Bots - how really big is this problem? (some statistics here)

General Discussion
1

A lot of threads about bots here on forum.
Is this problem really so actual?
Tried to do some research on this subj.
Everyone knows that there are bots in D3.
And bot devs have own website.
Two patches ago daily “legendary items dropped statistics” were there.
(Now it’s not an option more, since it’s disabled by default, acording changelogs, but some monthes ago it was)
AFAI remember, max numbers were about 24 mil items daily.
The bot isn’t effective for pushing - mostly for speed runs for max XP.
Speed ​​runs are 3-4 min per rift on average, let it be +1 min for routine (blacksmith / Kadala / stash) - a total of 5 min per rift, i.e. 60/5 = 12 runs per hour.
(I saw numbers up to 18 runs / hour on that forum, but bots never do GRs only: periodically rifts (for keys), sometimes bounties (for mats))
Approx. 10 legendaries dropped per GR (@ GR90-100)
(actually less, b/c you have to do rifts for keys in sequence 1r3gr)
As I assume, some ppl botting 24 hrs a day.
Some ppl imitate human behavior and limit botting to 8-16 hours per day.
Some ppl play manually except botting.
O/c I don’t have exact statistics, but it’s reasonable to assume that botters use their bots 12 hrs a day on average.
12 runs per hour x 12 hrs per day x 10 items per rift = 1440 items per day for one bot.
24 mil total items / 1440 item per bot = 16 667 bots are running daily.
I haven’t D3 sales by regions statistics, but according human population let’s roughly assume: 1/2 players are in Asia, 1/4 in EU / Africa and 1/4 in the Americas.

So EVERY DAY in the Americas roughly 4200 bots are running.
Is this a real problem for Blizz’s?
(There are no data of unique players at public access, except well-known D3 1st anniversary pic (of 2013, that’s not actual)
But we can suppose two cases.

  1. Daily playing unique accounts number is so huge, that 4200 daily bots are insignificantly small numbers to spend effort fighting them (which is unlikely)
  2. These 4200 daily bots are so huge numbers that Blizz’s haven’t enough resources to fight with (or they could ruin their servers by banning all these bots) (which is much more likely)

In any case, the number of daily botters significantly exceeds the number of people who want to ban them (and I expect to see them laughing when viewering and commenting that hot ban request threads)

Some words on bot problem from a player perspective.
First of all, botting is cheating. And against the EULA.
So I’m definitely against them.
But as a solo player, I can meet them ONLY in a public bounties. (since it’s the only task that is MUCH more effective in cooperative)
I don’t want it seemed like intolerance, but for me a properly working bot is more effective than many of noobies: no any toxicity from them, no “split plz” instructions needed, no extraneous business in town, no unnecessary TP to town and back, etc.
Moreover, they could do part of your work and will never blame you for that! :slight_smile:

Of course, when bot stucks, it become a problem for the rest of party, since new players couldn’t join
Btw you always could report them by RMB with “botting in public games” text.

So, to be honest, this problem is so far from me and don’t worth the noise around it…
(Btw I repeat once more that I’am AGAINST CHEATING / BOTTING!)

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2

4200 people with no integrity.

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Correct me if I’m wrong, but people are not worried with how useful they can be in public games, but more about how bots dominate the leaderboards, and make it impossible to compete in any legitimate capacity.

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I just saw a wiz guy with 2.7k paragon and 452 hours into season. So I made a rough calculation. Season started Aug 23 5pm pst. 21 days passed since it started. The guy average playing 21+ hours EACH day. unless he has a team for just one account, it’s highly likely hes botting like crazy. I doubt blizz system detection would ever deal with this play. Oh ofc hes GR 125+, too. You cannot compete, if you ask me.

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you forgot about people like my self (No-Lifer) No Job / No Kids just hours of freedom to game when ever i like and how how ever i like the most iv done is 5 days solid with no sleep yes it was killing me slowly so dropped it 2 days solid no sleep then that way was perfect would you call me a bot? i don’t bot all human

i gotta add my own reply to the topic tho botting is kinda pointless if you think about it… look at how easy D3 is as of right now do rat runs untill your 1k paragon and build the rough bazooka wizard with a rough necro and wala you can clear 150 with bad gear so thats end game right? so what you grinding for paragon and better gear for what? if you can already beat the game with really bad items and less paragon kinda pointless right?? if blizzard lifts the cap of 150 to a much higher number say likt 500 then sure its a problem then you would have something to grind towards who can get to GR500 but if blizzard leaves the game as it is right now not worth playing if the game has become too easy but if blizzard want it this way then sure all the casuals would beable to do 150 so for the other players this would be boring so you would have people leaving left and right im sure if you look at it right now im sure loads of left the game to go else where

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It’s easy if all follow your advice, but what about people who don’t play META only builds. Have you considered them too? Why do players that don’t want to jump the META builds bandwagon have to suffer just, cause they enjoy their own maybe not most efficient builds?

I know it’s not of my bussines, but if you play 2 days straight or even more than that, than I think you really need some help, unless you have suicide tendencies…

Btw. there’s an “easy” way that ALL classes could jump 10 with ANY build or maybe even 20 GRs up using specific builds without ANY buffs to any items at all :roll_eyes:

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That would only be true if bots can clear GR120+ solo. Can they?

Aside from that, the main advantage bots provide is the 24/7 farming they can perform for you, resulting in a flood of mats, gold, XP, grift keys and LEGENDARIES waiting for you in the stash when you wake up in the morning.

All that stuff you’d normally spend days farming yourself.

I don’t know where you get your numbers from, but I doubt at this stage there’s more than 5k-10k unique accounts playing daily.

And if there really is 4k+ bots running on a daily basis, there’s also the matter of them cows contributing to the server strain, which would theoretically worsen performance.

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Bots automate the farming, the human player then does the GR, enjoying his increased paragons from all that farming.

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What’s this nonsense about non-meta people suffering? You don’t suffer if you’re not able to get on the LB. You’re just not on the LB. :roll_eyes:

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It’s more about the principle than anything.

I would argue 99% of the playerbase doesn’t actually get affected one way or the other by bots in terms of in-game stuff. There’s no PVP and there’s no trading (2-hour party trades notwithstanding), so the only 3 real detriments are 1.) bots potentially spamming chats, 2.) bots taking up slots in games and the login queue itself, and 3.) bots giving an unfair farming/paragon advantage over legit players vying for Leaderboard positions.

I haven’t seen a bot spam a public chat in at least a year, and I’m thoroughly convinced the playerbase is small enough these days that login queues are a non-issue, and I’m also quite convinced that at least half the remaining playerbase doesn’t give two farts about Leaderboards. For the X / 2 remnants, botting directly affects them negatively in-game.

But for all that, rampant botting IS a huge problem, for the ENTIRE playerbase, again because of principle. Fair Play in a multiplayer environment, ESPECIALLY if said environment can be either officially or unofficially competitive-oriented, is of paramount importance. It is what builds trust between participants and faith in the company.

When you don’t get Fair Play, when you instead get Bots and Overlays, season after season, year after year, with little to no repercussion (all bans do is force the botters to buy the game again on a new account and then wait for a new bot core to release), it erodes the community’s collective good will. One starts to wonder if Blizz even cares at all (they do, but their silence doesn’t do them any favors). One starts to suspect their time and effort staying legit has been wasted. One gets a foul taste in their mouth and becomes less incentivized to continue playing Blizzard games.

And when the rabbit hole is pursued that deep, when legit players start dropping off and not re-upping for the next iteration, THAT is when entire companies, to say nothing of the games they make, die.

Diablo is dying, and cheaters are the ones who hold the smoking gun.

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No, I don’t think bots can push. But what do you need in order to push/be competitive?
You need paragons (bot takes care of that) and good gear (the player will do the reforges, but the bot takes care of the bounty materials).
So, yes, a bot won’t push, but it will provide a massive advantage for pushing, against legitimate players who have to split their limited game time between getting keys, doing bounties, upgrading gems for augments etc.

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The bots don’t simply “get gear” - they sort it for you based on configurable paramters. So you can set it say to farm and only retain certain pieces of gear and only ancient with specific rolls etc.

Now imagine waking up and, at worst, you have a boatload more paragon day to day for your actual play time. And at best, by now in this season, nearly full primal with ideal rolls (#18 eu Demon Hunter was a prime example last time I checked) and absurd playtime.

Now compare that with your finite playtime and say, bounties to reroll a leoric and you NEVER get the ideal one (investing hours in bounty runs and doing the cube rerolls yourself) whereas your counterpart has a chance of simply waking up to one.

I still play this game a lot but the fundental reason it is botted is due to the ease with which play can be automated. Will D4 change that?

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It’s hard to say. I don’t think they can do away with botting entirely. But it would be nice if they did ban waves more often. I think the more active/popular the game is, the more attention and love it gets (see WoW). So hopefully if D4 is successful enough, it won’t be as much of an issue.

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There are players well past 3k already and past 500 hours this season. its sad

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15

Exactly. Diablo 3 end game is not really fun. Hoping they can do better with the next game.

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I’m told there’s a discord channel for the bot…so, maybe that’s a semi-reliable measure of how many people are doing it? IDK, take a look for yourself.

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I was surprised to learn of the Grift lvl cap, which I thought did not exist like with paragons.

So if we have a grift level cap, then why not a paragon level cap (which can be raised periodically to allow for power creep from new items)?

This way the legions of middle of the road paragon players have a real incentive to catch up, and not feel like, “there is no way in hell I can catch up to the botters and no-lifers, because I only can play a certain number of hours a day, and so far when i try and play more, I still find the chasm in paragons continuing to grow between those who’s accounts are playing 18+ hours a day and the rest of the playerbase”.

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There is a plvl cap, it is 6001 in a season.

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I’m curious where the 4200 number comes from. It seems like there are WAY more bots than that, and the numbers seem to grow constantly. I can’t recall the last time I did a public bounty run and there wasn’t at least one bot.

So anyway, I was one of those people who generally didn’t give a turd about botters, because I was not chasing the top 100 of the leaderboard. I figured that if someone needed a self-esteem fix that botting to make the LB would solve, then good on them.

But then I realized two people on my friend list had been botting starting a few seasons ago. My opinion on bots changed quickly, because it reduced my play list and made me feel cheated. When I looked at their awesome gear and disproportionately large number of primals each season, I thought they were just lucky. Their paragon really didn’t stand out, because we all grew from rat runs and meta runs at comparable rates. But the gear disparity was really bothersome.

I know it’s me despising cheating and not being flexible enough to play with botters, but I’m now firmly in the camp on this thread. There is something far more rewarding about running with a group of clean players and landing in the 300 to 400 area of the LB than to run with cheaters and climb. I seriously hope that Blizz does a massive ban wave this season.

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So either they should just start banning them or if it would cost too much money to fix .
Or if they just lost the battle on this one they should just say then let everyone at it