I know the game is free, and I also know many people are making fuck tons of accounts to resell. However, do you guys really want to 24/7 this game going 60km/hr hopping around the country? I feel eventually your account as well as any accounts you've sold will be banned. Maybe they won't, but in the future new accounts will probably be banned very, very fast after doing this. Niantic is clearly focusing on the servers and keeping the game simply running. However once they've rolled out features, gotten the game out in each country, I bet the first thing they will do is create the ban hammer software.
It would be SO easy for them. Ban people playing more than x amount of hours per day (because who walks around 12 hours a day in the same location, practically no one.) Ban people getting over x amount of XP per hour, since there is literally a certain level in the game that only botters/cheaters can be at, since no legit player has probably been able to reach this certain level.
IMHO, from an ethical standpoint since I'm selling the accounts my routine is as follows:
-ONLY walking distance, running distance for 1-2 hours because obviously we aren't running marathons every day.
-Botting for only 4-6 hours max a day, in the same city, and next day of botting move to a different location in city.
-NO geohopping, and if I do geohop, allow for travel time and probably only change states or countries once a month.
This game (if niantic gets their shit together) should be super easy to create a ban system for. With geolocation, speedometers in phones. etc., they shouldn't have a hard time banning people.
I am no programmer so I am only guessing what is possible, but Pokemon GO is HIGHLY competitive. Couple that with the fact that cheaters have an ungodly advantage in this game (since game time basically translates to how much you walk and explore IRL, with botters not having to do any of this.) If I play you in WoW, you may have a bit better gear than me, but there are still many things I an do to beat you. In Pokemon, I can't do shit if you walk up to my gym at lvl 30 with 3000CP pokemon less than a month after the games release. This means that cheating has really bad implications for this game, worse than most games. Another thing is that the game has mainstream appeal and popularity, so it's not just a group of sweaty nerds that are angry about bots, it could potentially be a huge player base of the game, especially if they start to realize that cheaters are taking over their gyms.
Another thing: soft bans. Niantic already detects GPS spoofing the form of a soft ban. I am assuming that this is the only thing they've had time to implement, and once they have a better system in place these will become REAL bans. This is what I think Niantic is doing with soft bans: "hey, we know your botting/spoofing, so here's a soft ban. We don't have a fail safe system in place yet, so we can't determine 100% if you are actually botting."
I have botted many games and have been banned many times, so I am just forecasting what I believe will happen. I think as it stands, Niantic has nothing to stop botters. I think you could do whatever the fuck you want and get away with it (for the time being). These are the glory days for Pokemon go botting. A few months from now, I think we will all be botting much smarter to avoid the bans that will inevitably happen. I can only hope that they won't be able to sniff out botting programs such as Pokefarmer and only ban based on play time and GPS spoofing, etc.
It would be SO easy for them. Ban people playing more than x amount of hours per day (because who walks around 12 hours a day in the same location, practically no one.) Ban people getting over x amount of XP per hour, since there is literally a certain level in the game that only botters/cheaters can be at, since no legit player has probably been able to reach this certain level.
IMHO, from an ethical standpoint since I'm selling the accounts my routine is as follows:
-ONLY walking distance, running distance for 1-2 hours because obviously we aren't running marathons every day.
-Botting for only 4-6 hours max a day, in the same city, and next day of botting move to a different location in city.
-NO geohopping, and if I do geohop, allow for travel time and probably only change states or countries once a month.
This game (if niantic gets their shit together) should be super easy to create a ban system for. With geolocation, speedometers in phones. etc., they shouldn't have a hard time banning people.
I am no programmer so I am only guessing what is possible, but Pokemon GO is HIGHLY competitive. Couple that with the fact that cheaters have an ungodly advantage in this game (since game time basically translates to how much you walk and explore IRL, with botters not having to do any of this.) If I play you in WoW, you may have a bit better gear than me, but there are still many things I an do to beat you. In Pokemon, I can't do shit if you walk up to my gym at lvl 30 with 3000CP pokemon less than a month after the games release. This means that cheating has really bad implications for this game, worse than most games. Another thing is that the game has mainstream appeal and popularity, so it's not just a group of sweaty nerds that are angry about bots, it could potentially be a huge player base of the game, especially if they start to realize that cheaters are taking over their gyms.
Another thing: soft bans. Niantic already detects GPS spoofing the form of a soft ban. I am assuming that this is the only thing they've had time to implement, and once they have a better system in place these will become REAL bans. This is what I think Niantic is doing with soft bans: "hey, we know your botting/spoofing, so here's a soft ban. We don't have a fail safe system in place yet, so we can't determine 100% if you are actually botting."
I have botted many games and have been banned many times, so I am just forecasting what I believe will happen. I think as it stands, Niantic has nothing to stop botters. I think you could do whatever the fuck you want and get away with it (for the time being). These are the glory days for Pokemon go botting. A few months from now, I think we will all be botting much smarter to avoid the bans that will inevitably happen. I can only hope that they won't be able to sniff out botting programs such as Pokefarmer and only ban based on play time and GPS spoofing, etc.
