DBG working with MQ2Follow

oh wow, haven't seen a thread this active since uh like 2004 :D or something...

Anyway based on feedback here I can see there are some things I need to clarify.

1. I picked 300 cause that's the max range you can cast a spell.
Having said that someone pointed out with extended range gear its actually 360
so fine, I can make it 360

2. This change doesn't have any effect on line of sight targeting, if you have line of sight to the mob or the player you can /target them no matter how far away they are cause that's how the client works, in other words if you can click to target them, you will also be able to /target

I got Sidetracked here: And regards to running paths... If you rely on /target to pull mobs you are doing it wrong.
I don't condone pathing afk but lets just for arguments sake bring it up.
A human not using mq2 would run his path and if a mob exist at the end of it or along it, he will then /target it and pull.
A (a bad) bot /target first and then runs out to it and pulls it.
A good bot does /if (${Spawn[npc loc 123 456 radius 50]>ID}) /call runpath and THEN and only then when its within line of sight it /target it.

3. If you do faction or just have to target across zones, just add them to xtarget and use that as a workaround, that's what people who are not using mq2 do.

4. if you have to do /target /face just do /face id ${Spawn[something].ID} instead... we have to get away from doing /target cause everytime you do it, you spam their server with a target packet, /target is NOT clientside only, and I have seen too many macros since I came back that uses /target in loops to constantly target mobs for checking if a mob is up or tracking and following and so on, and basically those macros send thousands and tens of thousands target packets during run, its just isn't healthy and it is the wrong way of doing it.

to summarize: mq2 will allow /target of out of sight mobs within a 360 radius as well as any range if you have line of sight to it.

Whats the reasoning behind this change?
I am very actively promoting mq2 as a good third party tool to the eq1 team as well as people who don't use mq2.
I'm not "outing" Holly, cause there is nothing to "out" we had a nice civil meeting and she happened to mention this in eq2 General chat the next day, I wouldn't even have known about it unless a eq2 player (Secrets xo) had sent me the screenshots... But anyway here they are and it should add some credibility to what I'm about to explain next regarding the /target "nerf"
see:

http://postimg.org/image/72vk22gf1/

The MAIN reason for that meeting (which I initiated and Holly was nice to grant) was to discuss what I can do to disable mq2 on the upcoming no box ruleset server but we also talked about mq2 features and one of the things brought up at that meeting (as a "not so awesome" feature) when I was giving the presentation on mq2 was the fact that it can target across zones. (Another was mobs on the map)
Now I cant put the cat back in the bag when it comes to the map, it is what it is and doing so would be unreasonable at best and cause a fork at worst... BUT I can very easily restrict target range.

This change is relatively easy to circumvent as someone already pointed out in the thread, but of course I discourage you guys from doing that, I'm making this change to protect you, but if you revert it, don't blame me if you get banned.

Anyway this is open source so if you decide to revert the change when it goes live just take into account that I'm doing what I feel is good for mq2 in the long run and I need this as one more good argument that we are doing stuff to prevent "active hacks", abuse and unattended gameplay using mq2...

The eq1 team know exactly who is using mq2 when they play, they have been for years, but they don't ban for it as long as its ATTENDED.
At THIS point in time no one gets banned for just using mq2 (core) while ATTENDING, I don't want that to change, and I don't want a ring 0 war to defeat detection...

I suggest you see how much this change impacts you in practice before you make any rash decisions.

I think it's sad to see you defend the use of MQ, Sippin.

I think it really depends on what you're using it for, and whether what you're doing creates an obvious hack or disruption to the game. The GMs are basically looking for low hanging fruit here. I don't read anything sinister or conspiratorial about DBG talking honestly about the fact that the tool exists. Well, it does exist. They are aware of it, and have been all along. There's nothing wrong with having a conversation about it, and deciding what to do about it. It's always going to be a balance between cost to police and cost if you don't.

Also, as a couple people have pointed out, sometimes they correct answer is to simply incorporate the features of a third party tool like this into the game itself. So it's not a bad idea to have an ear to the ground in terms of what's going on with those tools. Not everything is game breaking.