Bots already harvesting resources

Rpalmer2

I have noticed this as well. I went back to Auridon to level my enchanting a bit, and everytime I would come across a rune I would see a level 3 appear and then I would see them a few feet away getting an iron node or a plant node... It makes for leveling my enchanting prof harder than it needs to be.

Vlos

If you hear a noise and the node disappears, it is likely someone who is phased. Especially in BleakRock as once you save everyone (and logically leave the island) you can go back to the island and still harvest the nodes, but you no longer see anyone who is still "saving" the island.

So this is likely what is happening on Bleackrock, not sure the other starter zones phase you.

Also it seems I hate to say the starter zones seem to have much better node spawns, which is probably why people are going back.

Rpalmer2

Vlos wrote: »

Also it seems I hate to say the starter zones seem to have much better node spawns, which is probably why people are going back.

I can agree with this. I'm able to find more enchanting nodes on the starter island than I have been on the mainland.

Brennan

Rpalmer2 wrote: »

Vlos wrote: »

Also it seems I hate to say the starter zones seem to have much better node spawns, which is probably why people are going back.

I can agree with this. I'm able to find more enchanting nodes on the starter island than I have been on the mainland.

I think this relates to the starter zone being significantly smaller than the mainland. So the resources are more tightly packed in that smaller area.

Etchesketch

Except it's just talk. If they really banned a bunch of bots, the most reported ones would be gone and the are not. Go into any public dungeon and there are bots camped there all day long. Mehrunes has 4 right now..

Easy enough for a gm to go check the dungeons.

Chalybos

The ones you see the most are not necessarily the ones reported the most.

Nox_Aeterna

I wonder how they make them teleport ... that is quite cool.

SDZald

alphasquid wrote: »

It's getting harder to report them now. Was just on Bleakrock and the harvesting bots are mining underground so the nodes just disappear and you can't see the bot.

I have not seen the transporting bots but over the last several nights I have come across what looks like valid nodes only when I try to interact with them nothing happens. If you move your mouse around and aiming down you can catch a Avatar name but you see no Avatar. At first I thought it was lag related but it seems strange I am only seeing this 'lag problem' around mat nodes.

bbadeau

This is great information!
I've noticed some peculiar behavior myself the last few days. I've tried to harvest some wood or ore only to have it disappear before I could select it. I've also noticed harvesting sounds but no player was there to make them.

I assumed that it was a bug but now know otherwise and will be watchful.

My question is: Is there a place players can go to get this information without stumbling upon it as I did? If more players were aware of this problem (and others that I am not aware of) this type of behavior could be spotted and reported faster.

Brennan

bbadeau wrote: »

*snip*
My question is: Is there a place players can go to get this information without stumbling upon it as I did? If more players were aware of this problem (and others that I am not aware of) this type of behavior could be spotted and reported faster.

Short of putting it on the launcher (which I suspect few people look at anyway), how would you suggest this be communicated in a manner other than the game's official forums?

Zooce

I would hope ESO could be coded in a way that stops such teleporting and flying being possible, I'm actually surprised they've found a way to make it possible.

Sakiri

Nox_Aeterna wrote: »

I wonder how they make them teleport ... that is quite cool.

Y axis and collision cheats.

I wont go into more detail.

Poenari

Thank you for addressing this issue, it left me disheartened as well. I have seen many of these bots while collecting mats and I reported every one of them. I was still seeing one called moosead in Dhalmora as of yesterday morning (April 10th), not sure if she's still there. I saw another in Khanarthi near Speckled Shell Plantation, they were too fast for me to write down the long, mostly consonants, name.

kcolasaccob14_ESO

I'm not seeing how this is going to be beneficial to these farming companies long-term. As it stands right now, they still need to join guilds to sell all of their ores to only other members of their guild or they have to go through the very slow process of actually selling through the game channels and chat. They're not really an interactive bunch, materials don't sell all that well (to make money en masse) and gold become rather useless after a bit. I'm not even level 50 yet and have over 200k on my character after several bank and inventory upgrades and leveling my horse every day.

poochie

Selling what exactly because I spend cash on bag-bank upgrades and my single horse for storage and repairs. Unless I see a WTB motif in chat I don't sell anything to players.

Cogo

Lets help to get rid of the bots then. When you see em, report to Zenimax as they asked.

Blade_07

Mansome wrote: »

Elvent wrote: »

I haven't seen these in game but I have seen a YouTube video somebody posted of a bot doing this... I hope this isn't the reason why the enchanting nodes are so hard to find.... I want to level and work on enchanting but can hardly find any.

Hope zenimax cracks down on these soon though.

If they do its going to hurt us more. I have never seen a dev in any game make changes to stop bots that doesn't hurt real crafters even worse than the bots. Not to say I don't want them to do something I just need for it not to suck.

I agree, devs most generally end up screwing the legit players with their wonderful fixes! Instead of actually doing something to just stop them they nerf something that screws us all and in some cases their brilliant solution is worse then the bots. Indeed, lets HOPE this will not be the case in this situation and future issues to come up.

Also, their phasing technology is broken like many things and some of the times what you thought was a bot was an actual player. Seen many situations where their phasing is just broken! Also love it when I run up to a node and click on it to only have it disappear & the only thing I get is pissed off cuz crap is broken! Sadly my patience is running really thin and with every day that goes by with these bugs not fixed just pushes me closer to closing my account permanently! Makes me mad that I payed $80 bucks for this frustration and on top of that I'm paying $15 a month. Trying very hard to hang in there cuz really like several things about this game and want to see it not completely fail. Ever since Oblivion I thought that a ESO would be awesome but didnt expect to get a product so utterly broken in so many ways especially for $80. Elder Scrolls has always been about high quality but that is indeed not the situation with ESO. Massive amount of bugs, cookie cutter caves/dungeons/instances. Really loved the the instance where you was SUPPOSE to be taken to Shivering Isles and all they did was copy/past the town of Vulkhel Guard and call it Shivering isles! I was like "Wow...WTH is this crappy work?" And then I started to wonder if any of them actually played Oblivion with the Shivering Isles expansion and seen what that place actually looked like.

Sorry, I know I'm being a$$ but they make it so hard not to be! Honestly, there is a great deal of content in ESO that is awesome and that is the reason why I'm still around. In fact most of the game is really cool and very well done & I give them kudos for a job well done in those places. But the negative things in ESO make it hard to wanna stick around.

Blade_07

ZOS_AlanG wrote: »

Hi guys, we wanted to thank you for the detailed information in this thread. This is an issue we take very seriously, and we posted a thread about this last night in the developer discussions forum:

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Today, we made our first major strike against those who choose to cheat in ESO, permanently banning thousands. This is only the beginning of our ongoing efforts to keep the game free from botters, speed hackers, and gold spammers. We want to thank everyone who has sent in-game reports about these individuals in ESO—your reports helped us identify many of the accounts we banned today. Please continue to report any botters, gold spammers, and speed hackers you see in-game, and we’ll continue our efforts to keep them out of Tamriel.

Thank you very much for taking action on this. Lets hope they can come up with a good fix soon.

Lepratul

Bots makes me huge lags when teleporting around me and harvest nodes!!!

Gillysan

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/search?Search=bots
Note at the bottom ">1000", which means over 1000 results.

http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info181-FastReport.html

Potenza

I know this is probly not practical to do but if ZOS could in a way turn their PVP on then we could hunt them and kill them ourselves - and when they die they drop their bags - we get the loot.

Pallmor

Cogo wrote: »

Lets help to get rid of the bots then. When you see em, report to Zenimax as they asked.

Saw a big group of them on Saturday farming Vivec's Antlers. Moving as a big train, all with randomly generated names. Moving too fast to report. And even worse are the ones I seeing moving around at super-speed (with exploits like that I bet the Leaderboards in PvP are pretty meaningless too).

You would think the devs could just scroll through a list of new players and look for the one's with obviously generated names. I'd give pretty good odds that someone with a name like "dqdgdkddkfff" is probably not a real person. Or look for players moving at superspeeds or underground. Pretty good tipoff there too.

Food4Thought

I have noticed bots do different things.

1. I have seen this particular bot activity heavily in zone Khan's Roost. A character jumped from a cliff and landed on a node only to disappear. At first I thought this was a game glitch and the poor guy just fell through the world. But then a second later his head popped up and the node he was on disappeared. I then noticed this bot and three others in this same zone repeatedly stick their heads up briefly as they harvested a node and watched as they basically cleared the zone of resources with little to no effort on their part. Each time just briefly showing their head as they travelled below ground.

2. I have also seen bots zip around a zone like "The Flash". They literally harvest a node, warp to the next, harvest it and keep on trucking. This bot activity seems to increase the likelyhood of pulling agro, but only minimally. And even if they do pull it, they tend to harvest the node and zip to the next before the mob can reach them. Which tells me they run two macros. One to speed travel and the other to autoloot the node.

3. the third is a teleport hack. The bot will literally teleport from one node to the next. But I have only seen this one once and not recently.

The wierd thing is that the bots seem to be selective when and how they run. Ore seems to be the most sought after resource (at least in the mid maps) and I base this on ore's rarity on those maps compared to other resource nodes. They also seem to run for a few days then are no where to be seen for a few more. It is almost like they are trying to limit their obscene resource gathering methods to avoid ticking other players off or being detected by the Devs.

Food4Thought

j.murro2ub17_ESO wrote: »

I know this is probly not practical to do but if ZOS could in a way turn their PVP on then we could hunt them and kill them ourselves - and when they die they drop their bags - we get the loot.

If only that was possible. But I think you can't interact with the ones that travel underground. And even if you can, they don't have their heads up above ground long enough to engage in combat.

Food4Thought

On a side note, I remember seeing somebody post an observation in one of the other threads. That obervation being that nodes in or near water tend to be left alone by the bots.

This player thought was that the water interferred with their underground movement.

From my own observations, I have to say I think this guy is on to something. Nodes on islands or in water to be left alone by the bots. Whether this is due to the water, something else, or just coincidental I have no idea.

Food4Thought

Blade_07 wrote: »

ZOS_AlanG wrote: »

Hi guys, we wanted to thank you for the detailed information in this thread. This is an issue we take very seriously, and we posted a thread about this last night in the developer discussions forum:

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Today, we made our first major strike against those who choose to cheat in ESO, permanently banning thousands. This is only the beginning of our ongoing efforts to keep the game free from botters, speed hackers, and gold spammers. We want to thank everyone who has sent in-game reports about these individuals in ESO—your reports helped us identify many of the accounts we banned today. Please continue to report any botters, gold spammers, and speed hackers you see in-game, and we’ll continue our efforts to keep them out of Tamriel.

Thank you very much for taking action on this. Lets hope they can come up with a good fix soon.

I appreciate their efforts but I can't help but wonder if it truly puts a dent in the bots. The smart ones probably run for less than an hour and then delete the character. Or they shuffle their loot to another player to avoid losses.

If it was me doing this, I would run the bot until I began to see other players in zone and then I would switch to another zone with the help of a higher level player. and then just keep switching zones to avoid being reported.

This is one situation where I think WoW got it right. Set crafting level requirements in order to harvest higher level resources. This will do a lot to keep level 3 bots out of level 40 or higher level areas.

Food4Thought

Pallmor wrote: »

Cogo wrote: »

Lets help to get rid of the bots then. When you see em, report to Zenimax as they asked.

Saw a big group of them on Saturday farming Vivec's Antlers. Moving as a big train, all with randomly generated names. Moving too fast to report. And even worse are the ones I seeing moving around at super-speed (with exploits like that I bet the Leaderboards in PvP are pretty meaningless too).

You would think the devs could just scroll through a list of new players and look for the one's with obviously generated names. I'd give pretty good odds that someone with a name like "dqdgdkddkfff" is probably not a real person. Or look for players moving at superspeeds or underground. Pretty good tipoff there too.

Actually, if you want to nip this in the bud, just have GMs playing in game in each of the zones 24 hours a day. Watching data is one thing, watching player activity is another and the response time would be much quicker.

Woolenthreads

j.murro2ub17_ESO wrote: »

I know this is probly not practical to do but if ZOS could in a way turn their PVP on then we could hunt them and kill them ourselves - and when they die they drop their bags - we get the loot.

Realistic headlopping damage for a Grapple Gun with Clothesline for the Trains? Wouldn't affect players because, well, we'd stop. Ghostly mines that don't affect characters that have collision on for the undergrounders?

xandraxas

The most aggravating one I've seen so far was a group of 8 to 10 low level Templars with randomly generated number/letter names.
They had enough fire power as a large group like that to take out everything that aggroed on them.
I followed for awhile and they went directly towards nodes. I was pretty bummed out cause I was out trying to get crafting mats myself at the time.
I also saw this same thing in a different twist. They had camped a boss in a dungeon. There was at least 10 there. All Templars again with just started gear on. All using that Templars javelin attack. I finally gave up trying to get the boss and finish the dungeon cause they had him dead before I could even react every time. :-(

twev

Food4Thought wrote: »

j.murro2ub17_ESO wrote: »

I know this is probly not practical to do but if ZOS could in a way turn their PVP on then we could hunt them and kill them ourselves - and when they die they drop their bags - we get the loot.

If only that was possible. But I think you can't interact with the ones that travel underground. And even if you can, they don't have their heads up above ground long enough to engage in combat.

Since traveling below the map (except for instanced delves and dungeons? But aren't they outside the map anyway?) isn't part of normal gameplay, why aren't 'toons under the map tracked and logged out? If you fall through the map you log back in, no harm, no foul. If a 'toon is repeatedly below the map the server should be able to notice.

Players 'toons can travel from shrine to shrine, or from anywhere to a shrine at a much faster rate than normal running, no problem. Why can't the server track travel at a supervelocity rate that doesn't end up at a shrine?

And 'toons repeatedly traveling a horizontal distance with a 'Z' coordinate in excess of a predetermined height for an 'X' or 'Y' distance in excess of some predetermined distance for 'flying bots? Whats up with them?

Why can't the server track 'toons that are repeatedly below the map and flag them for review?

Why can't the server track 'toons that are repeatedly traveling faster than a predetermined faster than normal horizontal velocity and flag them for review?

Why can't the server track flying bots?

The server has to track all sorts of data for our 'toons to award them damages against NPCs or PvP players. The server has to track a 'toons location to credit harvesting a node to that 'toon, and it knows where the node is, as well as WHEN the node is harvested.

This is computer generated database management. The server already has to keep track of this stuff. It can NOT be impossible for the server to know what can be done, and what breaks the rules, if it already knows when to award damage points to my score, or deduct damage points from my health on a dynamic basis.

Computers aint just for rocketsurgery anymore. Even script kiddies can program this stuff in mom's basement. Zeni ought to have access to some pretty good script kiddies of their own.