Taking Action Against Cheaters in ESO

christhomas4preeb18_ESO

GambitJ79b14_ESO wrote: »

You want to get down to the root of the problem - look at the buyers. If the gold sellers don't make any sales they will eventually drop their aggressive marketing campaign because there's not enough ROI (return of investment) to support it. Don't be so eager to give up your freedoms to get a false sense of security.
- If you lock gold trading - there's always account selling/transferring - then you can get a pre-leveled character too... and the bots/gold sellers will still be there.

It's not a perfect solution but if you take away some of the products (or the means of distribution) they sell...they hopefully will have less reason to spam..

KerinKor

christhomas4preeb18_ESO wrote: »

KerinKor wrote: »

christhomas4preeb18_ESO wrote: »

So the Question is...why do you need to give any other player/character gold?

You don't have any friends, do you?

I have plenty, but I don't give them gold...they are quite happy progressing and getting their own...sounds to me like you have leechs not friends if they ask you for gold...

There's a girl on here whose boyfriend helped her out to buy a horse early on by giving her a few thousand, you know how FRIENDS like to help each other out. He got banned for a time.

My FRIENDS don't ASK, I OFFER, so your pathetic attempt at trying to show me as some kind of sucker fails totally .. just like your fail of an idea.

christhomas4preeb18_ESO

KerinKor wrote: »

christhomas4preeb18_ESO wrote: »

KerinKor wrote: »

christhomas4preeb18_ESO wrote: »

So the Question is...why do you need to give any other player/character gold?

You don't have any friends, do you?

I have plenty, but I don't give them gold...they are quite happy progressing and getting their own...sounds to me like you have leechs not friends if they ask you for gold...

There's a girl on here whose boyfriend helped her out to buy a horse early on by giving her a few thousand, you know how FRIENDS like to help each other out. He got banned for a time.

My FRIENDS don't ASK, I OFFER, so your pathetic attempt at trying to show me as some kind of sucker fails totally .. just like your fail of an idea.

Oh dear.....girls asking boys for money....whatever next...offering people money is not a way to make friends...give a man a fish he will eat, teach a man to fish and he will feed himself.

Blud

Why don't you make it so after the first kill of a public dungeon boss, there is no further xp gain or loot? Wouldn't that stop bots from camping the bosses and ruining the whole experience?

I'm sure you've thought about this, but I just wanted to say it. I don't know why bots can't be stopped in this way.

KerinKor

christhomas4preeb18_ESO wrote: »

KerinKor wrote: »

christhomas4preeb18_ESO wrote: »

KerinKor wrote: »

christhomas4preeb18_ESO wrote: »

So the Question is...why do you need to give any other player/character gold?

You don't have any friends, do you?

I have plenty, but I don't give them gold...they are quite happy progressing and getting their own...sounds to me like you have leechs not friends if they ask you for gold...

There's a girl on here whose boyfriend helped her out to buy a horse early on by giving her a few thousand, you know how FRIENDS like to help each other out. He got banned for a time.

My FRIENDS don't ASK, I OFFER, so your pathetic attempt at trying to show me as some kind of sucker fails totally .. just like your fail of an idea.

Oh dear.....girls asking boys for money....whatever next...offering people money is not a way to make friends...give a man a fish he will eat, teach a man to fish and he will feed himself.

If you say so, troll on.

christhomas4preeb18_ESO

My FRIENDS don't ASK, I OFFER, so your pathetic attempt at trying to show me as some kind of sucker fails totally .. just like your fail of an idea.
[/quote]

Oh dear.....girls asking boys for money....whatever next...offering people money is not a way to make friends...give a man a fish he will eat, teach a man to fish and he will feed himself.[/quote]
If you say so, troll on.

[/quote]

I'll treat that with the contempt it deserves....

Form a reasoned argument...

I just had a look at some of the other comments you have posted on this forum over a 1000 in fact,none of the 30 of so that I looked at seemed to be in the slightest bit positive. You might not agree with my idea, which is your right, but your accusation that I am a Troll is quite clearly some maligned attempt to put me in the same boat as yourself. No wonder more people don't get involved in these forums when there are people like you waiting to be vile about anything and everything it seems...I would hope that anyone from now on ignores everything you say...at least I know I will...do remember that Trolls end up living solitary and lonely lives under bridges..I do hope you enjoy goat...

In fairness though Leeches was probably a bit harsh..for which I apologise.

GambitJ79b14_ESO

@Marricus

Marricus wrote: »

Did you read the whole comment or did you stop there and reply to what should obviously be sarcasm?

But here, let me continue my sarcasm...

Marricus wrote: »

Just no, what if that pop up appears in dungeon when your team are reliant on your heals etc.

well then learn to type your captcha fast, at least the bots won't be able to farm the dungeons

Marricus wrote: »

I do however like the idea of diminishing returns on a boss mob, kill it more than 10 times and you get no loot. As each solo dungeon boss, generally has 1 named blue item, make that drop on first kill as a one off drop per character

oh yes, lets take more of the MMO genre out of it. This game should be linear, make loot only available through first run quest completion. ZOS! Get on this right now or your game is FUBAR!

Marricus wrote: »

So farming a particular mini boss would only net Soul Crystals, Potions and random loot after the first kill. XP drop off could be a lot quicker, no xp after 5 kills.

oh yes, lets take more of the MMO genre out of it. This game should be linear, make loot only available through first run quest completion. ZOS! Get on this right now or your game is FUBAR!.... wait - didn't I say this before somewhere... Oh and BTW they are called Soul Gems, and those need to stop being dropped by bosses too since they're already available through venders. Don't need bots continuing to farm those too. A stack of 100 gems is much more valuable than any other item.

- (realistically)
Can you imagine how much more memory and data storage would be required to keep track of how many times you've ever killed a single boss? It's massive enough with all the phasing and quests which at full load the mega server is having enough of a hard time, and you want to call for more upgrades just to handle something that will ultimately not work. Adding limits to limit bots that will continue to bot and gold sell will only limit the real players. Making this more linear is taking such a huge chunk out of the MMO experience.
How much more freedom are you willing to give up to try and limit the bots? How far are you going to take it when those methods fail?

Marricus wrote: »

The bots are winning right now and it spoiling the game experience for many honest gamers. I still see the same bots I reported in lower levels zone now in Cold Harbour. I have never seen a GM in Zone Chat or online in game on EU. The bots are so easy to spot I honestly don't think it would take much effort to ban them quickly.

Well you need to get you're eyes checked, they may have similar names and use the same bot programming but there's no way you can back that claim that it's the "same bots" or the same account. Here's a forum with some screen shots
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/86793/so-the-legends-are-true/p1
And here's a screenshot provided by another player
http://prntscr.com/3d4109
And here's how you can personally check: add them to your ignore list and note their UserID, the next day (24 hr period) send them a whisper or in game mail and see if it goes through, if you get an error message saying account not found then they've been banned... which what I've been seeing I can pretty much completely clear my ignore list on a daily basis because they ARE getting rid of them. What you're seeing is a high turn-over rate on the gold-seller/bot accounts...

Marricus wrote: »

Right now I feel like cancelling subs and trying again in 3-6 months, when hopefully they have things sorted out.

if your method of getting rid of bots is to limit yourself along with them, then you've got your ultimate - unsub... poof - no more bots for you to deal with. Maybe come back in your 3-6 months but in the mean time stop trying to limit my gaming experience too.

Marricus

GambitJ79b14_ESO wrote: »

Well you need to get you're eyes checked, they may have similar names and use the same bot programming but there's no way you can back that claim that it's the "same bots" or the same account. Here's a forum with some screen shots

Don't need my eyes checked thanks, I screen shot the exact same group of bots and reported them 2-3 weeks previously in Stonehaven and later zones. The exact same group of names that I saw in Cold Harbour. Not at home right now or I would add the screenies.

As for the rest your comments you are perfectly entitled to your opinion as am I. Personally I am against any kind of captcha appearing on my screen at random times. Unless it was only initiated by the ZOS Police who could enact the process if they thought you were macro farming etc. I absolutely don't want it appearing on my screen in a Dungeon or in AvA.

Diminishing returns for killing the same thing in an mmo was around 15 years ago - DAOC for one, not that difficult and obviously not that resource hungry to implement given the advances in Server/PC's since that time.

We don't agree and that is fine. I won't resort to to petty insults though shame you feel that is necessary.

GambitJ79b14_ESO

@marricus ok, without trying to be petty, no screenshot is convenient... however with the benefit of the doubt would bring two questions.
1. are you taking screen shots of the account name (USERID) or of the characters names?
2. when the bot accounts are banned do they keep the characters and everything on it or wipe it out and just keep record of the banned account ID?

If they are wiping the characters then it's quite likely another account is reusing the same names.
If on that note you are accounting for the USERID's, don't know how you can legitimately prove it cause I can dupe screen shots to show that, but that would need to be shown, so people can see what ZOS is not getting done, rather than joining the rally over what seems to be some radical claims.

Otherwise my sarcasm is aimed to show the direction that mentality goes (placing more and more limits to try and get rid of them - in the end big picture all that will do is take you down with them). I don't want to see all these pieces of ESO, things I (all of us) am supposed to be able to do (legitimately), things ZOS meant for us to be able to do, just because people are ranting and raving of a few that's taking advantage of it. I'm not saying bots are not a problem because I've seen them shut down many games, but what I am saying is that restricting everyone is not a good solution. They are already diminishing xp and loot... the tighter you squeeze them, they will just find another way around it, and another, and another. The target really needs to be the ones supplying the demand (the buyers), if they don't move "product" it's only a matter of time when their warehouse get's full and the value of it drops.

ozbourne79

this is appreciated to the max!

GambitJ79b14_ESO

Blud wrote: »

Why don't you make it so after the first kill of a public dungeon boss, there is no further xp gain or loot? Wouldn't that stop bots from camping the bosses and ruining the whole experience?

I'm sure you've thought about this, but I just wanted to say it. I don't know why bots can't be stopped in this way.

It seems like an easy solution, it will stop the bots from farming the bosses yes, but they will just go elsewhere in game just like we are seeing now.

Cynteara

Since this "War on botting/cheating" has started, im noticing less bots in dungeons, and more large groups of bots in open world. I enjoy farming many stacks of rawhide in crows wood when i need money. I can sell this refined rawhide to the vendor or other players and get a little spending money. I cant even do that anymore. Go to crows wood, you will find almost a full raid of bots moving as a group and keeping everything dead. This is extremely annoying, as now i cant even farm for some gold. I see groups of bots moving as a group in all zones( save coldharbour -fingers crossed.) It is extremely disheartening, and makes the game lose some of its appeal. Let me know what you guys think.

Diakos

If the GM's want to spree ban bots all they need to do is do a /who and then ban every single Templar with lowercase names and 2H weapons.
That'll affect ~90% of all bots.

Enundr

Cynteara wrote: »

Since this "War on botting/cheating" has started, im noticing less bots in dungeons, and more large groups of bots in open world. I enjoy farming many stacks of rawhide in crows wood when i need money. I can sell this refined rawhide to the vendor or other players and get a little spending money. I cant even do that anymore. Go to crows wood, you will find almost a full raid of bots moving as a group and keeping everything dead. This is extremely annoying, as now i cant even farm for some gold. I see groups of bots moving as a group in all zones( save coldharbour -fingers crossed.) It is extremely disheartening, and makes the game lose some of its appeal. Let me know what you guys think.

and this , is the exact point of why we so called "campers/farmers" tried to make , just cause you think this method might work , it will NOT stop the bots , it empowers them since not only are we losing a source of items/gold , but the bots move onto the alternative that we all would have , but now theyre starting to hammer that down to get it to make it hard for anyone else to farm the stuff.....so congrats everyone thats wasted time defending the loot lockout , cause its made bots move to another farming method , as predicted........not a first and not a last......atleast with them in delves and such a GM wouldnt have to chase them down and waste more effort , they were all huddled ontop of the delv boss and easy to spot and ban for the GM.....so congrats Zenni , you drive players away with this and you dont make a dent in bots since they just find a new farmable object.....past mmo experience predicted this faster then you could even think.

GambitJ79b14_ESO

@enundr That's completely right, that's all that nerf has done, limit the real players and spread the bots to other areas... thanks for that, what's next in the cut?

ChairGraveyard

Enundr wrote: »

Cynteara wrote: »

Since this "War on botting/cheating" has started, im noticing less bots in dungeons, and more large groups of bots in open world. I enjoy farming many stacks of rawhide in crows wood when i need money. I can sell this refined rawhide to the vendor or other players and get a little spending money. I cant even do that anymore. Go to crows wood, you will find almost a full raid of bots moving as a group and keeping everything dead. This is extremely annoying, as now i cant even farm for some gold. I see groups of bots moving as a group in all zones( save coldharbour -fingers crossed.) It is extremely disheartening, and makes the game lose some of its appeal. Let me know what you guys think.

and this , is the exact point of why we so called "campers/farmers" tried to make , just cause you think this method might work , it will NOT stop the bots , it empowers them since not only are we losing a source of items/gold , but the bots move onto the alternative that we all would have , but now theyre starting to hammer that down to get it to make it hard for anyone else to farm the stuff.....so congrats everyone thats wasted time defending the loot lockout , cause its made bots move to another farming method , as predicted........not a first and not a last......atleast with them in delves and such a GM wouldnt have to chase them down and waste more effort , they were all huddled ontop of the delv boss and easy to spot and ban for the GM.....so congrats Zenni , you drive players away with this and you dont make a dent in bots since they just find a new farmable object.....past mmo experience predicted this faster then you could even think.

QFT

Just hope they don't do the next worse thing and nerf regular mob loot now that bots have moved on from the bosses to regular mobs. Not that I hold out much hope of that.

Regular Mob Global Lockout Timer here we come!

The people that dismissed the warnings deserve big fat "I TOLD YOU SO"s right now.

Fullenglish

and this , is the exact point of why we so called "campers/farmers" tried to make , just cause you think this method might work , it will NOT stop the bots , it empowers them since not only are we losing a source of items/gold , but the bots move onto the alternative that we all would have , but now theyre starting to hammer that down to get it to make it hard for anyone else to farm the stuff.....so congrats everyone thats wasted time defending the loot lockout , cause its made bots move to another farming method , as predicted........not a first and not a last......atleast with them in delves and such a GM wouldnt have to chase them down and waste more effort , they were all huddled ontop of the delv boss and easy to spot and ban for the GM.....so congrats Zenni , you drive players away with this and you dont make a dent in bots since they just find a new farmable object.....past mmo experience predicted this faster then you could even think.[/quote]

QFT

Just hope they don't do the next worse thing and nerf regular mob loot now that bots have moved on from the bosses to regular mobs. Not that I hold out much hope of that.

Regular Mob Global Lockout Timer here we come!

The people that dismissed the warnings deserve big fat "I TOLD YOU SO"s right now.[/quote]

Actually the bots had already moved onto group farming before the lockout was introduced. I'm beginning to suspect the mass of bots/farming/goldspam is simply because the goldsellers have learned that they have a short time window in any new MMO before they are forced out of the game and are trying to capitalize on it.

ChairGraveyard

There were *SOME* bots on regular mobs, but now the majority have moved from bosses to regular mobs.

I'm sure you guys will love your Regular Mob Global Lockout Timer, which will further screw things up for regular players while doing nothing about bots.

I expect no less from people who don't have the foresight to realize that a global lockout timer doesn't hurt bots, but does impact actual players, when it's patently obvious that is precisely the case.

hackedwowb16_ESO

was in stonefall tonight and saw (and reported) no less than 12 bots all farming instant respawning jute nodes add the few running around killed low lvl mobs and minus the ones i got killed in AOE's and it made for a pretty dismal display - no it didnt affect me personally but it will have an impact on the game somewhere down the line ... a flood of gold etc etc

Glsabre

My solution to botting is once a player kills the boss a couple of times, turn on their PVP flag so they can be killed and give bonus XP and Alliance points for killing the bots.

LaxCats01ub17_ESO

I was hoping to get a reply from someone at Zenimax about the steps taken to be considered for an in-game GM position to help out with issues like this among many other issues as a member of the GM's. I have the experience in this position prior and would like to bring that to the team and at the same time learn an grow from what Zenimax has to offer and teach.

ijRoberts

The devs have been very quiet on this topic. I have yet to see them reply to a single thread discussing the jute situation.

I'd love to know that they're at least working on a fix. Otherwise it's giving carte blanche for everyone (not just bots) to jump in.

Cytherion

I have a question. Yesterday I saw a whole train of bots there were about 12 of them all following the same path killing in a loop. It was so many and they were moving so fast. How do you target to report that many. Is there a way to get a GM directly in game to watch this?

Nefar

Cytherion wrote: »

I have a question. Yesterday I saw a whole train of bots there were about 12 of them all following the same path killing in a loop. It was so many and they were moving so fast. How do you target to report that many. Is there a way to get a GM directly in game to watch this?

Unfortunately there is no way to submit multiple names. I've run into scenario where there were 100's or bots in a single spot running some type of login/inventory routine. I tried the 'report user' key you can setup as a keybind so I could try and be quick as names cycled when they loged in, however, it didn't function! So only way to do it is with that radial menu, which quite honestly, I find to be a pain to use when you need to report tons of bots. They need a system in place where we can report bots in just one or two keys. The process as it stands now is to long. I'd much rather have a right click report bot, can still keep the longer report function where you can type in but we need something faster as an option.

Marika

i agree with Cytherion and Nefar, it happened to me in Deshaan, i tried to report as many i could , they were more than 20 in the same spot, but i got tired eventually. Another annoying thing , for me personally is that we don t have permanent nameplates !!! Heck, once i found myself helping a bout to not die, until i mouse over it s name !!! I need to see player names all the time, it s easier to see a bot even if you don t see it in action

FattytheWalrus

It sure feels like the latest efforts on the War Against Bots has only had a negative impact on the dedicated player.

Like most of the posts above, minus the petty troll jabs, I have encountered more open world bot trains with waypoints overlapping mission areas and fast spawning nodes. I find this disheartening because It really slows down the progress of someone actually sitting at the computer trying to level or harvest for legitimate crafting/selling purposes.

It does seem that there are less bots inside dungeons or camping boss respawn locations. I guess this is good for the people who would run through without getting a chance to kill the main dungeon boss and miss out on a local quest, or did not enjoy the difficulty of the battle. However, I am disappointed because if the boss is fun I sometimes like a second or third go at him/her/it. I don't see a problem with diminishing returns in loot and xp, but I am disappointed to say the least in a concept of 1 time only loot and xp. If the fights were really epic, like a raid boss I totally see the value behind a 1 time spawn and loot drop.

I don't know about anyone else, but I really wish there was a focus target tab. I find it REALLY hard to get the faceroll2keyboard names of these individual bots amongst 6+ bot train. I have had several occasions where I try to locate myself somewhere "safe" while trying to navigate the yellow brick road of bot reporting, and end up dead while on my second or third name. Yes, it is kind of funny, but it is also expensive to repair, and I don't have the bots giving me the money to pay for it.

BTW, why do these never ending nodes still exist?

Yes, I am glad there were steps taken to address the issues of botting/gold farming/exploiting. I am also pleased that they tell us, the paying customers, that there will be a Ban Hammer to enforce this. I do indeed like ESO enough to read forums and exercise my right to "rarely" complain when the nerf bat is pointed at me, but I think the actions taken for the War Against Bots were poorly executed and premature.

It is a matter vigilant reporting by users, ACTIVE/AVAILABLE GM's, and a little time. Taking the shortcut this time seems to have more consequences for the User and not the Bot.

(Is the server back up yet?)

GambitJ79b14_ESO

@FattytheWalrus‌

FattytheWalrus wrote: »

Yes, I am glad there were steps taken to address the issues of botting/gold farming/exploiting. I am also pleased that they tell us, the paying customers, that there will be a Ban Hammer to enforce this. I do indeed like ESO enough to read forums and exercise my right to "rarely" complain when the nerf bat is pointed at me, but I think the actions taken for the War Against Bots were poorly executed and premature.

It is a matter vigilant reporting by users, ACTIVE/AVAILABLE GM's, and a little time. Taking the shortcut this time seems to have more consequences for the User and not the Bot.

(Is the server back up yet?)

You are right (IMO) that it was poorly executed, but all these threads to complain and demand all these changes are toxic, when a big media review checks it out that's mostly what they read so it's easy to form a bias opinion out of it. These threads cry and scream the loudest so they're going to get some attention. So it seems ZOS made some of these changes to "quite" down the riot and the threats, in the mean time so many of us (all of us) are effectively collateral damage being caught in these restrictive changes... while some of the changes are not effective in getting rid of the bots - it just moves them to the next area.

How do you please everyone when the only ones speaking out are not representative of the whole?

steveb16_ESO46

GambitJ79b14_ESO wrote: »

@F
You are right (IMO) that it was poorly executed, but all these threads to complain and demand all these changes are toxic, when a big media review checks it out that's mostly what they read so it's easy to form a bias opinion out of it. These threads cry and scream the loudest so they're going to get some attention. So it seems ZOS made some of these changes to "quite" down the riot and the threats, in the mean time so many of us (all of us) are effectively collateral damage being caught in these restrictive changes... while some of the changes are not effective in getting rid of the bots - it just moves them to the next area.

How do you please everyone when the only ones speaking out are not representative of the whole?

Well, the sooner zmo rectify the mistake of designing the perfect game mechanics for bots to exploit the better then. Until then us paying customers are going to scream and shout.

They can fix the lag and freezes while they are at it.

Xaei

If they really want to get rid of bots, and goldsellers in particular, they need to target the buyers.

If you look at GW2, for a MMO that was released to such critical acclaim, there were actually relatively few goldsellers. This was because ArenaNet landed the ban hammer so hard at the start it scared the players who might have otherwise bought gold.

I took a little wander around Sythe (a IRL trading forum for MMORPGs) just out of curiosity to see how much my old RuneScape account would be worth (too much sentimental value, no intention to sell it), and the GW2 section of it had a sticky warning buyers and sellers that trading in GW2 is extremely risky because ArenaNet goes crazy with the banhammer.

GambitJ79b14_ESO

steveb16_ESO46 wrote: »

Well, the sooner zmo rectify the mistake of designing the perfect game mechanics for bots to exploit the better then. Until then us paying customers are going to scream and shout.

They can fix the lag and freezes while they are at it.

By all means scream and shout, nothing wrong with that - how else is anyone going to know something is wrong...
- what I am pointing out is the demanded changes, the demanded fixes the "people" and "paying customers", that seems to think they represent the whole community, have been making have not presented the results they claimed... sure it stopped the bots at the bosses, but it didn't stop the bots. The long term result is that all the real players are further restricted while the reason it's put in place is non-effective.