Macro manipulation using 3rd party scripts, is it botting?

I've recently had an argument with a friend who saw a video on somebody using simple programmable mouse operations to manipulate his mouse into clicking on things in game while that person is away from their computer. The individual in this video was using this process to craft large quantities of things while away from the game.

My first quandary is, is this botting? Typically when one thinks of a bot, it is something that performs much more complex operations, such as running around the game and gathering. Since this mouse macro only actually performs 3 clicks on a cycle in the game is it complex enough to even be considered a bot?

The second (and perhaps most important) question is, is this cheating?

The point of me posting this question is because I cannot convince this friend that what he is thinking of doing is, in fact, cheating. I'm hoping the responses to this post will help me dissuade him (assuming my belief that this is cheating is even correct).

ANY action which you do not directly cause via manual input is considered botting, and is an actionable offense. Only manual button presses, and in game macro use are allowed.

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Originally Posted by Archescribe

I've recently had an argument with a friend who saw a video on somebody using simple programmable mouse operations to manipulate his mouse into clicking on things in game while that person is away from their computer. The individual in this video was using this process to craft large quantities of things while away from the game.

My first quandary is, is this botting? Typically when one thinks of a bot, it is something that performs much more complex operations, such as running around the game and gathering. Since this mouse macro only actually performs 3 clicks on a cycle in the game is it complex enough to even be considered a bot?

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Yes. Any kind of "unattended" behavior is botting.

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Originally Posted by Archescribe

The second (and perhaps most important) question is, is this cheating?

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If they can respond to a GM inquiry of "are you there?" and can't respond, then yes. If someone reports them for cheating, point this out.

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Originally Posted by Archescribe

The point of me posting this question is because I cannot convince this friend that what he is thinking of doing is, in fact, cheating. I'm hoping the responses to this post will help me dissuade him (assuming my belief that this is cheating is even correct).

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Tell him, that it's the inability to respond to an inquiry (hence unattended play) that is against the ToS. If he is sitting there with this mouse macro and watching Netflix, then it's not technically unattended play, but it would still be frowned upon, and I would certainly report it if I saw it. I've gone out of my way to report players that are doing unattended actions.

In this game, anytime someone talks to you or emotes at you, casts a random spell at you, you should be able to respond. If you just keep repeating whatever you were doing, then it's clear you're botting. A real player will at the very least stop what they're doing for a moment to see what/why they are being targeted.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

In this game, anytime someone talks to you or emotes at you, casts a random spell at you, you should be able to respond. If you just keep repeating whatever you were doing, then it's clear you're botting. A real player will at the very least stop what they're doing for a moment to see what/why they are being targeted.

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If they are not GMs then it is allowed to ignore them.

Sometime I snap the contoller and go to another room to watch TV, while I press cross, cross, L2+triangle and wait a bit before pressing those buttons again.
But it would be nice if the devs add vibration after finishing a craft, like with fishing.

I had been trying to find some ideas along this line of thinking about how to help people with arthritus, since the QTEs can be quite spammy (someone mentioned about this in The Royal Menagerie thread, the spam meant after like 2-3 attempts they were in a LOT of pain). At the end of the day, using a program like Synapse IS still cheating, and if caught will result in instant termination of all your FFXIV accounts and possibly your entire SE account (like, SE take a zero tolerance approach to this, it's permaban from the get go). I don't know if using it to allow for completion of a certain phase (like the spam clicking of the QTE) that would otherwise be impossible to do for more than one or two attempts due to disability would be counted as a "Reasonable adjustment", but that's a whole other discussion. If they're not disabled, they must NOT use it.

If they are disabled, I would still err on the side of caution and not use it because there's no official word on whether or not using it to level the playing field due to disability (like we have the equality laws in the UK) would garner the same punishment or whether the GMs would be more understanding. It's likely it'd garner the same punishment mind you to avoid people faking disability to avoid punishment.

That is pretty much the definition of botting. Yes it's cheating and against ToS and your friend could very well get banned.

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Originally Posted by Paladinleeds

I had been trying to find some ideas along this line of thinking about how to help people with arthritus, since the QTEs can be quite spammy (someone mentioned about this in The Royal Menagerie thread, the spam meant after like 2-3 attempts they were in a LOT of pain).

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I'm disabled due to nerve damage in my back and arms and it does make some things very close to impossible, however what you suggest here would still be considered cheating. I'm fairly sure I'd get banned for using any 3rd party anything as all are against ToS. You are 100% correct though, for some of us, Royal Menagerie was very painful even on a keyboard where you can just hit any key at all. I was lucky and got an amazing pug group who didn't kick me even after I asked them to due to being embarrassed by my cruddy playing. I made it through thanks to them!

I don't use any 3rd party software to even the playing field, but it would be nice if that could happen. Unfortunately there are just too many people who would (and do) take advantage of anything for disabled people and would lie so they could cheat. Due to those people, SE bans anyone caught doing this.

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Originally Posted by Zarabeth

I don't use any 3rd party software to even the playing field, but it would be nice if that could happen. Unfortunately there are just too many people who would (and do) take advantage of anything for disabled people and would lie so they could cheat. Due to those people, SE bans anyone caught doing this.

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Which makes me think, I wonder if SE could come up with a way for people to provide proof of disability, and how it affects them (complete with official diagnosis documentation), and use this as a way to allow those people to get reasonable adjustments. If you're caught lying, perhaps they could sue? And speaking of disability causing issues, I'm disabled due to genetics which means if I try to write for an extended period of time (as low as 30 minutes), it causes significant pain in my wrist. Typing/gaming isn't an issue for me mercifully, but yeah, I can definitely empathise with people as a result. Good on you though for giving it your all despite your disability. If we were on the same datacentre I would absolutely offer to tag along with you for stuff, so you've got some backup. But alas, Leviathan and Louisoix are on different datacentres.

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Originally Posted by Paladinleeds

I had been trying to find some ideas along this line of thinking about how to help people with arthritus, since the QTEs can be quite spammy (someone mentioned about this in The Royal Menagerie thread, the spam meant after like 2-3 attempts they were in a LOT of pain). At the end of the day, using a program like Synapse IS still cheating, and if caught will result in instant termination of all your FFXIV accounts and possibly your entire SE account (like, SE take a zero tolerance approach to this, it's permaban from the get go). I don't know if using it to allow for completion of a certain phase (like the spam clicking of the QTE) that would otherwise be impossible to do for more than one or two attempts due to disability would be counted as a "Reasonable adjustment", but that's a whole other discussion. If they're not disabled, they must NOT use it.

If they are disabled, I would still err on the side of caution and not use it because there's no official word on whether or not using it to level the playing field due to disability (like we have the equality laws in the UK) would garner the same punishment or whether the GMs would be more understanding. It's likely it'd garner the same punishment mind you to avoid people faking disability to avoid punishment.

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This is my boat. I have really bad wrist issues. Some of the things I've done to improve my QoL are: Use the XI keybind setup which minimizes mouse movement in battle, use a vertical mouse / fully ergonomic mouse with a beaded mouse wrist rest for support, and macro the snot out of my crafting.

That said, I used the internal macro engine in 3.x and never touched any kind of external macros, because a 2 part internal macro was always enough to 100% HQ most things up to 2 stars. I would hand craft my 3 and 4 star stuff though.

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Originally Posted by Paladinleeds

Snip, due to character limit.

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I can't imagine there being a way to do that. How could one prove they were real medical records? Also I'm sure people would find a way to forge them or otherwise copy them.
I'm sorry you have pain too; and, yes, it does make it easier to empathize with others!
I'm fortunate in that I have a great group of friends on Leviathan, if you ever move to our server/data center look me up!

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Originally Posted by Catwho

Snip, character limit again.

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I'm sorry you have pain too :(
I'm also a crafter (all crafting and gathering at 60 before SB, except cul.) and would love some tips on setting up crafting macros! I use a few for battle but they seem to add lag at times, so I keep them to a minimum but, crafting would be fine.

Technically, it is against the terms of service, and is actionable.

In response to some of the replies in this thread, I ignore most players 99% of the time since it's all just emote and action spam, especially when I'm focusing on Crafting. It's not like I can actually emote back, or even click on anything, while actively crafting.

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Originally Posted by Zarabeth

I can't imagine there being a way to do that. How could one prove they were real medical records? Also I'm sure people would find a way to forge them or otherwise copy them.

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Yeah, that's true. Not sure what we can really do here though.

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I'm fortunate in that I have a great group of friends on Leviathan, if you ever move to our server/data center look me up!

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Leviathan and its datacentre is really a no-go for me unfortunately. Been too spoiled by being a European with 20ms ping on the Chaos datacentre! I do have friends here but they've been fragmented due to server moves etc.

How the fuck is SE even going to detect you using Synapse? All it does is press your mouse buttons, I don't think people here know what they're talking about.

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Originally Posted by Atmora

How the fuck is SE even going to detect you using Synapse? All it does is press your mouse buttons, I don't think people here know what they're talking about.

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They can tell by the timing between button presses. Bear in mind that every click is sent to the server. Synapse macros that are set to repeatedly click will have a rhythym behind their button presses (even if random time between each click is used, since even the random time between each click has some rhythym behind it). SE can look at that rhythm of the clicks and determine that it is a bot and ban.

Another thing they can do (at least on Windows, where Synapse is a thing), is sniff out other programs on the PC. If it detects the Synapse signature, it can report back to SE HQ and ban you for it.

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Originally Posted by Paladinleeds

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I mean yes, both those things are possible, but one would require them to install a program on your comp in the game files to look at what other programs you're using and honestly if they cared that much everyone using ACT would have be banned a long time ago; not to mention Synapse is the fucking driver software for most Razer hardware so you can't just ban people for having it on their computer. The other means they have to look at all of you're individual clicks and compare it across other synapse users then ban you which let's be honest, isn't going to happen.

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Originally Posted by Atmora

I mean yes, both those things are possible, but one would require them to install a program on your comp in the game files to look at what other programs you're using and honestly if they cared that much everyone using ACT would have be banned a long time ago; not to mention Synapse is the fucking driver software for most Razer hardware so you can't just ban people for having it on their computer. The other means they have to look at all of you're individual clicks and compare it across other synapse users then ban you which let's be honest, isn't going to happen.

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They don't need to install anything, Macro's do not contain random timing information. When you activate a macro, it plays back everything at the speed it was told to. So if you see someone activating every skill 3 seconds apart (which is the speed you can pretty much use the internal macro at) they are using the internal macro's. If you see someone activating the same skills repeatedly, with the same timing, it's a bot.

The game client itself can check for macro software, it doesn't need a third party program. Likewise, purpose-built cheating software often intercepts the C runtime to hide itself from the game. EG, enumerate software running on the system into a hash list, send the hash list to the server, the server cross-checks the hashes against known bots, cheating tools, macro software, etc every time a zone changes or teleport happens and then if the player is ever reported for botting, instant-ban.

Right now it only does that when you run the launcher, and only looks at software installed, and software running at the time the launcher runs, not side-loaded (click config-system information.)

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

In this game, anytime someone talks to you or emotes at you, casts a random spell at you, you should be able to respond. If you just keep repeating whatever you were doing, then it's clear you're botting. A real player will at the very least stop what they're doing for a moment to see what/why they are being targeted.

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This is not even remotely true.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

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I take it you've never used synapse or the other brand equivalents to any depth? You can make some incredibly long macros with super varied timings. Also using Synapse itself isn't even remotely ban worthy since most players with custom keys on their keyboards/mouse use it or another similar program. I mean unless I'm wrong and changing keys on my mouse to modifiers like shift and ctrl is a banable offense.

Edit: Lol I almost forgot to refute the stupidest part of this, Synapse doesn't send any packets to the game or interact with the game in any way whatsoever, the server won't be checking shit from it. Literally all it does is make your keys perform multiple or different actions.

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Originally Posted by Nixxe

This is not even remotely true.

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Next you're going to tell me that people are't randomly inviting people to FC's. The point of that comment was, "where are your eyes looking", if a GM starts talking to you, where are your eyes?

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Originally Posted by Atmora

I take it you've never used synapse or the other brand equivalents to any depth? You can make some incredibly long macros with super varied timings. Also using Synapse itself isn't even remotely ban worthy since most players with custom keys on their keyboards/mouse use it or another similar program. I mean unless I'm wrong and changing keys on my mouse to modifiers like shift and ctrl is a banable offense.

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When I worked for a certain company, the company built hundreds of macros in a program called Macro Express in order to speed up the delivery of everything from stock responses to ticking boxes in web-browser based CRM software. So yes, I've used macro software in a professional environment, and have written macros to customize the responses, or even read peoples email and generate responses based on context of what email path was followed.

That said, the average person is not a genius, and you're making it out like these macro programs can read someone's mind. No, the reality is that the average person downloads things they find on the internet and doesn't know what they are really doing, only that someone they found on the internet said they "use this", therefor it must be kosher.

If someone is handicapped, and the macro improves their QoL, and then one day they get banned because they decided to run their macro 3 ilms away from the marketboard, bell, or aethertyte (which is what the spamming bots do) and got reported a dozen times, then that is on them for being ridiculous. If you're going to go break the ToS, go break it somewhere where you're not seen by 20 people constantly.

90% of the amateur-hour bots out there use an easy to find open source macro program that is capable of triggering anything in the Windows API itself, this is what the spam bots use.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

That said, the average person is not a genius, and you're making it out like these macro programs can read someone's mind. No, the reality is that the average person downloads things they find on the internet and doesn't know what they are really doing, only that someone they found on the internet said they "use this", therefor it must be kosher.

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I'm not 100% sure you no what Synapse is, it's not something you randomly download, it's the driver software to Razer products like mice and keyboards. You're acting like it's some kind of cheating software and I never asked if you've used Macro programs, I asked if you've specifically used Synapse or something similar because you seem really mistaken on their functions.

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Originally Posted by Atmora

I'm not 100% sure you no what Synapse is, it's not something you randomly download, it's the driver software to Razer products like mice and keyboards. You're acting like it's some kind of cheating software and I never asked if you've used Macro programs, I asked if you've specifically used Synapse or something similar because you seem really mistaken on their functions.

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I have a Razer mouse, that software is installed and at defaults:
http://i.imgur.com/982uABC.png

The fourth and fifth mouse buttons are set to trigger things on the hotbar WITHIN the keybinds, I don't use Synapse for anything because I know it would be considered cheating.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

I have a Razer mouse, that software is installed and at defaults:
http://i.imgur.com/982uABC.png

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then you should know how easy it is to make a 5 minute long macro with varied key press timings that repeats itself.

Yes, it is against the ToS, but no it's not detectable, Kisai has no idea what they are talking about, GMs have better things to do than to stand next to a player with a stopwatch just in slim chance that the person could be macroing.

Either way OP, it is cheating no matter how they try to justify it, its a quite noticeable advantage over other players to be able to craft pretty much 24/7.

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Originally Posted by alimdia

Yes, it is against the ToS, but no it's not detectable, Kisai has no idea what they are talking about, GMs have better things to do than to stand next to a player with a stopwatch just in slim chance that the person could be macroing.

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A GM doesn't have to, all they have to do is go "Hi I'm (NAME) from SE Support, do you have a moment" and as your macro keeps spamming things for 2 minutes and you don't respond, they then ban you.

People think they are clever, when they really are not.
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/security.png

There are thousands of people crafting at a given moment, again they aren't going to go around sending tells to every person crafting just in the remote chance they could be macroing.

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Originally Posted by Atmora

How the fuck is SE even going to detect you using Synapse? All it does is press your mouse buttons, I don't think people here know what they're talking about.

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This is a bit of tin hat story so bear in mind. At the start of 2.0 a lot of crafters who said they did not cheat and did not buy gil. Had gil removed from their accounts. What several of them did admit to was macro crafting where they didn't actually do any crafting the macro did it for them. Once your gear is good enough a few button combination will always HQ and if you don't actually have to do the work it could be good gil. No one found/admitted to an exploit and no one got banned.

So if the story about macro crafting was true. SE might have some way to check. But I doubt it is a very good system and casual users probably get skipped over.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

This is a bit of tin hat story so bear in mind. At the start of 2.0 a lot of crafters who said they did not cheat and did not buy gil. Had gil removed from their accounts. What several of them did admit to was macro crafting where they didn't actually do any crafting the macro did it for them. Once your gear is good enough a few button combination will always HQ and if you don't actually have to do the work it could be good gil. No one found/admitted to an exploit and no one got banned.

So if the story about macro crafting was true. SE might have some way to check. But I doubt it is a very good system and casual users probably get skipped over.

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That's not a bit, that's a big tinfoil hat, the removal of gil at launch was linked to the marketboard gil exploit.

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Originally Posted by Kethic

Technically, it is against the terms of service, and is actionable.

In response to some of the replies in this thread, I ignore most players 99% of the time since it's all just emote and action spam, especially when I'm focusing on Crafting. It's not like I can actually emote back, or even click on anything, while actively crafting.

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I also do this..

On top of that, while I am macro crafting (in-game macros which are fine) I am generally not even looking at the screen. I just use the sound FX of the craft finishing to know to spam Numpad 0 then start the first macro..

Sending me a /t while I am crafting won't even get my attention to look at the screen when I am doing this :/