Salus, TheShocker, banned by radu

[Salus]

I was running 2 clients on 2 desktops, and missed a PM from Radu that "he sees me". I was there to respond after switching back and finding myself disconnect. A short conversation on a different character reveals that I'm using a macro... but all I've done was harvest silver, toy some with the first person view of cvs clients, and read forums while waiting. Could I please have some more details on the situation, as this forum section was a place I was hoping not to be in again, and I'm not really sure what's up...

 

Salus, TheShocker

[Entropy]

I am sure you would like more details on how we detect the macroing, but unfortunately, they are not avaialable at this time.

But I do see that you persist in thinking we are idiots. I was willing to let you play your other charachters if you did so legally, but this is no longer an option.

[Salus]

I am sure you would lime more details on how we detect the macroing, but unfortunately, they are not avaialable at this time.

But I do see that you persist in thinking we are idiots. I was willing to let you play your other charachters if you did so legally, but this is no longer an option.

 

I was not asking how something was detected. I was asking what I was accused of. I've only been told "macroing", and I'd like to know more of my accusations. In the past, I've seen other people told more specifically what the accusation was, but you have not told me any more than that. You just keep insisting I think you are an idiot, when in fact I said very specifically I do not and would just like to know my accusations. Of course there is the need to not explain how you guys detect it, and I can respect that, but I haven't been asking where you got your information. I've been asking what this information is. And the "I was willing to let you play your other characters if you did so legally"... all i've done was pick up a couple bags on while waiting for a response in PM. Surely that is legal, so why would that no longer be an option. I'm scratching my head here...

[Entropy]

Ok then, let be more detailed:

You used some sort of macroing/automatization to harvest stuff and to manufacture stuff.

[Salus]

But I did not. If this is a matter of quantities, I play the game day and night as RL has been a drag lately. If your logs can show misclicks and whatnot, I believe this will verify. There are points when I would switch back to the screen and accidentally stop my own harvesting because the number didn't seem to go up quick enough and I was trying to restart it. I walk in, set first person so the mouse will stay centered, then use my window manager's keybindings to switch desktops. With that, I could come back and just click because I was already pointed at what i wanted to harvest. When manufacturing, I'd mix all and sometimes switch to check on my other's harvesting. Especially late nights for me, if the logs are specific enough, you will see that I sometimes forget about one or the other and it will just sit for a couple minutes losing food. Yes, I do play the game a lot... probably more than someone should be playing a game, and yes, I have gotten it down to a tedium when it comes to harvesting two characters, but I believe you can at least see from logs that I am pretty regular to be active on chat while playing, and that I do occassionally mess up my patterns (especially coming back, seeing I stopped harvesting and starting my trip back to realize that I wasn't actually full, just broke a pick or something... boy I hated doing that... or forgetting to eat and never actually filling my food level like I intended).

 

A thought occurs to me that I do (did) use the patch for the blank maps so I could mark my spots. When a spot felt 'lucky', I'd mark it so that I'd return to just that right spot again. If it's a matter of me often being in the same spot, that would be why... I'm not sure what goes to the server in terms of map clicks, but if that can be checked, you'll see I'm often clicking around trying to get my destination X right on top of my marker X. I thought the patches to the cvs were legal as they were provided in the same place as cvs, and if they were not, I do apologize for that, and accept that it would have been an oversight of the rules on my part, though far from macro'ing.

 

I've got ctrl+(usually)1 and mouse positioning burned into my brain, and just keep flipping back and forth on characters. It made me productive. It was not automation, just old-fashioned playing-a-game-way-too-much...

 

I do appreciate the little extra information you've provided, but I still have to disagree as to its accuracy. I do wish you wouldn't insist that I think the mods are idiots, as I've said very forward that I do not, and I have respect on many different levels (concept/creation of the game in the first place, getting a playerbase, getting a dev/mod-base, keeping the game advancing, etc). The only negative thing I can really say is not that you are idiots, but maybe a bit quick to be so sure about what happened, as I feel like so much of the boring time prepping my characters for what I feel are the fun parts just came back and bit me in the ass..

[Entropy]

Let us just say that if you look at the bans forum various posts, you are the first person to claim to be innocent when it comes to modified clients.

All others were smart enough to admit, or at least STFU about it.

 

Our macro detection is not perfect, but it does catch various forms of macroing, with 100% reliability (no false alarms, that is).

[Salus]

Let us just say that if you look at the bans forum various posts, you are the first person to claim to be innocent when it comes to modified clients.

All others were smart enough to admit, or at least STFU about it.

 

Our macro detection is not perfect, but it does catch various forms of macroing, with 100% reliability (no false alarms, that is).

 

Everything has 100% reliability when that claim is made. The only way to be less than 100% reliable is to look into the possibility when there could have been error.

 

I've presented my case that (provided your logs have it for you) I've messed up plenty of times, lost track of my character when on the other, chatted often, and made the best out of keypresses provided (and window placement for that matter). You seemed reluctant to explain what happened in the first place, both in PM and in forum. I understand my name may not have rang the best to you, as I've been in this forum in the past, but I'm pretty certain you wouldn't just be out to get someone for no reason. However, I ask that you (or any other moderator willing to provide the time, I would appreciate it, though I understand most would have better things to do) see what you can discover through any logs. No developer wants to accept a fault in their work, but it's good practice to accept the possibility.

 

The only things I've done afk were mapwalking, harvesting, and idling... not continuing past those things, just starting them, leaving them, and hoping for the best. From our conversations in the past, I hope you've noticed I took pride in programming, not necessarily the "getting it to work" so much as any creative side to it. My point here is that if I see I'm locked anyway, and you already told me it would stay that way, sure, I would admit it if it was the case... just as I did before for a person who only wanted to try coming back to the game for a little bit. It was not even for my own benefit that I admitted it before. The reason I am not "smart enough to admit, or at least STFU about it" is because I've worked hard and made a legit character that got locked on me.

[Entropy]

You admited in the past to have done such a client. You PROMISED not to do it again, and I believed you.

Now you did it again and you try to make it look as if you are totally innocent.

 

And BTW, I did not remember about your past client when I locked you. It was some other mod that pointed that out.

I usually do very little banning, unless if my logs say that someone is REALLY doing stuff they shouldn't do.

 

And you are right, nothing is 100% reliable, but it just so happens that until now, we never banned an innocent person that was detected macroing by our anti macroing system.

[Salus]

You admited in the past to have done such a client. You PROMISED not to do it again, and I believed you.

Now you did it again and you try to make it look as if you are totally innocent.

 

And BTW, I did not remember about your past client when I locked you. It was some other mod that pointed that out.

I usually do very little banning, unless if my logs say that someone is REALLY doing stuff they shouldn't do.

 

And you are right, nothing is 100% reliable, but it just so happens that until now, we never banned an innocent person that was detected macroing by our anti macroing system.

 

You've admitted that nothing is fully reliable, but continued with your assumption that it is... There is a first for everything, which is part of the reason I had PMed first instead of posting here. I saw it as beneficial as there was an error, and you don't seem like the type to want it seen that there could be. I was hoping maybe you would look into it to realize that while I did have many things down to a seemingly mechanical level, that is a large part of the game (harvesting, mixing), and there was plenty of other details that would be ludicrous to put into a bot... like sitting and chatting while making any errors I may make.

 

And yes, I did promise. That is why I was cautious and asked a while back about the small change I wanted to make about the storage dialogue.

[Entropy]

The storage dialogue is fine. But having something to automate the harvesting and mixing is not.

While there is a first for everything, this is not a first for this particular thing, it's just one of the many other confirmed cases. And that's it, believe it or not.

[Salus]

The storage dialogue is fine. But having something to automate the harvesting and mixing is not.

While there is a first for everything, this is not a first for this particular thing, it's just one of the many other confirmed cases. And that's it, believe it or not.

 

The storage dialogue was not fine, by your own words.

 

And you continue to talk about automation of these things, but the fact remains that if you check your logs (your logs /do/ show times, don't they?) you will see human error, inconsistancies, and chatting throughout. It not a matter of belief on my part. I know what I did, I wasted my time trying to prepare one character for a reset while trying to make a bit of gc and HE on a character that otherwise was set up to not be a real moneymaker. It is a matter of a mod who won't check the logs to verify that, while he is 'teh god', he is also wrong in putting full faith in his system.

 

Also, the issue of usage... if I were to automate mixing, I think I would have made more than the handfuls-of-HEs at a time that I made (to heal from harvesting) and a load of bars to help raise $$ for an arti. I imagine also logs may show what items are used and when. If so, they'll show the couple times I tried to refill my food and kept it at an annoying -10ish because I kept forgetting to eat again while I was on the other character, and they'll show the times I've tried things I've heard elsewhere about combining fruits and toadstools when mixing.

 

If I were to automate harvesting, I wouldn't have been sitting around chatting in local the night before (or random comments at other points about MN and her deeds: most other harvesters I've met weren't as talkative as the pair I was chatting with the night before). Sure, I harvested a lot. That's part of what a reset needs. Also, that's a large part of why I ran two characters at once. It avoided the irritation of just watching a number go up over and over while not doing much of anything except wait for red text. A lot of harvesting and a bit of mixing doesn't prove a thing, though. I'm blind to any other 'evidence' you have, but I do know there is plenty of evidence supporting me.

 

What the hell kind of fun would the game be to automate harvesting? I'd rather go find some RL entertainment than watch a number rise repeatedly. Our issues in the past were, as was explained, a matter of playing with the code to explore and just generally play with it. I had never really used it much at that point, just debugging, and stopped at the point when a mod (i believe it was Soldus, though I'm not sure) had called me out on it. Someone else continued to use it, sure, but I did not, and have not since. In your next reply, would you mind updating me on if you've hand-checked any of this instead of just relying on the code in question?

[Entropy]

By "The storage dialogue is fine." I meant it's a different thing, and most likely people would probably just get an warning for doing that. We are not unreasonable.

Nevertheless, despite of the fact that I said it is not fine, I see that you did it anyway (or you did it just before asking permission, not sure).

[Salus]

By "The storage dialogue is fine." I meant it's a different thing, and most likely people would probably just get an warning for doing that. We are not unreasonable.

Nevertheless, despite of the fact that I said it is not fine, I see that you did it anyway (or you did it just before asking permission, not sure).

 

Right..

Any update as to whether you have or will look through logs by hand to see that nothing was automated?

[Entropy]

There is nothing new to look at. We only log what is suspicious. For example I was able to detect that you played with the NPCs. Or that you used a modified client. Or that you tried to macro harvest.

[Salus]

There is nothing new to look at. We only log what is suspicious. For example I was able to detect that you played with the NPCs. Or that you used a modified client. Or that you tried to macro harvest.

 

Then I suggest at some point in the future you work on your detection system. Not only is it incorrect, but it must be poorly planned. Your constant accusations of me attempting to macro harvest (which earlier you had said was harvesting AND mixing) are pretty poorly based when all you have is that the detection system said so, when you yourself have said that it cannot be 100% accurate. Had it logged more information when it suspected something, you would see all the stated misclicks, chats, forgotten pauses, etc. At first you stalled in making your claim of what happened, and just made a /very/ broad accusation. Afterwords, it took this long after a request that you check the logs for you to say it only logs what is suspicious. I understand you play god, but do it right. Be able to back up your claims. You are still wrong, sorry. I'd gladly do what I could to provide more proof (besides, again, all the stated chatting and errors), but you provide very little basis to work off of. For now it is one player taking the trouble from it. Yes, there is a first for everything, assuming this is indeed the first, but later, given time, there will be more.

 

It's a shame that you can't go through better logs to see all the errors in your accusations. I am curious, in your claims, are you thinking I was afk through this, too? If so, i'm sure ch. 4 can verify that I'm always freaking there. Reguardless of whether or not you think it was afk, better logs would show you otherwise... an oversight on the part of a dev/mod should not come down on a player.

[Entropy]

That's enough.

 

Even if by some very, very unprobable event I am wrong, and you did not macro, by the very fact that you attempted to modify the client to open the storage menu by clicking on the storager without permission, after you promised to play honestly after a ban for similar reasons, this ban is very justified.