Is there some NM bot/hack floating around out there?

[Kyoujin]

I've spent a lot of time camping NMs to pay for my gear. I consider myself relatively successful when it comes to NM camping as I generally get 70% or more of the spawns I camp. My strategy is pretty basic. I time the re-spawn of the PHs and rapidly hit my ‘/targetnpc /voke’ macro a few seconds before the next spawn is due. No bots, hacks or turbo-fire controller. Using this method I’ve managed to generate over 5 million gil farming targets like Hoo Mjuu, Mee Deggi, Chymes, Lizzy etc. That’s a vast amount of time spent on camping.

Yesterday something happened at the Mee Deggi camp that I have never seen before in all my time farming NMs. There was this monk there, who I won’t name just yet, appearing to be a normal camper. He had warrior subbed so I assumed he was using a ‘/targetnpc /chiblast' macro with '/targetnpc /voke’ as backup. Chi Blast has greater speed and range than provoke so he had me a bit worried at the start. That is, until I picked off seven of the next eight PH spawns. A thief got the one that popped out of my range. The monk never so much as looked at the PHs that popped. You can tell who's actively hitting a gank macro at a NM camp by looking for turning heads. So I assumed this guy was afk. The next pop was Mee Deggi and it looked something like this on my screen…

--100+ lines of
>> /ja “Provoke� <t>
…A command error occurred.
--then...
Monk uses Provoke on Mee Deggi the Punisher. [Note: He spawned in my LOS and in range of Provoke.]
>> /ja “Provoke� <t>
…A command error occurred.
>> /ja “Provoke� <t>
…A command error occurred.
Cannot attack.
Your target is already claimed.*
Samurai uses Provoke on Mee Deggi the Punisher.**

*Mee Deggi appears on my screen, 1-2 seconds after the monk provokes it, blue name, charging the monk. As you can see I wasn’t even able to target it up until this point.
**This happened at the same time MDP appeared on my screen. Rolling onto my log window at the same time I got the “Cannot attack� message. So it would appear that the samurai in the monk’s group wasn’t able to target MDP up until this point either.

I checked my lag, it was fine.

In all the time I’ve spent camping NMs I have never seen something like this. I’ve seen mobs provoked the second they appear on my screen, which is usually what happens at camps like these, but never BEFORE as was the case here. I fired off a message to the GM service so that they’d look into this shadiness then went about my business. Later on that night I passed it all off as a freak occurrence. That is, until it happened again today…

I was once more at the MDP camp in Oztroja. My competition was a THF/WAR, the same one from last night, and a RDM/WAR. With the exception of the additional party member that the monk had, the exact same thing happened. I was once again claiming the majority of the PH spawns. And yet again there was an unflinching camper, the RDM this time, who never so much as looked at the PH spawns yet managed to claim the NM 1-2 seconds before either the THF or I could even target it. Once again I was not lagging in the least.

I checked the LS and Bazaar message of both the MNK and the RDM. Both turned out to be NA so what happened cannot be attributed to a Japanese lag advantage. This is too weird to happen twice in a row. My guess is that there is some NM bot/hack cheat floating around that needs to be dealt with. Anyone have more info on this?

[maytrix]

[Vinen]

Was the monk Japanease. I belive they had about a 1 to 2 second advantage on us as far as seeing monsters spawn.

Heck I had Simurgh spawn on one of my LSs Paladin without her knowing it untill she saw it running off in front of her Purple.

[evilution]

no matter how fine you think your lag may be, the japanese players have a significant advantage all the time.

[neighbortaru]

um, guys, he said that they were NA.

[Vinen]

nowhere in his post does he mention where the monk was from~>

[neighbortaru]

Re: Is there some NM bot/hack floating around out there?

Originally posted by Kyoujin
I checked the LS and Bazaar message of both the MNK and the RDM. Both turned out to be NA so what happened cannot be attributed to a Japanese lag advantage. This is too weird to happen twice in a row. My guess is that there is some NM bot/hack cheat floating around that needs to be dealt with. Anyone have more info on this?

sure he does.

[Vinen]

blah totally missed that entire paragrah somehow.

Anyhow, i doubt it was a bot, he could have just been timing the spawn and once it reaches a certain time it is possible for someone to just start spamming tab etc and get him on target before he actually shows up on the screen *I think.

I really doubt its a bot. Especially if he was there at the computer and move to attack.

[Modri]

I'm not entirely sure if this is relevant, as I'm not technically savvy enough to know *exactly* how it works, but in DAoC there was a program widely used called Radar. It basically received information that was sent to the client computer but was hidden from the game client, allowing you to see things moving towards your player before they became visible (rendered within the clipping plane) in the case of an approaching player, or before they visibly spawned.

So in this case, the server notifies your client that mob x is about to spawn, and to start loading the cached graphics, name, position etc for it. The moment this packet is received, Radar or whatever utility reacts faster than the game client, and sends back the packet for provoke/whatever, resulting in it "spawning claimed".

Hope that helps.

[Macht]

Originally posted by Modri
I'm not entirely sure if this is relevant, as I'm not technically savvy enough to know *exactly* how it works, but in DAoC there was a program widely used called Radar. It basically received information that was sent to the client computer but was hidden from the game client, allowing you to see things moving towards your player before they became visible (rendered within the clipping plane) in the case of an approaching player, or before they visibly spawned.

So in this case, the server notifies your client that mob x is about to spawn, and to start loading the cached graphics, name, position etc for it. The moment this packet is received, Radar or whatever utility reacts faster than the game client, and sends back the packet for provoke/whatever, resulting in it "spawning claimed".

Hope that helps.

S-E seems to of countered this. The command to spawn is sent yes, but others like DAoC runs a check and won't let you target till the check verifies the target is visible. On here you can target the monster before it is even visible, however some macro commands are not able to target the monster till then. If I'm not mistaken /targetnpc is one of them that does that. There is other methods in a macro you can use that makes targeting way faster. I've stressed it once before and I'll continue to stress it, it's the setup of your macro's that makes the difference.

I've been acussed of cheating before because a player had a similar thing happen to them with me. Also one thing I've noticed over and over in this game button mashing can work to a disadvantage, the game seems to lag your response more the more you mash the button. So a combination of button mashing and an unoptimized macro plays against you.

If you ever bothered to test other methods then just /targetnpc you'll notice some work faster and some work slower. A perfect example of it is doing this:

/ja "Provoke" <t>
/p Provoking <t> <call9>

I used call9 because it's a decently long one. You'll notice your provoke action won't take affect till the call nears it's end (Almost a whole 2 seconds). However if you do:

/ja "Provoke" <t>
/wait 6
/p Provoking <t> <call9>

You'll notice provoke to act first like normal then the message will come up. To me it looks like commands in a macro have a priority. So if you do /ja and /p right after without /wait the system takes /p as priority and runs it first. This again works to your macro as well with the /targetnpc, that command seems to be the lowest in the priority list so your button mashing made it slower to respond.

EDIT:

All this seems to tie into the games method of syncronization. I haven't quite gotten it all yet, but I do know chat commands take priority over everything else. After that it appears that in party situations the member to make the killing blow on the monster is the first to get the info about the exp and it's drop. Almost 1-2 seconds later the rest of the party gets it, conveniently enough the Vana'diel Time changes at that moment too. So I believe the Vana'diel Time can be used as a valid mark to determine a syncronization that it seems to do constantly (This I think would explain the enforced transferre rate as well).

[dworkin]

lol even though they are NA. they can still be living in japan. my buddy is stationed there. so even if his message is in english. he can still get there speed of nm pops. so right there could solve that problem.. well maybe??

second thing is yes there is a provoke bot. it has something to the extend, that it cycles through the possible mobs, in an area til it finds the mob, specified in the command line, then provokes it. thus why you will always see the pc head moving constantly. and anyone who says its a player hitting tab?? sure but for 3 hrs in a row that i see. not likely. provoke bots are reality to jp..

there is one thing you can do when you hunt nm, an that is too just scan the screen over an over. make it look like you have rng sub, then that gives you a faster chance at the popped nm. dont bother killing the place holders. that is the first rule too nm hunting..

[thebizzy]

From my experience that NM is almsot always spawned claimed for me. The only way you can get a good shot is if you are lucky and it spawns in front of you, otherwise JP can and will get it. About the bot issue, there are tons of bots out there that mimic a player. They only execute a few things, remmber those D2 bots?

[MAK]

Welcome to Ragnarok...JP get to see it like .something secs before we see the pop.

[Kyoujin]

It happened again last night. A JP BLM this time. Same M O... The guy stands there for an hour, seemingly AFK, then manages to provoke the NM 1-2 seconds before anyone else can see or even target it. I noticed this time around that there was no sound effects or animation when the BLM used 'voke. I don't remember if there were particle effects or not. I'll be sure to watch for them next time.

With me this time was a MNK friend of mine. He wanted to come see the cheaters in action...and he got what he wished for =P. I'll try to get him to reply here with what he saw on his screen.

I started talking to people I know on my server about this and I caught wind of some 'voke bot' going around. If this is true, I guess we have to hope SE does something about it in a timely fashion.

I would like to stress again that I've put in a lot of hours at the big money solo NM camps and what I've seen lately is completely new to me.

[wstussyb]

Same server you are on and I have seen it
where the mob in not claimed, but for some reason I cant claim it for 2 or so seconds, I did see some get the mob and gte beat on for like 20 some seconds before he finally did something about it, so I knew he was afk
but how is what I wanna know...the mob in unclaimed, why did'nt my voke work? right next to me and just a error, then the next line it is claimed, like a bot that does not let ppl in a certain area use thier vokes.