7Seas Fishing Game, Autocasting and 3.3 Rods

Recently, 7Seas Fishing Game released their 3.3 update to both their fishing server and fishing rod. This update is supposed to fix a security hole used by third party autocasters rendering them useless. As a compromise, 7Seas included a built-in autocaster in the 3.3 version of their fishing rod.

My 7Seas Fishing Area where everyone is welcome even those who don't like me. ^_^

Personally, I never liked autocasting. When the Fishing Helper HUD or hacked client autocaster was introduced it gave those who used it a great advantage to those that do not. Even though fishing in a contest relies heavily on random generated numbers yet being able to cast faster than others can give you an advantage of a few seconds which can be enough to dominate a fishing contests. Well, not really dominate but enough to increase your chances of winning.

I have always considered the use of autocasters in a fishing contest as cheating and those that use it in a fishing contest are cheaters but 7Seas says it’s not and there’s nothing they can do about it since it uses a hacked client (that was before). When a new kind of autocaster was introduced to the fishing community they immediately took notice of it and worked on disabling it. Well, I can’t blame them for disabling it because it uses non-standard 7Seas chat channels which makes its operation illegal but, even though its operation is illegal, it gave those that don’t use the expensive hacked client autocaster a fighting chance in a fishing contest. It leveled the playing field so to speak. Winning or losing became dependent on what you catch and since it is random everyone has or had a chance to win.

Unfortunately, the release of version 3.3 didn’t fix anything at all. All version 3.2 fishing rods are still working and those so called illegal autocasters are still working along with them. I find it weird because why do an update to both fishing rod and fishing server if the reason for the update still exist after the update? Again, it didn’t fix anything although it did introduced new features but yet the problem still exist. The funny thing is, instead of fixing the problem they released a tool that will detect those who use their old 3.2 fishing rods and illegal autocasters and even mentioned that those who continue to use their old rods and autocasters in a fishing contest are cheaters or has the intention of cheating.

What they really released is a tool that can be used to discriminate, alienate and even embarrass members of the 7Seas fishing community who are also spending hundreds of linden dollars everyday for bait. How sure are they that this detection tool will not be used irresponsibly? With hundreds of fishing area owners and thousands of fishers they can never be a hundred percent sure. O_o

Why not just do a freaking mandatory update and disable all 3.2 rods for good? Are they afraid that they might lose a day or two of sales in bait? I don’t understand it at all but I do understand that a mandatory update is a better alternative than giving community members a tool to spy on each other. It will just promote distrust and, speaking of which, distrust already plagues the 7Seas Social Chat group as seen on its recent change from Open Enrollment to Close Enrollment due to recent chat grieving attacks.

Now for the reality of things, once all 3.2 fishing rods and illegal autocasters are disabled for good they’ve only just accomplished one thing and that is unbalance the playing field in favor of those using the hacked client autocasters. The built-in autocaster does not compare against third party autocasters. The built-in autocaster is only good for casual fishing or when you are camp fishing for customs but in a fishing contest it’s much slower. Why is it slow? Well, because it has what 7Seas call simulated human response delay (something like that) and with that it can’t be possibly be any faster than an autocaster that cast as fast as it can.

If you look at it, we are just back from where we started. Those who own these so called hack client autocaster again have an advantage over those who don’t have it (even with the built-in autocaster) but atleast now we know that those who use these hack client autocasters in a fishing contest are cheating or has the intention of cheating because back then they weren’t. LOL!

I stopped going to fishing contests months ago because of the unfair advantage brought by this hacked client autocaster. I was able to acquire a copy of the so called illegal autocaster but I never used it in any fishing contest although I did distribute it to my SL Group and through XStreetSL.com because, even though it was using illegal operations, it did give other fishers a fighting chance and a chance to win.

P.S. I did go to a couple of fishing contest yesterday but that is just to see if I still can win by manual casting. I lost, twice. LOL!