Discussion: How Can We Handle Botting Better?

[KageTokage]

I had a thought that it's possible that some bots might actually have some kind of countermeasure in their script that triggers if someone on the STF/GM team contacts or approaches them, since I've seen it done in other MMOs where the staff were more...active in trying to punish cheaters. All it would take is one person getting caught by them to gather the data necessary to do so.

While GMs and other staff members can make themselves invisible, they still exist in the game's world and thus would still register in the game's memory and the bots in some games would actually DC or log off if they approached them due to them having a unique memory signature they could be scripted to detect. They can be also be scripted to offer a canned response to specifically named individuals, IE, anyone with the word "GM" at the start of their name, which would protect them from getting purged if the ones contacting them aren't smart enough to do more then simply ask if they're a bot.