Easy Solution to Stopping this Ridiculous Bots

[Hiena]

Simple solution? online staff always giving kick and ban, is simple. Staff, GM, ADM etc online!

[Avatari]

3 hours ago, TheRealElvis said:

Hardware bans, make it happen NC, please.

Like hardware would work. Run VM and problem solved same goes with ip.

[Trox]

Just to correct some myths present in this thread:

 

Capcha will stop bots - wrong there are plenty of programs out there that can easily read and correctly enter a capcha so only thing that will screw up is the legitimate players

 

Charging a $ amount for account creation - wrong the companies that own the bots will use stolen credit card information to create the accounts, and then NCSoft will have to go through all the trouble of dealing with all the back charges that ensue when the credit card owners dispute the charges

 

In the end the only true way to deal with botters is to have a dedicated online staff which NCSoft will never do since that would then affect their bottom line.

[TheRealElvis]

Or a paywall, would love to see this game go pay to play. Subscription has been proven time and time again to be the best filter on any MMO, and even when the possibility to play with game currency, the amount of trash that gets throught is minimal so it's easy to get rid of vermins.

 

Of course some say it hurts the population, which it does, but I belive people who are unwilling to invest into a game are essentially just that, freeriders. They don't really wish to, or care, to see the game strive or getter better where proper funding would permit that.

 

Though in the meanwhile since solutions are unavailable, I think devs should give FairFight a shot. I don't think it has been tested in an MMO environment, but in couple of shooters it has proven to be quite effective. Server side anti-cheat that looks for certian behavioral patterns, and its parameters for the task at hand are tailorable. It's possible to fool FairFight, but you'd have to do so subtly and build the cheats much more human-like.

[MENT]

4 hours ago, Volensque said:

Have the devs played the game recently. Please tell me you have, so you understand when a player logs in and see's 20 random generated names all doing the same quest in a level 30 area. THAT SOMETHING IS WRONG. No offence here but I would rather content be delayed so that you can take 3 maybe 4 days to focus on removing these bots from the game. Souly because The auction house, Arena, Even pve content is all being taken away because bots get there first. 

 

Now what solution could possibly stop a mass of bots logging in?

 

A capcha code, Thats right. Bots use a serious of pre detemened algerithums to go about their marry way. In pvp they are designed to do the same combo over and over, while tracing the enemy. This infact means its pre detemend. What is one thing a bot can not think about? a picture.. Only a human or someone at the screen can see the letters on the picture to enter them properly to then join the game.. This Literally stops the majority of bots from entering, Sure if a bot spammer wants to manually enter 100 capchas that is still a signifigent loss to the bots and gold spammers.

 

I don't mind to select 2 numbers capacha, but not more. this will be annoying after a while to the players..

[Gamad]

The only real way to stop this us by getting real "GM's" into the game to hunt buts (i mean bots) all day, i've deen these in dif games. They arrive invisible, and trows at you a simple "how much is 11+5".

You habe a time period to answer, if you fail cause u are a bot then the account get banned in that right moment.

 

It involves work of people actually, work that nc avoid vigorously...

[alveil]

Captcha challenge every 1 or 2 hours on the field, dungeon only show captcha on the final boss loot pickup. Don't use simple alphanumeric, use something which require a bit of thinking. A simple math is good (just like Gamad sugggestion), a shape or color recognition can be used too. Give a limited amount of time to answer, 1 minute should be plenty. If you fail to answer, a different challenge will be presented. Fail 3 times, the game will automatically send you back to the character screen or logged you out.

[Meerkat]

This is going to seem crazy, but why not ban the players who buy gold?

 

Listen to me here.

 

The reason why there is a real money market is because there is demand.  Demand drives supply.  Kill demand, kill supply.

 

Whenever a bot is caught and banned, the computer pulls all transactions that account has performed.  Other accounts the banned account has traded with, sent mail to, received mail from, etc., etc., etc.  This is not difficult to implement.  Other bot accounts get banned and the process repeated.  Player accounts get one warning, then a suspension leading to a ban.  The warning can be set to automatically expire.  Warnings and suspensions can be contested, but suspensions remain in place until the contest is cleared.  If a suspension is not successfully contested within a week ( can be extended by handling GM's request ), the account is then banned.  Transactions that occur before implementation are automatically pardoned.

 

Because all transactions are recorded, and NCSoft has full power of these records, laundering cannot occur.  No amount of attempts at obscuration via use of marketplace or middleman can prevent a dedicated inquiry from revealing all involved parties.

 

Kill demand, kill supply.

[Xenire]

The captcha idea is silly and would only annoy legit players. Meerkat has the right idea, a strong infrastructure combined with a bot/buyer handling task force would be one of the only effective ways to deal with them in mass. Sadly, NC is well known for being very unwilling to invest in their games in ways that don't yield a very high and immediate profit margin. Quality of life investments, longevity, and building consumer loyalty is something entirely foreign to them. I'll be impressed if they ever remedy this problem. The only remedy I see on the horizon is when the game loses enough playerbase that bots don't have a reason to stick around.

[Trox]

4 hours ago, TheRealElvis said:

Or a paywall, would love to see this game go pay to play. Subscription has been proven time and time again to be the best filter on any MMO, and even when the possibility to play with game currency, the amount of trash that gets throught is minimal so it's easy to get rid of vermins.

 

Of course some say it hurts the population, which it does, but I belive people who are unwilling to invest into a game are essentially just that, freeriders. They don't really wish to, or care, to see the game strive or getter better where proper funding would permit that.

 

Though in the meanwhile since solutions are unavailable, I think devs should give FairFight a shot. I don't think it has been tested in an MMO environment, but in couple of shooters it has proven to be quite effective. Server side anti-cheat that looks for certian behavioral patterns, and its parameters for the task at hand are tailorable. It's possible to fool FairFight, but you'd have to do so subtly and build the cheats much more human-like.

WoW has spammers/bots, EvE has spammers/bots, Guild Wars has spammers/bots, all the previous MMOs that had B2P and Subs had spammers/bots; a paywall does absolutely nothing to stop spammers/bots, never has never will.

 

Honestly the only way to stop the spammers and bots is for the idiots to quit buying from them; guess what no market then the businesses will crash. Of course that will never happen so all anyone can really do is learn to live with the fact they are going to be in every online game from now until the end of the world.

[ThreeFeetofMagic]

6 minutes ago, Trox said:

WoW has spammers/bots, EvE has spammers/bots, Guild Wars has spammers/bots, all the previous MMOs that had B2P and Subs had spammers/bots; a paywall does absolutely nothing to stop spammers/bots, never has never will.

 

Honestly the only way to stop the spammers and bots is for the idiots to quit buying from them; guess what no market then the businesses will crash. Of course that will never happen so all anyone can really do is learn to live with the fact they are going to be in every online game from now until the end of the world.

Or NCsoft themselves can sell gold. I honestly think they are getting a slice of the money made from the gold buyers as it is. There is measures they can apply/enforce to make it very hard for the gold sellers but we see none of it. 

[Megapixel]

5 hours ago, Duniak said:

 

hardware is hardware, it was obvious what he meant. You thought it was IP? What does IP have to do with anything lol. I understood, 90% people understood. You did not. You are just intellectually inferior. Deal with it.

"Intellectually inferior" Damn kid that hurt me down to the bone. I'm gonna need Dr. Phil for that one. You must be that other guy's boyfriend. Well I'll let you get back to polishing his "intellectual hardware"

[ElectricLyn]

The bots even come to the forums. lol. I'm tempted to think that if they can't be stopped at the forum level, what chances do they have at game level? haha.

[Megapixel]

KEEP CALM

and

CARRY

ON

 

RUN! BOTS ARE COMING!

[gypt]

While they bots dont bother me that much while i play the game right now but i must say that for longer run this is unacceptable, these bots take over everything, not so slowly or quietly even.

I already decided not to sink any more money to this game, nor i will ever support bots by buying their gold with real money and anyone that does so, should and hopefully gets banned.

 

Why even bother to commercial bns anti cheat guards, if they cannot spot and ban these gold spammers or some characters running with macros, i wonder will it detect normal ppl if they use macro programs in the game? If so why cannot it detect some dang bots that lives on macros..

[Celestine]

A Paywall doesn't stop gold sellers or bots.

 

I know it rom TERA where we had massive bot problems after steam release. You can buy a lvl 60 scroll in Tera (this is not max level) and a lot of bots just bought the scroll. The scroll is around ... 50-60€ (?).

 

So even if you put in a paywall of 50-60€ initial, bots will pay as they apparently make far more money than paying the monthly fee.

[Kichi]

i resume ppl with ''capcha'' just afk all day?  I would love to see how u ented capcha when kiling bosses.

[TheRealElvis]

5 hours ago, Trox said:

WoW has spammers/bots, EvE has spammers/bots, Guild Wars has spammers/bots, all the previous MMOs that had B2P and Subs had spammers/bots; a paywall does absolutely nothing to stop spammers/bots, never has never will.

 

Honestly the only way to stop the spammers and bots is for the idiots to quit buying from them; guess what no market then the businesses will crash. Of course that will never happen so all anyone can really do is learn to live with the fact they are going to be in every online game from now until the end of the world.

Here, I'll be quoting myself because you apparently lack reading comprehension;

 

"and even when the possibility to play with game currency, the amount of trash that gets throught is minimal so it's easy to get rid of vermins. "

 

Of course P2P games have bots, nobody claimed otherwise, but a subscription is a deterrent. But my stance stays, I think Blade&Soul should be a buy to play, and it should require a sub.

[Somnolence]

10 hours ago, Hiena said:

Simple solution? online staff always giving kick and ban, is simple. Staff, GM, ADM etc online!

Hire some chinese to moderate servers. Fight fire with fire I'd say :)

[Somnolence]

 

7 minutes ago, TheRealElvis said:

Here, I'll be quoting myself because you apparently lack reading comprehension;

 

"and even when the possibility to play with game currency, the amount of trash that gets throught is minimal so it's easy to get rid of vermins. "

 

Of course P2P games have bots, nobody claimed otherwise, but a subscription is a deterrent. But my stance stays, I think Blade&Soul should be a buy to play, and it should require a sub.

Bots have preferred status (bought with stolen credit cards/sold gold money). This is because trash mobs essentially do not drop currency on kill without it, making farming it pointless.

[Victorion]

8 minutes ago, Somnolence said:

Hire some chinese to moderate servers. Fight fire with fire I'd say :)

 

Ha! What a great reply.

 

Chinese moderators are suspect to corruption though. And I´d hate for a chinese GM come ask me a chinese question, to determine whether or not I´m a bot xD

[Artillis]

I also think you need to kill their market to kill them, punish the buyers if you can reliable figure out who they are.  However I'm sure they will find some black market way of doing business.  Like has already been said the real issue is people buying from them and creating a market.

 

I do know this though, I was going to play this game for awhile tell I got bored of it and was going to stay premium the entire time.  But with the Bot issue growing worse and more pronounced I may quit all together when my premium runs out.  Plenty of other games out there I can play.

[Yamyatos]

I would really like if the game got bot-free.... but listen:

 

Have you notices that there was once a total spamm of bots? Now we only see one or two bots spamming every few hours. But they are not gone..

So, the question is. How did ncsoft *decrease* but not stop the number of bots? What lets one bot in would let all bots in. The feeling in my guts is that not ncsoft, but the spammers themselves regulated how many bots there are to a lower spamm-level. The thing is.. why would they do this?

I really dont want to accuse ncsoft of anything but i cant get rid of the feeling that there is money flowing and the bots are part of their buiseness model lol. Please get rid of the bots to make me get rid of such a horrible idea ncsoft :(

[Wrekk]

18 hours ago, Volensque said:

Have the devs played the game recently. Please tell me you have, so you understand when a player logs in and see's 20 random generated names all doing the same quest in a level 30 area. THAT SOMETHING IS WRONG. No offence here but I would rather content be delayed so that you can take 3 maybe 4 days to focus on removing these bots from the game. Souly because The auction house, Arena, Even pve content is all being taken away because bots get there first. 

 

Now what solution could possibly stop a mass of bots logging in?

 

A capcha code, Thats right. Bots use a serious of pre detemened algerithums to go about their marry way. In pvp they are designed to do the same combo over and over, while tracing the enemy. This infact means its pre detemend. What is one thing a bot can not think about? a picture.. Only a human or someone at the screen can see the letters on the picture to enter them properly to then join the game.. This Literally stops the majority of bots from entering, Sure if a bot spammer wants to manually enter 100 capchas that is still a signifigent loss to the bots and gold spammers.

There was a thread months ago on another mmo forum and they were talking about bots and how capcha codes can easily be overcome by botting. I can't remember the info they talked about but they said it wouldn't stop them as they see the code (matrix styley lol not) and don't have to even worry about the picture. They seemed to be in the know about it and nobody pulled them up about it. I just wish I could remember what else they had said about captcha's.

 

The main consensus seemed to be that only in game GM's could slow the numbers down. But that would mean the company having to spend money employing them.

 

I learned some stuff reading them threads and have since seen it in action, like how they can literally make dozens in an hour. On one game I played there was a 'train' of bots continually being created and moving from one quest to another, thats why people talk about only slowing them down, as I'm not sure you can actually stop them.

 

One game I have played which doesn't have a bot problem is Dragons Prophet (EU), all they seemed to implement was a system were microphone inventory items were needed to chat on the main global chat channel (regional doesn't require items.) It's not the best way (or even a good way) but it does work. It's a great game just a shame they're having some trouble ATM.