Is anything being done to combat bots?

[Dray0s]

on EU we don't have a single bot at top of even summoner xD.... why is this a NA Restricted problem... I mean we get our bots, I've seen summoner bots, never seen this hack u guys talk about though, doesn't seem to be used in EU at all.

 

I mean EU has some hackers/Macroers and bots but it doesn't even seem 1% as bad as NA... is the Security even Weaker for NA?.. or is this just a EU thing as a whole?..

[nichii]

this thread starter has some controversy issue no? lol his name in the forum is quite gibberish to my observation. But that arena ranking is already kinda expected only that it is happening now that could be already a blessing the botters are giving us chance last ranked to take all the top100

[nichii]

im a summoner and i didnt know i can spam them seed shroud this way LOL 

[KatHead]

1 hour ago, Dray0s said:

on EU we don't have a single bot at top of even summoner xD.... why is this a NA Restricted problem... I mean we get our bots, I've seen summoner bots, never seen this hack u guys talk about though, doesn't seem to be used in EU at all.

 

I mean EU has some hackers/Macroers and bots but it doesn't even seem 1% as bad as NA... is the Security even Weaker for NA?.. or is this just a EU thing as a whole?..

This hack was on top of EU leader board for a good while last season. 

[azraelkun]

Hello yesterday i started arena 1v1 after i won some match n got to silver..here what i saw.

1st match sum i run to him go in stealth 6 sec tried pve him ..resist resist..i said ok..lets pop X stealth for 10 sec ..resist resist..i said lol something off here lets pop fight spirit 15 secs stealth..resist resist...ARE U FKN KIDDING ME 31 SEC STEALTH ALL RESIST!!! I lost match

Then got a couple wins then faced a kfm i lost 1st round but something was off in this match so i specced ice mine n saw it was a kfm bot..another loose..

Then i got a sum with infinite sun flower spamming he didnt sum pet he just spam sun flower n he was vanishing in betweens lol..another loose so i stopped 1v1 n went to 3v3 i was so sad n pissed same time.

 Now why ncsoft are u destroying my game ?

Why u dont do anything?

1v1 is the best arena i ever seen n played n still u let it ruined by bots hackers n cheaters.

I play since cbt3 dont tell me u do things or u try cause im here n things are going from better to worst.

I dont know the english version of this phrase but "every yesterday n better" 

Thing is cheaters n hackers realised that ncsoft isnt doing anything n they run ranmpart they dont scared being banned n its getting out of controll

[Alouisius]

NCSoft should be honest and add to their commercial posts that this game accepts bots and it's 70/30% bots/players. Like they ever would...xD Bots already screws the market and severely affects the playerbase in a negative matter. I doubt NCSoft plans on doing much more than milking it for what they can before shutting it down.

 

I'll probably be banned just for typing it, wouldn't surprise me one bit.

[Can Oa]

ahahaha

The happiest people are those who believe in the rose world :)

[Giggle]

Hello, recently instead of actual constructive suggestions/ideas to get NCWest GMs thinking of a possible solution, I see pure rage and unrealistic expectations, so let me shut you all down.

 

Myth 1) Other MMOs don't have bots----- They do. All of them. Even WoW with all of their money, this right here should show you how difficult "getting rid of them" is.

 

Myth 2) GM mass ban will deter them!----- They have a program that can sign up for an email and then sign up and account and continue botting in literal seconds(GMs just finished mass banning bot hackers in top 50 PvP and they came back mere hours later). Also what defines a bot? How do you 100% know? A random name is NOT sufficient evidence.

 

Myth 3) NCSoft can patch current hacks----- Absolutely not,  you are now messing with the game's code. Currently movement/skills are client sided, meaning that your client has authority of where you are and what you are doing and the server sorts out what happened in X scenario, this was a developer decision to make the game feel super smooth.

 

**Knowing the above you would think "well make them server-sided!", however that is NOT in NCWest's jurisdiction, they can make small edits that won't cause problems in merging future updates(Block spammer system) but ENTIRELY changing the game's engine is.........*Stopping here because I'm cringing at the complainers*

 

Myth 4) NCWest doesn't care, they're taking the money and runnin! They do. This isn't some get-rich-quick scheme to them, this is their ****ing job and a business, customer is law in their world and you my friend are one of them. However they could probably calm a lot of people down by actively posting about their awareness on bots.

 

Myth 5) Someone can randomly hack your account---- No, this isn't the movies. NCSoft themselves have a database so only they could just randomly pull your info(which they wouldn't), meaning the ones complaining of hacked accounts gave away their info, or signed up to a BnS gold buying/fan site/hack site using their BnS email and didn't bother to use a different password.

 

**Databases ARE hackable via SQL injections for example or XSS, however, if they had access to EVERYTHING then they would just change gold/NCcoin values to high numbers to make their lives easy, and considering the funding for security NCSoft has, they might as well hack a small bank's website.

[Suna]

In eu there was 2 days one summoner bot rank1, it get banned after today i logged in. Do na ppl even report from those bots? Because in eu those bots get banned pretty fast.

[Giggle]

8 minutes ago, Can Oa said:

LOL Why is my post up? before OP?

Cause you're a wizard Harry

[nichii]

chuck norris was definitely there, that's why so many botters came to pay respect

[Fael]

We had an answer from a CM on the french forum last night about premium, bots and hacks. 

 

Short version:

 

- Can't comment about the premium value (not on his side). 

- They read the threads about bots and hacks. 

- The bots and hacks are still their priority, they're working on it with Korea and ban regularly (hundreds of bots daily).  

- They don't want to comment anything about it while they don't have any solution or results to announce. 

- They encourage us to continue to comment the situation on the forums, everything we write is read. 

 

If any of you speaks some french and wants the complete version :

 

 

 

[InstantDeath]

Bots are not the real problem really. I've seen many many bots and won against them. The real problem is real players using macro, cheat tablatures.
-Yesterday my first match was against a summoner who had resist during the whole match ( although i killed his cat, i couldn't even deal him 1 damage )
-6th match was against a blade dancer who teleported many times during the match. Especially when they fail to land their aproach skill or grab. They just leap/teleport to the opoosite side of the arena.
-Last match was the best; against a blade master who used his tab escape 3 times in 15 seconds, yeah... Tab switched & stunned him, he used his tab escape. And that moment i thought '' i got you, you little monkey''. Backstabbed him and webbed him down. Guess what? He used his tab escape :) Anyway, i also had my flower to escape his daze. Smoked and threw my shuriken and dazed him, landed 3 backstabs and another tab escape :)

I couldn't record any of these, because i have around 40 fps without a video recorder thanks to perfectly optimised BnS.

[azraelkun]

I saw a lbd with 3 tab escapes also yesterday :(

[Giggle]

31 minutes ago, InstantDeath said:

Bots are not the real problem really. I've seen many many bots and won against them. 

Get to high gold+ and prepare your bumbum for the infinate resist summoners that just stand there infinite sunflower spamming, mocking you, not even moving.

[Kromede]

Well,bots now infested in open world silverfrost zone too, summoner with unlimited sunflower and perma stealth farm mobs in beastplog, plog sanctum...etc. It is stupid hard to get your kill X amount mobs for your quests now. Oh, in SSP hackers just bomb you in stealth and all your Prrestige gone in second......

[Dotimus]

24 minutes ago, Kromede said:

Well,bots now infested in open world silverfrost zone too, summoner with unlimited sunflower and perma stealth farm mobs in beastplog, plog sanctum...etc. It is stupid hard to get your kill X amount mobs for your quests now. Oh, in SSP hackers just bomb you in stealth and all your Prrestige gone in second......

working as intended, no?

 

or they would do something to fix it beside the usual ban the ones at the top ranks....

 

i dont know, but something as server side skill usage checks....

[Abaxial]

Not the way I'm thinking. The developers must know which scripts are needed by the game. All that's needed is to block all others. Then it doesn't matter if botters update their program, it still will be rejected, because it's not part of the core game code.

[aSin]

Many of you are showing your concern on bots. Bots are a big problem to the developers as well because they interrupt game play and negatively affect the game's economy.

The bot report function we added to the game can effectively ban bots if used properly, but we also have to consider the possibility of its abuse. Throughout time, we've been doing research on how we can minimize this abuse. We're going to explain our report feature in close detail and tell you what to keep in mind when reporting bots.

First, not all reports hold the same validity. Each account has a value called "Report Influence Index." This value cannot be seen by players, but it increases whenever said account correctly reports a bot.

If a user is reported repeatedly by others, that user is very likely to be a bot. In addition, if the reporter is an influential individual, their report is most likely valid so we can set a priority on which account to ban first. This is where the Report Influence Index (RII) comes in. In terms of numbers, a player with 10 RII has the same impact as 10 different players with 1 RII each when reporting suspicious users.

Accounts with high report counts will then move to the next step of verification. Some have suggested using CAPTCHA, but that too, will be breached eventually. It puts needless restrictions on the players, so we are not considering its use. Instead, what we chose to use is a server-side classifier based on Machine Learning (ML) technique.

The classifier uses the comprehensive activity log of a reported account to determine if it's a bot in percentages. We will not be revealing the classifier's exact mechanism, as it can be manipulated by violators to bypass the system. We train our classifier by constantly inputting new data. The fact that we can maintain its accuracy is its advantage, because we're going to manually determine which factors should be considered to identify bots. The classifier's accuracy depends on how we determine the behavior criteria, and we examine over 20 basic criteria. The machine showed 99% accuracy on our Korean server when we set the machine to output fewer false positives. If we set strictness value low, the classifier will detect more bot with lower accuracy and vice versa.

An account that is deemed to be a bot becomes subject to restriction after a GM's additional confirmation. If that account gets banned, then all the users who reported that account gain one RII point.

However, should the reported account be declared clean, the reporter's RII value will be negatively affected. The RII is not a simple difference between the numbers of accurate and inaccurate report counts, and the algorithm we use to determine the final RII value can be changed in the future. Therefore, you should not report bots if you're unsure of their offense. The system can backfire on you if you're not careful.

For example, a player going afk while leaving a heavy object on the attack key has to be handled differently from regular bots. The classifier can deem the afk player innocent from looking at the honest play records, so afk players should not be reported using the report function as that will work against your RII.

Lastly, if we're not absolutely sure the reported account is a bot, then it will not be banned and the reporter's RII will remain unchanged.

We're going to keep examining and upgrading the system and do our best so bots will not ruin your play experience. Thank you for reading and have fun playing Tree of Savior.

 

Source - https://treeofsavior.com/news/?n=377

http://news.mmosite.com/content/2016-04-19/imc_games_banned_over__cheaters_in_tree_of_savior_today.shtml

[Pew Pew]

5 minutes ago, Abaxial said:

Not the way I'm thinking. The developers must know which scripts are needed by the game. All that's needed is to block all others. Then it doesn't matter if botters update their program, it still will be rejected, because it's not part of the core game code.

pffffff they can't even get through a maint without messing something up hahahaha!!! (major and minor things)

 

the most current example is /dance no longer works after the last one

[Pew Pew]

meh I say report anyone that is acting funny and be done w/ it....

 

not your job to determine if they are a bot or not.

[Xiouslaidyn]

third party botting companies pay NCsoft some money to loosen their security measures.

[KaLnoX]

Because you people keep buying gold, duh?

[Giggle]

18 minutes ago, Xiouslaidyn said:

third party botting companies pay NCsoft some money to loosen their security measures.

I laughed, relax buddy.

 

The reason bots are hard...no...impossible to get rid of (even WoW has a ton) is because they aren't breaching the game, how can you detect/prevent something that is no different than a human using a keyboard? because that's all a bot is, a third party software that detects objects client-side(Mob_Name_Here.mdl for example)  then follows a macro pattern to kill it and repeat. Or more simply just spams the same sentences(easier to detect via logs)

 

In more simple terms. Nothing bots do use the internet or anything different than keyboard inputs, so how can an online game easily detect it?

 

 

[Kromede]

First, this game is f2p so gold seller has nothing to lose, you banned 1 they re-make another 10 accounts.

Second, NCsoft might closely watch these bots/gold sellers account and hammer them at right time to remove a large lump sum of their gold 1 time (FFXI used this method and each time they remover 1000+ millions of illegal Gils from game (both buyers and sellers accounts). So, whoever bought gold in BnS gonna get ban hammer later on all of sudden...don't come here and cry like an innocent or pretend "I didn't do anything wrong..."