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The Silver-Gold Bot Problem


Rvannith.8364

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I'm not the best player, and generally rank low-mid Gold (okay, I'm actually quite kitten). Unfortunately, the biggest frustration and thing that stops me from improving is the sheer amount of bots that seem to be active in ranked PVP: accounts that, assuming a combined game and match-up time of sixteen or seventeen minutes, are active nearly 24/7, accruing thousands of ranked matches every single PVP season. The same accounts and profiles are there, season to season: they never seem to get purged. Sometimes we're lucky: a bot like "OmnX KatXryn" is a burst mesmer, and will spam so perfectly that most other teams die to AOEs unless one of them knows it's a bot and baits their skills out. On other occasions, we end up with bots like "CaorXz", a Guardian that does nothing but auto-rally and heal, or "FaXXXXXXr" or "ShXXXXXXXa" who autorun far every respawn and tend to just die over and over without contributing anything.

Is ANet at least aware of this problem? Would it trouble anyone to take five minutes, end of season, to look at the accounts that have so many games under their belts that they are either bots, or people who are somehow playing almost every single hour of the day for several weeks without ever sleeping? It's endless, and the majority of my games are undermined by this experience. I'd rather a longer match-up time and to lose to a human than win because there's a spammy bot on my team that out-competes the enemy, or because the other team has one of the "worse" bots that you can easily just auto to death. There's another thread in which people are mentioning this problem from last year, but the problem seems to be getting worse: it feels like the "human" population is dropping, which makes the probability of getting lumped in with a bot seem much more likely?

Taking a more pro-active role in dealing with this issue would be very much appreciated, not just by myself but all the other middling players who feel like almost every game is a coin-flip based on the amount of bots we get grouped with rather than anything to do with an honest contest of skill.

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@"sitarskee.5738" said:I feel you, brother. ANet is aware of the bots. Is there a solution for them? Hard to tell, it's rather complicated - we can only guess.

The only way to get rid of the problem is to stop caring at this point. Go into the game with "do your best and forget the rest" attitude.

in certain hours having 3-4 auto runing bots in your team isnt rare ^^when that happens you cant do your best.. infact you cant do anything xD the 3-4 bots will jsut run mid/side die or stand alone without action and you will bealone against 3-4 people.. you will just die quick

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@sitarskee.5738 said:I feel you, brother. ANet is aware of the bots.

I'm not sure if they actually are. There can't be more than a couple dozen of them, it's just that the player count is low enough it feels like you get the same handful every couple games. Everyone reports them, ANet never bans them, and we go around in circles. I don't buy into the theory that ANet runs their own to make the player count in PvP look higher to reduce queue times: I can understand if they keep known bots under watch to track RMT (the bots obviously get rewards, which other accounts do they send those rewards to?) but the long term impact on PVP, especially in the middle tiers, is dreadful. That the same bots are there multiple seasons over and over implies a decent amount of oversight. I understand PVP isn't their core focus, but very small steps here would go a long way.

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@Rvannith.8364 said:

@sitarskee.5738 said:I feel you, brother. ANet is aware of the bots.

I'm not sure if they actually are. There can't be more than a couple dozen of them, it's just that the player count is low enough it feels like you get the same handful every couple games. Everyone reports them, ANet never bans them, and we go around in circles. I don't buy into the theory that ANet runs their own to make the player count in PvP look higher to reduce queue times: I can understand if they keep known bots under watch to track RMT (the bots obviously get rewards, which other accounts do they send those rewards to?) but the long term impact on PVP, especially in the middle tiers, is
dreadful.
That the
same
bots are there multiple seasons over and over implies a decent amount of oversight. I understand PVP isn't their core focus, but very small steps here would go a long way.

Anet dont do anything because we dont : ) lets be honest here.. we complain and complain and complain and we rage .. and for a good reason..bots destroy pvp ! and they must be banned!but at the same time.. at the end of day we keep supporting Anet.. and we keep playing and we keep spending our money on the gemstore..so why would they bother fixing it? maybe when we stop supporting them with money and we ban their gemstore untill bots are banned they would take action :) and care more about us pvp / wvw players ^^

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@Rvannith.8364 said:

@sitarskee.5738 said:I feel you, brother. ANet is aware of the bots.

I'm not sure if they actually are. There can't be more than a couple dozen of them, it's just that the player count is low enough it feels like you get the same handful every couple games. Everyone reports them, ANet never bans them, and we go around in circles. I don't buy into the theory that ANet runs their own to make the player count in PvP look higher to reduce queue times: I can understand if they keep known bots under watch to track RMT (the bots obviously get rewards, which other accounts do they send those rewards to?) but the long term impact on PVP, especially in the middle tiers, is
dreadful.
That the
same
bots are there multiple seasons over and over implies a decent amount of oversight. I understand PVP isn't their core focus, but very small steps here would go a long way.

They must be aware of the bots because they're a topic on forums for months and months. Do they do anything about it? I don't know, they're not really open about whether or not they're doing fixing the issue.

There really is nothing more we can do than ignore the bots, keep reporting them and try to enjoy PvPing. Don't get me wrong, I wish there was more we could do to get rid of those lowlifers. We all could just stop playing PvP but it won't solve the issue and actually I'm afraid ANet would neglect PvP even more then.

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@"Rvannith.8364" said:

  • Bastion.1502
  • BlackCrag.9760
  • edaraz.3296
  • koechto.1835
  • Quaker.8314
  • Strogg.2695
  • Swedishchef.8609
  • Zorg.8340

I have been grouped with all of these accounts over the past half dozen matches alone. All have close to a thousand matches this season alone, every one has more losses than wins, and most of them "path" identically: they follow the exact same route out of spawn, jumping over obstacles in unison when there's more than one on my team. A number of these names have been here for multiple seasons. This shouldn't be a problem that requires a lot of effort to solve and would significantly increase PVP quality of life for bad players who are in low gold. Those of us who still play PvP remain flipping coins if we win or not based on if we end up with one of these accounts on our teams or the opposing team, and dealing with this situation would be a very simple step to make things a lot less frustrating.

How does a bot play 1000 games and be useless and still stay in gold LOL

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@DogMD.9182 said:

@"Rvannith.8364" said:
  • Bastion.1502
  • BlackCrag.9760
  • edaraz.3296
  • koechto.1835
  • Quaker.8314
  • Strogg.2695
  • Swedishchef.8609
  • Zorg.8340

I have been grouped with
all
of these accounts over the past half dozen matches
alone
. All have close to a thousand matches
this season alone
, every one has more losses than wins, and most of them "path" identically: they follow the exact same route out of spawn, jumping over obstacles in unison when there's more than one on my team. A number of these names have been here for
multiple seasons
. This shouldn't be a problem that requires a lot of effort to solve and would significantly increase PVP quality of life for bad players who are in low gold. Those of us who still play PvP remain
flipping coins
if we win or not based on if we end up with one of these accounts on our teams or the opposing team, and dealing with this situation would be a very simple step to make things a lot less frustrating.

How does a bot play 1000 games and be useless and still stay in gold LOL

some of them get carried .... gold is so easy now days.. ... every team got bots in silver during prime time 1-2 bots and in the mornings 2-4 bots.. in each team.. 1 team has to win regardless the bots and the bots progress.. simple as that/

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Keep in mind that name callings are now allowed so you better remove the names or YOU will get banned.

But the situation is out of control. Sometimes I'm the only human and 9 bots in a game. Even if I report the obvious bots I will still be the only one that report them in this game.

It seems that the skill that you need the most in PVP is how make the oposits bots useless and help your bots.

Each time I stop playing "real PVP" and start playing "anit-bot" style I win. Even with 4 bots on my team.

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@"DogMD.9182" said:

How does a bot play 1000 games and be useless and still stay in gold LOL

Bots are often on each team, so you'll have three or four human players on each team, and one or two bots on each team. Some bots are worse than others based on their class (although they appear to be programmed nearly identically) so even if the human players are identically matched, one team will pull ahead because they have a "less bad" bot. As a result, while the bots most often lose more than they win the difference isn't huge, because there's another 9 human or bot players that factor into the defeat or victory. Generally, bots are within a 10% margin, but mathematically speaking this isn't unexpected. There's a win/loss distribution curve you'd expect of even the most poorly programmed bots who do nothing but run to far point and spam AOEs as still winning about 40% of the time at worst: because your rank changes depending on how often you win/lose, which means over long periods of time your win-loss ratio should be somewhat even, regardless of if you're a bot or a real player, or how well or poorly you play.

Some of them are actually very close: Shambler.3408 has 442 wins and 451 losses, as an example.

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@Rvannith.8364 said:

@"DogMD.9182" said:

How does a bot play 1000 games and be useless and still stay in gold LOL

Bots are often on each team, so you'll have three or four human players on each team, and one or two bots on each team. Some bots are worse than others based on their class (although they appear to be programmed nearly identically) so even if the human players are identically matched, one team will pull ahead because they have a "less bad" bot. As a result, while the bots most often
lose
more than they
win
the difference isn't huge, because there's another 9 human or bot players that factor into the defeat or victory. Generally, bots are within a 10% margin, but mathematically speaking this isn't unexpected. There's a win/loss distribution curve you'd expect of even the most poorly programmed bots who do nothing but run to far point and spam AOEs as still winning about 40% of the time at worst: because your rank changes depending on how often you win/lose, which means over long periods of time your win-loss ratio should be somewhat even,
regardless
of if you're a bot or a real player, or how well or poorly you play.

Some of them are actually very close: Shambler.3408 has 442 wins and 451 losses, as an example.

i had some games in which 3 and even 4 of my team were bots.. sad year for gw2.. try playing ranked pvp in the morning. . 3 out of 5 in same team being bots isnt even a rare thing.. . infact you almost never have more than 1 actual human in your team during the first part of the day..

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It's certainly not specific to silver/gold since there's well documented platinum bots (such as the one in the trending post in the GW2 Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/k03kj3/baby_bot_finding_out_his_life_is_meaningless/), but yea...it's pretty bad.

It's a serious issue and I wish we could at least get some generic statement from ANet saying that they are aware of the problem and working on a solution, but it's seemingly been dead silent regarding this as far as I'm aware. I get that there is an expansion on the horizon, but this will affect PvP in the expansion just as much as now, so it still needs to be addressed.

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@"Dahkeus.8243" said:It's certainly not specific to silver/gold since there's well documented platinum bots (such as the one in the trending post in the GW2 Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/k03kj3/baby_bot_finding_out_his_life_is_meaningless/), but yea...it's pretty bad.

It's a serious issue and I wish we could at least get some generic statement from ANet saying that they are aware of the problem and working on a solution, but it's seemingly been dead silent regarding this as far as I'm aware. I get that there is an expansion on the horizon, but this will affect PvP in the expansion just as much as now, so it still needs to be addressed.

Anet only working on gemstore items .. really..

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@BadHealer.3608 said:

@"Styros.8931" said:trash company. Like support said, LOL JUST REPORT THEM ? .Yeah report them, but nobody banWell, in the morning there seem to be 10 bots playing happy with each other. So there are no problems and no complains in 20+ games.

Suddenly a human gets into that and reports 9 bots and than quits.

After that the bots play again 20+ happy with each other without any problem.

So you have now 41+ games and 40+ without any problem and in one game one "player" has a problem. From the point of view of the support, tell me who is causing the problem?

(And to even move this thought further, who do you think may risk a ban? The "player" that played 40+ games without a problem or the one that just gets in there and reports anybody?)

From a support point of view PVP is perfect the way it is, if you just let bots play on their own. Only human players are causing problems.

(I played for weeks in the morning, but only once I once get confused, because there was an other human than me. Very surprising.)

you legit made me laugh now xD haha so thank you for that ^^

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@"Dahkeus.8243" said:It's certainly not specific to silver/gold since there's well documented platinum bots (such as the one in the trending post in the GW2 Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/k03kj3/baby_bot_finding_out_his_life_is_meaningless/)

I'm not sure if that is the case: if you look up the bot names in forums etc, some of them have a small amount of account history (such as forum posts) from years ago. A lot are likely former "real" players who have had their abandoned accounts taken over, rather than them being brand spanking new accounts created by bots. A player might achieve a higher rank last season they played, have that displayed, then later have their account taken over? Alternatively, that might not be a bot at all, just someone with a keyboard mashed name running in a line hitting the "reverse direction" key. They don't have much of a PvP history, either way, and even if they are a bot... PvE bots just mess with the in-game economy a bit, they don't stop the rest of us from enjoying core content. If there's a focus here it should really be the issues that impact on people actually enjoying the game first and foremost.

Anyway, here Anet, I've done more of your work for you.

EDIT: list of bot accounts removed, just got an official warning for "accusing players of abusive behaviour" by writing a list of accounts that have 1000+ matches this pvp season and told just to use the in-game report function, rip.

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@Rvannith.8364 said:

@"Dahkeus.8243" said:It's certainly not specific to silver/gold since there's well documented platinum bots (such as the one in the trending post in the GW2 Subreddit:
)

I'm not sure if that is the case: if you look up the bot names in forums etc, some of them have a small amount of account history (such as forum posts) from years ago. A lot are likely former "real" players who have had their abandoned accounts taken over, rather than them being brand spanking new accounts created by bots. A player might achieve a higher rank last season they played, have that displayed, then later have their account taken over? Alternatively, that might not be a bot at all, just someone with a keyboard mashed name running in a line hitting the "reverse direction" key. They don't have much of a PvP history, either way, and even if they are a bot... PvE bots just mess with the in-game economy a bit, they don't stop
the rest of us
from enjoying core content. If there's a focus here it should really be the issues that impact on people actually enjoying the game first and foremost.

Anyway, here Anet,
I've done more of your work for you.

EDIT:
list of bot accounts removed, just got an official warning for "accusing players of abusive behaviour" by writing a list of accounts that have 1000+ matches this pvp season and told just to use the in-game report function, rip.

There's problems with this logic.

First of all, regardless of how the bot gets to platinum rank, it still stands true that there are bots at platinum rank games.

What rank an account has reached in previous seasons won't affect what rank you can display in your name plate. It will only show your current rank tier for the current season. This means that this bot (and ones like it) either made it to platinum rank by playing as a bot or is playing a freshly hacked account from someone who was at platinum or legendary recently enough for rank decay to not drop them out of that tier.

So, technically, it's possible that this is a PvE bot from a very freshly hacked account, but realistically, it's more likely that it's a bot that is doing PvP since A ) it wouldn't stay at platinum for long without playing PvP games and B ) existence of bots at platinum level games is well documented and known among the community (even if that does at times get exaggerated by upset players).

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