Bots stealing crafting nodes PS4

Avoranti

Bots are stealing all the crafting nodes! A while back it was bots killing mudcrabs. Now this? Every one of these bot PSN ID’s are just random letters and numbers. All fake accounts. Why are these allowed in game? Why hasn’t there been some kind of prevention put in place to keep this stuff from ruining the game?

It’s annoying, breaks the economy and very frustration when you’re wanting to teach a friend who is new to the game about crafting and they can’t even get mats because some fake accounts are stealing all the materials.

lagrue

It's been like this for years, ZOS can do nothing about it. All it takes is one account to own it, then they can set up a million fake PSN IDs with gamesharing. Doesn't matter how many fake IDs they ban because the copy of the game itself will never be banned because the main account isn't used for botting.

It's a serious blindspot they have no way to deal with effectively. They can shut them down time and time again, more will always come back.

Think of it in a positive way... atleast material stacks and yellow materials are cheaper than hell in Guild Traders now Almost no point harvesting materials.

The_Old_Goat

How does botting work on consoles?

lagrue

The_Old_Goat wrote: »

How does botting work on consoles?

There's 2 methods... jailbroken consoles (usually not the method used, as jailbreaking current firmware to get online is not often done, and those who do it covet their secrets very closely)... and then certain usb dongles that act as "macros" and can be pre-programmed with scripts to repeat certain actions at intervals. Both are very bad.

Hallothiel

@The_Old_Goat

Not sure, but they do. OP is right, they are a plague on the starter islands on PS4 EU. And apparently moving to the mainland.
Do report when I can, but there is no easy facility to attach a screenshot to report - if tick the box, you don’t go into your screenshots to choose one so I assume it just takes one if the screen you are in, which is useless (please tell me if wrong!)

I also wanted to report the players to PS but if you think that the ESO reporting function is bad......🤣🤣🤣🤣.(again, if I’m missing something please let me know!)

price101610

I suggested in another discussion that ZOS create a persistent thread to report when a bot is seen in the world. My post was misconstrued to be a request for a player report tool (which is against forum rules and was shut down)...this was not the intention. If ZOS could have a staff member for each platform and region (ie PC NA, PSN EU, etc.) that could investigate in real time and nuke the bot account, then all we would have to post is zone and location, and details about the bot (ie. level 3 pet sorc, not responding to human interaction, etc.). They may claim they’re too stretched thin resource wise, but I think that excuse will fall on deaf ears based on their track record of actually fixing performance issues in this game. It’s a huge problem on Xbox na as well, I don’t even run my old resource farming routes anymore. Too many bots.

CaffeinatedMayhem

HAHAHAHA, welcome to bots console! Too bad you can't have addons like BotScanner2000, which makes bot reporting super simple. Please do take the time to report the same bot, every day, for month so ZOS will eventually ban that account. At least makes the botter have to buy another copy of the game.

lagrue

CaffeinatedMayhem wrote: »

HAHAHAHA, welcome to bots console! Too bad you can't have addons like BotScanner2000, which makes bot reporting super simple. Please do take the time to report the same bot, every day, for month so ZOS will eventually ban that account. At least makes the botter have to buy another copy of the game.

They don't have to buy another copy though... as I explained above, they buy the game on one account, download it to their playstation... from then on any other account that uses that playstation can use that copy of the game... they just make 10000 fake PSN accounts and never bot on the real one.

Jolipinator

If the bot is stationary you can use certain mementos to move it away from the node, preferably toward a group of enemies.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/460701/there-is-a-huge-lack-of-diversity-in-this-game

Moving bots are too complex for me to kill.

Canned_Apples

They haven’t even bothered to do anything for the ones in pc- and those can be banned

FlopsyPrince

They ignore reports of botting.

I get the stock "you can block the player by doing..." as a response which is not valuable at all when reporting a bot.

I think they want us to stop reporting them to lessen the load on their support people.

robwolf666

If they can identify the source of who's doing it, they should sue the *** out of them for breaching the server security.

apri

CaffeinatedMayhem wrote: »

At least makes the botter have to buy another copy of the game.

It does not work like that on PS4 sadly. Bought games can be shared with other accounts that can run on the same or on a different console under certain conditions. So it is rather inefficient to ban a bot by ZOS. Chances are it will re-appear without much of a hassle and without any cost.

However, there may be another more efficient way to deal with bots on PS4. It should be done by ZOS and therefore bot reports are not a waste of time if our reports are handled properly by ZOS (which I'm not too sure about since ZOS does not comment on such activities). I'm sure ZOS could collect data and provide those to Sony. If Sony is convinced about the malicious impact of a gamer ID's wrongdoing, they can ban the gamer's console on a hardware level so such console could not be used for botting anymore. (Read here how Sony deals with hardware suspensions)

So while the game license would still be active and might still be shared with other accounts under certain circumstances, the botter would need to replace the console which has been used by the bot. This would cost a lot more than just a new game license and would make botting not a profitable business anymore. However it would require ZOS to get in touch with Sony since it's very hard for gamers to get enough evidence for the most harmful punishment Sony can hit a player with.

FlopsyPrince

apri wrote: »

CaffeinatedMayhem wrote: »

At least makes the botter have to buy another copy of the game.

It does not work like that on PS4 sadly. Bought games can be shared with other accounts that can run on the same or on a different console under certain conditions. So it is rather inefficient to ban a bot by ZOS. Chances are it will re-appear without much of a hassle and without any cost.

However, there may be another more efficient way to deal with bots on PS4. It should be done by ZOS and therefore bot reports are not a waste of time if our reports are handled properly by ZOS (which I'm not too sure about since ZOS does not comment on such activities). I'm sure ZOS could collect data and provide those to Sony. If Sony is convinced about the malicious impact of a gamer ID's wrongdoing, they can ban the gamer's console on a hardware level so such console could not be used for botting anymore. (Read here how Sony deals with hardware suspensions)

So while the game license would still be active and might still be shared with other accounts under certain circumstances, the botter would need to replace the console which has been used by the bot. This would cost a lot more than just a new game license and would make botting not a profitable business anymore. However it would require ZOS to get in touch with Sony since it's very hard for gamers to get enough evidence for the most harmful punishment Sony can hit a player with.

I happened to read a reply to a "bot report" ticket I made. It said to contact Sony. Like I am going to spend lots of time just to do what ZoS should be doing....

apri

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

I happened to read a reply to a "bot report" ticket I made. It said to contact Sony. Like I am going to spend lots of time just to do what ZoS should be doing....

That really is no helpful nor useful response from support and should not happen. We as little users cannot put enough pressure on Sony for meaningful sanctions against botters. ZOS is in a better spot with this and it's also in their very interest to protect their game. We don't get paid from ZOS for doing their work after all.

Avoranti

ZOS could easily do an IP ban or a MAC ban of the console the bot is tied to. That would kill all the bots from that console as well as the main account illegally using them. They can easily do the same for pc. It might be a bit of a process on their end but the QoL would improve and the market could see a little more balance.

There was another console game I played that had a major issue with third party software being used. Finally after enough players pushed, the devs took an entire week and removed all of the accounts (that they could find). Then they put in place a security measure to block accounts loading in with 3rd party software. Sure, it killed the active player numbers seen on paper but the QoL improved dramatically.