Guild Wars 2

Hello, for the past 3 weeks I have witnessed an increasing number of bots at Penitent Road north and south Waypoints. I have reported these players but it seems ArenaNet is too busy with other tasks. Anyway, it gets to the point where there are more bots than actual players camping and this scares me because I hope this is the not the state the game is heading to.

It’s not just there. Pretty much anywhere there’s a dynamic event with a quick reset, you’ll find bots, even in level 15-25 areas like kessex hills. Saw and reported 3 at the mine there when I was leveling an alt, and there are usually between 2 and 5 at the bridge.

Think about a DE for a second. How it works.

It’s an event that awards lots of karma points (at later levels) and can be easily exploited for it’s gold (as you get close to 2s at 80) by bots. They have the time to be there all day.

A DE just starts. It needs no human intervention. If you’re in the right place and swing your weapon around a bit within a given timeframe you get reward.

If I could devise a system that would perfectly cater to a bot, it would be the DE.

What would be a great idea to combat bots in a DE is to have an NPC that starts it ask you the kind of question only a human could answer. You won’t be redirect there won’t be captchas.

It’ll be a quick easy riddle with answers that change. Or it can be a multiple choice to get the DE started for you, or allow you to benefit from it. The point is it needs to be randomized on a daily basis, to prevent botting on learning how to break this.

If they’re getting no reward they’ll soon leave.

As DE is set up now, it’s all their Christmases come true and they’re drawing large amounts of gold out of the economy right now, this way.

It’s such a massive oversight to deisgn events like this and play right into their hands. What were ANet thinking?

The scourge that is RMT has been around for a long time It’s not like it’s a new thing.

If they never considered what effects it would have on their game and how DEs like these can mainpulated I’d really like to know why. I saw the flaw with this instantly.

Not to mention the fact the bots are pushed into the DEs by the DR system.

That’s a whole other can of worms right there.

The DEs can also be a bots worst nightmare if Anet expanded on it more.

Instead of simply restarting constantly, have the DEs progressively get more difficult with each player success.

Instead of simply spawning and re-spawning normal mobs with a few vets thrown in; have the event start spawning more and more vets then eventually a Group Boss mob.

Players will fall back and regroup, bots will get destroyed (and be nice targets to give players a chance to withdraw).

A progressive system like that breaks up “farm spots” too. Players can band together to take on the foe(s) and enjoy doing it. Bots however, rely on a constant behavior to maximize their time (not effort). If they are outted now and then, their earnings decrease greatly while at the same time, players are more entertained.

I’m seeing bots pretty much wherever a dynamic event occurs with a predictable and rapid frequency. I just watched a bot constantly attack a corner in Jeb’s Wheatfield, in Queensdale, for half an hour because, of course, that’s one of the spots where the wurms pop up during a dynamic event.

The Trading Post is also reflecting the damage bots are doing to the economy – you can pretty much forget making gold by selling drops. Prices are crashing, and thanks to TP manipulation by external software, a human can easily be stomped in both buying & selling.

If ArenaNet can’t get a handle on both botting and TP manipulation, humans won’t be able to play this game in a matter of weeks.