Coldharbour bots

Corew

I just got to the Hollow city today and damn, I've not seen anything like it outside of wow (the BOTanica). They are like lemmings, going from the wayshrine and over the bridge.. hundreds of them, all level 3.

ZoM_Head

Yep, was shocked.....

ElliottXO

As always ZOS is too slow in reacting.

They can do this crap for probably another 2 weeks before any measure will be taken. Just like with the dungeon bots.

Perseas

are u sure they are lvl 3? They may be VR 3... When I was in coldharbour also, I saw a couple of VR 1 AND 2... i THOUGht its bots (lvl 1 and 2), but they were veterans.

Now my character is RV9 but when u see him, it says 9 (with a symbol next to it..), many think that I am lvl 9.

I am sure this people u call bots, wear nice gear, is it? At least better than the cloth bots. So many veterans, dont do many quests in some areas and when they get a couple of lvls, they go back and finish it.

You just have to think, how they heck lvl3 characters, enter coldharbour, without the story done?

Corew

Perseas wrote: »

are u sure they are lvl 3? They may be VR 3... When I was in coldharbour also, I saw a couple of VR 1 AND 2... i THOUGht its bots (lvl 1 and 2), but they were veterans.

Quite sure, they are still in the starter rags and they all look the same.. and they take the exact same route wherever they are going, I assume they are turning in the quest or something..

Perseas

but the first story quest demands u to be lvl 9-10... How is it possible bots to quest in coldharbour, the finish of the entire story line.

Corew

I have no idea how they get there, they are obviously using the wayshrine though.. as for what they are doing it must be some quest as they couldn't kill anything. The city is phased once you start rescuing people right? so maybe they only show up in the first phase?

silvertemplar

Yea, i've seen them, but they were definitely high level. I am not quite sure what exactly they are doing in ColdHarbour though? I saw a ZERG of bots in the area where you play that "game" helping the 3 Mages. Are they farming xp ? You also don't earn VR xp from mobs in coldharbour anyway ? (i found that out the hard way, i was VR1 long before reaching Molag Bal). So if it's not xp, but loot, where do they put all that loot? If i was farming like that my bags would be full after 10 minutes.

I've seen so many i can even recognize them instantly now. Normally they run in this straight line 3 or so behind each other , they do this run-stop-run thing too and some simply run in a circle around a spawn point. All of them seem to be 2H/Melee , i have yet to see a ranged bot ...i assume for looting and such it makes more sense to be on top of the mob.

Covyn

They are indeed level ....3.... Been seeing them for quite some time now. you don't need to follow the quest to get into cold harbor, you just need to travel to someone sitting in the zone and the wayshrine is unlocked for you.

And what they are doing in the zone doesn't have anyone best interests in mind. I've reported chains of them. In ZoS's defense though, I have seen a better presence of GM's in game and have seen some areas become mostly "BoT free". Most likely just a matter of time before these little runts wind up in the crosshairs.

Thorntongue

They're not bots, in ZOS's book anyway. They're called revenue. Sickening, isn't it?

Evandus

I'm not really sure how any of you guys can be suprised that one character on a bot account reached Coldharbour and allowed access to the other bots on that account.

Many of us have been saying it's just a matter of time. Did you folks really believe they wouldn't show up there?

Tipsy

can confirm this as well,veteran multiboxing bots ,some I even recognized as I reported them few weeks back..

Osi

AH, that explains why the alchemy resource nodes near the pool by the wayshrine spawn so fast. No wonder.

Thalmar

When i first go to Hollow city i couldn't believe my eyes, hundreds of level 3 (not VR) with starting gear, with random no making sense names, walking the same exact path. I never, in any game, saw this much bots at a time except 39 vs 40 wow Isle of Conquest bots vs bots battlegrounds.

If a Game Master gets a bot hammer and stay there i am sure maybe tens of them will be banned in no time, but i don't think 1 GM is enough to ban all of these, because it was like Bot Exodus.

ZOS_TristanK

Hi, folks. Thank you for reporting the bots. We ask that when you see bots in-game you report them using the /help function to alert our Support Team. We are actively working to fight against bots in ESO every day, and reports from players like yourselves help us in this quest. Thank you!

Kililin

ZOS_TristanK wrote: »

Hi, folks. Thank you for reporting the bots. We ask that when you see bots in-game you report them using the /help function to alert our Support Team. We are actively working to fight against bots in ESO every day, and reports from players like yourselves help us in this quest. Thank you!

Problem the 1st, reported bots dont get banned in any reasonable time, also see my other thread.
2nd Problem, the new bot trains, partly created through boss nerfing, run around like mad, lagging about because of stick/follow (however they do it) and are very hard to single out.
3rd Problem (for this case): how to report a gazillion bots?

Telling us you fight them, and also telling us to report them does not help.

There is one megaserver, and if I am able to see the same bot on 3 consecutive days, and that bot was reported on the first you should probably be able to see it too. You do realise they are damaging your game, don't you?

caryhammub17_ESO

They make a guild, then a legitimate member of that bot guild who has done the content and opened it up goes to where you want your bots to be. teleport to guild-member. Done.

I have done this on level 3 characters myself just to look around, and see where I end up.

seneferab16_ESO

ZOS_TristanK wrote: »

Hi, folks. Thank you for reporting the bots. We ask that when you see bots in-game you report them using the /help function to alert our Support Team. We are actively working to fight against bots in ESO every day, and reports from players like yourselves help us in this quest. Thank you!

I know you're fighting to get rid of the bots, but they are currently overflowing the game. Many of them can not be reported as they are stacked up on eachother, I report one but there's 20 more that I can't see the name of. You need to hire people to take care of the bots in game, and you need to do it now. The bots are severely hurting your reputation and will cause a drop in subscriptions.

I've seen teleporting lvl 3 bots in Coldharbour. Many of them.

ElliottXO

Kililin wrote: »

ZOS_TristanK wrote: »

Hi, folks. Thank you for reporting the bots. We ask that when you see bots in-game you report them using the /help function to alert our Support Team. We are actively working to fight against bots in ESO every day, and reports from players like yourselves help us in this quest. Thank you!

Problem the 1st, reported bots dont get banned in any reasonable time, also see my other thread.
2nd Problem, the new bot trains, partly created through boss nerfing, run around like mad, lagging about because of stick/follow (however they do it) and are very hard to single out.
3rd Problem (for this case): how to report a gazillion bots?

Telling us you fight them, and also telling us to report them does not help.

There is one megaserver, and if I am able to see the same bot on 3 consecutive days, and that bot was reported on the first you should probably be able to see it too. You do realise they are damaging your game, don't you?

Agree. It took ages for them and a hundred threads to act on the dungeon bots.

It will take even longer until they act here since those bots don't harm anyone directly and are only seen by very few players.

If ZOS would be really serious about this they would put a GM there for 30 minutes who simply mass bans every level 3 account that happens to come to coldharbour. The error margin for bans will be below 0,1%.

Telling us to report them is just another form of saying that it's not high enough on the priority list for them to really care.

Those bots are building the capital right now for future bots. It's like ZOS is always one step behind. If they ban those bots in 2 weeks they already made enough money to purchase another 5 bots who will move on to the next exploit.

The story continues...

Hexi

Simple fix.

You can't teleport to players/guildies/group members that are in a zone you have literally no business being in. Legitimate players have no reason to be in coldharbour at that level because you get no xp for mobs over/under 5 levels anyway, Like, you can't teleport to CH, which is a 45+ zone until you are 40, for example. -5 lvls of the lowest mobs in the zone would be reasonable.

What the bots are doing there... I have no idea. Probably exploiting some insta spawning resource nodes. Or completing quests, getting a few k gold, deleting character, remaking character, rinse and repeat since you alwayus get quest rewards regardless of level.

It would also stop lowbies from getting Vamp/WW though, but that might be an acceptable drawback.

EDIT: Though admittedly, I might be biased as I have 2 lvl25ish Vampires myself.

MissKiwiana

You know its bad enough seeing a mountain of level 3 bots in starter gear running around all factions but I also find astounding is seeing those of a higher (in their 20's) level botting for nodes only. I just don't get it at all.

I did unsub because of all the bots and mail spam but then resubbed as I want to play the game dammit!

I can just see whoever is responsible for the bots in game reading these forums and laughing hard. Its a damn joke for sure but even I can say it has got a little better..... just a little.

coryevans_3b14_ESO

There is no reason people should keep their jobs over this. I'd like to see some reports of people being fired. The incompetence is over whelming.

Yankee

ElliottXO wrote: »

If ZOS would be really serious about this they would put a GM there for 30 minutes who simply mass bans every level 3 account that happens to come to coldharbour. The error margin for bans will be below 0,1%.

That would probably work. There is no legitimate reason I can think of for a level 3 to be running with 5+ others multiboxing in Coldharbour. Usually all Templars too.

I am going back to Coldharbour and see if they are vets or just level 1-3. I tried reporting some going through last weekend, but it is a real PITA they way they stack and the way the reporting system works. And I am pretty sure some were vet1 bots.

I am not seeing them yet in vet content past Coldharbour at least. At last a reason to do vet content.

Just send a GM or two there and BAN their accounts this time.

Oogaci

ZOS biggest mistake in all of this is their 'reactive' approach to bots. They wait for us (the players) to do the leg work and then they react.

Customer service is not a 'reactive' industry it is a proactive industry where you anticipate ahead of time and make initial preparations. They need to be logging into the game and actively looking for bots, not waiting for us to report them and then taking days to go through report tickets, game logs, etc. They are making things worse than they need to be for themselves and for their customers.

RunAway

Easy way to fix the problem? Have in game PLAYER moderators. /thread

GreySix

Where there's money to be made, there will be bots.

Hexi

RunAway wrote: »

Easy way to fix the problem? Have in game PLAYER moderators. /thread

This has never, ever ended well.

Wizzo91

Hundreds of them? God damn.

I've been very lucky regarding bots. Have not seen a single one.
When did you guys start seeing them? I've played since early access so maybe I always outleveled them.

The VR areas are bot free.

Yankee

I have to wonder if the developers built any decent logging into the game. One could build some analysis software to look for patterns of behavior if any decent level of activity was tracked. A bot definitely has a serious pattern over hours/days that even semi-normal players do not. If a mob/node had a position tag that was recorded to a character when killed/farmed you could build near real time reporting from that.

After all, 6 characters killing the same mob in the same spot (at the same time!) 100 times, farming the same node for 8 hours, etc....is pretty obvious if tracked.

If I designed an MMO it would have to have such a system, even if it cost me a separate server farm to stream the logs to for process, analysis and alerts. It would not have to be a book. Stuff like timestamp, character and mob/node number. If they can stream data to my client, they could to a database.

Because bots infest most all new MMO's, this problem should have been anticipated.

Before all the flaming, I work in IT and just mull over problems, even if my ideas are not practical all the time.

Dodece

I think what we have here is most likely a profound misunderstanding. In reality these are probably real players, and they are just running in circles harvesting the high concentration of plants the zone affords them. Even low level avatars can be accounted for as being crafting alts. Basically in hollow city you can do in a couple hours what would take a week anywhere else in the game world. It isn't just that there are a lot of plants, but they spawn quickly.

I found myself in a train with half a dozen real players last night. We were all just running around that pool like lunatics. Trying to outrun one another to the next spawn. The temptations to run around like mindless automatons is there. I can easily see players creating alts just to stock up off of those nodes. I really don't see it being a bot friendly environment. Just a necessary evil for the player that needs a ton of ingredients to keep them, and their friends stocked up.

If bots really are doing that. Then all I can say is how the mighty have fallen. It really amounts to collecting garbage off the ground. No Alchemist is going to pay them for the materials. Well let me rephrase it. Nobody is going to pay them a mint for common plants. Uncommon ones. Well that may be a different story.

Yankee

Bots are doing that. The ones I see are not real players. They are doing the exact same spells and on some sort of terrain grid pattern. They stack on each other when stopped as to almost appear as one. Many are killing mobs just to vendor for gold. Real players are not that hard to distinguish, even if they are named "absdfg".