Out of game macro use by either mouse, keyboard or software or a combination thereof

[Anything]

Since this seems to be a accepted practice people been using this more and more.

What makes me wonder is how many clicks are done per second, on how many characters and how much this may contribute to the server lag.
The macro system was designed with 1 second between operations and to only switch target on the death of a pc/npc to not cause excessive load on the server.

Now since it is allowed anyway (at least so far it seems) i would have a suggestion that may improve the quality of life for everyone including the ones not using this due to the gray area it poses namely:
Allow to auto use attack skills that normally can't be used automatically or let us make a skill group with a certain max number of skills that should be used immediately on it's cooldown.
To make this also worth considering for those who wish to only use skills exclusively also have a toggle to allow/deny performing any normal hits.
This will solve the need to use out of game macro devices / software for those using it and decrease the load somewhat by not needing to spam skill clicks insanely fast.

Also down the line this makes the game a bit more streamlined and allow everyone access to the same tools while taking away some reliance on 3rd party software / hardware.

[Daik0n]

this has been allowed since the first versions of nostromo over a decade ago.

you can use automation as much as you want as long it is not a software that is hijacking the game packages and breaking their encryption which allows access to way more than the regular client exposes to the players, as intended by developers.

 

on the essence version of the game the attack skills work like you suggested, you can just right click and they are use automatically when available.

Edited October 7, 2020 by Daik0n

[iHyperlite]

17 hours ago, Anything said:

Since this seems to be a accepted practice people been using this more and more.

What makes me wonder is how many clicks are done per second, on how many characters and how much this may contribute to the server lag.
The macro system was designed with 1 second between operations and to only switch target on the death of a pc/npc to not cause excessive load on the server.

Now since it is allowed anyway (at least so far it seems) i would have a suggestion that may improve the quality of life for everyone including the ones not using this due to the gray area it poses namely:
Allow to auto use attack skills that normally can't be used automatically or let us make a skill group with a certain max number of skills that should be used immediately on it's cooldown.
To make this also worth considering for those who wish to only use skills exclusively also have a toggle to allow/deny performing any normal hits.
This will solve the need to use out of game macro devices / software for those using it and decrease the load somewhat by not needing to spam skill clicks insanely fast.

Also down the line this makes the game a bit more streamlined and allow everyone access to the same tools while taking away some reliance on 3rd party software / hardware.

Most people use 100ms delay between repeats. So, how many button strikes is in your macro multipled by 10 would be your clicks per second. 

 

Edit: or rather, button presses per second

Edited October 8, 2020 by iHyperlite

[mixa]

This is not the cause of the lag, the servers got protection and the client too. While it may seem to you that you're flooding the server by using kbd/mouse macro, you don't.

Also on Core, everyone and his dog uses these and there is no lag, the culprit is elsewhere.

Edited October 8, 2020 by mixa

[mtrix]

10 hours ago, mixa said:

This is not the cause of the lag, the servers got protection and the client too. While it may seem to you that you're flooding the server by using kbd/mouse macro, you don't.

Also on Core, everyone and his dog uses these and there is no lag, the culprit is elsewhere.

^ that, imagine that you flood server to "cast a skill" while its still on reuse, how many packets that would be, i am pretty sure there is some sort of threshold, otherwise imagine how much traffic we would generate

 

[Anything]

Yes there is a threshold because i know when we had to turn in fortune pockets it used a lot of clicking and if you put the windows overlapping so you could spam click them really quick this would actually disconnect you if you spam clicks as fast as you could as if your life depended on it

However each client action still comes at a cost on the server side.
The client may have some of this logic on the client side like "if the skill is in cooldown inform user and do not send a request to the server" however there is some server logic involved.
This is easy to test by clicking a skill while it's in cooldown while running around, your character stops which means there is a communication to the server for changed states (moving vs not moving) so who knows what else happens.
Additionally when you repeatedly press a key that uses a skill while it's in cooldown and repeatedly click further ahead you will see your character still is kept synced with the many move and stop actions.
This is mainly why i bring it up because essentially on their own it wont do much but all those characters together would potentially make server load heavier and be somewhat like a ddos.

Not accusing anyone of anything, i am pretty sure each individual player is completely unaware of their impact on the server by doing this but it still should be a avenue to consider/explore for ncsoft to improve client side logic a bit more.

[LordDragnil]

I can hold one keyboard button and it won't crash my client.

Don't worry about server.