Originally posted by TwoThreeFour
This is a major reason why I like these forums: you have a lot of freedom as long as you are not insulting another forum poster. Controversial  and/or "sensitive" topics can often be posted, despite whether or not I agree with them or the majority agrees with them.

Yeah, not really. If you post something that differs from a mods opinion, you'll get slapped. It doesn't have to be rude or violent for them to wave their "I'm King" wand in your face. They are very sensitive to things that might be viewed as negativity towards people that are paying them (ads). You can tell by looking at threads that are closed, who gets warnings etc.

Originally posted by Onecrazyguy

Originally posted by TwoThreeFour
This is a major reason why I like these forums: you have a lot of freedom as long as you are not insulting another forum poster. Controversial  and/or "sensitive" topics can often be posted, despite whether or not I agree with them or the majority agrees with them.

Yeah, not really. If you post something that differs from a mods opinion, you'll get slapped. It doesn't have to be rude or violent for them to wave their "I'm King" wand in your face. They are very sensitive to things that might be viewed as negativity towards people that are paying them (ads). You can tell by looking at threads that are closed, who gets warnings etc.

Are you positive that they aren't just similar threads that people could of posted that in instead rather than assuming that someone needs their voice heard?

Originally posted by FrodoFragins

I miss the days when there were actually people doing the gold farming.  You know, the guy from country X who had to meet a quota but was basically friendly and would sometimes do an instance run for fun.

 

I'll still take ANets response over Blizzards non response on the subject.

Robots be taking everybody's jobs, even the gold farmers.

Originally posted by Konfess

I don’t believe anyone is botting. I suspect there are no botts. What you think are botts are the accounts of under 18 y.o. whose parents have told them not to talk to strangers on the internet. Some of these accounts could possibly be adults who are watching TV as they play, and are playing the game without watching the screen often.

The real problem as I read it, you are playing a game that the typical playstyle can be confused for botting. A game you can play while watching TV, reading a book, or walking on a treadmill. Don’t hate on these players, because the game play is so simplistic.

They have made their way to this higher level content, with or without interacting with other people. Why should Anet or anyone spoil their fun now?



The reason the Anet posts sound like we know better is because they have made contact with the supposed botts. And guess what? They found players at the keyboards. If a GM gets notice of a bot they will send a tell. Some players will not respond to other players tells and may have all tells blocked in options. System messages and GM tells will get through, and may even be answered. In that case a player is found at the keyboard, and it is assumed that the play style in question of being a bot is in fact a player. No harm and no foul. The player reporting the botting on the other hand has a strike against them, for making a false report.

Actually Anet have acknowledged the problem, which makes your supposition....well wrong. Legitimate players don't farm the same  20x20 area 24/7 nor do they teleport from node to node. Nor do they run into a piece of scenery indefinately. Or stand in the same spot firing regardless of whether mobs are there or not etc.etc.

Sorry your just wrong. Watch some of the videos and lol at how unsophisticated a lot of these bots are.

Originally posted by TdogSkal

Originally posted by JeroKane

Originally posted by Fendel84M
How do the bots hurt anybody? What if they were actually a big group of players instead of bots? Would it make you feel better? lol

Because they interfere with your questing, killing all the mobs.

Because they interfere with your harvesting, clearing all the nodes the moment they spawn.

On top of that, they use teleport hacks to instantly go from one spawn point to the other.

 

It was the same with Aion way back after launch. Entire zones were cleared of mobs by huge bot trains, preventing "real" players from questing!  It was absolutely terrible and was the main reason for me to quit that game at that time. As NCSoft didn't do anything to combat it! Bots that were reported were farming on the exact same spots more than a week later.

Just like with Aion, in GW2 bots are just running around in plain sight of everyone to see. Totally fearless.

Sure there were bots in WoW and EQ2 as well, but at least there they were more careful and sought out remote places, because they were actually scared to be banned.

Bots I reported in both WoW and EQ2 actually dissapeared within a couple hours to a day at most.

That's the difference.

How about playing the game before you post about it.  You clearly have never played Guild Wars 2 ever.

Nobody can clear the harvesting nodes for you, they are there until YOU MINE THEM.  Same with mobs and quest.   Mobs spawn so fast that there is zero chance of them clearing all of them.  GW2 is built not to allow bots or others to stop you from progressing and it works very very well.   

Harvesting nodes are per your toon, not anybody else's toon.   There can be 500 bots running around mining and I will still be able to mine every node in the zone.  FACT.

GW2 Bots are also removed within a few days.  I reported 3 bots on Saturday morning and by Sunday they were gone.

Please try and play the game before you talk about it.  You clearly have never played GW2.  

Another hater that has never played the game but is some how an expert on the issues we have.  

Botting is an issue but biggest issue is idiot sellers on the trader selling stuff at a lost because of the tax system and screwing the market up for the rest of us.  When an 18 slot bag costs 2 gold to make after mining all the mats and it sells for 2g 20 silver.  That is not a good profit at all for the time it takes to get the mats.  This is the way it was intended lol.. the trading post was desighned to stop anyone making money... its not an issue as such but an intended part of the game, firstly there is very little need for gold, secondly a global trading post that pits 1 million+ players drops all in the same pool , bot are not affecting this it was always gonna be satuarated, Anet did not want people to controll markets or flip items to gain huge sums of gold, this would increase  the need for people to buy gems , the whole point of the economy in GW2 is was to make you buy/sell gems and to keep the "everyones even" theory.  Bottom line is your not supposed to be making profits , some people still do manage to make small ammounts from minor flipping but playing the AH in this game was never intended to be doable, also with as you rightly pointed out individual nodes for everyone crafted items values are almost non existant, this is due to no one fighting over nodes, it makes us all gather tons while we just cruise around, when you add the %50 + of players that dont craft and just sell those mats you have total market saturation. This again was the real reason behind individual nodes, it also does give the bots an ability to ruin the economy further as they can telport farm mats all day HOWEVER the economy was meant to be broken from day 1 and will never be profitable to craft, sell items or materials due to a pool of potentially millions of vendors ....

Also blame the people who buy from those gold selling site's, if none would buy gold this problem woulnt eve excists in mmo's.

How can you blame any studio for something the players create themselves ?
They have the banhammer and it will hit hard, but each report has to be investigated so hardcore grinders aint getting banned by some moron reporting anything that is farming.

Hilarious to see these kind of posts and blaming game studio's.

I wont say there are no bots but you can go to certain areas in the game even the op posted links to the most common areas to find botters and whats bad is they do it in areas that have high traffic not some hole in the wall area like most other mmo's. But I have seen this same kind of botting in EQ2 at launch and after FTP even seen this in areas of WoW and alot of other games. Whats funny though is I stood at the bridge in Kessex hills where the centaur attack and reported the botters and watched then disapear and 5 or 10 mins later another train shows up all differant names and start all over again. I even followed a botter to a merchant one day and back to his spot reported him once he got started and he went away and then a few minutes later another appeared in the same spot and was auto attacking everything.

But in all games I have played I have seen this happen from Pay to Play to Free to play games I have even seen botters in games during beta Rift was one that I seen botters in beta and had a friend tell me he was not going to play it because of it. And yeah they cause problems but we as players can only do one thing report them.

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Originally posted by Medicated03

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Originally posted by TdogSkal

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Originally posted by JeroKane

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Originally posted by Fendel84M How do the bots hurt anybody? What if they were actually a big group of players instead of bots? Would it make you feel better? lol

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Because they interfere with your questing, killing all the mobs. Because they interfere with your harvesting, clearing all the nodes the moment they spawn. On top of that, they use teleport hacks to instantly go from one spawn point to the other.   It was the same with Aion way back after launch. Entire zones were cleared of mobs by huge bot trains, preventing "real" players from questing!  It was absolutely terrible and was the main reason for me to quit that game at that time. As NCSoft didn't do anything to combat it! Bots that were reported were farming on the exact same spots more than a week later. Just like with Aion, in GW2 bots are just running around in plain sight of everyone to see. Totally fearless. Sure there were bots in WoW and EQ2 as well, but at least there they were more careful and sought out remote places, because they were actually scared to be banned. Bots I reported in both WoW and EQ2 actually dissapeared within a couple hours to a day at most. That's the difference.

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How about playing the game before you post about it.  You clearly have never played Guild Wars 2 ever. Nobody can clear the harvesting nodes for you, they are there until YOU MINE THEM.  Same with mobs and quest.   Mobs spawn so fast that there is zero chance of them clearing all of them.  GW2 is built not to allow bots or others to stop you from progressing and it works very very well.    Harvesting nodes are per your toon, not anybody else's toon.   There can be 500 bots running around mining and I will still be able to mine every node in the zone.  FACT. GW2 Bots are also removed within a few days.  I reported 3 bots on Saturday morning and by Sunday they were gone. Please try and play the game before you talk about it.  You clearly have never played GW2.   Another hater that has never played the game but is some how an expert on the issues we have.   Botting is an issue but biggest issue is idiot sellers on the trader selling stuff at a lost because of the tax system and screwing the market up for the rest of us.  When an 18 slot bag costs 2 gold to make after mining all the mats and it sells for 2g 20 silver.  That is not a good profit at all for the time it takes to get the mats.  This is the way it was intended lol.. the trading post was desighned to stop anyone making money... its not an issue as such but an intended part of the game, firstly there is very little need for gold, secondly a global trading post that pits 1 million+ players drops all in the same pool , bot are not affecting this it was always gonna be satuarated, Anet did not want people to controll markets or flip items to gain huge sums of gold, this would increase  the need for people to buy gems , the whole point of the economy in GW2 is was to make you buy/sell gems and to keep the "everyones even" theory.  Bottom line is your not supposed to be making profits , some people still do manage to make small ammounts from minor flipping but playing the AH in this game was never intended to be doable, also with as you rightly pointed out individual nodes for everyone crafted items values are almost non existant, this is due to no one fighting over nodes, it makes us all gather tons while we just cruise around, when you add the %50 + of players that dont craft and just sell those mats you have total market saturation. This again was the real reason behind individual nodes, it also does give the bots an ability to ruin the economy further as they can telport farm mats all day HOWEVER the economy was meant to be broken from day 1 and will never be profitable to craft, sell items or materials due to a pool of potentially millions of vendors ....

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Bots disapaear in WOW ? you joined a battleground lately ? lets say from 2007 to now ?
You mined ore lately ? lets say 2004 and now ?
Blizzard condone bots as they pay a sub, they benefit from bots each month...

I think Blizzard's WoW has the most bots out of any mmo currently on the market, there are hundreds of these power leveling and gold selling site's for WoW.
Surely a company with blizzards endles funds is able to shut those sited down in a eyeblink ?
Nothing even close, some site's are up for many many many years and doin good business.

Guildwars 2 is no exception, but get your facts straight before spitting out trash.
Each mining node in the world is for you only, you can have 50000 people mining that same node and only you see that node empty once mined.
same goes for mobs, i can hit it once and get credit for it and loot my own loot.
You can tag up with bots in GW2 and make a profit out of it, unlike in other mmo's where bots steal your kills and loot.

Hilarious to read ignorant posts about gw2 when they dont even understand how stuff works :D

Henge of Denravi server.

Saw trains of ranger bots in lornars Pass killing imps and jotun. It was quite amusing. I will see if they are still around and take some screenshots.

Originally posted by Jyiiga

I'm going to take the gloves off here for a minute and generally be flat out rude. I am posting this here, because if I do on the main forums they will delete it and give me an infraction for it. 

As of today the thread on botting is now closed. 

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/On-Botting-and-What-We-re-Doing-About-It/page/12

It is 12 pages long and has 566 replies along with 84,516 views.

This is the final comment before it was closed.

The entire post comes off as condescending. Every hour are you kidding me? Mike (the one in charge of security) has not said a peep about botting since the original post was made on Sept 27th. In that time people have primarily posted screenshots, made comments about reporting bots and made comments on where they are finding bots. 

As of now the problem is worse than it was two weeks ago or even a month ago. The game is saturated with bots at most high lvl events. At this time the botters have zero fear of Anet. They bot openly 24/7 in clear view of all others players. 

I like this game.

I want to enjoy this game.

However, if this continues for another month and they keep their mouths shut about it. I will for the first time.. be encouraging people to leave this game. Both my friends and on the forums that I go to. It is out of control and they SHOULD have been better prepared for it. 

from the term "personal information" what you didint understanded ?

Originally posted by JeroKane

Because they interfere with your questing, killing all the mobs.

Because they interfere with your harvesting, clearing all the nodes the moment they spawn.

On top of that, they use teleport hacks to instantly go from one spawn point to the other.

 

(Snip...)

Not to split hairs but at least in this game, resource nodes are instanced so the bots can't harvest your nodes, only you can.

Otherwise, good post.

Originally posted by Rednecksith

Originally posted by Acebets70

Ummmm im in a lvl 65 zone andi see 2 huge bot trains running around... OP isnt lying but its ok if you wanna pretend there is no BOT problem... 

 

[mod edit]

I logged in just yesterday to do some grinding for low-level crafting mats in Queensdale (keeping all my tradeskills current with the zone(s) I'm in) and quickly logged back out in disgust. All the grinding spots for said mats are simply infested with bots, teleporting ones at that.

Arenanet just doesn't seem to care at this point, and the fanboys ignoring the problem aren't helping things. In fact, I'd say they're making it worse by acting like a bunch of Arenanet 'yes men'.

The by your own logic you are then, an ANet 'no-man'.

Was that a fair assessment of you, or was it dismissive?

Enough said about labels....

ALL the grinding spots are INFESTED with bots? - wow - you should post pictures of the many, many, many grinding spots in the game on a website to highlight the problem!

.... see what I did there?

My penultimate point is - how do the bots stop you grinding? - you just tag the mobs with some damage and you get full drops. yes it will slow you down a bit if they are everywhere, and you are moving around, but please - everywhere?

And finally - they are working on bots - the game has bots, I have posted piccies of bots at both bases in Cursed Shore myself.

I don't expect them to deal with the problem instantly - name one MMO company who has ever been able to do that?

I also don't feel an urge to 'log out in disgust' - they simply don't impact sufficiently on me, because they aren't everywhere and they cannot (unless they are in truly significant numbers which I have never seen in well over 100 hours of play) lock me out of content or it's full rewards by their presence.

It seems to me you saw some bots, got annoyed about it as many people do, but then massively overreacted and posted about it.

There will of course be times when bots interfere to some degree with what you want to do specifically. A significant delay in ANet delaing with them would indeed be poor - but we aren't nearly there yet.... 

ANet does'nt care about it?

.... please....

BOTS don't affect your grind
BOTS don't affect the nodes you collect
BOTS don't affect your pvp experience
BOTS don't affect dungeons and events

BOTS DO affect the trading post economy
^ that's the biggest concern. The more people buy gold from them, the more email spam you will receive and the more bots you will see, however the amount of email spam I've gotten lately has been drastically cut down so Anet must've done something.

In GW2 there isn't a reson to care about bots TBH because loot stealing can't happen. The only reason you should care about bots is if they break the events they are located in. Bots also keep goods cheap

/thread

Originally posted by TeknoBug

BOTS don't affect your grind
BOTS don't affect the nodes you collect
BOTS don't affect your pvp experience
BOTS don't affect dungeons and events

BOTS DO affect the trading post economy
^ that's the biggest concern. The more people buy gold from them, the more email spam you will receive and the more bots you will see, however the amount of email spam I've gotten lately has been drastically cut down so Anet must've done something.

It's debatable how much bots affect the trading post. You are dealing with a world wide economy here. Not a server wide one. With so many people buying and selling it is very hard to see how much influence bots have if any at all. 

I don't see anything wrong with that Anet post. Only way you could find that post condescending is if you are overly sensitive and take everything personally.

Obviously bots are a problem and they are working on it. They can't keep you updated every hour on what is happening though.

Locking the thread was a good idea for the time being.

Well what should I say? :/

As I mentioned in other threads about this already, I haven't come across a bot at the jade quarry server for over 3+ weeks now.

Not in high level areas and not at queensdale or ashford plains I was yesterday (did dungeons with guildies yesterday and my dailies while I was in these areas anyway) either.

Asked my collegue about his server and he didn't came across any for several weeks either.

Asked my guildies that were in other areas and it was the same answer.

Do the bots avoid our server for whatever reason or are they present on different times then the times I and some of my guildies play? I don't know.

All I can tell is that many people indeed exaggerate when they say that the "whole game is infested with bots" or that it's "overrun" by the bots.

Most of all when even the ones that are there and will be taken care off overtime doesn't really affect our gameplay.

Except if they would make it impossible to participate in a event which I doubt it can be the case cause after you enter the affected area, everything you do is considered a contribution anyway.

ANet also made a few statements that were posted in these very forums aswell, so I really don't understand why someone would want them to waste their time by answering threads like that like 24/7, when they could use that time to get rid of the problem from the servers that are affected by that greatly instead.

 If the teleportation is indeed a exploit that is getting used by people in WvsWvsW to get to orb locations is a real problem then they should take care of this first in my opinion cause it's actually not botting but rather a exploit real players are using to their advantage (I know that the HoD server did something like that the last few times we faced them).

Creating such threads 24/7 only to drag the game or the company down the whole time won't speed up their efforts, nor it will help the situation some servers are in either.

We know that they are working on it and they already stated that they do so aswell, so let them work so we can have a bot free environment in the game soon.

Originally posted by Raekon

Well what should I say? :/

As I mentioned in other threads about this already, I haven't come across a bot at the jade quarry server for over 3+ weeks now.

Contact these people then, they'll show you around:

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/On-Botting-and-What-We-re-Doing-About-It/300815

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/On-Botting-and-What-We-re-Doing-About-It/352619

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/On-Botting-and-What-We-re-Doing-About-It/366875

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/On-Botting-and-What-We-re-Doing-About-It/367821

All I can tell is that many people indeed exaggerate when they say that the "whole game is infested with bots" or that it's "overrun" by the bots.

All I can tell is that many people indeed exaggerate when they say "I haven't come across a bot at <> for over <> weeks now."

Easy to flip it around. So I take whatever the white knights have to say as well with a Kim-Kardashian-huge-ass-heap-of-salt.

Most of all when even the ones that are there and will be taken care off overtime doesn't really affect our gameplay.

It's been explained over and over how it does affect our gameplay. I can't believe people gave previous MMOs so much shit over the same issue but this time it's ANet on the receiving end and suddenly it's all "nothing to see here, move along".

ANet also made a few statements that were posted in these very forums aswell, so I really don't understand why someone would want them to waste their time by answering threads like that like 24/7, when they could use that time to get rid of the problem from the servers that are affected by that greatly instead.

I take whatever developers have to say very lightly. Ultimately they're all full of shit and want to peddle their goods (ofc, can't blame them for that) 

Actions speak louder than words. We'll see it when it's been resolved.

Creating such threads 24/7 only to drag the game or the company down the whole time won't speed up their efforts, nor it will help the situation some servers are in either.

Nothing new there. 

[mod edit]