In regards to whether or not this article violates anything in terms of its content and cheating, I think it is safe.
The writer does not say whether or not any AFK macroing was used at the blood wall. Unattended AFK macroing is supposed to be against their TOS despite how little it gets enforced. There are a lot of people who go AFK on bloodwalls to be beat on by other players to raise their defense skill. Standing AFK without any macro or key activity is not against the rules of the game by my understanding. Do people macro at these walls? Yes. This writer however makes no admission to doing so. This does shine a light on a very negative aspect of the game's mechanic, but unless the writer admits to unattended macroing, then I think it is technically safe.
Even without a macro, it's unattended skilling up, which according to the rules is not allowed. Supposedly. And as I said, even if HE doesn't admit to doing it, he admits to seeing it done by his guild and condones it. He even reports it in an enthusiastic fashion, as though it were some great reward for hard work.
It IS allowed because it's possible in the game to do it. The design allows and (since FFA PvP is VERY competitive) even encourages it.
Perhaps they have changed their minds, but then it is their responsibility to fix it.
If they had left a big respawning sack of gold in a corner of one town, they would not be justified to tell players not to loot it. Fix the problem you created, devs.
Just because the devs haven't found a reasonable way to fix the problem yet doesn't mean they changed the ToS, it's the players fault if they have no self control.
When I said players awoke to skill-up, I mean they beat up afk players. Not that they woke up and had skillups. Please do not take my words out of context. Sorry for not responding sooner, had not realized someone would make such an assumption.
Even IF you don't afk macro as a guild, do you really think that beating on afk players to raise skills is what competitve PvP is all about though? Is that what defines DF to you as it's corrospondent here?
It's just my view on playing to achieve, but I would be ashamed to admit I played that way tbh, let alone be part of a whole guild that thinks that it's a good thing... I mean, the only reason to to take the challenge free route to raise skills this way is too make PvP and PvE easier right? To make the game safer for you guys as players? To give you all an unearned edge because you don't think you can cut it on an even field?
To me, that just sounds carebear. I personally wouldnt be bragging about it.
Also, can I ask as well, is your guild ARAC? Do you guys max out your faction this way as well?
In Darkfall there is no easy routes. The Exodus syndicate gets raided daily. Black Knights, sinister, LOD, four horsemen, and others ensure The Exodus Syndicate don't get more then a hour or two before getting attacked from server up to server down. :-). Not that I am complaining the pvp is why we all play. In a open world, with pvp a constant threat, going afk in a city or hitting people who are afk is only slightly safer then hunting mobs, and significantly less profitable as you lose money doing it with no gain.
Yes we are ARAC and no. The max faction you can have is -99 or +10. They changed it to make it so 1 kill and gank will send any player red. Most clans that own cities, do not care about faction and 99% of all clans are ARAC. I have not heard of a large non-ARAC guild yet on NA-1.
When I said players awoke to skill-up, I mean they beat up afk players. Not that they woke up and had skillups. Please do not take my words out of context. Sorry for not responding sooner, had not realized someone would make such an assumption.
Even IF you don't afk macro as a guild, do you really think that beating on afk players to raise skills is what competitve PvP is all about though? Is that what defines DF to you as it's corrospondent here?
It's just my view on playing to achieve, but I would be ashamed to admit I played that way tbh, let alone be part of a whole guild that thinks that it's a good thing... I mean, the only reason to to take the challenge free route to raise skills this way is too make PvP and PvE easier right? To make the game safer for you guys as players? To give you all an unearned edge because you don't think you can cut it on an even field?
To me, that just sounds carebear. I personally wouldnt be bragging about it.
Also, can I ask as well, is your guild ARAC? Do you guys max out your faction this way as well?
In Darkfall there is no easy routes. We get raided daily. Black Knights, sinister, LOD, four horsemen, and others ensure The Exodus Syndicate don't get more then a hour or two before getting attacked from server up to server down. :-) . Not that I am complaining the pvp is why we all play.
C'mon, DF is full of easy routes... Thats why I chose to leave tbh. This 'hardcore' image it's players try to promote confuses me. It hasnt even got a real DP to worry about. Gear is super easy to get.
Since the first day I started I watched people take the easy route... I watched them exploit by sitting in lava or whatever, speed/ TP hack, fight naked, and afk macro. Skilling up and workin faction on afk clan members is just another such easy route imo.
Even being in an ARAC guild is an easy route.
EQ PvP on VZ, especially in the item loot days, was far more 'hardcore' then DF will ever be imo.
When I said players awoke to skill-up, I mean they beat up afk players. Not that they woke up and had skillups. Please do not take my words out of context. Sorry for not responding sooner, had not realized someone would make such an assumption.
Even IF you don't afk macro as a guild, do you really think that beating on afk players to raise skills is what competitve PvP is all about though? Is that what defines DF to you as it's corrospondent here?
It's just my view on playing to achieve, but I would be ashamed to admit I played that way tbh, let alone be part of a whole guild that thinks that it's a good thing... I mean, the only reason to to take the challenge free route to raise skills this way is too make PvP and PvE easier right? To make the game safer for you guys as players? To give you all an unearned edge because you don't think you can cut it on an even field?
To me, that just sounds carebear. I personally wouldnt be bragging about it.
Also, can I ask as well, is your guild ARAC? Do you guys max out your faction this way as well?
Yes we are ARAC and no. The max faction you can have is -99 or +10. They changed it to make it so 1 kill and gank will send any player red. Most clans that own cities, do not care about faction and 99% of all clans are ARAC. I have not heard of a large non-ARAC guild yet on NA-1.
Thanks for posting though.
Sorry, I missed your edit.
Just to be clear, when you say 'most clans do not care about faction', do you mean they don't care and stay red, with tall that implies, or they don't care because they know they can skip back to their bloodwall and fix it on fellow afk guildies?
Sorry, I missed your edit. Just to be clear, when you say 'most clans do not care about faction', do you mean they don't care and stay red, with tall that implies, or they don't care because they know they can skip back to their bloodwall and fix it on fellow afk guildies?
Since it is impossible to get faction gains from your own alliance/guild members. Obviously I mean they stay red. :-)
C'mon, DF is full of easy routes... Thats why I chose to leave tbh. This 'hardcore' image it's players try to promote confuses me. It hasnt even got a real DP to worry about. Gear is super easy to get. Since the first day I started I watched people take the easy route... I watched them exploit by sitting in lava or whatever, speed/ TP hack, fight naked, and afk macro. Skilling up and workin faction on afk clan members is just another such easy route imo. Even being in an ARAC guild is an easy route. EQ PvP on VZ, especially in the item loot days, was far more 'hardcore' then DF will ever be imo.
Players in darkfall not only have low resist when not wearing armor, Not wearing armor in darkfall players take additional bonus damage. Lava / acid pools have not given skillups since 2 weeks after the launch of EU-1. NA-1 players have never been able to exploit in that fashion and it has been fixed for last four months.
Afk macroing players are banned everyday. 1 week after NA-1 Launch, 300 accounts where banned for macroing on NA-1, and 700 on EU-1. More are banned everyday. If a player sees someone they suspect of macroing all they must do is /gm_report . Usualy a gm responds within 15 minutes or less and you can even watch as the character is kicked out of game if you are really that intrested.
ARAC means all races can join your guild. This is important because not everyone wants to be one race in a guilds over 100 people. I hardly see how it can be considered easy mode. There is very little difference between ARAC and Allignment guilds besides what races can join.
Speed/TP hacks are an insta ban. It is very rare to see someone attempt such an act as any player caught doing it is banned permanetly by IP and credit card.
Since all a player must do is report players they suspect of cheating, for the most part any one attempting to cheat or exploit in anyway are usualy found out very quickly. For speed or teleport hacks you do not even need to report a name, just a general location the cheater was in.
Obviosly alot of people bring up issues or possible exploits being used that are not viable since adventurine has done many patches to fix these problems. Please if you have not played the game in a while keep in mind like all MMO's any big exploit or cheat are fixed or addressed within weeks of it becoming known.
C'mon, DF is full of easy routes... Thats why I chose to leave tbh. This 'hardcore' image it's players try to promote confuses me. It hasnt even got a real DP to worry about. Gear is super easy to get. Since the first day I started I watched people take the easy route... I watched them exploit by sitting in lava or whatever, speed/ TP hack, fight naked, and afk macro. Skilling up and workin faction on afk clan members is just another such easy route imo. Even being in an ARAC guild is an easy route. EQ PvP on VZ, especially in the item loot days, was far more 'hardcore' then DF will ever be imo.
Players in darkfall not only have low resist when not wearing armor, Not wearing armor in darkfall players take additional bonus damage.
yet people still fight naked?
Lava / acid pools have not given skillups since 2 weeks after the launch of EU-1. NA-1 players have never been able to exploit in that fashion and it has been fixed for last four months.
This is why I mentioned it in the past tense. I would never mention a current exploit in a public forum, I only offered the lava as an example.
You say there are no known exploits being used in Darkfall at this time though? Really?
As for the rest, well I am glad AV have started to get their act together with regards to cheating. It's about time. It's all too late for me personally, and maybe too late to save the game's rep, but it's a good thing. Please though, don't try and tell me that hacks now don't happen, or exploits don't happen, or afk macroing dosent happen, and that AV are running a water tight boat. I am glad that AV are making them happen less though, but lets be real.
A clear anti cheating policy, heavy exploit policing and in game 3rd party protection should have been as close to 100% as it could be on release on day 1 in a game that sells itself so heavily on it's competitive PvP nature. This obviously wasnt the case.
My problem with DF has never been with the game itself but the hardcore=cheating attitude of a lot of it's playerbase... I never got that. Why so many of the early to dominate clans took this road I will never know, especially after declaring themselves so 'hardcore'. Always looked like the opposite... To me cheating is the weak choice, not 'hardcore' at all.
btw I do still consider levelling up skills on AFK guildies an easy route and an effort to gain a free unearnt advantage over the enemy in order to just make the game safer (ie more 'carebear'). It might not be technically 'cheating' (yet) but I think anyone with any sense of clarity can see why it's weak.
I see that you didnt choose to address the significance of free skill ups in a competitive PvP game your reply though.
Sorry, I missed your edit. Just to be clear, when you say 'most clans do not care about faction', do you mean they don't care and stay red, with tall that implies, or they don't care because they know they can skip back to their bloodwall and fix it on fellow afk guildies?
Since it is impossible to get faction gains from your own alliance/guild members. Obviously I mean they stay red. :-)
Ahh ok, this is why I asked.
Are there a lot more red players ingame these days then? They were realitvely rare when I played.
When I said players awoke to skill-up, I mean they beat up afk players. Not that they woke up and had skillups. Please do not take my words out of context. Sorry for not responding sooner, had not realized someone would make such an assumption.
And those afk players are skilling up in defence/resist/etc. without playing.
When I said players awoke to skill-up, I mean they beat up afk players. Not that they woke up and had skillups. Please do not take my words out of context. Sorry for not responding sooner, had not realized someone would make such an assumption.
And those afk players are skilling up in defence/resist/etc. without playing.
So the difference is?
I think the reluctance to answer probably means there isnt much of one Zor.
Rest assured going afk is not against the rules. Unless a player uses a third party macro, Auto-runs, or Auto-swims. For any quistions regarding Darkfall rules and or policies, please read this thread from the official darkfall forums website. http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=191365
"unattended use of autorun and swimming against obstacles are also prohibited."
This clearly states that unattended skill leveling, whether using a macro or not, is not allowed for these explicit circumstances. Since being AFK at a blood wall in order to level up your defense skills and the offfensive skills of your team mates is semantically the same as using a macro or the autorun key to level up your skills unattended, this implies that afk bloodwall skill leveling is also prohibited. No, it's not explicitly stated, but the intent is the same. Aventuine wants players to play the game. Unfortuantely, their design not only facillitates, but encourages afk play, whether using macros or not...
Obviously, simply going afk is not against the rules. Going afk for the express purpose of leveling up, especialy for long periods of time, is implicitly against the rules. Most games have afk timers and disconnects. Darkfall doesn't, which demonstrates one more aspect of it's poor design.
all this self-righteous grandstanding over bloodwall AFKing is pretty hypocritical - who here has never been powerlevelled in an MMO? or stood AFK or auto-followed a higher level while they cleared an instance? or AFK trained their weaponskill on level 10 mobs in WOW?
there are many many things in MMOs that walk a fine line between permissable and prohibited gameplay. bloodwalling is simply DF's version of powerlevelling - not really a big deal, and certainly not cheating. after all, everyone has a chance to do it, and if anything, this should be the true measure of what is fair and what is unfair/cheating.
all this self-righteous grandstanding over bloodwall AFKing is pretty hypocritical - who here has never been powerlevelled in an MMO? or stood AFK or auto-followed a higher level while they cleared an instance? or AFK trained their weaponskill on level 10 mobs in WOW?
there are many many things in MMOs that walk a fine line between permissable and prohibited gameplay. bloodwalling is simply DF's version of powerlevelling - not really a big deal, and certainly not cheating. after all, everyone has a chance to do it, and if anything, this should be the true measure of what is fair and what is unfair/cheating.
It might be like Darkfall's version of powerleveling, but that doesn't justify it. Even powerleveing, which I generally dislike, can be social and involve at least participation and interaction between the parties involved, unlike the AFK bloodwall. Any AFK macroing, leveling, skilling up, etc.. is ridiculous to me. Why even play the game? You might as well just buy a black market character that's already been maxed out (ahh, I remember the old EQ days where reputation actually mattered to some people).
all this self-righteous grandstanding over bloodwall AFKing is pretty hypocritical - who here has never been powerlevelled in an MMO? or stood AFK or auto-followed a higher level while they cleared an instance? or AFK trained their weaponskill on level 10 mobs in WOW?
there are many many things in MMOs that walk a fine line between permissable and prohibited gameplay. bloodwalling is simply DF's version of powerlevelling - not really a big deal, and certainly not cheating. after all, everyone has a chance to do it, and if anything, this should be the true measure of what is fair and what is unfair/cheating.
It might be like Darkfall's version of powerleveling, but that doesn't justify it. Even powerleveing, which I generally dislike, can be social and involve at least participation and interaction between the parties involved, unlike the AFK bloodwall. Any AFK macroing, leveling, skilling up, etc.. is ridiculous to me. Why even play the game? You might as well just buy a black market character that's already been maxed out (ahh, I remember the old EQ days where reputation actually mattered to some people).
~Ripper
Don't bother trying to reason with those that defend the blood walls. I'm sorry I DON'T power lvl in mmo's, I enjoy the game for the experience and just because some of you people want to cheat doesn't mean that any of us are going to agree with you so you can rationalize CHEATING in a game that is based around PVP. I don't force people to play with the same E bushido that I do but in games that are PVP you bet your ass I want you to feel bad about cheating to try to be better than others. People that afk bloodwall or macro are like the players in baseball that get caught using steroids and then try to rationalize it by saying well everyone does it, BULLSHIT. YOU cheat and your lame friends with no sense of right and wrong CHEAT. Don't ever make blanket statements about EVERYONE is doing it in some manner. Some of us have ethics, you( and speaking to the poster above you ripper) have none and I'm not gonna let you try to rationalize it by saying we all do it in some manner.
I'm curious as to whether or not Stradden will receive a reply. If Aventurine allows afk leveling (both for offensive and defensive skills) at bloodwalls then they're admitting they support afk skill leveling, which is contradictory to their published policies against unattended macroing and autorunning for swimming and running. Unfortunately, if AVenturine publicly stands against bloodwalling then they could lose a substantial portion of their already small player base.
Also, regarding the comments about sparring being a promised feature - sparring involves active participation. By going afk you're essentially becoming a practice dummy, except that you're gaining defensive skills, whereas a dummy obviously wouldn't. My personal opinion on sparring is that it's fine, up to a certain point, but that eventually you need to go out into the world and fight. As such, I'd generally suggest capping skill gain off friendly foes at a low level (25 or so). Doing so would force players to go hunting and either look for reds or become reds. That, in addition to perhaps an automated inactivity timeout would force players to actually play.
Very interesting article, OP. Could anyone give me a little info on how cites are claimed and how buildings are built? This stuff intrigues me, and though I dislike other elements and restrictions in the game, might be enough to warrant me trying it out.
I see again someone promoting afk-macro/exploit and bloodwall how pathetic this whole Darkfall community become they even think its legit and normal gameplay its a damn shame it has develop like this:(
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009..... In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
Comments
Even without a macro, it's unattended skilling up, which according to the rules is not allowed. Supposedly. And as I said, even if HE doesn't admit to doing it, he admits to seeing it done by his guild and condones it. He even reports it in an enthusiastic fashion, as though it were some great reward for hard work.
It IS allowed because it's possible in the game to do it. The design allows and (since FFA PvP is VERY competitive) even encourages it.
Perhaps they have changed their minds, but then it is their responsibility to fix it.
If they had left a big respawning sack of gold in a corner of one town, they would not be justified to tell players not to loot it. Fix the problem you created, devs.
Just because the devs haven't found a reasonable way to fix the problem yet doesn't mean they changed the ToS, it's the players fault if they have no self control.
Even IF you don't afk macro as a guild, do you really think that beating on afk players to raise skills is what competitve PvP is all about though? Is that what defines DF to you as it's corrospondent here?
It's just my view on playing to achieve, but I would be ashamed to admit I played that way tbh, let alone be part of a whole guild that thinks that it's a good thing... I mean, the only reason to to take the challenge free route to raise skills this way is too make PvP and PvE easier right? To make the game safer for you guys as players? To give you all an unearned edge because you don't think you can cut it on an even field?
To me, that just sounds carebear. I personally wouldnt be bragging about it.
Also, can I ask as well, is your guild ARAC? Do you guys max out your faction this way as well?
In Darkfall there is no easy routes. The Exodus syndicate gets raided daily. Black Knights, sinister, LOD, four horsemen, and others ensure The Exodus Syndicate don't get more then a hour or two before getting attacked from server up to server down. :-). Not that I am complaining the pvp is why we all play. In a open world, with pvp a constant threat, going afk in a city or hitting people who are afk is only slightly safer then hunting mobs, and significantly less profitable as you lose money doing it with no gain.
Yes we are ARAC and no. The max faction you can have is -99 or +10. They changed it to make it so 1 kill and gank will send any player red. Most clans that own cities, do not care about faction and 99% of all clans are ARAC. I have not heard of a large non-ARAC guild yet on NA-1.
Thanks for posting though.
Even IF you don't afk macro as a guild, do you really think that beating on afk players to raise skills is what competitve PvP is all about though? Is that what defines DF to you as it's corrospondent here?
It's just my view on playing to achieve, but I would be ashamed to admit I played that way tbh, let alone be part of a whole guild that thinks that it's a good thing... I mean, the only reason to to take the challenge free route to raise skills this way is too make PvP and PvE easier right? To make the game safer for you guys as players? To give you all an unearned edge because you don't think you can cut it on an even field?
To me, that just sounds carebear. I personally wouldnt be bragging about it.
Also, can I ask as well, is your guild ARAC? Do you guys max out your faction this way as well?
In Darkfall there is no easy routes. We get raided daily. Black Knights, sinister, LOD, four horsemen, and others ensure The Exodus Syndicate don't get more then a hour or two before getting attacked from server up to server down. :-) . Not that I am complaining the pvp is why we all play.
C'mon, DF is full of easy routes... Thats why I chose to leave tbh. This 'hardcore' image it's players try to promote confuses me. It hasnt even got a real DP to worry about. Gear is super easy to get.
Since the first day I started I watched people take the easy route... I watched them exploit by sitting in lava or whatever, speed/ TP hack, fight naked, and afk macro. Skilling up and workin faction on afk clan members is just another such easy route imo.
Even being in an ARAC guild is an easy route.
EQ PvP on VZ, especially in the item loot days, was far more 'hardcore' then DF will ever be imo.
Even IF you don't afk macro as a guild, do you really think that beating on afk players to raise skills is what competitve PvP is all about though? Is that what defines DF to you as it's corrospondent here?
It's just my view on playing to achieve, but I would be ashamed to admit I played that way tbh, let alone be part of a whole guild that thinks that it's a good thing... I mean, the only reason to to take the challenge free route to raise skills this way is too make PvP and PvE easier right? To make the game safer for you guys as players? To give you all an unearned edge because you don't think you can cut it on an even field?
To me, that just sounds carebear. I personally wouldnt be bragging about it.
Also, can I ask as well, is your guild ARAC? Do you guys max out your faction this way as well?
Yes we are ARAC and no. The max faction you can have is -99 or +10. They changed it to make it so 1 kill and gank will send any player red. Most clans that own cities, do not care about faction and 99% of all clans are ARAC. I have not heard of a large non-ARAC guild yet on NA-1.
Thanks for posting though.
Sorry, I missed your edit.
Just to be clear, when you say 'most clans do not care about faction', do you mean they don't care and stay red, with tall that implies, or they don't care because they know they can skip back to their bloodwall and fix it on fellow afk guildies?
And just about every 'hardcore' guild macros, maybe not every member but each guild. That's life (well life in DF).
Since it is impossible to get faction gains from your own alliance/guild members. Obviously I mean they stay red. :-)
Players in darkfall not only have low resist when not wearing armor, Not wearing armor in darkfall players take additional bonus damage. Lava / acid pools have not given skillups since 2 weeks after the launch of EU-1. NA-1 players have never been able to exploit in that fashion and it has been fixed for last four months.
Afk macroing players are banned everyday. 1 week after NA-1 Launch, 300 accounts where banned for macroing on NA-1, and 700 on EU-1. More are banned everyday. If a player sees someone they suspect of macroing all they must do is /gm_report . Usualy a gm responds within 15 minutes or less and you can even watch as the character is kicked out of game if you are really that intrested.
ARAC means all races can join your guild. This is important because not everyone wants to be one race in a guilds over 100 people. I hardly see how it can be considered easy mode. There is very little difference between ARAC and Allignment guilds besides what races can join.
Speed/TP hacks are an insta ban. It is very rare to see someone attempt such an act as any player caught doing it is banned permanetly by IP and credit card.
Since all a player must do is report players they suspect of cheating, for the most part any one attempting to cheat or exploit in anyway are usualy found out very quickly. For speed or teleport hacks you do not even need to report a name, just a general location the cheater was in.
Obviosly alot of people bring up issues or possible exploits being used that are not viable since adventurine has done many patches to fix these problems. Please if you have not played the game in a while keep in mind like all MMO's any big exploit or cheat are fixed or addressed within weeks of it becoming known.
Players in darkfall not only have low resist when not wearing armor, Not wearing armor in darkfall players take additional bonus damage.
yet people still fight naked?
Lava / acid pools have not given skillups since 2 weeks after the launch of EU-1. NA-1 players have never been able to exploit in that fashion and it has been fixed for last four months.
This is why I mentioned it in the past tense. I would never mention a current exploit in a public forum, I only offered the lava as an example.
You say there are no known exploits being used in Darkfall at this time though? Really?
As for the rest, well I am glad AV have started to get their act together with regards to cheating. It's about time. It's all too late for me personally, and maybe too late to save the game's rep, but it's a good thing. Please though, don't try and tell me that hacks now don't happen, or exploits don't happen, or afk macroing dosent happen, and that AV are running a water tight boat. I am glad that AV are making them happen less though, but lets be real.
A clear anti cheating policy, heavy exploit policing and in game 3rd party protection should have been as close to 100% as it could be on release on day 1 in a game that sells itself so heavily on it's competitive PvP nature. This obviously wasnt the case.
My problem with DF has never been with the game itself but the hardcore=cheating attitude of a lot of it's playerbase... I never got that. Why so many of the early to dominate clans took this road I will never know, especially after declaring themselves so 'hardcore'. Always looked like the opposite... To me cheating is the weak choice, not 'hardcore' at all.
btw I do still consider levelling up skills on AFK guildies an easy route and an effort to gain a free unearnt advantage over the enemy in order to just make the game safer (ie more 'carebear'). It might not be technically 'cheating' (yet) but I think anyone with any sense of clarity can see why it's weak.
I see that you didnt choose to address the significance of free skill ups in a competitive PvP game your reply though.
Since it is impossible to get faction gains from your own alliance/guild members. Obviously I mean they stay red. :-)
Ahh ok, this is why I asked.
Are there a lot more red players ingame these days then? They were realitvely rare when I played.
And those afk players are skilling up in defence/resist/etc. without playing.
So the difference is?
The exploitation claims and the bad spelling apart, what an amazing recount of teamwork and planning - kudos!
And those afk players are skilling up in defence/resist/etc. without playing.
So the difference is?
I think the reluctance to answer probably means there isnt much of one Zor.
I beg to differ:
"unattended use of autorun and swimming against obstacles are also prohibited."
This clearly states that unattended skill leveling, whether using a macro or not, is not allowed for these explicit circumstances. Since being AFK at a blood wall in order to level up your defense skills and the offfensive skills of your team mates is semantically the same as using a macro or the autorun key to level up your skills unattended, this implies that afk bloodwall skill leveling is also prohibited. No, it's not explicitly stated, but the intent is the same. Aventuine wants players to play the game. Unfortuantely, their design not only facillitates, but encourages afk play, whether using macros or not...
Obviously, simply going afk is not against the rules. Going afk for the express purpose of leveling up, especialy for long periods of time, is implicitly against the rules. Most games have afk timers and disconnects. Darkfall doesn't, which demonstrates one more aspect of it's poor design.
~Ripper
all this self-righteous grandstanding over bloodwall AFKing is pretty hypocritical - who here has never been powerlevelled in an MMO? or stood AFK or auto-followed a higher level while they cleared an instance? or AFK trained their weaponskill on level 10 mobs in WOW?
there are many many things in MMOs that walk a fine line between permissable and prohibited gameplay. bloodwalling is simply DF's version of powerlevelling - not really a big deal, and certainly not cheating. after all, everyone has a chance to do it, and if anything, this should be the true measure of what is fair and what is unfair/cheating.
It might be like Darkfall's version of powerleveling, but that doesn't justify it. Even powerleveing, which I generally dislike, can be social and involve at least participation and interaction between the parties involved, unlike the AFK bloodwall. Any AFK macroing, leveling, skilling up, etc.. is ridiculous to me. Why even play the game? You might as well just buy a black market character that's already been maxed out (ahh, I remember the old EQ days where reputation actually mattered to some people).
~Ripper
It might be like Darkfall's version of powerleveling, but that doesn't justify it. Even powerleveing, which I generally dislike, can be social and involve at least participation and interaction between the parties involved, unlike the AFK bloodwall. Any AFK macroing, leveling, skilling up, etc.. is ridiculous to me. Why even play the game? You might as well just buy a black market character that's already been maxed out (ahh, I remember the old EQ days where reputation actually mattered to some people).
~Ripper
Don't bother trying to reason with those that defend the blood walls. I'm sorry I DON'T power lvl in mmo's, I enjoy the game for the experience and just because some of you people want to cheat doesn't mean that any of us are going to agree with you so you can rationalize CHEATING in a game that is based around PVP. I don't force people to play with the same E bushido that I do but in games that are PVP you bet your ass I want you to feel bad about cheating to try to be better than others. People that afk bloodwall or macro are like the players in baseball that get caught using steroids and then try to rationalize it by saying well everyone does it, BULLSHIT. YOU cheat and your lame friends with no sense of right and wrong CHEAT. Don't ever make blanket statements about EVERYONE is doing it in some manner. Some of us have ethics, you( and speaking to the poster above you ripper) have none and I'm not gonna let you try to rationalize it by saying we all do it in some manner.
I'm curious as to whether or not Stradden will receive a reply. If Aventurine allows afk leveling (both for offensive and defensive skills) at bloodwalls then they're admitting they support afk skill leveling, which is contradictory to their published policies against unattended macroing and autorunning for swimming and running. Unfortunately, if AVenturine publicly stands against bloodwalling then they could lose a substantial portion of their already small player base.
Also, regarding the comments about sparring being a promised feature - sparring involves active participation. By going afk you're essentially becoming a practice dummy, except that you're gaining defensive skills, whereas a dummy obviously wouldn't. My personal opinion on sparring is that it's fine, up to a certain point, but that eventually you need to go out into the world and fight. As such, I'd generally suggest capping skill gain off friendly foes at a low level (25 or so). Doing so would force players to go hunting and either look for reds or become reds. That, in addition to perhaps an automated inactivity timeout would force players to actually play.
~Ripper
Several days later, no answer from Tasos?
/sadpanda
~Ripper
Save your cash - pro tip.
I see again someone promoting afk-macro/exploit and bloodwall how pathetic this whole Darkfall community become they even think its legit and normal gameplay its a damn shame it has develop like this:(
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
pretty awesome
Shadowlord Sage
CmdrAkbar
Napa Valley, UO, 1997.
I'd be very surprised if Stradden ever hears from Tasos.
Heck, lately Tasos only makes 1 post a month on the official site.
Network Issues - August 13
Tasos
08-13-2009 12:30 PM
by Tasos
Quick Patch July 17th
Tasos
07-17-2009 01:54 PM
by Tasos
forums.darkfallonline.com/forumdisplay.php
You guys DON'T understand something...
In DARKFALL you don't log out...
You simply GO BLOODWALL!
Yay for bloodwalls for teh winz!!! o/
Good article and very true of how it all went down.
Also standing afk on a blood wall is not a macro lolz.
Holden XOX