Botting

There is a point at which triggers and aliases are no longer assisting you in playing the game, but are playing the game for you. This is called botting, the use of scripts, triggers, or clients to control your character like a robot. If you can walk away from the computer and your triggers will continue to play the game without you, you are botting. This includes setting up client scripts that perform an action when someone sends you a tell (such as script to run a find on a person and send back results via tell) - this is your client playing the game for you, and is not allowed.

To prove you are at the keyboard, you must be INTERACTIVE. That means responding interactively to the game, to questions from admin, etc. In general, your character should not be performing actions if you are not paying attention to the MUD's output. The only definitive test we have for whether you are at the keyboard is whether you respond to stimuli within the game (such as a direct message from an admin). Note that this includes long strings of aliases. If your character is running around for several minutes doing gold quests and whatnot and is unable during that time to respond to direct inquiries, then you are in very real danger of being punished for botting.

A note regarding allowable alias length: you should not be running long aliases that prevent you from responding to stimuli for extended periods. Any alias that makes you unable to respond for several minutes at a time should be avoided - this is because the primary method we (Valinor) have of discovering botters is by testing the character's response to specific stimuli. If we send you several messages, for instance, and you keep running a long alias for the next several minutes, while we keep sending messages, then you fail the botting test.

In addition, we allow triggers and we allow aliases, but the extent at which they may be used is limited. With a trigger to pelt a corpse, it reacts and then it is over. With an alias to do '4east', you are replacing 4 "east" commands with 1. However, again, when the fourth 'east' has been entered, it is over.

This is different from scripts which:
(a) set you on a path, (b) look for prey, (c) attack the prey , (d) collect the rewards, and then go back up to (a).

In essence, if you can do it with a mud trigger or mud alias, then it's probably okay. If your client is doing more actions than you are manually entering, then it's probably not. This additionally means that it is possible to be botting while at the keyboard.

Regardless of how long your client is thinking for you, it is still thinking for you at an unfair advantage over other players.

It is ill-advised to try to find loopholes or test the boundaries of these rules.

Botting artificially inflates the achievement of your character. Therefore the standard punishment for botting is character deletion.

See also:    rules,  triggers,  punishments