Question about Browser-Based Games

[hallsofvallhalla]

hmm i can understand that. I seen where they had wow and EQ bots like that. They would auto farm and stuff. I can imagine how much easier a browser style game would be to script though. I don't know, if that was the case it seems like there are far easier ways of fixing it. Like a number captcha for each session right before a certain action.

And bots are easily caught with captchas. Like if you have a space game, you place a pic of ships in space with planets then ask how many ships are flying. No bot is going to solve that. 3 wrong answers bans account for 1 week or something.

[OldRod]

But too many captchas can be annoying - especially if they are not easy to read.

I tried out one game last week where every single screen that allowed user input (which was pretty much every screen) had a captcha on it. And they were light colored text on a light background, with 1000 random lines drawn through it... extremely hard to read (at least for an old guy like me )

Captchas are ok, but it's easy to overdo it

[hallsofvallhalla]

eeww, no i meant just one per session. As soon as they logout they destroy that session and will need another captcha. The best captchas are pictures. How many people wearing reds shirts. ect....

[Jackolantern]

eeww, no i meant just one per session. As soon as they logout they destroy that session and will need another captcha. The best captchas are pictures. How many people wearing reds shirts. ect....

The problem with Captchas is that there are services that you can link to as kind of a human-moderated web service. You create your script, and send the Captcha image to the service. A human sits at a desk all day and types in Captchas, one after another. The user of the service then pays by the entry for the service, and it is actually quite cheap from what I have heard because each employee can do hundreds per hour.

So just one per session is not going to be effective against people who really want to bot your game (they could either use one of those services, or just do it by hand then turn on the bot), but adding enough to make it annoying for the botters can make it intolerable for the legit players. Captcha probably has a place in a full-blown BBMMO security system, but it is far from perfect and needs many more safe-guards.

[OldRod]

eeww, no i meant just one per session. As soon as they logout they destroy that session and will need another captcha. The best captchas are pictures. How many people wearing reds shirts. ect....

The problem with Captchas is that there are services that you can link to as kind of a human-moderated web service. You create your script, and send the Captcha image to the service. A human sits at a desk all day and types in Captchas, one after another. The user of the service then pays by the entry for the service, and it is actually quite cheap from what I have heard because each employee can do hundreds per hour.

So just one per session is not going to be effective against people who really want to bot your game (they could either use one of those services, or just do it by hand then turn on the bot), but adding enough to make it annoying for the botters can make it intolerable for the legit players. Captcha probably has a place in a full-blown BBMMO security system, but it is far from perfect and needs many more safe-guards.

Wow... and I thought *I* had no life

[Jackolantern]

eeww, no i meant just one per session. As soon as they logout they destroy that session and will need another captcha. The best captchas are pictures. How many people wearing reds shirts. ect....

The problem with Captchas is that there are services that you can link to as kind of a human-moderated web service. You create your script, and send the Captcha image to the service. A human sits at a desk all day and types in Captchas, one after another. The user of the service then pays by the entry for the service, and it is actually quite cheap from what I have heard because each employee can do hundreds per hour.

So just one per session is not going to be effective against people who really want to bot your game (they could either use one of those services, or just do it by hand then turn on the bot), but adding enough to make it annoying for the botters can make it intolerable for the legit players. Captcha probably has a place in a full-blown BBMMO security system, but it is far from perfect and needs many more safe-guards.

Wow... and I thought *I* had no life

Well, those people are getting paid for doing that. It sure does sound like an awful job, though lol.

[hallsofvallhalla]

hmm it seems to be a easy fix though. I don''t see how you couldn't defeat a bot, well some are so persistant that there may be no beating. I would only hope that one of my games would be popular enough that people not only write bot scripts but pay people to get through the captchas!
As long as you put your captcha's in random pages and places I am not sure how the script would know its a captcha. How would you send a captcha to someone else? That doesn't make sense to me. You have session variables and quit possibly post variables that can not be sent. You would have to send the question and the captcha then send the answer back. A simple multiple boxes and 2 different pics would fix that.

Its much like my anti bot method we have on this site when you register. I have two password boxes and ask the user to agree to not to agree. It confuses the heck out the bot and we have had less than 1 bot in months. Though it could be easily defeated as long as someone wrote a script tailored to this site.

You could also pay the players to answer captchas to make them less of a pain. Answer this captcha and receive 5 gold!

[Perry]

You could also pay the players to answer captchas to make them less of a pain. Answer this captcha and receive 5 gold!

Runescape had little puzzles the would randomly appear. They were a bit of a pain but not that bad and you would get something for finishing them. Last time I player, which was several years ago. They had several one where someone gave you a box and told you to pick the triangle or circle and you would get a reward. It was nice when you were low leveled but after awhile the cheap prizes were just get dropped.

[Jackolantern]

hmm it seems to be a easy fix though. I don''t see how you couldn't defeat a bot, well some are so persistant that there may be no beating. I would only hope that one of my games would be popular enough that people not only write bot scripts but pay people to get through the captchas!
As long as you put your captcha's in random pages and places I am not sure how the script would know its a captcha. How would you send a captcha to someone else? That doesn't make sense to me. You have session variables and quit possibly post variables that can not be sent. You would have to send the question and the captcha then send the answer back. A simple multiple boxes and 2 different pics would fix that.

I don't know exactly how it is done, but it may have to do with screen captures or something. I have never made one or used one. I just know someone who did, as they were trying to bot one of those stupid browser-based game sites that sends prizes lol.

However, the Important thing is that they can get through the captchas. Bots do it thousands of times a day.