It's been two or three months now since I've noticed (more like disturbed by) that there are a few auto shops in Giran (Phoenix) and nobody bans them or even take the time to look at them.
For example there are a few low level dwarfs who sell DC and Tallum helemets and they shout 24/7. Ironically one of the bots is named "DCHelemt" and for what I've seen he sold more helmets than a casual player could make even if he would buy the mats and recipes; and the sad parts is that he's really a sport dude who sells them over priced.
Why don't they make a log with the shouts from Giran and after a few days take a look at who has the more shouts recorded. They could make a counter and if they catch someone shouting for 5 hours straight then that player could be recorded on an individual log. It is logical that if he shouted for 4-5 days in a row than he is a bot, I don't think anyone could be such a hardcore seller (they would have to eat, sleep and so on...).
By doing so you would be able to ban not only the auto shop but also its master cause you will be able to check the exchanges he made. So there you've go two bots in one slap. :)
Finding bots is easy, it's not like the GM's are running around and can't find anyone to ban if they want. They've just realized it's bad for business to ban too many bots.
In other mmos i've seen if a GM pms you or draws your attention you're obliged to answer and comply to his inquiry, otherwise, considering you're character is doing some sort of action (killing mobs, shouting from sell/buy shop), are determined as bot and banned/suspended/whatever even temporarily so next time you pay more attention to the GM trying to determine if you're automated or not.
I guess it's too much work for NA, we're not that important maybe. But honestly it seems like a ton of work, to be done on hundreds and hundreds of players... I'm just thinking it's too big of an investment to be worth it from their pov.
Bots nowadays, even those shop ones are not as they used to be from what I've heard, they are not traceable via logs, they don't modify data sent/received from the server and are virtually undetectable digitally. Only detection method is by saying "hey this guy acts like a bot" and that is usually enough for you or me, but maybe not for NCSoft, and tbh they have to be pretty scrutinous in order not to make serious mistakes, and that takes time and money...
Automated bot detection is actually rather trivial. Would take maybe a week worth of dev effort and be significantly cheaper and more reliable than paying GM's to do it.
As I say every time someone brings this up, stopping a bot from ever logging on is incredibly hard, basically impossible. Detecting a bot once over the course of several weeks is trivially easy. That would be enough for most people.
You mean by algorithms that detect bot "patterns"?
Like the behavior?
Doing things at precise intervals, precise order, following a certain pattern in everything it does?
Automated bot detection is actually rather trivial. Would take maybe a week worth of dev effort and be significantly cheaper and more reliable than paying GM's to do it.
As I say every time someone brings this up, stopping a bot from ever logging on is incredibly hard, basically impossible. Detecting a bot once over the course of several weeks is trivially easy. That would be enough for most people.
Sry but farmers/players who're using OOG gets banned on automated ban waves. I already know 4 cases that bot trains(main toon on IG and support on OOG) got banned. If live gm would have done that main toon would be banned as well, but now only support toons got banned. It's a bit strange.