r/ypp • u/Execute-Madness • 13d ago
How many Bots?
I was curious to get everyone’s opinion on this subject.
Between the 250-350 players or so, how many do you estimate are bots puzzling for Poe?
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u/Ambitious_Gazelle_36 13d ago
For such a small game, why can’t they control the bots? I still suck 20yrs later but not to be able to get an incred because they all bots sucks
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u/moonlit_wake 11d ago
Cleaver actually addressed this question elsewhere on Reddit. It's a pretty big lift to setup proper detection systems. Even the biggest AAA studios struggle. Hell League had to go full Kernel level anti-cheat. And GH/Cleaver were very direct in their intentions to not go to that level.
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u/Ambitious_Gazelle_36 11d ago
Thanks for actually providing a proper comment like old botter rampant defending. I didn’t realise it would be so costly when more then half are bots, volunteered senior players I am sure would help
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u/moonlit_wake 10d ago
True. And it's my understanding they have had open discussions with some groups of players about ways to detect or address the botting problem but I think if you let players add changes then you need new levels of validation on those changes.
Would we rather they spend time developing changes or validating every random change a player might submit to make sure it's not going to create new problems? And what stops the botters themselves from trying to submit changes that benefit themselves? It's all a double edged sword.
Side Note: Recent client data farming for the development client shows new checks for type of Internet connection. Seems there may be something coming to detect if a player is connected from VPN, data center, etc and potentially flag/prevent mass botting. So they are actively trying to address the issues. It's just taking longer than we all think it should. Despite what some people project onto the community I've talked with both 4B and Cleaver. They both have confirmed there's no favoritism or agreements in place between GH and any botters/bot developers. It's just a never ending battle between the two between detection systems and new ways to circumvent those checks.
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u/OkAbalone19 12d ago
the big flags are the whales, the whales need bots for that aspect of the game to function, if they ban the botters they lose the whales
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u/Ambitious_Gazelle_36 12d ago
So they would rather have a few large payers $$ to keep the income flowing then grow the game to have an actually of community of players again. Chicken before the egg I guess
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u/OkAbalone19 12d ago
yep, the opposite to RuneScape, guess which game is thriving
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u/ChestAdventurous7041 12d ago
RuneScape has a massive budget. Until the last few months the game was riddled with bots. Its only in the last month or two that they have actually got hold of the issue. It took a huge amount of investment and time to get to that point. Their entire bot detection system is AI driven now and took them over 6 months to set up with a large dev team. YPP currently has two devs and they are not full time developers. It's a very different type of game as well. Even in mod norths podcast he admitted that even now most botting, they still can't detect until the person attempts to move the money off the account.
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u/OkAbalone19 12d ago
Fair points but that is still tackling it, and not secretely encouraging it to line your own pockets
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u/ChestAdventurous7041 12d ago
Who's pockets is it lining exactly?
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u/OkAbalone19 11d ago
the mods that don't ban them because of the income lol
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u/ChestAdventurous7041 11d ago
What income lol. Who is paying for this income and where is it going to? Are you saying the OM's get paid not to ban botters?
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u/Ambitious_Gazelle_36 11d ago
What income? It costs doubloons to do stuff, the whales drop heaps of money, run your shitty bots. Owners make their money and happy to keep their nest egg/golden goose.
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u/moonlit_wake 11d ago
Just to be clear there are technically at least 3 devs working on PP. Potentially more. But yeah I don't know how many of them are full time vs part time. Source: I've just occasionally tracked the official OOO github repos being updated. Can confirm there's three separate devs making updates.
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u/ChestAdventurous7041 11d ago
Who are the three developers? You have Fourbites and Forculus. Apart from occasional help from the original developers I'm not aware of anyone else actively developing outside of these two.
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u/moonlit_wake 11d ago
MDB, Fourbites, and a third that I don't know the pirate name of that was part of the OG OOO team. Could be Forculus. Could be Greenbones.
Fourbites does basically zero work on the OOO open source code. 99% of those updates are MDB and the other dev. They've been the ones making account changes and java changes while Fourbites handles in-game updates.
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u/SplinterRifleman 8d ago
This is a hard to swallow pill, but getting rid of bots wont revive this game
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u/ChestAdventurous7041 12d ago
How do you plan to stop bots? Present your solution for controlling bots.
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u/Ambitious_Gazelle_36 12d ago
I don’t have a solution, but hold my joint…. there is like 250ppl online at the same time, surely the ocean masters can watch or track what the players are doing. Even from simple chat messages there would be human interactions along the line Present me your solution how they can’t control them?
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u/ChestAdventurous7041 11d ago
Ok but what do you class as proof and what you are saying is a very manual process that takes time and cost money. Most bots are an automated system, they even remake new accounts automatically when they get banned so if you ban one, a new one appears. You are not actually solving anything.
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u/Ambitious_Gazelle_36 11d ago
The bots wouldn’t have one genuine conversation with another person. Look at the new accounts process, who cares that it is manual. If you are getting paid for real users why should our hard earn money play with cheaters.
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u/ChestAdventurous7041 11d ago
AI can certainly have conversations with people.
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u/Ambitious_Gazelle_36 11d ago
Bro are the bots doing this ? It’s certainly not a normal conversation
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u/dragosthethird 11d ago
Dude I dont bot but typically dont talk. That being said theres no requirement to talk at all in the game.
There is some bot detection. Assuming they didnt remove it at some point you get auto banned using old bilge bots. But any detection they add eventually gets bypassed by the bothers and the issue is bots act like good players on a puzzle. You better be certain what you are banning is a bot. If you ban just a good player it can have a cascading effect of bad PR.
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u/Ambitious_Gazelle_36 11d ago
Yeah understand not everyone talks, but surely you could observe real players vs actions bots do over the length of their account. A good player would surely have interactions that a bot wouldn’t do in its account existence. Also looking into which flags/crews they join etc, would surely see repeat offenders. Also a genuine player should be able to argue to unban their account, like I had to do for RuneScape when I got hacked
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u/ChestAdventurous7041 8d ago
Most bots get banned within a few months. You act like they don't ban anyone
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u/Ambitious_Gazelle_36 11d ago
Hmm you seem really defensive. You are a botter just trying to protect and justify what you do? It won’t change or they would have done it by now and cared me re this subject.
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u/ChestAdventurous7041 11d ago
No I am realistic. There is loads they could do that I can think of. You haven't exactly presented anything useful here. It's a very difficult problem to solve.
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u/Ambitious_Gazelle_36 11d ago
Why are you defending every comment. You just said there is loads they can do, so why aren’t they more? I also presented a solution. Just go and and enjoy your bots and your 20 real players
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u/ChestAdventurous7041 8d ago
What was your solution? I don't see it here,
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u/Ambitious_Gazelle_36 7d ago
Bro you don’t even listen to solutions, you just defend botting, you even said yourself there was plenty
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u/UltraMediumcore 13d ago
1/4
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u/thelegohead1 13d ago
Don’t forget a lot of people multi-client but play both at the same time.
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u/ChestAdventurous7041 12d ago
I run about 75 bots personally. Account wise it's maybe 200-250 but they are on rotation so no more than 75 will be playing at one time.
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u/xPofsx 13d ago
Probably 2/3rds
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u/JustYerAverage 13d ago
Whoa, that's so many. Well, by percentage haha, there ain't many of us on there at all!
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u/Triston42 13d ago
The weird thing is that the game is not even THAT niche… it just had really bad marketing and retention strategies for the better part of 2 decades.
This game definitely could’ve had a larger audience if not for their self-sabotage