https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...e-ama-responses-are-here.296796/#post-4293338 Q: Oh, and can we get a 3rd party program policy that is more definitive? A: No, we cannot define which programs are OK or which are not OK. We are only able to define certain actions such as unattended automated gameplay as against the rules. Since we do not control the development of third-party programs, when we list programs as OK, those programs could start to include aspects that are not OK and clearly break our rule against certain actions. Additionally, we do not list programs that are not OK as we do not want to increase attention to certain programs and drive new users to that program Q: Parsing is one of the best tools raiders have to either have a bit of fun or to optimise their performance, unfortunately there are numerous in-game issues with capturing a lot of other people's damage and/or healing, do you ever wish you could fix this or better introduce an in-game parser? Niente: We’d be happy to make improvements to how clients receive damage to improve parsing accuracy. Please let us know your requests. An in-game parser is something that would be very cool, but also a fairly large project for us to take on if it were to be as advanced and accurate as player-made parsers.If we were to add something like that, it would probably only have total damage/time. It is a potential future project for consideration, but not something we are working on this year. Read both of those posts. If you still have the opinion that parsing is against the rules, then read both of those posts again.
Parsing and GINA are separate topics. GINA changes the way the player experiences the game. It makes the players that use it better and more efficient at events. It raises the bar on raid performance, and then those people complain the events are too easy. Same thing happens in WoW, their GINA is called Weak Auras, and then it just forces the developers to raise the difficulty of the event by shortening reaction timers.
And GINA just doesn't read log files. Only MMO players would look at program that tells you exactly what to do to counter a mechanic as not cheating.
Seeking an advantage over what the game offers out of the box is not necessarily against the rules. It depends on what you're doing. For example using a first party application like notepad is permitted, and in fact offered in the game text as an example use of the /system command. Using third party tools to parse log files already dips it's toe into some gray area. Sure it only reads the file you can read. You can't read that fast, you can't analyze that fast, you can't react that fast without audio. Is that too much of an advantage? Defacto answer so far, no. But the clear advantage is the clear reason people clearly seek that out. I guess the kids call that a skill gap issue? As a fellow old guy I'm fine with people using their crutches.
Yes, there's a reason it's sought out for the advantage it gives. Would you need the crutch, if the devs had actual feedback on player reaction times and skill? The problem is that the tool/crutch makes the raids easier, which leads to complaints on difficulty. Which raises the floor on the raids, then further necessitating the need for tools to deal with the difficulty. It's WoW versus FF14 philosophy in regards to add-ons. I'm on the FF14 side, where it's not allowed.
I'm not gonna read the 3 pages because I am lazy but I will say one thing. During the AMA, someone asked if the audio triggers built in EQ could be modified to to accept regex and the DB employee answered ; "yes but there are far better alternatives than the built in triggers".
It's an interesting point. I love modding, but that is almost always single player. Minecraft is a great exception to that, which proves its possible in multiplayer. Back to EQ though, I can see it being a long term issue. I would argue the 'mash button', click one or two things the whole raid is at least as bad of a 'top skill player behavior' issue indicating time distilling the behavior into a bad place. In my opinion.
I was originally intending on including that in the first rebuttal to that person, but I forgot to include it. Given their stance on not "endorsing" a specific app, because for all they know gina, eqlp, or nag could then decide to start implementing things they don't like such as unattended automation....I'm preaching to the choir here obviously, but everyone except Kushalla seems to understand that DB has never considered those kinds of apps cheating. I'd be willing to bet they even use them.
I stopped using GINA a while ago, I use EQLogParser so I'm among a group of elite hackers who use a program that can read a log file.
Not sure how this has been missed so far, but the best argument about the legality of GINA should be unlike other programs the name isn't censored and threads about it are not locked and deleted. The fact that this argument is happening in a thread asking for help on downloading the program and it is still around should be a big sign that they don't consider it illegal. If they did they wouldn't let threads telling people how to get it stay around on the forums.
I can play with or without GINA. Reading event messages is getting tougher as my eyesight worsens. I'll continue to live on the edge of parse-able legality until I'm either banned, blind, or Darkpaw shuts the servers down.
Oops, sorry, this was a thread about GINA, my bad. I'll just leave this here. https://imgur.com/Bg0hDTL
