Bots in dungeons

[ZhoRa13]

So, this happened on Ragnarok. I just joined an Amdapoor Keep (in progress) with the only human member being a freaked out tank (DRK) (shortly after a SCH and a RDM join as well).

So what the tank claims: his party members were 2 BLMs and a WHM with names just like gold sellers you see in the big cities. They teleported around, AOEd some mobs and then left the dungeon. The dungeon was 3-4 minutes in progress as I joined, the first 2 mobs were alive (a cultist and a demon) as well as 1 Dullahan along the path. The rest of the dungeon before the 1st boss was literally "cleared". Furthermore, after we've beaten the 1st boss, the 2nd floor was nigh empty aside from 2 gargoyles.

My friends, the gold-farmer bots (or whatever the hell they do) have evolved up to the point of joining dungeons and doing gods-know-what there. This is more than just annoying shouts about selling gold, this about literally disrupting the game-play. Be warned, be alarmed, and let SE know so they do something about it!

[iBerserker]

Good luck with it, SE isn't going to do anything about it trust me I've been reporting countless time on the same gathering bots on my server for the past 2 years and nothing happened to them at all they are still gathering right now as we speak.

[Arrhin]

Good luck with it, SE isn't going to do anything about it trust me I've been reporting countless time on the same gathering bots on my server for the past 2 years and nothing happened to them at all they are still gathering right now as we speak.

Pretty much this, however as the OP mentioned bots are startin to disrupt gameplay and the DF...at some post SE will have to weigh in.

[KageTokage]

This is how the RMT bots have been farming gil since 2.x.

The fact that SE hasn't actually addressed this after all these years and instead just keeps banning the RMT bots instead of fixing what they're exploiting just goes to show how inept they are at this whole thing.

That's not even getting into all those countless non-RMT bots who go undetected/ignored for years on end despite people reporting them constantly.

Pretty much this, however as the OP mentioned bots are startin to disrupt gameplay and the DF...at some post SE will have to weigh in.

They've been disruptive since day 1.

I've already encountered and vote kicked both healer and tank bots in dungeon roulettes and I've even seen them doing it in PotD/HoH, too.

[AeroXaia]

I'd like if there were a way to report bots the same way as RMT. It's usually pretty obvious to spot, and flagging them to have somebody come confirm seems easy enough.

I would say, ideally:

1. Make it so it's not so many clicks as RMT. One click and then one more to confirm is enough (reporting RMT is a pain, I'm sure there are people that don't only because it's too many clicks to bother). A /reportrmt and /reportbot macro would be nice too (it should still display a confirmation window and take one more click to send).

If you really want to do it great, a way to undo the last report would help cut down on accidental misreports. (Sometimes chat moves and somebody might click the wrong thing and go too quickly, and then see in chat that the wrong name was reported, then worry about getting in trouble.) /undoreport

Actually that would be even better with bot reporting, because more people might misidentify that, then realize it was actually a person after all.

2. Ban the bots after they've paid real money, if possible. It may take a lot more thinking to get the trial system right, so it's good for people and not botting.

I would be careful about reports doing too much in an automated way, like disabling them from queuing, because that could be abused by players. On the other hand, players have a lot more to lose and that's something really hard to get wrong by accident, especially if it takes multiple people reporting the thing to trigger the limitations. So if people are abusing it at that point, there can be warnings and temp bans, and escalate if it's clearly being done knowingly and repeatedly.

I think the idea is to have a system that requires the least amount of paid manpower, while still stopping the bots and not disrupting players. I don't think it's impossible, and hey I'd gladly help figure it out lol. I think it would be a fun problem to solve. But alas, I know nothing will come of this and I'm just "pissing into the wind".