The AFK Police

[Krimson]

21 minutes ago, Ukase said:

It's all a question of where the line would be drawn. Perhaps the easiest thing to do would be to remove the afk bubble, and that would likely put the afk-ers underneath the radar. 

To me, it's annoying, but I can always quit and do something else. 

It could be worth a try. Watching people getting logged during MSR or Hami would be comedy gold.

[Bob]

12 hours ago, Neiska said:

 

No, to me the joke would be them putting a holiday event behind what is clearly an unbalanced and unfair pvp system.

 

I have no problem with PVP as a concept. I don't mind 1 on 1 duel-style pvp. Or even team pvp. What irks me is the gankfest that most pvp has become in games. Its not a test of skill. There is nothing that will convince me that a lvl 50 with full epics stomping a lvl 10 repeatedly is in any way fair. In wow as well as a few other games, it was the people who would "camp" low levels, or people who would repeatedly kill a quest npc that made people leave. In Everquest it got REALLY bad when a guild took over a single NPC for a cleric epic, effectively preventing cleric on the server from getting their raid weapon, unless you paid them real money. That's when the DMs had to step in. Now I do want to say that isn't necessarily pvp behavior in the game sense, but pvp in the one person being a jerk to another sense. And I don't much care for it. 

 

And I kind of disagree with the idea that pvp is the reason why some games survive. I'm sure it helped, but its entirely likely that it harmed as well. (IE - people may have left because of it.) We can't know either one to be sure. But taking ESO as an example, where they have to more or less "bribe" people to pvp via cosmetics or even hide PVE skill trees behind PVP exp, tells me that they have to coherence or push people into it.

 

And I got nothing against pvp. Only the gankers. If people want to gank people, they can go play Call of Duty, Marvels, or whatever pvp game is big right now. If you like pvp, then fine. More power to you, and I hope you enjoy it. 

I use to believe PvP was a detriment to mmorpgs.  I wasn't big on it, even in WoW.  Rolled on a PvE server (tried PvP a couple times, private servers are almost all PvP as well).

 

Then classic rolled around, and PvP servers dominated the playerbase by a large margin.  Games that still survived; OSRS, GW2 (though this game has a small playerbase now), BDO, WoW (although WoW sucks now days for many reasons) have some of the most PvP to offer, and have a large amount of people who partake in it.  As time goes on and the gaming scene is "beaten" to death with information online not just in the form of text like it was 20~ years ago, but in video form, and even live... there is nothing to figure out anymore.

 

All things PvE can be learned by simply typing in a search on a discord server, youtube, or by watching streamers that will go meta.  It is not something I care for and I believe modern gaming to be fairly shallow, but it wont change at this point.  PvP is the last bastion of overall challenge, since you need to adapt to people doing different things, rather than bots doing the same thing and us (or our groups) knowing EVERYTHING important there is to know, many times even before playing the games themselves.

 

A lot of people want to be challenged again like it use to be.  Just wont happen in PvE form anymore. 

[ShardWarrior]

On 10/19/2025 at 11:36 AM, Bionic_Flea said:

Or give each door a longer cool down after anyone clicks.  I'm not sure what the magic number should be, but if each door took a few minutes to recharge, that would encourage folks to "work the block" and not just a single hotel.

 

Alternatively, have all ToT mobs that spawn immune to pet damage and teleportation.  AFK MM problems solved.

[Jacktar]

4 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

 

Alternatively, have all ToT mobs that spawn immune to pet damage and teleportation.  AFK MM problems solved.

Would that mean that I would not be able to ToT solo on any of my Mminds?

[ShardWarrior]

1 hour ago, Jacktar said:

Would that mean that I would not be able to ToT solo on any of my Mminds?

 

Unfortunately, yes.  I can empathize with you and others on that point.  I do not profess my suggestion to be the ideal solution, but it is a pragmatic one.  Unfortunately, there are a select few who decide to ruin the ToT event for others every year.  There is precedent for game changes being made due to the bad behavior of a select few - see the removal of converting EMP merits to Merits.

 

Many suggestions have come about over the years on what to do about AFK MMs.  None of them are real solutions in my opinion.  Reporting them does not work.  It is unreasonable for GMs to  be on hand in every instance to monitor every ToT site and take action.  I would rather our volunteer GMs not get flooded with support tickets about AFKers ruining the ToT experience either.  AFK MMs who are not in a league cannot be kicked from a league and they are still able leech XP from everyone else even when not teamed with anyone.  Moving to a different ToT location on the map does not work as they just follow and set up show.  They are in multiple instances of PI.  The only other options I can think of would be to convert ToT into an instanced raid like the MSR was, or have "MM Only" instances of PI.  At least if an instanced raid, AFK leechers can be kicked and removed from the instance or separated from everyone else and not negatively impacting anyone.

 

I was on a league earlier this morning and there were AFK MMS and Doms teleporting mobs away from the league.  Everyone moved to a different instance, and they just followed setting up shop in PI, PI2, PI3 and PI4.  Some tried moving to a different area,  but they followed there as well, ruining the fun and experience for others actively engaged.  

 

Again, I do not profess this to be an ideal solution, but it is an unfortunate practical one.  I never expect this to be implemented.  

Edited 8 hours ago by ShardWarrior

[Ghost]

 Just have infl/XP go in reverse during the time spent AFK.

 

The second the AFK tag kicks in, XP/infl starts dropping - potentially resulting in loss of levels and going into debt 

😈

 

[Excraft]

37 minutes ago, Ghost said:

 Just have infl/XP go in reverse during the time spent AFK.

 

The second the AFK tag kicks in, XP/infl starts dropping - potentially resulting in loss of levels and going into debt 

😈

 

 

This won't work.  These MMs are avoiding the AFK timeout by starting a TF or Ouro arc and then setting up in PI.  

[srmalloy]

2 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

Many suggestions have come about over the years on what to do about AFK MMs.  None of them are real solutions in my opinion.  Reporting them does not work.  It is unreasonable for GMs to  be on hand in every instance to monitor every ToT site and take action.

There is a partial solution, but it both involves coding changes and borders on harassment even if the code changes are made. The code change would be to disable the "teleport closer if too far from the summoner" code for AFK MMs, then take advantage of the fact that the game is set up so that all pets, except for the 'untouchable' T4 Radial Lore pet, will automatically accept teleports. This can be a serious inconvenience on teams and leagues if you don't have your 'prompt to accept teleport' option turned off -- if you're an MM with your henchmen clustered around you fighting a group of hostile mobs, and someone else on the team/league fires off Incandescence -- your henchmen will instantly 'accept' the teleport and disappear to wherever the Incandescence drops them, leaving your MM with their schwanzstucker in their hand facing the hostile mobs while you're trying to get your mouse to the 'accept' button on the teleport prompt window. (It's still better than having the prompt disabled and automatically accepting any teleport; I don't know how many times I've been tempted to take a character with Incandescence to the southeast corner of the instance during a MSR and Incan the league way the hell out of the way just to illustrate to everyone how much you can get jerked over by not setting the 'prompt to accept teleport' option)