PokeMMO uses many techniques in order to reduce the effectiveness of cheating in-game. This is due to constant, organized efforts from large-scale cheating operations intending to sell gold, monsters, and accounts for real money.
As described in How We Handle Rule-breaking in PokeMMO, we use a blend of automated and manual processes to handle these cheating groups. While we can usually identify players who are cheating quickly, we don’t always ban players immediately after we’ve done so. This allows us to trace how money flows and effectively shut down real money trading rings.
Rarely, these automated processes can affect normal players. Although this article will not detail all efforts we perform to curb cheating, it explains things you might see in-game, such as CAPTCHAs.
A common theme of bots is to park themselves in one area of the game, then Thief for a certain type of item forever, such as Heart Scales. Other times, they might use moves like Pay Day for extremely long periods.
In these cases, an automated CAPTCHA may be issued to players farming for items or money after an excessive amount is gathered within a short period of time – For example, $250,000-worth of in-game items within a short period (1 day).
When these CAPTCHAs are issued, if a player fails them, their returns on Pay Day may be turned off for a short period, then their account flagged for review by a Game Master.
Another common type of botting is to create a character, then run around on an early Route until they’re banned, seeking Shiny monsters. Because Shiny monsters are so valuable in-game, and because cheating groups are typically running many accounts at the same time, this type of botting can be extremely effective for profiteers.
To reduce the effectiveness of this type of cheating, we may turn off the ability to encounter a Shiny monster if a player doesn’t try to progress their storyline after a few dozen hours.
This type of restriction does not apply to players who have completed 8 badges in at least one region.