Let's talk about "shop alts" and the "shop blocking" meta
Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2023 11:06 pm
Since our server began in 2018, we have allowed using alt accounts. We will not be changing this for several good reasons:
1. People with alt accounts would be upset.
2. We cannot stop people from using alt accounts even if we wanted to, for several reasons I don't need to get into.
3. If we would try to enforce 1 person per IP address, people with more than one person in their household would not be able to play Open RSC together anymore, which would be sad.
4. Multilogging is allowed in modern Jagex games.
5. It is an interesting and fun way to play the game.
One of the most useful & low-effort things an alt account can do is buy items from shops. This has always been allowed & I've even encouraged it in the past, when we had less players on our server and it was common that no one was at the shops at all.
However, we have recently exploded in popularity. Even though we have had an increase in players on the server, the amount of resources available has remained the same. It is very natural in my opinion that people will fight over resources. But there's one trick that people are using that several players feel is unfair.
"Shop blocking" is taking advantage of the authentic mechanic of RuneScape Classic that only one person can talk to an NPC at a time, and there is a time-out of about 30 seconds during which a player can wait at a multi-menu and not choose any option. During those 30 seconds], the NPC will focus entirely on that player, appearing "Busy" to others.
I have several feelings about this. The first thing I thought when I heard about this method is "That's really smart." and the second thing I thought was "That's not very nice to other players." But most of all, I thought "That's an unavoidable consequence of the authentic mechanics of RuneScape Classic."
Players on our server have also had several feelings about this. I have seen "I will do something else while I wait for the shops to open up" the most, but I've also seen lots of reports in our "Abuse Reports" channel of players reporting shop-blockers for "Bug abuse" and there has been persistent demand to "do something about it".
What would "doing something about it" mean though? We wouldn't necessarily need to wait in shops and monitor the behaviour ourselves. We have been receiving reports that we could act on if we felt that it was wrong. It would also be technically possible to count the number of times a player blocks a shop for greater than 20 seconds, and send an alert in our discord after meeting some threshold, as well as, it could automatically warn the player that they are breaking the rules, in an impersonal and effortless way. This isn't a system that currently exists, and it would require time investment to build it. But if we did implement a system like this, hopefully, the behaviour would Just Stop after that.
Is it even something that we want to do though? I still feel like "That's really smart" is the correct attitude towards it. It's an option to run your own shop blockers against each other if that's how you would like to play the game. "Crashing" in RuneScape has always been a thing, and if you play this game, I feel like you know that Crashing isn't exclusive to shops. There's crashing at monsters, there's crashing at ore rocks, at trees. The best available solution for this is for players to accept the behaviour as just part of the game and to find somewhere else to train. Of course, even better than that would be for us to open more worlds so that there's more room for all our players (not currently an option for us unfortunately).
I think the pros & cons of allowing shop blocking can be summarized.
Pros:
* Do not impose how to play the game on others.
* Do not have to expend moderator resources on this issue.
Cons:
* Players are put off by the aggressive & selfish method.
* Some players don't understand how shops in Classic work and believe that just one person can use a shop, or that the shop is "broken".
Let us know your opinions below.
1. People with alt accounts would be upset.
2. We cannot stop people from using alt accounts even if we wanted to, for several reasons I don't need to get into.
3. If we would try to enforce 1 person per IP address, people with more than one person in their household would not be able to play Open RSC together anymore, which would be sad.
4. Multilogging is allowed in modern Jagex games.
5. It is an interesting and fun way to play the game.
One of the most useful & low-effort things an alt account can do is buy items from shops. This has always been allowed & I've even encouraged it in the past, when we had less players on our server and it was common that no one was at the shops at all.
However, we have recently exploded in popularity. Even though we have had an increase in players on the server, the amount of resources available has remained the same. It is very natural in my opinion that people will fight over resources. But there's one trick that people are using that several players feel is unfair.
"Shop blocking" is taking advantage of the authentic mechanic of RuneScape Classic that only one person can talk to an NPC at a time, and there is a time-out of about 30 seconds during which a player can wait at a multi-menu and not choose any option. During those 30 seconds], the NPC will focus entirely on that player, appearing "Busy" to others.
I have several feelings about this. The first thing I thought when I heard about this method is "That's really smart." and the second thing I thought was "That's not very nice to other players." But most of all, I thought "That's an unavoidable consequence of the authentic mechanics of RuneScape Classic."
Players on our server have also had several feelings about this. I have seen "I will do something else while I wait for the shops to open up" the most, but I've also seen lots of reports in our "Abuse Reports" channel of players reporting shop-blockers for "Bug abuse" and there has been persistent demand to "do something about it".
What would "doing something about it" mean though? We wouldn't necessarily need to wait in shops and monitor the behaviour ourselves. We have been receiving reports that we could act on if we felt that it was wrong. It would also be technically possible to count the number of times a player blocks a shop for greater than 20 seconds, and send an alert in our discord after meeting some threshold, as well as, it could automatically warn the player that they are breaking the rules, in an impersonal and effortless way. This isn't a system that currently exists, and it would require time investment to build it. But if we did implement a system like this, hopefully, the behaviour would Just Stop after that.
Is it even something that we want to do though? I still feel like "That's really smart" is the correct attitude towards it. It's an option to run your own shop blockers against each other if that's how you would like to play the game. "Crashing" in RuneScape has always been a thing, and if you play this game, I feel like you know that Crashing isn't exclusive to shops. There's crashing at monsters, there's crashing at ore rocks, at trees. The best available solution for this is for players to accept the behaviour as just part of the game and to find somewhere else to train. Of course, even better than that would be for us to open more worlds so that there's more room for all our players (not currently an option for us unfortunately).
I think the pros & cons of allowing shop blocking can be summarized.
Pros:
* Do not impose how to play the game on others.
* Do not have to expend moderator resources on this issue.
Cons:
* Players are put off by the aggressive & selfish method.
* Some players don't understand how shops in Classic work and believe that just one person can use a shop, or that the shop is "broken".
Let us know your opinions below.