Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the reply.

Actually, that’s the point of the “every X <time reference>” section. This culls the data in semi-regular intervals to prevent the logs from becoming more space consuming than the game itself.

I also understand that the customer service calls are going to seem a bit overwhelming, but one has to consider that these are generally compromised accounts or purchased for the intent of bot farming. Neither of which need to be active. The compromised accounts should only be disabled temporarily (24h) and would let Anet, as well as the account owner, know that the account has been compromised.

-Hate

Moa, no. It’s kinda poopy, dodge-able (range), and only really knocks out one goober. If said goober is carrying the team, then yeah it’s going to suck. I could also mention Hundred Blades or that gd rogue spin/leap/bleed/loldodge spam. I won’t Q_Q though as those have specific counters (i.e. DODGE). Moa’s counter is the 9 year cooldown.

Stealth? * shrug * I don’t stealth, I facetank.

No no no no no to normalizing the clones/phantasms. I like having them do different, weird things. If we make things predictable and universal, we would all be playing WoW.

I would like to see some form of targeted AoE then. Siege contribution is kinda not there without Mr.I-Attack-Once-Every-Five-Seconds.

Duelist is fine, hug a guardian (like…me, I keep WoR slotted 100% of the time).

Cry for me on Blurred Frenzy. Like Hundred Blades, the damage is only there if you are foolish enough to stand in front of a sword wielding bad guy. The evasion is 2 seconds, then maybe another 3 seconds (with a 45s CD). Yes, the 45s CD comes back once every 90 sec with the traits for it. Everything the dagger rogue does is considered a dodge, but somehow that is ok? Blurred Frenzy is fine. (sPVPing on a Guardian, it’s crap if you sidestep.)

GS#3 is kind of iffy, if the stop’n’cast animation were removed (read: can be cast without interrupting movement) then I would see it being MUCH more useful.

Scepter#1 could use some form of small condition goodness. Since it seems to be the Confusion weapon, why not confusion?

Scepter#3 kind of irks me that it locks the player into place to cast, but has a shorter cast range. I would like to see it allow movement while casting or 1200 range.

Staff#4, could we see a slight cooldown drop? Maybe 25-30s or set buff to 7-10s? Just a thought :-P

-Hate

(2/2)

Recapping in a short(ish) fashion:

• Log activity and apply point scores to every action
  – 1pt Kill
  – 1pt Looting a Corpse
  – 2pt Per Node Harvested
  – 5pt Per Mail Sent
• Every X seconds, the top 10 in each tile are moved to a zone wide “top suspects” list.
  – And then every Y minutes, the top 20 from each zone are put into a global list for the server.
  – Furthermore, each time a player appears in the list, his/her position is notated. (i.e. BobtheBot 2,3,2,2,5,4)
  – These logs can be used to manually process suspensions or automate based on count.
• If characters hits X amount of “points” or spends Y amount of time within a certain tile (or set of tiles, say 2×2 or 3×3), the player is considered to be a bot automatically.
  – Exceptions include tiles marked hot spots (i.e. Cursed Shore holy triangle)
  – The limit would be suitably high, making it unlikely that a player would normally hit it.
• Any accounts suspended automatically or manually through this system also have account locked, requiring a call to customer service.
  – This helps mitigate the damage of stolen accounts.
  – Since all mail is logged on a basic level, networks of bots and gold farmers can be more quickly identified and marked. This can vastly improve the delay in taking down entire groups of them.
• Repeat activity after the initial 24h suspension result in a huge suspension (72h or week) and/or banhammering.

As stated above, a similar system was written for an emulator community. Some of the servers are actually using a system of similar design, but tailored to accomodate their specific gameplay mechanics.

Please don’t give me another infraction for this. I am only trying to help.

-Hate

(1/2)

I attemped this earlier and was crucified because I had a link to a locked thread. This is similar to the framework that I have laid out for another game. It is on place on a few servers (private servers) and seems to work well.

Everyone keeps mentioning IP blocking as THE solution to the botting problem. It is NOT the answer. A proxy is painfully easy to enable (in some case, as easy as running a freely downloaded program) so IP blocks are useless. Although locking out other regions from playing on the geographical region designated (i.e. blocking Asia from playing on the North American region) may help in the slightest bit, it will end up hurting many others. This might include those traveling on busy, vacationing, visiting family/friends, and any other reason that would require one to be outside his/her home region. It begs the question, “then how do we solve it hot shot?”

Mapping.

Each map will be broken up into roughly even tiles. Since I have two Sylvari, we will use Caledon Forest as my example zone. Let’s say that Caledon Forest is 20×14 tiles for the rest of this article. With the map broken into tiles, a very simple script basically logs a player while in a map. Each kill made(1pt) , every item looted(1pt), every material harvested(2pt), every bit of mail sent(5pt) is logged. Any character reported for botting should receive a bonus to the points earned (say +1pt to all the actions above per 2-3 reports). The zone will handle all the data from each character. Every X seconds, the top 10 in each tile is moved over to a top-suspects zone log. Every Y minutes, the top 20 from the zone are moved to a global log. All logging will be done by account id (since it makes easier to spot those character hopping to hit events). Any character with X amount of events or Y minutes/hours within highly specific regions (say, a 2×2 area), it can safely be assumed to be a bot. Obviously, to prevent the ‘slaughter of innocents’, either of those values needs to be suitably high to avoid innocents being banhammered. To further protect legitimate players, certain tiles could be marked as “hot spots”. Such tiles could need double/triple the points accumulated and/or time spent to flag the character. With a bot sitting in plain view of players, the “report a bot” feature comes into play (which will eventually launch the bot’s point score past the danger threshold). When a character is identified as a bot, the suspension is handed out and the account locked until the owner goes through customer service. This serves to limit damage done by stolen accounts, let the account owner know that their account was compromised, and remove those bots from the game for small periods in a highly automated fashion. Removing the need for constant human intervention allows for a much more rapid bot destruction.

For example, let’s say BobtheBot on his ranger (with required bear pet) is farming in Caledon Forest (specifically tile 2,4). As BobtheBot’s activities continue in this one tile, a counter is logging the number of activities. After a few hours, it’s clear that BobtheBot is… A BOT. He has spent the last few hours in a single tile (and/or it’s adjacent tiles). He killed 20-30 mobs (20-30pts) per minute, each dropping an average of 2 items (20-30pts), and sent one spam email every five seconds (60pts). Every minute, BobtheBot was earning 100-120pts. That is roughly 6000 – 7200 pts per hour. Within 2 hours, BobtheBot has hit the points earned threshold. His account is flagged for suspension and lockdown. This will knock out the bot for the remainder of the day and possibly returning ownership of the account to the REAL Bob (if it was indeed stolen). If BobtheBot returns to repeat the process, he will last another 2-3h farming, then his account will be banned. Since everything was logged, all the accounts that BobtheBot emailed loot to are also logged and flagged. By logging and flagging the loot drop point accounts, entire networks can be locked down quickly.

-Hate

Zeph.5927:

The problem I have with this right now is that abilities like this have been broken/not working correctly since beta, but instead of actually fixing them, Anet decides to nerf us instead. Good job. Hand out those nerfs while a crap ton of other things remain broken or at least not functioning correctly. I just wish they would get their priorities straight. Way to many abilities and traits (for all professions) remain broke but instead of fixing them, they decide to start nerfing stuff instead. It would make way more sense to fix things and have it all working correctly and THEN nerf stuff if it still needs nerfed. Not sure what they’re thinking with their current “fixing” design.

Quit yer bellyaching and get back to killing. We don’t have time for this crap until the class is 95% useless. The toolbar readjustment, while stupid, is consistent with the rest of the classes (1 to 5, shortest to longest cooldowns).

Wizardauz.3761:

@Zeph (Idk why trying to quote on this forum is so hit-or-miss)

But i understand your frustration. We get a good skill nerfed and a broken skill buffed.

Not that i was a symbols guardian or even relied on the move intensely, but atleast it always worked when i needed it too….

There is supposedly some reconsideration of Retaliation’s use. Maybe they will make it viable outside of weak return damage. The broken skill isn’t entirely broken. They have admitted that there is a small issue with uneven leaps (i.e. higher to lower ground or vice versa). As for the blind procs, that is part of the hit. You can expect to injure an enemy without actually hitting it. I know that is crazy to think about.

-Hate

I am unsure of exactly how difficult this would be to implement, but could this be a “near future” addition?

In Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games, there is almost always a “Unit Acknowledge” tickbox in the Audio options. This disables the acknowledgement that units return when selected, activated, instructed, etc. Could we get something similar? The Retaliation line and the “I can outrun a Centaur” was a bit irritating after the 30th hearing in a 5 minute window. Now, it is to the point that I will probably attempt to disable voices or simply cut off in-game sound to run Pandora.

So…yeah, please? :-)

-Hate

Colton Bole, I will say the 100% uptime was a bit awkward…but expecting attacks is not something that can be reliably done in a PVP situation. Even in PVE, any attack series that MIGHT utilize it will generally end with a guardian being crucified. We don’t have the HP/mitigation to stand still and withstand an onslaught for the sake of Retaliation. The damage is sub-par to be worrying about 100% uptime. If Retal lasted ~5 sec but did 100% damage back (but not reflected, key difference) then I could see it be VERY important. Since that isn’t the case…it’s just not that useful in my flawed view.

-Hate

I will say that I am not thrilled with the requirement to STOP moving while using #5. I would like to see it be a MUCH faster cast or allow us to cast while moving. This might be more viability to it.

Number 4 is neat, but very troublesome as it generally knocks the mob/player out of range. Yes it is useful on a highly situational basis, but it costs so much DPS for a paltry hit, long(ish) cooldown, and time lost chasing the mob/player. If the ability did HUGE damage, I could justify it. If the damage were 100-150% stronger, sure.

As for the autoattack, I find myself tapping escape to prematurely end the combo so I can hit faster. The week long swing time on the third hit from the autoattack is painful.

-Hate