Do UI MOD's / Macros Ruin a MMO's?!

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Aikouka
Although I can't remember what changes Blizzard made exactly... but I wouldn't mind making a "logic button" up for my Shaman. I play two chars at once now and it'd be nicer if I could just hit a button to do an action if a cooldown is up or a debuff is on a mob. Kind of like stormstrike is up, use stormstrike, if stormstrike is on CD and the mob is debuffed with stormstrike, cast earthshock, if not check to see if the mana is below half, if the mana is below half, cast SR if it's up and Emerald Owl if it's up (my mana shoots up like crazy with these hehe). If I could do that it'd make my time much easier as I play on the same PC so switching between two applications can be easier on me 😛.

...that's exactly the kind of thing they took out. You can still have a "use A if A is usable, else use B" macro, but not most of the other stuff.

You can set up casting sequences with the new /castsequence command, but you can't use /script commands anymore to decide what to do in the middle of a macro. Having that capability made certain things too easy in Blizzard's opinion, as you could have 'smart' macros that would do things like automatically using your most mana-efficient heal while avoiding overhealing, or automatically choosing between various spells depending on the situation.

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
...that's exactly the kind of thing they took out. You can still have a "use A if A is usable, else use B" macro, but not most of the other stuff.

You can set up casting sequences with the new /castsequence command, but you can't use /script commands anymore to decide what to do in the middle of a macro. Having that capability made certain things too easy in Blizzard's opinion, as you could have 'smart' macros that would do things like automatically using your most mana-efficient heal while avoiding overhealing, or automatically choosing between various spells depending on the situation.

Bah, maybe if Blizzard understood how boring the game gets they'd let us do this so we could just put one of them water birds on our keyboards and let it do all the work 😉. My character with the most boring fights has to be my priest and they're so scripted I can list you what he does in every single fight and it never changes as long as it's 1v1 (melee).

Start at Mind Blast range -> Power Word: Shield -> Mind Blast -> immediately walk backward -> Shadow Word: Pain -> Stop walking backward -> Mind Flay (sometimes twice) -> Wand (must be a shadow wand).

Mob dies before my shield goes away... how boring 🙁.

Also, how restrictive is the use-if-available ability? Can it be nested in any such way? 😉

 

[torpid]

Originally posted by: mad0maxx
They got alot of illegal UI's and MOD's that allow AFK farming, AFK leveling, AFK priest healing and many other bots... The automatic flag capturing shows a scanbox that scans for the flag then automatically runs the script that allows the mouse to fly to the flag and clicks it. Trust me I've personally seen this script on my friends computer...

Those aren't mods, they are hacks and are disallowed in all MMO games, and virtually impossible to stop. Get your terminology straight. If you are actually concerned about it you should report your friends. Just sitting around and complaining about mods in general is idiotic. What you are really upset about is people like your jerkoff friend who cheat and hack the game and make it so blizzard and other companies have to take functionality out of the game.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Aikouka
Start at Mind Blast range -> Power Word: Shield -> Mind Blast -> immediately walk backward -> Shadow Word: Pain -> Stop walking backward -> Mind Flay (sometimes twice) -> Wand (must be a shadow wand).

You could actually set up a cast sequence macro to do most of that with repeated presses of one button (maybe even all of it, if you can turn on shoot from a /castsequence). But it doesn't handle things like deciding if you want a second Mind Flay in there. They are trying to let you write macros to handle the stupid repetitive stuff -- they just don't want the macros to do real decision-making.

Mob dies before my shield goes away... how boring 🙁.

You can try respeccing to Holy... I wish I could kill things before my shield dropped. 😛

Also, how restrictive is the use-if-available ability? Can it be nested in any such way? 😉

You can chain together a number of if/elseif decisions, but the conditions you can check on are fairly limited. I don't think you can nest things like that without using a /script command, and you can't cast from /script commands anymore. You could do something like "if in range and MB cooldown is up, cast MB, else if in range cast MF, else cast Smite", but you can't do things like "if in shadowform and enemy is <30 yards away, start casting sequence 1, else if in shadowform start casting sequence 2, else start casting sequence 3" or "if target doesn't have VE on them, cast VE, else ..."

 

[torpid]

Granted he's still low level at the moment, but so far nothing tops my warlock for brainless grinding. Send tank at enemy, cast 3 spells, send tank at another enemy, cast 3 more spells, send tank at 3rd enemy, cast 3 more spells, go watch TV for 5 minutes, loot the 3 corpses, rinse and repeat.

I almost miss shadow priest grinding... at least I had to actually be there for the fight.

 

[mad0maxx]

Originally posted by: torpid

Originally posted by: mad0maxx
They got alot of illegal UI's and MOD's that allow AFK farming, AFK leveling, AFK priest healing and many other bots... The automatic flag capturing shows a scanbox that scans for the flag then automatically runs the script that allows the mouse to fly to the flag and clicks it. Trust me I've personally seen this script on my friends computer...

Those aren't mods, they are hacks and are disallowed in all MMO games, and virtually impossible to stop. Get your terminology straight. If you are actually concerned about it you should report your friends. Just sitting around and complaining about mods in general is idiotic. What you are really upset about is people like your jerkoff friend who cheat and hack the game and make it so blizzard and other companies have to take functionality out of the game.

Now you just make yourself look stupid... you obviously do not know how to code! Should I report my friend... not really because this ****** should be tracked by Blizzard and if he can easily do it what makes others in the game not be able to easily do it... just because you stop one person does not mean you are going to stop it all. The only person that can do that is Blizzard so they need to get better tracking systems in place. Reason being is because they have people to pay 15 bucks a month and for what? Blizzard to sit on there ass and code bullshit nerfs and not fix any of the problems such as the behind the wall glitch in Warsong Gultch?

Originally posted by: CKent

Originally posted by: mad0maxx
They got alot of illegal UI's and MOD's that allow AFK farming, AFK leveling, AFK priest healing and many other bots... The automatic flag capturing shows a scanbox that scans for the flag then automatically runs the script that allows the mouse to fly to the flag and clicks it. Trust me I've personally seen this script on my friends computer...

You're friends with a 12 year old?

Originally posted by: Kur
1 word

decursive

I see you don't play a healer.

Brilliant we got a jackass who can not follow the forum rules!

 

[torpid]

Yeah I know how to code, that's why I know the difference between a mod and a hack. I've even coded mods. What you are describing are things you literally cannot do with a mod. There's no way to write a mod that moves the mouse around and clicks on things without any human input, nor can you write an afk healbot. Those are impossible with the mod api. They are hacks, plain and simple.

Blizzard can't track everything you do on your computer. If blizzard monitored the windows kernel like you are seeming to think they should then they'd get into all kinds of trouble from privacy groups and like would cause constant warnings and errors in Vista. It would involve digging into the OS.

 

[torpid]

And BTW, your logic about not turning him in is the same logic you could use if your friend murdered someone. Turning him in isn't going to stop other murders from happening. No kidding...

 

[mad0maxx]

Originally posted by: torpid
Yeah I know how to code, that's why I know the difference between a mod and a hack. I've even coded mods. What you are describing are things you literally cannot do with a mod. There's no way to write a mod that moves the mouse around and clicks on things without any human input, nor can you write an afk healbot. Those are impossible with the mod api. They are hacks, plain and simple.

Blizzard can't track everything you do on your computer. If blizzard monitored the windows kernel like you are seeming to think they should then they'd get into all kinds of trouble from privacy groups and like would cause constant warnings and errors in Vista. It would involve digging into the OS.

There are ways you can position a mouse to a specific location on your screen and this is a fact.

Blizzard can track how many levels you obtain every hour, your every location every so many minutes, life, mana, fatigue, spells casted and items obtained... these and many more are things that Blizzard can track...

 

[mad0maxx]

Originally posted by: torpid
And BTW, your logic about not turning him in is the same logic you could use if your friend murdered someone. Turning him in isn't going to stop other murders from happening. No kidding...

Cheating in a game is not the same as murder... :Q

 

[torpid]

Originally posted by: mad0maxx

Originally posted by: torpid
Yeah I know how to code, that's why I know the difference between a mod and a hack. I've even coded mods. What you are describing are things you literally cannot do with a mod. There's no way to write a mod that moves the mouse around and clicks on things without any human input, nor can you write an afk healbot. Those are impossible with the mod api. They are hacks, plain and simple.

Blizzard can't track everything you do on your computer. If blizzard monitored the windows kernel like you are seeming to think they should then they'd get into all kinds of trouble from privacy groups and like would cause constant warnings and errors in Vista. It would involve digging into the OS.

There are ways you can position a mouse to a specific location on your screen and this is a fact.

Blizzard can track how many levels you obtain every hour, your every location every so many minutes, life, mana, fatigue, spells casted and items obtained... these and many more are things that Blizzard can track...

Stop being a hypocrite. You complained about mods breaking the game. Your friend is using mods/hacks that violate the terms of service and require Windows API calls. If you are upset about it you should report him. You cannot make a mod that clicks on the screen while you are afk. The mod API does not permit this. Same for AFK healbots. Those require OS level programming, which cannot be done within the mod API.

I'd be very surprised if you could scan the screen using the mod API. You used to be able to move the cursor but I am pretty sure they took that out, not positive though.

CT_Mod, Bag mods, and fishing mods are totally unlike what you are talking about. You are talking about cheating, plain and simple. Your friend is violating the rules of the game and possibly even violating the law, depending on exactly how the hacks work.

 

[Matthias99]

I'd be very surprised if you could scan the screen using the mod API. You used to be able to move the cursor but I am pretty sure they took that out, not positive though.

I think about all you can do is to snap the mouse cursor to the location of an XML widget. You might be able to set it to an arbitrary x/y coordinate. But there is no way for a (legal) mod to know where to position the cursor in order to be over the WSG flag, or other in-game objects.

However, you can't actually execute the 'click' function, nor can you grab data out of a screen capture. Doing these things requires (disallowed) third-party software.

Blizzard can track a lot of things related to 'hacking' your client (things like speed or teleport hacks, for instance, which change game data in some way). They can't (reliably) tell from the server side if you are running a bot that is emulating mouse clicks and keyboard commands to play for you.

 

[torpid]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

I'd be very surprised if you could scan the screen using the mod API. You used to be able to move the cursor but I am pretty sure they took that out, not positive though.

I think about all you can do is to snap the mouse cursor to the location of an XML widget. You might be able to set it to an arbitrary x/y coordinate. But there is no way for a (legal) mod to know where to position the cursor in order to be over the WSG flag, or other in-game objects.

Yeah that's my impression too. I thought they even took out the xml snapping part, but maybe it's just the one mod I use doesn't do it anymore. I know how limiting the mod API is because I tried to do some basic things with it unsuccessfully for the reasons stated.

 

[Matthias99]

I thought they even took out the xml snapping part, but maybe it's just the one mod I use doesn't do it anymore.

You know, they might have. I hate it when any program does that, so I don't use any mods like that.

 

[CKent]

Originally posted by: Kur
level 70 priest, thank you very much. I love decursive and decursive removal was the reason we don't even go back to old content anymore. Every tried to do chroma without decursive? No thank you.

I must have mistaken your intent, I read it as you giving an example of an overpowering addon - sorry.

Originally posted by: mad0maxx
Brilliant we got a jackass who can not follow the forum rules!

Oh my, you sure are defensive... I wonder why?

 

[NeoV]

Decursive is garbage anyway - a simple mouseover macro tied to depoision/decurse, is faster than decursive anyway - just use some raid frames (like Grid, my fav, or even the default ones)

I love WoW mods - and I'm not talking about anything that cheats in any way, shape, or form. Things like seeing guildmates on the map, better action bars like Bartender, better mail functions like Postal, better unitframes like Pitbull - to me part of the fun in the game is tweaking the UI!

 

[CKent]

Originally posted by: NeoV
Decursive is garbage anyway - a simple mouseover macro tied to depoision/decurse, is faster than decursive anyway - just use some raid frames (like Grid, my fav, or even the default ones)

Right, we were lamenting the 2.01 nerf to dynamic frames, often called the "Decursive nerf" since it was one of the most popular addons affected by the nerf - although I had other addons affected by it as well, such as SSPvP. Healing sucks enough, Decursive made it more tolerable. I don't like the new decursive; I use Clique.

I love WoW mods - and I'm not talking about anything that cheats in any way, shape, or form. Things like seeing guildmates on the map, better action bars like Bartender, better mail functions like Postal, better unitframes like Pitbull - to me part of the fun in the game is tweaking the UI!

Agree 100%

 

[torpid]

Not sure I understand the decursive nerf. When I used decursive I just assigned it to a key and spammed it during certain encounters, like the ones in MC where you have to spam it or bad stuff happens. That was nearly 2 years ago though.

 

[Matthias99]

Not sure I understand the decursive nerf. When I used decursive I just assigned it to a key and spammed it during certain encounters, like the ones in MC where you have to spam it or bad stuff happens.

The fact that you had no idea why you were doing it or how it worked is part of why they changed it. The fact that it reduced a lot of encounters to "spam decursive" and/or "spam healing script" was another big factor.

When you activated decursive you were running a little script that would do things like looking at all the debuffs on everyone in your raid and then automatically targeting someone with a debuff you could cure and removing it. Probably with some kind of priority rules as well, so that you'd always try to get things off the MT or the people with lowest health first.

You can't do that anymore; scripts can no longer do things like changing your target or casting spells, and regular macros can't do it dynamically. You now have to do things like have a UI that shows everyone with a debuff and gives you a button/frame you can click on to cure that specific person.

 

[CKent]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Not sure I understand the decursive nerf. When I used decursive I just assigned it to a key and spammed it during certain encounters, like the ones in MC where you have to spam it or bad stuff happens.

The fact that you had no idea why you were doing it or how it worked is part of why they changed it. The fact that it reduced a lot of encounters to "spam decursive" and/or "spam healing script" was another big factor.

When you activated decursive you were running a little script that would do things like looking at all the debuffs on everyone in your raid and then automatically targeting someone with a debuff you could cure and removing it. Probably with some kind of priority rules as well, so that you'd always try to get things off the MT or the people with lowest health first.

You can't do that anymore; scripts can no longer do things like changing your target or casting spells, and regular macros can't do it dynamically. You now have to do things like have a UI that shows everyone with a debuff and gives you a button/frame you can click on to cure that specific person.

Your tone when speaking about it mirrors the devs' - it's that of someone who doesn't play a healer, at least not more than for a few minutes of testing (and even that I'm beginning to doubt they do). In the end the nerf just makes a thankless, boring job even more thankless and boring. It's as though we advanced to the next level in a nightly game of whack-a-mole, and it was wholly unnecessary.

I knew exactly what it was doing, it just made my job a lot more manageable and allowed me to take my eyes off the health bars, if only for a moment here and there, to actually see the zone I was in.

 

[mad0maxx]

It depends on the person who makes Decursive or the group of people since there are so many reversions of the program. Each MOD or UI's someone makes can be made workable in any version of WoW but the MOD's and UI's that Blizzard does not like they change the class event names so that breaks the mod... there are many programs out there that can dig into an DLL or DAT library to find all the event commands and you can easily fix your MOD or UI. Though the hard part is tring to find the new names.

 

[mad0maxx]

Originally posted by: torpid

Originally posted by: mad0maxx

Originally posted by: torpid
Yeah I know how to code, that's why I know the difference between a mod and a hack. I've even coded mods. What you are describing are things you literally cannot do with a mod. There's no way to write a mod that moves the mouse around and clicks on things without any human input, nor can you write an afk healbot. Those are impossible with the mod api. They are hacks, plain and simple.

Blizzard can't track everything you do on your computer. If blizzard monitored the windows kernel like you are seeming to think they should then they'd get into all kinds of trouble from privacy groups and like would cause constant warnings and errors in Vista. It would involve digging into the OS.

There are ways you can position a mouse to a specific location on your screen and this is a fact.

Blizzard can track how many levels you obtain every hour, your every location every so many minutes, life, mana, fatigue, spells casted and items obtained... these and many more are things that Blizzard can track...

Stop being a hypocrite. You complained about mods breaking the game. Your friend is using mods/hacks that violate the terms of service and require Windows API calls. If you are upset about it you should report him. You cannot make a mod that clicks on the screen while you are afk. The mod API does not permit this. Same for AFK healbots. Those require OS level programming, which cannot be done within the mod API.

I'd be very surprised if you could scan the screen using the mod API. You used to be able to move the cursor but I am pretty sure they took that out, not positive though.

CT_Mod, Bag mods, and fishing mods are totally unlike what you are talking about. You are talking about cheating, plain and simple. Your friend is violating the rules of the game and possibly even violating the law, depending on exactly how the hacks work.

Very true... but I am not here to ruin my friend's hacking / play of the game. It is up to Blizzard to find this crap out. Thanks for the reply... ^_^

 

[CKent]

Originally posted by: mad0maxx
It depends on the person who makes Decursive or the group of people since there are so many reversions of the program. Each MOD or UI's someone makes can be made workable in any version of WoW but the MOD's and UI's that Blizzard does not like they change the class event names so that breaks the mod... there are many programs out there that can dig into an DLL or DAT library to find all the event commands and you can easily fix your MOD or UI. Though the hard part is tring to find the new names.

Lol... they don't change the UI system to hinder mods they don't like, that would be silly as authors would just update within a day or two. You have some strange views on this. Do you use the supplied action bars or flip through your book to cast spells? 😛 Uh oh, looks like you're using an addon 😉

As for your hacking friend, there's no way around this and it can be done in every game. It's part of why I took exception to how I would normally feel about something like the Warden - I welcome it. Anything to combat the little kiddies who need to cheat to win. Hopefully he gets his account "hacked" soon (isn't that the usual term the kiddies use when their l33tz0r h4x program has a keylogger in it?).

 

[mad0maxx]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

I'd be very surprised if you could scan the screen using the mod API. You used to be able to move the cursor but I am pretty sure they took that out, not positive though.

I think about all you can do is to snap the mouse cursor to the location of an XML widget. You might be able to set it to an arbitrary x/y coordinate. But there is no way for a (legal) mod to know where to position the cursor in order to be over the WSG flag, or other in-game objects.

However, you can't actually execute the 'click' function, nor can you grab data out of a screen capture. Doing these things requires (disallowed) third-party software.

Blizzard can track a lot of things related to 'hacking' your client (things like speed or teleport hacks, for instance, which change game data in some way). They can't (reliably) tell from the server side if you are running a bot that is emulating mouse clicks and keyboard commands to play for you.

Actually Blizzard can tell if someone is using a bot if the character follows the same path almost like a straight line for an extended period of time repeatedly.

 

[mad0maxx]

Originally posted by: CKent

Originally posted by: mad0maxx
It depends on the person who makes Decursive or the group of people since there are so many reversions of the program. Each MOD or UI's someone makes can be made workable in any version of WoW but the MOD's and UI's that Blizzard does not like they change the class event names so that breaks the mod... there are many programs out there that can dig into an DLL or DAT library to find all the event commands and you can easily fix your MOD or UI. Though the hard part is tring to find the new names.

Lol... they don't change the UI system to hinder mods they don't like, that would be silly as authors would just update within a day or two. You have some strange views on this. Do you use the supplied action bars or flip through your book to cast spells? 😛 Uh oh, looks like you're using an addon 😉

As for your hacking friend, there's no way around this and it can be done in every game. It's part of why I took exception to how I would normally feel about something like the Warden - I welcome it. Anything to combat the little kiddies who need to cheat to win. Hopefully he gets his account "hacked" soon (isn't that the usual term the kiddies use when their l33tz0r h4x program has a keylogger in it?).

I played a Warlock and I used the default because that is the way I liked it though it is not wrong to play with any UI or MOD.

Also people do get MOD's fixed within a couple days... why do you think CT_MOD and the like jump back so fast? They do not trash the old and rewrite a new program.

As I stated in my original post

"Do UI mods/macros Ruin a MMO?! (ie CT_Mod, Fishing Mod, Bag Mod) I think if used properly they do not but in every game they are almost used improperly by a small amount of people on a every server that makes it unfair for the rest of us."

That is how I feel... many people do not abuse this system but the few that do piss me off when it involves me such as in PVP... if you hack and it does not effect anyone then who the hell cares! If you hack and PVP giving you the unfair advantage that just deserves an ass whooping :-\