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On December 28 2010 22:31 branflakes14 wrote: If Blizzard are endorsing products that allow violations of the ToS to occur, then what the fuck. What do you even say to that?
It's not the product, it's how you use it.
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On December 28 2010 22:33 Numy wrote:Show nested quote +On December 28 2010 22:31 branflakes14 wrote: If Blizzard are endorsing products that allow violations of the ToS to occur, then what the fuck. What do you even say to that? It's not the product, it's how you use it.
One of the 3 big bulletpointed advertising points of the Marauder keyboard is "On-The-Fly Macro Recording allows for Effortless Configuration". As much as it's still a case of how people use it, it's still a bit silly.
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You can rebind whatever you like as long as 1 button isn't doing more than 1 action. So one button casting is fine? After all it's one button, one spell.
Turning certain spells into "global" actions that don't change your unit selection must be okay too, because it's one button, one spell.
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Wow you guys are really rigid in your views. It can't be cheating if Blizzard endorses it. If they ban him, they'd have to unban him as soon as he complains because he's doing what they TOLD him he could do. I'm pretty sure he could complain to the some form of agency if they did ban him because it would be a violation of his rights in terms of being sold a product that can't do what its advertised to do.
Lastly, my own opinion, but macros really aren't that bad. It makes the game easier, and therefore should in turn make the game more interesting because players can invest more time into things like micro.
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On December 28 2010 22:25 Numy wrote:Show nested quote +On December 28 2010 11:24 chessiecat wrote: Blizzard hasn't made any sort of statement regarding this and their SC2 peripherals as of yet. I've been hunting around for one but to date I am just not seeing anything.
If you can actually point me to someone on the Blizzard website and from Blizzard saying that these products are not for use with the game on ladder, it would be mightily appreciated. I'm going to edit the original post. Blizzard actually stated that you can't have 1 button doing more than one action. You can rebind whatever you like as long as 1 button isn't doing more than 1 action. Stop cheating.
See, this is another one of these posts. Where did Blizzard say this? I want you to post it for me. I will require a place in the Terms of Service where it states that, despite being released, endorsed, advertised, and expressly encouraged for use by Blizzard...the program included with the Marauder Keyboard and Spectre mouse is cheating and is a ban-able offense.
I've been over the Terms of Service for Starcraft. They DO NOT make any mention of macro's. They mention bots, yes and most specifically third party software not endorsed or licensed by Blizzard. The software included with the peripherals is endorsed and licensed by Blizzard. It has a GIANT 'Licensed By Blizzard' sticker right on the box and another on the program itself.
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For the record, the idea of using a feature of a licensed peripheral getting you banned is nothing new, but the enforcement is usually pretty difficult. I just need to point to "turbo" controllers on Xbox Live as an example.
Regardless of whether or not you'll get banned for it, if you ever decide to compete outside of the Battle.net you'll be, at the very least, disqualified, so I'd advise against it. Furthermore, it's not so ridiculous that Blizzard has licensed a product that allows macros if they don't allow their use in their games. Making a "gaming" keyboard/mouse combo that didn't allow macros would be ridiculous.
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I think this just shows one of the inherent characteristics in the Starcraft 2 community. Because there's so much interaction between Blizzard and all the players, everyone feels so privileged and that because they bought the game, they have the right to dictate how it should be played. This was mostly in terms of balance, but now even with hardware setups? Honestly, I don't see the sense in "If I want to play the game as well as you do I have buy or install a 3rd party piece of equipment." And there's even people saying, "This game shouldn't be button mashing, I bought this to play a strategy game, not to just click buttons as fast as I can," which is completely the epitome of the self-deserving, new-age Starcraft 2 player.
I was a shitty Brood War player, about a D+ Terran, but when I played there was no talk about imbalance or macros or whatever. People just took the game as it was, and when someone on the forums would complain about some sort of imbalance, everyone would laugh at them and tell them to macro better, and then the thread would be locked. </When I was your age>
That said, I don't think macros are that big a deal. It might get a Bronze player into the Silver League but similar to building Probes and Pylons, it's not the action that's really the troubling part, it's actually remembering it. Getting this however-many-seconds advantage is undoubtedly useful, and it DOES add up, but I'm not sure how many replays of these people that you'd see that clearly show, "Oh yeah he TOTALLY won because his larvae inject was faster and he didn't have to click as many buttons." That inherent RTS sense that's there from playing tons of games and analyzing your own replays won't be there. But still, they shouldn't be used.
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On December 28 2010 23:01 chessiecat wrote:Show nested quote +On December 28 2010 22:25 Numy wrote:On December 28 2010 11:24 chessiecat wrote: Blizzard hasn't made any sort of statement regarding this and their SC2 peripherals as of yet. I've been hunting around for one but to date I am just not seeing anything.
If you can actually point me to someone on the Blizzard website and from Blizzard saying that these products are not for use with the game on ladder, it would be mightily appreciated. I'm going to edit the original post. Blizzard actually stated that you can't have 1 button doing more than one action. You can rebind whatever you like as long as 1 button isn't doing more than 1 action. Stop cheating. See, this is another one of these posts. Where did Blizzard say this? I want you to post it for me. I will require a place in the Terms of Service where it states that, despite being released, endorsed, advertised, and expressly encouraged for use by Blizzard...the program included with the Marauder Keyboard and Spectre mouse is cheating and is a ban-able offense. I've been over the Terms of Service for Starcraft. They DO NOT make any mention of macro's. They mention bots, yes and most specifically third party software not endorsed or licensed by Blizzard. The software included with the peripherals is endorsed and licensed by Blizzard. It has a GIANT 'Licensed By Blizzard' sticker right on the box and another on the program itself.
Was a blue post stating this I believe, was some time ago. Go look, if everyone is saying that they said it surely it's YOU who should be looking? Or better yet go submit a query.
Stop trying to justify cheating, it's just saddening.
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On December 28 2010 23:24 Animostas wrote: I think this just shows one of the inherent characteristics in the Starcraft 2 community. Because there's so much interaction between Blizzard and all the players, everyone feels so privileged and that because they bought the game, they have the right to dictate how it should be played. This was mostly in terms of balance, but now even with hardware setups? Honestly, I don't see the sense in "If I want to play the game as well as you do I have buy or install a 3rd party piece of equipment." And there's even people saying, "This game shouldn't be button mashing, I bought this to play a strategy game, not to just click buttons as fast as I can," which is completely the epitome of the self-deserving, new-age Starcraft 2 player.
I was a shitty Brood War player, about a D+ Terran, but when I played there was no talk about imbalance or macros or whatever. People just took the game as it was, and when someone on the forums would complain about some sort of imbalance, everyone would laugh at them and tell them to macro better, and then the thread would be locked. </When I was your age>
That said, I don't think macros are that big a deal. It might get a Bronze player into the Silver League but similar to building Probes and Pylons, it's not the action that's really the troubling part, it's actually remembering it. Getting this however-many-seconds advantage is undoubtedly useful, and it DOES add up, but I'm not sure how many replays of these people that you'd see that clearly show, "Oh yeah he TOTALLY won because his larvae inject was faster and he didn't have to click as many buttons." That inherent RTS sense that's there from playing tons of games and analyzing your own replays won't be there. But still, they shouldn't be used.
in about 15 seconds toying with the macro software that came with my microsoft mouse, i figured out a macro that would build an scv with perfect timing for an entire game.
For Zerg you can do the same thing but for automatic injections, you dont even have to remember to press the button, just start the cycle once your first queen is out. And to resync it for new queens and bases, just press the reset button, get all queens in place, then click go.
This is obviously a huge advantage.
Just because you can't imagine a scenario of this type of software being abused "properly" doesn't mean such a scenario doesn't exist...
Infact of all the races i think Z would be the easiest to "macro" the macro.. if you know what I mean.
Since they don't need to place buildings for supply, it's possible to completely automate an entire opener like a roach rush, You'd have to to create hotkey setup per map for gas placement, but its still very possible and highly abusable.
"Click here to download 4gate macro - Guaranteed to get you to diamond!"
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On December 28 2010 23:35 ProtossGirl wrote:Show nested quote +On December 28 2010 23:24 Animostas wrote: I think this just shows one of the inherent characteristics in the Starcraft 2 community. Because there's so much interaction between Blizzard and all the players, everyone feels so privileged and that because they bought the game, they have the right to dictate how it should be played. This was mostly in terms of balance, but now even with hardware setups? Honestly, I don't see the sense in "If I want to play the game as well as you do I have buy or install a 3rd party piece of equipment." And there's even people saying, "This game shouldn't be button mashing, I bought this to play a strategy game, not to just click buttons as fast as I can," which is completely the epitome of the self-deserving, new-age Starcraft 2 player.
I was a shitty Brood War player, about a D+ Terran, but when I played there was no talk about imbalance or macros or whatever. People just took the game as it was, and when someone on the forums would complain about some sort of imbalance, everyone would laugh at them and tell them to macro better, and then the thread would be locked. </When I was your age>
That said, I don't think macros are that big a deal. It might get a Bronze player into the Silver League but similar to building Probes and Pylons, it's not the action that's really the troubling part, it's actually remembering it. Getting this however-many-seconds advantage is undoubtedly useful, and it DOES add up, but I'm not sure how many replays of these people that you'd see that clearly show, "Oh yeah he TOTALLY won because his larvae inject was faster and he didn't have to click as many buttons." That inherent RTS sense that's there from playing tons of games and analyzing your own replays won't be there. But still, they shouldn't be used. in about 15 seconds toying with the macro software that came with my microsoft mouse, i figured out a macro that would build an scv with perfect timing for an entire game. For Zerg you can do the same thing but for automatic injections, you dont even have to remember to press the button, just start the cycle once your first queen is out. And to resync it for new queens and bases, just press the reset button, get all queens in place, then click go. This is obviously a huge advantage. Just because you can't imagine a scenario of this type of software being abused "properly" doesn't mean such a scenario doesn't exist... Infact of all the races i think Z would be the easiest to "macro" the macro.. if you know what I mean. Since they don't need to place buildings for supply, it's possible to completely automate an entire opener like a roach rush, You'd have to to create hotkey setup per map for gas placement, but its still very possible and highly abusable. "Click here to download 4gate macro - Guaranteed to get you to diamond!"
...Oh shit yeah I didn't realize it could be that bad. That's just ridiculous then. -_- The fact that people are trying to justify that is insane.
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I've been messing with the macro program that comes with the Spectre since I got it. I can tell you flat out that this guy is lying his tail off and exaggerating the actual functionality of the software. It is prone to mis-clicks, missed injections, crashing when too many commands are issued, and all manner of other issues.
Thank you Numy...because surely, I would not have posted this without hunting through the forums and Terms of service. I have also said, pretty straightforwardly, that I haven't used these macro's in a ladder game yet. You can check my profile on the Blizzard website if you want to. I don't ladder very often and the games are dated. I think my win:loss ratio would be significantly higher if I were using magical macro buttons to build probes with perfect timing.
I want to use my macro's but I don't want to get banned from the game. I paid 50 bucks for it and I have no desire to get thrown off.
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I don't understand why you would want to be in diamond if you're not actually good enough to be there. Maphacks, macros, whatever... It seems silly. A little pathetic.
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Bottom line is if Blizzard sold the rights for Razer to make the devices- so people are going to use them. It's simply too confusing for the average user to have the company they bought the game from endorse a product and then somehow realize they're not supposed to be using it. Razer makes excellent hardware and Blizzard should either be more clear with the marketing on whats allowed, or not endorse it at all.
Most people are not going to shell out that much money to NOT use the product as advertised. Regardless on your opinions on if it's cheating or not.
Not that I macro, I have a 30 $ target mouse.
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Blizzard didn't just sell the rights to make the product. They helped with the creation and integration of the APM system and the alert system with Starcraft 2.
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Exactly! Even if you think this is cheating then you should be mad with Blizz, not the players. They are the ones avoiding the ToS (if it's even actually stated some macro is against the rules) to make more money.
You can run with the argument its not Blizzards problem how people use the product, but I think it's a bit shallow. If you look at the bottom of the page it says Blizzard licensed product.
http://www2.razerzone.com/sc2/spectre.php
The product is made with the intentioned usage of these "bannable" offenses. The people at Blizzard aren't retarded, they know what Razer does, and how they marketed the product they allowed them create. If there's any problems with confusion on whether or not it's cheating using Razer and Blizzard's products then I say it's Blizzards fault.
If it against the ToS then they shouldn't allow it to be sold with their name one it.
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I can't believe people are seriously trying to justify cheating, obviously in a high level ZvZ having better and fasfter injects CAN and WILL win you more games. Even pro players like darkforce start to slack on their injection after a while, because there are just too many things to do and having a macro that will do the same thing with less button presses can give you a HUGE advantage. Don't straight talk it with "it isn't THAT much of an advantage". SERIOUSLY? Just because you're cheating ( in your opinion ) a LITTLE bit means it's okay? People using macro's are cheating and should be banned.
And saying it's a failing program that misclicks all the time doesn't justify it either.
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Report it then. Get someone from Blizzard to actually get a statement. Post the statement. Seriously, you might get it faster than I will. Who knows? I sent them an e-mail. They'll get back to me eventually.
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As far as I know Blizzard wants one action per keystroke (I don't have a source, but this is all over the WoW boards and I'm sure I saw it on the SC2 boards).
Something a lot of people don't know is that you don't even need a "gaming keyboard" to create advance scripts and macros. With a program called autohotkey you are provided an immense amount of functionality, and this program doesn't require extra hardware. Another thing is that half the time this program provides more functionality and power than most gaming keyboards with custom software do!
Here is the thing, botting is obviously cheating. When your macros get so advance that you don't have to play the game then you're cheating. With some of these programs you can easily make it build a unit every so many seconds and with others you can do that as well as issue click commands so that you can also automate building placement and such. This is very much cheating, and any way you cut it you can't justify using this.
On the other hand I see no reason why a player cant assign his mouse wheel to left click. This pretty much simulates the ability to create a ton of infested terrans in half a second (holding shift to prevent you from having to hit the action hotkey again).
In the end I don't think you can group all of macros into an illegal category and be done with it. Some are obviously worse than others while some are harmless.
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Actually no it doesn't matter what the community thinks. Especially when "the community" is full of people who think RTS skill is about how fast your fingers can spam and not how fast or how well you think.
Seriously take a step back and ask yourself if you think waypoints ruined the game or if SCV's auto mining when rallied to a mineral patch his a bad thing. Dumb mindless clicking is not a good thing, ever. This is a strategy game, not tap tap revenge.
As far as the macros, what matters is what blizzard has said and until someone can show a statement by blizz or some part of the TOS that says using straight macros like these is not allowed then I'd say go ahead and use them.
In WoW blizzard's stance on macros was this: As long as the macros are not making decisions for you then it's okay. You could queue up things like 1->q or s->d, because you're just combining two actions and using those same two actions every time without any decision-making logic. These were actually supported in game. On the other hand anything that moved the mouse or contained conditional or dynamic logic was banned.
I'm not saying their policies on the games are the same, just pointing out that they're not necessarily against macros, and especially since this product is developed in conjunction with blizzard you shouldn't be so quick to dismiss its use.
Edit: Also, I haven't used the products from the OP but as far as I know there's no way to get macros to build SCV's consistently. The best you can do is program it to enter 5->q every 17s, but then if you don't have enough minerals or are supply blocked it waits another 17s to train another SCV.
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Some people really REALLY need to learn to differentiate between macros and bots....IF it's something that automates a process, like say making a scv every 17 seconds, without the requirement of a keypress, Thats a bot and is prohibited.
If it's a system that changes say 1 keypress into 2, thats a macro. A macro is not a bot. If it auto injects without any keypresses. Thats a bot. If it simply makes it so that by pressing button "A" it presses 5->V so you can click on the hatch to inject, thats a macro. That's also ubelievably minor. Actually someone who plays normally would prolly get messed up if they tried to use this macro for the first few days. And you should also realise that a macro like this is still a decision. You remember to inject so you press the button and click the hatch. You save a total of prolly .1 seconds actually.
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