Bots !

QuebraRegra

Runs wrote: »

Bots can take up to 6months to ban with video proof.

It takes doing something racially offensive to be banned fast.

I'm racially offended by these bots...

can something be done now?

WyndStryke

Apherius wrote: »

... Oh and last question ! can i post my list of bots on this forum ( open office text ) ? because people need to know the gametarg of these grinded account . ...

No, there's a 'no name and shame' clause in the terms of service (TOS), this also covers screenshots and videos. You can make an 'unlisted' youtube video and send it to ZOS, but you can't make a public video which shows names and share it on the forums/reddit/whatever.

Just report them each time you encounter them (no more than once daily, and it has to be what you see with your own eyes, not reporting based on hearsay) and move on. How it works is that the accounts with the highest numbers of reports are prioritised first.



The trouble with bots is that they are hard to identify algorithmically - they need human eyes to identify them reliably.

Stormahawk

I have seen dozens of these bots running around Kerbol's Hollow , Bangkorai (PC NA), and I have given up reporting them because they run around for weeks after, and nothing gets done. If ZOS would have someone log in for only a half hour a day at a random time and go to these bot hotspots, most of our bot problems would be gone. @ZOS_GinaBruno if you ever need to blow off steam, just log in and go to Kerbol's Hollow to rain justice from above on the bots with your banhammer (or any other area favored by bots).

I also noticed some of the bots might be "real" player accounts because some will have unobtainable pets like the one you would only get as a pre-order bonus from 2014 (the Vermilion Scuttler), which means that the bots are also likely using stolen/hacked or sold accounts, or the botters feel so invulnerable to bans that they use their own personal accounts to bot.

bloodthirstyvampire

Is it at all possible if we can have a game in each area

LadyLavina

Not sure if ZOS can do IP bans but that would be a decent countermeasure

Keep_Door

Bots are people too

Apherius

Keep_Door wrote: »

Bots are people too

We don't care , they are not behind their screens , so .. i won't call this " people "

bloodthirstyvampire

Apherius wrote: »

Keep_Door wrote: »

Bots are people too

We don't care , they are not behind their screens , so .. i won't call this " people "

She/he was deleted

Docmandu

starkerealm wrote: »

Draekony wrote: »

Unfortunately banning them will just cause them to make more "free to play" accounts and farm more right? Downsides of FTP.

Good thing the accounts aren't free, then.

Sure they are.. that's where stolen credit cards come in.. and sites that enable those rats like G2A.

Anyway even if they have to pay for the account in a legal way.. it's like 10 bucks.. they'll quickly make that back when they sell the gold / items / accounts that they botted.

DMuehlhausen

Apherius wrote: »

Runs wrote: »

Bots can take up to 6months to ban with video proof.

It takes doing something racially offensive to be banned fast.

and grind 600 cp / golds , without doing anything is not " racially offensive " ?

How is it? And he's right it takes months to ban bots. They get the information people send it. Figure how they are botting then do a feel swoop mass banning of them. After like 6 months new bot programs are written and they are back. If they banned one at a time they would just keep coming back before you see any change with new programs that ZoS knows nothing about it.

They did it at launch after about 4 months and BOTS just started showing up what 4 months ago/ so we got a little over 2 yea

Apherius wrote: »

it's time to do something about these bots i already report them and the spot , 3 times ! but they don't care , nothing have been done about them and the spot , NOTHING ! I'm tired to report them and to receive a message from the customer service to tell me that " the residents of Tamriel thank me " while my ticket is directly send to the trash .

Saying they don't care or know how to handle the issue shows just how little you know or understand about supporting a game like this. no company bans based of every small ticket they get. They track everything they received, research which takes months sometimes, then 2-3 times a year do mass bannings.

QuebraRegra

LadyLavina wrote: »

Not sure if ZOS can do IP bans but that would be a decent countermeasure

proxies, DHCP, etc. no can do...

Feanor

At this point I'd be happier if the Anti-Bot code just got removed and Cyrodiil performance restored to its former state. Apparently the code can't stop botting automatically and the customer service is too short on staff to deal with it. So we have the worst of both - we still have the bots and bad performance on top.

QuebraRegra

Feanor wrote: »

At this point I'd be happier if the Anti-Bot code just got removed and Cyrodiil performance restored to its former state. Apparently the code can't stop botting automatically and the customer service is too short on staff to deal with it. So we have the worst of both - we still have the bots and bad performance on top.

use "x" amount of CROWN STORE (crates, etc.) profits to hire a couple of junior people dedicated to examining/addressing/adjudicating botting.

Elsonso

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

@Apherius, can you post or send me your ticket number from the last report you made on these bots? Thanks!

@ZOS_GinaBruno ... A little feedback. It is nice that you have asked for this, and received your answer. Don't let this stop you, but you have to realize that you are using a spoon to empty a river. There are probably hundreds (?) of tickets just like the one you are asking for.

Thanks for doing it. I wish you didn't have to.

KingMagaw

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

That's ok, we can pull all the previous information on our end. Thanks!

Pull from the SPAM folder his report went into most likely. For players to continually police a game then having to resort to multiple forum posts to get Z0$ to even reply is a disgrace.

RMerlin

ZOS needs to have in-game GMs monitoring things. Compared to a previous MMO that I played, GMs seem oddly non-existent in this game.

Since I started playing back in beta, I have never met a single in-game GM in this game. I met quite a few in my 7+ years in another MMO (one of them was even interacting with us on a few of our guild raids, we jokingly determined he was stalking a member of our raid ) We've had a few issues where within 5-10 minutes, a GM could get online to resolve the issues (looting issue, broken raid mechanism requiring a GM's bypass, etc...)

That's the only way that a lot of bots and exploiters would be caught in the act. Heck, I bet a lot of fans would even be willing to be part-time GMs, even if just as some kind of "assistant GM" (hall monitor kind of responsability), with more limited power than a full-fledged GM, but still access to some tools to deal with situations as they are encountered. Or at least a direct line of communication with a real GM, so when an in-game issue is noticed, a real GM could quickly intervene.

Evergnar

rmerlb16_ESO wrote: »

ZOS needs to have in-game GMs monitoring things. Compared to a previous MMO that I played, GMs seem oddly non-existent in this game.

Since I started playing back in beta, I have never met a single in-game GM in this game. I met quite a few in my 7+ years in another MMO (one of them was even interacting with us on a few of our guild raids, we jokingly determined he was stalking a member of our raid ) We've had a few issues where within 5-10 minutes, a GM could get online to resolve the issues (looting issue, broken raid mechanism requiring a GM's bypass, etc...)

That's the only way that a lot of bots and exploiters would be caught in the act. Heck, I bet a lot of fans would even be willing to be part-time GMs, even if just as some kind of "assistant GM" (hall monitor kind of responsability), with more limited power than a full-fledged GM, but still access to some tools to deal with situations as they are encountered. Or at least a direct line of communication with a real GM, so when an in-game issue is noticed, a real GM could quickly intervene.

There was actually a pretty consistent presence of GMs early on in ESO up until the anti-bot patch. Both bots and GMs seemed to disappear after that for the most part.

Jollygoodusername

Was going to make sarcastic remarks but decided against it, not to belittle others issues with alleged 'bots'. Some folks are more heavily invested than myself and can easily run 5-10 PC's at once, making it look like automated character movements but really it's just 1 person on 1 keyboard/mouse with 5 or more connections.

I've never tried to open 2 instances of ESO but I know with PoE I'm allowed to have 2 instances open per PC, so I sometimes run 4 executables at once, across 2 PC's, in order to power level alts for build testing. The difference I suppose is in that case, the world is instanced and no one can complain. On the other hand, I'm not seeing how this directly hurts ANYONE, since even healing one of the bots, nets you a kill and access to the same loot.

BenzZos

I was in a vet dungeon the other day with a cp600 sorc light attacking with an icestaff and clanfear the entire time. He had no gamerscore, no friends, and no followers. Another new player who bought a fully leveled account from a 'bot runner'.

I hope this doesn't become a game breaking plague, as an earlier guy mentioned there's thousands and thousands of them, banning consoles are the only solution it's completely futile to ban an account on an Xbox with a hundred accounts.

Elsonso

Jollygoodusername wrote: »

Was going to make sarcastic remarks but decided against it, not to belittle others issues with alleged 'bots'. Some folks are more heavily invested than myself and can easily run 5-10 PC's at once, making it look like automated character movements but really it's just 1 person on 1 keyboard/mouse with 5 or more connections.

I've never tried to open 2 instances of ESO but I know with PoE I'm allowed to have 2 instances open per PC, so I sometimes run 4 executables at once, across 2 PC's, in order to power level alts for build testing. The difference I suppose is in that case, the world is instanced and no one can complain. On the other hand, I'm not seeing how this directly hurts ANYONE, since even healing one of the bots, nets you a kill and access to the same loot.

With ESO, rules are one person, one account, one character, active at a time. There is a debate as to whether you can be logged into multiple accounts at the same time, as long as only one is being played at a time.

RMerlin

LadyLavina wrote: »

Not sure if ZOS can do IP bans but that would be a decent countermeasure

IP bans are pointless, the vast majority of Internet users are on dynamic IPs. Or they could just use any kind of proxy/tunnel to change their IP.

KingMagaw

IP bans are next to worthless but since the last terms update players signed, Z0$ can now record your MAC physical hardware addresses so it is a lot harder to change a MAC address and hopefully they use this to directly reference who is logging into other accounts etc.

Jollygoodusername wrote: »

run 5-10 PC's at once, making it look like automated character movements but really it's just 1 person on 1 keyboard/mouse with 5 or more connections.

That is the definition of multi-boxing, which ESO doesn't allow.


12 players only drop boss loot. If some randomer is farming a boss and a multi-box train comes along with 12 players and out dps the original player, the original player doesn't get a drop of the boss loot so it can affect others.

Technically you can launch the eso.exe as many times as your computer can handle, probably against the rules to run it more than once lol

RMerlin

KingMagaw wrote: »

it is a lot harder to change a MAC address

It's actually just as easy, most NICs will let you provide your own MAC.

Nestor

ZOS already has the ability to look at a computers hardware signature, so they just have to use that on bots they ban.If that hardware signature comes back, then they don't get the confirmation email to play again.

While you can spoof your Mac and possibly your HDD identifier, other hardware not so easy to do. Could someone who is persistent and dedicated figure out a way around it? Maybe. Would everyone who bots for gold do this? No. Make it difficult for the botters and they go away. No need to make it impossible.

Here is why, this is not some factory that does this. There are no rooms full of people running massive amounts of PC's with IT staff and technical support. The people who run these bot trains are just people who otherwise don't have a job do this out of their homes. These are not sophisticated networks of hackers, this is about as low level as you can get. The sophisticated people are not interested in the small amounts of money to be made botting a game, they can make far more doing other things and spend less time doing it.

FlaviusPK

I have sent a ticket few days ago and they have not sent me even an automatic answer. By the way I have screen and videoproofs for that with nicknames etc.

QuebraRegra

Evergnar wrote: »

rmerlb16_ESO wrote: »

ZOS needs to have in-game GMs monitoring things. Compared to a previous MMO that I played, GMs seem oddly non-existent in this game.

Since I started playing back in beta, I have never met a single in-game GM in this game. I met quite a few in my 7+ years in another MMO (one of them was even interacting with us on a few of our guild raids, we jokingly determined he was stalking a member of our raid ) We've had a few issues where within 5-10 minutes, a GM could get online to resolve the issues (looting issue, broken raid mechanism requiring a GM's bypass, etc...)

That's the only way that a lot of bots and exploiters would be caught in the act. Heck, I bet a lot of fans would even be willing to be part-time GMs, even if just as some kind of "assistant GM" (hall monitor kind of responsability), with more limited power than a full-fledged GM, but still access to some tools to deal with situations as they are encountered. Or at least a direct line of communication with a real GM, so when an in-game issue is noticed, a real GM could quickly intervene.

There was actually a pretty consistent presence of GMs early on in ESO up until the anti-bot patch. Both bots and GMs seemed to disappear after that for the most part.

because there were no GMs, they were actually bots?!?!? CONSPIRACY!

alexkdd99

Evergnar wrote: »

Apherius wrote: »

Runs wrote: »

Bots can take up to 6months to ban with video proof.

It takes doing something racially offensive to be banned fast.

@ZOS_GinaBruno Can you comfirm that ? And give us more information about Bots reporting ?

We won't get much information about how Zos deals w/ bots and rightfully so. What Zos has done in the past though has worked exceptionally well.

Something changed around the time housing came out. Not sure if some anitbot measures were removed/changed or if botters just found new ways to get around detection. We can only hope that Zos is working on it in a timely manner.

They use to pay attention is all. They added in some measures to stop gold seller spamming. They use to pay attention and ban bots.

They haven't cared for quite sometime, before homestead. It doesn't take long to find a bot and see people have been doing it for long before homestead.

FoulSnowpaw

Mind the 3-4 sorcceror bots at Northglen Bangkorai. They farm the same sequence all day 24/7 sell stuff and what not. This is only few of many, but I find them annoying because of their 8 pets just floating all over the place and ruining my favorite grind spot. Market prices are broken because of these bots.

OH! And what about those few "players" that list like 10-20 legendary quality jewelery. 10 legendary jewelery of the SAME SET under the SAME player is VERY unlikely. Either they broke the algorithm, bot, dupe, or simply have no life.
Not accusing, just pointing out a totally suspicious observation over the past few months.

Bots break the economy and burden TESO console itself.
Our ticket reports are poofed the moment we send it, until threads like this one is made public. Good job thread person.

Elsonso

Holdon wrote: »

I have sent a ticket few days ago and they have not sent me even an automatic answer. By the way I have screen and videoproofs for that with nicknames etc.

I usually get an automated email from bot reports within 5 minutes.

Ferrofluid

FoulSnowpaw wrote: »

OH! And what about those few "players" that list like 10-20 legendary quality jewelery. 10 legendary jewelery of the SAME SET under the SAME player is VERY unlikely. Either they broke the algorithm, bot, dupe, or simply have no life.
Not accusing, just pointing out a totally suspicious observation over the past few months.

Pretty sure the only gold jewellery that you can sell comes from the Golden vendor in Cyrodiil. A lot of players have millions of AP stored up so they just buy a lot of the high value jewellery when it's available and then sell for gold. Not particularly suspicious.