Diablo® III

Get rid of the RMAH the botters will go away, thats what ruining this game...

Ive seen many posts with "bots" is ruining the game. But im wondering what ppl mean by this.

Do they mean the prices are low on AH for "good" gear (not godlike gear) and are blaming bots? Remember when ppl where complaining about low drop rates, blizzard listened and upped it - several times actually. But Blizzard also stated it would be kinda pointless, as there will be a boom in gear upgrades the first couple of weeks, then you need to move on to the next "tier" of gear (eventually godlike) and it will be expensive again. But then, you will make less money, since everybody else have "good" gear they wanna sell, which causes the price to go down.

TL;DR - Ppl blame bots, but could the low prices on AH be a consequence of the higher drop rates and more MF on each player. (buffs ppl where crying for a couple of months ago, and they got it)

Give all users an Autheticator. (yea, for free)
Give people a pop-up to give Authenticator code before they are able to join a game.
Problem solved.
GG, enjoy.

This is (my personal opinion) the best and simplest solution (even though i don't understand much about the basic tech/system behind the authenticator )..and (i need to enforce this particular aspect)..if all people behind the Diablo III development knew from day 1 that the game would be played Always Online , taking into account 21st century piracy..i mean.. sooner or later this WOULD happen..so..an Authenticator should have been included with every copy sold of Diablo III..

But the fact is..if you want/need extra security or, the most important, want to enjoy the game you paid for..you have to buy an Authenticator??? no thank you Blizz..

What i've said here..might have it's flaws and not make any sense or logic for Blizzard and/or all people..if that's case..i'm sorry..but one mind works better with others minds in a particular subject..and if we all give our own personal insight, i'm sure the anti-hack team from Blizz eventually will come up with something..

My tks to *prod* for this possible solution..

Peace out..3õ

11/22/2012 11:45 AMPosted by Benjy

Get rid of the RMAH the botters will go away, thats what ruining this game...

Then they'll just sell items/gold through 3rd party sites, like every online game.

im starting a movement to increase the amount of bots.. bots are awesome, they crush the unrealistic prices in the AH.. IK eternal reign started at 100M and now sells for less than 20M, its awesome

i <3 bots

#morebots

I think the basic problem is that Blizzard has already lost. At some point, the behaviour of a bot is not distinguishable from the behaviour of dedicated human player. When analysing client behaviour, only the metrics that are obtainable can be assessed. Or to put it in layman's terms: If it looks, walks, talks, and acts like a duck, it may be a mechanical duck or a real duck. No way to know.

The only counter to this is to gather more metrics and behavioural data and look for even more subtle patterns. Remember Blade Runner? That's essentially what these guys are doing - looking for the tiniest aberration in behaviour that would reveal the difference. It's a Turing test and that bots are - at this stage - winning.

As to the CAPTCHA or Authenticator idea:

Won't work. There are real people running the bots. They log in just the same way you do. They are just as capable of entering the CAPTCHA or Authenticator code as you are. Unless you're talking about randomly interrupting gaming sessions to interrogate (something no one wants) then you're not going to exclude bots by such simplistic techniques.

I'm fairly certain that Blues relate posting on these forums to feeding ducks.

It would of been nice it Diablo had an in-game report button for bots.

Why not introducing a progressive flag system. ppl witch play 24/7 are almost certainly bots. Hell, there are some players out there with over 150k elite kills, how many can actually to this legit? Those ppl should get the Captchas. If they can`t answer them - another flag, also they should be kick out of their gaming session. If a new one is started by the bot another Captcha should be issued immediately to prevent them from further farming. If the failure quote is fairly high and shows certain patterns, the account should be at least suspend. A next step could be to demand an explanation for their very unusual behavior. If their reasoning isn`t convincing or the suspension even ignored altogether they should be banned.

11/22/2012 02:45 PMPosted by RaiZo

It would of been nice it Diablo had an in-game report button for bots.

+1
Yeah, give us a chance to help solve this problem!

11/22/2012 02:45 PMPosted by RaiZo

It would of been nice it Diablo had an in-game report button for bots.

yea like they have for reporting harassment and threats. this needs to be done asap

Blue reply and you are all attacking her argument like an idiot instead of giving solution. No wonder they did not post that often anymore. Do you guys remember when Lylirra actually replying to a lot of post and you guys just keep harassing her ?

Now we rarely got information thx to 25 years old with 12 years old mentality like most people that lurk in the forum

An important thing to keep in mind is that we don't make public announcements every time we action players for cheating, and the reason for this is that we are constantly removing this kind of exploitative behavior from the game -- on a weekly basis, sometimes even on daily basis. Public announcements would become tedious if we decided to make one every single time we banned someone for using a bot, a hack, or some other kind of cheat. Instead, we usually will post something whenever we issue a big wave, or whenever we feel like we need to remind players that exploitative behavior is not okay and can lead to a permanent ban from Diablo III.

It's something we take very seriously, though. Our developers, support staff, and anti-hack teams are all busting their butts to ensure that your online experience is as free of cheats, hacks, and bots as possible. From the development side, we look at ways to reduce the effects of exploitative behavior on the community and/or prevent certain programs from working outright. This trick here is to make sure that whatever we do doesn't negatively impact legitimate players, which is actually a very fine tightrope to walk (you saw the complications of that whenever we introduced game limiting). From the support side, we make sure that your in-game reports reach our anti-hacks teams. And from the anti-hack side, we take action on players that we are able to confirm to be maliciously exploiting the game, be it through botting or other forms of cheating.

The reality to all of this, though, is that even though we devote considerable time, effort, and heart to removing bad behavior from the game, there will always be individuals who excel at coming up with new ways of getting around the roadblocks we put up. So, it's a constant battle, but one that we're willing to fight. If you want to pitch in, you can; the easiest way to do so is by emailing hacks@blizzard.com or submitting a report through our http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/submit/hacks.html" class="bml-link-url2">webform</a>.

And, just for clarity, let me repeat:

- Exploitative behavior is not okay (this includes botting).
- If you are found to be exploiting the game, you can be permanently banned.
- Source: <a href="https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/diablo-iii-exploitation-policy

People aren't going to take you seriously when you say one thing, yet they observe something quite different. With botting is as rampant as it is in Blizzard games, until you provide some numbers or something more concrete, making such posts (reposts?) is time spent you could be doing something more productive. If it’s not an issue you can regain control over, just post that so fans/consumers know what to expect.

More than likely it's a management or structural issue rather than individual employee effort. I see this theme often at Blizzard--many hard individual employees doing great work, often not having that work result in the goal they were working towards achieving due to either management issues or corporate greed (with the latter more of a cultural issue).

Blizzard almost exclusively seeks employees with a deep passion for games and producing great work. While this is often seen in the quality of games released, I think that this may also result in employees even more tolerant of upper-middle management incompetence than they would already ordinarily be. I mean, Jay, seriously, a lead producer? ... A great guy, I'm sure, but... just read his interviews.

Bump,i really want to compete without annoying hackers,that actually suck at gameplay and can't find anything else to work IRL,ruining the fun of a Millions,by lowering the prices of the items/gold,etc, it really sucks.I hope Blizzard will do something about it,cause this will destroy the game.

Do you honestly think if Blizz actually cared about dealing with bots, farmers, spammers, and cheaters that they would be having these issues? No, they would have hired a few folks from the data security industry, a few lawyers to go quash the spammers' websites, and that would be the end of the problem.

The fact that spammers can post with impunity to the message boards, to say nothing of the fact that their websites remain untouched, just shows that Blizz doesn't care about this issue. If anything, they're somewhat dependent on the spammers and farmers as it helps drive up the prices on the all-important RMAH.

Wow, it's impressive just how clueless you are about the subject matter.

We'll start with the one that's most fun to address. Taking down websites. Explain to me, smart guy, how does Blizzard do this? Explain to us all the process of taking down someone else's website. Organizations like the MPAA and the RIAA, with far more money and influence than Blizzard could ever hope to have, can't even take down websites blatantly violating their copyrights on a daily basis, despite having been trying to do exactly this for years on end, but somehow Blizzard will just push the magical shutdown button nobody else knows about?
Now moving on to the botting problem. How do you know they do not have experts working on this? Do you really think it's this black and white? Why are there security vulnerabilities in pretty much all software that exists? Why do viruses still exist? Why are constant security updates needed for pretty much any software that interacts with the Internet in some way? Do none of them hire experts? I guess not, because if they did they'd have 100% solved all security flaws in like 3 seconds, amirite?

The fact is, the best bots will come from private websites, which sell access to their hacks/bots/etc to users. For these private websites, it's not only in their best interest to keep a skilled staff that can create these programs for popular games, but also to keep these programs as undetectable as possible. As such, it's a constant arms race between the developers of the game and the creators of the bots/hacks/etc. It's an unwinnable scenario as long as enough people are willing to pay money for these hacks/bots/etc (and they are), the best you can do is contain it.

!!!

Well said sir. There is still hope for this community after all.

See the thing is people could be playing 24/7 legitimately and have 5k hours by now. I know many people especially with call of duty that keep rotating out people especially on campuses. They don't want to all spend money or are too broke, so they just share accounts to have some fun.

This here is not a final solution against botting :

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/7199960753

But can help a lot !

"You find a certain kind of automation program and get rid of it, another pops up in its place."

So fkng tired of hearing this as an excuse. H****B**** has been active in WoW for over two years. Botters bot with impunity after multiple reports when it would take FIVE ENTIRE MINUTES for someone to watch the bot in action, and ban it accordingly.

Blizzard will also have you believe that there are a seemingly infinite number of accounts out there that are compromised. This is complete bull!@#$, and could easily be solved by making an authenticator mandatory on any compromised account.

Even if they were trying to figure out how to "break the bots", it is %^-*ing ABSURD to think the best way to go about that is allow the botters to continue instead of taking immediate action. How hard would it be for them to go purchase a copy of the bot itself and take a look through the code? The simple fact is there are too many botters in WoW to ban them all (I know of at least 7 people that have been using the program I mentioned in the beginning of my post for 20h+ a day for nearly a year), and D3 is either understaffed or they don't care because they are making a killing off microtransactions.

I have grown up playing Blizzard games, and been a Blizzard fanboy since the beginning of time. This company has taken a severe nose dive, and never again will they get another dollar out of me. They have left nothing but the sour taste of piss in my mouth for the last few years now.

11/21/2012 02:51 PMPosted by zenguppy

, and works so incidiouly against our legitimate players

Insidiously? Anywho, I play all the time and have only seen one bot and I was able to identify him immediately. The point I am making is that you people are blowing this out of proportion. The game is not 90% bots, I doubt it is even 35% bots. Keep a friends list and if you see botters in there report them, voila, botters account is flagged and will be removed as soon as Blizzard verifies the guy is a bot.