Captcha to stop the bots

sprokz·Sep 30, 2014·15 votes·4,000 views

I have only been playing for a couple of months, and am really enjoying ARAM. My problem is tonight I tried playing and had 3 to 5 bots per match, Really ruins the game. So i thought i would check the boards and see if anything is being done about it. Well to post to the boards I had to sign in, and found that signing in is behind a captcha wall. Wait a second now, they are using proven bot stopping technologies to prevent bots from fouling up the message boards! Great! Now lets take it a step further, every couple of games you try to Que for, bam, Captcha to make sure you are human. If it works for the boards, why not the game. Please tell me what you think about this idea, why or why it wont work, and any possible technical issues i dont know about preventing this from being a thing.

31 Comments

Lumus AvatarSep 30, 201410 votes

Stop the bots 2014

Sir ArmaMalumSep 30, 20146 votes

I the log-in screen? Sure, not too much of an inconvenience, but at the same time won't do much against the bots.

Every game? I'd find that ridiculously annoying to be perfectly honest. It could be effective, yes, but it would also harm the playerbase numbers of the already low numbers of dominion and twisted treeline.

How about this: Random captcha checks in que. Accomplishes the primary goal of dealing a blow to the botting business while only mildly annoying actual players. The 'proc rate' can be adjusted between ques to hit bot heavy ques like ARAM and Dominion a bit harder. Granted it wouldn't be immediately effective and can still allow botting behavior for any bots that are being 'maintained' by a human, but it will deal a big blow to large bot groups.

Hoi Im TemmoSep 30, 20145 votes

This is the best idea I have seen so far! Nice!

Saint Tyrone Oct 1, 20141 votes

This is the best idea I have seen so far! Nice!

SIONNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

exiledFromBadmenOct 1, 20141 votes

Sion hi

VanijorouSep 30, 20145 votes

That's obnoxious and penalizes the "real" players. Honestly I've played over a thousand games and I've only ever encountered one bot who proceeded to follow the EXACT same path through our jungle VERY meanderingly and into the enemy turret. What makes you think you're playing a bot? Something similar? I really don't think that bots are a big enough problem INSIDE the game to implement such measures.

Enlighten me if I'm just ignorant on the subject, or have somehow managed to miss it.

ValyrianBladeSep 30, 20147 votes

in coop vs ai twisted treeline (I play for first win of day) I encounter at least 1 bot on the"human" side every other game. It's okay for me since I can 1v3 the beginner bots even if someone is feeding, but it can be very frustrating for new players. even if they're paired with someone like me I'm sure it's not fun, as they need to Lane against an opponent fed from the bot and can't play properly (I explain that I need solo xp so I 1v2 top if we're going to win). They're obviously bots, always take ghost and heal, go bot Lane, never communicate, and just push non stop. attack the nearest minion, move to turret when minions are dead and attack it until the turret kills them. enemy champions attack them and they just keep pushing. even if you kill the champion first, the bot just runs to the turret and gives the champion a kill when the turret kills them. It's simply impossible for a player to be that clueless unless they're intentionally trolling.

sprokzSep 30, 20144 votes

It would seam that the most sever botting is done in ARAM and in Dominion. I don't play Dominion so I can't attest to the botting in that game mode. But as far as ARAM is concerned, bots are easy to pick out.

Most of them will only fallow minions into battle
they have very obviouse paths the always fallow
always feeding to the extreme point
Never ever respond to in game chat

Please play a couple of ARAM matches and come back to comment

JunkοOct 1, 20141 votes

I have been spamming ARAM on all my 3 accounts for the past few days and haven't encountered a single bot, so idk what you are talking about.

Dominion is an entirely different story, you won't play a single game of Dominion without an afk bot running around the fountain, i can asure you of that.

I'm against this idea because it's just gonna be annoying, i play a lot of games per day (even up to 15 sometimes during Saturdays and Sundays), and if i'm on a losing streak it's just gonna put me into a worse mod because i'm constantly going to have to type a captcha.

VanijorouOct 6, 20141 votes

Now that you point out more specific things. Nope... Still haven't seen any others. I've played lots of TT and ARAM I really don't see this as a big problem, ALSO I highly doubt riot would ever implement this anyway as it's better to get rid of the problem other ways.

Afro SkeletonSep 30, 20143 votes

Dominion games are almost always 8/9 bots plus you and maybe one other person. It's not that often on the rift, so I can see how you might have missed it.

TiropatSep 30, 20141 votes

you must be in low elo dom. I cant say I have ever seen a bot in dom (not that I play it super regularly. I usually jump into a game every time I get on the forums to see someone complaining about how often they see bots)

SecretAgentHulkSep 30, 20144 votes

I don't know how bots work, exactly, but I'd think a captcha every five to seven logins would probably be fine. Every few games is a hassle for real people, and IMO would be a pain even at every login.

sprokzSep 30, 201414 votes

I don't know how bots work, exactly, but I'd think a captcha every five to seven logins would probably be fine. Every few games is a hassle for real people, and IMO would be a pain even at every login.

The big problem I see with it only being at login is that I believe Botters log in themselves than turn the control over to thier script program to grind the game. Would therefore make a captcha requirement mostly if not totally useless. A possible alternative would be to add a reporting category for bots and than only activate the captcha requirements for people with x amount of reports for botting. It would limit the chance of people abusing the bot report function because if a real player is just being harassed with false botting reports, it is only a small pain to fill out the captcha and continue playing. Real bots would not be able to fill out the captcha and would be taken out of circulation. Most all other players would see no difference.

AbiwonKenabiSep 30, 20146 votes

I think I like this idea the best, since I think enough people find Captcha kind of annoying but its no doubt a great way to stop bots. The report system would be a great avenue to avoid annoying real players.

ParinoidPandaSep 30, 20149 votes

A possible alternative would be to add a reporting category for bots and than only activate the captcha requirements for people with x amount of reports for botting. It would limit the chance of people abusing the bot report function because if a real player is just being harassed with false botting reports, it is only a small pain to fill out the captcha and continue playing. Real bots would not be able to fill out the captcha and would be taken out of circulation. Most all other players would see no difference.

This. This would do it.

NubeelOct 1, 20141 votes

Random events. Every now and then an Evil Chicken spawns in game. GG bots.

ChaoscontrolSep 30, 20143 votes

CBA to fill out captcha, hell, I hate it when I have to do it once every X when I log in the forums.

Tapu FiniSep 30, 20143 votes

The botting has to stop, and I'm sure this exact "solution" has come up within Riot. However, this would only be a bandaid fix. It's annoying to the legitimate users, and impossible to some with certain disorders (See: Dyslexia)

ParinoidPandaSep 30, 20142 votes

I would recommend this option for known issue game modes. If this were implemented across all game modes it would be too big of an imposition on the players. To be honest, I think it should simply be a part of the login.

mi ramfanSep 30, 20142 votes

Anything that will get rid of bots is fine by me.

pro4neverSep 30, 20142 votes

They already have captchas for account creation and we all know how effective that is for bots making accounts (lol)

All it does is punishes real players. The actual bots are just gonna use a captcha cracker.

TravistyseOct 1, 20141 votes

They already have captchas for account creation and we all know how effective that is for bots making accounts (lol)

All it does is punishes real players. The actual bots are just gonna use a captcha cracker.

This. Unfortunately Captchas have existed for long enough for proper workarounds to be found. HWID checks wouldn't be of much help due to the nature of VPN and VirtualOS (the latter alters the HWID iirc or can be used to do so wheras the VPN causes the client to see the server HWID rather than the bot's) and I think that the only ways to solve this are as follows:

Any player with more than 50% of their refs having stopped playing within 2 levels of level 10 and not playing 2 months later should have those refs removed. No punishment should take place (iirc some players were making smurfs for Athene/SivHD when Athene was nearing 5k refs and SiVHD was wanting Medieval Twitch for an upcoming Vid Guide) but the refs shouldn't count. The 50% limit simply prevents unnecessary investigations/action.
When in the process of removing referrals, Email the email addresses of all of the accounts which are to be removed. If a response is made by at least 2 people stating that the accounts are legitimate waive the process (I don't think botters actually create a long list of emails and whatnot AND check them on a regular basis. But normal people with that email being their primary address will and do).. Kinda just a check in case of some sort of weird edge-case.