Quote Originally Posted by VeyaAkemi View Post
Just one point that I'd like to address, currently automation plogons are sophisticated enough that, provided the correct data, they can execute any mechanic in the game flawlessly, it's not tied to the mechanics being on a set timeline, they read the data of what is going on in the game in real time, and execute accordingly, this is necessary for them to work at all, as mechanics do have a degree of variation even when they are on a schedule, so they would still be, as you put it, "supremely useful" even with perfect, fully reactive encounter design.

Ah, yeah I know of those too but I suppose I was attempting to draw a line at plugins that you might think could be in the game normally (like ones that relate to spikey plants) vs the ones that 'do it all for you' (essentially botting). The info is publicly available so I definitely am aware of some of them. I am impressed with them in a sense, and many are actually like "oh that definitely should be in the game", but also I think "DOH" *face palm* as SE helped create this situation by not creating a nice box that many addon creators would play in. Even guild wars 2 created a third party environment that played nice (they have an API setup), but SE's approach effectively forced the talent to go into the shadows- and there they went growing and growing until it's more of a shadow tsunami.