Queues, Servers, AFK & Macros

Queues & Servers

In EU Central queues are a nightmare, but if only it was only queues… once logged in you can’t even group up to do your weeklies / dailies… as matchmaking is broken cause of servers not able to follow this amount of players.

Fun example:

Tried to do an Abyssal Dungeon this week, managed (after 10 tries) to find 8 players that accepted the request, even thought it would work only to finally had a message “you couldn’t join the session”. At the end, can’t do that same abyssal dungeon with my character this week cause of this server bug…

So what will be done for this???

AFK time

So basically you can be kicked of the game approximately 45min - 1h after being AFK. In this game AFK means not click on any input (mouse or keyboard or controller)
I think it’s a bit “long” for an AFK period isn’t it? They should definitely reduce this period to 15 - 20 minutes at least!

Anti-AFK Macros

It was the same on New World and honnestly i understand people using them. After working an entire day you can’t afford to stay in 3 or 4 hours queues… if only those queues were about 30min - 1h at max this could be “okay” but 2 hours or more isn’t.

So here we are with people not playing the game, launching the game early in the morning and setting their “anti afk macro” to be able to play in the evening. People able to play the entire day doing the same when they go to sleep and so on…

So what will be done against this? Cause if we have 10k - 20k players in queue, how things will become if every single players start to use “anti afk macros”? Infinite Queues?

Solutions

As i don’t like to spit on things without giving at least a temporary solution…
Here are few solutions:

  • Reduce AFK time to 15min (max 20min)

  • Make 1 or 2 servers restart per day: first one at 11am (when daily reset) so it cleans out anyone using “anti afk macro” for the entire day and a second one at 01am so it cleans out most people using “anti afk macro” while they are sleeping.
    Restart shouldn’t take ages, it should only be a matter of few minutes like 5 - 15 minutes.

  • Servers quality: making some server 1 or 2 servers restarts each day, would mean clearing “afk players” but also making servers more stable. Which would improve servers quality for people able to play the game => working matchmaking, working shop and so on…

  • Working on a better “anti afk system”, for example instead of controlling that player makes 1 input or 2 input, it could go much further with some sort of “check list”… Giving a detailled example:

If the AFK is set to 15 min:

Step 1 - if during those 15 min players did multiple inputs & character also moved then players isn’t kick after those 15 min. (otherwise if there was no input & no movement then players is kick from the game)

Step 2 - if “Step 1” is valid, then a new timer of 15 min starts, where it checks if the players is changing area. If the players doesnt change area he receives an “afk warning” telling him: “if you don’t change area in the next 5 minutes then you’ll be flagged as AFK and kick out of the game”
So even if someone is playing in a specific area he has time to react and not be flagged for no reason.

In addition, add a verification of “input times”. So if someone starts to record an entire macro to move, use spells and switch between areas, the time between those inputs will be the same each time cause it’s a record.

For people bad in maths, this means:

AFK without moving or doing any action = 15 min
Staying in the same areas 30 min = 5 min to switch area otherwise you are kick as AFk = 35 min

  • an input time verification to see if someone is using a macro

This should avoid “most” “anti afk macros”, cause most players won’t start to make real complicated macros or even bots to use as “anti afk”.

There’s the “hide in dungeon solution”, but a dungeon isn’t taking more than 30 min, but if it’s a real problem then a 1 h limit to do any dungeon should be fixed. So people hidding in dungeons would be kick of the game after 1h with ofc a 5min message so if they are playing normally they can react and TP out.

1 Like

Previously played New World.Queues was horrible untill devs write better system for afk players. Players was detected even if they used macros. That better afk detector solved queues on my server in NW instantly after releasing. Currenty i see many afkers in Lost Ark running into wall to avoid kicking by anti afk system. They try anti kicking tricks because of queues but queues are because they do that (loop). Good anti afk system solve problem. Just do it same way as it was done in New World. Sorry for my english its not my native language.