New RMT?

[BHGlobbd]

I'm not sure if anyone else has been experiencing this. For the past few days, only once a day, I receive a tell from an obvious RMT bot (random letters for the names). However this tell isn't the usual advertisement, instead it is simply three capital letters (i.e. GVX, LTR, CFD etc.)

I honestly don't know what it means, I do not respond to the tells, I am curious if anyone else has seen this before.

[Ragology]

I think those are the random letters they add to the end of their messages. Not sure why the first part isn't getting through though.

Maybe SE has found a way to sever the link RT have with their automated servers?

[Canadane]

This has happened before. People speculate that an update has broken their spam bots so all that's left is the custom placed letters.

[Bixillarla]

I am still getting the full message with website urls and such from them.

[Amariel34]

Same. I saw three lvl 50 bots last night. Took the time to screenshot them all, so I could get the gibberish names, and reported them. Hope they get banned. I'm curious about something. Why doesn't SE just close the hole(s) in the code that allows bots to teleport and go underground? I would think that would slow them down a little. Or is it one of those code things that is very hard to do? I know nothing about game code or coding in general. So it might be harder than I think it is.

[Lethallin]

Same. I saw three lvl 50 bots last night. Took the time to screenshot them all, so I could get the gibberish names, and reported them. Hope they get banned. I'm curious about something. Why doesn't SE just close the hole(s) in the code that allows bots to teleport and go underground? I would think that would slow them down a little. Or is it one of those code things that is very hard to do? I know nothing about game code or coding in general. So it might be harder than I think it is.

Their syching with the client really isn't very good.

For the most part, the server believes the client if the client says it's in position X,Y,Z. There's a few checks for client modifications, but it's not very great.

[Sove92]

Their syching with the client really isn't very good.

For the most part, the server believes the client if the client says it's in position X,Y,Z. There's a few checks for client modifications, but it's not very great.

The reason behind why MMORPGs tend to trust the client when it comes to movement is simple. It takes a lot of CPU power to track the movement of hundreds to thousands of players in a 3D environment. It's trading security for reliability and convenience.

[Amariel34]

So even adding in invisible walls and telling the client/server that players aren't allowed past certain X,Y,Z coords wouldn't help?

[Kosmos992k]

The reason behind why MMORPGs tend to trust the client when it comes to movement is simple. It takes a lot of CPU power to track the movement of hundreds to thousands of players in a 3D environment. It's trading security for reliability and convenience.

Indeed. But I have never understood why SE cannot parse the logs, off-line, for suspect accounts to detect invalid movement, teleport or other problematic client side requests. The load of adding this kind of validation in real time would be too much without doubling the server capacity, but you could easily parse the logs for suspect (reported) accounts off line to detect obviously bad behavior.

So even adding in invisible walls and telling the client/server that players aren't allowed past certain X,Y,Z coords wouldn't help?

No, because the server would have to do coordinate checks on each and every position update, which, as mentioned by Sove, SE doesn't do so much. You can actually find specific locations on some maps where you can fall through ("glitch") the landscape and end up under the landscape. The server doesn't object despite your z-axis coordinates being clearly wrong.

[Culfinrandir]

A solution would be to form a seamless "boundary box" a bit like the invisible walls but enclosing the entire playing space, including just below the "ground" & set heights.

As mentioned, it is computationally intensive to check positioning at the current refresh rate (sub-3s?) but if they introduced a check at an arbitrary higher frequency (eg 45s) the load is reduced. Any player out of the box at their allocated check time will be flagged for investigation & immediately suspended.

To balance the server load it could be alphabet based. To counter tools moving a character back into the "safe zone" at set intervals the check frequency could be randomly changed. Nobody, not even the developers, would know exactly when the positions are to be checked.

If something similar was introduced then checking could have an even lower frequency, say once every 7-12 minutes, because the exact timing would be unknown & highly variable.