Curse

suzumebachi · Jul 15, 2005, 04:28 AM // 04:28

I think that botters are making this game worse and worse. In order to combat the bots, ANet has resorted to nerfing esteemed farming areas, which while hindering botters' abilities, also takes away some of the fun for LEGITIMATE players.

What GW needs is some kind of Punkbuster type system that actually detects bot programs running in the background, and keeps logs of suspected accounts so that they may be dealt with by DMs/Admins.

Imp · Jul 15, 2005, 04:42 AM // 04:42

they do...

how do you think botters got banned? They picked the names out of a hat?

EternalTempest · Jul 15, 2005, 04:42 AM // 04:42

Good idea but it would be very hard, the gw client is designed to run minimzed, window, and full screen. Making programs running in the back ground is easy. If they decided to make it fullscreen only there be around it and other games have tried this approach. (Final Fantasy XI *cough*)

All that happens is GW to be "active" window and detecting "valid" key strokes. If they look for "repeat" patterns bots will be reprogramed. A.Net has some challanges ahead of it.

At least you don't have bots taking rare drops where everything is a "shared" and tickes off the players fighting over specific area's as most mmorph's.

suzumebachi · Jul 15, 2005, 05:02 AM // 05:02

If I recall correctly, punkbuster checks actual memory addresses for exploit programs, so it detects the bots themselves, not through keystrokes or repeating patterns etc.

also, Imp: I assumed that they closed those accounts based on actual observation, or from witnesses.

Anraeth · Jul 15, 2005, 06:07 AM // 06:07

there are at least 5000 nerds that broke punkbuster in AA, im sure it wouldnt work here.

Numa Pompilius · Jul 15, 2005, 07:55 AM // 07:55

1) Guildwars already has a much *much* better anti-cheat system than Punkbuster.
2) Punkbuster is utterly useless. It's hardly even a speedbump to cheaters.
3) A bot in this context is undetectable by the game, because it doesn't change any game files. It is simply a program running on the client computer which simulates mouseclicks/keypresses just like if it had been a player playing. The only way to detect bots is to look for repeated patterns which are too regular to be done by humans - and ANet already does this. And the bots already incorporate random commands as a counter.

Bots are effectively unstoppable, so what Anet does is to focus on minimizing the effect bots have on the economy. Unfortunately that means more aggravation for the legitimate players too, but there's really no alternative.

The only thing which would solve this problem in a GOOD way would be if people stopped buying in-game currency/items for real-world money.

Aranador · Jul 15, 2005, 08:01 AM // 08:01

Alternatively - A.net could employ hitmen - and instead of banning accounts, they eliminate the cheating at the source.

Mara Rotten · Jul 15, 2005, 08:18 AM // 08:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anraeth

there are at least 5000 nerds that broke punkbuster in AA, im sure it wouldnt work here.

Well its AA. In bf42 its impossible to broke pb.

Calimar · Jul 15, 2005, 08:30 AM // 08:30

There's no 100% protection, and there's no 100% certainty of breaking in.

Botters are NOT unstoppable: remember it's all about profit. Once I have hindered you enough, it stops being profitable. Bots CAN be detected. Remember they are not an intelligent being, just a program. And intelligent programs COST and the more intelligent they need to be, the more the cost.

How would I go about discovering bots? Well, first of all there are two ways to detect keypresses: one is the windows messaging system, the other is the bios functions. No program can directly modify the bios entry, so everyone uses the O.S. functions. Periodical checks on keypresses identify when the keyboard IS used and when it's just a windows message. This on the client side.

On the server side, if you suspect a user you can just send a weird series of messages to the client to see if it recovers: if it does, he's intelligent. If he gets confused too often, he's probably a bot. You can also automatically send queries to the suspected bot and check answers (like: "DM QUERY: give me name of one other char in your account") - pretty easy to check answers. Query wording can be changed automatically and queries might be different, easily checkable ("what time is it?"), and possibly changing ("who's got favour now?"). Bots will have a very hard time answering those, especially if they don't directly interact with the protocol itself. Every wrong or missed answer increases suspect, when suspects reach a certain value, DM check, warning or ban.

All in all tho, I agree with Pompilius: people should stop buying stuff.
A.net has done a good job in trying to keep economy low, and it's easy to come up with strong stuff: I found 3 max dam wands in my last ice caves of sorrow missions, how difficult can it be? Buying stuff for money in a game, like GW, that is for casual gamers is, in my personal opinion, extremely STUPID.

Saba The Hobo · Jul 15, 2005, 08:39 AM // 08:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anraeth

there are at least 5000 nerds that broke punkbuster in AA, im sure it wouldnt work here.

Yeah...pb hasn't faired so well with AA.

They basically manipulated pb to kick others, change name, etc.

and as far as 'impossible to break...'

not a chance

I must say, i do like Calimar's idea, however.

Chief · Jul 15, 2005, 08:54 AM // 08:54

Punkbuster has always failed to keep up with any hackers (programs) in any game. BF1942 and AA have been heavily played by hackers (PB is nothing). BF2 will have the same problem.

Punkbuster has no place in GW.

I do believe they need to figure a way to remove the bots so the rest of us can get "perfect" drops too.

I see the same person selling a lot of "perfect" weapons on Ebay, so there remains a way to farm the crap out of GW to get that many drops to sell on Ebay. This person knows the system well for get awesome weapons like the items I've seen.

Hopefully, the rest of us will be fortunate to get that many nice drops by playing the game. I've finished the game 6 times (two accounts) and have yet to seen the awesome drops that I see people sell on Ebay.

suzumebachi · Jul 15, 2005, 11:17 AM // 11:17

Well, there needs to be some way to check for programs running at certain memory addresses or something. The same way AV programs check for malicious code, GW could check for bots by scanning processes/services for suspicious crud.