Guild Wars 2

Just added six more new mining bots to my friends list today; reported them all, of course. I now have about more new buddies to add to my growing collection. The oldest have been there now for over three weeks. Always on when I’m on, constantly jumping from zone to zone, going offline, then online (no doubt to allow their bot program to read the memory to make a node map).

The prices on the BLTP for most mats have tanked in the last few weeks just like they did a while back before the major bot sweep. What I’m wondering is if ANet hired people to code anti-bot stuff, and the sweep was the result of that, what’s going on now? The mining bots are exhibiting EXACTLY the same behavior they always have. I haven’t seen any obvious mob-killing bots where I frequent, so that’s at least been curtailed more thoroughly.

Is there some reason why a reported bot can’t be tagged with a tracer program (automatically, no human intervention) to sniff out things like the character hopping from node to node with no intervening movement? Or the typical: enter zone, go offline, then online again, EVERY time? If nothing is detected, shove the report into the usual process chain (since it’s probably an erroneous report or an atypical bot program at work), otherwise auto-ban the sucker.

Seriously, no player EVER exhibits this kind of behavior on a consistent basis, and certainly not for 10+ hours a day, practically non-stop. A legit character can’t move those distances within a few seconds or less anyway, packet loss or not. That alone should be a giant red flag to a dedicated bot-monitor program.

Seems to me trying to code in some global bot-detector is a lot less (consistently) functional than simply using the power of the players and their bot reports. Legit players hate bots…harness that hatred and put it to good use, while simultaneously giving concerned players that needed sense of satisfaction to keep bothering. Lately, I feel like I’m wasting my time when it takes upwards of a month to begin not seeing one of my bot buddies stop logging in and out all the time. I can’t even imagine the amount of farming these swine are allowed to get away with, ~24/7, over a month.

I’ve seen tons of bots in the same areas, and they’re still not banned. Not sure what ANet is really doing about them, I mean all they’d have to do is walk through Orr and they’d see them teleporting about and mob-killing.

Dont worry they are going to lock this thread just like all the others and try and shove this under the rug while telling us to use the in game reporting tool, which is impossible 99% of the time because they teleport so fast you are unable to click on them most of the time.

I’ve also seen a heap of these bots. Ridiculous.

Yip and its now across all gathering nodes not just the desired stuff… carrot/vegetable patches, copper nodes, green wood etc etc.. anythig and everything… they just teleport onto (yes onto) the node and in a blink of an eye they are off again.
Seems the hackers have found their way through the anti-bot minefields once more.

What really conserns me about this is the fact that its super obvious Anet has ZERO reality checks going on with the server, so there is nothing stopping anyone from writing a program to allow players to teleport anywhere on the map with zero cooldown or costs involved as the bots are doing it already so we know its possible and it works.

This could really ruin WvW and PvP once insta teleport anywhere trainer is released. I would consider it a very unfair advantage if my opponent could teleport anywhere they point with a simple button press.

They ban bots around once a month or so, which is why they stay for a while.

They should be easily able to detect teleporting bots however, since they’re doing something that isn’t possible by normal players – rapidly moving, being under the map and quickly gathering an entire zone’s worth of nodes. I’ll assume however that detecting the teleports can be a little difficult for them, since waypointing is basically the same thing, when ignoring waypoint locations. Even WoW fails at detecting teleporting, under the map gatherers however, so who knows.

ArenaNet has confirmed that they log things though, since they can tell stuff like how many people salvaged and got what and how many loot bags were opened and what was received. Maybe they just track economy related stuff though.

Rifter.6591:

Dont worry they are going to lock this thread just like all the others and try and shove this under the rug while telling us to use the in game reporting tool, which is impossible 99% of the time because they teleport so fast you are unable to click on them most of the time.

There are other ways of reporting. You could, if fast enough, take a screenshot of the bot. Then write a support ticket (and include the screenshot if you managed to take one), put down as much details as possible about the incident, like where it happened, when it happened, the name of the bot etc, just like they said you should if you werent able to report using the ingame option.

There have been several of these threads popping up, there have been several answers but guess what, posting multiple threads on the very same issue does not help them to get rid of the problem at all. Chances are they are already aware of the botting issues and are working on it.

I saw my first one yesterday in Orr by the camps. Then I saw another following it. Then I saw 2 more running circles around pent and the Packheart spawning area.

4 bots in 1 area. Crazy.

Blackwolfe.5649:

Rifter.6591:

Dont worry they are going to lock this thread just like all the others and try and shove this under the rug while telling us to use the in game reporting tool, which is impossible 99% of the time because they teleport so fast you are unable to click on them most of the time.

There are other ways of reporting. You could, if fast enough, take a screenshot of the bot. Then write a support ticket (and include the screenshot if you managed to take one), put down as much details as possible about the incident, like where it happened, when it happened, the name of the bot etc, just like they said you should if you werent able to report using the ingame option.

There have been several of these threads popping up, there have been several answers but guess what, posting multiple threads on the very same issue does not help them to get rid of the problem at all. Chances are they are already aware of the botting issues and are working on it.

I have never seen a response to these threads other that the generic canned “use the tool” response.

If they have a official response to the teleporting farmer bots they should add it to the sticky bots thread at the top of this forum, but it hasnt been updated in months, So obviously they do not have a response.

That’s interesting Blackwolfe, but unless ArenaNet make it easy for people to report bots, people simply won’t do it. Taking a screenshot then mailing it is too much work for most people out there.
Always design game features around the central tenet that your players will ALWAYS take the path of least resistance.

Mungrul.9358:

That’s interesting Blackwolfe, but unless ArenaNet make it easy for people to report bots, people simply won’t do it. Taking a screenshot then mailing it is too much work for most people out there.
Always design game features around the central tenet that your players will ALWAYS take the path of least resistance.

Also to add to this a screenshot alone proves nothing, i mean so what you got a pic of some guy mining, whoopi.

Im assuming the report bot tool they have also includes a battle/movement log of the person being reported to help the support staff to ban the boters, a screenshot does not provide any additional info. And if they could obtain this additional info without us then they wouldnt need us reporting bots to begin with.

Mungrul.9358:

That’s interesting Blackwolfe, but unless ArenaNet make it easy for people to report bots, people simply won’t do it. Taking a screenshot then mailing it is too much work for most people out there.
Always design game features around the central tenet that your players will ALWAYS take the path of least resistance.

Yes, I made notes of 4 players node hacking in Dredgehaunt Cliffs, I missed another 6 or so due to the speed they move, didn’t quite catch their names. When I had finished playing I took the time to report them via email. Its a pain in the kitten though, a /who zone feature would be nice with a list a players currently in that zone so you could right click their names and report – with a brief note.

Hi everyone,

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. If you see a bot, please report them using the in game report tool. Be sure that the team will do its best to get rid of them as soon as possible.

Also, remember that making posts about it in the forums does not help us dealing with the issue.

Thanks for your understanding. This thread is closed.