Curse

FoxBat · Apr 21, 2010, 02:19 PM // 14:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by R_Frost

well all the past game changes havent done anything. loot scaling, nerf of bot heavy areas, nerf of builds. all had an affect on the non-boots more then the botters. un-do most of the nerfs making it easier for the rest of us to get gold and the bots are doing nothing more them wasting bandwidth. the economy has been in the crapper for a long time anyways so who cares if gold becomes easier to get.

Loot scaling did have it's intended effect on the larger population. Now most everything is near worthless AKA easily bought.

NeHoMaR · Apr 21, 2010, 03:51 PM // 15:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by poppu16

You are totally wrong, such methods already exists (search guild wars client API on google code)

Not, I am not, that method is the one in the second paragraph of my post:

Quote:

Originally Posted by NeHoMaR

There's no way at least the bot software is merged with GW.exe, or interfere RAM; even doing that half of the list is still impossible.

Martin Alvito · Apr 21, 2010, 04:46 PM // 16:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jinkies

True but removing tradeable money and items from the game removes the incentive for many players to actually play the game. Most players would not play an MMO where items of value could not be traded.

Yup.

Business interests > making the game work. ANet wants to sell games, and the best way to do that is to build the biggest tent possible.

Quote:

Originally Posted by snikerz

@Martin, do you know them? they know you.

Don't recognize the names. A hazard of being a C-list e-game celebrity, I'm afraid. People that recognize you > people where you can keep straight who's who. I talk to a lot of people, and I have a good memory, but it has limits.

Quote:

Originally Posted by capashen

botter are hardly banned , go in HA ID1 and see XXXXX he is the first botter XD

Seconding Lemming's motion. The player in question does not bot. Like Lemming, I have played with him and he does not exhibit bot-like behavior.

Quote:

Originally Posted by axe

Banning botters has to happen, its the same thing as the Red Resign that spiraled out of control, once the "honest" players see that nothing is done, then the problem becomes exponentially worse.

I completely agree that something has to happen. But the response doesn't have to be mass bans. RR proved that if civil disobedience becomes sufficiently widespread, ANet isn't going to ban everyone. Honestly, I think that it sucks that people exploiting the Ebony Citadel glitch ate the banhammer because they were a small group, but the people exploiting RR get off free because ANet won't ban 10-20% of the active player base.

This shows the inadequacy of a banhammer policy. At the end of the day, these issues are design problems that are the sole responsibility of ANet. It is their responsibility to find them and fix them. No other regime is sufficiently transparent to work. Gaile used to like to invoke "common sense" as the test for using the banhammer, but that's cultural and it's ludicrous to suppose that Gaile's "common sense" is universally shared by all human beings of all cultures. The only fair regime is to establish a list of behaviors (like duping) that is easily understandable, indicate that those behaviors are bannable, and then fight fires as they crop up.

Worse, you should realize that Schelling won a Nobel Prize for showing (among other things) that deterrence only works when the deterrent threat is credible. If this were 2005 or 2006 and ANet was still deriving a lot of revenue from game sales, I'd buy the banhammer threat. But it's costly to enforce such a policy, and I don't see the current skeleton crew spending their time doing a job (hunting down botters) that they simply have not been trained for.

Finding botters is a complicated enforcement task. You have to figure out how to separate out non-botters from botters. This is harder than it sounds, because real, live human beings focused on efficiently completing a task can be rather botlike. I know a fair number of real people that have been banned for "bot-like behavior" because ANet didn't believe that a real human could produce those results. If you believe in America, then you should agree with Jefferson that we should let 100 guilty people go free before convicting one innocent man. That principle makes enforcing an anti-bot policy difficult.

At the end of the day, I come back to the original argument: the banhammer doesn't solve these problems. Staying on top of why players engage in these behaviors and correcting flawed incentives does. ANet has an intelligence problem. If I were a developer, I'd employ people to infiltrate the networks containing the most sophisticated players (who hear about these problems as they crop up), and then use that information to fix my game. That's a lot cheaper than playing catch-up trying to enforce the rules, and it's more efficient.

Xslash · Apr 21, 2010, 07:32 PM // 19:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

we should let 100 guilty people go free before convicting one innocent man.

qft.

i dont give a shit if 1000 afk botters are running around.
a legit person being banned is worse, especially if it ends up to be someone you know or even you yourself.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dr love

at least people will never complain about not enough monks in RA... that's about all you can ask for.

still not enough monks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killed u man

Stop kiting bots for when Bull's is getting used on you. Cancelbots for when diversion and shame is about to be cast on you. Even cancel interrupt bots, which will cancel your spells if an interrupt is used on you. (Though relies on <80 ping orso)
Weaponswap bots, kite bots, prot bots (Pretty much the same way Me/Rt's worked in HA, they can land a spirit bond against an rspike from the time between the arrows being activated to impact) and infuse bots.
The list truly is endless, and on they are so easy accesable aswell.
But ye, Anet COULD fix the problem, or even do a mass ban on the people currently using the public bots (which will be what, 95% of the botters?), but they wont...

where do they draw the line on who to ban then?

heres a scenario with a so-called infuse bot.
at what point does it become a bot:

1. macro esc+f1+1+f2 on a keyboard - auto weapon swap to 4040 to infuse
2. macro esc+partymember1+f1+1+f2 on keyboard - auto weapon swap + target party member 1. works the same for all party members
3. a macro that infuses once u double click on a party member
4. texmod to make frontline a glowing beacon so you can watch where the damage is happening
5. a macro that just targets the party member with lowest health
4. combine 2+4 and put in some if,then variable. if health>20%, then infuse.
5. go even further than just after the fact infusing: if 4+ opposing party members are casting/attacking 1 party member, auto target, then infuse in ~1 second.
6. have a calculator automatically add up all the damage opposing members will deal, determine whether or not to infuse
7. screw the infusing, just turn on some interrupt bot and interrupt the spike.

and the drunkard bot.
so ANET doesn't ban people who use a autoclicker
but if they use that dll inject thing which auto clicks alcohol, thats a bot?
it has the same result.

which brings me to the RA monk bot.
lets assume you agree up to scenario 3 is acceptable and not a bot. what if it applied to everyone of your skills. thats still an unfair advantage.
even if you just agreed to scenario 1, its an unfair advantage, though a small one. one click is faster than 3.

i believe they should take that RA monk bot, shove it into Tahlkora, Dunkoro, Mhenlo, and all the other monks AI, so I can wear starter armor, perma frenzy, and still beat HM.

Mini Vizu · Apr 21, 2010, 08:36 PM // 20:36

I decided to do some RA and I found myself wishing for a monk bot on my team. It took a few teams to even find a monk, and when I did, they were bonder monks..... that's right, life bond and life barrier. WIN.

The Drunkard · Apr 21, 2010, 08:53 PM // 20:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

At the end of the day, I come back to the original argument: the banhammer doesn't solve these problems. Staying on top of why players engage in these behaviors and correcting flawed incentives does. ANet has an intelligence problem. If I were a developer, I'd employ people to infiltrate the networks containing the most sophisticated players (who hear about these problems as they crop up), and then use that information to fix my game. That's a lot cheaper than playing catch-up trying to enforce the rules, and it's more efficient.

Agreed. Banning RRs was pratically useless when there were 10+ districts of people.

Although the cases of botting in pvp don't sound dire now, wait for summer when people get out of school and have free time on their hands. When the average GW player finds out that bots are easy to run and nets them cash, there will be a massive influx of pvp bots, just like what happened with RR.

Hopefully Anet does something about this, although I'm not very optomistic.

Agar · Apr 21, 2010, 10:27 PM // 22:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mini Vizu

I decided to do some RA and I found myself wishing for a monk bot on my team. It took a few teams to even find a monk, and when I did, they were bonder monks..... that's right, life bond and life barrier. WIN.

I have never seen a bonder in RA and i play for years...also join date: Mar2010...nuff said

miskav · Apr 21, 2010, 10:46 PM // 22:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agar

I have never seen a bonder in RA and i play for years...also join date: Mar2010...nuff said

You haven't played as much as you think you did then.

I've seen hundreds over the years. It was even a hugely popular build on PvX for a few months.

cantalus · Apr 21, 2010, 11:34 PM // 23:34

"I have never seen a bonder in RA and i play for years...also join date: Mar2010...nuff said"

see bonders fail daily

see join date...nuff said

Shinichi Megure · Apr 22, 2010, 12:00 AM // 00:00

A good idea would be removing zkeys n (remove/freeze) Titles , so that nobody can make cash or gain anything from it.
Ppl who need gold should farm in pve, pvp is the place to have fun.

Thevil King · Apr 22, 2010, 12:17 AM // 00:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shinichi Megure

A good idea would be removing zkeys n (remove/freeze) Titles , so that nobody can make cash or gain anything from it.
Ppl who need gold should farm in pve, pvp is the place to have fun.

this would actually do something considering that most pvp people as of now are motivated by prospect of titles/emotes/$$. mostly tho, its about the zkeys, as there is very little prestige attached to titles and emotes now. reducing the reward will lead to less people playing them, but it is the trade off for actually increasing the quality of players somewhat. and given that anet always allude to their lack of resources/manpower, it is in fact a plausible thing to do, as it would not require them to put in as much work.

Dusk Banewalker · Apr 22, 2010, 02:16 AM // 02:16

Woe to those who seek a sense of achievement and self-worth by competition. Ironically, higher forms of competition have the trend of bringing out the worst in people, rather than the best as one might expect. What happened to pvping simply for the fun of it? It is a game after all.

My $0.02

lishi · Apr 22, 2010, 10:07 AM // 10:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dusk Banewalker

Woe to those who seek a sense of achievement and self-worth by competition. Ironically, higher forms of competition have the trend of bringing out the worst in people, rather than the best as one might expect. What happened to pvping simply for the fun of it? It is a game after all.

My $0.02

that is BS, they are many idiot (believior wise) HA player(and gvg too probably), but if you ever gone to RA you will notice that they are everywhere.

Karate Jesus · Apr 22, 2010, 12:49 PM // 12:49

Quote:

Advanced Mo/W Bots in RA

Just a heads up - these bots aren't advanced. Hell, they're barely good. You should see what a well programmed AHK bot can do compared to the Mo/W's.

The only reason these bots work is because 1/2 bar healing is easy and typically a team with a monk is going to win over one that doesn't.

Enjoy your free glads, guys.

axe · Apr 22, 2010, 01:09 PM // 13:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

At the end of the day, I come back to the original argument: the banhammer doesn't solve these problems. Staying on top of why players engage in these behaviors and correcting flawed incentives does. ANet has an intelligence problem. If I were a developer, I'd employ people to infiltrate the networks containing the most sophisticated players (who hear about these problems as they crop up), and then use that information to fix my game. That's a lot cheaper than playing catch-up trying to enforce the rules, and it's more efficient.

Martin, I really like your perspectives on these issues, esp. botting, you are very rational and you play the devils advocate well.

My problem is WAY WAY WAY WAY back when botting first started in PvE, then migrated to Rollerbeatle, snowball arena, but JUST BEFORE it got to the sophistication of Rupt Bots. Anet would have had a lot fewer bans to dish out.

And again to my point of Red Resign, Botting currently has not spiraled out of control, but by the time I personally start noticing it while playing (I rarely play) it has reached a point of saturation that will tip QUICKLY into the "Out of control" category.

Back during Rollerbeatle botting you advocated not banning as well, they have not banned, and the problem is worsening.

At this point in the game, I can hardly believe that Zkey farming is effecient enough vs other bot farming methods to warrent these monk bots existence in RA, the Rupt Bots in HA, etc.. PvP farming is SLOW unless you are getting tournament reward points.

The existance of bots in PvP is solely for taking the "grind" out of otherwise unattainable titles/status. While that doesnt exactly explain the monk bots in RA unless its RA Zquest night, the title is easy enough to get in your HoM, but even with a bot, still not going to max it in the near future. I would only gather that RA serves as a low risk test environment for more sophisticated bot developement.

In HA you can help 7 legit accounts boost their fame with one rupt bot, if the rupt bot account gets banned, the 7 others still profit. So Banning the RA bots, and HA bots serves very little to the cause, it will keep the problem from spiraling.

In situations like this I always remember that putting up deterents keeps the "honest" people honest, you will NEVER keep a theif from stealing, if they want to steal, they will. Basically you are 100% correct, the mass banhamer will NOT solve the problem, but again, it will keep those players that play the game honestly from seeing a Red Resign Situation and jumping on WITH THE SAFETY OF KNOWING that Anet doesnt issue mass bans.

Lowering rewards is not going to do anything to the PvP bots, they are title grinding/testing the rewards are already low enough.

Martin Alvito · Apr 22, 2010, 05:37 PM // 17:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by axe

My problem is WAY WAY WAY WAY back when botting first started in PvE, then migrated to Rollerbeatle, snowball arena, but JUST BEFORE it got to the sophistication of Rupt Bots. Anet would have had a lot fewer bans to dish out.

They did try to do this in 2005 and 2006. Unfortunately, it didn't work. Figure that ANet derived around a quarter of a billion dollars from sales of GW. Unfortunately, game design is a comparatively low margin business. Most of that money gets eaten up in salaries, benefits and overhead.

By contrast, the gold seller in a low wage country has a very high margin business. The business model is to exploit the wage differential between the developing world and the developed world. Further, the botting confers massive economies of scale compared to those of the individual player. Long story short, you can make in-game loot at a cost far, far below that of what your customers are willing to pay. And while the activity is technically illegal, in practice ANet has no ability to enforce the law.

The result is that the enforcement team is always horribly outgunned. The enemy is well funded and well organized, and they win in the long run because of that. That's to say nothing of skilled programmers who figure out how to bot largely as an intellectual exercise that tests their programming skill. (I'm sure they want the resultant rewards, but I guarantee you that the ego boost from figuring out how to do it trumps whatever they earn with the bot.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by axe

Back during Rollerbeatle botting you advocated not banning as well, they have not banned, and the problem is worsening.

While I agree that this is true, I disagree with you about the solution. I'd love to see everyone that bots get banned, but there are a couple of problems with that. An effective mass ban will cause lots of false positives. We don't want that. Worse, the bots will just come back in a form that ANet cannot yet detect.

If there's an effective RBR bot out there, then it's stealing hundreds or even thousands of ecto from me. I don't like that. But the evidence suggests that trying to ban botters is a Sisyphean endeavor. There's not a lot of point in rolling the boulder to the top of the hill if it's just going to roll back down once you let go.

Quote:

Originally Posted by axe

At this point in the game, I can hardly believe that Zkey farming is effecient enough vs other bot farming methods to warrent these monk bots existence in RA, the Rupt Bots in HA, etc.. PvP farming is SLOW unless you are getting tournament reward points.

If they're looking for the PvE bots, and they're not looking for the PvP bots, then it makes a certain amount of sense. And as you note, botting RA starts to look time efficient when the ZQuest is available.

Quote:

Originally Posted by axe

In situations like this I always remember that putting up deterents keeps the "honest" people honest, you will NEVER keep a theif from stealing, if they want to steal, they will. Basically you are 100% correct, the mass banhamer will NOT solve the problem, but again, it will keep those players that play the game honestly from seeing a Red Resign Situation and jumping on WITH THE SAFETY OF KNOWING that Anet doesnt issue mass bans.

Yes, but a better solution is to strip the incentives that lead people to bot. In all honesty, it's probably too late to do much for GW. What you should hope for is that the development team learns from their mistakes (graphics.dll, title tracks, artificially low gold caps, massive disparity in the rewards for playing different content/farms, bottable solo farms, etc.) and returns with a GW2 model that is fun to play and doesn't drive degenerate behaviors.

Martin Alvito · Apr 22, 2010, 08:33 PM // 20:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zahr Dalsk

Making things like elite armour into rewards for completing, for example, the campaign, would go a long way to improving the situation.

I've argued for similar systems in the past. I'd rather see a time attack sort of format where speed, rather than grind, allocates loot. Think the Factions missions, only with extremely challenging time limits and reserving the best shinies for players that can finish all of the missions with insanely fast times. That also provides an additional disincentive against power creep, because that will offend the hardcore audience that had to work to get their goodies.

Unfortunately, Jinkies is on the money with the claim that such a system will limit the number of people ANet can sell games to. Some people just want to spend most of their time sitting in someplace like Kamadan, using the game as a chat client, and making in-game money as a middleman.

ANet (and everyone else) wants to sell games to these people. Games in this genre therefore retread the random drop system, which dates (at least) to Wizardry and 1981. MMOs improve on the inefficiencies of the system somewhat, in that you can at least trade scarce shinies you don't want for scarce shinies you do want. That creates markets, and usually the most efficient way to get capital in a game is to farm up a bankroll and then move into the trading community. Some subset of any community is clueless about item prices and can be exploited, and the profit potential for high-end items is large due to the innate barriers to entering those markets.

But it's still crazy that the power of the market causes us to have to live with refinements on a 30 year old core mechanic. You wouldn't be able to sell a shooter with a 30 year old physics package, so you'd think that eventually some developer would be brave and try your idea, or at least implement it as a large part of loot assignment. (No, I don't consider the campaign endgame armors or green items to meaningfully do this.)

*lemming* · Apr 22, 2010, 09:02 PM // 21:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

Yes, but a better solution is to strip the incentives that lead people to bot.

Out of curiosity, how would you account for people aimbotting in public servers where stats aren't recorded? There's absolutely nothing tangible at stake in such matches.

Graveheart · Apr 22, 2010, 09:45 PM // 21:45

Botting is a really old issue,i am just glad anet dealt with it better than all the rest mmos out there.
Ncsoft on the other hand,does have a very bad history with veteran players.
Lineage 2 was bot infested to the friggin core as far as i remember.

http://lineage2.stratics.com/content...L2-comic16.jpg

This one is one old comic strip by an artist who got accused as bot user and banned(which the guy was fanatical against them,and thats why he mentioned the situation on his strips)
Nc pretty much didnt like the strips mentioning how bad the situation was,which was the real reason behind his ban.
Anyways the thing with the game is that they dealt with the basic bot infestations,now we have the advanced one.
Now what can i say,if they wanted to clean this one up they could.
I believe all they have done is to leave it to players to do this by reporting the bots.
Now of course why arborstone and bergen arent clean,it still eludes me.

Martin Alvito · Apr 22, 2010, 10:38 PM // 22:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by lemming

Out of curiosity, how would you account for people aimbotting in public servers where stats aren't recorded? There's absolutely nothing tangible at stake in such matches.

Lulz. Some people just like to grief. There isn't a whole lot you can do about it, TBH.

Other than perhaps GvG, there isn't really any incentive to bot GW for lulz. GW botting tends to be outcome-oriented.