ridding GW of bots without banning real players!!!!

hey guys I was brain storming and i think I have a good idea.....

PLEASE READE THIS ANET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let me start by telling you a good friend was a hard core farmer and was banned for being a bot.

long story short he plays WOW and will not think of GW ever again...

way to go ANET

a good friend I met here (GW) is gone and i can not play with him again

there should have been a good system in place if arena net detected "bot like activity" to rule out a real player and give him the benefit of the doubt. A lot of sites make you type in a code you see on the screen (ticketmaster, account sites...etc....) to prove your are actually a real person. If you display "bot like activity" and anena net thinks you are a bot there should be a warning instantly that pops up on your screen that says so and that you need to enter the code you see or your account will be banned. If you enter what you see you are legit - bots cannot do that. I think this would be an easier way to handle the problem than banning farmers like a salem witch hunt. It's sad people are afraid to farm and play the way they want to because they think they will be banned...

what do you guys think????

let's work together to end this so we can enjoy the game

Anyone notice that 99% of the time, it's 'friends' of banned players that complain - why is that?

For real I think they should not bother with bots at all, and ban gold byers instead then the bots will disappear.

I didn't know you can use bot freely in WoW?

Otherwise, why move there when you're going to get banned again anyway, right?

iirc, you do get warnings before banning. Both in temporary bans as in your ing chat screen. Also, bots fund GW. For every 1000 accounts they ban, another 1000 will be bought. And I don't see what everyone's problem with bots is anyway. I mean, they do no harm to you, do they? I mean, they didn't sell the materials and runes to the traders so much that they are worth scrap now.

This will only work if you are 100% sure that there is no-one looking at the bots.
For a professional botter, there would still be profit if they monitor their bots and act upon these kinds of events.
I think a person with a fair amount of programming knowledge (someone designed the botting programs) would have not that much problem building a monitoring interface that pops up when there is a certain event (like whisp or text on schreen). This gives a human monitoring these events the oppurtunity to react accordingly.
I think it's not unusual for a professional botter to have numerous bots in various online games and monitor them.

You are talking about catpcha.

Besides reall people supervising bots, there is trick to get around any catpcha:

Make website with whatever desirable (porn/torrents/warez ...) then use catpcha - but not yours generated, isntead display catpcha you want to solve, and accept any input. if there are no queued catpchas to be solved, do not require it.

That way any visitor will solve catpcha for you (within minutes...), and you can feed result to wherver original catpcha came from.

Neat trick, eh?

ANET's reaction to the botting is causing me far more grief than the bots themselves ever did.

They totally nerfed farming, and getting enough gold through regular playing is nearly impossible.
The new loot-scaling doesn't mean a thing to the botters-after all, the bots run the same place endlessly, and the anti-farming code used to kick in after a few runs. They get almost the same amount now as they did before.

i can't believe their solution to stopping ebayed gold is to make it so casual players can't earn enough on their own unless they dedicate thier lives to farming, and then banning them when they do.

Here's my idea of what should be done:
-Repeal the LS fiasco
-Have farm code kick in HARD after about 6 runs
-Go after the buyers as well as sellers
-Have decent gold rewards for doing the missions and quests. Not the "You get 250gold for completing mission" crap- make it more like 1k-4k depending on the difficulty. If the average player can make enough to buy a few skills or runes just by actually playing he won't even THINK about buying gold. There will always be a few spoiled children who'll try to cheat their way through, but it's a very small minority.

I totally agree. I mean it's not like bot's actually ruin anyone else's fun! Ban the people who sell the gold, but the botting itself isn't actually doing anyone any damage. I mean if they're going to buy a game to not actually play, and let some machine do their playing for them it's really their loss anyway, isn't it?

No don't ban the ones that sells the gold ban the ones that BUY it, they are the real problem (in GW and any MMO)

1. Here is a link to Gaile's comments in a similar thread. http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10156503

2. All bots do not belong to gold-sellers. Some of them are players trying to make money or farm greens. But using any program (whether purchased or a home-grown macro) that allows you to walk away from the keyboard is considered (rightfully) botting.

3. Gaile has also mentioned that generally gold-sellers do not purchase accounts. They are the main source of account theft.

4. By now, most players are aware of the bot bans and what it takes to win an appeal. It's up to the player to prevent banning by making sure he/she also does other things besides farming. If you don't act like a bot, you won't be accused of being one.

5. Yes, gold-sellers do have a need to monitor. Or do you think they never get disconnects? A lost connection equals loss of income to them.

6. ANet is neither a government nor a parent. They don't have to try to save you from harming yourself through stupidity. Amazingly, they pay people to spend time resolving banning issues.

How many here actually knows that bots come with GM detection nowadays and warp to other town when GM appear? It is not that easy to detect bots 100% surely and ban them because bot making community pay monthly to those guys who do bots so they can get new version what again counter whatever Anet try.

Ever heard of Loot Scaling? Ever witness drops get worse each time you enter an EA? Ever heard someone that was unjustly banned for bot behavior? Need I go on?

Bots do more harm than you think.

Loot scaling is character-specific. Other people farming "your" area does not harm you. Repetitve farming the same area yourself is what affects loot scale. Also, bots don't bother with Normal Mode anymore. And yes, I have heard of people being banned due to "botly" behavior, in fact, my brother had that happen to him once. But after a few mails and a week he got his account banned. If your autisticly doing the same stuff over and over again, you can expect for something like that to happen. That's what I told him too. Anyways, bots don't harm anyone. They only fund Anet by buying new accounts.

You misunderstood me.

Loot scaling was implemented to combat bots. Drops getting worse each time you enter the same area was implemented to combat bots. How are they funding Anet? Most of the bot accounts are stolen, if they get banned they just steal another account anywyas. You dont honestly think that the gold farmers are actually buying legit copies of the game do you? How would they profit if they had to buy X amount new copies of GW a day?

People get banned in WOW just as bad if not worse than GW for bot like behavior....just go to a WOW forum and read all the sad stories.

Sorry, but loot scaling means you now get the same amount of normal drops if you either solo or go out with a full team. First run out still means you get 1/8 of what you did before if you solo.

I would say ban both, just flag accounts that spread a hell load of money to others and ban both receiving and spreader. If there would be an auction system then things would even be more easy to check. Banning receivers would at least let people hesitate to buy illegal gold

My bad, I meant the Anti Farming Code. Both the code and loot scaling don't apply to hard mode anyway. And that is where the bots are now.

You're still wrong...

I think loot scaling also works in HM, soloing there still gave me depressing amount of drops