Random camping periods (in General)

First off, while I do have altruistic intentions in the post, let me first say, I loved camping as a part of CB. I was very good at it, and something like this plays to my natural advantages. I did not need any scripts, bots, or the such to camp massive amounts of gear and make tons of money, so that said I will now continue.

There still exists no greater thrill on CB than the buying of a rare item from the store at store prices. If you have never experienced it, then this post is really for you. That thrill is unmatched in any other experience I have found on CB and I wish everyone an opportunity to feel it.

The free retraining period got me to thinking. Maybe a random camping period. It could last an hour, a day, a week, whatever. It could spawn everything to the store, or even just certain random items during the period. The idea is to allow for someone, some lucky person to stumbled into it and get that rare, more so than to "bring back camping".

First off lets say, that if any pure campers are still hanging around, they are rare. Let us also say that the people using the script crutches were in fact full time campers. Without a plethora of campers out there the risk of losing an item to a script will not happen often, if ever. If the random camp period coincided with change month, there would only be 4 of them a year. I cannot imagine those periods drawing back the campers. I could be wrong of course, but 3 months is a long time to wait between camping opportunities, and I just do not see people doing it. If the period was announced (as in it will start this change month, but you wont know when until it happens) I do not think you would end up with many people camping the store. It would more likely be a true random occurance to find the item, and once your initial shock died off, and your heart began to race, it would just be a matter of speed and skill from there.

I will say if you just start playing CB and get lucky enough to get a rare in this fashion, your chances of continuing to play, and having greater community interaction increase immensely.

I think there are a lot of good reasons to try something like this. I can only think of the old camping needs to go reasons not to. So, I ask, what do you think about infrequent random camping periods?

Random camping periods... I don't get it... So you would camp ALL the time, in hopes of running across a random camped item? Would it cost BA? If not, someone could turn their bot back on and get rares galore. If yes (costs BA), then you would waste all of your BA, holding out for a one-hour period of random rare-spawning into stores?

Not sure I am following your logic -- if camping is once again "enough" to make it fun, then it is "enough" that botters will start again. And if it isn't "enough", then no one will do it, will they?

I'm not against it, I just need more details, I think...

I understand. Well, the idea is to make it so random and so infrequent that the botters wont bother. I mean seriously, let us say for arguments sake, using the change quarter as a guidline, that the number of rares that would spawn into the store in an entire year would be 4 X 5 or 20 items in 365 days. These 20 items would then likely fall randomly into the hands of a lucky person, vs. setting up a script and then running it for 365 days in hopes of catching 20 items.

Let us again revist the "script". The only automatic part of the script was the click/buy portion. You had to manually enter the store and you had to be at your computer. There was no auto bot created to go to the store for you an buy while you were at lunch. So, if you were a scripter, you would have to enter the store (for free of course) many many many many many futile times, in order for it to work. You would maybe be able to hone in your entry to these 30 days, but nothing more than that. So in a 30 day month, that is 720 hours of potential random spawning. Thats a lot of hours to cover, without the knowledge of when it will happen. Again, this is not to "bring back camping" this is to give the thrill of buying a rare from the store for store prices to some lucky most likley random person.

Now in all fairness, if you and I just happen to be in the store when it spawns, you will lose. I will get the item. Not because I have a script, but because I have done this before and I am faster than you. But that would be my only advantage. And I could see it as the only advantage a camper would have over a non-camper.

G_Beee rarely sells one of his rare items to the store from his admin character.. I believe allowing the auctioner to sell an item rarely would give a few players the rush and excitement of bagging a free rare. This would probably mean they'd stay and play longer aswell.

I don't believe there are any mad botters out there that stay and click the store at every opportunity in an attempt to nab these rare occurences. The store now spawning explosives shots has bought back a bit of camping which is fun, I got some explosive shots the other day and got a wee reminder of the rush you get from CB1. It's fun. I believe that spawning some rares into the store would make the game more fun rather then bringing back botters and what not. The store note should say:

"Looking for rares? They spawn extremely rarely and only a few lucky people will get them from here. Most stuff is spawned directly into the auctions"

This way only lucky people checking the store for ammo or just checking it for the hell of checking it would be most likely to grab a bargain. And if there are 5 or 10 campers checking the store in all of their free time, then let them as they are merely waiting for a rare occurance, and chances are they won't get it.

I'm perfectly content with the way G_Beee drops stuff in the store time to time...

Yeah but I think if the auctioner done it as well, it would add that bit more into the game. Nowadays the bargains are few and far between. Which makes it quite boring for the buying and selling industry.

The trick with G_Beee's dropping of items into the store is, they are never base. They have NW and even though the store offers that NW at a fraction of the cost, it still applies. This greater than base creates a price that favors long time players with ready cash over new players with cash flow problems. Problems a base corn for 20K could easily solve.

So you are simply talking an ultra-rare spawn rate and no BA usage to enter the store.

What is stopping me from having a botted camping session running continuously in one internet session, while playing in another? You think it is hard to create a bot that clicks "Businesses --> Store"?

All you are saying is that the botters get fewer items, and don't have to burn BA to do so.

I think I'm still not getting it?

You loved camping and you were very good at it. So if we have random camping time in the store, what chance do NUB's and peeps never camped before have?

You say the "pure" campers already left is not true, most are still very active. No this idea doesn't appeal to me at all. If there wasn't a title above this i would read "Sefton wants to camp again". Campers make cheap cash, so no need for it.

No thank you i like the way things are.

What's stopping you from doing that now? Nothing. Somebody out there might sell something thats rare? An admin might sell something to the store? Fact is, the bot program could be running now. However, the chances of a rare item spawning is so low that the botter probably wouldn't be online. Or just make the store have bot checks and not cost BA. Wouldn't that stop the botters from automatically checking for ultra rare items?

I'm not sure I like anything that deals with giving people items they did not work for...But that's just me. Maybe my view on camping is biased since I was not here when it took place, though.

That is a good point, Wasp... Could still use the botchecks without charging BA...

Hey, if a "camper" wants to use all of his/her time typing through bot-checks, scanning for items, and grabbing a couple rares per year, that's fine by me (assuming the store spawn rate is low enough, like 4-5 items per year). It would take 2-3 years to assemble a lot of net worth grabbing only that many rares, and the camper would still be getting carpal tunnel. *smile*

Fine by me... Though, Seft, imagine how much money you could make using that time for some free-lance programming or other computer work. *smile* Surely at _some_ point it is no longer worth it to "camp", is it?

And I still think the over-riding philosophical reasoning to say "no" to this would be the following:

Anything done to make camping worthwhile enough to campers would make it worthwhile enough to the campers who botted, thereby keeping extant the problems that caused camping's banishment in the first place.

AND

Anything done that is NOT enough to make camping worthwhile, well, isn't worthwhile.

As it is, with explosive shots spawning in the store, I believe
it's already being heavily camped. I honestly have not seen exp
shots in the store for nearly a month now including when I'm still
on at 3am server time, so either the bots are ruling the ammo
camping, or the campers are all over the spawns.
I'd love to see the occasional rare in the store. It was fun when
a couple of people were doing a "Camping contest" a while back.

Well Sut, I hope DAWG's fine example is what is stopping you from running two sessions one a bot and one your CB. I mean if you would like to risk all your time and effort and CB2 and perhaps even USD to catch one of say 20 items a year, (and it could be a Mithril Shield or even a BoM), then more power to you, but I bet you get caught BEFORE you earn more camping than you spent in playing CB, heck even in time spent setting up your foolproof bot.

LOL Henk. First off, if you go to the store and there is a rare, and you are the only person in the store when the rare is there, your chances of beating me or any other camper is 100% regardless of your NUB or new player status. Now, I will admit again, if we are both there, you will lose, but the odds of us both being in the store, when a totally random, non-frequent spawn occurs, is very very small. Again, if I was full time camping, and doing nothing else, this is not true, but with such a small quantity of rares, and such a large population of CB'rs that enter the store for ammo or some other reason, I think the odds of running into me in the store with a rare are less than 1%.

Name a pure camper besides DJ1942 that is still here, and doesn't actively play a CB character.

And for the record, I could title any post I make as, "Sefton wants camping back, and he needs to sell a Katana" that does not change the purpose or intent here :)

Yukk, free of charge lesson on how to camp the store for exp shots. I, BTW, pass on them all the time, simply because I cannot afford the space on my 14,999 ammo limit with my new archer.

The ammo store refreshes when it gets low. When it refreshes, it could spawn exp shots. Since the spawning of exp shots is random, and random nature is such that, if the store has not spawned any exp shots is quite some time, the chances of one spawning this time is greater. (yah I know you math whiz's out these spot the math flaw there, but I am speaking of our CB store, and I have lots of "proof" as to this method working)

So here is what you do. Look for ammo to be low. Then check the store purchase log for the last time exp shots spawned. If it has been awhile, enter the ammo store often until you see it goes from a few items to a lot of items. When that happens, you either see the shots or they did not spawn.

P.S. your 3am time checking hurts you more than helps you as you need ammo buying activity to force a refresh and thus perhaps a spawn.

I think the point of these random spawns, maybe as low as low as 1 every couple months, is not to make camping worthwhile. Its enough to add that small pinch of salt in the food. That dash of worcestershire sauce to the spag bol.

I think Sefton is trying to make rare spawns add that excitement to the game, not encourage camping. However, if campers were to camp the store all day for 1 rare... then more fool them. Think of it as a nice surprise when you enter the store.

Ah, then there is another facet to this whole thing you didn't mention: admins and/or Jonathan needing to run some sort of statistical analysis of clicks/flow into and out of the stores. Right now, there is not a need for any such thing, since there is no danger of such things happening in the stores.

So, if for this whole thing you expect the administration to scour click logs, etc. to make sure there are no bots in stores, well, then that's why the answer is "no". As Jonathan said in another thread, "simple is better than complex". The gains to be had here are not worth the admin's time (in my opinion).

That is, unless such scouring is already going on to prevent bot abuses for things like buying explosive shot...

Well Sut, again, not to presume knowledge or to suggest policy, but, I would think it could work just fine in reverse. Say I win all the random spawns, or even a good portion of them. Now you do not have to check those that lost, simply me, to see if my winning was due to hard effort and good karma or the inclusion of a bot.

Again I say to you, let us say for arguments sake, that the average resale price of any item purchased in the fashion is 500K (yes that is a simplification to account for RoBF spawning and corns spawning). So if 20 items yielded a total of 10 million in resellable gear, and you used a bot to get ALL 20 of them, then you are risking your, time, your effort and all of your gains, for 10mil a year. If you wish to risk all of that for $100 a year, then well more power to you I guess, you will be caught eventually, so sell your gains quick for USD.

In the end, the fact that Jon is active and is passing this post over without much effort, the chances of this idea being adopted is small. But, as my grandma taught me long ago, only he who tries can actually succeed.

So I will soap box a little :)

The reason I bring this idea up, is really not for my benefit. Could I benefit, sure I could. Could anyone, sure they could. But, I simply wish that everyone on CB had the opportunity to feel what it is like to buy that rare from the store. It is an amazing feeling, and do it once, you will want it again :)

So, you may all say, OHHHH Sefton wants 20 items for himself so he can what, spend it all on upgrading his character, and you are of course welcome to that opinion. It is not the reason for this post however, nor the overall idea. It is to bring back an element of CB that DID keep many ACTIVE in both chat and forums, which in the end I firmly believe will create a better community.

True, but if you never do it you don't know what you are missing, so it is moot. :P

That is like saying having sex for the first time is moot because you have never done it. Whenever and however you choose to have sex for the first time, I doubt you will find the experience moot. OK its an over generalization, but the basic underlying concept is true. Simply because you have never experienced something, does not therefore make you wanting to, or even hoping to let others experience it moot. It does make it impossible to describe properly, and it can only be experienced.

Some people choose to, and are fine with, never crossing that first-time barrier when it comes to sex. To say one way is better than the other is a philosophical debate far beyond the reaches of this simple thread. *smile*

Agreed there without question, but regardless of ones orientation, it still does not make the event moot :)

Hey, are you casting aspersions on my orientation? I am facing due North, thankyouverymuch! *smile*

As long as the orientation doesn't question which cricket team you play for ;P

That sounds like a pretty good idea to me - it isn't necessarily bringing camping back, but just dropping a rare in the store every couple of months as a surprise to some lucky player who comes across it.


As far as the botting thing....if someone is really willing to risk setting up a bot to check stores 24/7 for months at a time on the chance that they will gain one or two items....with the penalty for being caught as it is....I for one cannot rationalize doing such a thing, and am fairly sure nobody else would either. But as Sefton said, all you'd have to do would be to look at the guy who gets all the rares and check what's going on with him.

I dunno, I like it a lot, but that also might be because I've experienced that rush you get when you see a rare item in there, you click it, and you GOT it.


I suppose the point behind this is simple: This is no return of camping. This is simply a return of that thrill. Although, in a small way, Beee gives us this thrill anyways.... (I <3 Beee)

"So, if for this whole thing you expect the administration to scour click logs, etc. to make sure there are no bots in stores"

My answer for that would be to make the last 24 hours of store visits visible. Would not be hard to code. Then I'm sure the community would do all of the watching. No administration needed. Farmers of the store in CB1 were found the same way, by the community spotting it. However, saying this Oddbird is 100% correct. Find me 1 player who is willing to risk his whole career of CB for the unlikely event of getting a Mithril Shield. Lets all think about it here. In any case, as Beee does random droppings, how are we to know that people don't store bot now? Someone must already be looking at the store logs to make sure of this...