The Mana World Forums

eh... swimmy im going to have to say NO cause your talking in script 
and people no offense. not all of them speak geek like you and I ,although implementing a pop up that dose not kick you on the other hand and gives you a message telling you that gms have ben sent a message due to you being a possible botter.... but this would not work ether cause than your warning them and it makes it harder for a gm to catch them so once again NO....srry swimmy

im glad u have some thought please any ideas are welcome and make sure there efficient.

NOTE: please speak clearly and go over every post u submit for other viewers satisfaction thank you .......meway

i am not swimmy but Jumpy (or i do miss the word or a post )

it was just an idea and no ofense. On the contrary, thanks for replying and bringing others points of view and opinions and so on that helps situate oneself in the different issues and the way to present them.

Of course GM can have in a chat windows a copy of the messages automatically sent to the players that might be botting and then go invisible and see how the player behave. Would make easier to locate and faster also to be on them instead of jump jump

this was just an idea to bring a solution to educate people about rules and botting through the popups info about kicking (you know just like when you enter in a chat you have a topic and then if your script version is not right you get an automatic message and then you get kicked if you don't update or keep on not respecting the topic, or iddle on chan is not allowed or... (i am sure you'll find better images to explain this than i can)

Regards

yes as soon as i saw the reply of jumpy in my topics i thought oh crap hes going to say sumthing about swimmy... and to swimmy no offense and jumpy no offense.. honestly it was because of the similarity's in your avatars as they both have to do with water.

:note go up a page and a post to get on track of what this discussion was about
thank you .............meway

no problem

thanks

Regards

i like doulos's idea

Maybe rather than stripping away at their HP, if the server detects them in one spot and x attack commands are sent to the server in n minutes, then geist appears, and until the player moves from their spot, they'll lose the ability to attack, sit, or pickup items.

As I said before, yes I know this doesn't cover all the forms of botting, but it does cover the most common form of key-weigting. This wouldn't be annoying to players IMHO, unless they find standing in one place, fingers pressed on the keyboard more than 5 minutes to exploit a high respawn rate area as fun game play.

Fother J wrote:Maybe rather than stripping away at their HP, if the server detects them in one spot and x attack commands are sent to the server in n minutes, then geist appears, and until the player moves from their spot, they'll lose the ability to attack, sit, or pickup items.

It should only count if the attack goes through (even if the player misses, etc).

Fother J wrote:This wouldn't be annoying to players IMHO, unless they find standing in one place, fingers pressed on the keyboard more than 5 minutes to exploit a high respawn rate area as fun game play.

This is how I find myeslf playing the game! I'm not a huge fan of it, but I only tend to hunt when there are items I want/need so I find myself grinding for them.

I wouldn't mind having the geist appear tho, its a process in which we are trying to make the game better for those trying to do the right thing, so simple tile change or map change even, isn't that much of a hassle.

Even though I said a "stand still and grind" tecnique is sometimes my game plan (mostly when I am watching TV ) most people I know, including myself, tend to go after a high spawning MOB which means moving around a fair bit, so I reall don't see this as being a problem for people that aren't doing the wrong thing.

I also like the idea of putting this on the testing server, I don't even mind trying it out myself.


My 2c, Cheers =)

In addition, whispers, chat, item use, etc should reset the timer..

I've thought about such things in depth and there is one thing that worries me:

Will this just lead to more advanced botters? People tend to take the path of least resistance to accomplish their goal, right now that's just "paperweighting" a few keys, if we prevent that I think they will get slightly more advanced and possibly harder to spot. It's not like programs to simulate/script KB/mouse activity are hard to find or use.

perhaps you have a point i would like to speak to bjorn and other devs about another method. (in private.....when they have time)

IMHO, even if such an advanced system exist for detecting a botter. it will be useless if you send automated and visible signals to the client about botting activity. From a botters perspective (and i mean the advanced botters), code can easily(or not) be created to react to the received signal. What should happen is that GM's should be automatically notified of said activity and manually verify the situation.

That being said, it is a good idea for educating players (as said above). In which case, it should only appear the first few times.

In other mmorpg's if you are doing an activity too long in one spot, you will warp to another random spot on the map.

adamaix, you've got some points... I had originally suggested this because of other online RPGs that implemented some fashion of anti-bottling monsters, but the ones I had in mind were all 2d side scrolling, so perhaps it's more effective for them than it'd be for us. I know that the techniques it would cover are not too comprehensive against botting, but would be a deterrent for the most common botting technique none the less....

I do agree after reading all the feedback that this would likely pose the evolution of more determined botters to try more advanced techniques. Our GM's do a marvelous job in stamping out abuse out there, I had origionally posted this thinking it could somehow relieve the burden, but after thinking about it further, they're pros at this, and there's not much at all that escapes their immediate attention (save for the civil matters that happen between players, but the GM's take a fair stance on those as well).

Still, it never hurts to suggest and discuss.