Macroing & Alts

[Voideka]

I was thinking about the issue of macroing the other day, in HH as well as other games, and ways to combat it. I realized though, and this may be obvious to some, that macroing indicates a problem with the game, not the players. People generally don't join games to not play them, and macroing is generally something people do to get to the fun parts. UO has always been my favorite example of a good game that starts out bad. Very few people want their first minutes of combat to be against a training dummy, in an attempt to get enough skill to not be mauled by a rabbit. HH shares a lot of the same problems that UO does, especially in that players start out almost entirely incompetent. So, let's dissect HH and find some of the problems that lead to macroing, rather than trying to come up with clever ways to block it (because you never will).

As mentioned before, one of the biggest problems I see is not being able to do anything but grind right off the bat. In what ways can this be addressed? For me, one idea I've come up with is the concept of starting classes. A player would choose what type of character they want in creation, and they'd start out with some skills in those arenas. Nothing major, but enough to start doing things to help out in a town, or to get started on one's own plot. They can still train everything else, it's just a way to give people something to do besides weave baskets.

The other problem is, honestly, skill costs are just out of control. Making black arts really expensive only means a person needs to run their macro a little longer to get them. Meanwhile, anyone who wants to play normally is boned. This problem is compounded by the introduction of all those new skill types; I've always played normally, I liked taking my time with things, but seeing that long list of skills on the character panel is awful. I don't feel like I can just trundle along any more, it's really intimidating. After increasing the cost of black arts, did the problem of alt thieves really slow down? If so then it's an okay stopgap, but we need to find a better way to deal with it.

Again, one of the main reasons given for the high cost of skills is alt abuse. Alt thieves and their ilk are, like macroing, another symptom of a problem with the game, rather than the players. Just like before, we need to ask why people do these things, and fix the cause. In the case of alts, the main reason is the problematic system of thieving. Black Arts are here to stay (as far as I can tell), and many people do like the set, even those who don't participate, so it needs to be fixed. The biggest issue with being a thief is that it is usually a death sentence; thieves need more ways to stay safe, beyond a hearth in the boonies, and no, faster decaying scents don't cut it.

I suggest implementing quality on scents, with a low quality scent being vague and difficult to track as well as difficult to spot, and a high quality scent being more accurate, but never perfect, and easier to find. The longer a player spends on a claim doing criminal acts, the more things they steal, the higher the quality of the scent. So let's say I trespass onto Bob's claim, I will leave behind a Q1 scent. For every 5 minutes I spend on the claim, the quality of all my scents increase. Now I decide to take things, and every item I steal also increases the quality of future scents. One way this can be handled with the new status effect system: trespassing starts a buff for a hidden skill called Crime (like Farming etc), and every act or period of time applies the buff again, allowing it to stack. The higher your Crime skill, the higher the quality of scents you leave, the easier you get found. You could link Stealth into this as well, by having it act to lower your scent quality. The status effect would last something like 20 minutes, it's duration resetting to max every time you get another application. It would also be tagged with the claim name, meaning your actions in different places have no effect on each other.

The benefits of this system are manyfold. For one, it makes stealing viable by protecting thieves, but it also protects victims. It encourages smaller scale theft rather than huge ransackings, which encourages sustainable theft, allowing the victim to still progress while the thief gets a steady source of income. It also has the benefit of protecting innocent people; if I trespass on your property as part of my travels, with no malicious intent, you can tell by the quality of the scent that I wasn't doing anything deserving of death, as it would be very low, if you could find it in the first place.

Along with this, thieves will need new skills as well, to help make things more worthwhile. Lock picking is one such skill, along with other possibilities such as wall climbing and camouflage. With high-quantity thieving being less viable, thieves will need to spread out their actions among more claims and villages to gain value from their skill set, or it will be completely ruined. The plus side is again, as the theft is spread out, it has less of an impact on individual players. Obviously these things would need to be balanced appropriately (camouflage could simply be face paint and clothing, lock picking could take a long time and wall climbing could take a lot of stam), but as I said before, they will be necessary for any type of rebalancing of theft.

With main thieves being viable and skill costs being lowered, people will have less of a need to macro or make alts, leading to a more enjoyable experience for everyone.

[sabinati]

pretty good, would read posts from this user again.

[JokkeL]

since most of the LP-granting actions usually require some sort of resource, combined with food and staminaloss, i can't see a way how afk-macroing would be very effective in H&H. so you have to "play the game" anyways.

[PhaedrothSP]

I think the class idea is a bit like the Credo concept J&L had posted a while back.

[Voideka]

since most of the LP-granting actions usually require some sort of resource, combined with food and staminaloss, i can't see a way how afk-macroing would be very effective in H&H. so you have to "play the game" anyways.

Macros are a lot more powerful than you seem to realize. Even using something as basic as AutoHotKey or AutoIt, I could make a macro that covers all that.

Let's say I wanted a macro to make teapots. First I have it send the key presses to activate the Dig hotkey, then I have it dig in shallow water, which can be done using coordinates or a search for the right color blue followed by a mouse click. I can have it detect when my inventory is full or empty by monitoring the color of the slots. When it's full, I can have it send the keystrokes for making teapots, and I can craft them until I'm out of clay. After this I can have it dump anything from my inventory besides a flask. I can have it monitor my stamina by having it look for the color black near the end of it. If I'm out of stamina, I can have it refill the flask with a simple left click on it, and a right click on the shallows, followed by returning it to the same spot in my inventory, and then drinking from it. I can have it wait the few seconds until my stamina is full again, or I can monitor the end of the bar for the color blue. I can do the same for hunger, by checking for the colors red and green. If it detects hunger it can right click on an apple tree (detected by color and coordinates) and start picking and eating apples, while discarding the cores. When I'm fullish (known by the color green on the bar) it can go right back to the beginning in an infinite loop.

Now, I haven't made any macros for this game, so I don't know how much LP you would get an hour from that, but I can run it all night while I'm asleep and wake up with tens or hundreds of thousands of free LP. I've heard of certain grinding methods being able to generate 10k LP an hour, which if true would mean I could go to sleep at midnight and get back on the computer at 10 AM and have 100k LP waiting for me. So yeah, afk-macroing is very effective in HH.

I think the class idea is a bit like the Credo concept J&L had posted a while back.

A little bit yeah, but to be honest I didn't really understand what they were going for, it seemed a bit vague.

[Blaze]

They plan on making all types of resources depletable, that should void most of the common types of macros; barring an extensive script.

[Thursday]

They also plan to make the map infinitely expandable. Macros will just include a function to move to a new cell when resources get low.

Overall, the basics here seem like a step in the right direction. Before lock picking can be a worthwhile skill we need the ability to modify openables with locks (the chest requires metal and has a latch on the sprite, but can't be locked).

As for classes, I'm mostly against that. What would be nice though is for players to choose their starting beliefs. It allows them to specialize into a village, as there are several things like mining ore that are affected by belief only. It also isn't a balance concern because all the beliefs have cons to balance out their pros.

Like I said, I think that the original poster has it right saying that macros and alts are a symptom, not the source. Hopefully, changes in design will make the start of the game more enjoyable, as well as encouraging people to use alternative accounts for what they were originally made for: exploring character concepts that would be too time consuming for an already established character.

[Blaze]

I meant no more infinite apples/mulberries from trees or digging up the same water tile again and again.

[Jackard]

As for classes, I'm mostly against that. What would be nice though is for players to choose their starting beliefs. It allows them to specialize into a village, as there are several things like mining ore that are affected by belief only. It also isn't a balance concern because all the beliefs have cons to balance out their pros.

He's not suggesting classes in the traditional sense, but instead choosing from groups of starting skills and values.

A Farmer template might give 20 Farming, 10 Cooking, 10 Carpentry and farming related skills.
A Hunter template might give 20 Melee, 10 Survival, 10 Marksmanship and hunting related skills.
etc.

[Kruemelmonster]

Yes a UO like template would be nice. Another good idea in my opinion would be a skill/stats cap. So players have to specialize their abilitiys for getting best. Maybe a skill and statscap like 250each and 500 for all skills. So everybody can take a special job if he wants to be a grandmaster. This will increase the trade and reduce the spread between older and newer player on the long term and would be more realistic.