Keep your "macros" to your self

General
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Someone told me this morning that they got passed a macro that runs in my tree farm, and how awesome it is. Also gleam mining, and another for block changing.

A bad start to my day, tbh.

I used to automate for a living, I don’t automate my leisure. And I feel like this seriously devalues my time and effort. Not just in terms of coins and customer loss but overall in terms of contribution to that vague thing we refer to as “the community” which is the combined effort of all of us working towards each person being able to achieve their goals in the game.

I know that some people here take pride in being avidly antisocial and never interacting with another player.
There are also people who never want to feel like any scrap of their effort has been used in any way to help another person achieve their own goals. It’s clear that people are going to feel differently on a topic like this. But there are plenty of people who either can’t or won’t run complex macros on a game they’re playing for fun and TBH I feel like it’s cheating, myself.

I’m literally making this post because it makes me feel like I have to defend my efforts, and what I’m putting into the game. I’m less eager to engage in trade or be supportive of this other person’s activities now, when they relegate any part of my contribution to “something to be done with a macro”. I already have a hard time every time they mention levels, or plots. It costs me respect for what they achieve in the game, and leaves every other player’s efforts up to question.

It also creates an imbalance in being able to appreciate their margins in a market. And it skews the way that I look at other people’s builds. It’s just a little harder to appreciate the effort put into a rare block changed marble or brick when it’s held in the fore that people are automating the process.

It’s hard to look at the devaluation of resources as “natural market fluctuation” when it’s clear that some people are putting in zero effort for the same returns. It makes me defensive regarding the hundreds of hours I’ve spent harvesting and bringing materials to market when I am reminded there are people out there that figure I’m probably walking away and just “letting it happen” while I AFK.

I found I prefer to use my time playing the game rather than investing it into the “challenge” of bypassing the game mechanics (i.e. cheating). I know this sort of rant causes a bunch of posts about auto clicking and “my RSI” but IMO complex macros don’t belong in an MMO environment, and especially something cross platform.

I woke up eager to play Boundless, and finish the task I started last night. I think instead I’m going to find something else to do for a while. It’s already been over an hour and while I’ve spent much of my time sorting and editing my thoughts into this (still semi-coherent) post on the topic, I’m still frustrated.

I’m hesitant to post this because I suspect it’s going to ■■■■ a lot of people off, and may cost me a friend. But hey. Clearly I feel pretty strongly about it.

/rant

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I don’t know man. It’s a game. People do all kinds of stuff that i don’t think make sense or seem fun, but if that’s what they enjoy then whatever. The game is a tedious grind. Just to make blocks to builds with, That process itself isn’t always fun.

At the end of the day, whatever gets people playing and building works for me. Sorry you had a rough start to your gaming session.

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The thing you like doesn’t mean others should like it as well.
This is the forum, everyone can share their feedback and the feature they want to devs.
Devs they make final decision that these feature should adding to the game or not.

I think this thread should close. It discourage players to post on the forum lol.

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I agree with you. I don’t see the point in cheating in a game either.

Botting is usually a big fat no-no in games.
Now if there is a mod that is created by or approved by the game devs, that’s a different story.

I found out about a few that made me 2nd think even playing…like what’s the point if they are just going to do that, while I’m over here actually playing the game.

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I’m pretty sure that automating an activity is probably against ToS. @james can we get a weigh-in on botting being allowed? If it is can you push out private servers that can interconnect so we can play in a universe without it?

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If you turn your play station controller off remotely it will continue the actions infinitely, allowing macro like actions, and that is build into their gaming system and cannot be changed. I do not own a playstation but enjoy the entire communities efforts to push the non competitive, non pvp, non toxic game foward. And do not look at it as “Oh, they have more, I should have more or they should have less.” I see the entire community growing and working together more and more as a community game was meant to. So should playstation not even be able to play because their operating system allows it by default?

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He weighed in on a recent thread of those of us who use logitech macros due to carpal tunnel/arthritis/etc. He’s looking at ways to polish the system so it isn’t so repetitive it seemed like (I think this was in regards to the hundreds of clicks made on tables/machines/etc)

Of course Nightstar could be talking about a much more complex macro than what that thread was about?

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I’m not sure how wanting a craft all masscraft button is the same as having a macro that is mining and cutting trees for you. One is QoL, the other is cheating.

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Right. I get that. I don’t understand how mods that ‘cheat’ the game by exploiting or using code is ok, but the devs don’t seem to mind and PC players go on a tear if you talk about limiting mods. If you’re going to say one is bad, the whole thing better get looked at and cleaned up I’d guess? :man_shrugging:

They’re both cheating and they’re both quality of life improvements.

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Oh great, really?

Get that junk out of here, ‘botters’ already ruin other game economies, don’t need it here too.

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I agree the macro is cheating, but it shows we need a craft all button on each crafting tab.

Edit: I don’t want anything that automates things in this game. But I don’t agree with you the mods people are doing are the same thing as botting. Its not even close.

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Can’t help but read this in the Oblivion guard voice either,

“Keep your macros to yourself, sneak-thief!”

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In a game I played, a MUD (A mmo text based game, kiddos!) The use of macros was forbidden. It was deemed cheating. You were able to create ‘aliases’ which were a string of commands that were triggered by using a single word or abbreviation. The difference was that you still had to manually input the shortened command to carry out the actions within the alias i.e. you had to be physically at the keyboard, playing the game. You couldn’t create alias commands that triggered an infinite loop of actions.

Old school was the best school, in many ways.

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So we agree that it is cheating in both cases.

But only one warrants an adjustment to the UI for quality of life playing.
(as far as mods, I’ve seen several people mention that Sim’s trade scanner is an unfair advantage, etc etc but many people agree that that system was cumbersome and now we’re seeing direct game change because of it - just like the discussion on the potential crafting fix)

All I’m saying is we can’t paint these perceived ‘bad things’ with the same brush. They show flaws at some level that warrants looking at. I don’t like regen farms, but they are a thing, and they are the type of thing this macro thing generally shows itself in. I might be wrong but I thought the farming system was a first step at trying to figure out how to reduce regen farming.

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These sort of complex macros discourage feedback on game features by negating the activities themselves for certain players.

If the game is flooded with certain materials then without studying metrics on player actions, the devs can only assume that these materials are already too easy to acquire. So then a few players running macros lead to the game being made harder for every other player.

This is a forum where people can share feedback and request features. And if the game is so hard that it’s reasonable to bring on third party tools negating the game play, people passing around macros so that others are able to bypass it with literally zero effort in either developing the macro OR performing the task the game will eventually be unplayable for players that can’t or won’t use these outside tools.

IMO (you’re entitled to yours) these tools don’t encourage feedback, they suppress it.

It’s definitely not about an auto clicking mouse to bypass a bajillion clicks on the same button.

I’m talking about complex macros, that allow a player to align their character, then walk away while it repeatedly performs a harvesting, building, or processing action, interacting with blocks and constructs in the open world. Placing, harvesting, block changing, then returning to a start point or reorienting, regenerating, picking up, and/or replacing resources as necessary, and then doing it again.

As with many things in life, there’s a gap between what you “can” do and what you “should” do. And should is a very subjective word. It doesn’t really upset me that other people have different opinions. But it affects who I respect, and who I choose to associate with.

Yes specifically this morning I’m discussing a macro that farms bark and sap in a properly set up tree farm, the same macro which can be used to farm endless gleam in a gleam ball like on serpensarindi or any material deposit that is qa few blocks deep including trunk, gleam, stone, soil, etc…

Also mentioned was a macro to block change a smart stack of blocks in under 10 minutes completely AFK.

If you’ve ever done extensive chisel changing, I’m sure you can see how awesome that would seem. But will you ever look at a massive build of white marble again and respect the ‘effort’ that went into it? Less likely if you don’t personally know the builder or block producer, and how it was done.

Not to mention, from a market sense, that people charge a high premium for blocks that require changing.

So is the person who changed them by hand “a fool for their effort”? Or is the person who runs the macro a “market genius” for getting around the effort that supposedly justifies the premium?

All a matter of opinion I guess :man_shrugging:

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Yea this is complex and way different than what I was talking about. I’ve always referred to something like that as botting. It’s different than running a macro that does a limited function like the table stuff. That’s why i was asking which you were talking about exactly.

TBH I always assumed you used a macro similar to standing on top of a tree, setting macro to chop then stop after x second then throw regen bomb, and have it looped up down up down etc. It’s really simple and not nearly as complex as the one you are describing your friend to have used.

Yea, walking round automated though is a different level.

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If macros were to be banned, then playstation should not be able to play in the same connected universe as they will still be able to have their machine run continuative infinite actions if they turn off their controller remotely thru their phone. As it is built into the machine itself, what is boundless to do, separate the entire universe? Because that would be “what is fair” correct?

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My simple take: If you cheat, you get warned, then banned. Simple, easy, no politic like back-and-forth threads involved. I don’t want to see how people are going to try to twist this as “proof” or a “reason” to change something to their liking because I’m not interested in the byplay and won’t be part of it anymore.

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I choose not to do this.

After this thread I set up a macro to click on a table button 30 times and gave it a try. It didn’t negate the other aspects of mass processing that i don’t enjoy so in the end I literally started hiring other players to do it.

It’s not a lot of players that have been involved but I’ve given up hundreds of levels and the attendant cubits to have other people handle it lol. TBH I’ve been considering finding a new person(s) since the last person that was doing it steadily for me isn’t playing much any more. And my refined rock stands are getting bare.

IMO the more advanced tools are task automation, it’s beyond what would formally be considered a “macro”. But it’s often casually referred to as macroing and much of the software used is named/advertised as Macro Software.

100% also fits the common definition of “botting”.

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I agree entirely. I think a warning might even be too kind. IMO, cheaters should have account banned, characters deleted, and any beacons they owned removed and regenerated.

This is definitely something wonderstruck needs to address immediately. I also have no interest in playing with cheaters.

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