The Bot Check thread. (in General)

Thanks to Nixon for his survey thread as this brought out some frustration concerning bot checks that's been building for quite a while, so I've started this thread as an all purpose 'have your say' on them.

In his thread i mentioned that the frequency of the checks has dampened my enthusiasm for the game quite a lot. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for anti-cheat measures, but the number of them is bordering on absurd.

As a test, i recorded the number of checks during crazy xp time just now. During 503 BA I counted 33 checks. That's approximately 1 every 15 fights. Now as i sat down and did this in one go, did i really need to be tested 33 times, which probably lasted 15-20 mins?

I think the rate or probability should be heavily reduced because the high occurrence is really an annoying part of otherwise a great game.

Have your say..

I would have my say, but you've just had it for me. Completely, uniformly, totally agreed, and thanks for coming forward with it.

I agree about there being too high a frequency, but really it's just a minor irritation.

Rather than even having botchecks, can Jonathan just build response time checking by IP address into the battle code?

If someone is fighting too many times too fast, then block their IP address. You can't use more BA then you have anyway, so why is there even a need for botchecking in battles? If a person uses a bot to burn through their BA, then they still have to wait for regen... Are bots really that prevalent here?

I may be missing something here, but I am not seeing a need for botchecking in battles.

Glory,
checking the time interval would be useless, since a bot could be programmed to fight, say, once every 10 seconds.
Moreover, what prevents people from fighting once per second or more is only that they have to wait for the answer from the server: a bot is not faster than a real person.

If, on the other hand, bots were legal, people would not need to login at all, except once in a while to update the fightlist and to spend the money: all the actual fight would be done by the bot.
Now the idea is to reward people that put some effort in the game (by actually fighting).

Glory, want me to send you Badash or Octonar's email address? So you can discuss with them the need for (difficult and frequent) bot checks? ;)

Sounds like we have budding bot devolpers here ;)

Love 'em! They're like fortune cookies, random acts of kindness, Magic 8 balls -- with occasional social commentary.

aging//well ? nice//can !
why//poor ? beer//poor .
guys//sins ? amen//men !
vast//war. oil//war.
fear//cows ? bask//more !
trio//user ? evil//ego ? toad//guys.
know//woo ? gets//any ? lass/uses.
have//mess with//worm

Very nice collection Bast :)

I, too, find that botchecks are more frequently amusing than irritating. Sure, sometimes you get a run with a botcheck every second fight, but then you get an enlightening botcheck that puts everything into perspective. ...just don't ask for an example ;)

Out of curiousity, has there ever been a real problem with people using a bot in the past?

I have no problems with the bot checks. I have played several other games where there was nothing to stop the use of bots and it totally destroyed the game. Soon there was no one really playing the games any more, just bots that fought 24/7. With out the bot checks the same would happen here. You would have fighter bots and camper bots(like there used to be) and no human would have a chance to compete. There have been enough people such as mentioned above that have been able to cheat the system as it is for a short time. If you reduce the number of bot checks it will just make it easier and more likely that the bots will be used.

I generally assume that I will have one bot check per run through my favorites (about 12 normally). This takes about 2 seconds to clear the check and move on with fighting -- which I consider a very good trade off for keeping the cheaters/bots out of CB.

Nixon, there were a couple of high profile botters in CB1. One even towards the start of CB2.

I've no problem with bot checks or their frequency while fighting, but one thing that is starting to anoy me is getting a bot check when my opponent is comatose (or someone fights them seconds before I do...) or I've run out of BA. Do we really need checks for these activities?

Nixon: definitely. More than once or twice, and that's just the ones we knew about and/or were discovered.

The usernames I've mentioned were banned for using a bot in CB1...

Nixon: In the beginning of CB1, there was no bot check to enter the store. When Jon implemented the bot checks at the store, there were a number of people that quit CB. There was nothing offical, but generally believed that most of them were running bots and buying all of the good gear. To counter them Jon used the BA and bot checks.

Something else that occurred to me is that the bot checks might be used to ease off the cpu load a little bit... It is like an expensive IO call..

bot checks = fun!

oh yes they are annoying sometimes, but its just a part of the game...

Jon has never changed botchecks because someone criticized it.

The only thing that makes him change bot checks are people that make bots that beat the checks. If you can build a robot that beats the current bot checks, then Jon will change them, most likely making them more difficult.

Any pattern recognition that a human can do, a machine can do, sometimes better. Thats why a very random sometimes rorschach-esque test is required because it is difficult to make bots that would recognize the patterns in a otherwise random looking blob of pixels.

i dont have a problem with bot checks, jagain, just the number of them, its a pain in the butt to forge 160 BA and get like a bot check every 6 BA

bot checks are only a pain during wacky xp/money time. I've got plenty of bot checks after I'm hitting 4-6 dead people in a row (thanks to the top 20-30 people playing at the same time and hitting the same characters).

I'd prefer a faster recover time for characters during wacky times, the bot checks are fine.

I see no real problem with their frequency, I dont find it too annoying to take a 10 or 20 BA to type in a botcheck :P

should read: "To take a few seconds every 10 or 20 BA"

blah >.>

After a while you get used to the bot checks, they like run in the game for me now. I hardly notice them. Tell a lie, I only notice them when im in a rush, and you get that annoying botcheck after every battle?! I mean... Why Do It jon!?!? It's just not fair, you see that we are in a rush, so you put a botcheck after every fight we do.

Bot Checks overall aren't that irritating, but when I'm forging they can become a problem.

i like botchecks when I'm forging, if i screw up but i get a botcheck while doing it, I can go back and do it right :P.

You should try camping, flipperkill got at LEAST 1,774 of them in a 24 hour period. Good or bad, I let other individuals decide for themselves, me, shoot, I only notice them when I say, man I should have saved that one!

I think it sucks I get so few bot checks when everyone else seems to get heaps. I just went through 160 BA and received only two bot checks. Where's my chance to get cool or funny word combinations for my character pics?

The randomness of bot checks is far too unpredictable for my liking. I demand they be made more regular; perhaps every two or five BA.

You know what would be cool, have the bot check be a random word spoken with a computer speech program like this.

You know how horrible voice recognition technology is these days, you'll NEVER ever be able to decode that with a program... LOL

That would be cool but not all of us have audio systems hooked up to our pc's or use them. I have no trouble with them except the fact that if i need to use 160 ba in 2 minutes the botchecks can slow or stop me...and where are my funny bc's? i want them now!!!


all hail pong

I've pondered it a long time. Bot checks can get pretty annoying, and really frustrating when you just woke up and can't type correctly to save a life. I've been blocked a few times, and I've been through consecutive bot checks while fighting lots of times. One thing is for sure: every time the bot check has messed up my gameplay, it's because I wasn't paying enough attention to play the game effectively.

Bot checks are a revered, recognizable feature of CB2. If they were to be decreased in frequency in any manner, as convenient as that may be, things just wouldn't be the same. One of the reasons I play is the occasional funny bot check. I know that bot checks, were they to be eliminated (ha!), would be a sadly missed part of the game by some.

One aspect of the bot check that I like is that teaches people how to read scripts. :)

I like how I have gotten to where when at slow load times I can read the script when only a quarter to a third of the top line has loaded.

Out of 160 BA I had 165 bot checks.
Man, that's more than 100% =P
Honestly, after camping for a week, bot checks go by unnoticed, they take less than 2 seconds to type and it's a great way to get better at Scrabble. I know practically every 3-4 letter word there is!

has anyone ever seen the same check twice yet?

Yes I have seen the same checks twice.
On CB1 I've even seen the same one twice in a row.
My all time favorite was RAMP/AGE

real/gory
camp/guy
hip/era
free/camp
rare/gear
Just a couple

I've seen a few with the same top word but different bottom words...lol.

But i swear, i get twice as many botchecks after i buy BA compared to normal refreshed BA.