Blatant botting is completely out of hand

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by JeffHanson, Sep 3, 2019.

  1. Yimin Augur

    EQ needs a prison server where all cheats can go play and keep paying EQ ,

    YiMin
  2. Zamiam Augur

    ZEK
  3. Zeus Journeyman


    Ok lets think about this logically. You are upset that someone is exping in a zone that is what 4 or 5 expansions below current content? In addition you want something to be done about the guy boxing 5 groups at once. Lets look at this from a revenue generating perspective. You have person 1, pays for 1 account every month. 15.99X12 = 191.88 ok so that's how much you bring to the tablet regardless. Lets look at the guy who is boxing 5 groups at once. 30 Active subscriptions X12 months = 5756.4 so lets compare the numbers. Everquest generates 191.88$ worth of revenue from you mister 1 player over a year. Everquest generates 5756.4$ worth of revenue from the guy botting 5 groups. Who is more important the botter or the one who just pays for one account? I can tell you this much, this game cost money to run. If you are upset about botters, then grief them. EQ official stance on botters is that they are not player characters as such they can not be held to the same standards as other eq players. You cant train a robot ;) and you cant run in a cleric and 0% rez them over and over again can you?
    Come to Zek we will show you how we deal with botters
  4. Captain Video Augur


    Don't do this. On any server other than Zek, training is a bannable offense. People are getting suspended on TLP servers for this seemingly every week.

    Unattended gameplay is also a bannable offense, on any server. There is a big difference between someone boxing a bunch of accounts, and automating a bunch of accounts. Yes, on Live servers the botters can be pretty much avoided, but there is a principle here that causes some players to stop and think "OK, if this is being allowed, what's next?" Plus it's not like the designers force players back into old school content for the sake of evolving items either...
  5. Zeus Journeyman

    Evolving items are a choice, I would hardly say it is forced on you.
  6. dwish Augur

    I'm sure this has probably already been mentioned in the thread (didn't read everything), but the AFK botting on Firiona Vie is absolutely insane as well. Every single zone in the new expansion has multiple botting groups right out in the open, often camping named or near quest mobs that make it difficult to complete some of the quests. Choose a different pick? Yep, bot groups in those picks as well. It's getting to the point where the AFK botting groups outnumber real players. I'm sure FV is probably one of the worst servers affected, but unlike in the past, I feel it's really starting to become an issue just due to the sheer scale of the AFK botting going on. I'm not sure if anything can or should be done about it at this point, as EQ is an old game and these groups I'm sure bring in a huge share of the overall revenue being as prevalent as they are. FV population would probably be cut in half if you disabled all these bot groups.
  7. Fian Augur

    As I understand it, the problem is a GM sends a botter a tell, the message is then forwarded to the botter's smart phone, they can then type in a reply in their smart phone.

    One way to verify a person at the controls would be the following:
    GM tells you, "Please stop attacking so we can talk."
    GM tells you, "Please walk towards me to verify that you are controlling your character."
    GM tells you, "Please walk away from me towards the tree behind you."

    I can't see a person doing all 3 of those activities via a smart phone.
  8. Zamiam Augur

    IF GM's even investigated this blatant botting and stood right in front of the persons toon who was pulling , how can that person not see a GM is there and stop attacking mob ? if he doesnt he is afk botting .. GM sends him tells (while still standing in front of person's toon who is pulling) maybe even the GM starts to mess with his mob like say return to bind point on mob or make mob invulnerable .. or even take the toon who is pulling and bring them under the world :p
    Now tell me if a GM did those things and the toon does not respond how is that not proof that they are afk botting .. even if toon responds by automation via smartphone GM would ask him to stop pulling for few minutes while they talked .. if toon doesnt stop attacking then if I was a GM id boot them and suspend them for afk killing ..
    for a GM to take notice though I would think a video would need to be avail showing the party in question afk botting for at least 10min with any form of communication being ignored..

    I haven't come into contact with many autobot armies , however one imparticular in the ferrott the dream stands out bot army is center of a lizard camp and is auto pulling/agroing everything around him even the crazed mercenary's for the newb quests which were way far away ..

    Its sad that the GM's cant/won't do anything about them ..
  9. Velisaris_MS Augur

    - Exclude it from the server list
    - Make it PVP
    - Make every item no trade, including kronos
    - Prevent it from sending or receiving tells from other servers
    - No GMs ever

    Patch it and maintain it as normal...otherwise, don't admit that it even exists.
  10. kookoo Augur

    in FV , in kael zone same botter , 5 groups or so, near named drundar , they are there 24/ 24 since 8 months + , why anyone can tell they are automatic playing 24/ 24 and GM' s ( DPG ) can't even see they are cheating , or they know and do nothing........................ and there are other area where botters are too.

    i had a player in my guild , i told him to guildremove because i didn't want him to have my guild tag , because he was cheating ( my guess ) , he was new to everquest , asking me newbie things.

    then he started to use one of the 3rd party software where all players can be used to auto-attack.
    he went to lv 115 with all their toons in short time playing 24/ 24 ,( he paid a pwling from the bot group above ) then he leveled his group and more toons very fast using a program ..........when i asked him, he told me ** no one care anyway ** why not.

    problem is one software can let you play afk , while other one you need to punch buttons to send keys to your toons, and it is usually easy to see which one it is.......

    GM's could use a really big illusion no one have , and stand right in front of them and that we can't miss them , and would require us to reply to their /say or whatever , to ensure they ( we ) are not afk. ,.
  11. Zipline New Member

    I know this will probably go largely unread from a developer standpoint, but here is a thought on how to curb the use of 3rd party botting software, and the black market that has grown from it.

    1. EQ has a merc system already in place

    2. EQ has an 'offline' player trader feature in place

    1 + 2 = Player Bots for All Access accounts only

    Basically if you have an all access account you can gear up a toon and put it into "merc mode". This toon or 'set of toons' must be controlled by another All Access toon that acts as the 'main'. This toon must be active and run by someone at the keyboard, and presents the user with a control interface for the group of 'subbed merc toons'.

    This takes in the idea from the old 'bots' system in EQEmu before the 'mercs' system was even implemented into the live game. You were able to 'generate' a team of bots, and trade them any gear that dropped or was made in the game to 'twink' them up. However you generated bots of any class/race combo by commands in game, the system proposed here would be using player characters that can be put into a 'merc mode' locking out the account and giving control to the main account through a hotkey/macro system. They could also limit the amount of 'player mercs' that a single account can control so you don't have full 6 box teams, they could also nerf toons that are put into 'merc mode' somehow. This allows us as the players to make our own customized mercs from toons on other accounts that we can gear up, level, build AA, etc.

    By implementing something like this they can effectively curb the botting black market, and put in checks to prevent AFK play while reaping in more sub money from players that want to box multiple accounts. If the game is going in that direction, might as well add in a new feature to the game to reap the benefits.

    Now along with this comes some sort of prevention software to curb the 3rd party stuff from attaching to the game or just plain make it useless to read the game opcodes floating over the wire. Ie. stronger encryption, randomization, some sort of key pair, etc. But for Tunare's sake don't break Wine/Crossover support on Mac/Linux in the process because some of us like to legitimately play using those operating systems!
  12. Razorfall Augur

    It's still all over the place. I feel like I've reported these same characters at least three times. What really ticks me off is that I have taken videos of these people and put em on youtube so I could put a link to it in the ticket...only to have the ticket closed with 0 views on the video.

    What does it take to actually get some resolution here?
    Fenthen likes this.
  13. DillyBar Augur

    A year later and nothing is being done about this. Mmm mmm mmm
  14. Bobokin Augur

    EG7 Global is the new owner. We will see how they handle this.
    Yinla and Nennius like this.
  15. Bigstomp Augur

    You would need customer service that cares about cheaters.
    Nennius likes this.
  16. Bigstomp Augur


    Mercs are not bad because they are lacking in stats.
    Mercs are bad because they are dumb.
    Applying merc logic to a real toon they'll be even worse, the mercs survive because they are vastly overpowered to make up for the dumb.
    I_Love_My_Bandwidth and Nennius like this.
  17. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    I literally have reported people using this exact method. They were removed from world within an hour, mid-fight.

    Perhaps your evidence was inconclusive?
  18. Bigstomp Augur

    Please come live in GD on bristle for a while. I would love to see this happen.
  19. code-zero Augur

    you need to attach a video to the petition, there's no planet where CS is going to open a link sent to them from a random customer.
  20. Leerah Augur

    Nah, that goes way back, as long as I've been playing, ca. 2002.