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  1. #1

    Botting, and the real Solution!(Memoirs of a former Botter)

    Okay its time for some real talk from a guy who has been playing WoW since Vanilla(As if that gives me some kind of credibility)

    This thread is about Botting and its solution as painful as it may be for Blizzard it is probably the best solution they will ever get if they choose to pull their heads out of their ass and realize that they alone are unable to stop botting without the communities assistance.

    Before we get going, this may be a bit of a read get off the ride now if you aren't prepared, otherwise buckle your seat belts.

    For those who want to skip to the resolution CTRL + F Solution!(Twice of course)

    Vanilla: I had a friend who was High Warlord on my Server, I was mystified by how he accomplished it and as much as I could compete with him when gear was even I could never understand how he reached this level of prestige. He confessed to me in BC that he had botted his way to High Warlord using his programming skills and reading the memory to locate position and map accordingly, he was much more programming Savy than I was.

    BC: I wanted the entry level PvP Epics but I could only commit to so much gaming while having other serious commitments. My friend pointed me in the direction of a Macro Recorder That I could use(in first person) to queue for Alterac Valley, join Alterace Valley, use my AV Trinket to port to base and spam my /target attacksequence macro. I proceeded to get all my Gear on all my characters this way.

    As my friends started receiving bans for this type of behavior and losing gear I discovered a former bot known as Pirox as many of you may have heard of.

    Wotlk: Pirox geared me and leveled me all the way through Wotlk grinding mobs with most of my alts as I showed up to the expansion late and was desperate to catch up. It automated my attacks and made me seem slightly more human to the unintelligent player. I got all my honor gear this way.

    Cata: I skipped this expansion, apparently I have fantastic foresight based on what the communities general opinion of this expansion is, Pirox also got shutdown along with a plethora of Pirox bans, I was not amongst those bans fortunately due to inactivity I suppose.

    Mop: Have been playing casually and noticing the immense amount of bots in this game which has increased substantially since Wotlk when I last played. It is actually quite disturbing to have >50% of players in a single battleground be bots I only imagine it must be nightmarish for the actual real players.

    If you have read this far you are probably wondering what my solution is and it isn't anything new or groundbreaking, just a real simple and straightforward yet effective solution.



    Blizzard needs to seriously come to terms with the fact that they aren't actually doing a damn thing to hinder the botting community as any sane WoW player has realized.

    Most players are getting gear exclusively from cheating, so what should be done?

    Solution: The counter strike approach, put the game in the hands of the players. Players can make their own Warsong/Ab/Insert BG here server on WoWs Server just like in Starcraft, Warcraft 2/3 & Diablo, and gains administrative control of said server for a consistent gaming experience where people who flat out do not respond intelligently like a human can be kicked/banned by people who are given authorized privileges. People can then choose which server they want to join, based on which map they want to play or choose random to be randomly assigned to a server that has open spots available.

    - A sense of community will be built by people who repeatedly join the same server and actually get to know the other members who frequent their server, improving teamwork and the overall competitiveness of the game that was present in Vanilla do to actually gaining the opportunity to learn how your opponent plays consistently while gaining all the benefits of the modern game.

    - Bots will generally become a thing of the past where you as a server can test the intellectual skills of new members to distinguish whether or not they are being controlled by an active human. Even if this function is abused you will always have another server you can join in the result of being unjustly banned, or start one yourself.

    - Less dormant waiting in queues and more active searching, instead of waiting for blizzard to randomly find you a match, you could find one yourself even if it meant you were playing 5vs5 in a warsong or any other given map, at least you get to play right away.

    Okay so by this point you are probably saying "BUT GEMINIEL THEN PEOPLE COULD JUST MAKE A SERVER AND WIN TRADE TO GET ALL THEIR GEAR!!!!!" You are absolutely right they could do that, but perhaps Blizzard, instead of focusing on botting could then direct their focus on Wintraders due to the fact that the community will be dealing with botting in PvP and Blizzard would have more active resources available to monitor these sorts of things, not to mention we could always allow the community to report servers for being guilty of win trading. It isn't like win trading isn't easily identifiable in the extreme setting anyways. The problem generally is that blizzard does not have the resources to monitor these things due to whatever reason, perhaps it is botting perhaps it is not I am not in a position to say. I am not trying to justify Win Trading, but would it really be a terrible tradeoff for botting? If I could remove botting in exchange for some wintrading (so long as gear was reasonably attainable) I would do it in a heartbeat. Especially if blizzard allowed us to report entire servers for win trading. As it stand currently bots coexist with Wintraders, nothing is stopping win traders currently, eliminating one is at least a step in the proper direction.

    The Generic solution could also be, less honor for killing the same people over again(already implemented) and people just continuously play on the same server for fun(crazy assed concept) instead of just getting new gear, hell it worked for quake, counterstrike and many other games where the soul purpose it fun in PvP, I really can't see why it wouldn't work here.

    I truly think this could only benefit the PvP Community and help people meet real people in this game. I wish blizzard wanted to help the PvP community really enjoy this game but it is really getting harder and harder and bots are the problem(I apologize for my crimes ) It isn't fun joining a game where sometimes <50% of the players aren't human.

    I Want to stress that I understand that all potential solutions come with their share of issues, so I accept the fact that this isn't a perfect solution, I hope you can assist me in overcoming those adversities by letting me know what you think.

    I hope you enjoyed this read if you endured and please comment below whether you agree or disagree.

    I Am in no way shape or form talking about Rated battlegrounds
    Last edited by Geminiel; 2013-05-11 at 07:36 AM.

  2. #2
    Deleted
    So you want to change botting for wintrading ? Both are shit and the community shouldn't use it, but scum like some people do both. This does not even come close to a solution.

    And less honor for killing would result in people bitching about the time they have to spend farming gear.

    I don't see a good solution, I would be happy if they just perma ban every botter there is, still the best solution they can have.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by KunkkaTheAdmiral View Post
    So you want to change botting for wintrading ? Both are shit and the community shouldn't use it, but scum like some people do both. This does not even come close to a solution.

    And less honor for killing would result in people bitching about the time they have to spend farming gear.

    I don't see a good solution, I would be happy if they just perma ban every botter there is, still the best solution they can have.
    If they could perma ban they would, the problem is with good programmers accessing the memory it is very easy to appear human on blizzards end of things. You are not required to communicate with your team in anyway shape or form, I personally think it is necessary to win but I honestly can't tell between which players are human or not because they don't feel obligated in anyway shape or form to contribute to communicating even when they are human. Most people just want to top meters, very few give a shit about contributing to the team.

    And to emphasize I am not talking about Rated Battle Grounds.

    I am not certain you read my entire post either, I only mentioned trading Bots for win traders if gear was more easily attainable/if servers could be reported for win trading, I know this probably isn't the best solution but realistically what is stopping win traders at all now, as of right now they coexist with botting. Eliminating one is at least a step in the proper direction.

    I also only said less honor for repeatably killing the exact same player not in general as you made it sound(this already exists by the way).
    Last edited by Geminiel; 2013-05-11 at 07:52 AM.

  4. #4
    The only solution to botting is to actually hire an active force of gm's specifically to hunt down and ban botters in real time. I guarantee it would be less prevalent if people knew there was a real chance of losing their accounts within minutes of using a bot for the first time.

  5. #5
    If you think Blizzard will ever allow private servers, I'm afraid that you are delusional. Especially if you somehow imagine that characters from a private server will be allowed back into the general population.

    There may be a way for Blizzard to create battlegrounds that require some sort of qualification (Rated Battlegrounds, for example), but it will still be possible to game the system.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by oplawlz View Post
    The only solution to botting is to actually hire an active force of gm's specifically to hunt down and ban botters in real time. I guarantee it would be less prevalent if people knew there was a real chance of losing their accounts within minutes of using a bot for the first time.
    I agree and disagree. If there was a fool proof way to distinguish between human and bot I would be much more inclined to agree, the problem is that there isn't. In fact watching many human players play vs people I have easily identified as bots there isn't a whole lot that distinguishes the two other than the characteristics of an inexperienced botter. Most people that play WoW do so rather silently as if they are there for the sole purpose to get in, gain their Honor and leave. This mindset replicates that of the bots. While a bot will make obvious mistakes when a bot is programmed well it can play better than an inexperienced person can play. Trust me when I botted on many occasions I would be at the top of dmg/healing meters and killing blows(which is sad), this didn't always occur but unless you are expecting someone to whisper every person saying "Hey you better respond to this or you are getting banned!", and not have the general American populace scream "FASCISM!!" than good luck to having a team that bans on sight they will inevitably fail as people will outprogram them and assimilate themselves into the standard WoW player base.

    ---------- Post added 2013-05-11 at 07:50 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Vandexander View Post
    If you think Blizzard will ever allow private servers, I'm afraid that you are delusional. Especially if you somehow imagine that characters from a private server will be allowed back into the general population.

    There may be a way for Blizzard to create battlegrounds that require some sort of qualification (Rated Battlegrounds, for example), but it will still be possible to game the system.
    I never said private servers so much as public servers on WoWs Mother Server, this way they monitor everything on their end while allowing players to create their own server(essentially), it is just like Starcraft Warcraft(RTS) and Diablo, they monitor(theoretically) all of those servers and every game that is hosted on them. This would simply put the power in the players hands to eliminate bots from playing games with them.

  7. #7
    Deleted
    First off all it's funny how you think that Blizzard couldn't recognize bots which YOU have "easily identified." Not that this attitude is uncommon, still funny though. If we had your suggestion of player-run "servers" there would be a lot of shit going on: false bans, wintrading, abuse of pseudo-gm powers etc., all of which Blizzard than had to manually review. Gain for Blizzard? Nothing.
    I don't get where you're going with the whole "private but not really" server thing anyway, where does that exist in e.g. Starcraft? Are you talking about custom games on battle.net (which are just for fun without any relevance to the ladder/real game) or are you talking about the independent ladders like ICCUP for Broodwar (which are in no way whatsoever monitored by Blizzard)? The first one doesn't make any sense and the second one IS a private server.

  8. #8
    Bloodsail Admiral Misuteri's Avatar
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    I don't understand why a rating/feedback system can't be used like exists on Xbox Live.

    A player owns in a BG is top heals, dmg, KB's, flag returns, victory points? +++'s all around for him.

    A player does 0 kills, 15 deaths, 50k in dmg and 0 healing? ---'s all around for him.

    That way a BG feedback system starts weeding players and potentially seeding them against similar opponents. Yes, people will exploit to raise and lower rankings. However my experience with Halo (Admittedly a long time ago.) showed me that this system worked extremely well and I wasn't overmatched or face rolling very often.

  9. #9
    You can't have player controlled severs in a game with permanent gear. Counter-Strike works because gear resets on every map change. Give players a way to make their servers give gear and they will exploit it. Make player servers give no gear and no one will play on them.

  10. #10
    The Lightbringer Ultima's Avatar
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    It's not like botting isn't being dealt with by Blizzard. I'd also like to point out that I so rarely encounter bots I can only remember two times this year where I've thought "Hang on".

    /my subjective experience

  11. #11
    So you're saying Blizzard should completely rebuild the random BG system from the ground up just so people can't bot free honor gear...

    If you really think people botting for honor gear is a big problem to the point where you want the game rebuilt to counter it then I've got news for you. No one, not even Blizzard cares about BG bots. They do nothing. BG bots are made for personal convenience, to gear up their character with honor gear without having to sit though terrible BGs. People don't go on to sell honor geared characters once they are done, they don't make gold in BGs and sell the gold. It doesn't effect Blizzard in any way so why should the game be rebuilt just to get rid of something that isn't a problem.

    Not to mention your desired end result of having no bots on your team can already be accomplished through making a premade group either in trade or with an addon like oQueue.
    Last edited by Glurp; 2013-05-11 at 11:39 AM.

  12. #12
    a simpl solution to "botting" would be to let your char go fishing let's say in a special place, called the lake of endless dreams. Or just call it random cave 51 with some waterpools lol. Where your char keeps fishing whout you klicking anything.
    That's atleast the only real thing where i would say .. fine use a bot i get it fishing sucks! (real fishing is hanging out with buddys drinking beer, and like 1% of oh shit we got a fish .. shit what do we do now? eat it? throw it back? shiit why is there a fish? )

    or just like remove some basic stuff that bots in general use

    i don't realy care for pvp bots, whey are fun to kill :P and most of the time better then most crappy players ive met so no real harm done

  13. #13
    Deleted
    If you put the power in the hands of player, there would be servers without bots, but there would also be grinding or leveling servers where on the other side would be afk players, and the former side would be keep winning, not the solution.

  14. #14
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Misuteri View Post
    I don't understand why a rating/feedback system can't be used like exists on Xbox Live.

    A player owns in a BG is top heals, dmg, KB's, flag returns, victory points? +++'s all around for him.

    A player does 0 kills, 15 deaths, 50k in dmg and 0 healing? ---'s all around for him.

    That way a BG feedback system starts weeding players and potentially seeding them against similar opponents. Yes, people will exploit to raise and lower rankings. However my experience with Halo (Admittedly a long time ago.) showed me that this system worked extremely well and I wasn't overmatched or face rolling very often.
    This has nothing to do with botting (and is already done by mmr, for rated pvp)

    INB4 someone brings up the tribunal thing from league of leagends, that shit only works for something like checking chat logs or maybe match history.

  15. #15
    Immortal Evolixe's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Azalis View Post
    Make player servers give no gear and no one will play on them.
    Wrong. A PvPer at heart doesn't give a shit about gear nor gaining honor. I regulary play a few bg's on my main character even though there is nothing in it for me.

  16. #16
    I still think the easiest way to combat botting in BGs is something already in the game. If you could use the ignore function in BGs and it would make sure you were never put in a BG with that person again, we could eliminate botting in BGs. Once people started ignoring bots, there would be fewer and fewer BGs they could join. Eventually, they could only join BGs with themselves, and nobody would have to deal with them.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Misuteri View Post
    I don't understand why a rating/feedback system can't be used like exists on Xbox Live.

    A player owns in a BG is top heals, dmg, KB's, flag returns, victory points? +++'s all around for him.

    A player does 0 kills, 15 deaths, 50k in dmg and 0 healing? ---'s all around for him.

    That way a BG feedback system starts weeding players and potentially seeding them against similar opponents. Yes, people will exploit to raise and lower rankings. However my experience with Halo (Admittedly a long time ago.) showed me that this system worked extremely well and I wasn't overmatched or face rolling very often.
    When i botted on a frost DK he would be #1 dmg chart every 2d game, so this isn't a solution at all.

    P.S. Got 72 hrs ban not far ago so GMs are doing their job, just they're not that many and current botting technologiest (aka custom combat routines and behaviour patterns) makes it impossible to automaticly track bots unless WoW itself starts to scan your PC (and not many would be happy in such a case).

  18. #18
    The counterstrike approach - I haven't played counterstrike myself, but I have played other shooters and games with servers like that, unless counterstrike is in some way vastly different, please enlighten me.

    The issue with servers like this is that a lot of your time becomes spend on finding a server to your liking. When you've finally found one, there'll be new problems. For example: banned for being too good, an obvious and common problem in many shooter servers. Having two completely legit friends (I know, I saw them play) who are very skilled, they eventually found it impossible to join any server and play for a prolonged time without getting banhammered. Secondly: servers that allow cheating. They exist. Assuming 50% of the battlegrounding crowd is botting, which is a very high number and I don't think that's the case but let's assume, that'd mean that 50% of servers would, as a result, have botters or be ran by botters. Finding that one legit server where botters are constantly dealt with will be difficult. Thirdly, recognizing a bot. While you may be apt at recognizing bots, having been one yourself, and some other players may as well, the fact of the matter is that most players simply have no idea what to look for. Result: wrong bans and reports, such as bad players, the kind who noobturns, backpaddles, clicks their spells in the most unlikely order, will repeatedly get mistaken for bots. Now knowing the PvP community, people will probably say "good riddance l2p lol noob" but that's obviously not the goal of the game. It's for everyone to play, good or bad.

    This I believe is also why Blizzard is having a hard time dealing with bots, the amount of false reports, not to mention that players have long since abandoned reporting. Investigating whether someone is botting, bad, or on follow for one game is a time-consuming procedure, especially considering the sheer amount of bots. Secondly, the dreaded ban-waves. I understand the logic behind it, yet the problem is that it rewards botters anyway by letting them be for an undefined amount of time.

    Lastly, botting is NOT an issue exclusive to battlegrounds. Botting farmers have a huge and negative impact on the economy and are directly tied to goldselling practices. Botting in LFR may be a less obnoxious problem than in battlegrounds, but honestly, does that mean this should be tolerated? I believe that whoever bots one part of the game is more likely to bot the other part, yet that's not always the case.

    So by "fixing" battlegrounds, you're not fixing the botting problem itself. You're bandaiding the issue. Other parts of the game still get botted.

    ---------- Post added 2013-05-11 at 02:07 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Nyaldee View Post
    When i botted on a frost DK he would be #1 dmg chart every 2d game, so this isn't a solution at all.

    P.S. Got 72 hrs ban not far ago so GMs are doing their job, just they're not that many and current botting technologiest (aka custom combat routines and behaviour patterns) makes it impossible to automaticly track bots unless WoW itself starts to scan your PC (and not many would be happy in such a case).
    I don't want to bot myself, I'd never risk my account, it'd be terribly selfish of me towards my guild. I am however interested in learning about how those new botting technologies work. Would you enlighten me? In PM, if the forums won't allow. I don't need links to anything, just a description on how this works.

  19. #19
    Immortal Evolixe's Avatar
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    The best solution to stop botting in BG's is still to just hand out honor gear for free. It's not like that is going to cause any harm.

    Except for PvE in 5man dungeons and making it easy to enter LFR that nobody cares about.

    But ye, useless PvE content >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> PvP.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Holo View Post
    The best solution to stop botting in BG's is still to just hand out honor gear for free. It's not like that is going to cause any harm.

    Except for PvE in 5man dungeons and making it easy to enter LFR that nobody cares about.

    But ye, useless PvE content >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> PvP.
    There're miriads of solutions:
    1. Increase honor gain similar to rep gain when you're farming it for your alts.
    2. Make craftable sets a starting point of PvP (atm it's just a trash, in fact even honor gear is just a trash more then tier behind previous season wellfare gear).
    3. Balance pvp properly with small adjustments instead of retarded all out patches just changing FOTMs. They should take a note of how moba games (dota, lol, hon) are balanced with small coefficient changes week after week.
    4. Get some real testing going - for example provide some pets, tabards or whatever for high raited players doing pvp on PTR and collect data properly. Can even do invitationals for mini tourney with virtual prizes - if they can invite top pve guilds to test content then inviting top pvp guilds to test RBGs/Arenas shouldn't be that hard.
    5-999. Name it yourself.

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