The complaints about people cheating are not made by the people who cheat you say?
In other breaking news, the sky is blue.
Long running macro's threat by FD - What exactly is a long running macro?!
- Thread starter clinton
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The complaints about people cheating are not made by the people who cheat you say?
In other breaking news, the sky is blue.
The complaints about people cheating are not made by the people who cheat you say?
In other breaking news, the sky is blue.
Not quite what he said. The effect and practicality of this mechanism (without any automation) has been exaggerated based on certain not completely accurate assumptions of BGS mechanics, how it effects factions, how it can be defended against, and how painful it is to undertake. A lot of us test mechanics - not specifically to find exploits - but to understand the black box of the BGS works in order to achieve our goals. When we find poor mechanics they are reported. We have to "cheat" as you put it to test.
In terms of operational use, I suspect if our operations were designed around this mechanic AEDC would haemorrhage members at a tremendous rate. I wouldn't like to test that.
While I won't support intentional 1t trading where you buy something in bulk and sell it 1t at a time... mechanics like this can be, arguably, used "legitimately" as well.
As i mentioned before... raw profit shouldn't be the only decider in influence.. trading a variety of goods to high-demand stations should attract a larger positive effect on influence (When you think about it, profit should actually reduce a faction's influence, but that's a whole other discussion).
Tonight, in one load, I shipped 10 different types of mineral to a station, 10t of each. This is not an unreasonable scenario... with the way the markets work, sometimes profit levels vary by a lot. However, I do so knowing full well I'll get 10 "ticks" in the influence bucket, rather than shipping one batch of 100t of Palladium for 1 "tick". Turn the clock back a year though, and this is still exactly how I traded when I was a BGS noob, on the assumption that trading to high demand would have better influence effects. Is either of these "exploiting"? Probably not. But that's getting a bit off-topic.
Given the context, I'm fairly sure the "long running macros" dav refers to would be things set up to do "Enter + A + enter, wait 4 seconds", rinse, repeat 400 times to fully unload a T9 1t at a time while you go mow the lawns.
You are absolutely right though. When I did this stuff for my previously mentioned bug report, it was honestly the most brain-numbing activity ever... and I'm glad to not have it in my repertoire... frankly... there's better, easier, and not-'sploity mechanisms to hurt an opponent.
PS can't rep you schlack, so, high five?
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Seems you missed my point.
But again for you, Dav Stott is talking in this Q&A video about long and short time ideas to fix this single unit trade nukes but he has absolutelly nothing to announce today. Now that this nukes arent something new, date of this mail is 22/07/2016 and we and FD are aware of this "exploits" since 2015 (we didnt want to make it public to prevent people to mess around with them) i wonder what he ment with long term fixes ? 10 years ?
This single unit trade nukes are game breaking in my eyes and it showes again how fast and smart FD is reacting on major flaws in their game.
So what did they do to fix it since this blackmail short time solution mail six months ago ?
Nothing i guess.
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Very much this. I by now believe that if you ask a FD Manager (just like a manager in many other software projects, some of them i had the fate to be part of) about the project management triangle and what is consists off, he would answer "time and cost and something else, i have to look up what that is". (A little clue here: the unknown term is "quality".)
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Any big addition since the games launch had the taste and stench of being tossed out of the doorway. With the last beta and how it was announced, there was hope that somebody learned the lessons and things would improve, but considering how the beta was then ended and rolled out, that was just a smokescreen.
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There are already different layers - the BGS has ticks, the markets and missions have ticks. Things don't happen continuously. I can't see it being a problem for the sale/purchase and the effects on your balance and local faction rep to change immediately (or at least for the client to report their predicted effects in the latter case) and for the BGS effect not to be committed to the database until you undock, reinstance or some timeout happens (tied to the missions update tick and/or the market update tick perhaps). Even if you do sell 1tx100 and it does cause 100 BGS transactions at present, it doesn't have an immediate visible or actual effect since the BGS state isn't recalculated on every transaction.
As an exercise in seeing the cracks, pick a station of a faction you are neutral with - check their missions - sell exploration data till you get the inbox message that your status is now cordial and go back to missions. At present those which require cordial status will still be locked because the missions board doesn't update when your faction rep updates. (This is fixable, I suspect by not regenerating missions, but just reevaluating the locks on faction rep boundary change but it's only a minor inconvenience).
Similarly you won't see a faction go into a boom state just after you sell 1t of anything, even if that transaction is in fact the one which tips things over the edge, because BGS faction state transitiions are batch processed, rather than handled in real time.
Sorry, just can't take the post seriously as long as I read "blackmail"...
You can do whatever you like with your keyboard. No one is stopping you.
However, Frontier Developments are not obliged to let you do whatever you wont on *their* services that they own. Just like you can do whatever you want with your keyboard, they can do whatever they want with their own property.
Exactly and in case of the single unit trade nuke you even dont need a macro.
FD really should fix the game or is their goal to blackmail (this one is for babelfish
) all people with suspicious keystroke sequences as short time solution.You dont need to say sorry and you even dont need to read my post. Whats the point in this, just to leave a comment on this board ?
If you sell single units with loss the controlling faction will loose influence. Means, buy 200 tons of medics and single sell them with loss at the same station and the controlling factions will loose influence and outbreak will be triggered.
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I'm fairly sure that neither the value of the transaction nor the amount are the only things that determine influence... And I have a big problem with the whole 'fairly sure' because it's pure speculation.
On that note, ideally we should have a complete BGS manual. I would very much like everyone on equal footing.
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This is the sort of thing I was talking about. It sounds plausible, it's probably right, but there are likely unknown factors there on top. Also the words 'plausible, 'unknown', 'probably', 'likely'.
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No. Reselling at the same station has no effect.
Complete? the BGS will never be complete, it has evolved significantly over the past 2 years and will continue to evolve. Personally I do not wish to see the black box entirely transparent as that would remove some of the mysteries and challenge of working the BGS. Part of what I find enjoyable about it is the testing and figuring it out, innovating new ideas, techniques and strategies. Press X to BGS doesn't interest me all that much, and they have given out significant basic information. More than enough to get you started while leaving plenty to discover on your own - much like the rest of the game!
I agree with pretty much everything, and it's hypocritical of me to wish for flight model mysteries to remain while arguing for BGS openness. But I've had very unpleasant experiences way back in the day - it was like making rocks bleed, highly frustrating for low payoff. The information is there now for the newcomer to be educated in, but I wish it instead came with the official stamp and included in the game's manual.
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Sadly in this day and age of MMOs, there are people who find enjoyment in using macros and autoclickers and other tools to help them "enjoy" their gameplay.
Personally I dont use such tools, in my view they are not in the spirit of the game as it was intended to be played and therefore an exploit.
By tool, I mean some program or application running in the background in addition to the game that takes over control of what the player can do manually ingame.
I dont consider EDDB or Thrudds or other trading tools that do what in my opinion should be in the game.
I wonder if Frontier could implement something like Punkbuster, that would detect any macros/autoclickers/etc that are deemed exploitive, against the Terms of Service or Code of Conduct or not "in the spirit of the game".
But in the end there will always be cheaters..
Personally I dont use such tools, in my view they are not in the spirit of the game as it was intended to be played and therefore an exploit.
By tool, I mean some program or application running in the background in addition to the game that takes over control of what the player can do manually ingame.
I dont consider EDDB or Thrudds or other trading tools that do what in my opinion should be in the game.
I wonder if Frontier could implement something like Punkbuster, that would detect any macros/autoclickers/etc that are deemed exploitive, against the Terms of Service or Code of Conduct or not "in the spirit of the game".
But in the end there will always be cheaters..
They could, and I think Watchdog already does some of that - but such schemes are open to abuse by players looking to abuse other players. Sending someone a link that contains a banned signature, for example, with the victim completely unaware that having such in RAM will cause the cheat checker to throw a fit.
Sorry but i do not agree at all.
Just like many elements of the game until FD clearly state that selling 1 tonne at a time is an exploit then it just isn't.
That is why Dav didn't go there and until FD clearly put out a statement that it is then no-one can be blamed for using this mechanic in game.
Macro's ofc are a very different thing and covered in the TOS/EULA.
Most importantly this has been discussed on the forums for months now and has been ticketed, exploits are not supposed to be discussed on the forums yet the thread persists...support also have been informed with tickets and asked if its ok to do and they have not said it is an exploit.
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It had an massive effect when i tried it last time some months ago. Dont know if it still works but you have to sell with - profit (-203cr/ton for example).
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I find it amusing when people use the word "cheating" to describe something they don't do and yet justify an equally or more exploitative gaming tool.
Using eddb, inara or any other automated information gathering tool is exploiting the game and is against the TOS in the same way as using macros. In fact, they're more akin to a bot since they receive information from the game itself. Using "long runing" macros and simple Voice Attack macros are equally against the TOS. In fact, any automation is against the TOS.
Is any of this "cheating"? I'd have to say no. Cheating is using a bot to mine for credits. It's also using a bot to fly your ship and aim for you.
It comes down to whatever FD decide to enforce within their TOS. They can decide to suddenly enforce the use of eddb or macros at any time of their choosing. It doesn't matter what they enforced before.
Taking a RL example, a couple of days ago, I was driving down the road in a 35 MPH zone during lunch time. There were two cops parked on the side of the road with their driver's sides facing each other. They were obviously talking and probably eating. I sped up to 50 MPH to see if I'd get a response. They stayed put and enjoyed their lunch. The law says I could have been pulled over, but they chose not to interrupt their lunch.
Had I been weaving around on the road or other wise driving like a madman, they would probably pull me over. Or even the time of day undoubtedly played a role. If they weren't on their lunch break, I might be taking another ticket dismissal course to avoid a fine.
So FD can change their minds and start enforcing whatever they care to. If you want to use a macro, it might be wise to find out when they take lunch.
Using eddb, inara or any other automated information gathering tool is exploiting the game and is against the TOS in the same way as using macros. In fact, they're more akin to a bot since they receive information from the game itself. Using "long runing" macros and simple Voice Attack macros are equally against the TOS. In fact, any automation is against the TOS.
Is any of this "cheating"? I'd have to say no. Cheating is using a bot to mine for credits. It's also using a bot to fly your ship and aim for you.
It comes down to whatever FD decide to enforce within their TOS. They can decide to suddenly enforce the use of eddb or macros at any time of their choosing. It doesn't matter what they enforced before.
Taking a RL example, a couple of days ago, I was driving down the road in a 35 MPH zone during lunch time. There were two cops parked on the side of the road with their driver's sides facing each other. They were obviously talking and probably eating. I sped up to 50 MPH to see if I'd get a response. They stayed put and enjoyed their lunch. The law says I could have been pulled over, but they chose not to interrupt their lunch.
Had I been weaving around on the road or other wise driving like a madman, they would probably pull me over. Or even the time of day undoubtedly played a role. If they weren't on their lunch break, I might be taking another ticket dismissal course to avoid a fine.
So FD can change their minds and start enforcing whatever they care to. If you want to use a macro, it might be wise to find out when they take lunch.
So you are saying it is intended gameplay and I did it wrong all the time? Everyone should be selling only one by one? Because if it's not an exploit and it gives you an advantage it must be intended gameplay. Sorry, the definitions on exploits are pretty clear and don't need anyone from FDEV confirming it. If they are going to punish it or just change the mechanic is a different topic.