Guild Wars 2

I completely understand that Arenanet needs time to investigate the methods botters are using to exploit the game. I am suggesting a method to help curb the effects on the economy as well as people game play experience while we are waiting for the eventual ban hammer.

Suggestion:
After a potential botter receives a certain number of reports for botting from other players, a captcha appears on their screen (one of those annoying images that you need to read a distorted word).

If the botter fails to enter a correct response in an appropriate time (i.e. 60 seconds), they are logged out of the game.

If it was a real player, they can enter the correct code, and become immune to further requests for a nominated time (i.e. 30 minutes) to prevent players trolling each other by making people fill in captchas.

If the bot that has been kicked returns online, and fails again after getting rereported, they get kicked and slapped with a short term ban (i.e. 24 hours). This can escalate further with repeated failed attempts.

Disadvantages:
It won’t prevent botters running multiple accounts while they babysit them.
The captcha system isn’t infallible.
Minor irritation to real players (offset by the cool down after a successful completion of the captcha)

Advantages:
It gives real players a sense that the reporting for botting system will actually do something in the short term.
It adds another layer of inconvenience to the people botting.
Because it is player based – it gives no indication to the people writing the bots that arenanet have identified them, so a passive surveillance can continue, followed by a mass wave of bans.

I’d prefer something like more wandering champions that you can’t just skill spam to take out.

I remember the first time I entered burning crusade in wow and there were huge mechas that killed botters constantly as they traversed around the zone – any real player could easily avoid them. It adds flavour to the world, and even a nice random challenge for groups.

I think the solutions for anti-botting lie with server-side security.

The kludge solutions end up hurting the legit players (witness people getting chat-locked after just one or two “/map LF1M TA ex.”

No thanks. As a legit player, getting something like a catch phrase would rattle my kittens. They just need to pursue them quicker when there are reports. Sometimes you see them for days running around (with all broken gear) just running in circles attacking whatever they can. They are not even hard to spot…

emikochan.8504:

I’d prefer something like more wandering champions that you can’t just skill spam to take out.

I remember the first time I entered burning crusade in wow and there were huge mechas that killed botters constantly as they traversed around the zone – any real player could easily avoid them. It adds flavour to the world, and even a nice random challenge for groups.

Many games do this, and I think its a decent fix. I don’t mind being the prey and having to book it once in a while.

Would making gold sending through mail impossible fix the issue?

Scorpio.3821:

Many games do this, and I think its a decent fix. I don’t mind being the prey and having to book it once in a while.

Tbh there are quite a few wandering champs but they just don’t wander through the farming spots :P