EVE General Discussion

The assertion from CCP is that clarifications will be exploited because that's all EVE players like to do. This has been their position on harassment, on multiboxing, and just about any major EULA clarification we've seen lately.

Look at the multiboxing thread as an example. There has been zero CCP followups on the discussion, with no clarifications whatsoever. In that thread, folks like Lucas have devised ISBoxer methods that effectively replaces "input multiplexing" in a way in which he argues is not EULA breaking. Now, I would expect Lucas to do that, but shouldn't CCP interject with some kind of clarification if another player happens to be convinced by Lucas and ends up getting permabanned by some GM soon afterwards?

People who look for exceptions and grey areas are going to do it whether CCP gives clarifications or not. An official company communication will help those players who are not interested in exploits at all, and are instead concerned about being 100% within CCP's good graces.

So I followed your advice and opened a ticket to ask a GM for clarification on macros. He literally linked me to the dev post on the forums and told me to ask my question on the forums for clarification from CCP devs.

So I have an in game GM telling me to come to the forums for clarification and a forum CCP dev telling me to go in game for clarification.

Can someone please just answer my question?

Um, no. I went back to Friday's Security dev blog and here's what was said in regards to multiboxing.



So the policy is in a dev blog that links to the post. I really hope that the policy is stated along with the rest of the policies because players really need to have the rules in one place so they don't do something to get banned out of ignorance.

And here is what was posted about macro use.



These are not my words. These are from CCP Grimmi from Team Security. I do want to pull out what I think is a key sentence:



You can take that sentence to mean whatever you want. But to me, that means if someone writes a macro and it performs any actions that effect the EVE universe, even if it is only one action out of several steps, then it is a EULA violation and you can get banned.

I'm sorry I didn't bring this quote out sooner, but quite frankly, I forgot about it. You can rail against it and say how unreasonable it is all you want. You won't hurt my feelings. I'm just the messenger, since it looks like you weren't up to date on the latest news.

Well, looks like someones moved out of the "Denial" stage of greif.

It's interesting to sed an incursioneer be angry about this.

Kind of makes it obvious who is the greedy nogood here...

But "activate all your hardeners at once" is doable without a macro. Its just more convenient to do so with a macro.

Additionally, this type of macro was allowed historically and the recent EULA changes seem like they were targetted at multiboxers, so if they are also outlawing this type of macro that change appears accidental. If it was intentional then CCP would have said something on the dev blog.

What about...
• Players that have faster or low latency Internet connections
• Players that have SSD or flash hard drives
• Players with faster processors and the latest graphics cards
• Players with higher resolution or multiple monitors
• Players with premium audio systems and headsets

And last but not least...
• Players using custom gaming mice

Many pages.

Do you know what a macro is?

Macros are not allowed.


There.

Games are a set of rules.

I guess it depends on your point of view. I look at this as CCP finally agreeing with me on what the EULA actually says. I'm not getting everything I wanted two years ago, but I've mellowed a bit after listening to the defenders of ISBoxer. I originally wanted ISBoxer banned so that Team Security could just implement a detection algorithm to automatically ban all the ratting, mining, courier and market bots written using Inner Space. But after listening to the arguments from FCs like Lazarus Telraven, I understand how valuable the windows management function is to fleet commanders being able to create content. The fact that a free option, EVE-O Preview, is available lessens the objection about the cost of an Inner Space license for EVE's content creators.


You like to state that CCP lies a lot. That's probably not a good thing when trying to convince CCP of a position.

You bring up EVE Vegas. I understand that ISBoxer users are upset because they believe that CCP Seagull stated not to worry about using their software. So what happened when she got back to Iceland? ISBoxer went from being a EULA violation for client modification (as posted in the Third Party Policies at the time), and not just enforced, to being software that doesn't violate the EULA as long as users don't do actions, like input broadcasting, that violate the EULA.


Well, since CCP (and Team Security) determines what "accelerated gameplay" is, maybe we should try to understand what they are going to ban people for instead of just shouting "They're stupid because they don't agree with me!" CCP Grimmi wrote in the dev blog that, "Any use of macros to interact with the game world is prohibited by EULA now, and has always been." I think CCP Grimmi might know, since he was the lead game master before moving over to Team Security.



How much more discussion do you want? This debate started at the beginning of 2013 and the dual issues of ISBoxer and cache scraping led to the creation of the Third Party Policies page in April 2013. Back then, as I've pointed out before, CCP stated that the use of the "multi-boxing application" (aka ISBoxer) violated the client modification provisions of the EULA, but that CCP was not going to enforce the EULA. CCP also stated to use any such applications "at your own risk." I guess that the discussion you want is whether CCP should enforce its EULA and Rules of Conduct. I've argued that CCP should do that for years.

Oh, and if you made it this far, I just want to say that albino transgendered Fedos are probably okay. But I'm pretty sure that pink Fedos of any sexual orientation probably violate something.

Plus, my apologies to ISD if this is slightly off-topic. But it seems that figuring out what can and can't get you banned is at least in the spirit of the OP.

No I want an answer from an authoritative source. If the answer is no then I will be surprised but I will move on.

But the dev post said their macro policy hasn't changed and historically this type of macro has been allowed. I just wanted to be sure.