They wouldn’t say something like this, it’s like a cheat invitation.
Then they should have just delayed the launch period. Because then they are asking you the customer to play an online mmo without any form of bot protection. If I paid and found out, I would be pissed. Like if you found out your trojans were actually just made out of cheese cloth >_>
EDIT: Anyways, we’re talking about pointless hypotheticals at this point. Just sit tight and wait for now. No point getting into debates about imaginary things that may or may not have happened over issues that may or may not exist.
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Yeah well i am sure there are a lot of procedures for them to apply VAC on the game, and in the end, if it fails, i am sure they will add something like Xing or HackShield.
If we are already under VAC then it may be something that is not fully implemented on the VAC DB like the bots and what not, there are lots of ways out there hackers use on a non intrusive method that make some anti-hack systems not detect it.
Gonna have to wait for a staff response on that matter.
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I forgot, do staff even work on Sundays? I recall a server issue last week on Sunday that took quite a while for a response…
In KR they have some heavy penalties for off hour workload, so they aren’t at their office by that time, at noon today or a bit later they might since it will be monday morning in KR.
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No response today 
That’s okay… imc has a lot of explaining to do on Monday lol
EDIT: Looks like it got answered! We’ll see if this one gets answered too lol
I have a theory on why VAC isn’t enabled yet.
I heard somewhere, before game opened for exclusive access, that they were going to use VAC but I don’t remember where. My first though, which I brought up with another friend, was “don’t they need data for that to work first?”. After the game opened for exclusive access my friend agreed with me that they are likely gathering data especially with the strange restrictions for trading and auction house in place. It wasn’t long after that talk with my friend that an announcement was made about the trade restrictions. I really do think they might be gathering data on gold spammers, bots, and hacking probably for VAC. I can’t say this for sure though…
If they knew they were going to need to collect a lot of data before getting VAC up and running… then they should’ve hired a lot more GMs so that the data collection period would still be relatively bot free…
Anyways… it’s better to hear back from imc and see what they have to say…
How can you observe data if you ban all bots right away? That and the news post suggest they are observing auction house sales. The data needs to be active for them to see it. But its just a theory anyways…
To answer your specific question, you implement a quarantine system where bots can no longer interact with the main game. This could be via a separate quarantine channel which offers the illusion of multiple channels (all of which connect to just the single quarantine server channel). This would be a cost effective way of containing bots from the main game while still allowing observation.
Anyways, it’s fairly pointless to discuss hypothetical musings, but I guess it’s a way to pass the time while we wait for a response from imc…
There is nothing wrong with hypothetical musings. 
There might be a problem with the quarantine system though. If a bot is written to sense when it has been moved/ transported or “quarantined”, as some have in other games I know of, it might be possible to script it to log off. (Which also proves a problem to a “how to get rid of bots” idea I had earlier.) This would prevent further data from being acquired. (Its better for them to not know they are being watched.)
I mean… most quarantine systems use an account level flag. How would a bot detect if it has been moved to quarantine if you just make it so that the bot is only ever moved to quarantine when the bot itself initiates a channel change?
You could allow shout messages from the main game to still be piped to the quarantine channel, you just would not allow any shout messages to leave the quarantine channel (but you would display those messages on the quarantine channel). Additionally, the same could be applied to the market. You could spoof a snapshot of the market and allow “false” transactions to occur which would have no effect on the main game.
Funny thing is that most of these bots are not just bots, they’re superhero (or rather super villain) bots who can run with the speed of lightning, warp around, destroy all monsters on the map in 1 blow (and then warp around to collect loot), etc.
No, it doesn’t seem to me like ToS got ANY kind of security going on for it, not to mention VAC.
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Yeah… that observation that the bots were doing really crazy things was what ‘inspired’ me to do a bit more digging…
It’s kind of a douche move if imc decided to launch the founders without any form of anti-cheat/anti-bot other than overworked GMs/Staff (that they probably could’ve hired more of).
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I heard of bots from Ragnarok online were coded/ sophisticated enough to sense when they were in the wrong map ID and would be coded to act a certain way if that happens or even log off when a GM was sensed near by. (Even if they were invisible) I don’t see it as impossible for bots to be coded to sense if its on a channel that shouldn’t be accessible unless flagged on this game. Thing is we don’t know how sophisticated the code is for the bots so we don’t really know what methods would work against it yet. That and it does appear that they are at least trying to make them a little less annoying with the megaphone restrictions and supposed added spawn rate. Your suggestion, if considered, would take a little time for them to set up up.
More like Ragnarok’s coding was unsophisticated and obvious, but Ragnarok is a very old game and can be forgiven for that. With that being said, at least I didn’t see as many hackers in Ragnarok within many years in comparison to amount of hackers I’ve seen in ToS in a matter of days.
Though the behavior you’re describing (like logging off immediately when bot senses invisible GM) was a very obvious sign that it’s indeed a bot. I used to detect and ban them without much effort on my private server which was pretty populated. I think that manual detection and banning of bots by GMs on daily basis is an absolutely necessary measure for ToS. That’s apart from automatic measures and stuff like VAC of course, which are all needed as well. What isn’t needed are some of the restrictions they’re trying to force on all players, but that’s already offtopic, sorry.
Eh?
The official Ragnarok Online use to be known as Bot Online at one time. At a few different points in time it was as bad as on this games bot population possibly worse. I’ve also seen plenty of hackers in my Ragnarok days. (I’ve played Ragnarok way too long… 
)
But I anyways…
Moving on…
I won’t darken on this thread anymore…
BTW, OpenKore in RO cannot kill all mobs on screen with one blow.
Yeah, every veteran of RO can remember about packet senders like W**, but they is not even nearly that effective compared to TOS bots. It is not only a bot, but also a really hard hack.
Any update on this matter? The upcoming bot report features are great, but why doesn’t the Tree of Savior steam page list “Valve Anti-Cheat enabled” as one of its descriptors?
Should people be writing directly to Steam/Gaben asking why VAC has been completely ineffective for Tree of Savior?
Allowing botting reports is a good start. But why does the anti-cheat/anti-botting VAC program appear to be so useless in this game when it seems to do a decent job in other games?
At this point, given how many bots are being reported, it’s pretty clear that something is not working with respect to anti-cheat/anti-bot measures…
An ETA for when some relief from these issues will occur would be quite nice!