I don't know if you know this, but characters persist in the world even after logging out. When you log out, your character remains in the world as an OPC (Offline Player Character). OPCs can be scripted to do things, probably mostly simple things, so that way you can still log off and have your OPC perform mundane tasks.

While it's not exactly what you're after - you still have to log off - you can at least have your character do things while you're AFK.

Not sure if I understand this correct, but would the OPC take over in the event that I go afk ?

only if you've logged out of the game. Then the OPC would follow the basic scripts that you've selected for them to do.

I see, thanks :) I'll keep my fingers crossed i suppose ... i really do feel the need for something like this in online games.

I get your point, especially when you need to go but you aren't sure how long it is going to be. In CoE's unique situation, as mentioned above, logging out would at least let your character continue to do something instead of being logged in and sitting there doing nothing. In other games a common thing to do when going AFK is to just have your character sit down. I would hope you'd be able to do that if nothing else.

Instead of a script to run while you are logged in, perhaps you could rally for a quick logout button that safely logs you out of the game without having to dig through menus or wait on a timer to make sure it was successful. Since characters are persistent, it's not something that people trying to escape a fight would find beneficial so there's not much reason NOT to have it.

This has been discussed before for no realistic answer that I can remember, I am retired and time rich but still want a brief afk option available.

My best solution would be to allow scripts to be used when online with some sort of continue function.

Picture the scenarios of a mass move leading to a kingdom v kingdom battle or even a merchant caravan with multiple merchants and PC guards. If there is not "continue to follow" command or similar and the move has to stop every time a player needs to answer a family occurance, answer a door, take a quick bio break or god forbid a plain honest DC nobody will ever get anywhere.

I understand the reluctance for skill gain while OPC or running a script leaves the game open to become Bots Online but the transition between PC, afk and OPC needs to be seemless and instant, which why I think allowance of "limited" scripting while online is needed. Other games follow command or craft multiple command are examples of this sort of script.

imo, it would be great, if OPC scrips took over while afk, too.

It would be great to watch your character follow your commands on its own. For people with bad reactions, it could even help in fights. Like if you know, that you're a really bad fighter because of bad reactions, you could just type /afk or whatever starts the OPC scripts if you see someone attacking you and they'd face you like a fighting NPC instead of a non-moving puppet. With OPC not raising skills over a certain treshold, there is clearly a point in not letting the OPC do everything and there may be tasks which OPC cant do at all (it would be weird to come back after a day and find yourself being married to another character and having a different profession because OPC decided so). But for people that simply dont want to fight, letting the OPC script fight for them might be really helpful. There is so much in CoE and if one could choose to only do what one likes and letting the OPC do the rest via scripts, that would be nice.

They have already said no scripts will run while you're online or afk because it would double the load on the servers as they need to keep you informed of what the script has decided your character was doing. If you have to afk, do it in a safe place or log out.

Not sure where my stance are on more complicated scripting while online, thought i feel it's a different topic. But the "if you're afk - do it in a safe spot or logout" statement is kinda offending. It basically boils down to ... got a family, wonkey internet connection ... wonkey bladder ... to bad. Besides server load or not, what's the difference, if people are instead asked to go through login process and authentication? not to mention bad transition from OPC to PC (and vice versa).

(edit:) My point is, i don't this this has to be complicated - i believe very little would help quite a lot of people.

Since there's the OPC option I would just log out. I kinda hope they put in an AFK toggle option that turns on OPC while logged in, but if I am going to be AFK for longer then 5 minutes I will just log out. Hopefully their log in process is not long.

The thing to keep in mind is that CoE is always going. It's not like WoW where your character disappears from the world. Your character will always be in the world doing something. Logging out in the middle of nowhere will force your character to attempt to survive in it's OPC state. If it's attacked, it will defend itself to the best of its ability. Just like all the other NPCs in the world.

If you log out in the middle of a desert then hopefully you have enough food, water, and weapons to stay alive until you log back in. A blacksmith going exploring will only go so far away from town before going home to their nice warm house. An Explorer will be able to go out into the wild and live off the land for as long as is needed to do what they are able to do.

Currently OPC scripts are supposed to be active only on a log-out and not afk.

To the worries of AFK: I guess my question would be, why is logging out seen as such an issue? The only thing I can think of comes down to not wanting an extra 5-10 seconds to load in because a log-off should theoretically leave you on the soul selection screen so all you need to do is press enter when you get back.

Posted By Takeda_Shinukage at 12:22 PM - Mon Jun 03 2019

Currently OPC scripts are supposed to be active only on a log-out and not afk.

To the worries of AFK: I guess my question would be, why is logging out seen as such an issue? The only thing I can think of comes down to not wanting an extra 5-10 seconds to load in because a log-off should theoretically leave you on the soul selection screen so all you need to do is press enter when you get back.

I think some people are worried about login timers. Something like a que to log back into the game, and not just being able to get back into it as fast as possible. To the people who are just lazy I got nothing.

I'm more concerned about the time to log out. If it takes more than a quick second, that might be too long to deal with something that comes up right away in real life.

Okay, so, on top of my suggestion to have a quick log out button, it could be useful to have an AFK timer that you can set yourself. That way if you do have to leave all of a sudden, your character won't be hanging out for an hour staring at their shoes. Many games have these already so they auto log you out after 10 or 15 minutes of inactivity but it would be nice if you could change that to a time of your own choosing.

That's not a bad idea. Configurable inactivity logout timers seems like something they could handle pretty easily too. Maybe offer a range of 1-30 mins or something.

Last time I asked this question it was an unfortunate no however it was from discord so its possibly that it may change.