Constructive criticism regarding recent ban waves.

There's no need to be negative and condescending. It's not crying. It's frustration fueled by passion. People love this game, and they love the way they play it. There's reasons most of the players use <MAPstuff>, and it's because it became so rampant and was let go. People were at a disadvantage, and no player likes that.

Asking for clarity is perfectly reasonable. Being met with basically "because I can" is not. Imagine a cop pulling you over and giving you a ticket, but it just says "driving wrong" on it. That would NEVER fly, and it shouldn't here either. It's literally injust.

Yeah - not everyone is "crying" and perhaps it was a poor word choice. Just saying - it's an opportunity to provide clarity and transparency to the player base. This is a fairly niche community at this point - just looking for clarity and rules and being met with pages of "you are just justifying cheating!" is bizarre.

IP bans don't work as very few people have a static IP and will get a new one from time to time and they can force a change as well. As for a credit card ban I would hope they would be doing that when they do issue a ban and from what I understand they do that for chargebacks at a minimum.

Yes, they can use the same mechanism for chargeback ban to impose a cheat ban.

IP can change, can be spoofed.

no need for credit card if you start with a krono.

You have to ban them before they can make 15$ worth of profit with their account which... considering stuff like cazel spoon sell for 3 kr, VP key piece 2-4 Kr, phinny loot over a krono... doesn't take much to make your money back.

A credit card charge back will ban the entire account. You will not be able to enter or update to a different credit card. Doesn't matter what your IP is since its the account that is being banned.

In Daybreak's eyes you called fraud on them and told your bank they cheated you.

I have heard of 2 accounts that appealed and the ban was lifted - since day 1.

So they do have the capability of banning just the account. Or the IP. Or both. Or ..........

There are countermeasures to spoofing.

Darkpaw could ban the account holding many Kronos. It would be a battle of attrition. The serial cheater would get unlucky or tired at some point.

It doesn't hurt to try a new strategy: move away from 1 week suspensions to permanent ban for serial offenders.

This doesn't make any sense. It isn't plain or simple at all.

I'm not trying to call you out, but this logic just doesn't check out.

Gamparse/EQLogParser/GINA "affects gameplay, from launch of the game to camp out".

Gamparse/EQLogParser/GINA "modifies the game experience".

This reply is exactly the kind of thing that doesn't instill confidence in anyone that they won't be banned for literally any arbitrary piece of software they use. There is no such thing as "we cannot", it is only "we will not".

There is nothing physically stopping someone from pinning a post here that says "Multiplicity will get you banned", despite the fact that it is an entirely benign tool.

Like Tucoh suggested, I want to know what not to do so I don't have to end up losing the account I've had since I was a literal child over some arbitrary rule change/enforcement.

You are correct that they can change the methods that they use but that doesn't change that IP addresses change and people can easily get a new IP address which makes banning based on that a pointless effort.

DPS parsing doesn't change the game play experience and gina is just replicating an in game feature as players can make audio triggers in game.

This is not accurate. GINA is used to change player behavior massively. You gain an unfair advantage over raids not utilizing it, has you now have overlaid timers to dodge and negate entire AoE's. This software trivializes Veeshan's Peak and Velious mobs, causing the raid to require MUCH less raidforce to accomplish the task. Additionally, its utilized later to provide faster response times to things such as OMM Mask clicks, Vishimtar's DT, etc.

GINA most certainly is a dirty program giving people an advantage.

Audio triggers in game are not a replacement for screen overlays with countdown timers. You also can't use regex with in-game audio triggers. They're incomparable.

GINA absolutely changes my experience of the game, for the better.

Parsing software also changes my experience of the game. It changes the experience of the game to the extent that the developers of FFXIV suspend/ban people for it if they talk about it in game.

I think they would disagree with you pretty hard that ACT (Advanced Combat Tracker) doesn't change the "game experience".

So what I'm reading is: Network KVMs which I've used since Phinigel are now abrutly subject to suspension as part of a new anti-cheat initiative.

To the holier-than-thou members who always show up in these posts: Your ignorance as to what network kvms do and capabilities they deliver will only fuel player departure until you're left with only the option to box yourself.

Maybe then you'll quickly realize a lot of skill and practice goes into boxing 2+ characters efficiently.

Quite frankly I feel like I'm risking my account just having started this discussion in the first place.

The more this thread goes on, the more Rauven's observations are confirmed:

Yeah, see. This is the kind of confirmation bias that actual players are hoping to avoid so that constructive feedback can be provided to DPG.

You started with a conclusion and you are selectively reading the comments in a way that validates your thinking. There is nothing objectively muddying about people asking questions to clarify their intent out of a stated desire to not compromise their account. They are providing examples of commonly used software and seeking help.

Perhaps you can help keep the conversation productive instead of trolling others seeking assistance.

Angeliana already provided an answer in the thread.

You can either accept the rules or you can play another game.

Even if EQ followed WoW and explicitly banned key broadcasting, you can already see the pre-emption here by conflating the most benign software (audio triggers and parsers) with broader external software (VMWare to evade detection).

EQ devs approved GINA for use in game years ago (on these forums).

If that has now changed, then so be it. But if that is the case then the Mods need to stop playing games and make it clear that GINA is no longer acceptable.