Mods and cheat engine

[LittleImp]

I'd like to figure out what peoples' opinions on this is...

If it's cheating to use ACT's bot that gives players mechanic callouts, which are themselves limited and only really get into specifics when stuff is on the players' screen already (if at all), then would static members giving callouts to people also be considered cheating?

Cactbot can:
1. Solve mechanics that aren't visible on the client yet.
2. Solve mechanics with a less than 10ms reaction time.
3. Compile a series of mechanical queues taking place over a long time, and then provide a solution to a later mechanic, removing the need for anyone to remember anything
4. Make calculations based on Entity coordinates which tell you where to stand.
5. Can provide 8 separate callouts to 8 different people simultaneously.
6. Works out of the box with no practice or prog.

This is not at all comparable to a human shotcaller, who cannot do many of those things, and also has to spend prog time practicing to be able to do the ones they can. It fundamentally automates an aspect of fight execution that was not intended to be automated.

Both accomplish the same thing, and you still need to know how to resolve the mechanic on both.

Cactbot makes callouts like "NE/NW are safe" or "Look SW". Many of the callouts it makes completely removes any necessity of needing to actually understand how 90% of the mechanic works, and it provides personalized callouts based on your characters specific circumstances. Those kind of shotcalls are really only seen in places like RichCOB, where 7 people knew what they were doing and could afford to make individual callouts for one member.

Is it not more cumbersome to, say... and taking something easy that a lot of people have done... take Construct 7's math thing. There are people with dyscalculia, and I do know someone whose issue was so severe she had issues clearing TEA's Limit Cut because she couldn't count. She had to resort to shapes rather than counting dots. When farming the Lighthouse, I had to resolve my own math mechanic and also look at her number and health in advance to tell her which number she had to go. And on one run, I had to do it for her and someone else who wasn't getting the mechanic.

Sure, it's a third party tool and that's a no-no. But if it's just to call mechanics out for people and give them a heads up on what they have to do, is it really cheating?

It doesn't just call out mechanics. It solves mechanics, and tells you what to do. It is not comparable to a human shot-caller. I don't really mind if people with rare disabilities use certain things for accessibility purposes, and there's an important difference between a trigger that just says "Three" when you get 3 above your head, versus a cactbot module that reads 3 different divebomb coordinates and then actively tells you where you need to stand because you have 3.

[Raoabolic]

ACT text-to-speech triggers—which is what Midareyukki seems to be primarily taking about—do not put any overlays on your screen. It’s just a voice in your ear saying something like “Dynamo > Chariot” or “Left”/“Right”. You are thinking of something completely different, and something that a decent number of raiders are actually not okay with (the untelegraphed AOEs suddenly becoming telegraphed). The text-to-speech triggers are no different than a voice in Discord calling them out to you.

Personally, I don’t consider text-to-speech triggers cheating since one still needs to understand and execute the mechanic. I don’t see how ACT telling me “Dynamo > Thermo” is any different than a static leader saying “Dynamo into Thermo” outside of removing human error/processing delays. The ACT triggers simply read the battle log and relay the information to you as an audio cue.

I see your point, I assumed it was like DBM from WoW. I guess it all boils down to is if a computer is telling you or a person telling you. A call out script will never miss a beat, a person calling it out is no different from a leader commanding troops. At worst if a bad call is made the commander will look pretty silly, lol.

[LittleImp]

I don’t see how ACT telling me “Dynamo > Thermo” is any different than a static leader saying “Dynamo into Thermo” outside of removing human error/processing delays. The ACT triggers simply read the battle log and relay the information to you as an audio cue.

ACT isn't just relaying information in this case, it's actively parsing the meaning of it and removing the need for a human to do so. Nael doesn't have a castbar that says "Dynamo > Thermo" that's just getting read outloud by TTS. ACT is parsing something like "O hallowed moon, take fire and scorch my foes!" into "Dynamo > Thermo", without any player in the party needing to be able to understand or read the mechanics actual telegraph. Someone who has benefited from shotcalling in UCOB may not be able to tell the difference, but the experience of the person actually calling the quotes is very different with and without ACT.

[HyoMinPark]

ACT isn't just relaying information in this case, it's actively parsing the meaning of it and removing the need for a human to do so. Nael doesn't have a castbar that says "Dynamo > Thermo" that's just getting read outloud by TTS. ACT is parsing something like "O hallowed moon, take fire and scorch my foes!" into "Dynamo > Thermo", without any player in the party needing to be able to understand or read the mechanics actual telegraph. Someone who has benefited from shotcalling in UCOB may not be able to tell the difference, but the experience of the person actually calling the quotes is very different with and without ACT.

I’m aware of how the Nael triggers work, but I still don’t see how it would be considered “cheating” but someone shot-calling in Discord is not. People who do not translate and process the quotes fast enough have already failed the mechanic because the reaction time is incredibly short, and not everyone can process at the same speed. When UCoB released, most groups used the triggers because it was too cumbersome to read a chat log message or chat bubble. Especially the old quotes that were not nearly as straight forward as the ones the devs changed them to in ShB.

[Maxcrafter]

One thing that comes to mind is the macro to force our relic weapon to glow despite being sheathed. I love to use it lol.

I was able to get some of my newer crafting tools, the Pactmaker mainhands, to glamour up with Skybuilder's relic glowies- and at least for now retrieve some of the lost visual fun. Now if we can combine that with a nifty "dous" (/doze of unusual size) and get them to glow while sheathed.. voila. I'll perch anywhere with that!

Shooter

[LittleImp]

I’m aware of how the Nael triggers work, but I still don’t see how it would be considered “cheating” but someone shot-calling in Discord is not. People who do not translate and process the quotes fast enough have already failed the mechanic because the reaction time is incredibly short, and not everyone can process at the same speed. When UCoB released, most groups used the triggers because it was too cumbersome to read a chat log message or chat bubble. Especially the old quotes that were not nearly as straight forward as the ones the devs changed them to in ShB.

You're aware, but sorta misrepresenting them to make your stance appear more reasonable.

It's automation by a machine which by nature cannot make human errors and does not need to spend time learning. You import an XML or download Cactbot and you're good to. The majority of UWU groups use AM for titan gaols, the majority of DSR groups use AM for Wroth flames. The reality is, many many people doing Ultimate are driven more so by their pursuit of the achievement of clearing and the clout that comes with it, versus some deep passion for the content and mechanics themselves. Addons have become normalized within the Ultimate community itself, and it could be argued that their ubiquity and acceptance precludes them from being considered cheating within the context of that player-driven space. There is virtually no one in that community that is going to go "Omg, you used AM for titan gaols, your UWU clear is illegitimate." That said, these addons are still cheating in the greater scheme of things. They are explicitly prohibited by the developers, to the degree that the latest worlds-first race prompted a crackdown on people using them. If SE, who in this case is the organization handing out the clear achievements, deems something as cheating, it's cheating, plain and simple. It's SE's intention that these encounters be solved without the assistance of such tools, and a heavier reliance on human communication.

I don't think there's anything wrong with disagreeing with SEs definition of cheating or requesting they implement official third party support. It would be a much better use of the energy people are spending trying to redefine what is or is not cheating. Ironically enough, I write automation software for a living, and if SE offered official support for third party stuff you can guarantee I'd be all over it in a heartbeat lol.

[Midareyukki]

It doesn't just call out mechanics. It solves mechanics, and tells you what to do. It is not comparable to a human shot-caller. I don't really mind if people with rare disabilities use certain things for accessibility purposes, and there's an important difference between a trigger that just says "Three" when you get 3 above your head, versus a cactbot module that reads 3 different divebomb coordinates and then actively tells you where you need to stand because you have 3.

So was I resolving mechanics for other people. So were my friends resolving mechanics for me when I couldn't tell which direction to go on E10S's shadows. Or when the party leader called out where to go for during E9S's pizza cuts. But just because I had people doing call-outs, it didn't mean I didn't bother to learn the fight or resolve the mechanics by myself. Hell, often times I wanted to do it on my own and muted the person in question because I didn't want to be told where to go when I didn't need to.

[HyoMinPark]

So was I resolving mechanics for other people. So were my friends resolving mechanics for me when I couldn't tell which direction to go on E10S's shadows. Or when the party leader called out where to go for during E9S's pizza cuts. But just because I had people doing call-outs, it didn't mean I didn't bother to learn the fight or resolve the mechanics by myself. Hell, often times I wanted to do it on my own and muted the person in question because I didn't want to be told where to go when I didn't need to.

E10S has been the only fight I’ve heavily relied on things like callouts in a while because I couldn’t see his shadows very well. The design of black shadow on top of black boss just could not be processed by my eyeballs. I agree with the overall sentiment that using shotcalls—be it TTS triggers or a raid leader calling them—doesn’t mean one doesn’t learn the fight or the mechanic. Like with my Nael example: having ACT call out “Dynamo > Thermo” doesn’t absolve the player of properly understanding and executing it. If you don’t understand what Dynamo does or what Thermo does—or what Chariot does especially—you cannot react accordingly in a timely manner and you will get killed.

[Packetdancer]

This is not at all comparable to a human shotcaller, who cannot do many of those things, and also has to spend prog time practicing to be able to do the ones they can. It fundamentally automates an aspect of fight execution that was not intended to be automated.

So, I've said often in the past -- including in this thread -- that I consider Cactbot (or, specifically Cactbot's "Raidboss" module, the one that actually does callouts) little different than a human shot-caller; that I thought it was a huge problem if someone cannot do a fight without Cactbot calling for them, but was not sure it's a fundamentally different problem than if someone cannot do a fight without my callouts on Discord.

But I will admit that the only Cactbot modules I'd previously had personal experience with were "Oopsy Raidsy" (the one that provides a post-wipe breakdown of vuln stacks, missed heals, etc.) and the module that pops up an overlay in Eureka or Bozja that just has the countdown trackers a'la the Eureka tracker websites, so you know whether or not an NM or critical engagement can be spawned again yet.

So I finally decided I ought to at least see what Raidboss looks like, so that my "I'm not sure if it's a fundamentally different problem" statement could be made in a more informed manner, with some personal experience.

From what I've now seen, in the vast majority of cases, the callouts were still not hugely faster than I-as-a-human-shot-caller could make them -- stuff like P4S phase 2, with North/South or East/West for the first safe sides, it was maybe half a second faster.

There were definitely notable outliers, though -- it can absolutely call P3S Fireplume way before I would have any hope of calling whether it's a stay-centered-and-move baited giant AoE, versus a move-to-second-blast rotating one. Like, I was actually alarmed by how early it could call that one; I knew it could call it earlier than I would, but not by that much.

And I will grant that Raidboss does callouts for a lot more things than I expected; I guess I knew it could do personalized callouts, but I also didn't realize precisely how many it did. That was a bit of an eye-opener; it actually did it to a degree that I would personally find actively distracting rather than helpful.

That said, I'm still not sure it's a fundamentally different problem if someone relies on Cactbot callouts than if they rely on my callouts. Yes, Cactbot can do more callouts -- and more than I expected -- but if you rely on any external thing, be it a robot or a human, in order to be able to do mechanics, you are doing yourself no favors.

For those who wouldn't find it distracting, if they only use it as a sanity-check on their own read of mechanics -- the same way they should with my callouts -- I'm still not sure there's a huge difference between it and a human shot caller, even if it would provide sanity-check on considerably more mechanics than I expected.

And for some people -- like a colorblind friend who could not tell the difference between the chain colors in P1S to know if they needed to be near/far -- I could see it being of great use for certain mechanics; I actually think there might be value in a version of it that could be set to only do callouts for certain specific mechanics, as that could be incredibly useful for colorblind folks, vision-impaired, or hard-of-hearing folks to provide cues ("Far chain" / "Near chain") that they are capable of acting on but not easily capable of perceiving in the way the game communicates them.

I will grant that if you are determined to let it play for you, though, yeah, you can be considerably lazier than if you're just determined to make me as human shot-caller solve as many mechanics for you as you possibly can; I had not realized quite the degree to which that is true here. So I'll own that part.

But as I said, I'm still not sure quantity changes the fundamental nature of it.

(Though I do now know why in some P3S parties, I watched people see "Left Cinderwing" and scoot out of safety right smack into the blast; this thing apparently calls those assuming you are behind Phoinix, when nearly every party I've ever been in resolves Cinderwing with Phoinix facing them. So, this at least answered one long-standing PF question I've had!)

That aside... as I mentioned, I think that this thing would drive me absolutely stark raving crazy to run, though. It looks to call a lot of things which, rationally, I don't think need to be called, and which I would find distracting enough to be actively detrimental to my performance to have it throw up hints for.

[george357]

their going to keep beating this dead hose as long as the mods let them.