Bots are easy to fix!

red_emu

They managed to implement a killing system for dolmens when you stand in one spot for too long. They could easily introduce a similar system for players who seem to follow an identical geometrical path more than 3 or 4 times which is near impossible to do by human input.

weg0

Any of you play counter strike: global offensive? They instituted a system like @badmojo mentions, where reports were given to community members who then collectively determined the obvious offenders. IF they are serious about the problem, they can do this.

Emothic

Turelus wrote: »

I'm not on about sites but on about actively getting their security team to focus on the in game transactions.

I know I tout about CCP/EVE a lot (and I try my best not to) but this is one area they've done pretty well in.

They do the following.
Actively track and investigate suspicious money transfers in game.
Where evidence sugests that RMT (real money trading) is happening they step in.

• Sellers are permabanned.
• Buyers are suspended (1st offence) or permabanned (second offence) with all money they purchased removed. If they've already spent the money they're set to negative gold and must grind out of it.
• They're even able to track sales which were people buying billions worth of items then jettisoning them into containers in space for players to pick up.

I had a friend who was active in RMT (selling side) but avoided it in ESO (as it was his main MMO at the time), he would often tell me about information on sites he worked for.
We discussed the values of games and he stated that EVE was considered a "risky" venture vs ESO (or other MMO games) because of the quality of enforcement and tracking methods CCP used.

If we want to see less bots we need to make their profits suffer, that means hitting their sales, give them a bad reputation of not being safe to buy from they look at better games to make money on.

Not easy to track RMT on a large MMO, espeically if you have limited number of staff that does do it. Typically the developers will have to rely on player reports for suspecious activities, of which can still take days, weeks, or even months before they are looked at.

Also: Sellers have burner accounts that are desinged to give the item(s) to the buyer. Nothing is special about this account other then it's the deliever. If it gets perma banned then it is easily replaced with another account. And it is hard to know if someone is buying. Even on games like this that have a Free Market Trade System Economy. So it's hard to say if someone is actualy doing RWT (real world trading) or not. Again this has to be reported by a player. It's not easy for the game system to pick up. As well as Sellers have multiple storage accounts that distrubite the overal wealth and items of that website. So if a storage account is banned then the seller doesn't take that much of a loss, of which can actual cause a rise in supply and demand of which can increase the price of the items and coins.

Eve has a much more strict and dedicated system for this then ESO because the entire economy on EVE is based on a real life economy. And if the economy in EVE fails then the game itself can fail, something of which the developers and the EVE company cannot have. ESO on the other hand who's game economy really doesn't even matter at all doesn't have to focus on this.

But even if you do drive away alot of the sellers, you won't drive them all away. They are 'here' to make money off of the game. And if much of their competition goes away the supply and demand will of course increase becuase there are not that many botters. So those who do stay will take advantage of this opprotunity, increase their capabile production (which means they will try to use more bots), and monopolize on it.

Turelus

weg0 wrote: »

Any of you play counter strike: global offensive? They instituted a system like @badmojo mentions, where reports were given to community members who then collectively determined the obvious offenders. IF they are serious about the problem, they can do this.

As much as I love the ESO community I don't think it's mature enough to handle this.

The fact in the past we've had guilds mass report people for cheating, we regularly get posts defending cheating/exploiting when issues come up etc. added to that I don't think vigilante systems and mob justice helps build a better community.

Cpt_Teemo

I liked my idea of not being able to loot another node till either you loot the the primary one your on or it despawns, also to prevent theft the node gets locked to you only

Armatesz

The_Protagonist wrote: »

Another thing I would like to see is that if an area is farmed for too long, they spawn a Elite version of the mobs in the area, equivalent to a world boss or even tougher, that can easily wipe the Bot Train. regular life players can escape said boss.

Bots will find a way to repopulate again, but it would take them time and effort to do so.

Better still is for a GM to come in and spawn an unkillable elite mob to wipe out the bot train and then finally perma ban them from ever playing again, after doing the required investigation.

Yeah the spawn elite thing might tempt someone like myself to do it but might get others confused for being a bot when they are just burn farming enemies. They hurt no one else, they don't hurt the market... they just do them pretty much. I'd probably do it just for a challenge tbh.

Armatesz

I can suggest maybe use a trade record when you can see a list of the people that so and so bots have traded, try to figure out which is a more common amounts traded, monitor the accounts associated to see if it is the one controlling them and if true freeze all assets and ban their accounts over it.

NewBlacksmurf

Actual problem;

1. This doesn’t impact ZOS in one way
2. It impacts us customers but we just complain, we don’t stop paying and stop playing cause of it (so see #1)
3. It would cost them or impact them to hire more staff and considering how they choose to monetize items but considering the state or quality of the game as a whole, I’m not sure that’s their focus.

I’d argue that reporting someone should flag them and if reported 2-3 times it should actually ban them until reviewed.

Now if players decide to troll others the ban should flip to them. That’s not full proof but if they were serious about addressing bits we would see customers being empowered.

Even if this were limited to people they wanted to highlight who could swap from normal to playerenhanced GM mode and follow a template once flagged.

Although let’s consider any of this requires quality which is the larger issue, so imagine being empowered and then getting stuck in GM mode or accidentally getting locked out the game due to a bug

QuebraRegra

Giraffon wrote: »

If they could come up with a way for the player base to interfere with the bot trains maybe that would help. Maybe a way for players to buff mobs with a special spell so they are much harder to kill for as long as the player is protecting them.

Sure some of us would find it fun to buff mobs just to troll other players...okay, that actually sounds super fun but it's all for the greater good, right?

howabout they actually investigate and ban when players report bots? They could commission (letters of marque and reprisal) some selected (reliable) players on each platform./server to be "bot police", and investigate reports of botting... if ZOS do not have the staff to do this themselves. Rewards for bot police could be along the lines of writs, etc.

Obviously there should be an appeal process... I'd guess most botter's would not enrage in thus step. ZOS would need to modify their ticketing tool to have standard bot report information be included when a player reports.

There's even massive botting in CAMLORN on XBOX... no platform is spared, but I guess this explains all the gold and account sales on line

randomkeyhits

Don't know about Xbox but on PSN when someone sends me a PSN message offering to sell me ESO gold for cash I report them to the PSN moderators who do respond and do take action.

I'd guess if they will ban an account it would be at minimum a 3 strikes policy but if enough players do it when faced with it then it helps make the game less appealing to the botters/gold sellers.

Not to say that ZoS don't need to do their bit but we do have other options.

Armatesz

randomkeyhits wrote: »

Don't know about Xbox but on PSN when someone sends me a PSN message offering to sell me ESO gold for cash I report them to the PSN moderators who do respond and do take action.

I'd guess if they will ban an account it would be at minimum a 3 strikes policy but if enough players do it when faced with it then it helps make the game less appealing to the botters/gold sellers.

Not to say that ZoS don't need to do their bit but we do have other options.

There are ones that do that on xbox, I used to get it when I first started off but when I was able to better fend for myself and found how to money farm and doing things guildless I kind of made it a point for them to not be interested in messaging me over selling gold for actual money.

xenowarrior92eb17_ESO

@Logicbomb00 sounds like ESO 1.3...ah good old times...good old bot-less times!
w/e happened to anti-bot department.

NewBlacksmurf

randomkeyhits wrote: »

Don't know about Xbox but on PSN when someone sends me a PSN message offering to sell me ESO gold for cash I report them to the PSN moderators who do respond and do take action.

I'd guess if they will ban an account it would be at minimum a 3 strikes policy but if enough players do it when faced with it then it helps make the game less appealing to the botters/gold sellers.

Not to say that ZoS don't need to do their bit but we do have other options.

Xbox Live takes action too....problem is home xbox allows them to keep creating other accounts, similar to PSN.

Elsonso

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

Actual problem;

1. This doesn’t impact ZOS in one way
2. It impacts us customers but we just complain, we don’t stop paying and stop playing cause of it (so see #1)
3. It would cost them or impact them to hire more staff and considering how they choose to monetize items but considering the state or quality of the game as a whole, I’m not sure that’s their focus.

Yup. And, if someone does stop paying, chances are someone else will come along and start paying. If enough people stop paying, and not enough new people start paying, they just declare that ESO's time has run out and move onto the next game.

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

Actual problem;
I’d argue that reporting someone should flag them and if reported 2-3 times it should actually ban them until reviewed.

Now if players decide to troll others the ban should flip to them. That’s not full proof but if they were serious about addressing bits we would see customers being empowered.

I don't know about you, but I'm not going to risk my account to report bots. I will report them today, as a courtesy to ZOS so that they know they are there. If ZOS decides not to action them, either they don't care or the player was determined to not be a bot. In the latter case, I don't want ZOS coming back on me with a ban for reporting what looked and acted like a bot. (Actually, I would prefer that they come back to me and tell me that it is not a bot, so I can better tell the difference)

If it comes down to my ban or theirs, long live the bots!