Can We Reduce "Botting" ?

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Fern
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Re: Can We Reduce "Botting" ?

Post by Fern »

meway wrote:keep in mind this game is still in development although your ideas are appreciated there are other topic areas to post your ideas like the ones above
My ideas can be summarized in just one, and I think it is related to this post: Make bots unnecessary, gameplay shouldn't depend so hard on exp points and brainless monster killing. The only thing needed to fix this is to raise the experience/drop rate.

If the game is in development then thats one reason to raise much higher the experience rate so that more people can beta-test the areas. And this, at the same time, could be useful to expose what's the way to improve the gameplay. Perhaps without leveling players would start interacting more with each other and find new ideas/bugs/things needed.
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meway
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Re: Can We Reduce "Botting" ?

Post by meway »

That's OK, I'm just saying you will be heard better by everyone if you make a new topic and just post a link in this as it dose relate, i agree. just looking out for ya is all :lol:
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Doulos
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Re: Can We Reduce "Botting" ?

Post by Doulos »

Probably the only way to get rid of bots it to make them unnecessary.
I whole heartedly agree. In fact, many of your ideas are quite good, Fern.

The topic of the thread is how we can reduce botting. There are a number of ways this can be accomplished. One of the first suggestions was software oriented: build some complex (and likely to fail) method of "catching" botters. Scripts can do funny things. And how would the GMs deal with each case when contested? :roll: There's a can of worms.

Another method is by introducing more GMs or GM trainees. Some say that there are enough GMs online as it is. Personally I cannot agree with that. This is not an accusation against our current GMs. However, they have lives to lead outside the game (*gasp*) and having a few more members trained and ready to act isn't a bad idea. Some people actually restrain themselves from banning everyone when they're issued GM status. I think the current set of GMs are perfectly capable of selecting reasonable trainee GMs or deputies.

Your ideas, however, are the best by far Fern, in my humble opinion. Eliminate the need/desire to bot by reorienting game play and monster responsiveness. Rising up in levels through clever quests is by far much better than standing hours on end killing the same mindless creature killing.

@meway: this thread was the best place that discussion starter could have been placed. :D True: a whole new thread could certainly be opened up where we can discuss strategic changes. Fern? I encourage it.
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Goku
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Re: Can We Reduce "Botting" ?

Post by Goku »

From what I understand that's not currently possible with the current server. Right now eAthena is being used which is based on Ragnorok Online, which if you have played is one of the most grind it out mmorpg's out there.

You have some nice ideas Fern, but sports comes to mind a little bit if you know what I mean. Adjusting to the opponent (the botters) is a sure fire way to lose. I'm not saying it wouldn't work but The Mana World isn't the only game where you have to put some time into it to "level". I'm pretty sure all will change anyway once it moves over to TMWServ.
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Jaxad0127
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Re: Can We Reduce "Botting" ?

Post by Jaxad0127 »

The systems for TMWServ are designed to be funner for the player and harder to bot.
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Re: Can We Reduce "Botting" ?

Post by meway »

That's good to hear jax.
fern I would like to here more of your ideas. I like the concept of having certain attacks do less damage to different monsters. I was thinking maybe an item to encourage less botting a sword that gives 50% more xp from the killed monster but as a down side the sword only dose like 30 attack.
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Re: Can We Reduce "Botting" ?

Post by aroleon »

I like Fern's comments above.

I like the idea of a monster running away, say when it gets to 25-33% of its original hitpoints.

Botting works because we can hold down two keys and have the monsters keep coming to us. Go over to "beach", drop an arrow or something insignificant to lure the slimes, and hold down two keys.

If the monsters ran away when their hitpoints got lower, then the bot would have to move to get them.

But what if holding a key down didn't work?

If I press the "target" key, it selects the nearest monster; then "attack" automatically attacks it when it comes within range. If I hold down both, then as soon as one monster dies, the next one is automatically targetted and attacked.

What if I need to release the target key and then press it again to target the next monster? As far as I can tell, this is what I do when fighting anyway. Would this interfere with "normal gameplay" (whatever that is :) ?

just my thoughts,

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Jaxad0127
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Re: Can We Reduce "Botting" ?

Post by Jaxad0127 »

aroleon wrote:What if I need to release the target key and then press it again to target the next monster? As far as I can tell, this is what I do when fighting anyway. Would this interfere with "normal gameplay" (whatever that is :) ?
Remember, client changes won't help, as the client is open source and so it is changeable. These kinds of changes should only be made to improve the experience of human players. I doubt that change will go over well with the players.
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aroleon
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Re: Can We Reduce "Botting" ?

Post by aroleon »

jaxad0127 wrote:Remember, client changes won't help, as the client is open source and so it is changeable. These kinds of changes should only be made to improve the experience of human players. I doubt that change will go over well with the players.
Yerr, good call. Fair enough. Thanks.
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Re: Can We Reduce "Botting" ?

Post by Wombat »

Doulos wrote:Another method is by introducing more GMs or GM trainees. Some say that there are enough GMs online as it is. Personally I cannot agree with that. This is not an accusation against our current GMs. However, they have lives to lead outside the game (*gasp*) and having a few more members trained and ready to act isn't a bad idea. Some people actually restrain themselves from banning everyone when they're issued GM status. I think the current set of GMs are perfectly capable of selecting reasonable trainee GMs or deputies.
I fully disagree with you. Bots are not a problem, they are a minor annoyance that doesn't warrant a need for more GMs. I already got into this, so actually discuss a new point instead of ignore the conversation that went on earlier in this thread.
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Re: Can We Reduce "Botting" ?

Post by Crush »

Removed some unconstructive postings. Please fight your personal vendetta somewhere else.
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meway
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Re: Can We Reduce "Botting" ?

Post by meway »

Simple as gms getting off there bums and listening to the players that find the bots problem solved. I mean omg stop hiding in irc and play the damn game. your no good quit now. if you fall into this comment that is.
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Re: Can We Reduce "Botting" ?

Post by undecim »

It is really a waste of time to create automated mechanisms to detect bots. If there is a systematic way to detect systematic behavior, then there is a systematic way to circumvent that behavior, which means that the bots will always be better than the detection mechanisms.

I think the best way to stop botting is to get more human help. We could create an in game "report" button to report people we suspect are bots, and GMs would be alerted when this report button is used.

Another idea is to create moderators, which have less power than GM, but can be trusted more than normal players to submit bot reports. Most legitimate players would respond to a moderator just as well as a GM so as to not waste the GMs time with a report from a moderator . We can create a lot more mods than GMs, because they don't have any in-game power, aside from being trusted by GMs.
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Re: Can We Reduce "Botting" ?

Post by undecim »

I got to thinking about this today, and I have a really great idea. It makes use of two things: The turing test, and an attack resistant trust system

As I said in my previous post, if there is a systematic method to detect a bot, there is a systematic way for that bot to evade that detection. Therefor, the only way to determine that a player is a bot is to have a human determine it. This is often referred to a turing test (to "pass" a turing test, you have convince another human that you are not a robot)

Attack resistant trust systems are systems that allow players to mark each other as "trustworthy" or "not trustworthy" to give players a score based on who trusts them and who doesn't. The algorithms used, however, prevent users from creating several accounts and marking themselves as trustworthy. Attack resistant algorithms take into account how often users mark others as trustworthy, who trusts the person doing the marking, and can detect circles of friends who mark each other as trustworthy simply because they are friends.

This bot detection system would use an attack resistant trust system to let players mark each other as "Seen botting" or "Never Seen botting". Players should be instructed to mark people that they chat with while training as "Never seen botting", and players that don't respond or fail a turing test as "Seen Botting". This gives every player a score based on how much they interact with other players.

Players with high scores could then be rewarded (perhaps with a monthly item giveaway?) while players with low scores are investigated by GMs
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Re: Can We Reduce "Botting" ?

Post by Crush »

I think you are making botting a much more serious issue than it really is.

How much do bots really hurt your game experience?

Sure, when a botter survives for multiple weeks he starts to accumulate wealth and thus influence the game economy and they are an unfair competition for those who are striving for the highest level. But as long as a botter is catched and banned/reset after a few days, before he reaches a high level, he hasn't hurt anyone yet.

I think our game masters are currently doing a very good job at keeping the bot problem under control. I don't see the necessarity to develope automated systems to assist or even replace them. There are more vital things to program.

But the botters are still something to care about because they are a symptom of a much more serious problem: When a game can be played by permanently holding down two keys it is simply not challenging enough and needs to be improved. Thats the angle from which this problem should be approached, in my opinion.
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