BOTTING - A worry free lifestyle.

[Relic]

It's been some time since the last botter was taken care of. (Seletchi)
What happened? It's not like there was ONLY 1.
Nodiatis is a worry-free-botting-game, and that's exactly what they want.

I and some others have noticed several botters, sent e-mails explaining who and where, didn't see any action taken. I do understand Glitchless has to be careful with botters, and in order for a special investigation to take place, some sufficient evidence against the offender must be submitted via E-mail.
(Report all suspected botters to Help@nodiatis.com - include any evidence)

Here's the problem with that;
Last time I reported a botter, I included actual in-game chat transcripts of him, his character, his location that he botts. Screenshots of him admitting, explaining how the bot works, how he made it, whats its made of, his experience in software design, etc, etc..

I also forwarded the Actual Bot Program that he later e-mailed me, to Glithless.
It included: A bot program for farming white/yellow mobs.
A town running bot, to go from town 4 to town 5 and back.
A foraging bot.
All designed by this one player, who after being banned sent e-mails and forum messages to all his friends with these 3 programs included, along with instructions on how to operate them, an act of revenge is my best guess.


Glitchless then replied with, "Insufficient evidence" & ended up banning him for selling Timecards (That he made by botting) for real currency. I was never rewarded with any Timecards as so many seemed to believe. So there is much less motivation in that aspect.

So, literally reporting a botter and/or giving hard evidence is a waste of time
UNLESS
The admin investigates thoroughly, which seems to be the case.



The point of this thread is to raise awareness of botters, and hopefully sway Glitchless into more strict anti-botting augmentations. I feel something should be done to prevent the botters from having a worry-free-environment to operate within.

Perhaps random captchas?
Possibly have admins run random tests on over-active players in-game.
Race War Kingdoms has a very significant bot-prevention method, why not Nodiatis?

Glitchless did mention after banning the last botter:

If botting remains a problem further actions will be taken.

Botting has remained, gained strength, and it made a nice cozy home under our feet.

lol @ spam

[thatperson]

that was amazing lol

Implement bot upgrades for 54.99!

Roflmao.....;0

[God Stomper]

Just for... uhm... evidence to know what I'm looking for... uhhh... could you send those bots over to me?

<.<
>.>

I don't feel people should get rewarded for exposing a botter tbh but if more than 3 people email glitchless the same person with reasons why and maybe a little evidence (not alot if any) he should inspect the account for botting.

[zenga]

And how should he inspect the account? A good bot emulates human behaviour, meaning there is nothing to find

For example his click check: as far as I understood it should detect repetitive clicking (time & area based). That is so easy to circumvent with build in functions in any scripting language that it's a joke. Yeah it will detect noob bots, but any serious attempt will break it. A good bot means that it stays undetected, not that it farms 3x as more as a normal human being can farm. So it will need random intervals between clicks (every language has a random(x,y) feature); need different spots to click (not every time same x/y coord, which is very easy to do) and it will need to take random breaks (easy to define a random min / max value for a loop).

Relics idea to implement captcha's is even worse: many believe it's a decent solution, but truth is that 99% of the captcha's are so easy to read ... so you just annoy your playerbase with it forever, and the committed botter will spend a few hours tweaking his bot and go again.

The best way to make it botters as hard as possible is with changing little things. For a game like nod most people would go with a pixel/image recognizer. Here and there a different fade over an item (such as auto attack button or loot) will be a major annoyance. One could even implement it for 15 minutes, couple of times a day. Then draw a query from your database to see who stopped playing at the time of activation. That way you can narrow down the people to keep an eye on.

And the very best way is still contacting them through ingame messaging (admin should overrule dnd mode), see if they reply. But this is no guarantee, it's just making it a bit harder cq annoying the botmakers.

So yeah learn to live with it: botting will always have a place in online games, whether you like it or not. And not much can be done.

[Relic]

Originally Posted by zenga

The best way to make it botters as hard as possible is with changing little things. For a game like nod most people would go with a pixel/image recognizer. Here and there a different fade over an item (such as auto attack button or loot) will be a major annoyance. One could even implement it for 15 minutes, couple of times a day. Then draw a query from your database to see who stopped playing at the time of activation. That way you can narrow down the people to keep an eye on.

And the very best way is still contacting them through ingame messaging (admin should overrule dnd mode), see if they reply. But this is no guarantee, it's just making it a bit harder cq annoying the botmakers.

The first part is a good, complex way of taking care of the problem.

BUT.

That red part is just pure genius, and is what i suggested in the first place.

"Thorough Investigations."

Thanks for your reply Z.

[zenga]

Well i mentioned the messaging part as it was obvious that not much can be done, not that i had to be done. Many people with alts have resized windows. I used to play with storage up. When jeff was holding his story times i've missed it. If you allow alts & kinda encourage it, then you can't expect people to buy extra monitors (only fools like me). Though instead of pm'ng he could make there screen flash with 'read chat' or something . But a manual check instead of an automated.

The things you call complex are actually very simple for a tech savvy person and botter.

Bottomline: it takes a full time job to handle botters in a game. And that's still no guarantee for success.

[thatperson]

jeff doesnt override iggy either i found that out

[Relic]

I bottom line your bottom line and raise my bottom line, Z.

BOTTOM_LINE: Glitchless, Please Start Doing Something About The Botters, Even If It Is Small.

[thatperson]

agreed

Dumb question: Whats in it for Glitchless to catch botters? In my thinking they consume tc's at an enhanced rate, therefore make Glitch more money...
Sure they may make more xp than a human player, but a human player with a lot of time and cash could probably do better?

Originally Posted by Tarminyatar

Dumb question: Whats in it for Glitchless to catch botters?

To ease the minds of the people that are bothered by bots. Bots allow people to level in the game at a decent rate and give the user a Real Life at the same time. This seems to irk the people that play 8 hours a day.

>:'(


A side note from my non facetious forum alias:

Botting could cause inflation at a rate that would be less without the bots.

[zenga]

Originally Posted by Tarminyatar

Dumb question: Whats in it for Glitchless to catch botters?

1. Unhappy player base
2. Disturbing the economy
3. Reputation of the game

So that would explain why Glitchless aren't in to much of a hurry to investigate. If anything they make more money from botters than normal human beans.
Just they might lose a few players when teecees hit 200k a pop.

Cheers for answer

P.S. I am too thick/uneducated to even contemplate figuring out how to make a bot

[thatperson]

human beans? a botter generally will not buy TCs from glitchless ...seletchi for example in fact was selling TCs for real money....the botter tends to be a higher level player who just sits and farms all day the people arent into it for exp they are into it to make money i bet u can go to google and find nodiatis gold for sell if u look hard enough so glitchless in fact loses money from bots rather than makes money

[Relic]

Thatperson is correct, botters don't normally consume Timecards, they make much excess gold, buy them and normally sell them for real currency, like what Seletchi did.

Some just do it to make there characters strong while they sleep or are not around to grind.

[launcelot]

So that would explain why Glitchless aren't in to much of a hurry to investigate. If anything they make more money from botters than normal human beans.

OMG were beans?