Guild Wars 2

I don’t bother reporting to much any more. No point, really, since it’s obvious to me nothings really changing on the bot culling front.

All you have to do is send a GM around and start banning. Bots are super easy to spot and frankly it’s just getting worse.

Don’t matter what detection they put in place: botters will patch and get around it.

Now if you actively police the game while inside it, maybe then things will improve. But if they are simply going by pure ‘reports’, then nothing is going to change. Bots can simply migrate around with free transfers and avoid being reported to much anyways.

Y’know I’ve only been playing for about a month, but I haven’t encountered any bots yet. Either that or I have been too naive to notice… Who knows!

Ok, BoTs are a problem.. Use the K.I.S.S. principle. Keep It Simple Silly (other word have been used for the last s BTW) If an account is reported for botting, track them. If the Character runs the same route for X time – Ban and require a call. After X amount of times being reported PermaBan and never TAKE a call from them again.

Typicalsloan.8603:

Nothing beats a human GM taking care of business. MMO’s have had GM’s since the dawn of MMO’s. Unfortunately for Anet that would cut into their profits but so does the mass of people that will leave the game due to this.

If they moderated their game half as much as they moderated their forums, the bot issue wouldn’t even be an issue.

Say what u want, but fact is, i stopped getting in-game mail from gold sellers for a few weeks now, and i still see bots around every now and then (no more large groups though), but noticeably less than i did few weeks ago. So, there r improvements.

So an idea, have a report tally for individuals for a report count,when it gets to ten your inventory gets filled with items such as “a lump of brown stuff” soulbound and worth 0 copper and looting / gaining money disabled , when a bot attempts to sell an item a window pops with a randomly generated code to be entered ,if correct items dissapear and normal play resumes. Park a gm at the nearest merchant and watch the bots Que up. This gives power to human players. If they cotton on change the name of the item deposited and reapeat . Set the whole thing to a 12 hour timer so people can’t be trolled by it. This may seem stupid but its going to waste a lot of time for botters keep DE’s free of bots and somewhat keep the economy stable whilst giving players a rewarding reason to report bots

If anything, I have seen a huge increase in bots. Email from gold sellers still coming in strong (how about an option to block all email execpt from guild members or the game itself?).
Some areas are almost unplayable due to the number of bot teams running around. I do get some enjoyment from some of them, if you see a group of bots, try leading a few mobs over to “play” with them. I have gotten a few whole bot teams wiped out, LOL!
Some of these are so easy to spot, it’s not funny, even the player names. In the beginning char are are a half dozen or so all with similier charactor names, and the player names are all "oldwomen.123, oldwomen.456, etc. It should take all of 10 seconds for a GM to tell these are automated bots, but they have been there for days.

Munrock.3092:

Krimpton.4879:

Bott detection algorithm’s testing and blah blah blah what else…?

What wrong with the good old Mk1 human eyeball….

You know its an amazing thing the old Mk1 if you use it to ‘’look at things’’ you spot things like BOTS… Speed hackers….. flying hacks…. CHEATS.

You go oh look a guy flying in the game…. teleporting from mob to mob. did we program that into the game.. Hmmm no i don’t think we did… = BAN HAMMER..

Oh look 20 naked rangers all running in a line in a circle path around Orr.. hmm hello rangers.. no reply = BAN HAMMER.

Im sorry but i dont believe a word of what Anet says right now, it’s a horrible thing to say i know and i will apologise if im wrong. BUT…
When i see MORE bots now running around than i did before, and they claim to be baning 10k every few weeks… sorry but i dont believe it.

Get some Mk1 human eyeballs on the ground in the game Anet.

Good old Mk1 human eyeball? Do some good old maths. If a human used the Mk1 eyeball to get a ban rate of one bot every 10 minutes (and that’s generous considering once botters realise what’s going on they’ll sacrifice bot efficiency for stealth), how long would it take for that person to ban 10,000 bots if they worked a 40 hour week?

Now some more advanced maths: A RMT company can get a new account for $60. In order to cut a profit, a batch of x accounts would have to earn a total of $ x * 60 before they all got banned. Say that ANet has 20 people using their Mk1 eyeballs, and there are 5000 botters in China each running x bot accounts. Using the gem store prices and gold/gem exchange rate as a reference, how much copper per second do bots have to earn for the following values of x to cut a profit: 5, 15, 30?

Next, the botters also run levelling services and account hacking. 20% of their bots are unpaid for, borrowed or stolen from players. A further 10% of the accounts are funded by revenue from their levelling service. Recalculate those copper earning rates.

Lastly, in an alternate scenario ANet develop a semi-automated process to detect and ban all the bot scripts. The process uses a neural network which can detect bots with 100% accuracy after 4 hours of training by a team of 15 supervisors. However the neural net needs to let bots run free until it has recorded a total of 100 hours of bot telemetry to analyze. Calculate the copper earning rates required by botters for this scenario.

It’s called ‘arithmetic’

Just to bring up the flag, in my server i haven’t received a spam mail for two weeks, and i only spotted a single bot train (which i promptly reported) in the same place where i saw at least four bot trains a couple weeks ago.

I don’t know if our continuous reporting did this (when we go as a group, all five of us report every single botter, to be sure), but there are visible improvements. So i suggest you keep reporting, and with time, there will be justice.

GMs in game would be nice, however, especially in WvW, where the damage is much more than simply ruining the economy.

Firstly I will say I really really liked this game. Yes, sadly, I used past tense and said ‘liked’

Now after just several weeks I am struggling to see any fun in the game at all, and several of my buds have given up on the game completely and left.

The bot issue will wreck the game completely, well at least its reputation. You just have to do a google search and just read the comments/reviews about the game and see that Anet have totally shot themselves in the foot. The bots that have laid seige to this game is all anyone is talking about.

It is absolutely mind blowing to me that while this game was under development that Anet would not even consider that goldsellers would not at least try to infiltrate the game – and if they were successful, then come in their thousands. It has happened to every MMO out there – why did Anet think they would be an exception to the rule?? I kid you not, I am staggered beyond belief that Anet could not even even consider this a possibility.

You do not shut the gate AFTER the horse has already bolted, then come out and say you have everything under control.

Well what can be done now? Well, 10,000 account banned sounds impressive at first, but then in reality over 50 servers that equates to less than 5 accounts per day per server. My server (Kaineng) is over run with bots. They are literally everywhere. Go to any map, any location, and you will see bots on my server – banning a couple of accounts in a day will haver zero impact on my server. By the way, how on earth can a bot churning away killing stuff in mindless endless loops ever reach level 80 without being detected??? I am sorry Anet that is simply emabarrassing and is the greatest example of your failure to act. A bot should not get to level 10 without being detected and its account banned.

What staggers me also is how blatant these botters are. They dont even try to disguise themselves. I dont know about you, but if I was a game developer I would be absolutely pissed at this ‘in your face’ attitude and would have literally waged war on them LONG AGO.

I report EVERY bot I see, and add them to my ‘friends’ list. Needless to say my ‘friends’ list is FULL of bots. They are online 24/7. Out of interest I have kept a seperate list of the bots to see how long it takes for them to vanish. Of the 173 bots I have reported, 167 of them are still online and still churning away.

How about this for at least a temporary solution. In GW2 you can not ‘trade’ to another player like in WoW. All goods are delivered by mail or a guild vault. As a temporary ‘fix’ how about restrict all Gold tranfer via ingame mail to 1Gold per 24 hour period. Very few players will buy 100G off a goldseller then wait while its delivered at a rate of 1G per day for the next 100 days. As most people have their mates in a guild with them, the effect on most players would be minimal – if any at all. This ‘fix’ could be implemented RIGHT NOW, and be a stop gap measure until this much talked about automated botter detector is up and running.

This ‘bot detector’ – well I am skeptical. I strongly doubt an automated system will or can solve the problem. To rid the game of goldsellers, you need to cut the head off the snake (eliminated the way these people do business). Selling ingame money is the gold sellers business – not the bots. Monitoring gold seller site (something Blizzard was very proactive about) and monitoring ingame mail traffic will. As mail is account based (not set to every individual toon a player may have) it would not be hard to set up an a monitoring progaram to alarm on ‘shady’ mail transfers.

Finally, I firmly believe that the people that buy, and thereforte support these goldsellers, also need to be held accountable. IMHO these players are not the sort of people I want to play with in the game and should also face an immediate permanent ban.

Restricting players to trade or mail gold is kitten im sorry. Why to make normal players have issues just coz they are unable to work out problems themself. Im sorry but even most primitive private servers got ingame GMs and that works like charm almost always. Why is so hard to get few GMs to do this work properly ? And pls dont say that GMs cant cover it coz i personally know how many bots can one GM get in just few days.

Kiranslee – where did I say my idea should be permanent? What ‘normal’ players would be needing or wanting to mail large sums of Gold to many different players within a 24 hour period? As I stated most players play with mates that are in the same guild, so any transfer of larger than 1 G per day could be done through their guild vault.

Nowhere did I state this would, or should, be a permanent solution. This idea would how ever
A – make life for the goldsellers extremely difficult for them to do their business
B – could be implemented right now, until a more permanent solution can be found
C- have little, if any effect, on the vast majority of players.

Bots and gold sellers are a real problem in GW2.

So far all the measure Anet taken like DR and banning seems to have very little effects if any.

I am not sure why Anet seem to have so much difficult in banning bot farmer since they collect IP address of all the players and most gold sellers seem to come from 3 web sites.

Also a little data mining would identify who got most of the gold and how they are transfer to. This should be easily stamp out if Anet wanted to.

Bot problem is there coz of Anet. There is one reason to farm and sell gold – its needed for buying legendary weapon. There is problem , they made this to be farmed with no life, bots find way to profit on it. Anet dig this hole and im sick of fixing it over normal players back. What they should do is fix pre-legendary weapon price by adding it to boss drops on higher rate, and lower requirements for other mats.
Bots wont have reason to say and get ban if they cant make profit.
But u know this wont happen u know why ? They make more money on gems coz of bots, since bots rising prices of specific highly overvalued items.
And u r suggesting something that will affect all, again. I think its time to do something more radical then frikken blocking trades, mails, and gold amount for sending.
Just so u dont get me wrong, in all games so far /trade was one of most important things to me. I used to buy cheaper things and sell it a bit more expensive. There is reason to transfer large amounts of gold , every day. And since they doing it all wrong i cant even do a frikken trade to other ppl. And no, i DONT wish to pay taxes on kitten broker each time i try to sell something.

Kiranslee – we are talking about a couple of million people that play this game, no matter what solution Anet come up with, it will not satisfy everyone – that is simply impossible – as is the notion that they can 100% wipe the goldseller from the game completely.

My idea, was that, just an idea – that could be put in place now to at least show that Anet could do something and show its customers (us) that they are at least making a real effort. Some people may not like the idea and it may effect them – but I put to you that to the vast majority of players it would have no impact on their gaming.

I fail to see why I as a normal legitimate player would need to continously need mail huge amounts of Gold to other players outside my own guild day in day out. As a legitimate player the current state of the Trading Post (flooded by bot gleemed loot) it is impossible to make huge stashes of gold legitimately anyway.

Even you in your own previous posts complained about people bragging in game that they have huges stashes of gold in the tens of thousands and how in the current climate of the game that it is simply impossible to make that sort of ingame money legitimately – now you seems to say the exact opposite and they need to mail it all around the place…..

If they wanted to show they care for customers , they would for ONE day spawn GMs ingame and do huge demonstration of GM powers on bots. Just show would make , at least me feel better. Im sorry but even do i think u really give good point in that, its still just something that will affect legit players.

I support the idea to bring back the Dhuum ban from GW1. Public execution of those that break the rules.

I recently reported a whole bot train in Frostgorge Sound btw. I trust that they will be dealt with in good time.

ColinJohanson.2394:

What we don’t want to do is have someone report you as botting, we ban the account, the bot appeals, and we have no data to prove they were botting on file so we have to give them the account back.

You don’t “have” to do anything. Doesn’t your EULA basically say you can terminate anyone’s access at any moment for any reason? At most you could be legally required to return the money they paid for the game (if it was a relatively new account), but you could never be legally forced to “unban” people.

Of course, you don’t want to make mistakes and ban people who weren’t botting, because that’s terrible PR, but that’s a different issue from being “forced” to return account control to a known botter.

Also, as several people have pointed out before, you’d get rid of 90% of botters and gold sellers if you did what Mike O’Brien said before launch, which is put gem-gold trading “in the hands of players” (meaning let players trade gems with each other, setting their own prices or making their own offers). This is what Eve Online did with PLEX and it reduced 3rd party gold sellers’ margins so much (because it made every player into a direct competitor for them) that most simply gave up. Mike O’Brien seemed to understand this (and mentioned it specifically in that pre-launch blog entry) but somehow it was forgotten when the game was actually launched, and, as the cool kids say, “obvious result was obvious”.

Cloudwalkernz.1328:

I am not sure why Anet seem to have so much difficult in banning bot farmer since they collect IP address of all the players and most gold sellers seem to come from 3 web sites.

And you think they’re sitting in front of the web server, running the game on it…?

I think active police would be better. . . if someone reports something, they should actively port there and maybe hidden, observe the bot. then, issue an on-spot temp ban and begin a more indepth investigation. sure this takes resources, but you get what u pay for.

I honestly think few ppl from anet, like ColinJohanson.2394 are working a lot on this. And it feels like he is trying hard to. Even do i complain a lot on how Anet run this show, i really respect ppl like Colin Johanson and i really hope they make this work.

I don’t know what’s worse. The fact that gamespy, as usual, are exaggerating everything to try and get hits on their very bad website, or the fact the OP was infracted for posting a thread criticising the game.

xiv.7136:

Awesome reply on the botting issue!

10k bots banned last week is a great track record, keep it up

Honestly, there is botting in every game out there, and especially MMOs – and Arenanet definitely does more to fight botters than Blizzard.

Thats not what ArenaNet said at all. They said in the last FEW weeks. Completely different.

For the past week I have been reporting daily the same group of bots running around in the same area, and they’re still there. How much damage have they caused in that time? Stuff like that makes me doubt ANet has a handle on the situation at all.

What should I think failed in a scenario like this? Their ability to investigate? Their ability to react in a quick but reasonable period of time? Their willingness to do something about it? A week later and those ridiculously obvious bots are still there, so obviously something is failing.

Eyes on the ground would be amazing. I know quite a few responsible adult players that would gladly volunteer a few hours of playtime to put the smack down on bots. They are so blatantly obvious, it’s impossible not to see the difference between real players and bots.

I’ve noticed in the past few days the botters are changing tactics. They aren’t just using rangers with brown bears anymore. Now I’m seeing warriors, guardians, and rangers 2-5 at a time running in lines around an area to farm events. It makes it more difficult to tell who is a bot and who is just trying to finish a heart or do an event. Worse, it makes it harder for legit players to do events and/or get map completion when bots are sweeping away mobs 1-2 seconds after they spawn.

Anet, please do something about this soon. Not only shouldn’t I have to compete with bots to do hearts and events, I don’t even WANT to do them with bots around out of fear I’ll get mistakenly banned!

I think everything about this topic is frustrating and discouraging. They have completely overrun my server IMO (Borlis Pass). Bots we’ve reported a month ago are still there.

Even reporting them is frustrating, as you can’t keep track of who you’ve reported. The names make no sense, and there are gobs of them in every area. Did I already report lmabotone, or lnabotone, or lwabotone, or was it Imbbotone?

I think Anet is facing tough issues, but I think making it even more complicated and automated is a really bad idea. Aside from using it as a tip-off for a real GM to take action in game.

I think it’s simpler than that. They are thieves. They are taking loot, tangible or not, and selling it for real money, and hurting the real players, and hurting the game in so many ways.

1. When a report comes in, a live player with a champion level character pops in at the location. “Hi, I’m Jeffery. Where do you see the bots?”. … Over there.

2. The GM hits them with a spell that stuns them for 5 minutes, (preventing them from teleporting as well). The GM quickly finds out what country the account is registered in. The GM uses a large text bubble in front of them, and, sends a PM, in English, and in their native language (software translated), and asks: “Are you at your keyboard?”. Do this twice, maybe even 3 times. And listens to all chat channels from them …If there is no response…

3. Hit them with a spell that turns them into a Pink Flamingo Lawn Ornament that can be killed, and will re-spawn every minute for the next 24 hours. Let everyone that passes by, kill the flamingo, and take 1 random drop from their inventory of stolen goods, every minute until their inventory is empty. Giving back to the economy, that which was stolen. And giving satisfaction to all real players that pass by, that something is being done, and sending a message that you don’t want to get caught botting. Period.

4. On a second occurrence: Do the exact same thing. Only this time, allow the former bot to be targeted every minute, and looted by the honest players in the game, until the entire stolen bank account is empty, gold and all, then close the account. Done.

5. If they do respond to a GM inquiry, (possibly with an automated bot response), the GM can ask a random question that a Bot program can’t answer, but the GM can, and a live player can. “What color is your armor?” “What type of weapon are you holding?” “Why don’t you have armor on?”, “What color is the ocean?” ..Thanks, sorry to bother you, have a great night, here’s a “box of fun” for your time.

No appeals needed. If a “stunned” legitimate live player can’t see a text bubble in front of them asking “if they are at their keyboard, 3 times”. They deserve to get turned into a lawn ornament for 24 hours. And they will learn to respond the next time.

I’ll volunteer for GM duty, and wipe out 48 bots that way in my first four hours. I think most people on this thread would. Pay a bounty to authorized GM deputies., 3 gems per bot. (whatever, just sayin’)

It doesn’t have to be complicated, or covert. It just needs to be addressed promptly, and decisively IMO. Without risk of banning real players. Only live players can really do that IMO.

There’s a lot of servers, and a lot of bots. And legal issues, and…. whatever. But a few good Sheriff’s with a good simple plan of action could do a lot of good, very quickly, and make a lot of people very happy.

I don’t see how they haven’t done anything about the bots since you figure the amount of people reporting them. It seems like Aenet does not really care and the fact that they dont is a real turn off. I will not spend any real money towards anything in this game ever if there are chinese bots running around doing it for free. I say chinese since I also have had my account request by some IP from china multiple times. I also believe I saw a guy setting up his bots. I was farming corrupted lodestone and there was this guy following my group around. He never said anything then 20 minutes later the wave of rangers showed up. This is such a simple fix that I believe the community shouldn’t have to give a method. Aenet needs to just fix it.

The worst thing about bots is that it makes me scared to play like I want to. I’m genuinely worried that if I do certain things in certain areas, or use a certain build or pet or weapon, that I might get reported as a bot and accidentally banned. I’ve put in a huge amount of play time on this game and my characters, and the thought of being one of the unfortunate “false positives” scares the life out of me.

With so many bots running around, it’s very difficult or impossible to avoid them…and I end up spending a significant amount of time trying to act un-bot-like in the hopes that someone won’t accidentally toss my name into a report when they are clicking on the 3290873 bots in the area.

This genuinely sucks, ArenaNet. You say you are working on it. You say we will see the results within a couple weeks. Well, that time is running out, and so far I’ve only seen the problem get worse. THEY ARE EVERYWHERE on Ferguson’s Crossing. High level areas, low level areas…doesn’t matter. Do something about it, please.

The last time I reported seeing a bot in progress, there was NO screen shot capability in the report function. I’ve requested that they add that to the report function and I’ve seen others suggest that as well.

The few times I sent in a report via my email with a screen shot or two attached to prove what I saw, the response was for me to use the in-game report function.

So, I repeat, please add a screen shot ability to the reporting function.

Re: Borlis Pass bots.
Yep, overrun.

Re: Reporting
I spent hours at first trying to do that. Now I just try to see if I can ‘ride the coattails’ and if nothing worthwhile is happening move on. At most I report 1 bot in the swarm. Why?

It is simply not reasonable to expect us players to spend 15 to 20 minutes, per bot horde, trying to differentiate between 6-8 bots, all with the same name but one character different in a horde, then actually click on each of them (an arcade game in itself as they disappear and reappear and move so fast.) In many areas, If I actually carefully (whisper – ‘Are you a bot, respond or be reported’ before reporting, since WE have been specifically warned by a Redname in another thread that reporting a non-bot will get US banned) report all the bots I see in a normal day, I would have little time for anything else.

At some point you have to wonder if the real Bot policy, as opposed to the stated Bot policy, is to be sure that the gold seller bots make just enough money before their account is banned to encourage the botters to buy another 1000 copies of the game. Since the botters are supposed to be organized gangs, it reasonable to believe they get their copies wholesale, so that is not $60 bucks a pop they have to recover to break even, but something less. Still, 1000 times $40 or whatever wholesale is, it adds up for Anet.

I casually Hate ‘conspiracy theroists’ of every ilk, but at some point if it waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck, and most particularly Smells like a duck, it may in fact be a duck.

In fairness, I did notice a large number of my least favorite bots vanish recently, only to be replaced by better bots. The latest generation seemed to be all engineers. Now they seem to be gone. But there are still new bots appearing. So maybe the ‘massive’ effort is actually Finally working. But I remain in wait and see mode.

JakHammer.7094:

I casually Hate ‘conspiracy theroists’ of every ilk, but at some point if it waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck, and most particularly Smells like a duck, it may in fact be a duck.

I’m not one to defend Anet when it’s obvious the botting problem is getting worse not better… but I gotta respond to this.

You’re assuming botters are paying for GW2 at all. Hacker steals credit card info, uses credit card info to buy a copy of GW2. Hackers runs a bot to get gold, hackers sells gold to players and makes real $$. Eventually the credit card company/card card holder sees the credit card theft, cancels the card and reverses the charge on Anet. Anet is now out $60 plus manpower costs to handle bots/chargebacks.

And that’s only 1 possible scenario. While I agree Anet needs to do more about bots quick, soon, fast and in a hurry… I disagree that Anet has any conspiracy going on with the hackers.

Fozzik.1742:

The worst thing about bots is that it makes me scared to play like I want to. I’m genuinely worried that if I do certain things in certain areas, or use a certain build or pet or weapon, that I might get reported as a bot and accidentally banned. I’ve put in a huge amount of play time on this game and my characters, and the thought of being one of the unfortunate “false positives” scares the life out of me.

You are not alone. Soooo not alone there.

My mother, who loves the game, because she can play along with her grandson from far away. She loves to play a ranger and collect pets. …She swears she will never use a brown bear ever again. And she has also been accused on in game chat of botting., Which she (we) often do not monitor because she is on Skype with us. (But happened to notice line, after line, after line, of hate and accusation spewing at her, and pointed it out to me.) and that upset her a lot. And me too. You’re hating on a 70 year old woman, who’s proud of herself to be playing a level 80 character with her grandson. And, because she’s not playing like YOU (players with “world completion stars”) they stood accusing her of botting. (A F…. bot to be exact.) …Yes, it’s that out of control.

Myself, I love my Mesmer. Think about this one, if you haven’t already. I use AOE’s to support my many Illusions, Phantasms, and Clones…(I play it similar to an SoS Ritualist in GW I) I also like to use my illusions to my advantage when I’m “just passing through” a tough area. I give the MoB’s a few decoys to fight, instead of getting rooted, and overwhelmed, on my way through. …Anyone coming along behind me sees my “Illusions” with “My name” on them, and sees them fighting on thier own, killing something, and then disappearing…. Guess what? Must be a bot… Look, there he is again, over there. I often wonder if my lonely and left behind illusions and clones are getting reported as bots.

Common sense says: If they are not fighting, they are just AFK, letting the dogs out, and getting an ice cream cone. Right? My illusions are always fighting on their own, and they act like bots. And I’m often far away from them.

It really is scary. As stated by others, many of us have spent years of our casual spare time playing GW and are thrilled to pieces that GW 2 is upon us. The thought of being caught in the wrong place, at the wrong time, by the wrong person, and being wrongly accused is even more upsetting than the bot problem itself. It’s pretty bad when stuff like this is going on.

Props to others here. Lots of good input. Some threads like this deteriorate quickly, it’s nice to see an adult acting, well behaved version of the topic here.

Well i kinda had enough of it. I decided to move back to Aion. GW2 is great game but it haz some huge problems. Hopefully there wil lbe new review out there that will say :
Anet did awesome work to make game far more fun and bots free.
Till then her is an old story for all:
Farglick, The Automated Online Role-Player
http://sea-jnk.narod.ru/texts/farglik.html

Aphiroth.4608:

Y’know I’ve only been playing for about a month, but I haven’t encountered any bots yet. Either that or I have been too naive to notice… Who knows!

I see bots in every single zone, from the starter zone to the WvW zones.
They’re massively represented in this game.

We totally understand, that you are very unhappy with the botting issue, and agree with you, but we already have a topic about Bots and what we do against them, please read this one: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/On-Botting-and-What-We-re-Doing-About-It