Request Usercount inflation abuse (MirTracks)

[Dotrotton]

There is a precedent that has been around for a while in which server owners will introduce afk mechanics in order to boost there UC and attract more actual players.


UC should be used as a proxy for actual players to get an idea of things like community / pk / players in the world / economy etc and these afk mechanics just go against that.


Imagine not knowing about these, logging onto a server, seeing no one in the world but thinking “they must be in the high level caves” only to find that 99% of the ‘user count’ is people running multiple clients either auto playing / mining / fishing / *insert rediculous afk mechanic here*.


I don’t actually believe that server owners want to do this and would rather actual people play there server - but if one server does it, all the others are at a net disadvantage.


Given that the vast majority of people trying to get there Mir fix come via LOMCN (specifically MirTracks) is there a way to put AFK flags against servers that employ any kind of AFK mechanics to cheat the system, allowing those not in the know to take certain numbers with a pinch of salt?

 

[trancefied]

I doubt there's an effective way other than players call them out on their LOMCN server's discussion thread.
its really pathetic getting fake UC numbers just to lure actual players for whatever reason.

 

[MentaL]

I've already posted a solution before . It just needs developing. I'm not doing it

 

[Tai]

There is a precedent that has been around for a while in which server owners will introduce afk mechanics in order to boost there UC and attract more actual players.


UC should be used as a proxy for actual players to get an idea of things like community / pk / players in the world / economy etc and these afk mechanics just go against that.


Imagine not knowing about these, logging onto a server, seeing no one in the world but thinking “they must be in the high level caves” only to find that 99% of the ‘user count’ is people running multiple clients either auto playing / mining / fishing / *insert rediculous afk mechanic here*.


I don’t actually believe that server owners want to do this and would rather actual people play there server - but if one server does it, all the others are at a net disadvantage.


Given that the vast majority of people trying to get there Mir fix come via LOMCN (specifically MirTracks) is there a way to put AFK flags against servers that employ any kind of AFK mechanics to cheat the system, allowing those not in the know to take certain numbers with a pinch of salt?

I don't disagree with you but is it not common knowledge at this point? As with most things, people always find a way to circumvent things to gain an upper hand. It started with adding multipliers to the usercount but we cracked down on that and penalised a number of servers for it and so came the birth of the miners etc.

 

[Damian]

A centralised account server ran by or in partnership with LOMCN, user count stats can be taken directly from it.
I can think of other advantages that could come from this as well.. For players and LOMCN.

 

[Breezer]

API integrated solution, if server owners want UC, they use your code.

simple

A centralised account server ran by or in partnership with LOMCN, user count stats can be taken directly from it.
I can think of other advantages that could come from this as well.. For players and LOMCN.

I agree with my fellow Damian

 

[Slayer1985]

It’s becoming more common now days unfortunately…

 

[Jamie]

I agree with you to some extent.

You mentioned Auto Play, If the Auto play is designed to actively play in the game, competing for same resources etc, then you can't really justify that it is an afk inflation mechanic because they are players in the world abled to be PK'd and interact with the economy.

Sure if it was just a bunch of Level 1 GM characters in a hidden map, I'd agree thats pretty bad.

People leveling skills in SZ, Surely thats allowed or do you say thats not allowed? Where the line you are trying to draw?

 

[Breezer]

I agree with you to some extent.

You mentioned Auto Play, If the Auto play is designed to actively play in the game, competing for same resources etc, then you can't really justify that it is an afk inflation mechanic because they are players in the world abled to be PK'd and interact with the economy.

Sure if it was just a bunch of Level 1 GM characters in a hidden map, I'd agree thats pretty bad.

People leveling skills in SZ, Surely thats allowed or do you say thats not allowed? Where the line you are trying to draw?

I'd draw the line at having 10+ clients open , all mining and all incrementing the UC from a single device on the same IP (though capping IP would suck for multi-household).

As for Auto-Play, yours is integrated very well and works seamlessly with the ageing community, so there's an easy solution in regards to that.

Just slap a little overlay Icon that indicates Auto-Play mechanics.

I think the biggest ass **** with UC is allowing multiple clients to account for the UC , limit it atleast, it'd be a false positive to showcase a single player 10 to 20 times.

 

[Jamie]

I'd draw the line at having 10+ clients open , all mining and all incrementing the UC from a single device on the same IP (though capping IP would suck for multi-household).

As for Auto-Play, yours is integrated very well and works seamlessly with the ageing community, so there's an easy solution in regards to that.

Just slap a little overlay Icon that indicates Auto-Play mechanics.

I think the biggest ass **** with UC is allowing multiple clients to account for the UC , limit it atleast, it'd be a false positive to showcase a single player 10 to 20 times.

Currently on Marble V2, users can account share and play different characters at the same time.

So Number of Accounts active is not good,
Number of Unique IPs, Multi House hold or shared network/VPN/ExitLag maybe effected, and I would have an over inflated number than underinflated.

So then what we are asking for is Number of Unique devices playing the server, which whilst easilly doable, not sure It's worth me doing that since no one else can/will.

Post automatically merged: Apr 7, 2025

Edit: Also I can't know who is using Auto Play or not, only who has the ability to, (I don't trust the client to be honest about sharing that information so I never collect it)