Curse

the_jos · Jun 02, 2007, 10:57 PM // 22:57

From a end user perspective, I think the most successfull way would be to randomize mobs and npc's in town.
Bot's need reference points for movement in towns, randomize them and bots get stuck.
Placing mobs in various areas or differ how the mob looks also solves a part of the problem.
A few Chillblains necro's among the mobs outside Granite would solve the botting problem there.

However, creating random mobs might not be what the regular player wants.
PvE being predictable makes it easier to learn and play for a lot of players that are not that great, but still enjoy playing GW from time to time.
It also would require a lot of work on A-nets side.

On the other side, there is a technical solution with behaviour analysis.
This can be done with a program examining the database(s) or visual examination.
I don't know the amount of logging information A-net collects, but again, in the Granite Citadel example, it's a matter of looking at the various points selected to move (like NPC's and the flags marking the entrance/exit).
This however would create a enormous database, since you want to track behaviour over time and not only an instance.
It's possible to implement this on spot, but I think the bots will move as soon as the message hits the botting community that a certain area gives a ban.
Also, as soon as behaviour analysis is in place, botters will just adapt their bots so their behaviour does not fit the pattern anymore.

The only solution to this problem is a combination of several things.
First of all, selling GW gold for RL money should be made impossible.
I know sites like E-bay are working on that, not sure if they will succeed.
Second, selling GW gold for RL money should be made less profitable.
If bots get closed before they make the price of an account, people will not bot. I think this will be impossible.
On technical solutions, the best would be some kind of 'AI' behaviour analysis.
This would be rather complex and require a lot of storage for ingame behaviour of players and bots.
In other areas in the IT industry this is beeing looked at, but there has been no real solutions so far.
A good example is information security, where technical solutions are slowely moving to behaviour analysis, but there are no products that deliver 100% safety while they still give the users all they need.
This technology also could still lead to people being banned when their behaviour looks too much like a bot.

I think the botting problem will excist for a long time, since there will always be profit for the botters and the technical solutions will be too complex or too expensive to implement.

A question that also should be answered is:
Do botters have a significant impact on the game (economy?) in a way that the average player is influenced by them.
Or should the community just accept the bots and decide that A-net should dedicate the resources to other game areas?

To put it in other words, is stopping bots more important than HA/GvG balance or improving the game with features like Auction Houses (to name some topics I see frequent).
Given that people that are working on the bot problem are also capable on solving topics like the ones mentioned above.

lyra_song · Jun 02, 2007, 11:04 PM // 23:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by manitoba1073

So Lyra what would be n exceptable loss then. 20,30,40 or more players who were banned and then after the actually investigation were unbanned. shouldnt the actual extensive investigations happen before anyone gets banned? Come on by my count alone ive seen atleast 50+ ppl get banned then unbanned, this is a problem.

When Anet bans, theres 4 possibilities, from what i gather:

An account is justly banned, and not restored.
An account is unjustly banned and then restored.
An account is unjustly banned and not restored.
An account is justly banned and then restored.

The fact that there is even an appeals process shows that Anet does want possibility #3 to occur, or if it occurs, to be as low a number as possible.

Anet claims what? 8,000 bans?
So you say theres 50+ people out of your count thats been unjustly banned/restored?

Lets round it to 100 people. Thats a nice fat number.

Its a guess. Its exaggerated. But lets try it.

so basic math. Grab a calculator or google it. 100 out of 8000 is?

0.0125

Thats less than 1%
Its just over 1% of 1%

So that would give Anet a 99.9875% accuracy in banning?

-----------------

The question you ask is, what is an acceptable loss for me? ZERO.

I hope nobody around thinks that i LIKE players getting unjustly banned. I do not. But they do get it back.

Its annoying. its stupid. its inconvenient. it shouldnt happen. But its gonna happen.

Mr_Cynical · Jun 02, 2007, 11:07 PM // 23:07

Captchas ftw. It's not like this game works with screenreaders anyway, so why not?

Also, hopefully with the 'improved weapon crafting' system in GW2, players will be able to get weapons with whatever stats they need without farming 100 billion ectos to be able to improve it. Take away the need for huge amounts of gold, and you take away the market for bots. Take away the market and the supply will soon die off.

manitoba1073 · Jun 04, 2007, 08:22 AM // 08:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by lyra_song

When Anet bans, theres 4 possibilities, from what i gather:

An account is justly banned, and not restored.
An account is unjustly banned and then restored.
An account is unjustly banned and not restored.
An account is justly banned and then restored.

The fact that there is even an appeals process shows that Anet does want possibility #3 to occur, or if it occurs, to be as low a number as possible.

Anet claims what? 8,000 bans?
So you say theres 50+ people out of your count thats been unjustly banned/restored?

Lets round it to 100 people. Thats a nice fat number.

Its a guess. Its exaggerated. But lets try it.

so basic math. Grab a calculator or google it. 100 out of 8000 is?

0.0125

Thats less than 1%
Its just over 1% of 1%

So that would give Anet a 99.9875% accuracy in banning?

-----------------

The question you ask is, what is an acceptable loss for me? ZERO.

I hope nobody around thinks that i LIKE players getting unjustly banned. I do not. But they do get it back.

Its annoying. its stupid. its inconvenient. it shouldnt happen. But its gonna happen.

So by your number its been 2500 people thats been banned then unbanned since the start of GW, and thats not a problems for you? Ofcourse neither mine or your numbers are hard numbers but prolly close guess but i still find that very disturbing.

Amy Awien · Jun 04, 2007, 10:21 AM // 10:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loviatar

that is assuming only one single employee which is stupid since it was stated they have a much larger staff on that job.

Not properly reading is stupid. I did pose the 72 seconds for each employee investigating bots. That's per employee, so obviously it's 144 seconds with 2 and 288 (almost 5 minutes) with 4.

Quote:

Grab a calculator or google it. 100 out of 8000 is?

0.0125

Thats less than 1%
Its just over 1% of 1%

Lol, you need lessons in using percentages. I don't need a calculator, nor Google, 100 out of 8000 is 1.25%, which is more then 1% and a lot more (x125) then 1% of 1%.

lyra_song · Jun 04, 2007, 02:16 PM // 14:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amy Awien

Lol, you need lessons in using percentages. I don't need a calculator, nor Google, 100 out of 8000 is 1.25%, which is more then 1% and a lot more (x125) then 1% of 1%.

Nah i just need more sleep. But ya, youre right. /doh

My guess isnt a hard number. I really dont know what is the proper percentage of people who got banned and then appealed to get unbanned and were successful.

Forum posts alone are not enough of a sample. We dont know if there is a trend in increase (recent surges of banning), or if the ban rate is constant, or in decline, or whatnot.

And Amy, i dont think Anet alone is doing the banning. Gaile mentioned 3 continents, so im guessing North America, Europe and Asia.

NCsoft is the parent company of Anet. Perhaps the banning/accounts is more of NCsoft's side, since, they are the ones who we have to sign up for to even make support claims or make purchases in the game store.

-------

From my experience with MMOGs, any game where theres any sort of economy will get botters.

It really is impossible to get rid of it since its the users themselves who buy gold that attracts gold sellers.

I wish the issue was easily clear cut, but the vagueness and complications of it all really makes choosing a way to handle the issue much more difficult than simply saying "good" or "bad".

I think the reason i dont like botting and goldsellers not because of their effects on the economy (doesnt really bother me) but rather because they are not playing the game at all.

I cant pug with botters, i cant talk to them, i cant interact with them. They occupy server space and bandwidth that could be used by real people.

Gun Pierson · Jun 04, 2007, 04:53 PM // 16:53

The game mechanics are not waterproof. Botting is as old as online gaming itself and I think they still use somewhat the same methods to track them down.

If you don't want a cat to drink the milk standing next to her, the best way is to move the milk away instead of pointing fingers at the cat. That's control.

In the end it's Anet's problem, they created it. I don't care about botfarmers or gold buyers, I once did. This is an online game and in a few years we will only have some memories left, we will all be playing something else.

It's up to the softwarehouses to come up with better solutions in the future, that's the challenge.

Enko · Jun 04, 2007, 05:16 PM // 17:16

Well to address the issue of people not knowing that buying is against the EULA, Anet could at least stick a message when you start the program similar to the "Players, Protect your account" message.

I've had plenty of people who when I inform that I'm screenshotting and reporting for buying gold that they didn't know it was against the EULA. At least this way, they would have no excuse.

though people should still be reading the EULAs when they sign up for stuff . ..

Muk Utep · Jun 05, 2007, 12:57 PM // 12:57

Banning bots probably takes a bit of time. Likely not a month, but I doubt whoever is responsible takes a brief glance at an account and prompty bans it if it shows the slightest signs of bot-like behaviour. This means that there will always be bots, because even if they are fairly obvious, the process of banning them takes x amount of hours or days. If they ban ten bots, ten more will probably appear, and that's why you see them running around in GC or wherever. Just because there's a team dedicated to abolishing these bots doesn't mean that bots will completely disappear.

I do wonder what actually occurs when a truly innocent player is banned. Is it a complete coincidense that they just happened to show bot-like behaviour every time they were being monitored? Why were they being monitored in the first place if they are playing like a normal human being? Some of the complaints do come from people who are claiming innocence when in reality they did something wrong, but then again others have really done nothing wrong. I want to know what happens that leads to such a player getting banned. Is it because the bot banning team accidentally bans the wrong account id #? Shoddy work leading to the unjustified ban of a clean player? Actual imperception that leads another human being to believe that this player is actually a bot?

I know of at least one incident where a close friend of mine was banned for botting. We live together and always play from the same locale, usually sitting right next to eachother. The interesting thing is that we never do anything I'd consider bot-like - in fact, none of the characters on his account have builds that could even be considered farming builds. Most of the time we'd help eachother with quests, level up new characters to try things out, PvP a bit, trade, and otherwise swing around the game doing random things that no bot would truly benefit from. We didn't farm, except for the occasional run through some area if we needed a little money for skills or dyes or somesuch. I doubt we had ever spent a full two hours in stretch doing what can be considered farming. We practically always played together, in a party, and yet I wasn't banned when he was. This is the kind of scenario where I truly wonder what lead to him getting banned. Of course his numerous inquiries as to the penalty's nature were unanswered, and we stopped playing soon afterwards. I no longer play this game but occasionally visit the forums just to see if there have been any improvements that may tempt me to return. That has yet to occur.