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

[Catwho]

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.

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.

[Zarabeth]

Snip, character limit again.

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.

[Zarabeth]

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

[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.

[Altena]

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.

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 :/

[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.

[Paladinleeds]

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.

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.

[Atmora]

Snip.

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.

[KisaiTenshi]

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.

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.)

[Atmora]

snip

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.