Hello.
@Silba asked me to come and share my views. I've been out of Tibia for quite a long time, and recently returned; I was a GM on the original Real Tibia OT (before the map was released/leaked), Goobers OT, Green Zebra Hosting OTs etc etc., and have also since then run other game servers. My role usually revolves around community and game management, but I also enjoy mapping (I like to build worlds, it's fun for me).
People bot for all sorts of reasons. I've botted before. No matter the specifics, people do it to gain an advantage. The aim shouldn't be to 'ban all botters', it should be to 'minimise the deficit in player experience by refusing to use third party software', and this is an ethos CIP themselves have taken up, but I think there are better ways to do it than CIP has (although, this has only become evident because of their trialling).
Let's clear up some misconceptions I've seen here:
- People will always use cheats. It doesn't matter what game it is, they will cheat. I've seen cheaters on WoW, Tibia, TF2, Minecraft... people cheat everywhere. They do it for advantage.
- You can't just say 'this high level has hunted for 10 hours, therefore they're a bot', no matter the mob, because you don't know why they're hunting. This should be a cause for investigation.
- There are few ways to tell someone is using a bot if they're at their keyboard. Unless they are doing something improbable or impossible, such as the old rainbow outfit bots, you just can't tell.
- A deletion warning does not deter a botter on a free and open game. All it does, is encourage that player to diversify their portfolio of cheating to minimise their own losses.
From the perspective of a developer:
1) Anyone using the real Tibia map should move the entire map by a few hundred squares, and adjust functions accordingly. Cavebots function by using waypoints, and if you're using the standard real Tibia map, there are already a lot of pre-made scripts.
2) In the same vein of thinking, in common, known botting spots, it would be ideal to have a 'pool' of maps with holes, rope spots, and stairs, altered appropriately. The objective here being to disrupt the ability to produce scripts, such that it makes doing so less convenient than just playing.
3) Make an appropriate alternative to using the bot; the current discussion is so polarised "do we add hotkeys or not?", when you haven't looked at the grey area. Make hotkeys with a cost. A very simple implementation of this: make a spell that costs 10 mana to cast, but fires an SD at your current target, consuming an SD rune within your bags.
4) In a similar vein, for issues such as training, you should make trainers with a sufficient cost. For instance, you might make trainers that only increase your skill by 25% of the normal rate, and cannot be done for more than x hours. I think CIP made a mistake in making the skill rate the same; players should be rewarded for taking the time to do it manually.
The penalty can't be too harsh. You need to strike a balance between players getting the features they crave with convenience, whilst also making using a bot look unappealing.
Again, for something like fishing, maybe it would be worth significantly increasing the fish catch rate, or even increasing the duration for which a fish lasts, to ultimately require less effort to get the resources needed. Make using the bot feel like more labour than just doing it normally.
5) As other people have proposed, continue to develop new and engaging content. The content you make might also include changes to the map; for instance, you might have days where some of the Darashia rotworms are blocked off due to a 'cave-in', and maybe, sometimes, a wizard's tower appears near the Orc Fortress. Making the game dynamic is a healthy way to keep players wanting to look into how it works. It keeps them alert.
From the perspective of a community manager:
1) Bans are not a point of pride. I see many very new, amateur GMs, striving to ban as many players as possible. I have joined games/communities that would permanently ban for offensive behaviour, and I changed that significantly when it become my role to manage them. The problem was with the behaviour of the player, not that the player is in your community. Sometimes, this strive to get a ban can result in GMs acting hastily; this can come with the idea of role biases, as when a GM is newly appointed, their duty is to 'uphold rules and ban the baddies', and therefore if they don't, they feel inadequate in that role. You, as an owner, or community manager, need to change that mindset and ensure the people you take on are looking at this as a system of 'how do these rules make the game a better place to play?' Diffuse the prestige and necessity of bans, and look to create a cohesive environment of happy players.
2) GMs need multiple tool characters. As pointed out, players can easily identify GMs, their active times, and their own play habits. I used to make secret accounts to monitor not only what the players were doing, but also what my staff were doing (and have, on several occasions, removed staff from my rosters for their inept or intolerable behaviour that they wouldn't have otherwise done if they had known I was present).
GMs should have the tools to make characters sufficient to investigate issues. As we know, many bots will detect the GM outfit and stop/alert the player. This might mean being able to make characters with a higher level/skills, unmarked GM characters etc.
3) Ban broadcasts are stupid. They tell everyone using a bot, to stop for now, because a GM is patrolling. Again, bans are not a point of pride. Should you wish to broadcast that you have banned a player, you should do so manually.
4) Don't be afraid to check in on players with notoriety. You can perform innocuous checks just by running past them; if they ask, tell them you're just taking a look at who's in the cave, or that you're looking at making some changes and ask for their suggestions. Make it casual.
5) When you make and enforce rules, it is easy to sit there and copy CIP's rules. There are some good ideas within them to form a basis, but ask yourself why those rules exist, and consider if they're draconian. For instance, why is multi-clienting banned? The issue with multi-clienting is seldom the advantage players get from having two characters, but rather, that one of those characters is likely to be using bot software, or being used in a destructive way; there are however, very valid uses for them, such as training. Ask yourself: does this rule benefit the fabric of the game?
When I lost my position on real Tibia to an error made by one of their CMs (to which, they refused to rectify), I went and posted an enormous series of loop-holes in their rules on their forums. Their rules were rewritten two weeks later. Their rules are not iron-clad.
--
I might think of more. I hope this has been insightful. I still have to think about rules a lot these days, although not so much in games, but in managing the behaviour of teenagers.
- Cupcake