Petition to Demand a Response from Anet on Botting

/signed first of all, but second:

I believe in proposing a solution if I complain about something. between Danny, and KJ, I'm sure we could find some ways to make botting much more difficult at the very least, if not make it a total pita to do.

Soles

Unfortunately, I really doubt Anet would want to re-design their launch client, which would be my suggestion. And, honestly, that wouldn't stop anything except .dll injections (about 50% of the bots).

Oh, and from what I hear the client itself is a huge mess, so there may be no point in them even attempting it.

As long as Guild Wars has grind, I'm 100% behind bots.

Don't want bots? Stop rewarding players for doing repetitive tasks.

If you are too lazy to play a game and feel the need to cheat by using bots why bother logging in?


Keep defending the pathetic cheats, I'm sure you will go far.

Grindin' ain't playin', son, and ya best be learnin' that fast.

Nothing else to say but 100% /signed.

/signed...but not before I max my Kurzick title.

/sarcam, of course. Those rupt bots need to die at least.

Just because you don't understand the impulse doesn't give you the right to sneer at people that do feel that way. Doing that just makes you a douchebag.

The point stands: people want to personalize their characters. Titles are one way you can do that in this game. Cheapen the time investment needed to achieve titles, and the people that invested time to personalize are going to get mad.

QFT. Only solution.

Nothing in this world is permanent. Everything that has a beginning also has an end. Demand for titles will cease when people get what they want or when Guild Wars 2 comes out.

How does "putting your security and account at risk" have anything to do with people being lazy? It's a matter of free will. Either you accept to be inferior to a bot or you can get on the playing field and join the botters. Since Anet isn't doing anything about this, it's only logical that you join the botters. The harsh truth is, Anet doesn't really care about this issue. My guild members have botted in HA for the past 5 months and none has yet being banned. Of course, they only started botting because anet didn't do anything about the other bots in HA. It's a domino effect that only anet can stop. Since these interrupt bots are pixel based, it's very hard for Anet to do anything and it's also very hard to report an interrupt bot. You would have to take 10+ pictures of the same skill getting interrupted at the same time to prove someone is guilty of botting.

Energy management is one of the many necessities in PvP play. Bots can not manage their energy mainly because they are pre-programmed to use a certain skill when certain conditions are met. There is no need to double the energy for important skills since most of the important skills already have their own draw back. For example, powerblock will disable your own skill bar if you happen to miss. Say the mesmer is pre programmed to interrupt Restore condition or word of healing with powerblock, the players can always cancel the 5 energy skill (woh/RC) to put a huge disadvantage on the interrupt bot.

For song of concentration and altar capture map, you can always bring a knock down on your team to KD the interrupt bot so the paragon can put up the song. Everything that exists in this world has a counter. Nothing is perfect and flawless.


There is no need for this thread to stay open. Anet hasn't fixed botting problems for the past 6-7 months, what makes you think they will fix it now? In fact, I think they encourage botting as you are all aware that they are trying to kill guild wars one.

Also, since none of the representatives from Anet has said anything in this thread, you can safely assume that they do not care about the players.

Given how cheap party and sweet items are ATM... I'll /sign once my 3 consumable titles are maxed.

Is this your attempt at sounding grown up or tough?

pretty safe to say you failed either way but keep on trolling kiddo

It is true that grind generates the need for bots. GW was supposed to be skill > time, but now it's mostly just another grind mmo. Hence the bots.

Yeah, I'm sure it's this, and not that ANet doesn't really have anything that they can say in a thread like this that's going to win them any respect points from anyone.

The situation now is no different than it has been for a while. The Live team doesn't have the resources available to combat this problem directly any more than they already are, behind the scenes. If they saw a solution that they could implement in a reasonable amount of time, I'm sure they would do so.

What do you want them to do? Drop the Mesmer update and future content updates/PvP balances and work all-out on combatting an ever-evolving collaboration that focuses on reducing time and work investment necessary to achieve grind-based rewards in a dying game? You're delusional if you think that this is the right course of action, that it is an effective course of action, or that ANet would even consider trying to do this to GW.

Hence why this thread doesn't need to stay open.

This thread is ridiculous... everyone is /signing demanding a response from Anet? How many times does Anet have to tell you they consider botting a serious issue? How many times do you have to read dev's wiki pages saying they've banned X,XXX number of bots this week?

Have any of you thought about what would happen if Anet was more "transparent" about an issue as delicate as botting? You want bots removed but demanding information about their removal would effectively WARN botters to stop or take more caution.

A few examples come to mind.

1) Recent increased security measures. Do you remember the number of people complaining they couldn't remember the names of their characters on their accounts? Same situation!!! Players whined that Anet should have told us that this was going to happen. If they HAD told us... The measure would have been completely nullified. Botters and account hackers would have recorded character names to ensure access to additional accounts before it went into effect.
Note: Anet told us this measure was VERY successful in removing HUGE numbers of bots and account hackers (Ty again BTW). Yet we find it impossible to believe that Anet is serious about removing bots?

2) Botting Fast Faction Farms. Anet's position was to remove bots, but be lenient to first time offenders. Had anet told the community they were planning to let off botters easy, I garantee MORE people would have botted if they KNEW they could get away with it just one time! Heck, I would have botted the allegence title if I knew... but my title is still sitting at 550,000 pts.

tl:dr
A thread demanding information leading to the banning of bots is a double edged sword and will reduce the effecency of bot detection that Anet might employ, decreasing the number of bots banned, and leaving the issue partly unresolved.

A petition asking players to sign if they are overly offended by bots is a good way to let Anet know we as a community have had enough. But demanding information? Not the way to go.

@Lucky charm II
The harsh truth is, Anet doesn't really care about this issue. My guild members have botted in HA for the past 5 months and none has yet being banned.

You know this whole argument reminds me of the Hero Battle match fixing that used to happen. I think, when all is said and done, the end of it will be the same, ie Anet will do nothing, people will take advantage of this situation for as long as possible and finally Anet will stop it completely.

So what I say is this: Do what u think is right, keep doing that until you can not do it any longer

if your viewpoint is anything like mine, anet is part-clueless and part-helpless in regards to this matter. its not like similar things have not happened in the past. over the years, i have lost a lot of respect for anet due to lack of communication or even acknowledgement to what i consider 'important' issues. even the slightest gesture of acknowledging issues goes a long way.

@shayne hawke, yes they have limited resources, but that does not mean simple courtesy statements wouldn't be appreciated. what have we gotten recently? micro-transaction costumes and a bunch of dismantle lore? numerous delays in balance updates? no anniversary content? if there was no kind of communication with regards to direction or plans for the future, i would only have to assume that anet no longer cares about the state of the game, but rather milking money from what is left of the dwindling playerbase (yadayadayada they're a business i know).

and this is a huge problem: whenever issues arise, people assume (bad) things (which could potentially be true) because of anet's lack of communication.

I am 100% sure that this will happen again in Guild Wars 2. Wonder if people will still buy the game.

Didn't someone suggest a while ago they have some sort of feature that requires you to proove you're not a bot with one of those captcha code thingies? A bot will never be able to fill one of those out without hacking the server to figure out which one is accepted which no one will ever be able to code. I ALSO doubt anet would add this but .... meh, it's really the only way. And the consequences for failing it more then say, 3 times, would be to just kick you offline for maybe an hour? Further failures or attempts to break the system = ban.

i am not very familiar with programming, but if they would be anything like the captcha codes from sites like rapidshare, there are programs that bypass those (i'm not sure exactly how, but one way or another they are bypassed).

It might be that somehow, maybe (I also don't know a TON about programming either) that the correct code might be stored client side, in this case, your browser's cookies and or cache, someone probably figured out how one for a particular website or the style it uses and is able to spoof them with a few simple lines of code, like just resending back the proper code without even entering it. You gotta think, it has to be cached on your machine somewhere before it is sent back.

For guild wars though, not sure how they would work it but I mean, it could still be a viable option....who knows..

While this has been an ougoing problem, but not just GW. I have several PC games, and even consoles where people cheat/hack.

There are several companies that sell cheat and hacking programs. There is no way to stop it. Example, EA, Battlefield 2, 2142, BFBC2, and others, trust me. I have been gamming for long as I can remember, and it's not getting better but worse.

Punkbuster is utter fail, and even things like combat arms which has a built in anti-cheat system that stops them, not.

Only way I see something like this being fixed in any game, make it so that the game is played on there servers only, with no modded exe's etc. Everything resides on the servers.

As long as we have access to exe's and game files directly on our hard drives, they can always and will be hacked.

EA or Anet comes out with bans, plus new build, 1000 more cheaters, and new programs come out.

So don't blame Anet, blame the community, the kiddies that can't play games worth shit because they suck and have to cheat too win. Case and fact.

Indeed. It's a shame, I only started to enjoy MW2 and the other day I got raped by some dumb**** using a wallhack... it's pretty stupid. Plus, most of the time they are already maxed out level and have every gun you can get...I don't understand why you would cheat, when you will never get money for it. Same for GW. Sure...you will get in game prizes and items and money without being at the comp, but in the end what is it really for?

And I also like the punkbuster comment, haha. I hate PB, if anything - i've never seen it kick a cheater, but it has no problem kicking me for a "disallowed program/driver" like steam or my freaking video driver.

the last fps game i played online was cs, which was a highly competitive one. sure you'd come across cheaters in pug servers, but admins can easily ban them (or players vote kicking if the server has that option), or users can easily change servers. in gaming leagues however, cheating was less of a problem. all matches were recorded and cheaters would get reported and dq'd.

in terms of gw, all tournaments are automated. and only a handful of the matches are put up on obs mode. i can't tell you from personal experience, but i've heard that many people have botted in the mat. aside from that, the report function in gw is a complete joke.

I tried but with my failping the rupt script (at 0 delay) failed repeatedly to rupt 3/4 sec casts with point blank magebane/savage/dshots.

Since I can't join them, /signed to QQ instead

You actually expect me to believe that recording and reporting cheaters/hackers they do something?

LOL, not even, I was in a clan and we reported cheater, you know what? They didn't do anything.

what game/league? i guess it depends on how high up you go. just imagine trying to cheat in a korean sc tournament where its played locally over lan. which kind of makes you re-think if gw is actually competitive or not now with all the botting at supposed 'high-level' play.

Well, /signed for something to be done. Whether it actually does (and makes a difference) is another matter, however.

A change to how the game launches would not affect anything just a few lines of code would need to be changed to adjust for it. The root of the problem is in the software architecture used for modern operating systems. I have written a lot of various memory hacks, dll injection, wrappers, and yes even kernel hooks. I have not done all that much with gw but the very nature of a program in windows allows endless methods to alter a program.

They could change the launcher and many parts of how gw works and it would only take me a few days at most to have a work around for the .dll injected bots. That is if that is the method you are planning to use since a bot doesn't need a .dll to work. The point is this late in the game nothing is going to happen and the games architecture is well known now from years of reverse engineering. One of the best anticheats now a days for online games is simply just release a new game that is different enough to require all the work again which is a bonus effect of gw2 and I bet anet knows it.

THIS. It's an old game, and above all they've already given they're answers before. They aren't going to change the entire coding and building blocks of the game JUST to stop botting. It happens, and especially moreso with old games like this. When is the last time you have seen a game as old as this implement something that flat out STOPS botting and the like?

/not signed

lol why is there even a discussion on this.
eula=legal contract.
advocating botting or any of the like=against eula= an offense.
by not signing and giving arguments for it you are in essence saying we should break the law and here are the reasons why:

1. im legit and im good so it does not concern me, aka i didnt commit a crime therefore it is ok for other people to commit crime and get away with it.

2. anet most likely will not respond so why bother, aka law enforcement is incompetent therefore we should just let crimes slip.

3. old game argument. yes, because the game is old lets allow offenses to happen. now i wonder what would happen if a politician said this about the law?

4. technical/logistic problems, aka im going to post a bunch of academic technobabble and/or esoteric philosophizing and conjure up random arguments which in essence says nothing and promote/permit botting and other such offences

so to summarize, to even discuss about how to permit botting or the like is clearly admitting that breaking the law is fine. now idk about you ppl, but if you are going to apply this kind of demented logic anywhere in rl, then gg.

Simple solution, actually look at bot reports.

The difference between a bot and a good rupter is so glaringly obvious its really a non-factor if you just watch players for a minute or two.

this made me laugh and is totally inaccurate. this is from a member that believes that gwguru is an anet affiliate when anet itself denies any connection. as do gwguru admins. please refrain from this ignorance in the future as many admins have condemned me for making the same "assumptions". bots will exist and are obviously better then players, get over it.

i appreciate your effort to troll me, but please maybe at least grasp a basic understanding of logic first. spewing out fallacies like personal attacks on me will not help improve ur argument, nor does it enhance any validity of pro-botting.

tbh idc about gw or guru or admins, if they want to condemn me for saying the obvious truth, then go ahead. ive had a couple of incidents with mods (from other forums) and they do not affect me. if u are going to say that breaking the law is ok, and mods support you, then thats not my problem.

however, this is the internet and hiding behind a computer screen and projecting fallacious arguments will not do any good. bots will exist? no shit they do, thats just like saying people will commit crimes. and from ur statement, you seem to be quite acquainted with bots/botters, perhaps you are one of them?

This is incorrect. For clarity: botting is against the Rules of Conduct. ANet can take action against you up to and including banning your account. Botting is not illegal. You cannot face criminal or civil penalties for botting.

In response to your complaint: I'm not advocating botting and never have been. I've never used a bot in any game. I just don't enjoy rewards when I cheat to get them. Simple.

However, I am advocating that you be realistic about the problem and the likely response. The prospective benefits from an endeavor aren't always worth the costs. We live in the real world, not some idealized fantasyland where justice is always served because the police have infinite resources with which to catch crooks. The fact that botting is wrong and against the rules does not necessarily imply that ANet should drop other projects to resolve the problem.

i am not saying breaching a rule of conduct in game is exactly the same as breaking the law irl. what im trying to draw from the analogy is the same logic that is being applied to both, if you would like to argue against that then go ahead.

by any means, i am not delusional to think that anet will do anything or anything will ever happen to fix the problem. i AM being realistic, in the knowledge that botting will happen, and most likely people will get away with it. but that does absolutely nothing to say that botting is right, which is what im trying to get at in my first post. idk if people with ulterior motives want to twist my words or anything, but plz note: i am not advocating any action, i am only considering the nature of things, what people do with it is beyond me.

I'm not sure if this has been brought up before, but the client is so poorly designed that it takes hours to even change the numbers in a single skill - this is why small balance tweaks don't happen.

If they haven't fixed the client to accommodate regular skill updates, I'm entirely unconvinced that they'd be willing to do so simply to stop botting at this point in the game's life.

There are solutions to stopping botting, but even then, that only stops one type of botting. I've seen scripts that entirely use just the UI, no dll's, and there's little to no way to stop those. (It's entirely possible to even bot Raptor's, Vaettir's, ToPK, RA, and JQ using macro-type utilities.)

Now since they haven't done any good in 5 years with this version what makes you think they are going to do any better in GW2. I love these hope and wishes threads because they never qualify anything and deal with delusions that things will get better. The botting issues are one of the major reasons I won't buy into GW2 nor recommend to anyone or that anyone comes back to GW and wastes their money on it.

As long as you have free to play no monthly fee games you will have this kind of riff raff and in hordes just like it is now. Start charging and these botters will disappear rapidly because it eats into their profits.

EULA's can't be enforced in almost all situations and also in a lot of places the EULA is not a legal binding contract that is honored. It's purpose is not to tell the player what they can and can't do but basically protect the developer from any legal claims.

So to sum it up the EULA isn't worth the bits its made of when it comes to enforcing 'Rules' and the game companies know it. Why do you think they rather just ban/suspend an account rather than sue the pants off a person in violation?

lol.................simple math says there never was 5,000,000 players. somewhere around 6 million copies sold was one of Anet's press releases a year or so ago. if everyone had all 4 games thats only 1,500,000 unique accounts. of course we know not everyone has all 4 games and we know people have multiple accounts from the early stages in the game before character slots came availible and also from farming z-keys with the pvp bets.