Curse

Revelations · Jan 21, 2010, 06:21 PM // 18:21

Before it got deleted you asked what further could be done.

Not playing devil's advocate and giving Anet further reason to turn the other cheek is a pretty good start.

Your argument is the exact equivalent of that often presented with overpowered skills - "X doesn't need a nerf, it has counters, therefore it is balanced and acceptable." You're obviously not stupid enough to realize the absurdity behind this, however you seem to want to decry the importance of this issue anyway.

I won't pretend to understand your reasons, but all it's achieving is giving Anet a reason to look the other direction. Resigning such an issue to defeat before any official response is given is only going to give them the impression that the community is of divided mind on the issue. Regardless of how good the bots are or not, it would be beneficial to yourself (if you truly deplore bots) if you were to drop the arrogance from your posts and admit the bots are a problem. Though it is unlikely that doing so will force Anet's hand, acting otherwise is only going to give them cause for inaction.

Polgara Val · Jan 21, 2010, 06:24 PM // 18:24

Try and keep things civil ladies and gentleman this is a debate, dont give the moderators another reason to lock down this thread again.

Pol

Revelations · Jan 21, 2010, 06:28 PM // 18:28

I want to make it abundantly clear that I am not now attacking the poster when I say that the idea of not playing ladder matches as a solution to botting is plain retarded. Surely this in itself is an excellent measure of just how large an issue botting really is?

Martin Alvito · Jan 21, 2010, 06:34 PM // 18:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killed u man

If you think bots aren't that big of a problem, because a non-physicial barriers exists that keeps 'em out of the "serious" matches, then so be it.

I'm not disputing that there's a problem. I hate the bots too. I'm disputing the severity.

When other games (eg: CS) were overrun by bots, people organized leagues to get legit competition against legit players and had observers monitor possible cheating. That's not optimal; it's costly. But it's the available second-best solution in the absence of a developer response, which is going to take a while. It took Valve quite a while to come to grips with that problem, and they're unquestionably a first-tier gaming company.

Even so, I remain unconvinced that you have exhausted all of the possible options available to you for beating bots. You are so sure that the bots cannot be defeated! But I know that isn't the case in some arenas, and I've seen evidence that suggests that the bots could be beaten in GvG.

You're probably correct that if the absolute best teams were to begin cheating using the bots, they would be unbeatable. But as you noted, there are barriers in place (obs) that make this unattractive for them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Revelations

I want to make it abundantly clear that I am not now attacking the poster when I say that the idea of not playing ladder matches as a solution to botting is plain retarded. Surely this in itself is an excellent measure of just how large an issue botting really is?

Isn't this what people have done in games for years once the game's integrity is compromised? They form private leagues and bar the cheaters from participation. If all you care about is the quality of the competition, it's the best solution in the absence of developer intervention.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Revelations

Your argument is the exact equivalent of that often presented with overpowered skills - "X doesn't need a nerf, it has counters, therefore it is balanced and acceptable." You're obviously not stupid enough to realize the absurdity behind this, however you seem to want to decry the importance of this issue anyway.

There's a huge difference in cost between fixing a skill and making the botters go away. It's reasonable to demand action now when a skill is obviously broken. The effort involved in fixing that problem is comparatively minimal.

It's ridiculous to demand developer intervention now when the game gets cracked. The developer has to figure out how the game has been cracked and what will fix the problem for good. These are not trivial tasks.

The importance of an issue varies not only with its severity, but also with the cost associated with making it go away.

Revelations · Jan 21, 2010, 06:45 PM // 18:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

Isn't this what people have done in games for years once the game's integrity is compromised? They form private leagues and bar the cheaters from participation. If all you care about is the quality of the competition, it's the best solution in the absence of developer intervention.

I'm aware Anets track record is unreliable at best, and after such time as an announcement of inaction on their part I might agree that such measures are necessary. Until then, decrying the issue and resigning yourself to their nonintervention is doing absolutely nothing but giving them reasons to do naught about it.

For most players, adjusting your play to accommodate the issue, or simply not playing is NOT an acceptable solution. I honestly can't say why you don't abhor such prospects, but it appears that you are set in such thinking, so I'm not going to bother pushing the point further.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

There's a huge difference in cost between fixing a skill and making the botters go away. It's reasonable to demand action now when a skill is obviously broken. The effort involved in fixing that problem is comparatively minimal.

It's ridiculous to demand developer intervention now when the game gets cracked. The developer has to figure out how the game has been cracked and what will fix the problem for good. These are not trivial tasks.

The importance of an issue varies not only with its severity, but also with the cost associated with making it go away.

And you seem to have weighed that cost/benefit analysis all on your own without knowing any of the details involved. I'm not demanding action in the short term so much as acknowledgment. If the issue is such that it will take too much time or effort for Anet that they will not act upon it, then I will resign myself to that. However, community mind on the problem also plays an (albeit minor) role in their decision to act. If no one thought bots were an issue then, even were the fix fairly easy, it would probably not be applied. Until such time as we get an official opinion I believe that a bycot of the ladder, or a downplay of the seriousness of the issue is going to do absolutely nothing but provide Anet with reasons to downplay it themselves.

Martin Alvito · Jan 21, 2010, 06:51 PM // 18:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Revelations

I honestly can't say why you don't abhor such prospects

I'm just being realistic about what I have control over. I can't control the other players. I can control the quality of my play. If that isn't good enough to beat the bots, then there's always the option of controlling who you play against or measure yourself against.

If the client has truly been compromised at the level that has been suggested, expect to wait a while to see action irrespective of the level of attention ANet gives the issue. Those holes aren't going to be easy to patch.

Sarevok Thordin · Jan 21, 2010, 06:58 PM // 18:58

I'd seriously laugh my ass off if Anet were taking the Valve approach and just stealth watching who was botting, then ban them in a massive swoop, or even just strip EVERY unlockable, reset all titles to zero and affix (CHEATER) to every character name on their account.

Yes Anet, I am subtlely feeding ideas.

Revelations · Jan 21, 2010, 07:02 PM // 19:02

How can you dispute the severity of the issue, yet suggest such radical solutions as not playing ladder matches, or even replacing ladder play with (lol)scrims? You never actually answered that before.

Tullzinski · Jan 21, 2010, 07:09 PM // 19:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

I'm not disputing that there's a problem. I hate the bots too. I'm disputing the severity.

How severe does it have to get before you feel that it crosses the line?

The fact that a old polish guy is able to find this freaking program openly available on the internet is proof that it has gone into the severe zone. If I located it any fool can get it.

Time has come for ANET to combat this, the progam being used is easy to get, ANET can study it and determine how to shut it down. No need to determine how the game became cracked when the hammer is free to use.

Martin Alvito · Jan 21, 2010, 07:12 PM // 19:12

@ Sarevok - I'd love to see it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Revelations

How can you dispute the severity of the issue, yet suggest such radical solutions as not playing ladder matches, or even replacing ladder play with (lol)scrims? You never actually answered that before.

- You have outside options. This isn't like account security (NCSoft side) or duping where there's absolutely nothing you can do as a player. They may not be particularly desirable outside options, but they are available to you if you want a "pure" competition decided by human skill.
- The cost term for fixing the issue is extremely high. We're not talking about a single loophole (like reconnects) that can be closed temporarily at some cost to players. Remember, it took a while to get reconnects back, and that was small potatoes next to the complexity of this issue.
- There are other unresolved issues still on the table that also matter. I'd like to see a skill update rather than have ANet drop everything chasing the botters.
- I still think the case for the advantage conferred by the bots has been overstated.

Samuel1 · Jan 21, 2010, 07:24 PM // 19:24

Basically my stand point on bots is this: in a perfect world there wouldn't be any bots, but we dont live in a perfect world. Having anything this drastic done to this game is already too late to ever think about happening, You know it, i know it, no reason trying to argue about it, we just need to accept it, so what needs to be done is making sure GW2 is bot-proof. So in my opinion all you computer-savy players need to be making suggestions to anet (since they are either incompetant or are too busy working on how sexy the pixels look in gw2) on how to make sure bots dont ever appear in GW2.

Tullzinski · Jan 21, 2010, 07:27 PM // 19:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

- I still think the case for the advantage conferred by the bots has been overstated.

I disagree.....Taken from a script description of the bot:

The most powerful script that has been created using "freaking program" so far. The "freaking" Bot is a highly advanced, customizable tool that doesn't take too long to get used to, but can provide great results. The bot has been optimized and thoroughly tested to assure that your interrupts look genuine. It's not about hitting those 1/4 casts, but more to steadily interrupt, without missing, and allow you to do whatever you feel like at the same time. You may also manually interrupt still, granted you're fast enough, it takes everything into account really.

Sounds like a big advantage to me... The more I read about the worse it gets...

Funny I also see the person that put this crap on google present in this thread.

Polgara Val · Jan 21, 2010, 07:35 PM // 19:35

You know I actually feel kind of sad that people have to use a bot to enhance there skill. Just goes to show that some players are so desperate to win a pixalized item or cape that there willing to go to extreeme lengths for it.

If you cant do it your simply not good enough yet. The old adage, practice practice practice if you want to make it to the top of the tree.

Pol

Martin Alvito · Jan 21, 2010, 07:40 PM // 19:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tullzinski

The bot has been optimized and thoroughly tested to assure that your interrupts look genuine.

But what's being described here is behavior that is obviously botlike and yields a competitive advantage. So I'm not sure how seriously we should take this claim.

Revelations · Jan 21, 2010, 07:42 PM // 19:42

It's looking increasingly like account security issues are the fault of NCSoft rather than Anet, and we're getting a skill balance withing the week. Assuming it's not an ass-terrible update then I see absolutely nothing that should take priority over this issue.

I don't think you fully understand the implications of these newer bots. Their behaviour can be switched on and off at will. They are capable of interrupting 1/2 second casts. EVERY TIME. Fakebots are likely on the horizon. In snowball they ensure you can never retain ownership of a present if you're split 1v1. An infusebot that analyzes packets of incoming damage and works out a perfectly optimal infuse time has been created. The opposing party bar screen very likely uses the same loophole (This bar includes stances, weapon sets and more in case you haven't seen it yet). There are rumors of a synchronized spikebot. Weaponswap bots. Dodgebots. This is likely an incomplete list, these are only the one's I've seen part or all of the code for.

Implications include protbots for such things as Aura and RoF. Consider a bunch of bots designed to throw a skill at a warrior as soon as he frenzies. The code and the possibility is all there. Bull's faking, perfect quartering off of other people's KD's EVERY TIME. Hexbots - look at how overpowered heroes were with those. Autochaining of skills among different characters. They could so such things as cancel one skill to cast another - canceling diversion to pblock a 3/4 would be simple to code, if it hasn't been already. This is just the limit of my imagination currently, in a ridiculously tired state as it is.

And all of this occurs while the player is free to manually use skills and control such things as movement. The bot behaviour can be manually toggled at any stage during the match according to the player's whim.

If these things don't seem to confer much of an advantage to you then I can only imagine how little PvP experience you've really had.

Tullzinski · Jan 21, 2010, 07:43 PM // 19:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

But what's being described here is behavior that is obviously botlike and yields a competitive advantage. So I'm not sure how seriously we should take this claim.

I would ask the person that put this on google in the first place to answer that question. He is very keen with this kind of stuff - very

Martin Alvito · Jan 21, 2010, 08:23 PM // 20:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Revelations

In snowball they ensure you can never retain ownership of a present if you're split 1v1.

Just ain't so. They can make it a lot harder, but you can abuse their stupidities. Suppose your opponent has a dodgebot. Said dodgebot has a fundamental flaw: it will always drop the gift at the same time, because this has to be timed properly to successfully dodge. So if you skill cancel and scoop before the bot can (because it's auto-executing its dodge and can't scoop), you now have the gift AND your Hidden Rock. You have converted a liability into an advantage; you never have to actually use a snowball to get the gift.

If you play it right, the best move for your opponent is then to turn the hacks off and play you straight.

If the coder of the dodgebot gets smart and successfully codes to get around that, you can still get the gift. If you get right up in the bot's face, it can't dodge the throw 1v1. It's important that you do this at an angle from the direction of travel, but it still works.

Now, if the bot is technically flawless like that, you're going to have to DnD his snowballs to do anything but stalemate the gift. But at a minimum you've negated the advantage, and against anyone that doesn't position perfectly you've still seized the advantage.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Revelations

If these things don't seem to confer much of an advantage to you then I can only imagine how little PvP experience you've really had.

You're still insisting that technical perfection is everything.

You always have one huge advantage over a known botting opponent: you know what they're bringing to the table beforehand. You know what's on their skill bars. You know what they're going to do as a team, and what they have to do to beat you. You can predict their every reaction at a tactical level.

To take advantage of this, you have to think outside the honor balanced box a bit. If you show up with the expected team and plan that the botters expected and coded to beat, you're going to get thrashed. No doubt.

If the problem really is that a specific combination of skills, played flawlessly, always wins irrespective of the opponent's behavior...then what we have is a balance problem that botters are exploiting, rather than simply a problem with bots.

Again, this is why getting the skills right is so critical.

Revelations · Jan 21, 2010, 08:41 PM // 20:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

Just ain't so. They can make it a lot harder, but you can abuse their stupidities. Suppose your opponent has a dodgebot. Said dodgebot has a fundamental flaw: it will always drop the gift at the same time, because this has to be timed properly to successfully dodge. So if you skill cancel and scoop before the bot can...

No, you can't. Said dodge occurs at the moment the snowball leaves your hand. Canceling won't fake the bot out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

You always have one huge advantage over a known botting opponent: you know what they're bringing to the table beforehand. You know what's on their skill bars. You know what they're going to do as a team, and what they have to do to beat you. You can predict their every reaction at a tactical level.

To take advantage of this, you have to think outside the honor balanced box a bit. If you show up with the expected team and plan that the botters expected and coded to beat, you're going to get thrashed. No doubt

This is wrong. These bots are way beyond what you've seen before. 7 interrupts is just the beginning. I have seen and toyed around with that this code can do. If it wasn't going to get deleted I could post it here, though you should be able to find it easily enough.

Some wonderful (not) people have gone out of their way to create a nice codebase, replete with documented help and function library for script kiddies to be able to create a bot for nearly limitless purposes. ANY SKILL at all that you want to write a very specific set of instructions for, you can. You can't buildwars them, because they can run ANYTHING. Obviously some skills will be better than others in bot hands, but you can't buildwars the range of skills that they run. And they have thinking human minds behind the technical part, so saying 'just split' isn't actually going to solve anything, unless they really are RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing terrible. Add to that the possibility that you can modify or turn off the bot behaviour on the fly, and you have a ridiculously major advantage right there.

The code is amazingly flexible, and easy to use. At the moment you've no doubt seen and heard about the interrupt bot - which is strong, but not incredibly flexible, as you've pointed out. However, believe me when I say that this is the tip of the iceberg. As much of an ass they are for creating this trash, I have to say hats off to Mr S. (not a real name) and his buddies, because the possibilities for this stuff is amazing.

EDIT: A few more possibilities - Ripping enchants/pulling hexes or conditions the instant they land, auto canceling a skill about to be diverted - before the diversion lands. Bsurging/flashing any attack skill you can possibly want. This thing is even capable of tracking how much adrenaline each skill on a given player has.

FURTHER EDIT: As far as I can tell, it looks to be possible to create anti-stupidity measures using this stuff as well. Say you were to use devhammer on a target in balanced stance. By the looks of things it should be possible for the bot to deny such an action, disallowing the skill while retaining full adrenaline.

Martin Alvito · Jan 21, 2010, 08:57 PM // 20:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Revelations

No, you can't. Said dodge occurs at the moment the snowball leaves your hand. Canceling won't fake the bot out.

Uh uh. I've played against the "suspected" botters. Your bar will be about 75-80% full when the gift hits the deck. In practice, I find there's a delay between when you drop and when you are able to move - hence the early drop.

Either that or the players that stand accused simply aren't botting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Revelations

ANY SKILL at all that you want to write a very specific set of instructions for, you can. You can't buildwars them, because they can run ANYTHING.

Sure, but some things are going to be more (apparently) advantageous than others. They're going to congregate on focal points.

You're correct to assert that you can't buildwars them with the same trick repeatedly if they can continually produce new builds that they can play. In the limit, this turns the game into something similar to a 1v1 match with your buddy in the guild hall, where who turns up with what becomes decisive.

That's hardly desirable, but the outside options to avoid that still exist, and you can still win as long as you can stay a step ahead in the guessing game. If you don't, you can blame it on the Monks.

Revelations · Jan 21, 2010, 09:15 PM // 21:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

Uh uh. I've played against the "suspected" botters. Your bar will be about 75-80% full when the gift hits the deck. In practice, I find there's a delay between when you drop and when you are able to move - hence the early drop.

Either that or the players that stand accused simply aren't botting.

The projectile's course is decided on the moment it leaves your hand. If they were to drop and strafe before such an event, then it would adjust accordingly for their strafe - this is the game I'm talking about, not the bot - and still hit. I don't know whether your opponents were botting or not, but it does seem like inefficient behaviour.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

Sure, but some things are going to be more (apparently) advantageous than others.

Every single skill with a conditional effect can be coded to be stronger in the hands of a bot than a human. Skills which require major coordination to be effective can be coded to be stronger in the hands of bots. By my guess that's a good 50% of the skills in the game right there. That's a shitload of leg room botters have to work with. As I mentioned above, there's also the possibility of limiting manual skills that wouldn't be run well by a bot.

After further browsing this code I can see how easily a spikebot could be coded also. Your caller using a single skill could automatically allow any other bots on your team to acquire the same target and use their own spike skill synchronously. Such a script would probably be less than 10 minutes work to someone familiar with this stuff and would produce an uninfusable nearly unprottable spike which compensated for each players ping and landed INSTANTANEOUSLY.

Everything I have come up with is well within the realms of possibility for anyone familiar with this code. And now that it has been made public it IS going to propagate. There are myriads more possibilities beyond my scope at this time, though I'm sure the botting community is going to go nuts with it. All of the things I have listed constitute absolutely MASSIVE gameplay advantages, you'd be a fool to continue to declare otherwise.