Upcoming changes to the official Empire AFK Policy

Discussion in 'Empire News' started by Aikar, Jan 24, 2014.

  1. I'll throw my little two cents into the gutter here...

    I feel that being allowed to AFK in town with ticks updating for an hour then stopping after that so we can at least go do some task while still letting our crops grow. Maybe even increasing the idle times for diamond as an added perk..

    EDIT: While marked AFK or when we're marked afk and recieve a message can we have a 3 second note or sound play to get our attention? Or have a longer noise play when a staff member messages you to get your attention
  2. Aikars Starlis needs to get as much money to run the servers and maintaining them as possible, for that he would need as much supporters as possible.
    If everyone got diamond supportership Starlis is getting alot of money. And, hence people do need to want to get diamond supporter, or at least some kind of supportership.
  3. Yep, and an AFK policy isn't going to sway someone's mind when it comes to Supporting if it's even across the board.
  4. I personally like the idea of the AFK system :)
    This puts more people wanting to play the game and get resources while not being AFK.
    But question? When your afk in town and people try talk to you, the color of the person there trying to talk to should be a different color (afk color, in the tab button) so people can identify who is really afk in town or anywhere, but I'm not sure if that would get confusing between supporters or not. Does anyone think that is a good idea?
    :p
    highlancer54 likes this.
  5. That sounds like a typical night for me.
    607, cadgamer101, mba2012 and 4 others like this.


  6. this policy kinda makes me angry because one big reason I support in emc is so I can afk in utopia without griefers. if I cant afk then I probably wont support and they be losing money‏.


    i might go iron or something if they do change the policy‏
  7. To preface this, I rarely ever use afk farms so this change isn't going to affect me much, especially since I can't leave my computer afk-ing for more than an hour anyways before it catches fire :p But I have to say I don't really like the spirit of this update. Vanilla minecraft allows for automatic farms and for afk-ing. Intentional or not, it's part of the game that I could do in singleplayer, and up until this thread was posted, on the Empire too. A lot of people seem to have something against afk-ing at a farm to gather resources, as if that's cheap and not really playing the game:
    I would disagree. You can't define "playing" in a sandbox game, that goes against the entire spirit of the game. With this policy, we're extremely limiting something that many, many players use constantly and that is a perfectly valid option for "playing" Minecraft and participating in an economy. Now, I could see making this sacrifice for some huge reason, like we did with the entity caps, but I don't see the need for this other than people not liking the idea of afk-ing. I think I saw Aikar mention that iron/gold farms can cause lag, but it is really that huge of a problem?

    tl;dr Eliminating a play style in a sandbox game because you don't support/like it bothers me.
  8. I think 45 minutes would be a good time personally. Every once in a while, come back and sort items, or create blocks/ingots for the metal farmers. At the 45 minute length, you don't have to be constantly watching the time and it is a good interval for which you could get deep into an activity. I personally like to have my unfinished materials and finished materials at different sides of my bases, so coming back and sorting them or condensing them wouldn't be a huge issue to me.
  9. - There is a whole separate player base of players on EMC who are major afk farms, most which are supporters, taking away the fun they have in minecraft drives them away.
    - Space on server issue isn't a problem as of now, if this would be a problem in the future, all for it, make the change. But this current day, as we speak, that problem is not present.
    - I do not find mining fun, perfect example - Making a gold farm is loads of fun, you get to collect the necessary resources, use them towards a build that is functional and profitable in the long run.
    - I've made a bunch of friends from making afk farms with others, discussing with the community about designs and doing these big projects with people.
    - Yes you are right MineCraft is called that for a reason, but it's also not called BuildCraft, RedstoneCraft, AdventureCraft but those are all apart of the game as well as Afking.
  10. I'm ok with this. I think it provides enough time to do things that take you away from the game for a short period of time and still allows us to play the game according to our preferences. If I have to be away from my computer longer than 30 minutes I really should be focusing more on what has priority anyway. Perhaps the time could be adjusted if it is too short, but I think the general idea is acceptable.

    Please don't treat Supporters differently when you implement this rule. Supporters already have perks that might in some player's views put them ahead of others in terms of gameplay. I think that when it comes to a rule like this that affects our gameplay so strongly, all players including Supporters and Staff should be treated equally. Something like this would set us apart in this part of the game.

    Also, some people have asked if this includes Town. This should apply to us anywhere, Wild, Waste, or Town as the behavior that it affects can and is being done in all of those places.
    607, jkjkjk182, mba2012 and 1 other person like this.
  11. But it's not intended to be like that. It's a bug, we're "fixing" it.
  12. Why are you blocking afk farms. They work in SP so they should work here. If IRL i am making too much money, the government will not burn my house down. This makes no sense whatsoever. I sense more like this coming soon, like making auto farms that go into hoppers illegal too.

    I am now going to snipe down everything that makes me sad here.

    I pay $20 dollars each month to get the perks i do. You cannot simply say "NONONO THEY ALREDY HAZ PERKS". The CLUE is in SUPPORTer. I support, therefore, I get supported.

    NEXT:
    This is going to be fun. Starlis is already pretty well off. there are probably more than 100 supporters. On only an IRON Supportership that is 5000 dollars. Servers don't cost half that much. we already have the server hardware, WHY do we need more?
    NEXT:



    You're not the only one...
    Luckygreenbird likes this.
  13. The problem is, this isn't real life. This is a game.
  14. Sooooooo...
  15. Not playing is not a play style. It is not "part of the game". It's a sign of boredom in the game.

    My goal is to get people less AFK'ing and more playing. Other ideas in line to come is bigger grouping bonuses too.
    Minecraft is not IRL and can not be compared in such a way.

    AFK'ing does cause a loss of server resources and a use of bandwidth that could be spent on other players.

    We had to add more bandwidth capacity to our network and another server due to us going over our monthly limit (5 Terabytes....)
    mba2012 and jkjkjk182 like this.
  16. You don't know what you are talking about. Sorry to be so blunt, but you have no clue about how much the servers cost, and your math is embarrassingly wrong. Your entitled attitude also reflects poor on you, and that is making your "side" look bad because of it.
    just_five_fun likes this.
  17. Just as a general post for people who are complaining they will not get to use their iron/gold/ general exp grinders.

    I've been here longer than the majority of all of you, I've built many farms/grinders in my time and many before the notion of having them kicked off (spawner blocks were a thing you encountered and ran from, not bent to your will). I still have many of the farms, and one which used to be considered the best in EMC, I use most of them regularly and have set ups at all to manage my time, with smooth-stone mining/ slime pad killing/ potion brewing, or general crop-growing.
    This update is nothing new, we used to have the same thing implemented back in the busy days, if you were considered AFK you were kicked by server, so people invented AFK coasters, of which certain Staff were also guilty of using in attempt to bypass, Justin found ways to track this as well and stopped people doing this too.

    If you find it too hard to stomach that your going to loose the '24/7 AFK ability' consider yourselves lucky that Aikar has allowed the server connection kicks to be laxed for so long, you would have been kicked regularly and made very little from being away back then.

    If this is still to much of an issue for you, I will happily accept the coordinates of all your farms, spawners, and grinders and bend them to an efficient state that I can work them myself, I will of course be very gracious for your donation of your as you've all said now useless farm, so what do you want with it anyway?
    BevK56, highlancer54, 607 and 4 others like this.
  18. That is understandable. Now i see why this rule is being put into place.

    I still think that adding a bottleneck to the players to reduce costs is not a very good idea.
  19. I wish EMC was back in the olden days before smp9 (I blame smp9 for the fall of everything :() If we still had 60/60 on each server nobody would go afk, it was more fun in those times! *runs off crying* Oh and I blame mojang.
    jkjkjk182 likes this.
  20. Buddy. BUDDY. i am on a MBP keyboard in a car going over a destroyed highway. car bounced, triple click the zero. We already OWN the servers. I am not "ENTITLED" i am simply unhappy. note my last post. My side? You mean EMC?

    Is Confused.