Botters in PvP (Preventive actions for RBR)

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...