Unlimited Aetherial Dust

Ballzy321

Lord wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi folks,

Just letting you know that we reached out to the player who created this thread ( @Alcest ) early yesterday evening for additional details. He was able to provide some helpful screenshots, and our team is already looking into this. We should have more info today. Thanks!

Thank you for letting us know

I hope it will be fixed as soon as possible and the players who exploited this bug will be punished accordingly.
In my opinion the gold earned from the sales of the Aetherial Dust should be removed from the exploiters game accounts.
Also, the exploiters need to be banned(idk if permanently but 1+ months at least).

When people used banker glitch they banned them for theee days. I wouldn't expect much from zos in regards of any kind of punishment

Prive

Magıc wrote: »

Well at least Zos made a comment. I'm suspecting 3 day bans + keep the gold or permanent bans once my Russian amigos have sold all their gold, based on historical evidence from past exploits.

You're hopeful man.

they will only ban the wrong people, as they usually do.

Magıc

Prive wrote: »

Magıc wrote: »

Well at least Zos made a comment. I'm suspecting 3 day bans + keep the gold or permanent bans once my Russian amigos have sold all their gold, based on historical evidence from past exploits.

You're hopeful man.

they will only ban the wrong people, as they usually do.

I guess I am hopeful. I still remember when they perma banned people gap closing into keeps in Cyro, yet 3 day bans for the survey exploit (including bans for people who didn't even exploit it) which had a much worse impact on the game.

Thinking about it I am way too hopeful.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom

Hi everyone,

In digging into this with our BI team, we found a few things but none of them point to an exploit. We did find some gold sellers involved, and have since permanently banned the accounts and are investigating other accounts for potential involvement.

Beyond that, we looked at how many Aetherial Dust players have obtained daily over the course of the past two months on each server and how they obtained it. There is a possible (statistical) maximum that players can obtain via normal methods and no one has exceeded that. Now, something we are seeing is a few people buying low, selling high, and essentially cornering the market. This is resulting in what looks like someone having far more of a rare item than they should, but when we dug into how they got the items, we’re not seeing anything abnormal that would suggest item duping or an exploit.

(Small edit to clarify the limit comment.)

Turelus

Awesome! Thanks for the news Jess.

Urkraft

wow. sounds a bit like goldsellers have been farming/botting over a several amount of time and just keeping the stuff over months to pump it out all at one moment?

Prive

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi everyone,

In digging into this with our BI team, we found a few things but none of them point to an exploit. We did find some gold sellers involved, and have since permanently banned the accounts and are investigating other accounts for potential involvement.

Beyond that, we looked at how many Aetherial Dust players have obtained daily over the course of the past two months on each server and how they obtained it. There is a possible maximum that players can obtain via normal methods and no one has exceeded that. Now, something we are seeing is a few people buying low, selling high, and essentially cornering the market. This is resulting in what looks like someone having far more of a rare item than they should, but when we dug into how they got the items, we’re not seeing anything abnormal that would suggest item duping or an exploit.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom those permabans do not make a single difference.
Those same people will still have access to their funds, to their mats and to everything else they need to continue their gold selling activities.

They operate trough "dead" trading guilds, so they always have access to everything. I personally handed you guys 2 guilds, with 350 botting/gold selling accounts and those people are still active in game. With old accounts AND new accounts.

I gave up on trading, because of exactly these issues. There's simply no point.

You guys will most likely just ignore this message again and continue breaking your game even further. Wether it's battlegrounds, bugs, exploits, botting, gold selling, broken trials or the grouping tool.. You guys simply don't care or are not competent enough to fix the mess.

Sorry for this rant, I know you don't care, but at least it's said once more..

LMar

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi everyone,

In digging into this with our BI team, we found a few things but none of them point to an exploit. We did find some gold sellers involved, and have since permanently banned the accounts and are investigating other accounts for potential involvement.

Beyond that, we looked at how many Aetherial Dust players have obtained daily over the course of the past two months on each server and how they obtained it. There is a possible (statistical) maximum that players can obtain via normal methods and no one has exceeded that. Now, something we are seeing is a few people buying low, selling high, and essentially cornering the market. This is resulting in what looks like someone having far more of a rare item than they should, but when we dug into how they got the items, we’re not seeing anything abnormal that would suggest item duping or an exploit.

(Small edit to clarify the limit comment.)

So buying these rare items at dirt cheap prices is a bargain we should take advantage asap then?! :P With no danger to our accounts?

DRXHarbinger

Prive wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi everyone,

In digging into this with our BI team, we found a few things but none of them point to an exploit. We did find some gold sellers involved, and have since permanently banned the accounts and are investigating other accounts for potential involvement.

Beyond that, we looked at how many Aetherial Dust players have obtained daily over the course of the past two months on each server and how they obtained it. There is a possible maximum that players can obtain via normal methods and no one has exceeded that. Now, something we are seeing is a few people buying low, selling high, and essentially cornering the market. This is resulting in what looks like someone having far more of a rare item than they should, but when we dug into how they got the items, we’re not seeing anything abnormal that would suggest item duping or an exploit.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom those permabans do not make a single difference.
Those same people will still have access to their funds, to their mats and to everything else they need to continue their gold selling activities.

They operate trough "dead" trading guilds, so they always have access to everything. I personally handed you guys 2 guilds, with 350 botting/gold selling accounts and those people are still active in game. With old accounts AND new accounts.

I gave up on trading, because of exactly these issues. There's simply no point.

You guys will most likely just ignore this message again and continue breaking your game even further. Wether it's battlegrounds, bugs, exploits, botting, gold selling, broken trials or the grouping tool.. You guys simply don't care or are not competent enough to fix the mess.

Sorry for this rant, I know you don't care, but at least it's said once more..

Exactly this. They don't keep their hoards in their own inventories. You need to find the GM And kill his guild bank. How I'd love to hack their accounts and rob their banks.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom

Prive wrote: »

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom those permabans do not make a single difference.
Those same people will still have access to their funds, to their mats and to everything else they need to continue their gold selling activities.

They operate trough "dead" trading guilds, so they always have access to everything. I personally handed you guys 2 guilds, with 350 botting/gold selling accounts and those people are still active in game. With old accounts AND new accounts.

I gave up on trading, because of exactly these issues. There's simply no point.

You guys will most likely just ignore this message again and continue breaking your game even further. Wether it's battlegrounds, bugs, exploits, botting, gold selling, broken trials or the grouping tool.. You guys simply don't care or are not competent enough to fix the mess.

Sorry for this rant, I know you don't care, but at least it's said once more..

Send me the ticket number you got when you sent in the report? I'll follow up. Sometimes it can be difficult to see the full impact of what our Support team does since they don't publicly disclose disciplinary actions or the results of investigations.

Ackwalan

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi everyone,

In digging into this with our BI team, we found a few things but none of them point to an exploit. We did find some gold sellers involved, and have since permanently banned the accounts and are investigating other accounts for potential involvement.

Beyond that, we looked at how many Aetherial Dust players have obtained daily over the course of the past two months on each server and how they obtained it. There is a possible (statistical) maximum that players can obtain via normal methods and no one has exceeded that. Now, something we are seeing is a few people buying low, selling high, and essentially cornering the market. This is resulting in what looks like someone having far more of a rare item than they should, but when we dug into how they got the items, we’re not seeing anything abnormal that would suggest item duping or an exploit.

(Small edit to clarify the limit comment.)

Thank you.

Urkraft

Hello @ZOS_JessicaFolsom ,

regarding @Prive s statement, i also remember havin reported one of those russian goldsellers in the past. is there any chance of increased effort into the goldselling/botting problematic on eu-server. people aren't taking zos for serious anymore, and actually many think, zos doesnt even read bot-reports... all which is needed would be only one gm for this.

Prive

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Prive wrote: »

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom those permabans do not make a single difference.
Those same people will still have access to their funds, to their mats and to everything else they need to continue their gold selling activities.

They operate trough "dead" trading guilds, so they always have access to everything. I personally handed you guys 2 guilds, with 350 botting/gold selling accounts and those people are still active in game. With old accounts AND new accounts.

I gave up on trading, because of exactly these issues. There's simply no point.

You guys will most likely just ignore this message again and continue breaking your game even further. Wether it's battlegrounds, bugs, exploits, botting, gold selling, broken trials or the grouping tool.. You guys simply don't care or are not competent enough to fix the mess.

Sorry for this rant, I know you don't care, but at least it's said once more..

Send me the ticket number you got when you sent in the report? I'll follow up. Sometimes it can be difficult to see the full impact of what our Support team does since they don't publicly disclose disciplinary actions or the results of investigations.

Hi @ZOS_JessicaFolsom , This issue has no ticket nr, because it was a little more "complicated". If you'd like to get into the matter, please send me a PM so I can explain the necessary in detail.

zaria

Urkraft wrote: »

wow. sounds a bit like goldsellers have been farming/botting over a several amount of time and just keeping the stuff over months to pump it out all at one moment?

Why dumping it all now, why not sell it over time back around morrowind launch then everybody leveled warden?
Yes it might be that the gold sellers either needed cash or they wanted to pull out fast.

Mettaricana

Havent a single found dust since it was released

Urkraft

zaria wrote: »

Urkraft wrote: »

wow. sounds a bit like goldsellers have been farming/botting over a several amount of time and just keeping the stuff over months to pump it out all at one moment?

Why dumping it all now, why not sell it over time back around morrowind launch then everybody leveled warden?
Yes it might be that the gold sellers either needed cash or they wanted to pull out fast.

thats what i wondered too. no idea. maybe a bit of goldselling and yolocrushing in one. maye its because they are russians ^^' (sry guys). when its about goldselling the chinafarmers always were smarter.

Elsonso

Mettaricana wrote: »

Havent a single found dust since it was released

Same here. The stuff does not even exist. I have no idea what fantasy the rest of the people in the thread are living.

DRXHarbinger

Those gold sellers were found quickly.... perhaps if there was a more proactive approach you could remove a few more.

caperon

Magıc wrote: »

Well at least Zos made a comment. I'm suspecting 3 day bans + keep the gold or permanent bans once my Russian amigos have sold all their gold, based on historical evidence from past exploits.

Well, lets be honest here...

We all recall the anuncement of how many, 10 million boxes sold? Russian gold sellers are a good source of income for ZOS, best strategy is just steady ban them so they keep steady buying boxes. Its pretty clear ZOS and gold sellers have a non word agreement where ZOS does some banning for PR purposes and gold sellers assume the operational loses. Its that or ZOS selling gold for crowns, and that would be worse.

For the rest of the playerbase... Well, me personally as buyer, i don't give a crap abut the market crashing. Deflation is good for me. Be a survey exploit, be a dupe exploit, i benefit of the lower prices.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Beyond that, we looked at how many Aetherial Dust players have obtained daily over the course of the past two months on each server and how they obtained it. There is a possible (statistical) maximum that players can obtain via normal methods and no one has exceeded that. Now, something we are seeing is a few people buying low, selling high, and essentially cornering the market. This is resulting in what looks like someone having far more of a rare item than they should, but when we dug into how they got the items, we’re not seeing anything abnormal that would suggest item duping or an exploit.

Im sorry but this has no sense at all. This strategies of cornering the market (that in fact happen) have the objective of pushing the price up creating a false scarcity of the targeted comodity buying them all and then listing it at higher price. Buying at 70k for mass selling at 30k has NOT any sense in any way.

Its obviously some kind of exploit that is producing extra amounts of materials in some way and the exploiters are trying to get rid of the items asap.

Rickter

yay another PvE issue that will get immediate and priority attention and hot fix while PvP continues to flounder with imbalance.

Urkraft

Im sorry but this has no sense at all. This strategies of cornering the market (that in fact happen) have the obbjective of pushing the price up creating a false scarcity of the targeted comodity buying them all and then listing it at higher price. Buying at 70k for mass selling at 30k has NOT any sense in any way.

I think Jessica was referring in this case to the resellers which occured after the Dust has been dumped on the market.

For the rest of the playerbase... Well, me personally as buyer, i don't give a crap abut the market crashing. Deflation is good for me. Be a survey exploit, be a dupe exploit, i benefit of the lower prices.

Has to accepted, since u make clear its only your personal view. There are a lot of farmers, which also deserve the right to get something from their honest work - i guess u also agree on that view.
___

In general...

well - people got banned, the material is still on the market. People are feeding and selling on it now, as usual. It doesnt matter wether those accounts got banned, those people will come back, keep spamming the market, the material stays there, so there wont be any chance to undo the damage.

MLGProPlayer

Hammy01 wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

zeus1gdsm wrote: »

I wish ps4 server would have a price crash.. I can't afford to buy the mats I need to craft a full set of 160 gear.

I literally have to go and grind a gold farm to get cash so I can get Mats for all my crafts.

And it's not a "get good" situation. It's literally a time investment issue. Not enough time to invest.

And man would it be amazing if console could get a pricing add on to prevent inflated prices.

But it also means you can make gold much quicker than on PC due to the higher price of everything you can sell.

You should be able yo easily make 150-200k an hour farming mats on console (and then just buy the ones you need). Everything is relative.

I am no expert but just because we can make 3x to 5x more gold on the consoles does not make us better off because we also have to pay 3x to 5x more for stuff. I would think in the end it all evens out... After buying/selling and whatnot we should be closer to the same % of profit (dealing in percentages and not actual amounts)


I am currious though if an influx of mats this size would hurt the console or pc markets more (or maybe it would have the same effect/outcome).

It evens out in the open market. But you do have an advantage with gold sinks. Stuff like houses and bag upgrades are cheaper as you can raise the funds to buy them more quickly.

caperon

Urkraft wrote: »

For the rest of the playerbase... Well, me personally as buyer, i don't give a crap abut the market crashing. Deflation is good for me. Be a survey exploit, be a dupe exploit, i benefit of the lower prices.

Has to accepted, since u make clear its only your personal view. There are a lot of farmers, which also deserve the right to get something from their honest work - i guess u also agree on that view.

I would be raging with pitchforks and torches if my main income was farming.

SilverWF

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi everyone,

In digging into this with our BI team, we found a few things but none of them point to an exploit. We did find some gold sellers involved, and have since permanently banned the accounts and are investigating other accounts for potential involvement.

Beyond that, we looked at how many Aetherial Dust players have obtained daily over the course of the past two months on each server and how they obtained it. There is a possible (statistical) maximum that players can obtain via normal methods and no one has exceeded that. Now, something we are seeing is a few people buying low, selling high, and essentially cornering the market. This is resulting in what looks like someone having far more of a rare item than they should, but when we dug into how they got the items, we’re not seeing anything abnormal that would suggest item duping or an exploit.

(Small edit to clarify the limit comment.)

Excuse me, but it looks like official tip:
Find a bug - this is a hardest part. You need to be a good hacker, or bought one on the cheaters forums, or hire some hacker for it.
Buy a second hand account - there is plenty of pretty cheap, already leveled, with gold etc.
Dupe whatever you want and throw to a some market
Immediately bought it with main account, but left a lot at market too - let's many ppl would buy it too.
Your cheating account becomes banned, but you and everyone else - are legit buyers
Profit.

Even if it all came from botters - it doesn't matter, you must delete all of that items and all consumables, produced from it.

Otherwise, you are supporting exploiters, because noone becomes punished in real.
You have banned some botters or maybe cheaters, but who cares if they all were bought from second hands (cheap), or by carders (for free)? All mains are safe anyway.

There is no need to ban everyone around - just remove that this botters or cheaters produced. This will be enough.

LMar wrote: »

So buying these rare items at dirt cheap prices is a bargain we should take advantage asap then?! :P With no danger to our accounts?

Exactly

caperon wrote: »

Deflation is good for me. Be a survey exploit, be a dupe exploit, i benefit of the lower prices.

There wouldn't be daflation.

caperon

SilverWF wrote: »

caperon wrote: »

Deflation is good for me. Be a survey exploit, be a dupe exploit, i benefit of the lower prices.

There wouldn't be daflation.

Ofc there is deflation when a big influx of materials get to the market. Its not only the exploiters sell at lower prices, people buying all and reselling are forced to sell at lower prices than the old legit listed products. And that big influx instantly fills all the demand, so naturally sells will slow down for a while, forcing the prices down. Thats general market dynamics. The only way prices are not affected is if the items are instantly removed of the market, as your solution says (I mostly agree with that solution).

Prive

[This post has been removed.]

@magictucktuck

Ok, let me shine some light on the matter.

I was unrightfully banned for a matter related to goldselling. (Hence my first statement in this thread saying that they only ban the wrong people).

Since both my in game and forum account got banned, I've send zos an email about it, which eventually led to a 6 week ongoing discussion with mails, proving my innosence. Since this case eventually evolved into a point were it went beyond "normal support", it doesn't have a ticket number.

Hence why I never stated I've "send in a ticket" or "reported them", but said that I handed them the necessary evidence.

Hopefully you'll still have a rather nice evening.

code65536

The quantities do seem unbelievably high.

If ZOS is standing by their story that there was no exploit or duplication, then the only way it could make sense would be if people were doing a price manipulation scheme. For example, Alice posts 200 dust for sale at a low price. Her accomplice, Bob, buys them up the instant they're posted. He gives them back to her to relist. If they do this a few times, and it could cause movement of the MM price and also make it seem like they sold 1000 dust when they really just "sold" the same 200 dust five times.

Urkraft

code65536 wrote: »

The quantities do seem unbelievably high.

If ZOS is standing by their story that there was no exploit or duplication, then the only way it could make sense would be if people were doing a price manipulation scheme. For example, Alice posts 200 dust for sale at a low price. Her accomplice, Bob, buys them up the instant they're posted. He gives them back to her to relist. If they do this a few times, and it could cause movement of the MM price and also make it seem like they sold 1000 dust when they really just "sold" the same 200 dust five times.

cant be, because different buyers were holding a lot of quantities the same time, also u could see a lot of relistings by resellers then. u can track such activities with master merchant or arkadius trade tools easily.

Asardes

Not sure selling items back and forth on guild stores is really worth it. You lose 7% per transaction. And getting that much dust without any exploit seems hard to believe. I've played almost daily since One Tamriel got released, and harvested tens of thousands of raw mats in the ~8 months since then but failed to get even one.

Kneighbors

Well this is apparently an exploit. There's no other explanation which could be making sense.

Reminds me how I purchased Payday game on sale and started playing with random people. All the costumes, guns, everything was supposed to be bought with ingame gold. I was like "damn it's not easy to earn for equipment here, got to grind" when suddenly I ran into a random party where one guy simply by several commands poored sacks full of gold from the sky.. In terms of ESO it was like I was grinding 500 gold each match for 30000 gun and suddenly there sacks of 50,000,000 of gold falling from the skies. Needless to say I didn't came back to that game again.

Collapsing ingame economy could led to people loose interest, there's no doubt in that.