This would be most retarded thing ever, do yo realize, that modern neural network based image recognition software is capable of achieving very high percentage of successful captcha solving? sometimes even higher than people.
There is no solid permanent solution versus bots, server based pattern based antibot was successful in PathOfExile and battlefield (they use it for anticheat tho).
One problem is that code of the game in written in non-native programming language, making it really easy to reverse, but it is still not an excuse that the bot (at least main) is packet-based, it is kind of telling about amateur level of development, at least of some part of the game (yes guys, witch hunting is not really, a good solution). This is weak idea, because scale of the game and people playing is only going to grow, and recent pokemon-related releases is only going to boost this.
The ONLY reason why game master witch hunt is working is because game is not really represented in any in-game currency markets, real botters are not interested yet, just kids. But this will change, when game will be (if) more popular, when obvious things will force devs to make world session based system (10 servers with que's is not an good idea). The real deal is at least two things - asymmetric packet encryption to at least fix packet based bots, ban waves. Trust me, solo bans is bad idea because you can almost always determine the reason of ban. (come on guys, look at blizzard at least). Right now, even i'm couple of days in, it does feel like a little private server of some big game, stuff/gm's are way to involved in gameplay, just does not looks serious enough in some ways.
