Regarding Third Party Cheat Programs

Can we please get a clarification on boxing programs. I enjoy being able to assign a hotkey to specific EQ instances. I like being able to hit Alt+Ctrl+1 and having it always open my first instance. Alt Tab is annoying at times.

I box 4 toons without any outside software. I just load them in the same order and have an icon for each instance in the task bar. I just click the icon of whichever toon I want to do something on. This is on a live server. Obviously can't do this on a true box server as it won't let you play more than one toon per computer.

All of you guys name dropping these programs, like the Dev specifically ask you not .. you're risking action against your accounts, and giving them an excuse to lock this thread ( as if this thread is going anywhere =( ).

Your rant with random caps locked sentences and a giant text block with no punctuation is going to work against your point. People won’t take you seriously.

I box on Phinigel and I’ve never used the programs I described but a superior autofollow system would be beneficial to the game overall. Yes you can take wide turns and plan around the failures of the current system... or they could improve it.

It is beneficial to Daybreak to encourage easier boxing on regular servers as that’s more money for them. Perhaps they should consider incorporating some easier boxing features into the core game. For example, in many games clicking on a monster will get your character to stick to the monster and chase it around continually attacking. On Live servers there’s a huge number of activatable discs/spells/AAs you are constantly doing. It isn’t 1999 anymore where the only thing Melee has to do during a fight was autoattack and tap Backstab or Kick every 10 seconds. Following around a mob being pushed isn’t really a skill or fun, it’s just tedious at level 110. Perhaps they should incorporate this into game so that people who box Melee can more easily keep their Melee toons engaged on a mob without having it lose DPS when it gets pushed out of range.

Truebox servers I can understand not wanting many of these features but they are a minority here and these features could always be disabled on specific servers.

You're not wrong but you're not right here either.
The problem is that with this logic you're assuming that everyone boxing is using a recurring bit of revenue but that is incorrect. They are not paying for subs they are using Krono that is being aquired through gold by their excessive farming with their boxes. It is quite literally why many people go to TLP servers at all with their setups is just to get more Krono with less effort and then play the game for free.

Yes, someone is paying money for the Krono but the sale has already been made and some of the Krono farmers have years of playtime saved, they are hurting the game, especially on TLPs by existing at all and taking camps from players that need xp and or gear for themselves. Even with "truebox" the multi-boxers are just using 5 extra cheap computers to multibox their whole group with just to make more of their respective currency. I ran into this problem multiple times on Agnarr and then again on Coirnav. It hurt the game for me because there was not only less space to group but it became very hard to get gear that i actually needed just so a farmer could get some mediocre bump.

Did you really just say "Get Good At EQ?" Hah. Pathetic.

Congrats, you know how to auto follow your character. Nobody said that we can't do that, it was simply stated that auto follow, the way it is, is absolute garbage. The functions from [not to be named software] is simply better, hence the example.

Next time, keep your mouth shut and remember to put your helmet on before you login. You definitely sound like you wear one on a daily basis.

Most want the afk botters gone forever, but do it right. If we start seeing Mages banned for using Call of Hero for suspicious porting we will all be running scared. Hopefully y'all know what to look for but as long has this is been going on unpunished, I do wonder if the people in charge understand the game.

Daybreak, you need to be specific and answer the many questions please, as soon as possible, to stop the turmoil and negative commentary that you have triggered.

At the moment the rules you vaguely state cover everything from Gina to third party intrusion software.

You can resolve the frustration that you are causing simply by indicating the nature of the 'cheating' you are talking about, such as features of the 'cheat' software and examples of the more common ones that you encounter in your investigations.

Keep Calm and Carry On.

Yes ban them all for using gaming keyboards, mice, GINA, Vent and Discord also..../sigh here we go again.

You know if your using something you should not be.

As well, many only sub one account (usually a tank) and sometimes not even that unless they are trying to level aa's, so there is NO recurring money being made by DBG.

I think this is a bit awkward of a post to come from DBG considering the state of the game. I want to be clear before I make my points that I do not and have not EVER used any additional software with the game aside from a single window switcher macro that when it "M1" on my keyboard it hit Alt+Tab for me instead of me having to do two keystrokes and "M2" that did Alt+tab+tab to double tap to the third window.

I did my first dual box experience back in 2002 and it was just nice always having something there that was always useful. In my case I used a Shaman, back then I was a bit on the poor side and used two computers because I didn't have one that was capable of running two instances of EQ but I had my old computer and my new computer and my old one ran EQ with lower graphics settings at least. Having two accounts and playing two characters not only reduced the time it took to find a group but also guaranteed my group would be a success because I had this part that was an extra help, slows, extra heals, dps, etc.

Those things being said in the gamestate as it is today there are really only two ways to get to max level in the Live game. You either buy a boost and then grind or you just grind. The fact that Mercs are in the game makes things easy but mercs do not fill in the roles of a group and allow a player to pick a class of their choosing or in my case three classes of my choosing to get to max level. The game in the state it is currently in with the lower populations on servers and combined with the even LOWER number of people leveling on those servers means that you are extremely limited in options of who you can play with other than yourself and mercs restrict that even further.

For some people third party programs allow an individual to be able to play the class or classes they wish to without relying on mercs since as just stated Mercs do NOT fill the role of a proper player due to their limited class availability so a third party program allows them to control another class to fill that role better than a merc that isn't filling it AT ALL.

So with these things in consideration I think the reduction of cheating comes back to you Day Break Games. You have created a gamespace where it's not only beneficial but almost necessary to run third party applications to farm/etc.. than it is to just play the game. The scary fact is that if you want to have a good experience being a newer player on these low population servers(all your f2p base) then you almost HAVE to get a third party app and make six accounts to just be able to group and play or at the very least three accounts and mercs.

So right here we could just STOP and that would tell you everything you need to know about why third party and cheating applications are so prevalent....but i'll continue.

Continuing on since the introduction of Kronos as a currency that provides a RMT(real money transaction) the cost of items has risen sharply and the explosive inflation has made it so new players can't even afford to buy anything in the auction house unless they have a krono to sell for some base finance or pay for a subscription to get loyalty rewards for bags of plat. Beyond that even there is then later game experiences where there is content that is provided but nearly unable to be experienced at all without spending money on the game to gain access to extra AAs and spell ranks.

The entire previous paragraph was an explanation of how you designed your F2P systems into a Pay2Win system which then caused more problems with RMT and farming necessity with third party apps just to be able to get into the game at all without buying into the new P2W mechanics.

Going even deeper beyond that you limit the mercs for free players to mercs that are mostly useless. A single player with a single low tier merc can't possibly have a good experience which once again...drives people to either leave or seek out third party apps to have more accounts. This is a cause for heartache for most new players and I have had people that I play WoW with that come to play and actively tell me they can't get anything done because their merc can't heal them and they can't get gear after their first freebie set and then they are struggling because gear in the bazaar is horrifically overprices because heyy a chrono is like over 2 million plat so why shouldn't a level 15 piece of gear be 1000pp right? This is a problem of the economy, yes...but it's the economy that you created with RMT items. The same server that I played on in 2003 has an item on it that back then I bought for 100k, that is now 400k. An item that is 15 years old...well like 17 if you count it's actual expansion introduction has gone UP in price even though it's an easy solo for most players just because the basic principles of economic stability surrounding inflation have been entirely destroyed.

So, with all this information here you should, as a company understand that the fundamental issues of explosive proliferation of third party cheating programs is entirely a result of your designs. Telling people to stop playing the game in a viable way because we consider it "cheating" is a cop out on acknowledging the design mistakes that have been made over the years.

If you want to cut down on the problem of afk farming and cheating programs etc etc then you need to directly change the game to be able to be played in a manner consistent with the principles of gameplay. How you do that is entirely up to you but a couple options are things like full group merc play. Having a player be able to have a full group of mercs that manage abilities fairly well such as adding in the ability for an enchanter or shaman for haste, mana regen, etc. The other option is to create a better leveling experience designed around a player being able to solo entirely to near max level with regular interval questlines that grant full sets of gear that will scale with them through most of the content between the quests to get more gear and providing them with the capabilities of each character having two function mercs so a DPS can have a tank and healer or a tank can have a dps and healer or a healer have a tank and dps. These things solve some of the thirdparty issues with leveling toons but the high end stuff requires you guys to get away from RMT sources. As long as there is an avenue for an individual to gain real world monetary advantages they will attempt to do so in a matter that is beneficial to them. They can play the game entirely for free with all the benefits of a paid subscription without spending any money, if they are smart they will have an account that holds all their krono and only use what's needed on their farming toons so even IF they get caught they only lose a small amount then create six new free accounts send over six kronos and go back to doing what they were doing for another year without being caught.

Krono was never really the problem, it just seems that way. RMT existed long before krono's. It's cheat programs which allow people to box a full group (or far more in some cases) and farm 24/7 that cause the issues.

The question remains - why do that if not for a benefit? The two things are very much connected.

If a person had to spend their money per month on six accounts, even at the minimum which is what, 12 dollars a month? That is over 70 dollars just to farm plat if they are buying one year subs. There isn't an advantage to be had in that instance for them but...if they farm to get Krono to save themselves over 700 dollars per year...now that is something where there is a gain to be made.

I get what you are saying but a Krono transaction is an entirely approved in game transaction, they don't have to worry about their accounts getting banned for Krono activity but previous RMT sources they did. The Krono system as a basis for RMT is exactly what has caused the problem of excessive farming. Without it there is no way they would shell out 700, 1400, 2800 dollars a year just to farm virtual items with no monetary return.

I think DBG is expecting the users to utilize common sense here.

However if they are really serious about this, they should email a single one-time warning(with the ingame mailsystem and a ingame pop-up you won't miss), to everyone with a detected cheat program active, and simply state:

After the minute has passed they will disconnect, get a 24 hour suspension, and get a (real) email with the same message.

That would clear the confusion among the users as to what is ok. and still give people the choice to continue playing without cheating, when the suspension has passed.

The only downside is that some of the cheaters will(after a lot of banned accounts) be able to learn how the detection is made, and circumvent it. I doubt many cheaters will feel it is worth the risk though.

I think you underestimate some people's desire to win at pixels.

I would rather they just get banned and not a free pass.

They get a free pass to disable it immediately and forever, and they can't complain about not getting a very clear warning. I can live with that.

Mostly as a service to the few thick-heads who lack common sense(they pay for their subscription too).

[quote="
Recently we greatly improved our algorithms for finding problem accounts.[/quote]

Translation: We will put out a post about third party programs and see who complains. ROFL!
I couldn't resist.

Maybe spend some time... I don't know... fixing the account to account character transfers or making a 19th anniversary raid event... wait, missed that boat. Maybe spend some time making quests other than trade skilling (as exciting and exhilarating as completing an additional 4% of my baking was to reach 317, I don't know what you could do to top that).

Please stop putting your efforts into something that only a few people do and start putting it into things people desire in the game as a whole. This game isn't going to die from people cheating, it's dying because people don't care about it anymore and/or don't want to turn themselves into cave trolls to get somewhere with their characters/toons. Level 85 toons can't even hope to catch up now with 110 toons outside of some serious help from the community. A community that I'm watching shrink more and more each day. Many classes have AA maxes in the 30000+ range. So, the pitch is "battle with the best, Heroic Characters now available, Instant access to level 85." So, for a brand new player, having no idea what to do in the game, who wants to battle with the best, can spend $35 US (in addition to the monthly subscription) to get a character with less than half the AA's of their 110 peers, access to playable (for their level range) content almost a decade old that NO ONE goes to anymore... Might want to rethink the 85 bit.

Losing core people who have known this very complex game from it's infancy, and who can explain the intricacies and small nuances that are needed to play even somewhat competently is absolutely disastrous. As mentioned before, it's not due to cheaters (they've been around since the beginning) it's due to boredom from lack GOOD content, that's worth while to grind at, that's fun to achieve both in single player and group/raid. I'm not seeing that. Even the creative end of the game hasn't been opened in 19 years... 19 YEARS!!!. The only people who can submit creative content are those who have accounts in the US. A company that seems very focused on the micro transaction end of the game may want to strongly consider opening this area up to the rest of the WORLD that plays it's game. Imagine fellow EQer's, having a selection of things to buy from the market place outside of the same stuff, from the same people, year in and year out. People are tired or getting ambiguous answers to their questions of when changes to these things are coming. Perhaps DB could just change their answers to all the questions people have been asking about content and play-ability to "we're not quit there yet, but rest assured, as soon as we catch all the cheaters, we'll get to it!"

I'd like to throw these questions out to the community;

When, if ever, has someone cheating ruined your game enough that you or someone you know wanted to/strait up quit?

When, if ever, have you considered leaving or watched friends/guildies leave because...? I'll let you guys finish that question.

I think the varied responses/completions to that open ended question may be what DB could put it's time and resources into. I think the future of this game is hanging on it right now.

I agree, cheating is an area to work on, but like my counterpart above stated, this isn't a game worth policing at the moment. I'm personally bothered more by bullying, kill stealing and being intentionally trained by other players than I eve was with people cheating, in any capacity. Maybe write some algorithms to catch people doing that nonsense.

Before I end my little rant here I would like to mention that I have seen a lot of really nice improvements come into play in the last few years since DB took over. However, many of those changes (1000 stack piles for trade skill items, many many fixes to the user interface that have been years coming) feel hollow. 3rd party programs have been years ahead of the game as far as looting (which is now automated) and interface issues (such as a bard melody that picks up where it left off after being stunned or the more recent non stop melody if there is no target and a direct damage song is played). It's great that Everquest is appearing to catch up in that regard and I hope that this can take place even faster in the future.

As for myself, I'm interested to see what DB has in store for its next expansion and what they have up their sleeve as a company for the 20th anniversary. After that who knows.