Guild Wars 2

I agree…this change is needed very badly. I’m in a guild with 442 members…and lucky to have 10 of them ever on-line. My bet is that at least 75 – 85% of the members have been inactive for a long time.

I honestly don’t get how ArenaNet thinks they are going to combat botting, when they only do sweeps around once per week…..2 times at most.

Can’t they understand that the motivation is money, and if the bot can run freely for a week or more (after it has already levelled to 80), after it has been reported in-game, then they are making money, and the behaviour will go on and on and on…..

The player base is stated to get so apathetic about bots…and for good reason.

There will NEVER be an automated solution to bots. Blizzard has had that approach for years, and has failed miserably.

It’s so easy to see that Anet has to respond to reports submitted by players on a daily basis in order to hit the botters where it really counts…in the pocketbook! And hit them as hard and fast as possible.

HOnestly, what is the difference in manpower when you do it once per week, as opposed to dividing the work evenly throughout the week to have a greater impact.

I’m often in Frostgorge Sound on Maguuma, and it is pitiful to see bots that I reported a week ago still running freely through the canyon area in large numbers.

If I was in charge, I would see it as a war against bots, and one that needs to be won in order to keep players on your side in the effort to keep the game environment as one that is appealing to players…human ones…

It leaves a bad feeling when I’m farming somewhere and a whole slew of bots come in and kill everything in sight.

Wake up Anet. The game is going to hell in a handbasket, with your slack efforts on enforcement. You are prolonging a battle that could likely have been won long ago….or at least reduced to a very minimum.

Educate and enforce…rather than play the PR game that everyone and their mother can see through.

In regard to Weyandt’s Revenge, I found the torches useless mostly because they have a timer on them. I mostly just waited for the light to blink occasionally…and then used my number 5 skill on rifle engineer which has targetting, and could give me the outlines of the next piece of rock I needed to jump to. I suffered horribly doing it….LOL. I can’t count how many times I missed my jump and had to run back to start again.

I realize the topic of bots has been discussed, and thread has been closed.

First of all, I want to clearly acknowledge that gold selling spam has been reduced dramatically. I likely only get 2 or 3 messages, or chat spams per full day of playing these days…and that looks promising.

In regard to botting, ArenaNet needs to acknowledge that there is huge concern in the player base at this point. The high level areas are simply rife with bots, and can be absolutely horrendous in the late evening and after midnight (pacific time).

The roving packs of the usual botted rangers are getting larger and more brazen in Cursed Shore and in Frostgorge Sound.

My suggestion….to give us all a sense of action being done by Anet.

Please post a daily report ( or even every 2 days) of actions taken.
i.e. Bot bans, gold seller message bans….etc. If you break it down by server…it would be even better..

This will give players a more real and down to earth sense of what Anet is doing, and will also allow us to work with you to come up with new and better ideas to combat this plague in the game.

The sad part is when I hear players say that it is useless to report bots because Anet isn’t doing anything about it… I know that’s far from the truth, but Anet has to take some responsibility for the apathy that is starting to develop around this issue.

We all need to be part of the solution….and we need some improved leadership on Anet’s part.

I reposted this, as I had wrongly included details of an exploit in the previous post.

Would like to hear from Anet on this suggestion.

The problem is that it makes it much too easy to accumulate the huge amounts of karma needed to get a legendary item, or to buy significant amounts of karma gear from the temples. I realize the gear can’t be resold….but it still cheapens the game.

I like the idea of letting you know which bots you have already reported. I likely report the same bots 2 to 3 times when I’m trying to report a big group that is all stacked on top of each other, or when I see the same bot on a successive day…

And…to be clear…control of market prices is not the answer…just like in real life. Proper enforcement of the rules is the answer, and let the economy run itself from that point.

I have to side with banning the buyers also. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Anet would have to introduce this slowly….beginning with short term bans that remove all bought gold.

If players don’t see it as a risk, they will continue to support the gold sellers…..and fuel all the crap in the game that we all really don’t want.

A simple removal of the gold obtained, and a short ban (24 hours) would be a good place to start.

In my opinion, there is no question that the gold seller gets an immediate perm ban, but the gold buyer needs to pay the price also, as they are also breaking the rules of the game.

I get the feeling that there is a chance of getting ruined ores incorporated into high level mining/logging. Not sure though, but I get the occasional ruined ancient log…and ori….so I just took it for granted that the function was planned by Anet.

I’ll do that, but I think it’s likely that Anet knows it already. This is why I presented it as a suggestion..

That would be hilarious. I report a whole swarm of bots…..and next thing i know…..a helicopter moves in and drops a swarm of commandos that machine gun them all to death and beyond. Seems like fun to me..

You can actually chase the bots and report at the same time. I do it all the time. You can still move your character while you have the reporting screen open…..

NOn issue. I’ve never seen this feature introduced in a game, and likely never will. Time to roll a new character, and chalk it up to experience.

There are many of us that second guess our race…character features…all the choices made on character creation…but that’s just part of the game. Learn to love what you create……just like life…

Hardest one i’ve done is Weyandt’s Revenge….in Frostmaw Caverns in Lions Arch…in the dark. Took me hours….but that’s life… There is a chest at the end. These people who thing the game should be a walk in the park are hilarious….

This is a non-issue. The jumping puzzles are at the right level of difficulty. Yes, it’s frustrating and difficult at times….but get over it. The game would be for 5 year olds, if it had no challenge. Learn to challenge yourself…and get over quitting at the first sign of difficulty. Life is like that……learn to deal with it. How much daddy talk is needed hear to get someone out of their small protected world…lol??

I have to agree with the gist of the original post. Most legendaries or precursors I see are in the hands of people who bot, or those who do massive karma exploiting in cursed shore. It’s a sad thing to see repetitive and unacceptable behaviour being rewarded, while the variety and challenge of the game falls far behind in providing rewards.

I realize it’s a challenge to take game out of the hands of exploiters and botters, and to put it into the hands of real legit gamers…..but I think this suggestion is a step in the right direction.

It’s useless to debate the significance of bots on the game. Only ArenaNet can really determine that significance. You can’t ask another player to prove such a thing. We all know that the game is rampant with bots, as you have to be blind to not notice such a thing. AND….the rare times that I see high level decorative weapons esp in quantity….have happened to be on bots….LOL. Fancy that…. Caught a guy the other day playing with his 3 bots on a pirate beach…. Reported them all…. I started talking about the existence of bots and he was first to jump to their defence…and then I clued in. He promptly moved them all to a nearby town where I found them standing in one place doing nothing. Funny part was that I never rez’d them when they died….including him…and then he complained afterwards about having a 10g repair bill…and I just laughed…

I got sidetracked a bit there….but let’s not forget the experience of D3 with massive high end inflation generated by bots, and the clear effect of auction house botting on a very significant number of items in the game. D3 did not have buy orders….only bids on current items. So, when an item gets scooped instantaneously as soon as you post it, then you know it’s a bot…..esp when it happens several times in a row. The clincher is when it gets relisted almost right away also…. The days of innocence are gone….

I know an automated solution is being looked for here….but i think the best option would be a GM who covers several servers…and can actually be in game to check bots and ban them. With the huge sales of the game, can ANet not afford this?

I have to agree. The entrance area in cursed shore on Maguuma is absolutely loaded with bots. I have reported at least a dozen over a week ago….and yet they all still seem to be there. I just caught a guildmate actually…… It’s a sad way to play…..but it’s getting to the point of stupidity when a certain area is just crammed with bots…and there is not action. The area in question has continual events happening and the bots are reaping huge farming rewards for gold sellers, and just plain cheaters.

Playing big brother is a thing of balance. The economy is a delicate thing in mmo’s and there need to be boundaries and enforcement in place to keep it in good shape. Just look at what bots did to d2 and d3. d3 was destroyed within a week in regard to gold inflation, due to massive botting and exploiting. And I don’t believe that gold spammers are just scammers….lol. The number of bots farming in this game is huge. I see so many every day while playing, once I knew what to look for…. I would really like to see ArenaNet take faster action on them. They get to farm for days and weeks before any action is likely taken, if any.

I jsut identify dyes, and then unlock them on the character. The only reason I wouldn’t id them or unlock them, is to sell them…..and I don’t see the point in doing that. Once in a while, I identify a duplicate, but that has been rare up to now.

I agree about the dyes…and same should be done for recipes. I made the mistake of purchasing recipes with my engineer and thought i could transfer to my mesmer…..but was out of luck. I ended up just deleting them……gold wasted….

Tonics just get deleted in my case, because i just don’t have space for them…and they are a frivolous item. If I had a bank tab for them, would be fun to collect them.

The bots in cursed shore die occasionally (because it’s an areas with constant large mob battles……but they have an auto-respawn….not sure how they do it. In other areas, it’s too hard to kill them as they group several rangers together in a area with moas and such. Not enough enemies to kill them, but enough for them to have a constant source of experience / loot. It just needs some attention from Anet…..because aside from the rule-breaking of botting, it’s just an eyesore on the game.

I think this one waters down the weapon / item system. D3 took this to an extreme in allowing all characters to use all weapons. I like the specialization. It supports the crafting of more variety in items.

Mounts would be fun, and add another nice goal for gearing up in the game.

I can’t help but notice lately how many power-levelling / farming bots I come across on the Maguuma server. Right now, I’m in cursed shore and the entry road is chock full of bots. I likely reported about a dozen, but they still keep operating endlessly…day and night. Some are easy to spot, and some have more variety in their script, so you have to follow them a bit to see their repetitive routine.

My suggestion to ArenaNet is to have some kind of in-game GM that can respond in a timely fashion to botting reports, and chat spam (gold-selling / power-levelling) reports. In my opinion, it increases player morale….and just cuts out that disheartening feeling when you enter an area and you know that there is no human behind the actions of a character. We all generally like to stand up for honesty and just plain civil behaviour in real life, and the game is really no different.

If you don’t come down harsh on botters and they are profiting substantially, then it will only encourage them, and have a detrimental effect on the economy that is very important to the enjoyment of this game.

Honestly, if there was world pvp, the players themselves would be killing them off to show their disdain for this behaviour.

What do others think about this suggestion?