Guild Wars 2

@Aieala if you think Anet is going to be able to stop the bots with a program then the joke is on you. The people who write the bot programs make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. They will have a fix two days tops after Anet has their bot program in place.

The only effective way to get rid of the bot program is to make a human bot banning team. The economy is in the dumps right now, if you ran a add in the paper video game job paying minimum wage the line of people would stretch for blocks.

Pretty soon there is going to be a point of no return for the game and this game is going to be another D3. You don’t wait until the house is burnt to the ground to call the fire department!

@Soulwatcher – just out of curiosity, where did I say that they’d be able to stop the bots with just a program?

Also, please do share with us your name, professional title and a list of credits for the games in which you have successfully instituted a “bot banning team”. I’m sure your extensive experience in effectively getting rid of bot programs is something we’d all be fascinated with.

Airala.8629:

@Soulwatcher – just out of curiosity, where did I say that they’d be able to stop the bots with just a program?

Also, please do share with us your name, professional title and a list of credits for the games in which you have successfully instituted a “bot banning team”. I’m sure your extensive experience in effectively getting rid of bot programs is something we’d all be fascinated with.

You want some credits? Blizzard is a MULTI BILLION DOLLAR company and they cant get rid of the bots. Assuming Anet is going to wipe them out with a program is foolish.

Soulwatcher.2604:

You want some credits? Blizzard is a MULTI BILLION DOLLAR company and they cant get rid of the bots. Assuming Anet is going to wipe them out with a program is foolish.

The same reason blizzard is a multi billion dollar company is the same reason they can’t get rid of the bots. They’ve refused to take any action on the matter /ever/ for the entire duration I played it. You see trial account orcs come right out of character creation, marching up to Orgrimmar so they can start glitching themselves into positions that advertise gold farming websites. Did they put controls on trial accounts? No. Did they prohibit trial accounts from spamming chat channels? No.

We’re lucky. We don’t have trial accounts, and thus the only time you see someone spamming is quite literally a hacked account. We’ve forced the illegal gold farmers to go into the even more illegal route of identity theft. If they came from anywhere but China, they’d probably be fined or incarcerated for credit card theft, operating 3rd party hacking programs, or worse. Instead they come from China where even their prisons encourage gold farming as a form of punishment. I don’t feel sorry for them, not a single one, even the ones forced to gold farm in prison.

You tell me, when they have such limited options on how they can operate – without spending $60, that ANet doesn’t have a surefire way to smother that flame. Secondary account security is already on its way using 2-step authentication like Google, they’ve already stated that. Once they get that figured out, the only people you’ll see spamming in game are legitimate players who choose to spam gold or bot, and they’ll be put out like a light.

Until then, the purpose of this thread stands – get over the fact that bots aren’t instantly banned the second you report them. Get over the fact that a week later they are still there, farming their little worthless lives away while the ban hammer floats steadily above their heads, waiting for the moment to squash. Get over the fact that ANet doesn’t just come right out and tell you their plans like a cartoony super villain.

The beginning is near.

Soulwatcher.2604:

You want some credits? Blizzard is a MULTI BILLION DOLLAR company and they cant get rid of the bots. Assuming Anet is going to wipe them out with a program is foolish.

And again – where did I say ANet would wipe them out with just a program?

By the way – that was kind of my point… that you close one door on botting, and another opens. That it’s not some easy, simple task to be rid of botters.

Though according to you, it sounds like all they have to do is hire people to hang out in game and ban them… thus the reason I asked for your professional credentials that demonstrate you have enacted such a system in other games and successfully eliminated the botting that way. After all, if it is your contention that this is all ANet has to do, you must be speaking from experience… yes?

@Airala who said they would have to hunt for bots? I am sure Anet is flooded with bot reports! Perhaps they should wait to the vast majority of players quit and then run a system wide message nicely asking the botters to shut down. Pretty soon the damage done by bots will not be able to be reversed and then it will be too late!

LoreChief.8391:

Soulwatcher.2604:

You want some credits? Blizzard is a MULTI BILLION DOLLAR company and they cant get rid of the bots. Assuming Anet is going to wipe them out with a program is foolish.

The same reason blizzard is a multi billion dollar company is the same reason they can’t get rid of the bots. They’ve refused to take any action on the matter /ever/ for the entire duration I played it. You see trial account orcs come right out of character creation, marching up to Orgrimmar so they can start glitching themselves into positions that advertise gold farming websites. Did they put controls on trial accounts? No. Did they prohibit trial accounts from spamming chat channels? No.

We’re lucky. We don’t have trial accounts, and thus the only time you see someone spamming is quite literally a hacked account. We’ve forced the illegal gold farmers to go into the even more illegal route of identity theft. If they came from anywhere but China, they’d probably be fined or incarcerated for credit card theft, operating 3rd party hacking programs, or worse. Instead they come from China where even their prisons encourage gold farming as a form of punishment. I don’t feel sorry for them, not a single one, even the ones forced to gold farm in prison.

You tell me, when they have such limited options on how they can operate – without spending $60, that ANet doesn’t have a surefire way to smother that flame. Secondary account security is already on its way using 2-step authentication like Google, they’ve already stated that. Once they get that figured out, the only people you’ll see spamming in game are legitimate players who choose to spam gold or bot, and they’ll be put out like a light.

Until then, the purpose of this thread stands – get over the fact that bots aren’t instantly banned the second you report them. Get over the fact that a week later they are still there, farming their little worthless lives away while the ban hammer floats steadily above their heads, waiting for the moment to squash. Get over the fact that ANet doesn’t just come right out and tell you their plans like a cartoony super villain.

The beginning is near.

And if its done with a program 2 days tops they will be back and we will be back to square 1!

Soulwatcher.2604:

@Airala who said they would have to hunt for bots? I am sure Anet is flooded with bot reports! Perhaps they should wait to the vast majority of players quit and then run a system wide message nicely asking the botters to shut down. Pretty soon the damage done by bots will not be able to be reversed and then it will be too late!

I think you and I must be having two very different conversations with two entirely different people… that’s the only conclusion I can draw from the seemingly random and unrelated comments you keep directing my way.

Blizzard is an interesting case study.

They rather famously said they would not ban gold buyers. So players buy gold. Lots of it. It’s part of the game’s culture at this point.

ANet to this date has never said they’ll ban a gold buyer. Yes, they have a record of everyone who got gold from a gold seller in the mail database. But you’ve not seen anyone banned for it.

If they’re real on limiting RMT, they need to punish the demand side. Or go the route Blizzard did, and accept RMT as a fixture in our game.

Cuz surely if sellers can make good money selling gold cheaper than the gem-store, if buyers can continue buying risk-free, they will.

Airala.8629:

Soulwatcher.2604:

@Airala who said they would have to hunt for bots? I am sure Anet is flooded with bot reports! Perhaps they should wait to the vast majority of players quit and then run a system wide message nicely asking the botters to shut down. Pretty soon the damage done by bots will not be able to be reversed and then it will be too late!

I think you and I must be having two very different conversations with two entirely different people… that’s the only conclusion I can draw from the seemingly random and unrelated comments you keep directing my way.

Actually it looks to me like you are failing to read any replies to you and actually understand them.

No one implied that direct in game ban hammers was the only solution, nor the long-term solution. It is merely a way to mitigate damage while working on the longer term solutions (automatic stuff).

Also, calling someone out on the forum for their personal information is not only against forum etiquette but also poor form.

I think most of you are underestimating what a tricky problem this is to deal with and the amount of time and resources it would take. A single employee combing through the hundreds of reports a day and personally verifying that each one is a legitimate bot report? Yeah, right.

Mountain Man.7901:

I think most of you are underestimating what a tricky problem this is to deal with and the amount of time and resources it would take. A single employee combing through the hundreds of reports a day and personally verifying that each one is a legitimate bot report? Yeah, right.

Then they need to hire as many as it takes. It took all of 3 months for bots to destroy D3’s economy beyond repair. We are 5 weeks out now, how much longer do you want to wait to take action?

Fort Aspen Server doesnt appear to have too many bots. I traveled pretty good distance in the server on 2 different characters and have yet to see more then 1 or 2 bot like players.

Soulwatcher.2604:

Mountain Man.7901:

I think most of you are underestimating what a tricky problem this is to deal with and the amount of time and resources it would take. A single employee combing through the hundreds of reports a day and personally verifying that each one is a legitimate bot report? Yeah, right.

Then they need to hire as many as it takes. It took all of 3 months for bots to destroy D3’s economy beyond repair. We are 5 weeks out now, how much longer do you want to wait to take action?

“Hire as many as it takes!”

That sure is easy to say when you’re not the one writing the paychecks. ArenaNet has limited resources and a hundred different things that need their attention, so I’m sure that they (and Blizzard, since you mentioned them) are devoting all the resources they can to tackle the botting problem. Which isn’t to say they’re devoting a lot of resources to it, just everything that it makes sense to from a business perspective.

Soulwatcher.2604:

Mountain Man.7901:

I think most of you are underestimating what a tricky problem this is to deal with and the amount of time and resources it would take. A single employee combing through the hundreds of reports a day and personally verifying that each one is a legitimate bot report? Yeah, right.

Then they need to hire as many as it takes. It took all of 3 months for bots to destroy D3’s economy beyond repair. We are 5 weeks out now, how much longer do you want to wait to take action?

D3 is a horrible comparison to this game and the bot situation and how to handle it. D3 is not a MMO and its economy went down hell in the first couple of weeks I know i was there. THings were overpriced and hyper inflated. Bots came in from the start pretty much and since single player game with no way of weeding them out as effectly. This is a MMO where players can keep an eye on the bots more. Also Anet sells the Gold as well so it makes Gold bots not as effecticent as in Diablo 3 where if you werent rich you couldnt afford anything and is just a bot and gold seller havon.

Craven.5468:

Actually it looks to me like you are failing to read any replies to you and actually understand them.

No one implied that direct in game ban hammers was the only solution, nor the long-term solution. It is merely a way to mitigate damage while working on the longer term solutions (automatic stuff).

Also, calling someone out on the forum for their personal information is not only against forum etiquette but also poor form.

Wait – I’m failing to read replies & to understand them?

Then perhaps you can show me where I said that ANet would be able to stop the bots with a program. Because I’ve asked soulwatcher to show me where I said that repeatedly… and instead I get random replies that don’t seem to relate to any of what I actually wrote.

Also, according to soulwatcher, the only effective way to get rid of bots is with human bot banning teams. That seems to be in conflict with your claim about what others have/have not implied.

If people are going to advocate that their preferred course of action is better/more effective than whatever ANet is doing, then yes, I DO expect them to back up such a claim with some sort of professional credentials that lend credence and authority to their position. If someone wants to armchair quarterback what the quarterback (ANet) should do, I’d like to know that they’ve actually held that pigskin themselves.

Mountain Man.7901:

I think most of you are underestimating what a tricky problem this is to deal with and the amount of time and resources it would take. A single employee combing through the hundreds of reports a day and personally verifying that each one is a legitimate bot report? Yeah, right.

All reports go into a database. Sort column by report type: Botting. Hide all other report type entries. Sort the now exclusively bot reports column by reported players name. Apply a count of those entries to find the person most reported for botting. This can all be automated in less than an inth of a second with the push of a button. Just push button and whoever the Punisher will be just has to look at the name that pops up, find them in game and watch them work. Apply banhammer as necessary.

This is how it could easily be done. However, I’m still of the mind to feed the botters enough rope to “sufficiently hang themselves” as another user put beautifully. We’re way past the point in time where we need babysitting GM’s invisibly guarding our game from evil doers.

One thing about the use of bots.They are there because they feel they have a service that players will need/use.They only sell items on the trade systems for MMOs because they accumulate gold to sell online.

Simple solution just dont ever ever buy from their websites and if we all did this they would lose interest fast. Players are buying game currency from them otherwise they wouldn’t bother, right?

Well,

I agree with many sentiments here, just to add my own 2 cents in…

1-There will be collateral damage, stolen accounts will get banned and people will have to get them back, the idea of people being outright banned for botting is pretty optimistic.

2- I cannot help but feel that this is really tricky given I imagine Anet does not have a huge staff given operating costs for GW 2 must be pretty slim with the lack of a sub and the rate at which the devs are working on stuff, coupled with the turn around time on CS work such as account retrieval.

3- I’d love to see my reporting a bot actually have an impact, at this point I’ve been reporting the same bot 2 times a day for over a week now daily while farming my own materials, nothing has come of it.

Finding bots really isn’t all that hard, simply saying “Hey want to work together?” tends to weed out bots from actual players for a very simple reason that teamwork speeds up your own farming by increasing the speed at which things die and making sure you can run a reliable circuit rather then each of you killing half the mobs, you can work together and kill ALL the mobs in the same time. Bots tend not to even respond to a “Hey” or “Hello”

I think the report a bot should give a simple pop up After the second or third report, a “Click the randomly located obvious button on the screen” after you do so you cannot be bothered for another hour. This allows for a player to gather some help to remove a bot, while at the same time means that a bot needs to be monitored.

Just my two cents.

Speaking from personal experience, all the anti-botting measures in the world are ineffective at best without boots-on-the-ground enforcement. I’ll refer to the arms-race analogy above, where the bots and devs are constantly trying to keep one step ahead of each other. The problem is, that’s a no-win scenario, and it affects the playerbase as a whole instead of just the bots, because the botters will always come up with a better program to circumvent the measures put in place.

I was a community volunteer in Anarchy Online back in the day when it was experiencing botting problems, and that was one of my jobs. I’d get reports of botting from players, which I’d investigate. If it panned out, I’d kick it up the chain to a GM who’d then ban them. There were some server-side bot-detection measures, but the majority of the bans came from in-game enforcement. In many ways, that game was even more conducive to botting than GW2 is. For example, chat bots running outside the client for Organizations, new player help, et cetera were officially endorsed. But as far as cash farming bots went, the problem was handled with aggressive, real-time, in-game enforcement, and was absolutely crushed. Botting went from rampant to non-existent in a very short period, and I haven’t seen a bot in that game for over 8 years now.

Anet wouldn’t even need to hire many new personnel. Like in my own example, a lot of the leg work could be handled by vetted volunteers. I was recruited to help new players after being active in the new player help channels and hunting bugs on the test server. They wouldn’t even need to have any actual “GM powers,” just to be a set of eyes and ears.

The current periodic mass-banning system in place, in my own opinion and drawing from my own experiences I’ve related, is ineffective because it gives a grace period to the botters. They know that even if they’re using an easily-identifiable program, they can run it for long enough to still turn a profit, if they even bought the game to begin with as opposed to hacking an account or spoofing a code. Say the bot runs for a week and farms 100 gold or so, lowball estimate. If they can sell that 100g for $1/g, they’ve made a $40 profit for no more effort than setting it to run. However, if they have a chance of being banned within 10 minutes of starting up, they stand to lose a lot more. In short, the answer isn’t an arms race, it’s a war of attrition. The botters are running a business. The answer is cutting their bottom line and making the risk far outweigh the potential for profit.

And that, as Forrest Gump once said, is all I gots to say about that.

Hunter flies everywhere in lowbie areas. Worst idea ever. I wonder what happened to that game. Given bots and the insane amount of private servers (and the utter demise of its sequel), I’d be surprised if it’s still kicking.

They just need an in game SWAT team to rain hellfire on bots wherever they see them. It’d be gone in a week.

If the choice is between bots or draconian measures, I would take bots any day.

At the end of the day, bots and farmers are always going to do their thing; as long as it doesn’t adversely interfere with our every day activity, I see no problem with it.

There should be a clear policy to deal with these of course, but never to the point where it starts affecting the legit players.

If they wish to be rid of the RMT’s I think they have a much easier way to do that then any thing you guys are tossing about they can just drop the exchange rate on the gem to gold trades they have in game would that get rid of all the bots no you well always have them players that sitting at the desk and pushing the keys is to much work. Eh but then what do I know walks off humming a Irish song

ounkeo.9138:

If the choice is between bots or draconian measures, I would take bots any day.

At the end of the day, bots and farmers are always going to do their thing; as long as it doesn’t adversely interfere with our every day activity, I see no problem with it.

There should be a clear policy to deal with these of course, but never to the point where it starts affecting the legit players.

I agree with you; however, Anet is obviously trying to protect their TP for gems market. This struggle between the botters, hardcore players and Anet’s TP is why the DR has been implemented. Anet has been taking a very passive stance on botters thus far and aggressively focusing on farmers, in general.

Screaming and yelling for botters to be dealt with only strengthens Anet’s argument to increase DR constraints. Unfortunately, this effects any individual even considering earning a legendary within the next year through conventional farming. The other question that arises from all this is “to bot, or not to bot.”

I don’t care if they tell me how their anti-botting measures work. But I can’t log in without running into bots interfering so badly with my experience that I end up logging off in frustration. Whether it’s taking half an hour to finish a single heart on my lowbies because all of the heart mobs are getting destroyed by much higher level bots before I can even tag them, or taking all of the mobs my main needs to gather the mats to make the rest of his gear.

They block my progress daily and I haven’t seen anything substantial from Anet. That’s what I care about. Well that’s not true, they’ve substantially lowered the loot and rewards I get from the mobs that I do get to kill…

RoninsBack.4023:

beren.6048:

Going easy on botters because of complains that destroys the game. Anyway GW is so easy that I don’t understand why anybody would want to bot. Everything is so balanced that equipment or level doesn’t really make a difference in PVP and the thats why most people bot, to be the superman in PVP.

Most people want to bot to make money.

Real life money.

Players will use bots to assist their gameplay no denying that. That’s not the real problem.

You know what RMT is right?

Yes, ok probably here it is mostly RMT, but more gold gives better equip and this gives more power. And, then again, why do RMT in this game. Everything is already so easy and even if you want, you can still buy better safe via gems instead of some obscure RMT who steals your account.

Maximus.6945:

@VendettaDFA:
Bots could even drop loot after they’re killed, everything that was farmed.
It would be called PvB(Player vs Bot). Speciall feature, unique to GW2…
How that can be a bad idea?

No, in fact in most games exactly the opposite will happen. Bot and RMT users will get powerful quickly and they ll just stand outside of towns killing people because they have nothing better to do (after quickly botting to the top). Lineage 2 used to have people drop stuff and high level people would stand out of town and kill new people like mobs. Fair pvp that is unique to GW2 (more or less).

beren.6048:

Maximus.6945:

@VendettaDFA:
Bots could even drop loot after they’re killed, everything that was farmed.
It would be called PvB(Player vs Bot). Speciall feature, unique to GW2…
How that can be a bad idea?

No, in fact in most games exactly the opposite will happen. Bot and RMT users will get powerful quickly and they ll just stand outside of towns killing people because they have nothing better to do (after quickly botting to the top). Lineage 2 used to have people drop stuff and high level people would stand out of town and kill new people like mobs. Fair pvp that is unique to GW2 (more or less).

Never seen such game. Could be interesting challenge – Taking down “evil” bot…

Maximus.6945:

beren.6048:

Maximus.6945:

@VendettaDFA:
Bots could even drop loot after they’re killed, everything that was farmed.
It would be called PvB(Player vs Bot). Speciall feature, unique to GW2…
How that can be a bad idea?

No, in fact in most games exactly the opposite will happen. Bot and RMT users will get powerful quickly and they ll just stand outside of towns killing people because they have nothing better to do (after quickly botting to the top). Lineage 2 used to have people drop stuff and high level people would stand out of town and kill new people like mobs. Fair pvp that is unique to GW2 (more or less).

Never seen such game. Could be interesting challenge – Taking down “evil” bot…

It’s usually a bought character, not some RMT grinder. And it’s normally not fun or challenging, as in most games it’s a poke to death due to the treadmill.

Eochaidh.4106:

Maximus.6945:

beren.6048:

Maximus.6945:

@VendettaDFA:
Bots could even drop loot after they’re killed, everything that was farmed.
It would be called PvB(Player vs Bot). Speciall feature, unique to GW2…
How that can be a bad idea?

No, in fact in most games exactly the opposite will happen. Bot and RMT users will get powerful quickly and they ll just stand outside of towns killing people because they have nothing better to do (after quickly botting to the top). Lineage 2 used to have people drop stuff and high level people would stand out of town and kill new people like mobs. Fair pvp that is unique to GW2 (more or less).

Never seen such game. Could be interesting challenge – Taking down “evil” bot…

It’s usually a bought character, not some RMT grinder. And it’s normally not fun or challenging, as in most games it’s a poke to death due to the treadmill.

Bought characters are fine in my book…
Tools for players to police their own game would be epic.
Like someone mentioned droping fireworks in front of the bot and let him teleport around, giving the show for amused players, as he dies with no way to defend himself from mobs…

In medical terms, bots are symptoms of an underlying disease. That “disease” being people buying gold from 3rd party sellers. The only feasible solution I see is either make it impossible for people to actually buy gold or to ban/punish those people who do. If you eliminate the demand for gold, you eliminate the reason for the bots’ existence.
Problem solved.

^this
and this is also the reason why my face can’t be stopped from being palmed when reading things like “this game forces me to buy gold from 3rd party websites – it makes things go faster for me and there is nothing bad about it, the game publisher is just mad, because they don’t make money instead”

it’s more complex

botting, goldselling, hacking…it’s all (except for some few single exceptions)
linked to each other

TobyTucker.5317:

In medical terms, bots are symptoms of an underlying disease. That “disease” being people buying gold from 3rd party sellers. The only feasible solution I see is either make it impossible for people to actually buy gold or to ban/punish those people who do. If you eliminate the demand for gold, you eliminate the reason for the bots’ existence.
Problem solved.

Arenanet has no power outside of Tyria, they can’t make it impossible unless they decide to cut the mail system. But then, RMTs also get a lot of cash by selling characters and character leveling programmes. I believe they already ban people who buy gold, it’s just not always easy to detect.

LoreChief.8391:

Mountain Man.7901:

I think most of you are underestimating what a tricky problem this is to deal with and the amount of time and resources it would take. A single employee combing through the hundreds of reports a day and personally verifying that each one is a legitimate bot report? Yeah, right.

All reports go into a database. Sort column by report type: Botting. Hide all other report type entries. Sort the now exclusively bot reports column by reported players name. Apply a count of those entries to find the person most reported for botting. This can all be automated in less than an inth of a second with the push of a button. Just push button and whoever the Punisher will be just has to look at the name that pops up, find them in game and watch them work. Apply banhammer as necessary.

This is how it could easily be done. However, I’m still of the mind to feed the botters enough rope to “sufficiently hang themselves” as another user put beautifully. We’re way past the point in time where we need babysitting GM’s invisibly guarding our game from evil doers.

You’re still downplaying how labor intensive and time consuming this process would be. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day to manually process the hundreds or even thousands of bot reports pouring into ArenaNet every day.

And to think, that the bots could be just about annihilated with a simple captcha every now and then…

Banning the buyer as well as the seller is as important as getting rid of the bots, I agree. In a lot of games recently, this hasn’t been done. As a result, the stigma and fear goes away and it becomes accepted or even routine. In my experiences working with these issues in AO, that I related earlier, one big thing that I took away from it is that you can win most of the battle by just “flying the flag” so to speak. Make players afraid to buy gold in addition to hitting the bots. Players tend to be a lot easier to intimidate and deter than botters, as they stand to lose a product they paid money for (both the game and the gold), whereas the botters/sellers stand to gain profit from breaking the rules and will do so as long as the potential for that profit is worth the time investment. Hitting the supply and the demand cuts the margins at both ends, and if the margins get low enough, they’ll move their focus to other games where the environment is more favorable.

Now, I don’t know the in-depth mechanics of the mail system , so take this with a grain of salt, but it seems to me that it wouldn’t be terribly hard to put in place a system that “flags” all large-scale gold transfers or high volumes of small ones between two characters (if, for example, they try to break it up to avoid detection). In addition to this, following the paper trail would also be fairly simple and effective if such a thing were in fact possible. Generally, bots send the money they make to a sort of “proxy” character that is not a bot or a seller, who holds the mass of it in case the bots or sellers get banned. Track the flow of gold from identified bots to the seller to the buyer and ban your way down the chain. Could even work backwards down the chain to identify more bots based on who else is sending money to the holding character, thereby rooting out the whole chain entirely. To keep operating, their operation would have to become more and more complex and convoluted to mask the transfers and at the very least require a lot more man-hours on their end, cutting their profit margins and leaving them with… shudder… diminishing returns on their investment.

Once again, the above suggestion is conjecture based on the assumption that the current mail system gives the devs the ability to do this. If not, a re-work of the mail system to allow such tracking functionality could be very beneficial.

Revenant.2691:

Banning the buyer as well as the seller is as important as getting rid of the bots, I agree.

This needs to be done, both quickly and soon. ArenaNet needs to crack down on this fast or the economy is going to be permanently wrecked and so will regular players leave the game.

I am on Emhry Bay in Cursed Shore, and as I write this the botting is literally like a plague now. They are not here and there, they are literally dominating the zone. It is really wrecking the game now for legit players.

There was a great suggestion earlier from someone who worked on Anarchy Online. Clamp down on them fast and hard. Make them lose money on the game itself and the businesses they work for will soon be looking at other MMOs. Permanently ban and player who is found buying gold through third party sources. Put the fear of god in players that they could spend $20-$100 on game gold and be banned permanently before they even spend it.

ArenaNet please. This is a plague now and can’t go on for another week or two even, the economy is crashing fast and the game has become almost unplayable in the high level zones due to the sheer volume of bots. I’ve never seen so many characters running around without armor in an MMO ever. Also, consider how much revenue this is costing you when players are buying from sweatshops undercutting your own store. Please, for the good of the legit players and your own business clamp down on this with an ironfist fast!!!

Eochaidh.4106:

TobyTucker.5317:

In medical terms, bots are symptoms of an underlying disease. That “disease” being people buying gold from 3rd party sellers. The only feasible solution I see is either make it impossible for people to actually buy gold or to ban/punish those people who do. If you eliminate the demand for gold, you eliminate the reason for the bots’ existence.
Problem solved.

Arenanet has no power outside of Tyria, they can’t make it impossible unless they decide to cut the mail system. But then, RMTs also get a lot of cash by selling characters and character leveling programmes. I believe they already ban people who buy gold, it’s just not always easy to detect.

I’m not at all familiar with how items in the mail get transferred to your account, but I would think ANET would have some control over said transfers, seeing as the accounts in question are in their game. At the very least they should be able to monitor transactions of this sort.

BTW, is there any legitimate reason for someone to be transferring things from the mail to their account? Otherwise, I don’t see why it’s even possible in the first place.

Anet have too much Client side checks instead of Server check checks and their pricing model is also alot to blame for this.

(1) If a player spams, they get ‘blocked’ for 20 mins from any public channels, the bots do not, as the block is client side and easy to by pass.

(2) If 20+ player reports another player for botting but nothing happens. They need to ‘personally’ investigate and as this takes time, they will never do this faster then the bots can be added to the game. Until they add ‘automatic’ checks for botting, the problem will never get any better, but that means more server based checks.

(3) Banned an account means little when you can just buy another as the ban is ID only, not Visa card used or IP used.

(4) Movement checks are client side, the server is designed to handle missed packages, so if the server gets told player A is at postion X and then told a few seconds later is it at positon Y (900 metres away), it thinks it was a missed packet, it just ’fix’s the location and believe the client, this allows botts to hack the client and teleport.

There are ALOT of server based fixes they could add that a lot of other games already use, but this will mean more code is server side instead of client side and this means the servers do more work and they need more of them, and therefore costs more each month to keep running. This game is one of the few that has most of the code client side and therefore easy to ‘bypass’. I prefer monthly fee games who have high anti botting and server side based code. But you get what you pay for.

This game is free to play (with a box cost) so I guess you get what you pay for.
Anet pricing model is to sell gems and get money each month from that to pay for the servers. But this is all based on players buying gems and using it for gold to pay for the gold sinks in the game.

But the gold sellers are trying to undercut Anet on the price and so far doing a very good job of that. They have anti farming code to stop the normal users from making any gold in game, but they have very little to stop the bots. If they don’t do anything soon, they will just keep losing more and more revenue to the gold sellers instead of selling their own gems.

Bott’s take away the fun for all. They need a team set aside just to fix the bot issue via code changes, not manually banning them. You can kick players from your group, why can’t players kick botters from the zone. Make a box appear on their screen which 5 people report them and they have to enter in the code it displays on screen or be kicked from the zone

TobyTucker.5317:

BTW, is there any legitimate reason for someone to be transferring things from the mail to their account? Otherwise, I don’t see why it’s even possible in the first place.

I myself have used it a little bit to help friends when I find something they can use. I wouldn’t miss it much, but given the repercussion we’ve already had over the lack of trading, removing this could be quite harmful to the community.

Are we willing to remove basic features to fight bots/gold traders? As I previously said, it will hurt players the most, as they have other ways of doing their thing.

I think that simply removing the mail system is a bad idea. You’ve got to temper the response here, because taking action that’s too drastic can sometimes be worse than not taking enough action. There are plenty of legitimate uses for the mail system. For example, if you want to toss some funds over to a friend so they can grab something from the TP, or if you want to buy a 1.5g keep wall upgrade in WvW and are a little short and ask for a few quick “donations” to get it going. I’ve even been known to toss a few low-level weapons/gear pieces I don’t need to new players just getting started because the warm, fuzzy feeling I got from their joy and adoration was worth much more than the few coppers I’d get from salvaging/selling it.

That said, the overwhelming majority of mail I get are either gold ads or phishing attempts. I’d also imagine that based on the number of bots and sellers as well as the relatively few uses legitimate players have for the mail system, that the majority of all mail is bot-related. For the ads, a charge for unsolicited mail like EVE has would go a long way, I.E. if the player is not a contact, they are charged a fee for sending mail to you. For the bots offloading their ill-gotten gains, the amount of money they’re transmitting would be a big telltale as there isn’t a legitimate reason I can think of for transferring huge amounts of cash through the mail system. That is not to say, of course, that anyone sending a big wad of gold should be guilty until proven innocent or we might accidentally ban a guy who sent 20g to his guildmate to quickly grab a cheap Dawn of Rage off the TP.

Wayshuba: I wouldn’t say that I “worked” on Anarchy Online, I was a community volunteer, not a Dev or GM, just a lowly player granted the privilege of working alongside those demi-gods on issues similar to these. I think my experience in that is valid to this discussion, but I don’t want to misrepresent myself in that regard. Put in many an hour helping new players, resolving stuck petitions, and hunting down bots and spammers like teenage lovers in a horror movie, but I was just a regular player whose in-game persona had an alter-ego with superpowers and a shiny nametag =p

I could not disagree with the OP more. If the anti-bot measures mean a worse game, then they have bigger problems than just bots.

IMO, players aren’t hounding them enough. A call to action is needed. If policing the game isn’t their #1 priority, then the rest is worthless.

How long do we tolerate bots with infinite range, teleport hacking from mob to mob? We report them and they are left there for DAYS farming, destroying our economy and disheartening the honest players.

I understand that they recently posted on the subject of bots, but until we start to see faster response time upon reporting them, it’s all just PR speak.

I’ve been an avid supporter of this game, but I cannot sit back and watch something as basic as anti-cheat measures damage the game without saying something.

arawulf.5210:

I could not disagree with the OP more. If the anti-bot measures mean a worse game, then they have bigger problems than just bots.

IMO, players aren’t hounding them enough. A call to action is needed. If policing the game isn’t their #1 priority, then the rest is worthless.

How long do we tolerate bots with infinite range, teleport hacking from mob to mob? We report them and they are left there for DAYS farming, destroying our economy and disheartening the honest players.

I understand that they recently posted on the subject of bots, but until we start to see faster response time upon reporting them, it’s all just PR speak.

I’ve been an avid supporter of this game, but I cannot sit back and watch something as basic as anti-cheat measures damage the game without saying something.

By the way, such cheats have been around since beta and we did post videos/spread the word about that. It seems we were completely ignored.

Again, I rarely post here and have been a huge supporter but I just get a sour feeling in my gut when I read a dev’s sticky post that says, “In short, we are fully committed to keeping this community free of bots” while my in-game experience is completely different. Again, until results are seen, as far as I’m concerned it’s just PR speak. I actually want to be proven wrong on this issue!

arawulf.5210:

Again, I rarely post here and have been a huge supporter but I just get a sour feeling in my gut when I read a dev’s sticky post that says, “In short, we are fully committed to keeping this community free of bots” while my in-game experience is completely different. Again, until results are seen, as far as I’m concerned it’s just PR speak. I actually want to be proven wrong on this issue!

The Devs just need to tell the truth. They WANT to be fully committed but currently the botters are winning, so they will add DR and other code to slow the botters down (but slow anyone else down) while they try to work out how to fix the problem without moving all the checking code from the client back to the server as that will cost too much.