Bot detection system

[Halian]

Yesterday I was wondering how could we stop botting and came up with this idea:

Each map should have (if it doesn’t already) a bunch of data to make some statistical studies or apply some statistical methods/tests.

Through a simple averaging method, we could get a trend on some aspects, like monster kill count or time spent on the same area.

Having that average, plus or minus the standard deviation, we have our lowest tolerance level and our highest tolerance level. Now, using the box-and-whisker approach we could detect the outliers of the sample (extremely high values in this case, towards the right of the gaussian function plot) and we can almost be sure that those players in that situation (outliers) should be bots, so we apply some “are you human?”-like test: image captcha or whatever, and if it doesn’t answer correctly in a few time units, the server should kick him as a warning. Three or more warnings and a temporal ban (on the month scale) should be applied, and a the next ban after the first is permanent.

It’s a pretty unpolished idea, but as I see it, it’s a good approach to solve the issue.

Thanks for the good work!

[marcobrotas.mm]

Greetings Halian,

I believe your approach could be highly effective. I myself also propose an idea that it could probably be combined with yours. I posted before I was aware of the existence of your suggestion.

My suggestion can be found here:

Bot detection system suggestion

Greetings Tree of Savior team, I have a suggestion for bot detection that I believe could be highly effective. What's the guideline for my idea? One of the major "unavoidable" differences between human players and bots. Human have eyes and act upon what they see. Bots do not. They act upon data received from the client/servers. So, when humans are farming, they will attempt to kill what they see. A bot will attempt to kill what the data indicates is available. Taking that as a basis…

Hope the suggestion of players do help reduce the bot problem.

Best regards and most respectfully,
Arkight Crossfaith

[glemorjoaquinpurchas]

s a warning. Three or more

nope this won’t work. I’ve been developing ragnarok server before. if in ragnarok bot program can bypass popup image verification or captcha, what more in tree of savior. just remember there are no 100% anti bot program, in ragnarok. botters can talk too. what more in tree of savior. think harder guys. every solution got a hole in it.

[Halian]

I get your point, but:

1. The test, and the way you code it and implement it, should be effective.
   I.E: Imagine the captcha comes with a debuff, a -100% exp -100% silver -100% drop debuff, and the only way to clear it, it’s by asnwering the image captcha.

2. eAthena was released by Gravity to create private servers, so, that gave us (coders) an inside look to the workings of RO, so of course bots could be programmed to bypass any RO-coded security measure. I don’t know if IMC is planning on doing the same, but I doubt it.

Thanks for your reply!

[Bald_Dad]

Please no captchas, there is one much easier way to detect the dumb bots we have right now. I already emailed IMC about it now we sit and wait.

[Halian]

The captcha part, it’s not important, that can be changed with… anything you like.

The core of this solution, is the way you detect the bots.

And you should share with us your solution! It could be nice to read about it, maybe we, as a community, can improve it.

[Bald_Dad]

Its the best for everyone not to make it public because its simple and could be worked around if known.

[Halian]

Then it will be worked around.