Proposal Discussion Anti Botting Agreement Idea 3.1 Player incentivised, VR compatible in-station "not-a-literal-Captcha"

[fus roh potato]

The only way you're going to make any impact against bots within a P2P system, is through a solution similar to what Frontier suggested for Powerplay back years ago. If you disconnect from an interaction, join a game mode other than solo, or encounter a blocked player, all pamphlets and missions providing influence are flagged as no longer valid for impacting BGS or PP. Some hacker might figure out a way to snake around that or abuse others with it, but it's the only thing Frontier could do that'd actually make a real and overall positive difference. Otherwise, you've got nothing but speculative witch hunts or mechanics that ruin the game for a much larger playerbase.

It's also kinda silly to even consider anything related to bots before any form of ballpark balance is established, but at least it would push bots into discovery.

 

[Brrokk]

This is the most Donald Trump answer I've seen since I last saw Donald Trump answer something

That's actually a good comparison. These bots have all the hallmarks of things you have to believe in to support a worldview, without perceptible evidence. Anyone who questions their existence is automatically an enemy. The lack of action about them is due to an establishment conspiracy.

 

[Jane Turner]

I'm going to make the identical response that I made, coincidentally on a different thread to the same people, saying the same things

Those of you who have not joined the discord discussion, can't see what is going on behind the scenes, so can be forgiven for getting the wrong end of this particular stick. A couple of things to clarify.

1. It is stated as clearly as possible that only FD can make any decisions on whether a suspected bot/hack account is one. We can however be more organised in collecting and presenting that data to FD - which accounts to keep a closer eye on, which systems to run telemetry in, that sort of thing.

2. We are close to agreeing that only the beneficiary of a suspected bot attack can make the final decision that they have indeed been the beneficiary. There are some interesting reconciliations starting already.

 

[ADAMtheWELSHMANz]

Including - a significant monetary gain for answering a simple game-related question? One of the main aims of this thread is to explore ways that would make this more engaging or mitigate it.

Your proposal would be on stronger footing if it offered a DECREASED reward for an incorrect response, meaning it would only negatively affect bots.

Any suggestion that offers players a "boost" will strongly detract from what your OP is trying to achieve.

Giving players that can prove they are human a 2x/3x multiplier bonus means diddly squat if these bots can run all day, every day, they'll still come out ahead.

I also wonder about these 17,000 signatories, are they individuals or Squadron Cmdrs signing on others behalf?

 

[Viscera]

Fdev have already given you the solution.

If you suspect botting, contact them with your concern, supply your evidence, and they will look into it, and deal with it as appropiate.

Why does anything more than that need to be done?

 

[Vardaugas]

"Greetings Commander, this is a random security checkup. Please enter word 5 in line 7 of page 30 in your ship manual to verify you are the legitimate owner of your ship."
Time until next check doubles when you are correct, time halves when you are wrong. They used that with Frontier Elite. If you were wrong too often, the save file would get deleted.

 

[Arindor]

I hope FD ignores all this rubbish. I shouldn't have to prove I'm not a bot every time I dock: time consuming, immersion breaking nonsense tbh.

 

[Mizbehave]

"Greetings Commander, this is a random security checkup. Please enter word 5 in line 7 of page 30 in your ship manual to verify you are the legitimate owner of your ship."
Time until next check doubles when you are correct, time halves when you are wrong. They used that with Frontier Elite. If you were wrong too often, the save file would get deleted.

Yeah I remember that. You had no idea of wether or not you got it right and, if you got it wrong, random npcs crashed into you - ruined the game.

Stupidest implementation of anti-piracy ever

 

[Misty_Dark]

Including - a significant monetary gain for answering a simple game-related question? One of the main aims of this thread is to explore ways that would make this more engaging or mitigate it.

so what would that be?

seems more and more like a bunch cluesless people are trying to come up with a solution to a problem with questionable evidence of actually being a big problem... and at the same time, they appears to refuse to report this the proper way that FDev have said they should do!




What is a significant monetary gain today in Elite?
Becuase there are multiple activities that will earn you over 100 million per hour... not to mention that some of them easily can earn you double triple or quadruple of that...


So if "everyone" can be multi billionaire in a few days of playing the game, then what constitutes a big payout?

This is why I do not believe you, as you pick up ideas left, right and center, and think it is good, like the medical register you for a short while wanted FDev to create! how would that have worked? and I am sure the bots would be the first to apply! while the players would revolt, and report FDev to everywhere for this truly overreach...


but the bottom line is,
if you report what you believe are bots in action, ie cheating, we all know, that FDev is never going to tell you what they found, or not found. That is standard procedure regarding thus cases.
So here is the juicy bit, regardless if FDev did anything or not, you cannot be sure, unless you actually know who runs the bots in the first place and they TELL YOU. how likely is this scenario?

And now to some problems, in EVERY ONLINE GAME I have played, I have always encountered players that have no other life than that game, meaning, they play that game for 10-20 hours every day... for various reasons they do not have school/job etc, Just imagine how these players activities would look for any outside onlookers? if they decide to do something, they will sure try hard, because they have the time! so how many hours can you devote to something and how many will be able to help you? becuase you need to devote atleast the same amount of hours to outpace one these players. Now imagine this player have two computers, and with all the nice QoL stuff were have now, Super Cruise Assists, Advanced docking computer, it is realitvely easy to do simple errands back and forth between two stations on two accounts at the same time.
For example
A1 - Buy stuff, leave station
A2 - Buy stuff, leave station
A1 - Plot course, boost and jump, set 0 throttle
A2 - Plot course, boost and jump, set 0 throttle
A1 - align super cruise assist and engage
A2 - align super cruise assist and engage
<if distance is longer, take control over A1, and fly faster, other wise wait for SA>
A1 - once dropped in on the station, boost towards station, and ask for landing permission, let ADC do the landing
A2 - engage wingman navlock, and set full throttle
A2 - once dropped in on the station, boost towards station, and ask for landing permission, let ADC do the landing
A1 - Sell stuff, leave station
A2 - Sell stuff, leave station
A1 - Plot course, boost and jump, set 0 throttle
A2 - Plot course, boost and jump, set 0 throttle
A1 - align super cruise assist and engage
A2 - align super cruise assist and engage
<if distance is longer, take control over A1, and fly faster, other wise wait for SA>
A1 - once dropped in on the station, boost towards station, and ask for landing permission, let ADC do the landing
A2 - engage wingman navlock, and set full throttle
A2 - once dropped in on the station, boost towards station, and ask for landing permission, let ADC do the landing

and this can easily be done, and double your effort... no scripting at all need.just a single person running two computers at once...and if done a couple of times, you are sure to figure out how to optimize this chain of evens even more! and depending on time, you might even get a 3rd or 4th computer...



this is not botting, this someone playing the game... but I am sure that any outside onlooker, would have a crazy time believe the results. Lets assume you can spend 5 hours playing the game, you have 7 friends in your squadron helping you, so you are two full wings. doing the same thing between two station, that is a total of amount of 40 hours worth of stuff done by 8 players... now take the above player, with 4 computers and only 11 hours of playing the game, he has now done 44 hours worth of that same work!!! and we know who will scream about botting here!

[edit]
I couldn't count. fixed the 8 vs 1 player figures

 

[Jane Turner]

I hope FD ignores all this rubbish. I shouldn't have to prove I'm not a bot every time I dock: time consuming, immersion breaking nonsense tbh.

We've already ruled out every time for that very reason - the question is would you be offended or have your immersion broken if on say the 3rd repeat visit to the market of a system in a defined period of time, you were offered a special deal by the market?

 

[Stealthie]

So no, I don't think bots are a big problem, but false accusations of botting are

See, this is a dangerous way to think, especially if (and I'm not suggesting you are) it's used as a basis to ignore something.

Just cos something "isn't a big problem" that doesn't mean it shouldn't be addressed if it can be.

It's kind of like when people moan about X and the response is "Why are you moaning about X when Y is also a problem?!"
Sure, Y might be a problem but Y might be difficult to fix but if X can be fixed it should be.

A while back somebody posted up some videos of obvious bot-ships doing their thing so that's enough to tell me botting is happening.
Honestly, it doesn't have any effect on my gameplay at all - and I'm actually quite impressed by the whole thing - but if it can be prevented, FDev should probably get on it.

 

[Old Duck]

We've already ruled out every time for that very reason - the question is would you be offended or have your immersion broken if on say the 3rd repeat visit to the market of a system in a defined period of time, you were offered a special deal by the market?

IIRC, I think your ideas are fine. It's your use of the word "Captcha" in the title that got you off on the wrong foot, as it's a bit of a trigger word for some of us. I use a VPN, so I frequently have to jump through Captcha hell to do anything, even post on Twitter. The irony is that "click on pictures of stoplights" Captchas are actually crowdsourcing pattern recognition to train BOTS for things like self-driving cars. I much prefer word puzzle captures, which are surprisingly rare. For example, "If five kids take two candies each from a bag of 20 candies, how many candies are left?" That's way less annoying that clicking on hard-to-see bicycles in fuzzy pictures for an hour.

 

[Christopher Roberto]

You don't need a capcha, you need developers that stay on top of things. Other P2P games, especially the F2Ps, handle this by measuring various interaction metrics on the client and sending them to the server to evaluate, and periodically changing what metrics are being measured to prevent it from becoming a known target. This kills 99.999% of bots as the kind of person slapping some script together has no way of knowing how they're being monitored, what they need to fake, and when the monitoring changed. For most games where cheating isn't an industry it's all they ever need.

 

[aRJay]

I mean, honestly, I think the change of station when you land / a vox when you enter the system would probably work well enough.

A little bit of flavour text to go with it like "Appologies Commander, since your departure from XXXX we received word form YYYY that these supplies are far more urgently needed there. Please deliver to ZZZZ station instead and we will compensate you for the last minute change"

For me that'd still be just as entertaining, it wouldn't be immersion-breaking cause sometimes things do get redirected and would add enough randomness to confuse scripts, no?

The minor problem with this is that many of us have done passenger flights or been bombarded by spontaneous missions obviously designed to distract us that we deliberately ignore the message in box until safely docked and the ship unloaded.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Your proposal would be on stronger footing if it offered a DECREASED reward for an incorrect response, meaning it would only negatively affect bots.

And me when i'm playing 3 sheets to the wind.

 

[ADAMtheWELSHMANz]

Your proposal would be on stronger footing if it offered a DECREASED reward for an incorrect response, meaning it would only negatively affect bots.

Any suggestion that offers players a "boost" will strongly detract from what your OP is trying to achieve.

Giving players that can prove they are human a 2x/3x multiplier bonus means diddly squat if these bots can run all day, every day, they'll still come out ahead.

I also wonder about these 17,000 signatories, are they individuals or Squadron Cmdrs signing on others behalf?

We've already ruled out every time for that very reason - the question is would you be offended or have your immersion broken if on say the 3rd repeat visit to the market of a system in a defined period of time, you were offered a special deal by the market?

Again, are you out to deal with bots or looking to get a "special deal?"

 

[Gully Foyle]

@Jane Turner
What about a moving button you have to click on?

Captcha is how I found out that I'm actually a machine.

I've basically been living in a Philip K. Horselover Fat novel ever since.

Edit: If I were human, I'd complain about the forum censoring the name of one of the greatest sci-fi writers of all time.

VALIS told me about you

 

[Jane Turner]

Again, are you out to deal with bots or looking to get a "special deal?"

Looking to find a way to limit the effectiveness of some bots in a way that doesn't annoy people who don't give a stuff about bots - so there is an underlying assumption that some increased complexity - even if it's a rare event, needs a sweetener.

 

[Vandaahl]

Genuine question, what is it that bots do for BGS work at the moment? Trading I take? Something else?

 

[ADAMtheWELSHMANz]

Looking to find a way to limit the effectiveness of some bots in a way that doesn't annoy people who don't give a stuff about bots

If that's the case I feel the focus should be on negatively impacting the bots, not on offering players some arbitrary reward.

Reduce their effectiveness, don't offer buffs which could affect current balance.

A 95% reduction in Inf for a failed, let's just say Captcha for the sake of it, compared to a 2x buff for a passed one would be much more effective and change nothing balance wise EXCEPT for bots (and drunks @Agony_Aunt )

Edit: Typing too fast = wrong words/ numbers, corrected