Macros = cheating?

[Vekter]

Fine, whatever, if Foxicide wants us to discuss it we'll discuss it.

The current understanding is that using a macro is considered to be cheating either by intentionally bypassing the action limit or by automating clicks to make annoying tasks easier. This isn't actually written down anywhere and it really should be.

[Sylphet]

Using unfair methods to get an advantage over people is the dictionary definition of cheating.

[terranaut]

what about the integrated byond macros
everyone has access to those, its not unfair by any stretch of imagination

[Cobby]

If you are making a macro and you can replicate delays so it appears like you are no different than another player but you are clicking less keys I could care less tbh.

If it is obvious you are using a macro to optimize your actions so much that someone is able to point it out then knock it off. Allowing those kind of macros would shift the meta and game in an unhealthy direction imo.

[Boris]

what about the integrated byond macros
everyone has access to those, its not unfair by any stretch of imagination

I'm like 85% sure those aren't available on /tg/.

[wesoda25]

I think its pretty obvious that this is cheating, if someone has something remotely close to significant playtime and claims it isn’t, they’re probably just being disingenuous. And wouldn’t this fall under the no powergaming rule?

[Armhulen]

what about the integrated byond macros
everyone has access to those, its not unfair by any stretch of imagination

I'm like 85% sure those aren't available on /tg/.

And I'm 100%. They are disabled.

For anyone thinking macros are harmless remember it was used to super murderize people with throwable stacks. How is that reasonable or fair for the victim?

[MortoSasye]

Rule 0

Admins are fully accountable for any consequences should they invoke this rule. Admins are also allowed to intervene in rounds when it is in the best interest of the playerbase.

Rule 4

Lone antagonists can do whatever they want.
Short of metagaming/comms, bug/exploit abuse, erotic/creepy stuff, OOC in IC or IC in OOC, and spawn-camping arrivals.

Macros have always been treated as cheating, and it is an unfair advantage. It doesn't need to be explicit it is against the rules, because just reading our own rules you can get an idea we wouldn't be ok with it.

There is also precedent it has been treated as such before: so no idea why we're discussing this, unless it is for the purpose of adding it to the rules.

[PepperPrepper]

Just out of curiosity would this include auto clickers?
While I've basically stopped using them I've been temped to use one again purely because of how ass high ping melee combat is

[PKPenguin321]

Rule 0

Admins are fully accountable for any consequences should they invoke this rule. Admins are also allowed to intervene in rounds when it is in the best interest of the playerbase.

Rule 4

Lone antagonists can do whatever they want.
Short of metagaming/comms, bug/exploit abuse, erotic/creepy stuff, OOC in IC or IC in OOC, and spawn-camping arrivals.

Macros have always been treated as cheating, and it is an unfair advantage. It doesn't need to be explicit it is against the rules, because just reading our own rules you can get an idea we wouldn't be ok with it.

There is also precedent it has been treated as such before: so no idea why we're discussing this, unless it is for the purpose of adding it to the rules.

Stop invoking rule 0 in policy discussion. It is and always will be redundant because it's literally just a rule saying "WELL I SAID SO AND THAT'S FINAL" which defeats the entire purpose of something like a policy discussion. Imagine if, when we tried to ban rape, somebody said "wellll creepy ERP can already technically be banned by rule 0 so really we don't need rule 8." You'd call that person an idiot.

Using unfair methods to get an advantage over people is the dictionary definition of cheating.

Macros are not a bug or an exploit. The game is programmed to take inputs, and other programs that can facilitate macros to provide said inputs are common and freely available to anyone that wants to use them. If they were deliberately obscured, or if BYOND had some deliberate mechanism to block macros that was being actively defeated maliciously, then you could call it unfair.

Taking the angle of "there are already rules for this because rule 0/it is a bug" is simply wrong. That being said, it sucks if macros are used to the advantage of an individual because people don't always want to have to play with them on. I certainly don't want to have to juggle macros for a casual round or two. At the same time, unless the macro user is being very very obvious about it, this is impossible to police because there is no mechanism for blocking or detecting macros. Do macros kinda suck? Generally, yes, but making a rule against them would be grandstanding at best because a rule that can't be enforced has no authority.

If you are making a macro and you can replicate delays so it appears like you are no different than another player but you are clicking less keys I could care less tbh.

If it is obvious you are using a macro to optimize your actions so much that someone is able to point it out then knock it off. Allowing those kind of macros would shift the meta and game in an unhealthy direction imo.

This is the reasonable take.

[Mickyan]

Macros are not a bug or an exploit. The game is programmed to take inputs, and other programs that can facilitate macros to provide said inputs are common and freely available to anyone that wants to use them. If they were deliberately obscured, or if BYOND had some deliberate mechanism to block macros that was being actively defeated maliciously, then you could call it unfair.

You can more or less apply this very same reasoning to botting and other specific cheating programs

The mistake that's being made here is to try and find a vague line that cannot be crossed in terms of input automation and it's not going to work because everyone's going to have their own opinion on what that line is

Using external programs to gain any kind of advantage is cheating by definition and being very difficult to detect hasn't stopped us from making metagaming against the rules, so why should this

[PepperPrepper]

Using external programs to gain any kind of advantage is cheating by definition and being very difficult to detect hasn't stopped us from making metagaming against the rules, so why should this

I feel that the key word here is advantage. While I myself am somewhat biased as I in the past I've used an external program. There are many theoretical macro/hotkey scripts that would cause no in game advantage and thus would not fall under the "cheating" category.

[NoxVS]

Macros are not a bug or an exploit. The game is programmed to take inputs, and other programs that can facilitate macros to provide said inputs are common and freely available to anyone that wants to use them. If they were deliberately obscured, or if BYOND had some deliberate mechanism to block macros that was being actively defeated maliciously, then you could call it unfair.

So would something like an aimbot be perfectly fine to use then? Automatically tracks someone and attacks them whenever in melee range. I have seen them used before, and it is just providing inputs so it should be fine right?

[cacogen]

If your ping is bad you should be able to use autohotkey scripts to attack as fast as the game allows because otherwise almost no clicks register thanks to the built-in click delay combined with your god-awful latency. I don't actually mean this sincerely but I'll admit I'LL ADMIT I have done this in the past and it makes a marked difference to melee combat at least, where otherwise you'd be fucked in all forms of combat unless you happen to go up against someone with a similarly bad ping or who has a physical disability that inhibits their ability to use the keyboard and mouse.

[Armhulen]

If you are making a macro and you can replicate delays so it appears like you are no different than another player but you are clicking less keys I could care less tbh.

If it is obvious you are using a macro to optimize your actions so much that someone is able to point it out then knock it off. Allowing those kind of macros would shift the meta and game in an unhealthy direction imo.

ya

[PKPenguin321]

Macros are not a bug or an exploit. The game is programmed to take inputs, and other programs that can facilitate macros to provide said inputs are common and freely available to anyone that wants to use them. If they were deliberately obscured, or if BYOND had some deliberate mechanism to block macros that was being actively defeated maliciously, then you could call it unfair.

So would something like an aimbot be perfectly fine to use then? Automatically tracks someone and attacks them whenever in melee range. I have seen them used before, and it is just providing inputs so it should be fine right?

Those worked by directly passing arguments (something BYOND doesn't expect an average user to do) that you absolutely weren't able to use without an obscure and deliberately hard to obtain tool. It's not a valid comparison. Also, I'll go on to say that even if macros were objectively a bug (they are not), it would still not matter because of the point in my post.

Do macros kinda suck? Generally, yes, but making a rule against them would be grandstanding at best because a rule that can't be enforced has no authority.

[NoxVS]

Do macros kinda suck? Generally, yes, but making a rule against them would be grandstanding at best because a rule that can't be enforced has no authority.

I think it is pretty easy to enforce a rule where if you are using some form of macro or something to get an obvious in game advantage, ie, turning a deck of cards into a machine gun, then you get yelled at by an admin
these things usually aren't that subtle

[Armhulen]

If the admin doesnt notice it's probably harmless

[Timberpoes]

In general, if you have a setup - Either hardware of software - Where you doing a single input sends multiple inputs to the game, you're probably cheating. Autoclickers are cheating. Using gaming keyboards, AHK, etc. etc. to play back sequences of button presses automatically is cheating. If you're automating the playing of the game to some extent, chances are that you are cheating.

How easy those things are to catch? *shrugs* - But they're still ostensibly cheating.

We can go round and round about which cheats are acceptable and which cheats are not. Is a keyboard macro that types "t;help maint being killed" in the blink of an eye cheating? Well... Yes. But is it ACCEPTABLE cheating. Is it the kind of cheating that doesn't have some sort of negative stigma attached to it? *shrugs*

I'd personally advocate a zero tolerance policy. If a player is caught doing something that is cheating then what they're doing is probably blatant enough to constitute a permanent ban, since detecting it in general is such a pain in the ass. This is not a single player game, it is a competitive multiplayer game. Player skill should be the deciding factor in what happens in-game instead of what macros they have set up, who has the best autoclicker, so on.

Although of course a player with better hardware, a higher quality mouse with better tracking, a keyboard with a better layout, with better keyswitches, etc. etc. could still have an advantage. That's by-the-by. They're still playing the game instead of automating it. Whatever, I'm hungover and rambling.

tl;dr - Macros, autoclickers and everything else is cheating. Stop trying to justify their use in edge cases, because it's still cheating.

[SkeletalElite]

I feel like any macro that isn't incredibly obvious is probably okay, but banning anything more than incredibly obvious use of a macro is a flimsy reason to ban someone at best,
ie. autoclicker.

[cacogen]

You can't know that me shoving you ten times a second isn't pure skill combined with living out of my car in front of the server's collocation centre on COVID-19 cellular wireless

[Nabski]

I've used an autoclicker to combine a bunch of rods and glass into reinforced glass.

I've also used a screenshot tool to take a picture so I could remember things better.

Both of these were using external tools to help me and MAYBE gain some minor advantage (saving slight time or mental effort), but I don't feel like I was cheating with them.

[mstachife]

I've used an autoclicker to combine a bunch of rods and glass into reinforced glass.

I've also used a screenshot tool to take a picture so I could remember things better.

Both of these were using external tools to help me and MAYBE gain some minor advantage (saving slight time or mental effort), but I don't feel like I was cheating with them.

First one is minor and didn't much affect anyone else, sides theres already a thing in game for clicking too fast.

Second one is akin to using the wiki in game, which is fine.

This has gotta be looked at in context, also using macros in games tends to become the meta whenever they're allowed which is something I definitely dont want to happen here.

[Mothblocks]

i used auto clickers to repeatedly kill myself in the orion trail and when i get the notification that i'm clicking too much i roleplay that i have carpel tunnel

[Coconutwarrior97]

Using a macro to give yourself an IC advantage over players is something which is not acceptable.
Though not all macros are necessarily disallowed, such as one letting you kill yourself super quickly while playing Oregon trail, that's just kinda funny and effectively harmless.

Its going to be context sensitive as to which ones are allowed vs not allowed, but as long as it doesn't give you an IC advantage you're likely fine.

Headmin votes:
Coconutwarrior97: Yes, this is mostly a common sense thing, as long as your macro doesn't give you a leg up over others I don't really care.
Domitius: Yes.
Noaloac: Yes.