Darn bots

I was playing late tonight and I forgot what town i was in but i was the only real person there. The rest were all bots over 40 of them . all running together. I really hate that. People get that lazy that they use a bot. Its so dum. But my realy question is where do these people even get theses bots and why doesnt GW bock the program or somethin. Thank your reading heeheh

Thank you,
Ladie Firefly

You can't block a program from running in the background all the time. If Anet engineered a way to block it, the authors would just tweak a programming intstrument and bypass the problem, getting it to work again. It's akin to the windower for FFXI.

How do you know they are bots by the way?

hack sheild could help the problem but not by much

Probly thats how he knew

The problem with bots to be specific is that many do not interfere with packet transfer at all. Most are pixel readers which is an output feature of the computer and input via pseudo-keypresses. So, it's like having someone at the computer, and GW can't really tell the difference. The only way it could would be to invade your running processes and shut down whatever it thought was the cause of the problem, which I don't think is what we want.

Why does Anet have so much trouble spotting bots? Because to them, the only way they can know the difference is by extrapolating patterns of normal player behaviour
and basing judgement when something falls out of the norm of that behaviour i.e. repeated and instantaneous actions, and input that's nearly identical over long periods of time. If they knew what was causing the problem, they wouldn't make an effort to stop those people from using bots, they'd just ban them

Ring of fire
go there
theres atleast 5 bots...
i nisult them spit in their face
enter them with me for mission
and they all go togehter not following me
they speak every 5mins saying what?
this so pisses me off

Blizzard was able to spot bots in D2 and WOW, how difficult is it to do so in GW?

Yea Blizzard was able to spot SOME bots.... not all. Same with Anet.

only way to 100% kill bots... is to implement someting that would also kill the game

Implemnent having to input random numbers/letters displayed in a "picture" whenever you enter a mission and/or explorable zone or change towns/outposts. This would kill bots since they wouldn't be able to see the pictures and thus couldn't enter the coide..

course bot's could then just build a database of the codes to try... but if say you only get 2 attempts at the code before being ejected off the server... and make sure there are a lot of codes used.. and randomize which get used... sure some bots with databases would get lucky.. but generally speaking they would get kicked off... especially if the codes were changed frequently (and thus forcing the databases to be expanded...)

Course this would totally peev players off and would cause a mass exodus of players from GW.. anet would solve the bots.. but would kill the game in the process... cuz who really wants to have to stop and enter a random code whenever we enter a mission, change cities/outposts, etc?

If you could guarantee me that it would eliminate botting entirely, I'd go for it. Unfortunately, it wouldn't take care of the "botting houses" that have a live person sitting around monitoring computers.

snepp - thats true.. since they would just enter the code. so guess it's not a 100% way of removing bots...

it would be a 100% way of getting rid of bots where the ppl aren't monitoring the bots.. but the bot factories wouldn't be effected since they sit and monitor the comps to respond to GM's and enter codes and such as is needed (depending on what game they are farming).

but fact is I'd say that a vast majority of players would agree to wanting to get rid of bots.. but if anything was implemented that effected them.. they would complain and leave the game. It's the old "We know it has to be done, but it better not effect me!"

Just like whenever a council or such wants to put in a new tip.. or something like that.. people campaign to not have it in their backyard... "We know it's needed, but not in our backyard!"

So ppl might in principle agree to entering random codes to help kill bots... but the moment it actually gets implemented and ppl actually have to enter the codes... they will get peeved off and whinge and whine and complain about it and demand that the code "garbage" gets removed.. forgetting why it was implemented in the 1st place... and then quit the game in anger...

But don't BOTS have feelings too...? How would you like it if you were playing a game and got shut off for doing it? I wouldn't like it, ESPECIALLY! if I was a bot.

Without a doubt, for every 100 people that say it would be a great idea, 99 of them would be pissed/annoyed/quit GW if it were to actually be implemented (random numbers, no statistical accuracy intended ). While it's a nice idea in principle, it's not exactly a viable solution.

The annoying bot paranoia is pissing me of big time. Can't you guys just mind about your own business? Yes i am farming. Yes i do it regularly and in quite the same way. Yes i like playing GW this way, no i am not screwing anyone. Yes you can go and cry about bots now -.-

Why am i so aggresive about this? Arena.net must have like 50 reports about my person because people thought i was a bot when i in fact wasn't. Countless are the times i've been accused of bots just because i would not reply to some random accusation of some random moron sitting at an outpost 24/7 whispering every trespasser with "evidences of botting". Go get a life for christs sake and stop messing with my gameplay experience you damn bot paranoids -.-

Sorry, this is really pissing me off. This game is going down the drain like Counter-Strike. You know the saying?

5 Kills in a row in Quake 3 - Excelent
5 Kills in a row in UT - Monsterkill
5 Kills in a row in CS - Kicked by console.


Do you really want it to be alike in Guildwars (there is no plat in those games, just an example)

100 plat a day in WoW - Nice dedicated playing there pal!
100 plat a day in Everquest - Woaah, nice farming! Mind sharing?
100 plat a day in Guildwars - Bot Report.

Kampfkeks,

When I see 10 people in the Ember Light Camp repeatly doing the same thing over and over again, its begs to differ if they are a bot or not.

When I go farming I take the time to make sure I say I'm not botting by speaking out, since I myself have had people message me, trying to test if I'm botting or not, basically using an auto-response system.

Bots are reported by players, the way I see it, your CS example is groundless, since its a different game, and getting 5 kills in a row, all headshots, all within the space of 5 seconds is cheating.

Needless to say Guild Wars is a different kind of animal, no normal player could amass 100K every day, 7 days a week, its simply not possible. That says without selling stuff since most bots simply farm and sell to Traders for gold.

Personally I say well done to A.net, some MMO games simply give in and allow bots to carry on, at least ArenaNet is trying to do something about it.

they'd get themselves into some pretty serious legal trouble if they engineered a way for their game to shutdown other processes you had running.....

The thing i wanted to get across was the paranoia at the moment. In my example it is not only 1 different games but a total of 6 different games. What i'm trying to say... paranoia is what made the CS Community go down the drain. Behind each kill they suspected a cheater and accused alike.
This turned the once good community into what it is today, a lot of people disrespecting with a lots of REAL Cheating going on. Only because people where suffering from paranoia earlier.
Even though 5 kills in a row isn't directly comparable to Guildwars. The problem about Paranoia still has gotten carried over to it. Sadly. People accuse allmost everyone now of being a bot. If you think 100 plat is unrealistic, decrease it down to like 5 plat a day. You'll still get accused of being a bot if you leave the same area twice.
Hell, i even got accussed of being a bot while i was just staying there, busy chatting with my guild. To some people it looked like i was a bot who got stuck in its pathfinding routine.

And i just don't want to spam useless text just so no one accuses me of being a bot. And i don't want to have to reply to every, sorry, moron accusing me.

I do mind my own business, why can't the others do alike? If there are really that many bots it is A.nets duty to spot those. Not the duty of the players. A-Net, so i do assume, does a good job in finding those real bots. The players don't. They aren't as professional as A-Net is and they often go a bit extreme with their accusations.
________________

All i am asking for is a community which tries to prevent its own self humilation in form of paranoia.



@Algren
You do know about a so called copy protection called SecuRom? This little program gets automatically installed into your system with some games (even some demos, see F.E.A.R). It now is resident in your system and demands the deletion of copy programs like Alcohol and others. It even wants you to uninstall Daemon Tools of any kind.

A few people program them out of scratch. I wouldn't be surprised if GW had more than one "type" of bot. But I'm guessing that the majority of the botters never wrote their own code, and got it from others.

It's impossible to permanently block bots. If you block or try to change the packet encryption used by the bots, they'll just change it.

i wouldnt complain if they implimented the random #/letter thing during trades. of course it would bother me if they didnt allow me to customize the amount of items i am selling. last night i cleared out my inventory of steel and iron, had 250 of each. if they had the random # system i would have had to input it 275 times! but if they say, enter it once and then i can enter that i want to sell all 250 of some item, yeah i wouldnt mind that.

I haven't noticed any bots but it would be par for the course in mmog's these days. Gone are the days of actual virtual worlds (like UO was in the early days) instead of the generic, uberific, status hungry, "look at me!" community we have today. GW isn't unique in this regard as all games are full of folks who think this way. So there really isn't any downhill for the community to slide. It was virtually born with the problem.

geez folks,they are actively monitering bots...they arent going to ban them one at a time....also if they are bots,take a screen shot and send that to anet. A whole bunch of people bitching and moaning...is just a whole bunch of people bitching and moaning.

Hmm, that would be ok, as long as it doesn't stop me from playing music or chatting on msn

I don't know if anyone notices but the botting is getting worse you can tell by a visit to ebay, the price for 100k is now under $5. The price just keeps getting lower because more botters keep joining in to make money.

ive gotten 4 hs in a row once on de_cbble in a scrim, they all ran to b and i was positioned behind a box, i just stepped out with p90 (bc i love p90, dont diss the p90) and rocked em all!

but yeah, me and a friend were farming minotaurs/griffons for a bit (his warr and my monk) and i kept getting pms like that too. i got tired after a while and responded with "I AM BOTZILLA."

What programs are theses kids useing like how do they get them. Cant AN just go the site that people are downloading them from and shutdown the website thats what blizzard did. THats why i asked where do they download themfrom

what the hell is the POINT of botting in GW?

It's not like the reasonable equipment is hard to get, rather, it's practically handed to you with a pat on the back, on the way through the bloody door!

The entire point of GW is that it doesn't /require/ the grind to get up there. Sure, if you want to stock up 300 ectoplasm, it's gonna take you a while, but it's not necessary to be competitive, or even LOOK good.

Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

(Firefly) No clue of what programs they are doing but if they try and nerf one two more will pop up. Scripting windows is nothing new.

All they are is programs to "mimick" key punches or mouse movements to do repative tasks. With computer's they have legmit use but have been adapted for gaming / bots to cheat. I don't think Anet would have the resouces to keep shutting them down. If any, I would say Anet would go after the gold selling sites before the bots programs web sites, but there not going after them / are unable to go after them either.

yea I know they use macros or just scripts which are somewhat macros i believe. But like how would they write those. I Program Java and do it ok im above normal in it and iwanted to know what language they use to code these bots and how. But if i could get a hold of one of the programs i could Unpack it and See the source code. Thus seeing how they all do it. and send that to Guilds to maybe help. Also my classmates and I have found a way to stop them its a cool java script. We are working on. What is does lags the computer and then searchs for programs that should not be running. I.E the bots. We already but this to work on some key loggers we install on are test computers at school. and this java script worked like a carm. IT detected the keylogger that even norton couldn't. IF we could get a hold of a GW bot we could put this to the real test and then send the source of are program to GW. ARe big plan is everytime u connect to guilds once u start up the exe. U connecto to their site. Boom are script starts and scans them and Criplels them just like that. THats why I have been looking for a bots so bad. so if any one know anything. OR just a place to look please help

How can people suspect you of farming with bots in an instanced game? I understand the bots running around towns as being observable, but in the combat sections of the game?

sounds good, but it smacks too much of hacking into THEIR and admittedly everybody else's computer to just combat what? maybe 20,000 bots? at least 400,000 people plays worldwide.
all you'd do is make the world pissed off at you every time you want to play GW you gonna wait 5 minutes for Anet to scan YOUR private files for any bot scripts? no thanks.

To the tune of "why ruin a great game" and "hey, get a life", I don't understand the reason behind all this massive farming, be it with bots or real players. I can understand the need to collect 100K, maybe 200K per character for all that good armor and weapons, but what is the point in farming 100K per day, as one poster wrote? Could someone please explain that to me?

If the farmer is doing it to sell on ebay as a way to supplement his/her income, then no sympathy here; that's not what the game was created for and if that negatively affects the game in any way (e.g. ruining the game's economy via inflation, making it too easy for players to "buy" their way to becoming super heroes instead of digging for the gold themselves, or eating up server CPU time with bots) then out with them. Bot or no bot.

BTW I go out farming sometimes, and its a real thrill to find a rare item! But this is only a minor part of my total gaming, percentagewise.

It's often the same people selling the gold on ebay. Arenanet should really look into those accounts!

Just did a quick ebay GuildWars search to see what all this was all about. Man, the thought that people actually would pay real money for game money or items is sick! Why don't people just play the game like it was supposed to be played, and enjoy the thrill of finding money and items the correct way?

U miss understood me about the program of java. WoOT. OK it wouldnt take 5 mins. IT would take about 30secs and if people have problems with 30 secs then they should just sit up and look out the window due their eyes some help. Also it wouldn't be hacking or scanning their files. All windows files and Most used programs would not be scanned. Which means and we have looked into this. We have a list of over 3000 plus programs that would not be scanned. ALso it would only scan for the bot programs its self. What is nice about this is we have tested it with a low end 2d game. And it worked fined it found are program we sit it to find. and it only took 15 plus secs. The only problem is once this would hit the community baamm two or one day later u got a patch out for the bots out that would over right it. And we are working on this proble as we speak for a Low end 2d game we are testing it on. We are Working for the Program to Brake down the programs that do not show on the due not scan list. This would take a bit long. Which we expect to take around 3 mins. To brake down 2 programs. and scan are source code. But theses are all problems we are working on. And we have also though about going away from guild wars and useing this for many games. Which then it scan hacks. So U may see this program in future games in about 2 years lol. If we dont give up. Which if we due we will release the Source code we have been working on and all of are blue prints to all companys. But we want to try the bot test. and are C++ programer is out for the Week and we are getting bored