25 replies to this topic

[KingOnigami]

You'll have to excuse me since this is my first post and I don't usually visit forums to post unless it's a serious matter I feel is worth my time. But onto my question...

Why are there so many bots on iRO? Every time I go on a hunt for a monster on my TaeKwon, I see a mob (and I do mean mob) of players with strange names and acting like botters. Usually a butt load of Rogues and Thieves, low levels in groups of 5-7 just straight mobbing monsters.

If botting is illegal, how in the world do you report these players? How do you even detect them using a bot, and why is there so many?

It's just crazy how many "fhjgf" players I see spamming it up in town or in a dungeon. And those advertisers are such a pain, I can't even bother myself to try and talk to someone in Prontera because of them, it's futile. I've even seen people asking about bots. Any help on how to report these players would be nice.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, I play on the server Valkyrie.

Edited by KingOnigami, 31 May 2011 - 01:10 PM.

[nein]

Why are there so many bots on iRO?

From the point of view of computer technology, it is currently impossible to prevent botting 1) in any game and program and 2) on any platform (pc, consoles, online, offline). So the Valkyrie server was created to attract (not confine) botters by making it free to play. Keep them away from the real servers.

Reporting is a good thing, but do you even realize how much work it is to read the tickets, stalk these botters and banish them? The effort is enormous.

[Akihiro]

You'll have to excuse me since this is my first post and I don't usually visit forums to post unless it's a serious matter I feel is worth my time. But onto my question...

Why are there so many bots on iRO? Every time I go on a hunt for a monster on my TaeKwon, I see a mob (and I do mean mob) of players with strange names and acting like botters. Usually a butt load of Rogues and Thieves, low levels in groups of 5-7 just straight mobbing monsters.

If botting is illegal, how in the world do you report these players? How do you even detect them using a bot, and why is there so many?

It's just crazy how many "fhjgf" players I see spamming it up in town or in a dungeon. And those advertisers are such a pain, I can't even bother myself to try and talk to someone in Prontera because of them, it's futile. I've even seen people asking about bots. Any help on how to report these players would be nice.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, I play on the server Valkyrie.

A lot of it is due to the fact that anyone can make an account and play on Valkyrie without paying even a cent. It's to the point where banning the bots is futile because they just reproduce themselves so fast. If you're not into the game too far, might you consider moving to Ymir? You need to be VIP to create a character there, but once it expires, you don't lose access to your characters.

Edited by Akihiro, 31 May 2011 - 01:21 PM.

[KingOnigami]

From the point of view of computer technology, it is currently impossible to prevent botting 1) in any game and program and 2) on any platform (pc, consoles, online, offline). So the Valkyrie server was created to attract (not confine) botters by making it free to play. Keep them away from the real servers.

Reporting is a good thing, but do you even realize how much work it is to read the tickets, stalk these botters and banish them? The effort is enormous.

Why don't they make a particular forum specifically for people to report botter names? Or suspected botters? They could upload screen shots of a few of them, it's not hard to capture names through that. Maybe I'm misunderstanding. Botters can pretty much get away with it now? I've seen level 99 Rogues just hamming it up, which made me think they may have been using some really slick program.

What's this "ticket" stuff about? Is it like those tickets to change clothing colors and such?

A lot of it is due to the fact that anyone can make an account and play on Valkyrie without paying even a cent. It's to the point where banning the bots is futile because they just reproduce themselves so fast. If you're not into the game too far, might you consider moving to Ymir? You need to be VIP to create a character there, but once it expires, you don't lose access to your characters.

I most likely would do this. But I enjoy having a lot of players around and I've seen those numbers only in the 100's (although most of the players, like 1000 of them are probably botters on Valkyrie). The economy makes it slightly easier for me to acquire the gear I want as well, although it'd take me forever to get the zeny. So playing on a server I'd need a small subscription to play on first would probably never happen. Dealing with the botters and having a *little* fun is better than dealing with few players and feeling like I'm back on a small server where I'm practically ignored and the item hunting sucks. No offense.

[DrAzzy]

The open/free servers are infested with bots, because we're in the crosshairs of the the chinese game offices. Ymir has far less botting, because the char creation paywall keeps out most of the bots.

[Chucklet]

If botting is illegal, how in the world do you report these players? How do you even detect them using a bot

What's this "ticket" stuff about? Is it like those tickets to change clothing colors and such?

Since I'm not sure this was completely explained...:

If you find a certain player that is completely unresponsive, KS'ing or just a huge group of jkhkjhjk players in a map, the official thing to do is sending in a ticket via this website: https://support.warpportal.com/ (under ill-mannered activity). Give the server name, map name and if you can character names (and maybe class+headgear, if it's a single bot (also, right-clicking can be helpful for warp bots)). You will soon figure out which are bots and which are normal players, their behavior is quite noticable. Like said, the tickets are not instant and require alot of manpower, but bot reports do get priority. Just try not to send in too many tickets at once (or containing only 1 player), so as to save on the time they have to spend digging through the piles of tickets.
If you feel direct action is needed you could theoretically pm a GM on the forums (like Oda) to get quicker results, but most of the time they do require a ticket number (as you can send screenshots with that etc.). In any case, bots are not reported on the forums, those post will get deleted.

There is one other problem that has been mentioned above, Valkyrie/Ygg are open servers which means the bots are pretty much able to return instantly. It makes reporting them a fruitless issue in the eyes of alot of people, but in the end I think that if nobody reports bots, nothing is done anyway... So if you see bots, report! Joining Ymir is a good way to get rid of alot of bots (but sadly we DO have some bots too), imho it's very much worth the 1 time payment (besides the fact that being VIP has sweet benefits).

I hope this was somewhat informative.

[KingOnigami]

Since I'm not sure this was completely explained...:

If you find a certain player that is completely unresponsive, KS'ing or just a huge group of jkhkjhjk players in a map, the official thing to do is sending in a ticket via this website: https://support.warpportal.com/ (under ill-mannered activity). Give the server name, map name and if you can character names (and maybe class+headgear, if it's a single bot (also, right-clicking can be helpful for warp bots)). You will soon figure out which are bots and which are normal players, their behavior is quite noticable. Like said, the tickets are not instant and require alot of manpower, but bot reports do get priority. Just try not to send in too many tickets at once (or containing only 1 player), so as to save on the time they have to spend digging through the piles of tickets.
If you feel direct action is needed you could theoretically pm a GM on the forums (like Oda) to get quicker results, but most of the time they do require a ticket number (as you can send screenshots with that etc.). In any case, bots are not reported on the forums, those post will get deleted.

There is one other problem that has been mentioned above, Valkyrie/Ygg are open servers which means the bots are pretty much able to return instantly. It makes reporting them a fruitless issue in the eyes of alot of people, but in the end I think that if nobody reports bots, nothing is done anyway... So if you see bots, report! Joining Ymir is a good way to get rid of alot of bots (but sadly we DO have some bots too), imho it's very much worth the 1 time payment (besides the fact that being VIP has sweet benefits).

I hope this was somewhat informative.

It was helpful but... don't they use some sort of program to find 3PP players? Like Blizzard when it uses Warden? Or is that not possible with RO? I think they run on completely different settings, since Blizzards Diablo and Warcraft are on its own private server.

[Chucklet]

I think it's the way that RO works that makes it hard for a program to spot 3rd party programs (as they can be run client sided without even actually accessing the client itself). That is why Gravity relies on ingame reports. There are some safety issues built in the RO client to keep people from doing too much iffy stuff (like sending packets that don't belong or sending packets too fast) but they are far from foolproof (as 'recent issues' on the forums have shown). There have been some serious attempts to prevent botting, like GameGuard. But mostly those caused serious lag or were only bothering the real players.
I'm just happy that some players (myself included) consider it their sacred duty to send in the occasional bot report to help keep the server clean. It's so very satisfying to have that 3rd class char that bots on obscure maps/dungeons banned...

I'm quite sure that if Gravity had a multi million playerbase there would be some better (and thus costlier) security, but there is just no comparing to the security measures a company like Blizzard uses.

[DrAzzy]

Contributing factors:

1. RO was poorly designed - it failed to observe the first rule of online systems: Never trust the client. The server responds poorly to unexpected input from the client.

2. These problems are unique to iRO - most other national RO's either have given up and allow botting (pRO, mRO) or require their nation's equivilent of a SSN in order to register an account. Since iRO is international, and because americans wouldn't share an SSN anyway, we can't do that here. Hence, the developers (based in korea, and closely tied to kRO) are not very motivated to address the problem.

3. RO is a small game, compared to the major titles, so aggressive automated bot detection software is out of reach.

Edited by DrAzzy, 01 June 2011 - 07:10 AM.

[SirDouglas]

Brazilian Ragnarok (bRO) is much worse.

[DrAzzy]

Brazilian Ragnarok (bRO) is much worse.

They're one of the ones that gave up on it, imo.

[KingOnigami]

How do you know if they're bots? Aside from the obvious "gfgjd" names? If you have no program, how would you detect a bot that's got a better name or in a guild?

[DrAzzy]

I can think of a few nice ways to do it (several of them fairly easy to implement, assuming access to the logs), but i don't think it responsible to post them here. Botters read these forums.

[KingOnigami]

I can think of a few nice ways to do it (several of them fairly easy to implement, assuming access to the logs), but i don't think it responsible to post them here. Botters read these forums.

Well, reading around it seems like some players who aren't even botting get banned, or "prohibited" from logging on. Just sounds like the only way really is through word-of mouth. Photos and a small report of a bot, when it could just be a player who doesn't speak english.

Perhaps I'm being a little naive but there doesn't seem to be any other way besides that to detect if someone is botting or not. The captcha idea seems plausible, really, from what I read, but on smaller servers they would pause the maps and have players "report" in to a GM. On such a large server here, I doubt that would be mildly possible.

I imagine even if you were using an auto-mated code, you'd still be stuck wondering if it mixed something up a time or two and got the wrong player banned. But then again... players can mix things up too.

EDIT: I should have clarified, other than the obvious ways a person is botting, like 10 hour runs in the same area non-stop. (even though I've been known to do 2-4 hour runs in 1 area doing kills for my TK mission, due to other players hunting the same mob, or a low spawn rate)

Edited by KingOnigami, 01 June 2011 - 11:42 AM.

[Oda]

The tests that the GM Team performs would get a response from a real player, even if they do not speak English. The issue with people reporting suspensions here are that an account can be locked down for a multitude of reasons, of which botting is only one. We have locked accounts connected to bots, accounts that were hacked and needed protection, accounts that had an glitch that we needed to inspect or for some other kind of ill mannered activity.

Screenshots alone will not result in a suspension for third party program usage.

[KingOnigami]

The tests that the GM Team performs would get a response from a real player, even if they do not speak English. The issue with people reporting suspensions here are that an account can be locked down for a multitude of reasons, of which botting is only one. We have locked accounts connected to bots, accounts that were hacked and needed protection, accounts that had an glitch that we needed to inspect or for some other kind of ill mannered activity.

Screenshots alone will not result in a suspension for third party program usage.

I see.

I did see something interesting in Morroc yesterday while I was trying to find a new monster to hunt for my TK mission. There were a lot of bots in a neat little square and while I was sitting with another player, I seen them all log off simultaneously. The player mentioned they were "recalled" to their master, or something. I didn't catch any names or anything, but they were by the spawn point of Morroc. I've seen things like this in Izlude too, do you guys travel from town to town to spot that sort of "gathering"?

[DrAzzy]

Of course the GMs ban squares of obvious bots. In fact, that could have been what happened when they all DC'ed at once (it was either that, or the owner's internet connection dropping, or the owner deciding to shut down those bots for whatever reason).

Edited by DrAzzy, 01 June 2011 - 01:01 PM.

[Drak231]

I still don't understand why you don't implement an automated system where players vote against other players...

Like you can up a player and state the reason why or down a player and state the reason why. The GMs could than easily ban people by seeing a created section when down-rating the player like "this player is a bot".

I already suggested something similar and I don't think it would be so hard to implement...

[KingOnigami]

I still don't understand why you don't implement an automated system where players vote against other players...

Like you can up a player and state the reason why or down a player and state the reason why. The GMs could than easily ban people by seeing a created section when down-rating the player like "this player is a bot".

I already suggested something similar and I don't think it would be so hard to implement...

That sounds like it could be easily abused by people who want to just get someone banned.

[Drak231]

That sounds like it could be easily abused by people who want to just get someone banned.

Why would a bunch of people want to ban a specific person?

[DrAzzy]

Why would a bunch of people want to ban a specific person?

Can't tell if you're trolling or naive here... Assuming the latter, you havn't seen drama yet have you? Plain old guild rivalry and people with bad attitudes are enough that people would stoop to trying to get people they dislike banned, and that's before you even consider relationships....

[KingOnigami]

Can't tell if you're trolling or naive here... Assuming the latter, you havn't seen drama yet have you? Plain old guild rivalry and people with bad attitudes are enough that people would stoop to trying to get people they dislike banned, and that's before you even consider relationships....

One thing I loathe about this game more than anything is those damn "online relationships".

I blame the marriage capabilities in-game. It's like 10 year olds playing "house" and taking it literal.

[DrAzzy]

One thing I loathe about this game more than anything is those damn "online relationships".

I blame the marriage capabilities in-game. It's like 10 year olds playing "house" and taking it literal.

It's not in-game marriage that causes all the crap. It's the stuff that happens in the vent rooms and skype with webcams - soon as the relationship ends, bang, the nudes are making the rounds! Usually ends because one of them takes the relationship really seriously, while the other thinks of it as just an online thing, and the first person gets all pissed off that they're being cheated on, or whatever.

That said, i know of at least one couple that married irl who met on RO...

[KingOnigami]

It's not in-game marriage that causes all the crap. It's the stuff that happens in the vent rooms and skype with webcams - soon as the relationship ends, bang, the nudes are making the rounds! Usually ends because one of them takes the relationship really seriously, while the other thinks of it as just an online thing, and the first person gets all pissed off that they're being cheated on, or whatever.

That said, i know of at least one couple that married irl who met on RO...

The same thing happened on Diablo II. I remember seeing the banners about it a long time ago. But one success story does not mean everyone will be able to find love. The same rules apply to online dating sites, I think. One success story doesn't dictate all will be guaranteed to find love.

Well, this chat turned a quick pace, didn't it? From botting to relationships in-game. Lol.

[Drak231]

I see.... the thing about relationship would be only one person and perhaps some of his friends voting -1, but it wouldn't lead to a ban. But I can see entire guilds voting against someone which is powerful or whatever else reason...

If the system recognize who voted and from which guild they are, then the GMs could perhaps see that something is wrong?