I just crunched the first article.
Nothing really applicable for ToS except for reducing the incentive / extending the bot busting duration. They couldn’t offer a really strong CAPTCHA without using physical (i.e real world) devices.
Working on the second…
The second that’s the good one, first is only there for those that dislike reading…
I’m professional at bobbing.
It will become only worse after the start, if anything.
As much as I agree that bots are a serious problem and discussing the ways of making their life harder is useful, I still wish people would keep it in one thread instead of 20 all around the forum.
Wanted to read the first article, saw catpcha highlighted in big letters something which is a complete no-go in scientific articles. Read the conclusion and saw the proof that it is bullshit.
The second article is about traffic which is interesting.
Still none mentions end-to-end encryption which is the death for every halfway decent bot.
I’ll just put it out there now. The only true bot detection you only need is to detect for extremely high levels of activity (activity defined as movement state outside of town). You will still get false positives of players sharing accounts, but to have success in this game, every account (I emphasize account because it is a rare instance for people to share accounts as that is trending a gray area in Steam’s terms of service) must have an “equal” chance (equal in quotations because of early access) of enjoying the game without being ruined by harsh economic conditions caused by botting.
Limit the use of time, and you’ll have less players complaining about how bots are greatly destroying the game. As for who decides on time, that is up to IMC, but I highly doubt that many human beings are willing to hit an average of 18+ hrs/day for a month.
Nice info, thanks. Sadly I think IMC gave up with the bot problem 
Because this message:
We’ve come up with this initial access to prevent numerous Bot Accounts from the early stages of service and to provide a stable in-game environment to our users.
End-to-end encryption will not solve anything. The client is still encrypting/decrypting the packets so DLL injection bots are unaffected.
Halfway decent written it shouldn’t be easy to get the encryption key. Especially with modern IT we have now.
DLL injection is a problem because of that shitty windows code but VAC can sniff that. And weekly updated encryption keys are a huge pain for botters.
But in the end it costs more money and therefor will never find its way in.
Nothing about that message even implies they gave up. In fact, there are several very recent posts from staff members that thank people for all the input on bot fighting, and they’re looking into solutions
[quote=“nuriomarayana, post:18, topic:153284, full:true”]
Nothing about that message even implies they gave up. In fact, there are several very recent posts from staff members that thank people for all the input on bot fighting, and they’re looking into solutions[/quote]
They are admitting there will be lots of bots and that they can’t do nothing about it 
An absolute nonsense claim. You’re looking at evidence and drawing the exact opposite conclusion. If I were to tell you I have 3 sisters, you’ll go around claiming I have 2 brothers
These are actually really great reads. Going to enjoy these.
Also I see OpenKore. I admit I used it to make a 24/7 merchant. It was actually pretty much allowed too where I played. Merchant would be online all the time while I played normally myself. It’s an insanely versatile tool.
Nice read and informative papers, thanks for sharing.
I’m amazed at the fact you people are amazed.
Hey, you drop this. (づ>‸<)づ N
Reading papers on detecting bots… If someone is not responding to you and no form of influence invokes a reaction (such as kill stealing) then report. Its as simple as that.
Ty…
/charrrrrrrrrrrr
In my opinion, we need to think like Google:
Mimicking human behavior is the hard part for bots. For Google, it’s not about what you write in the captcha box, but how the process to write it happened.
We need bring a similar approach in the game. Such as, detecting mouse movement (if it moves in a constant speed straight line, or there’s speed and trajectory irregularities), patterns in keyboard input (if the Z button is pressed in exact delays of 0.5 seconds), etc.
Please give this man a round of applause!
YES. real metrics, and a analytical approach to anti-botting.
I think that there could be several easy-to-implement filters to implement.
check actions per minute (APM) for consistency over time. if someone has a nearly constant APM. that person may be a bot… its not something to insta ban over. it might be a false positive. but u can use it to flag for suspicion. or captcha challenge. because even hardcore gamers who play for hours will rarely have such consistent action patterns. that way it doesn’t bother too many ppl.
that packet tracking thing is basically a more elaborate way of behavior analysis.
3)allow a system for human players to flag for suspicion. if they are flaggeed multiple times deliver them a captcha challenge.
and… well i might as well share. i work for a detector company that uses basic level AI to discern where or not there is a fire, in hot or bright/flashing lights environments from arrays of infrared light sensors.
this may be hard to do BUT i think is doable.
start tracking all player data. whenever someone is caught botting by a human, save that dataset and train a neural network, and do backward propagation to build appropriate a pattern detector for that type of bot/pattern. use it to then start flagging and delivering capcha challenges automatically
honestly. I think an entire company could exist just to counteract botting. and you know what. i think it would be MORE profitable than a bot-selling company. google has alot of ppl working on this kind of thing to detect spam emails, and im sure every mmo game maker out there would be interested in the code for such an application.
i dono what IMC is thinking of doing or how skilled they are in these fields. but please give us some feedback to reassure us. tell us that you know this is a big problem and are working to resolve it.
I dont wana say it. but… if this kinda stuff doesnt get resolved me and all my friends are gonna quit. I already invested 150$ buying them all founders packs, but even I’m ok with walking away from ToS- because I know when something is broken when i see it. and that’s not a threat or anything. im just saying because I’ll be sad too and i wanted to let you know IMC instead of just disappearing.
bots break games. game economies. and the enjoyment of playing. I have a day job. I play games for fun. i’ll even pay for it. or buy it. but its no fun the way things are right now. and its a tragedy because it had nothing to do with the real game which I’m certain you put a huge amount of effort into making IMC.
Good luck out there tho IMC.