Taking Action Against Cheaters in ESO

zaria

KerinKor wrote: »

GuardM wrote: »

myself and my guild have witnessed first hand ban on the spot gm's showing up at farming locations and more then once. So they are on top of this, saying other wise is being a troll, sorry but true..

Of course they're not on top of it, and you seem to confuse someone pointing out a truth which doesn't conform to your agenda as 'trolling'.

There are so many bots, so many broken nodes, so many zones, layers, phases, instances that this effort is at best a whack-a-mole that produces a bit of PR then goes away.

Last night on the EU server a GM came on for FIFTEEN minutes. ONE GM, for FIFTEEN minutes .. I'm sorry, that's so lame it doesn't even qualify for token gesture status.

Sorry, this is a diversion, ZOS want to be seen to be doing something but this is so totally ineffective it's sad to see some people are trying to hype it up into any sort of 'solution' at all.

Meanwhile Bleakrock is overrun with bots that yesterday I conservatively reckon outnumbered real players by at least 5:1, and all starter zones seem to be as bad and the infection goes all the way up the tiers to a lesser extent.

THAT is the scale of the problem here, that won't be solved by ONE GM.

Solution to bots is not GM, or GM job is not to ban but to investigate and see bot patterns, now you scan log for bot behavior like you scan spam mail.

active 24/7, do one thing only, always give all items or loot to another player,
And yes obvious stuff like players sending level 3 to coldharbor to do an quest.

As analyzing players in detail might be to hard set up various bot traps, things who in it self not is proof for boting but very strong indications and put you on a watch list, it looks to me like its an limited number of bot behavior so after identifying them its simple to find the common pattern and ban after this, yes you will also look into the other players who interact with them, the receiver of gold and so on

Nerfing drops is not the solution, it just moves the bots, stoping exploits is something else, like making the coldharbor quest dependent on level. Still this is an good trap, doing it 20 times is an exploit anyway.

Leucius

It's hard to tell how effective the ban process is. I ignored a bunch of spam bots my first week in the game, and last week removed about 5 of them from my ignore list only to find 2 or 3 of them were still spamming in Auridon on the US Megaserver.

I have high hopes for this game, and I report every spam bot I see in chat, as well as those stupid enough to send me ingame mail. I'm hopeful ZOS gets things worked out. I know it can be done, I've seen other mmo's with little to no obvious bot presence, but it's probably going to take something like increasing the gold earned through drops and trash loot increases to make it go away.

After all, the problem isn't in the supply...

TomSamuel

Targrim wrote: »

Only problem is you banned the main groups, but you did not clean up the damage they had already caused. Now DC has unlimited stacks of everything, and almost 80% are all 10 Vet status while the other 2/3s are still grinding at regular speed because we don't have the luxury of just using endless resources on Offense and Defense and so on. You should have wiped all Vet status and cleared all PvP related gear to level the field after you patched the problem. Now before all you Dumb Fks start crying "why should the rest be punished for what a few did?", simple most of the DC are still using the stacks to this day, while wiping just DC would the preferred method, some would think that they were singled out. Then again you DC didn't report your faction while it happened so your really just as guilty. let the flaming begin the TRUTH hurts.

You are an idiot sir. This problem is just not one faction side but all three. You'd sound more credible if you acknowledged this instead of saying only one side need be wiped.

TomSamuel

@Zaria : Also , I exchange stuff with my buddy all the time. We're not bots. He's an alchemist I'm a armorer .

Coloradotomasb14_ESO

You guys are amazing, I have not had a bad experience with customer support, Thank you and keep it up, you have a loyal customer here.

zaria

TomSamuel wrote: »

@Zaria : Also , I exchange stuff with my buddy all the time. We're not bots. He's an alchemist I'm a armorer .

Most people do they also do stuff like giving all stuff they don't need to guild bank.
You also have bank alt but they are on the same account.

Still farming 24/7 and then giving all your loot / gold to another player will show up pretty different in the statistic.
Now you analyze the one who receive all the items/ gold, if a few players take all the gold from hundreds of other something is fishy, you know you have a bot network.

Benefit of player interaction is that its far less data than movement patterns.

No this will not catch player run bots, a player who uses a bot while afk to grind or farm while afk.

MercyKilling

The past few nights I've been wandering around Wayrest, following the bot swarm. The pattern I've observed so far:
They will run up to the bridge on the east side of Wayrest, where the Back Street gang mobs are threatening a townie. They'll pause there, then run in a series of straight lines to the Recruiter in town. Another pause. Then they'll again run a series of straight lines into the Mage's Guild, to stop directly in front of the Soul Gem vendor there. I'm guessing they're emptying their inventories. From there, they bee-line into the Wayrest Sewers dungeon. After that, I lose them, because the dungeon instances. I'm guessing they port back out into the world from there.

ONE invisible GM with account banning ability could wipe out literally hundreds of mule/farm accounts that the gold sellers use. These are the bots you see in the overworld, running geometric patterns from mob to mob. Cut these accounts out and you're crippling their ability to generate ingame gold.

It took me all of perhaps half an hour to track their entire run, from the mob just outside town to the entrance of the Wayrest sewer dungeon, reporting new bots as they came along. Eventually, they got too numerous for me to report, so I gave up. Besides, I pay my sub to play the game, not spend all night reporting bots.

Oh..and after all that...heading to the wayshrine to port out of town...I ran into MORE bots heading into town to vendor off loot gained from farming overworld mobs.

Edit:

I have since discovered the bots are running from the exit of the Wayrest Sewers dungeon to the mob of street thugs on the east side of Wayrest, just before the bridge. Supposedly, Ma'iq can be found on an island nearby, but I've yet to discover him, hence my constant witnessing of the bot train.

steveb16_ESO46

I'm hoping we're going to see something huge happen soon because things are now totally out of control. If as people suggest one method is to create a toon, teleport it in to do a simple one off quest, delete it and make a new one (all scripted) in seconds then I'd immediately limit toon creation to 2 a day.

goatlyonesub17_ESO

About a week ago, I wrote in-game to Customer Service and reported the use of "bots" for cheating. I have since learned that the cheating is taking place in a different way.

It's the speed-buff cheat combined with a nasty "toggle collision cheat."

Certain players have found a way to toggle collision off in ESO, giving them the ability to move through the land, partly or entirely below the visible surface, thus sometimes hidden from sight. They can also run across the top the water. And they can even run through the air. They can ignore the contours of the terrain and move toward their target in a straight line.

In Skyrim, this ability was gained by the use of the TCL console command. Cheating players have discovered a way to implement it improperly in ESO.

Additionally, they have boosted their speed so that they can run faster than a horse can sprint. These cheaters are depleting the wilds of resources, leaving very little for honest players. They are offering them, or wares made from them, for sale, spamming chat with their dirty advertisements and scamming gold from honest players.

Since the use of this exploit became common, the rate at which an honest player can harvest jute or ore has fallen to about a quarter of what it was originally. Please identify the cheating players and remove them from the game.

I don't necessarily mean "ban their accounts." Organized cheaters can always create new accounts, and probably faster than you can shut them down. Something else is neeed here. You might consider asking law enforcement to arrest the cheaters for vandalism, or pursue civil action in court, suing their butts for interfering with your business, making it less attractive and thus less profitable for you. Put a real-world whammy on a few of these cheaters, and that will do much more than banning (some of) their accounts could ever do.

If this were Skyrim, I'd suggest hiring the Fighter's Guild to go and beat them up.

Catflinger

goatlyonesub17_ESO wrote: »

Since the use of this exploit became common, the rate at which an honest player can harvest jute or ore has fallen to about a quarter of what it was originally. Please identify the cheating players and remove them from the game.

I don't necessarily mean "ban their accounts." Organized cheaters can always create new accounts, and probably faster than you can shut them down. Something else is neeed here. You might consider asking law enforcement to arrest the cheaters for vandalism, or pursue civil action in court, suing their butts for interfering with your business, making it less attractive and thus less profitable for you. Put a real-world whammy on a few of these cheaters, and that will do much more than banning (some of) their accounts could ever do.

If it were only that simple.

You appear to be new to the world of MMO gaming, so this is the deal. Gold farmers are not kids out for the lols. These are tightly organized groups who are professional real-money traders, and they have been plaguing MMOs for well over a decade. Many (most?) of them operate out of mainland China, making litigation nearly impossible.

Other types of botters are generally players and they are easier to catch, because they bot for gains in-game rather than for RMT/money laundering purposes, are prone to making stupid errors in judgment, etc. You still can't bring the law down on them. Game companies have tried to go after the makers and distributors of bot software, with limited success (Blizzard took down a particularly odious gathering bot maker and it's biggest distributor back in 2007.) But the people who make this software have gotten craftier over the years -- and the users of these bots aren't even what we're dealing with right now, by and large.

Chinese gold farmers are probably running their own custom scripts. How are they to be tracked down and litigated?

KerinKor

goatlyonesub17_ESO wrote: »

You might consider asking law enforcement to arrest the cheaters for vandalism, or pursue civil action in court, suing their butts for interfering with your business, making it less attractive and thus less profitable for you. Put a real-world whammy on a few of these cheaters, and that will do much more than banning (some of) their accounts could ever do.

As @Catflinger said, RMT have infested MMOs for 15+ years, no MMO developer has successfully sued anyone for 'cheating', 'botting' or even 'hacking'.

The Blizzard case (s)he referred to is the only 'win' by such company and that was on COPYRIGHT grounds, and they were only able to successfully pursue that case because the defendant was in the US.

Right now Blizzard are trying to pursue an East European gang and finding it very hard to lock on to a legal basis for any action. If Blizzard with their long history, deep pockets and incredibly firm commitment to taking the botters out if at all possible can't establish a basis to proceed it's pretty unlikely there is one.

Pretty much every MMO in existence has been plagued by RMT, the fact there has never been a successful case other than this one, and indeed there have been very few that even made it to court, is clear evidence that whatever may appear to be an 'obvious' solution to someone with no legal understanding there is in fact very little a company running an MMO can do legally when the 'enemy' is outside US civil jurisdiction.

In any event, to sue you have to demonstrate damage, any financial reward is of course called 'damages' and ZOS would be hard pressed to actually prove any financial loss at all: it's not like they sell gold so there's no question of RMT taking money away from ZOS' 'store'.

As for suggesting "law enforcement", just no, a player using a bot is not 'vandalising' anything in the sense such a term could be applied to use of a computer, the bots don't destroy anything.

reggielee

its not just cold harbor now with low level toons straight from starter zone in high lvl areas, if there is a wayshrine you can bet there will be packs there farming quest rewards. they are all sharing scripts now on how to do this, deleting the char soon after seems to erase the data logs of where and who they sent to goods too. i would think the devs would then instead just track who has made a hundred alts in a week. you pretty much can thank players directly for this new tactic, not so much the gold farmers... why pay the gold farmers when you can do your own?

ya know, i just ignore them as much as i can but when you clear a hill and see a huge swarm of them it can take a good gaming day and turn it into a grudge match

steveb16_ESO46

I'd be totally on board with a limit on the number of alts you can create in a day.

LupX

Here's a tip for some GM to get the achievement "Ban Hammer of today". TP to Thane Mera in Windhelm and check out what's going on.

Catflinger

yawner_sb16_ESO wrote: »

Here's a tip for some GM to get the achievement "Ban Hammer of today". TP to Thane Mera in Windhelm and check out what's going on.

You might need to edit the image to take out the bot's name, or a mod may remove it on the grounds of "naming and shaming". Because it would be totally tragic if @gytigkdahdmfuretrrytigldfkdlfl;g78soamd was wrongly accused of being some gold farmer's automaton!

Nuksuu

I've played since launch. ZOS have been extremely proactive in recent times fighting bots, spammers and gold sellers. I congratulate them.

With regard to volunteer GMs, I would put my hand up for this. I play from Australia and the bot are particularly active during my evening playtimes when many US players are inactive; this probably gives them greater leeway to get about their nefarious business unreported.

As they are most active in my timezone (and I make no direct accusation about their country of origin as a result), I would like to have ZOS take into account my credentials; hard copy documents are available as proof.

I am a former Police Officer and Physical Security Professional with 24 years experience under my belt. No blemishes on my record. I've been playing MMOs since 2003 with SWG, AoC, TSW and now ESO providing great experiences.

I would suggest the power to 'suspend' a suspect bot from the server pending formal investigation by those that normally conduct this role through reviewing activity logs etc. If I get it wrong, they get an apology and I get a rap over the knuckles from you

I don't want any special title, badge, reward or anything else for that matter. I am used to serving the community in the interests of keeping public order. Whilst this should probably go in a formal communication to ZOS, this thread seems as good a place as any to put this out there. I have a feeling that it is being monitored and feel free to contact me if my suggestion appeals to you. I have a solid history of reporting bots which you could no doubt review.

Otherwise, I will just keep up the reporting but if I had a more active capacity, I would be able to view zone chat, travel to the various zones at least in the EB areas and respond to calls of suspected bots. I'll leave it there.

KerinKor

Nuksuu wrote: »

As they are most active in my timezone

I expect the botters run 24/7, albeit maybe with different bots due to banning/whatever. I think what you're seeing is the effects of layering on the mega-server where the bots get more spread out due to the larger general population whereas in your prime time the lower overall population I think would likely concentrate bots into fewer layers.

strongoakb14a_ESO

I have to say this, in the VET areas resources are so plentiful I get sick of getting off my horse to harvest them, ive caught myself think "can I please go 10 feet without something glowing". So i am in Rivenspire collecting a few missed lorebooks and every node I saw glowing except alchemist had some toon come up and start harvesting it. The names on a few were normal and behaved normally, but I saw several with those random messed up names. I didn't witness any poof away but they definitely ran right by mobs that didn't agro to go after them, which I thought was odd.

zaria

KerinKor wrote: »

Nuksuu wrote: »

As they are most active in my timezone

I expect the botters run 24/7, albeit maybe with different bots due to banning/whatever. I think what you're seeing is the effects of layering on the mega-server where the bots get more spread out due to the larger general population whereas in your prime time the lower overall population I think would likely concentrate bots into fewer layers.

High chance for this, during prime hour lots of players so server create many layers, during night its few players fewer layers but the same amount of bots.

ashronthasb16_ESO

Today, I am seeing questing, speedhacking bots. This is the first time I've seen this, and I play a lot. Just wanted you to know. I saw them at the Sotha Sil shrine north of Ebonheart, all doing the quest there, speedhacking in, and out of there again.

Logan9a

They need to have a better way to report chat spam. Right click, select 'spam'. The current way to report spam is laborious. Make it easier.

Syzmicke

Since this post was made 6 weeks ago the bot infestation has got worse.

nawlinzbilly

Awesome!!

Relicz

o man wabajack 20 minutes ago had Blue road keep door down to 15% then all of a sudden fixate is at the door standing there with his shield up and boom all of the daggerfall covenant siege got bugged and they repaired their wall to full *** game. o and did I mention it was our last keep to capture for emperor

Corithna

KerinKor wrote: »

GuardM wrote: »

myself and my guild have witnessed first hand ban on the spot gm's showing up at farming locations and more then once. So they are on top of this, saying other wise is being a troll, sorry but true..

Of course they're not on top of it, and you seem to confuse someone pointing out a truth which doesn't conform to your agenda as 'trolling'.

There are so many bots, so many broken nodes, so many zones, layers, phases, instances that this effort is at best a whack-a-mole that produces a bit of PR then goes away.

Last night on the EU server a GM came on for FIFTEEN minutes. ONE GM, for FIFTEEN minutes .. I'm sorry, that's so lame it doesn't even qualify for token gesture status.

Sorry, this is a diversion, ZOS want to be seen to be doing something but this is so totally ineffective it's sad to see some people are trying to hype it up into any sort of 'solution' at all.

Meanwhile Bleakrock is overrun with bots that yesterday I conservatively reckon outnumbered real players by at least 5:1, and all starter zones seem to be as bad and the infection goes all the way up the tiers to a lesser extent.

THAT is the scale of the problem here, that won't be solved by ONE GM.

I'm not sure if you realize this, but each zone you enter can have as many as several hundred instances running concurrently. Chat is also instanced in the same manner. That they stay where "you" are located for 15 minutes just shows that they have a lot of ground to cover and not a lot of time to do it in.

skeletorz_ESO

Either the duping is still happening or a lot of people were still sitting on lots of stacks. See people trying to tell me they get all the stacks of improvement materials from refining raw materials. I know that's BS because I've leveled two toons from 1-50 (the normal questing way where you get lots of mats, not the shortcut grinding way) and after those, I still don't have a full stack of purple improvement mats, much less a stack of gold ones.

Duping is still happening.


To ZOS: You guys don't really seem like you knew what you were getting into with an MMO. Clearly, you should've put the game into open beta for about six months before releasing it. Right now, you're getting people to pay you for beta testing it for you. And that's going to kill your game. Clueless. Whoever's idea that was needs to be viciously ridiculed out of the game industry.

KerinKor

Corithna wrote: »

KerinKor wrote: »

GuardM wrote: »

myself and my guild have witnessed first hand ban on the spot gm's showing up at farming locations and more then once. So they are on top of this, saying other wise is being a troll, sorry but true..

Of course they're not on top of it, and you seem to confuse someone pointing out a truth which doesn't conform to your agenda as 'trolling'.

There are so many bots, so many broken nodes, so many zones, layers, phases, instances that this effort is at best a whack-a-mole that produces a bit of PR then goes away.

Last night on the EU server a GM came on for FIFTEEN minutes. ONE GM, for FIFTEEN minutes .. I'm sorry, that's so lame it doesn't even qualify for token gesture status.

Sorry, this is a diversion, ZOS want to be seen to be doing something but this is so totally ineffective it's sad to see some people are trying to hype it up into any sort of 'solution' at all.

Meanwhile Bleakrock is overrun with bots that yesterday I conservatively reckon outnumbered real players by at least 5:1, and all starter zones seem to be as bad and the infection goes all the way up the tiers to a lesser extent.

THAT is the scale of the problem here, that won't be solved by ONE GM.

I'm not sure if you realize this, but each zone you enter can have as many as several hundred instances running concurrently. Chat is also instanced in the same manner. That they stay where "you" are located for 15 minutes just shows that they have a lot of ground to cover and not a lot of time to do it in.

Er, I know, hence my "There are ... so many zones, layers, phases, instances".

KerinKor

skeletorz_ESO wrote: »

To ZOS: You guys don't really seem like you knew what you were getting into with an MMO. Clearly, you should've put the game into open beta for about six months before releasing it. Right now, you're getting people to pay you for beta testing it for you. And that's going to kill your game. Clueless. Whoever's idea that was needs to be viciously ridiculed out of the game industry.

This is sadly a good summary. ZOS's naivety or ignorance of the world of MMOs and the grief RMT/bot have caused every game that's been released since FFXI (and maybe earlier) is appalling, they designed a game whose architecture was has hackable as a stand-alone off-line game and the bot writers have had a field day just like the cheat writers for Skyrim etc.

I played FFXI in 2005 and RMT nearly destroyed the game when it was just 3 years old, I saw bots cause serious grief in LOTRO, Rift and others .. only Turbine ever got real control, in FFXI Square Enix took ZOS' approach and nerfed and crippled much of the game the botters attacked, and ironically after all that fishingbots are as bad now as ever.

I also agree with your 'laughing stock' comment, if I were in the shoes of the developers who designed this game I'd be ashamed at how naive I was.

Auldjohn

I requested GM Moderation for the Tears of Anaya Quest Giver in Davon's Watch. For three days there have been a constant stream of Bots with random names both at the Quest Giver location and the Tavern with the Tears of Anaya bottle. I reported at least 10 or 12 bots but they persist.

This is an unobvious location for a bot chain since there is no boss and limited reward for the mini-Quest. All the bot chain does is obstruct access to the Quest Giver and crowd both the giver location and the quest location.

ZOS Admin: Is there an in-game help or chat feature to request GM assistance or moderation for an observed exploit? I recall this was a feature briefly during Beta but I cannot find it now. /help search returns no relevant FAQs.

ZOS_JasonI

Hey there, @Auldjohn. If you want to report a player for inappropriate behavior or exploitation, you can do so in-game by right-clicking on their name and selecting the "Report Player" option. You can also submit a help ticket to report bots that you find in-game, just be sure to give specifics as to their location.

For the instance you named above, we'll be sure to forward that information to our Support Team so they can jump to that area to investigate. Thanks for bringing this to our attention!