[POLICY] Macro Limitations

Discussion in 'Empire Help & Support' started by Krysyy, Jul 15, 2016.

  1. I am not directly replying to you, and you alone in any way shape or form. Just your latest comment gave me some ideas so I went with it to reply.

    ~~~~
    I timed how long it took to craft 36 stacks of melons into 4 stacks of melon blocks manually and macro-ly?...

    I did this in SP, so no break da rules

    Manual: 27 seconds (probably can subtract between 3-7 seconds as I spaced out and my fingers weren't moving like they usually do (was thinking about a show I was watching of all things to think about while testing a mechanic lol!))

    Macro: 2-3 (around 2.5) seconds.

    Now, thats a large difference! Do you know why it takes so much less time with macros? It is mostly because you dont have to shift click another 9 stacks into the hot bar each time. I do believe this is the reason staff now allow one stack at a time per-say. I can see why it was changed, while still disagreeing with the whole thing.

    I've since removed macros (its on another profile in my launcher) and just run Optifine now. I only ran macros to craft melons and man is that no fun to do manually (cant write scripts for the life of me, bummed the script I used off a fellow player lol) especially when your 80DCs fill in a few hours time.

    Now what was I talking about, I have no idea. None of this probably makes sense lol. Gonna go back to that show, it took me alot longer to type this than it should have. :rolleyes:
    Uber_Corq and JesusPower2 like this.
  2. I have just opened up a poll for my suggestion and would appreciate if everyone could take a few minutes to vote on it! Thanks so much.
    JDHallows and JesusPower2 like this.
  3. To be clear, there's no "new rules", as Krysyy said:
    ----------
    Your DC doesn't fetch more money, but you do, because the spare time is used to gather more ingots. The non-macro-user has a DC but the macro-user has more than a DC. Time is money.

    ----------
    While I get that alts can be a whole other problem if they're used simultaneously, they are at least "Vanilla" and have nothing to do with mods. It's probably easier to argue in favour of alts, and I wouldn't exactly say it's hypocritical to accept only one. I don't know though; that's really another conversation altogether.
  4. That seems odd to me, though. What I knew, is that you should not be afk while using macros, and you should not do things that would be unachievable by a player playing without the macros mod. However, crafting an entire chest of melons into melon blocks is perfectly achievable by a player playing without the macros mod, and before this thread I've never seen any mention of the "1 stack output" rule.
  5. Yes, alts can give an advantage economically. I have a job and other responsibilities. Someone that doesn't have a job or school and can play 10 hours a day, unlike myself, have an advantage too. So many ways to get an "advantage". But the beauty of this server is you are talking about getting rupees. I played this server 9 months without giving a hoot about rupees. If I wanted cobble I mined it. If I wanted carrots I grew them. I built things, I mined things, I farmed things, and it was a lot of fun. Just saying rupees aren't everything and if you are a slave to them you will burn out. It's happened to me before.

    I do agree that if mods are going to be allowed that staff should support players getting them. And I think that includes providing the ever elusive scripts. At least for me they are.
    607, JDHallows and ThaKloned like this.
  6. My opinion about this has changed a lot while reading this thread. I personally do not use the Macro mod, however I do have an auto-crafting mod installed that was approved by Chickeneer (now with a note by it that gives certain restrictions). This mod is very fast, only requiring shift-clicking once to craft everything of a certain item. It was instant, completing the action in under a second, much faster than the macros I have seen here. Previously, during 1.8, there was a different auto-crafting mod that was not as fast, but could also very quickly craft a lot of specified items.

    Using mods to gain an advantage over other players has been against the rules for a long time. However, I always thought of this as Xray mods or fly hacks, not an autocraft mod that made my Minecraft life a little bit easier. After reading this thread, I understand why this change is necessary, that it does give players a strong advantage.

    I believe that Krysyy and Aikar gave us a compromise that everyone could be happy with. They could easily tell us that the Macro mod and the auto-crafting mods are banned, and not have to deal with any of these issues. Instead, they said we could continue to use them, just with some limits. Will people try to hit those limits exactly, to get the best output they can? Yes. Will some people exceed these limits by just enough to make a difference, but not enough to really get caught? Yes. However, that doesn't matter because the goal was still accomplished: the playing field is more fair now.

    You both have made some strong cases against the macro mod and similar mods. However, I believe that making them illegal is shortsighted, and does not consider that similar advantages already exist in-game. There are two things that stick out in my mind that could use the same argument you both have given: alts and redstone.

    Alts were already mentioned earlier in this thread, but I wanted to bring them up again because its a good point. A large portion of our player base is young, and do not have a lot of disposable income at their disposal. In addition, for some the money they do have is controlled by their parents, who may not let them use their money to buy another Minecraft account. To a parent that doesn't play Minecraft, that would seem absurd. This means that only the economically privileged or those that work could purchase multiple accounts. And at $27 USD each (thats how much mine costed me), they are not cheap either.

    I have my main account, 1 alt, and I use my 2 brothers accounts as "alts" because they rarely play on EMC. I know many players in game that have many accounts, and I know a few players that have more than 10. We all know the value of promos on this server, so if ever there was an unfair advantage, that is it. That there are players who can get 10 free promos every time they come out. That these people get the voting rewards 10 times over. That these people can use these accounts to run 10 automatic farms across EMC simultaneously. This is not vanilla gameplay, because Mojang never intended this when they created the game. However, this is the way the game works, and alts are used extensively across not just EMC, but many Minecraft servers, and even SP.

    Redstone on the other hand is vanilla, obviously. Mojang included it in game to allow people to automate tasks. I have a melon and a pumpkin farm, each 20 levels tall. They are fully automatic using pistons to break the blocks, and require no input from me at all. As long as I am near or on the res, they are constantly working. However I know people who grow all their crops by hand, they plant them, watch them grow, then harvest them. Obviously they would never be able to keep up with my production rate, and my farm gives me a strong advantage. I can sell melon blocks for a few rupees, and restock them consistently. Or trade DCs of pumpkins and melons for emeralds and get DCs of emeralds in a much shorter time span because of my faster production (without any mods of course).

    Should I be forced to remove my farms because the local community can't compete? The other players could build these farms, and keep up. But perhaps they don't want to, or they don't know redstone enough to be able to build it. There are videos on YouTube that show you how to build these farms. But they should not have to build these huge farms, using tons of their resources, just to stay economically competitive.

    Obviously alts and redstone are never going to be removed from EMC, this was all satire. However, we have to know where to draw the line, and I believe that Aikar and Krysyy just drew that line for us. It will take some time for these changes to make a difference, but overall its a good compromise and will help the EMC player base in the long run.
  7. We'll have to agree that we differ on this subject and I respect your opinion on it.

    I'm guilty of using this macro in the wrong way like many others. I used it to trade crops for emeralds for hours, craft items that normally took a lot of time, etc. I was always at my PC for this but still was not intended. For the last few months I've only really used it to block iron, redstone dust etc. I've adjusted to the more clear rules and have no issue with that. I guess before I used it I could have asked about it, if what I was using it for was ok. I didn't. I just assumed it was ok because the mod itself was approved. That's on me. Apologies to anything who thinks I got an unfair advantage.

    I recently had a convo with Krysyy about something else that I wondered if it was allowed. We worked it out and now I'm clear on that subject. Same goes with this thread. Had it not been posted I would not have known.

    Bottom line is we know what our limits are and we have to work with them or risk trouble.
  8. Does anyone want to share some examples of macro scripts they use?
  9. Calling this rule "ridiculous" is not called for, and is false. I don't ever consider any sort of mod except optitine legit gameplay, so macros are already cheating to me, but that's just my opinion. As Krysyy has stated, crafting entire inventories at a time into block form is not something that can be done by hand, and is then cheating. Crafting is part of the game, and solutions can include but are not limited to a) get over it, b) pay someone else to do it, or c) cheat; option C is disallowed on EMC.

    Another thing, accusing administrators of making "dumb" rules just because they "don't use" macros? If Krysyy and Aikar use them or not, they both seem to know much about them, and that is as good as using them.
  10. I get what you're saying, and I agree that alts and redstone can be used to gain an economical advantage, for sure. However, no one ever made the rule that you can't use Vanilla game mechanics (aside from actual bugs) to gain an advantage over other players. They did say that you can't do this with mods. That is the fundamental difference. Some people use 10 accounts and get 10 of each promo every time, which is ridiculous, but it's not a mod.

    I use enchanted diamond armour when I go hunting to gain an advantage over the monsters. I also have an advantage over those with only iron armour. Is that an unfair one? What if I also used Kill Aura, is that advantage now unfair?

    I shoot creepers from a distance. I light up dark areas. I use a boat to cross water. I cook my meat. It's a video game where you go from being naked and weak to top of the food chain. The whole point is to gain advantages over the world (and over other players in MP).

    Redstone is just another thing you use to gain an advantage, in the Vanilla game, and that's fine. That's what the game is. The macro mod is not part of the game. It's a modification, a "hack", if you will. An advantage becomes "unfair" when it is achieved through means not included/intended in the Vanilla game. That's how I see it, anyway.
    ShelLuser, Zrugite, MatthewDA and 4 others like this.
  11. Would it be legal to slow down a script that requires one key press to the speed of a manual craft/trade? With my current knowledge of scripts (I have been using the macro mod for almost two months now, and I have never got into learning anything about scripts), I would need 12 different key binds to craft an entire inventory of paper. It gets more complicated with villager trading. :confused:
  12. I interpreted the wording to mean, "press 1 key and get at most 1 stacks of paper," and it's OK to press the same key each time. So one key to craft a stack of paper...one key to execute one trade. I could have misinterpreted though.
    ScufIsAOriginal and ThaKloned like this.
  13. I did a basic analysis of the paper-crafting script I have, and it uses slots. If the script crafted paper using slots 3, 4, and 5, it would craft three stacks of paper. I would need another script to craft paper using slots 6, 7, and 8, and another one for 9, 10, and 11, and so on. I have no idea how to craft an inventory of sugar cane into paper using one key multiple times... there may be a way, but I don't know it. The same thing applies with the villager trading script.
    ScufIsAOriginal and JesusPower2 like this.
  14. Oh, I see! Yes, it's three stacks of paper output for three stacks of cane input in this case.

    Though it's still one "shift-click" of output for a player, and I think the intent was one key press = one shift-click crafting. So in my opinion this would still be allowed. I could be wrong though! You should PM Krysyy to check. :)
    ScufIsAOriginal likes this.
  15. I am not arguing against alts. I am just pointing out that almost everyone supports having alts and having one AFK at an automatic farm while the other is being controlled, but they have issues with automatic crafting. IMO its a double standard.

    It could also be argued that using alts is not vanilla because it allows one person to be in two places at once. Vanilla or not though, using alts allows you to gain an economic advantage strictly related to time that is far greater than any legal macro.

    An opinion cannot be false.
    That is a personal problem. Also, you should know that, in your opinion, many of the staff members are cheating.
    This statement clearly shows that you don't have a clue what macros are. It is not like with the click of a button the entire inventory is crafted. It still takes time, and the crafting process is the exact same as if you were doing it by hand, except the script does the monotonous clicking.
    I suggest that you pursue option a) about macros, as you do not know how they work.
    No it is not. I do not think that they (collectively) know much about macros. Yes, aikar is a developer and Krysyy has been a staff member long enough to know what a macro IS, but not necessarily enough about the usage of them to apply a blanket statement on a diverse community.
  16. Add this line to the beginning of your script. This line will prompt you to press Enter 3 times. Problem solved
    $$?($$[2]($$[3]));
    Problem solved.
    willies952002 and TomvanWijnen like this.
  17. Actually, yes you can. One click all inventory.
  18. We know how they work and we know how script works. Our staff utilizes them to an extent and is being reminded just as the rest of the community is. The point behind this clarification was to remind the players that there are limits to macro usage in order to keep things from becoming OP. If it takes you 20 hours to manually do something and you have a button that lets you do it in 2 hours, then you have an 18 hour gameplay advantage over another player that does not have the mod, which is OP. This clarification is preferential to other changes that require code in order to finally prevent AFK macro abuse. However, code takes more time than a simple reminder, so we started with reminder and honor code system.

    If we continue having issues with players abusing macros/scripts while not present on that account, then we will take further action to prevent the issue at the root in the code and how AFK limitations are currently set.

    Note: Being present on a separate alt account of yours while the macro is running on your alt is NOT allowed regardless of your ability to respond. I've had a few questions about this and wanted to clarify it as well. You cannot legitimately play on multiple accounts simultaneously so if we see you auto-clicking on one, while your other account is playing normally, you will be messaged about your abuse of afk clicking because you are 'afk' on your alt account while interacting with the world. This does not affect just standing around, only when you are interacting with the world.
  19. Can I get an answer on this please. I don't want to use it then get in trouble.
  20. Yes, that would be fine as long as all other conditions are met.
    WitherDoggie likes this.