Guild Wars 2

Welcome fellow GW2 players, today I would like to ask you about an interesting topic: Bots. We all see them at the high level areas, farming valuable mats, ruining our farming routes, and generally running amok. However, this is a BLTC post so lets get to the main topic: as of right now, have the bots helped you (by lowering the prices of items you want) or hurt you (by devaluing the items you farm)?

Please answer:
1. Helpful or hurtful? (have you been helped more than hurt, or hurt more than helped?)
2. On a scale of 1-10 (or whatever numbers you can come up with) how big of a problem are they?
3. This is for Anet (since I can’t ban them for you): should Anet be more active in banning them?

Additional comments are welcome. Happy hunting.

-Chrollo

hurtful
10
its sufficient if they keep them at the level they were at 3 weeks ago

Hurtful
10
Anet should ban them all

I’m shocked that this is even a question.

Hurtful
10
The bots reached critical mass again a week ago and the T5 markets are hobbled. You should’ve intervened already, it’ll take weeks for the damage to repair itself again.

Hurtful.
I’d say they were up to an 8 or 9 before the ban waves, probably at a 4 or 5 now but rising.
I think there’s a balance to be struck between being active and being effective for ArenaNet (i.e. rather than playing whack-a-mole with individual bots, being able to detect and ban whole classes of bots in one fell swoop), but it would be nice to hear more about progress on this front.

I don’t farm and in fact hate farming, but I do (try to) craft so I’m all for bots doing the menial work of gathering materials. As I see it, the issue of in-game bots closely mirrors the issue of labor IRL (which, really, the bots are). You’re always going to have people who feel threatened by cheaper competition.

From what I can see.

Hurtful if you farm materials to sell them.

Helpful if you like buying things cheap.

Helpful to me as I prefer to make my money at the trading post instead of spamming an auto attack out in the wild and am looking towards a legendary in the next month or two.

Leablo.2651:

You’re always going to have people who feel threatened by cheaper competition.

LOL.

Great, now you’ve given me a mental image of that South Park scene xD – I’ll never be able to look at a bot the same way again…

for poor or beginners players helpful , for filthy rich players hurtful, since many rich nerds who exploited their gold now manipulating the market.

Fook.3914:

for poor or beginners players helpful , for filthy rich players hurtful, since many rich nerds who exploited their gold now manipulating the market.

you have it backward.

for poor people. it allows people to farm for money. Rich people just want to buy mats for cheap.

Hurtful on a scale of 10, and of course A-Net should ban them ASAP.

The simple reason why its hurtful, these bots feed the gold-sellers which leads to a even higher decrease of the gold → gem value, making gems for people that want to buy them rather with gold than with euro or usd

I always see bots farming in southsun cove, in the waters between point lion and pride where the waters are shallow. I report them asap but the same bots are still there the next day. Anet dont give a rats kitten about them it seems.

Hurtful.
10.

I like to play in open-world content and unless bots are bringing down the price of precursors/exotic weapons, then it is going to take me MORE time to make enough money for these from farming…..hence rather than playing the game to earn money I’m forced to play the TP.

Anet need to redouble their efforts to prevent botting – it should not have become this bad again.

Harmful to harvesters, advantageous to crafters.

Also a bit harmful to ANet since they can’t see the consequence of having a ‘real’-harvesters-only economy yet – in terms of the current drop rates driving crafters into a fury, throwing up their hands at having to spend hundreds of gold to achieve any sort of medium to long term goal, and quiting this game forever long before any rational correction is made .

Anything that pushes down the price of T6 mats is helpful to me.
5. Fix bugs/tooltips/walljumping/RNG/DR first.
It doesn’t matter how you ban bots, they’re bots, they keep coming back.

Chaotic…I dislike a number of key ingredients swing wildly due to mass disappearance/reappearance of bots which I cannot predict in any way as it is internal technical conflict between ANet and the botters.

Hurtful. Bots reduce the price of items that people can farm while doing nothing for the prices of things that people want.

Bots are helpful, wealth is relative, if resources cost less you need less gold to be considered wealthy. The input from gold is pretty static if you run dungeons or take points in WvW… as prices deflate that income becomes more valuable, so anyone that focuses on playing the game should find bots extremely helpful.

Plus anything newly introduced that would cause demand is usually tied with some token system or PvE drop so even with gold alone “wealthy players” aren’t going to get everything they want right away unless they diversify their time spent in game.

IMO farming is a really dull mechanic that should be optional, if not removed all together from MMOs…

1. Helpful
2. 1 & 10 : (1=not a problem in PvE, 10=a big problem in WvW).
3. Anet should not ban them except when they threaten to exclude real players from zones because of population caps. They should be completely banned from WvW zones for this reason.

There is a huge problem with tier 6 materials being required in every legenday recipe and low supply (although of course, it could be argued that legendaries are meant to take legendary effort/cost). Bots help to solve this problem, so if they are banned again, the drop-rates should be adjusted to accomodate for this loss.

As much as I hate bots and all that they stand for, I love the prices they bring to the market. If things continue as they are, maybe I’ll be able to actually afford my Gift of Fortune, haha. There has to be some middle ground where we can get rid of bots but keep the supply for these items up; maybe make farming easier/better/whatever.

1. Can be both. As long as one is not forced to farm in the same area, I see them not as problem.
2. Much less a problem then people manipulating prices of the TP in the other direction (that is, to higher prices).
3. That’s ArenaNets own thing – and I would assume they will do their best because it’s first of all their own interest.

Bots (and the Gold Farmers who use them) are detrimental to the game. They sell goods cheaply, which means that people can not gain gold as easily, which means they can not afford to buy high end items or gold to gems. They use the gold they acquire to drive up the price of Gems, so that they benefit from stocking up on gems, and then selling them for gold. This is all so that they can exchange virtual currency to real currency. The fact that people still do this after decades of this kind of behavior boggles me.

Half the reason the economy is busted in this game is because of Botting. There is no defense for this behavior, and those that feel that they are beneficial are being Barnum’ed.

SarahTV.6470:

Bots (and the Gold Farmers who use them) are detrimental to the game. They sell goods cheaply, which means that people can not gain gold as easily, which means they can not afford to buy high end items or gold to gems. They use the gold they acquire to drive up the price of Gems, so that they benefit from stocking up on gems, and then selling them for gold. This is all so that they can exchange virtual currency to real currency. The fact that people still do this after decades of this kind of behavior boggles me.

Half the reason the economy is busted in this game is because of Botting. There is no defense for this behavior, and those that feel that they are beneficial are being Barnum’ed.

I am sorry but I disagree. You fail to realize if the economy is inflated and you are selling something at a higher price all other items you are interested in buying will also be selling for a higher price.

It is not a one way road.

I also disagree with the gem exchanged. Gold from gold sellers is 3 to 1 cheaper over gold from gems, so why would they convert gold to gems to convert them back again? They would be destroying a lot of gold in the process.

I will agree, the economy is broken because of bots, only because they were removed from game. Now supply cannot keep up with demand, and a small abundance of money can be used to manipulate certain markets to the point where supply cannot out pace people profiting.

All you have to ask yourself is, is the economy better now or was it better a month or two ago when bots were thriving?

As I posted before, “wealth” is relative, and more importantly the means in which a lot of people gain wealth in this game is static, and is not going up with market prices, which is why so many people are having a hard time with the economy right now.

Sorrow.7452:

I am sorry but I disagree. You fail to realize if the economy is inflated and you are selling something at a higher price all other items you are interested in buying will also be selling for a higher price.

It is not a one way road.

I also disagree with the gem exchanged. Gold from gold sellers is 3 to 1 cheaper over gold from gems, so why would they convert gold to gems to convert them back again? They would be destroying a lot of gold in the process.

I will agree, the economy is broken because of bots, only because they were removed from game. Now supply cannot keep up with demand, and a small abundance of money can be used to manipulate certain markets to the point where supply cannot out pace people profiting.

All you have to ask yourself is, is the economy better now or was it better a month or two ago when bots were thriving?

As I posted before, “wealth” is relative, and more importantly the means in which a lot of people gain wealth in this game is static, and is not going up with market prices, which is why so many people are having a hard time with the economy right now.

Except items sold by NPC vendors (such as cultural armor) are immune to this inflationary effect, so generating more in-game wealth from farming benefits people who want to buy these sorts of items. Also, I doubt that the inflationary effect would be evenly spread across all items, so while items may cost more in general, it’s more likely that the effect on a specific individual will be mixed.

The economy isn’t broken because bots were banned, it has been going through an adjustment because the “artificial” supply dried up. It’s up to players to either fill the gaps in supply or be prepared to pay higher prices for those items. Now there are items that aren’t farmable, but people find ways to increase the supply if the prices rise high enough (ectos are a good example of this).

Which markets are you referring to that people are manipulating to the point where supply cannot outpace profiteering?

My Answer:

1.) Hurtful (Ive always hated bots)
2.) 11! lol ( No bots more profit to players who actively plays the game farming mats etc. etc. etc.)
3.) 34k Bot bans from Anet pretty awesome job they did! <3 Anet!

imo helpful in pve id say 8. simply because at the moment the inflation that exists is just kitten #8230;.some people may think oh snap look at all dis gold i make from farming….excpt look at the price of literally everything….. what 20g would hv gotten u last month you now need 70-100gold.

i don’t like bots but i don’t like a bad economy even more. now if Anet could keep the ban wave and somehow manage to keep the economy stable then id be all for it… but atm RnG is Rng, you are removing a supply without fixing demand.

I’d rather bots didn’t exist in the first place so we won’t have to taste sweet sweet 11s ectos before :| I’d say they’re helpful for new people as they drastically lower prices of mats and armor and stuff lowbies need to level up. But its detrimental for higher-level people because they kill farming spots with their overabundance of rangers and bears and make it impossible to farm when they’re there.

Ulquiorra.6903:

i don’t like bots but i don’t like a bad economy even more. now if Anet could keep the ban wave and somehow manage to keep the economy stable then id be all for it… but atm RnG is Rng, you are removing a supply without fixing demand.

The only item to which this applies is T6 materials

Lodestones (and precursors) are the two most kittened about things, and neither are bot farmable; these drop in instances and special chests (Well that and the mystic forge), the removing the bots won’t do squat to alleviate the lack of supply to most the supply bottlenecked items.

T5 materials are returning to saturation point again; like they were before an saturated T5 markets hurt everyone (well, everyone accept power traders)

Ryuujin.8236:

Ulquiorra.6903:

i don’t like bots but i don’t like a bad economy even more. now if Anet could keep the ban wave and somehow manage to keep the economy stable then id be all for it… but atm RnG is Rng, you are removing a supply without fixing demand.

The only item to which this applies is T6 materials

Lodestones (and precursors) are the two most kittened about things, and neither are bot farmable; these drop in instances and special chests (Well that and the mystic forge), the removing the bots won’t do squat to alleviate the lack of supply to most the supply bottlenecked items.

T5 materials are returning to saturation point again; like they were before an saturated T5 markets hurt everyone (well, everyone accept power traders)

precursory wep can drop in Orr which bots farmed in……and as for t6.. if it affects t6 mats then it would affect lower teir mats as well due to the fact that u can upgrade lower teir to t6…also dont forget rares tht u get can A be salvaged or B be thrown into the forge for wait for it…precursors…. yah it does affect price in general.

and the mat price are dropping again because …the bots are returning…

as for lodestones that is in part due to the discovered recipes requiring them but also remember charged lodestone also drop at sparks where i did see bots, too.

I don’t think the bots are particularly hurtful or helpful in regard to the trading post. It’s just a different market before and after bots. If you don’t bring your own preferences to it that result from your own playing and gold earning habits, then it just seems neutral to me.

The real downsides of the gold farming are hacking, exploiting and spam.

They are dropping prices for me, so, blame economy that I cant call them hurtful. Also I wish T6 were farmable like T5. Ach….such prices drops… dreams..

As long I economy is such a mess and inflation is so big, anything that lower prices for me- well, how I can view that hurtful? (I am averge player)

I am against hacking and exploiting game, but really, players like what give them better and more. So start doing it Anet.

Hurtful cause people get to greedy and prie things on the TP stupidly expensive, i mean look at dusk! So not worth what its at right now. Bring bots back!! gold sellers get back to farming hurry!!

Bots are 100% hurtful. But the big issue with the economy was that it took so long to ban them. This length of time with them in game hurt the economy by keeping prices down with inflated mat supply amounts in the TP. Now that they are getting the ban hammer, prices are going sky high.

Am I happy their numbers are down? Hell yes! But, the bot problem should of been taken care of at a faster rate before they negatively influenced the economy or Arenanet should of had something implemented pre-release.

Hurtful overall (by a narrow margin), but banning them / taking so long to ban them was more hurtful overall than any damage the bots did directly themselves.

“Wealth” generated by static means in this game always outpaces farming/TP items. It was true before bots invaded. It was true during the invasion. It’s true now that bots are back and operating with more care to go unreported.

Bots: 3-4/10
Banning the bots: 7-8/10
Taking so long to ban them: 11

The results are obvious. Far less damage for the long and short term would have happened if Anet took no action at all.

This has been a debate in various mmo games all over the internet so here’s my 2 cents perspective of the issue.

Why gold farming bots are bad:

1. Gold farming bots or manually inflates the game’s currency (making the game’s gold worth less in comparison of other things that players might want).

2. Gold farming bots disrupts and destabilize the game economy by making the game currency too common. As with any economic system, the more money there are circulating in the game the higher the prices of things in the long term making it more expensive for new players to buy things they need.

3. New players become discourage if they cannot buy the equipment they needed to advance or are forced to play longer in order to accumulate the amount of money to buy the same equipment needed in order to advance. This can be detrimental to the game’s and community’s health in the long run. New players or community members are what keeps the game from stagnating.

4. Bots can be disruptive inside the game. Depending on the game and the botting script. They can prevent players from enjoying the game or be a general annoyance (esp. spam bots).

5. Bots can cause the prices of some items in the game to collapse from over supply. This can be a good thing or a bad thing for the players. It can make rare items more abundant or it can make things become worth-less due to over abundance. This can force the hand of developers to adjust the drop rate of items making it even harder for non-botters to acquire the items they need (or force them to buy from the botters).

6. Botters can shorten the life of the game. All games have a pre-designed shelf life. Some games can last months, some can last years or even a decades (ie. EQ or UO). But eventually all games becomes obsolete and/or unsustainable economically in the eyes of the developers. Botters can hasten this process by a dozens or even a hundred fold.

7. Botters are like parasites. They take and take from the game without giving much back. They kill your favorite game like a slow acting disease.

Hurtful.

10.

Players can never compete with bots. Not in farming, not in playing the market (bots can be used to overbid and undercut human traders quickly and tirelessly).

Botters are also generally part of the gold farming trade, and that trade promotes account theft as well. But not as much as the players who do business with them. If it weren’t for players willing to buy gold, goods, and leveling services, bots might be a very small problem in MMOs.

Hurtful.
10.
They inflate supply with too many items, driving down price of various raw materials. Furthermore, all of that gold that they get from it is either being used for credit card scams, or for purchasing stuff on the TP. The wealthiest players should not be the ones with the most illegal gold purchases or the most bots.