I'm done spending money on ESO (bot rant)..

Genomic

Shadow-Fighter wrote: »

We had bot-thread on german forum. We pushed it daily towards ZOS for several years with a lot of tickets but nothing has changed.

Unfortunately, ZOS don't care about their product.

The way businesses are run has changed in the last decade or two. It used to be that companies at least made a solid attempt at making good products and providing good customer service. Now it's evolved to 'distract the customer with some shiny things and you can repeatedly treat them like chumps and you'll still make a huge profit'. Look at Apple, Facebook and Windows 10. There's no incentive anymore to provide quality service/products or treat their customers with respect, because we've not only let them get away with it, we've actually rewarded them for it.

Banana

I like a good deal

mocap

me too till they add something from this:
- class change token
- harder overland ("personal debuff" method without "play naked, remove CP" bs)
- better support skills for healer

but we all know they will never do anything like that, so ESO is just a nice F2P game for me.

Turelus

From the conversions I've had with ZOS in the past about botting, I can say they do care about the issue and do work to stop it, however they're not winning the war just fighting it.

Seems if bots are reported they're normally dealt with in some manor, but new ones come and replace them.

There isn't a magic fix for it sadly and it's prevalent in all MMO games. They could in theory invest in more GM staff but if you want to think corporate wise that's invested money with low returns.

All I can say is keep reporting and have friends report as well. Also make sure you're discouraging and reporting RMT where you see it so the bots don't have customers.

LordSkyKnight

Bots will never disappear as long as people keep purchasing services from them. The reason bots stay in business is the same reason why micro transactions are so popular, people are too lazy to earn their rewards. They would rather purchase everything. Whether it’s the excuse they don’t have the time or they don’t have the skill to earn the rewards, the results are the same. They think they are entitled to the same rewards that others put the time in to earn.

Personally I don’t bother reporting them anymore. I don’t see fast enough results for my efforts on reporting so I don’t waste my free time on it anymore. The practice of botting or using their services has always disgusted me.

Perwulf

XP bots meh.

Farmer bots, now that's the problem.

Elsonso

Perwulf wrote: »

XP bots meh.

Farmer bots, now that's the problem.

Bots are bots. I report both. Whether ZOS bans the XP bots, which might get sold to some other player when fully leveled, is up to ZOS.

mzprx

Turelus wrote: »

...Seems if bots are reported they're normally dealt with in some manor, but new ones come and replace them...

...They could in theory invest in more GM staff but if you want to think corporate wise that's invested money with low returns...

appreciate the effort, mate, but if you look at the videos you'll see that the same bot (not a new one) is doing the same thing for over a year. after having been reported repeatedly by over 60 players. so nope, bots are not dealt with. that is an outright lie..

to your second point, i have spent a good chunk of money on this game. i don't mind paying for my entertainment. now i'm not going to any more. now, what would it take to go online, log into the game and check for bots in popular bot spots by a GM? like 10-15 minutes every 4-5 hours? 'cause botters don't do their thing for 10 minutes, they spend whole hours/days botting. well, correction, they don't, they enjoy their life while some program does stuff for them whilst i, a paying customer abiding by the ToS, have to grind everything myself. so overall paying someone for 10-15 minutes of their time every 4-5 hours would be much less than i myself spent on this game. so by losing the money i could spend in the future they've lost more than they would have by paying someone to check for bots. so your point is not valid..

Trancestor

I find it sad how this bothers you that much

twev

OFFL1MIT wrote: »

Yeah dolmen bots now are popular. Put serously think, how is it game breaking for you when some does stuff like that? I think you taking everything too over sensitive. Think about it, every 10 mins they get what 5 k xp? They're just wasting their electricity and paying silly money for running PC over night just level 2-5 levels in 12 hours? That's pathetic. It doesnt bother me. Most people grind dolmens just for jewlery, only silly people bot at dolmens. With xp scroll, armour traits (training) and running to every next dolmen you're x10 faster to level up than this way. Let them waste and pay their electricity bills. They gaining less than you are imagining.

Please post a list of the rules that we're all allowed to break, so we can see whether large groups of players breaking rules has any effect on game play for the rest of the players on line atm, or over long periods of time.

One guy breaking a rule or two in a small way once in a while - not much impact.
But when people see that the rules don't really matter - then the players as a whole start to change their view of 'right/fair/permissible/acceptable'.
Because the game teaches them that the rules aren't really rules, just suggestions that don't matter and aren't important.

I'm quite sure the 'player society' as a whole would change, and become less cohesive.

TelvanniWizard

lordrichter wrote: »

Perwulf wrote: »

XP bots meh.

Farmer bots, now that's the problem.

Bots are bots. I report both. Whether ZOS bans the XP bots, which might get sold to some other player when fully leveled, is up to ZOS.

I agree completely with you. The problem, as I see it, is that ZOS doesn´t seem to act against bots, once they have been reported.

alainjbrennanb16_ESO

I can see these are console if xbox report through xbox customer services its breaking t&c's but if playstation not much can be done

ezio45

i like the bots, they have entertained me more than most quest for years.....

Turelus

TelvanniWizard wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

Perwulf wrote: »

XP bots meh.

Farmer bots, now that's the problem.

Bots are bots. I report both. Whether ZOS bans the XP bots, which might get sold to some other player when fully leveled, is up to ZOS.

I agree completely with you. The problem, as I see it, is that ZOS doesn´t seem to act against bots, once they have been reported.

It's hit and miss it seems. I've seen them act as well as others reporting that said bots are gone, and we also have examples like here where it seems nothing has happened.
Jess in the past has said that the more reports they get on a bot the more chances it will get seen and banned. Was a forums post back when the Dolmen thing was an issue, too lazy to go dig it up again.

BWS2K

The bot in those videos is not there at the moment (PC/NA). There was a person in that spot who I conversed with briefly, who moved and jumped and fought when the dolmen came up. There was another questionable character who did not respond and who acted much more bot-ty but neither of these people look anything like the one in the video.

And here's where people remind me of instances, so I'll just go ahead and say that it works both ways - you can't say something has been going on non-stop for a year if you haven't checked daily (at least) throughout the year in the same instance. This zone particularly is a good place for farming dolmens because there are groups that just rotate through. Similarly, starter zones have more efficient resource farming routines so you'll see a lot there. Botters have routes and spots that they share with each other, and it's entirely possible that this person wasn't on for that duration of time but just occasionally and the reports went unanswered because there's lots of reports going in.

Like I said earlier in the thread, there is zero evidence that reports are acted on because acted on does not always equate to banning and we don't see the details. There is also, then, zero evidence that reports aren't acted on for exactly the same reason. Report them or not, play or don't, but you cannot say definitively that reporting does or doesn't work. I don't support bots in any form because it's against the Terms of Service and I don't need any other reason and neither does anyone else... but there are other good reasons.

All that said - if it's ruining the game for you or interfering with your enjoyment then I 100% support the decision to stop spending money on it. I've left games for the same kinds of reasons in the past and it stinks that there's always people out there doing this but I suppose we all have to make that decision for ourselves whether to stay or not. Happy Gaming!

Girl_Number8

Zos = Crown Crates = Endorses Gambling

Moral compass working as intended.

HalloweenWeed

I think the underlying problem is: ZOS is done spending money on banning bots.

Jayman1000

If they have to employ people to manually ban bots by roaming the gameworld as you suggest them doing, then yes they could hit a LOT of bots. But unfortunately you can bet your butt that too many of those employees will be so incompetent that they will also ban a lot of innocent players.

To avoid that they would have to employ some smarter people instead of just low pay yokels without brain and that will simply be too costly. You know how when you call customer services you always get to talk to morons? Low pay yokels who have been trained to talk in a specific way but have little practical skill or actual problem solving skills. they are just there to talk to you, not really to fix your problems. You don't want them to search for bots, they'll just ban innocent players too.

So the cheaper solution would be, and probably is, to rely on a lot of player reports and statistics that overwhelmingly and safely shows who is a botter or not. That way they can cut the tip of the iceberg cost-efficiently and without risking banning innocent players.

LiquidPony

Diminish wrote: »

Pheefs wrote: »

I see the macro in action and I agree it sucks!

but if some Weirdo wants to set up a character to do this for their own advantages or even to sell a CP Max Account...
(& given how bizarrely long its been, its more likely they are farming CP for themselves)

So why do we care and how many support resources should be devoted to preventing this kind of play?
What's the cost to benefit ratio? & no sarcasm intended (text being dangerous in that way )

I'm genuinely curious? How does it hurt us ...and how do they fix it?

Maybe I can contribute to the OP's post to better shed some light on the issue. Keep in mind, both of these videos were taken before I stopped playing ESO. Both of these videos were the follow up to me reporting this issue countless times in game, and also mentioning it on the forums. This type of thing should literally *** off every legit player in the game that plays more than just a couple hours a week. These same 2 locations (and many more) have been like this for years, jam packed with bots. They ruin the economy, the promote gold/account selling, they break immersion (if you are into that sort of thing), and so much more. ZoS does nothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD7409-2gKE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ydVWw1zpz0

zyk wrote: »

"if you having botting problems I feel bad for you son..."

I've got 99 games I enjoy to play, but TESO ain't one.

ZOS does clean out the bots with some regularity. If you find a spot where there are mass bots farming, they'll be there for a while and then one day they'll all disappear. For instance, your first video there is near the lake east of Sunken Road Wayshrine in Bangkorai. There aren't any bots there now. In fact, I'm standing there at this very moment and there's not a soul in sight, bot or otherwise:

So I do have to disagree with the notion (repeated endlessly here in this thread an elsewhere) that ZOS *never* does anything about bots. For instance:

mzprx wrote:

appreciate the effort, mate, but if you look at the videos you'll see that the same bot (not a new one) is doing the same thing for over a year. after having been reported repeatedly by over 60 players. so nope, bots are not dealt with. that is an outright lie..

It's not an "outright lie" that bots are dealt with. I've seen spots go from being overrun by a train of bots one day to completely empty the next. I've also seen bots in the same spot for months on end. My own personal opinion is that ZOS has some people who are responsible for cleaning up the bots, and those people are doing the best that they can, but it is not a huge priority for the company. I doubt that they want Tamriel to be absolutely teeming with bots, but I also doubt they see any real benefit to spending a bunch of time and money trying to squash every bot on every server.

Juhasow

People overreacting hard with the bots "issue". Yes bots exist. There are bots people created to lv up or to sell max lv account. So what ? I really enjoyed my progression in the game and if someone wants to pass on that while risking getting banned it's his/her decision at the end of the day I'll be on top since if I'll met person like that in PvP it'll be free kill for me since I have practice that person chose to skip. If I'll met person like that in PvE , person that have max CP and have no idea about anything related to combat I'll say "good bye". Yes there are bots farming mats. So what ? I really reccomend to all people making claims that bots destroy the market to really do the estimated math of how many mats 1 bot train can get per day including that there is limited amount of spots. Results are funny and few people doing crafting dailys on all characters is capable to get more golden mats per day then bot train. Regular players will obtain golden mats in much more ways then bots (decons , dailys , farm , hirelings). There is also much more regular players who obtain mats then bots and that gives picture of how little bots affect market in reality which is more or less mirrored in mats prices if someone follows long term charts with sells.

So at the end of the day despite the fact I do realize there are bots and personally I would like to not see them at all but I have no issue with seeing them until it wont affect my gameplay in any case and thankfully it doesnt. Of course I would like to see bot free game but people are who they are and there will be always bad apples. ZoS is acting against them but it's war they cannot win and expecting that every bot in the game will get banned because someone made a ticket is kinda silly. Expecting from company like ZoS or any other to say openly "we're fightning with bots but it's war we cannot win and we dont want to spend too much resources since issue isnt that big" is silly. And seriously deciding to stop playing (or paying) the game because here and there You can meet the bot that will not affect You in any case is also silly.

zyk

If you're not concerned about cheating, why post at all? Are you arguing no one should be concerned about cheating? Because if that were true, I guarantee it would grow to the point where it would impact you.

There is strong reason to believe ZOS does not action bots consistently or promptly. Many players have documented their reports and shown evidence there has been no actions. Players have linked bots to traders that dump mats on to the market and they have not faced action.

The exception is when bots are actioned promptly. So it's completely fair and necessary for players to bring light to this issue.

Elsonso

mzprx wrote: »

appreciate the effort, mate, but if you look at the videos you'll see that the same bot (not a new one) is doing the same thing for over a year. after having been reported repeatedly by over 60 players. so nope, bots are not dealt with. that is an outright lie..

I looked at the video. I want to believe. I know there are bots in the game, and you definitely have videos of cheating happening. I can't tell if it is the same bot. You were very careful to avoid naming and shaming, which is what you should be doing, but without that information, your videos show two different characters. Just because they look the same does not mean they are the same. The videos show nothing more than two bots. Sorry.

RavenSworn

this sucks. Botting sucks.

that being said though, Gold selling has already become official with the gifting available in game. So yeah....

Asha_11_ESO

If it's actually the same character and account, and has been doing that for a year, it seems like it would just be some random *** too lazy to farm cp right? And not someone farming cp fast to sell accounts to others. Hence it would be low on the priority list, but still, if it's been reported numerous times, it's a little disheartening that nothing (seemingly) has been done about it.

From what I've gathered, as soon as an account is banned for botting they just make a new one, and use the exact same characters and names. It's a great way to deter fellow players from reporting, because it makes it seem like your reporting has zero effect.

In my opinion, the real problem is not zos, it's the very players who play this game who buy gold or accounts etc, and keep the market for bots alive. Unfortunately because of this demand, it's a never-ending battle for them.