Guild Wars 2

Dear ANet,
It has come to my attention, as a concerned player to this game, that the Banning procedure seems to be… extreme. Now I understand, one sour apple will ruin it for the rest. But What I am asking is to rethink how you ban people based on the assumption on ‘botting’. There have been three members in my guild, and me being a guild officer and of of them being too, it has affected the guild. From what I understand is you guys monitor ‘repetitive’ actions and reports from other players. If this is true then it seems that maybe you need to improve on this. Taking a report from ‘Johnny’ is not enough to ban someone. If that is the case then having anyone ‘blame’ anyone for ‘something’ would just be silly. Instead of taking that drastic action, maybe you should investigate further before you pull the trigger on banning just anyone. Now I am not telling you how to do your job. I am merely a player that is concerned on the this process is conducted. I have guild members now afraid of leveling thinking they will be banned due to ‘looks like a botter so ban him’ if tells you anything on the extreme measures. Also I know that if -I- where to get banned for botting it would not make sense. If you look at my account history I have spent a lot of money on buying gems. So if a player gets banned and has a large history on that, why would that make sense? It does not.
To sum up, please rethink your strategy on this procedure if in-fact this is the way that you do things. Please do not keep banning innocent players when there could be a better system to ensure that real botters and other horrible players be banned for good.
I would like you to respond to this. This is not a rhetorical statement.

-With much concern,
Psyloken

This is definitely a concern. In this case, the players had upgraded armor, weapons, and jewelry – one of them a combination of crafted and/or dungeon and the other wearing cultural. Their account histories and gear disprove the possibility of them being bots. In fact, the farming is a necessary evil to support crafting!

It has been stated many times that there is an appeal process if you feel it is necessary.

It has also been stated that RMT companies hijack accounts to run as bots.

It has also been stated that some people run bots in off-hours and play normally during regular hours (a friend of mine used to bot diablo 2 whenever he wasn’t actively playing it).

While it sucks to be one of the stastically few false positives, accidents happen (and there is a review process), but as was established with the banned-for-chat-violations thread a long time back, most of the people proclaiming innocence were guilty.

Fildydarie.1496:

It has been stated many times that there is an appeal process if you feel it is necessary.

It has also been stated that RMT companies hijack accounts to run as bots.

It has also been stated that some people run bots in off-hours and play normally during regular hours (a friend of mine used to bot diablo 2 whenever he wasn’t actively playing it).

While it sucks to be one of the stastically few false positives, accidents happen (and there is a review process), but as was established with the banned-for-chat-violations thread a long time back, most of the people proclaiming innocence were guilty.

We’re merely suggesting the investigation take place before the ban, not after. It takes around 3 days to get your account back (more around holidays), which is a serious “accident”.

Not condoning the ban, although if you randomly say hello to people in different ways in /s and then randomly talk with people in Map chat you lessen you chances of getting pegged as a bot. Also change up how you running to places, fight some mobs run past some, Stop and look around move one way then another way as if your trying to make a decision keep opening your map. There are a ton of ways you can avoid this. I just spent a month in a half mining and gathering T6 mats from orr along with Orichalcum, Mithril then mining Platinum I never once got banned.

On the other side of it, I realize this is your friend or guild mate, although unless your sitting in the same room as him you can’t be 100% sure he is not using a bot. I had a buddy do it in WoW I never realized it for the longest time till I saw him at the movies and I contacted my wife and told her that he was there and we were grabing a drink after wards. She said how is he there if he is online, ( of course this spurred an argument short but ) once she realized he was there she told him over the phone that she was going to report his account being hacked. He quickly stopped her and told her he was boting to farm.

Now I am not saying your guild mates were doing this, just an example that it is possible they were.

Again, its a suggestion for them to review. I appreciate everyone’s opinion but there is an issue with the actual process. Yes, sure there is a ‘repeal’ process but that is AFTER the ban. I am sure it would be different if you where the one banned for something you did not due and never given a chance to explain or at least ask why. Just simply “We have found out you bot, so your banned. If you feel this is wrong you can complain about it and we might take off the ban. Thank you, have a nice day!”

At least give a warning email, or an imgame mail from a GM saying “You have been tagged as a possible botter and here are the steps to take you off this hit list. Respond or you will be banned until further notice.”

Just able to be just and not extreme. Again it is just a suggestion I would like for them to look at and possibly respond to this post. I am sure I would like their input on their ‘actual process’ or at least some sort of statement.

Besides they informed me to post it here after I submitted it as a question… Would like for them to at least give me that.

Kaimick.5109:

Not condoning the ban, although if you randomly say hello to people in different ways in /s and then randomly talk with people in Map chat you lessen you chances of getting pegged as a bot. Also change up how you running to places, fight some mobs run past some, Stop and look around move one way then another way as if your trying to make a decision keep opening your map. There are a ton of ways you can avoid this. I just spent a month in a half mining and gathering T6 mats from orr along with Orichalcum, Mithril then mining Platinum I never once got banned.

On the other side of it, I realize this is your friend or guild mate, although unless your sitting in the same room as him you can’t be 100% sure he is not using a bot. I had a buddy do it in WoW I never realized it for the longest time till I saw him at the movies and I contacted my wife and told her that he was there and we were grabing a drink after wards. She said how is he there if he is online, ( of course this spurred an argument short but ) once she realized he was there she told him over the phone that she was going to report his account being hacked. He quickly stopped her and told her he was boting to farm.

Now I am not saying your guild mates were doing this, just an example that it is possible they were.

Agreed. But I AM sitting in the same room with the person in question, less than 3 feet away at our dining room table…

It is possible for family members to hack/bot.

The process at the moment seems pretty thorough though. How long did the persons in question “play like a bot”? And most people report bots that are running in bot trains and tele-hack farm bots. I doubt they would report you if they see you just farming, UNLESS they see a very robotic procedure to your farming, which I admit, I’ve seen really smart bots before that assisted each other whenever they’re in danger, but they always patrolled the same area, 24/7.

I have about 4 80s, on my way with another. I’m never afraid of being banned for botting here lol. Actually, I get sorta annoyed at how long it takes for a bot to be banned after reporting because I felt that the checks were TOO thorough.

kenshinakh.3672:

It is possible for family members to hack/bot.

The process at the moment seems pretty thorough though. How long did the persons in question “play like a bot”? And most people report bots that are running in bot trains and tele-hack farm bots. I doubt they would report you if they see you just farming, UNLESS they see a very robotic procedure to your farming, which I admit, I’ve seen really smart bots before that assisted each other whenever they’re in danger, but they always patrolled the same area, 24/7.

I have about 4 80s, on my way with another. I’m never afraid of being banned for botting here lol. Actually, I get sorta annoyed at how long it takes for a bot to be banned after reporting because I felt that the checks were TOO thorough.

Umm, I was busy playing my character so definitely wasn’t hacking his. HAHA On botting, no, we have no interest in that – we’re here to play the game or wouldn’t have bothered with all the dungeon runs or upgrades or crafting.

The deal: he (my husband) and a guildie were in an area killing trolls for crafting materials and drops. They frequently stopped to talk as they were being social more than anything. And they were there for less than 30 minutes before getting “booted” for “botting”. One is a sylvari guardian in cultural gear and one was a necro in Khilbran’s (sp). It is definitely a case of mistaken identification.

I don’t dispute that bots exist. And I like to know they are being watched for. The point is that these 2 were not (they have filed the required tickets and I’m sure they will be reinstated but 3 days is a long time to wait when you genuinely want to play – note the word “play”). Nor do they meet the criteria of a common bot, so we’re at a loss as to why they would have been banned without investigation beforehand. Can bots deviate from the “format”? I’m sure they can…as someone pointed out, their friend played and botted both. But my husband does not, nor does he know (or want to know) how. And, frankly, if that were his interest in this game, he would not have 4 level 80s and a baby he is leveling up, nor would they all be upgraded and taken care of in the manner he does…

Again, the suggestion is that the research be done beforehand (e.g. before banning) rather than forcing the player to submit a request to have the ban reviewed – unless there is a concern that the account were hacked. In this case, there was no indication that was a concern, only that they suspected botting, which again could have been easily disproven had he been given half a chance to do so.

Anet please lock this thread.

Again this is a suggestion, not a ‘he was botting to lets play a blame game!’.

Better read up more about how they do it. They don’t take “one request from Johnny”. They amass hundreds of reports, compare human actions while playing vs programmed actions, scan hours of log files, etc.

ive made a standard procedure before i think of reporting someone , i make several attempts to communicate with said player , party invites , whispers and /s. if i dont get any form of response and see them continuously running off to do other stuff then its hard to deny that the said player has a high chance for botting , even if you have chat filtered you can see a party invite and in turn leaves very little in their defense. i think thats a fair procedure ppl should consider checking for bots imo as far as a player can do.

Hi everyone,

Thanks for your feedback. We will forward your concerns to the team so they can be taken into account.
I would like to inform you that the team takes banning people very seriously and they do check everything before taking any kind of action.

Thanks for your understanding, This thread is closed