Hearthpwn

Quote from SinAscendant >>

Quote from FortyDust >>

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Quote from FortyDust >>

When you type "how to report a player in Hearthstone" into Google (hint, hint), this is the first link to come up:

https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/99516

  What option should I choose? 

 Battle.net covers all players of all Blizzard games.

 Battle.net refers to the Battle.net client that you launch your games from my guy.

 OK, my guy, which option fits better?

I have used Battle.net to report Hearthstone players in the past, and it was fine. I got a response telling me they'd investigate and everything.

Quote from Cracken23 >>

Yes, you're right "technically" but in reality, a macro clicker can't affect the game at all and it hasn't any difference from an afk farmer. If macro users will be banned, afk farmers should be banned too but why anyone would be banned for just starting a game and waiting it to end? 

That is the real problem. You can't spot the difference between a macro clicker from an afk farmer. I mean yeah some macros are too obvious and they can be spotted easily but a macro that is prepared carefully won't be different from an afk farmer. Imagine a macro that plays a card in a turn and hero powers in next turn and then play a different card, some turns are long and some turns passes quickly etc. This is very easy to make and if this account is going to be banned, then oh my god a metric ton of real players will be banned too. Because macro commands are totally identical with mouse inputs in software level. 

There is one way to prevent this situation and that is charging these accounts for "stalling" but how you define "stalling" and how will you punish it? That can be a much bigger problem.

I think you can see my point. For these reasons I don't think Blizzard will ban macro users or afk farmers. If this macro usage go crazy and became much bigger problem for Blizzard, they may take some actions but in this state I think Blizzard can ignore this easily. They won't bother a little "minority" whose letting their opponent to win the game by not playing. 

By the way, that is all Blizzard's fault to do it this way. Winning games was much more rewarding at the past but now you just need to have game time to earn rewards. This is where everything went wrong.

But macro users do affect the game: not only is it annoying to play against them because most people would rather play against a real opponent and not an automated process, but they also get an advantage over other players under the form of in-game currency. On average I'd say macro users get an extra 10k gold over non-macro users, due to doing something that is a bannable offense: automating the game.

Besides, why are you so sure that there is no way to detect a macro? Runescape found a way to label macro users rather quickly, and millions of accounts got banned. Not to mention that your hypothetical scenario of the perfect macro is irrelevant because it's not what most people do. Most people either have a macro to queue, or a macro to queue and hero power, and in that case it's not far-fetched to implement a detection method that reads time between clicks and finds a pattern, because that action simply cannot be replicated by humans.

As for AFK farming, that's just grinding. Needing to manually press Play gets a pass from the ToS. Automating that process does not.

Quote from RandoUno >>

Quote from Cracken23 >>

Yes, you're right "technically" but in reality, a macro clicker can't affect the game at all and it hasn't any difference from an afk farmer. If macro users will be banned, afk farmers should be banned too but why anyone would be banned for just starting a game and waiting it to end? 

That is the real problem. You can't spot the difference between a macro clicker from an afk farmer. I mean yeah some macros are too obvious and they can be spotted easily but a macro that is prepared carefully won't be different from an afk farmer. Imagine a macro that plays a card in a turn and hero powers in next turn and then play a different card, some turns are long and some turns passes quickly etc. This is very easy to make and if this account is going to be banned, then oh my god a metric ton of real players will be banned too. Because macro commands are totally identical with mouse inputs in software level. 

There is one way to prevent this situation and that is charging these accounts for "stalling" but how you define "stalling" and how will you punish it? That can be a much bigger problem.

I think you can see my point. For these reasons I don't think Blizzard will ban macro users or afk farmers. If this macro usage go crazy and became much bigger problem for Blizzard, they may take some actions but in this state I think Blizzard can ignore this easily. They won't bother a little "minority" whose letting their opponent to win the game by not playing. 

By the way, that is all Blizzard's fault to do it this way. Winning games was much more rewarding at the past but now you just need to have game time to earn rewards. This is where everything went wrong.

But macro users do affect the game: not only is it annoying to play against them because most people would rather play against a real opponent and not an automated process, but they also get an advantage over other players under the form of in-game currency. On average I'd say macro users get an extra 10k gold over non-macro users, due to doing something that is a bannable offense: automating the game.

Besides, why are you so sure that there is no way to detect a macro? Runescape found a way to label macro users rather quickly, and millions of accounts got banned. Not to mention that your hypothetical scenario of the perfect macro is irrelevant because it's not what most people do. Most people either have a macro to queue, or a macro to queue and hero power, and in that case it's not far-fetched to implement a detection method that reads time between clicks and finds a pattern, because that action simply cannot be replicated by humans.

As for AFK farming, that's just grinding. Needing to manually press Play gets a pass from the ToS. Automating that process does not.

You're viewing from wrong perspective. Do you know what is the real problem? That's the 1 million dollar question. The real problem is, macro/autoclicker using is the exact same thing with afk farming. Hearthstone is a card game, not a click&grind game. There shouldn't be any rewards for grinding in a card game. Wins should be rewarded. You can't justify afk farming with ToS. If there is a reward for grind in a game, there will always be botters, macro users etc.

Yes they can detect and counter macro users but for what cost? It's not easy. They'll develop a solution but "botters" will find another way, you can be sure about it. I played a lot of grind games(mainly Pokemon Vortex). When it's all about grinding developers must find a solution otherwise the game will be trash. So they are hard working to prevent bots but everytime a new kind of bot/cheat is developing and this became an infinite cycle until game ends.

That is the situation of grind games but Hearthstone is a card game. Why would Blizzard bother that much just to counter a set of macros which can't do anything during a game but lose? I think we aren't in a state that Blizzard is care about these things. Maybe in future percentage of botters will increase and Blizzard start to care. 

By the way, do you now what will happen if Blizzard decides to develop a macro detection system and ban the users but not touch afk farmers? First step would people starts using macros that only starts game and do nothing else like tapping hero power etc. This is exactly what afk farmers do. It won't be that as efficient and fast as current macros but it is much better than nothing. I have seen this before like a million times. In basics, nothing will change. 

Sadly this system won't go anywhere soon. It seems like Blizzard doing a good money with Tavern Pass. By the way I won't be suprised if most of macro users are buying Tavern Pass(totally my speculation, don't have any information). If it is really the case, I'm sure Blizzard won't ban any macro user.

Quote from Cracken23 >>

You're viewing from wrong perspective. Do you know what is the real problem? That's the 1 million dollar question. The real problem is, macro/autoclicker using is the exact same thing with afk farming. Hearthstone is a card game, not a click&grind game. There shouldn't be any rewards for grinding in a card game. Wins should be rewarded. You can't justify afk farming with ToS. If there is a reward for grind in a game, there will always be botters, macro users etc.

Yes they can detect and counter macro users but for what cost? It's not easy. They'll develop a solution but "botters" will find another way, you can be sure about it. I played a lot of grind games(mainly Pokemon Vortex). When it's all about grinding developers must find a solution otherwise the game will be trash. So they are hard working to prevent bots but everytime a new kind of bot/cheat is developing and this became an infinite cycle until game ends.

That is the situation of grind games but Hearthstone is a card game. Why would Blizzard bother that much just to counter a set of macros which can't do anything during a game but lose? I think we aren't in a state that Blizzard is care about these things. Maybe in future percentage of botters will increase and Blizzard start to care. 

By the way, do you now what will happen if Blizzard decides to develop a macro detection system and ban the users but not touch afk farmers? First step would people starts using macros that only starts game and do nothing else like tapping hero power etc. This is exactly what afk farmers do. It won't be that as efficient and fast as current macros but it is much better than nothing. I have seen this before like a million times. In basics, nothing will change. 

Sadly this system won't go anywhere soon. It seems like Blizzard doing a good money with Tavern Pass. By the way I won't be suprised if most of macro users are buying Tavern Pass(totally my speculation, don't have any information). If it is really the case, I'm sure Blizzard won't ban any macro user.

 I disagree on wins needing to be mandatory, I much prefer this system instead of the old one. With a system that rewards playtime, the playerbase isn't encouraged to win games in order to get rewards, so the number of tryhards is lower which is good for the game's longevity. And now you also don't feel like you wasted hours of your time for nothing if you try to make a homebrew deck work, which is another big advantage. Just because some people use illegitimate means to profit off this change it doesn't mean that it should be reverted; much like the age-old debate of publishers punishing paying customers with shoddy anti-piracy measures, if this change would be reverted in order to stop botting then I would feel punished for being a good customer.

I also disagree that a queue macro and AFK farming is the same. I get that you're looking at it from an opponent's perspective, but the way I see it, it's simply not feasible to spend your time queueing every 2 minutes manually. That's why it's safe for me to say that the overwhelming majority of AFK farmers do it in Battlegrounds. The only people who do ladder are the ones wanting that small XP boost, and are equipped with macros or bots to bypass the handicap of needing input every two minutes. And if you ask me, if you force people to do ladder farming manually, most would quit within hours for such a small reward. Because it's a world of difference between doing that, and launching a macro and rechecking every hour to see if it's still working.

As for a reason for Blizzard to care, that's easy. The more people get away with it, the more people do it. The more people do it, the more legitimate people get disgruntled by the fact that they're seemingly allowed to do it. Even more so when you get your face rubbed in it by queueing into them more and more often. Like I said before, macro users get twice the amount of gold that non-macro users do, so anyone would feel cheated if they'd see that macro users are getting away with something that is against the ToS. And unhappy customers aren't good for the game's health. Though you're right, the developers would probably only deal with it if it becomes a bigger issue.

I honestly think a lot of macro users buy passes too, but that is by no means a deterrent. All it'd do is make Blizzard's banwave be a month or so, to be like "this is a warning but we still want you as a customer". You know it'd work too.

The way I see it, only ladder macros piss me off, and the easiest solution for this would be to bump up Battlegrounds XP to be on the same level as Ranked. I believe this will drastically lower the amount of macros found on ladder, due to Battlegrounds becoming more favorable: it's the same amount of XP, but you also remove the chance of queueing into someone who's going to bother going through the report process. Which, at 50 ladder games a day, it's going to happen sooner or later. And then it'd be out-of-sight-out-of-mind for everyone since the macro users would just go into lobbies with other macro users, and everyone will be happy.

Quote from RandoUno >>

Quote from Cracken23 >>

You're viewing from wrong perspective. Do you know what is the real problem? That's the 1 million dollar question. The real problem is, macro/autoclicker using is the exact same thing with afk farming. Hearthstone is a card game, not a click&grind game. There shouldn't be any rewards for grinding in a card game. Wins should be rewarded. You can't justify afk farming with ToS. If there is a reward for grind in a game, there will always be botters, macro users etc.

Yes they can detect and counter macro users but for what cost? It's not easy. They'll develop a solution but "botters" will find another way, you can be sure about it. I played a lot of grind games(mainly Pokemon Vortex). When it's all about grinding developers must find a solution otherwise the game will be trash. So they are hard working to prevent bots but everytime a new kind of bot/cheat is developing and this became an infinite cycle until game ends.

That is the situation of grind games but Hearthstone is a card game. Why would Blizzard bother that much just to counter a set of macros which can't do anything during a game but lose? I think we aren't in a state that Blizzard is care about these things. Maybe in future percentage of botters will increase and Blizzard start to care. 

By the way, do you now what will happen if Blizzard decides to develop a macro detection system and ban the users but not touch afk farmers? First step would people starts using macros that only starts game and do nothing else like tapping hero power etc. This is exactly what afk farmers do. It won't be that as efficient and fast as current macros but it is much better than nothing. I have seen this before like a million times. In basics, nothing will change. 

Sadly this system won't go anywhere soon. It seems like Blizzard doing a good money with Tavern Pass. By the way I won't be suprised if most of macro users are buying Tavern Pass(totally my speculation, don't have any information). If it is really the case, I'm sure Blizzard won't ban any macro user.

 I disagree on wins needing to be mandatory, I much prefer this system instead of the old one. With a system that rewards playtime, the playerbase isn't encouraged to win games in order to get rewards, so the number of tryhards is lower which is good for the game's longevity. And now you also don't feel like you wasted hours of your time for nothing if you try to make a homebrew deck work, which is another big advantage. Just because some people use illegitimate means to profit off this change it doesn't mean that it should be reverted; much like the age-old debate of publishers punishing paying customers with shoddy anti-piracy measures, if this change would be reverted in order to stop botting then I would feel punished for being a good customer.

I also disagree that a queue macro and AFK farming is the same. I get that you're looking at it from an opponent's perspective, but the way I see it, it's simply not feasible to spend your time queueing every 2 minutes manually. That's why it's safe for me to say that the overwhelming majority of AFK farmers do it in Battlegrounds. The only people who do ladder are the ones wanting that small XP boost, and are equipped with macros or bots to bypass the handicap of needing input every two minutes. And if you ask me, if you force people to do ladder farming manually, most would quit within hours for such a small reward. Because it's a world of difference between doing that, and launching a macro and rechecking every hour to see if it's still working.

As for a reason for Blizzard to care, that's easy. The more people get away with it, the more people do it. The more people do it, the more legitimate people get disgruntled by the fact that they're seemingly allowed to do it. Even more so when you get your face rubbed in it by queueing into them more and more often. Like I said before, macro users get twice the amount of gold that non-macro users do, so anyone would feel cheated if they'd see that macro users are getting away with something that is against the ToS. And unhappy customers aren't good for the game's health. Though you're right, the developers would probably only deal with it if it becomes a bigger issue.

I honestly think a lot of macro users buy passes too, but that is by no means a deterrent. All it'd do is make Blizzard's banwave be a month or so, to be like "this is a warning but we still want you as a customer". You know it'd work too.

The way I see it, only ladder macros piss me off, and the easiest solution for this would be to bump up Battlegrounds XP to be on the same level as Ranked. I believe this will drastically lower the amount of macros found on ladder, due to Battlegrounds becoming more favorable: it's the same amount of XP, but you also remove the chance of queueing into someone who's going to bother going through the report process. Which, at 50 ladder games a day, it's going to happen sooner or later. And then it'd be out-of-sight-out-of-mind for everyone since the macro users would just go into lobbies with other macro users, and everyone will be happy.

Yeah you're right about equalizing xp between ladder and BG. There is a %33 difference between them right now. I did some calculations, if somebody set a macro and run it constantly also do all daily and weekly quests, it would take approximately 8 weeks with ladder and 10 weeks with BG. Diffirence is like 2 weeks. These numbers includes Tavern Pass too. If you cancel Tavern Pass xp bonuses, the difference became like 3 weeks. I'd personally go ladder with these numbers. If xp difference lowered or equalized, no need to go ladder for bot farming.

On the other hand maybe much more people would choose BG over ladder in this case, and Blizzard may not want it.

There IS an option ingame to report bots or players in general. open the chat, go to 'recently played' list, click on the name, report, reason why, done....