AFK Gump? Please at least try to read before voting, this is why we ended up with Trump

I'm the one reacting like a child?

Wow.

I guess this is supposed to be where I say "I'm out".
Well, I'm not and still sitting here waiting for an open discussion about the automation that I see as a problem.

What reacting emotionally?
I think we must be reading different threads.

If you want emotion, try @Smash a few posts back.

You just wrote-off input from a player with more first hand experience of the topic being discussed than you have. Why not engage a little more constructively?


"So instead of addressing the concerns of players that are in well written, researched and referenced posts"

Show me one.

His first comment to me was this.

Which by the way is where your "conspiracy" reference comes from.

So considering that post, which is essentially telling me what is a problem and what isn't (entirely subjective), and then his following posts where he whinges and moves from his inside voice to his RAGE OUT CAPSLORD style, why would I consider his view of ANY importance? He's like the child in the playground who yells louder and louder when he doesn't get his ice-cream. Not forgetting - I do not know who he is. Do you take the word of strangers that walk up to you on the street?

Heh, well if you are going to passive aggressively let me know that my posts aren't well written, nor researched, nor referenced. There is no point. If you look hard enough you'd see that I have researched and referenced. As for well written - let me guess, grammar and sentence strucuture are subjective?

You both have made up your mind long ago and your opinion is noted on the topic of IDOCs.
Now lets continue the discussion about the problem of automation in relation to IDOCs and other areas.

Why are some forms of automation allowed whilst others are not?

Be it financial or information gained, I believe the automation ban should be consistent across the shard.

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Thanks for the input. This is part of the point I was trying to make, but I "have no clue".

Randomization of the timer means that no one has the exact time it will drop - this means that people will have to actually work in the lead up to the collapse, as well as the smaller crews having a chance at it falling when *gasp, the horror* there is no big bad ProIDoC4Lyf crew around.

@One I will forever stand by my original point which is that the number of people attending IDOCs is incredibly small. Even at the height of IDOC rage-threads in 2017 I would be camping idocs and see no other players show up to oppose iderp. There is so much truth in what Smash said about a randomized timer making the IDOC experience for a solo player much, much worse. Do you honestly think a group like iderp, which has put considerable time and effort into a system, will suddenly get confused and beat out by solo players? They will refine their system and continue to crush, except now solo players will have no chance at all of competing at drop time. It's just not the answer.

Look, this game is meant to be somewhat difficult. It takes no time at all to become wealthy in this game, so these idoc threads just remind me of housing-crisis threads where the outcry seems to be about one month old players who can't immediately access end-game content.

This thread is hard on the head because there are 2 conversations happening that should have nothing to do with one another. If Automation is the thing ruining IDOCs for a player, they are doing it wrong.

But what is keeping a smaller crew from having a chance right now? Literally nothing.
Randomize the timer and the smaller crew has a harder time, because it will be determined only by manpower, and the smaller crew won't have the resources to compete. Right now as things are, they absolutely can.

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Certainly right now the smaller crew will get steamrolled by the larger crew every single time?
Even if the smaller crew has a close to perfect timer, as the big boys do, its the same scenario.

This is not true. I skimmed the older pages of this thread pretty quickly so apologies if you've addressed this, but can you describe your own experiences at Idocs?

My experience at IDOC's has been this:

1. Camp it with a rotation of players who have accounts they can leave logged in.
2. Discover that it is IDOC and wait on that char / other chars. Originally I was of the (mis)understanding it had a random timer, instead of what I now believe is a set 17hrs?
3. Notice the increase in traffic of recallers as it gets close to dropping, get excited.
4. Notice it has fallen and:
a) We are all dead, damn we weren't paying attention at that exact moment.
b) Stealth around as sneaky as possible, acquiring anything that looks expensive (not really possible if anyone whatsoever uses DH one or two times)
5. Be killed by 4-6 Dragons + Mares via 'all kill'.

One of us got some statues once! I have a skull of greed in my house as decoration from an IDOC, lol.

It's true I have no great experience in IDOC's. That isn't the discussion though. Let's not get in to a "this is the way it must be done to be successful" argument, as that just leads to players feeling pressured in to a play(bot)style.

I also don't see myself "playing" the IDOC style very frequently, its kind of a shitty system I wish was never in place. But it is so meh.
I might give it more of a go if there was some type of randomization, as that potentially means that no one really knows the hour, which additionally means those large crews can be caught off guard - allowing a small team or solo to get some nifty items.

I solo IDOCs... I've gotten in blockers and / or loot from the IDOC crews. I do it with my t-hunter, even. I win some, I lose most... I don't go whining about it afterwards, though... nor demand changes so I have a chance to randomly do well at IDOCs opposed to a group of people dedicated to doing ONLY IDOCs.

Well maybe try going through your points 1-5 and look at what didn't work and then try again with a new strategy. The botting isn't why you failed, and I'm still struggling to see why that conversation is occurring alongside the drop timer/idocing conversation. There are easy fixes to your process but like you suggested we don't need to start telling others how to play.

"Let's not get in to a "this is the way it must be done to be successful" argument, as that just leads to players feeling pressured in to a play(bot)style."

I genuinely don't understand this viewpoint. If one has no desire to reflect and improve on their playstyle, and has limited experience on the topic, how do they expect their arguments to hold water?

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Sigh, another one.

I'm not whining. I'm trying to have a discussion on the automation that is crap, in my opinion.

Also not looking to improve my playstyle. Did you just choose not to read my last line?

I have been directly talking about the automation process that is used to gain information on when an IDOC is going to drop. Nothing to do with playstyle, as I have stated I have barely done the thing. The automation is a concern as it is in play in other areas too.

@Vandalin I thought there weren't these groups that would be affected? You seem to agree with this bob chap. Which is it? Will my thoughts be "anti-somegroup" or does "somegroup" not exist?

@Vandalin "Keep their position in game" - which is exactly what I was talking about when I said "keeping those with power, in power".

So... no conspiracy, and I was right, they do exist for that purpose. No problem with that of course, until they start defending potential adjustments to mechanics in order to maintain that position in game.

Gideon has far more insight than me but the options he brought up are pretty much what I was thinking. I think fun can be had right now, but it's entirely on the player to consider WHY they are attending IDOCs (or doing any activity in UOR) in the first place. There are far more efficient ways to get rich. Is that the end goal?

You have issue with automation... do you play the naturalist style of UO? Hand crank out every skill gain? Otherwise, there should be afk gumps for every single skill gain. I mean, skills are a resource used to gain advantage. DOWN WITH AFK MACROING! lol

@JimmyTheHand it's too much effort to navigate that last post you made, it's messy.

If you are stating this

"Also not looking to improve my playstyle. Did you just choose not to read my last line?"

Then everything else you've said in this thread is completely irrelevant. What exactly do you want? If you are happy not understanding the system and being bad at something having only tried it a handful of times, you will never convince anyone here that something needs to be changed. How are you not grasping this? I'm not even trying to attack you personally, but it's crazy to me that you can't address this.