Bot question

Ulvich

First I want to make it clear that I am in no way interested in creating or using bots. I simply just want to understand a bit more about them. The reason is I think I have come up with an idea that may slow them down to a crawl in ways of population (more on that later).
My question for now is this: While a bot (or groups of a bots) is active does it require any physical pressing of any buttons, or do they have a predetermined setting that dictates what they do and how they do it?

AZSharksFan

Physical pressing of keys and/or movement of mouse is merely sending signal to a monitoring program.. You don't need to press anything.. just fill the signal where expected...

Phantorang

Well, thats botting, doing stuff without physically pressing any buttons. But the signal for a keypress is sent by some software instead, ie. a Bot

Innocente

The multiple character bot hackers you see are computer controlled. The hacker plays one character, and the software mimics the actions for movement and combat.

There is another type that is completely controlled by software. These run autonomously and can be single or multiple characters.

In general though,

* Teleport Hackers
* Speed Hackers
* Z-Plane Hackers
* Bot Hackers

All of these types of cheats are available because there is to much logic being handled by the ESO game client. In normal MMOs, the server handles a much larger portion of motion and positioning logic, but in order to have the 'Action Based' combat systems, that logic is placed by ZOS into the client.

Having the movement and position logic in the client may make for better performance, but it opens the whole system to hacking and exploitation. As we have all so painfully experienced. Since this is all a fundamental part of the client/server architecture that ZOS uses, it is not going to change. And the cheaters are not going to be going away.

This is a fundamental error in coding and security. It is the reason why action multiplayer games use layered anti-cheat systems to stop this sort of thing. I fear that as time goes on, the PC side of the game will slowly die. Don't know if the Console systems are vulnerable to this sort of hacking.

Really kind of to bad. ZOS has punished players in an attempt to 'discourage' the cheaters. It has not worked. Well, the 'punish the players' part has.

Liquid_Time

I.. am.. tired.. of.. bot.. threads..
Sorry, I understand you have a reason for said post, but it is getting old fast.

Ulvich

This is what I thought, but wasn’t sure.
Now for the idea I have: In order for a character to actively remain logged in the physical pressing of a button (any button) would be required. If the server picks up that no buttons have been pressed within a certain time said character is flagged as AFK and auto-kicked. A second time the character is flagged as AFK (and auto-kicked) that character can’t log in for a certain amount of time (say 5 minutes). The third time is longer, and so on.
I think this would work if ZOS could create a program that can actually pick up on key strokes. Trying to determine the difference between a bot signal and a human pressing buttons won't be easy. Or at least I would think.

Phantorang

Thats not possible for ZOS to see, if they could we wouldnt have bots in the first place