Anti-farming creature factory for TGES06 and more
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#1: No icon Anti-farming creature factory for TGES06 and more Author: Cyberia-Mix, Location: irc://irc.epiknet.org/2LO PostPosted: Wed Aug 29, 2012 2:57 am
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I think I finally found a way to prevent farming in an automated fashion (in other words, working 24/7 without humans needed).

It's a subclass of CreatureFactory that keeps track of who kills its monsters and inflicts penalties to players who kill too many.

It's working. There's a test map you can try on the Mapping server.
Right now the penalty is your score becomes 0, and you lose all weapons to make it more obvious.



In detail, it works this way:

A factory owns a dynamic list of items with the form (player, number of charges, next item).

When a player kills a monster from the factory, the factory searches its list for this player and adds him/her a charge.
If a player's charges get close to the limit, the player receives a warning message.
If the limit is hit, the player receives a severe penalty so he/she won't do that again.

Charges decrease with time, meaning a player can't reach the limit by accident. If you're not a farmer you shouldn't even notice that this system exists.

Charges limit and cooldown are configured by the mapper.



These factories also come with a custom class of triggers to control when the anti-farming mode is active, because we don't necessarily want to do it all the time the factory is working.
For example in LongCorridor, the anti-farming mode of a factory should be activated only when the next zone has been entered.



This is not a perfect solution against farming, for various reasons, but it works with almost zero efforts.
A perfect solution would need a new element in the scoring system and custom monsters in all maps, which is just unthinkable.


Bob I need your help with the custom class of LocalMessage. If the class is written from UEd the default properties can't be overriden (because the default properties of LocalMessage are hidden...) and I don't know how to work with .uc files.
Right now I'm using a subclass of MultiKillMessage so it's kind of retarded.
#2: No icon Re: Anti-farming creature factory for TGES06 and more Author: Cyberia-Mix, Location: irc://irc.epiknet.org/2LO PostPosted: Sun Sep 02, 2012 10:01 am
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Thanks to Bob's help the message issue has been sorted out.

I tried the factory on TGES06REDUX for now. The anti-farming mode activates when players enter the first building. You can try it on the Mappng server.
#3: No icon Re: Anti-farming creature factory for TGES06 and more Author: Miks,  PostPosted: Mon Sep 03, 2012 11:44 pm
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Keep working ! Yaay !

I have some technology to slap down those dumb ideeas triggering messages like "!v" in servers. Even More things can be broadcasted to all players when something isn't usual for a MH map, even only to admins for sorting quality VS trashes.
Smile
#4: No icon Re: Anti-farming creature factory for TGES06 and more Author: Cyberia-Mix, Location: irc://irc.epiknet.org/2LO PostPosted: Tue Sep 04, 2012 7:23 am
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This message was very useful and I thank you for it.
#5: No icon Re: Anti-farming creature factory for TGES06 and more Author: Cyberia-Mix, Location: irc://irc.epiknet.org/2LO PostPosted: Sun Sep 09, 2012 4:38 pm
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I'm in the middle of scratching my head to find how to dynamically adjust the various parameters to the number of players involved, because the situations when you have 1 farmer and when you have 4 are nothing alike, and I wasn't expecting such huge differences before testing. There is a ton of annoying scenarios to think of that call for different values so it's really tiresome.
If settings are too easy it doesn't really stop people from farming, and if settings are too hard players must advance without killing pretty much anything. I'm not sure I'll be able to find a balanced solution before I run out of brain cells.


HOWEVER,
in the mean time I tried another solution that works very differently: using on normal creature factories custom monsters that grant 0 points, just from reverting your score to before shooting all the time. Triable on MH-TGES06REDUX-NoFarm on mapping server.

With this solution, players are able to kill as many monsters as they want, and yet it's quite demonstrative of how they're not supposed to (I'm personally very excited to try it everwhere in Nara).
But people playing normally don't get rewarded anymore, which means if Unai killed 90% of the brutes on the way he still leaves the area with the same score as the players who killed the other 10%, which is unfair.


All in all, solution 1 doesn't change the game for normal players but might not be powerful enough to stop farming completely (just make it very slow, and even then I think some idiots would still prefer this than playing), while solution 2 is for sure effective in all situations but changes the game for all players (notably, it means everyone would finish LongCorridor with a much lower score).


Thoughts?
#6: No icon Re: Anti-farming creature factory for TGES06 and more Author: HellFire, Location: The Netherlands PostPosted: Sun Sep 09, 2012 5:52 pm
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IMO it's fair enough, just getting score for the Skaarjs and Warlords now.
Which means those who farm will still have 0 in the end while others don't.
#7: No icon Re: Anti-farming creature factory for TGES06 and more Author: Miks,  PostPosted: Sun Sep 09, 2012 6:06 pm
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If is permitted I'll try to explain what I'm thinking.

First of all there are a bunch of maps already made. You need to implement that Custom Factory near original suppressing original and triggering this newer. Exist a link between spawnpoint and original factory. Switching to other factory I don't know if won't break spawning to infinity triggering farming and even a crash. I prefer for myself to slap down Bad factories adjusting them as necesary, even the number of monsters spawned at once can be modified with a simple or complicated formula. If exist troubles with Custom Counters, this is not an option. I'll put down those counters bringing defaults. 10 players killing 256 monsters might develop some score, but not excessive. There are 25-26 monsters to be killed by each of them (in theory). Also Bad Factories linked with nothing can be almost ruined to 20 Creatures (for being like original). Options are many but exist chances to meet surprises - I saw a problem (was only one but is good to know as being not good ideea toying with factories too much).

I'm playing randomly at DU but, I never checked stats. Is just a team-game - original MH help is saying something like: Players against monsters - So, I wasn't ever interested in any competition because this is only TEAM-WORK. A detailed scoring in a team-game is ruining the team-game. And these were my thoughts. I'm sorry if I posted too much.
#8: No icon Re: Anti-farming creature factory for TGES06 and more Author: Cyberia-Mix, Location: irc://irc.epiknet.org/2LO PostPosted: Sun Sep 16, 2012 5:30 am
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Okay, after some massive brainstorming (25k characters text file) I think the system has been improved in a way that makes it balanced enough now.

I've updated the code and put a new test version on mapping server. I still have to complete a proper script commentary about the different parameters and find an appropriate map name for Main.


Miks > You can't blame mappers for not being pros. For most of them it's just a relaxing hobby.
#9: No icon Re: Anti-farming creature factory for TGES06 and more Author: Cyberia-Mix, Location: irc://irc.epiknet.org/2LO PostPosted: Fri Jun 14, 2013 11:19 pm
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¡UPDATE!


I've finalized the script, commentary included. It's used in MH-TGES06REDUX-FarmFixV0, currently playable on the Mapping server. V0 just in case the farming limit needs to be readjusted if I configured it too low or too high, which normally shouldn't be the case (SCIENCE).
And in case it's not clear: YES IT'S MEANT TO BE BROUGHT TO THE MAIN SERVER.

TGES06REDUX is a challenging map. There's no reason the end screen should be hijacked by some zombie that did nothing for the team, if not breaking the team record for wrong reasons.



The script in some words:


The factory now uses a double charge system: players get charges from kills like they used to, but now the factory gets its own charges as well, from all kills.

On kills, a player that reaches more charges than the factory is considered to be farming, and receives a warning message in the middle of the screen IN THE FACE.
Too many warnings will result in a score reset.

So the charges on the factory basically represent how much pressure is put on it from the kills.
When this pressure raises (i.e. more charges), the warning threshold lowers, meaning a player reaches it with less charges.

Naturally, factory charges decrease over time to let the warning threshold come back to its initial value if few or no new kills are committed.


The purpose of this double system is to handle playercount, because multiple farmers sharing the same targets individually get less kills than a single farmer would, and so the threshold needs to be dynamic to match the game's situation and be reached at the right time.


I'm quite proud of this, I think the time spent has earned me that right. And my code is all pretty.
Try it!
#10: No icon Re: Anti-farming creature factory for TGES06 and more Author: EmperorHunter, Location: Somewhere in California PostPosted: Thu Jun 27, 2013 1:42 am
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What about the skaarjs on lower canyon floor I notice that if their is no brutes you stand on cliff edge and kill the skaarj's with sniper rifle and farm their as well you can do this too the warlords too if they are above the door bottom part of the valley and skaarj's as well want point this out for you
#11: No icon Re: Anti-farming creature factory for TGES06 and more Author: Cyberia-Mix, Location: irc://irc.epiknet.org/2LO PostPosted: Thu Jun 27, 2013 2:58 am
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You said it yourself, as long as there are brutes up there you can't farm the skaarjs from above.
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