Dealing with macros

[shockedfrog]

Trying to stop macros is not realistically possible, and even if it was, wouldn't necessarily be the best solution. I'm more interested in ways of reducing the negative impact macroing may have on the game.

[Vattic]

One thing I don't want to see is what I hear they did with maple story for a while. You could force a player you suspected of using macros to do a little puzzle and during this puzzle their activities in game were paused. Of course it wasn't just used on suspects and it was removed from the game very quickly .

[kimya]

so, what are macros actually?
they seem to be programs that repeat actions in-game?
wft, thats shitty. hows that possible?

[Rift]

It's a pretty generic term for any program/script that moves your mouse, clicks, and does keypresses automatically in repeatable patterns.
So you could use a macro to right click on tree, get branch, left click on ground, build something, put branch in it, click build, click destroy, REPEAT ect... to gain LP..
Not really that efficient... cause in reality since the most LP is from making really hard to make items or hunting strong animals.. both of which can't really be macro'd.

[kimya]

weeee, didnt know that. this is interesting.
its a bit like rewriting the program. or lets say, improve a program the way you like it. like the farming thing trav talked about. it really is a pain in the ass to harvest 10x10 wheat, plus replanting.

but with a proper macro you could make a couple of thousand lp within short time and steal, then give it to your main char or something like that. :/

[shockedfrog]

The issue with macros isn't so much the ability to do things in a shorter time (though this is sometimes the case) but rather the ability for players to basically set up a macro and leave the game running, earning LP for them while they go do something else.

[kimya]

The issue with macros isn't so much the ability to do things in a shorter time (though this is sometimes the case) but rather the ability for players to basically set up a macro and leave the game running, earning LP for them while they go do something else.

yeah i kinda wanted to say that.
but, im actually not sure what i think of it. i can imagine that its probably the best to change the game a bit i a way you mentioned before: make gaining lp not harder but maybe with more steps to take. not only building baskets and stuff. not sure though.

[sami1337]

It would be easy to fix. The add a random value to every build able item.
If a basket costs 5 branches to make, it should be 5 branches 9 out of 10 times. But only once it should be 6.

I guess you can also macro that out, but it drops all the nooby macro people.

Another possibility is to swap the craft with cancel/destroy button once in a while.

[Trafalgar]

but, im actually not sure what i think of it. i can imagine that its probably the best to change the game a bit i a way you mentioned before: make gaining lp not harder but maybe with more steps to take. not only building baskets and stuff. not sure though.

You want to make it take even more steps to do stuff? You'd have completely the opposite effect - you'd be encouraging people to make macros to make that easier on themselves.

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Personally I don't see anything wrong with helpful UI macros. I don't really want to click fifteen million times to get my hunger bar back up to 99% with apples every half hour.

I made one for the apple-getting-eating-and-core-dropping last night and have been testing and tweaking it while playing. Made it work regardless of what inventory slot the apple appears in. Also found out how to make the helpful macros not break existing hotkeys, e.g. I made the apple macro use alt-left and until I figured this out it made it stop working in other applications - I have my mouse wheel left tilt mapped to that - in firefox that does the back button, in windows explorer, same thing, in most games I can map the left arrow to something for it, etc.

However, if the inventory isn't open, it shows a message box saying it couldn't see the apple. It's entirely possible to write it to look for the Inventory and open it if it isn't open, but I didn't.

As for LP-gaining macros... Well, it's up to the devs to lay down rules, if any, about them. You can either be on all the time, or you can macro, or you can make an alt and have your alt and main beat each other up for massive free LP (assuming your alt eats lots of bread or cow chorizos and then wears bandages to get HHP up), or you can fall behind. Personally I've fallen behind, since I don't macro on my main, and I don't do the beating up thing with my main either. I just play him normally. But I've also made an alt which I want to roleplay with later, which I am macroing on sometimes when I'm afk. Except someone cut down that alt's apple tree, so I have to go find a new one before I can macro any more. :3

(RaptorJedi's first post in this thread, where he said he knew someone who wrote a macro for making dreamcatchers and tried to screw him up, was referring to someone else, rather than to me. He hasn't met my macroing alt.)

It's not going to be easy to macro stats, especially str. All three independently developed LP-grinding macros I know of essentially do the same thing - partial build and destroy dream catchers, periodically save the character, and nom nom apples, which are things that are very easy to do, since they don't involve much movement or making sure you don't go wandering off, getting stuck, or running into other NPCs, like farming or fighting NPCs would. Actually, I'm not sure they all nom apples. Mine noms them each cycle if food is less than 99% (so it never gets overstuffed) and saves progress every 10 cycles by opening the skills/attributes/etc screen and clicking 'buy'.

It would be easy to fix. The add a random value to every build able item.
If a basket costs 5 branches to make, it should be 5 branches 9 out of 10 times. But only once it should be 6.

So the macro-writer makes the macro do an ImageSearch after the 5th branch to see if it still wants another branch, and if so, add another one. Fix beaten in about 5 minutes of work.

Another possibility is to swap the craft with cancel/destroy button once in a while.

Also easily solved with an ImageSearch, and you'd REALLY piss off everyone building things, especially when people start destroying their log cabins at a much higher rate instead of whatever the rate is now.

My apple-eater already uses ImageSearch to find the apple no matter where it lands in your inventory and no matter where your inventory is on the screen, so... Your countermeasures are already obsolete. All the countermeasures you've listed probably wouldn't work against any of the people who have already written AFK macros for their characters, because they actually know what they're doing. Note that none of the AFK macroing macros have been posted anywhere AFAIK.

If you ask me, if you want to eliminate afk macroing, you have to deal with the cause, which is usually people feeling that other people are levelling up faster than they can, or that they can't compete, that everyone's much more powerful than them, etc.

[jorb]

If we were to combat serious macroing/botting, I think it would be done more by means of statistical analysis of factors such as total playing time/lp per unit of time/obvious sequential actions/other such patterns, than by adding little gimmicks and gadgets into the game itself. Right now, the problem is not so much macroing as it is the fact that the game relies heavily on basket grinding and has a less than sterling UI. A big part of the problem is that certain aspects of the game lend themselves very well to macros. This last part is what should be fixed, if anything.