Keep your "macros" to your self

There are two MMOs that I know of where moderators will play the game & engage reported botters in convo. If they get no reply or see no change, the person is kicked.

Which is fine apart from the fact I feel the person most likely should have been temp banned, as I Do not support boting or any type of AFK automation of any online game.

Button press macros that require the user to be at the computer actively controlling the situation, is fine in my book.

Good, i can go bot Hunting in this game aswell now.
Let the hunt begin!
:boom:

Someone running a macro wouldn’t stop just because you stand in front of them or if you happen to be friends with them and grapple them they will still be doing the same interactions. I know this for certain in boundless because there was a person on my friends list that stated he runs macros when he goes to sleep. Made it so he would eat a teaching pie too when it was time. But I tested it and pulled him away from the area and left him away from his box and he just kept swinging that chisel and hammer.

Then this is no longer a Macro in my book and is a Bot. Everything mentioned in your response to me, is behavior of a Bot which allows for AFK Automation of the game.

Boting is not legal in most games, and it isn’t legal in boundless.

But Marcos allow afk too so really not any different

It is extremely different, at least to me and when it comes to what can be banned and what is allowed


Because Macros are typically used to translate a button press in to a Series of actions, but requires the user to keep pressing that button if they want to repeat the actions.

If you design your macro such that it loops forever, this is a „Dumb“ Bot in my book (Bot with no logic AI). it may have been designed using tools intended to create legal macros, but the moment you program it to automate something while AFK, that is boting.

There are many legal uses for plain old Macros that behave in such a way that it requires the user to be active at the computer at all times to run the macro.


Bottom line: If you use a macro to create a bot, I consider it to be a bot, not a macro

Macro = Legal in most cases
Bot = You get your account banned in most cases.

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Take WoW as the chief example (though nearly every triple A MMO I’ve ever played allowed/encouraged it)They encouraged you to make macros in game to elevate gameplay.

Meanwhile you had WoWGlider which was a 3rd party bot program that went to court and lost handedly.

Two entirely different functions and people need to learn the differences. Macros not bad. Botting very bad.

There’s a huge one that will ban you for using either. They also kick people that try to “alter” the market.

One I MMO play has a built-in UI for them like mentioned above.

To my knowledge there is no absolute clear yes/no from BL on the subject. That’s probably the biggest issue. If people had a clear answer one way or the other, it would put a lot of this to rest.

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There is no absolute, however

When the game allows and even maybe promotes the level of modding it allows, even going as far as allowing some mods to read memory and network packets and letting that mod be publicly posted on the forums, knowing full well the Tech support problems such mods may or may not cause. with little to no response from the dev team,

I am going to go ahead and take that as meaning something as simple and minor as Macros is allowed,

While Boting is not allowed

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If either is allowed, then there should probably be a central github page for BL mods or something where everyone can download them and install the updates as needed. Not private little websites that people have to be lucky enough to come across or someone’s private discord channel.

Otherwise, no bueno.

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Which rather shows that we need a new machine that can mass block change! Would be a massive QoL update, just like a craft all button would be, IMO

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So same thing then when putting some tape on some buttons on ANY platform??

I don’t like this stuff like this in the game. I feel it ruins it for the ones of us that actually play it the way it was meant to be played. I also feel it hurts the economy in a huge way. Personally I am struggling with the game as it is. I have 6 characters and between them only 64k. A few exo travels and buying some needed items can easily wipe that out. My store is barely making anything and it is no wonder when people can do stuff like that to flood the markets with items. You can’t compete with that.

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Honestly? I would legit stop playing if I got interrupted every x minutes with PROVE YOU ARE HUMAN. Like damn.

I have seen games where there is an item/skill that will cause this prompt on other players. If they failed to complete it within three attempts, they would be logged out and their character/account flagged for future observation, and if they succeeded, a buff was set on them so the item/skill couldn’t be used on them (by anyone) again for a certain period of time. The item/skill also carried a cooldown so players couldn’t spam it on people. I got tagged by someone in a game with such a system exactly once, and that was because I was running around in circles in a place where I knew the respawn timer of some minerals.

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I saw last night someone sharing his macros for
Gleam mining / block changing.
Some even said he plays on ps4 while his pc account is gathering(or whatever) 
 how the f thats not cheating?

I do think this is a problem
 as there is people who can play basically 24/7 the game
 crash certain market when they want etc.

I suggest that devs add a system in the game that after certain period of time (like 1hr ) theres box popped on the screen where you gotta but exact number code that it says
if code is not put in 
 it will return you to sanctum
@HOST actually suggested this alrdy

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“Avidly Antisocial” since 2003 and loving every second of it.

Botting, however? Not my cuppatea
 Don’t see the point in cheats and shortcuts. More than half the fun is in the trip of getting to where you’re going.

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This is me
 the antisocial bit completely!

And also have to agree with the second part wholeheartedly. If I found a game so tedious that I had to bot parts of it I’d just go and find a new game to play that I actually enjoyed.

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Hmm quite a bit of conversation to catch up on.

Out of many relevant points, I’ve grabbed this quote because it’s a good summary of part of the problem in clarifying how a community feels about this issue. The confusion is compounded by the many products in the market selling themselves as “macro software” or “macro tools” when, by pretty much any formal definition, they’re in fact full fledged automation software.

People respond to a post like this with anything from reductio ad absurdum to extensive quibbling over semantics.

I’m honestly not bothered by some software or hardware that sends a few extra clicks. Personally. Of course, it never occurred to me how conducive all the various keyboard shortcuts for menus and interfaces in game really facilitated this (macroing) growing more and more “complex” over time.

In my background emulating a few keystrokes or mouse clicks at the hardware level is typically something that would be referred to as a macro. Once you start negotiating multiple interfaces and/or emulating human interaction with a system either by the GUI or by exposing back end interfaces, it’s automation - in more popular gaming terms, “botting”.

It’s nothing to do with games that provide internal scripting systems for complex activities, comparing playing a game with dev-provided interfaces to breaking out with a third party software and writing bot scripts is a distraction, at best.

I’m not speaking out against the use of in game systems for automating certain things or even stuff as complex as the “redstone” systems people frequently ask about. None of which exist within boundless, nor justify bringing third party tools to bear on the game.

These are probably the same scripts that were brought to my attention this morning, by another person, who was excited to have tried them out, and already eager to explore other applications.

Someone who has the skill, honestly, to do this on their own if they were so inclined, but they weren’t. Until someone put it right in front of them and said “Hey, give this a try”. Now they have the software on their machine and a taste for it and the question is no longer “Could I” or even “Should I” but instead, “Why wouldn’t I”.

Back to the topic of opinions again but I hope this doesn’t become normalized. As mentioned above if this is the common behavior then the devs are, in the end, pushed to balance the game with these tools in mind and the whole thing becomes more a challenge of who can pile up the most while playing the game the least.

Maybe I’m mistaken, but I don’t think that’s what the majority of players here want. Without trying to blur the line I also think that most of us can pretty clearly see the difference between a bit of autoclicking, and a bot script.

With or without various definitions of the word “macro” muddying up the water.

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Speaking as someone from “the other side” - i’ve used 2 macros myself. Well actually, its 1 macro with 2 uses - an autoclicker.

  • Function 1 is to allow me to craft hundreds of thousands of rock without giving myself carpel tunnel syndrome (which I think isnt bad, as im still manually going to each table to craft)

  • Function 2 is to shoot a slingbow as fast as using the auto-shooter epic, but without having to spend 5 skill points to do so

To be honest, the main reason I do the second option, is because there dosen’t seem to be any repercussions to doing so - its impossible to even detect the difference between an autoshooter and someone using the epic unless they self admit the former. Ëąá¶Šá”ˆá”‰ ⁿᔒᔗᔉ ᔖ˥ᔉᶻ á”ˆá”’âżá”— á”‡á”ƒâż ᔐᔉ Ê·á”’âżá”ˆá”‰ÊłËąá”—Êłá”˜á¶œá”

While I do think macros should be banned, I think they should only do so once a craft all button is added. There’s also the issue of actually identifying macro users - having a popup every half an hour probably isnt enough, especially in the case of using Function 2 described above

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