This is getting stupid. (in General)

I failed a bot check while I was suspended for multiple fights that I didn't even get a warning for.

This is bloody ridiculous. It's been happening more and more since the server had those slowdown issues not too long ago. How I failed a bot check I never even saw because I was banned from fighting is beyond me. It's just sloppy coding, that's all.

Somebody needs to remove the 10 minute multiple fight penalty, or at least make sure the system gives two or three CONSECUTIVE warnings - meaning not after you've been fighting for several minutes warning free - before pulling a penalty out of thin air.

It's not Jon or NS's fault for your crap internet.

Mitt, try reading before you act like a fool.

Mitt, it has absolutely nothing to do with "his *** internet", it has everything to do with the SERVER failing to transmit the data at all (or at least properly) in the first place.
And it's been happening to many people with otherwise flawless internet connections.
Personally, whenever the system "locks up", I usually reload the entire game and wait a couple of seconds before fighting again, or else I would get the same problems occasionally.

Fight slower and when you get to the 10 minute suspension stop fighting entirely.

I have yet to get this occurrence due to my slower fighting style.

And I have blazing fast internet at work and home.

While fighting slower is an option, I have to agree the random penalties without warnings is a bit ridiculous. I have come across this a few times myself. It is especially aggravating during xp or money times.

LB,

How do you fight?

Do you hold down the enter key and let the computer just fight repeatedly?

I wait till the fight I am doing goes through before attempting the next one. And have not had a fight suspension from problems on my end.

In the past, yes, I have gotten suspensions, but they were due to server lag issues.

Ranger, this is less about the fact that you get penalized for multiple fights and more about that penalties seem to come out of nowhere, usually after wide gaps between warnings.

I get a warning not to fight multiple battles.
Wait..
Then fight without issue for several minutes.
Then after another random click, BAM! penalty.

..and of course, that last fight just happened to have a bot check attached to it. But I never saw it to begin with, since it gave me a penalty page instead of a bot check screen.

This has nothing to do with fighting speed. If the server locks up as it has been lately, you pretty much have to click fight again before the two minute mark to make sure it didn't freeze on a bot check.. which in my experience is usually the case. You can't wait any longer or fight any slower than two minute intervals, or risk a much heftier penalty.

And while we're at it, can BA respawn during bot check fail time? The 60 minute penalty is bad enough (and nobody had better give me that "just pay the fine" crap). But losing three BA spawns is something I've never understood.

The problem is not with the "fight consecutively" thing, it's with the botcheck WHILE in such a state.
You can't see if you should have a botcheck without attempting to fight, you can't fight if you have a suspension, and you have to do the botcheck in a shorter timespan than the suspension.
All in all, a botcheck that appears in one of the pages that doesn't load that resulted in the multiple-fights-too-fast suspension is a botcheck you can't see and will always lead to a longer suspension.

"The problem is not with the "fight consecutively" thing, it's with the botcheck WHILE in such a state."

That would be part B of the problem, yes.

Third gripe: Why a 10 minute penalty for multiple fights, and why 60 for bot checks? Is there a reason these are so high? Can somebody tell me why we shouldn't have five minutes for the multi-fight, and as low as 10 minutes, with BA regen, for bot checks?

I have actually gotten fights when I certainly did not click fight back to back. Also, while in the suspension I do got a bot check that never showed up. NS said that it didn't even showed up in my failed bot checks on the log.

Ranger, I let the fights show up until I press enter again but I've still gotten many of the 10 minute suspensions.

I've seen many more of these 10 minute suspensions lately.

Last bot check noted which you failed is this one which was your first:

July 5 5:40 AM EDT bias bigs



I don't know if it is sloppy coding or not but if you regularly get suspended for multiple fights, perhaps try to fight a bit more slowly for a while and don't try to attempt multiple actions when CB seems to not respond.

That's about all the advice I myself can give you...

Shade, that was most certainly not the first botcheck I failed due to this. If by "your first" you mean my first out of two attempts, well, yes, that would very much back up what I've been saying all along here.

On the issue of fighting slower, well, I've already responded to that.

Lord Bob: I did mean that that bot check was your first attempt at entering it, not the first one you failed because of the issue.

There are no recordings of the issue in the failed bot check list.

"There are no recordings of the issue in the failed bot check list."

By "the issue" are you referring to the 10 minute, multi-fight penalty that prevented me from even seeing the bot check? I'm not sure what you mean here.

Yes, of course the one I failed was the first of two. That much was obvious. I failed it because I never saw it due to the 10 minute penalty that I did NOT get from clicking too fast, as explained throughout the thread.

By no records of it, I indeed mean the bot check you failed while being banned from fighting for 10 minutes.


I am even really unsure how you can even get a bot check from being timed out for 10 minutes... it shouldn't process to a bot check.

"By no records of it, I indeed mean the bot check you failed while being banned from fighting for 10 minutes."

You know what? I didn't look at the date on the one you posted. Today is the 9th, not the 5th. *hangs head in shame*

Regardless, it happened today, record or no record.

"I am even really unsure how you can even get a bot check from being timed out for 10 minutes... it shouldn't process to a bot check."

Exactly.

But nonetheless, what I got was first a message saying I was suspended for 10 minutes with that awful "Didn't I tell you it's not nice" junk, then after the ten minutes when I went to fight again I saw the usual bot check failure message asking me to pay $50,000 or wait the 60 minutes.

Record or not, it happened.

As some pointed out previously, you can actually fight during the 10 min suspension, so it's the 10 minute suspension itself that needs fixing.

"it's the 10 minute suspension itself that needs fixing."

Exactly, as noted in my first post.

I haven't tried fighting while suspended because I didn't want to risk a bigger penalty, if one exists.

I didn't fight while under suspension, and just came back 10 minutes later to find out I failed a botcheck that I didn't get and am suspended for 60 minutes for it.

This needs to get fixed. I do have wireless internet which isn't the greatest, so the multiple fight suspension had happened before, but to come back and having not fought during the suspension to find out I failed a botcheck I didn't receive is just irritating.

I just got the ten minute ban (hoping its not on a bot check)

I did not receive a warning notice lately (about ten minutes ago I did)

I don't care much but if it helps..meh..

I've been getting these suspensions out of the blue again as of late but wasn't going to bother with posting anything.

It fell on deaf ears last time it was brought up.

Just a quick reason on why bot check fails can't just be ten-minute penalties WITH BA still accruing -- because that would defeat the purpose of bot checks.

If someone makes a bot reader that works 70 percent of the time, then I could set up my machine to roll, and even if there was a failure, I could stick with it and never hit 160. Heck, a bot check hitting 40-50% could probably easily keep up. I believe someone had one that worked 30-40% back on CB1.

Failing a bot check has to hurt, at least in regards to losing some BA regeneration, otherwise there is no reason to have them at all.

As for the ten minute suspension junk, yeah, I have no idea what is going on there, and it is extremely frustrating. The fact that a bot check can sneak in there adds extreme insult to the injury, so I definitely support a review of that programming to see if that can be tightened up...

This may not affect the point of the thread, but if the most successful bot was only 30-40% accurate, wouldn't that make it obvious someone was botting? Even if the cheater is only running the bot at night, there should be an obvious trend of failures to any admin who checks the logs.

^i guess that depends on the average success rate of a non-botting humanoid carnage blenderer.

it did take months for him to be caught, i think it may have even been over a year. iirc that is, and there was suspicion for much of that time i seem to remember.

it would appear i never need to trust my memory, from the wiki:

"The exact format of bot checks has evolved over several generations, as various bot authors have highlighted weaknesses. The most recent change occurred after December 11, 2003, when users paul4, tomstdenis, and mattm were banned for using bots, often getting the first letter correct or guessing random words. User BadAsh, also a Quarter Blender at the time, confessed to using a bot. Over about five weeks of using his bot, BadAsh was able to answer 1297 successful Bot Checks and failed 313 Bot Checks, bringing his accuracy to answering 80.5% of the bot checks correctly in two tries."

There will always be cheaters and ways to find cheaters.

Long live honor!

This thread is a great example of how *NOT* to report bugs.

If the bug was fixed the last few times it was brought up it would not have been reported this way.

Have you gone to the Ranger school of temper tantrums?

I appreciate all your good work here NS but please can we have Jon do the put downs, he's the best ;)

Hm, NS, maybe you need to go to the Jonathan Ellis Institute of Laconic Posting... LB is just venting. It's already hard enough to keep up in the pack with NUBs rushing by, clan-play being absolutely required, and random drops making predictable money-management that much harder. There can be nothing more frustrating and debilitating than loss of BA.

I think Lord Bob is entirely entitled to vocally "re-submit" this bug, since I don't know of any other formal bug-reporting mechanism in the game.

"Have you gone to the Ranger school of temper tantrums?"

I taught him everything he knows.

Now can we get a fix on this?

"This thread is a great example of how *NOT* to report bugs. "

No offense but...

This has been reported numerous times in the past.

This greatly effects gameplay.

This has not been fixed, and no record of any attempt to fix it is see by us common folks trolling the forums.

How do you want us to report these bugs?

We report them and they get ignored and nothing gets done.

Just like the exbow and tutorial. And other bugs.

I realize that you and Jon are very busy with RL issues, but sometimes we do not even get an acknowledgement that someone is aware of the problem and are working on it.

Sometimes it takes a few harsh words to get some action.

I personally, contrary to what people believe, really hate having to resort to these "temper tantrums" to get things that CB needs done.

If not, we would have tons of bugs still ongoing.

If you and/or Jon can make a better system of bug reporting, including a way to better communicate with the populace that these issue are noted and attempts are being made to fix them, we would use that instead of the current "bitch and moan" method.

Just got another warning after clicking fight one time. I feel another 10 minute suspension coming on in a few minutes...

I just got two warnings. One, after I had got done texting my gf and the page had been done loading for about 5 minutes. Second time was when I had been done fighting and was watching t.v. the page had finished loading a long time before I hit fight again. Yet, I still got a warning. This is definitely a problem. I don't even understand how I can get a warning for fighting twice when I click fight once, let it load, then click fight again. It's almost like the server is trying to send the information twice sometimes.

I think this is my first 10 minute suspension. I clicked Fight and got an error page instead of fight results (ie, the page you were looking for doesn't exist). When I clicked Fight again, 10-minute suspension.

"Sometimes it takes a few harsh words to get some action."

Disagree completely.

"Didn't I say it's not polite to fight more than one battle at a time? You'll have to wait about 10 minutes now for fight to be reenabled.

(Multiple suspensions will result in longer penalties.)"

This is after clicking fight on Galaxy one time. The first fight in two minutes.

The fight went through, but I got a suspension anyway. Galaxy was the only fight I clicked at 4:03 server time.