Guild Wars 2

As I have been leveling up recently, I have noticed characters appear at a node, harvest it, and disappear immediately upon completion. No movement or visible skill use from the character and no other characters appear to be lag jumping. It was most apparent today when I came across two cypress saplings in close proximity. A character was harvesting one with 2 drakes hitting him. He then appeared at the nearby node, the drakes wandering over to him again. He then disappeared completely and the drakes slowly walked back to their spots. Unfortunately I have never been quick enough to get a name or class of these people as they are in and out before you can realize what happened.

Apologies if this has been covered, I don’t visit the forums very often.

Those are bots. Report on sight

But yeh, it’s hard to catch ’em

Email support with the names of those characters if you can catch them.

Think of it like a challenge, every time you catch one, that removes some supply on the TP making the price go up. Gotta catch ’em all!

if you cannot i had a key to snapshot right away, never managed to be that effective but next time i’ll catch some of those bots to report

They are very fast. It’s hard to even catch the name, let alone capture a screen shot of them. And if they have some sort of nonsensical name, such as Xfdhujkft, what’s the likelihood of you remembering that in the second or so that you see it.

The only thing I can think of to do is to send in a general bug report stating what you saw, the place and the time along with a screen shot of the area. Maybe that will be enough information for ANet to track them down.

If you do manage to get their names and report them, put them in your friends list, I think you’ll find it will take weeks or months to ban them (Or maybe just a 3 day ban).

I’ve been adding them to my friends list and then reporting them. It’s been over a month and they are still hopping around.

Report them, but please be careful.

I like to park my alts at ori nodes. Then I just gather, re-roll, and gather again.

I try to dance or say something to people near by so they don’t think I’m botting XD

All over! (for me, mostly lower spots & in Orr) And good luck reporting them – they appear, gather, & disappear while I’m still thinking, “Heyy… That’s weird… Wut?…” Poof! And oh look, there’s that same guy (always a ranger) on the next node, an impossible distance away. (they also walk under water, rather than swim – no clue why)

They’re too fast even for a screenshot, even if I had the presence of mind to try it – and there’s no feature for reporting it anyway. And big surprise, gathering mats are rising in cost at the trading post.

eta: Vorch, there’s no way to confuse this with a player logging in & out. For one thing, you invariably see them pop up at another node, quite a bit faster than a person could log in & out. There’s no gathering animation, from what I’ve seen (and this is FAST, so I could be missing other signs) I’ve seen one underwater in the lost isles, and what struck me is that the animation was for walking, not swimming. I haven’t been able to report a single one. I hope & trust that Anet is aware – because it’s escalated rather dramatically in the last 3 weeks.

These bots like to port from 2 places I have caught them – Entrances from other zones, and waypoints. If you happen to be passing by either & see someone, just stand there a moment & watch if they disappear & reappear. What u can do is actually click their location they keep porting from & click them before u even physically see them, giving u decent enough time to report, but u still have to be quick. Iv gotten maybe 10 of these types, but have seen others just out in the open too fast to report.

They are teleporting botters. I see them regularly. I don’t report them like most though. Why? Because the only effect that have on me is putting more materials into the TP and driving prices down, which is good for me. If Anet was serious about botting, they wouldn’t be asking players to do their job for them.

I dont understand how they can even do this? Clearly its a flaw in the code somewhere allowing this.

Whenever people talk about bots some players come with the argument “I don’t mind them, they just keep prices down”. This is so shortsighted and selfish that it just shows an immature and egoistical mindset. These bots operate for the goldsellers, the gold they make by selling the mats is sold to other players, harming the game and the company.

You could just as well say “Oh, I don’t mind burglars, they are good for the economy, they steal items so that people need to buy new ones”. Likewise: the more drugdealers the better, because they keep the prices on drugs down so the addicts have to commit fewer criminal acts to get their drugs. This brings down criminality, which is great, no? Yes, we definitely need more drug dealers.

oh that;s just the harvesting bots.

Shikigami.4013:

Whenever people talk about bots some players come with the argument “I don’t mind them, they just keep prices down”. This is so shortsighted and selfish that it just shows an immature and egoistical mindset. These bots operate for the goldsellers, the gold they make by selling the mats is sold to other players, harming the game and the company.

You could just as well say “Oh, I don’t mind burglars, they are good for the economy, they steal items so that people need to buy new ones”. Likewise: the more drugdealers the better, because they keep the prices on drugs down so the addicts have to commit fewer criminal acts to get their drugs. This brings down criminality, which is great, no? Yes, we definitely need more drug dealers.

And our adorable little harvesting bots are probably operating on a hacked account. A few years ago, I caught a hacker stealing my sister’s wow-account. (this was kind of fun, really – a nice GM, drama!) The little fiend tried to sell ME gold when I confronted him. Ya, I definitely mind them. They’re not ok. The fact I’m seeing so many & have no easy way of reporting them is disturbing.

watch harvesting get nerfed “to combat bots” and watch it also help anet to have players be poorer.

stobie.2134:

And big surprise, gathering mats are rising in cost at the trading post.

Bots actually bring down material costs by (dramatically) increasing the supply.

There are several reasons for the price to go up, including increased demand associated with a newly released recipe (or material sink), decreased supply as players leave the game (and with regards to mats, on average most players are suppliers of most mats), or decreased supply due to something Anet has done (decreased node availability, increased node cooldowns, banning bots, etc.). In some particular cases, there’s even the potential for market manipulators to artificially set a price floor (for example, back in October I had a pair of guildies who cornered the Charged Lodestone market).

If bots are often operating on hacked accounts, should we really care if our prices lower? I mean, isn’t this just about the height of selfishness?

eta: ARGH! I can’t believe I have to defend wanting bots gone! This is what happens when you foolishly head to a game forum, for whatever reason! Why do I do it? Oh, thank you so much, Guild Missions, for annoying me enough to send me HERE! Double ARGH!

Could make it so once your in combat, you can’t harvest?
This would of been a big pain when making a run past the champ karka for the Rich Orichalcum Node, but now with all being practally on even field (& personally, no desire to go back to that node), shouldn’t be too much of an issue to clear mobs near the node u want. That’s my thought to prevent these porting bots.

Isn’t that why they’re on rangers? Those I’ve seen have had a drake pet, who briefly engages anything that attacks. (the last one I saw was in Orr) Since they port out in combat, they’re obviously hacking past the point where being in combat could stop them.

Shikigami.4013:

Whenever people talk about bots some players come with the argument “I don’t mind them, they just keep prices down”. This is so shortsighted and selfish that it just shows an immature and egoistical mindset. These bots operate for the goldsellers, the gold they make by selling the mats is sold to other players, harming the game and the company.

You could just as well say “Oh, I don’t mind burglars, they are good for the economy, they steal items so that people need to buy new ones”. Likewise: the more drugdealers the better, because they keep the prices on drugs down so the addicts have to commit fewer criminal acts to get their drugs. This brings down criminality, which is great, no? Yes, we definitely need more drug dealers.

Thats the whole point. Its not harming me, its helping me. Its only harming Anet and my opinion isn’t really high at present. So why do they expect me to detect bots, thats their job.

stobie.2134:

If bots are often operating on hacked accounts, should we really care if our prices lower? I mean, isn’t this just about the height of selfishness?

If they’re using hacked accounts, I agree it’s despicable.

Blame China. Maybe I’ll go fish out the great article I read recently in the WSJ regarding the Chinese government’s direct support of widespread intellectual property theft.

stobie.2134:

eta: ARGH! I can’t believe I have to defend wanting bots gone!

Your choice to do so is even more optional than doing dailies for laurels.

Shikigami.4013:

Whenever people talk about bots some players come with the argument “I don’t mind them, they just keep prices down”.

Anet’s problem with bots is that they undermine Anet’s goal to maintain certain currency/material values.

Because it’s just so much better to leave the ‘who cares, it doesn’t effect precious ME’ sitting here uncontested.

Pay me to report bots.

Astral Projections.7320:

They are very fast. It’s hard to even catch the name, let alone capture a screen shot of them. And if they have some sort of nonsensical name, such as Xfdhujkft, what’s the likelihood of you remembering that in the second or so that you see it.

The only thing I can think of to do is to send in a general bug report stating what you saw, the place and the time along with a screen shot of the area. Maybe that will be enough information for ANet to track them down.

Astral Projection explains it right, if you do suspect it is a bot, the best way to report it is to submit a ticket to our support team. Add to this “violation report” the screenshots you have made and a short explanation of what you have seen.

Thanks for your help!

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