Bots

[_Gunnar]

port to boston timer

[harflimon]

Well then we'd be leaving noobs with 0 ability to escape if they ever run into someone out in the wild. For that matter no one would really be able to run from a fight if they came against someone more powerful. That seems a little harsh to me, though I guess it might be closer to how the original game design was meant to be.

[Dallane]

don't mind me

[Sevenless]

Alright well let's for arguments sake say that it's probable that someone either has or will create a bot like that. What does everyone suggest they do to stop something like that? I mean they can write it into a set of rules for the game, but it's not like some words are going to stop someone determined enough to do it. How do you think they are going to police this type of activity? I guess a first step would be to stop the use of custom clients, but that would destroy a lot in the process and I'm not sure if it would even completely eradicate this issue.

I used to play a game called Asheron's Call which had basically the same problem. At first bots weren't really outlawed because in the devs naivete they thought a sophisticated enough bot program couldn't be made that would survive (not that that's the case here, I'm sure they know about it). Eventually they caught on that it was working, most of the playerbase got pissed off and started quitting, and so they outlawed the bots. Problem was that there wasn't any good method of stopping the bots. They had already allowed third-party plugins into that game that did a massive variety of things, if they tried to stop all that it would have been an even bigger outrage than stopping bots. Eventually they relied on players reporting bots and then a Mod would message the reported person in game and if they didn't respond and answer some questions then they'd get banned. Not a very effective method, especially when bots got smart enough to log-out when people got to within a couple radar of them and then log back in after a certain amount of time. It basically started coming down to people blind reporting each other because everyone was doing it and you just had to guess when someone was logged on that they were macroing. Of course this led to a lot of wasted time for mods and I think they eventually started handing out bans to some of the people who were sending in tons of reports that were just crying wolf.

The same principles apply here, with the added problem that this game does not have the resources to hire Mods as staff to actually police this type of thing. I'm sure to this day bots rule AC even though they are technically banned. So how are we going to stop them here?

What you're missing is that a lot has already been done to curb the influence of bots in Salem compared to haven. The benefit they can give is significantly less than their impact on the haven world. I'm not 100% sure there's room to stop them. Hiring people to police is out of the question for the budget Salem is working on, and always will be likely.

If someone really wants to bot, you've got a couple options. You can design mechanics to make botting less helpful. How farming works in salem is mostly a good example. Harvesting is "automated", relatively low time input, and requires some mental effort to sort seeds. That's relatively hard to bot, and the benefit of botting isn't the end of the world. Hay is the big weakpoint to that as an easily bottable input.

Another option is to be a pain in the ass to players with captchas and junk. It's not fun for humans, but it's a catch of sorts in games where botting is prolific because game mechanics aren't designed well to stop bots (read runescape). I for one think Salems mechanics are well enough designed that this is un-necessary and would actually hurt the game quality more than removing bots. Hay, wood, and worms are the current mechanics in danger of widespread botting.

Final option is a player reporting and hired moderator system. An option for games with bigger income than this, but not for a shoestring budget.


All in all? I think salem's doing just fine considering.

[harflimon]

All in all? I think salem's doing just fine considering.

That was sort of the round-about point I was trying to make with most of my devil's advocating. The people saying that they aren't going to spend any money on this game until the devs put an end to botting are overimagining both the ability of bots and the ability to stop them.

[Dallane]

All in all? I think salem's doing just fine considering.

That was sort of the round-about point I was trying to make with most of my devil's advocating. The people saying that they aren't going to spend any money on this game until the devs put an end to botting are overimagining both the ability of bots and the ability to stop them.

People are clueless. Every MMO has bots in them. It's impossible to stop people from doing it

[Sevenless]

All in all? I think salem's doing just fine considering.

That was sort of the round-about point I was trying to make with most of my devil's advocating. The people saying that they aren't going to spend any money on this game until the devs put an end to botting are overimagining both the ability of bots and the ability to stop them.

Honestly this is more of a CoaH discussion than a true Help! thread, but it was generating interesting stuff so I left it. And I think our forum goers picked up on that.

Basically meaning don't feed the trolls

[Nixman]

All in all? I think salem's doing just fine considering.

That was sort of the round-about point I was trying to make with most of my devil's advocating. The people saying that they aren't going to spend any money on this game until the devs put an end to botting are overimagining both the ability of bots and the ability to stop them.

Until they make an active effort to stop them, take a look at APB, it became well known for having aim bots, as a result the playerbase nosedived drastically and never once recovered. If it even gets out that 'bots are allowed' the majority of mmo gamers will stay clear of this game.

[Sevenless]

All in all? I think salem's doing just fine considering.

That was sort of the round-about point I was trying to make with most of my devil's advocating. The people saying that they aren't going to spend any money on this game until the devs put an end to botting are overimagining both the ability of bots and the ability to stop them.

Until they make an active effort to stop them, take a look at APB, it became well known for having aim bots, as a result the playerbase nosedived drastically and never once recovered. If it even gets out that 'bots are allowed' the majority of mmo gamers will stay clear of this game.

They are making an active attempt to curb it. The game design itself is designed to be less prone to botting. Until there's actual bots running around (and despite claims I highly doubt there's anything created considering what the scripters I've talked to have been saying) there's not much else to do other than design the game right from the ground up.

[Hardsun]

What about one IP = one active session ? Could help vs alts(dont like them as much as bots, alts abusing a lot of ingame mechanics) and botting in some way ... either one would need proxy for each bot.