Hello everyone! I'm not too sure how to begin speaking on the topic, but there are some things I'd like to bring up about the rising intensity of shop-keeping. I think that a key gameplay-aspect of the server is the dynamic community and how well it's kept Skyblock together. It isn't a bad thing or anything, but that's what I believe makes this server really unique. Though things start to feel a lot less "human" and socially-inclined when the chat is simply riddled with AFK auto advertising alts. We've reached a point where some shop owners allocate most their time, money, and/or resources to alts that auto advertise. It's a good idea on paper, but really one shop is just as good as any. I, as well as many others, wouldn't mind someone using a bot to auto advertise, but our inability to suggest changes to rules leads to unclosed loopholes that make it so that these bots can reach unholy depths of insane advertising without any players' say in possible regulations or limits. Gilgamech has created himself a sort of alternative solution to intensely advertising. He's developed a bot that can automatically respond to a player asking something along the lines of "Who sells x-item?" that is answered with a list of players who sell the given item in their shops, and even lists the price ratio. Though, it doesn't make the spam problem go away, as the list can be large at times, a message bot is being developed to respond to messages just like mentioned previously. Don't get me wrong, eliminating shop ads entirely would be ridiculous as it's a key component in shop-keeping, I just want to emphasize that AFK adverts should be toned down and/or limited. Some people may have forgotten that skyblock is still a game, and selling items is only a part of it. I do not mind whatever you do with your time on the server, as you paid for your own accounts, but I kindly ask anyone who uses afk advertising scripts/mods to further limit their messages if they haven't already. In sum, this thread is here for anyone else to speak their opinion on the whole topic, and for shop-keepers to see things from another player's perspective. Please note that these are my opinions and I respect that you may not agree with me. This is not a server suggestion, but an open discussion. Thank you for reading this.
I totally agree that auto-advertising should be toned down. Reading the same rainbow text every 5 minutes doesn't add to my gameplay experience at all. If anything it makes it more difficult to see requests for help from new players and generally interact with actual people, which is one of the big reasons I play multiplayer games. With the sheer number of shopkeepers using auto-ads, I'd estimate that ads now represent half the text in chat or more. Personally, I'd like to see auto-ads limited to once every 30 or 60 minutes, though even every 15 or 20 minutes would be better than what we have now. Here's a screencap I just took, showing 4 actual people talking amidst what appears to be a flurry of bots:
Gilga doesn't really want to continue his scanning and who sells. he told me he was sick of scanning all these shops. what about people who don't use auto advertisers, I used to advertise all by hand how are you going to stop those people? we need to fix the lag before the chat
^ as he has 2 accounts constantly advertising one after the other, yikes. Joining the hub when the server lags and seeing 5 people autoadvertising is always fun
I think there needs to be some limit. It's kinda ridiculous, because I know when I got on in the morning during school (roughly 6 am EST), there would be no one talking which would overrun the chat with ads and I found myself turning off chat every morning. I think the auto-adverts should be limited to one account, and every fifteen minutes. That's 4 ads per hour. And another thing that would make it better is not so many obnoxious ads. Theres the colorful ads, the long ads, the ads that make no sense, ThE adS thAt hAve rANDOm CApiTals, and random emojis. Then, look at this awesome chain of ads: Shop advertisers should be like Haberson. Four times every hour.
I agree, half the chat is ads and not chat kinds like those virus ridden websites you may have visited if your antivirus was bad. I do completely understand why they'd do that, because if they don't, a lot less people will visit their shops. If you really insist on advertising in chat, at least don't make them rainbow colored. And make them short and to-the-point. Edit: One more tip for auto advertisers: Set the time intervals your bots post the message to 7-10 minutes or more (maybe even more, I'm open to discussion), not 2 minutes. There's a reason why you don't see the same ad appear all the time (well, ads sometimes appear twice in a row, and I have no idea why)
You don't need to be so passive aggressive. And this thread is to discuss AFK ads, I don't care if you do it by hand.
Honestly annoying af to see people spamming this dumb stuff like we get it you have a shop cool so do 26 others. Like, not to be rude but we get it? I personally find it annoying when I wanna message someone a question and then they don't answer, because it was just an auto advert v.v
maybe one ad per 5 pages its normally 1 ad per page but with auto ads because if you play the server for 10 minutes in this state youll easily see maybe 60 ads
In my opinion, chat pages are too inconsistent. Time limits are much more consistent and easier to abide by. 1 ad every 10-15 mins is perfectly reasonable.
How will this be enforced? I’m sure it would be to tedious to warn every person for advertising 2 times in 15 minutes and you can’t change the mods people are using because they can just create their own mods
This isn't a suggestion. I don't want to have to think past that, and that would be staff's discretion regardless. This is an open discussion about how afk auto-adverts have been taken too far.
And who knows maybe the community can make a silent rule like out of respect to other to not spam the chat with adverts
I think we should just go back to manual copy-paste adverts or advertise only when needed. “Oh I forget to advertise sometimes I’m too busy building blah blah.” but that’s the point. Or if someone is asking to buy something, then you can advertise it then. Sort of like Gilgamech’s bot that tells you what shops sell what when someone asks. Besides, AFK advertising is like going to a store with no employees to talk when you need assistance. There is no interaction between shop owners and their customers. It’s important to know what your customers want.
It is fine to consider that advertising like this can be very intrusive and annoying. But what can we do about it? We could create a special chat channel for advertisements so only people looking for shops can search when they want to. However this creates issues where staff have another chat to monitor and new people may not understand they cannot advertise their little shops. We could ban shop advertisements all together, however that wouldn't work for obvious reasons There could be an alternative such as a billboard which people can make small adverts which may reduce the long adverts and more people will just say Check my shop ad @ spawn, so less spam. However it may not stop people from using larger ads We can certainly create more rules about the frequency of adverts under spam and try and outlaw afk ads but it is difficult to prove whos afk for the night and whos afk for a few minutes. The problem is since we got chest shops that work when you are offline, rather than hand trading, it has given less people incentive to log in unless it is to check and fill stock, and more incentive to afk. Skyblock has become afk to a lot of people and people strive for automation. How can we fix that? who knows.
Hoppers are the key to automation if we remove hoppers tbh it’s a win win no more automation skyblock would become more interactive, it would stop most of the lag and it would be better for the economy
True but the issue is this pissing off many players. Which is why no matter how much lag we have, hoppers remain untouched except for nerfs. The community is too invested now for a change like that.
Personally i use a varity of ads to keep things more interesting, i do think seeing the same old ad over and over gets annoying. Which is why i constantly create new ads and try to grab peoples attention. Also my advertising is mailny done by me and not autoAFK adverts, i can understand how ppl might think its auto, but tbh i dont think there is a way to tell if someone is AFK advertising, most ppl assume i am but as i said im here doing it myself and keeping it revelant and updated.
