Why Do Reported Bots Stay in Game?

[Barnard]

Why is it when I report obvious teleporting bots, they remain in game for weeks later? Tickets are filed, and closed by BioWare, yet the problems still remain. It is getting to the point where you can't even harvest anything in some areas because the bots are just taking every single node when they spawn. This is becoming disruptive to other players trying to level harvesting skills or gather resources for crafting.

 

BioWare, seriously hire 1 entry level position to police your servers. There's usually 10 bots per server in the same areas on the same planets on any given day. Be it the bots farming the hill on Ord Mantell to level up to spam the fleet, or the obvious level 48's on Rishi and Yavin gathering resources. There are some less obvious spaces like the heroic areas on Voss or the Black Hole farming kills for cash and drops, but we've all seen them and told you where they are. Put an end to it.

 

You wouldn't need to review the situation and try to setup some big time sting to break credit sellers every 6 months if you just did some daily cleanup work. The player base would be much more appreciative of it and it would have a bigger impact on credit sellers being removed from the game.

[Tobero]

Because a report/ticket is not conclusive evidence and also they will want to ban as many as possible simultaniously so the people behind the bots can't react. But that needs time. I don't have a link to their post but last time they banned thousands of accounts and deleted billions of credits from the game. Point is: They do take action from time to time. It's just not as simple as some people here believe it is. Imagine the *****torm if they'd ban normal users by mistake because they did not check the evidence thoroughly.

[psandak]

Because with a F2P model any single account that gets banned for botting is meaningless. That level 1 person you want, bans one character, the botter just makes another character. The ban is applied to an account, the botter just makes another account.

 

What you are failing to realize is that while there is no immediate result, someone (or more likely a small group) is in fact researching where those bots are coming from and are working to ensure that when they get banned they stay banned.

 

The same thing happens in big time MMOs like WoW: bots are reported and reported and reported and nothing happens...then 30 or 60 days later...BAM they're all gone.

 

Just because there is no instant result of reporting does not mean NOTHING is being done.

[Barnard]

Yes, but other games have historically used in game staff to monitor and react. When the same character has been online for days straight warping around, its pretty conclusive. You could police the blatant stuff and still investigate less obvious stuff. Busting hundreds of accounts once a year isn't as helpful as daily policing would be. These bots are having a negative impact on the game every day. Even if you bust them once a year, they are just back the next day and doing it again. Start taking action on a daily basis, and you will have a bigger impact on them and restore some normalcy for players. Edited March 1, 2016 by Barnard

[Barnard]

Because with a F2P model any single account that gets banned for botting is meaningless. That level 1 person you want, bans one character, the botter just makes another character. The ban is applied to an account, the botter just makes another account.

 

What you are failing to realize is that while there is no immediate result, someone (or more likely a small group) is in fact researching where those bots are coming from and are working to ensure that when they get banned they stay banned.

 

The same thing happens in big time MMOs like WoW: bots are reported and reported and reported and nothing happens...then 30 or 60 days later...BAM they're all gone.

 

Just because there is no instant result of reporting does not mean NOTHING is being done.

 

That would be great if BioWare actually took action frequenstly. I can only recall of 3-4 instances of mass banning by them since release. Even then, the botters are back again the next day. I was a volunteer GM for EQ and we could flag accounts and knock them offline. Verant/SOE staff would review marked accounts within minutes and take action. It was an effective system.

[psandak]

That would be great if BioWare actually took action frequenstly. I can only recall of 3-4 instances of mass banning by them since release. Even then, the botters are back again the next day. I was a volunteer GM for EQ and we could flag accounts and knock them offline. Verant/SOE staff would review marked accounts within minutes and take action. It was an effective system.

 

That was also back when "hardcore" gamers were the norm in MMOs and there was a lot more trust in player GMs.

Does any modern MMO have in game player moderators/GMs?

[Mirandel]

Because with a F2P model any single account that gets banned for botting is meaningless. That level 1 person you want, bans one character, the botter just makes another character. The ban is applied to an account, the botter just makes another account.

 

What you are failing to realize is that while there is no immediate result, someone (or more likely a small group) is in fact researching where those bots are coming from and are working to ensure that when they get banned they stay banned.

 

The same thing happens in big time MMOs like WoW: bots are reported and reported and reported and nothing happens...then 30 or 60 days later...BAM they're all gone.

 

Just because there is no instant result of reporting does not mean NOTHING is being done.

 

How do they do it? I mean, even in theory? Because what you described as a typical F2P sounds impossible to fight (though, have to confess, a permanent position of "bot-hunter" in every MMO still looks like a possibility. Sure, they will create a new account, but eventually they'll give up if you kill it on spot. At least I hope so)

[DawnAskham]

Because it appears they don't have any automated monitoring tools that can detect and action bots with reasonable certainty, and manually reviewing tickets and such is not something that can be done very efficiently, and requires resources of which they are notoriously thin.

 

And while conceptually it would not be difficult to create some machine learning algorithms which could monitor actions server side to detect and action bots in an automated manner, it could be very expense and difficult to develop and execute in reality due to technical limitations and server architecture.

[Max_Killjoy]

Because it appears they don't have any automated monitoring tools that can detect and action bots with reasonable certainty, and manually reviewing tickets and such is not something that can be done very efficiently, and requires resources of which they are notoriously thin.

 

And while conceptually it would not be difficult to create some machine learning algorithms which could monitor actions server side to detect and action bots in an automated manner, it could be very expense and difficult to develop and execute in reality due to technical limitations and server architecture.

 

The teleporting, at least, should be easy to detect -- if a character repeatedly moves large distances on the map in under a second, that should flag the character for investigation.

[RealOwl]

This is a serious issue for me also.

 

I see the same botters everyday, and everyday they take away some of the fun from my swtor experience, since i can't farm in Yavin IV anymore.

 

If the idea is to wait and apply a big banhammer from time to time, banning thousand at the same time, well ok... but it's not working as intended for me.

 

I mean, the issue is now... you devs should do something now.

 

I pay a timed subscription after all... who will compensate this time i'm having this issue?

 

I mean, just put some GM's who can flag people forcing them to click on a button or be kicked out. You will help some legit players this way.

[Warrgames]

That was also back when "hardcore" gamers were the norm in MMOs and there was a lot more trust in player GMs.

Does any modern MMO have in game player moderators/GMs?

 

Skyforge have player in game GM. They have limited abilities. They can't ban anyone.

 

On topic.

Ban a bot there is a new one tomorrow. Figure out how the bots works and plugging that loophole takes time.

Edited March 1, 2016 by Warrgames

[Djiini]

Man, the fact that not doing any crafting at all takes away all of the annoyance of bots really makes my day.

[harleyspringer]

Cutting my own throat here but,

Is there a chance that the "bots" are from the

game maker or someone in the ranks?

 

Reason why unknown...just asking.

Seems odd that you can program a game and

can not "fix" this issue.

 

I Have seen the same issues on Yavin for months.

 

Funny, if you go after them they act odd....if you kill them and

wait by the Pub side ... in my case....they respawn in about 10

seconds. kill again...same thing.

 

Expect the same issue in the Wild Sector soon

(death is a long nap for you)

[RealOwl]

Cutting my own throat here but,

Is there a chance that the "bots" are from the

game maker or someone in the ranks?

 

Reason why unknown...just asking.

Seems odd that you can program a game and

can not "fix" this issue.

 

I Have seen the same issues on Yavin for months.

 

Funny, if you go after them they act odd....if you kill them and

wait by the Pub side ... in my case....they respawn in about 10

seconds. kill again...same thing.

 

Expect the same issue in the Wild Sector soon

(death is a long nap for you)

 

I've to be honest, i've had the same thoughts after i reported the same bot for the third time. Guess it's legit to have some doubts at some point. Still i believe that's not the case... they are simply gathering info and proofs, so they can ban a large number at some point.

 

But again, how will we deal with the farming experience now? waiting isn't an option with a timed subscription.

Edited March 2, 2016 by RealOwl

[Mezarkan]

Cutting my own throat here but,

Is there a chance that the "bots" are from the

game maker or someone in the ranks?

 

Reason why unknown...just asking.

Seems odd that you can program a game and

can not "fix" this issue.

 

I Have seen the same issues on Yavin for months.

 

Funny, if you go after them they act odd....if you kill them and

wait by the Pub side ... in my case....they respawn in about 10

seconds. kill again...same thing.

 

Expect the same issue in the Wild Sector soon

(death is a long nap for you)

 

 

interesting theory. i just don't understand why the game makers take months to fix exploits like this.

[Zasszz]

Because a report/ticket is not conclusive evidence and also they will want to ban as many as possible simultaniously so the people behind the bots can't react. But that needs time. I don't have a link to their post but last time they banned thousands of accounts and deleted billions of credits from the game. Point is: They do take action from time to time. It's just not as simple as some people here believe it is.

Unfortunately this is nonsense that players just copy from spokespersons of the game companies.

 

It doesnt take time. All it takes is that the one handling the ticket takes a look at the reported char. Just watching the char operating for less than two minutes exposes the easy detectable bots. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out that a char that moves the same paths over and over cant be a real player.

 

Also simply removing this char doesnt tell the people behind it how they were detected in any way. Its only shows that the script is ineffective. The vast majority of those bots are people that only operate the tool using a prefabricated script. And until some wise guy comes up with programming random paths for farmbots such chars will be easily detectable by just observing them for two minutes.

 

Imagine the *****torm if they'd ban normal users by mistake because they did not check the evidence thoroughly.

Which happens in every banwave too. But it doesnt take much to determine if its a bot or not. Letting them continue for weeks and even months creates constant dungstorms in every infested MMO.

 

Also instantly banning a bot results in the removal of an income source for the botters, it removes the farmed credits and another account/char has to be bought/created which is profit for the game company. The excuse to let them continue to catch "the people behind the cots" is causing more damage then a simple two minute observation and instant removal. Purchasing a couple of chars after each banwave isnt as damaging to the botters as having to set up a new account every few days.

Edited March 2, 2016 by Zasszz

[Wolfgangpiffath]

They can't ban the ip from those bots or people behind ? I've seen they farming in Ilum too, where you have the heroic quest weekly, the spawns are fast and you can see usually 3-4 bots, killing everything around.

[Djiini]

It's really not a good use of their time.

[ChicksDigHarleys]

LOL they can't even ban credit seller bots in a timely fashion.

[Max_Killjoy]

They can't ban the ip from those bots or people behind

 

Who has a permanent IP?

 

Would be awesome to have the same ISP as a botter, and have the local service go down, and end up with the IP he used to have when everything resets...

[Quraswren]

LOL they can't even ban credit seller bots in a timely fashion.

 

Pretty much.

 

BW can't do much in a timely fashion.

[RealOwl]

Pretty much.

 

BW can't do much in a timely fashion.

 

This in a 2012 mmo, guess what.

[Unperson]

Just because there is no instant result of reporting does not mean NOTHING is being done.

 

The only way this works as an excuse is if they are also gathering data to plan a mass ban of the end recipients of the farmed credits. Which given the current state of the game, I doubt is something that aligns to their interests -- they'd be better off curbing offer than punishing demand.

 

I think this is just another facet of the understaffing that also contributes to other problems commonly discussed like poor QA, low content production rate, poor value, and so on. Acting on bot reports quickly should be a duty of in-game GMs, but that means they would need to hire more of them (I haven't seen any). Large companies strive to hire less, not more.

Edited March 2, 2016 by Unperson

[IanArgent]

Who has a permanent IP?

 

Would be awesome to have the same ISP as a botter, and have the local service go down, and end up with the IP he used to have when everything resets...

 

I do email antispam as part of my day job; and let me tell you, blocking malicious actors in an environment where there is no financial penalty to shedding and regenerating "accounts" is Hard. Blocking/banning accounts is and will always be, a game of whack-a-mole at best. It's not a job suited for automation, and it's a job where the malicious actors outnumber by orders of magnitude the defensive team. And mechanical defenses against gold sellers have to include not damaging the overall economy in their own design.

 

I'm beginning to think that the dev team is accepting some inflation to make credit selling less profitable; I believe I mentioned this upthread. "Normal" players don't care (as much) about inflation, because they don't have a lot of "savings" or "basic cost of living expenses."But inflation hurts the credit sellers, since they are in competition with the "free" credit fountains. The more credits/hour of playing the game you can earn, the less desirable paying money to the credit vendors is.

[peter_plankskull]

The only way this works as an excuse is if they are also gathering data to plan a mass ban of the end recipients of the farmed credits. Which given the current state of the game, I doubt is something that aligns to their interests -- they'd be better off curbing offer than punishing demand.

 

Even waiting to ban all of them at once doesn't work either... bots will always find a way to come back, no matter what. Look at a game called Runescape, it was shown that literally 40% of the population playing the game were actually bots, compared to the rest which were actual players. I uh.... I don't feel like searching through the forums of a game I haven't played in years... so you... uh... gotta... take my word for it...

....

.......

But the point here is that game is roughly I think 17 years old at this point, and its ALWAYS had bots, yet they didn't come around to much till the 8th year but since then, they been a plague to the game. They tried mass ban waves all at once and it didn't work, bot activity was the same a few months later, and it took several months to mass ban them up to that point.

 

Banning all of them at once isn't going to work well, its better to squish them early on as it costs more and is harder to maintain bot activity. Would you really want to keep setting up your bot program every other day? having to rebuy a account, and set up the programs? Or would you prefer to check in once a month and then rebuy the account, all while amassing tons of credits and profiting off it.