EQ TLP - Yelinak (True-Box Timelocked Progression)

your_mum said:

i've yet to see a person say they were banned who's only used mqnext. everyone who's been suspended this wave and previous had myseq (either running or running recently) in common.

it's so stupid though because showeq is so easy to setup... it may not seem that way because the forums are so garbage. additionally, it wouldn't even be that difficult to rebuild it with a more modern stack so the build process doesnt require libraries from 2001 and 100 packages to install.

so all they're doing with this ban is making it so the people who are truly cheaters continue to cheat while the common man is deterred. i mean i guess it cuts down usage.

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To be honest I think they thought just banning MySEQ users would also catch a lot of MQNext users and the amount of misinformation that came out of the bans would be enough to deter a few from using it.

The reason they likely went this route first is because it's piss easy to detect two processes that MQNext does not exclude using existing technology that has been in place for several years and is simply an administrative decision to do so.

If they're serious about preventing cheat programs, I hope they go full nuclear instead with EasyAntiCheat (they'd just have to put the EQ client on Epic Games Store to qualify, I think, for free EAC) and just stop pussyfooting around with if they're going to prevent automation or not.

Secrets said:

To be honest I think they thought just banning MySEQ users would also catch a lot of MQNext users and the amount of misinformation that came out of the bans would be enough to deter a few from using it.

The reason they likely went this route first is because it's piss easy to detect two processes that MQNext does not exclude using existing technology that has been in place for several years and is simply an administrative decision to do so.

If they're serious about preventing cheat programs, I hope they go full nuclear instead with EasyAntiCheat (they'd just have to put the EQ client on Epic Games Store to qualify, I think, for free EAC) and just stop pussyfooting around with if they're going to prevent automation or not.

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This wave was trigged by a dev who is currently in a guild on one of the new TLPs and was nudged into triggering this banwave by one of the few people who know they are a dev in the guild.

I wont name names, but I know who is who.

niente did it, its already known.

Secrets said:

I don't think it's a formal, written agreement, but what niente just mentioned there is the kind of agreement I thought was in place - a gentleman's agreement to not touch the program in question. I use the word 'believe' because when it comes to eqmule and his written agreement, as it's hard to filter what is true and what is bullshit with that guy. I suppose if we ever see the entire EQ source code leaked publicly, I'll take back what I said about him being a liar.

They don't mess with MQ as long as it's not used on truebox servers. I still think they're loosely adhering to that, as the folks getting banned are all on special ruleset servers.

The setting in question also would only use the code I mentioned earlier in the thread (a 'block list' for programs that I pointed out) so that also confirms to me that they're using server-sent data to prohibit specific software (and thus, MySEQ, as I mentioned earlier)

The only capacity they have for detecting ISBoxer is that setting, too. As I mentioned before, MySEQ has been detected using that same 'setting'. MQNext evades that setting because it hides its own modules and processes, but it does not hide MySEQ from their detection by default.

There's a financial benefit to allowing ISBoxer on live servers as opposed to truebox when it comes to player perspective. Which I imagine is the primary motivator for them allowing ISBoxer on live, but not on truebox.

Also, yes, everyone already knows that about eqmule. He threatened to leak the "Entire EQ source code" that "JChan gave him" during one of his meltdowns, he's a staunch COVID denier, and he is the reason why EQMac died after I worked with Todd to close the loophole for PC and promised not to update it. He also had a pissing match publicly with brainiac after brainiac basically carried the weight of the project for multiple years.

He's like me but actually unstable, and not a tranny obviously.

I'm glad Knightly and brainiac took over development and cut him out, as eqmule's not the person I'd want publicly developing a cheat program like that.

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Yeah, I think at the most, and we're trying to stitch things together here from what Redbot has been willing to say (he was one party that did also have discussions with Daybreak back in 2015) + what Mule has claimed, back in 2015 Mule may have been told something to the effect of "make it so your customers can't trivially run MQ on our Truebox servers, and we will find other things to focus our attentions on than going hard after MQ2."

Mule's claim is that MQ going back to fully open source "broke" the agreement and is why the ban waves came. It should be noted--MQ was fully open source from its creation by Plazmic up until 2015 or so when Mule unilaterally violated the open source software license on the project and closed source parts of it, from 2011 to 2015 there was also an era of very low enforcement against MQ2 outside of the so called "active hacks." It certainly wasn't fully allowed, but it was "widely tolerated."

From 2015 to 2019 there was indeed a stretch of very low enforcement against MQ, particularly on live servers where enforcement was virtually nonexistent, somewhat seeming to confirm there may indeed have been an "agreement." In 2019 things even got to the point that Holly met with me, Suineg, and a number of other TLP guild leaders to discuss our views on MQ use on a "boxing" server aka Rizlona. Holly made it explicit in that meeting that she was okay with MQ use if it didn't facilitate automation. This has been interpreted as MQ "going legit", and Redbot has now admitted that is how he interpreted it, but he (and the rest of the MQ community) all admit that they were basically trying to read more into it than was really there. There was no formal blessing, just some commentary that you wouldn't get banned for it if you followed a few rules--which I note is not the same thing as saying it's truly allowed, it's kinda like the situation where some cities decriminalize cannabis, it's still not technically legal, they just aren't arresting you for it.

At the same time this "golden era" of cheating, still featured what seemed to be an annual ban wave, and several Redguides content creators (Sic and Maskoi) were prominently mega banned for streaming MQ2 use on Twitch during this time.

My read on it is basically that Holly was very revenue focused, and this can be seen in several of her initiatives (Overseer is something she pushed, and apparently the dev team absolutely loathed.) Holly felt that as long as people weren't mass automating and warping around, and as long as they stayed off TLP...the boxing with tools be it MQ or ISboxer are basically not causing "enough problems" to justify the loss of revenue. I thnk MySEQ was largely ignored for all these years for the same reason.

When Holly left, from all I can tell from my sources, the dev team started running the company and basically seem to be allowed to do anything they want with little supervision. The big ban waves this year were started by a dev, who implemented it without any corporate approval. When the first wave went out, Jchan retroactively said it was fine to keep doing it. While I think the rampant MQNext use on Mischief and Thornblade may have been a big part of why they allowed the ban waves to go on, the other reality is the couple of developers involved in anticheat all raid with a specific live EQ top raid guild that has a very strong anticheat mentality (this same guild gets datamined personal data from Daybreak's customers, given to them by Daybreak staff, so they can get a list of their own guildies who use MQ for purposes of gkicking them.)

I've always found the whole MQ community pretty interesting, a lot of good developers have been involved in it, and some sketchy ones as well. The personalities are fairly autistic. I know several people who went on to careers in real programming based on learning to code from fiddling around with MQ2 back in the day. I think the reality is SOE/DB/DPG created a big mess by choosing to intentionally "minimally enforce" rules against cheating for over a decade--including letting prominent TLP guilds on several servers get away with massive levels of MQ use (including the Lockjaw guild I was in, lest people think I'm just randomly throwing shade.)

At the end of the day I do think the game would be better off without rampant cheating, but I also reserve the right to say DPG sucks real bad at how they go about doing things.

I honestly don't care if the bans are biased or caused by arbitrary desires. We want this perfect enforcement where the worst people get hit and its fair and just and amazing. Nah. Never gonna happen. One big thing about banning myseq type shit while some mq2ers skate is that it sends the message that cheating is cheating and you can't just lightly cheat and be fine for a while or whatever. You cheat you can get hit. Second, if its personal or arbitrary, while its a bit "unjust" or whatever, it means there's more oversight. I have more trust that a pissed off roi member dev will actually look at the target list for correctness over some loose algorithm sweeping.

The rampant cheating is such a drag. I think a server like rizlona is an ideal solution. Fuck cheaters and seriously fuck you guys that think stuff like myseq isn't cheating because some mq2er is worse. Go play on the pro cheating server - riz is actually a really awesome community. Playing where every fucking spawn is assumed instantly spotted and all the other performance enhancing bullshit is lame. I simply found eq more fun before it all became so prominent.

I don't really know anyone serious who doesn't think MySEQ is cheating, but not-using MySEQ is literally akin to being a 1990s baseball player and refusing to use steroids. Every top TLP open world guild since Ragefire/Lockjaw, has absolutely used MySEQ as an integral part of tracking open world raid bosses, and the usage of it in the community at large is incredibly high. If say 5% of players use MQ2, I would guess 50% or more of TLPers use MySEQ. That is why, if they are going after it now (and guys like Knightly say they are), it is at an incredibly low % rate, like maybe they're choosing to action 1 in 100 accounts using it, the vast majority of people I know who still use MySEQ 100% of the time every single day, but don't use MQ, have never been hit with so much as a suspension.

If they ever actually pursue the sort of modern/more legit industry standard anticheat like Secrets mentioned, they could literally just kill any account that even connects to the game with MySEQ, instant kill the client and permaban the account involved. Most modern games do that when you use cheat software, and when you find bypasses that get by it, they are usually only good for a few weeks and then the software catches up and bans a bunch of people. Most of the games that aren't regularly banning huge numbers of botters have made some sort of philosophical decision that being too aggressive with anticheat is bad for business--or they are like Amazon/New World in that they designed the client in such a way that it's hopelessly susceptible to client side hacks.

Serious question, I've never put much thought into the MQ/SEQ map stuff. It's always seemed to me that, while it's a cool toy, I know this game well enough that I haven't ever felt handicapped by not having it. The only scenario I could see it being worthwhile in is if you are doing drive-bys of a few zones and just want to see if something is up worth killing.

I've also never cared about tracking OW raid spawns either, but why wouldn't you just log the kill time and start the window timer? What does MySEQ provide you in the OW case that an old school spotter running logs wouldn't?

Elderan said:

This wave was trigged by a dev who is currently in a guild on one of the new TLPs and was nudged into triggering this banwave by one of the few people who know they are a dev in the guild.

I wont name names, but I know who is who.

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I really don't care about people or names or who ordered the hit. I just care about getting pictures of spiderman.

alavaz said:

Serious question, I've never put much thought into the MQ/SEQ map stuff. It's always seemed to me that, while it's a cool toy, I know this game well enough that I haven't ever felt handicapped by not having it. The only scenario I could see it being worthwhile in is if you are doing drive-bys of a few zones and just want to see if something is up worth killing.

I've also never cared about tracking OW raid spawns either, but why wouldn't you just log the kill time and start the window timer? What does MySEQ provide you in the OW case that an old school spotter running logs wouldn't?

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Say you are VP. You can put a character with MSEQ at the entrance and see when any of the dragons spawn. A old school spotter couldn't use track from the entrance and see all the dragons. Or say you are in Seb with a tracker for Trak. You would have to keep him at the lair instead at the entrance. You also don't need to be at the computer - MSEQ can send a message to email/discord when something spawns.

WorryPlaysGames said:

Say you are VP. You can put a character with MSEQ at the entrance and see when any of the dragons spawn. A old school spotter couldn't use track from the entrance and see all the dragons. Or say you are in Seb with a tracker for Trak. You would have to keep him at the lair instead at the entrance. You also don't need to be at the computer - MSEQ can send a message to email/discord when something spawns.

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I guess when I played in batphone guilds most stuff was contested enough that people would be constantly watching when it was in window anyway, so it always seemed unnecessary to risk it in my opinion.

The only reason you'd ever really use MySEQ or SEQ beyond raiding is for camps like Quillmane, or spotting mobs at a distance - like in LOIO by a specific name or type (which really doesn't matter in today's age, the invis ring isn't useful like it was before with all the cash shop stuff and lack of danger)

There's also the case that people use it while doing XP groups to see where to pull next, what timers are due, etc.

I think adding MySEQ to the ingame map works around a lot of these concerns.

Ranger tracking, imo, is fucking awful, even if it's something we're used to in current day. It'd be solid to be able to see all the NPCs and just go with an implicit assumption that everyone has MySEQ or the ingame MQ variant of it. The example I posted earlier from emu that I wrote, I believe, is the most fair way of handling that. If you have to make up for financials, take a hint from EQ2 and sell the tracking skill as a perk with your monthly sub like they did with XP loss removal so you can see the names of mobs on the map based on your tracking skill.

Modern MQ movement needs to be put in for /follow. Daybreak should reach out to brainiac like they did Lax, and implement MQNav for /follow.

Beyond that, MQ features are mostly automation or active hacks. You can put in EAC and remove automation completely after those above items are addressed, only the 24-box automated crews will miss that being an option.

I think people are done with this whole 'half-foot in the water' approach to cheating and never consented to the 'light enforcement' approach to begin with. It just became the norm for reasons Daybreak never disclosed, and now that those are coming to light, I think it's best they just double down on its removal or rescind the whole approach.

WorryPlaysGames said:

Say you are VP. You can put a character with MSEQ at the entrance and see when any of the dragons spawn. A old school spotter couldn't use track from the entrance and see all the dragons. Or say you are in Seb with a tracker for Trak. You would have to keep him at the lair instead at the entrance. You also don't need to be at the computer - MSEQ can send a message to email/discord when something spawns.

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I remember just sitting at seb entrance looking into the wall and casting eye of zomm. It would put the eye at Trak's lair.

Even if you set up "legitimate" trackers people will train them over and over and over and over. TEB's broken golem tracker and Vulak tracker were murdered just constantly. You had to really work to kill the Vulak tracker too. He was way in where Vulak spawns in a corner with nothing around.

xmod2 said:

You can get by pretty easily as a regular player without SEQ (I know, I've done it), but if you think you're in a batphone guild and not benefiting from SOMEONE using SEQ, well...

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Oh I know for a fact like everyone had it. I just didn't see the necessity of it when half of the time a poopsock was already forming 4-8 hours prior to spawn anyway. Not sure how SEQ was inching anyone across the finish line there.

edit: I too remember in the old days just staring through walls and using pets. It seemed plenty efficient then. We also had people watching logs for mobs that would emote and that post it to IRC. In reality, I suppose it's not all that different, but definitely less risky.

Poopsocking kinda hit its peak on RF/LJ, the last big TLPs without AOC. The incentives for socking just weren't there after that, the way subsequent (AOC) servers went down is you had a clear top guild that very aggressively tracked a bunch of targets--SEQ helps with that because you can have a few accounts with throwaway trackers at a zone line or somewhere safe (which being in visual range of a raid boss often is not) and automate the tracking burden. There were usually 1-3 guilds that would regularly try to "snipe" OW targets if the top guild slacked at all, and this was the main incentive to keep up with tracking.

There were occasional socks that broke out on later TLPs, but unless a bunch of socking went on after 2017 that I never heard about, it kinda died out. Remember AOC means anyone who doesn't OMEGA care about killing EVERY OW trak, EVERY open world Naggy etc, can just largely not care and do DZ at their leisure, it removes a lot of pressure from the system vs the old pre AOC TLP.

In ye olden days the guild bosses could attempt to invite the mob to the guild. If it was up you'd get a different message.

Arbitrary said:

Even if you set up "legitimate" trackers people will train them over and over and over and over. TEB's broken golem tracker and Vulak tracker were murdered just constantly. You had to really work to kill the Vulak tracker too. He was way in where Vulak spawns in a corner with nothing around.

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He was actually really easy to kill. Just bring in an AoE mob from the hallway.