Hi all,
is it me or are there more bots than ever online this weekend? Inner and outer TOS is complety controlled by bots - and most (when not all) of them are monitored.
I still wonder who those botters are? Just adena sellers? Come on, there can't be that many stupid players who are willing to buy adena and support the bots that way. So are the bots side accounts of legit players to push their main chars? Seems to be more realistic to me...
Most bots run for one reason: Gather a high amount of a certain item, e.g. zels, dais, frags or rare items. They are configured to drop all unwanted items - and exactly that can be used to give botters a hard time! To understand this, you have to know how the bot programs identify an item.
Every item in Lineage has a unique item id, e.g. the item id of a zel is 100, bzel 101, etc. This allows NC to assign different item names for any required language.
Well, the bot program identifies an item by its id and depending on its configuration it will either keep, use or drop the item. What do you think will happen if NC changes some of the item IDs after each server reset? Right, this would totally confuse the bots and requires them to be updated after each reset! In history it came out that this takes between a few days up to weeks!
The result would be that the bots would simply drop all the hot items or stop botting until the update for the bot prog become available for download.
This requires some client modifications too but only once...
Good idea in a way, but I
Good idea in a way, but I afraid it would not work in practice for too long, at least for the bots that are updated. The problem is that the updater would need to send the modified IDs to the client for it to know to show the names correctly and that's where this solution's weakness lies. When the encryption of Lineage has been cracked years ago, the bot programmers could just code a system in their bot that automatically updates their IDs same way as the legit client does.
If NCi would really want to stop most of the cheating going on they would need to add lots of checks in the server-side in possible rewrite of the server and then totally rewrite the encryption system -> new client. That would require players to download the new client and re-install it as a whole because the updating line has not been secure for years. But even then the client encryption would hold up so long until cracked again, after newly encrypted client would be needed; not very practical for the players. The connection itself can be secured in a more advanced ways of encryption keys, but the benefits can be questionable if the client encryption is cracked - they can already manipulate what goes in the server and see what the server sends to the client. Thus the sever-side checks are definitely needed.
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Have fun, but let others have too :)
True, thats one weak point,
True, thats one weak point, the client needs to be updated too. At least it would kill to most popular bot program right away because it comes with its own decrypted dat files and relays on them.
The features of the bots are impressive, auto hunt multiple locations - solo, party, with summons/pets, adjustable speed settings - overall, when see item, when see mops, auto sell/buy with auto conversation, auto chat/response, auto fight-back, etc.
One other approach of NC was/is to limit play time per day. After 3 hours exp and the chance to get items are cut in half, after 5 hours you don't get exp or items at all. I wonder if they'll implement this? For me this would be bad, because I play more than that when I have time.
This was discussed at one
This was discussed at one time. I think someone at NC had said they could make the change, but the problem would be it would change all the existing items in the game into whatever was represented by the new code.
So if they changed the code on nzels to candles so bots would leave them on the ground, it would also change all of the nzels, including those in your inventory, to candles.
Yeah, I think this has been
Yeah, I think this has been discussed before, but it is seemingly a good idea.
What comes to the existing nzels becoming candles, I think that problem could be avoided by running a database script during the downtime (after players would need to download the new client) that would update the existing items into the new ones. This would result into the correct situation where the nzels you had before are still nzels and candles are candles; at least showing the right sprite, text ect in client.
The major problem in the server code might however be, that it probably connects the functionality to the item by it's ID. If the possibility for this kind of change is not made into the code in the first place, then it would be very risky to go and do this kind of transformation. Because the functionality code is most likely spread all over the code, you might end up having the candles look like candles but actually working like nzels because the server just sees what ID-item you had used and connects the functionality accordingly. But if there is somekind of inter-server ID->code_identifying_factor -table made when the system is coded just to allow these kind of ID changes, instead of using the IDs as an identifying factor for the entities to connect the functionality, then it of course would not be a problem. But somehow I doubt such a thing exists because only purpose it would have is exactly the one Coronis demonstrated: to mix up the item/monster IDs if crackers have managed to track them up to code unwanted 3rd party applications.
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Have fun, but let others have too :)
how bout instead hire some1
how bout instead hire some1 who will be a gm that will actually instantly ban the obvious bots. really u can find atleast 100 obvious bots in less than 10 mins.
That would be the simplest
That would be the simplest way but they don't ban bots instantly. On Ken TOS 1f is completely owned by bots. A few days ago Jesy was able to convince a monitor to remove the bots. At the time I checked them, none of them was monitored, just simple auto-answer (most reply 'hi' if you whisper them). To my absolute surpirse ALL of them were back one day later! The monitor just removed them from the game without taking any further action.
The high level bots claimed new areas like TOI 37f,41f! Those on 41f are terrible because they totally ignore other players and they are usually chased by hords of Lesser Dragons, they just venz when it gets hot - and you are the one whos butt gets burned if that happens near you. I wonder how long it will take until we see the first bots on 81f.
Full out bots? Mobydick has
Full out bots?
Mobydick has been on 81f+ for months, and there were others before him (stick, Crack, Carol, etc). They use bot heal mages and many hacks while up there.
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