Curse

Tactical-Dillusions · Jun 26, 2005, 03:43 PM // 15:43

OK, so you've got player X who goes in and out of one particular town and hunts his favourite monsters all day long. He's legitimate and he's just having a good time playing, minding his own business.

Player Y is a bot, doing the same thing and is totally against the rules.

How does ArenaNet know who is a player and who is a bot?

I'm just wondering because whenever i act like player X, even for just a couple of trips, i start to get immensely paranoid. I think that someone might be observing me and so i do weird things like stopping occasionally or wiggling from side to side.
Sometimes i have thought about stopping for a dance (although i've not become that paranoid, yet!)

Are my concerns justified or should i just get on with the game?

DrSLUGFly · Jun 26, 2005, 03:49 PM // 15:49

The March of the Bots thread said that there were several bots remaining after the bot-banning. I'm guessing that they monitor the bots over time and possibly try to interact with them in game to investigate.

Minwanabi · Jun 26, 2005, 04:29 PM // 16:29

You'll almost undoubtedly get a PM from a GM prior to being banned, so as long as you respond like a human would, you're fine. They're not just going to ban people willy-nilly, I'd have complete faith in their ability to detect bots from humans.

GW Monkey · Jun 26, 2005, 05:08 PM // 17:08

Well, if you are following StandardAI's personal war, you've probably come across the "banned" thread... I'll quote GG's reply from two weeks ago (this is specifically regarding veng'ing your mirror self for fun and profit)

"It's really important that you guys know that we didn't ban people who hit upon this exploit accidentally or who were merely trying to complete the mission. We banned people who did this intentionally and on a repeated basis. We have complete logs of everything that these players did, and it's enormously obvious who was trying to exploit the bug and who wasn't. Those who were not, and even those who were simply marginal, were not banned. If there was even the slightest question of their involvement in intentional exploitation, we left the account unbanned. In other words, only the worst abusers were banned."

The exact choice of wording says it clearly. You basically have to be a total idiot to get yourself banned for botting. My guess is you have to leave it running 24/7. (there are professional bot farmers, scary but true.) I highly doubt you'd be mistaken for a bot. Bots zone and re-zone in a nice, predicitible pattern. If a human were doing the exact same thing a bot was, it should be apparent. You'll pause. You'll check friends, you'll chat, you'll pause for food/bio breaks, etc. But nonetheless - wiggle and dance anyway. Just because...

(GG from the "bot policy" thread)
"You report them, we will attend to them. That's a promise! support.guildwars.com. (We dealt with more than 100 today alone. )"

Meaning you could theoretically get caught in a wide-cast net. Obviously they won't disclose the method they use to detect bots; that'd be really stupid as the bot coders would just make slight modifications to their tool and it'd be undetectable for another couple weeks. I'm sure as we speak there are "humanized" versions farming and chatting and... and... they might be in your PUG right now!!!

Alderman Sweet · Jun 26, 2005, 05:36 PM // 17:36

PUG Member 1: "don't go beyond this line"

PUG Member 2: "ok"

PUG Member 3: "right"

PUG Member 4: *draws bunny on radar*

BOT (PUG Member 6): "okay lol"

PUG Member 1: "wait WAIT WAIT"

PUG Member 3: "oops"

BOT (PUG Member 6): "okay lol"

PUG Member 1: "you people are idiots"

PUG Member 5: "shuts up"

PUG Member 3: "////////////////"

PUG Member 1: "you have GOT to STAY BEHIND THE LINE"

PUG Member 4: *draws flower on radar*

BOT (PUG Member 6): "okay lol"

PUG MEMBER 1: "the only one of you IDIOTS paying ANY attention is PUG Member 6!!!"

BOT (PUG Member 6): "okay lol"

Corwin_Andros · Jun 26, 2005, 05:54 PM // 17:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by GW Monkey

I'm sure as we speak there are "humanized" versions farming and chatting and... and... they might be in your PUG right now!!!

Might not be too far off on that guess. If it was me personally with the time, ambition, and skill to make an AI Bot like that, I would be marketing it along with myself to ANet rather than have it playing GW to make a bit of cash off of the ebay crowd..lol

Caco-Cola · Jun 26, 2005, 05:57 PM // 17:57

Unfortunately that's not the way bots opperate.

Unfortunate^2 any good bot writer can make it respond to a GM.

I used bots all the time in Ultima Online to get through some of the more tedious skill grinds (when I found out about 8x8, ooh life was much easier) and with the enormous power of EasyUO and the flexibility of the scripting language I could respond to almost any given situation. Could log myself back in (for when they did maintenance on the shard) and talk to a GM convincingly (as most GMs would just pop in for a 'are you there? What are you doing?' basic set of questions) and I never got banned.

Same thing here. Only the crappy botters get caught.

And yah I would assume that they would PM you or something before they banned, just reply with something more than just 'yes' to show that you're not just a script and you should be fine.

Tactical-Dillusions · Jun 27, 2005, 12:59 AM // 00:59

Anyone who PM's me and i don't know them...i put them in my ignore list. Hmmm, better be careful, lol.

Thanks for the info.