Guild Wars 2

I just had my account hacked and I have an idea to discourage botting: if we suspect of being in front of a bot, we should have an option for making contact with a request only a human could answer (a captcha? a request for an emote like /bow?). If that player does not answer in, let’s say, 20 secs, every other player around can target and attack him. Of course we should refine this idea to avoid regular players being swarmed, but I think that if the targeted player answers “What the kitten?” that’s plenty clear by itself
What do you think?

I just think this would get abused by targeting players who are AFK.

Besides, bots are quite easy to see anyway, especially if they are many, just look at them for a little while, sharp turns usually give them away, and no moving during combat. And if they are several on the same route they will all run on a line and stand in the exact same place while in combat.

CapN Biku.6024:

I just think this would get abused by targeting players who are AFK.

Could be feasible if anet makes afk shorter and don’t switch to red target at least 30 seconds after the afk timer, so any user can get back from the afk and have time to move the mouse, confirm that it’s a real player.

All users would know the rule (twitter/forum/whatever), and eventually wait couple of minutes if they want to find out if it turns red and destroy him (possibly call friends to do a collective one shot kill

I still don’t like the idea. What about the people who don’t follow the forums or twitter and just play the game, how will they find out about it? The hard way.

I can find so many potential flaws in this idea. (Not anything personal against you, you’re just saying what we’ve all thought)
Like bugs that could potentially make you stuck as a target. Make you not be able to reply to the request or maybe not even receive it.

For this idea to work there can’t be any flaws and people can’t be mean (which we all know some can’t seem to manage)

How about this?

CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD, and use one that you do not use on other accounts.
Preferably one with 2 numbers and 2 special characters, READ THE A-NET SECURITY ISSUES and you you will see how they got your password…

CapN Biku.6024:

I still don’t like the idea. What about the people who don’t follow the forums or twitter and just play the game, how will they find out about it? The hard way.

I can find so many potential flaws in this idea. (Not anything personal against you, you’re just saying what we’ve all thought)
Like bugs that could potentially make you stuck as a target. Make you not be able to reply to the request or maybe not even receive it.

For this idea to work there can’t be any flaws and people can’t be mean (which we all know some can’t seem to manage)

Lol, If I should get pissed off for each little no or mmm… during brainstorming sessions at work where people have different ideas, then it would be horrible, plus this is a game, I like the game but I’m not a teenager anymore, it’s just a relaxing friday evening with the forum, trying to give some inputs here and there as I’m not always around.

So, there are endless possible flaws in countless systems in any game. Nothing is flawless. It’s important that they can implement the feature well, if not they will improve it later anyway, until it solves a problem properly. It’s not about people to be mean or not, I quite trust the capabilities of anet team and I know there are challenges with budget, time and decision making, and obviously they are human and make errors.

CapN Biku.6024:

I just think this would get abused by targeting players who are AFK.

Besides, bots are quite easy to see anyway, especially if they are many, just look at them for a little while, sharp turns usually give them away, and no moving during combat. And if they are several on the same route they will all run on a line and stand in the exact same place while in combat.

New players tend to also play like this.
As do older players (I know of atleast 2 70+ year olds playing).
They sharply turn, don’t move in combat unless absolutely necessary, etc.

Carefull what you use as your de-facto “it’s a bot” methods.

Bots can also be “sweat shop” players and, as it was pointed out, players can appear to do bottish things. I’ve been killed while AFK and was asked if I was a bot. Any typewritten response is fine as long is it makes some kind of sense.

Regarding the type of bots, the most common one I see is a player controlling multiple characters (ostensibly running on separate machines) with one set of control system; i.e., one mouse and one keyboard running half a dozen characters. In that sense, it might be wierd getting identical “I’m not a bot” responses from six rangers while their pets just stare. Then, again, I have never seen one of those types of botters respond to questions but I do have screen cap’s.

no thanks, its easy enough to tell who’s botting, just report them. i can only see this idea hurting people who are not bots

Anchoku.8142:

Bots can also be “sweat shop” players and, as it was pointed out, players can appear to do bottish things. I’ve been killed while AFK and was asked if I was a bot. Any typewritten response is fine as long is it makes some kind of sense.

Regarding the type of bots, the most common one I see is a player controlling multiple characters (ostensibly running on separate machines) with one set of control system; i.e., one mouse and one keyboard running half a dozen characters. In that sense, it might be wierd getting identical “I’m not a bot” responses from six rangers while their pets just stare. Then, again, I have never seen one of those types of botters respond to questions but I do have screen cap’s.

It’s against the ToS to control several characters with 1 mouse+keyboard as you’re using 3rd party software to gain advantage over other players (in this case players who are using several mouse+keyboards to manage those several players). So if you ever run into that situation report them anyhow, they’re cheating.

This is an amusing idea, and I don’t mean that in a bad way.

Still, you probably knew as you were suggesting it that this causes all sorts of complications, all the way down to people just using it to annoy others.

Whatever ArenaNet is currently doing to combat botters is actually fairly impressive and effective. It was enough to ramp up a great deal of materials costs, and actually cause people to complain about the cost of things (indirectly, complaining about the lack of bots to get their cheap mats from). From a personal perspective, I see very few bots around anymore, where I used to see them all the time. I don’t presume they are eradicated, but I think whatever they are doing right now is working quite well.