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#Post#: 4231--------------------------------------------------
Alt Account and AFK Discussion
By: Bla Date: January 28, 2018, 3:52 pm
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Some years ago, we used to have a rule not to make "AFK
machines" that prevented you from going afk, and a kick after
e.g. 30 mins of AFK.
Since then this norm has been destroyed and with the "industrial
revolution" recently I see people are even using alts to
increase spawn rates and stay online for many hours to get items
without actively playing.
I think we should move away from this. First of all I think it's
not a very good solution using alts to increase spawn rates,
this gives an advantage to people with alts and alts cost money.
I think people who have one Minecraft account should have the
same advantage as people who have the money to buy 10.
Secondly the server expenses and performance. I feel putting an
alt (or main account) to stay near some farms to gather endless
items for 8 hours while doing something else, isn't really a way
of playing we should encourage. This is an expensive way to play
the game and we could save some money that we could enjoy on
e.g. better performance instead. (Assuming activity and costs
remain high the coming months, otherwise there's not a big
issue). Additionally accounts near some big farms bring down the
whole server tps significantly, so someone putting an alt near
industry and going to sleep may negatively affect the
enjoyability of people who log on to play actively.
I think it might be better if there was maybe a 30 minute kick
after going AFK, people could stay at mob farms, get some items
but not just go to sleep.
So I'm wondering what do you guys think about this?
#Post#: 4232--------------------------------------------------
Re: Alt Account and AFK Discussion
By: AeriOwl Date: January 28, 2018, 3:56 pm
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i don't pay for the server upkeep so i can't really comment on
that aspect
and i'm not sure if having an advantage is an issue considering,
well, it's not like the stuff yqt gets from afking will be used
to compete against me in something (or maybe it will?)
my primary concern is limiting lag, if alts are causing lag then
i think we should definitely kill them in favor of letting
actual players play the game
you do bring up a good point on how instead of paying for the
time it costs for the alts to afk we can instead pay to increase
performance for actual players. this is a really interesting
point and something i'd like to see discussed more
#Post#: 4233--------------------------------------------------
Re: Alt Account and AFK Discussion
By: yqt1001 Date: January 28, 2018, 4:05 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
I like the post industrial revolution status quo but I would be
ok with some regulations. I try my best to not use my alts for
an "unfair" advantage. Only on one night did I use one to afk
farm at two different places. I've never used it to increase
spawns. I'm currently using it to stop mobs in the nether from
spawning so I don't have to worry about them when building.
The problem with an AFK limit of 30 minutes is that there are
farm designs where that simply isn't enough to get it running.
My iron phoenix, for example, takes an hour and a half to get up
to maximum production. If I log out or leave and unload the
chunks, it's broken and will take another hour and a half to get
to max production. This is why when I use it, I start it up once
and leave my alt there for a few days so at least I can enjoy
the game while its running.
If we are looking at it from a server cost perspective, the more
alts afking the better, as it allows us to minimize up time in
the long term if everyone is on afking at once.
#Post#: 4234--------------------------------------------------
Re: Alt Account and AFK Discussion
By: Komrage Date: January 28, 2018, 4:15 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
i only skimmed the post and replies but here's my take
1. afk time is needed to prevent the game from being grindy and
unfun
2. afk time is expensive in server costs and other intangible
costs
3. alts reduce both those costs, at the cost (heh) of real world
money
anyway here's my solution which i proposed a few weeks back
1. ban afking, but not alts, so you can still use alts for
testing/whatever
2. allot everyone X hours of "simulated afk time" (SAT). X = 100
or 200 should be a good number
3. have people who want to afk time rates of their farm in an
unbiased manner
4. each month, people can select how to distribute their X hours
across their farms, and using the computed rates, spawn in the
appropriate amount of drops they would've gotten
basically, it's simulated afking without the associated costs
and problems
#Post#: 4235--------------------------------------------------
Re: Alt Account and AFK Discussion
By: atomic7732 Date: January 28, 2018, 4:27 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
while i think it is somewhat cheaty and unfair, i think it would
be more unfair to unindustrialized people to ban it now (unless
you remove/distribute some quantity of the items from the
now-banned processes), because for example let's say i want
mending books. yqt has afk farmed mending books for a few days
or whatever and has them, and they're a resource people are more
likely to keep for themselves because they are rare, unlike
iron, which people can get reasonable amounts of just by asking
if you banned afking, i wouldn't be able to get mending books
while other already industrialized people would have them and i
would have limited ways to get them other than long and hard
grinding with emeralds and whatever (of which i have basically
none) with villagers, which is not something i'm particularly
interested in doing
it's kind of like the global warming problem and why developing
nations get to pollute more because they aren't industrialized
yet
#Post#: 4236--------------------------------------------------
Re: Alt Account and AFK Discussion
By: Bla Date: January 28, 2018, 4:47 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
To Fiah:
Yeah Blacraft is hardly very competitive. But still we're all
playing in a survival world, building with resources we gather
with some effort. If someone has alts and it lowers the effort,
they can build something more impressive than the others,
because they spent some irl money. I don't think that's very
good and I think it makes the survival world less of a uniform
world for everyone, but closer to a Creative-ish world for
others.
To Yqt:
I don't see how more afks minimize the cost - why would players
coordinate their alts and not just put them in the farms they
want randomly and independently of each other?
You've already built the iron phoenix so I understand it would
be annoying if the rules were changed and it became ruined. In
the future, people might build farms with the rules in mind that
you're not supposed to afk for over some amount. Maybe we could
consider something higher than 30 minutes. However I also think
if it's 30 mins there's still nothing preventing you from
checking up on the game, moving your mouse a bit to stay online,
or (depending on the farm design) do something in-game around
where you're farming.
To Komrage:
Minecraft survival isn't unfun imo because you can't have a
beacon per minute or whatever. It just means you'e gonna put
fewer beacons everywhere. You're gonna adjust your building to
it every time there's a limiting factor. I think that's part of
what makes survival good.
You might afk at a farm so maybe you do something else on your
comp but still check up on the game every once in a while. At
least that's how I farmed xp back in that terrible skele farm
back in like 2012.
Alternatively you might stripmine or build something near your
farms to kill time, or build them near places you're often at,
if the design allows for it.
I would still allow alts for testing server-related things,
which was all I thought you and Yqt were using the alts for
initially. For testing redstone designs etc. I'm not sure, again
I think if you really need to use an alt to test it, maybe find
someone to ask for help.
Your solution is smart but I also feel it's a bit...
"theoretical" or Idk what word to use to describe it. In theory
it's perfectly fair and solves the problem, but I just don't
feel we should sit outside the game and calculate how much afk
time every player can have and spend time putting alts where
people want them. If we have a volunteer for this I may consider
it though.
To Kalassak:
Yeah that makes sense. I also feel it's unfair to take away
items from people for breaking rules that weren't really there
previously. But maybe they could be compelled to share the
items.
Mending books aren't that hard/rare to get tbh and you don't
need to farm very much to get them. If you get a villager with
the trade you can get dozens of them relatively easily, and you
probably won't need more than few dozens to put mending on all
the stuff you're using basically. If it were wither skulls or
they farmed some other item it might be more serious.
[hr]
I'd say I'm inclined to ban alts for other purposes than
testing, re-banning afk machines etc. and having an afk timer
where I'm inclined towards 30-120 minutes, but still open to
ideas.
#Post#: 4237--------------------------------------------------
Re: Alt Account and AFK Discussion
By: AeriOwl Date: January 28, 2018, 5:21 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
would like to point out--
moving your mouse every 30 minutes to escape the AFK timer
shouldn't be a valid option because then it's trivial to write a
script that moves ones mouse every 30 minutes with no way to
really verify if it was done by a script or a person, thus
negating the purpose of an AFK timer
#Post#: 4238--------------------------------------------------
Re: Alt Account and AFK Discussion
By: Komrage Date: January 28, 2018, 8:22 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Bla link=topic=375.msg4236#msg4236
date=1517179626]
Minecraft survival isn't unfun imo because you can't have a
beacon per minute or whatever. It just means you'e gonna put
fewer beacons everywhere. You're gonna adjust your building to
it every time there's a limiting factor. I think that's part of
what makes survival good.
[/quote]
I think everyone has their own ideas on what makes minecraft
fun, and we shouldn't prescribe just one way to have fun.
Personally, my version of fun isn't that survival has a
"limiting factor" (has resource constraints), but rather the
fact that with a large amount of cleverness and knowledge about
game mechanics, you can build up some sort of
technological/industrial base which makes what was nearly
impossible in the early game quite easy. Basically, minecraft
early game to "end game" (killing the end dragon) can be
completed pretty easily, and after that the logical progression
for me to utilize game mechanisms to keep advancing the things
that I can do.
But anyway the point is that I think everyone should be able to
choose how they enjoy the game within the constraints of it
being survival smp
[quote author=Bla link=topic=375.msg4236#msg4236
date=1517179626]
You might afk at a farm so maybe you do something else on your
comp but still check up on the game every once in a while. At
least that's how I farmed xp back in that terrible skele farm
back in like 2012.
Alternatively you might stripmine or build something near your
farms to kill time, or build them near places you're often at,
if the design allows for it.
[/quote]
Latter is impractical in a lot of farms which have an precise
afk spot of just a few meters across. The former is possible,
but at that point isn't it just saying "you can afk, but only if
you can bear the pain/annoyance of checking the game every half
hour" -- seems like a weird penalty to me which doesn't address
the root issue. This would just give advantage to people with a
lot of free time like alts give advantage to people with money.
[quote author=Bla link=topic=375.msg4236#msg4236
date=1517179626]
Your solution is smart but I also feel it's a bit...
"theoretical" or Idk what word to use to describe it. In theory
it's perfectly fair and solves the problem, but I just don't
feel we should sit outside the game and calculate how much afk
time every player can have and spend time putting alts where
people want them. If we have a volunteer for this I may consider
it though.
[/quote]
I would volunteer to do the computations. I don't think it's as
involved as you might imagine it is. Here are the steps:
1. measuring the drop rates of a farm -- only need to do this
once per farm
2. a spreadsheet set up to do computations -- also a one-time
cost only
3. a mechanism to spawn in the drops -- shouldn't be that hard
although i don't have anything concrete right now.
Anyway the point is that there's no sitting outside the game
computing things. At most, we'd spend 30 seconds entering a few
numbers into a spreadsheet once a month. I don't think it'll
morph blacraft into some perverse computational game or anything
like that. I'm not exactly sure what your objection is about
theoretical or whatever.
Also there are no alts involved in this solution, since we could
simply say that you can't use alts for the measurement process
in order to make things fair
#Post#: 4240--------------------------------------------------
Re: Alt Account and AFK Discussion
By: Bla Date: January 29, 2018, 1:38 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Komrage link=topic=375.msg4238#msg4238
date=1517192525]
I think everyone has their own ideas on what makes minecraft
fun, and we shouldn't prescribe just one way to have fun.
Personally, my version of fun isn't that survival has a
"limiting factor" (has resource constraints), but rather the
fact that with a large amount of cleverness and knowledge about
game mechanics, you can build up some sort of
technological/industrial base which makes what was nearly
impossible in the early game quite easy. Basically, minecraft
early game to "end game" (killing the end dragon) can be
completed pretty easily, and after that the logical progression
for me to utilize game mechanisms to keep advancing the things
that I can do.
But anyway the point is that I think everyone should be able to
choose how they enjoy the game within the constraints of it
being survival smp[/quote]
You were the one who originally prescribed it not to be fun if
you can't have alts to grind for you. I don't agree with that.
I agree you should be able to enjoy the game pretty much within
smp, maybe with a very few exceptions. But I think it should
only be with one account.
[quote author=Komrage link=topic=375.msg4238#msg4238
date=1517192525]Latter is impractical in a lot of farms which
have an precise afk spot of just a few meters across. The former
is possible, but at that point isn't it just saying "you can
afk, but only if you can bear the pain/annoyance of checking the
game every half hour" -- seems like a weird penalty to me which
doesn't address the root issue. This would just give advantage
to people with a lot of free time like alts give advantage to
people with money.[/quote]
The reason it's supposed to be a 'penalty' is because people
aren't meant to get enormous quantities of items so easily in my
opinion. Building farms is totally fine, advancing beyond mining
and gathering. But you should still be playing actively to get
those items. If you want more items, build a more efficient farm
or spend the time there. Don't go to sleep to get a billion
items and drain the server performance.
[quote author=Komrage link=topic=375.msg4238#msg4238
date=1517192525]I would volunteer to do the computations. I
don't think it's as involved as you might imagine it is. Here
are the steps:
1. measuring the drop rates of a farm -- only need to do this
once per farm
2. a spreadsheet set up to do computations -- also a one-time
cost only
3. a mechanism to spawn in the drops -- shouldn't be that hard
although i don't have anything concrete right now.
Anyway the point is that there's no sitting outside the game
computing things. At most, we'd spend 30 seconds entering a few
numbers into a spreadsheet once a month. I don't think it'll
morph blacraft into some perverse computational game or anything
like that. I'm not exactly sure what your objection is about
theoretical or whatever.
Also there are no alts involved in this solution, since we could
simply say that you can't use alts for the measurement process
in order to make things fair
[/quote]
It's not that I think it's hard or complicated to do, it just
seems weird in a way. The only thin these alts do is drain our
server performance. If we buy one more alt, should we add more
time for everyone to spend? What's the point even, of having the
alt on the server and paying for it to be up? If we know the
production rates, we might as well spawn the items right into
the game? I don't feel this is the kind of server I wanted
Blacraft to be at least.
Kalassak: If those who didn't have a chance to do the alt thing
got maybe 1 day of alt time to spend I think your issue could be
solved.
[quote author=AeriOwl link=topic=375.msg4237#msg4237
date=1517181710]
would like to point out--
moving your mouse every 30 minutes to escape the AFK timer
shouldn't be a valid option because then it's trivial to write a
script that moves ones mouse every 30 minutes with no way to
really verify if it was done by a script or a person, thus
negating the purpose of an AFK timer
[/quote]
I don't agree it's trivial. I think only a few people in this
community would probably have the skills to do that and I think
we can trust them with not doing it. AFK timers used to work
pretty much fine on this server a few years ago I think.
#Post#: 4241--------------------------------------------------
Re: Alt Account and AFK Discussion
By: Komrage Date: January 29, 2018, 8:23 am
---------------------------------------------------------
tl;dr: I think alts and afking are separate issues. also, the
last two paragraphs of this reply are the most important ones if
you don't have time to read everything.
[quote author=Bla link=topic=375.msg4240#msg4240
date=1517211484]
You were the one who originally prescribed it not to be fun if
you can't have alts to grind for you. I don't agree with that.
[/quote]
Right. I intended that to be a statement about my own gameplay
style, not a prescription for everyone. Also I think you
misinterpreted what I said there. I didn't say I needed alts to
grind for me. I said afking is necessary. I think the issue of
alts and afking are orthogonal to each other. alts just allow
for more afking to take place in the same amount of time, and
arguably gives an unfair advantage to people with alts. whether
we should allow afking is a completely separate issue (and imo,
the more important issue here).
[quote author=Bla link=topic=375.msg4240#msg4240
date=1517211484]
The reason it's supposed to be a 'penalty' is because people
aren't meant to get enormous quantities of items so easily in my
opinion. Building farms is totally fine, advancing beyond mining
and gathering. But you should still be playing actively to get
those items. If you want more items, build a more efficient farm
or spend the time there. Don't go to sleep to get a billion
items and drain the server performance.
[/quote]
I would take issue about the last line. Most if not all of the
new farms that have been built recently have taken great pains
to be extremely lag efficient, for example, explicitly avoiding
*redstone dust*, which is an extremely laggy block. Sitting in
the middle of desertopia with no farms in range causes far more
lag than any of my farms.
I disagree about the need to be playing actively to gather
items, because no one likes to grind forever for large amounts
of items.
[quote author=Bla link=topic=375.msg4240#msg4240
date=1517211484]
It's not that I think it's hard or complicated to do, it just
seems weird in a way. The only thin these alts do is drain our
server performance. If we buy one more alt, should we add more
time for everyone to spend? What's the point even, of having the
alt on the server and paying for it to be up? If we know the
production rates, we might as well spawn the items right into
the game? I don't feel this is the kind of server I wanted
Blacraft to be at least.
[/quote]
So the alt issue and the afk issue is again, orthogonal. I think
we should discuss them separately. For the purposes of my
solution, we would ignore alts completely in the computation. So
I'll just address this last line here:
[quote author=Bla link=topic=375.msg4240#msg4240
date=1517211484]
If we know the production rates, we might as well spawn the
items right into the game?
[/quote]
If you feel this is not legit, then I can't really convince you
otherwise. But the reason I think it's not a totally crazy idea
is because in theory, we could have generated those items in
gameplay using the *same amount of effort* (aka almost 0). On
the other hand, it doesn't make sense to spawn items into the
game if you could mine them ingame because that would be a
reduction in the amount of effort spent on the game. I don't
meant to say that the only aspect of gameplay is the expenditure
of effort of course.
But just one last thing. Here's a theoretical situation which
will hopefully make it intuitively clear why I think this is
legitimate. Suppose there's this very useful new item you can
craft, except due to some bugs in the game, crafting it causes
extreme lag to the server for the next 15 minutes, which is
annoying. To get around this until the bug is fixed in the next
update, we allow players to throw away the crafting ingredients
and spawn in the item, which is a no lag replacement for
crafting. To me, this seems very legit. I don't know about you.
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