The problem with bots and how to fix them...

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Bishop120 wrote:

Dealing with botters is for the most part dealing with gold sellers. As I said before in a game like this the botters that run on singles accounts that are for personal use are I believe the "small fries" of the botter problem. I do not believe that they have a significant impact on game economy. Its only when its scaled up to the level of gold sellers that they become an issue. In this case 1 computer run by a gold seller is the equivalent of 10-12 single personal users.. and everyone knows that some of these gold sellers run in the neighborhood of 20+ servers easily.

As far as stoping them as said before its not a matter of making the one perfect catchall program/method. Its more of the shotgun approach.. the combination of many techniques each catching, flagging, and banning them to the point of making it not a feasible business for the gold sellers. Eve Online is a good example of what can happen with the shotgun approach. Gold sellers quickly stopped selling Eve "ISK" when their botter programs started getting caught and accounts banned in droves. Unholy Rage they called it. GGG could follow a similar implementation... catch the accounts and flag them.. then when you have a valid signature down ban thousands of bot accounts at once and push out a scanner that looks for that signature (what ever it may be.. UUIDs, background programs, memory injections..). This forces an arms war.. bot developers try to outsmart the signature... GGG trys to catch/ban the bot accounts. The trick is to not let the bot developer know that you have their signature... this can be accomplished a variety of ways... ban letters with misdirection for the reason of the ban, delaying the ban for 24-36 hours after being flagged so that botter has no idea what exactly the've done to get caught.

I've personally always favored the "time bomb" currency. Currency has a shelf life for usage. If not used within 4-5 days the currency expires and is deleted. Game term wise this would be a good way to start a currency "sink" which flushes currency and forces it to be used by true gamers. Currency would be good to trade for a short while but would be kept from stockpiling. In addition currency near the end of its shelf life would be less valuable as people would actually have to use it and could not keep it around to be used as further currency. This would make it extremely difficult for gold sellers to make a profit as bots would likely not be able to keep their supply high enough especially if combined with a decent ban policy.

Once you can drive the gold sellers away from your game botters becomes pretty much a maintenance issue... you just need to be aware of them and catch any mass usage before the gold sellers can start up a profitable business again.

--Bishop--

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terrorist wrote:

Put invisible invincible mobs in the game. Bots get stuck attacking them. Log the data of these attacks. Ban the accounts.

Problem solved

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Shippal wrote:

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terrorist wrote:

Put invisible invincible mobs in the game. Bots get stuck attacking them. Log the data of these attacks. Ban the accounts.

Problem solved

Interesting idea, but it really depends on the way that the bot is programmed. "Many" (read: most) modern bots have to be programmed on "reading" graphics that the client sends, i.e. imitating a human player as much as possible by causing reactionary clicks on things that the client can perceive. This type of programming is done to circumvent initial "patch bombs" where a patch, besides its other features, has a logger to check if the code of the game is being used improperly.

If you have an "invisible invincible" mob, the client will not perceive of that mob in anyway. Consequently, the bot will not "react" to it, and will not emulate any clicks on it. It will be ignored by the bot the same way a human would ignore it.