Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

There was a certain someone abusing the Concierges. I know that's why my linkshell stopped putting pearls in. Others might be deliberately listing themselves as Japanese to hide from that person. I do see a lot of Japanese during that region's peak hours.

FinalRedemption has still been a good place to be in, though it is pretty quiet at certain hours. I've also heard excellent things about WolfPackNation.

That's actually one of the things I'd want to see this emergent technology do. If they could refine and implement these ChatBots to video games, especially RPGs, that could be a good use. Program a simple personality and backstory for each NPC, you could ask them about other NPCs, clues for the next objective on your quest, how to get to another town, and so on.

It would be the ultimate RPG experience: no need for quest markers nor guides.

I actually have a better solution to my own.

An addon integrating FFXI chat to Discords.

Then, people could interact at any time without being logged with people currently playing.

It doesnt seems like a incredibly hard programming, provided Discord has the API for such a thing

People have been doing that for over an year since there is API for easy chatGPT implementation. However none of chatGPT powered dialogue game released from the past has become a hit....yet.

In reality I feel this feature does not enhance the core experience in games as much as people expect it to. When people talk to the NPC it should quickly deliver necessary text that enhances the core experience. Once the NPC starts talking on different topics unrelated to the core experience, this actually weakens gameplay.

Personally I am a strong believer of "less is more". Souls like games never give NPC tons of dialogues and yet the worlds are very immersive. We don't need to know what this random NPC ate for lunch yesterday for immersion. We just need this NPC delivers text that supports the core experience.

Maybe one day someone will deliver a chatbot powered game that become a hit and prove me wrong on this matter. Until then I don't think it will change much.

I'm not saying they should tell you what they had for lunch. But if you're looking for a woman named Shantotto - a person everyone in the federation would know - you should be able to talk to an NPC and click on a list of things your quest is asking of you, click on "Shantotto", and have the NPC say something.

They could even then use that opportunity to throw in some extra flavour about how scary she is or whatever. But to program every NPC's response to every possible item would be impossible.

It's a lot more immersive than the quest log sprawled across your screen reading "GO TO SHANTOTTO" with a gigantic arrow pointing you in the direction and your medieval-era map highlighting your path like a modern GPS wayfinder.

I still think y'all should storm Bahamut. What's the worst that could happen? :)

Being banned for fleehacking, anchor and duping medals in the fight!

No one wants to talk about Shantotto because she's a literal witch who puts curses on people.

And a tarutaru.

Well, mostly because shes a tarutaru.

If this is all you want, then AI is not really needed. Dialogue branches in conversation have been a thing since 1990s. We don't need AI for that.

AI's strength is generating endless amount of content.

How many items and characters and zones and quests are in a typical RPG? It might not be "endless", but it's an impossibly large amount to write and program.

In a game like FFXI, maybe one or two random characters might have additional dialogue at certain point in a quest that might clue you into your next objective. That's the kind of interaction where you have to go to each NPC within a mile radius, where 99% of them just spout the same random sentence they always do.

Would it not be neat if you could walk up to literally any random NPC and ask what they know about the quest you're on? Maybe they wouldn't know, and that's fine. But maybe they have a clue, or have an idea who might know. This is exactly the kind of thing that could make good use out of this ChatBot software. Their personalities could even be programmed to get annoyed at a variety of points. Maybe one NPC is super helpful and is happy to chat with you about everything they know about the world, maybe another doesn't want to talk at all, and maybe another would answer one question before saying they have to get back to work or whatever.

For your reference, Baldur's gate 3 has around 2 million words, Disco Elysium has about 1.2 million words. That is already more than enough text to read in one game even if you really like reading.

By comparison all 7 Harry Potter books combined only have 1 million words. You are effectively reading 7-14 Harry Potter books playing one game above.

Even for text heavy games like DE or BG3, I don't think we need even more words than what we have now. I personally felt I read too much text after I finished DE, I don't feel I need to play another game with even more text lol.

So I think the currently proven doable text amount is already good.


Yeah, you can already do that in decade old games without AI. Back in 1998 players did that in Fallout, they walk everywhere in the world asking every NPC where things are. The problem is that if an NPC tells you "I don't know", you effectively wasted time reading that line of dialogue for nothing. Just walking to NPC, ask questions and get no answer is not really "gameplay" with problems to solve nor they have the drama or tension that we see in a story.

Modern narrative crpg like Disco Elysium insert more drama and tension in every line of NPC dialogue, so there are less time wasted on reading NPC dialogues, as NPC dialogue IS the main story. But such carefully crafted NPC interaction experience kinda needed real writer to handcraft the content, I don't trust current AI to be smart enough to write dialogues as good as DE tbh.

I remebered that LS conierge is a thing and decided to check it out. Got one named "CasualsAnonymous" just because I thought the name was funny

Man, Star Trek Online announced it's next story update and they spoiled so much in the announcement post and image, I'm real curious what the actual mission is gonna be.Also they're being weirdly generous again. On top of already giving all 3 options for this year's event campaign instead of choosing just 1, this event (which won't be part of the campaign) will also reward 500 lockbox currency (ships cost 900, and you only get 4~10 per lockbox) and 1 epic prize token (1 ship). Curious if this generousity is just one last hurrah from the Cryptic team before the changeover, or if this is how things will be going forward with Deca.

You do understand that she would put a curse on you for insuating that she is a mere witch.

All the politicians in Washington DC can't come up with near as much bull**** as AIs can and they have been bull****ing far longer.

But whether or not the NPC knows today's AIs Could easily give you false information. I will take decision trees anytime.

I had a great idea for a story.

Gonna quickly write it. Then it will go to a folder together with another hundreds of ideas that are awesome till i get bored of it then that project never takes off.

1-she is a witch
2-she doesnt know I called her a witch because she isnt a mind reader nor have super hearing, so dont snitch!

Spamming AMAN Trove be like...

OK, who broke bgwiki...

NVM it's back

Good morning you who has Artificial Intelligence.

And also you who has Natural Stupidity.

Finally got banned. I am now free. Good luck and may you all receive merciful bans as well so you, too, can move on with your lives and play actual good games that are fun.

My only regret is that I couldn't give all my ***away. I had every AH item except kraken, the quad earring and skymir cord +1, basically. Would have been nice to be able to give those to friends before I got pinched.

If anyone is curious, all I was doing was exping, which I hardly ever do, so not sure what it was. I was using scripted to afk exp, but was at my pc and not doing anything odd or unusual. Unless they actually bother checking streams and saw all my addons like timers, scoreboard etc. I have no real clue what it could have been.

Anyway, RIP Samuraiking, 2003-2024.

Edit: Actually, I literally just got my Volte Tights last week and didn't get to use them. So there's a second regret.

Now we have evidence that Panta is Prince Trion in disguise (aka "Raillefal")

Did you POS hack at any time?

Not frequently and not without precaution, but yes. I did with invis up in KRT to get to camp a few hours before I got banned. That's something that I do every time I exp at KRT or any other camp, and have for the last 2 years. Not that I exp much at all, usually once a month or so at most, but every single time. So it would be weird to get caught for that.

No, it isn't weird and I'm almost 100% sure that is the reason. There is no precaution, its almost completely automated and a chance to get caught up in their system. There is literally 0 GMs doing anything about exp botting, you didn't get banned for afk botting. Almost every case of someone getting banned has been linked to POS warping/hacking. I don't know the exact threshold, but even if you somehow did it differently today and it got picked up, or they have something they turn on/off, I'm pretty sure its the reason.

Square are stupid asf, they should never ban people outright unless they are RMT or hacking the server.

They should all be 1-4 month bans outside of those things. Imagine stopping people giving you money over minutia.

Afk xp-ing for more than 24hours straight will 100% get you papped. Ask me how I know.

Sad to hear it, but I am happy for you that you are finally free.

And yes POS warping can get you caught, it is 100% detectable but not 100% that you get papped if you do it. Just luck of the not-really-random dice they throw for the automated detection to select you vs the 1000s of RMT that do it.

SE needs to periodically increase bans or cheating gets out of control and it erodes the game. It sucks to lose players(and friends), but it's a necessary part of the game.

Someone else posted about losing their 5 characters this week too:
https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/57837/square-enix-expects-loss-of-140-million/6/#3702980
So, maybe they're doing an uptick again.

Yes, you can get banned for exp(or any combat botting) if you run it for excessive hours. People saying otherwise are using their personal experience as fact or assuming that because a bot got away with it for an immense amount of time it never happens. But, probably far more likely you got hit for POS.

We can all only speak for our personal experiences and those we know/know of. I have had friends exping for weeks without bans or suspensions. There are limitless amounts of rmt botting the same NMs and spots that are constantly reported. Almost none of them banned. It almost always stems from some POS hacking or automation for menus or movement actions like warps. Exp botting the same spot for 24hrs is not 100%, easily proven and from personal experience.

While that doesn't give people a free pass to bot, I am highly suspicious when someone says all they did was exp. Considering the long laundry list of addons people use now that all lean on automation. Even during the height of ML cap raises, actual dev involvement for new content/storyline, etc, there were tons of people botting for ages in thr exact same spot. But now most of these people are emboldened to use everything, but in reality their system flags them, and they think it's for exp botting. I have extensive experience with their automated system for POS hacking so it's the first thing that comes to mind for me.

People can't honestly believe they have GMs that check for botting in exp camps. When they are literally slashing the budget for everything they somehow have resources and time to check streams or manually check if people are botting. Just isn't realistic compared to an automated system flagging people for something that has been policied that way since day1.

Not GMs no, but they do have detection for afk xp-ing. It is quite easy to do in any case.

Maybe not 100%, but there is automated detection. Same for POS warping. You take the risk if you do it but won't always get papped.

Like speeding down a back road. 99% of the time you might be okay, but eventually if you do it 1000s of times..