Usl
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Posts posted by Usl
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There is a bot that is happily spamming most of the other bots to achieve this same functionality, Rraisa.
Currently in the "extended testing" (read guild only) phase, the bot is due to go live on August 1st according to Usl.
This is confirmed. In addition to members of my current and previous guilds, the bot has been/is being tested by owners of indexed bots who have requested to join in the beta test. I will post the full announcement in this forum on the appointed day (although almost a month late w.r.t. my original schedule -- sorry!).
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I would hate to be European or anyone for that matter who logs on right after most of the Americans have gone to bed. Well, given that I am European and am fine with it, and you are American and think Americans would be at an advantage, it would be easy to make both of us happy
. But as I said above, I don't think this can be implemented, so the point is moot. However, based on what I can observe from #stats, the number of players logged on at any given time is more or less constant: are you just assuming that there are huge spikes based on US vs. rest of the world time zones, or you actually observed such fluctuations? I do not normally play on CET mornings, so I might be missing part of the data -- but I'm on for some 10-18 hrs/day
, mostly every day, and the number of players is typically between 480 and 550 at all times.Unless there is such a regular, periodic effect, the disaster scenario you depict so effectively is not going to happen...
But again, why waste bits on discussing this?
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People have totally missed my point with regards to a dynamic system controlling item input (I probably should've been clearer). I didn't mean it JUST for rare items, I intended it for all types - rare or not. More importantly are the harvestable items that shouldn't be unlimited in supply.
In general terms, I agree: we might have a large but limited stock at any given harvesting spot, and once the stock is exhausted it would take some time for it to reform. This would make harvesting more realistic, avoid large crowds at favorite spots (the harvesting pressure will distribute more evenly), and encourage map exploration (so that players can find unspoiled resources).
My favourite example are the outhouses: only rarely I find someone inside, yet they hold an unlimited supply of dung
!But I have the impression that it might be very difficult to implement given the current data structures in the server, and moreover most players would be quite unhappy with such a change (which, actually, might be a good reason for Entropy to consider it
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Ok, this is really a number of separate answers to a number of issues raised in the thread: bear with me
.1. I am in favour of keeping rarity changes "secret", and let people realize the changes by themselves (through observation). Thus, prices will adjust slowly, there will be opportunities for smart/more observant players to make some gc from smart trading, and Entropy will be able to make any needed adjustment without causing too much hassle everytime.
2. While Trollson's formula for dynamic adjustment is correct, I am against any automatic fixed-target adjustment of rarity.
First, in RL prices of raw material or other items do change, so there is nothing inherently wrong with them changing in EL as well. The important point is to have some positive-feedback loop in the system to keep things balanced to a level where the game can still be played and provide fun. There are already a number of such mechanisms (i.e., NPCs, the EL shop itself, plus supply-demand effect for various items).
Second, determining the "optimal" amount is next to impossible -- even with standard Operational Research techniques (symplex, primal/dual forms, etc.), you cannot easily track changes in the player population. This includes not only the number of players (total or active, as you wish), but subtler things like how experienced players are (the needs of a OA80 are different from those of a OA15), what kind of character they are building (i.e., should two or three top players switch from levelling a skill to another, or maybe a top hoarder give his stock away before leaving the game, the market could be seriously affected), etc.
The historically minded might compare fixed targets to Soviet Union's attempts at a planned economy (those beloved quinquennial plans of old...
)3. I don't think hoarding is a problem in itself -- counting stuff taking dust in storages as if it were for sure to be eventually used is. Face it, certain people takes pride in showing their collection of Rostos to their friends, or maybe having three full sets of any armour every dreamed of on display, etc.
Please Entropy, when considering whether 13K or 14K EFEs in the game are too much or too few, remember us poor guys with a 1/33000 EFE record while looking at the total sum... Identifying "dead" items (those lying in storages, or maybe moving in a loop, etc.) is probably impossible to implement, so there is no much scope for action here.
4. Substituting what are essentially counters to random generators, as suggested by TirunCollimdus, does not seem a good idea at all. The lucky roll is a fundamental part of the gaming experience -- I got my first EFE after 600 fe (ok, those were other times: and how happy I was!), and then nothing for the next 32000+ fe. Adding certainty will make the game more boring, in my opinion. If this is the solution, then it is much better to drop the "random chance" idea at all, and say that you can MIX (i.e., produce) an EFE with 10000 fe, and that's it. Another option would be to make enrichment stones manufacturable (with a mechanism similar to saving stone, so that they will be reasonable rare anyway), and drop the random production while making basic stuff altogether. I'm in favour of keeping the current system, though.
5. Finally, a little change in the client could make the point 1. above easily accepted: just provide a per-item counter reset option in the client, or maybe just a separate counter over a given time window (for example, over the last 30 days), so that observant people will have an opportunity to realize the effects of a change in rarity, rather than having an announcement of the change.
As a side note, pushing people to observe the rates rather than being told them would also increase social interaction among players (to compare statistics), which could be a nice outcome anyway.
Now, where were my 0.02$?
-Usl
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It seems bagjumping is not the only bad habits Suffer has...
I was at a polar bear spawn in Glacmor, after having left the Sewers (which where quite densely populated, being a Sun-Tzu day, and where Suffer had came and generously helped himself on the orcs without a single word to the others which were already present), when Suffer came into the scene:
[03:40:08] Usl: Suffer, there are a few other polar bear spawns around... you are really interested in just this one?
[03:40:08] [PM from SuFFeR: im afk. SO LEAVE ME ALONE! unless your 1 of my friends. in that case just keep spamming me]
[03:40:16] SuFFeR: umm yes
I refused to leave the spawn, so we started the typical "run on your prey" routine, until Suffer started using big weaponry on the animals:
[03:53:28] Usl: pitiful
[03:53:35] SuFFeR: im out of mana
[03:54:45] SuFFeR: =P
Then I arrived first on a couple of bears:
[03:54:48] SuFFeR: wtf
[03:54:59] Usl: there are higher powers in this world...
and
[03:55:55] SuFFeR: smeg
at that point, Suffer began serping the spawn deliberately:
[03:57:36] Usl: are you spawn serping on purpose?
[03:57:40] SuFFeR: yea
[03:58:10] Usl: ok... faster respawn for me
I still refused to leave and, after a while,
[04:10:18] SuFFeR: i sugest you find a new spawn
I then went AFK, writing this report, and ignored him. Ten minutes later, deprived of his sport, he had left.
This is just a report of my experience, it's up to each of you to decide if this information might be relevant in your future dealing with this guy.
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I don't think this is quite what you intended -- a "score=100" character gets the same points for killing a "score=0" as for killing a "score=200". He'd also get '-Infinity' points for killing another "score=100"...new_winner_score = old_winner_score + alpha * log(abs(old_winner_score-old_loser_score));new_loser_score = old_loser_score - alpha * log(abs(old_winner_score-old_loser_score));
Ops, you are right! I had in mind a shifted symmetric logarithmic curve, but then wrote the equation for just one case. (Picture it as a log, shifted back to remove -inf for positive x, and -log, shifted towards left for the same reason, for negative x).
But then the formula would not be that simple anymore, and in any case the choice is already done, so the point is moot. Thanks for spotting the errors!
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My guildmate Wilbur_Whateley tried to register several times, to no avail. He would be grateful if you could register him (with that name).
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I am not a PKer myself, but I am in favour of the point system as a way of role-playing the "fame" of a skilled killer. I voted for the asymmetric system because it seems only reasonable that your fame (and your value as a PKer) is much increased by killing someone who is himself famous and skilled, maybe more than yourself -- i.e., by superior strategy, or skillfull ambush, or whatever. Also, I see as a positive feature the fact that a famed PKer will attract more killing attempts -- this is the way this kind of things worked in ancient Japan (1400-1600), for example, where killing a samurai of renown was a feat which would greatly enhance your status.
I am totally against awarding negative points: killing a weakling may be no fun, but is certainly not reproachable in a PK area.
Having said that, I was going to suggest an asymptotic system, but Trollson has already posted a thorough presentation of the matter, so I can save myself a lot of typing and just recommending Trollson's suggestion (or whatever other asymptotic curve one may want to use, e.g. logarithmic). The key idea here is that the amount of points transferred with each fight is asymptotically limited, but a PKer can still get as many points as he wants by killing the appropriate number of opponents, so the score is not limited, nor is it difficult to increase it. Additionally, we save the 0-sum property in the game, which is nice.
A maybe simpler formula with the same properties would be to transfer the logarithm of the difference between the two players' scores, multiplied by some constant, e.g.
new_winner_score = old_winner_score + alpha * log(abs(old_winner_score-old_loser_score));
new_loser_score = old_loser_score - alpha * log(abs(old_winner_score-old_loser_score));
(you way want to truncate to integers for simplicity in the end). But the exact formula is kind of immaterial, and as long as we keep the 0 sum, it can be adjusted in the future.
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When's this gonna be closing, so I can see how much money I can raise before then.
End of this week is the expected closing date.
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Hear! Hear!
Auctioning off a shiny new Vegetal Nexus Removal Stone!
My friend Sonteard who found it is a potioner, which proves once more that the EL random number generator has a wicked sense of humor
.Post your offer here, or via in-game or forum PM either to me (Usl) or in-game PM directly to Sonteard.
I will update this thread to let you know of the current price in case of PM offers. Prospective buyers privacy will be safeguarded.
edit: received offer for 1 fruit
edit: received offer for 450Kgc
edit: received offer for 50 hydro bars
edit: received offer for a cutlass of mage
edit: received offer for thermal serp + 200Kgc
edit: received offer for staff of mage + 400Kgc
edit: auction will close on Sunday, 22:00 CET; we have three offers in the 450-480Kgc range standing, if you want to bid, do so now.
edit: received offer for 450Kgc + 10 wolf bars
edit: received offer for 500Kgc + 5 wolf bars
edit: sold for 540Kgc, thanks to all the bidders, thread can be closed now
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The bot Rraisa provides exactly the service you have in mind.
It is true that pricing is often different for different players, but that is not the point -- once I know which bot has something I need, I will ask that bot for the price. The boring part is having to peruse dozens of bot to find the "right" one.
Rraisa has been in testing for two months now, and will become public very soon at this point. You might want to keep an eye on an announcement. Notice also that only bots that have chosen to participate are indexed anyway -- LabRat's bots, for example, are not accessed at all, as per his request.
Ciao,
-Usl
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Same for me and a few fellow mates from ELIT; last week she tried to bugjump us during teamwork in the sapphire cave several times, and she was actually waiting in readyness for any opportunity that might arise.
I explained her why this was considered impolite to say the least, and she moved away from our bag after some insistence (apparently she took some unimportant item from that).
Seeing how she continues bagjumping after having being duly lectured on the subject, I would recommend everybody to avoid any dealing with her.
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{from a co-worker of Moebird who had received it by email, so not sure how trustworthy these data are:}
Hi Yanks, I thought you all would like to see the real figures from Down Under. It has now been 12 months since gun owners in Australia were forced by a new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by our own government, a program costing Australia taxpayers more than $500 million dollars.
The first year results are now in:
Australia-wide, homicides are up 6.2 percent,
{more similar figures}
Just to stay on the statistics side, at this Wikipedia article there is a list of countries listed by homicide rate (the scalable map is particularly nice).
The U.S. are at ~6 murders per 100.000 inhabitants; Western Europe is around 1 per 100.000, which is more or less the same as in Canada. I suspect availability of firearms does not play a major part in explaining the difference, with other factors being more important (e.g., how badly important is money in people lives, to afford basic services), but I would dare to say that there is little support for the idea that arming the population does something to reduce the murder rate.
As for Australia, for sure reducing an armed population to an unarmed one (the legal principle being that the State has a monopoly on violence) is a difficult process. We have seen similar things in Ireland and Spain, where in certain areas large sectors of the population had firearms; it takes on average 20 years before the situation stabilizes. Still, the available data (from official UN reports) for Australia tell a different story:
Year, murders/100.000
2000, 1.57
2003, 1.53
2004, 1.28
2006, 1.28
So it may be worth to review the sources of that email...
In the short run, criminals will keep the guns and law-abiding citizens will turn them on, which is a rather unpleasant situation. In the long run, our experience in Italy is that after a century with no firearms and no death penalty, the crime rate is certainly not particularly high -- and this is even considering Mafia in the statistics
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Subject says it all.
This would be in much the same way as Leather Gloves appear both as Clothes and Armour, or Bones are both Animal and Weapons.
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well, in EL u dont get much for return.
u cant use a city for something
This seems a little premature. You don't know which kind of new buildings and related services will be there. For example, what if you can create a building which provides, say, a pay-per-use arena which guarantees that only you and your training partner can enter it for a given amount of time?
In full glory, city builders will have some form of scripting or programming language (maybe similar to the one used for quests?), and then endless possibilities open... the whole issue with player-run cities is that players can be creative on their own without having to wait for Ent or some of the other good souls doing the server work to implement everything.
Just as a term of comparison, look at all the services the various bots around provide to players, and how much they add to the game texture. I can imagine player-run cities will have buildings as varied as bots are (and no, not all of them are tradebots
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For example, if the zoning advisor hates you, he won't allow you to build your home anywhere, so you will go to bitch to the mayor who maybe is your friend, and then he will bitch to the zoning advisor, and then the trade advisor will take sides, and so on. Even though this is what usually happens IRL, I would like to avoid that if possible.
I agree; in fact the idea with the "commisioner" was that for the initial period, before reaching the steady state, a single person has all authority, hence there are no conflicts(1). This period between establishment of the city and beginning of regular "government" is meant to mold the community into a single social body (which is the same goal as with the other two analogies).
In any case, whatever the mechanism, I like the idea a lot, and would be happy to contribute as I can.
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(1) there are no conflicts between different authorities. There may still be conflicts between a single player and the commissioner, but that would be the same also with the guild or "delegate" system.
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I would rather go with the old (Roman, actually) method of establishing colonies: initially, an appointed person runs the city (it would be appointed "from above", e.g. one of the mods) for a fixed period; as soon as the city reaches a certain critical mass, or after a given period of time, the appointed commissioner steps down and elections are held among the residents.
Depending on how large and how many player-run cities are, we might even consider establishing "guild colonies", e.g. having as appointed commissioner the guildmaster of a (large) guild. Again as a historical parallel, this is what happened with colonies established in eastern Europe by anseatic states in late middle age.
Last, there is the third way of establishing colonies, the one used by the Greeks while colonizing Southern Italy, Phoenicians in Africa and Spain, and several European countries while populating N&S America and Australia: here a group of citizens that already belonged to the same city (/state) were sent or moved of their own accord elsewhere to establish a colony. The key point is that the colonist already formed a social group on their own, they were not just collected at random.
I would go with the first option initially (appointed leaders), and later experiment with #2 (guilds) and #3 (split). Both collecting people at random (NPC) and having a single "owner" which has to collect the money beforehand are kind of risky (and not totally realistic).
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Given that it will be useful for all skills except fighting and potioning, I would guess it might be some kind of "food consumption suspension" -- for a period of time, your food level will not decrease.
Fighting does not consume food in a significant way (only for restoring phys/mana), and potioning has to be excluded from such a feature (because otherwise you would have a positive feedback, and could use one such potion to produce countless others). Other analogous mechainsms could be imagined, e.g. fixing your food level to max for a while, or increasing your max food capacity, etc.
That would also be consistent with the hint about a big market for the concoction -- everyone would love such a thingie!
Just my 2 euro cents worth...
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Yep, you cannot access the gypsum you have in storage, nor deposit more, but the #sto command correctly reports what you have there already. Probably just a typo or something similar in deciding in which section of the (graphical) storage windows it should go. Be patient till tomorrow.
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Nice idea indeed. The Top 100 lists would be funny to peruse, but even more interesting is the ability to check which goods are suffering inflation and which ones deflation, to keep the M3 monetary mass in check, to verify that the mixing rates for various artefacts are appropriate, etc... which I imagine is the real reason why this feature was worth spending a week on
I'd love to see some stats... thumb up on my part!
Advanced Broker-Bot
in Bots
Posted · Report reply
Nicky, if you were in the bot owners private forum, you would know that this has already been discussed months ago (also see the numbers below). Of course, whoever does not want to be indexed can simply state so, and that bot would be removed from Rraisa listings. A total of 2 tradebots, both owned by the same person, have in fact been removed upon request. Entropy stated quite clearly that by default it is acceptable that a bot asks another bot for its INV and WANTED, but of course bots are free to ignore requests as they wish. Rraisa has been running for 6 months now, it's not that the matter hasn't been thoroughly discussed and tested.
This is in fact like saying that there is no reason why a web site should respond to Google's requests. Why there is so much talk about botspam, I can't quite understand: Rraisa just sends an INV or WANTED command every 1 and 1/2 hour, which should not be a burden to anyone. These PMs go directly to a single bot, not to a channel where they could constitute spam. Globally, it would hugely reduce the total number of tradebot-related PMs in the system. If you have n players and m tradebots, for every player to get a complete picture of the market would require O(n*m) messages (a message from each player to each bot). With a broker, you only need O(n+m) messages (n messages from player to broker, plus m messages from broker to bots).
There is no claim that results will be accurate, or whatever. Of course tradebots can cheat to Rraisa, and then maybe offer a worse price to a player. That's why I normally use Rraisa to get a list of bots carrying some item, and then INV them directly before going half a continent to do my shopping. Notice that I'm avoiding PMing dozens of bots that DON't carry what I want, saving time for myself and bandwidth on the server.
Well, I can't see the botspam problem, and if the service as a whole doesn't work, people will simply stop using it. I'm not a zealot, and I would not pushing this -- except, several other tradebot owners said they would gladly support the service only on condition that it was open to the public, not only to a few guilds.
So far, I have had:
1 tradebot owner explicitly asked to be removed from the listing
3 tradebot owners explicitly asked to be added to the listing (I had missed them initially)
all the rest were happy to be included, and some of them opted to ban Rraisa for the time being, in particular:
6 bots are ignoring Rraisa (some of them are ignoring all bots, regardless of the purpose)
40 bots are replying to Rraisa requests
10 bots are off-line right now and I can't tell wheter they would accept or reject requests
in addition, several of the newer bots are not yet listed.
ttlanhil, we already know we disagree on this issue. As I said, opening to the public was requested by the owners of several of the 6 bots that currently ignore Rraisa, and explicitly encouraged by Entropy, who even said it would weave the $20 bot fee and consider Rraisa a free "community" service if it was opened up. I asked for some months of testing before opening the service, and the time has now come to try it for real. So far, only tradebot owners have had an opportunity to discuss the issue; let's see how all the other players like it as well.
As I said above, I'm not a zealot by nature: if the existance of Rraisa affects negatively EL as a whole, I would be happy to retire it. My impression is that players would love such a feature, and this implementation is actually more efficient that a separate bot channel or other similar proposals (in fact, Rraisa also indexes the market channel, so announcements from bots and players alike are also reported in response to queries).
Peace?