Defoliant mod now illegal on US server

Posted on by

Thanks to Beerstein for this info.

Hello everyone,

just a quick announcement: up till recently, US server was pretty much the only server allowing the use of the “defoliant” mod (flora remover – that removed all the bush and tree leaves in the game to help you cheat “increase your FPS”) – well until November 2013 (for those interested, here is a ticket history of Beerstein, it’s mentioned in the text).

However, this has changed around December and now the mod is considered illegal:

mMF20Xy

So, to all of you, mod users out there, don’t tell anyone don’t use cheat mods!

56 thoughts on “Defoliant mod now illegal on US server”

    • Because it just removes the foliage making you see the targets behind bushes/trees clearly…

      If the bushes/trees are visible you’ll have a harder time guessing where to exactly shoot that “red outline”
      Also…maybe it has some parts covered by an obstacle…you won’t know that unless you point your gun around the outline…if the mod is installed you’ll know that from the start(just an example).

  2. Eh…still, this won’t prevent people from using it, as it doesn’t on EU…
    Exactly as you said above: “… (don’t tell anyone) don’t use cheat mods!”

    • We can still use this mod on CN server. (Hell they don’t even ban bots with 100k+ battles and 42%- WR!)

  3. I sent a picture of a retard to the support a retard who was using foliage removal cheat and the answer what I’ve got was:

    “Dear Tank Commander,

    Thank you for contacting us.

    In our Games, we tolerate the use of mods yet please be advised, Wargaming.net does not officially support them.

    Mods may damage the game files or cause system malfunction. If you are unsure about a mod usage permission, the only advice we can provide you is to delete it.

    For further details regarding mods usage permission, please refer to our EULA.

    You can find more information about the Game Rules if you follow these links:
    http://worldoftanks.eu/en/user_agreement
    http://worldoftanks.eu/en/privacy_policy
    http://worldoftanks.eu/en/terms_of_service

    Thank you for your patience and understanding.

    Kind regards,

    XY”

    So yeah…

  4. I have used the Foilage mod before it became forbidden and I have to say that it really helps when it comes to shooting moving targets that normally would be hard to see. It also helps shooting weakspots greatly.

    • that mean cheating you know. when you an an enemy sitting in two bush. You can see him clearly if use mod and shot at his weeak spot when he is very hard to find out your, because he don’t use mod and only see the red outline. So you have x-ray vision when who don’t use that is blind?

  5. I wish they’d just ban ALL mods, most have some aspect of cheating, even the famous xvm has aspects that can be considered cheating.

      • Tell me, how is another aim circle/crosshair, a a hitlog+damage panel, a tankcarrousel or a scope shadow removal an “aspect of cheating”?

        • “cheating” is maybe/maybe not too strong.. but…

          * different crosshair, because you dont HAVE to remember loadtimes of all tanks, some crosshair mods show up the enemy’s reload and armour values… advantage, yes, cheat.. not really, information is available elsewhere, just not instaneously..

          * hitlog, you know who hit you, what tank and with what ammo, even if not spotted, you know what tank (and if more than one) is roughly in what position, even when they haven’t been spotted in the game at all. Major advantage is knowing if its 3 tanks or 1 fast firing. advantage, yes, cheat.. yes actually.. you know information you are not supposed to know.

          * scope shadow, gives you more view “width” than those who don’t have it, advantage yes, cheat, probably, because you are “not supposed” to be able to see outside the “black circle”

          * carrousel.. nope..

          * XVM, you know which tank is “probably” the most highly dangerous enemy and can focus fire on him, remove the enemies “best players” and you now have the upper hand.. advantage, yes, cheat, not really.. you can find this information elsewhere, but not in 0.0001 of a second while in game… this is probably one of those “cheats that isn’t a cheat” due to “the spirit” and not “the letter” of the rules

          • Ban the game! Because:
            a) all the information about reload are in the game. You can also be playing with two monitors, on the second you can have for example a WoT inspector running up and actually be “cheating” even more. And WoT inspector and programs such as use exactly these informations that are in the game (either in garage, or in the game mechanism)
            b) “hit log”… hm, in my mods set up it’s a damage panel, my hit log shows all my hits to the enemy I did. The damage panel shows me the amount of damage I took by that one shot or whatever. It’s not cheating again, because all these informations are already in the game. You can recognize the HEAT ammo (with your ears) and you also can recognize the APCR ammo (just with your eyes). Also when the not spotted tank hits you and doesn’t bounce (i.e. does some damage), the game also tells you, what tank it is. This is also in the game. Ban the game!
            c) those who use scope shadow remover are probably guys who have weaker PCs and removing the scope shadow actually increases their FPS byl 25% or even more. I use it just because when camping in the bush and going into sniper mode, my framerate sometimes drops to 17 fps. Which is ridiculous. It’s not about cheating, it’s about fluent vision, because game itself is horribly optimized and 99% of scope shadow removal users are using it because of it.
            d) 99% percent of XVM users don’t give a f. about enemy team. They use it to see if that friendly player can take that flank alone or not. Also it is not cheating, because XVM doesn’t help you kill better or worse player, it’s just a tool to help you decide if you can trust the player or not. Ask anybody with good stats why he uses XVM. He’ll tell you this. Personally I don’t care if I fight a unicum or a tomato, I approach every player the same, I just used XVM to see whether I need to be afraid of losing that flank or not. XVM didn’t make me a better player killing unicums one after another.

            Also the community has been asking Wargaming to implement a list of mods which are forbidden for over one year and the only result we got was “Sword of Damocles is forbidden to use”. Okay then.

    • Not possible.

      If WG could remove the ability to mod the game internally then the cheats would move to external applications. The only ones suffering would be the regular players.

  6. all modded version are cheats in compared to vanilla version: you know exact where they were, which ammo and which gun they are shooting you, you know which distance you can shoot and they cannot see you, you can zoom in more than they can zoom in, you can zoom out in arty mod to extreme so you can shoot half of a map easily and don’t need to scroll the minimap like others….

    • So basicly all those evil things that pro players know. Ban all those bastards who have more than 1000 games and remeber weakspots! Ban all people who can learn!

      Just L2P kido, the fact you are too dumb to install a mod doesn’t make it a cheat…

      • Plus not all mods are evil. What about hangar or interface mods that don’t influence the gameplay at all? These aren’t cheats, they just make everything more comprehensible.

      • lol, I’m already an unicum with 64% win so I don’t need to l2p
        And yes, many unicums and super unicums use those mods too because they are “legal”

        • Agree that due to being ‘legal’ they are used.

          And why they are used? – They give advantage, why else!
          ‘Everyone can get them’ bull****. – Not everyone uses them or even know about them to begin with!

          WG is just damn ignorant about it, they don’t care until there are really abusing mods… There should be clear advice on what is legal and whatnot. And purely cosmetic, taste and non-gameplay wise changers should be legal. But beyond that it is not allowed. Yes the modders be mad, but they know it better themselves how it alters the gameplay.

          • And why they are used? – They give advantage, why else!
            ‘Everyone can get them’ bull****. – Not everyone uses them or even know about them to begin with!

            You are so right. Not everyone uses, or knows about, wotlabs, wotDB, TankInspector, forums, tankwiki, ftr, the Community Mentor Program… Sorry, SilentStalker, they’ll have to ban you next, followed by all those other information sources. It’s been fun having this huge advantage!

            • Having a brain instead of software makes a great deal of difference, thanks for noting it. Or does our brain cheat because we are at higher capacity to learn?

              Talking about in-game changes, sorry for not being clear as blue sky, but there just happened to be a bird flying! :P

            • Well this diesnt give advantage at all. It henders gameplay because you cant see where to lineup or double bush and maps are ever changing.

              We play agame with a massive head and over target marker….Yeah this is soooo ridiculous that one guy can see the paint job and the others only see a huge Red display of health and a huge red outline.

              You guys might get credit if it was WT without Overhead markers….But its not.

              Pray that everyone uses these, so you can use vision to murder them.

              Very few mods actually give a player massive advantages, most is just preferance TBH.

              Only things like 10 sec tracers, lazer pointers and 3d hitskins [see through not paint] are real advantages or minimap aiming mods.

              As a whole guys who rely on mods are not great. Best players dont use them they distract you more than help.
              That said without my custom Sniper Sights and XVM and this game is shitty. Mods allow us to do stuff we want and if we relied on WG we would never get shit….They just now after 3 years are putting a fiore icon ingame…Lol

              • Changes via mod are very little for the unknowing, but those who beat the best of it, can make real game changes. Tactical thinking without info is taking a wild guess. But the smallest detail will give away particular player great insight to how a player will act in your and in enemy team. It is simple counter what can be countered. You know what works and what not. Simple as that.

                Difference between 52-55-60-65+ comes down to use information which laid upon you. Even without mods you can make it to the well over sixties, but you can augment it to gain few extra percent and the list is not small who actually rely on mods to work from patch to patch, they simply can’t fathom how they would manage without their mods, because they are so used to them. Used to information they are getting.

                Best ones being gun mod which shows which gun the enemy is lurking… And that is not distance dependant! Also zoom out mods… how many times I’ve sweared when I simply cannot scroll back enough ( and still cannot ) with the default to see what the enemy is currently looking at or zoom in to see better on long distance for more precise shots.

                Say what ye like, but advantage is advantage. They are not even close to preference when you can gain information in milliseconds, which you would have to get close to or dissolve the wall of Himmelsdorf corridors to see.

                There are plenty of mods which do jacks*** for anyone. I for one only use skins to make up for the eyecandy part, but have no need to get the adrenaline boost from ‘small’ mod changes, which would totally change my gameplay. As I would know things I should not via the vanilla WoT setting. Guessing, estimating and taking chances. All mitigated to cold calculations when I rely on info I get via headset when clanmates, friends use mods for their advantage. As of soloplay I would say my sixth sense is dampened. More instict on what to do and what the enemy team will do a 48% player certainly will not try to conquest the Mines hill when I give a few shells in, but 55%+ would definitely challenge to the duel.

                Knowledge is power, a big crank up from guessing.

          • WTF E-100 driver with 64% win rate and 60% survival rate here
            And my ARL -44 and M6 performed better than my KV-1s

            • It says nothing to me.

              I can say i have 100% win rate with AT 1. But I have done only one battle with it.

              So without number of battles you have done with each vehicle, the Win% does not mean much to me.

              So give me your number of battles or better yet, your WOT username so i can check it myself.

        • Given your first post, you seem to lack basic knowledge of the game…. –

          Especially these two sentences reveals it: “you can zoom in more than they can zoom in, you can zoom out in arty mod to extreme so you can shoot half of a map easily and don’t need to scroll the minimap like others….”

          • Lol this really is also another distraction. The amount of time spent in super zoom or zoom out is nothing. Most times it actually saves the other guy as newbs are zoomed into 64x and tunnel out until they miss the other 3 open targets.

            Also same with arty zoom out. It takes like 4 rolls of the wheel to zoom in and y then they safed up.

            Guys need to stop blaming mods for huge advantages. Look at WGNL these guys will whoop ass and dont use any mods.

            Mods make life simpler or less menial as a whole NOT increasing skill.

  7. That’s why i don’t tell anyone…

    BTW, has EU ban on last known position markers been officially lifted? Not that it matters, because all major streamers and youtubers use it anyway :P .

  8. Well, mods give HUGE advantage, considering that you even wont be banned, if you use illegal ones. They should seriously take measures of making official mod page and stop blabbering nonsense about banning people who uses illegal modes (which is not happening).

    • Is not what they said they were going to do there are some mods i disagree with for example damage skins. But things like XVM I see no problem with them as they give no advantage and actually make the game more enjoyable for me anyway.

  9. I really don’t care. It’s up to them whether they want drive through empty maps or have clown tanks. Good players will be good anyway and bad players still will be bad, unless they install “brain.exe” into their nervous system.

    • Exactly I can tell who uses bush mods by them never using cover at all..he ones that leave the trunks only are also bad and very old and since WG changes bushes constantly they are disadvantage.

  10. How about banning the use of full-screen, it makes the tanks bigger so they are easier to shoot and that is not fair.

  11. For the record (dohoho), I tried the mod while my PC was out of action, as my non-gaming laptop struggles to run the game even on the lowest possible settings and with a low-res texture pack installed.

    It did nothing to help performance, in fact I believe it slightly worsened it. I didn’t bother taking a close look at the mod’s structure but I’m inclined to believe the makers simply replaced the textures of the leafy parts of bushes and trees with fully transparent alpha textures as opposed to the existing ones, meaning the game still has to load the textures and render them, even though they may appear (well, not appear, I suppose) to be invisible and therefore absent.

    TL;DR doesn’t improve performance at all, don’t bother trying. This mod is only useful if you want to see through bushes, not if you want to boost framerate.

    • Then you got wrong mod. The one mod turns them clear and it doesnt add anything liek you said.
      The other removes any image from the game and that greatly reduces it. Also just like WOT tweaker turns off all kinds of graphic options this one does as well.

      I used to save 10 FPS from High detail bushes to the removal mod.

      Also who gives a shit? We have a HUD with HUGE OTM right above us and a massive outline…Its not as if we can`t see them anyways.

      If anything its a bad mod because as a player you can`t see bushes and its hard to strategically hide.

      • I never said it added anything. I downloaded the right mod as far as I am aware (Artisan’s).

        • No you downloaded “Right” mod. But there are 2 types. Artisans and the ones based on the older removal mod like you said simply makes the bushes invisible or close to it.

          Like you said that makes the comp work even harder trying to bend colors etc rather than when its a solid color. It actually makes more work, and from my exp doesnt save performance and is used for game play advantage/preference.

          The other is a removal of the actual image so its using blank sprites or whatever they are called.

          But I have been told using Artisans it is much faster when using no post process and low bush settings since it doesnt try to make that invisible bush look good.

          So it may have been a compounded issue.

          Anyways I had same problem until I used other mod and it added 5-8 fps on a 40 fps machine.

          Wot is weird low settings arent always fastest my poor settings are slower than mid settings.

  12. I just wish that they would stop being so ambiguous about what is and is not banned in which server.

    A central list would seem to be the answer but is lacking on NA servers.

  13. This isnt “Illegal” they just didnt want him posting these mods. So he is forcing issue and so WG decides to not reverse it because others will use it as excuse.

    Basically they dont want these mods talked about but they couldnt care less.

    WG has always used vague rules so they can punish anyone at anytime.

    This mod isnt banned officially.

  14. Funny. I had an issue recently with mods/support. What happened was that I mentioned a mod and said that people use it because WG doesn’t do anything about it. In the exact same thread, I believe.

    I got a warning, which I appealed, pointing out that there is no list of banned mods, nor a rule against mentioning mods. Their response was that it’s in the EULA, that I “encouraged violation of game mechanics”.

    Again, I disputed this, stating that you don’t even have to agree to the EULA, which is in the game, to use the forums. They replied with more nonsense, and I noticed that you now have to play 10 games (meaning that you have to agree to the EULA), in order to post on the forums.

    There’s some clause in there that states “BY INSTALLING, COPYING, OR OTHERWISE USING OUR GAME(S) OR SERVICE(S) IN ANY MANNER, YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THESE RULES.”

    The ‘services’ are the forums. So basically you agree to be censored at their mercy, for unspoken rules, by playing the game.

  15. With how formal and sterile-sounding the response to support tickets of any sort are, I’m willing to bet that all possible responses are prefabricated, and the support personnel just have to copy and paste whatever vaguely resembles the issue being brought up.