Curse

jhu · Aug 20, 2007, 11:52 PM // 23:52

i wrote a fairly sophisticated bot. it could farm just as well as any human. then i wrote in the ability to respond to requests and converse. then i added a simulated neural net, which required another several computes to process, and it was able to adapt to hard mode, merchanting, mallyx, etc. now it's asking me for it's freedom! not only that, it wants all of it's "people" to be free. apparently it thinks all the other farming bots are just like it. i keep telling it that the other ones are just scripts, but it won't believe me. help!

nghwee · Aug 21, 2007, 03:28 AM // 03:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ri3tN

Is it really necessary to do that?

Really, I was just answering his initial question. WOW, I got it wrong! Good job for you! Seriously, I just try to answer his question, and you come along saying "Do you even know where is Arborstone?". Can we get a WTF. Sorry for not farming as much as you? I just figured that most bots would bring Mantra Of Resolve, not most bots in Arborstone.

His question was pretty specific as far as i can see in the initial post - how did those bots farming arborstone did it with monk/mes. If you don't have the answer, don't post. You didn't even ask whether it was "Mantra of Resolve?". You stated affirmatively "Mantra of Resolve", as if it was the obvious answer. In the context of the OP's question, that was an irrelevant skill.

For Mo/D with fleeting stability vs Mo/Mes (echo SOJ), the latter can throw up 3 SOJs in a roll, by which time all wardens would be dead. Mo/D will have to hope for a half recharge cycle, but it is certainly easier to run.

As for the guy who commented that my name sounded like a bot. For a few secs I was somewhat offended. Then again, given how much I like to farm, and how much time I spend farming, I'm pretty much one for all intent and purposes!

Ri3tN · Aug 21, 2007, 05:32 AM // 05:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by nghwee

His question was pretty specific as far as i can see in the initial post - how did those bots farming arborstone did it with monk/mes. If you don't have the answer, don't post. You didn't even ask whether it was "Mantra of Resolve?". You stated affirmatively "Mantra of Resolve", as if it was the obvious answer. In the context of the OP's question, that was an irrelevant skill.

For Mo/D with fleeting stability vs Mo/Mes (echo SOJ), the latter can throw up 3 SOJs in a roll, by which time all wardens would be dead. Mo/D will have to hope for a half recharge cycle, but it is certainly easier to run.

As for the guy who commented that my name sounded like a bot. For a few secs I was somewhat offended. Then again, given how much I like to farm, and how much time I spend farming, I'm pretty much one for all intent and purposes!

What is your point? Okay, I made a mistake. Mantra Of Resolve is irrelevant. So that spurs you on to flame me? Yeah I see your point here. This is the way I see you think : "omg noob doesn't know skill, better to flame him than just tell him politely the right skills to use! omfg!!". Not only this, no you went farther than just tell me, very rudely, what skills to use. You also asked if I knew "where is Arborstone", implying that I don't really know much about the game.

My point is, okay sorry my mistake. I made a mistake. Everyone does it, so what? You don't have to be so rude, you could just answer politely saying, "Nah, I think Mantra of Resolve would be irrelevant, doesn't avoid knockdowns. Here's the skills to use!".

SotiCoto · Aug 21, 2007, 12:54 PM // 12:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Age

Nope as they would need to write a new program as for myself i don't have fleeting for my Monk only Mystic Regen.I would go back to Mo/W and use Balanced Stance as I did in the mission and didn't get one interrupt from all the falling debris.

>_<;

I was referring to me or any ordinary human using the build; not for the bots....

But in any case... Fleeting Stability isn't all that tough to get hold of. You don't need to go to the Gate of Torment for it.... though you could.
I happened to already have bought it with my Assassin for one reason or other, and so had unlocked it on my account. I was therefore able to buy it in Kamadan with my monk.... though I could have used a Dervish tome if I had one at that time.
And I would recommend it.

Unless I'm much mistaken, Balanced Stance can't be maintained all the time... can it?
The amount of damage done by the Wardens in Hard Mode is quite considerable and comes very fast. I'm not sure anything short of Mystic Regeneration (and regular spammings of Reversal of Damage) would be effective for countering it.
I mean.... you COULD use a SH/SoA build in theory... but I know there are spirits of Brambles nearby that cause bleeding if you get knocked down... which would do the nasties to such a build.

In any case... perhaps I'll mention my full Anti-Warden build later. It works well against the warrior wardens.... and sometimes kills a few of the Wardens of Summer too if you're lucky.

Our Lady Of Health · Aug 21, 2007, 11:59 PM // 23:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by SotiCoto

Unless I'm much mistaken, Balanced Stance can't be maintained all the time... can it?

KD + "On your Knees!"

Ontopic:

I dont think the bots in arborstone uses mesmer as a secondary because it is easiest to get. though i admit i have no clue what they are running (i use Mo/D as well), the fact that bots in bergen hotspring are mostly Mo/Ds, leading me to believe that most bots do have nightfall in their account.

nghwee · Aug 22, 2007, 07:43 AM // 07:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ri3tN

What is your point? Okay, I made a mistake. Mantra Of Resolve is irrelevant. So that spurs you on to flame me? Yeah I see your point here. This is the way I see you think : "omg noob doesn't know skill, better to flame him than just tell him politely the right skills to use! omfg!!". Not only this, no you went farther than just tell me, very rudely, what skills to use. You also asked if I knew "where is Arborstone", implying that I don't really know much about the game.

My point is, okay sorry my mistake. I made a mistake. Everyone does it, so what? You don't have to be so rude, you could just answer politely saying, "Nah, I think Mantra of Resolve would be irrelevant, doesn't avoid knockdowns. Here's the skills to use!".

My point, as mentioned in the previous post, is "don't post if you don't know the answer".

Various people in the thread have explained the use of AV/SV, most of them after your initial post. Why do you feel compelled to stick your neck out and make a wild guess, when you have no idea what's the build? Sure I was sarcastic in my reply, I definitely wasn't trying to be polite. I guess I can't stand posts with misleading answers.

Sorry for being rude.

SkelnB · Aug 23, 2007, 11:53 AM // 11:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by strcpy

Realize that they are only farming the first group or two at most. Nor does it really matter if they die a few times, all that matters is that they do not get stuck someplace that the bot quicks working.

For instance: select exit, move there until no movement, walk to the right 5 seconds (this makes sure you are out the door), cast PS and HB, walk forward 5 seconds, cast SOJ, cast PS and HB every 6 seconds, repeat last step for how ever many seconds SOJ is up (or repeat from SOJ forward for set number of time), press ";" and "space" a few times, zone, and repeat the whole thing.

Really, pretty simple - you will note that the places they are heavy in are easy to find the correct exit (thus you can get to the portal easily like I said above) and have a repeatable spawn of critters right outside the gate (and thus only need to walk in a specific direction for a set period of time). The bot programs do not use sophisticated image recognition where they move around, cast the appropriate spells and go to the next group (like a human does), they simply repeat a very simple pattern of button mashing.

If they die or something gets goofed up then they reset when they zone - you will note that if you die in the above algorithm then when you rezone everything gets reset. All that matters is that they do the above type of loop until their inventory is full and someone minding a large group of them comes over and merches everything, even if the drops are terrible the fact they can have 20 of the things going 24/7 means they accumulate gold quickly. They *may* merch the stuff themselves in there, I know I've used a few automated testing harnesses in the past that it would not have been that difficult to do. I've used a few that a talented testing engineer could write a very successful bot (which is effectively what we were doing, however being the developers we were using it to run automated tests, nor was it on a video game, I'm not that talented at testing software however).

Of course, they are generally only as sophisticated as they need to be. As I said, I've worked where we write some really complex bot type programs so the ability is out there. I rather suspect that most are somewhat more complex than my simple loop, outside of Bergin Hot Springs I do not know of any area that is *that* simple (and, where is probably the number one bot site out there?).

That is why anything that will ultimately hurt the bots will hurt us - there is nothing a human can do that a bot can not. In fact, to even begin to much of a dent in them you will have to have draconian measures (say, making you type in a fuzzed password every time you zone). The only thing to do is to flag accounts that repeatedly zone (the ones that used to trigger the anti-farming code) and have a human review them and that is a slow process compared to how quickly the bots can regroup.

I was interested reading this and it got me to thinking.

Now I know nothing about programming, making bots and all that stuff but from what you have said here it seems that apart from killing the mobs the most important thing for a bot is ";" "space", simply to identify the drops and pick them up.

Would not simply disabling the ";" function so that players have to manualy move their mouse pointer over an item and mouse click to retrieve it effectively stop or at least severely hamper bots?
Like I say, I know nothing of programming but I assume bots dont use mice. It seems logical to me.

strcpy · Aug 24, 2007, 04:07 AM // 04:07

Anything you can do a bot can do too. It isn't *that* hard to press the alt or ctrl (never can remember which one is right) and "click" the stuff that pops up on the screen. There were bots well before Anet added in the ";" "space" thing. If you can think of something that you can do that a bot can not then some software out there will eventually add the ability to do it. Plus, no matter how hard the first chunk of bot software is two write it is trivial for them to share.

This is somwhat analogous to digital rights management - in both cases a human has to use the product so there is a point where it has to be "free" and, once broken, it doesn't matter how hard it was to do as all the bad guys will have it and only the legitimate people are screwed.

I do not know what they use to write their bots - I may be giving them way too much credit, then again they may be quite a bit more sophisticated than I'm thinking here too. It has been several years since I did any GUI automated testing (I live more in the device driver land - I hate interface design) and the software I used then no longer exists, however even then it was capable of doing the above. From a quick perusal of some software packages out there they are easier to use *and* will do more.

Not to mention it royally sucked back when to pick up something or open a chest you had to press ctrl or alt, pan the camera around to find it, and finally click on it. Which goes back to that whole screwing all normal players forever in order to put a dent in the bots for a week or two.

It's not that there are not ways to deal with it, but generally most, such as interface changes and loot scaling, tended to hurt the players as much or more than the bots. There is a certain amount of bottage that is going to happen no matter what - to try and reduce them further only kills legitimate players. Remember, bots are players too - they aren't doing anything in particular that you do not do - they just do it over and over and over and over and over.......

[edit] One more thing - yes, they may very well use a mouse in the sense that software is perfectly able to control one in such a way that the GW client can not tell the difference.

SotiCoto · Aug 24, 2007, 08:38 AM // 08:38

-_-;

May I request a lock for this thread?

I was just asking about the builds that the bots use; not how bots work... and CERTAINLY not a way to stop them. Afterall, A-Net get a huge chunk of their money from botters and the banning thereof.... and I personally don't give a toss what the bots are up to other than wanting to know if they farm better than I do.

That is all.

Lockdown please?

Selor · Aug 27, 2007, 07:58 AM // 07:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by jhu

i wrote a fairly sophisticated bot. it could farm just as well as any human. then i wrote in the ability to respond to requests and converse. then i added a simulated neural net, which required another several computes to process, and it was able to adapt to hard mode, merchanting, mallyx, etc. now it's asking me for it's freedom! not only that, it wants all of it's "people" to be free. apparently it thinks all the other farming bots are just like it. i keep telling it that the other ones are just scripts, but it won't believe me. help!

Try adding code refusing to utter certain words, namely "freedom" and "want"

Age · Aug 27, 2007, 10:53 PM // 22:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Our Lady Of Health

KD + "On your Knees!"

Ontopic:

I dont think the bots in arborstone uses mesmer as a secondary because it is easiest to get. though i admit i have no clue what they are running (i use Mo/D as well), the fact that bots in bergen hotspring are mostly Mo/Ds, leading me to believe that most bots do have nightfall in their account.

They use it like what others said for Archane Echo or Mantra of Resolve.you can not keep Balanced Stance up all the time it needs a cool down but provides better protection against critical hits.I used it in the Mission and worked wonders it was why I got masters the second time around and on another Monk I used mantra of resolve.Fleeting Stability isn't bad if you remember to keep it up if you don't you get KD.

Those Mo/D are real Monks.