There is really a solution for bots?

[tarantonio]

I know this post can be a flame, but I want to discuss about bots in a peaceful way.

I played Tibia for almost 15 years now, and bots were always the focus on player's criticism about the game. The same as on every online game. I played Counter Strike from the earlier betas, World of Warcraft since beta, and a bunch of old games like Ultima Online, Diablo, Runescape and many others.

All of them have the same problem. Bots.

You can take measures against them, but it's almost imposible to get ride of bots and illegal software to take advantage in a game. It's a war the same as virus/antivirus, clinton/trump, human/alien...

My question is: there is really a solution for bots?

I released and owned a lot of game servers out of Tibia: Counter Strike, WoW, MU online, Lineage, etc... and I always faced the same problem with bots or illegal software.

A lot of people claim to have the "perfect antibot client", and yes, it's almost perfect for one or two days....it depends on when the bot developer starts their journey on the morning...

But to see the light in this question I have to say that the best way to handle bots and illegal software is to have a dedicated staff to take care of the game. Make the game playable, fix bugs, fix playability, balance vocations, fix quests, fix npcs, don't release a beta game, don't expect to earn money with an unfinished game, don't expect to have a lot of players and you maybe will have success. Work hard to launch a finished game. Test, test, test. And test again before release. Listen to players, interact with them, fix the problems they discover... from day one to the end of server. That's the only way I had success in the past.

But OpenTibia is a strange community. You launch a server, and the next thing to handle if you have a decent base of players is a DDoS attack. Private servers are expensive, you need a lot of money to host, maintain and advertise your work to have at least a good start. I always had a lot of donations to help me maintain my servers in the past... and I never had a "SHOP"... only a link to paypal altruistic donations. It's supposed that you play Open Tibia because you can't afford for Real Tibia taxes or you want some different experience than the real thing, like custom map or custom playability. And if you enjoy the experience maybe you can help to maintain the server. I don't talk about donate 10€/month, I talk about to help the developer and let him know that his work is well done. It's a pride when you receive a donation with a simple note like: "Good work mate, I'm not rich but 5€ will not make me poor. Thanks for the server"

And.. about bots...

Why you bot? Do you really love the game you play? Do you need a bot to really enjoy the game?

A solid community is the best antibot. There will always be people willing to ruin the game.

The best Tibia era was before 7.8, when the Gamemasters were the firewall against cheaters, Tibia was a hardcore mmorpg, no auto aim, no stamina, old pvp, and the rest of the bad decisions tha leaded this game into a kid's playground. But that's my opinion. I respect yours.

 

[MysteriousDot]

Honestly no. The people who create bots will always find a way to make new and improved versions no matter how many times you try to shut them out. Just how it is

 

[tarantonio]

Honestly no. The people who create bots will always find a way to make new and improved versions no matter how many times you try to shut them out. Just how it is

Only a few words about bots: if you don't allow bots, you are hurting those who do not use them. There will always be bots, and people who want to play honestly have a disadvantage.

 

[Xikini]

There is a good handful of reasons why people bot, I'll list a few off the top of my head.

-> Not enough time to grind games, or find it boring to collect experience/gold.
---> This is mainly for adults or teenagers, or gold farmers. The problem stems from games requiring repetitive game-play in order to create artificial difficulty in their games to extend the play value of their game. Unfortunately it's impossible for developers to create content faster then the player can complete it. So tactics such as experience, or obtaining items, or creating boss battles with a large health pool, or combining all of these standard methods to hinder the player from advancing through content 10-20x faster then the delelopers can create it, has become a norm.

-> Players want to play the game, however specific parts of it, so have a bot do the 'boring stuff' for them, so they can play the entertaining part. (aka: new content)
---> Largely due to the same reason as above, however just for a different reason.

-> Developer of bot, wants to test their 1337 hacker skills, and create an exploit for a game, just for fun
---> When enough people do this for enjoyment, or their job, eventually someone posts their work online for others to have fun with.

-> Same as above, except the bot developer has people pay for the exploits they have found and created.
---> Personal gain incentive.

-> People who use bots
---> Have become bored with the game, and are using bot's to have a new game-play experience.
---> Botting has become a part of the community and feel forced to use a bot to 'keep up' with others.
---> Actually wants to cheat to be 'the best', or gain an unfair advantage over others.
---> Uses a bot to do boring or repetitive tasks.

Now these are just off the top of my head, and can obviously be expanded upon.

There are ways to hinder botting, but there is no definitive way to stop botting, unless you host all the players clients on an internal server. (Which is 100% unfeasible).
Even if it was feasible, people would attempt to find new ways to exploit the system, because people are curious people.

TL;DR
People are curious lazy jerks.

 

[whitevo]

Unfortunately it's impossible for developers to create content faster then the player can complete it.

Not true. If you have gui to create content, you practically make content with matter of minutes.

 

[Xikini]

Not true. If you have gui to create content, you practically make content with matter of minutes.

I'm sorry, let me rephrase it for people reading it literally.
It's impossible for developers to create original, new, exciting, thought out and balanced content faster then the player can complete it.

 

[N e r o n Z]

Honestly no. The people who create bots will always find a way to make new and improved versions no matter how many times you try to shut them out. Just how it is

Then lets kill the bot creaters? ; )

 

[whitevo]

It's impossible for developers to create original, new, exciting, thought out and balanced content faster then the player can complete it.

I'm sorry, let me rephrase it for people reading it literally.

Not true. If you have gui to create content, you practically make content with matter of minutes.

With advanced gui what is so modular you can attach unique features with no time, you practically can create original, new, exciting, thought out and balanced content faster then the player can complete it.

 

[tarantonio]

I see good ideas here, new content always keep our players chained to our game. You can see that in games like WoW, server population always increases with old players returning back when they release anew major version. But the overall population is always going down.

Focus on new content or fix and improve old content? Always a hard decision. 50%/50%?

Let me tell you one word: procedural.

Games like "No man's sky" are hitting hard.

Why not a true rpg experience in some way inside Tibia? Cipsoft have changing dungeons, why not a procedural dungeon? you don't need to focus on new content always.

 

[Xikini]

I'm sorry, let me rephrase it for people reading it literally.

With advanced gui what is so modular you can attach unique features with no time, you practically can create original, new, exciting, thought out and balanced content faster then the player can complete it.

Counter argument, if this is so easy to accomplish, literally every developer would be doing this.
Counter counter argument, why are you not pushing out content this fast in your own server?

I'm not hear to debate how fast content can be created.
No matter how fast you create content, players will always consume it faster then you can create it.
This fact has not changed in years and years, and until a game company proves otherwise, your theory on this amazing gui is worthless.

I see good ideas here, new content always keep our players chained to our game. You can see that in games like WoW, server population always increases with old players returning back when they release anew major version. But the overall population is always going down.

Focus on new content or fix and improve old content? Always a hard decision. 50%/50%?

Let me tell you one word: procedural.

Games like "No man's sky" are hitting hard.

Why not a true rpg experience in some way inside Tibia? Cipsoft have changing dungeons, why not a procedural dungeon? you don't need to focus on new content always.

A procedural dungeon, would be 'new content'.

 

[whitevo]

Counter argument, if this is so easy to accomplish, literally every developer would be doing this.

its not easy to accomplish, it requires lot of time and dedication. Been doing the gui for over a year now. Still improving them and creating new ones.

Counter counter argument, why are you not pushing out content this fast in your own server?

If you haven't noticed, whenever I do create content, I do it fairly fast. Yes its true that most of my content I create has been ran over with just hour or 2 where I spent hours do even think how to make it new, cool and amazing. But in some other cases like events(PVE events), monsters and world quest, which take same amount of time, may take a day or even more for people to fully explore or complete.
Like you said earlier:

So tactics such as experience, or obtaining items, or creating boss battles with a large health pool, or combining all of these standard methods to hinder the player from advancing through content 10-20x faster then the delelopers can create it, has become a norm.

This is also something what will scale over time in my server, right now practically everything you see in Whi World is new and I'm just creating the standard power of monsters and complexity of quests/missions.

However as players starting to get the grasp how items, spells, talents, upgrades, enchantments work. I can also make creatures harder to kill. Slowing down people to the point they have to rethink what gear, spells, upgrades they need to use/get.

Right now I have few small quests/missions here and there what stay in specific area. But creating a quest/mission what involves entire server doesn't take any more time than small ones, but it certainly takes a lot more time to complete it.

I'm not hear to debate how fast content can be created.
No matter how fast you create content, players will always consume it faster then you can create it.
This fact has not changed in years and years, and until a game company proves otherwise, your theory on this amazing gui is worthless.

There are certainly people you cant beat to outpace, but content creator goal is not to produce content for top players. Goal is to produce content for majority of your active playerbase and that speed is possible to achieve.

Well you are simply missing the bigger picture then. How do you think Wow still creates more and more quality expansions so fast? You think they recreate the game features over and over again for each expansion?
The gui itself isn't necessary, the idea of using existing functionalities is the key. Gui just polishes it up and allows you to create content without thinking/knowing how code does work.

Think it like this: doSendMagicEffect(param1, param2) is gui. The params are the values you can change.
Without this function. you would have to somehow do this with lua (I assume only possible with byte codes):

Spoiler

if (lua_gettop(L) >= 3) {
        Player* player = getPlayer(L, 3);
        if (player) {
            list.insert(player);
        }
    }

    MagicEffectClasses magicEffect = getNumber<MagicEffectClasses>(L, 2);
    const Position& position = getPosition(L, 1);
    if (!list.empty()) {
        Game::addMagicEffect(list, position, magicEffect);
    } else {
        g_game.addMagicEffect(position, magicEffect);
    }

    pushBoolean(L, true);
    return 1;

Now tell me, which one is faster, using the function or creating specific byte code to execute the source function every time you want to create magic effect?
This is just the base of it.
When you scale out you can create unique events, quests, missions, items, etc the same way you are doing this magic effect. fast and simple.

I'm not a developer/coder or anything, all I know is learned from this forum and google. But I believe I will be able to create content faster than majority players play trough it when all is set and done.

 

[Sinth]

As long as there is a skullsystem there will be botting in Tibia, deal with it or do like me and take it away. It worked great in the past to let the community clean up botters and PKers and there's no reason why it's not the same today. The skullsystem is what allowed Bots/AFKers roam 99% free... the 1% getting caught by GMs the exception.

 

[tarantonio]

As long as there is a skullsystem there will be botting in Tibia, deal with it or do like me and take it away. It worked great in the past to let the community clean up botters and PKers and there's no reason why it's not the same today. The skullsystem is what allowed Bots/AFKers roam 99% free... the 1% getting caught by GMs the exception.

Great answer. I'll analyze that in depth for my upcoming works.

 

[R.yan]

people bot cause they wanna be the best pker/highest lvl without using skill, it's same for cheating in fps games. kids have internet ego and wanna show off to their virtual friends.

cheating/being best at something is inherent to human nature and won't change

 

[Pyziol]

There is a good handful of reasons why people bot, I'll list a few off the top of my head.

-> Not enough time to grind games, or find it boring to collect experience/gold.
---> This is mainly for adults or teenagers, or gold farmers. The problem stems from games requiring repetitive game-play in order to create artificial difficulty in their games to extend the play value of their game. Unfortunately it's impossible for developers to create content faster then the player can complete it. So tactics such as experience, or obtaining items, or creating boss battles with a large health pool, or combining all of these standard methods to hinder the player from advancing through content 10-20x faster then the delelopers can create it, has become a norm.

-> Players want to play the game, however specific parts of it, so have a bot do the 'boring stuff' for them, so they can play the entertaining part. (aka: new content)
---> Largely due to the same reason as above, however just for a different reason.

-> Developer of bot, wants to test their 1337 hacker skills, and create an exploit for a game, just for fun
---> When enough people do this for enjoyment, or their job, eventually someone posts their work online for others to have fun with.

-> Same as above, except the bot developer has people pay for the exploits they have found and created.
---> Personal gain incentive.

-> People who use bots
---> Have become bored with the game, and are using bot's to have a new game-play experience.
---> Botting has become a part of the community and feel forced to use a bot to 'keep up' with others.
---> Actually wants to cheat to be 'the best', or gain an unfair advantage over others.
---> Uses a bot to do boring or repetitive tasks.

Now these are just off the top of my head, and can obviously be expanded upon.

There are ways to hinder botting, but there is no definitive way to stop botting, unless you host all the players clients on an internal server. (Which is 100% unfeasible).
Even if it was feasible, people would attempt to find new ways to exploit the system, because people are curious people.

TL;DR
People are curious lazy jerks.

Also, a big part of community is making real money on it.