Is Cheating O.K.?

[Fox the Clever]

All right, I've just about had enough of the things I have seen happening in the lands of Norrath lately, and I'm just posting this to vent.

What is getting my ire up is the outright cheating I've been seeing in the game. LOTS of cheating. It almost seems as though I can't turn around without discovering somebody or group of somebodys engaged in dubious behaviour. What the heck has happened? The pendulum has swung from the early days of EverQuest under Verant with a (often tyranically enforced) no tolerance policy against cheating, to the present day under SoE where a blind eye seems to be increasingly turned towards scummy behavior.

Please understand that I'm no idealist. I know cheating has always occured and, given the size of the gaming populations and the small number of those who enforce the rules (especially after server GMs were done away with), one will always have troublemakers slipping through the cracks. As of late, though, it seems to be getting worse. I'm talking about zoning into Cobalt Scar to farm some arctic wyvern hides for a tailoring skill-up run and finding absolutely no wyverns anywhere and, upon checking, discovering that just some anonymous guy and I are in the zone. Suddenly, the anonymous guy is gone and, a few minutes later, all of the wyverns pop at once - ALL of them. WHAT....THE....HECK? I'm talking about walking into Riverdale one fine day in order to purchase ingredients in order to make misty thicket picnics, and I discover two characters engaged in rather......questionable behavior with one of the quest givers - and who immediately bolt to the zone with their tails between their legs upon realizing that somebody who doesn't belong to their skank guild is in the zone. I'm talking about character names; stupid names, gross names, and names that make one think "Gah, how did that obscenity get past the name filter?!" becoming increasingly common.

Yes, I know what /petition is. I know what /report is. I use them whenever and wherever the need arises, but aside from a few changed names, they seem to do no good anymore. On the Tribunal server, there's this one guy who camps out in the city of Thurgadin. He has set up his character as a forage bot, and can usually be found in the zone, running his macro and foraging items day in and day out. It is PAINFULLY obvious as to what he is doing, as he is tucked away in some tight little corner of the city, never responds to any forms of communication, is always automatically dropping unwanted foraged items at his character's feet, and is almost always there. I have fired off petition after petition against this character, and nothing is ever done. All I have ever gotten back were generic, cut-and-paste replies that often didn't even apply to the subject that I had brought up. What can the GMs possibly be thinking? Oh wait, I can guess:

"Oh no no no no no, we can't ban this person! We've already lost too much business to World of Warcraft!".

That must be it. That's why cheaters are being tolerated to an increasing degree. We haven't quite reached the level of cheating of, say, the early days of Asheron's Call, but I fear if left unchecked, Norrath will one day get like that.

There, I finally got that off my chest! How about the rest of you? Has anybody else noticed if cheating has become more prevalent on your server? I'm just wondering if it's just me, or in fact cheating has become O.K.

[Melinia]

Cheating seems to be ok if those sorrounding the cheaters do nothing to stop it.
If "powers that be" in any given situation will not step up to the plate to stop the cheating it is up to the simpleton to take a stand. You can publically (/say) call them out on thier infraction. You can notify your guild not to do business/group with individuals cheating. There is nothing stopping your guild from creating a "Do-Not-Group/do business with" list. Soon enough word will spread the person(s) is a snake.
If those around you will not support your disdain for those who do not EARN thier way, maybe you need to find a new group to sorround yourself with.

Remember "Birds of a Feather, Flock together!"

[crystilla]

Cheating does stink.

On the Cobalt scar thing, while I haven't seen the exact situation you mentioned, I can tell you it's very possible that by natural causes 10 or more can spawn within seconds of each other.

When I was raising tailoring, I was able to pull 10 or so at a time and AoE them with a spell or my DoN ward. They wouldn't respawn at the exact same instant however, but they would within 3-5 seconds of each other.

[Fox the Clever]

On the Cobalt scar thing, while I haven't seen the exact situation you mentioned, I can tell you it's very possible that by natural causes 10 or more can spawn within seconds of each other.

When I was raising tailoring, I was able to pull 10 or so at a time and AoE them with a spell or my DoN ward. They wouldn't respawn at the exact same instant however, but they would within 3-5 seconds of each other.

Oh, I am very well aware of this. I have personally witnessed skillful players, both alone and in groups, wreak astonishing area of effect havoc on huge packs of critters. The thing that gets me with the Cobalt Scar incident that I mentioned at the beginning of this thread is that the other guy took off almost immediately upon my arrival in the zone. One would think that if you were doing things in a legitimate fashion, you wouldn't mind other people watching you. Even more importantly, I have encountered this situation more than once, with leads me to suspect it simply wasn't a matter of coincidence, of me just happening to arrive just as the other guy decided that he was done.

[Angelsyn]

Honestly? Some people don't want their "tricks" to become known... whether they're exploits or not.

Remember when Bards were slaughtering in HoH? For a long time nobody wanted to publicly say how it was done, since they all knew it would lead to it being stopped.

Have you ever tried to see if that person has headed back to Cobalt Scar again and again?

As far as that person who is foraging in Thurgadin... what's the harm, really? They're not using a true Macro, more likely using one of those joysticks or whatever... like Rangers used to do to "autofire" before autofire was put in the game.

And this "questionable behavior" you mentioned?

[Pootle]

As far as that person who is foraging in Thurgadin... what's the harm, really? They're not using a true Macro, more likely using one of those joysticks or whatever... like Rangers used to do to "autofire" before autofire was put in the game.

I used to see this on my old sever, some guy managed get his toon inside a rock under the ice bridge in thurgadin, he was there for hours and hours on end. There was no way he was sitting at his computer doing this.... and if he is not at his comp then its considered an illegal macro.

The same character then moved to Jaggedpine Forrest and was doing the same thing.

2 zones with highly prized forage items.

[Lemeril]

The one thing SOE can not control is the new keyboards with innate macro's that you can setup to auto do this then pause and do it again.

[Strokker]

well it seems that this is to a degree considered a cheat even if you are at your box...like watching a movie or what have you...A noble kind of cheat...lol.

Personally I see nothing wrong with it you can set your keyboard typematic feature in windows and use that key for autoforage...this is not a major problem but to some it is...why were people not banned for using a third party autofire program as a ranger it was before the introduction of autofire in the game considered a minor cheat since it used a third party software or your keyboard or gamepad or joystick...lol the foraging thing is truely minor and it does not effect your own foraging as the forage pool is going to be what it is per zone no mater if you have one auto or a thousand.

Now as to people who camp vendors and such well that is just that some have found a exploit or so they think and are afraid this is why they run, the wyvern thing is explainable too I play a wizard and have a spell or two that will blast most greens to hell and back in one or two shots no mater how many i have on me and my rune will protect me...minor stuff

Actually I am waiting for a official stance from Sony on this topic as I too have used autoforage and I do not want to get banned, even for a week. I do understand we have a contributer here who is in an official capacity with Sony and would like to get their take on the subject...How about it Ngreth?

[Fox the Clever]

Have you ever tried to see if that person has headed back to Cobalt Scar again and again?

As far as that person who is foraging in Thurgadin... what's the harm, really? They're not using a true Macro, more likely using one of those joysticks or whatever... like Rangers used to do to "autofire" before autofire was put in the game.

And this "questionable behavior" you mentioned?

First of all, there would be no way for me to check if this guy was returning to Cobalt Scar repeatedly. Please remember that he had his /anonymous tag on, and that means you cannot tell where the character is in Norrath when his anonymous tag is up, only that he is online. The only way I would know is if I personally went to Cobalt Scar and did a zone check to see if he was there.

Secondly, what is the harm with this person autoforaging in Thurgadin? Well, it's against the rules. Witness this question and reply that I got from SoE's site regarding macroing in EverQuest:

Question:
Are the use of outside macro programs allowed?

Answer:
No, macros that are run through a separate client is against our policies, and can lead to actions being taken against your account.

It doesn't matter if he's using a program or a programmable joystick or keyboard. If he does so and walks away from the computer, he is cheating. Rules like those are put there for a very good reason. After all, if enough people end up macro foraging, the EverQuest economy can eventually be messed up in one form or another if enough highly desired and (deliberately intended) rare foraged items end up saturating the game world.

There's also another, more insidious effect to consider here. If SoE really is starting to ignore complaints about macro foragers, this can lead to nasty consequences down the road. Are you familiar with the saying "Give them an inch, and they'll take a mile"? If this type of cheating gets tolerated, people will then start to push and prod in order to see what they can get away with next - it's simply human nature. This is how Asheron's Call got into big trouble in its early years with exploiters. By stating that those who used exploits would not be automatically banned (just let us know about them, and don't use them again, m'kay?), people started to exploit the bugs and loopholes in the game. Slowly and in little ways at first, but then with greater frequency and magnitude, until cheating became the de facto way to play the game. Tolerance of exploits was only put to an end when a particularly notorious exploit destroyed the financial system of the game world. Don't believe something similar couldn't happen to EverQuest, because it can if SoE chooses to let their guard down.

Finally, as for the "questionable behaviour" I mentioned at the beginning of this thread - no, I am not going into detail with that. I haven't the faintest desire to post exploits because first, I despise them to begin with, and two, doing so would violate one of the board rules on this website.

[Parvusimmedias]

The easy fix is to change forage so that it creates a tiny amount of AoE agro that builds like a negative faction buff, and increases in radius until the person zones. Moving forages for a while won't matter, but a standing macro'er will eventually drag the zone down on them.

[Dranul]

Oh, that will be nice when I hit forage whenever it pops while raiding Time. "Inc Quarm! Dranul's MT since he's been foraging the entire raid!"

[Twistagain]

After all, if enough people end up macro foraging, the EverQuest economy can eventually be messed up in one form or another if enough highly desired and (deliberately intended) rare foraged items end up saturating the game world.

Actually, I suspect (but, of course, cannot prove) that the reverse is true. If you come down hard on AFK-foragers, there will be little to no foraged items for sale in the bazaar. As such, all of us who can't forage will be SEVERELY crippled as far as tradeskills go.

I'm not arguing FOR macroing...SOE says it's wrong, and they make the rules...but I think it is a fact of life at this point. It has made it possible to buy fruits, veggies (pre-recipe), etc in the quantities we tradeskillers need to skillup. The prices on those items reflects the quantity for sale. How would you like to pay 100p for fruit?

I, personally, feel that macroing should be allowed within certain boundaries. Those boundaries should include things like:
1) No experience can be gained with all involved parties AFK
2) No hoarding of limited-availability world items (stationary tradeskill containers for example) by AFK macroers
3) I haven't really thought this out, and don't want to spend the time to atm...so insert any other rather abusive practices here...

Also note that, when I refer to macroing, I am talking about using existing macro functionality in the game in combination with programmable keyboards/controllers. I am NOT referring to nefarious software which allows warping, instantaneous tradeskill combines, enchanced speed, or anything else that couldn't be done by a real-life person sitting at the keyboard hitting keys.

[Strokker]

Fox has it slightly wrong here I believe, if I read it correctly then SoE's stance is against third party macroing like macroquest and such...not the ingame macro like pause 20, /doability <#-whatever forage is> /autoinventory...rince and repeat or some such and the third party program only toggles a key like Auto Archery Guide.

Secondly, what is the harm with this person autoforaging in Thurgadin? Well, it's against the rules. Witness this question and reply that I got from SoE's site regarding macroing in EverQuest:


Quote:
Question:
Are the use of outside macro programs allowed?

Answer:
No, macros that are run through a separate client is against our policies, and can lead to actions being taken against your account.


It doesn't matter if he's using a program or a programmable joystick or keyboard. If he does so and walks away from the computer, he is cheating. Rules like those are put there for a very good reason. After all, if enough people end up macro foraging, the EverQuest economy can eventually be messed up in one form or another if enough highly desired and (deliberately intended) rare foraged items end up saturating the game world.

I am not nor will i ever advocate the use of third party Macro programs like Macroquest or MQ2 or any other as they would be cheating their abilities are not in game, however to just toggle a key on and off does not violate the EULA, but still to this point there has not been any reply from SoE about it, nor do I expect one as they most likely are fearing that if they ok this one then others will feel it opens up another.

On my server, Fennin Ro, I asked a GM about it and afk foraging while I slept, he said to him it was no problem, but I should /petition it to get the official...I am still waiting.

Again i turn to our resident Dev here in these forums for clarification, I dont want to put them on the spot and if they say it will I will drop it, however not even that has come out.

[Yammez]

Actually, I suspect (but, of course, cannot prove) that the reverse is true. If you come down hard on AFK-foragers, there will be little to no foraged items for sale in the bazaar. As such, all of us who can't forage will be SEVERELY crippled as far as tradeskills go.

Bull! Look how many rangers and druids there are lol. There is plenty of foraged items out there.

I'm not arguing FOR macroing...SOE says it's wrong, and they make the rules...but I think it is a fact of life at this point. It has made it possible to buy fruits, veggies (pre-recipe), etc in the quantities we tradeskillers need to skillup. The prices on those items reflects the quantity for sale. How would you like to pay 100p for fruit?

Fact of life? That just reinforces the arguement that macros are being used too much and SOE is doing not enough about it. Keep the game clean, police up the peeps exploiting and breaking rules, and play honest....it's more fun because it's more challenging. 110p for fruit? Hmmm, my ranger would like that very much

[Ngreth Thergn]

Again i turn to our resident Dev here in these forums for clarification, I dont want to put them on the spot and if they say it will I will drop it, however not even that has come out.

I have given up commenting on it because I can give n o clear answers on it. And people try to wrtangle me into legal arguments where I absolutley cannot go as that is the perview of the Legal Team and *NOT* for me to comment on.

Cheating is against our rules.

The ELUA is reasonably clear.

What I have seen mentioned here looks like Cheating.

I have maybe 1% chance of controling enforment of stoping cheating.

Cheating is not OK.