Bot Detection How do We do it?

[Yojimbo]

Please skip down to post 9 by Sabregirl we will continue a new track of discussion from there original post deleted. I apologize for my confusion and mistake and the anger it stirred in people.

[Paradoom]

While I see that this bot detection will be made for Limbo (because of a planned general change), why the heck is everyone going to try and put penalties on them?

Just a little run formation reality: I very often bot in random groups and why? Because everyone wants to tag and not make/bring a needed character (core). So I am practically forced into playing one of those, to make the run happen. Just yesterday I played bard and druid on a min run and tagged my rouge, and sin even dropped his tagger and brougth a sorc. And yes I would like to play the rouge also once in a while or a tank or any other toon for that matter.
Now the problem arises: I do what I can to make the run go and if possible drag my tagger along, so I get that at least (and still keeping the human > bot rule up, unless that makes the run impossible). But you suggest to penalize everyone for helping out that way. Please rethink that suggestion carefully.

[Yojimbo]

Well I can only assume that a bot detection in Limbo would penalize them in some form. Only other penalty I can see if not giving the bot gold from autosell and such or not counting them when the various calculations for based on party size are made. Currently bots do bring their own penalty in the form of potentially adding to demi count which can be an unwanted cost of botting. The problem I see with addressing bots specifically is that detection of bots vs leeches would require a lot more work than simply detecting them as the same an applying an equal penalty. I am all for it only being applied to Limbo but I don't see why this would not get implemented to other areas. I would find a penalty to XP the most agreeable penalty to apply to both groups also as well I suggest, or intended to suggest, that action would reset the penalty back to 0 so as to allow an action from a bot to be rewarded.

[chainlink]

As there is already code in place to prevent random loot spawns with multiple characters from one IP address (and yes this also affects multiple players from one IP address) in certain LL runs I'm not seeing any huge advantage to further penalties for running bots although for Limbo I suspect its to prevent solo players getting the new uber set loot as well.
Lets be realistic the player population is low enough already without cheesing off the people that run multiple instances and further reducing the chances of successful run formation.
The xp penalty is also kind of counter intuitive as well bearing in mind when the server population is below a certain level you get extra xp from 'ghost' characters running with you.

[Yojimbo]

I was unaware of the loot system noticing bots and I understand your point about the bonus XP from ghost party members but that to me is more reason to consider a means to negate that in groups that are not groups the idea is the penalty only applies to the actual bot/inactive player essential reducing what they get for doing nothing while not removing it entirely.

[louisvilleslugger]

Why in the nine hells would you want to punish people who bring bots...

As of late, there wouldn't be any hell runs if not for people who play a core and drag a tagger behind them.

It's usually the vets who do this to get the run going as versus no run at all.

**scratches head and wanders off**

-Outkast

[Twilight Semner]

Mar 31, 2014 12:16:09 GMT Yojimbo said:

Funk has said he wants to code in some type of anti-bot code for Limbo

Funky didn't say that. He said he wanted bot-detection, not bot-punishment.

[chirality]

So is this whole thread just a bad rumor?

I don't even ?

[sabregirl]

The only "punishment" I'm aware of has to do with the XR tokens that will be earned by completing limbo runs (some of you may remember earning them in pillars events). Since it would be somewhat unfair exploitative to allow people with many instances to earn a token per account as well while actual human players only earn one. All the other stuff is invention by the posters.

-S

[FunkySwerve]

Mar 31, 2014 21:14:08 GMT sabregirl said:

The only "punishment" I'm aware of has to do with the XR tokens that will be earned by completing limbo runs (some of you may remember earning them in pillars events). Since it would be somewhat unfair exploitative to allow people with many instances to earn a token per account as well while actual human players only earn one. All the other stuff is invention by the posters.

-S

This. Though I suppose one man's lack of reward is another man's punishment, depending on how flexible their semantic leanings. In fact, as the fog lifts from mine gaze, I can see clearly not that this is obviously not some simple antiexploit designed to cover a fairly obvious loophole with an eye to the best interests of the server, but is in fact a convoluted and nerfarious plot by the man with many intricate and overlapping layers of malign intent and nogoodiness aimed at punishing players for playing. And . . . begin rant.

Funky

[theultimatesin]

You might be going a bit to the dramatic side. Of course, it's only paranoia if their not all out to get ya

[Yojimbo]

I certainly got the wrong impression and apologize for all that it stirred up. I agree it is semantics as while what I initially proposed was a "penalaty" it was applied to something a specific character didn't exactly "earn". I do understand what your actual objective is though similar mechanics could be applied to determine if a player "earned" a token as I would not be opposed to a player getting a token on 2 toons on a single run if he was able to provide enough active playing on each character.

How do we determine who all has earned such a token then? IP address alone would just be a random chance or could be limited to first from IP to enter but also penalizes people playing from the same network which seems common enough here to be of concern. I would prefer a system which determines how much a player "contributed" during the run to determine if they "earned" the reward this would allow people from the same IP to earn and receive the reward. The biggest "issue" with it is that it potentially means a single person capable of actively playing two characters could earn a reward as well however this is an acceptable "issue" as if you are able to actively play two toons well enough the "bonus" reward to the extra toon would be worth it.

[Yojimbo]

I also thought we could allow players to designate a bot with a command of some type and if the command isn't used then it is selected by the system and how it will be selected I don't know first to enter a map first in database who knows. This solution does not address the issue of 2 human players playing simultaneously from the same network which is something I think we should take care to make possible as we have parents that play with children and spouses who play together it certainly wouldn't be good to "penalize" them for playing together.

[madzapper]

Apr 1, 2014 14:27:02 GMT Yojimbo said:

I also thought we could allow players to designate a bot with a command of some type and if the command isn't used then it is selected by the system and how it will be selected I don't know first to enter a map first in database who knows. This solution does not address the issue of 2 human players playing simultaneously from the same network which is something I think we should take care to make possible as we have parents that play with children and spouses who play together it certainly wouldn't be good to "penalize" them for playing together.

With all of this discussion about bots and trying to determine them, I don't see any very good way to "automatically" determine them, as has also been mentioned many times with regards to IP address, etc.. With a bit of goodwill and community participation, there might be something that could ease that, however.

I definitely haven't fleshed all the ramifications, but alluding to your mention of a "bot" command, it could be furthered with something akin to the following:



First, a command to link two accounts together.

account 1:  !linkacct
account 1: target toon on acct 2

account 2: !linkacct
account 2: target toon on acct 1 - the final action links the accounts together.

What it does:  flags these two accounts (cd-keys, I guess) as being the same person.  When a player logs in to a server, if there is already a player from one of the accounts “linked” to that account, it automatically flags the account as a "bot" on that server until reset.

There are going to be times when this won’t work and a human response would be necessary.

!bot
!unbot

Which specifically flags a toon as "bot", or removes "bot" status.


If a "bot" status is declared, it could potentially be flagged as "bot" in webdash, etc. If you don't penalize "bots", but rather reward players, there probably isn't any reason people wouldn't voluntarily perform this action. It would make it easy to spot on runs how many party members are really there, etc. While discussing the possibility of "bot" showing in webdash, it might also be nice to allow people to flag "ABCD".


**EDIT - some additions:

A couple of other features that might be necessary/useful:

!list botstatus - lists accounts linked to the current account and the bot status of each character.

!primaryacct - sets the current account to be the "played" account and flags the other linked accounts to be "bot".

I know this sounds like a lot of dev work, but if the goal is to have a reliable way to determine bots and it has to be done... well, I think this might be part of ONE workable solution.


Cheers,

Madzapper

[FunkySwerve]

Apr 1, 2014 12:50:24 GMT Yojimbo said:

I certainly got the wrong impression and apologize for all that it stirred up. I agree it is semantics as while what I initially proposed was a "penalaty" it was applied to something a specific character didn't exactly "earn". I do understand what your actual objective is though similar mechanics could be applied to determine if a player "earned" a token as I would not be opposed to a player getting a token on 2 toons on a single run if he was able to provide enough active playing on each character.

No need to apologize. I was just having a bit of fun over the recent forum histrionics.

I also don't object to actively-played bots getting tokens, which is why I don't want to do just a simple ip check (which would also penalize couples playing together). What I'm going to need some help fine-tuning is quantifying what 'active' means in game terms. Damage dealt is one metric, but I still have to decide what is sufficient amount over what period of time to qualify as 'active', and past that, what other checks need to be added to capture support-type classes. The threshholds need to be pretty high, so that people aren't handed incentives to try to squeak by them with a number of bots.

Funky