Guild Wars 2

This coming from a person who had a lot planned for this holiday weekend in game and got banned although I have never used any third parties or even a macro.

Please roll back the bans and fix the automated system or get rid of it and do it over, preferably in the middle of the week when everyone is working and not wanting to play.

No one at Arenanet is going to give me back the hundreds of TA tokens I could have been making or the karma or the time I am missing with my friends in WvW, so the least you could do is give the, at this point, hundreds of unrightfully banned people back their accounts and go back and fix the bot problem with manpower.

Hell, I will put in my resume right now if you need more people looking into bot reports and actually watching the people and their consoles I am all for, but don’t automate it.

A system that allows for this much error is doing more harming than helping and the bots that need to be banned are still there while people who are legitimately playing have lost about a week of their gameplay time.

Yes, I have only been banned for two days, but I doubt this will be resolved any time soon with the mass amounts of banning that is still going on.

PLEASE!

Give us all back our accounts and fix the botting problem manually instead so innocent people don’t get their weekends ruined!

Is it only a 2 day ban for botting ?

That explains why all the bots I reported that are in my friends list are back online !

Solid Gold.9310:

Is it only a 2 day ban for botting ?

That explains why all the bots I reported that are in my friends list are back online !

You misunderstood. The ban for botting is permanent. However, those who are banned wrongly can connect the support team and get their unrightful ban lifted, but the response takes at least 2 days.

You sure, because at least 3 bots in my friends list with names like (jklznmv) disappeared the day after I reported them, and reappeared about 3 days later.

And have now been on Frostgorge Sound for about a week.

Solid Gold.9310:

You sure, because at least 3 bots in my friends list with names like (jklznmv) disappeared the day after I reported them, and reappeared about 3 days later.

And have now been on Frostgorge Sound for about a week.

Well, I also got an unrightful ban, and now I am waiting for the customer support to reply my ticket, but the message I get upon trying to login states that the ban for botting is permanent.

retek.2963:

Solid Gold.9310:

You sure, because at least 3 bots in my friends list with names like (jklznmv) disappeared the day after I reported them, and reappeared about 3 days later.

And have now been on Frostgorge Sound for about a week.

Well, I also got an unrightful ban, and now I am waiting for the customer support to reply my ticket, but the message I get upon trying to login states that the ban for botting is permanent.

Well good luck with that, maybe I’m lucky as I do play a Ranger with an un-named bear pet !

Just was wondering how the bots I reported got their accounts back.

Solid Gold.9310:

Is it only a 2 day ban for botting ?

That explains why all the bots I reported that are in my friends list are back online !

No.

For those who clearly don’t know, they put in place a new banning system. Unfortunately, this banning system swept up a whole bunch of people who do not bot and got many of us banned for no reason.

I spend all my time PVPing in WvW and because no actual human reviewed my case, I have been banned along with many others who have no idea why. Arenanet has been scrambling to unban people since Wednesday when this all started, but people are still being banned for no reason.

Toble.2968:

Solid Gold.9310:

Is it only a 2 day ban for botting ?

That explains why all the bots I reported that are in my friends list are back online !

No.

For those who clearly don’t know, they put in place a new banning system. Unfortunately, this banning system swept up a whole bunch of people who do not bot and got many of us banned for no reason.

I spend all my time PVPing in WvW and because no actual human reviewed my case, I have been banned along with many others who have no idea why. Arenanet has been scrambling to unban people since Wednesday when this all started, but people are still being banned for no reason.

Yes I understand some people may have been banned when they shouldn’t have been.

But the new system is not working properly because the bots I reported are STILL there………..

Back on topic, well it’s unlikely that they roll it back, but the at least they should give some kind of compensation for their victims. Something like 500 gems would at least help people get over this a bit quicker.

Solid Gold.9310:

You sure, because at least 3 bots in my friends list with names like (jklznmv) disappeared the day after I reported them, and reappeared about 3 days later.

And have now been on Frostgorge Sound for about a week.

This obviously means this system doesn’t work then.

Wouldn’t you like them to fix it instead of banning people like I Am Harmless (Me)?

Jklzmv I am sure is still botting away in game while innocents like me are waiting to get unabnned. they obviously need to fix this.

Lutharr.1035:

so let me see if I can get my head around this.
[Deleted]

Indeed. Best thing since the new version of Apple Maps. /sarcasm

[quote=687261;Toble.2968Wouldn’t you like them to fix it instead of banning people like I Am Harmless (Me)?

Jklzmv I am sure is still botting away in game while innocents like me are waiting to get unabnned. they obviously need to fix this.[/quote]

No of course I don’t want to see innocent people banned, and neither does ArenaNet I’m sure.

Well jklzmv << not real name, was still botting as of 3 minutes ago.

you know these anti bot banning things have never effected me in any game ive ever played? maybe im just really lucky. or maybe i just never use bots. probably because i never use bots.

Toble.2968:

For those who clearly don’t know, they put in place a new banning system. Unfortunately, this banning system swept up a whole bunch of people who do not bot and got many of us banned for no reason.

Strangely enough , nearly every one who bots claims they did not do it when banned.

The odd one or two may get banned accidentally but i have yet to see evidence that a whole bunch of people claiming to be falsely banned are actually being honest.

poe lyfe.5879:

you know these anti bot banning things have never effected me in any game ive ever played? maybe im just really lucky. or maybe i just never use bots. probably because i never use bots.

I have had GM’s approach me in previous games, I have even had them nerf my drop rate before. In previous games that actually required farming, because guild wars 2 really takes only 2 weeks to get a level 80 fully geared character with little effort, I would sit there for hours and grind on monsters and I actually had a dev show up on a dev character and watch me. I continued my business as usual for a little bit and then I proceeded to greet them and ask them what exactly they were looking for. Of course they didn’t respond, but I wasn’t banned because they actually looked into it and could not find any third parties or anything wrong with what I was doing despite the fact that I appeared to be botting by farming in the same place with a similar rotation for a very long time. I often got sneered at by players called a bot and reported, but because NCsoft could not find the evidence of botting I was never reported because I was never botting.

I’m sure the wave hasn’t effected many players who have never botted and I am sure the wave hasn’t effected many bots as well.

We have gone over this, there are still bots farming right now and there are still people who have never botted without account access.

It is a flawed system.

Just because you didn’t get hit by it doesn’t mean it’s working.

Lutharr.1035:

so let me see if I can get my head around this.

1/ The make a system that bans people for botting
2/ They ban people who are not botting
3/ The bots are still around

Sounds like an awesome new feature /facepalm

It’s great isn’t it? And they decide to test it server-wide just before a long weekend.

Brilliant!

Toble.2968:

Give us all back our accounts and fix the botting problem manually instead so innocent people don’t get their weekends ruined!

So at the moment you’re saying an automated process is coming up with a large amount of false positives. To remedy this, you’re suggesting they do the whole process manually.

Does this mean you’d only want them to ban based on player reports? Since I think with that method you’d still end up with false positives.

Nefaria.7659:

Toble.2968:

Give us all back our accounts and fix the botting problem manually instead so innocent people don’t get their weekends ruined!

So at the moment you’re saying an automated process is coming up with a large amount of false positives. To remedy this, you’re suggesting they do the whole process manually.

Does this mean you’d only want them to ban based on player reports? Since I think with that method you’d still end up with false positives.

No. This means I want them to assess the tickets personally (As in people read them) and then given the bulk of tickets and gravity of the offenses have the devs assigned to check up randomly on these players at any given time and most likely catching them in the act of using third party programs.

This has been used by many games and successfully deals with much of the bot problems while avoiding innocent bans.

I am in fact saying against what you claimed I was saying. Currently, I assume the process of this ban wave was to take those with a certain number of reports against them and ban them without looking into it, which has caused this large issue we now see.

This is a repost while being more respectful and not telling the person to take a hike out of my thread. This is a response to kistell.5684

Wrong.
We have offered all of our account information, serial numbers and permission for them to look into everything we have. We have openly offered the evidence to arenanet. the problem is, this is thousands of people at this point trying to get thier innocent accounts back over a holiday weekend and Arenanet has not time to go through this evidence.

What they should have done was gone through the automated system individually first instead of sending out a ban wave and cleaning up the mess afterwards.
The people that are “Mostly bots” often haven’t even farmed. I come from Os Guild and I spend 95% of my time in WvW owning the faces off people. Because of this, I am sure I have been reported under the botting section as a hacker despite the fact that it isn’t a hack, I just have high regen, a lot of heals and can take off conditions faster than people can put them on. this is how I got banned for third party programming.
Arenanet didn’t find any illegal software on my computer or anything of the sort. what has happened is those with excessive reports against them were banned and not in fact looked into before being banned.

This is why this is happening to so many people, because those who do simply farm or people that play oddly overpowered classes in WvW are getting banned because of excessive reporting and a flawed system. That or someone isn’t doing their job correctly and is going to be fired.

You will never see the evidence because it is not for players to see. We as the convicted have asked for the evidence as well and have honestly not been offered anything to show whether we are guilty or not.
It goes both ways, you see.

You call us all bots, yet you have no evidence to do such, when we have openly shown we have nothing to hide by giving every last bit of information we have into our support tickets just so they can go in and finger through our accounts in order to prove our innocence.\

We have given evidence of innocence.

Now where is your evidence of our guilt?

Are there proof of these thousand of people wrongly banned for botting?
Because if you just invent numbers then it’s hard to take everything else you say seriously.

Haishao.6851:

Are there proof of these thousand of people wrongly banned for botting?
Because if you just invent numbers then it’s hard to take everything else you say seriously.

Please reference the account issues forums where for the last week or so, there have been hundreds of complaints.

Now, consider all the people complaining on forums and now consider all the tickets that were submitted silently.

On top of all that, there are people with ticket numbers going well into the 7000s this weekend.

Now double it.

This happened last month too.

Need more evidence?

Just ask and please take your arguments into an argument thread, not a suggestion thread.

Why should Anet provide you or any one, the evidence they hold?
Botters and Hackers will just use that information to circumvent their checks.

So by your logic if every one contests their innocence then they are automatically innocent?

The mere fact you suggest Anet can check your PC now its total rubbish, who is to say you and many others have not done a clean reinstall / removed any potential infringing software since.

Do a quick search on the internet their are already people openly bragging about botting whom were caught and even got their bans lifted.

All i can say thank god you are not a judge in any legal system.

Your guilty as of now because your banned.

Anet staff have stated in posts that bot bans range in the thousands. They’ve also stated that many of the people saying they weren’t botting were, in fact, botting. Sure, there may be a couple dozen legit players who got unfairly banned – but it’s a very small percentage in the face of thousands of bots which also got banned. Some bots will slip under the radar, too, it’s inevitable.

Also, suggesting a human isn’t looking at your case is… odd, to say the least – has it ever been stated that there are auto bans? I think a staff member specifically stated there are absolutely no auto bans.

Suggesting that every bot ban be rolled back and that they stop banning just because a few people got unfairly banned is silly to say the least. What about all the people who are actually botting that they’d be allowing back in?

kistell.5684:

Why should Anet provide you or any one, the evidence they hold?
Botters and Hackers will just use that information to circumvent their checks.

So by your logic if every one contests their innocence then they are automatically innocent?

The mere fact you suggest Anet can check your PC now its total rubbish, who is to say you and many others have not done a clean reinstall / removed any potential infringing software since.

Do a quick search on the internet their are already people openly bragging about botting whom were caught and even got their bans lifted.

All i can say thank god you are not a judge in any legal system.

Your guilty as of now because your banned.

So you think that banning thousands of bots is okay if a chunk of them happens to not be bots.

So you are saying because botters get bans lifted they should not believe anyone at all even if they are innocent?

I hope you get caught up in a ban wave some day and say the same thing.

Oh by the way, the American legal system is the exact opposite of what you say. So technically my way of doing it IS what our legal system is currently practicing.

It’s innocent until proven guilty.

Please go educate yourself and yet again, this is not a debate forum, this is a suggestion thread.

neon.4863:

Anet staff have stated in posts that bot bans range in the thousands. They’ve also stated that many of the people saying they weren’t botting were, in fact, botting. Sure, there may be a couple dozen legit players who got unfairly banned – but it’s a very small percentage in the face of thousands of bots which also got banned. Some bots will slip under the radar, too, it’s inevitable.

Also, suggesting a human isn’t looking at your case is… odd, to say the least – has it ever been stated that there are auto bans? I think a staff member specifically stated there are absolutely no auto bans.

Suggesting that every bot ban be rolled back and that they stop banning just because a few people got unfairly banned is silly to say the least. What about all the people who are actually botting that they’d be allowing back in?

I don’t believe that it was only a couple dozen for the simple fact of my case.

I definitely believe that legitimate PVErs would get caught up in this when someone who doesn’t even participate in PVE at all would get banned.

I spend pretty much all of my time in WvW with my guild killing other players and doing dynamic events such as dropping siege, building it, repairing things. None of my actions are macroed or repetitive.

The fact that they made such a far off mistake proves that the system is flawed and most likely based on number of reports verses anyone actually looking into the botting.

Also, if actual bots have had their bans lifted, that means that Anet in fact has not pinpointed a way to prove the botting, i.e. finding the programs and such and I would rather deal with bots for a longer while than have anet not being able to make a distinction.

The only way I can explain it to you is by using an actual justice system. 100 people are captured by the police and 75 of them are murderers.

You assume put 25 innocent people in jail instantly instead of the police letting them go and on a later event putting all 75 of them away with hard evidence.

In fact, this is how the situation is right now in metaphorical terms. 100 people go to jail, 75 are murders.

5 are found to be innocent, which makes the justice system doubt their judgement and 50 people get out as innocent, leaving 50 murders in jail, 25 innocents having days of their life taken away in jail and 25 murders off the hook and able to probably get out again scott free in the future.

Does no one see the problem in the logic of mass banning without individually investigating each case?

Toble.2968:

So you think that banning thousands of bots is okay if a chunk of them happens to not be bots.

So you are saying because botters get bans lifted they should not believe anyone at all even if they are innocent?

I hope you get caught up in a ban wave some day and say the same thing.

Oh by the way, the American legal system is the exact opposite of what you say. So technically my way of doing it IS what our legal system is currently practicing.

It’s innocent until proven guilty.

Please go educate yourself and yet again, this is not a debate forum, this is a suggestion thread.

yes im perfectly happy for Anet to ban thousands of botters and hackers,
they destroy the game.

Also you cannot say with any degree of certainty that a large chunk are falsely accused, your pulling that from thin air.

Educate my self are you claiming that Anet just bans people for a laugh with no evidence? please prove me wrong i ask you.

When you purchased the game and acknowledged the terms and conditions of service every thing you needed to know was their.
accounts have been investigated and deemed to have broken the conditions and accounts have been banned, the service has been removed for breach of contract.

You have had your service removed because you breached contract , its simple.
They do not have to prove any thing to you im sorry.

As for your legal system is the opposite of what i say, please elaborate?

So according to you a person can be accused and judgments should be formed on the correlation of number of defendants pleading innocence.

To many defendants are pleading innocent so we have to many false arrests, logic i think not.

Staff has stated there are no auto-bans, which leads me to believe there is individual investigation of each case (they keep saying the best way to help them track down bots is by reporting them in-game). There are, however, thousands of cases every week and I highly doubt they have a team of thousands of people working on it – it’s probably a lot of cases for each person and some things may slip under the radar. There will be mistakes. A system that is run by humans is inherently flawed.

If you really haven’t been botting, though, keep pleading your case. They should be able to tell from your account history/behavior that you’re not a bot. There is no advantage for ANet in keeping wrongful bans.

neon.4863:

Anet staff have stated in posts that bot bans range in the thousands. They’ve also stated that many of the people saying they weren’t botting were, in fact, botting. Sure, there may be a couple dozen legit players who got unfairly banned – but it’s a very small percentage in the face of thousands of bots which also got banned. Some bots will slip under the radar, too, it’s inevitable.

Also, suggesting a human isn’t looking at your case is… odd, to say the least – has it ever been stated that there are auto bans? I think a staff member specifically stated there are absolutely no auto bans.

Suggesting that every bot ban be rolled back and that they stop banning just because a few people got unfairly banned is silly to say the least. What about all the people who are actually botting that they’d be allowing back in?

http://tinypic.com/r/2my910/6

Yes it was stated there are no auto bans.

But if there are no auto-bans, then how did the innocents get swept up?

It has been stated that out of thousands some are bound to get swept up.

but how?

http://tinypic.com/r/2ijlz5f/6

Well this is how, simply being invited to a party or in the vicinity can get you caught up apparently.

Which means they just admitted to not checking individually for a botting program on each characters computer.

Which means this is most likely the room for error that is getting innocents banned.

And yes, if this is happening where people are not even being checked before the sweep, yes, let the bots back in, check them, ban the bots and save the people who shouldn’t be banned.

kistell.5684:

Toble.2968:

So you think that banning thousands of bots is okay if a chunk of them happens to not be bots.

So you are saying because botters get bans lifted they should not believe anyone at all even if they are innocent?

I hope you get caught up in a ban wave some day and say the same thing.

Oh by the way, the American legal system is the exact opposite of what you say. So technically my way of doing it IS what our legal system is currently practicing.

It’s innocent until proven guilty.

Please go educate yourself and yet again, this is not a debate forum, this is a suggestion thread.

yes im perfectly happy for Anet to ban thousands of botters and hackers,
they destroy the game.

Also you cannot say with any degree of certainty that a large chunk are falsely accused, your pulling that from thin air.

Educate my self are you claiming that Anet just bans people for a laugh with no evidence? please prove me wrong i ask you.

When you purchased the game and acknowledged the terms and conditions of service every thing you needed to know was their.
accounts have been investigated and deemed to have broken the conditions and accounts have been banned, the service has been removed for breach of contract.

You have had your service removed because you breached contract , its simple.
They do not have to prove any thing to you im sorry.

As for your legal system is the opposite of what i say, please elaborate?

So according to you a person can be accused and judgments should be formed on the correlation of number of defendants pleading innocence.

To many defendants are pleading innocent so we have to many false arrests, logic i think not.

Well, if I am pulling it from thin air, then how are so many people getting unbanned?

So you are saying that everyone being unbanned is a bot, then therefore this whole sweep is being reversed and was unecessary in the first place? Look at mr. logic!

So all the people being unbanned are just bots that Anet proved guilty at first but then were let off the hook for not apparent reason and they weren’t actually innocent at all, correct?

Also, please refer to my previous post to figure out exactly why innocents are in fact being banned stated by a moderator.

Also in your previous post, what you were exemplifying was Martial Law where they can take people into custody without giving them rights of any sort and hold them until proven guilty, not what America practices, which was my suggestion, innocent until hard evidence of guilt, I.E. the proof of programs is found. My argument has nothing to do with the number of people pleading innocent. It has to do with the collection of evidence. Seriously, educate yourself.

They can’t check for a botting program on your computer. That’s hacking, and that’s illegal.

neon.4863:

They can’t check for a botting program on your computer. That’s hacking, and that’s illegal.

Companies are allowed to see what is being input into their software, so yes, yes they can see input from botting programs while they are being run.

Toble First things first if you want to quote me out of context your argument fails already. Is this how you justify botting?

I said " Do a quick search on the internet their are already people openly bragging about botting whom were caught and even got their bans lifted."

Merely pointing out that people claiming they are innocent necisarly are not.

You then quote me as saying “So you are saying that everyone being unbanned is a bot, then therefore this whole sweep is being reversed and was unecessary in the first place? Look at mr. logic!”

See how you are attempting to manipulate facts yet again, twisting what others say and do.

This is pretty much how your entire straw man argument fails, against Anet bans.
Its all twisted made up facts you pull out of thin air.
Bans with out investigations and allegations thousands of people are wrongly accused, you cannot back up any of it with fact.

I also see you cannot hold a debate with out lowering your self to name calling, so
ill just leave you with this " Those who shout the loudest usually have the most to hide. "

Actually, what companies can see is the input that is transferred to their servers if the software is connected to the internet (which, in this case, is true – since the game client connects to ANet’s servers). And even then, either they’re monitoring it live, or keeping logs of what’s been done, because otherwise they really can’t know what you’ve been doing while playing.

Even assuming logs are being kept (they probably are) or that there is a way to flag and monitor someone for botting activity remotely, input from botting programs is nothing more than macros that mimic input from real humans. A macro is something that sends the same signals to your computer as the peripherals would, thus behaving exactly like a click of the mouse or typing.

There is no way to tell with 100% certainty whether input comes from a macro or from a human unless you’re monitoring a user’s computer activity outside of just the game software. Bots behave very mechanically though so their patterns are usually easy to spot – usually. Sometimes a regular player can behave in a way that is really close to bots, and sometimes you make mistakes while monitoring.

It’s impossible to have a system to ban bots that won’t sometimes get legitimate players caught up in it. An effective system, however, will catch a lot more bots than legitimate players, and I don’t really see evidence to the contrary so far (since a lot of the people claiming innocence have probably botted, just like a lot of the people in a reddit thread a while ago claiming they never said anything “bad” in chat had actually said some really appalling things).

It’s a huge hassle to be unfairly accused of something, but keep pleading your case if you’ve never botted. You should be able to get your account back with a more careful review of your case.

That’s worrying.

I think they should implant those words verification pop-ups in-game for suspected botters. If the GM thinks the player is botting, the GM can give a 2-3 minutes timed verification pop-up to the player. If the player did not input the words verification within time limit, he’ll be confirmed as not being with the screen and botting.

Make the pop-up looks big and noticable (1/3 of the screen). The letters/numbers are easily seen too. Also, make the character invulnerable to attacks during that time so legit players can input the texts without worrying about being killed by mobs. It helps alot in differentiating legit players and botters.

Pop-up verifications are usually triggered automatically rather than via GMs, actually (you get flagged for suspicions of botting and the popup comes up). They’re not failproof, though – you could get them while AFKing or someone could have a really sophisticated bot that recognizes numbers/words (this is wholly possible – captcha systems are not able to fully stop bots). This could also be really frustrating and jarring if you got a huge pop-up in the middle of a boss fight, PvP or WvW, for instance – you’d be pretty much incapacitated for the duration of the popup and that could cost you/your group the match depending on the situation.

kistell.5684:

Toble First things first if you want to quote me out of context your argument fails already. Is this how you justify botting?

I said " Do a quick search on the internet their are already people openly bragging about botting whom were caught and even got their bans lifted."

Merely pointing out that people claiming they are innocent necisarly are not.

You then quote me as saying “So you are saying that everyone being unbanned is a bot, then therefore this whole sweep is being reversed and was unecessary in the first place? Look at mr. logic!”

See how you are attempting to manipulate facts yet again, twisting what others say and do.

This is pretty much how your entire straw man argument fails, against Anet bans.
Its all twisted made up facts you pull out of thin air.
Bans with out investigations and allegations thousands of people are wrongly accused, you cannot back up any of it with fact.

I also see you cannot hold a debate with out lowering your self to name calling, so
ill just leave you with this " Those who shout the loudest usually have the most to hide. "

“Your guilty as of now because your banned.”

Aka, you are a murderer because we put you in prison, not because we found hard evidence and have shown it to you. (Martial Law)

“All i can say thank god you are not a judge in any legal system.”

Hinting that Martial Law is the legal system you support since mine is based of proving guilty via evidence before putting someone in prison.

“Educate my self are you claiming that Anet just bans people for a laugh with no evidence? please prove me wrong i ask you.”

http://tinypic.com/r/2ijlz5f/6

And thin air you say?

Hundreds have been unbanned.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Blocked-suspended-terminated-Players-comments/page/24#post688867

You can count for yourself how many spoke about being unbanned, just wrap your head around those who didn’t speak when they got unbanned?

“Do a quick search on the internet their are already people openly bragging about botting whom were caught and even got their bans lifted.”

And how many bots didn’t brag about it?

So by your arguing my suggestion, you are saying keep the system that gets what arenanet deems as hundreds of innocent players caught up in a bot sweep. The same system that lets guilty bots go.

Your argument is basically fighting for a system that lets bots go.

“thousands of botters and hackers,
they destroy the game.”

Don’t get into a quote war with me.

These aren’t twisted words or fact.

You are contradicting yourself.

I never name called, I asked you to go educate yourself about the topic before speaking against it and you clearly don’t even no the essence of this topic since you hate bots and clearly are voting for a system that lets them go.

Yes, you are in a suggestion thread which is suggesting revamping a system which lets bots go.

Educate yourself about the topic before you speak.

Naoko.7096:

That’s worrying.

I think they should implant those words verification pop-ups in-game for suspected botters. If the GM thinks the player is botting, the GM can give a 2-3 minutes timed verification pop-up to the player. If the player did not input the words verification within time limit, he’ll be confirmed as not being with the screen and botting.

Make the pop-up looks big and noticable (1/3 of the screen). The letters/numbers are easily seen too. Also, make the character invulnerable to attacks during that time so legit players can input the texts without worrying about being killed by mobs. It helps alot in differentiating legit players and botters.

Even better, have them enact Gamegaurd or Xtrap. These programs make sure that no third party input is being made into the gw2 client.

There is no system that won’t get some innocents unfairly banned or end up letting some bots go.

Edit: Gameguard and Xtrap are not foolproof either. Nothing is.

neon.4863:

Actually, what companies can see is the input that is transferred to their servers if the software is connected to the internet (which, in this case, is true – since the game client connects to ANet’s servers). And even then, either they’re monitoring it live, or keeping logs of what’s been done, because otherwise they really can’t know what you’ve been doing while playing.

Even assuming logs are being kept (they probably are) or that there is a way to flag and monitor someone for botting activity remotely, input from botting programs is nothing more than macros that mimic input from real humans. A macro is something that sends the same signals to your computer as the peripherals would, thus behaving exactly like a click of the mouse or typing.

There is no way to tell with 100% certainty whether input comes from a macro or from a human unless you’re monitoring a user’s computer activity outside of just the game software. Bots behave very mechanically though so their patterns are usually easy to spot – usually. Sometimes a regular player can behave in a way that is really close to bots, and sometimes you make mistakes while monitoring.

It’s impossible to have a system to ban bots that won’t sometimes get legitimate players caught up in it. An effective system, however, will catch a lot more bots than legitimate players, and I don’t really see evidence to the contrary so far (since a lot of the people claiming innocence have probably botted, just like a lot of the people in a reddit thread a while ago claiming they never said anything “bad” in chat had actually said some really appalling things).

It’s a huge hassle to be unfairly accused of something, but keep pleading your case if you’ve never botted. You should be able to get your account back with a more careful review of your case.

Oh, I know I will be getting my account back.

Sure I am angry I lost a whole holiday weekend of playing with my guildees against a much fairer match up in WvW and am going to miss out on the free trail event and maybe even the first part of lost shores, but what worries me is it happening again and to my friends and in general other people.

I don’t think it is fair what has happened and I don’t think it should continue. I do think they should check for the macro patterns. No person could mimic a macro for more than 30 minutes to a T they are bound to make a step out of place when moving or targeting. they should monitor it personally.

My movements and spell casts have never been commonplace or repeated. in PVP you have to dynamically change weapons and attunements and use skills on the fly so there has never been a pattern which is how I knew something was up when I was banned for botting. none of my keys are bound to anything that makes a macro or changes anything than more than 1-1, so I knew it had to be something else. I went on the forums and lo and behold tons of people are getting banned and have no clue why.

What is more, I was banned and my friends were still spotting bots running around. people are still spotting bots.

So I investigated further and as you can see fromm what the moderater said, apparently there is a chance to get caught up in a bot sweep via area.

Then how did I get caught up while PvPing in a WvW borderland?

I speculate it has to be from number of reports and given my current class I can see why people would try and report me for hacking. I heal faster than they do damage. that makes sense, people don’t see that kind of elementalist often so they have no clue why my health bar isn’t dropping. Since there is no “hacking” choice under report, I assume people have reported me for botting. I know this because this is what we do when we see someone blatantly fly hacking in WvW.

Anyways, my point being, there is something wrong with the system and I think what you have said with the thorough investigation of macro patterns alongside an Xtrap program would be best in this case. All good gamers never mind Xtrap so why not use it? It does come to some cost to the company, but it makes for better gameplay for the people who really don’t want bots.

Well, I haven’t been banned for botting. So far I am 100% in support of this system. Seems to be working as I do not bot, and therefore have not been banned

I would oh so much love to the see the logs of what the system thought was you botting though. Just to point out how obviously you probably were botting xD

neon.4863:

There is no system that won’t get some innocents unfairly banned or end up letting some bots go.

Edit: Gameguard and Xtrap are not foolproof either. Nothing is.

I know this, but did you see the screen shot earlier? By vicinity. You could get banned for being in the space where the bots are farming or even just in their party if they send you a random party invite.

And if it does it consistently we wont have a problem with ban waves. It will be more of a ban trickle making the complaints of innocents more manageable.

Do you see my point?

What did the ban say as the reason? Just curious

Game protection systems like GameGuard and Xtrap are often met with some criticism (GG for instance can cause several browsers to crash), so I can see why they’d choose not to use it. I’m not saying the system is foolproof because it obviously is not, but I’m pretty sure it’s not as bad as it may sound. It’s possible to get wrongfully banned for any number of reasons (I saw a case once of a guy who reported someone else for verbal abuse and was the one who got banned).

Be assured that the tons of people you see being banned aren’t really all as clueless as they seem, though. A lot of people will deny doing something wrong even in the face of very solid evidence, so in a case like this (where ANet can’t release evidence, with good reason) it’s even easier to sound like a legit player who got unfairly banned.

I’m pretty sure most of the people saying they have no clue why they got banned are well aware of why.

Frvwfr.4307:

Well, I haven’t been banned for botting. So far I am 100% in support of this system. Seems to be working as I do not bot, and therefore have not been banned

I would oh so much love to the see the logs of what the system thought was you botting though. Just to point out how obviously you probably were botting xD

I would enjoy seeing that too. In fact, that is what I have been asking for.

Then again hundreds of bots also haven’t been banned for botting either.

Must be working.

neon.4863:

Game protection systems like GameGuard and Xtrap are often met with some criticism (GG for instance can cause several browsers to crash), so I can see why they’d choose not to use it. I’m not saying the system is foolproof because it obviously is not, but I’m pretty sure it’s not as bad as it may sound. It’s possible to get wrongfully banned for any number of reasons (I saw a case once of a guy who reported someone else for verbal abuse and was the one who got banned).

Be assured that the tons of people you see being banned aren’t really all as clueless as they seem, though. A lot of people will deny doing something wrong even in the face of very solid evidence, so in a case like this (where ANet can’t release evidence, with good reason) it’s even easier to sound like a legit player who got unfairly banned.

I’m pretty sure most of the people saying they have no clue why they got banned are well aware of why.

True, I am positive some of them are bots, but I also want to relate to you a very wonderful story from Aion.

A guildmaster got banned from Hello Kitty Nation, a guild that controlled much of a factions zerg resources and organization. He got banned after a giant influx of individual reports against him for hacking in PVP.

Well, this was news to the people who actually PvPed along side of him whether in his guild or out of it and complaints came rolling in to have his account investigated.

They finally investigated the reports and his account and found that no investigation into the hacking situation had actually been made and the one handling the tickets actually just assumed that with so many unrelated individual tickets this must have been a blatant user.

The ticket influx was organized by a rival guild of the opposite faction.

The guildmaster was reinstated his account and the ticket handler was fired from NcSoft.

Fired.

So yes. This has happened before, can happen, and I believe something terribly wrong has indeed happened here.

Also, Neon, when I was playing Cabal even way back when 4 years ago, I never had any issues with Xtrap and any of my browsers or anything else. I understand the reluctance, but from what it seems like people hate bots way more than a browser crashing every once in a while.

I would rather have that than orb hackers or fly hackers.

moose.6973:

What did the ban say as the reason? Just curious

In general, this is the messege we all got. It is for third party program usage. Explained in the forums it is anything that automates or improves your gameplay. There was a guy who actually made a post saying he had a macro that pressed 6 keys and was wondering if he was banned for it.

This made me frown because that’s when I realize most people haven’t actually read up on the ToS before posting at all.

Again, if you are innocent, just keep pleading your case. That’s all you can really do. Asking ANet to rollback bans or stop banning isn’t really a reasonable request – it harms the players as a whole.

Also, they will not tell you how you got flagged for botting. That’d be a silly move on their part, because if you reveal how you find your bots, you’re giving them the info they need to reverse engineer it to get around your method.

neon.4863:

Again, if you are innocent, just keep pleading your case. That’s all you can really do. Asking ANet to rollback bans or stop banning isn’t really a reasonable request – it harms the players as a whole.

Also, they will not tell you how you got flagged for botting. That’d be a silly move on their part, because if you reveal how you find your bots, you’re giving them the info they need to reverse engineer it to get around your method.

Oh, it will get unbanned after the holiday weekend is over. the problem is the banning is continuing and the tickets are piling up. They are going to have their work cut out for them.

If they actually put in the effort to investigate each and every one, it will take weeks for people to get back their accounts.

If they don’t, some bots will go free.

My suggestion here is let everyone go and begin filtering on a regular basis instead.

It just makes sense not to do it in waves where people can get “Caught up” in it.

First of all, it’s unfair to those of us who had things planned for this weekend.

Second of all, it let’s guilty bots go.

So why not set in a normal filtering system like other games?

Yet again, I have never been banned in other games for botting before and I farmed A LOT in Aion since it took months of farming just to get par gear. This game doesn’t really need farming so I don’t really farm at all here and I have gotten banned, so something is most certainly wrong here.

You’d be pretty upset to if you got accused of something wrongfully. Even being labelled a botter is offensive to me because mmorpg games are about earning things over time, not just automatically having them, (Which you can already do in spvp anyways so what is the point of botting again?)

One of the things I enjoy earning is a reputation of being a good and helpful player in PvP. Why would I risk that reputation for hacking?

I knew a guy in Aion that was really good at pvp in general but ruined his reputation by wanting to get the best gear he could buy without doing any of the work, so he hacked his way to it, got his account banned and ruined his reputation in the process even though he was still a rather good PvPer. he also became a major jerk when he began this cheating for some reason which is why i don’t enjoy associating with hackers. it ruins the competition, and that is what me and Os Guild are all about.

Why would I ruin that?

Apparently threads get glitched if they are on the crux of page changing. Ignore this post.