Stop Bots Once and for All!!

Go to Bergen Hot Springs and Granite Citadel. You can find tons of farming bots. That really pissed me off. This can be stopped quite easily.

In many banking or account registration sites (include this Guild Guru), people are prompted with a distorted image of letters that only a human can recognize. This challenge ensures a real person is working at the other end of the line, not a program.

GW can employee similar approach. It can prompt such challenge during zoning when it sees a player who looks suspicious. (For example, solo Mo in an abused area.) If the user failed three times, the account is logged out automatically and needs to be log in again.

The advantage of this is that it does not annoy vast majority of legitimate players. For those who just happen to fit in the pattern of a bot, it is simply a few more key strokes between zones. In addition, since the account is not suspended, it avoids disputes between GW and suspended users. Moreover, the filtering rules can be adapted as soon as new bot programs appears, making it infeasible and non-profitable to write bots.

umm, last I checked GW can't send images through online GW chat. Maybe it can be key strokes like this.

|-|i=? or c@$|-|=? but then again programmers can get around that. I donno.

Dupe post

Noooooooooooooo don't stop bots only account ban them
bots are good

No...just no...

This is like fighting the bots the "hard" way, and you'll never win this way. They'll always involve and make more advanced version.

If you think all the bots out there are developed by one person, then you're dead wrong. There are workgroups and "department" of a company in China that dedicate to the development of bots.

Pattern recognition takes a workgroup about 2 weeks to bypass. It's futile.

Well, I happen to be computer science major. I know pattern recognition for twisted letters with noisy background is not easy (or my bank won't use it).

Regarding GW won't send image down, then it is up to their software updates. The image size shouldn't be too large after compression, especially if the image is black and white.

If someone already posted the same idea, that is great. This can remind them to implement this simple solution.

While I understand you concern it's not as if these bots have personally been stealing your loot now i it?
They mind their own business and make things cheaper because they can do it en mass.
Ok, it's unfair and perhaps illegit to a certain extent but i for one don't give a rats ass if there is a bot out there or not.

We need bots in GW loosing bots would be the end

1. It'll annoy legit players. I for one don't want to have to enter stupid captcha like images everytime i zone.
2. Easily bypassed.

• Take screenshot
• bring screenshot into a program to crop out rest of the screenshot except the captcha image.
• run a OCR (Optical Character Recognition) program on it.
• have bot take text output from ORC app, enter in the text & continue botting.

theres already programs out there that can get around captcha images. not only are they annoying, but some people can't see them clearly (whether it be old age, bad vision, or just have trouble turning something that looks like a 2 year old threw up alphabet soup into text..)

Heres an idea, not sure if it could be implemented into the current engine though:
For "suspicious" users (maybe have an ingame player report system that would force the user to take this test), upon zoning, would be faced with a rotating cube. In a random position around the cube, text such as "click the red triangle" would appear (hopefully scrambled up a bit). In other spots around the cube, random colors/shapes would appear, in the same font/formatting, to confuse any bots. The cube would never rotate so a face was DIRECTLY pointing at the screen, to prevent easy shape recognition. Hopefully, the shapes (with the red triangle example) would go something like "red diamond, red kite, red triangle, yellow triangle, orange triangle", with varied shades of red. I would ASSUME this would make it hard to make a bot for, but you never know.

Won't work. Silkroad tried something similar, and it took less than a week before the botters had figured out a workaround. Now the only difference is, legit players take longer to connect, having to type an image code every time. It's just an annoyance.

Teger's idea is interesting though.

how about this...now i'm no wiz, but! i think i have a solution........every time you see a bot you write down the name to report it ta-daa. okay even though yes there are like a 1000 bots in bergen GW promotes reporting as a way to get rid of bots..posted a bot complaint like this earlier...everyone said just report bots...so passing along the advice.

So all you STOP THE BOTS people, you want monthly fees?

I agree. I never quite understood what all the fuss was about. I mean, they're not stealing anything that's actually REAL. The only thing that bothers me about them is when people get banned for being one when they're not, but as there's no way anyone could ever mistake me for a bot (I'm broke and hardly ever spend more than 2 hours online) it simply isn't an issue for me. *shrugs*

What people dislike is that they cause inflation in the economy, thus causing things like we see today, with some items costing over 100e, and makeing the entry barrier into the game higher. Just to put things into perspective, in a game I used to play, Anarchy Online, the number of bots essentially shot the entire economy to hell so much, that if a new player actually wanted to buy a half decent peice of armor, or a weapon, off of another player, they would either have to spend weeks farming for enough gold (by which time they would be too high level for it), or would have to buy gold from online bot sites as well. While that hasnt happened in GW yet, and it probably wont, as GW2 will reset everything, its something that "can" happen due to bots.

So if I don't like you for whatever reason, I just report you continually, making you take this test? Easily exploited by asshats.

Bots annoy you so everytime you zone you have to solve a puzzle??

You don't need to challenge a player every time. Only when the profile matches recent bot activity. As I said before, for now you challenge solo Mo at the exit of Bergen Hot Springs and Granite Citadel. Not elsewhere and not everyone. When bots moves to other places, you update your filter.

To answer Replicant. If a bot owner has to go though all these steps to get over the hump, then the method works.

As of why stop bots? I don't trade anymore. The prices are out of reach for a player who also has a life.

But then if you stopped bots it would cost real money to play not more GW money

guys bots can be easily stop because they are super damp so how bots work is this way they go out kill some enemies collect drop then head back to any NPC then they sell there loot and they do this over and over until u got a good cash

so if u want to stop them u need to know one thing how bots collect there drop after they kill there enemy or how do they know there enemy is killed it is like macro or something, the thing is they use the keyboard key to activate there skill and collect there loot so to top them is by remove the key that select the drop so u can only collect ur loot by using the mouse pointer I know this will make some ppl unhappy because they like using keyboard key to collect there loot but this is the only way to get rid of the bots ones and for all

Just leave them they support the REAL WORLD economy of GW's

1) kick players from the game who are inactive for more then 30 minutes!

2) Have us enter a scrambled code either every time we log in, or once a month when we log in!

That way if a bot is kicked for being inactive, they cant log back in!

man this is a game not some sort of bank account it is about having fun are u saying that when I with a pary is 50% bots ppl get real

I dont want to enter codes every month and so

I dont want to be booted when I when afk for more than 30 min

if u dont have real solution then please keep ur suggestion for ur self

Excuse me mate, but WTF are you on having that kind of an attitude?

I made a perfectly decent suggestion, just because you dont like the sounds of it is no reason to tell me to shut up.

Is it really too much hassle to have to enter a tiny 5 digit code every month just to ensure your not a BOT?

Is it really too much to ask that you be automatically logged out if your AFK for 30 minutes?

If people want genuine solutions to ridding the game of bots, then you have to be willing to accept stronger regulations and rules. You cant complain about BOTs, but also complain because the only way to remove them is a bit of an inconvenience to you.

Maybe my idea could have used a bit more clarity and explanation, and a bit more thought into a few bits. But do not tell me to shut up just because you dont like the idea.

Lets make the 30 minute limit only work inside towns, and lets make a 45-60 minute limit inside instances and missions.

Unless your in a team in an outpost, getting auto-logged out isnt going to effect you. And if your in a team in an outpost then why are you afk for 30 minutes?

And why would you be afk for 45-60 minutes in an instance or mission unless its a toilet emergency, a phone call or dinner. But who takes 45-60 minutes to eat dinner or speak on the phone or go toilet?

Either way, you have to be willing to endure tighter regulations if you want BOTs removed. Kicking people out after being inactive for a set time is a good start, because BOTs just stand around for ages doing nothing.

If your auto-kicked out and asked to enter a code to log back in, then you cant get back in if your a BOT!

Simple!

Or, you could do something more to those "You need to take a break" messages... like allow the game client to disconnect you and temp-ban you, or something like that? The game is right, if you play for 8 consecutive hours you DO need to take a break xD

Only one way to stop "bots" don't buy gold for cash. Punish people who do sell and buy gold, then they learn to appreciate to earn gold in game.

yes this what solution we are looking for but again no one will follow

to freekedoutfish

I didn't mean to shut up or something what I mean is the solution or suggestion must be simple not some rule that will make it harder for ppl just to play a game

Ur suggestion is very manually thing and if where a programmer u will now those code will create hell loud for the server if some bots use brute force to login again

To Priest Of Sin

"like allow the game client to disconnect you and temp-ban you"

Are u serious if that ur suggestion did u ever farm or use those death leveling thing or did u use lucky or unlucky games
I don’t want to answer that for u think about it ur self

I am a programmer!

Maybe not in what ever language they use for the game, and I dont know any server-client kind of stuff. But I cant see how entering a code once a month or after your auto-logged out would cause tramendious lag issues?

Its no different to when your varify your username and password on the first page I would have thought.

Looks like someone needs to take a chill pill. Anet will always deal with these things that create minimal disturbance to its customers, so chances are, they won't implement your idea. Simple as that. And people do afk for more than 30 minutes in a town/outpost. Lucky/unlucky titles come to mind, as well as a variety of other stuff like dancing afk in presearing/HA.

Not because I made a bot(well, at least I've never made one for GW), but from a SE student and nwscripters point of view, I might have a solution.

A bot would use(pseudo code):
LOOP WHILE (target is valid) //can be checked by listening for the "shickshick" sound when a skill can't be used
get next enemy
<use skills on foe>
END LOOP
LOOP WHILE target is valid
get next item
preform action on target(pick up)
END LOOP

Now get next item also select stuff like road signs, but as you make a bot to farm a particular area, they pre-know what road sings are there and ignore them.
Have all areas of GW spawn random objects, that can be used.
These must be named randomly, or preferably named the same as random loot.
This fake loot will confuse bots they will continuously use the items trying to pick them up but can't as they are not really loot.
Hence the bot will get stuck trying to pick something up they can't tell is a fake.

Now if it where a single item, one could get around this, if it allways had the same name bots could ignore it as well.
But if you make it randomized as such it has a name the same as loot you picked up * seconds ago, then the bot can not ignore it on the basis of name.

Making it random in location and response will prevent bots from recognizing them in other ways.

The first basic way would be to spawn a campfire item together with a mob-spawn of dwarves from the granite citadel.
The current bots would get suck on that, but a workaround would developed quickly enough, by simply ignoring stuff named campfire.

followed by the implementation of frozen items, an item of the exact same name as you picked up a little while ago would be on the floor and when used a message would appear stating that the item if frozen or in another way unable to be picked up.
The message would have to be undetectable as in a mouse over tooltip perhaps, or something bots are unlikely to be able to recognize.

(maybe players would be able to get some 'planks of wood' from a tree take them to the campfire and then melt the ice around the item, making the bot counter an addition to the depth of GW game play as well)

And also the placing of these items simply in places players can't get to, bots can't either, but they will keep trying for quite a while, especially if the pathing is complicated and it tries to approach the item from 2 or more completely different directions, walking quite a bit in between them, and it would move to the other whenever it encounters a obstruction in one.
That way the the bot won't be able to detect that is is not advancing because from it's point of view it is still moving.

This would not hinder players (much), but it would hinder bots, because of their design for continuity.
Bot work with loops, there is not work around for this, because without loops they would need constant human attention.
If you mess up a bots loops, they break(or freeze up)
As Anet has the power to manipulate GW environments and AI/pathing they have the power to mess with all possible loops the bots might use.
Hence Anet has the power to stop bots.

Good for you.

You know what professionals do to get around that problem?

They hire 50 people that watch these images 24/7 and decode them. Chinese farmers cost dime-a-dozen. Simply have them watch the images served from all bots and decode them. These people are actually cheaper than any hardware or software you can use.

There are services located mostly in some African countries (alphabet issues), and even some in Asian countries which specialize in that.

They use screen scraping tools when bots scan the web, and these people see one captha after another, and they enter the result.

Very effective, very cheap.

Even in this day and age, human labor is sometimes cheaper that automatization. And the farmers have zero problem getting around something like that, since their job is dull enough as it is.