Petition To Demand A Response From Anet On RMT Botters and Exploiters

Originally Posted by Ninja Ninja

Do you think I and others come to gwguru to see 5 generic threads on bots crying.
Nobody cares that you got banned, seriously if you want sympathy from other bots then take it up on the bot forums. I can't wait till this crap goes away or at least dies down to one thread.
BTW am I supposed to feel bad for the bot that I would see every day in the game or the person who spent a minute starting it for the day?

Originally Posted by tha walkin dude

The people flaming the banned people need to keep saying things.
a. to feel better about themselves at the expense of others.

Originally Posted by Theocrat

I don't come to Guru to see hundreds of pages of retarded ideas, but lo and behold, they exist anyway.

Originally Posted by Theocrat

Guru is a forum for discussion. Sometimes people want to discuss things that other people don't want to discuss, but that's par for the course on the Internet.

Originally Posted by tha walkin dude

It would seem that you do. Arguments have 2 sides, and you and others have held your end up.
I am not banned, and I never botted.
I don't think it matters what you feel about them, just stop chasing them with torches.

Originally Posted by Ninja Ninja

It has nothing to with feeling better about myself, its just moving on something perma banned people have trouble doing.

Originally Posted by tha walkin dude

The people who were banned have a reason to keep saying things.
a. to attempt to make a point.
b. to attempt to make themselves feel a little better about a crappy situation.

The people flaming the banned people need to keep saying things.
a. to feel better about themselves at the expense of others.

I'm going to side with Team Banned. Here's why:
You can justify it anyway you like, but unless you're talking about people who bot PVP, What anyone does in this game has absolutely no effect on anyone else's ability to play the game.
The arguments lamenting the effects on a fictional economy- grow the F up.
Saying it detracts from the value of a video game title- again grow the F up.
Saying it hurts the integrity of the game- it's a videogame, grow the F up.
Singing cheater-cheater- do what you were told to do in kindergarten, don't worry about what other people do. It doesn't affect you. Worry about what you do. And BTW, grow the F up.

I farmed my Lux title almost exclusively in comp mishes during the height of the botting craze. Just about every match, there would be 3 wand bots running around the map in circles, all but guaranteeing fail. I gotta tell you, I still don't see a need to ban those accounts. Just perma-dishonor them, so they can't ruin the game play and call it a day.

Originally Posted by tha walkin dude

Thanks for proving my point for me.

Originally Posted by Yuki Juggernaut

LOLWHUT? Exploiters are evil?

I'm sorry, Gaile Gray, but you've got it all wrong.

The RMT sellers are the evil people, not the exploiters. There is a major difference.

Exploiters just want to make big bux in-game, and RMT sellers want to take your account and your real-life money.

Originally Posted by windtalker

Inb4 someone disagrees with you...thank you for finally making the point that there is a severity of offenses against the game. You are exactly right in stating that PvE exploiters are much less of a problem for the game than the RMT traders.

Because ANet is weak/lazy/workingonGW2/doesn'tcare/idon'tknow, they figure, well we should just catch all the minor offenders and perma-ban them without doing anything about the serious offenders. That'll show em.

Originally Posted by YunSooJin

cause you can't reliably detect most of the modifications.. except for .dll injection :P. I'd say its less of a double standard and more of a "we don't know if these other guys are botting, but we sure do know you're botting!"

There is no way GW can detect whether you are using a third party program that uses pixel detection.. no way. I suppose if they made the game more invasive and it checked up on your task manager they could, but even then there are multiple options out there to run bots.. I mean, bots have existed as long as grind-games have existed.

Originally Posted by tha walkin dude

I'm going to side with Team Banned. Here's why:
You can justify it anyway you like, but unless you're talking about people who bot PVP, What anyone does in this game has absolutely no effect on anyone else's ability to play the game.
The arguments lamenting the effects on a fictional economy- grow the F up.
Saying it detracts from the value of a video game title- again grow the F up.
Saying it hurts the integrity of the game- it's a videogame, grow the F up.
Singing cheater-cheater- do what you were told to do in kindergarten, don't worry about what other people do. It doesn't affect you. Worry about what you do. And BTW, grow the F up.

Originally Posted by Warvic

What crisis? If you mean that the economy is ruined. Well, botting is/was not the main prob of that.

Shadow Form says hello
Ursan says hello

People who bot for real money are also an problem ofc. But an rupt bot is WAY worse then some dude that sells money. Because you can't buy skill in this game. You can only get visual stuff. Nobody cares about that. (eccept you). So yes, i'm against RMT botters, but I'm HAPPY they got the REAL cheaters, the pvp bots!

Originally Posted by lishi

Well, I'm pretty sure that a bot behavioral can be somehow detected so the account can be flagged. Once its flagged a real guy can check if its a real bot or just a botlike player.

Originally Posted by YunSooJin

people seem to think that bot detection is some sort of magical happening, as if ANET has the perfect algorithms to detect bots.

anyone who's done a fair amount of coding can assure you that thinking of ways to reliably to detect a bot based solely on the behavior of the player is a losing proposition...

Originally Posted by YunSooJin

people seem to think that bot detection is some sort of magical happening, as if ANET has the perfect algorithms to detect bots.

anyone who's done a fair amount of coding can assure you that thinking of ways to reliably to detect a bot based solely on the behavior of the player is a losing proposition...

Originally Posted by lishi

Once the bot have checked a reasonable amount of "bots behavior" a real human being can check it out

Originally Posted by Gill Halendt

Too complex and not even close to be a warranty of successful detection. No automated system can reliably tell you're botting by just checking for "bots behaviour", and anyway, bots can be easily programmed to disguise such a behaviour and to randomize some actions.

Originally Posted by Um Yeah

Considering Anet first said they were "combating bots/RMTs" back when there were actually more than 5 people maintaining and working on this game, I suspect they do even less work on it now. I mean, they basically got all the money out of this game that they're probably gonna get, so why bother caring anymore beyond basic server maintenance? Im sure some of you may say that if they dont put an actual effort to keep botting out of GW, then you wont buy GW2, but really, you will probably end up just doing it anyway, right? I really don't see any reason why they should put forth any more effort into stopping botters, assuming theyve put forth much of any effort in the past 3-4 years theyve been "working on it".

Also, with regards to the idea of designing some sort of automated system to detect "bot-like activity", I really don't see it being feasible due to the complexness involved especially considering the Reconnect feature was designed by an Anet staff member in their free time as a side project, again, back when there were more than 5 people working on GW. With as few people that are working on GW now, I imagine it would take them quite some time to design such a system. Then again, I can't imagine that the people still working on GW actually do much anything during their work day, so maybe they could do it.

Originally Posted by Um Yeah

And for those who are enjoying the bans on the PvP bots, you should have played when there was actually competition and more than what? 500? guilds. A good mes/ranger>bot any day. A bot's a wasted spot compared to a good player. Of course, theres MAYBE one each of those left sooo...you might have a better point. Regardless, l2p.

There, /thread

You're Welcome.

Originally Posted by mini pet monster

For those of you that are curious, the bans were not for 'botting' per se, but for injecting a certain .dll

Of course, many, many botters were caught because the .dll gave such powerful options and botters couldn't resist using it.

However, I can give some funny examples of bans that happened to real players:

1. Someone released a map travel tool on a guild website. It allows you to map travel to anywhere in the game that you have unlocked on that character. For example, you can go from ToA to DoA in 1 click. Woohoo! Little did these guildies know, the utility was built using that forbidden .dll. They are all perma'd.

2. I'm going to assume 95% of the players with max drunkard used some kind of glitch (remember when you could drink, map travel, drink, map travel?) or an auto clicker. I have never heard of someone being perma'd for clicking booze. Well, one poor soul used the injected drunkard clicker because it was so readily available. He didn't dare use any other bots, but he figured, who's been banned for a drunkard clicker? Well he was.

I can also give some funny examples of real people that were not banned:

1. A few people botted hard on alt accounts, but never injected on their main account. Their bot accounts are smoked, but their mains live on. They also gained some fat stacks. Good for them.

2. Those that started injecting about 2 weeks ago, missed the ban wave. No doubt, they are crapping their pants, but for now, they are safe.


So, if everyone was banned for modifying the client, but not necessarily 'botting', why is texmod, multilaunch and ksmod ok?

Texmod can be used to confer some cool advantages as martin posted. It can also be used to help with cartographer, and even help setup pixel detection bots. I believe texmod was the main tool used by guild wars botters before this new .dll came out. Diablo 2 bots live off of texmod.

Multilaunch confers wicked advantage to those that can use it. You can rush multiple accounts through one area, instead of playing it over 3 times. You could red resign like a BOSS. I'm sure everyone knows someone that loaded up 4 accounts or something crazy and made a few thousand zkeys. You can powertrade kamadan and scam ascalon at the same time. During canthan new year, all the top rbr racers had multi accounts going. They would race the first 30s, and if they couldn't get a top score, they would just switch accounts. During festivals, people drop all their accounts into kamadan/LA/shing jea and afk gifts. The list goes on.

I'm unfamiliar with ksmod but I believe it plays some fun noises when enemies die. In GvG or HA, its nice to have something indicate when someone dies besides a tiny little faction counter that pops up.

These modifications all confer advantages. They are OK as long as not abused right? So why is the standard not the same for this modification that got 3700+ banned?

Originally Posted by Jinkies

From what I understand people who have been running GWCA based bots on their alts that didn't get banned (since the ban) have yet to be banned. This would suggest that Anet's super amazing bot detection methods aren't really all that great and it takes alot of time for bans to actually catch up with the botters.

Originally Posted by Jinkies

There is a reason you haven't stopped most botters yet. And that's because you just plain can't. The only methods you have are checking for repetitive action, which could easily be justified by a macro, and in game reporters, which you've never given a shit about anyway.

Originally Posted by Theocrat

I believe it was mentioned in a press release (or something of that nature) that they would be adopting the banwave system commonly used by companies such as Blizzard and Valve. It's likely that anyone using GWCA bots won't be banned for another 3-6 months.

Which, naturally, gives them plenty of time to obtain virtual riches and safely stash them away on alternate accounts.

Originally Posted by Kiky

As for the "texmod is available to everyone" well if u think of this bs than the PvP interrupt bots shouldn't have been banned cause they were available to everyone since it was released to public.

Originally Posted by JoeKnowMo

Good point. Everyone should have been running bots since they are 'publicly' available. A lot of illegal things are also 'publicly' available. Let me know how that works out as a defense for you in court.

Originally Posted by Kiky

I'm against interrupt bots those are the worst type of thrid-party program /end

Originally Posted by JoeKnowMo

What bots are you not against?

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

You're all still missing the cost term.

TexMod isn't bannable because it's hard to detect. If the advantages were gamebreaking, maybe ANet would be willing to invest the resources to set up a VAC-style monitoring program.

But they aren't, and ANet isn't. Demanding that ANet fix the problem just makes you look silly. Doing so shows that you're unaware of the RL problems facing a developer trying to address problems of cheating.

Further, if ANet says it's kosher, then we're all on a level playing field.

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

You're all still missing the cost term.



TexMod isn't bannable because it's hard to detect. If the advantages were gamebreaking, maybe ANet would be willing to invest the resources to set up a VAC-style monitoring program.



But they aren't, and ANet isn't. Demanding that ANet fix the problem just makes you look silly. Doing so shows that you're unaware of the RL problems facing a developer trying to address problems of cheating.



Further, if ANet says it's kosher, then we're all on a level playing field.

Originally Posted by Kiky

Mentioning interrupt bot was only an example and a good one since it caused the most of the troubles.

Originally Posted by Gli

There's no reason to be lenient toward obvious offenders simply because there are also less obvious ones around.

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

This would be true if enforcement cost ANet nothing.

You're demanding perfect justice in a world where perfect justice is impossible.

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

Your proposition is: there is no reason to fail to enforce the rules. If you cheat, you should be banned. But not all cheating is equally costly to enforce.

If the developer has unlimited resources, then all cheaters should be banned. If not, then the developer has to prioritize. Hospital emergency rooms prioritize (triage). So do police departments.

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

Claiming that the developer should ban all cheaters requires making two suppositions: that the developer has sufficient resources to ban all cheaters, and that the players will put up with the methods necessary to ban all cheaters. In practice, those suppositions just aren't true.

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

OK, then I'm entirely misreading your tone in the first post, Gli.

Originally Posted by Um Yeah

I mean, they basically got all the money out of this game that they're probably gonna get, so why bother caring anymore beyond basic server maintenance?