The problem with removing the chestcount from the public API, and why it needs to be returned

everyone already gave a serious response so i wont. yall acting like the lootrunners arent the ones that abused the system and the team is in the wrong for stopping the abuse

 

Can't this be resolved by implementing delayed updates? Query and Batch-work updates on chestcount api each hour. Instead of Real-Time

 

Come on guys, get a little perspective.

People were getting stalked through constantly tracking their chest count, optimized sniping was happening in private Discord servers and even people who tried to play by the community lootrun server's rules were getting flamed and really couldn't manage to even get decently filled worlds anymore. It's very clearly been both an unfair advantage and abuse for a long while.

It's unfortunate that the actual number's gone from the API for the time being, but it's also the only way to prevent further abuse until a system can be put in place to prevent this sorta stuff- I have no doubts it's going to come back, but considering more abuse of the API such as Hunted players being tracked through worlds I would imagine a separate solution for both of these issues as well as any possible future ones is being worked on, hopefully something better than having a timer for when specific player stats are updated in the API compared to others. Disabling by far the most negatively affecting abuse until that solution is ready and implemented is not at all a strange decision, especially while you can still view your chest count through an in-game menu. Even with it being off the API you can still use your big number to brag, show off to your friends and convince yourself the timesink is worth it over.

 

Somebody has to explain to me how querying the dry count on a class/player has any actual advantage on lootrunning. Chests, to my knowledge are filled at random over a set distribution, and thus will on average contain X mythics over Y chests.

How on earth does the chestcount mod in any way increase your chance at finding a mythic?
If not, why is _anyone_ legitimately mad at this? It's a damn irrelevant number.

 

Lootrunners are mad that they cant track which worlds got looted

 

For some reason, some people are so blinded by their hate on lootrunners that they are celebrating the "death" of "organized lootrunning" and not even realizing that this doesn't change pretty much anything about organized lootrunning lol.

This is an MMORPG, people do care about numbers and stats that they sunk thousands of hours into. You are saying that's not the case with dungeons and mobs (tbh I flex about my dungeon count). But let me remind you of the curious case of 101. People had bigass xp overflow back when 101 was the level cap and when it was increased, the overflow (number) disappeared and people were mad as fuck. Of course that this change had other issues like fucking up progress on the leaderboards, but it was still just a number. And back then with exceptions, almost everyone agreed that was a bad change. But this time around it's the opposite cuz it's popular and epic on the forums to shit on lootrunners.

Of course the majority, casual playerbase really doesn't care about numbers, but the minority (that's the most dedicated part of the playerbase anyway - not talking specifically about lootrunners, just endgame players), should be considered as well.


I personally don't feel affected by this change too much as I still have my chest count through chestcount mod and if I didn't I could count my chests through the tome slot (very convenient way), and I agree that tracker bots were an exploit that had to be removed/fixed. I just hope that a better fix is implemented soon - like someone already mentioned you could make the delay 24 hours, or even 6 hours would be more than enough or make the chest count private to respective players (a player could see only their own chest count).

I guess the reason why I'm writing this even though I'm not affected by the removal almost at all, is the fact that I find it too funny how some people think this is the death of organized lootrunning for some absurd reason lol.

 

imagine lootrunning in 2022 economy

 

well right now with the current (and pretty bad) system loot is based off of how long the chest hasn't been looted by anyone. A 4 hour unlooted t1 chest is nearly full while one that's been looted a couple minutes has only one or two items. What the tracker did is track everyone's chest count from the api to figure out what worlds were likely looted and which ones weren't so they could get the better chests. Without a tracker bot pretty much the only way to find a good world was to use the loot runners discord and pray no one took "your" world, giving a massive advantage to trackers and making chests less full for non-tracker users

as for why people are mad, I guess read doge tennant's reply above

 

I know there's a lot of responses here, and I haven't read through them all yet. I just want to say that I don't personally believe that this change affects lootrunning too negatively as a whole.
For several years, people were using the motobot server list and nothing more, perfectly fine. Later on, the bot that val created in the lootrunner's guild server to mark worlds, alongside motobot to check worlds. These methods have worked perfectly fine for so long, and still work. It is a bit harder to find "unlooted" worlds, just due to the population of players lootrunning, in combination I think with the economy update getting rid of most unleveled runs (such as dernel, etc.) by instead using the territory to take level priority before nearby mobs. Later on, in a 1.20 patch this past year, a new priority was even added, being mob spawn nodes. Now instead of just having to kill nearby mobs to unlevel a chest, if any mob has a spawn point nearby a chest, the chest will be leveled to said mob.
These changes have cut down the amount of "viable" routes that lootrunners can use significantly over time, so there's a lot of competition for worlds/areas. On top of that, players claiming every single area in a world causes further confusion among the lootrunner's guild community, as most areas aren't actually looted/fully looted even then, thus leaving areas unlooted that appear to be marked as looted.

Being able to directly see which worlds have players opening chests, and which worlds don't, is a huge help to this. I'd honestly argue it's not too problematic, so long as people behave. Unfortunately, there have been a lot of harassment situations within the community lately, and it's caused further action to be taken regarding the tools that are publicly available. This obviously doesn't put an end to said harassment, as it's been happening more and more ever since the term "sniping" came about and people started using the world claim feature in the lootrunner's guild as a way to argue against other lootrunners, but it at least gives players some much needed privacy that has since been taken away with the creation of these trackers. I hope people can understand that

I have a lot more to say, but I think I've gotten my main thoughts across anyway.
This also goes without saying, but these thoughts and opinions are my own, and may differ from other members of the community and staff

 

literally just have the chestcount update once a day or whatever and that would solve all the problems

 

I gather from other opinions that the tracker was firstly a huge advantage, and secondly unavailable to the majority of the playerbase. On top of that, Salted already explicitly stated that the ability to track players like that was not intended. This makes the tracker quite clearly unfair.

Spoiler: Quotes from this thread

 

I am an advocate for have it update once every 24 hours, I like having public stats but do not like the abuse of it.

 

Regarding my message, I was referring to chest trackers as a whole, rather than any specific bots that people have on their own public or private platforms, unavailable to others. Of course a tracker gives an advantage over someone who isn't using one, nobody is arguing that. However, it's not much different from what using motobot to find a world that's been up for 2 hours was like a handful of years ago before lootrunning became as popular as it has now. Fundamentally speaking, the lootchests are sitting there on said server, completely untouched, meaning they are there available to anyone who wishes to open them. There isn't much a difference whether someone uses third party resources to locate them or not, whoever opens them will generate similar loot. These are the reasons I don't find the base idea of chest trackers problematic

The main issues come from the fact that third party resources are allowing players to see others, what they're doing and where they are in a given world, without being mutually friended. Which normally would be the only way to find the location of another player (using the wynncraft map). This leads to potential harassment and just a general lack of privacy, and that's where the main issue with these trackers lies. It barely has anything to do with the use of a tracker to find good worlds to loot

Again, my opinions alone and they may vary from others

 

The only thing I will say about this is that the loss of the API did create further uncertainty and loss of faith in Media ranked players since there's no check to make sure there's no further abuse. However it is not an argument to the returning of the API. We had a lengthy discussion about this, several wynntuber and I over in our Wynntuber discord, and we have suggested different fixes to ensure no future abuse directly to Salted. I state this to show that we are aware of the uncertainty it causes and that we are actively trying to ensure abuse on our private server doesn't happen.

 

Now introducing: TOME MENU

 

Just make chests per user/account already. People have been begging for this for years instead of per world like it currently is and has been for as long as I could remember. Lootrunning would then be accessible for literally everyone with no need for bots, discord/guild drama, etc. It would improve casual Wynncraft experience as well.

 

honestly worlds are way better now that chest api is fully privatized so smile!

also i asked people about this before but like who was getting harassed really, i never really see any proof that its people in any of the private discord servers. seems like a copout cus salted just wanted to remove something that was not intended in the slightest.

 

I think the biggest issue with this update is that I can no longer stalk and harass people via Chest API. I liked being an asshole to people who were just trying to open a chest or find a mythic. I also liked crying about it and reporting people in my lootrun discord server. How dare they remove this vital feature.

 

yea it would maybe help lootrunning but it would also crash the economy if anyone could lootrun op worlds all at the same time

 

nerf loot quality to something like 50% effectiveness, and slightly nerf loot bonus. the fact that loot quality is so effective on good worlds already is an issue, and i think every lootrunner would rather full worlds with 100% longer dry streaks (3k - 4k dry as opposed to 1.5k - 2k) than never really knowing if ur world is ass or not and getting a fucking 1:1 chest to box ratio lol

or increase chest cooldown ten fold. the fact the player can lootrun such an immense amount without any drawbacks causes immense burnout and is a bad game design. yet again they never really intended for lootrunning to be a thing so shrug