Any next steps to further combat bot issue?

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14

What are Game Masters supposed to do?

  • it takes just minutes to create several more bots (there are several post in the forum linking to videos from bot farms streaming how they are doing it > new server with 8 LA clients is in the end just a few clicks)
  • a GM would need to identify a bot and issue the ban, which might even take longer than spawning new bots
  • as Roxx explained back in March (I think), they’d need a whole lot of people working on that (like each person working 8h > 3 persons for 24h shift, you’d need these teams for every server and additionally each region if not even channel and so on > Roxx just roughly estimate like 150 people if I remember correctly)

You can’t compare this to e.g. sit around in Vern and identify several bots running around and reporting them, to what a GM would need to do.
Even if it would be that simple: take each region of the game, multiply this by 3 and then by the total number of servers…well okay, you might now argue, that it is just a matter of money and AGS should simply pay 150 or 200 people and it is done.
Just look at this forum and what happens if false bans occur. AGS says “bot wave incoming, sorry for false bans, please contact support because we can’t do anything here…” and the people that might got falsely accused of botting/RMTing and so open thread upon thread here. So a GM needs to work with more caution. And yes I know how easy it is to identify most of the bots.

In the end it comes down to the technology/tools they (AGS/SG) are using.

Because on the one hand, some tools in the backend do not exist (or didn’t exist, as Roxx and others also explained several times) and you simply can’t compare game A with game B.
Maybe a GM system works in game A with the technology of game A, but game B uses a totally different technology and thus GMs might be totally ineffective.
GMs need specific tools to e.g. simply to monitor the global chat of each server and clearly identify gold sellers and ban them. Gold sellers, identified by their chat spam messages. Seems pretty easy looking at an individual case, but the scale of monitoring is not.
In the end, it is not like throwing enough money at the problem aka just hire some GMs and it is done.

I’m not saying that everything is perfect as how AGS/SG is handling the situation. But after several months with the bot problem, it should be pretty clear that you can’t manually fight this.

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15

game masters offer in game enforcement on reports, so they are more than a gvg strategy. They act when they see things like the screenshot op posted or the hundreds of others we all see everyday. They also provide in game support on bug testing new encounters, plan community events, and even just hang out in chat and answer newbie questions. you are correct some sneaky ones will get by and it will always be a issue, but you don’t have to stop them all to stop them running rampant like this, you have to offer resistance and have them run the risk of it not becoming profitable.

I don’t know why you think you couldn’t almost instantly identify a problem and act, with that I just disagree lol. And also with the point that its clear you cant manually fight this since there has been no attempt to manually fight this, and its been part of the solution in so many other games. The game master coverage on servers is a fair point, but only if you don’t consider that those server numbers are inflated by overwhelming numbers of bots and we wouldn’t need this many servers to avoid ques if they didn’t have 99% efficiency.

We all know its a constant battle I’m just asking that they start fighting that battle. The screenshot above is just embarrassing and should never happen out in the open of a major hub city. Much less be defended. Ban waves when the bots are so bad that they are literally clogging up ques is not fighting the battle against bots :pensive:

16

I am really ignorant when it comes to these topics, but can’t game masters be invisible and can permanently ban any accounts straight up in game? For example, dayz or a gta private servers. If a game moderator/masters think someone is breaking a rule, they have the power to ban the person in game without any complication or route to take to get there, and if they want an unban, or think their ban is not justified, they will have to take it up to the mods as a right that they have, aka appeal the ban with evidences.

Isn’t this how it supposed to work?

17

In theory yes :slight_smile:

It comes down to how many users you have, how the servers are instantiated - e.g. in LA we have channels 1, 2, 3 and so on which seem to be dynamically created based on how many users are in a zone - which makes monitoring in the backend possibly more complicated.

And as far as Roxx explained it, not only the channels would be a problem, but also the zones itself (e.g. the different continents and areas).

This is what I meant by “you can’t compare game A to game B”.
Now of course it should be possible to have tools available for server wide monitoring. But if these tools didn’t exist in the first place, they need to be developed and it takes time. We could for example assume that SG didn’t see the necessity to have such tools, because they don’t have the bot problem and it would’ve taken several weeks/months more development time. Now these tools might exist and/or are still in development.

Now back to GMS themselves and what I feel is maybe a bit of a misunderstanding.
Of course you could have a GM in the chat and you’d need at least 3 or 4 for the different languages we have (EN, DE, FR, SP). They can be there to help people and yes maybe also issue bans on gold sellers by monitoring the chat.
But the bots are not active in the chat, they are simply running around. So what could possibly happen:

  • a monitoring tool says > “bot identified”
  • GM “warps” to the zone, looks at the character being identified as a bot > bans the character/account > takes few clicks…maybe just 1 or 2 > just imagine a GM needs to do the same thing when we report someone e.g. give a reason “Account ban issued by GM due to automated notification of server monitoring…”

Easy, right?

Now how many bots are there? I think we can agree there are at least several hundreds on each server. How is a single GM supposed to be able to: monitor the chat, ban gold sellers, answer questions, offer help, jump around from zone to zone and ban bots?

And this is the problem I see. Like I explained you’d need like 3 or 4 GMs for the different languages in chat+ 1 or 2 GMs “jumping” around to ban the bots, because they can’t do both. You can’t read a question and have a reasonable conversation and try to help out and ban accounts at the same time.
In the best case it would be 4 GMs times 3 for a 24h shift and you’d need them for each server. And we have 58 servers (yes you might not need DE, FR mods for the SA Servers…it is just a rough estimation of the numbers).

To make it simple again: just imagine the clicks you’d have to do to report someone. Takes just a few seconds. For manual bans, issued by a GM, I’d argue that there are 2 scenarios:

  1. if monitoring identifies a bot > the GM simply issues the ban > why doesn’t automated monitoring do it in the first place? Saves time, we don’t need a GM for that, but might have more false positives
  2. GM identifies a bot either via notification from monitoring or by looking at the game > GM needs to do a few clicks like we as players do > it takes some time

I do think that having GMs in chat would be a great idea, don’t get me wrong. But not as a real counter measure for banning bots.
Of course a GM should be able to issue bans if a character/account is identified as using illegal RMT, using bots, being a gold seller. But I’d see them as a second step e.g. when players report an account, the GM checks the report and then issues a ban. And I’d assume this is already happening, the people doing this are simply not active in the game itself, thus I wouldn’t call them GMs.
Now again simply imagine how often people are reporting bots/gold sellers. Every report gets in a ticket queue that someone needs to work through…again this takes time.

edit:
I’m also not getting why AGS/SG are doing some things like they do them. Because on the one hand they stated several times that they can identify many bots automatically. Yet they are not directly banning them, but always have these large ban waves. It is like “we banned 1mio accounts, now let’s wait 3 or 4 weeks so that we can ban 1mio again…”. Almost as if it looks better for marketing…

I also do not agree with several of the measures they have taken and are reluctant to make bigger changes to the systems the bots/gold sellers are abusing (e.g. the market and the flow of the money). But well…that’s how it is :slight_smile:

I’d just argue, that you don’t need a GM to identify the situation in some cities for example. Everyone knows how bad it sometimes is. And posting a screenshot with many bots on one spot is kinda yesterdays news :slight_smile:

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cmon…lol, translation exists the framework for all this exists and just the threat of gms existing instantly stops the screenshot posted. I tried to give my feedback and explain as best as I could but its getting pedantic in here so ima untrack. Thanks for the chat :wave:

I really hope they start to combat this at the source of the issue rather than “reducing server queues among other effects” being their focus. its a problem long before its a server que problem :face_exhaling:

19

Totally agreeing with you on this one.

And also thanks for the chat and have a nice day :slight_smile:

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Could be player stolen accounts that bought illegal gold, used by the bot users manually to get even more materials on the bot accounts.

21

Could be, still waiting for AGS confirmation. I have seen a lot of posts about hack accounts lately, like damn I can’t even play a game peacefully?

22

You can, as long as you don’t engage with bots lol. Also be carefull on the prices you set for stuff, as it could be bought with illegally obtained gold, ending up possibly affecting you too lol

23

How is playing game now similar to trying not to offend people irl, my words
Monka Monkas GIF - Monka Monkas Scared - Discover & Share GIFs

24

My dude how is that u don’t enjoy banning someone who is cheating ? I would be mega happy to ban hammer those who break the rules…i would Even send a message making fun of them when they get banned …how is that You can’t enjoy making them obey the rules ?

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25

OSRS RuneFest: Bot Busting Highlights - YouTube :melting_face:

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Fun video, but now for the important part:

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:grin:

Or this one…seems familiar and only 2y old (or look at some of the other comments, could be this forum as well hehe):

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image1252Ă—126 29.6 KB

And afaik Diablo Immortal is also getting a bigger bot problem as it seems. Let’s hope there is more money in DI than in LA :slight_smile:

Diablo Immortal players think they have a botting problem | GamesRadar+

It is kinda the same with the servers when a game comes out. By now it should be obvious that there will be to many people for all the servers, yet still almost every MMO launch is a big clusterf*** at launch.
Same way you could argue, that bots could be a very well known problem and every developer should be ready for them. Yeah well…guess not…

27

Even if gm wouldnt ban all bots and they are so easy to create again with just 1 click ir not click at all …banning them Will surely make something …cuz creating an account and bots it’s ez but it takes times to lvlup gear and have them up there to make gold …which atleast it’s a good thing …and the higher the gear they have the more time it Will take for them to catch again …and that time Will be spend banning other bots as those start again there Will always someone banning them…

28

yea just an example of bot busting be made fun like raishini was talking about. However if lost ark had the reputation of doing things like this they would not be out in the open fearlessly. I think we can all agree on that at least haha. its a cat and mouse game and we have no cats :face_exhaling:

29

Yes this is correct, but so does the automated ban wave.

I’m basically arguing that automatic mechanisms are much faster and thus more efficient. And based on statements by Roxx they can identify the bots. The question should be more: why are they not immediately banned in the first place.

The statement by Roxx was done in a discussion about the real user numbers and why/when to release Valtan. People argued based on Steam stats and achievements that no one is ready or so (the usual stuff) and AGS is making decisions based on the bots ingame. And Roxx stated, that they can clearly differentiate between bots and real users. And that they base their decisions on what to release when on these internal numbers.

To me this is kinda strange, because if they have the tools, why “collect” bots for weeks instead of simply banning them on a daily basis?
It seems like they need extended maintenance for the bans…

Thus I’d agree on the cat&moiuse analogy:
Only that our cat is there, but sleeping, or in a cage…

:slight_smile:

edit:
Oh and btw @Shadow_Fox this would be something that is interesting to know. I’m with you when you say, that you can post everything in advance so that you don’t give any hints to the bot users.
But why can’t you simply tell us more about why it seems, that there are only these ban waves, but no automated bans on a daily basis or so.

Because @Raishini is right of course: ban the bot asap and they have no time to level up.

And another thing: if you can clearly identify the bots, why are there still so many high level bots running around? Yes people make mistakes and an automated system has some issues. But it pretty much seems that you are more or less only able to ban pretty new accounts, but the old ones with GS + 1400 are still roaming free.

30

“after several months with the bot problem, it should be pretty clear” wise man from the forums once said xD.

I as a player honestly don’t care about the speed or efficiency of it, as a consumer of a end product that’s not my problem. the experience is, results are. we see the results of ban waves here in the ops screenshot, and we see it so often you make the argument that its “yesterdays news” its become accepted as the norm and defended lol. From the comment in this thread it seems they don’t care until there’s 600k of them causing ques in a 80k player game.

My feedback is this is unacceptable no matter the reasoning or straw mans, The end result is objective failure, and more steps should be taken and money spent to combat this openly. Especially steps that have already proven to be very effective historically imho

31

Please correct me if I’m wrong but I think the point that @romconstruct was trying to make was that it will be very inefficient to hire GMs to manually combat the botting issue.

A major issue with botting is that it is super easy to create new LA accounts and I’m fairly certain that account creation process is pretty much automated for bot owners. Having GMs in game to manually ban bots might help alleviate a bit of the pain but doesn’t seem like a viable long-term solution.

Also, really appreciate the reply. @Shadow_Fox

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32

Ok and I would love to that in a short term in the mean time while they think up of something for a long term.

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33

Yes.

And basically my point is/was, that it might simply not be that easy as some think.

Yes part of the problem is also, that companies might to invest more. But if you really think, that AGS/SG/Blizzard/… like all the negative publicity and only want to see the playerbase get angry, well I’d beg to differ.

Clearly they are companies that want to make money and everyone that has seen Fight Club also should understand how they work/think: does it cost us more to gain some negative publicity, or does it cost us more to higher more people and implement counter measures.
Now the bot problem has been existing for like 20+ years now. And therefore I’m saying: if it was always that easy, they’d have a solution by now. Because this solution would give them even more money.