First lets tackle what Bots are, what they do, and how they do it.
What they’re doing
Bots in TOS and in every MMO that ever existed all comes down to one simple thing, they’re automated programs that do not stop, do not rest, and do not care about any sort of consequence to fulfill their purpose, be it farming silvers, items or materials.
How they’re doing it
Bots run on scripts and codes whose main purpose is to automate normal tasks like walking, attacking, teleporting, changing channels, basically everything a normal player can do, these scripts rely on exploiting the game’s drop and loot system, they write a script for a bot to walk and attack monsters, the monsters would drop their silver and loot, and repeat this cycle for weeks on end, that is how it works in the most simplest of terms
Where should we attack them
Like I said, in the most simplest terms, a bot is nothing but a program that exploits the game’s drop and loot system, their whole existence revolves around them killing things and gaining loot,all theyre doing is taking advantage of the game’s feature to get loot, but what if we had a way, a system, a feature that would prevent them from obtaining any form of loot? or better yet, a way for them to not be able to kill monsters?
By introducing a weapon lock system, a feature that would lock an individual’s weapon slot, BOTS would be reduced to fodders that could only walk in circles, they would still be able to do everything a bot can, EXCEPT attack, stripping away their metaphorical weapons and spells would greatly hinder their performance, or even their existence, a BOT with its weapon slots locked, unable to attack, or cast a spell would do nothing but stand, walk around and waste its time
if it is part of the game’s feature to lock your ability to attack and cast spell the same way it is part of the game’s feature for you to obtain loot upon killing an enemy, then possible bots would have a very hard time to create a bypass since it would require access to the game’s coding itself, the amount of effort to get your hands on it and to actually pull it off would technically mean that they could just easily edit their gold into XXX number and be done with it.
Botters use a third party program, meaning that they are using another program apart from Tree of Savior, meaning that they arent exactly hacking the game itself, but they are using an ‘outside-hack’ to do the work, its the same as pressing the Z key with a book, but WAAY more advanced, it is a program that exploits the game’s FEATURE to give you loot upon killing an enemy, by locking their ability to kill an enemy you’re basically setting them up to a dead end, how in the world would they bypass not killing an enemy when it is within the game itself that is preventing them to do so?
Implementation
Heres where the hard part is, how would we implement it without everyone abusing it? sure we can add this function to the report bot system, making it so that an individual reported X number of times would have their weapon slots locked and will have to appeal and send a ticket, but wouldn’t that easily be abused?
TLDR
Introduce a system to lock a BOTS weapon slot
Couldnt programmers easily write or create a script to bypass and workaround this?
No, because it wouldn’t take simple scripts or codes anymore, it wouldn’t be exploiting anymore, for them to bypass and find a workaround against a game’s feature would require them to alter and manipulate the game’s code itself to disable the feature for them, the implication is that if they are able to access and manipulate the game itself, then they could easily just write themselves infinite silvers and loots