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Devs: Please define the meaning of "macros" properly

Discussion in 'Release 37 Feedback Forum' started by helm, Jan 3, 2017.

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  1. Weins201

    Weins201 Avatar

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    Ok I just had a Light Bulb Moment - It does not make the actions taken right but think about this.

    There are players who have obtain absurd skill levels and as a result (lower level can do it to) they could feasible cast fields, buffs, heals . . . over and over and stand in one spot. If they ran a macro they could keep themselves alive forever. Now add another client or a friend or two and these players could easily keep fields up, maintain agro on one char, keep that char alive, and slaughter every and all comers to the battle field. With simple mouse macros and programmable keys this could easily be accomplished.

    So in that regard Port has to take the stand they did and forbid any and all macros. They can then deal with it under special circumstances.

    Now why this is still total BS and a weak excuse - is the fact that if this was done by any one or group of players then it clearly is an abused loophole that they have already said they would not tolerate.

    So giving another warning is sad.

    To much stepping over the line is exactly what will bring player to the point of saying "screw it they are just going let players do it over and over and not deal with it".

    Again I am not saying I agree with the stamen made but I do see the Why. Just the thought process behind it goes back to ITYS a long time ago about dealing with exploiters.
     
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  2. LiquidSky

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    Some macros I have used in games:

    I cant remember what key, or why, but I remember in UO using a roll of pennies to hold a key down while I made lunch. Macro? Or Not?

    When my character was low level (in SOTA), it was annoying to run out of focus(and a lot of health) after every fight. So I made a macro key that I could hit that would ('Z' unsheathe wpn, '5' Cast Healing, '4' Cast Healing Ray?, and then..after about 20 seconds....'Z', then 'T' to enable Auto-attack). Obviously a Macro. Impossible to detect.

    In mid-levels whilst fighting......having each of my buffs fire automatically with enough time delays. Basically hitting the '1' key every 45 sec...the '2' key every 1 min 10 sec....etc. Obviously a Macro....and because of the long periods inbetween...impossible to detect.

    I seriously doubt that any of their servers know that such and such a key was pressed...let alone the time it was pressed for. That's a lot of useless information to be sending back for the thousands (and they hope for 10's of thousands people) who might be playing. But they probably do know that glyph a was activated...then glyph b...etc. And at what time.

    So avoid long term repetition. Pressing a key to do a bunch of things to save typing....not detectable.


    But hey, you don't have to take my word for it....just look at the texts you got from your probation officer on your phone. Did he type them all out, or did he use auto-complete (a macro?)

    For a couple words in this post, I used a macro. When I hit a key, those characters were sent to make up the word for me. Can you figure out which ones?

    For added fun and mystery...one whole sentence was added using copy and paste. Can you detect which one?
     
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  3. helm

    helm Avatar

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    @Lord Tachys al`Fahn, thank you for at least an attempt to create a "harmful" macro. Since this has been the only such submission, congratulations, infinite glory to ya! :)

    My point has been trying to demonstrate that people claiming even simple macros to be harmful are not able to come up with concrete examples, and especially that those folks putting out slippery slope arguments(*) are unable to devise even a single simple macro that could possibly be even considered harmful, let alone used in their slippery slope scenarios.

    (*)
    By slippery slope arguments (in this context) I mean arguments that take the form
    "If macros were allowed, then
    (make up some wild imaginary scenario only possible using extremely complex bots, possibly spice it up with some tale from some other MMO)
    therefore, all macros must be banned. No exceptions."

    For example, "If macros were allowed, people would make up macros that would constantly conjure up dragons and kill everyone in the instance, therefore ALL macros must be banned". Usually takes somewhat milder forms but the basic structure and "logic" is the same. Several examples in this thread too.

    I'm not convinced about this one either, this is not to belittle the submission, just trying to explain why this might not be so serious, or causing harm in any significant way.

    This is a static macro for combining two glyphs in static places. Yes, it might potentially provide an advantage. Is it significant, i.e. "unfair"?
    I can compare this to my own situation. Would such a macro provide any advantage against me? Would I receive any benefit from such a macro?

    I have four glyph slots (call them ABCD) set up as semi-fixed (so they only pop up one type of attack glyph, one slot for each attack), and two (in reality three but let's be kind to the argument) slots (call them EF) that put out a variety of glyphs that can be stacked or combined with ABCD. So I would need a total of eight macros (EA,EB,EC,ED,FA,FB,FC,FD), assign keys to them and learn how to use them. Contrast that to the fact that in rest (i.e. not in the middle of fight, with lots of things happening) I'm able to simply type the stackings/combinations (e.g. R-FD or R-EA) faster than they appear. I made a little external script (nothing to do with the game) to test out the speed, it's about 50-80 combinations per minute with no distractions (let's say average 1 per second). Therefore the combination speed is not a bottleneck in any way - the bottleneck is either the speed of the glyphs popping up, or my own capability to pay attention. So with these macros, the actual bottlenecks would be exactly the same.

    To use these macros, I would need to assign 8 keys to prime positions (lets assume I could use the side buttons of some MMO mouse, still taking up valuable space) and do the additional muscle memory training to be able to use them efficiently, so I would need to learn a total of 14 keys, instead of just 7, learning them is even more difficult than the ratio suggests because of visual overlap with glyphs - for example, there would be FIVE keys (four macros and one direct key) associated with slot A, instead of just one key.

    So this kind of macro would only make things several times more complex, slower, more awkward and difficult, compared to what I'm doing now - and that's assuming using just two "feeding slots" instead of the actual three (which would mean a total of 19 vs 8 keys to be assigned and learnt, something too difficult to even imagine). Fiddling with the number of target slots and feeding slots does not help - the ratios may change somewhat but always end up as distinctly negative.

    Would it benefit someone else? Well, maybe it would provide a temporary "advantage" for absolute beginners vs absolute beginners, but even then the net result would be negative, because the time invested would be much better used by learning proper key combinations. In fact, it would probably take 15 minutes of practice for an absolute beginner to be far better in combining glyphs the "normal way" than the user of such a macro could ever be.

    To conclude, I have to remain convinced that no harmful simple+static+blind macros (as defined in my challenge) exist, or at least that nobody has been able to demonstrate any.
     
  4. mass

    mass Avatar

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    At least be classy about it. Use a roll of dimes :p.
    I'm not sure I'd be so confident in the lack of detection for this. Repeated macros are usually detected when a repeated action occurs with the same time delay of like a +/- 1 ms change, e.g. something humans don't do. Like, I sometimes gather water for 20 minutes at a time, but I doubt I have more than 2 or 3 intervals of key presses that are even close to a +/- 10 ms sameness as the others. If you were using a simple repeated macro that fires the exact same time interval for 20 minutes, I bet that would be easily detected if they were looking for it.
     
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  5. helm

    helm Avatar

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    Quite correct. Any fixed timing interval is trivial to detect. This includes multibutton mice with programmable buttons.

    On the other hand, detection based on timing would also be trivial to circumvent if so desired, for example by using a sleep/pause/wait function that varies the time sufficiently, maybe using baseline value with some kind of normal distribution function thrown in, plus sufficient number of outliers thrown in for added taste. Or just record the distribution profile from actual humans and use that as a base (just some quick off-the-knee thoughts, I have never written one or even thought about it very deeply).

    Things like that are the reasons why I stated earlier that the monitoring aspect is not relevant in the context of this thread. The "humanness" of scripts and bots will only increase over time, and monitoring it is only going in one direction: more and more difficult. The direction is inevitable, and it is already next to impossible against the best solutions. Those who really want to "game" the system will be able to do so (are probably doing so as we speak), with almost no risk of getting caught.

    It is almost exclusively only those folks having legitimate and/or quite harmless reasons for doing simple short macros, that end up suffering most from knee-jerk flamethrower-style policy approaches such as the current one.
     
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  6. uhop

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    It is about time somebody speaks up for the people! Apparently the "common sense" started by Portalarium spreads, and now we have even bigger contractual problems: I spotted several physical places that sport a nonsensical rule: "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone"! Naturally I tried to clarify with the administration of those fine establishments what it actually means, and it turned out that, while they cannot refuse service to certain federally- and state-defined protected categories of patrons just for being in those categories, but other than that they can and they do, when people disrupt their business! They did give me some examples, but refused to provide a complete list! Those bastards!

    I understand when contractual obligations are well defined with a fancy lawyering, like "no shirt, no shoes, no service" --- looks totally legit to me. But Portalarium's position is unheard of. Then again, a friend of mine was thrown out of *mart (I don't want to advertise them here), when he came to buy some smokes --- in shoes! in shirt! without pants (totally honest mistake!). Let's be honest: at times we all forget to wear pants when buying smokes. Yet, he didn't violate the rule, so calling police was totally unnecessary. "What if children could see him?" At 4am?! Only with unfit parents! Anyway, those children probably take bath, so they know how a person looks without pants. But I digress.

    Jokes aside, let's deal with disclaimers first. Disclaimer #1: I don't use macros. Disclaimer #2: I have a contrarian view on macros, but I don't force it on anybody.

    Let's acknowledge that macros have certain side-effects: they tax game resources more than a typical humanoid. Basically they make people super-human by a) possibly speeding up operations, and/or b) reducing fatigue, sometimes to nothing. Even if we imagine macros, which work slower than an average human, the second part still matters. If a macro plays for me, say, hitting a practice target with a mace, I can do it 24/7 without potty breaks, instead of 1-2 hours a day (not every day!) I can afford naturally. They make time "price" of certain operations different altering the game's dynamics, thus changing the game how it was envisioned.

    "But what if I do it to skip the boring parts?" Still the same --- I will play more, and consume more game resources. (Obviously we should complain to Portalarium about the boring parts, so they can make them better, or even eliminate them.)

    So I imagine that Portalarium will not ban all people with game mice, or some fancy input devices, yet if they see an abuse in a form of increased game resources, or some unnatural "moves", like hacking, or automating the game, let's hope they will kick some asses. What are those "moves" exactly? Repeat after me the time-honored mantra: "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone".

    Obviously both players and Portalarium can potentially abuse the system. Given that it is Portalarium's business, and they don't want to alienate players en mass, plus given history of computer games, my bet is on players, who will try to get ahead using unorthodox means at expense of others, rather than on Portalarium, who will ban people randomly.
     
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  7. helm

    helm Avatar

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    Right, sarcasm is a difficult form of art.

    An integral part of the quote, where I said that contracts need to be clear and unequivocal, was left out. I wonder why.

    I also wonder, why people keep insisting on discussing long interactive macros, when there is absolutely zero dispute about their illegality. Using long and/or complex external interactive macros is and always has been a punishable offense.

    Once again, all of the statements in the above quote concern only long and/or interactive macros, none of them apply to short, static macros. Implying so is equivocation, which is not a valid argument by any choice or stretch of logic.

    Short static macros do NOT tax game resources any more than a "normal humanoid". Neither do they speed up operations, or even reduce fatigue, in any way that can be considered significant or even measurable. And they definitely do not allow doing anything 24/7, or even for a minute. Anyone is still of course welcome to claim otherwise, but please prove it then, by responding to the short static macro challenge presented several times.

    Reserving the right to deny service for what ever reason is totally fine in my opinion. However, the "denying service" part is generally done before accepting payment (so both parties know what the "rules of the game" are).

    To build on your analogy, Portalarium's behavior is somewhat analogous to a shop owner who would state "We got into trouble with our previous policy of "no shirt, no shoes, no service" when innovative customers went totally wild and showed up with no pants, so from now on we are forced to only provide service to people in tux or formal business attire. This includes our customers with annual fixed fee contract. We are sorry with about the inconvenience and stress this causes to all of you."

    What Portalarium is effectively doing is putting large part of its customer base technically in violation of the contract (without most of them even being aware of it), while providing "assurance" that they withhold "indiscriminate" sanctions. Not a good form, any more than, say, making presumptions about other peoples' motives.

    I remain convinced that doing two things, namely that
    1. Allowing short, static, non-interactive macros (which are NOT able to cause any signifcant harm to the game, in any shape or form)
      AND
    2. As suggested in the quote, making the "boring parts", that almost everyone hates anyway, better. For instance, removing mandatory chronic holding down of buttons and keys, and removing mandatory repetitive clicking of the same pattern ad nauseum. There is NO sane reason for forcing any "normal humanoid" to go mindlessly through the exact same pattern tens or even hundreds of times, like a robot.
    ..would be beneficial to both the company and its customers. It would make the game more interesting and more enjoyable, which typically translates to more sales. There is no real risk in permitting short, static, non-interactive macros, and there is no sane reason to introduce forced boredom into any game.

    I repeat once more, to let it sink in: Short, static, non-interactive macros are NOT the same thing as what people stubbornly insist referring to when talking about "macros". Equivocating them is a blatant logical error.
     
  8. uhop

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    Wonder no more: it is practically impossible to create a reasonably clear and unequivocal contract safe for most primitive cases. That's why in the contract law (there is one!) the pivotal role is played by a concept "good faith" AKA "bona fides". The idea is that the contract parties must act in a spirit of fairness and honesty, rather than debate what "is" is, or "is this a dot, or a trace from a fly???".

    I didn't even mention interactive macros --- what's interactive in hitting a practice target with a mace? I did mention a "long" macro. But before going there let's acknowledge the fact that you deem them illegal.

    Now, back to "long" macros. I created a "short" macro, and repeated it 1000 times. It is clearly illegal, taxing resources unfairly, because on my own I am unlikely to repeat that sequence 1000 times.

    I assume that you don't support exclusivity of macros either. So if I can do it, you can do it too (potentially), and so everyone else. So what is the difference resource-wise between me running a macro 1000 times, and 1000 people running it just once? Answer: no difference. In fact, that's how DDoS attacks work --- spreading innocent calls across a number of clients.

    But they do:
    1. If it is easier to invoke, the trade off changes, and people would use it more frequently.
      • Just to give a real example: hassle of "making" water forced me personally to suspend my agricultural experiments. If I had a macro to "pump" water, it would change. I still hope that Portalarium will solve it in the future without me doing anything drastic.
    2. If X knows that Y uses macros, it can start an "arms race" --- X will use that macro too, and possible some others, and so on. Soon it would be stupid for an Average Joe not to "arm" himself with macros. The result: Portalarium requires to allocate more resources.
      • Again, just read forums on topics like AOE spells, control points, taming, to name a few --- perceived and real advantages forced people into those areas, than created a backlash, when fixes were made.
    If Portalarium charged per transaction, I would assume they would be all for macros, bots, 3rd-party gold miners, and so on. The same deal with a period-based fee: if an average transaction takes $0.001, and on average a user makes 10,000 transactions per month, let's charge them $10/mo. (Power users will rob any period-based payment system blind, but it is a topic for a different conversation.) But they don't, so let's keep it this way. And use good faith, and cool head, more frequently.
     
  9. uhop

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    Heh. Go buy a ticket to see "Rogue One", or whatever floats your boat. When inside try to probe limits of contractually possible --- just use your imagination. Please report what cops will say when you inform them that a) you already paid for the ticket, b) you didn't do anything that directly prohibited by a legalese printed on the ticket.

    We all share a hearty laugh.
     
  10. helm

    helm Avatar

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    @uhop, I have defined several times very clearly what I mean by short static macros, and still you choose to apply sophistry. I do not think that kind of approach will lead to fruitful discussion. I'll reply just for this once regardless, but please lose the sophistry.

    Making reasonably clear definitions is entirely possible. It is self-evident that not everything can be covered on detailed case-by-case basis (and it would quite frankly be moronic to even attempt such an approach), but that is no reason for at least trying to be precise.

    The two examples presented in here, "the unattended macros are fine" one and "no shirt no shoes no service" one are just examples of extreme carelessness regarding definitions, nothing more. There is some justification in the latter one, because it was technically not a contract or an attempt to interpret one, just a vague hint at how common sense might be applied in the place (with the premise of reserving the right not to sell for whatever reason). There is no justification whatsoever in the "unattended macros are fine" statement - it's simply a huge blunder (not defining what "unattended" means, and not defining what "macros" mean).

    Both of the above examples would be straightforward to write in the form that is precise enough. I see no further need to go into details with the latter one because it even has a term of its own, called a "dress code" and is, for example, explicitly defined in many workplaces without any issues. The former requires a more specific definition such as what I have outlined several times in this thread, for example in here. Or alternatively, one could do something like defined in the SQUARE ENIX quote. These represent sufficient level of detail, defining what is reasonably allowed and what is not (approaching the issue from different angles but basically to the same effect). The current Portalarium interpretation of its policy, which can be paraphrased as "we prohibit anything and everything that could be called a 'macro' and further refuse to clarify what it might mean", is NOT sufficient level of detail.

    The movie theater example actually demonstrates the point quite well, but perhaps not in the way you intended. Private properties have their own sets of regulations, often deliberately set very vaguely and enforced quite arbitrarily. Typically movie theaters are actually quite notorious regarding the amount of distractions that they allow. It's common knowledge, and people actually make choices in advance to buy or not buy the service based on those rules. For example, I personally visit public movie theaters very rarely for this exact reason - because it's all too often a gathering place for popcorn-and-candy-munching folks that have blatant disregard for disturbing others with moronic behavior. However, just because a private companies have typically chosen vague and arbitrary set of rules to regulate behavior, it does not follow that openly defining more precise rules would be somehow impossible. Actually I would much rather visit a theater that had some clearly defined rules about decent behavior. Now I just choose not to purchase the service at all.

    Running something 1000 times in a loop will make that loop itself a macro, and therefore illegal, and therefore irrelevant to discuss (in this thread at least). For the same reason I have no further need to "read forums on topics like AOE spells, control points, taming, to name a few" because everything I have ever seen, concern only long and/or complex macros, 100%. I have not seen a single example, imagined or actually used, that would demonstrate any significant harm with short static macros. And I have specifically asked for actual concrete examples in this thread, I think more than five times now, without getting a single answer that would be convincing in any way. Only one person has even tried, everything else has been just vague hand waving.

    The difference between a single person running a something 1000 times, and 1000 people running the same thing once is quite obvious: 999 times more people playing, and 999 times (99900%) more people paying.

    Easier invocation does not automatically translate to more use. For example, even as I (rather generously) defined them, five non-looping player actions (macro instructions) does not do much, and repeatable actions would anyway have to reissued every ten seconds by hand. In short, it's not at all suitable for automating repeated bore-to-death tasks that this game appears to be so fond of implementing. Time remains the limiting factor.

    I think the water harvesting is actually a good example of this. Please do go ahead and describe a short, static water-harvesting macro (max 5 instructions, max 10 seconds, non-looping, executes the same way every time, no input from the game) that would revolutionize your water-harvesting routines.

    In sum, allowing short static macros is mostly good for working around certain ergonomic shortcomings, and establishing a baseline so that a large part of the player population would not be in violation of the contract by default (by just using certain types of multibutton mice for example).
     
    Last edited: Jan 8, 2017
  11. helm

    helm Avatar

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    And for these reasons, I remain convinced that such macros (short, static, non-interactive) should be explicitly allowed.

    And with that, I think this feedback thread has run its course, and the devs may make of it what they will. Thank you for attending.
     
  12. uhop

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    I didn't expect you to go personal that soon, but agreed, no sophistry as soon as you stop using the casuistry.

    And I wrote, but you didn't read for some reason:

    What exactly are you arguing with?

    Sorry I didn't quote more --- the rest of your post is in the same vein, but I hope readers can read up the tread, so I will avoid including the complete text.

    And what does it prove exactly? 999 people learned they can do a macro, and rushed to pay? What if they already paid for whatever reasons once (all people in these forums), and we are forcing them to use macros, so they don't lose a competitive advantage?

    But given that it was your last post in the thread, let me chart a course of actions for you: find a contract lawyer, explained her the problem, if she agrees to represent you (highly unlikely), file a lawsuit, stay firm at an arbitration, proceed to a court, and talk to a judge. I hope it would be as educational to you as it was to me (no, I didn't sue anybody).
     
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  13. Jezebel Caerndow

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    Just don't macro, it really is that simple. If you don't like to click every time for a water bucket, don't collect water that way then, you can still buy it. Don't want to click on bodies to loot them, don't loot them then. Don't want to click every skill, then don't use them. Don't want to stack skills or make combo's, don't stack or combo then. Don't want to to play a game that does not allow macros, don't play then. If you have trouble clicking a few buttons, why are you even playing a video game? I probably click 5000 times an hour, its not hard, and if you really do find that hard, how do you ever accomplish anything in life. I did concrete for a job a couple years ago, WAY harder then clicking a few buttons 5000 times an hour. I shovel snow right now, WAY harder then clicking a few buttons 5000 times an hour. If you can't click buttons, and you are not disabled in some way to hinder you doing so, you just might be one of the laziest people in the world.
     
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