Reducing BGBuddy's Impact on Battlegrounds

[Millz]

Aware the team is considering BGBuddy's future and reducing the impact on the WoW community. Thought I'd throw out some ideas/suggestions for changes to try and improve the situation rather than taking a heavy handed approach of removing it completely. Making it public allows others to throw suggestions into the ring.

Some lesser impact options:
- Add logout options (logout on capped/configured honor points, deserter debuff, after X minutes) - I've got these options in BGFarmer and they're pretty useful.
- Add delays between BG signups, for example...

• Customizable Delay
• Forced random delay after every X number of BGs for ~5-10mins
• Slow down the sign up time between each BG

Slightly more intrusive:
- Remove relogging capabilities for BGBuddy (i.e. block it in HBRelog/ARelog).
- Add forced stop after X hours of BG botting that requires an HB reload to continue - for instance after 4 hours of AFK botting then stop so that the user needs to reload HB (manually.. would need to block BGBuddy autostart to get this working really) - helps against people who leave it running solid (especially overnight) until fully geared.

 

[@alisha]

Also an important thing is improvement of navigation logic specially for BG, so bots wont move as one big snake, and walks more human like.
Maybe by adding some random weights on goal [go to lumbermill/stables etc] (so different botters will be on different goals -> ways to it) or random vectors to Path generate, so they move more differently from each other.

Also big improvement can be done by adding retreat "moving away" logic, like when we have many enemies around us and less alive friendly team members - we need to retreat asap and not force to combat just for death.

More random variations for each unique player will add more chance for bot to stay in shadow.

I think most way that force people to manually report bots cause of too unhuman navigation behavior in BG, and when there are at least 2 bots following same road it becomes even more obviously.

 

[bossland]

Thats all things we need to achieve the question is, will we.

 

[Aion]

Thats all things we need to achieve the question is, will we.

<joke>Just obtain Millz's corporation and all would be happy pandas </joke>

On a more serious note, the most obvious presence of BgBuddy, as we most know, is in the off-peak hours.

Most of us have seen at least one youtube/twitch movie for Battleground with at least 10-15 BgBuddy bots on both sides, which look quite funny to be honest, but the result is not fun.

The point is, even in such scenarios, the bots to look as-most natural, as possible.

I liked the way Highvoltz handled the bots movement, while running within LFR with the crowd. In certain moments, the bots could be filtered out of the crowd, but just for a sharp eye, and usually for a few seconds, so I barely see any botting complains in LFRs, generally not seen any for weeks.

 

[laria]

In LFR i would assume the human percentage is a lot higher by default so you blend in by default.
You can't depend on the crowd in BGs too much, otherwise you will have trains.
Some more path variation and goal differences could do wonder

 

[Hydroxsys]

The only real way I can think of to achieve that is using a breadth first search and setting a follow option such as searching for less clustered nodes (node = characters in this instance) and having it lock into that player for a while. Then periodically have it choose different people to lock into and stay around.

The biggest problem in BG's is the pathing. If you ever want to see exactly how many honorbuddy users are out here que and watch for who takes the exact path as you. There is no variation.

 

[hazard]

Random path generation. Problem solved