On my server I hadn't seen but one bot on my first character from L1 to L80. But now that I am playing alts I sometimes see hordes of them I have seen the same gang of seven bots running same circle a couple days in a row now. They also tend to look just like the picture someone posted before, almost all female human, with brown bear pet, almost always Rangers, blahhhhhhhhh.
I play 3-4 hours a day. I have NEVER seen a bot. Don;t know what to tell you guys, maybe Im just lucky and chose a good server. I'm not saying they dont exist, I watched the vids posted in this thread but I have NEVER seen a single person with a name like 'gdfjgfff' or seen a person port, or any of those obvious bot chains.
Pretty well the same experience here. I've logged an embarrassing amount of hours since launch and seen a total of 5 bots.
Played this morning on my Ranger, went from 44-47.
At one point I saw 4 bots porting around, all from a single hilltop vantage. Some videos out show these types.
A semi Asian grinder that is infested with bots and hacks,why does that supprise anyone.
How is this game a grinder? I'm sorry, but anyone calling this game a grinder has obviously never played a grindy game. Most asian grinders I've played, including my current guilty pleasure Atlantica Online can take over a month of regular play for a single level's worth of XP when you're near the cap.
A semi Asian grinder that is infested with bots and hacks,why does that supprise anyone.
How is this game a grinder? I'm sorry, but anyone calling this game a grinder has obviously never played a grindy game. Most asian grinders I've played, including my current guilty pleasure Atlantica Online can take over a month of regular play for a single level's worth of XP when you're near the cap.
Guild Wars 2 isn't a grind at all.
Just because you can site worse "grind" games out there doesn't mean GW2 is not one of them. It is, by loose definition, a grind game.
We can grind xp, we can grind farming materials, we can grind these so called "quests". I found that GW2 had all of that then I hit 80 and omg it multiplied by a factor of 10. It may not take a year to get to the highest level but it is a grind fest all the same.
Suppose I better add: I have also seen a dramatic increase in the number of bots on my server (Gate of Madness) and it is disheartening that all the reporting pretty much goes unanswered. They diminish the imersivness and in a way make me feel helpless knowing that they are doing something wrong and there is nothing I can do to change it. We even tried to MPK a group to no avail^^
GW and GW2 are the least online grind of any game I've played.
I don't even mind gold farmers, I don't use them, but I've never had one ruin my day. Hackers and cheaters are another story and I haven't encountered one yet. Lots and lots of gold farmers out there. I wouldn't even play a game where I felt like I want to buy gold, so it's all kind of foreign to me. What in the world do you spend it on? There's nothing I want that badly.
I'd pay real life money if they'd put in GvG and HoH, but other than that I wouldn't pay one penny for anything in game.
Anet is "losing" the fight against bots because it isn't fighting it. All they have done is institute the diminishing returns crap which is really aimed at legit players and declared it an anti-bot measure. Most of those botters are paying customers, just like you. Except they buy multiple accounts whereas you probably only own one. Who is more important to Anet? Cracking down on botters means cracking down on a huge revenue stream.
While I am sure some botters use hacked acxcounts, the majority I see seem to be legit multi-accounts with brazenly obvious botter names like "Guardian A, Guardian B" or "LoveAO and LoveBB" unless hackers pay for name changes on their hacked accounts. Look at the rapidity with which they banned hundreds if not thousands of players for "offensive" names. How hard is it to tackle botters? Obvious botters are obvious.
If they wanted to get rid of botters all they have to do is hire a few people to go to the areas they congregate, observe for the 3 seconds it takes to pick out the obvious ones or the 10 minutes for the more complex ones and start banning accounts. In a single day on my server they could easily corral 500 hundred botters like this, all of them obvious and beyond dispute. This will create the same "chiling effect" in the botter community that their uber-banning of bad names did in the legit community. All they have to do is make botting a financially risky procedure and only the daring with money to gamble will attempt it. As it is it is clearly a risk-free venture. It might not eliminate the problem, but it will reduce it dramatically.
It doesn't require user reports as these botters have been operating 24/7 for weeks with nothing being done about it.
Your experiences in the game aren't universal. You aren't speaking for anyone other than yourself. There might be a problem with botting, but a few opinions on this forum isn't enough to convince me.
Anet has acknowledged the problem and claims to be fighting it. Is that evidence enough for you?
I've seen and reported 4 bots (in a train) in the human starting area on blackgate the other day. All 4 were rangers. Is there a reason why they like to use ranger for botting? Is it because of the pets?
Rangers have an ability called "search and rescue" where the pet can be used to automatically seek out and rez downed players. You'll notice many ranger bot gangs running together and periodically spaming this ability. If one of them gets killed, the others can auto-rez him with this ability. The bears are also pretty tanky and a signifcant percentage of mobs will tend to go for the rangers' pets over the rangers themselves unless directly targeted, so the bear serves as a partial aggro magnet/shield.
Haven't seen any bots on the areas I was mostly at the time I was playing in Jade Quarry for 3+ weeks now.
I used to get 2 gold spamming emails that I immediately reported per day in lions arch for like around a week, till I got only one mail for 2 days and afterwards none anymore.
So when I read by some people that are saying that the whole game is "overrun" only because they came across some and some others saying that they saw a whole area being "infested" with 50+ bots at once, it makes me wonder on which area and which server they are cause I find it quite strange that some servers are THAT "full" with bots while others are having barely if any at all.
Due to a debatte and argument I had with someone last week in a other thread, I asked my collegue that is on a EU server about his experience and this of his guildies and he came across one bot (teleporter one) since the headstart only.
Guildies of mine said that they saw a few on Jade Quarry in a area or two through the month but only once aswell.
So it seems that some servers are more affected than others. Playing times might play a role in this aswell.
However, saying that the "whole game" is overrun or infested by bots is an exaggeration in my opinion cause if this were the case then all servers would be full of them and they would be like around every corner (which is not the case).
Anyway, I hope that ANet will get rid of them soon so the people from the servers that are affected more than mine are not as annoyed as they seem to be now.
I can only speak for Yak's Bend and what I've seen. Like I said my first trip to L80 I only ran into one bot, she was around Level 60 something and was standing shooting fire at a wall for hours and hours and hours. btw there was more than just this incident, many people were reporting her, it was just funny when whatever macro/program went wonky and had her standing there shooting a wall forever.
But now I have several alts from level 27 up to level 58, some areas I haven't seen any bots at all but other areas are infested with them bad. For a few days in a row with my L50+ I saw a group of 6-7 of them running the same circuit over and over. The other area I have come to mind is in Gendarran Fields. I've seen a group of 3 constantly there, all the exact same appearance, same armor, same brown bear pet, sighhhh. I was using the brown bear with my Ranger but now I am loathe to do so, bots are making me see the pet as somehow dirty or something, lol.
Worse bot infestation I have seen, and I have seen quite a few. (AC, Aion, numerous Asian grinders etc.) What beggars belief is that Anet are allowing them to proliferate when a lot are so blatantly un sophisticated they take seconds to identify.
My opinion of Anet has diminished significantly, they are obviously (and rightly) proud of there game to see it so abused must be gut wrenching. I just don't understand it.
Bots have killed the game for me ! Its has been getting worst not better and now Ive been seeing players telepeort around not bots .Thats what happens when you let something go so long its speading and normal players wont in on the fun if thats what you want call it for me its a game ender . Just look and you will find websites selling hacks basiclly god mode for the game ,Gold ,kramma and bots.
My sulotion is to let players flag these cheats and without acode like the time they were flag and by who type in they are turn red open for Pking ! Losing all their loot and kramma to those players killing them of course any bad flags would give the player a time out from do any flagging .Of course this is just for bots as far as players cheating I got noghting . At less this way I can have some fun again.
The bots are bad but for me it starts to make me wonder why would I bother especially with crafting, with all the warping/porting to nodes going on by actual players. I need to run around and they port back and forth. My time is devalued to nothing and while I am not scraping coppers, I do not have a fortune amassing either.
And nothing is done.
Sure. They are working on it. Good.
It's been long enough and acknowledged enough that they can and should drop a team of live GMs on it to ban the ones that are obvious. They had a wonderful post on X number ( I think it was 1600?) were banned int he first week or two (for other infractions as well). Half a dozen GMs checking on the botting would have hundreds done in the 1st 48 hours. (Yes GMs can port directly to an account once they know it's name, which is auto-tagged in the report.)
Give the players a bit of a positive feeling and get rid of some of the bad guys. Keep the other 20, 30, 50 guys and gals working on a software fix but get 5 -10 bodies actively jumping around banning the ones you can visible verify are botting.
Comments
On my server I hadn't seen but one bot on my first character from L1 to L80. But now that I am playing alts I sometimes see hordes of them
I have seen the same gang of seven bots running same circle a couple days in a row now. They also tend to look just like the picture someone posted before, almost all female human, with brown bear pet, almost always Rangers, blahhhhhhhhh.
How is this game a grinder? I'm sorry, but anyone calling this game a grinder has obviously never played a grindy game. Most asian grinders I've played, including my current guilty pleasure Atlantica Online can take over a month of regular play for a single level's worth of XP when you're near the cap.
Guild Wars 2 isn't a grind at all.
Just because you can site worse "grind" games out there doesn't mean GW2 is not one of them. It is, by loose definition, a grind game.
We can grind xp, we can grind farming materials, we can grind these so called "quests". I found that GW2 had all of that then I hit 80 and omg it multiplied by a factor of 10. It may not take a year to get to the highest level but it is a grind fest all the same.
Suppose I better add: I have also seen a dramatic increase in the number of bots on my server (Gate of Madness) and it is disheartening that all the reporting pretty much goes unanswered. They diminish the imersivness and in a way make me feel helpless knowing that they are doing something wrong and there is nothing I can do to change it. We even tried to MPK a group to no avail^^
GW and GW2 are the least online grind of any game I've played.
I don't even mind gold farmers, I don't use them, but I've never had one ruin my day. Hackers and cheaters are another story and I haven't encountered one yet. Lots and lots of gold farmers out there. I wouldn't even play a game where I felt like I want to buy gold, so it's all kind of foreign to me. What in the world do you spend it on? There's nothing I want that badly.
I'd pay real life money if they'd put in GvG and HoH, but other than that I wouldn't pay one penny for anything in game.
Asdar
Anet is "losing" the fight against bots because it isn't fighting it. All they have done is institute the diminishing returns crap which is really aimed at legit players and declared it an anti-bot measure. Most of those botters are paying customers, just like you. Except they buy multiple accounts whereas you probably only own one. Who is more important to Anet? Cracking down on botters means cracking down on a huge revenue stream.
While I am sure some botters use hacked acxcounts, the majority I see seem to be legit multi-accounts with brazenly obvious botter names like "Guardian A, Guardian B" or "LoveAO and LoveBB" unless hackers pay for name changes on their hacked accounts. Look at the rapidity with which they banned hundreds if not thousands of players for "offensive" names. How hard is it to tackle botters? Obvious botters are obvious.
If they wanted to get rid of botters all they have to do is hire a few people to go to the areas they congregate, observe for the 3 seconds it takes to pick out the obvious ones or the 10 minutes for the more complex ones and start banning accounts. In a single day on my server they could easily corral 500 hundred botters like this, all of them obvious and beyond dispute. This will create the same "chiling effect" in the botter community that their uber-banning of bad names did in the legit community. All they have to do is make botting a financially risky procedure and only the daring with money to gamble will attempt it. As it is it is clearly a risk-free venture. It might not eliminate the problem, but it will reduce it dramatically.
It doesn't require user reports as these botters have been operating 24/7 for weeks with nothing being done about it.
Anet has acknowledged the problem and claims to be fighting it. Is that evidence enough for you?
Rangers have an ability called "search and rescue" where the pet can be used to automatically seek out and rez downed players. You'll notice many ranger bot gangs running together and periodically spaming this ability. If one of them gets killed, the others can auto-rez him with this ability. The bears are also pretty tanky and a signifcant percentage of mobs will tend to go for the rangers' pets over the rangers themselves unless directly targeted, so the bear serves as a partial aggro magnet/shield.
Haven't seen any bots on the areas I was mostly at the time I was playing in Jade Quarry for 3+ weeks now.
I used to get 2 gold spamming emails that I immediately reported per day in lions arch for like around a week, till I got only one mail for 2 days and afterwards none anymore.
So when I read by some people that are saying that the whole game is "overrun" only because they came across some and some others saying that they saw a whole area being "infested" with 50+ bots at once, it makes me wonder on which area and which server they are cause I find it quite strange that some servers are THAT "full" with bots while others are having barely if any at all.
Due to a debatte and argument I had with someone last week in a other thread, I asked my collegue that is on a EU server about his experience and this of his guildies and he came across one bot (teleporter one) since the headstart only.
Guildies of mine said that they saw a few on Jade Quarry in a area or two through the month but only once aswell.
So it seems that some servers are more affected than others. Playing times might play a role in this aswell.
However, saying that the "whole game" is overrun or infested by bots is an exaggeration in my opinion cause if this were the case then all servers would be full of them and they would be like around every corner (which is not the case).
Anyway, I hope that ANet will get rid of them soon so the people from the servers that are affected more than mine are not as annoyed as they seem to be now.
I can only speak for Yak's Bend and what I've seen. Like I said my first trip to L80 I only ran into one bot, she was around Level 60 something and was standing shooting fire at a wall for hours and hours and hours. btw there was more than just this incident, many people were reporting her, it was just funny when whatever macro/program went wonky and had her standing there shooting a wall forever.
But now I have several alts from level 27 up to level 58, some areas I haven't seen any bots at all but other areas are infested with them bad. For a few days in a row with my L50+ I saw a group of 6-7 of them running the same circuit over and over. The other area I have come to mind is in Gendarran Fields. I've seen a group of 3 constantly there, all the exact same appearance, same armor, same brown bear pet, sighhhh. I was using the brown bear with my Ranger but now I am loathe to do so, bots are making me see the pet as somehow dirty or something, lol.
Worse bot infestation I have seen, and I have seen quite a few. (AC, Aion, numerous Asian grinders etc.) What beggars belief is that Anet are allowing them to proliferate when a lot are so blatantly un sophisticated they take seconds to identify.
My opinion of Anet has diminished significantly, they are obviously (and rightly) proud of there game to see it so abused must be gut wrenching. I just don't understand it.
Bots have killed the game for me ! Its has been getting worst not better and now Ive been seeing players telepeort around not bots .Thats what happens when you let something go so long its speading and normal players wont in on the fun if thats what you want call it for me its a game ender . Just look and you will find websites selling hacks basiclly god mode for the game ,Gold ,kramma and bots.
My sulotion is to let players flag these cheats and without acode like the time they were flag and by who type in they are turn red open for Pking ! Losing all their loot and kramma to those players killing them of course any bad flags would give the player a time out from do any flagging .Of course this is just for bots as far as players cheating I got noghting . At less this way I can have some fun again.
The bots are bad but for me it starts to make me wonder why would I bother especially with crafting, with all the warping/porting to nodes going on by actual players. I need to run around and they port back and forth. My time is devalued to nothing and while I am not scraping coppers, I do not have a fortune amassing either.
And nothing is done.
Sure. They are working on it. Good.
It's been long enough and acknowledged enough that they can and should drop a team of live GMs on it to ban the ones that are obvious. They had a wonderful post on X number ( I think it was 1600?) were banned int he first week or two (for other infractions as well). Half a dozen GMs checking on the botting would have hundreds done in the 1st 48 hours. (Yes GMs can port directly to an account once they know it's name, which is auto-tagged in the report.)
Give the players a bit of a positive feeling and get rid of some of the bad guys. Keep the other 20, 30, 50 guys and gals working on a software fix but get 5 -10 bodies actively jumping around banning the ones you can visible verify are botting.