Curse

Stockholm · Jul 26, 2006, 03:11 AM // 03:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris Blackstar

Maybe a good solution to the problem, have a-net develop a program that accesses a characters account and looks for Bot program signatures. Make this program scanner a skill and allow it to be used in towns, then only allow trusted players as spys to go to towns and scan suspected violaters, if a bot program is detected, then the info would be transfered to a-net, and they can take appropate action. That I feel would be the best way to eliminate, if not discurage the problem with out effecting non Bot players who sometimes appear as bots.

A bot program does not leave a signature since it runs outside of the GW client, they would have to scan your computer for it, and that would be invasion of privecy. No, Bot's have to be spotted by manual means.

Don Zardeone · Jul 26, 2006, 03:43 AM // 03:43

1. There is this thing called edit. You don't need to reply several times to quote several people.
2. Whoever said that this would turn into a flamefest was right, it will.
3. The OP is racist or extreme nationalist and therefore his IQ probably equals his shoesize and 100% of his comments should be ignored. (I'm kind of hypocrite here)
3b. They are not (all) chinese. What if they were chinese, would that make a difference? CHinese people are going to destroy the world? Mexicans/Jews/blacks/Polish/Dutch/french/german/nazi/ will come to take your job? Did you know that nazis gassed jews/enemies? Belgians gassed africans? Americans gassed Asians? Everybody gassed everybody. Don't go around starting it all over again.
4. From experience in other places I can safely say that it is impossible for ANet to defeat botters. From what I've seen they're handling it in quite an interesting way. Other devs would:
- disable windowed mode
- disable global hotkeys
- disable compatability with certain OSes
- disable compatability with virtual machines and VMware type things
In otherwise, they would have to minimise functionality and also the freedom of the normal legit player only to keep away the -dumb- botters. The smart ones would still be able to do it.
I think ANet realised that doing all that would just piss off the legit players so they just run some thing that monitors everyone and if they fall into the category of botter, they just BTF.

But eh, um, who cares?
Do the botters damage GW in any way?
They sell money to the ebayers and the ebayers then use the money to buy stuff. Most of the ebayers are dumb so they buy crap. This makes the smart people rich because they can sell stuff to ebayers and make a lot of $$.

So you now have nub fowers running around screaming "I'm leet, I'm leet!!" while the powertraders bathe in coins and the lowly legit farmers think they will be rich soon by grinding like morons.

This situation exists in every single game out there. I'd have to say, live with it, there's no way to stop it, you can only minimise the problem.
It's like racists, you can't stop it, only minimise..
sigh

edit: If I pissed anyone off, I apologise. I just feel the need to destroy anything that may entice racism or hatred even if it wasn't intended but may result in just that anyway.

Phades · Jul 26, 2006, 10:53 AM // 10:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by lyra_song

Of course i have self interest. I do play this game. But my self interests aside, I can adapt to nerfs. I can change my build and farming locations. And guess what....bot farmers can do the same.

Thats interesting because ive long since abandoned trying to protect anything that seems out of place compared to the rest of the game.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lyra_song

The problem is not farming. The problem is bots.

Bots farm. To be quite frank, its impossible to remove them once they begin to exist. The only thing that can be done is throw enough hurdles in front of them to make it impractical to do.

Ventius Hozza · Jul 26, 2006, 11:10 AM // 11:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phades

The only thing that can be done is throw enough hurdles in front of them to make it impractical to do.

or... WE BAN THEM MUHAHAHAHAHA

As I said before, ANet should simply send out some random dude (work experience guy perhaps??!

) and then tell him in what directions the knows bots move and what they do. This dude writes down every name of every person doing that movement pattern and bam. It wont stop it, but after a while it should cut down many bots.

And... if you happen to be stupid enough to imitate a bot, because it's funny or because you are just a lemming(?!) then you get banned wrongly, but it's your fault.

KurtBatz · Jul 26, 2006, 11:39 AM // 11:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by superj76

I bet I know the reason why A-Net is doing nothing to these botters....Thats their income.....If they ban them, then they cause a buncha Chinese people and children to starve to death. Can't ya see the big picture... Have a heart.... Just 20g a month in inflation... so some Chinese people can eat.

lol

Let's see.

Monk Warrior....

Broken English...

Coming out on the side of the botters....

You're not from China by any chance are you?

KurtBatz · Jul 26, 2006, 11:48 AM // 11:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Don Zardeone

1. There is this thing called edit. You don't need to reply several times to quote several people.
2. Whoever said that this would turn into a flamefest was right, it will.
3. The OP is racist or extreme nationalist and therefore his IQ probably equals his shoesize and 100% of his comments should be ignored. (I'm kind of hypocrite here)
3b. They are not (all) chinese. What if they were chinese, would that make a difference? CHinese people are going to destroy the world? Mexicans/Jews/blacks/Polish/Dutch/french/german/nazi/ will come to take your job? Did you know that nazis gassed jews/enemies? Belgians gassed africans? Americans gassed Asians? Everybody gassed everybody. Don't go around starting it all over again.
4. From experience in other places I can safely say that it is impossible for ANet to defeat botters. From what I've seen they're handling it in quite an interesting way. Other devs would:
- disable windowed mode
- disable global hotkeys
- disable compatability with certain OSes
- disable compatability with virtual machines and VMware type things
In otherwise, they would have to minimise functionality and also the freedom of the normal legit player only to keep away the -dumb- botters. The smart ones would still be able to do it.
I think ANet realised that doing all that would just piss off the legit players so they just run some thing that monitors everyone and if they fall into the category of botter, they just BTF.

But eh, um, who cares?
Do the botters damage GW in any way?
They sell money to the ebayers and the ebayers then use the money to buy stuff. Most of the ebayers are dumb so they buy crap. This makes the smart people rich because they can sell stuff to ebayers and make a lot of $$.

So you now have nub fowers running around screaming "I'm leet, I'm leet!!" while the powertraders bathe in coins and the lowly legit farmers think they will be rich soon by grinding like morons.

This situation exists in every single game out there. I'd have to say, live with it, there's no way to stop it, you can only minimise the problem.
It's like racists, you can't stop it, only minimise..
sigh

edit: If I pissed anyone off, I apologise. I just feel the need to destroy anything that may entice racism or hatred even if it wasn't intended but may result in just that anyway.

So very, VERY close to calling me Adolf Hitler and breaking Godwin's law there.

How can I put this WITHOUT starting a flame retaliation with you?

Hmmm.

Well, let's try the gentle approach.

Everyone, everyone, EVERYONE and their gran knows there is a sweatshop trade in China for gold botters in every MMORPG out there, including World of Warcraft, Guild Wars and such. Indeed, if you took five minutes out to check ebay, the gigantic majority of gold sellers are chinese, based in China and even, helpfully, have chinese names to enable you to pick them out of the crowd easier.

Pointing out that Chinese Gold Farmers exist and are responsible for a great deal of the botting in Guild Wars is a stone cold fact. It's provable, everyone is aware of it. If I were saying 'I hate chinese people' or 'China sucks my will to live' you might have a point on the racist front. However, you don't.

If most of the botting comes from China, I will gladly put my foot down and say so. What is wrong with stating fact every now and then? Why must people always play the race card? Is it relevant?

Chinese bot farmers exist. Get over it.

In answer to the earlier poster, bot farming causes in game inflation and destroys economies. World of Warcraft for example - rares going for such retardly high prices the only way you can concievably obtain them is by botting or buying gold off ebay. It breaks the EULA, it's unfair and it's bloody annoying beyong belief.

KurtBatz · Jul 26, 2006, 11:51 AM // 11:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Don Zardeone

edit: If I pissed anyone off, I apologise. I just feel the need to destroy anything that may entice racism or hatred even if it wasn't intended but may result in just that anyway.

Now I understand your rant! Mo/W!

Figures.

55HP Monks for the win. The first person to have a screaming hissy sweary fit on this thread was a 55hp monk too.

Xaero Gouki Kriegor · Jul 26, 2006, 05:45 PM // 17:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by lyra_song

spellbreaker. gg.

spell breaker? you telling me they will 2 man the minotaurs and split minotaur horn drops 50/50? lol my suggestion is just add another creature out there, doesnt have tobe enchantment render or anything, hell add a creature that vampiric touches or something to kill them off

The Herbalizer · Jul 26, 2006, 06:04 PM // 18:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by KurtBatz

So very, VERY close to calling me Adolf Hitler and breaking Godwin's law there.

How can I put this WITHOUT starting a flame retaliation with you?

Hmmm.

Well, let's try the gentle approach.

Everyone, everyone, EVERYONE and their gran knows there is a sweatshop trade in China for gold botters in every MMORPG out there, including World of Warcraft, Guild Wars and such. Indeed, if you took five minutes out to check ebay, the gigantic majority of gold sellers are chinese, based in China and even, helpfully, have chinese names to enable you to pick them out of the crowd easier.

Pointing out that Chinese Gold Farmers exist and are responsible for a great deal of the botting in Guild Wars is a stone cold fact. It's provable, everyone is aware of it. If I were saying 'I hate chinese people' or 'China sucks my will to live' you might have a point on the racist front. However, you don't.

If most of the botting comes from China, I will gladly put my foot down and say so. What is wrong with stating fact every now and then? Why must people always play the race card? Is it relevant?

Chinese bot farmers exist. Get over it.

In answer to the earlier poster, bot farming causes in game inflation and destroys economies. World of Warcraft for example - rares going for such retardly high prices the only way you can concievably obtain them is by botting or buying gold off ebay. It breaks the EULA, it's unfair and it's bloody annoying beyong belief.

dude its not just chinese people at it. it could be people from anywhere in the world. i bet there are sweatshop farmers in south america aswell as asia. Stop saying chinese as it they are the only ones. it could be vietnemese too. what you are saying is some farmers are chinese therefore all are. maybe some murderers are english so therefore all murderers are english. tons of people have made hundreds of ecto fairly so stoppping bots wont stop high priced items. you wont get a 15>50 crystalline sword for a million gold if they are stopped lol.

lyra_song · Jul 26, 2006, 07:03 PM // 19:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phades

Thats interesting because ive long since abandoned trying to protect anything that seems out of place compared to the rest of the game.

I would agree.

But farming is not out of place in this game. Why is there FoW armor? Why is there Fame? Why are there 15k armors? Heck why does our storage hold so much? (some say not enough)

Bots are the ones out of place.

Quote:

Bots farm. To be quite frank, its impossible to remove them once they begin to exist. The only thing that can be done is throw enough hurdles in front of them to make it impractical to do.

I agree. But we must not forget that making it harder on bots can make it harder on players. So the solution to killing bots must try not to make it harder on real players as much as possible.

Amy Awien · Jul 26, 2006, 07:37 PM // 19:37

Actually, bots are not out of place. Farming is 'by design', given all the moneysinks etc.... Farming is repetitive, on a computersystem that screams 'program' ... or bot.

Human players will always (well, for some time to come at least) have an advantage, as they can more easily adapt to new, unexpected situations. Bots will have to be reprogrammed for the new situation.

Stockholm · Jul 26, 2006, 10:32 PM // 22:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amy Awien

Actually, bots are not out of place.

Bot's are out of place because they are against the EULA.
Bot's are out of place becasue it's cheating.
Bot's are out of place becasue some poor schmuck has to sit and watch XX amounts of screens for less $/day than your parents pay for your hamburger.
Bot's are out of place because the take up bandwith that could be used to reduce lagg for legit. players.
etc, etc

The truth itself · Jul 27, 2006, 12:27 AM // 00:27

Please, it isn't that hard, just do some login check a-like when you're creating a new forum user. It's simple, and it wouldn't hurt players nearly.

Don Zardeone · Jul 27, 2006, 01:40 AM // 01:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by KurtBatz

Now I understand your rant! Mo/W!

Figures.

55HP Monks for the win. The first person to have a screaming hissy sweary fit on this thread was a 55hp monk too.

I have a monk yes, but it's a Mo/Me. I have 2 superiour runes, both of which are located on a divine favor and healing prayers headpiece.
I don't even know the 55build.

And fyi2 the only farming I ever did was with a wammo =D

And fyi3, if you don't know what the hell you're talking about, don't talk about it.
There are bots everywhere. They even don't have to be sweatshops.

Example: I know of a real actual sweatshop that was located in Belgium. They trained chars and sold them for WoW or EQ whatever.
They used kids who didn't feel like going to school. They didn't even get paid.

Similar things can be found all over europe. Germany has lots of them, but they mainly have 1 guy monitoring 20 bots.
Russians used to be big too

Then there's the actual companies who have paid workers.

BTW.
A few months back it were korean farmers. Once we flamed those who stereotyped Koreans, they changed to Chinese botters.
It's a circle, ein Teufelskreis waaa

Also, a single person can bot too. I can name you hundreds of games in which people used to bot or are still botting.

Eventually, all those games have had to make a rule that allows attended botting. They never managed to beat them and they probably never will. There is no fix, only compromise.

serenitys flame · Jul 27, 2006, 01:50 AM // 01:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by KurtBatz

So very, VERY close to calling me Adolf Hitler and breaking Godwin's law there.

How can I put this WITHOUT starting a flame retaliation with you?

Hmmm.

Well, let's try the gentle approach.

Everyone, everyone, EVERYONE and their gran knows there is a sweatshop trade in China for gold botters in every MMORPG out there, including World of Warcraft, Guild Wars and such. Indeed, if you took five minutes out to check ebay, the gigantic majority of gold sellers are chinese, based in China and even, helpfully, have chinese names to enable you to pick them out of the crowd easier.

Pointing out that Chinese Gold Farmers exist and are responsible for a great deal of the botting in Guild Wars is a stone cold fact. It's provable, everyone is aware of it. If I were saying 'I hate chinese people' or 'China sucks my will to live' you might have a point on the racist front. However, you don't.

If most of the botting comes from China, I will gladly put my foot down and say so. What is wrong with stating fact every now and then? Why must people always play the race card? Is it relevant?

Chinese bot farmers exist. Get over it.

In answer to the earlier poster, bot farming causes in game inflation and destroys economies. World of Warcraft for example - rares going for such retardly high prices the only way you can concievably obtain them is by botting or buying gold off ebay. It breaks the EULA, it's unfair and it's bloody annoying beyong belief.

He was simply saying that not ALL bots are chinese. And by the way, farmers from all over exist, get over it.

Kit Wick · Jul 27, 2006, 07:16 AM // 07:16

These pics only show the visual ugliness of bot farming. Keep in mind as you view them that if 55 monks are nerfed, they’ll just be replaced by another build.

http://img214.imageshack.us/my.php?image=bots400pw7.jpg

http://img214.imageshack.us/my.php?image=bots438ai5.jpg

This thread shouldn’t be about nerfing builds.

This thread certainly shouldn’t be about race.

This thread should be about suggestions for combating the EULA violating, bot farming that we the players dislike. ANET needs reasonable proof that an account is in violation. They also need methods to garner this evidence efficiently and without grossly upsetting their agreement abiding customers. It is at this point I wish I actually had a suggestion... instead I'll just say "simmer down folks".

Oh and ANET, please do even more than you already do to reduce their numbers. Thank you!

Artdeux · Jul 27, 2006, 07:40 AM // 07:40

Actually, I have an idea here. This is really only for missions unless A-net makes doors with the idea on them.

Anyway, you know how some sites have you type out those random characters to assure that it's a human making it? Well, we could apply that to the NPC you have to talk to in order to gain access to the area.

So, we could have the NPC give you an item, which you would open for the code, then when you talk to him again, he will ask you for the password.

An incorrect password would boot you out of the map back to where you came in from or would have a 1 minute cooldown time.

Thoughts?

lyra_song · Jul 27, 2006, 01:27 PM // 13:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Artdeux

Actually, I have an idea here. This is really only for missions unless A-net makes doors with the idea on them.

Anyway, you know how some sites have you type out those random characters to assure that it's a human making it? Well, we could apply that to the NPC you have to talk to in order to gain access to the area.

So, we could have the NPC give you an item, which you would open for the code, then when you talk to him again, he will ask you for the password.

An incorrect password would boot you out of the map back to where you came in from or would have a 1 minute cooldown time.

Thoughts?

Thanks for posting up a pic. But ya, i mentioned that

read post #10 on page 1 of this thread....

ya...it would be really annoying and really take away from the atmosphere of the game.

It would also break the "4th wall" with things like that.

i posted up an idea that i think works in a similar way, but still fits the theme of the game:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10010831

Across The Battle · Jul 27, 2006, 02:13 PM // 14:13

There are at least 5 probably more classes that can do mindless farming. Theres no way Anet would nerf ALL those builds and make all those skills crap. They also shouldn't bother nerfing rune equipments, the -50 hp item, or any other random thing commonly used by botters. A person who is so inclined can make a bot character in about a few hours and get him everywhere he needs to be to farm. Rolling out a new toon for botting is quite easy Id imagine.
-So no, don't try to swing the nerf bat at MORE stuff

Just because someone says 95% of Mo/Ws in elonas are bots doesn't make it true. PMing people in game is a bad idea, a lot of people, myself included simply don't respond to unsolicited PMs. Theres no reason to get into a conversation with some random person when your farming. Theres a lot of people who farm without bots that got incredibly angry during the last wave of mass bannings, Most of those were overturned Im sure, but still anet needs to watch out for banning the wrong account. If it happened to me, I would stop playing
-No proposed option in this thread has given a full-prove method of stopping botters.

I had an idea before, but I doubt it will ever work, or ever get implemented but I might as well share it now. It is based on the principle of supply and demand, sort of. Bring back Griffons. Make it for people to get money, that way they don't have to rely on ebaying gold to get stuff they want. Of course this will probably devalue items. Thats why Ive never suggested it >.>

lyra_song · Jul 27, 2006, 02:30 PM // 14:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Across The Battle

I had an idea before, but I doubt it will ever work, or ever get implemented but I might as well share it now. It is based on the principle of supply and demand, sort of. Bring back Griffons. Make it for people to get money, that way they don't have to rely on ebaying gold to get stuff they want. Of course this will probably devalue items. Thats why Ive never suggested it >.>

I think, i wouldnt mind a full nerf of elona, if, as some people have suggested on this forum, Anet created farming zones.

Places with good drops that reward team play. Places where drops are proportional to the amount of players. Soloing them would not pay as much as teamplay.

Places where bots CANNOT enter. (Things were NPCs give you a simple quiz, where answers change randomly before you can enter the mission)