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Identifying the problem...
Many people have tactfully voiced valid concerns and even proposed possible solutions to these problems. They have been met with condescension and ridicule, both by members of the Evony community, and by the moderators themselves. We should all be looking objectively at these issues, examining the FACTS, and trying to find a solution.
FACT: Botting, multi-accounting, and account sharing are all against the ToS.
FACT: Many people break these rules routinely due to the lack of enforcement.
FACT: The captchas are an inconvenience.
ISSUE: Captchas affect the non-cheating player negatively while botters will continue to find workarounds. According to Thantium, 'it will only appear about 1 time every 2 hours unless you fail it repeatedly. If you fail repeatedly it will shorten the duration between the captchas. ' So EVEN if you get all of them right, you have to deal with it every 2 hours! It's only a matter of time before it ends up interfering with an incoming attack. Just close out of it you say? Sure go ahead, now instead of every 2 hours, it shows up more frequently, increasing the chance of it interfering yet again with a future incoming attack, and compounding the situation.
SOLUTION: The most logical solution would be to enforce your ToS. Use your "normal anti-botting programs" that Thantium talks about (page 10) and start banning people. The number one reason people bot is because you allow them to. That said, I can understand your reluctance to roll out the ban hammer, as that would reduce your income. If Evony released an approved bot, even if it had less features, it would also be a big help in fixing this, but without the lost customer base. Start rolling out 3 days suspensions for people that are reported and caught botting, and people will move to the approved bot gradually with very few lost customers. With or without captchas, the only way you will ever stop botting is by enforcing your ToS. Don't inconvenience your legitimate players needlessly. You have already stated that you have other ways to catch botters, not to mention the ones that are given to you on a silver platter by people that report them.
ISSUE: Multi-accounting provides an unfair advantage over legitimate players, not to mention the devastating effect that flat filler bots have had on the game. Players that multi-account AND bot are REALLY extending that unfair advantage to the fullest. We have people that set feeder accounts up, probably the most common, and people that run separate, full accounts to attack people together from, and some that have 4-5 separate accounts with feeders for each one!
SOLUTION: Again, the most logical solution is to enforce your ToS and ban the offenders. I would suggest perma-banning their 'alt accounts' and maybe removing half of their troops/res in their main account. This would reduce the likelihood that they will quit, while at the same time, discouraging them from making more alt accounts. It seems like you could do a sweep and find out pretty easily who is multi-accounting, but if not, certainly you can investigate individual accounts which have been accused, and be able to tell whether they are multi-accounting or not. Like the other problems, this will not stop unless people are held accountable.
ISSUE: Account sharing is one of the first (widespread) means of cheating. It seems to be a minor issue now with the number of bots and multi-accounters, but you need to realize this is still an unfair advantage, and against ToS, and should be addressed.
SOLUTION: Once more, enforcing your ToS would solve this issue. I realize there are probably workarounds for your detection methods for this, and you wouldn't be able to stop this entirely if the people were careful enough, but you could certainly stop the majority of this relatively easily with a 3day suspension on any accounts logging in from the same IP address.
ISSUE: Flat filler bots are enabling people to port to specific locations at will using random teleporters, and prohibiting people from building npc's. This is compounded by the fact that Evony pulls npc's every so often. Due to both of these issues, many players are reluctant to use (waste) ports to port out low level npc's in their fields to create lv10 fields or whatever, and they are also reluctant to purchase an adv port because it costs 3X as much and has a 24hr cooldown as compared to the random port which works just like an adv with a flat filler bot only w/o the cooldown.
SOLUTION: The first thing I recommend doing is to have a system so that ONLY npc's that have not been attacked for 7 consecutive days should be removed. In addition there should be a way to flag certain unwanted npc's to be removed, assuming your city is closer to that npc than anyone else. This would eliminate one of the reasons for filler accounts. The other reason for them is to be able to use random ports to port to a specific flat. To fully solve this problem, you need to find a way to stop the bot itself, and, if possible, perma-ban their main account, if you can trace it back to a specific IP address.
If Evony was really looking to continue age I, as you claim, you would start enforcing your ToS, and start suspending people for botting, multi-accounting, and account sharing, not wasting your time and ours with these captchas, which are basically a bandaid on a gunshot wound.
Last edited by Kubrius; 08-06-2011 at 12:20 PM.
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