Tree of Savior Forum

Reporting Botters as announced in News

General Discussion
#1

There can be no more delay. IMC, we need you to finally define the term “botting” for your game.

This has been long overdue and, after hundreds of posts by the community, still neglected and deemed unworthy of official response.

Since reporting botters will be a thing in an upcoming patch…

We’re also developing an in-game report function for players to use, and we anticipate other inconveniences to naturally diminish once we successfully administer bots.

We need you to define what is actually an offense, in advance, so players can prepare themselves for what they will be looking for. Otherwise we will have players reporting far more often than what you likely expect and will result in muddied report logs that no number of active GM’s or automation could sift through in a reasonable amount of time.

For instance, Is holding the Z key an offense? There is no way to prove a player is away from their keyboard as they could be holding the key with their finger while doing other things (I used the example of reading a book before). This has been blatantly ignored since as long as I can remember. However with reporting an option just around the corner it is high-time that this question is settled.

Will there be separate options for reporting players? (i.e. Botter, Hacker, Spammer, etc) Or do you intend that a single “report” option will actually cut it? I expect a generic report with a text field but I don’t believe that will suffice.

Is a logical mandatory CAPTCHA going to be implemented to help weed out invalid reports? (i.e. player can only be forced to solve one CAPTCHA every couple hours, has 2 minutes to solve it on-screen via mouse clicks and randomized number locations, etc) Again, logically, this would help validate many reports as well as potentially allow hackers and botters to be in a temporary limbo until GM inspection (or automation if it is sophisticated enough).

It’s assumed it will take X reports before Y happens, however, some of these bots and hackers are teleporting everywhere and may be hard to spot (in addition they may be hiding underground with z-coords being adjusted). Meaning, one report with a CAPTCHA may not be enough for a shady character, despite being obvious, if only one player is able to report them in a given time frame. Additionally not all players will be able to spot a bot (even the generic barb/priests we see running around every map) which means that they may go unnoticed for longer stretches of time (especially so once they wise up and start emoting, setting fires, and are actually scripted to speak with semi-appropriate or logical replies to proximity /s chats via primitive checks).

I could go on forever but this isn’t a Q&A so I won’t. I will instead say again that we, the players, need to know in advance what is an offense that is able to be reported. No more grey areas.

@Staff_Julie @STAFF_J @STAFF_John @STAFF_Ethan

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Does auto attack consider as botting?
#2

Please strongly also consider implementing something like behavioral biometrics. I just don’t think captchas are effective. It’s true that the proposed method might be a bit tricky to implement but maybe if you released some input output function specifications you could open source it like with translations…:

Alternatively: hiring one programmer with expertise in this field would also likely be more cost and time effective than an army of gms.

Edit: forgot to add… I would be interested in hearing imc’s stance on ‘z’ holding. I personally hope they just add a timeout point when the player must re-press ‘z’

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#3

I personally don’t have an issue with z-botting since it is so inefficient. However, from some grind spots I visit, I have noticed there are real bots now that move around the game world and are able to use items and stuff now. A report feature for these bots can’t come soon enough

#4

I hate the idea. Especially since it reminds me of the autoshoot/autoattack “feature” in grenado espada. It encourages people to not play the game… which I find crazy…

#5

With the updates regarding bot reporting features coming eventually, I think this topic gains new significance…

What should players be reporting as ‘botting’?

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#6

Thank you kindly for the post.

As it stands I am seeing a lot more AFK+Z players (which I don’t mind oddly) but now… now I’m seeing players using full-on macros.

I’m not talking about the bots that we expect. I’m talking about Peltastas aoe taunting an entire room while they sit in a corner spamming attack. These players look like AFK+Z except you’ll note that their mana is low from being used on rotation. I’ve also started to see players starting to walk over-encumbered in tight circles setting fireballs and flare grounds and then auto attack in the center, repeat, and then drink a strong potion (which likely explains the over-encumbered as they’re likely stacked with a metric ton of potions) after 3-4 sets of this.

It’s not just bots as most players expect, but primitive automation that is happening by otherwise legitimate players. It’s like our priest-bots we see are the first iteration of Terminators and our players using automation are robots that were pre-Skynet. Their sophistication may be on different levels but the truth remains that players are already starting to rely on means outside of those provided by the game to further automate their play.

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#7

So, @STAFF_Ethan, what’s the word now that people will be able to report bots within an hour?

#8

Z-AFKing is indistinguishable from a simple bot, and it’s obviously exploitative and against the game’s purpose, so it should be reportable.

Of course not, that would be stupid. The inconvenience would prevent legitimate reports and do nothing to stop “I’m mad at this guy.” The only purpose would be to prevent bots from mass reporting legitimate players to clog the reports queue, but they could just flag anyone who reports too often and have a “delete all reports by this team” button if they turn out to be spammers. Presumably, IMC will prioritize reports from past good reporters, too, so spam reports would be at the bottom of the queue.

#9

Running in circles and playing while you’re high also can make you look like a simple bot.

We’re seeing very few breeds of bots right now. Priests, some swordies, etc. This is far different from simply holding a key-pressed. The game specifically allows you to stand in place and attack because holding the key is designed to repeatedly attack.

That’s not a simple bot. That’s holding a key and I can easily be at my computer doing that. In addition to stating it is exploitative you would be limiting nearly every class from being able to keep up with the free silver, materials, exp etc that a pet class can gain simply from sitting in that same location without needing to hold Z o.o

#10

If you’re too high to respond when someone asks you if you’re a bot, you deserve whatever you get.

No, it generically allows it. There’s no specific measures taken to enable it, but instead it’s something the game’s design overlooked.

Would it be a complex bot, then? What kind of bot would be simpler than one that just logs in and sends autoattack signals?

Being able to let a pet farm for you is a class perk, like being able to leave an AFK shop open on a squire. Nearly every class is limited from keeping up with the free silver a shop class can get. I’d be in favor of changing pets to fall asleep if the master is AFK for a certain amount of time, but this is a different situation from Z-AFKing or using a bot that acts like Z-AFKing.

#11

To each their own. The only reason I said “specifically” is because of the immense amount of questions and feedback the topic has generated both lately and in the past. To me their act of taking no stance or any action against it means they endorse it or have designed it this way. I can’t think of any topic that has been brought up more over the months than this and yet IMC has avoided and tiptoed their way around any official response on the matter.

So, agree to disagree, and I will respect your opinion. You aren’t alone; there are a lot of players who don’t like AFK+Z. And there are a lot who do (I’m personally a huge Grenado Espada fan). We’re just members of a different camp is all =)

Hopefully IMC answers this soon.