You are taking things way too seriously for a game that is supposed to be played for fun. Note that LE is not an esport game. I play most ARPG’s and never heard of game banning use of gaming keyboards and mouse.
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That has nothing to do with esports. Farming bots are a real issue for every rpg with an online economy. EHG has already taken steps to prevent botting. They restrict items as uniques and legendaries as well as gold for trading. This makes item or gold farming less viable because the farmed items cannot be sold.
But there are also xp farming services in other games. D3 had a massive bot problem and Blizzard spent a lot of money an effort to prevent it.
And bots are just complex script programs. So when measures are taken the poor script user that only runs an autocast script could be considered cheating for mistake and be banned.
Why you keep talking about farming bots? I thought we were talking about assigning certain button on mouse or keyboard as a automatic recast of skill? No game ever blocked me for using my gaming mouse or keyboard functions. D3, POE and many MMO’s with anticheat scanners never gave me any problems since it is not cheating.
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I just want to know what I have to expect when I am using numlock (or macros). Are the devs aware of this? Do they care? If they care what are their plans regarding this? Will they block numpad or other macros?
And there are discussions about macros in about every game. The fact that you are not aware of it does not mean it isn’t there.
And I don’t want to convince you to not using macros or else. If you don’t care, no problem. I have the experience that people got banned in online games for using macros because macros can look like bots. And when EHG plans to install counter measures against bots this can happen here, too.
That’s the whole story.
I’m genuinely curious as to where the numlock functionality comes from. If it’s not something the devs explicitly added then that means it’s a windows thing & I’ve not seen Excel auto-repeat any of the number keys if they’re pressed with the Numlock, which means it has to be something the devs added, surely?
This has nothing to do with the game itself. Found this:
Pressing the key registers a key down event, and it will continue firing until a key up event is fired. Pressing num lock effectively changes the key code, so when you release the key, the key up event for the original key is never fired, so the game acts like you’re still holding it down.
When you hit numlock again, the keys are still “down,” until you press and release them again to trigger the key up command.
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Oh, that makes sense.
A good solution for this will also be to design the game such, that botting does not help. If the reward for play is the play experience in itself, no botting is necessary. As long as the developers stay away from the temptation to artificially prolong game play by making the game extra “grindy” there shouldn’t be a need for bots.
In POE i.e pretty much every streamer is using potion macro. I used it too through my mouse/kb. Never had any issues. Another reason is that Carpal Tunnel is a real thing and that’s why we have gaming kb/mouse. I haven’t heard of one game that will ban you for using functions in gaming gear.
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I don’t know what else I could tell you. Did you look at the link I posted? The flask macro is officially not allowed by GGG. Now this was a few years ago and this is LE not POE. But why do mind that I am asking about this?
Just google the words “macro+[gamename]” and you’ll find dozens of threads about people asking what’s allowed and what’s not.
So maybe it’s different here. Maybe not. Would be nice to have an official answer to that question. I’d rather ask before using something that could me get banned. Even if a stranger on the forum tells me I should not bother.
Yes. This should be the first step. Problem is that you possibly have to make hard restrictions to make bots less effective or meaningless.
I followed the Bazar Dev Blog here on this forum for a while. There are many people that don’t agree with these kind of restrictions. The thread is outdated now and I a very curious what to expect from the Bazar.
autocasting skills that are ment to be auto-casted manually; the health of individuals specially with carpel tunnel: ---- i’m in my 30’s and I’m experiencing this now, you trying to remove/restrict a non issue, that is only factored in by casting it yourself, it’s not a violation of anything legally, or game breaking, it’s a quality of life feature, that has no real op mechanic, and is actually bypassing a lot of these bugs from skills this patch that are auto-castable, like aura of decay.
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No way… i know when i ran Maelstrom+Tornado+Ice Thorns while having to manually use earthquake and my basic attack a real pain (Maelstrom, Tornado and Ice Thorns specced on insta-cast and max cd reduction + cd reduction helm). My hands went numb. (Well okay, the basic attack didn’t matter… that one was comfortable… but having to hold 3 buttons, while using a 4th from time to time really hurts… try it xD) So i do feel like some kind of auto-cast is needed. :x
I am absolutely with you. So instead of using a “trick” the best solution would be to change the skill mechanics, imho.
Sure, it is officially not allowed, but plenty of people use it without being banned. I’m ultra-casual in PoE and even I’ve seen reference to crap like “tape a popsicle stick across your flask keys to press them all at the same time”. It sounds goofy as hell to me but I bet people have done it.
One action, 5 reactions, and completely undetectable.
I respect the stance that you’re taking against doing things that a game developer states are against their game’s rules. I’m the same way, personally…but the thing is, it doesn’t matter how much you say “it’s against the rules”. If there are undetectable ways to do it, people WILL do it. Hell, people will use detectable means as well, and sometimes some of them even get banned for it.
Some people just like automating things to see what they can get away with. Some people have carpal tunnel and have to choose between automating things and not playing at all. Some people use bots for more nefarious purposes like grinding levels while they sleep, or grinding gear to sell for in-game resources or real money.
The best thing a game creator can do is realize up front that there will be players playing outside the rules, and some of them will be using undetectable methods to do so. It’s part of the cost of doing business. Having autocast functionality for some skills might make sense, but that doesn’t mean the devs should design the game to play itself while you watch, even if there might be outlier players who use automation to do exactly that.
The fact that some players will automate things doesn’t mean the grindy aspects of the game should be designed around it and “legit” players punished.
The fact that some players will use other means to have an advantage in a player-driven economy doesn’t mean that resources should be extra scarce to account for it, and “legit” players wind up punished.
At the end of the day, as long as a player who plays the game as intended (whatever that winds up meaning) has a fun, satisfying experience and gains power at whatever rate is considered normal by the devs…then balance is in the right place. You don’t balance around outliers, you balance around the masses who will be playing the game as intended.
In addition, as a player yourself, you need to accept that people will bend/break the rules or stretch the definition of what is allowed, and there’s nothing you (or the devs, in some cases) can do about it.
There is a lot that can be done about it but most devs don’t do it because the loss of players and the bad publicity that comes with it will hurt more then letting some lazy people violate the rules.
Back when EHG stated they want more active gameplay and everything shoule be tiresome to use I already said that this way is a bad move because people would macro everything. Well here we are ^^.
I don’t wanna be the white knight and point with my finger at people like “What you do is not allowed”. This is absolutely NOT my intention.
Of course there will be people driving this to the top by automating everything. So the minor tweaks are found ok. The stupid thing is when game companies make rules but don’t interfere when they are broken because of fear to lose the player base. That’s either poor politics or poor game design. Or both.
Wouldn’t it be terrible to start with a new game where some builds - e.g. like @Swylli mentioned - are absolutely unfun to use without macros?
@Macknum: I totally can understand the intention of EHG. Imho this is ok for an MMO with long uptimes and cool downs, but it doesn’t work for this fast paced combat of an ARPG.
PoE begs to differ & that’s significantly faster paced than LE.
Right, this is a line a game developer has to tread. I’ll refer to any of the numerous cases where a dev inserts shitty DRM into their game, that actually makes the game perform worse on a “legit” version of the game than a cracked version with the DRM removed. Sometimes not taking action is actually better because it preserves the game experience for non-cheating players (which is as it should be).
Again, if the “interference” would screw over the legit players, it’s not stupid.
Each situation has to be weighed, and with how transparent the LE devs have been up to this point, I’ve no doubt it’s already something that’s on their radar.
I find it impossible to believe they will actively try to block every single possible cheat/automation/workaround. As with my “popsicle stick” example, many are simply not detectable, and with the existence of programmable gaming mice/keyboards, this point is enhanced.
So, if they can’t interfere when the rules are broken because they have no way to detect that the rules are being broken (other than perhaps people whining on the forum, which is not proof)…is that still stupid?
Indeed. It is stupid to set up rules I don’t be able or willing to force. What is the sense of this?
This may be true. And I hope the devs nevertheless will do all they can to detect and prevent cheating. It would be the instant death of this game when they are negligent because they think they won’t be able to stop them anyway. This would be a bad attitude.
And just because something is popular it does not get legit automatically. Legit is what the devs declare as legit. So when EHG is of the opinion that using numlock is ok, they should make a statement. But then they also should rethink to change their skill mechanics and not force players to use a workaround.
If they are of the opinion that using numlock violates their rules they should also make a statement and be ready to detect and tackle rule-breakers.
The worst they can do is state that it is against their rules, but do nothing about it. This would make them implausible.