Anet's stance on toolbox

    • Official Post

    I will take that last line...that is good. The example that was given in the answer, was comparing apples to dogs to pine trees to me, I understand that clicking 10k times (yes I have done this on a bunch of characters as well) is annoying and that having some(thing) else doing it for me would be great (would be a good time to teach the grandkids how to left click a mouse), but comparing that to someone playing the game? Not quite the correct example to use in this case-------

    anyways...they say no, so Legacy says no as well.

  • The example that was given in the answer, was comparing apples to dogs to pine trees to me,

    That example is horrible. Wouldn't even call it an argument. But atleast it is clear what their stance is on toolbox.

    I don't have the imagination that people will get banned for it, however I think communities should question if they should advertise programs which Anet said that should not be used.

    • Official Post

    I think this is a much better quote to take about GWToolbox++

    From Anet DrStephenCW on Reddit:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/GuildWars/co…oolbox/dzl9vak/

    Quote

    I have a running copy of Toolbox built from the source code, and in my copious free time I'll look at it and give very specific feedback.

    Not EVERYTHING that gives an advantage is expressly disallowed, see texture modifications texmod/Umod. The cartographer modifications give a HUGE advantage, I'd say even more than an autoclicker in terms of completing titles.

    I agree comparing something as feature packed and technical as toolbox to an autoclicker isn't the best. However I don't expect Gaile Gray to have the knowledge required about GW mods at this stage.

    I'm trying to track down some non generic replies from Anet in the Guru archive but that will take some time. The generic responces (including an original one from Gaile) are actually better than Gaile's latest one:

    https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Player-ma…s_from_ArenaNet

    Player modifications/QoL bots at this stage is something that is really interesting in the sense keeping the game alive and giving new ways to experience it. However I'm much more interested in keeping access to my account therefore unless Anet have signed off on a specific mod I wouldn't use it despite the growing number of people that use it without any action (and there may never be any).

    If they banned anyone that has ever used toolbox then I think it would have a huge impact on the playerbase of the game, I expect a lot of people would abandon it there and then.

    • Official Post

    It’s worth keeping in mind that toolbox has evolved quite a lot since guru went down, with a lot of powerful new features which wouldn’t have been present when those statements were made. Any comments made back then by Anet staff are likely out of date now and so not relevant. We could do with a bit more of their current thinking rather than out-dated opinions. The question of where the line needs to be drawn should be considered carefully.

    • Official Post

    It’s worth keeping in mind that toolbox has evolved quite a lot since guru went down, with a lot of powerful new features which wouldn’t have been present when those statements were made. Any comments made back then by Anet staff are likely out of date now and so not relevant. We could do with a bit more of their current thinking rather than out-dated opinions. The question of where the line needs to be drawn should be considered carefully.

    I was looking for their more direct responces for texmod, Umod, GWMultilaunch, GWDressup, KSMod etc. If my memory serves, and I hope it does, they said all of those were OK to use in their itteration at the time, with the obvious warnings that come with downloading any 3rd party application.

    I don't believe any comments have previously been made about toolbox, I'd even go as far as to say there still haven't been any comments made to date. Gaile's is a corporate reply to any question about game modification, not specifically aimed at toolbox.

  • There are some features from GWToolbox that are quite useful and not really game breaking. I hope that StephenCW and Bill might find some time to implement some of it ingame:

    * /chest - Incredible useful to open up chest at anytime. Normal restrictions should apply. If you haven't unlocked your storage or in a map without a Xunlai Chest, it should do nothing. GWTB does this, but also currently let you access gold in your storage, which gives an unfair advantage to all new players lacking 50g.

    * /tp mapname - It lets you map travel without having to go through boat travel. Usual restrictions apply, can't tp to a map you haven't unlocked. Technically even save server resources, don't have to instantiate empty districts like LA only to map elsewhere directly after.

    * /transmo <targeted NPC> - Because it adds a bit of fun to an aging game when you can disguise as any targeted NPC. Others won't see this. GWTB currently allows this, giving unfair advantage to players making youtube/Twitch videos, just because they can look like a giant Xunlai Chest, perhaps even a sign post.

    • Official Post

    Since the thread linked in the OP was closed, I doubt you will get more of a reply 'officially' from them---that was their reply.

    It would be nice if they did make some clarifications (at one point multi-launch and texmod were both big no-nos too! and caused, er, problems for many of their users).

    So going the official route is out, the best bet is Stephen et.al. so I hope that they can make a big difference for the game. (though I hope he is not running that code on his own account--he could get banned! ;))

  • Multi-launch and Texmod were permitted by AN in a post on gwguru years ago. By Martin , if I remember correctly.

    Toolbox can f-off back to bot forums where it came from. "Improving life quality" hahaha get a life :P

    • Official Post

    Multi-launch and Texmod were permitted by AN in a post on gwguru years ago. By Martin , if I remember correctly.

    Toolbox can f-off back to bot forums where it came from. "Improving life quality" hahaha get a life :P

    what have you done to improve life quality of your precious game we all nolife, trust me when i say things are being discussed about making toolbox more tos compliant

  • it has some good quality of life features imo especially what you use in towns like builds/travel/open chest, but they should remove all pcons/target macro/dialog send as they are game breaking imo. Even resign counter is nice feature coz it doesnt affect pve content. Sad this tool is so normalized nowdays coz when it breaks many people refuse to playX/

  • This is somewhat reminiscent of 2010 again with AN being very quiet on API usage, aside from a generic post in Guru (along the lines of Gaile's reply in this thread). Not so fond memories of the result :(

    I admit I like some of the features that GWTB gives - reminds me of the functions I was working on when I received the Dhumming (extracting player and storage item information so that I could find items over multiple characters/accounts). Given that the player base significantly smaller now, I would be surprised if they took banning action for this - however, this is AN after all so you can never be confident that this will indeed be the case.

    All I can say is be careful, maybe take a historical heads up therefore and disable using the tool until such a time as this is properly clarified or a compliant version is sanctioned into the game client - believe me, there is nothing worse than losing an account caught up in something like this (especially when the tool is not being used for nefarious reasons!).

    • Official Post

    I'm not strictly against Toolbox - in fact, it's an amazing tool that offers a lot of QoL I believe would have been added should the game have been actively developed for longer.

    For example, opening up your storage - in GW2, bank storage access is far and between, but in GW1 you've literally got storage access in every outpost.

    Having a button to open it up, instead of having to find and run to the storage chest, would be a great time-saver at no cost/negative influences.

    I also liked several of the features that toolbox has (I started to use Toolbox for the borderless windowed mode).

    All in all, Toolbox is in my opinion a response to the game it's current state, but goes a bit too far - it's hard to find a gate monkey nowadays, so having the possibility to do that without having a second player for that, in the current state, is fine to me.

    Transporting to any (UNLOCKED) location in the game, without first having to go through Embark or any other outpost in order to reach it and re-adding your heroes - that's just annoying. Imagine having to go to the Gate of Pain - you'd need to go to Kamadan, through the Vortex to finally go to the Gate of Pain - only to re-add your heroes. Embark tries to solve this, but it's still a lot of work to find everything. In that viewpoint, it only shortens the time that you need to reach it and removes some annoying things - and this itself gives no real advantage - being able to reach places you shouldn't (or not without some special items like The Deep) is another thing.

    Other things, like flash GW's icon on the toolbar when you receive a new message is genious.

    It's a bit of a grey area - and I'm currently no longer using Toolbox. I only really used the Open Xunlai Chest and borderless window mode.

    It would be nice of having a ToS complaint version of Toolbox - until then, I'll allow discussion of Toolbox on Legacy, with the caveat that when things are directly about cheating, they will still get deleted and it's the discretion of our staff to decide if it should be deleted or not.

  • Imo the few good features wont allow the "bad" features, i rly hope ppl would stop using it since i find it cheating, just ban or two now and ppl would be scared im sure it wouldnt require much mass bannings or anything ;) well seee what GM Says after he has tested it himself

  • Between Toolbox and botting, they would probably ban the entire player base at this point. They decided to abandon their game which left players to take "QoL" into their own hands which is fine and expected, so just leave it abandoned at this point.

    I mean they could just say they don't support Toolbox which means discussion on these forums would stop that surround it. Which is fine. I don't agree that my mother should be smoking for 20+ years but it's not going to stop her doing that, and that doesn't provoke any response from me. I've said my part on the matter and that's that. IF they take action on the other hand is where issues pop up.

    Interference - even with good intentions - is going to have a huge negative impact on many parts of the game because there is already a very low population. As much as it would be interesting to see just 3 people standing in Kamadan, I dont believe it is in any way a good thing to support the remaining life of the game.

    On that note, I do agree that these programs are not good things (Albeit impressive!), and if the game was properly managed/maintained/updated/monitored I would agree that they should be purged, but unless they plan on doing a Guild Wars HD Remaster (lol) in the near future they should leave everyone to enjoy the game in whatever fashion they enjoy it for as long as the servers are up.

    tl;dr; Honestly and seriously, THEY made the choice to abandon GW1 support. Don't come back guns blazing and nuke the game when the game is already doing its best to try and survive.

  • It's time to ban all bots and toolbox users.

    BWAHAHA. People saying bots are good for the economy. ArenaNet could just add an NPC to sell consets at a constant price in kamadan, problem fixed cya botters

  • Whenever TB needs a fix my whole alliance wait for the update. In the meantime u cant form runs anymore because everybody just goes offline- And this hasnt to do with people beeing too bad to pop pcons etc.. Most of them already played years back when we didnt have tb.

    Its just like a lot of people before me said. It adds the logical next updates to the game by its self. I would be happy to see a "tos complaint" version. I think we can all survive the dialog func etc. missing.

    Best post for me is from GhostKairi . With a good intention anet would do the opposite: It would take away QoL and hasnt got the manpower to add that by itself.

    tl;dr; Honestly and seriously, THEY made the choice to abandon GW1 support. Don't come back guns blazing and nuke the game when the game is already doing its best to try and survive.

    Also I dont rly see reasons for banning people on a big scale. I can see why they ban the mmogamersmarket etc. and I also can see why they ban massive bot networks... But: its an old game. Nobody outside our little bubble cares. It has no financial impact on anets Quarterly! Toolbox is just a little helper nothing hugely game changing. Maybe make a tos complaint version and then: Let the people play as long as they do not interfere other playing styles and its fine.

    • Official Post

    ah the slippery slop....what do you allow and what not to---I believe this is why they are so adamant about ANY 3rd party program ( multi launch and texmod included). I have never used toolbox (until reading this thread I really didnt even understand what it did----), but I can understand why people are in favor of it. As for the banning of bots and rmt---all for it, just make sure that you are not banning law abiding players too (I will remind you of the last HUGE ban of what 2015? when that GM ran that program that detected anyone using anything....and yes load of non-rule breakers were banned---later most were unbanned as well). Just make sure when they ban they catch only the rule breakers (rmt are easy---though, as we know, many of those accounts are more than likely stolen---) not as easy as it sounds.

  • This thread baffles me. TB is great quality of life tool, putting some of more outdated and tedious aspects of GW up to par with modern mmos. The "worst stuff" it allows, while arguably belonging in the grey area, doesn't negatively affect community at all. How can people even think about banning toolbox users when all the gold sellers and bot users are still going strong? smh

  • There is a line on what's considered cheating. Some features certainly borderline, but consider for example

    /tp doa

    Would that be considered cheating in your book that you can get directly to DoA without having to pass by Kamadan and a bunch of other maps in between. (DoA unlocked of course).

    Surely you can admit that not all features are cheating. And by making Toolbox TOS compliant, it would certainly mean removing the ones you do consider cheating.

  • what have you done to improve life quality of your precious game we all nolife, trust me when i say things are being discussed about making toolbox more tos compliant

    It's not my job to work on improvement of the game experience. All the "programmers" should find a job in the field , instead of working on game that does not belong to them.

    Everyone mentions access to the chest or simple map travel , but maybe let's talk bit more of other features of Toolbox (like bypassing quests and missions or skill usage on recharge without player presence , etc.) ? What about non public versions of Toolbox ? Are you sure it's only used to "do good stuff" ?

  • It's not my job to work on improvement of the game experience. All the "programmers" should find a job in the field , instead of working on game that does not belong to them.

    bullshit

    Everyone mentions access to the chest or simple map travel , but maybe let's talk bit more of other features of Toolbox (like bypassing quests and missions or skill usage on recharge without player presence , etc.) ? What about non public versions of Toolbox ? Are you sure it's only used to "do good stuff" ?

    valid point. this why we need a tos complaint version. Well and we need trust. But you can never be 100% sure that people dont use their skills for evil. Maybe there is a person who can still dupe items. Nobody would ever know. Or that developer/hackers build their own cheating tools. I think there are a lot of things going on in every game we dont know about. Shit is normally only going down when things get public. Because suddenly you have hundrets of people running script they do not understand. Just because they downloaded them somewhere.

    You will never be able to track every individual down which is messing with the api or reading out game memory.

    • Official Post

    It's not my job to work on improvement of the game experience. All the "programmers" should find a job in the field , instead of working on game that does not belong to them.

    Everyone mentions access to the chest or simple map travel , but maybe let's talk bit more of other features of Toolbox (like bypassing quests and missions or skill usage on recharge without player presence , etc.) ? What about non public versions of Toolbox ? Are you sure it's only used to "do good stuff" ?

    Quote

    It's not my job to work on improvement of the game experience. All the "programmers" should find a job in the field , instead of working on game that does not belong to them.

    It is our hobby to work on the game, all of us are students or already working in the field with 6 digit salary's. ArenaNet has been more than okay with lightweight game mods in the past like KSMod, texmod, the directsong playlist editor, etc. That do the same sort of "hacking" that toolbox does to a lesser extent. To say we are all nolifes in our basements is insulting honestly.

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    > Everyone mentions access to the chest or simple map travel , but maybe let's talk bit more of other features of Toolbox (like bypassing quests and missions or skill usage on recharge without player presence , etc.) ?

    Hence the discussion for tos compliance. Toolbox originated from doasc as a more available box to private toolboxes that were available before like the Zraw Menu, which did much worse things than toolbox does today. I may not agree with Has Khas decision to make it all open source and available, but you have to understand these were developed when the game was in no-mans-land for support. If you get abandoned by your developer and there is no consequences to doing more risky things, it will be taken advantage of. Toolbox has pushed beyond that scope for a while now especially with the C++ rewrite, and most of the features that you all have problems with are legacy features ported from the old toolbox.

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    > What about non public versions of Toolbox ? Are you sure it's only used to "do good stuff" ?

    We cant control what people develop outside of toolbox, and if toolbox was closed source there are plenty of other avenues that are easily available for them to do the same things.

    • Official Post

    As for the banning of bots and rmt---all for it, just make sure that you are not banning law abiding players too (I will remind you of the last HUGE ban of what 2015? when that GM ran that program that detected anyone using anything....and yes load of non-rule breakers were banned---later most were unbanned as well). Just make sure when they ban they catch only the rule breakers (rmt are easy---though, as we know, many of those accounts are more than likely stolen---) not as easy as it sounds.

    A lot more of those accounts deserved the ban than you think. At least I know that the majority of the people who were complaining on the guru thread about the ban did actually bot

  • There is a line on what's considered cheating. Some features certainly borderline, but consider for example

    /tp doa

    Would that be considered cheating in your book that you can get directly to DoA without having to pass by Kamadan and a bunch of other maps in between. (DoA unlocked of course).

    Surely you can admit that not all features are cheating. And by making Toolbox TOS compliant, it would certainly mean removing the ones you do consider cheating.

    Well guess everyone draws the line on their own since there isnt really official word about it, but personally i think its cheating if its done with 3rd party program and isnt avaible without such, it might be small things but imo it realy doesnt matter, its all wrong

    • Official Post

    Well guess everyone draws the line on their own since there isnt really official word about it, but personally i think its cheating if its done with 3rd party program and isnt avaible without such, it might be small things but imo it realy doesnt matter, its all wrong

    I can respect that opinion, but even the past few updates show that it is not all wrong. A good chunk of features officially added by the recent update came from toolbox first (borderless fullscreen, chat filter, etc.). And even before this, functionality such as hi-res textures for other players was originally from KSMod. We have had an impact on the game, and there are features that arenanet are obviously happy with in these modifications.

  • This thread is very le fun.

    I think tb should be allowed, it makes the game much more confortable for sc players while not ruining the fun of John-LGiTton the Third who just wanna do his daily Zquests

    It's probably cheating if you go straight by the rule of ''any third party mod is cheating" but then, you' ll have to remove texmod too, because it gives you an unfair advantage for your cartographer, or for desolation runs over somebody which doesn't run it.

    Today I think it's safe to say 70% of players use either texmod, toolbox or both, these program make the game straight up better and more enjoyable. Even my IRL friend, which is some serious LGiT material uses toolbox to save the dozens of hero teambuilds he likes to theorycraft. He never popped a pcons with it, doesnt even use the fast travel option, he just likes having it.

    Super righteous people acting all strong n mighty because they got GWAMM deathless without popping any consumable because "muh cheating" and refuse to take dervs or assassins in their parties because "muh its overpowered" need to chill a bit, the game is old and got a passionnate community that is still sticking to it 12-13 years later, mods are helping people stay by smoothing up unfun parts of the game (ToA to DoA travel without tb ? Yaay.), that's awesome.

    • Official Post

    Well, I've seen a lot of opinions here, but there have been in my opinion some great Guild Wars mods - DressUp, GwVanquish, DirectSong editor, TexMod are a few that I've used before. They enhanced my game experience quite a lot.

    The devs of Toolbox have, in my opinion, the right mindset and are willing to remove features if required - something that we can only be glad for.

    It's still a far way of from being a real cheating tool/bot, but it has the potential - you can skip required quests etc, and that's a line too far for me. But those are only a few features compared to what is really handy on it.

    But, I'll cut it short here - if ANet isn't okay with it, we won't be either - otherwise, we'll make sure to provide a platform for it here.

  • Many of the advantages that Toolbox gives can be mitigated on the server side, rendering the tool less useful.

    Dialog doesn't let you skip all quests. The majority can't be skipped, and those that do are mostly in Cantha. The Gate NPCs mostly check if the player completed the previous mission, not the previous quest.

    The slightly larger map range that Toolbox gives could also be mitigated on the server side, by not giving the client information about spawn until they're actually within the normal radar.

    Open chests on distance? Yes, I'm sure an additional constraint could be added that the player actually have to be within X distance.

    /chest: Either they could add that command into the game, or put a similar constraint that you have to be within X distance to be able to access the Xunlai Chest.

    There are more features in ToolBox that I'm not so sure about how they could be affected.

    Personally I hope they inspire a but from the good options from ToolBox rather than block them. By adding similar features ingame, there's less incentive to use a thirdparty program.

    • Official Post

    But why should Anet be expected to alter their game server-side to accommodate a third party program? No no no no. That’s entirely upside down thinking. The third party program should not be allowed to do it in the first place. It’s not Anet’s job to accommodate Toolbox, it’s Toolbox’s responsibility to comply with Anet.

  • Yes, that may be true.

    But it won't stop other rogue programs (including bots) to abuse them unless they're patched on the server side. In this case it's a fault in the server and it makes sense to block all abuse of it, not just a single software using it.

    • Official Post

    But why should Anet be expected to alter their game server-side to accommodate a third party program? No no no no. That’s entirely upside down thinking. The third party program should not be allowed to do it in the first place. It’s not Anet’s job to accommodate Toolbox, it’s Toolbox’s responsibility to comply with Anet.

    Because otherwise people will abuse it? People don't ask for permission to cheat, they look for lack of enforcement

    Also, what Lexx said above

    • Official Post

    Because otherwise people will abuse it? People don't ask for permission to cheat, they look for lack of enforcement

    Also, what Lexx said above

    the problem with that approach is that eventually there will be a choice for Toolbox if this attitude is adopted - comply or get squashed.

    Also for any prospective replacement programs too. It would be less work to blanket-ban all third party programs than to adapt the existing code accordingly.

    But I really hope it doesn’t come to that. I’d like to see a middle ground.