Cheating-- Questions I have

[Vortex]

I will try to make this as short as possible and I’m sorry if a lot of this has already been gone over but I just registered with the boards. I just want to know why exactly people seem to want to cheat at EQ. One reason I believe EQ has been so successful is the lack of cheating and that the game will challenge those who beat the games the day they get them.

I don’t know about everyone else but I like the fact that I don’t have to compete with cheaters for items and creature spawns. If you don’t want to camp items or play the game like everyone else then why play? You can go play Diablo 2 or something. The fact is that games always get boring when you start to cheat, Its just a matter of time.

If a program is released that will give an advantage to certain players over others for windows the game will be ruined for those who wish to play the game the way it was meant to be played. All I want to know is:
1. Why cheating is nesacery.
2. What separates the people who want to play the game and those who want to take advantage of the information they are able to acquire and use for their own benefit.
3. Why play the game if you feel its necessary to cheat.

Thank you for reading and maybe you can convince me why some need an advantage over other players.

--Vortex--

[eggman]

Firstly, your question doesn't apply to EQ. There is no "winner". How does one "cheat" at something when they are not competing with anyone ?

Secondly, for the sake of argument let's say that it is possible to "win" in EQ, a SEQ user has no advantage over a non-SEQ user. "How is this?" you ask. Simple. If EQ were a contest wherein each person was given a box of parts and told to make something of it. The only difference between the two is that the SEQ user has chosen to disasemble the box that the parts came in and include it in their creation. The SEQ user isn't getting any special information that the non-SEQ user isn't getting. The SEQ user isn't modifying the game in some fashion that the non-SEQ user cannot. The SEQ user is getting the same exact data stream that a non-SEQ user gets, the SEQ user has simply chosen to look at the information, nothing more, nothing less.

-Egg

[Dedpoet]

Vortex, I hope you understand that you are just going to get flamed for coming to the development site for some software and attacking it.

That being said, have you ever used Seq? It sounds like you haven't. Do you know what it does? I bet you don't. I'll tell you: It's a glorified overhead realtime map of a zone that shows the location of mobs. It's like if you could display a track window graphically and have an overlaid map like in Diablo so you don't get lost.

It can't tell you that Naggy will drop a CoF. It can't tell you how to spawn Quillimane. It can't tell you how to spawn the Ancient Cyclops, or Raster of Guk, or other rares. It can't make you run fast, or generate platinum, or increase your dps. It can't make you single pull Vindi to the zone line, or get to Dozekar faster, or kill the Emperor. It can't order you a pizza, mow your lawn, or make you popular at school.

It's a mapping program that shows you where mobs are. Go flame on the Macroquest forums - that's what's bringing this game down.

-Dedpoet

[high_jeeves]

I'm not sure you have a fundamental idea as to what ShowEQ does. It really only provides 2 peices of information (atleast 2 that i use):

1) A map of the zone with mob locations. IT DOES NOT provide information on loot, drops, etc.

2) An semi-accurate experience log.

Why do people use it? Because they want to.. I cant come up with a better description than that. How does ShowEQ use affect other players? It doesnt. It makes it easier for me to pull, it saves me time running to spots to find they are already taken. It allows me to know how many more kills i need before i level.

ShowEQ users are duping, or stealing things from other players.

As a side note: If you are in any reasonable size guild (any guild that raids), you probably have somebody in your guild that uses ShowEQ.

--Jeeves

[Vortex]

I was totaly missinformed, sorry for the hasty post. I should have looked up exacly what it did and what it doesnt do. No I have never used it, thought about it but Im not to great with Linux to set up the program. I was under the impresion that it showed spawn points, creature loot tables and other stuff.

-Vortex-

[BlueAdept]

One thing that I use it for most is determining what class the players are in my group. With all those damn titles, I dont know half the time what the hell they are. One of my characters is an enchanter. Casting clarity and haste on the right people is important and wasting mana on someone who doesnt need it sucks.

All I have to do is con the group memeber and it tells me the players class and then I know what spells to use. Yes I could do /whotarget but its a pain. If the group memeber is anon or roleplaying then you have to ask.

I do occasionally use it on my druid and warrior. It helps me pick out the mobs that I can kill without having to con everything in sight.

It has also kept me from dying on occasion.

That is pretty much what I use it for along with the maps.

[Cryonic]

It can learn spawn points, but only for cycles that are only < 10 min long and the point is a fixed location (e.g. gnoll spires in SK) and give an estimate till next pop, but it won't know what that mob will be. It can show what last spawned at a spawnpoint if you were in the zone and had decoding working before it spawned. It cannot, and never has been able to show the loot table of a mob. That is never sent to the client until you actually loot the mob.

[throx]

Read the thread titled WinSEQ for some interesting debate on this topic.

[fryfrog]

as someone else suggested, you might look at MacroQuest (http://macroquest.sf.net) as an example of a "cheat" that is used to actually alter the in game experience to a point which one could really call cheating. things like macro's to farm pp and providing new commands in game (some of which should probably be IN GAME anyway).

i won't deny that seq is "cheating" but there are worse forms of it, such as exploiting pathing bugs to get exp with no danger to yourself, duping items or other things along those lines. things that give you a noticable advantage in game and potentially harm others as well.

lets just say, most of what seq does is ONLY possible due to ... not really POOR, but just new to this kind of gaming programmers. far to much information is given to the client. go check out AC2 (which has an ingame map similar to seq) or DAOC who's map cheat only shows mobs in a short range around them for some better examples.

[Old`Fart]

Re: MQ -- As I understand, Verant has limited the speed of combines to one per second, which is around the maximum human speed. MQ just lets you sustain that speed, error-free, for as long as you like. Even while you sleep.

MQ can also be abused for auto-combat, but I hear it's relatively flawed for that, and not inobvious when used for that purpose.

Previously, with old buy/sell merchant tables, and CPU/connection being the only limit on combine speed, it was possible to generate large amounts of plat in a largely risk-free fashion (9k/hr definitely, with rumors of considerably more).

Nowadays, it's a great way to work on skilling up a character, or combining simple things (oh, gee, I need another 200 Celestial Essence for my Pottery).