Feature Suggestion: In-game bot reporting

[Edit 3-24-2,010: I'm glad to see the /report name feature now in the game. I have used it effectively on others, and once had it used on me when I had to go away from the keyboard to answer a telephone call. I think that in both cases the results were and are effective and fair.
Regards,
Chris]
NCsoft staff,
In Guild Wars: Factions (Fort Aspenwood), I have encountered players (bots?) simply standing at the start point without moving or talking that significantly distort what would otherwise be even games (I have reported some of those players/bots in a seperate message). It would make bot reporting 10-fold easier if you could add a new feature: when in play if a player sees a talk/trade/faction leech/or other bot, the reporting player need only right-click the bot player and select "report as bot" from the resultant dropdown menu, after which the reporter could then optionally select from a sublist for "bot type" (please also allow one to do this from the chat window, if you implement it). If you do this for us, the number of successful reports will multiply and play will be cleaner. All the information you need could be automatically logged in the background (reporting account, character, time, gameplace, et cetera). (If you like, you could later implement an in-game rule where if at least 3 players report a bot player by the dropdown menu or chat menu, the bot player would receive no faction points when the reporting team wins or looses, or other situation appropriate consequences would activate.)
Best regards,
Christopher Dratz
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That was a reprint of a message I sent to NCsoft. I've posted it here because in a reply, a rep said to post it at a forum too. I did a search before posting this message and didn't find anything.

I say keep reporting out of the game. Whenever you add a feature like this you get those people who abuse it. If you piss someone off, they report you. If they don't like you, they report you. If you have a different sexual orientation, they report you. If you don't join their group, they report you. I know that the majority of people won't do this, but there are some who are just not mature enough not to abuse a feature like this. At least with the system they have now, it deters people making these pointless reports because they have to make more of an effort to do so.

EDIT: Also, I really don't like that last idea with 3 or more people reporting. This would mean that people in a group could gang up on someone, even if they're not doing anything wrong.

"I have encountered players (bots?) simply standing at the start point without moving or talking"

Sounds more like an AFK instead of a bot.

If bots annoy you enough, use customer support with names, screenshots, or even vid caps. Letting people do it in game is handing over a bit too much power, and would just end up overflowing customer support with invalid claims, because someone's angry and juvenile, or mistaken, or just griefing in general.

/unsigned whole heartedly

This is one of the reasons, well the main reason why i no longer PvP anymore (the little reward and the rudeness of PvPers when you are tryn to learn how to PvP/GvG) and reporting of players/bots is a waste of time as well, you report them and they off you to a community, (that should tell you how much they really care), i seen the same bot in F/A 4 months after reporting 5 seperate times and know of others who have reported the same character as well, i just no longer even go to F/A anymore, ill stick to farming PvE and 3 campaigns,(well i hate NF) so its really only 2 chapters i mostly use now anyway, no more new chapters for me, if they cant fix this simple problem i don`t want to get another chapter just to see what they can`t fix in their as well.
In game reporting is, i am sorry to say a bad idea because Meat Axe is absolutely right. and Area would be constantly flooded with bogus reports from immature *%#@ Hea-- and thus the opposite would happen, it would be ignored more than it is atm. unfortunately if you want to farm for some Faction Points orhave some reemblace of F/A all i can recomend is ABing, you need to be in a guild for ABing, if you don`t have a guild you can PM people for an invitation as a Guest of their guild to do either Luxon or Kurick ABing, ie Kurzick Alliance Guild for Kurzick Factions.
Sorry not to support your idea but you are right in thinking that something should be done about this

Great point, lacking customer support is another matter entirely though.
If they don't ban/kick from emailing them names, they're definately going to ignore increased in game reports from juvenile acting griefers.

i had a bot in that pinged the map and drew swashtikas over and over on aspenwood (i think). Though i think there should be more done about it i dont know if this would work. As mentioned before there is to much room for abuse. Heres the big question, whats the point of bots like that anyway. I know some are made to farm gold which is in turn sold on ebay, but why the nazi pinging bot?


~the rat~

I think this idea instead of downright doing something is instead sent to a database for Guild Wars GMs to look at.

Basically it should leave a flag on the suspected bot. And if say persitent amounts of reports that there is a Aspenwood faction leecher going in for 1 specific name then the GM "observes" this suspected bot leecher. If it is proven correct the GM takes action(banning from Aspenwood, suspensions, etc). Action that basically is appropriate for the issue.

Also though it should be given in a fashion that if there are people abusing this tool and sending these GMs on false observes then the GM has right to take action on those abusers be they suspensions or loss of the privlage to use that tool.

I really like the thought that a community can help th egame in such a fashion like this cause even though the bots are a minority that ruin the game there a minority that ruin the game for a lot of people at once.

I had hoped this thread would result in some constructive discussion about how to approach the problem, and I see that it has. The thing I like about the possibility of in-game bot reporting is: that the game can pre-log the actions of the accused and the accusers so that the GM can review the log with the results being out of the control of people who want to abuse the system; and/or the game can use preprogrammed analysis routines to take incremental action. For example, when a player is reported as a leechbot, the game takes note of who reports the player and all relevant information about the reporter/abuser so that this information can be used to identify abusers should any action become necessary regarding them--although I think that if the game proves in the log and/or through the analysis routines that the "bot" is not, in fact, doing what is reported and is actually a valid player, no action need be taken, thereby preventing false or accidental reports from hurting anyone, including the accuser who will simply give up upon realizing that (s)he is talking to a brickwall, or won't have to worry about being banned for mistakes. Then the game takes note of whether and how many times the reported player/bot simply stands at the start without talking or playing for the entire battle at the expense of the rest of the team after directly entering it 30 seconds ago. With enough thought and refinement, this system could be very easy, effective, and magnanimously foolproof. Do you have any additional ideas on problems of otherwise-desirable elements of in-game bot reporting and/or solutions to them?
Best regards,
Chris. Dratz

i think just anet don't care.

sure they make some big annoucement "Banned xxx bots!!!!!" sometime but the truth is 2 day ago i seen a bot spamming a real money -> gw gold selling website for the an entire day in great temple of balthazaar.

I hope you did something about this bot. Like reported it. There's only so much Anet can do. I think the main reason that there's a lot of bots is that most people just don't care enough to take screenshots and maybe a video and submit it to Anet, so that they have the opportunity of doing something about it.

The main problem with the idea presented in this thread, though, is that Anet just isn't a big enough company to cope with all the reports that would be coming in. They don't like just banning because someone reported someone else. They do extensive investigation of the facts, and then if they come up with anything, then they can do something about it. With a system like this, the reports would be thousands every day, and a lot of them would not be real. To cope with this many reports would mean bringing more people in to go through them, which means the company has to dish out more money for these new employees, which means that they have to start charging more for their games, or add a monthly fee. Let's face it, the bots exploit the game, yes, but are they really worth paying more money for the game just to control them?

It would be wiser just to program some server and game code to deal with it, with data that can be reviewed but doesn't have to, IMHO.

One of the things I liked about another MMO was that they had 2 slash commands: /bug and /petition. Using either one sent a time-marked message to support (NCSoft support, no less) with everything you needed: character name, server, time, location, active mission, everything. It also gave you a space to type in a few sentences, and a checkbox (for the /bug command) that allowed you to say generally what the problem was: typo, stuck, graphics glitch, etc.

The /petition command could ALSO be used to report offensive names and behavior, in-game. It wouldn't get an immediate response, of course, but it was, IMHO, vastly easier than "take a screenshot, type out all your information, then email all of it to NCSoft." Seems to me that they could catch more bots/AFk's/gold sellers/rulebreakers if it were less of a hassle to report them.

please , a bot spam for a entire day (i mean more than 12+ hour) in Great temple of bathazaar and no gm noticed that? you dont believe that.

there are 2 possibility.

1) there are no gm or a very few number (like 2-3)
2) they dont care.

Yeah, it should somehow be easier for all concerned.

Reporting would be 'have a look at this' to a GM.

If someone abuse it, they would be warned instead.
Once you report a bot, the GMs watch at the player and decide.

It won't be like you decide if someone is a bot or not.

/notsigned

Bingo. I have, without a doubt, encountered full on bots. One guy in Pre was talking/doing emotes with one char, and a second char would immediately mimic. He did this for about an hour too. So, what did I do? I took screenshots and reported him. I've talked to other players that have griefed about bots and asked them, "did you take screenshots?" Usually the answer is, "no. But I reported their name." /doh

I like the intent of the idea, but I see it as a facet for extreme abuse from players. If this person is a bot, or they are a scammer, get proof that they are and then report them. IMO, the real problem is that most people that report don't present enough evidence for ANet to warrant them to properly and reasonably verify the claims.

that's the problem with reporting botters in FA (or anywhere, really)...a screenshot of someone standing at the starting portal honestly proves nothing.

i once played a match with a person who, after winning the game, said "gg guys i'm going to bed and leeching now, cya". i took a screenshot of that, and screenshots of him leeching over the course of the next couple hours. did they do anything? nope.

an in-game bot reporting method would be nice, but could easily be abused and would require a massive overhaul in the game's coding (i'm guessing). a simpler solution would be to require the entry of a randomly generated code to join the FA game queue upon clicking "enter battle". so you'd do something like, "enter battle", popup asks you to type a code it gives you, and THEN you can join the countdown. not an ideal solution as it would be annoying after a while, but it would sure as hell put a stop to the bots.

In-game reporting and bot-scanning would have access to the conclusive server data and wouldn't be exceptionally difficult or time-consuming to program. Just a few bot-scanning routines per bot type, a new chat command, and some additional fields in their probably already existing statistics reviewing tool which would be used as a last resort in the rare cases that the autoscanning is not sufficient.
[Edit: Wouldn't it be funny if the server detected you standing there at the start for the whole game doing nothing if it forced your character to leave just before the faction points are awarded, or if it finds a player that is acting like a chat bot, it just logs the character out? The epiphany just made me laugh. Of course first there could be automatic warning messages and so forth.]
Best regards,
Chris. Dratz

Bots arent a big surprise anywhere, go into droksand go into the international and youll feel like youve stepped into Asia bot land. The same bots have been there for months on end and anet barely does anything to fix this situation. The leeching continues, the PvE bots never end, and the trade-spam bots become like best friends.

[Edit 3-24-2,010: I'm glad to see the /report name feature now in the game. I have used it effectively on others, and once had it used on me when I had to go away from the keyboard to answer a telephone call. I think that in both cases the results were and are effective and fair.
Regards,
Chris]
It appears to me that posts about this issue tend to be divided into 4 groups. Those that agree that there is a bot problem, those that want something done about the bot problem, those that display concern about the methodology of possible solutions to the problem, and those that believe that bots are a nuisance that is best ignored. Might these four goups of us work together to gradually come up with a way for the Arena Net and NCsoft staff to accurately assess the elements and extent of the bot problem, stop a majority of the bot abuse, prevent problems in the way this goal is achieved, and make the company's use of the solution seemless for us players who just want to play and not have to take responsibilty for stopping other people's offences.
As it seems to me that we want bots eliminated without for several reasons having to deal with the process of reporting them, should I begin a new thread with a topic like "How might Arena Net and NCsoft better solve the bot problem?," or should I continue the subject in this one? If you think I should start a new thread, I am open to your suggestions about its title.
Best regards,
Chris. Dratz