Guild Wars 2

People have been reporting these bots for hours, yet they remain…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oTd95skcyM
and after all day of botting, were they banned? Nope, in fact there are now MORE of them there!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyeTkJyhgiw

Coming up on 48 solid hours of botting with reports:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Pf4xo-KAdI

This is so annoying. Informed my guild mates who promptly informed me that bots they have reported over a week ago continue to play 24/7.
Hope this isn’t the future for GW2 Anet…

I think they are banning bots, but it seems to takes a considerable period of time between bots being reported and then disappearing, in some cases. Don’t lose hope and keep reporting them when you see them is the best approach, I reckon.

I’ve transfered to different servers high.medium and low population and it’s the same on all,bots everywhere.

I’m currently on Gates of Madness with a new character in the human starting areas (Queensdale & kessex Hills) and I can’t run any where on the maps without coming across bots.

A lot of areas have more bots that players and it sometimes makes it difficult to do well in events.

That video shows the most current type that I’m seeing.One guy running 8 to 9 down leveled bots that do a circuit of an small area near events,such as the Cave Troll and Bandits, or camp out low level events such as holdbrook (sp ?) defend event.

At any rate,I’m losing interest in Bot Wars 2 and don’t think there is much that can be done about it since there are no server GMs like old.

I would suspect that one of the best anti-botting tricks would be for these popular events to have some sort of aoe knock-back feature?
Something that players could dodge and roll from but bots would be removed so far from the centre of event they become useless?
The Kessex Hills “Break centaur morale” bridge event could easily justify a pair of centaurs running up with a battering ram between them doing a dash-knock back up to the bridge. Bots and afkers would likely tumble into the gorge. A battering ram with lumps of wood makes sense in the context of repairing the bridge and getting resources to it.
If necessary they’d also need to randomly target adjacent areas to spread out the effect.

Would this work and appear more integrated with the game mechanics?

Unfortunately GW2 bots are way past the stand in place and press 1 phase.

Botters have incorperated waypoint respawn,return to location,waypoint circuit paths and last night I’m pretty certain I spotted automated resource gathering (without going to the length of stalking the bot).So a simple knockback feature just won’t do the job.

Word in the botter circles is that a fully functional PvP bot isn’t far away.

There are whole communities of botters out there and some of the devs of these bots make a substantial subsription fee for the use of the bots,hence they are motivated to make them.Just google it.

The only way to effectively squash bots is live DM/GM intervention,something GW2 lacks severly.Mass bans once a month or similar do absolutely nothing to curb botting and actually encourage it through a lengthy period of inaction against them.

Bots need to be squashed daily and without pity,it’s the only deterent.Just ask a botter.A lot of the botters at present only bot because…they can.

Yep these bots continue and since Anet is doing nothing about Bot Wars 2 they seem to actually just be adding more. Here is a video of the SAME bots but now they have multiplied. I’m going to buy Borderlands 2 now. You win Anet, you got my money. I’m not asking for a refund as I’ll still play dungeons with my friends, but wow, do you guys care at all? Bots ruin the game and your lack of response in and out of game speaks zounds about your level of give a kitten.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyeTkJyhgiw

I would gladly start paying a monthly fee if it meant Anet would care about the quality of this game. As it stands now, there is no point in them fixing this stuff, they have your money. At least if there were monthly dues they would have some money to motivate them fixing this garbage.
Are bots okay and I didn’t get the message?

Temper.7265:

Botters have incorperated waypoint respawn,return to location,waypoint circuit paths and last night I’m pretty certain I spotted automated resource gathering (without going to the length of stalking the bot).So a simple knockback feature just won’t do the job.

I actually kinda like the idea of auto gathering bot, if the bot keep does that, they need to sell the resource at tp right ? And that means the resource price is going to be lower, and we will no longer worry about the boring gathering thingy any more.

@ “Mass bans once a month or similar do absolutely nothing to curb botting and actually encourage it through a lengthy period of inaction against them.”

I’m no expert on botting, but I’ve heard that Arenanet tend to ban bots in waves, so that they don’t alert botters early as to what is currently detectable and allow other botters to circumvent that.

If a botter has an account on Guild Wars 2 it is either paid for or has been hacked. If it was paid for then botters would be losing money by being banned, so mass bans should be effective as people will not want to lose money. If the account was hacked then that’s another problem that is being addressed by tightening up security.

@ “I would gladly start paying a monthly fee if it meant Anet would care about the quality of this game.”

Of course they care. You only have to explore the game for a few minutes to appreciate the care and detail that they have put into it. What you need to appreciate though is that software development isn’t instant and problems don’t just fix themselves overnight. Also remember that about 2million people have bought the game and there may be 500,000 playing at any one time: No development team can easily keep track of that quantity of people all at once.

Yeah the price could be made lower by mass bot TP tradeing,but while that may sound fine in the short,in the long run it’s gonna make the game even less playable for players that actually took the time to gather and/or produce with loving care the product to supply to you.And what’s not to stop the botters from using bots on the TP and price fixing ?

It’s happened in other games.

In short mass bot aquisition of resources for trade does nobody any good.Just 10 accounts x 100 botters is game over for anyone wanting to play a resource gathering game,without the use of bots.

I have botted and dual boxed in other games in the past,that have allowed some form of it (for no finacial gain),and Im here to tell you that botting does no favors to the community,gameplay and game economy as a whole.

As harmless as using a bot to gain a levels,resource,karma overnight for your personal account may seem,I assure you it is not by any means harmless and adhere to the opinion that botters should be banned without mercy daily by dedicated server GMs.

@rococo: Most botters will and can afford the once a month wave of bans,even if they arent hijacking there own customers accounts (in some cases).They’ve made their monthly quota and already prepared with new accounts.

Besides,doing bans in waves allows the the damage of full time botters to be already done to the game.

However banned on a daily basis presents them with a real concern on monetary gain/loss.

One of the first things a botter (pro or amateur) considers when deciding to bot a game is….how active the developers are on banning bots and can I afford the replacements in said time frame.

So detectible or not,if they can enjoy a lengthy unhindered farming period or make enough cash or maybe even steal enough accounts,then it’s well worth it to bot.

Being perma banned on a daily basis however may make botters reconsider their position.There just is no substitute for the server GMs/DMs of old.

Play safe everyone and remember to use the in game currency exchange supplied by Anet and NOT gold sellers,unless you want your friends to see you characters name spamming map chat for Fastgold.gogogo123

Guess I will have to change the title to read something more accurate like “Reporting bots for DAYS!”
They are all still here raking it in, killing the experience for honest players. Wish you guys cared.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/JNUrI.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/crvgy.jpg[/img]

The botting shown by the OP video is relatively unsophisticated and doesn’t appear to do much harm. Even though they should be banned ASAP the “smart bots” at events need to be dealt with first.

My problem is with the mass smart bots that ruin dynamic events because they are “smart” and run around killing everything way faster than you can. I saw a video of a bot that was so smart it could go out find mobs to kill, loot and then go back to an NPC vendor to sell once the inventory got full. Then rinse and repeat.

I have been at a few events where I’m sure 3/4 of the “players” were bots. But they acted so much like real chars it was difficult to tell… other than the fact they went back to the camp and stood around until the next event, multiple times.

This means you don’t get XP if your mob dies before you get to hit it. Also because the game is designed so that if you don’t do much damage in the kill, your loot is non-existent or junk, this is a form of “killstealing” by the bots.

Anet please ban these bot faster!

NinjaKnight, these were upgraded to smartbots it would appear…
Uploading a new video now, also there are now 10 of them running together. We are coming up on 48 hours of this. There is virtually no anti-bot in this game, and I don’t know that “virtually” need apply here.
Uploading a new video now, will post here and update OP once the video is up. Bots getting smarter, ANet getting dumber.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Pf4xo-KAdI
Any bets on how many days this will go on for?

Temper.7265:

So detectible or not,if they can enjoy a lengthy unhindered farming period or make enough cash or maybe even steal enough accounts,then it’s well worth it to bot.

You are confuting two different things again here. The point is that botters who use stolen accounts (the worst offenders), who are probably mostly commercial gold farmers, can be prevented most easily by making it very difficult to steal accounts and that is the angle that Arenanet are working on most thoroughly at the moment as M O’B stated in his blog post. And, I very much doubt that the majority of casual botters want to pay $60 every time they get an account banned.

No Roqoco, Temper is correct here. It is quite clear that anything negative against ANet, justified or not, you are going to take issue with. I will not be arguing with you on this matter, just try not to be such a fanboy and think for yourself. There are now 10 of these bots running all together, clearly they are gaining more accounts quicker than ANet is cleaning them up, that means they profit. That means it will continue. This all upsets me BECAUSE I LIKE THIS GAME, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t care about the invasion of bots.

Ending bots is as simple as adding Captchas. I won’t discuss it further, but there are many ways to implement it that aren’t annoying and person-friendly.

@ “it is quite clear that anything negative against ANet, justified or not, you are going to take issue with.”

On the contrary, there are many things that aren’t working well in the game right now. But saying that Arenanet don’t care about botting and account stealing because they already have your money is plain silly. For a start, if you want a purely commercial argument, in the long run they will likely get more from cash shop than from box sales, as other games do. Besides, wheeling out the old “fanboy” thing is Ad Hominem, which is the last resort of the desperate when they don’t have any sensible argument to make – as you don’t.

& If you don’t want to argue with me and just pop out of your shell occasionally and throw a few ad hominem insults around, then that’s fine with me too.

Banning bots in waves more than 1 day apart is pointless. One month is way too long.

Reason – bots that are farming to Gold sell are on hacked accounts. I’m pretty sure that their profits then get sent to another hacked account to sell to a Gold buyer. By the time it is tracked down, the Gold seller has his money and the hacked account is banned but way too late.

Same with bots that are paid power leveling chars. Yes the chump that paid for the powerlevel gets his account banned but the person that sold the powerlevel is long gone with the money and is spamming chat for a new chump with more money than sense.

NinjaKnight.1340:

Reason – bots that are farming to Gold sell are on hacked accounts. I’m pretty sure that their profits then get sent to another hacked account to sell to a Gold buyer. By the time it is tracked down, the Gold seller has his money and the hacked account is banned but way too late.

As already pointed out hacked accounts are a different issue from casual botting: The most important thing with hacked accounts is to prevent accounts being stolen in the first place and to get back the ones that did get stolen. Arenanet have explained the steps they are taking to do this in their latest blog post.

Whilst hacked accounts are clearly a priority they obviously don’t want casual botters (i.e. mainly those who paid for their a/c and cheat on their own behalf) either and have said they will be banned. Exactly what procedures they are adopting to catch and ban such players is of course something that is best kept to themselves.

roqoco.4053:

NinjaKnight.1340:

Reason – bots that are farming to Gold sell are on hacked accounts. I’m pretty sure that their profits then get sent to another hacked account to sell to a Gold buyer. By the time it is tracked down, the Gold seller has his money and the hacked account is banned but way too late.

As already pointed out hacked accounts are a different issue from casual botting:

In either case, while I agree hacked account botting is worse, there does not appear to be much being done to stop either. At least not on a frequent basis.

It just takes much away from the game experience to go into an area and see anywhere from one to a group of so many bots it is impossible to count and impractical to report all of them.

I’m not confusing anything,any type of bot use,casual or professional is a danger to any game that isn’t specificlly designed for play with the use of a bot.

I am an ex multi box botter,that has partaken in the virtual profit on offer.Not recent mind you,if that helps shed some light on why I’m so tough love stance on botters currently.

This very moment I still have 3 towers sitting right in front of me that are more than capable of running up to at least 5 instances of GW 2 each,simultaneuosly (at max settings) more if I decided to check it out for botting.I can safely say that by months end,I’d have more than made up for these accounts if I were laundering.Even if I were to bot one account for personal use,I’d seriously be able to afford a new one by the end of the month,with real world money

I consider that I myself were a casual botter.(not for real world monetary profit)

I know very well the damage that can be caused by one player with just one 24/7 session to a games loot tables,economy and gameplay mechanics,with just ten to fifteen bots on one server.

I can log in daily and casually wander for a few hours from 1 to 15 and 15 to 25 starter areas (most predominantly the human areas) and without doubt,count up to 50 plus bots,without even going to the bot hot spots.Higher level players report to me the same thing in higher level zones.Some of these are casual and some are pro it makes no difference,it’s the sheer number of them that count.

Now take into consideration that players are reporting up to 20 odd bots in WvW in a lot of servers and that a PvP bot is almost ready for use,then we have a huge problem accumulating over a months time.

The only deterent to bot users is Server specific GMs banning accounts,without mercy,daily with appeal only to customer support.

I admire that Anet and yourself believe that you can save peoples accounts from being stolen,but that is addressing a symptom,not an ailment.And you are right,account security is a whole other kettle of fish.

@Temper, @Ninja

OK interesting posts. I don’t know how Arenanet intend to deal with the botting problem either and I’ve seen them and reported them too. However, Arenanet have said that they will be banning people for botting and it’s obvious for the reasons you (Temper) outline in your post why they aren’t good for the game. It should be equally obvious then that Arenanet are not going to spend half a decade making this very complex game and then let it be destroyed by bots and other exploits, if there is anything they can do about it; so they will be and are no doubt already addressing the problem to the best of their ability.

I’m not sure why people are assuming that Arenanet don’t have GMs on each server: I’m sure they do. One thing to remember though is that Arenanet is quite a small company and they didn’t quite anticipate the volumes they would be getting so soon after launch – this is surely the root cause of many of the problems that the game has had. They have said that they are employing more staff on the support side to handle the volume, but of course it does take time to recruit and train staff.

Edit: One thing I might add is that Arenanet haven’t always been as good as other companies at pro-active support in game (i.e. in GW1). Eve Online does this well and their in game support was often almost instant. I hope that Arenanet will take a leaf out of CCP’s book in this respect (and for it be feasible with the cash shop model in GW2).

Monthly ban waves won’t work. Fortunately the areas I’ve spent most of my time in had no bots that I had seen, some areas were just swarming with them, nearly all of which were gold-farming bots as evidenced by the names and identical appearance (like people were were saying, the human starter areas tended to be the worst by far). From what I’ve heard, the botters have been causing the recent spikes in Gem prices when they buy massive quantities and just in general completely ruining the economy. Something needs to be done about them, and monthly ban waves are simply too infrequent by far; I mean, we’re talking about an interval of time similar to the length that the game has been out! At the rate of bot buildup, monthly bans might provide a bit of relief immediately following a wave, only for things to go right down the toilet again for another whole month. That just won’t cut it.

As to account security, and helping people reclaim accounts, I’d move to a ‘ban-first, appeal later’ system, but that only works if you’re going to have people who can quickly work on processing appeals.

@Avan – I don’t know where this monthly ban wave idea surfaced and it is probably just a myth. All we really know is that they don’t appear to be banning bots the instant they are reported, since the same bots seem to be in the same areas for some time – or at least so people have reported.

As regards gem prices – one might expect gems to go up in terms of gold as the game progresses and more people reach the higher levels where gold is somewhat easier to come by – so that may be a factor in what you have observed too.

If any of you play mesmer, it is sometimes possible to “derail” mobile bots using your portal. Since they spam the f key to loot, they will activate your portal and be moved outside their programmed path. I know it’s not a real solution, but anything that slows them down hurts their profit in an area. If the bot isnt spamming f all the time, it will still use it ocasionally, such as after combat to loot or revive its bot friends.

The current game is very friendly towards bots. During events, people unknowingly protect them from swarms that would kill them and put them out of commision for a while. I have watched them be killed, and other players come along and rez them in an attempt to be helpful.

I can only imagine what it must be like to invest $65 in a game, to sit in the same zone.. and actively , for “days”? monitor people I suspect of cheating… for free. Literally as the title says “for days” just sitting, watching…. it’s like going to a club to sit in the corner scowling at what other people are doing the entire night, except… every night, for days.

Not that I agree with bots, but botters and you have one thing in common: they invested $65 into the game to spend their time dealing with bots. Theyre just profiting from it xD

ericade.3807:

Not that I agree with bots, but botters and you have one thing in common: they invested $65 into the game to spend their time dealing with bots. Theyre just profiting from it xD

A quick Google shows that a lot of the botting accounts probably aren’t paid for.

Tanqueray.4837:

ericade.3807:

Not that I agree with bots, but botters and you have one thing in common: they invested $65 into the game to spend their time dealing with bots. Theyre just profiting from it xD

A quick Google shows that a lot of the botting accounts probably aren’t paid for.

totally missed the point of the message, but fair enough. Prove they were stolen and report as such o.O