Five macros that will make your life easier

I see no issue with creating a way to bind /commands in chat to a useable button.

I do have problems with scripts that perform many actions to one button press though, such as opening and walking through a town portal. That is full blown automation on game tasks.

The macro to hold down shift while attacking I think falls directly on my line, i dont know how i feel bout that one. Think it could be a useful option though in the game settings 'never move while using skill' kind of forcing a player to use a move only button though.

/justmylineinthesand

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Drahken wrote:

using fast logout and playing hardcore is hilarious.

This, I play HC and have lost 5 mid-high level characters because I refused to alt f4 or escape, no point in playing HC if you do that, might as well play default.

Also, macros are against the ToS...

Operating system is automated software. Well, any software is automated, so to speak. The indexing sites are automated software as well. The defragmenter is automated and is accessing the game files. You know, there is many things that could be judged as violation of ToS but you would never think of them as such. The ToS are too vague in that matter, I think GGG would have to tell us what is the spirit and where exactly is the line. Until then, I will enjoy the /itemlevel and /oos macros OP shared with us. (thanks btw)

Edit: I would even use the fast logout but I don't play regular HC, just some races time to time and not on a level where the death would matter much anyway. Dying in default is more hardcore than logging out in HC.

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Mr_Cee wrote:

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mazul wrote:

It doesn't matter where you think automation "starts"; anything that a program does that used to be done manually, is "automation" per definition.

Yeah, it was maybe a bit odd expressed; automation is not really the center of my point.

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mazul wrote:

Also, out of curiosity: why do you draw the line for what automation you find acceptable based on whether or not it automatically extracts information from the client? It is a technical line, but this is a matters of ethics, so what is your ethical reason for drawing the line there?

Automation or not, technically a scripted typing does no kind of intrusion; while reading data from the screen/out of the game can be considered as a (very minor) kind of reverse engineering. The other thing is, how differs such a "pure" software macro function from a similar solution in hardware? ->there are keyboards that can do the exactly same as this scripts; deny, really??

Beside this, the ethical view is based on the impact it has - scripting commands like /oos, /itemlevel and even /Alt-F4 only shortcut existing functions, they do not steer your chars, do not automate the gameplay itself. They are - like stash tabs - a convenient advantage, not more. (You have a bit more time to react, but I also had situations where I could not rely on the oos script, and - once typed - it also only 3 keyboard strokes 'manually' (Enter, Up, Enter) to repeat it.

Thank you for the reply.

My opinion on the matter is: the practical answer is: GGG decides their own rules for their game and we players should not blame any player for playing within GGG's rules.

If GGG says botting is ok, then it is ok. If we want to change the rule, we would ask GGG to change it, but not blame players for doing it.
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A hypothetical situation of interest: if we were to design our own rules for this game, how would we design them and why? For that situation, I would choose to advocate an "even playfield" as primary goal, which means that any form of 3rd party automation would not be allowed since they all give some form of advantage. This is also how Arenanet to a large extent has handled them in Guild Wars 2.

To quote Arenanet's stance for guild wars 2:
Macros
Guild Wars 2 players are permitted to use macros as long as the macros are programmed with a 1 key for 1 function protocol.
This means that if you program a macro, it must require one keystroke per action. You may not program a single key to perform multiple functions.
For example, if you Press A and it results in the casting of a single skill, you’re ok. If you Press A and it casts multiple spells, you’re not ok.
You cannot program a macro to perform the same or multiple actions on more than one account at a time.
You cannot program an “auto-clicker” macro that, for instance, opens chests while you play elsewhere.

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mazul wrote:

To quote Arenanet's stance for guild wars 2:
Macros

sounds reasonable.

one thing is: using macros is primary a knowhow, and its also a shared knowledge - in general as in detail too. So, compared to using 'better' hardware, that may be too expensive for some, or even hard to obtain in general, its really free available for all that wants to easify their (ingame) live with such tools; its really not an elitary feature. (This does of course not affect the 'ethical' view of each player, if someone refuse their using its their own decision) Explanation: lets take again the most debateble possibility - logout: if I'm struck in a situation that dont let me move to escape from attackers (by rocks, etc) and I have the time to save my char, then I'll use (all) the possibilities I have, to do so - and I would do the same also in non-HC, probably even in normal where I had to fear no penalty at all, just to never have to think about if its neccessary. Fact is, you'll never be able to completely prevent from quitting a piece of software on a pc (you cant exclude crashes for a 100%), and all tries to 'trim' or 'cut' these (by timeout delays etc) only risk unwanted situations, IMHO (where you may die for reasons out of your control)

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Nithryok wrote:

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Drahken wrote:

using fast logout and playing hardcore is hilarious.

This, I play HC and have lost 5 mid-high level characters because I refused to alt f4 or escape, no point in playing HC if you do that, might as well play default.

Seconded, if you cant deal with HC deaths, then HC isnt for you.

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LostForm wrote:

I see no issue with creating a way to bind /commands in chat to a useable button.

I do have problems with scripts that perform many actions to one button press though, such as opening and walking through a town portal. That is full blown automation on game tasks.

The macro to hold down shift while attacking I think falls directly on my line, i dont know how i feel bout that one. Think it could be a useful option though in the game settings 'never move while using skill' kind of forcing a player to use a move only button though.

/justmylineinthesand

i agree with this. making macros like this has been going on in multiplayer gaming forever. This kind of stuff is no big deal and gives no advantage to the player using them. Its making macros that do a spell rotations and check for certain conditions (popular in MMOs) that I have a problem with especially in pvp games. But sometimes macros are simply quality of life improvements that dont affect anyone.

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wiggin wrote:

Operating system is automated software. Well, any software is automated, so to speak. The indexing sites are automated software as well. The defragmenter is automated and is accessing the game files. You know, there is many things that could be judged as violation of ToS but you would never think of them as such. The ToS are too vague in that matter, I think GGG would have to tell us what is the spirit and where exactly is the line. Until then, I will enjoy the /itemlevel and /oos macros OP shared with us. (thanks btw)

Edit: I would even use the fast logout but I don't play regular HC, just some races time to time and not on a level where the death would matter much anyway. Dying in default is more hardcore than logging out in HC.

strawman argument

OS's or anything else have nothing to do with the fact that macros are against the Tos (if they are). please don't do that.

By calling it strawman argument you don't actually disprove it, please don't do that. Also, I only talk about the examples of automated software to show how vague the ToS actually are and that we can't tell what exactly would GGG consider unwanted kind of automation.