Something needs to be done to address bots in the game.
I remember years ago all the games had people sitting in the throne room before Baal while a Bot pally keeps spamming hammer.
Enjoyment of the game will disappear with bots that are allowed to flourish like that once again.
I 100% agree that something needs to be done about the bots.
But captcha is not the solution, and never was.
Shareholders would eat Blizzard alive if Blizzard admitted that their anti-bot solutions are bad so they have to have players solve captcha to play the game, LOL.
Sadly it’s probably too late to truly battle bots in d2r.
The way d2 is setup, it is far too advantageous to bot for items, and d3 is far too advantageous to bot for experience.
Half of battling bots is designing a core game system that rewards grinding, without making the system a one size fits all grindfest.
D2’s most bottable content is simply too easy to farm as a bot solo in an 8p game for max drops. There’s no reward for exploring, no random world bosses to encounter for loot to rival repetitive content, etc.
We’ll see how it goes for d4, but d2r’s and d3’s systems are basically a ‘how to’ video on how to design a bot-heavy game.
Pretty much correct. I will say that D3 is less bot-friendly than D2 though because while you can bot in D3 to gain Paragon Levels, outside of that, it’s fairly pointless, and the more you do it, the less the risk to return ratio is worth it. The difference between Paragon Level 800 and Paragon Level 900 is negligible at best, but the time investment required to hit it means it’s extremely likely you’ll be caught botting it.
Meanwhile D2’s entire item system is based around the fact that items can be traded or given freely, and in some cases even stolen, which incentivizes an arms race to beat the anti-bot measures and make money.
That’s why I’ve always said that I wouldn’t mind if D2 changed its loot systems heavily either to combat bots or to make it possible to gear up without having to rely on a bot-run economy. But in the absence of both those changes, and anti-bot measures that actually work (captcha are not that), then hey, whatever, I guess it’s the authentic D2 experience everyone wanted, a bot-run economy. :V
I just have to say, after reading through nearly half of this thread, I applaud your patience with these people. I don’t know how many times you had to say the same thing.
Anyway, I’m all for a non-invasive CAPTCHA. Sometimes it just seems like bots are like death and taxes though… completely unavoidable. If Blizzard can do something to stop them it must be somehow too difficult or unreasonable for it to be worth implementing.
If it is not going to make me look at a distorted image and put in whatever code is written every time I go to make a room, I’d be ok with it.
I am all for anti bot stuff, I am strongly against inconvenience for the player.
I have seen games that required entering a captcha for things like using market boards as an anti bot measure. The bots filled those out instantly because they were updated to get around the captcha. It actually gave the bots an even bigger advantage over players because of that.
Hi guys, any news on whether Blizzard is investing in something to fight bots? Could a Blizzard representative provide this information?
I see people on the forum asking the bird to turn pink, for the doll to have thick paws and green eyes!
Now bug fixes and the main thing is to put an end to cancer called (BOTS), I see few people comment!
Blizzard does not post here. Even if they did, they would most certainly not reveal any information about their anti-cheat capabilities, since the more cheaters know the easier they can get around them.
And you can rest assured that captcha are not and never will be in their actual plans for the game, lol.
There are a couple threads on main forum as well - links below.
Years and years of all this bot BS with Blizzard games and they still won’t put put enough time and effort into an auto-banning workflow.
If they ever did a captcha system to combat bots, I don’t think it would be something every player had to do every game. It could be something that they’d flag your account for if they detected unusual activity. If it did get flagged, maybe you’d only have to enter one every so often rather than every game for a certain period of time and then went away, unless you were flagged again.
It’s not something that has to be an inconvenience for everyone.
Im sure they said the same thing about game/hour limits, entering and exiting games too quickly, changing characters too quickly… All those restrictions that only effect real players and bots can program around.
They can and will do the same with a CAPTCHA
I don’t think it makes much sense to compare old bnet issues to modern games.
I don’t think any Blizzard employee ever thought it was a good idea to make someone get disconnected and IP banned temporarily if you swapped paladin auras too quickly. They obviously were aware normal non-bot players joined and exited games very quickly as well etc. There were clearly a lot of technical limitations and issues in old bnet that I don’t think anyone ever thought was a good idea.
They obviously thought it was a good idea to combat bots, since they did it… They did not think it through, or re-analyze it after the fact.
This solution might be a “modern” game implementation, but it will have the same result, legit players permanently annoyed, botters mildly miffed at having to change a couple lines of code and press start.
I don’t think using captcha every 10 games would be that annoying for most players. As long as it still shows them as joining game so that no one can take their spot in game while doing captcha, unless its done when game is joined.
Ehhh… maybe every 10 games or if Blizz detects some erratic behavior like 500 pindle runs or speed meph runs, they hit you with one.
Ill admit, I would prefer a captcha over a 3 hour temp ban just for trying to play efficient.
To jump on that an easier way to implement the captcha is every 10 games created by the same player results in a captcha. Leechers will wait as they have no other choice and half the time I’m doing runs I end up sharing game creations anyways so every 10 would barely be noticeable but to some random running a bot it will rely on coordinating more than one bot to make games or solve the captcha.
Most people who botted only knew enough to run the code and relied on available bots, if bot creators need to continually improve their bot they will no longer share it as widely.
Seriously? Bots are just like any other cheat in an online game. If other games cheats get updated regularly, what makes you think the people that create the bot programs are going to care about updating their software?
Personal experience, harder you make it on the bot creator the less likely he will spread it unless monetized to do so. Bigger the spread the more likely it will be noticed and patched accordingly. There are tiers to bots and depending on trustworthiness/financial motivation it won’t see public use unless leaked or no longer in creators gain to keep private.
Will there be bots, for sure, the quality would be questionable.
this is the worst idea
This is a Horrible idea, there are a few things for consideration here.
Bots/Cheaters Don’t care about rules hence they’re breaking them in the first place so they will just seek a means to by pass this.
Most importantly It’s thee Average player such as you & I that Suffers the most from a “captcha”.
Blizzard is Moving the Game to it’s New Updated system Same as Warcraft reforged which will already Increase the detection and Prevention of Botting/mods/cheating.
Furthermore instead of Punishing thee average player they should Incorporate or Block players that hit on/under a Specified Criteria flagging them for a Captcha and that’s thee Only way I think ppl could ever get behind this if at all. (making it more random and alot less frequent and this could range from making to many games too quickly or your mouse pointer flowing in a straight line. ect ect.