Please remove ESO from the Xbox Game Pass to reduce the bot farming

Alphawolf01A

Jimmy wrote: »

Bots = Log-ins, which is good for ZOS's image and bottom line.
Don't expect many bans. This business is built on how many log-ins your game gets.

This is totally untrue. Bots aren't good for business. a business is built on making money and the bots are not bringing any money into the game or ZOS. Log-ins don't pay the bills. Real players that buy the game, ESo+, legit gamepass owners. We keep the lights on here.

BWS2K

Jimmy wrote: »

Bots = Log-ins, which is good for ZOS's image and bottom line.
Don't expect many bans. This business is built on how many log-ins your game gets.

Do you want me to articulate how wrong this is or are we just going to keep rolling?

Sygil05

People playing for free through Game Pass are numbers that the marketing and business-oriented departments of ZOS can use to inflate the active player base, as well as more eyes viewing the crown store/potential revenue. I seriously doubt they'd want see those numbers go down in any way.

Feric51

First off. I hate bots as much as you and try to report them whenever I see them, however......

Game Pass is not the problem in the slightest. With any Xbox you can set it as your "home" console and using 1 hard copy of the game and 1 Xbox gold membership you can create infinite ESO accounts as long as you have a valid email for each.

The free trial is only good for 14 days, whereas an investment of $4.99 at GameStop for a used base game disk and $5 a month for Xbox Live your bots can reach CP levels with no risk of the trial ending. Go to Camlorn in Glenumbra if you haven't completed the quest and look at the bots there. It's instanced and I see CP-level bots in there every time I take a new character through.

Just saying, in this case, removing the game from Game Pass will accomplish nothing.

Alphawolf01A

I don't think this is the case. How do you explain 10 identical characters standing in a cluster, spamming lightning attacks in sync. The key words are "10 identical characters". Not someone playing then switching characters.

BWS2K

Sygil05 wrote: »

People playing for free through Game Pass are numbers that the marketing and business-oriented departments of ZOS can use to inflate the active player base, as well as more eyes viewing the crown store/potential revenue. I seriously doubt they'd want see those numbers go down in any way.

So... the logical question is why do those numbers matter?

Because they want people, not bots. Bots are a static investment. People are less riskier in terms of a source of revenue both because they can recommend the game and make further purchases. Bots don't do that. They make a one-time purchase and they're done. It might be lots of one-time purchases, but the moment a better game offers more opportunities for money they'll be gone... which leaves only the players. The game won't last forever, sure, but it won't last long without players - the botters need players too then. So the numbers matter because they can use them to get more players. The high numbers aren't just high because high is good, they're high because there are a lot of players in the game and that turns heads and brings in more players. Which folds into reputation. If that reputation suffers, so does the impact of any numbers and then those numbers start to decrease. ZOS wants money, which means active players, and the botters want money, which means a place to bot. Both require active players - without them, they both get nothing.

If there was more money in making a game designed for bots that only cared about log-ins then you'd bet we'd see it. No marketing costs, minimal maintenance, zero investment in new content... but that game doesn't exist because that's not how this works, lol

Alphawolf01A

Also, when I check their gamerscore. it's 5!! Seriously, this is not a real account and they are more than likely not spending money for the pass or gold.

Armatesz

BNOC wrote: »

If you removed bots from console, you'd struggle for mats.

Also, can't you only take 3 free trials per Xbox? That used to be the rule iirc.

That is a lie when you say struggle for mats. I can verify you can farm well enough without the need to utilize "bots"

Twohothardware

Xbox Game Pass has little to do with bot farming because bots are on all platforms and it's therefore not a unique problem to Xbox. The base game is less than $10 and if there's a profit worth time invested people will look for ways to abuse it.

If there's bots the problem is with ZOS not making the effort to ban them and removing ESO from Xbox Game Pass just reduces the number of players helping populate a dying game.

Moloch1514

ZOS will never stop these accounts. #10MillionStories

https://elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/10millionstories

Alphawolf01A

I'm not saying it is an Xbox only problem. I play on xbox, i only offered a possible solution to that specific problem. I'm saying that the gamepass offers cheap, easy and often times free access to the game which the bot farmers are exploiting. I understand this is a ZOS problem. I'm trying to get some support here to get ZOS to acknowledge the problem and instead there are people who either don't care about the bots or support their actions. If you don't think it's a problem then this board isn't for you. If you have a better solution I would like to hear it.

As for a dying game, people have said that for years and yet it's still here. I'm still here. You're still here. So what does that tell you? Not dead yet. But the bots are only hurting the game and violating the TOS.

It needs to stop.

Mr_Walker

I've put forward the solution previously, but it will never happen.

This is an online game. Zos can literally track EVERYTHING a toon does. Bots are an easy detect system-wise, especially if it's reported for being a bot. For the facilitators, if there's evidence of items being emailed in a constant one way stream from a confirmed bot to a player, we can safely say the player knows what is happening. Ban-hammer time. Anyone who buys the bot accounts that are high level, if they're found, ban them as well.

Make these bans very loud, very public, and the problem will solve itself rather quickly.

BNOC wrote: »

If you removed bots from console, you'd struggle for mats.

Absolute BS. I've only ever picked up mats wandering around, never farmed (how boring), and have NEVER had to buy mats from traders. I think the lowest level I have of any golding mat is I currently have about 50 dreugh wax. Excepting jewelry of course.

NoTimeToWait

Armatesz wrote: »

BNOC wrote: »

If you removed bots from console, you'd struggle for mats.

Also, can't you only take 3 free trials per Xbox? That used to be the rule iirc.

That is a lie when you say struggle for mats. I can verify you can farm well enough without the need to utilize "bots"

No, thanks. I don't want to farm mats more than a few hours per week. And to be able to gold out a set you need to farm around 70 stacks of mats. And I haven't even started my rant on housing, which is a huge mat sink. I have lots of stuff to farm in this game besides mats (dailies, some achievements for colors and furnishings, furnishing plans, motifs).

Mr_Walker wrote: »

Absolute BS. I've only ever picked up mats wandering around, never farmed (how boring), and have NEVER had to buy mats from traders. I think the lowest level I have of any golding mat is I currently have about 50 dreugh wax. Excepting jewelry of course.

50 dreugh wax is a laughable amount. Enough for a single set. You might find it reasonable to run in purple sets, true, but I still think you are very economic in the way you use your mats if you never farmed and never bought anything from traders (yes I do have hirelings too, not on every char though).

Mr_Walker

NoTimeToWait wrote: »

50 dreugh wax is a laughable amount. Enough for a single set. You might find it reasonable to run in purple sets, true, but I still think you are very economic in the way you use your mats if you never farmed and never bought anything from traders (yes I do have hirelings too, not on every char though).

I don't even have hirelings. I also don't change my set every week chasing the next meta. All from just.. playing the game....

NoTimeToWait

Mr_Walker wrote: »

NoTimeToWait wrote: »

50 dreugh wax is a laughable amount. Enough for a single set. You might find it reasonable to run in purple sets, true, but I still think you are very economic in the way you use your mats if you never farmed and never bought anything from traders (yes I do have hirelings too, not on every char though).

I don't even have hirelings. I also don't change my set every week chasing the next meta. All from just.. playing the game....

I think you don't do Master Writs too, because that's where most of my tempers actually go

Sygil05

BWS2K wrote: »

Sygil05 wrote: »

People playing for free through Game Pass are numbers that the marketing and business-oriented departments of ZOS can use to inflate the active player base, as well as more eyes viewing the crown store/potential revenue. I seriously doubt they'd want see those numbers go down in any way.

So... the logical question is why do those numbers matter?

Because they want people, not bots. Bots are a static investment. People are less riskier in terms of a source of revenue both because they can recommend the game and make further purchases. Bots don't do that. They make a one-time purchase and they're done. It might be lots of one-time purchases, but the moment a better game offers more opportunities for money they'll be gone... which leaves only the players. The game won't last forever, sure, but it won't last long without players - the botters need players too then. So the numbers matter because they can use them to get more players. The high numbers aren't just high because high is good, they're high because there are a lot of players in the game and that turns heads and brings in more players. Which folds into reputation. If that reputation suffers, so does the impact of any numbers and then those numbers start to decrease. ZOS wants money, which means active players, and the botters want money, which means a place to bot. Both require active players - without them, they both get nothing.

If there was more money in making a game designed for bots that only cared about log-ins then you'd bet we'd see it. No marketing costs, minimal maintenance, zero investment in new content... but that game doesn't exist because that's not how this works, lol

You totally missed my point: It's not just bots that are using the Game Pass to play this game. By putting ESO on this Pass, they're getting more actual players (possibly along with bots) into the game by reducing the investment needed to start playing. If ESO were no longer included, some of these players would also disappear, which doesn't make sense from a business standpoint.

The bots don't really cost ZOS any money directly, while those players engaging with the game through their Game Pass subscription are MAKING ZOS money. Until that equation changes, I don't really see them worrying about this.

Easily_Lost

The one thing I don't understand is why players would pay real money of in-game gold. It is so easy to make gold in ESO.

I never farm for my mats, all I do is when I am going from one place to another is to stop and harvest any nodes that I see. I have several hundred of each tempers with out breaking a sweat, ha ha. I sell my tempers at a price that people are willing to pay.

BWS2K

Sygil05 wrote: »

BWS2K wrote: »

Sygil05 wrote: »

People playing for free through Game Pass are numbers that the marketing and business-oriented departments of ZOS can use to inflate the active player base, as well as more eyes viewing the crown store/potential revenue. I seriously doubt they'd want see those numbers go down in any way.

So... the logical question is why do those numbers matter?

Because they want people, not bots. Bots are a static investment. People are less riskier in terms of a source of revenue both because they can recommend the game and make further purchases. Bots don't do that. They make a one-time purchase and they're done. It might be lots of one-time purchases, but the moment a better game offers more opportunities for money they'll be gone... which leaves only the players. The game won't last forever, sure, but it won't last long without players - the botters need players too then. So the numbers matter because they can use them to get more players. The high numbers aren't just high because high is good, they're high because there are a lot of players in the game and that turns heads and brings in more players. Which folds into reputation. If that reputation suffers, so does the impact of any numbers and then those numbers start to decrease. ZOS wants money, which means active players, and the botters want money, which means a place to bot. Both require active players - without them, they both get nothing.

If there was more money in making a game designed for bots that only cared about log-ins then you'd bet we'd see it. No marketing costs, minimal maintenance, zero investment in new content... but that game doesn't exist because that's not how this works, lol

You totally missed my point: It's not just bots that are using the Game Pass to play this game. By putting ESO on this Pass, they're getting more actual players (possibly along with bots) into the game by reducing the investment needed to start playing. If ESO were no longer included, some of these players would also disappear, which doesn't make sense from a business standpoint.

The bots don't really cost ZOS any money directly, while those players engaging with the game through their Game Pass subscription are MAKING ZOS money. Until that equation changes, I don't really see them worrying about this.

I don't think I missed your point but I see it clearer now. Without numbers to look at it's hard to say what percentage of those new players are botters. *shrug*