Could we get some news on removing botting accounts?

[DarkOne.9603]

Like the title said.

I've been farming elder wood and flax seed for a while now, and every time I do, I see multiple accounts where a player just teleports below ground level to nodes.

Only way to report them is to make screenshot after screenshot, hope you get their name on one of them, add that name to friends and then report them for botting.

Then you never hear from the report again (several accounts I've reported are still on my friend list, so it seems nothing has been done after even a few months) and we never hear any announcements about bot accounts being removed.

I fully understand you can't say anything about particular cases, right to privacy and all that. In contrast, Final Fantasy 14 (which has its fair share of bot problems) makes regular announcements about banning accounts for real money trading, breaking terms of service etcetera. They don't share information on specific cases, but at least they show they're doing something.

In contrast, I search for bots on this forum and I see multiple threads of people complaining about bots and people frustrated that nothing seems to be done.

 

I already remarked about this in a support ticket, but they simply advised me to post here, since, as they say, devs read the forums.

[mercury ranique.2170]

I think they do enough, but the issue is hard to resolve.

You say you see multiple accounts doing it. But how are you sure it is the same account over and over and still used for botting?

The way botting accounts work is that they are part of a bigger issue called goldselling.

The organisations behind them operate on many accounts and it is calculated that many of them are also removed over time. Some examples:
1: They obtain accounts using hacked accounts. These are existing accounts, but hacked by botters and then used to bot.
2: They create new accounts using stolen credit cards These are new accounts, but only if the real owner of the credit card reacts quick enough, the ability to not sent gold and resources is removed.

Some wrong assumptions.
"I saw a botter and I friended him and it is still active"
When it is a hacked account, it might very well be that the original owner has the account back and is playing again.

"I see the same player over and over botting"
Many botters also automate character creation to speed things up. So while they are different accounts, they look the same.

In short. It is difficult for us players to see and comprehend what ncsoft does about hackers and botters.
 

[GODh.3892]

On 11/6/2021 at 11:23 AM, DarkOne.9603 said:

Only way to report them is to make screenshot after screenshot, hope you get their name on one of them, add that name to friends and then report them for botting.

The whole report system is a joke. You need to select a player to use the report function, but that is often impossible tot do that because the bot is underground or in the node or just too fast (teleported away). And i think Anet wants multiple reports of 1 account before they even considering to look at it 😥

Edited November 10, 2021 by GODh.3892
typo

[DarkOne.9603]

On 11/9/2021 at 3:20 PM, mercury ranique.2170 said:

In short. It is difficult for us players to see and comprehend what ncsoft does about hackers and botters.

 

That's exactly my point. Nothing is said, so people tend to interpret that as 'nothing is done'.

You can see it in a lot of places, most of all in the forums and on Reddit. A lot of PvP players are very bitter about the topic of bots and they see no announcements whatsoever about anything being done about it.

I understand that they can't say anything about specific cases, but if you make reports, don't hear anything about your report being done, still see that account in action and then also never see an announcement, then that's not exactly going to inspire people to report these activities.

 

If ANet wants to do something about the problem, they should at least show that helping them by reporting does something

[mercury ranique.2170]

1 hour ago, DarkOne.9603 said:

 

That's exactly my point. Nothing is said, so people tend to interpret that as 'nothing is done'.

You can see it in a lot of places, most of all in the forums and on Reddit. A lot of PvP players are very bitter about the topic of bots and they see no announcements whatsoever about anything being done about it.

I understand that they can't say anything about specific cases, but if you make reports, don't hear anything about your report being done, still see that account in action and then also never see an announcement, then that's not exactly going to inspire people to report these activities.

 

If ANet wants to do something about the problem, they should at least show that helping them by reporting does something

I understand the frustration, but there is also such thing as privacy. Let's use the hacked account example. You report illegal activities. Anet sees it is a hacked account and might even alert the original owner that his security is breached. The original owner takes steps to improve his personal online security and regains control over his account.

All you see is that this account is still active. But do you think it is ok for them to tell the reporter what happened? Or give any information beyond: "Thanks,. we'll look into it" (which is what they are allready saying).

Another thing not mentioned before is that by informing people about actions taken, they also grant insight in how they operate. Another example. When a specific report about farming is made, they'll likely have a queue. Let's assume for the sake of explaining it is 3 days (no it isn't! but it is an example). By giving us feedback about the reports it is known this queue is 3 days. People might even discuss that 3 days is outragious. So the smart botters know that they have no fear to farm for atleast 2,5 days. After that they need to take a break of 4,5 days so they can't be caught in the act.

I'm not saying this is how NCSoft operates, but how they do operate should be obscured from the bad people. This makes it hard to share the info with the good people as well.

Frustrating? Yes
Can something be done? not much!

[TheQuickFox.3826]

Removing botting accounts is only of limited use as long as players can create new account for free or nearly free.

 

Best option is to to design the game to make it more resilient to botting to begin with, as the founders of ArenaNet wrote themselves:

https://web.archive.org/web/20060704151801/http://www.arena.net/news/articles/mikearticle040802.html

Edited November 16, 2021 by TheQuickFox.3826

[arukAdo.2047]

At some point after release, a few months or a year, there was a lot of tchat bot for gold sellers, and I mean a lot.
They did manage to solve the issue over time, nowaday theres either none or marginal ammounts of them in the game.
Whatever botting you can encounter is probly very marginal, or examinated/evaluated at a point or another.

In comparaison gw1 feel totally abandonned by anet, bots are running in plain sight to get daily zaishen, they dont care to hide.
In kamadan (the main hub) the advertissement for gold sellers is so annoying they basicly updated the client so you can filter your own tchat instead of trying to get rid of the sellers, there are websites that actually filter the tchat for you, at this point im not sure anybody actually read it in game anymore, or its marginal anyway, because its just left in that sorry state.
They took many years to repair the /report feature, but its pretty clear nobody is on the other side of the "line", botters/gold sellers dont even need to "switch" accounts, they are there since forever and never dealt with.
They even got the dye trader hacked/bugged by somebody for the black dye, since that well its impossible to use the npc for that specific purpose, affects all players regardless, answer from support was basicly they cant do anything because its too old, probly would take 5min to fix for a dev but anyway, nothing seems to reach them.

[DarkOne.9603]

On 11/16/2021 at 1:13 PM, mercury ranique.2170 said:

I understand the frustration, but there is also such thing as privacy. Let's use the hacked account example. You report illegal activities. Anet sees it is a hacked account and might even alert the original owner that his security is breached. The original owner takes steps to improve his personal online security and regains control over his account.

All you see is that this account is still active. But do you think it is ok for them to tell the reporter what happened? Or give any information beyond: "Thanks,. we'll look into it" (which is what they are allready saying).

Another thing not mentioned before is that by informing people about actions taken, they also grant insight in how they operate. Another example. When a specific report about farming is made, they'll likely have a queue. Let's assume for the sake of explaining it is 3 days (no it isn't! but it is an example). By giving us feedback about the reports it is known this queue is 3 days. People might even discuss that 3 days is outragious. So the smart botters know that they have no fear to farm for atleast 2,5 days. After that they need to take a break of 4,5 days so they can't be caught in the act.

I'm not saying this is how NCSoft operates, but how they do operate should be obscured from the bad people. This makes it hard to share the info with the good people as well.

Frustrating? Yes
Can something be done? not much!

 

"Announcement:

We've terminated 3940 accounts due to botting and RMT.

We've suspended 2345 accounts due to buying gold for money."

 

This is what I'm asking for. This is what FF14 does as I mentioned above.

Make it visible that you are actually doing something. "We'll look into it" is an empty promise. "We have looked into multiple issues and as result took this many actions" is a report on something actually being done. No privacy was breached. No information was given on their process towards their action. But you show your community that something is done.

 

You only have to look at the third person to post in this thread to see what a lot of people in the community are thinking:

On 11/10/2021 at 4:06 PM, GODh.3892 said:

The whole report system is a joke. You need to select a player to use the report function, but that is often impossible tot do that because the bot is underground or in the node or just too fast (teleported away). And i think Anet wants multiple reports of 1 account before they even considering to look at it 😥

 

[raykor.6723]

ANET needs to be more communicative about what they are doing to combat the problem. Something to let us know they are aware of and actively combating the problem. I see the underground node harvesters ALL THE TIME. The AFK farmers are a problem as well. If this is just the game they want to have then let us know and we'll all join the party.

[raykor.6723]

This game is great on many creative and artistic levels but as a programmer, I have always been impressed with the game as a piece of software. It performs very well the vast majority of times and is stable. All the more reason why I cannot for the life of me understand why they let this persist. The botter/teleporter/hacker activities are easily recognized by a human. If an activity has a pattern that a human can describe in words then it can absolutely be translated to a software routine that would detect and flag offending accounts.

Edited December 7, 2021 by raykor.6723

[DarkOne.9603]

I just reported 5 different bot accounts by waiting 8 minutes in a spot in Malchor's Leap and I missed more than half of them, because they show up just a fraction of a second.

Reddit and this forum are full of threads about bots.

 

Can we please at least get a reply about this in this thread?

[Teratus.2859]

Just a heads up but Mighty Teapot did a video on bots recently.

Apparently the people who make the biggest botting software for Gw2 are abandoning it soon and focusing most of their efforts on FF14 going forward.
Reason they give are (Gw2 isn't profitable enough to support anymore) which I personally think is BS, but that's what they said on their discord apparently.
 
So many of the common Gw2 bots may not be around much longer.
And frankly I say good riddance to all of them, and I hope the players who used them also quit the game as well.
I've no tolerance, sympathy or respect for people who cheat and abuse hacking software for their own selfish interests at the expense of everyone else.
Good riddance, good riddance, good riddance!!

[DarkOne.9603]

That suggests Mighty Teapot is very knowledgeable about the goings on of bots and the amount of people that use it, which makes him look incredibly suspicious.

But since he doesn't really need bots to get what he needs ingame, it's more likely that he doesn't know what he's talking about and he's just posting a video about "things he's heard", since posting videos is his source of income.

 

Regardless of the reason he posted that video. If it's true what he's saying, it means that that botting software will stop being useful once taken off. It doesn't mean there will be no more botting. If it's the biggest bot software that goes offline, that just means they go to the next person to supply people with bots.

Therefore, it doesn't diminish the need for Arenanet to address the issue at hand.

[DarkOne.9603]

*cough*

<

 

Bot accounts I reported months ago are still active.

[Forum Moderator.3419]

Hello Everyone,

If you witness any of these acts while playing, please submit an in-game report or a ticket to our Customer Support team, so they can properly investigate the matter.

Regards.