Would you be willing to suffer from node spawns timers, if it got rid of the bots?

ChairGraveyard

No.

Squishy wrote: »

ChairGraveyard wrote: »

Chryos wrote: »

"Guaranteed no timer would ever get rid of the bots - all bots HAVE is time."

Your negativity is poisonous.

I voted yes, mainly because I don't really craft in the first place.

Facts aren't negative. Bots will NEVER EVER be affected by a timer in the way you people seem to think, PERIOD.

Timers only affect legitimate players. Not bots. They are therefore one of THE STUPIDEST WAYS TO COMBAT BOTS.

Just because you're ignorant of all this doesn't mean any of it is "negative".

They will if it is not longer profitable.

See this is where your assumptions are DEAD WRONG.

Even if the timer was 1 week per node, it would still be worthwhile for BOTS because BOTS have nothing BUT TIME.

This is not rocket science. I guess it's obvious as heck to anyone that knows jack about bots, but for newbies timers must seem like some sort of holy grail of ways to combat bots.

In fact, it does precisely nothing ever.

Squishy

Yes.

ChairGraveyard wrote: »

See this is where your assumptions are DEAD WRONG.

Even if the timer was 1 week per node, it would still be worthwhile for BOTS because BOTS have nothing BUT TIME.

This is not rocket science. I guess it's obvious as heck to anyone that knocks jack about bots, but for newbies timers must seem like some sort of holy grail of ways to combat bots.

In fact, it does precisely nothing ever.

Contrary to popular belief, bots are not free.
They need computers to be run on, and considering most will likely run several clients/bots for various games, even in low settings, power is needed, space is needed, hardware is needed. There is a cost for every minutes bots are up.

There is a cost for hosting their sites, there's a cost for the financial transactions on their site. Stolen credit cards are not actually free, in the amount they need them, they'll need to buy them in bulk (like stolen papers, those are not free).

There is a point where running a bot, is no longer financially viable for the operators, and that is just a fact of life.

If you believe those are like isolated people, in a basement, you can keep dreaming. Those people need a proper network, a proper internet connection, hardware, power. They are for a lack of better words companies.

Each bot has a cost per minute, and if the bots is no longer making profit, it is better to remove it, than keep it inactive. As illegal and annoying as it is, bot running is a business, with real life cost behind it.

The bot sites have 24/7/365 live chat running, you think it's a single guy answering you? They must have a team of people answering them (minimum of 2 on a 12 hour shift), and they're unlikely to do it for free or for fun.

So yes, timers can be a solution. In most cases, like dungeons, I do agree it does hurt the players. In this case however, were we can no longer harvest in those zones, what the hell would it change? Since we can no longer harvest anything, adding a timer will simply render most bots unworthy to their owners, without making it worse than it already is.

Brennan

No.

Why should I suffer anything? It's the bots that suck - Make them suffer.

ChairGraveyard

No.

Squishy wrote: »

ChairGraveyard wrote: »

See this is where your assumptions are DEAD WRONG.

Even if the timer was 1 week per node, it would still be worthwhile for BOTS because BOTS have nothing BUT TIME.

This is not rocket science. I guess it's obvious as heck to anyone that knocks jack about bots, but for newbies timers must seem like some sort of holy grail of ways to combat bots.

In fact, it does precisely nothing ever.

This is appropriate - for me and the other people in the thread that aren't totally ignorant of anything to do with bots, and realize how much your idiotically pathetic suggestion would ruin this game, and meanwhile do NOTHING TO BOTS.

Your ignorance makes us all facepalm.

Finagill

Other option: please comment on your idea.

What they could do is reduce the quality of drops you get from a node every time you collect from it and have it reset after a few hours of non-collection of the node. After a few attempts all you would get is worms and bug parts.

Another option would be to make the spawns instanced and then the OP's idea would work nice. You won't hurt the innocent people and the bots would eventually be waiting days to collect from a node.

Brennan

No.

Finagill wrote: »

What they could do is reduce the quality of drops you get from a node every time you collect from it and have it reset after a few hours of non-collection of the node. After a few attempts all you would get is worms and bug parts.

Another option would be to make the spawns instanced and then the OP's idea would work nice. You won't hurt the innocent people and the bots would eventually be waiting days to collect from a node.

Another option is to ban bots.

Vartra

No.

Lockout timers are a slippery slope. We've got them on dungeon bosses and it's already an amazingly bad implementation that harms legit players as much as it does bots. Any cooldown of sufficient length to dissuade bots will impact legitimate players.

There is no game mechanic solution to bots that lacks collateral damage like this. Bots will always be present until dealt with by direct GM intervention. Clinging desperately to timers, diminishing returns and other anti-fun, anti-player design decisions just bleeds the game dry of its enjoyment until people start quitting because rewards aren't worth it anymore.

People seem to be caught up arguing how exactly the bots work, but all of the described methods are present. Bots follow node patterns with and without client manipulation to teleport between them. Bots sit in one place and cycle through multiple characters, clients and accounts to phase switch and harvest. Bots chain together and run patrol routes killing trash mobs. Cracking down on any of these mechanisms presents collateral damage to legitimate players in some way, and to me that's an unacceptable option.

A fast line for getting bots reported, investigated and banned does take more work on the part of the GM team, but it's the only solution that doesn't impact players negatively by passive-aggressively diminishing rewards and adding timers where they aren't needed.

ChairGraveyard

No.

Vartra wrote: »

There is no game mechanic solution to bots that lacks collateral damage like this. Bots will always be present until dealt with by direct GM intervention. Clinging desperately to timers, diminishing returns and other anti-fun, anti-player design decisions just bleeds the game dry of its enjoyment until people start quitting because rewards aren't worth it anymore.

QFT.

Some people in this thread need to re-read this about 20 times until they finally get it.

Squishy

Yes.

Vartra wrote: »

Lockout timers are a slippery slope. We've got them on dungeon bosses and it's already an amazingly bad implementation that harms legit players as much as it does bots. Any cooldown of sufficient length to dissuade bots will impact legitimate players.

There is no game mechanic solution to bots that lacks collateral damage like this. Bots will always be present until dealt with by direct GM intervention. Clinging desperately to timers, diminishing returns and other anti-fun, anti-player design decisions just bleeds the game dry of its enjoyment until people start quitting because rewards aren't worth it anymore.

People seem to be caught up arguing how exactly the bots work, but all of the described methods are present. Bots follow node patterns with and without client manipulation to teleport between them. Bots sit in one place and cycle through multiple characters, clients and accounts to phase switch and harvest. Bots chain together and run patrol routes killing trash mobs. Cracking down on any of these mechanisms presents collateral damage to legitimate players in some way, and to me that's an unacceptable option.

A fast line for getting bots reported, investigated and banned does take more work on the part of the GM team, but it's the only solution that doesn't impact players negatively by passive-aggressively diminishing rewards and adding timers where they aren't needed.

Agreed, but since at the moment, the GM presence is light, for whatever reason, unless this is changing soon, other measures will need to be taken.

I completely agree for the dungeon timer, however, the harvesting nodes reached a point it seems where players are already no longer able to gather. At this point, a timer will impact the bots, and only the bots, since the players are already getting near 0, as long as the timer only runs in the bot infested areas, it will not impact players, as well, we're already bled dry it seems .

Someone above suggested the implementation of the timer, with a instanced nodes to your toons, and that would indeed work beautifully, in theory. However, with the amount of nodes and players present, I doubt it's technically doable without a serious impact on server performances. Let's assume only 100 nodes per maps, 20.000 players per maps (and those are probably much lower numbers than they really are), we're already at 2.000.000 nodes per maps. Granted, the nodes are probably only calculated and present while you enter a new zone within the map, but since we can go fairly long distances on foot or horse, I'm guessing the amount of calculations needed would be quite outrageous. Since the system was not designed to handle this load, I'm not sure it's doable at the moment .

An alternative, would be to implement a count per players. And if you or your group harvest let's say 40+ nodes in about 5 minutes (we would need to calculate how quickly the bots harvest from nodes to nodes with TP and without to get a number that a real player would not be able to achieve without cheating), then you and your group no longer see nodes for 10 minutes. Those numbers are just examples, and would need to be properly calculated, but those sounds pretty fair to me .

The easiest way, would be to have a single instance of the world, with 0 harvestable nodes. If you reach the timer, you're put in the empty world for 10 minutes. So you can still quest etc, but you can no longer harvest for 10 minutes (or more depending on what would seem fair and reasonable).

Vartra

No.

Are the bots particularly dense in certain areas I've not played? I've got level 30+ characters on all alliances, with more time spent on AD than anywhere else, and there seem to be no real issues with harvesting nodes in Auridon, Grahtwood, Greenshade, Malabal Tor or Reapers March. I'm just honestly wondering where the zones are where "it's so bad you can't get resources at all" because I haven't seen it myself.

I don't agree that instancing resources to the player is a good solution, but do agree that the technical issues with it would make it extremely difficult regardless of efficacy. There are player instanced quest items though, so it's not out of the question.

If there must be a timer in the method you describe by trying to limit it to only botting activity, bots will most likely simply change their habits to fall in line with regular player activity and spread it out over more characters. I'm sure that saying this will be construed as advocating doing nothing to stop bots, but any sort of timer mechanic that has leniency will get exploited no matter what you do and make the timer itself ineffective.

The GM presence isn't as light as you seem to think, but some more info from Zenimax would be welcome. It seems like from the GM sighting accounts around the net they've got a few dedicated GMs staking out each alliance's zones for bots, excluding the occasional bot witch hunt system message event.

SunfireKnight86

No.

No. ESO is already punishing legit players too much in efforts to stop cheaters/gold sellers. Enough already.

Brennan

No.

Vartra wrote: »

Are the bots particularly dense in certain areas I've not played? I've got level 30+ characters on all alliances, with more time spent on AD than anywhere else, and there seem to be no real issues with harvesting nodes in Auridon, Grahtwood, Greenshade, Malabal Tor or Reapers March. I'm just honestly wondering where the zones are where "it's so bad you can't get resources at all" because I haven't seen it myself.

I don't agree that instancing resources to the player is a good solution, but do agree that the technical issues with it would make it extremely difficult regardless of efficacy. There are player instanced quest items though, so it's not out of the question.

If there must be a timer in the method you describe by trying to limit it to only botting activity, bots will most likely simply change their habits to fall in line with regular player activity and spread it out over more characters. I'm sure that saying this will be construed as advocating doing nothing to stop bots, but any sort of timer mechanic that has leniency will get exploited no matter what you do and make the timer itself ineffective.

The GM presence isn't as light as you seem to think, but some more info from Zenimax would be welcome. It seems like from the GM sighting accounts around the net they've got a few dedicated GMs staking out each alliance's zones for bots, excluding the occasional bot witch hunt system message event.

@Vartra - FOR THE QUEEN!!

Thete

Natjur wrote: »

Just limit the amount of 'yellow' resources you can get from refining raw resources per toon per day. Each 'yellow' resource you get from refining should lower your chances of getting another one for that day to the points where its almost zero. (same for purple and blue but takes longer to get to the limit)

The way to counter bots is not to ruin the game for genuine players. Just need better security against exploits and better ways of identifying it when it happens.

One thing I'd be interested in is this: if an account is banned due to gold selling or exploits/bots, is there a check made on trades/mails of large quantities of gold/materials from the account in order to attack other links in the chain?

SunfireKnight86

No.

They need to stop focusing on gold sellers altogether. I've never seen a developer more concerned with stopping cheaters/spammers than rewarding real players.

Seriously. If they feel this strongly about it make a separate department to deal with it. It feels like their devs and customer service reps have a one track mind.

Mansome

No.

SunfireKnight86 wrote: »

They need to stop focusing on gold sellers altogether. I've never seen a developer more concerned with stopping cheaters/spammers than rewarding real players.

Seriously. If they feel this strongly about it make a separate department to deal with it. It feels like their devs and customer service reps have a one track mind.

At least they are really doing something. Most games I played the devs act like the bots aren't even there or they do something way after its too late and their player base leaves. Aion is a perfect example of that. They waited too long to stop the bots and they literally took over chat in the game to where it just isn't useable.

SunfireKnight86

No.

People don't quit because other players buy gold, they quit because of poor gameplay/design decisions.

stungateb14_ESO

Not just no but hell *** no to any idea that punishes legit people playing the game as intended.

Alpha_Protocol

Put a timer on gather rates. If a character gathers more than X nodes in X minutes all nodes are account locked for X minutes.

De spawning an entire area would affect everyone not just the bots.

ChairGraveyard

No.

Alpha_Protocol wrote: »

Put a timer on gather rates. If a character gathers more than X nodes in X minutes all nodes are account locked for X minutes.

De spawning an entire area would affect everyone not just the bots.

Considering botters have unlimited accounts via stolen credit cards, this is VERY HIGH on the list of BONEHEADDED IDEAS.

We already have enough systems that punish legit players and let bots get off scott free, we don't need another one, especially not one as ridiculously poorly thought out as that.

Sidney

No.

Bots are just programs and you ban one, another takes it's place. Timers mean nothing to bots. But to us we have to work or go to school etc, so it just makes it worse for us.

Maybe a timer on a specific node (like if you looted Node at coords x,y in zone A, you can't pick from that same node for 5 minutes). However, that would require an extensive system and depending how fast an actual person can do a lap, it might just make it hard for us still.

MasterSpatula

No.

Riiiiiiight, because leveling Enchant with the current number of Rune nodes and respawn rate is far, far too too much of a cakewalk.

Arsvita

Other option: please comment on your idea.

Chryos wrote: »

"Guaranteed no timer would ever get rid of the bots - all bots HAVE is time."

Your negativity is poisonous.

I voted yes, mainly because I don't really craft in the first place.

Deforestation, YES!, I live in the city.
Oh well.

Would you be willing to suffer from node spawns timers, if it got rid of the bots?
No.
Other option: please comment on your idea.

I'm sure it is not possible, but I would love for target-able bots and bot hunting abilities. Being able to have Bot Hunting Parties would clear up those pesky Harvester Bots, Spam Bots, and "Boss" Mobbing Bots.

Maybe have a tourney, or just some achievements.

I have asked Zeni a bunch of times if they could figure a way to do this until they may fix the bot issues. Otherwise it's the mini game as usual, report, report, and report.

clocksstoppe

No.

no, because it wouldnt get rid of any bots

Squishy

Yes.

MasterSpatula wrote: »

Riiiiiiight, because leveling Enchant with the current number of Rune nodes and respawn rate is far, far too too much of a cakewalk.

That is a known problem all enchanters have. I found that leveling 2 toons at the same time helps greatly, unless you have a guildie playing whenever you play.

Basically, play one toon one day, gather as normal, craft as normal, put your runes created in your bank.
Then play as your other toon, gather and craft as normal. deconstruct the other toon's runes, and put your created runes in your bank . Seems like your alts also get the deconstruct bonus, so using your bank space, you can swap your glyphs pretty easily .

teox76

Other option: please comment on your idea.

Chryos wrote: »

"Guaranteed no timer would ever get rid of the bots - all bots HAVE is time."

Your negativity is poisonous.

I voted yes, mainly because I don't really craft in the first place.

Sorry but your lack of empathy towards other players (the ones who do craft in the first place) is even worse. Timers as presented in the poll are in my opinion a very bad idea.

As others have said, I think the best and easiest options would be to completely randomize the nodes spawn locations. This will not penalize much crafters, but I do not know anything about how a bot works, so don't know if this is will be easily bypassed.

To me a log monitoring system would be the best bet for the devs. Bots have a very standard and reproducible modus operandi. A player called "Zwuijiuxf" harvesting only nodes in the same area all day, should be easily spotted by one ad-hoc log parser.

Shimizu

No.

Everything I'm seeing here in this suggestion is more detrimental to regular players than to bots. This problem needs to be dealt with, without crippling the playerbase and honestly I don't really think the proposed solution would do much to combat botting - they'd simply find something else to farm.

Anything that you leave convenient and available for a regular player, bots will farm x100. The solution is not to make things difficult for the player in order to slightly inconvenience the bots.

There are other, less intrusive solutions already mentioned that could be implemented, such as mail/chat level or quest requirements which wouldn't interfere as much with a normal player who will do these as a matter of course. Regular players having to click a button saying I'm not a bot every few hours would be less intrusive. Annoying, but a price I'd be willing to pay.

jepatznerub17_ESO

No.

Absolutely not. I can't see having nodes on a respawn timer doing anything other than benefiting bots.

Edit:
To elaborate on this some more, you are effectively reducing the overall supply while maintaining the regular amount of demand assuming that the bot stands still to harvest the same node. According to basic economics, that means the value of said commodity goes up, which means bots would need fewer resources harvested per time to hit the same profit. They could also easily program a route between several spawns to counteract the respawn timer you propose to implement.

Pyatra

Other option: please comment on your idea.

Make nodes have a spawn offset, basically they randomly spawn in a small area. So bots get stuck farming thin air while the node is right behind them.

ChairGraveyard

No.

Pyatra wrote: »

Make nodes have a spawn offset, basically they randomly spawn in a small area. So bots get stuck farming thin air while the node is right behind them.

This is a much better solution.

The poll's idea is straight up, hands-down 100% terrible and wouldn't do anything more than tick players off, and increase the bot presence in the game to offset the loss of loot to timers.

Sakiri

ChairGraveyard wrote: »

Guaranteed no timer would ever get rid of the bots - all bots HAVE is time.

Timers hurt legit players, not bots.

Anything that "hurts" bots hurts players that farm.

WoW has random node spawns. Still botted.