Obvious botting behavior in FG

Discussion in 'General Gameplay Discussion' started by Elostirion, Feb 24, 2022.

  1. Elostirion Well-Known Member

    There is once again a deluge of extremely obvious botting behavior in FG. Toons zigzagging around making instant high-angle turns, running directly at TS nodes back and forth on an obvious "target nearest one of these" algorithm, frequently getting stuck on zone geometry worse than a roomba.

    They're not bothering to be sophisticated enough to be plausible human behavior. Is this to be permitted?
    Sunlei and Twyla like this.
  2. FuRiouSOne Well-Known Member

    Funny how people are using bots to do their weeklies/dailies and I dont blame them, specially ones that have 20+ alts that need to do this boring task every week/day...

    I gave up doing them other then the occasional weekly as the rewards are and have been complete trash. Have 30+ raid weapon recipe that will never get used, thousands of chess piecs, rocks and grass and very rarely get any good recipe books.

    Lets hope they learn from this awful mistake and go back to having us gather actual resources and give us useful rewards. Keep the house items on the house item vendor and or crafted only...
  3. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    I don't have enough coordination or computer to bot, but I do strafe and run at odd angles. I also by golly know where all the nodes are now that I have run through these quests a zillion times, so yes, I go straight to the next node. I often get stuck on the blasted broken crates and sometimes in the cart by Corpseolynn's house.

    The nodes in FG aren't like regular harvesting nodes. You can't tab-target them, you have to mouse over them exactly and click them, so I'm not real sure how a bot would even do this. But hey, people do get real creative when cheating, I guess.

    Anyway, my best advice is "You do you, ignore the other people" on this one. If you are just darned and determined that this is someone automating gameplay in a way inconsistent with the rules, then /petition and report the activity and let customer service sort it out.
    Breanna, Pixistik, AOE1 and 2 others like this.
  4. Xavion Well-Known Member

    even if they did a do daily 10x you unlock xyz recipe woudlve been better then rng atleast people wouldve had a goal
  5. Lateana Older than Dirt, Playing EQII since 2004

    The powers that be just can't seem to get that crafters want real rewards, not random junk.
  6. Elostirion Well-Known Member



    This... makes no sense to me. I've seen you be very friendly and helpful for many years now. But this appears to be deliberate misinterpretation of a well known phenomenon.

    You cannot strafe and run at odd angles and change your facing instantly when you change direction using normal controls. You would not run from the spawn point by renfry's basement past the bank to get an ooze, then turn 160 degrees to get the one to the right of the entry gate, then turn 140 degrees to get the one by the second wagon-fragment before the hill up to renfry's basement (because it just spawned), etc, until you're done with ooze and then do a similar high speed (**) zigzag all over the entry area for the next item on your list.

    You would not get stuck in the blasted broken crates for minutes at a time, repeating a command every second or so until you appear to stop and vanish and reappear at the zone-in point from renfry's basement.

    Acknowledging half of what I say and stretching that half to its maximum possible (It cooooooould not be cheating if...) limits is disrespectful pettifogging, and I would not have expected it from you. Discord-goers have acknowleged that this is indeed a well-observed process every Thursday mornings, and given strategies to increase the quality of the reporting of it (**) including acknowledging that these bots move at such high speed that getting their character names legible in a recording is the primary challenge. Why are you now a bot-apologist? Why would you ask us to ignore this behavior? You have really surprised me.
  7. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    Because I personally haven't seen anything that looks to me like automated gameplay happening. I'm running 13 toons through the harvesting in FG. I think, on Maj'Dul, I'd have noticed? Perhaps, perhaps not.

    I do see lots of people who deliberately try to rush ahead and "steal" a harvesting node out from under me (rude!) But that's the only bad behavior I've actually seen. This is not a zero sum game: there are lots of nodes and they repop fast.

    I play with three fingers on the L, R, and Up arrows, while driving with the mouse buttons held down, and I can make some pretty amazing changes in direction. It doesn't usually take me more than a few seconds to get unhung from crates or the cart handles, and thus far I have not had to evac to get free.

    Have you tried sending /tells to the people you suspect of being bots? How do they answer?

    Like I said before, if you see behavior that you are convinced is automated gameplay with no human at the keyboard, then /petition and report it. But for my 2c, I just blow them off and move elsewhere in FG to harvest if someone is annoying me.
    Bhayar, Breanna and Twyla like this.
  8. DENSER Well-Known Member

    frankly it's not easy. the same, I Zigzag, tried to do this quest in 15 min max without stopping, since I have 4 characters to do and above all try to get rid of them as quickly as possible So boring.So know if it's a Bot, not easy. Even if you see him stumble against an obstacle, this can be a multitude of excuses (poo emergency, postman, kids, husband, wife etc etc ) Only those capable of antiquing the intricacies of these programs could enlighten us
    Twyla likes this.
  9. Cisteros Active Member

    When not in combat I try and run on balanced settings so I can see the sparkly auras better. In FG that means I run at about 4 FPS when harvesting. I press forward for an instant and find myself overshooting my node. I find myself stuck in overturned carts for several seconds at least twice per weekly on every character. I find myself moving on from a node I think I have harvested only to realize that my harvest click did not register. I try clicking on a node only to find my camera angle and perspective radically changed from the instant before. I'm also OCD and know which nodes spawn where so it is easy to narrow my targets as I get closer to finishing off. All of that combined and it comes pretty close to perfectly fitting the description of what you are seeing.

    Example, up the steps from Eyegore and the dude we first meet in MW...one spiderweb on the bottom step next to the wall where a Necromantic Sentinel spawns. Up the steps, second spawn point on the right wall is spiderweb #2. Closed door on the left slightly further up is spiderweb #3. Zig-zag straight to what I need and ignore the twisted bits of metal...check
  10. Elostirion Well-Known Member



    No. It very much doesnt. But that's okay. I have to thank all of you (and I remember your names from a decade ago). You've convinced me that it is just not worth taking time to explain anything further. You are either determined not to understand/concede the possibility that something you claim not to have seen could exist, or you know very well what I'm talking about and the gaslight is thick in here. Those are really the only options because some of these comparisons are amazingly weak, so I know which option I favor.

    But that doesn't matter. You've convinced me that it is not worth taking time or making videos and submitting reports. How it is is how it will be, for several obvious reasons, and I'm left with Siggy's original recommendation to ignore it. That's actually probably better, even though its for the wrong reasons and I'm honestly thankful.
  11. Cisteros Active Member

    Or the alternative possibility that you did not adequately convey what you saw because based on your first post and my harvesting experience of the past week fighting lag I genuinely thought it was possible you saw me trying to finish the daily/weekly on any of my 7 125 toons and saw everything you described in your original post and I know I am not a bot or running any botting program and tried to give an explanation why it might appear that I look like a broken roomba when trying to complete those missions.
    • Toons zigzagging around making instant high-angle turns...check
    • running directly at TS nodes back and forth on an obvious "target nearest one of these" algorithm...check
    • frequently getting stuck on zone geometry worse than a roomba....check
    And I am not trying to say bots and botting do not exist or are not a problem in the game and should simply be ignored or worse accepted, or that you have not seen it happening. I hope someone does look into it to make sure that botting is not happening. I just don't want to be misidentified as someone doing it.

    I wish you well
  12. Almee Well-Known Member

    I've seen behavior such as that mentioned by the OP but I assume DP is keeping an eye out for botters and will eventually get them. I don't let it bring me down because there are lots of nodes available. most of the time, and it just isn't worth getting stressed over.

    It is also possible that handicapped people are using bots. As Sigrdrifa said, targeting is really hard so anyone with poor hand and eye coordination is at a great disadvantage doing the daily and weekly. I have a massive headache after doing the weekly and my hand is shot for days. Fortunately, I have no great need for any of the rewards so I don't need a bot but others might.

    I would hope, however, if anyone is going to cheat with a bot, that they would keep their botting to the lessor used areas of FG. It is irritating, and rude to use one in highly-populated areas.
  13. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    Don't count on that. Although we KNOW that they can detect automation (they do so on PVP servers, I have heard) they seem pretty much to ignore it on Live servers unless someone /petitions and reports the activity. Since most botters are running more than one account, that's extra subscription money coming in. It's not until they are actively disrupting gameplay enough to draw complaints that anything seems to ever get done.

    If someone is annoying you badly enough, try sending them a /tell and asking them to be more considerate. If you get no answer or some odd answer that seems like it's "canned", and you think the rest of their behavior strongly suggests automated gameplay, then /petition and report it.

    Just programatically speaking, since you can't tab-target the FG nodes, an assumed bot program would have to have some way to identify where to click. I don't see any way to actually program such thing, where the click has to hit a particular small area of pixels to register. I never underestimate the frakkery of cheaters, though, so perhaps... That's why trying to communicate with the suspected bot is important. If it is actually a bot, talking to it often will make them instantly log out (a trait I first noticed in Sinking Sands back when that was new!) which solves the problem by getting rid of the annoyance, and you can STILL /petition and report them with that as extra evidence.
  14. Satarie Member

    I just don't understand all the people getting so bent out of shape to do all the nasty stuff I see on the forums. Its not like you will get RL money for any of this stuff. People its just a game.
  15. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    Some botters DO get RL money. They use shortcuts to get loot, they either sell loot rights or take the loot to IoR and sell it there. Then they can sell plat and/or Krono for RL money.

    I'm still not sure why people buy plat/Krono this way, because the consequences of getting caught are not good. I love my EQ2 game too much to risk being banned, or losing my account then having to create a whole new account and re-creating characters from scratch.
    Siren likes this.
  16. Tanto Done, finished, gone.

    Let's be realistic. This isn't a good game. It probably was once, or at least good enough. Right now though, no, it's barely good enough to hang on to die hard players. Daybreak have been truly awful custodians of this game. What we have now is far from being worth what we pay to play it. Everyone knows that really, and most players just hang around for their guildies/friends. Without that, nobody in their right mind would choose this game over pretty much anything else out there.

    With that in mind. I'd say that for someone wanting to get back to their old guildies, get caught up, get raiding and get some instant gratification, the risk vs reward of going to some dodgy website to get a few hundred million plat and some pay to win stuff, so they can compete in our utterly broken economy (which Daybreak/SoE CHOSE to not rectify when the dupes originally happened), is completely different. They won't shed a tear if by some miracle they get caught (they won't).

    That said, why use botting software to run the TS weekly? lol. I mean, are we thinking it's to sell GM books? Would that really be aiming high enough for someone who wants to make money this way? I highly doubt it. If somebody was doing this, I expect it'd be out of laziness, as the quest is pretty mind-numbing. If you've got a lot of alts, it's daunting sitting down to churn them all out in one session.
  17. Almee Well-Known Member

    This game might be bad for some people, Tanto, but I still love it and hope to have it around for a long time to come. It has its quirks, and it frustrates me no end, at times, like today when it refused to acknowledge an item needed for The Proof of the Pudding quest that was in the bank. I had to actually put the item in my backpack, and return to the NPC, to get her to accept it. She had no problems taking the other 8 items out of the bank.

    I can see, however, where raiding-type people might find the game lacking. There must be something worthwhile about the game, however, to keep them paying and playing.
    Siren likes this.
  18. AOE1 Well-Known Member

    I have tried to send a tell to them and usually end up telling them that I will stand back and let them get done running over everyone else in the zone to get theirs, THEN I will continue to harvest what I need. It isn't like the mats don't spawn in a matter of seconds. Good grief, the rudeness is ridiculous.
    Twyla likes this.
  19. Satarie Member

    I guess I had forgotten about people selling the rights to loot stuff for RL money. I'm not sure there is anyway we can put a stop to this. Maybe instead of sending a tell to the offenders. Sent out the names of people doing this in general chat and everyone flood them with tells. I know in EQ1 they use to have a black ball policy where players wouldn't group with the person.(the players) but with the ability to box that wouldn't work. Might just have to put up with it. From what I have seen on the broker prices are out of sight might make the best items very cheep for awhile. Heck everyone should have tons of pp by now. but I dont play in the upper lvls cause of the crazy stuff going on in them. I do the TLE servers or make a new toon on the regular servers and go to diff areas to learn what all in that zone. I guess those of you that do you'll just have to put up with it. in a way you kind of caused the situation. Had to have better stuff and harder raids. Not much to do in the upper lvls from what I hear then raid.
  20. That guy. Well-Known Member

    Bots are paying customers too.
    dragonfodder22 likes this.