So I was sitting in a remote place with no other players around, just learned improved hide from my guild master, and decided I was going to spam it up to get it above 75%.

Within 30 seconds of starting the spam... which I have done literally hundreds of times with many many characters since the mud started for many similar skills such as hide, sneak, lore, etc, an imm froze me for about a minute followed by 'an Immortal tells you 'Please stop spamming, it's against the rules. Especially spamming something like that that has zero RP value or intent.''

Now, I can see how it would be annoying for an imm to see me suddenly start spamming hide and so forth if they were randomly snooping me, but I wasn't spamming any other players. I wasn't AFK or botting since I obviously was moving around just seconds earlier. And now I am very concerned about how I am going to learn this skill without using the spam I am accustomed to. Wouldn't it be better for the imm to just either stop snooping me or give me a test to see if I was botting rather than giving me an ultimatum like I am going to get denied if I continue to try to master a skill which is pretty much mandatory to be mastered to be remotely useful?

Even Nepenthe has declared that spam is necessary in past posts to learn spells, as long as it's not done by a bot it's okay.

Crap like this just makes me not want to log back in again, honestly.

I would never try to spam this skill up by sending tells, either to Mob or Players, but to me this is a very interesting skill. Especially combined with certain other things. And for an IMM to tell you that you shouldn't spam it, because it has no RP value...silly. Why the hell would anyone spam anything with RP value. They spam stuff with an actual use.

But when I practiced this skill, I did not sit in a major area. I sat in an out of the way place and never saw a single person, and even with the 3 second lag on closing doors, it went up pretty quick for me.

That's what I ended up doing, thanks for the suggestions everybody. I will just brush it off and move on with my life now.

The helpfile mentions opening doors.

>The helpfile mentions opening doors.
>

Yes, but there's a horrendous lag on closing doors. The difference is, when you send tells from the shadows, you learn Improved Hide up to 100% even on a low-int race in about 5-10 minutes. My only other way I am aware of to work on this skill is to open and close doors from the shadows, with about a 3 or so second lag on every close. That led to about 1 skill improvement in about 20 minutes, which was all kinds of painful for such a simple skill.

And Twist's recommendation on opening doors that are already open didn't seem to work.

I guess my real issue is I'm pretty sure my pfile was tagged for being a spammer, which I am sure will limit future RP/Immteraction opportunities. And I'm sorry I apparently spammed an imm that was randomly snooping me from my guild and all. But really, I was just using the game mechanics to master a skill the most efficient way possible, something that every serious character has to do a number of times in this game since the first age. There's no way you can do spamming skills IC, it's always going to be an OOC mechanism to get that all mighty skill up.

I don't know what kind of answer I am looking for, maybe I'm just OCD and it's silly to want to have a skill at 100%. It just seems like canceling the snoop on me and letting me do what I needed to do in the game while I was all alone in my guild would have been a better solution than using the freeze command and telling me I was violating rules of the game.

And the reason was that one of the channels Imms get was getting spammed hard (maybe they have one for mob tells?) due to what you were doing, it is clear that one of them was going to tell you to stop it so that their screens wouldn't get flooded. In this situation, it is likely that. I think their motivation would simply be make it stop.

Let's assume that an Imm uses a mob to interact with people and the tells the mob gets go to this channel. The RP interaction between mob and Scion, without you in picture, would look like this:

Scion tells mob1 Interesing.
Mob1 tells Scion This is how it is.
Scion tells mob Indeed.
Mob1 tells Scion How do you feel about this?
Scion tells mob1 Amusing.
Mob1 tells Scion That's how it is?
Scion tells mob1 Quite.

With you in picture, it would look like this:

Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Scion tells mob1 Interesing.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Mob1 tells Scion This is how it is.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Scion tells mob Indeed.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Mob1 tells Scion How do you feel about this?
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Scion tells mob1 Amusing.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Mob1 tells Scion That's how it is?
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Scion tells mob1 Quite.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Thiefy tells mob2 All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

I briefly thought of using "tell self", but assumed that would still register on the imm channel. As it probably should, since a character might use it for RP purposes while chatting with an imm.

Does it trigger on eating and drinking? Helpfile doesn't mention that, but I thought I remembered some thief skill that let you eat/drink without stepping out.

Since you're spamming and it uses less liquid.

I have no idea who you talked to or what their side of the story is, but fwiw...I'd spam for that skill improvement, too. In my opinion, if you're not hurting anybody's experience and you're not doing anything to try to be a jackass "ie, tell guildmaster Twist is stinky and Zulg couldn't code his way out of a paperbag!" then you're fine. Further, if it's tripping our channels that we have to monitor the game, then it's on us to sidestep around the annoyance.

My guess is you ran across a new immortal that didn't realize what was fully going wrong and/or someone having a bad day.

..seeing this kind of honesty is really really positive in my eyes. Thank you for this excellent post.

-thinnie

If I see someone spamming a tell that says "Twist is stinky" or "Zulg can't code" I'm realming you for a serious talk at best and denying you at worst. RP is still mandatory even when you're spamming up a skill.

Seriously if I got realmed for something as pointless as sending tells to mobs to spam a skill I would be rather pissed and I think most people would.

What would you gain by creating that encounter? Best case you interupt their spamming and they get back to it with something else. Worst case you trigger a player melt down. It seems like you have nothing to gain and something to lose.

lol I mean really just spam it a different way that is ok

jeez guys this isn't that hard

...but I'd ask you politely to stop (as the original Imm did).

Keep in mind that certain spammers have prompted us to add code that deal with such things as spamming the same tell to something (a mob or a pc). This isn't us being jerks, this is us telling you to stop.


As for the RP is mandatory even through tells, it's completely accurate. If I throw out a random snoop and I get some guy who is telling a mob that Twist is stupid...no I wouldn't realm you.

Twist would vis and most likely turn you into a toad. Or throw a power word pain on you. Or something.

The toad thing or vissing might be cool. Just going to the ROTD seems a bit much.

..although I think Cyradia was saying the same thing as you, I wasn't really commenting on the content of her note, but more the tone of her response which I found very refreshing. It was with an open candor which I've been seeing quite a bit more as of late. It really does bridge the divide between Immortals and Mortals and I think that was somewhat lacking before and is great to see now.

As an aside, no one is perfect and I think it takes a courageous person to admit a mistake and apologize if any ill will was imparted. Whenever I see mortals and immortals alike doing this, it really does instill a new confidence in me that CF will last the test of time. Although Immortals spend an exponentially larger amount of time with the mundane of this game, everyone is truly invested in the game and wants to see it succeed. Kudos to the positivity I've seen as of late and I hope it leads to a larger playerbase which CF deserves.

-thinnie

that we as imms have. Some report various types of info.

Since you say you were spamming up improved hide, my *guess* (and this is a total guess, since I'm not the Imm in question nor have I checked into it) is that you were doing hide, tell guildmaster 'bleh', repeat.

So if you stepped out of the shadows via the tell, you'd immediately re-hide.

Likely one of the communication channels that we have available as imms was getting spammed hard by this.

Just a suggestion - instead of doing that, try to improve the "improved hide" skill by opening a door (I think it'll improve even if the door is already open). That shouldn't trigger on any channel I can think of.

Or just vis?

Edit: Scratch that. I'm dumb.

Did you send a tell back? Can we see a log?

You seem to be escalating a lot without any clear evidence to support your side.

Actually, he's de-escalating.

Instead of making a big deal in-game, he's asking for clarification on a general ruling out of game, and he gave us enough information from his side to have that discussion.

Don't knock a constructive discussion.

Splntrd

Either you were doing something else that was spamming other people without knowing it or the imm just had a senior moment.

There is nothing wrong with spamming hide/camo/sneak since they don't have any output other players can see.

The exception is if you are spamming by going, vis;hide;vis;hide then that is spamming.