500% magic find at the flip of a switch.
I played a different NCSoft game (Lineage 2), which was very bot-driven. At one point I discovered I was the only player in my clan that was still using the official client.
The devs and PR folks made talk like they didn’t like bots, but in practice they turned a blind eye to it.
GW2’s pattern thus far is very familiar.
are you sure? i am certain anet will ban the bots in waves and all.
give them some time perhaps?
They will ban in waves undoubtedly. However these waves will be extremely far apart and more to maximize arenanets profitability from new bot accounts rather than fixing the problem.
Actually Stratzvyda, it’s very simple tactics. Rather than trying to bash ArenaNet and call them greedy (Even though they are not charging you a monthly fee), you should try to use some logic and think about this. Botters tend to report to other botters if they’ve been banned in which case, everyone using said botting program/exploit/botting area/etc. would stop using that one and switch to a different one; one this not known about.
By banning in waves, you allow more bot accounts to accrue in say a list, then, once you hit a certain quota, be it 500, 1000 or however many, you ban them. This actually allows for many, many more botting accounts to be banned than banning on sight.
Believe me, ArenaNet couldn’t care less about the profits they make from botting accounts, especially when RMT’s account for the vast majority of botting accounts who often use stolen credit cards to buy the accounts. Do you really think ArenaNet likes chargebacks and dealing with creditors when someone buys an account with stolen money? Money ArenaNet by law cannot keep?
I don’t get how this is possible. Isn’t the server controlling everything? How can a client side bot perform such ridiculous actions? Is there no code on the server to check incoming packet data for invalid values? Such as 500% MF? Or changing position with speed that clearly violates the rules? And if there isn’t, why not?
Every game has bots.
Even borderlands, even single player games.
This is just the nature of a small minority of gamers nowadays who cheat as a matter of course.
The key thing to remember is how much worse things would be if these botters gained permanent, game-changing stat/level advantages over other players by cheating – like if they could use higher item level gear to pwn in PVP.
As it stands, all they get is more gold, which translates to more skins. No numerical advantage because the game isn’t gear-driven. And they also gain a ban sword of damocles over their head.
Think about it.
I don’t get how this is possible. Isn’t the server controlling everything? How can a client side bot perform such ridiculous actions? Is there no code on the server to check incoming packet data for invalid values? Such as 500% MF? Or changing position with speed that clearly violates the rules? And if there isn’t, why not?
I don’t know for sure, but based off of what I have read and encountered in the game, I would say there is not. Why there isn’t only the developers can say for sure, but I would speculate they put a lot of emphasis on the client in order to reduce the load on the servers. Again, only they really know for sure, but from what I have read about and seen bots do, I would say there are NO checks for a lot of client data input. If there were, the game would not be so easily hacked/botted.
Thanks.
It’s as I have always said,
“You can get more results with a kind word and a big stick,
than you can with merely a kind word.”
“You can get more results with a kind word and a big stick,
than you can with merely a kind word.”
zerospinIs there no code on the server to check incoming packet data for invalid values?
Obviously not. This situation came up a few months ago in gw1 where people manipulated npc dialogue boxes so that npcs would give them pretty much anything they asked for instead of what it was actually supposed to give (a storybook). Anet was able to track them down and ban a number of them so they should definitely be able to deal with these types of hacks. Strange that they didn’t implement a system within gw2 to verify packet data after it happened in gw1.
It comes down to the simple fact that by botting you can make a profit, there is no real risk to you as a player if done properly. You could buy two accounts, play one and bot one. The bot one may get banned one day but not before you have farmed enough to cover your outlay and probably a lot more.
Also consider that when Anet say “We banned 10,000 accounts”, they are actually saying, we have now sold an extra 10,000 copies to cover the banned accounts and 5,000 of them are valid sales, not card fraud so thanks for the free money"
I’m actually somewhat curious as to how GW1 made it into that list. I don’t know if there’s actually a way to tell if botting is an issue in that game, right? Anywhere that it was possible to kill a monster was always instanced to your party. o.O’
Aside from that, yeah, botting is an issue. The teleporting, cheating, and hacking isn’t anything new. It’s been around since a couple weeks after release and it will be around until something is done about it. Anyways, massively informing the community of the details on how “pro” bots are might not be a good idea.
Sanarian [ME] | Thief | Blackgate
Why is it not a good idea. The foundation of a community is it’s education.
If people know about this in advance and it has an effect on Anet in a negative way they may do something about it. As it stands this game is riddled with bugs and yet Anet only respond to small issues like QQ’ing about not getting what people want from chests. If they ignored the chest rewards and fixed the entire maps whose quests were bugged or glitched events that spawn infinite loot people would be less inclined to hit them in the pocket and more inclined to further the community.
Make your game work or people will find ways to exploit it and you.
I’m actually somewhat curious as to how GW1 made it into that list. I don’t know if there’s actually a way to tell if botting is an issue in that game, right? Anywhere that it was possible to kill a monster was always instanced to your party. o.O’
Answer to your question: Outposts/Towns
You had to go through them to access any of the instanced areas and bots had to come back to the outposts to sell off their junk and store stuff in the xunlai chest.
Sanarian.9614I’m actually somewhat curious as to how GW1 made it into that list
Mada.5319Answer to your question: Outposts/Towns
I guess you never played Jade Quarry….
Yes bots in GW2 definitely need a fix. Some may have the opinion that it’s fine if they don’t get higher stats by farming, but I am much annoyed every time I see 5 rangers with bear pets attacking whatever is close to them.
The 500% magic find is an unsubstantiated rumour and the author of that article doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in technical understanding of how bots and other exploits are done: you can go over to reddit, there’s a long thread about his article there.
So before QQ it’s a good idea to know whether it’s true or not. Of course many do think that magic find (at any %!) is a poor mechanism that encourages bots, other exploits and intensive farming oriented playstyle in preference to other ways of playing the game; that has been discussed, in some detail, on this forum here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-Magic-Find-is-a-Poor-Mechanism/first.
(edited by roqoco.4053)
I guess you never played Jade Quarry….
You guessed wrong. Notice that his question was regarding pve, not pvp. Context is important dude.
roqoco.4053:The 500% magic find is an unsubstantiated rumour and the author of that article doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence: you can go over to reddit, there’s a long thread about his article there.
So before QQ it’s a good idea to know whether it’s true or not. Of course many think that magic find (at any %!) is a poor mechanism that encourages bots, other exploits and intensive farming oriented playstyle; that has been discussed, in some detail, on this forum here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-Magic-Find-is-a-Poor-Mechanism/first.
You’re right, 500% isn’t right at all. It’s actually 600%
This can all be verified easily by searching google. It is very real.
Just because magic find sucks doesn’t change the fact that it exists and this hack will give an unfair advantage over normal play. Not to mention that this hack comes with various other forms of cheating…. fly hack, speed hack and teleport hack to name a few…
(edited by Mada.5319)
GW1 they did attempt to ban bots, but the truth is that they simply cannot detect all of them. I question how many people who complain about bots actually understand how to create them, or how you would even go about detecting them. GW1 relied on detecting prolonged repetition, they had almost zero client-side checks for things such as bots or programs/tools using similar command lines and/or same API.
GW2 is most likely the same. They’ll rely on people to submit reports, and if there is significant evidence (i.e. bot that was left running for 10 hours straight repeating the same activity(s)), they’ll ban them. GW1 did ban in waves generally, however they also did ban individuals. One of the big waves happened when a certain API got so popular that it had to be stopped. It does almost seem that ANet doesn’t mind botting in moderation. It was pretty basic knowledge by the end of the game that if you ran your bot with the ‘common’ API of the time for no more than ~10 or so hours and did it sporadically, you had almost zero risk of being banned.
#LoveArrows2013, never forget.
“You’re right, 500% isn’t right at all. It’s actually 600%
This can all be verified easily by searching google. It is very real.”
I’m not saying it’s false just that it’s unsubstantiated. I did what you suggested and see that many people are making a bunch of different claims in order to sell their exploits. What’s true or not true in this shady world of hacking isn’t so easy to sort out: At some stage in the looting process you have to hit server side code, I reckon (it can’t all be done on the client !?) and one might imagine that it would be a good idea to put some checks in there for this kind of thing.
(edited by roqoco.4053)
These guys at ANet are real smart guys so I’m going to guess they understand how these bot work and I’m not going to tell then anything they don’t already know but here it is anyway.
These bots read the memory locations of the client particularly the XYZ values in order to navigate and some will actually inject their own values into these locations effectively teleporting the player to the new XYZ location in the game.
Now, some games are real good at hiding these values and actually changing the location in of where these values are stored in memory on a weekly bases.
So if ANet was serious about getting rid of the bots they would be making it a pain in the Kitten for these bot developers to keep up with the memory location changes with a weekly up-date to address this issue.
However it seems for some undetermined reason they chose to let it continue when it’s fully in their power to stop it.
By doing nothing when it is in their power to stop it …it’s as good as condoning it.
By the time the bots get bant the user of the bot will have generated more than enough $ to buy another account. Does anet even use any detection similar to warden or do they just have look at bot reports and send a gm there? I also don’t get why bots can even do this in the first place I thought the game was server sided
GW1 they did attempt to ban bots, but the truth is that they simply cannot detect all of them. I question how many people who complain about bots actually understand how to create them, or how you would even go about detecting them. GW1 relied on detecting prolonged repetition, they had almost zero client-side checks for things such as bots or programs/tools using similar command lines and/or same API.
GW2 is most likely the same. They’ll rely on people to submit reports, and if there is significant evidence (i.e. bot that was left running for 10 hours straight repeating the same activity(s)), they’ll ban them. GW1 did ban in waves generally, however they also did ban individuals. One of the big waves happened when a certain API got so popular that it had to be stopped. It does almost seem that ANet doesn’t mind botting in moderation. It was pretty basic knowledge by the end of the game that if you ran your bot with the ‘common’ API of the time for no more than ~10 or so hours and did it sporadically, you had almost zero risk of being banned.
Yes we know anet can’t catch all of them. The issue most people have is say you are in orr doing events going through the map you will most likely see 5 different groups of bots in the same spot moving through the same path it’s painfully obvious they’re botting. Bots numbers are way too high like I said even in WvW i’ve seen 20bots everyone is probably botting because anet is so slow at catching them it’s like who cares
(edited by RoRo.8270)
I agree, banning is not the answer, someone in it for the money will be right back up and running the next day with 10 new accounts and chock up the ban as a business expense.
They need to make it a pain for the bot developers to keep up with them by attacking how these bots work and they know how to do this but for some reason they chose not to.
Pretty simple to detect a bot really. Receive the hundreds of ‘this person is a bot’ messages, log in as admin, sone to area, witness behaviour. Whisper potential botter, no response then ban the account.
I reported the same 6 bots in the exact same spot for 2 weeks without anything being done, for all I know they are still there.
The lack of any action (and I have seen zero action taken) does encourage others to bot.
Better not to turn this into another botting thread. Constantly repeating the same prescriptions just isn’t useful and if you do have some unique angle on the problem (unlikely), send a PM to support.
are you sure? i am certain anet will ban the bots in waves and all.
give them some time perhaps?
How much time do you want to give Anet? 3 months, 6 months, a year?
There comes a point when it is inevitable to conclude that Anet is either incapable or unwilling to remove bots from the game. The same applies to bug fixing.
Between the hacking of accounts and the endless army of bots I think GW2 wins the worst security ever award.
This game has been torn apart.
Better not to turn this into another botting thread. Constantly repeating the same prescriptions just isn’t useful and if you do have some unique angle on the problem (unlikely), send a PM to support.
Potential buyers should know what kind of state the game is in.
“It comes down to the simple fact that by botting you can make a profit, there is no real risk to you as a player if done properly. You could buy two accounts, play one and bot one. The bot one may get banned one day but not before you have farmed enough to cover your outlay and probably a lot more.”
Both accounts would have the same IP though.
Both accounts would have the same IP though.
Is easy to change your IP.
Hello,
Thank you for your feedback, it’s appreciated. We are taking such issues very seriously, and it’s one of our top priorities at the moment. Our team is working very hard to find the best way to solve this.
But as we explained, we want to give you an update about that only when everything will be setup, not before.
In the meantime, we invite you to keep reporting that kind of issues to our customer support team.
Thank you for your understanding & patience.
(edited by Moderator)