Suspicion of Helper Addon

NoSoup

So I'm going to start by saying I have no concrete proof. This is purely speculation but I'm throwing this out here to see if other people have started seeing similar behaviour in games.

I've been playing Tribute since release and predominately only pvp. I pay very particular attention to how other players play in the opening rounds so I know which style of play I have to play agasint this opponent for a chance to win. Over the last couple of days I have noticed a particular pattern across a number of different opponents which has me feeling there maybe some "extra help" out there.

Across all players that I noticed this it occured only with the Crow cards. The first time it happened I put it down to lag, but I looked at my latency and it was great (for Australian standards) and it continued throughout the entire game. Basically, when a crow card shows up in the Tavern during their turn, if they have the gold for it, it is brought fast. And I mean incredibly fast. So fast that the animation of the card doesn't complete and the card appears to go straight from the draw pile to their cooldown pile. So fast it never even lands in the Tavern.

With the first player I faced where I saw this happening, I just put it down to a very skilled and quick thinking player as all their moves were quick and on point. But then an hour or so later I face another player where this exact behaviour (cards being brought so fast they don't land in the Tavern) and this player was far from the level of the previous, they made numerous silly choices and seemed completely humstrung when dealing with any other non crow card (for instance not converting/destroying bewilderment cards, etc). It also struck me as interesting that it only ever happened with Crow cards. Over the last 2 days I have seen this in about 4 games now and none of the players were this quick with any other patron cards, and when you see it once it continues to happen throughout the rest of the game. If it was a "one off play" during a game I could easily put it down to a random lag spike. But when you see it happen once, it then happens with every opportunity for the rest of the game and that becomes instantly eyebrow raising. It really looks like an auto buy script/addon and if this exists it would surely be crossing the line between QoL and cheating.

So I'm mostly curious to see if other players have noticed similar behaviour during any of their recent games? For context, I'm playing on PC|NA

IncultaWolf

I play on PCNA too, and yes, I've played against several people who do this, only with crow cards. I don't think it's an addon or anything, just that these players are so obsessed with getting as many crow cards as possible, because it's the easiest deck to win with rng outside of orgnum spam, that they spam click the millisecond they see a purple card show up. Luckily, they are nerfing crow on the pts, so the deck won't be as overperforming as it is now.

NoSoup

Well based on what other people have previously said in the forums it's seems more likely than not that people are working on addons to do what I'm suspecting to be the case of these games recently.

From https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/623333/suggestion-automated-tales-of-tribute-gameplay-option/p1

Heelie wrote: »

I am actually working on an addon in this direction, I have built the engine but need to make a good implementation. ESO specifically allows RTA ( Real Time Assistance). My idea here is to make an engine that runs in the background and calculates the best move every turn, it then highlights the best move(s) in game for you to do. Essentially you can play perfect ToT without having to understand or pay attention to the game. The engine is already good enough to hit #1 on the leaderboards and runs at a 85% win rate.

Personofsecrets

I've run into a few players that play their cards extremly quickly and I've never found a way to play the way that they play.

One thing to bare in mind is that some choices really don't take any time to make. Someone had accused me of cheating since I was buying cards so quickly from the tavern, but really there was no choice left to make. I had a ton of gold, Vestments of the Druid King was active, and every purchase I made was giving me power.

So though some types of play seem unnatural, even like the fast play that I don't understand, there could be a fair reason that explains it all. Maybe ask those players?

I've encountered players that are sort of slow and make such bad choices that I wonder if they are bots. Low and behold, they are just really not familiar with the game. I had to ask to find out though.

NoSoup

I'm going to record my games for the next few days to see if I can catch it again to give a better idea. Need to emphasis how quick this happens.

In the particular games I mentioned above it occurs so fast that the card barely has time to even show it's face and the animation gets cancelled before it even makes it to the Tavern. Visually it looks like the card gets drawn striaght into their cooldown pile. Multiple times it happened so fast I didn't even get a glimps of the card and had to look at their cooldown to see what card they actually brought.

WitchyKiki

IncultaWolf wrote: »

I play on PCNA too, and yes, I've played against several people who do this, only with crow cards. I don't think it's an addon or anything, just that these players are so obsessed with getting as many crow cards as possible, because it's the easiest deck to win with rng outside of orgnum spam, that they spam click the millisecond they see a purple card show up. Luckily, they are nerfing crow on the pts, so the deck won't be as overperforming as it is now.

Oh this is good news.