Prelude: World 13

[begem0t23]

God bless you! this is the best news from previsious year/wipe.

[TerraSleet]

Every anti-cheat measure has an equivalent amount of collateral damage. At the very least, custom clients would have to be killed off entirely. But no matter how much you try to fight it, worst case botters can still just scan the screen and simulate keyboard/mouse input to mimic genuine play behavior. I've played an MMO before where every now and then while crafting you had to solve an in-game captcha (using game sprites rather than words or photographs); failure to solve it in time would get a GM to check on you. Is that the future you want for Haven?

I'm not sure if I want to take the time to seriously reply to this or condescendingly mock you. I guess I'll do a mixture of both.

Alternative title: Speedrun undermining your entire point any%

[LunariusH]

Is that the future you want for Haven?

Yes... This would be most satisfactory, thank you.

[VDZ]

If you really want to mess with resource botting you should make logging in or out near the localized resources impossible. Lets say if you are trying to log in closer than 200 tiles to localized resource you would be sent to your HF instead, so botters would have to walk said 200 tiles in order to check resource and walk back to log out. That would probably deter many of them, and in case of very presistent botters- at least you can knock their bots out on the way to resource and actually compete this way.

I'm sure the bots will be very discouraged by the repetitive activity of having to walk all the way to the localized resource to check it. As we all know, bots hate repetitive activities.

at least you can knock their bots out on the way to resource and actually compete this way.

You already can. It takes quite some time to actually harvest a localized resouce nowadays; it's no longer instant like it used to be.

I like the idea of everyone spawning into the central continent, then putting the burden on the hermits to relocate to "get away" from the bullies, trolls, and griefers.

The requirements for a Snekkja, the minimum required vehicle for ocean travel, are sufficiently steep that you do not get the chance to travel away from the continent until you're already properly established and have less reason to be worried about bullies, trolls and griefers. If bullies, trolls and griefers are a serious problem, you'll never get to the point where you can build a Snekkja.

I don't get it, so your solution is to spread people evenly and remove the "get away" option entirely?
With the w12 spawn location you at least get to chose if you want to settle in more peaceful area or around other ppl.

I did not propose any specific solution; I merely pointed out the problem.

If you want me to propose a solution, I think a more viable option would be to have some kind of early boat that cannot carry any cargo whatsoever and fits only a single hearthling, but which can cross oceans (a kayak or something). I think spawning the players on a central continent is a good idea, but there is currently no proper way to get away from the starting continent early-game.

Also, how is getting more wealth making you less worried about bullies? Losing a 3 days old character isn't as bad as losing month old one.

Three days in, bullies are still stealing your skins and leather and preventing your progress in similar ways. A month in, you'll have proper claims and palisades and the only things at risk are your character and the stuff you carry with you. Put another way, if you die less than 48 hours in you're basically restarting from scratch, while dying a month in just makes you lose some of your progress and your remaining progress can help you get back to your previous level relatively quickly.

I'm not sure if I want to take the time to seriously reply to this or condescendingly mock you. I guess I'll do a mixture of both.

Civil arguments tend to be more convincing and harder to refute (though they're also harder to make).

Yes, as we all know. All anti-bot measures, which are the same as as anti-cheat measures,

From a technical perspective, they absolutely are. You monitor the user's system or activity to detect unnatural activity. If anything, botting protection is deeper into the invasive part of anti-cheats, as they emulate legit play activity and thus require you to monitor play activity that seems legit rather than just obvious outliers. (This in contrast to, for example, a client reporting the player just walked two screens in one second, which can easily be detected by only performing a simple check on data received by the server.)

Likewise, as you imply, the developers are peon brained and cannot develop a basic system to distinguish between AFK botting actions and custom clients of which they have source code access too.

Most custom clients are closed-source. And yes, it is incredibly hard to distinguish between the two; as far as the server is concerned, botting activity is the exact same as legit player activity, they just happen to have more consistent patterns. But determining those patterns is a never-ending game of cat-and-mouse where the botters always have the initiative (thus the devs have to put more effort into detection than the botters have to put into evading the detection). You mentioned in your previous post that "someone who never worked in game security" would dismiss your claim, but you seem to be unfamiliar with the field yourself. While I don't work directly with anti-cheat systems or evasion thereof, my day job does involve reverse engineering of video games and I do encounter similar elements such as anti-tamper myself. Any code run on an end-user system should be considered compromised, and all you can do to prevent unwanted activity is slowing and discouraging the people modifying your code; moreover, the vast majority of the time circumventing such protections costs significantly less effort than it does to implement them.

Likewise, any implementation of possible anti-bo- I mean anti-cheats, but be the worst and most invasive form possible. Clearly only with kernel level access is this possible, as with all other games in existence. In no way, is a combination of basic detection/logging with occasional mod review to doll out harsh punishment is sufficient for a community that is at best several hundred large. As we all know, HnH is the new CS:GO and the integrity of the e-sports scene must be maintained with only the most intrustive anti-cheat systems.

Kernel-level anti-cheat still isn't perfect (especially against botting), but yes, it's the only feasible way to have a somewhat resilient anti-cheat system. User-level anti-cheat systems can significantly reduce cheating by scriptkiddies, but the H&H fanbase is very hardcore, with the botters being among the most hardcore of players. There is a lot of effort put into user experience modification, whether benign (custom clients for normal play) or malign (exploit bots), and the people botting are heavily invested in the game. Whenever some form of botting becomes unusable, they will immediately move on to the next still possible form of botting; you already see the same happen with exploits that get patched. The community's efforts to bot will always exceed any reasonable efforts the devs can make to prevent it.

which is why no small scale indie multiplayer games ever been able to successfully address this problem. Literally none. Zero. Not even one.

That sounds about right, yes. The only communities without significant botting or cheating are those where not enough people have sufficient drive to bot or cheat.

[Liss12]

If you really want to mess with resource botting you should make logging in or out near the localized resources impossible. Lets say if you are trying to log in closer than 200 tiles to localized resource you would be sent to your HF instead, so botters would have to walk said 200 tiles in order to check resource and walk back to log out. That would probably deter many of them, and in case of very presistent botters- at least you can knock their bots out on the way to resource and actually compete this way.

I'm sure the bots will be very discouraged by the repetitive activity of having to walk all the way to the localized resource to check it. As we all know, bots hate repetitive activities.

Anyone who tried to organize farming bot knows they aren't that great at basic navigation, sarcastic man.

[WEREWOLF132009]

I just bought a subscription for a month, can I pause it until the next world starts

[Ysh]

I just bought a subscription for a month, can I pause it until the next world starts

All subscriptions are, effective immediately, paused until the launch of World 13.

[WEREWOLF132009]

yes, I read it, but in the profile it says that
Account is verified.
Silver subscription until 2021-04-22 17:49.

[Ysh]

yes, I read it, but in the profile it says that
Account is verified.
Silver subscription until 2021-04-22 17:49.

I think I will wait until tomorrow and check if it is not updated to 04-23. I believe this is how the pause is working.

[zebratul]

Here's for a new world!