Sacrifice some to get rid of bots

Selstad

Well now I've seen what many people have been talking about in terms of bots. I decided to try and make a couple of alts since *cough* "End Game" *cough* in this consist of watching paint dry. My Nightblade I started out grinding ghosts in Stonefalls, just to be accompanied by 3-4 trains with 8 players each of bots. So after some attempts and nothing, I decided to log to my templar and try some grinding on that. Templar is 20, in Deeshan. What do you know, grinding areas clustered by bots.

So it's quite devastating for the community, though, for my sake, not so much as I have a character at max level. But this is what new players see when they join the game. Not that good.

Banning and such is something that is a major issue, as per today they will only return within minutes. IP banning has never been that good anyway. Neither have account banning as they use compromised creditcards and accounts to do their dirty work.

So is there a solution? Yes. But it's controversial and in some countries even illegal (not that it has stopped users of said program to mumbo jumbo up an excuse to make it "legal"). There is a software called "Warden" which basically is integrated in the client software. What it does is send a hash of the programs running on your computer and compares it with hash of known cheat programs. It is currently in use by Blizzard, in World of Warcraft. And by some security companies, flagged as spyware.

So would you sacrifice some security to allow such an integration in ESO, knowing that it would make bot hunting and removing better and more automated? Would you sacrifice some freedom and allow your computer to be monitored?

Truth be told, I wouldn't mind. You're monitored anyway, and I've been playing games for many many years. I wouldn't mind knowing that this program ran in the background and send non-sensitive information about programs on my computer, if I also knew that I had nothing to hide and nothing to fear by the software company using it. It is however highly controversial and is integrated in the age old debate of "who's watching the watchers".

doggie

Is it even possible to licence warden though?

Selstad

It wouldn't be the first time competitors helped each other out in terms of battling cheaters, however, I think the most viable solution - seeing as Zenimax is a very big competitor in the game market to ActivisionBlizzard - would be for Zenimax online to develop their own sort of client doing the exact same thing.

After all, copying is also a known norm in the industry.

Blade_07

I would not mind this at all. If it gets rid of bots then more power to it! Sick & tired of bots & cheaters.....painful death to them all I say! Seriously, the only people that would complain about this in all honesty would be those with something to hide from Zenimax that would get them banned! I say make it happen please! If admins cant keep up with banning all these worthless maggot infested parasites then bring in some automated program that will help. But I fear that the botters would actually end up making a fix that would elude the program. Just like it is with anti-virus programs & the fu***** jurk off virus makers. A constant and never ending war.

Chatoyancy

I can see why some people would be bothered by this (a game scanning their computer, it is an invasion of privacy) and I don't blame those people in the least, but I personally would be okay with this if it would help and has a chance of working.

SFBryan18

I think virus scanners would see it as a cookie.

Zorrashi

An interesting idea, probably an effective idea, even--but it does ring some alarm in my head. What if some of these "cheat programs" have code very similar too the pressing of certain buttons on my keyboard?

For example, if a bot is running at normal speed and on the ground, but is maneuvering toward all the nodes around a beach on an island, would that bot's movements be compared to my own? I run a certain "beach lap" for nodes every day.

I am wondering where the line is drawn. Sure, bots are normally constricted to a very specific path, but the program will likely have a relatively broad parameter in order to determine "bot activity". But what do I know? I'm certainly no code geek.

It is not a bad idea, but it is one I would like to know more about in detail.

zgrssd

Selstad wrote: »

So is there a solution? Yes. But it's controversial and in some countries even illegal (not that it has stopped users of said program to mumbo jumbo up an excuse to make it "legal"). There is a software called "Warden" which basically is integrated in the client software. What it does is send a hash of the programs running on your computer and compares it with hash of known cheat programs. It is currently in use by Blizzard, in World of Warcraft. And by some security companies, flagged as spyware.

Not a solution. It is meerely a higher wall. That will be scaled by a longer ladder.
The enemy controlls the entire client, memory and CPU. No mater how many layers of software you add, it will be overcome.
It might make it (temporarily) harder, but it will be overcome. Just look at the history of "Is original CD/DVD in drive" licesne check vs. virtual drives and (fixed) images.

There is a rule for thumb for error handling: The only reliable devices are the RAM, the Graphics/Console output and the keyboard.
Not becuase they are unfallible. But because we programmers can't do *** about it if they don't work as expected.

Fighting botting has been a eternal war since before WoW cam out, and it will continue long after WoW and ESO are nothing but fond memories and entires on Wikipedia.

rawne1980b16_ESO

There are programs that "hide" things on your system from Warden ... or any system scanning software.

someuser

Ok, this is what I don't understand... Why can't Zenimax monitor the resources or gold that is being collected or traded by players? Wouldn't it be a red flag if toons were rapidly acquiring resources or trading large sums of gold?

Why not cap how much resources a toon can mine/harvest per min or per sec?

Mortelus

Get rid of gold in game and make trading purely about trading items and mats between players.

Would probably help some way to getting rid of gold farmers in a game...

GreySix

Mortelus wrote: »

Get rid of gold in game and make trading purely about trading items and mats between players.

Would probably help some way to getting rid of gold farmers in a game...

There are gold sinks in the game. Whenever there are gold sinks, there will be both gold sellers and gold buyers.

bean19

In Aion, bots were a terror for the first few months and then game support learned how to find bots easily through the game logs. At that point, they were able to ban their accounts within an hour or so of a bot program being used. There should be red flags in the logs of bots that show that they aren't real players.

Selstad

paige.n.mcmullennub19_ESO wrote: »

An interesting idea, probably an effective idea, even--but it does ring some alarm in my head. What if some of these "cheat programs" have code very similar too the pressing of certain buttons on my keyboard?

For example, if a bot is running at normal speed and on the ground, but is maneuvering toward all the nodes around a beach on an island, would that bot's movements be compared to my own? I run a certain "beach lap" for nodes every day.

I am wondering where the line is drawn. Sure, bots are normally constricted to a very specific path, but the program will likely have a relatively broad parameter in order to determine "bot activity". But what do I know? I'm certainly no code geek.

It is not a bad idea, but it is one I would like to know more about in detail.

The program doesn't monitor your behaviour alone in the game, it also runs an API on the operation system level, monitoring what programs are running on your computer while ESO is running. It then sends a hash image of your computer's environment and compare that whit hash images of known cheating programs.

It is that scanning of the OS and what you run on that is the controversial part of it.

zgrssd wrote: »

Not a solution. It is meerely a higher wall. That will be scaled by a longer ladder.
The enemy controlls the entire client, memory and CPU. No mater how many layers of software you add, it will be overcome.
It might make it (temporarily) harder, but it will be overcome. Just look at the history of "Is original CD/DVD in drive" licesne check vs. virtual drives and (fixed) images.

There is a rule for thumb for error handling: The only reliable devices are the RAM, the Graphics/Console output and the keyboard.
Not becuase they are unfallible. But because we programmers can't do *** about it if they don't work as expected.

Fighting botting has been a eternal war since before WoW cam out, and it will continue long after WoW and ESO are nothing but fond memories and entires on Wikipedia.

Indeed, the war is never truly won, and it's not about deleting it completely because that's impossible, it's about making it so inconvenient for the cheaters without making it inconvenient for your players. The problem with Warden is that if your firewall or spyware detects it and blocks it, it crashes WoW as well due to the build in mechanics. So that's certainly an inconvenience for the players.

Having things client side is the big problem these days in MMOs, and with the combined knowledge of the internet's cracking/hacking group, it's certainly not looking good for the future. I think that cloud gaming is about the only way forward, such as Onlive. That way, all your files are on the server side of things, making boting a much bigger hassle, and will then be based again on keyboard inputs instead of direct program inputs. That is the only way to start battling bot problems.

rawne1980b16_ESO wrote: »

There are programs that "hide" things on your system from Warden ... or any system scanning software.

Indeed, and Warden now has a module added that searches deeper. It's an everlasting cat and mouse game, and the program is certainly not infallible, but it at least discourages the would-be boters to risk their account.

AlexDougherty

Selstad wrote: »

W But it's controversial and in some countries even illegal (not that it has stopped users of said program to mumbo jumbo up an excuse to make it "legal").

This is the problem here, it doesn't matter how useful the program is, if it's illegal.

If it's illegal in USA, Canada, Mexico or EU, then Zenimax can't use it, because these are the regions ESO has been officially released in. If it's other countries it's illegal in, then Zenimax might be able to use it.