The other day, I was leveling my new alt just outside in Verteron Fort when I saw 4 Gladiator toons running all in a row out of the town named Rafillaax, Rafilleax, Rafillaix and Rafillaox.  When they reached a certain point, one would break off and began a random search and destroy pattern while the 3 remaining ones advanced further on only to drop off the third and then the second so on...

A classic bot scenario.

I was considering to report them, when I panned around to see the huge, bright red, 13th level elite crab named "Paskigue" on my tail.  We affectionately call him "Crab Norris" because he is far tougher than what his level suggests, for even toons at 25th level have felt the fury of Crab Norris and perished.

While his counterclockwise path around the town covers 90% of the zone with very eratic and hard to predict  jerking course changes, he is easy to see and easy to avoid for those who are paying attention, and since I saw him I easily evaded him.

The bots, however... the first one attacked him and died fast, then Crab Norris plowed the second into the dirt and then the third.  The fourth one simply stood there and was crushed.

Watching this was a sort of epiphany for me, for I realized that Verteron Fort zone was the only zone that didn't regularly have bots and now I knew why: Crab Norris.

All that NCSoft would have to do is put a super elite patrol mob like Crab Norris in every zone and the number of bots would be greatly reduced because they would get repeatedly mowed down.

For us folks who are actually playing, the mob would be easily seen and avoided if we were paying attention.  Bots would get mowed and players would soon learn the "Environmental Awareness" skills that will serve them well in the later PVP levels.

Worried about Crab Norris getting hunted?  Don't.  He respawns quickly and doesn't drop squat.  Effectively, Crab Norris was born to be the ultimate bot destroyer.

I vote for Crab Norris to be the new sherrif in Elysia, for he is far more effective than all those cyberspecialists NCSoft says they are employing.  I wager he works for far less money than those specialists too. 

I like your style :D

That's actually a pretty good idea.

Originally posted by comerb

That's actually a pretty good idea.

Yes, thats an awesome idea. Keep Crab Norris on a very random patrol path and let him gank all the bots. It would be a simple solution and would help squelch botters for a while, allowing NCsoft to figure out a perm solution.

OMG I can't believe someone actually used my pet name for that damn crab! Back in beta I started calling him Crab Norris for the obvious Chuck Norris implication. I hated that crab, used to kill my toons trying to level, lol. I started calling him Crab Norris on the 3 servers I play on when the pre-launch started off and it was a immediate hit. Everyone loved it and started calling it Crab Norris. Some even suggested having NCSoft rename the crab, Crab Norris, which would be some pretty funny shit. But to the point, yeah the OP has a great idea of putting Crab Norris's at all the spots that bots like to farm. Would absolutely work great. Just make sure to make him powerful enough to mow down the damn bots. :) Good idea dude!! Let Crab Norris whack the bots, roflmao.

The only problem I can see with this idea is:

The bot programmers are smart cookies. After a few days maybe a week they will know what all the mobs are called. They will patch their botting programs to constantly scan for the "bot killer" mobs and if one is located near them then the bot just runs away from the mob until it cannot locate it any more. It wouldn't be that hard. Some of the bots you can get for Aion actually scan for other players and if one is following you for too long it runs to a different location of just does nothing to "avoid" looking suspicious.

Its a good thought and would work for a while but the bot creators will just work around it. So in reality you will still have a bot problem.

Originally posted by fyerwall

Originally posted by comerb

That's actually a pretty good idea.

 

Yes, thats an awesome idea. Keep Crab Norris on a very random patrol path and let him gank all the bots. It would be a simple solution and would help squelch botters for a while, allowing NCsoft to figure out a perm solution.

Yes, my thoughts too.

I know that eventually the botters would come up with a way to tell Crab Norris from the other mobs and have a "run away" script, but until then it would be great.  Besides it makes the botters work harder.

For those bots who can evade Crab Norris, I have another card up my sleave:  Technology from from 1990's consol games.  Specificly Breath of Fire.

In that game series, there were normal mobs that fought and acted like normal until it reached a certain threshold of hit points.  At that point a message would read, "Monster X is getting mad" and it would morph into a whole lot of WTF PWN on you.  You had 3 options: run, tough it out, or die.

The same could happen in an MMO.  A normal mob could have a small chance of digi-volving into something elite and ugly when it was reduced to 33% HP or less.  There would be a bubble message (as in no sent message to tip off the bot) and you could actually watch the monster transform... or you could run while it transformed and evade it. 

Bots would get rolled. And those in groups could tough it out defeating the mob and get more XP and even more loot; whereas the soloers would simply have to run.  A win-win for all camps except the bots.

Originally posted by Nov8tr

OMG I can't believe someone actually used my pet name for that damn crab! Back in beta I started calling him Crab Norris for the obvious Chuck Norris implication. I hated that crab, used to kill my toons trying to level, lol. I started calling him Crab Norris on the 3 servers I play on when the pre-launch started off and it was a immediate hit. Everyone loved it and started calling it Crab Norris. Some even suggested having NCSoft rename the crab, Crab Norris, which would be some pretty funny shit. But to the point, yeah the OP has a great idea of putting Crab Norris's at all the spots that bots like to farm. Would absolutely work great. Just make sure to make him powerful enough to mow down the damn bots. :) Good idea dude!! Let Crab Norris whack the bots, roflmao.

Well, if you came up with that name I salute you!

I laughed pretty hard when I first heard it a while back.

And yes, he taught me that valuable lesson of "Pay attention stupid" to me too on my first Aion toon.

Yeah don't underestimate Crab Norris. He is so bad he can kick his own ass. He is smart enough to figure out a new way to kick bot's asses. :) He could morph into Super Crab Norris and kick their bot program into Fallen Earth!! Crab Norris rules!!

Originally posted by AnimusChaser

The only problem I can see with this idea is:

The bot programmers are smart cookies. After a few days maybe a week they will know what all the mobs are called. They will patch their botting programs to constantly scan for the "bot killer" mobs and if one is located near them then the bot just runs away from the mob until it cannot locate it any more. It wouldn't be that hard. Some of the bots you can get for Aion actually scan for other players and if one is following you for too long it runs to a different location of just does nothing to "avoid" looking suspicious.

Its a good thought and would work for a while but the bot creators will just work around it. So in reality you will still have a bot problem.

Aside from the "Digi-volving mob" idea I made in another post, I wonder if giving Crab Norris random Aliases would help?

That way, scanning the mobs' name would fail.

Likewise, Crab Norris could get a posse or some deputies where random elite mobs make random appearances to zones and then vanish only to reincarnate under a different name and guise?

ah just like guest stars on the show eh?

When I first started playing I assumed there was a boss mob like this in every area.  I thought it was a great idea to curb the botters.

I was mildly disappointed when I didn't see any elite roaming mobs in any other areas as I leveled.  Would have been a really good idea for all the reasons the OP mentioned.

Wouldn't it be easier for players to be able to simply bash eachother's heads in?

See a bot? Kill it!

On the other hand........See a random player? Kill it!

Hm.

Originally posted by Dameonk

When I first started playing I assumed there was a boss mob like this in every area.  I thought it was a great idea to curb the botters.

I was mildly disappointed when I didn't see any elite roaming mobs in any other areas as I leveled.  Would have been a really good idea for all the reasons the OP mentioned.

Me too.  I was hoping for such in all the zones.

Aside from the bot hunting benefits, such mobs give a player something to aspire to:  The day you can solo it.

Originally posted by BizkitNL

Wouldn't it be easier for players to be able to simply bash eachother's heads in?

See a bot? Kill it!

On the other hand........See a random player? Kill it!

Hm.

True...

I have often wished that "Autoreporthunting" enabled a FFA PVP mode where you could kill the bot.  Sadly, it is not to be. So, for PVE carebear land, we need Crab Norris to be the law.

Wait wait wait...Tyvolus1 was just saying in another thread that there are no bots in Aion.

Are you guys...are you...lying!?!  Or imagining bots?

Originally posted by Malifiss

Wait wait wait...Tyvolus1 was just saying in another thread that there are no bots in Aion.

Are you guys...are you...lying!?!  Or imagining bots?

Well, my imagination must be pretty damn lucid.

To be sure, the gold spam has been greatly reduced.  Yesterday, I blocked 2 after about 6 hours of play and that was the first two in 2 days... not perfect but a vast improvement from launch when spam was all you saw.

As far as farm bots go... they seem to less in number, but they are still there.

Anyone who says Aion does not have bots is in denial.

It is a good game and I enjoy it, but it isn't the Holy Grail of gaming and it has its flaws, and bots is one of those flaws.

I don't play this game... But do want to some day. And my idea would work, so I don't mind posting it and let the world have peace... (My version of world peace) So here goes my plan "Bot Stopper 6000".

It is really quite a simple plan, and seems to work mostly on the internet. Captcha pictures! Whenever a character, ANY char leaves a town, you will be presented with a picture that you must type in a sequence of alphanumerics to answer what it is. It can be as short as 5 chars long. And unlike the captcha pictures we ALL have had to SUFFER to figure out what the heck they really are... These would be EASILY seen and deciphered pictures. No possible way to not know what is shown.

Altho I would suggest an audio version of this, perhaps like the game of "Simon" had 4 color panels to press and each made a different sound. That way you could have a small tiny minigame to play on your way out of all towns. I don't know if there can be a bot that can listen to audio (of course this kinda isn't good for our def players.) But the color changing random matching thing or a picture will work just fine. I don't believe a bot could be programmed to play a randomized minigame as well as all the things it needs to do, but I could be wrong...

This should be implemented in ALL MMO's that have a bot problem. And by that I mean, 1 bot is too many bots already and is a problem!

END

FOX

Originally posted by Korhindi

Originally posted by AnimusChaser

The only problem I can see with this idea is:

The bot programmers are smart cookies. After a few days maybe a week they will know what all the mobs are called. They will patch their botting programs to constantly scan for the "bot killer" mobs and if one is located near them then the bot just runs away from the mob until it cannot locate it any more. It wouldn't be that hard. Some of the bots you can get for Aion actually scan for other players and if one is following you for too long it runs to a different location of just does nothing to "avoid" looking suspicious.

Its a good thought and would work for a while but the bot creators will just work around it. So in reality you will still have a bot problem.

 

Aside from the "Digi-volving mob" idea I made in another post, I wonder if giving Crab Norris random Aliases would help?

That way, scanning the mobs' name would fail.

Likewise, Crab Norris could get a posse or some deputies where random elite mobs make random appearances to zones and then vanish only to reincarnate under a different name and guise?

Alittle packet sniffing to get the mobs entry id., would break that idea.

how about automatically disconnecting the players if their mouses and keyboards aren't active in a 15 minutes time frame?(unless in town sitting their asses).Let's not be complicated, but then Aion devs aren't so smart to start with.