Now, since I don’t have any experience with game dev, let alone any proper coding experience, I’m just gonna assume that this is possible some how, rather than with any definite “yes this can be done”
Now, I believe that while it may take a lot of effort (or little effort, I’m no expert here), it would be possible. The devs could rig the game to track your button presses, and if the time between it being pressed becomes a pattern or is too similar, the machines just don’t give out anything to the player at all. It will never land on anything that will give them units, just blanks. When the macro user wakes up in the morning, they’ll have put all of their units into the machine, nothing was given to them.
And the way it could track the button presses, it would maybe just find a pattern or a similarity for every 20 or so button presses (and this would go on for the duration in which the user is playing). So if I press it 20 times, and they were all off, so to speak (whenever you press space, it’ll never be exactly the same) I would keep on getting units (and during the time the game is checking the button presses, I would still be getting units, if that wasn’t already clear). Then a person who is using a macro presses it 20 times, they will stop receiving the units. Hopefully that makes sense.
So punish macros by making them lose all or most of their units?
Sounds a tiny bit too harsh IMO. But there should definitely be a decent punishment for it.
Well no, they would leave their macro on all night not knowing the punishment. As they leave it on, the game will detect every 20 presses that they’re using a macro. Once it determines that, it’ll stop giving a payout, leaving the user to continuously put units into the machine, but get nothing out of it in the process.
Me CSxDeity actually had a minor talk in pm about possible solutions, and we came up with a pretty decent one, just wanted to chip in.
"The most basic i could come up with was kinda inspired by your captcha idea
Except the timer is set to an hour so that it wont annoy players that arent using macros.
Those that are using macros wont really see it as a big problem in said captcha, until they leave it for longer than an hour.
Now the idea of the system is that if they dont anwser the captcha they will be kicked out (they will have a generous time limit ofcourse)
and those macro users that dosen’t keep an eye on their machine will be kicked out because they didnt anwser the captcha, and then it will be pretty obvious to see that they are using macros since they will be jumping every like 6 seconds."
As far as I know, the devs already have something like that planned. You’ll have to press a random button every so often to keep yourself on the machine.
And besides, that’s a suggestion on it’s own. I have no idea how you’re chipping in.
Well I mean, down to the millisecond, your button presses won’t always be the same. And it’ll be scanning your button presses in 20 press intervals anyways, so I don’t think there would be much to worry about. And as for the whole being able to set random intervals through their programs, I think those ones are much harder to come by. But even with those ones existing, this way would help combat the more obvious macro users.
It’s a possible solution that we put together after a few messages, based on smaller ideas.
I do have a few others but ill doubt the devs would wanna make them or that they would be effective.
Also the way im chipping in is by posting suggestions (temporarily, there are only so many ideas you can come up with before one gives up) on ways to combat macro users, basically like you are.
IMO, the best way to combat macros would be to implement auto-kick after a certain time on the slot machines, and once the kick happens, detect if the same action’s still happening. Normal people wouldn’t constantly be jumping after they’re booted from the machines, nor would they click, move their mouse, click, and move their mouse again (assuming that people transition to mouse-based macros to make things less obvious, although that would also bring a lot of detection opportunities). However, since you’d be able to trigger that kind of thing on purpose by constantly pressing space without macroing, I’d say the harshest punishment to do in that case would just be to force-quit the game.
Another bonus to that idea, when it kicks you, it will make you face the opposite direction of the slot machine, so you can’t bind the spin key to E and expect it put you back on the machine
I think @Jordan’s point is that your suggestion is not directly related to their suggestion, and would be best served in a thread on its own.
As to the topic of this thread, I could see this working to catch the more obvious macroers, but I’m not sure it has much staying power once macros get more advanced.
The only viable solution that wouldn’t punish innocent users that much is the capcha-like solution. Just have it randomize from the typing derby list that’s already there and boom, simple solution, I’d say to have it at a random interval every 10-20 minutes so it’s not too annoying, but so you also can’t predict it.
There may be a more better way, an extra button that you need to click every 20-30 minutes that is on the other side of the machine, since macros require you to face only 1 way making it that you have to face the other direction every 20-30 minutes will make it almost imposible to macro (unless they set a timer every 20-30 minutes that is)