Guide: How To Report Botters

Minyassa

I've spoken with quite a few people in chat that find it frustrating and sometimes impossible to catch the names of botters to report them. Here's the method I use. The more of us that can do this, the better ZOS can respond; and the more of us that flood them with reports on the same people, hopefully the more pressure it will create to permanently ban the IPs of bot users!

1. Identify botters as botting. This will usually be a group of sorcerors with two pets and sometimes an NPC trailing along. A prime example is in Silsailen, where there's almost never NOT someone botting. They will follow a set pattern, running from enemy to enemy and then pausing over them to pick up loot before they move on to the next.

2. Make sure your screencap hotkey is one you can use with your non-mousing hand. It can help to have it on the closer side of the keyboard to your primary hand rather than having to reach across.

3. Follow the botter group around, and when they stop to fight an enemy, pan across the group with your camera (mousing) and spam the screenshot button like a cameraman taking action shots of a model. You want to take many screencaps of the group as you mouse over the moving bodies. Do this several times. You can usually see if you've got the player names popping up between all the NPC names, they will be brief flashes.

4. With the game in windowed mode, open these screenshots one at a time in a program that can open images (I just do it in Firefox). When you find one that has the screen name of the botting player displayed, leave it open and look at the rest. There seem to usually be two cheaters at a time. This may be one person with two accounts, who knows, but look at all your screenshots and just delete the ones that show nothing but NPC names.

5. Open the Help menu in the game and pull up Support and then Report Player > Cheating. Put the player's account name in "player" and then supply their character name and that you see them botting at (location). I also include the names of any accompanying botters with each one to keep them identified as a group but also to make sure that none of them get lost in the system.

6. Report each botter name similarly.

I save the screenshots for a while, myself, and take the additional step of waiting to receive my email confirmation of the report and then replying to it with the screenshot of the botter in question. I don't know if that does any good but I took the durn pic so I'm gonna use it.

Hope this helps. I can say this: Whether it does any good right now as far as getting these people banned, I have no idea...but it feels good to just do SOMETHING, and to prove that their constant movement does nothing to protect them from identification.

ComboBreaker88

Congratulations. You've wasted your time. Lol. Botting happens in every MMO. It's nothing new. In fact it's a good sign the game is doing well if bots are very active in the game, it shows that there is a large enough player base for it to be worth their time to farm a particular game. When all of the bots dissappear, it's a bad sign. As they have moved to another game because the one they left is dying. Sure Bots are annoying and an eye sore, but so are regular players to some. But seriously, what are they really hurting? If you really don't like them, don't buy goods from traders or players. Farm them yourself. Because until players start farming their own stuff, bots will always be in a game that is doing as well as ESO is. Even if the accounts get banned, they will just make new ones and start over. So you are literally trying to fight the tide with a teacup. If it makes you feel better, keep it up. But bots are going to be here so long as the ESO servers are online and running.

EttinTheBreton

Thanks for the post, @Minyassa, I have bookmarked this thread for the future.

@ComboBreaker88, I do understand your points, and I agree with your comment that having botters is a reflection of the game doing well. However, I will be reporting these bots whenever I see them in-game because we have to have some resistance to botters taking over and running freely. If we do not ban botters for "harmlessly" harvesting cheap mats, what is to stop them from creating more advanced scripts to bot characters and accounts up to CP 660? Who says that isn't already happening (I certainly hope not)?

Bots are an eye sore. I like ESO for the fact that the dungeon leaderboards are more or less genuine, and I like that when I see max level players I can believe they did everything themselves. I am not a fan of certain materials being farmed by bots. If we can ensure that everything going on in ESO is being completed by genuine human players, I believe that is the ideal MMO game to play, myself!

ComboBreaker88

@EttinTheBreton I'm not saying you shouldn't report them. Report away. But ZOS knows that they provide a much needed influx of materials, items and gold to the player base. Which is why you don't see Gamemaster banning these accounts. I get that they are annoying and definitely an eye sore. But while I don't support buying gold for real money, I can't deny that having cheap mats and tempers in guild traders isn't nice. Lol

Minyassa

They're more than an eyesore. The ones in Silsailen are running around making it harder to actually do the quests centered on that region. Have had them both run ahead and kill several mobs I needed to kill, and also have had their surprise respawns ambush me when I didn't know what to expect in that area since they had already ruined it before I got there to see what it was about. I count that as griefing.

Megabear

You're not wasting your time. It's important that all of us report any and all botters. The fact that botters run from me is a sign that they do not want to be reported, which is a good thing for those of us reporting them.

m12d12_ESO

ComboBreaker you assume these bots are just botting farming nodes. But the truth is they are leveling. I just sent in video the other day of ppl botting that i see in Cyrodiil in pvp.

Notice the level on these bots - they are not level 3 or 4. These botts are 300+cp and higher. Farming for many is just a secondary way of sourcing income for themselves.

People pay companies to level their toons up while the rest of us sweat thru it.

If you thing botting is only for farming you are highly mistaken. It is very lucrative for private people as well as companies to charge big buck to level up players. All they gotta do is run the programs and reap all the benefits.

I have had people in this game admit to have botted toons for themselves and others. And yes i video and turn in every incounter i have.

It is happening more an more - botting still goes for farming groups, but its the individual bot running around that is growing rapidly in this game.

Megabear

At times I heavily farm the area botters are in to sap away exp from them, or get them killed. It's a great hobby to have.

Waylin

How do you get them killed?