World of Bots

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Hello everyone,

botting is a constant, yet unfortunately underestimated, issue in World of Tanks (detection of bots is actually really not that hard, someone with 300 battles within 24 hours is probably not a human being, it can be verified otherwise). A lots of people seem to think that “a good bot is better than a noob” – a notion, which is actually false and quite dangerous.

- a bot does not learn, while a bad player can improve
- any player speaks their own language and can be told to and advised, a bot cannot – this is not so hard, if you see an exposed flank and a player with a name of something like PragueLoverCZ, there is a good chance this guy is Czech, so you can tell him “Praguelover jed na levo, mas tam nepritele!” (Praguelover, go left, there is an enemy!) – or just “vlevo!” (left), it works
- a bot cheats (you can’t “surprise” a bot, when you appear behind him, the program automatically knows about you), yes, but is not capable of solving any tactical situations

The video that follows is from Russian server and shows exactly the last case. An AT-2 in the video is a bot. An AT-2 is also a pretty tough bastard – a top tank of the team and he is facing only lowtier opposition. With a bit of skilled play, it is fully capable of deciding the battle! But, unfortunately, it’s a bot, so that’s not going to happen. See for yourself how one bot on team (that stays alive because it’s programmed to camp) can screw the entire battle by stupid behavior.

Notice the conflict in the program where the bot can’t choose a target and gets stuck in the middle.

 

 

A bot is a NPC. If I wanted to fight NPC’s, I’d be playing Skyrim.

63 thoughts on “World of Bots”

    • I see them a lot on the Russian server. Commonly in tier 5 or 6 tanks and tier 8 premiums. I especially notice it in Löwes, probably because they are relatively slow and tend to get isolated from their teammates when botting, so they end up as the last guy left on the losing team. Bots are easier to notice when all eyes are on them.

      • I had a great match last night with a Lowe driver, he was giving us a great lesson why a Lowe should park in the middle of the base where all the enemies could spot him miles away. It did not matter for this match as we won but it was funny, a bot could have not done any worse.

  3. SS, I thought you knew better… This guy was just wiggling so they couldn’t hit his cupola! :P

    • I understand the concept of sarcasm. But really… This “guy” just ignored enemy tank that was flanking him the very second it disappeared from radar.

      By the way this “guy” has played over 32K matches in 15 months (that’s over 2100 matches per month or 72 matches EVERY single day) with 44% winrate and 305 average damage per match. Yep, he sure has enough skill to try “wiggling” :)

    • Yep, in low tier battles are many reds, but the real players can learn, especially if they have just 1-2k battles. I don’t want to know my stats during the first 2k battles :D.

      But the bots are problematic in every tier and I see many of them in high tier battles. It’s just impossible to have less than 300 WN8 and 16k battles!

      • The problem is the idiots in high tiers.. there the bots are more use, because they do “less stupid” manouvres and are not likely to yolo and die in 30s shouting “CAMPING NOOBS!!!” at the other 14 alive tanks..

      • Obviously it is not. I believe some players are illiterate 4 years old kits capable of spending most of the game in the queue and countdowns and still somehow enjoying game for a reason we can’t understand. I believe more clever ones can platoon with their 2,5 years old brothers.

    • I’ve seen many bots in tier 10 battles. Just watch some of my videos on YT channel: Echozwot

  5. quote: “See for yourself how one bot on team (that stays alive because it’s programmed to camp) can screw the entire battle by stupid behavior.”

    lol what?! he’s the last tank in the team, and has 2 kills; how can it be worse than it is!?
    11 players in that team don’t even have a single kill, while the enemy has 6 players with no kills

    I’d really like to see the battle results for that encounter, with damage done by everyone

      • AT2 is a godlike tank yes… it can shoot out scouts and arties in no time yes… all alone yes…

    • So you basically say that bots are ok if they play on average? Actually no wonder by a player who supported using no-foliage mods…

      • did I say that .. jeez! but no, let’s jump into conclusions bandwagon
        I just commented on a remark, a very wrong one, that SS made

        as for the no foliage mod, if it would still exists and I would be still playing, I would still use it – deal with it!

  6. “- a bot does not learn, while a bad player can improve”

    Sry, but 24k Matches and 42% Winrate… No u can’t hold that.

    “- any player speaks their own language and can be told to and advised, a bot cannot – this is not so hard, if you see an exposed flank and a player with a name of something like PragueLoverCZ, there is a good chance this guy is Czech, so you can tell him “Praguelover jed na levo, mas tam nepritele!” (Praguelover, go left, there is an enemy!) – or just “vlevo!” (left), it works”

    See the first thing… do u think checking how a flank works out is part of a 42% winrate!?

    “- a bot cheats (you can’t “surprise” a bot, when you appear behind him, the program automatically knows about you), yes, but is not capable of solving any tactical situations”

    Good! Actualy this makes a bot way better then every 42% winrate player.

    So in conclusion! I still prefer bots.
    Just for the info… I don’t like bots… but i hate stupid humans.

  7. >> A bot is a NPC. If I wanted to fight NPC’s, I’d be playing Skyrim.

    That one! Exactly! Finally!!!

    PS:it doesn’t matter if a bot is better or worse. You can make bots better that humans. Deep Blue beaten Kasparov many years ago. Human reflexes can’t stand a chance against good aimbot – that’s a case from old CS like 15years ago…
    There just is NO satisfaction competing against a machine.

      • I don’t care about the ceiling. Playing against bots is as competitive as comparing your penis to your girlfriends dildo…

        • Competative.
          ESL, CW, pre-made TB – thats competative.
          Randoms usually just trying to survive to deal damage, gold or not.

          • It’s still about being “better” than others. I can’t care less if i’m better or worse than bots – i don’t care about winning over bots.
            It’s still competitiveness, only on different level, small and available for everyone, you don’t need a league for that. That’s what makes this game interesting.

        • How can you call something competitive if you somehow manage to analyse it’s movements you can already guess what it’ll do while a human can still create a much more unpredictable pattern than a bot, if you really want to be a competitive player then try playing in tournaments or against a group of high efficiency players in team battle or companies.

          • bad analogy. In this case, a dildo would be the human player, since it needs human intervention to do something, whereas a man is a bot (because it works without doing anything)

    • “There just is NO satisfaction competing against a machine.”
      If i could beat a Deep Blue then i would be jizzing in my pants ffs. If i would beat Kasparov i would just yawn… (BTW in 1997 G.K. said the computer was CHEATING. LOL.)

  8. It stuns me that WG haven”t come up with something like Valve’s VAC system by this time. It ought to be relatively easy to detect if other software is running at the same time as WoT and to recognise the signatures of the bot software. They just have to set up a bot account themselves and download the software, rip it apart and write code to recognise it.

    Of course tinfoil hats will say that WG is making money from these bot accounts and so is reluctant to actually ban them. I really REALLY hope that isn’t the case because in order for WG to think it makes financial sense not to ban these accounts, there must be a LOT of botting going on. Much more than 3000 accounts.

  10. You like bots? Play WarThunder :D it has legal bots on both teams. If player runs bot – one more or less on team – no problem :P

      • The thing about bad players is sometimes they can surprise you in ways you haven’t expected, like flanking on their back expecting that they’re not waiting for you but to your surprise they’re already pointing the gun at the route you we’re taking and it’s too late for you to stop because of the speed and the lateness of the detection, in bot you can sometimes fool it as long as it believes that you we’re still there and hasn’t been detected again you can make it think that you haven’t move one bit, basically it lacks the critical thinking a normal person would have while a human in the right place, in the right time, with the right mind can turn a battle even if he’s not that good in his stats.

      • Somehow I’ve seen utter tomatoes do things I wouldn’t expect countless times and win the match.
        How many matches bots have won for me? None. They stand still, get spotted, shoot once and die.

  12. 1. Well, the problem with watching bots as “last man standing” (how hard can it be to be the last camping in base the whole game?) is that it makes you sick to see how obvious and easy solution is to kill the remaining opponents (as example in the video), but program is waaaay to dumb to decide what to do.
    2. WG is, by my opinion, intentionally ignoring bots, saying “there are no bots” (my ass there aren’t), for one particular reason – they are holding Guinness record of “active players”!!!! They rather hold large number of “active players or accounts if you prefer”, than banning them. You have to know that there are multi accounts as well. So if 100 people have average 3 accounts, then REAL one-person accounts are 100, actual number is 300 (“active accounts), which means 200 of them are “fake one person, one IP, or whatever the hell you want to name it, accounts (and those 200 of them are potentially botting, since one player cannot play 3 accounts at the same time, can he/she/it? but there is a program that it alows you to run several wot clients at the same time, so one you actively play, 2 opr more others are boting in background – sorry don’t remember the name of the program but I read about it somewhere). As long WG is going to be “Yea, we are glorious, we are the best, we have 85 million players and no other game can beat that, whilst holding every freaking fake account and bots alive, NOTHING will change. The number is way much important to them, and the freaking record, to do something about that. I’m pretty sure that 30% of accounts are multi accounts (one person with 2, 3 or even more accounts on same server) and bots included, so we are pretty fast at 60 million REAL ONE PERSON ACCOUNTS (this number might still be enough to hold the record, but, why wouldn’t we make sure with 25 million (real or not) accounts more), not faked 85 million. And that is sick, and that’s why we are forced to watch freaking bots, and they won’t do shit about it. They would rather clear out (as of HIDE) official data on portal (as they already have for 24h, 7 day playing period for every player on portal (hmmm, why do you think they did that?) than admit that there are bots. NEVER going to happen.

  13. - a bot does not learn, while a bad player can improve
    - any player speaks their own language and can be told to and advised, a bot cannot

    theoretically but it stays a dream. I often advised players what action the enemy will take next and what to do to face that but as always no one cares shit and continue losing an almost won battle. Braindeads stay breaindead, WoT is full of knowledge resistent idiots. And i saw bots playing much better than most of them.

    • Actually, bot programs get better, so they do learn. My issue with “a player can improve” is that it doesn’t help you that battle.
      And with bad players either ignoring or shutting off the chat, following direction is not always assured. If I recognize a bot on my team, I can count on that bot performing a certain way. I learned long ago that a bad player will more often do something stupid than something smart.
      Not that I support botting, I don’t. but that makes these are very poor analogies.

    • Have you ever coordinated an attack with a bot? I did not. Even the dumbest players are able to listen and cooperate even if they serve as cannon fodder. But I still can take advantage of the enemy shooting lame player than a bot that camps the base.

      There are still a lot of people who did not get that WoT is a team game and bots are very unsuitable for such a task. I still prefer lost game with good teamplay than early cap by a bot and 600XP daily double because of victory at third minute of the battle.

    • So the scouts and the arty will almost never get any XP or credit…
      BTW bots CAN be better then the 11th place. Just sayin’.

  17. I had 1 AFK and 1 (terrible) bot in my football team yesterday…
    (the bot hardly moved ever.. then moved fwd and back roughly the same distance and fired)

    I still didn’t lose.. the 3 players on the other side were much MUCH worse…

    I hardly moved more that 20 yards from the left corner of my goal and kept them out permanantly.. even when 1 realised what I was doing and tried to block me…

    Complete nooby-noob-noobs!

  18. Well, most players in WoT doesn’t provide tactical solution either, nor can they seize it.

  20. Bad players can improve and can be advised to do something (cover a flank etc.) but they just don’t. If they improve, they’re probably replaced by more bad players and with most such players you can advise them in any language you want, they’ll ignore you.

  21. I helped get SLYFOX54 ‘s account wiped yet they are back to botting again.

  22. An idea for a new feature:
    I thought that when trying to communicate with other players in a match, it would be a good feature to be able to determine which is the preferred language for each player, or even better – for the EU servers, indicate if the player speaks English. And ftr, English is not my first language … it is just an accident ;-)