Recent change to killing things while afk, specifically mercs and pets

They very recently suspended about 400 people by mistake because a GM did not investigate and acted too quickly going off the word of 1 person. They were all overturned because there was a major uproar over it. A single person cant really cause an uproar. I am almost certain people will be wrongfully caught in this. Probably not innocent but most likely from having no idea this hidden change took place and doing something that has been ok for many years.

The only reason this change was caught is because there was a discussion going on in the TLP forums about a player being moved to the zone line for doing this. Someone looked up the rules to clarify and found a new entry had just been made 2 days prior to the post. Then as the discussion continued the new entry was actually updated to be far more specific in the wording to make certain pets and mercs were not ok.

People now need to be highly aware of their surroundings when they go AFK or simply log out until they get back. This is the only reason i made this post in the first place, to make people aware of the change before they get punished for it.

damn go for the juggular motherlee!

"If you need to go away for longer than a few seconds please move your character to an empty part of the zone or log out completely."

This part is hilariously out of touch.

I'm fine with the change in policy though, because either you want to play the game or you don't. The loss of ambiguity covers DBG when they're taking action against botters. This is a good thing. Secondary point is that it's nice to zone in and feel like you're actually able to interact with other players instead of people who are AFK for weeks. It's nice to have the world feeling more alive. Nobody should feel entitled to gaining XP while they sleep. I tried it once a few years ago; it wasn't fun and I didn't gained much from it. I woke up and my characters were dead.

They forgot to inform us how it is not fun to play that way. Silly geese.

It's such a shame to see the players objecting to a change like this. I remember the golden years on these forums where a change like this would be in 99% support. It only confirms my theory that the current players are nothing but 1% newbies, 19% old timers hoping for the glory days to return, and 80% engaging in some kind of shady behavior.

I came back to try the new expansion early this year and was disgusted with the loss of control the devs seemed to have. The balance of the game is well under the control of exploiters. I'm guessing the dev team has no idea of what and how powerful pet swarming is.

I am disgusted as how much the TLP is impacting live. Stealing resources, forcing unneeded changes 8 years after the fact and on and on. The melee change that went in went in the way it did because it tweaked both the tlp and live, not because it was the best fix for melee on live.

Some of these people left the game years ago for various reasons. Not to be seen or heard at least with money to support this game at all since. Please let them have what they want with the TLP but don't make it at the expense of those of us who kept the lights on and footed the bill for all that time between. I didn't pay to play this game for 11 years to see it changed monthly into something else based on tlp requests or concerns.

This is a good change for live as well as tlp servers.

It's not surprising they are focusing more attention on their money maker. While the live servers slowly lose subs due to little content to do, players re roll on the TLP servers or just stop playing altogether. We vets all know the reasons why all of this happened and it's certainly not the players fault.

The game would be much better if live got as much support as the tlp people. They almost have an attitute that people on live have played the game for years and won't stop paying not matter how terrible the content and service is, but tlp will if we don't cater to them and hand and foot.

Changes on tlp should not affect live at all. They are 2 different things, with different rules and cultures. Also, these are people who will only pay for the game when only classic and kunark are available. After that, they quit and don't pay for the game for years until another tlp server. Please stop catering to the lowest end customers and start caring about the people who have been keeping this game afloat for 16 years!!!!!

I do not want to play on a classic server, and you guys can keep all that stuff over there and not have it leaking onto live. The melee "fix" should have been a real fix to balance out melee and casters by adding power to melees to bring them in line with mages, wizards, necros, enchanters, clerics etc.

I am glad I do not play a mage, they are so broken on tlp I cannot imagine what they will do to live mages when they "fix" them

An exploit is an unaccepted use of a bug or unintended use of in-game features. AFK use of pets has been an intended and accepted practice for like 15 years, and similiarly the AFK use of mercs in this same fashion has been an intended and accepted practice since their inception. It was never an exploit, as someone else mentioned the only reason for the change is likely due to the fact that these people are now gaining money and items due to this which the Devs do not like, so they have changed their position in an extreme way.

Since they can tell when we have been afk for an extended period of time, they could have just added a flag that functions along the same lines as AFK, but is not outwardly visible. This flag would auto activate and deactivate under the same conditions as auto afk on and off; and then while this server side flag is on you would not receive any loot or plat from kills that your pet/mercs do without right clicking the corpses. Another option would be for them to have it set so that you would not be able to auto loot any plat or items off of a mob to which your pet or merc did 100% of the damage, which is similar to how under those circumstances with a pet you get less xp.

AFK use of mercs or pets has never been an "intended" use.

Do some research on the boards around the time when mercs first came to be in game. Devs and pie flat out told the community it was fine and working as intended. With the advent of free to play and the advanced looting system their tune has changed which is fine but they need to come out publicly and say it for all to see. not reword some paragraph of a document no one will see or rely on people pointing out that fact.

All mercs should be banned for afk playing not responding to tells

Wow, if you are caring for a toddler you probably should turn your attention to the toddler not video games.

Reminds me of the horror stories of parents neglecting their children to play eq back in the day. Looks like that behavior never goes away. Disgusting!

so reading this whole thread ... isn't the point of a game to play when u are able for rewards and fun and yes occasional life interruptis happens ... i don't envision a sign on my front door ... do not interrupt gaming in progress ... or not having to run to rebalance a washer occasionally. But don't get the point of setting up then going to work or a movie etc. On the surface this sounds good if handled correctly.

I support the change, but I've never used that method of gameplay.

As for them banning folks, I'd imagine they'd closely watch and attempt to communicate before something happenned.

I think you missed his/her sarcasm.

All,

I do not personally use AFK killing but figured I would throw my cents.

I have only seen AFK happening a few times. In my personal experience, it appeared to be raiders using mercs to get experience possibly after a raid day was over. Minus the AFK swimmers in POK, the person(s) were considerate in picking an out-of-the-way-place to setup their toon(s) to allow mercs to kill a small number of mobs that would agro them. Heck, I even watched their mercs do it while waiting for spawns doing hot progression. I thought it was a great way to get that experience back without wasting their time and affecting others.

I hate to say this but it appears to me that all this seems to be related to the TLP servers. Someone or people must be using this style to farm items in current camps or disrupt others trying to farm items. It seems unfortunate that some bad apples are killing the tree that was been around for sometime.

Discussing this change and other changes recently, most of them seem to spawn from the TLP servers. I have tried to ignore the rampant complaining coming from their servers/boards but, really maybe it is time to focus some of these resources in reigning in some of their complaining.

Rykard

What will happen to all of the AFK raiders? When their accounts are banned by DBG and the population is thinned out even more, will raid events be tuned to 18-24 players max? You know, the ones who are actually at the keyboard for the whole event. Or will we all be playing on one server soon?

These sorts of policies make me LOL. I've only seen afk killing a few times. None of which caused a problem. Maybe it's a TLP thing, I dunno. I would rather see them ban all mercs forever. Did they think this wouldn't happen?

I will say this, half of our raid force is going to get banned if AFK killing is enforced.. HAHA.