Of Pirates and Macros – Shortcuts Revisited

[WizardHawk]

I'm level 38 and raised two levels in less than two days to get there. It might be easy for some to think I may have done something like that as well. I was not only on the leaderboard for level but also for kills (something over 2,000 I believe). I can assure everyone that I worked a few 12 hour shifts and often get bored at work and play there as well so it is easy for me to level up fast when you play around 15 hours a day just to be doing something to try to stay awake.

I'm not at level 38 because I want to get to the top, to get ahead of friends, or for any other reason other than I enjoy the game and my time with my friends there and have a bit more playing time than the average person.

Cheating exists and will probably always exist in all online games. Let us hope that as Vandelay said they don't start allowing open trades to make things worse. Still, I think game devs should be more aware of the issue and give it good thought when making or updating games to at least cut it as much as possible, even if removing it isn't reasonable.

I made this to help raise awareness of how it impacts this game and to create some discussion over how far macros can go before YOU think it is cheating. I enjoy seeing the different opinions of others. I'd even love to see the opinion of the person who was using them to power level to start with if they cared to add to this talk.

[Rob]

I would be suprised if people are using macros for this game. There is absolutely zero purpose. It is easy enough to level without it and with the cap of 40, there really is no reason. After a certain level (I will not spoil it for those that have not reached it yet), there are no more quests. If anyone really wants to level fast, the ability is there just by maxing kills at 100 rep points per. I always found it funny seeing people with 3k of kills when I wouldn't even be on the list and leveling daily at the high end.

There is also no purpose to farm gold as the cap is low. You will make that cap level many times over and end up doing what the rest of us do, buy ships and sell them right away to cut your gold down. Maybe, when there are more things to buy and more high end game content, macros will become a problem, but for now, I think they are wasting their time and prefer the devs spend time fixing bugs and adding more content than looking for cheaters. Just my opinion.

--Tristan