Botting and AFK parties are out of control

[BlackEmrald]

I really feel like the botting and AFK parties are really starting to explode. I just spent all weekend in Sikuku Ruins trying to successfully party through what is pretty much the hardest leveling bracket (150-180) and was CONSTANTLY fighting AFK botters in my party. It eventually devolved into us having to be the AFK police, instead of actually playing and enjoying the game. It's awful.

We would kick the AFKers, then they would come back an hour later with excuses or whatever, and it was just totally exhausting. Its crazy that in a 10 person party, only having 3-4 actual players is the norm. Is there nothing we can do to combat the AFK aoe and Cleric botting spam? 

 

[GodOfEntity]

Accepting the fact that people have lives outside of the game was important for me to deal with people going AFK. 
Still can be frustrating or annoying, but, when I accept that real life is more important than the game, and the game is just a persons enjoyment and being upset about that is absurd in of itself, is a conclusion I had to come to. Not saying you can or will come to this conclusion too, or even that you should. But for me, that helped with that frustration. 

The botters... Those need to be reported with the support channels and using video's and whatnot. 

[HoneyBuns]

12 hours ago, BlackEmrald said:

I really feel like the botting and AFK parties are really starting to explode. I just spent all weekend in Sikuku Ruins trying to successfully party through what is pretty much the hardest leveling bracket (150-180) and was CONSTANTLY fighting AFK botters in my party. It eventually devolved into us having to be the AFK police, instead of actually playing and enjoying the game. It's awful.

We would kick the AFKers, then they would come back an hour later with excuses or whatever, and it was just totally exhausting. Its crazy that in a 10 person party, only having 3-4 actual players is the norm. Is there nothing we can do to combat the AFK aoe and Cleric botting spam? 

 

When you see parties that are botting, take screenshots (or videos) and create a support ticket.  Make sure the player's names are visible in the ss or list them in the ticket.  Then someone from the team can investigate and take appropriate action.

[BlackEmrald]

11 hours ago, GodOfEntity said:

Accepting the fact that people have lives outside of the game was important for me to deal with people going AFK. 
Still can be frustrating or annoying, but, when I accept that real life is more important than the game, and the game is just a persons enjoyment and being upset about that is absurd in of itself, is a conclusion I had to come to. Not saying you can or will come to this conclusion too, or even that you should. But for me, that helped with that frustration. 

The botters... Those need to be reported with the support channels and using video's and whatnot. 

You are right, AFK doesn't bother me as much as botting. As long as people let us know whats going on its all good! "Hey i have to go for a few minutes, brb" is all it takes. 

 

The recent problems have been more than that though. People wait around at popular level spots for parties to form, beg their way in then almost immediately set up their bots and AFK. They come back when they check in every 15-30+ minutes to see if there is an issue, but its apparent to every active member of the party that they are AFK the entire time. The AFK botter crowd simply has no fear and is very bold, because they know its very unlikely anything will happen to them and "everyone" does it. I can and will start reporting them, but i wish there was an easier way. I  don't love the idea that I have to be the lawyer and build a case to submit against every botter I run into. It's just all very frustrating. 

[Artsy1]

On 6/26/2023 at 8:18 PM, GodOfEntity said:

Accepting the fact that people have lives outside of the game was important for me to deal with people going AFK. 
Still can be frustrating or annoying, but, when I accept that real life is more important than the game, and the game is just a persons enjoyment and being upset about that is absurd in of itself, is a conclusion I had to come to. Not saying you can or will come to this conclusion too, or even that you should. But for me, that helped with that frustration. 

The botters... Those need to be reported with the support channels and using video's and whatnot. 

If you have stuff to do outside of the game, you shouldn’t be playing.  Lol!

Edited June 28, 2023 by Artsy1

[ZEEZROM]

How do you identify botters?  Do the players join a party then sit and gain without fighting?  What are we talking about here.

[Havick]

I noticed this on some soldiers players they just put character in middle and doing random Aoe same as class mage this was been noticed since sometimes people move bit far away and they still on that position doing aoe and there no mobs there, they keep with bot skill using just aoe random.

 

Other think i saw today saw 6 newbies on pumpkins all close each other i dont saw more if they was like botting since i had to go but my friend saw them more later and send me picture im not sure if show picture on forum with nicknames its against rules but they was more level up and all same gear, weapons and all soldiers as well, its bit suspicious possible people botting to sell accounts after

[BlackEmrald]

On 6/28/2023 at 7:27 PM, ZEEZROM said:

How do you identify botters?  Do the players join a party then sit and gain without fighting?  What are we talking about here.

Yes, players join parties, and immediately set up with repetitive AOE/Passive skills and AFK. They do the same run of skills over and over, don't move or respond to chat. Even when they die they don't respawn until they come back and see they are dead. Soldiers and Clerics are the worst offenders in my experience, but any class with an AOE does it. Its SUPER common in Sikuku Ruins right now especially, but also in most common power leveling spots. 

[GodOfEntity]

On 6/28/2023 at 12:34 AM, Artsy1 said:

If you have stuff to do outside of the game, you shouldn’t be playing.  Lol!

So a parent should just never play games, or kids should just never need their parent when the parent is having time to play the game? 
Emergencies outside of the game shouldn't exist, and players should just completely ignore reality while playing the game because when you play the game, that  game is now the only thing that can matter, and if that's not possible, they shouldn't play the game ever. Really... ? 

Edited June 30, 2023 by GodOfEntity

[HoneyBuns]

12 hours ago, GodOfEntity said:

So a parent should just never play games, or kids should just never need their parent when the parent is having time to play the game? 
Emergencies outside of the game shouldn't exist, and players should just completely ignore reality while playing the game because when you play the game, that  game is now the only thing that can matter, and if that's not possible, they shouldn't play the game ever. Really... ? 

There are countless excuses for cheating but that does not change the fact that it IS cheating. The game rules clearly state that the use of assistive technology to automate ingame actions is prohibited. If a parent  (or anyone) has something to do in real life, then they should do that. But that does not mean they can bend or break the rules. It's simple- log out until you have the time to actually play the game.  Teaching your children to cheat is not good parenting.  Teach them to play fairly instead.

[GodOfEntity]

11 hours ago, HoneyBuns said:

There are countless excuses for cheating but that does not change the fact that it IS cheating. The game rules clearly state that the use of assistive technology to automate ingame actions is prohibited. If a parent  (or anyone) has something to do in real life, then they should do that. But that does not mean they can bend or break the rules. It's simple- log out until you have the time to actually play the game.  Teaching your children to cheat is not good parenting.  Teach them to play fairly instead.

Botting = Cheating. 

AFK = Away From Keyboard. (not cheating) 


I was defending the act of going AFK. Not botting. 
Apologies for the confusion. 

Edited June 30, 2023 by GodOfEntity

[HoneyBuns]

4 minutes ago, GodOfEntity said:

I do not understand how going afk is cheating. 

Botting = Cheating. 

AFK = Away From Keyboard. (not cheating) 

AFK and standing motionless in a salamander is fine (assuming the rest of your party is ok with it). AFK using auto hot keys to continue to skill or heal or pick up drops while you are AFK is not allowed.

[GodOfEntity]

4 minutes ago, HoneyBuns said:

AFK and standing motionless in a salamander is fine (assuming the rest of your party is ok with it). AFK using auto hot keys to continue to skill or heal or pick up drops while you are AFK is not allowed.

Apologies. I don't just correlate being AFK to botting.
I thought the person mostly meant botters, and people that join the party to just go AFK and not be there. 

I looked at the initial post as meaning two separate things, not merging the later with the former. 

[BlackEmrald]

7 hours ago, GodOfEntity said:

Apologies. I don't just correlate being AFK to botting.
I thought the person mostly meant botters, and people that join the party to just go AFK and not be there. 

I looked at the initial post as meaning two separate things, not merging the later with the former. 

You dont have to be AFK to be botting, and you dont have to be Botting to be AFK. Both are at best bad party etiquette and at worst blatant cheating. They tend to go hand in hand.

[TheGuy]

On 6/26/2023 at 6:04 AM, BlackEmrald said:

I really feel like the botting and AFK parties are really starting to explode. I just spent all weekend in Sikuku Ruins trying to successfully party through what is pretty much the hardest leveling bracket (150-180) and was CONSTANTLY fighting AFK botters in my party. It eventually devolved into us having to be the AFK police, instead of actually playing and enjoying the game. It's awful.

 

I don't want to point fingers but there are a select group of players that tend to do this on every JRPG/KRPG (Japenese or Korean RPG). They infiltrate small games like this and plague it with inconsistent markets and RMT transactions. They usually have many forms of exploits up their sleeves, and if not exploits, automated programs meant to do things for 24 hours a day. They tend to be attracted to games with micro-transaction cosmetics as well. Gotta make the characters they aren't even playing to look cool...

Hopefully this ZulieApocalypse has opened the eyes of the higher ups and they can push out an in-game reporting system (which unfortunately can also be abused by trolls) or possibly open their employment roster to Volunteer Community Managers that can tend to running around the world, cleaning the streets. Coming to the website with screenshots/recordings is not something everyone wants to do. Someway to right-click the player, have options brought up that include a Report button.

Edited July 1, 2023 by TheGuy

[Buffiies]

Botting has always been a problem throughout the years and it will keep being it until action is taken. One problem is AOE spots, shouldn't be a thing. I haven't played a lot of MMOs but from the time I have done it, I have never ever seen a AOE spot like Rose Online. I understand it might be because of its age and so on but the last DEV time redid Sikiku Prison to be a BOT-free zone and it killed the whole map. No one ever goes there anymore, why? Because it's difficult to bot there now. Something like Sikiku has to be done throughout the whole game, but it might also just kill the game because people don't wanna put a lot of effort into the game, at least when it comes to the leveling part. I tend to sometimes like the grinding part of just spamming aoes/healing/picks up because I tend to talk to the party and get to know people. Last night we talked about cultural differences with it comes to tipping within restaurants and service jobs, which was nice and fun! People went brb, afk because people had to eat, visit the toilet and stuff happened which needed attention. Which is fine because a real good party? Can run for hours and hours...

Am saying once again, as I have said in past years. Why play the game if you aint gonna play it? Just my random thoughts...

[GodOfEntity]

On 7/1/2023 at 12:30 PM, TheGuy said:

Someway to right-click the player, have options brought up that include a Report button.

I'd love a right click report option, that will timestamp the event, saving the past 5 minutes of server activity. That can be played back in a replay system, for the moderation team to review. (including chat logs ect.) Or highlighting the timestamp in the report, and being able to replay back anything that was done, ect.

11 minutes ago, Buffiies said:

the last DEV time redid Sikiku Prison to be a BOT-free zone and it killed the whole map. No one ever goes there anymore, why? Because it's difficult to bot there now.

Because it was a great place to farm zullies. But it was too much of an increase of zullies with the boxes. 
Also there are better places to do everything now, and the spawn rate in Prison is just too slow. Honestly all it needs is to be MARGINALLY faster, and it could be worth it again. But Prison is just, so difficult now for the reward to be marginally better leveling then elsewhere.  
Prison farming and leveling could be great, it wasn't done right that update. They killed it, its not just laziness of the player. imo. 

[ingway]

On 7/5/2023 at 8:03 PM, Buffiies said:

Botting has always been a problem throughout the years and it will keep being it until action is taken. One problem is AOE spots, shouldn't be a thing. I haven't played a lot of MMOs but from the time I have done it, I have never ever seen a AOE spot like Rose Online. I understand it might be because of its age and so on but the last DEV time redid Sikiku Prison to be a BOT-free zone and it killed the whole map. No one ever goes there anymore, why? Because it's difficult to bot there now. Something like Sikiku has to be done throughout the whole game, but it might also just kill the game because people don't wanna put a lot of effort into the game, at least when it comes to the leveling part. I tend to sometimes like the grinding part of just spamming aoes/healing/picks up because I tend to talk to the party and get to know people. Last night we talked about cultural differences with it comes to tipping within restaurants and service jobs, which was nice and fun! People went brb, afk because people had to eat, visit the toilet and stuff happened which needed attention. Which is fine because a real good party? Can run for hours and hours...

Am saying once again, as I have said in past years. Why play the game if you aint gonna play it? Just my random thoughts...

I am also very annoyed by this bot situation. Not only for leveling, but in the good farming spots very often there is a afk bot taking over the spot. I need point that it is impossible to compete with a bot, you will keep loosing first hits and be frustrated. The bot doesn't really care, so you can only compete in this situation also botting.

A solution for the AOE spots would be scatter the mobs, and increase exp and drop reward. But bots can also single target, so that isn't a proper solution. We need a system to identify inhuman time reaction, using skills with too consistent timing and taking too long to loot important drops (there are many macro users that keep spamming AOE while they watch TV or something and they check ground from time to time to loot). Players with very large farming time in routine should also be flagged and a warning be sent to GMs to inquire. This would kill the vast majority of bots. Also, anti-cheat is good  to prevent obvious 3rd party as AHK, or when people report another famous bots to staff include in the anti-cheat. Right now it is almost legal to bot because the anti-bot policy relies mostly on players reporting, and any botter that doesn't get reported goes unpunished.

Edited July 7, 2023 by ingway

[zyk]

On 7/7/2023 at 12:40 PM, ingway said:

I am also very annoyed by this bot situation. Not only for leveling, but in the good farming spots very often there is a afk bot taking over the spot. I need point that it is impossible to compete with a bot, you will keep loosing first hits and be frustrated. The bot doesn't really care, so you can only compete in this situation also botting.

A solution for the AOE spots would be scatter the mobs, and increase exp and drop reward. But bots can also single target, so that isn't a proper solution. We need a system to identify inhuman time reaction, using skills with too consistent timing and taking too long to loot important drops (there are many macro users that keep spamming AOE while they watch TV or something and they check ground from time to time to loot). Players with very large farming time in routine should also be flagged and a warning be sent to GMs to inquire. This would kill the vast majority of bots. Also, anti-cheat is good  to prevent obvious 3rd party as AHK, or when people report another famous bots to staff include in the anti-cheat. Right now it is almost legal to bot because the anti-bot policy relies mostly on players reporting, and any botter that doesn't get reported goes unpunished.

Ingway afair is one of my Party Mate in Xita to Ruins. We've been through hell in Ruins for People that says that their gonna pee and gone afk for good. And eventually pull out their max character to kill us all lol

 

Grinding with War lol

[TheGuy]

8 hours ago, ingway said:

Also, anti-cheat is good  to prevent obvious 3rd party as AHK, or when people report another famous bots to staff include in the anti-cheat. Right now it is almost legal to bot because the anti-bot policy relies mostly on players reporting, and any botter that doesn't get reported goes unpunished.

Unfortunately anti-cheat would do nothing here. There are a million and a half programs designed for auto-clicking or auto hotkeys, as well as high end software that is meant for Logitech, Razor etc...that has that type of programming also built in. The solution would be to have some sort of Community Managers that are available to check the obvious locations. Goblin Cave, Luna Penguin Artillery, Xita, Fossil Sanctuary...

[zyk]

Sample of a Happy Party in Ruins with Active Players Grinding. No matter how many Monster we can kill it before it comes to us lol. 

Hope you guys are still here T.T

Edited July 8, 2023 by zyk

[TheGuy]

I just want to bump this thread a bit...

Ive reported groups of bot accounts (groups as small as 1 and as large as 6) every day during last week. The typical response I get is "The team will investigate and take action if needed". 

If I'm putting in a certain amount of effort (recording, coordinates and map name, server time, player name), then the effort should be returned, yes? The team doesnt have time to look at logs (if they are even recorded since no anti-cheat system is used) so I go above and beyond to provide evidence with explanation. The work is being done but the players are still active. What more can I do as a player to actively help the community if I see my efforts not used.

Edited July 20, 2023 by TheGuy

[Buffiies]

On 7/21/2023 at 1:45 AM, TheGuy said:

I just want to bump this thread a bit...

Ive reported groups of bot accounts (groups as small as 1 and as large as 6) every day during last week. The typical response I get is "The team will investigate and take action if needed". 

If I'm putting in a certain amount of effort (recording, coordinates and map name, server time, player name), then the effort should be returned, yes? The team doesnt have time to look at logs (if they are even recorded since no anti-cheat system is used) so I go above and beyond to provide evidence with explanation. The work is being done but the players are still active. What more can I do as a player to actively help the community if I see my efforts not used.

I have also reported multiple players and some I have never seen again and some I have seen get *poofed* away and seen the player 15 minutes later running around. My guess is the DEV team doesn't ban instant but instead of giving a warning to the players and if it's seen again, a punishment will be put in place. I understand if they are doing something like this but at the same time, shouldn't a warning contain perhaps a 3 days ban, and if it continues the punishment will result in a perma ban. To make a greater stand against botting because, as said before, it's a big problem, and the DEV team needs to take a big step against this. But I hope there is some sort of system already in place, which I find comfort in at the moment. 

P.s If you need a botter agent DEVs, contact me

[Havick]

10 hours ago, Buffiies said:

I have also reported multiple players and some I have never seen again and some I have seen get *poofed* away and seen the player 15 minutes later running around. My guess is the DEV team doesn't ban instant but instead of giving a warning to the players and if it's seen again, a punishment will be put in place. I understand if they are doing something like this but at the same time, shouldn't a warning contain perhaps a 3 days ban, and if it continues the punishment will result in a perma ban. To make a greater stand against botting because, as said before, it's a big problem, and the DEV team needs to take a big step against this. But I hope there is some sort of system already in place, which I find comfort in at the moment. 

P.s If you need a botter agent DEVs, contact me

What im scared of its people make economy bad again if have tons bots in game farming easy and sell like tons stack 999, yesterday saw in my party guy using 4 accounts 2 of was soldier with spear doing aoe bot

[TheGuy]

7 hours ago, Havick said:

What im scared of its people make economy bad again if have tons bots in game farming easy and sell like tons stack 999, yesterday saw in my party guy using 4 accounts 2 of was soldier with spear doing aoe bot

There was a HUGE influx of champs and mages after the ban. I'm assuming its because those are the farmers that got perma banned and also they help speed up leveling for the 2nd account since they are more powerful in AOE groups than pretty much every other class (with max clerics healing and sacrifice to protect the group)