Taking Action Against Cheaters in ESO

Quidel

Ojustaboo wrote: »

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.

for those who think having on the ground GMs is not possible or that they need more GMs..... For every Mod/CSR person that takes a call or answers in these forums each of those people have a ingame GM character, so it isn't asking too much that they log in every now and again and do something ingame too.

coreserv

Count me in the Good Job Club- However, now I am Tired of reporting, they are inviting me to guilds with spamming gold urls in the name.

UncleMo

Just cleared my ignore list again because of so many gold spammers.

Hey ZOS. Do you really expect people to pay $15/month when you don't have in-game GM's and players don't have the ability to contact a GM or moderator or some sort of real person? Just because you put out a message that you banned a thousand accounts doesn't deter our attention from the reality that there are tens of thousands more accounts that need to be banned.

The box fees have paid the developers. That money is gone now. If you want to see sub money you had better learn the art of customer service and do it quickly. Between this, my bag slot upgrades being ***-canned, lost gold, terrible forum software, no authentication security software....yea I'm about ready to be done with this game.

Get your *** together ZOS.

ragamerb16_ESO

The 2nd batch of Gold Sellers and Bots (There is a new type that has become, again, a menace for crafters) is here in full force...

...As the vulnerabilities they seem to be using are the ones that take a long time to fix I would expect this cyclic process to repeat itself over time... So I would like to ask for a small quality of life change...

...As the ignore list most likely have a limit, I would like that the handlers of permanently banned accounts to be automatically removed once per login or something... Nothing stressfull for the server, just a simple checkout to prevent my list to fill up.


To ppl asking for Real GMs... They surely exist, the problem is the link with Custommer Service... Most Companies make the mistake of subcontracting 2 critical elements of their MMOs: Billing and Custommer Service... By the mistakes ESO have made on both Departments, I would take the risk and assume it's the case here... Well, if you subcontract CS, you can't allow a direct link between actions requested by users through CS and a "Superuser" (ie GM) ingame (Similar as what happens with Banks... For security reassons, their CS can't access any real data regarding your accounts because they are different companies subject to different security access policies), there must be a process that, ofc, slowsdown everything. Why do you think that after all the fuss with the strange billing and bans most of us received a "Custommer Service Survey"? It's ZO trying to get direct feedback from their users to gauge their Subcontractors.


For ppl "tired" of reporting and seeing more bots... If you just go and "ban on the spot" you achieve mostly nothing... Gold Advertiser Bots are rarely connected to the Gold Storing Network, meaning you will get an isolated account, meanwhile Farming Bots have to be connected with the Gold Storing network of each Gold Selling Company... Well, as in real life Criminal Network organization investigations, it requires a certain period of close monitorizing so you know how the Network operates and you identify as many invididuals as possible (How gold is moved between accounts, which ones gather, which ones store and which ones contact custommers)... And when you have more or less all the elements identified, you proceed with the actions needed to remove them. In the case of online games you also have the problem of the Users prone to buy 3rd party gold... Those need to be investigated also and appropiate action taken (Usually a temporal ban followed by the removal of bought gold... Is enough to "make the message heard") because reducing the Demand is also a way to disable Gold Selling. If you pay attention to the Gold sellers you may have seen a sharp drop in the gold buying rate... This usually is good news, meaning demand is decreasing forcing the different Networks to fight each other (The other explanation is that productivity is so high that the networks are flooding with gold... Which is also good news because it eases their Detection... OFC, ZO has to also deal with the productivity... But I repeat this takes longer).

SypherDiass

Quidel wrote: »

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.

its a commodity ? so its not something with quest-lines and story behind it that is part of the game that people are paying to play and enjoy the full benefits of the game ?

i never said i was trying to get a bite , i am still too low level to even undertake the quest once i am bitten , i am more concerned about the integrity of the game with people monopolozing the game through things that should be available to everyone that wants it.

the people with the bite didnt play the game properly , they just click an run , to race to get to the appropriate level so they can interfere with how other people want to play the game and try and get rich off of other people's mis-fortune, from the way you go on about it being 'tuff luck' and 'just the way it is' i would think you were selling bites and trying to justify it ......

if you want to sell a bite , go somewhere OTHER than where the bite spawns , offer it in davons watch or mournhold or the other 2 main cities for the other 2 factions.... dont camp the spawn of the mobs , kill them all off so no one else can get near them so they have 2 choices ... pay or dont get bitten / scratched ... cos that is clearly griefing ... and should be handled with severe bans in the same way that gold sellers should be ... i am not saying its the same offence , but it has the potential to be as destructive towards player 'morale' and 'motivation' towards continuing their subscription when things like this are being taken away from players by other greedy players..... people are paying to enjoy the story side of the game , the mmo part for most at the minute is an UNFORTUNATE side effect that we are having to tolerate , IT IS NOT the happy community version of skyrim that many hoped it would be , and it is largely due to these people trying to ruin it for everyone else and get rich while they do it

i am already at the point of cancelling my subscription if things are not done to address these issues swiftly and severely, because why should i pay for something that doesnt work , or if it is working as intended , it was a MASSIVE oversight from them to think this would be acceptable to paying customers when a part of the story they want to play , and are paying to play , is taken away from them ....

ragamerb16_ESO

i am already at the point of cancelling my subscription if things are not done to address these issues swiftly and severely, because why should i pay for something that doesnt work , or if it is working as intended , it was a MASSIVE oversight from them to think this would be acceptable to paying customers when a part of the story they want to play , and are paying to play , is taken away from them

Fully agreed there... But after seeing who is spawn camping the zones, I sadly realized there are a good portion of regular players... So yes, CS tickets for harrasment are in order (On top of the multiple scams that are around regarding this... As it always happen when you pay for a "3rd party service" before it's actually given on ANY MMO)...

...I'm afraid this is another example of how ZO Devs were naive enough to not realize how certain features are most of the time used by MMO Communities... So far I still haven't seen a situation that haven't repeated itself on other MMOs.

SypherDiass

yeh i have seen dungeons etc with regular people farming the bosses , most of the time these are easiest spotted because they actually move around the boss' spawn , as opposed to standing in one place and spamming 1 move constantly to try and aggro / kill whatever is in front of it ....

either way , the real players there are still not 'real players' as most of us have some self worth and have more important things in our life than trying to ruin someone else's fun. i can understand people wanting to farm a boss for soul gems etc and even for loot to sell / deconstruct or whatever , but if you are farming a boss , and you have killed it 20+ times already , would it really hurt you soo much to step back and allow someone to finish their dungeon then be on their way ? or is allowing someone that 1 piece of loot going to break your bank ?

TwistedRiddlesb14_ESO

SypherDiass wrote: »

yeh i have seen dungeons etc with regular people farming the bosses , most of the time these are easiest spotted because they actually move around the boss' spawn , as opposed to standing in one place and spamming 1 move constantly to try and aggro / kill whatever is in front of it ....

either way , the real players there are still not 'real players' as most of us have some self worth and have more important things in our life than trying to ruin someone else's fun. i can understand people wanting to farm a boss for soul gems etc and even for loot to sell / deconstruct or whatever , but if you are farming a boss , and you have killed it 20+ times already , would it really hurt you soo much to step back and allow someone to finish their dungeon then be on their way ? or is allowing someone that 1 piece of loot going to break your bank ?

I have a serious issue with mentioning boss farming in the same conversation as the vampire/werewolf griefing. People are not killing dungeon bosses to stop others from killing them. I have personally never had a problem killing a dungeon boss, but I do understand how some people might. I just either wait for the spawn and AOE or I press tab as soon as the boss spawns in order to target lock and then attack like crazy and get a hit in. In any case, this is not griefing and you cannot hand out bans to legitimate players who are farming a boss for loot manually. Maybe that's how they get enjoyment out of an MMO. They like farming for loot. And if you are going to make it a bannable offense to farm a boss "too much," then you have to quantify "too much." You can kill a boss 5 times? 10 times? 15 times? There has to be a number. Is it inconvenient? Absolutely. But even if one person decided to step back from farming, it wouldn't do much good with the other 12 people still there.

These solutions need to come from the way that dungeons are presented. They can either a.) make public dungeons instanced (you could still bring a group in, if you need to). I really do not understand why so little of this game is instanced because it really does cause some serious immersion-breaking problems. or b.) Cap the number of people in one phase of a dungeon to a really low number. like 6 or 7. So if one fills up with farmers, you will be placed in the one with less farmers.

TomSamuel

I was playing tonight er otday , and saw one guy constantly spamming the same spell over and over with no effect . Asked him or her what they were doing but got no reply. Maybe it was spamming to level increase ? Seemed weird . Heard people pay to have their toons leveled . Maybe that was going on ?

mrvicchiob14_ESO

Publicly state: buy gold get banned. No questions asked.

Turelus

I would like to know if ZOS are doing things on their end to stop these farming bot issues.

Right now I am running around Bleakrock to get some fishing supplies and there are at least three invisible bots running around farming nodes.
I understand you have banned a large number but I want to know if there is working being done to stop them using exploits as bad as being invisible or moving almost instantly from node to node.

Banned accounts will just be remade and start over enjoying their exploits of their botting for a while until they're banned again.

I understand for security reasons you can't speak openly about changes you're making but some kind of reassurance that there is a team looking at ways to stop these bots or that there is a GM team tracking where the items/gold go and banning accounts with obvious links to them.

SypherDiass

i agree to a degree twisted , people should be able to farm if they wish , but it shouldnt interfere with people trying to do regular stuff like finish a dungeon for an achievement.

as you mentioned and several other people have mentioned also , phasing dungeons would be a much better way of presenting them, only leave the ones in cyrodil unphased so we can still pvp in them if we find players of the other faction.

see how many people want to leave a bot trying to farm a pvp area where they can be farmed themselves ..... i bet not too many as it will interfere with their coding having to respawn and travel at unknown and unpredicted times.

i did try and use an aoe , but the only aoe i had was volley fire for my bow and by the time my arrows are in the air the boss is dead..... i decided against even trying to compete with bots and farmers and went back to questing ....

today seemed marginally better for seeing gold sellers in chat , but there is even more of them doing it via guild invites and in game mail now , i was online for an hour earlier trying to get some questing done , after reporting and ignoring 6 people i decided that , actually , fable 1 is more fun on my xbox at the moment .... i hope you sort this out soon as bad press is building rapidly

Kaskako

There are guilds of gold sellers... ban them all...

Really need to take harsher and much faster action against gold sellers, its just terrible... Between this, the massive amount of bugs all over the place and the terrible support... you are essentially killing the game.

Get your act together before it's too late please.

Quidel

SypherDiass wrote: »

Quidel wrote: »

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.

its a commodity ? so its not something with quest-lines and story behind it that is part of the game that people are paying to play and enjoy the full benefits of the game ?

i never said i was trying to get a bite , i am still too low level to even undertake the quest once i am bitten , i am more concerned about the integrity of the game with people monopolozing the game through things that should be available to everyone that wants it.

the people with the bite didnt play the game properly , they just click an run , to race to get to the appropriate level so they can interfere with how other people want to play the game and try and get rich off of other people's mis-fortune, from the way you go on about it being 'tuff luck' and 'just the way it is' i would think you were selling bites and trying to justify it ......

if you want to sell a bite , go somewhere OTHER than where the bite spawns , offer it in davons watch or mournhold or the other 2 main cities for the other 2 factions.... dont camp the spawn of the mobs , kill them all off so no one else can get near them so they have 2 choices ... pay or dont get bitten / scratched ... cos that is clearly griefing ... and should be handled with severe bans in the same way that gold sellers should be ... i am not saying its the same offence , but it has the potential to be as destructive towards player 'morale' and 'motivation' towards continuing their subscription when things like this are being taken away from players by other greedy players..... people are paying to enjoy the story side of the game , the mmo part for most at the minute is an UNFORTUNATE side effect that we are having to tolerate , IT IS NOT the happy community version of skyrim that many hoped it would be , and it is largely due to these people trying to ruin it for everyone else and get rich while they do it

i am already at the point of cancelling my subscription if things are not done to address these issues swiftly and severely, because why should i pay for something that doesnt work , or if it is working as intended , it was a MASSIVE oversight from them to think this would be acceptable to paying customers when a part of the story they want to play , and are paying to play , is taken away from them ....

If you would have read my full post and not just the parts you wanted to. i don't have the bite yet, and i wouldn't sell it if i did. i agree that if they are farming the ww/vamp to corner the market they should get a temp. ban and warning, second offences ban. also you would have noticed that i mentioned where to look to find guilds that are giving the bites out for free, but again if you would have read it you would have less to argue about. i also never said misfortune nor did i say tuff luck. i just gave out info that would let people that want the bite get it without paying, therefore ending the market of paying for bites and putting the bite campers out of business, while still letting people have a decent amount of fun with the game.

OlivR

Is one solution to the farming problem to 'instance' the resource nodes? So that players can mine their own resources without impinging on anyone else's ability to gather resources? I imagine it might be difficult from a coding size or rather just cumbersome. If the demand becomes one-sided to the cheaters then this a valuable remedy as everyone can collect their own stuff without having to worry about competition or hogging from bots.

SypherDiass

only the first 2 lines of that post were in reply to your comment , i didn't refer to you personally selling a bite , it was a generalization for people that do want to sell it ... you misinterpreted my post, as i never said that you did say things were unfortunate or tuff luck , they were comments about how it seems ZOS view the situation. maybe i shouldn't have complicated it by separating paragraphs? maybe when its all stuffed in together like this its easier to think its all about the same thing.

redwall

rhis is great @runaway

TomLukman

Well done ZOS. Those annoying bots usually attack the low level areas (such as Bleakrock) and really give new players a hard time. It's hard for new players to get the finances going as it is, without those nuisances ripping them off every resource right in front of their faces.

Now to respond to some points seen in the comments - I had a pleasure to be in a part of a hobby MMO team so I have a good idea what it's like to be behind a game master/developer desk. It's important to report cheaters and spammers, but it's also (maybe even more) important never to check out those gold selling sites and/or buying their crap. As long as they keep making profit selling gold for money we'll be forced to put up with them in game.

The reason why MMO game masters don't share results of cheater investigations are pretty simple - if they did, they would only have more trouble with people arguing over it.

Game masters have thousands of tickets to respond to (and with a game as popular as ESO we can assume the same), and in order to be able to manage this they have to follow some system. Since there is no flawless system - there might be a few false bans here and there but such situations are really rare and are usually quickly solved when a real person gives them a proper judgement.

Also, a word of advice to players - don't brag about reporting cheaters publicly - they might read this and give you a hard time later on (which is a reason why game masters don't tell alleged cheaters you did it).

ohmwave

Thank you for your efforts!!! Also, everyone has the power to hide, its called hiding, and most of us have been doing it since around age 5. Sorry about the sarcasm, just found it funny that a comment on "supposed power" was necessary. I would like to start a rumor about girl power meetings in the basement of capital city banks. So, uhh... keep an eye out at banks, I heard secret meetings are taking place there.

Dbetz007

Glad to hear this but it does not seem to stop them. I ignore about 20 to 30 gold spammer accounts a day and report as many as I can but there are so many and how can you tell whether a report is accurate or not whether an account has been hacked or not as well. I have heard some of these gold spammers have been hacking player accounts to do their dirty work. Honestly it would also be good to see some action in game as we play.. Having a Deaderic prince come along and turn them into permanent toads just before they are banned would be hilarious and make the community feel better to boot. The Gold spammers / bots are a massive problem IMO the biggest the game is facing in fact.

trahe

The gold and leveling spammers were outrageously bold, even going so far as to fill the chat screen so their name could not be easily seen and ignored. The dungeons were collecting groups of bots hitting the main bad guy so fast if you didn't have split second timing you had to wait for the next respawn.

If you are feeling nervous...why? I think buyers should also be perma banned. Don't look at me like that...it's another tool to help control the sellers, is it not?

Cablethewolfb14_ESO

Maybe in game chat will be less spammy

Bhakura

One step to stop them is to close down acces to Ondil. I did a quick math there.
They make a bot and go straight to ondil, the dungeon has been bugged since beta, certain normal mobs drop boss loot while the boss drops normal mob loot. There is several of those mobs, 5 i counted, and they respawn within the minute like ordinary dungeon mobs. When i did the count, i counted 13 bots.
Why bother with lowlevel to farm gold? Well this is why:
1 minor soul gem (always filled) = 9 gold
13 bots looting 9 gold of 5 mobs every minute.
585 gold / minute
35100 / hour
842400 / day
5896800 / week
100k = 3 euro
if they sell all in a week, and im pretty sure plenty of idiots already bought from them they made 180 euro.
And thats only counting those 9 gold soulgems not all other loot and coin the mobs drop, so in fact its even more.
So if Zenimax wants to stop these pests, closing down or fixing Ondil would be a HUUUUUUGE step in the right direction.
But im guessing its way to late for that by now they must be sitting on billions of ESO gold.

IamFatalHit

What makes you all think they don't have people running around INVESTIGATING do you even understand what they do in an investigation?

azirri

Zenimax needs a better solution. Even post patch there are still bots everywhere. The gold spammers are annoying, but I just turn off zone chat to avoid; but the bots must go. Stonefalls seems like more bots than regular players.

Muletide

I've been reporting gold spammers left and right: Mostly in game mails and false guild invites. According to the incident reports in my gmail I'm up to 20 reports. Any chance I can get a "Constable" title for my character? lol

Percipience

chimera2005 wrote: »

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

I am glad to see action being taken against gold sellers but reading the above gave me pause.... twice now i've had to use a code sent to my email because it said my IP address wasn't recognized - even though I was playing from the only computer I have ever played from - does this mean someone was trying to hack my account? If so, is it possible that some of the ingame mails are from accounts that were hacked (seeing as how half our login information is available to everyone) - in the first several days, the gold spammers all had names that didn't spell anything - just a string of letters - now I'm getting ingame mail selling gold with names that do sound like legitimate names and I wonder if their account was hacked and will now be banned because someone used it for gold selling. I'm really concerned this might happen because passwords seem to be easy for hackers to get (wasn't there recently a Heartbleed bug that supposedly exposed a ton of information?) - I'd be fine with using an authorization code like Chimera mentions - the extra step would sure make me feel more secure.

deheartb14_ESO

Percipience wrote: »

I am glad to see action being taken against gold sellers but reading the above gave me pause.... twice now i've had to use a code sent to my email because it said my IP address wasn't recognized - even though I was playing from the only computer I have ever played from - does this mean someone was trying to hack my account? If so, is it possible that some of the ingame mails are from accounts that were hacked (seeing as how half our login information is available to everyone) - in the first several days, the gold spammers all had names that didn't spell anything - just a string of letters - now I'm getting ingame mail selling gold with names that do sound like legitimate names and I wonder if their account was hacked and will now be banned because someone used it for gold selling. I'm really concerned this might happen because passwords seem to be easy for hackers to get (wasn't there recently a Heartbleed bug that supposedly exposed a ton of information?) - I'd be fine with using an authorization code like Chimera mentions - the extra step would sure make me feel more secure.

Don't worry, you're not being hacked.
It happens to me occasionally, it probably just means that your Internet Service Provider changes your IP address every once in a while. I think its called Dynamic IP address or something like that. If you reboot your modem you will probably get a new Ip assigned to you out of a pool of 5-10 different ones. Or it automaticly changes regularly or something.

And onto another topic, in my personal opinion, having an autoloot feature that you can turn on in the gameplay menu or allowing addons to autoloot (In Other Words, doing automatic actions without player having to hit a key) does half the work for bot programers. If you somehow put a more stringent requirement of manual play it might cut down on alot of the more crappy prolific botters. Just throwing that out there.

nhisso

Is it just me, or are the gold spammers more obnoxious and more frequent with their spamming and guild invites than they were before this supposed crackdown?? Pay me minimum wage for my state and Ill sit on my rear all dang night and ban gold spammers!

OrdainedFaun

I thought the ESO team did something to fix the public dungeon farming? Just reported 5 farmers/campers who were standing on top of one another and would not reply to my chats.