Creative anti-bot measures

Just wanted to point out that the people at Arena Net do listen to us in that in the Bergen Hot Springs run they have put in a group of mesmers at the beginning to fight the bots, at least until they update their programs.

http://img402.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gw047sp1.jpg

great, now us legit farmers need to find a new place...

pretty sure theyve always been there on second thought

Mesmers have always been a part of the mobs out there. They die just as easy as the other ones, unless they strip enchantments now or something.

KANE

Edit: BTW, you're not the beginning. You already killed 23 of them.

Either way, legit farmers can think on their feet. Bots cannot. If this is a new move, great job to whoever did it.

yeah they don't strip enchants, so no harm no foul

That is not an anti bot measure, that is an anti farm measure. Get rid of signs in every town or put them in the opposite direction as the portal, no more bots being made that easily. One easy solution where noone will care if the signs are gone because we don't click on them so we can get out the zone.

It would be some work, but they could modify the signs to actually have the names of the locations on them. Make the fonts fit in with the designs of the different styles of signposts across the various regions.

Remove the garish yellow text at the base and viola, something that fits the lore, looks good and removes a critical bot pathing node.

Those Mesmers have randomly replaced the group of Rangers in the same location since as long as I can remember. This is not new and they suck against a 55 monk. They don't strip enchantments and they wand for damage. Gogo SoJ.

I never saw those memsers never spawn so close to the town is how come I thought it was new. I find them hard to kill myself because they seem more interested in using spells than attacking me. I thought that anet might have put them there to fight bots who clear out the first couple groups in a zone. A real person can go around them while a bot might die and be stuck at the rez shrine.

I use those signposts to get out of town pretty often; I like the convenience.

The look or font of the sign makes no differnece...what matters is you can press a key and then hit space or whatever and run directly to the sign, which puts you right next to the exit. Put in another sign or move the sign away from the exit and it would be much harder for them to find their way out, though they would eventually.

As mentioned, they don't hurt you.

Infact the Deep Wound actually helps a 55 monk ;D

i order to actually come up with a good anti-bot measure i guess anet needs to get one of these bot programs and check how it functions.

ANet knows how the bot programs work, as they are all in response to the things in the game. ANet could get rid of the bots tomorrow by removing all signposts and NPC labels (that aid navigation), all item drops (that can be merched for gold), and all gold (cash) drops.

Of course, the whole GW player community would start screaming and the economy would really go crazy. BUT, the gold farming bots would go away.

I like them too but that is a convenience i could settle with if it got rid of bots

If they removed the signpost, the botmasters would just code "walk x steps forward, turn right, take x steps forward".

This does jack to the bots, and just inconveniences the regular player.

That coding only works if you start in the same place every time in an outpost. However, we know that when you enter an outpost, there are at least 4 or 5 different places where your character is placed, and taking x steps forward might work for one location in the outpost, but not for all of them.

This is true, but they could recode it to go to a certain NPC, then x steps forward, x steps right, and so on. Removing the sign actually does nothing, unless you also make all NPCs unclickable as well.

Then they'll code it to walk as far as it can to the wall and it will get through.

Or code it to walk towards a moving part (the portal).

Its all futile and just hurts the average player.

And the average measures Anet uses to stop bot farming do not?