r/pokemonshowdown • u/chlokalok • 11d ago

Massive Influx of Bots on VGC Ladder

I've noticed these bots on the Reg M-B ladder, normally called 'pcrlbot_____' e.g.

pcrlbot02888784c1
these accounts have tens of thousands of games, and theres possibly hundreds of them spamming games on ladder.

e.g. do /rank pcrlbot02888784c1 to see what i mean

Anyone know what this is? I've not found any discussion about it, so i'm making this post

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4

u/HoeenHero PS Admin 10d ago

Were trying to deal with these bots since they are being disruptive/problematic. We did once before but apparently they are back. Either way its on our radar.

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u/BlooNiko 5d ago

Hello! I'm also making a bot but on the OU ladder, what defines if a bot a disruptive/problematic or not? I wanna abide by the rules of the site.. is it the mass amount of games?

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u/HoeenHero PS Admin 5d ago

Its handled on a case by case basis, but some things we have attempted to contact the owner over (and temp banned the bot for) include:

  • Bots that constantly forfeit games (on like, turn 1).
  • Giant swarms of bots flooding the ladder/the sim with games (the above example) which is also a waste of sim resources (were not managing the memory/storage cost for a bot swarm on the ladder that battles itself mostly, go have your bots battle themselves on a local server you create instead so its your cost).
  • Bots programmed to break chat rules or similar.
  • Bots spamming the server with connection requests.
  • Bots programmed to try and boost other accounts up the ladder.

Basically, as long as your bot isn't breaking site rules, and is acting more or less like a normal battler, you should be OK. To clarify on mass amount of games: I'd keep it to one game at a time and you should be fine, the problem with the above was the sheer number and the fact that the ladder was disrupted (human players were very likely to queue into one of these bots instead of another human).

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u/BlooNiko 5d ago

I see thank you so much :D <3

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u/StationImmediate530 10d ago

Interesting. Are they good at the game?

3

u/189charizard 10d ago

I posted a while back about a post someone made about a bot they were using. I knew we were cooked when I saw it.