, it is very reasonable that administration wants to encourage player interaction, and require some basic interaction amoung players. Finally, if you think grinding is too boring, you can defninitely watch a TV show on another screen, as long as you are paying enough attention to the game to respond to others. Paying attention to 2 things isn't really that difficult. I do it all the time while selling leech. Audiobook is is great too. I am done with this argument and won't reply anymore about this topic. It's fine if you don't agree with me. If you really feel so strongly about it then maybe you should find server that allows robotic play.
I agree that macro botting is wrong. Again, there was never a rule regarding paying enough attention to the screen - not paying attention in other games=losing. (Here comes the problem) You can't lose that way in MapleStory, at least not here - there's autopot and many other ways like leeching (Which I consider the worst thing ever happened to maplestory). There are many other ways you can handle this problem quite easily - like disabling autopot and some features. Most of MapleStory was mindlessly grinding, do you know how many hours you needed to grind to get to level 120? (It was known as one if not the most grindy game of that time) Yes maplestory is also about socialising but I don't remember anyone forcing me to talk or respond to other players lol I never understood why people hate macro botting while buying leech or leeching other players themselves - that's really hypocrite. I'd love to hear your opinion about this. Also, I don't play this server but I wanted to share my opinion about that and listen to other opinions. that's the beauty of freedom of speech.
https://royals.ms/forum/threads/id-has-been-deleted.119000 Yet another. In this case the rule against robotic play was quoted even though the ban was for macrobotting, and permanent.
... ... ... I just realized, that by constantly buying huge amounts of Heartstoppers (because my DK is literally addicted to them) I have encouraged people to try farm those little sweets for the first time (because they have seen others do it for ages) and because they didn't have much experience, they failed to "play robotic" properly (by which I mean, they played "too" robotic, as opposed to others who manage to play just semi-robotic) and therefore get permanently banned from a game they enjoyed playing. I am to blame for this ban and maybe many others, and it kind of feels bad... Maybe in the future I will use Cider instead of Heartstoppers. It should be a bit more healthy after all (who knows what's inside those ridiculous sweets, they even boost my speed beyond the speed cap!)
What I don't understand about summon farming is that it looks exactly like botting, but somehow as long as you read your chat it's not botting? This isn't intuitive at all and I don't know how new players are supposed to know this without browsing ban appeals themselves. Also, even if you do know but simply miss your chat by mistake because you're multitasking, well sucks for you, you could get perma banned and lose years or progress on this game. Here's a very recent example of someone getting banned for summon farming, seemingly for simply not knowing how to do it without getting banned: https://royals.ms/forum/threads/id-has-been-deleted.119000/ I guess I find it weird that something like this even exists in the game when it creates such a big gray area for people getting banned. As a side note, summon farming also really sucks from a gameplay perspective. It rewards people for semi-afking while not really playing the game. I don't think this is healthy, because it incentives people to spend insane amount of hours on the game (we're talking 8+ hours a day of semi-AFKing for weeks or months). This is just about who has more time to blow doing this while multitasking based off their real world situation. Seems more like botting to me, and doesn't reward actually playing the game. The other thing bad thing about summon farming is that heartstoppers play such a big role in bossing, but attackers have no natural way to obtain them. Players are forced to buy stoppers from a small group of summon farmers. It'd make a lot more sense for stoppers to drop from high level mobs like in Temple of Time or something, so people would actually have to play the game to get them and attackers would have a viable way to acquire them. I'm saying all this as someone who summon farms a lot myself and knows many other summon farmers.
I totally agree with you here. But have you thought about how many popular mobile games are designed? ...Exactly, you enter once every once in a while, tap the screen a few times, and then out. You have been rewarded. Apparently this does something to our brains and it's very sad to see it has made its way into Maple. (I didn't see this type of behavior of AFK-farming when I played GMS, but it could because I didn't look close enough) This is why I, after pondering this for a while, will turn to other attack pots instead. I guess Onyx Apples are viable since they come from a legit source. However, it feels a bit weird to use the "supreme" attack pot for fairly easy things like Zakum, Krexel, Bigfoot and such... To me, it doesn't make sense to have Heartstoppers outside Hounted Mansion as they are a form of Halloween-type candy. Having them in Phantom Forest could make sense, since it's possible that for example Headless Horseman killed a few Voodoos and sneaked out of the Mansion and back into the Forest to enjoy his stolen candy. I completely understand your point though, and having maybe a custom attack pot (with roughly the same effects) drop in Temple of Time could be accepted (by me, personally)
I think this ban is justified. As the GM said, the player recast Bahamit EXACTLY every 60 seconds. If he was really multitasking, the timing wouldn't be so accurate even with an alarm. It takes time to set up the alarm, to switch window, to move your mouse, and so on. Recasting exactly 60 seconds is almost certainly done by a script, which falls into the macro botting category. Also, Bahamut lasts almost 3 minutes. If he was really multitasking, he would most likely renew it between 2 and 4 minutes (which is what I usually end up doing). Renewing it every 1 minute is not natural. Based on the reasoning above, I think that player is indeed macro botting and tried his best to lie and get away with it, and GM did a good job catching him. Maybe he GM should have quoted the Macro botting rule in addition to the robotic play rule, but the punishment is correct
That mobile game analogy is 10/10. A combination of factors makes it exist here while it wasn't there in nearly the same quantity in GMS. Mainly, 4th job mages and SE mules are incredibly widespread due to increased experience rates and insane benefit of having a 4th job mage for selling leech. Also, since there is no end game content besides bossing, attack pots are the bread and butter of the game. I agree that putting heartstoppers outside Haunted Mansion would not make sense thematically. As what you said, I basically had the same thing in mind that something else could be done, perhaps a similar potion with a new name. "Time Elixer, +50 att, last 5minute" with a small drop rate from all ToT mobs. Just a really quick and blunt example. All in all this server has a lot of problems from a gameplay perspective that the original MS didn't have. This is due to the fact that it is a private server with increased exp, drop, and mesos rate, while also having unlimited NX. Lots of exploitable things in the old game like HP washing, leeching, and summon farming are even more accessible and exploitable now. All of these problems are created because this is a private server, and make the game worse. I like to raise the discussion about these things because I really believe solutions are out there that would make the server and game better, but the hard part is getting people to realize it. Lots of backlash of course as people hate any idea of change, but I still believe lol.
I am not going to enter the discussion on whether or not bans are justified. That is the role of staff and I am glad I don't have that role. Still, I want to throw out another very similar example: https://royals.ms/forum/threads/ban-appeal.118296/ This person was banned for macro-botting too, but claims it was just regular robotic play. As has been mentioned in this thread, it's really hard to see exactly where the distinction is, and I guess this is the topic of the thread. I feel like a regular customer, who has recently been made aware of where my goods originate from. Previously, I gladly bought Heartstoppers, but now I think very differently... Prices has increased from about 300K to 450K recently and some said this was due to the decreased drop rate. I don't believe this, because that change happened long ago. The increase in price probably came from people realizing that their AFK farming can easily be mistaken for macro-botting and, being afraid of the many recent bans, they quit farming, leading to a severely decreased supply. Let me add something more... I sincerely believe that a botter (unless he is totally out of brains) will LOOK much more like a regular player than someone using an alarm. With an alarm, I only need to press tab + one other button + occasionally feeding pet. This can be done quickly and easily, in an accurate way. With a macro, however, I doubt anyone would script it to re-cast every x:th second. The botter would surely use a randomizer having it re-cast say in intervals of x +/- 5 seconds. (Unless he tried to get banned on purpose, of course)
Hmm, I think the 2nd case you mentioned is even more obvious, since not only did the player recast every 85 seconds, he also failed to repond when warped to jail map. Hard to imagine any legitimate player giving no response and continue to do the same thing when he sunndenly finds himself in a different map. As someone who summon farmed many stoppers myself, I believe the delayed inflation of stoppers was caused by a different reason. You see, the drop rates were decreased on the same patch as the Valentine & Lunar New Year event, which means stopper farmers were compensated by envelopes. For the first month after the drop rate decreased, most of the 20 channels of the 2 stopper farming locations (namely Sophilia's Bedroom and Toy Room) are occupied due to the huge profits from envelopes, keeping the supply high enough despite the lower drop rate. But after the Valenting & Lunar New Year event ended, the envelope incentive disappeared, occupation of stopper farming locations went back to normal, and the decreased drop rate is showing its effect. In short, inflation was indeed caused by the lower drop rate (instead of banning a couple of macro botters). The effect was just delayed due to the envelopes in event. Finally, if you haven't farmed stopper before, I would suggest you try it a couple of times, and you will understand how impossible it is to recast summon EXACTLY every X seconds during an hour-long farming session while doing other work. In response to your argument about randomized recast timing with macro-bot programs, I would like to point out that not all macro botting programs include this feature. As far as I know, most botting programs in GMS didn't include this "randomized racast timing" feature, possibly because it wasn't needed in GMS to avoid being caught (GMS didn't do anything about botting at the time). I believe botters here are limited by the tools available to them (many of which are adapted from GMS botting programs), and most botters are not proficient enough in coding to modify a botting program.
For some numbers about stopper prices, Before the drop rate nerf, stoppers were at 300k/ea and dropped at 60/hr for a total of 18m/hr in stopper income. Add 7m/hr from npc at voodoos. Total income: 25m/hr or so. After the drop rate nerf but during the event: Stoppers were at 350k/ea and dropped at 40/hr. This was supplemented by 10 envelopes/hr @ voodoos and 20 envelopes/hr at psycho jacks. This adds up to 14m/hr from stoppers + 8-16m from envelopes (they were 800k each for a long time until the last week when they spiked for some reason). Total income: 30m or so from jacks, 29m or so from voodoos. After the event: Stoppers are now stabilizing around 450k/ea and drops at 40/hr. This is the same income as before the drop rate nerf. Total income: 25m/hr or so at voodoos. The price of stoppers briefly spiked after the event ended because the maps were literally empty, probably because of a combination of lower income and people taking a short break after an event where they probably played a lot to make mesos. I know my farming output went from 1200+ stoppers/day to less than half that. Ever since stoppers broke the 500k mark, a lot more channels have been taken, indicating that people are interested in farming them again.
I think you misunderstood me here. I didn't mean the price increased because of a couple of farmers getting banned. I meant that it increased because a much larger number of farmers stopped farming in fear of getting banned. However, my theory (which made sense to me first - a player who never farmed anything at all, basically) now falls short after you two provided some facts. I appreciate that, as I sometimes tend to talk too much about things that I don't know anything about. May I get a cookie if I can accomplish this? On a serious note though, I believe you are right - it's probably very hard. It has not been my point, however, to discuss whether or not the banned people have been using Macro. I really wish people could be honest in ban appeals but to come back to the topic, it doesn't matter to me. The current game state encourages robotic play, and that is the problem to me. Of course botting is game-breaking in its nature, and it should be punished accordingly, but as people have stated, robotic play CAN do the same thing. Botting is just the next step in laziness (same way as robotic play is the next step in laziness from "regular" AFK farming) The whole idea of farming things this way is one that I don't like and therefore I have never played the game this way (at the expense of meso income, of course) I don't know how to respond to this one without sounding like someone who encourages botting. But if we switch our focus away from botting and just look at things in general... People shouldn't limit themselves to what a "tool" can do. If I want to do something, I get the tools required for it. If they don't exist, I have to make the tools myself. (The topic of how tools developed from a sharpened rock into much more, could be the topic of another discussion. Just get my point: If man limited herself to what a sharpened rock could do... well you get it.) But I believe that people who've learned coding by creating bots have now progressed onto more interesting software than bots for a private Maple server.
And I apologize for focusing too much on countering your arguments without looking at the bigger picture (i.e. the general idea you are trying to convey) Ultimately I think it is a gray area, and I am fine with whatever decision administration makes about it.
