Hey all,

At the meeting on Sunday I heard several references to Macroing. How does KGB as a whole feel about this topic? I would assume it is not refering to unattended macroing or is it?

In UO my guild was strictly against macroing. All the people doing the 8x8, macromanic etc. It kinda ruins the game. On the other hand if other people are doing it to get the upper hand do we bend and do it as well?

I always thought it hurts the game but who (besides me because I am a freak) wants to sit there for 8 hours gathering resources?

Thoughts?

always have the chinese farmers to ruin the game as well :/

My thoughts:

Grinding = Gay.

Who wins in fights should be determined by player skill > character setup > intrinsic stats > items. The other way around only works to support people with more time, which does NOT = more skill.

Ultimately, I support macroing if it's legal by the developers. I want to log in and go kill with a character I've uniquely created. I don't want to sit there and "work a game" when I'm done with a long day at work.

More time does mean more skill, at least in real life. If I practice at my archery say for 4 hours a day, and you practice for an hour a week, who will have more skill.


Dont get me wrong I hate the grind as much as the next guy.

Items also make a difference in real life. If I am in full plate and you beat me with a sword I shouldnt take as much damage as if I were wearing leather.

In this game your uniquely created character is going to be how much time you spend practicing what skills you want. So with more time you will have better skill.

The difference in the game world is that the more time your character spends doing something, the more skill THEY get, not necessarily you. Some people are great at grinding and killing mobs but suck at PVP because they're just not skilled PVPers - i.e; may not be fast with a mouse or thinking far enough ahead with strategy. That's what I'm talking about.

I was more referring to macroing resource gathering that kind of stuff.

"I need 1000 wood today, ugh this is going to effing suck" instead of sitting there clicking every 30 seconds - set a macro and read a book....looking up everyonce in a while for /tells so that you are not considered unattended macroing.

I plan on doing magic. Let's take the regeant-less mana missile for example. At level 0 it does about 12 damage. At level 50 I think Brutal was saying it does around 14 damage. Someone posted on the forums today that at level 99 it does 26 damage. At level 100 (it drops back down to 99 after you shoot it once) it does 36 damage.

To level from 99 to 1000 takes 1500 casts of mana missile, each one taking 3 seconds. You can cast 30 before your mana pool runs out. You must rest for 2:30 or so before your mana pool completely regenerates. So 30x3 is 90 seconds, so 1:30 to cast your pool away. 2:30 to rest, so to shoot it 30 times takes in total 4 minutes. This means in one hour you shot it about 450 times. So it takes about 3-4 hours to go from level 99 to 100. This is if you're just running a highly efficient macro while afk, shooting mana missiles into the air. You're literally not wasting any time between casts like this.

Now what about getting to 99, or 98, or 97, etc. It might not take 1500 casts, but it might be 1490, 1480, or whatever. This wouldn't be so bad if missile damage weren't a step function. Rather than damage be represented by a smooth curve (12 damage at 0, 12.2 at 1, 12.4 at 2, etc.) it does 12 until level 25, at which point it does 14, then maybe 18 or so at 75, and then 26 at 99, 36 at 100. So unless you've literally hit 99, the spell is useless in PvP since you're doing less damage than a sword-user with good equipment and 50 or so skill.

I could still see why you'd be against macroing, but then check this: If you level up the "fair" way, and just go off killing goblins or whatever to level, then you'll only be casting maybe 10 spells, then waiting for the goblin to respawn. You're wasting a huge amount of time, and you're limited to level as long as you're at the computer. Macroing you could level 24/7 if the servers never crash (and I've heard you can get scripts going on to connect you to the servers as soon as they're online.)

See the problem now? Leveling magic at least, just isn't viable without macros. And that's just mana missle. To get greater magic you need 50 lesser magic (which levels along with mana missile.) Then to get elemental magic (earth, fire, water, air, etc.) you need I think 50 greater magic. That's all fine and dandy, but to level greater and elemental you _need_ reagents to cast your spells. These reagents drop off stuff like fishing, mining, herb gathering, etc. It takes 10 seconds to do one gathering cycle, and you have about a 30% fail rate, and then you have upon success maybe a 25% if not less chance at getting a reagent. So if it takes 1500 mana missiles to level up when you get to the 90s, how much time are you going to need to invest into harvesting to get the reagents just to level up your "real" pvp spells such as fireball or whatever to the point where they're useful? And then how much of your day will have to be spent gathering just so you can go cast those spells at a pvp siege for more than 30 seconds?

So do you want to spend the maybe 3 hours a day you have online whacking at a rock all day to get reagents for a month, so that then you can spend those 3 hours whacking at goblins with your mid-level spells for a week, then rinse and repeat until you have 50 greater magic so you can then do the same with a fireball or something to begin to enjoy the game? When will you be ready for PvP? After a year? Then you have to leave that progress behind to move to a north american server?

F that. I plan on macroing.

And by macroing, I mean shameless, unattended, I'm leveling in darkfall while at the movie theater or getting drunk with my friends macroing.

If I were in beta...

I would say that Bib speaks true, and that skills take so goddamn long to raise that without some unattended macroing while sleeping and whatnot, it will take weeks or months to max certain skills.

If I were in beta that is...

Macroing is in, it is permitted, nay-encouraged by the guild. There will always be a few people who dont do it, think its bad, etc. Most of the server will be macroing their collective arses off.

Most of the non-newbie macroing will require resources.

If you are unattented, that means anyone can come and take your stuff. That right there is more than enough to balance things out, its not like unattended macroing in DFO is without risk, excepting macroing the most basic beginner spells, ergo, is not and can not be game-breaking since it does not fall outside the risk/reward model.

Quote:

---

And by macroing, I mean shameless, unattended, I'm leveling in darkfall while at the movie theater or getting drunk with my friends macroing.

---

Better : I'm gonna double macro like hell.
If my toons are better with a good amount of mats when I come back home after work it'd be awesome.