Bots, how to deal with them.

[Deedolith]

Of course, the 1st thing to do against bots is to report them whenever you see one.

Now, how do you recognize a bot will you ask ?
Easy:
They run straight for mobs and don't bother if they're engaged already or not (usually KSing).
They ignore you.
They do the same things over and over (always use the same skills pattern, if any, ect ect ....)

There are a few categories of bots:
1) Solo bots:
Melee bots (Fighters and Cleric):
These are the easyest to deal with, since they run after mobs. You can aggro a couple of mobs (punch them for less dmg) and come close to them, and drag them away while they're attacking your train (Drag them toward aggressive and powerfull monsters preferably). Or, if there are high lvl mobs around, grab one (or more) and drive it to the bot. Wait till the bot start beating on it, step back and watch the circus :D.

Ranged bots (mage and archers)
These are difficult to deal with, as they rarely move, so the melee trick hardly work :eek:. Also, they rarely loot since mobs are usually dead before reaching them (bots only loot stuffs at their feets). You can easilly steal their loots tho. :rolleyes:

2) Spam bots:
Nothing you can do against them but report.

3) Group bots:
These are also very hard to deal with, since you'll find them in high lvl zones (moonlight tomb and higher). You can drag them away to a boss or elite mobs (they're probably not ready for it), but you might die in the process.

One thing you can try against any bot, is sending them a friend request, if the bot owner didn't set his bot right, it can bug it.

[mrbradley1]

lol- ive ben dragging mobs to them, but this first ive heard about friends requests bugging them- gonna try it next time i see em =]

[Andromeda]

If your an Archer cast Nature Protection and watch the colours fly :)

[Roxias]

I have already taken MANY screenshots of the bot farmers in MT and reported them to Kaalan. Whether he is doing anything about them I am uncertain (I've PM'ed him twice).

[ASCIIrider]

Well there's one for sure I know of in MT uses **** on his fighter and HoreOOE I think on his cleric.

The cleric was easy to tell... KSing, no response... same pattern... same delay between heals... Poisoned and not curing themselves (30+ level) And when I pulled a train and tp'd out...sat there for the entire 2 min to warp back to town.

Yeah I'd say it's a bot

[WNxOddJob]

The bot problem is easy to take care of.

Step 1: Implement Auto-traps.

An auto-trap is a monster, specifically made to never be hurt, and never agro a player. You cannot damage it in any way, and it won't fight back if you do attack it. Make sure these special monsters have unique appearances, names, and are easilly distinguishable from regular monsters for normal players.

Step 2: Implement Auto-trap attack feature:

This means simply that if you are a bot and attack randomly (auto-traps will be everywhere, and wander a bit), and you attack an auto-trap for more than x seconds, you get a punishment.

Reccomended:

9 seconds of attack time: lose 10 levels and all your items/money you're carrying.

15 seconds: Lose 30 levels from your current character, and every character on your account. All characters are transported to jail permanently, flagged, and eventually deleted by a gm.

Easy 2 step plan to stop botters. Put a special warning screen on login for a couple days so people know the auto-traps are there, and maybe have a warning about it in the newbie quest for beginners.

[Trebori]

The bot problem is easy to take care of.

Step 1: Implement Auto-traps.

An auto-trap is a monster, specifically made to never be hurt, and never agro a player. You cannot damage it in any way, and it won't fight back if you do attack it. Make sure these special monsters have unique appearances, names, and are easilly distinguishable from regular monsters for normal players.

Step 2: Implement Auto-trap attack feature:

This means simply that if you are a bot and attack randomly (auto-traps will be everywhere, and wander a bit), and you attack an auto-trap for more than x seconds, you get a punishment.

Reccomended:

9 seconds of attack time: lose 10 levels and all your items/money you're carrying.

15 seconds: Lose 30 levels from your current character, and every character on your account. All characters are transported to jail permanently, flagged, and eventually deleted by a gm.

Easy 2 step plan to stop botters. Put a special warning screen on login for a couple days so people know the auto-traps are there, and maybe have a warning about it in the newbie quest for beginners.


Rappelz had a similar system in early beta. They had to remove it because it didn't work as planned.To many idiots couldn't grasp the concept and the GM's spent all their time dealing with these idiots :( I don't know if they ever brought it back. I quit playing about 2 months after launch.

[robdawg]

I understand that; paying attention to a warning is the last thing most people do in a video game.

"Warning: If you push the red button in the game, your Nintendo cartridge will explode in your system."

"Hey Jim, lets push the red button and see what happens!"

[x_Ace_x]

Why not just ban the bots/people who buy from the bots? By slightly grasping the concept of supply and demand, just remove people from both sides and botting will become less of a problem.

[Deedolith]

Ace, we have more than 1 kind of bots issue, gold sellers arn't the only ones around here.

[pooooooooooop]

pooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooop

[WNxOddJob]

pooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooop

5 years old. :cool:

Back on topic:

Rappelz -did- bring back that system actually, and it's currently in place. The GMs pretty much say 'if you do it, too bad' now. :rolleyes: What a pity, taking out the players who can't take the time to play a game correctly, and just want to rush in mashing buttons.

[MyYing]

its really sad that we have botters on a FREE game that you dont really need an item mall on to be successful...i guess some ppl are jus natural gamers.
I mean if this game was some that Ive played then yea having a bot wouldnt really bother me but this game is actually VERY easy..why bot..ftw O.o .

[Countess]

Rappelz had a similar system in early beta. They had to remove it because it didn't work as planned.To many idiots couldn't grasp the concept and the GM's spent all their time dealing with these idiots :( I don't know if they ever brought it back. I quit playing about 2 months after launch.

We have anti-bot mobs now, it's sort of ridiculous. cute lil moon rabbits, n tamias's.. They can be buffed, but not damaged and they're freaking everywhere T_T duno why the dev's'd think R5 players would bot the desert after all they've invested.


Why not just ban the bots/people who buy from the bots? By slightly grasping the concept of supply and demand, just remove people from both sides and botting will become less of a problem.

I would've thought the gm's'd be able to track/search/filter trade transactions between players. Many of the sites are offering tons of silver, couldn't the gm's filter the logs (if they exist i guess) to see who was trading lots of silvers for nothing?

[LiQuidWrench]

its the funniest thing i have ever seen .paying cash for video game money .I mean are you kidding me ...I dont think the spammers are the problem , I think it's the morons who buy from them ..... If your punishing the dealer better punish the buyer ...Cause they are both screwing up the game ..

[yourmahder]

its the funniest thing i have ever seen .paying cash for video game money .I mean are you kidding me ...I dont think the spammers are the problem , I think it's the morons who buy from them ..... If your punishing the dealer better punish the buyer ...Cause they are both screwing up the game ..

yea. these people just waste money, time and make us pissed... cause when these ***ots buy, they are effectively fueling the market for such "gold botters" which in turn, spoils the entire game... GM's please implement something... maybe like a tracer to see which accounts have not logged off for like weeks or months? then maybe you can go look for them and find out if the're botting or just trying to get titles...

[Funeral]

I know how to get rid of the gold spammers, Disallow Proxys <<< thats a must, and ban Via IP. within a weeks time you wont see spam.

As far as botters go. I played Silkroad for ages and everyone botted, it ruined the game and quite frankly took away from the DEVS abilitys to update the game, bots swamped them and al the focus went to stopping bots, then the devs cracked and left the alone.

Bots will be around, there is no way around this, but I think previlent GM's and banning will do the trick nicely. As long as there is User - GM communication.

One more thing.

And implement a spamming filter on the chat would help a lot of things.

Price gouging is another thing that fuels gold selling, so be fair with your prices, people wont need to buy gold to buy your overpriced item.

[Andromeda]

I know how to get rid of the gold spammers, Disallow Proxys <<< thats a must, and ban Via IP. within a weeks time you wont see spam.

As far as botters go. I played Silkroad for ages and everyone botted, it ruined the game and quite frankly took away from the DEVS abilitys to update the game, bots swamped them and al the focus went to stopping bots, then the devs cracked and left the alone.

Bots will be around, there is no way around this, but I think previlent GM's and banning will do the trick nicely. As long as there is User - GM communication.

One more thing.

And implement a spamming filter on the chat would help a lot of things.

Price gouging is another thing that fuels gold selling, so be fair with your prices, people wont need to buy gold to buy your overpriced item.

Yeah thats good and all but that won't solve the problem because if the bots are using static IPs instead of Dynamic all they need to do is reset their router for a new IP...

[MyYing]

we just need a kicker for the gold spammers plain and simple. over use of a certain and or phrases result in a kick or being idle to long result in one somthing on that line of defense. as for the farming bots..these exsist in everygame hellz ive botted in other games b4 (not this one) tho i do have alot of money in this one. so i cant really tell ya how to get rid of them besides from banning constantly and that may not work seeing as how most botters bot on an alt. or maybe a system simiaular to rapplez...

[Funeral]

I guess your right about the Dynamic. But I am sure it would reduce a good bit of it.

[Deedolith]

it would take away a bunch of true players in the process. Lots of people use an ADSL modem who is also a router, or have a mini network at home.

[rustic]

Price gouging is another thing that fuels gold selling, so be fair with your prices, people wont need to buy gold to buy your overpriced item.

Precisely.

There will always be those that are honest in their attempts to make a product available to their clients for affordable rates, and there will seemingly always be some schmuck hell bent on making sure that is ruined by buying them out and reselling at higher rates.

It's why I only sell half my loads typcially in one shot. I bust these people by selling to them at say (100c) and then when they vend up next to me afterwards and sell for (150c) I break out my second half for the original rate.

Sexy carries a lot of weight, but smart wins every time.

[PufftheMagicDragon]

Wow there are bots? Scary, well once I encounter one I'll report him :)

[rammur]

Hmm i jus got off the onrpg site. I was reading up on WYD interview.( With Your Destiny) and saw that they have a built in bot into there game! Seriously, and its there to prevent gold sellers aswell as hackers and third pt botters! So I was thinking that maybe somthing like that would help fiesta, i mean for one the gold spammers would go out of buisiness because we can farm our own stuff now and the prices would go down aswell in turn fixing and or balancing the economy and also making it easier for the ppl that turn lvl 20. I mean 250c to 6s is big leap for som1 just turning lvl 20 lol.

[yanokito]

i dont think thy are that kind of bots that are programmed to do so.... coz som of thm interacts...

you would know one from their name.... their names are just made of random letters just to make a name....

i saw one bot died... and when i was talking to it.... she spoke japanese... but in english alphabet...
and another bot at CP when i said they where bots... they said lol.... not everyone though, but some of them...
also i accidentally buff a party, i though thy wer the normal bunch but when i saw their names... its name where like "dsajfkh" or " wasd" or something like that.... they said thanks and after that he said lol...

ill put a pic link so you would know what i mean...

i think they are real players that are payed to play and loot... its like piloting someones character so you could level it.... or something like that...
i may be wrong but this is what i think..

or mayb they dont understand us..lol.... so thats why they dont interact....@_@
i dont really know... im just saying....-_-

heres links:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v189/sab0y/screenshot220.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v189/sab0y/screenshot224.jpg

[Funbox20]

The thing is, the bots always find a way to come back:mad: but that doesn't mean we can't slow them down:)

[rustic]

Think of it as a poor man's PvP.

I do. Successfully dropped a ratman fighter on a bot today. No Screenies (sorry, I'll offer proof of my vigilanty kills from here on out), but it was quite funny.

[Funeral]

it would take away a bunch of true players in the process. Lots of people use an ADSL modem who is also a router, or have a mini network at home.


What the hell does ADSL and a router have to do with proxies kiddo?

[rustic]

What the hell does ADSL and a router have to do with proxies kiddo?

Duh - buzzwords go together.

Thought you would know that....


And to be fair, the ADSL/Router statement was in reply to the IP Ban (Which I still think is a good idea. Lose your IP, pound the moron in the face, write a "I kicked his butt" email, game on).

Hope that made sense.

I still like the idea of mingling buzzwords: Our synergy in this matter creates amazingly assertive energy.

[tingrui22]

lol i saw one today...and i love to report them but cannot store file...so i pulled a piggy bat to it and KO :P

[tingrui22]

its the funniest thing i have ever seen .paying cash for video game money .I mean are you kidding me ...I dont think the spammers are the problem , I think it's the morons who buy from them ..... If your punishing the dealer better punish the buyer ...Cause they are both screwing up the game ..

Then u r trying to say that ppl who plays maple and buy @cash r morons???

[tingrui22]

I know how to get rid of the gold spammers, Disallow Proxys <<< thats a must, and ban Via IP. within a weeks time you wont see spam.

As far as botters go. I played Silkroad for ages and everyone botted, it ruined the game and quite frankly took away from the DEVS abilitys to update the game, bots swamped them and al the focus went to stopping bots, then the devs cracked and left the alone.

Bots will be around, there is no way around this, but I think previlent GM's and banning will do the trick nicely. As long as there is User - GM communication.

One more thing.

And implement a spamming filter on the chat would help a lot of things.

Price gouging is another thing that fuels gold selling, so be fair with your prices, people wont need to buy gold to buy your overpriced item.

People buy gold is the reason that they do not have enf game money to buy something like armour and equips...so the shop prices can drop or simply just drop a few copper for every monster u kill

[Deedolith]

And to be fair, the ADSL/Router statement was in reply to the IP Ban (Which I still think is a good idea. Lose your IP, pound the moron in the face, write a "I kicked his butt" email, game on).
Once again IP ban doesn't work at all. Many internet users use dynamic IP, it change every time they turn their internet connection on.

Back to main topic. I noticed that there are new kind of nots now: The healing bots. You'll usually see them paired with a fighter. The cleric follow the fighter and only heal him If the figher is human, there isn't much you can do, but send them a massive train of aggresive mobs. But if the fighter is also a bot, drive them to a dangerous area.

[notalther]

you would know one from their name.... their names are just made of random letters just to make a name....


just cause a name looks like its just a bunch of letters, doesnt mean that its not a real person. one of my characters is named iydkydg, and i know for sure that i'm not a bot..so...

[yanokito]

just cause a name looks like its just a bunch of letters, doesnt mean that its not a real person. one of my characters is named iydkydg, and i know for sure that i'm not a bot..so...

^^.... my bad.. but most likely your name does sounds like it.... well you can see at elderine, a bunch of bots with random lettered names just stand there with no armor and stuff, and just shouts out and spams..

maybe because they got tired of making real names thats why thy just type in anything to make a char and spam... i mean thy can gt banned anyway...

again my bad, iydkydg....^^

[notalther]

^^.... my bad.. but most likely your name does sounds like it.... well you can see at elderine, a bunch of bots with random lettered names just stand there with no armor and stuff, and just shouts out and spams..

maybe because they got tired of making real names thats why thy just type in anything to make a char and spam... i mean thy can gt banned anyway...

again my bad, iydkydg....^^

its cool, just trying to make sure people like me dont get harassed just for having a name that people dont understand.
and yes, it DOES mean something
but, if you don't know..

[kimanorei]

hi peeps..

the 1st person or company dat develops the technology to curb and/or destroy BoTs wif effectivenss of up to 90% and at the same time not disrupting live players and the game itself, WILL definately become a rich person/company overnight.. :D

UNLESS.. if its the game companies dat introduced BoTs in the 1st place..
(highly unlikely, but possible.. :p)

Juz my 2cents worth.. :cool:

[Deedolith]

So far the quickest solution I have in mind against them is trap mobs (mobs than con the same as mobs around them, are nearly invincilble, fight back, have random name, but looks different) in sufficient numbers so bots will waste their ressources (pots / stones) against them.
When bots will cease to be profitable, they'll naturally disapear.

[myztic]

its very simple if you find out they are botting or spamming gold sales ban the IP
or you can ask blizzard (world of warcraft) how they did it took them some time but they did put a stop to it you might see 1 bot a week now or disable the downloaded game thats tied to the accounts that are botting

[Deedolith]

WoW have a few more ban tools available since it is a Pay to play game, but Fiesta don't have unfortunatly

[Eversio]

didnt flyff have a good system against bots and hacks?

[violence]

Rappelz had a similar system in early beta. They had to remove it because it didn't work as planned.To many idiots couldn't grasp the concept and the GM's spent all their time dealing with these idiots :( I don't know if they ever brought it back. I quit playing about 2 months after launch.

the system of attacking auto thing hurting a player by making them lose levels would just make everyone mad only bots ive seen that are against the rules anyhow are the ones that spam the shout box

[violence]

The bot problem is easy to take care of.

Step 1: Implement Auto-traps.

An auto-trap is a monster, specifically made to never be hurt, and never agro a player. You cannot damage it in any way, and it won't fight back if you do attack it. Make sure these special monsters have unique appearances, names, and are easilly distinguishable from regular monsters for normal players.

Step 2: Implement Auto-trap attack feature:

This means simply that if you are a bot and attack randomly (auto-traps will be everywhere, and wander a bit), and you attack an auto-trap for more than x seconds, you get a punishment.

Reccomended:

9 seconds of attack time: lose 10 levels and all your items/money you're carrying.

15 seconds: Lose 30 levels from your current character, and every character on your account. All characters are transported to jail permanently, flagged, and eventually deleted by a gm.

Easy 2 step plan to stop botters. Put a special warning screen on login for a couple days so people know the auto-traps are there, and maybe have a warning about it in the newbie quest for beginners.

many reasons this wouldnt work bots are programmed to attack certain colors on the screen meaning if the other types of trap monsters didnt have the color the bots would not attack them so the only people who would ever attack them is legitimate players secondly most people dont use bots anymore everyone just thinks they are bots they really are people they dont respond when you ask a ? cause they dont speak english and the only bots that are truely against the rules are the spamming ones

[violence]

I know how to get rid of the gold spammers, Disallow Proxys <<< thats a must, and ban Via IP. within a weeks time you wont see spam.

As far as botters go. I played Silkroad for ages and everyone botted, it ruined the game and quite frankly took away from the DEVS abilitys to update the game, bots swamped them and al the focus went to stopping bots, then the devs cracked and left the alone.

Bots will be around, there is no way around this, but I think previlent GM's and banning will do the trick nicely. As long as there is User - GM communication.

One more thing.

And implement a spamming filter on the chat would help a lot of things.

Price gouging is another thing that fuels gold selling, so be fair with your prices, people wont need to buy gold to buy your overpriced item.

banning ip will not stop spammers because even with a proxy ip not being aloud its not hard to go in and change your ip on your puter

[hyperswoss]

didnt flyff have a good system against bots and hacks?

You're kidding, right? FlyFF is one of the easiest games you can hack right now.

[nachtwind]

Well.. here are a few of my personal ideas...

I was programming on a server for a MMO game for quite some time and especially did the security stuff, so what about that:

Spamming:
Most spammers here do - as i recall - say ALMOST the same thing in a regular way. Lets say every 5 seconds 'Buy Money on click.here [SOMEBOGUS]'.
So that would leave two possible ways of preventing it.
1) If you retype the almost same message (lets say 70% or more) for more than 3 times and the time elapsed between is the same (again with a 70% tolerance) you get a message window to click on - if you dont in like 2 minutes Kick. 3 Kicks - Ban.
2) Same as above, but people get muted and if they keep on talking though muted and remembered why they get kicked.. Pretty dumb way, but doable ;0)

About the banning. IPBans are fine and good, but to be effective you'd have to ban the first three octets of the IP and THAT would lead to a problem. Here in Germany you could ban that way like 3 or 4 cities.. No.. but how about those things: When logging in Fiesta gets the Hardwareid of the Harddisc (C:/) or the MAC Address of the currently used Ethernet Adapter and when banning someone you simply ban that thing. Its unique and most people will think twice to install a new Harddisc or Ethernet Adapter just to spam.. If you go a step further you could also ban the CPU Serial or the used Windows Serial Hash.. A computer nowadays consists of sooo many unique values that are easy to obtain when using windows - why not doing it?
A few things i would recommend to be done at least:

- Disallowing playing by Proxy. There are only very few cases where this is needed
- Running Siesta in an emulated System like VMware or VirtualPC
- More than like 5 or 10 Accounts per IP logged in the same time

my 2ct

[Deedolith]

About the banning. IPBans are fine and good, but to be effective you'd have to ban the first three octets of the IP and THAT would lead to a problem. Here in Germany you could ban that way like 3 or 4 cities.. No.. but how about those things: When logging in Fiesta gets the Hardwareid of the Harddisc (C:/) or the MAC Address of the currently used Ethernet Adapter and when banning someone you simply ban that thing. Its unique and most people will think twice to install a new Harddisc or Ethernet Adapter just to spam.. If you go a step further you could also ban the CPU Serial or the used Windows Serial Hash.. A computer nowadays consists of sooo many unique values that are easy to obtain when using windows - why not doing it?

You're exposing yourself to various privacy law if you start looking at someone's computer personal datas. I won't recommend this.



A few things i would recommend to be done at least:

- Disallowing playing by Proxy. There are only very few cases where this is needed
What about people (like me) who have a mini network at home ?



- Running Siesta in an emulated System like VMware or VirtualPC

System overload inc!



- More than like 5 or 10 Accounts per IP logged in the same time

What about net café ?

[nachtwind]

You're exposing yourself to various privacy law if you start looking at someone's computer personal datas. I won't recommend this.


Well, ok, if you send those data directly. It is afaik allowed to make a hash of it. You still have Unique values which are not personal data.



What about people (like me) who have a mini network at home ?


I do have a network here as well, and using a NAT is not using a proxy. By proxy i refer to anonymous relais that relai datastreams and are not bound to one's personal network.



System overload inc!

Yes, but doable. You dont actually need to play, just run a bot and the client. You only need to run a VM and start fiesta on it - i guess you could do that way like 5 spammers on a regular computer.



What about net café ?
Well, internet cafes with games are very very very rare here so i didnt think of them, thats surely a problem..