Yes, it takes some human oversight to fight botters, but that's unfortunately going to be a given for any system that isn't hugely punishing to specifically only the non-botting players. I think most people agree autobans for tripping automatic flags is ridiculous, so there will have to be some kind of oversight anyway.

Botters don't care about captchas, they will never see them, and their scripts can solve them rapidly. :P FR is a perfect example of this-- the captchas stopped the bots for a few months, and then never again. Neither do they care about being permabanned, because most of them aren't playing to play the game-- it's usually a real-money-trading issue at the core, where they are farming up premium currency to exchange for a real life currency at a rate lower than whatever site's own exchange rate is(because it's all raw profit to them), and they aren't particularly concerned about the value of the things they are farming, just that they offload them quickly to an unsuspecting userbase. The only really effective way to fight that is human oversight, unfortunately. There is no automagic cure that isn't more debilitating to the legit players.

Conversely; your players that need accessibility devices will be harshly affected (there are more accessibility cases hindered by captchas than merely needing something spoken aloud), and the only players sitting at the computer screen to see them and be bothered by them are the people playing campaign fairly.

I know oversight is definitely an issue with LW! That sucks! But Captchas belong back in the 90's, when they still barely worked. >:P

Edit: I really do sympathize with people and games that are affected harshly by botting, it genuinely sucks, and it does play havoc on game economies in ways that are harmful. Especially with games that don't have the most active and responsive teams to deal with it. But I'm never gonna support something that trashes the user experience of the people playing legit, when it doesn't even work to deter the problem to begin with. It will stop a couple script kiddies, maybe, but so will the knowledge that someone even has even bare-basic campaign logs to look at.

Support.

Any word from the devs on this would actually be super appreciated, too, since most suggestion posts seem like screaming into the void lately with no staff interaction on them. I find it difficult to be more upset with the people who are botting than LW at this point since there seems to be absolutely no logs to catch someone using a (easily accessible) script at the moment because it seems like people can do it endlessly and just stop if CAPCHAS are introduced with no repercussions because there is no reviewing logs. It's embarrassing that someone can run campaign for 2 weeks 24/7 and there's no system to in place to stop them or even catch them doing it after the fact.

Agree with this in part, but I also feel compelled to state that I find botting for wild wolves abhorrent and wildly (pun intended) disrespectful to players that are grinding hard in the campaign.

I will never never ever be more upset with the devs than I will be at the people who are botting. Ever. Not even if the devs sold LW to Rumpelstiltskin or chucked it into the bottom of a deep deep lake.

It takes me 4+ hours of grinding on average to befriend a WW, and to know that there are cheaters on-site presumably collecting/selling/trading wolves that have been unfairly acquired makes me so mad. As for the scenario of someone running campaign 24/7 for two weeks, I am curious to know where this information is coming from? Was this something that was alleged on site in forums that I missed or was this alleged off-site? Is there proof of the activity occurring? And most importantly.....

what indicates that this is an easily accessible script? That allegation is very concerning to me. If it is easily accessible, how prevalent is this issue exactly? How is it accessible and who are the people that are sharing/spreading it? The implications of 'easy access' scripts are really awful...

Was someone caught and banned for it? I was genuinely out of the loop and completely ignorant to the botting issue until yesterday when this suggestion thread was made.

Also, I want to clarify that I am not attacking the OP that I am quoting at all about their own feelings towards people botting or towards the devs. I am definitely upset, but mainly at the botters and at LW for not taking more action to discourage and put a stop to botting. My upset feelings are not directed towards OP.

Also adding to keep this post relevant to the suggestion: I support the idea of loggs that can be flagged for abnormally long and *consistent* periods of grinding/clicking.

Good Monday, Lorfolk.

The Lorwolf Team are aware of the rising concern of botting in the campaign and are working on

appropriate tools using direct human observation to address this situation whilst avoiding impacting legitimate players. This may take some time but is our number one priority in solving. Once these tools are complete and thoroughly tested, we will be rolling out account locks to those discovered to be botting.

Thank you all for your important feedback and input on this matter.

@PZM

I totally understand why you chose to not mention that here! I just want to clarify that I was quoting someone else who in a previous post in this forum thread mentioned the "2 week" incident. I was so crushed to hear about it and was massively confused as to what happened and how it happened which is why I referenced it in my earlier post. I would actually really appreciate a DM if you're ok with it. I The op (person who I quoted) has already reached out to offer clarification, but I really appreciate you offering to DM as well! Thank you so much!

And Quiche, thank you so much for giving a statement and for letting us know that the LW team is working on appropriate tools with direct human observation to address the situation. I for one am in 100% support of rolling out account locks to those discovered to be botting.