The fine for missing a botcheck sucks. (in General)

I just paid out 185k because my computer froze up. =| It would be different if BA regenerated during the fight suspension.

Lame.

If it regenerated during the suspension, it wouldn't be much of a suspension, now would it?

It would be a delay against those fighting automatically with bots. If you're fighting using a bot and hitting all your BA anyway, why is a monetary fine any sort of dissuasion? You're making more than the average player.

That said, if I were forced to wait an hour because my computer froze up I'd miss even more BA, as it's 12:30 AM and I wouldn't be staying up another hour just to make up for the BA loss.

I think 2 minutes is too short. I need enough time to reboot, dammit.

My frustration is redoubled because my computer just froze on me AGAIN. I bought this thing 2 weeks ago, it should not already be giving me crap.

Is it really necessary for the penalties to be so harsh? A simple 5 minute timeout should suffice. The point of the botcheck would be to weed out bots, and given enough time if the bot fails more botchecks then the player gets busted. The way the system is right now, it is probably too harmful to the player. Whatever security gained by ensuring there is no botting in the game might be overshadowed by the steep penalties in failing botcheck. Especially when some checks are just... silly. Consider this, for example:


Go ahead, I dare you to make sense out of it.
While I'd personally be happier if the botcheck was gone (it's annoying) I know it isn't happening, and I feel that it should be changed in a way such that is inconveniences the average user the least, while still having it as a viable method of bot detection/dissuasion.

awed/mine.

I have no problem with reading them, but I agree that the penalties are overly harsh.

mini*

Damn, I fail again

Its cool, I read it as nuni, doesn't make sense, but i guess that its a good thing that we have to read the top word

Let's put it this way : given the minuscule current CB population, chances are nobody here would be able to make a bot that would accurately manage to get one out of 2 captchas even if the timeout would be 1 full hour.
Just remove the timeout altogether. You get to fight when you get the captcha right, even if it takes you 8 hours before you try to enter it... you get to sit out when you get it wrong twice, and that's all.

Just to clarify : I am not against the captchas themselves.
I am only against auto-failing it if you don't enter it in 2 minutes.
If the bot can't do it in 2 minutes (given the processing power of PCs today), it can't do it, period.
But punishing people for being distracted by something for 2 minutes (like, oh, say, a phonecall or somesuch)... that's junk.

IMO, if a bot can't figure out 3-4 characters in a second or two, it won't ever. Out of curiosity, where did the two minutes come from?

When CB first started, you lost everything when you failed the bot checks. Be grateful that it doesn't anymore ;)

Somehow I find it hard to feel enhappinessed by that tidbit of information :P

I've always thought the two minute rule was there to discourage 'semi' botting.

Where you set your bot burning BA, then tab out, or go do aomething else, and wait for the 'ping' of a botcheck page to load.

Stop what you're doing/cooking/surfing, tab back into CB and anweser it.

To discourage that sort of thing.

If we had an unliimited time, you could just keep the bot going for ever while you go out shppoing, then come back, answer the bot check, and carry on.

Sounds like a personal computer problem, not the problem of the CB admins to fix. Fix your computer, don't complain.

I know it's on my end, but my new laptop keyboard types out double of keys I don't mean to type doubles of, lol.

When I'm on first thing in the morning and nobody else is playing I seem to get all the botchecks. IE about 1 every 4 clicks. It's annoying. I wasn't a bot then... I'm not a bot now, and I still won't be a bot in 4 clicks time.

It gets tedious.

I have failed bot check a few times..mostly from two mistypes in a row.

A couple times I fought the last person on my list then went to another tab quickly that I had going just to comeback 5 minutes later to a unfulfilled bot check. This happens rarely and sure sucks but it's not a weekly or even monthly occurrence so I chalk it up to stupid tax and miss the BA or pay the fine.

I personally think it's not a big deal and should stay the same. I actually collect the funny ones.

Sorry to dbl post and I thought this may have been suggested before.

But each year a player is active would reduce the % of a bot check showing up.

I'm not going to write a tutorial or Howto on how to build a bot, but I will just say that a two minute timer is important given the way that botchecks are circumvented using today's technology.

I've failed a bunch of botchecks from clicking fight on my last target then leaving... I was suspended twice within 3 hours this way.

So don't do that :P

I have failed Bot Checks in every way possible - Walking away, looking at another tab, phone, work, computer hang/crash, power outage, dropped connection etc. It is just part of the game and if it keeps this game more Bot Free; I am all for it.

while i do think it would be cool to have a system that rewards you for successful bot checks, such as for every 100 you do right you get one free pass for a wrong one, i feel that there are many more issues that i would rather see our limited dev time spent on.

I was just thinking yesterday how important the strong anti-botting on CB is...

Out of curiosity. When you have children of a younger age, when one of them has an 'accident' and is horribly embarrassed, do you console them with "When you were a baby, you used to poop all over yourself all the time. Be grateful you don't do that anymore?"

Just not a big fan of the "I know this punishment is harsh, but be grateful for it, we used to just hand out the death penalty" argument.


The personal computer problem is indeed what triggered my annoyance with the botcheck system. Excellent observation. However, my issue is still that fining the players doesn't seem like it would dissuade a bot...and is annoying when you miss the timer. 2 minutes is really short when you're having computer issues.

It's a brand new computer, didn't expect it to need fixing so quickly. I'll complain if I like, though, in these public forums. I look forward to any topics you create in the future bringing forth any sort of complaint; I will delight in telling you not to whine.


I agree, but it could certainly be improved.

If a machine takes more than two minutes to reboot it might be time to uninstall Norton or McAfee

I agree that the limit is too short to fix a computer problem, and I think we've all had times when a computer hangs or goes to 100% resources during a bot check.

But the counter-argument is that a bot can be set to chime rather than attempt to fill in a check. The longer the window, the greater chance a cheater has to get over to the computer when he hears the alert.

novice: Computer froze up and was making a weird buzzing noise. I couldn't even get it to shut down for a short period.

And, Novice, pretty much any computer will take more than two minutes to reboot when it's hung-up to begin with.

While I agree with all the arguments regarding the need for how the system currently is, it doesn't take out the fact that it doesn't fully discourage botting and aggregated there is more grief to users than there is to botters.

I like to think of this in similar terms as DRM on games, which is meant to discourage piracy, but by and large it will P.O. the average consumer more than anything.

How exactly is it ineffective?
Are you claiming you know of someone who has been successfully botting on CB?

Not personally, but I can think of one way in which botting could be done in the game, which would be botting everything and leaving the botchecks to the user. You'd still have to be on your computer to bot, but that doesn't really not make it botting. I've mentioned this in chat, and was told of a guy who did this a while ago and was eventually caught.

If the bot-verifying process extends beyond botchecks in the first place, then maybe bot checks could be less of a pain when failed just to spare the honest users. I guess the 2 min timer is fine, but the 1 hour timeout with no BA regen is a little harsh.

The point of the hour timeout is to make the punishment almost equate the crime. The cost is the same as if you'd bought that amount of BA, I'd say it's pretty fair.

Even during an NCB when BA costs are so high? I mean, it's not a huge deal, it's not like I'm trying to run an NCB on an already incredibly tight budget and can't spare the cash...but why would fining someone for failing a botcheck dissuade someone who is botting? Nobody has explained this to me yet.

Why not simply switch it so that you do not accrue BA until the bot-check is answered correctly (two wrong = time out still)?

This would still give a hit/miss record and allow for fight 'suspensions' but wouldn't impact people in OB's situation.

because it would give a bot enough time to properly answer... the time limit is what it is to drastically reduce the chances of it being successful

bah... I suspected that was the case.

Pssh, you barely break the top 100 in failed botchecks, you're fine. :p

Dish the Dirt!!!!

2 minutes is very important. Even with the current settings, I could set a bot up to burn BA, and if a botcheck comes up, email me, I go finish the bot check, then it goes back to work. 2 minutes would be plenty of time for this, as long as my phone's email is working nicely. If you raised it to 5 minutes, it would be very very easy.

Key issue remains unaddressed

Yup, you're right, let's remove the fine and make people set out the hour.

the more i think of the idea to let people accrue free passes, the more i like it. above though i stated that they would get one after 100 correct bot checks but i meant after 100 in a row.

you could show people's record as well as the number of free passes accrued on the bot check page. this way people might not dread seeing the damned things so much! ; )

I think the last bot that actually tried answering them was at about 80% success rates, any "free passes" and that number gets ever closer to 100%

I think a much better bot check solution is:

Reduce the time to 1 minute.

All you lose is that battle, so basically you fight nobody and lose 1 BA.

On your next fight you get another bot check.

So if you fail twice, you just lose one BA and you have to do another one.

If you don't think a bot can check it in 2 min then there is no way he'll get it in one, and since he'll get bot checked for his entire BA bar, this effectively kills all bots and makes the penalty to humans who can't figure it out or step away accidentally almost nothing.

the bot would never get a free pass as at 80% success rate it wouldn't be able to get 100 successful bot checks in a row.

now someone might be able to fight for a year, save up all of their passes and then bot for a week or so, but i think going from 100 percent success rate to 80 is what has gotten people caught in the past which effectively changes nothing except that the bad guy had to play for a year before he could try to bot. ; )

I'm not sure if this was per check, or included both. I feel this is for just trying to get one of them. If that is the case, there is only a 4% change that the bot would fail.

that would likely be doing better than most of us players do so it is unlikely that the current system would catch it anyways.

If success rates are a concern, how about making a switch to reCaptcha or something of the likes? Ideally, the bot checks would be spaced out further apart since filling out a re-captcha takes longer since it's 2 words as opposed to a single 3-4 letter word. There would be a need for a couple more free passes since sometimes reCaptcha messes up and puts out incoherent words, but it would be a step up in security.

I think it should stay the same. However long term user should get some sort of break.

In reference to a reCaptcha mess-up, see:
http://i.imgur.com/qfdZn.png

You can read about why that happens here:
http://www.google.com/recaptcha/learnmore

For those interested, the current cracking success rate of reCaptcha is 30%. These are professionals, mind you. If we get a players who manages to break reCaptcha completely, it would imply developing/improving some serious amounts of OCR technology, and they might as well be off curing cancer or something.

Given how turing tests are cracked, using a more popular one as you suggest would be a step backwards.

And, Rod, you really don't get how these things are cracked.

54 comments for a "botcheck" thread... Yep CB really does need some new stuff to talk about.. wow..

Lol at Kef.

OB, you got fined because your computer froze. That kind of makes it your fault old mate.

Meanwhile, even when I was using a complete piece of junk computer I never was that bothered by botchecks. I think they're fine exactly as they are.

Missed a botcheck on my phone on the train home form work. Thought Orange's service was playing up. Closed the internet down.

Got home to find a 150K suspension fine.

Paid it.

Carried on fighitng. ;)

Aye, I understand that JW.

I just don't see how fining players dissuades bots. I think it is unnecessary, I feel that the current system is a bit outdated, and I _REALLY_ like Wraithlin's idea.

Maybe if we upped the fine to 88 million CBD it would be more of a deterant? :P

I also like Wrathlin's idea.

i too like wraithlin's idea. it has the added benefit of marking clearly who is botting as well or drunk! ; )

Blast. I withdraw my support.

*grin*

Crouching Botter, Hidden Drunkard >.>

So from all of this I gather that people actually tried botting in CB _and_ had moderate amounts of success ?
...
Well, what do you know.
Pigs can fly.

Yup.

http://www.carnageblender.com/wiki/Bot

Get a helmet.

I'm not buying the helmet unless you buy me the bicycle.

But it also sounds like those are cases from ages ago (7 years for the respond-o-bot and 3 years for the click-and-warn bot), back when there were noticeably more users, and they still got (eventually) caught.

You know, a long enough time ago, back when CB$-to-US$ exchange ratios were actually noticeable (10$ per mil, now it's more like 2$ per mil), and transactions were quite frequent (now we literally had TWO such transactions in an entire month, one paying 7 USD, the other paying for a supportership).

So in other words, back when selling CB$ was not unusual enough to warrant any serious extra attention, back when there was more than the hint of an incentive to bother, back when bots would have enough people to hide between, back when BA refresh rates were x/10 instead of x/20, and last but not least, back before we got the "keep finger on ENTER key to burn BA and only enter botcheck, if any" feature.


Basically, what I am saying... I doubt anybody would actually bother botting nowadays. Or if they would bother, they wouldn't really get all that much of an advantage over a regular player (at least nowhere near as much as they used to "in the good old days"). And last but not least, they'd be far, far, FAR more noticeable.

Our 'bot checks' do more than just check for bots. After all, they happen more frequently the faster you click fight. It has nothing to do with the patterning of clicks, because a bot could surely utilize BA in a slow but patterned fashion. It discourages too many people from clicking fight and potentially clogging the server or what-not.

Basically what I'm getting at, the current bot-check is largely flawed and unnecessary (not to mention thoroughly illegible--took me months to relatively understand it). It's certainly not random, and if someone tried hard enough, and knew how to create one (I certainly do not), they could develop a bot to slowly burn BA. It serves more of a purpose in warding off too many fights per second than anything else.

Just thought I'd put my 2 cents out there...

You know what sucks the most ?
The fact that you can STILL get botchecks... WHEN OUT OF BA AND TRYING TO VIEW THE OUT-OF-BA PAGE.
I just thought it was hilariously wrong.

Solare - Everytime someone complains that their botcheck frequency is off, bartjan goes and pulls the data to see what their frequency is. You know what? With the placebo removed and pure empirical data applied, the user is always wrong.

When I got access to the code, I eventually found myself looking for this particular chunk. What I found is that it was no more complicated than anyone expected -- a simple random number generator with a percentage of occurrence. There's no code whatsoever to be adaptable to fighting style.

Now, if you want to debate the randomness of the pseudo-RNG that CB uses, that's fine :)

Hits against coma targets also count for bot checks, thats usually why it seems like there are more of them when you fight fast.

I get more bot checks than item drops.

Could the drop system use the same RNG? :P

Is there any way bot checks could get spaced out a bit more, and maybe reduce the penalty for failing them? Fromm the looks of the thread, I infer nothing will change and the bot check system will operate as usual, but it can't hurt to ask.

I still just want to know how fining money when a bot fails a botcheck is supposed to deter them. NUB, for example, don't pay for their BA - so it doesn't even stop them from buying more.

I really just want that fine reduced or something. I'm at the very start of my NCB and got fined that amount, I imagine if this happens to me when I'm larger at the end I'll end up paying several hundred k or closer to the million mark to get back to fighting, and that is ridiculous.