Guild Wars 2

I chose that specific title because I’ve seen a number of threads trying to get the following points across, only to be closed with the unhelpful advice “please report these players”. The problems, put as simply as possible, are as follows:

1) GW2 has a vulnerability that is allowing players to suddenly appear and disappear to/from specific points on the map without the use of waypoints.

2) Players are exploiting this vulnerability to easily farm resource nodes, which is interfering with the game’s economy.

3) It is extremely difficult, to the point where you can not rely on players to help you with this problem, for a player to report hack-users who are exploiting this vulnerability in your game.

To explain point #3 further, the problem is said hack-user will suddenly appear out of nowhere at a resource node and immediately begin the interaction animation. At this point, any witnesses are likely thinking “Whoa, where did this fellow come from? Did I really just see what I thought I saw?”, and before that thought is complete the hack-user has already vanished away – and with that any chance of reporting his activities. Even if you target these hack-users in an attempt to access the report menu, the target is lost the moment the hack-user vanishes, making it impossible to file the report. In all likelihood you can’t even count on a witness to notice and remember the hack user’s name.

As someone who religiously uses resource nodes myself when playing, I regularly see a number of these specific type of hack-user during my play sessions. All of them thus far have been Ranger characters – and while I’m sure that’s not a guarantee, I suspect it’s not a coincidence. The Ranger’s pet would be handy to intercept and distract any mobs near the resource node, leaving the hack-user free to quickly appear, do his business, and disappear.

Whether they are actually teleporting around the map or just taking advantage of an exploit that allows them to turn invisible at will, I have no idea. What I do know is that simply requesting that players report these hack-users is not helpful and not going to solve the problem. If you are depending on player reports to locate and remove these hack-users, then you’re unlikely to ever remove them in any sort of timely fashion. This time, the method of detection needs to come from ANet’s side. We helped you with bot-users when we could, now help us by taking this seriously and finding a better way to go after these individuals.

1. Hacker appears.
2. I hit Prntscrn
3. I report him.

Why wouldn’t this work?

Mackdose.6504:

1. Hacker appears.
2. I hit Prntscrn
3. I report him.

Why wouldn’t this work?

A) While it was simple for you to type that out, what you’re describing (manually submitting a report after the fact) takes far more time than the usual “right-click portrait, select report bot, submit” sequence, and thus it’s unlikely many players will even bother to do this. There’s a reason developers try to make the report function as quick and painless to use as possible.

However, the fact that many players won’t take time out of their schedules to do what you’re describing does not diminish the problem that a) this vulnerability exists in the game in the first place, and b) that people are exploiting it.

B) I would love to know how many pointless screenshots you’ve taken of legitimate players who you suddenly noticed at a resource node, only to see them run off normally, bringing you to the conclusion that someone simply managed to sneak up on you (and you overreacted by scrambling for the printscreen button).

Frankly, I think it’s a bit silly to suggest players start snapping screenshots of any player that suddenly shows up next to them at a resource node. Many times players will not know for sure they’re seeing a hack-user until said arrival suddenly vanishes into thin air (at which point it’s too late).

You forgot the most important problem with the new botting technique. The old bot trains would often help, unwittingly, with certain DE’s, and they were always a handy way of trading off aggro when you needed to. They were perhaps annoying to see so many of but you could incorporate them into your gameplay.

But, don’t be too worried, botting behavior is very easy to detect through data-mining techniques. They shouldn’t have any problem due to the players inability to right-click report them.

1. If you’re around to notice a hacker ‘suddenly’ appear, nothing is faster than a single keystroke.
2. If they’re hacking using the method you mentioned, they won’t be running off normally, just like they didn’t run into my screen normally.

If you’re going to give circumstances that a system broken, and I give a reasonable answer on how to report them anyway using the circumstances you provided, telling me my way is useless because it’s slower is pretty insulting.

Mackdose.6504:

1. If you’re around to notice a hacker ‘suddenly’ appear, nothing is faster than a single keystroke.
2. If they’re hacking using the method you mentioned, they won’t be running off normally, just like they didn’t run into my screen normally.

If you’re going to give circumstances that a system broken, and I give a reasonable answer on how to report them anyway using the circumstances you provided, telling me my way is useless because it’s slower is pretty insulting.

The problem with your method isn’t that it’s slower it’s that most of the time we can’t tell if someone is a hacker until after they teleported and out of range of seeing their ID. basically the only method i think will work is asking the map to get involved with seeing the name of the hacker and posting it in map chat.

Really that would be the best way.

Mackdose.6504:

1. If you’re around to notice a hacker ‘suddenly’ appear, nothing is faster than a single keystroke.
2. If they’re hacking using the method you mentioned, they won’t be running off normally, just like they didn’t run into my screen normally.

If you’re going to give circumstances that a system broken, and I give a reasonable answer on how to report them anyway using the circumstances you provided, telling me my way is useless because it’s slower is pretty insulting.

The problem with your proposed solution is, again, two fold:

You’re assuming whenever a player is using a resource node, their number one priority is being on the lookout for the sudden appearance of other players. They’re not. Me, personally, I’m usually keeping an eye out on monsters in the distance or taking this automated-resource-extraction process as an opportunity to look over chat. Often when another player appears it is extremely difficult to tell how they arrived (out of thin air versus legitimately running up unnoticed).

You’re assuming players are going to go through the trouble of manually filing a report after the fact with their screenshot evidence. Many won’t. The quick-report function is as painless as it is for a reason – to encourage players to use it. When players can’t use that function, many simply won’t bother filing a report. You can call that laziness, but that doesn’t diminish the problem of the vulnerability in GW2’s systems nor the fact that it is being exploited.

Maybe, just maybe, they park an alt there once they find the node location and then they log in, mine, send it to the bank then log out?

Or… they are using a sophisticated teleporting map hack that ANet is unaware of and doesn’t care about stopping or something.

Edge.4180:

Mackdose.6504:

1. If you’re around to notice a hacker ‘suddenly’ appear, nothing is faster than a single keystroke.
2. If they’re hacking using the method you mentioned, they won’t be running off normally, just like they didn’t run into my screen normally.

If you’re going to give circumstances that a system broken, and I give a reasonable answer on how to report them anyway using the circumstances you provided, telling me my way is useless because it’s slower is pretty insulting.

The problem with your proposed solution is, again, two fold:

You’re assuming whenever a player is using a resource node, their number one priority is being on the lookout for the sudden appearance of other players. They’re not. Me, personally, I’m usually keeping an eye out on monsters in the distance or taking this automated-resource-extraction process as an opportunity to look over chat. Often when another player appears it is extremely difficult to tell how they arrived (out of thin air versus legitimately running up unnoticed).

You’re assuming players are going to go through the trouble of manually filing a report after the fact with their screenshot evidence. Many won’t. The quick-report function is as painless as it is for a reason – to encourage players to use it. When players can’t use that function, many simply won’t bother filing a report. You can call that laziness, but that doesn’t diminish the problem of the vulnerability in GW2’s systems nor the fact that it is being exploited.

Fair enough, but if you’re planning on reporting the player anyway, screenshotting allows you to submit the report at your leisure. Because of this, the speed at which you can submit the report is largely irrelevant, you can do it later and get the same result. The screenshot is to get the name, first and foremost, followed by the time and location (both on the map in the screenshot)

I’m not arguing that the method is efficient, I’m arguing that it works. Players don’t need to be on the lookout for them, since they suddenly appear (jarring) have to mine the node (enough time to hit a single key) and suddenly disappear (confirmation of hacking.)

If you care enough to file a report, there are alternative methods to capture this method of hacking effectively. Telling me that the problem with my method is that lazy people won’t bother is irrelevant, because there are people who would bother and didn’t think to just screenshot them, thinking that reporting from the frame is the only option.

The fact that their server side code DON’T check for this blatant exploit is very telling… The player is X location… teleport to Y location, and Y location is not a waypoint the server should auto flag the player. Anet can’t ever add simple check system in their code

ArenaNet could easily counter this with an automated system if they wanted to.

Just have each node record a time stamp for when the player last used it, and compare times/distance.

If node A is 5 feet from node B, then the “error” period should be ignored. If node A is 50 feet from node c, then there should be a period of about 5 seconds minimum (this includes the collection time) whereupon a flag is tossed up. Increase the reasonable red-flag grace period depending on the distance. If a user hits two warning flags in a row, then automatically suspend the account and get someone to look into it.

I am normally not a fan of automated systems but in this case there’s really no reason why a player should hit 6 nodes spread out across half of a map in under 20 seconds. Just the collection time alone makes that improbable. An automated system could handle it and would not hurt if left in place after the exploit was patched.

Wagnard.4027:

The fact that their server side code DON’T check for this blatant exploit is very telling… The player is X location… teleport to Y location, and Y location is not a waypoint the server should auto flag the player. Anet can’t ever add simple check system in their code

That won’t work nicely with many skill uses.

Nonlinear.9823:

Maybe, just maybe, they park an alt there once they find the node location and then they log in, mine, send it to the bank then log out?

The first few times I saw these events, I assumed that was what I was seeing. But after seeing a number of examples of odd behavior surrounding this, I made the point of catching the name of one of them and confirmed that they were still online and in the same zone after they vanished from sight.

By the way, while logging out may seem instantaneous, anyone who has played with friends on voice (or in the same room) who had to momentarily log out knows their avatar remains behind for several seconds after the owner actually logs out. Contrary to that, these are characters that are vanishing the moment they take the last swing at a node. There are a few other signs that don’t add up as well.

There has actually been a number of threads popping up on this particular bot (?) behavior recently (example: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/A-new-type-of-bots/first#post923057 ), but they always get closed with the request that players report them. I feel like ANet is not understanding how difficult it is to carry out that advice in this particular case. I think this time around they need to rely less on our reports and more on their own methods of tracking these cheaters down.

These hack-users would probably get more attention if they were abusing this ability to cheat in SPvP/WvW, but since their purpose is to make money I don’t think they bother with those areas of the game.

Mackdose.6504:

Fair enough, but if you’re planning on reporting the player anyway, screenshotting allows you to submit the report at your leisure.

I should point out that (while not always) often these characters are “blinking” while harvesting the resource node. By “blinking”, I mean sometimes their position quickly shifts around by several feet during the harvesting process. They’re here, there, then there, then over here , then gone. In other cases, they appear to be flickering in and out of existence until they vanish entirely.

I suspect that is a byproduct of the exploit they’re using, but obviously it makes it difficult to reliably get a screenshot.

Not all of them do this (and why that is, I have no idea), but it just complicates the matter further because you see someone suddenly standing beside you at a node, aren’t sure how they arrived unnoticed, but you don’t see anything “buggy” happening so you conclude they’re legitimate. Then, suddenly, they vanish all the same and it’s too late.

This happens a lot at the rich Ori node in SouthSun… I asked someone about it and they said they logged out there and logged in to mine the node.

I’m still not sure if I believe him, but the fact that he responded and it’s indeed feasible…

VOLKON.1290:

This happens a lot at the rich Ori node in SouthSun… I asked someone about it and they said they logged out there and logged in to mine the node.

I’m still not sure if I believe him, but the fact that he responded and it’s indeed feasible…

Yeah, I suspect a lot of legitimate logging in and out happens at a location like that. This is activity I see at much odder locations, like someone suddenly appearing at a normal platinum node in a bath-tub sized pond in the middle of a swamp with two hostile drakes guarding it (of all the places to choose to log in and out to farm a node, why there?). Or someone suddenly appearing in a forest area and gathering lumber from a tree and then vanishing, while oddly ignoring the two other lumber nodes not ten feet away.

Kerithlan.1659:

Wagnard.4027:

The fact that their server side code DON’T check for this blatant exploit is very telling… The player is X location… teleport to Y location, and Y location is not a waypoint the server should auto flag the player. Anet can’t ever add simple check system in their code

That won’t work nicely with many skill uses.

Ah come on you got the idea. Its not hard to get it done. You just being nick-pick about this issue.

VOLKON.1290:

This happens a lot at the rich Ori node in SouthSun… I asked someone about it and they said they logged out there and logged in to mine the node.

I’m still not sure if I believe him, but the fact that he responded and it’s indeed feasible…

I have all my 4 lvls 80 parked there to farm that node.

Nonlinear.9823:

Maybe, just maybe, they park an alt there once they find the node location and then they log in, mine, send it to the bank then log out?

Or… they are using a sophisticated teleporting map hack that ANet is unaware of and doesn’t care about stopping or something.

You could well be right.. All MMO’s that I have ever logged into have farmers logging alts on key nodes etc.. nothing wrong with it, especially as the Nodes are not timered for all once clicked, unlike in SWTOR.
But one thing you missed from the previous posts… certain classes have pets – these act as a distraction whilst node interaction commneces.. but when said player dissappears, the pets doesnt, at least not for a little while… so loggin out theory in some cases can be discounted… and having seen the this happen several times since this weeks patch, I would hazard a guess there is some kind of teleport hack crept into game… then again a quick google will likely confirm this as most of these hackers go to certain sites to obtain them in first place.

It’s annoying and stupid, but tbh show me an MMO that doesn’t have its brigade of hackers cheats and gold spammers – more the fool if players actually use these sites to buy pixel gold for real money, or feel the need to cheat to farm pixels to make pixel gold to go spend on another set of pixels, just to feel awesome.

Anyone who thinks teleporting bots in GW2 don’t exist really has to look no further than Youtube to see the disappointing reality with their own eyes. (shrug)

Mackdose.6504:

1. Hacker appears.
2. I hit Prntscrn
3. I report him.

Why wouldn’t this work?

On my system I dont have a PrntScrn, I have to have the game screen “windowed”, bring up the virtual keyboard, click game screen, click PrntScrn. If I don’t do it like this, I cannot get a PrntScrn.

Solution for ANet would be something like:
– check previous position vs current position over time difference between both points
- did character more further than normally allowed
- no (no need to check further)
- yes, Did player use skill to move
- no, Kill player (teminal velocity exceeded) return corpse to previous position
- yes, was skill allowed
- no, Kill player (teminal velocity exceeded) return corpse to previous position
- yes, Did distance exceed skill distance
- no (no need to check further)
- yes, Kill player (terminal velocity exceeded) return corpse to previous position

AN are doing extensive checks in the background the player reporting tool is just part of the redundancy security system I’ll just say Warden redux is alive. and well.

Asglarek.8976:

AN are doing extensive checks in the background the player reporting tool is just part of the redundancy security system I’ll just say Warden redux is alive. and well.

I can’t help but question how extensive or effective those security checks are while watching the trading post get flooded with a ridiculous amount of crafting resources over the past week. Dozens of listings of 20,000-60,000 units (per price listing!) of a single resource being dumped into the market in less than a 24 hour period yesterday alone.

VOLKON.1290:

This happens a lot at the rich Ori node in SouthSun… I asked someone about it and they said they logged out there and logged in to mine the node.

I’m still not sure if I believe him, but the fact that he responded and it’s indeed feasible…

I do this too. All I really do is WvW, so I log in at the node, mine, and hit B to go to WvW. I log out in the WvW zone, so that when i log back in next time, i’ll be back at the orich node.

Edge.4180:

Asglarek.8976:

AN are doing extensive checks in the background the player reporting tool is just part of the redundancy security system I’ll just say Warden redux is alive. and well.

I can’t help but question how extensive or effective those security checks are while watching the trading post get flooded with a ridiculous amount of crafting resources over the past week. Dozens of listings of 20,000-60,000 units (per price listing!) of a single resource being dumped into the market in less than a 24 hour period yesterday alone.

i agree, i think this ‘botting technique’ is gaining in popularity alarmingly fast. Also i am not talking about rare nodes like Ori and such, i see people in the low level areas and at multiple ‘junk nodes’.

great, along with the loot nerf, now they will make the node respawn like an entire week.

its not alts I was browsing guild wars 2 glitching out of lions arch videos (because 1 time I fell through and could swim around and I was trying to do it again, JUST BY JUMPING I am not a hacker and i loathe those that cheat), but I found a video that someone posted and they were using a program where they input X and Y coordinates and the would instantly blink to set location. IT is Hacking and a Bannable offense. I could find the video again but I dont want to promote that sort of thing. But just know you are not crazy.

I want to update this thread since the following article was released today:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/mike-lewis-on-the-war-against-the-bots/

In the article it talks about the importance of players reporting bots, and states:

“Moreover, we have observed a serious decrease in the population of bots in the game – and so have you, our players. The number of bots reported every hour worldwide has dropped from more than 2,000 in October to a much healthier 20 as of this writing.”

I read that and am struggling not to let out a deep sigh of frustration. The reason for that being simple: I am completely not surprised that the number of reports per hour have been dropping for the simple fact that players are finding it next to impossible to file reports on the newest form of hack users – the ones “teleporting” from resource node to resource node.

There has been thread after thread on the forums lately complaining about this, and yet the article is painting a picture that things are improving. I disagree. If anything I see these hacks being used now with much more frequency than I ever did in the past when they were just teams of bots running around shooting anything that moved.

The number of reports being filed is not dropping because the problem is getting better. It’s dropping because the current tools for reporting these bots are ineffective against the new type of exploit they’re abusing – which was the entire point of this thread.

They’re not using the actual client. It’s much better to detect (or better yet, break) the bot on server side than to rely on observed behavior in the rendered game. I think Arenanet believes this, too.

Reporting of bots and people getting mad about cheaters — that aspect is a PR side of it. Getting them out of our game is a programming issue.

ArenaNet can get the bot programs just as easily as the bot makers can get the client. Then it’s an issue of who can reverse-engineer the other guy better.