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Potential Tool for players to use against BOTs????
novercalis
Member, Founder, Kickstarter
So, it would be nice if we can just kill Botters w/o getting corruption but alas, we cant.
OR CAN WE??????????????????????
I wonder if there is a way, or a system that can be created that isnt abused - where if bots has been reported X amount of times, they can turn purple and stay purple until the GM can finally review.
NOW YES OBVIOUS - AS IS - ABUSABLE BY ALL HELLS. How can we prevent Abuse?
Unique "IDs" of sorts.
example
Player 1 ID --- 48392
Player 2 ID --- 43892
Player 3 ID --- 68318
When joining a Guild - a guild ID is added to their player ID
Guild ID - G382
so player IDs will look like:
Player 1 ID --- 48392G382
Player 2 ID --- 43892G382
Player 3 ID --- 68318G382
The report system will identify it is coming from a guild, trying to mass report. it will not flag the potential botter.
The report system will also identify if a mass report is being done in a very short time. IE 10 ppl reported within 2 minutes or less.
Reports must be made seeing the character - so it's not like you can open a menu, type a name to report. you got to see the bot in person and click on them to open the report menu as well.
So with something like that - Maybe you are the 20th person walking by someone you suspect is a bot. You then report the bot, now you get a prompt or you visually see this person gets flagged purple. This is an indication that multiple ppl have reported for suspect bot activity and you are free to kill. Lucky you, you won the Gacha Bot
Also when Reporting players - you have an internal CD to report another user. To prevent all players going around and reporting like mad, creating false flag & getting innocent legit players flagged.
thoughts? found a potential exploit? let me know or share your resolution to that hole.
Or know of a better approach, let's hear it!
OR CAN WE??????????????????????
I wonder if there is a way, or a system that can be created that isnt abused - where if bots has been reported X amount of times, they can turn purple and stay purple until the GM can finally review.
NOW YES OBVIOUS - AS IS - ABUSABLE BY ALL HELLS. How can we prevent Abuse?
Unique "IDs" of sorts.
example
Player 1 ID --- 48392
Player 2 ID --- 43892
Player 3 ID --- 68318
When joining a Guild - a guild ID is added to their player ID
Guild ID - G382
so player IDs will look like:
Player 1 ID --- 48392G382
Player 2 ID --- 43892G382
Player 3 ID --- 68318G382
The report system will identify it is coming from a guild, trying to mass report. it will not flag the potential botter.
The report system will also identify if a mass report is being done in a very short time. IE 10 ppl reported within 2 minutes or less.
Reports must be made seeing the character - so it's not like you can open a menu, type a name to report. you got to see the bot in person and click on them to open the report menu as well.
So with something like that - Maybe you are the 20th person walking by someone you suspect is a bot. You then report the bot, now you get a prompt or you visually see this person gets flagged purple. This is an indication that multiple ppl have reported for suspect bot activity and you are free to kill. Lucky you, you won the Gacha Bot
Also when Reporting players - you have an internal CD to report another user. To prevent all players going around and reporting like mad, creating false flag & getting innocent legit players flagged.
thoughts? found a potential exploit? let me know or share your resolution to that hole.
Or know of a better approach, let's hear it!
{UPK} United Player Killer - All your loot belongs to us.
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Comments
About the quantity and speed of reports against a single target, it's kinda difficult to balance that. Bots will most likely exist in less popular places to be more safe. If it's such an unpopular place that you only have 10-20 people a day there - that means that the bot gets to farm that location for a day. But as you said, just bringing your party there to mass report the bot would lead to bigger exploits elsewhere.
Corrupted player: if you're corrupted and piss a bunch of people off, and they report you as a bot...would that then turn you purple? which would be great for me as a corrupted player but there should be a guard in place against that to where if you're red nothing happens...but it just makes work for GMs to review this erroneous report. then what happens to the people that did the fake reporting? they could claim they truly thought the corrupted player was a bot when they truly werent.
Corrupted bot: again shouldn't go from red to purple...I guess a BH could get them...?
Purple player: would have no effect because they're already purple...but again the GM would have to sift through possible fake reports from unscrupulous players.
purple bot: similar to corrupted...if they're already purple this reporting system doesn't really help
green player: I guess worst case a bunch of people could report an innocent player, turn them purple, and then kill them. Again leaving the GM with a fake reporting to deal with later.
green bot: this would be the only case where this system would be advantageous. So the players report, the bot is killed. But then couldn't the bot detect that they were flagged as purple and now a human knows they need to deal with the eventual GM when they come for the investigating?
I will say that WoW had this reporting system and was also a subscription based game...but they still had bots ...so not sure how much it helped?
So the key question for this system:
How do you stop a bot from detecting it went from green to purple because of this reporting, thus alerting the human behind the bot.
What does a GM do with people who did fraudulent reports?
How does a GM decide if a player is a bot from the reports
you're on the right track.
Account ID + Player ID + Guild ID
so he reports on his main, then hops on his alt to report - the system will see it is from the same account.
The system will see all IDs attached to the accounts, so all alts included. If it see's another player on an alt, outside of the guild but has his/her main in the guild - the system will recognize.
Question is - is this system creatable?
I suspect bot makers can easily write a script to click on a prompt and then say "hi, leave me alone."
This wouldn't work. It only flags Green to Purple. If you were Purple/Red - nothing happens other than your character getting flagged internally for the GM to investigate when they get to that ticket.
You can also have Log Reports of all those who reported. Once the GMs arrive to the ticket and does the inspection - if they suspect and see this was a mass report by guildies to abuse the system - they can be punished. HOW - up to the GMs to decide.
GM can watch and observe a player activity hidden to determine if someone is botting. Lots of bot have weird automation behavior. After watching the bot, they can then attempt to make contact with the player. GMs don't need to have their names revealed "GM Nover".. can just spawn into the world as "Nover" and pretend it's a player to see how the player reacts / respond before hopping on "GM Novercalis" and see if they reacted differently.
Honestly the way Ashes is shaping up, I won't be surprised if the bots just beat people in PvP anyway.
And in the same vein, I'd assume that the report system tracks who reports who, not only for ease of backtracking by GMs, but for logging history too.
So in theory Intrepid should already have everything they need for this type of system. Well, that is if my assumptions are correct.
In any cases there will be bots. These bots will be reported and the staff will do there job to ban them.
But honnestly if some huge budget like AGS couldn't get ride of bots in New World, I don't know if Intrepid can do better.
Maybe the best solution is to put some mobs everywhere, but using the corruption system is wrong. Botting must be punished by a immadiate ban + ban IP if possible.
May not be our responsibility, but doesnt mean we cant do our part. Obviously if you see one, Report it. Be nice to kill a botter imo tho.
GMs are gonna be flooded with tickets and follow up.
As previously mentioned - when a GM investigate a potential botter - I assume the process may take 15-30 minutes.
* 10 mins observing the bot behavior
* 5-10 minutes checking bot logs, communications, IP Lookup
* 5-10 minutes making contact with the bot for a respond, reading any previous account notes, reading other logs (who reported, how frequent, how often - daily, weekly, hourly? writing up a report after determining guilty or not guilty for appeal purposes
I don't expect a team of 20 GMs around the clock 24/7 per server is gonna happen.
I expect 3 GMS doing 8hr shifts per server. So 1 GM Shift may be able to find 16 bots per day. This is excluding other tickets and GM request, following up on RMTers, Cheaters, Hackers, Exploiters, Bugs, Dupes, Dispute, Harassments, Threats...
So, while they are busy doing all other things, and not being able to get to this bot within his shift, YOU ASSUME LAZY.
I want to look at - UNTIL GM ARRIVES ON BOT TICKET - let the players grief the botters.
A good community is created by the community. So technically, it is OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO PLAY OUR PART< DO OUR PART AND CULTIVATE THE RIGHT CULTURE. We can go down the Fortnite/Rust/CoD Community of toxicity or a nice helpful, chill community ala EQ or something in between with Barren Chat ala WoW.
15 - 30 min ? I think you are dreaming...
It's more 15 - 30 days... Except maybe if they have more than one GM for 100 players, but it would imply 80 - GM per server of 8000 players. So it's not realistic. There will be probably 10 - 20 GMs for the whole game who will have massive quantity of reports to read from morning to evening with certainly a queue.
I am more for the captcha with random numbers to write. something like : "You have 5 min to write the following number, otherwise you will be kick from the game".
I know nothing in programmation, but maybe it's possible to code the captcha for it doesn't bother those who are on a boss or super elite mobs. A bot is usually not fighting a boss ))
And bots are low level so if there are mobs everywhere, it will make there life more complicated. GM could focus more on low level areas.
1. If someone is suspected of botting then drop a strong Mob next to them(strong for their level bur still killable of course) this could be the first step. It may reveal the likelihood of them being bots. Example: if they are programed to run in a certain direction like nearest node then come back to botting spot after some time, then the gm need only repeat this prosses every so often on potential bot and if everything lines up to be too clean then boom go to next step and initiate convo and check logs. This obviously has its kinks but something like this sounds not too bad. (If the bot is scripted to fight back then see if ecact combo is used with the same time between each ability use etc etc. If the actions seem too botty then maybe that would reveal them. )
2. Have the account id + guild id + player id idea that was mentioned earlier in the thread. This would be another layer.
3. Lastly if there is a group of individuals on each server that are willing to make a guild called something like bot hunters and are well known enough to be the "good guys" then if they happen to cross someone they think is a bot, they could simply ask the a question like "what 2 colors can a apple be?" This could be said outloud and not through dms. If the person can't answer after the guildy makes it obvious the question is directed at them then just kill them and move on. That interaction should take no more than 5 mins at most.
4. In hindsight that could would for the gm to catch bots aswell. They could rotate the questions out daily and write them in a broken way like "wWaAt Tw00o c8I0rs KaaaAn Ann ApIe B?" The system could go something like this:
1.Player A gets reported 5 times for botting.
2.Server automatically sends them this question. "wWaAt Tw00o c8I0rs KaaaAn Ann ApIe B?" It should come as a DM I think. The question only pops up while they are gathering or crafting something so it doesn't hurt those in a fight etc etc. They have 1-3min to respond. If they aren't a bot this shouldn't be an issue because they obviously should be looking at their screen to play the game.
3. If they don't respond then they gm could pop up. Monitor them. Maybe use another prompt 10min later and then if they still don't respond, take the appropriate gm actions with the assumption that they are a bot.
4. This would help to avoid false flags so the gm has more time to deal with actual bots. It'd also get rid of a decent amount of bots and make players less likely to bot since it will take more effort to get away with it.
The effort required to bot needs to be too high in order to prevent someone from botting. I.e "if I can't make money botting on this game because my accounts keep getting suspended then why would I bot?"
I sincerely apologize for making such a long post. It's probably a bit disorganized and flawed here and there. Just wanted to get these thoughts out there. Sorry for the rambling.
It depends also of AI of the mobs... On New World you cannot bring a mob enough far to get ride of bots. After few meters the mob goes back to his place. Bots knows it.
Hopefully the leashes aren't that short or else everyone will just run through every dungeon straight to the boss.
But that is a fun mechanic too. To create trains and run to safety when you see it comming
not really. it takes 2 minutes. I've done bot hunting before.
1. Player Id is a nice idea but goldseller just ganarate /hack random acounts
2. mass report - what if this is an gold selling bot spamming as mutch as posible? - solution : list there advertised website as hate speech and censor these so they use _ . , beween every letter , or just write LiKe tHiS - same as well until they have been so creativ that noone can read it any more
3. what if the person uses hacks/bugs and is able to stay under the map? than you can't report and need a actual Gm
4. so if someone just gathers materials he can be trolled by gankers? - what if you get an message as reportet person to identify as human (with diffrend windows/ colores/buttons that are totaly random) you have to click the right button or get flagt as bot, if no button at all is clicked you get disconected and maybe on an " at watch" list
5. if you see 3 bots as party staying in on place and killing just random moobs for grinding exp? dont reacting to you wisper, kill your moobs that you pull to them even they clearly dont get something by doing so? - report them all but if you report everyone and they aren't bots you're getting yourself into trouble by beeing shown on everyones minimap for a long (ingame) time. perfectly for geting killed and looted in the wilds
6. also if there are fixed spawns (locations and timer) for recources they would simply loging in, gather an log out until CD is over and respawn- solution : random spawn locations or spawn a burned tree that can't be used and are worthless and fill up all your inventory- who would farm this the whole day? just a bad bot
what if they don't speak the Language? and are Just annoyed? Or bots just programed to respond right?
if an GM shows up he sould spawn an unkileble moob that resetes his HP no mater what- a player would change his target a bot not or just after a time - everytime
Assume there will be possible to create sentient robots, cyborgs and artificial creatures much better than humans.
Assume an mmo is created for the primitive humans like we are, to enjoy ourselves.
What will will the mmo creator do?
then they can make a bot that detects bots
So it is doing something in between until the GM arrives.
But if the free pass for killing someone is just "them being reported for botting" then it's literally broken.
ANd from the moment it gets verified (by an ai, or a GM), then the bot should be auto banned.
Another question then becomes .. should the corruption wear off instantly if the person you attacked was a bot, then, possibly yes.But in the meantime, you have to remain corrupted until there is a verification and the bot is banned.
EDIT: possibly yes butttt, actually, probably no haha. Because of the implication is has down the line. You being corrupted affected your interactions with other players, and affected their corruption level also, so it cant work. You have to keep your corruption...
So either accept your fate or just report and dont kill.
I'm not convinced there should be any interference in the corruption application. The ticket might take hours in which time you could have worked off the corruption.
A different kind of tool. Actually, a reward for spotting and reporting bots. (albeit fairly small so that it doesnt get abused by bot managers lol)
You see someone who's acting like a bot? Watch him for even 30 secs and hit "report". This will send a supercompressed video to the server and GMs can watch it on their end and see if the report is even worth checking the logs for. I'd imagine that fully responding to a report would take longer than the potential 30s-1m of just watching a video and knowing for sure if the reported player looks like a bot.
This kind of system would also put way more pressure on the false reporters. If GMs get direct proof of false reports - they have more rights to punish the reporter.