Guild Wars 2

So let me preface this by saying that this isn’t speculation, but the real deal : these bots are out there and gaining loot as we speak. You may even have been seeded with some in your last match. Read, be informed, beware and spread the word. Hopefully Anet will do something about this… eventually

What is going on : There is currently people queing multiple bot instances and running them in some sort of array. By queing all the bots together, they can weight matches in various ways ( map voting—> related to map pathing / scoring/ gangups).

How does it work : The bots are mostly running condi-type builds . Spotted in the wild : Condi engy with turrets, necro, mesmer, traps druid defensive, burn guard defensive. Individually the bots are weak to middling, with bad rotations and fighting/capping reflexes. However when multiple bots are seeded in a team, they will always path/roam together and 2-3 man condi burst people ( then switch to next target or if no targets—> move to closest cap).

How to spot them : There is a definite preference for asuras and “fish-derived” names ( sushi, sashimi, little sharkie, etc), but all races have been observed. Different guild tags observed. The bots will always hook up, and path together. They will always fight together ( and multi-condi spike). They have a tendency to get pulled ( thru rotation teleports/jumps/charges) off spots normal humans would fight ( aka in the middle of nowhere, you’ll see 2-3 people randomly fighting and chasing people instead of capping). They have low cap awareness. They will stack to fight, then leave….after 5 seconds you can usually get back and recap. The worst mistake you can do is feeding the array in middle fights. Backcap em.

How did we get here? : Since rewards are now participation based, someone figured out that you could make a lot of gold and materials by running pvp bots 24/7 . The new thing is running the bots in array : now you will have weighted matches where the team with the most bots will get “fed” bots from it’s own array. No matter what happens, every bot gets money and loots. Do it enough, and suddenly it’s possible to equip with ascended equipment these " battlebots" for sale on the alternate gaming markets ( gold/toons with pinkies for real money) while controlling the match environment ( via map selection/bot stacking).

As you can imagine, it is not with a happy heart that i am reporting these shenadigans but with utter disgust. While the game can have… questionable balance at times, the primary thing with spvp is that you were fighting other humans. they could surprise you with unexpected moves… when you queue and you’re seeded with these bots ( or fighting them) the whole purpose of fighting other humans is disrupted. Might as well play pve….

Discuss !

( and sadly, this is NOT a joke).

I can confirm having 3 people who did not speak on my team , our thief (only other real player) , went home at the start , all 3 of the bots followed her. they capped home , then all moved together , exactly together from one place to another. all 3 of their icons on the mini map were always exactly on top of each other… they did fight , and if one died it always ran back to the others. we won…amazing enough. but yeah it is really fishy how 3 separate entities always moved completely in unison.

On NA or EU ? Any real proof of that ? it is quite common to see people who choose not to communicate and make their own game …

kitten , if that’s true, i’m genuinely impressed.

Now, i’m really curious about their rating.

Are we putting on our tinfoil hats for this one?

It does sound plausible and doable, but it’s just hard to believe.

Bracing in case of troll post (no disrespect to OP).

I mean the fish name was hilarious so…

10/10 I’m amused haha.

was reading thinking this was serious at first. top rate trolling

Qori.9671:

I can confirm having 3 people who did not speak on my team , our thief (only other real player) , went home at the start , all 3 of the bots followed her. they capped home , then all moved together , exactly together from one place to another

Once you know what you are looking for, it’s much easier to spot, that’s for sure.

I can confirm this is happening in NA silver, but i can’t confirm on other ratings/divisions.

Kaga.7629:

Qori.9671:

I can confirm having 3 people who did not speak on my team , our thief (only other real player) , went home at the start , all 3 of the bots followed her. they capped home , then all moved together , exactly together from one place to another

Once you know what you are looking for, it’s much easier to spot, that’s for sure.

I can confirm this is happening in NA silver, but i can’t confirm on other ratings/divisions.

Wait….you guys are actually being serious!?!? you mean this post wasnt a joke? i was, no word of a lie, laughing at this.

RedCobra.7693:

Wait….you guys are actually being serious!?!? you mean this post wasnt a joke? i was, no word of a lie, laughing at this.

It sounds funny and out there… but it is actually happening. At first i didn’t want to believe it but it is real. I’ve been teamed with/against many of these bots….. once i started recognising the pattern, i knew i had to post about this shocking and disgusting development on the spvp scene.

this is at par with the illuminati conspiracy theories

If this is forreal, then its an utter disgrace that anet doesnt have a practice mode with bots.

Good post OP, real or not.

It’s funny how no-one can tell if this is true or not, a few years ago we’d have all said it was a troll. Now after the amount of match fixing and exploiting in NA no-one can tell.

I can see how this could be a thing, in the current meta complex behaviour like combo fields and positional awareness has kind of gone out the window. I’m not saying they won’t field better results just that you don’t need them to pass off as decent anymore which is sad.

Bots are quite common in other MMOs. The movement patterns sound familiar:

It wasn’t a joke thread , when you see it in game it will be very obvious to you. They will move stacked on top of each other. Unless we have some strange form of pvp performance art choreography going on ,they are bots.

The more I think about it , they could be owned by 1 person with multiple accounts , who uses the same bot program for all of them. So you may get 1 of them in your party often and not realize it. Its only very very obvious when 3 of them randomly all get qued together in the same match, because they all share the same pathing. Otherwise you would just assume its some random noob who runs straight for home with your thief.

Most players up till gold arent a lot better or worse than bots

Because GW2 doesnt have a ‘’right click Follow option’’ or ‘’/follow macros’’ , most multixobers programs have some glitches when a character get obstracted by simply rocks , or turning in corners or getting Slowed CC-ed , they have to manually re-adjust the ‘’loose character’’

That was the problem with ’’Prepared’’ (famous WoW 50+multiboxer) , faced on WvWvW
(and he was insisting that the game need a /follow command , while even without it bots can be used …. ‘’so why not implant it’’ ?)

So … simply slow or cc the last of them and run , and he will waste time

ive been playing a lot and never seen this. I think I may have to call baloney. yep, baloney time.

I haven’t seen any of that in S7 but I also haven’t played GW2 in over a week now. The last obvious bot I saw was during S6 and it was alone. It was a full trap DH that would spawn and go to camp home the entire time it was in the match without ever moving.
It was programmed to sit in the middle of the home point, spam traps and fire a LB. Every time you CC’d it off point, it would bug up or something and just stop taking actions all together until someone killed it, then it would resume it’s patterns.

It was needless to say, a very kittenty bot program.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

I haven’t seen any of that in S7 but I also haven’t played GW2 in over a week now. The last obvious bot I saw was during S6 and it was alone. It was a full trap DH that would spawn and go to camp home the entire time it was in the match without ever moving.
It was programmed to sit in the middle of the home point, spam traps and fire a LB. Every time you CC’d it off point, it would bug up or something and just stop taking actions all together until someone killed it, then it would resume it’s patterns.

It was needless to say, a very kittenty bot program.

I’ve seen one of these. I think it was an actual player but otherwise description is correct

There are so many bots in the silver division. These bots will camp at certain caps. The way they move is glitchy. I will just see

yeah I’m in 2nd tier silver , thats when I have seen them

I have seen such a group. This was obviously some time ago. There are 5 Asura burn guards. Four are following and mirroring the actions of one. I thought it was amusing at the time. As you can see, four are making the same attack as the screenie is snapped.

I’ve yet to see one in an actual match.

~edit~ I’d love to try my Discord team in a match, they don’t need to be micro’d and do a nice damage spike … hmmm nice thought.

I can vouche for the OP. I’ve run into a lot of Asuras in ranked PVP that are named Sashimir, Fresh Shark, SnakeSniper that always idle in base for several seconds before all moving together to cap home when it’s already capped. They also always have level 1 gear and have absolutely no idea about any of the map’s secondary mechanics. And I think the biggest thing I’ve noticed is these bots cannot be whispered.

“sashimi”

Yeah, theres a guard asura called sashimir, thats always start afk on begin of match. i tried flame him and him neves responds.

And hes playes LONG hours.

I’m the guy who sleeps very little, and it’s rare to have people who spend as much time as I do, I slept, I woke up the other day, and this guy was there as if he played non-stop from saturday to monday.

ugrakarma.9416:

And hes playes LONG hours.

I’m the guy who sleeps very little, and it’s rare to have people who spend as much time as I do, I slept, I woke up the other day, and this guy was there as if he played non-stop from saturday to monday.

Since the spvp servers are in meltdown mode tonight, I figure it’s time to keep working on this thing, and do part of the work . This comment actually made me think of several things.

- From Cerulean to Byzantium an spvp bot can make 75+g & all kinds of sellable loots and the possibility of ascended equipments for character resale afterwards. So yes, there’s definitly incentives.

- If the botrunners are greedy they would simply see it as a “crunchable hours” problem ( pips/hour ) and would have a tendency to let the bots run overnight or for very long period of time.

- If you take an average of ten minutes per game ( which feels money from experience) and an average 2-ish min/Q you get between 5-6 games per hours of straight sitting. Back of the envelope math tell us that 60-72 ranked games per day means 12 hours of actual play ( most normal humans would not do 12 straight hours of gaming. eating and bathroom time intervenes).

- These accounts are most likely new(er) and obtained on some kind of special sale (the cheaper the accounts, the more this scales) . However the gold/mat will eventually get funneled to another account . (follow the money perhaps?)

So if you take all that and you start to run actual log analysis on spvp results ( or the grep as sysadmins would say)

Search for
—> Newer accounts ( < than a year most likely)
—> spvp silver division ( I can confirm seeing the bots in all silver but a search by divisions could be certainly be interesting)
—> High number of games per day ( 50-60+ say ? Are those games all consecutives?)

You start with this, then you refine these results
—> Any reports on those players ? ( botting, match manip, afk ?)
—> are multiple accounts from the list from the same ip/netblock ?
—> Are some of these accounts running from known cloud computing netblocks?
(scale, once more)

I mean…. that’s already a good start on this problem.

Ive seen bots in my match. Spawns, casually walks to mid. Auto attacks until dead. It was an asura engi. Never once dodge never once talked never once used a skill. Did the same exact thing everytime he spawned. Same path to mid. I whispered him trying to talk to him, i just said hey and of course nothing.

well dang.

/15dangs

i’ve seen them too, but some ppl might think i’m one cuz i don’t respond back with text, usually ill just jump several times for “Yes” if some1 is asking me a question[s] the reason for this behavior is bcuz i use xpadder with xbox 360 controller and i have my keyboard some distance away

hopefully the devs take notice and… do something ?

Kaga.7629:

hopefully the devs take notice and… do something ?

i come back to silver t3 now, and didnt noticed them for some days. i guess, does they got burned in mass ban anet did?

There’s no reason to disbelieve that there are bots. They’ve been in GW1 for years. These days you can’t even get pickup games started without botters helping to fill up the slots, Balthazar bless them.

That said, there is a community of people who refer to Asura as sharks because of their teeth. The name alone does not indicate membership in a botnet.

i saw bottage earlier this week but i was pleasantly surprised to see none last night at my usual hours of operation….. let’s see if the hope holds out this week. Perhaps the sysadmins in the sky used grep to find some naughty accounts ?

I once joined a custom server that was full of afk players, all different races wich is weird that half aren’t human, and they all moved together in a weird way, like they were sort of stacked together but didn’t attacked, my friend and i killed them all on both teams and they only tried to rez each other but nothing else. I think that was one of the first tests done by the guy pulling this (this was like a month ago)

this community is slowly losing it’s mind.

bots and naughty list.

seriously i know it’s hard to believe that people play like this but they exist.

Xanctus The Dragonslayer.2318:

this community is slowly losing it’s mind.

bots and naughty list.

seriously i know it’s hard to believe that people play like this but they exist.

Yeah, those players definitely do exist. But so do bots in gaming. Most of the things the OP and others describe I’ve seen for years in spvp. Not the pathing though. That sounds interesting and worth really looking deeper into. I’ll reserve judgement until I see it for myself. I’ll be paying closer attention. With CNN and Mainstream Media being caught lying and using crisis actors on almost a daily/weekly basis now, I’m more skeptical than I ever was. Man, are pvp and WvW Anet devs even real? Hmmm

Xanctus The Dragonslayer.2318:

this community is slowly losing it’s mind.

bots and naughty list.

seriously i know it’s hard to believe that people play like this but they exist.

Humm… what you opinion on hackers? :\

i understand why some people may think that there are bots running around in ranked games, but correct me if im wrong i thought you could only duo que in ranked? so unless they also manipulated the matchmaking system how would they get 3 or more bots into the same game on the same team?

edit: if its 2 bots in the game i totally understand, i too have seen bots in spvp. i just cant seem to wrap my head around the idea that there are 3 or more bots. have a good day

danielrazor.6041:

…but correct me if im wrong i thought you could only duo que in ranked? so unless they also manipulated the matchmaking system how would they get 3 or more bots into the same game on the same team?

First of all, it’s not like a bot operator cares about winning behond the fact it gives more pips/hour on average to be winning. To team your bots together would probably make it a lot more obvious for detection purposes.

So say you’re running a bot array of 25 bots ( or whatever magic number. the bigger number, the more profit. because Scale.) .
- The Queue seeds 10 matches ( or 100 players that are queing within matchmaking range atm) and all 25 bots get “drafted” for those matches.
- It’s not like the drafted bots are gonna get seeded equally as a quarter of a team each( cuz that would be a guy and a quarter-ish) . They’re gonna get sprinkled in all kinds of matches and teams , likely unequally sometimes. This is where a bot’s rating might make a difference in the “placement voodoo”.
– Sometimes they get “sprinkled” 2 or 3 in a team. That’s when the pathing becomes real obvious.

Late nights, when there’s less matches being “seeded” the bots tend to get seeded more and more together… making the thing more obvious once again.

SaltyDogs.9073:

I can vouche for the OP. I’ve run into a lot of Asuras in ranked PVP that are named Sashimir, Fresh Shark, SnakeSniper that always idle in base for several seconds before all moving together to cap home when it’s already capped. They also always have level 1 gear and have absolutely no idea about any of the map’s secondary mechanics. And I think the biggest thing I’ve noticed is these bots cannot be whispered.

Fresh Shark, yes that one. I can vouch for this. They stack on each other and do the same thing, bunkering points not moving, and yes condis.

Xanctus The Dragonslayer.2318:

this community is slowly losing it’s mind.

bots and naughty list.

seriously i know it’s hard to believe that people play like this but they exist.

A simple google will lead you to a botting forum for any kind of game. And they are updated. Either you’re just ignorant or you’re one of them.

I have encountered one definite bot, but I’ve been on the upper end of Silver/low Gold so I might have run into only one of the outliers who’s getting more wins.

Pretending that there are no bots in this game is bizarre considering that they’ve long been a problem in PvE. They are only new to pvp because the pvp rewards are finally somewhat meaningful even if you’re extremely unsuccessful.

I’ve honestly found it a little weird that a loss is an entire 1/3rd a win; I’m all for participation rewards, but I feel like this discourages taking an active role in trying to win. I feel like 1 pip should be baseline for losing, and it should scale upwards for close wins up to 7 pips for a 450-500. This would mean that anyone playing pvp for the rewards won’t feel discouraged if the enemy has a 200 point lead, because there’s still an incentive to get as many points as possible. There’s no point in struggling hard once it feels like you’ve lost because it’s faster to just lose and queue for the next match than delay the end of the match longer.

Kadj.6725:

I have encountered one definite bot, but I’ve been on the upper end of Silver/low Gold so I might have run into only one of the outliers who’s getting more wins.

Pretending that there are no bots in this game is bizarre considering that they’ve long been a problem in PvE. They are only new to pvp because the pvp rewards are finally somewhat meaningful even if you’re extremely unsuccessful.

I’ve honestly found it a little weird that a loss is an entire 1/3rd a win; I’m all for participation rewards, but I feel like this discourages taking an active role in trying to win. I feel like 1 pip should be baseline for losing, and it should scale upwards for close wins up to 7 pips for a 450-500. This would mean that anyone playing pvp for the rewards won’t feel discouraged if the enemy has a 200 point lead, because there’s still an incentive to get as many points as possible. There’s no point in struggling hard once it feels like you’ve lost because it’s faster to just lose and queue for the next match than delay the end of the match longer.

Its seems the bot arrays are stuck on silver tier, after i reached gold, never seems the Sashimir gang anymore, luckily. Sorry for T1, T2 Silver legit players, but they will have a painful pass, getting one Afk in team is almost “new normal”.

I can confirm i haven’t seen bots yet in gold, but the fact that this still hasn’t been dealt with is ridiculous.
Just the repeatable byzantium chest gives 20g a pop and i’m pretty sure the pvp lootbots can get one or two of those every day by sheer grindage.

Where’s the banstick ? It’s not like we haven’t provided enough info for the devs in the sky to take action.

Oddly, I’ve been seeing a lot of bots in unranked lately. Almost always a turret engy.

This ‘bot’ just stand there letting the pet attack. And I’m just sniping from the top watching these bots fight. I only know one guy in the team not botting, the one I’m chatting.

Saw it in bronze and in gold (didnt see any in silver myself). It was fun tho watching one of our human condi reapers kill em all at once thanks to plaguelands and epi/plague siggy.

Still more reports keep coming in with tales of bronze and silver league bottage.

Now that the whole first monthly tournament of drama issue has been swiftly and justly resolved with a solid twack of the banstick, perhaps the powers that be could tell us more about what’s being done about the bot issue?

Kaga.7629:

Still more reports keep coming in with tales of bronze and silver league bottage.

Now that the whole first monthly tournament of drama issue has been swiftly and justly resolved with a solid twack of the banstick, perhaps the powers that be could tell us more about what’s being done about the bot issue?

You said it, life partner!

The bots are reporting human players now.