No more chaser items please, and here's why

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Uxtalzon, Oct 1, 2013.

  1. Kurayami Augur

    Indeed, some were meant to get 13.
    Leerah and Mykaylla like this.
  2. Tulisin_Dragonflame Augur

    Err, sort of, but not really. Krono means that SOE is incentivized to keep the economy fluid and keep platinum valuable, which is a win/win for the game. So, yes, there's more incentive than there used to be to let goods be traded, since if the in-game economy does well then SOE benefits, but it isn't as simple as "They did it to sell Kronos".

    The same logic goes for this thread as a whole. Do valuable items increase the number of botters...well, yeah, but so does anything that makes the game more successful. More players, more demand for stuff, more people breaking the rules to get that stuff.

    "Don't make money/goods desirable because then people will desire them!!" has been a recurrent argument throughout the history of EQ, and it doesn't make a lot of sense. If there are people breaking the rules, they should be punished for doing so, the game shouldn't be made less fun or goal-oriented because some people have chosen to cheat to achieve those goals.
  3. Kreacher Augur

    I could care less what other people are doing as long as it doesn't effect me.

    In fact if there was Botters there 24/7, then that surely should lower the price of the ring/cloak on your server. Grats you're getting a bargin in the baz.

    There is an extremely easily way for them to detect who is 'ing. In fact they probably ALREADY do it. I call it the Fatbuk Hotkey as he was the first to discover the command.

    /tar corpse
    /loot

    What this does is that it /targets the closest corpse and then you loot it. Unfortunately only CHEATERS have this command available to them.
    This command is stored in the .ini file of the character. All SoE has to do is UPLOAD the user's ini file when they log in and scan it for illicit commands. The ini file IS SoE's property and a game asset, so it's completely legal.

    TBH - It's so simple and core that imo they must do it and have discovered that holy poop - there is a tonne of people using these illicit commands - lets just ignore those ones, and just get the warpers.
  4. Falos Augur

    It's a real shame that botted boxers remain under soes radar. I give legit kudos to SoE for cracking down on warpers / etc and dealing with them more effectively than they did years ago but I must say and I agree with this part of the topic creators post, botters are a real problem.

    I have 5 accounts and have experience with boxing manually the old fashioned way, and even dabbling with programs like [Unmentioned 3rd Party Software] and a gaming keyboard. I know what these things are capable of and i know their limitations, as a result I know how to pretty much detect botters from just people using legit functions.

    I've come to except that as old as the game is they will never deal with these botters, but thats fine I guess. I know of a few specific botters that are literally helpless at boxing or playing in 'hard' content on patch days (which is utterly hilarious to me) I'll always play as good on a patch day as I will on any other day. Some players just are sop bad and have so little going for them in the real world that they have to cheat at a multiplayer videogame i guess lol. Maybe they do it so people think they are good eq players and covering up their shortcomings I don't know, whatever it is though I genuinely feel bad for the people that do that sort of thing and cant control their characters with their own hands.




    EDIT: I want to add that I am in favor of chase items staying in the game with some exceptions. THey shouldnt be linked to completing group or raid conquests, seriously thats way too inaccessible a requirement even for chase items (especially since most chase items are BARELY a chase item to begin with)
    Also I am not really a fan of things like xorbbs powersource which has limited use, cant be recharged, and is ungodly rare - chase item should always be permanent / rechargable never something that 'expires'
  5. Uxtalzon Augur

    No. I guess I'll explain what passive-killing automation is.

    One player or group sits in the middle of a room and waits for mobs to spawn. Mob(s) spawn, attack the player, and suddenly the entire group comes alive. All of the non-melee classes are looking in every which direction except at the mob, because they don't need to see when casting (and they never move). The tank moves and responds to the mob aggro with horrible FPS, less than 5 (indicating that player screen is not active... who plays with that kind of FPS?). When the mob dies, a single toon in that group always loots, and then all characters move back to their exact spot, and even back to the exact original direction they faced. When they turn the characters don't turn smoothly. More amateurish hackers will have a healer cycling group targets endlessly or have one character move around/pull the nearest target, even attempt to KS another player if their mob is closest.

    In one case the group set a fellowship campfire, so even if the entire group wiped, they could still port back and attempt to resume botting.

    Botted players will instantaneously accept any rez given to them. When I watched the GM kill the two groups off, he had to pull them away from their spot (the tank was still rezzed and immediately began trying to fight a fire giant without assistance, funny). I guess he then kicked them offline, because both groups left their corpses there for a couple days before they came back.

    Tobynn's Methodology
    1. Post nothing of value
    2. Get one post removed already
    3. Feel scorned
    4. Keep posting to save face

    Well it doesn't take a genius to figure out who's hacking and who's not if you know the signs and scripts they use. If I see a group I've reported before and find them doing it still, it's because whoever is supposedly enforcing rules, aren't enforcing the rules. I don't actively seek these players out. I spent dozens of hours in Sol B and probably hundreds in MM hunting the chase items. Not hard to come across them time and time again. With your logic, people who see kids trying to steal candy in a store and telling the clerk should mind their own business.
  6. shruggz Elder

    /lolz at Kreacher, I 3 box, I use no outside programs none. but I have a little hotkey on each of my toons called loot gnome, due to the time ive spent in beta, zeka, fort mech, ship, and steam factory.
    gnome corpses especially I have noticed can be difficult to target to loot so I set up a hot key
    like this /target a
    /loot
    I am at the controls, I use no outside programs I am using in game designed socials
    I don't even use a custom ui, I use the game provided standard ui. I alt tab between toons.
    I think that you saying anyone using socials is cheating, is wrong. its no different than
    using a /pause 50,/cast 1
    /pause 50,/cast 2
    or a /melody 1, 2, 3, 4
    I see nothing wrong with this and if the /loot command is illegal and shouldn't be used in a social
    then it needs to be officially posted somewhere because as far as I have found it is not.
  7. Uxtalzon Augur

    Wrong logic, dude. It won't stop them from cheating, but chase items gave them the advantage by botting as long as they wanted with little to no repercussions as my original post stated. Not meant for everyone and being rare is fine, but these groups/players could have farmed many of them with zero effort. While normal players put in hour after hour, these people can let their characters go at it while they slept.

    Put whatever value of the items they got into plat/kronos and they can literally have free membership for all of their accounts for a whole year.

    And if anyone cares, I managed to get two cloaks (one in group, one solo farming for bat collectibles) and one ring. I probably stayed in MM four times longer than Sol B to get that stupid ring, near the end of HH as well.
  8. Potionless Elder

    Don't know anything about botting. Would it be harder to bot if they didn't use dungeons with closely packed mobs? Why not put these in an outdoor zone where you have to go out into the zone to get the mobs. If they set up a bot group, wouldn't they just get a few random mobs that wander by - not the X number of mobs that repop every 20 minutes?
  9. Porterz73 Augur

    This looks to me to be a classic case of sour grapes.

    I am on the Povar server and spent a bit of time in Sol B and Mistmoore and I did not witness any of the described pandemic of cheating. Any time I was in zone I did camp checks and regularity got responses as well as witnessed several groups offering items in OOC.

    The OPs description of Passive Auto Kill sounds to be like a typical box group and not a mindless Bot program.

    1.) A box group will generally not move much especially in a heavily camped zone.

    2.) A box group many times will only have 1 melee class that moves and casters that just run dots or nukes off a macro

    3.) A box group with a tank merc will have the tank merc react and gain Argo anytime someone in the group gets agro. A cleric merc will also react based on damage

    4.) Generally only 1 person will loot if they are boxing. Anyone who boxes will be in a fellowship and therefore use a campfire.

    5.) As for another persons FPS I'm not sure what program you are using to detect another players FPS but it sure sounds suspect to me.

    Perhaps all this reporting got no action because the reports lack merit and are therefore not actionable. Chase items are fun, ending them based on a unproven perception of mass cheating would be just silly. If anything suggesting they be made NoDrop would be a more reasonable idea.
  10. Atvar Augur

    Running multiple instances on a single computer can also kill frame rates. I used to have big issues even trying to 2-box.

    There must be some fancy macros these days that chain rez rebuff and continue killing with 0 mana for these people to do it all while sleeping.
  11. Kathylynn_Unity Augur

    There is no confusing what the OP is describing as passive killing and boxing. It is obvious if you've seen it before. It does exist in the game and no one should even try to defend those that abuse it.

    With regard to chase items, I don't think that eliminating them solves this problem. I am not a fan of the current implementation of chase items at all either. In the past chase items were anywhere and everywhere, they were both rare and powerful and as a result held great value. Now you have two temporary items out of hundreds of thousands that have any significant value which is really the problem.
    Leerah likes this.
  12. Tulisin_Dragonflame Augur

    While that might raise a red flag, regular players can achieve similar functionality by just using /target a_ and /loot in a macro.

    By all means, use whatever kind of indicators necessary to detect people using illegitimate software...but this is one indicator that'd be extremely easy to work around for those using it.
  13. Endo Journeyman

    I tend to agree that from their viewpoint, this was a major factor to making them tradable. Since they already have said that they would not put items on Marketplace that represented real in-game power, they can't go back on that. This is sort of a work-around for them to "sell" items and get revenue.

    Having said that, overall I found the HH Revamps and chase items to be quite an enjoyable experince. Zones were very populated and a lot of socialization going on...both good and bad. :) But hey, thats the way it was "back in the day".

    .
  14. Roderick Journeyman

    Apples, and oranges.
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare likes this.
  15. Lily Augur

    I must be misunderstanding you, because in the Options window under Keys tab, there is a 'target nearest corpse' key. I would definitely hope this doesn't flag anyone, because I've had to use it in conjunction with /loot frequently while fighting Darkness in HoF. There's no other way I know of to loot a corpse when you're blind.
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare and Leerah like this.
  16. Dramatime Augur

    I appreciate the OP's efforts. I have no problem with players spending their time investigating/petitioning other players possibly cheating/'ing. If it somehow cuts down on botters AMEN! Nobody should dictate what he does with his time while in game.

    As someone stated before perhaps the lack of actual bans shows that the system might be working in that he saw what he thought was suspicious activity and when the GM's actually took a look at the log/INI or whatever they look at it turned out to be someone working very methodically and not in the mood to chit chat from all the alt+tabbing and button smashing. Or heck maybe the person has an elaborate system of NON computer button pushing "thingys". But if there are botters I say BAN THEM.

    I do not however think that the solution is to get rid of the "chase items". They'd just go somewhere else and farm some other item. Though it may not be as good as a ACotF it'd be something else that has a good price on it to make it profitable. And to add to your logic OP I'd say have more of them that way you draw the suckers into a trap. It'd be like that show "Trap Car" and the items are the "unlocked cars".

    Even more to your point of them Botting in these HH zones it would not make much sense for them to be in zones where a lot of people gather anyways. The more people the more chances of you getting caught. Also as you pointed out that they do not require to actually be at the computer while killing and looting it does not make a difference where they kill or what they loot because time is a limitless commodity for them they can make money all day while doing whatever it is they actually find fun haha.

    Again I say thank you though for your efforts to battle the Botters and keep it up because every little bit helps.
  17. Kurayami Augur

    Afraid I'm confused, there are commands in game I could get banned for that actually work? Shouldn't such commands simply search for a valid GM/Guide handle before working, telling the user this is for GM use only or some such? Experimenting trying to figure out ways to avoid using the mouse less is now a bannable offense, what?
  18. Kreacher Augur

    The Everquest client parses the commands. The commands don't get sent to SoE servers initially. The client parses them, identifies if they are valid and then passes them on to the server if they are.
    Note : this is how monk kill worked. as it was the client that parsed that distance between the mob and the monk and also the refresh of the disc, you could override it and send the kick directly to the server. As there was no server side checking on this, you could send 100's at a time and pretty much instant kill the mob. There is now server side checking on this tho.

    So if you type /tar corpse and send it from the EQ console. The client will just ignore it as an invalid command and that is the end of it. SoE wont know.
    The thing is, people make Hotkeys to do these simple things, rather than full on macros.
    The hotkeys are stored in your character ini file. It is this file that SoE should be looking at for illegal commands and then doing a manual follow up. Honestly - it's such a no brainer - i'd be surprised if they have not done it.
  19. Dre. Altoholic

    Perhaps the chase items were simply a honeypot after all :)
  20. Kreacher Augur

    You are completely missing the point.

    The /loot command IS an in game command. What you are doing is perfected valid. You could even bind the loot command to the same key you use to cycle and you'd get 1 key looting "almost" exactly like CHEATERS do.

    The illegal command is /tar corpse