Guild Wars 2

Botting should be combatted in another way … and i think the support for stopping botting is high amoungst the gaming community as a whole, so much so that i think they would tollerate a little annoyance to do so… If done this right this could turn into a random mini puzzle DE, that could even be enjoyable…

Thus I introduce the F4-RM Golem, project X101_Y45 by an Asuran Inventor of the school of synergetics (yours truely ). F4-RM was originally designed and build to research steam creatures in lonar's pass, but like many of Asuran tech, it takes a couple of versions to get things right. F4-RM was obviously version 4, of a Golem that is supposed to diagnose if an entity is truely a ‘living entity’ … I am not sure which Asura (names) would be available to fullfill this role in that area, but the lore surely lends itself for a now rouge Golem, with build-in site to site transport, questioning creatures to determain if they are ‘living entities’

This golem would be an actual ingame entity (instead of a pop-up captcha, and thus reduce the annoyance threshold, and preserve immersion), we all loved Dhuum when he showed up, so why not F4-RM. This golem can be programed to appear at any character that ’doesn’t move for 30min’, that has been playing non stop for 3h (or use the timeframe that Arbo-Code recommends for deskjobs, to take a short break, and on confirmation of a human have it recommend taking a break), on slaying foes of a certain type/or certain area on end (if this can be recognized), and any other types of game behavior that could be linked to botting…

F4-RM is programmed to ‘paralyze’/Turn to Stone? a character, after which it randomly picks a puzzle from a wide variety of puzzle options:
- simple math
- simple text
- simple logic
- simple drag/drop (real puzzle)
- simple slide puzzle
- etc… ?
And giving the user a limited amount of time to solve this puzzle, 30sec or so. The randomness of puzzle forms is obviously to try and ‘fool’ bots, seeing they are not to clever, the limited time is to give bots a limited time to solve what to do, and how to respond.

After the puzzle is solved the player is released from it’s grip and can game on. If the test is failed, farm should release the character aswell, but F4-RM should re-appear within a random short time period (0-15min) to present another puzzle… after a couple of these events, and constant failure, F4-RM should Flag the account for further inspection (possibly it could kick the account back to character sellection after these test, and retest after logging back on. As it’s still likely that a player gets booted for just being AFK, but unlikely that the player will go AFK multiple times after just having logged on again… a bot on the other hand will likely relog automatically after loosing connection.)

It is important to keep developing mini puzzles in all shapes, sizes and forms, and have this done by programmer & developers that truely understand what computers ‘can’ and ‘can NOT’ do easily. And replace, add, replenish the puzzles that F4-RM offers… Efforts should also be put into determaining good bot identification ‘actions’ that can be tracked, as to not bother players a whole lot. Logging that a character is controlled by a human on a couple of tests may also prevent F4-RM turning up endlessly due to certain player behavior…

F4-RM will likely solve a lot of botting issues, and may well present some random, yet unexpected game content for actual players. Meeting F4-RM can thus be kept to minimum annoyance… As long as F4-RM introduces himself properly, explains it’s purpose (and heck he may even give some reward, F4-RM could even give people a ‘Living Entity Badge’-trophy item, worth a couple of copper, for the inconveniance… ) he won’t annoy players much. Let’s be real, who wouldn’t want to meet this cute lil golem …

This sollution is offered free to use, to ArenaNet, after investing the time and money to make it a reality

That’s actually kind of awesome.

And it keeps the Dhuum-ban flavor!

Haha wow, this is actually a super great and creative idea to a legitimate problem! We need more people like you…lol

I totally support it!

Also, what is this “Silly DR” you speak of? Idk what DR is….

Diminishing returns on events and loot.

Events I understand.

Diminishing returns on loot is kinda… :| I understand it, but it’s really restrictive.

Bots can just program their macros to move every 30 minutes or so. The issue of suggesting anti-bot measures is that botters will already know how to bypass it even before it is accepted.

Eochaidh.4106:

Bots can just program their macros to move every 30 minutes or so. The issue of suggesting anti-bot measures is that botters will already know how to bypass it even before it is accepted.

He does include other “Bot-like” parameters that the thing would check for. =p

Eochaidh, well see that is the whole thing, F4-RM can be programmed as such to intercept any Bot-like Behavior, it could even just ‘bother’ genuine players every now and then.

As long as F4-RM introduces himself properly, explains it’s purpose, and heck he may even give some reward. He won’t annoy players much.

Bots on the other hand, will less likely be able to deal with random puzzles of kinds that computers just can’t solve (yet). F/e a puzzle like the one offered by Oola’s lab, are truely impossible to solve by a computer, esp. if the answers get placed in random locations every time. Meaning that even with programming they are hard to solve. Having tons of these would make it near impossible to get bots passed such a test … see even though computers are programmed by using logic, computers themselves don’t understand it… but the more kinds of puzzles offered the more fun F4-RM will be!

And yes, creating an even more human like bot is a way to bypass F4-RM, but bots are only usefull when they are deployed for long periods of time. Relogging can be noticed by F4-RM and thus ‘playtime’ can be taken as whole. Including random appearance times and random survailance times can help a lot… F4-RM can be the way to outsmart the Botcreators in a direct fashion, also showing the community that something is being done about them, in the least obstructive way…

Bots can’t do(currently) something as simple as “Click the moving dot on your screen three times”.

That’s all they’d really have to do, and unless someone’s -always- watching the bot’s screen(they aren’t), then that’ll catch the bot. Even if they are watching, a 30sec window -really- isn’t all that much.

It won’t only take out bots, but stupid people unable to take simple IQ tests.

The dream of any Asura.

@Illushia, well such a thing could be included in F4-RM, the thing is though, if it were just some ‘promt’ during gameplay it would annoy players (i know i get annoyed by these kinds of things, so i am sure others are too). Yet, packaging it into a random DE-puzzle Golem, that could introduce itself, it’s purpose, excuse itself for the mixup, even offer a small reward for the inconveniance. That be mighty funny, and stay within the parameters of immersion

@Mithran, lol, well yes true ‘rolleyes’ , that may be a slight side effect, but as long as things are simple for humans but hard for computers, and the puzzles are random every time, i am sure players can get one of them right… Heck, F4-RM may even be forgiving and offer a ‘try another puzzle’ given it’s clicked in those 30sec, or so… giving humans a bit more chance to come across a puzzle they ‘can’ solve. Perhaps 3 strikes for a gold/silver/bronze event reward?

Hmmm, 9h passed and nobody responded :o … i thought this to be one of my brightest ideas in years, expecting large amounts of players to agree with this better alternative for combatting bots than the DR-stick… tobad i can’t see +1 status on threads that may give a good indication if people realy like this, but have nothing to contribute to it … or not, and i overestimated the likeness of this idea by a large margin

I love this idea, I highly support it.

Like it, and its so in character with the game.

… Now I’m just imagining a security golem apologising for the inconvenience in the middle of a big boss battle.. Hilarious :’D

I’d rather not have it give a reward, since I’m sure no one doesn’t want to promote this kind of behaviour.

This is actually a really good idea. I’m so tired of seeing Gold Spammers in LA on my server.

Simple 1+1 questions, anything else would be absurdly annoying to do especially when you’re in the middle of trading or browsing TP.

Surprisingly a decent idea IF it was implemented well. Parts of your proposal has holes in it that would make this annoying rather than helpful.

Runescape does(did? do they still do this?) the same with their random events. You would be typically thrust into combat while doing a grindy activity like fishing or mining, and the enemy was scaled to be somewhat stronger than the player, but defeatable with some effort on their part that a bot couldn’t do. More recent random events skew towards a “do this thing” bent since many legit players met a swift and painful death at the hands of the fishing troll.

I wouldn’t mind seeing these again, I enjoyed them.

I think this is an awesome idea and hope to be bothered by F4-RM soon!

Could have something like that appear when another player uses Report, appearing at the reported players location. It asks players at that location a random question (from a short pool) with the answer given in the question’s text. If, within a short window (but long enough in case the player is fighting, say 3 minutes) the player(s) don’t respond, it goes aggro.

OP you have my vote. +1 to this idea.

I was told there would be no math.

There already are math problems in the game, just head to Metrica Province and Brisban Wildlands… probably somewhere else as well, just saying….

Crise.9401:

There already are math problems in the game, just head to Metrica Province and Brisban Wildlands… probably somewhere else as well, just saying….

That reminds me one of them was wrong. Was something to do with percentage increases of something or other. The way it was worded resulted in a different answer than what was supposedly correct.

All i can say is, It’s been done before and it didn’t work. All you have to do is take a look at a certain game by the name of RuneScape. They implemented this EXACT feature years ago as an anti-bot measure, the end result was smarter bots, loss of players, and a highly annoyed remaining population. Any and all repeat actions were considered signs of botting, even simply walking from one place to another while questing.

Frequently these events would occur at the worst possible moments, such as a few moments after having remained in a hostile zone long enough for the creatures to lose hostility, or as your trying to pick up that 1 in a million rare drop that has no chance of being there still when you finish the event.

The goal is noble and the idea on paper may sound good, but in practice it’s nothing but a nightmare to legit players, in reality it punishes the real players more than it punishes bots. The creators of RuneScape even admitted to this when they started cutting back on their random event triggers and removed most of the particularly annoying ones.

awesome idea till you afk and dont do anything then get a ban :P

As a legit player, this would bother me immensely… I would prefer they actively go after people boting (GM stars a conversation with them), and not put an automatic solution that could bother legit players as well, while probably not stoping boting…

I understand the need to stop boting, but I value the need to not pointlessly bother legit players even higher.

Kal.2376:

As a legit player, this would bother me immensely… I would prefer they actively go after people boting (GM stars a conversation with them), and not put an automatic solution that could bother legit players as well, while probably not stoping boting…

I understand the need to stop boting, but I value the need to not pointlessly bother legit players even higher.

If you are a legit player, why the hell are you not moving attacking mobs from your position for 30 minutes? And how is this even possible? lol.

That’s a very nice way to stop the botters. Good job.

please don’t make the bot bother me. i have enough trouble while in combat stayin’ alive, random golem spawn to stop me will be the death of my Guild Wars 2 career.

This is a genius idea, 100% support it.

Kidel.2057:

Kal.2376:

As a legit player, this would bother me immensely… I would prefer they actively go after people boting (GM stars a conversation with them), and not put an automatic solution that could bother legit players as well, while probably not stoping boting…

I understand the need to stop boting, but I value the need to not pointlessly bother legit players even higher.

If you are a legit player, why the hell are you not moving attacking mobs from your position for 30 minutes? And how is this even possible? lol.

That’s a very nice way to stop the botters. Good job.

Bots are not perfect. I may be RPing, I may be testing weapons/skills (No need to go all over the map to test weapons/skills). There are a lot of things I could be doing that keep me in one place for 30 mins. It is my choice to stay in one place for 30 mins or not. If I want to stay in that place for 1 hour, that is my choice as well.

Bots can make mistakes anyway. I prefer they just hunt then down actively, instead of trying an automated solution that could be bothersome to real players.

Edit: A good example. I spend about an hour in the same area yesterday, testing the custom music options. I was constantly pulling 3 mobs (to activate combat music), and checking the internet often (it was not working all the time). If I was banned because of that as a “bot”, I would not be a happy camper… At all…

Kidel.2057:

Kal.2376:

As a legit player, this would bother me immensely… I would prefer they actively go after people boting (GM stars a conversation with them), and not put an automatic solution that could bother legit players as well, while probably not stoping boting…

I understand the need to stop boting, but I value the need to not pointlessly bother legit players even higher.

If you are a legit player, why the hell are you not moving attacking mobs from your position for 30 minutes? And how is this even possible? lol.

That’s a very nice way to stop the botters. Good job.

As has already been mentioned, Botters are already 10 steps ahead of idle detection systems. When one is put in place they are ready with a work-a-round these work-a-rounds cause the developers to take another detection path, till eventually every action is registered as “bot behavior” This is why systems like this have failed in other games that have tried them. What may start as a non-intrusive anti-bot measure will rapidly evolve into an annoyance to legit players just trying to play the game.

I’ve already witnessed this first hand in other games, don’t bring this nightmare to GW2.

Kal.2376:

Kidel.2057:

Kal.2376:

As a legit player, this would bother me immensely… I would prefer they actively go after people boting (GM stars a conversation with them), and not put an automatic solution that could bother legit players as well, while probably not stoping boting…

I understand the need to stop boting, but I value the need to not pointlessly bother legit players even higher.

If you are a legit player, why the hell are you not moving attacking mobs from your position for 30 minutes? And how is this even possible? lol.

That’s a very nice way to stop the botters. Good job.

Bots are not perfect. I may be RPing, I may be testing weapons/skills (No need to go all over the map to test weapons/skills). There are a lot of things I could be doing that keep me in one place for 30 mins. It is my choice to stay in one place for 30 mins or not. If I want to stay in that place for 1 hour, that is my choice as well.

Bots can make mistakes anyway. I prefer they just hunt then down actively, instead of trying an automated solution that could be bothersome to real players.

I agree with you 100% automated anti-bot systems are never a good solution, they cause more harm to real players than they do to disrupt botting, additionally, a large number of gold-farmer “bots” aren’t actually bots.

OP, you are brilliant. This is an amazing idea, and I totally wouldn’t mind having this pop up on my screen after playing for three hours straight. :3

ArenaNet, please do this!

I think i should adress some concerns here. While i obviously have no controll over how F4-RM would be implemented, i personally would NEVER have it BAN people. It should be an automated ‘test’ for finding out if an account may run a bot and flag this account for further inspections….

Second, F4-RM could easily be programmed to give accounts an ‘inspected’ status, that could run for a certain period of time (even randomized), so that actual humans are bothered less for certain activity.

Certain activities could be exhumed from testing, like standing still in towns, or while doing certain activities, like using bank or w/e. In this regards i don’t think F4-RM should ever turn up when you are in ‘combat’ state. Unless it came with a way to instantly scare off any foes to a safe distance. and release you from it’s ‘grip’ with a clear warning. So even if foes would be within close to near agro range (while not drawing agro while in it’s grip) so you can leave this status undisturbed..

What i hear about runescape doesn’t realy sound like this idea, it sounds like triggered foe spawns that take you on for a fight. I wouldn’t wan’t F4-RM to fight, it should give you a puzzle that is currently near impossible to solve by a computer and thus determain if you are in fact a living entity, and not some ‘bot’. That is also why i am against it banning people! It should run off the actual bot detection software that is likely already in the game (or use parts of the DR system to construct such software), but this kind of software can only ‘detect’ possible botting, and afterwards there is nothing that can realy be done but inspect rigorously. So what F4-RM does is it actively tests (with a puzzle) if the character is run by a human, or not, and if not (or no response) it should merely kick the player to character selection. Depending on when this account logs on again, it should test again. If no response is made, or faulty responses, F4-RM should flag this account for that rigorous inspection.

So what it does is add a test, and a minor action. It could remember the status of an account to limit bugging accounts for every action that is bot suspicious. Because if you farm undead for an hour on end every day, and it tests you 2 times, it’s more than likely you are you, the 3rd and 4th time.

At ‘i rather have a pro-active approach’, well this costs resources, and those are limited, i rather have them deal with accounts that are flagged by F4-RM than dealing with every account that may have some sort of possible botting behavior. Which likely are loads more… F4-RM is a pro-active approach, as it is just a test that any bot-fighting department would like to run, aka. determain if it is a bot or not… With that partially automated the amount of accounts to truely look into get reduced considderably, and with it the chance to eliminate bots increases aswell… (also read on to the next)

In regards to ‘well bots will get smarter’, true, but bots will get smarter anyways, every year there is the ‘chat-bot’ challenge, if you ever heard of it, it’s a challenge to make a chatbot that can’t be distinquished from a human. Every year these get better and better, so realy, ‘talking to a person’ by a GM may soon be totally rediculous. Next to that there are programs under way to construct ever smarter computer, so they will come no matter what you do. That doesn’t mean though ‘we’ should stop now and deal with the bots we can deal with now. And even if it would eventually spawn a bot that is truely clever in dealing with these puzzles, well true that would suck, but then again it would also be incredible awesome. Now these bots will come anyways, regardless of our actions now, atleast we could say we contributed to them being developed and marvel at the possibilities the software could give in all sorts of usefull aplications. You just can’t stop the future, but you can stop a good deal of market destroying bots in the game now, and possibly discourage them from comming back for quite some time…
======
Some other stuff I been thinking most of the day about some Lore for F4-RM and i came up with a nice background for him/her/it. F4-RM was originally designed and build to research steam creatures in lonar's pass, but like many of Asuran tech, it takes a couple of versions to get things right. F4-RM was obviously version 4, of a Golem that is supposed to diagnose if an entity is truely a ‘living entity’ … I am not entirely sure which Asura (names) would be available to fullfill this role, but the lore surely lends itself for a now rouge Golem, with build in site to site transport, questioning creatures to determain if they are ‘living entities’

This is kind of a cool idea. I wouldn’t mind having a robot appear suddenly and being like
HALT MEATBAG
YOU ARE UNDER MY PROGRAMMER’S CONTROL
RIDDLE ME THIS OR YOU WILL BE PUNISHED
WHY IS A RAVEN LIKE A WRITING DESK

and no bot or chinese farmer will be able to answer that

If it attacks normal players, it might still be okay, because it’s Asuran, and they can’t wait to patronize the world beneath them (which is all of it)

lol, well i would have to actually read the answers to know the answer, cuz right now i’m sort of drawing a blank :P …

Another good indication i just picked up, characters that keep playing on end without fixing broken gear. And thus keep on fighting endlessly without any clothing… This should be excluded in dungeons obviously, and possibly in some events as well (i know atleast one where i died so many times that i was as good as naked for quite some time ) … but any human would likely fix their armor after those events. Bots are ‘stupid’ though (for now) and likely won’t fix their armor…

I’ve seen games where you could force someone to enter a captcha to prove they’re not botting.

Xetelian.9278:

I’ve seen games where you could force someone to enter a captcha to prove they’re not botting.

That would be kind of intrusive and immersion breaking. :/

I love the idea of the OP. +1 FOR GREAT JUSTICE!

This is a bad idea. People playing intoxicated will be banned.

I remember a similar strategy taking place in Unofficial RO servers where the devs created bot hunters – if you interact with it, a small message would appear which tells the player the item/monster is a bot hunter and warns the player to no longer interact with it. If a dumb player or an actual bot continues to mess with the bot hunter, their character would be transported to a ‘jail area,’ where they awaited the biased and, justified, prejudice wrath of the GM. All the while, the entire server would be pinged a small message “XXXX is a bot and is in the Jail Area. Feel free to go and poke fun at them.”

@Xetelian, was this player driven? aka could i force this captcha on you? because that be mighty annoying, and may well end up being used to troll people. Though in essence F4-RM would be somewhat of the same, only driven by behavior recognition software and it would offer a wide variety of mini-puzzles instead of a captcha.

@Houdini, i doubt that would happen to often, you would have to be mighty intoxicated all the time to fail simple tests. You would also have to act in a computer logic kind of way to trigger F4-RM to show up (which doesn’t sounds realistic along with the word ‘intoxicated’). Also, F4-RM would only flag an account, i am fairly sure that even if everything goes wrong, a human could distinguish between you behaving like a drunk idiot and a bot

@Actracts, hmm tricky, my curiosity would likely have me locked up there atleast once :P … and i don’t like to accuse people in public, it may only trigger people to behave in a different way, just because they saw an official looking server message telling everybody ‘you’ are a bot.

I have also realized by now, that F4-RM might not even have to ‘kick’ bots and players off after a failure to pass the test. As it may well turn out to be realy annoying for less fortunate people, it should just test an account after certain ‘behavior’ and F4-RM would perform a puzzle test, if the test itself fails, it should likely test again in a shorter period of time, and likely test a 3rd time. All this would do is ‘flag’ an account for further investigation. That would be the least intrusive and most immersion guarding behavior. It would just feel like a rouge random event for most, while still performing it’s bot-hunting tasks on the backend

EDIT I edited the OP to include some additional ideas that sprung up during discussion.

They should just work on detection. AI that detects bots (bots detecting bots?), but no action is taken. Just a flag is raised, and a GM can take action from there. I do not like being accused of boting when I’m there playing. Innocent until proven guilty. Just chasing people randomly will just bother more people, and do more harm than good…

op this is amazing and i think this might actually be a fun but efficient way to discourage botting

@Kal, the problem with just detection is that you can’t validate a ‘find’ easily, this is where F4-RM would come in. F4-RM is not there to accuse anyone, it’s just there to check if ‘you’ are a living entity, by providing a small puzzle for you to solve.

If you read the OP correctly this F4-RM bot would essentially be a random Dynamic Event, that should indeed ‘bother’ everybody every once a while. But behind the scenes it should hunt for Botters.

With F4-RM a more certain flag can be raised, and a GM doesn’t have to take action on every person that happens to get flagged. Instead F4-RM takes care of that portion, and the GM can deal with those characters that F4-RM determained to fail the ‘living entity’ test multiple times. This will mean the GM’s can spend their time on actual bots, instead of chasing every account behind the scenes. Which in turn means that it’s more likely that something is done about the actual bots.

+1 it seems like a really cool idea if implemented properly!

Awesome! if all off us support this to be every day on top we could get a real answer on it perhaps.

If I’ve seen this once I’ve seen it a hundred times before. Without the playing communities ability to police itself ergo a vigilante style system bots will consume all the resources within the game, they will control the economy. Arena.net cannot control the game inside the playing parameters sure they can flip a switch but the inmates will always rule to asylum and without a pvp switch this game is toast and a wholesale punishment of legitimate players will further exacerbate the problem.

Arghore.8340:

@Kal, the problem with just detection is that you can’t validate a ‘find’ easily, this is where F4-RM would come in. F4-RM is not there to accuse anyone, it’s just there to check if ‘you’ are a living entity, by providing a small puzzle for you to solve.

If you read the OP correctly this F4-RM bot would essentially be a random Dynamic Event, that should indeed ‘bother’ everybody every once a while. But behind the scenes it should hunt for Botters.

With F4-RM a more certain flag can be raised, and a GM doesn’t have to take action on every person that happens to get flagged. Instead F4-RM takes care of that portion, and the GM can deal with those characters that F4-RM determained to fail the ‘living entity’ test multiple times. This will mean the GM’s can spend their time on actual bots, instead of chasing every account behind the scenes. Which in turn means that it’s more likely that something is done about the actual bots.

This game doesn’t utilize Game Masters not in the traditional sense of the word anyway.