Cya Everquest

They have been doing suspension-waves for what, 4 months now? Eventually, cheaters will get the message, and play within the rules just like the rest of us. Sure, some of them will have to reduce their gigantic armies, or get better at boxing legit. But they will remember how the game was before they started mass boxing and learn to enjoy playing within the rules again.

You can either accept that cheating comes at the price of irregular surprise suspensions, or change your way of playing.
A lot of players box(or non-box) just fine without cheating, maybe you should try it too. Just because you pay for a lot of subscriptions, does not give you the right to pick and choose your own interpretation of the rules.

The fact that they only suspend people rather than perma-ban them, is a chance for you to adapt to the rules. They are giving you a second chance. Take it or leave it...

Very much agree with all of that but it appears they are suspending accounts, not people. So once a person has changed their play-style and stopped doing what got them suspended they appear to still be getting suspensions on other accounts for violations in the past. They should suspend in mass all at once instead of spreading out the suspensions.

But I can see why they are doing it. If they suspended everyone all at once it might hurt the game more than the obfuscated approach they have taken.

Something that might bring the 2 sides together (probably not though) is that both sides are right.

Botting is 'cheating' but a policy that is not enforced is not a real policy. It would be easy to argue it wasn't cheating because it was allowed. And it was pretty allowed. There is likely some truth in that there is a factor of the claims that the two sides collaborated. It's hard to call it 'cheating' if that was going on.

However, EG7 acquired EverQuest at the end of 2020. The behavior continued for a long time after, but almost exactly a year. EG7 probably took a stance on it and began collecting data when they acquired the company. A year after they acquired EQ, they started acting on that data seemingly suddenly.

Compassion is often better than polarity. Understanding and appreciating view points beyond your own help with that.

For the people 'not cheating', they take a strong stance because cheaters finally got caught and that's great. For the people 'using help', they are pretty unhappy because something they have been doing for a long time is suddenly not okay (and keep in mind the context that it was actually okay, given the information that collaboration occurred, if accurate)

There is a lot in between these two stances. The 'not cheating' crowd is still upset because a lot of the most flagrant cheaters are still flagrantly cheating and the 'using help' crowd is upset because they are struggling to enjoy the game in the way they did while the most flagrant cheaters are still cheating. Who is winning? Probably the flagrant cheaters who just spool up a replacement.

There is a lot of good conversation to be had. The people shouting 'cheater!' are just as wrong in that conversation as the people shouting 'I can do what I want'.

There is room to say, yes, it is currently cheating, and you should not cheat, but I can understand how you would like those features client side, however, there are some features here that should never be allowed and you're being unreasonable for asking them to come client side.

With that said, I think there is room for EQ to bring some tools to box Client side, while also giving computers and recording abilities to high playtime players (tech'ed up guides) to catch the most disruptive players.

Most people would sooner stop playing than adapt. The majority of the "botting" community does it because it is the only way they enjoy playing the game, take that away and there is no reason to come back.

My experience was this: Started 1 account levels 1-70 then the game gets so painfully slow I had to make a box to make any sensible progression. Levels 70~100 manually boxing two accounts, so tedious I couldn't even keep a sensible conversation going on discord voice as I am too busy making so many actions per minute. Level ~100 again the game gets almost impossible to progress as most of the experience is from missions requiring groups. Went to the dark side and had the most fun in EQ probably ever, managed to progress, able to contribute to the community throwing out buffs in GL etc.

People complain on these forums all the time of quitting before hitting max level, and I would have done the same. If there was a reasonable alternative I would be all for it, but lets face it the current state of the game is not conducive to solo or casual play.

To the die hard single account players out there, or boxers without any third party software: how many have actually tried starting fresh in this game from 1-120? It is an absolute wasteland out there and the scaling of difficulty is ludicrous. You can level from 1-70 in the same amount of time it takes to get from 70-75 and I will guarantee you won't find a soul to group with in that time. Defiant is great until you get to HoT, then prepare to be devoured while you try to gear up to survive Feerott trash mobs.

That is a good point. Players who learned their lesson after their first suspension, should not be getting belated follow-up suspensions on their other accounts, after they have stopped cheating. That is not in anyone's interest...

I think DBG needs to compare account-ownership before suspending accounts. It is probably possible, but it might be easier said than done. I think they could compare account email-addresses or payment sources(although I think krono-paid accounts would make that hard) or something...

I absolutely agree that the level 70+ game needs a drastic retune. There should be a realistic way for a molo-player to catch up. But encouraging boxing is not the correct solution imho.
Overseer and heroic characters should not be a replacement for content in that level range, let molo-players level up in actual expansions if they want.

Good points Vumad. Probably won't fly with either crowd unfortunately as one side is very black and white and the other is very much gray.

I was really happy with Rizlona/Aradune launch and that felt like what you were getting at maybe.

The problem with that one I think is that all it did was make most of the non toxic boxers go to Rizlona, and most of the krono/toxic guys ended up on Aradune anyways. Keyword being most.

One thing I've mentioned before is that I would like to see an AA or something that makes older expansions easier the older they are. The buff does something like mitigates incoming damage and increases output damage proportional to the age of the expansion. It would allow them to solo older content without having to box. Newer expansions would get less benefit from this buff since that's where the player base is. Grouping in a new expansion like ToL is going to be much more feasible than in HoT, so a solo player doesn't need the assistance from this buff. If someone is doing HoT today, they may be the only person in the zone. Might as well let them complete the content on their own rather than having to turn to boxing.

Repurpose mitigation of the mighty as a player buff?

I actually kind of like that from a revenge standpoint.

Boxers would probably still box just for current content though right? This would just give non boxers a place to go.. and it's at the back of the bus with low level content?

I wasn't aware of MotM, but it sounds exactly in line with what I was thinking. A player starting from scratch is going to have to get to the top levels on their own before grouping is a viable option. Someone who's 70 or 80 is going to be slogging it through the deserted, older expansions on their own one way or another. Boxers could still box if if they wanted, but this kind of buff would mean they would be boxing through HoT because they liked boxing rather than felt like boxing was the only way to progress.

One other benefit is that if players can get to the active grouping community at the top levels without boxing, they are more likely to join the grouping community once they get there. If they don't have to box along the way, they won't have a full boxing crew by the time they get to the top levels and they will be more likely to lean on the community to progress rather than doing it on their own. As it is now, people have to setup a boxing crew by the time they are 70-80. If they use that crew to get to 110+, then they can just keep using their boxing crew. No need to group when you learned how to be an accomplished boxer along the way.

Exactly this. Honestly wish we could focus our efforts in dealing with the flagrant cheaters and RMTs that will just say IDK about a suspension on 1/4th of my accounts and keep spooling stuff up. Breaking down into categories and focusing on the most disruptive section may be the correct path. Most of the suspensions and or bans aren't even affecting the 24/7 bot crews or the most egregious of AFK campers. Idk somethings got to give somewhere.

While Joe needs to manually play over months to gear up his characters in Type 5 augments, Tom leaves his automated crew to gear up his characters in Type 5 augments and goes to the bar.

But "you shouldn't care what other people do for enjoyment." LOL.

The suspensions have been more targeted to servers with major problems. Not everyone who uses the programs are getting suspended.

The people who are using the program as a box assist, are already on their last leg. Either they playing using it, or they don't return.

Do you think someone who is farming for business is cares if they get their account banned? They have multiple sets not linked to any other set ready to go just in case. They'll get banned and have a new set doing same old thing a few days later.

Raids have zone wide debuffs. What Essence of the Dragon protected you from in EoK. The easy way to implement this is zonewide buffs in the song window. The song window buff can simply increase Mitigation, DPS, etc. It's easy to tune and probably not hard to implement. Not sure I agree with the solution. Just commenting on the implementation.

Not all people using bot assistance go AFK. That stereotype is part of the big problem with anyone respecting your comments in the discussion. There is a wide range of botting and you are only focused on the disruptive people. Your strong bias makes your view point ignorable because it doesn't apply to so many people.

Ok so Tom doesn't go to the bar. He runs his brokerage and watches Netflix.

You want Darkpaw to live stream your desktop/keyboard to confirm slightly more morally acceptable usage ("It's automating but I am at my desktop")? You have to be naive.

Agreed the only advantage the bitter has in that situation is he dosent half to wait to form a group or sit LFG/LFM for any amount of time before tackling those HA's it's not like he is able to earn the currency any faster than anyone else in a group.

It is interesting that the recent suspensions have NOT come with interaction with GM's - in other words a GM does not come into the zone and send you a tell and the you fail to respond so boom, suspension. They are not doing that

Players are just getting bumped off and suspended or logging on after weeks or months and receiving notice they are suspended, even after uninstalling the suspect programs.

Its like once you are flagged it just keeps happening.

So people have been saying that suspend/ban waves are delayed (due to the investigative and evidence-gathering process).

In terms of "No GM" interaction, that would be anecdotal information taken at face value. By saying they didn't see GM messaging, they are effectively running a defense on ignorance.

This example makes no sense and again is showing your understanding of the subject matter. No one is farming type 5's with a bot army, this takes an actual player in the drivers seat. Also who cares how many type 5's someone has? The game is about your enjoyment, gearing up is part of the process.

Come on. This is like saying Morwenna and Blasphemous Steel are unicorns. You do realize Morwenna and Blasphemous Steel were camped 24/7 by bot crews (until reported and suspended) on single static zones on many servers.