[Lets have a talk]A more efficient way to ban bots, hackers etc

[hansleo0102]

As you all know, there are alot of possible bots(or at least when I played in cbt2) in this game, and I dont think sending a ticket to the “higher ups” and waiting for a response is good enough to punish these players. What I want to discuss is how there should be enough active admins or moderators in-game to take actions. “Why do I even bother discussing this now?” Its because a great “gaming environment” is neccessary to attract more players which leads to a happy happy place and success. Note that I am not in position to know whats a must, I just think this is the right idea. This is simply my OPINION.

Why do we need to strike as fast as possible?
Imagine taking a stroll on the map and you see a hacker 1-hitting every mob on the screen just as when you were about to take the kill, that wouldnt be fun for you right? That is why an action is needed to be done as fast as possible. We cant let them run around freely for an entire week. Having a bunch of them running around will also most likely make more people to quit.

Why even bother wasting time on them?
If you dont even know why, dont bother joining the discussion. Its sad how I feel that I had to add this because of some people I wont mention who.

How should we deal with them and ban them as fast as possible?
As we all know, we dont even know how fast they punish these exploiters. Recently they just banned 1000 of them and thats impressive! But how long did this decision and action take?

Well, here comes the bigger problem about how we should do this. I think there should be some sort of moderators. They arent the admin type and they have less power. I dont know what plans they have to add to their hierarchy, but I hope we do get some sort of active moderators to have the power to silence and ban. Moderators are the hero we dont deserve, but the one we need

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Overall, a clean “gaming environment” is important because it will lead to positive results. With it, people are less likely to quit, players will have a more enjoyable experience. I found it annoying and the game unappealing whenever I saw them around. Dont you too? This is also a good thing for those actually trying hard and actually playing the game unlike some people who spends a maximum of an hour and reaches max level. Notice how there is also a small competitiveness in this game. People working hard to get on top of the ladder of something should feel more rewarding.
Now Im not saying they’ll be punished as fast as a blink of an eye, but punishing over 1000 players far after cbt ended took way too long. (yeah yeah, it was still beta). Banning them in one wave after wave is way too long.

[Melon]

It did take too long,I agree with you.I think both versions need active staff around the clock looking for things like this,because hackers/exploiters work around the clock themselves.You have to put in the effort to stop them early,and you have to be relentless from that point on.

Many games get killed from the inside out from gold-sellers,exploits,and hacks that are allowed out in the wild for far too long.I think it’s even worse in cases like this,where the game staff isn’t on constantly and communication is slow [usually from time and language differences].So especially before our version launches,they should consider hiring some staff in all areas [customer services/help/support/,game GM’s,probably more forum staff for when it gets busier on launch,tech support] who can help with issues more promptly for international players.This would give us swifter disciplinary actions,and quicker fixes.

[VnZzz]

Lets think outside of the box… Its not a solution to the main problem.

Why not a free hack server? A server where you can use hack and stuffs just bcz you are lazy or dumb, idk bcz you need hack for something. IMC could offer “hack” like speed hack, one hit ko, gold multiplier… god mod or else.

Its a very stupid, and funny, idea but idk maybe can work?! A server for hackers to play like they want and normal servers for players like us who enjoy the game and want to kill some time with it.

Now lets do the real talk.

IMC really must do some emergencial fixs to stop that hack/exploit season… If not, the game will grown with a bad popularity. Need to be more active with the player base too. Not as an deceiver move, just be more active talking with the forum, making presence to close some gaps between player/staff .

[Snivs]

I’m all in for having a chaotic server as well, but it’s a double-sided weapon as you’d be opening up an exploit farm. Even if there are no laws to be enforced, the server should be monitored for any vulnerabilities discovered, patching those in the lawful servers should become a priority.

[hansleo0102]

Now lets do the real talk.

IMC really must do some emergencial fixs to stop that hack/exploit season… If not, the game will grown with a bad popularity. Need to be more active with the player base too. Not as an deceiver move, just be more active talking with the forum, making presence to close some gaps between player/staff .

Real talk? Do you really think having their presence in the forum will spook abuser’s pants? Lets get real here. There are alot of people that wont give a damn even if their presence is humongous in the forums and be all “buddy-buddy”. People will do it as long as they are not caught. That is why Im saying some sort of active moderators in the servers. They are not necessarily the admins or developers. They give the developers and admins more breathing room to do what they are more needed to.

[VnZzz]

Sorry a little mistake sir. (im a bit lazy and i hate to write in english… sorry i mixed 2 diff ideas and it result in a confuse post)

Your right ppl dont give a damn your they are cheating the game, if they get caught or not. They just want to “play” and be annoying.

to resume what i wa s saying:
Presence on forum will make a better base i think.
More activeness/work in game ill give a fast response to what they need to be awere.

Presence in forum wont fix the game or player behaivor, ill just show if they want to mod this forum or not, be close to they community or not…
Atm we have like 2 or 3 moderators?! Yeah its fine bcz the forum is running auto and low active player base.

[FatePGN]

Even if a moderator bans a bot, or staff, or anyone, it’ll just be remade.

They come into the game knowing they’ll lose a set amount of bots each day/week, and plan for that.

The only way to effectively stop bots, is to stop giving players/gold sellers a reason to bot.

If silver isn’t transferable between players, botting becomes absolutely useless. Potential and 1 time trades for mats/recipes already helps a lot.

I understand that it’s impossible to stop silver trading since that’s literally the economy, but what they could do is stop silver from being traded in 1:1 trades.

Gold sellers that use bots have 3 primary ways of trading gold:

1. In game mail (which we don’t have).
2. In game 1:1 trading (which I mentioned a possible solution)
3. Marketplace

Now the marketplace can easily be solved by showing only the cheapest of every item. This has been used successfully in other games such as Wakfu/Dofus.

This will stop gold sellers since there is no real viable way of selling gold to players, and in turn stop most botting.

[davidhelp84]

if u put an item to the Marketplace u have rnd time 30min - 2H that item can be showed in the market

[nizidr]

if u put an item to the Marketplace u have rnd time 30min - 2H that item can be showed in the market

this was removed already iirc. Because it was as dumb and an ineffective system as it looks and sounds.

[quote=“FatePGN, post:7, topic:126544”]
Now the marketplace can easily be solved by showing only the cheapest of every item. This has been used successfully in other games such as Wakfu/Dofus.
[/quote]How would you define “cheapest” between:

1. Normal weapon.
2. Same weapon enhanced to +1.
3. Same weapon enhanced to +1 but different amount of potential.
4. Same weapon enhanced to +1 has same potential as 3 but briquetted/awakened.
5. Same weapon enhanced to +1 with same potential as 3 and 4 but has slots/gems in it.
6. Any other combination of 2 and/or 3 and/or 4 and/or 5.

[elfochka]

Active bothunters are usually pretty good but they need to get paid so it may not be the right solution…

[nizidr]

Active bothunters are usually pretty good but they need to get paid so it may not be the right solution…

And outsourcing it by giving privileges to players is even worse solution imo.

[greenfoxy21]

Yeah.

Only hope is reports and active GM’s checking strange logs and supiscioiuos things.

In ro i was known as bot hunter xD.
I farmed some areas that were beloved by bots … hydra cards, phenon cards and co.

Teleport Bot … run kill … teleport on 12 cells away from player!

On one day … i had an Gm ban 7 people xD.
Then he warped me into prison too “So now i will get a coffee.” and left me there for 30 minutes xD. Together with bots that were trying to run away from me. As they couldnt teleport xD.

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I think the “Like/Dislike” would be a nice feature for it.
A player received lots of dislikes? Get’s warped into prison for x amount of time.
After checked by an GM if he responds, when he’s runnign around ( and not obviously a bot).

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Global will be hopefully our bot pranger … “Hey guy’s theres a bot here.”
Massive party!

[nizidr]

A player received lots of dislikes? Get’s warped into prison for x amount of time.

a way to ruin someone’s day by getting spammed dislikes by a group of bored players…
You put up too expensive/too cheap gem roasting service? Get them all the dislikes and go to jail while you are offline.

Way to get rid of competition instead of bots.

[FatePGN]

I’ll use an example from another game called Dofus. In Dofus, gear can also be modified. Ofcourse it doesn’t have enhancing or a potential system, but the stats can be modified (so let’s just say it has breiquetting/awakening and gems as that’s pretty much that’s what you do to gear in that game). When you search up an item, it’ll show every possible version of that item, at it’s cheapest possible price. Higher priced items won’t show up, so it’ll appear like this:

Now to bring potential in to the game and +1 - +? seems a little difficult and excessive. Perhaps when searching the marketplace you can have modifiers in your search option like:

1. When searching for a weapon/armor, you can choose these options:

• Highest Potential
• Lowest Potential
• Briquet % (choose a value)
• Has gem slots (choose a value)
• A check box for each color gems that you are looking for
• The enhancement value you are looking for

I think that makes it specific enough while letting you see more without really having to select something, and using a similar output like the Dofus marketplace, you can still see more than 1 iteration of an item, but it will still be the cheapest version of that iteration.

[greenfoxy21]

forgot about that…

[FatePGN]

i’m not sure if I agree with that idea either, but what they could do is after a person is jailed, they will be reviewed to see if they were actually botting/etc.

If they weren’t, then anyone that gave them the dislikes will be banned (be it temporary or permanent).

Then you can also improve on the idea, that the dislikes have to all appear within a short period of time, so as to prevent it flagging players that are just not very likeable.

[Snivs]

If you don’t wanna read the long post:

TL;DR: Give higher taxes to players earning more money, so that purchasing silver is heavily taxed when using the market or even 1:1 trading.

Extended Version: I have discussed several changes to tax in order to make it harder to purchase silver in this topic: Preparing for a Healthy Economy in the International Server:

Preparing for a Healthy Economy in the International Server

In the ingame economy, I think silver is pretty worthless and easy to come by, and when everybody can be rich, nobody is really rich, these are my suggestions:

• Make silver drops scale based on level difference, like experience, so, botters can’t just slow-farm silver low level mobs, this doesn’t address bots farming loot.
• Make instanced dungeons reward silver, an incentive to run dungeons in a daily basis.
• Create daily quests that reward silver, an alternative to grinding for money in endgame.
• Make Tax a more complex and iterative formula, like this:
  – Base tax = 0.80% = 0.08
  – Define multiple silver limits, each 10k, 20k, 30k… up to 100k, 200k, 300k… each 100k up to 1m, each 1m, 2m, 3m… up to 10m, each 10m, 20m, 30m … up to 100m, 100m, 200m, 300m … up to 1000m and so on.
  – For each limit that a sale suprasses, add an iteration for the tax to be calculated with it.
  – So your tax formula becomes: (1-BASE_TAX)^(1+ITERATIONS) (This is the iterativity I’m talking about).
  – Your tax is recalculated every time you get raw income (market sales, npc sales, silver from trades), based on the total amount of income you’ve earned from previous sales/trades that day. This makes it so that the more you sell/trade during the same day, the more tax % you actually have to pay, even if you sell bunches of cheap items.
  – Your total income tax is reset periodically, maybe daily, weekly or during maintenances.
  – This system emphasizes on avoiding players from getting extremely rich, while helping players with less who handle less money (mostly during the earlier levels), pay a lot less taxes than rich players.
  Example:
• Your base tax: 0.8% (it does seem low, but it scales up).
• You sell an item for 50k, you have 1 base iteration and suprased 5 limits so far (10k,20k,30k,40k and 50k), so you’re getting 6 iteratinons. Your tax is
  1-(1-0.8%)^(6 iterations) = 1-0.92^6 = 0.0471 = 4.71%
  Your taxes will be 4.71%, so your item will be charged for it:
  50,000 - 4.71% = 50,000 - 2355 = 47,645.
• In this same scenario, you sell another item for 100k, accodring to this system, you have already sold 47,645, so your total income will be 147,645 you have 1 base iteration + 10 iterations (10k-100k, the next iteration not being until 200k), meaning you’re getting 11 iterations, your tax is
  1-(1-0.8%)^(11 iterations) = 1-0.92^11 = 0.0846 = 8.46%
  Your taxes will be 8.46%, so your total income will be charged for it:
  147,645*8.46%=12,491.
  But you’ve already paid 2,355, so only 12,491-2,355 = 10,136 are applicable taxes, meaning you will earn 100,000-10,136=89,864, by making these calculations, you pay the same when you sell a single item for 150k, or several items for 150k in the same period (day/week/maintenance).
• Daily Income should tracked account-wide.
• Any amount of Silvers spent with an NPC should be sustracted from your daily income, so the more silvers you spend with NPCs, the less taxes you have to pay in your future transactions with other players.
• I’ve made an estimation spreadsheet, so you could try fiddling with the base tax, daily income and sales amount.
• Notice that the higher amounts of silver you recieve in a small period of time, the higher the taxes you will be charged, towards 900m, you are charged the following (when base tax is 0.8%: you get charged 30.89% which I consider fair for earning that large sum in such a short time period, while, when base tax is 2%, you get chraged 60.89% for the same quantity, which I consider way too abusive).

Please, let me know what you think about my ideas, Like if you want to let IMC know we want a healthy economy both for the company and the server.

Edit: an amount was wrong in the example calculation.
Edit: Corrected some percentages I wrote wrong.

While I am conscious it will not eradicate the issue, it’ll surely make it harder for gold sellers to provide large sums of silver in short timespans… like… oh, you instantly earned 100m silver? Here’s your 26% tax; You earned these 100m silver in different transactions? We can adjust these taxes to fit your total income, too.

The formula breakpoints can be adjusted to make it even steeper, so that players with humongous incomes (gold buyers), get much higher taxes, while not taxing players with lower incomes as hard.

I really believe this system can be tarnished as the server economy sees required, imagine 50% taxes when earning over 100m a day, sounds absurd, but 100m is a big amount to earn in a single day…

[Snivs]

These flags would require GM/Admin review, and I really, really, really don’t like the way that goes.

Let’s make botting not that worthy silver-wise, and then give big punishment to these who dare to bot.

[FatePGN]

Yeah, just thought I’d try to improve on the idea, but I think it’d be an excessive amount of reviewing to get anything done.

[nizidr]

Let’s make botting not that worthy silver-wise, and then give big punishment to these who dare to bot.

As long as monsters drop silver or items that can be vended for silver - there will be bots.

[quote=“FatePGN, post:14, topic:126544”]
I think that makes it specific enough while letting you see more without really having to select something, and using a similar output like the Dofus marketplace, you can still see more than 1 iteration of an item, but it will still be the cheapest version of that iteration.
[/quote]You forgot that Briquetting gives randomized bonus that makes each briquetted item unique. Do you think that it’ll be hard to find a variation that is not currently on market for RMTers to use? That means that your proposed system will achieve nothing it was designed for. What works fine for one game might not in another which is currently the case here.

[quote=“FatePGN, post:16, topic:126544”]
If they weren’t, then anyone that gave them the dislikes will be banned (be it temporary or permanent).
[/quote]Any automated system for catching/punishing bots has way too many flaws.You forgot about false positives. If you’ve met a player that mindlessly kills monsters and doesnt want to talk to you (a normal condition after you’ve grinded for 6-8 hours straight) and you flag them as suspected bot you risk being punished for false report yourself while you werent exactly wrong. So either system can be abused or it wont be used at all.

The only system that might work is just flagging suspected characters for personal GM review after character gets certain amount of reports. There should not be any automation ever. And even then system is prone to mistakes.

[quote=“Snivs, post:17, topic:126544”]
Give higher taxes to players earning more money, so that purchasing silver is heavily taxed when using the market or even 1:1 trading.
[/quote]I had a little conversation with you in that thread… Anyway i think that diminishing returns depending on grinding time in a grinding game (thats what your progressive tax system is in a nutshell) might alienate players towards devs more that they currently are.