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Macros for pvp, respecing, grabbing huttballs. Legal?


PoliteAssasin

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Hey guys I had a question, and hopefully a developer can chime in as well. There is a guild on my server, who shall go unnamed, that uses macros in warzones both regs and rateds in order to respec in literally 3-4 seconds, speed click the huttball on the pit, and other things. I was under the impression this wasnt in compliance with the TOS, but one of the members linked a message where he interpreted Bioware saying its ok for quality of life to mean he can do these things in pvp. Obviously this gives them huge advantages in warzones. Doesn't matter how many people you have at mid if one of them are there they will always grab the ball, and as I said, and did not exaggerate, they can switch between dps and heals, or tank and dps within a matter of 3-4 seconds while walking through a warzone.

 

So basically, is this against TOS or is it ok to do these things? One of the reasons we are hesitant to do rateds with them is because of the huge advantage this brings, and we don't want to do it as well to simply end up banned, just for the sake of being on equal footing. So please let me know, and if a Bioware employee could shed some light on it I would greatly appreciate it.

Edited by PoliteAssasin
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Hey guys I had a question, and hopefully a developer can chime in as well. There is a guild on my server, who shall go unnamed, that uses macros in warzones both regs and rateds in order to respec in literally 3-4 seconds, speed click the huttball on the pit, and other things. I was under the impression this wasnt in compliance with the TOS, but one of the members linked a message where he interpreted Bioware saying its ok for quality of life to mean he can do these things in pvp. Obviously this gives them huge advantages in warzones. Doesn't matter how many people you have at mid if one of them are there they will always grab the ball, and as I said, and did not exaggerate, they can switch between dps and heals, or tank and dps within a matter of 3-4 seconds while walking through a warzone.

 

So basically, is this against TOS or is it ok to do these things? One of the reasons we are hesitant to do rateds with them is because of the huge advantage this brings, and we don't want to do it as well to simply end up banned, just for the sake of being on equal footing. So please let me know, and if a Bioware employee could shed some light on it I would greatly appreciate it.

 

according to the people running the game those things don't exist (the game's programmed to well....HA!)

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Yes. macros like you explained are indeed against the ToS. Report those fools.

 

:( :( :( :( :(

 

This would gut a substantial amount of opponents who do something other than faceroll. With how often they're reported (for legit and non legit reasons), I'm surprised unsaid guild is still around.

 

I know exactly which guild hes talking about on our server - it's fairly obvious and unsaid faction is well known for abusing exploits, macroing, and hacking, even in pre-55 queues. The more passive of us consider it a "Oh, its them again. Ah well, medal farm time!"

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Well they do exist, in fact one of the members even streamed it several times. (Won't give the stream name). He's under the impression it is legal, as are the others. What I find to be sad is these players also talk a lot of trash, and when we found out they used programs a lot of their credibility went out the window, more so now that you guys are saying its against the TOS.
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The TOS is always a rather hazy area, though. SWTOR had some promotion with programmable mouse and it seems to me the macros described here is only a step up from what you can from a programmable mouse. Even if they attempt to try to classify what macros are okay and what macros are not, it'd end up looking like 'cheating is bad unless you used the cheats from the guys we have a deal with', so that's probably why they won't do anything about it.
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Well they do exist, in fact one of the members even streamed it several times. (Won't give the stream name). He's under the impression it is legal, as are the others. What I find to be sad is these players also talk a lot of trash, and when we found out they used programs a lot of their credibility went out the window, more so now that you guys are saying its against the TOS.

 

just need to do a google search to get the names of the macro / exploits

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Well they do exist, in fact one of the members even streamed it several times. (Won't give the stream name). He's under the impression it is legal, as are the others. What I find to be sad is these players also talk a lot of trash, and when we found out they used programs a lot of their credibility went out the window, more so now that you guys are saying its against the TOS.

 

cheaters always claim their cheating is legal. make sure to report them.

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A lot of mmo based keyboards have macro ability that would be difficult to detect and prevent as well as vendors getting into the fray about having banned hardware. I can see respec macros being handy though, I think they could make a respec feature. It'd be nicer if they let you assign respec templates to a name and let you respec and pick a dropdown for the template name to toggle between them without the whole give yourself carpel tunnel procedure. Definately an advantage to a person with the proper hardware, and against the TOS but hard to prove and so hard to enforce, which is largely why I think macroing is ignored unless it generates credits.
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Slade, I know exactly who you are talking about and although I agree that using macros is an unfair advantage and will not use them myself (just like I refuse to exploit the booster system) there may not be a lot BW can do about this as the vast majority of gaming devices have these kind of abilities.

 

The irony is that a lot of the players in that guild are very good PVPers and do not require this extra advantage to win against most of the players on the server, especially in PUGs.

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On the Bastion all the pub bragging guilds use macros. It's pretty obvious when in HB they grab the ball from a light year away and they trow it in the most impossible situations. Plus speed hack, plus Premade vs PUG and than they post on the forum how awesome SWTOR PvP is.
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Slade, I know exactly who you are talking about and although I agree that using macros is an unfair advantage and will not use them myself (just like I refuse to exploit the booster system) there may not be a lot BW can do about this as the vast majority of gaming devices have these kind of abilities.

 

The irony is that a lot of the players in that guild are very good PVPers and do not require this extra advantage to win against most of the players on the server, especially in PUGs.

 

I'm not gonna lie I've done the augment exploit and such simply because if I didn't others would have that advantage over me and my team. The macros though are a whole different level, I won't do it because 1. its a cheap way to win, and 2. its seemingly against the TOS. Another thing to note is the bolster exploits were at the very least available to everyone. Macros are not as easy to obtain from what I hear. And I agree some of the people who do use it I would think shouldn't need to. But then again given they're so used to it, it makes you wonder how well they would do without them.

 

Another poster on the previous page put up a good point though, afaik the SWTOR mouse comes with a macro program. But I remember a dev post saying you aren't supposed to use it even if its in there. Obviously these programs are getting through though, and our suspicions were more than confirmed when players openly admitted to using these programs. Needless to say people who don't have them will be at a significant disadvantage, unless they to use these programs. Given its nature in regards to the TOS though that simply isn't an option for us.

 

So I take it that even though it violates the TOS, they can't detect them and thus these individuals can simply get away?

Edited by PoliteAssasin
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the macro for speeder/huttball is sorta cheese and most people know it isn't the macro that gets you the win.

 

personally, not bothered. the re-spec thing is cool especially if i could store a few specs. but i generally respec almost every map depending on the objective so i have 3+ main specs and even then i make minor adjustmants.

 

at the end of the day, no one is winning because of macros and you aren't losing to people because they use macros. look for other excuses.

Edited by RyanReagan
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the macro for speeder/huttball is sorta cheese and most people know it isn't the macro that gets you the win.

 

personally, not bothered. the re-spec thing is cool especially if i could store a few specs. but i generally respec almost every map depending on the objective so i have 3+ main specs and even then i make minor adjustmants.

 

at the end of the day, no one is winning because of macros and you aren't losing to people because they use macros. look for other excuses.

 

 

When a player is able to respec from heals to dps, or dps to tank in the middle of a match (within 3-4 seconds) depending on the circumstances, that heavily influences the outcome of the game. (We're not talking about respeccing at the beginning, but respeccing in the middle of a fight in a warzone by the push of 1 button)

 

Matches like huttball where possession is everything, if you have 4 people at mid all trying to grab the ball when it resets, and the opfor doesn't even need to CC, he just gets it every time because he is able to speed up his click, that significantly affects the outcome of the match.

 

So I in turn say to you, come up with better excuses.

Edited by PoliteAssasin
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To be frank, I really hope bioware implement their own version of macro support for swtor. My one pet peeve with this game are players who seem to have a severe inability to press buttons. At least if everybody macro'd some sort of spam rotation to a handful of buttons, all those 30k damage wonders "should" evaporate. Edited by JackNader
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So far as cheating goes, it's generally very hard to detect anything preemptively without intrusive measures (e.g. Blizzard Warden), but it's relatively easy to detect anything after the cheating has occured assuming the game has a robust log system. For example in the respec case, I don't think you can detect that before it happened, but it'd be easy to see via log that soandso field respeced in a span of 5 seconds and conclude that there's no possible way you could do that without using macros. Depends on how extensive (or not) the logging system of SWTOR is it can be very easy or impossible to catch the cheaters.

 

That said I really don't see how Bioware could ban people for using macros while having special deals for people who bought programmable mouses. Even though MMORPG developers generally has never lost over banning people over cheating, it'd appear to me that banning people for using macros while you've deals to sell programmable mouses is a great way to lose a lawsuit.

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Really all a macro does is do legal actions automated like a computer

 

The fact that it's legal is the problem, not the macro itself. Disable respeccing inside WZs. I've respec'd inside without macros, did it in about 10 seconds as I know my build.

 

As for the huttball, it's a skill-reflex based thing, which, in MMOs, always go to hell. Ability Queueing takes out the needed reflex for combat. If that queue didn't exist macros would still be able to do it.

 

If they do put in macros the abysmal amount of skill required will go down the drain

If they don't put in macros a very small percent of players will have an advantage.

 

TL;DR report and deal with it

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lol some people will use any excuse to weasel out of playing ranked games that they know they have litlle chance of winning.

 

For the record, no team that I know of on our server uses huttball clicking macros -- certainly not any team I've ever played on. I don't even know how such a macro would work.

 

See also (note point c) :

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=3310172&postcount=288

Edited by Syberduh
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I don't get why people always say 'I don't know of anyone who cheats at the high end'. Usually all that means is you don't actually know anybody. This game has a relatively low skill cap so if you are actually good, you'll know that to really stand out in a game where it's hard to come out significantly ahead by skill you need every little bit of help you can get. I've been in plenty of games where people are blatantly cheating and they all swear they're not cheating, and if you didn't know how the cheats work they sure look like legit players to you. The only thing that balances out cheating is fear/risk, i.e. is it really worth it if you think there's some small chance you'll get banned?

 

In a game of Huttball the team that grabbed the ball more often almost always wins if the two teams are of comparable strength. It's hard to tell the difference between a macro or someone who is just really, really fast. If you make a macro it'd probably just spam click on the middle, which is pretty much what any good player should do whenever the ball is resetting. That's why it's fairly hard to catch these things because you can't always tell the difference between someone who is just extremely fast to someone who is cheating. In games with more powerful scripting language you can do stuff like make usre you always interrupt at the last 0.1s, but a good player can do that most of the time too, so you really have no way of knowing whether that guy is just really good or he's using some kind of tools to help him.

 

Therefore, a well-designed game should do its best to make cheating irrelevent. Disabling field respecs, for example, and you wouldn't have to worry about someone doing that in the middle of a WZ.

Edited by Astarica
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I don't agree at all with disabling field respec. I solo q quite often and have to respec mid round at least once a night because i never got a response to a generic "who is healing?" question, and sometimes people run odd set bonuses. So I'll spec conceal or lightning on my op/sorc. I can see why people don't like it for rated games, I guess.

 

I have never researched it myself but I have heard about respec scripting. It really sounds easy given the tools available. It is definitely on a different level from the kind of macros you'd make with a g15 keyboard.

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a macro for respecing in wouldnt be possible, there are mouseclicks involved. it would have to be a script with either pixel/image recognition or screen locations for mouseclicks.

 

i think that would be against the rules

I've seen videos of swtor bots that recognize, target and attack enemy players. I agree that it shouldn't be too hard to script "K" (open skill tree), click the respec button (XY coordinates), confirm (yz coordinates), then click talents. Pretty sure that will be possible for dragging and dropping talented powers to their rightful places on action bars.

 

No matter how practiced the player is, they won't be able to respec faster than a specialized script. So yeah, this kind of stuff does give unfair advantage.

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