Followers running around in circles

I've looked through the forums and glanced at the net in general and either I'm not searching for the right things or this is something new. I'm having an issue will followers running in circles whenever they are put into group. I've tried this on a brand new (almost completely blank) setup and on my main setup and they both do the same thing. I'm at work so I can't post my configs. Has anyone else seen this kind of behavior?

When do they start running in circles? Immediately upon accepting the invite to join the group? Or after joining and when you hit the follow me hotkey?

They randomly do it when they accept the group invite. However, I've also seen them do it when the follow command is pressed. SO, that really doesnt narrow it down any, but it happens more on invite than it does when follow is initiated.

[lax]

The only thing that comes to mind (and this has been a thing for years) is low framerate. Follow in EQ1 is (or was) tied to your FPS, so if your followers are only getting 5 FPS their ability to adjust heading is only going to occur 5 times a second instead of, say, 30 which is much smoother. With low FPS, they may not be allowed the turn radius within those 5 frames in order to point close enough to your leader.

One way of mitigating this problem is to use EQPlayNice with its Rendering Limiting feature, although this feature is somewhat of an annoyance when you can see the windows because it causes a sort of "strobing" effect. But the benefit is that the game doesn't render the game world most of the time for background instances, therefore allowing the game to process things like auto-follow at a faster rate than the actual rendering rate. So you could SEE 1 fps, but follow can run at 30 fps, eliminating the "running in circles" effect and the similar effect of lagging too far behind to continue following the leader.

To use EQPN with ISBoxer, just run WinEQ 2 (and let it sit in the system tray)

Ironically I installed play nice yesterday. My FPS has been hovering in the 20-30 (before and after) range on my laptop, but im getting a solid 50+ on my desktop. I need to try my bare bones config on my desktop and see if it behaves better. i run 4 necros on the laptop, and then i run a cleric, warrior and the necros on the desktop. take a further look when i get home. It's gotta be something simple and it's just not something that I know about yet.

Your problem is almost certainly your background framerate.

Go to Alt+O to open EQ options, then Display, then Advanced, then look at "max background FPS".

If you set this to 50 or more you'll get almost perfect follow.

I can't do this - it overheats my machine and it eventually crashes!

[Ualaa]

My followers will sometimes run around in wide circles.
That is immediately after clicking the follow key.

If they're facing the leader when follow is initiated, this doesn't happen.
And once the leader moves even a short distance in any direction, they follow correctly.

I have the default IS Boxer wizard settings, except that I have all cores on everyone.
I have 60 FPS for the main and 30 FPS for the background characters.
I don't think the game is much of a tax on my system.
One group of six characters, on whatever settings the game defaults to.
i7 3930K, 32GB Ram, GTX 670 4GB video, 2x SSD in Raid0.

It might be just a thing to do with EQ.

Does the follow circling continue after you move?

It's always happened that I can remember (at least 5 or 6 years)

Either the chars are too close to turn when the command is given (like lax said) or there's a lot of structures around and they lag as a result.

If they've got movement buff (bard is worst of course) it makes it happen more often.

Try setting background to 50 or 60 and see if it helps - it did for me.