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Fooball
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Posted - 2005.11.11 16:44:00 -
[1]
There are couple revelations I had about the macro mining. These revelations lead me to one solution to the macro mining. It's slightly unique and requires some fine tuning but the main principle should be quite potent.
First revelation is that you don't have to block and protect every feature in the game from macroing. It's enough to block certain gate keeping features that enable you in overall to do certain actions. With macro mining this would be starting the miner module.
The second revelation is that the macros are mostly doing blind clicks on the interface. If they are doing some other things their abilities are very limited. They can't really ôthinkö, not even in an extremely simple human way.
The third revelation is that if you build an anti-macroing feature someone is going to most likely build new tools to go around it.
Now, what if when you tried to active the miner you were asked for something that can't be accomplished with a blind click? There are some quite strict requirements for this:
1.It must be easy to accomplish. We don't want that only the Einsteins can play the game.
2.It must be fast to accomplish. We don't want any real burden to the miners.
There are many nice possibilities. Say, ask a simple question. ôHow much is 2 + 2 ?ö. Provide 4 clickable answers, with only one correct answer. If the answer is wrong, lock all the miners of that player for some punishment time.(15 minutes? 30? An hour?) ôConnect the blue dots!ö. Present some picture with 4 dots of which 2 are blue. And one mouse swing and swoosh. Off you go. Or ôWhat color is this text in?ö.
An intelligent developer is able to think of thousands of extremely easy (dead easy!) tasks which take 0.1 seconds for a human to complete û but which are impossible for macro systems. It should be also possible to camouflage (some of?) the puzzles to belong fluently into the game. ôYou need to add some coolant to your lasers, blahblahö...
Okay, there are downsides too. To be usable the feature needs a superb interface so that it wouldn't ruin the game by being intrusive or disrupting some other things people often do at the same time. (Like chat.) Also for the people with many lasers that's perhaps too much burden. Ask those things once in 30 minutes or so, unlocking all the lasers... ?
The feature would add couple extra clicks and take couple seconds (not more) of the player's time in a mining session lasting an hour. It would be of no burden to active miners. Afk miners could when activating lasers complete the task with ease. (Spending just couple extra seconds in the game.) Macro miners then again would be far more sad. 
It's possible that the macroers can adapt to the specific ôpuzzlesö. That's why they should be (cached) scriptable content. (That's what the Python is good at.) Meaning that if required the devs can flood the system with new simple differently acting tasks. They wouldn't have to push out a complete new client patch or anything like that. There is no way macroers can adapt the same pace as the new very simple puzzles can be introduced. They will be quite much just locked out from macroing in the long time frame. 
The feature is not imho biased. I haven't though had the ability to think of all the possible situations. It is possible that someone can come up with possible legit use cases where the system is bad. I believe however that fine tuning and designing this further the macroing problem can be stopped for good.
The only thing that would be hard to solve would be all the emerging whining. Both general resistance to change and from the macro miners. 
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Dead Anarchyst
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Posted - 2005.11.11 22:04:00 -
[2]
I dont think what games with Q/A are good idea.
Devs can implement few good things without breaking interface.
1. Reduce number of ore in asteroids. Require more target locks.
2. Implement mining lasers work temperature barrier. If your laser works more than 15 minutes, he can be damaged (temperature overload) or stopped (automatically). After 1 minute you can run laser again.
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Galifardeua
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Posted - 2005.11.11 22:29:00 -
[3]
I don't like the idea. Too hard to implement nicely (taking into account different languages, levels of mathematical habilities, colour disabilities, ...).
I'm not fan either of a cool down period. It's boring, and slow, enough to be there mining, even with a covetor (covetor is the medium one, right? too sleepy to check). If I had to stop 1 minute between changing locked targets it'd be worse.
At least I can play windowed.
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TotensBurntCorpse
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Posted - 2005.11.11 22:37:00 -
[4]
continue what we do now is all i can say...
1) find macroer
2) steal from macroer
3) no response steal some more
4) petition macroer
5) broad cast to others macroer name and location
6) steal from macroer
7) rinse and repeat #6 till full or macroer leaves
8) follow macroer
9) rinse and repeat #6 till full or macroer leaves
10) rinse and repeat #9
If EVERYONE helped with 1 - 10 above, macroers will start to disappear due to US the players policing this cheat.
TotensBurntCorpse
Likes
EVE, Starfleet Command Series, Earth & Beyond, Anything Battlefield, MOHAA, Call of Duty.
Dislikes
Not much. |
Fooball
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Posted - 2005.11.11 23:21:00 -
[5]
Requiring more locks or cooldown periods or reducing the amount of ore would do absolutely nothing. It would be still just as macroable, though it might add some extra small pauses 
I'm also stunned that someone is thinking there are EVE players who can't complete the stunning mathematical task "How much is 1 + 1 ?"  But that might be, I've met a few really retarded people in the game and a few more on these forums
Yeah, it's not easy I agree. But I believe most of the current macroes are being caught so slow that they have already covered their account costs and earned some. The same slowness goes often to the other ways of handling as well.
Also the things I have heard about the staff's tools and investigating procedures are mostly just appalling 
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Lygos
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Posted - 2005.11.12 18:49:00 -
[6]
Increasingly unstable asteroids.
Mining should be dangerous. Yields should multiply exponentially given the amount of equipment and pilots present to manipulate and suppress dangerous conditions. They should require intelligent decisions all around.
As for time sinks, they should occur only in refining. 24 hours worth of one rented or built facilities refining capacity should be acquirable in 1 hour. The upkeep costs should only be a fraction of the profit, and below 25% of the sum activity. Basic empire refining should be incredibly limited. Refining in low sec should be expandable, but rather vulnerable to enemy depredations.
Ice is stupid.
"Everything I love is combustible." |
Spy4Hire
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Posted - 2005.11.12 22:28:00 -
[7]
Actually, it's not the macro miners so much as the macro haulers who enable the macro mining to flourish.
If you want to introduce puzzles, then do it each time the hauler enters the grid and attempts to open a jetcan. That will at least force a human to command the haulers, rather than allowing the whole process to be automated.
As for the miners... a puzzle each time a new can is jettisoned would not be as onerous, and again require a human to interface that part of the process once every so often.
The problem lies in how to descriminate a can used by mining as opposed to one used by a mission runner/rat hunter. Proximity to a vessel equipped with a mining laser, perhaps?
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Zydigo
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Posted - 2005.11.13 03:18:00 -
[8]
I say we cut off their fingers..................wait, nevermind
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Lexa A
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Posted - 2005.11.13 04:43:00 -
[9]
what about a messgae box asking for you to put a series of numbers from the server if it was displayed as a image i dont think thers anyway a macro could reconise the charectors
Gah that better |
Nytemaster
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Posted - 2005.11.13 11:06:00 -
[10]
Bah, I hate mining as it is and you want to make it that much more intensive? I don't mine much anymore but I surely wouldn't mine at all if I had to punch a keycode in everytime I activated a laser. My Lord, NO!
---
Nytemaster
Mega-Deth |
Fooball
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Posted - 2005.11.13 19:27:00 -
[11]
 Originally by: Lexa A
what about a messgae box asking for you to put a series of numbers from the server if it was displayed as a image i dont think thers anyway a macro could reconise the charectors
OCR systems are relatively easy to build and automate. Those anti-robot number/letter series must be so wrinkled and garbled that humans will have serious problems with them before it starts affecting automated programs. There has been some serious studies afaik about them since many free email account providers and such use the technique. 90%+ of the schemes used can be broken quite easy at this moment.
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Fooball
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Posted - 2005.11.13 19:30:00 -
[12]
Originally by: Spy4Hire
The problem lies in how to descriminate a can used by mining as opposed to one used by a mission runner/rat hunter. Proximity to a vessel equipped with a mining laser, perhaps?
Good thinking. I can see though someone renting dozens of miners for one human hauler.. 
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000Hunter000
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Posted - 2005.11.13 19:38:00 -
[13]
Wheeee!!! we get a quiz everytime we click our mininglaser? what fun!!! Do we win anything if we click the right answer too???...
Yes, i was beeing sarcastic.
I'm all for eradicating macroers, but putting this in is just silly.
Rejected but keep those ideas comming Fooball.
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Fooball
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Posted - 2005.11.13 19:42:00 -
[14]
Edited by: Fooball on 13/11/2005 19:48:51
Originally by: 000Hunter000
Wheeee!!! we get a quiz everytime we click our mininglaser? what fun!!! Do we win anything if we click the right answer too???...
Yes, i was beeing sarcastic.
I'm all for eradicating macroers, but putting this in is just silly.
Rejected but keep those ideas comming Fooball.
If you would have bothered reading, you would have noticed that it wasn't meant to be "always when you click your mining laser". 
Using for instance 2-4 clicks in an hour and 2-5 seconds of your time shouldn't be worth that sort of reaction from anyone besides macro miners imho. 
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Lygos
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Posted - 2005.11.13 22:02:00 -
[15]
Will this make mining less boring?
"Everything I love is combustible." |
Nyphur
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Posted - 2005.11.14 12:14:00 -
[16]
Some nice ideas, although you'd need things that can be explained in-game. I made a recent post along those lines. It can't just pop up a thing asking "What's 2+2?" because that would ruin the in-game feel of things. There is actually only one game I know which did anything substantial to combat macroing and they did it fairly well -- Runescape. To the shame of many popular MMOs, Runescape, that crappy little java MMO, managed to solve a lot of macroing problems. They introduced random events which they updated and changed frequently. If you're mining, sometimes a little drunk dwarf might appear, walk over and start talking to you. If you talk back, you get a free beer and a kebab (fun to relieve the tedium of mining for players, they loved this kind of stuff) but if you ignore him or are macroing and thus can't respond to him, he starts throwing rocks at you. I've sat and watched people mine away with him throwing rocks and die because either they didn't know to run away, didn't know to talk to him or were macroing.
Of course, we can't have a little druk dwarf in Eve but that was just one of a whole bunch of random events they can have occur when doing something simple, repetitive and non-pvp-oriented. In Eve, we could have random events happen while mining which would harm us if we ignored them but help us if we noticed them. Something that a human should be able to do but a computer program shouldn't. I'm a programmer and I could code a macroing program and modify it in one day to get around something that could take CCP a week to code and implement unless it's done correctly.
Current macros are usually blind clicks or recorded input but more advanced ones, which people tend to make and sell rather than just make themselves or get for free, can do much more. They can identify interface elements based on size, shape, colour, even parse the text in the name of something like a ship, character or secure can. The way to combat that is to have random events which are obfuscated on the UI. Something that is not immediately noticeable nor threatening but if left unattended to could either ruin your mining efforts or destroy your ship. Perhaps the asteroid has a small chance to start breaking up and fragments start impacting your ship? Perhaps there's a contaminant in the mining laser that needs removed before it starts working again (your laser getting clogged, effectively). Perhaps the beam becomes misaligned and stops taking ore until you realign it. There are any number of ideas to be implemented, it just requires some thought. the solution to random event problems has to be simple enough and every player in eve will need notified about how to complete it the first time it occurs.
Furthermore, it should not be able to be easilly recovnisable (an icon appearing to indicate the problem or something) and should not be able to be attempted to be fixed when there's no problem. What I mean is that if your laser isn't clogged, trying to "unclog" it should stall laser operation for 1 minute. That way macros can't do the brute force approach of trying to solve every problem every cycle in order to counter any and all problems that occur. If trying to solve the problems will stop the lasers giving ore for one minute, that won't ruin player operation but would significantly impair macro operation.
A side-effect of this would be to remove afk-miners in indies and while that's legitimate, I wouldn't call it a loss.
Some really nice points, though to think you're drifting slightly outside of the eve world with things like the question. To return to my runescape analogy for a moment, Runescape used to have a thing whereby mining gave you fatigue and you had to sleep it off. Sleeping would pop up an obfuscated word that you had to type to wake up. It worked to get rid of macroing a lot but it ruined the gameplay. They implemented in-game random events soon after and they feel so much more natural.
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TotensBurntCorpse
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Posted - 2005.11.14 12:37:00 -
[17]
How about this...
Make a new rat for 0.5+ security space.
This rat has a nosferatu of moderate power and attacks your ship to drain the capacitor as normal. It would be relatively easy to destroy and worth little to nothing. It has no offensive weapons. Its single goal is to stop you from cycling your mining lasers by draining your capacitor. A light scout drone should be able to kill it in a minute or so.
IF deployed in 0.5-1.0 this may hinder macros quite a bit by killing the capacitors (note this will also do a number on afk mining as this is almost the same from the rats standpoint).
Alternate...
If you cannot beat them join them. How about a rat in an industrial who steals from jet cans.
TotensBurntCorpse
Likes
EVE, Starfleet Command Series, Earth & Beyond, Anything Battlefield, MOHAA, Call of Duty.
Dislikes
Not much. |
000Hunter000
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Posted - 2005.11.14 13:46:00 -
[18]
Well i don't think most macroers go below 0.8 for that reason, there are rats, and allthough the BS miners might be able to tank those, the haulers might be in trouble if they warp in at the wrong time.
Oh, and stealing from a macroers orecan was concidered profitting from macroeing as well and therefore a bannable offence (at least thats what i heard)
But about that idea, 1 click or 10 clicks, it's still annoying imo and it's still a silly idea.
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Leandro Salazar
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Posted - 2005.11.14 13:46:00 -
[19]
Maybe Concord could police the belts for 'illegal' mining techniques. When someone is behaving suspiciously, some Concord craft appears and hails the suspect with a random easy question. This hail comes along with a very noticeable audio signal to alert afk people. If this hail is not answered within a minute or three (or if the answer is wrong, maybe give 2 other chances if the first answer is wrong due to typo or whatever), your vessel is 'impounded' and automatically docks with the nearest highsec space station. If you answer the hail correctly, you get a grace period of an hour or three in which you won't be bothered again.
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Stormhold
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Posted - 2005.11.14 14:02:00 -
[20]
Originally by: TotensBurntCorpse
How about this...
Make a new rat for 0.5+ security space.
This rat has a nosferatu of moderate power and attacks your ship to drain the capacitor as normal. It would be relatively easy to destroy and worth little to nothing. It has no offensive weapons. Its single goal is to stop you from cycling your mining lasers by draining your capacitor. A light scout drone should be able to kill it in a minute or so.
IF deployed in 0.5-1.0 this may hinder macros quite a bit by killing the capacitors (note this will also do a number on afk mining as this is almost the same from the rats standpoint).
Alternate...
If you cannot beat them join them. How about a rat in an industrial who steals from jet cans.
Hehe, "Guristas Griefer" "Sanshas Ore Thief" :)
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BIRDofPREY
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Posted - 2005.11.15 03:15:00 -
[21]
Originally by: 000Hunter000
Well i don't think most macroers go below 0.8 for that reason, there are rats, and allthough the BS miners might be able to tank those, the haulers might be in trouble if they warp in at the wrong time.
Oh, and stealing from a macroers orecan was concidered profitting from macroeing as well and therefore a bannable offence (at least thats what i heard)
But about that idea, 1 click or 10 clicks, it's still annoying imo and it's still a silly idea.
I've seen them in space as low as 0.5...
What I do when I suspect a Macro miners is to waddle up next to them - jettison a single round of ammo and move all his ore to my can. If there is a player on the other end, they will be screaming bloody murder in local - to which I appologise and the ore is still in reach of his ship... If not, the ore will continue to poor into his can...
I did this today in our home system (0.6) and got nothing - I destoryed the can I created and sent 20k of pyro to the deep...
It was so obvious that they were macro'ing. All the characters were 4 days old and running around in omens. No comment when I moved their ore... so Bang! Pop goes the ore can...
Your 650mm Artillery Cannon I perfectly strikes Serpentis Guard, wrecking for 340.0 damage |
Binary Mind
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Posted - 2005.11.15 12:40:00 -
[22]
of course you can do "anti-macro" systems in every game, but is it still worth playing the game if you have to answer 12 questions, decypher 3 images and push 6 buttons before doing any command?
no
most simple way to protect ourself from macrominers is to take all they are mining, use them as pets.
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Butter Dog
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Posted - 2005.11.15 13:26:00 -
[23]
I do hate macrominers, and unfortunately they seem to be more common every day.
Its becoming ridiculous. I mean, you can log in after a weekend of solid macromining, and find no kernite/omber in ANY of normally less busy empire systems. I spent 3 hours trying to find a system last night, and ended up mining in lowsec. Its simply not fair on players who don't break the rules.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but in the meantime:
1) Steal their ore
2) Petition them
I've petitioned about 10 so far, and the list keeps growing...
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Fooball
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Posted - 2005.11.15 21:51:00 -
[24]
Originally by: Nyphur
Some nice ideas, although you'd need things that can be explained in-game.
...
Some really nice points, though to think you're drifting slightly outside of the eve world with things like the question. To return to my runescape analogy for a moment, Runescape used to have a thing whereby mining gave you fatigue and you had to sleep it off. Sleeping would pop up an obfuscated word that you had to type to wake up. It worked to get rid of macroing a lot but it ruined the gameplay. They implemented in-game random events soon after and they feel so much more natural.
That description of Runescape's system was extremely nice to hear. Especially the fact that defeating blind clicks is the problem to be solved -- and it would have to be varying to stop the adaptation. I was also delighted to hear (or at least get the impression) that it was really effective 
Blending the tasks into the game is hard but I think some head scratching could produce suitable events. In overall what you described happening as an idea was exactly what I had in my mind. I just can't think of good "tasks" to fit the Eve world myself, at least not at the moment.
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Zaphroid Eulthran
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Posted - 2005.11.16 00:41:00 -
[25]
Would it be possible to make mining lasers not lock onto roids? but have manual aiming?
You would need all the beams to converge on one point that could be adjusted by the mouse cursor.
You could also include the idea of higher grade viens of ore within a single roid, fewer larger roids with mixed content requiring active control to keep the beams on target.
Plausable?
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Fooball
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Posted - 2005.11.16 09:28:00 -
[26]
Originally by: Zaphroid Eulthran
Would it be possible to make mining lasers not lock onto roids? but have manual aiming?
You would need all the beams to converge on one point that could be adjusted by the mouse cursor.
You could also include the idea of higher grade viens of ore within a single roid, fewer larger roids with mixed content requiring active control to keep the beams on target.
Plausable?
I wouldn't want to hit the afk miners in a way that it would be unfair for them. I wouldn't myself mine some limited intelligence requiring action though
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Caliith
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Posted - 2005.11.19 07:10:00 -
[27]
Edited by: Caliith on 19/11/2005 07:11:05
I liked the idea of having the roids go unstable as you mine them
could be done when theyre about to be depleted to get rid of that disappearing effect that just seems so unrealistic and out of place in this game and would give me more to do while mining
as it is i have to have a horde of drones to keep me interested
sorry if i seem a bit rambling but its 1:00Am for me right now |
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