[EN] Patch Notes - 2024-05-27 - Captcha Patch!

Clear cache is useful for things other than just PvP buddy. Don't worry, we'll make PvP more fun after 2.0.

I will look into a cooldown but frankly, HTB use at plat is not a high priority. HTB is a problem everywhere, not just at plat.

Quote from MonasticBoy

i cant login help

Hey buddy, I responded to your other thread. You need to use the game credentials, not forum credentials, and/or open with DBOGLauncher. If that doesn't work, turn off any browser translators you have and reset your password.

Quote from NeuroTypical

I'm a new player and I came here to the forums to check out what the deal is there are better ways of tackling bots than giving each user a captcha every whatever you say it is, I would've said 15 mins also.

Making this into an achievement is so weird too, it's a security system not a gameplay feature, you're rewarding people for completing captchas and somehow if they've completed 9000 of them they're still not considered a human player, you actually have to be trolling and this is a late april fools joke

I know you would have said 15 minutes as well, because you're not interested in making the game better. You're interested in complaining. There's nothing wrong with giving people some rewards for using a minimally invasive system that helps slow down botting. What makes you think this is the only thing we do to tackle bots? If stopping bots in an open source game with long decrypted files and packets is so easy, feel free to drop your ideas here. If they're any good I'll use them to make the game better.

Quote from NeuroTypical

Are you subject to this system when you play the game, do you play the game?

Yes, I play and test the game frequently.

Quote from NeuroTypical

This feature is NOT minimally invasive, its frequent enough for me to not want to play this game anymore

Dragging some balls around once an hour to get a buff and title progress is minimally invasive.

Quote from NeuroTypical

if you talk to any other new player like this you're not fit to be a moderator.

New players are not any more immune to their ideas being criticized than I am. When you play the drama queen and engage in hyperbole (every 15 minutes) expect to be corrected.

Quote from NeuroTypical

I don't complain, this is me being frustrated over it because I do like the game and I want to make it to supersaiyan and whatever the end content is. Poll your players to ask whether this is minimally invasive if you care.

I understand that you are frustrated. You would be more frustrated if we allowed botting freely.

Quote from NeuroTypical

It's not easy giving constructive feedback when I'm supposed to be a player,

I've been a player and dev for many years. Giving constructive feedback is not hard. It starts with being truthful about what you're experiencing in game. You are not being assailed with constant bot checks. It's just something that pops up as infrequently as I can make it pop up and still discourage botting.

Quote from NeuroTypical

1. My first idea is to actually ban the accounts, you currently let them reconnect every 15 mins, its annoying for a human to re-enter their credentials, you're not punishing any bots with it

What makes you think we don't? What's with this 15 minute number?

Quote from NeuroTypical

2. I don't remember having to verify my email address

This doesn't stop botters and adds a layer of inconvenience for players.

Quote from NeuroTypical

3. Runescape used to have these random events that take you to a different area and have you do a quest for a unique item, that was something that was actually rewarding and well received, it also happened like only once per day if you're lucky. It was an actual gameplay addition. What runescape does now is have better moderation and easy reporting of bots, it also checks whether you perform actions that are indicative of a bot.

Runescape makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year. We are less than 30 volunteers working for free. Also, if you find filling out a captcha once an hour invasive, you will find being whisked away to a random area and being forced to do a quest unbearable.

Quote from NeuroTypical

4. You probably have the server already log certain events in the game, you would notice when someone is spamming a certain action or is leveling a little too perfect without breaks, those actions need to be flagged and then you can either ban them or give them login restrictions.

What constitutes "leveling a little too perfect without breaks"? Powerleveling is often faster than bot leveling. What about level ups? How would you distinguish between a player using one and a bot using one? These are the exact kinds of things you should think about before being too quick to criticize.

Quote from NeuroTypical

5. I've still seen plenty of sellers in chat, you don't need human moderation to restrict chat spam or advertising of links, if someone does any of that time them out for a good long time so those sellers don't consider it worthwhile anymore, if they get consistently flagged ban. It's not an account that anyone plays on so you're not losing a player.

URL blocking is on my to do list.

Quote from NeuroTypical

6. Change something up that isn't too hard for a human to get around, like move a tree in the way of a path you know bots take, lower the amount of rewards from grinding a single mob or a single dungeon over and over again, a bot isn't flexible by nature, you could even just move a few pixels on a dialogue screen somewhere and it would stop some of the bots, again once they stop and just stand there for hours, ban them. The best counter against bots is fear of losing your account, so if you catch the same ip address or same email you should suspend them too.

I don't think you fully appreciate the situation and inertia of changing things in this game, or how easy it is to use a new IP address or email.

Quote from NeuroTypical

Maybe you're not able to do this kind of stuff and that would be fair, but defending captcha calling it "minimally intrusive" after all major tech companies have transitioned away from it is so so weird, like I literally can't believe you're serious with that.

I call it minimally intrusive because it is minimally intrusive. Argumentum ad populum is not the best way to convince me to change what I'm doing. Context matters. All major tech companies have nearly limitless advantages over our workflow and almost none of the problems we are up against. Most of our codebase is completely open source and constantly being looked over by malicious actors for bugs and vulnerabilities. Additionally, we do not have the ability to significantly patch the client you are using. The packet structure and file structure of the game has been cracked for longer than we've been working on this game. It is a botter's dream and a developer's nightmare.

Part of the reason we choose to stick to the bot checks, even though they are annoying, is because this specific bot check already had all of the client side code working (by virtue of being the last official client for the game), and because it is not implemented in the open source version of the code. This means that it will be more annoying for the botters to find a way around, because they don't have the source code. It also encourages them to leave for other servers because the other servers are less likely to implement this without doing some annoying work. It is much more attractive to just move to another server that does not have this level of protection, than it is to try to get around it here.

You could have obtained any of this insight by just talking to me like a human being and asking. What you are doing is neither criticism, nor constructive, and when you try to pass it off as such, expect to get pushed back on that. I understand the infrequent bot checks can be annoying. They are not annoying enough to justify the alternative, especially until we have more control over client security.

Quote from NeuroTypical

I know for sure you don't now because you would've told me you did.

You'll notice how minimally invasive it is based on your usercount, with that list I've tried to connect several real world examples, runescape is a bigger game which means they have bigger problems and you should learn from their approach, you would be honest if you just said you couldn't make the commitment and leave it at that, your situation is not unique, email verification is a one time annoyance we're all used to and if you truly want to stand by this shitty opinion then I wish you good luck and have fun with your 9001 captchas

I'm not obligated to tell you or anyone else exactly how the captcha works or what we do with the information we gather from who fails and who passes them. Part of the point of it is to be as nebulous as possible as to how it works and what we do with the pass/fail logs such that botters can't get around us via policy. The bot checks have not significantly impacted our player numbers. Like I said in the beginning, you aren't here to improve the game, you're just here to complain. You can confidently, incorrectly misrepresent and complain about most games on the internet. This is one of the only ones you'll be expected to tell the truth about if you choose to voice that complaint publicly. As I also said earlier though, I'll use any actionable feedback you gave, which wasn't much. If you want people to be more receptive to your complaints, make sure they're accurate and avoid insulting people who work for free, for your benefit, and try not to characterize the people with more experience who know better as having shitty opinions. You haven't got the foggiest clue what it takes to run something like this and the compromises that have to be made. Briefly playing a game doesn't make you an expert on it. Think about that next time you want to Monday morning quarterback.

Quote from NeuroTypical

That's what I said. I'm going to have to because I can't stand the "minimal intrusivity" of this "anti" bot system.
I'm nice only to people who deserve it. We can't all be asskissers like you

Acting like a reasonable person doesn't make him an asskisser, any more than you making mountains out of mole hills makes your complaints useful. If you can't improve your behavior, I'm with Korinny. Have a timeout to cool off, and if you can't, feel free to play another game elsewhere.

Quote from iKai

Hi if you get the bot tittles it makes you appears the bot captcha less or is the same?

It's the same, there's no bonus from getting the titles currently.

Quote from PrincessK

If we fail does that open us up to being suspected as a bot account?

No, failing just one every now and then is harmless.