One of the biggest problems that I have seen with the catalog right now is botting of really limited items, it frustrates people who wait patiently only to see an item sold out in a few seconds.
A Captcha should be introduced to prevent this stuff happening in the future, it’s getting ridiculous.
I know, botters could always just have the Captcha come up on their screen ready to solve but that doesn’t warrant not introducing this, it is technically feasible that botters will still be able to act faster than a normal user but it will hinder them. And on the balance of preventing botters buying out an item in under a second vs the user having to click a box marked ‘Im not a robot.’ I’d say the balance tips in favour of preventing botters.
I see what you are saying but I don’t think this would reduce profits. Instead of an item selling out in 5 seconds it would sell out in a minute. The money is still there, just not instant (and a lot more fair)
I’m pretty sure I’ve heard “Why bother because all you’re doing is adding an extra step?”. This is true, but it requires the purchaser to physically be at their computer. Anyone who isn’t on can’t complete the captcha, so that gets rid of a number of bots, and for the people who are on, they’re moved onto equal footing with people who have a notifier, so the botting issue wouldn’t really be as apparent anymore. Even though it just adds an extra step, I imagine it’d still be pretty effective. Especially for PMs as well.
I think a Captcha would be a great addition. There’s just one thing that I think has been overlooked (and I only just remembered this) - it’s the fact that you can also use an in-game purchase prompt + notifier with HttpService to buy these items. That would have to be addressed as well, otherwise it would still be as simple as placing an autoclicker over where the Buy button would appear. Not sure how easy it would be to integrate a captcha system into the ROBLOX client.
Or of course there’s the simpler option of just disabling in-game purchases of new limiteds (though this would hinder places which make legitimate use of the feature, like Trade Hangout and its notifier system)
And a captcha should definitely be used for messaging as well if a person is sending a decent amount of messages within a certain timeframe.
I think, in addition to this, they should publish the items an hour in advance, and have it countdown for that hour until it is sold. Then everyone is literally on equal footing, since being there earlier because you have a notifier won’t really increase your chances of getting the item so significantly.
I don’t understand how they would lose revenue. Different people that are not bots would buy the items instead. The money is still existing no one is hurt except for botting.
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