Bots in Snowball Arena and rollerbeetle racing

Before you read any further, I would like to point out that I didn't make this thread to invoke a flame war. A mod can ALWAYS clean up inappropriate posts, but bear in mind that I'll I'm trying to do is bring this to Regina's attention. PvP is getting farmed by Bots, this can only be concidered as an extremely high violation of the PvP rules. On top of that, these bots are stealing reward points and prizes (mini rollerbeetles) from legit players.

They're a problem. What's other people views on this? I'm kinda getting fed up playing with WoTu, all legit and nice players, getting into play offs, and then getting destroyed by the same guilds over and over again.

Not going to call anyone out, but we all know who it is. Some of them (most even) are ALSO the same people who bot rollerbeetle racing, and steal other's ,legit player's, chances of getting top scores. Some of them even were the cause of the huge QQ'ing going on 2 years ago about having 20+ acounts in top 100.

I just want to make a public appeal to Regina, who sometimes reads this forum, and ask to review these problems. I wouldn't even mind as much, if it wasn't the same players trashing opposing guilds in-game (us), saying how bad they are. (For not using bots I gues?!)

P.S.: It's so easy for Anet (devs) to find if someone's botting. Just look at the input comming from characters... They select presents on code (spawn), they detect incomming kd'ing dodgeballs on code, and they always have the same routine in their actions.

Again, wouldn't be a big deal if they didn't annoy the general community so much. The way it stands right now, legit guilds (wotu, YMCA and others) always have to settle with 2nd, 3th, or not even in playoffs because they keep getting kicked out by the same botting guilds.

The same is true for rollerbeetle racing...

EDIT: To make myself clear, I don't want a witchhunt going for PvP bots (such as the interrupt one), I want Anet to actually check on those certain individual (and guilds) input logs.

EDIT2: This also goes for Rollerbeetle. I already know for a fact that the click to move ping command WORKS in Rollerbeetle racing. This, combined with complicated keyuse is the ONLY explanation why the same people can get so many acounts in top 100. There's a different between the mainstream community getting +-470-475K scores, and then an elite of no more than 10-12 people getting redicilous scores of 480-485K. Being good at something is one thing, being REALLY goot at something is another thing, but at a certain point, U got to draw a line. As with snowball, some behaviour and scores are simply so redicilous, botting is the only logical explanation. (Such as the click to move command in rollerbeetle)

When will the day come when those who come on top actually deserve it...

If you're complaining about your latest loss (10-1 with Dwayna if I heard correctly) I'll have you know that guild does not bot, nor do they use macros, or any other form of 'cheating' they're actually really good players. And for reference, [Ball] does not 'bot' either.

+1



From day one Anet have always warned about 3rd party programmes. Maybe they got tired of all the innocent "skill finders" and "build programmes" that just provided information, rather than improving in-game performance.

But people are taking my RPs illegitemately and still call us bad (for not botting?) >.<
I mean, there are so many RPs up for grabs in these tournaments, if players are able to hoard all this for Z keys, that's rediculous.

Wotu might not be the best at snowball, but just flaming them for being bad when its proven advanced bots are currently a big problem is pretty retarded.

Sure they're not using macro's nor bots. They're all super humans with ultra fast reflexes.

Right, go make my grandma believe the top guilds in snowbal AT's aren't using macro's.

Macro's just gives you the advantage of not having to bash 2 keys rapidly.
Bots on the other hand, come on they're so much different from macro's. You can notice some one botting if they cancel their skill and pickup at the same time. unless of course, you're one of those super human with ultra fast reflexes.

WoTU aren't a bunch of botters, we play the snowballs legit, and we play it for fun. We just laugh when guilds go rage mode if they lose, or rofl ur a noob guild mode if they win. All good for the laughs. those botters just show that some people even need help from a program to be good at a game.

*sniff*
I feel left out of this discussion..(about accused botting ect.)
I dun has a e-peen to wave around! dammit.
Seriously, accusing another team of botting is kinda serious.
Stick with a support ticket, that may get you farther than pissing off the player base?
Just my .02cents

Virtual snowballs are serious business, Trub.

Send a ticket. Stop playing bad.

nope, but they CAN be players who trained yrs and are very used to performing these tricks.

and moo was not one of them

/clap you are 100% right about the function of macros, but that does not mean players who did these tricks are all bots, or if any of them are bots at all. and geuss what, i dont even use keyboard to pick up, i use mouse click. yet still i am able to perform that cancel skill&pick up trick, and no, i dont use bots

so does lots of other players that play this

1 ) Sending a ticket it useless. It has been done before, and usually NOTHING gets done about it.

2) Something of this scale deserves public attention.

It's not some guilds exploiting some weaknesses in GW code, it's some guilds (and players) getting top scores/rewards using 3th party software, whilst fair players can't do anything about it.

1> If they find anything they'll deal with it.
2> This is nothing major. Account security is a more pressing issue.
3> You have no proof, so you can't accuse anyone of anything.

It's marginally more serious than other ATs because the Reward Points up for grabs are more than the other ATs combined and gamer points to top it off.
And it's equally serious with anything that violates their EULA agreement.

And i don't think anyone appreciates such vague and illustruous statements.

How many other posts have brought up the use of advanced bots for interupting in GvG matches?

Safe to say, reporting and sending tickets have yielded nothing even for account security. Anet are still to get back to me about tracking those who hacked me in November.

borat made this thread hoping those like Regina would notice that issues like these have been floating under their radar and conventional communication with them isn't sufficient.

1) No they won't, not untill you've send over a 1000 tickets. Publical attention is the only way to reach Anet. Anyone who has ever send in a ticket knows this.

2) How is this nothing major? People throwing monthlies was something "major", but people BOTTING holiday events, stealing top places using THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE, stealing people's prizes isn't major? Is that the state PvP is in right now?

3) You can't proove anyone got hacked either. You can't proove anything about anyone, in theory. And I wouldn't make false accusations if I wasn't 100% sure. I know what bots can do, because I've seen them. I know what these players do, how they do it, and I can guarantee it's bot behaviour.

4) Again, I'm not flaming anyone. I just want Anet to act to this issue. People are BOTTING Holiday Events and STEALING rewards from fair PvP'ers. Since when did that became "OK", or something minor?

Everyone that posts top times in RBR does it legitimately. You couldn't program a bot to do it. Too many variables, and everything has to be timed very precisely to get maximum results. You need human decision-making capabilities to make it work.

Long story short, small variances in timing power-up usage can lead to small variances in the RRPM meter. Those variances are cumulative, so a player that knows the course better than you can pick up several seconds of time over an entire race. Given the right power-ups (which come along every several hours of play on average), a knowledgeable player can keep the RRPM meter at max almost the entire race.

Your cluelessness seriously impairs your credibility when you complain that people are botting snowball fights. As I stated in the previous thread, these guys aren't doing anything novel. [DoM] was drop-and-dodging consistently during last year's ATs. No one accused them of botting then; players knew that what they were doing was possible.

You're getting beaten by people with stable connections that have spent an obscenely large amount of time playing 4v4 snowball fights. People have been using the tricks you are complaining about for years in 4v4, and with a similar success rate.

I'm not denying that botting is a problem in GvG. But what you're observing has been done by real humans in the past, and there's no reason to think that they're cheating without a lot more proof than you have provided here.

You obviously don't know what PEOPLE are capable of.

Quotes like that from the OP are complete BS. I don't know if the people are botting or not. But to seriously say "they are too good to be human" is a complete sham ignoring just how obsessively good some PvPers are in certain parts of this game.

I wonder if anyone playing GW (for the races/Pvp etc. etc.) is using one of These.

I had a ball with one on a game that will go un-named. I will say it was a "full-loot" game. lol.

Some people need to realize the thread isn't about one specific guild they faced last AT.
That's pretty damn irrelevant, botting or not in the match.

Its true some people practice specifically for snowball etc., there are people who are just better than the rest.
But even a korean progamer with years of practice in a tournament with thousands of dollars on the line will eventually make mistakes.

While playing you face some people who just never will get hit by snowball from one player at point blank range, and someone who will consistently pick up presents from someone in a fort while 1v1.

That's what's unrealistic.
Whether or not friends of xx and people who think yy is botting stands up for either doesn't really matter when its obvious and proven that bots can function in the game at the current time.
With such information and proof, you can pretty much assume that some unrealistic traits some players will showcase will be suspicious enough for botting to be a legitimate claim.

Coming to the conclusion that another guild is using various 'bots' or 'macros' because they beat another guild in snowball is one thing.
Observing and playing against the SAME guilds and the same players, already rumoured to be sharing other bots for Roller-Beetle racing and other events, watching them all perform identical actions, picking up a dropped present before it has even appeared on the ground, running in one direction and using a skill before immediately cancelling the skill to pick up a present out of their view, before the drop animation has even occured, someone having a dropped present in their hands before the previous player has even hit the ground, and more importantly, performing this on Every Single present drop? Now that's another thing.
If Anet are going to the bother of creating events like this, designed for player enjoyment, shouldnt they be rewarding the players who are playing legitimately, and using the event for its intended purpose.. Fun?
Rather than going to every possible length to create programs and macros able to get them the highest number of reward points.
All that I ask is that Anet can look at this, all they have to do is view the top 8 in every tournament, and at least 20 players performing identical actions has to be suspicious.
Please Anet, help us legitimate players to enjoy our game.

I've seen(abeit rarely) sync teams in 4v4 who drop and chain pick up presents so quickly that it almost seems impossible to do so manually. I wouldn't go so far as to accuse anyone of cheating but it does make me wonder...

RBR has two problems that a bot is phenomenally ill-equipped to handle:

1) Other players
2) Six different starting gates

You can't always take the same line in RBR and expect to get results. Nor can you use your Shield in the same places and get results. Proper strategy varies with what other players do. By the time you observe Rollerbeetle Blast being used, it's already too late to Shield.

I'm fully aware of what a bot can do. I'm also cognizant with the problems that you have to solve in RBR, and this is why I am fully comfortable with throwing the word "idiot" out there. You'd be at a significant disadvantage with a bot. Human reflexes are good enough for RBR, and the innate stupidities of a bot program would be exploited.

With Snowball ATs, I'm not arguing that botting isn't possible. I'm disputing the necessity of the bot to generate the observed result. Euros on Euro servers with low ping can consistently drop-and-dodge at medium range. I've seen it done by real, live Americans on American servers for years now.

EDIT: As for your complaint regarding Hidden Rock - seriously. Good players wear out their TAB key. If you want to prove your contention to anyone's satisfaction, do this:

1) FRAPS.
2) Have half the team Hidden Rock at start when you 2-2-2-2. Ideally, one per spot.
3) Test.

If they can DnD only the correct snowballs on the first gift and you can FRAPS it, I'll concede the point. Until then, I remain skeptical.

On why you would DnD a Rock even when surrounded: Daze is bad, man. Daze is bad. It's a lot easier to take it back when you are not Dazed; Otherwise someone is just going to use Snow Down The Shirt and house you.

On pickups: try hitting your "Target Nearest Item" and Space a little earlier.

The ones next to you won't kd, the ones at mid range will, so you open your eyes and you try to dodge. It's a risk, but as someone said before, lose present>lose present + damage + daze

First sentence.

Third sentence.

Last sentence.

Rollerbeetle has been completely ignored in the mess that is snowball at's

I play 4v4 and see bots often, even if they arn't on my team.

So it wouldn't surprise me if they were used in the AT's too.

Quit the flame war which was stated in DOH the first sentence.

As previously mentioned, this is a dying game. We should treat it how it is and uhhm idk make the game less srs bsns.

There is no way to proof you guys are botting, aside from the botlike behaviour you guys experience when we face you. I wrote an intire paragraph before on how you guys "magicly" seem to know the difference between a KD'ing snowball, and a non KD'ing one. This and other "evidence" that I find strong enough to base an accusation on...

Again, you make some valid statements, but let me explain:

Why would be be "impossible" to bot RBR due to 6 different spawns and other people?

For starters, if other people bother you, you're not going to get a top time anyways, regardless of running a bot. So in other words, the bot can IGNORE the other players, as if you're gonna get KD'd in the beginning, you're effed anyways.

On top of that, I'm talking about a more sophisticated bot here. Who says you can't have any input over the put? Let's say, for theory's sake, the bot only inputs movent, and you control skill usage. This way, the bot makes sure you always have a flawless route, and then you can worry about shields, rams, RBR, etc...

And 6 different spawns, how is that a problem? After the intital turn, all 6 routes converge to the same one, which is strafe/cut the right border.

And I'm not even talking about a pre-scripted route here. You seem like an educated person, someone who knows what he's talking about, then you also know that GW locations are made up out of tiles. Each tile has coordinates, bla bla. It wouldn't be too hard to code it so that the bot could calculate the most oprimal route to XX coordinate. Heck, it's exactly what the build in pathfinding does. If you add some strafing to left and right, you can cut corners at 99.9% effiency, something a real player would do maybe once every 10000 runs.

But this is besides the point, the point is that it IS possible to bot, and I'm not talking about high school auto-it scripts here, and it IS possible to gain rewards for said thing.

I don't care you guys are botting, if you are at all, I care that my reward points, my roller beetle (I got position 105 orso last year, I got kicked out in the last hour) scores get kicked out by a handfull of people who have AI playing for them...

After the first couple of hours, people stop being stupid and start trying to KD you intelligently. If you don't know how to defend against this, you're going to get KD'd and never post a top time.

There are griefers out there that live to ruin top runs. Ignoring the other players just isn't an option; you're vulnerable quite a bit, and you have to be able to protect yourself at the proper times. A bot isn't going to be able to do this well. It's going to be predictable in its choices and suffer for it.

The other issue is that if you run the same route, you're going to lag out on other beetles a LOT. You don't necessarily have to run a flawless line early on to score a top time, but you cannot lag out on other beetles or the run is toast. This is another point where running a consistent line will screw you.

First off hi im roko wut crackin borat?

Ok Bots are ILLEGAL in every MMO. macro Which spams "x" to target the item and "x" to pick up the item ever 1/10th to .5/10th of a sec is fully legal unless guildwars rules have changed. Macros Req you to be at your computer and Actually be playing guildwars. As where a bot is ran on its own and does not req you be at your computer. There is NOTHING anet can do about macros i promise you. Unless they were to stop G15s or other Programs that micro things to work while you have GW selected. You know just about every guild uses a macro. Even wotu does borat you told kyle. Now there is a difference between having your macro set to a time that could be reflexed such as 1/10th of a sec and something faster then that. I do agree something faster then that is crazy. and Is in a way over powering. I mean how would anet stop ppl? just be like u got top 8 and in one single elim match u won by more then 8 presents so you are macroing? I mean hell look at Mitch from KMD he is accused of using a macro ever time he does well in a MAT. And he doesn't. There is no one to tell if some one does or not. Face it there is nothing that they can do.


Edit: btw ppl that snowball and use macros are going to post here and flame you borat because u made this post and macros are LEGAL IN GUILD WARS.



edit#3: i doubt this will be fixed/adressed ever because gw 2 will be out or be close to be coming out this time next year. I doubt the glitches such as being 2nd and geting 3 dwayna or being first and geting 3 grenth will be fixed. and a bunch of other glitches that didnt come out till this year will EVER be fixed. Now maybe just maybe these things about Snowball will be fixed when WIntersday in july comes around but i highly doubt this is on Anets list of things to be looked at seeing as how it happens only once-2 times a year.

Sup Roko,

We ARE talking about botting. Macroing is something that retarded kids do when they think spamming Nearest Item + Spacebar is the way to win. (Clicking, for starters is faster)

I'm talking about packet sniffers here. Bots who READ the incomming packets from the server to the client, and then reply said packets which certain actions. It's this way bots are capable of interrupting 1/4 second cast time spells, aswell as detecting KD'ing snowballs, and picking up INSTANTLY.

If you're spamming Nearest Item + Space, aside from being extremely inaccurate because new presents just drag you to the wrong side, you're still WAITING for the relic to drop, whereas a bot would simply READ the code, and reply the "Relic has been dropped" with a pick up ping.
This way, you won't get distracted by distant packages, AND U can focus on other stuff.

I could care less about macros. I'm talking about software which these guilds have (Written themselves I gues) which READS and MODYFIES packets.


Lastly, we faced your guild, and you guys were REALLY good, and you guys picked up REALLY FAST, but you weren't botting. Why? For reasons mentioned in previous posts: it's still humainly behaviour. You guys pick up fast, but so do we. You guys are GOOD players, those guilds I'm referring to are obiously botting.

you have some good points here borat

Else I wouldn't be talking about it

If you can't understand how someone is able to be doing something in Snowball or RBR, then chances are that you haven't played the arena enough to understand what they're doing right.

I'm not going to deny the existence of bots in these arenas. I'm going to deny the existence of effective bots. There's no way that a bot is going to be programmed properly to account for all necessary variables in RBR, and you're not going to consistently lose to teams in Snowball unless they're just better than you, bots aside.

If you really think players are botting and your trolly-sense is tingling, /report > Botting > Report. Or screenshot and send a support ticket. Or screenshot and post it on Gaile's wiki page. Or take a video of it and submit it to YouTube so Gaile can watch it. Or find the program that they're using and turn it in. Anything but talk about it here, because given the responses you've gotten thus far and the community of Gamer-seekers that you've caught the attention of, nobody really seems to believe you, or really notices or cares about this issue enough that it needs discussed. And it's not like posting about it here and getting a bunch of negative response is going to make this find its way to any properly empowered member of ANet's staff than an e-mail, support ticket, or wiki post. After all, discussions about account vulnerability have been going on for weeks, and ANet seems to give me the impression that they only just realized what's going on in the past few days.

Unless you've got some proof that's more than "his actions reek of robot!", this thread speaks nothing to me except accusations.

i can guarantee you nobody that wins top 100 for RBR uses a bot. i can't even imagine the coding nightmare it would take to try and make an effective bot for it. but if someone thinks it's possible, go ahead and spend the next few years developing it.

i can't guarantee the same for snowball, but then i present this case:

if these snowball bots exist and are possible to create, they must've taken some time to code. it's not something you can do in a few hours, it would take at least a few days of solid coding, testing and troubleshooting. but to the coder, this time is worth it if they can consistently beat opponents, /rank their dead bodies and win large amounts of RPs using their bot.

so lets say its possible. a coder was able to make this bot, to give them an advantage in snowball arenas. they win lots, and make lots of RPs. gz to them.

now, a programmer with these talents, would realize their are other opportunities they can exploit. them and their friends can now win top GvG easily. why? because they can make bots that will prot/infuse every spike. they can cancel cast to stop any interupt, shame, diversion because their packets tell them its cast on them. they will never get bulls'ed because they can read the packet coming and react in time. they can kite an rspike because the bot knows its coming. they will cancel frenzy every time. they will have every edge possible over the other opponent because they have amazing programming skills. AM I JUST NAIVE OR WHY HAVEN'T I HEARD OF THIS IN TOP END GvG?

of course there is also the rupt bot, but that doesn't count as a good example, because as someone stated, i can make that with high school programming skills, texmod and autoit. it's also freely available for download, but i don't think i'm allowed to post the link.

for some reason, these amazing programmers have limited themselves to something that happens for a few weeks, and offers less rewards in comparison to winning hundreds of ATs throughout the year. that sounds like a lot of wasted talent to me.

roller beetle is kinda decided right at the beginning.. bot can't really do that right I wouldn't think

In principle you could write six different scripts and copy most of the code over. But if you have to babysit the bot, you might as well l2p.

The problem is that the first 40 seconds of the race just can't be scripted effectively. It isn't deterministic enough. You're trying to get to the water boxes as fast as you can, given what the other players are doing. Bots fail at strategic behavior. They're great for mindless, repeated tasks. They're bad at responding to events around them. There isn't an algorithm that's going to get you to the first checkpoint safely.

Maybe you could compensate for utter lack of skill by programming a fixed line and having repetition + pure dumb luck carry the day. Given an infinite series of matches, eventually you'll have five idiots that are too bad to interfere with your ability to run an ideal line, and also get the appropriate powerups from the boxes in the same run.

But a skilled human is going to crush the bot's results every time. The human is going to post more quality runs and better overall times by virtue of more quality starts.

Borat's accusation is little different than the classic accusations of syncing RBR; you could do it, but it's inefficent. If you're not switching off who gets to go for the gold each run, then you lag each other out fighting over the ideal line. If you were switching off babysitting each other's runs, the benefits would be outweighed by the cost of cutting your number of runs by more than half.

if u dont have any hard evidence that certain ppl/guilds are botting i dont think anet will take a look anyway

Probably not botting, just people with far too much time on their hands to want to be that good at a video game.

Laugh at them for spending hundreds of hours perfecting their technique simply to fap their e-peen as people rage quit. then IDK.. go out and do something useful IRL and don't bitch on forums without proof :P

Keyword there is proof, BTW. You'll convince no one here unless you have it.

EDIT: also, half these peoples' posts here are boxes D: and I don't know why lol

Hi. Don't turn this into a flamewar again. This is everyone's first and final warning. If you want to make a huge deal out of this and flame other guilds, take it to QQ.

EDIT: Apparently it's very hard for people to understand the above message, so I'm just going to close this. Borat you should probably leave a message on Gaile's page or send her an email or something.