You going to do something about all the Bots?

Monsoon

One every 2 minutes...that's what I had in the chat box yesterday before my game crashed. I decided to not report them anymore when my mailbox was filled with 30 replies per day of ZOS responding to my reports. So now I just ignore the bots one by one.

One every 2 minutes. As of today I have decided that between being unable to play in cyrodill due to a mac memory leak crashing the game every 5 minutes and the constant bots spam I have no incentives to pay for this. As of today I am canceling my subscription

YourNameHere

driosketch wrote: »

Even if none of them are bots, the fact that this play style is disrupting other players from completing a dungeon is a problem. I say getting a false report is the very least you deserve. Do players not understand why dungeon mobs are now worth only a handful of xp, why the player kill quest is now a daily? You're practically begging boss loot to get the nerf bat next.

This is the problem.

Bet on the loot being nerfed. And yes what you are doing, innocent or not, is affecting gameplay of others.

You want soul gems? Spend 19 gold from the Mystic, slap the Soul Trap on your hotkey. Boom, kill mob, you got full gem.

There is WAY more to do out there in game.

And yes, if I see you standing on top of a boss, or near one, I will send you a tell. If you are human you'll answer. If your name is complete gibberish and you don't answer but kill the boss over and over and over in sync with other people, you will be reported as a bot.

Ruining the game for others so you can get that one piece of blue gear faster is kinda selfish. It's hard enough all being on one megaserver, with things not spawning, gold sellers, spam mail, spam guilds, teleporting harvesting bots ...

Give us something to enjoy!

Vampiresbane

krix_ost wrote: »

Only 1 method to stop all botting scripts. NO ADDONS period. Multiboxing is rough with ESO because of No Follow and the quirky combat.

ESO needs to lock this down....simple as 1 update to disallow client based stuff.

Perhaps pissing off a whole new group of players. XD

This is like using a hammer to sew a dress. You're talking about the wrong tool for the wrong job.

Add-ons are not allowing bots. Outside Macroing and Botting programs are. Some folks think add-ons are still allowing gold sellers to spam chat; Zenimax stripped that function from the API program and yet we still have gold spam in both zone chat and in mail. It's an outside (outside of ESO) program. It's not an add-on. There are no add-ons that can put a static message into zone chat (I wish there was. It would make leading PUGs in Cydrodiil a LOT easier.)

Multiboxing likewise is usually done by just loading the ESO program mutiple times with mutiple accounts and then using an OUTSIDE program to coordinate all of those characters. Multiboxing is not a new concept. Happened in DAoC, Warhammer, WoW, and now here. The only tool Zenimax can use against multiboxing is banning accounts. Multiboxing is different from botting scripts for those that are wondering. You can have both, but they're not the same.

Add-ons are not the problem. Don't you dare start making add-ons the escape-goat and getting rid of ALL the good and useful add-ons that help make this game fun. We have limited functionality with add-ons as it is.

hawke21

Maybe me=noob but i would think that even if the location of a character is sent by the client to the server, the server should still be able to recognize that it moved from point A to point B in an impossible amount of time, and perhaps boot the account out of the game?

Thechemicals

What i see is player "crfzTe" and player "Aasdfasdf" running a macro in dungeons that kill monsters. They run the same path over and over.

robert.jernbergnrb19_ESO

I saw a group of 6 players standing in a circle around the spawnpoint of a boss constantly hitting one skill over and over again, even when there was no boss there.
I tried to talk to them, no response.
I ended up reporting them all for botting.
I then came back with another char I made a couple of days later, and the exact same 6 players where still standing there doing the exact same thing.

Rantog

Zershar_Vemod wrote: »

OP, these are mainly other players, not bots. It's VERY common if not something like 2/3 dungeons will have players farming a boss.

Thank you for commenting.
Your comment is important to us, and we will forward it to the appropriate department.
We assure you, this message is unique, written expressly to respond to the concern you reported.

Sincerely,
Beatrice Olivia Thomson.

--
If you read anything beyond.. oh.. 3 words of the post. You would know I'm not talking about the people farming bosses.
I'm talking about Automated BOTS that act In perfect unison, as a Group, and respond even before the boss appears.

They are using any one of 3 (probably more that aren't publicly advertised) script programs that layer the client and respond to data sent to the client before the client even gets it.

Rantog

ElliottXO wrote: »

telling me those are not bots has a serious problem with his conception. Today I saw them in a level 35 dungeon! They move higher and higher since Zenimax seems not to be able to get rid of them in time.

The fact that the bots are leveling that high before being BANNED just demonstrates how little is being done to stop them.
Sure, some of them might have leveled up legitimately Then gone to botting, but since the bots always work as a Group - it is unlikely.
- Leveling up to 35 is one thing.. doing it 5 times.. a much larger hill to climb.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrm7i1pEz_Q

Thanks for this video link btw.
Good demonstration of Instant - Synchronized activity across multiple accounts.. proving it is Not legitimate Human Players.

Jadeviper1974

YourNameHere wrote: »

driosketch wrote: »

Even if none of them are bots, the fact that this play style is disrupting other players from completing a dungeon is a problem. I say getting a false report is the very least you deserve. Do players not understand why dungeon mobs are now worth only a handful of xp, why the player kill quest is now a daily? You're practically begging boss loot to get the nerf bat next.

This is the problem.

Bet on the loot being nerfed. And yes what you are doing, innocent or not, is affecting gameplay of others.

You want soul gems? Spend 19 gold from the Mystic, slap the Soul Trap on your hotkey. Boom, kill mob, you got full gem.

There is WAY more to do out there in game.

And yes, if I see you standing on top of a boss, or near one, I will send you a tell. If you are human you'll answer. If your name is complete gibberish and you don't answer but kill the boss over and over and over in sync with other people, you will be reported as a bot.

Ruining the game for others so you can get that one piece of blue gear faster is kinda selfish. It's hard enough all being on one megaserver, with things not spawning, gold sellers, spam mail, spam guilds, teleporting harvesting bots ...

Give us something to enjoy!

Yep, I fill up my soulgems with sheep and deer, so I don't even have to fight.

krix_ost

Vampiresbane wrote: »

This is like using a hammer to sew a dress. You're talking about the wrong tool for the wrong job.

Add-ons are not allowing bots. Outside Macroing and Botting programs are. Some folks think add-ons are still allowing gold sellers to spam chat; Zenimax stripped that function from the API program and yet we still have gold spam in both zone chat and in mail. It's an outside (outside of ESO) program. It's not an add-on. There are no add-ons that can put a static message into zone chat (I wish there was. It would make leading PUGs in Cydrodiil a LOT easier.)

Multiboxing likewise is usually done by just loading the ESO program mutiple times with mutiple accounts and then using an OUTSIDE program to coordinate all of those characters. Multiboxing is not a new concept. Happened in DAoC, Warhammer, WoW, and now here. The only tool Zenimax can use against multiboxing is banning accounts. Multiboxing is different from botting scripts for those that are wondering. You can have both, but they're not the same.

Add-ons are not the problem. Don't you dare start making add-ons the escape-goat and getting rid of ALL the good and useful add-ons that help make this game fun. We have limited functionality with add-ons as it is.

Don't be naive.

I shall use one example of an Addon that can be used to exploit the game....Garkin's Skyshard Locations. You see the problem here? ZeniMax uses the CLIENT to DICTATE to the SERVER what and where happens. Since the CLIENT knows these coordinates then it is a simple matter to INJECT code/data to Teleport to these Coordinates and do 'something' at them.

Each Resource, Skyshard, Boss, NPC....etc....have coordinates and are being manipulated.

Once ZeniMax has resolved the issue with CLIENT based workloading to a more 'Industry Standard' encrypted SERVER base authentication of data then Addons could be used 'again'.

Until then.....'don't you dare' prattle on about how Addons are not assisting the hackers. Some are not of course but many of the 'convenience features' you are asking for in Addons are indeed assisting them.

TheKing1nYellow

It's funny that the OP was in Softloam Cavern because that is specifically where I have discovered a Cathartic release dealing with the bots. Not the campers, but bots. Just go aggro one of the fire mages and run back into the bot swarm. Use block and just wait until the fire Mage launches it's AOE circle at you, then move out of the way and watch the bots stand there and burn to death...

The boss campers run by human players recognize what is happening and move out of the fire. The handful of bots run by an algorithm don't and just stand burning to death...

After a couple of hours doing this over and over I always feel a little better...

blauschwinge

Rantog wrote: »

blauschwinge wrote: »

I doubt theres any botting yet

You must have missed the official statement that they have already banned Thousands for it.

And that there are 3 major game hack/bot software distributors already selling the Bot scripts for ESO.

And the endless stream of videos of the Teleport hack harvester bots running..

Or the further videos of those same tele hack harvesters, bots, and other script users Bragging about their use of these things and having Not been banned yet.


I Wish it was just gold spammers... but I would still want them gone too

Ah indeed, you are right, missed that, just that I have not really noticed anything weird that looks like botting in my game instances (eu) I am used to my fellow adventurers not talking much when farming a solo instance boss, but they never looked like the weirdly stacked mob with strange names like in the picture. Only thing I notice a lot are stuck nodes I cannot farm and also rarely the vanishing nodes, but it does not happen often.

Rantog

krix_ost wrote: »

Don't be naive.

I shall use one example of an Addon that can be used to exploit the game....Garkin's Skyshard Locations. You see the problem here? ZeniMax uses the CLIENT to DICTATE to the SERVER what and where happens. Since the CLIENT knows these coordinates then it is a simple matter to INJECT code/data to Teleport to these Coordinates and do 'something' at them.

Each Resource, Skyshard, Boss, NPC....etc....have coordinates and are being manipulated.

Sorry, but it doesn't work that way.

The API Zenimax provides for creating addons does not allow the addition of abilities or access to information the client doesn't already have -because the API doesn't allow interaction with the servers.. only the client itself.

If the Servers are the television network, and your cable box is the client, the API for addons would be cables that connect from your cable box to a television, DVD player, VCR (if you're old school), etc.

The cables can't create movies you don't already have access to, nor get you access to channels your service isn't already providing. They just allow you to change how/where you watch the shows.

Mister_Crowley

Before reporting, I say something along the lines of: "Human check--speak up if you're not a bot." So far I've only had a handful of people say something, but it's enough to give me pause before reporting everyone in the cluster of bodies. General rule of thumb--random string of consonants name = bot

Citraka

Sad thing about this is its so very simple to police, with 1 real person from the company running the game playing in a GM capacity, same with the gold selling spam, watch the chat forward it to whoever has the account blocking authority and have them lock it out and email the owner. Job done, and without the thousands of customer reports to sift through.

Its as if the issue isnt worth the minimum wage job position to them.

Rantog

Citraka wrote: »

Sad thing about this is its so very simple to police, with 1 real person from the company running the game playing in a GM capacity, same with the gold selling spam, watch the chat forward it to whoever has the account blocking authority and have them lock it out and email the owner. Job done, and without the thousands of customer reports to sift through.

Its as if the issue isnt worth the minimum wage job position to them.

Exactly why so man of us are so upset about this mess.

They keep claiming it is a "Top Priority" to get these scum out of the game - and yet they continue to Ignore them, and the harm they do, while they work behind the scenes to EVENTUALLY come up with a solution.

A long term plan is fine - but not doing something in the mean time is simply Lousy Customer Relations.

One full time position would have a Massive impact on our game experience - and yet they Still don't have anyone In-Game dealing with these people.

One GM-style account could remove the gold spammers as they appeared, and pop into the dungeons to check for.. and ban the bots.
They won't get them all, no - but they will get those they ban out of our hair for the time being, and at worst - force those cheaters to buy Another $50 account.

crush83

Let's see.

1. The players just appear out of the floor at the boss.
2. They have names that are completely random: "Xjgkdji" for example.
3. They don't respond to tells or spatial chat.
4. They never move from their spot, unless (see 5).
5. They will attack any mob that you drag within range, kill it, then snap back to the spot they were previously.
6. They stand directly on top of each other. Probably because they are all using the exact same coordinate for the boss. It's also a good defense because it becomes hard to target all of them for reporting.
7. They begin attacking the boss before he's even had time to load into the client (aka packet sniffing).
8. They will instantaneously switch to a ranged weapon if the boss is knocked out of range.

Sure, a few of these could apply to a legit player. However, when you combine all of them, it's pretty obvious that you are dealing with a bot.

Furthermore, if a GM would simply pop in, drop these guys a tell, I feel pretty confident they'd try to respond to it if they were a real person.

Rantog

crush83 wrote: »

Furthermore, if a GM would simply pop in, drop these guys a tell, I feel pretty confident they'd try to respond to it if they were a real person.

Yes, as long as they fail to respond, but continue attacking the boss spawn... /bye

I want to respond to this before someone else comes along and cries that "if they ban you for not answering, they'll be banning real players who are afk!"
They may be clueless, but even Zenimax - can't possibly be That clueless.

Failing to respond PLUS continuing to farm the boss.


Other things people have been suggesting, some of which Sound good on the surface - simply won't work..
Eg..

Force a Popup question to everyone around the boss - and if they don't answer it, ban them.
-- firstly, people do go afk, fall asleep, etc. Secondly, the bots are not a hard-coded automation, they are running Scripts, which can be modified to Answer those popups, which means the only ones they will bother are Realm players.

Lock characters out of killing the boss more than once.
-- obviously not an option, since the reason most of us go after a given boss (other than the achievements, which I never had an interest in) - is to obtain the boss' specific item drop, which can often take 5 or more kills to get.

Similarly : Limit characters to killing the boss X times in 24 hours.
-- They have 8 characters per account, and can move from One dungeon boss to another faster than a real player can walk out of one. Kill X times. Log to the next of 8 characters - kill X times. repeat til all 8 have done so, then warp to the exit, use door, warp to the entrance of another dungeon, use door, and start the process all over again.
In the end, all it accomplishes is making it harder for us to report them because the specific characters doing it are always changing.



In the end, the Most Reliable method is to have in-game staff to hunt them down and ban them.

"but there are multiple instances to a dungeon, they won't find them all" - ignores that a GM account could switch instances, as easily as the Bots do.

"but the GM can't be everywhere, they wouldn't find all of them." - ignores the fact that if we reach the point that there are so few bots that the GM can't find them... we've already WON this fight.

crush83

The main thing is a GM should pop in and ban the obvious botters for now. That would help tremendously. If a few of the more clever botters get by, ok, I'll deal with that.

Obviously, the GM should give ample time for a player to respond to a private message. I've never received a message from a GM, and I'm kind of under the impression that they don't even exist. If they do exist, I'd hope that GM tells would be more prominent than normal player tells.

It should also be considered that the player might not be able to understand English in order to be able to respond.

HOWEVER. Simply observing the style of play of players, and taking into account all these other factors I listed above should be enough for a human to make a judgment call on if these are bots, or real players.

Of course, eventually, this will lead to more sophisticated bots. Bots that attempt to reply to tells. Bots that move around occasionally, and seem to do random behavior. Bots that have names that are chosen from a dictionary, instead of random characters.

That will be harder to police, but hopefully by then, Zenimax will have finished coming up with their automatic detection methods.

Ashlynne

KerinKor wrote: »

djodars wrote: »

I have also came across players gathered around a public dungeon boss "farming" him every time he spawned.

What are they doing wrong?

The OP Is alleging the characters he's talking about are bots, simply standing by a boss spawn waiting is hardly a banable offense per se.

LOL, when they have names like Wddfgr and Llpdmmg, it's OBVIOUS they are gold farming bots. I see packs of them. It's annoying, and I wish ZoS would do something about it. It's not hard to have a GM paid to play and ban gold sellers and botters. That would be a fun job.

grimscalrwb17_ESO

Iv seen a few people claim that auto target and boting would not work in eso.

What iv seen is 1 dragon knight and 10 dual weld standing on the bos spawn.
When the bos spawns all at exactly the same time turn to face, the knight pulls the bos to him and they all start pumping the weapons for all there worth.
Result dead bos in less then 2 seconds. Some appear to be set to eliminate threats. any mob I pull onto them gets pulled to the knight the instant its in range. some will run out of position to finnish it off. but quiet often cant return back to the starting spot. you see them try to re-pos there selves every 30 seconds or so when that happens. they run a loop wich appears to be timing and a sequence of turns. funny to watch if the keep banging into a obstacle.

when ever a bot move, it will turn to its start point and run back after the combat is over.

SO there are bots, that can some how lock onto something and attack it.
it does seem like its not able to discriminate. it simply attacks whatever is in range.

My thoughts. sell for a few gold a decoy, that will explode on being hit. make it super obvious to every human that its not a mob. don't allow it in pvp.
have it as a ground target from a range. the damage would be enough to kill any toon caught in the a area effect. Now killing bots become a hobby we can all enjoy.

Rantog wrote: »

Every other dungeon you go to right now has a group of bots parked at the boss spawns.
They never move, never speak, and you could set the second-hand on your watch by the timing of their buffs between spawns.

Go into any dungeon right now and see for yourself.

To demonstrate, I poked into the closest dungeon to where I am - Softloam Cavern.
5 rounds of the boss - the following 4 users have been absolute Clockwrok timing.

None have moved a step, they don't respond to spoken chat, and you can drag mobs right in front of their noses and they don't react. They Only react to the spawn of the boss, and in Exactly the same sequence of actions in Exactly the same timing every time.

Rantog

grimscalrwb17_ESO wrote: »

My thoughts. sell for a few gold a decoy, that will explode on being hit. make it super obvious to every human that its not a mob. don't allow it in pvp.
have it as a ground target from a range. the damage would be enough to kill any toon caught in the a area effect. Now killing bots become a hobby we can all enjoy.

That would be great except for the fact that - to be Obvious to the Real players that it was a decoy, means it is obvious in some way .. to the client. Different model, color, whatever.

The first time someone involved in making the scripts these bots are using was confronted with such a thing - it would be about 5 minutes before every bot operator had access to a fix to get around it.


I maintain that In-Game, Human action is necessary.

They seem to care nothing for getting them out in the short term, determined as they are to do something Every MMO has tried to do for 20 years, but been unable to get right.
Zenimax wants to code what those companies with over a decade of experience in this field cannot - - presumably to prove they can..

Meanwhile, the Obvious, Easy, Simply solution of hiring a few GMs to look around once in a while and Ban these people - is ignored.

cheeser123

Kyosji wrote: »

Well, considering you already admitted that you watched them 'hours on end', sure. If you upload a video of a few hours of these 'bots' farming a boss in complete sync, I'll admit to you they were bots. If not, or you can't, you really have no right to call someone a bot. If I'm wrong, please let me know where you got your degree in 'Bot-tology', and I will apologize once again.

This is a CUSTOMER SUPPORT FORUM.

Please take your contributions to the "bash people asking for customer support" forum, which is located on Uranus.

helgekhb16_ESO

ZOS_MichelleA wrote: »

Hello, all! As stated in our Community Code of Conduct, we do not allow posts or threads that are created for the purpose of “naming-and-shaming” other community member(s). “Naming-and-shaming” is the act of creating a post to call out an individual or group by name, and making them the subject of public accusation, ridicule and/or shaming. Generally, naming-and-shaming involves an in-game situation and/or Terms of Service violation, which the ESO Community Team is unable to assist with.

Thank you for your diligence in reporting this to us, but if you genuinely believe someone has violated our Terms of Service, we ask that players please report them in-game via the support interface (/help) rather than post it on the official ESO community forums. Thank you!

Whats the point of reporting nothing seems to be done about the countless reports we make about bots anyway?
I have personally reported so many bots that i totally lost count of them and keep seeing the same bots week after week, my advice is to people stop reporting them its only taking away from your game time to no use unforunatly.

I even made a post here about it and not even getting a response from cs
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/85197/an-answer-from-zos-would-been-very-nice#latest

OkieDokie

ZOS_MichelleA wrote: »

Hello, all! As stated in our Community Code of Conduct, we do not allow posts or threads that are created for the purpose of “naming-and-shaming” other community member(s). “Naming-and-shaming” is the act of creating a post to call out an individual or group by name, and making them the subject of public accusation, ridicule and/or shaming. Generally, naming-and-shaming involves an in-game situation and/or Terms of Service violation, which the ESO Community Team is unable to assist with.

Thank you for your diligence in reporting this to us, but if you genuinely believe someone has violated our Terms of Service, we ask that players please report them in-game via the support interface (/help) rather than post it on the official ESO community forums. Thank you!

Okay, what I just don't get is why we cannot have a proper answer about what are you guys doing about it. I mean, we all know where the bots are. It would be so easy to ban them if GMs were out there checking dungeons. It is not like as if you couldn't afford a few people doing this all time, this is not a cheap game. I think you guys owe us a proper answer on this.

Cheers.

j.frank.nicholsb14_ESO

helgekhb16_ESO wrote: »

Whats the point of reporting nothing seems to be done about the countless reports we make about bots anyway?

This is certainly a valid comment. If the situation was corrected - ie. no more bots - within a couple days, then feedback would not be necessary. However, it is dragging on now, and while we are asked to continue to report bots et al we have no way of telling what good our reports are doing. If ZOS wants us to participate in "fixing" the issue by providing feedback, I suggest it would be a good thing to provide us with feedback so we feel as if the time and frustration we put in is helping.

Dita

Rantog wrote: »

You going to do something about all the Bots?

Yes. They going to allow more, after every scheduled / unscheduled / hotfix / or just whatever maintenance.

jaggedrelief

Sadly, people who want to do the right thing and help by reporting are getting frustrated with not knowing if the trouble they go to is really making a difference. And, this leads to less reporting (why bother?) which I'm thinking could lead ZOS to assume they're fixing something that's not being fixed at all. Less reports means less problems, right? Well, no.

Since they say they need our help to combat it, then it appears as though they can't tell without our reporting which chars are bots and if they get less of it, it could lead to false assumptions that it's more solved than it is.

Hope I'm wrong and they've thought of a way to tell without reports.

Rantog

jaggedrelief wrote: »

...which I'm thinking could lead ZOS to assume they're fixing something that's not being fixed at all.

Just one more on the ever-growing pile of reasons that they should have had In-Game GMs or the ilk to find and ban these people.

The fact that we Never see the gold spammers in a town suddenly vanish - or all the bots in a dungeon just poof - - shows that either no one at Zenimax Plays the game, or for some reason I cannot fathom - they lack the power to ban these people.

Since they seem to want no part of being In the game themselves.. they need to hire someone who will.

SiliconShadow

hawke21 wrote: »

Maybe me=noob but i would think that even if the location of a character is sent by the client to the server, the server should still be able to recognize that it moved from point A to point B in an impossible amount of time, and perhaps boot the account out of the game?

Some games do actually include this check, but when packet latency is involved this can become a fine line between booting those with a poor connection, and those who are cheating.