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03/09/14, 11:26 AM   #1
Oz4u
Join Date: Feb 2014
Posts: 7
Cheating Addons

Hi dear Eso LUA-Fans, Contributers, Publishers and Managers,

did you hear about an Addon which could be harmfull, and how Zenimax Online Studio / Bethesda (ZoS) or EsoUI should react on?

I mean addons for e.g. which

+ do in PvP automatic blocking
+ do aggresive guild-autoinviting
+ do IP-Sniffing or more
+ steals performance because of
++ syncing between raid-/campain members
++ unlucky LUA Programming
++ unintended side-effects

What dou you think how should ZoS or EsoUI handle this? Did you have found some kind of malicious solutions?

BR, Oz4u

Last edited by Oz4u : 03/09/14 at 12:07 PM.
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03/09/14, 02:42 PM   #2
daimon
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It is upto the game developer to prevent "cheating."

If an addon can be done to partially automate the combat for example, it will be made by someone and it will be used by some.

Personally I do hope that they will restrict the API quite a bit so stuff like that can't be made.

I've not heard any harmful addons yet but I guess this is somehow related as one of the PTS testers have said:
And don't get me started on the addon massacre, which was primarily information most MMORPG's put in their base UI such as hitpoint numbers and buff icons as options.
http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/149...d-not-crafted/
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03/09/14, 02:49 PM   #3
JadeKnightblazer
Join Date: Feb 2014
Posts: 24
I believe its up to everyone...

User: To find such addons and report them. Also to not use them afterwards.
Dev (ZOS): Take action on said addons and alter the API or break functions on their side.
Dev (Addon): To not make such addons and to report possible misusage of API functions to Dev (ZOS).


Everyone has to do their part to make/maintain/upload/download Addons for ESO and to allow ESO to be a great game.
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03/09/14, 03:11 PM   #4
Blenz
Join Date: Mar 2014
Posts: 4
The effect of addons

A big concern right now with addons is the amount of information the ESO API allows for them to see. The default UI has a very minimalist design to it which doesn't show on-screen a large amount of the data available at any given time.

For instance, here is a function from the API which an addon could use to see a lot of information about a unit casting a spell in the vicinity...
GetUnitCastingInfo(string unitTag)
Returns: string actionName, number timeStarted, number timeEnding, bool isChannel, integer barType, bool canBlock, bool canInterrupt, bool isChargeUp, bool hideBar
Some of the most important information this function returns includes:
  • The name of the spell/action
  • When the cast began
  • When the cast will finish
  • Whether the spell/action is channeled or a chargeup type spell
  • If the spell/action can be interrupted
  • If the spell/action can be blocked

The addon could then take some action(s) based on this information it has received...

However! It is incredibly important to realize....
By and large, the ESO API does not allow an addon to issue combat or movement commands for the player. So by itself, the addon is only capable of notifying the player of this information. In theory this prevents "cheating" or "botting".

Access to this kind of information does, however, make botting a fairly trivial task using an outside application. For example, you could make an addon which uses the above function to detect whenever a certain interruptable spell is being cast nearby and do something non-combat related in the UI, say place a 1 pixel pink square at a specific location on the screen. A program external to the game could be setup to look at that one pixel and enter some keypresses automatically whenever that pixel turns pink. Voila, you have an auto-interrupter. This is cheating and could very easily get you banned.

The two most obvious ways to prevent this are to...
  • implement tools to detect/police these external applications which use the legitimate API information to cross the line
or
  • cut off the information at the source by removing addon access to the API functions which give the exploitable information to those external applications in the first place

The former would preserve access to those API functions for legitimate uses, but is much more difficult and invasive to pull off (the game would need detection algorithms and/or a sniffer application that can look at what is running on your computer outside of the game).

The latter would solve the problem for good, but deny a great deal of functionality to addons which would use the information legitimately.

Zenimax has stated that they will be taking a pretty firm stance on exploits of the API. They are very much against the idea of players feeling forced to get a certain addon in order to stay competitive in the game.



To address some of your specific concerns....
  • Automatic PvP Blocking
Addressed above
  • Aggresive Guild-Autoinviting
Definitely possible with the API unless there is some sort of internal cap on invites/time
  • IP-sniffing
To my knowledge, nothing in the API has access to anything regarding your system information, so no worries there
  • Peformance Stealing
Addons run locally on the client's computer reactive to "events" (player opened a vendor screen, player looted something, etc.) in the game. As far as I know, there are very few (if any) API functions that create events that are not local to the client and would need to be sent to the server. Even if there are and an addon was made to maliciously spam the server with events, it would probably take a lot of people all using the addon at the same time in one place to notice any effect on latency due to the enormous bandwidth the servers have.
  • Yes an addon could cause performance issues for the person running the addon
  • No, it is very unlikely that an addon could create performance issues for other players
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03/09/14, 03:19 PM   #5
Cairenn
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A number of the things you've listed aren't actually possible using the Lua programming language. Some of the others are, it all depends on the amount of leeway Zenimax gives us.

My hope is that they will continue to let us have a robust API and that they will do like other companies have done - judiciously lock down certain very specific parts of the API if and when it becomes necessary.

I would also like to see them give us an "AddOn Policy" of some form. Give us a list of the things that they categorically do not want us doing. It's a lot easier to police things when there is a clear statement of what isn't acceptable.

Honestly, if I were to say what I really wished, it would be that people not create/use things that they bloody well know ZOS won't like in the first place. But I also know damn well after all these years that there are going to be some folks out there that will push beyond the 'acceptable' limit and, in the process, spoil it for the rest of us.*



[edit]* And that's the point at which the community (users, addon devs, ESOUI, etc.) should be going "hey, not cool, I'm not going to use/write/host that". One thing the OP and others new to our sites will discover, and hopefully be reassured by, is that we have some pretty firm guidelines of our own and our standards are very high. As others that have known us and used our sites for years can also attest to is that we have great communities. When something is just not copacetic, folks make it known and it gets dealt with.

Last edited by Cairenn : 03/09/14 at 03:51 PM.
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03/10/14, 10:58 AM   #6
Oz4u
Join Date: Feb 2014
Posts: 7
Originally Posted by Cairenn View Post
One thing the OP and others new to our sites will discover, and hopefully be reassured by, is that we have some pretty firm guidelines of our own and our standards are very high. As others that have known us and used our sites for years can also attest to is that we have great communities. When something is just not copacetic, folks make it known and it gets dealt with.
What do you think about a user voting? Perhaps with a simple 1-5 Star System in the beginning, perhaps extending later on in categories, like:

enviroment/UI integration
ease of configuration
ease of using
support quality
spoiling factor
errorness
...

Only rough first brainstorm-ideas... But perhaps with something like that the community can rank the addon in different ways. And this in return can help developers make nicer, faster, easier addons *g*

Last edited by Oz4u : 03/10/14 at 11:01 AM.
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03/21/14, 01:45 AM   #7
Vuelhering
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Originally Posted by Oz4u View Post
What do you think about a user voting? Perhaps with a simple 1-5 Star System in the beginning, perhaps extending later on in categories
1-5 stars is one of the worst voting methods in existence. It does not help the consumer, pretty much ever.

What the star system does is the following:
  • 1 star - "This actually doesn't do almost anything it claims, and is buggy"
  • 1 star - "The dev didn't answer a question I had within 4 hours"
  • 1 star - "I installed it incorrectly"
  • 1 star - "This competes with the addon I wrote"
  • 1 star - "After installing it, my 73 other addons stopped working"
  • 1 star - "The dev called me a bitch"
  • 2 stars - "2 stars means nothing except that I'm an idiot."
  • 2 stars - "I mis-clicked, tried to click 1 star"
  • 3 stars - "I installed it and didn't test it"
  • 3 stars - "I installed it but don't want the advertised functionality"
  • 3 stars - "3 stars is average, and this is only an average ANOVA stat package with graphing, with automatic error bars and arbitrary-precision math library. I've seen better running on a 50 TFLOPS machine coded by MIT grads."
  • 4 stars - "Does what it says, some minor issues"
  • 4 stars - "I disagree with how a verb was conjugated, therefore it's not perfect. Otherwise, perfect addon"
  • 4 stars - "I love this addon, but I'm a jackass and never give anyone praise or people will think I'm weak"
  • 5 stars - "I love this addon"
  • 5 stars - "The dev is in my guild"
  • 5 stars - "I think the dev is cool because he answered someone's stupidass question with 'stfu bitch'"
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03/21/14, 09:29 PM   #8
ins
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Posts: 76
Until Zenimax patch things out -- all things are fair.

They introduce a bug -- they fix a bug -- problem solved (if there ever was one, usually it only exists in peoples mind..)

People should focus more on creativity than trying to hinder or prevent it.

Re: Stars: Based on Blackberry/Google storefronts, its either 1 star == "I have no idea" or 5 stars == "I have no idea".
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03/23/14, 10:50 AM   #9
Lodur
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Join Date: Feb 2014
Posts: 108
Thumbs up

Originally Posted by Vuelhering View Post
1-5 stars is one of the worst voting methods in existence. It does not help the consumer, pretty much ever.

What the star system does is the following:
  • 1 star - "This actually doesn't do almost anything it claims, and is buggy"
  • 1 star - "The dev didn't answer a question I had within 4 hours"
  • 1 star - "I installed it incorrectly"
  • 1 star - "This competes with the addon I wrote"
  • 1 star - "After installing it, my 73 other addons stopped working"
  • 1 star - "The dev called me a bitch"
  • 2 stars - "2 stars means nothing except that I'm an idiot."
  • 2 stars - "I mis-clicked, tried to click 1 star"
  • 3 stars - "I installed it and didn't test it"
  • 3 stars - "I installed it but don't want the advertised functionality"
  • 3 stars - "3 stars is average, and this is only an average ANOVA stat package with graphing, with automatic error bars and arbitrary-precision math library. I've seen better running on a 50 TFLOPS machine coded by MIT grads."
  • 4 stars - "Does what it says, some minor issues"
  • 4 stars - "I disagree with how a verb was conjugated, therefore it's not perfect. Otherwise, perfect addon"
  • 4 stars - "I love this addon, but I'm a jackass and never give anyone praise or people will think I'm weak"
  • 5 stars - "I love this addon"
  • 5 stars - "The dev is in my guild"
  • 5 stars - "I think the dev is cool because he answered someone's stupidass question with 'stfu bitch'"

Amazing post.
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03/24/14, 02:12 AM   #10
Oz4u
Join Date: Feb 2014
Posts: 7
Originally Posted by Lodur View Post
Amazing post.
Jo, independent from an exact semantic of the "why", you get a rough indication. Perhaps, add an additional, optional "Reason for your vote" Textfield. This could help all Addon-Developer to make better Addons.

BR, Oz4u
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ESOUI » AddOns » AddOn Help/Support » Cheating Addons

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