Too many macros and bots Bots and macros

Cause ID in-bots · Primary owner Game team (Server development) · Also Infra team (Network infrastructure)

Open the interactive card with figures and simulations →

Bots send requests far more often than people do and eat into server capacity.

Why Large numbers of bots connected, farming, moving, and trading nonstop → Effect Server processing load and DB load go up → On screen A specific farming spot or the whole server slows down (slow motion, input lag)

Symptoms: Slow motion, Input lag
Factors: Stall
Who’s affected: Whole server, Specific zone/channel
When: Always, Evening peak hours
Owner: Primary owner Game team (Server development) · Also Infra team (Network infrastructure)
Game team action items: Detect bots, rate-limit requests per account and character.
Infra team action items: Rate-limit connections and requests per IP (loosely, since many people share one IP at PC bangs and on mobile networks), block bot IP ranges at the firewall/WAF.
On the graph: Outliers only · Requests per second per account and IP
Where to look: Distribution and top list of requests per second per account and character from game server logs. Without code metrics, requests per IP at the firewall/WAF
Confirmed if: A handful of accounts or IPs send requests nonstop at rates no human could produce, and limiting them visibly cuts server load
Ruled out if: Requests are spread evenly across accounts: points to normal player growth (tick overrun, autoscaling delay)
Check with: Game server or client logs and metrics

Sources

Using rate-based rule statements in AWS WAF AWS
Counts requests per key such as IP, and rate-limits when there are too many within a set time window
RFC 6269: Issues with IP Address Sharing IETF
When many subscribers share one IP, blocking or limiting by IP also blocks other users

Too many macros and bots Bots and macros

Sources

See also

Same layer: L13 Server architecture and operations

Same symptom (Slow motion), other layers