Those are not bots. They are afk ppl. Anybody smart enough to figure out how to get a working bot up would NOT let it “farm” the generous red kepa boss…
‘Botting’
1 Like
Hiya, I will summarize all the points made on this thread and forward it to our Dev team.
Thanks for so many good ideas 
1 Like
All reducing a bot’s speed does, is increase the time they need to get the thing they are getting automatically. If you leave the bot on 24/7 making it slower may actually make the problem worse, since botters will then just make multiple accounts to bot resulting in more clutter.
The only viable solution to botting is a paywall(subscription with fraud protection) and active GMs/Community. Free to Play will always have bots, and good luck banning them since they will just be up the next day behind a proxy IP.
I honestly have no problems with auto-attack AFKers, as long as they can be dead branched.
1 Like
Thank you. Don’t forget that I’m cancelling Point 3, though.
You have a point, but there are many other ways to counter botting without a paywall. Captcha is a famous way for example. An official game is already using it, forcing the player to enter captcha if they afk for too long, but I haven’t seen the effect of not entering it in time (time limit is 5 minutes).
The reason I didn’t suggest captcha is because it can bother legitimate players.
Haha, true, you’re not botting, but doesn’t that make my suggestions MORE feasible in order to make people actively play the game? I didn’t include banning people, if you’ve noticed. 
Well, I did also contribute regarding “z-bots”:
There was a feature one of the private servers of RO that once you have haven’t moved in your place for a certain time, the game sends a random question to you and you have to click the right answer or else you’ll be booted out of the game.
Yeah, I played another server where if you’re solo farming, an npc image will pop up asking to enter numbers, failure also means getting booted out of the game. That’s counts a kind of captcha. But yes, it bothers people who AFK without farming anything, really.
Your post in this thread is good. I agree with that one but I’m posting a different kind of solution that utilizes the weight system mostly, rather than server-side protocol. So the latter is up to them to implement and to others to suggest.
The post about NOT DISABLING z-button attack, which would also apply to not disabling attack in general, I cannot agree with IF you mean z-button shouldn’t be disabled even after the character gets 100% weight.
Sure there are legit auto-attack builds, but it doesn’t hurt to take the time to drop some items to shed weight or watch your weight limit from time to time, rather than insisting the z-button remains usable at all times regardless of weight. Having an auto-attack build does not mean you get to go AFK in a game. That’s no different from botting, really.
Keep in mind my OP said this DOESN’T solve the botting problem. It’s meant to PUNISH botters, sadly that extends to AFK farmers because the gameplay method is the same. The purposes of botting was to originally gain exp and loot for oneself and then brag about being high level without doing jack of a work. Only later it evolved to selling accounts and currency for real money. There’s nearly no difference between botting and afk farming, both require no effort to get exp and items.
Well, there is a huge difference in how it’s done, and that’s why we need different solutions for both of them. I think we all agree on the following:
On actual Bots:
- The game and economy need protection from bots.
- No mechanic like dropping heavy items, restricting number of consecutive autoattacks without moving or stuff like that will hinder actual bots.
- So on actual bots, there needs to be a server-sided bot-protection and analytics system and we need client protection.
On the famous Z-Bots:
- Those are just afk ppl, we need no clever software to catch them.
- Randomly dropping heavy items into anybodys inventory and not allowing them to attack if at 100% weight limit will hinder them from getting drops and exp, but it will be a huge issue for legit players.
- (+++) Effectively stops z-bots
- (-) Macro vulnerability (press / release + move mouse + perhaps recognize heavy item is not easy but possible)
- (—) huge issue for all legit players
- Dropping heavy items into the inventory only after X consecutive attacks and not allowing them to attack if at 100% weight limit will hinder people from getting drops and exp, but it could still be an issue if legit players are doing too many auto attacks and then are suddenly at 100% weight and cannot attack anymore. With some tweaking this could be a solution as long as they are not using macros.
- (+++) Effectively stops z-bots
- (-) Macro vulnerability (press / release + move mouse + perhaps recognize heavy item is not easy but possible)
- (–) Issue for legit auto-attack build if they don’t pay attention
- Plain disabling ppl from holding the attack button for more than e.g. 20 consecutive attacks does stop z-bots completely from getting loot and exp, as long as they are not using a macro. IMHO the better solution, but still weak to macro-users.
- (+++) Effectively stops z-bots
- (—) Macro vulnerability (press / release macros are easy)
- (o) Less of an issue for legit players
- (NEW) Perhaps the best solution is a combination of the above:
Let ppl autoattack for 20 consecutive attack, then drop them 100 items (each having 1 weight) and stop the autoattacking. Of course they can release and press the button again to keep autoattacking. If they reach 100% weight they cannot autoattack anymore. This way they are not completely stopped from attacking after triggering the X amount of consecutive attacks, as in bullet point (3.) and we also get the benefit of complicated macro using.
- (+++) Effectively stops z-bots
- (-) Macro vulnerability (press / release + move mouse + perhaps recognize heavy item is not easy but possible)
- (-) Small issue for legit auto-attack build if they don’t pay attention
Also I noticed that any form of disabling auto-attacking (even disabling auto-attacking completely and having ppl spam the button 100% of the time) is prone to macro abuse. Suggestion:
- Register if ppl move at all and make sure ppl have a certain ratio of walk-distance/auto-attacks in a given amount of time. Everybody with more than X autoattacks AND beeing under a certain threshold should be flagged for GM examination and be banned if found afk. Ban time should increase from 1 hour to X [big amount of time] with increasing number of offenses.
Did I miss something?
1 Like
I agree with your actual bots solution, but perhaps I wasn’t clear on my solution and how it can help against “Z-bots”.
In my point 2, I said they will not gain exp and be unable to attack once their weight reaches 100%, this means, let’s say you can magically attack when your weight is 100%, you will still NOT get exp because the rule is weight = 100% = no exp, even if from a party mate killing all the monsters.
And my solution was to disable attacking completely at 100% weight, why is it inferior to your “possible to hold attack button for 20 consecutive attacks”? Do you mean your solution was for all weight levels, meaning people can’t spam normal attack no matter what weight they are? Then it contradicts your argument that “disabling auto-attack is bad for legit auto-attack builds” because they can’t spam for more than 20 consecutively? If they aren’t (meaning your solution only kicks off at 100% weight), and somehow Z-bot can macro auto item drop, my solution seems better or equal since Z-bots will figure it out anyway.
How does your solution make the Z-bot more active in controlling his character compared to mine?
Sorry, I was not trying to let my solution shine over yours or anything along those lines. As you can see I pointed out that my solution is quite prone to macro abuse; even more than yours.
I didn’t get that you suggested to not let ppl autoattack at all if they are at 100% weight. Sounds good to me, I’m gonna change my summary.
Also I don’t think that having only 20 autoattacks hinders active ppl. This suggestion is a compromise between letting ppl autoattack only once and letting them autoattack forever. You cannot let them attack only once, because sooner or later this will cause issues for ppl and then they’re gonna macro anyways. Also, 20 attacks is enough as long as we do not get any heavy aspd steroids because ppl have to reposition sooner or later anyways, and just releasing the button and pressing it again every few seconds should not be an issue.
I added a new suggestion to my summary that combines both approaches:
This seems quite complicated and burdening for a legit player to manage dumping 100 items if they overextended, you’d also need a counter to show them how many times they’re auto-attacking and they need to abide by it if they don’t want 100 useless items. Isn’t that a hassle? Most people wouldn’t want to deal with that, I think.
Both our solutions couldn’t counter macro and this one seems complicated. Well I’m dry of suggestions lol. The bright side is, for good or bad, all of our suggestions are here. It’s up to the devs, and this thread is always open if you and others have any more suggestions. Thanks for going along with me for this far.
Thank you for the feedback. It might be complicated in coding for the devs, but the gain should be worth the effort in this case. I haven’t tried to dump a stack of multiple items at once, but it works with buy NPCs at least and ppl don’t always have to dump it, they only have to do it if they’re at 100% or close to that. And once players are used to this, it won’t be too much of a hassle. Maybe this needs a bit of testing…
Also, I added one (-) to my latest suggestion because of the items dropped.
@STAFF_John
Senpai notice this post: