Bots in Frontlines - Do something.

[Zanmato]

I've reported the same bots for a few weeks now, and nothing has happened.
It is getting worse, and worse. It has gotten so bad that I now write this.
Just now I was in a 72 player game where ALL of my team were bots. Some that I hadn't encountered before, but that showed the same obvious bot behavior as those I regularly encounter.

So why not just kick them with the vote-kick system?
When your team consists of 4 or more bots, that becomes impossible. Also, having to wait 5 minutes just to initiate a vote is not good. Furthermore, having to wait 4 HOURS to vote again after a successful vote-kick is no help either, especially when you encounter that same bot AGAIN the next match.
I understand that it can take time to get to bots, and that it is not a GM's job to do, but there has to be some kind of action to counter this. It shouldn't have to take WEEKS, or MONTHS to get rid of just one bot.

I suggest getting a few PvP Judges that can hop in to PvP to kick/temporarily ban botters and cheaters now and then because it most DEFINITELY is needed now. I can't speak for the EU data centers, but Aether data center is in dire need of counter measures.
I may as well volunteer to do such as I do Frontlines a whole lot.

[saucyshortcake]

We've tried, SE doesn't care. You'll see bots running high end pve/pvp tiles and mounts without a care in the world, because they know there's absolutely no chance they'll get actioned for it. More and more regular players are realizing this and just grabbing the bot too, because it's easier than actually playing. You know it's a sad day when The Hand of Mercy on your team is a bot, running on the exact same script as The Legend standing next to him.

And don't bother trying to name them here, or on some other platform like reddit. They'll censor you for having the audacity to try to point out this problem, you dirty name-shamer.

[Harka12]

This will kill the PvP, just question of time when. I come to play this MMO because im bored of WoW, but i guess SE care less about this then wow developers...

[saucyshortcake]

This will kill the PvP, just question of time when. I come to play this MMO because im bored of WoW, but i guess SE care less about this then wow developers...

To be fair, I think the bots are the only thing keeping it going. Frontlines probably wouldn't even pop without all the bots queueing it.

[Zsolen]

Bots make it so people don't want to queue frontlines, and it leads to too much shatter. Which leads to more people getting sick of one mode. Frustration kills modes. Bots are the ultimate frustration.

[geekgirl101]

People aren't doing PvP because there are bots, and some aren't doing them because the PvP isn't that good. PvP needs a jolly good tweak before more legit people will show interest in it, so as saucyshortcake said the bots are the only thing keeping it going at present. Maybe once PvP becomes more of a thing that more people are participating in it then we can appeal to SE for more better ways to remove suspected bots that doesn't punish the player for reporting/removing them.

[Enlial]

Frontlines is dead. Its a honeypot for bots now. But, its bleeding into other modes too (Lately, in leveling roulette for example). I think once that gets bad enough + starts really impacting the mainstream playerbase SE might actually do something. I hope, at least xD In the past botters mostly restricted themselves to solo activities, Im assuming because they figured the risk of being reported+banned was much lower if they werent really bothering anyone. By now though, they've realized that reports do nothing and there no enforcement whatsoever when it comes to bots. Seems like their programs are getting more sophisticated, too.

And there's literally nothing SE can do to make frontlines "more of a thing" when you're lucky if you get 2 other human players on your team (and thats absolutely not an exaggeration. If anything I'm being conservative in that number).

[Korihu]

To be fair, I think the bots are the only thing keeping it going. Frontlines probably wouldn't even pop without all the bots queueing it.

Honestly, in the state it is now? Yeah. Before, Frontlines still remained active, before you could even get EXP in the mode. Before GARO was a thing. Before freelancing was a thing (it just made queues long for certain GCs).

Frontlines has largely dropped in population of actual people because of two main reasons:

1. The huge influx of bots, which is the fault of EXP being added as a reward.
2. 4.0's PvP update has made Frontlines pretty terrible.

All of my old friends, and myself included, we used to do frontlines aaalll the time. Because we genuinely enjoyed it. Now there's little to enjoy when the mode is racked by bots and the PvP changes makes the large scale gameplay awful.


It's a common misconception that Frontlines was dead before. Frontlines was active before, only queues were slow on some GCs because of the lack of freelancing. EXP made it less active. 4.0 PvP changes killed it.

[Rufalus]

Maybe there's a way to disincentivise botting by altering the rewards. Set a minimum contribution target to receive a reward. If your contribution to the battle is below a certain threshold, exp/tome/marks payout is reduced to zero.

I want botters to stop because they gain absolutely nothing. Setting the parameters to kill bots without affecting real players is really hard though, especially considering healers and join-in-progress players.

I just feel so bad about the situation on Aether datacenter. Entire teams of bots for months/years is unacceptable.

[Astrophysx]

You remove rewarding EXP, the bots will go away.

OR

Make it so only the winning team receives EXP. The other two losing teams, tough luck. My assumption is that this will also somewhat discourage botting.

But... these suggestions will bring large scale PvP back to when queues were more than 30m's long in the Pre-Garo days.