Taking Action Against Cheaters in ESO

Moonclaw

Great. I do believe that boss farming needs to be fixed also. Way too many public dungeons are a joke with huge teams of folks standing around waiting for boss to spawn - just to kill, rinse and repeat . It can be hard to just complete quests with this going on. Some really good aspects of ESO design but this one is out of control

reggielee

for those saying that they see the same botters days after reporting, look reall closely at their names, alot of times its a new acct, same name but with an extra blank space added in or a letter, easy to overlook

Aldarund

What about bots that creates guild with goldselling site name and invites people into it. Guildleader just stand at first location ( in prison), he is 1lvl and all he do just invite all other to this guild.
I guess its easy to create some algorithm that would detect and flag this behaviour. Like if you invite evert sec new people it probably means you are bot..

7gonago7nrb19_ESO

Good news. And step in the right direction!

Daemoneyes

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Today, we made our first major strike against those who choose to cheat in ESO, permanently banning thousands. This is only the beginning of our ongoing efforts to keep the game free from botters, speed hackers, and gold spammers. We want to thank everyone who has sent in-game reports about these individuals in ESO—your reports helped us identify many of the accounts we banned today. Please continue to report any botters, gold spammers, and speed hackers you see in-game, and we’ll continue our efforts to keep them out of Tamriel.

First off, you were and are totally unprepared.
Which is a catastrophe for the game and ingame economy, also its embarassing to watch. Hell its 2014 and you want to make me believe you didnt see the goldspam coming?

Also you seem to not know that goldseller bots are now invisible, will be a heck of a lot fun to play pvp with invisible chars..

Get your Arse up and filter chat for the most common phrases of the goldspammer and ban them.
Get your GM to move their lazy Arses to the Boss mobs and ban the Bot trains.
And fix this *** annoying bug that has cost me a total of 5 hours of quest and item progress!

Rantog

Anex wrote: »

'm not trying to turn this topic into a bug post, but your use of Vanguard as an example is not a good one in the manner you are trying to use it for (bots before bugs).

I didn't say that Vanguard suffered because of Bots. I meant that failing to act decisively to fix the most critical issues in the immediate rather than "getting around to it" can generate a reputation that can't be undone.

Go play Vanguard now - while it is there - and tell me how much of that still applies. Fantastic gameplay, unique story lines, virtually bugless game (until the recent 2 bombs that lead to the decision to terminate it rather than undo their screwups) ...
- But ask 100 random MMO gamers about Vanguard and they will only know how bad the launch was, and never played it personally - or only played long enough to give up At launch.

Bugs in ESO .. what? 2 quests in the entire game that can't be completed right now, and getting bumped under the map to fall into the void about once every 10 hours?

IMO that is nothing compared to having a completely useless chat system because in trying to Use the chat you spend 90% of your time clicking to Ignore the spammers, ..
Or trying to hit a dungeon with a friend only to find that every dungeon in the region is being farmed by Bots,... which are able to attack the bosses before the model is placed, so you have little chance of even getting kill credit on a Templar or solid melee.
Or deciding that you'll just go harvest and do some crafting while they deal with the bots and spammers, only to find 2/3 of the nodes in the game are mapped out and being harvested on rails by teleport-hack bots.

I know which side of things sounds more severe to me.

I can wait to do a broken quest, and do a thousand others in the mean time.
I can use /stuck to get back to the world if I fall through it.

I can't wave a wand and make the gold spammers vanish so I can use chat normally.
I can't kick the bots offline so those of us actually playing the game can play it as it was designed.
I can't reach into the packs of the teleport hack bots and get what They harvested since I have to go to the Newbie areas to find nodes they aren't already running - and since there are dozens of them, many of them crossing rails..

TomSamuel

If youre against gold sellers why did your facebook page promote a site that does it. ?????

Hellrazr

I have already reported quite a few people for botting......thank you for responding!!!

ZeroNeonix

rirri wrote: »

The ban on my husband's account was revoked today. According to him, while the emails seemed pretty cut and paste, the representative he did talk to cared about his situation and was helpful.

He was banned for 4 days total.

If this happens to you (and it will to a few if they're getting rid of cheaters so quickly), be patient and appeal it. Seems like this is just part of the launch drama.

Good. So were his character, items, and progress still there when he got back in, and did they compensate him for the play-time they took from him?

The_Death_Princess

I want to thank ZO on living up to what I projected to my friends in terms of customer service. Been playing F2P too long, with the genre's complete lack of real support, and even some games bowing to the farmers and instituting ways the company gets their 'cut' of the virtual currency to real.

What I would like to see, if possible, is for a time GM's hit the popular 2nd continent boss spots (i.e. Auridon Del's Claim). Those spots (get it - a mine) have rich veins of botters. I can report half a dozen anytime I go.

Thanks and keep it up.

chimera2005

In a recent event, the other day my account had an unauthorized access attempt, and Zenimax sent me and email, with a 8 character code so I could re-access my account. In the email, it said they locked it, because someone on another IP address tried to access it.

I do believe it would a good idea, and in the best interest of you as a company, and for your loyal customers to give your security measures an extra step.

By use of a remote security password. The password would change automatically every few seconds.
http://oi58.tinypic.com/357is15.jpg

or one via Android or iSO app that works the exact same way as the physical remotes as pictured above.

Square-Enix already has both measures in place.


Thank you for taking the time to read this.
@chimera2005‌

timothycaseyb14_ESO

Good news...I was just saying today, one of the most fun parts of the game is sneaking around in small groups and pvping. If a map hack makes it to game where people show up on the screen...that would kill everything for me. Really hope they can prevent that.

Singular

Good news getting rid of the exploiters and spammers.

Question: how do bots do the teleport thing? And why are there bots at all in an MMO?

Me no savvy.

SypherDiass

ZOS .... IN GAME moderators are needed sooner rather than later , then you can go round in your own teams and check on these bots , the gold spammers, the guild leader spammers and the *** BLATANTLY selling their WW or vamp bites in zone chat for rediculous amounts of money...

yesteday to see how bad it was i announced i wanted to buy a ww bite for 10k ..... i was told by several players that i WILL NOT get a WW bite for LESS THAN 40k gold .....

issues like this need to be witnessed by ZOS EMPLOYEES and dealt with swiftly and severely, there is only soo many times that we as players can take our own screenshots or use the report functions to try and help before we decide that nothing sufficient is being done to help the genuine players. which is unfortunately how it does look to most of us ...

Sarenia

The harvest bots that warp around between nodes are using guilds as safe storage.

They dump the resources periodically into the guild bank, so if one gets banned, the resources are safe. The resources can then be sold off for gold in bulk periodically, and the gold sold.

If 'n' members of a guild are banned for this exploit, ZOS should do a manual audit of the guild to look for other obvious abusers. There will likely be legitimate players as well, people who foolishly accepted the mass invites.

Some players think the invites are to get their user handle. That's not true. Simple /ignore someone and you can see their handle. Much faster/easier and guaranteed. The guild invites are to mix legitimate players in with the cheaters. Security through obscurity.

They are getting clever about this. They disappear (seem to log out) if they warp in and somebody is nearby, minimizing the chance of being seen. In fact, they may log in/out rapidly between each node, since you can't seem to send them a tell or anything unless you catch them in that half a second they're visible.

Hope this helps.

Cously

I saw them on a quest today, like 7 characters with odd names such as "adsajdsa" teleporting around the tomb like patrolling, killing all mobs back and forth. I also lost countless nodes for people that were harvesting them and I couldn't see them so no way someone got there faster than me in a legit way. And finally boss camping, it is very annoying. Sadly it was not on just one dungeon but ALL I went. Permanent ban to both gold sellers and gold buyers.

sagesourceb16_ESO

Gold spammers tend to use character strings that are HIGHLY unlikely in legitimate users. Could you just flag every post that has six asterisks in a row, for instance, double-check by eye to make sure it isn't some delicate person writing "***" as "b******," and ban the spammers?

sagesourceb16_ESO

sagesourceb16_ESO wrote: »

Gold spammers tend to use character strings that are HIGHLY unlikely in legitimate users. Could you just flag every post that has six asterisks in a row, for instance, double-check by eye to make sure it isn't some delicate person writing "***" as "b******," and ban the spammers?

And speaking of delicacy....why are you editing out a word that has legitimate usages and is in any case not a serious obscenity? This is an M-rated game. The only words that should be automatically deleted (and reported for that matter) are racial, gender, and other group insults.

MercyKilling

I happily volunteer my time to be an ingame volunteer GM to police for bots and spammers.
Let one of the spammers send me an invite to their guild. I'll join, get a good look at the roster and prune from there.
I can monitor chat and instagib gold spammers.
I can respond to reports of bots in dungeons and make a call whether or not honest farming by humans is going on, or if it's a bot and banhammer them.

To reiterate: I'll do this for FREE, Zenimax. Because I care about the game.
Give me a separate account so I can continue to play when I'm not on duty, and we'll call it even.
Deal?

Davor

New to MMO. I think I now what a bot is, a computer playing a character. I don't know how it does this, since it would mean extremely good programming skills. What am I not seeing here?

What is Speed Hackers and Gold Spammers?

Wylerayb14_ESO

TwistedRiddlesb14_ESO wrote: »

rirri wrote: »

I am happy to see that action is being taken.

However, my husband's account was erroneously banned for gold spamming. He frequently reported gold spammers - perhaps there is a misunderstanding there. After the 'review' they informed him his ban is permanent.

In the push to address in-game problems, there will be mistakes. I'm sure everyone is extraordinarily busy - launch is such a difficult time.

But to have the review turn out to be inadequate? What is the point of the review if it isn't done properly (as must have been the case). Maybe the people with this job simply aren't given enough time to do it right in these current conditions.

It's sad. He really enjoyed this game. He even took some days off of work to play (including the day he tried logging in only to discover his account was frozen).

That is extremely unfortunate and disheartening and scary. What if it hadn't been now? What if it had been 6 months from now or 2 years from now? or 5 years from now when they did that? They need to get their act together if they are erroneously banning legitimate accounts permanently. This makes me very nervous about continuing to play and also makes me want to NOT report gold farmers, in case I somehow get filtered into the wrong pile.

I don't believe this person with the simple name

unratedvin

Great Honor To This Knowledge!

Jadeviper1974

Wall as with any first strike now it is time for the BDA (Battle Damage Assessment), and I can say that I think the "first strike" was lacking. Perhaps more spotters on the ground would be helpful as this has proven to be very effective in improving strike results. So I say hire more GM's or use the model that other games have used and let community members apply to be GM's.

TwistedRiddlesb14_ESO

Moonclaw wrote: »

Great. I do believe that boss farming needs to be fixed also. Way too many public dungeons are a joke with huge teams of folks standing around waiting for boss to spawn - just to kill, rinse and repeat . It can be hard to just complete quests with this going on. Some really good aspects of ESO design but this one is out of control

This isn't cheating, though, and it's not griefing, as long as the people are doing it for loot. It's simple farming, which has been happening in MMOs since there were MMOs. If they fix this issue, the way to fix it is to change the way the dungeon works, not to punish people for doing simple, standard MMO behavior. I really think they just need to instance public dungeons. There is very little value in keeping them public, in my opinion, and you could still bring a group in, if you wanted to. But just instance them, have someone run through them, kill the boss, and if they want to run through them and kill him again, they can leave, go back in and do so.

Jeremy

I suggest giving players an in-game perk of some kind to encourage them to take the time to file legitimate reports.

Nothing extravagant. Just a sufficient enough reward to convince them it might be worth their time. I think this would help you in your efforts to make this game cheater-free

TomSamuel

those public dungeons have achievements , completed when the boss is killed , why not link that to weather the boss drops loot or not ? easy fix , farmers would move along wouldn't they ?

Ojustaboo

rirri wrote: »

The ban on my husband's account was revoked today. According to him, while the emails seemed pretty cut and paste, the representative he did talk to cared about his situation and was helpful.

He was banned for 4 days total.

If this happens to you (and it will to a few if they're getting rid of cheaters so quickly), be patient and appeal it. Seems like this is just part of the launch drama.

Excellent.

I suspect that due to the amount of gold sellers, they took very over zelous action to try and get on top of it.

Sort of looks like they ran a simple script with a few variables that to be honest an idiot could tell innocent people would be caught.

simply looking for people who have sent or received over X amount of gold, and looking for people that have sent loads of in game mail to other players.

Hence the guild leader who sent a mail to everyone in his guild was also banned.

But while an idiot could see what would happen, that doesn't mean that zenimax weren't aware. Chances are that they knew innocent people would mistakenly be banned, but thought it a worthwhile risk to take to try and get on top of the spammers. Of course they would never admit this, if they did then every other person who was banned for good reason would try to appeal and any one who was innocently banned would be fuming that zenimax knew in advance it would happen.

What they need to do is make people who appeal, a top priority and fix it within hours not days

I hope he got those banned days added on to his months sub

Ojustaboo

IamFatalHit wrote: »

Youre all being rediculous Im apart of a guild of very trustworthy people and we make it a duty to report and ignore any gold spammers or suspected botters and out of the over 90 of us that have done so since the release of early access we havnt had a single mess up nor have any of us been banned. dont listen to these people who claim to have been mis banned. if they were banned it was because an investigation led them to be banned and if you are truly innocent then you will have no trouble getting an appeal and wouldnt be here complaining.

So because no one in your guild has had it happen, anyone else who says they have, must be lying?

Using that logic, yesterday anyone from my guild could have said not to listen to people who claim to have lost bank slots as my guild uses it all the time and has never had a problem. We couldn't say that today though as one member did loose all his expanded bank slots.

If i was mistakenly banned, I would first contact support and the second thing I would do is come on here and complain, just like all the other players have complained about bugs etc that stop them playing.

I imagine that your the type of person that never believes an innocent person ever gets jailed, or the police never lie etc

Quidel

SypherDiass wrote: »

ZOS .... IN GAME moderators are needed sooner rather than later , then you can go round in your own teams and check on these bots , the gold spammers, the guild leader spammers and the *** BLATANTLY selling their WW or vamp bites in zone chat for rediculous amounts of money...

yesteday to see how bad it was i announced i wanted to buy a ww bite for 10k ..... i was told by several players that i WILL NOT get a WW bite for LESS THAN 40k gold .....

issues like this need to be witnessed by ZOS EMPLOYEES and dealt with swiftly and severely, there is only soo many times that we as players can take our own screenshots or use the report functions to try and help before we decide that nothing sufficient is being done to help the genuine players. which is unfortunately how it does look to most of us ...

i understand the quest to get rid of bots and gold sellers. but if your too lazy to find a way to get a vamp or wolf bite for yourself, then its your own fualt. they got the bite that everyone wants....its a commodity that they are selling to the people that want the easy way instead of finding out how to do it themselves. someone selling the ww/vamp bites is not the same as cheaters, it sucks but they have it and can set what ever price they want on it. So please quit lumping them in with the cheaters. by the way, if you pay any attention to the guild part of the forums you will find many guilds that if you join they offer the bites for both to their members for free.

Ojustaboo

sagesourceb16_ESO wrote: »

Gold spammers tend to use character strings that are HIGHLY unlikely in legitimate users. Could you just flag every post that has six asterisks in a row, for instance, double-check by eye to make sure it isn't some delicate person writing "***" as "b******," and ban the spammers?

Trouble is, you would probably need one human working full time on each world instance, something that is simply not financially possible. We would end up paying our entire sub just to try and stop gold sellers and no money left over for investment in new content.

Zenimax needs to come up with a fix that involves minimal human input.

One side effect of the way trade is done is that I see loads of legitimate chat posts saying things like

Selling 100 iron ore only 1000 gold

So they can't even look for the word gold as some sort of indicator.