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Bot festival?
robai
Member Posts: 344 Arc User
2 days in a row I've had this situation:
Join a random queue, kill mobs, and wait at the end boss, where all player must gather.
We had to wait for 2 players that were running in circles or drop in the pit, respawn at campfire, and drop in the pit again, and repeat that many times. They never talk, no guild, so 100% bots.
The problem is that we couldn't kick them since they were 2 (4 votes needed to kick).
The bigger problem is that we can't report them, the game don't give us an option to report an account as Bot, for example, it would be nice to have an option "vote to kick and mark as Bot".
Game developers could easily track down these Bots with these reports (for example, if an account was reported as Bot 10+ times then the account should be investigated and if confirmed do a permaban).
There is a tiny chance that those were actually real players and did that intentionally, but in this case it would be even worse!
Either way, permaban is the way to go.
Join a random queue, kill mobs, and wait at the end boss, where all player must gather.
We had to wait for 2 players that were running in circles or drop in the pit, respawn at campfire, and drop in the pit again, and repeat that many times. They never talk, no guild, so 100% bots.
The problem is that we couldn't kick them since they were 2 (4 votes needed to kick).
The bigger problem is that we can't report them, the game don't give us an option to report an account as Bot, for example, it would be nice to have an option "vote to kick and mark as Bot".
Game developers could easily track down these Bots with these reports (for example, if an account was reported as Bot 10+ times then the account should be investigated and if confirmed do a permaban).
There is a tiny chance that those were actually real players and did that intentionally, but in this case it would be even worse!
Either way, permaban is the way to go.
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So, i would suggest that GMs also mark/tag those accounts, follow their AD flow to the main account(s) and perma. ban those before banning all the other account in their "operation".
Considering how they went after the players that were involved in "Huntgate", i'm wondering why they can't do something similar against people that bot the everloving HAMSTER out of this game?
Kicking a player out of a queue for "suspected" bot activity isn't even something I'd personally be in favor of since from my personal observation there are so many players so quick to jump on the "bot!" accusation and some of it based on really flimsy reasoning.
I am kind of disappointed Cryptic hasn't put any more effort than they have into trying to identify and deal with what is perceived as expanding bot activity. I think the last time they tried was during a Simril event several years ago that saw many actual players banned for what someone obviously thought was botting... so I can't imagine it's easy to do.
Seems the best way to best avoid actual bots in an instance it to use the Looking For A Group option. As far as I know, no one has programmed their bot to respond to LFG queues. Not as easy as just hitting the "queue for random dungeon", but pretty much fool proof if avoiding bots in the queue is a player's top priority.
Myself I've never had to wait for more than a minute or two at the worst before everyone showed up at the boss gate and in the grand scheme of things a couple of minutes is less than a minor inconvenience for me.
Behaviour that might warrant GMs having a look at an account:
+ characters that allways follow an exact pattern inside dungeons/skirmishes, for example they won't stop running in circles at a certain spot in a dungeon after they died, or they won't stop running into those hedges that divide the sections in the Master of the Hunt skirmish until they die.
+ characters that transfer all their earnings to another account without receiving anything of worth in return.
+ characters that run dungeons/skirmishes for extreme amounts of time without taking any breaks in between.
+ characters that don't improve their equipment accordingly to their level and/or use any enchantments in it.
+ characters without any kind of boons/campaigns progression at all.
+ characters that don't show any kind of communication with other players, even after they unlocked the chat.
And i'm pretty sure there're even more signs of botting that could be added to that list, to the point...
"If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck."
or bot in this case, and GM could start taking at least some actions against those accounts.
There should be a short way to do it as mentioned in the OP, that is, you just click on player's name and choose the option "vote to kick and mark as Bot".
As regenerde mentioned, there is no need to do autobans, but GM should have a list of suspected bots and investigate further before making a decision to ban. Even if no bans will be done, just the existence of that list will reduce a lot of bots since that will scare off many bots makers since it will be a risk of permaban on their main accounts (now they have no risk, that's why we have so many bots, in my experience I see bots like 10% of time and that's only when they aren't working well, in other cases I don't even know if there are bots, but that doesn't really matter, as long as they don't waste my time). By running in circles I've meant small circles, almost turning around in one place, and do that many times (hundreds or so).
It's an obvious infinite loop that bot programmers didn't anticipate.
A real player also has and option to type in chat (whatever the language, we have google translate if needed), but bots never type anything, never answer any tells. This is a multiplayer game, chat is part of it, especially when there are problems. If not using that and preventing others to complete the dungeon then that player (or bot) should be kicked from dungeon.
But when there are two of them we can't deal with it, the only option is to abandon it.
I can say that I have on occasion just ignored chat attempts, it depends on my mood and what else I might have going on. Forcing anyone to chat if they don't want to is not a requirement for MMO's, at least I've never considered it to be.
Two, when a player wants to "fool around" in game, he/she can find their spot outside of a dungeon/skirmish and do their thing for as long as they want, but when they join a queue, they're either there to do their part for a successful run or be prepared to suffer the consequences for their "fooling around"...
Third, no one is forcing anyone to chat, but a real player is probably going to write something at least remotely relevant in some (group/guild/alliance/zone) chat at some point.
Anyway, i'm not sure why you're only seeing those points and ignoring all the others - for example, do you know a real player that gives away all of his AD to another account all the time as well?
The behavior you describe is the bot scanning or searching for a visible player to follow. If you are talking about the spike pit at the end of Gray Wolf Den, the players are no longer visible to the bot and they fall into the pit. This is probably a stupid follow bot, created to follow the party. Because the botter has no clue what dungeon they will walk into, they use a following mechanic (one built into the game type /follow in chat sometime) if these bots lose sight of the party they start to scan in circles to look for a party member, enemy, or door. If Cryptic eliminates their /follow command they kill these bots.
Other bots that are built for a certain dungeon have known or recorded map coordinates called nodes. They travel in more or less straight lines between the nodes. These are the bots that get stuck walking into walls because the botter left out a critical node point. These can be detected by Cryptic, but I doubt they are used much in this game. The way to detect these bots is to set up the packet recorder to a server side log and compare the user movement points. If player entity "I am no bot" keeps stopping at map coordinate 2048.6 X and 1965.3 y to make a course adjustment, 10 out of 10 runs.... well then they better start playing the lottery because they would hit the jackpot. Only a bot reading map coordinates can do this sort of thing.
Finally my friends have already suggested the very best way to defeat the bots. Cryptic hasn't done it, must be they don't view bots as big of a threat as we do??? Bot prisons or jails work, bots don't see graphics, they walk the dungeon blind. Suspected bots can be sent to a blank copy of the dungeon map. The walls and floors of the dungeon would not be stone but solid black. Botters are not present 99% of the time when they run the bots. The bot would follow the program and not gain anything all day. At the end of the run the botter shuts his bots down and his account is banned. They go to support and cry "Why did I get banned?!" The simple answer is, Why did you play a dungeon you could not see, for more that 10 hours? Not to mention you played the dungeon so well. End of bots until they can teach them to see the screen in 3D as a human.
Just killing time...
If anyone here plays the mmo Eve Online, CCP policy for bots is pretty hard core. First offense is a 3 day ban, second offense results in a perma ban. According to the reason behind this rule, they had 1,800 bots appear in one month. Only players who run bots would need fear such a policy, and I for one, would have no problem supporting the same policy here.
Just killing time...
There are 3 ways to lead your project - make it bigger, maintain, or reduce. Cryptic went for a blatant reduction, our experience corresponds with their choice.
Now, do I want them to build a new content, fix old, or chase botters? Well, I think one thing is for sure: the current mixture is a "compromise" on too many levels. That surely reflects in decrease of revenue, which leads in less investments, resulting in worse gamer experience, which brings us once again to decreased revenue, which is compensated by lowering investments...