Useless AFK conquest farmers

[Telbor]

Yep I feel everyone that has posted and reported this "candy" guild. I spoke to the guild leader and he basically told me to F off cause nobody cares about gsf. I wish the devs would pay attention to all portions of their game and actually do something about willfully malicious queue'rs. I have attempted to /ignore the AFK/Bots cause if you do that with group finder and pvp matches you won't be queued with them, but even after adding them to my ignore list I still continually queue with them, every match I see them in I do everything I can to get them kicked but it isn't enough. The constant gsf bots/afkers is hurting everyone who queues imp on Shadowlands. I have been building a GSF team in my guild and these bots have discouraged more than a few people from actively getting into GSF. On another note, I will be running a guild GSF boot camp on the first weekend of May, I am looking for some experienced pilots who want to help new pilots out. I am trying to find 6 full groups of people who will queue right after a regular match starts so we have 2 full teams, will spend the first 10 minutes of the match letting the opposing team get the basics down, LoS, missile breaks, locking on, etc. If anyone is willing to help get some new blood involved in gsf on the imp side drop me an in game mail. I would love to have some of the Angels, Xi'ao#'s and the Xi'ao there to help the new pilots understand this great portion of the game without having to worry about bots or pub pre-mades farming them at their spawn. Telbor/Telbora/Telhunt/Telsinner

[ThrakhathSpawn]

They would sing a different toon if people got in their PVE groups, and just put them on follow for FP's/Ops.

[MufasaW]

... I have attempted to /ignore the AFK/Bots cause if you do that with group finder and pvp matches you won't be queued with them, but even after adding them to my ignore list I still continually queue with them, every match I see them in I do everything I can to get them kicked but it isn't enough. ...

 

/Ignore only affects chat. I've never seen it affect the queues. I queue and end up with /ignored jerks in there all the time.

[JediMinerBob]

/Ignore only affects chat. I've never seen it affect the queues. I queue and end up with /ignored jerks in there all the time.

 

Ignore affects group finder also. That way you won't group with them for a flashpoint.

[JediMinerBob]

Seemed like this weekend brought a new type of Conquest farmer. Maybe they are anticipating getting kicked? Anyway, we were defending a node and saw player after player charge in with strikers and scouts, shooting at the turrets and any players who got in the way and then kamikaze into the node. Time after time.

 

So they had lots of deaths - not as many as the asteroid slammers - but they also had damage scores. So unless you were on the opposing end and watching them, it might be hard to catch what they are doing.

 

It didn't really seem to make the game go that much faster. Maybe shave 3 minutes off of the game? It wasn't until the second wave that we realized what they were doing. We started catching them farther out after that.

[Linuxizer]

On another note, I will be running a guild GSF boot camp on the first weekend of May, I am looking for some experienced pilots who want to help new pilots out. I am trying to find 6 full groups of people who will queue right after a regular match starts so we have 2 full teams, will spend the first 10 minutes of the match letting the opposing team get the basics down, LoS, missile breaks, locking on, etc. If anyone is willing to help get some new blood involved in gsf on the imp side drop me an in game mail. I would love to have some of the Angels, Xi'ao#'s and the Xi'ao there to help the new pilots understand this great portion of the game without having to worry about bots or pub pre-mades farming them at their spawn. Telbor/Telbora/Telhunt/Telsinner

 

You should probably start a new thread for this

[ThrakhathSpawn]

It seems ranked PVP, is getting its griefers into trouble with bans, its probably time to start another wave of reporting the peanut M&M's on Shadowlands again. What they are doing IS against the TOS, and IS bannable if we just get enough attention to it.

[jankiel]

It seems ranked PVP, is getting its griefers into trouble with bans, its probably time to start another wave of reporting the peanut M&M's on Shadowlands again. What they are doing IS against the TOS, and IS bannable if we just get enough attention to it.

 

Had two self destruct trolls on the Progenitor today. This needs to get some attention. I've been reporting people for this yet no effect.

[CrazyGreggy]

People seem to be (slowly) getting the message on votekicking. Hopefully it'll penetrate fully and the botters will just give up.

 

Hopefully.

[Linuxizer]

I saw this thread in the General Discussion section:

 

Taking Down a Credit Selling Ring

 

and also did not see those bots for a few days, the few times I logged in to the Shadowlands, Empire side.

 

Unfortunately, they're back today.

[Verain]

One of the hazards of Bioware (or Blizzard, who is even more aggressive) moving in coordinated periodic large scale actions, is that these actions leave plenty of time for profit. This means that the target keeps moving, and the problem is never solved. They do at least reduce the profitability of the bad actors, and there's certainly not nearly as much credit spam as before (and note, the amount of credits for sale doesn't have to be very high before they'll start spamming to sell), but at the end of the day it's still an engine that makes money for them, and Bioware's actions are too periodic to inject enough risk for them to go do something else.

 

Simply put, it's a big burden on Bioware, and they aren't really able to chase it down. Unlike Blizzard, they can't really lock down accounts because you can always make a new one that has a lot of power. Like Blizzard, and unlike other smaller MMOs, they have enough targets for gold buying in the playerbase that they have to deal with the sort of thing. They handle this terribly, but on this note I at least want to cut them some slack: they have to deal with the downsides of a big and a little MMO at the same time.

[Bolo_Yeung]

Since it looks like the devs are sometimes loking at this forum - would it cost much to decrese 'conquer the skies' reward and add 'dominate the stars' (or 'medal of bravery') to every conquest season? Maybe just do the same change as it was done with ground PvP?... For now, if a losing match with just camping around pays the same as hard-won one then much people does not bother with doing anything (except preventing getting kicked).

[Lavaar]

** UPDATE **

I have been conducting an undercover investigation into this issue. It appears that the worst offender has returned just as the Shadowlands GSF scene has begun to flourish again.

 

Through sheer deception and guile, I managed to get myself into the offender's guild. I played innocent and casually asked the offender to join me for a match, claiming I'm new to the server and would love to team up with someone from my new guild for a match. The GM responded that it was his young daughter playing gsf all day on his friends account, although she often gets distracted and is AFK more than half of the time. When I offered to give some pointers to her so that she could help out her struggling teammates (who were fuming mad at her (lack of) performance) I was met with a harsh rebuttal from the GM, telling me that nobody is allowed to talk to her. At this point I decided to lay off the investigation for the time being in order to compile and report my findings.

 

My take? This entire situation seems more complex than he is letting on. This seems to raise more questions than it answers.

 

How does a 9 year old play GSF all day?

How does she/it always seem to get 0 kills and damage in every match?

How is she there to hit the pops but not there once the game starts?

 

Speculation is encouraged.

 

Updates to come.

[tommmsunb]

** UPDATE **

I have been conducting an undercover investigation into this issue. It appears that the worst offender has returned just as the Shadowlands GSF scene has begun to flourish again.

 

Through sheer deception and guile, I managed to get myself into the offender's guild. I played innocent and casually asked the offender to join me for a match, claiming I'm new to the server and would love to team up with someone from my new guild for a match. The GM responded that it was his young daughter playing gsf all day on his friends account, although she often gets distracted and is AFK more than half of the time. When I offered to give some pointers to her so that she could help out her struggling teammates (who were fuming mad at her (lack of) performance) I was met with a harsh rebuttal from the GM, telling me that nobody is allowed to talk to her. At this point I decided to lay off the investigation for the time being in order to compile and report my findings.

 

My take? This entire situation seems more complex than he is letting on. This seems to raise more questions than it answers.

 

How does a 9 year old play GSF all day?

How does she/it always seem to get 0 kills and damage in every match?

How is she there to hit the pops but not there once the game starts?

 

Speculation is encouraged.

 

Updates to come.

 

 

Going to repeat what I said in mumble for everybody to see.

 

If you want to test if it's a bot try thinking up common public commands that are used by bots in general. A lot of the time these bots are made from a template instead of from scratch and the bot-creator doesn't take the time to erase them. If something like !id or !status comes up with a response then that means you have a bot for sure.

 

If you have to be all sneaky and hush hush about it, make a new toon and pretend to be a goldspammer or something, who knows.

[MaximilianPower]

** UPDATE **

I have been conducting an undercover investigation into this issue. It appears that the worst offender has returned just as the Shadowlands GSF scene has begun to flourish again.

 

Through sheer deception and guile, I managed to get myself into the offender's guild. I played innocent and casually asked the offender to join me for a match, claiming I'm new to the server and would love to team up with someone from my new guild for a match. The GM responded that it was his young daughter playing gsf all day on his friends account, although she often gets distracted and is AFK more than half of the time. When I offered to give some pointers to her so that she could help out her struggling teammates (who were fuming mad at her (lack of) performance) I was met with a harsh rebuttal from the GM, telling me that nobody is allowed to talk to her. At this point I decided to lay off the investigation for the time being in order to compile and report my findings.

 

My take? This entire situation seems more complex than he is letting on. This seems to raise more questions than it answers.

 

How does a 9 year old play GSF all day?

How does she/it always seem to get 0 kills and damage in every match?

How is she there to hit the pops but not there once the game starts?

 

Speculation is encouraged.

 

Updates to come.

 

 

Nice work, Vexx. You could have a second career in the SIS.

 

I don't believe the GM's explanation at all. That's crap. I was in 2 games with the offender yesterday (and yes, I realize that's a small sample size)...in the first, I didn't know his (her?) MO, but I did notice the zeroes across the board at the end. That's when you gave me the 411 on this player. So in the second match, I paid attention. I saw a lot of flying in a straight line...and that's all. This is not the behavior of an afk'er. Simply doesn't make sense. This individual didn't just take the pop, he/she also spawned, and moved. Obviously intentional.

 

I'm trying to come up with an innocent explanation, even a tenuous one, but i haven't been able to thus far. I'll report this player next time I log in imp side.

[Monumenta]

Going to repeat what I said in mumble for everybody to see.

 

If you want to test if it's a bot try thinking up common public commands that are used by bots in general. A lot of the time these bots are made from a template instead of from scratch and the bot-creator doesn't take the time to erase them. If something like !id or !status comes up with a response then that means you have a bot for sure.

 

If you have to be all sneaky and hush hush about it, make a new toon and pretend to be a goldspammer or something, who knows.

 

bots are just people, mostly in third world countries, using macros on multiple accounts at the same time to farm credits there is no such thing as a programed robot afk or otherwise farming matches, a slight bit of research (in the real world not television sci-fi) would show you this is true but by all means 'hack' those 'bots', lets hear the results

Edited July 23, 2015 by Monumenta

[Danalon]

bots are just people, mostly in third world countries, using macros on multiple accounts at the same time to farm credits there is no such thing as a programed robot afk or otherwise farming matches, a slight bit of research (in the real world not television sci-fi) would show you this is true but by all means 'hack' those 'bots', lets hear the results

 

Edit: Not every task needs to be performed by a human being.

 

Spamming chat is usually done by bots.

Farming gold/credits is mostly done by humans.

 

In case of GSF it's very likely that there's a bot at work that prevents the client from being flagged afk. The only thing the bot has to do is clicking the ready button and then centering the mouse for a minute to fly a straight line then repeat.

 

By the way, a "bot" is not a "programmed robot". I smiled when imagining someone builds a robot and then placing it in front of a pc to press buttons.

Edited July 23, 2015 by Danalon

[tommmsunb]

bots are just people, mostly in third world countries, using macros on multiple accounts at the same time to farm credits there is no such thing as a programed robot afk or otherwise farming matches, a slight bit of research (in the real world not television sci-fi) would show you this is true but by all means 'hack' those 'bots', lets hear the results

 

Good god you must be an idiot. Danalon might find you endearing like a puppy or some crap but do you actually think about what you say before you speak?

 

I'm a programming student and have been programming for 13 years. In that time I've made many bots. Bots are not real life robots they are rather large programs of code used to accomplish a goal. Many bots are taking from already programmed bots on github in a variety of languages.

 

Please, do your own research you blazing imbecile.

 

An example of a bot that accepts chat commands as console commands is moobot on twitch. For example a bot may have a command like !getName and !setName. Or even !stopBot, it all depends on the scope the programmer decides. Many bots are programmed to recognize any characters after ! or / as a function. Some don't recognize that at all and must be worked from their own desktop.

Edited July 23, 2015 by tommmsunb

[Lavaar]

bots are just people, mostly in third world countries, using macros on multiple accounts at the same time to farm credits there is no such thing as a programed robot afk or otherwise farming matches, a slight bit of research (in the real world not television sci-fi) would show you this is true but by all means 'hack' those 'bots', lets hear the results

 

I can see it being controlled by a program such as Autoit, which controls user inputs. Some folks have made autoit routines that allow them to send party members on crew skills all day while they are at work.

 

anyway...*ahem*

 

** UPDATE **

 

Two new pieces of information have come to my attention:

 

- One of the offenders alt accounts is selling encryption items on the GTN, undercutting the lowest price.

 

- The offender's conquest points seem to reach their points target, and then they abruptly stop playing, switching to another alt.

 

In this investigator's humble opinion, it seems like this is more evidence here to imply that these acts are being systematically and deliberately perpetrated in order to game the conquest system.

 

My friend and ally, MaximilianPower, has decided to offer his assistance in the investigation. We will continue to update as more information becomes available.

Edited July 23, 2015 by Lavaar

[Danalon]

Good god you must be an idiot. Danalon might find you endearing like a puppy or some crap but do you actually think about what you say before you speak?

 

The first version of my answer was "Please stop trolling." and how funny the thought of an actual programmed afk robot physically typing on a keyboard was to me. But then I remembered playing on a server where people actually tried talking to credit spam bots in fleet chat. So I tried to give a better answer. On that server I wrote in fleet chat that it's futile to talk to bots and more people than you'd expect tried to convince me that those weren't bots but "third world people, because they're cheaper". Another time (on another server) I heard someone arguing that "bots can't be intelligent enough to know who's online at a given time and then whisper them".

[Danalon]

[stuff]

 

Don't forget to contact customer service with the things you find out.

[tommmsunb]

The first version of my answer was "Please stop trolling." and how funny the thought of an actual programmed afk robot physically typing on a keyboard was to me. But then I remembered playing on a server where people actually tried talking to credit spam bots in fleet chat. So I tried to give a better answer. On that server I wrote in fleet chat that it's futile to talk to bots and more people than you'd expect tried to convince me that those weren't bots but "third world people, because they're cheaper". Another time (on another server) I heard someone arguing that "bots can't be intelligent enough to know who's online at a given time and then whisper them".

 

I guess I was more offended by his last sentence. I would've responded nice and politely if he didn't say the "Do your research part, this ain't sci-fi yadayada."

 

This just in the ability to type on a keyboard is now more expensive than the life of a boy in Pakistan. Also pigs can fly.

[AgentRobP]

** UPDATE **

I have been conducting an undercover investigation into this issue. It appears that the worst offender has returned just as the Shadowlands GSF scene has begun to flourish again.

 

Thank you for your research!

 

So, for my thoughts... First off, let's assume the story about the 9 year old is true. (I absolutely don't believe it, but I'll get to that later.)

 

I made a post in another thread about how this behavior could be a violation of the rules of conduct. The wording is broad enough to encompass this kind of action, since it exploiting the AFK system affects the enjoyment of the game for everyone else involved.

 

Adding to that, according to the Terms of Service, the player is 100% for what anybody does with the account:

 

You are solely responsible for all activity on your Account. Your Account may be terminated if someone else uses it to engage in activity that violates the Terms of Service or is otherwise improper or illegal.

 

It also appears that a 9 year old is not allowed to use the account:

 

TOR Accounts are available only to adults, or in their discretion, their minor child. If you are a minor, your parent or guardian must complete the registration process, in which case he or she takes full responsibility for all obligations under this Terms of Service. TOR Accounts will not be allowed for minors under thirteen (13) years of age, regardless of permission and/or registration by such minor's parent or guardian. You must be eligible to use the TOR Service for which you are registering.

 

There is some wiggle room due to the wording, but the intent seems clear. It would be nice if BioWare could enforce this against this particular problematic player, considering the effect it has on GSF on this server. (It also has an effect on Conquest for the guild, which should definitely a factor for BioWare.) If the admission was made in in-game chat, there should be logs they can look at (doesn't matter if the 9 year old playing is a lie or not, as the alternative explanation can also result in account action).

 

That said, I don't see a 9 year old playing just to watch a ship go in a straight line only to explode every few minutes. There are easier and more reliable ways to watch spaceships explode. The kids I know in that age range would certainly do more than just crash over and over for months on end. They'd, you know, fly around and stuff. Shoot things. These farmers don't even fire a shot.

 

Also, there's the little matter of having multiple leechers at the same time. Is this kid multiboxing? Maybe that explains the poor performance...

 

Or, it's just lie engineered to cause sympathy and deflect away from the actual goal. Yeah, it being a bot is much more likely. And if that can be proven reasonably, then that is insta-ban. (In theory, of course.)

 

Also, I made a post earlier in this thread about tweaks to the AFK system and rewards that could mitigate this kind of farming (in addition to reducing false positives for real players).

 

Hopefully this can give a bit of additional ammo for building a case against farmers like these.

Edited July 23, 2015 by AgentRobP
additional speculation and clarification

[MaximilianPower]

My friend and ally, MaximilianPower, has decided to offer his assistance in the investigation. We will continue to update as more information becomes available.

 

Indeed, I have also initiated a deep cover operation, closely coordinated with Vexx's. We are the GSF SIS.

 

@the perpetrators: if you are reading this, know that in the event of my disappearance, all records of the investigation will be forwarded to the authorities. Or, whatever.

[Linuxizer]

I'll add a few observations and thoughts.

 

There is one subscriber/preferred legacy with 26000+ achievement points, and one throw-away legacy with maybe 1000 achievement points. One or both can be farming at the same time. All Empire characters from both of these legacies belong in the same "candy" guild. I only recognize one Republic character so far. The few times I saw more than two players in a match with all zeroes, I did not recognize the other names as repeat offenders.

 

These characters are programmed bots. There is no erratic movement of the mouse, and it's inconceivable for someone to sit there and do this manually for hours on end. I would guess both legacies belong to the same person, either with two computers or multi-boxing. He also uses the same characters (and turns off the bot program) for other game modes like ops and pvp, and types in chat.