Panagrammic
(?)Community Member
Offline
- Posted: Thu, 03 Mar 2011 20:39:16 +0000
Thanks for the feedback. There were many good suggestions, and we've made some changes as a result:
- we've changed the CAPTCHA frequency to 1 in 4. We'll try this level for a while and see how people feel about it -- we can raise it and lower it as needed.
- since users with slower Internet connections / computers were complaining about missing tanks all the time, we've both slightly increased the number of maximum players in a game, as well as slightly increased the glow time.
Short FAQ:
Why not put the CAPTCHA at the end?
That is a good suggestion and something we will look at. However, the way the game is currently set up, the gold is granted at the end of the game, so a CAPTCHA after you've played would be too late to do anything.
Also: putting the CAPTCHA at the front of the game stops some classes of bots from jumping into the game -- which means it's easier to get tanks, since you don't have a bunch of bots jumping in before you.
Bots don't exist!
They do. I hate to give these guys more views, so I won't direct link, but a ten-second search will reveal tons of booty grab bots, with accompanying videos. We have a bunch of these in house and have confirmed that they do in fact work (or rather, used to work).
Why so sudden!?
We've been saying for a while that we have problem with BG -- you can see previous AtAs and such -- but we've seen a recent sharp spike in the amount of botted gold, and it has become a problem. Fixing bots is a labor intensive process by our amazing but overworked mod team: not only do we have to go through and ban the bots, but we have to undo all the transactions that the bot completed. This means going through trade logs, holding trading passes on people that received botted gold, so on and so forth. Stopping bots at the time of gold grant with a CAPTCHA is far more effective and a better use of everyone's time.
The CAPTCHAs are too hard!? I don't speak Greek / Russian / mathematical symbols
We get our CAPTCHAs from a service, Recaptcha. The CAPTCHAs are actually from OCRed texts -- so every time you solve one, you're actually contributing a little bit to digitizing old works of art.
As many people have noted, one of the words in a Recaptcha CAPTCHA are known, and one is unknown. Whatever you enter for the unknown word is fine. So, if you see a word that is Greek / a fraction / whatever, you can enter whatever you want for it.
Why are you blaming tank owners for inflation!?
Actually, we aren't -- but we are blaming the bots for exacerbating the inflation problem. To some extent, however, tank owners were counting botted gold as their standard earnings, and I think that's exaggerating the effect of this.
Is this the final solution?
No, we're more than willing to adjust as necessary -- what would make both tank owners and tank players happier, but still give us the capability of keeping botted gold out of the economy?
My direct link no longer grants gold
Your direct link should start with /tank. There were some people that were using various direct links (i.e., to store preview) that aren't a supported configuration if you're going to be playing BG.
- we've changed the CAPTCHA frequency to 1 in 4. We'll try this level for a while and see how people feel about it -- we can raise it and lower it as needed.
- since users with slower Internet connections / computers were complaining about missing tanks all the time, we've both slightly increased the number of maximum players in a game, as well as slightly increased the glow time.
Short FAQ:
Why not put the CAPTCHA at the end?
That is a good suggestion and something we will look at. However, the way the game is currently set up, the gold is granted at the end of the game, so a CAPTCHA after you've played would be too late to do anything.
Also: putting the CAPTCHA at the front of the game stops some classes of bots from jumping into the game -- which means it's easier to get tanks, since you don't have a bunch of bots jumping in before you.
Bots don't exist!
They do. I hate to give these guys more views, so I won't direct link, but a ten-second search will reveal tons of booty grab bots, with accompanying videos. We have a bunch of these in house and have confirmed that they do in fact work (or rather, used to work).
Why so sudden!?
We've been saying for a while that we have problem with BG -- you can see previous AtAs and such -- but we've seen a recent sharp spike in the amount of botted gold, and it has become a problem. Fixing bots is a labor intensive process by our amazing but overworked mod team: not only do we have to go through and ban the bots, but we have to undo all the transactions that the bot completed. This means going through trade logs, holding trading passes on people that received botted gold, so on and so forth. Stopping bots at the time of gold grant with a CAPTCHA is far more effective and a better use of everyone's time.
The CAPTCHAs are too hard!? I don't speak Greek / Russian / mathematical symbols
We get our CAPTCHAs from a service, Recaptcha. The CAPTCHAs are actually from OCRed texts -- so every time you solve one, you're actually contributing a little bit to digitizing old works of art.
As many people have noted, one of the words in a Recaptcha CAPTCHA are known, and one is unknown. Whatever you enter for the unknown word is fine. So, if you see a word that is Greek / a fraction / whatever, you can enter whatever you want for it.
Why are you blaming tank owners for inflation!?
Actually, we aren't -- but we are blaming the bots for exacerbating the inflation problem. To some extent, however, tank owners were counting botted gold as their standard earnings, and I think that's exaggerating the effect of this.
Is this the final solution?
No, we're more than willing to adjust as necessary -- what would make both tank owners and tank players happier, but still give us the capability of keeping botted gold out of the economy?
My direct link no longer grants gold
Your direct link should start with /tank. There were some people that were using various direct links (i.e., to store preview) that aren't a supported configuration if you're going to be playing BG.
