NCSoft's follow-up on PvP-botters.

Maybe a mod could pick a more fitting thread title: The main idea of this thread is to get an idea of how many people are actually reporting botters, and how many reports are going through.

Alot of the complaints go not particularly to NCSoft's inability to ban every botter out there, but simply the inability to recognize the problem in the first place. Many people have reported NCSoft not banning obvious botters, despite "proof" being given.

I actually want to get a general idea of how bad the support truly is at dealing with the problem when the community itself delivers the reports, and they only have to press the "BAN" button, so to speak.

The sole purpose of this thread is to generate a positive attitude from the community towards reporting botters. By showing people that reporting people through the long route (print screens + email to NCSoft) IS worth the trouble, we can get more people to file in complaints, and ultimately get more people to report botters.

The general attitude right now, when I ask friends and other PvP'ers, is that reporting them through the long route simply is not worth the effort because everyone believes they won't get banned anyways. (Why waste easily 30+ minutes on writing a nice email with screenshots when you know it isn't going to do anything anyways?) I hope this thread can change that attitude a bit.

What I ask is for people to quickly post here after they reported a botter using the NCSoft email route, how they reported him and what the current status is. (Not banned, pending, banned or "falsely banned"*)
*Where they say they banned the person, but in reality they didn't

If you can be asked, try and post some pictures (Links, don't use img marks, I'll just use them in the OP to illustrate what pictures) obviously with blanked out names so people understand what NCSoft's definition of "proof" is.

I'll try and keep the thread update as often as I can. I'll keep the checklist (below) update aswell. I'll keep track of all the reports that have been made, and will then split them up in 2 categories: With pictures (proof) and without pictures (without proof). This should give some nice information in case some reports don't result in a ban, to see wether or not the person reporting supplied pictures.

If you're posting a report that didn't result in a ban, and you did supply pictures, provide the links here so the community themselves can see how obvious the proof was. For those unaware of the NCSoft support site: http://help.ncsoft.com/cgi-bin/ncsof...bCZwX3BhZ2U9MQ!!

Total number of reports: 21

Reports with pictures: 18

Reports resulting in a ban: 5

Reports still pending: 3

Reports not resulting in a ban: 10

Reportings resulting in a false ban: 0


Reports without pictures: 3

Reports resulting in a ban: 0

Reports still pending: 0

Reports not resulting in a ban: 3

Reportings resulting in a false ban: 0

I've reported 4 people so far, all 4 with pictures. The first report was a long time ago, so I have no records of that.

The second one was a week or 2 ago, I supplied pictures of the person using 5 interrupts, aswell a couple of skills getting interrupted. After 3 days he got banned.

The third report was send a couple of hours ago, and is still pending. I only supplied pictures of 3 of his interrupt skills, and I asked them to look at his logs. He had a bar of 7 interrupts, and interrupted 1/4' second spells at a redicilous rate. There is no doubt he was a botter. This one is still pending.

My last report was made just now on behalve of my gf who got completely obliverated by this botter. He managed to pblock skills such as patient spirit and infuse health, whilst keeping all weaponspells and the mesmer shutdown. I send in the report with 4 screenshots, showing all the skills he uses aswell as the interrupt's he's hitting.

with follow screenshots: (I only post image tags so people understand what is obvious proof of a botter)




Please post your reports here so we can actually get a clear overview on how many reports are being made, and how many are actually getting through.

0-2 here, no screenshots.

Are you interested in statistics on ladder/codex manipulation?

Wahey first post on this forum.

I think the main opinion that everyone will have, is that they can't be bothered, no one likes to take an hour out of their own game time, just to report some guy who grieves you for about 5 mins.
I know Im one of those people, but more or less, youll never meet that botter again, so it's more of case of a minor incovenience than to waste your own valuable time.

First off the word is "grief" not "grieve", different things.

Second, it's this kind of Apathy that lets people get away with botting.

Third, you obviously never played JQ, where the same bots are always present, there's even a guild called [pet] which is nothing but a bot dump.

However on top of all this, I'm guilty of apathy towards it as well. I'm not spending my time reporting a few bots, trying to gather evidence instead of playing the game (and no doubt being reported for leeching while I try and cap a decent screenshot) when I know that the bots will just be replaced with a new account. Or wont be acted upon at all. I commonly face entire Luxon teams which are nothing but bots. Why should I report them all, when it's so blatently obvious, that if ONE GM just watched a sodding match they could ban them all in one go?


edit: p.s. I use the /report command to report bots on a regular basis, but see them all week still, unbanned.

Might wanna add a link in the OP for where to go to send this stuff.

A good idea, see what happens.

Except that if botters are rife, you'll get griefed constantly by one bot after another - not just an isolated 5 minutes.

It's also a somewhat selfish attitude - those bots will go on to grief countless others. I applaud the OP for getting off his ass and trying to do something to clean things up - for everyone's benefit.

And - as if it takes 1 hour of your game time. It couldn't possibly take that long, unless you do it with both hands tied behind your back. Are you a botter, trying to discourage reporting?

If this survey shows that botters do get banned, then I imagine reporting will gain momentum. The more results it gets (ie. the more bots are SEEN to be banned, here or elsewhere), the more willing people might be to spend time reporting.

That would not only remove some botters, but would also discourage others from doing it, rather than risk a ban.

On the other hand, if it shows that botters do not get banned, then this might shame A-Net into addressing the issue. That would also be FTW.

Here are my numbers for the last month.


Total number of reports: 14

Reports with pictures: 13

Reports resulting in a ban: 3

Reports still pending: 1

Reports not resulting in a ban: 10

Reportings resulting in a false ban: 0


Reports without pictures: 1

Reports resulting in a ban: 0

Reports still pending: 0

Reports not resulting in a ban: 1

Reportings resulting in a false ban: 0



Looks pretty bad when it's all laid out.

when you say that a report has resulted in a ban, does that mean that you were replied to and told directly that the person is not going to be banned? Or does it mean you just did not get a reply for an extended period of time?

anet doesn't necessarily have to reply to you with the results of their investigation, telling you whether or not the person in question was banned.

Just want to thank you for this post. Next time I meet a team I know they have someone botting, I'll try to sreenshot them.

Do you think the /report command helps or is it useless without email and screenshot ?

How did you take a picture of a botter actally prooving he/she is a bot?

Pictures of the same N/Mo bot running posts in Chivros, pics of interrupted 1/4 cast time skills in HA/GvG, pics of chat logs with well-known botters, pics of follow-bots on secondary accounts named things like "[Player Name] 2", pics of players botting the Dragon Arena (not hard, because the pathing is obvious), etc.

It's not hard if you know what kinds of bots there are.

Ok, I wasent trying to sound smug or anything.

I've had my D-shot be D-shotted or a quarter heal be d-shotted. Even by "real" players too. Now, thats obviously a lucky break, but i guess if it happend repeatadly I would figure something is fishy.

So the 1/4th cast 'rupt pics dont seem as solid evidence to me, but to each his-own.

If you PvP atleast once a day, you know what is and isn't doable. Don't doubt that when I say someone bots, he is botting.

He, aswell as Lemming, aswell as Karate Jesus aswell as every other PvP'er have enough experience to really pick out the botters on the spot. It's only a matter of making it easy enough to understand for the support.

A few people on this site have access to GW bot forums (which isn't that hard to find) and we can read what the bot does.

It is extremely hard for a person to copy EXACLY the same thing a bot would do and do it,let alone a whole guild. I'm (and some of the people on Guru) are not saying that everyone that interupts a skill with 1/4 sec activation time as soon as it activates is a bot,we are saying that there are ALOT of players with the same behaviour,the same time to interupt a spell,the same action after a spell was casted,etc. AND that this actions were put into a known bot in its features,when it was posted in a thread.

Don't be naive,bots are present. 2 days ago or so this German guild named (in english) We Do HA with [----] (---- being the name of the "api" used to run GW bots,which I doubt I can post here) that was holding HA. JQ is also full of botters,and something has to be done about it,but I highly doubt something CAN be done.

What I do agree with you though,is that some people are just pooping threads over and over and over instead of posting in the same one,IMO to get post counts maybe,but IDK.


------------I do not own bots,know people personally that bot,make bots,etc. I just know a certain site that has bots and I read what they do so I know what is out there-----------------------

I agree with Danzo Dattori, the trouble with bots is there are just too many to report and ban. One bot site estimates there are 1000 botters in game. Each botter doesn't just use one account; they use at least 7 - 10. That means there is an estimated total of around 7,000 - 10,000 bots running at any one time in GWs.

Not only that but since these threads about how easy it is to get away with botting have appeared downloads of the botting software and registration on bot sites had gone up by around 700 new members in just a few days.

Some bots have become so advanced they are almost undetectable (except these interrupt bots which can catch every 1/4 second skill which just gives them away), other bots are easily noticeable as they follow the same path time and time again but the botters do watch threads like this and do edit their bots to make these noticeable actions unnoticeable (one example is a thread for advanced Mo/W bots in RA, the guy who created the bot saw the thread and has now changed the bot so it’s not noticeable by the methods mentioned in that thread).

The only real way anet can effectively stop botting altogether is to check for injected dlls (which is how they work). However, how often would this checking program have to run? Start and end of every match? Every few minutes? The point is that the players could just wait until the server has scanned the GW.exe process and then inject the process and run the bot.

Botting is going to be around for a while as Anet just doesn’t have the resources to deal with it right now, due to GW2 and the sheer number of bots in game. For me personally taking the 30 minutes out of my time, which could be spent re-joining a match, to upload screenshots and explain why I feel this guy is a bot just seems like too much effort. Ok, I’ve stopped one bot, but that guy will have 10+ other accounts botting AND will just trade Zkeys and Ectos for another account to make up for the one that’s been banned.

Edit:

Like Zarion said:

I don’t own bots; I just pay attention to botting sites so I know what’s out there and what to look for if and when I do report someone.

look at the 2nd word of healing on that screenshot.
its like 1/20th of the way there, if not less.

pretty sure your buddy monk just cancel casted, because nobody can rupt that fast.

and with that logic, i could just sit there, cancel cast infuse 5 times...take a screenshot. and call the mes on their other team a bot.

with this said, id be scared if anet was banning ppl from the screenshots and not looking through the logs. you should be easily be able to figure out bots from logs, so the screenshots would seem like a waste, since they can be faked.

Even when I see a Ranger that has his back to me and interrupts my monk only to whip around and interrupt me when I am not his target on a 1/4 to 1/2 second cast, that can be a person. When that same Ranger interrupts my spell in exactly the same fashion time and time again at the same position of the cast, that is fishy. ANETS servers are not able to keep one person with that low of a latency to even make it possible. What's the point of competitive game play when it's anything but competitive. I would rather play against NPC's in PvE. They don't cheat, and if they beat me, it's my fault.

Point proven?

We're talking about PvP bots here, not PvE.

at 1/20 of a 3/4 second cast is 0.0375 seconds.

thats shorter than a 16 fast cast 1/4 second cast.
(15 fast casting = half casting = 1/8 second cast = .125 seconds)

so you'd have to have negative ping to rupt like that.

thus: it was either cancel casted, or guessed, or the dood just got qknocked.

or he was chain casting skills and got rupted on his second spell. but then thats even more unlikely to be a bot. because that would mean the bot was a whole second slow. 1/4 second for the previous cast, and 3/4 second for the aftercast.

im not saying the other screenshots dont look like bots, just that word of healing shouldnt be included in your screenshots.

I don't disagree that the screenshot in question is very possibly of a bot (no one brings five interrupts otherwise), but the 1/4s interrupts aren't very good examples.


Also, from what I'm told, this screenshot didn't get the mesmer banned:



That's why watching matches is important. Since the GMs refuse to do it, this is the closest we can get outside of frapsing random HA matches.

Posting screenies, as many have already pointed out, do nothing to prove they botted. The best and most concrete way to expose rupt-bots is to record them via programs like Fraps. It's relatively easy to use [google it and dowload]. With it, you can record in-game videos to use them as evidence against them. Otherwise, you have no real case. You can point them out, but without solid evidence indicating beyond the shadow of any doubt that they botted, Anet has nothing to work with. So, record them and submit your videos of those botters to [email protected].

Yeah I agree with this guy, that is if you actually can be arsed to do this...

Oh well, don't fret guys, just wait till GW2 when you actually get away from all this botting crap, I know bots will eventually turn up again, but by then I bet Anet would have matured to maintain their user base, as GW2 is their biggest project yet.

In an amusing side-note. It would seem that by failing to effectively deal with botters, NCSoft has inadvertently launched a denial-of-service attack on itself. I would assume the fact that all of my e-mails to support have been bouncing back to me are a result of people emailing in massive amounts of bot reports. Either that or NCSoft has finally thrown the 'gored engine' switch and packed it in.

Screenshots are not solid proof that someone is botting. You have no proof who is interrupting, if it is the same match, or what the situation is. Videos are better bets, but not everyone is going to fraps every match, hoping to find a botter.

I'm afraid we are down to 3 options, or at least Anet is:

1) We could send reports on certain botters and hope Anet can find infected .dll files on that person and ban them.

2) Anet can do a scan on every player and look for infected .dll files and auto-ban them. (not sure if this is possible, but I sure as hell know it is not the proper way to approach this)

OR

3) Anet can set up the Dishonorable system to include accounts with infected .dll files on them, thus eliminating them from PvP until they decide to play fair. (Again, not sure if this is possible, but is the best solution I have heard. Not only do they keep their playerbase and not waste precious time on banning, but they make a lame system better)

Personally, I don't feel that it's worth my effort to take pictures and be reporting them directly to NCsoft when there's so much talk of reports not going through, and when we have a /report system that should be doing enough of a job to combat the problem.

More power to you though if you guys are getting responses and action this way.

A little off-topic, but something I'm curious about. Would adding an aftercast to Mesmer interrupts be an effective way of combatting this, even slightly? I mean, it's not like players are always trying to spam every interrupt on their bar in order to disrupt someone.

reported i think 4 accounts via emailing support. All 4 resulted in those accounts being terminated. Didnt send any pics. The GM told me they will review the logs and did so. This was like a year or 2 ago and the scripts were probably less sophisticated and easy to detect.

The question that should be asked is what has anet done to address this issue in their GW2 client. GWs "bots" have gone from script kids to something resembling a open source project community. Sophisticated 3rd party software will be up a few hours after GW2 goes live . Which really sucks.

The pictures that you posted there would actually lead me to believe that the mesmer was actually NOT botting. I realise that you are posting a pic of a mesmer that has 5 rupts. But you have to take into consideration that this is in HA, so a couple rupts that are capable of a) stopping spikes (cry) and b) rupting SoC+ghosts are actually a good enough reason for this mesmer to have 5 rupts with him.

As for the rupts themselves, the 2nd rupt on WoH and the rupt on PS are too fast to be a bot. As far as I am aware, bots work from the actual players computer. Therefore bots still have to deal with the ping issues that affect all players. This together with the fact that casting times even at 16 fast casting are still 46% of their original time (so, 0.125 MAX in this case), it is impossible for the rupts to be before 0.125+ping, leading to both the rupts on PS and the one on WoH to be impossible (and therefore a predictive/lucky rupt).

As for the rupt on Power Shot, that is actually an argument for the mesmer NOT being a bot. When you set bots, you have to code in the skills to rupt. Key skills like WoH and RC are coded in by botters with something like this (if WoH--->Pblock/Leech sig) (I don't know how to code bots, so this is obviously just a very crude example) The problem with you accusing the mesmer's power attack rupt as one by a bot, is that he would have had to have coded in something like this (if Power Shot-->Leech Signet). That is retarded. No decent player ever rupts something as mundane as Power Shot unless it is a very specific situation (i.e. a mesmer+random damage character are trying to kill a heal monk+ghost, and the mesmer rupts the ghosts attack to try to keep the dmg from the ghost at a minimum). The most likely scenario is that the mesmer was simply watching the ghost attacking, and decided to rupt the next auto attack. Which happened to not be an auto-attack and was actually Power Shot.

The rupt on WoW and the rupt on Infuse are both extremely fast. For a bot to be able to make this rupt, a) the fast casting on the mesmer would have to be extremely high and b) the ping of the bot would have to be quite low. I'm not saying that it is impossible, but i find it v.unlikely that a botter would code in a rupt on a 1/4 cast when ping is in the mix. With the rupt on WoW, real botters put a delay on their bots with all casts over 3/4 secs, so that the actual rupts are in a range that normal players could rupt (to avoid suspicion).

So, out of the 6 screenshots that you have as "proof" that this mesmer is botting, 3 of them are pretty much 100% false and 2 of them are extremely questionable. I for one am glad if this mesmer didn't actually get banned by Anet, it shows that they are actually looking for real proof of people botting rather than banning anyone accused of botting just because they managed to rupt a couple 3/4 to 1 sec skills a few times in a row. While i rarely play the game anymore, I have been called a bot atleast 10 times in the last month while just playing a Magebane ranger in RA. A few of these people even reported me for botting. I just laughed it off since i knew 100% that I wasn't botting but i did wonder if Anet would end up banning me if I was "reported" enough.

Even with all i have said about this specific mesmer, there is still a possibility that he infact was botting. When people bot, they play the game normally and a couple times when situations arise, (like a rupt opportunity on WoH) the bot will activate and will rupt WoH. So it is very possible that the mesmer could simply have rupted the ghost's Power Attack with his own predicitive rupt while still having the bot rupt stuff like WoH. This together with the fact that botters can simply turn the bot on and off whenever they please makes it very hard to recognize if people are infact botting.

The easiest way to recognize a bot is if botters get lazy or don't give a damn about you recognize them as botting or not. It is pretty easy to recognize a bot if they rupt WoH or RC every time it is used for the entire game and you do see this from time to time.

Not necessarily true. The botter could have coded in (if non-spell skill -> leech signet). While still retarded, not completely.

by the way..bots can't interrupt 1/4 sec cast skills so they can't interrupt infuse health so your screenshot fails.

There's this thing called Fast Casting.

You need a stupidly good ping to pull it off (< 100 ms), but a fair number of Euros and a few West Coast types have the necessary pings.

Shred Di does point out some valid concerns about the interrupts on the right. Neither can be predictive. They must be either predictive or lucky spam.

Almost forgot: Lemming's SS is clearly a bot. We find the defendant guilty as charged, Your Honor.

EDIT: Welcome to Guru, Cogablue. Two and a half years is a lot of lurking.

Hi I lurk here, but this is something i've seen happen. I saw this match and watched the mes. There is no doubt he was botting, it was insane.

The match in question is gone, but you can still see matches where [quit] is running bots. The user on the first post isn't there now but another botter took his place and I *SAW* him P-leak weapon of warding literally as soon as he activated it.

Theres a vid on you youtube showing a mes power blocking a monks patient spirit, check it out.