Guild Wars 2

I’m from the Borlis Pass server. I don’t know how the other servers fare bot-wise, but we currently have a hideously large bot population.

We all wish we could burn, slash, snipe, blow up, disintegrate, drown, poison, bathe in acid, punch, drive over, implode, impale, cut in pieces, raise as minion, grind with a permabanhammer (or better, Dhuum’s scythe) every single bot we run into. Ok, well, maybe not all of us, but at least I do wish I could do that to the people running the bots <insert evil, maniacal charr laugh here>.

There is a partial solution.

I thank a player by the name of Cailewyn for discovering and sharing a method to disable bots roaming around the Cursed Shore. This method may be used in other places as well, depending on the availability of the required resources. I believe certain skills and consumables that spawn map objects should also do the trick, though not as effectively (you’ll see why in a minute).

If you’re at the Cursed Shore, you’ll see that there’s piles of metal scraps near the Anchorage Waypoint. They spawn around that location, due to a dynamic event. These scraps do not expire, and they’re not considered as weapons of opportunity, so all weapon skills will be disabled for as long as you carry them.

All you have to do is pick up a scrap and drop it on top of something a bot has killed. It may take more than a single attempt, but if you pull it off, the bot will pick up the metal scraps instead of looting the corpse. Once, I even had a bot run towards the scraps.

As soon as the bot bites, all it will do is run around like a fool, drawing enemy attention while doing nothing but activate utility skills. This will slow them down, as their pets will have to do all the killing, and the bot is likely to die eventually.

Share this method with others, and don’t forget to thank Cailewyn for helping us deal with the bot pest.

Cunning! Not as fun as luring a Champion Group Event boss over to stomp the bots into oblivion, but I like it.

I think bots have gotten too smart for this.

They learned to avoid taking mesmer portals, and don’t pick up fireworks anymore either.

It was funny while it lasted though, I used to mesmer portal whole droves of bots into champions etc.

It doesn’t disable them at all, all you do is slow them down for a couple of seconds. All what happens is that the bot dies, respawns at nearest waypoint, run back and start farming again. You don’t even saddle them up with a repair bill, as bots are usually running around in their undies. If you want to effectively disable the bots, you’re gonna ahve to stay with the, and give them a piece of scrap metal as soon as they return from the waypoint. Which prevents you from doing anything else. Good luck :P

I hate bots as much as you do and I love messing with them as much as you do. But calling it “a partial solution” is way off. All we can do is report them and wait for Anet to handle it.

Paradox.5498:

It doesn’t disable them at all, all you do is slow them down for a couple of seconds. All what happens is that the bot dies, respawns at nearest waypoint, run back and start farming again. You don’t even saddle them up with a repair bill, as bots are usually running around in their undies. If you want to effectively disable the bots, you’re gonna ahve to stay with the, and give them a piece of scrap metal as soon as they return from the waypoint. Which prevents you from doing anything else. Good luck :P

I hate bots as much as you do and I love messing with them as much as you do. But calling it “a partial solution” is way off. All we can do is report them and wait for Anet to handle it.

The scraps can keep them busy for up to 20 minutes before they get killed, and not all the bots respawn automatically. I’ve watched them.

Besides, the bots “breed” faster than they’re being erradicated. I keep track of all the bots I’ve reported, and there’s some that I reported over a month ago, still running rampant. I’ll take anything that’ll help me deal with them.

Charr Guardian.1497:

I keep track of all the bots I’ve reported, and there’s some that I reported over a month ago, still running rampant.

This is the part that’s the most sad. I certainly won’t stop reporting them, but I’d love to see some kind of end result come to fruition.
While I don’t doubt [or, at least, I certainly hope] someone on the development team is looking into the bot code that is floating around on the web to see about how it might be countered, it would be really rad to see staff in-game nuking these bots.

I still think my suggestion of giving players a skill that generates no-value junk that fills an inventory is one of the best ideas. That way, the bot continues running its path, but doesn’t get anything out of it as their inventory is full.

Mungrul.9358:

I still think my suggestion of giving players a skill that generates no-value junk that fills an inventory is one of the best ideas. That way, the bot continues running its path, but doesn’t get anything out of it as their inventory is full.

I’ve never really looked at the inventory mechanics, but wouldn’t the farmed items just appear in their inventory as soon as the human account owner deletes the junk items and creates enough space?

Or does it not work this way in GW2?

That’s the point though; most bots are unattended, so if you continuously fill their inventories, eventually they stop receiving loot and they become inefficient as the inventory of each bot would have to be continually emptied. To empty the inventory requires the attention of a human operator, and as most operators tend to multiple bots, you tie them up with needless administration. By the time they’ve emptied the final bot’s inventory, they’d need to go back to the first bot and start all over again. Essentially, their bots stop making money.

but on the other hand that is one of the msot abusable methods i ever heard of mungrul, you can be dead sure you would have ppl runing around filling up the legit players inventory that way constantly, yet shoud be quite easy for the bots to counter, some code that say every 10 min or so, check the inventory for non-value stuff and then destroy it, so that would be more harm than good

The idea is that players have to pick the item up for it to fill their inventory. A human player would be able to spot the difference between a real drop and this one.

I think you’re over-simplifying the capabilities of some of the bot programs available. I’ve seen the mechanics of some of these in past games such as FFXI and WoW and both could remove unwanted items from inventory. The WoW bot I saw could be programmed to dump certain items and tracked back to an NPC when the inventory was filled to sell and continue pathing again.

I don’t advocate botting, but just tossing junk in their inventory is a simple programming fix that won’t stop the problem.

The very best thing we all can do is to report them when we see them. I make it a habit of first watching the group for a bit to ensure they are bots, then posting in /say that I am reporting bots and if you’re not a bot to move away and say something. It gives plenty of opportunity for real players to not get falsely reported. I report and then move on to another area as I don’t want to be even near them in case someone else reports them as well and I get reported by mistake for being in the area.

I agree that this is by no means a solution that most players can or will achieve long term results with. What I do like about this post is that players are thinking about ways to take their own stand against botters without breaking the rules themselves.

I also agree with Ashlar that the best thing you can do for the time being is be sure to report any bot you see, and I recommend taking a screenshot if the violation is obvious.