This is not an attempt to cause this thread to continue, the entry of Macros should be resisted tho, personally seen two other games (Lords Online (Naval) cancelled, Kingdom of Camelot (Feudal Mediaeval)severely diminished) after Macros impacted, in both it led to more sophiscated hacks of the game code itself.
Lords Online tried to block the Macros, failed. Kingdoms of Camelot blocked and banned most of them but legitimised a couple to run. Their tactic backfired, the players left in droves even entire alliances.
Ive no solution on how to stop the Macros but wish DB well in curbing their advance. The hope that many have that persistent growth of their crew, bonuses, and array of ships will yield a higher reward if lost can be catastrophic to a game.
The solution is clear. Build events that require human thought to play. Don't build repetitive events. If DB turns this into a technical battle with bot writers, DB will lose. It's happened in other games, and it's happened in copyright infringement. Do you really want DB to have to spend all their resources fighting a losing battle to detect and block bots? I'd rather they focus on building a better game.
Which could have the benefit of potentially more entertaining gameplay.
For me, the simple solution is to reduce the grind - break the chron-intel nexus. This can be easily done by increasing the intel cost for running missions beyond 1200; something like 6000 or even 10,000. If this is done, the constraint will no longer be time but chrons. And the benefits from a macro will fall dramatically. For this very reason, I don't personally see the use of macros in galaxy events as such a big problem. The constraint there is mostly chrons (though some in my fleet say its time as well).
Other option, slightly harder for DB, is to make the battles longer and more difficult - so it is not over in one cycle and you have to actually think depending on how it goes and whether rng favors you. It will also create more differentiation on the leaderboards depending on crew/ship you have.
At that point you gotta fix the crew selection screen then as well.
Based on the hourly data recorded and being used for the discussion - from Saturday at noon DB time (phase 2 kickoff) to event end on Monday at noon DB time -
Would I put up $10,000 of my money to sit and watch a human play this game for 96 hours, along side another member of the same fleet - and watch them consistently produce high-level VP at the same rate of accumulation over the span of 48 straight hourly increments without a decline or deterioration in the rate of their scoring? No.
I'd put up $20,000.
Because I'd win that bet every. single. time.
I don’t even have $10,000 to put together but I would try and borrow it for such a bet. I think back to that South Korean man who died after playing Starcraft for some 50 hours straight without stopping:
28 years old, barely left his computer to pee, ate and drank little, slept less. Died of heart failure due to exhaustion.
At those still defending the bot users: yeah, some people could totally play STT on their phone for 96 hours straight while sitting on the can. Suuuuure. Hey, on a totally unrelated note, I have a bridge for sale that you might be interested in buying. Small bills only, please.
I did 72 hours for the first 3 days of basic training. During this I actually fell asleep while marching several times. Staying up was much easier with fear/people screaming at you combined with physical activity and variety. Without that I don't see 4 days happening. 4 minutes was pretty boring for me.
Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, is all ancient history. Then, before you can blink an eye, suddenly, it threatens to start all over again."
Based on the hourly data recorded and being used for the discussion - from Saturday at noon DB time (phase 2 kickoff) to event end on Monday at noon DB time -
Would I put up $10,000 of my money to sit and watch a human play this game for 96 hours, along side another member of the same fleet - and watch them consistently produce high-level VP at the same rate of accumulation over the span of 48 straight hourly increments without a decline or deterioration in the rate of their scoring? No.
I'd put up $20,000.
Because I'd win that bet every. single. time.
I don’t even have $10,000 to put together but I would try and borrow it for such a bet. I think back to that South Korean man who died after playing Starcraft for some 50 hours straight without stopping:
28 years old, barely left his computer to pee, ate and drank little, slept less. Died of heart failure due to exhaustion.
At those still defending the bot users: yeah, some people could totally play STT on their phone for 96 hours straight while sitting on the can. Suuuuure. Hey, on a totally unrelated note, I have a bridge for sale that you might be interested in buying. Small bills only, please.
I don’t know if any specific person was a bot/macro user or not, I wouldn’t come out either way and level accusations based on hourly score rates being consistent. I just think it’s not a completely out of realm of possibility that any individual person actually played and didn’t use a bot.
Also I would think that a macro user wouldn’t be guaranteed to get that many hours of a consistent rate. You would use the Macro to be able to take breaks to sleep and such. I would think that at some point in 4 days an internet connection would glitch for 5-10 seconds and break the macro causing nothing to happen until it was reset, which would also be noticeable in hourly score totals.
I am also completely in support of having one of the click through boxes change position to try to combat this as I’m sure there were some people using macros (I just think there is insufficient information to say any specific person was using one)
An automated player is impossible to detect if it is done well. Timing can be varied to camouflage the algorithm. Moving things around on the screen will not stop a clever bot script. But practically speaking, some changes that have been mentioned would thwart 99% of simple macro players.
An automated player is impossible to detect if it is done well. Timing can be varied to camouflage the algorithm. Moving things around on the screen will not stop a clever bot script. But practically speaking, some changes that have been mentioned would thwart 99% of simple macro players.
Yes, getting into an arms race with botters isn't something DB isn't going to win. They simply need to make events where people perform better than bots. Grind-fests like this will always favor bots.
An automated player is impossible to detect if it is done well. Timing can be varied to camouflage the algorithm. Moving things around on the screen will not stop a clever bot script. But practically speaking, some changes that have been mentioned would thwart 99% of simple macro players.
Yes, getting into an arms race with botters isn't something DB isn't going to win. They simply need to make events where people perform better than bots. Grind-fests like this will always favor bots.
Bot meta will lead to the Ddos meta, will lead to all sorts of stuff. Even if DB relies on data policing, it becomes who can create the most organic looking macro.
This is not an attempt to cause this thread to continue, the entry of Macros should be resisted tho, personally seen two other games (Lords Online (Naval) cancelled, Kingdom of Camelot (Feudal Mediaeval)severely diminished) after Macros impacted, in both it led to more sophiscated hacks of the game code itself.
Lords Online tried to block the Macros, failed. Kingdoms of Camelot blocked and banned most of them but legitimised a couple to run. Their tactic backfired, the players left in droves even entire alliances.
Ive no solution on how to stop the Macros but wish DB well in curbing their advance. The hope that many have that persistent growth of their crew, bonuses, and array of ships will yield a higher reward if lost can be catastrophic to a game.
The solution is clear. Build events that require human thought to play. Don't build repetitive events. If DB turns this into a technical battle with bot writers, DB will lose. It's happened in other games, and it's happened in copyright infringement. Do you really want DB to have to spend all their resources fighting a losing battle to detect and block bots? I'd rather they focus on building a better game.
Which could have the benefit of potentially more entertaining gameplay.
For me, the simple solution is to reduce the grind - break the chron-intel nexus. This can be easily done by increasing the intel cost for running missions beyond 1200; something like 6000 or even 10,000. If this is done, the constraint will no longer be time but chrons. And the benefits from a macro will fall dramatically. For this very reason, I don't personally see the use of macros in galaxy events as such a big problem. The constraint there is mostly chrons (though some in my fleet say its time as well).
Other option, slightly harder for DB, is to make the battles longer and more difficult - so it is not over in one cycle and you have to actually think depending on how it goes and whether rng favors you. It will also create more differentiation on the leaderboards depending on crew/ship you have.
This aligns with what I was thinking. Right now, there's an encouragement for automation because the event is a repetitive task and the constraint for performance is largely time. The amount of time input required for maximum performance on just free resource income is in far in excess of what most players will reasonably want to put in, so macroing becomes an easy way for players to use up resources that would otherwise go to waste. If the time requirements are dropped so that a human player can use up all their Intel in a reasonable time-frame, there is less incentive to macro, and less issue even if players still do as those who choose not to macro can then compete with macro players because the constraint is no longer something that favors computers.
The other part that favors macroing right now is that the skirmish battles are very predictable. The AI will use all of its abilities in a precise order and timing. That makes it easy to develop a set strategy around it with routine button presses that don't require the player to react to anything, which is perfect for macroing. If battles are retooled to become more interactive and have players react to what the enemy has done, then the ability to macro them drops significantly. Easier said than done though.
This is not an attempt to cause this thread to continue, the entry of Macros should be resisted tho, personally seen two other games (Lords Online (Naval) cancelled, Kingdom of Camelot (Feudal Mediaeval)severely diminished) after Macros impacted, in both it led to more sophiscated hacks of the game code itself.
Lords Online tried to block the Macros, failed. Kingdoms of Camelot blocked and banned most of them but legitimised a couple to run. Their tactic backfired, the players left in droves even entire alliances.
Ive no solution on how to stop the Macros but wish DB well in curbing their advance. The hope that many have that persistent growth of their crew, bonuses, and array of ships will yield a higher reward if lost can be catastrophic to a game.
The solution is clear. Build events that require human thought to play. Don't build repetitive events. If DB turns this into a technical battle with bot writers, DB will lose. It's happened in other games, and it's happened in copyright infringement. Do you really want DB to have to spend all their resources fighting a losing battle to detect and block bots? I'd rather they focus on building a better game.
Which could have the benefit of potentially more entertaining gameplay.
For me, the simple solution is to reduce the grind - break the chron-intel nexus. This can be easily done by increasing the intel cost for running missions beyond 1200; something like 6000 or even 10,000. If this is done, the constraint will no longer be time but chrons. And the benefits from a macro will fall dramatically. For this very reason, I don't personally see the use of macros in galaxy events as such a big problem. The constraint there is mostly chrons (though some in my fleet say its time as well).
Other option, slightly harder for DB, is to make the battles longer and more difficult - so it is not over in one cycle and you have to actually think depending on how it goes and whether rng favors you. It will also create more differentiation on the leaderboards depending on crew/ship you have.
This aligns with what I was thinking. Right now, there's an encouragement for automation because the event is a repetitive task and the constraint for performance is largely time. The amount of time input required for maximum performance on just free resource income is in far in excess of what most players will reasonably want to put in, so macroing becomes an easy way for players to use up resources that would otherwise go to waste. If the time requirements are dropped so that a human player can use up all their Intel in a reasonable time-frame, there is less incentive to macro, and less issue even if players still do as those who choose not to macro can then compete with macro players because the constraint is no longer something that favors computers.
The other part that favors macroing right now is that the skirmish battles are very predictable. The AI will use all of its abilities in a precise order and timing. That makes it easy to develop a set strategy around it with routine button presses that don't require the player to react to anything, which is perfect for macroing. If battles are retooled to become more interactive and have players react to what the enemy has done, then the ability to macro them drops significantly. Easier said than done though.
Tightening the feedback loop only makes it more expensive to macro. Earlier calculations I made estimated the event winner invested somewhere around 60k chrons in the event (assuming 100% of the chron rewards were reinvested ).
Increasing the Intel cost (or reducing chron drops) would make it easier for people to keep up with macros since it would he more costly and running missions 24/7 less feasible. However, it wouldn't necessarily prevent someone from dumping 100k or more chrons in and running a macro to burn it all off.
One fear I have about all of this is they might decide just to let skirmish events go the way of expedition events. Meaning pretty much nonexistent. While these can be tedious the rewards actually make it almost worth the effort. Please don’t take that away.
And you can still do well without a Bot. Yes, the top of the ranking were almost definitely bots, but not the top 1,000. I had about 6000 Chronitons to start. I ended at rank 207.
Maybe all they have to do is randomize enemy ships battles. Add a few more ships to the mix and make it completely random. The bot can't time a cloak if it's not there and vice versa.
I'm going to start off by saying I don't know either of the top two players, but the third place finisher is in my fleet. I don't find the fact they playing the event consistently for close to 96 hours a reason to think its proven they used a macro, at best I think its inconclusive and its reckless to go throwing accusations around without more proof than they scored consistently for a long stretch of time.
It may seem like an extremely hard thing for someone to stay up for 96 hours straight and click at buttons, but how many of you would feel confident enough to bet someone say $10,000 as an even money bet that they couldn't do it. Put that sort of money in front of someone and I think they can find enough caffeine to do it. Now ask yourself if there are people here who have invested enough in this game that they would value an event win enough to put themselves through this.
Now maybe you feel confident enough to say that the one person will accidentally fall asleep accidentally at some point and want to take that even money bet at $10,000. What if they bet was there are 10 people going into the event with the intention to stay up all 96 hours and you have to have all 10 fail in order to win the bet. Would you still take that bet?
The fact is there are 4-5 people who put up remarkable scores in this event. While it may seem like a stretch for them to have been consistent enough to have done this, the fact remains we don't know how many people "tried" to this and failed.
I also don't think its as impossible as people are making it out to be to sit there and do this for 96 hours. While I'm not proud of it I've had stretches of being awake for 66/72 hours with the majority of it at a poker table making constant decisions for that stretch. Honestly playing a skirmish event would actually help keep me awake during one of those runs. Actually, if I ever don't have work obligations during thursday/friday of an event I may fly to vegas and do just that and play the skirmish the whole time at a poker table.
As to the "fact their scores are too consistent in each hourly period" to be real, have any of you ever looked at the splits of some marathon runners, I'm pretty sure there are plenty of people out there who run marathons with 26 mile splits within 10 seconds of each other (not just elite runners but people in the 7-9 minute mile range as well), toss that into a regression formula and let me know what the correlation factor is and how it compares to people in this event.
Don’t think you understand what “consistently” means in this context. We are not talking about staying up, we are talking about the kind of consistency only a machine can produce.
In the 96 hours they have to go the BATHROOM. If they were humans we would see a variation in the hours were a bathroom break was taken. Except we don’t see that. Even the quickest bathroom break would show up in the numbers. The lenght of the bathroom breaks would also vary so even if you scheduled them for let’s say once per hour (also not believable), you would be able to tell a human from a machine. If you told me that you sat at poker table for 96 hours without using the bathroom I would tell you that you are lying.
In marathon, you don’t take bathroom breaks. Also as someone who trained for a marathon I was aware of maintaining consistence splits because that’s what the “how to run a marathon” books and smatwatches told me to do. 3-4 hours of consistency is far cry from 96.
Yes, I will take any money bet that these results were not natural.
On a serious note, regarding the data compiled, Is the frequency of the sampling hourly, or was something more frequent done? I would be curious what the high and low VP was per hour, rather than graphical charts.
I'm not sure if the bathroom comment was serious or not about that being a major issue, but newsflash, people use smartphones on the toilet. In fact it may be the activity I can think of in a busy workday where playing a skirmish would be the least disruptive.
At points this last weekend I was time crunched enough where I literally was playing skirmishes while I was cooking a meal (not a very complicated meal), but playing a skirmish involves only one hand if you put the phone down on a counter and you have periods of 5-10 seconds every battle you don't do anything).
If i had no other obligations, stayed at home, and was able to stay awake for the 96 hours, I can't imagine what I would need to do that would stop me from playing for more than 1-2 minutes at a time, other than wanting to take a shower, and that would mainly be to help stay awake and not be a necessity.
Again. I don’t think you are getting how the science works. I would be able to tell strictly by looking at the data when exactly you cooked that meal. Every bathroom use would not last the same amount of time. To be gross...I would be able to tell exactly what you did in the bathroom strictly with the math.
You’re missing the point. It’s the consistency. The consistency is impossible for a human to produce. DB should be able to tell because they have access to more finite data.
Games that have serious bot problems have ways to detect this consistency. Botters counter by adding RNG elements so they appear human.
Are you making the case that no one used a bot....even after people admitted to using a bot?
I’m still willing to take that bet. If a human can produce those numbers it would be worth the money just for science.
I’m trying to wind down my gameplay but I will go full R2D2 on the next skirmish if DB does not address this.
The crew I used had no variability in when I used their abilities. I tweaked the hull regen a bit, but I bet people with slightly better crew just bursted through everything and not worried about any regen.
What needs to be done is let the battles get harder and make the traits provide real significant skill boosts. That way by the end you need to pick new crew based on traits each battle and even consider skipping bonus crew in exchange for better crew. I also think the battles should continuously get more difficult for more VP instead of having a fixed 5 battle end. That way someone who can run 10 battles will be better off than someone running two 5-battle skirmishes. And then make the ship and traits random for each battle.
Combine all that and you've created an event that is more engaging for players, is impossible to script for a bot, and rewards players based on their skill in crew selection/timing instead of grinding. DB can even add a refresh option for DIL so they can monetize players trying for longer skirmishes.
Maybe all they have to do is randomize enemy ships battles. Add a few more ships to the mix and make it completely random. The bot can't time a cloak if it's not there and vice versa.
This.
I suggested the same after the first event. I suggested it for the interest rather than as an anti-bot. But the same applies. It does not need to be harder. It was hard enough for many players. Instead, have seven different ships and have five of them randomly chosen and randomly ordered each ticket. Easy to do and the event is more interesting and harder to cheat. Free idea for the team, @Shan.
This is not an attempt to cause this thread to continue, the entry of Macros should be resisted tho, personally seen two other games (Lords Online (Naval) cancelled, Kingdom of Camelot (Feudal Mediaeval)severely diminished) after Macros impacted, in both it led to more sophiscated hacks of the game code itself.
Lords Online tried to block the Macros, failed. Kingdoms of Camelot blocked and banned most of them but legitimised a couple to run. Their tactic backfired, the players left in droves even entire alliances.
Ive no solution on how to stop the Macros but wish DB well in curbing their advance. The hope that many have that persistent growth of their crew, bonuses, and array of ships will yield a higher reward if lost can be catastrophic to a game.
The solution is clear. Build events that require human thought to play. Don't build repetitive events. If DB turns this into a technical battle with bot writers, DB will lose. It's happened in other games, and it's happened in copyright infringement. Do you really want DB to have to spend all their resources fighting a losing battle to detect and block bots? I'd rather they focus on building a better game.
Which could have the benefit of potentially more entertaining gameplay.
For me, the simple solution is to reduce the grind - break the chron-intel nexus. This can be easily done by increasing the intel cost for running missions beyond 1200; something like 6000 or even 10,000. If this is done, the constraint will no longer be time but chrons. And the benefits from a macro will fall dramatically. For this very reason, I don't personally see the use of macros in galaxy events as such a big problem. The constraint there is mostly chrons (though some in my fleet say its time as well).
Other option, slightly harder for DB, is to make the battles longer and more difficult - so it is not over in one cycle and you have to actually think depending on how it goes and whether rng favors you. It will also create more differentiation on the leaderboards depending on crew/ship you have.
This aligns with what I was thinking. Right now, there's an encouragement for automation because the event is a repetitive task and the constraint for performance is largely time. The amount of time input required for maximum performance on just free resource income is in far in excess of what most players will reasonably want to put in, so macroing becomes an easy way for players to use up resources that would otherwise go to waste. If the time requirements are dropped so that a human player can use up all their Intel in a reasonable time-frame, there is less incentive to macro, and less issue even if players still do as those who choose not to macro can then compete with macro players because the constraint is no longer something that favors computers.
The other part that favors macroing right now is that the skirmish battles are very predictable. The AI will use all of its abilities in a precise order and timing. That makes it easy to develop a set strategy around it with routine button presses that don't require the player to react to anything, which is perfect for macroing. If battles are retooled to become more interactive and have players react to what the enemy has done, then the ability to macro them drops significantly. Easier said than done though.
Tightening the feedback loop only makes it more expensive to macro. Earlier calculations I made estimated the event winner invested somewhere around 60k chrons in the event (assuming 100% of the chron rewards were reinvested ).
Increasing the Intel cost (or reducing chron drops) would make it easier for people to keep up with macros since it would he more costly and running missions 24/7 less feasible. However, it wouldn't necessarily prevent someone from dumping 100k or more chrons in and running a macro to burn it all off.
I don't mean to suggest that tweaking Intel/chrons would solve macroing, only core gameplay changes or rigorous monitoring and banning could, but you can change the resource balance so that it's more favorable to humans, and make the battle more about use of game resources such as Chronitons than it is about time allotment.
So ideally, players who didn't want to invest beyond free Chrons would be at parity for macro versus non-macro if non-macro players are able to use all their Intel in a reasonable time frame. And for players willing to invest, it becomes much more expensive to run a macro 24/7, ideally prohibitively so, so that macro players end up capped on expenses and are not able to run missions 24/7, and non-macro players who are also investing can run their missions is a reasonable enough time frame to keep up.
As I said, it isn't a full solution as it doesn't prevent macroing, it just removes some of the incentive and puts more parity between humans and macro play. There could still be some mad lad who is willing to run a 24/7 macro no matter the cost just for first place, but otherwise changing the Intel stream should help alleviate the influence of macros.
This is not an attempt to cause this thread to continue, the entry of Macros should be resisted tho, personally seen two other games (Lords Online (Naval) cancelled, Kingdom of Camelot (Feudal Mediaeval)severely diminished) after Macros impacted, in both it led to more sophiscated hacks of the game code itself.
Lords Online tried to block the Macros, failed. Kingdoms of Camelot blocked and banned most of them but legitimised a couple to run. Their tactic backfired, the players left in droves even entire alliances.
Ive no solution on how to stop the Macros but wish DB well in curbing their advance. The hope that many have that persistent growth of their crew, bonuses, and array of ships will yield a higher reward if lost can be catastrophic to a game.
The solution is clear. Build events that require human thought to play. Don't build repetitive events. If DB turns this into a technical battle with bot writers, DB will lose. It's happened in other games, and it's happened in copyright infringement. Do you really want DB to have to spend all their resources fighting a losing battle to detect and block bots? I'd rather they focus on building a better game.
Which could have the benefit of potentially more entertaining gameplay.
For me, the simple solution is to reduce the grind - break the chron-intel nexus. This can be easily done by increasing the intel cost for running missions beyond 1200; something like 6000 or even 10,000. If this is done, the constraint will no longer be time but chrons. And the benefits from a macro will fall dramatically. For this very reason, I don't personally see the use of macros in galaxy events as such a big problem. The constraint there is mostly chrons (though some in my fleet say its time as well).
Other option, slightly harder for DB, is to make the battles longer and more difficult - so it is not over in one cycle and you have to actually think depending on how it goes and whether rng favors you. It will also create more differentiation on the leaderboards depending on crew/ship you have.
This aligns with what I was thinking. Right now, there's an encouragement for automation because the event is a repetitive task and the constraint for performance is largely time. The amount of time input required for maximum performance on just free resource income is in far in excess of what most players will reasonably want to put in, so macroing becomes an easy way for players to use up resources that would otherwise go to waste. If the time requirements are dropped so that a human player can use up all their Intel in a reasonable time-frame, there is less incentive to macro, and less issue even if players still do as those who choose not to macro can then compete with macro players because the constraint is no longer something that favors computers.
The other part that favors macroing right now is that the skirmish battles are very predictable. The AI will use all of its abilities in a precise order and timing. That makes it easy to develop a set strategy around it with routine button presses that don't require the player to react to anything, which is perfect for macroing. If battles are retooled to become more interactive and have players react to what the enemy has done, then the ability to macro them drops significantly. Easier said than done though.
Tightening the feedback loop only makes it more expensive to macro. Earlier calculations I made estimated the event winner invested somewhere around 60k chrons in the event (assuming 100% of the chron rewards were reinvested ).
Increasing the Intel cost (or reducing chron drops) would make it easier for people to keep up with macros since it would he more costly and running missions 24/7 less feasible. However, it wouldn't necessarily prevent someone from dumping 100k or more chrons in and running a macro to burn it all off.
I don't mean to suggest that tweaking Intel/chrons would solve macroing, only core gameplay changes or rigorous monitoring and banning could, but you can change the resource balance so that it's more favorable to humans, and make the battle more about use of game resources such as Chronitons than it is about time allotment.
So ideally, players who didn't want to invest beyond free Chrons would be at parity for macro versus non-macro if non-macro players are able to use all their Intel in a reasonable time frame. And for players willing to invest, it becomes much more expensive to run a macro 24/7, ideally prohibitively so, so that macro players end up capped on expenses and are not able to run missions 24/7, and non-macro players who are also investing can run their missions is a reasonable enough time frame to keep up.
As I said, it isn't a full solution as it doesn't prevent macroing, it just removes some of the incentive and puts more parity between humans and macro play. There could still be some mad lad who is willing to run a 24/7 macro no matter the cost just for first place, but otherwise changing the Intel stream should help alleviate the influence of macros.
I think most players would prefer to leave intel the way it is so you don't risk nerfing the event. Better to make other changes so the event can still help recover resources instead of just consuming them. Randomizing ships would be more interesting and potentially solve the bot issue as suggested in the forum.
I'm going to start off by saying I don't know either of the top two players, but the third place finisher is in my fleet. I don't find the fact they playing the event consistently for close to 96 hours a reason to think its proven they used a macro, at best I think its inconclusive and its reckless to go throwing accusations around without more proof than they scored consistently for a long stretch of time.
It may seem like an extremely hard thing for someone to stay up for 96 hours straight and click at buttons, but how many of you would feel confident enough to bet someone say $10,000 as an even money bet that they couldn't do it. Put that sort of money in front of someone and I think they can find enough caffeine to do it. Now ask yourself if there are people here who have invested enough in this game that they would value an event win enough to put themselves through this.
Now maybe you feel confident enough to say that the one person will accidentally fall asleep accidentally at some point and want to take that even money bet at $10,000. What if they bet was there are 10 people going into the event with the intention to stay up all 96 hours and you have to have all 10 fail in order to win the bet. Would you still take that bet?
The fact is there are 4-5 people who put up remarkable scores in this event. While it may seem like a stretch for them to have been consistent enough to have done this, the fact remains we don't know how many people "tried" to this and failed.
I also don't think its as impossible as people are making it out to be to sit there and do this for 96 hours. While I'm not proud of it I've had stretches of being awake for 66/72 hours with the majority of it at a poker table making constant decisions for that stretch. Honestly playing a skirmish event would actually help keep me awake during one of those runs. Actually, if I ever don't have work obligations during thursday/friday of an event I may fly to vegas and do just that and play the skirmish the whole time at a poker table.
As to the "fact their scores are too consistent in each hourly period" to be real, have any of you ever looked at the splits of some marathon runners, I'm pretty sure there are plenty of people out there who run marathons with 26 mile splits within 10 seconds of each other (not just elite runners but people in the 7-9 minute mile range as well), toss that into a regression formula and let me know what the correlation factor is and how it compares to people in this event.
Don’t think you understand what “consistently” means in this context. We are not talking about staying up, we are talking about the kind of consistency only a machine can produce.
In the 96 hours they have to go the BATHROOM. If they were humans we would see a variation in the hours were a bathroom break was taken. Except we don’t see that. Even the quickest bathroom break would show up in the numbers. The lenght of the bathroom breaks would also vary so even if you scheduled them for let’s say once per hour (also not believable), you would be able to tell a human from a machine. If you told me that you sat at poker table for 96 hours without using the bathroom I would tell you that you are lying.
In marathon, you don’t take bathroom breaks. Also as someone who trained for a marathon I was aware of maintaining consistence splits because that’s what the “how to run a marathon” books and smatwatches told me to do. 3-4 hours of consistency is far cry from 96.
Yes, I will take any money bet that these results were not natural.
On a serious note, regarding the data compiled, Is the frequency of the sampling hourly, or was something more frequent done? I would be curious what the high and low VP was per hour, rather than graphical charts.
I'm not sure if the bathroom comment was serious or not about that being a major issue, but newsflash, people use smartphones on the toilet. In fact it may be the activity I can think of in a busy workday where playing a skirmish would be the least disruptive.
At points this last weekend I was time crunched enough where I literally was playing skirmishes while I was cooking a meal (not a very complicated meal), but playing a skirmish involves only one hand if you put the phone down on a counter and you have periods of 5-10 seconds every battle you don't do anything).
If i had no other obligations, stayed at home, and was able to stay awake for the 96 hours, I can't imagine what I would need to do that would stop me from playing for more than 1-2 minutes at a time, other than wanting to take a shower, and that would mainly be to help stay awake and not be a necessity.
Again. I don’t think you are getting how the science works. I would be able to tell strictly by looking at the data when exactly you cooked that meal. Every bathroom use would not last the same amount of time. To be gross...I would be able to tell exactly what you did in the bathroom strictly with the math.
You’re missing the point. It’s the consistency. The consistency is impossible for a human to produce. DB should be able to tell because they have access to more finite data.
Games that have serious bot problems have ways to detect this consistency. Botters counter by adding RNG elements so they appear human.
Are you making the case that no one used a bot....even after people admitted to using a bot?
I’m still willing to take that bet. If a human can produce those numbers it would be worth the money just for science.
I’m trying to wind down my gameplay but I will go full R2D2 on the next skirmish if DB does not address this.
I am sure that there are people who used a bot and that I agree dB should take steps to prevent that, I was just trying to point out that just because someone posted high scores over a 96 hour period it shouldn’t be enough to accuse a specific person.
After getting more detailed data on discord, you guys have a very inconclusive case based on the standalone increases in the top two players, if you look at the points per minute in each of the top two players in the sampling periods there are not long 4-5 hour stretches of the same points per minute amount that would indicate a macro use, in fact there is a decent amount of variability in that metric. Unless you have additional data there is plenty of variability in points per minute per snapshot period to account for short breaks
Now when you look at the combined charts of the points per minute of the top two players there is significant correlation between them that makes no sense under normal circumstances unless they were in the same room playing (which doesn’t seem likely). When one takes a break the other does, when one slows down for period of time the other does, when one speeds up the other does. I won’t theorize on what would cause that, but it does seem suspicious.
Maybe all they have to do is randomize enemy ships battles. Add a few more ships to the mix and make it completely random. The bot can't time a cloak if it's not there and vice versa.
Unfortunately, that won't be enough.
With a powerful enough ship/crew combo, you can run the same sequence regardless of which battle you're fighting. I used the identical sequence for all five skirmishes and didn't lose one over the course of the event. This *would* work if the difficulty level were ramped up, but as-is it won't.
Maybe all they have to do is randomize enemy ships battles. Add a few more ships to the mix and make it completely random. The bot can't time a cloak if it's not there and vice versa.
Unfortunately, that won't be enough.
With a powerful enough ship/crew combo, you can run the same sequence regardless of which battle you're fighting. I used the identical sequence for all five skirmishes and didn't lose one over the course of the event. This *would* work if the difficulty level were ramped up, but as-is it won't.
Working cloak ships on different initialize timers would solve it. One that cloaks from 4-10, one from 8-14.
I'm going to start off by saying I don't know either of the top two players, but the third place finisher is in my fleet. I don't find the fact they playing the event consistently for close to 96 hours a reason to think its proven they used a macro, at best I think its inconclusive and its reckless to go throwing accusations around without more proof than they scored consistently for a long stretch of time.
It may seem like an extremely hard thing for someone to stay up for 96 hours straight and click at buttons, but how many of you would feel confident enough to bet someone say $10,000 as an even money bet that they couldn't do it. Put that sort of money in front of someone and I think they can find enough caffeine to do it. Now ask yourself if there are people here who have invested enough in this game that they would value an event win enough to put themselves through this.
Now maybe you feel confident enough to say that the one person will accidentally fall asleep accidentally at some point and want to take that even money bet at $10,000. What if they bet was there are 10 people going into the event with the intention to stay up all 96 hours and you have to have all 10 fail in order to win the bet. Would you still take that bet?
The fact is there are 4-5 people who put up remarkable scores in this event. While it may seem like a stretch for them to have been consistent enough to have done this, the fact remains we don't know how many people "tried" to this and failed.
I also don't think its as impossible as people are making it out to be to sit there and do this for 96 hours. While I'm not proud of it I've had stretches of being awake for 66/72 hours with the majority of it at a poker table making constant decisions for that stretch. Honestly playing a skirmish event would actually help keep me awake during one of those runs. Actually, if I ever don't have work obligations during thursday/friday of an event I may fly to vegas and do just that and play the skirmish the whole time at a poker table.
As to the "fact their scores are too consistent in each hourly period" to be real, have any of you ever looked at the splits of some marathon runners, I'm pretty sure there are plenty of people out there who run marathons with 26 mile splits within 10 seconds of each other (not just elite runners but people in the 7-9 minute mile range as well), toss that into a regression formula and let me know what the correlation factor is and how it compares to people in this event.
Don’t think you understand what “consistently” means in this context. We are not talking about staying up, we are talking about the kind of consistency only a machine can produce.
In the 96 hours they have to go the BATHROOM. If they were humans we would see a variation in the hours were a bathroom break was taken. Except we don’t see that. Even the quickest bathroom break would show up in the numbers. The lenght of the bathroom breaks would also vary so even if you scheduled them for let’s say once per hour (also not believable), you would be able to tell a human from a machine. If you told me that you sat at poker table for 96 hours without using the bathroom I would tell you that you are lying.
In marathon, you don’t take bathroom breaks. Also as someone who trained for a marathon I was aware of maintaining consistence splits because that’s what the “how to run a marathon” books and smatwatches told me to do. 3-4 hours of consistency is far cry from 96.
Yes, I will take any money bet that these results were not natural.
On a serious note, regarding the data compiled, Is the frequency of the sampling hourly, or was something more frequent done? I would be curious what the high and low VP was per hour, rather than graphical charts.
I'm not sure if the bathroom comment was serious or not about that being a major issue, but newsflash, people use smartphones on the toilet. In fact it may be the activity I can think of in a busy workday where playing a skirmish would be the least disruptive.
At points this last weekend I was time crunched enough where I literally was playing skirmishes while I was cooking a meal (not a very complicated meal), but playing a skirmish involves only one hand if you put the phone down on a counter and you have periods of 5-10 seconds every battle you don't do anything).
If i had no other obligations, stayed at home, and was able to stay awake for the 96 hours, I can't imagine what I would need to do that would stop me from playing for more than 1-2 minutes at a time, other than wanting to take a shower, and that would mainly be to help stay awake and not be a necessity.
Again. I don’t think you are getting how the science works. I would be able to tell strictly by looking at the data when exactly you cooked that meal. Every bathroom use would not last the same amount of time. To be gross...I would be able to tell exactly what you did in the bathroom strictly with the math.
You’re missing the point. It’s the consistency. The consistency is impossible for a human to produce. DB should be able to tell because they have access to more finite data.
Games that have serious bot problems have ways to detect this consistency. Botters counter by adding RNG elements so they appear human.
Are you making the case that no one used a bot....even after people admitted to using a bot?
I’m still willing to take that bet. If a human can produce those numbers it would be worth the money just for science.
I’m trying to wind down my gameplay but I will go full R2D2 on the next skirmish if DB does not address this.
I am sure that there are people who used a bot and that I agree dB should take steps to prevent that, I was just trying to point out that just because someone posted high scores over a 96 hour period it shouldn’t be enough to accuse a specific person.
After getting more detailed data on discord, you guys have a very inconclusive case based on the standalone increases in the top two players, if you look at the points per minute in each of the top two players in the sampling periods there are not long 4-5 hour stretches of the same points per minute amount that would indicate a macro use, in fact there is a decent amount of variability in that metric. Unless you have additional data there is plenty of variability in points per minute per snapshot period to account for short breaks
Now when you look at the combined charts of the points per minute of the top two players there is significant correlation between them that makes no sense under normal circumstances unless they were in the same room playing (which doesn’t seem likely). When one takes a break the other does, when one slows down for period of time the other does, when one speeds up the other does. I won’t theorize on what would cause that, but it does seem suspicious.
I don't like the chart you are referring to because it is easy to misread, the slow up, speed down is actually because it's charting VP gain between the intervals of data, so one set at 56 minutes vs one at 1:04, shows different amounts of VP, that chart is mainly useful for showing the consistency between the two over the intervals.
The R2 graph is much better for rate, as you can draw a straight line between the phase 2 start and end scoring, and each data point between the two matches linear increase at more than 99.9% over the period.
My hands are still sore from last week's sleep dep kombucha fuelled adventures. 5.16 million VP of tapping captured 12th. I got my 2x Geordis; can't help but think of other humans who were bumped from whatever reward tier or achievement by automitons. Whether they were bumped from top 5, top 1000, or some 4* fusion tier.
I might be the odd one out. But I enjoy an endurance challenge and repetitive mindless tapping. Planning ahead then tapping my face off for a weekend.
If it's with other humans. Which, call me naive, I went into it in good faith believing that it was.
Otoh variance in gameplay which avoids the possibility/probability of playing against a program posing as a human, would be welcome.
But that's not the current case. As it stands, events are repetitive tap-fests. So, if you're not into repetitive tapping, or not willing to, I suggest you stay out of it and don't ruin the game for everyone else. Unless it's a legit and DB-approved part of the game itself everyone has access to.
I don't want skirmishes to stop. I plan to play the next one (with my hands). I'd rather not play than pretend to.
However something's got to change. Its not about individuals (though you won't find me shedding tears if their accounts get shut down for the good of the rest of us and the survival of the game). Beyond the deterrent of punishment after the fact, I'm interested in what DB can proactively do for it going forward.
Honestly I don't mind if team of people to place high by passing device from each other. If they play - that means they sacrificed their placing for a team. If they don't - that means they sacrificed their time for game they don't even care about. If somebody organized that - good for him.
But bots? Bots is another thing entirely. It essentially kills game as sooner or later everybody start using them and for this particular event it turns one where you actually have to DO something to one where you throw more chrons and hope it will go to self-sufficiency and if not throw more chrons.
yo i am curious what DB is doing about this?? this thred about the macro was last week and nothings happening. i also seen the youtube with macro of this event!!!
why is DB doing nothing???? Comment moderated. ˜Shan
yo i am curious what DB is doing about this?? this thred about the macro was last week and nothings happening. i also seen the youtube with macro of this event!!!
why is DB doing nothing???? Comment moderated. ˜Shan
This is wholly unacceptable all around, from the players doing this to DB's lack of any meaningful public action or even statement.
yo i am curious what DB is doing about this?? this thred about the macro was last week and nothings happening. i also seen the youtube with macro of this event!!!
why is DB doing nothing???? <snipped YouTube link>
What do you expect to happen so soon? If they decide to investigate, which I hope they will, it will no doubt take a crazy amount of man-hours and effort to even prove cheating (i.e., macro use during the event) was even done by any particular person. They can't just accuse someone on even strong suspicion, because if they plan on taking action (such as deleting their account — which, again, I hope is the plan for anyone violating the TOS in this manner), they would legally require proof. Acquiring, and validating, that proof will take time. It may take months. I wouldn't expect any statement to be made until and unless such proof is obtained.
And as far as taking steps to prevent future transgressions of that nature, the best they could do for now would be to postpone plans for any Skirmish events until they can address that. Which, again, would take a lot of time — changing the coding for an event is not just something you can wave a magic wand over and sprinkle faery dust on and call it fixed.
So I hope that anyone who feels that something needs to be done immediately, would severely lower their expectations about that, and trust that DB cares about the integrity of their game as much as any reasonable person would expect them to. In other words, if it happens, it'll happen when it happens.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing. ~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
Except we have now seen evidence that macros are being used for galaxy events in addition to skirmish events. They could have stopped skirmish events until they fixed the issue, but unless they want to only run faction events they're really stuck right now.
Either way, this is past the point of the DB silent treatment. I can't imagine why anyone should continue spending on this game going up against bots until DB addresses the problem.
Except we have now seen evidence that macros are being used for galaxy events in addition to skirmish events. They could have stopped skirmish events until they fixed the issue, but unless they want to only run faction events they're really stuck right now.
Either way, this is past the point of the DB silent treatment. I can't imagine why anyone should continue spending on this game going up against bots until DB addresses the problem.
Maybe I missed that discussion, but I don't remember seeing evidence of macros being used in Galaxy events.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing. ~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
Comments
At that point you gotta fix the crew selection screen then as well.
I don’t even have $10,000 to put together but I would try and borrow it for such a bet. I think back to that South Korean man who died after playing Starcraft for some 50 hours straight without stopping:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4137782.stm
http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Lee_Seung_Seop
28 years old, barely left his computer to pee, ate and drank little, slept less. Died of heart failure due to exhaustion.
At those still defending the bot users: yeah, some people could totally play STT on their phone for 96 hours straight while sitting on the can. Suuuuure. Hey, on a totally unrelated note, I have a bridge for sale that you might be interested in buying. Small bills only, please.
I don’t know if any specific person was a bot/macro user or not, I wouldn’t come out either way and level accusations based on hourly score rates being consistent. I just think it’s not a completely out of realm of possibility that any individual person actually played and didn’t use a bot.
Also I would think that a macro user wouldn’t be guaranteed to get that many hours of a consistent rate. You would use the Macro to be able to take breaks to sleep and such. I would think that at some point in 4 days an internet connection would glitch for 5-10 seconds and break the macro causing nothing to happen until it was reset, which would also be noticeable in hourly score totals.
I am also completely in support of having one of the click through boxes change position to try to combat this as I’m sure there were some people using macros (I just think there is insufficient information to say any specific person was using one)
Yes, getting into an arms race with botters isn't something DB isn't going to win. They simply need to make events where people perform better than bots. Grind-fests like this will always favor bots.
Bot meta will lead to the Ddos meta, will lead to all sorts of stuff. Even if DB relies on data policing, it becomes who can create the most organic looking macro.
This aligns with what I was thinking. Right now, there's an encouragement for automation because the event is a repetitive task and the constraint for performance is largely time. The amount of time input required for maximum performance on just free resource income is in far in excess of what most players will reasonably want to put in, so macroing becomes an easy way for players to use up resources that would otherwise go to waste. If the time requirements are dropped so that a human player can use up all their Intel in a reasonable time-frame, there is less incentive to macro, and less issue even if players still do as those who choose not to macro can then compete with macro players because the constraint is no longer something that favors computers.
The other part that favors macroing right now is that the skirmish battles are very predictable. The AI will use all of its abilities in a precise order and timing. That makes it easy to develop a set strategy around it with routine button presses that don't require the player to react to anything, which is perfect for macroing. If battles are retooled to become more interactive and have players react to what the enemy has done, then the ability to macro them drops significantly. Easier said than done though.
Tightening the feedback loop only makes it more expensive to macro. Earlier calculations I made estimated the event winner invested somewhere around 60k chrons in the event (assuming 100% of the chron rewards were reinvested ).
Increasing the Intel cost (or reducing chron drops) would make it easier for people to keep up with macros since it would he more costly and running missions 24/7 less feasible. However, it wouldn't necessarily prevent someone from dumping 100k or more chrons in and running a macro to burn it all off.
And you can still do well without a Bot. Yes, the top of the ranking were almost definitely bots, but not the top 1,000. I had about 6000 Chronitons to start. I ended at rank 207.
Again. I don’t think you are getting how the science works. I would be able to tell strictly by looking at the data when exactly you cooked that meal. Every bathroom use would not last the same amount of time. To be gross...I would be able to tell exactly what you did in the bathroom strictly with the math.
You’re missing the point. It’s the consistency. The consistency is impossible for a human to produce. DB should be able to tell because they have access to more finite data.
Games that have serious bot problems have ways to detect this consistency. Botters counter by adding RNG elements so they appear human.
Are you making the case that no one used a bot....even after people admitted to using a bot?
I’m still willing to take that bet. If a human can produce those numbers it would be worth the money just for science.
I’m trying to wind down my gameplay but I will go full R2D2 on the next skirmish if DB does not address this.
..."go full R2D2" — are you actually publicly saying you'll use a bot in the next Skirmish if no statement is made by DB between now and then?
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
What needs to be done is let the battles get harder and make the traits provide real significant skill boosts. That way by the end you need to pick new crew based on traits each battle and even consider skipping bonus crew in exchange for better crew. I also think the battles should continuously get more difficult for more VP instead of having a fixed 5 battle end. That way someone who can run 10 battles will be better off than someone running two 5-battle skirmishes. And then make the ship and traits random for each battle.
Combine all that and you've created an event that is more engaging for players, is impossible to script for a bot, and rewards players based on their skill in crew selection/timing instead of grinding. DB can even add a refresh option for DIL so they can monetize players trying for longer skirmishes.
This.
I suggested the same after the first event. I suggested it for the interest rather than as an anti-bot. But the same applies. It does not need to be harder. It was hard enough for many players. Instead, have seven different ships and have five of them randomly chosen and randomly ordered each ticket. Easy to do and the event is more interesting and harder to cheat. Free idea for the team, @Shan.
I don't mean to suggest that tweaking Intel/chrons would solve macroing, only core gameplay changes or rigorous monitoring and banning could, but you can change the resource balance so that it's more favorable to humans, and make the battle more about use of game resources such as Chronitons than it is about time allotment.
So ideally, players who didn't want to invest beyond free Chrons would be at parity for macro versus non-macro if non-macro players are able to use all their Intel in a reasonable time frame. And for players willing to invest, it becomes much more expensive to run a macro 24/7, ideally prohibitively so, so that macro players end up capped on expenses and are not able to run missions 24/7, and non-macro players who are also investing can run their missions is a reasonable enough time frame to keep up.
As I said, it isn't a full solution as it doesn't prevent macroing, it just removes some of the incentive and puts more parity between humans and macro play. There could still be some mad lad who is willing to run a 24/7 macro no matter the cost just for first place, but otherwise changing the Intel stream should help alleviate the influence of macros.
I think most players would prefer to leave intel the way it is so you don't risk nerfing the event. Better to make other changes so the event can still help recover resources instead of just consuming them. Randomizing ships would be more interesting and potentially solve the bot issue as suggested in the forum.
I am sure that there are people who used a bot and that I agree dB should take steps to prevent that, I was just trying to point out that just because someone posted high scores over a 96 hour period it shouldn’t be enough to accuse a specific person.
After getting more detailed data on discord, you guys have a very inconclusive case based on the standalone increases in the top two players, if you look at the points per minute in each of the top two players in the sampling periods there are not long 4-5 hour stretches of the same points per minute amount that would indicate a macro use, in fact there is a decent amount of variability in that metric. Unless you have additional data there is plenty of variability in points per minute per snapshot period to account for short breaks
Now when you look at the combined charts of the points per minute of the top two players there is significant correlation between them that makes no sense under normal circumstances unless they were in the same room playing (which doesn’t seem likely). When one takes a break the other does, when one slows down for period of time the other does, when one speeds up the other does. I won’t theorize on what would cause that, but it does seem suspicious.
Unfortunately, that won't be enough.
With a powerful enough ship/crew combo, you can run the same sequence regardless of which battle you're fighting. I used the identical sequence for all five skirmishes and didn't lose one over the course of the event. This *would* work if the difficulty level were ramped up, but as-is it won't.
Working cloak ships on different initialize timers would solve it. One that cloaks from 4-10, one from 8-14.
I don't like the chart you are referring to because it is easy to misread, the slow up, speed down is actually because it's charting VP gain between the intervals of data, so one set at 56 minutes vs one at 1:04, shows different amounts of VP, that chart is mainly useful for showing the consistency between the two over the intervals.
The R2 graph is much better for rate, as you can draw a straight line between the phase 2 start and end scoring, and each data point between the two matches linear increase at more than 99.9% over the period.
I might be the odd one out. But I enjoy an endurance challenge and repetitive mindless tapping. Planning ahead then tapping my face off for a weekend.
If it's with other humans. Which, call me naive, I went into it in good faith believing that it was.
Otoh variance in gameplay which avoids the possibility/probability of playing against a program posing as a human, would be welcome.
But that's not the current case. As it stands, events are repetitive tap-fests. So, if you're not into repetitive tapping, or not willing to, I suggest you stay out of it and don't ruin the game for everyone else. Unless it's a legit and DB-approved part of the game itself everyone has access to.
I don't want skirmishes to stop. I plan to play the next one (with my hands). I'd rather not play than pretend to.
However something's got to change. Its not about individuals (though you won't find me shedding tears if their accounts get shut down for the good of the rest of us and the survival of the game). Beyond the deterrent of punishment after the fact, I'm interested in what DB can proactively do for it going forward.
~· Fly with the Subspace Eddies! ·~
But bots? Bots is another thing entirely. It essentially kills game as sooner or later everybody start using them and for this particular event it turns one where you actually have to DO something to one where you throw more chrons and hope it will go to self-sufficiency and if not throw more chrons.
That's like saying "Bomb" on a plane
If bot usage continues, I will stop playing. I know that I am just a drop in the bucket, but I prefer to play against people. 🖖🏻
why is DB doing nothing???? Comment moderated. ˜Shan
This is wholly unacceptable all around, from the players doing this to DB's lack of any meaningful public action or even statement.
What do you expect to happen so soon? If they decide to investigate, which I hope they will, it will no doubt take a crazy amount of man-hours and effort to even prove cheating (i.e., macro use during the event) was even done by any particular person. They can't just accuse someone on even strong suspicion, because if they plan on taking action (such as deleting their account — which, again, I hope is the plan for anyone violating the TOS in this manner), they would legally require proof. Acquiring, and validating, that proof will take time. It may take months. I wouldn't expect any statement to be made until and unless such proof is obtained.
And as far as taking steps to prevent future transgressions of that nature, the best they could do for now would be to postpone plans for any Skirmish events until they can address that. Which, again, would take a lot of time — changing the coding for an event is not just something you can wave a magic wand over and sprinkle faery dust on and call it fixed.
So I hope that anyone who feels that something needs to be done immediately, would severely lower their expectations about that, and trust that DB cares about the integrity of their game as much as any reasonable person would expect them to. In other words, if it happens, it'll happen when it happens.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
Either way, this is past the point of the DB silent treatment. I can't imagine why anyone should continue spending on this game going up against bots until DB addresses the problem.
Maybe I missed that discussion, but I don't remember seeing evidence of macros being used in Galaxy events.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"