Recent Alignment/Damnation changes

[12345]

[quote="Weasel":2oz8fv0l]Sounds good but for one thing.. the ones who abuse it the most atm are just as likely not to bother setting the flag or advising the leader, so only the ones who are honest about it are going to get penalized..[/quote:2oz8fv0l]

Which is why I made a point of making it a leader set option. If they don't want to penalize themselves, I'll be happy to flag them if I think they're botting... and see how long it takes them to ask me to unset them. No one who's actually at keyboard is going to let that fly for long.

@Splork, I'm fairly satisfied with my groups. I rarely have an instance where 1 person is sitting on a ton of mana while the rest of the group is empty. I have been frustrated with someone on occasion, but its fairly rare

[*Splork*]

Why should we trust a leader to set a player as idle when they are not informing immortals now that they have characters whom are botting?

Splork

[12345]

It's often two different things to suspect someone is botting and know they are. If you suspect they are, you can ping them and set them idle. At that point, you have a timer. If they come back 2 minutes later and ask why you did that, you can unset them and tell them to pay better attention. If after 15 minutes they don't mention it, you know they're botting and can recall them, push them into demo, tell Splork to have a barbeque... whatever.

Its really hard to argue that you've been paying attention when you ignored a tell from the leader, haven't been making any xp or gold for the last 10-15 minutes and allowed yourself to sit at recall and have Splork flay you alive.

It's also unlikely that person will ever join one of your groups again... ever.

Everyone wins

[Weasel]

[quote="*Splork*":14h2avxi]I disagree with Weasel( again I know) but botting was at its lowest when annie and others were pkilling botters, flight was removing their protects, groups refused to allow them to join, etc. Those immortals who spent countless hours finding botters should of been building us a new website or adding something fun for our players to abuse because ultimately it gained nothing for Sloth:-)[/quote:14h2avxi]

Well you don't really disagree with me - it was around the same time wasn't it? or at least the actions of the leaders followed up the wipe of a char (or the other way around) - either way I'm glad it was happening and would like to see it enforced again by leaders, although I'm aware they have a lot to do already without checking for botters, particularly if it's one of their personal friend(s). As far as immorts monitoring, I totally agree, as I already said - you have better things to do with your time.

[quote="*Splork*":14h2avxi]Why should we trust a leader to set a player as idle when they are not informing immortals now that they have characters whom are botting?[/quote:14h2avxi]

It's a mindset.. it's become accepted or at least tolerated, and the more it happens, I guess others just think "well if they can, why shouldn't I" and so it goes.. Nepotism might have something to do with it too.. You're quite right though Splork in your comment above, but hey, it's something proactive and maybe it will help change the current mindset that going afk/botting is accepted.. which it shouldn't be.

I think I just confused myself. ( O)(o )

[12345]

After talking with Splork for a while, I came to understand that I misinterpretted a few things. For instance, when I hear the phrase 'demo them' I think ungroup, push, forget about them... standard pkill type stuff. Demo loots, dude is screwed.

It turns out, this is not intended to be quite so cruel. After you kill them, you should rescue and raise them. This encourages them to be slightly more attentive.... chance of shock and whatnot.

I'm reluctant to full out screw someone, so I don't tend to go that route. The rescue and raise thing is kinda better though. I might start trying that.

[Diazz_Dizazter]

Debunking botting....

Aint gonna happen.

[quote:36hs8b0c]So, how's this sound - if the idle flag is set:
- you get no xp
- you get no split
- you don't autoloot, nor can you use "get"
- people protecting you succeed 100%[/quote:36hs8b0c]

The only way the above would work, is:
a: wait_state(60) after each command.
or
b: if(idle(ch)) no commands parsed except chat and un-idle cmd.

Now then without a or b:

Five(x) people flag as idle, have a low level lead, give orders to the idle botters.
Boom. You now have a power leveling frenzy, in which 1 person gets xp
and loot, while the rest do the work, and are idle (flagged by leader). And
here I thought this was the exact reason xp chains were removed.

Are the idle people removed from group_gain entirely, allowing those
who are in the group to have a larger share in the xps (in this case,
botting is promoted again, as long as the leader flags you as idle). Or
does isle take the xps out of the total, but the idle xps is not accounted
for to the group, lessening the whole experience net gain by idle(x).

Either way it allows for a shortcoming to the xps, the prior less then the
latter though. Ditto with gold.

This is brilliant. So short of the idle flag actively recalling the now idle person
this leaves much to assume. So unless you physically add about 200
exceptions to interpreter.c (which is a small hassle), your giving free
reign to those who would knowingly bot, and would now let them get
away with it, provided they get nothing in return? Obviously an idle
person who was afk (by the game or by the leader), would have no
reason to have use of ANY of the commands in the interpreter, except
possibly rent and save.


Option 2: Monitor input of key strokes, to see who is there and who is
not. While almost viable, it is not. Merely stating a reverse of mxp that
checks for keystrokes is a keylogger, this would be in bad form for a
mud of any caliber to allow. The mud merely interprets the data sent,
(correct me if Im wrong), but it really doesn't distinguish between data
sent from the keyboard or from the client. So short of a true client side
check, the data is just that, data, and the mud works with it. And lets
face it, anything that allows checks and balances from the client side
that is physically connected to the mud's inner core IS breachable.

Option 2.5: F-secure method. Reversed mxp keylogger, but on a secure
client side configuration. Great. Now the mud-box has to fuss with the
encryption and decryption of data being received, and sent, meanwhile,
theres that 20 person group in on SS to consider. Meaning a bigger cpu
and more flops to get used. Also more lag, whee.

Option 3: Allow only raw telnet access. No one would play unless players
were allowed to add a limited amount of actions, substitutes and counters
into their pfile (this would require pfile support and in game coding to pull
off). Once again. Unlikely, because its forcing players to have no options
except the ones you give them. Players usually dont like this. Players like
options. Unless of course they live in a dictatorship...oh wait...nm.

Option 4: Design a Sloth only client, which disallows certain instances of
actions were pliable. Wintin.net comes close, but still allows for some huge
and hellacious scripts to be written to bot like there is no tomorrow. Then
again, unless something cool comes out of it, players again arent given
choices on what they like client wise, wintin, zmud, tintin or which ever.
(not like anyone uses telnet with any gusto).

Option 5: Nothing changes, status quo remains mute. Players will bot,
and the immortals wont care unless the moon is blue and someone gets
caught with their scripts in action.

[Weasel]

Ok, so idle person gets no exp as discussed, but make it so the rest of the group just gets the normal exp as if the idle person was still there, that way it cant be abused.. furthermore, it would actually encourage the leader to ungroup the idle person if they were idle too long, as it's wasting exp that the rest of the group could benefit from otherwise... sound like a good plan?

[Knight]

In circlemud there is a built in function that tells the imms how much time has passed since each player entered a command, I imagine the same function is available in Dikumud. How about that function being used to put up a flag against a player (Idle 1, Idle 2 etc) who hasn't touched the keyboard in a minute so the group leader can more easily spot botters and deal with it according case by case.

Dennis

[Diazz_Dizazter]

Hmm, I shall now go look up circle mud code.

[13]

Notorious Bots:

Turbo
Charsi
Apollo
Nomic
Adam
Merlin
Impz
Sarge

[kjartan]

[quote:2ejvntyo]
Five(x) people flag as idle, have a low level lead, give orders to the idle botters.
Boom. You now have a power leveling frenzy, in which 1 person gets xp
and loot, while the rest do the work, and are idle (flagged by leader). And
here I thought this was the exact reason xp chains were removed.
[/quote:2ejvntyo]

Yes, of course we wouldn't allow this. The xp share of the idlers would just go away. The gold share would not go away. If you want to power-gold some newbie, you could just, you know, give him a bunch of gold.

Also, if an imm notices a group full of people with the idle flag set, we would tell the leader to cut it out. You still aren't allowed to bot; but if the idle flag is set we would view it as not such a big deal, since you aren't benefitting yourself.

[quote:2ejvntyo]Option 2: Monitor input of key strokes, to see who is there and who is
not. While almost viable, it is not. Merely stating a reverse of mxp that
checks for keystrokes is a keylogger, this would be in bad form for a
mud of any caliber to allow. The mud merely interprets the data sent,
(correct me if Im wrong), but it really doesn't distinguish between data
sent from the keyboard or from the client. So short of a true client side
check, the data is just that, data, and the mud works with it. And lets
face it, anything that allows checks and balances from the client side
that is physically connected to the mud's inner core IS breachable. [/quote:2ejvntyo]
We're in line mode; we can't monitor keystrokes anyway. We can only monitor lines. We aren't going to change that, which does away with most of your other options.

It is a common thing on these boards for people to assume that we will implement something in the most idiotic way possible. We usually don't.

[Medios]

Heres my point. Killing a bot then spending my mana to raise them is pretty counterproductive in my mind. I have to waste mana to kill them, then waste mana to raise them. Hell I never knew we could pk bots or I woulda been whoopin ass a long time ago. I better never hear anything from an immortal cuz im gonna start knockin heads. Heed this warning, bot in my group and die.

Mike

[Weasel]

excellent

[Diazz_Dizazter]

[quote:3l41sexq]Heres my point. Killing a bot then spending my mana to raise them is pretty counterproductive in my mind. I have to waste mana to kill them, then waste mana to raise them. Hell I never knew we could pk bots or I woulda been whoopin ass a long time ago. I better never hear anything from an immortal cuz im gonna start knockin heads. Heed this warning, bot in my group and die.

Mike[/quote:3l41sexq]

ROFL! KILL'EM ALL!

Cry Havoc, and let free the Dogs of Botkilling!

Pk'ing bots is likely the only way they could stop bot's.

[Avatar]

Detecting and timing the commands that the mud receives from a player doesn't help, most of us have clients that automatically send 5 - 10 commands per fight anyway.

Regarding the pkilling (demo trip) for bots, I agree with Medios that this is a waste of time and mana. Rather than that, I'd just recall the person and tell Splork that we caught the person botting in a group. The bot likely loses 5 levels, and your group continues to cycle.

Myself, I've always preferred to just recall the bot / afk person and send them a tell to rejoin when they are ready to play. I don't often lead, but I do often recall people who don't fix protects. I've often borrowed a recall before a fight, then used it immediately to recall someone. Then I ask the person above if HE is ready to fix protects. You don't have to be the leader to use recall scrolls, and most groups will applaud when you recall someone who's obviously not paying attention.