Goldmining is causing the lag, and must stop

[SirChicken]

Thanks for the update! I'm glad you were able to pinpoint the problem that's been causing the lag.

I haven't done goldminig in ages because my CPU couldn't handle it on my old PC lol (it was getting to be 7-8 years old by that time). Everything would chug like crazy, so I have long since removed linkclump from my browser extensions... I am a little relieved that y'all are discussing alternative options for ways of earning gold.

[Pounces]

Just saw this and stopped, I had been running snaplinks with IFG.

I did have a question though, if we adjusted the opening to do a open a new link every 10,000 - 15,000ms would this ease the strain on the server? I had been running at opening at one every 5,000ms just so it doesn't kill my computer.

If it's still too much, I'll definitely completely stop - and will not use it again until I hear one way or another. I just recently decided to come and give the site a try in earnest yesterday, so I only started mining. xD

[WolfBane382]

For gold, how about adding a Mage collector who's got a fresh quest every day? They're on the hunt for stuff like eggs, hatchlings, adults, or items and they’re asking players to help. Completing these quests will score some sweet gold rewards.

I like this idea. This and maybe logging in each day can give you a certain amount. I know Flight Rising does this, which significantly helps on that site as far as getting treasure goes.

WB

[AuraDragoness]

As people have gotten more efficient at it, opening thousands of pages as people acquire more and more creatures, the site simply cannot keep up. Gold mining is essentially "DDOSing" the site--sending so many requests to pages that it cannot keep up. There is no way around this.

I usual only open about 50 tabs at a time with snaplinks because my PC and internet suck horribly and can't load any more than that. Is that an unsustainable rate for mining or is that amount acceptable. I don't do it like, every day, just every now and again when I remember to do so. (I mostly use snaplinks to material farm at a rate of however many creatures fit in the screen without scrolling.

For gold, how about adding a Mage collector who's got a fresh quest every day? They're on the hunt for stuff like eggs, hatchlings, adults, or items and they’re asking players to help. Completing these quests will score some sweet gold rewards.

As far as alt methods for gold, I do like this, so long as the quests are simple-ish and don't requires 10+ steps to complete and creatures that hardly show up in the stream.

A good example would be like, "hatch 10 creatures from [insert tributary here] kind for me" or something along those lines as opposed to something like "Hatch 5 amphistas"

You could also have a weekly quest that scores more gold than a daily quest but takes longer to complete.

[bandbullets]

woah oh ok yeah its super unfortunate that this of all things was the cause,, tho i am looking forward to seeing new ways to earn gold! i think this would be particularly a big step forward esp for ppl who dont use the forums as much since atm forumposting and creatureclicking is the currently the only sources of gold afaik

[Danafox]

Okay so before we ban people can we please give a two weeks time period or something? I'd hate to see people banned for something they've been doing for years on end.

I haven't been able to gold mine for years and the only gold mining I do is the IFN to click peoples stuff to help grow or when I click and post in the click threads. So I just hope that Snaplinks is okay to click eggies at least.

[PhoenixSolblade]

Well, glad y'all were able to find what was causing all the lag. I never got into goldmining so it won't be a habit I'll have to break at least

But like Danafox is saying, if there's people who have been doing this sort of thing for years is there a way to maybe message them or something before a ban? It's good that this is showing up on the main page but it's still possible that the news might be missed and it would be a shame for someone with no malicious intent to be punished

[Danafox]

And I am totally up for the new ways to earn gold. I think we should try to create multiple variations of methods to get gold.

For example, User Shops where we can place stock of stuff we want to directly sell to people (so basically no trading involved, it just shows up to the person that clicks buy first.) Second, at least 4 daily quests. Two weekly quests and maybe one monthly quest. The daily quests should earn you around 2k gold up to 5k gold. Weekly quests should earn you up to 30k gold each, and the monthly quest can earn you 100k gold?

Also maybe future events or contests can offer large amounts of gold as a first prize and then lower amounts as additional prizes etc (of course the gold is something additional to add next to the normal variation of prizes of donis or shards etc.)

That's what I could come up with for the moment. I might stew on it for even more ideas.

[LunatheDragoness]

Please add games to make gold!
I'm so tired of gold mining. I don't have time for it anymore. I'm a college student.
I've been here since high-school. I'm 29 now. Please add games.
I am begging you guys, add something. Even a simple game like 2048 that rewards gold would be great.

[Raneth]

I just want to clarify, no one will be banned as pure punishment for mining--the "ban without warning" may occur if someone is mining so much that the site slows down/alerts happen behind the scenes that allow Rosehill to see that one particular IP is hogging all of the server resources. The IP will be banned in that case so the site doesn't slow down or crash.

Rosehill would be able to explain it more accurately, but long story short--Behind the scenes, gold mining is practically indistinguishable from a DDOS/bot attack. We don't see that a user is mining, we see one IP using up CPU by making tons of requests to the server. We can't see any information about the IP, just the IP itself. It's part of the reason it took us so long to figure out that mining was contributing so heavily to the lag. What we thought was a bot making thousands and thousands of server requests was actually a user mining, which we learned when we banned the IP and the user contacted us via VPN.

If someone is banned due to mining in the next few weeks, they will be unbanned and then warned. But I wanted to make clear that a surprise ban could happen, and make sure people know about the new rule.