Guild Wars 2

I reported 2 botters on Maguuma yesterday, just northwest of the Arunden waypoint, where there are lots of minotaurs. They are rangers, who teleport between a half dozen specific locations, spam attacks, and let bears tank mobs. Literally teleporting to exact locations, not even moving.

I come back today, and not only are they still there, still running the same loop, but there are about a dozen now doing the same thing.

I’m glad that 33 whole account shave been closed on each server, roughly. That certainly helps keep gold out of the hands of gold farmers on a game-wide shared trading post. :/

Today’s group literally includes characters Wangwwww, Wangiiiii, and Wangbbb
They’re not even trying to look like real players, and their account names are equally stupid.

edit: 3 different groups now in the same zone. I’m pretty much done TRYING to find anywhere to farm resources, which is essentially the end-game. This is kitten

I log in, spam mail. I enter a new zone: spam mail. map chat: spam. Try to farm anything: piles of bots.

Any small amount of actual in-game support could put a serious dent in this crap. Instead we have an auction house full of items selling at an actual loss after costs are adjusted, devaluing nearly everything but raw materials and rare drop resources, which are bot farmed.

I dont think these folks even care about getting banned so why not be named Wangiiii. I thought Aion was bad with botting until I started playing this game. Reporting exploits in Aion gave no results but that game is almost 5 yrs old now so who cares. Its almost 2013 and its now obvious that reporting exploits is as useless as me reporting my car stolen to a police officer. Sure they may find my car a month later but in that time 1000 other people’s cars have been stolen. I see no way for Anet to fix the botting issue without somehow invading the privacy of each and every account to sort out real from fake. Maybe during logins and periodically during gameplay they will have us complete a complex math equation to prove we have organic brains LOL.

the bots are recharging their batteries

This game is infested with bots. I counted 6 in one spot on one server. Some in another spot. So I switched servers and there were actually more bots in the same spot. They are everywhere and they are overwhelming everything. This along with the absurdly long queue times for WvW and I am seriously thinking of giving up on this game. This is an awesome game but if I can’t even play it then I am not sticking around.

CC Eva.6742:

… Nynja, we delete those specific posts here because this sticky will benefit all of us if we keep it for discussion and feedback only. Thanks for your understanding.

The report function doesn’t work, Eva. The bots are everywhere. This is the only way to get any kind of a response. If you agree the bots are everywhere, go in the game and ban them. Otherwise, what else are we supposed to do as customers? Stop playing? How is that good for you?

but you do nothing with boot… i see from almost 7 day in some spot on forest song map 3 boot running all day and fasrm mats… ppl report them and they still run…
If you don’t start ban this boot they will farm gold, you will ban their account but from selling gold they can buy 10 new account and start boting again so ban account wil be useless… they will farm more gold and buy more accout…
lvling in this game is simple and very fast so it’s not a problem for bot… so if you will be ban bot like in GW 1 just change game name “GW2 gold farmer game”…
and you can delet craft becaus boot kill this aspect of game… they farm mats, put on TP in very low price so create item and put them to TP is useless becaus you can get more cash from mats what you need to create item… bot will kill this game if you do nothing with that…

I come across Bots with randomized names [Edit] , rather than the hacked accounts with user created names.
They plow through areas with foes trailing them. When the dust clears, players are left to wait for respawns, and they come in again. Wash, Rinse and Repeat
Sure I may get a drop and always XP, but I don’t find it fun to try to get a few hits in and scrounge from they mess they make.

I squeezed in an hour of play yesterday, reporting 6 offenders, 3 of them naked, running amok around Shiverspur Front, getting stuck in the scenery.

[Edited by CC: Names removed]

Have you guys not realized by now that Anet has made their money off all of us, and now it is time to move on.. If anything is being done, I sure as kitten cant tell.

vjek.4270:

CC Eva.6742:

… Nynja, we delete those specific posts here because this sticky will benefit all of us if we keep it for discussion and feedback only. Thanks for your understanding.

The report function doesn’t work, Eva. The bots are everywhere. This is the only way to get any kind of a response. If you agree the bots are everywhere, go in the game and ban them. Otherwise, what else are we supposed to do as customers? Stop playing? How is that good for you?

“The report function doesn’t work”? I really don’t understand that statement when people make it. How do they think it’s supposed to work? We’ve been arguing about this issue for at least a couple of weeks now and we have ANet’s statement at the beginning of this thread. They’re collecting and analyzing all the information on bots that comes in to them via reports and when they have developed strategy and programming to really deal with them they are going to go after them. They’re not sitting on their hands doing nothing. I think the problem here is that people are expecting instant action on an issue that won’t respond to off-the-cuff action (I mean, look at how many people have pointed out that the buggy, band-aid DR system hasn’t really done that much to slow down botters).

I also don’t understand all the continued pleas and demands for “information” and “response” on this matter when the fact is that business security is involved here. Don’t you think that botters and gold farmers are monitoring this thread and similar ones? ANet has to be very, VERY careful about what they say about how they’re going to deal with this problem because if they let slip something they shouldn’t, botters will be able to figure out what’s being proposed to be done and work out something to get around it and then we’ll be right back where we started or even worse off. Bluntly speaking, we don’t have the need to know the details of ANet’s developing response to botters. Anyone who’s ever worked with safeguarding classified or business-confidential information should understand.

“They’re not sitting on their hands doing nothing”.

The perception though is that they are – or at the very least they’re not doing anywhere near enough, or as quickly as is required to control the bots and satisfy the players. Most of us here don’t actually care HOW they do it, as long as they do SOMETHING about it – at a faster pace than up to now. Automating things with the Diminishing Returns seems to be backfiring against players – and even at the simplest level – just 6 active GMs who did nothing but teleport to the location of bot reports and inspect them, you could actively police these reports a lot more effectively than with anti-bot codes.

This kittening kitten is getting worse by the day… DO SOMETHING!

I’m standing here looking at three teleporting bots at a DE right now. It is everywhere, the game is saturated with bots and cheaters. PVE, WVW… BOTS BOTS BOTS.

I am starting to feel like I am playing some kitten F2P junk from overseas.

5 bots at penitent path this morning. Two teleporting, three that run the same path over and over.

A single GM could pop in and fix this. Right now, but you don’t. You ignore it.

I reported several people on Gendarran fields (25-35) as I’m low level.. the same bot can be seen day after day at the same place doing the same things..

I even saw 2 from the same guild acting the same at the same time etc.. it looks like a dance somehow… but sadly I saw too many of them..
With all the report I made you could easily remove 10 guys… but nothing is done.

It doesn’t take long to check suck guys.. it’ so obvious that they’re boting.. so ask to the “boting special team” to stop drinking milk and swap for some Italian coffee and remove those players.

What about people being falsely accused of being bots?

I haven’t been a victim, but I have seen people calling others bots, either because of their damage range, or because of certain skills, etc. I just want to know that I am safe from being falsely banned.

AdelaisAer.4109:

What about people being falsely accused of being bots?

I haven’t been a victim, but I have seen people calling others bots, either because of their damage range, or because of certain skills, etc. I just want to know that I am safe from being falsely banned.

Do you run in a circle like a robot for 24 hours straight?

Do you teleport magically all over the map?

Do you stand in one spot spamming your number one skill for days on end?

This stuff is blatant and obvious.

Jnaathra.6549:

AdelaisAer.4109:

What about people being falsely accused of being bots?

I haven’t been a victim, but I have seen people calling others bots, either because of their damage range, or because of certain skills, etc. I just want to know that I am safe from being falsely banned.

Do you run in a circle like a robot for 24 hours straight?

Do you teleport magically all over the map?

Do you stand in one spot spamming your number one skill for days on end?

This stuff is blatant and obvious.

I lol’d. But no, I do not run in circles, or teleport, or spam skills in one spot for days on end. xD

It’s mostly new people to the game who are like, “Oh my god, what the hell, an Engineer using a shield? Haxor!” or other stupid things. But also, usually, I am too lazy to dodge, so I do end up standing in one place while attacking my enemy, so I may come across to people either as an idiot (which I admit I can be when I am lazy) or a bot to noobs and other idiots.

Other than that, I don’t do anything that shouts bot or sell gold or anything of that sort. -shrugs- But you know, innocent people do get banned, because bot-detection strategies aren’t flawless.

There are now about a dozen of them in the Human starting area in the orchard. I can’t kill even 1 spider without the herd of them ripping it apart. This makes the game unplayable and seriously not enjoyable.

Here I was hoping to come to the forum to see if anything is being done…and I see from 6 pages that no, not enough is being done. That’s why it’s a problem everywhere in the game now.

BadHabitZz.1856:

Its really crazy, i cant remeber a day when i loged in and didnt have atleast 1 msg from some gold seller i always report them as spamers or should i report them as botters i mean they obviously are botters…
I dont know why every game must be ruined by bots :-/

There is an option that if a gold seller sends you mail and I get them quite frequently to report them as gold sellers not bots or spammers. It is getting more and more out of hand as every time I seem to log into game anymore i have a few messages and its usually spam from gold sellers. If anyone logs into gw1 now there are tons of spam bots in GTOB also selling gold for GW1 and GW2

“Bot Report” option is discouraging when I see the same botters that I reported 6 days in a row still remain farming.

The situation is just terrible. I wanted to play an alt in queens dale last night and I had to chase after mobs to get to them before bot swarms. (centaur camp near vineyard north of beetletun).

OK… I’ll go look for dynamic events nearest dynamic event is bugged and cannot be completed. (DE near the fields east of beetletun farms).

OK I’ll go get the next skill point….. skill challenge in beetletun is bugged.

Screw this. log out and try another alt. Different zone (gendarran fields) same issues. Bugged events and bots everywhere.

This is worst in the low level areas. As it is, I could not in good conscience recommend anyone buy and start playing this game. The quality of game play at the early levels has gone down by a drastic am mount since release. I understand ANet probably wants to collect data and mass band but the prolonged inaction in the mean time is having a terrible effect. Please by all means work on a long term plan, but the need for short term drastic action is quite significant.

Won’t be playing alts any time soon…

It’s pretty standard for developers to take a bit of time and attention before they ban bots. Obviously, they want to avoid false positives as much as possible, and they want to try and get as much info as possible about how the bots operate. (Better to cut a weed off at the root than the stems.)

EVE Online has periodical “purges” – people see bots, report, complain and whine, and it seems like CCP are doing nothing about it, then WHAM, huge swathes of them are cleared out in one go.

I think the DR complaints have some validity to them, I don’t agree with people who say “you aren’t playing right”. Sometimes people like to min-max their time efficiency, or just like a relaxing, trance-inducing playstyle to wind down after work with, and they shouldn’t be punished. That’s true.

But I strongly doubt such players are in a majority (especially in a game that’s been advertised from the beginning as non-grind-centric, which it is), and if there’s a cost/benefit calculation to be made between bots ruining the economy, and some players being upset for a while, I know where I’d come down on that.

However, to speak for the other side again, I’d be very suspicious if DR wasn’t a temporary measure – i.e. if Anet keep it in the game for more than a few months (i.e. after they do a purge on the current bot plague, which I think is undoubtedly going to come), that, to me, might be a sign that they are trying to manipulate people into buying gems, and I wouldn’t like that attitude, and would probably leave.

Still, thankfully, I’ve had easily more than $60 worth of fun out of the game already. Anything else is gravy.

Is it possible to add the gold selling website names to a filter list, similar to the profanity filter? Most people have the profanity filter turned off so it would have to be a seperate filter but would work just like the profanity filter. Set it up, add all the known websites and when they change domain names, add those as well. Can leave the www and the .com but filter out the important part … I’m sure they would find a way around it, but it would hamper them considerably. When they start adding hyphens between letters or spaces, add those as well to the list to make the site names illegible when they try to spam.

After reporting Bots for a while,and seeing that they are NOT beeing removed, on the contrary the bots are increasing in number it seems, the less i feel its any use in reporting at all. If we make a post about Botting i feel we are beeing “told off” if we say it in wrong place, posts getting removed etc, its not very encoraging at all.. I love this game, i would Pay to Play if the botting and gold sellers were adressed more strictly.

I would atleast appreciate some feedback about whats happening about the botters and other kinds of exploiters/cheaters..

A current area that I am in there was 1 bot, I recorded a video, posted it on the forums, and reported the bot. Now 5 days later that bot is still there and 2 more bot friends.

Its obvious nothing has been done, since the bot I reported is still farming. I understand data needs to be collected, but with the recording I made the bot is using mechanics in the game that simply don’t exist, so it shouldn’t be hard to identify this character as a bot.

Please get your act together Anet, these bots have got to be stopped quickly and efficiently.

To those that read this thread, and aren’t sure what the current form of bots look like, or what type of behavior to look for in a bot so that you can report, please look at this thread I made that details what behavior to look for.

Mike,

No mention of a stance on Diminishing rewards and its continued existence?

It’s good that you are getting rid of botters and gold sellers. I personally think its bad that you are selling gold yourselves. I don’t think cash shops should sell things that are otehr than convenience items and skin items. If you can impact gameplay with cash then how are are you guys any different than the goldsellers you are banning?

Ethnic.6251:

How about on the spot banning GM’s? An ingame ticket for botters would be enough to handle this. With the help of the society its really possible to keep botters/farmers to a minimum.

US – 11 GM’s
EU – 11 GM’s
French – 2 GM’s
German – 3 GM’s
Spanish – 1 GM (with English or any european country as 2nd option to help on spare time)

In total 28 GM’s for banning them on sight. Just to keep spots open for real players. Whether if its for WvW or just to get in your own server instead of overflow etc.
One last idea. EU GM’s would also be responsible of US servers. So that the US servers wont be full of botters at night. And vice versa.

Lets say couple of EU GM’s start early in the morning around 6 AM GMT +1. At that same time US GM’s are finished working and EU is taking over.

Darnit i really would like a job like this.

Any feedback on this guys?

Personally, I would prefer to see some of the forum mods moved over to be in-game GM’s. Right now it seems we have a much more policed forum than in game.

Tyops.5894:

The situation is just terrible. I wanted to play an alt in queens dale last night and I had to chase after mobs to get to them before bot swarms. (centaur camp near vineyard north of beetletun).

OK… I’ll go look for dynamic events nearest dynamic event is bugged and cannot be completed. (DE near the fields east of beetletun farms).

OK I’ll go get the next skill point….. skill challenge in beetletun is bugged.

Screw this. log out and try another alt. Different zone (gendarran fields) same issues. Bugged events and bots everywhere.

This is worst in the low level areas. As it is, I could not in good conscience recommend anyone buy and start playing this game. The quality of game play at the early levels has gone down by a drastic am mount since release. I understand ANet probably wants to collect data and mass band but the prolonged inaction in the mean time is having a terrible effect. Please by all means work on a long term plan, but the need for short term drastic action is quite significant.

Won’t be playing alts any time soon…

I had the same experience a couple days back trying to start an alt. The bots are slowly infesting everywhere, though, but it seems like the starting areas, bots outnumber real players almost 2 to 1.

Lance Coolee.9480:

Ethnic.6251:

How about on the spot banning GM’s? An ingame ticket for botters would be enough to handle this. With the help of the society its really possible to keep botters/farmers to a minimum.

US – 11 GM’s
EU – 11 GM’s
French – 2 GM’s
German – 3 GM’s
Spanish – 1 GM (with English or any european country as 2nd option to help on spare time)

In total 28 GM’s for banning them on sight. Just to keep spots open for real players. Whether if its for WvW or just to get in your own server instead of overflow etc.
One last idea. EU GM’s would also be responsible of US servers. So that the US servers wont be full of botters at night. And vice versa.

Lets say couple of EU GM’s start early in the morning around 6 AM GMT +1. At that same time US GM’s are finished working and EU is taking over.

Darnit i really would like a job like this.

Any feedback on this guys?

Personally, I would prefer to see some of the forum mods moved over to be in-game GM’s. Right now it seems we have a much more policed forum than in game.

Sad that its true, but I agree.

Anti farm code will stop them…oh wait; it only effects real players while has no effect on bots since they simply teleport around and run 24/7. Sigh.

I think one the first things that should be done other than have buncha GMs go around and start banning on the spot is to find out how the heck they are ‘teleporting’ and immedietly close that exploit. This effects everything since even ‘legit’ players are now using them in PvE and worse; PvP.

The situation needs to be handled very quickly because the industry of gold or virtual items farming and selling is an extremely shady one. Do a search on Chinese prison guards and gold farming and you will get what i mean. The part that bothers me most is that these corrupt businesses will resort to almost anything which means that until you rid the issue fast i will never financially support the game further by buying anything from your gem store. I do want to show my support from time to time because i feel its deserved because this is a better game than i could have imagined for one that has no recurring subscription but i cannot allow my credit card details to be saved on a system that has a very corrupt business running around inside it unchallenged. The level of severity of this issue will be up to you Anet and the difficulty to remove them will be greater the longer this goes on.

Ok. People keep reporting the same character over and over again you are seeing people posting screenshot because they don’t see the effect of reporting bots. They are still there. But you are threatening that posting screenshot of botters that were reported for over week or two can lead to ban legit player… This is beyond me.

We are posting screenshot because we don’t see any effect. we are fed up. Yet it is we that will get banned for posting a screenshot? Are you serious?! And since when a character name is sensetive private data?!

Trying to prevent it may be a good idea in theory but hardly practical. Sure you might get a few but in the end it will always be a ongoing thing.

Then you toss out diminishing returns on loot, exp, karma, money to try and discourage bots and gold sellers, but in the end you just end up hurting the honest players trying to farm for their tier sets or whatever else, and they end up being the ones discouraged who feel it’s a waste of time to play anymore because the HUGE end game grind for cultural sets, legendary’s and whatever else has become what feels like almost impossible and hardly worth the time involved.

No to mention the fact you have done kitten all that I can see about fixing broken skill points. While playing my guardian I cam across 5 broken ones in 2 zones, log in next day still broken. I mean it’s not like we need skill points for anything right…….

As much as I like this game or at the very least trying to like it, I’d almost rather give that other company 15 bucks a month and play stupid kitten panada’s ( and I haven’t played that other game since the end of the second expansion )

Report feature would be much easier to use with a “Suspected Botter” report option.

It took long enough to get a “Gold Selling” report option so i’m not holding my breath that a Suspected Botter will arrive any time soon.

Until the botter option becomes available can you really blame people reporting on the forums? You harp on how using the report feature incorrectly can result in a ban for those reporting but then don’t give those reporting the tools in-game (option to report botter directly) to report with the correct heading.

The bots have been reported day in and day out the same ones over and over and yet after 2 weeks they are still in the same spot. Yup seems like the system works. We have to use SS cause the way that is in place now does not work.

gurugeorge.9857:

Snip

I very much hold the opposite opinion to you george on most things, especially DR and the rampant bot problem (which is, you must agree, getting out of hand.)

However, I can’t knock a well articulated and well-meaning post down when I see it. You also say you agree with several negative effects of the controversial systems used by ANet to “police” the game and that made me smile.

You’re quite right, could I really be unhappy with the purchase I made for the price I paid? Not really. 1-80 was really fun. Really really fun. Each new vista I made sure I watched in full. Each new level was a heart flutterer. Each new mob an eye-opener, each new zone a challenge.

It’s these moments of brilliance and sheer joy within the game that started to make me believe that this game was the one.

That special game that would fill the void this genre so badly needs.

It seems ANet had done their homework and had laid out this solid plan.

I got sucked in. Sucked in big time. I had this silly smile on my face over a weekend from Friday to Saturday, that happy feeling you get when you find an experience you can enjoy in the privacy of your own home that’s all yours.

Then this novelty started to wear off. Not because I reached the cap. Not because I managed to put together my exotic set relatively fast.

Bots. Rampant bots.

Everywhere.

I have seen the same bot names from 3 weeks ago. I’ve mashed that report button like a hyperactive whack-a-mole fanatic. It’s not working.

I hear what you’re saying about CCP and their business practice. I’ve played EVE for 3-4 years.

EVE and GW2 are massively different. Polar opposites of the MMO scene.

EVE has a stable population of ~30,000 per day and if you’ve been in their world recently you’ll know it’s full of nasty dangerous spam messages. They have spam for contracts that, if you’re uninitiated and new, can clear you out. It’s nasty the way the scams target new players. You must know this.

EVE is no paragon of virtue, not by a long shot. There’s myriad things CCP does right, but it’s bots are definitely not one of them.

All I want is action.

As is said in the OP they’re proud of 1600 and relay these glad tidings to us as if it’s some major cleanse operation.

It’s not, it’s a drop in the ocean. You must be able to see this.

You say there’s a ban hammer coming which will affect swathes, leagues, multitudinous bots.

The fact is you don’t know this is true at all and MOST importantly you don’t know what ANet protocol is going to be for dealing with these bots.

They could just tempo-ban them as opposed to perma-ban them.

The real fact of the matter is bots are proliferating and it IS affecting the way I play right now.

They are in my way in the PvE environment and very noticable.

I challenge anyone from any server to prove me wrong and we’ll go on to your server and spend time in Cursed Shore around the trinity of waypoints and see if there’s any truth to what you say.

This isn’t even taking account the chatlog spam and PM spam.

I’ve noticed an increase in PM spam, up from 1-2 per week to 1 per day. You can’t ignore this. You must be seeing it!

I would love, nay, I would pay hard cash – 1 week’s full wages of my own money – to take someone from ANet (not fourm staff) into the the areas affected on the 3 servers I’ve played on.

Just show them. Open my arms and say “This is what I am talking about.”

There’s no way they’d be happy with what they saw.

ANet, please log into your own game, please visit these places and see what we see, we’re not trying to mislead you, we really have problems, we just want you to see how we experience the game as a player, we just can’t play

I love so much about this game. It’s so stylish, so fresh, so… je ne sais quoi.

The bots really ruin it.

I’ll even play with DR.

Just have a bot cull. PLEASE!

I would really love an open world pvp server.. you know then any bot is just going to be a free kill.

It is NOT working!

I have seen the same packs I mean packs of rangers on Maguuma for over a week. And more and more are springing up every day.

I report them 2 to 3 times a day and they are still here! Not in one zone but in all zones I’m being overrun with them.

I will state this again… It is not working they are increasing in numbers not decreasing rapidly!

I will update this thread every day with the same bots in the same spot to prove it.

What makes it entirely frustrating for the legit players is how the behavior of the botting feels like it is going relatively unnoticed. I understand you want to keep things private since there are or will be cases of mistaken activity that looks like botting. But the banning of only 1600 accounts when there is probably several times that amount started up last week alone is just a very poor showing of ANet’s seriousness in the matter.

Are you at all looking at the common and repeated botting areas used on multiple servers?

And what your current detection system (requiring in game players to keep pointing the finger at the culprits) misses is any botting activity that happens in far away locations (far edges of a map in Frostgorge for instance) or in private instances (like the storyline areas). The players have no idea how widespread or minimal the botting issue really is.

This lack of communication (and reminding players of how this is a bannable/termination of account offense) does not appear anywhere in the login screen. Because of this, many botting accounts when finally banned will simply appeal and claim they didn’t know better.

In short, what this all means is that by not being HUGE with an announcement and HUGE with the ANet ban-hammer is you are ultimately encouraging it to continue and expand.

Needless to say, I reported ~15 bots running a bot-figure-eight pattern/dynamic event spawn found on one map today alone. They were there on Saturday and I’m quite certain they will be there tomorrow. What timeline should we expect to see a report investigation followed up on?

LOL, this is like:

Q: Report dosent work, what we can do?
A: Use Report option.

Q: Ok we alredy use it, for weeks, but we see not effect ingame, bot still in the same spot after weeks… so?
A: Use Report then, let me show you how can u use report: blah blah blah

Q: [whatever] and because of that we conclude that report DONT WORK
A: Here is a fresh idea: use report, if you go ingame , right click…

you imagine this guys at war?
“the heli is broken, please send backup”
“just take the heli and get out of there”,

“Already told u, the heli is not working, we need…”,
“copy that, take the heli and…”

come on….

Just some quick mathematics while I’m here.

Approx. 2,000,000 box sales.

1600 bots caught.

1600 divided by 2,000,000 (and this is far less than total box sales now) x 100 = 0.08%

It’s not even one tenth of a percent of the global population.

Just sayin’.

The problem is I think Arena.net is having to sift through all of these reports manually.
If I were a bot maker I would randomly report characters I encounter in the game for botting. Hence increasing the number of players being reported for botting. Effectively smoke screening your behavior.

They need a solid algorithm that snaps the log like 2 mins before and after and parses the behavior server side.
If it looks suspicious…ergo same movements “a route” etc…not giving away to much. Then and only then forward them onto “real humans” to evaluate.

@XMLVIKING:

Not to argue against your point, but think of combating bots like combating computer viruses. Sure, you can develop, test and deploy your “bot-buster” feature, but these botters will never stop looking for creative ways to exploit the system.

Those bots behind the keyboard do this for a living. No bots = no food on the table. They take this “job” very seriously.

So what does it mean? It means that you’ve effectively now cornered yourself into only being able to resolve the botting issue through some development release cycle; and when your botters can compose creative solutions faster than your development cycle can fix them, you can see where this is a huge issue.

This needs abrupt human intervention, IMO. It’s the only way to get to the source of it quickly and reliably. It’s the only way to really send a message that this game will not tolerate a hostile environment.

We’re so quick to invest in forum mods, why can’t we likewise invest in game GMs?

RoninsBack.4023:

juiceman.2870:

Well I was saying only captchas for someone reported as being a bot by multiple people then only that person or bot gets the captcha not everyone. It could be automated since I mean players are really the best defense against bots since we are everywhere.

To you, juiceman and others calling for the implementation of captchas. There have been automated captcha solutions you can purchase through Google for years.

You send the copy of the image of the captchas to a company in Russia, they read it, send back the code and this is then entered in the required field. All of this is easily automated. I’ve seen them work.

Captchas are not a line of defence against anything.

What you will do by using them is really really annoy people. People hate captchas in the more mundane areas of their life. Let alone while interacting with a game.

Anyway, the whole captcha argument is totally invalid as automated captcha solutions have existed for years.

If you’re having trouble believing this, Google “Antigate Captcha” and be prepared for some sobering edumacation.

It’s a totally flawed premise.

Well….c**p. Thanks for the enlightenment RoninsBack. Guess live GM’s are the only way to go then. I guess wherever there is money to made….someone will fill that niche.

“As Mike explained, we’re committed to fighting botters.”

Then explain to them, please, that this word does not mean what you think it means. The current actions seen being taken encourage players to run bots on a second account through a proxy if they want to have enough in game gold to compete in a botting driven marketplace. Botting and being banned every few weeks is still incredibly lucrative and places non botting players at a severe disadvantage in the Black Lion Trading Company.

You can’t claim to be committed when the current actions are allowing the many bots out there to be extremely profitable. That is not fighting them… that is encouraging others to do the same.

I’m not sure if the lack of more pro-active methods of dealing with this issue is because ANet didn’t ship the game with the sort of “god” GM accounts in place, or the lack of resources to have “god” GMs out there playing sheriff in the wild. With the lack of anything obvious by now, I’m hoping, as dumb as it might have been, that it’s lack of the former, because surely you could have deputized any number of people willing to take this one on.

Obviously, long term, it is better to have a reliable automated system in place, but short term, there needs to be some posse action going on where players can actually see the white hats riding into a zone and annihilating bot users permanently. Botters were probably equally bad in GW1, but we never saw it because of the all instance, all the time game design. With a persistent world you can’t leave so many bots up for days on end and expect people not to get fed up.

If a bot runs for a few days Im sure they make enough money to just buy a new account after its banned so I mean you need to do it often enough that they keep losing money and I dont think that is happening yet

I can’t see what are you doing at all, there’s 5 bots for 2-3 weeks now at Penitenth Camp at Cursed Shore in Aurora glade, and yet they’re not banned.

So, what are you doing exactly?

RIGHT NOW as I am posting this, there are over 15 bots in Despond Precipice on Devona’s Rest. I gave up counting. They have been there for days. They have totally taken over. It is so blatant I can’t believe it. I have never seen this in an AAA MMO before. I switched servers to this one because they were so bad on Dragonbrand. Seriously, this is outrageous.

How do I know they are bots? Because they all follow each other in a single line and they go in a circle around the whole area, 24 hours a day, every day. If you follow them, you can see the waypoints that have been set up that they follow. They will even go if there are no mobs. They don’t really use too many abilities and basically just auto attack. They all have gibberish account names such as [Name removed] . Sometimes they will teleport around, maybe due to lag from being in China, but I can’t say for sure.

How much longer is it going to take? I have bought gems on the store and I would buy more, but I am not spending another dollar on this game until this is fixed. If it takes too long I will probably just abandon this game. I will gladly pay $15 a month to another game that actively takes care of the bot problem.

[Edited by CC: Name removed]

And just like that, DR completely lost it’s affect on the botters and can now only serve to impact the rest of the playerbase.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/New-Undetected-Form-Of-Botting-Has-The-Potential-To-Crash-The-GW2-Economy/first#post317116