Bots, bots and again bots

Edegas

I`ve seen a few threads about it, i`ve reported loads of them, but im boiling here.

How in the world can these run around and nobody gives a rats ass. (been in the same location for weeks, same names and everything)

Any action taken so far against them ?

Mr_Apollo

Not that I know of, perhaps a few. Its a problem that's happening and still going to happen. Sorry to inform you bud

SaRuZ

Oddly. I never, ever see them on Xbox NA. A few days ago I was doing the FG daily for Glenumbra Dolmen's and I found four lvl 20's farming one of them. Just the one dolmen. It confused me and I asked if they were bots but alas they all responded no.

Mr_Apollo

Yeah, careful when accusing

Edegas

Mr_Apollo wrote: »

Yeah, careful when accusing

Believe me buddy , ive been in Mmorpgs since 16-17 years ago, i can recongize a bot in a second.


Those turn on point , run around on similar/same paths. Some do random stuff from time to time.

AI isn`t that developed that you cannot see a bot vs a human.

This was on NA/PC.

They also take turns who leads the crowd, i also see them daily, its hard to miss it

Turelus

Sadly it's a part of MMO games, it happens and there is little that can be done to ever fully stop them.

That said ZOS does seem slower than other companies at stepping in and acting on bots. I don't know how their report systems work but it doesn't seem to be landing on the desk of anyone who can spare the time to go and confirm then enforce a ban.

Edegas

Turelus wrote: »

Sadly it's a part of MMO games, it happens and there is little that can be done to ever fully stop them.

That said ZOS does seem slower than other companies at stepping in and acting on bots. I don't know how their report systems work but it doesn't seem to be landing on the desk of anyone who can spare the time to go and confirm then enforce a ban.

Takes literaly 20s to ban 5 people. After observing them.

Its just annoying, you cant compete with them, they kill stuff fast. If they did random stuff, not camp entire farming spots, i could give a rats arse about them.

Pixel_Zealot

Yeah I see them from time to time as well, but I just leave them be.

I've given up on Zos' customer support ability. I used to report bugs and issues daily, but I've given up as I'm sure most of it is swept under the rug before even thinking about investigating the problem.

Dracindo

Edegas wrote: »

Takes literaly 20s to ban 5 people. After observing them.

You need at least a few minutes to have a good observation and make a justified decision. If they aren't a bot, you could spend at least 5 minutes following them. You can ask them something, but if a bot can be programmed to do all kinds of farming for you, then an autoreply is easily configured, or an alert that'll force the player to open his screen, stop the bot for a moment and reply.

If there really are soo many bots as you claim, then staffmembers would need to follow alot of people who get reported for being a bot. In which most of them are just hardcore farmers.

My suggestion against bots
Perhaps they could add a button that appears every hour you've been online, which you have to click within 5-10 minutes after it appears. If not clicked, you'll be logged out. If this happens multiple times in a month, the account will be banned for a month. It shouldn't take 3 seconds to click an obvious button to prove you're still actively playing. And 10 minutes... Unless you're having a real difficulty fighting a boss, this shouldn't be to much of a problem. Or they could add this button somewhere in the settings too, that will also reset the timer, in case you don't want to risk being bothered with this verification.

Turelus

Generally I have found ZOS support is fantastic for issues regarding accounts access, general bugged character fixes etc. they have kept me more than happy with their help over the last years with these issues.

I find they fall off when it comes to rules enforcement however. I don't know the system ZOS has in place but it seems like all their security and GM work is done by an outsourced company (like many MMO games) and they're very cautious about bans.
There generally only seems to be action taken when enough of a stink is made on the forums about an issue or it's causing a bad image for the game.

I wish they would let us know how they have their systems set up or ZOS/Bethesda/Zenimax would hire an in house security team (like CCP Games of EVE Online) who focus on protecting the game from bots, server attacks etc.

Edegas

Dracindo wrote: »

Edegas wrote: »

Takes literaly 20s to ban 5 people. After observing them.

You need at least a few minutes to have a good observation and make a justified decision. If they aren't a bot, you could spend at least 5 minutes following them. You can ask them something, but if a bot can be programmed to do all kinds of farming for you, then an autoreply is easily configured, or an alert that'll force the player to open his screen, stop the bot for a moment and reply.

If there really are soo many bots as you claim, then staffmembers would need to follow alot of people who get reported for being a bot. In which most of them are just hardcore farmers.

My suggestion against bots
Perhaps they could add a button that appears every hour you've been online, which you have to click within 5-10 minutes after it appears. If not clicked, you'll be logged out. If this happens multiple times in a month, the account will be banned for a month. It shouldn't take 3 seconds to click an obvious button to prove you're still actively playing. And 10 minutes... Unless you're having a real difficulty fighting a boss, this shouldn't be to much of a problem. Or they could add this button somewhere in the settings too, that will also reset the timer, in case you don't want to risk being bothered with this verification.

I was farming near them , or tried to for hours (remember this is going on since 2 weeks ago, or thats when i saw them first hand). They are bots 100%, there is no doubt (hence 100%).

It just pisses me off, i dont mind sharing farming spots with other players, but bots ... never.

Majic

SaRuZ wrote: »

Oddly. I never, ever see them on Xbox NA. A few days ago I was doing the FG daily for Glenumbra Dolmen's and I found four lvl 20's farming one of them. Just the one dolmen. It confused me and I asked if they were bots but alas they all responded no.

You realize, of course, that's exactly what a bot would be programmed to say.

Never trust a bot!

Edegas

Majic wrote: »

SaRuZ wrote: »

Oddly. I never, ever see them on Xbox NA. A few days ago I was doing the FG daily for Glenumbra Dolmen's and I found four lvl 20's farming one of them. Just the one dolmen. It confused me and I asked if they were bots but alas they all responded no.

You realize, of course, that's exactly what a bot would be programmed to say.

Never trust a bot!

Lmao , yes you can code something (color code) and they can actually reply, on color change press R and Hello then enter.

I`ve seen software that can do that, its not that complicated.

kyle.wilson

Problem with bots and cheats, is that without video proof no one gets punished.
The only thing that can be said is to report them and supply as much info as you can. Then maybe ZOS will do something.
But, without some sort of proof of a crime, there won't be any action taken.
It took players being recorded spamming ults with CE before zos even acknowledged the CE issue. It was there, just not as in your face as 1 player spamming 100 ults in a minute,

Edegas

kyle.wilson wrote: »

Problem with bots and cheats, is that without video proof no one gets punished.
The only thing that can be said is to report them and supply as much info as you can. Then maybe ZOS will do something.
But, without some sort of proof of a crime, there won't be any action taken.
It took players being recorded spamming ults with CE before zos even acknowledged the CE issue. It was there, just not as in your face as 1 player spamming 100 ults in a minute,

Well , i can make a fully informed report, when i get time to work for them also. I do pay for ESO+ too to support them.

I`ll work part time to document the bots too. (sarcasm)

Turelus

kyle.wilson wrote: »

Problem with bots and cheats, is that without video proof no one gets punished.
The only thing that can be said is to report them and supply as much info as you can. Then maybe ZOS will do something.
But, without some sort of proof of a crime, there won't be any action taken.
It took players being recorded spamming ults with CE before zos even acknowledged the CE issue. It was there, just not as in your face as 1 player spamming 100 ults in a minute,

The problem is this should be something they're able to look at and confirm on their end. There are small companies with less resources which have better bot control than ZOS.

When someone is reported as a bot that needs to result in that account actually being checked and investigated. It might be that this already happens and just takes a very long time, but we don't know.

They should also be watching where the materials/gold from said accounts are moving and then be investigating those accounts either for RMT of buying/selling gold or using the botted materials to gain on another account.

This is the kind of standard practice one would expect in an MMO security team but something that ZOS either doesn't have or doesn't talk about being in place.

Once again I can only point to CCP Games being smaller and more on the ball than ZOS is in regards to cheating/botting, and that's a far smaller company with less resources. Being the cynical person I am I just figure someone with a suit somewhere is looking at the costs to employ this vs the number of people actually leaving due to it and figures it's not worth the investment.

Although if they banned more bots they'd make more money from account sales as the bots have to continue to buy up new accounts just to be banned, everyone wins.

kyle.wilson

sometimes even blatant cheating doesn't result in a permanent ban.

https://youtu.be/1cgkbrTG1vM

this isn't my video, but it proves a point.

Turelus

kyle.wilson wrote: »

sometimes even blatant cheating doesn't result in a permanent ban.

Which goes back to what I was saying about ZOS needing some in house (if it doesn't already exist) security/GM teams to take evidence such as yours and investigate. If they do have this already they need to find out why issues like the ones you posted (omitted in my post due to forums rules) are not investigated and acted on in a timely manner.

I've been saying this since the dawn of the game how this needs to be looked at, I mean there is an entire thread about cheating/exploiting where we screamed our lungs out about it. I posted so much in that thread and tried so hard to get change I burnt myself out of even enjoying the game, probably meaning I should stop posting in this thread about it all...

Edegas

kyle.wilson wrote: »

sometimes even blatant cheating doesn't result in a permanent ban.

https://youtu.be/1cgkbrTG1vM

Was that some God action over there ?

Olen_Mikko

kyle.wilson wrote: »

sometimes even blatant cheating doesn't result in a permanent ban.

https://youtu.be/1cgkbrTG1vM

Bugged Valkyn Scoria?

Turelus

Edegas wrote: »

kyle.wilson wrote: »

sometimes even blatant cheating doesn't result in a permanent ban.

Was that some God action over there ?

Ultimate spam, either via cheat programs (which have been proven to allow this) or exploiting bugs/lag within the game to fire multiple times.

Generally people don't abuse things like this as it's hardly subtle and will result in you getting a ticket filed against your account.

kyle.wilson

Olen_Mikko wrote: »

kyle.wilson wrote: »

sometimes even blatant cheating doesn't result in a permanent ban.

https://youtu.be/1cgkbrTG1vM

Bugged Valkyn Scoria?

No that's straight Cheat Engine. Which that level wont happen again. But, many of those caught were let back in.

Caligamy_ESO

Majic wrote: »

SaRuZ wrote: »

Oddly. I never, ever see them on Xbox NA. A few days ago I was doing the FG daily for Glenumbra Dolmen's and I found four lvl 20's farming one of them. Just the one dolmen. It confused me and I asked if they were bots but alas they all responded no.

You realize, of course, that's exactly what a bot would be programmed to say.

Never trust a bot!

I once spotted a botter replying to one of these threads in this way, found him out by his odd username appearing on mmovipers page in restricted forums for paying members only. But you can still read a few of them via google cache.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/3611481
Can you spot it? :P

Edegas

Caligamy_ESO wrote: »

Majic wrote: »

SaRuZ wrote: »

Oddly. I never, ever see them on Xbox NA. A few days ago I was doing the FG daily for Glenumbra Dolmen's and I found four lvl 20's farming one of them. Just the one dolmen. It confused me and I asked if they were bots but alas they all responded no.

You realize, of course, that's exactly what a bot would be programmed to say.

Never trust a bot!

I once spotted a botter replying to one of these threads in this way, found him out by his odd username appearing on mmovipers page in restricted forums for paying members only. But you can still read a few of them via google cache.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/3611481
Can you spot it? :P

Nope , i couldnt

Turelus

Caligamy_ESO wrote: »

Majic wrote: »

SaRuZ wrote: »

Oddly. I never, ever see them on Xbox NA. A few days ago I was doing the FG daily for Glenumbra Dolmen's and I found four lvl 20's farming one of them. Just the one dolmen. It confused me and I asked if they were bots but alas they all responded no.

You realize, of course, that's exactly what a bot would be programmed to say.

Never trust a bot!

I once spotted a botter replying to one of these threads in this way, found him out by his odd username appearing on mmovipers page in restricted forums for paying members only. But you can still read a few of them via google cache.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/3611481
Can you spot it? :P

That's a special kind of stupid.

That said there was a site someone from my guild linked me once where someone was giving a positive customer review for power levelling, gold selling or something like that. They used the name Turelus for that, and I am pretty sure it wasn't me.

I always put it down to someone I have upset over the years or general forums browsing by the company to get the name, the best part was they listed me as being a Sorcerer player, I have a Nightblade main and hardly play anything else.

Edit*

There you go I found the link. https://www.esomasteryguides.com/gold-making apparently I'm a Sorcerer.

phairdon

Last time I witnessed bots was the first half of last year, in Shadowfen. Two of them, one Templar and a dragonknight from memory. Was the most erratic behavior I've seen in this game. Looked they were glued together, were following a certain path, farming Dreugh. They're kill some Dreugh, blink out of existence for a few seconds, before appearing somewhere else on their route. Reported the bots. Response was to put them on ignore.
Zeni were really good prior to last year when it came to reporting bots. Supply footage and they'd actually do something about them.

Surgee

If you are tired of cheaters, bots and addons that are basically a cheat, consider playing on Xbox One or PS4. No that kind of crap there, no stat race, no worrying that someone else has 20 monitors connected to a $10k pc having a big advantage over you. Just an MMO RPG as it should be. It has its fair share of issues, but I'm enjoying it much more. MY PC version is collecting the dust for almost 2 years now.

Edegas

Surgee wrote: »

If you are tired of cheaters, bots and addons that are basically a cheat, consider playing on Xbox One or PS4. No that kind of crap there, no stat race, no worrying that someone else has 20 monitors connected to a $10k pc having a big advantage over you. Just an MMO RPG as it should be. It has its fair share of issues, but I'm enjoying it much more. MY PC version is collecting the dust for almost 2 years now.

I have a decent enough PC not to worry about the fps lag. I do enjoy the game on PC with the multiple addons, adds flavour to the game and i can customize it as i please.

Bots just annoy the crap out of me, they did in any game i played.

Also i can`t stand the controllers, i`m an old school gamer

zaria

Dracindo wrote: »

Edegas wrote: »

Takes literaly 20s to ban 5 people. After observing them.

You need at least a few minutes to have a good observation and make a justified decision. If they aren't a bot, you could spend at least 5 minutes following them. You can ask them something, but if a bot can be programmed to do all kinds of farming for you, then an autoreply is easily configured, or an alert that'll force the player to open his screen, stop the bot for a moment and reply.

If there really are soo many bots as you claim, then staffmembers would need to follow alot of people who get reported for being a bot. In which most of them are just hardcore farmers.

My suggestion against bots
Perhaps they could add a button that appears every hour you've been online, which you have to click within 5-10 minutes after it appears. If not clicked, you'll be logged out. If this happens multiple times in a month, the account will be banned for a month. It shouldn't take 3 seconds to click an obvious button to prove you're still actively playing. And 10 minutes... Unless you're having a real difficulty fighting a boss, this shouldn't be to much of a problem. Or they could add this button somewhere in the settings too, that will also reset the timer, in case you don't want to risk being bothered with this verification.

An button would not work as the boot program could just use it.
Runescape had an pretty nice system with random events if you had an boot like behavior.
Say you run the same path over and over, spawn something in the path like an lava pool, or an boss who will kill you if attacked. Might even have an npc forcing interaction with you and ask you an question, an player would answer and get an gift. Fail and you have an problem.
Mind you that runescape had more primitive boots down to keyboard macros.

Edegas

zaria wrote: »

Dracindo wrote: »

Edegas wrote: »

Takes literaly 20s to ban 5 people. After observing them.

You need at least a few minutes to have a good observation and make a justified decision. If they aren't a bot, you could spend at least 5 minutes following them. You can ask them something, but if a bot can be programmed to do all kinds of farming for you, then an autoreply is easily configured, or an alert that'll force the player to open his screen, stop the bot for a moment and reply.

If there really are soo many bots as you claim, then staffmembers would need to follow alot of people who get reported for being a bot. In which most of them are just hardcore farmers.

My suggestion against bots

Say you run the same path over and over, spawn something in the path like an lava pool, or an boss who will kill you if attacked. Might even have an npc forcing interaction with you and ask you an question, an player would answer and get an gift. Fail and you have an problem.

Oo i just love the lava one, or make it the gate to heaven (similar with the portals in certain dungeons) and when they fall, they die.

Surgee

Edegas wrote: »

Surgee wrote: »

If you are tired of cheaters, bots and addons that are basically a cheat, consider playing on Xbox One or PS4. No that kind of crap there, no stat race, no worrying that someone else has 20 monitors connected to a $10k pc having a big advantage over you. Just an MMO RPG as it should be. It has its fair share of issues, but I'm enjoying it much more. MY PC version is collecting the dust for almost 2 years now.

I have a decent enough PC not to worry about the fps lag. I do enjoy the game on PC with the multiple addons, adds flavour to the game and i can customize it as i please.

Bots just annoy the crap out of me, they did in any game i played.

Also i can`t stand the controllers, i`m an old school gamer

I'm very old school gamer too. Started my adventure with gaming on ATARI 130XE. I was a die hard PC gamer until my early 20s, then I switched to consoles for gaming. My asian wife was a PC gamer too and couldn't stand a controller until I got her xbox360. Took her a while to get used to it but since then she can't go back to PC, hehe. I guess it's all up to preference. Maybe I Just became a bit more casual with age ;P