Curse

Revelations · Jan 22, 2010, 04:01 PM // 16:01

I only joined this thread several pages ago. Concise doesn't cut it when you jump into the middle of quotewars. However, I do believe this thread has run it's course. It is quite clear that everyone now posting is either in agreement with Borat's opening sentiment, or is so vehemently opposed as to be in denial of the issue, despite evidence to the contrary. I would not protest a closure.

Martin Alvito · Jan 23, 2010, 12:00 AM // 00:00

I'll put it this way:

- I think that a limited amount of productive discussion has come out of the thread.
- I don't think we're going to get any further.

The bots unquestionably change the nature of the game. I think everybody (except some of the botters) would agree that those changes are undesirable. The issue on the table is degree.

At the core of the dispute over the issue's relative importance is whether a stupid machine with a complex decision tree and a human controlling its movement is unbeatable in GW.

It may be less stupid. But it's still a stupid machine, and this provides a point of attack. Others seem to think that doesn't matter, and that the machines cannot possibly be beaten.

I probably should have cited PvE as Exhibit A for why humans > prescripted behavior irrespective of how high you pile the scripter's advantages, but I'm sure the people on the other side would claim that the argument is flawed due to some human control of the bot and due to the fact that the scripting behavior can be varied in response to human innovation. I'd say that the first point is wrong but the second point is more problematic. If it's just an arms race in the limit, eventually the botter wins but it's going to take a while. See: IBM vs. Kasparov.

The other issues on the table are in my view still important but peripheral, in the sense that players that insist that bots are invincible will not concede the validity of the other issues.

I'd advise players that badly want to see change to do two things. First of all, I'd try to arrange some civil disobedience that makes the issue an embarassment to ANet. Second, I'd work on reducing the cost to ANet of closing the loopholes that are being exploited. Since there is a popular, open source program being used, you have the privilege of being able to see exactly what is being done and suggest solutions.

Many of you claim expertise in coding. I suggest you collaborate in putting that expertise to work if you want to see change.

NeHoMaR · Jan 23, 2010, 12:24 AM // 00:24

BOTs of every type could be easily detected (and kicked) by the game (if developers program it property)

Every single BOT does something to clearly identify itself as a BOT. It's a BOT, it's programmed with simple instructions, real humans are more random (hundreds of times more random than even BOTs programmed to be random)

Thevil King · Jan 23, 2010, 12:56 AM // 00:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Revelations

You obviously have no idea what you're talking about. All of the bots Borat listed in the OP are either already in existence, or would simply be a matter of hours - or even minutes for the more simple ones - to create. Sunec has done a pretty amazing job on this code, and the possibilities of the thing are incredible. People like you downplaying an issue about which you have no RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing idea are giving Anet a very good reason to do sweet shit all.

lol? i dont know what im talking about? dude i probly played more snowball, dball, and racing then you think. and i certainly played alot more then you can imagine during the festival events. yet through all that gaming, ive never ever heard of the likes of pickup bots and dodgebots, bots that can detect hidden rocks, untill this thread came up. and now you claim that some one can create a bot in a matter of minutes? do you srsly know how programming works? its extremely rare for a program to work on the very first try, and will require extensive amounts of rewriting, testing, and troubleshooting at the very least.

now if you read my post carefully, and do not misinterpret it on purpose, you will find that nowhere in my post did i disagree on the negative impacts the bot have on the gaming community, nor did i ever attempt to downplay the issue. I am simply suggesting a differing view concerning this issue. if you do not agree with my arguments, then maybe you should atk my arguments rather than my character

Greedy Gus · Jan 23, 2010, 01:01 AM // 01:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Katsumi

If this issue is so important to you and Borat, why don't you take it to the people that can really do something about it? It's obvious that ANet ignores a lot of what goes on with fansites anyway. Take the issue directly to them if you want. If you'd like to use this thread to draw attention to the issue, that's fine, but don't think for one second you're going to change ANet's mind about anything.

What? This issue is incredibly important to everyone who plays pvp and knows about it. Characterizing it as just a few whiners on guru is way off the mark. The problem is that most people gave up on trying to get any results when dealing directly with a-net, and certainly most gave up on guru riverside over time when thread after thread about all kinds of various issues get closed by a mod for reasons I described earlier.

I'm sure there have been tons of 'last straws' that cause people to stop playing over the years, but this is a potentially disastrous one that needs more attention before it's too late. And no matter how disagreeable this forum area is, some people still feel strongly enough to come here because its one of the few places that populist gw rage can still catch anet's attention and create (late) change.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Katsumi

The only problem is that you ARE clogging up the thread. It's a mass of ranting and raving. A simple, concise message is the only way you're going to raise awareness. Otherwise you're only going to drive people away. This thread doesn't seem to be raising the awareness of anyone, as far as I can tell. 5 or 10 people maybe, but that's about it.

Please, any objective reading of this thread will notice how off-topic and spammy your fellow mod martin's replies have been, which fueled this thread going in circles this long. Over 14 pages, he has constantly fixated on any sentence even gracing a strategy or tactic from snowball or rollerbeatle arenas in discussions of bots, and gone into dissertations on his thoughts & personal experiences of elite strategy for those arenas. That could be interesting for someone in the glad's arena forum interested in pvp/minigame strategy, but has no bearing in this discussion.

It's always bad practice to question someone's motives, but I tried to point out in my first post martin's clear conflict of interest because his personal guild is implicated. To allow him to act as a neutral party (which is basically one entire of side of this 'debate'), filibustering with objectively off-topic, long, quotewar responses is incredibly biased. And then characterizing the thread as being "clogged" by the other side with a legitimate complaint as they get more and more frustrated by martin's stonewall devil's advocate and close to needing a lock/deletion is just blindness.

Killed u man · Jan 23, 2010, 02:14 AM // 02:14

Last part of what the above said ^

It's Martin's right too defend his guild, but it indeed doesn't put him in a neutral position.

Secondly, I don't care if we're creating 'productive' conversation or not. The goal initially was for Regina, Gaile or Martin (The other one) to notice it. I'm pretty sure we ALL know by now bots DO exist, ARE getting used by certain individuals, and guilds and SHOULD be dealed with.

As I have also said a couple of times before, 29th of January is the final date I want a reply from Anet. As suggested (Or hinted) by Martin himself (The Guru mod), if you can't reach out to Anet, force them to deal with you.

Kattar · Jan 23, 2010, 02:28 AM // 02:28

You can't force them to deal with you. That's kinda where the plan falls apart. Martin certainly hasn't been a neutral party and I'd also like to mention that he hasn't been moderating any part of this thread. That's one plus at least.

From this point, I'm going to start deleting anything that just goes back and forth like the last few pages have been. Martin, Borat, Revelations, if you'd like to keep discussing this please do so via the private messaging system.

Hopefully that should keep everyone happy, and get this thread back on topic.

Turbo Ginsu · Jan 23, 2010, 03:28 AM // 03:28

I'd just like to tell a story, mainly for the few that seem to believe that not a lot of harm can come from bots anyway.

Few years back, before Source came, I was co-leader of a semi-competitive Day of Defeat clan. We did allright, entered a few ladders, ranked around 6th or 7th, which was pretty decent.

Then cane the hackusations. According to many, several of our players, some at the top of their game, were using wallhacks and aimbot. We defended them of course, because we'd known these guys for ages. They didn't hack. Or did they?

Turns out that they were, and had been lying to us all along, well most of the way. They were, after all, rather skilled players, one was even a pro CS player with quite a rep who had made quite a bit of r/l money in competitions. Amazing players. Yet they still botted. Why when they were already good players did they bot? Who knows. Perhaps the reputation they'd earned was the driving force. Fear of falling off of a perch tends to drive some people that way.

*Edit: Good bot users know how to use their bots properly. Detecting them took a long time, and they were only caught because they made simple arrogant lapses of judgement, i.e. they thought no-one important was watching.

The end result was moot. Our clan fell to pieces, our names were smeared simply by association, our clan was known from the day they were caught as a hack/bot clan. Thousands of my personal hours put into building the clan, building the forums, building the community, smashed because of 3 or 4 bandits. I walked away from competitive DoD, and the clan, without a word. It sickens me to this day.

Out of all this, you can't fail to see at least one aspect of what bots do. Anyone who knows about aimbot, also knows about the damage that it has done to any number of FPS games, and the reputation of players, even whole communities.

Point is, we're right to make a bloody furor over it, aNet is acting like a stubborn 2 year old who wants the sweets.
The fact that they addressed several other threads of the same level of importance as this, and are still completely stonewalling this smacks of it. "I've got my eyes covered!!" "You can't see me now!!"

Neither of those 2 facts are going to matter for shit if the same sort of bot invasion hits GW as has done to other, more successful games in the past. The companies who've attacked botters and hackers visibly and strongly, still have their customers and several have grown to stellar proportions, the ones who didn't hit the nail on the head as soon as it stuck out, well. We don't really hear about those guys anymore, do we? I wonder how life's going for them..

Reverend Dr · Jan 23, 2010, 12:22 PM // 12:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Katsumi

You can't force them to deal with you.

This is correct. But you certainly cannot calmly ask them about something and ever get them to deal with you.

Shayne Hawke · Jan 23, 2010, 02:39 PM // 14:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killed u man

As I have also said a couple of times before, 29th of January is the final date I want a reply from Anet. As suggested (Or hinted) by Martin himself (The Guru mod), if you can't reach out to Anet, force them to deal with you.

You're fairly delusional to think your thread deserves a direct response from anyone at ANet.

The best you could possibly hope for is Regina or Martin K. to start a new thread in Riverside that links to some place on the official wiki or webpage where they make a statement of how they've been following the bot situation and any steps they're making against the situation, and that's probably only going to happen once they start showing significant progress in that department.

You want it before the end of January? You won't see anything particularly revealing from them until after the full skill update for PvE is released mid-Februrary.

Killed u man · Jan 23, 2010, 03:34 PM // 15:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shayne Hawke

You want it before the end of January? You won't see anything particularly revealing from them until after the full skill update for PvE is released mid-Februrary.

Snowball AT's, and the week after RBR...

Demigod Heracles · Jan 24, 2010, 12:43 AM // 00:43

Posting from a GvG perspective, though it applies to other formats as well.

Yes, you can deal with bots. In fact, any top team will mop the floor with a lesser botting team because they're just flat out better. The problem comes when, in a hypothetical situation, two of the best teams are going at it and one of them is botting and the other is not. The nature of the latest generation of bots means that the player is still in control of his character and can take over manually to deal with any unexpected occurences, and then go into overdrive when necessary. This makes it increasingly harder to outplay them, although not impossible.

Yes, you can change builds/tactics to deal with bots but you make it sound a lot easier than it is. First of all, (from an American perspective) EVERYONE already runs non-disruption builds that can deal with enemy interrupts because of the increbile ordeal that is playing on 206. No matter what you run, going onto Euro servers vs. an enemy disruption build right now is almost a death sentence...skills are blinking, some people experience minor freezes regularly, hell its even hard to cancel sometimes because pings get high enough to where you get interrupted before it registers for you. Yes, you can run more defence but teams are already running as much defense as they can get away with and still score kills. You can't run 3 bsurges and 3 monks and expect to win, especially because of...disruption on the enemy team. If you only have a minor kill threat and it comes from elementalists, they can split back disruption + healer and dshot your skills and they'll win at the tiebreaker since they can't be killed.

The point of this is that people already run as much defense as they can get away with and still bring kill threats. People are already trying to survive against disruption in as many ways as possible, especially with the server imbalances. It's possible, but extremely hard. When you throw bots into the equation and put enemy disruption into overdrive, it makes things nigh impossible especially on visiting servers. It's not a huge problem in competitive play, but the potential for abuse is still there and it could get worse at any moment. Banning everyone isn't even the best solution, since a lot of the people I have seen running bots recently are real players and losing them would be incredibly detrimental with how few people are stil pvping.

Bots are not unbeatable, but extremely retarded. This post is lengthy, rambling, and is meant to adress some of the random things people said in 15 pages of a stupid thread.

Turbo Ginsu · Jan 24, 2010, 02:09 AM // 02:09

Hi Heracles. First, let me just say thanks for all the zkeys you guys have won me..

After everything that's been said here, the scenario I laid out, one of the coders of the bots themselves, and now a top PvP'er to back it up. How much more evidence is needed?

It's as clear as the nose on your face that bots are a problem, there's not much a well-coded bot can't do, they are increasing in number, pretty soon the rate will become exponential, as at the mo', anet are making it abundantly clear that it's A-OK! I can see, just as in other games where bots are a major problem, that soon bot's will be the problem in GW, especially with anet's aforementioned lax stance on them, and their obvious stonewalling of this thread.

I don't agree with threats of widespread distribution of the latest and greatest botting app, sorta feels a bit like trying to hold anet to ransom, which through history, is proven not to be the most reliable PoA. I would go so far as to say that the member making the threat needs to make a written apology for the threat right here, as well as forwarding a copy to Regina, to try and clear the slate and get this ball rolling.

To aNet: I'm sure most of the posters in this thread would agree with me when I say that I think we are all chasing the same end result that you are, a game that is as clean and free of bots and hacking as we can get it. From experience over decades of gaming, I know full well that this process requires both devs and players to co-operate, as an agressive and active stance is needed in respect to these sort of threats.

Come on ppz, they will listen, but they sure ain't gonna play ball if we prove we're too immature to follow the rules of play. i.e. Co-operation, patience and as much info as we can provide as a community to help them.

Shayne Hawke · Jan 24, 2010, 03:01 AM // 03:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killed u man

Snowball AT's, and the week after RBR...

Yes, I realize the timing is horrid. But the skill balances that have been worked on for months now are coming into a stage where they can finally be released. They're not going to drop all of those planned changes to throw everything at this issue of which they don't seem to have an immediate or thorough solution.

Killed u man · Jan 24, 2010, 04:00 PM // 16:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shayne Hawke

Yes, I realize the timing is horrid. But the skill balances that have been worked on for months now are coming into a stage where they can finally be released. They're not going to drop all of those planned changes to throw everything at this issue of which they don't seem to have an immediate or thorough solution.

I don't expect an immediate solution, I expect:

"Dear community, we are working on banishing the bots from GW PvP. The fact that GvG and holiday events are getting farmed by AI is repulsive to say the least. We'll monitor the upcomming Snowball At's, aswell as RBR the week thereafter."

Something amongst those lines would be fine for me...

Tullzinski · Jan 25, 2010, 03:06 PM // 15:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killed u man

I don't expect an immediate solution, I expect:

"Dear community, we are working on banishing the bots from GW PvP. The fact that GvG and holiday events are getting farmed by AI is repulsive to say the least. We'll monitor the upcomming Snowball At's, aswell as RBR the week thereafter."

Something amongst those lines would be fine for me...

The fact the ANET can go right to the "Freaking Program" on Google, examine it download it and use it firsthand should make them jump right to the end result, the removal of this program from use in Guild Wars. In the meantime A good first step from ANET would be a simple "We are aware of the issue and researching it" plus a strong reiteration of their no bot policy and violators will be prosecuted would go along way.

I shudder to think what will happen when the RMT's get hold of this and put it into mass farming production across the whole game. Maybe that will be the straw that breaks the camels back on this.

I cannot imagine that ANET cannot find this program on Google code, however if they cannot find it feel free to PM me, I will point you in the right direction.

This mirrors Blizzards lack of response for the longest time in Diablo, it was considered approval by many to use bots/hacks due to the lack of action and communication of its stance about the issue.

Once widespread use of bots permeates the game and silence by ANET accompanies it, what will people think?

/begin over the top analogy/
Do not make laws and not enforce them.

Salutary neglect was a large contributing factor that led to the American Revolutionary War. Since the imperial authority did not assert the power that it had, the colonists were left to govern themselves. These essentially sovereign colonies soon became accustomed to the idea of self-control. The effects of such prolonged isolation eventually resulted in the emergence of a collective identity that considered itself separate from Great Britain.

/end over the top analogy/

Edit:

This is from the CEO of SecurePlay discussing account security but this applies here also:

1. Aware – Tell your customers that you are aware of the problem and are taking it seriously. Let them know that they (the customers) and their issues are important and that the integrity of the game is critical to the company.

2. Triage – Figure out what immediate action you can take to stop the problem from getting worse or spreading.

3. Investigate – Figure out what is really going on.

4. Patch – Identify short term solution or work around to get things "almost" normal.

5. Repair – Fix the problem and reconstitute the game.

6. Reflect – Look to see if there are related vulnerabilities in the game design, business operations, or other areas that can be exploited and fix them before they fix you.

glountz · Jan 26, 2010, 11:13 AM // 11:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kattar

You can't force them to deal with you. That's kinda where the plan falls apart. Martin certainly hasn't been a neutral party and I'd also like to mention that he hasn't been moderating any part of this thread. That's one plus at least.

From this point, I'm going to start deleting anything that just goes back and forth like the last few pages have been. Martin, Borat, Revelations, if you'd like to keep discussing this please do so via the private messaging system.

Hopefully that should keep everyone happy, and get this thread back on topic.

Actually the OP's move is correct.
The bot issue is not adressed because it is not enough widespread. Putting links to all the PvP bots will encourage 95% of the PvP crowd (even the PVE crowd wanting those shiny PvP titles) to use them, just because of the two mottos of GW play: "Play to win" and "if you can't beat them, join them".

Point:
Back in time, the dishonor system didn't exist. Then leaving in RA became a widespread problem, to the point where a team with no monk had 1-2 leavers. When it was a secluded problem, (no glad title), it was ignored. When 95% of the RA population used leaving as a way to avoid RA's randomness to farm glad, A-Net introduced the dishonor system.

You're right saying A-NEt won't give a shit right now.
You're wrong saying A-Net won't give a shit when GvG will be plagued by those bots.
Hence, if you want them to solve the problem, you'll have to make it an enough issue for them to counteract.

isildorbiafra · Jan 26, 2010, 11:52 AM // 11:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by glountz

A-Net introduced the dishonor system.

Yeah....and we all know how well that worked out.
No one uses it.
Now if the team your in has 2 leechers; you cant even leave without you yourself getting dishonor.
Blah.....I'm so disgusted with this game.

DRGN · Jan 26, 2010, 03:59 PM // 15:59

I kinda stopped taking this whole thing seriously about seven pages in. I don't care about all the accusations of botting by individual people or guilds, but being told that I'm bad because a bot repeatedly pleaks my Patient (By a mod, nonetheless) may be the biggest dick thing I have ever been told since the +4 years I've played. I seriously re-read that four times to make sure I was reading what I thought I was. Gwen and Norgu never gave me a TENTH of the problems these interrupt bots are, so that's a really shitty analogy. I guess I'll use the amazing workaround of cancel-casting every single spell I cast repeatedly while the non-bot members of the team pound the shit out of everyone. You sure as hell seemed harder on the players than the bots given everything I read, aside from the token "bots are bad" thing.

On top of that, getting on us for "complaining" about it. Is it really a bad thing to take it out in the public and say "Hey, this bad shit has been going on for a long time, you should do something about it." What's the alternative? They're obviously not going to do jack if we DON'T say anything, so what do we have to lose by bringing this up?

Kattar · Jan 26, 2010, 04:16 PM // 16:16

I'm not saying not to say anything, but the whole idea that, "Oh man, if I threaten a company by promising to post something they already know about on a forum that they have no official affiliation with, they'll take care of a problem that's been around for years," is a little...optimistic.