Suggestion on gathering materials.

Squishy

I think we can all agree, that we have a bot problem. While doing my round to see this week's new bot, and how I could mess with them, I had an idea...

I was looking and observing those pests, and realized they were completly ignoring chests. Then I thought to myself, why? Because, it is likely the random interaction needed to open them can not be scripted.

I would then suggest for gathering to work on a similar fashion as lockpicking, and that it needs some interaction from the player to have a succesull gather.

I would also recommend, that how well the player does, influences the loot gained.
Since it would take longer to gather, I would also recommend an increase in drop per nodes.

I could see some patterns/symbols for runes, that have random markers on them (let's say 12 possible markers) with a random 3 to 6 choosen by the server. The player would then have to push the same markers in the same order to succesfully gather the rune, but be allowed 1 or 2 mistakes. A perfect score would increase the drop rate.

Or a shape that is drawn, the player would need to draw it with the mouse in an alloted amount of time. The closer to the shape, the better the drop. My least prefered option, as I have the twitch quite often , but better that than bots .

For plants/clothes gathering, I would suggest various a mini game with various drawing looking like plants/trees, with "weak spots" visible on the randomly drawn branches. The player would need to cut the right places within the specified timeframe, and a single mistake would make it so the player needs to gather again (no CD, node is locked until player gives up or succeed).

For ores, I would suggest a mini game quick time event, where the player would need to hit the rocks with his/her pickaxe before the marker on the spot wears off.

All those do not need to be difficult, but simply random enough, so the gathering can not be scripted and needs a human interaction.

I think this would also increase immersion a bit, after all, if we need to work for our gathering, well, I find it better.

Zafieiria

This is an interesting idea, as long as it doesn't take too incredibly long to do the mini game. Collecting can be time consuming as is, so having to complete a mini game with each individual item would just be more of an annoying grind. These bots are annoying though and it would almost be worth it. I don't know how they're going to manage to filter them out of the game but I hope it's soon. It's pretty sad when the first week into the game I'm getting spam messages from bots selling "gold".

Squishy

Oh definitively, it is already painfull enough as it is. The idea is really not to add more delay in gathering, hence why I suggested a sizeable increase in drop from nodes if this is implemented...

Hell, I wouldn't mind spending 10 seconds on each nodes, if I got 10 or 15 items (or 4 / 5 runes).

ArRashid

Interesting idea... though the only thing I can think of now is

Squishy

Lol... they are delicate flowers

VampiricOmen

While this suggestion initially looks good, I have one counter argument that I believe should be considered when implementing changes to the game such as this. Remember that not everyone is able bodied, and while they are a minority in gaming, disabled players generally play games as there isn't much else in life that they find enjoyable. I'm not sure how disabled player friendly ESO really is, but I'm sure they are out there.

By introducing quick time events or anything that requires the player to have a reasonable amount of fine motor control, there is potential for the disabled player base to be alienated from that portion of the game. This in my opinion, is not something any game developer should do.

Already, locked chests provide a need for a reasonable level of hand to eye coordination. Nobody is saying you must open chests to progress in the game, but they are a nice little reward for those with the patience and skill to unlock them. Now, someone without that fine motor control might find locked chests too frustrating to bother with attempting. As a small, optional part of the game, this doesn't prevent disabled players from enjoying the rest of the game's content.

Crafting is perhaps one of the few things in this game that does not require serious micromanagement of the mouse pointer location or sequenced button pressing, and also it provides hours of entertainment with both harvesting nodes and crafting goods. To increase the difficulty of harvesting nodes in the spirit of deterring bots will also very likely deter disabled players. That isn't fair. The combat is likely hard enough as it is and making crafting more difficult too would make me want to quit if I had fine motor control problems. I'd rather deal with the issues bots entail than to impact other players in such a way, but that's just my opinion.

Synfaer

Hell, I wouldn't mind spending 10 seconds on each nodes, if I got 10 or 15 items (or 4 / 5 runes).

Something like this could be implemented with an simple 'mini-game'.
Say having a crafting skill (SP required to upgrade) that allows you to collect more ingredients from a node by using a special runic tool. This tool requires you to align 3 runes with the node runes (randomly generated) to collect extra materials... sort of 'attuning to the node'.
It would be fairly quick process that requires little manual dexterity.

Squishy

I just thought this could also be implemented for crafting... kinda like saw in the right holes for clothes/medium, and bang at the right spot for metal... wood, I don't know, maybe work the wood with it's tool or something...

I was looking at one of the infamous bot software used (only the videos showing what it can do), and normal players are apparently using it to automate some stuff, but not everything. I kinda managed to get in some part of their forum without an account (don't ask, I don't know how or why), and it'll be damn near impossible to catch those pests.

So I think it is time for some other ways to deal with the infestation

Beside, I was a bit disappointed with the crafting system, for its lack of human interaction , but I could live with it

I'd also like to be able to process "everything" at once, by like ticking items, and have a single mini game for it... If I mess up, and loose the items, tough luck for me

on a completely unrelated side note, the vending machine gave me a free box of chocolate this morning, finally a Monday that starts well.

Squishy

VampiricOmen wrote: »

While this suggestion initially looks good, I have one counter argument that I believe should be considered when implementing changes to the game such as this. Remember that not everyone is able bodied, and while they are a minority in gaming, disabled players generally play games as there isn't much else in life that they find enjoyable. I'm not sure how disabled player friendly ESO really is, but I'm sure they are out there.

By introducing quick time events or anything that requires the player to have a reasonable amount of fine motor control, there is potential for the disabled player base to be alienated from that portion of the game. This in my opinion, is not something any game developer should do.

Already, locked chests provide a need for a reasonable level of hand to eye coordination. Nobody is saying you must open chests to progress in the game, but they are a nice little reward for those with the patience and skill to unlock them. Now, someone without that fine motor control might find locked chests too frustrating to bother with attempting. As a small, optional part of the game, this doesn't prevent disabled players from enjoying the rest of the game's content.

Crafting is perhaps one of the few things in this game that does not require serious micromanagement of the mouse pointer location or sequenced button pressing, and also it provides hours of entertainment with both harvesting nodes and crafting goods. To increase the difficulty of harvesting nodes in the spirit of deterring bots will also very likely deter disabled players. That isn't fair. The combat is likely hard enough as it is and making crafting more difficult too would make me want to quit if I had fine motor control problems. I'd rather deal with the issues bots entail than to impact other players in such a way, but that's just my opinion.

Granted, it could affect those people, but considering the way combat works in ESO, and how fast reaction and eye/hand co-ordination is, without meaning anything bad by it, ESO is probably not the best game for them to start with .

I have my own little eye/hand co-ordination issues, when things get too fast, I simply "panic" for a lack of better words, and use the wrong keys. Yet, for chests, I have no issues at all. I do see your point though, but like I said earlier, it does not have to be hard or extremely fast, as long as the rewards gained are adequate .

The sole purpose is to break the possibility of automated gathering, nothing more. What I suggested were only suggestions/ideas on how this could be implemented using already present game mechanics, or things not really hard to implement in an MMO .

I personally HATE actual fast quick time events, I screw them up pretty much all the time . But I'd still prefer that than bots ^-^

TazzyD83

I was thinking of a similar idea one night whilst struggling to sleep, as well as this mini game option for gathering, i thought about a system for hampering bots that farm solo/group dungeons.

As you know some areas have traps and obstacles to navigate, which require timing and or pressing of a button to disarm. My idea was to implement these more in the solo dungeons, and perhaps add loot-able items such as metals, woods, style materials or trait items for traps such as bear traps, or trip wires, and Runes or such, for traps such as flame pits (kind of like when you got a soul gem for disarming those pillars in oblivion).

the aim of this idea is to hamper the ability for bots to follow a single path auto attacking everything it comes across, maybe have the traps spawn in random locations within the dungeon so courses cannot be plotted efficiently, have the traps do enough damage and maybe add a de-buff that stops HP regeneration for a short time, long enough so that if bots run through then attack, they will most likely die, but also allow a real player to stop and gather themselves without taking too much time.

it may not be practical to implement, or may be too time consuming for players, but I thought I'd just put the idea out there.

Thanks

Squishy

@tazzyd83 considering the amount of narrow spaces in dungeons, I'm not sure this could be implemented, due to the lack of space for traps to appear.

From what I've seen of traps currently in game, they're a simple timed script running, I'm not sure they could actually get them to spawn at random spots.

I'd be more inclined for ranged mobs ambushes, where the mobs stay at their max range, and spawns from behind players. Automated bots would have a tough time dealing with this, especially if the mobs followed you regardless of how far you go

VampiricOmen

Squishy wrote: »

Granted, it could affect those people, but considering the way combat works in ESO, and how fast reaction and eye/hand co-ordination is, without meaning anything bad by it, ESO is probably not the best game for them to start with .

I have my own little eye/hand co-ordination issues, when things get too fast, I simply "panic" for a lack of better words, and use the wrong keys. Yet, for chests, I have no issues at all. I do see your point though, but like I said earlier, it does not have to be hard or extremely fast, as long as the rewards gained are adequate .

The sole purpose is to break the possibility of automated gathering, nothing more. What I suggested were only suggestions/ideas on how this could be implemented using already present game mechanics, or things not really hard to implement in an MMO .

I personally HATE actual fast quick time events, I screw them up pretty much all the time . But I'd still prefer that than bots ^-^

If the quicktime events aren't too fast or difficult, then perhaps that could keep it accessible to players already at a disadvantage. There is one game where I know of where they had quicktime events to not "bleed out". One person who frequented the forums had quadriplegia and was able to tackle a difficult cooperative setting completely solo. Granted the gameplay mechanics in that game were rather different and it did allow macro scripting with third party software like Razer Synapse, although I cannot recall if he used macros. What I am trying to say is that it's not entirely impossible to do, but as you have stated the combat in ESO may not be as forgiving in that regard.

These quicktime events wouldn't bother me in the slightest, but it could very well ruin the fun for others. While I frequently disagree with topics to tackle botting, I don't want to come across as someone who supports the continuation of botting. I don't, simple as that; there just needs to be a reasonable solution introduced that doesn't punish the players any more than what some of the already introduced countermeasures do.

I appreciate that you are being proactive and putting forward a suggestion to tackle node harvesting bots. Perhaps something like this could work if ZeniMax were able to implement this in such a manner that defeated scripted programming, but allowed genuine players to play with minimum negative impact. Thank you for your response to my argument, and for insight on your own hand to eye coordination problems.

Woolenthreads

Squishy wrote: »

I have my own little eye/hand co-ordination issues, when things get too fast, I simply "panic" for a lack of better words, and use the wrong keys. Yet, for chests, I have no issues at all. I do see your point though, but like I said earlier, it does not have to be hard or extremely fast, as long as the rewards gained are adequate .

*hi-fives squishy* Bound Armour on 1, Clannfear on 4 with active attacks on 2 and 3 and I still desummon either the armour or the critter. I had to move the ultimate because I kept triggering it in battle accidentally. I'm considering shuffling all the keys around because of the "panic" battle-effect .

On the original subject random 2-line draw left-to-right and back again with dots randomly spotted top-middle-bottom to guide. Also run as a minigame straight from the pc.... no, because then they'll just send the success code *sigh*.

Squishy

Woolenthreads wrote: »

*hi-fives squishy* Bound Armour on 1, Clannfear on 4 with active attacks on 2 and 3 and I still desummon either the armour of the critter. I had to move the ultimate because I kept triggering it in battle accidentally. I'm considering shuffling all the keys around because of the "panic" battle-effect .

I moved the ultimate from R to 6 myself, while battling bots to gather mats, I kept launching my ultimate . I unsummon armor a LOT with the ultimate on 6.

I have my main attack on 1 and 2, and pets/armor on 3/4/5, and I still manage to unsummon them from time to time, especially if one dies, and I try resummoning it :S, I then usually remove armor or the next pet, in the middle of battle of course, or it simply is not fun . I've been considering moving the pets to keys further away, but when swapping weapons, it gets, chaotic...

I found the destro fire staff is actually quite good for people like us... We can either debuff/AOE damage, or CC/push mob while damaging them, and I find myself quite efficient with it When I need to refocus, I just cast the crystal attack, the charge time gives me time to focus again and off we go again .

Woolenthreads wrote: »

On the original subject random 2-line draw left-to-right and back again with dots randomly spotted top-middle-bottom to guide. Also run as a minigame straight from the pc.... no, because then they'll just send the success code *sigh*.

What success codes? It doesn't matter, since the interaction/mini game would be chosen at random, knowing the solution would not be an issue, since you'd only get one try at it .

Let's say there's 100 possible mini game for each kind of nodes, and it picks one at random... it doesn't matter if it's easy, the bots simply can not guess which mini game it is, a 1/100 chance to guess it would make the scripting useless for auto gathering . The check would be done server side, like all those puzzle quest, since I assume the check to see if the right buttons are pushed at the right time is done server side.

If it's done client side of course, it'll probably be overcome eventually.

KerinKor

Squishy wrote: »

I could see some patterns/symbols for runes, that have random markers on them (let's say 12 possible markers) with a random 3 to 6 choosen by the server. The player would then have to push the same markers in the same order to succesfully gather the rune, but be allowed 1 or 2 mistakes. A perfect score would increase the drop rate.

What you don't seem to understand is that the bots 'see' the commands the client receives so the bot 'knows' or can calculate the correct response.

They can read all of the client's memory, they can 'see' what's in the graphics display (to some extent even using modern gfx cards), there's nothing the server can tell the bot to do that the bot can't see .. and 'flying' bots are a result of the bot changing the game client's memory, as does the ability to disable clipping to allow them to move through solid objects.

Squishy

KerinKor wrote: »

What you don't seem to understand is that the bots 'see' the commands the client receives so the bot 'knows' or can calculate the correct response.

They can read all of the client's memory, they can 'see' what's in the graphics display (to some extent even using modern gfx cards), there's nothing the server can tell the bot to do that the bot can't see .. and 'flying' bots are a result of the bot changing the game client's memory, as does the ability to disable clipping to allow them to move through solid objects.

I originally assumed this, however, the fact they are ignoring chests, which holds a pretty tasty amount of gold, plus a soul gem, seem to contradict this. They literally walk/run/fly/crawl past them, without even stopping at them. There was a single exception to the rue, a bot stopping, and I waited to see what happened, the timer ran out, the chest was still locked... 10 seconds later same bot arrives, samething...

Yakidafi

I love it and it would fix the bot problem.

Woolenthreads

Squishy wrote: »

Woolenthreads wrote: »

Also run as a minigame straight from the pc.... no, because then they'll just send the success code *sigh*.

What success codes? It doesn't matter, since the interaction/mini game would be chosen at random, knowing the solution would not be an issue, since you'd only get one try at it .

If the mini-game is run client-side then it will have a success/completion code to send to the server. They'd just need to figure out what it is, hence the "no, doesn't work" comment.

Squishy

ah right, since they're ignoring chests, I'm assuming it is either too complex, or run server side though

lavendercat

Squishy wrote: »

when things get too fast, I simply "panic" for a lack of better words, and use the wrong keys. Yet, for chests, I have no issues at all.

me too !!

i have a mental disability. i think my hand to eye co-ordination is ok ? not sure. but it was a very insightful comment above which mentioned the disabled person playing games because they dont enjoy much else in life

i am really struggling with the chests though. every time i have a lockpick, i start with a simple chest. so the little lever thing is hovering above one of the.. pins.. and i push it down until it wobbles.... thats about as far as i get. either the pick will break or i run out of time.

Woolenthreads

lavendercat wrote: »

i am really struggling with the chests though. every time i have a lockpick, i start with a simple chest. so the little lever thing is hovering above one of the.. pins.. and i push it down until it wobbles.... thats about as far as i get. either the pick will break or i run out of time.

Press down with left button then right to accept. Alternatively press down with right button and release to accept. Either works.

#edit: Sorry, I should have stated "to accept, when it starts to wobble". My bad.

Rev Rielle

I think there are some really interesting ideas here.

I'd also like to see harvesting require skill-investment as well, perhaps even have it's own 'crafting' skill-line. We level up the skill by harvesting that skill type, which in turn opens up the ability to harvest higher tiers of resources more efficiently, etc etc (It's only rough but I believe you get the idea). Coupled with some other ideas in this thread, such wouldn't really effect the players in any adverse way, but would sure make botting harder. Even if botting wasn't an issue in the game I'd still like to see the harvesting process made more worthwhile: Something you could invest your time/skill in and be rewarded for. There are skilled fighters and crafters in-game, why not add harvesters as well to that list?

I think - from reading the above - the take home message many are wanting is for the process to become more interactive for more reward. Similar to what chests are; basically something that's not automated.

Origin

keep it simple: ban then all.