Thank you for finally making an official thread on the matter *hopes now that people won't make recurring threads on this topic*.

Unfortunately, I've had many ideas, all with problems of their own, major flaws. I quite like the idea of "Question Cards", which was an idea going back a little while. Basically, a box would pop up after you've logged in. The box displays a type of fruit (for example) and under it, a question "What colour is this apple?" (just an example). The question would come with corresponding answers.

Of course, the problem came up that on International Servers, some players may not be able to understand the questions. Replacing the answers with actually pictures of colours could solve half this problem. I'm not too good at explaining, and I guarantee you won't understand me. xD I apologise.

Sophidian ^^

DELETED BY AUTHOR

This post has been edited by VarHyid: 21 Nov 2008, 17:20

You mods only need to ban the scammer bots on Heroic server, right? I'm still almost sure there are no farmer/hunter etc bots in the harsh enviroment of Oto Mustam, but I'd like to hear if someone found any.

This post has been edited by anzuk: 10 Nov 2008, 22:08

Yes but Oto Mustam is only 1 server. And if all the servers were like Oto Mustam I would have never played this game for more than a few weeks.

And I have to repeat AGAIN that even though you ban millions of bots per month, the hunter bots get banned around once per month and I suspect farmer bots to have similar statistics. With just a daily mod or two patrolling around Astrub, you could greatly reduce the number of bots to an extent companies will probably have to rise their prices a lot, meaning less buyers too.

Conclusion: why the hell doesn't Amakna want more active mods?

Without pidgeon-holing maybe Dofus can limit play just to players from 'gold-farming free' countries. I know its unfair to current subscribers from the likes of say Asia, maybe Russia (I dunno just speculating here), but maybe Ankama can limit play to people from 'Developed Countries' and not allow access to people from 'Poorer' countries. Okay it might sound a little discriminatory, but I tell thinks as they are - the gold-farmers are from 'Poor' countries - we all know the stories behind so-called Sweatshops etc.

I am sure it's possible to tell which ISP/Country a player is playing from... of course this may/may not help when it comes to those Random IP Switching programs that are freely available etc...

Thats my two-cents worth.

You're not REALLY sorry and rollbacks don't REALLY su... oh wait

Joke aside, many times i,ve seen killer bots last over a month. And those are only the times I was F2P (staying in Astrub to see bots). The smallest amount of time I've seen a killing bot banned was more or less 2 weeks.

And I'm wondering something: if by 1 bot you are able to identify MANY of its followers by a simple click (admittedly it takes seconds/minutes to create the list), wouldn't a daily mod sweep be rather short? Or at least, much shorter than I imagined it would be. Couldn't a quick sweep then take a couple minutes?

Would be fun one day if you tried realying mods every couple of hours for a day or two on one server, checking how far bots could go without getting banned. Until you really try that or come with actual proof it would do nothing, I will continue to state you should get more (active) mods.

This post has been edited by RollbackSuckz: 11 Nov 2008, 04:39

Please take note at the displayed statistics at the top of the page. According to Sato, roughly 200,000 bots are banned per month. This does not mean "only kama-sellers", but quite the contrary. Evidence is provided to the bot-killing claims. If you think you're able to do a better job and moderate Dofus and its Forums for 4 hours a day (or more) like some Moderators do, maintain a safe environment for players and ban the abundance of bots in Astrub, feel free to send in an application. Good luck.

Sophidian ^^

DELETED BY AUTHOR

This post has been edited by VarHyid: 21 Nov 2008, 17:20

yeah and over the million now. I even said I expected igher numbers.


Does this mean you agree with me on that? I'm not sure what you mean.


Mod applications ave been closed for a very very long time as far as I'm aware. Plus I seriously doubt Amakna would let me become one with my "disagreeing" views I would definately give it a try if it was available though, nothing to lose But if a couple appropriate people are added to the mod team, I'd be very glad.

As for Wish, I'd like to know what you don't agree on exactly. Is it when I say I've seen bots last over a month a couple times? Is it when I say getting more mods could mean the ability to do a quick sweep every couple of hours or daily? Is it when I say regular cleaning of the killer and farmer bots (mostly killers I think though) would help?

And I don't think mods are lazy, in fact I like (most of) you guys. But the few of you just don't seem to suffice, especially when it comes to banning bots. But I have no idea why, if you ban that many bots, how come I can see the same ones for over a month. Might be what Amakna tells you to do, but I still find it strange. Personally those killer bots would have been my 1st target.

This post has been edited by RollbackSuckz: 11 Nov 2008, 17:12

From what you'd posted, I gathered you thought that not enough fight-bots were being banned and all the attention was focused on the more obvious kama-selling-bots. I was just informing you that this is not the case.

Sophidian ^^

Ah, now I understand. However I might disagree. I see those spam bots getting banned almost every hour, instead of a muh longer lifespan for killer-bots. Might be only due to some automatic banning system though, in which case mods wouldn't have anything to do with it.

This post has been edited by RollbackSuckz: 11 Nov 2008, 23:00

I see. Well I guess if it only takes a few minutes for them to come back then I was wrong, I thought it would take them a few hours to be operational again (they do need to gain a couple levels somehow). Thanks a lot for actually going through this.

This post has been edited by RollbackSuckz: 12 Nov 2008, 15:19

Fight-bots are harder to ban. They're constantly on the move, making money. Stands to reason that more kama-selling -bots are banned, but I gather all types of bots are given equal attention. As far as I know, the only automatic banning system is for over-working a profession, which suspends your account for two hours. I may be wrong? Which means Moderators are responsible for the mass-bannings of the bots.

Sophidian ^^

I invited spam-bots to my guild: Sadida's bots. After an hour, or two at most, they would be put offline. Unless they THEMSELVES log off to never come back, it means they get banned in about an hour, either by mod or by auto-system. Killer-bots, in comparison, can last a month. Now if Zoothia said is right (they come back in 5 minutes) I now agree with these methods.

But I am wondering if it's an auto-system that bans spam-bots or mods. I know some bots have a counter when they speak (a number is added at the beginning or end of their message) and that is probably some programming flag. Added by the devs or by the botters, I don't know though. Could be part of an auto-ban system.

This post has been edited by RollbackSuckz: 12 Nov 2008, 17:43

The bots put numbers on the end of their sentences so that they don't get the message "Too much spam!" I'm not sure if typing the same message over and over disconnects you, currently. But the main reason for the numbers is so they can get the "Sell kamas!" message out much easier.

Sophidian ^^

Oh, you mean "it's the same message as the old one and wasn't sent"? I didn't think about this one! Guess that's a mystery solved

I'll say that I've seen a decline in bots over the last couple months. I think a big part of this was destroying kamas from the incarnam quests. Just standing around astrub the prices have really gone up, from about 10 usd per mil to as much as 20 usd over the last months. So keep up the good work.
As far as the number of mods I'm not satisfied, I'm certain the restrictions are harsh to be a mod, but payed or not, I'd be willing to bet there would be more people like me willing to dedicate an hour or two out of their day to kicking bots or thwacking scammers.

Is there anything we, as players, can do to help you identify bots? I have the advantage of being able to be online for a good amount of the day and can see a lot of them. Any help I can provide will be given.

I don't think you can do much beyond sending a ticket. And if you do decide to do that, I'd wait until you have the names of twenty bots and report it all at once, as not to spam Ankama Support (I think they would appreciate minimum spam ).

Sophidian ^^

the amount of banned bots is really impressive...

my ideas:
- Wish said she killing hunting bots, i think hit announcer bots is more crucial - no announcers, no customers... plus you dont need to kill them, mute them is better (if there is such function)
- hit their client. Bots owners obviously have some kind of commandline client, that helps them react way faster on mob respawn (as they are catching packets, not graphics), run in superfast "trains" etc. So in next regular client update should programmers prepare some traps to detect/kill/IP ban anyone, who'll try to login with other then official client.
- Use IP bans on their networks. Even if its really some kind of sick business, change IP's is really not that easy, and they'll run out of available proxies really fast.
- Track kamas. All kamasellers must have some central accounts, where they gathering kamas from hundreds of their minions before they are banned. Find out such account will hit them hard. My
- Try buy kamas from announcers websites. Well not you :-), but same Amakna employee. This will help you find out how it works, who's selling, if tracking kamas is not possible for whatever reason.

I've noticed that the amount of bots are increasing in Incarnum's Solar server. There has to be something you guys at Ankama can do about these buggers. They are stealing all of the monsters on the field! It's really annoying!

At the moment, there is no sure fire action that can be taken to rid the bots. Ankama and the Dofus community have not yet discovered a direct way to get rid of the bots. Hopefully you can contribute some ideas instead of the usual 'I don't like them', as it's been said over and over and has no useful information or ideas contained within.

Sophidian ^^

I find that the ones constantly spamming websites in Astrub to be even more annoying. It really ruins the area for me.

So far you can't do anything you might as well have to deal with it. But I'm pretty sure ankama is trying to figure out how to get rid of these bots. The spamming ones are less annoying I mean at the place where a lot are in groups and fight I try to get in but they keep stealing it. I hope they find a way to fix it but I think ankama for what they've done for us so far.

How about a blanket mute across the whole of f2p land? Legitimate players can simply Group up if they want to talk to one another - may seem harsh, but that would instantly remove the problem away from Astrub. I am not sure whether f2pers can talk outside the f2p area at present - perhaps you could forbid this as well if thats necessary.

If the people who sell kamas can't talk to 'their customers' how can they possibly get their message across? Of course this may end up moving the problem elsewhere eg. bots PMing people they see run through the screen.

The developers must also consider a Report button - hitting this captures the Dofus window, the chatbox is cropped, and /w text if visible is converted into Text and sent to ankama where it is processed into a spreadsheet containing the account name and player of both the person pming and the player who received the message along with server name and time-stamp.

Then using SQL against the message itself check for offending Text for such words as WWW.kamas.com, 3w.kamas.com etc etc etc.. if the account is flagged then automatically suspend the account no questions asked. No one should ever need to type a website address with kama selling connotations.

So in short, ban public chat throughout f2p land and add a report button so its possible for players to report offending 'announcer bots' anywhere in the game directly to the developers as and when they are received, check the reported data for offending words and auto-ban the account.

So there you go build a comprehensive black list of kama websites, then develop a new application that will run SQL commands against the spreadsheet whenever a player make a report... an application that checks for 1000 variations of www.kamas.com will help stem the problem somewhat. Without a means to advertise their kama sites there is little point in other bots going about their business.

This post has been edited by RikkiL: 22 Nov 2008, 04:52

I find the idea of putting black chat off ridiculous. Even wose: bots would PM as you already mentioned. They can already click any monster and "join", how hard would it be to change it to "players" and "private message".

And your idea of the report button seemed good at first because mods/admins would have to read the logs. Which is also a bad thing because they have other stuff to do. So there's 2 gambles here. One: players will only report bots (so no bad scam reports and stuff like that). Two: the bots won't abuse it themselves to make the logs almost unreadable.

I'll just copy and paste my comments wholesale from another thread (with some additions and editing)

Hmm... let's get back to the basics based on information contributed by players in the forums.

1. The primary source of real-life income is the sale of kamas via the numerous weblinks spammed.
No matter how rigorous Moderators are kicking them and banning them, they just keep on coming back. It's a case of Humans Vs Machines and unless there's an automated way of kicking spam bots, there will never be enough Mods to keep the server spam-bot free. There is no use asking for more mods or for mods to do their job more often, a Mod needs to sleep while the computer running bot doesn't. The only logical way is to somehow for the system to identify a spam-bot and automatically kicks it. That said, you might have human players who are shouting the same thing over and over again (like selling their resources) and they will inevitably be tagged as spamming and automatically kicked... and I'm sure they will make a fuss about it soon enough.

Bottomline: Spam is plain annoying but relatively harmless on the big scale of things. It's basically advertising and that can be rectified by turning the black chat off, pretty much like switching to another tv channel instead of running out to get a can of cola whenever the cola advertisement comes on.

2. Kamas to be 'sold' are obtained via farming bots
Farming bots... might refer to hunting bots or the resources farming ones. To sell kamas, the sellers must have kamas and they are obtained via these muscles. Once again, you can ban them as and when they are discovered but just like any other bots, they make a comeback within minutes and goes back to optimal proficiency in farming within a week or so. Sure, it might slow them down somewhat but I would imagine that kama sellers have such a huge stockpile of kamas that they can afford to lay off using any bots for quite a while. The Scarecrow started off as an anti-bot measure but it has since become more like a piece of paper rather than a solid wall against farming bots, but giving credits due, it was initially a good idea, but have since proved worthless and likely taken advantaged of, since winners against the Scarescrow gains additional resources, and farming bots just loves having more to sell for kamas.

Bottomline: Anti-farming-bot measures are good....if they work. I still believe by cutting this main line of kama supplies, it's basically the end of the story for them, no kamas to sell equals to no business. That said, these bots are the hardest to fight because they keep moving around and like I mentioned, their stockpile of kamas could possibly be on par with the national treasury so it's gonna be a long long battle.

3. F2P bots and P2P bots
Most of the bots are found in F2P areas, Astrub and Incarnam and I believe that there are some P2P bots running around too. Would making a server fully P2P really eliminate the botting activities? I believe that it will cut down on the number of bots but the big repercussions are going to come from the players, especially those who can't maintain a subscription constantly. F2P allows people to try out the game before deciding if they want to subscribe and it's a good form of advertisements that Ankama are gonna stick to no matter what. I believe the reason that Heroic server is relatively bot-free is mainly because of the "intense" situation rather than the P2P factor. Kama sellers are just as likely to survive in a P2P environment, just having to give up a small part of their earning to subscriptions. Someone might need to do the accounts on behalf of the kama-sellers to see if the books balance out in the end, so that to know if a full P2P server is gonna punch a big hole in their pockets.

Bottomline: Proceeding with this route and one might be at the end of the burning wrath of F2P population. The impact of such a move on F2P has to be weighed against the likelihood of success, anything less than a significant decrease in number of bots and it's failure with big backlash.

4. Kama buyers
In some way, they are source of all the problems. Afterall, no demand, no supply right? The fact that in-game currency selling is so rampants these days is due to the players themselves. You can say they do not respect the game but at the end of the day, they are the ones paying. It's similar to people who use cheatcodes in single-player games and they have their reasons too, despite whatever principles that hardcore gamers believe in, so it will be an endless debate on the ethics of buying in-game currency. If Ankama's stand on the sale of kamas is firm, they will have to do more than putting a statement in their ToS. It will be an uphill task because if they start restricting huge transactions, it's gonna affect the economy, and if they decide to monitor such transactions, there will be a lot of data for them to sieve through and by then, the buyers would have already paid for the kamas and the sellers do not care what happens to them as long as payment is received.

Bottomline: Either you cut off the supply in 2) or you cut off the demand as mentioned here in 4). Let it be known by clear action that kama buyers are dealt with seriously and whatever they paid for in subscription or payment for the kamas will be forfeited. Of course, there is just small problem of how to track these people.

Overall summary: It's gonna take more than just ONE implementation to deal with the bots, because if such a Holy Grail exists, I'm sure one of the more established companies would have employed it and boasted about it long ago. Also, how much collateral damage are we as players willing to accept? We could be one day be at the mercy of our own suggestions because of a misunderstanding, and are we able to deal with it patiently and logically?

The 'log' as you call it requires very little human interaction. Its an application that reads a row of data, analyses it against a black list and suspends an account if it finds the player posted a kama website address.

Unless you come up with an incredible idea to prevent this, it will end up hurting real players. I often write links in-game, especially the wikia to beginners.

This could be a idea of stopping the bots...

1: No more allowing dropping instead throw trash at nearby bank trash cans( so auto's cant drop trade for their buyers)
2:When a player offers a item the other player can give the exact price or only so much below or above(so auto bots cant trade like a piwi cape for like 1m to thier buyer.
3: No more giving 1m to a player for free(this is cause auto's give their buyers money for free)

Since the auto's cant trade thier buyers there would be no point for them to farm or hunt ect.


Also the people that use auto's to thier advantage you cant just bann their ip adress.

I think this would stop lots of auto's.

Wish, this is astoundingly insightful. From what I have seen in-game and read about the bot issues for Dofus are much like the evil early days of email spam. And the methods of abaiting the the bot systems are most likely going to be developed in the long, slow and painful process that the most successful email filtering systems now use.

I can think of about a dozen different methods (some have been suggested, some not) to curb botting, "ignore" accounting is one that would be interesting. But I know from previous experiances that it's not a single or handful of things that create a successful ID/filtering system, it's the conglomeration of dozens of different systems to produce "patterns" or "trend/types" (as opposed to "matchs")... That kind of sofistication is only recently being promoted by the largest of email concerns. I'm going to go ahead and put forth that nothing of that level will ever exist in this game.

That being said, I think you are dismissing the single greatest resource in the game itself: the player base.

Yes, it's a very easy to create an abusable system, but all systems are open to abuse of some form... it's like a law of nature (rule in the matrix?). But the 2nd greatest advancement in email filtering was the introduction of client responce databases. When you say a piece of email is spam in Google, MSN, or (especially) AOL, you are voting on it. If enough clients vote on "similar" emails as spam, that "type" of email is automatically filtered at the gate servers.

In Dofus, an example would be like "If enough differant accounts ignore a specific player; take action".

Anyway, as far as "bang for buck" on a single suggestion, I really think a system involving player contribution is a key (actually crowdsourcing is a form of contribution). Your right, there will never be enough Mods, but the players outnumber the bots (hopefully ). So, I guess I'm suggesting less of a crowdsourcing system and more of a full player empowerment system. Just one that doesn't actually involve direct power.

I leave it to you to decide how much I don't understand the term crowdsourcing

This post has been edited by osirisxeno: 24 Nov 2008, 08:50

I think this is a good general suggest for the game. A full P2P server would promote a number of things conducive to the game experience, as well as reducing bot activity / making it more expensive to advertise / practice on.

It does make an interesting demographic target for them though.

Using pleayers' help is a double-edged sword. There are many n00bs out there (or just nwbies who won't know what the report system will be for) and bots are "players" too so they can abuse it.

Many times people suggested ideas like "if a person gets ignored 100 times in 10 minutes, it is banned". Bots could just ignore everyone. Some people would gang up on someone to get that person banned. And most people speaking other languages would get ignored, thus banned. And since Rushu has now almost the same number of players in french and english, they ignore each other and get each other banned.

This is why, unless someone comes up with a very innovative way to report bots, I'm against such a system.

Agreed. The example I gave was simplistic. But I can also perceive that the only resource the game may have to deal with something as complex and dynamic as bots (in a 90-95% efficacy kind of way) are the players. Wish was suggesting a method (which had several good points, raw as it was), I guess the implementation is really what it comes down to.

One point I probably need to clarify; it's not really the players that would be making the decision - they would just be input for an automated server-side decision maker. That's how you unload the Mods and still keep up with all the goofy stuff Botters would throw at the game... I think we can all agree that giving players a "kick" function (in any form) isn't the goal.

And yes - being an international game does make some interesting issues. But not issues that couldn't be overcome.

I'll be thinking about this more... thanks RollbackSuckz

I dont know did someone mentioned it before me cause I didn't read every replay there is.
How about a system for f2p players that will force them to "rest"? I mean sure it whont help a lot but still they have to pass Incarnam rite? Well they can also go straight to Astrub but what if there were some sort of "Resting System". If you play long it will make your character (this account) weaker. Losing energy, auto-ghosting, immobilizing, making you unable to do anything even trade so u would have to log off from this account for fiew hours. Specialy for things like fighting monsters all the time or smth like that. The longer you are online the the more you lose. Some sort of play time timer.
I think this might help at least a bit. At least it will slower them down.
p2p bots population is lower cause they have to pay. In other word they pay for Ankama and they get banned anyway
Besides I think at least some players are trying to help and reporting f2p/p2p bots it they spot them (like myself)
Best way is directly to online MOD but even by sending a ticket.

One word:
Runescape

Hmm, I think that accounts should need to be verified through a valid email address before account creation is complete. Perhaps if DOFUS had limited players to one account per email, that may have lowered the number of bot population by a good ammount. Although it would be too late to do that now since there are so many players with multiple accounts running through the same email already.

Since each of these botting accounts have been created suscessfully, even imputted the anti-bot code correctly, this tells us that either an employee of the kama selling company creates the account or they have a very clever system that somehow automatically detects what the code is. I wouldn't think that is very likely but everyone is welcome to debate on that.

The accounts in-game seem to login, logout, move, fight, advertise and everything else automatically. What if there was another anti-bot code you had to imput on the login screen? Sure it may be slightly anoying for players but it would only take a few seconds for a player to look at the code and type it in. This way botting accounts which run automatically will not be able to imput the random code thus won't be able to login.

I'm not sure what the employees would do if there was an anti-bot code you had to imput pn the login screen. Maybe they would have to manually imput usernames/passwords and the code in in order for an account to logon. Compare the ammount of bots with the number of employees there would probably be, it would be difficult for the employees to manage. If not impossible. 1.85 million bots deleted in October 2008... Imagine having to logon that many times in a month and you wouldn't just be logging on once with that character. If it disconnects, you'd have to re connect etcetc. And what, around 100 employees have the responsibility for managing that many accounts?
I personally think the only things the employees need to do are create accounts and possibly manage the website and sales of kamas. Manually logging on just seems so unrealistic for that ammount of accounts being made.

So yes it is impossible to ban every single bot on DOFUS. However it could be possible to prevent bots from logging on in the first place.

Just a thought!

• Rou

(Slayer of over 500 bots... More like 1500-2000 by now!)

How about if a player stays at 1hp for 10 or more fights he can't enter the next fight until his hp is at 100%? Again another thing to slow them down/force them to buy bread.

They eat bread already. I know the "group leaders" already do and I'm fairly positive the enus also do at least from time to time.
At least, that was back in the days where it was still possible to join some of their fights if you clicked fast enough. I was able to enter and kill them but they'd usually be at full HP in the next battles.

This 1HP system would be easily countered and it doesn't hurt real players much but it would still require some programming time and data storage, so I think it should not be done.

This post has been edited by RollbackSuckz: 25 Nov 2008, 22:24

why not make a new account only can battle like 10-20 times i think that enough to test the game, after that they cant battle again outside astrub city and only can kill the piwi, i think no bot killing the piwi

because alot of arch at f2p area like tofu sunflower evil dandelion missing in game

I've noticed bots are starting to congregate in the jelly peninsula. I've seen groups of them every day for the past week now. Can the mods do a quick sweep of the area? I took pictures and was going to send a ticket, but that seems like a joke in and of itself anymore. I'd be happy to post pictures here, but I'm not sure what the best method is to report p2p bots anymore. What are my options?

How exactly are the bots registering so many accounts so quickly? I know they are doing it automatically, but how are they getting past the anti-bot confirmation image?

~1st Idea~
I read earlier on that the bots weren't using the normal clients but using clients of their own that don't display anything and just react to the packets that are being sent from the server itself. I also read that they all log on on their own. If the bots can't see what is on the screen itself, then Ankama should put a anti-bot confirmation image on the log in screen. They won't be able to read it and therefore leave the spot blank and not be able to log in. At most this would be a minor annoyance for real players who would be able to do it.

~2nd Idea~
Bots move around from map to map fighting monster after monster without stopping for hours or days(not sure how long they actually run). So they can go through 20 fights in 10 minutes. Real players don't because the main goal for them in groups is normally experience or items so they fight higher lvl mobs and the fights take longer. I think a system could be created so that players would have to confirm themselves by answering a question or typing in a randomly generated code IF they have been in more than 10 fights in 10 minutes. When the question or image opens it could give them the "Overloaded" effect of not being able to move or do anything until they get a right answer. That would make them stop right in their tracks. If they don't answer or get a wrong answer they are immediately logged off and need to log in again.

If you mix my 2nd idea and my 1st idea together, the bots would need to confirm themselves constantly (when they log on/when they are fighting/when they are logged off for a wrong answer they would need to reconfirm themselves to log on again)

Wow, that took forever to write... ok tell me what you guys think

rikkil...your words scare me.
i am not so sure poor country makes the bots.why are u?bec they are poor?
u scare me indeed

This post has been edited by ejszem: 2 Dec 2008, 07:26

Hmmm not sure if it's just me but there seems to have been a large increase of Cras the past few days on multiple servers.

Also bot names seem to be more natural now, like a normal player would use. Not just random giberish. That's not so new however.

-Rou-

The more normal names are due to the random name button that is on the character creation page ;]


-Nate

Makes me wonder how many possible names there can be... there must be an upper limit - unless when bots are deleted the 'name' they was using was also removed from the database.

Ejszem, I was referring China (Gold Farming) - an interesting read... and as rammed down our throats these days China is far from being a 'poor' county and is rapidly turning into a superpower.

This post has been edited by RikkiL: 2 Dec 2008, 23:42

This may sound dumb.... But what is a bot?

Bot: a robot. Basically when you see a player doing strange things such as joining fights at the speed of light thousand times in a row, or spamming websites in Astrub, it's usually a bot.

Bots are not slowed by "reflex speed" and fatigue, so they do the same thing over and over again.

After reading Gold Farming once again I have come to the conclusion that Ankama should introduce an Unbalanced Trading and Quest Point system. Of course quests already completed by players must be taken into account when introducing such a system.

If two players are trying to trade between one another and they have both accured a high number of QPs (say more than 10000 for arguments sake) they can freely trade between other, but if either of the players has accured anything lower than 10000 points then a trade is not possible.

That would royally piss off everyone trying to level up new characters, everyone having mules, and everyone having low-level characters with jobs.

I'd agree for a quest point system only if the whole account counted.

right i have had enough.

im new to this game and only started yesterday ok?

right i read the first page of this topic and was amazed despite all the things the mod was saying you were still going against it like wtf??

it true i use to be a mod for rs and you have no idea of the amounts of bots i banned a day , it literally took the fun out of the game. as the mod said in the first game botting is there way of earning money and i have 2 solution's which helped reduce the numbers of rs bots by a little at least.

1) the bots are usually working for kamas selling site you could try and ban them all .... etc

2) make a special type of mod/gm. the type of mod/gm will only have the right to ban players , but not just to ban random players they must pass threw and "senior" or "experienced" mod. these mods wont be paid but will be volunteers. with the different amount of players playing dofus i would say you would be getting at least 2 mods from every different time zone on ech server thus making the mod runs 24/7. This way the company would not have to pay any money at all and have mods to ban botters , also my friend wrote a file with can seek out botters anywhere and get there "internal I.P" (dun ask me what it is no idea) which always stays the same even when you use a proxy or something like smart hide this way the botters will not be able to make anymore accounts. Currently its not working as good as he would want and hes given me permission to sen dto you guys when he finishes it if u want it it might help a lot.

well thats all i got to say.

P.S: someone give me a gob set plz

peace and out

main> yppgunz119>rusha>whiskyjacks>feca
alt>falmeee>rusha>whiskys>iop

Excerpt from the Closed 'Damn Bots' thread:

Rollbacksuckz:

I want to bring up the fact that if you powerlevel less, you're probably going to have more money when you reah level X and thus equips for that level will be more affordable to you. My main character's level is not exactly 180, but I don't have money problems regarding equips for my level. I didn't powerlevel much.

-------

I agree with this 100%. Players are always in a rush to hit level X, but when they reach level X the goal-post moves again. Oh I'll just get to level X+X then I'll save for item Y.. ah nvm I am now at level X+X+X I don't need item Y instead I'll get item Z. OMG item Z costs Vkk I only have V/100kk I am such a noob... nvm I will continue on to level X+X+X+X and worry about it later because prices 'have to come down soon, i'll let everyone else farm stuff'.... except they don't for ages because the majority of players have the same lazy-ass mentality, 'It's someone else's job to do the repetitive crap'.

Of course the price does fall eventually, but whilst your powerleveling that once sought after item becomes less appealing... as does the next and the next after.

The game needs people Drop Hunting and Less Leveling... A Good Player = One with good equipments, the level alone means nothing.

ie. A level 80 Player (any class) wearing Prespic is a disgrace. I only ONCE wore Prespic in my early days and that was when Reflect worked the old way and ONLY on Moon Island against them Tikokokos.

And just for the record Rambo may have been the first to have reached level 200, but the other thing that people remember him for is his pathetic gear - he wasn't worthy of his level at that time.

This post has been edited by RikkiL: 9 Dec 2008, 03:04

I dont agree much to the drop hunting thing, when someone comes along an jumps into a group an the game gives that player the drop I am or the group is after. And this person runs off with it, this happened me loads of times in dungeons an at the Arenas. I also wish there was a +1PP scroll like that +1 to spell points, cause I have a terrible time trying to get drops cause the PP lock for the item I am after is alot higher than I can ever get on my own. My friends tend to be busy or mostly off-line so I have no choice but to hunt the item alone 98% of the time.

Go with some Enus' an have them help out, those are the players that are stealing my drops an then they totally refuse to hand the drop over; even if players agree to some rules when opening souls at Arenas, there always low lvl pleyers there who jump fights at the arena to steal item drops all the time, an I'm getting tired of it. I'd prefer some "Drop Lock" in the fights, if a player doesn't kill nothing.. then he/she gets no 'drops or kamas' from the monsters in a mob. (xp he/she may still get, its fine with me) Moowolf Scalp

My grievance wasn't over the PP/Lock System aside from dropping Dofi its perfectly sound.

My grievance was about the general mood in the game, lazy ppl and the general lack of understanding Dofus game mechanics. Why don't people have a go at farming Cheeken Plaits? The drop lock is low enough - but the price is sky high. Sure the fights last longer, xp is crap, but like I say when you level up you don't magically find 100kk in your bank just for purely leveling your char.

And the game mechanic I was referring to.... A Mob is either for XP or for Drop. In Dofus the two never cross - because they design it that way.

This post has been edited by RikkiL: 9 Dec 2008, 18:19

This has nothing in common with bots just give some suggestions about bout bots and boy about pp lock or drops. anyways this thread is about how to deal with bots k got to the suggestions forum or somthin

If you ask how can bot do ..? It is simple they just can. I have played Silkroad for a while but got disgusted with community but not bots(but if you want know more about bots then there is a lot of articles about this game).(Mod delete this part if it breaks rules)

Personally they could deal with spam bots easily by disabling public messages in this area.(there are couple places only where they spam).

Hi sorry in advance about the quality of this post, its my first in this forum . I'm sure almost everyone, at least on rushu, is tired of the constant spamming for kama selling websites that causes huge lag. I propose a suggestion, that every 10 minutes that a person stays on a single square (getting into a fight would count as leaving the square.) they get attacked by a low lvl monster, much like the scarecrows for farmers, this idea could stop many of those dumb spammers making dofus laggy, however I don't know how complicated this would get, and it might be too much effort for too little reward. well, tell me what you think.

anti-bot means that some random mechanism is needed to prevent the whole dofus from been annoyed by the spams, for example, the exit points on each single map have constant coordinates, hence a automatic program could collect whole information for this and drive its bot to run from one map to another. however, supposed that, the exit point could have a random position, i mean, vary in a short range, but not constant, this could make the bot-program fail to identify and maybe stop. of course the program possibly make use of some image processing method to look for the exit, but, the dofus could adopt different kind of exit icon, and different color, this is very simple for players to learn, but hard for program to adapt. and lot of such kind of mechanism could be introduced into the system, as long as it does not affect the user experience too much



This post has been edited by gobball-corner-ya: 26 Dec 2008, 07:55

I'm completely in favor of integrating a captcha in game for, say, every 10 fights. That way, the screen is frozen until the player types in the correct code. Players could have a 'captcha counter' to tell them how many fights to go until the next one. This might anger some people at first but quite honestly it's a small price to pay. It seems like it would hinder the bot creations/convenience/quickness to the point where they are useless.

Or you can make it so that the captcha system works only for a certain length of time (first few hundred fights) and once it is proven that the player is an actual human who can unlock the screen whenever a captcha shows up, the system is canceled and the players can go ahead and live their lives. Then after a certain number of fights (few hundred or a few thousand), the captcha system returns.

I think this would dramatically reduce the number of bots because they are no longer useful because it requires human interaction.

This won't work. Lot's of players simply leave their characters to go do other things for long periods of time. It would be really inconvenient if someone left their character to go eat dinner only to come back to find that they're a ghost.

I posted this in another thread, but it got closed because I'm guessing this is the official bot discussion thread... Anyway, I woke up this morning to try and play the game, and there are more bots than there were two days ago. Same names, and they're all running around grabbing up every monster on the map, making it almost impossible to level.

i got an idea its : how about searching for the computer that make that bots and bust him , good idea , right ?


thanks for every thing ankama games

Have you noticed spambots are getting more annoying every day? Honestly, I feel it is now easier to steer clear of Asturb at all rather than plow through four screens of

CHEAP KAMAZ www.stupidwhore.com BUY NOW!!!! 43

every time i have to get, say, from zaap to the bank.

As far as i can tell, Ankama is trying to fight this with some kind of text analyzing ban system (judging by the way spam messages are getting weirder and weirder) and an ocasional moderator visit (I've seen them working couple of times - boy that was satisfying!)

But that doesn't seem to work - too many servers, too many spammers, not enough Ankama employees.

So i think it is a great idea to let players fight those pests on their own.

The easiest and the most obvious way to do it, i think, is to count how many times people have ignored a certain character. If somebody gets, say, 50 ignores - I think it is safe to assume we have a bot on our hands, so preferred course of action would be kicking the character off the server, banning the account, banning that IP address from creating any new accounts and probably finding out the physical location of spammer's computer and nuking that place from orbit.

What do you think of that idea, fellow forum readers?

So far you can ignore the spam bots, but I'm sure ankama is working on how to get rid of them.

No. Time and time again ideas such as "after X number of ignores they get banned" is not a good ting because of possible abuse. By real players and by bots. Personally I ignore all the frenchie nuisances I find. Frenchies probably ignore me too. Now, imagine a frenchie writing in the Buying channel. How many people do you think ignore him at once? And the same thing goes for any language. Basically the most popular language would pretty much kick all the others away.

And then, there's the possibility of harassment. Say 20 people are online in your guild, on top of 20 friends. You ask them all to ignore Chevalier-Deladoom because you don't like him. And then you ask them to ask their friends to ignore him as well. Quite possibly after a few minutes, mister Chevalier-Deladoom will be kicked.

And then, there's bots. The day bots decide to use that system, everyone is screwed. How fast do you think they can click on everyone on the map and ignore them, then go to another map? VERY fast. After a few minutes, most of Astrub could be kicked. And also, remember that there are some P2P bots : they could do it as well.

And this is why I am against that type of system.

This post has been edited by RollbackSuckz: 27 Dec 2008, 21:38

Abuse can be dealt with.

At the very least number of ignores is a great way of attracting moderators' attention.

Also, you can always run an automated human/bot check when some character hits the ignoring threshold. Spambots are easy to spot - always standing at the same area, always shouting the same or very similar sentence, they are always level 1 characters. They get ignored constantly and at a steady rate while potential abuse victims or "frenchies at the trade channel" will get a lot of ignores at the same time - a huge peak on ignores/time graph instead of a steady line.

I don't know what kind of statistics Ankama keeps, but surely there is something to work with.

RE possible ignore-bots - i don't think they can make much trouble. Amassing 50+ bot-driven characters on the same map is simply not worth the effort - you will have to set up several computers, monitor all the bots constantly - just for the satisfaction of getting someone checked by moderators.

Naturally, feature like this will require some extensive testing, but I think it is possible to tune it up the right way.

I often see people spamming the same things over and over again when I go to Astrub. Example:

BUY ---ACORN---10kamas---PRESPIC PEAKS---50kamas---

and

I need kamas to open bank, 572 kamas ploxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx!!!!!!

and on a french server, I saw screenshots similar to this:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH Rushu is under maintenance!

You would ban them? Or just kick them? If so, how much time till they can come back?

And yes, it would be a bit of extra work for a botter to make it so their bots ignore everyone on sight and get them banned. Would you put that system into effect, knowing with a bit of work bots could screw up the game so badly on such short notice? I would not.

This post has been edited by RollbackSuckz: 28 Dec 2008, 08:12

Allow people to move their characters from one server to another...
Then I could leave the bots of rushu behind me, and you know the bots are taking up so much room I apparantly cant log on because the server is full.

And if you can pull up a massive list of accounts linked to a single bot... couldnt you just, delete them all, no questions asked?
Update your filter and put a report button in... or like... a new server, invite only.

Maybe, a very, very strict filter system, which players can impose on a bot, if it fits the category the bot gets deleted, along with all of his little friends.

If mods copy and paste a few of the bots messages into the filter then anyone who types it gets deleted... every single bot writes the same thing, with a number on the end... so just type enter that message minus the number, anyone who types it is deleted... sounds simple to me.

Or yeah, pop ups or something that ask you to do something, hitting enter obviously ends with the character choosing to have his account deleted.

I think you have to be real mean to get rid of them.

This post has been edited by EvaPilot: 28 Dec 2008, 19:34

I know I can create a couple accounts in a matter of minutes. So creating new accounts is definately no problem for bots.

And I'm pretty sure there are bots on all servers except Oto Mustam and possibly Jiva. Because those 2 have restrictions to join.

This post has been edited by RollbackSuckz: 28 Dec 2008, 19:29

well.... how about a maximum number of accounts per IP address or something? sure, if one is deleted you could make another... but at least there would not be so many bots around.

And just because they can make more accounts, doesnt mean you shouldnt be deleting them all at once. By not doing it your just letting them accumulate, as represented by the stats you gave in the first post.

This post has been edited by EvaPilot: 28 Dec 2008, 19:47

Well, not long ago Wish said soething along those lines:

EDIT: first page of this thread:


So I'm pretty sure they do ban every bot attached to each other (I'm guessing by IP)

This post has been edited by RollbackSuckz: 28 Dec 2008, 19:54

which reinforces what I just said...
Just someone needs to work out a way of doing it automatically

I wondered if it might be possible to add a feature allowing players to "flag" a character as being a bot? (Via the clikmenu etc?)

If enough unique flags were accumulated within a short period of time (say >100 in an hour), as if everyone passing by a zaap flagged a spambot, the account could get suspended. This would save the mods lots of time and effort, and make the players feel like they were lending a hand to a nearly impossible problem.

How about an ignore indefinitely button?
I dont like having to ignore the same bots every time I log on

Spam-bots, in my experience, rarely last more than an hour.
I once tried inviting them to my guild and after a couple minuts, they would be gone (but there would be new spam-bots to replace them).

IDEA. . . how about you bana bots ip so they cant log use dofus on their computer again.

I'm trying to find where people suggested this 10+ times and we kept saying it wouldn't work, but I can't find where

Basically: proxies counter this. And you mess up internet cafes, schools, etc.

This post has been edited by RollbackSuckz: 8 Jan 2009, 07:57

i have a pritty radical idea, and i know its going to annoy a lot of people.


if the main problem is farmer bots,
and in order to keep these going they need money,
and money makes the world go round.

so: money makes the dofus world go round right?
players in game always need money.




well the soultion to this seems pritty simple to me. as AQ did ( yes i used to play, i was that sad. ) introduce kama sale to ankama itself. if the players can buy it from ankama then they will not buy from the bots. i think i am right in assuming that rosal 1mk is about £15. so if ankama kept up its current efforts to kill bots, and sold their own kama at an undercut price, (with a limit on amount per month say to stop people just amassing money) then they will eventually go bankrupt no?

kills the player demand, which i believe was one of the solutions wanted earlier.

any thoughts?

It would remove any hard work from the game, as instead of working for say a Dora Bora via earning Kama or dropping the mats, why not just go and buy 2mk(Rushu money) from ankama for £2-4, each time you want a new item or whatever, just spend a couple of £'s and you got it - Removes all the players hard work, and professions would become void.

MOD Bokze

is true, but would solve the bot issue. i'm just firing off another idea into the mix for people to mull over. i never said it was perfect

It would solve the problem, well, i don't actually think it would - They would simply put them cheaper than ankama's... But it would completely ruin the economy, ruining the game IMO.

MOD Bokze

Greetings all!

I would just like to let the creators of Dofus to know that I have worked to get now at least 4 people, both old players and new players alike, into Dofus. Unfortunately, each time I have done so, I would come into the tutorial/low level area and try to help my friends with quests, and each time I would be trying to find a high level mob only to have an ARMY of Bots go from one side of the screen, agro just about everything on the map, and then move on to the next screen.

When it comes to farming quests, as a lot of the quests require you to hunt creatures, often times rare creatures and the drops that they cary, it is rather difficult to do so when there are a good 5-10 different Bots on the screen taking everything as they are running from place to place, agro to agro, in very quick short order. I find this to be extremely irritating, as if it were an actual player, I could at least have the opportunity to try to join the group and even if not trying to level, at least try to farm these drops with the other players.

Either way, those four players, despite all that I have said to try to keep them in the game, have been detoured to other games. I find Dofus to be a good game, though even I have to admit that the Botting has gotten ridiculous in low levels. I would definitely hate to see how bad this has gotten in the higher levels as I'm sure players and bots alike are farming for both scroll materials and kamas, selling them on actual online markets in order to make real money.

Since my joy of the game, as well as the enjoyment of the game for my friends, have all been detoured, all I have is two questions! Why, oh why, has botting become such a fad in this game, and why haven't more resources been invested in order to diminish these Botting characters. I understand that some things have been done to make it harder for botters, but if I'm seeing sometimes up to 10 or more Cras, all looking the same and moving from screen to screen, not stopping once and making it so I can't report them as you can't determine a players name while they are moving, then its a clear fact that something seriously wrong is being taken advantage of in a rather silly proportion.

But then again, this has been the case for over a month now, but when the experience has been the same for multiple weeks and on two different servers (Rosal and Solar) I honestly do not believe its just something thats happenstance, its a regular problem and its being ignored. Despite this, I know that this could just be an exageration of my observation, and if it is what can I do to make my own, as well as my friends, playing experience more worth our time and prevent machines and programs from taking the fun out of the game.

Thank you for your time and consideration of this matter,
Entromancer

Mods are probably trying to get rid of it but in another 30 minutes they are back. =(

Ah, are those bots. I was wondering where that train of dwarves (Enutrofs) was running to all the time and where Snow White was. Maybe kidnapped by that family of identical-looking Cras

But I've never seen them do anything other than high speed through screen after screen. Have you seen them stop to fight?

Ok so recently i've seen people complain ages about bots. Whats really that bad about them.


Does one person standing in one square chopping at a piece of wheat for 5 hours really bother you that much? Sure they can steal a good tofu mob or two, but there are a lot more than what these guys are taking, Plus most of them just killing arachnees moskitos and stuff like that all day. Not a great deal of harrasment.


Im just wondering, whats the hype about Bots?