Should Zenimax Online take stronger measures against bots and buyers?

DragonMother

Honestly, I've been stepping more and more out of the game to avoid the issue of bots swarming the material nodes that I frequent for my own crafting needs. I've gotten so tired of issuing report, after report, after report that I simply don't care to log in until the issue has been resolved. I've seen very few game masters logging in to do anything about them, and many of the problematic areas with these bot-swarms could be glitch-fixed if enough time was given. Had the company taken a bit more time to test things out, we would have noticed these issues first hand, but most of us did not have the time to take notice of it over the three days each phase we were given. I feel that Zenimax Online needs to take on a stronger role against buying and selling of gold and materials from in-game on outside, unsanctioned markets. One of the biggest reasons these bots exist is because of the supply and demand being just right to nurture the need for spending real money, on virtual items. I'd love to see ZOS take a stronger position against spamming, botting, and buying virtual items that they technically own in-game. But I also would like to see them break this market entirely until they find and fix every one of the loopholes these bots have been using. Speedhacks, teleportation hacks, and phasing terran hacks seem to be the most prominently used at this moment in time. I don't care if they bring down the servers for upwards to a month to fix it, as long as we players get our dues for waiting for the repairs and to have our gametime frozen until it's safe from the RTM abusers.

Please feel free to respond with suggestions, or ideas that might help ZOS and their development team. I really want to play this game, but at this moment in time I'm so fed up with the bots and the spamming I just want to hole up in a corner away from it all. I don't know if there are other players that share this sentiment, but I would hope others understand where I am coming from with this.

Orizuru

Undecided.

I want the bot problem fixed as much as the next guy, but I'm not sure a stronger stance would help much. They already admitted that they accidentally banned a sizeable group of innocent players in their attempts to remove bots. A stronger stance against botting would likely end up hurting more players than bots.

Taking action against these types of issues has be to be done carefully to avoid these types of mistakes, because the players who are banned by a sweeping process that doesn't involved a human being making a decision on each individual case can have just as much negative impact on the game as the bots.

I prefer a more measured and calculated approach that impacts players less, and so far, ZOS has hurt the players more than the botters I think.

DragonMother

I agree with you completely on that last point. One of the biggest issues right now is that it seems like with all the issues currently at hand, they just do not have enough people staffed in development to take it all on. It may very well be the parent company's issue as well, but I'm just a player, I don't know for certain what they will choose to do. I would hope they would take down the servers for a while to sort out the mess of codework that still needs troubleshooting after all this time. I was with the sanguine group during the beta and things were not this bad until the last two phases. We didn't even have that big of an issue with the node glitches until the last two phases. Someone somewhere has dropped the ball in the dev department and they really should take up the gall to fix what they basically refused to in the final two beta phases.

buffbcub17_ESO

Yes.

I don't mind a slow and steady approach to bots, but it seems like they are evolving much faster than Zen can do anything about them.

For example, Coldharbour has been getting groups of 2-3 bots in a line running around killing stuff, now it is up to more than 10 in a line doing the same sort of thing. The complaints are constant and people are just amazed how blatant it is in that zone.

ShedsHisTail

Undecided.

I'd like to see fewer bots, sure, but I don't think the situation is anywhere near as tragic as it's being played up to be.

I see more bots out in the world roaming in packs and killing random mobs these days; but I see far fewer camping dungeon bosses than there used to be. So that's a plus.

The number of nodes I've come across which were stolen by bots I could count on one hand. I receive, maybe, one spam piece of mail a day. Honestly, to me, the bots have been little more than a distraction than a serious problem.

I dunno, I've been called "bug-tolerant" in the past, but really, as long as the bot population doesn't just explode, I think I'd rather they spent more time on other issues.

Maybe something simple like a Captcha box on login would help? Or on certain in game interactions? Wouldn't want anything too invasive to real players, of course.

Or, if there were a way to identify bots on the fly, maybe tag them to be banished to a special bot-only phase in the game? Yeah, they'd still be able to spam your mail, but they wouldn't as visible.

Just spit-balling here.

Nox_Aeterna

No.

I want to see them take right measures against bots , not stronger.

Like was said in the first post , i dont like measures that affect a lot me , a normal player.

Things like 1 month downtime so they can solve this or bans that hit normal player , this kind of thing is much worse than the bots themselves to me.

rattbagrwb17_ESO

I'd like to see the community take responsibility for it. If nobody buys gold from goldah, the spam will stop, the bots will disappear and your nodes will be back.

Unfortunately, it's great in theory but in reality there's always going to be 'that guy' that wants to buy his way ahead.

ShedsHisTail

Undecided.

The easy fix is to just make it so you can't trade things... But that also makes for a really boring community.

robdotcom2002pub19_ESO

They may have to take it easy on the bots, could be their only subscribers soon.

Vanathi

Really? A poll?