How Ankama is unknowingly supporting Harvester Bots The resource protectors that randomly appear during the harvesting process (farmer/alc) were made supposedly to break the programming thread of a harvester bot. However, contemporary programs easily loop this primitive hurdle. In point of fact, resources establish the dominance of bots by effectively breaking our resource queues, which is irritatingly time-consuming; the automated queueing system of a bot effects minimum time consumption for them. Food for thought, Ankama?


This post has been edited by Robeine - November 27, 2012, 11:13:13.

So..... Ankama could remove the resource queueing again to make you happy?

I would rather like to see Ankama do some more stuff to make harvesting less repetive. Certainly not that you just enter a map, click on all resources and switch to TV for the next 5 minutes. This would make everyone into some kind of bot.


Maybe gathering challenges that increase Profession XP when done correctly (can't really come up with good ideas ). Mini-Games could be an option, but are quite awkward to justify and many player probably hate them..

Ankama could re-iterate your resource queue post the fight with the protector. Simple as that.

As I said, I think that would be a step in the wrong direction since it makes the harvest system even more automated.

THINK for a second, please. The current system means bots reign supreme.


This post has been edited by Robeine - November 27, 2012, 16:55:16.

This.

You say resource protectors are a small hurdle for botters, but if you get rid of having to re-queue, its not even a hurdle. Besides, I believe Ankama wants professions to be something that you should have to invest in and take time for (actively) and I don't see anything wrong with that.


This post has been edited by BluSkies - November 27, 2012, 14:24:08.

Do think a bit more for a moment. 99% of the harvester bots in existence on dofus are click and run bots. They have no combat ability at all. If they had the ability to fight on each bot, how do you explain me being able to lock up bots in combat with a level 20 aligned alt until moderators can take care of them? And you also realize the bots dont even use the queue system present in the game? The simplest bot is a friggin point and click macro that runs on a small loop. I could easily write such a thing myself if I was so inclined. The fact I have no inclination to do so, combined with the fact that it would bore me to tears, doesnt discount the knowledge that it's pitifully easy.




Not to mention the whole doomsayer attitude is kinda old and pointless. If bots "reigned supreme," how is it I can level harvester professions without an issue?

1) Since they have no combat ability, simply the appearance of the protector is enough of a hurdle.

2) Since bots do not employ resource queuing, the dissapearance of resource queues post fights with protectors is a hindrance to the honest player, not to bots.

And it is the present situation. Like it or not, most of the economy is run by bots. If there were no bots, everything you have, everything you gather would sell for alteast thrice as much.


This post has been edited by Robeine - November 27, 2012, 16:54:49.

Everything? including gear and such? I don't think so even with recources..

Not likely. If there were no bots, more players would be obtaining gathering professions. And it's ZERO hindrance to a player. It IS a hindrance to the lazy do-nothing players who dont even want to take the 15-20 seconds it takes to re-select the queue.

This may be an old thread, but i thought of something recently. What if once in a while, the wheat drops a 'anvil' which ways 10,000 pods. And the only way to continue farming or to gather your resources is to delete the anvil from your inventory. The anvil is linked to the character. I don't see any downfall in this tbh. Just something to think about.

That is actually a much better solution than ankamas - as far as my knowledge of bots goes anyway. perhaps have a captcha (An easy to read one, not them crazy silly ones) incase bots can be programmed to delete things from the inventory.

Doubt you would read this anyways, but for anyone else reading. You know when we need to sign up for an account for almost anything, and we need to copy down a couple letters and numbers? The random generated code, what if every once in a while, a little popup comes up with one of those? When one of these pop up, you have 10 minutes to answer, and if not, you automatically get disconnected from the game? As far as i know, bots can't bypass that (maybe they can). Because there are so many possibilities. I can't think of any ways a botter could get through it. If you have any ideas, let me know.

-Core-Attack

 


This post has been edited by Marleen - February 02, 2013, 14:48:54.

Izmar just said in her post (the post you quoted :p) that in-game captchas are ineffective.

I wouldn't mind resource protectors so much if they didn't appear so often. Their probability of appearing is pretty high so they come up relatively sparsely on the high tier, low saturation resources (snowdrop) but they come up way too often when gathering low tier, highly saturated resources (hemp). It gets aggravating when every 2-3 minutes you spawn a resource protector you end up one shotting for a bag of 50 hemp when you could gather 100 in the time it took to end the fight.

Ooh, sorry for my ignorance. I clearly didn't know what a captcha was.

-Core-Attack

These pesky bots are more clever than i suspected. Oh well, thanks for the response though Izmar

There was some good ideas while they lasted i guess haha!

I'm not sure if this thread is considered old and what not, but I think the solution should be that there aren't resource protectors in subscriber areas. What do you guys think? I don't think many bots are subscribed so I don't think there's a need for the system there.

i have an idea too!

now: if you defeat the protector, then you get 50 resources else you lose nothing, except a little bit of energy.

new: if you defeat the protector, then you get 100 resources else you LOSE HALF of resources that this protector defend ,)

additionaly make time for turn near 15-30 seconds and make protectors level equal resorces level.

I actually run and hope for a protector to appear. Especially on resources which give 1 to 2. Then 50 resource bag in one fight is a jackpot.

In my opinion there are to low protectors.
Whenever i'm harvesting something, i usually get 2 protectors in an hour.
I like protectors because of the extra ore.

~Aura

You are partially right, however there are MANY bots located in subscriber areas. I see them farming namely piwis and North-Bonta mobs (fungi masters/sunflowers etc). So the problem still lies within the subscriber reefs.

As to the solution, there nearly isn't one. Captchas will make people pluck out their hair, not to mention that this doesn't even work for account creations anyway. Stopping devourers will only make it easier for bots, and harder for people to collect resources. I'm still thinking of a solution, but we have to ask ourselves, is there one?

I believe there is one. We are human, we have the potential if we are willing to use our heads.

They might help the bots, but they help new players much more. As a low level lumberjack or miner, fighting resource guardians represents your main income of desired resource.

Lol no

Alternatively, Ankama could change the protectors so that they level up similar to the way dopples level up against the character level of the player (or even the profession level of the character fighting the protector.) Low-level protectors might not drop anything at all and have few hit points, while higher level protectors would hit harder, have more spells, have more hit points, and drop substantially more resources - perhaps even 2 or more bags of resources? Unless the protectors get really good at killing bots, this will at least make it more interesting for players and give enough resources to make up for the time spent fighting the protector.


This post has been edited by Disgustus - February 19, 2013, 00:18:11.

Thank you for your constructive reply full of valid points and relevant data to back it up.

This. I strongly support your idea.


No, as a low level, the priority is leveling the profession. As you know there is no experience gain for resource protector fights.

I wasn't talking about experience at all. With level 10 miner, getting those 50 minerals from a bag is worth a lot of mining time. Having level 80 lumberjack, it's much faster for me to kill the guardian than to chop 50 logs, even with ash.

Thing is, it varies by person.
I care as much about leveling as I do the resources I get.
I would rather not have to deal with Resource Protectors. They become irritating, and when I'm gathering, I just like to gather. However, at the same time, without Resource Protectors, Fishing would be far less lucrative.

Alright. So how about this? Subscribers can choose to turn on/off resource protectors, or maybe there aren't any if your profession is level 100, AND resource protectors give experience towards the profession, while the rewards get higher based on profession level.

I actually discussed a topic similar to this recently. The spawn rate of resource protectors for farmer is way too high. I mean ridiculously high. I've had about 4 protector fights in around a 5-6 minute time frame and Im not even exaggerating.

I get aggravated and log off.

i know that dofus has for a long time had a problem with bots. the sad thing is alot of the proposed ideas or the ideas implemented hurt real players. on a side note imma bring up a game that i still play that was two riddled with bots, runescape. this game was plagued by bots although it still is it is by far under a much more manageable level. Runescape tried to "stay a step ahead of the bots" by removing many things players loved (much like dofus has done) which the bots then next week had a working bot and runescape had less and less players. The only way to deal with bots is to be more aggressive and attack the botters not the things that are botted. although you can try to solve the problem by taking away stuff bots have scripts for but this will only buy you time and kill your player bases. Runescape lost a large portion of there player bases by removing key features, the game then put it to a vote if the features would be reinstated a few years later. the features were voted back in but not without a price to pay. Bots returned and a large portion of the player base was gone never to return. The company then started active lawsuits against company's that sold or offered runescape bots, along with aggressive pushes by there programing team for anti bot procedures. Although the fight is still on going the players have responded to the slow progress. Essentially the moral of this example is you wont win the war against bots by simply removing resource scrolling, spell point scrolling, and anything else the player bases has enjoyed. You will simply upset players, and the bots will find a new cash cow of the game till you have removed everything. So not to be rude but essentially it comes down to the programmers, developers, and ingame mods to make this happen. Runescape tried the same things you did and they didnt work. take a lesson from there mess ups.

P.s perhaps make the report option ingame a little bit faster then sending a forsaken support ticket.

As long as there is spam in your inbox and junk mail in your snail mail inbox there will be bots...

The only way to get rid of bots is to kill the food they consume...

You mean just like they removed resources for characteristic scrolls?
Only thing that did was make Assrub City a little bit less cluttered (Who cares,sub or don't complain) and drive all the bots to professions.

Great idea worldkit.

That would require monsters to lose the ability to drop kamas. What most people can't seem to understand is that bots only gather the kamas, they drop the resources. That's why they've not dissapeared after the scroll update.

It's also why specificaly this topic is pointless. There are ways to fight the bots, but the person creating this topic was horribly misinformed on how bots work.

I think Ankama knows the code of the game and they know the best what to do. You might have some great ideas on how to stop the bots, but it might not be compatible with the game's code.

only you would get aggrevated. i don't mind collecting more than 1 frosteez at a time x.x