This is going to be an extremely long post. If you are one of the people that complain about bots on OT servers you better read this because it is for you... I hope this will be enough to make you understand why 8.6 is this way and why pretty much every tibia version will always have bots to some degree.
Part 1: The sad Truth
(Sorry if this disappoints you, but I think you guys need to hear it.)
No one individual is going to sit on an OT for 12-16 hours a day searching out people using bots on an 8.6 client. I say 12-16 hours a day because that is the amount of time it would require to actually make a difference. The second the GMs log out to go to sleep, people will set up their bots around that schedule. We have 2 admins, both of which live in the US (1 west coast, 1 east coast) so best case scenario we could alternate time schedules so that we overlap our coverage by 3-4 hours allowing the other Admin to take a break. In that best case example, each Admin is still logged in searching for botters 6-8 hours a day. Here in america 8 hours is the average work day. With that said, you would have to be so outlandishly arrogant to think that an OT is worth working like a full time job just to make sure people aren't botting.
So many of you might be thinking. Hey Xagul, why not find a hand full of GMs? The answer to this is quite simple... Have you ever played an OT with a large number of GMs that weren't corrupt and/or treated some players unfair? I personally have not.
Every OT that I have ever played (and I have played a metric fuckton)
That has had GMs (pretty much all of them actually)
Has either:
- had corrupt staff that banned people for stupid reasons
- had staff that treated some people unfair because they didn't like them
- played the favorite game allowing some people to get away with things they shouldn't
Part 2: My Personal Experience
Now I strongly believe in fair play and as such if I found out a GM on my server was treating players differently and/or picking and choosing who to enforce rules upon I would have to remove them. In my years (and by years I mean a very fucking long time) I have been able to find only a hand full of players that I truly believed I could trust and could be fair in
most cases (lets be real, nobody is perfect) and in all honesty, I could even be wrong about these people but there are so very few of them that I will name them all right now and I will also show a reason why them being a trustworthy GM would not help once so fucking ever in preventing bots.
- Gelem - Some of you might remember him from the original Deathzot. He was also a silent partner on OT Madness II but thats really just it... a silent partner. He has no interest in dealing with a community and he hasn't been active in the OT scene for years now. tldr; not interested
- @Snuggles - Most of you know him, he helped us map a shitload here on Deathzot. He is an extremely nice guy but the major problem with him is that he does not have much time at all to spend on OTs and when he was online, he was enjoying himself playing a normal character and rarely logged into his GM. tldr; he has a real life
- @Synthetic_ - Is fair as long as he isn't overwhelmed. Has a lot of time but likes to spend it doing things he enjoys. tldr; not interested in babysitting
- @Archlord (aka Gaylord) - He is a really good guy as well and he seems very interested in the community aspect of OTs. The big problem here is that he has less time than one might be lead to beleive. While Archlord was in fact online all the time, the majority of that time was mostly afk botting. tldr; has a real life?
- @Flatlander - Works a million hours a day. When hes not working in real life he is either watching anime or working on 1 of his 20 personal projects. Also the presence of a Flatlandergrenade instantly converts him to the dark side and he becomes the most corrupt GM ever. tldr; has a real life / not interested in 8.6 / not interested in babysitting for deathzot
So as you can see, most of these people are either inactive, do not have the time to nolife hunt for botters, or are simply not interested in the "fight". The sad truth really is, if people aren't being paid, they aren't interested in treating tibia as a job. And while many of you may think you know someone that is trustworthy, the fact of the matter is that most people who are great GMs are the ones that are/were involved with the building of a project which is why they are so hard to find... because generally, they are already working on their own project.
Part 3: What we Can, Have, and Will Continue to do
I have done my best to make it as hard to bot some things as humanly possible without making the server completely annoying for manual players. I could make random silly minigames and other events that bots cannot solve every 30 minutes so that it is impossible to bot. That would however be extremely annoying for actual humans that want to do some grinding and are constantly interrupted. If the community wants a system like this, I would gladly implement it... on a server that isn't 8.6 because that would completely ruin the purpose of 8.6.
Part 4: The Real Problem on OTs
All that aside, the real problem is not bots. I know a lot of you really dislike bots but in all honesty they aren't that destructive to the game/community. Bots are actually extremely inefficient when it comes to most tasks. Also stamina really hinders a botters ability to shoot extremely far ahead of the community. The real issue is multiclienting (mcs). The problem with stopping mcs is that once a server decides they are going to put an end to mcing, players begin finding ways around it. The internet has evolved quite a bit in the past decade and now it takes literally 2 seconds of googling to find a "proxy" of sorts for games. While most games would run like shit on a proxy due to latency and such, a tibia bot does not care. Tibia as a game is not complex enough to require perfect latency and a bot is normally doing such a simple task over and over that slightly higher latency isn't going to make it much less efficient. The reason this makes it pretty much impossible to ban mcs is because once people start to use a proxy for their bots it becomes a "witch hunt" and human error becomes much more of factor in catching people. Also the time spent "witch hunting" would be astronomical. We would have to sit there and watch each player and see if they are funneling everything they get to 1 location and then determine if it is a guild working together or mcs working for 1 person.
Part 5: Xagulz PSA
I would also like to say. And by all means please feel free to quote me on this...
ANY OT SERVER THAT IS
8.54/8.6 AND
BANS YOU FOR THE USE OF A
BOT.
(I don't mean afk botting 24/7, I mean using bots/macros for other things)
IS UTTERLY CORRUPT WITH A 99.9% CERTAINTY!!!!
There is quite literally 0 reasons to ever host a server that is 8.54 or 8.6 if you do not want people using elfbot. A server can change the client version to 8.61 with absolutely 0 side effects and it would prevent elfbot form working. If you do not believe me, just check the update features, the only things added to the client are monsters sprites and item sprites. 8.61 doesn't even have mounts (those came with 8.7). The owner of an OT can just choose to not implement the new monsters/items and then 8.61 would be
IDENTICAL to 8.6.
http://tibia.wikia.com/wiki/Updates/8.61
If a server is using an "elfbot client" but banning people for using elfbot, you can rest assured that they are allowing their friends and/or themselves to do so.
I just want to put this out there because I strongly believe everyone should know how easy it is to stop elfbot.
P.S.
I am not saying upgrading to 8.61+ stops or even remotely helps to prevent bots. All I am saying is that using 8.54/8.6 is quite literally promoting the use of bots as the only thing the client offers when compared to 8.61 is elfbot support which is arguably the easiest bot to access and certainly the most powerful (until you get to later versions that have xenobot).
Part 6: TLDR
Stop trying to make us feel bad because we allow bots... We don't.
Stop trying to tell us that the server would be better without bots... It won't
Stop trying to suggest that we do something about bots... We can't
When the day comes that you see a Deathzot update that says "Upgrading client to <insert version here>" You will know that we are working on making the server bot free. You will never see that update however because if I work on a new client version server, it will not be Deathzot... So in short, Deathzot is forever 8.6 unless someone else makes a new one and that someone else will not be me... So please stop nagging, play Deathzot for your own enjoyment, and stop worrying about what other people are doing.