I’d just like to clear a few things on BOTs and why it is unlikely to eliminate them in any game, despite a developer’s best efforts.
I am not an expert, but I am a computational biologist and I have written several LUA scripts for League, and a couple of aim-‘bots’ for CSGO and other FPS games. I know some much better than I, whom make a VERY decent living off the updating and support of these bots.
The first thing you must understand is that for the people who create these programs, this is their life. This is how they make their money, and feed themselves. They may or may not have any relationship with the gold selling, or power-leveling websites themselves, but they provide the software and capability to provide these types of services. The people who create these programs are … smart. There’s no better way to describe it, but for those of you whom get offended by this, lets stick to the definition that ‘smart’ in this post is in relation to ability to read, and write abstract code in particular computer languages. They are probably smarter than you, and smarter than me, and smarter than even the developers of the game. Because of this … good bots are difficult to detect, and often impossible to rid completely, even if you somehow come into access with the source code.
A bot is a computer program that preforms automated tasks. Generally in order for the bot to function properly, you need to programatically do two things: detect what or gather what is happening ingame, and then provide input into or to the game client. Of the two, detecting what is happening is the more difficult. This can be done a variety of ways, intercepting a game’s data packets which helps with identification of player action, capturing an image and parsing it, looking at text on the screen such as enemy and game messages and game clocks and so on. Monitoring of a game’s memory space by seeing what memory a game updates similar to Game Genie, and so on.
Giving input into a game is easier, we’re all probably familiar with this. Emulation of input via fake keyboard or mouse signals, game scripting, writing data directly into a game’s memory space, and etc.
So just as an example … you could search the screen for the name of an enemy which can be stored as many things, but something simple could be a picture with the game’s font, and then script a small program that clicks a small distance below the name of the enemy to attack it.
So what is the point of this topic? The point is … it’s unrealistic to believe that ToS will be bot-free. I am certain that a large majority of the forums will be in outrage a few months in because bots will most certainly be coming into the game. The severity of the bot problem will depend largely on how successful the game is. Pointing fingers at the developers and saying “your game sucks, you need to fix the bot problem” is pointless. You cannot cure a cancer. At least not without causing damage to the cancer victim. The same can be said for ToS and bots. Bots are the cancer, but in order to remove them completely the developers would need to implement a absolute no trading policy, which hurts the players. This doesn’t stop powerleveling, or similar forms of item grinding.
So what can be done? Technically, there are probably a few things you could do. Having worked for a aim-bot company for a bit, there are probably a few flaws that can be taken advantage of by the developers. But i’d like to dispel a few rumors or ‘suggestions’.
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Join a bot forum and download the bot and then fix the problem by targeting the source code. You DO NOT want to do this. Many of these sites have fine print in their contracts when you decide to purchase or sign up for their site. You WILL run into legal issues. Whether this is un-lawful, or allowed in a legal setting, only a REAL lawyer could let us know. But I know of a specific case where my old ‘company’ was able to pursue legal action against a FPS developer but it was quietly handled.
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Give people the power to temporarily ban players they suspect to be bots and then allow the developers to review the ban. This is a horrible idea. The world is ■■■■. You will have players that will abuse that power. The developers have neither the time or the money to go through 300-500 bans a day and review them. How do you even decide someone is a bot? Because they are grinding for hours and not talking? Maybe they don’t want to talk.
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CAPTCHA or similar. Doesn’t work. Any decent bot can solve a complicated CAPTCHA, or be scripted to run a minigame. This is only an annoyance to the legit players.
Any questions? Let me know.
My suggestions? None that I can offer that are a ‘simple’ solution or that are not technical in nature.
