Feature Proposal: Official Autocasting
Posted: 19 Feb 2009, 13:07
With the pervasiveness of autocasting gestures and scripts lately, and our official stance neither supporting nor fighting them (since any fighting we do would impact the fishing of ordinary folks too negatively), I've been pondering if we need to take some action on this front rather than simply ignoring the problem. I came up with this idea today, but given the volatile nature of the subject of autocasting, I felt it critical to open it up to community discussion rather than blithely plowing ahead and coding it into the fishing rods.
The proposal is such:
GIVEN that autocasters exist and many are undetectable,
GIVEN that fishing area owners may or may not want to ban autocasters,
GIVEN that most people use them just for convenience and not with any malicious intent,
THE SOLUTION is an Autocasting option in the fishing rods which, when turned on, will continue to cast until turned off or until you run out of bait. This option, however, works like Loud Catch Mode... a new fishing server would be released simultaneously which allowed fishing area owners to DISABLE autocasting in their fishing areas. If they disable it, then the official autocaster won't work.
THE ADVANTAGE is that the official autocaster would be safe, responsible, and ethical as a result... casual fishers could make use of it, fishing area owners trying to run marathons or have very rare customs could disable it, and it would provide a safe alternative compared to shady third party products. And anybody who DOES use a third party autocaster would immediately be suspect because there's no reason to use one anymore.
THE COMPLICATION is that while having a safe and ethical official autocaster satisfies the needs of 95% of fishers, there will always be some who turn to said shady third party products anyway so they can have an undetectable, unstoppable autocaster. There are already these things in the wild, and even though fishing area owners already can say "No autocasting!" they can't stop it, and we cannot provide tools to stop them. (An autocaster could be as simple as one of those plastic water-drinking birds repeatedly tapping your F2 key. How could you possibly stop that short of CIA level spy equipment and a SWAT team doing a home invasion to disable it?)
THE QUESTION is, would adding an ethical official autocaster improve the situation any, or would those who intend to ignore a fishing area owner's desires simply ignore it anyway and nothing would really change? Is it worth the inevitable hailstorm of controversy autocasters cause just to try and provide a responsible solution? Is this going to improve your fishing lives enough that you'd want it despite that? In short... what do you think? Should we do this?
Oh, by the way... one way or another, we are closing the gap which SOME autocaster creators are using to programmatically access our rod's casting functions. They are using unauthorized, non-OpenSeas channels against the wishes of the 7Seas developers and they will be stopped. While we aren't pledged to going to crazy lengths to stop autocasters, like skill minigames or checking avatar inactivity in weird ways, this is a simple five minute fix and one that's going into the next rod upgrade. This won't affect gesture based casting or plastic drinking bird toys, but it should handle many others. If you're selling a scripted autocasting device using unauthorized channels, you may want to stop now, or face some unhappy customers when they stop working.
The proposal is such:
GIVEN that autocasters exist and many are undetectable,
GIVEN that fishing area owners may or may not want to ban autocasters,
GIVEN that most people use them just for convenience and not with any malicious intent,
THE SOLUTION is an Autocasting option in the fishing rods which, when turned on, will continue to cast until turned off or until you run out of bait. This option, however, works like Loud Catch Mode... a new fishing server would be released simultaneously which allowed fishing area owners to DISABLE autocasting in their fishing areas. If they disable it, then the official autocaster won't work.
THE ADVANTAGE is that the official autocaster would be safe, responsible, and ethical as a result... casual fishers could make use of it, fishing area owners trying to run marathons or have very rare customs could disable it, and it would provide a safe alternative compared to shady third party products. And anybody who DOES use a third party autocaster would immediately be suspect because there's no reason to use one anymore.
THE COMPLICATION is that while having a safe and ethical official autocaster satisfies the needs of 95% of fishers, there will always be some who turn to said shady third party products anyway so they can have an undetectable, unstoppable autocaster. There are already these things in the wild, and even though fishing area owners already can say "No autocasting!" they can't stop it, and we cannot provide tools to stop them. (An autocaster could be as simple as one of those plastic water-drinking birds repeatedly tapping your F2 key. How could you possibly stop that short of CIA level spy equipment and a SWAT team doing a home invasion to disable it?)
THE QUESTION is, would adding an ethical official autocaster improve the situation any, or would those who intend to ignore a fishing area owner's desires simply ignore it anyway and nothing would really change? Is it worth the inevitable hailstorm of controversy autocasters cause just to try and provide a responsible solution? Is this going to improve your fishing lives enough that you'd want it despite that? In short... what do you think? Should we do this?
Oh, by the way... one way or another, we are closing the gap which SOME autocaster creators are using to programmatically access our rod's casting functions. They are using unauthorized, non-OpenSeas channels against the wishes of the 7Seas developers and they will be stopped. While we aren't pledged to going to crazy lengths to stop autocasters, like skill minigames or checking avatar inactivity in weird ways, this is a simple five minute fix and one that's going into the next rod upgrade. This won't affect gesture based casting or plastic drinking bird toys, but it should handle many others. If you're selling a scripted autocasting device using unauthorized channels, you may want to stop now, or face some unhappy customers when they stop working.