Panagrammic
Booty Grab CAPTCHA
There have been many complaints about marketplace inflation, and it turns out that one large gold source has been botting on BG. As a result, we're adding a CAPTCHA before you can play BG.
We're hoping this does not inconvenience players too much (since you have to hunt around for the tanks anyway), but it should greatly reduce the gold influx from the bots.
As always, we love to hear your opinions about steps we take in Site Feedback -- inflation and botting are difficult problems, and we hope to hear some good ideas as to the right way to deal with the issues.
There have been many complaints about marketplace inflation, and it turns out that one large gold source has been botting on BG. As a result, we're adding a CAPTCHA before you can play BG.
We're hoping this does not inconvenience players too much (since you have to hunt around for the tanks anyway), but it should greatly reduce the gold influx from the bots.
As always, we love to hear your opinions about steps we take in Site Feedback -- inflation and botting are difficult problems, and we hope to hear some good ideas as to the right way to deal with the issues.
Panagrammic
BG Update
Thanks for the feedback. We've created a thread in Site Feedback to try and centralize discussion. However, there were many good suggestions, and we've made some changes as a result:
- we've changed the CAPTCHA frequency to 1 in 4. We'll try this level for a while and see how people feel about it -- we can raise it and lower it as needed.
- since users with slower Internet connections / computers were complaining about missing tanks all the time, we've both slightly increased the number of maximum players in a game, as well as slightly increased the glow time.
Short FAQ:
Why not put the CAPTCHA at the end?
That is a good suggestion and something we will look at. However, the way the game is currently set up, the gold is granted at the end of the game, so a CAPTCHA after you've played would be too late to do anything.
Also: putting the CAPTCHA at the front of the game stops some classes of bots from jumping into the game -- which means it's easier to get tanks, since you don't have a bunch of bots jumping in before you.
Bots don't exist!
They do. I hate to give these guys more views, so I won't direct link, but a ten-second search will reveal tons of booty grab bots, with accompanying videos. We have a bunch of these in house and have confirmed that they do in fact work (or rather, used to work).
Why so sudden!?
We've been saying for a while that we have problem with BG -- you can see previous AtAs and such -- but we've seen a recent sharp spike in the amount of botted gold, and it has become a problem. Fixing bots is a labor intensive process by our amazing but overworked mod team: not only do we have to go through and ban the bots, but we have to undo all the transactions that the bot completed. This means going through trade logs, holding trading passes on people that received botted gold, so on and so forth. Stopping bots at the time of gold grant with a CAPTCHA is far more effective and a better use of everyone's time.
I'll change the OP in the feedback thread as more FAQs come up.
Thanks for the feedback. We've created a thread in Site Feedback to try and centralize discussion. However, there were many good suggestions, and we've made some changes as a result:
- we've changed the CAPTCHA frequency to 1 in 4. We'll try this level for a while and see how people feel about it -- we can raise it and lower it as needed.
- since users with slower Internet connections / computers were complaining about missing tanks all the time, we've both slightly increased the number of maximum players in a game, as well as slightly increased the glow time.
Short FAQ:
Why not put the CAPTCHA at the end?
That is a good suggestion and something we will look at. However, the way the game is currently set up, the gold is granted at the end of the game, so a CAPTCHA after you've played would be too late to do anything.
Also: putting the CAPTCHA at the front of the game stops some classes of bots from jumping into the game -- which means it's easier to get tanks, since you don't have a bunch of bots jumping in before you.
Bots don't exist!
They do. I hate to give these guys more views, so I won't direct link, but a ten-second search will reveal tons of booty grab bots, with accompanying videos. We have a bunch of these in house and have confirmed that they do in fact work (or rather, used to work).
Why so sudden!?
We've been saying for a while that we have problem with BG -- you can see previous AtAs and such -- but we've seen a recent sharp spike in the amount of botted gold, and it has become a problem. Fixing bots is a labor intensive process by our amazing but overworked mod team: not only do we have to go through and ban the bots, but we have to undo all the transactions that the bot completed. This means going through trade logs, holding trading passes on people that received botted gold, so on and so forth. Stopping bots at the time of gold grant with a CAPTCHA is far more effective and a better use of everyone's time.
I'll change the OP in the feedback thread as more FAQs come up.
This is was from of the Dev notices.
So please do not spam Sacred or Es about the changes.
