Finally: Thank you. Someone with a bit of common sense regarding capthas.
Capthas are solvable for bots if the captha itself is ■■■■.
If you design caps while keeping in mind how bots work, the chances of a bot solving them evaporate.
And no, i honestly dont care about what nasa or the CIA has come up with in order to get past capthas. We are talking about a small time game and botting, not national security ffs.
Well there are services like deathbycaptcha that basically beats captcha for you. Implement that to the bot and it will be all good.
I appreciate a lot of people here thinking it’s easy to defeat bots. We have bots in every MMORPG and even games back up my blizzard can’t beat bots.
I’m sure your elementary grade level ideas are what’s missing to defeat the bots. Not like things like this have already been thought of and tried and it didn’t do ■■■■.
You’re making a lot of sense (stop it), but I don’t see how these “indistinguishable fakes” would stop bots. Or rather, how it wouldn’t stop legitimate players.
Any difference you could see as a human should be possible to detect as a bot, no? Say, its HP does not drop despite successfully hitting it. Bots can compare HP values and switch targets eventually. If it’s just invisible, real players may think it’s a graphical bug and kill it anyway, or AoE it without looking, while a bot might be able to see the instruction the client received to make it render differently.
Sanity checks I get, and they can be hidden or like a delayed reaction so you’re not waiting on the server’s decision for every little action, just if it detects something funky it logs it and screws with the player appropriately.
Solving random puzzles and crap while you’re just trying to play is pretty annoying, though. Maybe it’d be alright if you’ve been in the same map for 4+ hours so you’d never see it unless you’re harsh farming, but such a long interval lets bots switch maps or characters to avoid it, too.
Maybe it’s fine that it only catches the stupid bots, or players who leave a rock on the Z key all night. More sophisticated checks can be less intrusive and still catch the expensive bots. Heavy handed stuff is good to prevent the obvious things, like chat spam. Why is there no limit to how many messages you can send? It took them this long to even implement a maximum length…
You should understand that you are flaming to wrong guy now. I’ve just commented in the thread that “they should continue the fights against bots as long as it doesn’t annoy normal players”.
I also suggest learning some programming if you think that captchas being useless against botters is an excuse.
Not that i would not want to point out that you are just throwing outdated counter arguments about, but why bother when you fell down the other side of the horse?
In your opinion bots are so ■■■■■■■ accurate that they cant be countered. Not even by multi bil. corporations like blizzard. Know where this reasoning went wrong?
Just around the point where you are arguing this inside a game which burns down all of its core features to stop bots, because even tho we cant hold them off, we should make sure to at least KILL THE ■■■■■■■ GAME WHILE TRYING.
Sorry m8. Not 100% of the bots can be stopped? Surely. Im all for agreeing with you that you that there will be always skilled individuals who circumvent bot protections.
Would that still stop more than 90% of the idiots who try? YES IT ■■■■■■■ WOULD AND YOU WOULD NOT NEED TO KILL YOUR GAME WITH RESTRICTIONS YOU ■■■■■■■ IDIOT.
Why the two horned jet skying ■■■■ are you in here, arguing for absolutely nothing to be done, because its impossible anyway?
Take your ■■■■■■■ nihilism to a satanist cult board where you might be even worshiped for it, and just to rub it in: deathbycaptha is a self learning script, meaning (among the many things) that you need to teach it first. Given enough options in a captha with a larger mass of queues, its more trouble than its actually worth it.
Capthas if done right CAN work. The question is: CAN you actually do it right?
Nobody is arguing for a 100% defense here you know, but everyone is agreeing that maybe instead of ■■■■■■■ the game into yesterday, we could have something that filters out the script kiddies and 70-80% of the botters, then the rest can be handled by community, gms and other possible methods.
Battling bots was never a “1,2,3 they are all gone now” system. Its a constant battle in which a few very simple things can filter out a larger percentage of attempts.
TL;DR: The game is being crushed by restrictions on the player base and all you are doing here is arguing that everything is impossible, we are all gonna die anyway, everyone who dares to suggest something is stupid and we should just accept our fate.
Thanks jesus, now climb back to your cross and shut up.
If you can’t have a discussion without babyraging then maybe you shouldn’t be here.
The issue with people offering elementary grade level suggestion to counter bots is that it’s not realistic and the suggestions you’re offering are outdated.
The reason you use to explain things make no logical sense. You can’t just pull out a “90% possibility to stop bots” without actually backing up your claims.
Multi-billion dollar companies can’t stop bots but they do try to. You’re right about that. The key I’m trying to get you to comprehend is that IMC is trying to as well. Maybe the approach is different but it’s a pretty popular approach that a lot of multi million gaming companies are trying to do.
Look at guildwars 2 and black desert online, they both have restriction to protect players from bots. The issue doesn’t even end with punishing bots either. We need to think the economy and why there are trade restrictions in place. If a group of people have infinite amount of resources then having free trade will make everything you get be worthless.
There’s a lot of things you need to consider but seeing your replies shows that you’re not up to be open minded about this topic.
Leave it to people who are mature enough to actually discuss things and people who are smart enough to think things through.
I suggest doing some basic level research before you make suggestions as well. It takes a few second to learn how powerless captcha can be.
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What good about that it is buy to FULLY play guild wars 2 and the restrictions are well planned … they are so smart at what to restrict … i was a f2p at guild wars 2 i thought with restrictions I can’t win agains monsters or players the only game with restrictions I have a respect on is guild wars 2.
If you really think it is easy to counter captcha and just code it… Then why don’t you try it on other games with captcha? might want to take college courses about programming first.
Our point here is to reduce the bots.
To be exact my friend, To lessen the average IQ coders in this game to be atleast less bot running around the maps ks’ing ruining the gameplay of other legit players.
You say it is easy to bypass and they will just code for it.
But the question is… can all of them has the logic and good programming skills?
And who has time to waste to code for a bypass if IMC just gonna patch it UNLESS they are paid OR they are MAKING MONEY but the current sell of silver of bots is 100k silver for 2 dollars( AND NO ONE WILL SPEND 2 DOLLARS FOR A 30MIN GRIND)… not so big… NOW, if we will just cripple them a little bit atleast stop them for 2 weeks they will be discourage and will just find another game to bot with…
and that will profit us… less lag… less ks’ng. and no more ridiculous restrictions like taxes
Yes, guildwars2 has been out a few years. How long has Tree of Savior been out? The restriction might be too harsh right now but they are patching literally every week with changes that the community wants. Give them time to balance out the restriction and we might get the same level similar to guildwars2.
It might be a bit slow and the patch might be result to them ■■■■■■■ up but at least there’s an effort there right?
In an ideal world the things you’re saying makes sense. Increase security and there will be less botters. Simple right?..Except in reality it’s not that simple.
“If you really think it is easy to counter captcha and just code it… Then why don’t you try it on other games with captcha? might want to take college courses about programming first.”
I have bypassed a lot of captcha required website and games without having to take college courses about programming. This is why I’m telling you it won’t work. Look up other games with captcha there are still bots.
Heck remember ragnarok online private severs? They had a ■■■■ ton of captcha to prevent botters but there were still botters.
“You say it is easy to bypass and they will just code for it.
But the question is… can all of them has the logic and good programming skills?”
Again unfortunately that’s not how it works. It doesn’t take ALL of them to have the skills. It takes one person. Like most hacks/bots one person figures out how to bypass and then he sells it to everyone else.
Ever played counter strike? Any shooter games? You think all the kids hacking there know how to code? It’s just one guy selling a program that allows them to hack.
This is a very similar case. Black market doesn’t work the way you think it works. Go look at any gold seller site you ever why they have the same template? Ever wonder why they seem to have the same exact formula as to how they handle things?
It’s a network.
It’s a group.
Only takes one person with an incentive to get paid.
As long as this game is popular there will always be people botting.
Now I’m not saying not to do anything. I’m just asking all of you to be realistic. It’s not as easy as everyone is making it out to be.
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This one is different man. I was talking about TO LESSER the bots… look how many BOT COMPANY seller out there in ToS… THERE ARE TONS OF THEM.
Our suppose to be goal here is to lessen them.
And if you think they are selling them to other people… THEY DON’T.
There’s NO BOT YET sold to PUBLIC there are only SEMI-BOT(Macro like).
The one you record the moves and everything then plays it.
The ONLY THING THAT IS OUT FOR PUBLIC right now is HACKS. Yeah right!, Hacks… Teleport hack, Range Hack, Aoe Hack… THERE ARE TONS posted on youtube about tree of savior.
And you still don’t want to improve?
Please, you don’t get my point about to LESSEN BOTS.
I was talking about KIDDIE SCRIPTS ALSO.
Isn’t MACRO is already considered BOTTING right?
EACH OF THAT COMPANY HAS THEIR OWN BOTS MADE
THEY WILL ONLY RELEASE IT TO PUBLIC UNLESS THEY DON’T GET ENOUGH PROFIT ANYMORE
Or some individual out there who has alot of time and talent to do one and sell it
No stupid company botter sells their hacks while they are getting a profit right? because when everybody using that program eventually IIMC gets annoyed by it and patch it.
Public botting programs are different than the private ones.
the thing I mean is public botting/macro’ing
DxDark I see you gave the problem thorough thought and strongly believe in the power of captchas. Then let me ask you one question:
Imagine you had 30x ( can be way more depending on your setup)ToS tidely on the second monitor. You click with the mouse on one window and it is transferred to the main monitor and fullscreen.
How many captchas could you solve per hour like this? 30? 60? 100? You think economical botters leave their assets unsupervised? They do not.
Don’t argue back and forth on this, ultimately a human is already sitting next to a bot most of the time. I only say most of the time, because private botters and medium botters have short pauses. Many medium botters I know will not run the bots during that time, but that is a personal choice.
It is just fair, that you would not know that the bigger botters won’t leave it unattended. Initially I didn’t supervise either until going to sleep once in arrogance (knowing an update was inbound within the next hours) made me lose all my assets. Even losing all bots at once was just an inconvenience though.
Most bots that are detected are the open bots. Big botters already have their own coders hired. The chances of finding these bots for developers are slim to none. The sample size is small and these bots are actually protected via other means and actions.
To stay with your D3 example: There was a chinese group that could bot without graphic, which makes a huge difference. It was just a rumor though, but likely true. That botting power they had - I don’t want to believe they had that many computers running.
Now your second argument is that every bot can be detected and that is simply false. Some things you do with your bot-base leave a trail - that can be detected if enough people do it. To give you an example straight from archage. I had several bots split between trade runs and fighting. The fighting bots got banned, while the other kept running just fine.
Now at that point of course it was my job to find out what was wrong with the fighting bots. This is how it goes for literally everything, the proper bot bases will not be detected if they are coded by someone that knows what to avoid. What you do with it though is a different story, that might be detectable.
There are solutions that are doable, nobody in the industry is using them right now. I cannot tell you if they didn’t have the idea to implement them yet or if something else is stopping them. So before you ask me why I don’t offer solutions - I already wrote an email to the business email at IMC and so far no answer.
There is no reason for me to give information for free that is rarer than being a lawyer 
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Whatever bot-catching implementation you put into place I could program a way around it in under an hour, and this isn’t even my profession. Bots are rampant in every F2P MMORPG and even most P2P for a reason.
The only way to weed out most of the bots is to make things so ridiculously strict it is horribly inconvenient for the average player. That’s all there is to it. It’s definitely not as simple as you think it is.
If it’s gold selling bots, then there’s no solution since they aren’t afraid of being banned anyways. If it’s players botting, they will ideally be caught at higher levels and banned.
I sincerely doubt you could do it in an under an hour. In fact I am willing to bet that you couldn’t even interact with the game’s main window in an hour’s time.
That would only show your own coding ignorance then. I don’t write bots, but I’ve written more than enough other software to know how easy it really is. Modifying existing code to work around a new policy would take virtually no time at all.
It would take developers far more time to theorize, code, test, and implement the policy than it would for me to work around it. They aren’t even losing tons of money from botters. It’s not like IMC sells silver for a living. Is it wrong to bot? Absolutely. Are there bots in every f2p MMO? You bet. Is IMC losing money over having bots? Not much.
Please don’t exaggerate. An hour? You’re dreaming. That shows your ignorance more than anything else. You said you don’t write bots, so please don’t pretend you even know the first thing about AI programming.
I don’t write bots. I have, however, worked extensively in game development. Though AI was never my main focus, I have done a bit of it, and definitely know more than enough about it.
I’m sorry that you are inept when it comes to these sorts of things, but don’t just assume everyone else is because of your own insecurities.
You clearly are inept if you actually believe you can analyze a work around to a solution, write up a counter, test it and deploy it in under an hour. That is simply not realistic.
If you have worked in game development, then that’s pretty basic information. You don’t just dream up a solution, write it and you’re good to go. Software development is not that simple.
LOL. Programmer wanna be alert…
An hour? Really?
I wish i have that skill and brain to pass my 1 hour limit test.
Software development IS that simple when you’re writing for yourself. You know EXACTLY the hardware, operating system, and connected software you are working with. That is any developers dream. It’s essentially the entire reason gaming consoles exist to start with.
You would barely have to modify your existing code anyways. Whatever new system they patch out is not going to be immense initially. They are going to add to it piece by piece to ensure it doesn’t destroy the community of legitimate players. You don’t go from having 0 security to being Fort Knox with one patch. There is just way too high a likelihood that regular players, your loyal customers, would be massively disrupted. That would be a horrible business decision.
@nothing2say103 I’m sorry; I don’t quite follow. I’m sure English isn’t your native tongue, so I don’t blame you, but that is not an intelligible remark. If you can reword it I will gladly reply to whatever you are trying to say.
Maybe add a similar Hackshield like “Gepard” the one RO servers uses …
i’m still waiting for someone to show me a modern, popular game, with an effective captcha system.
none of us have ever said “we should just do nothing”, despite some peoples’ ridiculous overblown assertions.
but at the same time, doing the first thing that comes to mind, without properly considering it, can be worse than doing nothing at all.
…who said they are selling them to the public?
one guy (who may or may not be a goldseller) writes the bot (bot addon, bot upgrade, etc) and sells it to the goldsellers. he makes a bunch of money for a relatively simple coding project.
i could do that in an hour, and i’m barely a novice programmer.
hell, if i just use tool that already exist, i could do it in a couple of minutes.
yea, but those aren’t free. Hackshield, Gameguard, Punkbuster, etc etc etc… there’s a lot of them out there. additionally, every one of them has horror stories of how it ruined some game or other, and every one of them also has stories of how the hackers have gotten around them.
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