Well you're right AND wrong Andre..
Youre right in the sense that yes, people shouldnt cheat. People shouldnt try to bypass mechanisms in place to make you do a certain thing in a certain way. This is very true.
BUT! OTOH its the devs RESPONSIBILITY to prevent this from happening and to implement fixes to prevent it from
happening in the future.
They have no choice. It's their intellectual property that is illegally manipulated. So of course the responsibility falls on them to fix what was damaged.
We have to get back to basics. Games are made to be played to have fun. However, once the rules are made explaining how the game is supposed to be played, its on those playing it to follow the rules. The Terms of Service everyone agrees to before playing dictates those rules. As soon as someone decides to take it upon themselves to find ways to circumvent rules and fair play - then it's on the exploiter/cheater/botter. Every game has cheaters. But in the mmo world the great majority of honest players must deal with a very small, loud minority of cheaters, who are not here to enjoy the game or pay their way, they are here to ruin the economy, ruin the fun, and mainly profit for themselves without regard for anyone else. This is the enemy of the great majority.
Sadly solutions to exploits and bots are not switches that can be turned on and off. They take time to resolve, and often involve major internal revisions to the game. PWE/Cryptic has done a great job so far combating them, as they have defeated all the important ones. You will see faster resolution in the future, as the Neverwinter game code continues to get more resilient and the community becomes more alert as a whole and reports and gets word to those who need to know. Sure there will be more exploits, but they are on it, and coding, and improving their systems every day.
As time goes on, you'll see faster reaction time to fixing exploits BECAUSE of the community's re-activeness and Cryptic dev team's skill in creating code to deny cheaters.
PvP unfortunately always brings in the scum of the mmo community. The least common denominator. Hopefully the good honest folk will be patient enough. It will take time, but my money's on Cryptic. Take it from experience, it's not safe betting against Aandre
However, once the rules are made explaining how the game is supposed to be played, its on those playing it to follow the rules. The Terms of Service everyone agrees to before playing dictates those rules. As soon as someone decides to take it upon themselves to find ways to circumvent rules and fair play - then it's on the exploiter/cheater/botter. Every game has cheaters.
So just because there is a TOS that admittedly nobody reads, the responsibility of the devs to stop cheaters is pushed onto the player base? I mean, maybe if they gave us adequate tools to deal with the situation ourselves, but I don't see that happening. If this is how you think cheaters should be dealt with we might as well all uninstall now. I mean, if every game has cheaters, and they just about do, then don't you think something like this should have been thought of beforehand? Bots are a something you have to expect as a developer of an online game, anything else is negligence.
They have no choice. It's their intellectual property that is illegally manipulated. So of course the responsibility falls on them to fix what was damaged.
Oh, I'm glad we agree. Why are you propping up walls of text to support a developers inaction?
PvP unfortunately always brings in the scum of the mmo community. The least common denominator. Hopefully the good honest folk will be patient enough. It will take time, but my money's on Cryptic. Take it from experience, it's not safe betting against Aandre
I love how you close it all up with trash talking a whole demographic of the game's player base just to play Cryptic's lapdog. Because I'm a pvper I am the scum of the mmo community, the least common denominator. Because I have expressed irritation at the exploitation and ruination of the only facet of the game I find enjoyable I am not a good honest person, and have no patience. Beta was the time for patience, the game being live is the time for action. Some community moderator you are.
PvP unfortunately always brings in the scum of the mmo community.
The PVP crowd can be immature, I'll grant you that, some of the worst (pvp in itself brings out the worst in people pretty often, including myself :P ). But the raiding community is no better. These two groups, by far, gave the WoW community the extremely toxic reputation its community has today. Raiders can not only take your self esteem like PVPers, but they can spread that around throughout the community just by saying how bad you were, or whatever. They're more than happy to do it too, or stab you in the back for that epic piece of gear that puts their ego 2 inches taller.
I know we have some of those people here, for now, because Cryptic made the stupid mistake of including gear score (a gear score that's broken and not entirely based on gear, I might add... ironic, or sad? Your call), long the elitist tool of exclusion based upon being elite and having gear that you may not get simply because RNG hates your guts (and thanks to the aforementioned broken gear score calculator, it's now based on spec as well, so you HAVE to spec a certain way if you want the highest possible gearscore. Penn and Teller would call that bull****.).
I don't think it's fair to blame the PVP crowd for trolls and manchildren.
As time goes on, you'll see faster reaction time to fixing exploits BECAUSE of the community's re-activeness and Cryptic dev team's skill in creating code to deny cheaters.
Or this.
It'll be far less about the teams skill and communities re activeness and far more about a massive drop in people actually playing the game by the time that would even be measurable.
You know me well enough to know that I'm okay with betting against Aandre once in awhile
I'm reading between the blank spaces here and I concur with the poster. Give those locales their own server to log in and wreck while blacklisting them from the Western and Euro ones.
Problem solved.
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kimberixMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
i dont think botting is much of a problem at lvl 60 on par with the inbalance in pvp .. u hit 60 then bang you have to go up against guys fully geared. you are rocking 7k gear and need to get some pvp gear oh yeah i have a chance against guys in 14k gear sweet balanced as hell ..
What happened to progression within an MMORPG? Or is this just a pvp thing?
You CANNOT surely expect to just join the lvl 60 rank of players and then be able to dance with them fairly after a couple of minutes. You will be going up against people that have spent hours / days / weeks improving their characters.
I see this in the requests for ranking systems - sure, it isn't fun to be stomped in PvP, but everyone has to start somewhere - if no-one is getting stomped, there is no-one donig the stomping and everyone just becomes the same.
Some people will never be happy.
1) They don't want to go against tough/better players, so they'll complain about ranks
2) Within ranks, they'll still get beat and complain about a specific class
3) Fighting against their own class, they complain a lot of fights will be 2, or 3 v 1, so they'll want duelling
Then,
After manufacturing the requirements for a fight that they think they should win (a duel against a same-geared, same-class, same-skilled person), they realise that anything purely balanced will always be a 50% chance of winning. At which point, they'll quit the game, after wrecking the PvE side of the classes and complain that PvP sucks.
I fully understand that, at first, PVP in the 60 bracket will be harsh, but that's just how it is. It's the same for NPC's in a dungeon that constantly gets owned by better geared players and that's the reason why you aren't allowed to talk to an NPC in an epic dungeon, nor are they allowed to post on the forums (that's a joke by the way).
Then make the players cry. Seriously, you've been in these forums. It is pretty much what goes on anyway. Cryptic should man up and take a stand and do something about it. One of those "simple solutions".
Said it before, will say it again. Take all rewards away from PvP and you'll see no more bots in PvP. That leaves node farming.
Or better yet. Develop a participation scale of rewards. No participation to very little(IE, what a bot normally does) = 0 reward.
Marginal participation, marginal reward.
Full participation, full reward.
This was quite an interesting thread. I like clcmercy's ideas of 1) rewards based on participation or 2) no rewards at all. However, I think the first idea would still leave the door open for botters, while the second might be a bit too austere. I think modifying the "no rewards" idea to include rankings, stats, or maybe some kind of skins only for pvp-in other words some kind of reward that does not attract botting- would be better.
Of course this would also mean having to radically change the way pvp is set up so I doubt it could be implemented, but it would cut down on the bots/ leavers/afkers. Maybe just throw the same gear on everyone at each level bracket? Like 10-19's all get some standard level 19 gear etc, then open up enchants at level 60 so you can choose level 5 enchants (only for use in pvp), and you could unlock more enchant options as you play to give a horizontal progression (not giving more power, just more options, kind of like in moba games with heroes).
Some bots are quite sophisticated, they will run away for pots when health is low and target specific classes.
And this is really a major programming issue. It means that somehow a 3rd party script is able to read the game's data and interact with it...it's able to not only SEE another player's location, it's able to read specific information on it (class) and make choices based on that, which it can inject back into the game program.
This is far more than just a script that can only send commands into the game and I fear the game's core programming has way too much sensitive stuff unsecurely stored on the clientside. Unless they put a lot more stuff securely on the server AND invest in the extra server power this requires to run, 3rd party apps will have free reign.
I really think a manual response system is the way to go, that and the same kind of reporting ability for spammers.
PvP unfortunately always brings in the scum of the mmo community. The least common denominator.
Good grief, ain't that the truth? That's why I shudder inwardly whenever someone starts demanding an "esports" setup in any game that I actually enjoy playing.
The toxicity in PvP games keeps the other communities cleaner. - this was edited by a moderator, I tend to write a little better than this
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited July 2013
There's no simple solutions to bots.
What Aandre said rings true. It may not have been the friendliest way to word it but it's all true.
Bots are here because they want to be and there's no way to simply wave a wand and remove them. As long as they want to be here they will make accounts as fast as Cryptic can remove them. That's how bots are. As Cryptic improves the technology which detects bots and players continue to report botting accounts the speed in which bots are detected and removed from the game will increase as we head into the future.
There will never be a day in which bots won't exist in an MMO. It's just not possible. However the amount of time each individual bot is in the game can be reduced with the support of the community and the action of Cryptic which, despite any illogical ideas to the contrary, is an extremely high priority for them.
The problem becomes that the most sure fire ways to reduce botting is also the ways which will negatively effect every player. Sometimes the cost of removing bots is a cost of your freedoms or your own enjoyment. Removing rewards for losing botting matches or removing the ability to trade PvP Ger would all but kill the PvP bots...
But such measures would kill casual PvP and remove much of the overall reward for PvPing to begin with.
Improvements are happening behind the scenes all the time because they don't want to negatively impact the game. Trust me, if you hear about anti-bot measures be prepared to cringe because the only time that happens in MMO's is when bots have succeeded in hurting the legitimate player base.
The problem becomes that the most sure fire ways to reduce botting is also the ways which will negatively effect every player. Sometimes the cost of removing bots is a cost of your freedoms or your own enjoyment. Removing rewards for losing botting matches or removing the ability to trade PvP Ger would all but kill the PvP bots...
Some of the "low-hanging fruit", such as properly encrypted/signed comms and not trusting the client as much would prevent botting being trivially easy in this game. A little googling will find not just bots for this game, but source code to manipulate things in memory which should not be trusted by the server.
These fixes would certainly not harm the player, they are basic good practise, and should really be part of the baseline set of practises. Other stuff, like Blizzard's infamous Warden, are more controversial.
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malkavierMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited July 2013
I see the mods didn't like the fact of me pointing out where the RMTers, etc all originate and how to deal with them effectively. How funny. If this is how they operate, the game is done before it's barely started. It wasn't a negative allusion. It was a statement of fact from someone who DEVELOPS GAMES.
They still haven't addressed these people using a duplication exploit to post stacks of 99x enchants, either.
As for what's in the clientside code? All kinds of things that can be manipulated from what I've seen. Funny how they leave things like your inventory contents, daily power, cooldown timers, etc clientside.
How Cryptic trolls the entire NWO playerbase: 9200 GS listed for CN, implying anyone who needs more has no skill.
I don't know where you get your information, but there are a number of solutions. Ghosting is pretty effective, if not in prevention definitely in detection.
But let's talk brackets and ELO. bots would filter to the bottom bracket or lowest ELO and probably all be playing with each other, and while not outright eliminating them, it does help to prevent them from ruining our games before they get the ban hammer. It takes zero time to implement, and almost no programming knowledge. FFS at least put a band-aid on the bot situation.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
I don't know where you get your information, but there are a number of solutions. Ghosting is pretty effective, if not in prevention definitely in detection.
But let's talk brackets and ELO. bots would filter to the bottom bracket or lowest ELO and probably all be playing with each other, and while not outright eliminating them, it does help to prevent them from ruining our games before they get the ban hammer. It takes zero time to implement, and almost no programming knowledge. FFS at least put a band-aid on the bot situation.
I get my information from first hand experience with multiple MMO's and a decent chunk of programming knowledge under my own belt. There's no simple solutions and as with any measures they take time to perfect as each system has to be created to deal specifically with each game individually.
So first and foremost you are assuming they don't ghost. If they did ghost you wouldn't know otherwise they wouldn't be much of a ghost!
And improved matchmaking is something I have been a major advocate for. Don't confuse me with the development staff because they hear enough out of me regarding how irritated I am with the matchmaking system.
Try PvPing at level 60. I couldn't care less about bots at level 60 because they are **** near non-existent. What I have to deal with instead is constantly being matched with a bunch of random fresh level 60's with 6K GS facing a PvP Guild with 13K+ GS each. I don't get effected by bots, ever. Matchmaking is my major gripe about PvP.
However, believe it or not, there is a game beyond PvP and the bots effect the game outside of PvP. They are tackling all of the bots.
You guys have "the Google," yeah? Thirty seconds of research tells me if you take one screenshot a day and had a temp sort through them you could ban several hundred bots a day.
I always like these threads, becasue suddenly everyone knows better the the devs on how to run the game. If it were so "easy" it wouldn't be a problem in about every mmo.
There should be repercussions for those who cheat, but the blame is most definitely at the feet of the developers. They, and they alone, are responsible for preventing this.
Everyone knows there are players who will cheat if they can, this isn't some astonishing revelation to anyone who has anything to do with any kind of game development. And honestly, there's really no good excuse for why it's so prevalent here. They simply haven't put in the effort to prevent it.
Put in safe zones around respawn points that cannot be entered or attacked in from outside the safe zone. Players aren't allowed to be in a safe zone for more than X consecutive seconds without being booted.
Put in a /votekick system, if a player is targeted with /votekick they are required to attack or heal another player, or be gaining capture points in X seconds otherwise they are booted.
Problems solved, and it's not like I just made this up, it's pretty much exactly what other games in the industry have been using for the last 5+ years. The fact that they're just now getting around to implementing these types of things, and so far not very successfully, is the only astonishing thing here.
Problem with bots and cheating in any online game is that there are way more players trying to break the game then there are devs preventing it from happening. It's mostly a matter of time before someone finds an entry.
I always like these threads, becasue suddenly everyone knows better the the devs on how to run the game. If it were so "easy" it wouldn't be a problem in about every mmo.
Well, since it's also from the same pool of 'everyone' that the scriptkiddies come from, and they're always a step or two ahead of the devs... so yes, I think some do.
So just because there is a TOS that admittedly nobody reads, the responsibility of the devs to stop cheaters is pushed onto the player base? I mean, maybe if they gave us adequate tools to deal with the situation ourselves, but I don't see that happening. If this is how you think cheaters should be dealt with we might as well all uninstall now. I mean, if every game has cheaters, and they just about do, then don't you think something like this should have been thought of beforehand? Bots are a something you have to expect as a developer of an online game, anything else is negligence.
Your argument is DOA as soon as you claim innocence simply, because you don't read TOS. Game programmers can think of ways their code can be broken, and testers can spend time trying to break it.. but sooner or later, when you have enough people trying to break code and cheat, they will succeed. There is no game on the planet that utilizes the internet that can not be broken. Of course they expected bots. But blocking cheating is an ongoing process. It cannot be magcally immune no matter how much thought goes into it before hand. Just like having to deal with cheaters at cards, or board games, practically any and every game ever created, we will always be dealing with cheaters. The reporting tools given to us - are very capable tools.
Oh, I'm glad we agree. Why are you propping up walls of text to support a developers inaction?
Inaction? Nothing can be further from reality. They have closed practically every exploit in the game, thusfar. Cheaters are their own worst enemies. I can promise you Cryptic is proactive and reactive, and getting better each time. They have proven very capable of listening to the community, closing down and denying cheaters. Sometimes exploits can be fixed right away, and other times, it takes a bit of time, due to the processes involved.
I love how you close it all up with trash talking a whole demographic of the game's player base just to play Cryptic's lapdog. Because I'm a pvper I am the scum of the mmo community, the least common denominator. Because I have expressed irritation at the exploitation and ruination of the only facet of the game I find enjoyable I am not a good honest person, and have no patience. Beta was the time for patience, the game being live is the time for action. Some community moderator you are.
Your two statements are in conflict. We all know PvP brings in the least common denominator in gaming, especially the f2p kind. The rest of the PvP community (the majority), the ones who choose to play an honest game, I certainly was not referring to. If that wasn't clear, I hope I've successfully resolved that for you.
The exploitation and ruination of PvP is why I'm here, and why I have promoted the reporting mechanisms as much as anyone on this forum. Just look in my signature for clarification. I may not be the world's biggest PvPer, but I will defend those who play with integrity till the day I leave this game.
Well, since it's also from the same pool of 'everyone' that the scriptkiddies come from, and they're always a step or two ahead of the devs... so yes, I think some do.
That's just flat out wrong... It is a fact, in ALL walks of life, that it's always easier to find a hole than it is to fix it (I actually dare you to go and find a hole, measure the energy you spent, and then try to fill the hole in such a manner I couldn't see there was a hole in the first place and measure the energy you spent doing that). Saying that a kid who can break a house knows more about building houses than the one who built it is... wrong! Trust me, if your statement was correct I'd be rich, cause i excel at breaking stuff, like houses, TV's, computers, Bricks my phone daily and so on and so on... If you really mean to say that that makes me better at building phones than Samsung, better at building processors for computers than Intel and better att TV sets that phillips i envy whatever part of the world you live in, and would love to rent a room from you and get a job there cause I'll be rich
I believe that 40 percent of players using bot is to gain a pvp set for their characters.
But 60 percent for them is to sell that pvp gears in AH.
My point is how about making the gears "bound when purchased" so that we can minimize the bot.
That way we can limit the abuse of bot. When it only can be used by the one who purchased it.
And after boting to complete the gear they will have no more reasons to bot for other purposes.
F2P mostly have bots. We just have to limit there goals of abusing to much.
I always like these threads, becasue suddenly everyone knows better the the devs on how to run the game. If it were so "easy" it wouldn't be a problem in about every mmo.
Even crappy f2p ones generally spot attached debuggers better than this, and don't rely on client data too heavily for anything vital. The fact that you don't understand this stuff doesn't mean that others don't.
I get my information from first hand experience with multiple MMO's and a decent chunk of programming knowledge under my own belt.
Well that's fine and dandy, I have a degree in visual and game programming, and am currently on the development team for 2 games, a third starting in a week.
And improved matchmaking is something I have been a major advocate for. Don't confuse me with the development staff because they hear enough out of me regarding how irritated I am with the matchmaking system.
Try PvPing at level 60. I couldn't care less about bots at level 60 because they are **** near non-existent... I don't get effected by bots, ever.
TROLOLOLOL again with the BS. What games are you playing in? A few pages back I named bots I see multiple times a day, and then linked to my stream and started PVPing. WOULDN'T YOU KNOW THAT A BOT I SPECIFICALLY CALLED OUT WAS IN THE VERY NEXT GAME I STREAMED.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited July 2013
Botting and data-mining/exploiting are different matters kattefjaes.
I'm not going to go into the details of the cleint issues...
But the bots aren't relying on any client side data in order to bot.
If they are and I am unaware the best thing you could do is report it (privately) rather than rant about it on the forums.
EDIT - I have seen, in total, about 10 bots since I reached level 60 and that was at least a couple of hundred PvP Matches. If you're seeing them you either have better luck than me or are the case example of why ghosting isn't the best solution in the world.
Game programmers can think of ways their code can be broken, and testers can spend time trying to break it.. but sooner or later, when you have enough people trying to break code and cheat, they will succeed. There is no game on the planet that utilizes the internet that can not be broken. Of course they expected bots. But blocking cheating is an ongoing process. It cannot be magcally immune no matter how much thought goes into it before hand. Just like having to deal with cheaters at cards, or board games, practically any and every game ever created, we will always be dealing with cheaters. The reporting tools given to us - are very capable tools.
I'm not saying you can make a fool proof system, but I am saying that going live while you have a botting problem that has been going on since at least open beta started.. is unacceptable, delay going live at least. I mean, it would be one thing if they had cleansed the test servers of bots, went live and somebody found a new way around. But we are talking about the same exploits that have been happening for some time, now.
Comments
This post has been edited to remove content which violates the Neverwinter Forum Rules of Conduct ~Moderation Team
They have no choice. It's their intellectual property that is illegally manipulated. So of course the responsibility falls on them to fix what was damaged.
We have to get back to basics. Games are made to be played to have fun. However, once the rules are made explaining how the game is supposed to be played, its on those playing it to follow the rules. The Terms of Service everyone agrees to before playing dictates those rules. As soon as someone decides to take it upon themselves to find ways to circumvent rules and fair play - then it's on the exploiter/cheater/botter. Every game has cheaters. But in the mmo world the great majority of honest players must deal with a very small, loud minority of cheaters, who are not here to enjoy the game or pay their way, they are here to ruin the economy, ruin the fun, and mainly profit for themselves without regard for anyone else. This is the enemy of the great majority.
Sadly solutions to exploits and bots are not switches that can be turned on and off. They take time to resolve, and often involve major internal revisions to the game. PWE/Cryptic has done a great job so far combating them, as they have defeated all the important ones. You will see faster resolution in the future, as the Neverwinter game code continues to get more resilient and the community becomes more alert as a whole and reports and gets word to those who need to know. Sure there will be more exploits, but they are on it, and coding, and improving their systems every day.
As time goes on, you'll see faster reaction time to fixing exploits BECAUSE of the community's re-activeness and Cryptic dev team's skill in creating code to deny cheaters.
PvP unfortunately always brings in the scum of the mmo community. The least common denominator. Hopefully the good honest folk will be patient enough. It will take time, but my money's on Cryptic. Take it from experience, it's not safe betting against Aandre
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So just because there is a TOS that admittedly nobody reads, the responsibility of the devs to stop cheaters is pushed onto the player base? I mean, maybe if they gave us adequate tools to deal with the situation ourselves, but I don't see that happening. If this is how you think cheaters should be dealt with we might as well all uninstall now. I mean, if every game has cheaters, and they just about do, then don't you think something like this should have been thought of beforehand? Bots are a something you have to expect as a developer of an online game, anything else is negligence.
Oh, I'm glad we agree. Why are you propping up walls of text to support a developers inaction?
I love how you close it all up with trash talking a whole demographic of the game's player base just to play Cryptic's lapdog. Because I'm a pvper I am the scum of the mmo community, the least common denominator. Because I have expressed irritation at the exploitation and ruination of the only facet of the game I find enjoyable I am not a good honest person, and have no patience. Beta was the time for patience, the game being live is the time for action. Some community moderator you are.
I know we have some of those people here, for now, because Cryptic made the stupid mistake of including gear score (a gear score that's broken and not entirely based on gear, I might add... ironic, or sad? Your call), long the elitist tool of exclusion based upon being elite and having gear that you may not get simply because RNG hates your guts (and thanks to the aforementioned broken gear score calculator, it's now based on spec as well, so you HAVE to spec a certain way if you want the highest possible gearscore. Penn and Teller would call that bull****.).
I don't think it's fair to blame the PVP crowd for trolls and manchildren.
Or this.
It'll be far less about the teams skill and communities re activeness and far more about a massive drop in people actually playing the game by the time that would even be measurable.
You know me well enough to know that I'm okay with betting against Aandre once in awhile
I'm reading between the blank spaces here and I concur with the poster. Give those locales their own server to log in and wreck while blacklisting them from the Western and Euro ones.
Problem solved.
What happened to progression within an MMORPG? Or is this just a pvp thing?
You CANNOT surely expect to just join the lvl 60 rank of players and then be able to dance with them fairly after a couple of minutes. You will be going up against people that have spent hours / days / weeks improving their characters.
I see this in the requests for ranking systems - sure, it isn't fun to be stomped in PvP, but everyone has to start somewhere - if no-one is getting stomped, there is no-one donig the stomping and everyone just becomes the same.
Some people will never be happy.
1) They don't want to go against tough/better players, so they'll complain about ranks
2) Within ranks, they'll still get beat and complain about a specific class
3) Fighting against their own class, they complain a lot of fights will be 2, or 3 v 1, so they'll want duelling
Then,
After manufacturing the requirements for a fight that they think they should win (a duel against a same-geared, same-class, same-skilled person), they realise that anything purely balanced will always be a 50% chance of winning. At which point, they'll quit the game, after wrecking the PvE side of the classes and complain that PvP sucks.
I fully understand that, at first, PVP in the 60 bracket will be harsh, but that's just how it is. It's the same for NPC's in a dungeon that constantly gets owned by better geared players and that's the reason why you aren't allowed to talk to an NPC in an epic dungeon, nor are they allowed to post on the forums (that's a joke by the way).
This was quite an interesting thread. I like clcmercy's ideas of 1) rewards based on participation or 2) no rewards at all. However, I think the first idea would still leave the door open for botters, while the second might be a bit too austere. I think modifying the "no rewards" idea to include rankings, stats, or maybe some kind of skins only for pvp-in other words some kind of reward that does not attract botting- would be better.
Of course this would also mean having to radically change the way pvp is set up so I doubt it could be implemented, but it would cut down on the bots/ leavers/afkers. Maybe just throw the same gear on everyone at each level bracket? Like 10-19's all get some standard level 19 gear etc, then open up enchants at level 60 so you can choose level 5 enchants (only for use in pvp), and you could unlock more enchant options as you play to give a horizontal progression (not giving more power, just more options, kind of like in moba games with heroes).
And this is really a major programming issue. It means that somehow a 3rd party script is able to read the game's data and interact with it...it's able to not only SEE another player's location, it's able to read specific information on it (class) and make choices based on that, which it can inject back into the game program.
This is far more than just a script that can only send commands into the game and I fear the game's core programming has way too much sensitive stuff unsecurely stored on the clientside. Unless they put a lot more stuff securely on the server AND invest in the extra server power this requires to run, 3rd party apps will have free reign.
I really think a manual response system is the way to go, that and the same kind of reporting ability for spammers.
Good grief, ain't that the truth? That's why I shudder inwardly whenever someone starts demanding an "esports" setup in any game that I actually enjoy playing.
The toxicity in PvP games keeps the other communities cleaner. - this was edited by a moderator, I tend to write a little better than this
What Aandre said rings true. It may not have been the friendliest way to word it but it's all true.
Bots are here because they want to be and there's no way to simply wave a wand and remove them. As long as they want to be here they will make accounts as fast as Cryptic can remove them. That's how bots are. As Cryptic improves the technology which detects bots and players continue to report botting accounts the speed in which bots are detected and removed from the game will increase as we head into the future.
There will never be a day in which bots won't exist in an MMO. It's just not possible. However the amount of time each individual bot is in the game can be reduced with the support of the community and the action of Cryptic which, despite any illogical ideas to the contrary, is an extremely high priority for them.
The problem becomes that the most sure fire ways to reduce botting is also the ways which will negatively effect every player. Sometimes the cost of removing bots is a cost of your freedoms or your own enjoyment. Removing rewards for losing botting matches or removing the ability to trade PvP Ger would all but kill the PvP bots...
But such measures would kill casual PvP and remove much of the overall reward for PvPing to begin with.
Improvements are happening behind the scenes all the time because they don't want to negatively impact the game. Trust me, if you hear about anti-bot measures be prepared to cringe because the only time that happens in MMO's is when bots have succeeded in hurting the legitimate player base.
Some of the "low-hanging fruit", such as properly encrypted/signed comms and not trusting the client as much would prevent botting being trivially easy in this game. A little googling will find not just bots for this game, but source code to manipulate things in memory which should not be trusted by the server.
These fixes would certainly not harm the player, they are basic good practise, and should really be part of the baseline set of practises. Other stuff, like Blizzard's infamous Warden, are more controversial.
They still haven't addressed these people using a duplication exploit to post stacks of 99x enchants, either.
As for what's in the clientside code? All kinds of things that can be manipulated from what I've seen. Funny how they leave things like your inventory contents, daily power, cooldown timers, etc clientside.
I don't know where you get your information, but there are a number of solutions. Ghosting is pretty effective, if not in prevention definitely in detection.
But let's talk brackets and ELO. bots would filter to the bottom bracket or lowest ELO and probably all be playing with each other, and while not outright eliminating them, it does help to prevent them from ruining our games before they get the ban hammer. It takes zero time to implement, and almost no programming knowledge. FFS at least put a band-aid on the bot situation.
I get my information from first hand experience with multiple MMO's and a decent chunk of programming knowledge under my own belt. There's no simple solutions and as with any measures they take time to perfect as each system has to be created to deal specifically with each game individually.
So first and foremost you are assuming they don't ghost. If they did ghost you wouldn't know otherwise they wouldn't be much of a ghost!
And improved matchmaking is something I have been a major advocate for. Don't confuse me with the development staff because they hear enough out of me regarding how irritated I am with the matchmaking system.
Try PvPing at level 60. I couldn't care less about bots at level 60 because they are **** near non-existent. What I have to deal with instead is constantly being matched with a bunch of random fresh level 60's with 6K GS facing a PvP Guild with 13K+ GS each. I don't get effected by bots, ever. Matchmaking is my major gripe about PvP.
However, believe it or not, there is a game beyond PvP and the bots effect the game outside of PvP. They are tackling all of the bots.
Problem with bots and cheating in any online game is that there are way more players trying to break the game then there are devs preventing it from happening. It's mostly a matter of time before someone finds an entry.
Well, since it's also from the same pool of 'everyone' that the scriptkiddies come from, and they're always a step or two ahead of the devs... so yes, I think some do.
Your argument is DOA as soon as you claim innocence simply, because you don't read TOS. Game programmers can think of ways their code can be broken, and testers can spend time trying to break it.. but sooner or later, when you have enough people trying to break code and cheat, they will succeed. There is no game on the planet that utilizes the internet that can not be broken. Of course they expected bots. But blocking cheating is an ongoing process. It cannot be magcally immune no matter how much thought goes into it before hand. Just like having to deal with cheaters at cards, or board games, practically any and every game ever created, we will always be dealing with cheaters. The reporting tools given to us - are very capable tools.
Inaction? Nothing can be further from reality. They have closed practically every exploit in the game, thusfar. Cheaters are their own worst enemies. I can promise you Cryptic is proactive and reactive, and getting better each time. They have proven very capable of listening to the community, closing down and denying cheaters. Sometimes exploits can be fixed right away, and other times, it takes a bit of time, due to the processes involved.
Your two statements are in conflict. We all know PvP brings in the least common denominator in gaming, especially the f2p kind. The rest of the PvP community (the majority), the ones who choose to play an honest game, I certainly was not referring to. If that wasn't clear, I hope I've successfully resolved that for you.
The exploitation and ruination of PvP is why I'm here, and why I have promoted the reporting mechanisms as much as anyone on this forum. Just look in my signature for clarification. I may not be the world's biggest PvPer, but I will defend those who play with integrity till the day I leave this game.
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That's just flat out wrong... It is a fact, in ALL walks of life, that it's always easier to find a hole than it is to fix it (I actually dare you to go and find a hole, measure the energy you spent, and then try to fill the hole in such a manner I couldn't see there was a hole in the first place and measure the energy you spent doing that). Saying that a kid who can break a house knows more about building houses than the one who built it is... wrong! Trust me, if your statement was correct I'd be rich, cause i excel at breaking stuff, like houses, TV's, computers, Bricks my phone daily and so on and so on... If you really mean to say that that makes me better at building phones than Samsung, better at building processors for computers than Intel and better att TV sets that phillips i envy whatever part of the world you live in, and would love to rent a room from you and get a job there cause I'll be rich
I believe that 40 percent of players using bot is to gain a pvp set for their characters.
But 60 percent for them is to sell that pvp gears in AH.
My point is how about making the gears "bound when purchased" so that we can minimize the bot.
That way we can limit the abuse of bot. When it only can be used by the one who purchased it.
And after boting to complete the gear they will have no more reasons to bot for other purposes.
F2P mostly have bots. We just have to limit there goals of abusing to much.
Even crappy f2p ones generally spot attached debuggers better than this, and don't rely on client data too heavily for anything vital. The fact that you don't understand this stuff doesn't mean that others don't.
Well that's fine and dandy, I have a degree in visual and game programming, and am currently on the development team for 2 games, a third starting in a week.
Glad we agree
TROLOLOLOL again with the BS. What games are you playing in? A few pages back I named bots I see multiple times a day, and then linked to my stream and started PVPing. WOULDN'T YOU KNOW THAT A BOT I SPECIFICALLY CALLED OUT WAS IN THE VERY NEXT GAME I STREAMED.
I'm not going to go into the details of the cleint issues...
But the bots aren't relying on any client side data in order to bot.
If they are and I am unaware the best thing you could do is report it (privately) rather than rant about it on the forums.
EDIT - I have seen, in total, about 10 bots since I reached level 60 and that was at least a couple of hundred PvP Matches. If you're seeing them you either have better luck than me or are the case example of why ghosting isn't the best solution in the world.
Lol, are you honestly going to tell me that you read the whole TOS on every game you've played? Because I think you'll lose all credibility if you do.
I'm not saying you can make a fool proof system, but I am saying that going live while you have a botting problem that has been going on since at least open beta started.. is unacceptable, delay going live at least. I mean, it would be one thing if they had cleansed the test servers of bots, went live and somebody found a new way around. But we are talking about the same exploits that have been happening for some time, now.
No, they don't, nor did I claim they did, if you look. Memory debugger style hacks are for "haxxxx" rather than bots, obviously.
That's fair, you didn't... But why did you say that in a thread about bots? That's just saying random fancy words one just learned.