Flagrant botting in paineel

i've farmed bone chips in freeport before . killed one skeleton spawn over and over and only took bone chips and yes i am a mage. with the pile of corpses i left it probably looked like i was botting too. the repop on the skeleton spawns is very fast. makes it easy to farm chips. I also pl'd a toon 1-5 doing the same thing fairly quickly. if anyone sent me a tell i would answer. especially the lowbies around asking if they can have the loot on the corpses.

I can't speak to previous times, but right now it's just two mages with almost identical names (two letters are reversed at the end) in the same guild (not TL)

I don't see eye to eye with frenzic about many things here, but the thread you mentioned wasnt really definitive. If someone accused me of cheating I think I would have reacted the same way. He even made a post on ragefireforume.com and none of the people with "proof" it was him showed up there.

Thank you for the vote of confidence!

Yep. I went to Paineel myself a few hours ago to give a friend who just started playing some cash and buffs on his newbie necromancer and noticed no less than three different people who appeared to be botting. Some were doing it to farm bone chips, others were leveling up their spell skills up by chaincasting low level spells (these players were not at the keyboard and/or responsive when accused of botting) consistently and without fail on multiple accounts in succession over and over again with no break in between casts as would indicate a person doing the work instead of a program because eventually a person would forget to press the key, grow tired after a while, have to take a bathroom break, etc.

I personally didn't submit a petition for this particular instance, but had a couple of people in the zone said they had already petitioned before only to be ignored and that they have seen these same characters in Paineel continue to do this on a daily basis. I saw one person who was fed up with the bots try to train a KOS mob on one of the accused botters and the botter did not respond or attempt to move away from the KOS mob or anything. Lucky for the botter, for some reason the mob which was scowling to both mine and my brother's character, did not agro them, but it does not change the fact they were unresponsive to a KOS mob staring them in the face, they didn't budge at all.

I feel bad for any low level erudite trying to level in there because I'm not kidding when I say every single skeleton I saw did not have a lifespan of more than 3 seconds and there was not a whole lot else for the new players in there to kill.

I know [Unmentioned 3rd Party Software] is legal, but automation/botting through illegal third party programs is not. I've had petitions or known other people to petition about what appears to be clear cases of botting and have DBG basically ignore their petitions and do nothing, even when presented with photographic evidence.

I had an instance about a week ago where someone who appeared to be cheating/botting was trying to KS a mob from my friend so I charmed it and ran away with it on my enchanter and the player had the mob I had charmed on follow. You can not put NPC's on follow in EQ and it was clear they were following the exact same path as the mob I had charmed to a was to a T, I even had another enchanter there with me who confirmed they saw it happening as well. I reported this and so did the other enchanter and nothing appears to have been done.

So I'm in concurrence, if you're going to turn a blind eye to what appears to be obvious and blatant botting and violations of what I thought were the rules when there are people petitioning to point it out and present evidence accordingly, does that mean it's ok to do completely automate play of your character now? I'm totally against automation, even [Unmentioned 3rd Party Software], but if it's going to put me on unfair playing ground by not using these programs and you don't care if anyone uses them then I'd sure love to know. I'm not greedy by any means, but having some extra plat would be nice and if I can have a 3rd party program farm plat for me while I eat dinner, do my laundry, or sit on my butt and watch Netflix that would be lovely. /sarcasm off

I'm not happy at all with their stance on IS Boxer and similar programs, that allows a single person controlling six mages to kill a mob like Phinigel or things of that nature, but I accept it for what it is. However, If DBG is really going to turn a blind eye at botting as they clearly seem to be and just pretend to be against it on paper, then I won't need reminding that once I've stopped enjoying this server and no longer am getting that feeling of EQ nostalgia, that I should never touch another game with DBG's stamp on it ever again if they are going to let a few rotten apples spoil the bunch and ignore their playerbase.

I just think if you are going to directly call someone out on something like that, you better have definitive proof, and be ready to provide it when challenged.

Even this guy in paineel, it's *possible* he's not afkbotting, but I'd be ready to testify in court as to what I saw~

People seem to be more inclined to post on the EQ subreddit instead of join in a profanity-laden post on ragefireforums.

If it's the mage with the super creative name... I sent him a tell yesterday and it took him like 30 mins to respond even though the corpses were still piling up

Funny how we both had the same experience. Me and a couple of others were accusing this person of botting over OOC while watching his character continue to slaughter the skeletons and we carried on this conversation and delved into other topics for at least 30 minutes and then said mage responds in OOC something to the effect of "I'm not a bot!". We were like yeah that might have been a valid defense if you had said that 30 minutes ago when we first started accusing you, but good job confirming what we already knew though.

But back to the main point of my TLDR post a few posts above and the original poster's point as well I think. I'm tired of seeing more than a handful of people in game or on these forums agree on what appear to be obvious cases of botting and going through the trouble/process of reporting it only for DBG to sit on their hands and not do a damn thing. This happens day after day watching the same person/character repeats the same type of illegal behavior and yet their character(s) are still there in the game doing the same thing. This is obviously a bigger issue than just one mage botting/afk farming bone chips.

Like I don't get on these forums too often and only periodically when time permits, so I probably miss some things and it is probably old news now, but I just read a similar thread where an entire guild or a significant % of a guild was caught cheating and instead of raining holy hellfire down upon these cheaters and permanently ban their accounts they simply give them a "suspension"? What was the suspension for? A couple of days of not being able to play and no dinner before they went to bed?

*DBG shakes it finger at the cheaters and says "promise you won't do it again?" Ok we'll let you come back and cheat, I mean play some more.*

Hell I can see why people cheat now if there is about a 90% chance there isn't going to be a damn thing done about it and in the unlikely event something is done it just results in a suspension rather than a complete forfeiture/deletion of their characters and/or account? Give me a break.

Hey just wanted to clarify, that no, this wasn't Frenzic or anyone in TL or any of the other major guilds on our server. Specifically, this was 3 mages (2 obviously from the same account holder due to similar names - as mentioned by frenzic) a necro, and a bard - the bard wasn't just spamming dissonance, but actually using the automatic facing and move-to-target scripts, as well as a return home script to the exact same spot every spawn.

I didn't post this thread to QQ about botting. It's not about that. It's about the fact that rules that are not enforced evenly can absolutely destroy a game and the trust that players put in the hands of those responsible for enforcing the rules. If the botting rules are unenforceable they need to be abolished so that those of us who DO play by the rules can compete on even playing field with those who are currently breaking the rule.

Right now, those are the two spawn spots in Paineel that are the easiest way to get bone chips. There's anywhere from three to five skeletons with three seconds. I tend to guard the spot and set hotkey for /pet kill a decaying skeleton and press it over and over, the problem comes in those using automation with the hotkey.

I am more annoyed with one person armies using pick zone to repeatedly take camps over for Frenzy/AM/Seafury/solb/ areas regardless a group's there already. Something that would have been impossible to do back when everyone had dial-up, times have changed.

i cant count the number of times over the years playing EQ that i have had a client up on my 2nd screen spamming a single button to skill up or to do a forage macro etc - all while watching something on my main screen. there can easily be 30 minutes between even looking at the screen. someone not instantly responding to you does not equal a bot.

should you be heavily doing something like this in a newbie area with limited mobs? absolutely not.

one was posted on a holly tweet about suspensions last night.

You leave it going for 20 hours a day while you spammed that 1 key none stop without a break? Be it a g5 mouse / g15 keyboard or some other programmable option that is botting.

Newsflash botters:

It's STILL botting if you're at your desk running your "skeleton bone chip massacre macro" while watching you're upteenth Game of Thrones episode. And it should still be bannable you half wit of a friggin casual.

These guys are botting and streaming on twitch.tv atm.
channel: eq1_grouping
You can see Magebish in the background doing the same thing.

Yep, that's botting, but for whatever reason it's not a bannable offense if you're at the keyboard while your script runs.

Was there yesterday and did find some mages clearing mobs when they spawned instantly, but i think it was plain fast reactions (i also timed my AoEs right before the spawn so i could tag at least 1 or 2) i don't think it was botting, just plain restless farming.

What's funny is that the adv loot has probably made automation easier due to not needing to loot corpses.

Where do you draw the line?

If it's done with a built-in social macro, it's ok? What if it's a single hot-key that runs third party software that does exactly the same thing a social could have, but the person didn't know the commands to build the social?

I think DBG has drawn the perfectly line here. Use what you want to use, do what you w ant to do, as long as you:

1) never AFK automate / bot (as tested with /tell or /say)
2) never use exploits, whether built-in or through use of 3rd party software

I think that's perfect.