There are rather simple methods to reduce bots, competent ones even. honest
The number one counter against bots is human verification…
you add random factors to the game which a human wouldnt notice being to counter bots or would be bothered by.
A simple way for fishing would be a 0.1-2% chance to fish up a strange fish type enemy with moves not found elsewhere in the game.
make the enemy drop unique fish stuff/loot an players wont complain.
another would be having the warden system pay extra attention to players who do not take or do any quests.
Honestly speaking… any competent developer would be able to list 3-5 solid designs to counter obvious bots. the harder it is to make a functioning bot the less there will be and you will only need to focus on the advanced ones after which u can reverse engineer based on the sold bot systems…
The fact that there is an AFK timer is fine if it was properly implemented, but the fact is that it’s a very crude way to implement AFK check. It only checks player coordinates and not if player is browsing trade post or chatting or in war/invasion preparation etc… I second removing it until a proper AFK check can be added, this is just annoying to players as it is now. I know this was added because of long queue times and might have been done in a hurry. this needs to be implemented properly or disabled for now in my opinion.
Yes, punish the common player supporting this game for undetectable bot behavior. Makes sense. Its like in school when one kid messes up and the whole class has to skip recess and is punished. Why not just Ban the bots instead of logging them out?
Exactly. But they punish the poor players just looking through the auction house or storage unit. I’m all for random events, it gives regular players a reward while punishing the bots. Much better than punishing the regular player.
Yeah it was needed because they launched with not enough servers and people were afking so they wouldn’t face 5 hour que times. But after the new server roll out it should have been reverted. Its way less immersive when I feel I have to move every few seconds. Sometimes I like just looking at the scenery. Now I feel rushed all the time.
I’m sorry to saying this as bluntly as I do - but every time you guys mention any effort you do to battle bots, you seem more and more incompetent. This just adds to it.
AFK timer - A bot will easily avoid it by doing timed movements to avoid such things. I mean any 7 year old with Auto Hot Key can make a macro that moves your char back and forth every min.
Must be level 10 to trade away items
Must be 2 hours played and 72 hours old to chat
No Mail, and no way to send cash (being removed now)
All this and much more… to battle bots
To no avail. The bots still flourish , and the players are hurt.
No other mmorpg have such invasive anti QOL features - new players to the game will not understand why they cant communicate - cant ask for help etc. in the beginning.
And all of this does nothing to stop bots.
Bot runners will just make a bunch of accounts and have them on standby till they are needed. The first 2 hours of a game will be spent farming anyways.
And waiting 2 hours before they can spam gold selling sites is not a problem for a bot - but it is for a new player.
Just do your job, and manually follow up on reports.
Take the AFK thing on the AH - if you are actively searching in the ah, scrolling up and down, putting up stuff for sale, or buying stuff - you can’t possibly be afk. STILL you are being kicked for afk. Explain that to me - how does that deter anything but players? Bots will have mentioned timers that break out of the ah, move one step, then enter ah again if necessary.
Stop making hindrances in the game. You need to develop methods to detect the bots without putting up arbitrary rules to as to what can be done in the game and not. You seem to be detecting players with your changes, not bots…
Also unless a server is above 90% full ALL afk timers should just be disabled. Enable them when servers reaches a capacity that are on the verge to introduce queues - before then, no afk timers are needed.
The AFK timer angers me greatly when I’m actively surfing things in the Auction House… and suddenly see a “are you still there” message when I’m MANUALLY searching for something that I currently can’t actually search for by name in the Auction House (hopefully THAT will be fixed this patch at least)
Another thing that really grabs me wrong is when I try to post something in the Auction house and get told that my storage is full… I check my storage and I"m ~ 200-300 lbs under weight… but I’m full due to the number of unique items in my storage… (what the heck?!?)
The storage bug for items really makes me frustrated. I spent the money to have a larger house, and more storage boxes… but I can’t fully use the space due to a number of items limit?
As far as bot’s go… you should watch some of the videos about people following/finding bots. seems like there’s some pretty simple mechanic’s that many of the follow at this point related to turns, and zooming to specific targets all of the time.
The timers do literally nothing against the bots. Think about this logically devs. What purpose would there be to a bot that stands still? This was a counter strategy to the initial basic fishing bots. You’ve let this go on so long they are now following infinite gathering loops, returning to town, using storage and posting on trade. They also can do combat.
Every time I see this damn timer come up while I also see a gibberish name factionless bot walk up to my trading post I wonder who you’re really trying trying to impede, the bot or the player.
AFK timer. The update that nobody asked for.
The update that added more problems.
The update that fix 0 problems.
It kick me after a expedition sometimes.
It kicks me searching on trading, crafting… And you are saying that it is for prevent bot? REALLY? you have the same bots spaming the same message selling gold for weeks and you dont do nothing. AFK timers do nothing againts bots.
afk timer was never about bots as a bot does not stand still… it is literally the opposite of a bot… a bot moves in static manners pre-defined patterns based upon input which usually is a python script with image recognition based on colors etc.
but they do not stand still… that is the one thing bots do not do unless stuck in terrain in which case most bots would be instructed to use unstuck.
furthermore the auction is trash… i mean… it would take me roughly 30 minutes to make a random website with filter search 10 times better and more user friendly even tho it would be rather basic… their UI design team better not have any experience or knowledge since otherwise they would be an utter disgrace.
bots by definition dont stand still, so the afk time only catches bots stuck in terrain at best but 99% are players talking in voice before invasion/war or looking at auction.
they literally dont know what a bot is if they thought afk timer would counter them… it could only counter fish bots at best and those dont exist as fishing is worthless even the aptitude bags are trash.
It’s getting more than a little bit annoying that you guys continue to push “fixes” under the guise of “fighting bots”. Nothing you do really prevents bots, but consistently annoys the crap out of your active playerbase.
Fishing bots? “Let’s make it so if a player doesn’t move, they’ll get AFK kicked faster”. Result? Players now get kicked while browsing the auction house or taking a small coffee break. The bots? Implement a small side step as part of their bot fishing script. Followup fix: “Ah, but then we’ll remove the actual rewards from fishing. THAT will teach them”. You’re right, it will. Just not sure the lesson taught is the one you should aim for.
Duplication bugs? “Let’s disable all forms of wealth transfer for the 99% of people who never visit these forums and have no idea nor intention of exploiting the game”. Result? Everyone is inconvenienced while you guys clean up your mess. Duping, of course, still happened.
Gold spammers? “Let’s implement a clever system so that new accounts can’t write on chat channels”. Result? You fail to actually have any kind of connection between this chat system and the real player account data, so that when you leave OPR you’re banned from global chat (and trading, and, and, and…). Gold sellers just found a different outlet; like paid ads on YouTube videos.
Leading right into the incident where you falsely banned a legitimate player because of adspace sold by YouTube to be played during one of his videos.
Everything you’re doing here is targeting the wrong people.
Why not focus on the actual fixes people want, get that done. Instead of, each month, coming back here with an even longer list of bugs and an equally long list of apologies?
Not only that, but the bots that do get kicked—fishing and AH bots—simply log back in as part of their script and go back to what they were doing. If you watch fishing bots for a while, they don’t move around to beat the AFK timer, they just lay down (log out) when the timer is up and pop back in a few seconds later.
The kick is only hurting actual players while having zero (apart from a few lost seconds every 10 minutes) effect on the bots.
I never thought i’d get this much support for this. Thank you everyone. Hopefully we can get everything reverted so that we can have more QOL > ruining the gameplay for everyone.
omg…you must not list a ton of things at a time…i cannot tell you how many times ive been afk kicked while actively listing and sorting through trade post items. I have not gotten up or done anything else.
