Where does a bot begin?
Posted: 29 Apr 2008, 19:47
Hi,
if I may briefly paraphrase Platyna, botting seems to begin when players use some client to tmw that gives them an unfair advantage. This sounds reasonable to me, but advantages may come about in many forms-- for example, an argument could be made that people who use the current svn client (with the now-operational shortcut bar) have an unfair advantage over people who use the official client. Due to some recent discussions I had, I am uncertain as to where the line should be drawn. May I ask for some judgement calls on particular examples?
if I may briefly paraphrase Platyna, botting seems to begin when players use some client to tmw that gives them an unfair advantage. This sounds reasonable to me, but advantages may come about in many forms-- for example, an argument could be made that people who use the current svn client (with the now-operational shortcut bar) have an unfair advantage over people who use the official client. Due to some recent discussions I had, I am uncertain as to where the line should be drawn. May I ask for some judgement calls on particular examples?
- Hardwiring the client to auto-attack everything in range (possibly toggled), as if Ctrl+a were pressed. Advantages gained: (1) Easier chatting during combat, (2) can stand around in a dungeon and gain experience without being at the machine. Detection: suspiciously verbose chatting during combat (1), attacking but not responding to communication (2). Prevention: ?
- Setting up shortcut commands to combine multiple actions, such as switching multiple pieces of clothing at once. Advantages gained: (1) less time consumed for dungeon preparations. Detection: suspiciously quick succession of `use/equip' actions on distinct items. Prevention: Slow down event processing for individual clients.
- Automatically using health items under certain conditions. Advantages gained: Less need to track health bar during combat, possiby more efficient food consumption. Detection: ?. Prevention: Restrict number of food items the player can eat to one every n seconds, or change the effect of health items to merely speed up regeneration.
- Automatic navigation. Advantages gained: Less attention consumed for repetetive navigation tasks (`go to Hurnscald'). Detection: No sensible reaction to `surprises' along the way. Prevention: More random encounters.
- Magic mouth: A secondary player that can be remote-controlled to listen and speak, but not for anything else (controlled from within a single client). Advantages: Can participate in remote communication, spy out other players. Detection: If used to speak, such a character would not be able to react to visual stimuli, only to verbal ones. If controlled via whispering, a strong correlation could be detected between text in whispered messages and text spoken by the player. Prevention: Enforce a `no loitering' rule.
- Chatbot: An extension of the `magic mouth', this character is not controlled directly by another player. Advantages: Can log conversation and/or give out information based on certain stimuli. Detection: Turing Test. Prevention: ?
- Minion: A fully automated secondary player who (unlike the magic mouth/chatbot) can pick up/trade/drop items, fight etc. Unlike a `full' bot, the minion only acts on explicit command from their master/mistress and remains inactive in his/her absence. Advantages: No need for friends for dungeon raids (thought whether that is an advantage is debatable), all treasure goes to one character. Detection: Turing Test. Prevention: ?