Tree of Savior Forum

Anti-BOT method

General Discussion
#77

Like I just posted on the other bot topic…

As a long time user and (somewhat new) creator of bots… I can tell you guys there is absolutely no way to stop a bot.

There’s nothing a player can do that a bot can’t.

My favorite is how advanced the big game bots are. WoW/GW2/FFXIV. The
AI is amazing and surpasses a majority of normal players. I’d take a
bot in my party over normal players in any 3 of those games. Even in
raids.

I may or may not (COUGHCOUGHCOUGH) have a FFXIV bot running on my second monitor as I type this. Making crazy gil.

If you’ve ever played WoW/GW2/FFXIV I guarantee you that you’ve
partied with multiple bots for dungeon runs without ever knowing it
wasn’t a player.

Yes, there is even plugins to allow basic chatting for bots.
Including answering those basic math equations you give a player to
‘check if it’s a bot’.

#78

Some random ideas for handling bots:
(@STAFF_Ethan I hope something below is useful.)

  1. Report system that keeps records and makes a score of suspicious and successful reports.
  2. Make reverse engineering the game really hard (maybe it’s too late).
  3. Manual (GM) checking based on reports and data collected.
  4. Create an internal document of possible ways of cheating so GMs have a database for each case.
  5. Keep some client/computer environment fingerprinting and try to match similar behavior. It’s possible, like, depending on the score of the player, to spawn monsters only in the same spot so that the player would end up doing the same actions based on the bot AI, so you could map a environment fingerprint to a repetitive behavior.
  6. Keep somehow to behavior of the players the GMs are checking. You don’t need only a banishment command. It would be nice to have something like a track command that collects info on that player.
  7. Allow the GMs to control the environment while the tracking mode is enabled on a player.
  8. Make false rewards/events possible. Like dropping an unpickable rare item on the ground. Or dropping something good that only a bot could detect (not visible on the screen/triggering a glitch but trackable by procedures, bots aren’t processing in-game screen images as far as I know, lol).
  9. Make anti-bot channels if the player changes from map to map so those suspects players gets moved to special anti-bot environment without knowing it. The anti-bot mode should be disabled once it’s certain the player isn’t a bot.
  10. Use the suspicious score in conjunction of trading history to check if the player trades resources between characters. Apply sanctions to all the accounts involved if it’s a confirmed cheat. Even if “I just helped a friend of mine, don’t ban him”.
  11. Map internally common bot cases, like, it’s more common to have Swordies Lv. 1~40 on X map as bots, so you have a scope to give more priority to spend the automatic checking resources.
  12. Don’t, really, give any second chance to anyone confirmed using in-game cheats or bots. Make people have fear to use cheats.
  13. Create something like a neural network or a simple checklist for automatic bot checking. It’s possible, like, to check if the character speed is unusually high. If the player is teleporting you can check if he have a high ping or low ping and collect information over time.
  14. Don’t punish the players as soon they are detected using cheats. Ban them when they are not online or from time to time. So they don’t know what was really detected.
  15. If the player have a really high suspicious score allow the GM to add a “annoying” mode that makes the character rubber band, miss more attacks and lose connection from time to time. Also keep in mind that connection issues or “unexpected” common scenarios can break bots AI.
  16. Force the player who are reporting to give enough information to report. Like, you can only report someone if you’re in the map for some minutes. The player would also have to answer like from 5 to 10 questions that can map if the report is trollish or good. Use the pattern of the answers and environment to create common good reports.
  17. Glitches! Abuse your own glitches as GMs, glitches that annoys the suspect player or make them fear you. Like the golden message glitch asking “stop botting or i report u” or some non-sense. Start ks’ing the bot and see the behavior. Is it always moving to other targets? Keeping the route? Changing the route? Whining?
  18. Make GMs able to fake the character name and outfit.
  19. Play with internal values that bots are detecting. Like, monsters are in a X place but make it possible to show it in a Y place on the screen or the server so that you can see if the bot is attacking a non-existing monster.
  20. Play with player’s behavior. If you see a shining monster you’re going to kill it asap, right? Spawn no-reward shining monsters if the player have a high suspicious score and check its behavior.
1 Like
#79

I’d just like to throw this info in:

Movement hacks (Teleport, speed, etc) cannot be stopped by the game as, other than in scripted events that the server moves the player without player input, any sort of movement is controlled by the client and the server does not need to approve of it, only to adjust the location you display to others.

This is the same in WoW, FFXIV, or any other big online game.

That video showing the “aoe attack” hacks definitely needs looking into before it becomes common sight but the movement shenanigans will need manual observation to catch the players in the act.

#80

It can be non-intrusive.

It shows up, you can minimize it (in style of programs that can be opened in tray) and it gives you 15 minutes to enter it.

This way, if you’re in a boss fight or whatever, you have some time.

Another way:

  • Several trusted members of community can be given a “game sage” title, or whatever you want to call it. Given the power to start a vote to kick poll, serverwide, where everyone can vote on a kick. As long as 60%+ of the online community votes yes, the kick will happen.

OR, as every game should have. IMC should hire people that will watch over the server, investigate every bot report and kick it if it is in fact a bot. This of course costs money, so it’s only a dream to expect it from IMC.

I personally think that a captcha is the best solution, with 15 minutes to enter it, so it’s not very intrusive and you sort of have some time to do whatever you’re doing and then enter it.

#81

You guys want to know the only method that has any form of impact on botters in any game?

A built in way to trade in-game money for cash shop currency.

And vice versa.

GW2 does it.

The only other option is to check when large amounts of money are being traded between people that have had little to no interaction before. And if one of the traders is a low level (which is common for gold sellers).

You can’t stop botting. You can only reduce the amount of people that buy in-game money.

#82

Quite inefficient. /twentyfharacters

#83

HUahauishuashasudhasu its nice if we have one captcha-anti-bot like this in-game rsrsrsrs :joy::joy:Beat Dark Souls :heart_eyes:

1 Like
#84

I would just quit if I had to solve a captcha every hour.
Thx god IMC isn’t stupid as every player that agrees with captcha.
It won’t happen, just won’t :smiley:

1 Like
#85

Please IMC do not add captchas or any other restrictions of any kind. There are enough annoying restrictions that are going to piss people off already. Just add a option to report bots by clicking on them and selecting report bot. Then have GMs active in the servers every few days or so checking the reports and logs.

#86

@KaiserX @LunarRabbit
Thanks for all of your constructive feedback. I’ll try to pass some of the ideas we haven’t thought of to the dev team. But please note that there are many many things that must be considered before any new methods can be implemented.
An active community reporting bots/abusers with solid evidence(screenshots / recordings etc) will always be one of the best ways for getting rid of bots since programs can always be worked around given the amount of skilled programmers with too much free time. :stuck_out_tongue:

2 Likes
#87

Have you guys considered actively searching to hire or recruit a volunteer with actual bot programming experience?

They won’t be able to solve your problem, I believe you’re right on relying heavily on active community support in-game to catch / control bots, but the first step to any problem should be knowledge. And having someone who’s written / writes and can clearly help you cover up holes would be so incredibly helpful.

#88

Like good old ro prison.

I made a day 20 bot finds… and the gm jailed me then too … accidentaly.

The room wa sfilled with bots that were runnign aroudn or hitting a wall while running. Or trying to teleport on the spot … ohh god the nightmares.
Anti Teleport.
Anti pvp.
Anti skill.

The perfect prison… an donly gm’s could warp you out again xD…

#89

People usually want to bot because of silver and they want to bot because something has really low odds of obtaining it.

Instead of removing features or adding captchas, we need to remove/limit items that are too rare to get yourself. These items are created to “give us something to do” or something that will take our time, but not only is this lazy game design, the issue lies in that people would rather resort to other easier methods. Difficulty balance is what really needs to be looked at so we have less RNG items that only bots can be able to farm and less rare items that cost such a high amount of silver in the first place to eliminate the demand for an unfeasible silver amount.

Difficulty in obtaining both silver and items needs to be balanced so that the players feel like they want to do it themselves or find it fun doing so. If it becomes a chore or feels impossible, it creates the need for not only botting but demand for goldsellers as well as cheating programs.

Rare items when finally able to obtain it are nice, but should be restricted to single player games. Instead of having players be unique or empowered by rare items, its better for players to be unique in the choices they make. So instead of rare items, create more variety and more combinations. This way people will be still hunting and looking for that perfect item, but instead of just focusing on a single one, they’ll be trying out various ones, collecting, and rewarded with smaller increments and steps so it feels less impossible and more that they want to do it themselves.

#90

I’m not entirely sure about this, but I think bots have a lot more to do with profiting real money than actual in game difficulties. i.e. Bot because RMT is profitable.

#91

They do, but rare items means people will sell it at very high prices, very high prices means people will buy from the gold sellers, which means a demand is created for people to bot and sell gold, which means we’ll have bots.

Why else would people buy from a gold seller if not to buy that thing that they can’t possibly save money for? And what would ever be so expensive besides a rare item?

1 Like
#92

Although you are right, a hard game create the perfect environment for BOTs, since they’ll be needed more than easy games due the fact that not everyone can get the rewards but everyone wants it.

Actually the problems is that is easier to find “customers” on hard/grindy games due the nature of greed players, that want the advantages but without effort.

A better way to tackle this is to move your PVP/GVG toward skill base gameplay rather than just a raw power tug-of-war, but that’s easier said than done, due the fact that MMORPG have heavy latency issues, fps drop, harder classes/gears/stats to balance because of their freedom of gameplay.

It’s really a tough issue, and not so simple as ppl think it is.

Check it out:

#93

1000 x9 = 9 000…

the best way to wipe out Bot is either give them a map to farm or allow players to take them out PK map.

#94

Wow, aren’t you superior, calling people idiots for typos? (I don’t think it’s a miscalculation. But even if you think it is, it’s no ground to insult him.)

#95

Nice ideas.
@STAFF_Ethan Did you give up with the bot thing? I don’t see there is a real strategy in order to combat bots. Did you give up? Because reading this we can understand you gave up :frowning2:

We’ve come up with this initial access to prevent numerous Bot Accounts from the early stages of service and to provide a stable in-game environment to our users.

#96

No, captcha wouldn’t work:

See: https://d1a2y8pfnfh44t.cloudfront.net/KuPai0ogiHk/full/540p/index.mp4

At the very least, it would have be a very sophisticated captcha that has users matching pictures of with only cats in them or pictures with only street signs, or complex visual tasks like that.