Guild Wars 2

http://nf.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2c8mbb/so_anyone_else_banned_for_mass_wood_farming/

I read that a guy who has streamed his 12 hours af chopping has been banned, for sure he’s not a bot !!!

I’m anxious, as a normal player (I’m not a bot^^), can I keep on chopping or not ? I really want to craft my backpiece …

meh…Anet’s done worse….

((Not that it makes it okay in any way.))

((edit – What’s even more awesome is that someone was banned while they were streaming through twitch, while trying to gather from every resource node in the game in one run.

http://www.twitch.tv/imnotdom/b/552970165 (doesn’t work anymore….)
http://www.twitch.tv/imnotdom/c/4788736

I don’t know it they were botting or not, just posting a link [Though its obvious they weren’t]))

….And yeah, I was gonna chop down a lot of trees later today to get some firefox clusters, I wanna know if I’m going to get banned or not too?

Edit 2 it seems the first link isn’t working anymore. That was the one showing the hours and hours of gathering.

Edit 3 – Some accounts are getting restored….still afraid to go chop another tree down, less the A(net)EPA comes after me….maybe tomorrow?

omg i fell you ive just heard about this myself i wanted to farm trees and keys today and now im even afraid of touching the game in case they think im botting because im farming

Well, I would THINK you could continue to harvest trees, but speaking as someone who has been banned this morning (I guess, can’t log in, zero word from anet on my tickets) for cutting wood and selling foxfire, you make the call. From what I’ve read, the bans were for people who literally logged thousands of logs for >100 foxfire. I made 200g on it over the last 2 days. The thing is, I did this. I work from home, I did it with my spare time (and I’ll admit a bit on my company’s time, but that is none of anet’s concern). I was looking forward to doing more of it today, but nope, I’m banned. I have no idea for how long since I never received an email or anything. Just can’t log in on my primary account. But, I logged in on my other account and sure enough, plenty of people farming wood just as they were before. So, I’d say you are safe if your past activity didn’t trigger whatever the heck triggered me and others to be banned.

This is such a joke omg.

Well at least the gift of wood might be 2 gold cheaper now 0_o

If you behave exactly like a bot (which based on my observation from farming trees) which about 99% of the farmers do, is it really that weird that you get handled like a bot?

Does a bot do pvp matches in between harvesting these logs, across all the maps with elder or higher wood? Doubtful. I queue for a match, harvest (and sell as soon as I get one cuz i know the price will drop), play a match repeat. If the repeat part is botting, then they need a new way of determining what a bot is. Do people who run the same 8 dungeon paths a day at the same time because they can play at that time and get good returns for it considered bots? cuz if you look at it from afar, that behavior is very very repetitive also.

GreytheRaven.3492:

Well, I would THINK you could continue to harvest trees, but speaking as someone who has been banned this morning (I guess, can’t log in, zero word from anet on my tickets) for cutting wood and selling foxfire, you make the call. From what I’ve read, the bans were for people who literally logged thousands of logs for >100 foxfire. I made 200g on it over the last 2 days. The thing is, I did this. I work from home, I did it with my spare time (and I’ll admit a bit on my company’s time, but that is none of anet’s concern). I was looking forward to doing more of it today, but nope, I’m banned. I have no idea for how long since I never received an email or anything. Just can’t log in on my primary account. But, I logged in on my other account and sure enough, plenty of people farming wood just as they were before. So, I’d say you are safe if your past activity didn’t trigger whatever the heck triggered me and others to be banned.

Until I know its safe to chop down trees I’m going pretend there is a Bearspider guarding every tree in the game world and just say…NOPE!

(P.S. – Bearspider for Ranger pet. plz Anet? Thanks.)

The thing with people I have seen botting is that they port between nodes as I have reported people that mysteriously appear at a node in front of me.

I’m shocked that they will ban people for legitly farming nodes but not people who blatantly exploit an event that can be made to not end but spawns infinite mobs that drop loot.

Ayrilana.1396:

The thing with people I have seen botting is that they port between nodes as I have reported people that mysteriously appear at a node in front of me.

I’m shocked that they will ban people for legitly farming nodes but not people who blatantly exploit an event that can be made to not end but spawns infinite mobs that drop loot.

There were people that wanted to do that during the story related Frostgorge event. While there is 3 champions to kill already, the event can continuously spawn 2-3 champions at a time until they are killed, and the previous event also spawns a lot of champions as well. There were a lot of people hitting the boss once of twice, then afking as long as possible to get more loot bags to spawn. I don’t think it should be bannable because the splash could affect a lot more players than just the ones who were purposely doing it, but it is definitely a problem.

Some people also cycle their alts. They log in (aka appear), then log out (aka disappear). With some of my characters I usually do that at some rich nodes (iron, platinum) although I also grab nearby chests.

The ones who cycled their alts during all of this and stayed confined to one or two maps weren’t banned, because you need an actual person to do that (allegedly)

It could have been that he was reported by uninformed people for botting, and Anet took action. If enough people saw them running from node to node in all the zones, for 12 hours, it sure would look like a bot. I would probably report it too.

Well, I have 11 80s, all of them parked at the Malchor’s cluster. I logged with all of them, then the 2 of them that have perma logging tools ran around and harvested the rest of Orr (straits, CS rest of Malchors). At reset, my Guard also pvp’d in between to get closer to champ title. All of this activity would be impossible for a bot to perform. But, I guess a blanket ban was the easier option. I’m frustrated. Gonna go work of steam at the gym. Totally disappointed but will forgive this all if they just let me play the game again

lordkrall.7241:

If you behave exactly like a bot (which based on my observation from farming trees) which about 99% of the farmers do, is it really that weird that you get handled like a bot?

Otherwise maybe, but after ANet created a resource that basically had to be farmed in this fashion, shouldn’t they expect people would? Instead of going “oh look something is going on, suddenly there’s so many bots farming trees, I sure wonder why this is happening!”

The current thoughts in map chat tonight was that they were banned for their health, all that farming with no breaks can’t be healthy.

Based on all the comments I’ve read so far there seems to be a number of constants to getting picked out as a bot.

1) Farming for extended periods (10hrs+ in some cases)
2) Selling the clusters instead of using them yourself
3) Farming every node on the map or multiple maps

Now I know I’ve spent a fair amount of time chopping trees today, logging in my alts multiple times and taking my main around a couple of maps in Orr twice (but not farming everything just what I could find) and I have farmed up 39 clusters so far.

I haven’t sold them though. I’ve also taken long breaks during the day and I’ve also spent two hours in a T5 dry top collecting geodes and opening chests.

So I haven’t been banned, but a lot of other people seem to have been.

Ummm … there would be better ways to make sure people don’t play “too long”.
I really doubt they would use such drastic action for that reason.

Apparently its good to be banned for chopping too much wood, at least for a short while, because when they unban you they give you a free chest/loot as a apology.

http://i.imgur.com/UNafCck.png

I would like to know what was Anet thinking?
Knowing that there was already a problem with a certain type of farming – rhymes with rot, they go ahead and place an highly desired item on something that almost everyone does everyday, i.e. gathering. This of course increases the amount of people gathering (shhh… must not call attention to this or Thread will be locked and an infraction posted)

Now, the argument could be made that the folks banned were overzealous in their gathering enthusiasm, and that the security features that seek out this type of behaviour can’t tell the difference.
Well, get better programming then. These players were only chasing the carrot laid out by the game developer, and are being punished for it.

Seems a lot like entrapment to me, and that’s not right.

stuff like this is the reason why i dont farm mats at all… well not more then i need for daily gatherer. I like my account way too much to endanger it

lordkrall.7241:

If you behave exactly like a bot (which based on my observation from farming trees) which about 99% of the farmers do, is it really that weird that you get handled like a bot?

So it’s the player’s fault. Of course!

Lord Kuru.3685:

So it’s the player’s fault. Of course!

Of course everything is ArenaNets fault.
And if this didn’t happen and bots kept running around like mad forever it would be ArenaNets fault as well.
Just like the situation in the Middle-East and the starvation in Africa.

lordkrall.7241:

Lord Kuru.3685:

So it’s the player’s fault. Of course!

Of course everything is ArenaNets fault.
And if this didn’t happen and bots kept running around like mad forever it would be ArenaNets fault as well.
Just like the situation in the Middle-East and the starvation in Africa.

Read your own post. You literally said that it’s the players fault if they get falsely banned by Anet. Seriously?

Lord Kuru.3685:

lordkrall.7241:

If you behave exactly like a bot (which based on my observation from farming trees) which about 99% of the farmers do, is it really that weird that you get handled like a bot?

So it’s the player’s fault. Of course!

If you’ll check his history, you’ll find that he believes it’s 1. always the players’ fault, or 2. never ArenaNet’s fault.

lordkrall.7241:

If you behave exactly like a bot (which based on my observation from farming trees) which about 99% of the farmers do, is it really that weird that you get handled like a bot?

lol. It doesn’t surprise me you defend them over this.

Perhaps they shouldn’t release content that requires farming then. It would make their job a lot easier without worrying about botting.

lordkrall.7241:

If you behave exactly like a bot (which based on my observation from farming trees) which about 99% of the farmers do, is it really that weird that you get handled like a bot?

You have to be the staunchest of staunch white knight defenders to be defending anet over something like this where they’re clearly on the wrong.

I have to agree with there being something hinky going on here. Obviously the best solution is to simply approach the issue rationally (flying off the handle never got anyone anywhere good after all) and submit a ticket to support if this affects you.

In my opinion, both parties are actually at fault here.

Anet obviously has an issue with their anti-bot code, which kitten happens, that’s just how things work out sometimes. I don’t think the game is supposed to auto-ban, but it’s possible they changed that. If that’s the case, they need to look much more closely on what parameters are in place to determine that action.

Conversely, we the players know they have anti-bot code and need to keep that in mind when we’re running around mindlessly in our farming. If it is simply the amount of repetition over a certain amount of time that flags one’s account (which it sort of sounds like it might be), the farming spree incited by the new LS drop would definitely pose potential issues both for the established code as well as for those that don’t consider that their actions might be seen as ‘bot like.’

We had this issue in GW1 as well, so it’s not like it’s a new thing to keep in mind. We had accidental bannings there as well (especially during holiday item gathering) because of the unvarying repetition of some peoples’ play. It’s an honest mistake really.

And that’s a problem with programming and scripting… It does not differentiate things much. It just looks for certain behaviors and patterns and, when something meets that criteria, it flags it.

I’m going to guess that farming nodes for over what could be considered and extreme amount of time (legitimately or not, 10 hours /is/ a long time…) will flag the account as a possible bot…
The problem becomes when such a flag shows up, the Moderators probably aren’t going to look too deep into it.
Just look at it, see the flag and ban-button.
Or even worse, Moderators aren’t even involved and the entire system is automatic… (Which I personally think is a bad way of doing things… Too easy for such systems to be circumvented or abused…)

I’m willing to bet that the programming in this situation does not take into account other actions taken… Just looks at the amount of nodes harvested over how long a time.

Definitely not saying it’s right on Anet’s part, but I can also see how a problem like this could happen.
Hopefully they get it fixed soon.

Yujin.1785:

lordkrall.7241:

If you behave exactly like a bot (which based on my observation from farming trees) which about 99% of the farmers do, is it really that weird that you get handled like a bot?

You have to be the staunchest of staunch white knight defenders to be defending anet over something like this where they’re clearly on the wrong.

I don’t think you know what a “white knight” is… or defending for that matter.

lordkrall merely pointed out that when you do the actions that botters do, you’re going to be running the risk of being detected as a bot.

ArenaNet does NOT have thousands of employees watching everyone’s screens to find botters so they can ban them. They created a computer algorithm that monitors activity and issues bans automatically when the algorithm indicates a high likelihood that botting has occurred. This is industry standard as there is NO other way to do it.

Clearly, the new content combined with the existing algorithm has resulting in a lot of incorrect bans. This is not the player’s fault, nor is it ArenaNet’s fault but rather the result of unintended consequences.

nexxe.7081:

lordkrall.7241:

If you behave exactly like a bot (which based on my observation from farming trees) which about 99% of the farmers do, is it really that weird that you get handled like a bot?

lol. It doesn’t surprise me you defend them over this.

Perhaps they shouldn’t release content that requires farming then. It would make their job a lot easier without worrying about botting.

But I thought they don’t make grindy games…..

Lord Kuru.3685:

lordkrall.7241:

If you behave exactly like a bot (which based on my observation from farming trees) which about 99% of the farmers do, is it really that weird that you get handled like a bot?

So it’s the player’s fault. Of course!

…. and he’ll be here daily to remind us that.

mtpelion.4562:

Yujin.1785:

lordkrall.7241:

If you behave exactly like a bot (which based on my observation from farming trees) which about 99% of the farmers do, is it really that weird that you get handled like a bot?

You have to be the staunchest of staunch white knight defenders to be defending anet over something like this where they’re clearly on the wrong.

I don’t think you know what a “white knight” is… or defending for that matter.

lordkrall merely pointed out that when you do the actions that botters do, you’re going to be running the risk of being detected as a bot.

ArenaNet does NOT have thousands of employees watching everyone’s screens to find botters so they can ban them. They created a computer algorithm that monitors activity and issues bans automatically when the algorithm indicates a high likelihood that botting has occurred. This is industry standard as there is NO other way to do it.

Clearly, the new content combined with the existing algorithm has resulting in a lot of incorrect bans. This is not the player’s fault, nor is it ArenaNet’s fault but rather the result of unintended consequences.

You’re funny. You obviously never seen his post history and what people are trying to say about the people who got banned. I have some guildmates that were banned after just AFKing for just ~30 mins (waiting for the nodes to replenish within the hour) and got banned. They were on the map for extended periods of time but no way were they “behaving like bots” as lordkrall described.

That’s clearly pushing all the blame on the players.

I think the mass-harvesting triggered their anti-botting code. Last I saw on Reddit, they are working on unbanning people. Simple as that.

If anything, John Smith is probably using this Foxfire opportunity to gather valuable data about GW2 market trends. It must be a fun time for him!

Kain Francois.4328:

(…)
If anything, John Smith is probably using this Foxfire opportunity to gather valuable data about GW2 market trends. It must be a fun time for him!

Haha, I was thinking about him as I was chopping wood and selling the few clusters I got *lol

I suspect they are monitoring broker sales and leaping to conclusions.

Ban first, investigate later is garbage in this case. This is not game breaking like duping and other exploits.

oh, yeah. Krall is Krall.

Wow…
The wonderful toxicity level in this thread…