Guild Wars 2

I see people talking about bots all the time. I’ve played GW for 4yrs and have now had GW2 for a few months….ummm what am I missing in spotting these…..and what are you supposed to do about them?

People suspect bots when a player is doing the exact same thing over and over, like running the same event chain in exactly the same way, always stepping in the same spots, etc. This kinds are really hard to tell from regular players who are just farming. We used to have a lot of them but now they’re pretty rare.

We now have teleporting farming bots, that use hacks to move themselves between resource nodes.

The way to report a bot is to select them, right-click and hit report, then choose Botting as the reason. It’s hard to do on the teleporting resource bots because they move so quickly. For the other kind, it’s so easy to get a bot and a farmer mixed up that I usually whisper to ask if they’re a bot and only report if I don’t get a response.

Many thanks for the explanation Gilosean

I ran into a bot once, while trying to figure out a skill point, which was apparently bugged. She didn’t respond to my question about the skill point, but that means little. I began to be suspicious the third time she came down the tunnel killing the same grawl, so I followed.

She was a longbow/brown bear ranger, at at one point, she targeted a mob on the other side of a wall. Her bear ran around the wall to attack, while she stood there and unloaded shot after shot on the poor innocent wall. Maybe she thought she had piercing arrows traited, so it would work. :P I even found the end of her track, which I could tell as she made several weird angles in her running that would have been hard for a human to do, not to mention pointless.

I did end up reporting her, and taking a screen shot the second time she tried her piercing arrows wall trick on the exact same mob. If you’re going to report, please do take the time to be really sure. I had a narrow escape once, and it didn’t feel at all nice.

I was up in Frostgorge with another ranger who was ~ 10 levels too low to be there. He got killed by some ice worms. I’m tanky, not glass, and we just wanted out of there. I decided to ignore the worms and just get him back up. I could have killed the worms, but my DPS is modest, and they might respawn. I went over to res him, got bounced, went back to it, got bounced, finished the job. He got hit, and died, so I started ressing him, got bounced, etc. They pose little actual danger to me, and I thought it was hilarious. Once we were out of danger, some guy asks in /local chat, “Bot?”. I was lucky I saw it, because I often use a tab with just whispers, party, and guild chat.

Just because someone is a ranger, or is playing differently than you would, or seems stupid, awkward, or inept doesn’t make them a bot, and asking if they are is pretty insulting. Please do be careful what you report.

Better to ask than not to, insulting or not, that’s just the price of playing rangers in every game. Always the most faceroll class. :P

Gee, thanks….

I have seen activities like that before but guess I was just enjoying playing the game so much it never clicked in …..thanks for the information folks

The teleporting gathering bots are the most obviously suspicious, heh. I tend to notice bots when they’re characters who will always attack the nearest enemy, including anything that’s just spawned. When an event starts up nearby people tend to run to at least check it out, the bot will stand there attacking the same three grawl as they respawn.

It’s still good practice to ask or at least observe them for a while, but sometimes you can tell when behaviour fits a programmed set of criteria but just doesn’t make sense from a person.

Do bots even res each other?

I think the bots don’t need to be ress. If they died they will teleport somewhere.

Nowadays the only bots i see are teleporters. They are too fast for me to report though.

Typical behaviours I’ve seen:

Teleporting to nodes: They appear from thin air, start collecting a node, and disappear again.
Farming bots: They are usually rangers or guardians. They usually have a movement pattern, from point A to point B and back; or a big circle. They never dodge attacks.
Farming trains: Usually lots of rangers and/or guardians. They move following the exact same path one after another, turning in the same point and attacking the first mob in sight and continuing their path even if there are more mobs nearby. They can be also find camping some spots where mobs respawn fast.

They are harder to find now, I guess the most hardcore ones have been banned already.

Iv come across the “typical” running around the same path over & over, blowing their elites when nothing is around or using heals when at full health. But those have been showing up less & less.

The teleporting bots have become a challenge that I have perty much figured out how to catch. They zone into a area from an entrance of another area, their character will be parked there for awhile & do the same thing: Teleport to node, teleport back to entry, teleport to node, teleport back to entry, node, entry, node, etc etc. The ONLY time they leave is when they have cleaned out the area & then port across entire areas to the next area they have not farmed up. Parking at that area entry & continuing the same pattern.

I am able to at times catch them when they teleport back to entry’s, clicking the same spot they port from & hitting them before i even see them, giving me enough time to report. But there are times I just resort to screenshotting, friending, whispering “hows the botting going?” wait a couple seconds then report. I enjoy catching these teleporting bots & I got plenty of screens to support my findings

EDIT: Also if a teleporting bot dies, they pick waypoints & teleport from there, so glance at those as well for a lil bit if you see someone standing there for a split second. Binding your scrrenshot key to an easy access key is highly recommended.

it’s worth pointing out that not all appear-gather-disappear characters are bots. some people park alts at nodes and just sequentially log into each character, harvest, log into another. was more common with that rich ori vein, but not unheard of elsewhere.
easiest way to tell the difference is to friend them and see if that same character is still logged on and in that area after they disappear. If they are soon logged on with a different character, they are likely human.

If you feel like wasting time then just pick a tree or an ore node, if they all of the sudden pop out of nowhere then harvest then blink out it’s most likely a bot. If they run up to the node, harvest then blink out it is most likely not a bot. Most of the time though with the non-bot there will be a delay before they leave.

What I usually do if I am in the mood is quickly write down the player name, add it to my friends list then decide weather or not to report. Most of the time the player name might seem somewhat normal, but the account name will still be something like wqeihwq.XXXX

Most bots today hang out in Southsun Cove. Mostly Rangers underwater killing Barracudas and anything else in the water. Most people don’t see them as they run by the coast lines so they don’t get reported.

Here is how you can report teleporting bots. If you see someone appear suddenly at a node, select them and take a screenshot. If they then quickly disappear, it is likely they are a bot. From the screenshot, get the name and invite them to a party. If they’re still online, that’s even more evidence that they are a bot. From the pending invite, you can right-click and report.