GGG's opinions on data mining and content extraction

As someone who has been doing a fair share of poking around in the content.ggpk as of late, I recently became a little bit worried about if this was technically acceptable by GGG. The pertinent section of the ToS reads:

"

Licence: Provided that you are 16 years or older, and also if you are younger than 18 years old you have legal parental or guardian consent to access and use the Website, Materials and Services, Grinding Gear Games grants you a limited licence (“Licence”) for the purpose of accessing, as applicable downloading, and making use of the Website, Materials and Services (or any parts of such as Grinding Gear Games may make available to you from time to time) and the related Rights for your own personal and non-commercial use in accordance with these Terms of Use. For the further avoidance of doubt, pursuant to clause 3, any rights you may have in respect of any elements or aspects of POE (including without limitation in respect of the in-game characters and Virtual Items) are strictly limited to a personal ‘licence to use’ such as part of the Licence and at no time do you acquire any ownership rights in respect of such. Any contravention by you of these Terms of Use or any other terms or conditions notified to you by Grinding Gear Games or any behaviour which Grinding Gear Games deems in its sole discretion is not in keeping with the intended spirit of participation in POE, immediately terminates the Licence, or such aspect of the Licence as Grinding Gear Games may otherwise provide you notice of. Termination of the Licence, or any aspect of the Licence, by Grinding Gear Games may without limitation also result in the taking of any of the further actions described in clause 16.

The part I'm concerned about is the section that reads
"Grinding Gear Games grants you a limited license... for the purpose of accessing... and making use of the Website, Materials, and Services... and the related Rights for your own personal and non-commercial use in accordance with these Terms of Use."

To me, that reads like a blanket ban on all forms of content extraction and patch analysis as is commonly found for other games (many of which have a similar clause in their ToS). As someone who not only wishes to provide analysis of game content (to the fairly limited extent that the content.ggpk allows) but who also really enjoys the theorycrafting element of the game and is rather disappointed in the lack of real monster stats, this doesn't really make me a happy camper.

So, I'd like to get a little bit of a clarification on a) what this section of the ToS really means and b) if it means pretty much what I stated above how stringently it will be enforced (i.e., what GGG thinks about data mining as a whole). I figure that certain things (recipes especially) are definitely off-limits just because that, IMO, would ruin the point of discovery. However, a way to see microtransaction effects before you buy them or a way to minmax the health and resists needed to survive a boss without having to resort to extensive trial and error seems germane to the development of the game as a whole.

I'd also like to gauge community receptiveness to this idea as a whole. Would you guys like to see content extractions if GGG gives a green light, and what would you potentially like to see in them?

Bump

as a gamer without the knowledge of what implications this has, I'll just respond to the examples you make. I would not care if you looked at how microtransactions looked before you bought them. However, if this meant you could play with them in any way, even if they only showed for you, I think it is def off limits.

If you want to look at monster stats, I think this is acceptable if you post them so we all can see them. However, this will never happen, if it's allowed, people will not share everything if they can get an advantage themselves.

About the vendor recipes - def off limit. But ye, if you allow the rest, how will you check if someone read the new recipes (if this is at all possible by these means)?

Anyway, as someone who knows as much about the subject as there is info in your post; I don't think it should be allowed because it will in practice give an unfair advantage to the players who will do it.

I'd have thought that monster stats and recipes ect were all held server side?

"

whrsmycoffee wrote:

as a gamer without the knowledge of what implications this has, I'll just respond to the examples you make. I would not care if you looked at how microtransactions looked before you bought them. However, if this meant you could play with them in any way, even if they only showed for you, I think it is def off limits.

If you want to look at monster stats, I think this is acceptable if you post them so we all can see them. However, this will never happen, if it's allowed, people will not share everything if they can get an advantage themselves.

About the vendor recipes - def off limit. But ye, if you allow the rest, how will you check if someone read the new recipes (if this is at all possible by these means)?

Anyway, as someone who knows as much about the subject as there is info in your post; I don't think it should be allowed because it will in practice give an unfair advantage to the players who will do it.

I'm a bit insulted. This whole project started because I was trying to help with the monster pages on the wiki. We already did a lot of work getting elemental resists and suchlike.

"

DeSgeretjin wrote:

I'd have thought that monster stats and recipes ect were all held server side?

I can tell you for certain that some monster stats are held in the content.ggpk. One of the absolutely infuriating things I've found is that the DefaultMonsterStats.dat holds the data for exactly 100 monsters. Unnamed, of course. For each monster level, there is one monster recorded. Of course, since each map has at least one type of monster and in merciless there are 5 or 6 maps with all the same level mobs, this means that we have probably 10 or 15% coverage for things like HP and EXP.
To be honest, I'm not 100% sure on recipes but it was more of a categorical statement that some things shouldn't be revealed even if they can be data mined.

"

Nocticate wrote:

We already did a lot of work getting elemental resists and suchlike.

You have monster elemental resists?! I'd love to see that info.

Anyways, as long as GGG gave the green light, I'd love to see info like monster Life and monster Elemental Resists released.

As you should probably expect of the majority of users though, my opinion is that the "microtransaction preview" thing would be a strict no-no because the way you word it makes it seem as though a player could potentially forgo the purchasing process and simply have a free microtransaction (client-side only, but still free), which is just... bad. Argue for or against piracy, but that would just be bad. Really.

"

Nocticate wrote:

"

whrsmycoffee wrote:

as a gamer without the knowledge of what implications this has, I'll just respond to the examples you make. I would not care if you looked at how microtransactions looked before you bought them. However, if this meant you could play with them in any way, even if they only showed for you, I think it is def off limits.

If you want to look at monster stats, I think this is acceptable if you post them so we all can see them. However, this will never happen, if it's allowed, people will not share everything if they can get an advantage themselves.

About the vendor recipes - def off limit. But ye, if you allow the rest, how will you check if someone read the new recipes (if this is at all possible by these means)?

Anyway, as someone who knows as much about the subject as there is info in your post; I don't think it should be allowed because it will in practice give an unfair advantage to the players who will do it.

I'm a bit insulted. This whole project started because I was trying to help with the monster pages on the wiki. We already did a lot of work getting elemental resists and suchlike.

"

DeSgeretjin wrote:

I'd have thought that monster stats and recipes ect were all held server side?

I can tell you for certain that some monster stats are held in the content.ggpk. One of the absolutely infuriating things I've found is that the DefaultMonsterStats.dat holds the data for exactly 100 monsters. Unnamed, of course. For each monster level, there is one monster recorded. Of course, since each map has at least one type of monster and in merciless there are 5 or 6 maps with all the same level mobs, this means that we have probably 10 or 15% coverage for things like HP and EXP.
To be honest, I'm not 100% sure on recipes but it was more of a categorical statement that some things shouldn't be revealed even if they can be data mined.

Sounds like you found the "average" monster data that is used for tooltip dps.

"

Saffell wrote:

"

Nocticate wrote:

"

whrsmycoffee wrote:

as a gamer without the knowledge of what implications this has, I'll just respond to the examples you make. I would not care if you looked at how microtransactions looked before you bought them. However, if this meant you could play with them in any way, even if they only showed for you, I think it is def off limits.

If you want to look at monster stats, I think this is acceptable if you post them so we all can see them. However, this will never happen, if it's allowed, people will not share everything if they can get an advantage themselves.

About the vendor recipes - def off limit. But ye, if you allow the rest, how will you check if someone read the new recipes (if this is at all possible by these means)?

Anyway, as someone who knows as much about the subject as there is info in your post; I don't think it should be allowed because it will in practice give an unfair advantage to the players who will do it.

I'm a bit insulted. This whole project started because I was trying to help with the monster pages on the wiki. We already did a lot of work getting elemental resists and suchlike.

"

DeSgeretjin wrote:

I'd have thought that monster stats and recipes ect were all held server side?

I can tell you for certain that some monster stats are held in the content.ggpk. One of the absolutely infuriating things I've found is that the DefaultMonsterStats.dat holds the data for exactly 100 monsters. Unnamed, of course. For each monster level, there is one monster recorded. Of course, since each map has at least one type of monster and in merciless there are 5 or 6 maps with all the same level mobs, this means that we have probably 10 or 15% coverage for things like HP and EXP.
To be honest, I'm not 100% sure on recipes but it was more of a categorical statement that some things shouldn't be revealed even if they can be data mined.

Sounds like you found the "average" monster data that is used for tooltip dps.

No. I found specific data for one hundred different monsters. I went and checked for about 5 or 10 of them based on exact exp value (each different mob has different exp values) all for mobs of varying levels. That was enough to convince me. I feel relatively safe with that inference.

I'M WRONG AND SHIT. Damn, the exp values were exact for only one mob per area. I feel really stupid.

"

adghar wrote:

"

Nocticate wrote:

We already did a lot of work getting elemental resists and suchlike.

You have monster elemental resists?! I'd love to see that info.

Anyways, as long as GGG gave the green light, I'd love to see info like monster Life and monster Elemental Resists released.

As you should probably expect of the majority of users though, my opinion is that the "microtransaction preview" thing would be a strict no-no because the way you word it makes it seem as though a player could potentially forgo the purchasing process and simply have a free microtransaction (client-side only, but still free), which is just... bad. Argue for or against piracy, but that would just be bad. Really.

Oh I think you misinterpreted what I said, or maybe I didn't expound on it enough. I meant more along the lines of being able to view microtransaction effects with a 3d model viewer or something like that. A cross between what a friend of mine did for a site called Southperry (for Maplestory) and what LoLking does with its model viewer for skins.