Guild Wars 2

Just wanted to say, good job.

I’ve went from 1-80 since November and I only saw a total of 3 bots which were the teleport-hack bots. I never really did any PvE before November, so it was nice not to have any problems with bots when I decided to do some PvE.

What kind of problems with bots did you expect had there been any more?

lucky you

On Far Shiverpeaks (EU) i see many

Credit where credit is due. I’ve seen far, far fewer bots lately. The vast herds of bears followed by an entire football stadium’s worth of rangers seems to have gone the way of the dodo bird.

I’m sorry, but the bots are all over the place, you just are seeing them anymore. They have just switched to node farming. I’ve been fighting in a few events where just outside of it a tree or mining node where a bot flashes in and out almost every minute using the thief stealth mode. Although it was funny, I did see one of these guys get mobbed by a bunch of NPCs the other day and died.

They just don’t farm in the open as much anymore or going to places less traveled. There have been bots outside the Holy Place in Sparkfly Fen for the last three days now.

Maybe on some server they are doing good

I logged out this early morning in Malchor’s Leap weast of Doric’s Waypoint (little north of the repair NPC) and when i logged back this evening there was still the same train of 8-9 bots clogged in a passage between 2 rocks with infinite respawn of risen.

They died sometimes, but then suddenly they reappeared there, even if no near waypoint was players controlled….

I did reported them before logging out in the morning.

Most bots have gone into hiding, but they’re there. You typically see them underwater now (especially around Lost Shores) so as to not be so noticeable with their teleporting.

Its also very hard to report those thief bots, because even though you click on them, once they go stealth you lose the ability to report them. I’ve gotten it down to a fine art, haven’t had one slip through my hands in a while.

Just got done leveling a guardian and the bots are still there. But, yes, credit where credit is due, they are far less obvious and obnoxious than they once were. They tend to be either teleport hacks or bots running two-by-two. I didn’t see a single ranger/bear train while leveling the guardian which was refreshing.

T5 mats have halved in price in less than a couple weeks. I doubt demand suddenly plummeted nor supply from a normal player base suddenly doubled, so you are left with a resurgent bot supply as the most sensible answer for it.

I don’t think there’s been much of an improvement as much as there has been a shift in the way the bots are operating. Now they “teleport” from one resource node to the next and gather resources with ease, and then flood the marketplace with them.

The fact that player reports has decreased is not because there have been fewer sightings, but because it is much more difficult for players to report these hack users because they appear and disappear within seconds. There have been dozens of threads complaining about this problem in the past few weeks.

If anything I see more bots now than ever before. They’re just better at getting away with it. The recent article tells me there is a serious disconnect between what ArenaNet feels they are accomplishing and what players are actually seeing in the game.

Come to Gandahra … like bot heaven :-)
Countless times my friends and i have reported them but 2 weeks later they are still there farming 24/7
Favourite locations are Frostgorge (collossus/corrupted quagan and Southsun Shore Reef Skelk area (both above and below water)

apparently is because bots have choosen their world too lol

Yeah there aren’t nearly as many as there were a month or two ago,.

Its a on going war. They find new ways to detect bots, and bot programmers find new ways to get around detection.

There will never be a bot free game. Or a hack free game.

Namu.5712:

Its a on going war. They find new ways to detect bots, and bot programmers find new ways to get around detection.

There will never be a bot free game. Or a hack free game.

I hope you’re right.

When I read this update info I thought “yay that sounds awesome”. Then I logged into the game and went to Cursed shore and saw 2 of a group of bots near an area I saw them at 48 hours ago when I reported a total of 6 of them. I thought “where are these active GM’s that they are talking about that can investigate as we report?” Surely after 48 hours if they only get 20 reports or so an hour they should have got to my reports by now……..

So yeah it sounds good but of course it’s not perfect yet. Keep up the good work anyway guys!

I was a bit surprised the update on official botting was so glowing.

Relying on the number of reports is misleading, since the current methods of botting/hacking make it more difficult to report, even for those players who are attentive and making an effort to report before the bots port away.

This past week I’d estimate that I see about 10 bots an hour, though I can see that many in 5 minutes at times, and report about half of them.

Yea I am also noticing a decrease in bots. Great job Anet, keep it up!

I want my bots. I want my cheap T6 materials.

WTB Charged lodestones bots.

Seriously, bots are the only balance we have vs the TP fluctuation going on.
On one hand, we got sheriffs going out of their ways to report every bot every day.
On the other hand, we get threads on top of threads complaining how everything in game became unobtainable.

I thought people were quite happy with 3s T6 mats?
Stick to one belief and stand firm behind the consequences of it, don’t be a bunch of kittening hypocrites.

I for one, would rather have everything cheaper and let the botters or whatever they are, keep doing their job. And reach my goals faster instead of farming more and more for some pixelated goal.

It’s not just T6 mats they’re farming. The prices have tanked at nearly every tier. I see them teleporting all the time in low and mid level zones.

Spending some of my time gathering crafting resources and selling them on the BLT is a big way I make my money (although not the past few weeks thanks to botters). I don’t try to play the market like so many do. I just try to earn a little money in the game legitimately and the botters are ruining it.

Do people like cheaper prices? Sure. But this is the wrong way to get them. Anyone in favor of what’s happening.. I don’t know, you’re sounding like those players who are willing to exploit a bug and feel justified in doing it. From an ethics point of view, there’s not much difference between personally exploiting and happily benefiting from one.

Edge.4180:

It’s not just T6 mats they’re farming. The prices have tanked at nearly every tier. I see them teleporting all the time in low and mid level zones.

Spending some of my time gathering crafting resources and selling them on the BLT is a big way I make my money (although not the past few weeks thanks to botters). I don’t try to play the market like so many do. I just try to earn a little money in the game legitimately and the botters are ruining it.

Do people like cheaper prices? Sure. But this is the wrong way to get them. Anyone in favor of what’s happening.. I don’t know, you’re sounding like those players who are willing to exploit a bug and feel justified in doing it. From an ethics point of view, there’s not much difference between personally exploiting and happily benefiting from one.

I sound like one?
I sure kittening am.

If I had the chance of doing the godskulls, chilli poppers or anything similar, you can count on it that I would.
This game hardly worth my time to farm day and night.

voyager.4982:

I was a bit surprised the update on official botting was so glowing.

I was a bit surprised too. It’s like they don’t know about teleporting or price of T6 returning back to it’s minimum.

Mike Lewis:

The number of bots reported every hour worldwide has dropped from more than 2,000 in October to a much healthier 20 as of this writing..

I had to laugh at this in the article. The reports have dropped because a lot of people have left the game since then and everyone else gave up reporting them. It doesn’t say anything about how effective their bot culling actually is.

I swear I have never seen any dev studio spin stats like Anet does. We have to put up with it enough from politicians…

Mission Accomplished!

Great work ANet!

I guess that means you can remove Diminishing Returns now right? RIGHT???

I think this was including that big bot ban they did before Lost Shores and for some reason the update was given now. Bots have resurged since and it’s not great timing to post the Mission Accomplished^ announcement about having beaten them.

They are a lot harder to spot now and even harder to report.

this will never end, unless Anet figures out a way to proof who’s buying gold from the botters/gold sellers and starts mercilessly banning every single one of those rotten kittens.

but unfortunately, they won’t do that. so that means, we’ll have to live with them as long as the GW2 servers keep running.

Can’t they ban the IP range of the botters?

Clark Skinner.4902:

Can’t they ban the IP range of the botters?

No. I don’t think you grasp what that would entail for the unfathomable amount of people who could innocently get caught in an IP range ban.

But they’re all in China. How many people in China actually play gw2?

They could compare the account info to the IP address and if the IP is in China and the country in the account info is in the USA, ban ban ban, the ban is the word.

Yes, job well done. I have seen maybe 1 or 2 botters in the last few weeks. It is great to hear about the numbers you got rid of for botting.

Any way you could supplies us with numbers of accounts banned for other reasons such as selling or buying gold, conduct, etc….

thanks and again, great work!

Clark Skinner.4902:

Can’t they ban the IP range of the botters?

Do what…..go look up IP range. What like ban all of asia or something? Or ban some of the US or Europe and hope everyone else isn’t in that range?

What if they use a proxy?

Not all Gold sites sell Gold via farming a lot of them buy gold from players in game and don’t even farm. Meaning anyone in here can be a botter.

Just so you know, Aion which is a much more polished game of NCsoft is still dealing with exploiters who use the same upgraded cheats from build to build.

Get something straight – YOU CAN’T FIGHT IT.

If hacks in the past were all done in secret and shared between the top hackers, today their developers wised up and are selling them for money.
If Sony and apple can’t fight 100% jailbreak, do you honestly truly believe that anything can be done in our case?

Either accept it, join them or quit —-- These are your options.

Thanks for telling everyone what you think their options are. I’m sure we’ll all change our mindset now.

Actually no, it had no effect as I still feel like there are lots of ways they haven’t tried to deal with botters.

And joining in with bad behaviour is lack of integrity by definition. Most of us prefer our integrity to gaining video game currency easier.

Clark Skinner.4902:

Thanks for telling everyone what you think their options are. I’m sure we’ll all change our mindset now.

Actually no, it had no effect as I still feel like there are lots of ways they haven’t tried to deal with botters.

And joining in with bad behaviour is lack of integrity by definition. Most of us prefer our integrity to gaining video game currency easier.

Come at me with pretty words.
That doesn’t change the reality.

Some people these days, these forums deteriorate to gamefaq’s levels, lately I’m only finding myself coming here for a good laugh.

Evil.7529:

T5 mats have halved in price in less than a couple weeks. I doubt demand suddenly plummeted nor supply from a normal player base suddenly doubled, so you are left with a resurgent bot supply as the most sensible answer for it.

Daily (if you watch the TP) you will see batches of THOUSANDS of large bags put on TP or filling orders. I am not talking over time it is a dump all at once … so either Anet is “adjusting the tier 5 market through bags” or the bots are back and rampant.

That and it is hard to choke down about them watching the reports coming in when you and your friends have been reporting the SAME two bots for TWO WEEKS.

So some bots got banned? How many gold buyer banned from now ? Oh, not on this case yet..

Just keep reportin….

I agree I have noticed a significant reduction in bots. Especially in lower level areas (bandit farm place). Well done, thank you and keep at it! =)

Zappix.7928:

I agree I have noticed a significant reduction in bots. Especially in lower level areas (bandit farm place). Well done, thank you and keep at it! =)

Agreed.

ArenaNet has done much better than any other MMO when it comes to fighting bots, and deserve a lot of kudos for it.

There will always be people trying to bot etc in MMOs, but Arenanet has actually banned loads of them and continues to do so, whereas other companies really haven’t, and probably can’t.

No, they don’t.

Bots simply evolved. It’s getting a lot harder to distinguish them from real players. And it’s not those stupid teleport bots I’m talking about, it’s the more advanced type of bot like GW2Minion and alike.

There are still many zergs which consist solely or mostly of bots. And real player join them without even having a doubt about the real nature of those “teammates”.

The economy is no more beneficial to me or you by someone else cheating to get rich if you really think about it..

0 people botting: Mats @ 10s per.
1,000,000 people botting: Mats @ 1s per.

If you are actively playing this game, and not just power leveling your characters, then regardless what the price of mats are, you will be able to afford them the same way, either way. You buy the mats for cheaper but you will also be selling mats you don’t need for cheaper too. It all pretty much balances out. As a legit player, the market fluctuates for me, but my checkbook will stay balanced regardless (with time). The only difference I see here is the people botting are getting rich for cheating. While I’m grinding/farming away to EARN what I have.

Marysvillain.6231:

The economy is no more beneficial to me or you by someone else cheating to get rich if you really think about it..

0 people botting: Mats @ 10s per.
1,000,000 people botting: Mats @ 1s per.

This belief is what make them richer, through your money too, and your gold cheaper.

The whole ‘’through observation’’ detection method seems bull. How come then alot of the bots i report day in day out are still there farming the place 24/7. its not like they teleport. They go in trains of 4 or more and just run the same circle day in day out. I know plenty of other people have reported them too but still weeks later they are there farming the same area.

I dont believe the whole ‘’we countered the bot problem’’ story. Its a fairytale they want us to believe. Sure they countered a portion of them but so many obvious bots are still running around the same places they’ve ran for months already.

Btw they indeed also use exploits. Ive seen bots in wvw farming the swamp while basically all i could see was their healthbar just above the ground. They’d only appear when making a kill then going ’’underground’’ again where just their healthbar would show, very hard to identify then for reporting.
Could be a glitch or purposely programmed that way. Ive seen teleports too at mines/wood which were at nodes that are randomly placed every week so its unlikely those are players which log in and out again.

I dont do node runs anymore in certain zones like malchor’s leap etc but i used to encounter the same bots every single day and me and others would report them every single day. 10+ bots farming the same spots. How come any observation by the team wouldnt have spotted those ? Then i’d go orr and come across more bots. On a single day by just doing node runs i’d be reporting 20+ bots a day.
This was just a couple weeks back.

Dont believe everything they say they did.

I agree the work on decreasing bots is admirable from Anet. However, I was watching someone I have been playing with who legit farms. (you know the grind that everyone hates) get reported for botting and now has the account banned. All the hours to level to 2 characters to 80 and the hours spent in getting the drops through tedious farming are now locked away and the ticket system has commenced.

I hope there are some safeguards for players that enjoy farming cause not everyone that runs in an area for drops is a bot. It is crazy to read how some over zealous or simply mean people go into report mode.

In my opinion, there are two fundamental problems with the way Anet are dealing with bots: communication & reaction. Take the new announcement – how long ago did that cull take place, 4 weeks, 6 weeks? I remember logging in one day and being astounded at the lack of bot trains, especially in places like the canyons in Frostgorge Sound. You’re only just telling us about it now, Mr Lewis? Way too late, way too late, especially when, within a fortnight, I was seeing & reporting the steady creeping rise of returning bots.

I don’t expect an announcement every week, or whatever, saying nothing more than “We haven’t stopped working on the problem, don’t worry!” But what kind of sense is there is making an announcement so long after you’ve actually taken action? As with many games companies, one thing that Anet can be fairly accused of at times is poor communication.

Then there’s reaction time. It’s all very well proudly announcing that you’ve chopped 34,000 accounts, but why do you apparently have to wait to do them all in one hit? Time & again, I see players complaining that they are seeing the same bots days & weeks after they have reported them. If you have “a considerable task force assigned to patrolling the world”, why does it seem to take so long to remove individual bots?

Whilst I applaud your efforts, I am afraid I have to flatly disagree with the statement “The bot occupation, I am happy to report, has been dealt a decisive blow.” No, it hasn’t. There’s nothing decisive about what has been done. They were dealt a serious blow, yes, but it’s hardly a decisive one, and certainly not fatal. As several posters before me have said, they’re still there, they’ve changed their tactics a bit. There’s less rampantly stupid toon names & account names i.e. just a random string of letters. There’s fewer bot trains, and they have fewer members when you do see them. But they are very much still there. And they are still, I believe, seriously distorting the world economy to the detriment of the game, driving up (down?) player apathy, and driving players away from the game.

Most of my raid alliance who joined GW2 have either left completely or become inactive. There is more than one reason for this, but botting certainly is one of those reasons. Dear Anet, very many players do not believe you are reacting quickly enough or communicating well enough. As someone above pointed out, if there really is a falling off of reports, a sizeable percantage of that is probably down to apathy. Others are just leaving the game.

It is not enough to be proactive, you have to be SEEN to be proactive. Perhaps you should publish a weekly report, broken down by server, as to how many accounts you have deleted? You need to do something to restore damaged confidence, I feel.

Even a nice gamemail, saying because of reports you sent we have banned so many accounts. Feedback would be nice.