How to stop hundreds of bot farmers in no time.

http://img89.imageshack.us/my.php?image=monkbotsuy5.png

Sit in Elona's reach with a piece of paper and a pen.
Write down the name of every single Mo/W that turns up.

BING. You've listed hundreds upon hundreds of chinese bot farmer accounts within the space of a few hours.

Monitor the behaviour of all Mo/W's that turn up this area - 98% of them will be botters. The innocent 2% will respond to tells - not with a bot response, but a human response.

How about it Arena Net?

PS - They're all 55 monks. Considered nerfing this bot friendly build yet?

How can you prove every Mo/W there are bots? Sure, most of them probably are, but since some arent you'll be accusing the wrong people.

Well they could toss the person a whisper first, wait for a reply, if nothing, ban them. They can always plead "I was AFK" to the support later to have their accounts banned. But pretty sure that majority of those Mo/W's there are bots, as proven by their wallhugging (and how they walk in teams one after another at times).

ANet shouldn't have any problems with banning people accidentally, it's not very long since ANet did the mass banning operation.


What it comes to "nerfing 55's", how people suggest that do be done? The skills involved work perfectly in the "indended" uses.

Not sure. Make it so you can't reduce your HP below 100 or somesuch and if adding an additional rune to take it below that amount would reduce you further, the game doesn't let you?

I swear, every botter in this game is a Mo/W

My suggestion is to have an Arenanet representative sit there for a couple of hours, write down all the Mo/W names and monitor their behaviour closely, that's all

There's bound to be a few innocent Mo/W there - but sadly, they are completely in the minority for that area.

A trained lemming could tell the difference between a bot and a real person by watching movements.

Rule number 1 of criticism: know what youre talking about before you make yourself sound stupid.

Yes, I know a trained lemming can tell the difference. But I wasnt talking about trained lemmings, I was talking about general people. Most people cant just go there and tell who a bot is or not. Theres a difference between a trained lemming and a normal person.

I thought that other guys response was overly harsh, so here's one of my own.

It's easy to tell if they're a bot. If you message them, they have scripted responses like 'hi' and little else. They have 55hp monks that log into an area, go straight into the mission, farm, log off to stop anti-farming code, log next monk on that account on. That's why in areas like Elona, as per the screenshot, about 80 monks all pop up at once then disappear.

If you see a 55hp monk/warrior pop up in the area then disappear immediately without a word spoken, you know it's most likely a bot. All Arena Net need to do is sit there, write down the names and monitor that player.

They're not even that bright about it. Most of the names I see are asian to begin with to make it even more obvious they're chinese farmers. Up a name pops, second later it's gone. Over and over. I swear Arena Net aren't doing enough about it. Last night over the period of half an hour, I lost count of how many I saw - never less than thirty or so in a single town.

Thirty M/W's in a single town...... now have YOU ever found it that easy to find a monk for your team? It's glaringly, shockingly obvious who the bots are.

making prot spirit a cast on target other ally would fix it

While i do agree that shutting down bots is on the list of Anet's things to do, i dont think a single person sitting there monitoring activity is the most efficient way to do things. That person could be devoted to actually helping people with direct problems.

I really think bot catching needs to be automated for efficiency. A bot should flag the accounts for a human to check their activity history later on.

Right now one of the best ways to stop a script is to use non-OCR confirmation systems. Sign up to a forum and you'll see what i mean. Its a box of text and numbers thats distorted so OCR software cant read it.

I posted the idea of something like that being implemented in game. Like a security thing before you can sell to a merch...or access storage.

Annoying. VERY. Stops bots? Maybe. Pisses off real players. Im sure it would.

Botting is effective because it is EFFICIENT. Time spent in town is not time spent farming. The more it forces a human touch to farm, the harder it will be for botters. If they cant be efficient, they cant make money. If they can't make money, they have to stop.


Edit:
Then this would promote 2-man bot farmers. And seriously nerf the skill.

Why nerf it? There are 2 other solo monk bot-friendly builds i know of and if 55 is nerfed they would just go to those. In fact, one of them builds is faster than any 55 could be. Then if those are nerfed they would just find other solo builds for other professions. Nerfing isnt the way to stop them as they would just move to the next build and it would also ruin the game. The only way to stop them is to ban them (or make money so easy to get that no one would have any reason to buy from or use the bots.. but that will never happen). And no, not every Mo/W in Elona is a bot.

No, it wouldnt. They would either do 2-man groups as Lyra said or they will just go to the next solo build. There are only 2 solutions: ban the bots faster or make it unprofitable to bot.

Well then all you do is bring two 55 monks.

SOLUTION to 55ers remove all -hp off hands they will nolonger be a "55" monk

Woah, that is one hell of a botting area, but i've farmed there with my 55 as a mo/w, yet does that mean im going to be banned. I have only farmed there about 2 times because it is a crappy place, but not every monk you see is a bot although im sure looking at that 99% of them are all bots, and if a-net did find a good way to nerf 55's without destroying a bunch of skills, its going to kill off one hell of a lot of thier players.

I'll throw out a figure here and say a good 95% of Mo/W's in Elona's reach is a bot.

If they turn up then disappear immediately, they're a bot. Come on, let's not beat around the bush here and try and cloud the facts. These people ARE bots, in their droves. There's hundreds of them.

Again, I refer to the above screenshot. I haven't seen that much overpopulation since the dragon mask event.

Any time you want to hang out with me in Elona's Reach for ten minutes and have me prove the point, I'm more than willing

I've just had a GREAT idea.

Well, great by my standards ^_^

People love titles.....

So have a 'fair play' title. For every ten botters reported and subsequently banned by Arena Net, you receive a title for your character.

It'll encourage people to report more botters

Horrible idea. I have a monk that runs a 55 build. I'm not a bot. I also have seen numerous posts of bannings of players who show botlike behavior (many hours played, same mission entered many times). But, bots and non bots alike do this because its profitable.

So, the main problem I see with arenanets bot detection is they're not actually looking for bots, they're looking for bot-like behavior that many non-bots also use. My suggestion would be to sign up with someone like punkbuster and look for code running at lower levels.

As for suggestions on trying to make it unprofitable to bot, this can cause some serious problems. Bots will have an advantage over normal players simply due to more hours put in, so we can expet them to have more cash. Lowering drop rates enough to make them more poor could severely cut into normal players cashflow. Keeping normal players poor is the biggest reason why there's a market for ebay gold farmed from bots.

* nodnods * remove that stupid minus offhand object you need from pre-searing. It's broken to begin with.

suicide and you get DP, which drops your health.

Oh and -20 health focuses drop from bad guys (i have a -20 plagueborn focus)

What's a horrible idea? The only proposal I've made is for someone from arenanet to take names at Elona's reach of all the obvious Mo/W bots. If you're not a bot then you won't be affected.

I'm not personally taken with 55hp monks as the idea seems broken - having a practically invicible character that can only effectively be taken out with shatter hexes and blood magic doesn't sit well with me in terms of fairness, but I guess that's a matter of personal preference. I'm all for people throwing out ideas on how to stop these OBVIOUS cheaters in Elona though.

Think I'll take some screenshots of my own in that area tonight to show Arena Net how bad the problem is there.