Anti Botting System

As much as I hate to admit it, there is literally nothing that can be done to stop botters, it just isn't possible.

Any steps taken to catch them, often just hassle legitimate players, such as that captcha crap.

It doesn't stop there though either, accusing those with high play time of being bots is a failing method as well, some people share accounts or stay up for long periods of times playing games.

Anti-bot measures are worse for players than the bots are, I think that's a good note to end on.

Sigh....

Activity profiling is exactly what is making Google and Facebook rich.

It is how financial crime is detected and prosecuted. Serial Killers are tracked the same way, as it happens.

It requires the collection of a lot of data, and the knowledge to analyse that data.

It is the only way to detect botters in a system that allows unlimited anonymous accounts. (as an aside, since the accounts are all anonymous in any case, there is no privacy issue because there is no identity to tie data to)

It is not impossible to catch botters, but you wont catch them all for the simple reason that it takes time for their activity to cumulate to the point that they are noticed. Like Serial Killers.

And a major key is never ever letting botters know youre onto them; If they know youve spotted them they change tactics. thus my assertion to fuck with their efficiency rather than banning (alerting) them.

I really wish people would understand that no single event could cause a legit account to be flagged as a potential botter. If you understand a normal distribution then you'll know why.

B.

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LivingHell452 wrote:

IMHO there is only one way to stop botting: Any content that's really worth farming should be too hard/complex/random for bots to do efficiently.
That is, create some nasty random mazes, puzzles, traps and really nasty mobs that require some thinking (which a bot isn't capable of, I presume). On the other hand, easily farmable content should be restricted in terms of possible drops or have a reduced efficiency if done repeatedly (like bosses).

This is no doubt the type of thinking that prompted GGG to create a gold-less currency. Unfortunately there's still a hierarchy and I can imagine botters selling regals/mirrors en masse for some ridiculously low amount.

The captcha idea appealed to me but MorriganGrey (amongst others) made it clear that they're far from effective these days.

I think the ultimate solution to botters, and indeed to most forms of cheating, are temporary leagues which are less about simply getting a high leveled, powerful character and more about how much you can achieve in a set time. I find these much more challenging and rewarding personally, but sure, sometimes it's nice to come back to your level 80+ powerhouse.

By extension, and because I really don't have a clue how GGG plans to combat bots, I am betting on the private league option. I never saw a single bot in my private games on Bnet, and whatever BS went on with duping/maphacking did not affect my own experiences of the game. If you think this was myopic or ignorant of me, I won't disagree, but I will contend that the problems with D2 being botted weren't mine, at any level. Not to deal with, not to solve. The game, as far as I was concerned, was cheat-free for as long as I played it.

If GGG weren't planning to offer private leagues, and if they didn't regularly run short term leagues with varying conditions such as 'turbo' and 'cut-throat', I'd be much more concerned.

I would run a script if I had to play with captchas popping up all the time, it would solve them instantly and I could ignore its intrusions.

I love all the detailed responses to this suggestion, they really illustrate a lot of good points. I think SL4Y3R's response was the only one really needed though. Glad we could all elaborate on it for a bit though.

I also avoided bnet and made a private server for my friends and I to play on. Bnet was poorly implemented though, and I think Chris and the gang all know a bit more about security systems then the gold selling admins over at bnet did.