They are already doing it in Asia region. Cheating is taken there a lot more seriously. I dont understand why they should ahve issue in US or EU with that, just Btag is not enough to identify someone.
On the forum at least, there are rules against naming and shaming. If Blizzard posted even batteltags, they would be doing the thing that the code of conduct forbids.
Also, you can imagine that there could be a few false positives (these most likely would be rare), but you do not want to defame someone unfairly. If you strive to have the false positive rate exceptionally low, that means that you end up with more false negatives.
You would think; however, people often use the same handle across multiple forums or are a little too generous with the details that they give.
While the thought is good and it will catch more botters than without it, there is absolutely no way it will eliminate them. Serious botters are far too advanced for that. They have scripts that randomize positioning clicks to avoid repeating patterns and thus mimicking a dedicated and fast human, just to mention one of their tools. Finding bots using patterns is a way of the past, it doesn’t work anymore in a game where you don’t need to be 100% accurate in order to excecute the job to a satisfactory level.
Then there is a massive issue if there were to be checks on those who play for a prolonged time as they might as well be human. 10 hours, 20 hours straight is surely not the normal, but everyone knows some people do.
Having dedicated “bot finders” to join your game is something I also find mostly useless. What will they achieve? One is not required to even speak English in order to play the game so a player could always use language as a defence for not engaging with the Blizz employee or even be afk.
All in all, these are good measures for sure, but the ones you have listed are no match for modern day bots and cheaters. It’s childs play for them, unfortunately.
Good thing the RMAH didn’t crash, burn, and nearly take the entire game with it…
Yep. I told a friend… “Imagine getting banned because you teleported too efficiently a few times in a row!” or similar nonsense.
Actually, Warden works and work’s well when they just turn it loose to do it’s thing. The major problem being they have not let it loose to do it’s thing on a Grand scale for many many years now. They will use it occasionally but not on any major on going scale that it needs to be used. .10 was the last major unleashing of warden for the rust storm but it was quickly put away and not maintained to keep doing it’s thing. There are several articles out there about warden ,how it works and how well it works if they let it loose to do it’s thing.
The ball is now in Blizzard’s court to put a stop to the bot , duping,and hacking problem they have the means to attack the problem head on . But it remains to be seen if they take the bull by the horns so to speak.
RMAH was pay to win.
Agreed… but isn’t that basically what monetizing the portions of the game, as you mentioned, would amount to?
I had in mind transmog stuff, change how your char looks and stuff like that. Or some bonus stuff like guild hall or odk, stuff which doesnt affect game.
Activision won’t even police bots on their money printing franchise “Call of Duty”. Lmao you think they’ll allocate any funds for D2R? I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale if you believe that too.
This topic is not about what I think they will do. I just wanted to explain there are ways how to do it if they really want to destroy boting. Reality is that the methods i explained actualy worked.
I’m vehemently against transmogs. Just my personal opinion, and we can agree to disagree on that.
Guild halls… could be pretty cool. I saw some early concept shots of them. I don’t see how that would keep bots away though.
One thought I had about enforcing persistent patterns, other than false positives, which I’m sure has been mentioned in this thread already… but, have you considered how this would turn into an Arms Race… which Bilzzard ultimately would lose? There’s no reason for them to entrench and dedicate so many resources when waves of bans will suffice.
I am curious to hear why? Can you explain?
Well Diablo 2 is example of ban waves not working at all. Because time between these waves is enoug to make profit on bot accounts.
My main reasons for disliking transmogs:
- They can break immersion / feel of the environment. I don’t want to be slaying demons next to some druid in a pretty pony costume.
- In games like WoW, before transmogs were a thing, various armor aesthetics were status symbols, and not because you had to pay to get them. Because they required skill / dedication to obtain. Now… anyone and their grandmother can lob a $5 bill at the devs and look like someone who actually worked for it.
I do see some merit, although, I’d say it is comparatively small, to the fact that some armor sets honestly look better. That might be more of an issue in D2R now that we’ll actually see more of our armor… but, imagine if you could just buy a glowing aura (e.g. Tals, IK set) and waltz around in whatever you wanted without having to farm for actually hard-to-get items. Seems like it dilutes the value of having the aesthetics in the first place.
The ban wave point you made, eh, by the time they did another ban wave, it was needed again, yes. It definitely stimulated the economy though, making it cyclical on a macro scale, which, ultimately, I think was a good effect.
In D2, transmogs would be presumably limited to pre-existing in game items if Blizzard chose to do that. Is there any item in D2 that resembles a “pretty pony costume”? If not, I think your concern is misplaced.
Why do you think that D2R will become microtransactions for transmogs rather than finding a gear piece that can later be used for a transmog?
Even in D3, there are no microtransactions for transmogs. Sometimes you get a transmog if you buy another game or preorder something or complete some task (e.g. seasonal journey).
Ok. Maybe not pretty ponies. Maybe ghoul lords, dudes with super-saiyan auras, and really blue or purple armor. Idk.
I’m sure it’d be great to have people actively looking, but huge difference between Private realms vs retail realms, privates can have 10k concurrent users as retail will prob avg around 5m for the first couple days, then down to about 1m for the first couple months, you try telling me that 1-3 people specificly looking for bots only will be able to keep track of over 100k - 1m people will be “easy” is nonsense if you ask me.
I’d pay for bot free servers monthly subscribtion
Why prevent bots when you can ban the accounts every 2-4 weeks and let them buy another copy for $40? It’s more profitable (blizzard is publicly traded and only has obligations to their shareholders) to let it happen and ban in waves. Which is exactly what they publicly announced in the past.
If they can provide bot free servers for paid subscriptions i can guarantee you this will generate more profit over time then the wave ban model