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Update regarding Multiboxing and input automation

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Lucas Kell
Solitude Trading
S.N.O.T.
#2521 - 2014-12-12 17:05:32 UTC
Josef Djugashvilis wrote:
Stop staring in the mirror, it will really cut your fan club numbers down Smile
:p I use "fan club" as a friendly way of describing those people that follow me around going "Oh god Lucas is posting".

Lady Rift wrote:
This change has been like many others lots of tears, lots of attacking and defending the change and lots predictions on the health and state of the game. All without even see how these changes play out.
Well yeah, that's part of the problem. The change is unlikely to make much of a difference without more changes (reasons for which have been discussed at length), yet has turned parts of the community against each other in a massive bitchfest. You can't honestly say that either side of the argument is free from attacks, trolls and tears.

Either way though, it's still no reason for anyone to unsub. The whole point of the forums is to put forward our concerns and questions, and for a discussion to evolve for CCP to follow and take on board. Saying "if you don't like it, unsub" really doesn't help anyone.

The Indecisive Noob - EVE fan blog.

Wholesale Trading - The new bulk trading mailing list.
Nidal Fervor
Doomheim
#2522 - 2014-12-12 17:07:54 UTC  |  Edited by: Nidal Fervor
Lucas Kell wrote:
Eli Apol wrote:
Now that you mention it, perhaps trading needs to be made more involving as well rather than just 30mins a day of adjusting your orders...maybe a tetris mini-game to shuffle your stock around or a mini FPS with a pricing gun...
Absolutely! I mean not a minigame, I think they are pretty dire and I'm sure there are better ways of making a mechanic more involved, but certainly yes, trading is another example of a mechanic that needs to be improved.

Eli Apol wrote:
And yes change is good, hopefully this change will have a positive effect and they follow up on people sidestepping the new intentions of this ruling by expanding their scope to include window switching macros...
Which they won't, because as previously stated there's no reliable way to tell if someone is using one of thee methods or not. So the change will be broadcasting, and perhaps ISBoxer specifically if they decide to go that route (doubt it). Hence my belief that the change is pointless.

Eli Apol wrote:
And with that we've gone full circle back to where I was several pages ago - sidestepping this ban is a futile effort because CCP's intent has been made pretty clear - dodging their intent on technicalities will just lead to more stringent policies in the future to eliminate the loopholes.
And yet, you've still not managed to explain what that clear intent is. The only clarity is they don't want broadcasting, which round robin and VFX are not, so using them isn't sidestepping. It's only sidestepping if you assume their goal is to attack multiboxers specifically, in which case logging on multiple clients at all is sidestepping.

The sort of it is this: They've banned broadcasting, and only broadcasting. Everything else (that was OK to do before this change, i.e. no automation) is fair game and thus will be used until they do something to target that too.


According to the isboxer wiki, round robin is input broadcasting: http://isboxer.com/wiki/Round-robin

Round-robin is a name given to the idea of sending an instruction (such as a Key Combination) to each of several windows, one at a time.

If you intend to use round robin to send your input to multiple clients, one at a time, it is still input broadcasting.

Multiboxing is fine, but YOU must control each client yourself. If software is replicating your controls to more than one window then you are input broadcasting, it doesn't matter if you use a delay to try to hide it, this only shows you are trying to avoid being caught cheating by making your actions less obvious.
Rain6637
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#2523 - 2014-12-12 17:09:47 UTC
i get the feeling these threads arent as much for feedback as they are for letting players vent til they get tired

Help, I can't download EVE

President of the Commissar Kate Fanclub

PLEX: A Giffen good? (It's 1B?)
Lucas Kell
Solitude Trading
S.N.O.T.
#2524 - 2014-12-12 17:24:03 UTC  |  Edited by: Lucas Kell
Nidal Fervor wrote:
According to the isboxer wiki, round robin is input broadcasting: http://isboxer.com/wiki/Round-robin

Round-robin is a name given to the idea of sending an instruction (such as a Key Combination) to each of several windows, one at a time.

If you intend to use round robin to send your input to multiple clients, one at a time, it is still input broadcasting.

Multiboxing is fine, but YOU must control each client yourself. If software is replicating your controls to more than one window then you are input broadcasting, it doesn't matter if you use a delay to try to hide it, this only shows you are trying to avoid being caught cheating by making your actions less obvious.
So which part of one at a time confused you? If you push 1 button and it sends 1 command to 1 client and only 1 client, it's not broadcasting. It doesn't matter if you then push that same button to send the same command to the next client. As long as you don't multiply the input, (i.e. send a command to 5 clients from 1 button press), then it's OK.

Here is a handy gif - The bottom one is round robin.

And here is CCP Randoms flowchart explanation of the rules. Using round robin, at question 4 you would return to the "It's OK"

It really can't be explained much more simply than that.

Edit: Oh, and in most cases, a well configured VideoFX will outperform round robin anyway.

The Indecisive Noob - EVE fan blog.

Wholesale Trading - The new bulk trading mailing list.
Basil Pupkin
Republic Military School
#2525 - 2014-12-12 17:55:31 UTC
Lucas Kell wrote:
I apologise. I was under the impression that you'd read the topic of the thread before posting. Now I realise you literally searched around for a CFC member posting so you could whine a bit about them. What's the matter, get recruitment scammed?

Your apology is insincere. I gave you a topic review, which of course you didn't quote (skipped reading it, perhaps?), which highlighted my points inside this thread. I do not blame you, after all, maybe those points were too painful for you, but this certainly isn't the reason to keep a misleading impression.

Lucas Kell wrote:
And perhaps if you want to see why input broadcasting takes skill to properly utilise you should try it out. Guarantee you'd not even finish setting up before your head exploded.

I peeked into a video tutorial on it, and found it to be about as difficult as suicide ganking - which, as we all know, is the easiest activity in eve at the moment. Takes a setting up once, true, but it's a routine, no actual difficulty is involved.

Lucas Kell wrote:
Actually "goonies" don't want it rolled back at all (not that something that hasn't come out yet can be rolled back) since it's beneficial to them. And if you read my posts, you see that while I don't agree with this change I have no problem with other changes which make multiboxing more difficult by altering gameplay mechanics to be more involving for the player.

Buddy, please, there are a crap ton of crying goonies in the thread, you really want me to start quoting them? Or we can accept the obvious and move on already.

Lucas Kell wrote:
You see, something you missed is how little impact this change will actually have on ISBoxers anyway. Look about the thread for "round robin" and "VideoFX". These are two techniques that will still be allowed from January the 1st, which allow nearly as much control as input broadcasting. VideoFX is particularly powerful, allowing you to merge multiple clients into a single screen (it can basically look like a ship has 20 mining lasers for example, with each actually being on a different client).

You see, if it is so little impact, then why is there a threadnaught of goonie tears about it? You bring so many reasons why it shouldn't be here, yet here it is. You do seem like the kind of pal with problems in facing the objective reality, but even you can't deny a tear thread while posting in it.

Being teh freightergankbear automatically puts you below missionbear and minerbear in carebear hierarchy.

If you're about to make "this will make eve un-eve" argument, odds are you are defending some utterly horrible mechanics against a good change.
Lucas Kell
Solitude Trading
S.N.O.T.
#2526 - 2014-12-12 18:06:31 UTC
Basil Pupkin wrote:
Your apology is insincere. I gave you a topic review, which of course you didn't quote (skipped reading it, perhaps?), which highlighted my points inside this thread. I do not blame you, after all, maybe those points were too painful for you, but this certainly isn't the reason to keep a misleading impression.
I apologise again! It came out like you were just talking complete rubbish, some of which you can't possibly have known is fact, as a way to insult a group of players you seem to have a particular dislike for.

Basil Pupkin wrote:
I peeked into a video tutorial on it, and found it to be about as difficult as suicide ganking - which, as we all know, is the easiest activity in eve at the moment. Takes a setting up once, true, but it's a routine, no actual difficulty is involved.
And yet, you haven't tried it, and thus your opinion on the level of skill it takes to set up and use effectively is worth precisely zero. And no, while you only need to set up layout and controls once, you need to sort out your squad and get everyone running in sync every single time you go out.

Basil Pupkin wrote:
Buddy, please, there are a crap ton of crying goonies in the thread, you really want me to start quoting them? Or we can accept the obvious and move on already.
I guarantee there are a heck of a lot more goons that either don't care or are happy this is happening. I mean the first page of the thread has 4 goon posts, only one could even be remotely thought of as tears, and even that very remotely.

Basil Pupkin wrote:
You see, if it is so little impact, then why is there a threadnaught of goonie tears about it? You bring so many reasons why it shouldn't be here, yet here it is. You do seem like the kind of pal with problems in facing the objective reality, but even you can't deny a tear thread while posting in it.
Except it's not, is it. Basically you've read a thread and you've got a stick up your ass because goons have scammed you, killed you or rejected you. So all rationality goes out of the window and suddenly everything is about goons. It's not the first time we've seen it, it won.t be the last. To be honest mate, nobody gives a crap. Whatever made you so mad you have to roll around the forum dribbling and screaming about "goonies", get over it. It's a game.

If you want to proceed on topic, by all means do, but if you're just going to whine about "goonies", your posts are irrelevant.

The Indecisive Noob - EVE fan blog.

Wholesale Trading - The new bulk trading mailing list.
Nolak Ataru
Hedion University
Amarr Empire
#2527 - 2014-12-12 18:10:51 UTC
Basil Pupkin wrote:
You see, if it is so little impact, then why is there a threadnaught of goonie tears about it? You bring so many reasons why it shouldn't be here, yet here it is. You do seem like the kind of pal with problems in facing the objective reality, but even you can't deny a tear thread while posting in it.


Taking into consideration the percentage of EVE that can be arsed to post on the forums, and then taking the percentage of that that is in the CFC/Goons, we see that there is no real "overabundance" of tears from one coalition/alliance than another on a per capita basis. Please take a statistics class.
Basil Pupkin
Republic Military School
#2528 - 2014-12-12 18:20:38 UTC
Lucas Kell wrote:
Basil Pupkin wrote:
Your apology is insincere. I gave you a topic review, which of course you didn't quote (skipped reading it, perhaps?), which highlighted my points inside this thread. I do not blame you, after all, maybe those points were too painful for you, but this certainly isn't the reason to keep a misleading impression.
I apologise again! It came out like you were just talking complete rubbish, some of which you can't possibly have known is fact, as a way to insult a group of players you seem to have a particular dislike for.

Basil Pupkin wrote:
I peeked into a video tutorial on it, and found it to be about as difficult as suicide ganking - which, as we all know, is the easiest activity in eve at the moment. Takes a setting up once, true, but it's a routine, no actual difficulty is involved.
And yet, you haven't tried it, and thus your opinion on the level of skill it takes to set up and use effectively is worth precisely zero. And no, while you only need to set up layout and controls once, you need to sort out your squad and get everyone running in sync every single time you go out.

Basil Pupkin wrote:
Buddy, please, there are a crap ton of crying goonies in the thread, you really want me to start quoting them? Or we can accept the obvious and move on already.
I guarantee there are a heck of a lot more goons that either don't care or are happy this is happening. I mean the first page of the thread has 4 goon posts, only one could even be remotely thought of as tears, and even that very remotely.

Basil Pupkin wrote:
You see, if it is so little impact, then why is there a threadnaught of goonie tears about it? You bring so many reasons why it shouldn't be here, yet here it is. You do seem like the kind of pal with problems in facing the objective reality, but even you can't deny a tear thread while posting in it.
Except it's not, is it. Basically you've read a thread and you've got a stick up your ass because goons have scammed you, killed you or rejected you. So all rationality goes out of the window and suddenly everything is about goons. It's not the first time we've seen it, it won.t be the last. To be honest mate, nobody gives a crap. Whatever made you so mad you have to roll around the forum dribbling and screaming about "goonies", get over it. It's a game.

If you want to proceed on topic, by all means do, but if you're just going to whine about "goonies", your posts are irrelevant.


You appear to be lost in your gooniecentrism. All right, let me throw you a bone. I have met goonies in another game before eve. What upset me about them is their constant side shifting - the game had clear-cut sides, and they jumped them whenever one side started to win, to always get the goodies of a winning team while doing nothing to earn them. They shattered the balance we had before they appeared, their crapton of alts and spies on every side turned things upside down, and what has been a pretty good game has depopulated and died, thanks to goons. A few months after that I picked up eve, and surprise, same goonies. Of course, they had no chance to kill or scam me, since I already knew what kind of scum they are. That is my reason for grrr goons or whatever you call it, and it has nothing to do with eve - just knowing that they exploit everything a proper player won't, so hard that it becomes recognized as cheat, then start a monsoon of tears and cries for compensation when the cheat is fixed - is enough. This is the last time I'm going to reply to your self-pity, your provocations can be ignored.

I dunno about the quantity, but majority of tear contribution to this tear threadnaught are goonies like you, who keep crying, trying to be leet while they can, and trying to prove more to themselves than to anyone else that they can still be leet even after it's going live, covering away from the truth that their skill substitute button is getting taken away, and burning their tear launchers in overheat to show how insignificant the change is.

Being teh freightergankbear automatically puts you below missionbear and minerbear in carebear hierarchy.

If you're about to make "this will make eve un-eve" argument, odds are you are defending some utterly horrible mechanics against a good change.
Lucas Kell
Solitude Trading
S.N.O.T.
#2529 - 2014-12-12 19:41:24 UTC
Basil Pupkin wrote:
I have met goonies in another game before eve. What upset me about them is their constant side shifting - the game had clear-cut sides, and they jumped them whenever one side started to win, to always get the goodies of a winning team while doing nothing to earn them. They shattered the balance we had before they appeared, their crapton of alts and spies on every side turned things upside down, and what has been a pretty good game has depopulated and died, thanks to goons.
So tl;dr, they did what they could to maximise their gains while minimising their efforts? Sounds pretty smart.

And yes, you are simply in this thread whining because you have a problem with goons in general, and nothing to do with this actual thread. Thanks for confirming.

Basil Pupkin wrote:
I dunno about the quantity, but majority of tear contribution to this tear threadnaught are goonies like you, who keep crying, trying to be leet while they can, and trying to prove more to themselves than to anyone else that they can still be leet even after it's going live, covering away from the truth that their skill substitute button is getting taken away, and burning their tear launchers in overheat to show how insignificant the change is.
Well first off, I unfortunately can't claim to be a goonie. Secondly, you should seriously do your homework. Goons, as a whole are on the other side of this debate. It's because of goons that multiboxing is getting looked at, because it was their (well our, the CFC) losses to multiboxed bombers which suddenly brought this all up.

Seriously, null players don't need to multibox, because tasks which require multiboxing, like mining are scrub as ****. If we want to grind isk, we grab a nice AFKtar, pop it in an anom and come back later. The only benefit to a null alliance would be multiboxed bomber fleets, which a) will still be possible, and b) we don't need because we have more than enough pilots to fill a fleet of them. If you want to stick your head in the sand and scream "No it can't be true!", go right ahead, but right now you are on the side of the goons.

The Indecisive Noob - EVE fan blog.

Wholesale Trading - The new bulk trading mailing list.
Steppa Musana
Doomheim
#2530 - 2014-12-13 00:25:11 UTC
Lucas Kell wrote:
Goons, as a whole are on the other side of this debate. It's because of goons that multiboxing is getting looked at, because it was their (well our, the CFC) losses to multiboxed bombers which suddenly brought this all up.

Heh no surprise there. Goonies are notorious for their incessant whining when an accepted form of gameplay is used against them successfully. I agree with them most of the time, but like usual Goons are the biggest hypocrites in New Eden. They love to tout HTFU and are big supporters of The New Order - the biggest HTFU don't-whine-to-CCP group in the game - yet they cry like children when mechanics work against them.
Nolak Ataru
Hedion University
Amarr Empire
#2531 - 2014-12-13 01:15:41 UTC
Steppa Musana wrote:
The New Order - the biggest HTFU don't-whine-to-CCP


Huh, that's funny. Coulda sworn I saw them raging at CCP about how the Bowhead had too much EHP, not to mention when they gave freighters lowslots....
Sgt Ocker
What Corp is it
#2532 - 2014-12-13 09:37:04 UTC
Lucas Kell wrote:
Basil Pupkin wrote:
I have met goonies in another game before eve. What upset me about them is their constant side shifting - the game had clear-cut sides, and they jumped them whenever one side started to win, to always get the goodies of a winning team while doing nothing to earn them. They shattered the balance we had before they appeared, their crapton of alts and spies on every side turned things upside down, and what has been a pretty good game has depopulated and died, thanks to goons.
So tl;dr, they did what they could to maximise their gains while minimising their efforts? Sounds pretty smart.

And yes, you are simply in this thread whining because you have a problem with goons in general, and nothing to do with this actual thread. Thanks for confirming.

Basil Pupkin wrote:
I dunno about the quantity, but majority of tear contribution to this tear threadnaught are goonies like you, who keep crying, trying to be leet while they can, and trying to prove more to themselves than to anyone else that they can still be leet even after it's going live, covering away from the truth that their skill substitute button is getting taken away, and burning their tear launchers in overheat to show how insignificant the change is.
Well first off, I unfortunately can't claim to be a goonie. Secondly, you should seriously do your homework. Goons, as a whole are on the other side of this debate. It's because of goons that multiboxing is getting looked at, because it was their (well our, the CFC) losses to multiboxed bombers which suddenly brought this all up.

Seriously, null players don't need to multibox, because tasks which require multiboxing, like mining are scrub as ****. If we want to grind isk, we grab a nice AFKtar, pop it in an anom and come back later. The only benefit to a null alliance would be multiboxed bomber fleets, which a) will still be possible, and b) we don't need because we have more than enough pilots to fill a fleet of them. If you want to stick your head in the sand and scream "No it can't be true!", go right ahead, but right now you are on the side of the goons.

Lucas your replies here show, you need to stop posting now.
Every sentence just makes you look more ignorant than the previous.
"Well first off, I unfortunately can't claim to be a goonie" - Should read; I am only a Goon pet
"because it was their (well our, the CFC) losses" - Not sure here but; Goon and Pet losses

"Seriously, nul players - - - , like mining are scrub as **** "; You do yourself and your alliance no justice with silly comments like this. (Try reading your overlords forums some time)

The rest of your post simply shows - You don't have much of a grasp on the day to day workings of the CFC.

IMO the only "leet" thing about Goons is that they still somehow manage to keep all their loyal pets running to the whistle.

You did get one thing right, Goons whining has brought about a lot of change (good and bad) in nulsec that affects "everyone".

Lucas; Leave Goon propaganda to Goon Propaganda Team, they manage to make themselves look bad all on their own. They don't need your "help".

My opinions are mine.

  If you don't like them or disagree with me that's OK.- - - - - - Just don't bother Hating - I don't care

It really is getting harder and harder to justify $23 a month for each sub.
Black Pedro
Mine.
#2533 - 2014-12-13 09:44:02 UTC
Nolak Ataru wrote:
Steppa Musana wrote:
The New Order - the biggest HTFU don't-whine-to-CCP


Huh, that's funny. Coulda sworn I saw them raging at CCP about how the Bowhead had too much EHP, not to mention when they gave freighters lowslots....

While giving feedback on a proposed new ship/mechanic to the game is quite different then the usual carebear song of coming to the forums to whine to CCP to make the game safer for them after being exploded, I think you are remembering what you want to remember. I didn't stick around for that whole threadnaught, but I just skimmed the first few pages and it is mostly players complaining that the Bowhead didn't have enough EHP - which worked and CCP buffed it before release.

As for freighter low slots, I recall there being a consensus among gankers that this would actually make ganking easier as haulers can't seem to resist putting those expanded cargoholds on and anti-tanking their haulers as actually turned out to be the case. Perhaps I am just remembering what I want to remember as well.

But to the topic of this thread, on principle it seems wrong to allow third-party software or hardware to provide an advantage to players. It should be prohibited, but I would hate to see more players banned for something they didn't do so I trust that CCP is able to detect this behaviour accurately. I lack the information to judge whether this behaviour is technically possible to detect accurately, but if they can, clearly CCP should enforce this part of the existing EULA.




The 8 Golden Rules of Eve

Why Do They Gank?
Lucas Kell
Solitude Trading
S.N.O.T.
#2534 - 2014-12-13 10:01:42 UTC  |  Edited by: Lucas Kell
Sgt Ocker wrote:
Lucas your replies here show, you need to stop posting now.
Every sentence just makes you look more ignorant than the previous.
"Well first off, I unfortunately can't claim to be a goonie" - Should read; I am only a Goon pet
"because it was their (well our, the CFC) losses" - Not sure here but; Goon and Pet losses

"Seriously, nul players - - - , like mining are scrub as **** "; You do yourself and your alliance no justice with silly comments like this. (Try reading your overlords forums some time)

The rest of your post simply shows - You don't have much of a grasp on the day to day workings of the CFC.

IMO the only "leet" thing about Goons is that they still somehow manage to keep all their loyal pets running to the whistle.

You did get one thing right, Goons whining has brought about a lot of change (good and bad) in nulsec that affects "everyone".

Lucas; Leave Goon propaganda to Goon Propaganda Team, they manage to make themselves look bad all on their own. They don't need your "help".
I'm sure in your warped anti-CFC mind, everything anyone in the CFC has ever said makes them seem more ignorant to you, so that would seem to be your problem, not mine. Whatever was done to you to make you so incredibly butthurt, I hope it was spectacular.

And in all honesty, I couldn't give a flying **** what you think of what I say. Don't like it? Don't read it.

The Indecisive Noob - EVE fan blog.

Wholesale Trading - The new bulk trading mailing list.
Kadm
Catfish Gumbo
#2535 - 2014-12-13 15:04:56 UTC  |  Edited by: Kadm
This is an email that I sent to the developers that had posted on this thread. After a week with no reply, I submitted it as a petition, and was told it should be posted here to be addressed.

Quote:
Uncertainty
From: Kadm
Sent: 2014.11.29 15:40
To: CCP Falcon, CCP FoxFour, CCP Phantom, CCP Random,

Good day,

My name is Kadm, and I'm a mass-scale multiboxer. I have thirty four (well, had) active accounts, and maintain one-hundred and one characters in EVE. These characters are divided into three fleets plus miscellaneous supporting characters.

You could probably infer it, but the recent changes to the EULA have a significant impact on me. I look at them a bit differently than most folks have. I knew something would happen someday. I'm surprised, but not upset quite the same way other people are.

People will always search for a way to maintain what they have. I've looked at a few EULA compliant methods of maintaining what I've built for myself, and while I'm not sure how they'll work, people will always persist and try.

My uncertainty comes in how everything is going to be handled going forward. My initial reaction to the changes was to give a sigh and pack things up, tell me partner and friends that we would roll into a small corp, and just play with a few accounts again.

It's a sad thing to feel like you've sunk over eleven thousand dollars into a game, but unlike most people, I know that I've gotten my moneys worth. There's no feeling like landing on the Jita undock in 21 Oracles and vaporising people playing suspect docking games, or helping a small corp move into a wormhole, giving them a chance to grow. There are many things that I'd planned, that I don't think I'll get to do now, but the things I've done have been fun.

Many of my friends want me to stay. And part of me wants to stay. In my eight years playing EVE, this is probably the most exciting the game has ever been. While there have een times I've worried for EVE, this isn't one of them. The six week development cycle has been the best thing I've ever seen happen to the game.

But the idea of staying is filled with uncertainty. If I go through the trouble of setting myself and my fleets up in a EULA compliant manner, what will happen? People will still feel like wronged when I shoot them, even if there's a difference in how it works on my end. How many petitions will it take before it's easier for CCP to remove me, rather than explain the difference between what I'm doing now, and what I'm doing then? What thresholds are in place to differentiate key duplication from fast keystrokes? If I rebind hotkeys to put them closer together, will I be automatically detected and banned for being too fast?

And what happens if I'm banned? My partner and I reap approximately two to four billion isk an hour when we're running sites. If I'm banned, that's the end, but how would that effect the people I play the game with? When their wallets are drained of the isk made from my efforts. What about my allies? If I help them siege a tower, or kill an enemy fleet, and I get banned, what happens to them? Are they banned for taking my help?

And what do I do if I think I was wrongfully banned? Do I spend weeks escalating to try and reverse the process? How do I even prove that I'm EULA compliant, going forward?

This is my greatest concern. How will all of this effect me, and is it worth trying to be EULA compliant, if playing by the rules may still mean that my friends and I may suffer for it.

I'm not sure who should recieve this, so I'm going to blindly mail it out to anyone who has touched the keymultiplexing and ISBoxing topics the last few days.

If you tell me that my concerns are valid, I won't be upset. As I said earlier, I've had my fun. The memories I've made with my characters are priceless. There is nothing that compares with your friends saying, "Wow, that looks cool," as a dozen Tengus land and start firing missiles, or people cursing your very presence because they know their time in W-space is at an end.

It's hard to imagine going back to anything other than that, but at the end of the day, I love EVE Online, and CCP games. Even if I wouldn't have as much reason to play, there is no game company out there that deserves my money as much as I feel you do. Even if I have to forsake my exa-scale boxing, I'll likely stay.

I thank you all for your time, and I appreciate any guidance that you can give me in this.

Kadm
Paula Trevaline
Aberrance
#2536 - 2014-12-13 17:05:49 UTC
I do appreciate the timing. I sub my accounts yearly and pay them up in December due to the sales that abound at xmas.

CCP will do what CCP does. My opinions on the matter mean nothing, all I can do is review the changes and perform the justification of spending my time and money on the game.

I'm not throwing my towel in with quiting now, I'll likely sub one month on each account as I return to the game (paid a year and barely played. Good too read this now.) and see how the allowed functionality works for me; I've not been using broadcasting for 2 years and was just recently determined to use it more.. and it seemed pretty important to validate keeping the accounts paid yearly as such.

Given all the other changes in the game that are apparently ruining any small-group gameplay and requiring everyone to be part of one of the big cooperative player groups and play the linear game rather than a sandbox, the odds are high that CCP just lost 8 accounts with minimal activity that pay yearly.

Best case scenario I see is I transfer my characters with notable SP into 3 or so account and drop the other 5 completely. After that, I just spend a few months seeing if the game is even worth playing in it's current state.. which is growing questionable from what all the active veterans I'm talking to are telling me.

This is sad as I've played since beta, and these accounts have been around 3/4+ of the time. On the other hand, I've been spending to much on Eve and not playing enough so it's a good thing that CCP has sent the message they don't want my money.

It's about time I looked at other games.
Nolak Ataru
Hedion University
Amarr Empire
#2537 - 2014-12-13 17:20:49 UTC
Black Pedro wrote:
Nolak Ataru wrote:
Steppa Musana wrote:
The New Order - the biggest HTFU don't-whine-to-CCP


Huh, that's funny. Coulda sworn I saw them raging at CCP about how the Bowhead had too much EHP, not to mention when they gave freighters lowslots....

While giving feedback on a proposed new ship/mechanic to the game is quite different then the usual carebear song of coming to the forums to whine to CCP to make the game safer for them after being exploded, I think you are remembering what you want to remember. I didn't stick around for that whole threadnaught, but I just skimmed the first few pages and it is mostly players complaining that the Bowhead didn't have enough EHP - which worked and CCP buffed it before release.

As for freighter low slots, I recall there being a consensus among gankers that this would actually make ganking easier as haulers can't seem to resist putting those expanded cargoholds on and anti-tanking their haulers as actually turned out to be the case. Perhaps I am just remembering what I want to remember as well.

But to the topic of this thread, on principle it seems wrong to allow third-party software or hardware to provide an advantage to players. It should be prohibited, but I would hate to see more players banned for something they didn't do so I trust that CCP is able to detect this behaviour accurately. I lack the information to judge whether this behaviour is technically possible to detect accurately, but if they can, clearly CCP should enforce this part of the existing EULA.


You are quite right. I was remembering events in in-game channels and mistakenly attributing them to the forums.
Though I seem to remember someone mentioning that they were fiddling multiple times with the Bowhead EHP before final release.
I think we're both remembering the posts of the ones who didn't read the full change notes and simply saw "freighters get lowslots" and started whining without bothering to read the notes.
Paula Trevaline
Aberrance
#2538 - 2014-12-13 17:21:11 UTC
Kadm wrote:

But the idea of staying is filled with uncertainty. If I go through the trouble of setting myself and my fleets up in a EULA compliant manner, what will happen? People will still feel like wronged when I shoot them, even if there's a difference in how it works on my end. How many petitions will it take before it's easier for CCP to remove me, rather than explain the difference between what I'm doing now, and what I'm doing then? What thresholds are in place to differentiate key duplication from fast keystrokes? If I rebind hotkeys to put them closer together, will I be automatically detected and banned for being too fast?
Kadm
[/quote]

Exactly. Zero tolerance is a silly concept when you quantify transgression through inference.

I take pride in being a legit player. I multiboxed without ISBoxer for 5 years and was known for being able to stagger 5+ accounts with specific strategies and not use any kind of broadcasing or multibox software. Even those strategies at times entailed such rapid window switching and mouse movement that the server could detect it as "input broadcast" based on the symptomatic behavior.

I'm don't want to sully my memory with Eve by quitting after my accounts are 1st-strike banned due to a false positive in a zero tolerance environment; whether it's via the above, or ensuring that all keystrokes in ISBoxer were a 1:1. Both technically and even purely legit; yet I can get banned for them based on the color of my skin... I mean the appearance of my keystrokes.

I rather just quit or close all but a few accounts and avoid that scenario.
Paula Trevaline
Aberrance
#2539 - 2014-12-13 17:34:58 UTC
On the false positive note, I just induced what would likely be detected as one. Logs/Chat windows timestamp's don't indicate fraction of seconds that might appear on CCP servers, I can say I just induced heavy network lag and switched across 8 windows with a 2 second gap each and all log entries/chat entries I tested this method with came across as the same second on the timestamp.

More likely than not this behaved identical to a broadcast from the server review, unless CCP has applied good networking practices and embedded the client-side timestamp into the keystroke data uploaded to the server.

If it wasn't already there, and they add it to properly police this behavior.... they've also just increased network bandwidth consumption to some degree as every command would need the extra data. Not a big deal, but it all depends on the details.

Regardless, false positives are an ambiguous question as we have no real idea if they are even properly developing their system. Given the code details I've witnessed playing since beta, I lean more to throwing my hands in the air to avoid sullying my memories by quiting on a ban and just give up now as even if I try to fly just 3-5 ships manually at a time I will most likely be banned for it.

Oh well.
Nolak Ataru
Hedion University
Amarr Empire
#2540 - 2014-12-13 17:43:34 UTC
Paula Trevaline wrote:
On the false positive note, I just induced what would likely be detected as one. Logs/Chat windows timestamp's don't indicate fraction of seconds that might appear on CCP servers, I can say I just induced heavy network lag and switched across 8 windows with a 2 second gap each and all log entries/chat entries I tested this method with came across as the same second on the timestamp.

More likely than not this behaved identical to a broadcast from the server review, unless CCP has applied good networking practices and embedded the client-side timestamp into the keystroke data uploaded to the server.

If it wasn't already there, and they add it to properly police this behavior.... they've also just increased network bandwidth consumption to some degree as every command would need the extra data. Not a big deal, but it all depends on the details.

Regardless, false positives are an ambiguous question as we have no real idea if they are even properly developing their system. Given the code details I've witnessed playing since beta, I lean more to throwing my hands in the air to avoid sullying my memories by quiting on a ban and just give up now as even if I try to fly just 3-5 ships manually at a time I will most likely be banned for it.

Oh well.


Playing Devil's Advocate for a moment here, CCP claimed they would be able to distinguish between a round-robin person spamming F1 and actual broadcasting
/Devil's Advocate
Then again, it's CCP.....