Guild Wars 2

I have come across a 3rd party program that allows visible health bars near players (instead of the upper left hand corner)

I have been dying for something like this and neeeed it. Any information I found never outright says its right or wrong.

If I use this and become “tagged” what is the chance I could get a successful appeal?
Anyone using this have anyhting pop up yet?

I know the whole “just don’t use it”, but I would like to know that if its something wrong that wasn’t 100% clear in TOS I deserve to at least state my case and vow to never use it again.

It’s just there is no way for them to tell what this 3rd party program is doing? So telling the truth is pretty much wasted time?

This is something Anet should’ve implemented a long time ago when they introduced the druid. kitten often seems to be the case, they fail to understand what many of their players need.

Cinnamon Toast King.3062:

I have come across a 3rd party program that allows visible health bars near players (instead of the upper left hand corner)

I have been dying for something like this and neeeed it. Any information I found never outright says its right or wrong.

The ToS helpfully tell us that all third party modifications are forbidden, unless they are explicitly permitted. We also have, thanks to the recent AMA and other reddit discussion, an acknowledgement that it is OK to show combat data (eg: damage done, taken, healing done, taken), but that it is absolutely NOT OK to go beyond that right now.

That means that this is not acceptable. It’s not in the scope of “display current or historical ‘combat information’ available to the client”, in the sense that the health of other players (or NPCs) is not part of your damage done or taken.

See also arcdps pulling target health numbers from the meter to comply with these rules.

Cinnamon Toast King.3062:

If I use this and become “tagged” what is the chance I could get a successful appeal?
Anyone using this have anyhting pop up yet?

I know the whole “just don’t use it”, but I would like to know that if its something wrong that wasn’t 100% clear in TOS I deserve to at least state my case and vow to never use it again.

It is one hundred percent clear that this is a violation of the terms of service for GW2.

Cinnamon Toast King.3062:

It’s just there is no way for them to tell what this 3rd party program is doing?

Yes, there is absolutely no (reasonable) way for anet to see what a third party tool is doing with the data it reads from memory. They can see some things, such as what requests the tool makes via the network, etc, but they can’t see what is done with “passively” received data.

Cinnamon Toast King.3062:

So telling the truth is pretty much wasted time?

Telling the truth is not a waste of time. On the other hand, telling the truth will not save you in a situation where there is a clear and unambiguous answer to the question “can I be banned for using this third party software”.

(…and that is doubly true when you demonstrate that you asked and got told that.)

PS: when I say there is no reasonable way, what I mean is that it is not technically impossible for anet to determine what the code is doing by, eg, reverse engineering it, or capturing video of your screen, or whatever.

It’s just a degree of time, effort, and other investment that they are absolutely not going to make, even if it “could” be done, because it is not practical … not to mention the risks associated with, oh, “yeah, we capture full screen video of everything displayed on your computer”, or whatever.

PPS: I’m not expressing my personal opinion about the question of should this be permitted here, just about is this permitted. Don’t conflate the two.

Thank you your answer and I completely understand where you are coming from and that this is just facts not opinion. Which I thank you very much for! I was worried people may take my post wrong when I was really trying to get a very clear understanding.

So again thank you.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

That means that this is not acceptable. It’s not in the scope of “display current or historical ‘combat information’ available to the client”, in the sense that the health of other players (or NPCs) is not part of your damage done or taken.

See also arcdps pulling target health numbers from the meter to comply with these rules.

If we are allowed to know healing and damage done its just simple adding and subtracting essentially.

So if I am not mistaken its the method of knowing the total health which is bad?

Also I don’t quite understand the the quote in bold and underlined.

^The creators of the app ‘Arcdps’ had to change their program by removing health numbers to comply with the rules stated above.

Cinnamon Toast King.3062:

So if I am not mistaken its the method of knowing the total health which is bad?

Yes. If you’re solely looking at the in-game combat log, you can’t determine the exact health of your target. They’re only allowing the use of data that is normally available. They should have never officially allowed memory reading. Their combat log is just so bad they probably couldn’t implement the basic option of dumping it to a text file.

The other problem with the health bars is that it was more than just health bars, it was a basic radar implementation. To make it legal, everyone would need to be running the app to share their own information with each other.

So if some how it was limited to only your party everything would be good? Which is till against TOS even though they are in a party that information is known?

Again thank you guys for the amazing responses and I think this will be the last question.

Cinnamon Toast King.3062:

So if some how it was limited to only your party everything would be good? Which is till against TOS even though they are in a party that information is known?

Again thank you guys for the amazing responses and I think this will be the last question.

The reason (as I understand it, and keep in mind I’m talking for someone else here) is that this information isn’t normally available. Like, damage you do: available. Amount of health of target: not available.

That’s the difference that caused that one little feature to be pulled. Same deal as “exact unit distance to target”, which got pulled ages back for the same sort of reason.

(…and, in part, I think target health was probably in a grey “probably ok” bucket, until it turned out that some meters were really pushing boundaries, and things got a little more black and white in response. but that’s just speculation on my part.)

Anyway, the other thing is that arcdps now only shows people in a group with you, because that was identified by the anet team as a high enough degree of “consent” to being measured. There are lots of valid arguments on either side of that, but that’s what WoW does, and that’s a pretty solid standard to shoot for, given their position in the market.

At the end of the day, though, even the most concrete thing here is basically anet trying an experiment where they relax the rules a bit, and see how things go right and wrong, and try to work together with the community to do something that folks want, but they can’t build internally.

So … don’t take any of this as concrete or forever. If things don’t work out, DPS meters might go back to being banned, or whatever, because the experiment failed. It’s just … try not to abuse things, try to play with the spirit of the permission — that is, only showing your (groups) DPS and history of DPS — and you should be ok.

I doubt ArenaNet would have a problem with showing the health bars of your own party. The problem is with using it to mark every possible target on screen, which is a common cheat found in various games to quickly identify priority targets or see through walls, stealth, etc.

To make it legal, you can use the open mumble data to gather positional data and have each client communicate it with each other. Health can either be calculated by pixel reading or through the combat log. Reading it from memory is simply a convenience.

The health bars we’re talking about here are for healing purposes, as in seeing the health of allies ONLY, not to see the health bar of your enemies.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

PS: when I say there is no reasonable way, what I mean is that it is not technically impossible for anet to determine what the code is doing by, eg, reverse engineering it, or capturing video of your screen, or whatever.

I’ll expand on that with info I know
If one day Anet decided to go on a witch-hunt for the non-ToS compliant “DPS meters” out there, they’d be able to figure out who’s running the proper ones and who’s not.

As far as I know, through interactions with the developer of Arcdps, Anet developers can pull information about the .dll files since each of these carry the ‘build info’ within it. The developers can match that info with the ones in each of the developer’s website and find out whether you’re in compliance or not.
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Since there was such a large response and tension as a result of recent events, the best course of action would be to stay on the safe side: stay in compliance and strictly have the ToS compliant meters installed.

As SlippyCheeze said, we got the privilege of using them as tools, but Anet can simply turn around and reverse that decision in an instant if it becomes abused by many.

OGDeadHead.8326:

The health bars we’re talking about here are for healing purposes, as in seeing the health of allies ONLY, not to see the health bar of your enemies.

Yes, that’s one of the purposes that the health bars have. However, its purpose isn’t exclusive to that. As a matter of fact, these health bars can be used (and abused) in other content since you’re seeing beyond what was originally intended.

Keep this in mind: DPS meters were allowed as they provided combat metrics to the user on which they could act upon sometime down the future; modified health bars provide you an instant advantage over others that don’t use it as it’s giving you the opportunity to act upon something immediately.

Posted by a dev a few days ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/66m13h/anet_this_really_should_be_part_of_the_game/dgjutww/

I understand this isn’t going to be a popular opinion, as those that like more viability in their UI will no doubt enjoy the addition. However, taking the initiative yourself to make a post saying that “this is what ANET should do” to garner support for a feature you know is in violation of the rules is going to attract my attention.

While I understand your opinion on this matter, that does not make it OK to push development of a “DPS Meter” to include features that clearly reach beyond the interpretation of “combat data” or even a DPS Meter. Combat data was defined as any data that is generated via combat, and player health pools (or other features that remain hidden inside your “DPS Meter”) do not fall under that and I was very clear.

This is exactly why I chose not to endorse or say any specific tool was “OK”, because further development was likely to reach beyond it’s scope originally.

Your tool isn’t in compliance, and hasn’t been for some time. I’m not going to warn you any further.

Edit for note to users: I get it. I really do, as someone who had 59 billion addons for WoW and authored my own, I get it. The problem here is that we can’t control the functionality and can’t audit every change made. These tools evolve based on their creators, and we see that here. You are using them at your own risk, and while Bhagawan’s site says “BGDM is officially allowed by ANET!”, you can’t always trust that. There’s no telling what gets pushed by closed source programs like this. Be careful.

Your account’s aren’t at risk right now, I fault the tool creator on this one, not his users.

Further in the thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/66m13h/anet_this_really_should_be_part_of_the_game/dgjwapj/

Good questions here, but nothing I haven’t already answered. I’ll go ahead and rebump previous info given out here.

ArenaNet authorizes the use and development of 3rd Party tools under the banner of a “DPS Meter”. “DPS Meters” is defined as the collection and processing of combat related data in order to develop a statistical and visual representation of that data. This combat data maybe collected from anyone inside of your immediate social group. Social groups are defined as including the player character, and current party and/or squad.

Combat data does not include current entity status, including current Buffs/Debuffs/Health/Stats/Location or any other data that is not generated due to the usage of skills or impact on player characters due to skill usage (by the PC/s or an outside source).

The collection and processing of data in the client must be limited to the scope of the “DPS meter” and should not exceed it. Visualization of this data must also limited to the scope of the “DPS Meter” which includes visualizations, logging, and processing/visualization of logging.

The bolded part repeated: Combat data was defined as any data that is generated via combat, —>and player health pools (or other features that remain hidden inside your “DPS Meter”) do not fall under that and I was very clear.<--

The answer to the OP’s question is officially “NO”, from the looks of things.

Well, there you have it…quite explicitly.

Something to bookmark for future reference. Thanks for the information.

AngelArchangel.2106:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

PS: when I say there is no reasonable way, what I mean is that it is not technically impossible for anet to determine what the code is doing by, eg, reverse engineering it, or capturing video of your screen, or whatever.

I’ll expand on that with info I know
If one day Anet decided to go on a witch-hunt for the non-ToS compliant “DPS meters” out there, they’d be able to figure out who’s running the proper ones and who’s not.

As far as I know, through interactions with the developer of Arcdps, Anet developers can pull information about the .dll files since each of these carry the ‘build info’ within it. The developers can match that info with the ones in each of the developer’s website and find out whether you’re in compliance or not.

Nit: calling it a “witch-hunt” is pretty opinionated, and I’ll say this: regardless of if you agree with their position or not, anet set the terms for playing their game, and it wouldn’t be an unfair persecution of anyone to enforce those.

Anyway, it is possible that anet could pull build information from the DLL, identify it, etc. That hopefully means they will do that, compare behaviour, and so on.

Unfortunately, in some cases — notably, not arcdps, since deltaconnected is being really solid about this stuff — there is only a configuration difference between “good” and “bad” behaviour in the tool, or it includes the non-compliant features by default.

That means that it is not that simple in practice … and even if it is that simple, that only lasts until someone publishes “how to hex-edit the build info to look compliant” somewhere on the web … at which point the whole game is blown, until you start looking at secure hashing over the content of the file, and that whole arms race … which costs anet more and more.

eg: if this becomes an arms race, anet juts blanket ban this stuff, because it’s a losing game.

I read that topic on reddit, and the reply from Chris made sense,

However the problem now is that more and more people are using the 3rd party ap, as some parts of it are ok, and some are not ( boarder line ) the issue is that someone who doesn’t follow the forums/reddit/ dev comments, who say only happened to watch a youtube video from a top GW2 streamer, who recently said it was OK to use,

So with more and more people using it, if anet decide to change there mind on the app, will they give a statement saying that from xx day you cannot use it, or just go with plan B and go, WHAM blanket ban for those using it.

I wouldn’t mind trying out the app to show my DPS and stats or my team so that we know where to improve/change things up, but I wont even download it if it means that my account could be at risk at a minutes notice.

Im hoping that in a future expansion Anet will have the resources to have this type of thing ingame, even if its just for certain bosses/raids/fractals so that teams can monitor there damage etc, this way it removes the need for 3rd party, I think the person who made it said they had 16k downloads that week and 2k players using it at any one given time, this has probably increased since then.