MacroQuest64

I'm really curious about this, and I haven't seen it answered yet, and the question really needs its own thread. Does anyone have any idea exactly what SoE is doing as far as this 'crackdown' goes? I mean, are they possibly just taking /petitions from onlookers more seriously? Or do they have serverside parsers for methodic movements? I mean, the possibilities for this is really endless, but if we can talk to some people who have been spoken to by GM's regarding the matter, we can probably fit the puzzle pieces together.

The faster we can get a good, *accurate*, idea of what's safe and what isn't, the faster I can get back on my Bard without having to rest my fingers every 5 minutes.

One thing I found interesting is this quote from Alan posted on Caster's Realm:
"I can't describe the cheat method in any detail, but there was an experience cheat that allowed extremely fast leveling. This required some rather sophisticated cheating, but was being done without inside help. Obviously we have removed that exploit and banned any accounts that used it.""

Maybe all they can do, or have acted on, is related to macros (and the dumbasses behind them) using these "experience cheats"?

Hell if I know.

They are insta-answering ANY petition that goes into the queue. At least two guides are now required to be on any server at any one time. They've not implemented anything into EQ that detects passive macros, or changes. IE: The lore description from MQ2, and buff timers. The stuff that I use the most. But they have implemented a logging system that tracks anything, including trades, that are being done for more than an hour at a time, in succession.

Also, there have been nerfs to a LOT of combines, and the delays on most combines have been upped. There have also been delays added to the merchants buying items from you, as well as some merchants even denying your sale to them.

It's becoming a sad, sad world. They're tearing apart everything that makes the game, a game. Including actually getting money for your jobs(tradeskills). So it's now becoming plain to see just how EQ is going to crash, and it makes me sad.

They're tearing apart everything that makes the game, a game. Including actually getting money for your jobs(tradeskills).

Actually....The Vision(tm), at least in its original form, has always been that the only way tradeskills would make money was through player-player interaction. They were designed to CREATE community be requiring people to interact with one another. ANY combine that made money was an oversight.


www.eqtraders.com

Do some digging around in the Den Mother's Corner/General Tradeskills sections on the message boards, especially the Fan Faire reports and you'll see SoE representatives stress that point over and over.

On my server right now there is only 1 guide and I doubt they are tracking anything in logs ATM (nothing more than before). They have not nerfed the components for the combines and you still make a 1pp profit per combime.

Ask yourself these questions - (Everybody in general)
Now if you are using macros and dont add delays in them to slow them down then I guess you get what you get. There's no need to be greedy since you aint doing the work. If you make 10k a day who cares why try to make 20k? Are you that greedy to push the envelope that will get you caught? If you want to make all you can in a day then have fun before you get caught be just remember you would be ruining it for the community that helped you make that plat.

You know I could be have with making 1k to 5k a day with no effort and would be very happy with the outcome becuase remember this you didn't have it before you started the day.

elric .. i can confirm the delays on the combines, but thanks for the delays on my macro mine workd, my macro made me forge at humanly speed which i thought was more fair to begin with .. i liked to see it happen =P ..

the delay from merchants buying stuff from you, it seems isa random timer of some sort .. that timer has to pass befor you can sell again .. lasts up to 2 seconds i believe( havnt tested .. afraid to ) but my macro was selling in 1 second increments and sometimes it wouldnt sell .. got the message it was too fast. or it didnt wanna sell.

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im actualy glad they put delays on the combines .. it doesnt matter to me .. as long as i can do it without using my mouse ( which is starting to break ) im happy .. all the delays on the combines did was nerf the turbo macro'ers IMO .. which goes back to what i been saying .. why dont they just implement some auto tradeskilling as describbed in my other post (somewhere here) then they wont have to worry about ( and we wont ) all the kids who go off trying to make macros. more then half the people who come to this place are after tradeskill macro's .. and 90% of those are looking for PP making ones. ..IMO .. they need to automate it somewhat.
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so make your macro's work more intelligently, at the speed you would work at, and the way you would too... humanly


/enable flaming
/enable biatching
/enable debating
/exit stage_left

One thing that I find funny is this ... Look at the publicity this crackdown is getting ... I mean, this will easily multiply MQ2's popularity 5 fold, if not more. In the process of them trying to stop it, they're basically advertising. And once people come to these boards (not exactly hard to find, especially since it was linked on SOE's Official EQ Board) and see how many people are doing it, and more importantly, how not to get caught, ... I mean, that's just funny to think about.

But on a constructive note, if MQ gets up to the popularity of EQW, maybe Sony will step away from programming EQ2 for a few seconds and look at why their consumers use the program (ie, tradeskills, song-twisting macs, auto-archery, etc) and add it to their client? ..... Hell, what am I saying? Sony? Pay attention to us? That's crazy talk!

MQSEQ wrote:On my server right now there is only 1 guide and I doubt they are tracking anything in logs ATM (nothing more than before).

Yeah, I thought the same thing, until a petition for someone training me earlier was insta-answered... and the guide was not visible, but showed up standing in zone, right behind me.

Lol he didnt show up .. he was waiting there the whole time =P .. they hired the psychic network to help them. ... anywho ..

But on a constructive note, if MQ gets up to the popularity of EQW, maybe Sony will step away from programming EQ2 for a few seconds and look at why their consumers use the program (ie, tradeskills, song-twisting macs, auto-archery, etc) and add it to their client?

dude ... i wish they added all that stuff ... then we wouldnt have to be here trying to add it ourselfs ... it would be leagal ... then the real macroing would be for ... cheaters i guess .. lol but hey .. till then were "cheaters."

MQ is not for cheaters, it's for those who find the games lack of ability to add features that users want. I have seen some very nice macros written that was for the good of the game and to help folks combine stuff for skills. Let's look at Celestial Essance, it's a Non Trivial item to make (No Fail) but it takes 2 items to make so thats 4 clicks (2 to get items, 1 to combine and 1 to drop). Now do that 500 times just to make 500 items that would be 2000 clicks just to make 1 Item to be used in a trade skill. 500 Celestial Items will get you maybe 100 attempts for the final item with a less than 10% chance of getting a single point increase.

Now take those numbers (plus the other numbers for other items needed for a single combine) to a hand specialist and they will tell you that repetative movement will cause carpoltunnel syndrome. Hmm EQ already knows the game cause certin medical issues becuase of the color patterns and all they did was post a warning message (Good Job Sony). Hmm common sense will tell you that folks who get sore hands because of the game will stop playing the game and then there goes $13 per person who left. Now take that $13 and multiple it by 10,000 users (since there are over 400,000 accounts) would $130,000 per month in fees and times that by 12 = $1.56 Million US dollars. Of course the 10,000 number would probably alot higher but you get the point. Take that number to the Board of Trustees and explain how you lost $1.56 Million because of hurt hands.

Sony really needs to read these posts and buy the clue for 10pp at the PoK vendors. If they want to stop the use of these programs then they need to add them to the program.

MQSEQ wrote: Sony really needs to read these posts and buy the clue for 10pp at the PoK vendors. If they want to stop the use of these programs then they need to add them to the program.

No, if they add them, to EQ, then MQ will hack something else.

The people that are abusing MQ (and EQ, by extension) are doing it because they can. The people who are macroing 24/7 aren't doing it to save their wrists, or to hope to get that small chance at a skillup, they're doing it because it brings them lots of plat, and gives them an advantage over their fellow player. All this happy feel-good justification is bullshit. They want to cheat, and currently MQ is the easiest way to do it.

I don't know *ANYONE* who's been banned for making 500 celestial essences. The ones that have been banned are the ones megawarping, zoneshifting, afk plat macroing, and other stunts that are well beyond reasonable.

And a note to these fuckers: If you're so damned bored with the game that the only way you can have fun is to cheat, go find another game. Don't take away my enjoyment of the game just because you're bored and stupid.

Not 100% certain, but they may have put a delay on drops too.. ( or the click type action).
I tried to drop a whole bunch of items real quick yesterday and it wouldn't let me unless I clicked waited about a second or 2 and tried it again. May be lag, but...

Spectre I would love to know how they ruin your enjoyment of the game? You act like MQ just came out last month. Hate to pop the bubble it's been around a very long time. Now for those who haven't actually look at this Forum, the policy is not to AFK, plat generating, etc. even tho some folks do it and some abuse it.

And your *ANYONE* statement makes me believe you don't understand the concept of the EULA and using 3rd party software (you use them and get caught you can get banned, doen't matter what it was for). I gave an example of what alot of folks here have posted in the past so give them credit for why they use it (I personally use it for the BS trival skills so that I can manually make the big stuff). Is that cheating yep, do I care? Nope! Will I still use it? Whenever I need it!

As for adding them and MQ doing other stuff whocares that means Sony should look at adding those items into the game. For example in game DPS window, what's wrong with Sony adding a DPS window?

I don't care about the other hacks folks are doing but if they use them and get caught using them, then see ya.

I guess using my programable keyboard is wrong too? Even tho Sony says you can use the PS2 game controller (which auto fires and you set it game what you want it to do) is not against the EULA if your sitting there at the computer.

So Sony don't really care untill you get the folks complaining about it so they do something. Sony has turned blind eyes in the past even when there was picture and transaction proof of the macroing.

If you use these to purely cheat vs complimenting your enjoyment then your greed will get you caught. For those who say it hurts the economy just remember maybe if you didn't sell your junk at rediculous prices folks wouldn't need these programs. Anyone selling a spell for 250kpp is the person you really need to be piss at! Remember this as well all that plat they are making will find it's way into your pockets sooner or later! So it helps clean out the high price crap in the Bazaar and allows you to make a few plats in the process, now take 10% of the plat you made in the past month from selling junk in the Bazaar and you will see how much you made off someone doing the macros. I would say I have sold atleast 100k in the past month and about 40k was bought with plat that others made with exploits. Did that ruin my enjoyment? Hell no, now I can turn around and skill up with that money so I can make products to sell. My thought process is if I want to sell the products quicker then sell them cheaper than the rest. Now do that over and over and you make your own money.

I AFK MACRO!

there I said it.

but I dont think you would notice my chars doing it, which is somehting to ponder...

I have a nice system worked out that sends me an sms if I get a tell from a gm or if a gm enters a zone my char is in.

I also get an sms if another player approaches within a certain range and stays there for some time saying things or sending me tells.

I have been using this method for months, and not a single tell has been about macroing, more of the general noobcrap -Do you want to group and stuff...

However I should point out, that I havent been running any macros at all since jewlery craft got nerfed... nowdays I only use MQ while im playing for the extra enjoyment it brings, but if I got hold of a macro that could be making me plat while afk, I would not hesitate a second to jump at it, it would be stupid not to do it.

People that get banned for using "a 3d party tool" are just not using it correctly... afk or at the keyboard...

At least two guides are now required to be on any server at any one time.

Guides are unpaid volunteers. Due to how Sony's lawyers interpret the law, damned near nothing at all can be required of guides, at least as far as SoE is concerned. There are a few "thou shalt not" type requirements, but there's no way they could "require" 1 guide to be on server all the time, much less two. Add to this the fact that most servers have between 15 and 25 guides, and there are about 40 "swat" (roaming) guides total, the quoted assertation is just impossible.

GMs are paid employees. However, there are far too few of them to have even one on each server all the time, much less more than one.

On my server right now there is only 1 guide

Any time a guide or GM is /anon, they will not show up in the /who all gm list. You never know how many guides (or GMs) are currently logged into your server because of this.


No offense intended, at my pointing out these inaccuracies. I was a guide for several years though. Funny thing is... having MQ when I was a guide would have helped me to do my job better!

To be completely honest with you, I am a guide currently.

That's the only reason I know what I *do* know.

It wasn't an order, more like a heavy suggestion. Unpaid volunteers or not, they were still asked to be more attentive to the game.

:-). Just thought I should point that out.