Auto hotkey to pick heroes before loading is even finished

General Discussion
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Last I heard, Blizzard’s stance on the use of things like macros was that you aren’t allowed to use them to do things that are impossible for humans. If you do a quick search you can find AutoHotkey scripts which make it possible to choose any hero you want before your loading screen is even over, which is impossible to do (especially to pick a specific hero) without the help of a third party program (AHK). Although it doesn’t give a gameplay advantage so to speak, it does go against Blizzard’s ToS in that it’s a third party program giving the user an advantage over other users and allows them to perform an action not naturally possible.

Is there or will there be any action being taken against macros like these and other third party programs that give a stronger and more immediate advantage to players? Or do you guys want to continue to refuse to suspend and/or ban players to try and keep player numbers up to keep Overwatch at least “barely profitable”?

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Just don’t even try anything like that, or risk a ban.

If you wanna quickly pick a hero, just get an SSD harddrive, and load up the game 10 seconds before other people.

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Consider reading the post before responding please thanks!

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You can do the same with razer synapse or corsair cui.
Lets ban everyone who has a razer or corsair mouse.
Many mice/keyboard have macro functions at this point.

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I don’t see the point of taking action against these people, I can still outclick them, and there’s always the option to have undetectable hardware macros.

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Everyone doesn’t load in at the same times. If someone has picked a hero before you loaded in, then your PC is simply slower.

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People have been banned just for having third party programs loaded during play. So yes, it’s punishable and detectable apparently.
That being said, minor problem at best. The kind of person who needs scripts and programs to autolock is definitely someone who’d instalock and refuse to change anyway.

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Can I be banned for having AHK on by accident?
Bc I have a script thats linked to tab I use for a clicking site, but I forgot to close it before booting up QP yesterday

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You can do the same with razer synapse or corsair cui.
Lets ban everyone who has a razer or corsair mouse.
Many mice/keyboard have macro functions at this point.

Not talking ability to use a macro, talking actual use of them while in-game. A macro would perform a very recognizable pattern of rapid inputs in a pattern so perfectly consistent (and potentially faster than is possible for a human to perform) that it should easily be detectable through actual usage rather than by detecting the program/hardware.

I don’t see the point of taking action against these people, I can still outclick them, and there’s always the option to have undetectable hardware macros.

Good for you! We’re all so proud you can outclick them, thanks for adding meaningful commentary. There are currently undetected hacks, I’m sure Blizzard doesn’t allow those even though they aren’t detected.

Everyone doesn’t load in at the same times. If someone has picked a hero before you loaded in, then your PC is simply slower.

Again, read. I mentioned you can do a quick search and find macros specifically for picking before the loading screen is over. I’ve joined games at 45 seconds remaining in hero select, which is the maximum time, and yet heard someone pick 1-2 seconds before the loading screen ended.

People have been banned just for having third party programs loaded during play. So yes, it’s punishable and detectable apparently.

Yes, they do detect some third party programs. I’m talking about a specific group that as far as I can tell they can detect the usage of but ignore regardless of the fact that it goes against their ToS and direct statements about 3rd party programs that give direct in-game advantages.

That being said, minor problem at best. The kind of person who needs scripts and programs to autolock is definitely someone who’d instalock and refuse to change anyway.

Not at all relevant to the topic.

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Not really an advantage… but that part could be irrelevant anyway.

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Wouldn’t chance it.

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how was that not relevant? My opinion is it’s a minor inconvenience at worst and the kind of people who would use that crap would still be instalocking anyway and not changing. Therefore not really worth blizzards time of focusing on such a petty thing when they could spend time … i dunno… reworking the report system so there’s not so much appealing needed.
Are you looking for a Dev response “WE ARE LOOKING INTO THIS AND HAVE BEEN AWARE OF THIS FOR A WHILE”?

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Not really. For games where I do use macros I record actual input with a temporarily rebound scroll wheel. If I ever cared to it’d be possible to program it to be slightly random and have the same standard deviation and range as real inputs.

As for mouse positioning, you can move your cursor there before you even enter the match, it’s not like the character portraits move. If I’m serious about winning the instalock (i.e. on the PTR) I’ll tape stuff to my monitor to know where to click.

More advanced things like recoil/burst control and 180s are much easier to detect and much harder to hide, but instalocking is really easy and the SSD and ping matter a loooot more.