Find a new way to check if people are AFK

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Reece, Jul 19, 2015.

  1. Mezrah Augur

    Hmmm

    From that list, I believe the following were in the game when I started playing in april 1999.

    5. Macro's and Hotbuttons. I used socials and Macro's to announce things like heals and use of Divine Aura / Barrier on my cleric.
    9. Follow. I certainly remember following other group members around.
  2. Mezrah Augur

    Hmmm

    In another MMO I played, they did not send tells to people they suspected of botting, because of the ease of setting it up so they could be alerted to any incoming /tells, instead they used to move characters to different areas of the zone to see if it resulted in any change of behaviour.
    Fallfyres likes this.
  3. Behee Augur

    We won't group with people who don't box. They are just too intolerant of other players, they prefer to watch everything you say and do, and report it as some sort of breach of some arbitrarily understood rule, in hopes some uneducated GM will enforce it.

    We play to play with each other in real life. Sorry if that offends people, but "social" doesn't mean being forced to group with intolerant and ignorant players.
    Fastdefense likes this.
  4. Tarrin Augur

    GINA is an audio trigger program. It runs and gives you text overlays / voice to text audio triggers, etc. It can monitor multiple log files at once. There is no automation, etc. So its completely fine to use.

    It doesn't run the game for you. It only does audio triggers. When I 2 box, I have it set up to display yellow words on my screen " Soandso has received a tell".

    I am still curious how you would prefer them to do a simple test on if a person is AFK botting or not.
    Rhiyannon likes this.
  5. Tarrin Augur

    I personally think sending a quick tell is better than disrupting a person playing the game via moving toons around. With certain boxing software being absolutely fine to use, I can see that causing issues / inconclusive results.
  6. Mezrah Augur

    Hmmm

    It is certainly less disruptive, as for better? Depends if by better, you mean more effective. I don't believe it is, using GINA and custom audio triggers means it is easy to be alerted to a tell. On Fippy I took part in a lot of long socks on the raiding scene, I knew plenty of people that used to go to sleep during the window and that relied on key phrases triggering their audio alerts to wake them up / alert them. Same principle, someone could be doing unattended botting while sleeping / cooking / whatever and have an audio trigger to alert them to incoming tells.
  7. Dark_Intentions Augur

    There needs to be a code solution, not sending tells to people.

    What if someone responded with "I see your message, but I'm too busy killing things in dangerous areas. Go away and mail me, and I'll respond later."

    So, should they get banned? They responded. They were busy. Where does it say this is not an acceptable way to respond? Did a human press a macro button, or was it a bot? Where does it say I have to respond AT ALL? Maybe I don't want to talk to people.
    Fastdefense likes this.
  8. Vaclav Augur


    It wasn't in initially - but it was a VERY early addition. Sept 99 at the latest.
  9. Machen New Member


    This would be terrible. The last thing people need is their healer getting randomly ported across the zone while they are fighting because someone suspected him of boxing.
  10. Mezrah Augur

    Hmmm

    Aye, but it would certainly be very damning if the healer kept on trying to chain heal despite being out of range.

    I am not advocating doing that, I just don't believe that sending a tell is very effective, it seems to provide the illusion of doing something without actually doing anything.
    Rhiyannon likes this.
  11. ripndobys New Member

    once upon a time there was this AFK mage and his earth elemental pet in Runney eye citadel AFK camping a popular named camp.I sent a tell asking for food ( i never really needed any) i never got a response so i hailed him, still nothing so i mezzed this named and waited for it to wear off, AFK mage's pet attack again i re-mezzed it, and sent another tell asking for water ( had lots of water also) still nothing, hrm weird ok so i charmed the named continued to experience with him ( he makes for a great pet) once he was close to dead i killed him received my loot and basically rinsed and repeated for the next 6 hours AFK mage never once became not AFK or complained a single time. i also ask him for some pet weapons to give to the named i just charmed that is sitting next to him and if he did not want to open trade with me he could just directly give them to him but he never responded =( oh well was a good day
    Rhiyannon likes this.
  12. Hendar2 Augur

    AFK with a mage pet isn't botting. I recall people getting into trouble with it for a bit, but then it wasn't an issue. AFK with a merc isn't botting either. Both of these use in-game features.
  13. Unrepentant New Member

    Grouping pretty much killed eq live for me. I'd log in with 2 hours to play and spend half of it trying to build a semi-decent group.

    I refuse to do that ever again. I three box most of the time, warrior, druid, enchanter, and it works for me. I have three computers and run one toon on each. Anyone is welcome to join my little group, but I always tell them up front that I'm boxing the three. I'm also willing to log a toon if another player of same class wants to join. But I am not sitting around waiting for groups. I login and start play immediately.

    And honestly, I have friends in real life. I don't need them in a game. I enjoy them when I find them, but I don't need them. I also don't need to conquer raid bosses or wear the most l33t gear. I set my sights on a target and figure out a way to beat it. That's what I enjoy. Do what you like. I'll do what I like. It's why we both pay a bill.

    As far as annoying the crap out of other players, I can think of a lot of things that annoy me more, like level 50 players perma camping a level 20 mob. Personally, I'd like to see trivial loot code come back into play.
    Fastdefense likes this.
  14. Tarrin Augur

    A code solution? I don't see how that is possible outside of forcing you to download an extra program that monitors your PC and what you do on it while on EQ.

    I would cancel EQ immediately if they wanted to start doing that.
  15. Rhiyannon Augur


    and that solution would affect all tradeskilling
  16. Dark_Intentions Augur


    Yeah, I don't know how either. There might be some way.

    How about an occasional CAPTCHA popup?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA
  17. Hecula New Member

    Simple - first make a general announcement that if you are sent tells and don't answer in a satisfactory manner, you will be assumed to be AFK and if not in a safe location will be sent to bind or a safe spot in zone or disconnected.

    Second, in your tells, ask a question or two - maybe some trivia like what are you camping or what zone or what game are you playing - change it up each time. Or simple math - what is 6+2? Let people know that if you get a canned message, it's off to bind or disconnect.

    Story:

    A few days ago I was camping a spot in the early morning before work. I had a human monk-type toon run in and stand in front of me. I don't normally say anything because it's not unusual for people to run through this camp, I normally don't get a response anyways and people usually leave once they see I'm keeping things down. A placeholder popped so I killed it while this guy watched me. A few seconds later I was disconnected - not just kicked offline but client crash. I was like, "HAX! That guy somehow crashed my client because he wanted my camp!" So I logged back in and said something to the guy in say. The guy just waved and ran off. A min later I got a tell from the guy - this is Senior Guide Priowen - we had reports of a zone disruption.

    I didn't get any tells or anything before being crashed. Maybe I did and missed it. But I doubt it and there was no way to check after the fact because I wasn't logging. So maybe the test was to see if I went offline and stayed off or logged back in? I just don't know about that. It's sort-of like testing to see if you're a witch by burning you at the stake. If you don't burn, you're obviously a witch.

    Also, perhaps I'm naïve but I don't know the names of the guides so I have no idea if someone is a guide, GM or player so I don't know if I'm being watched and certainly don't know to preemptively send someone a tell or say something. The last thing is, I was close to having to head off for work so I almost didn't log back in. The only reason I did was because I was going to be damned if I let someone hack me and knock me offline to steal my camp without at least logging back in and giving them a piece of my mind. But if I chose to just head to work early, I guess I would be assumed to be AFK?

    My last guide interaction was back in 2000 or so when someone ninjad a locustlure in KC and a guide helped distribute it fairly among the group. But more investigation would have been nice - not just a disconnect. Should be fairly easy to spot someone using canned replies just with a little talking to that person. For those that have such a slick system that they can avoid detection like this, it's not worth the disruption to the other people who are not AFK to try and ferret them out IMHO.
  18. Jaime Lannister Augur

    This is why I have a Audio Trigger on every character, that actually says the characters name being spoken to if they get a Tell =p
  19. Imak Augur

    Can someone point me to the section of the EULA that states I am required to respond to tells in some obscure definition of a timely manner? And/or the section stating I am forbidden from ignoring tells entirely? I scanned through the document, but cannot find such things.
    Fastdefense likes this.
  20. Machen New Member


    Oh, I think it's very effective at accomplishing what they actually want to accomplish, verifying completely unattended game play. They just need to be better about avoiding false positives on guys that are at the keyboard but tabbed out/on a different character. It makes no sense for them to give the thumbs up to key replication software, which is designed specifically to let you send commands from another toon without having to look at the screen of the toon receiving the commands, and then punish you for actually not looking at the screen of the toon receiving the commands.
    Rhiyannon likes this.