Does this break TOS

[Khatovar]

The question I have is how exactly does spamming work? F8,F9,F8,F10 sounds all well and good if it's working like an ingame castsequence, as in it doesn't care if you're pressing the key 1 time a second or 40, it's only going to cast that first spell and ignore everything else until the spell casts and the GCD is done.

But you've taken that out of the hands of the game...your program is now tracking keypresses. How exactly is it responding to that? Swap those spells around so you have :

1st Healing Touch
2nd Regrowth
3rd Rejuv

Now it's not instants for the first spell. I hit F8,F9,F8,F10 @1 keypress a second....what happens? I hit F8, F8, F9 in rapid succession, what happens?

As for the cooldown thing, I think that's really, deeply in the grey area. You're using external information to determine when something should be allowed to try casting.

You're worried that /click is an exploit but don't have any problems taking the casting mechanics out of the hands of the game?

[Barelan]

Now it's not instants for the first spell. I hit F8,F9,F8,F10 @1 keypress a second....what happens? I hit F8, F8, F9 in rapid succession, what happens?

Just like with cast sequence it would fail. It is up to you to determine when you want to press it.

You're worried that /click is an exploit but don't have any problems taking the casting mechanics out of the hands of the game?

We havn't taken any casting mechanics out of the game. When you write commands in GCP they are converted into keymapping roles and macros. The macros are sent to the game and the keymaps determine what happens when you press a key. The automation in GCP is in the production of commands not in the execution. You only get one ingame action per key press and you always know what that action will be. The reason GCP looks more powerful is because of the integration between the different parts of the system. We don't do anything that you can't achieve with a standard key broadcaster and complex macros. We just make it easier.

[Khatovar]

We havn't taken any casting mechanics out of the game.

You have a timer that says "even if I press this button, do not cast this spell until X time has passed". That is taking casting out of the game's hands. You point to it and say it's cooldown monitoring, I point to it and say "Fantastic, now I can create a macro to automatically perfectly time rolling HoTs without having to worry about overwriting too soon, missing one and letting them drop or spamming myself out of mana, so I can throw it on my all my keys and as long as I'm facerolling somewhere between my DPS and tank, I never need to worry about actively healing."

Can I make a rolling HoT macro in game? Sure can, but can the one I make in game determine when, in seconds, to move on to the next spell? No, it can't. I can throw as many commas in there as I want but they can't tell time. Some fights I may hit 10 commas a second, some I may only hit 2, some I may push out 15. The complications that arise with that is the price I pay for using castsequence to minimize the number of buttons I have to deal with. With your setup, 10 seconds is always 10 seconds, nevermind latency, nevermind what else is going on in the game.

[Barelan]

I think that, given the reaction, we should probably not implement this feature at this point.

To summarize:

Blizzard will not comment on a given application. They take the view that functionality can change (both in the app and in their software) so this prevents them from commenting.

Their stance is that as long as one key causes no more than one action, it is OK. Automation seems to be defined as when an application takes an action with no user input.

According to the above, what we propose would be "legal" but Blizzard also say that it is up to the individual to decide on whether the application they use is acceptable. This is our issue.

So far we have been extra careful to ensure that our application cannot be used to break TOS. GCP was build from the start to be a legal multi-boxing program. We could have bolted our management functions on to existing platforms, but that would have removed our ability to ensure that this remains true. In that sense we have spent time and money on ensuring this compliance.

Everything that we do in GCP can be achieved in other products - GCP just makes it easy.

Based on this thread, it would seem that adding this functionality would enter a grey area, and we should probably avoid that. We feel that preserving our exclusive "can't break the TOS" feature is probably more important, even if we lose out on some potentially cool functionality.

You people have helped clarify this for me, and I'd like to thank all the people who have so far responded to this.

Once again, thanks for the feedback

[Sam DeathWalker]

Well he is asking here to see what the reaction is of people who are in the know, before going to Blizzard for the final say. I often will bounce ideas off of the people here before doing things, thats what forums are for.

Its a lot grey as its the timeing part that is questionable. You are not allowed to introduce timing into macros. Logic that goes. If its time A cast A if its time B then cast B is little different then putting in a fixed delay.

This is illgal:

/cast 1
/delay 10
/cast 2

Thus this is also illegal:

/cast 1
if delay less then or equal 9 cast 1 again else cast 2


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