Bot related topics

Is it possible to report things that are not necessarily "illegitimate", but strongly suggestive of botting? For instance:

http://ragial.com/sh...alkyrie/4052307

It's basically a merchant, HampasLupa, selling the following:

Flora Card 32x
Dead Branch 351x
Elder Branch 9x
Green Ale 465x
Savage Meat 17x
Snake Card 235x
Spore Card 67x
Rough Elunium 136x
Wormtail Card 58x
Alligator Card 127x

True, it could be a conglomeration of the efforts of many newbs, or the savvy trading of a merchant. But... maybe not? So what are the odds that this could be handled? And if we cut suspicious activites at the marketplace... can that stem the tide of bots? At least those of the zeny farming/item farming sort?

Yeah, we don't want to get too close to the line - I myself have come across a number of cards; I don't want to be accused of botting after saving them up for years and then selling them at once. But the instance above - probably pretty far from the line, if you ask me. Maybe the GM's can put together some resources and be able to track where people are getting their items - yes, basically a backlog to investigate when players draw their attention to suspicious merchant activity. Overall, this may end up netting more bots than going after the bots individually, no?

Omg i saw him too, maybe i saved a screenshot somewhere. last i check his vend, it had more than so many cards!!.

Edited by kati3, 26 June 2011 - 04:34 AM.

Found it!

A good stratergy would be to first check player vendors and determine if further investigation for that character is needed.
For example, if GM's see that a certain merchant has many of a certain card [not 1 or 2 cards. But it also depends on monster density in RO and if those monsters are easily hunted] then check the logs and see where those items came from. A player vending 200+ dead branches etc should be checked as to where those dead branches came from, and that way a whole family of bots could be banned.
For players buying the dead branches via buy shop etc it shouldnt be a huge problem since a number of different players would be selling the dead branches via buy shop. A botter would have one or multiple bots supplying them the items and those same characters appearing in the trade logs over and over again.
blah blah blah this might be time consuming etc etc but with some help from players taking one screenshot, a number of bots could be banned.

sry about bringing this topic back to life, but bots are a seriously problem.
Take a look on how many rogues wearing caps are out there with suspicious nicknames:
http://ropd.info/?s=...=level&dir=desc
I bet that most of them in the first page are bots. Botters became so lazy that they don't even try to disguise bots anymore (having random combination of letters and characters for the name and same equips for their bots...)

*Well, for the moment, I believe that the best we can do is to pm Oda when we spot a bot and send him their name(s)

sry, I just had to show you this link, cuz the other day I was doing the turnin event at the Alarms, and that place was filled w/ bots (all of them were rogues wearing the same cap)...

I know reporting and using tickets is ABSOLUTELY useless, because all the bots that I have reported still bot 24/7 on the same map. Bots have clearly won.

Even major city maps such as Prontera and Payon are full of zeny selling advertisements, surely that should be moderated every once in a while? We have bots flooding public chats and bots running around every map I go wherever I level. I trained to level 60 single handedly and have never seen a map without bots.

I agree with the suggestion to implement a community effort to weed out bots. GMs can only do that much, so give players some power to remove the bots !

Even major city maps such as Prontera and Payon are full of zeny selling advertisements, surely that should be moderated every once in a while? We have bots flooding public chats and bots running around every map I go wherever I level. I trained to level 60 single handedly and have never seen a map without bots.

I agree with the suggestion to implement a community effort to weed out bots. GMs can only do that much, so give players some power to remove the bots !

Have you never seen a GM walk around and perma-mute all the spammers? It happens, but they can't walk around every city and mute every spammer every single day on every single server just to make a few people happy. Spammers can be dealt with by the players with 2 mouse clicks.

Bots on the other hand ARE being dealt with. Think of it like this:

If you cut down a tree in a forest with no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?
If you ban 100/1000 bots that can just come back tomorrow...

Names like: afnjkdasfas are all over the place, and just cause you ban afnjkdasfas doesn't mean afnjkdasfas2 won't appear tomorrow.

GMs are doing their best!

Notify a map is to be shut down in so and so minutes, don't tell them for how long. When it comes back up randomly (So that no one is waiting to log in right when it comes up), ban all the people that log on instantly and that start killing right away.

Sort of like dealing with those vendor bots in prontera. The map shouldn't be down for over an hour, of course.

Edited by Alumni, 11 July 2011 - 11:49 PM.

I just wanted to say that I've seen bots around - but a LOT less than I was before. And the spamming seems to have subsided a bit. Yeah, they aren't completely gone, but it seems to be better...

Admins, if you had anything to do with this - we thank you! Keep up the good work.

I have been playing RO for YEARS now and I was part of the beta of iRO. I would hate to play devil's advocate but as much as everyone would complain about bots they are a large source of items that are sold in the merchants and without their existence items would be a LOT more expensive than they are and are lot less available.

Also the fact that mobs respawn instantly on the map means that they don't do any damage to our farming unlike other games like WoW where you need to sit around waiting for mobs to respawn.

So I can complain and report them to a GM but really...I will be the one who is hurt in the long run and I think the GM's see this and ban bots only to make face with the community. The ones we need to focus on IMO is spammers which are annoying as hell!

Edited by Muramas, 18 July 2011 - 06:16 AM.

There is one idea that I have come across in my years of RO that can take the bot market on Valkyrie down as drastically as you would like it: Require a subscription to make new chars on Valkyrie server.

That simple fact is the difference between Ymir and Valk. Try out Ymir. See the difference.

@Muramas

This is a typical pro-bot argument. The fact is, at some point, said items will be more valuable for normal players to hunt. More players will do it. I've always liked the idea of RO's system of high level players needing a steady supply of items from low level maps. It helps keep the zeny flowing, and the new players well equipped. Also, you're not telling us all about how bots sell crap to NPC creating more zeny in the market...artificially inflating OUR zeny so that it's worth less. No thanks.

@Muramas

This is a typical pro-bot argument. The fact is, at some point, said items will be more valuable for normal players to hunt. More players will do it. I've always liked the idea of RO's system of high level players needing a steady supply of items from low level maps. It helps keep the zeny flowing, and the new players well equipped. Also, you're not telling us all about how bots sell crap to NPC creating more zeny in the market...artificially inflating OUR zeny so that it's worth less. No thanks.

I think your logic is a bit flawed

Zeny's value isnt "worth less", items cost is less because more are available and more items can be moved. The botters's don't get all the zeny, the players who are selling items get the botter's zeny.

Lets say someone had 8m and a botter had 20m you vend an item that is 10M the guy with only 8M can't buy it and the botter can, he buys it and you make 10M. The other guy does not LOOSE 8M he still has it and can either wait for more zeny or wait for a sale.
Now lets say you put it at 10M and the botter is gone your item sits there at 10M never being sold until you either have to wait until someone makes more zeny to buy said item or you take a cut loosing 2M zeny trying to sell the item. Now if you sold it for less you are now even farther down the hole because other items cost more because they are more rare and you need to get even more to catch up.

Also lets put this in reverse, say you want to buy an item and You have 8M, you see people vending it for 10~12M you can't buy it and there is only 1~2 stores both selling for 10~12M
Now lets say there are more people with the items, instead of it being worth 10M the price will fluctuate to around 8~10M.

From selling to stores the botter can then by other people's stuff like the stuff you or I will vend giving us the zeny letting us buy something from someone else like the low level players who are trying to sell quest items or low mob cards. The wheel turns.

In a game like this, more is better. Having less people and less items really really hurts the economy and I don't want to spend forever farming items to find I am still a lot short because no one is vending.

Edited by Muramas, 18 July 2011 - 08:46 AM.

I see what muramas is trying to say, here is how i'm reading it:

Botter sells item at 10m
You buy item at 10m

Botter is later banned.
You keep the item.

10m has now dissipated from the server.

I don't see how you lose anything, all bots are caught sooner or later.

I see what muramas is trying to say, here is how i'm reading it:

Botter sells item at 10m
You buy item at 10m

Botter is later banned.
You keep the item.

10m has now dissipated from the server.

I don't see how you lose anything, all bots are caught sooner or later.

All bots are caught sooner or later? Yeah, ok, I am seeing bots that are botting up to 150. Ridiculous. They bot for weeks and they don't get caught.

it because people report and dint Report them in the first place or They were not Botting / online when the GM were investigating them. That one of the few reason y they were not caught and Banned...

Report does works. It just trying to catch them in the act is the main problem

@ Muramas

You're only looking at half the picture. Prices of botted items are temporarily depressed. But bots are programmed to NPC useless loot. Little zeny per bot, but mulitply this by the number of bots, working all the time, and it adds a LOT of zeny compared to the number of players. This extra zeny creation is what causes in economic terms "inflation". By definition, it makes prices higher and higher over time. This acts as a penalty for all players in the form of artificial markup on player shop prices.

I'll take on your first example as a self-refuting argument on your part:
You claim that botting up zeny doesn't make it "worth less".
You then say that a player can charge up to 10m and have his card sell if and only if the botter bots up the zeny.
Otherwise, he can only charge 8m and have that same card sell.
Trader's Maxim: an item is worth what a buyer and seller agree that it's price is.
Therefore: In your example, the botter has just driven up the actual price of this item from 8m to 10m zeny, creating inflation on this particular item. When Mr. 8mZeny's 8 million zeny no longer buys him the card he wanted, his zeny is effectively "worth less". Argument refutes iteself.

You're trying to excuse the bot problem by using a few examples while ignoring the big picture. There have been thorough rebuttals of your arguments before. Some of them posted by me. Go read them.

Botter owned. GM's +1 me please to reverse the -1 he put on my reputation.

Let's stop arguing about their positive/negative effect on the economy for a second
There's conflicting opinions on whether bots help or hurt the server. Yes, great, more bots make more items accessible - but it also makes cool/rare drops worth less when you get them, because they are so accessible. blahblahblah arguments, both sides. The fact of the matter is, even if all things were equal, the economy operating one way with bots, one way without, both entirely equivalent, I would opt for without bots. Why? BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT LEGAL.

The moment you make them legal, you will see me botting, because hey, that's the way the game is then meant to be played. I don't want to have to play this game half hidden in the dark with a bot that is technically illegal but never enforced. I want to play legitimately along the rules.

Look, I'm okay with bots, if it's legal. But until it is, enforce the freaking rules. Why should we reward those players who have gone outside the rules - indeed, BREAKING them.. in order to gain an advantage over everyone else?

The outrageous: 'you have to report them!'

That is a flawed proposition. It's one thing if bots are rare, hard to find - YES by all means, we should have to report them. We, as players, are in the position to best develop a suspicion about them, and forward that info to admins for better investigation.

But when bots can be found aplenty in just about every map, with minimal effort? It's a fools errand to have to tell people to point at individual bot when you can hardly move through one side of a map to the other without encountering a bunch. Like grains of sand in a desert.

i got a email for free vip service and created characters on ymir.

free vip server <3

/thread