Botters in PvP (Preventive actions for RBR)

TURN THE BOT ON AND OFF!

If the situation is advantageous to the bot (which will happen in a match) turn it on. If it is disadvantageous, turn it off. This isn't a case of just "beat the bot/badplayer/badbuild", it is a case of someone having a full on advantage over other people. Have an interrupt bot that you turn on whenever your team is spiking, catch RC/WoH that happens on the spike, heavy pressure. Have a separate bot that will full on catch 1/4 second spells, turn it on only immediately after a monk gets KD'd, its not a bot you just got Qrupted.

New player "Guys we lost a match pretty bad, I went back over it and a couple of their players had flawless skill activation even though the player was always out of position and couldn't do much of anything else, after multiple looks it still looks like a bot."

New player, "Seriously, that is all you can say? Not, 'I don't believe there's a bot', not 'Can you provide more evidence its a bot', but you acknowledge there are bot and that no one should care? Screw this game and its community, I'm gone"

P.S. Anet read this above

Getting worked up over something is the ONLY way Anet will bother to address it. How could you possibly think otherwise.

And you cannot stress it enough, infact your posting hints that you cannot stress it at all.

If you could actually read for a second (I know that's hard when you are only concerned with what you have to say) I proposed a non-egotistical response. It's rather simply, really, so let me break it down slowly so you understand this time:

1. The claim you are defending is that there are not bots in RBR. If you can make that argument that RBR is too complex for there to exist an effective bot you win.

2. "I am good at it, and I don't cheat" lends nothing to a concise, appropriate argument. If you can effectively argue that it is too difficult to program a bot for RBR then why would you need to even bring yourself into the equation? If bots can't exist then it is assumed you don't bot; therefore, why make it a point that you don't bot AND you are amazing.

3. For the record, I am in agreement that a bot being successful in the very top of RBR is impossible, but I am disgusted at the way you attempted to defend such a viewpoint.

Actually if enough people complain, it will. The real problem is the people who are complacent with such methods of cheating, and give Anet no incentive to make changes. To draw a real world analogy to our argument:

"Steroids are cheating in baseball, but if a player works hard enough he can be better than someone who takes them, so they aren't really a problem". In the real world, as it is now, anyone who made this argument would be considered an absolute fool. It's a shame such attitudes do not transfer as easily to online games.

Also, to the latter part of your claim: bots have an on and an off switch - they aren't as inflexible as you think.

Really, spitting on people won't get you anywhere - are you that hypocritical? Your entire argument is founded on the belief that if people lose to bots it's THEIR fault for being bad - if that's not spitting on 90% of a player base I don't know what is. If you actually want to be taken seriously on these forums, I suggest you get more attuned with the average player, and dismount from your artificially high horse.

I guess some people are just used to gimmick builds. Yeah sure there are tons of gimmicks still in Guild Wars. Gimmicks that if you play poorly or don't address correctly you'll lose.

You could somewhat extend this to:

Yeah sure there are tons of bots still in Guild Wars. Bots that if you play poorly or don't address correctly you'll lose.


Of course one of these statements is not quite like the other.

@ Rainy: If you'll recall, the OP accused me of cheating. Not by name, but the accusation is still there. (Not the first time, either.) My behavior is at issue here. You can't separate me from the discussion.

If I'm being a jerk about it, consider this: I've been accused of cheating in this forum since 2007. I worked VERY hard to accomplish what I've been able to accomplish in RBR. I find it reprehensible that people that don't know what they're talking about can come in here and slander me without consequences. But that's the Internet and democracy for you.

@ Reverend Dr: You're still missing the point.

You should be worried about the things you can control. Instead, you are whining about things you cannot. We know ANet is glacially slow in responding to these sorts of issues. The bots will be dealt with. Eventually.

In the meantime, you have to help yourself. Change your build and tactics when you know you're going to be facing an interrupt bot. You have that luxury in an AT. Ladder play is more problematic, I'll grant that.

Outrage isn't going to solve anything. We can talk about how bots are unjust, deter new players, and destroy the game all day, but that isn't going to win matches. You should turn your energies to the more productive task of determining how to beat the things, because they aren't going away any time soon. The better teams appear to be winning despite their existence, so clearly a workable solution exists (unless you wish to argue that everyone that won gold capes in the last year was cheating, since Borat claims these bots have been around for a while).

If a workable solution exists, then we're back to: if you lose to bots, you're bad. You would agree with the statement: if you lose to gimmick, you're bad. I fail to see the difference here in practice. Ethically, sure. Functionally? No.

Sorry, I can't seem to find evidence of such a thing. Maybe I'm tired and missed it, but could you please point out how he exactly involved your personal play in the discussion?


If the world functioned this way, nothing would get done. We understand you are a very straightforward, hard nosed, right-brained kind of person, but believe it or not talking about and protesting issues which are out of one's control is part of being human. Not to get too off topic, but the issue of death is discussed repeatedly even though humans may never gain deeper insight into it. It is harshly unrealistic to expect people to only interact with things they can fully manipulate and understand - living a life in such away is also quite sad.

I did a little rummaging through your old posts Martin, and I have come to the conclusion that the only way you are able to really understand how things work - that is, the "big picture" - is by putting it in direct relation to yourself. This isn't always a bad thing, but what it does is it makes your thinking very narrow minded. Forgive me for paraphrasing but I believe in an earlier post you said something to the gist of: "I am morally against cheating, but if I cannot detect it then it is functionally not cheating". As we can see here, you feel the need to place yourself in relation to the larger issue of cheating. If, to you - in your eyes you are apparently the expert in everything - you cannot see cheating then there is none. Such an idea is so unbelievably backwards I do not know where to begin. Morality and functionality do exist simultaneously and affect one another. Moreover, just because you can't understand something doesn't mean it is unimportant to everyone else - you really aren't that special, and you have demonstrated to most people on this forum that you are intellectually weak.

If you knew anything about gvg - which your boastful facade would appear to perpetuate - then you would know that such bots HAVE been around for years. Honestly, I am surprised you were not aware of such information. The difference now, is that they have become increasingly more public.

Bots are against the rules, gimmicks are not. This is just as much of a functional issue as an ethical one. Gimmicks, although generally requiring less input for a given level of success, still functionally involve the player sitting there pressing buttons and making decisions. The difference with a bot, is that it isn't the player using his skills to his advantage - it is a machine. How you do not see this crucial difference is frightening. Perhaps the outcomes of running a gimmick and a bot are the same, but "functionality", as you so put it, is also about inputs.

Martin, you're saying you're dragged into the discussion by OP - there's no way you can prove you're not using a bot. no way. either you're superb at RBR as you're trying to say here, as you've wasted long hours to 'scientifically analyse the problem', or you're just telling crap for a mere diversion - hiding a little bot there, behind all those big words and sentences with correct punctutation. saying that you can't be separated from discussion because you have to defend yourself in a cheat-accusation thread in a big, public community forum full of trolls is, well... overkill. maybe just that cap fits for you perfectly. maybe not, but then why are you wasting your time arguing with 'trolls' instead of getting better at the game or doing something productive?

i've been in a party of bots at dragon arena once, they even had some totally clean wins several times in a row. they've never replied in any language, never chatted, never reported me for leeching at a few matches, never failed to win (they've just left after ~47 wins), sometimes won without dying even once. they were from one guild, named almost identically. they haven't even replied to reporting them as bots. if dragon arena can be manipulated, so is RBR.

and it's you who is missing the point all the time. when you have a bot perfectly cutting the edges, you only need to learn how to use dash/ram. it's much easier and comes much faster than learning the whole route. and that IS getting illegal advantage over other players. the only way to compete with it is to be botlike yourself - as in wasted hours to analyse the track instead of happy farming and just running a bot to do most of the hard stuff for you. and even as a pro beetler, there is still room for error when it comes to players - not even the latency, but just being tired, a powerful sneeze, interrupting family, anything distracting. bot is free of it.

it doesn't mean that every run of the bot is prize-winning, of course not. but instead of 100 runs needed to get into top 100 as a pro player, you'll need 20 and will more likely achieve it. i see a difference.

In this case the only thing I can control is whether or not I play.

If this game has bots, I don't mean hidden bots that only certain coders can create and cannot distribute widely without being found out (VAC), I mean easily accessed and no-punished bots, then I'm not going to play. Furthermore for a company to expect anyone to play in such a game is absurd.

Martin, hey Martin, do I have your attention?!?

This is frustrating. The point was quite clearly distinct from the argument you are attempting to put into my mouth. What I said was: if the best players can consistently beat the bot, then it's exactly like gimmick. Either way, if you lose then you're bad and it's your fault. Cheating is morally wrong...but if the results it produces are functionally no better than gimmick, then where is the huge issue?

You bring up steroids, and it's an invalid comparison. In principle, the bot used properly would be advantageous...but if that's the case, where are the empirical results to back up the theory? Steroids obviously helped McGwire, Sosa and Bonds to hit more home runs. There's historical evidence (the home run totals of other players that didn't cheat, plus Bonds' pre-steroid numbers) to back the assertion. Where is this evidence in Guild Wars?

I haven't played GvG in ages. Not since the early days of the AT system. So it's easy to understand how I would know the format well, but not be aware of such bots.

Whatever gave you the impression that I don't see that difference? Did I not clearly state that there is an ethical difference between gimmick and bot? The point is that if the bot yields results no better than gimmick (ie: can be successfully countered with tactics and good play), then the bots aren't the huge issue you are making them out to be.

Are you seriously claiming that botters are winning mATs, or at least making the single elimination rounds? If they aren't, then why is this problem so serious? If the best teams are beating the cheaters, then the responsibility for losing to the cheaters still lies on your shoulders.

@ Reverend Dr: I think that's a totally appropriate response to the issue. But I still don't think you get what I'm saying, which is: ANet will deal with the issue eventually, because there are a lot of people that feel the way you do. In the meantime, beat the bots or (as you suggest) don't play.

@ drkn: Why am I arguing? Baseless accusations like this piss me off. It's been going on for years, and it doesn't get any less irritating.

Sure, I can't prove that I don't bot. However, ANet can.

There is no wait, this has been going on for 2 years.

Beat someone with an unfair advantage is never an excuse.

People don't feel the way that I do either because they don't know, or because people like you trivialize it.

If you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem. In my eyes, in the eyes of everyone viewing this thread that won't stand for bots, you are the same as anyone that is abusing them.

I'd like to see the OP's evidence that RBR bots do provide such an edge that: 1) if you use one you're very likely to end up in top100; and 2) a significant proportion of the top100 uses bots. I'm actually more concerned about skilled players hijacking the top100 via multiple accounts than bots.

Without evidence, I'll side along Martin Alvito as I'd rather believe people in the clique of Yuri (who I've seen playing, and whose consistent top100 and RBR guide is a living proof that skill is all it takes) and who have good knowledge and experience of RBR. I've experienced first hand how very precise timing of skill use (and luck of no rubberbanding due to lag, and players getting at you) can significantly improve your performance.

*leaves in hope that he can replicate his 482k from Dragon Festival*

I never called you out in person, Martin. I admit, I have a problem with your guild, as they are known (And acknowledged by WoTu, YMCA, Vent Rage and many other top Snowball guilds) to use pick up bots/DnD bots. (You again said Yuris behaviour, aswell as other guildies running that bot, is botlike)

For starters, if your guild manages to bot snowball, it's only normal I assume that they also bot RBR, for the obvious reason that many of the same people are also in top 100 scores EVERY TIME.

So this can either mean 2 things: Your guild really does have the best of the best of "event-gamers", yet can't accomplish anything in PvP. (HA - GvG) Inactivity I fail to see as a valid reason, since Yuris is on alot of the time, and so are other guildies.

Secondly: I've said this before, but making a private server isn't all that hard. As a matter of fact, if I'm not mistaken, you can find a guide on youtube. (For Guild Wars)

Tough, you obviously won't have source, I'm saying the basics are there. And a team such as GWLP HAS GOT ACCESS to fully operation private servers. They can rollerbeetle as much as they want, when they want...

So you wouldn't have to spend your "limited" event time making the bot. You could have spend any time between the first year and second year making the bot, as long as you could extract the RBR map...

Thirdly, PLEASE understand WHY I'm calling your guild out: (Going to repeat it again)

-It is KNOWN to bot snowball AT's (Wins with 3x grenth in playoffs with 10-<5 scores, pz)
-It is KNOWN to have multiple people in there who also having seemingly "botlike" scores in RBR

I'm just putting 2 and 2 together here. I KNOW the RBR exists. Given, I have no proof your guild is using that RB bot, but there is no way one could prove it in the first place. All I know is some of your guildies have got acces to advanced bots (If Yuris makes them himself), and thus also a Rollerbeetle bot.

Damnit, right this moment I'm talking with people that are looking at the code.

A gimmick problem in game balance you say: This isn't good, but in the meantime this is how you work around it.

A problem like bots in the source and development end, you say: This is unacceptable.

If this is true and you are so upset about it, then why haven't you been in here every day posting about it?

Worked for getting us better account security, didn't it?

The problem is that there are a lot of people that feel the way I do about the bots. They don't generate the same level of outrage as account vulnerabilities. I hate them and I want them to go die, but it's a matter of priorities. I'd rather have balanced skills than a bot-free game, given the apparent track record of the bots.

@ Borat: Sorry, but you're just wrong about Snowball ATs. It really is tactics.

you said that u dont really want the prize for 100 somewhere in here, u want people to see your nickname and tell that "you are good", well guess what you have to be FIRST for people to remember you NOT 60-100th ... And btw i think a big part of the GW community already knows you from your whiny threads about bots in snowball ats and rollerbeatle races
so why bother?

Are you talking to people in RBR top100? If not, knowing the code improves performance will not mean what the OP implied (i.e. that botting is likely to put you in top100 and most top100ers do it).

I don't think that's what most people disagreeing with the OP are saying here. (surely not me) One can hate bots (and botters) and want things to be done about them, while still acknowledging that there's little that Anet can do. If someone find an easy workaround for stopping current bots, a new version will bypass it, and the cycle continues.

Could it be that they're skilled at RBR? Yuri's guide to RBR wasn't created by a bot, it simply showed his skills (he clearly said why he created the guide: so that there's more competition and more fun).

You're starting to launch personal attacks. Not only is it against the forum rules, but it's pointless: why should we take your word (and the one of those you know) against others'?

You don't think its more of a problem when the entire enemy team has access to your teams party screen with bonus information such as weapon sets, skill usage, easy targeting etc.?
Its very likely more can be extracted that at least I don't know off yet.
Coding of every skill ID into the bot so it will perfectly prioritize isn't troubling enough to cause an outrage.

How is this not a bigger issue than completely random things like minor bug fixes in obscure places?

Toning the problems down has been proven through empirical testing to fail extraordinarily as a method when working with Anet, therefore people with experience on the matter are RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing mad 9001 because they're obviously entitled to, and because its the only way to catch some attention.

Whether or not bitching about it here will actually help doesn't matter the least, its just another try at something seemingly hopeless.
Simply discarding complaints about something legit with nothing else than the stupid saying people are bad if they don't just work around it perfectly doesn't get through properly.
People are obviously trying to work out methods for how to beat botters, that's pretty straight forward logic, but saying so is just retarded when you imply that people are whining exclusively.

Edit: You can always blank out the names if you want. I'm not using his full name anyways...

I'm pretty sure our guild was amongst the top. Are you hereby claiming your guild, once again, has such crazy tactics it can outplay top 20-50 GvG guilds, yet has no significant meaning in GvG?

And what are these magical tactics you speak off? Last time I checked, winning snowball arenas STILL only comes down to picking up the relic faster than your opponent. I mean, you can twist it, you can turn it, but at the end of the day, your guildies always outpicked up our guildies... We would have strategical snares, be spamming interrupts, would bodyblock, whereas sometimes your guild would have no notice of relics spawning.

Yet 2 of your guildies (Given ice fort) managed to "out-pick-up" 7 of our guildies. If you call that tactics, ok...

Your guild definatly wasn't bad, but it seems to be excempt from any form of limitations other guilds aren't... Having a guild beat another guild being grenth in Play-Off was close to never seen, your guild DESTROYED (10-2, 10-0, 10-4) WoTu, Vent rage, YMCA every time being grenth.

Claiming to be good is one thing, your guild was simply bending "the possible" in Guild Wars. And SOLELY because your guild always managed to pick up faster than any of the rest. I admit I used a pick-up bot myself once, to see wether or not your guildies could beat it, and they did. Yuris has no problem out-picking up MY bot. (It was a 50-50 scenario) Yet other players can MAYBE steal the relic from me 1 in every 15-20 tries. (You simply CAN'T compete with direct server pings, just like Yuris uses aswell)

And I'dd rather have NO PvP than PvP getting farmed by bots... The ONLY reason people aren't using those bots in mAt's, is for the obvious reason that it would be on observer, and would get massivly reported. This doesn't change the fact that the bot itself still means "autowin" for any decent team.

If 2 teams of equal skill (Like in most top 100 gvg's) fight, the one with the interrupt bot WILL win, unless they fubar... Being able to interrupt Infuse Health, WoH, Patient Spirit, Spirit Bond and RC is NOT something you can coop with. And there's also a difference with the old hero rupt bots and the actual "bot". Heroes would RANDOMLY get a spell, and could actually miss interrupts. Also getting interrupted on 1/4's was something that happened rarely, but it still did, and we've wiped because of that. (Infuse Health often is a LAST RESOURCE HEAL, if that gains interrupted, it usually means a death -90% of the time)
These bots can interrupt ANY spell, if they want. The more advanced bots, such as the one within my grasp, allows for ever more dynamic set-ups.
There's bots that calculate energy (They count every spell enemy monks use, aswell as regen/degen, and give a pretty accurate estimation of enemy monks energy), and will Pleak spells (1/4's if they have to) when the monk swapped to high energy set and/or is low on energy.

There's bots that U can set every skill U want interrupted on. You can litteraly just "check" on the skills you don't want going off: "Bsurge, RC, Guardian, WoH, Bflash, Blurred Vision", and the bot will get every single one of those, given he has interrupts recharged and people don't cast at the same time. (He's obviously still stuck to being able to cast 1 spell at a time)

Thinking of it now, it probably would even be that hard to program Tease/CoF on that bar, and make it interrupt multiple spells. (If 2 ppl cast a spell at the same time next to eachother, it'll rupt both of them with CoF/Tease)

My point is, the options with bots are endless, and not something "trivial" you can ignore, or overcome. We, neither me or Reverend or anyone for that matter, never claimed PvE'ers are going to win mAT'es with the aid of bots. Our claim is that bots give you such a significant advantage, they can pretty much guarantee you a win, if you play just as good, or only a bit worse than your opposing team.

It's the same in RBR. I'm CONVINCED that Yuris, yourself, and other guildies are GOOD at rollerbeetle racing. Because you need to be GOOD in order to make a GOOD bot (with good pathing), but they're still botting it nontheless.

Getting 480K scores is something that happens every now and then. A REAL human can't cut corners perfectly and/or time his speedboost perfectly every time, just as much as a human can't reliably interrupt 1/4s spells, yet the top 100 RBR scoretable is FILLED with guildies and friends of Yuris who seem to poop out these scores like there's no tomorrow.

If you are not outraged by bots, then you are condoning bots. There are no "ifs" "ands" "buts" or other conditionals.

What do you want me to do? "Just wait?" I've been 'just waiting' for over 3 years.

Why am I still here? I had a lot of fun between the summer of 2005 and the summer of 2006; and I miss it. Enough fun to still warrant arguing about this shit in the summer of 2010.

It's counter-productive to fight over a principle on these issues unless you can show the extent of the damage these bots are making. (and it's pueril to target specific people while you could simply talk about the issue without talking about the people)

Yes bots are bad, but can you show that in RBR they're the reason why you do or do not end up in top100?

Congratulations

Is it that hard to read my posts?

Last year, I got 105th, orso. I got kicked out of top 100 with a 479K orso time (Maybe even 480K, I remember being at position 99 2 hours before end).

Given the info from before:

I have a strongly grounded reason to believe some people in top 100 RBR are INDEED botting RBR. (And the ground here being that they are known/proven to bot Snowball AT's)

You're making a moral argument. It's only relevant IF (and only IF) the RBR bots are what differentiate people in the top100 and the others. Can you show us that? If you can, then people will indeed support actions being taken, if possible (another thing that needs to be proven, because ultimately: 1) not much can be done on Anet's server for most bots; 2) any fix would be bypassed by the next version of the bot... )

Apparently easier than for you to read mine correctly.

How is that PROOF of anything? Proove to us that BOTTERS (not you) are in the top100 and that there isn't many people in the top100 who doesn't bot.

All you're showing us is your suspicions. There's no evidence anywhere. It's a bit like if I was going to say "I suspect the OP is simply unhappy in his RL and wants to whine on Guru" (I have NO reason to believe that, I'm illustrating a point: back your statements or keep silent)

It looks like you're trying to start a witch hunt.

I don't understand why people think this is the case. I've had it out with SO many people in Vent over this issue. Pickups are important. They rarely decide matches, because they only become an issue when you already failed. Positioning is the key. You need one to knock down and one to scoop, and you need to disable their ability to pick up if you have numbers.

If they were Euros and the match was on Euro servers, that's all you really need to know. I can't pick up anything on Euro servers either.

To put it bluntly, none of them were regularly good. [vR] fielded a strong lineup on occasion. The others were just bad. You can facestomp bad people with Grenth. Avalanche is only so helpful.

Again, this is easily explained by 206. Good Euros are going to beat you on 206, and almost all of the matches with a Euro team involved were played there. There isn't a thing you can do about it.

It actually isn't that hard to be consistent once you do enough runs. I still make mistakes, but not a lot.

You sound like Dubya. That is not a good thing.

More than two positions on the matter exist.

I am making a game developer argument based upon the craftiness and evolution of coders: Bots existing are always and never without exception unacceptable.

Taking the stance you proposed is giving up. This is the same as uninstalling the game. If this is the stance you are taking, then I suggest that you delete both your GW account and your account here. If this is the stance that guru is taking (which as the moderator Martin tends to suggest, as moderator posts set the example of both what is acceptable and the official opinion), then guru itself needs to be deleted, much less removed as the final "elite fansite". Lets have an "elite fansite" that casually turns a blind eye to obvious hackings and other manipulations that are grossly against the game design.

You sound like someone that thinks Dubya is evil incarnate that can never do anything good which is a far worse stance to take (you are the one that brought politics into this argument, that is tantamount to Godwining yourself).

There are only two positions, either you hate bots or you think you can thrive in a bot riddled environment. I have been implicitly saying you like bots. I believe Borat has been explicitly saying as much.

^

Our guild is euro. I was playing at on a shitty computer with 7 FPS and +-250 ping. (I'm euro aswell) -Tough FPS don't matter for the pickup bot-

I could STILL outpick up americans on american servers, just because a direct ping to server packet is so fast.

So either Yuris is american, and can somehow out-pick up a bot, or he's euro, and he can somehow out-pick up a bot.

But Martin, if you don't believe me, I still have the bot (To be publicly released if no replies are made within 2-3 days by Anet), I bet I can drop a thousand flags and pick it up again before any legit player can pick it up. Or vica versa: I can pick up any flag faster than a legit player would if were to drop it and try and pick it up himself. I've tested this with guildies and the results were redicilous.

I found that Yuris WAS capable of stealing presents I randomly dropped, or that were dropped by other people. This just gave me the final % "sureness" I needed to be 100% sure he was botting, the other 99% being his RB crazyness and his DnD botbehaviour.

NO player can pick up faster than a bot, reliably, Yuris can, and so do some of your other guildies. Explanation?

Then show us you're gaming development credentials, or elements of a solution. Or else it's simply like saying "we have to solve the climate crysis NOW because it's a morale urgency" while providing no elements of the solution. Morale grounds, as legitimate as you wish, cannot be more important than RL resource limits can it? (unless you're going to work free for Anet to fix the problems?)

No it's not. I've said I'd support actions, but only IF evidence is shown.

I don't believe for a second that Martin is speaking for Guru. He's speaking in his capacity as a player.

Way to shoot yourself in the foot: Martin was a prominent and active participant to the "security issues" thread, which lead to actions being taken. So now he's done a U-turn?

So this is what your thread was about? It's derailed and it seems now that you want to get back at these people. (maybe it's not what you wanted, nevertheless it's the impression you're giving people)

You've made tons of claims up to now. Can you start backing them up or will you simply continue to expose your suspicions?

(NOTE: I'm not taking sides and I think that a discussion between the accuser and the accused is not reasonable unless it's based on FACTS, not guesses or hunches)

@ Reverend Dr: Now you're just engaging in histrionics, and trying to distort my position as well.

First of all, my opinion is just that: my opinion. As I see it, botting isn't the biggest issue. Neither of us is playing regularly, right? Why? It isn't cheating. It's stale, dead metas.

I'd rather have the developer provide a game that I actually want to play, but is rife with cheating, than have a game that I don't want to play. Neither is optimal; I prefer the game that I want to play in which cheating is not possible.

I'm not suggesting that we turn a blind eye to cheating. It needs to be dealt with. What I am suggesting is that there are bigger fish to fry right now. We need a game that gets us to log in. Then we can worry about having a game that is free of cheating.

We've already identified the options we have until that happens. Learn to beat the bots, or don't play. It appears that the best players have been beating the bots for some time now. If [rawr] was using an interrupt bot, they never would have abandoned the Mesmer, no?

Perhaps what I was saying about Dubya wasn't clear. The "you're either with us or against us" approach to terrorism was rightfully criticized very widely, and you're staking out a similar position on this issue. It isn't black and white, because ANet's resources are finite.

@ Borat: Video? If you're also Euro, then I can't explain it. But I need to see proof of your allegations to believe them. Your word alone isn't sufficient. I obsed a very large number of matches, including some that were brought to my attention as suspicious. I never saw anything that I had not seen done by live human players in 4v4 years ago (ie: before cheating became an issue).

Some people will demand proof that their village is burning, while smoldering ashes surround them.

FACT: The GW client broadcasts positions, facement, HP bars (including condition/enchant/hex information included on those), equipment, and skill usagage for every player in any zone. Bots and UI interfaces already exist that exploit these. The advancement of Bot AI is merely a matter of time if it hasn't happened already. In the coding world, if you can't imagine it, then you are gone, because you are so stuck in the paradigms of the past that you are no longer of any use. If you can imagine a bot to do X, then a bot can do X. If you can't imagine a bot to do X, then you are uncreative.

Martin has a mod title that is presented next to every one of his posts; yes he does speak for guru. Account security and botting are two separate things. Is it so hard to believe that someone with ill gotten gains from botting would want their account to be stolen? Activity in the security issues thread is irrelevant here.

Interesting argument. As a player I might agree with you. As a developer of a persistent game, never would that thought cross my mind.

Again, please read through my posts. I know they're lenghty, and often contain bad usage of words (English is my third language, shoot me), but if you're not going to, don't reply...

YOU CAN NOT PROOVE SOMEONE IS BOTTING

Someone could be running against a wall for hours, yet he could just be REALLY bored and decided to do such a thing. There's a .0000000000001 % a player really does happen to do the exact same sequence over and over again in a farm, yet Anet bans people for botting...

At one point, you got to make a claim in saying: Ok, this behaviour, WHILST STILL POSSIBLE, is comming so close to bot behaviour, it probably is.

And that's what I felt when I watched Yuris play. I'm not trying to get back at him, but he is my personal example and proof of why I believe his guild is botting.

The tread didn't derail, we just broaded it up a bit. I created it to aim at RBR botting, but it just turned into a general botting thread. (Which needs to exist anyhow, as it is a serious issue)

I'm NOT trying to get back at Yuris, I keep mentionning for reasons mentioned above, he IS my personal proof that guild is botting, it all started with him...

As for supporting my claims:

I've said it before 2-3 days from now, I will start releasing bots in public, be it here on guru, through PM's, or on QQ forums. I don't want to do this for obvious reasons I would be putting myelf at a disadvantage, but Anet's position on this simply is UNACCEPTABLE.

But in order to prevent a lock, I'm just gonna stop arguing about the snowball bot. We ALL know it exists, we ALL know who uses it, wether we all want to admit it is a different thing. But ye, I'm asking any mod instead of locking it, just delete/posts (even mine) or blank out names.

I personally don't feel this thread has become a "calling out xx botter", but I can see it heading there. But that's something you should always expect with something around this issue. It isn't something like game balance, where there is no real "culprit".

With botting, there's ALWAYS someone using said bot, and that person will obviously never admit to doing so. Therefor any thread related to botting will always contain some "personal" attacks and flames, tough I'm doing my best not to derail it.

I really want Anet to tackle this problem, so I can FINALLY get a top 100 score... Or maybe even win some snowball AT's upcomming event. (I won plenty last time, but I've lost plenty aswell due to botting guilds)

As a matter of fact, I just realized the snowball AT's ARE comming back again (right?). So I hope for Anet's sake I get some official replies soon, or else snowball At's will be kinda... Botlike...

Wow, there's a huge lack of understanding of posts and I won't make any more efforts as it seems pointless since you're not really listening. We're actually not asking you to prove that people do bot (well unless you're going on the witch hunt ...) but that botting is the determinant factor in getting in the RBR top100. And I'm also wondering whether you're blowing things out of proportion.

EDIT: releasing the bot will prove nothing apart from its existence. Send it to Anet devs and designers.

I'm asking any mod to instead delete only what is absolutely necessary (e.g. names), temp ban accounts for whatever posting behavior they violated, then mod edit accounts to include that something was deleted and include notes that someone was banned for that post.

Its all about transparency.

And others require no proof whatsoever.

Hardly. My personal views are not necessarily those of Guru. No other mods or administrators have ventured in here yet, but I'm willing to bet that not all of them would agree with my take on the matter.

I still played Counterstrike when it was a hackfest, and I didn't hack. I was hardly alone in that. It was nice when it was cleaned up somewhat; I appreciated the effort.

You can make a fairly persuasive case. The problem is that you look like someone with an axe to grind. You're not impartial, so I am skeptical when you claim that someone was botting. I'm inclined to disbelieve the claim that you used a bot to conclusively demonstrate that someone was botting, in the absence of video evidence.

Further thoughts: since you can't observe RBR, I guess you simply stick to the "botlike score" argument. So I make it into top100, will you claim I'm using bots? And have you ever been in an RBR match where you saw first hand "botlike behaviour", or heard someone saying so?

EDIT: Fril, I asked you 3 times, but you refuse to read my posts. Read "Second edit" in BIG CAPITCAL LETTERS IN MY OP. I clearly claimed that I'm not calling everyone a botter. EVERYONE is capable of getting 480-485K scores.


Releasing the bot, for starters, will prove once and for all that bots DO exist. Tough I know most people realize this.

Secondly, it will PROOVE to Martin that the worst guilds botting snowball AT's will be able to destroy non botting guilds.

I really do understand Martin in some of his points, and I would LOVE to share his idealistic view of some things, such as Snowball being based on skill, but I don't.

I like to believe I'm person of relativly high intelligence, and I believe that certain things are NOT about skill, but about routine/other factors.

Skill will get you a far way in RBR, but so will a perfectly pre-programmed route for a bot to follow.

Skill will get you somewhere in snowball, but picking up the relic faster than your enemy will win you the match.

You can snare the enemy as much as you want. You can block them as much as you want. But at the end of the day, it comes down to YOU being able to pick up the relic so U can run it to your Avatar. If you NEVER get a chance at picking it up, you won't EVER be able to run it to your Avatar.

Therefor, the ultimate factor in winning snowball At's is picking up relics fast enough. This is plain and simple logic, it is not flawed, it's is the perfect truth.

You can send people for Relics, you can kill them, you can snare them, you can block them, you can lineback their caster, you can cripple their snare, you can do whatever you way, BUT AS LONG AS YOU DONT PICK UP THE RELIC, YOU WONT WIN. And that's why botting guilds beat legit ones with 10-2 scores being Grenth in Play-Offs. Because the legit guilds, as good as they are, EVEN WITH DWAYNA ADVANTAGE, can NOT pick up the relics fast enough.

Counterstrike isn't a persistent game. Also in that case as a developer I still would never want hacking = fun to ever cross my mind.

Martin, when you became a mod, you became a voice of guru. This isn't my opinion, this is the way the world works.

Fril you are right you can't PROVE it. You don't have access to video footage of my fingers playing this game so you can never prove that anyone is ever doing anything involving hacks.

Most players of Snowball ATs are seduced by that logic. It appears correct, but it turns out that it is flawed.

If you can't get into position to pick up, quick scoops are useless. The key to keeping a relic moving is preventing the opponent from getting defenders in position. The better teams are simply much more effective at this. They function as teams, not as independently operating pickup units.

This is not obvious unless you spend some time observing matches. Every once in a while a missed pickup is crucial and turns a game. But usually the difference between winning and losing boils down to positioning and controlling the opponent's positioning. They can't steal the gift if they can't get next to it.

The above would be true, if it wasn't for the fact that you rezz every 5 seconds.

Your statement is flawed due to the simple fact that one can not "prevent" the enemy team from getting close to the relic. It takes too long to kill people, because you rezz too fast.

And I never said skill skill DIDN'T matter at all. The first thing I told my guild when facing botting guilds was: We're not going to be able to out-pick up them, so we're going to prevent them from picking it up aswell", so we ran 4 rangers, 2 necros, 2 eles, and we focused on killing them so they couldn't run.

This worked against bad botting guilds, but not against yours. We killed you guys so fast, and so often, but every death person would get replaced with a newly spawned person on max health.

The time to get from your spawn to the relic is trivial at most, as we're assuming the relics spawns in the middle, or even closer to the botter's base, as they should have picked it up in the first place. (After spawn)


So whilst your statement isn't fully untrue, it would only be true if you didn't rezz every 5 seconds.

Snares don't recharge fast enough (and when you're grenth, you have NO snares whatsoever) and people rezz too fast for any other strategy than "mobing the relic and picking it up the fastest" to work.

If you can't see this, your perspective is flawed. Anyone who understands PvP will agree with what I've just said.

I understand PvP perfectly well, thank you.

You're not thinking about the problem correctly. Kills alone are not valuable; you are correct that dedicating a lot of resources to killing cripples your ability to run gifts. Well timed kills are another matter, though.

You should be thinking about the following things that you are not presently considering:

- Are we set up to be the first to get the next gift that spawns?
- Are we using DPS in the right places (ie: closer to home)?
- Can I use this Hidden Rock/Icicles to keep a runner clean for an extra few seconds?
- Should we just concede this gift and instead worry about moving the next one?
- Can I buy some time to get reinforcements and deny the enemy this gift with a Fort?
- How can I be most productive when I am not carrying a gift?

Long story short, if your runs are cleaner than theirs are, you will win. Pickups factor into that...but not nearly as much as you might think.

The time to get from your spawn to a relic is NOT trivial. It adds up.

Fixed it for you.

This is what Martin was referring to as "Dubya thinking", also called "black&white thinking". Everyone understands that mods also have an opinion outside of what Guru wants/needs, they sometimes speak for the whole team, but most often only speak for themselves. It's obvious.

Now I think we need to REclarify 2 things:
1) BOTS do exist, without the shadow of a doubt (I could write a long prose on how I knew this would happen in a server-centric game like GW but let's not derail more);
2) BOTS are bad (i.e. bot devs and bot users are bad) for the game.
I hope that now it's clear and that the following points can proceed from these 2 very basic assumptions.

And these following points are:
3) you're linking people (and even a whole guild) to the problem of botting based on a few observations; I and Martin are clearly doubtful about these; high score in RBR does not mean botting, hence the questions about the OP; the frontier between skill and botting is so fuzzy (not necessarily "thin" if we become very technical) that your assumption that "high efficiency=botting" can't be defended or proven wrong, thus your opinion is yours and you won't probably have a huge support here (as shown by the current discussion), thus Anet won't bother;
4) you're assuming that it's technically or even humanly (i.e. there are resources available and this topic is higher priority than others) possible to get rid of bots; I've studied scientifically part of this problem and can tell you that from a purely theoretical viewpoint, it's impossible to defend against bot in an "absolute" way, e.g. one strategy/technique that solves the problem realistically. It's like security, it's an arms race, and this race is lost because the bot devs are much more numerous than the 3 people on Live Team (plus occasional participation from GW2 devs/designers) than can act (independently from the fact that their schedule is already full!).

It's clear than we all share points 1 and 2 above, but disagree on points 3 and 4. That's because: point 3 is heavily based on your PERSONAL experience which can only be share through the trust that we have in you (and tbh it's not that high, but we're not stupid and we're trying to understand what you're saying, but the lack of more "concrete/trustworthy" evidence is too much); point 4 is something I think you're not seeing because you're behaving like a "classic" customer, you're expressing what you WANT (and you're entitled to that ofc), while I tend to take a more pragmatic approach based on what I know is impossible (due to human resources and technical difficulties, although I admit I can be proven wrong on the last point).

So much for staying out this thread...