Bots

USarmydrew09

Rex-Umbra I agree with you 100% problem this I'm on the playstation 4 we have the same issue I've been playing since day one and stay 1 and I have never seen a zos member on

USarmydrew09

ZOS_Kevin It's been 8 years of this game and every time I post something on the Box the reply you just posted is the same ones you pretty much get. Just keep reporting them we'll look into it 8 years later is 8 years later still having the same issue. That tells me 1 of 2 possibilities one they're not looking into it and don't care or 2 they know that they're there but cannot get a handle on their own video game.

USarmydrew09

Dr_Con I make my gold in several different ways. I can pull in a couple million A-day if I like. When I go farming it's usually to stock up for later cause our prices luxury dark prices fluctuate pretty often so it's good to have a backup source plus I do a lot of housing and you need a lot of that material to upgrade your houses most of mine costs about 2 million to put together. But the payout is usually around 5 mill depending on the contest. I probably posted several different types it's of comments applying to bots over the years and I have seen nothing done about it I wish we had the option to change our thing or things to the PC but we don't so until then I hold zos to a higher standard. Some things are just beyond ridiculous at this point. Another example would be leads I spent all week farming griffins so far a grand total of 360 this week but I'm pretty sure I'm close to 800 over the month or 2 trying to find a stupid lead still have not found it. From my honest opinion over the years it feels like they just don't care anymore air anymore or ever have really.

MidniteOwl1913

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All, the team is aware and actively combatting bots. However, feedback like this is helpful for us to send to our teams to better pinpoint bots. We also suggest using the in-game reporting tools when reporting bots as that will give us a better idea of where bots are at a specific time.

However, we will pass this thread to our customer service team to make sure they can take a look and see what they can do.

So I'm not sure. Is this the report player function? This really isn't a player? I see them all the time in BalFoyen PS5/NA. More bots than people most times. Is the report player the best way to let you know?

Alphawolf01A

Dr_Con wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno

I have a design suggestion that would give mixed reviews but would certainly curtail the botting and be healthy for the community.

Since they are low levels farming mudcrabs, bears, and such, they are likely getting raw hide/hide scraps and then refining those to get Dreugh Wax.

Why not have a scaling chance to get Dreugh Wax with better materials? Ancestor Silk and Rubedo Hide when refined should net a higher chance, but instead it's the same chance as the lowest quality materials. Right now I believe it's about a 0.5-0.6% chance per refine to get a gold mat for anything when refining any essential crafting mat if you use crafting CP and have the right skill points invested. Same goes for Pewter Dust vs Platinum Dust. Why not make it scale based on the level of the mat? This would crash the value of low level mats, but shouldn't low level mats be low value anyways?

One thing you can do to mess with them is shadowban them before banning them, slap restrictions on them that prevents trading outside of associated accounts for a week without any notification then issue a ban- figure out what character they are sending these mats to before banning, if they even are. Who's to say you aren't doing this already though, but it would prevent further economic harm on consoles (I'm pretty sure this is why certain guild leaders are getting social banned on console, they allow these people in their guilds and the botting activity harms the console economy and playerbase- these guild leaders shouldn't be getting punished unless they are involved- they're just trying to make money so they can afford the traders, the botters should be the ones punished).

Why not nerf it to 0.01% chance with the lowest level materials, and make the chances go up depending on the level of the mat? This wouldn't put a stop to them unless you are on top of them and catch their characters quickly, but as it currently sounds like they are making characters faster than you can ban them- it will certainly slow them down enough and provide more markers for you to check for suspicious activity... (i.e. if a level 15 sorc has no points in anything but the clothier line, that's very sus). Adjustments and nerfs like these in the name of stopping bots are perfectly justifiable.

This would force them to get their crafting levels up on all characters, making them spend more time at the crafting table and getting skill points, using up ill-gotten materials instead of being able to sell them (they probably sell the refined mats- not the dreugh wax but rather the hide scraps- for gold at vendors).

Like I said in a previous post, there's many ways to tackle this. This is one way- make it not worth their time. If you are truly putting in all the effort to ban them based on reports, but they are already back at it by the time you ban them, this should communicate to you that a ban is meaningless as they can just create a new character.

Also, are they able to port out of the tutorial the first time when making a character if someone sends a friend request or parties with them? If that is a feature it needs to be disabled- make everyone go through that for each new account and it will cripple them further. If it's required, another possibility you should account for is if they are "warping" with modified clients to the end of the tutorial instead of doing every quest checkpoint- make sure that before they get to the end that the portals aren't active until they kill that daedra, or until the NPC in Balfiera gets to them. I have no way of knowing if "Warping" is even a thing in this game because people seem to phase in and out of existence sometimes, but I have seen people hitting others from under the map in cyrodiil in the past, I can only assume it's a possibility.

Scaling the drop chance for high level tempers and wax and such wouldn't really work. Reason being, I have seen the sorc bot clusters stop farming and a "handler" player shows up and the bots trade all the mats they've farmed to the handler. The handler is higher level, presumably with crafting skills for better chances at refining. The handler leaves and the bots start farming again. The bots aren't the ones doing the refining..

I've even seen bot trains come out of the wayshrine in Grahtwood, run to an NPC merchant, sell their stuff then run back to the wayshrine and off they go to keep farming.

Dr_Con

Alphawolf01A wrote: »

Dr_Con wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno

I have a design suggestion that would give mixed reviews but would certainly curtail the botting and be healthy for the community.

Since they are low levels farming mudcrabs, bears, and such, they are likely getting raw hide/hide scraps and then refining those to get Dreugh Wax.

Why not have a scaling chance to get Dreugh Wax with better materials? Ancestor Silk and Rubedo Hide when refined should net a higher chance, but instead it's the same chance as the lowest quality materials. Right now I believe it's about a 0.5-0.6% chance per refine to get a gold mat for anything when refining any essential crafting mat if you use crafting CP and have the right skill points invested. Same goes for Pewter Dust vs Platinum Dust. Why not make it scale based on the level of the mat? This would crash the value of low level mats, but shouldn't low level mats be low value anyways?

One thing you can do to mess with them is shadowban them before banning them, slap restrictions on them that prevents trading outside of associated accounts for a week without any notification then issue a ban- figure out what character they are sending these mats to before banning, if they even are. Who's to say you aren't doing this already though, but it would prevent further economic harm on consoles (I'm pretty sure this is why certain guild leaders are getting social banned on console, they allow these people in their guilds and the botting activity harms the console economy and playerbase- these guild leaders shouldn't be getting punished unless they are involved- they're just trying to make money so they can afford the traders, the botters should be the ones punished).

Why not nerf it to 0.01% chance with the lowest level materials, and make the chances go up depending on the level of the mat? This wouldn't put a stop to them unless you are on top of them and catch their characters quickly, but as it currently sounds like they are making characters faster than you can ban them- it will certainly slow them down enough and provide more markers for you to check for suspicious activity... (i.e. if a level 15 sorc has no points in anything but the clothier line, that's very sus). Adjustments and nerfs like these in the name of stopping bots are perfectly justifiable.

This would force them to get their crafting levels up on all characters, making them spend more time at the crafting table and getting skill points, using up ill-gotten materials instead of being able to sell them (they probably sell the refined mats- not the dreugh wax but rather the hide scraps- for gold at vendors).

Like I said in a previous post, there's many ways to tackle this. This is one way- make it not worth their time. If you are truly putting in all the effort to ban them based on reports, but they are already back at it by the time you ban them, this should communicate to you that a ban is meaningless as they can just create a new character.

Also, are they able to port out of the tutorial the first time when making a character if someone sends a friend request or parties with them? If that is a feature it needs to be disabled- make everyone go through that for each new account and it will cripple them further. If it's required, another possibility you should account for is if they are "warping" with modified clients to the end of the tutorial instead of doing every quest checkpoint- make sure that before they get to the end that the portals aren't active until they kill that daedra, or until the NPC in Balfiera gets to them. I have no way of knowing if "Warping" is even a thing in this game because people seem to phase in and out of existence sometimes, but I have seen people hitting others from under the map in cyrodiil in the past, I can only assume it's a possibility.

Scaling the drop chance for high level tempers and wax and such wouldn't really work. Reason being, I have seen the sorc bot clusters stop farming and a "handler" player shows up and the bots trade all the mats they've farmed to the handler. The handler is higher level, presumably with crafting skills for better chances at refining. The handler leaves and the bots start farming again. The bots aren't the ones doing the refining..

I've even seen bot trains come out of the wayshrine in Grahtwood, run to an NPC merchant, sell their stuff then run back to the wayshrine and off they go to keep farming.

I must have not been clear- I suggested that lower quality mats should have less of a chance to refine and have the top quality upgrade mats come out of the refine.

Basically-
Currently we have:
Raw Hide Scraps/Raw Jute = .5% chance per refine to give Dreugh Wax at max skills
all mats inbetween = 0.5% chance
Raw Rubedo Leather/Raw Ancestor Silk = .5% chance per refine to give Dreugh Wax at max skills

To help curtail the damage they are doing it should be:
Raw Hide Scraps/Raw Jute = .01% chance per refine to give Dreugh Wax at max skills
all mats inbetween = increasing chances of Dreugh Wax per crafting level
Raw Rubedo Leather/Raw Ancestor Silk = .5% chance per refine to give Dreugh Wax at max skills

(I'm pretty sure the decimal needs to be shifted to the left by 1 and these are numbers based on refine rate per mat)

These are design choices that I'm surprised ZOS hasn't done already as it's very easy to level up these crafting skills, but for someone botting with 12+ accounts it would be a timesink and a nightmare. To help offset some of this they could also say that lower quality mats have a higher chance to come out per refine, but it really doesn't matter. Low level stuff should have a low chance of refining/creating these items that upgrade end-game gear, a brand new level 4 doesn't need Dreugh Wax...

(Mudcrab Chitin is likely to be low value on console as well, this likely has no way of being fixed through my suggestions but it is not a huge impact on end-game)

The mats that drop are dependent on crafting skill, this change would also take some of the ill-gotten gains out of the economy as they'd have to craft and disassemble to level up their clothing line, and it would give more markers to help flag down suspected botting accounts (hence the level 15 sorc with points only in clothing example).

Alphawolf01A

Dr_Con wrote: »

Alphawolf01A wrote: »

Dr_Con wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno

I have a design suggestion that would give mixed reviews but would certainly curtail the botting and be healthy for the community.

Since they are low levels farming mudcrabs, bears, and such, they are likely getting raw hide/hide scraps and then refining those to get Dreugh Wax.

Why not have a scaling chance to get Dreugh Wax with better materials? Ancestor Silk and Rubedo Hide when refined should net a higher chance, but instead it's the same chance as the lowest quality materials. Right now I believe it's about a 0.5-0.6% chance per refine to get a gold mat for anything when refining any essential crafting mat if you use crafting CP and have the right skill points invested. Same goes for Pewter Dust vs Platinum Dust. Why not make it scale based on the level of the mat? This would crash the value of low level mats, but shouldn't low level mats be low value anyways?

One thing you can do to mess with them is shadowban them before banning them, slap restrictions on them that prevents trading outside of associated accounts for a week without any notification then issue a ban- figure out what character they are sending these mats to before banning, if they even are. Who's to say you aren't doing this already though, but it would prevent further economic harm on consoles (I'm pretty sure this is why certain guild leaders are getting social banned on console, they allow these people in their guilds and the botting activity harms the console economy and playerbase- these guild leaders shouldn't be getting punished unless they are involved- they're just trying to make money so they can afford the traders, the botters should be the ones punished).

Why not nerf it to 0.01% chance with the lowest level materials, and make the chances go up depending on the level of the mat? This wouldn't put a stop to them unless you are on top of them and catch their characters quickly, but as it currently sounds like they are making characters faster than you can ban them- it will certainly slow them down enough and provide more markers for you to check for suspicious activity... (i.e. if a level 15 sorc has no points in anything but the clothier line, that's very sus). Adjustments and nerfs like these in the name of stopping bots are perfectly justifiable.

This would force them to get their crafting levels up on all characters, making them spend more time at the crafting table and getting skill points, using up ill-gotten materials instead of being able to sell them (they probably sell the refined mats- not the dreugh wax but rather the hide scraps- for gold at vendors).

Like I said in a previous post, there's many ways to tackle this. This is one way- make it not worth their time. If you are truly putting in all the effort to ban them based on reports, but they are already back at it by the time you ban them, this should communicate to you that a ban is meaningless as they can just create a new character.

Also, are they able to port out of the tutorial the first time when making a character if someone sends a friend request or parties with them? If that is a feature it needs to be disabled- make everyone go through that for each new account and it will cripple them further. If it's required, another possibility you should account for is if they are "warping" with modified clients to the end of the tutorial instead of doing every quest checkpoint- make sure that before they get to the end that the portals aren't active until they kill that daedra, or until the NPC in Balfiera gets to them. I have no way of knowing if "Warping" is even a thing in this game because people seem to phase in and out of existence sometimes, but I have seen people hitting others from under the map in cyrodiil in the past, I can only assume it's a possibility.

Scaling the drop chance for high level tempers and wax and such wouldn't really work. Reason being, I have seen the sorc bot clusters stop farming and a "handler" player shows up and the bots trade all the mats they've farmed to the handler. The handler is higher level, presumably with crafting skills for better chances at refining. The handler leaves and the bots start farming again. The bots aren't the ones doing the refining..

I've even seen bot trains come out of the wayshrine in Grahtwood, run to an NPC merchant, sell their stuff then run back to the wayshrine and off they go to keep farming.

I must have not been clear- I suggested that lower quality mats should have less of a chance to refine and have the top quality upgrade mats come out of the refine.

Basically-
Currently we have:
Raw Hide Scraps/Raw Jute = .5% chance per refine to give Dreugh Wax at max skills
Rubedo Leather/Raw Ancestor Silk = .5% chance per refine to give Dreugh Wax at max skills

To help curtail the damage they are doing it should be:
Raw Hide Scraps/Raw Jute = .01% chance per refine to give Dreugh Wax at max skills
Rubedo Leather/Raw Ancestor Silk = .5% chance per refine to give Dreugh Wax at max skills

The mats that drop are dependent on crafting skill, this change would also take some of the ill-gotten gains out of the economy as they'd have to craft and disassemble to level up their clothing line, and it would give more markers to help flag down suspected botting accounts (hence the level 15 sorc with points only in clothing example).

OK, I get what you're saying. Makes sense. A level 1 raw mat should have the lowest chance (if any) to get high grade upgrade mats. Where as, a level cp160 raw mat should have the best chance to refine high grade mats.

Alphawolf01A

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All, the team is aware and actively combatting bots. However, feedback like this is helpful for us to send to our teams to better pinpoint bots. We also suggest using the in-game reporting tools when reporting bots as that will give us a better idea of where bots are at a specific time.

However, we will pass this thread to our customer service team to make sure they can take a look and see what they can do.

I have repeated reported bot farm clusters over the years, including the specific locations, like the area of Ancestors Landing in the Alikr Desert and the area from Haven wayshrine around the coast inlet to Volunidai's Manor in Grahtwood. And yet the clusters remain in EXACTLY the same space they have been for YEARS.

This sounds less like a problem for Customer Service to deal with and more like something some form of "Cyber Security" should handle to figure out how they are getting into the console to do this at all. I have even heard of some form of a "console emulator" being used on a PC to run multiple instances of ESO in order to syncronze bot trains like the ones in Grahtwood and every other base game zone.

Caribou77

ZOS, here’s a tip for identifying bots: their names contain no vowels and they don’t level up.

Good Luck!

opalcity

Caribou77 wrote: »

ZOS, here’s a tip for identifying bots: their names contain no vowels and they don’t level up.

Good Luck!

For some reason, a lot of bots I've seen lately all include the name of a popular brand of electronic tablet and stylus - almost as if the bot creator was looking around their desk for inspiration and that was the first thing they saw.

zaria

Dr_Con wrote: »

(Mudcrab Chitin is likely to be low value on console as well, this likely has no way of being fixed through my suggestions but it is not a huge impact on end-game)

The mats that drop are dependent on crafting skill, this change would also take some of the ill-gotten gains out of the economy as they'd have to craft and disassemble to level up their clothing line, and it would give more markers to help flag down suspected botting accounts (hence the level 15 sorc with points only in clothing example).

Mudcrab Chitin sells for 500 on PC-EU.
Chances of getting stuff from deconstruction already depend on crafting level, slotted crafting cp and used skills.
Not sure about refining raw materials but I always has some fully qualified refine.
PC-EU again Rubedo Hide Scraps sells for 90-95 gold, Rubedo Leather for 8-9.
That Dreugh Wax sells for 17K explains this, just to focus on the differences in economic.

Blinx

I remember when I was brand new on PS4, and had to do a quest in Grahtwood that required killing mudcrabs, and being frustrated because this weird bunch of sorcerers kept killing them all( I had no clue what they were then),

when I converted to Xbox, I also encounter them, but not to the same extent

Dr_Con

zaria wrote: »

Dr_Con wrote: »

(Mudcrab Chitin is likely to be low value on console as well, this likely has no way of being fixed through my suggestions but it is not a huge impact on end-game)

The mats that drop are dependent on crafting skill, this change would also take some of the ill-gotten gains out of the economy as they'd have to craft and disassemble to level up their clothing line, and it would give more markers to help flag down suspected botting accounts (hence the level 15 sorc with points only in clothing example).

Mudcrab Chitin sells for 500 on PC-EU.
Chances of getting stuff from deconstruction already depend on crafting level, slotted crafting cp and used skills.
Not sure about refining raw materials but I always has some fully qualified refine.
PC-EU again Rubedo Hide Scraps sells for 90-95 gold, Rubedo Leather for 8-9.
That Dreugh Wax sells for 17K explains this, just to focus on the differences in economic.

PC prices are a bit irrelevant since we are talking about console issues, but the association that I am explaining is that these alt accounts should get banned before they are able to farm rubedo drops. I am also fairly certain that with the amount they are farming they are likely selling their crafting mats to vendors or letting them stack up on the "handler" account that someone described before.

Someone made a suggestion to get a GM in each of the console servers/zones and ban the botters directly. Does support not have xbox, ps4, or some way to look at what is happening in game or something? This is a very direct albeit man-hour intensive and temporary approach to the problem (and depending on tickets to be sent in for support to act is even less effective). It won't stop the botting, but it would get rid of a lot of the online botters that are running rampant while the game designers come up with a way to get the botting to stop.

MidniteOwl1913

Honestly I think they should just admit they can't solve the bot problem and remove jewelry mat nodes from starter areas. At this point the *only* ones getting any of those mats are bots, so it wouldn't hurt players.

katanagirl1

MidniteOwl1913 wrote: »

Honestly I think they should just admit they can't solve the bot problem and remove jewelry mat nodes from starter areas. At this point the *only* ones getting any of those mats are bots, so it wouldn't hurt players.

That’s strange because jewelry nodes are the only ones I don’t see the bots taking, except for alchemy of course.

It’s mostly ore and runestones now for the single bots and the poor mudcrabs for leather with the bot trains.

FluffWit

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All, the team is aware and actively combatting bots. However, feedback like this is helpful for us to send to our teams to better pinpoint bots. We also suggest using the in-game reporting tools when reporting bots as that will give us a better idea of where bots are at a specific time.

However, we will pass this thread to our customer service team to make sure they can take a look and see what they can do.

You don't need reports or feedback. It makes me kinda angry that you ask. Like you just don't get it.

Every hour of every day in every starter zone on xbox and psn they're everywhere. I won't waste a second of my time dealing with it for you by reporting them. It's not my job. It's YOURS.

I would have just stayed out of this but it's just condescending to ask us to do anything about this.

SimonThesis

They routinely have pretty big bot ban waves but they do come back. As a trader you can tell when they've done a bot ban wave because the price of mats skyrocket. Bots make it harder to farm your own mats but make it much cheaper for everyone else to buy mats and they help keep inflation down. It is fun when they do a ban wave and you can sell your mats pretty high for a bit.

mIstyKisshot

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

on PC its rare to see actual bots or bot trains nowadays lol

This because the gold price of pc especially NA has been ruined, not worth it

Kali_Despoine

I love bots.
Back in the day I would join their groups and put out my merchant and farm cats in the Rift
We also would make our own bot farms in Stonefall and Bankorai. Stacks and stacks of raw mats and other sellable goodies. The merch and banker paid for themselves
I also remember having a few questionables that used my guild store, they paid the dues but had those all too common names like 'attx88'

If 'they' wanted to shut down bots 'they' would go after the launder sites that sell gold for cash online. Several lawsuits some prosecutions some million dollar fines and wham-mo no bots.

But just this morning /sat/ I saw a couple dozen bots standing in front of their own nodes.
(I almost feel sorry for the guy behind the controls what a way to make a living)

katanagirl1

I wonder if the reason we have a huge bot problem on PS is because we don’t have any game masters there. Maybe they can’t just ban bot wranglers based on a report and need someone to confirm it first. If that is the case, then perhaps someone at ZOS can comment on that and if so they should clarify that reports only on PC will see any action on them. Then those of us on console can know we have to live with it and not bother taking the time to report.

FluffWit

Katana- it's a combination of that- [snip] And the fact I can make as many psn accounts as I want and play eso for free as long as I have one account with a paid PSN Plus membership.

PC you have to pay to make each account so even a little policing is enough to make botting unviable financially.

Kali- Those aren't bots. You running around farming tigers- or standing around afk while other people kill them, isn't a bot. A controller or keyboard taped down to spam heavy attacks or tap a button to pick a node also isn't a bot.

Bots are automatic input programs running intelligent sub routines. They first showed up on console 3-4 years back. PC has had them much longer.

[edited for bashing]

Bealeb319

On PS5 they are everywhere even in some of the dlc zones it is quite amazing actually. It makes you wonder if they have been around for so long does it mean there simply aren't any repercussions? Maybe we should all be running bots probably more lucrative with less effort than doing my daily crafting writs?

Lumenn

I, and others, suggested years ago they should just make the spawns random locations instead of fixed. I'm sure there's some code/program that can deal with that but it would help active farmers rather than the auto farmers.

MidniteOwl1913

Lumenn wrote: »

I, and others, suggested years ago they should just make the spawns random locations instead of fixed. I'm sure there's some code/program that can deal with that but it would help active farmers rather than the auto farmers.

Sure, do something *anything* to try and stem the tide of bots. My suggestion is to just remove jewelry mats from the starter areas. Just admit they can't fix the problem and stop rewarding the bot masters. That at least would be something.

Necrotech_Master

USarmydrew09 wrote: »

[snip]

i would be careful with the wording, cause this screams conspiracy theory, so i heavily expect this to get modded lol

[edited to remove quote]

Androrix

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

USarmydrew09 wrote: »

[snip]

i would be careful with the wording, cause this screams conspiracy theory, so i heavily expect this to get modded lol

You are correct! But it is also correct that ZoS could be more active in game to stamp this out. Players should not have to police bots or other players' behavior. I believe USarmydrew09 intended the rest of the post as tongue in cheek.

[edited to remove quote]

hrothbern

Androrix wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

USarmydrew09 wrote: »

[snip]

i would be careful with the wording, cause this screams conspiracy theory, so i heavily expect this to get modded lol

You are correct! But it is also correct that ZoS could be more active in game to stamp this out. Players should not have to police bots or other players' behavior. I believe USarmydrew09 intended the rest of the post as tongue in cheek.

I really do not understand why this is a problem for ZOS to implement.

When I see as player a bot suspect and can click directly a button followed by a confirmation button to report at which moment ZOS activates for 1-5 minutes a vid from that player viewpoint (who has to continue following and looking at the bot suspect) and ZOS activates some background data stream helping to get irrefutable evidence... it could all be done and over with very simple and swift.

We do not need vigilantes but just ordinary citizen's duty reporting taking not much time for players.
Players who get for that 5 minutes the satisfaction og more fairness and no frustration.

[edited to remove quote]

boi_anachronism_

It really stinks when trying to farm leads for antiquities from nodes in starter zones. Makes it damn near impossible.

Blinx

I only encountered the obvious sorcerer train bot once in Grahtwood while fishing for master angler recently, perhaps there's other bot types that are harder to spot.

Vulkunne

Something many of us have mentioned for years now lol

I'm not going to say what happened however in the past both myself and others I know have had run ins with Support over minor things so that makes me wonder why the bots continue to be tolerated.

And the bot farmers are not hiding, they are in every starter zone... at least last I checked. That's another reason inflation is so bad in this game.