Online Debat Post 1

Recently I stumbled upon a debate hosted at Fly Reckless. Linky. I've decided to spend some posts dedicated to answering the questions there for myself. I figure it'll be interesting and, if not, at least fill my writing quota for a week or so!

Question 1, from Finnegan

What level of economic damage would you and other cheaters have to do to non-cheating miners before you agreed that it was too much? If you devalued their mining efforts by five percent, 25%, 50%, 90%, at any point would you stop cheating or does the state of the profession not bother you? Likewise, how much damage to your chosen macroing profession would it take before you chose another aspect of EVE to macro?

There are three things that converge to make mining the AFK Gamers’ choice activity. The first is the ease with which it can be done, on a technical level. Technically speaking, AFK Mining is a simple problem with a simple solution. That’s kind of why it is so boring for humans to do – there’s not much to think about.

The second factor is how difficult it is to be caught, either by another player or CCP, and again this is related to just how simple the activity is – because it is SO simple, there is little to no variety in how it is done. Thus, how do you differentiate between an At Keyboard (AK) miner and an AFK miner? The easier it is to hide, the more AFK Gamers will be there.

The last factor is profitability and, as The Evil Macroer stated, AFK Mining brings in between two and three million ISK per hour. That’s really not that much, in the grand scheme of things, but it’s sufficient reward for me to bother writing and maintaining my application. I can say that if it dropped to 1 million ISK per hour I would stop doing it and would focus my attention elsewhere, but before I did I’d have to take a look at what else I could do. If nothing else presented itself, 1 million ISK an hour would be what I did until another avenue opened up.

For a comparison lets look at ratting in high-sec. It would be facile to create a program that was capable of ratting in high security systems, and the likelihood of being caught is slightly less than that with mining. However, the profitability is damn near zero, so I wouldn’t even consider it an option.

However, profitability isn’t EVERYTHING. I did tinker with the idea of writing an AFK Pirating program but only saw a reason to do so if the Security Status reward was useful. For me, now, it’s just not.

So, I want to caution the reader away from seeing the AFK Gaming motivation as being about mining, per se – there’s a reason why AFK Gaming in EVE is connected with mining and not, for example, exploring wormholes.

So, this was a longwinded way of saying that the state of the mining economy does bother me, but not from a moral standpoint. It’s far more calculated and pragmatic because I am part of the same community that AK Miners are, and thus I’m impacted by their actions, as well as my own.

Further, as evidenced by the fact that The Evil Macroer does not still macro, it’s a means to an end, not an end unto itself. Having a lot of money is great, and all, but at some point you really do have enough. There’s only so much you need before the motivation to continue playing the AFK Mining game reaches zero. When that happens I personally will begin looking at other things to AFK with. Probably low-sec ratting.

The Struggles of a Cheater...

AFK gamers are often accused of things that go far beyond AFK gaming. For instance if you read Telbrah’s comments on this site you’ll see:

http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs.cfm?isapi_rewrite_remap=zergwatch%2F042008%2F1492_Why-do-MMORPG-publishers-REALLY-hate-the-Chinese-Gold-Farmer&bhcp=1

“Why do the MMORPG Publishers not like Gold Farmers? Because hacking and then stealing accounts is where they get the most bread and butter for their online merchandise and its ILLEGAL. Why is it ILLEGAL because whether you say Blizzard owns the merchandise or the Player owns the merchandise someone owns it and it was TAKEN and then RESOLD. Its not a worthy part of anyones pie to make a buck. If so, go buy yourself a kilo of illegal drugs and start selling that to children and see if you dont end up in prison.”

His comments are similar to those you will find from most gamers when discussing AFK gaming. To them, we are “evil” and we “ruin” things like economies and games. We’re hackers who are out to steal whatever we can and we only care about money. We’re scofflaws, at best, and criminal masterminds at worst.

This sort of response is common in history when dealing with cheaters. And, make no mistake about it, we AFK gamers are cheating. It’s just, that’s ALL we’re doing –cheating. I don’t own a website where I get you to give me your login name and password. I don’t make my money by ripping people off or sharding their purples. I’m just a regular guy who likes to program and sees MMO’s as the ultimate venue to cheat for fun and virtual profit. So while I’m nothing less than a cheater, I’m also nothing more.

One place that has a lot of information about cheating is Tault.com. These guys have been in this business for awhile and they’ve created several applications which work similar to the ones I create – only they’re professionals and in this with the goal of creating more profit for themselves than I am interested in creating for myself. They sell subscriptions to their website, applications, and forums and they’ve created a sort of bazaar for how to cheat in online games. Their cheats are also not limited to simply AFK gaming but include exploits and outright hacks.

That’s not my style, but more power to them. For me, the creation of an agent (that’s what I call my “macro”) which can play the game is the entire point. And to be honest I get a little bored with the game if I’m not upgrading the agent or making a new one. Out of the past two weeks I’ve probably only AFK Gamed three or four days because of a general lack of motivation and uncertainty about what I want to accomplish in the game.

Don’t think I’m trying to excuse anything by saying that; I’m not. Quite the contrary, I know I SHOULD be AFK Gaming more and I dislike that I get bored with it when I’m not messing with the agent’s code. It’s like “Why can’t you just be happy with this AWESOME thing you’ve created? Why are you only interested in upgrading it? Fucking ENJOY it, you’ve earned it!” I’m getting better about it, but we all have our struggles.

Even cheaters.

The Sky is STILL fallling...

Oh man, I am going to get several days worth of posts about that article!

“NotImportant” at http://www.eve-mag.com/wordpress/archives/the-sky-is-falling

So in-fact, the macro miners most likely stand for 50% of all ore being mined. Couple this with the fact that macro miners only “effort” is having to wait for the ore to roll in while a hard working miner has to WORK for it. The effort value for a macro miner is way less…

Ya know what, I’m going to go ahead and disagree with that. I was up until 11:30 and worked on my program for about 6 hours the night before last because the code on Agent EVE wasn’t working right. He was unlocking targets, double mining asteroids, and failing to warp back to a station. It was awful! Then last night I got it all fixed after about three more hours, only to wake up and AE is trying to mine despite his cargo hold being completely full. Ooops! There’s a bug somewhere but, of course, when I dock and restart the app everything works fine. Weird!

How much “effort” does a straight miner put in? “Well I click this button, then I click that button…and then I wait until I have to click this button over here!”

That’s not work; it’s “play”. I have to WORK to create my agent. I have put in literally hundreds of hours trying to figure out how to write this thing (almost all of it spent NOT playing EVE), and then you have the audacity to come along and ignore all that and say that the MINERS are the ones working? No…I made a program that plays the game for me; trust me, that’s a LOT more work than mining in EVE.

“Edcognito” at http://www.eve-mag.com/wordpress/archives/the-sky-is-falling

IS what he does illegal? Yes? Then its wrong. Whether or not it hurts the in-game experience is irrelevant. Clearly what the author is describing is cheating, cheating is wrong, and he clearly tries to rationalize it.

Oh, and about this “illegal” word. AFK Gaming is not against any law in the United States Code. In fact, a lawsuit that Nintendo brought against Galoob (makers of the game genie) ended thus:

"Having paid Nintendo a fair return, the consumer may experiment with the product and create new variations of play, for personal enjoyment, without creating a derivative work."

We have the right to AFK Game because of the Fair Use clause in the United States Code. Now, sure, the EULA tries to strip us of this right; but that still means we have the right, and are not breaking any laws.

Edcognito, since we're not breaking the law, and our impact is irrlevant, you must be ok with AFK Gaming :-)

If the Sky is Falling then I am in Trouble...Because I'm IN the Sky!

Today as I continued looking for information about macro mining when I found “EVE Player’s” article titled “The Sky is Falling”

http://www.eve-mag.com/wordpress/archives/the-sky-is-falling

Wow!!! I could have written this article, it is SO MUCH like what I do.

To the first point, I play the game using macros because it is a fantastic challenge. I hit a Zen like state when I program them. There is a positive and tangible reward for doing it as well.

…

Keep in mind that macros are not magical. My macro cannot read words on a screen. My macro cannot intercept, decode, decipher nor even invite to tea the packets that are sent out and received by the Eve servers. That’s the secret though. That is flying under the radar. I’m not hacking anything. My macro can only do what my eyes and my hands can do. Its brain is only as good as the cross between my programming skills, understanding of the game and the amount of garbage I can put into it.

Oh man, that is SO on point! I do the same thing with DB – I don’t get into the IO stream or even hack into the executable to sniff out memory offsets or watch for certain function calls. ALL my agent does is stare at the screen and respond to what it sees. Just like you. That’s how you stay under the radar.

Is it unethical to AFK Game, since I agreed to an EULA saying I wouldn’t? Well, maybe. Sure. Why not? Whatever. And?

This is a game. This is not real life. This is not important. It is not valid. It is not a good reason to miss work. It is not a good reason to fight with your family. It is nothing more than a pastime and I will be damned before I care what society thinks about how I play a game. Further, I am grateful to any fool who thinks that because I AFK Game I am unethical in general; I’m grateful because it is rare that someone will walk up to you and say “I’m stupid” so when it happens I am really and truly grateful. If you earnestly think that how someone plays a game indicates their ethics then congratulations; you’re ethically retarded.

And I really hope you don’t have an illegally gotten MP3 because if so, you’re not on ethically retarded, you’re a hypocrite too.

You don’t have to follow some rules. No, no, REALLY. You’re allowed to break some rules. It’s ok. Society won’t eat your soul because of it and you aren’t a terrible awful human being because of it. You’re just someone who doesn’t follow every single rule, just like every other person in history.

So yeah, great read and I’m really glad this guy wrote in to Eve-mag.com (http://www.eve-mag.com/).

Who else is blogging about this?

I decided to go looking for other people blogging about AFK gaming.

I’m still looking!

What I have found is that AFK gaming goes by many different names. Bots, Macros, and Farmers are the most common, but each describes a different thing despite the fact that the ignorant use them interchangeably.

So in this post I’d like to differentiate between Bots, Macros, Farmers, and other terms applied to AFK Gamers.

Bots:

A “Bot” is an application that can play a character in an MMO with the goal of completing some objective. Common Bot objectives are level-grinding and resource harvesting. Personally, I find the term “Bot” to be outdated and I think the word “Agent” better describes what is occurring – an agent is controlling a player’s character. An Agent differs from a simple macro application in that an Agent is capable of simulating human behavior based on the input it receives. For examples, my EQ2 Agent was able to determine when a spell needed to be cast. This ability is beyond the scope of a simple macro application.

Macro:

A macro is a set of keyboard and mouse commands issued to the game client in a precise order with precise timing. The difference between a macro and an Agent(or Bot) is large. Agents are capable of responding to changes in the environment. For example, my Agent can tell if his cargo hold is full, how long he’s been in space, and whether or not he’s docked. A macro cannot do any of these things. Macros are dumb scripts, sort of like a dumbfire missle. Once they are started they can be easily broken by common MMO actions such as lag, “bumping” or even by sending a message to the player. Agents are aware of their purpose and thus are akin to smart bombs or tracking missiles, though they are limited by the ability of their programmer and their code.

Farmers:

A farmer, in the MMO vernacular, is a play-style consisting almost entirely of collecting an in-game resource. This resource may be currency, items, or anything else that is in limited quantity or that has value. A farmer is someone who does not interact with much, if any, of the game beyond whatever resource they are “cultivating.”

Most Farmers use an agent, some use a macro. But this fact does not mean that every agent or macro is a farmer (or that every farmer uses an agent or macro.) There are a many players (such as myself) who have no interest in farming but who still use agents to work for us.

Now, that isn’t saying I don’t occasionally farm using my agent. In fact, that’s about all my agent CAN do. But, since my playstyle isn’t all about collecting ISK (I do missions, train skills, sell stuff on the market, buy stuff on the market, etc.) I’m not a Farmer.

ISK/Gold Sellers:

These are accounts played by employees of a business. The business engages in the activity of selling in-game resources for out of game resources. This usually takes the shape of selling gold for cash. Normal Players tend to dislike ISK/Gold sellers because of their methods of advertising and because they’ve been convinced that ISK/Gold Sellers harm the game’s economy.

So as you can see, Agents (bots) and Macros are tools used by players while Farmers and Gold Sellers are kinds of players. Please don’t confuse the tool used with the purpose it is being used for.

One last thing I wanted to mention in this post. AFK Mining is not AFK Gaming, Botting or anything like that. AFK Mining is when someone puts a mining laser on a ship with a large cargohold. Then they start mining and walk away. They might pop back every now and then to see how the mining laser is doing. This is popular for noobs because it’s easy to do but not popular with non-noobs because it’s like mining an asteroid with a spoon. It take a long time and gives a lot less profit compared to other activities in the game.