lots of players cheating on grahtwood

jssriot

I reported this problem with this specific quest area too. At least twice, at the start of 2017 when I returned to the game from a 5 month break. I was on an alt and had trouble getting the mudcrabs for that quest because the bots were killing them all and there was so many that they would kill them before I could get in a hit. As I was in Grahtwood doing quests on a new alt for the whole day, I observed the same group of bots at the same location over a 12 hour period, many hours after my first report.

ZOS knows about this. They could do something to discourage farming in these quest areas if they wanted to. But they don't.

NeKryXe

jssriot wrote: »

I reported this problem with this specific quest area too. At least twice, at the start of 2017 when I returned to the game from a 5 month break. I was on an alt and had trouble getting the mudcrabs for that quest because the bots were killing them all and there was so many that they would kill them before I could get in a hit. As I was in Grahtwood doing quests on a new alt for the whole day, I observed the same group of bots at the same location over a 12 hour period, many hours after my first report.

ZOS knows about this. They could do something to discourage farming in these quest areas if they wanted to. But they don't.

this is really wrong.

if i 'm afk for less than 5 minutes, doing nothing wrong, i'm removed from the game being forced to login again and wait through all the slow load screens again... meanwhile, a bunch of cheaters can be afk for more than 12 hours ruining the game for others and farming everything automatically.

so... i wonder why can't honest players be afk for 5 minutes and cheaters can be afk for all day?

quite interesting.

lagrue

NeKryXe wrote: »

jssriot wrote: »

I reported this problem with this specific quest area too. At least twice, at the start of 2017 when I returned to the game from a 5 month break. I was on an alt and had trouble getting the mudcrabs for that quest because the bots were killing them all and there was so many that they would kill them before I could get in a hit. As I was in Grahtwood doing quests on a new alt for the whole day, I observed the same group of bots at the same location over a 12 hour period, many hours after my first report.

ZOS knows about this. They could do something to discourage farming in these quest areas if they wanted to. But they don't.

this is really wrong.

if i 'm afk for less than 5 minutes, doing nothing wrong, i'm removed from the game being forced to login again and wait through all the slow load screens again... meanwhile, a bunch of cheaters can be afk for more than 12 hours ruining the game for others and farming everything automatically.

so... i wonder why can't honest players be afk for 5 minutes and cheaters can be afk for all day?

quite interesting.

Because they aren't AFK in the same way you are, there is some degree of input. If they park their characters with a macro to just mash the same button all day, the game has no way of knowing they're AFK because technically a button is being pressed from it's viewpoint.

More complex botters also have/use software tailored specifically for cheating at games, but even non-cheating utilities can be used.

The only way they're ever going to stop this is full on liscense bans. Copies of the game found exploiting should be rendered functionless forever. If a botter gets caught, they should have no means to start up again but to re-purchase the game and face same thing.

It permanently removes them, cuts into the gold-seller botter's profits, and makes ZOS money if said botter is stupid enough to try again.

Same on consoles. What they do with us is use their Secondary Accounts to bot, and they can make an infinite amount of these secondaries as long as the Primary holds the game license. My opinion is that if a secondary account is found to be cheating, then the primary should lose license access permanently. I can't speak for XBL, but ZOS should approach Sony about locking ESO from gamesharing in the first place - I know it's possible because some games do it to their DLC.

Hexyl

Fight Bot with Bot.

Make your own counterbot, that's kill their route and their rentability.
If ZOS won't fight, we will.

NeKryXe

lagrue wrote: »

NeKryXe wrote: »

jssriot wrote: »

I reported this problem with this specific quest area too. At least twice, at the start of 2017 when I returned to the game from a 5 month break. I was on an alt and had trouble getting the mudcrabs for that quest because the bots were killing them all and there was so many that they would kill them before I could get in a hit. As I was in Grahtwood doing quests on a new alt for the whole day, I observed the same group of bots at the same location over a 12 hour period, many hours after my first report.

ZOS knows about this. They could do something to discourage farming in these quest areas if they wanted to. But they don't.

this is really wrong.

if i 'm afk for less than 5 minutes, doing nothing wrong, i'm removed from the game being forced to login again and wait through all the slow load screens again... meanwhile, a bunch of cheaters can be afk for more than 12 hours ruining the game for others and farming everything automatically.

so... i wonder why can't honest players be afk for 5 minutes and cheaters can be afk for all day?

quite interesting.

Because they aren't AFK in the same way you are, there is some degree of input. If they park their characters with a macro to just mash the same button all day, the game has no way of knowing they're AFK because technically a button is being pressed from it's viewpoint.

More complex botters also have/use software tailored specifically for cheating at games, but even non-cheating utilities can be used.

The only way they're ever going to stop this is full on liscense bans. Copies of the game found exploiting should be rendered functionless forever. If a botter is gets caught, they should have no means to start up again but to re-purchase the game and face same thing.

It permanently removes them, cuts into the gold-seller botter's profits, and makes ZOS money if said botter is stupid enough to try again.

Same on consoles. What they do with us is use their Secondary Accounts to bot, and they can make an infinite amount of these secondaries as long as the Primary holds the game license. My opinion is that if a secondary account is found to be cheating, then the primary should lose license access permanently.

i wasn't aware of that. so it means that the cheating is even deeper than i thought. i hope zos know about this, and it's really easy to track the main account - they just need to track where all the items and gold from farming is sent to.

Ihonu

NeKryXe wrote: »

there are a lot of players cheating on the Brackenleaf beach on Grahtwood. i went there to get some carapaces for a quest and i hardly could find any mudcrab. at this moment there's two groups of cheaters that somehow managed to create a lot of automatic actions and they are all doing exactly the same route and actions, dozens of them. zos should do something about this.

If you are worried about the Bot-Trains in the quest Areas, try pvp then you will see what a real cheating problem is...

Elsonso

lagrue wrote: »

The only way they're ever going to stop this is full on liscense bans. Copies of the game found exploiting should be rendered functionless forever. If a botter is gets caught, they should have no means to start up again but to re-purchase the game and face same thing.

This is what Jessica said they do, the last time this came up.

NeKryXe

Ihonu wrote: »

NeKryXe wrote: »

there are a lot of players cheating on the Brackenleaf beach on Grahtwood. i went there to get some carapaces for a quest and i hardly could find any mudcrab. at this moment there's two groups of cheaters that somehow managed to create a lot of automatic actions and they are all doing exactly the same route and actions, dozens of them. zos should do something about this.

If you are worried about the Bot-Trains in the quest Areas, try pvp then you will see what a real cheating problem is...

I completely left PvP about one year ago after we found one single guy on cyro that seemed impossible to kill by 2 full groups of players.

we never found out if he was a cheater or an amazing player, but, I understood at that moment that I was having much more fun at PvE. but I intend to return to PvP

lagrue

lordrichter wrote: »

lagrue wrote: »

The only way they're ever going to stop this is full on liscense bans. Copies of the game found exploiting should be rendered functionless forever. If a botter is gets caught, they should have no means to start up again but to re-purchase the game and face same thing.

This is what Jessica said they do, the last time this came up.

Well, historically all we've seen is them shutting down the account, not the full-on license, this allows the person to keep going with the same copy of the game.

I would like a source for that though just to better educate myself on how ZOS is currently handling the issue.

Kuramas9tails

That's a new location for them.

GaldorP

There are about 20-30 bots farming tigers near Karthdar (Grahtwood zone) on PC EU. They were reported 16 days ago. Today, the same bots (same character names) are still farming in the exact same location in very obvious bot trains.

YamiKuruku

GaldorP wrote: »

There are about 20-30 bots farming tigers near Karthdar (Grahtwood zone) on PC EU. They were reported 16 days ago. Today, the same bots (same character names) are still farming in the exact same location in very obvious bot trains.

i just came across them when doing the new years event quest on a new character and getting the skyshards near Karthdar.
It's insane, two big bottrains farming the tigers I tested if its just a train of players but when i killed all mobs they were still running the same path, that sucks.
Many of them are already champion level 200-300

GaldorP

YamiKuruku wrote: »

GaldorP wrote: »

There are about 20-30 bots farming tigers near Karthdar (Grahtwood zone) on PC EU. They were reported 16 days ago. Today, the same bots (same character names) are still farming in the exact same location in very obvious bot trains.

i just came across them when doing the new years event quest on a new character and getting the skyshards near Karthdar.
It's insane, two big bottrains farming the tigers I tested if its just a train of players but when i killed all mobs they were still running the same path, that sucks.
Many of them are already champion level 200-300

Yes, they've gained almost 200 champion ranks in those 16 days (some were already CR 100+ 16 days ago).

WillhelmBlack

I've reported the account of the bot train in Karthdar. No doubt they'll be back though.

Radiance

I just saw this train before shutdown... I once reported as many bots as I could in a train in Auridon months ago but idk if they were banned or what, I never heard anything back from zos...

Tan9oSuccka

lordrichter wrote: »

NeKryXe wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

duendology wrote: »

Ehh.. I really doubt people at ZOS don't know what software those people use. How hard is to hire people to develop a "patch" preventing from installing this bot software?

It is a matter of priorities.

I figure they see that most players, on all platforms, don't care, or at least don't care enough to report them. If bots and cheating were something that was costing them money and players, they would be all over it. Priorities.

players who cheat usually are the same players who don't pay for anything, by other hand, players who don't like cheaters are players who support the game and pay for stuff when they can. so... if players who don't like the cheaters get annoyed by the cheaters, zos would start to lose some money.

when players feel that cheaters start to take over the game, naturally they start losing interest. so... it should be a priority

At that time, it probably will be. Until then, it is what it is.

Such a terrible phrase. Used in all walks of life. Bad coaches, coworkers, teachers all use it.

The universal phrase for acknowledging a problem, but providing neither the effort, knowledge or ambition to solve it.

NeKryXe

zos marked all my reports as solved. i went to the same place right now and a bunch of new cheaters are there. i reported them all again.

i noticed that all cheaters have more than 200 CP, so, it doesn't seem to be a auto train to reach level 50 but more like a auto farming.

NeKryXe

would it be hard for zos to program something that forced a player to automatically accept a duel after that character have done exactly the same route for a period of time? it would be really funny to be able to kill the cheaters and a great way to let the players cleaning the plague