would this kind of "bot" program be legal?

Basic premise is to give simple access to 7 (well, not 7 but 6) heroes. There would be one character logged in 24/7, lets call it "Good Bot"

Player initiates its service by whispering him where he is, i. e. "kaineng eu eng 1", bot will map travel there and invite itself on arrival. Once player who requested its services gets him to party, bot becomes responsive on team channel, to theese commands:
"add (heroname)"
"remove (heroname)"
pinged build (i.e. bot will recognize that player pinged build of his koss and will try to add koss if hes not in team and change his build to pinged one)
"review" bot will ping all hero builds
"dismiss" bot will leave party and return to its default outpost and become ready to serve another player.

Typical usage would be to call bot, set builds and heroes, go to explorable and dismiss bot - player stays alone with 6 heroes which have his builds.

It does not spam or anything, GW would be unmodified as well as connection to server left alone, all it take is to simulate what user gives same task would do, so hardly counts as "evil bot". And service would be free for good of community.

So?

I would say not legal since it allows you to accomplish something by using commands only and not actual gameplay.

LOL, it would be easier to allow 7 heroes...
Like to do thigs complicated dont you?

Anyway, it won't happen. Just find yourself a friend... Is it THAT hard?

id say its against the EULA *ie: bannable.

On the other hand Anet would have a hard time catching you if it was just for personal use (though why be so complicated in that case, just do it manually).

If its for everyone, then its a overly complicated, half "fix" with many many issues.

to many to even start listing.

Say it with me:
It's A.Nets game!

It doesn't matter what we think.
Unless you are hoping somebody from A.Net gives an official view on this - everything is completely futile. And thus should be in the suggestion area.

I wouldent go there............think anet wouldent want to complicate the hole bot situation. All bots are bad.......easy like that.

mzzls

interesting idea, however if the bot is essentialy taking the place of a 2nd person so you can use its heros, as soon as it leaves pty, it would take its heros with it as happens now when someone with heros leaves. (unless they have changed this and ive just never noticed)

And im sure Anet would say its Ilegal as they have a no tolerance for bots policy. Point of a game is to play and have fun, not to have the most money or best equip for the least effort.

*EDIT* I was thinking about someone not zoning into pty in the first place and thus we never got their heros, my bad. Disregard first statement.
Ide still say any bot would be considered illegal though.

As soon as you start asking yourself "is this legal" the chances are that it isn't.

It's much easier to just use a second account with heroes, and invite yourself with the 3 extra heroes you want, then disconnect or map out the alternate, leaving you with 6 heroes. But then, that does cost more money.

I think any program that does what you describe, automatically and without input, would almost certainly result in a ban for the account it was used on.

I don't think it is legal, unless you can get approval from Arena Net. read the user agreement.

Would this kind of murder be legal?........

QFT




-this text is to make my message long enough- >.>

Where'd you get that info?? Heroes NEVER left the party once their player left. People have been "selling" their heroes for missions since day one of Nightfall, although fortunately, it nobody really needs them, so you rarely see people offering heroes anymore.

Sometimes when I'm busy, and a guildie needs help, and nobody responds, I'll offer him/her my heroes. That's great in all places where the henchmen aren't level 20 yet. Otherwise, henchies work fine.

^^ heros stay after another toon leaves until you zone into another area.

say it with me: ALL bots are against the EULA.

Well, you'd have to have a second account anyway since you can't log in 2 characters at the same time to get the bot commanded character to do anything.

Basically you'd have to be logged into 2 accounts at the same time. The second account would have to have all the skills of the first one so you'd most likely have to buy the PvP packs also. You'd also have to take the bot character through the required campaigns to get the heroes you want.

To be honest, you're wasting your time even thinking about it. just use GWx2 or 2 computers, log into both accounts as you would have to anyway, set the skills on both accounts (a lot easier than typing a load of commands imho) then use both at the same time, leaving one when you exit the outpost.

Bots aren't a good idea to start with, but as far as ideas for new bots goes, this one just fails. The bot is actually more complex to use than simply controlling 2 accounts therefore failing in its purpose.

I wondered about that as I have heard about toggleable macros using key press commands that execute and re-execute a key press every preprogrammed amount of seconds or milliseconds. They can be used to cast and keep up enchants for example. Since they are just doing what could be done in game by a key press I guess they would be legal to use then.

This is exactly what I was thinking. Plus, anything that might be deemed as a "bot" will not be ok under the EULA.

Also wouldn't the heroes leave with the bot unless you did that in a mission? Then you would still be down a player. Full team of H/H over a team of hereos-1.

And ya any type of "bot" is illegal according to the EULA.

First off, there is no legal or illegal for Guild Wars, because you can never go to jail for it, never be prosectuted, and go find me one country which says botting is against the law.

Second, botting IS against the EULA. Yes you had found a rather creative solution to get around PUG groups, but 3 heroes was a design decision to encourage grouping with at least someone. Im sure they DONT want a single player game.

-I can also tell you I suspect you would never get caught if you had two PC's, one running the bot that follows you, another thats you. But sending chats to it are a no-no, you would need to manually start it to follow you. Which is all it is really doing is following you.

Third, I dont think some macro usage is against the EULA, I have seen people use

Macros to type /dance at 1 key press,

mouse recorded macros to spike with heroes (there was a vid somewhere on guru, kinda neat).

Macros that will open your inventory for you every minute your out vanquishing or something and will drink another booze so you dont need to worry about it.

Macros that help you keep things up like tainted ie: press some key and it will taint players 1-8 yatta yatta. I'm pretty sure I've seen this on observer before because a player got a leech sig off perfectly in the middle of taints exactly between taint casts.

Macros that weapon swap for you before/after key skill usage. IE, I just casted Aegis so Now I need to switch back to my 40/40 water set.

Macros that cause you to cast LoD just after you hit infuse

and so on.

It would be interesting to know the stance on macro usage because a bunch of people use macros to enhance thier gaming. I've been thinking about setting up a weapon swap macro myself for sometime since I hate reaching for the F1-4 keys (mouseclicking takes to long).

It isn't a "bot" program, and yes, because bots are not allowed. On the other hand, the scripts that find bots probably aren't meant to look for something like this, so you could use it safely.
I just want to quote this to emphasize how stupid it is.

WTB Your heros 100G (Step outside with me then leave)

there are alot of solo FOW and underworld explorers doing this already. No bots attached

Clearly, it's against the EULA.

That said, but for the getting your account banned part, I do think it's a good idea.

Bots are never legal in any games

...
That's pretty much the definition of any bot. They don't have magical game breakng properties, they just send what would be keypress data to the client.

Client side bots maybe. There's loads of third-party bots that server operators run on fps games that aren't breaking any EULAs.
Plus iirc the WoW interface is so badly designed that their dev team just encourage users to macro it to high heaven, perfectly within their EULA.


... Yes, because every time monks infuse they should cast LoD. :\

This setup would work for missions and single zone vanquishing but not really beyond that. Heroes remain when a player maps out or logs out but as soon as you zone into another area the heroes of the player that left also dissapear. Thus this setup would be useless in clearing multi level dungeons or vanquishing a series of zones.

Overall bots are against the EULA so this wouldn't work from the very start.

Probably not allowed, sadly, but a neat idea nevertheless. Anet's stance on full hero parties (in elite areas and HM, anyway) is complete nonsense IMO. It's even more nonsensical in light of the ability to "borrow" other people heroes as described above. Clearly it hasn't broken the game, clearly the design allows for it, let us do that with our own heroes and the problem is solved.

Umm, if you have two accounts, why not manually add the heroes with your second account?


BTW, you lose PC-less heroes on zoning so this would be of limited value if you have to zone.

Sorry, but just have to contribute my limited knowledge of this, as I see many things that are WAAAY off.
For things such as this, the main issue often does not lie in what function it performs, but the way it performs it, what methods it takes into use.
As long as the methodology is considered alright by ArenaNet, every kind of program that uses it would, in most cases, also be considered alright (to take this "bot example", if a chat-responsive bot like this WERE to be allowed, one of the things that would not be allowed with a chat-responsive bot would be a Casino Bot, as ANet has directly stated that any casino server is not allowed).

I do not claim to know how to make it, but I am pretty sure a chat-responsive bot like this would have to either:
1. Modify the client
2. Intercept packages
as there is currently no API to carry out such commands as (in pseudocode):

"if ( mainChatFrame.channelParty.getRecievedMessage() == ("add ".%name%) ) { partyControl.addHero("%name%) }"

Instead, you would most likely have to sniff up packages in search of a string of "add %name%", adressed for party chat.
As I fully doubt that intercepting the packages (the method needed for this kind of automation) is permitted by ArenaNet, I also doubt the legality of such a bot.

Thus the dismiss command, as the user would be able to run him and the bot to another zone before dismissal. This would of course require being able to make it there 4-man, but if that's what it takes...

_Zexion