Botters in PvP (Preventive actions for RBR)

I am not dismissing it as a non-issue.

I am saying that you are overreacting.

There is a difference.

That is the inference that can be derived from your posting:

You've said bots aren't prolific. You've said bots only beat bad players. You've said bots haven't reached high level play. You've said bots are hard to create. You've said bots are easy to counter.

I'm not overreacting, you aren't reacting enough. With Anet, not reacting enough is the same as not reacting.

Ive seen the same guy botting in HA every day, can something PLEASE BE DONE. I have reported him every time and nothing happens.

Are you implying that my lack belief that Anet will fix a problem on its own is justified?

It appears to be time for clarification:

- not prolific: Never said that. It's well known that there are plenty of interrupt bots in GvG today. I doubt their existence, prevalence, and efficacy in the other formats under discussion.

- only beat bad players: True in some of the formats under debate, including the one the thread was aimed at (RBR). In GvG, I'm saying that they beat unimaginative ones. If you fight them on their terms, you're gonna lose.

- high level play: If we're defining the mAT as high level play, they haven't been shown to have affected mATs.

- hard to create: Depends on what you mean. I'm saying it's hard to teach them to not make stupid mistakes humans wouldn't make. I'm also saying that in RBR writing a bot isn't the best use of your time.

- easy to counter: I wouldn't go that far. They make you work for it. But it can be done, and that's the important thing IMO.

The last point that you didn't bring up: you don't have to play them. Why the top guilds didn't form a private league (think English Premier League for format, with home-and-home, divisions and relegation) ages ago for fun is beyond me.

Activity is a concern these days. There's a thread on QQ suggesting collaborating to fill ATs. But if the competition (rather than making title track bars go up) is what matters, why use the AT system when you can just schedule matches directly at everyone's convenience?

If the mAT stays clean, it's a replay of what's happened in countless other games, where gamers that wanted a pure competition had to band together and work something out.

Well, mAt's stayed clean of interrupt bots. I've seen plenty of weapon swapping bots...

Wasn't implying anything, my comment was more of an offhand observation than a contribution to the current argument.

Edit: Although yes, I do not think Anet will do anything unless we all start moaning about it enough.

And yet in those countless other games I have heard so many anecdotes of how people cheated, how people got away with; and underlying rules and regulations including everyone recording demos in the case that any cheating accusations were claimed (which are just not possible in GW context). Also in those game there is always a 'pub' community that is far larger than the competitive community. If your argument is that as long as the competitive players don't have bots, it doesn't matter if the 'public' have to deal with it, then your argument is horribly flawed.

Though continuing this thought further, yes if CEVO or some other 3rd party were able to organize seasons or something (even if they disallowed skills/classes/whatever) it would have been a huge boon to the GW game. Too bad it didn't happen and isn't going to happen from now.

EDIT:


Just piggybacking off you

Good point, I forgot that you brought that up. Would "not meaningfully impacted by bots" have been better? That was what I took away from your phrasing earlier.

I think it'd take some dedication and work to make it fly, no doubt about it. The community would have to self-police, and people would have to have alts that you could move around to record other matches as a neutral party. But I don't think that's impossible.

The "public" would have the same mechanism available to them. At least, it would if a league with multiple divisions, promotion and relegation were set up properly.

I think that season formats with goofy rules on what skills/classes were allowed would have been a whole hell of a lot of fun. But that's just me.

The prospects for organizing something look pretty bleak judging from the lukewarm response to the thread over on QQ, but the bots might change that.

I think you give the voice of the community too much credit. They've blatantly ignored a lot of stuff the community was pretty upset about. Usually what causes them to do something is an unambiguous signal that they have to act to avoid losing credibility. People usually get upset long before that.

If I were you, I'd be hoping that the mAT is a botting disaster.

How do you propose a community self-police? By posting inflamatory threads on public messageboards that include pictures and names of the offenders? I cannot see any type of self-policing that would be within the rules of this board.

The "public" is involved in matches that are randomly determined, that are not observed for cheating, and have no chance of being overturned due to violations. This is hardly having the same mechanism available.

CEVO rules are hardly goofy. If you really look at how and why things are banned for existing games, you would only find very good reasoning. But even then it is far, I mean FAAAAAAAAR to late to try to organize this. If you recall it was a long time into GW before two teams could even arrange a non-ladder match with each other, how the hell can you have a season if you can't organize games?

Is wanting the mAT to be a botting disaster the same as waiting for every player involved in major league baseball to be on steroids before actually addressing the issue?

Too much crap to weed through but I noticed 1 phrase in this thread. Someone said something about Bots being hard to make.

WHAT?!!!

wow....its really quite astonishing to find that this thread is back and, after 13 pgs, is still NOT CLOSED.

Though it is a fact that some of the bots on this list do exist, some certainly do not. we are simply mixing the facts with pure speculations here. Interupt bots and weapon swapping bots, yes, because they are verified and there are good reasons to believe that they in fact do exist. but pickup bots, dodge bots, and rbr bots? the only argument, so far, that is given on the existence of these bots are pure speculation. it goes something like:
my opponent beat me
my opponent did something i could not do
therefore my opponent is botting

i mean, nice joke lol. these "bot behaviours" can easily be achieved through practise. just take the pickup bot for example:
the only reason people do the dnd trick up close is because snowballs can be dodged at mid to long range while holding a present, so it makes perfect sense that ppl only do it close up. how do you do it? press drop item key, dodge the snowball, then pick up again. through experience and anticipation, either you dodge successfully and pick it up, or if a teammate is standing beside u, they pick it up. now some teams dont even need ts or vent for this, they just do it cuz they are THAT experienced. not to mention that, even if the bot accusation is entirely successful(which by no means is), this can easily be countered, by moving to touch range, and/or coordinate kds so that both the player holding the present and the player waiting to repick gets kded at the same time.

And the claim that the "bot" can detect a hidden rock is simply ridiculous:
1.if a player just got killed, then most likely he will cast hidden rock right away when he rez, therefore one should always assume that the very first snowball their opponent cast is a hidden rock
2.if a player is within radar range, then one should be able to know if he is casting hidden or not. how? by spamming tab ofc
3.if for whatever reason that u didnt spam tab, look at the radar. if a dot is not moving for more than 1second, then hes either casting, kded, or dc/lag. obviously its most plausible(and safe) to assume that hes casting
4.if u go through 123 and STILL cant figure out whether or not ur opponent has hidden, enlarge ur camera so u get the maximum view possible, and watch peoples animations if they cast close to u
5.if an opponent has hidden rock, most likely he will come up close to u to cast a snowball(since he needs to pick it up). so if you see an opponent move close to u while u got the present, and even if ur still not sure, ur still better off to assume that hes got hidden rock, so dodge, fort, or hit back.
there are other methods too, but if you go from 1-4 then u should have at least a 95% chance to know who has hidden and who don't. to top it off, the other 5% is secured by step 5. its jsut a simple 5 steps that any experienced player can do, now why would anyone(whos talented enough to make a bot) go through the trouble to make a bot that can do the same thing, when they couldve just followed an easy 5 steps?

as for bots that do exist, such as the int bot... yes good players CAN outplay them. i remember when ta was still around, we flawlessed this int bot team 3times, within 1hr(both team is got g7+ players). its not impossible to beat int bots, as previously mentioned, you just need to play smart and learn to buildwars, etc

well, im sure that people who bot using int and weapon swapping bots alrdy have access to them. however, ive never seen a pickup bot, or dodge bot(if such a thing REALLY exist), so im skeptical as to how your gona come up with such a bot

to sum it up, the only reason you have for believing these said bots to exist is based on the opinion that players are simply "too good" to be human. which is not only an ignorant view, but also is unfair to those players that actually do deserve credit for their true skills.

1) If you don't plan on reading the intire thread, or atleast the post of the person who MADE the thread, you shouldn't call out his reasoning BEHIND the thread.

2) I HAVE the bot within my possession, the Pick-Up bot that is. I have also been granted permission to distribute it in case Anet does not reply before the 29th.

3) I never said they were too good to be human, I said the guilds in question behaviour (Or individual people) is botlike to say the least.

4) I've did some field tests, both snowball throwing, AS matching my bot with theirs. Results can only come to one conclusion, they were also botting indeed.

5) I never used the bot for "evil". I only used it when facing said botting guilds, just so I could proof they are botting aswell (If only to myself), aswell as giving our guild a chance. 1 botter vs 8 isn't going to make a big difference, but it'll atleast put us on the map again.

6) Ironicly I was the ONLY person capable of stealing relics from these botting guilds in question, and even then it was more of a 50/50 chance who get it. My other guildies got a relic maybe once every +-15-20 drops...

For the record I've never cheated, exploited or hacked on GW but...

I do have a neat lil program I've used for other games (where 3rd party programs are allowed) to basically write a script/macro for picking loot up among many many other cool lil tricks. To say a Pick-up bot or any other bot doesn't or can't exist is complete and utter fubar. It's not that complicated to program a simple instruction. Give me 10 minutes and I can make it exist. No I'm not actually going to do it but just stating how easy such a thing is to make. I'm not even a programmer and I have no knowledge in that field whatsoever. If I can do it anyone can.

Riddle me that...

Actually, several guilds were accused of using interrupt bots during the last mAT.

No guilds used bots during the actual mAT play-offs in the top 16, as the games would be on observer mode for an extended period of time.

It can be speculated that some guilds would have had their opportunity to get gold denied, by having their place in the play-offs effectively stolen, by a guild exploiting the interrupt bot.

Interesting to say the least! I actually teach C programming to non-programmers and no one would ever say that. May be you want to tell us how you'd program the processing of the various input you get from GW.

(zwei2stein is going to love the following )

Scenario 1, let's make it easy
You hardcode certain skills to rupt, say you have a list of 25 possible ones. Whenever (it's an IF statement) you see one, it has to be associated with a rupt strategy: shall I rupt this one? Is it a fake so that the next skill can be cast non-rupted? how am I doing with energy with my various rupts?

Finish with: Add a few numbers together and then decise on threshold what to do? Or simply list what to do (IF skill1_used THEN use_MYskill1; ELSE...), and if you can't, just wait until you can.

Scenario 2, let's look at the big picture
Input is:
- 8 values to represent the possible skills of each ennemy, with for each 3 basic numbers (cost, cast, recharge) and many others (health effect, energy effect, kd, ...); that's a fairly big struct we have here, with many values to code, depending on how much intelligence you want;
- maybe you want to have manual commands for the player to say when one strategy is used (split, spike, gank) to adapt;
- your char energy and health, so that you manage them intelligently without draining them; actually you could have modes like heroes do, "cautious" or "frenzy"
- whateverelseyoufancy
I can't start to imagine the flowchart to describe such an "intelligent" program. Yes it's doable, and it's very probably been done. We could even make it a very interesting CS project (it's about programming an AI...). But easy? or quick?

I have few doubts about what can and probably has been done. Even for RBR. But will such a bot put you in top100?

Please keep such irrelevant trash out of this thread. Borat may be whining about RBR, but it's entirely counterproductive for his aims to confine this thread to such a minigame.

The code in question comes with a nice little function library, well documented example scripts, and handy little installation and execution instructions. A bot designed to pick up loot as Byteme is talking about would take no more than 10 minutes to create using this library, for anyone with an even mediocre knowledge of any C derivative.

You obviously have no idea what you're talking about. All of the bots Borat listed in the OP are either already in existence, or would simply be a matter of hours - or even minutes for the more simple ones - to create. Sunec has done a pretty amazing job on this code, and the possibilities of the thing are incredible. People like you downplaying an issue about which you have no RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing idea are giving Anet a very good reason to do sweet shit all.

@Martin: You still insist on theorycrafting retarded situations whereby all your opponents are stupid and lose because they don't have half a brain, which is not even slightly relevant to the topic. This isn't your average PvE farmbot, constrained by petty limitations like having to move to signposts. It's not your standard RA bot which autofollows the nearest target and mashes riposte. These things have real human players to supplement their behaviour, and making the assumption that anyone using them can't adapt to your own strategies and countermeasures is fallacious at best. To beat them you have to either out-micro the bot, or out-macro the players to such a significant extent that you're effectively not engaging them. Anyone with half a brain and a snare isn't going to let that happen - please stop assuming that all botters are innately retarded.

The guy who is loading his skill bar with 7 interrupts just sucks. I was playing the bot in TA and all these lower-end arenas, never in GvG (where the entire guild can be taken responsible for any "illegal" activity).
Never did I put 7 interrupts on my bar. That just sucks and is poor play.
However, playing a VoR mesmer (diversion empathy optionnal*2) with two (often three when I was also using power blocking instead of VoR) interrupts that are casted while your skills recharge and while you observe the field to take the right action is just very powerful.
I was generally only using 2 interrupts : power drain on a 40/40 inspi set, and power spike on the regular 40/40 dom set.
Power spiking the 3/4 secs WoH when monk was in trouble ensured easy victories.
Power draining with 0% fail any spell that is casted is just a tremendous energy management so I could just hex without never caring about my energy.

Of course I know what you mean: there are still ways to counteract. For example, the bot doesn't "see" if you are hexed or not and rupts even if, say, you're under diversion, which is very bad since he will cast through reactive hexes. However that is not a noob hero AI that plays your entire bar, you can also prioritize so you rupt the mesmer that is casting such spells.
Bots are not just a replacement of you: they are a tool that improves greatly your play by freeing your hands.

Bots are an unfair advantage and, let's face it, very difficult to notice and catch as such, since you actually play your bar as well as the bot.

^

But you can make the bot better if you want. You can MAKE it so it doesn't cast through diversion, unless in the last minute of the match.

Yet it's pointing into one direction: how far can you go with these bots? As I said (it's funny you'd quote this bit and ignore the rest) I know that we can go VERY VERY far, provided there's a team of people very knowledgeable about the gameplay at hand (GvG or RBR or snowball or...) and a skillful coder who understands gameplay.

Ofc, the famous "just use the do_the_trick" function and give it the appropriate arguments idea! Don't forget to execute check_that_I'm_still_alive function between two calls, and if needed unflag LOW_ON_ENERGY. Botting for the dummies, my students would love this!

He's been clear but people haven't listened carefully: it's not about what potential for harm bots can have, they're all always detrimental to the game and people doing it without ethics should be put in front of their responsibilities. Instead what Martin was saying is that: 1) no one can tell us whether there's an actual threat, i.e. if their use is widesprea (hint: it's not about you and your friend using them, or even the friends of your friends, it's about many more people); 2) if it is significant (something that seem less likely in RBR, hence the argument above, which is no "trash") then what can be done about it...without Anet having to start a costly cycle of updates at the expense of other work they're doing? I mean, if there are some super-smart people behind these ideas and they have ethics, they'll come up with a solid proposal and that would transform completely the shape of this thread...

I'm not even going to bother quotewarsing that, because I don't believe any of it made the slightest bit of sense. That plus the fact that it decided to entirely ignore the post it was written in response to.

The bot can easily be found on google code. It has been spread about on another well known/less strict forum. It's public, and if it's not prolific yet, it will be. It comes with DOCUMENTATION for easy user modification. Denying what is only a three minute google search away is stupid.

EDIT:
I lie. I am going to quote this, because it alone demonstrates you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Please do the research before jumping on a bandwagon.

It's being injected into the GW.dat. it shouldn't need super smart people, solid proposals or ethics.

Please, remind me, how does Anet (i.e. the GW server) check YOUR gw.dat (i.e. the one on your HDD) in such a way that they can be sure you've not modified the GW client?

maybe you should be asking the devs that brah. not me. pretty sure they've done it in the past.

Can you substantiate your claim? E.g. where did you read that exactly and what was it refering to?

(the reason I'm asking is that AFAIK GW is server-centric and the client is very, very largely untrusted; and Anet seem not keen at all on client monitoring technologies)

No, it's being injected into the GW process as it runs. The dat file has nothing to do with it. A dl file is a library of code used to extend .exe files.

Anet doesn't check your dat file. If anything goes wrong with it you usually won't notice until something occurs during gameplay. As for the exe file there is likely some sort of hash check on startup, but such a measure entirely fails to catch say... a dll injected into the process.

It would be very possible to create another outside process which monitors GW.exe for any sudden changes in behaviour. It could then terminate the process, flag any accounts accessed, or undertake similar actions. However, such a process is vulnerable to the exact loophole that the bots all use to function anyway. Intercept enough packets between the process and the server it communicates with and you can start to replicate normal behaviour artificially. It will buy some time however, though how much I am unable to say.

reading up on it as I type. my german is a bit rusty lol.

/edit
if it is going into the process then wouldn't a mem check of some kind be in order?

/agree Sunec has done a very nice job on the program. After reviewing it I would be able to have any of the premade bots up and running in a day or so. Creating other bots would take me a lot longer due to a lack of exposure to the programming.

Fril have you reviewed what has been created and placed on google code? I can pm how to get to it if you desire to review it. I for one would be very interested in what you think about it all...

Warden and PunkBuster are the two mostly used monitors in the gaming industry. You need a privileged module which can still be bypassed, as many games have shown. Unless you tie this to a hardware token (which WoW doesn't do) with some solid crypto, which thus requires the company to manage an expensive PKI, you're not going to avoid software bypass. AFAIK the Anet founders started from the very assumption that the GW is almost completely untrusted (apart from rubberbanding-like stuff). The check you're talking about is the "sanity check", which is about ensuring that your data is not screwed, not that it's actually been modified.

Packet intercepter is another techno, much stealthier if you're careful in your programming, but heavier to manipulate. And indeed these bots do it. But it's the untrusted world of the client, you computer.

Tbh, I'm not entirely sure how the exe check is made, I can only assume from various bits of evidence given.

The main issue here is that the vast majority of potential fixes are going to be fooled by simple fake packet generation.

EDIT:
And obviously the level of trust granted to the client is sufficient to fuel one of the most advanced bots I have seen in a game. Or rather, the traffic between client and server.

What I mentioned above is not a 'sanity check', it's a nonexistence. The gw.dat file is not checked, to my knowledge, ever. The fact that nearly everyone's dat is different makes the probability of a check being slim to none. I inferred this by stating that even should your game be RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed, it will attempt to run anyway. If there is no check on the dat file for corruption, there sure as hell isn't one for intentional manipulation, other than perhaps checking filenames or something equally simple inside the archive. In any case, this is entirely irrelevant, since the dat file has absolutely nothing to do with this exploit.

I disagree the program we are discussing, but not allowed to directly name has the ability to display a skill log of all skills are being cast by the OTHER team. Making it very easy for the bot to detect and act accordingly.

Even if they're out of radar range. This is not a question.

I'm not interested in this in the slightest (too busy too :P ), ty for the offer though! I have a good idea of what's probably happening. It's what happened in most FPS/RTS before, with a very different flavor due to GW's architecture (Anet is actually a pioneer of the "don't trust your client", can't wait for GW2's architecture!). I bet the guy implemented a simple high-level interface to client management/packet manipulation. I can give you the ref of a few good books where you'll find the same stuff but in basic C programming, but I digress.

Here is the reason why I'm not going to go the route of looking into this (hint: I did find it in seconds): I want people to realise it's about ethics, not coding. Botting is not only a technical plague, it plagues the mind of people (in 2 ways: to think that botting is the end of the world; and that it makes you super-player). And their computer too (does this run with Windows privileges? if so you could be executing a rootkit; if it's not done now, it may happen in the future when/if the dev will sell his work for a lot of money to RMT companies). As I said before the only way to counter that is to engage into an update cycle that' may be a bit too costly for GW1's Live Team shoulders. (I'm hoping that actually by pushing ethics into the problem people will slowly realise they're harming themselves by harming the community of their game; these things that give a silly advantage in a game are worth real money to businesses, so that's the nerver of the "war"; but well it's going to be a very, very long time until this happens)

Edit: it reminds me of this brilliant comment Ravious made not too long ago here on Guru, that if this programming power was used for good, a lot of good things could be done for PvP!

Not gonna happen, buddy.

As I understand it, you aren't even particularly inclined to PvP, especially the formats where this issue really is becoming more prevalent. Could you please do the entire community a favor and stop playing devil's advocate for something which you obviously don't have any idea about?

EDIT: Furthermore, this was posted a couple of pages back, but I'm going to quote it both for emphasis, and because I don't think it got the proper attention it deserved.

Get some more batteries for your sarcasm meter.

If this issue is so important to you and Borat, why don't you take it to the people that can really do something about it? It's obvious that ANet ignores a lot of what goes on with fansites anyway. Take the issue directly to them if you want. If you'd like to use this thread to draw attention to the issue, that's fine, but don't think for one second you're going to change ANet's mind about anything.

If anything has been demonstrated over the last few month, especially with regard to security, it's that they do exactly what they think is best. We're all just a bunch of raving idiots in NCsoft/ANet's eyes anyway.

The outcome of this thread has already been predicted, so why bother? Is this all just an academic exercise? I'm all for fighting for honor and lost causes, but hasn't your point already been made? And if this kind of action hasn't produced the results you've wanted, isn't it time to change tactics?

I've already send messages on wiki, and my support emails are getting ignored.

Funny you should mention the ethics of this; I recently let my 12 year old son start to play GW, since then he is over my shoulder alot for anything GW related. He was asking about what bots were and why people use them (ahhh the innocence of youth) After giving him the quick rundown of the pros and cons, I told him about Diablo 2 and how for the longest time I resisted the use of bots in that program. One day I finally broke down and loaded up the bots for Diablo and enjoyed them for a few months.

Well the Luck of the Polish was with me and Blizzard finally decided to put an end to all the bots and I lost everything. Slightly recovered from that but then they decided to kill the MapHack users also and completely lost everything.

He got the point about not putting his (mine) account(s) into any kind of possible danger by using things to make the game easier even though everyone else might be doing it.

Somebody else may be able to answer about windows privileges/rootkit.

Botting ended my world in Diablo and I swore never again. I felt that the people behind bots and other "hacks" destroyed Diablo. Probably why I hate bots so much in GW!

Since Sunec made this publically available I doubt he could sell it to the RMTs. I sure he can explain it for himself.


Edit:
If the RMTs got ahold of it they would flood the game with these bots which may trigger ANET into action. That is a nasty visual....

I know. Hence this:

My purposes are to try and raise both community awareness and outrage against such an issue. Though I realize that - to an extent - I am ranting I find it preferable to clog up this thread with fastidious anti bot sentiment, rather than allow it to be filled with denial that an issue exists, or is worth fighting for in the first place.

Satisfied?

As far as changing tactics is concerned, if you were to be so kind as to suggest methods by which we could better put our efforts to use I would be happy to oblige. But as Anet happily ignores the opinions of minorities (and oft majorities also) then what more can we do besides garner support in the hope that it will raise awareness all round?

EDIT: You are surely not going to deny that Anet is more likely to respond with action if a larger number of people are aware of, and are actively protesting the issue?

Not at all. I hope you can do that.

The only problem is that you ARE clogging up the thread. It's a mass of ranting and raving. A simple, concise message is the only way you're going to raise awareness. Otherwise you're only going to drive people away. This thread doesn't seem to be raising the awareness of anyone, as far as I can tell. 5 or 10 people maybe, but that's about it.