Bot Wars 2

[tetrodoxin.2134]

Returning player here.
I've decided to reinstall the game since I had some weeks off work - everyday life nowadays usually prevents me from playing time-intensive games (like MMOs).
Luckily, GW2 is a bit more forgiving in that regard and returning to the game usually is quite easy. 

Anyway - after catching up with the living story and figuring out all the new stuff that was introduced to the game since I left (shortly after PoF, so it's been a while), I decided to use the few days I have left and try to get one of those fancy Skyscales everyone seems to have now. I've found some guides on how to farm those ressource nodes most efficiently and ran my route, spending a few hours every day. Felt like college time all over again - I don't even mind the grindy nature of farming the stuff.

I noticed pretty quickly tho - players popping in and out around resource nodes within seconds, clusters of obviously afk/farming characters (mostly minionmancers) and other odd behaviour. Some online "research" revealed pretty quickly that this has been and still is an ongoing problem that is seemingly ignored? I've seen dozens of threads; frustrated people venting that apparently nothing is done about the botting. The weirdest part for me was - those botting characters weren't even some free accounts; many of them had very high ranking, wearing legendaries and all. So I guess using bots is tolerated and common in GW2 now? Am I the stupid one not using them? I'ts painfully easy to find resources and guides on how to do it; I obviously won't link any of that stuff here. I've reported some of them initially, but after reading more from people that apparently reported (the same) bots for weeks with no action from anet, I also decided to stop. The amount of bots I saw was just too staggering and reporting them all would have been way too time consuming.

As you might have guessed, I am playing this game very casually. But if botting in this very casual part of the game is so common, I really wonder how it goes in other aspects of the game. One might say "it doesn't affect you in any way, why even care?" and I guess that might even be a point, but in the end it's the sense of fairness that lurks in the back of your head and makes this still quite demotivating to see. And again, I don't even know the extent of botting in other aspects of the game that aren't as "casual" (but there seem to be a lot of complaints in the PvP section as well).
Very disappointed to see this amount of bots in the game, and I'm glad I probably don't have much time to play GW2 in the near future again.

This is probably nothing new to any of you guys here on the forums. Back when I played more actively (long before PoF), I rarely noticed any bots. Now they seem to be everywhere. I know that bots are a common problem for online games, and MMOs in particular. But seeing nothing done about the problem makes me kinda lose faith in this game.
I just needed a place to vent my concerns, and I am seriously wondering if (and why) arenanet is tolerating botting (and to what extent).

 

Thanks for reading.

[Turial.1293]

You are right that it has gotten worse recently. If you look way back to the core game, there just wasn't anything worth farming/botting back then but now there is so many places to generate tons of income that it just makes sense for some people. It's still not as woeful as other games but it does not give a good look for the game either. With the last year surrounding covid and layoffs, that was likely a big factor in affecting what could be done. The only real solution that I can see is to remove loot from the areas that people are farming, every time a spot appears to farm, they nerf the loot there. A genuine player will almsot never notice the change in loot and it would only affect afk players or bots. Changing how loot works as an overall system affects genuine players and modifying events is unlikely or tricky to do, at least if they just modify the loot tables of specific farming spots then that would be much more effective in my opinion.

 

As for bots that teleport around the place... that's just not an issue that has been solved yet 😞 in any game. Thankfully GW2 has the least amount of bots and afk players in all the games I played though it is absolutely on the rise and Anet will need to combat it sooner or later.

Edited September 1, 2021 by Turial.1293

[AgentMoore.9453]

1 hour ago, Turial.1293 said:

The only real solution that I can see is to remove loot from the areas that people are farming

I'd say a better solution would be to employ in-game moderating GMs to spend part of their shift visiting popular farming locations (and monitoring under-map behavior) and doing the check in/kick that they're purported to do when observing possible botting and AFK farming. These people aren't difficult to find. Now, I have no idea what kind of resources that would require or how much of this is already being done, but I can see the Not Awesome behavior steadily increasing all over the game.

Some seem very happy to die on the hill of 'just don't look at it, it's fine' in threads like these, but I agree that seeing so much of what appears to be automated play is demotivating when you're actively trying to do things in Tyria. I'm told it's even worse in competitive modes, but I'm not really an authority on those.

[Konrad Curze.5130]

in sPvP people have reported having games with 9 bots, them being the only real player

 

The status of this game is a disgrace, a farce. and Anet does absolutely nothing, nothing at all.  they simply dont care.

[Dante.1763]

2 minutes ago, Konrad Curze.5130 said:

in sPvP people have reported having games with 9 bots, them being the only real player

 

The status of this game is a disgrace, a farce. and Anet does absolutely nothing, nothing at all.  they simply dont care.

I have to ask, is this in ranked/unranked?

[Konrad Curze.5130]

2 minutes ago, Dante.1763 said:

I have to ask, is this in ranked/unranked?

https://clips.twitch.tv/BovineTacitMageThunBeast-WUKEm-Ohp44NZNbP

 

this is plat 3

[Dante.1763]

1 minute ago, Konrad Curze.5130 said:

https://clips.twitch.tv/BovineTacitMageThunBeast-WUKEm-Ohp44NZNbP

 

this is plat 3

Ouch 😞

 

[Jukhy.2431]

Not "taking sides" or trying to defend anyone here but please do note that there are more people who work from home since the covid crisis. Many have GW2 running in the background while they do some work, likely keep the game sounds on while tabbed out and check in from time to time. Their toon (usually minion master necro) stands still in area where mobs spawn constantly. I've seen some who I assumed to be "afk farmers" discuss things in map chat, so clearly they were not afk.
I have also noticed the same "blitzkrieg gathering", as I like to call it, taking place and I suspect the super fast ones are indeed using some kind of macro to do it. One place I see this often is the Sandswept Isles. Before now the last time I've seen it was before PoF, so it has been a problem in the past. However there are many who do park their toons on eg. rich iron nodes just to log them in and gather it daily and that is completely fine.

On a sidenote; wish I could work from home and keep playing GW2 in the background. I wouldn't make much but every bit of gold helps.

[Turial.1293]

1 hour ago, AgentMoore.9453 said:

I'd say a better solution would be to employ in-game moderating GMs to spend part of their shift visiting popular farming locations (and monitoring under-map behavior) and doing the check in/kick that they're purported to do when observing possible botting and AFK farming. These people aren't difficult to find. Now, I have no idea what kind of resources that would require or how much of this is already being done, but I can see the Not Awesome behavior steadily increasing all over the game.

Some seem very happy to die on the hill of 'just don't look at it, it's fine' in threads like these, but I agree that seeing so much of what appears to be automated play is demotivating when you're actively trying to do things in Tyria. I'm told it's even worse in competitive modes, but I'm not really an authority on those.

As you say "you don't know how much it is being done" and communication is key. Lip service to say they are doing it is one thing but as players we don't see that. We only have their word to go on but I wouldn imagine that since it is getting worse they don't have the resources right now. My solution is based around screwing the lazy players/bots and not implement any sort of band-aid solution that hurts genuine players. It's usually what happens in online games.

 

Oh I totally agree with you, the defenders of this seem to believe that it somehow doesn't affect them which is absurd but it's ironic that they insist on telling other players to mind their business when they can't stop themselves from butting in to defend it lol.

 

As for pvp, I don't care for it and general consensus is that neither does Anet.

Edited September 1, 2021 by Turial.1293

[ClanWars.5746]

51 minutes ago, Konrad Curze.5130 said:

https://clips.twitch.tv/BovineTacitMageThunBeast-WUKEm-Ohp44NZNbP

 

this is plat 3

 AT have it worse, 5 openly lazy named players in a teams afk in base for a quick 25 gold each AT.

 And in pvp league you'll see bots that camp near or on nodes, spam their combos when another player goes near it's range. After it finish it's combos it will stand there quietly until the skills come off cooldown.

 I'll be honest, these posts on bots/afk farming problems which I see a lot in the forum and reddit are useless. I have never seen an official anet employee or someone qualified comment on this issue properly. But still it's good to speak out on it but don't hope for something to change, it's been this way since long ago.

[Rogue.8235]

5 hours ago, tetrodoxin.2134 said:

noticed pretty quickly tho - players popping in and out around resource nodes within seconds

Rather than leaving all of my characters in a city hub, I park them near different nodes.  That way I can easily just log on the character, gather, and log on to the next one.  I'm just using my characters efficiently when I'm not playing them.  I usually have 3 characters at a time that I don't do this on as they are the ones I'm actively playing at the time.

Not everything you see is a bot.  

6 hours ago, tetrodoxin.2134 said:

...Some online "research" revealed pretty quickly that this has been and still is an ongoing problem that is seemingly ignored? I've seen dozens of threads; frustrated people venting that apparently nothing is done about the botting. The weirdest part for me was - those botting characters weren't even some free accounts; many of them had very high ranking, wearing legendaries and all. So I guess using bots is tolerated and common in GW2 now? Am I the stupid one not using them? I'ts painfully easy to find resources and guides on how to do it; I obviously won't link any of that stuff here. I've reported some of them initially, but after reading more from people that apparently reported (the same) bots for weeks with no action from anet, I also decided to stop. The amount of bots I saw was just too staggering and reporting them all would have been way too time consuming. ...

(emphasis added)

Well that quickly spiraled out of control.  That was a massive leap of logic there to state.

So, to combat bots it must be done in waves.  Incremental changes to detection will quickly be met with rapid adaptations from the ones creating the automated software.  InfoSec personnel have to identify all of the parameters used by the current rendition of automation and vulnerabilities, create solutions, and execute en masse.

Also, InfoSec processes should NEVER be shared with the public, as that would defeat the purpose.  Publicizing how you fight bots only gives the answer book to the ones creating bots.  So no, players will never receive monthly reports concerning this.....

Further, reporting the actions taken to the player that reported is the very definition of a vulnerability.  If you create bots, you can then do occasional reporting on your own bots to see how ArenaNet adapts and how long it takes them to adapt.  

Moreover, you have already demonstrated that you can't always correctly identify that the "strange behavior" you witness is actually a normal active player.  Your "research" is also a review of accounts made by other players who very possibly cannot accurately identify true botting either.

Instead of actually thinking the situation through, you immediately jumped to the irrationally impulsive and hyperbolic state of stating you, too, should be botting.....

6 hours ago, tetrodoxin.2134 said:

As you might have guessed, I am playing this game very casually. But if botting in this very casual part of the game is so common, I really wonder how it goes in other aspects of the game. One might say "it doesn't affect you in any way, why even care?" and I guess that might even be a point, but in the end it's the sense of fairness that lurks in the back of your head and makes this still quite demotivating to see. And again, I don't even know the extent of botting in other aspects of the game that aren't as "casual" (but there seem to be a lot of complaints in the PvP section as well).

Again, you just jumped to the conclusion that botting is so rampant and problematic.  You have ill-informed premises that you used to just start making assumptions.  

And just to intercept the remote possibility of it being brought up:

No, I am not defending botting.  No, I'm not stating that there is absolutely no botting at all in the game.  

6 hours ago, tetrodoxin.2134 said:

Very disappointed to see this amount of bots in the game, and I'm glad I probably don't have much time to play GW2 in the near future again.

Again, it's an assumption you made.  While there is no fault at being very disappointed or even very upset with rampant botting, that just isn't the case here.  The good news is you don't have to be disappointed anymore.  Bad news is there's still other things you can be disappointed about without making rash assumptions (there's stuff I'm disappointed with in the game, too).

6 hours ago, tetrodoxin.2134 said:

This is probably nothing new to any of you guys here on the forums. Back when I played more actively (long before PoF), I rarely noticed any bots. Now they seem to be everywhere. I know that bots are a common problem for online games, and MMOs in particular. But seeing nothing done about the problem makes me kinda lose faith in this game.

Your misidentification of normal, active players as bots is not surprising to me.  Manyothers have made this mistake and continue to do so.  

As for AFK farming, I have not noticed an increase.  People change farming spots so that might be what you notice.  The only time I know of where AFK farming was much more numerous is around the beginning of HoT when auto-casting Reaper GS 4 became widely known and engineer turrets lasted indefinitely.

6 hours ago, tetrodoxin.2134 said:

I just needed a place to vent my concerns, and I am seriously wondering if (and why) arenanet is tolerating botting (and to what extent).

They do not tolerate bots,  You just lacked the awareness of information security practices.

 

[tetrodoxin.2134]

You are misinterpreting observations. I am not referring to players logging in once next to a resource node, and then disappearing. Of course people do that. What I'm referring to is, while moving across the map, seeing the same characters seemingly port out of nowhere from node to node within a fraction of a second (often times just floating above the nodes).

If that's not botting, I absolutely agree with you. Yes, I assume those are bots. Because it's not possible to port from node to node with the same characters, unless there was a new gemstore item that allowed that.

[Dante.1763]

11 minutes ago, tetrodoxin.2134 said:

You are misinterpreting observations. I am not referring to players logging in once next to a resource node, and then disappearing. Of course people do that. What I'm referring to is, while moving across the map, seeing the same characters seemingly port out of nowhere from node to node within a fraction of a second (often times just floating above the nodes).

If that's not botting, I absolutely agree with you. Yes, I assume those are bots. Because it's not possible to port from node to node with the same characters, unless there was a new gemstore item that allowed that.

i absolutely get annoyed by those "players"

Teleport, mine, teleport mine, teleport mine. On classes with no ports, and no way to move that fast.

[Daniyyel.3428]

I'm one of those who has a lot of characters parked in good spots.  I log in and get the chest/gathering or whatever I'm farming.  I've seen people post on here about seeing someone log in but they are under the map.  Honestly I thought the person posting was just seeing things and was mistaken.  But over the last few months I've seen that as well. I can see their character but I can never click on them, its like they aren't there.  I'm not accusing anyone of cheating, fact is I don't know.  All I know is they are doing something I can't do on any profession.  Maybe they figured out a secret.  But it does look veeeeerrrrry suspicious.

[Svarty.8019]

 

7 hours ago, tetrodoxin.2134 said:

Bot Wars 2

16 MILLION Bot accounts!! Fact!

[Dante.1763]

26 minutes ago, Svarty.8019 said:

 

16 MILLION Bot accounts!! Fact!

All of us are bots, did you not know this?

Joking aside, while i dont think its really a problem, it is noticeable in places and does go against the TOS, so it should(And it does, except in pvp it seems) get dealt with.

Just need to figure out why anet hasnt banned the teleport hackers though despite getting reports 😕

[Turial.1293]

4 hours ago, Rogue.8235 said:

Rather than leaving all of my characters in a city hub, I park them near different nodes.  That way I can easily just log on the character, gather, and log on to the next one.  I'm just using my characters efficiently when I'm not playing them.  I usually have 3 characters at a time that I don't do this on as they are the ones I'm actively playing at the time.

Not everything you see is a bot.  

(emphasis added)

Well that quickly spiraled out of control.  That was a massive leap of logic there to state.

So, to combat bots it must be done in waves.  Incremental changes to detection will quickly be met with rapid adaptations from the ones creating the automated software.  InfoSec personnel have to identify all of the parameters used by the current rendition of automation and vulnerabilities, create solutions, and execute en masse.

Also, InfoSec processes should NEVER be shared with the public, as that would defeat the purpose.  Publicizing how you fight bots only gives the answer book to the ones creating bots.  So no, players will never receive monthly reports concerning this.....

Further, reporting the actions taken to the player that reported is the very definition of a vulnerability.  If you create bots, you can then do occasional reporting on your own bots to see how ArenaNet adapts and how long it takes them to adapt.  

Moreover, you have already demonstrated that you can't always correctly identify that the "strange behavior" you witness is actually a normal active player.  Your "research" is also a review of accounts made by other players who very possibly cannot accurately identify true botting either.

Instead of actually thinking the situation through, you immediately jumped to the irrationally impulsive and hyperbolic state of stating you, too, should be botting.....

Again, you just jumped to the conclusion that botting is so rampant and problematic.  You have ill-informed premises that you used to just start making assumptions.  

And just to intercept the remote possibility of it being brought up:

No, I am not defending botting.  No, I'm not stating that there is absolutely no botting at all in the game.  

Again, it's an assumption you made.  While there is no fault at being very disappointed or even very upset with rampant botting, that just isn't the case here.  The good news is you don't have to be disappointed anymore.  Bad news is there's still other things you can be disappointed about without making rash assumptions (there's stuff I'm disappointed with in the game, too).

Your misidentification of normal, active players as bots is not surprising to me.  Manyothers have made this mistake and continue to do so.  

As for AFK farming, I have not noticed an increase.  People change farming spots so that might be what you notice.  The only time I know of where AFK farming was much more numerous is around the beginning of HoT when auto-casting Reaper GS 4 became widely known and engineer turrets lasted indefinitely.

They do not tolerate bots,  You just lacked the awareness of information security practices.

 

That's a whole lotta words to say you support botting.

[JustTrogdor.7892]

It would not surprise me if  some of the bots people are seeing in PVP are there via Anet.  To be clear I am not saying they are.  But I have seen other games use bots to lower queue times in competitive modes.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

9 hours ago, AgentMoore.9453 said:

I'd say a better solution would be to employ in-game moderating GMs to spend part of their shift visiting popular farming locations (and monitoring under-map behavior) and doing the check in/kick that they're purported to do when observing possible botting and AFK farming. These people aren't difficult to find. Now, I have no idea what kind of resources that would require or how much of this is already being done, but I can see the Not Awesome behavior steadily increasing all over the game.

Some seem very happy to die on the hill of 'just don't look at it, it's fine' in threads like these, but I agree that seeing so much of what appears to be automated play is demotivating when you're actively trying to do things in Tyria. I'm told it's even worse in competitive modes, but I'm not really an authority on those.

It used to be very common practice in the games industry to pay alot of GMs to moderate the game and keep it a safe place to play, not only for how players treat each other but also to watch for things like bugs, exploits, etc. But as the old saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and GMs often ended up being a liability to the companies as much of the time they would actually be the ones dishing out abuse to players (especially sexually harassing players in exchange for rewards), or using their abilities to duplicate and sell items for real money, etc.

 

In one game I previously played, the GM exploitation was so bad they crashed the entire in-game econemy.

 

Game companies don't like to employ GMs anymore, and those employed by this game have essentially no power for the same reasons, and in most cases can't even help you with anything or punish abusive players.

 

@ Thread :

I've talked about this already in other threads but there's no way to stop bots. There's no way to 100% discern a Human player from a bot because many Humans behave in the same manner.

 

For example, while yes its obvious that botting software does exist (which I won't talk about here), alot of the players who seem to be bots in PvE are just AFK and have a coin on the key or something, its a super old tactic used in MMOs to play while doing something else. A bot would move around and try to maximise its farming potential, not camp a single spot with Minions.

 

They don't get banned because they respond when a GM messages them to check if they're Human. There's nothing in the rules against AFK play and Diminishing Returns (DR) keeps them from getting any significant loot if they don't move to other areas every hour or so.

 

The ones popping up at resource nodes are not only bots however, but hackers as well. And you should always report them and they do get banned rather quickly.

Edited September 2, 2021 by Hannelore.8153

[Xanadrine.4352]

It amazes me that people want to take all these drastic measures that will ultimately ruin the game for everyone. There is no need to remove loot from mobs , or have to hire GMs to monitor bot spots, way over kill. All they have to do is change it so if your pet or turret or minion w/e does more damage than you to a mob you get no loot from it. Good lord other games have been doing this for years to stop autobots. Anything else ruins legit farming for everyone else, and cost anet time and money, something they dont have. As for gathering and people saying bots are teleporting around the map or under the map to nodes, thats a different problem they are using hack software and need to be reported.

[Dante.1763]

9 hours ago, Hannelore.8153 said:

 

 

The ones popping up at resource nodes are not only bots however, but hackers as well. And you should always report them and they do get banned rather quickly.

Except they dont it seems, Ive got two on my list that are still active to this day, and have been, for over two years. 

Further, they should have stuff set up to detect characters node hoping in such a manner and it shouldnt be down to players to have to report someone who can warp before you can even click, not to mention the do it faster than the fastest moints. Before anyone says it, no they arent logging in on a node amd logging out. Its the same character across every node on the map. The banning should be manual, but the detection can be automated.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

1 hour ago, Dante.1763 said:

Except they dont it seems, Ive got two on my list that are still active to this day, and have been, for over two years. 

Further, they should have stuff set up to detect characters node hoping in such a manner and it shouldnt be down to players to have to report someone who can warp before you can even click, not to mention the do it faster than the fastest moints. Before anyone says it, no they arent logging in on a node amd logging out. Its the same character across every node on the map. The banning should be manual, but the detection can be automated.

In this case yes I do believe the detection can be automated.

 

I think the devs are scared to go too nuts with automated detection though since a long time ago near the start of the game they had several long banning sprees in which alot (thousands) of innocents lost access to their accounts due to poorly written algorithms, and they kind of stopped after that.

 

That happens alot in this game though, something goes wrong and they just never return to it again. 😕

Edited September 2, 2021 by Hannelore.8153

[Dante.1763]

20 minutes ago, Hannelore.8153 said:

In this case yes I do believe the detection can be automated.

 

I think the devs are scared to go too nuts with automated detection though since a long time ago near the start of the game they had several long banning sprees in which alot (thousands) of innocents lost access to their accounts due to poorly written algorithms, and they kind of stopped after that.

 

That happens alot in this game though, something goes wrong and they just never return to it again. 😕

I remember that, auto software isnt infallable either 😞

There is a clever way they could do it, and that would be putting nodes where players cant get them(floating in the air for example, or inside a mountain.), but..that would be a bit of work.

[Dami.5046]

people need to play games like aion to really understand the difference between a bot you barely see collecting a chest and  over 30 fighting over the same mob in a questing area.  

 

[Dante.1763]

1 minute ago, Dami.5046 said:

people need to play games like aion to really understand the difference between a bot you barely see collecting a chest and  over 30 fighting over the same mob in a questing area.  

 

That happens here too tho?

I was doing a heart recently and there was a stack of 10 minion master necros all standing on top of each other letting their minions kill all the mobs. Only time they did a cast was to resummon a minion.

Made that heart frustrating as hell.