Screen Sharing & the High End Raid Scene

[arsenalpow]

Yesterday, while I sat at Phara Dar and contemplated my life decisions for almost 16 hours waiting for a purple dragon to spawn in a 17 year old elf sim, something about screen sharing came across my desk. I had heard that it was possibly something that TMO and IB had done back in the day and I raised the question to the staff about it's legality.

For those of you that don't know, screen sharing is when a face tracker is logged in by a single person, then uses skype or other types of means, to broadcast his screen to the rest of his guild thus allowing everyone in his guild to bind sight essentially. This lets you crowd source tracking. Now you might be thinking, doesn't this violate the idea of "one person, one computer" which in essence is the boxing rule on Project 1999? The answer to that question is no, according to Sirken, through his messenger Braknar, it is not considered boxing.

The logic behind the ruling is that it had been happening since the IB and TMO days, the staff was aware of this, and never really felt the need to elaborate on the policy specifically. It's still happening to this day, it was happening last night at Phara Dar even.

[Mon Apr 04 01:03:32 2016] You told Fifield, 'so if you guys aren't bind sighting how are you watching this'
[Mon Apr 04 01:03:40 2016] Fifield tells you, 'skype'

Additionally, because the other people in the guild can't control the account they are watching through screen share it doesn't really count at boxing even though it could be perceived as boxing.

So this should be the norm going forward for your 17 year old classic elf sim. I'm just letting all raid guilds know that they should be adding this to their strats immediately if they want to keep up with the Joneses.

PS: warping eyeballs through walls to make them pop to the entrance has also been deemed legal from what I've been told, although I don't have a Sirken ruling in black and white for that one. YMMV.

[Ella`Ella]

Yesterday, while I sat at Phara Dar and contemplated my life decisions for almost 16 hours waiting for a purple dragon to spawn in a 17 year old elf sim, something about screen sharing came across my desk. I had heard that was possibly something that TMO and IB had done back in the day and I raised the question to the staff about it's legality.

For those of you that don't know, screen sharing is when a face tracker is logged in by a single person, then uses skype or other types of means, to broadcast his screen to the rest of his guild thus allowing everyone in his guild to bind sight essentially. This lets you crowd source tracking. Now you might be thinking, doesn't this violate the idea of "one person, one computer" which in essence is the boxing rule on Project 1999? The answer to that question is no, according to Sirken, through his messenger Braknar, it is not considered boxing.

The logic behind the ruling is that it had been happening since the IB and TMO days, the staff was aware of this, and never really felt the need to elaborate on the policy specifically. It's still happening to this day, it was happening last night at Phara Dar even.

[Mon Apr 04 01:03:32 2016] You told Fifield, 'so if you guys aren't bind sighting how are you watching this'
[Mon Apr 04 01:03:40 2016] Fifield tells you, 'skype'

Additionally, because the other people in the guild can't control the account they are watching through screen share it doesn't really count at boxing even though it could be perceived as boxing.

So this should be the norm going forward for your 17 year old classic elf sim. I'm just letting all raid guilds know that they should be adding this to their strats immediately if they want to keep up with the Joneses.

PS: warping eyeballs through walls to make them pop to the entrance has also been deemed legal from what I've been told, although I don't have a Sirken ruling in black and white for that one. YMMV.

Warping an eyeball to the entrance is 100% illegal and has been since the earliest days of VP - was outlawed around the same time as pulling dragons to the ledge up top in picture room and the ban against pulling dragons to the top of the zone by glitching Z-plane. I have the ruling laid out a few times between tells/Skype/petition logs/PM from GMs if I can find them. I'm pretty sure this ruling came from Nilbog at one point as it's a pathing exploit.

Most recently, as this rule wasn't abused much because of the severe penalties associated with pathing exploitation, Rampage ate a heavy suspension (forfeiture of several mobs) for this at the early release of velious.

[arsenalpow]

Warping an eyeball to the entrance is 100% illegal and has been since the earliest days of VP - was outlawed around the same time as pulling dragons to the ledge up top in picture room and the ban against pulling dragons to the top of the zone by glitching Z-plane. I have the ruling laid out a few times between tells/Skype/petition logs/PM from GMs if I can find them. I'm pretty sure this ruling came from Nilbog at one point as it's a pathing exploit.

Most recently, as this rule wasn't abused much because of the severe penalties associated with pathing exploitation, Rampage ate a heavy suspension (forfeiture of several mobs) for this at the early release of velious.

eyeball warping was outlawed by amelinda because of adriana in VP, there was never a specific place where staff said "this is cool now" and I only tacked it on to the end of this post to make sure everyone has the same footing when it comes to strats/knowledge

[Daldaen]

Regarding the screen shares, yep that's how foot races go on this server. That's what gets people off the starting line so quickly. There is no reaction time necessary for the person watching to spam a hotkey or key up in voice chat to alert people of the spawn.

I think this practice is 100% dumb, however I have no idea how you could moderate it's use. So enjoy those Kael footraces that Sirken didn't get any petitions out of!

--------

Warping eyeball through the wall is *pseudo classic*.

On live during this era, it would function sort of like it does here with one primary exception. If there is a second floor directly underneath that wall the eye would drop to that second floor.

http://www.monkly-business.net/forums/archive/index.php/t-8629.html

Another thing the eye does, is when it appears it is “in front of you”. So if you sit in front of a locked door, and then cast, the eye will be BEHIND the door !! Hey presto, no lock picking needed. Even better, “sometimes” this works through walls. If you face a wall/corner and cast, it can appear in another part of the dungeon “behind” the wall, and if this is in a vertically above/below area, the eye will go to that place.

From my experience on the Mac server I can tell you I was able to summon an eye in Temple of Ssra on my bard and have it drop like a rock into the basement to connect a CotH chain. I can't say I ever tried it out anywhere where I didn't know there was a level below me... Wish I had now :/.

Also, it's fun to push against a wall in various dungeons and cast the eye. In solb, the eye would appear in seemingly random locations. A few times I used this to check on ragefire from the freeti camp, for instance (took a few tries to get the eye to appear in or near nag's lair, though.

It sounds like it's possible where the eye went after being summoned in a wall with nothing good behind or below it the eye may randomly pop up in the zone rather than at the zone in though? Sounds like some good classicquest for us to engage in Chest!

I've never heard of any ruling for or against it though. I'm sure all guilds will abide to whatever Sirken, Rogean or Nilbog hand down. But personally I'd favor getting the classic mechanics of the behavior handled and allowed for classic. It's possible Nilbog knew the classic mechanics and just set the default location to be the evac point to prevent the inevitable trains from a randomly chosen eye summon location if casted into a wall (which would be admittedly hilarious though extremely easy to grief with)

[Pint]

this is a real thread.

[Anichek]

Found some references directly against screen sharing/skype/twitch/broadcast tracking - although not from a GM these quotes are pretty legit cases.

http://www.project1999.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1949609&postcount=26

http://www.project1999.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1949629&postcount=28


Screw this, I'm installing The Division. Some of ya'll need Jesus.

------edit-------

How is this (using an external program) any different that using MQ, Autofire, etc? Just because the technology exists doesn't mean it should be legit. The same people doing this are the people who probably argue that the server isn't "classic" ...lol

[Ella`Ella]

With the exception of maybe only Ele, people only care about "classic" when it benefits their agenda/game play.

Also, I think the Skype thing is realistically more an issue about enforcement. There's no real way to monitor it, thus you can't regulate/ban it.

High end raiding largely (but not entirely) revolves around, "it's not cheating unless you get caught".

Also, Chest, you're right that Amelinda handed that ruling down to the player level, but I'm pretty sure I have a message somewhere saying that Nilbog was behind it being a banned practice. However, as Daldean said, I also remember it being a classic mechanic.

[Pan]

Yeah, we messed with that some a while ago and chose not to do it because it seemed dirty. Our choice. I get that.

There was a lot of talk on Sunday about the ability and dedication to commit resources as the differentiation between the top guilds and those in the middle/bottom.

But there's another axis to that, too. It's self-regulation. And Unbrella speaks to that when he says:

High end raiding largely (but not entirely) revolves around, "it's not cheating unless you get caught".

However you want to parse that and however much of that you want to own of that or not, it's a stance that many humans take. Reference the doping in sports, for example. Also invoke the similar notion that: if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying here.

So hypothetically (and I'm not talking screen sharing here - I'm talking generally), if we accept the notion that some people behave that way - and that some self-regulate differently (try to follow the rules out of principle) - you eventually end up with an uneven playing field. A race, as it were, that's unwinnable by a subset of the contestants (a non-doper doesn't beat Lance Armstrong on a bike). (Again, I'm not talking about footraces in Kael, but conceptually.)

I'm not accusing anyone of anything here. That needs to be clear. I'm just setting up the construct (that we probably all know is real).

But that construct speaks to success (high-value target kills) every bit as much as the notion of "devoting resources" to kills does. And shouldn't be ignored as an element in the mix - although we didn't speak to it directly on Sunday.

--------------------

That said, and completely detached from the conceptual above, we weren't even running in the same race on Sunday. And that makes me feel stupid for getting up at 2am my time and spending 4 hours staring at the screen before real life intervened. And, worse, asking others to do the same.

[Daldaen]

Unbrella's view is his own.

It's not cheating unless it's ruled as cheating by the rule makers is what most individuals at the high end follow.

Once a ruling comes down most everyone follows that ruling. A problem with a lot of our rules as I stated over and over is they are vague. Another problem also happens to be that they aren't all stated together.

For example, I know that this server has a 2 player near a mob as trackers rule. In the raid rules the only mention of this is about tracker FTE not about a limit of players nearby a mob when it spawns. Of course we follow this rule because we know it's a rule. However I could certainly see a new guild glossing over the 2 trackers aspect instead focusing on the "you may not get FTE with trackers" intent of that rule.

Another example would be some specific zone rules. Like Venril Sathir is not allowed to be pulled out of his area because KC is one of the most popular dungeons and there are always 2-3 full groups going at all times that get wrecked nearly immediately by a train leaving no time to move or relocate during a guilds pull. Yet that's not stated anywhere specifically. In fact I don't even think I was raiding when that ruling came down.

Citing Amelinda as banning the Eye thing is yet another example of this. I don't doubt chest but pointing out that a Guide RMT banned several years ago banned a certain practice is fine, but how is everyone supposed to be aware of this, especially newer people to the raid scene or server in general.

The Skype thing I think is the absolute most nerdy approach possible, but I can't think of any way this could be moderated by the staff.

[Pan]

Yep. "Sirken said on his stream that..." (for example) is just plain tough.

There needs to be a clear canon. And, further, as different stuff is ruled on (in a thread or on the stream, or as part of a ruling on a petition, or wherever), it needs to be added to the canon so it's available to all.

Speaking of which, we're waiting on the "we're gonna be racing in Kael for a while" official pronouncement.

[arsenalpow]

we weren't even running in the same race on Sunday. And that makes me feel stupid

Yup. Awakened doesn't even want that ruleset because it minimizes the fact that they can convert an immediate FTE into a kill, which is understandable. No one else wanted the ruleset because it wasn't going to be pushed to other targets like NToV and because the next step would have by a racer cap which would have allowed Awakened/Aftermath to further spread their reach. Only Aftermath wanted the race because they knew their screen sharing strat gave them a slight leg up.

The next evolution will be the level 5 ogre army alts all screen sharing to win the Kael races. Can't wait.

[Pint]

Why dont you gather your monks and rogues in tov one night this week and race each other to random locations in ntov. Feel free to get back to us with your results.

Also realize that our reach isn't going to diminish in any specific area if uncapped races are the norm. We're simply going to establish conventions with awakened for whatever targets we are jointly pursuing and sink all of our spare resources into unregulated races. Youre best option is to compete with us on equal footing on a target by target basis, leaving us unrestricted is a mistake.

[Culkasi]

Why dont you gather your monks and rogues in tov one night this week and race each other to random locations in ntov. Feel free to get back to us with your results.

Also realize that our reach isn't going to diminish in any specific area if uncapped races are the norm. We're simply going to establish conventions with awakened for whatever targets we are jointly pursuing and sink all of our spare resources into unregulated races. Youre best option is to compete with us on equal footing on a target by target basis, leaving us unrestricted is a mistake.

So Aftermath's stance is "do it our way, or we effectively lock the server down on a two-guild cycle again"?

[Pint]

So Aftermath's stance is "do it our way, or we effectively lock the server down on a two-guild cycle again"?

Aftermath's stance in the first piece is a suggestion for all guilds to go out and do these things they are suggesting and then come back and reapproach their stance from a position of experience.

Aftermath's stance in the second piece is, work with us to level the playing field on a target by target basis or leave the game wide open for us to eek out whatever advantage we can to win. We track 16 hour windows to kill mobs, we do not track them bc waiting around is enjoyable. Nowhere have I said "do it our way", at every turn I've attempted to have you work with us. Stop refusing to work with us, I will make your life on this server in this raid scene both easier and better. What do you have to lose...