Anyone else notice more of these lately: you go into an Alert, especially one with a nice rare reward, like Harmon Labs or FATAL ERROR: RAID ARRAY (Cybermind), and one hero does very little but provide an aura, use energy builder, maybe summon pets and then just move a little erratically.
These are follow-bots: characters created using a second account, set to follow a player who is dual-boxing. As computer processors have improved, it has become easier for more and more players to run two accounts at the same time. People do it to double the chances for a rare drop, or to complete Vigilance special alerts twice as fast. Sadly, if the rest of the team can't handle dead weight like this, the special alert becomes a real drag, since the follow-bot nearly always dies and gets locked out.
Anyone else seeing this?
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BOTs are illegal in every MMO, if you find one please report it
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
I despise such behavior... and i have no clue why people are botting, at all, since everything in CO can easily be obtained, by just playing the game.. (all it takes is some effort and time).
#edit:
The person i am referring to must be reading the forums, because as soon as i typed the above, he / she immediatly logged out of the game.
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I dunno if it still works, but a long time ago Golds could file report tickets ingame. Haven't had a reason to use them since I came back, but my guess is they dont work anymore with the low staff.
Mini Map HUB -> Game Support -> Request GM Help -> this propably goes in Behavior, Character or Others category,
Most likely in Others
For the follow-bots, I have not reported because I can't prove anything: it seems like one toon is set to follow another and use some simple macro, but I can't say for certain.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
This isn't against any terms of service as far as I know, and because of this, I'm going to say that yes, I do it for certain things, but always lower-tier stuff like smashes, grabs (fighting city hall, day at the mall), and radiation rumble. AND! I do this as a courtesy to my team actually, since the character I control is typically capable of solo-running those alerts. Meanwhile, the one following is usually a crappy AT with poor gear who really wouldn't contribute much.
So it's really not a big deal as long as those doing it use common sense, and I'd never do it in any content more advanced than what I listed. Think of it this way, would you rather be on a team with 4 low-level, undergeared ATs who can't complete the objective? Or on a team where at least one other is a solid level 40?
no offense thats OP
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Huh... this argument would've been a lot better if this were the STO forums.
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Anyhow, the problem is that you can't truly prevent people from doing this and there would be drawbacks to implementing any sort of "anti-multiboxer" mechanics.
1) Multiple instances running on the same PC: Nothing stops a person from using a second PC for account #2.
2) Preventing same-IP users from queuing: Two legitimate people playing via the same network can no longer team up. This would be a huge deal.
3) Participation thresholds: This might sound good, but someone who is level 10 really doesn't do a whole lot of damage compared to someone who is 40 and properly geared. A level 40 auto-following and spamming an energy builder will probably do more damage than a level 10 playing legit. Same with a level 30 using aura of ebon destruction, but does nothing at all.
Edit - 4) True multiboxers. Do they exist on CO? If so, this kind of change would screw them over, and typically these people are paying for and maintaining multiple accounts instead of just 1.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against them preventing this type of play, but I'm not exactly for it either--partially because I make use of it, but not only that. I worry that, for reasons stated above, it could do more harm than good if done poorly.
Anyways, multiboxing is not really what i was referring to, in my initial post. I cannot name the script, but one can easily find it, just by googling for 5 minutes. It's a well known plague in all Cryptic games and people in CO are using it.
And it can be detected if a player is pushing keys or is letting a script run and do the work..
If you're bringing your "drone" account into an alert PUG and all it does is auto-follow and has its energy builder on auto-fire, it's no different from any other player just spamming their energy builders. That kind of behavior is obviously frowned upon for obvious reasons, because they don't care to put in their 100% as the rest of the group and are letting them do the majority of the work. That's exactly what your follow-drone of a toon is doing. The only insignificant difference is that it doesn't directly have a human controlling it.
Now, if this were some other reality where alerts are made of nothing but hostile combat dummies that at the very most have energy builders as their sole attacks, then this wouldn't be that much of an issue. However alerts aren't structured like that at all, and furthermore all of them have at least one boss-level villain to deal with. Exactly how is it even remotely fair that someone in the group who just spams their energy builder on a villain like Ao or Jack Fool is entitled to the same rewards as everyone else?
I don't care if you have a level 40 build that can solo everything the game can throw at you that the drone account toon is padding off from. As far as I'm concerned it isn't just padding off your level 40's efforts, but the others' in the group as well. Having a solo-capable build != you solo'ing the game. I'd rather be involved in an alert team that has everyone perform at their best regardless of levels and build, and that involves actually playing the game.
1) Bug abuse. Let's say there was an obscure power combination capable of killing GCR bosses in only a few hits and a guild used it every single time. That's abusing a bug.
2) Game mechanics. This is something of a gray area, actually. During the nightmare invasion, another player made a thread detailing a trick for killing portals with long-range attacks (>100 yards) in a way that prevents the nearby mobs from being able to retaliate. While I find this to be very clever and see no problem with it, someone could argue that it's technically using the mechanics in an unintended way that conveys an unfair advantage. The thing is, anyone can multiclient, but silvers using ATs can't swap powers out to get access to Sniper Rifle, or any other >100 yard attack unless it's part of their limited AT kit. Cryptic & PWE are really the only party here allowed to be judge/jury/executioner.
In all the other PWE games I've played, multiclienting is allowed. Looking over the terms of service, there's really nothing saying you can't run more than one account at the same time as long as you aren't using some third party program to control them. Rightclick-follow and setting an energy builder to toggle on/off instead of spam/maintain mode is all available within the game for anyone. I only run mine through the easiest of the basic alerts, and for even a mediocre-geared level 40, that those pretty much are dummies. And maybe this part is a matter of opinion, but I never really cared if I was "carrying" afk or really weak players through, even before I started 2-at-a-timing them. If anything, I find it a lot more enjoyable to run alerts with really weak or afk players since things actually get to put up a fight instead. It's no fun at all when everything just falls over and dies instantly.
This is really annoying, and often hindering, in Cybermind and Warlord. The auto-follow character does not contribute enough and reduces DPS against the boss, which has a lockout mechanic. In Cybermind, it was maddening.
Mechanics and TOS aside, I really dislike auto-follow toons. Imagine if it caught on, and what nonsense it could bring to things like open missions and Cosmics that scale with the number of players that show up. Another issue with auto-follow toons is that when someone says something in chat to the auto-follow toon, there is no response, and the toon's actual controller never responds, either. In a co-op game, non-responsive players bother me to no end.
Keep your follow-bots to solo content. Keep them out of team-content unless you ask everyone in advance.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Your drone didn't earn its reward with any real participation or effort. It did it by proxy. It piggy-backed on your main toon and most certainly the other group players who've put in the best effort as expected of them during alerts.
If it's Radiation Rumble, whatever. It gets a pass because of how incredibly hard it is to lose that alert. Anything else though? I don't see a problem hitting record on my Shadowplay and submitting it along with a support ticket.
And since we're bringing up Terms of Service:
23. Official Service and Beta Testing
23.1The Games are designed for play only as offered through our Service. You agree not to access, create or provide any other means through which the game may be played by others, such as through server emulators. You agree not to use any hardware or software, including but not limited to third party tools, or any other method of support which may in any way influence or give you an advantage in the use of the Services which is not authorized by us, including but not limited to the use of ‘bots’ and/or any other method by which the Service may be played automatically without human input. You acknowledge that you do not have the right to create, publish, distribute, create derivative works from or use any software programs, utilities, applications, emulators or tools derived from or created for the games, except that you may use the Software to the extent expressly permitted by these Terms and the applicable EULA. You may not take any action which imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure. You do not have ownership of and may not sell, transfer, trade or auction any Accounts, characters, items, coin, Zen or Proprietary Materials, nor may you assist others in doing so, except as expressly authorized by us. We do not recognize any transfers occurring outside of the Service of anything related to the Service.
The "follow-bot" might not be from a third party software, but "follow-bots" do not require human input all throughout the alert through an alternative method. No human input = as good as a bot.
The Terms of Service are specifically written in a way where they don't have to expressly cite anything exact with regards to wrongdoing in order to ban you. That's because they can't list out all the ways that someone might screw with the game.
If you even have to talk about them or go read them, then you are probably doing something wrong and should stop.
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Sure, I could just queue the weak level 12 void AT I made a few days ago solo, but what guarantee do you have that the other 4 slots won't also have similar characters? It's easy for people to say on a forum that "I'd rather have everyone try and fail!" but that's not how it actually plays out ingame. Wipe in a smash and people start bailing, rarely with a nasty comment on their way out. Queuing that weak alt along with a strong level 40 to do the heavy lifting helps everyone out. Setting it to follow me requires input. Toggling its energy builder requires input. Running it back when/if it dies requires input. Making it go through doors requires input. Moving it to a safe spot on the boss, so that it doesn't get wrecked by splash damage requires input. Counting that as "bot play" or whatever is silly, because it's not. Would it be better to just leave it at the loading screen, then head in toward the end to collect the loot circle? Of course not. Energy builders may be weak, but some damage is better than none. That's a horribly untrue generalization. Sure, you may just click agree and skip off to play the game without ever wondering if something you're doing may conflict with the terms of service, but there's plenty of perfectly legit activities which require carefully combing through it, line by line. Ever set up a fansite? Ever build an app designed to help out the community, such as a skill calculator? People who do these things have to check the terms of service to make sure they even can, or to know what methods are allowed vs which ones aren't. For example, the guy who made the Powerhouse could manually enter data for all the powers, but he couldn't create a program to mine the data by accessing memory addresses while the program was running.
Maybe we need a Cryptic staffer to come forward and say whether or not it's okay, because multiclienting is perfectly fine in other PWE games. Botting is obviously not fine and should be punished, but setting an alt to follow and spam its energy builder uses tools readily available to everyone within the game. If they wanted to stop it, all they really need to do is remove the "follow" command. But then, I suppose people could just park their alts at the beginning of the alert and accomplish the same thing, only with even less contribution. (energy builder damage > no damage at all)
Dare to dream.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
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They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Do not get me wrong, I'd love a bit more banter now and then too but it just seems to rarely happen.
Sure, I'll get my reward at the end of a successful alert. Everyone else who's played their toon to their full potential rightfully gets their reward. That follow-bot that just spent the whole alert brainlessly spamming its energy builder on the other hand? It doesn't deserve jack, because it never put in any real effort like the rest of the group. That's like saying if the automatic robot vacuum I'm using runs into a problem getting stuck in a corner of the house requiring me to reset it, it doesn't make it what it does automatically without human input, at all.
Your intention from the start is to put the toon on auto-pilot without human input while focusing gameplay on your main toon. All you're doing when it dies or gets stuck in a doorway is resetting it in some manner. Setting it to follow you and toggling its energy builder on is just what you do to initialize the automatic functions without further human input. It's still considered a form of botting.
If anything else, consider that what you're doing is effectively hogging two player spots just for yourself, considering that your follow-bot really does ****-all in the alert if it spends all its time just spamming its energy builder. Don't need a staffer to explain how that's a **** move and how it's inconsiderate to the other players in the PUG. Which is all well and good, if you're actually playing the toon. A follow-bot is still a follow-bot regardless of what build or AT is involved.
Let's pretend for a moment you have a fully-geared ultra-badass GCR-geared DPS character. Maybe you do, I don't actually know. Either way, your character is the type that can target groups of mobs and melt them within seconds. In contrast, the random lowbies in your group rarely get off a charge before everything is dead and the healer doesn't even need to heal you due to everything dying so fast and your absurdly-good self healing. All the group can really do is just follow you around while you roll out 5k per second compared to their lousy 100s. They didn't contribute much, so when the alert is done, do they deserve anything even though you literally did nearly all of the work?
There are some who would say no, but I'm not one of them. I bring my stronger characters along to help everyone involved (not just myself) get the reward they queued for more easily. I (and I suspect more people than you realize) would rather be in a group with as many as 2 different players carrying their follow alts that succeeded, vs an alert where everyone is too low-level and too squishy to complete it successfully. According to who's dictionary? Yours? Putting a character on follow and toggling an energy builder is just a clever use of existing ingame mechanics. Bots make basic logic-driven decisions such as "move to this location" or "if hostiles nearby or attacking, kill them" or "if not in an alert, queue for and enter an alert" and then manipulate the game in order to carry out these objectives. They're not at all the same thing. Half empty vs half full. Late at night when queues are slow and you're in a queue stuck at only 3 people, if I entered alone, we'd be stuck at 4, waiting even longer until either it popped or people dropped out. Meanwhile, if I enter on both my main and a follow alt, that pushes the count straight to 5 and the queue pops. To claim that it's "hogging player spots" implies that things like a day at the mall are limited-edition and will get removed from the game forever after X runs have been completed.
That's silly.
I'd go find the paragraph in the terms that states that you can be banned for any or no reason....but since you've carefully read them line by line I'm sure you can find that paragraph yourself.
In any case, I personally do NOT want this to become a thing.....where I show up in Alerts with my characters and everyone else shows up with theirs + their tag-along energy builder bot. So no it's not ok.
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The auto energy builder feature was put there so that people didn't feel bummed-out by having to quickly mash their energy builder key / button all the time. The follow command's usage most certainly doesn't involve combat, because in combat you're supposed to be doing...I don't know...combat things other than following someone around like an obsessive stalker, and actual combat relevant to the power framework system does not involve exclusively using nothing other than your energy builder. Whatever convenient excuses you need to cook up justifying bringing exploitative follow-bots to PUG alerts, I guess.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Your rationalization falls apart pretty quick once we throw just one extra player into the mix, and it instead turns into a glaring example of why what you are doing is wrong. Stop it.
I can solo entire alerts. I don't go around thinking that entitles me to take up extra spots on the team to get my hands on more rewards. For all you know, your eb-buddy is taking up a spot that would have been filled by someone just as strong, or even stronger than you.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
And if that was a case and we go by that logic of ToC, then someone like me would've been banned along time ago for having/buyinh a Corsair or Steele Series Keyboard with programmable options/settings for use of Macros and any of the Razer Mice Products(yes that's right I use this too, because why on Earth does doing this the 'balanced' and living-under-a-rock-way make this at all rewarding? Why should I have to trouble myself with nonsense powers manually which I can macro and not have to worry about?)
You may as well ban anyone else for using a Xbox/Gamepad(I personally have one that's Hot Pink oh goodness I love that 360 controller on my desktop lmao)
Hell you could even ban me for having two monitors to double stream the game for lulz. One @60hz and another at @144hz cuz I know over on Battlefield 4 if you play on a Hardcore server and you have two monitors all you have to do is activate Battlescreen on the second monitor which is a pseudo mini map. :^)
Or even better! Why not ban everyone for using an SSD to load to their games faster because ain't nobody gat tiem fer loading screens that take forever to input my characters, even on an HDD + an arbitrary movie/cut scene prompt which can't be skipped via Space Bar or even exited via the Warp To Rencen anymore(thanks for that worthless change btw, that thing is sitting on my alts and I'm wondering how/why is this here.)
Though I think by the time one of my next builds get screwed up, I'll simply just stop playing game and go back twitch shooting or lovely "Zou Zou" Jump in some awesome First Person Shooter. Because at least there, my Razer Naga 2014 MMO Edition and my Corsair Keyboard with beautiful rainbow color lights won't be gimped because of this.
In the end, that's not a desirable outcome.
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I get that most of you will never see how someone using an auto-follow alt can be beneficial as long as the person doing it brings along a strong character as well.
1) It increases the chance that the queue (provided it's a basic alert, and not something like Cybermind) will succeed, as it guarantees 1 slot will have a solid character in it who can defeat the end boss with or without support.
2) It pushes more people through the queue per minute than normal, causing them to pop faster. It's equal to being able to start a queue with only 4 people instead of the normal 5.
3) It helps out the little guys. Dying sucks, especially when you're a lowbie who has little for survival and nobody on the team heals and the tank (if any) is mediocre. A stronger person coming along greatly reduces that chance.
In the end, once people put their pride aside, all that really matters is that the alert gets finished. Right?
Look, I'm not trying to be some greedy a-hole like some of you are trying to make me out to be. I'm actually pretty altruistic in this game when I can be. Leeching lowbie alts through alerts really isn't that big of a deal. It's really just a matter of cutting down the time wasted on the daily treadmill. It's nice to be able to have time for things that actually sound fun without making it feel like I'm cheating myself out of "proper" progression for, say, exploring a new area, trying an adventure pack, etc instead of hopping into the daily grind.
I probably won't respond much more in this thread because I feel like I'm just going around in circles with people who would rather see an alert fail as long as all 5 people were pushing buttons than one which succeeded even though 1 or more characters were auto-following alts. In the end, succeeding in your daily 3 alerts is logically all that should matter. Same here actually. Theirs is the only word that really matters in the end, after all. I've said it before and I'll say it again by just laying out all the tools needed, provided the devs actually see this as some sort of problem:
1) Remove the "right click target -> follow" option. It's not really useful for anything other than dragging along alts anyway.
2) Remove the "Toggle, never cancels" option for the energy builder. This still leaves 2 toggles and a maintain option for those who want them.
Now, anyone who is following and spamming an energy builder is an actual bot, and therefore bannable. But then, people will just park their alts at the beginning of the alert and do nothing, so in comes participation thresholds which hopefully everyone can meet.. And so the arms race continues.
And what's the point of this post? As another poster already mentioned, if you program your peripherals in a way that they can automatically run missions / alerts then yes, that's considered a bannable offense (as stated in the ToS). I even believe using macros in duels is a bannable offense, since you automatically do what others have to input manually, thus you're gaining an unfair advantage.
Take care.
A lot of people starting to have follow-bots queuing up for alerts. Is this a desirable intended outcome? Do the people in this thread and in the game want that? I sure do not want to be playing with a bunch of bots....regardless of their level. You forgot #3 which is to ban someone reported for doing it. They didn't make the tailor worse or reduce its capabilities because you could do bannable things with it.
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Now for the most part I run missions to level up and when I do alerts they very rarely fail, when they do fail it is almost always because of two things..either half the team rage quits after a bad pull very early on, or because there are a couple characters just waiting around the spawn point the entire time(leeching) Most of the time when I am doing alerts it is because I am doing a daily thing on one of my lvl40 characters and there are no problems what so ever, I may not even notice someone on auto follow using only their eb because the run goes by quickly and smoothly for everyone, but I still do not approve of leeching, I would rather have a team of 4 lvl10s at my side than run an alert with a single leech.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
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Block timing explained
Are we talking XP alerts? Because a strong 40 can take a 15 minute Alert and bring it down to like 5 minutes or whatever. It kinda balances out, probably. Unless it's XP Alert Daily day, you're not gonna get an overwhelming amount of 40s carrying teams.
Technically, I think this behavior is allowed (and I think it's been confirmed by a Community Manager (TrailTurtle, but again, take this with a grain of salt because I'm going on my own memory here)). It doesn't break any rules.
If you guys think manually setting a character to follow another one with their energy builder is on, think about this. I can do the same thing while at my keyboard and let someone else, someone I don't even know, without them even knowing it. And that's not botting, because I did all that manually. Botting is having a program continuously gaining you XP by grinding or whatever, something that can be done overnight while you're asleep. That's what's against the rules. Judging by what some people have said, it seems like you guys think that as long as no one is actively controlling a character at all times, then it's botting. Like if I go to shave my butt for 15 minutes and keep my character idle and I get back and my character had been attacked by an enemy, and I killed it back with my auto attack, that's botting. And that's not right.
As far as the morality of the issue, I'd say it's pretty messed up, especially if you're in content that gives out rare rewards. It's not unlike those guys that screwed over a lot of people in the Warlord mission.
I will admit when you are Mr. Uber it feels pretty badass but when you are the lowbie it often feels either sort of awestriking or just a bit disappointing.