Captcha Decay

[Unahm]

Hello,

I started on this shard about two weeks ago. I am a fairly heavy player and have played pretty much every day since. I am really enjoying the shard overall and want to express my gratitude to all who have made this possible.

Moving on to the suggestion.

Captcha Decay

Being a totally new player to the shard, when I began to level my gatherers/crafters I encountered my first Captchas. Overall I truly enjoy the system, as you really do need to remain active in front of the screen to gather. It does good for the economy and promotes difficulty to what would otherwise be a set and forget it unlimited source of materials. I run dual screens and usually leave UO up with a macro running and will move my character manually once I need to. On the other screen I read/surf the web. So I am there. When I first started doing the captchas some of them were quite unclear, truly. I did not know that I could close the gump and get a new Captcha for those that were unclear and have ended up with an infraction on my account (6hr unable to gather) I know from the rules these are cumulative and have very stiff penalties. I would like to propose a decay of infractions, some such as 30 days where they roll off the account. My reasoning is that now I feel extremely paranoid about them and it makes me very anxious go monitor my gathering. By allowing for decay it would allow a slight amount of leeway for mistakes and/or a short distraction that got you and infraction.

For example.

You are running a macro monitoring your character but you need to leave them computer for a moment for an urgent manner and you left your macro going (oops). You get back from answering the door, picking up your kiddo cause they were crying, or breaking up the dogs fighting. The timing was bad and the Capcha came up right as you left the PC, and since your macro was going you have an infraction. No big deal if it rolls off eventually from your account, life happens, but if it stays forever this could make you reconsider gathering altogether...

I am only suggesting this mainly because I really like crafting/gathering and since I plan to play here for a very long time I don't want accidents to lock me out forever or create a high amount of anxiety for us who really enjoy the practice.

 

[Siv]

I kind of like this idea. I'm not sure how long it should take for the mark against you to decay, but 30 days sounds like a nice arbitrary place to start. I'm also a fan of the captcha, just for the record.

However, when I first tried switching to CUO I got banned from harvesting in the first 2 minutes trying to record and loop a lumberjack macro. Then I'd get in situations where my macro would run away, apparently I needed to click outside to gump to be able to use my "stop current macro" hot key. After working with Owyn a few times, I've given up on harvesting for the most part. I still skin, and when I feel like doing societies I'll go do the one-key lastobject/targetself gymnastics until I have what I need.

The problem with things as they are is that people unfamiliar with the system, or that are not macro wizards, are punished. At least penalty decay would take a bit of the sting out the hand slapping while keeping the technical deterrent in place.

 

[Vem]

 

[Renegade]

Hi all,

Just started playing a week or so ago after a long absence from Europa shard and Lord Blackthorns Revenge and a couple of free shards back around 2004 ish.

Looking really good so far although not left Sheltered yet as was never a pvper. Quick shout out to Arch Lich Oro for dropping a starters bag on my first character whilst in the new player dungeon. Much appreciated.

Reason replying to this thread - I made a crafter this afternoon and had read up on it being ok to macro for the skill gains when gathering resources as long as you didn't go afk. All was going fine until (as Siv mentioned above about the captcha gump and having a macro running), I got the pop up captcha and couldn't stop my macro running. It has now stopped me gathering for 6 hours.

Is there a construct I can add to the macro so that if it sees the captcha gump, it pauses running so I can enter in the numbers requested. Because it was still running, every time I tried to enter the values, it refreshed thought I was failing at completing it... technically I was I suppose but not for the reason it was intended. I had set a hotkey to stop the macro but it wasn't stopping it.

Anyway, thanks in advance and hope to get more in game time once I''ve got a couple of characters skills sorted.

 

[AreYouKidden]

There is no way to identify the captcha, that would defeat the entire purpose for the captcha being put in, which is to stop afk resource gathering. All you can do is watch your screen, when it pops up, stop the macro - there is a stop button on the macro itself, or you can create a stop macro hotkey - or start a different macro with a hotkey, to stop self harvesting.

 

[Laughing Skull]

My miner is like 101.X so I haven't gathered a ton. I usually gather when I want to play, but have a baby in one arm. Here are just a couple of my ideas:

1) Clear all captcha infraction marks when losing young player status. This allows for your rookie mistakes not to have a lasting impact.
2) I think infraction decay is a good idea. But, I think 30 days is far too short. I think 180 days would be more appropriate. It sounds like a long time, but I think the idea here is not to have "life happens" mistakes follow you around forever. If you leave your macro running every time you grab dinner, answer the door, use the restroom then you need to learn to remember to stop your macro beforehand.

 

[Renegade]

There is no way to identify the captcha, that would defeat the entire purpose for the captcha being put in, which is to stop afk resource gathering. All you can do is watch your screen, when it pops up, stop the macro - there is a stop button on the macro itself, or you can create a stop macro hotkey - or start a different macro with a hotkey, to stop self harvesting.

That's fair enough, wasn't trying to get around it as aware afk gathering ruins the economy. My only problem was not actually being able to stop the macro from running despite having the stop macro hot key set. Hadn't thought of starting another macro instead....will try that in a minute.

Cheers for the reply. I'll just have to be more careful in future.

 

[Renegade]

My miner is like 101.X so I haven't gathered a ton. I usually gather when I want to play, but have a baby in one arm. Here are just a couple of my ideas:

1) Clear all captcha infraction marks when losing young player status. This allows for your rookie mistakes not to have a lasting impact.
2) I think infraction decay is a good idea. But, I think 30 days is far too short. I think 180 days would be more appropriate. It sounds like a long time, but I think the idea here is not to have "life happens" mistakes follow you around forever. If you leave your macro running every time you grab dinner, answer the door, use the restroom then you need to learn to remember to stop your macro beforehand.

They both sound like good ideas. Don't want to find myself in a postion where I'd be too paranoid to macro just because of a couple of mistakes / errors.

Also liked the idea someone mentioned about maybe having skill gains without the resources being gathered just so you can get your crafters to a decent level without the worry of being afk.

 

[gehad farland]

the captua is not bad but the way some of the numbers show you have to guess the number witch sucks make them a little bit better to id the number but still make it were a comp macro can figure it out