Ascertes
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Posts posted by Ascertes
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I've been in and out of this game over the years so I don't know the answer to this: But have they ever explained why they can't just implement a simple email/chat spam filter? I mean these guys all rely on establishing pretty regular patterns of behavior that should be easily detectable. It's obvious there's nothing there now because these guys spamming general chat have the URL in their message in plain text. A spam filter would quickly learn that that is spam and automatically silence those messages.
They've never explained it to my knowledge, and that spam filter would do wonders. In many MMO's I've played, when the chat filter is implemented, it's almost impossible to decipher what the heck it is said spam bots are saying, effectively undermining their advertising campaigns.
Little steps like these go a looooooooong way.
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I've added an additional section to the Methods list that's called "General PvE tactics." This area is to help those on PvE servers deal with bots by providing some simple guidelines as to how to break them.
Cheers! And happy breaking
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What about an option in the preference menu that allows a person to toggle whether mail is allowed from strangers or not? Examples of non-strangers would be guildies, people in your friends list, and your other characters. Would that work for the mail spammers?
I don't see why not. This would work as well and seriously undercut their advertising effort.
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Bioware bans them when they get reported.
It is impossible to ever fully get rid of them however, because there is real world money involved in credit farming. The banned folks just return with new accounts. Credit farming by bots will exist so long as there are people willing to spend real world money to purchase in game credits. For every person that reports a bot there are probably 10 other players alt-tabbing to go to their website to purchase credits.
There is a reason why they exist in every MMO and no company has ever been able to fully eliminate it from their games.
That isn't to say that people can't have fun breaking the bots, though. Some of the suggestions in this thread do sound amusing.
Personally instead of banning them I think Bioware should just flag them permanently for PVP, with the added bonus of any player killing them getting to loot whatever credits or items they've accumulated. Introduce a feature where you can credit farm bots through PVP.
This...I like this!
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Friendly bump to keep this thread alive. Our good work needs to be done and our methods spread around the community!
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I have never seen a bot in this game. Ever.
Either you don't know what to look for in a bot or you aren't exploring very much. I guarantee you'll find them in the Heroic areas on Hoth and above, or at the mailboxes on the starter planets. These in particular have nonsense names. How about the spammers on the fleet? Those are technically bots as well.
I will personally assure you that they do exist and are a growing problem in this game.
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Aha! Can they at least ban some words in the chat or in mail system? I mean if mail/chat contains black-listed word (a full site name lol) or a pattern so it cannon be delivered to recipient and sender marked as suspicious!
Is that so hard? But nobody cares...
A good idea for BioWare, but alas there is nothing we as players can do in regards to this
I'm not sure where I stand on BioWare being apathetic towards the problem, but regardless it's time we start doing our part. -
So let me get this straight.
You want a male apprentice, and have a LORE (yes you said Lore in the opening post) relationship with them? I guess that's your thing but that's...unusual.
"Oh Darth (insert title here), I want to be with you again so you can tell me of the glory of Ajunta Pal!" Okay then
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Hey everyone! For those who haven't taken a look at the thread in a while, there is a bunch of new stuff up there with some new methods to break bots in various areas. Feel free to check them out for yourselves!
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I have to agree with the OP here. One thing I always enjoyed was gearing up my comps in PvP and taking them off to Tatoine or whatever planet had some activity going on and just wrecking people with them. I enjoyed maxxing out my companions; they're characters I enjoy and I want to use them and for them to be successful. I may be a tank, but I liked Vette better than Quinn on my Jugg even though she was deeps so I used her. No skin off my teeth. I had no qualms about them not being able to fill every role because honestly, it wouldn't make sense.
How does it make sense for Doc to be a tank? He's a smuggler-esque character.
How does it make sense for Scourge to heal? He's pretty much a Juggernaut.
Khem Val healing? What?
Andronikos? Doesn't make sense to be a tank or a healer.
The list goes on. These don't make any sense what so ever, and never once did I see people complain so I don't quite get why they decided to make this change
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Friendly bump for awareness.
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Security chests only drop mats these days. Bot problem(and legitimate credit farmer issue) solved.
Glad to hear it. That's another scratch in their income but that means they will probably ramp up efforts at other sites. We need more!
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I have good news everybody! Me and a friend were brainstorming on how to deal with bots on PvE servers, especially the credit farmers, and we may have something for you.
This meat and potatoes of what we thought up was pulling one of the NPC's they're farming into a pit, or onto a ledge so that the bot will attempt to follow it and get itself stuck on said ledge or in said pit. I have yet to test this out anywhere, but the logic seems sound. If anybody wants to help out with this endeavor, please post your findings on this thread so I can update the main post and hopefully bring some relief to our PvE friends in arms!
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I report the ones that pop up like the creatures from Tremors. I target, add to friends list so I can see when that toon is on. Ill usually travel to the world they are on, and if I see em at it again I report. This has gone on for 10 days at the longest but they get deactivated pretty fast if you lock onto one, and report everytime you see them breaking TOS.
As for mob farmers, I cant say much. I farm mobs in heroic areas when I want new armor pieces. If I see a glitch bot farming Ill try OP's methods 1 and 2 for sure.
This is brilliant! Glad to see BioWare taking notice of your efforts. Will add this to the front page.
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When I spot botters during the rakghoul event, I make sure to explode on them.
From what I understand that's a short term fix. We need something to last longer...
But it's still something! I will add this to the main page.
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I sometimes wish I could bot the botters. Ya know make a program that follows anyone else botting, getting in their way, killing them, stealing their money and sending it to some random legit gamer. But one, my puter skills are as follows, turn on computer, turn on swtor, tada. And two, it's against the rules, but oh the joy if i could do this.
I know for a fact it would make my life a TON easier if this were a thing. Still, like you said it's against the rules. We're stuck with doing things the hard way...
Maybe asked nice enough...lol
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Add in game GMs. I know, earth shattering stuff here, wouldnt want BW to actually lift a finger now, would we?
BioWare does seem to be apathetic towards the botting plight, even though I know they ban the spammers on the fleet rather frequently as well as the mail senders. The rest of them though? Nah. That's why I made this thread: I'm tired of waiting for BioWare to do something. It's time we did something.
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The ones the bot the starting planets just kill me . Stand in the same spot , killing things until they are like level 8 or 9 , then move to the higher levels and repeat . I was starting a trooper the other day, in a room a chest spawn near a bot and he looted it as he killed the mobs. went on my way and came back to see him loot it again . before I left the planet I went back and he was lvl 8 , still killing the npcs in the room and looting the chest :/ Is there real credits doing this on starting planets?
but, far as chest go there should be a buff you get when you loot them and can't loot another for 30 mins or so . give other players a chance to get one .
And for boters killing mobs for loot , maybe add something If you kill the same mob over and over in a set time frame, it stops dropping loot or a reduce loot . This would have a big impact on even the credit famers who are really playing . Just seems bots go after the same mobs
There probably isn't very many credits to earn there, but if they move up to lvl 8-9, they're either starting a new credit farmer to use at future planets (Hoth, Ilum and Corellia being big offenders.) Or, they just turn them into one of the various spam bots on the fleet that we all hate.
We should still figure something out on how to break them though.
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Friendly Bump post for awareness!
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I've seen this one too, on Ebon Hawk. They run around the Aggressor Camp on Rishi as a level 50 Sorcerer and hit all the slicing boxes really quickly without aggroing any mobs. They appear to fall through the elevated walkways from time to time and become visible, which is how I targeted them, then a few seconds after the last box they vanish. Then do it all over again after the boxes respawn.
I'm not really sure what you guys mean by "bot" but how are they moving around so fast and without getting any agro from the mobs?
I filed a ticket about it.
By bots we refer to people who are running a script in the background that controls their character for them so they don't have to do anything while their character grinds out credits, rewards, etc. These are against the rules of just about every MMO in existence and they destroy everything they touch. Many of these bots are also controlled by credit selling sites, another thing that is against the rules of almost all MMO's.
And they're moving around so fast due to a speed hack that these bots have been utilizing for some time. They're scum and need to be dealt with. It's a good thing you filed a ticket, but usually nothing ever comes out of them. Hence why I made this thread, so we as players can do something about this plague.
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If you're on a PvP server there is probably a way to do it. I'll investigate and see what I can find and I'll get back to you.
UPDATE: Well, I have a mixed bag of results. Firstly I went to 4 different servers on Rishi...and didn't encounter a single bot. I found several security chests, but after waiting around for a bit for somebody to show up I just took them for myself.
The good news: There were no bots where I went! Huzzah! Also, there are several good ledges and rock faces that you could easily climb up and pull bots onto in order to break them, much like my Ilum method. So if you do see any, you know what to do...
The bad news: Since I didn't encounter any, I wasn't able to really test any methods whether it be PvP or otherwise :|
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Unfortunately this game is people friendly and actually harassing people is quite hard and thus its even harder to harass a botting toon.
Any PvE server tips are most welcome.
The only characters I actively use are all stationed on PvP severs I'm afraid so I'm not going to be much help. The only thing I can think of is trying to steal their kills, but that's tedious and time consuming...
If anyone knows anything, please say so!
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Wait... they admitted to credit farming? Or admitted using a bot? The former is very much allowed, the latter is very much against the ToS.
Oh, sorry that wasn't clear. Admitted to using a bot. Credit farmers don't bug me so long as they do it without using bots. People farm credits all the time in heroics, myself included.
Might I also add he admitted to working for a credit selling site...
(Yes I filed a ticket)
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I've noticed recently that a bot hits several slicing nodes on Rishi. They appear, hit the node, vanish, reapear at the next node and so on. I followed it for a minute the other day, not sure how he is vanishing and re-appearing.
Wish I could mess up its flow.
If you're on a PvP server there is probably a way to do it. I'll investigate and see what I can find and I'll get back to you.
I'm not sure where I stand on BioWare being apathetic towards the problem, but regardless it's time we start doing our part.
Bot-stopping methods!
in General Discussion
Posted
Well, crap. With the new instance-switching system, it seems most of the bots have transferred over to the PvE instances on all servers...Some are still in PvP mode, but these are few. Now more than ever we will need additional PvE methods to help slow the bot menace.
If you have any, please post!