The March of the Bots

I actually stood there for more than 30 minutes to see if the same people came back. I also noticed most of them run in the same direction. If they were people, wouldn't there be some variance to their movements?

Also, the sheer number of them running lags the district. Wouldn't they bother going to the other ones? If they were random people logging into the district, they wouldn't bother taking the time to select and log into distict 1. They'd auto-district to 1-3 instead.

It is quite a funny video, indeed. Never have I seen lines of people running like that.

Eh, i believe you have read my post out of context. I was in no way justifying "macros" or "aid-bots" . I was attempting to state that fully-automated bots that play the game FOR you are a result due to GRIND factors within a game. Any other form of "bot" are purely to automate tasks and make things happen faster than you would normally able to respond to. The latter type is of course almost -impossible- to find, as the player will inevitably be behind the keyboard. So i dont see where you got the whole justification part from, i was plainly differentiating between the 2 types of bots/aids. The bots i believe we are discussin in this thread are NOT of the "macro" type, it is the type where you go to bed and let the game play itself.

Again taken out of context, i wasn't refering to GuildWars. I was referring to the MUD i played which DID allow "triggers" and "macros" but NOT automation-bots. [And it didnt ruin the game, it was shared knowledge and 99% of all MUD clients support trigger creation].

In the end, all bots are circumventing original game intentions, but somewhere is a grey area for "bad design" and "convenience". You cant say Anet did not open themselves up to this sort of exploit by creating a requirement to kill something over and over to get a piece of eq , or opening a chest over and over to get some gold .......its logical what is going to happen.

1. they bound a key to "/whisper xxx, heal me quick" -makes a nice "ding" sound to the healer...legal?
2. they bound a key to do various emotes faster....permaban?
3. they bound a key to cast a combo [i.e. hex+hex break] ...hmm?
etc

It will happen, will Anet ban based on farming-bots or "macro-bots" ? Which can actually be stopped?

Like I said, I farmed one chest for 30 minutes. Would re-appear in town every 70 seconds. I really doubt the bots are going to district-1 everytime. There is no advantage to doing that, and it in fact would slow down the looting speed. The game treats them like random people and assigns them districts randomly. However, when they do this over and over, they are bound to hit the district you are in quite alot. If there are only 3 districts then you will see them on average every 3 trips. So multiply what you saw by 3 to get a better count

What I do not understand is that if there are so many of them hitting town and causing lag, how come the game does not spawn more than 3 districts?

And yes if they are people there will be some <minor> variance to movement. When I was doing this, as I zoned in, and even before my toon appeared, I would hit R to start running, then U to get the map and my bearings, then I would turn towards the exit. So the only noticeable variance you would see would be in that first second of my appearance. After that I would beeline for the exit. Very hard to tell me apart from a bot without having access to my actual movement coordinates embedded in the game.

I actually vary my movements more once out of town as I maneuver past the obstacles in the path to the loot. Sometimes I cast a skill sooner or later or sometimes I go left instead of right to avoid the slightly random placement of the mobs.

Decades ago, in the early/primitive days of online gaming, there was a game for the Apple called "Robot Wars", where you coded bots that were able to negotiate a maze-type battlefield, detect the enemy and fire on them and sense damage and retreat. You could then test your bot by running it on a bench and inputing data, running it against your other bots, or going online to compete against others.

Creating the bot was the game, not a cheat.

Dazzler, that is not always the case.

Between my 3 PvE characters I have always noticed that Seeker's Passage was never really a lively place. There were never more than a few people there at any given time and the zone never ever instanced past the inital district.

Now over the past few days the place is swarming with Bots, yes bots. All you have to do is go there and see for yourself. The same people running in and out with no party members or henchies. In the same line always entering and re-entering at regular intervals. It lags the hell out of the zone because for some reason the zone doesn't spawn (or very rarely does) other instances.

I seriously hope Arena.Net does something to stop this. People are botting the FOUR wreckages outside like mad.

I am not doubting that it is happenning. I just question whether it is all bots or people. This location has been posted to the forums and MANY people know about it. I really think that a large portion of what you are seeing is actually PEOPLE doing it over and over before the Great Wednesday Nerf. They can be as efficient as a bot after a few practice runs.

If they have henchies you will not see them, as the henchies only move when you are in the EA. That being said, no one that is farming these chests, be they people or bots, will be going with a party of any kind--that dil00ts the l00t. These chests are being farmed precisely b/c you can do it solo.

I'm not saying that the bots do not exist. I'm just saying that I don't think it is all bots. Try whispering them to see if they respond intelligently. Threaten to /report them as a bot if they don't respond. That should get some responses! I'd be interested in knowing what happens if you sample, say 10, different names doing this and see how many respond in a "non-bot-like" fashion. I qualify that since I am bet the bots *do* in fact respond, but with an enigmatic general phrase that could be used no matter what the query was, and therefore makes a good response for a bot to give.

Dazzler: the clearest sign that they are bots is in the way they occasionally get stuck. I can imagine a player standing in front of the sign for a while, but if three or four players are standing there staring at the sign from point blank range, occasionally moving slightly sideways, then after a minute or so finally manage to move around it, that to me is a clear sign they are botting. There's people who tried to talk to them, got no response whatsoever. Sometimes they talk, but it's just the same sentence (usually Chinese) over and over again.

The number of people in Seeker's Passage isn't that high really, it's just that the number of people you see running the same path over and over again is pretty high. Most of the time they're gone, then they pop in and run straight out again. If you just sit down and observe it for a while, you start to notice the same names over and over. Since the district selection algorithm tends to prefer to put people in the 'automatic active district', they keep ending up back in district 1, since the other districts are empty.

I'm sure there's people there that are actually sad enough to keep doing those wreckages runs. Fine, that's their choice. But the fact remains that there are bots active, and they need to be stopped.

I believe there is ALOT better ways to control this type of farming:

1. Give items/rares/dyes as rewards to QUESTS on a random basis. NOT this "focus and sword" nonsense we get right now.

2. Introduce Morrowind style "random" quests forcing you to travel all over the entire map to complete. I want to see someone bot that.

3. Implement a PvP reward system that not only include unlocking skills but gaining items/gold/dyes AS WELL. Why a PvPer must go farm chests to get runes is beyond me, give runes when you win PvP battles and encourage players to do what the game want us to do : PvP!

Heck, how old is Anarchy Online, anyone seen their "mission" system? The only "profitable" way to gain items/cash is to do these missions. It is "instanced" and "randomized" missions. You+group get a mission to some far off place , usually very boring objectives but you get a certain reward. You PAY to generate a mission and you can generate/delete missions until you get a reward you like and then you go do it. Normal hunting also have drops but if you look for anything remotely rare or unique you got to do the missions [sure there are the regular boss drops, but because it is a MMORPG you got to fight 200 other players for the boss, making the mission system alot faster].

Sure parts of it is bottable, they actually created a "bot" to auto-generate missions until you find a specific reward you want. In the end though it is certainly not easy to create an intelligent enough bot that will do the traveling AND kill all the mobs for you to complete the mission.....

My point? I think A.Net should think creatively on this instead of spending all their days playing Inquisition and hunting down botters because the entire GuildWars game mechanic are begging to be botted/abused. They did things to limit farming, but didn't replace it with an alternative, result now people will try to squeeze watermelons through hosepipes and A.net will be plugging holes till they are blue in the face. Fact of the matter is: You must kill something over and over or open a chest over and over to get ANYTHING in this game, there is no alternative zilch. You get nothing for quests, you get nothing for missions......

There back now!

new copy of the game with same character names

Still There???

All gone passage full of Hydras now.

Heh, I didn't see that in your video. You are right...when I am farming a chest, I know not to get stuck on a signpost.

Argh. I hope that is just a temporary fix. Fixes like that really suck as they make the game more difficult for legitimate players. It would have been better to move the chests to a monster-infested area, or get rid of it altogether.

Now if you are a poor pre-ascended player trying to get to Seeker's you will have a hell of a time getting past the hydras.

Wasn't my video though...
I agree, it's just a band-aid fixing one incarnation of a continuing problem. Won't be long before another place gets enough bots to become noticeable; I hope something more permanent is in the pipeline for this.

Hydra's are part of the challenge of the Crystal Desert, they shouldn't be a problem for people in a half-decent team. I personally think the Rockshot Devourer/Storm Kin packs are much more of a threat than a couple of Hydra's, but the difference between Devourer/Kin packs and Hydra's is that you can easily run past the former, but the latter will make quick work of an unprepared solo runner with a mix of fireballs and meteors. It's a practical solution for this particular exploit.

really. i love killing hydras with w/e, it's easiest way i found so far to gain those skill points + claws + whatever it drops.

lmao i love it anoter botters paradise out of business