Bot Control Plan?

[eightball5549]

First off, let me say, I'm totally jazzed about everything I've seen about Aion thus far. My biggest concern though, is still that NCSoft's track record for moderating and reining in bots and rampant cheating, especially in the Lineage games, is not very good. This game looks gorgeous and well-made. I'm DYING to play it.

But...I don't know how I'll feel about paying the kind of money they'd want for a game that may just be overrun by bots by the time it's actually released to the US. I realize hacking and cheating exists in every MMO but Lineage and L2 were particularly bad on this. Anyone know if the devs have said anything about whether Aion will be different or how this issue will be addressed? I'd hate to see what looks like a gorgeous game brought down by lack of moderation or a plan for rule enforcement.

[Calindor]

Theres a lot of good features...first off its open pvp based like L2 is, yet the enemy race can kill you without consequence. That will put a stop in the best areas, but I suppose there is nothing you can do against bots in you own factions territories. However, when you farm a type of mob too long, it will eventually grow stronger and stronger until you cannot kill it...because with a questing based system there is no reason to farm the same area for 1 hour +. There were some pretty advanced scripts for L2walker that allowed it to complete hour or even 5 hour long quests for you, but those are the class change quests that everyone had to do...so they would be more common. If someone is botting for their own benefit of exp and not farming, its not a really big deal...the problem is bot trains and groups of bots that farm raid bosses and the best areas...If questing is the way to make money, then bots wouldn't have much use except for repeatable ones...and htey could easily implement a system that wouldnt allow big money bonuses from repeatable quests.

I think the bot problem would be somewhat like WoW...just bots in towns yelling and shouting stuff, not many bots that farm.

Personally I think the best way (I know I've said it before) is the L2p server I play on. The head dev coded the bot programming into the game emulator (l2walker, and 1 other bot program, i cant think of the name). It makes your game always think the bot program is running, so when you try to run it yourself it says its always running. It seems like a simple solution, but its tested and true after 15 months of the server's life....I even have a guy in my clan with a degree in Computer Sciences and he couldn't find a way to get around the coding (the game wont let you connect with any altered files except options), however he did find a way to get out of game (you cant see what's going on in the game) botting to work, but that is extremely risky, because all it takes is 1 player to see you, alert a GM, and you lose everything....When I was first moving to the server my clan had about 60-70 people coming, when they realized they couldnt bot the number dropped to about 20 :O...I have been playing there for over a year, and have never seen 1 single bot.

[Akaris]

The problem with that is that most likely there will be many different bots for the game. Maybe hundreds. Aion is going to be a high profile game. It would take wayyyyy too much space to download all of those into the game to trick the bots.

[danstaff]

Can't get rid of currency farming or buying. It will always be there. If theres a demand...someone will supply it.

Hopefully botting will be countered a little more than it was in L2. Wasn't some form of botting actually condoned in L2???

I remember some situations like... buff bots as long as they were away from battle and "stationed" somewhere out of action?

[Calindor]

Originally Posted by Akaris

The problem with that is that most likely there will be many different bots for the game. Maybe hundreds. Aion is going to be a high profile game. It would take wayyyyy too much space to download all of those into the game to trick the bots.

The whole bot program doesnt go into the game, just coding to make the game think its running. Its minimal...probably less than 1mb of space, L2walker itself is only 10mb. All it takes is an active dev team to do the job.
In L2 there are only 2 or 3 bot programs I've heard of, sure if one gets stopped, maybe someone will make a new one...but its not something a guy just spends a weekend in his bedroom to make. When l2walker first came out, it was a long time before it was easily accessible. You had to pay hundreds to buy it, so mainly Asian adena selling companies owned it. It took quite a while before it was mainstream and easily accessible in the game.
If a bot program comes out, the dev team gets their hands on it, alters the game to stop that specific program (no ****ing gameguard or stupid programs like that, do the work yourself). It will be a while before a new one is found/made...and if a trend like that continues, people might realize it is futile. Even if it doesnt completely eliminate the problem, it would reduce it to an amount where only a few people/companies have a hold of the program, because if they spread it around, it would increase the chances it's detected and fixed.
In L2 right now, any one of you can install the guy, get l2walker with some decent google skills and start botting away as easy as that, if it was reduced like above where people who made one would fear spreading it around, I would say the problem is 95% solved.

[Riku]

you get banned for botting you should have to buy a new CD for 50 bucks inorder to play again, that will get rid of gold bots and most of the player bots.

[RenegadeAngel]

Not quite. I heard from a GM of another game that with P2P games often the CD key as well as the monthly fees are often paid for with bogus or stolen credit cards, which leads to chargebacks, which leads to the company who owns the MMORPG being screwed out of their money.

[OwnYa]

Bots are no Problem i think NcSoft has some nice Tracking Systems For that

Like AutoPickMessage Explain: when someone say i use Bot[something like that] It trace u'r name and u get a waring
@ the 3e Warning u get a 2 week ban or soemthing like that and when u get warned again ul get banned

But 0x33 comes to Aion 2 The Makers of Softmod @ Sro and they are very handy with Programming this stuf so there will be bots in 2 months after release

And U Also Got a Programm it Checks u'r Ping They make a Copy of all pings in the first week ( No one Go bot Directly)
Then When the Ping Goes Higher THey Do a Check and when they find bot u get banned but all games get fked up by bots so i hope they got some good Programs for it i dont wanna see this game die Like Cabal

[Kitten]

I think it depends on whether or not the company will make more money from them NOT finding a solution to rid the servers of bots.. Thats what it came down to for FFXI, they didn't start getting rid of bots until large amounts of people canceled their subscriptions because of it.
Any good programmer can easily plant things into their game to prevent bots.. Its just whether they make more money from leaving the bots or not. Sadly. :[

[Snowy]

The harder it is for people to bot, the better it is for the game. It's true that you can't get rid of bots completely, doesn't mean the GMs can't do everything they can to make it hard for people to bot.

I like Riku's idea. If you get caught botting, say byebye to $50 bucks and the character.

<3

[danstaff]

Originally Posted by Snowy

The harder it is for people to bot, the better it is for the game. It's true that you can't get rid of bots completely, doesn't mean the GMs can't do everything they can to make it hard for people to bot.

I like Riku's idea. If you get caught botting, say byebye to $50 bucks and the character.

<3

50$ may be worth it if a farmer can sell the currency for 100$+ and then sell the chr for 100-200 before they have time to ban it.

But yea... if ncsoft is making money fromthe botters i hope they choose to fight it harder rather than let it go for their own pocketbooks.

[Maximus]

If you can easily bot to gain exp or currency, this game will die like Lineage II did. End of story to be honest. The shouting like in WoW isn't so bad, people can tolerate that. Legit players who EARN there exp by playing the game how it was meant to be played will always lose to those who cheat. Eventually all the legit players pack there bags and head back to WoW and all the cheaters are left to eventually be caught cheating and either quit or continue.

[Calindor]

Originally Posted by Riku

you get banned for botting you should have to buy a new CD for 50 bucks inorder to play again, that will get rid of gold bots and most of the player bots.

thats what happens in L2...the question is do they ban you or not. If you get caught your account is deleted.

Originally Posted by Kitten

I think it depends on whether or not the company will make more money from them NOT finding a solution to rid the servers of bots.. Thats what it came down to for FFXI, they didn't start getting rid of bots until large amounts of people canceled their subscriptions because of it.
Any good programmer can easily plant things into their game to prevent bots.. Its just whether they make more money from leaving the bots or not. Sadly. :[

L2 took that short sighted goal of bots = more accounts/money. But the game went on a downwards spiral and is close to dead right now except for a few servers. While WoW, almost as old is still growing. I only hope they choose quality of gameplay as a long term choice to make money rather than short term bots = money.

[Otium]

A good system for players to use in order to report bots to the GMs would work fine in my perspective.

[SoraNashimi]

Well one thing that will screw the bots over is the Abyss =p, thats where you get all the best xp, gold, and everything else down there, and its both pvp and pve so really bots aren't safe down there hahahaha, start farming, opposite faction spots an easy kill, you can say goodbye to being alive hehe.
Also maybe they should change Gameguard >.>, I heard it was horid and didn't exactly protect the game from those types of things
Also another thing is I think they have a special team to track them down, pretty sure I read that somewhere =p