I do not think that word means what you think it means.
I understood the point of the macro checks to be for catching illegal botters/macroers, not to punish folks for walking away from the keyboard at the wrong time. /shrug
People who walk away from their keyboard, leaving it UNATTENDED with a MACRO running are guilty of UNATTENDED MACROING. These UNATTENDED MACROING CHECKS are meant to find and discourage this type of behavior, which shall henceforth be termed UNATTENDED MACROING. Using a third party program that automates tasks even more than the in-game client allows is a particularly egregious form of UNATTENDED MACROING, but is far from the only one.
Puella said:
This brought another idea into my head for improving the system, which is to increase the time to pass a check from three to ten minutes. This would mean that a legitimate TS'er would have to hit the button and then walk away for more than 10minutes before failing a test.
The same people who have complained repeatedly in this thread would be in exactly the same boat under this change you propose to the system. Three minutes is plenty of time to read and respond to a brick of text. Tripling this time would only benefit people who use UNATTENDED MACROS for ten minutes at a time instead of three.
Which brings us to the better than better system:
1) Randomly checks, you have ten minutes to respond and cannot TS during this time
2) If you type incorrect answer or don't answer for ten minutes, nothing happens
2a) If you fail three times in a row, bye bye love, hello loneliness, I think I just got banned
3) If you answer correctly, you continue as normal
Like many others, I'm not particularly in favor of a system that automatically bans you.
This would have the effect of making it nigh impossible to fail a test due to PL (unless you didn't see the correct color before crashing), would prevent ridiculous punishment for needed diversion from the keyboard after you have hit the button (examples of forced diversions including kid's fighting, glass breaking, dog's peeing, etc) unless you are unable to get back to the keyboard within 10 minutes.
How does this affect PL macro check fails? If you get PL you never get the message and you don't see the macro color, having tree minutes or ten minutes to respond won't affect anything.
Also I'm not sure many people in this thread grasp that broken glass, screaming children or urinating dogs are not exactly mitigating factors in this discussion. Not only is it ridiculous to expect you to back up a claim of a failed macro check with evidence that it was for one of these reasons, we don't care. If your life is so busy that you simply cannot pay attention to a screen for three minutes, either fish one cast at a time instead of macroing several attempts and walking away, or fish when the kids are in bed, the dog is outside and your bourbon is in a plastic sippy cup with a lid.
Overall, I think the three minutes is fine, but I can see a younger (not as intellectually endowed?) person getting into a panic over a three minute test, where a ten minute test might alleviate some of this angst.
If the idea of having to tell what color a color is within three minutes throws you into a panic and drains your ability to type /cm passcolor [a color] this is not the game for you, as you will often be throwin into situations when you need to press more than one button in less than three minutes.
And hey, if you fail a test and realize you failed it, no biggy, just pay closer attention for the next test, pass it, and you're in the clear
This is already the system, except you can't accidently completely miss a check.
I don't like your system for many reasons, but I'm curious most of all as to why you seem to think that players who get all randy about their ability to fish for an hour being taken away will be totally ok with being BANNED instead.