Inability to combat gold spammers and making them more active

Fuzzylumpkins · May 2014

I am sure ZOS is working hard to combat gold spam and it is hardly working. Before Friday's patch I had not received any gold spam mail but I had read about it. Since Friday's patch I am at no less than a half dozen gold spam mails daily.

Whatever it is devs are doing to combat gold spammers and bots, you are not doing it well or correctly.

Thus far we have: credit penalties, drop changes, timer additions to boss spawn, disabling whispers on occasion and other AI behaviours you have managed to use to isolate and punish your active paying player base with.

I can empathise with the difficulty in combatting bots and spammers and that you would be having added difficulty due to an obvious lack of ability within the coding department due to inexperience or manpower. However you are doing it wrong, it is getting worse and you are being beaten by automated services. If the game breaking/ progression stopping bugs and glitches and exploits and hacks were not enough to completely deplete the player base (as the lack of resubs indicated after month 1) this certainly is poaching all but the greatest of disillusioned fanboys.

nerevarine1138 · May 2014

I love that you think that the publicly announced mechanic changes are the limit of what ZO have done to combat bots. Or that most of these were even intended to combat bots. You do know that things like the boss-kill timer were implemented to stop regular farmers too, right?

No developer announces its actual security changes. That would be like Obama warning Bin Laden that Seal Team 6 was on its way, and if it isn't too much trouble, would he just stay put in that building until they shoot him.

Turelus · May 2014

What nerevarine1138 said.
Most battles against bots happens behind the scenes and security teams focused on it don't make big announcements like "we updated the code to stop bots" because then the people programming the botting software will know they need to go and change it.
A hidden change which screws with them leaves their product not working for a few days for regular players botting and gold farming bots lose out of days of income while they're finding way around the changes.

ZOS has been working hard on bots as you said, they have a lot of posts on the forums saying they're doing work but they can't give us daily updates on steps taken because that makes it easier for the cheaters.
Not getting mails before and getting them now is probably just coincidence, it's like spam mail if you ever look they take a letter and spam a bunch of names common to that letter. Also the mails are the least annoying thing from them, hit X and done. Most days my mail collection is just E, X, E, X, E, X any way.

Khandi · May 2014

Agree with the OP. It is seemingly too little too late for a lot of people. The game certainly feels like it is circling the drain.

Ysne58 · May 2014

I do report every mail I get. I'm only getting 1 or 2 a day now so it is better.

Darastix · May 2014

I agree with nerevarine1138 , but i would love to see a server message from time to time saying (insert bot name) has been banned for botting ect.. it would go along way to boost moral in my opinion.

Fuzzylumpkins · May 2014

In no way did I or am I implying ZOS is not doing all they can to combat spammers/botters. I am however saying it has become obvious it is out of their control and ability. The situation is penalising live players no matter the opinions of previous posters stating changes had alternate motivations.

GreySix · May 2014

Gold spammers are a problem, because folks are buying gold. What follows are comments from a popular hacking/botter forum:

I purchased 300k towards the end of April (not through the spam chatters) which was sent to me in one mail and the account did not get banned.

I've bought 4 or 5 times since last night. I'm like a teenage girl with a credit card on that game.

I thought it was bullsh*t, but I, just to test, bought 100K or so off xxxxx.com, those guys that constantly spam chat and inboxes with advertisements. I expected not to get anything but 10 min or so later I got an inbox with the gold attached! Hope this helps.

... and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Google "ESO gold buying," and you'll find dozens of sites offering to sell gold. Its a booming business.

Want to make a dent in it? First, change human nature. When that attempt fails, then the developers should remove or minimize in-game gold-sinks.

Maverick827 · May 2014

GreySix wrote: »

When that attempt fails, then the developers should remove or minimize in-game gold-sinks.

I've been saying forever:

1. Crafters should be able to repair their own gear. Though with 1.2, equipment decay isn't as bad.
2. There should be a free alternative to respecs. One free respec a week, small initial costs that increases with additional use and decrease over time, items that drop from dungeon bosses that grant respecs, anything but what we have now.
3. The best horses should come from achievements, not gold.

aleister · May 2014

I don't think there is much they can do in game to combat bots that isn't going to hurt players even more. They need better account management and verification on the back-end to weed out stolen credit cards and flag suspicious account activity -- weaknesses in this area are most likely why ESO seems to be so plagued.

Controlling costs and going after the reasons why people buy gold is a good idea though. Another thing they need to do is accept the reality that there will always be bots no matter what and then look at why bots are a problem for the players. In other games, there were lots of bots, but I rarely saw them and almost never had my gameplay impacted by them. In ESO, the opposite is true: I saw trains of bots my first play session and they were running around a public dungeon killing everything, including the boss, that I wanted to clear and get the achievement for.

Sendarya · May 2014

I have not seen nearly as many bots in the game recently. None in The Rift at all, and only a few in Coldharbor where there used to be dozens. And the few I have seen, I'm not sure aren't regular players boxing.

It seems the gold farmers are using mail more and chat less as well. To be perfectly honest, I'd rather get it in my mail than see it every 30 seconds in zone chat, so that is an improvement as well.

But hey, way to focus on a problem that is clearly getting better overall. And yeah, it will never go away, because the insta gratification crowd who wants things now and don't want to work for them will always be there buying gold.

And loot drops have been increased dramatically in the last patch, including purple recipes (I saw a lot for sale last night, though people were asking laughable amounts for lvl 35 purples) and so many "rare" motifs that Daedric was going for UNDER 40k.

In short, it is getting better for regular players.

twev · May 2014

Sendarya wrote: »

I have not seen nearly as many bots in the game recently. None in The Rift at all, and only a few in Coldharbor where there used to be dozens. And the few I have seen, I'm not sure aren't regular players boxing.

It seems the gold farmers are using mail more and chat less as well. To be perfectly honest, I'd rather get it in my mail than see it every 30 seconds in zone chat, so that is an improvement as well.

But hey, way to focus on a problem that is clearly getting better overall. And yeah, it will never go away, because the insta gratification crowd who wants things now and don't want to work for them will always be there buying gold.

And loot drops have been increased dramatically in the last patch, including purple recipes (I saw a lot for sale last night, though people were asking laughable amounts for lvl 35 purples) and so many "rare" motifs that Daedric was going for UNDER 40k.

In short, it is getting better for regular players.

Auridon on the south beach near the light house, last night.
I was showing a friend around, after she just bought the game.
There were more bots and bot trains than pirates and players combined.

We went up the hill to a quieter spot so I could show her something else.

I opened a loot chest for her, stepped back, and in the time it took for her to walk forward a bot appeared, looted the chest and vanished.
I had zero idea they'd even consider devoting bot-code to do something like that, or that something so quick and random could even attract a bot.
(I assume it was a bot merely from the appear/vanish action. It was too quick to garner much other evidence.)

Walked the beach just passed the harborage - there were bots between The Harborage and Eastshore Islets Camp crafting station area running at 4X normal run speed. One ran into bluff and vanished.

She was/is not impressed with the game and already assumes now that if thats an example of game play - she wasted her money.

Edited because my square brackets made enclosed text inviz.