Zenimax given up on purging bots?

Rittings

I am used to seeing bots purged every day or so... and that gives a small (about a 2-3 hour) window to actually be able to farm nodes. 2-3 hours ever 48-72 hours is a pretty tight window...

But now, I've reported the same bot in bleakrock for 6 consecutive days - just gone into day no. 7... If I'm lucky I'll get a farm window of an hour... after 168 hours of not being able to compete with the bot.

REALLY ZENIMAX??? It's requested a lot... but it's high time gamemasters were re-introduced into the servers. The bots are crippling the servers in so many different ways... with zero purging, we are now seeing bots in all base game zones. ALL zones... So, no amount of double node perks will help save us... because they are only double nodes if you can actually farm them.

vivisectvib16_ESO

fwiw, farm bots keep the price of bulk mats down in the traders - remove them and the prices will skyrocket.

Rittings

vivisectvib16_ESO wrote: »

fwiw, farm bots keep the price of bulk mats down in the traders - remove them and the prices will skyrocket.

FALSE... totally FALSE...

Bots take nodes, with zero CP perks - meaning they will only ever get the bare minimum amount of nodes. They keep them out the hands of real players. The bots are interested in one thing only... SELLING THE MATS FOR THE BEST PRICE... They have that mentality because they are gold sellers - and gold sellers devalue the actual currency because they farm the gold for players to just purchase with real money... thus... keeping the mats at higher prices on two fronts (1) via monopoly/control of farm spots and mats and (2) devaluing the currency (gold) used to buy said mats.

Prior to the infestation of bots, dreugh wax was around 4-5k per... right now, they are at about 7-8k... This is because gold is worth less than it was back then... and also because real players had more refinable mats to trade and refine with. You'd think with the new CP perk the price should be going down... but it's not... because, like I said... bots don't have the CP perk - and so they are keeping prices HIGHER than they should be.

Amottica

vivisectvib16_ESO wrote: »

fwiw, farm bots keep the price of bulk mats down in the traders - remove them and the prices will skyrocket.

@Ritter has made some very good points. I would also add that those player buying gold from those that run the bots are buying matts which in turn drive the price up. The bots are not just farming matts, they are farming NPCs and vendoring the trash Ofc, this is part of devaluing the in-game currency Ritter mentions.

Also, while I am new to ESO, what I have seen in other MMORPGs where cash shop items could be sold to players is strong inflation over time which is due to the influx of gold from these sellers.

Elsonso

vivisectvib16_ESO wrote: »

fwiw, farm bots keep the price of bulk mats down in the traders - remove them and the prices will skyrocket.

I would not be so sure about that.

From what I have seen on PC NA, they wayshrine into a city like Ebonheart, where there are merchants near the wayshrine, vendor their stuff, then wayshrine back to their farming area.

Rittings

It's nice though. Zos having an event of double nodes for the botfarmers. They are really enjoying themselves as we can't get ANY nodes at all in starter or base game zones. Loverly.

@ZOS_GinaBruno Any idea what the real players among us should do?

Elsonso

Rittings wrote: »

It's nice though. Zos having an event of double nodes for the botfarmers. They are really enjoying themselves as we can't get ANY nodes at all in starter or base game zones. Loverly.

@ZOS_GinaBruno Any idea what the real players among us should do?

ZOS should implement a captcha for each resource node interaction.

Rittings

All joking aside, maybe nodes shouldn't be available to be seen until a certain level? like level 10?? Make it harder on the bot farmers to produce enough accounts and then have to level them... and then get banned shortly after... really make it rough on them to keep the production line going like they currently do. Or make it so up until level 10 nodes will only drop a single item.

Elsonso

Rittings wrote: »

All joking aside, maybe nodes shouldn't be available to be seen until a certain level? like level 10?? Make it harder on the bot farmers to produce enough accounts and then have to level them... and then get banned shortly after... really make it rough on them to keep the production line going like they currently do. Or make it so up until level 10 nodes will only drop a single item.

They already have bots that can level up characters, and I expect that these get used to go well past Level 10. At least, on PC.

Rittings

Elsonso wrote: »

Rittings wrote: »

All joking aside, maybe nodes shouldn't be available to be seen until a certain level? like level 10?? Make it harder on the bot farmers to produce enough accounts and then have to level them... and then get banned shortly after... really make it rough on them to keep the production line going like they currently do. Or make it so up until level 10 nodes will only drop a single item.

They already have bots that can level up characters, and I expect that these get used to go well past Level 10. At least, on PC.

on ps4, all the bots are levels 2-4. I rarely see one higher than that. Sometimes we get fast purge activity - and that's great and all, but they just roll more out right behind them. I honestly believe that the only four ways to stem the tide of them are:-

1) Have gamemasters in beginner zones ready to purge
2) Make harvesting more fruitful (like the plentiful harvest cp being back to DOUBLE nodes 100% guaraneed) for real players with CP
3) Make it so low levels get very little (or nothing at all) from nodes until something like level 10
4) Make the registration process to join the ESO servers go through a few extra steps to confirm (you can't just start playing without email confirmation etc...).

Only these steps are truly going to really push the bots into decline.

Rittings

Currently in Bleakrock we have a bot that's heading towards the 14 day mark and still (after my entire guild has reported it) it's happily taking every node...

Honestly... don't know why we even bother asking anymore... I guarantee if I was using an exploit to get an achievement in the game I'd be banned within 24 hours.... but this, which is actually the tip of an iceberg that is breaking TOS for Sony as well as ZoS's own... well... let's just ignore it.

Elsonso

Rittings wrote: »

Currently in Bleakrock we have a bot that's heading towards the 14 day mark and still (after my entire guild has reported it) it's happily taking every node...

Honestly... don't know why we even bother asking anymore... I guarantee if I was using an exploit to get an achievement in the game I'd be banned within 24 hours.... but this, which is actually the tip of an iceberg that is breaking TOS for Sony as well as ZoS's own... well... let's just ignore it.

PS4 NA or PS4 EU?

Rittings

PS4 NA... I've reported the same bot now for 15 days in a row... It's more noticeable for myself and my guild since we group at Bleakrock (due to issues with freezing load screens into trials that haven't been fixed in 2 years lol).

Rittings

@ZOS_BillE Have the rules changes on being able to run macros now and just bot our way through the game? Just asking because seems like I might have missed a memo... want to know if it's perfectly okay now to exploit??? I've reported this bot every day now for 16 days... as have lots of my guild...

Elsonso

Rittings wrote: »

@ZOS_BillE Have the rules changes on being able to run macros now and just bot our way through the game? Just asking because seems like I might have missed a memo... want to know if it's perfectly okay now to exploit??? I've reported this bot every day now for 16 days... as have lots of my guild...

Report the bot once, and only once. Do not report it every day. That will not speed things up, and could actually hinder your efforts.

Rittings

Deleted because bots are humans too.

Elsonso

The forum mods are much quicker to mete out punishment for violating the forum rules than the ToS team is for in-game rules. You might want to reconsider posting that video.

Rittings

Eh?? I mean I know you can't name and shame another player... but this is a bot... it's not a player. Right?? That's surely like showing the name of an NPC???

Elsonso

Rittings wrote: »

Eh?? I mean I know you can't name and shame another player... but this is a bot... it's not a player. Right?? That's surely like showing the name of an NPC???

ZOS is the one that determines that, not us.

You are upset because ZOS has not done anything in 16 days. I watched something that I am convinced was bot in Shadowfen for months, and to this day, I do not know whether ZOS took action or the player running the bot just got bored and left the game.

Rittings

They make 15-20 new bots per day... which is why ZoS need a better strat... I've offered some up, but largely ignored

Avoranti

vivisectvib16_ESO wrote: »

fwiw, farm bots keep the price of bulk mats down in the traders - remove them and the prices will skyrocket.

[snip]

Not only does this break TOS for both ZOS and Playstation/Xbox but it’s unfair gains that hurt the market and take away from actual gamers. Unfair gains to hold guild traders in major cities. You’ll know if a guild trader has a bot farmer because they’ll usually have 1 potato for 1 mil gold to launder the gold from the unfair resource gains. I recently saw a guild trader with only like 5 single items. All potato’s, all 1 mil gold each.

I also believe that since these bot programs are 3rd party that they are a huge cause of lag in the game. Either way, it’s against the rules.

I agree there should be gamemasters in game daily just removing bots and occasionally monitoring the toxicity known as zone chat. I mean, I understand they can’t pay people to babysit who we assume are grown adults but it seems there is a need.

[Edited to remove Baiting]

Rittings

Avoranti wrote: »

vivisectvib16_ESO wrote: »

fwiw, farm bots keep the price of bulk mats down in the traders - remove them and the prices will skyrocket.

[snip]

Not only does this break TOS for both ZOS and Playstation/Xbox but it’s unfair gains that hurt the market and take away from actual gamers. Unfair gains to hold guild traders in major cities. You’ll know if a guild trader has a bot farmer because they’ll usually have 1 potato for 1 mil gold to launder the gold from the unfair resource gains. I recently saw a guild trader with only like 5 single items. All potato’s, all 1 mil gold each.

I also believe that since these bot programs are 3rd party that they are a huge cause of lag in the game. Either way, it’s against the rules.

I agree there should be gamemasters in game daily just removing bots and occasionally monitoring the toxicity known as zone chat. I mean, I understand they can’t pay people to babysit who we assume are grown adults but it seems there is a need.

[Edited to remove Baiting]

totally agree with this... how people can't see that these bots are almost certainly contributing heavily to the lag issues is beyond me... they are each running a macro and sending multiple pings to the server every second... and there are thousands of bots in the game at any given time. Its a HUGE problem, and what that has many detrimental offsets...

Rittings

Okay, I know I was advised by a member to not post videos as it was upto "Zenimax to decide" what was a bot and what wasn't...

But I think this one is too obvious to ignore.

[snip]

[Video Removed for Naming and Shaming]

Elsonso

Rittings wrote: »

Okay, I know I was advised by a member to not post videos as it was upto "Zenimax to decide" what was a bot and what wasn't...

But I think this one is too obvious to ignore.

Multiboxing, I assume. Looks like there is a human running the show. Sadly, you can see the names, so ZOS will be along to slap you.

It is against the ESO terms of service, but my guess is that PlayStation allows this as long as the hardware is not hacked. I doubt ZOS will do anything about it, if for no other reason than there are bigger fish to fry.

Report them, move on. Maybe we will get lucky and the ZOS ToS people will be bored and looking for something to do. Maybe all the Daedric Princes will get together and host a tea party for the next Chapter, too.

Rittings

This isn't just multiboxing... you can tell by the fact they stand still and wait till agro is lost before they begin their route again.

This is using a USB macro on the PS4 units... it's totally against TOS... and whether you can see PSN's or not, they are not being controlled by human players, and therefore this is not against the TOS by Zenimax for these forums...

I won't name the device here, as THAT would go against TOS, but I absolutely know what piece of hardware is doing this that the unknown user has used. (I say unknown, because the owner of these bots does have an account, or several actually, that they use to offload all the mats and goodies too before they sell them into the market place... but I won't be posting their name, because that WOULD go against TOS... they have to do that because they know these accounts will inevitably be banned shortly).

Elsonso

Rittings wrote: »

This isn't just multiboxing... you can tell by the fact they stand still and wait till agro is lost before they begin their route again.

This is using a USB macro on the PS4 units... it's totally against TOS...

I won't name the device here, as THAT would go against TOS, but I absolutely know what piece of hardware is doing this that the unknown user has used. (I say unknown, because the owner of these bots does have an account, or several actually, that they use to offload all the mats and goodies too before they sell them into the market place...

Possible. I think that the human was involved because I got the impression they were watching you to see what you were doing. I have spent some time watching unattended automated bots (no human), as well as human controlled characters.

The moderator will delete the video link. You will likely draw a warning if they delete it before you do.

Elsonso

[Quoted post has been removed.]

ZOS has placed policing the people in the game with the players. This pretty much makes everything people do in the game the business of everyone else in the game.

Rittings

[Quoted post has been removed.]

Trying to enjoy it... but can't because everytime I go somewhere to do something - it's plagued by bots. Which not only are taking the nodes/farm resources I'm after, but also causing the game to lag and crash since there are literally thousands of them on each server...

But hey... you go complain about the lag in another thread... without the foggiest clue that part of the reason are these bots...

Rittings

Elsonso wrote: »

Possible. I think that the human was involved because I got the impression they were watching you to see what you were doing. I have spent some time watching unattended automated bots (no human), as well as human controlled characters.
.

It's not possible, it's definite. The human I think you think you're referring to - was not a human player at all. It was just a bot that got slightly off course. You can make them do this with twisting path etc... but they always are programmed to go into a corner now like this, so they environment and objects around there "re-allign" them back into a solid stack (which is why they go into the corner). The programmers behind the bots have thought of this... I've watched these bots develop very carefully over 2 or 3 years.

xv1_me

Rittings wrote: »

[Quoted post has been removed.]

Trying to enjoy it... but can't because everytime I go somewhere to do something - it's plagued by bots. Which not only are taking the nodes/farm resources I'm after, but also causing the game to lag and crash since there are literally thousands of them on each server...

But hey... you go complain about the lag in another thread... without the foggiest clue that part of the reason are these bots...

I haven’t seen any bots (that I noticed) since beta of this game. Idk I have a hard enough time worrying about myself let alone the comings and going’s of others. But hey, that’s just me I guess.

Elsonso

xv1_me wrote: »

I haven’t seen any bots (that I noticed) since beta of this game. Idk I have a hard enough time worrying about myself let alone the comings and going’s of others. But hey, that’s just me I guess.

On PC, they are quite common. They are in the game every day, day and night, outside of how long it might take to update the automation software after a patch. Anyone on PC NA or PC EU that spends enough time in the overland, especially in the starting zones, has seen them.

Rittings wrote: »

It's not possible, it's definite. The human I think you think you're referring to - was not a human player at all. It was just a bot that got slightly off course. You can make them do this with twisting path etc... but they always are programmed to go into a corner now like this, so they environment and objects around there "re-allign" them back into a solid stack (which is why they go into the corner). The programmers behind the bots have thought of this... I've watched these bots develop very carefully over 2 or 3 years.

I'll have to take your word for it. I have spent years studying bots on PC, but very little time on console.