Is there a mod (or preferably rioter) willing to have a quick discussion

FlyingRoboticCow··2 votes·256 views

I was scrolling through a discussion on the boards that was being poorly framed but ended up touching on a subject that I have questions about that have never really been answered. The following is part of a Quote by the Advisor Chermorg:

"On the subject of bots, Riot bans bot accounts in waves (and generally there is 1-2 waves per month from what I've been able to see). They do this so that bot operators are unable to reverse engineer Riot's detection methods. If you would look around the Help and Support and Player Behavior boards, you would see these waves (they're pretty obvious) of scripters and bots being banned (and people complaining about their accounts being banned "unfairly"). Riot Support is not going to potentially compromise accounts by banning them instantly after they are detected. It is their job to investigate and potentially flag accounts, however Support is not there to be your personal report taker. Player Support is there to deal with technical issues mainly, and behavioral clarifications - not to circumvent the larger detection and abuse prevention measures of Riot.

Riot's detection is quite good. You will see many players around these ban waves who've purchased their accounts and/or only used it in one game or a custom game being banned. However, bot operators will not cease making new accounts. It is literally impossible to prevent them from coming right back and making more accounts when their batches of bots are banned. Riot does ban bots and they do so very efficiently - however the bot operator will just come right back and make a new bot account, hence why it appears "nothing is being done"."

This is my less than stellar reply to them-

"I Agree with most of what you have said but saying riot Ban's bots "efficiently" depends on what definition of efficient you are using. If you mean "in a way that achieves maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense." then I would agree if you mean "in a well-organized and competent way." then I disagree If you are doing it only once or twice a month then you are giving bot operators way to much time to level those accounts and destroy other peoples games. Because by the time the wave comes around Aram has been unplayable for days due to the number of bots. If a B5 moron can tell that someone in game is a bot and reports them as so (along with another ten people in the next ten games that also realize its a bot) then why isn't that account banned immediately its already ruined ten games for people. People know whats a bot and whats not (in most cases) so why does riot need advance detection methods for these damn things."

So if possible I would like these questions answered- 1 Are bot accounts banned strictly in waves or can they also be banned by the normal report system 1b If they can't be banned by the normal report system why not? 2 Is there any reason other than the "reverse engineering" that riot bans them in waves. 3 why doesn't riot ban these accounts immediately after they're detected. (the above explanation is not satisfactory)

5 Comments

Chermorg1 votes
  1. To my knowledge it is only in waves. By banning bots only in groups, Riot maintains the integrity and proprietary detection systems in place to detect bots.

  2. To my knowledge they are banned in waves also to give the anti cheat team time to review the data and audit a small number of detected accounts to ensure there's no errors in the detection.

  3. Why is the above explanation not satisfactory? If Riot were to ban them instantly after detected, it would be very easy for operators to figure out how they were detected, then make their bots undetectable. Not only does this result in more bots running around, but also more account selling and trading. Riot keeps bots at bay in the long term by banning in waves to maintain good detection practices.

FlyingRoboticCow1 votes
  1. Why is the above explanation not satisfactory? If Riot were to ban them instantly after detected, it would be very easy for operators to figure out how they were detected, then make their bots undetectable. Not only does this result in more bots running around, but also more account selling and trading. Riot keeps bots at bay in the long term by banning in waves to maintain good detection practices.

My point is that banning in waves doesn't seem to be up to the expectations of the player base that's effected by them(if it was I wouldn't see a post about them every time i come to the boards), if your Instant feedback system is good enough to catch and punish every other offense then why is it not good enough to catch and punish something like this that is easily found by your player base as well as your detection system. As far as people figuring out what you do to detect bots so they'll change them, good it'll cost them time and money to figure out whats happening to their accounts and how to change it, that'll take effort so maybe for a short while you can honestly say that you don't have thousands of hours of peoples games wasted every day, and yes those bots will eventually be back after they've figured out how to sneak past your detection system but those bots better play well enough for your player base to think its a human or now that the instant feedback system can punish these accounts they'll still be gone. So in the end they need to not only fool riot and its system but its player base who loath bots. Lets be clear your player base hates bot's because they cost you the game if people start making bots so good that we can't tell they're not a human your player base won't know or care that the're a bot which is a win-win for you.

Chermorg1 votes

Except that's not what happens. Riot doesn't punish an account if even a small doubt exists if it's a bot or not. You wouldn't have bots programmed like humans, you'd have bots that look like probably bots but go unpunished because there's a doubt.

Basically, instead of bots running it down mid, you'll have bots that play the game but are absolute shit at it, but they'll never get banned for it.

FlyingRoboticCow1 votes

that's not exactly a stellar review of riots bot detection practices then is it. My whole point is while riot seems to think what they are doing is good enough and "good enough" isn't good enough. What i'm saying is that if a company is going to make over 600 million dollars from a game each year then how about we set the bar a little higher than "good enough".

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