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.

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.

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. 

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

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

First of all.... botting is not gold sellers spamming chat or mail to sell gold.

Secondly... I have not seen a massive influx of botting that ruins gameplay in most areas of the game. STOP being such a drama queen all!

As far as the issue of gold sellers and botting in MMOs..... they will be there. Every developer handles them differently, but Anet's approach to their games has always been strong and consistent. With a new form of MMO they will need new ideas and methods to confront them. Anet (not NcSoft) will handle exploiters in the same manor they did in the past. They DO NOT tolerate them!

So all the Naggy Nancys and Synical Sallys either find a different game to play if it is SOOOOO bad to play or be patient because it will change.

Originally posted by ste2000
I heard of Bots from other players, but never met one in game yet, so it is not rampant as the OP make out to be.

Go to any starter area and bot trains will run you over. Don't downplay it. Even the devs acknowledge it.

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.

You are correct Botting is connected to Gold Farmers/Sellers  & there is an easy Fix , Make Gold Hierloom / & usable thru Auction House only

So gold can be handed down to any character on your account  or when U use it in the AH the gold goes from Your Hierloom Gold to the Seller/Buyer Hierloom gold ..

So you can't transfer gold from one player to another as easy as now.. while I doubt it would totally stop gold farmers it would slow em down .

Originally posted by TomBaker_fan

 

Geez, drama much? I reported a gaggle of 4 botters yesterday and within 15 minutes they disapeared. This is the only time I have ever seen bots, so they are doing the best they can. It is up to us to report what we see, if we do, they respond.

Why do people love drama so much?

You do realize that just because your experience was positive doesn't mean someone else had the same experience, don't you?

I've been reporting the same bot for a week and he is still there, every day, running the same path and even has a gibberish name - yet goes completely unchecked.

No, they don't always respond, and the poster you falsely accused of being dramatic wasn't actually being dramatic at all. Before you sling random mud at people you really should get all the facts straight.

Originally posted by I_Return
Not seen a bot yet :( .

This

I dunno I think most bots are on american servers and Im on Gandara(EU)

I think Ive seen like 1 bot. 

Originally posted by andre369

Originally posted by I_Return
Not seen a bot yet :( .

This

I dunno I think most bots are on american servers and Im on Gandara(EU)

I think Ive seen like 1 bot. 

I would say that all my expereiences have been on American servers so there may be something to that. USA servers are rife with them.

Originally posted by Digna.

Go to any starter area and bot trains will run you over. Don't downplay it. Even the devs acknowledge it.

Not true, it depends on the world you're on. I've only ever seen one bot from pre-launch until today. I've seen the Youtube videos, so I know some worlds have it bad, but a lot do not. And they are over dramatising it. It may be unpleasant to see a ton of bots running around, but you cannot compare it to botting in other mmos. It is no where near as bad, for one, you don't really have to fight against them. So long as you tag a mob, you get full credit for it. You all don't seem to understand there are many things they are working on that has higher priority. The only place bots have any real negative effect is in WvW. I can understand that bots are highly frowned upon though, and I would like them gone as well even though they're very rare on my world, but you should all stop being little babies about it and just be patient. They'll eventually take care of it, for the most part anyways. Until then, you whiners are more of an eyesore than bots. If you can't appreciate Arenanet's hardwork and efforts, then go play something else. I'm sure you won't be missed. You make it sound like what they do is so easy. If you think it is that simple and that you know how to fix the issue, why don't you contact Arenanet about it? I'm sure they would love to hear about it. Otherwise, you're of no help at all. Of course, you're free to say whatever you want, whenever you want, so I know I'm not stopping anyone. But I'm also allowed to say what I want, and I just wanted you all to know that you're making yourselves look stupid.

Originally posted by Nadia

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

I don't know enough about rubber banding to comment about it. However, at the time that WOW (not private servers, but official one) allowed speed and teleport hacks, it means that at that time their server checks did not react to the "unrealistic" changes, which contradicts what the original poster meant. If it has server based "movement" then you can't speedhack efficientely, at best I can Imagine that a 5% or 10% increase in speed is possible, but that is negligible. 

As for teleport hack: there are two types: one where you teleport to any location within the same map and the other where you teleport to another map without cost. If there are proper server checks in place for movement, the first verson will not work, because either the server is the one that gives info where your next step should be or the server notes that the step you did is not okay and ports you back.

The second form of teleport hack is possible if the server does not check from where you call the "teleport to other map command". Games solves this by making sure to check that the  serverside coordinates is near the serverside coordinates of the relevant teleporter npc and by making sure that the teleport command is only possible through sending the "npc teleport packet".