About robotic play aka. botting.

This is what the rules say about botting:

Nowhere in the rules is it stated that failing to respond to a non GM player is a bannable offense.

I have not read all ban reports/appeals on the subject but I have understood two things

1. Some players believe that others have to talk to them or they can report them for botting.
2. Some players believe that they can be banned for botting if they fail to respond to other non GM players.

Then I read things like

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Can the GMs please explain to me what is going on?

Where in the rules is it stated or can it be implied that a player is engaging in robotic play unless he/she interacts with another non GM player?
And when did we go from banning for clear rule violations to banning for suspicion of violations?

What happened to innocent until proven guilty?
http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ (Article 11)

 

First of all, innocent until proven guilty does not HAVE to apply here, nor do the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Last I checked, we weren't a member of the UN

To your point though, I see what you are saying about players not having to respond to non-staff. I think I have said it before (and if one of those quotes is mine, then I've said it both ways, totally guilty), if you own the map, you can do whatever you want on that map as long as it is within the rules. Likewise, you don't need to reply to anyone. With that said, by not responding to someone when they come into your map and try to talk to you and making the same repeated movements over and over while casting a skill, you are definitely running the risk of being reported for botting. It is well within a staff member's right to ban based on the evidence presented as well as any evidence the staff member may have/find/know of.

There have been plenty of times people have been banned for suspicion of violations. You need to look no further than when we ban people on suspicion of duping or selling mesos/items for real world currency. Again, it is certainly within the staff's right to do so.

I hope I answered the question(s) you had, as well as provided my view point on how reporting for botting works. At the end of the day, staff isn't on 24/7 and even when we are on, we can't find every rule violator, which is why Report Abuse exists to begin with, so that members of the community can help us remove rule violators.

 

My stance as a member of staff who both responds to players "suspected of botting" in game, and reports of players who are "suspected of botting" on the forums, I look at it like this: evidence is rarely conclusive entirely on its own. If I walk into a map and I see a monster flying directly towards a player wearing beginner clothing, I immediately assume that player is a hacker. Could there be any other logical conclusion to make? No, I don't think there is, but if doubt was raised with my logic, then I would consider unbanning the player.

Likewise, if I see a a player who has not responded to interaction over a course of time, that alone is one point of inconclusive evidence towards a player botting. Next, if I notice that over a course of time, they do not move very much, or they move in a very predictable and seemingly scripted manner, that is another point of inconclusive evidence. Finally, if they make no attempt to defend themselves, that is a third point of inconclusive evidence. In each of these individual points, there is a reasonable explanation as to why this might occur, however in combination, there is a clear and obvious logical conclusion: the player is botting. If doubt can be raised with that logic, then I would consider unbanning the player, just as I stated I would above.

That's just how I look at it; it's not on the player to prove they are innocent if they have not been accused of anything, however if we have evidence that the player may be breaking a rule, it becomes their responsibility to show that they are not.

 

Thnx for the replies gugs

Still I don't think I got a clear answer.

Hypothetically speakikg now. If I'm in a map, say himes, playing a priest, watching a movie, luring and killing with heal. Or if I'm lazy as shit "playing" in gs2, standing on the stairs, healing and occasionally pressing left and right to keep the heal going. And someone comes in and talks to me 1) I might not notice him/her, 2) I might not wanna speak to him/her. Am I obligated to interact in any way with that player unless it's a GM? And if I don't, and that person screen shots or records me healing left and right for a couple of mins, is that considered a bannable offense? Do I have to screen shot the situation my self so I can post it in the ban appeal and show I was just ignoring the player? As it is right now, the rule just requires my pressence behind the screen, nothing more.

Spoiler: Never forget

@John Coffin v. United States, 156 U.S. 432 (1895)

 

You're probably only looking for answers from the staff, but I feel like I can answer a few of your questions. Hope it helps. Feel free to correct me if I made any mistakes!

Scenario 1: You're in a GS2 map healing and resetting the attack counter by moving left or right.
Here's the thing, most people aren't actively counting how many times they've used heal. In fact, I'd say you almost never attack the exact number of times or buffed yourself at the exact interval of time as the last time you changed position. Even if you passed the 100 attack limit every time, you aren't necessarily following a pattern.

Scenario 2: You're spamming skills in a town.
This one is really a no-brainer. The only way you could be accidentally banned is if you intentionally spammed skills in town following a pattern to draw attention to yourself. If you choose not to respond to a player or staff member here, you're either trying to get yourself banned or waste the staffs' time.

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Because the autoban is unable to detect inputs from macroing software, the staff is forced to decide on what action to take (if necessary) based on their best judgement. You will see that some cases result differently from others rather than being completely uniform depending on the person issuing the ban.

Hypothetically speaking, lets say you were wrongly banned for botting. If that were the case, you could still post a ban appeal and the staff member who banned you would most likely unban you if they weren't 100% sure about the ban in the first place. In extreme cases where you were on your second ban for botting, it becomes your responsibility to prove your innocence because your first offense was your only warning to be more cautious.

In both scenarios, you don't have to worry about being falsely accused of botting. In the event of a report being filed against you, a screenshot wouldn't be necessary because before the staff take action, they visit the map to double-check whether or not the report is valid. However, if your character is offline, it'd have to be completely obvious that you were not present for a moderate period of time. A few screenshots of you moving back and forth without the player trying to catch your attention for at least a few minutes is not sufficient to warrant a ban. Either a video with a duration of a minimum ~5-10mins to clearly demonstrate the botter's attack pattern must be present or a player must screenshot multiple uses of the ~servertime/~uptime/~mapowner commands while attempting to communicate with the accused player.

 

I'm glad that you benefited from my last post. To give more indepth answers to your questions in the first post:

Where in the rules is it stated or can it be implied that a player is engaging in robotic play unless he/she interacts with another non GM player?
The rules state nothing about interaction with anyone, GM or player. What the rule does state is that engaging in robotic play is not allowed. It is up to us to decide if someone is doing that or not based on what is given to us. We define botting in both live game encounters as well as report abuse threads as the combination of a few factors, only one of which is responsiveness. Just because you do not respond to a player does not mean that you are botting, and likewise, responsiveness alone does not exempt a player from being banned for botting. Consider the following scenarios:

• You are doing what you suggested in your post; training at Ghost Ship and only moving very little in order to continue grinding. This is unfortunately very similar to botting activity, and thus does not help your case. If there are other supporting evidences to the argument that you are botting, such as failing to respond to a prompt from a player passing by, then you will be banned, simply because it is not possible to differentiate you from a botter anymore. There would be two very strong similarities between what you are doing and what any botter does, which makes our conclusion logical.
• You are training at another map where movements around the map are less regular, for example, Himes. It is a lot more difficult to tell if a player is playing "robotically" at a map like this; you would have to prove that the player you are reporting was using skills in an unnatural way. Perhaps they were using heal at specific places in the map only, regardless of whether or not there are mobs there. Perhaps their botting program messed up and they would only heal half the map consistently and leave the other half untouched. These are scenarios that are dead near impossible to prove with screenshot evidence alone, but would be the basis of any botting report, or at the very least, the strongest argument for it, whether or not the player responded. It is much less likely to be banned in this sort of scenario.
• A player is set up at Creeping Evil. They use five different macros with their summon skills to give a "response" every time they recast their buff. Despite the fact that it looks as though this player is responding, the player may still be engaging in robotic play. Anyone who I've ever checked in on at common summon farm maps will know that I always give a basic query when I arrive; my favorite one is asking what my name is. My name would literally be on the screen; it's impossible to not know the answer to that question.

My point in taking you through those scenarios is to make sure it is understood that responsiveness is a big factor when it comes to determining if a player is botting or not, however it certainly is not the end of the discussion if a player does or does not respond to basic prompts. Because of that, I think that your question is somewhat unfair; the rules do not state, nor have they ever stated what defines every individual offense in regards to how we come to the conclusion that a player is violating a rule, but rather they are a list of actions that are not permitted on our server. It is our own judgment of what a player has done that then leads us to our decision on whether or not the Terms of Service have been violated or not.

And when did we go from banning for clear rule violations to banning for suspicion of violations? What happened to innocent until proven guilty?
I want to make clear what exactly our definition of the word "suspicion" actually is. When we say that we suspect something has occurred, it is because evidence is very strong that a player has done so, and that we are therefore in agreement that the player should be banned before the results of their actions have become detrimental rather than simply illegitimate. Some examples of these scenarios would include a player that looks very much like they have duped hundreds of Onyx Apples, which you may remember we handed out many suspicion bans that got overturned. This was for the purpose of stopping any illegitimate activities from moving beyond player benefit of being able to train/fight anywhere using +100 weapon attack to the point where other fully legitimate players are using illegitimate Onyx Apples in their daily activities, and the market price of Onyx Apples is being affected due to the influx of supply. Therefore, it becomes important that we ban any player who looks like they may be breaking the rules; the key words being looks like. If you look like a duper, something is suspicious about you; you may be perfectly legitimate, however you do not appear so at first glance, and so we have come to the conclusion that you must be dealt with before a problem arises. To use an obviously flawed analogy, but still one I consider helpful, if you walk into a bank with your face covered, you are likely to be confronted by a security guard, because you look like a robber. When you tell them that you have skin problems and prefer not to have your face seen, they leave you alone.

Similarly, if we see a report that looks very much like a player is botting, we ban them. Anyone call this "suspicion" if they wish to, however theoretically any ban could be pegged to "suspicion" of Terms of Service breaches; it is very difficult to conclusively and entirely determine what exactly a player is doing, however the closer we get to knowing based off of what is presented to us, both in game as well as in a thread, the more certain our suspicions are. To summarize; when we say suspicion, we mean that we are very sure that what we are saying is true, and therefore we fully believe that you are guilty, however if you are not, we are always open to hearing what you have to present to prove your innocence.





I do apologize for how wordy this became, however I think that you will all find this post informative. Please do understand that we put a lot of thought into every action that we do; this post is about as close as I can get to being able to explain to you what goes on in my own head (and what I trust goes on in the heads of my fellow members of staff) when they handle any report abuse thread, or any situation in game, for that matter, including cases of botting.

tl;dr:
Where in the rules is it stated or can it be implied that a player is engaging in robotic play unless he/she interacts with another non GM player? It isn't, but that question isn't very fair, as the rules don't explain how we determine if an offense is committed, it is just a list of offenses that we would investigate and punish a player if we believe they are guilty.
And when did we go from banning for clear rule violations to banning for suspicion of violations? What happened to innocent until proven guilty? When we say suspicion, we mean that we are fairly certain however the evidence may be circumstantial or otherwise inconclusive, however we've determined that a ban is necessary until the player has explained their actions. We like to be proactive whenever we can in order to keep this server as clean and happy as it can be.

 

OMG Mike isn't it enough I have to read long papers at work, I also have to do it on my vacation???

Thnx for the post and input on the matter m8! So basically no interaction with anyone is required.


I don't know your routines, maybe you (the GM team) already do this, but I would like to suggest not banning people for botting right away if the evidence isn't 100% clear (100%) but instead take a note of the IGN and do a check manually to see if she/he is truly botting or not.

@Succubus, thnx for your input but yes I only wanted GM POWs since ultimately they have the ultimate discretion and authority in applying and interpreting the rules.

 

You might already notice that we're fairly stringent on what we ask for in botting report threads; I know I've personally had to deny peoples' threads (and face some seriously upset PMs afterwards!) because of people who don't include quite enough information for me to justify banning a player, even if there is a good bit in there. More often that not, these borderline threads make their way past the eyes of a few of us to see if we can find any special reason to confirm or deny a player botting before something happens.

Like I mentioned in my longer post, evidence will never be 100% clear unless the offender sends us a video of them using a macro tool. The game of being staff is how far away from 100% we're willing to go in order to maintain the sanctity of the rules without harming regular players in the process. Sometimes, we make mistakes, everyone does, but in the name of preventing botters from attaining accolades in the game without putting in the effort of actually playing, it's a risk we have to take. I'd like to think we're fairly accurate when it comes to our ban processes, and I will give a lot of credit to the general understanding that the playerbase has of how we operate and knowing generally what makes things easier on everyone, and hopefully this thread proves to be even more helpful for you all to understand how to make sure you never get wrongfully banned.

We're all working towards the same goal here; a fun server for everyone to play and enjoy.

 

It is required if it can be mistaken as botting behavior.

In my opinion, someone who does not respond to someone who asks "are you botting" or "please respond or I will have to report as this looks very suspicious" (while having bot like movement) is more than likely of botting and is grounds for banning. It isn't really that hard to even type in "y" or "n".

Also, the point of ban appeals is to prove and explain that you weren't botting if you were wrongfully banned.

 

Ok guys, now I want a clear answer. Is it required or not?

 

I think it was a misstatement on Jeen's part. It is not required but certainly preferable (for both your sake, and for our sake when deciding whether or not to ban the person in question, makes the case a lot clearer and prevents us from wasting time)

 

So basically, the importance isn't in whether or not they respond or not. If it looks robotic and like botting, it will be bannable. Not responding may or may not contribute to that. Is that correct?

 

Right. SAKI wants to know does one have to respond, and the answer is no. But bear in mind, by not responding, you've made the case a lot stronger for someone making an abuse report, and making it easier for the staff to see it as botting and ban you for it.

 

At first I was interested in reading but TL; DR.

Spoiler

You don't HAVE to tell a third party that the stuff you're exchanging in that baggy is just flour, not crack, but if you don't you run the risk of them calling the police on you.

 

Thank you for the clarification then. At that point, it is on the player to be able to prove he was not botting, right (once he has been bannd with a strong case against him)? And if they weren't speaking at all, it makes it difficult to prove that they were physically there.

 

Best response.

 

Bingo. If they weren't speaking at all, it will be difficult to prove that they were physically there, which is why it is in your best interest to respond. But again, while you SHOULD respond to a query, you are not REQUIRED to.

 

Thank you guys @John, @Michael, @Succubus, @Matt and @Jeen for responding and contributing to this conversation!

Special thnx to @Rob!

I hope you guys understand I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass (actually checked to see this isn't considered homophobic slur nowadays) here, I just want stuff to be clear even for new players so they know what's expected from them and what's not and how they preferably should act in situations like this.

 

And like I said earlier, we're all here with the interest of making sure innocent players play freely, and bad players get put away. Glad to be of service, mate.