Tree of Savior Forum

Give players "moderator status" to disable the bots - idea from a developer

Suggestions
#1

Hey team,

I’m an artist/programmer from New Zealand and have been working in the video-game industry for 18 years now. I’ve done contract work for Hasbro, Sony, Disney and a few other large companies. I’m currently working on an MMO and had an idea for how I was going to address bots, I though I’d share it here because I enjoy ToS like many people and anything that could help reduce the bot infestation will hopefully loosen some of the restrictions that are vexing players. I could just be selfish and keep it to myself but that’s not how the gaming community works. When I say I could just keep it to myself, I don’t mean it in an arrogant way as though my ideas are the best lol, because they definitely are not.

There’s no truly effective way to stop bots in a FTP model, because there’s no overhead for botters when every thing is available to them for free. You can make them jump through hoops and restrictions galore but they have an unlimited amount of resource(time) to work around those and continue.

The best way available currently is sheer diligence, multiple admins on-line 24/7 seeking and destroying bots right? Well, yes and no, that’s a huge overhead for a company compared to the botter’s unlimited resource so it’s not really viable. But IMC, you also have an abundant resource available, us, the players.

Moderator Status.

A “moderator status” for players could help us do the seeking to help you, IMC, do the destroying. Allow the top 10% bracket of the achievement ladder to apply for moderator status. Why the top 10%? Well this definitely reduces the chances of a botter getting moderator status but also because these players have invested a lot into the game already and abusing moderator status is less likely. Most are also on-line for large amounts of time.

The top 10% is only an example, if there’s a more suited option I’d love to hear it.
Moderator is strictly for disabling RMT spammers and bots only and not to be used on actual players.
Abuse of moderator status would result in losing the privilege and in serious cases some sort of punishment to detour people away from being power hungry.

What can a Moderator do?

Squelch spammers: When a spammer is squelched, their messages only appear client side and are stopped from being sent to the server, that way they wouldn’t know their messages aren’t reaching people and also reduce the formidable lag in cities. This would be strictly for gold sellers only and not to be used on people spamming general text.

Flag bots: If a player is determined by a moderator to be a bot, they can flag the bot (literally put a red flag over their head so players can see they’re a bot) which sends an alert that there’s a new bot detected. This can easily be monitored by 1 active admin. While flagged the bot cannot attack till the on-duty admin inspects the suspect. The flag can also be removed by a moderator in case there was a mistake eg: accidentally flagged the wrong person. All moderator actions will be logged in case someone who is part of a gold-selling operation manages to get moderator status on their personal character, then you could see who is going around unflagging all the bots if it were to happen.

There would be strict steps that would be explained when applying for moderator that requires you to follow all of the steps before flagging someone.

Disable the bots from doing their jobs, power to the people!

Anyways, its just a thought and would take a lot of the heavy lifting away from IMC on the bot front, we all know they have a lot on their plate already.

Obviously there are occasions where this could be abused and can be handled accordingly, but that’s fine detail that would be decided by IMC if they ever did something like this.

3 Likes
#2

I like this idea but imo a really bad idea too. Giving power to the top 10%, whats to stop them from abusing it? They could just claim that a certain playing is suspected of botting. Yes i understand another mod can remove the flag but i can see it being used to favour their friends too like using the said mechanic during a world boss hunt Dullahan for example. This is to the best of my understanding.

1 Like
#3

Of course, power goes to peoples heads sometimes, but like other moderator privileges it can be taken away.

#4

Top 10% are ridiculous easy to achieve and plenty top 10% get banned for bad manners, thats not a good factor, I think. The problem of such a thing is that you wont ever be able to rely on players, cuz this isnt their jobs, this isnt their lifes and most have nothing but a char to lose. The firm can lose much more by doing it.

#5

Abuse can be made, so NO.

#6

I agreed with pretty much the entire post except for the:

I don’t believe in giving players any type of true power that could hinder another player’s gaming experience. You can have 100 good mods and it would only take 1 to ruin it for everyone. The chat squelching can be abused but not to a point where it completely hinders game play.

Flagging alone should be good enough for a mod and you should let the GM/system do the actual bot checking. Too many things can go wrong with a player given the ability to disable attacking.

I like the idea of a mod, whether it be community driven or someone IMC delegates outside their GM team to handle this task.

#7

Agreed. People are a-holes. But you can weed out those a-holes, remove their moderator status till you have good moderators with best intentions.
Perhaps a more severe punishment for abusing moderator.

1 Like
#8

Yup, only an example. I’m sure there’s a better way to find the right people to be mods.

#9

I totally agree, I guess in my mind the perfect team of mods that wouldn’t abuse it already existed but getting there is a different story. There are players out there that would do it earnestly, but there’s probably just as many who wouldn’t. I guess they could effectively “hire” players. You moderate for a month for a token. I’m not sure if that sounds like a bad idea as well lol.

#10

I think this is overall a good ideia, a good option with some work.

#11

Agreed.

If mods are considered to be a serious thing even with limited powers - maybe even have people interested in such position to submit ‘job applications’ to IMC.

Whether hired Mod is reimbursed for time in TP, token or nothing at all, it’s a good idea for IMC to have a background of applicant and the whole 10% top player thing as a requirement wouldn’t be such a bad thing either.

Tons of possibilities and a lot ideas are going to need to be hammered out before this concept is even plausible.

#12

A moderator by the community is always a good idea but as others said, great power comes great irresponsibility. 10% is quite easy to achieve in game and we or the company don’t know whether this 10% will do their job or just abusing their powers to the brim (Seen them before, terrible).

However, you idea still hold it’s value but the way of doing it can be improvise. I’ve seen several companies that open a position of a community moderator in game, mostly to divide the workload that the GM already has. Surely many will apply but they can be weeded out mainly by interviewing, asking for their experiences, past jobs etc.

And if there was an abused of power, the GM will know who to look for at least.

#13

The 10% thing was only an example and mostly to set a bracket of expectation that you need to be with in that 10% to apply, narrowing down the numbers. Otherwise you’ll be over flooded with applications from everyone and their dog.

But like I said earlier, there’s probably a better way.

#14

An automute system, is it hard to do :sleepy: ?

#15

2/4 people here is a bot owner and goldseller. :frowning:

#16

Yes because discussing on ways to handle chat spam from negative players and bots is an admission of running bots/goldsellers these days( Hory fk do ppl get stupider by the day)