Curse

Lycan Nibbler · Mar 03, 2010, 11:18 PM // 23:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

Have to disagree with Borat that it would be possible to keep any format clean. Mostly clean, I'd buy. Unfortunately, "mostly clean" does create some seriously undesirable distributional effects.

/agree... there is always someone with more knowledge/programming skills and support would always be playing catch up, even if they had the resources which they dont /sigh

The-Bigz · Mar 04, 2010, 01:51 AM // 01:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tramp

Several of my pvp buddies have quit recently due to bots ruining their fun. Look at any mmo and the end of its life cycle is characterized by rampant botting, hacks, and no support. If you ever logged into Diablo2 a few years ago, you know what I mean. The game, although lame compared to today's games, was just bots, bots, bots. So look at gw1 today and you can see what to expect in its final days:

No support = Test Krewe recommends changes to skills and they dont know their head from their rear ends so we get rotten skill changes
= No official acknowlegment or inquiries into the pvp botting
= No programmers to fix the xth tournament so it ends
= hb cancelled along with other pvp stuff I never did
= 6 months before they do something about the hacking of accounts when it reached unprecedented levels
= more stuff I am sure you can think of

botting: pvp bots are everywhere and they can not or will not do a thing to stop it

There is a reason why my fame stands at 1 point and the odds of me ever playing pvp to double it to 2 points is zero. That reason is I was too lazy to ever learn how to pvp. HOWEVER... now I have a second excuse as well, bot wars...

You win the prize. These things are correct.

I didn't want to solo through PvE, but with the way things are going now its either solo or get a run. Looks like I can't PvE.
I didn't want to run a bot or a cheap gimmick/team spike build in PvP, but with the way things are going for the last 2 years it looks like I will have too. Looks like I cant PvP.

This is how most things are turning out, and its not like you can blame A-Net due to how long the game has been out, of course its going to be neglected. Can't blame them again on recent updates/late updates/weird off topic ranom buffs either. The community that does speakup gets what they want changed until the community that was against the change speaksup in QQ format, usually after an update, like now.
This is the new Guild Wars, and its been heading this way for the last 2 years, thats why I still try to be constructive while taking time to troll people that are naturally anal on purpose. Keeps things exciting.

Edit: One can also post opposite opinions and even support those opinions vs mass hordes of angry people and then watch them stress over theory crafting. All these things and more is why I have played less Guild Wars and since joining have done more Guild Wars Guru foruming.

The point is that one must find his own way to satisfy his own condition of fun. Thats just my way. Play the game every now and then, but spend more time watching the community stressout like savage apes from the Jurassic Period.

Silverblad3 · Mar 04, 2010, 10:54 AM // 10:54

I reluctantly have to agree with Borat, from what we know in regards to Anet and their lack of comments on this matter currently demonstrate that interrupt botting is here to stay, that competitive PvP is those with the best bots, and 'scumbags' will farm fame at the expense of others.

I was very surprised that Lucky Charmed admitted that his guild uses such bots for several months with no consequence. This is one of the lowest moments in GW PvP, rampant cheating in competitive formats that was once the pride and joy of Anet.

I liked FoxBat's suggestion, nerf interupts to hell, however it would make for a poor meta game but at least it would stop the cheating taking place. I cannot help feel that the situation with interrupt bots has left me (and I know others) with a great sense of abandonment from anet. I am not worried about GW2, it is not here yet and at the moment the current situation is a real deterrant to myself of getting involved with this franchise further, sad story.....

Silver

Lycan Nibbler · Mar 04, 2010, 12:02 PM // 12:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silverblad3

I reluctantly have to agree with Borat, from what we know in regards to Anet and their lack of comments on this matter currently demonstrate that interrupt botting is here to stay

I think the writing was on the wall long ago when they didnt clamp down on the first follow bots etc in JQ and FA. The bots have been in PvP for much longer than many realize, theyve just become apparent because more people have them now and go overboard with their use rather than having them "blend in" like the initial ones did.
Like yourself, the lack of action in GW1 just makes me believe the same will happen in GW2 and maybe I will bite the bullet and play a P2P that includes proactive support in the future instead.

Silverblad3 · Mar 04, 2010, 12:19 PM // 12:19

Lycan, you are right, they have been around for so long which was why I gave up on JQ so long ago, the fact that people were simply leeching and got over 6 mil faction to max titles and nothing happened to them....That was about 18 months ago.

The 'silent' treatment of such issues is what damages the community further, alienates them and allows folks to run wild with the abuses. Those I HA with are also feeling the same way and I have already seen folks become very upset that all the hard work they put into HA was for nought.

Whilst the CRMs may not be able to comment on this for whatever reason (I dont blame them, I blame their support and management structure) the situation will only escalate. I guess their management think it more important to let the CRMs make posts on artists working on personal stuff at events then tackle such a problem...go figure...

I can see new blood in HA resorting to these bots as they become more prevalent. I guess I can bow out of this arena and future products at the right time.....

Silver

Amy Awien · Mar 04, 2010, 12:59 PM // 12:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silverblad3

I liked FoxBat's suggestion, nerf interupts to hell, however it would make for a poor meta game ...

You'd have two classes in for a redesign, or you'd have to accept your failure at designing and building a PvP capable RPG.

You can take interrupts out of the game but that will not change the fact that hacked clients will still give their users an advantage. Just knowing what skillbars your opponents brought, seeing which skills they activate, which are recharging, charged, how much energy, adrenaline and health they have - and seeing it from all of them at the same time would be an advantage.

Quote:

I am not worried about GW2 ...

Perhaps you should be. It is not obvious at all that they both understand whats at the heart of the problem and are able and willing to address it, in GW1 or GW2.

code · Mar 04, 2010, 01:06 PM // 13:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amy Awien

You can take interrupts out of the game but that will not change the fact that hacked clients will still give their users an advantage. Just knowing what skillbars your opponents brought, seeing which skills they activate, which are recharging, charged, how much energy, adrenaline and health they have - and seeing it from all of them at the same time would be an advantage.

Stop thinking that the GW developers are that bad at security.

You cannot see other people's skillbars, you cannot see the recharge of opponents' skills, you cannot see their energy and you cannot see their exact health, because health is sent as a percentage. You can't see their adrenaline either.

So all of your points are void.

Also,
@sunec patrolling this thread every so often: I pity you.

Amy Awien · Mar 04, 2010, 01:18 PM // 13:18

But apparantly - according to screenshots - you can see which skills they activate (or are you going to deny these bots exist?), which will tell you what bar they run, and it will give an indication of their energy.

Just seeing what skills they activate is more than enough, it also proves the point you don't like to hear; GW developpers are bad at security.

lishi · Mar 04, 2010, 01:45 PM // 13:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killed u man

It's not impossible to detect cheaters/botters in this case. It is, however, impossible to detect them with GW in it's current state. There needs to be measures in place which detect the usage of bots not relying on visual conformation.

Though as Lemming said, when there is certain individuals running a Me/R bar with dshot, pleak, block, pdrain, leech, preturn (you get the idea) interrupting pretty much every keyskill on your bar, it's obvious, and they can be "visually" targetted by Anet. Though this requires way more resources than Anet is willing to spend on it.

Also, the real problem lies underneath. These apparent botters are the little fish in the ocean, the real problem is the botters you don't see. Snowball At's come to mind, weapon swapping bots and even those same interrupt bots.

Any person stupid enough to put all those interrupts on his bars SHOULD bot, because they clearly lack any common sense, and insight in actual PvP. Because it is these same players that, despite their apparent stupidity, still realize they can only farm laddermatches/HA. Running such a bar in a monthly, if not monthly finals will be an autoban, even if we're talking about Anet here.

If you simply mod the bot (And I know some people who bot top 100 GvG), you can make it alot more effective, and alot less apperent, pretty much next to nothing for the visual eye.

For starters, you could implement the publicly available "opposing party window" in your bot, and target monks NOT on shield set. (And thus on higher energy) You could then make your bot ONLY interrupt when the enemy Monks are low on energy (A bot can easily keep track of enemy monk's energy). So now, the bot will "slumber", waiting for the opportune moment to hit a pleak when your Monks were already low, pretty much guaranteeing a party wipe. (Even if it's on a 1/4's cast, noone will report someone getting a seemingly "lucky" interrupt)

On top of that, a real player is also capable of hitting such a lucky 1/4's cast, and therefore you can no longer visually detect botters.

Anet needs to implement certain securities which detect injection in the GW.exe process. But then, these will be bypassable, and then will have to keep on adjusting it.

So long story short:

Any bot can be detected through code/security measures without any form of doubt whatsoever. However, botters will always find ways to bypass that security, so you got pretty much of a rat race going on between Anet and the botters.

And concidering Anet barely cares about their game (with GW2 upcomming and such), and these botters clearly want to push their bots through, there can be but one victor, the botters.

I'm not saying it's hopeless, because Anet is definatly capapble of keeping certain events clean (RBR, monthlies, snowball, etc) but a 24/7 sweep of every botting in HA and GvG would require too much effort for a team so short on resources.

Problem is they don't even bother with keeping anything clean. I see botters in monthlies (I recognize their names from certain forums), snowball At's, HA, ... and nothing is getting done about it.

They can clear the most evident botting from HA simply by assigning someone on the job for few hour a week.

They will pick a botter, perma ban it, check IP, chat, credit card history try to permaban as many account as he have. Punish a few to educate many, normally its not a winning solution, but i don't see many other, as you stated any automatic bot detection could be fooled.

code · Mar 04, 2010, 01:57 PM // 13:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amy Awien

But apparantly - according to screenshots - you can see which skills they activate (or are you going to deny these bots exist?), which will tell you what bar they run, and it will give an indication of their energy.

Just seeing what skills they activate is more than enough, it also proves the point you don't like to hear; GW developpers are bad at security.

Of course you can see which skills they activate how else would you see cast bars?

Seriously I fail to see how that makes GW developers bad at security.

If you don't know anything about how Guild Wars works, then please don't insult the people who made it.

Killed u man · Mar 04, 2010, 02:42 PM // 14:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

*nods @ Borat*

The basic problem is that intelligent botting is more or less indistinguishable from quality play. I might suspect that a certain player botted this year's RBR...but I can't be sure. That player might know something I don't, have a ridiculously high quality ping, or just be lucky. I can't discriminate between the hypotheses based on the available evidence.

Establishing whether someone is "lucky" or "good" in any individual case demands resources that Support doesn't have. You need significant time and expertise. Someone reviewing the records would have to know what should be "expected" in order to observe whether or not someone's behavior conforms to expectations. But expectations vary from arena to arena, and it's ridiculous to suppose that ANet has a person in Support that is pro at HA, another that is pro at GvG, another that is pro at Gamer arenas such as RBR and Snowball Arena, and so on.

Have to disagree with Borat that it would be possible to keep any format clean. Mostly clean, I'd buy. Unfortunately, "mostly clean" does create some seriously undesirable distributional effects.

That's exactly what I said, in a longer version. Shitty bots will interrupt EVERY spell the Monk casts (or attempt to), good bots will interrupt keyskills, even miss interrupts (on purpose to avoid detection) but will guarantee interrupts on keymoments. (Guarantee rupt on ALL res signets for example)

However, since we're talking about bots here, and no longers some scripts created by a 12 year old, we can start using other ways of detecting these cheaters.

What I suggested is that Anet implements security measures which pretty much read the GW.exe process, and see what happens to it.

It's pretty simple, though, and 100% effective:

Right now, launching Guild Wars means GW.exe will get launched, and that's about it. This is pretty much a packet sniffer's dream, because he can pretty much do with GW.exe what he wants. And in the worst case scenario, you might crash the GW.exe process, in which they STILL give you the option: "Do you want to send this to Anet?" -Obv you don't-.

All they need to do is add a secondary process, independant of GW.exe, that's sole job is to monitor GW.exe. Due to the simpllicity of that program, it will be hard to compromise, because you can pretty much add as much "defense" to it as you want. (Without costing too much resources or process memory)

Point merely being, this program will detect any injections in the GW.exe process from outside, and there will be no doubt wether or not someone was cheating. Obviously, they would have to put certain programs on a ignore list (Texmod).

I'm not sure what the deal is with legal issues, but maybe Anet could even check ALL the processes on your computer to see if any hacking software is active. Though I doubt they're allowed to do that, privacy issues and such. But they're definatly allowed to scan their own process for injections, which as a matter of fact is illegal.

And then the ratrace starts which I talked about. These botters can then find ways to bypass said security (which is now non-existant), for example "hide" their hacking tools under a Texmod cover, or simply try and compromise the intire scanning process.

This, however, takes alot of time, and that's what you intitally want. If you do it decently, it can take a couple of days/weeks to fully comprimise security, meaning hackers/botters will now have to spend a week so they could bot again for xx days untill Anet updates it again. And then they can go with a healthy balance. (Release changes every 2 weeks) Meaning that hackers now have to spend 1 week simply to bot the next. This will not be worth it anymore (Unless again they're doing it for eBay money), and alot of botters will quit.

Obviously all theory crafting, because it's unlikely Anet will implement such a thing, but I do hope they do it for GW2. GW has been farmed by bots as early as 2006. (Early 2006)

Because the first duplication exploits (I know off) involved some packetsniffing and glitchy NPC's. (Which is pretty much the same principle as all these bots. Read and modify the server packets. Only with exploits, you try and force "impossible" packets through. For example opening xx NPC dialogue -Xunlai chest- without being anywhere close to it, or it not even being in the district)

Just saying it IS possible, without having to dedicate major resources to it (Unless again you want 24/7 coverage), and there is alot of companies out there who will SELL security. (So Anet has to do nearly nothing)
Buying a licence for GW2, and maybe GW1 aswell, wouldn't be that expensive, so I don't see why they didn't do it in the first place. (Prolly cuz GW has no monthly fees? I dunno)

Martin Alvito · Mar 04, 2010, 04:18 PM // 16:18

As you note, instituting such measures just sets off an arms race between cheaters and Support. There are many more cheaters than people in Support, and some of those cheaters are probably better programmers than anyone at ANet.

It follows that ANet will lose that arms race. As I recall, your suggestion is essentially what Valve did with Half-Life. They caught some cheaters, but lost the war. Yes, there's value in catching the dumb cheaters. But expecting any Support efforts to revert the game back to a pristine 2006 state is unrealistic.

To eliminate the cheating, ANet needs to close the exploits. That probably requires a rebuild of the client from the ground up. I'd rather see them provide us an airtight (for now) GW2 client than expend time, resources and energy trying to repair the current GW client. Let's face it, GW is a five year old legacy game. It's impressive that the client held up as long as it did.

Silverblad3 · Mar 04, 2010, 04:36 PM // 16:36

I hope GW2 has better features to prevent botting, but at the moment we are not playing that game, we are playing GW1 and hence it is important that such competitive play is protected. Many others are will judge what they do here and it will be a basis for their decision to move to GW2 or not.

Whether it is a technical solution or resourcing (monitoring) publicly banning accounts may also act as a deterrant.

From the sounds of things can be done, it is up to Anet to decide if they will allocate the resources and l hope they can do something, but the more they remain quiet the less faith I have, especially since this has been a problem for sometime now.

Silver

some guy · Mar 04, 2010, 05:00 PM // 17:00

That's why PvP is getting deader-er and flashing tigers in PvE and troll is the way to go!!

Mireles · Mar 04, 2010, 06:17 PM // 18:17

PVP has been dead for about 2 years not, only people left are emote junkies and ppl that need a real self esteem.

I never expected a game play with a community with such rotten sportsmanship, no since of fair play, no encouragement from the community to enter new people, could last as long as it did.

This is just another example of why pvp is dead because of pvp-ers, Anet was just trying to provide another area of game play. Like people and support have said before. The game is what you make it, its not Arena nets fault that pvp has attracted this kind of community.

I pvp-ed back before emotes, faction, and fame...Halls was in tomes and pve specific... and it was actually fun.

Then it got emo when they added things to measure people by, And it got harder and harder for people that don't play guild wars 16 hours a day to get into.

If rank didn't have an emote nobody would care.

Anet will never fix PvP because:

1. Fixing Pvp offers no pay-out... New players will continue to be excluded.
2. The players are the cause of the problem... There cheating so i got to cheat too... does display much morality or sportsmanship of the situation, so why fix it when they will just find another way to cheat.
3. Continuing poor sportsmanship... Nobody likes to be cussed out for winning or losing... or being called a noob and getting kicked from a group because u don't have the correct number by your name.

When the community fixes these problems... then maybe Anet will be more inclined to serve the dedicated pvp community that is probably around 10% right now.

Amy Awien · Mar 05, 2010, 02:10 AM // 02:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by code

Of course you can see which skills they activate how else would you see cast bars?

Seriously I fail to see how that makes GW developers bad at security.

The problem is that (judging from the reports on pvp bots), with the hacked clients you can at any time see the skill activation of all your opponents, not just the one you have targetted.

That means the server sends all this information to the client, trusting the client to only show the information on the selected target.

It would be this trust that shows a lack of 'security' oriented thinking in the design.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killed u man

It's pretty simple, though, and 100% effective:

Right now, launching Guild Wars means GW.exe will get launched, and that's about it. This is pretty much a packet sniffer's dream, because he can pretty much do with GW.exe what he wants. And in the worst case scenario, you might crash the GW.exe process, in which they STILL give you the option: "Do you want to send this to Anet?" -Obv you don't-.

All they need to do is add a secondary process, independant of GW.exe, that's sole job is to monitor GW.exe. Due to the simpllicity of that program, it will be hard to compromise, because you can pretty much add as much "defense" to it as you want. (Without costing too much resources or process memory)

No process on the machine where the client is running on would be able to detect a packet-sniffer running on another machine functioning as router between client and server. It might even be fairly difficult to detect one on the client machine itself.

Any additional process running and checking the actual GW-client can be hacked as readily as the GW-client. You can try and make this as difficult as you want, but in the end it will still get hacked by the bad guys while the good guys get the suffer the unavoidable drawbacks.

Quote:

Point merely being, this program will detect any injections in the GW.exe process from outside ...

GW.exe makes use of many system dll's and each of those could be modified to 'take control', without your detection program being able to detect any of that.

Quote:

I'm not sure what the deal is with legal issues, but maybe Anet could even check ALL the processes on your computer to see if any hacking software is active. Though I doubt they're allowed to do that, privacy issues and such.

You can never guarantee that the system function your detection program uses to query about running processes is not hiding some processes

And indeed, they are not allowed to check all processes, or at least, they're not allowed to send that information back to their servers.

Quote:

But they're definatly allowed to scan their own process for injections, which as a matter of fact is illegal.

Don't 'matter-of-fact' to hastily on legal matters, you might be wrong where you live and your running a good chance to be wrong where I live. Afaik it's not illegal where I live.

Quote:

And then the ratrace starts which I talked about.

Indeed, rather pointless. It's more effective to be very strict about the information you send to the client.

Btw, I'd not to be to confident in your estimates about the time it would hackers take to adjust to updates.

Quote:

Obviously all theory crafting, because it's unlikely Anet will implement such a thing, but I do hope they do it for GW2.

I hope not, because using the kind of stopgaps you've described would indicate they hadn't really considered 'security' in their client-server design. And certainly not one of those retarded third-party rootkit solutions that get hacked almost before they're released (if they're used more hacking them pays better)

Phineas · Mar 05, 2010, 02:55 AM // 02:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amy Awien

The problem is that (judging from the reports on pvp bots), with the hacked clients you can at any time see the skill activation of all your opponents, not just the one you have targetted.

That means the server sends all this information to the client, trusting the client to only show the information on the selected target.

It would be this trust that shows a lack of 'security' oriented thinking in the design.

I see your point, but without sending the info for all players, how would your client know to play the skill animation/sound that they are using?

Amy Awien · Mar 05, 2010, 07:18 AM // 07:18

That could be done by the server telling it wich animation or sound to play - and by reducing the different kinds of animations and sounds so that this information itself can not be used accurately to determine which skill is being used.

Silverblad3 · Mar 05, 2010, 11:26 AM // 11:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mireles

PVP has been dead for about 2 years not, only people left are emote junkies and ppl that need a real self esteem.

I never expected a game play with a community with such rotten sportsmanship, no since of fair play, no encouragement from the community to enter new people, could last as long as it did.

If rank didn't have an emote nobody would care.

Anet will never fix PvP because:

1. Fixing Pvp offers no pay-out... New players will continue to be excluded.
2. The players are the cause of the problem... There cheating so i got to cheat too... does display much morality or sportsmanship of the situation, so why fix it when they will just find another way to cheat.
3. Continuing poor sportsmanship... Nobody likes to be cussed out for winning or losing... or being called a noob and getting kicked from a group because u don't have the correct number by your name.

When the community fixes these problems... then maybe Anet will be more inclined to serve the dedicated pvp community that is probably around 10% right now.

Whilst you are right to a degree on the way new blood is treated in HA, this discussion is about the interrupt botting problem, but I do feel I need to answer some of your points.

1. PvE has little or no payout too if you are saying PvP has no payout. New players are excluded in elite PvE areas currently.
2. Not all PvP players cheat, however the same applies to PvE, leechers, non-payers to runners, scammers etc.
3. You are right, it was how I was treated when I entered the arena, twice I gave up but carried on and learnt to have a thick skin. I actively 'yell' at people who flame new players, tell them to go to PvE etc. On vent they realise that I am right, if we put off new blood, who will they farm for fame? They change their attitude and encourage new blood.

Anet have done much in GvG in terms of update, sometimes slowly but nonetheless they have, and this issue of bots is also very prevalent in GvG.

Silver

Otello · Mar 05, 2010, 02:38 PM // 14:38

I can't know the details and the criteria A-NET uses to find out botters, but I can suggest a way to reduce this problem. Clearly not everyone can be checked, but they could pay a major attention on higher level players. A team is winning 10 times in a row in HoH? look at their mesmer/ranger for botters, The first 10 gvg guilds should be checked constantly, all rank 14-15 heroes should be checked. I think its a small percentage of players, but at least you know that if you are becoming too good with bots, you increase your possibilities to be banned. Clearly this is a dumb proposal, one have to know the exact numbers of good players and the hours needed by A-NET to control them, but it could work.