Large group of bots in Rivenspire, Silverhoof Valley (PC EU)

LadyNalcarya

As the title says.
I wanted to finish some achievements in DC, and found this. Large group of petsorcs and templars, all perfectly syncronized, are farming harpies in Silverhoof valley.
All of them are different levels, from nonvet to cp 200ish. Possibly hacked accounts used for botting.


@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

Megabear

On PC/NA you see them everywhere as long as you're doing quests and such.

Apherius

DAMN , don't you see that they are trying to release a new PONY IN THE CROWN STORE ? it's clearly more important lol.

Seriously , I wonder if one of these 2 CM will come on your thread and if the answer will be different than the " hey here , you can report a bot by doing X and Y , then add it on your black list ! hope it help "

Enemy-of-Coldharbour

I reported this bot train weeks ago and it is still there. When I came across it there were 17 of them.

Motherball

What are they doing? Farming or killing things for loot? Im confused, why would someone use a bot to do that and why would anyone care? Gold is easy to get and not overly useful for most activities. Forgive my ignorance. I truly am curious.

LadyNalcarya

@Motherball wrote: »

What are they doing? Farming or killing things for loot? Im confused, why would someone use a bot to do that and why would anyone care? Gold is easy to get and not overly useful for most activities. Forgive my ignorance. I truly am curious.

Yes, theyre farming materials and gold. Some bots also boost accounts for sale.
Why this is bad for us regular players:
1) They dont buy accounts, they hack them. Not always, but it happens.
2) Bots can farm 24/7, theyre getting huge amounts of materials and gold.
Thats is harmful for other players because it directly affects the market prices.
3) In some situations, they make certain quests impossible (for example that one in Auridon where you need to tame a weakened bear).
4) Goldselling allows players to gain unfair advantage, basically thats pay to win situation. I suppose I dont have to explain why it is bad and harmful.
5) The amount of bots means that ZOS doesnt care about this kind of stuff, which gives a green light for cheaters and exploiters of all kinds.

Apherius

LadyNalcarya wrote: »

@Motherball wrote: »

What are they doing? Farming or killing things for loot? Im confused, why would someone use a bot to do that and why would anyone care? Gold is easy to get and not overly useful for most activities. Forgive my ignorance. I truly am curious.

Yes, theyre farming materials and gold. Some bots also boost accounts for sale.
Why this is bad for us regular players:
1) They dont buy accounts, they hack them. Not always, but that happens.
2) Bots can farm 24/7, theyre getting huge amounts of materials and gold.
Thats is harmful for other players because it directly affects the market prices.
3) In some situations, they make certain quests impossible (for example that one in Auridon where you need to tame a weakened bear).
4) Goldselling allows players to gain unfair advantage, basically thats pay to win situation. I suppose I dont have to explain why it is bad and harmful.
5) The amount of bots means that ZOS doesnt care about this kind of stuff, which gives a green light for cheaters and exploiters of all kinds.

those bots in Shattered grove at auridon are still a thing ?! PC EU ? do you seen them after you complete the quest or before ?

LadyNalcarya

Apherius wrote: »

LadyNalcarya wrote: »

@Motherball wrote: »

What are they doing? Farming or killing things for loot? Im confused, why would someone use a bot to do that and why would anyone care? Gold is easy to get and not overly useful for most activities. Forgive my ignorance. I truly am curious.

Yes, theyre farming materials and gold. Some bots also boost accounts for sale.
Why this is bad for us regular players:
1) They dont buy accounts, they hack them. Not always, but that happens.
2) Bots can farm 24/7, theyre getting huge amounts of materials and gold.
Thats is harmful for other players because it directly affects the market prices.
3) In some situations, they make certain quests impossible (for example that one in Auridon where you need to tame a weakened bear).
4) Goldselling allows players to gain unfair advantage, basically thats pay to win situation. I suppose I dont have to explain why it is bad and harmful.
5) The amount of bots means that ZOS doesnt care about this kind of stuff, which gives a green light for cheaters and exploiters of all kinds.

those bots in Shattered grove at auridon are still a thing ?! PC EU ? do you seen them after you complete the quest or before ?

Not sure about that, I havent been there in ages, but it used to be a thing at some point.
Considering that those botters are allowed to farm without any consequences, I doubt they would care about people who just want to finish a quest...

Getern

LadyNalcarya wrote: »

As the title says.

All of them are different levels, from nonvet to cp 200ish. Possibly hacked accounts used for botting.

Dude, bots are in game for some long now, they could probably easly reach CP cap.

Zose doesnt really takes advantage of the bots problem. It's so easy it requires just a brain.
Do u think the guy implementing his bot account pay for crowns? Does he need that? Nope, but he still has to pay for the game. All u have to do is to make some serious antibot policy, massive banning action. If it's profitable enough, they will buy the game again = profit. But when it will come to the state when it will no longer be profitable they will simply vanish. Either way it's win-win situation. Guess Zose really makes significant dollar on Crown Store these days and doesn't care about that anyway.

Getern

Motherball wrote: »

What are they doing? Farming or killing things for loot? Im confused, why would someone use a bot to do that and why would anyone care? Gold is easy to get and not overly useful for most activities. Forgive my ignorance. I truly am curious.

Bots are one of factors why gold is worthless. They are simply providing most of end game crafting mats including gold improvments. That makes the price of those lower.

KingMagaw

LadyNalcarya wrote: »

5) The amount of bots means that ZOS doesnt care about this kind of stuff, which gives a green light for cheaters and exploiters of all kinds.

Couple this with The Cheating and Exploiting thread being wholly ignored, even tagging CM does nothing. No offence this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

Expect this thread to be closed and forgotten about asap in case any new player reads it, aesthetic damage control and all )

Zerok

I reported all the accounts who were botting in-game. It took me a while to write down all the account names...

I'm not surprised ZOS did nothing about them.

EDIT: I was referring to the bots in Silverhoof Valley, of course.

LadyNalcarya

Getern wrote: »

LadyNalcarya wrote: »

As the title says.

All of them are different levels, from nonvet to cp 200ish. Possibly hacked accounts used for botting.

Dude, bots are in game for some long now, they could probably easly reach CP cap.

Zose doesnt really takes advantage of the bots problem. It's so easy it requires just a brain.
Do u think the guy implementing his bot account pay for crowns? Does he need that? Nope, but he still has to pay for the game. All u have to do is to make some serious antibot policy, massive banning action. If it's profitable enough, they will buy the game again = profit. But when it will come to the state when it will no longer be profitable they will simply vanish. Either way it's win-win situation. Guess Zose really makes significant dollar on Crown Store these days and doesn't care about that anyway.

Hmm not really.
First of all, base game is very cheap when it goes on sale, even if you buy it from ZOS/Steam (not counting sites like Kinguin etc).
Secondly, theres a huge market of "second hand" accounts, hacked or just sold by their original owners if they tried the game, but didnt like it etc. Of course, ZOS isnt getting any profit from those deals.
So, I'm not sure it is that profitable for ZOS. After all, they focus on selling dlcs and fancy crown store stuff, and they need actual players to do so.

KingMagaw

Imagine the price of materials and tempers were to suddenly increase because no bots were supplying the market.


Do you think the average casual player would be happy with this?


The game overhauls itself every 6 months with massive changes and not gradual ones to 'achieve' balance. The cost of re-gearing over and over again would rise?.


Do you think the average casual player would be happy at this?.


I know my answers to these questions. ZoS has/moved to cater towards casuals who, play very little/beat a DLC, leave and come back for the next new DLC - Which admittedly takes hours to beat some DLC's so its hardly a holding value.
Coupled with the fact of tasking manpower to look into/deal with the botting, it costs money to do so. Lastly:


Do you think a ZoS employee spending one week to combat the continual botting problem that has always plagued ESO would gain them more than the same employee re-skinning a mount to sell?


I am not saying what is right, i am saying what is more practical and what in my eyes is being done. I also feel hesitant to post in these forums as i will only be banned *again* because my feedback shines a bad light on ESO (Even though it is NOT malicious), as well as this topic, so i wouldn't expect it to be around long )

LadyNalcarya

KingMagaw wrote: »

Imagine the price of materials and tempers were to suddenly increase because no bots were supplying the market.


Do you think the average casual player would be happy with this?


The game overhauls itself every 6 months with massive changes and not gradual ones to 'achieve' balance. The cost of re-gearing over and over again would rise?.


Do you think the average casual player would be happy at this?.


I know my answers to these questions. ZoS has/moved to cater towards casuals who, play very little/beat a DLC, leave and come back for the next new DLC - Which admittedly takes hours to beat some DLC's so its hardly a holding value.
Coupled with the fact of tasking manpower to look into/deal with the botting, it costs money to do so. Lastly:


Do you think a ZoS employee spending one week to combat the continual botting problem that has always plagued ESO would gain them more than the same employee re-skinning a mount to sell?


I am not saying what is right, i am saying what is more practical and what in my eyes is being done. I also feel hesitant to post in these forums as i will only be banned *again* because my feedback shines a bad light on ESO (Even though it is NOT malicious), as well as this topic, so i wouldn't expect it to be around long )

Well, its not that simple. There is such thing as purchasing power, and generating extra gold actually devalues it. Thats what bots do - the train in Karthdar, for example, doesnt just farm scraps, they also visit one of Elden Root merchants to empty their bags. And we all know that selling random loot generates a decent amount of gold even without botting.
And dont forget that players dont just buy items, they also need to earn gold to buy BoE weapons, houses, motifs and other expensive things. And farming materials/crafting writs and selling tempers is one of the most accessible ways to earn gold. Considering that houses, bag/bank upgrades and some other things have fixed price, lowering prices on tempers doesnt really help average players.
Not to mention that average casual players do not change their gear every patch and dont really care about BiS, builds, rotations and other "endgame" stuff. If you do random normal dungeons or quests/worldbosses/public dungeons, you'll see many people with all kinds of "weird" gear and builds, and it really looks like they are the main demographic. Why would they bother about BiS if their setups work just fine... Tbh Im a little bit jealous, random drastic changes in every major patch become annoying very fast.

P.S. Goldselling and botting is a malicious business, it involves much more than just lowering the price on tempers.
Hacking and robbing accounts, for example. Or hacking accounts and using them as bots.
They dont use hacks just because they want to help people. They arent like Robin Hood or something, they just want to exploit everything and everyone to get as much rl money as possible, that is.

KingMagaw

I think we have largely different experiences )

I have always maxed crafting and styles, run a guild i specifically target new players, create gear for them for free and friends and many change gear every patch, not targeting BiS builds, though following the google meta changes, i see specifically players changing gears for style purposes on the release of new motifs with the addition of overhauling ESO every x months changes the meta they google when playing/coming back to ESO.

Lower priced tempers help and hinder, on upgrade and gold generated. Personally i would say its equal, not many farm materials to RNG into tempers tbh, there is still strong market selling raw materials, as RNG sucks. I couldn't see a casual coming back to the game to farm ore for days so they can purchase something with gold, that is a boring grind in my mind.

Bots dont automatically equal hacking and/or gold selling. Could be doing that to strengthen a main account into purchasing the house/bank/bag upgrades for that rather than sinking considerable playtime into doing so. Most accounts that are hacked the email/username has/was made known in any way and doubtful people are hacking into ZoS database to get this information, mostly it falls on the person this happens not the company.

Additionally the price of ESO gold is almost nothing now. Comparing this over the years it has drastically fallen for 2 main reasons i have witnessed. Little gold sinks in the game, not like repairing armour is going to hold you back, nor does everyone max achievements into furnishing/motif knowledge (I do and it is/was a massive gold sink hah), so i assume the buying market is low (Only an assumption as i would never know)
Second reason is botting has never been under control in ESO - for the main fact players are solely policing it and tbh, i never have/advocate botting or cheating/exploiting but i bought the game, bought DLC's, consistently subscribe to support the game but on top of that i have to police it as well and squander my paid for playtime to do work i definitely judge to be ZoS remit?, that is too far for me personally and i doubt i am the only one with this stance.

rossk25

I saw something similar near Bearclaw mine in Stormhaven.

It was a huge group of sorcerers that ranged in different levels and just spawning their pets to kill all the bears that kept spawning. The whole place looked like a bear massacre.

Apherius

I know why they use pet's now ... simply because when you try to stuck them they will stay focused in their rotation while their pets are killing the mobs you aggro ....