Note from the Pool

[nichelas]

Alight – I’ve been around for multiple decades and it may be time to call it. Apologies for the rant/diatribe, but wanted to air the grievances before I take off.

As some of you know – I’ve been operating the Cysaegir locksmith pool for the last year or so. Started out because I couldn’t stand waiting the 3-4 days to get back boxes from the pool when it first started up, so I figured I would start contributing on the upkeep and plowing through boxes. Dedicated a few accounts to it over time to help manage the process. Only worked the pool during work hours (M-F, 8ma to 6pm and sometimes 8pm-11pm if the wife fell asleep early) and basically had a secondary workstation with dual monitors set up to just pick boxes. Everyone gives the pool pickers shit for being bots – I was always there. Watched all the shitty things happen from broken picks to loose scarabs to those god damn gas traps. At the end of the day, during a good month the pickers could make enough to cover their account costs and I didn’t mind doing it when I was fortunate enough to be able to sell silver over $3 per M. Would span between 2-5 working smiths during the day based on the time I could commit. Over time, it became cathartic during the day to have my group working and monitoring their work. It’s laughable the number of script checks and weird shit I saw, but never had any issues.

Then came this Saturday. Snow in New England – came upstairs for a few hours of gaming to hit the firewheel raffles and then was planning on unplugging for the weekend. Had three smiths working and got the weakest script check I have seen/heard of from everyone’s friend Naijin. In white/normal scroll font it said something along the lines of the table is full and needs to be tapped to clear. I saw it, thought it was related to someone else in the room and kept picking. Never had an issue and didn’t see it again. Five minutes later, my smiths are kicked to the “Scripting room” or whatever the hell its called and I get hit with the “you were unresponsive” message from Naijin. Literally spent 20 minutes digging through the logs trying to figure what the hell I missed. Confirmed with Aiza (who truly is a miserable person) that the script check was the tap the table message and then got sent to the Cell because I essentially committed my first thru third scripting violations at the same time. Sent in an appeal thinking some reasonable mind may overturn and received a note back tonight a snarky “you missed the flashing lights” response and enjoy your 30 day lockout.

I’m fucking done – these people don’t deserve my money. I’ve run over 10 accounts at a time – money hasn’t been an issue as its something I’ve enjoyed even if I haven’t done it as efficiently as possible. But at this stage if Simu/Stillfront is going to allow this kind of nonsense for no reason it’s no longer something I can support. I never made money off of smithing – I have all my rogues and they’ll come with me to the ether with the rest of my accounts. Reality, only decent funds I ever made was off of buying/reselling and that never covered my monthly fees (but at least kept my wife off my ass).

Apologies for the length of the this, but it is the first and likely last time I feel the need I to speak up in regards to the management of this game. I have been part of this community since Prodigy, thru AOL and into the Internet and always felt at home. People have moved on and come back (as have I multiple times) but this is the first time I feel like I am being pushed out and it’s not something worth fighting for. They set up this locksmith pool as a functional player supported activity and power-hungry oversimplistic individuals like Naijin have the ability to create scenarios for failure and are then not accountable for what they have done. I am walking away at this point. Apologies for those of you that will not get your pool boxes picked – I saw earlier today (before my other accounts were locked) we are now at 3-4 days waiting again for picking and it’s not going to get better. And I caution anyone that believes they can help to restrain themselves – the people we trust to govern this process are not invested in your success and are actively looking for ways to catch and prosecute you.

Best of luck to you all – this is a great community and something that has been a part of my life for three decades and I wish you all success and happiness in life.

This is your friendly neighborhood Pool Boy saying – I’m out.

[beldannon5]

It does seem some of the newer gm's like to pick and choose what the hell they want to do. I guess some of the older ones do too, looking at estlid. It's really a bunch of crap. Sorry this happened to you. Not sure the people in charge will ever learn even if people leave, unless we all leave. Also no yellow is crap.

To summarize, sorry man

[Rjex]

There's been a hard crackdown in recent weeks/months on scripting that's absolutely idiotic. It's one thing if you're unresponsive when people are legitimately trying to communicate with you, but it's entirely something else when they go out of their way to devise a convoluted way to "sneak" a check in. And stacking violations during a single event? Ridiculous. Why this is being tolerated by top management is unclear. What exactly does this accomplish? Other than driving away the core player base. I know so many people who got hit recently it's not even funny. I'm legitimately thinking this game will be on a downward spiral far sooner than we expected. Maybe people need to stop handing them so much money every DR for them to finally take notice of really bad policies, as they seem completely out of touch.

[SHAFT]

Take the fight to discord.

I just came back after a few years and this locksmithing pool is new for me. Do they expect people to open all these boxes without scripts? Doesn’t seem reasonable.

[Mobius1]

One time I had something similar happen to me, except I wasn't even scripting!!

I was using the grinding wheel for crafting when suddenly it threw sparks and knocked me prone with RT. I had mastered crafting and had never seen that happen, so I send some messages to some friends asking if they had heard of any catastrophic failure like that, and after a couple minutes I stand up and start grinding again. Next thing I know I'm in the consultation lounge.

I respond immediately, and the GM even showed up. He pointed me to some policy that basically says they can do whatever they want, and I was stripped of like 75 crafting and forging ranks (and from Master, that is effed up.).

I am still bitter about it and will never mess with their joke of a forging system ever again. And I was neither afk nor scripting.

What was I supposed to do? I was alone in the forge. "Hello grinder, why did you throw sparks at me?"

[Neveragain]

Alight – I’ve been around for multiple decades and it may be time to call it. Apologies for the rant/diatribe, but wanted to air the grievances before I take off.

As some of you know – I’ve been operating the Cysaegir locksmith pool for the last year or so. Started out because I couldn’t stand waiting the 3-4 days to get back boxes from the pool when it first started up, so I figured I would start contributing on the upkeep and plowing through boxes. Dedicated a few accounts to it over time to help manage the process. Only worked the pool during work hours (M-F, 8ma to 6pm and sometimes 8pm-11pm if the wife fell asleep early) and basically had a secondary workstation with dual monitors set up to just pick boxes. Everyone gives the pool pickers shit for being bots – I was always there. Watched all the shitty things happen from broken picks to loose scarabs to those god damn gas traps. At the end of the day, during a good month the pickers could make enough to cover their account costs and I didn’t mind doing it when I was fortunate enough to be able to sell silver over $3 per M. Would span between 2-5 working smiths during the day based on the time I could commit. Over time, it became cathartic during the day to have my group working and monitoring their work. It’s laughable the number of script checks and weird shit I saw, but never had any issues.

Then came this Saturday. Snow in New England – came upstairs for a few hours of gaming to hit the firewheel raffles and then was planning on unplugging for the weekend. Had three smiths working and got the weakest script check I have seen/heard of from everyone’s friend Naijin. In white/normal scroll font it said something along the lines of the table is full and needs to be tapped to clear. I saw it, thought it was related to someone else in the room and kept picking. Never had an issue and didn’t see it again. Five minutes later, my smiths are kicked to the “Scripting room” or whatever the hell its called and I get hit with the “you were unresponsive” message from Naijin. Literally spent 20 minutes digging through the logs trying to figure what the hell I missed. Confirmed with Aiza (who truly is a miserable person) that the script check was the tap the table message and then got sent to the Cell because I essentially committed my first thru third scripting violations at the same time. Sent in an appeal thinking some reasonable mind may overturn and received a note back tonight a snarky “you missed the flashing lights” response and enjoy your 30 day lockout.

I’m fucking done – these people don’t deserve my money. I’ve run over 10 accounts at a time – money hasn’t been an issue as its something I’ve enjoyed even if I haven’t done it as efficiently as possible. But at this stage if Simu/Stillfront is going to allow this kind of nonsense for no reason it’s no longer something I can support. I never made money off of smithing – I have all my rogues and they’ll come with me to the ether with the rest of my accounts. Reality, only decent funds I ever made was off of buying/reselling and that never covered my monthly fees (but at least kept my wife off my ass).

Apologies for the length of the this, but it is the first and likely last time I feel the need I to speak up in regards to the management of this game. I have been part of this community since Prodigy, thru AOL and into the Internet and always felt at home. People have moved on and come back (as have I multiple times) but this is the first time I feel like I am being pushed out and it’s not something worth fighting for. They set up this locksmith pool as a functional player supported activity and power-hungry oversimplistic individuals like Naijin have the ability to create scenarios for failure and are then not accountable for what they have done. I am walking away at this point. Apologies for those of you that will not get your pool boxes picked – I saw earlier today (before my other accounts were locked) we are now at 3-4 days waiting again for picking and it’s not going to get better. And I caution anyone that believes they can help to restrain themselves – the people we trust to govern this process are not invested in your success and are actively looking for ways to catch and prosecute you.

Best of luck to you all – this is a great community and something that has been a part of my life for three decades and I wish you all success and happiness in life.

This is your friendly neighborhood Pool Boy saying – I’m out.

This is what happens when their staff is chosen through popularity.

Don't miss it one bit.

[nocturnix]

Classic GM's to release a feature that is so begging to be scripted and then bust people for it. Certain things in the game are too tedious to realistically do by typing out every fucking command. For example: guild reps! Forging! Alchemy! and now Locksmith Pool.

I know they turn a blind-eye to some forms of scripting (ie. DR/Pay events), but some things they bust for. I mostly script all my hunting now, but do it while i work on a second monitor similar to you. Its so hard to catch any script checks even if you are playing by "hand". With the game's natural screen scroll, especially on message heavy systems like forging, guild, aclhemy, lockpicking etc. Theres just so much noise you could glance away for a second and miss it.

Luckily i have not been busted for scripting (even though i automate hunting, although only while I am there watching) in a really long time.

I"m sorry to hear they got you. The punishment sounds a bit harsh. You must have had a prior warning or two to get a 30 day lockout ban. I would also appeal it. But honestly would not expect them to overturn it as the thing with lockpick pools is you are technically gaining silvers and experience, which you yourself said you sell. You could argue the same happens with ;bigshot but they rarely bust people for that. I think they only do in egregious cases like if youre scripting while asleep. That is what they are most worried about. An army of bots generating silvers or XP and unbalancing the game. You could try just being honest and explaining that you have your locksmiths picking while you are working and watch it on a second screen, which they will likely say that is too automated (do they still allow macros but not hands-off complete scripts)? Most likely even if you tell them the honest truth, that you are watching but not entering commands regularly, they will stick to policy and claim what you are doing is not allowed.

[Tgo01]

If it's true they only sent the one script check and it was something lame like "The table is full, tap it" then that's absolute bullshit. The script checks should be obvious.

I one time got a script check while picking boxes at my table (this was years ago though, well before the locksmith's pool) and the script check was very related to picking boxes. It was something like "You might have missed a trap on that box, you should DISMARM it again to make sure."

The crazy part is I totally did see the message but at the time they had just announced some changes to picking boxes so I thought "Oh, that must be a new message related to the changes they made recently." But NOPE! It was totally a script check that I was supposed to respond to. It pissed me off that the GMs try to sneak in script checks like that. Luckily the GM did a couple of more script checks that were a bit more obvious it was a script check (something like "YOU REALLY SHOULD CHECK THAT BOX AGAIN. FINAL WARNING.") Dumb thing is by then I was already done with the original box and was picking a new box so I was like...uhh okay...and I disarmed the box again.

If the GMs were REALLY concerned with afk scripting and aren't just looking for an excuse to bust someone, then they should make the script checks obvious and give at least 3 or 4 script checks before busting someone.

One time a GM gave me a script check with something like "What two coins would equal 30 cents?" That was pretty obviously a script check. Saying the table is full and needs to be tapped isn't as obvious.

[Tgo01]

You must have had a prior warning or two to get a 30 day lockout ban.

According to his post this was counted as 3 afk scripting violations because he had multiple accounts logged in which were scripting. Which is all kinds of bullshit if true.

He is still one person, you can't have a warning system in place then just decide to bypass that entire system merely because one person is running multiple accounts.

[Flap]

Take the fight to discord.

I just came back after a few years and this locksmithing pool is new for me. Do they expect people to open all these boxes without scripts? Doesn’t seem reasonable.

From what I read, they were afk scripting 3 accounts, failed the script check on all 3 and got a 30 day lockout because of it.

They also said it was a plain white text message only sent once. I've only ever seen script checks in yellow that were repeated multiple times, so it seems fishy one way or the other. Pretty lame if it's true IMHO.

On the other hand, it's a pretty cut-and-dry policy violation. You'd think some of the "tough on crime" folks here would be in support