Do you enjoy seeing the shield and swords. You know you do and more importantly FoE knows you do which is why you will be seeing a lot more of it!
It's not your computer. It's not your internet service. It's not your cache settings. What is happening is you click attack and the server has to register that attack, process it, and then send information from the server to the client (your computer). So we all know how awesome this lag is especially during busy GbG seasons. The hamsters that spin the wheels that run the FoE servers just get exhausted.
Well there is now GOOD NEWS!
FoE has introduced a "zoom in, zoom out" feature that will cause you to left click furiously while holding down the R key only to find it registered zero hits. So players will be staring at what appears to be a frozen screen with the shield and swords and getting zero or if lucky a few hits.
Now why would they do this? Well they're trying to combat auto-clickers and bots. By moving the attack button slightly the bots will get the frozen screen so that's great, no problem. The issue is every freaking player that is NOT cheating will also get it.
Look GbG is annoying already. Don't give us even more reason to not play it.
Now can humans avoid that screen? Mostly yes.
- -adjusting the left mouse click point
- -release and depress the 'R' key when the screen freezes
- -use curse words repeatedly. It won't help but it does offer some pain relief
- -buy something from the store shop. No this won't help the lag but playing this game is a form of self-harm so may as well make it worse
Now here's the funny thing. The instructions listed above that allow players to minimize the impact of the zoom in, zoom out windows can also be used by the bots and auto-clickers. Yeah but here's the punchline. The bots and auto-clickers can do it faster. So this anti-cheat feature will actually give the bots and auto-clickers an even bigger advantage against human players.
This last part is the chef's kiss part of this post.
An algorithm will be determining if an account is using a bot or auto-clicker. This algorithm will see if the series of clicks is more probable than not cheating or human inputs. So if you hold down the "R" button and spam left click without moving your mouse it will most certainly look like an auto-clicker.
So we need people to understand this part. The timing of left-clicks in terms of delay between clicks will determine if you dear reader are a human or a bot. That's what this boils down to. Also, bots and auto-clickers can stagger delays so they don't appear to be bots can you do that?
So what they'll do is collect data over a series of weeks or months and then do a mass-suspension or ban of players they believe to be bots. It won't happen right away but when it does happen, and it will you won't know unless you're directly affected. All you will see is a player that hasn't missed a day in 3 years suddenly be absent for a week. Suspension length varies. It starts with a few hours then increases with each offense.
And keep in mind by "offense" we're talking about spamming left-click in a way an algorithm determines you are more likely than not a bot. If you try to appeal they will not even tell you what you did to get suspended or banned. They will not tell you how to avoid being banned in the future.
Now if you use bots or auto-clickers then you get no sympathy from us. But non-cheaters will get caught-up in all this. Those players have our sympathies.