Guild Wars 2

Botting is a rampant problem currently in Guildwars 2. We have reported numerous but how fast can Anet clear them before the damage is done? Every second they bot causes damage to the economy.

Perhaps Anet can consider tracking its list of reports, identify bona fide players who consistently report true cases of botting, and empower them to help keep the area clean.

These volunteers will have to follow standard protocols such as, take screenshots (to show botting behaviour such as moving in lines excessively), whisper to do bot checks and then subsequently applying a debuff for no loot no xp (or even to suspend them).

Of course this is open to abuse to those who were empowered, but Anet can minimise this by selecting reponsible individuals (via tracking of what they reported), and take away such rights if there are complains of abuse.

I believe establishing a system like this may allow rapid response against botters, and significantly reduce long term, real-time damages to the economy by botters.

Maybe, but honestly if ANet hired actual activate (in-game) GMs to do that (amongst other things) it would help tremendously. But that’s only if it was done by and within ANet with their actual engine tools and whatever software they use internally to maintain “security” and fight Bots internally (within the company). As far as I know so far only us mere players have to report the bots, and then… well we forget about it until we report a new one.

But to be honest I wouldn’t trust “Mr. Joe everyone” with such powers indeed due to inevitable abuse, even if a few individuals would be willing to do it responsibly and “professionally”. I would rather want ANet to just continue to do whatever they’re trying to do to help with the bots issue.

It’s a complex problem, so even if ANet did give such executive powers to some individuals here and there then how in the world would those few selected community-based “GMs” be able to literally go around in every zone on a Bots Hunt and then take the time to make sure they’re not actual human players first, and so on, following the “Protocols” for each one of them?

I mean there’s literally dozens if not hundreds of Bots in any one map, and that number and their identity (Bot names, account holders, etc) differs from servers to servers… they don’t even connect at the same time nor do they always farm the same spots in the same maps.

It’s not practical. For every single Bot that such Bot Hunters would successfully manage to punish or ban or whatever, then two new Bots would be created. There’s no point I’m sorry I don’t see any.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-09/28/gaming-ai-appears-to-be-human

1) ANet has access to more information and tools than us regarding how to spot a botter, and since it’s also possible to mistake a legitimate player for a botter (see above). False bans would also put an extra stress on the customer service team in renewing accounts.

Anet also can’t give us access to them tools, because it then gives potential botters the ability to find work-arounds.

2) Since these volunteers wouldn’t be able to ban, stopping loot doesn’t help when other players can’t kill because of the bots.

True u guys have a point. I would like to emphasise on the point that every second they bot is damage to the economy. Existing lead time to deal with them is too long and something must be done about it.

@gvogels
Community involvement is a great idea, and doesn’t have to be at the volunteer GM level.

I am absolutely certain there are reliable people out there who would be willing to volunteer in some capacity to help out however they could. It is just up to anet to figure out whether they want to tap into that resource, and the logistics surrounding it.

This seems like a bad idea. This means botters can perhaps target the specially empowered players and hack their accounts. They would have intel to proceed in their bottings etc. I don’t think A net would do this and endanger volunteer’s accounts.

Coltz.5617:

This seems like a bad idea. This means botters can perhaps target the specially empowered players and hack their accounts. They would have intel to proceed in their bottings etc. I don’t think A net would do this and endanger volunteer’s accounts.

Dude your cray. lol. A bot is just a program that does all your work for you. Using one does not mean that you magically have programming ability, and having program ability doesn’t immediately grand you the prowess you need to hack a person’s account. If you have any idea what they’d actually have to be able to do to get your account information, then you know that’s not going to happen.

The person who programmed the bot MIGHT have the know how, but what do they care if a person who bought their program gets banned? They have their money. But the guy using the bot can’t hurt you that way, believe me.

Against this. Sooooo what if I get selected to be empowered and decide to go on a banning streak and ban the people I do not like?

Keep it in the company. If you want banning power, go get hired.

essenCe.8235:

Coltz.5617:

This seems like a bad idea. This means botters can perhaps target the specially empowered players and hack their accounts. They would have intel to proceed in their bottings etc. I don’t think A net would do this and endanger volunteer’s accounts.

Dude your cray. lol. A bot is just a program that does all your work for you. Using one does not mean that you magically have programming ability, and having program ability doesn’t immediately grand you the prowess you need to hack a person’s account. If you have any idea what they’d actually have to be able to do to get your account information, then you know that’s not going to happen.

The person who programmed the bot MIGHT have the know how, but what do they care if a person who bought their program gets banned? They have their money. But the guy using the bot can’t hurt you that way, believe me.

Gold sellers use botters to farm and sell/make gold. Hackers get accounts and sell to botters for money yes? So if specially empowered accounts is there, Won’t they be in higher demand for the gold sellers/ botters to know whats up? Im not talking about the minor 1 – 2 bots farming. Im talking about the (seems like ) a bot factory for purpose of gold selling. I’ve seen before a group of 16 bots running as one annihlating and dominating a whole area. Preventing DE’s and heart quests in that whole area.

Coltz.5617:

Gold sellers use botters to farm and sell/make gold. Hackers get accounts and sell to botters for money yes? So if specially empowered accounts is there, Won’t they be in higher demand for the gold sellers/ botters to know whats up? Im not talking about the minor 1 – 2 bots farming. Im talking about the (seems like ) a bot factory for purpose of gold selling. I’ve seen before a group of 16 bots running as one annihlating and dominating a whole area. Preventing DE’s and heart quests in that whole area.

Yeah I’ve seen huge groups too, it’s definitely getting ridiculous. I’m still failing to get the connection between hackers and botters. When you see the botters in game, the bots do tend to run in groups yes; however, this doesn’t mean that those people even know each other. They are using the same program, it’s going to run the same routes and do the same things, thus, it makes sense that complete strangers would end up forming large groups if they are all botting. This gives the illusion of working together perhaps, but it’s only that; an illusion.

These are just regular people and kids with the money who bought the program and let it run. Now where gold selling is concerned, obviously places that sell gold make use of many different bots gathering the items to sell to get the gold that they sell for money; it is the simplest explanation for how they gather the gold. However making the leap that because these people use so many bots and run a metaphorical crime syndicate they are capable of hacking you is a pretty big step. Ockhams Razor applied, you can’t make that assumption because there is no connecting fact.

Consider this, the gold sellers are making a profit off of the people buying gold. This is a fact, why put forth the effort for no gain? So there is profit being made. Any profit that they make is 100% profit, when people go to pvpbank or whatever else websites there are and buy like.. whatever, maybe 100 gold for 40 bucks or whatever the going rate is, that’s 40 bucks straight to these people with no cuts save for splitting up the profit amongst those involved. My point is, how much is a new copy of GW2? These people can go to the hassle of hacking your account, or they can just take a measly 60 U.S dollars and go buy a new serial code to get around their ban and start right back up again having only lost a drop in the bucket.

Banning botters wont stop gold selling, because they are making money off of the players. Banning the players that are buying gold wont stop them, because those people obviously have money to burn; thus, they too would just go buy another game. The only way to successfully put an end to it would be to do just like the real world.

When a person opens up a store and you don’t want them there, open up your own store and sell cheaper. If arena net starts selling gold cheaper than these guys, they lose profit and they go away. Will that happen? Probably not. Why? Because nobody really cares. People that made this game stop making money the minute you buy it, it’s free to play. Time is money, spending it on a game for the benefit of people you’ve already made the most out of you can expect is bad business. That’s why, more than likely, the team that the company has in charge of the game’s administration is likely exponentially smaller than the team that made it. They aren’t going to waste their money paying the wages of people to watch over this game when they make nothing from the people who play the game beyond that initial in store purchase.

Unless one of those people comes up with a way to detect and disconnect bot programs – it will continue to be a problem. In order to do that they’d need a copy of the program itself and a way to take it apart, and even then there would have to be a difference somewhere between the bots connection and yours to make it stand out. It’s just not going to happen, all we can do is keep reporting them.

But on topic, if people were made administrators it COULD work. But you’d have to choose wisely and closely monitor all of those people. Having already made the point that the team that’d be responsible for that is likely quite small, I don’t think they have the manpower to track the number of admins they’d need to make a dent in the problem.

@ Gallian.7630 and LanceHavenbay.2067
If you stop thinking/ dreaming about GW2 and look at reality you’ll see it happens every where.
Politicians… police man’s… the fact that some of these people abuse they’r power dont change the fact that we need them, and the fact that not all of them are “abusers”

“with great power come great responsibility” xD

LanceHavenbay.2067:

Against this. Sooooo what if I get selected to be empowered and decide to go on a banning streak and ban the people I do not like?

Keep it in the company. If you want banning power, go get hired.

You’d lose your privileges obviously and the accounts you banned would be unbanned. It’s not like such powers would be given to some random player on a whim.

I’m amazed that this game does not have GMs at all. Coming from other MMO such as EQ, FFXI, etc, they all have GMs and they respond fairly quickly to people who summons them.

I would love to see GMs in this game. They can regularly patrol those bot farming area and that should be fairly effective.

Hi,

Thank you for your suggestions. The topic will now be locked so that the suggestions won’t be confused when we gather them.

Thanks for your understanding.