Quote Originally Posted by Wolfie View Post
The point I was trying to make was that you could do what HealBot did with the default UI and in-game tools that were given to you.

The fact that some things were automated by the API does not mean anything. Generally things that were automated via API calls were already marginalized, unwanted, or unimportant parts of gameplay, like automatically retrieving all your mail, auto-replying to tells when in combat, etc. That is a conscious decision that the developers make.
I'm still not sure what you are saying. I'm not taking about anything being automated by the API. I'm talking about using the API to create automation. For example if you allow your API to see player health which has plenty of legitimate uses, then allow your scripting language to perform conditionals/iteratives/comparisons which again has legitimate uses then allow for execution of commands, none of these three in themselves are automation or arguably malicious.

But when you put the three together, then you start running into problems. Give the user the three controls above in FF14 and you can make a White Mage play itself other than executing the macro similar to what HealBot does in WoW.

This is the kind of risk you run by opening your interface up. The more information and controls you expose the higher the risk that people will just further automate tasks in the game to the point that they are just running complex scripts rather than playing the game. Sure you can just argue that good people won't use them but that really doesn't solve the problem.