Over the past week there has been quite an increase in the amount of spambots (this is referring to the Factions sub in particular but it of course could happen to the others if the botter wanted), and by this I don't mean the advertise bots that spam their message until they are dealt with, I mean a multi account effort (4+) where users are pay spammed, pm spammed, the global chat is spammed, or there is teleport spam. Currently it becomes very chaotic whenever this happens, and I have a possible idea which may fix it while minimizing the server flow's disruption in the process. - Idea - Allow a role - Probably mod, maybe SrMod if you think it is too much power for Moderator (although Mods are usually the ones who are there well before others so I think it would be valuable for them to have too) to enable a slowmode on the server. What it does (subject to change of course): While enabled, all of these commands are limited to one usage on a player per 2 min (time very subject to change) /f join /pay /tpa /msg /f invite Chat speed would also get a slowmode, perhaps one msg per 20s, or a message per minute (again time very subject to change here). **NOTE, for global application assuming the bots were to attack in other areas, all commands which are equivalents or have a similar disruptive function would have an equal type of restriction (time modification could be possible based on how important the commands are per sub) Reason: These restrictions may seem kind of harsh, but keep in mind they are something that will only be enabled while the bots are being dealt with (as a staff has to activate it). Now why should it be added? Well, as it currently stands, if there are a good quantity of bots they can effectively lock a faction out of playing entirely outside of discord / sign communication, and if its in pub chat then it removes all of chat too. Currently the chat reporting systems and etc are inadequate to deal with real spambots, and they wreak quite a bit of havoc while they are active through spam, but more importantly command spam. With this mode, staff will be able to sort out who is doing what much much easier as the bots will only be able to perform these actions once rather than on spam repeat, making player reports extremely easy and dealing with the IGNs through seeing them much easier as well. Also lessens the chance of false mutes as with much less chat to review, it becomes quite easy to discern who was one of the bots and who wasn't. Another important thing of note (and the main reason I am suggesting this at all) is that this in theory will make the bots hardly do any actual damage to gameplay as a first wave of messaging is negligible (or commands etc), as after it swiftly ends the gameplay can resume as normal while they are picked off by the moderator who has enabled the mode. Under the current system, when the bots attack it is total chaos and there is a ton of disruption until they are dealt with. The reason I did not suggest a full chat mute is because it doesn't actually do anything about the many other ways the bots can spam (which are much more disruptive), this one should minimize bot damage as well as have the least negative impact on gameplay in the process. What are your thoughts? I would love to hear them in the replies, is this a good preventive measure for spambot damage on MCC? Terrible? Not a bad start but needs improvement? Let me know!
Honestly I've never really been too fond of the "slow mode" or "chat mutes" features that some servers have. Why would you punish everyone on the server and limit their actions just because one idiot is spamming? Especially if you're blocking core commands like /f /msg and /pay. Even if it did stop the spam you'd also be making gameplay a lot harder for everyone else. It doesn't matter if someone is spamming these, people NEED to use these commands. Pretty ironic for a suggestion that "minimizes server flow's disruption". And if you did make the cooldown low enough to not effect the gameplay, then the cooldown would be useless to have in the first place since it wouldn't stop the spamming. There is no winning with this. Also, even if there was a long-ish cooldown, implementing this would do nothing but slow them down. You're not stopping them from spamming with this, you're just limiting how fast they CAN spam. Why would you prefer that over just dealing with them in the first place? If a moderator is online, they can be muted/banned. If not, then you have /ignore for a reason. This is probably the worst way that you could handle the botting problem, no offense. Also I've already suggested a better system on a thread someone else made regarding the issue, so I'll just repost it here. Could be applied to commands as well though, obviously.
No need, chatreport generally works well and there is no need for slow chat in my opinion. There is also a separate thread containing spam bot issues.
I do agree that I do not like those either, however this is not for one idiot, it's for when 16+ bots are online or similar numbers which have been popping up on facs recently so I can't say that fits as much here. Also not disabling faction commands, just attempting to join / invite more than once per X seconds as those are the only commands that can be used to spam when outside of the faction (and are one of the most effective group spam methods as they spam each fac member with the msg). These are also commands that you will rarely need within a short interval, I could say the same with pay and then as for msg rapid messaging does not really matter if the user has absolutely no chance of reading it so that is just a compromise I would have to accept. Ik that these are not the most satisfying answers but from my experience with them I would much rather take this over the nothing that is currently there, and 3 of those commands (not msg) are ones that I would say do not need to be used that quickly to where it would become a serious problem. It also is of course by no means permanent as it would only be applied in those situations and would be removed immediately after, not asking for a permanent timer on these commands. To continue since u rly seemed to hammer home that there was no good from it, maybe I should add a poll for whether it would be worth because I know for me personally I would again absolutely take this over fighting the bots, and I think that most of the players who were experiencing it while it was happening would say the same. Yeah you are just slowing them down, that is really the major goal here as the bots being so fast is the problem. The rate at which they spam makes it difficult to impossible to communicate at all, and the speed also makes screenshots, recordings, and witnessing from staff all clear the bots at a much slower rate. The goal is to deal with them as quickly as possible so it is intended to 'deal with them in the first place', and that ease of reporting / evidence collection should ease the process quite a bit. A mod has to be online for it to even be activated, and ignore is a fair point although it can be extremely difficult to when there is a very large wave (and they will still cause quite a lot of damage as I fail to see how /ignoring for 5 minutes is less disruptive than being able to basically play as normal). Going back to the mod thing though, the entire purpose of this is to prevent the amount of damage the bots currently inflict on gameplay and ease how quickly they can be dealt with, it's not a suggestion that will just remove all of the spambots and I'm not claiming that it is. That of course would be the ideal scenario, but until that fix is here I will maintain my suggestion for handling them in this way. I do agree with the post quote u made although I'm not sure how the numbers would work to where u don't get more blocked messages than would be ideal, but it doesn't seem to actually address the problem I am talking about here which is not only the chat but also the vicious command spam which is far more damaging as some things like the tpa take 4-5 boxes of your text, and /ignore does not work on f join attempts or /pay spam either btw. I did address the type of bot that u brought up to dissociate this from that but again that is not what this thread is talking about, ik those have a much easier solution & agree with u in that respect. Also before we talk about any type of IP thing all the ip's of the accounts were checked and they were not matching, so it's not always going to be that simple either (this is referring back to the mass bot incidents).
Could you link me that please? I would appreciate it. Also, no it does not for this situation (and also keep in mind that the chat would only be while the spambots are being dealt with). I'm not sure if both of u know what I am talking about because it seems like ur just talking about those bots that join and spam bitly links or a fake server advertisement with the number randomizer at the end when these instances were not like that at all as I explained in my initial post (and reply to ankh). *Edit so I don't just say "no it is not" without anything more, CR doesn't work well here because 1) you are dealing with a minimum of about 6 accounts, usually way more. You can only do one CR per 10 mins so this alerts of one user which does absolutely nothing, usually you get staff pretty quick when there is a major disruption like this as there was about 3-4 staff on after the incidents happened for a bit. Screenshots are MUCH more helpful to the staff in these situations as that is what they spam asked for each time, and in an environment where the bots can only unleash one wave it becomes very easy to send that evidence and dispatch them possibly before they even get round 2, after which the chat can have slowmode removed with minimal disruption at the hand of the bots. (Also makes it much easier for them to look at the perpetrators) 2) I thought I was going to make a list but I think point 1 just about covers everything so nvm lol
As annoying as they are, it's still just one loser who used a free spambot tool to login as these 16+ people at the same time. If anything it's just confusing to think of why someone would go through all the effort of doing the captcha on all those accounts just to get them banned lol. It is true that these commands generally don't need to be used too frequently, but there will always be that [rare] case where someone needs to use it quickly, and they won't be able to. Even if it isn't permanent, it's still not really fair to the rest of the players that have done absolutely nothing wrong. Say you're having a discussion (important or not) in /msg with a friend. Then suddenly, a spam bot appears, and now you need to wait 1 minute between messages with your friend. Even though you did nothing wrong, now you're being restricted because of someone else's actions. This is just one example of many, of course. Now I can agree that the current system is flawed, but I still fail to understand why you'd settle for just slowing them down and having a mod or two slowly pick them off one-by-one. When (with the suggestion I made) you could be removing them completely, instantly. Not sure what you mean by the numbers, but in the case of mass bot spam, as many blocked messages as possible would be "ideal", because more messages blocked = less chat spammed. Which, if my suggestion was implemented, would be the case. In short, every message would be blocked except the first one. Then all of the accounts could be flagged as spam bots for moderators to handle. Or better yet, automatically muted/banned. There's really is no other case where 20 some people are going to say the exact same message in less than half a second. As for commands, it wouldn't be hard to implement a similar type of system. If player x runs same command as last person to run a command, they get blocked & flagged. Which would IMMEDIATELY remove all this "/f invite" "/pay" whatever spam. Differing IPs wouldn't matter. Though this could also be easily combatted by simply making the login captcha reset every time your IP changes, since the account when logged in on the spambot will have a different IP than the client they used to pass the captcha for the account on. It's really not that hard to stop any of this. They just need to be flexible and willing to make positive changes and updates to the current system. Though, I do wonder if they would implement it if I made an anti-spam system for them :thinking:
There will be the rare case that they must use it rapidly more than once but I would not be sure as to when this would overlap with the time that the bots are being dealt with, and its not like in most of these cases it would even be relevant because the current bots are far too disruptive for you to be able to use those types of commands as you normally would. Again I see your point here & I would normally agree but the thing with it is, as I stated in the previous post, you really are punishing the players more by just leaving it untreated while they are being dealt with. Especially in your example, with no restriction the chat box is completely useless. The chance that those PMs even get read or that the other person can respond to the MSG afterward is minimal, meaning if u need to communicate u will already have to do it by sign anyway. A thing of note here in this case as well is that you can still utilize /msgf with no restriction, so if you do need that pm & can't afford to sign it then you can use it to communicate, and more importantly your exchange can actually be read as the wave will not be a constant flow but rather a 1 time thing with a cooldown that definitely lets u get some messages across before the next wave if they are not dealt with it by that point. I do want to emphasize again that I'm not just saying player msg should be taken bc of bots, if the messaging command actually had any use while these bots were active then I would not be suggesting for it to be taken but the truth is it really doesn't. To your suggestion, how? I know that it deals with the link bots but how does that handle the other forms of spam which are much more toxic and much more often utilized (pay, tpa, f join, etc see commands I initially listed) by them, and if u do modify your proposal to include them how is that not going to false flag a lot of members who are attempting to use those commands whether it is panic, joke between friends etc? I did agree with your idea as I stated but I do not see how it deals with the issue I am talking about here because it is not as simple with these bots as it is with the 1 user link posters By the numbers I mean that there have been multiple waves of quite a bit of the users, not only overall but in each individual occurrence. And again with the wave it is mostly not about public chat here, although it is a part of it. Depending on the timer I like the idea of the public chat solution, but I'm not sure how you would not false flag some normal users with a command system especially in things like raids or helping someone where tpa spam is often utilized, and as it's usually their primary attack route I again don't see the problem being so easily solved.
Like I said, it would be an extremely rare occasion, but if it ever did end up happening, it could have a lot of serious, long-lasting effects. I never said leave it untreated. The entire point of my reply was to suggest a better alternative way to deal with these. In your example, they would still be able to mass spam, but only once every minute or so. Which is still very disruptive. In my example, they wouldn't be able to spam at all, they would at the most get one or two messages out, then immediately be blocked and flagged for staff to deal with. And, possibly automatically muted/banned if the owners would be in favor of that. I made my own thread on this idea to explain it in much more detail, it can be found here. But to answer your thoughts relating to "false flagging" and blocking commands, first off it would be very easy to block commands. Just like a chat message, the plugin can turn it into a string of words and compare it to a command someone else ran. So for example, "/tpa Ankh" and "/tpa Ankh" are identical. "/pay Ankh 47" and "/pay Ankh 69" are very similar, and therefore would be blocked. As for false flagging, that is the entire reason I mentioned that the plugin should check the time between the messages as well. Like I said in my thread, there is pretty much no chance that 2+ people will run the exact same command, within a quarter of a second or less. The only way this would normally happen would be if someone set up 10 some accounts for the sole purpose of instantly flooding the chat. Or those "first to pay me when I say go gets double" games, but to be honest it would be better to block those anyways. It's lowkey scamming.
