EVE General Discussion

So then you agree that putting the BAN at the player level with the activity rather than the tool makes sense, good. As to banning scraping, that's for CCP to decide as it is distinct from this.

It automates purely out of game tasks. CCP has set no limit of that. Rather this is concerning multiplication of in game tasks. Sure, we can call out the whole 3rd party tool giving an advantage argument, but in doing so address the fact that it's completely a false premise regardless of how many times it's brought up. The issue with command broadcasting is limited to just that and not shared with and other tool support.

Actually it does ban round robins as I understand them and their function in a strict reading, the only dispute I'm seeing being brought up is the capacity to enforce that and prevent false positives. I don't think there is much question of the spirit of the rule being violated.

that's why you give lead time, like say a little over a month.

It's that last step that distinguishes even a spreadsheet from a bot. None of the things it does individually are banned, and combining a number of out of game activities that aren't banned also isn't banned.

As far as the complaints, that's fine, there are lots of things people whine about that are changed, and a lot that aren't. The mistake likely being made here (and not just here) is the conclusion that the complaints led directly to changes without some form of gameplay goal in mind or evaluation on the part of CCP. We can't really know the entirety of the reasoning that went into this decision, but you seem really eager to label it as the effect of whining alone, making any validity of your counterwhines very suspect.

Depends I suppose, round robin functionality that I've seen suggested entire sequences of events, though perhaps I made the mistake of assuming it would be in conjunction with a macro.

As a purely keybind related function no, it doesn't violate the rules, which should be a non issue.

Just to make sure I understand this correctly:
Using 3rd-party software to automate the login process is not recommended, but it is allowed?

And if the above is allowed, does it apply only to logging in via keyboard automation or are we allowed to login by automatically fetching an SSO token and passing it to the client, ie. emulating what the official launcher does?

Cache scraping is probably a bad example. I believe the plan is that once all the CREST endpoints are created that CCP will remove the cache completely, so any application that still references the cache will break.

also please crackdown on account sharing, especially of supers and titans.

I still think that individuals could find ways to combine the aspects of these 3rd party tools with multiplexing input to achieve a per-character efficiency that is greater than a standard multiboxer. But I get what you are saying about the affect when it's straight up multiplexed multiboxing versus standard multiboxing.



I enjoy those kinds of thought experiments and coming up with ideas on how to handle things in a balanced way. But the more things that have to change to address something the more unintended side-effects can come from them. So where possible the changes should be minimal. I do agree that the round robin appears to remain legal and would work for the bombers. I think it would be fine for miners and other things too. It seems like a simple thing but having the user actually click the key the appropriate number of times feels like the right cutoff point. At that point the 3rd party app is directing input, not multiplying it.



I think that's the thing that pushed this issue over the edge and gave it the attention needed to get adjusted. But I also think once they made the decision to make a change they intended for it to affect all activities using this mechanic. This really seems to be more about what makes players feel like it's been fixed rather than what actually fixes it. There will always be some guy with the perfect workaround, but if that is less prevalent then then playerbase won't experience those effects as often.



I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this. Playstyle definitions start and end at the login screen. I won't deny that people pursuing their playstyles in spectacular ways will lead to spectacular events which make for spectacular videos. But I just don't see how playstyle definitions can be relevant when they include things that come from outside the game. I can be a trader, or--if I use all the resources available to me--I can be a great trader. But again, the preceding adjective isn't part of the playstyle, just a modifier to the base definition.

You could say that it's a playstyle because that's how you play, but I'm talking about EVE playstyles, not gamer playstyles in general. You can't balance a game around a niche gaming playstyle, but you do have to be aware that it exists to balance properly.

Here i think you're a bit wrong. By that logic: why bother to change anything or to enforce anything in the rules of a game? People'll just find workarounds. By that logic you just say: sure, come on in and do everything which is against our rules, be it broadcasting, macro's, or even full bots. i mean: a change doesn't adress the problem, people'll just continue on with minor changes to what they do.

Small changes are the way to go about enforcing the rules. People know the spirit of the rule, but try to rulelawyer their way out of it. This says more about those people than about CCP imo. (Not saying that you are one of those people, i mean this in general)

I showed above how the reality of inputs alone doesn't match with the idea that this won't cause and changes for the biggest offenders or those with high levels of input per client. Care to make a counter claim regarding how multiboxing can be done according to the rules without any effect on gameplay?

You haven't been the only one to make the claim but I haven't seen from you or others any actual quantification of how that plays out?

It's been explained multiple times. While yes, for the 100 man multiboxers (of which there are not many) it will be difficult to adapt, most ISboxer users will find this change to be a minor increase of effort at best. VideoFX allows you to practically turn as many clients as you want into what looks like one, very busy client. That alone will make most of the problems go away. On top of this, round robin keybinds mean that you'll just have to hammers a single key 20 times instead of once, something most people can do in a couple of seconds. They type of activities that use input broadcasting require so little effort anyway, that multiplying the number of keypresses you need to do really doesn't mean all that much.

Going forward there will still be nearly as many ISBoxer miners, bombers, incursion runners, etc. The problem they are trying to address will still be there.

Because it's the first step in an inevitable run down the wrong path to fix an issue which is actually gameplay mechanic related. Why roll out changes which will attack a single group of players when the problem is badly designed game mechanics? Mechanics which most people seem to be well aware are terrible too. Like mining for example. There really aren't many people that think mining is interactive enough. It's AFK play. How can you expect multiboxing, even manual multiboxing, not to occur on a large scale when it barely takes 2% of your attention to run a miner. I've run more than 20 miners without isboxer and *still* been able to play the playstation while I'm doing it.