Tree of Savior Forum

[Suggestion] Tackling bots

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#1

-Intro, Skip if you want-
Now the forum is full of bot report and obviously they will fill the town with pardoner (or something similar) soon. I do not know what the dev is doing since the Dev blog tells nothing at this point. The bots had get to Pardoner, it is obvious that the 40lv cap won’t do much good. The current anti-bot method is primitives and I believe IMC want more “civilized” method (https://treeofsavior.com/news/?n=356)

It is unfortunate IMC took a very restrictive way to prevent gold seller, which make the game less fun for many people (although I can live with the restriction).

I hope the forum administrator can put up their official post for people to give constructive suggestion, but I hope others could make input on this issue here for now.

I want the game to do well, I like the design. Not that I like to “pay to work” for IMC, but gonna do something, right?

So my suggestion is trackling the source than the buyers (as many had since last year July):

  1. Anit-bot Bot
    It is very hard for player to report bot at this point. We aren’t paid for reporting these (Bot of savior :S).

For GM to cover almost a thousand channels, a more efficient way is IMC creating their own bot to bot hidden GMs to scout (use the same random generated name so the bot cannot filter GMs). Sure it will cause some lag, like 1,000 extra char teleporting around, but this is method to think about.

It will be bypassed someday, but maybe it could help a bit?

Or simply bot GMs account so scare away bots, force logout themselves or something.

  1. In game verification
    Many had suggested this, like Captcha… just do it. since IMC had already make the entire community inconvenience, why not another one that might actually help to stop bot and gold seller?

You can track how efficient it is, it’s still “OBT”

  1. Statistically statistical outlier test
    Sure IMC had been tracking some data, as written in post, and these data should then help to identify potential bot/gold seller (IMC kind of doing it, but doest seems to be checking the bots)

Make some criteria and actively checking these characters (privacy issue warning?) other than rely on forum post that make the forum messy.

  1. In game report
    It will be abused, but at the same time it’s also a data point to identify troll and bots. Gonna perma ban those who report others for no reason right?

Do it, since GM is checking bot report manually and player are reporting bots manually…

Efficient.

  1. Got to deal with the machine Pardoner who sell day and night.
    Personally I have no good idea to deal with them, but raise a point to tackle. checking their equipment? they can just put something on. Check past record? only IMC have them (and privacy issue again). Outlier check? they can pretend they are real by filing complain at this point.

By the time IMC do anything, they will fill the town and RIP those legit Pardoners…

  1. Movement tracking?
    Not sure if this is even possible, but since the current bot is set on a fixed path, tracking characters that take the same path to scout bot?

I think it is possible software wise, but it probably will cause massive lag.

  1. Modify the engine
    It’s a way, probably not going to happens, but if IMC somehow have the tech to plugin something in their code to stop bot (after fixing the netcode?), why not?

well, I think they would have done it if they can right?

That’s all I have for now. Please share your advice so that IMC can finally have some ideas to work on.

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#2

Your first suggestion seems a little silly since I don’t think you can scare bots away. I had an idea instead of another bot make it a clearly labeled unkillable bot hunting monster that doesn’t attack back in game that if it was attacked would pop up a picture captcha puzzle. If player doesn’t stop attacking and solve the puzzle after a period of time or completes the puzzle then attacks it more the player will be flag/ banned/ or transported to a type of jail (which ever of those things they prefer.) for GMs to deal with. The idea is a modification to a bot hunting idea that someone else made on another game which worked very well.

#3

IMC should criminalize buying RMT services more. Like writing an announcement that instead of repeatedly banning the gold selling accounts, IMC starts keeping an eye and tracking on them and ban those players who buy from them. And of course, those higher level accounts too who the item is then passed on to avoid banning only alt accounts while the main stays safe. Without customers the whole botting organization just collapses. If permabanning is too severe, then some shorter one that still stings, combined with nice sanction on silver and removal of the items bought from RMT.

Another possible solution for hacking is randomly checking the spatial distribution of attacks and movement speed for short periods of time. And if either of them exceeds/keeps exceeding the theoretical limit for that character class and level (buffs, equip buffs, potions etc. taken into account), auto ban the account since it’s hacking. All kinds of errors caused by lagging and quest teleporting etc. should be taken into account when setting the limit parameters. This could be possibly implemented in a way it doesn’t hog much resources, like for example client side recording of the location during that session and it’s bound on the location data sent to the server. Without hacks, botting becomes less efficient which helps to tackle this problem.

@lumlotus Nice idea, as long as there’s proper tutorial about it when you start playing, so that kids with limited understanding of English don’t keep attacking it for fun or because they think it’s some kind of boss monster and get banned when they don’t realize you have to answer on that annoying captcha every time.

I can only imagine how nice it would be after getting high leveled and getting banned only because I delegated the babysitting job of my younger relative to a computer game :joy:

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