Ban players from this "The Veterans' Lounge" ..

DPG is leaving threads open that don't turn into personal attacks that derail the threads. That to me implies that they are still listening.

When that 3rd party software is letting them cheat in ways that can't be detected by the server it can only be detected by other means. Cheats as simple as adding NPC's to the map and what loot they have might not be easy to detect server side.

The reason you can real time track (without automation tools) is because it's too difficult for them to obfuscate their data stream like every single MMO on the market to include the old ones like Asheron's Call, Ultima Online, and Anarchy Online. They can do it but that requires a lot of client changes for them. That isn't me defending anything just information to you that they could shut a LOT of things down if they took the effort and actually really cared up until the beginning of this year.

I am aware that the current tools are 100% open source for everything you "need to run" to automate so I trust their software more than I do Google Chrome or Everquest itself not because I think either of those are out to get me or are bad actors but because I can see every word of it myself.

The reason that those other servers don't catch on nearly as well as the live game is because they are rife with corruption, drama even above what you can bring, and the whims of capricious admins that will just delete it all one day.

Before your inevitable claim that I'm a cheater because of only this post I will say that I do packet and data inspection for a living is why I know any of what I know first and foremost.

You don't have the slightest shred of a clue of how anything works in any persistent online system. I cannot believe you typed this out and thought that it was real and hit post reply confidently.

EDIT: I am leaving my above statement even though I made it without actually reading it thoroughly. I am leaving it because I made a mistake and I don't hide from my mistakes.

You are correct that npc's can show on maps, the loot that they have is not possible for a long time. That being said what they hold in their hand if it has a model can be seen but you can also see it in their hands. That isn't some excuse of it being legit to use just informing of what it can or cannot do. It cannot show the amount of plat or any other item they have.

If you can't detect it on the server then you surely aren't detecting it on the client. And sure you can detect map hackers on the server.

Rare mob pops
18 seconds later Johnny hacker comes from halfway across the zone on his wizard when no trackers were in track range of the mob
Johhny nukes the mob and gets rare loot
30 minutes later Johnny does the same thing
Another 30 minutes later Johnny does the same thing with a different rare mob
A day later Johnny does the same thing in a different zone with another rare mob

Abusive behavior and cheating isn't difficult to detect without looking at the client. Add a layer of manual review and you have a system that will quickly weed out the bad guys.

Loot is not predetermined on an npc or even chest. It is rolled after kill based on several loot tables and odds for each category/item. Knowing what is on an npc before it dies is impossible.

You are correct that parts of that system no longer work but that wasn't the point of my reply which was that not all cheats can be detected server side.

Maybe? Maybe not? The point was you can't rely on server side cheat detection to catch everything.

You are correct and I used an older example of what people used to cheat, sorry for confusing you with an older example of what can't be detected by the server.

I'm sure Daybreak could use your help since it is so easy.

According to the cheat software developer, as of January 2022, he is "nearly finished" with open source.

Equally tantalizing is the concern with the changeability of software/code.

That's just completely wrong. How would you explain mobs that drop the weapons they're wielding?

Wonder if you can still see what weapon an npc will drop in classic EQ if it has it equipped

Have you played on a live server lately? There are 2 groups maybe in each ToL zone but most often just one. There are 478 people in guild lobby. There are 52 groups in ToV Great Divide. Then there are the 6 groups in Sathirs Tomb. The entire rest of the server and every zone is empty. I know that this scenario you say is in fact possible but it's just not happening with any kind of frequency. You could sit next to a rare mob in a ToL zone today maybe for 24 hours without it being touched.

Those "cheats" can be detected. Some of the "other" servers can see when people are doing that and do things as a result. Like I said earlier every aspect of this is fixable by the developers if they felt it was worth the time to do so, it was doable back in 1999 but they felt it wasn't worth the time because back then you needed a promiscuous hub and a linux machine.

The software is the root of the problem. It grants advantages/capabilities to the user.

If they targeted "abusive behavior", do you really think it will stop the groaning? It would merely increase the complaints of subjective interpretation of abuse and "false positives."

They can't use my help because that's not what I do, I don't code. They can hire those people. There is not a single other MMO made that you can unencrypted see where all mobs are in the data stream, not one. They all did it and so can DPG, I believe in them why don't you?

According to "the cheat software developer" you're looking at the wrong guy I think. The guy that used to be a thing but has been shunned for hiding several closed source modules in it. The current TEAM (not a single guy) is 100% open source code that you can compile today yourself with no middle man involved.

And I never said they couldn't be detected, just that relying on the server to detect them isn't going to produce a lot of good results. If the player is just viewing data that is sent to their client that can be hard to detect by looking at data on the server.

Yeah but the fact that it is $current_year in coding and every MMO that launched in their era had encrypted data streams and they still have not ... that's kind of on the company to fix a huge flaw. The thing is that it will take time and changes and there will be errors and bugs. Why change it for the past 22 years when no real damage is being done (that's them signaling that by not fixing this)? They switched to a 64 bit codebase and STILL didn't do anything about it because where a mob is just isn't an issue any more with instancing and leashing.

That still doesn't change the fact that not all cheats can be detected from the server alone.

They can be detected though, like I said the "other servers" are doing it.