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The Botting Epidemic is Disheartening [updated]

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  • dageezadageeza Member Posts: 578

    They use diminishing returns as a means to fight bots however it is affecting many players and in the end as more players discover how they are being manipulated anet is going to see a diminishing population and deminishing returns of players..

    Then maybe they will ask themselves, is it fun?

    I love the game but i really will not further support this kind of being treated like a criminal and punished like a child for playing in a full group and pulverizing many mobs and or DEs fast..

    And the bots are winning this war..

    I ask myself as do my friends when DRs kick in on us while the bots bot on, Is this fun?

    Playing GW2..

  • fenistilfenistil Member Posts: 3,005
    Originally posted by Kuinn
    Originally posted by fenistil
    Originally posted by squalleonaha

    botting is consequence of gold  buying.

    you give those farmer income then of course they keep making and ruin your game.

    if that same money go into Anet pocket through gems sell, i think they can hire more techniction to develove anti -bot.

    Exactly why selling gold by devs will never solve the problem.

     

    Unless their gold is cheaper than the gold sold by gold sellers. But that would demolish the economy completely I'm afraid.

    If devs would drastically lower their gold price, then game prices would inflate and players would demand increase gold drop in game (from mobs, quests, dungeons, selling items to NPC) and then it would make botting avabile again.

    Id devs would not do that then only vaible gameplay would be : a) buying gold b) setting bot yourself.   Playing by yourself would nto work.

    What gold selling by devs is doing - is just increasing potential gold seller clients. Making people used to buy gold and some % of those players will sooner or later buy some cheaper gold from farmers.

  • botrytisbotrytis Member RarePosts: 3,363
    Originally posted by Sentime
    Originally posted by TangentPoint

    Okay, let's. The root cause is lazy, entitled players who want the best things in the game handed to them with the least amount of effort. When the game doesn't fit squarely within their "tolerance level" of actually playing the game (read: next to nil for many), they feel that it then gives them the right to cheat, hack, exploit and bot to get around it. And thent hey blame the developers for their choice of gameplay. Kinda like what you're doing in  your post, squalleonaha.

     

     

    Oh please avoiding clicking a node a million times or pressing 1 to kill yet another boring mob doesn't make you lazy or entitled.  Might want to look at people that enjoy this type of thing and question their sanity.

    Cheating, hacking, and exploting are another topic altogether and have nothing to do with botting, the topic of this thread.

    It doesn't matter what you think - it is against the EULA of the game so it is VERBOTEN!


  • fenistilfenistil Member Posts: 3,005
    Originally posted by Sentime
    Originally posted by TangentPoint

    Okay, let's. The root cause is lazy, entitled players who want the best things in the game handed to them with the least amount of effort. When the game doesn't fit squarely within their "tolerance level" of actually playing the game (read: next to nil for many), they feel that it then gives them the right to cheat, hack, exploit and bot to get around it. And thent hey blame the developers for their choice of gameplay. Kinda like what you're doing in  your post, squalleonaha.

     

     

    Oh please avoiding clicking a node a million times or pressing 1 to kill yet another boring mob doesn't make you lazy or entitled.  Might want to look at people that enjoy this type of thing and question their sanity.

    Cheating, hacking, and exploting are another topic altogether and have nothing to do with botting, the topic of this thread.

    You are aware that instead of clicking node "milloion times" or botting you can just don't play the game?

    There is no excuse for botting. If you don't like game that "encourage" botting then don't play it. By playing it (even by using bots & macros) you're supporting this design.

    Logical?

  • JeroKaneJeroKane Member EpicPosts: 6,959

    Every single game under the NCSoft umbrella has been infested with bots and hacks!

    Lineage, Lineage 2, Aion, etc.  Guild Wars 2 is just next  in line to be ruined by botters.

    In AION they did nothing either to address the botters. Back at launch there were many days I just had to log off, as botters were just chain killing all the quest mobs in the area you were questing in. /shrug

    Shame to see the exact same thing happening in this game.

    Worse is that most seem to be build in the client side, so that is even worse recipe for dissaster! Pure invitation for hacking and botting!  /sigh

  • NaeviusNaevius Member UncommonPosts: 334

    Botting is annoying but has few effects on my gameplay.

    Teleport hacks are a bigger issue since they seem to work in WvW and maybe sPvP (haven't seen that personally.)

    Reducing the gold sinks and karma prices would help reduce the demand for gold sellers.

  • kaiser3282kaiser3282 Member UncommonPosts: 2,759

    Id kind of like to know what some of you nuts consider "hordes" and "epidemics". You consider 2 or 3 a horde? Except for 1 location, I have yet to see more than that in an area. I get the feeling many of you never played games that had real bot problems. You could actually sit there and watch a steady train of unique bots just continue running by single locations several seconds apart all day every day.

    Yes there are bots. Is it the massive widespread epidemic ruining the game with endless waves of bots everywhere you turn and a result of mor ebots than actual players that some of the drama queens would like to have the more naive believe? Not even close.

  • botrytisbotrytis Member RarePosts: 3,363
    Originally posted by drakaena
    B2P. You get what you pay for. Reports of P2P death were greatly exaggerated. 

    You still have bots and gold sellers in P2P games. So no system is perfect.


  • skydiver12skydiver12 Member Posts: 432

    I survived Linege and Lineage II, aion and GW2 are nothing yet compared to those.
    The road to success with ncsoft involved games is not how they may get rid of bots, but how you can deal with (ignore) them to have an acceptable game.


    If a goldfarmer can spam the chat and two minute old characters with the same string of "url" for his site, without resorting to variations - over the course of 1 month.

    It's telling enough. They lack even basic force to control the farmers and bots.

  • botrytisbotrytis Member RarePosts: 3,363
    Originally posted by skydiver12

    I survived Linege and Lineage II, aion and GW2 are nothing yet compared to those.
    The road to success with ncsoft involved games is not how they may get rid of bots, but how you can deal with (ignore) them to have an acceptable game.


    If a goldfarmer can spam the chat and two minute old characters with the same string of "url" for his site, without resorting to variations - over the course of 1 month.

    It's telling enough. They lack even basic force to control the farmers and bots.

    They did in GW1 and they will in GW2. I just ignore and report - move on. You don't use them, they will go away. The trick is, they need to make money, if you don't use them there is no incentive for them to sell/bot in game.

     

    But, people are lazy and don't think that if they buy gold, there will be an consequences. There are, mostly to other players.


  • TwoThreeFourTwoThreeFour Member UncommonPosts: 2,155
    Originally posted by botrytis
    Originally posted by skydiver12

    I survived Linege and Lineage II, aion and GW2 are nothing yet compared to those.
    The road to success with ncsoft involved games is not how they may get rid of bots, but how you can deal with (ignore) them to have an acceptable game.


    If a goldfarmer can spam the chat and two minute old characters with the same string of "url" for his site, without resorting to variations - over the course of 1 month.

    It's telling enough. They lack even basic force to control the farmers and bots.

    They did in GW1 and they will in GW2. I just ignore and report - move on. You don't use them, they will go away. The trick is, they need to make money, if you don't use them there is no incentive for them to sell/bot in game.

     

    But, people are lazy and don't think that if they buy gold, there will be an consequences. There are, mostly to there players.

    We've seen in the other thread that a lot of people were not ready to support Arenanet through item mall despite liking Arenanet, so it is not too farfetched to think that there is a significant amount of people who are not going to automatically accept a "It is not ok to buy gold from other people despite how legit they obtained it, but it is okay to buy from us" just because Arenanet says so. They simply are not ready to make enough sacrifice for Arenanet even though they may like the company; their wallet speaks higher.

  • Cod_EyeCod_Eye Member UncommonPosts: 1,016
    Maybe everyone should just go and buy gold from the farmers, Anet won't be happy and will react quicker.  They can't ban every account.
  • KyleranKyleran Member LegendaryPosts: 43,435
    Originally posted by botrytis
    Originally posted by skydiver12

    I survived Linege and Lineage II, aion and GW2 are nothing yet compared to those.
    The road to success with ncsoft involved games is not how they may get rid of bots, but how you can deal with (ignore) them to have an acceptable game.


    If a goldfarmer can spam the chat and two minute old characters with the same string of "url" for his site, without resorting to variations - over the course of 1 month.

    It's telling enough. They lack even basic force to control the farmers and bots.

    They did in GW1 and they will in GW2. I just ignore and report - move on. You don't use them, they will go away. The trick is, they need to make money, if you don't use them there is no incentive for them to sell/bot in game.

     

    But, people are lazy and don't think that if they buy gold, there will be an consequences. There are, mostly to there players.

    Riddle me this......

    We know GW2 can be a grind intensive game, what are the odds that some portion of the bots you see are actually just regular players utilizing bots to farm the gold they need for their own uses?

    They may not all belong to farming organizations you know, in Lineage 2 many of the bots you ran into were just controlled by regular players of the game.

     

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  • caetftlcaetftl Member Posts: 358

    Botting has been rampant in recent MMOs, I remember Aion's NA launch and the chat was simply unusable because of gold selling ads...

    One thing I think blizzard has done decent with, considering the size of their game... is relentlessly trying to stop the botters and gold-selling sites... there are waves here and there where things get out of hand (spelling out sites in corpses in big cities) but blizzard never gives up, and they keep their technical analysts hard at work. 

     

    Anet shoulda learned from all the other recent mmo launches and put in countermeasures... to be crippled by something you knew was going to happen is just sloppy preparation. 

  • botrytisbotrytis Member RarePosts: 3,363
    Originally posted by TwoThreeFour
    Originally posted by botrytis
    Originally posted by skydiver12

    I survived Linege and Lineage II, aion and GW2 are nothing yet compared to those.
    The road to success with ncsoft involved games is not how they may get rid of bots, but how you can deal with (ignore) them to have an acceptable game.


    If a goldfarmer can spam the chat and two minute old characters with the same string of "url" for his site, without resorting to variations - over the course of 1 month.

    It's telling enough. They lack even basic force to control the farmers and bots.

    They did in GW1 and they will in GW2. I just ignore and report - move on. You don't use them, they will go away. The trick is, they need to make money, if you don't use them there is no incentive for them to sell/bot in game.

     

    But, people are lazy and don't think that if they buy gold, there will be an consequences. There are, mostly to there players.

    We've seen in the other thread that a lot of people were not ready to support Arenanet through item mall despite liking Arenanet, so it is not too farfetched to think that there is a significant amount of people who are not going to automatically accept a "It is not ok to buy gold from other people despite how legit they obtained it, but it is okay to buy from us" just because Arenanet says so. They simply are not ready to make enough sacrifice for Arenanet even though they may like the compay; their wallet speaks higher.

    In GW1, I never bought anything from the CS in game. I won't now. The CS, is just icing on the cake. They really are trying to get most of their money from box sales - just like other software producers do. If you don't use the CS - it is not a big deal. Companies depending on subs may (notice may have issues) if people decide not tp pay for month to month playing.

     

    A.Net is a small company compared to Blizzard and EA, for example. So, they need time to deal with this, they did in GW1 and I expect them to in GW2.


  • TerranahTerranah Member UncommonPosts: 3,575

    Hmm, I'm usually too busy running around to notice what others are doing but lately I have been noticing more botters myself. 

     

    Cheaters destroyed APB as well.  Granted it had its issues but damnit I loved that game.  I fracking hate cheaters.  But APB did not act efficiently in removing those cheaters and the game, as intriguing as some aspects were, crashed and burned.  I hope GW2 gets this under control.  Seriously.

     

  • TwoThreeFourTwoThreeFour Member UncommonPosts: 2,155
    Originally posted by botrytis
    Originally posted by TwoThreeFour
    Originally posted by botrytis
    Originally posted by skydiver12

    I survived Linege and Lineage II, aion and GW2 are nothing yet compared to those.
    The road to success with ncsoft involved games is not how they may get rid of bots, but how you can deal with (ignore) them to have an acceptable game.


    If a goldfarmer can spam the chat and two minute old characters with the same string of "url" for his site, without resorting to variations - over the course of 1 month.

    It's telling enough. They lack even basic force to control the farmers and bots.

    They did in GW1 and they will in GW2. I just ignore and report - move on. You don't use them, they will go away. The trick is, they need to make money, if you don't use them there is no incentive for them to sell/bot in game.

     

    But, people are lazy and don't think that if they buy gold, there will be an consequences. There are, mostly to there players.

    We've seen in the other thread that a lot of people were not ready to support Arenanet through item mall despite liking Arenanet, so it is not too farfetched to think that there is a significant amount of people who are not going to automatically accept a "It is not ok to buy gold from other people despite how legit they obtained it, but it is okay to buy from us" just because Arenanet says so. They simply are not ready to make enough sacrifice for Arenanet even though they may like the compay; their wallet speaks higher.

    In GW1, I never bought anything from the CS in game. I won't now. The CS, is just icing on the cake. They really are trying to get most of their money from box sales - just like other software producers do. If you don't use the CS - it is not a big deal. Companies depending on subs may (notice may have issues) if people decide not tp pay for month to month playing.

     

    A.Net is a small company compared to Blizzard and EA, for example. So, they need time to deal with this, they did in GW1 and I expect them to in GW2.

     

    Either you assume that the boxes themselves are enough to make Arenanet "successful" or you assume that they need a certain income through item mall to reach that goal. If you assume the former, then yeah, you are right, there is no real need to spend more money, just buying the box is enough; however, I assume the latter. It comes down to opinions and cynicism I suppose. 

  • IselinIselin Member LegendaryPosts: 18,719

    Does anyone seriously believe that any game with an active 3rd party gold sales market does not have a lot of botting? Do you think it's one underpaid, semi-slave gold farmer in a sweatshop per character? Every popular game has gold farmers and power-leveling bots with scripts running multiple characters at the same time. They just check on each one occasionally to make sure the script hasn't malfunctioned.

     

    And you should have a look at the official forums... there is a heck of a lot of account banning due to "using macros or 3rd party programs." So much so that some who are apparently innocent--or so they say in the forums--are being caught in the net.

     

    And btw... not all of them use the teleport to the next mob exploit. Some do but not all. Some are very simple static bots farming DEs... the classic example is the DE at the broken bridge in Kessex Hills. The bots there are extremely simple and move only occasionally to collect the loot. You can see them continuously spamming an attack or sequence of attacks at the same general area whether there are currently mobs there or not--engineer bots are the most common there. Other bots do farm larger areas moving from mob to mob. The simplest ones and easiest to spot are the teleporters. But there are others with much better script AI that behave in a way that is almost indistinguishable from a live player farming drops in the area. The only thing they have in common is that these are either guardians, warriors or rangers. I have yet to see a necro, ele, mesmer or thief bot.

     

    There's all kinds of stuff being posted here about how this is typical of NCSOFT or how ANET botched the programming by having more things happen client side than other MMOs or having no good anti-botting AI built in.... I'm still waiting for persuasive proof that either one of these two is true. And it really doesn't matter all that much anyway: they will find a way to bot... you can count on that.

     

    What's really happening here is that the number of gold-farming bots is directly proportional to the popularity of the game. WOW has lots and so does GW2...big surprise there! Maybe you should start to worry if all botting and gold sales email spam suddenly stop image

     

     

    "Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”

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  • JyiigaJyiiga Member UncommonPosts: 1,187

    The botting thread grows daily on the official forums.  It has 376 replies and a staggering 72,000 views at this point. They have started deleting any screenshots or youtube links that provide proof of botting. Which seems a little odd to me, since anyone playing the game (that has a brain) has already noticed them. 

    The same bots have been in Penitent Path for well over a week now. 

  • tank017tank017 Member Posts: 2,192

    It is getting to the point where most players I see, Im not sure if the player is real or a robot.

     

    I see them in DE areas,I see them in groups in random areas of the maps..I see the obvious ones with names like fhghdh or less obvious with actual names..

     

    I was in a cave last night and a  guardian bot was in there,teleporting all over the place to aggro multiple mobs.I couldnt help but sit there for a minute and watch..heh

     

    its gotten pretty bad.

  • NaeviusNaevius Member UncommonPosts: 334
    Originally posted by Jyiiga

    They have started deleting any screenshots or youtube links that provide proof of botting. Which seems a little odd to me, since anyone playing the game (that has a brain) has already noticed them.

    They deleted stuff on the grounds of 'innocent until proven guilty' - it is against forum rules to post stuff with other peoples' names unless they give permission.

  • sfc1971sfc1971 Member UncommonPosts: 421
    Originally posted by jaserion
    sadly, gw2 grinds and bots remind me of L2 and aion.  typical ncsoft tragedies.  

    I am still amazed people are suprised.

    Korean MMO's have never had quality, that is why they could afford to be free. Because they were very simple games with just lot of flash in the frontend.

    Before and during launch, you saw countless posts how GW2 lnot needing a subscription was proof western developers were lying with their claim they needed subs to pay for servers and support.

    Well guess what? Those posters were wrong.

    NCSoft has always cut corners, two corners were cut in GW2. GM support is nowhere to be seen. GM's are people and people want paying. If your income from a customer is 50 bucks, there are only so many minutes of support that buys. If it even comes up to a whole minute.

    The second corner cut is a disaster, they made a client based MMORPG. Yeah, I know, what a bunch of morons.

    For those who don't know, only a retard would these days consider making a client based FPS. 

    Most FPS and ALL western MMO's are server based.

    What does that mean? It refers to where the math is done to calculate the results of your actions. A client FPS/MMORPG basically works like a single player game and single player games are well known for cheats. You can easily alter the input (aim bots) or the results of your input (money cheats, infinite health, warp exploits).

    In a server based game, this is not possible. You game client send your command (move forward) and the server that has been keeping track of where you are, calculates your new position and transmits it back to you.

    It is why western MMO's suffer from lag, rubber banding (your game engine doesn't wait for the server to tell it its new position but moves you already, but then puts you back if it doesn't get acknowledgement from the server) etc etc. 

    AND it requires powerful servers and fast connections. 

    But it does prevent most cheating.

    Rule 1 of multiplayer game design, NEVER EVER DO THE GAME LOGIC ON THE CLIENT. This is an absolute rule and NCSoft broke it to cut costs and the fanboys ignored it because they never heard of aimbots and cheating in online games before.

    NCSoft screwed up big time. And if they don't fix it fast, EVERYONE will be using bots because the current end game design requires insane amounts of gold and materials.

    I predict NCSoft can't fix it, won't fix it and the game will enter a death spiral when it comes time to pay for the next expansion.

    They can't even safe it with the cash shop, who is going to buy gold from the most expensive gold shop active in the game? And if they can't ban bots, what makes you think they can buy gold sellers/buyers?

    FF9 called, it wants it braindead design back.

  • MaxJacMaxJac Member Posts: 185
    Originally posted by Terranah

    Hmm, I'm usually too busy running around to notice what others are doing but lately I have been noticing more botters myself. 

     

    Cheaters destroyed APB as well.  Granted it had its issues but damnit I loved that game.  I fracking hate cheaters.  But APB did not act efficiently in removing those cheaters and the game, as intriguing as some aspects were, crashed and burned.  I hope GW2 gets this under control.  Seriously.

     

    If you are talking about RTW APB then yes. If you are talking about RP APB:R then no. The game has regular updates and a developer has said that they are hiring at the moment. It isn't the 100 man team it once was, but I believe they last said that there team was over 20. That is not bad for a f2p game. On hackers, yes they exist. Just like in any f2p title. However, it is not nearly as bad in todays APB as people make it out to be. Most people just can't believe that someone can completely demolish them.

  • ZenIrishChaiZenIrishChai Member UncommonPosts: 527

     

    I've seen more bots in this game than any other game unfortunately. I guess I play during their busiest work hours or something, but I report every one. I have faith they'll find a way to reduce the botters. It sounds like they are doing the best they can.

     

    I think some people need to redirect their frustration to those directly responsible though. The employees and companies that hunt for ways to sell game currency is the problem. I'm not going to blame the design of the game for people being stupid, selfish, and disrespecting the EULA. People will do that no matter how it's handled.

     

    I've seen people driving 80mph right pass highway patrol in the next lane (and obviously gets caught), but that won't stop anyone from just doing it again, over and over and over again, just finding new ways to not get caught. Stop blaming the people that brought this game to us in the first place for a problem that they are facing just like we do.

     

    If you bitch long enough, they won't have any desire left to give you a game to bitch about. Some of you are just ungrateful aholes that don't even realize the hard work that goes in to making a game, much less trying to monitor everyone trying to break the rules. If the developers bring us a game that we all want to play in the first place, then they damn well deserve our respect for that achievement and we can show a little more maturity in working with them to stop gold-selling. That's the difference between those here that give constructive criticism and ideas versus those of you just saying random bullshit aimed at the developers like little kids in the schoolyard crying after someone tries to break your toy. Get your enemies straight so you know who to fight off here. I want Anet to continue to do everything they are doing with this game, and I will continue helping them to ban botters until they can't make a profit anymore because they don't last a minute before someone spots them and bans them.

     

    Maybe they should even 'deputize' some of the players (after they show significant means of being trust-worthy and mature about it) like they did with UO for awhile. Abuse of it can be easily monitored as it should be, but I would love to help and search out these botters in any capacity whether it stays the same with reporting them or via some other means.

  • NadiaNadia Member UncommonPosts: 11,798
    Originally posted by sfc1971

    In a server based game, this is not possible. You game client send your command (move forward) and the server that has been keeping track of where you are, calculates your new position and transmits it back to you.

    It is why western MMO's suffer from lag, rubber banding (your game engine doesn't wait for the server to tell it its new position but moves you already, but then puts you back if it doesn't get acknowledgement from the server) etc etc. 

    ive seen rubber banding in both GW1 and GW2 (altho its rare in GW2)

    ive seen speed and teleport hacks in "server based" mmos like WOW

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