Long story short, I stumbled on an elementalist in spvp who “one-shotted” me few times during the match. I went down from full to null in around 1 second each time, I made screenshots of combat log after each kill and compared them after the match. Each time it was same combination of skills in exactly same order and all executed withing a roughly 1 second time window. Instant spells and damage values were legit but considering that they were always in same order and in what seemed like an instant combo I can only assume it was some sort of keyboard macro.
I just wanted to know for the future, are such things legit for play or are they considered illegal by Arena? Not talking about “moral” aspects, just straight rules. I analyzed the combo and it consisted from around 10 keypresses. I dont want to report anyone yet. Just wanted to clarify if external macros (like keyboard or mouse software) are allowed to use in game?
macros are not permitted as far as I know in tournament play. The game client needs to support macro’s for them to work so smoothly that 10x key presses can be achieved in 1 second. Considering a lot of gw2 skills have an unmentioned after cast/precast, it seems that 10 keystrokes in one second is a bit exaggerated. However guild wars 2 has just released a steel series keyboard that claims to 18 macro keys that are duel layered. (36 macros in all.) I asked this same question. How can this keyboard be entirely legal considering there is other peripheral devices that are not allowed due to their high macro settings.
Definitely doable without a macro, but of course a lot easier with one. I don’t know the legality of it, but I do remember one funny occasion when an engi on the other team was using a macro and someone on our team told him to turn it off because there was a dev in the match (there was). The guy panicked, quit, and we got an easy 5v4 :P
If you’re not playing to win, don’t complain when you lose.
1 key 1 action, only hotkeys are permitted (Aka putting something on another key, like weapon’s switch on mouse ans so on..) everything else is considered as a bot and it’s bannable. Solution? Leave macros and l2p
The thing is i’m almost sure they have no tool to detect macro usage, so unless they do something this way we’ll always see those “perfect combos” (mainly from thieves and eles with the actual state of the game)
The thing is i’m almost sure they have no tool to detect macro usage, so unless they do something this way we’ll always see those “perfect combos” (mainly from thieves and eles with the actual state of the game)
um, a macro is not impossible to detect. Like I stated above, most macro devices need support to work entirely smoothly.
Currently gmail will disable any account that attempts to spam emails too fast. Considering the vast number of email accounts they hold I would think they just use a simple, but very effective filter. I would dare say a-net probably has the means to detect when multiple inputs are being done in near inhuman time. However, also as stated above, there is nothing to stop a player from assigning numerous hotkeys to an entire row of keys and just pressing the keys in order as fast as possible so they fire as quickly as the precast/aftercast allows. With timing and practice a player could in theory execute very fast chains on solo targets, but would get blitzed anytime they had to react to situations that interrupts the chain.
um, a macro is not impossible to detect. Like I stated above, most macro devices need support to work entirely smoothly.
Currently gmail will disable any account that attempts to spam emails too fast. Considering the vast number of email accounts they hold I would think they just use a simple, but very effective filter. I would dare say a-net probably has the means to detect when multiple inputs are being done in near inhuman time. However, also as stated above, there is nothing to stop a player from assigning numerous hotkeys to an entire row of keys and just pressing the keys in order as fast as possible so they fire as quickly as the precast/aftercast allows. With timing and practice a player could in theory execute very fast chains on solo targets, but would get blitzed anytime they had to react to situations that interrupts the chain.
You seem not to understand the concept of “macro”. It’s not faster than we could human possibly doing it, it’s more regular and reliable. It’s absolutely impossible to detect as it does exactly the same thing a “high skilled” player could do with the press of only 1 key for a combo. Recent keyboards and mice permit to program macros, and they work if you had the right delays after each skill. It doesn’t need any support from the game, it’s low-level imput done by the keyboard/mice.
You seem not to understand the concept of “macro”. It’s not faster than we could human possibly doing it, it’s more regular and reliable. It’s absolutely impossible to detect as it does exactly the same thing a “high skilled” player could do with the press of only 1 key for a combo.
It’s that regularity that makes macros detectable. A skilled player can surely press keys fast but no human can consistently press a series of keys in exactly the same order everytime and with the exact same delay between one key and the other.
Let’s say you are a skilled player and you press 5 buttons in 1 second and let’s call these keys A B C D E. One time you will hit A at 0.0 seconds, B at 0.3, C at 0.4, D at 0.8 and E at 1.0 and it will change everytime you redo it. If instead you run a macro it will look like A at 0.0, B at 0.25, C at 0.50, D at 0.75 and E at 1.0
I hope it makes sense
I used to run macros for a game that was utterly unplayable without 40 keys..
You can code the macros to have different times..
That’s how bots do it…
Code from Programs like Autohotkey or autoit is almost undetectable if done right..
um, a macro is not impossible to detect. Like I stated above, most macro devices need support to work entirely smoothly.
Currently gmail will disable any account that attempts to spam emails too fast. Considering the vast number of email accounts they hold I would think they just use a simple, but very effective filter. I would dare say a-net probably has the means to detect when multiple inputs are being done in near inhuman time. However, also as stated above, there is nothing to stop a player from assigning numerous hotkeys to an entire row of keys and just pressing the keys in order as fast as possible so they fire as quickly as the precast/aftercast allows. With timing and practice a player could in theory execute very fast chains on solo targets, but would get blitzed anytime they had to react to situations that interrupts the chain.
Logging time between keypresses (In milliseconds) clearly shows if you’re using a macro for a certain combo or not cause most macro programs, expec those integrated into hardware, send keys with fixed delay…3 times with same delay between skills? BAN..humans can’t replicate 0.1 sec range delays evey time. Easy and effective. Let’s start with those…then we’ll follow smart ones with random range delays between keys..and something like game guard too to detect every third party program running, closing the game and sending a report to anet..3 reports? You’re done.
um, a macro is not impossible to detect. Like I stated above, most macro devices need support to work entirely smoothly.
Currently gmail will disable any account that attempts to spam emails too fast. Considering the vast number of email accounts they hold I would think they just use a simple, but very effective filter. I would dare say a-net probably has the means to detect when multiple inputs are being done in near inhuman time. However, also as stated above, there is nothing to stop a player from assigning numerous hotkeys to an entire row of keys and just pressing the keys in order as fast as possible so they fire as quickly as the precast/aftercast allows. With timing and practice a player could in theory execute very fast chains on solo targets, but would get blitzed anytime they had to react to situations that interrupts the chain.
You seem not to understand the concept of “macro”. It’s not faster than we could human possibly doing it, it’s more regular and reliable. It’s absolutely impossible to detect as it does exactly the same thing a “high skilled” player could do with the press of only 1 key for a combo. Recent keyboards and mice permit to program macros, and they work if you had the right delays after each skill. It doesn’t need any support from the game, it’s low-level imput done by the keyboard/mice.
In fact, via statistical analysis it is trivial to detect a “dumb” macro that does not attempt to fake human behavior. A simple macro will always have almost exactly same timing between the inputs. The smarter cheat macros however, attempt to mimic the slight randomness of normal input.
and something like game guard too to detect every third party program running
That’s useless as it’s not difficult to hide these programs.
The only real way to fix this issue is to design the game so that spammy combos are just not very effective.
I have a macro mouse. I use it 1 key 1 binding.
However under the settings there is a randomise option. So I can set
E.G.
A -> B -> C -> D
A 0 – 300ms -> B 300ms – 600ms etc
So each time I used the macro the key press would be different.
If you really wanted to easily get a burst combo on ele you would just bind F2 2 and 7 8 to qwer
Then tap qwer to fire the combo qwer
qwer
qwer
qwer
qwer
and that’s on a crappy keyboard.
So 4, mouse 5, qwer
earthquake, lightning flash, air attunement, air 2, arcane wave, arcane blast.
4qwer
4qwer
4qwer
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