Script: "Reliant" + HTML Script Legality Discussion

[Wymondham]

My question to the moderation team is this - why bodge it?

CG admits that the bans were done as a solution to mounting pressure to make a decision. How can players truly have confidence in the ability of the moderation team to reach properly considered, impartial decisions when CG has now admitted that the moderation team put out a half baked, rushed decision to avoid people saying mean things about how long it was taking? When the moderation team has admitted to putting PR and the unwillingness to undergo public pressure ahead of the integrity of the investigative process and the importance of getting such an administrative decision right, questions must be asked. While I acknowledge that justice delayed is justice denied, is it not also true that it is better that 10 guilty persons go free than one guilty person be convicted as happened to Luca, Alt and GK, who had to live with this smear on their name for 4 days, which is 4 days too many.

I know that the moderation team will, rightly, feel that this was an unfair position to be in as they would be slammed for taking too long if they didn't make a decision, or be slammed for rushing it if they made a decision that later turned out to be wrong, so I merely want to try and understand in greater detail why the latter risk was chosen ahead of the former; in an attempt to dispell the fears I have listed above, which I know many people share.

Also, additional to the above, did the admins explicitly identify Alt, Luca and GK as rulebreakers or was this a judgement the moderation team reached?

[Syberis]

My question is much more to the point.

In the wake of this catastrophic mishandling of a situation, moderation felt the need to say that they were considering making technical changes to the rules of the game.

Instead, I think we as a player base should ask what changes are going to be made to the administrative and moderative processes? This is a mess that seems to have been poorly handled by the team at every single step, and one that I'm not sure how the player base would handle if it happened a second time. And yet, because of how poorly this was handled, there is now discussion about removing player tools. I don't see how that quite makes sense. I feel like it's being approached from the wrong direction.


ETA: In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this is a continuation of my earlier concern that the GP player base is occasionally feels like they are treated as an active annoyance. Even when correct, we must still be punished for the frustration caused.

[Numero Capitan]

We need to be nurturing that hard-earned (and hard to re-earn) growth to accommodate a larger player base with more modern expectations. There is already a variety of long-standing projects such as making a new forum, developing frontiers and strongholds, which will never get done or worked on without more admin time. To be clear, in the state of a absent administration, bans on player-sourced development are unwise when it is the only development we have access to -- where we can contribute to production, regardless of admin's inactivity.

The only real solution that NationStates will ever reach, not only in regards to script analysis and investigation in the future, but also in terms of the site's own development and continuity, is for admin to perpetuate itself. Inactive admin slots need to be filled so that development for this community can resume before it causes further damage. With such a wide variety of technically capable people around NationStates, there really is no reason this cannot be done other than the existing procedures are not occurring or are insufficient.

But without question, a blanket html-script ban would be a devastating blow to the user base that does not address the root of the issue and causes vast collateral damage to everyone else.

As someone who quite literally left the game because of the poor site infrastructure and its management (aside from the occasional offsite poke), I couldn’t agree more with this.

This whole thread seems to have been prompted by a naive GHR about modern day defender capabilities and exacerbated by the staff teams own outdated perceptions of what could reasonably achieved within the legal parameters of r/d gameplay.

This whole topic could have been dealt with in a quick exchange between admin and the script author, it’s only became the mess it has because of insufficient information/dialogue. As far as I can tell the issue was one of the following:
- server logs explicitly identified simultaneity violations that could have be troubleshooted by the script author if they had been given a single excerpt of the server logs where this was shown
- server logs fail to provide enough information to identify simultaneity and admin simply ‘filled in the blanks’ based on their own (incorrect) expectations of user ability/speed, which could have been corrected from a brief investigation into what is typical (for experienced defenders) in 2022
- non-Reliant keybinds were creating occasional accidental refreshes and duplicate actions as a result, resulting in no gameplay advantage and no script design issue that could have simply been ruled as a de minimis issue if the details had been communicated properly to active members of the staff team

Very grateful that the staff have walked back on this issue now, but there seems to be a refusal/reluctance for this to happen with a natural lean towards the infallibility of other staff members (it’s the children who are wrong) and some of the staff responses to honest concerns in this thread were pretty disappointing. This isn’t a blanket criticism of all the staff, but there needs to be a correct diagnosis for the fix to be right and the users affected by this worked very hard to review and peer review Reliant to ensure it’s legality - I can assure you from experience of those conversations. The idea that users and their scripts are therefore the problem is quite a leap.

[Queen Yuno]

Congrats on the successful appeal.

That being said, scripts do make everything unfair.
I'm all for a scripting ban.

I look forward to and will continue to advocate for the banning of scripts.

Completely agreed with this.

I'm not a fan of scripts either.

Those WADP scripts, those Telegram Scripts, all of them should be banned. I'm sick of GCRs using scripts to send telegrams to nations leaving those GCRs, to come back to those GCRs. All for free.

That's not fair for the UCRs who pay for stamps.

The GCR Welcome Telegram (which also instructs new users on how to block recruitment TGs and only join the GCR's personal website) should also be taken away.

Overall, I'm not really a fan of scripts and the unfair advantage that they give to GCRs. I want to see a NS world where UCRs are on even ground with GCRs.

Not all of us own $2000 Servers that can run 24/7 for free Telegrams for all GCRs to retain their thousands of players. It's just unfair, for unverified anonymous website owners to farm IP addresses from everyone.

I'm not a fan of scripts!

[Madjack]

Imagine using this episode to rant about the fact that certain regions are better run than your own.

[United Calanworie]

Not all of us own $2000 Servers that can run 24/7 for free Telegrams for all GCRs to retain their thousands of players. It's just unfair, for unverified anonymous website owners to farm IP addresses from everyone.

I'm not a fan of scripts!

I mean I dunno about you, but my "server" cost me $35 + a 5v/1.1a power draw on my wall outlet. So I think it's a bit disingenuous to suggest that you have to spend thousands to be able to maintain an advantage in this game. That said, scripting provides a ton of actual things that this game needs -- see: WA development programs, keybinds, and heck, like Luca said earlier, even accessibility features. If you want to ban scripts because they're "unfair," you need to a) grasp the scope of their involvement in this game, for ill or for good, and b) come up with a way to get these necessary features added into the source code of the game.

[Crazy girl]

Speaking purely for myself (and I suppose as a player rather than member of staff), I'd love to see NS get to a point where scripts would no longer be needed, as the game itself can provide everything a player would need or want.

[United Calanworie]

Speaking purely for myself (and I suppose as a player rather than member of staff), I'd love to see NS get to a point where scripts would no longer be needed, as the game itself can provide everything a player would need or want.

I'm fully in agreement with you. I would love to see that day. Until then though, scripting is a band-aid patch.

[Refuge Isle]

- snip -

Some notes:

• You can get a server for 24/7 API telegramming for $4-6 a month. You can also run one from your home computer for the cost of whatever you pay in electric (possibly less).

• You cannot obtain an IP address from a telegram, or from any component of the NationStates site or API as a player. What a weird thing to suggest.

• HTML scripting ban =/= API ban; telegrams in the manner you're describing would not be affected.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

Speaking purely for myself (and I suppose as a player rather than member of staff), I'd love to see NS get to a point where scripts would no longer be needed, as the game itself can provide everything a player would need or want.

It's unfortunately almost impossible to get even objectively simple API calls added from the requests thread for them, much less complex new ones that replace things done via HTML scripting at present, /much less/ things like an account/puppet manager/login switcher that admin has repeatedly already said is infeasible. =/

Edit: There's not even a search box for our paid-for infinite TG boxes without scripting. NS promised to add QoL features from NS++ when it took over that extension, and not only have most of those features not been added, but the extension has become broken abandonware. There's also an undocumented RMB API that was added nearly a year ago as a trial but never documented. Among many other things. There's not a lot of community trust to meet current promises on site upkeep or minor new adds, much less on the idea of major API adds to reduce the need for other types of add-ons - and people tend to doubt whether frontiers and strongholds will ever happen or not for similar reasons.

[Free Algerstonia]

Scripts at the very least should be banned from n-day and z-day, they ruin the game by encouraging large puppetstacks. There's literally nothing about the scripts that improves the games for the vast majority of players.

[Varanius]

The banning of HTML scripts just, plainly, wouldn’t be great. My personal focus when discussing the issue is as someone who used to be a card farmer, and still occasionally farms here and there. The banning of HTML scripts would make card farming in particular incredibly inaccessible. For some context, most large scale card farmers maintain anywhere from 150 puppets to several thousands. I for one farmed 200-300 puppets a day, but some farmers (such as New Makasta) use several thousand. One of the only reasons this is possible is through scripts such as GotIssues. These scripts make managing this many puppets for the purposes of card farming incredibly easy. And this is really currently the only way to achieve an actual place on the leaderboard. From my understanding, there’s about a one in 5 chance of an issue having a card pack, and a one in hundred chance of this pack containing a legendary card. So, assuming each puppet has 5 issues, let’s say that you pull about a legendary per 100 puppets. The only way to acquire legendaries at the rate most big players do is through the farming of obscene amounts of puppets. But really, this is great. It allows for a more engaging and accessible experience. When I farmed my 300 puppets, it took my about an hour and a half. If I had to manually farm that many puppets, god knows how long it would take. But I certainly would’ve quit the second I started had I learnt that I’d find a legendary at that rate without the ease and speed that scripts provides. It’s just not fun to find a single valuable card after what would have to take at least 45 minutes. What it means is that the only people who will only ever be on the leaderboard are those willing to do that, so what 5 people? It would kill the the cards community frankly. Whereas now anyone willing to donate an hour of their day to farming could easily be at least top 30 in a rather short amount of time, that would often translate to nothing under a system where card farming had to be done manually. And I agree, it would be absolutely great if we didn’t need scripts to enjoy the game this way. But given how slow the administrators have been on delivering any major changes such as Season 3 of cards or frontiers and strongholds, why would the approach be to ban the tools that do make things like card farming bearable, and sit here and pray that the admins one day improve the site, when they don’t even have the time to manage the current script rules?

[Frisbeeteria]

And this is really currently the only way to achieve an actual place on the leaderboard.

Just to set the record straight, I've never ever used a card farming script, farmed no more than ~200 puppets, and haven't farmed any cards in probably 2 years. I'm still at #15 on the leaderboard. Before I quit I was in the top 5. You don't need a script to play cards.

I won't say that manually farming is bearable, because it's a pain and that's why I quit. That said, you shouldn't need to script-farm thousands of card puppets to enjoy the activity. The leaderboard is not the be-all end-all of the card game.

[One Small Island]

And this is really currently the only way to achieve an actual place on the leaderboard.

Just to set the record straight, I've never ever used a card farming script, farmed no more than ~200 puppets, and haven't farmed any cards in probably 2 years. I'm still at #15 on the leaderboard. Before I quit I was in the top 5. You don't need a script to play cards.

I won't say that manually farming is bearable, because it's a pain and that's why I quit. That said, you shouldn't need to script-farm thousands of card puppets to enjoy the activity. The leaderboard is not the be-all end-all of the card game.

I also have never used scrips; and I've at times gotten up into the low 20s of the leaderboard.

[Imperium Anglorum]

Speaking purely for myself (and I suppose as a player rather than member of staff), I'd love to see NS get to a point where scripts would no longer be needed, as the game itself can provide everything a player would need or want.

It's unfortunately almost impossible to get even objectively simple API calls added from the requests thread for them, much less complex new ones that replace things done via HTML scripting at present, /much less/ things like an account/puppet manager/login switcher that admin has repeatedly already said is infeasible. =/

Edit: There's not even a search box for our paid-for infinite TG boxes without scripting. NS promised to add QoL features from NS++ when it took over that extension, and not only have most of those features not been added, but the extension has become broken abandonware. There's also an undocumented RMB API that was added nearly a year ago as a trial but never documented. Among many other things. There's not a lot of community trust to meet current promises on site upkeep or minor new adds, much less on the idea of major API adds to reduce the need for other types of add-ons - and people tend to doubt whether frontiers and strongholds will ever happen or not for similar reasons.

Fully agree. I've been asking for a long time for the GenSec portion of the API (it prints the rulings given by various Sec't members) to be turned back on... it already exists and was beta-deployed in Prod.

[Bears Armed]

That said, scripting provides a ton of actual things that this game needs

Speaking as somebody who's been playing NS from 2005 onwards without using any scripts, I think that I have reasonable grounds to question the idea that the game "needs" them.

[Refuge Isle]

That said, scripting provides a ton of actual things that this game needs

Speaking as somebody who's been playing NS from 2005 onwards without using any scripts, I think that I have reasonable grounds to question the idea that the game "needs" them.

This area of discussion does not apply to the limited scope of the GA, yes.

[Bears Armed]

Speaking as somebody who's been playing NS from 2005 onwards without using any scripts, I think that I have reasonable grounds to question the idea that the game "needs" them.

This area of discussion does not apply to the limited scope of the GA, yes.

I have also been involved in region-building, issue-drafting, NS Sports, and various other aspects of the game.
Do you mean, perchance, that "This area of discussion only applies to the limited scopes of R/D and card-farming"? Because I'm also on the record as saying that NS as a whole doesn't "need" R/D, because of that being the only way of playing that insists on imposing its participants' actions on NS players not interested in it....

[Madjack]

Scripts are pretty much required for effective region building in 2022. Scripts are definitely required for maintaining the kind of infrastructure TNP is rocking. It's highly unlikely NS will ever be able to provide all or even a majority of those tools.

[Trotterdam]

Do you mean, perchance, that "This area of discussion only applies to the limited scopes of R/D and card-farming"? Because I'm also on the record as saying that NS as a whole doesn't "need" R/D, because of that being the only way of playing that insists on imposing its participants' actions on NS players not interested in it....

Perhaps it's true that game areas other than R/D and card-farming don't "need" scripts as much. On the other paw, game areas other than R/D and card-farming also can't be broken as badly by scripts, and scripts that people do write for these areas are meant to add minor conveniences rather than grant unfair advantages. So a blanket ban on scripts would only hurt and not benefit those areas. It's only in in the blatantly-broken parts of the game where banning scripts in the name of making things fairer / making things easier for the moderators makes sense.

[Altmoras]

Legal Script: "Reliant"

[Refuge Isle]

This area of discussion does not apply to the limited scope of the GA, yes.

I' have also been involved in region-building, issue-drafting, NS Sports, and various other aspects of the game. Do you mean, perchance, that "This area of discussion only applies to the limited scopes of R/D and card-farming"?

My exact quote was actually

"Where the cards and military gameplay communities have brought so much activity, vibrancy, and in many cases revenue to the site. Hard script bans, without counterbalancing development, disproportionately affect these users and their respective primary content-creators, especially."

NationStates contains a variety of sub-communities from its various minigames. An html scripting ban may not necessarily impact all of them and would certainly not impact all of them to the same degree. However, for the communities that I have been intensely involved with over the past several years, I can speak authoritatively to both cards and military gameplay's use of scripting as a necessary walk of life. A proposed change not impacting your personal focus or playstyle is insufficient grounds to presume that it does not impact any others, especially those which I have called out by name.

When it comes to cards, Vara is largely correct. It is not currently feasible to reach a top spot on the leaderboard without the use of scripts. Fris' assertations that he once did it (before the state of the market made it necessary) is not a particularly strong pushback on this comment. There is however no real need for cards to work like this, as I've said a few posts up, when admin could change the process by which they are generated to require neither scripts nor farms. Until that time occurs, a lot of players are feeling Fris' other stated sentiments: "I won't say that manually farming is bearable, because it's a pain and that's why I quit."

When it comes to military gameplay, a ban on scripts pushes the system back some ten, fifteen years. It disrupts a paradigm that mainstream raiders and defenders are satisfied with, where we are currently free to undertake development and innovation that outclasses the other. I question how much of the gameplay community would remain around, interested, and active in the event that every script tool were made illegal. Such a change would also disproportionately affect defending, which has much less time (often less than two seconds) to respond to raider's jumps. Lily would be dead, chasing would be dead, pretty much everything but large-scale raids and liberations would be dead.

Would a html scripting ban impact other areas of the game? It very well could, but that's not in an area where I can know or comment -- my concern is where I do and can.

[Bears Armed]

Scripts are pretty much required for effective region building in 2022

If your interest in recruiting is primarily in quantity, for gameplay or just to gain & keep a high place in the "Largest Region" table, then perhaps -- because of competition from other regions using scripts -- this might seem the case to you... but if those other regions are all banned from using scripts for recruiting too, so that there's a level playing field, then in my opinion that "need" should seem a lot less obvious.
When I say "region-building", though, I'm thinking more in he context of finding recruits who seem likely to fit in with & find themselves happy as members of the region's community, with its existing shared interests & general ethos, which obviously requires a more selective approach: Not only are scripts significantly less useful for this approach, but the sheer number of regions using them -- and of regions telling their recruits (or, for feeders, nations actually entering existence through them) to block recruiting TGs altogether means that the more individualised messages sent out by non-[script-using] regions are considerably less likely to get through than was the case back when everybody was limited to manually-sent TGs.
(The use of stamps for recruiting campaigns also contributes to that problem, of course: In fact, if you go to the thread in 'Technical' where the introduction of that feature was originally advertised, and search carefully, you'll find a post by me forecasting the likelihood of that effect...)

[Guess and Check]

If your interest in recruiting is primarily in quantity, for gameplay or just to gain & keep a high place in the "Largest Region" table, then perhaps -- because of competition from other regions using scripts -- this might seem the case to you... but if those other regions are all banned from using scripts for recruiting too, so that there's a level playing field, then in my opinion that "need" should seem a lot less obvious.

?

It isnt about competition, it is about ease of access. Manual recruitment without scripts is mentally draining for many people, including me, to the point where it is impossible to do. This tends to mean that unless one has money for stamp campaigns or recruits outside of telegrams (which many regions seeking to grow do not), manual recruitment is the only real option. With scripts, more people can bear the burden to 'manually' recruit for their communities. Without scripts, they cannot.

So yes, for a lot of people who are unwilling to spend hours paying strict attention to an activity feed, hunting down personalized recruits in far corners, or spending hundreds on stamps, scripts are a necessary help.

I feel this goal to increase ease of playing the game so that it becomes feasible to do so is the same for literally most other usages of scripts. So I completely agree with others that banning HTML scripts is not a good idea at all, and that there needs to be a re-evaluation of staff-selection processes so that there are active staff who know coding and can deal with script violations and whatnot. So that incidents like Reliant do not occur again.

[Queen Yuno]

Mhm fair. Not everyone wants to buy stamps or manual recruit (like the old days,) but wants to run Telegram Scripts.

But consider an idea. Maybe it's time to ban Telegram Scripts for GCRs, but allow telegram scripts for UCRs. The GCRs clearly don't need them.

Not all of us own $2000 Servers that can run 24/7 for free Telegrams for all GCRs to retain their thousands of players. It's just unfair, for unverified anonymous website owners to farm IP addresses from everyone.

I'm not a fan of scripts!

I mean I dunno about you, but my "server" cost me $35 + a 5v/1.1a power draw on my wall outlet. So I think it's a bit disingenuous to suggest that you have to spend thousands to be able to maintain an advantage in this game.

Well, it's more than just having a server connected to the Electricity 24/7. I think that you'd still need an internet connection on 24/7 or keeping your server on 24/7. At my home, we only have the internet connection in the morning, and we have to turn off the router at night. I am not tech literate enough to know the easiest method to keep home servers running online, connected to the internet, 24/7 like most telegram scripts currently do, at this time (it only works when my computer is on.) A look at some of the servers my NationStates friends have bought to run their stuff, and they're well within the range of hundreds to 2k dollars. Hmm.... What are you using that's only costing $35? Is it a Raspberry Pi tool? Well, you don't have to answer. I mean, it's probable that our tech expertise are at different levels. Anyway, your UCR is doing great with your TG script, but a GCR doesn't need that $35 setup that you have. For obvious reasons, GCRs are already getting so much, give some nerfs!

I'm really grateful that this discussion has been had though.

Also, glad to see the appeal was granted too, of course but since we're talking about changes going forwards, I need to add in my opinion.