The simultaneous sending of keystrokes is considered illegal in EQ2...

[Fat Tire]

I am curious when they made this policy change?




Edit: You may want to post this on the General Discussion forums so it gets a little bit more visibility for anyone considering playing EQ2. This is a pretty big deal. I could see wow doing the same thing.

[Svpernova09]

Here is a direct link to the SoE reply:

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/p...464930#5182737

INC OFFICIAL RESPONSE!!!
End of debate Thank you very much everyone


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So, multiboxing if you control all 6 characters signally and you have to type a command for all 6 characters separately is ok. Multi-boxing with the use of hardware OR software which allows you to control 6 characters with 1 command is not ok and considered in violation of the spirit of the game as it gives the player(s) an advantage over other players.

IMO "6 characters signally and you have to type a command for all 6 characters separately is ok" Sounds like if you round robin everything so only 1 toon is getting a key at a time, you'd be ok. But it's definitely a Box at your own risk until they clarify further.

Going to move this to General Forums.

[Inactive]

From the thread on the official boards:

So, multiboxing if you control all 6 characters signally and you have to type a command for all 6 characters separately is ok. Multi-boxing with the use of hardware OR software which allows you to control 6 characters with 1 command is not ok and considered in violation of the spirit of the game as it gives the player(s) an advantage over other players.

What this means is that its perfectly fine to still have one keyboard for 6 accounts as long as you are controlling each client signally and uniquely. You can accomplish this with ISBoxer using keymapped steps while making no use of the repeater whatsoever.

I just changed my setup to comply with these "new" rules. A few examples:

First press goes to client1 second to client2 etc etc

Num9, client one invites all group, clients accept - I press 6 times and voila
NumComma, Client stops follow - I press 5 times
Q - Assist and autoattack 1 - Same thing i now have to press 5 times

I also have an elaborate keymap setup where i use 3-4 different ingame macros on each toon with the one of my "spam" button, depending on which mode set on my main guys keymap a different keystroke is send to a specific client. This button where before i had to hit once every sec, i now have to spam as it first goes to client 2 then 3 etc.

This complys with no simultaneous keystrokes or cloned keystrokes, and would be impossible for SoE to even determine or scan for since every action on all chars happen at different times.

It does however still give me the "unfair advantage" over other players. And SoE can just as she said at their sole discretion ban everyone they feel like for no reason whatsoever, so ya.

I think what started this was this being brought to attention on the PvP servers, where this indeeds gives a huge advantage everywhere except T8 pvp.


Im going to continue to box with the current setup i just posted, im fairly certain i wont get banned tbh.
Its ofcause up to you if you wanna continue to play, but i wouldnt break a sweat if you swich to a different round-robin kinda setup

Good luck!

[highlander_133]

Kiara responded, and then locked the thread.

So, multiboxing if you control all 6 characters signally and you have to type a command for all 6 characters separately is ok. Multi-boxing with the use of hardware OR software which allows you to control 6 characters with 1 command is not ok and considered in violation of the spirit of the game as it gives the player(s) an advantage over other players.

So using one mapped key to fire off actions on more than one client = illegal.

I cannot understand why SOE would have a policy that is so divergent from Blizzard, and is all but guaranteed to alienate players rather than encourage new accounts.

[Lax]

So it's interesting that Kiara says that broadcasting to multiple clients is a violation of "the spirit of the game". It's also interesting that she said it gives "an advantage over other players" (p.s. "signally"? singly perhaps?). So does owning a G15 keyboard, X-Keys, an n52, etc. That's the whole point of going out and buying a new input device, because you expect to get some advantage in your play. But these things are available to anyone, and without violating the explicit terms of the EULA. (There is no part of the EULA that explicitly states you may not use these input devices, broadcast keys, etc) Doesn't that make it a fair advantage?

But, like people have brought up.. what they seem to be saying is that if you are sending a key to 1 window at a time instead of all of them at once, then they have no problem with it. Which means multi-step/round-robin and whacking the key 6 times instead of 1.

At any rate, if EQ2 players in general hear of this, any EQ2 multiboxer -- regardless of whether they are using any added hardware or software or not -- can pretty much expect to be reported. There's no way of detecting whether you're broadcasting to multiple clients or not, especially considering your round trip time to the server is probably high enough to whack the key a couple times. They would either have to adopt a ban all reported policy, or spend man-hours to watch you long enough to make a determination.

I think this is going to cost them more money in lost subscriptions (they're practically begging you to spend your money on WoW instead) and added enforcement costs than they stand to gain in not losing subscriptions from people who are upset about someone broadcasting to multiple clients. Unless, of course, they do not plan on banning you for multiboxing or having to enforce the policy... in which case they're still losing because customer service will still have to field additional complaints about multiboxing due to making such a statement. I'm not really sure where they win here.

[Ellay]

Very silly change.

Either the above mentioned GM is going to retract his/her statement as being uninformed or EQ2 is going to lose a massive amount of subscriptions.
% wise I'd guess EQ and EQ2 are the most boxed mmo's out there. Of course more people box WoW but if you take it from an overall % of players, EQ2 has way too much to lose on enforcing this policy. On top of that coming from a game that allows you to macro all your abilities into 1 button if you wanted to and just spam it.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Very silly change.

Either the above mentioned GM is going to retract his/her statement as being uninformed or EQ2 is going to lose a massive amount of subscriptions.
% wise I'd guess EQ and EQ2 are the most boxed mmo's out there. Of course more people box WoW but if you take it from an overall % of players, EQ2 has way too much to lose on enforcing this policy. On top of that coming from a game that allows you to macro all your abilities into 1 button if you wanted to and just spam it.

Sony won't bat an eye. They have far too many other "primary" gaming markets to care about the "vanishingly small" percentage that their MMOs make up, IMO.

[Captive2]

This is just stupid. As I said in my other post, EQ2 can’t afford to lose a significant portion of their player-base. If this is the hill they want to die on, then I guess we boxers don’t have any choice. I’m not going to jump through ridiculous hoops and get carpal-tunnel spamming keys hundreds of times per minute just to get around this ridiculous arbitrary decision.

I think I’ll just continue to play the way I am today – with ISBoxer broadcasting keys. I don’t PvP EVER – and am running around zones which are almost completely empty (which might suggest to SOE that they shouldn’t go out of their way to drive paying customers like me away). So if someone reports me, or if after all this time they decide to start cracking down on this sort of thing by actively hunting down people doing it, well I guess my days with EQ2 are over. I certainly won’t be buying their expansion unless they publicly reverse this position. However, as others have stated, SOE is generally their own worst enemy so I don’t expect them to do anything that prudent.

This is where PvP gets in the way of a game which was NEVER intended to support it. The game was never built around PvP; it was never balanced around it. You can’t balance classes for PvP and yet make them interesting to play in PvE (see WoW). And yet because people complain about an unfair advantage, this sort of things happens.

[Gadzooks]

This is where PvP gets in the way of a game which was NEVER intended to support it. The game was never built around PvP; it was never balanced around it. You can’t balance classes for PvP and yet make them interesting to play in PvE (see WoW). And yet because people complain about an unfair advantage, this sort of things happens.

It's a fault/attitude of the PvP junkies, who complain if another class gets one more dps than they do, and wage campaigns on forums about it, because another class is OP vs. theirs.

Look at how rogues are treated in WoW - they're not especially OP in any way, if you know your class, and know how rogues work, but the forums are littered with "OMG NERF ROUGES".

PvP attracts a certain kind of player, the same ones who play ContraStrike on XBox live, and spend all day spewing racial slurs and offensive comments at everyone - the "hur hur" crowd, as I like to call them. They discovered WoW during BC, and brought all their friends.

They're pretty much anywhere you go, now. Luckily, the general consensus within the WoW community is that MBers are fine, stop crying. I doubt the current leadership of WoW will change their stance, they understand MBing, know we don't exploit, and try to not annoy/interfere/cheat other players.

[Lyonheart]

This bums me out! I consider ( or did ) EQ2 my secondary MMO. I have 6 accounts there and I play it when there are gaps in WoW content. I am already maxed out on triumph badge gear in WoW. I can log on and knock out the frost badge random in less than an hour. It wont be long before i have a few hundred K in gold and items. That is when i find it hard to log in, so I play EQ2 until new content comes out.

SOE benefits from people like me, even though we do not maintain active subscriptions indefinitely. The two to three months a year I play 6 accounts = more than a single account who plays all year.

I do not see how it is an "unfair advantage" over 6 individual players. There is a lot of instanced content that is much more difficult, if not impossible, to BOX that 6 players could do very easy. The ONLY advantage ( and not unfair ) is that a boxer does not have to waste hours waiting for groups, and they PAY for that privilege. That is not any more unfair than taking a car to work over walking. You can afford it so that makes it unfair?