Botters are Back
Ugh. It took a few months, but the team of botters that were infesting my neighborhood are back with a vengeance. (See https://pokemongo.gamepress.gg/q-a/omg-mr-blissey-gone for a description of their previous behavior.)
This time around, they are worse than ever. Their bots feed berries to their Pokemon in gyms, making it impossible to kick them out. No matter how fast you are, they've programmed the bots to feed a Golden Razz Berry to their mons as soon as they hit 1/3 of their maximum motivation.
It's amazing that they've managed to evade Niantic this long. I mean, I don't have much faith at all that Niantic really ever cared about banning any but the most obvious cheaters, but what I suspect these guys are doing is using dummy accounts that are separate from their main accounts to handle the most egregious cheating. They're probably creating accounts that do nothing but collect golden razz berries all day, then stationing them at the same gyms where they place their mons. Somehow they have a way of immediately recognizing when the Pokemon needs a berry, then the bot feeds it from that account.
The worst part about all this is that there's virtually no reason to bother with keeping a stranglehold on gyms anymore with the 50-coin/day limit. They hold at least two gyms here and likely several more, so they get their 50 coins in 2-3 hours at most. The only reason they do it is to be obnoxious choads.
Answers
Interesting. Though it's really, really frustrating that the only way to defeat this cheat is via coordinating with at least two other players. I like to play at odd hours and so it's not exactly convenient for me to just rustle up random people to go around my neighborhood at midnight to eject cheaters.
I almost wish someone would develop an anti-cheater bot, fighting fire with fire: you give the bot the names of the gyms where this cheat is being employed, and it uses its own multiple accounts to efficiently take these jerks out.
Player 1 takes down first pokemon below 2/9 health, then WAITS.
Player 2 joins, gets a fresh go at the same pokemon, take it down below 2/9 health, then WAIT
Player 3 joins, gets a fresh go at the same pokemon, takes it down to below 2/3 health...
Now all three take down their "copy" of the same pokemon, it suffers 3 losses within the same time frame, noone has time to feed it.
The problem is that all this has to happen within the 100 second timer.
It amazes me, in the current gym meta, how territorial some folks still are. In my locality, we have 3 gyms, in the old system it was a both a challenge & an achievement to build a strong lvl 10 gym that was difficult to take down. and you were rewarded accordingly for your efforts. Now, it's all about the daily coins, and when I take a gym down, usually on a morning where I'm giving the holders their 50 for the day, the same players will take back the gyms within an hour or two. Can only be for territorial reasons as I know these players all have their gold badges. Maybe they're just bored & looking for something to do, not a help to the rest of us tho trying to earn our max coin bonus.
i am instinct player, like every time any gym in locality is taken down 6 instinct account will take those gyms in no time, i have gone without coins for many days, so one day i was at a gym and took it down i saw 2 ladies in a car they have 3 phones each i was like what i just asked them politely to leave one spot on each gym now i can get my coins..
man some players are very competitive..
This sounds like very expensive to feed so much berries. Also, how do the bot accounts even get berries?
Anyway, I think the solution is to get them bankrupt. Take 2 or 3 people and just attack his gym for an hour, concentrate only on the first Pokemon and attack it constantly. He will have to feed him every 30 sec or so and deplete his berries quickly. You will gain tons of xp with minimal potion investment since you are attacking with 3-4 ppl. My guess is that after a few times he will give up since all those berries cost real money and time (I don't think bots can do raids but I might be wrong).
So as of this morning the botters have been kicked out of both gyms they were holding. That fact - and the point that others have made on this thread about golden razz berries only being available via raids - makes me suspect that what these guys might be doing is actually cheating with their primary accounts (which are all at like level 37+).
They set the bots to grind and raid during the day, collecting berries, then take over gyms in the late evening to maximize coin payouts (since few are playing then to battle them) and set their primary accounts to stay at the gym and feed the berries (or, possibly, feed the gym remotely). Maybe they are just running out of golden berries by morning, but perhaps they also simply have set the bots to do other tasks while their owners are awake. In either case it's a bit of a relief that their ability to cheat seems to be somewhat limited.
