Taking Action Against Cheaters in ESO

TharinLyes

Is there any updates regarding this issue? I end up spending more time reporting/ ignoring Gold Spammers/ and Bots then I do playing the game. It's getting old, but just ignoring them does nothing to help the true players of the game. Just would be nice to know if there is some sort of plan and that my efforts, and those of others (I hope) are not being wasted.

Perhaps banning by MAC/IP address instead of just user names?

colemanmarkd

After reporting over 200 spammers/bots, I've just been closing the zone chat all together. I made a chat tab only for group/guild. Finally a bit of peace, even though I now miss out on any socializing other than with my guilds. I only report the group and guild invites now, which I still receive 5+ per play session.
+
Something really needs to be done about all this. Drastic measures. I've reduced my sub plan from 180 to 30day increments. So if things are still like this after that 1st bill cycle, I'm out.

ashronthasb16_ESO

Afk bots are standing in groups of like 10-15 on bosses in any dungeon now, everyone knows that. But the new thing i saw today, is that the botters also have some afk bots to stand by the dungeon entrance, just walking in and out, to insta-spawn the bosses inside. So when the bosses fall dead, after those few seconds of a fight, new ones spawn right away to be killed again.

Like i wrote earlier, there should be a quest # solved demand, before getting to enter dungeons. Everyone knows bots dont quest, so this is a fine way to keep bots outside. Players that actually play the game, solve quests anyway. And this quest # demand, could be done with only one character on the account to unlock it, so that all characters can enter dungeons up to that point of unlock quest demand in an area. And of course, the demand should rise some, the further into the areas one go, and so one see fewer bots, even if they quest. I doubt these botters will sit down and make quest solving scripts anyway, and even less so, sit down and pull up their sleeves to even quest with just one character.

UnknownXV

I truly do not understand how this is possible in a P2P game. How can they possibly afford to buy thousands of accounts at $60 each (and have to submit valid payment information to actually log in)?

Topher

I think we all need to, as a show of solidarity amongst the community, take the time, EVERY TIME, to report all bot activity, gold spammer/sellers, exploiters and so on. I ALSO think that gold BUYERS should be banned just like the sellers/spammers. It may not seem cool to report on other players, but the influence of real money on the many micro economies will be terrible. I think in all reality having the micro economies as guild stores instead of one HUGE Auction House may mitigate the damage of real world money infilltration....perhaps tha's why ZoS went that route. But I do not think it will be enough. Report people you see obviously cheating and trust in the devs to sift through the reports and act decisively. The game will be SO much better in the long run for us having taken this extra time to clean up this mess NOW. If we let gold buying and selling and bot activity/exploits get too ridiculous, the leech effect will have permanent repercussions on TESO's economy.
I am hearing about some collateral damage in the way of (supposed) "clean" accounts getting accidentally banned. I would like to think ZoS, with some review process, will make this go away.
At some point, every player in TESO must decide. Either we all work together as a team (players and developers) and allow this experience to achieve all the awesomeness it has the potential for, or we sit back and watch yet another beloved world be destroyed. The BIGGEST aspect of that decision to work as a team is TRUST. We, as players, must TRUST the developers to have our interests in mind in all decisions they make policy(s) concerning gameplay.
I, for one, trust ZoS to do the right thing and I will diligently fight against the greedy behavior which has poisoned so many solid games in the past and threatens to sink its fangs into TESO.

SypherDiass

soo little has been done about these scum bags that i now play for at most 2 hours a day to sort my crafting and help any guildies that need it. i cant be bothered to waste more of my time reporting players when there is clearly not enough being done to sort the problem. all these people coming in here still saying the same as we were n early access kinda confirms to me ZOS doesnt care whether we are happy playing the game, it seems they are equally as happy to take the sub monies from the spammers and sellers as they are to take us 'true players' money.

i wont be giving you any more of my money ZOS , consider this my sub cancelled for 6 months to see if you pull your finger out and save the game and its economy or if you just sit back an watch the sellers and spammers bend your game over a barrel anf F#*k it ....

Topher

PS ...


The circle of cheat is something like this: ---->bots camp bosses for loot and gold, stacked in droves

---

>gold sellers gather all the loot and gold from bots, liquidate the loot to only having gold--->gold spammers then obnoxiously and w/o any fear, spam their gold selling in all citys, jamming up chat channels etc----> players who don't give a damn buy the gold with real money in back alley transactions---->real money pays for the people who sit all day handling/maintaining the bots/spam---->bots continue to camp bosses .... thus the circle of cheat goes on.

So..if we make any aspect of this too much trouble for them. Perhaps they will move on to easier prey. ANY other game will do..we can let them decide. They can go to another game, where people don't care about gold selling, and we can return to what we were trying to do in the first place...have fun and enjoy this world we love so much.

Report all Spammers. Don't just ignore them. Report all bot activity.

Make sure the developers know we are in for the long haul and I think they will continue to go the extra mile for us to keep the game safe.

Topher

UnknownXV wrote: »

I truly do not understand how this is possible in a P2P game. How can they possibly afford to buy thousands of accounts at $60 each (and have to submit valid payment information to actually log in)?

this should give you some insight into how well funded some of these operations are. I have heard that there are some countrys (I won't get specific) that actually have sweat shop style gold farming set ups.

Please remember though:

The law abiding, rule adhering, lovers of all things Elder Scrolls are more motivated and better funded. We also have the developers on our side! This situation can be controlled and eventually dispatched with the right attitude and cooperation between players and developers.

krapmyself

I applaud your effort, but in Glenumbra, I can go into any one of the solo dungeons, (that use the torch symbol) and find about 10 or so bots farming the mini boss in them. seriously. Go into ANY one of them and you'll find several bots.

Requiemslove

I can vouch for this as well. A few days ago I went on a tour of the first couple of zones shard hunting...in every solo dungeon there were bot farmers. Its getting to the point where it hardly seems worthwhile playing. I have a monthly sub for the game but I have not played since late Saturday, and frankly my desire to play this game is affected by it. It shouldn't be this way. This game has been live for 17 days. A player such as I should be all over this still, like you know, MAD for it. Instead, going back to my old comfort [lotro] gets more and more interesting. And yes, Zenimax should contact them and ask them how they did it [get rid of gold spammers/bots] and if the devs for this game have a plan...well a simple "we are aware of the problem and steps are being taken to rectify it" would frankly be much better than this silence.

NightBladez

Well the situation is getting worse and worse. Bots at every boss in every public dungoen. I do try to get all reported but they are so many it is difficult to get to all of them.
Perhaps implement a system where you could call for a ingame GM to be summoned to that place with power to temporarly ban or kick them out when their identity has been verified, i.e. their handle name.

I am very sick of this bots and goldsellers. Time to step up the fight against it or people will loose interest in the game.

As i posted in the post above, why don't make public dungoen boss loot unique, one item for each boss, and only one item, nothing else. so kill it again you get nothing, no exp or loot. Everyone gets loot that it from boss and can still help for friends or guildies. render bot farming uselsess and don't need a timer.

Cause timer will only hurt the players and bots still be around somewhere or even still there, depending on the timer on the boss.

Vampiresmile

Good Work, dont want to spoil such a great game with gold sellers spamming the chat every 2 seconds

Requiemslove

Nightbladez....dude, that's a seriously cool idea. I like how you think. I am not sure the system you suggest would be fair, but maybe a compromise can be reached? How about instead of a cool-down timer for dungeon bosses, you have a cool-down timer for loot and xp from a dungeon boss which activates say, after a character has killed that boss say...2 times in an hour? It could last for an hour [meaning any potential bot gets nothing for an hour] and if someone kills the dungeon boss more than 2 times, an extra hour CD is applied to that dungeon boss for every successive kill. This would be a work around for a boss being reset from its grace period, which would also stop bots farming it as the xp/loot CD [after you killed a boss the second time, if you kill it a 3rd, you get nothing at all] is not connected to that dungeon boss, but is a count of how many times a character has slain the boss.

A further step could be, that count is ACCOUNT wide, meaning for every dungeon boss you get nothing if you killed that boss 3 times within an hour. [which means people with bot accounts cant hop from character to character as a work around]

TwistedLogic

The botting issue on the EU server does seem to be pretty bad at the moment... The lower level dungeons across Auridon are all 80-90% populated by bots when I checked yesterday. With groups of players moving in perfect sync, stacking themselves in the same spots constantly and all reacting instantly to any mobs that come along. This seems to be in every dungeon/cave I went into and is incredibly obvious. I reported about 10-15 characters at least and will continue doing so as long as I find them, as this kind of thing needs to stop before ESO character farming gets as bad as it did for WoW. I really hope they crack down on these as a priority, as actual players are having trouble completing areas due to botters.
Could we possibly have some way to kill these characters off? There is currently no easy way to kite monsters to them to kill them before they regen, so if players had some way to either stop them or alert GMs in-game, it may speed up getting rid of these cheaters.

Magnys

I've stated this in another thread but one thing that would help with this is the implementation of a mandatory paid (one-time) security key.

Branek

My wife was banned by accident as well. Customer service warned it would take an hour before they could respond to her but around an hour they responded to our appeal and they put her back into the game. I was pleased by their response and good job to customer service (at least from our end and in this instance.)

Don't stop banning these jerks because of the problems this time around though. Just a GM occasionally running through could really get a lot of these guys. They are blatant. Its not hard to tell that "mcmmidow" (name made up by just face rolling my keys) running in the same place over and over or standing and farming a boss while not responding to questions is a bot.

This botting and gold spamming has to stop, its really ruining a game that I was enjoying until these guys became so pervasive. A game that the devs worked so hard on to be immersive has lost all immersion because of this. They are even spamming guild invites with their web address. Its making the game unplayable and if it doesn't get cleared up soon I will be forced to cancel my accounts. I will go back to a game that has this much more in control. If you don't start hurting the gold spammer/ botters pocket book and make it harder on them, my pocket book will find other things to go to.

On side note, whats most interesting, a lot of this could have been avoided if the "Questionnaire" that was promised in the beginning was implemented and if the system actually sent you to instances with like minded players that didn't have 20 bots on the same boss. I realize why its so prevalent is because there are so many people on the same server. Instead of them being spread out among 20 servers now they all get to congregate and annoy us all equally but this is just insane.

Nefar

Magnys wrote: »

I've stated this in another thread but one thing that would help with this is the implementation of a mandatory paid (one-time) security key.

I've already paid a premium price for the game and a subscription fee. I'm not paying them another damn dime. This is their problem and they need to solve it. I was about to pull the trigger and purchase 6 months sub last week, now it's the cancel button.

r3v3n

They are most likely using stolen credit card info to purchase the accounts. Whoever buys from them continues the circle with giving them new creditcard info.

So. Setting up a security key wouldn't help at all. How about a GM log into game and monitor?

PaulD

Good on banning gold spammers/scammers. There is one thing I'd like to say though, given there are some obvious (teleport, etc) issues on the client side. You'll have third party "security" vendors pushing their stuff at you shortly, if you haven't already. Just one thing, none of their crap works. BTDT. I mean really, I DO NOT CARE what garbage information they are feeding you, THEIR "SOLUTIONS" DO NOT WORK. Client side issues should be addressed with a combination of client and server sanity checks, IOW, any travel more than X distance when not within usage distance of a shrine or travelling to a shrine should close the game client. More than five boss kills in fifteen minutes should close the game. Etc. That's sanity checking. This "we'll scan the users machine for XYZ" just starts a DLL war that you'll never win, especially if you outsource work to the people who are writing the bots - and yes I've caught that one red handed. Just say no to the third party "solutions". Really.

Cameryn

Kill the ability to loot a public dungeon boss more than once per character. Why is this not being discussed? Might make it a bit harder on the people who want to farm them for hours, but it'd take care of the bot problem… they couldn't make as much gold, certainly.

BTW I'm on a month to month subscription. I NEVER sub for less than 6 months. But as much as I love the game framework, I can't abide by the constant bugs (my constant Mac crashes, endless load screens, broken quests) and the bots. The bot situation is the worst I've ever seen in an MMO game and I'm an MMO gamer from way back.

SKEyesOGrey

So silly idea... Maybe a mod should just chill in zone chat for an hour or two a week randomly and drop the ban hammer? I mean it's kind of sad when chat is unusable because of gold spammers....

necrolineage

After reporting a total of 16 bots on the same boss and after waiting almost two hours. No intervention was made .

The same bots are still there farming the boss and prevent players from the loot . After 2 weeks of launch , I find this a scandalous situation.

You say that you take action but I see daily that is nothing and the situation becomes even worse by the day .

So continue like that, we'll talk about when to renew subscriptions ...

Your ad date of 11 days and there is still more bots in the game as of the date of this announcement. Your service is close to nil !

"This is only the beginning of our ongoing efforts to ensure that the game remains free of " botters "," speed hackers , " and other" gold- spammers '. "

Remains free ? What a joke , your game is infested to the core !

SypherDiass

public dungeons are now a waste of time visiting them , zone chat is unreadable due to spammers , more time is spent by us players trying to rid the game of this vermin than is spent playing now .

such a sad state of affairs , especially when things appear to be going untouched, despite the claims of 'ongoing efforts' there is more now than ever.

why is there not staff from ZOS playing the game and seeing this stuff for themselves ? or if there is ( which surely there must be if they are fans of the title as they claim to be ) why is it taking so long to see any sort of improvement in game ?

you should add into your terms and conditions of usage that if you are caught and proven to be 'gold selling' or using bots etc to exploit the game , you agree to pay 100,000 dollars to ZOS in compensation .... (ensuring it is clear you are stating a real currency).

seeing as no one actually reads the whole thing as you have little choice but to accept if you want to play the game ..... most wouldnt even read it and would hit accept .... therefore putting themselves in line for a 100,000 dollar fine or similar huge amount that will ruin anyone caught doing it ..

there will always be people that know how to get around being traced , but you could eliminate or deter a vast majority of them if they may face such penalties...

Warec

The bot camping of main bosses in dungeons is INSANE!. Every one I go to, there's at least 10 bots camped at the boss.

You REALLY need to figure a way to stop the camping. Banning players isn;t the long term answer. Make it so you can't get XP loot/whatever after turning the dungeon white.

Requiemslove

If you mean don't get anything after you are x many levels above enemies in a dungeon, that already happens. I personally think the idea I had which I stated about earlier, would be the best option. It would allow people to kill a boss however many times it takes for them to explore a dungeon [lets be honest, you can explore a dungeon and only have to fight the boss 2-3 times in reality] and so anyone who basically just waits for a boss to respawn time and again...after the 2nd or 3rd kill should no longer be able to harm that boss, the boss should become invincible to that player [or account] for a set amount of time [like an hour] and this way, even if zenimax don't get rid of all the loot bots all it will mean is a boss will be constantly in combat, killing these bots again and again and yes, again until the space of an hour goes and they can kill the boss 2-3 times again. This way it will give legitimate players the chance to kill a boss when exploring or doing some quest that requires it to die and be on their merry way, and will have the added benefit of ramping up the repair bill on bot characters, which will detract on any income they got, and make the whole process no longer worthwhile. Oh yes, and having a bot who has killed the boss 2-3 times reset the dungeon will NOT reset the CD on when loot farmers can kill the boss again.

lucablue

Hi,
Why not put a tail on GOLDSELLER? I mean: any player send spam alert to GM by email ingame system, after 10 goldseller deleted the Player got a 1 slot in Inventory or take some golds.

It could be a good idea to incentivate all players to send messages to GM of Goldseller

eaton68_ESO

In the two years I've played Tera, I saw a couple gathering bots...that's it. No mail/chat spam, no mob bots, no gold sellers, nothing...hmmm /thinkstoself .....why?

DirectAim

Once you have a killed a boss the XP earned from killing that boss again should be ZERO.

Its not that *** hard Zenimax.

Also, maybe send on of your staff into public dungeons and just ban everyone botting there.

Accounts that get ignored by 10+ people within 5mins in zone chat are flagged for banning.

Remove limit to number of accounts I can ignore.

Bolfui

My very first MMORPG was Rift. As to what other MMO's have done I can't say, but I will tell you this. To end the Gold spammers they sold the gold their self, and it drove the Gold Farmers out. They opened a Rift Store, you pay real money for Credits that you can trade to other players for in-game money. In turn you could spend the Credits on items in the rift store, there's some good stuff and some fluff. but the best one I have seen was spending credits for 15 to 30 days of game time. It makes you do your daily quests and grinding rep more motivational as you got gold on completion, save the gold, buy credits play the game for free (before it went free to play), no real money out of pocket if you played it right, Just say'n

Bolfui

and yes, I report every stinking scummy BOT and every annoying spam mail I get