This discussion is degenerating into a pitchfork and torches against DB for not saying anything, and believing that you can magically have a program play for you.
This discussion is degenerating into a pitchfork and torches against DB for not saying anything, and believing that you can magically have a program play for you.
For repetitive aspects like Skirmishes, it ain't magical. It's logical. You're not Mintakan are you?
This discussion is degenerating into a pitchfork and torches against DB for not saying anything, and believing that you can magically have a program play for you.
It’s not magic whatsoever. Also, people have admitted to doing it and there is video proof of the same. Continuing to deny that macros are both possible and problematic is highly illogical.
This discussion is degenerating into a pitchfork and torches against DB for not saying anything, and believing that you can magically have a program play for you.
It’s not magic whatsoever. Also, people have admitted to doing it and there is video proof of the same. Continuing to deny that macros are both possible and problematic is highly illogical.
Mouse recording is not a macro , and what was demonstrated is ridiculously basic and breaks every 5 minutes it's not doing **tsk tsk** for galaxy and its unreliable for skirmish
This discussion is degenerating into a pitchfork and torches against DB for not saying anything, and believing that you can magically have a program play for you.
It’s not magic whatsoever. Also, people have admitted to doing it and there is video proof of the same. Continuing to deny that macros are both possible and problematic is highly illogical.
Mouse recording is not a macro , and what was demonstrated is ridiculously basic and breaks every 5 minutes it's not doing **Chech'tluth** for galaxy and its unreliable for skirmish
This discussion is degenerating into a pitchfork and torches against DB for not saying anything, and believing that you can magically have a program play for you.
It’s not magic whatsoever. Also, people have admitted to doing it and there is video proof of the same. Continuing to deny that macros are both possible and problematic is highly illogical.
Mouse recording is not a macro , and what was demonstrated is ridiculously basic and breaks every 5 minutes it's not doing **Chech'tluth** for galaxy and its unreliable for skirmish
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.
Though I agree from an Engineering standpoint, I disagree from a Public Relations standpoint.
It appears the DB is starting to value stealth patches over transparency if we think they might have fixed the shuttle issue.
Though I do not expect an engineering fix soon, if I was the product owner, I'd want to get ahead of this thing before it gets too much more steam at least assuring people that it was a priority. (And not just a Shan stating she notified the team)
Otherwise we might think that its going to be a year of putting up data making it more and more and more precise over time until in 2019 they fix something behind the scenes and never speak to the issue.
Sorry, Data, but he’s right: there needs to be an announcement from someone above Shan’s level reminding people of the ToS and what punishments will be levied against violators. Whatever the coding or game design fixes end up being (which will of course take a while for a small team to work on), something needs to be said by DB soon.
And how are you going to prove that people are cheating or not?
That sounds like a question DB’s software engineers have to answer. But the simple version is that they need to do what we did - look at consistency of scoring over time and flag anything that is improbable due to biology.
In the interim, just saying something about the players who have openly admitted to running bots, including the one who shared directions for writing a bot program and the YouTube user who uploaded a six minute video showing one in use during the Galaxy phase of the event that ended today, would be a start.
Dude in the YouTube video had like 4k VP. I think that was more posted as proof then actively attempting to game the system.
This discussion is degenerating into a pitchfork and torches against DB for not saying anything, and believing that you can magically have a program play for you.
It’s not magic whatsoever. Also, people have admitted to doing it and there is video proof of the same. Continuing to deny that macros are both possible and problematic is highly illogical.
Mouse recording is not a macro , and what was demonstrated is ridiculously basic and breaks every 5 minutes it's not doing **Chech'tluth** for galaxy and its unreliable for skirmish
As soon as you get a small "Hailing Starfleet" burp or your opponent gets an excessive evade string (looking at you, Miranda-class...) your timing is off and you end up missing your ship abilities, getting blown up, and spending all your dil on refilling your intel. It's definitely not viable for any kind of unattended use. If you're going to do it you will have to baby sit and make sure it doesn't die. All you're really doing in that situation is saving yourself a little RSI, no unfair advantage unless you consider preventing carpel tunnel syndrome an advantage. Nothing about this allows you to automate unattended for hours at a time, or even tens of minutes at a time.
I filed a ticket about the whole thing, including a link to this thread. The takeaway was that the CS rep handling the ticket doesn't have the authority to do anything further and that any official action would be announced in Starfleet Communications. And that, as best I can tell, is that for the time being.
I should be stoked about next month's Dominion mega-event, but truthfully I'm not. I'll still play through the thresholds just because I can do that irrespective of how compromised the event's competition may be, but I'll be extremely reluctant to commit beyond that rote level of effort.
As someone that was (probably) burned in the first skirmish (rank 1001, so if even a single person ran a bot and got Enemy Lines Sisko... you know who you stole him from), I will still be extensively playing skirmish in the mega because of the reward drops - I'll take as much honor as they want to give me. But if no changes are made by event start, then I won't buy any packs and will no longer care about my final rank in it. I worry that pre-planned disinterest is the first chip in the process of eroding my long-term interest in the game. I'm someone who would normally be here when the lights go off, but if the game devolves into silicone-aided unfairness, I'll be out long before last call.
Hey there, sorry for necroing this thread, but couldn't figure out how to create a new one (I've never even commented there previously, maybe it's tied to that), but I've had an idea to try and alleviate the issues with botting/macroing. Basically, some prominent member of the community should contact the leaders of the top 50 fleets of the last skirmish event, and persuade them to enforce a policy of zero tolerance in their fleets. Of course this would not necessarily stop players from using illegal software, it would be still more productive than doing nothing (I guess?) until DB figures out how to handle this issue.
Hey there, sorry for necroing this thread, but couldn't figure out how to create a new one (I've never even commented there previously, maybe it's tied to that), but I've had an idea to try and alleviate the issues with botting/macroing. Basically, some prominent member of the community should contact the leaders of the top 50 fleets of the last skirmish event, and persuade them to enforce a policy of zero tolerance in their fleets. Of course this would not necessarily stop players from using illegal software, it would be still more productive than doing nothing (I guess?) until DB figures out how to handle this issue.
Sadly people are in denial about them even being used. We couldn't even keep a thread about community unity from getting locked due to trolls and folks in denial or failing at basic math.
Sadly people are in denial about them even being used. We couldn't even keep a thread about community unity from getting locked due to trolls and folks in denial or failing at basic math.
I guess you could try creating a Line group or a Discord server for discussing it, it would be far easier to moderate and would be a way to spread awareness. I've checked and a lot of fleets from the top 100 of the last Skirmish don't really have a forum presence, so it's entirely possible that some of them don't even know of this issue.
Hey there, sorry for necroing this thread, but couldn't figure out how to create a new one (I've never even commented there previously, maybe it's tied to that), but I've had an idea to try and alleviate the issues with botting/macroing. Basically, some prominent member of the community should contact the leaders of the top 50 fleets of the last skirmish event, and persuade them to enforce a policy of zero tolerance in their fleets. Of course this would not necessarily stop players from using illegal software, it would be still more productive than doing nothing (I guess?) until DB figures out how to handle this issue.
Sadly people are in denial about them even being used. We couldn't even keep a thread about community unity from getting locked due to trolls and folks in denial or failing at basic math.
It was well intended, but honestly it was not messaged nor framed well and was very easily targeted by folks trolling.
For some it came off more as a goof than something seriously intended to bring unity, and I say that having kept very very quiet and listening in my own alliance chat and an FB group that I'm in.
Comments
For repetitive aspects like Skirmishes, it ain't magical. It's logical. You're not Mintakan are you?
It’s not magic whatsoever. Also, people have admitted to doing it and there is video proof of the same. Continuing to deny that macros are both possible and problematic is highly illogical.
Mouse recording is not a macro , and what was demonstrated is ridiculously basic and breaks every 5 minutes
So unreliable it never happened (waves hand)
Get good.
Dude in the YouTube video had like 4k VP. I think that was more posted as proof then actively attempting to game the system.
As soon as you get a small "Hailing Starfleet" burp or your opponent gets an excessive evade string (looking at you, Miranda-class...) your timing is off and you end up missing your ship abilities, getting blown up, and spending all your dil on refilling your intel. It's definitely not viable for any kind of unattended use. If you're going to do it you will have to baby sit and make sure it doesn't die. All you're really doing in that situation is saving yourself a little RSI, no unfair advantage unless you consider preventing carpel tunnel syndrome an advantage. Nothing about this allows you to automate unattended for hours at a time, or even tens of minutes at a time.
I should be stoked about next month's Dominion mega-event, but truthfully I'm not. I'll still play through the thresholds just because I can do that irrespective of how compromised the event's competition may be, but I'll be extremely reluctant to commit beyond that rote level of effort.
Sadly people are in denial about them even being used. We couldn't even keep a thread about community unity from getting locked due to trolls and folks in denial or failing at basic math.
I guess you could try creating a Line group or a Discord server for discussing it, it would be far easier to moderate and would be a way to spread awareness. I've checked and a lot of fleets from the top 100 of the last Skirmish don't really have a forum presence, so it's entirely possible that some of them don't even know of this issue.
It was well intended, but honestly it was not messaged nor framed well and was very easily targeted by folks trolling.
For some it came off more as a goof than something seriously intended to bring unity, and I say that having kept very very quiet and listening in my own alliance chat and an FB group that I'm in.