Guild Wars 2

Yes, I know this post will probably get locked, but I thought it might help.

While attempting to do many of the dynamic events in the Harathi Hinterlands on the Borlis Pass server, I reported some 50 or so bots in the zone. In my opinion, there were more bots than actual players in that zone. There were so many bots that it scaled the dynamic events up to almost unplayable/unwinnable levels.

My wife and I and several others all attempted to kill Gargantula, but due to the number of bots in the area, we were never able to bring the MoB down fast enough before it healed and spawned the spiderlings. Whenever the centaurs attacked, there would litterally be 25-30 of them coming in waves. The bots would natually just leave them alone and run their routes, while the four or five of us that were actually trying to participate in the event were overrun with the numbers and levels of the waves of centaurs.

I reported all the bots I could click on. Several of them are running around in groups, so it was difficult to get all of them reported. However, I though in the interest of helping out, I would also give you a hint as to where you can find them. Not only are they bringing down the economy like matter trapped in a black hole’s point-of-no-return, but their sheer numbers are adversely affecting the strengths and difficulties of the dynamic events in the areas where they are botting making many of them unplayable.

They should not be too difficult to find as they all seem to be Rangers with bears and/or the infamous five signet Warriors. Go get ’em!!

Thanks.

I encountered more bots in the past 2 days than I have in all the other days since launch combined. It really is getting out of hand. All the ones I saw were rangers, but I saw them in Harathi Hinterlands, Gendaran Fields, Straits of Devastation, and Cursed Shore.

Yeah, I don’t understand why they don’t have an automatic kick after so many reports (at least until they can review them). I know they don’t want to ban people who don’t deserve it, but if 20 or more people report someone as a bot, you can bet they are.

Vegas,

I can’t quote you but I can easily explain why this isn’t allowed. Botting can be reported anywhere as it can happen anywhere. What could hapkitten a guild could get somone banned simply by reporting someone they dislike. People could do that to opposing players in WvWvW.

This could easily create issues for people based on simple reports instead of first investigating.

I don’t disagree that it seems that bots stay around for far too long but your simple solution could create epic issues.

I believe they affect the DEs in other ways as well…
On the (stuck again) “Wait for Footi to repair cannon” part of Grenth, I watched a bot die and Jonez went to rez the bot – the bot was teleporting around the area DEAD!?! I don’t know what the kitten I was seeing but I thought this may be a cause of all these DEs breaking. Jonez got stuck for a few minutes on the hill where the bot first died. He would stand up but no longer fight.
If bots are going to be around at least don’t allow them to teleport around like crazy…

True but if you never told people anything about how it works then it would work as intended because only bots would actually end up getting reported 20 times by different people.
People might only do it in person if they were told how it worked which of course you would never do.

On Desolation there is a train of warriors running in a nice formation just endlessly farming mobs. Wouldnt be suprised if thats one of the reason the Pact Morale event is now bugged. Never seen it before those bots turned up.

think its fair to say that if these are ruining events and Anet dont pull their finger out soon. People will get fed up and leave.

I was in Frostgorge Sound (70-80) just exploring when I came upon Yaks Bend. While thinking about that place in gw I noticed players downed. I usually am one of those that runs in to rez, I start reviving when I noticed people were downed all over. I thought maybe it was a event, but the way point is not far and nothing was on my screen about any event. I then remember a guildie talking in guild about seeing lots of naked norn ranger bots, look up and noticed all were naked. Just then something spawned near by and it was mass kill. There had to be atleast 20 alive with about 10 dead. This is the first time in since gw2 came out that I saw this. All had bears, all were without armor, norns. Not sure of levels but assuming about 70. I then walked away while I watched others running to see what was up. Its just sad. No I didnt report any and yes they were like in gw with the names that look like to me like someone just beating on a keyboard then hitting enter. I will say that what I saw that was spawning around them was wildlife and not really any monsters (like bears, deer and such), I know I have rarely gotten that great of drops from those things.
am on fort aspenwood server and wondering how anet is going to deal with this on gw2 with so many servers or if it is going to be another elonas reach mass ban.

“Our monitoring of ‘bot’ activity has already resulted in over 1600 account terminations world-wide in the last week alone, and we are actively tracking the most common ‘bots’ in use, so that we can continue to eliminate them from the game. As we continue to gather information on these ‘bots’, we will be increasing the rate of account termination to remove them. Please continue to report players that you suspect of ‘botting’ – your support is much appreciated.

We are actively improving our means of detecting ‘bot’ activity in the game automatically. This includes tools for our customer support team to help them verify ‘botting’ reports and efficiently issue account terminations. Recently we have also hired a team of data specialists who will be helping us create more effective tools for analyzing reports of ‘botting.’

As a side effect, these efforts directly impact the operations of third-party gold sellers (and spammers). In conjunction with ‘bot’ removal we also take Real Money Trading very seriously and actively remove hundreds of gold spammers and sellers each day.

In short, we are fully committed to keeping this community free of bots and illicit gold sellers, and we very much appreciate your assistance in identifying and eliminating them.

Thank you for your understanding and patience as we continue to improve our ability to deal with this issue."

That is from another thread from anet. There was some great ideas I thought, in response to this. But some I liked could also get me into trouble when I go afk or sometimes need a break from the game for a bit, that leads me to then being logged out for inactivity.

Honestly the botting issue is minor and mundane compared to the extremely disturbing fact that they can still teleport. Why arenanet believed their client should be perfectly trusted is beyond me, it’s nothing against arenanet’s security, you always assume your client is going to made an exploiters kitten because there’s nothing you can do about it, it’s a fact of life.

if its so minor why is it I can see them camping penitent on cursed shore every kitten day?

“Our monitoring of ‘bot’ activity has already resulted in over 1600 account terminations world-wide in the last week alone, and we are actively tracking the most common ‘bots’ in use, so that we can continue to eliminate them from the game.

Wow seriously a whole 1600? That doesn’t even cover what I have personally reported on a single server yet.

I noticed today that Cursed Shore was completely bot free for an hour or two, so it looks like a banwave must have gone out recently.

That said, our server knows the names of a bunch of Cursed Shore bots. There are probably about two hundred in total. Following them around is the best way to get to resource nodes, so I guess I can’t complain too much.

Bots are now all over the place. It’s insane I hope this is crushed soon!

The other night a group of us (complete strangers!) from Borlis Pass were teaming up to kill a champion troll, and we just used all the nearby bots as cannon fodder. Kite the troll over to them, and let them take the aggro. It was pretty excellent.

He didn’t even drop anything remotely useful for me, but it was totally worth it just to see that.

Sadly, there really is no surefire way to kill botting…at least none that wouldn’t also screw over the legitimate players (like, someone suggested making gold account bound…yeah).

Even if you ban them all, they will just keep coming, because it isn’t costing them anything to create these botting accounts (if you believe they’re ALL using stolen accounts/credit card numbers).

The only way any game will ever be bot free is to remove the incentive for them to do it, which means getting rid of all possible tradeable in-game currency.

Gargantula is not a race to down her.
Gargantula will go immune and heal herself to full at 75%, 50%, 25%.
Which means that the first time you engage her, you get her to 75% and she heals up full, summons adds.
Second time you start downing her, you can get her down to 50% – she heals up to full health and summons adds.
Third time you can get her to 25% health and she does the same as above.
Fourth time, she dies.

Rika.7249:

Gargantula is not a race to down her.
Gargantula will go immune and heal herself to full at 75%, 50%, 25%.
Which means that the first time you engage her, you get her to 75% and she heals up full, summons adds.
Second time you start downing her, you can get her down to 50% – she heals up to full health and summons adds.
Third time you can get her to 25% health and she does the same as above.
Fourth time, she dies.

Yeah…I thought this fight was broken the first time I did it, but that’s just the way it’s programmed to work, I think (unless it is bugged and she’s not supposed to completely regen when she calls out the spiderlings).