Guard spamming in town

[Koflee]

Hey there, I'm a long term UO-er, second time Second Ager. I love to play as a thief. I LOVE it, it was by far my favorite thing to do in retail UO. I know macro use is a hot topic for you guys and I don't intend to bring it up as a whole as a topic. But one aspect that I believe to be completely unfair is the spamming of the word 'guard' in town.

Just one person having their character afk say "guard" over and over at a bank makes the ENTIRE bank a non-thief zone. It completely disables thief classes, one unavoidable grey and it's game over, where as in T2A and Felucca you had until someone noticed you enough to call the guards.

Hell, wherever an afk macroer is spamming "guard" becomes an anti thief zone. It is completely nerfing town stealing as a whole. In retail, if your character sat at a bank saying guard at exact intervals for 5 hours, you'd get slammed. It was unheard of.


In my personal belief a player should have to NOTICE a grey and then MANUALLY call the guards. I believe, to restore accuracy, adding the term 'guards' to your afk macro should be made illegal. I haven't been able to pickpocket at the Britain Bank for days now because of it.

[Lucien]

Are you GM Stealing? There are quite a few different possibilities after you use the skill stealing.

Take a look at the wiki: http://wiki.uosecondage.com/?title=Stea ... inal_Flags

You shouldnt get guard-whackable everytime you steal.

Concerning guards macro and era-accuracy, I cant say much as I didnt play back then.

[yossarian]

Just use another char to kill them

[BobDobbs]

Brit West Bank has signs saying "No Spamming" but I don't know if this applies to including the word guards in a macro.

[Lucien]

Brit West Bank has signs saying "No Spamming" but I don't know if this applies to including the word guards in a macro.

The question is, what is the speech delay that is considered spam? Most shards I played had a defined "spam" between-speech delay but Ive heard nothing about this around here. This is quite important... I have to say I particularly hate the shop-gate spammers, but banking in skara solved my problem.

[BobDobbs]

Brit West Bank has signs saying "No Spamming" but I don't know if this applies to including the word guards in a macro.

The question is, what is the speech delay that is considered spam? Most shards I played had a defined "spam" between-speech delay but Ive heard nothing about this around here. This is quite important... I have to say I particularly hate the shop-gate spammers, but banking in skara solved my problem.

I'm not sure either. I guess this is a policy decision.

[Derrick]

I agree with this, it does add an unnatual element to the game, spamming repeated text in general unless it have a long delay is forbidden in most populated public areas, however we police this only when it's reported.

I think it is within the realm of reasonableness to police this in some automated fashion.

[nightshark]

Just use another char to kill them

Doesn't matter, ghosts can call guards here, which I'm sure is inaccurate (it's based off Stratics, which copied directly from the T2A manual, which I always thought to be wrong). Given macroing was illegal on OSI, macro spamming guards by the bank was non existent. And it sucks.

Lucien.. have you tried playing a GM thief? You get guard whacked half the time trying to steal a rune or 1gp.. bank thieving is beyond pointless even without people macro spamming guards.

[Mikel123]

Doesn't matter, ghosts can call guards here, which I'm sure is inaccurate (it's based off Stratics, which copied directly from the T2A manual, which I always thought to be wrong). Given macroing was illegal on OSI, macro spamming guards by the bank was non existent. And it sucks.

Lucien.. have you tried playing a GM thief? You get guard whacked half the time trying to steal a rune or 1gp.. bank thieving is beyond pointless even without people macro spamming guards.

Since we allow macroing and OSI didn't, any comparison or analogy about macroing is sort of going to be bunk.

Spamming on OSI was actually allowed; people spammed 3-line text messages nonstop, trying to sell their +15 dagger of force. In all caps. And there were generally a dozen people doing this at a time.

Personally, I don't see how it's breaking any rules. Being annoying isn't against the rules. It's not interfering with anyone else's banking ability, or their ability to call guards. If it's a bandwith issue, fine, but I doubt it is.

There's like a dozen threads on this subject with people talking about, often with screenshots, how they dealt with these people.

[wgensel]

I don't really see how it's any different. Now you have a few people at west brit bank spamming the word guards every few seconds. But back in the day you had TONS of people at the bank going in and out. Constant traffic ALL yelling "Vendor buy the bank guards" or something like that. The difference is you had a lot of people saying it a few times as opposed to one person spamming it, but the effect is the same.

So, I argue that is is not accurate UNLESS we have at least one player spamming "guards" at west brit bank.

[Koflee]

I don't really see how it's any different. Now you have a few people at west brit bank spamming the word guards every few seconds. But back in the day you had TONS of people at the bank going in and out. Constant traffic ALL yelling "Vendor buy the bank guards" or something like that. The difference is you had a lot of people saying it a few times as opposed to one person spamming it, but the effect is the same.

So, I argue that is is not accurate UNLESS we have at least one player spamming "guards" at west brit bank.

The effect really isn't similar at all. I used to spend quite a lot of time stealing back in the day and I would get away with a large number of noticed steals, just because people weren't paying attention. Sure I had to watch out for people running up and using their bank macro, but it's not the same as someone in the bank saying 'Guard' every one second for hours at a time.

With that guy in the bank macroing 'guards,' you get guard whacked at the bank no matter what. There's nothing you can do, you'll die the moment you click the item you want to steal unless you fully succeed. And at GM, hell that's half the time. The thief class is very dependent on getting away safely when you go gray.

I agree with this, it does add an unnatual element to the game, spamming repeated text in general unless it have a long delay is forbidden in most populated public areas, however we police this only when it's reported.

I think it is within the realm of reasonableness to police this in some automated fashion.

I agree, and with a lot of people macroing in town, there are guard spammers all over the place, not just the bank. I'm not too familiar with how you guys do a lot of your policing, but would adding something along the lines of "Spamming the term 'Guards' while macroing in town is now illegal." fix the problem without the hassle of implementing an automated feature?

[Mikel123]

I agree, and with a lot of people macroing in town, there are guard spammers all over the place, not just the bank. I'm not too familiar with how you guys do a lot of your policing, but would adding something along the lines of "Spamming the term 'Guards' while macroing in town is now illegal." fix the problem without the hassle of implementing an automated feature?

Adding a customized rule to prevent one single non-gamebreaking type of macroing, just to help one single type of player, seems pretty wrong to me.

Stealing always has it's challenges. You also have a very high chance of guardwhack if you steal within the line of sight of an NPC. Shall we remove all the NPCs for you as well?

Stealing at Brit Bank was never a good proposition, and was about the least effective use of the skill you could ever imagine. There's a ton of people there to catch you stealing if you go gray, a bunch of NPCs, and often a couple guards lingering from a few recent steal attempts.

[Koflee]

I agree, and with a lot of people macroing in town, there are guard spammers all over the place, not just the bank. I'm not too familiar with how you guys do a lot of your policing, but would adding something along the lines of "Spamming the term 'Guards' while macroing in town is now illegal." fix the problem without the hassle of implementing an automated feature?

Adding a customized rule to prevent one single non-gamebreaking type of macroing, just to help one single type of player, seems pretty wrong to me.

Stealing always has it's challenges. You also have a very high chance of guardwhack if you steal within the line of sight of an NPC. Shall we remove all the NPCs for you as well?

Stealing at Brit Bank was never a good proposition, and was about the least effective use of the skill you could ever imagine. There's a ton of people there to catch you stealing if you go gray, a bunch of NPCs, and often a couple guards lingering from a few recent steal attempts.

I understand that adding that rule would make afk macroing a bit more difficult. But I think protecting an activity that really isn't T2A accurate (Allowed afk macroing) over keeping aspects of the game T2A similar (Stealing) would be unhealthy.

It's a completely moot point how difficult stealing is without guard macro spamming. Stealing is a skill that people use, we all understand the risks of stealing in town or near a bank. No thief in his right mind steals next to an NPC and it's been that way since T2A. However, no thief ever had to worry about afk player sentinels that constantly spam 'Guard' and create a stealing void around them.

I apologize that you feel creating a more T2A accurate stealing environment is 'wrong,' but people play as thieves. That is something you're going to have to accept sooner or later.

[nightshark]

Really? How are people so bad at macroing? You don't need a "guards" line in your macro, just stand near an NPC, in an out of the way building. All these idiots doing it at WBB are doing it wrong. I macroed my first 2 characters to 6x in Minoc bard academy before buying a house, and didn't get stolen from/killed once :S

[BobDobbs]

There are enough ways to keep thieves from stealing from you that I really don't see why there needs to be an exception to the "No Spamming" rule.

You have lockboxes, you have a restock agent.

The signs say "No Spamming." This means no spamming.