[DISCUSSION THREAD] How is this not against the rules?

[Elon musky]

There are a few thoughts that come to mind:

1. I can understand the issue of AFKing at a high traffic area such as the Kraken during an event being an issue. I don’t see an issue AFKing at an area of dead content such as tortured gorillas or Thermos.

2. I also don’t see an issue with AFKing for XP AS LONG AS you are putting your account at risk of dying. The argument can be made that the chance is low with specific gear, but it is still at risk none the less.

3. I would be in favor of teleporting a player home if they don’t click for an hour. I WOULD NOT be in favor of turning off a players auto retaliate off after an hour to guarantee their death. That crosses the line between preventing a problem, and punishing/retaliating against players for doing for something as minor as AFKing.

[Rapsey]

The ability to afk at some enemies is intentional

I wouldn't go that far. No NPC was ever implemented with the mindset of "we want people to be able to AFK this". However the decision not to criminalize it when we found out about it was intentional.

This is something that should be addressed with game changes, not punishments. It's just bad practice to make the game work a certain way and then punish people for making use of it, when it could simply be prevented by changing the way the game works. We should only use punishments for the things we can't prevent in any reasonable way.

As for the rule, yes, technically this falls under it. I'm not particularly inclined to change it though. The wording is intentionally broad to close off any loopholes, which is more important to us than removing the ambiguity. The rules are a list of things we withhold the right to punish for, thereby enabling you to know for sure that anything that's not on there definitely can't get you punished. They should not be seen as: anything that could fall under one of these rules MUST be punished. Some vagueness will always need to exist (in some rules more than others) and in those areas we will always err on the side of caution, by making sure we don't tie our own hands in case someone comes up with a malicious method we hadn't thought of. You'll find the same thing in any end-user license agreement or in real life laws. Some things are technically prohibited under broader statements but nevertheless tolerated as they are deemed fairly harmless.

[Church]

The ability to afk at some enemies is intentional

I wouldn't go that far. No NPC was ever implemented with the mindset of "we want people to be able to AFK this". However the decision not to criminalize it when we found out about it was intentional.

This is something that should be addressed with game changes, not punishments. It's just bad practice to make the game work a certain way and then punish people for making use of it, when it could simply be prevented by changing the way the game works. We should only use punishments for the things we can't prevent in any reasonable way.

As for the rule, yes, technically this falls under it. I'm not particularly inclined to change it though. The wording is intentionally broad to close off any loopholes, which is more important to us than removing the ambiguity. The rules are a list of things we withhold the right to punish for, thereby enabling you to know for sure that anything that's not on there definitely can't get you punished. They should not be seen as: anything that could fall under one of these rules MUST be punished. Some vagueness will always need to exist (in some rules more than others) and in those areas we will always err on the side of caution, by making sure we don't tie our own hands in case someone comes up with a malicious method we hadn't thought of. You'll find the same thing in any end-user license agreement or in real life laws. Some things are technically prohibited under broader statements but nevertheless tolerated as they are deemed fairly harmless.

I think the place where we're not on the same page is that when I say afk I mean like, a cannon at frost dragons in your poh and you walk away for a few minutes with your antifire up, rather than while you're asleep for hours.

I think OSRS's chunk based aggression timer. Per the wiki:

After a player spends 10 minutes in the vicinity of aggressive monsters, the monsters will become tolerant of the player and become passive. However, if the player leaves the area and then returns, the monsters there become aggressive again. Note that logging out is not classed as leaving the area, so if a player logs out and logs back in again, the monsters will still be tolerant. This includes swapping worlds.

[Fungamer]

The rules are a list of things we withhold the right to punish for, thereby enabling you to know for sure that anything that's not on there definitely can't get you punished. They should not be seen as: anything that could fall under one of these rules MUST be punished. Some vagueness will always need to exist (in some rules more than others) and in those areas we will always err on the side of caution, by making sure we don't tie our own hands in case someone comes up with a malicious method we hadn't thought of. You'll find the same thing in any end-user license agreement or in real life laws. Some things are technically prohibited under broader statements but nevertheless tolerated as they are deemed fairly harmless.

While I initially agreed that this needs a game change rather than a rule change, I hadn't thought of the rules like that. You make a very good point.

Gorillas and Thermos are a bit weird. They don't make that much GP when AFKed. Most zenytes get yoinked by cc members or simply despawn. Pretty much the same for thermos, they've never been good gp. Unless you check every few minutes (which means this kind of behavior becomes a non-issue to everyone), you're probably better off mining gold semi-afk if you want to make more cash. They're more or less a spot to powerlevel (powerxpgain?) the melee stats, just like how in the past we went into clan wars with that one gamemode where the clan leader has a ton of HP and sat there AFK with a chaos whip and max str.

People don't stay there to make GP, but to get their comp requirements done. And I get it, do all the melees (and HP) and you knock out 4/8 2b stats required. Training melee is incredibly boring unless you're doing slayer, but many people have ways to train the other two combat stats without being on a task. I think that in general this entire situation is a non-issue. AFKing for hours is cheesy, sure. But OSRS has known cheesy ways to get XP in certain stats as well. Expensive but fast methods, fletching on a touchscreen, etc. AFKing gorillas or thermos comes at the cost of actually playing & making other meaningful progress (GP and slayer XP for example). It's just an alternate route to take if all you care about is XP.

That being said, I don't mind a logout after 1 hour of no red/yellow clicks or other changes to combat this. But such a change would be flawed so I see little point in implementing it to begin with. The issue I see is that most changes we could reasonably make are easily countered with an autoclicker, and though it is against the rules, such a change would only serve to encourage autoclicking IMO.
Also, uh, our boosted playercount from AFK people is still something to keep in mind. At least it's better than lying about our count or having bots running around to inflate it.

[Patel]

As for the rule, yes, technically this falls under it. I'm not particularly inclined to change it though. The wording is intentionally broad to close off any loopholes, which is more important to us than removing the ambiguity. The rules are a list of things we withhold the right to punish for, thereby enabling you to know for sure that anything that's not on there definitely can't get you punished. They should not be seen as: anything that could fall under one of these rules MUST be punished. Some vagueness will always need to exist (in some rules more than others) and in those areas we will always err on the side of caution, by making sure we don't tie our own hands in case someone comes up with a malicious method we hadn't thought of. You'll find the same thing in any end-user license agreement or in real life laws. Some things are technically prohibited under broader statements but nevertheless tolerated as they are deemed fairly harmless.

I agree that this should remain the spirit of the rules (intentional vagueness to account for unforeseen circumstances). However the sentence is declarative and leaves no room for ambiguity (shown below). You could also put what you said as a disclaimer on the top of the rules.txt file. In which case, ignore the rest of this post

Using a modified client will also get you flagged as a bot. Gaining XP or items while being AFK falls under the same punishment.

Therefore: the report in this thread is valid, and this situation is against the rules (obviously I don't think that should be the case, but I want to illustrate how there isn't sufficient vagueness in the rules to really disagree without invoking unwritten motivations)! Not by implication, but by declaration. Hence why we have this thread, and a lot of the discussion in this thread. I've seen this discussion before elsewhere, but my, the years have gone by so I'm quite frankly not sure where to look.

Anywho, the phrasing you describe in theory is basically staring us in the face, just add one or two words:

Gaining XP or items while being AFK may fall under the same punishment.
Gaining XP or items while being AFK could potentially fall under the same punishment.

In summary: I agree it should be vague, but I argue that it's not vague enough. My motivation for a change is to decrease the necessity for having to parrot this explanation, since it's not the first time we've had to go over it.


As for the logout timer:
Why don't we start with a ridiculous upper limit? I don't think it would pass a poll to add a logout timer that's 1 hour or even 2 hours (based on this recent suggestion), but maybe 12 to begin? I feel like we're generally in agreement that you shouldn't be able to sleep while your account is still gaining xp and getting kills. That makes us iffy. But we like our Pkh without a logout timer for longer than most of us would reasonably be playing the game. Whether it's based on yellow/red clicks or is just a simple timer based on the last click is up for discussion.

On another note, just to make the discussion spicy:
I still have yet to think of or see how asserting that 'game inputs must be made by the user and not by some automated process' isn't airtight. It even accounts for folks who tie their mouses to a rotating fan apparatus IRL to generate periodic clicks. My only counterargument is that even clicks and keystrokes aren't necessarily free from automation. We have to account for interrupt handling and assembler integration at a very low level, since that stuff is technically automated, but if we entertained that argument seriously then quite literally everything would be botting (plus, I doubt most people could/would make that argument in the first place)

[Iron podge]

Rapsey's explanation covered it well for me.

Why don't we start with a ridiculous upper limit? I don't think it would pass a poll to add a logout timer that's 1 hour or even 2 hours (based on this recent suggestion), but maybe 12 to begin? I feel like we're generally in agreement that you shouldn't be able to sleep while your account is still gaining xp and getting kills. That makes us iffy. But we like our Pkh without a logout timer for longer than most of us would reasonably be playing the game. Whether it's based on yellow/red clicks or is just a simple timer based on the last click is up for discussion.

Are you still referring to combat afking or just afking in general (sitting at home)? Non-combat seems like a whole different rabbit hole, as seen by the votes on that suggestion poll.

If you mean combat, I like your idea because at least it's something

[Patel]

Rapsey's explanation covered it well for me.

Why don't we start with a ridiculous upper limit? I don't think it would pass a poll to add a logout timer that's 1 hour or even 2 hours (based on this recent suggestion), but maybe 12 to begin? I feel like we're generally in agreement that you shouldn't be able to sleep while your account is still gaining xp and getting kills. That makes us iffy. But we like our Pkh without a logout timer for longer than most of us would reasonably be playing the game. Whether it's based on yellow/red clicks or is just a simple timer based on the last click is up for discussion.

Are you still referring to combat afking or just afking in general (sitting at home)? Non-combat seems like a whole different rabbit hole, as seen by the votes on that suggestion poll.

If you mean combat, I like your idea because at least it's something

Combat, sorry

[Rapsey]

I agree that this should remain the spirit of the rules (intentional vagueness to account for unforeseen circumstances). However the sentence is declarative and leaves no room for ambiguity (shown below).

Agreed. I also don't like the definitiveness of that wording.

[Slayer]

Rapsey's explanation covered it well for me.

Why don't we start with a ridiculous upper limit? I don't think it would pass a poll to add a logout timer that's 1 hour or even 2 hours (based on this recent suggestion), but maybe 12 to begin? I feel like we're generally in agreement that you shouldn't be able to sleep while your account is still gaining xp and getting kills. That makes us iffy. But we like our Pkh without a logout timer for longer than most of us would reasonably be playing the game. Whether it's based on yellow/red clicks or is just a simple timer based on the last click is up for discussion.

Are you still referring to combat afking or just afking in general (sitting at home)? Non-combat seems like a whole different rabbit hole, as seen by the votes on that suggestion poll.

If you mean combat, I like your idea because at least it's something

Combat, sorry

Log out timer wouldn't be a horrible idea. I've left mine on afk purely on accident due to getting caught up at work etc and not realizing it till the next day. A large timer such as 12 would be a perfecting starting point for something like this.

[Markymark]

I mean the man brings up a great point...Think of it this way. You have an account afking for days on end, your clan mates see the drops and loot that afkers loot. Thats money being generated by itself. On top of the zenyte shards being obtained, theres other things in factor, such as pkp and KC being farmed, PKP can be used for ingame gp, and KC can interrupt people that actually kill them legitly, and go for top kills.

Even tho tortured are a lower level mob, so to speak, 10b at a time is coming in the game in items, along with another 3-5k pkp worth overnight, which in theory is another 2-3b, along with an elite that hes obtained, another 2.3b, Now pair this with 4 accounts, and you get the result of 50b on a bad night with 1 zenyte per account, upwards to 100b generated daily, just afking if lucky with shards.

With that said, How are we complaining about having no GP in the came for the items there are, and why are we wondering why theres an influx of items, that cant be bought with cash, because its simply being either hoarded, staked, or just not enough of because the lack of money there is ingame.

Im sure theres logs that show how much pure gp is in the game currently. How about we compare the wealth between all the accounts in pure cash, and the wealth with pure items (you can even exclude the ultra rares). I believe the ratio will be somewhere around 1:1500