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Do Game Masters have the tools to find out Multi-Characters scripters ?

poppspopps Posts: 4,019
edited February 2022 in General Discussions
Does anyone know, perhaps for personal experience or from a friend playing UO experiencing this, whether or not Game Masters have the tools to be able to "detect" players using unauthorized, from UO's TOS, Third Party utilities to control multiple characters/accounts with the same keyboard's strokes?

The reason that I am asking, is that, my understanding is, that usually, what a Game Master does, is to interact with a player via GM Chat to verify whether that player may or not be AFK.

In the case, though, of multi-characters being controlled in a synchronized way (same key strokes to have all characters do the same actions) through Third Party software which, to my understanding, is against UO's TOS, the player is not AFK so, obviously, he/she would be able to respond to a GM's query for any and all of the characters controlled...

So, how could a Game Master be able to understand what is going on there, and take appropriate measures, if all that they were able to do, was to interact with those characters via GM chat ?

Does anyone know ?

Comments

  • YoshiYoshi Posts: 3,322
    popps said:
    whether or not Game Masters have the tools to be able to "detect" players using unauthorized
    "I am pretty sure the Game masters have eyes, and are conscious (most of the time)" 
    Posts on this account have been pre filtered from personal comment or opinion in an effort to suppress conservative views in order to protect the reader.
  • poppspopps Posts: 4,019
    edited February 2022
    Yoshi said:
    popps said:
    whether or not Game Masters have the tools to be able to "detect" players using unauthorized
    "I am pretty sure the Game masters have eyes, and are conscious (most of the time)" 
    Well, sure, it is pretty obvious when one sees multiple characters in UO moving and acting concurrently and in a synchronous way that there "should be" some Third Party utility controlling them all at once with 1 single key stroke.... yet, is the "visual" assessment of a Game Master sufficient to then sanction those multiple accounts for a use against UO's TOS ?

    What I am wondering is, whether Game Masters have been given some tool to actually having something more then their visual perception when it comes to then having to sanction those accounts beyond any possible mistake in visually evaluating the situation....
  • gaygay Posts: 382
    edited February 2022
    Outside of a GM catching 10 people persistently maintaining buffs, xhealing, and attacking while being unresponsive. A GM cannot actually prove that someone is "scripting" and often times just use best judgement. Some of the tools that they DO have however, is the ability to look into the mythic master account of an account and see all the accounts linked on it, and what will usually happen is if they if they catch someone multiboxing, legitimately or not, if there are a number of EJ accounts linked to that master account they will outright just permanently ban the entire mythic account altogether, although this action requires the oversight of Broadsword's Customer Support Manager, but more often enough it's what happens.

    There used to be myths about GMs being able to detect things like NotHardUO if it's installed on your computer, and that rumor changed to be that they could only detect it if it was installed to your UO directory. As it turned out, and what was so often the case back then, it was just overly zealous and biased GMs with an agenda and player driven background.

    However the dev client can determine that someone is logged in with something other than the EC or the Default client (without a loader). But are not actually able to determine with what, or that it isn't some erroneous false positive.
  • Skittlez1337Skittlez1337 Posts: 40
    Or you can do what everyone else does and scripts after business hours. GM's are not around 24/7
  • Yui_Zii_AriyaYui_Zii_Ariya Posts: 65
    popps said:
    Does anyone know, perhaps for personal experience or from a friend playing UO experiencing this, whether or not Game Masters have the tools to be able to "detect" players using unauthorized, from UO's TOS, Third Party utilities to control multiple characters/accounts with the same keyboard's strokes?
    In short... No.

    Key strokes being sent to the server whether they be a player pressing it or a program replicating it are still just key strokes being sent to the server, nothing more.  

    In many cases multi client programs arent just replicating keystrokes across clients they are fully scripted clients and dynamic to respond to situations including player and GM interactions.  Scripters have had over 20 years to refine and perfect scripts for all occasions and in many cases you wont even know that you are looking at scripted clients.

    It's an uphill battle, a battle they will never win.

    I believe if they could detect and ban all those using 'illegal' 3rd party programs, they would probably loose well over 50% of the remaining player base!
  • MerusMerus Posts: 656
    No they don’t.  And at least some of them can’t actually tell the difference between someone who is good at multi-clienting and multi-boxing.

    I have actually resorted to recording some of my playtime when I multi-client as proof after I was accused by an ignorant GM of multi-boxing.
  • McDougleMcDougle Posts: 4,080
    Unless GMs come here and post there is no point in this post.....
    .
    Acknowledgment and accountability go a long way... 
  • MariahMariah Posts: 3,239Moderator
    Knowledge of what tools are available to GMs is not in the hands of players (not even this player :D)
This discussion has been closed.