AFK Merc killing

Something seriously needs to be done about this. I just saw a guy 3 boxing with two caster mercs and one healer merc. Here is the kicker though. The dude was AFK! He was in The Grounds and all three of his actual toons were all afk and his mercs were farming for him.

You need to take away the ability to turn off the auto afk. Also, Mercs should be changed so that if your characters are set to AFK, your merc doesn't attack or cast spells. I consider what that person was doing as cheating.

I agree it's rediculous they allow it, but they do. I petitioned against this once and a GM replied saying it is within their rules so there is nothing they can do about it. He then went on to say though that being AFK means you cannot react to unforseen circumstances. Reading between the lines I just took this as a "train him/her!" message.

It would be very unfortunate for this person if someone were to take over their camp and inadvertently overpull/wipe.

It is a feature now. In fact if you inadvertently pull and they somehow screenshot it you are the one in the wrong and that will face punishment. Stupid but thats what you get with a shoestring budget and 5 devs.

It's really bad one Test, Grounds always have 15+ people in it at anytime but /who and 13/15 are AFK, I just go to my camp or find a spot that has the mobs I need for my Daily and move on. If you want to AFK merc kill at level 100 go ahead I'll run HA and in 20 mins get 40+ aas, those over pulls are bad, and /ooc over pull sorry is always a nice way of letting them know I was truly sorry, if they are not around to see it oh well !!

Just go and kill and ignore them. If they are afk they have no claim over the mobs. It doesn't really affect us. No point in purposely training them, the exp from afk killing is quite low, I'd imagine compared to actually playing.

Its much lower than actually playing. Unfortunately no one can actually play that long. If I play for four hours. I have to kill 6x as much as an AFKer in that time to meet what they did in the same day. Could probably do that easily. But so can they. And then they are afk for the next 18 hours still getting exp while I'm not.

The way to handle this is to claim they are macroing while afk. I mean do you know if they are or not? That's for the GMs to decide. Who knows, maybe they'll login one day and have a 3 day vacation for it and learn to knock it off. I mean 3 days of lost exp is enough to get some peoples' attentions. If the GM thinks they are macroing and they are afk.. then thats how it rolls.

The long term way of dealing with this is to ensure this thread reaches about 20 pages worth of complaints. That will get the attention of policy makers and they should consider making a change that prohibits this behavior. It used to be that running macros from gaming mice and keyboards as well as cloning keys from programs were not allowed. With enough support, SOE changed that to actions performed by players must be done by players AT the Keyboard. With enough support, we can get this to include mercs as well.

Code is in the game already to fix this. Can simply take the option out that prevents merc auto passive. So even if the AFK tag doesn't come up (from being disabled) after about 15 minutes of inactivity, the mercs autopassive and the afk players get killed. Course... there's ways to prevent that. And those ways lead to real bans.

So lets get this to 20 pages. If you disagree with anything I said, please debate me. It will only help the thread grow.

This is the most sensible reply I've ever seen on a subject that keeps regurgitating.

So lie to possibly get somebody possibly banned even though you may not like it, it's not against any rules and has been confirmed as such? While I don't afk merc kill I know now who to avoid I bet you would petition me and my 3 alts for being afk and gaining merc rebuffs......

I like when i run across these people. I am given a chance to train them, which can be a challenge in itself. Its like a mini guide event popping up.

Ya know you should read the rules about training people expecially folks that are not breaking the game rules before posting about something you are doing that could get you in trouble.

Its for the GM to determine, not me. How am I supposed to know someone is rebuffing themselves every couple of hours using afk macros or not? I don't have the time to confirm it. I'll let a GM figure that one out instead. If the GM thinks they are macroing while afk, then they take action. If they don't, then nothing happens.

What is there to fear?

Not for nothing but some box set ups can be so effective that it looks like I am AFK but in truth I am just sitting there watching my boys chew things up. I pay for all my accounts and if I want to partially use them I have that right especially for characters I maintain actively. Of course sometimes I just fall asleep in the late hours and for that I apologize and I am rarely that surprised to come back dead.

However I do call out rotting items if anyone is around to see as a courtesy for having to put up with my awesomeness

is there ever an end to people complaining about something someone else has or is able to do?

in this case, it is allowed, so you can do it too.

i've been able to put 3 accounts on at the same time on a 1.5mb/s net speed with 2 gigs of ram and a single core cpu only a couple years ago, so please dont argue that your pc cant handle it and its not fair.

you either do it or you don't. they obviously didn't set up camp on top of you, they were there first.

if you dont like it (they aren't actually there) Take Over!

Or we can get this to 20 pages and watch them change the options ingame or make a policy change. Your contribution to that cause is appreciated however.

The AFK group isn't moving around. The group controls a limited area with only a certain number of mobs in it. Everquest is a massive game. If you can't find a place to exp in this game then you've got bigger issues than AFK groups.

Maybe you're jealous that you don't have the resources to do the same? If you can't do it then why should other people be able to? Maybe you feel the group is getting something for nothing when you have to work hard for it? Stop hating on other people and concern yourself with yourself. Stop looking over your neighbors fence.

Some people aren't happy in life unless they're causing grief for other people. Go play the game and enjoy yourself. Also, be careful what you wish for. If the devs get to messing with Merc behavior then they'll probably stop working all together.

1) Not being able to turn off Auto-AFK or Auto Merc Passive would be a terrible idea. I personally don't use either of these. (Though auto merc passive could be convenient.)

2) If they DID do such a thing, all it would take to get around it is a program that hits a hotkey every 5 minutes. (Or just stick a quarter in your left arrow key, and your key is held down 100% of the time... with the side effect that your character spins forever.)

If it isn't disrupting your game play, I wouldn't do anything about it. Sony says that is OK, but they do say that zone disruption is not okay. I've had a case where AFK killers doing both.

I was working on my Hunters achievement in a particular zone, checking on it once a night for a couple weeks, and there was always three people spread around an area to get as much agro as possible and letting the mercs do all the work. This spot happened to be right on top of where a named spawned. After two weeks if this, I got sick of it and killed the named when it spawned right in front of their group. It felt like killing stealing, but afterwards I don't think it was because they were obviously not there and had no claim to the NPC.

So my advice is to not bother with them unless they are disrupting your gameplay. If they are, then you can do what you need to fix the problem.

I haven't run into that much, but I don't look for it. Once, when I needed a mob in a specific area that someone else was in, I sent him a tell asking if it was ok for me to kill one mob when it spawned. I waited a few minutes and when I got no response I went ahead and killed the mob I needed. Even if he had not been afk, he probably would have said sure, go ahead. But I can see how that would be annoying if they get agro first and the merc jumps on it and kills it.