Hide AFK Players

The game doesn't care if you are AT YOUR KEYBOARD but otherwise engaged in something else (surfing, Facebook, /b/, adult websites, whatever) either online or perhaps just sitting at your keyboard but watching TV. It only knows that you are not interacting with the game world. That is what AFK really is defined as. Its loitering at a business while not even buying anything more or less. Sure, you are actually present and COULD actually buy something but otherwise you are just taking up space and acting like a vagrant. Being idle for hours on end, with no interaction what so ever is no excuse when someone takes you camp because you have not moved for hours. Why should it be an excuse now? Its understandable that people have it sunk deeply into their moral code that such and such is an entitlement, even if it is petty and frivolous, and they will make complete out of themselves to argue that position until they are blue in the face.

I would rather see such people faded out or booted from the game and have some extra frame rate. I am not going to buy a new computer just to appease unreasonable people.

We aren't going to lose our channel bot to appease you either.

Fully visible AFK.

I look at it like this, if you don't care about inconveniencing others by the lag you cause them, why should anyone be concerned with your inconvenience?

Hey! I saw me! Everyone wave at the gelatinous cube!

Forgot to mention, in that video I spotted one (1) AFK player, Saintly, that appears in shadowman mode (only name & weapons visible). So, why it works properly for 1 player and doesn't for the other 99, I cannot explain.

I wonder if it has to do with people that physically put up the AFK tag and others that get it automatically applied.

Just a pure guess though.

Loitering? Now it's loitering to merely be logged into the game? All those poor traders and barters are loitering if they don't sell or buy something? Who knew??
How dare anyone who downloaded and logged into the game not be doing something every single second they are in game! How dare a player place their character in a zone in hopes of receiving a buff or three! How dare a player leave their character unattended! The horror!

Funny how it's supposedly reasonable to insist that people, the vast majority in all likelihood, who don't have any lag problems should jump through hoops, get "booted" from the game and otherwise be expected to inconvenience themselves; while it's not "unreasonable" to refuse to upgrade ones system or use the myriad of ways already available to reduce the lag on their own systems, including ways to avoid both Plane of Knowledge and the Guild Lobby entirely. Of course, it couldn't be the fault of the "not unreasonable" people that their refusal to remedy their own systems might just be the problem. It must be the fault of everyone else! The moral code of entitlement in all its glory.

I'd pay extra for a "Hide all players except..." list. I can't stand seeing the collective vomit of polygons in the guild lobby or zoning out of a heroic adventure into 10 people standing on top of each other, or a task NPC enveloped by campfires and giant PCs. These things just scream "poor quality game". Time for these things to be addressed.

Esp. considering EQ runs on a Pentium.

Until mouse movement registers as being 'active,' the auto AFK is a fail.

The hide afk in non combat zones doesn't appear to be working 100%. I see some people who are marked AFK in the guild lobby that are a plain human model and it won't hide them.

One of the QA devs popped onto Bristle to investigate the weirdness I reported in that video. One of the things we were able to identify and reproduce was that plain human appearance that refuses to be hidden. Seems to be some sort of malfunction when going AFK while under certain illusions. We were able to cause the Hide to fail at will using the Gelatinous Cube and Blood Skellie illusions. For whatever reason, the illusioned player does not render as the expected shadowman when hidden, but instead displays the n00b human (Doug) model.

Least it gives QA a starting point.

How many servers allow you to keep an active connection but otherwise do absolutely nothing as far as utilizing the service for basically infinity? Does your online bank keep you logged on for weeks? How about any distance learning pages? Your electric company? Insurance? Heck not even SoE's commerce page allow indefinite connection time. If you are not using what is offered than you get booted. Common sense....which is very much lacking here. If EQ allows you to sit on your backside doing absolutely nothing for 4-8 hours, than that is being VERY generous compared to the rest of the internet. You can get your buffs and all that crap in 8 hours. I like to get buffs too, but if I am leaving the house or going to sleep or know I don't need to use it, the computer gets shut down and the game/world done a favor. Of course, people in EQ feel they are special, and since Facebook or 4Chan doesn't boot anyone if they chose to be logged on for ...I dunno...months while idle than EQ is also obligated to offer the same. Also, Facebook and 4Chan...well it is questionable as to how important they really are but that is another discussion....Bottomline: The merit of indefinite idle time being important is your opinion but some of us think that's BS, have always thought that is BS and that the Dev Team needs to go further, grow a pair and kick the vagrants/loiterers out.

Oh and BTW.. I don't feel entitled to anything. No one is "entitled". Technically, EQ is private property. We buy tickets to come visit in the form of subs/krono, are required a unique ID and that is how we participate. Its not an open, public anon venue. Players may think they run the show, but SoE makes the rules and if they tell you "You need to go home" if you are not going to ride the rides or visit the midway....than you need to go home.

Stop defending SOE and stop telling people how they can play, chat, exist in Norrath.

Time to lock this thread. The AQ is too high.

^^^ Hypocrite.

Stop pushing your lag on people just so you can be lazy. If you want to chit chat, than use Mumble/Skype/Twitter/Teamspeak etc. EQ is not Social Media. If you want social media than log on to that and feel free to piss away time there at your leisure.

No, Leerah. Everybody plays in Norrath, not just you.

Never once has any member of the SOE staff stated that logged in but idle characters contribute to server lag. As we all know it can certainly contribute to client lag, which the auto-AFK is addressing. Your and others assumptions that AFK players contribute to server lag is completely unfounded and until it is confirmed by someone actually in the know, please stop using it as an argument. As someone who has worked in a datacenter environment for the past 14 years, I would actually be dumbfounded if a SOE staffer confirmed your assumption. The science and math just doesn't support it.

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And btw...your comparisons to other online resources earlier? Apples and oranges. Session timeouts on commerce sites, online banking sites, etc. are primarily in place for security reasons...not resource utilization reasons. A little knowledge goes a long ways.

I too am very passionate about AFK players.

I remember I used to AFK in Plane of Tranquility. The music there was fantastic so I could get some homework done in peace, and I'd always see some friends go running by and shoot them a whisper to say hi. Keep in mind this is a social game, and there are a lot of interactions to be had, even if someone is AFK, that you may miss if you hid them.

With that said, I'm locking this thread.