[Permabans being lifted] ZOS how are we as a community dealing with exploits/hacking?

Korah_Eaglecry

All we can hope for is responses from admins. Its a holiday weekend so its unlikely anyone is in the office let alone scanning the forums that have any official capacity to say anything on the issue.

Dont expect to hear anything until maybe Wednesday.

Phinix1

So I don't know if anyone remembers, but ZOS shifted a lot of critical code like this server side back in I think patch 1.5. Then Fengrush and others made a bunch of videos blaming this for the poor performance in Cyrodiil.

Now it seems ZOS reversed those changes and the hacks are all back.

Now Fengrush and others are making videos complaining about the hacks...

Around and around we go...

I would rather they keep the code server-side, add sanity check to critical values like stats and ultimate, create a tamper detection system and permanently ban anyone causing these sanitized values to go out of sync, than to eek out a little more FPS at the cost of an unplayable game.

andy_s

Well, rip eso I guess. But regarding current pve leaderboards, I'm sceptic about any scores without video proofs. In all other games speed runs must be proven by videos. All these "secret tactics" and exploits is bs.

Nifty2g

andy.s wrote: »

Well, rip eso I guess. But regarding current pve leaderboards, I'm sceptic about any scores without video proofs. In all other games speed runs must be proven by videos. All these "secret tactics" and exploits is bs.

Can confirm Jace's scores are legit, unlisted videos but in all fairness he's got some pretty cool strategies, mainly kill order. Dont know if you take my word for it, but I agree.

Brightxdawn

ZOS they really dont care. These matters are never addressed to the community. Its always sweep it under the rug mentality with them.

Deltia

I don't think public shaming is the answer because THAT'S the attention they want.

They want to grab a scroll, see there name across the screen and feel good about themselves due to attention, negative or otherwise.

However, they should absolutely not be allowed in game, especially the ones who've already been banned.

This game is our hobby but for some of us, our livelihood. A golf course wouldn't let someone come on the course with bionic arms and let me them scream, run around all of the course with no repercussions. This is the same thing, ban and move on. Don't reward them with attention, because mommy sure didn't.

Saturn

Nifty2g wrote: »

andy.s wrote: »

Well, rip eso I guess. But regarding current pve leaderboards, I'm sceptic about any scores without video proofs. In all other games speed runs must be proven by videos. All these "secret tactics" and exploits is bs.

Can confirm Jace's scores are legit, unlisted videos but in all fairness he's got some pretty cool strategies, mainly kill order. Dont know if you take my word for it, but I agree.

Yeah, Jace got his high scores a while ago. Before any of this mess. It's the current nr.1 for Sorc and Templars who is a problem, alongside many other who make a mockery of the leaderboards by cheating. They all deserve to have their accounts locked permenantly. If this isn't a serious violation of TOS, then I don't know what is.

SeptimusDova

brightdawnx in this case they need to care. I get it that it is a holiday weekend. but come Tuesday They need to hit the logs and let loose the dogs.

Ch4mpTW

Deltia wrote: »

I don't think public shaming is the answer because THAT'S the attention they want.

They want to grab a scroll, see there name across the screen and feel good about themselves due to attention, negative or otherwise.

However, they should absolutely not be allowed in game, especially the ones who've already been banned.

This game is our hobby but for some of us, our livelihood. A golf course wouldn't let someone come on the course with bionic arms and let me them scream, run around all of the course with no repercussions. This is the same thing, ban and move on. Don't reward them with attention, because mommy sure didn't.

Well, well... The great @Deltia has arrived to give his opinions and thoughts on the matter, and is standing with the community publicly about this. I'm pleased and quite surprised by this sudden appearance of such a celebrity of sorts...

Welcome Deltia. Hopefully you can talk some sense into ZOS, being as how your words tend to draw Zenimax's attention more so than anyone else. And my, my... I'm loving the spice in your post. Things are certainly going to get more interesting around these forums...

SwaminoNowlino

There are folks who have been cheating for a while in regards to VMA and PVP. Some folks got sick of reporting them to no avail, with no response from ZOS. There is a group of people in PVP doing this in the most outrageous fashion, dropping 50 meteors and posting videos, to force Zenimax to respond. These people aren't the same that are trying to game the leaderboards to get in ahead of a fix. The guys FENGRUSH had on his stream are blatantly waving it in everyone's face to force Zenimax to action.

So there are indeed two groups of people, and there are reasons you shouldn't deal in absolutes. 1 group is legit cheating for gain. The other is engaging in some civil disobedience to elicit change for the betterment of the game. The PVP group for the most part aren't impacting leaderboards or people's loot. The other people who are pushing folks off of hard earned leaderboards are indeed scum.

outsideworld76

If only my wings would bounce meteor.... this would not be a problem.

AdmiralSam

outsideworld76 wrote: »

If only my wings would bounce meteor.... this would not be a problem.

haha you'd have a tough time reflecting 50 mps (that's meteors per second)

JD2013

Anyone who agrees with anyone who's saying they're doing this to prove a point to others - no. That's no excuse to use third party software to ruin everyone else's game.

These people need kicking from the game permanently.

LadyNalcarya

Deltia wrote: »

I don't think public shaming is the answer because THAT'S the attention they want.

They want to grab a scroll, see there name across the screen and feel good about themselves due to attention, negative or otherwise.

However, they should absolutely not be allowed in game, especially the ones who've already been banned.

This game is our hobby but for some of us, our livelihood. A golf course wouldn't let someone come on the course with bionic arms and let me them scream, run around all of the course with no repercussions. This is the same thing, ban and move on. Don't reward them with attention, because mommy sure didn't.

Well, of course you will get a million of "agrees" just because of your name, but do you have any other suggestions how to draw Zos' attention to the problem? According to people in this (and similar) threads, just reporting and moving on is not exactly working...

SwaminoNowlino

JD2013 wrote: »

Anyone who agrees with anyone who's saying they're doing this to prove a point to others - no. That's no excuse to use third party software to ruin everyone else's game.

These people need kicking from the game permanently.

If they hadn't done it and weren't in PVP on stream doing this on outrageous fashion the forums wouldn't have been blowing up about this and people would be farming VMA all day with no effort without you ever knowing. Can agree to disagree but they seem to have accomplished their goal of making ZOS finally accountable for this.

rfennell_ESO

JD2013 wrote: »

Anyone who agrees with anyone who's saying they're doing this to prove a point to others - no. That's no excuse to use third party software to ruin everyone else's game.

These people need kicking from the game permanently.

Problem is that the people doing this aren't hiding it.

There are plenty of keyboard pvp toughguys who have obviously been doing this on the down low for a long time.

Some of them respected...

LadyNalcarya

outsideworld76 wrote: »

If only my wings would bounce meteor.... this would not be a problem.

Then they would start using other ults...

SeptimusDova

wrong is wrong demo the 3rd party in a clinical setting . Proof of concept post it and be done with it. Give reasonable disclosure and keep the video links off of the forums. That is what you should do. Not run around pvp/pve like a mad person dropping meteors/air walking/speed hacking until your lua buffer crashes.

JaceSB

Its just unfair. Someone such as myself who has held number 1 vma Sorcerer and Nightblade 100% legitimately feels that the people who have used exploits to get those scores must be penalized in some way. I have put tons of time and effort into getting the scores I have gotten and holding number 1 and for someone to come in out of nowhere and use exploits just completely ruins the idea of competition and top scores. It disgusts me. It truly is unfair.

Brightxdawn

There this one *** who plays dc and ad and most likely ep. Wont name names. People know who he is. He logs into one alliance to steal scrolls for another. Hes been reported MULTIPLE times. Hes still in the game. ZOS does not give a F >@?
So no matter how much players are reported for exploting/cheating the makers of this game seem to do little to nothing.

Buffler

JD2013 wrote: »

Anyone who agrees with anyone who's saying they're doing this to prove a point to others - no. That's no excuse to use third party software to ruin everyone else's game.

These people need kicking from the game permanently.

Whilst normally I'd agree but the 2 guys willingly came onto Fengrush's stream to show everybody what can be done and to seriously highlight issues.

Psychotius

All I've got to say about this is it needs to be fixed and I expect to never see the people I know to have used the exploit again. Problem is, I know I'll see them again. Many of the people using this cheat are the same people that consistently abused the multiple mundus stone bugs, speed hacks, and the other menagerie of famous exploits over the years; these people always seem make it back in the game on their same old accounts.

I can respect not wanting to name and shame people before developers have been able to determine whether someone is guilty or not. But once they are established to have been cheating, name and shame the hell out of them. Ban them from the game and make it known that x player cheated and is banned.

Honest players I think deserve some transparency over this, quit protecting the cheaters names and reputations.

snoogadooch

Bans are in order.

JD2013

Buffler wrote: »

JD2013 wrote: »

Anyone who agrees with anyone who's saying they're doing this to prove a point to others - no. That's no excuse to use third party software to ruin everyone else's game.

These people need kicking from the game permanently.

Whilst normally I'd agree but the 2 guys willingly came onto Fengrush's stream to show everybody what can be done and to seriously highlight issues.

But do you not see that they are wilfully using third party software of their own free will to hack and exploit this game. That's my point. Yes, people have been doing it before, but now this is on a much larger scale. And whilst it may have finally gotten it noticed, anyone who was party to spreading this information should get a ban too. That includes twitch streamers.

And anyone who has been using this software to hack the game needs a lifetime ban. Simple. There are better ways to bring things to people's attention than by being that guy who thinks they're doing some kind of duty and getting all self righteous about "well we are simply showing Zenimax" by showing everyone how it's done.

That is no excuse. Period. They need to come down and come down hard on the lot of them.

Tandor

I assume that you guys have done what you can in-game to deal with the cheaters, i.e. you're in touch with their guilds, sent your videos to their guildmasters etc, rather than just heaping all your frustrations and vitriol on ZOS?

I don't doubt that they're doing their best to deal with a difficult situation, the forum staff just enforce the forum rules which are quite rightly designed to protect the innocent from the kind of malicious complaints that can arise from competitive gameplay while different staff deal with the disciplinary issues. The fact that this whole explosion of protest has occurred over a public holiday weekend doubtless doesn't make it any easier for them as they are very likely on a skeleton staff.

I'm not defending exploiters, while I don't play competitively and they don't therefore impact on me I do consider them scum and have long campaigned in many MMOs for "bans" to mean "bans" and not "suspensions". I just think the cheaters should be dealt with as far as is possible through their guilds (and yes, report the whole guild if they're all in it), not just by reporting them, while ZOS have now been made more than aware of the scope of the problem and should be cut some slack while they show whether and how they're prepared to deal with it.

Out of interest, is this restricted to one platform/server or is it happening across the board?

Nifty2g

JaceSB wrote: »

Its just unfair. Someone such as myself who has held number 1 vma Sorcerer and Nightblade 100% legitimately feels that the people who have used exploits to get those scores must be penalized in some way. I have put tons of time and effort into getting the scores I have gotten and holding number 1 and for someone to come in out of nowhere and use exploits just completely ruins the idea of competition and top scores. It disgusts me. It truly is unfair.

I too hope they have the power to remove people from the leaderboards instead of just resetting them. If I were in your situation I'd be incredibly angry and wouldn't bother anymore if something like this gets allowed. It would be nice to hold #1 until the next major update etc. As in my signature

I'm also going to be angry if a group of people exploit this in Maw of Lorkhaj to get a skin they don't deserve and bypass the learning process that others put so much time in to.

But from what I'm seeing, this is mainly breeding from PvP players, I'm proud of you PvE players and guilds who are not exploiting scores and leaving it mainly up to the PvP community to do so. Good to see where the toxicity forms from

Buffler

Nifty2g wrote: »

JaceSB wrote: »

Its just unfair. Someone such as myself who has held number 1 vma Sorcerer and Nightblade 100% legitimately feels that the people who have used exploits to get those scores must be penalized in some way. I have put tons of time and effort into getting the scores I have gotten and holding number 1 and for someone to come in out of nowhere and use exploits just completely ruins the idea of competition and top scores. It disgusts me. It truly is unfair.

I too hope they have the power to remove people from the leaderboards instead of just resetting them. If I were in your situation I'd be incredibly angry and wouldn't bother anymore if something like this gets allowed. It would be nice to hold #1 until the next major update etc. As in my signature

I'm also going to be angry if a group of people exploit this in Maw of Lorkhaj to get a skin they don't deserve and bypass the learning process that others put so much time in to.

But from what I'm seeing, this is mainly breeding from PvP players, I'm proud of you PvE players and guilds who are not exploiting scores and leaving it mainly up to the PvP community to do so. Good to see where the toxicity forms from

Have you seen the PVE leaderboards??

Dont talk nonsense its widespread in pve and pvp

Psychotius

Buffler wrote: »

Nifty2g wrote: »

JaceSB wrote: »

Its just unfair. Someone such as myself who has held number 1 vma Sorcerer and Nightblade 100% legitimately feels that the people who have used exploits to get those scores must be penalized in some way. I have put tons of time and effort into getting the scores I have gotten and holding number 1 and for someone to come in out of nowhere and use exploits just completely ruins the idea of competition and top scores. It disgusts me. It truly is unfair.

I too hope they have the power to remove people from the leaderboards instead of just resetting them. If I were in your situation I'd be incredibly angry and wouldn't bother anymore if something like this gets allowed. It would be nice to hold #1 until the next major update etc. As in my signature

I'm also going to be angry if a group of people exploit this in Maw of Lorkhaj to get a skin they don't deserve and bypass the learning process that others put so much time in to.

But from what I'm seeing, this is mainly breeding from PvP players, I'm proud of you PvE players and guilds who are not exploiting scores and leaving it mainly up to the PvP community to do so. Good to see where the toxicity forms from

Have you seen the PVE leaderboards??

Dont talk nonsense its widespread in pve and pvp

He's saying its rampant in PVP, just starting to show itself in PVE. For every 1 PVE player cheating, there is probably 5 PVP'ers using the same cheat.

SwaminoNowlino

Tandor wrote: »

I assume that you guys have done what you can in-game to deal with the cheaters, i.e. you're in touch with their guilds, sent your videos to their guildmasters etc, rather than just heaping all your frustrations and vitriol on ZOS?

I don't doubt that they're doing their best to deal with a difficult situation, the forum staff just enforce the forum rules which are quite rightly designed to protect the innocent from the kind of malicious complaints that can arise from competitive gameplay while different staff deal with the disciplinary issues. The fact that this whole explosion of protest has occurred over a public holiday weekend doubtless doesn't make it any easier for them as they are very likely on a skeleton staff.

I'm not defending exploiters, while I don't play competitively and they don't therefore impact on me I do consider them scum and have long campaigned in many MMOs for "bans" to mean "bans" and not "suspensions". I just think the cheaters should be dealt with as far as is possible through their guilds (and yes, report the whole guild if they're all in it), not just by reporting them, while ZOS have now been made more than aware of the scope of the problem and should be cut some slack while they show whether and how they're prepared to deal with it.

Out of interest, is this restricted to one platform/server or is it happening across the board?

It's limited to PC, maybe Mac. But it's not a standard console thing.

As for those saying there's never an excuse, just have to agree to disagree. Context matters. It may make you feel better to out outrage the next guy, but context matters. People have been reporting players, messaging mods, and generally doing whatever they could to deal with this subtly. But it was ignored time and again. Civil disobedience does have a place in society to raise attention to issues authorities would just like to ignore. Which is why we are having this discussion out on the forums with the support of the community, instead of people being ignored and suppressed.

Nifty2g

Buffler wrote: »

Nifty2g wrote: »

JaceSB wrote: »

Its just unfair. Someone such as myself who has held number 1 vma Sorcerer and Nightblade 100% legitimately feels that the people who have used exploits to get those scores must be penalized in some way. I have put tons of time and effort into getting the scores I have gotten and holding number 1 and for someone to come in out of nowhere and use exploits just completely ruins the idea of competition and top scores. It disgusts me. It truly is unfair.

I too hope they have the power to remove people from the leaderboards instead of just resetting them. If I were in your situation I'd be incredibly angry and wouldn't bother anymore if something like this gets allowed. It would be nice to hold #1 until the next major update etc. As in my signature

I'm also going to be angry if a group of people exploit this in Maw of Lorkhaj to get a skin they don't deserve and bypass the learning process that others put so much time in to.

But from what I'm seeing, this is mainly breeding from PvP players, I'm proud of you PvE players and guilds who are not exploiting scores and leaving it mainly up to the PvP community to do so. Good to see where the toxicity forms from

Have you seen the PVE leaderboards??

Dont talk nonsense its widespread in pve and pvp

I'm in the guild that has #1 in SO, AA, HRC and MoL
I'm in the guild with the players who had #1 VMA Templar, Nightblade, Dragonknight and Sorcerer.

The only person hacking is #1 on Templar and Sorcerer. No one else is doing so. If they were, the scores would be a lot higher than what they are. I know the capabilities of each class in VMA and what score/time is possible or not.