Bot Taask Force

Proposals by Gotchi Gov'nuhs
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Hey everyone,

During the DAO meeting today, the idea of a Bot Task Force (BTF or SWAAT team) was brought up. This task force would work with Pixelcraft to eliminate as many bots as possible from within the game. Dan has said on multiple occasions that bot fighting is currently taking up a large portion of his time. This has been a never ending but very important fight in Web2 games for a very long time, and with real money and investments coming into play, it’s more important now than ever. The members of the task force could monitor the #bot-report channel on discord, work on appeals that people may have who claim they aren’t bots, find bots in game themselves, as well as work with Pixelcraft directly on new bot detecting methods.

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Howdy Xeko,

I propose that a captcha type challenge could be implemented to randomly propagate in the Gotchi verse… this would stump bots and cause malicious users to risk being booted… If it’s a user hiring Gotchi’s then their wallet address would receive a perma ban and the owners wallet would be redlisted and forced to submit a bot report… This would be very efficient as a way of identifying bots passively and free up dev hours for fabber things… there is an opportunity to make the captcha a cool Gotchi theme that is actually fun and could even receive an alchemica prize for completing… there could even be community involvement and prizes for designing Gotchi captcha’s :slight_smile:

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Couple things about this.

  1. Imagine you were about to pick up a full kek and a captcha pops up preventing you from moving, or you just need to complete it in time so you don’t get banned, then someone else shows up and grabs it before you, that would be pretty annoying.

  2. Captchas don’t work for any extended period of time, if they did, no games would have bots anymore because a lot of them already have captchas and the rest would’ve implemented it too.

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I propose we name it the Bot Banning Committee (BBC). This committee would be independent, impartial, and truthful!

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I have also come up with the SWAAT (stopping wanton automated aavegotchi threats) team.

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I agree that there would be frustrations… however having alchemica seeking bots zooming around the place is frustrating and disenfranchising… that’s why I thought a special prize for completing would be cool… I’m not sure what your saying regarding point 2…

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SWAAT team is the natural choice IMHO.
BBC is just not threatening enough :smiley:

So… who hates bots and plays 40+ hours a week? We need avid players, with vendettas against bots, that can be trusted to be the backstop on this.

Based on what I have seen in chat… we have a very limited selection of owners who fit the profile. Xeko, and who else? I know there are a few more? Maybe there is is a situation where we have a sherrif, and deputies? Xeko has surpassed me in “answering questions for noobs” and has a good rapport with the scholars. He might be able to identify a team of scholars that would put in extra effort at flagging bots and know the difference, and can be trusted. If they aren’t doing well… bye. If they are, pay them for protecting the realm.

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How about a mechanism that rewards Gotchi’s for submitting positive bot reports… Kinda like a bounty system… This could incentivise players to spend that little bit extra time taking screen shots and submitting reports when there could be a small cash of alchemicha for their efforts… Even a tiered reward system with special awards for players that achieve a certain quota of bot reports in a specified time frame… This would keep the alchemica in the hands of the for real Gotchi owners and keep those bots on the run while making it a fun/rewarding part to play and contribute in the Gotchiverse… Time to get those aagents and wranglers to work !!!

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I like this idea, although idk exactly how it would be implemented. What are the rewards and where are they coming from?

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In general, this topic doesn’t seem to be receiving all that much interest so I’m thinking about approaching this as a shorter timeframe to see how it works out. Ideally it would be me and a dev. I would handle the manual work like monitoring the #bot-report channel, checking bot ban appeals, searching the gotchiverse for bots, then the dev could develop tools with information provided by PC to analyze on-chain data and other metrics to identify and catch bots on a wider scale. I may submit it to the DTF, but would need a dev who is interested in working on something like this. I reached out to Eitri already and she has a friend who might be interested.

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What Dan had said about it was that PC could give the tools they have for this, to some trusted community members… The Lead + deputies format is very good for this situation. One person to be responsible for the others, to ensure its not abused and that the people with the tools are actually using them.

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Yes, although like I said, not much interest so far. So 2 things, 1) It will be hard to find people as there doesn’t seem to be much community support. 2) It would require more funding to hire more people.

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I have some time and I’m pretty keen to help in some way, I’m just not overly technical. I could spend some time looking into bot-reports perhaps.

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Overnight post is not exactly a long time ser. I spend a lot of time campaigning to find people and get support for things. You are just getting started.

Put the word out, watch for people really angry about bots, that wont STFU and are hyperfocused on it, and blaming everyone else. Throw it in their face, see if they catch the ball or duck.

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It’s been a couple of days since the post, but bots have been affecting the game for 2 months now, this isn’t a new issue. The problem is that bots won’t affect a lot of the holders right now. If all you’re doing is channeling, or having someone else channel for you, then bots don’t matter. Bots are only affecting people actively playing the game trying to collect spillage.

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I’m not sure how bot hunting works but if we can monetise it and have it be affective then I think it’s a valid option. Would be great to hear exactly how this could be implemented by someone with the technical know how.

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I figure that the bots are accumulating quite an amount of alchemica that is then (more than likely) dumped on the market… It would be in the communities best interest to overcome the hoard of bots so perhaps the funds could come from the reserve of alchemica put aside for the DAO as proceeds from crafting and upgrades… The rewards would need to be reasonable to insipe community members and not too much as to deplete reserves… I’m thinking somewhere in the vicinity of 5 FUD, 3 FOMO, 1 Alpha and .5 Kek as a tier 1 reward with level ups and ‘badges’ awarded to members that achieve multiple bot boots per week… It would be cool to have the achieved badge title above the players name in game…

Here is a roughy

L1 - ‘Bot Wraangler’ - 1 to 5 bot boots per week - 5 Fud, 3 Fomo, 1 Alpha, .5 Kek per bot reported

L2 - ‘Bounty Hunter’ - 6 to 15 bot boots per week - 10 Fud, 6 Fomo, 2 Alpha, 1 Kek per bot reported

L3 - ‘Neo’ - 16 and up bot boots per week - 15 Fud, 12 Fomo, 4 Alpha, 2 Kek per bot reported

I’m not sure how this would effect the alchemica reserves of the DAO or how the administering of this proposal would go but it has the potential to garner community support… A cool article in the blog would get traction…

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I think the quality control and the follow up on the bot report, is the key to success here.

What if it were a system, where they get 1% of what is siezed form the botter or network of bots, when it is shut down, AFTER a week holding period to make sure this was actually a successful operation.

Procedure would be as follows -

Sherriff hires and vets deputies, they are given training and limited tools to use for flagging and researching bots. The Sherriff gets the full set of tools, and acts as the power user and the liaison to PC for this.

When a deputy finds an unidentified bot, they tag it, then the investigation stats, and once all the associated bots are found, and everything is properly logged, the hammer is brought down, and the funds go into “the evidence room” for a 7 day hold.

If the botter is found to be a botte, in the end, then the deputy gets 1% of the alchemica, and the rest is burned. Large catches could yield cartridges, and rentalOperator positions, as these players will be taking time out of their collecting activities, to handle bots, and would be ideally suited to be a rental manager that finds you non-bot players to rent.

In the end, I would like to see this create a small middle class position inside the scholars, where the most engaged and community minded ones, are finding and killing bots, while also finding good players of people to rent to, thereby making the community stronger for all involved.

The Sherriff would have the same opportunities, and is in direct control of the power tools, so they should be finding even more than their team. In addition, the Sherriff would be tasked with whitelisting people who keep getting flagged as bots, once they are determined to be legit. As payment for this, they get 1XP for a gotchi, for every person they help that doesn’t have same problem again. These can be paid out any time other XP is being paid out.

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I like the idea, but they would definitely need to get more than 1% haha. Best case scenario, if they had 250 KEK, they would get 2.5 kek for their efforts lol. But even that scenario would never happen, no where close to it.

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No, they just caught a bot daddy, and nuked 20 to 100 bots at once. add a nice X to that :smiley:

If you can knock out a daddy a day, you are making an extra 10-50 kek a day, and keeping them out of yourr zone, too.