Trade bots ever banned? Reporting feature exist?

It is quite a funny thing. Every league, no matter how bad league is, trader wins, this league traders win even more. This they don't bother nerfing, but lowering supply they would gladly do it. Me finds GGG sadly naïve.

I'll just leave this here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Best way to beat the bots is an AH. Then bots have no advantage.
A game that relies on trading should not make trading cumbersome and annoying. Yes it would affect prices, most likely reducing them for bulk items. So what. Let the market decide.

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vladesch wrote:

Best way to beat the bots is an AH. Then bots have no advantage.
A game that relies on trading should not make trading cumbersome and annoying. Yes it would affect prices, most likely reducing them for bulk items. So what. Let the market decide.

I assume this is sarcasm. But just in case it isn't, who do you think will be able to snipe and buy up items faster? A human clicking manually? Or a bot running 24/7 against a predictable automated AH?

If you think it's tough to get an item at what you think is a reasonable price, just wait until an AH w/ bots running it.

And bonus: we would get rid of the current form of price manipulators (set low price and never sell), for a new form of price manipulator (buy up all inventory and mark at a higher price).

Your cure is worse than the disease. It ironically makes the disease worse as well.

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Nubatron wrote:

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vladesch wrote:

Best way to beat the bots is an AH. Then bots have no advantage.
A game that relies on trading should not make trading cumbersome and annoying. Yes it would affect prices, most likely reducing them for bulk items. So what. Let the market decide.

I assume this is sarcasm. But just in case it isn't, who do you think will be able to snipe and buy up items faster? A human clicking manually? Or a bot running 24/7 against a predictable automated AH?

If you think it's tough to get an item at what you think is a reasonable price, just wait until an AH w/ bots running it.

And bonus: we would get rid of the current form of price manipulators (set low price and never sell), for a new form of price manipulator (buy up all inventory and mark at a higher price).

Your cure is worse than the disease. It ironically makes the disease worse as well.

this is actually the primary reason why i'm against an auction house.

it would be nice and convenient for me to sell all my shit and not have to keep going back and forth to my hideout all the time, but it would only make it harder and more expensive to find the items i am after if i had to compete against all the auction house bots. shit would be sold before i could even see it, let alone click on it

Flippers hates BOTS, ask why?

There are options to combat bots in current trade framework and auction house. Some ideas for hampering bots in AH:

-Rate limit on searches
-Limit on item posts and/or item bids/purchases
-Ban bots (best option, easily detectable)
-Item type limitations for bots (maybe only currency)
-Transaction or posting fee
-“Bot” indicator in player name or posting metadata
-AH usage cooldown timer with potential time increases

Other than the transaction fee idea and streamer memers who manually flip for profit goals, these constraints would not affect actual players.

But I honestly think GGG is fine with having bots. Botting is definitely detectable, and banning bot accounts and their potential mule accounts would be done (and be effective) if they saw it as a problem.

Banning bots would be an added expense and totally ineffective. They know this. That's why they don't do it.

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budawpi wrote:

There are options to combat bots in current trade framework and auction house. Some ideas for hampering bots in AH:

-Rate limit on searches
-Limit on item posts and/or item bids/purchases
-Ban bots (best option, easily detectable)
-Item type limitations for bots (maybe only currency)
-Transaction or posting fee
-“Bot” indicator in player name or posting metadata
-AH usage cooldown timer with potential time increases

Other than the transaction fee idea and streamer memers who manually flip for profit goals, these constraints would not affect actual players.

But I honestly think GGG is fine with having bots. Botting is definitely detectable, and banning bot accounts and their potential mule accounts would be done (and be effective) if they saw it as a problem.

I was going to try to stop myself from countering each of these arguments for what feels like the millionth time, but I failed. Kuduku help me.

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-Rate limit on searches

I'll need more context for this one. If this is account based limitation, see below.

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-Limit on item posts and/or item bids/purchases

This is an account based limitation. Botters don't use one account. They will create more accounts to get around this, since they're free. And since they can have their bots create the accounts, it's a lot easier for them. This will be a major hindrance for real people though, since creating accounts as a human is a quite time consuming to get around this speed bump.

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-Ban bots (best option, easily detectable)

Best option. Most dangerous to deploy massively. False positives will be rampant if you're not careful because this game rewards bot like behavior and efficiency. Botters will learn the triggers and add code to avoid the pitfalls. Humans won't realize they're acting like a bot, because grinding in this game is bot-like, and get banned.

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-Item type limitations for bots (maybe only currency)

This idea has some merit except for price fixing. Botters will buy up a market and the mark it up. Nothing can gain a monopoly and fix a price like an army of bots that have nothing but time and currency to work with.

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-Transaction or posting fee

This inhibits everyone equally. All this does is add some friction to posting everything and anything you want. Most likely this would hit the casual gamers harder who can't afford a fixed overhead on trading as well as someone who is making multiple exalts an hour. It won't be received well in a game that is heavily trade centric.

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-“Bot” indicator in player name or posting metadata

Again, false positives are a risk. The bot owner will also scan for this, create a new account, and keep rolling. Not much value in this option either other than people who are disgusted by bots avoiding them. I think you'll find that there are quite a few people who think the bots provide a public service. I disagree, because I think the bad they bring to the game outweighs the good.

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-AH usage cooldown timer with potential time increases

Again, an account limitation. This will inhibit people, not bots. No one can create more accounts more efficiently and as fast as a bot army. In a game were accounts are free, limitations that are account based do absolutely nothing except annoy humans.

Nubatron, nice responses. I will summarize all of my responses to yours with this:

These were quick brainstorming ideas, not the efforts of a dev team and months of testing & iterations. The sentiment is that it is definitely possible, but is GGGs decision not to pursue. Roll-out could be impact free by first flagging accounts (unbeknownst to us), then further collecting data on those accounts to confirm, update their criteria for a bot/ban, and go through this process as many times as they want before implementing an actual ban.

A rate limit is networking related. We see it when querying the trade API too many times in a row (which is how it should be). But you don’t hit that limit under normal shopping circumstances. A breached rate limit on the AH could flag an account (should be the main goal), and ban an IP (which is easy to get around, but throws a wrench in the bot process).

Yes, accounts are free and easy to make. Room for improvement here too. Authenticator app, token, associating account to phone number, you name it. All of those help the player to maintain account security while at the same time associating an account with a unique identity which could be banned for malicious activity cleanly.

Thanks for reading.