Devs: Please define the meaning of "macros" properly

This post was written using a macro called copy and paste

 

Good move Port!

 

I hope you don't mean to imply that everyone else in this topic is nonsensical.

Unfortunately, contractual obligations can not be resolved with just "common sense". They should always strive to be clear and unequivocal, especially when there are sanctions involved. Where is the exact statement by DarkStarr or some other developer, that explicitly refers to several actions? If there is not one, then it's a simple case of hallucinating something that does not exist. And if there is one, the devs should still provide sensible grounds for the rule - explaining why and how "several actions" is sufficient to "harm the game".

Actually, you can easily help them, by providing a counterexample that would demonstrate the infeasibility of the exception rule I posted a while back. I posted the link already several times, here is it again. Just describe a macro that is a) harmful to the game in any significant sense AND b) satisfies all the conditions that I listed (they are in green). Easy peasy. Except, nobody has managed to do it yet. Be the first! And, if you (or anybody) can't do it, then I can't see how the "several actions prohibited" argument could be either logical or based on "common sense". It's a kind of "put up or shut up" type challenge.

Let me try to explain. You wrote: "Anything you try to set up that does multiple actions are not allowed." The macro definition you quoted talks about instructions. Instructions and actions are not necessarily the same thing. An action may consist of several instructions (often does). In this interpretation, even a simple keypress is a macro (KeyDown, delay, KeyUp) and therefore not allowed. If that is somehow declared as a "not macro" (for example, using "common sense") then what are the same instructions in reverse (KeyUp, delay, KeyDown), are they a macro or not, and by what grounds is such a thing allowed or not? What about double-clicks or double-taps (down, delay, up, delay, down, delay, up) that map to a single action?
See the problem?

Or, example of an in-game action that involves several keypresses: stacking or combining glyphs. You press the combine key, then press the source key and then the target key. That is a single action, that consist of several keystrokes, that each consist of several instructions.

The point here is, keyboard (and mouse) macros and game actions are two very different things.
If your premise is based on the technical macro definition, you end up prohibiting quite a lot of things (including simple keybindings).
If on the other hand, by "actions" you refer to game actions, well, could you pretty please provide a direct quote from the devs stating something to that effect.

It would be trivial for Portalarium to get rid of the "policy problem" by explicitly permitting a subset of short, blind, static (aka "non-interactive") keyboard and mouse macros, that can do no real harm, and would take care of 99% of ergonomic workarounds that are necessary for some folks (like what SQUARE ENIX seems to be doing). But apparently they do not care about such things. Sad. Well, ultimately it's becoming THEIR LOSS.

 

@helm: Well, with all due respect and without trying to insult anyone here, but that whole discussion seems pretty fruitless to me. For me it is perfectly clear what Darkstarr and his team try to say and what they want to achieve and Darkstarr himself made it clear in his post: If he gives you any kind of definition you (or someone else) uses that same definition to find some loophole as it happend already in the past. So the basic and simple rule of thumb here is: if you don't know if your "tampering" or "modding" or whatever you call it what you want to do, is against the rules or not, then don't do it. Give some constructive feedback for the devs here in the forum so whatever you try to achieve can be adressed by the devs. Yes, that can take a while to even get a response, but it's definitly not against any rules. It is THAT easy. And I don't know how you or anyone else cannot see that.

 

Quite right, I assumed however that port were saying no to macros in game and not trying to implement a world wide ban on all macros in general (i.e. like the one used to copy paste on this forum)

This is not a single action. As you already said in the description you press the combine key (one action), then press the source key (one action) then the target key (one action)

 

Oh boy! This conversation has done nothing if not prove that we need more details from Portalarium.

 

No keylogger is required. The game receives the keyup and keydown events. That's how it knows what to do when to do it. Recording the duration of that is neither unethical nor illegal nor particularly difficult, as long as they are not recording what is going to OTHER programs.

 

Vote for closing this senseless ***

 

But that is a matter of how you define those terms. Of course you can choose to define action == instruction, regarding everything, including keyboard and mouse events, as "actions", but that means opening quite a big can of worms: the "actions" need to be divided further, because mouse and keyboard instructions are actually made up of primitives. For example, a "drag" (which could be called a compound instruction) is made of a ButtonPress mouse event, followed by one or more mouse MotionNotify events (change in mouse cursor coordinates), followed by a ButtonRelease mouse event. Whether or not that is one "action" or several "actions" becomes quite arbitrary. For example, pressing down the key mapped to "Move Back" is a "primitive" action (can not be subdivided further), but that means actually moving back only if the key mapped to "Move Forward" is NOT pressed (which would mean stopping movement altogether, is that now one, two or zero actions?). Further, if pressing down a "Move Back" key is "action", then doing a "combat roll" jump backwards is three "actions" on top of that, making it illegal to map backwards combat roll anywhere. I find it therefore a bit nonsensical conceptually to define things this way.

In your quoted message I interpret these two concepts differently; actions as something happening in the game, typically triggered by the mouse/keyboard activity (instructions). For instance, the combining of the two glyphs is a single action, and the exact same thing can in fact be achieved by at least three other ways (different instructions); including pressing two glyph keys simultaneously and dragging a glyph over another. They denote different kinds of instructions to trigger the exact same action. I find this way better, because you can consistently talk about actions (events triggered in the game) and instructions (keyboard/mouse events), which can be further subdivided into compound instructions (such as tap, click, double-click, drag) and elementary instructions (ButtonPress, ButtonRelease, KeyDown, KeyUp, MotionNotify) when necessary.

You can define things whichever way you want, except you can't have it both ways at the same time. In any case they need to be defined clearly to avoid confusion.

 

If you find the discussion senseless, you have complete freedom to not visit the thread, without posting derogatory comments.

 

Let me try explaining this another way.
Everything under the controls menu is an action and a key can be assigned to it (W to walk forward, Space to jump etc)
The game has already defined these as actions.
Combining any of these things into a single keypress so that multiple actions occur would be a macro and so not allowed.

If its left to interpretation on what an action is and those actions are arbitrary then what is stop someone coming up with a single action of "kill everything in this dungeon" and having a single keystroke to do it?

 

No offense, but this topic seems to just be people trying to figure out a way to game the system (pun intended).

If the "1" key on your keyboard is mapped to the "1" action slot (say "Chain Lightning") and I now assign one of the buttons on my kick-ass Razer mouse (with 12 buttons on the left side where your thumb rests) to "1" - THIS IS NOT A MACRO. I have simply assigned another "key" to "1".

However, if I take my Razer software, and now assign that button on my mouse to map "1" from the keyboard, but also to wait 2 seconds and then add a click for the number "2" on my keyboard - THIS IS A MACRO.

Any number more than ONE is a MACRO. Pretty straightforward definition, which I know a lot of you will hasten to point out is wrong (when you are really just trying to game the system).

Honestly, I feel like some people are trying to figure out a way to sneak by the rules. Do so at your own risk and stop giving other people (ME!) ideas.

 

First, @Scoffer, thanks for the patient, civilized and conversational tone. I enjoy that very much.

This is partially correct - most things under the controls menu are (game) actions, but not all (there are many things that only change aspects of the UI, without changing anything in the game itself). However, the reverse is not quite true: Not every action has an entry in the control menu. Case in point: the backward combat roll/jump. This is tied to the button having the "Move Back" assignment (using double-tap).

Basically yes - but why exactly?

I have asked this quite a few times in various ways this thread: what would be the exact harm caused to the game by having limited simple macroing ability - i.e being able to link instructions or even game actions. I haven't so far received a single good answer, not from the devs, and not from anyone else. See below for the challenge..

I don't think actions (game actions) are at all arbitrary. They could perhaps be best defined as discrete events that change the game state in some way. Most are associated with a separate piece of code. For example, if I do a backward combat roll, the game state changes accordingly. If I press "Move Forward" for two seconds, the game state changes accordingly (assuming it's not already agaist a wall or something). If I press "Move Forward" for two minutes, the game state changes, probably in a very different way. But if I start combining a glyph, by pressing "combine" and select the first glyph and leave it at that, no action is triggered, i.e. the game state does not change - there is a small temporary change in the hotbar (UI), but not in the game state itself.

Of course these definitions are a matter of choice, but I don't think totally arbitrary definitions make much sense. Case in point:

Now that's a respectably big straw man sliding down a steep slippery slope in there

Because it would be a bot (even an extremely complex one), not a simple macro. There is absolutely no question that bots are and should be strictly prohibited. This thread only concerns simple limited macros (and the definition of a "macro" in the first place).

So, I will turn the tables once more (this is the last time):

How about static, blind, short macros? Where exactly is the harm caused to the game in using them?

I renew my invitation for anyone to come up with a macro, any kind of macro,
that would
a) be harmful to the game in any significant way,
while
b) adhering to all the following rules:

• is non-repeating (does not run in a loop),
• is static (executes the same way every time),
• is blind (does not get any input from the game itself),
• executes in less than ten seconds,
• consists of at most five consecutive actions,
  where an action translates to any of the following:
  • press down or release a key or button, or
  • tap, double-tap, click or double-click a key or button, or
  • click or double-click somewhere on the screen, or
  • type a string of text

This is basically the same challenge as before, slightly rephrased, with "actions" referring to player actions with the keyboard/mouse (not game actions as discussed above)

Where exactly is the harm done? Please, anyone, demonstrate "an unfair advantage over another player", or some similarly significant disruption in the game balance (economic or otherwise) with a concrete example.

 

Sometimes people aren't trying to sneak by the rules, they just want to know how far they can go up to the rules.

If the line is drawn at point M, and I'm carefully limiting myself to point G, then I'm not trying to get to point Q. I'm just trying to make sure that I'm not at a disadvantage to someone who is at KLM.

 

Well, that depends a bit on the implementation of the thing. The mouse might treat the side button like a keyboard key (so it presents itself to the system as both a keyboard and a mouse) or it might send all the keyboard event primitives (KeyDown 1 - some fixed delay - KeyUp 1) to the system right away. The latter case is definitely a macro (technically) despite doing nothing more than typing "1".

Who can resist a challenge put out so "honestly" and "non-offensively" and without assumptions regarding the motives of others?
How about a number LESS than one? Like, say, 5/7?
For example, suppose that the mapping the backward combat roll action was allowed to be bound to a click of the kickass mouse side button, or something. This might even make good sense, even without the desire to "game the system", if one wants to move with just the mouse: it's really just a one action among others, even though it happens to be hardcoded to the "Move Back" key (just a plain "click" would be necessary because mouse side buttons are not exactly double-click friendly, and combat roll double-taps are unreliable even on keyboard). This would translate to assigning keyboard event primitives KeyDown+delay+KeyUp+delay+KeyDown+delay+KeyUp (a double tap) to the side button. So this would be legal, fine this far? But skipping the last two items from this (i.e. leaving just KeyDown+delay+KeyUp+delay+KeyDown), would then make the thing totally illegal, because it would be combining two game actions, namely the backwards combat roll and moving back. Neat, huh? Logic (and sometimes lack thereof) and irony are beautiful things.

Seriously, though, this thread only attempted clarifying in good faith what the developers mean by a "macros", which are categorically prohibited. Now it appears that the devs would rather prefer an open mandate to suspend/ban whomever they please for whatever reason, because. Well, they say "got into trouble" earlier, so because. But they promise to not start banning multibutton mouse users, at least not "indiscriminately", that's quite comforting, isn't it. So even though both examples mentioned above are now actually illegal at least technically, which makes zero sense, you can rest assured that no sanctions might not get enforced. With the proper attitude, one can also get great amount of relief from the apology regarding the inconvenience and stress. So it's ultimately only a good thing. Trust me. Honestly.

While here, why don't you give the above challenge a good honest shot.
Just curious - why exactly are simple static macros evil? The best entry will get, uh, infinite glory, or something.

 

The problem with arguing that this should be commonsense is that at least some people think that what they were already doing was commonsense, but turned out to be breaking the rules, punishable by a ban.

Clarity is important.

 

But this already sounds like you made an assumption about your premise (certain macro'ing should be allowed). I would not agree that the dodges should be allowed for exactly the reason that it requires two keystrokes in quick succession. More than one. And not less than one, as there is no "less than one" keystroke. You either press "1" or you don't. This is not something that can be split.

The problem here is in the interpretation. Which can be left up to you, me, the Devs or anyone. And that itself could be unfair because we are all human (except Scoff - seriously, he licks ore).

This is why, as much as it pains us all (because, hey, I would love to use my Razer keyboard/mouse to do some macros), the best policy to avoid any confusion is to simply say no macros, and to define a macro as more than one keystroke or command. Reassigning keystrokes (as is allowed in the game menu) would be fine in this instance, and not just because I have a kick-ass mouse.

 

Since you can set up a random deck to favor certain slots with certain cards, greatly increasing the chances of specific combos which not only basically apply both attacks combined, but also lessen focus use, increasing the number of attacks you can perform over someone with a similar focus pool and abilities who is NOT using combos, something similar to the following would be a macro that could meet all of the stated rules, while being harmful to the game by granting a player distinct advantages in PvP combat, as well as PvE, which translates to a similar gaining of advantage:

Mouse button 1: Play macro that triggers R, pauses, triggers button x, pauses, triggers button y

three of these in a properly set up deck can mean a huge advantage in combat for the player using them.

 

You are mistaken. You can send half a keystroke. The keyboard sends an event both when the key is pressed and when it is released. you can easily map "key down" to a mouse button, but not have it send the corresponding "key up" when you release the button. The game/application will read this as you continually holding the key down until a keyup macro is activated.

 

Agreed, EVERY keystroke is a macro. There is a key press, and then a depress. This is true. However, this should be the extent of macro'ing. I would just argue that for general purposes, every letter I typed in my response = one keystroke, and not double the keystrokes. Otherwise, then we have to start saying you can press and depress a key and that's it. But then someone will chime in saying, what if I press "x" key and then do something to approximate depressing "y" key. It just gets convoluted. Much like what I just wrote. Sheesh.