Ending Bots With D2R <Critical>

Diablo II (2000) General Discussion
1

Hi,
This is the main topic that has been ruining D2 a lot for the past years for most legit players (so most players), dealing with cheaters.

I will suggest that you are ready of course to deal with cheaters as you’ve said you’ll do with D2R and in preparation for it, I think you should be aware that one of the most simple and direct way to delete cheaters efficiently from the game and make them lose straight up, is the ability for admins to spectate private games and therefore spot the bots and delete them easily at any time.

This means that you will need a reasonable number of paid admins who can dedicate some of their weekly working time to spotting and deleting cheaters which will greatly impact the cheaters incentive to try to keep cheating at all. In preparation for that you must include a way for admins to spectate private games in the D2R code and perform the necessary interactions.

Thank you and this is an expectation that will make or break this remaster tbh, don’t let the bots generate anything non legit at all and let the economy and the whole item and wealth pool be run by legit players only.

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2

Well, I don’t read unformatted walls-o-text, so I’ll just go from the title only and say, while it would be great if they got rid of bots, there’s no chance of it.

The new BattleNet games are just as prone to botting as D2:LOD has been on old BattleNet so botting is, unfortunately, going to be a thing.

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Wall of text?

I refuse to even look at the first sentence.

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Since these guys seem to have reading issues on a simple paragraph i have included a few “carriage return”.

Also obviously it is all about admin effort. Private servers don’t have an issue with cheaters and bots, because they ban them. This of course doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t prepare the necessary tools and team organization to make this efficient and effective. If nothing is done, the fight is lost and the power, wealth and trading pool is dominated by cheaters then D2 will still be avoided by many players who aren’t interested in cheating themselves. And of course will look into this point before considering a purchase obviously.

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  1. You’re the one wanting your post to be read, it’s up to you to make it easier for people to do so.

  2. I would be first in line to cheer if Blizzard could somehow wave a magic wand and make all cheaters, botters and the like disappear from their games, but if they can’t do it for their top shelf games (WoW for example), where they’d be strongly incentivized to do it, then the most logical conclusion is that they can’t, or can’t at least for a cost they’re willing to accept.

That being the case, expect botters and their ilk in D2R.

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From what was mentioned in Blizzard’s panel discussions on D2:R, botting may not be what we’ll experience for some time. If the annoying noise from the little script kiddies becomes unbearably loud, the already bored to tears coders may come in from their adulting, e.g., backyard bbqs with their families and best friends, to tackle Blizzard’s new login and realm connection methodologies.

To be fair, I think the adults who were once children with mad coding skills will opt to not listen to the annoying noise from present day script kiddies. Life goes on.

D2:R players will have a truly fun and reasonably fair gamer experience for quite some time. I cannot wait!

:alien: :dolphin:

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I admire, but don’t share, your optimism.

I expect, the combination of hype surrounding its release, with monetary value of freely tradable items resulting from that hype along with supply of said items from the ongoing use of shared loot models, will ensure that bots, hacks and cheats are developed for D2R from the very absolute get go.

I also expect that Blizzard, having little to nothing to gain from cracking down on them, will do as little as they think is necessary from a PR standpoint to combat them - the occasional ban wave for example (once bots can be isolated in Warden) - that will simply be factored in as a “cost of doing business” from those people using bots and cheats.

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I do agree with your assessment of optimism. I am cursed with that condition. I am in a nonantagonistic manner hopeful/optimistic that your ideas may be wrong.

:alien: :dolphin:

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One more thing on this topic : it should be possible to constantly break hacks and cheats by changing up parts of the game code periodically such as weekly or even daily with a small update. This is apparently done for software security in other domains, and this technique is actually used by the cheat coders to avoid any automatic detection.

Here is an example : ezfrags dot co dot uk

They use some type of unique code encryption or compilation randomization per copy of the cheat to make it more undetectable. Use a similar method on periodic updates for the game client, with even each player-copy individually different while able to connect to Bnet, to make it much harder or impossible for cheat makers to distribute and keep running with any efficiency.

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10

I’ve seen bots being completely purged in an mmo I used to play after over 20 years of botting going rampant, so I’m not gonna say it’s impossible. I’ve never seen Blizzard doing it though, even in their bigger games.

Regardless, I think I had enough of playing Diablo, I played it for basically my entire gaming life and I think I’ve been moving on to games with less dependence on RNG and more survival elements in them (like Monster Hunter, Terraria, Minecraft, Ark, horror games in general, that kind of stuff), which I find myself enjoying much more as of late. But I’ll keep following the game and the franchise and hoping for the best. I still love this franchise and want to see it doing well.

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Actually, I hope my view will be wrong as well. Like OShogun though, I’ve yet to see Blizzard do it with sufficient vigor to stamp it out.

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Reworded “Use a similar method on periodic updates for the game client, with even each player-copy individually different while able to connect to Bnet, to make it much harder or impossible for cheat makers to distribute and keep running with any efficiency.”

13

Well, reading over your OP now, I think there’s no way in hell they’ll bother with actual admins spectating games to ferret out bots - that’s just so absolutely not gonna happen.

Nor are they going to incorporate some sort of individualisation of each game client (even if they could, the economics aren’t in favour of it), so you’re basically back to what they’re prepared to do now, which is updates to Warden, occurring only periodically, when the tiny number of staff assigned (likely only part time anyway) to updating it get around to figuring out the memory signature of the latest maphack/bot/pickit cheat.

This will, of course, be more or less completely ineffectual against organised botting/item selling sites (the two go hand in hand) since items found by the bots will be transferred to other accounts shortly after being found, and then offered for sale on diablo item selling sites shortly thereafter.

As the botted accounts are banned (as will periodically happen), they’ll simply spend the dough to make a new account, and bot that one till, months later, it too gets banned and the process repeats.

Edit: Don’t take any of that the wrong way either - I’d be cheering if they found some foolproof, free or nearly free (or they won’t do it) way of killing off all bots and cheats - they could even then increase drop rates for high end items if they were sure they had botting eliminated. It’s just not going to happen though, wish as much it did as we might do.

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As the botted accounts are banned (as will periodically happen), they’ll simply spend the dough to make a new account, and bot that one till, months later, it too gets banned and the process repeats.

Yes, botting will flourish in D2R. Maybe hardware ban is the only effective way, but I’m not sure it will be used, as it is not used in D3 (though I heard it was used occasionally in Overwatch, which is still rumors though).

15

since i dont trade, and avoid games with bots in them, the botting has never really been an issue for me, well at least not directly. i dont know if they are ruining the stability of servers, because its really the dislocations that keep me from playing d2 online. its hard to make a more simplistic melee build function on hardcore when you dont know when or why you are getting surrounded by severely dislocating monsters. or you keep swinging at the thin air when you think you target a monster that appears close to you. some ranged skills dont work optimal with this either. my last attempt at playing online, where i tried to ditch the idea of playing melee, i made a firewall sorceress. but targeting enemies often made me target nothing at all, because they did not appear to be where they visually stood. that became a huge waste of mana. im the kind of player that wants to kill everything in my path, so the dislocations become irky really quick

16

If that’s the case I won’t bother with D2R.

[Definitely doesn’t have to be : admins spectating private game bots can quickly ban in a few minutes, and buying a new key has its price. The cheaters will quickly stop cheating. Just don’t let them cheat for months without spotting, that’s a dead end. Search and destroy instead, they will play legit or quit. This was actually old Blizzard approach, the announced “aggressive” approach against cheating. This is a correct way to deal with cheating as a game company and server admin, even more so professional. You should also confirm that you are going to do it.]

As for server lags, it should be good if the servers are really solid and/or any improvements to netcode. Also an expectation for D2R ofc. But yeah I might just dodge it love D2 don’t want cheating on my server. Also, 1.09 best version (cant buy mana potions at vendors, +100% HP to monsters per extra player ant not +50%, no OP runewords, no synergy that oversimplify and unbalance skill builds, and some more).

If you can’t / won’t properly deal with cheating, ciao.

17

Ending the ability to dupe items is what is critical, bots exist in all games not much one can do about them.

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18

Yeah you just need to actively spot and ban them. You can also further eradicate them by periodically breaking their program compatibility and etc. Botters can generate a ton of top items very fast with their bot army, this is clearly a critical cheat. Of course duping needs to be out of the game too.

[By the way on the topic of duping, how do you dupe a item in D2? I only heard about it but not seen much or know how it’s done, curious about it not cause I want to do it since I’m against cheating but to understand it. I find it quite weird that such a simple and breaking cheat still exists in this game tbh : /]

19

I mean.

If you want a legitimate self found Enigma, Grief, Breath of the Dying, Chains of Honor and one Faith bow – you have to put more hours into the game than you’d need to put into school to finish a masters degree at a university, absolutely zero exaggeration.

That gives me pause.
Which also means that selling items - regardless of the existence of botting – is going to be profitable, because I, for one, cannot defend spending that amount of hours into a ladder season.
Like.

If not bots, then multiboxers from third world countries, that run 8 games for 1$ per hour, meaning they play 64 hours per day, and most likely just the singlemost effective direct method of aquiring runes.

I mean. I suspect the most effective way of getting runes, as a flesh business, is hellforge runs.
That’s easily 6 hellforges per hour in coordinated teams, which means an average of Gul+Ist every hour, cubed up.

At least Vex + Gul in 2 hours.
At least Lo + Vex in 4 hours.
At least Sur + Lo in 8 hours
At least Jah + Sur in 16 hours
And Ber + Jah in 32 hours.

…

I’m not arguing against bots – just against the current drop rates.

…

Just to put this into perspective:

Say you like playing bowazons, and whirlwind barbarians.
You want Ice, Faith, dual Griefs and a Breath of the Dying, and Foritude and Enigma.

If you manually farmed for the runes, you’d have to kill more than 2 500 000 bosses – or 25 000 000 monsters.
Say you kill 200 monsters and two bosses in a run, chaos sanctuary and Nihlatak and their minions, and the run takes 5 minutes…

That’s 625000 minutes.
10 000 hours.

A full year at university is 1 000 hours.
Without botters or people playing 1000 hours before quitting and leaving their items to you or their friends that give or trade those items, devalued from the other donations from quitting players or players that don’t bother with learning the value of items – and/or people that actually scam new or inexperienced players…

…the best way to get the runewords you want is to go to university, get a masters degree, start working – and pay someone to farm for you.
It literally makes you a million dollars in real life value, compared to farming the items yourself.
AND will get you the items you want far faster than farming yourself, by years, if you have a life outside the game.

…

Again.
The main problem with the game is not botters.
It’s the fact that farming items is a million dollar industry, because the drop-rates are so abysmal and because there’s no good way to get runes apart from spending thousands of hours.

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They did increase the drop rates of High Runes in patch 1.13. Before that was much harder to get High Runes especially legit anyways. I just did 1 Nightmare Chaos/Diablo Run last night, and an Ist Rune dropped from Lord De Seis! :slight_smile: