First if you do something against the game rules be prepared to pay the price. What I have a problem with is the logic. The same folks who say afk bots are everywhere and everyone they know is doing it also say get rid of them all and it won't affect the game. If there are that many of them yeah it could kill the game. So that makes no sense. If there are some but not all over the place then they should be able to deal with them with no probs and no big loss of players. But you can't have it both ways.
Yea. Teleport, or anything that would obviously disrupt the action and they could not fail to notice. A live player says wtf, but a bot just keeps pushing buttons.
I think they need to add something where a GM can automatically select the puller in a group and put something on on the screen they have to respond to which cant be automated. No idea what though.
As a GM, they should be able to suspend the MOBs from popping and see what the player does as things dry up. As a GM, they could take take control of a MOB and attack in unexpected ways. Say root the puller as they approach and taunt them in text. Should be able to do something to tell bot from player.
If you are using a program to do stuff, as in forage, fish, while you are elsewhere, it has been stated as a violation, if you have your pet or combat merc, killing anything that attacks while you are are doing something else, is a violation. Being a Bazaar character, buying or selling is okay, probably doing auto combine in trades, could be okay, as they did set the auto combine into game, along with using learned recipes (a serious treat for trade skills). Using any program to basically play for you, is a risk. Using any device to auto tap keys, would be a violation.
many keyboards can press a single key on a timer. This is how rangers did archery for years on end. That is allowed. Therefor a button that pushes your forge macro over and over is ok The issue is when your character can REACT to something that is happening. That is when the devs care. AKA fighting and casting spells because a mob spawned or attacked or whatever.
I think they have stated in the past a lot of that depends on the player being at the keyboard or not rather then how the action is automated.
You can definitely automate sending your pet to attack a target in the same way you can automate a forage macro, so I don't think that's a real differentiator.
You don't even need to do that much as your pet will attack anything that attacks you without needing to do anything unless use an ability to prevent that.
The actual phrasing in the official rules of conduct is "If a character, including any pets or mercs, is found performing actions while the user is away disciplinary action may be taken against the account." (What are the EverQuest Rules of Conduct? – Help Home (daybreakgames.com)) That seems pretty clear to me. It doesn't explicitly use the word "forage," but you really have to stretch to claim that foraging is not "performing an action." (Will they actually ban you for AFK forage? I don't know. But it's against the rules. They could enforce it at any time, if they so choose.) This is key. The rules as written are quite clear--you have to be at the keyboard while your character is doing stuff. The details of how exactly they police that are fuzzy, and they should be, because outlining exactly how they are going to detect and punish it would just give a guide to the actual cheaters on how to fly under the radar. Be physically at your keyboard, watching your screen, and you're not going to have a problem regardless of whether you're personally pushing the buttons or using a macro-able keyboard or whatever. Walk away while your character is doing something and you do so at your own risk.
Basically its violation. But if no one reports you, then you get away with it. Thats how it is. It's speeding limit, violation if you 90 in a 55 mph zone. No one reports you, no one investigating, no one enforcing the rules. You get away with it. No one is really gonna say what they do and what not because, the people that know how to work around, work around they don't spill the beans.
I would like a quote then. We know using a keyboard to activate a key is legal. "I think" is meaningless.
Finding quotes on this forum are pretty much impossible and my statement wasn't about using a keyboard to automate something. It was a statement that the intent is for a player to be at the keyboard when doing things even if automated instead of the computer acting on it's own. Just because you can use a macro on a keyboard to automate something versus some sort of other program to do it doesn't make it more or less legal. The programs that allow the keyboard to automate key presses are third party programs and would fall into the general third party program category.
With a key you can attack non-hostile targets. That's how the mage bot armies theoretically work without third-party programs -- they just have a /pet qattack named_01; /pet qattack named_ph_01 macro that their keyboard is spamming (I mean obviously that's not actually how they do it, but that it's possible is the figleaf they hid behind back when fire beetle was at its peak on Phinny).
Sure, but the point was pet classes can AFK farm mobs that agro them while taking no action themselves and that can still get them punished for AFK activity.
Technically you could interpret their broadly stated rules so that it would include forage and fishing, but they have never said such a thing explicitely. Neither have they said automating spellcasting in the guild hall for skillups or begging or lockpicking skillups is forbidden. Or automating attacks on a combat dummy for long parsing. All of those could technically be claimed to be violations. But use your common sense. A broadly stated policy can always be interpreted to mean more than it actually intends.
There's not really any "interpretation" going on here. The rules, in plain language, forbid "performing actions" while afk. Fishing and casting spells are pretty clearly examples of "actions." Now if where you're headed with this is that it's de facto allowed because people have been getting away with it in plain daylight for years, well, that may be true. But that's a matter of enforcement. The rule as written pretty clearly makes all of that against the rules. They could start banning people for afk fishing and foraging at any time, if they wanted. If they actually intended automation to be allowed in non-combat zones, it would be easy to add that language to the rules of conduct. But they haven't. Most likely because having everyone automate that stuff is not their desired outcome. Heck, if they were going to make automating spellcasting skillups explicitly legal, they should just ditch the whole casting skill system instead, because it would be pretty much entirely meaningless at that point.
No I thought I was pretty clear. They made a broad statement so people cant game the rules. Broad statements often can be rules lawyered to read broader than what is actually intended. They wont enforce against fishing or foraging because that was never their intent. They also wont enforce against auto-casting a low level spell over and over in a GH to skill it up. Same thing.
Well, we're just going to have to agree to disagree on that second point then. I do not agree with your assessment of their intent. Having said that, the part that we do seem to agree on is that they will never give an explicit itemized list of what automation is allowed and what isn't, so I guess we are stuck at this impasse.
