Sphere

I work DAMN hard for a living in real life and resent ANYONE suggesting otherwise! I have the callouses, scars, and daily sore back to prove it. I'm at best a part time EL player, and if you read any of my other posts, I'm recommending limiting concurent connections. How the hell do you get an army of 50 alts that way? I thought you of all people, an as an apparent long time player would be above insulting someone. Guess I said enough in this thread.

There are an equal number of ways to make the Anti perk painful again as there are ways to get around it. For one replace all of the ship/map flags with an NPC. Anti holders would need rings/magic/ess to go anywhere. Not really recommending that. Just pointing out that if one element of gameplay changes, others will have to change as well. The game is still in Beta, and there are some smart cookies doing the dev work... The alt harvesting all of the money for nexus removal still has to actually DO the harvesting. The Player worked for the money....

You have the patience/time/knowlege to level an alt, find, and harvest the valuable resources that you would give to your main. IMO, the economy is about people who will go through the effort, selling to the people who wont. With all of the events during harvesting, the harvester still has to do the work to get the resources, and carry them. In other words, if I have an alt muling ore, the alt is still ME, harvesting and carrying. I think the time would be better spent talking to players and finding the automated clients and macros. Just my two cents

I don't understand why so many people that are screaming "ahhhh 50 alts ruin game" when the number of concurrent connections could be limited to 2 or 3 to solve that....

Yes with limitations. Limit the number of concurrent alts by IP. Something sane like 2. I'm not saying limit the number of alts that can be owned. Everyone has a pile of them. Just limit the concurrent server connections to 2 or whatever makes sense. If it's done automatically, Aislinn is free from ban hammer duty. She could spend her time much more effectively chasing macroers or automated clients. That's the real danger to the economy imo. I have an all rounder for a main. I started a fighter only. It would be nice to give him some stuff to get started. Same person doing all the hard work. I earned the items or the skills to make them. If I have a mule on and an alch'er, I'm still tending to both of them... EDIT: As an aside, I don't endorse any kind of macroing or automated clients. Keep rule 5 and amend it.

That would have an interesting "busy streets" sort of effect. I've seen something similar implemented for fake AI. Instead of physically limiting the pathway though, there are different types of invisible tokens dotted along the center of the path that the AI has an affinity for. It would require a new object as a token, edits to all of the maps to place the tokens, changes to the pathfinder code, and of course, a million other things I haven't thought of. Teh God is messing around with that stuff now though...

Occasional special event(s). Have 2 kill bots spawn in an arena and fight it out. No drops. Different guild map could be host and arena for each event? New temporary event NPC could take bets on winner, or sell passes to event (fairly expensive.) x amount of gc for bot entry fee. x amount of gc for spectator fee. x amount of $$ for "Fight Bot" class bot or pass to participate for the season. Winning kill bot owner splits entry pass fees and/or portion of bets with hosting guild and/or bragging rights. Arena would simply be an array of X-Y coords that the bots would be limited to. Regular players caught stepping on arena grid (or border) get beamed straight to underworld. Could be held in conjunction with a real PK arena type events? Maybe have someone do color commentary in event channel? A Mod makes sure there is no interference from spectators. Moves NPC to correct location pre-fight. Announce fight. Kill rouge/haywire bots before they kill everyone Someone somewhere must have a "swiss army knife" type bot to keep win/loss standings for the season and advertise next fight occasionally. Championship at end of season. One issue is that a partially automated fight bot would be hard to detect and might have a big advantage. Maybe have a box somewhere in EL land to host the fight bots?

Sorry, worded that a bit vague. I agree completely , but how do you *know* it's a bot and not someone running bot code and fiddling with it during the competition? The spirit of the event would be coder vs coder with entertainment for all. I think they would have to run on a hands off box somewhere unless someone has an alternate idea... I'd love to get hacking on a fight bot

Occasionally I want to shop for some big ticket item (steel plate or somesuch item.) I grab the list of bots from the EL players online page, filter out the bots that I know are not trade bots, and PM the rest to find the item in question. I don't update this list more than every couple of weeks, and these are the bots that happen to be online when I do update the list. **No bot was intentionally ignored. Mistakes will be rectified upon request.** If you want me to edit this list and add your bot, move your bot to a different category, or remove your bot, post below. This is simply meant to be an aid to ppl who want to do some comparison shopping since I had to do it for my own benefit anyway. P.S. This would be a lot easier to maintain if the list of online bots was similarly categorized. Trade Bots: [usually activated by sending /inv /loc or /wanted] Aage Adarah Achaja aeryn Agneum Angeline Astronomy Atomship Azdora Bazzy Bene Blondine busy C2_Trader Charn ClamCake CrazyGirl DaisyGirl Emporium EvilsHalo Fame_Store Freya GreyStar Honor idle JMart Karlin LA_Deals Lady_Legend Lilandra Lord_Legend Luxe Magellan Mattamus Meep_Meep Miria MonkeySoup Narai Nera Oyster Paladina Passion Peaceful (Only buys enrichment stones.) Pepa Pigi Richery Safe Sava Shari Shedevil ShopRite ShrimpTaco SilverLeaf Taliesin Thor Titanta Trader Vakana Vooten WeaselTurd Services and Information Bots: [These bots usually respond to /help or /info and provide some sort of service.] Flying_Cow (Messaging and utilities) EternalBroker (Trade bot utilities. Availability/price checking.) EternalTrivia (Trivia game on channel 124.) Gossip (Messaging and many utilities) KoS_Info (New hour notification service) Prattler (Stories, songs and information on channel 11) Rraisa (Trade bot utilities. Item availability checking) Speaker (Has trade functions, but does not trade...?) TrinityBot (Trade bot utilities. Price checking) Treasurer (Swap/trade bot? No inventory however...?) TinkerBelle (Gambling bot.) Vakana ("Swiss Army Knife" of bots. Also a trade bot.) Guild/Guard Bots: [Generally unresponsive (or possibly hostile) when encountered] 7of9 Citrine Corpus Deadbeef Kathkusa KnightofLegend MadaM Mufo Perun POLtergeist PoOkS QuiM Rafik SigSegV Edits: -Added Vakana to the list of trade bots (thx tt.) -Added Honor (down as of this edit), just because I happened to remember seeing him yesterday. -Added Gossip (odd that she's down as of this edit....) How could I possibly have forgotten her?!? -Sorted and updated the list of non trade bots to separate out the util/service bots. -Moved the "Eternals" to the services and information bots section. -Added Mattamus to trade bot section (thx RobotBob). -Moved Corpus to guild/guard bot section (thx RobotBob). -Moved Deadbeef to guild/guard bot section. -Updated the guild/guard bots with guild affiliation (that Gossip knew about...) Edit: see below. -Removed the tags for the guard bots by request (If your really curious ask gossip.) -Added Mufo the ebul guard bot ;-) -Added Kathkusa and SigSegV to guard bots. -Added ShopRite to trade bot section. -Added Luxe to trade bot section. -Added Atomship, Miria, and Sava to the trade bot section. -Added KoS_Info to the services and information bots section.

I used to have a similar problem. For some reason, some of the bitmapped fonts were being displayed on the sky, and as reflections in ponds. One day, items were showing instead of fonts (pots, gc, swords etc.) Really creepy looking. Went away after a graphics card update (ati raedon 9500/9700)

I had an idea triggered by Hadassah calling me a "Shape Shifter" because of my alt's name (Cube.) A keypress (or spell perhaps...?) that would (with some sort of eyecandy display) morph you to an alt char. -Inventory/clothing/weapons/nametag/health/etc.. would change to whatever the 2nd char has. -4 slot non wearable common inventory for stuff like GC or valuables (yes, I'm aware that this is currently illegal as multiplaying.) -Delay before it could be cast again (1 min?, once per hour?) -Alt selection would be permanent or difficult to change (only 1 allowed) I understand that this could be abused in a multitude of ways, and would need a bunch of thought to prevent illegal abuses. Some of the legal abuses could get interesting however... P.S. Yes, I know Roja has said that shapeshifting is coming... This is a somewhat incomplete idea that I wanted to throw out for discussion.

Edit/update: Every now and then I am just amazed at the generosity and kindness of EL players. I dunno what to say, so I'll keep it simple: I want to say a heartfelt thank you to Cthulhu of LNX for giving me a replacement COL. For the past 3 days I've been helping out a friend who owns a masonry company. Lugging wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of loam, stone, and wet concrete around. Last night, exausted and with more blisters than I've ever seen, I took an ice cold shower and settled in in front of my computer to lug a few really light loads of Ti in Willowvine. I'm not sure how long I was logged in for, but at some point I fell sound asleep. My girlfriend woke me up and steered me to bed. This morning I woke up, and headed out the door for more real life punishment.... all the while forgetting that I was still logged in. This evening I noticed that I was still logged in, in the under world, missing my COL (that I've only had for 3 weeks or so), and beloved powersaving cape (a gift very early in my EL life.) I'm posting here in the hope that MAYBE someone who does return bags and did not know who it belonged to found it near the Ti in the cave... I dunno why I didn't have my rosto... I usually carry it whenever I wear the COL...

Love the event and perk idea, but not terribly useful while mining (usually.) Maybe use the collected radon gas to manufacture a stone/medallion that gives the "I glow in the dark" perk. Empty vials catch the gas...? 10 vials radon gas + 1 serp stone + 1 Titanium bar = "Medallion/Stone of Radiance". High break rate during combat, and when it breaks, it deals 10 radon gas events worth of damage? Mix and match ingred, I just pulled those out of the air.... For ONCE people would be hoping something would break

Very old Sony Multiscan 300sf (20") Same problem, very dark. I usually have to jack the gamma up too... I'll try my 17" when I have a chance...

I had a similar issue. EL would not let go of the mouse. Middle mouse button would occasionally "stick". I haven't had the problem since I upgraded from an ATI Raedon 9500/9700 to an Nvidia 6200. I'll update the thread if I do ever have the problem, but I'm fairly sure that the ATI was responsible. The exact same behaviour would occur in windows or linux on the same machine. P.S. as of the card swap, I don't get all of the click errors that I used to get (click here, go there kind of stuff...)

All looks well except for maybe a control(?) char(s) showing up before each colored name. Example: â¹Taliesin @ 3]: Selling: 105 leather (8gc each), 5 raw meat (5.5gc each), 120 potions of spirit restoration (15gc each), PM me for other items! Could be my editor or something.... Gedit running under Ubuntu. <CR><LF> vs \n maybe? Just posting it in case anyone else has the same issue. The answer will probably follow from myself or someone quicker to the draw ;-)

Added all 3 of the missing trade bots. Thanks for the updates. At some point I'll whip up some perl to do the comparison every so often (a little too busy lately.) BKC56. LabRat: TYVM. The bot colouring looks, and works, nice! I added daily summary e-mail monitoring to both threads so that I can keep an eye out.

Wow! Thanks for all of the updates I removed the guild tags from the guard bots. I had a few requests to do it and figured that anyone who is really curious can find out anyway... Scorpius, she's there. She's in the services bot section. P.S. Thanks everyone.

Added Mattamus (I was thinking of him this morning....=-), and moved Corpus. Just curious what ch 144 is anyway? Lexi: You are very welcome. As I said above, I make this list periodically anyway, so figured I'd post it to see if others could also use it. Frogimus: If it doesn't go sticky, I'll bump it from time to time when I update it (every week or so...)

May need a bit of tweaking (but I assume that you know that already ;-) Could bring some life/danger/uncertainty back to PK. I don't PK that often so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

A customer's view: As a player that uses bots fairly often, I have to say this is a very good idea. I could care less if Rraisa gives me a price or not. I'll go to the bot for the price straight from the horse's mouth regardless.... IMHO a feature that's probably not needed anyway. The big problem for most players is finding what they are looking for. The market channel is largely useless and usually clogged with advertisements for things I don't need or want (but I digress...) Occasionally (and this method is usually a waste of time) I'll leave the market channel open for a while then grep my logs to see if the item is being advertised. More often than not, all I get is the loss of the top half of my display, or living with a chat window shoved off to the side. What the hell is wrong with a SANE list of who sells what? Seriously?!? After reading the posts in this thread, I have to wonder if some of the bot owners aren't losing perspective. Stop and think for a minute about what resources the average EL player has to find an item... Grabbing the list of bots from the EL page, parsing the list to remove all of the guard/info type bots (another nice maintenance chore in itself), then pm'ing the remaining trade bots with /inv sounds to me like a nice task for a COMPUTER! At least with a service that will guide me to a subset of bots I can use /inv on a much shorter list to find what I am looking for, nearby, and in a reasonable amount of time. If any of the bot owners think for even a second that many of us don't do comparative shopping when spending 1k+, then I've got some swamp land in MM for sale ;-) Likewise, I'm not going to cross a continent or ocean to save 1 or 2 hundred gc.... So now I'll be faced with with several decisions: -Continue with my current tedious method of checking ALL of the bots. -Find a way to determine who does not use Rraisa and PM them separately. -Ignore the bots who do not use Rraisa. -Post a suggestion that this type of functionality be added to the client (like that'll happen....) -Dig up the old "Get the bots off of the market channel" thread (like that'll help....) I'm sure that once/if this catches on, many other players will have to make the same choice (consciously or not.) P.S. Keep the flames to yourself, and take with a grain of salt. This is my opinion. Signed: A customer.

Another big \o/ and thanks. Appreciated very much.

Yesterday's invasion got me to thinking. Invasions are a lot of fun. They rally people from all over, assemble the "Great Army of EL", and add a lot to the gameplay and role playing aspects. Imagine that gc storage is separate from item storage (noticed some banks around....) Add a bank in each of the defensible/walled towns and have invasions target the banks in the towns. Scouts announce an army of monsters marching on a particular town, and If the monsters get to the bank in that town, then everyone's gc goes down by a percentage per minute (say 1%....) To a nubbie, 10gc is worth the same as 1000gc to a mid level, and 10k (or even 100k..) to a pr0. Shouldn't be all of one monster either. Mix in all types or have waves ascending. As the invasion gets tougher, low level players can pull back to shoot arrows/remote heal from the back or the walls...? I'm picturing something like Portland where players can get in the "backdoor" by sea and the invasion marches down from the north, or NC with the PK cave temporarily non PK to get players/supplies in and out. Yes, I am aware that some people are going to hate me now just for suggesting this ;-) P.S. Always thought that the storage depots should be located in towns (...and more of them to cut down on lag/crowding.) ---------------------------------------------------------- Edit: Thought of a cool way to announce the invasions and build some suspense. 1st have all of the spawns everywhere go quiet for a half an hour before the invasion. 2nd, to add more of a role play aspect to the warnings. Have "scout" bots funded by a donation to Manole. Scouts are stationary (and usually the first victims ;-) They report when more than 3 of one kind of monster is seen within 1 min...? Dunno, I'll leave that idea hanging. As will the whole idea, savor for a bit before flaming ;-) Edit2: fixed $$ amounts. Lol, yes Cyprom, that is a lot of money!

My first oldschool type invasion. Had a blast, and got my 1st phantom warrior (while dodging cyclops =-), and lost 1st rosto to a tiger. Kinda thought that was going to happen ;-) The high level players cleaned up the gargs in votd pretty quickly. I'm training on gargs now and would have loved to wade into a pile of em, but got there in time to see a pile of bags. Portland was fun, but again didn't last very long. Things tapered off for me and probably for a lot of the other lower level players after the Portland invasion. I've explored most of C2, and have an idea how to get around, but a lot of the other lower level players haven't, and have trouble figuring out how to get to the invasions on C2 before the low level stuff is over. Not knowing what's through the next map entrance creates a lot of confusion and adds a lot to the channel spamming... Having low level stuff invade C1 while high level stuff invades C2 would probably help to make the invasions last a bit longer and separate the high/low players. I'm sure that lower level players would be more likely to participate on "home turf" knowing where to find storage/bots/NPCs/safe havens/teleports/etc. Maybe have someone role play one of the other gods and run the C1 invasions or something like that. Regardless of the above, I had a lot of fun and would love to see more of this type of stuff. TYVM Acelon (and whoever else helped)

Nice work Nathan. I'm planning on using your bot code for the eventual SaH guild bot if that's ok? Any issues with me reorganizing? Nothing wrong with it now, I just prefer stuff in other places, a minimum number of files, and want to add some specific stuff for our guild. I'd also like to do some heavy commenting as the grey matter doesn't retain stuff as long as it used to ;-) I will of course keep your credits at the top in the code, and just add a "reorg'd by Sphere blah, blah...." I'll also send you a copy of what I've done if you'd like (zip/tgz?) I just got a sourceforge ID, but haven't used CVS in a looooong time. Python skills are a bit rusty, but worked enough to start trying out stuff on the test server. Pain to test the guild functions though, as the test server doesn't have guilds.... Again, nice work.