Lucky Hochei and G15 Keybinding. Allowed or Forbidden?

It is Canthan New Year again. Drinks all around!

My question is not about best tactics blah or other stuff you can find on wiki pages.

I'm actually wondering if Anet would mind if someone binded a G15 macrokey to play Lucky Hochei's RPS game.

I know half the community would call it cheating or even hacking and Anet isn't exactly happy with questions like this I'm sure.

But would they really mind? After all, Drunkard title has been and still is a title people bind a macro for and appearantly Anet doesn't mind.


It would be nice for an official to reply on this thread. I'm sure quite a few folks like this question answered as well. Discussing these things without an official is like untying a Gordian Knot.

It's playing the game for you. If they detect it you will get banned.

Explain to me how they can detect a macro, let alone prove it is not you playing the game? He isn't injecting anything, and I'm sure as long as it isn't running 12 hours a day, the game won't flag it as a bot.

u ll get banned if u get caught, simple as that...

I said "if they detect it," because I don't know and they won't say.

If you aren't going to have something like this running several hours in a row, what's the point?

If this will ban you why not ban the 1000+ alcohol consumers who use the same G-key macros to do it. That's one of the reasons why I ask the question.

Is it a yes/no or something in between?
It has been said about alcohol that they wouldnt mind by an official (i believe this was Gaile back in the day)


EDIT: a definite no to this has never been given as far as I know.
This isn't the same as botting which will, ofcourse, get you banned.

I bought a G15 a while ago and after reading some threads I decided that without an official word I wasn't going to risk a ban. I even switch to a mapping with no macros set in case I bump a button while playing. My understanding is that you can map emotes, but anything else is a grey area. And even that was implied from Gaile our other anet forum posts.

I would love an official on what is and isn't allowed. But like ui modding in GW2, I don't think we'll get it.

If it plays the game for you, it's not allowed. Easy as that. I have a mouse macro that is bound to my heroes' first two skills so I can force a spike. This is entirely legal, as I'm still interfacing with the game.

It's when you walk away and make it do things while you're gone that it's banned.

To the OP: If you try it, I don't want to find a thread later on about how you got banned. Will it happen? Maybe not. If that's good enough for you, then you didn't have to ask here in the first place .

I hear you there. The rest is grey. small skill combo's like bonding a party or a tactical weaponswap-skill-weaponswap or even chatcombo's are grey.


I do however also understand 3 key reasons why a definite answer has not been given. We have common sense and the EULA. But the options to do things like this are infinite yet most will never be considered. So we simply have to ask about each specific option whenever the option occurs if it is allowed or not.


EDIT: @Fengsui: just like jumbo says, without an official word I won't risk it.

how would we know...

do it if you want, but don't make a thread here so that you can blame someone else if you get caught

Iirc, the eula refers to things that give you an advantage. A macro that calls heroes to spoke could be argued to give an advantage and therefore bannable. Further if the difference is that it does it for me when I'm not there, then is it fine if I babysit a script? I doubt it.

If not any of that, is it fine to make a macro for "/paper" and then use it solely to cut down typing? There has been no response from anet saying "macros that automate x, y, z are bad and macros for emotes, text responses, spiking heroes, etc are okay." That's the problem here.

I would say that you don't do it.

No matter what anyone here says (unless Regina suddenly swoops in), if ANet bans you for this, you have no right to complain.

Horace why would I make a thread to blame others for mistakes they didn't make? I'm not enticing anyone, I'm not doing anything myself. I simply ask a question here.

Please contribute to the thread.

Read Jumbo's last post, he hammers the nail spot on what the problem is i'm trying to solve for not just myself but for a multitude of players. It just so happens I am the one starting a thread about it. (given this specific subject I found none)

Regina, or someone with similar authority, is exactly what Devonas Big Sister and I are hoping for. To do anything of a macro sort without their word is tantamount to playing russian roulette with our accounts.

There are ways of doing this using solely in-game options and keybindings, so there's really no advantage to be had here.

Macros are a gray area. Botting or automation is not; they will ban you if they detect it. If you write a macro that loops, that's automation. So a /paper, /rock, or /scissors macro is fine, but if you make a "macro" that talks to Hochei at set intervals, waits for a set delay, and then enters RPS to play and repeats without any further input, that's botting.

People keep on taking Gaile's comment about drunkard bots out of context and interpreting it to mean what they want to believe rather than what she actually said. She never said drunkard bots were allowed.

The advantage is how quickly you can do it. The macro executes instantly with the press of one button leaving you free to tank, skill spam, whatever rather than take however long to do it yourself.

With your logic I could say that since any number of things are possible with in game controls, then there is no problem with a macro. Including the OP's question.

Can you point to a place where Gaile our another anet employee said those short of chat shortcuts were okay? I say this with no sarcasm intended. It would clear up a lot of worry for me.

I don't think you should do it. They can't detect the attached keyboard or drivers that automate keystrokes, and those keystrokes don't modify your game at all. But what they do detect is the fact that your input is persice and perfectly excetuted every time, which their poorly designed algorithm will still catch, flag and auto ban your account. You will try to appeal it, but they'll give you the 3rd party, RMT, or botter excuse, and afterall this is THE online game company that does express that they can even close legit accounts for no reason (and have done in the past). So common sense says don't risk it.

NCsoft Support sends an automatic reply every time they are asked about macros. There are a number of users who have posted it, and they sent me the same one. As for ANet employees, I don't know.

Edit:

Here's a link to someone's post quoting Support's generic reply. Search will turn up more examples. They will sometimes change a few words here and there or perhaps inject a new paragraph, but this is the generic template for their replies.

This thread contains more information, including a response from Stephane Lo Presti, and a link to Gaile's talk page where she talks about macros.